Shadowplay

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘You reveal yourself every night of your life on the stage.’

  ‘Kind of you, but no. That happens very rarely. It happens with Len, it’s her gift, extraordinary thing. Len is always Len, no matter who she’s playing. That’s why they love her. Never saw anyone better at telling the bastards the truth. Suck it down and come back for more. Remarkable.’

  In the distance, the waterfall. He looks without seeing it.

  ‘When I was a young’un, you know, starting out in the game, I didn’t even have to try tremendously hard. It just came to me, somehow. Like being able to sing. Used to wish some ruddy barometer had been invented that could measure the pressure in my head. The morning of a performance, I’d boil. Like a cauldron. Up and up, all day, until I could barely stick the steam. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, feel it fizzing out my eyes damn near. Then I’d walk on the stage and let it blow. O my dears. Didn’t give a damn for the audience or the playwright. Or myself. But these days – love a duck – I’m afraid I don’t boil. Like some ballsed-up old teapot kicked down an alley. But you boil, old thing. It’s there in your writing. All you needed was to find a way of letting it out. A pity you never did.’

  ‘It’s getting on. Shall we make back? You can rest a bit before the show?’

  ‘This was wonderful. Thank you. I think a sherry and a little lie-down.’

  An hour later he is in bed at the hotel, the heavy drapes shut. He awakens to find Stoker lighting the lamp, putting together the washbowl and jug.

  ‘Buggeration,’ Irving murmurs. ‘It’s not already time? I was having such a pleasant dream. Rather naughty, in truth.’

  ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  ‘I hate surprises.’

  ‘You’ll make an exception. Hold still.’

  ‘What in hell are you doing?’

  ‘Brushing your hair before I shave you.’

  ‘Leave off, you handsy ponce. Get yourself a dilly-boy.’

  The door opens quietly and she enters the room.

  ‘Who is there?’ Irving says. ‘Come forward. I can’t see.’

  ‘I was playing in Harrogate last night,’ she says. ‘Our friend sent a message that you were here.’

  ‘Darling Len? Is that – ?’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks. How marvellous of you to come, my darling, how simply too divine. Bram, you unspeakable bastard not to tell me.’

  ‘I can only stay a moment or two.’

  ‘Wish I’d known you were coming, would have cleaned myself up a bit. Well, how have you been, my dearest angel? Sit you down, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Surviving, old pet. Doing one-night stands at my time of life, can you imagine? I’m in Uddersfield this evening in the most execrable piece of Music Hall tosh and at the Prince of Wales Birmingham tomorrow in a dreadful old panto by a Welshman with three boyfriends if you can imagine such a thing. Still, it keeps me in bonnets and gin.’

  ‘Let me get out of this rotten bed and we’ll punish a glass of fizz together.’

  ‘Stay there, you old miscreant. I haven’t the time, really.’

  ‘Hop in with me if you like? Bram won’t mind, would you, Auntie? Matter of fact, she’d like to join us.’

  ‘Incorrigible devil you are. You look so galoptious, I’m rather tempted.’

  ‘My sweetest old minx, you tell such pretty lies.’

  ‘What’s this nonsense I hear from a little bird about you not looking after yourself properly? That won’t do, you know.’

  ‘Find it hard to bloody sleep, that’s the curse of it all. Shagged to buggery with tiredness all day but awake in the night. Thinking, you know. Going over the old days. What I’d give to close the peepers and know that peacefulness again. Strange what we end up longing for, no?’

  ‘It’s getting on for seven,’ Stoker says. ‘We should make a start on your paint.’

  ‘Oh, let me help,’ Ellen says. ‘Fetch me over the stuff, Bram, and a towel? Do shut up, Harry, I’d like to.’

  Stoker brings the tray of pots and brushes, the powders, the rouge.

  ‘Your farewell tour,’ she says, massaging the base-pan into Irving’s chin, ‘I don’t believe it for an instant. Another ruse for rustling up punters, you irredeemable fraud. Pout your lips for us, can’t you? Pout. Make an O.’

  Stoker applies the lip-stain, ochre mixed with violet, while she paints around the eyes, delicately lengthening their lines. ‘The people shall never allow you to retire, poor old workhorse,’ she says with a smile, licking her fingertips and smoothing his brows with them, ‘but even if you did, what a wonderful career you’ve had, haven’t you, darling?’

