Shadowplay

by Joseph O'Connor

  They writhe and scuttle on the screen, faces white as blank paper, eyes startlingly wide open, as though warding off death, uneasy in their element, lips moving but silent. If we could see them, this is what ghosts would look like.

  Sometimes, in other places, a pianist has come in, vamped along to the story, glancing up now and again at what is happening on the bedsheet, the spectacle of humans playing as they have since they crawled from their caves – crawling from their caves was perhaps itself a sort of play, a dare born of boredom on a wintry afternoon – but the best accompaniment is silent stillness, just the clicking whirr of the projector, like now, and the occasional awed sigh from an audience member at a sword fight, a promise, a kiss.

  In silence it becomes possible to hear what subsists beyond the noise, what has been there all along, the truths that are drifting on the air, often drenched out of recognition but not quite drowned. At such moments you don’t need the dialogue – words get in the way – but they project it for you anyway, on ornately decorated slides, with laurels and harps in their corners.

  Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

  Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not …

  that, when I waked,

  I cried to dream again.

  In the darkness, he feels his son reach across and take his hand. Both of them quietly weeping. A curious thing. Back in headache-bringing daylight, neither of them will mention it.

  ‘Pops,’ says his son. ‘Let’s not go where you’re going.’

  ‘I’m going. You needn’t come with me.’

  ‘But why, Pates?’

  ‘Don’t matter. I’m going, that’s all.’

  For half an hour they say little. A sandwich, a cigarette. But they are bonded by having been in the room with the ghosts. Gentleness, mildness, but something else, too, for not all of the airs are sweet.

  A FASHIONABLE THEATRICAL RESTAURANT

  1.18 p.m.

  Smile, old girl. Someone here will know you. It’s the Savoy, after all. Full of actors, impresarios, showpeople. You don’t want to let them see you looking restlessly at your watch, it would bring them to the table and then there’d be talk you don’t want to be having. Not that there is any sort you do want.

  A gin, perhaps? Not alone.

  O where on earth can he be? Twenty past already. Typical Shaw. Always bloody late. Does it on purpose, his power, he’s so busy. His time matters more than poor yours.

  Pompous twit.

  Pompous bloody twit.

  Pompous bloody bearded bloody self-regarding twit.

  Mercy Christ, look at that miserable string quartet over there on the dais, sawing and plucking away like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, not a smidgeon of musicality or attractiveness among the lot of them. To think Haydn agonised to drag such beauty of himself. Had he ever heard this collection of cummerbund-toting ghouls he’d have burnt his fiddle and become a barber.

  Imagine being married to one of them. Or to anyone.

  Men, if carefully cast, are so marvellous in so many of life’s roles, wonderful friends, lovers, lion-tamers, popes, explorers of waterless or unmapped regions, coal miners, shooters, drinking pals. They have admirable simplicity, their predictability is so soothing. Know a man for fifteen minutes and you know him for life, he will never surprise you again, he wouldn’t know how to; asking would only frighten him. But they’re simply, alas, not good at being husbands. Almost any woman you’d meet by chance, in a grocery queue, say, or sitting beside you on a train, would make a better husband than almost any man ever born.

  Often she remembers an evening twelve or fourteen years ago when she ate a bad oyster at one of the tenants’ christenings, with the calamitous results that ensued. For three days she had been wretchedly, vesuvianly ill. Cold, hot, sweating, in agonies, things happening inside her body that made her wish she had never been born in one, raving, burning, weeping, heaving, roaring at the servants to get out of the house so that the indignity of her tortures would not be witnessed or, worse, overheard. For three days her blasphemies scared the rooks off the chimney pots, her innards were the cauldron in Macbeth. When all of it was over, she realised one thing. At no point was it worse than being married.

  Having to listen to them, talk to them, endure their weird angers, their misdirection of rages better targeted elsewhere, if anywhere at all, which was debatable. Having to watch them suck soup, cut their toenails, sniff their shirts, put their feet up on the ottoman while telling you what things like elections and continents are, because, being a woman, you wouldn’t know.