  ‘Oh yes, a wonderful life of work.’

  ‘Just some blush on his right cheek, Bram, why, yes, you’re an old master. What have you got out of it all, Harry, do you think? You and I are getting on, as they say. Do you ever think sometimes, as I do, what have you got out of life? Look in the mirror here.’

  ‘A good cigar, a glass of wine and some merciful friends.’

  She laughs.

  ‘Oh, and a tiny little slice of immortality of course.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘My dear Len, pay attention. You are talking to the Un-dead.’

  ‘This nonsense again,’ Stoker sighs, combing out a wig’s fringe. ‘Here’s an old bugger can’t appear to credit that a scribbler simply makes the stuff up. Vanity, thy name is Irving.’

  ‘Oh I never thought that,’ she says. ‘Dracula is too gentlemanly to be Harry. What are you playing tonight, darling?’

  ‘I reckoned Thomas à Becket. They wanted me to do the wretched Bells but then I rather changed my mind. Stubborn old queen. I like to make ’em dance.’

  ‘Perfect,’ she says. ‘Better shove along in a tick.’

  ‘Yes, you mustn’t miss your train.’

  ‘There was always a ruddy train to catch, wasn’t there, my Romeo?’ She caresses his face, thumbs the talc and glitter into his cheekbones. ‘I believe I’ve spent more time on trains down the years than I ever did on a stage.’

  ‘I missed one or two of them.’

  ‘This one, you caught.’

  ‘My Angel. Our Len. Get thee to a nunnery.’

  ‘Good night, sweet prince. Break your legs.’

  Backstage, Royal Theatre, three minutes to curtain

  A doctor is sent for and examines him by candlelight. The coughing fit is bad, the nosebleed a concern. His blood pressure is falling, pulse is erratic.

  ‘Best not continue, Sir Henry. It might weaken you considerably. The performance must be cancelled or postponed.’

  ‘Rubbish. I am an Irving. We Cornishmen don’t funk.’

  ‘If you’ll permit me to insist, sir, really it would be wise.’

  ‘Someone get me an ale, I want it cold as the Celtic hell. And shut the house doors now before the bastards start escaping, will you.’

  ‘Again, as a physician—’

  ‘Doctor,’ Stoker says. ‘I know him as well as it is given any man to know another. There is no point in talking sense. Let him on.’

  ‘Boy, here! Bring me that bottle. What kept you?’

  The beer is handed over. He takes a deep, annihilating glug.

  ‘The ale makes me sweat, Bram. They like to see you sweat for them in the north.’ He drains it to its dregs. Turns to the other players. ‘Know your lines, chaps? Good. Beginners’ positions, keep it crisp. Anyone upstages me, I’ll boot him up the hoop. Champagne on me later. Cut along.’

  The house lights are extinguished to an explosion of cheers. The actors hurry on to their opening places. From the pit arises the out-of-tune piano’s attempt at a fanfare.

  ‘Bram? A kindness?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Go for a troll about the town. Don’t watch.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘It’s what I’d prefer, feeling a bit flat tonight. Want you to remember me at my best. See you at curtain
down? Crack along.’

  ‘You’re quite certain?’

  ‘Yes I am. Nancy off.’

  Outside on the greasy street, Stoker is trudging past the theatre’s frontage when the sleet comes. Rows of soggy posters read FAREWELL SIR HENRY IRVING. He steps into an ironmonger’s doorway to avoid the downpour. Lights a cigarette. In the window is a daguerreotype of King Edward.

  That night of fame and glory.

  Young Irving striding offstage at the close of The Merchant of Venice, fleets of carpenters and builders waiting in the dock. Before the last of the audience have departed the auditorium, the workmen are flooding in, tearing out seats, painting the walls royal purple and silver, unfurling Persian carpets and spools of plush over every inch of the floor. A silken banner is undraped from the apex of the proscenium. CORONATION OF KING EDWARD. ROYAL GALA PERFORMANCE

  Gilded carriages on Exeter Street, steam rising from the horses. Princes, rajahs, tribal chieftains, potentates, lairds in rich tartans, sultans in tiger skin, royalty from every unpronounceable corner of Empire, processing through the foyer, along the aisle and to the stage. Archdukes and Magistrates, lords-Lieutenant and Admirals, Contessas in gem-studded gowns. Gold dust and glitter-light twinkling on the air. A confetti of red and yellow rose petals, wine trickling from fountains. In the halo of his fame, newly knighted Irving. He summons Stoker from the wings. Hand in hand, they bow.

  The crowd as one chanting ‘Long Live the King’ and the frisson of ambiguity about whom they mean. Irving indicating with his eyes to an apprehensive-looking King Edward that it is he who should step forward and acknowledge the applause.

  The steamships to America. The luxury of the staterooms. The tours to San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago. Ellen in Central Park, ice-cream by the lake. Irving genuflecting before kind-eyed Mark Twain. Did all of it happen? Did any?

  He climbs the shabby steps to the Stage Door, past the dressing rooms and Prop Shop. Past the reek from the players’ lavatory, past the row of buckets standing sentry to catch the leaks from the ceiling, past the posters for old plays no one remembers any more, descends the Jacob’s-Ladder into the wings.

  The Chief looks rheum-eyed, sick, has torn his episcopal collar loose, is wrestling with the play’s closing moments, which might best him. Stoker glances down at the Prompter’-script.

  Becket: ‘My counsel is already taken, John. I am prepared to die.’

  Salisbury: ‘We are sinners all. The best of all is not prepared to die.’

  Becket: ‘God is my judge. Into thy hands, O Lord. Into thy hands.

  As the shabby drape is lowered, he stumbles, the audience rises, cheering. Assisted by two of the bit-players, he steps out and takes his curtain-call, nodding, defiantly pouting, like a highwayman on the gallows. A pagegirl comes from the wings with a bundle of lilies. He kisses her hand, flings the flowers into the crowd.

  ‘Yorkshire for ever,’ he calls.

  In the Dressing Room, he stares at the worn-out ghost in the mirror.

  ‘Let us speak of the root of all evil,’ he sighs. ‘Choke the money out of them, did you Auntie, old girl?’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘How did we do?’

  ‘Four pounds, give or take. The weather will have put some people off.’

  ‘Bastard northern tightwads. Barely pay for the hotel.’

  ‘Not every performance can sell out.’

  ‘If only one were Prime Minister, one could rain cannonballs on Yorkshire and cull the whole bloody lot of the indigenes in one fell swoop. The average intelligence of Britons would be raised by a mile.’

  ‘It will be better tomorrow night. Leeds is a good show-town.’

  ‘To think I was once handsome. Look at me, Bramzles. Face like a vandalised cake.’

  ‘You’ve been feeling the taking up of your work again, that’s all, after your illness. Now you’re back in your stride it will be easier.’

  ‘Give us over a bowl of water would you, till Mother gets off her slap.’

  ‘Do you want help?’

  ‘I’ll do it myself. Don’t want your shovel-mitts all over me, I’m not that sort of girl. Have we cold cream in the bag?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘How long are we together?’

  ‘Seven hundred years.’

  ‘Sweet Christ. I shall have a special crown in heaven for having worked with a Pat all that time. My first performance was in Dublin, you know.’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘Bastards hissed me. Like thisssssssss.’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘Never forgot it,’ Irving says, wiping the paint from his eyelids. ‘Dublin audience, harshest bastards in the world, never give you a chance. But you have made it up to me, Auntie, for your countrymen’s treachery. Perhaps I’ve done the same for you, eh?’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Right as the mail.’

  ‘I thought you looked pretty unwell. Near the end.’

  ‘Oh I hammed it up a bit, darling, don’t worry about that. Mother always knows what she’s doing.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘They’d love us to drop dead for them, give ’em a story to tell. “By gum I were at iz last performance, bugger died with iz boots on, never seen nowt like it.” That’s what my sort is for. To bloody die for them.’

  ‘There is a note from a Mrs Lauderdale, a cousin of the manager. She requests a lock of your hair and an autograph.’

  ‘Tell her no, impudent bitch. Pluck a hair off her husband’s arse.’

  ‘It’s for a charitable fund she is getting up for elderly actors out of work.’

  ‘The critics have often taken the whole damned head. I suppose I can spare the interfering old biddy a tuft of its grass. There’s a manicure scissors in my purse there, if you’ll fetch it.’