  Being told what to wear, who he met at the station, why the indigenes of such and such a protectorate are congenitally ungovernable, being nudged and commanded brightly to smile, it’s not so bad (rrrr). Having to look riveted while they enumerate the fascinating differences between Liberals and Tories (yawn) or reveal to you that tigers live in India, not Africa (ah!) or prove what jolly sports they are by telling an amusing anecdote against themselves or let you know the blissful tidings of how remarkably quickly they finished the crossword this morning on the train up to town, faster than any other boy in the kindergarten.

  Their nostril-hair. Their odours. Their wet feet on floorboards. Their re-enactment of misunderstandings they had with others of their sex, in which they ‘do’ all the voices. What a microscope is. How to spell ‘parallel’. Their exhausting need to be admired, to be built back up. And that is before we approach what happens in the marital bed – why are they so much nicer at it when they are not married to you? – on which rare but sadly not rare enough occasions one recalls the verdict of Hobbes on life: Nasty. Brutish. Short.

  The manager approaches tactfully, in a suit so crisply pressed that it must surely be uncomfortable to sit down in.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Terry, an honour to see you with us again. You have everything you wish, I hope?’

  ‘Thank you, Paul, good afternoon. How have you been?’

  ‘Keeping well, thank you, Miss Terry.’

  ‘Family in the pink?’

  ‘Three little ones now, Miss Terry, thank you for asking.’

  ‘Excellent. Your wife’s hands are full.’

  ‘There is a matter to bring to your attention. Mr Shaw has just telephoned to our office upstairs with a message.’

  ‘A message?’

  ‘He regrets to say that he is detained at rehearsals at the Prince of Wales and will not be able to see you at one as planned. He asks if you will be good enough to wait here for him until half past. Two o’clock at the very latest. I am instructed to look after you well.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘May I get you … ? Perhaps a glass of something crisp? Anything you wish.’

  ‘Will you give that Irish nuisance a plain and simple message for me when he arrives?’

  ‘Of course, Miss Terry.’

  The next words to come out of her mouth take about sixty seconds to say. Many of them are heard only rarely in the dining room at the Savoy. Some of them, she didn’t know she knew.

  ‘On second thoughts, don’t bother. Fetch my coat for me, would you, Paul?’

  He appears mildly relieved as he nods.

  AN AUCTIONEER’S SALEROOMS

  2.15 p.m.

  They watch from across Foley Street as the steaming motor cars and hansoms pull up and the people step out in the rain. From the doorway of the auction house come attendants with umbrellas. An overhead canopy is pulled out. More buyers arrive. It is as though an audience is gathering for a performance.

  A strange nervousness besets him. He doesn’t want to go in. His son seems to sense it, places a reassuring hand on his father’s shoulder.

  ‘Pops, if you’d rather not?’

  ‘Let us cross, Nolly.’

  The saleroom window has misted up. From the street, the room’s contents are not properly discernible, seem like hulking wrapped objects in a nicotine fog. But the notice pasted inside the glass is clear.

  EXECUTO
RS’ PUBLIC AUCTION

  OF THE LATE

  SIR HENRY IRVING’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

  APRIL 12th, 1912, 3 p.m. at these premises

  Seven years having passed since the death of Sir Henry Irving, all matters of probate having now been resolved, the executors have felt it proper that some of his belongings may be disposed of to the public so that burdens on Lady Irving and his family might be relieved. Many curios, items of theatrical memorabilia, stage costumes by the house of Auguste et Cie, fancy objects, trinkets, sundries, a fob watch, reading spectacles, a good walnut desk, some of his clothing and boots, a fine billiard cue, an ivory paperweight of the Acropolis, a fine pair of fencing swords, good suitcases and monogrammed valise, daguerreotypes, sketches, mixed general lots (boxes of old newspapers, many back-numbers of Punch, Illustrated London News, Theatre Gazette), phonographic cylinders, his Medal of Knighthood, & cetera. Advance bids accepted. Every lot must go. Cash or bank draft only. ALSO, the green beetle-wing gown of Miss Ellen Terry as worn by her in the role of Lady Macbeth, Royal Lyceum Theatre, 1888 (‘The most marvellous and iridescent stage costume I have seen in my life’, Mr Mark Twain, American gentleman of letters), a memento gift from Miss Terry to the late Sir Henry. Also a collection of stage weapons, wigs, and other theatrical properties, all clean. Also, a very finely-cast DEATH MASK.