  He bows his head while Stoker cuts. The scissors are blunt, it’s necessary to saw, until the curl comes away, a frail grey feather. There is a moment when his left hand is resting on the make-up table.

  Stoker reaches down and touches it. Their fingers interleave.

  Everything is quiet but for the sleet on the Dressing-Room window.

  ‘Muffle up your throat, old chap,’ Irving whispers. ‘Bitter cold night. Must take care of you.’

  The lobby is busy, guests coming and going, waiters fetching trays to a wedding party. A fire has been lit in the grate near the dining-room doors.

  Now the post-show weariness is coming. He is breathless, coughing.

  ‘Let me sit a moment, Auntie. Bit fagged out.’

  The stately armchair in an alcove has about it something of a throne. He limps to it, seats himself, plucks a menu from the table. ‘Oh that’s better, that’s better, now a glass of champagne, little kidney-rinse.’

  ‘You know what the doctor said about drinking late at night.’

  ‘But Bradford is known for its champagne, old girl. Tiny wee sip. To scorn the devil.’

  ‘I will have a glass brought up to your rooms once you retire.’

  ‘Is not a wedding the loveliest spectacle in all the world? The charm of the young for the old, I expect. Get the booze in and we’ll watch the dancing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dearest Jesus, you are such an incurable mumsy. Sher yeh droive a stake through me heart so you do.’

  ‘It is midnight. We have an early start. Be reasonable.’

  ‘A mouthful of fizz won’t kill Harry Irving. I’ll drink a docker under the table, then get up and do Hamlet. Oh and ask if they have a nice bit of cold lobster too, would you, or a chicken leg or something?’

  ‘Christ, come on then, you nuisance, take my arm.’

  ‘Go and fetch it for me, Auntie? I like to sit and watch the people. It’s research don’t you know. People are food.’

  In the bar he happens to notice the doctor from the theatre’s backstage, now at a billiard table in a circle of cigar-smoking men. The doctor waves amiably, clenches a fist in the air, mouths th
e words ‘well done’. Stoker nods back, orders the flute of champagne, changes his mind, asks for a half-bottle. Oh, and dash it, two cigars. Yes, Turkish Latakia if you have them.

  A strange moment. In the bar mirror, above the optics, he sees, behind his shoulder, Irving’s face weeping. But when he turns, shocked, no one is there.

  Hail swooshes on the glass roof, causing everyone to glance upward. The pianist starts playing an old Northumbrian ballad, ‘The Lass of Byker Hill’. He isn’t very good but he plays with great feeling. Some of the drinkers join in.

  If I had / another penny

  I would have / another gill.

  I would make the piper play

  The Bonny Lass of Byker Hill.

  Byker Hill and Walker Shore,

  Collier lads for ever more.

  Byker Hill and Walker Shore

  Collier lads for ever more.

  In the lobby, Irving is on the floor, face down, there is blood. Waiters are turning him, pumping his chest, calling out. The doctor hurries from the bar, billiard cue still in hand. Two policemen rush in from the street.

  The ice-bucket falls.

  The bridesmaid is weeping.

  The revolving door turns in the wind.

  Someone brings a bed sheet, they drape it over his face while they wait for the priest to come.

  CODA

  Friday 12th April, 1912

  SMALLHYTHE HOUSE, TENTERDEN, KENT

  6.31 a.m.

  The elderly cook is poorly this morning so the lady of the house makes breakfast for her and carries it carefully up the servants’ back stairs and along the landing, fresh eggs, tea, two slices of toasted loaf, with a small glass of orange juice and a hot water bottle. Having plumped the pillows and helped the dear old love brush her hair and tidy herself, she settles her with a jug of fresh lemonade and a stack of back copies of The Stage and Woman’s Realm. Good to have a bit of nonsense to read when we’re ill.

  Not long before dawn, the lady closes the heavy hall-door behind her and hastens down the steps, their granite slippery in the dew, then across the gravel driveway, past the henhouses and the gate to the pear orchards, through the pleasingly narrow stone passageway that leads to the stable yard. The rooster’s raucous call is answered by the bawling donkey down in the waterfield. Steam rises from the dew-laden wellhead.