  Inside, the room is stuffy. The smell of mothballs and damp coats. Nearly every man here is smoking. Professional traders, they scurry about with notebooks and catalogues, their magnifying glasses and measuring tapes looped to their belts. There is an anxiousness, a fear of something about to be missed.

  Long trestle tables have been set up and draped in black baize, the better lots laid out carefully and labelled. Autographed letters from Conan Doyle. A signed photograph of Queen Victoria. The scroll of honour on which his Freedom of Philadelphia is inscribed. Signet rings. Tiepins. A hallmarked silver comb. The pair of gloves given him by Lady Tennyson. A jewel-hilted dagger inscribed with his favourite quotation: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

  A headless mannequin on a platform is wearing the beetle-wing gown, which has been lit by a circle of candles. Now and again, a white-gloved attendant picks up a candle and walks a slow, priestly circle around the pedestal, so that beams of emerald and cobalt and silver shimmer from the bodice and dance around the dirty, smoke-filled air like eau de nil turned to light. A woman is trying to photograph the effect, with a box-camera on a tripod. But no camera is able to capture magic.

  He wheels himself further down the room to where a collection of bad sketches has been badly hung. He will not look at the death mask, which is in a glass case of its own. His son drifts away towards the gown.

  A phonograph machine has been set up on a table and, through a sea of crackle and fuzz, begins playing what he realises after a moment is Irving’s voice. So startling to hear it, after all this time. It’s both like him and not, as though he’s giving an impersonation of himself. To tek. Up awms. Against a see. Of twubbles. And by oppeausing. End them.

  Such an old-fashioned style of delivery, plummy, over-declamatory, his speech impediment oddly more prominent than anyone who ever heard him speak would remember. The voice a bit in love with itself, not serving the text. That mode would be laughed at now.

  Nearby, a trio of glass cases containing medals, picture frames, silver cigarette boxes, a presentation urn of Waterford crystal.

  His clothes have been pinned to sheets of cork set leaning against the walls. Jackets, britches, waistcoats, even undershirts. Two dozen pairs of empty, wrinkled shoes, in a line, like a detail from a nightmare set at a grand ball.

  One dealer plucks a tricorn hat from a stack on a table, pops it onto his head, turns grinning to his chum, who warns him with his eyes that he’d better replace it or the attendants will ask them to leave. Remarkable, how much can be said with the eyes. But every actor knows that.

  In a corner down at the back, near the exit to the lavatories, sits the junk no one but a scavenger or a rag-and-bone man will want, the stuff someone will have to be paid to cart away and dump. Bundles of mildewed theatre programmes, stained cravats, divorced slippers, envelopes of odd buttons, a bent sword. A notice has been pasted to the windowsill above the dismal huddle: ANY OFFER SECURES. BUYER MUST REMOVE IMMEDIATELY ON PURCHASE.

  Beneath a length of old curtain, he finds a battered cardboard box, marked assortment of secondhand books. Many are missing their jackets, or silverfish have been at them. A Complete Poe, fallen to bits. A ninth edition of Jane Eyre. A pirated Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. Nothing anyone would want. Too damp even to use as kindling. The novels that never sold. The poems unread. The dead books where the publisher simply made a mistake, was in a falsely good mood the day he said yes, or wanted something from the author, or owed someone a favour. And now, in the bottom of the box, something he recognises, an old friend fallen low. Spineless, frayed, the first copy of Dracula. Chapter two has been torn out. Someone has scribbled what appears to be a grocery list on the yellowed, crinkled frontispiece. Bread, wine, half pound of sausage, milk. Below it, in his own hand, six faded words.

  To Henry, from Bram. Eternal love.

  As he looks away, through the blur, the scald of the weakening blush he doesn’t want to have, an apparition arises near the steamed windows. There, across the room, by the luminescent dress, the ghost of her gentle young self. So fresh, full of the majesty and poise of youth, so possessed of the knowledge she could not have known at the time, that innocence is a kind of wisdom, more valuable than experience, that no moment will ever come again.

  You wanted her desperately. You never made it clear. Because you knew what would happen if you did.

  And if things had been different, things might have been different. But it is too late now. It was too late too long ago. The words go around in circles. Brittle little bits of acidy memory, tangy as lemon-ice, bitter as salt, overhung by the reek of rotting coffin. No wonder you were never able to make of it a novel, a poor tale it would have been, a bit of dressmaker’s trash.

  Perhaps to have known her was enough, to have been any part of her life. If her story were a book of poems, you would be no more than one line, but that is not nothing, not at all. To have her think of you as her ally, her confidant, her shadow. How many true friends can anyone have? For a woman, how few of those will be men?

  Light in at the window, through the blears of dirty steam, the gaps in the auctioneer’s shutters. He listens to the sound of the hail. He is picturing the Wicklow hills, the long beach at Killiney. Sea-foam flying over the Military Road. He knows it is sleeting there too.

  Turning, she stares at the windows behind you, her violet eyes glittering in the sleet-whitened light. A ghost long-accustomed to being looked at.

  Now she is approaching. Pushing deftly through the traders. Their hands are waving bids but she is not looking at the lots.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ she says. ‘You’re not by any chance Mr Stoker? You were a great friend of my mother. I am Edy.’

  THE LYCEUM PALACE OF WAXWORKS AND SPOOKS

  3.32 p.m.

  From a flower girl in Covent Garden she buys a single white lily, which she folds in a page torn from a cheap edition of Hamlet. The afternoon light is pale.

  She collects the script of her lecture series from the typewriting service on Exeter Street but the Welsh girl she was vaguely hoping to see is not there, has left, is getting married. The old hatchet who runs the place is tight-lipped and falsely courteous, as though there is something in the story she disapproves of and doesn’t want to reveal.

  Along Exeter Street. Southampton Street. Nightingales chirruping in the plane trees. A notion looms up at her – so she tells herself now, but in truth it has been with her for days, even weeks, pushing against her will to push it away. Going up to town anyway, little errands to run. Visit the old place when you’re up.

  Today, on the far side of the city, they’re selling off his belongings, auctioning his clothes,
whoring out his ghost. Poking grubby fingers into his buttonholes, his privacies. Unbearable the thought, how he’d hate the vulgarity of it all. Instead she will hold him by walking with his memory in the parterre. Sit a while in the foyer. Lay a flower on the stage. We have each our own kind of remembrance.

  It’s not the vulgarity I’d hate. I never minded a little vulgarity.

  Leave me be. Not yet.

  She climbs the steps carefully, stick tapping on the stone, pushes gently on the door, which is new, one of those modern revolving affairs that slap you on the bottom if you don’t hurry along. Honestly, what was wrong with ruddy doors the way they were for a thousand years? This modern mania for improvement.

  The lobby is empty, the Box Office closed. Dusty light streams in from the narrow cruciform windows. The walls have been papered a revolting mauve and green, the carpet is worn and reeks of stale tobacco. The dozen brass-railed marble steps up to the parterre are gone, in their place a scarlet-painted ramp too steep for anyone to climb. You can see the dark circle in the ceiling-rose where the Tiffany chandelier once hung. She remembers its breeze-made tinkle.

  She had expected him to feel close here, to be part of the air, the dust. But he isn’t. She can’t hear him at all.

  The old theatrical prints are gone, replaced with posters for variety acts and freaks. The Globe-Headed Lady. The Wild Man of Borneo. His Highness, King ‘Tattoos’ Muldoon. On a table near the rusted drinking fountain, a jumble of roller skates and a thick book of yellow tear-out tickets.