“But what’s going on in there?” Shuffling noises were coming from the auditorium. It sounded like my piano was being moved. One of the piano wheels was loose and I didn’t want anyone to move it except Leo or me.
“Oh, nothing—wait,” Hugo said as I opened the auditorium door.
But he was too late—I was already inside—and when my eyes adjusted I was surprised to see Liddy on the stage wearing the ingénue costume for the three-act play, which I had just finished sewing last night. She was helping Cook push my piano. I’d never seen Cook on the stage before. “What are you doing?” I asked them.
Liddy turned around just as Thaddeus, also wearing part of the costume I’d just made, came onto the stage. I looked at Hugo for an explanation. He squinted his eyes at me and then decided to smile. He spread his arms.
“Happy birthday!” he said.
“What?”
“Happy birthday! Isn’t today your birthday?”
Liddy came down off the stage. “May!” she said. “What a surprise we have for you! Sit down, sit down! No, up here in the front row. Right in the middle. You’ve caught us getting ready, but that’s all right. You’re a little early is all.”
“A little early for what?”
“Your birthday play!”
It took a minute of explaining: they were going to perform their new play for me—at least, the first two acts of it. A birthday play, for me.
“Helena and I always had birthday plays growing up,” Hugo told me. “The great fun was trying to keep the other one out of rehearsals. Or trying to find out where the rehearsals were, if you were the one with the birthday coming.” He was smiling hard, very pleased with himself. “We practiced in the mornings when you were in town. If I didn’t need Liddy or Celia, they went along with you to keep you there nice and long.”
I was still confused. A birthday play? Everyone was smiling at me. I never took much notice of my birthday, and I was embarrassed by this attention, but also a little pleased. After my mother died, most of my birthday presents had been from Comfort, small things she no longer needed: perfume or a shawl—once a shawl I’d made for her myself—and usually a day or two late. I felt a warm, almost liquid sensation go through me, as though I had just drunk a too-large sip of wine.
After Liddy settled me on my seat, Hugo got up to make a quick introduction to the play—Thaddeus in the role of a young Spanish Marquis in love with a general’s daughter—and then he jumped off the stage with no more fanfare than a cat.
“Jemmy’s going to play the General for me so I can get a look at the whole and also give you some company,” he said, sitting down beside me. I could feel the warmth of his shoulder and something of the rest of him—not a smell, not a touch, but, like all performers, he emitted a presence that extended beyond his physical self. He looked at me and smiled again. Because of the pleasure of the coming performance? Or the surprise itself? I didn’t know, but I found myself smiling back—a real smile, not just showing my teeth.
Thaddeus came on the stage wearing the green doublet I’d finished only that morning, and I was pleased to see that the brown velvet ribbons showed up as stripes on the fabric, just as I had intended. He paraded up and down the stage for a moment looking around him, with his servant, Mr. Niffen, at his side. Then he began:
“This is my native place—the town that gave me birth—and in spite of my attachment to the capital, dear Madrid, I must prefer this town to every other spot in the world.”
Sebastian (Mr. Niffen): “Ay, my Lord, you came hither to take possession of the estate of a rich uncle just deceased. But if I was not in love, and if the object of my passion was not living in this very town, I could not be happy in it.”
“Give me your hand Sebastian—for once my equal.”
“How so, pray, my lord?”
“For being in love, as am I.”
Mr. Niffen, or rather Sebastian, took his hand away and said proudly, “Ay, sir, but we are not all equals in love for all that. You will always be above my match; for I never could love more than one woman. However, your Lordship I have known to love sixteen—and all at the same time.”
Here I laughed.
Sebastian went on: “And all so well, it was impossible to tell which you loved the best.”
I laughed again.
The two actors moved upstage and began to argue, for all that one was master and one servant. A few of the windows on the port side of the theater were open, and a hot breeze brought in the familiar smell of seaweed, mud, fish, and the wet, slow-rotting bark of all the tree trunks partially submerged in the water. I was sitting on the very first bench with my shawl in my lap and my hands on my shawl, watching the play unfold. At first my fingers danced a little, wanting something to do, and naturally I looked critically at each costume as it appeared for the first time, but after a while I forgot about them. I noticed that Mrs. Niffen’s wig was askew, but she must have fixed it offstage, because I forgot about that, too.
Perhaps it was a strange thing that I’d never before seen a play from the audience side. When you are standing in the wings as I always do, you can see the actors drop out of character as soon as they exit, and how the mantle goes on again when they walk back on the stage. You see the ties in the backs of their costumes, and places where a wig has lost some hair. You are so close that you can see spit fly from their lips as they speak their lines. And you never lose the sense that what they are saying is false. At least, I never did. Whenever I waited offstage for Comfort, holding a glass of water and a handkerchief for her, because she gets very hot behind the footlights, I could feel all the actors’ urgency without ever having that feeling myself. Perhaps it was just that small distance, sharing the same space with them in the wings while never stepping foot with them on stage, that held my disbelief in place. Or perhaps I was so busy anticipating what Comfort would need next that I didn’t pay sufficient attention to the play as a whole.
I don’t know. I only know that, sitting on the front bench in the auditorium, watching Thaddeus transform himself into a man in love and Mr. Niffen speaking his lines as though all he wanted in the world was to speak and be heard—a fact I knew to be wholly untrue—something shifted in my mind and I gave myself over to them. It was just as Hugo said. I wanted to know what would happen next, and I stopped for a brief time thinking about anything else.
Jemmy stood in for Hugo as the General, and Pinky came out in the costume of an old woman, a servant named Cecily, wearing a long, unbecoming nightgown of a dress (not my creation) and an old-fashioned mobcap.
Marquis: “That severe air you put on agrees but little with your gentle and beguiling looks.”
Cecily (Pinky in a high but growly voice): “What do you mean? I am old and ugly and, what is more, I have, thank heaven, as bad a temper as any woman in the world.”
Hugo and I both laughed, and when I looked over at him, Hugo winked. Why was it so funny to see a handsome man dressed as an ugly woman? But it was. Even Leo participated, for at the end of the second act he came out onto the stage and, looking down at his boots, recited in his wonderfully deep voice:
And thus we deliver our gift this day,
In honor of our most excellent friend, Miss May.
We wish we could for longer stay
But we have not yet memorized the last act of the play.
I clapped until the palms of my hands itched. At the same time a proud warmth seemed to pass between Hugo and me. I had no idea Liddy and Thaddeus and Mr. Niffen—the principals of the play—were so good. Hugo was pleased with them, too. We clapped very hard, and this time I did not turn my good ear away from the noise. But the actors were not looking at us as they bowed, I noticed; they were looking beyond us at the risers, smiling their professional smiles. I had the thought that this must be something they were trained to do: bow to the very back row. But Hugo turned around to look, and in a moment he stopped clapping and was up on his feet. And although I stopped clapping when he did, the sound of a
pplause continued, followed in the next moment by the rippling voice of an older, confident woman, a woman who was just as proud of her voice as any trained actress:
“Bravo,” Mrs. Howard sang out.
Comfort was sitting next to her, also clapping and smiling. Both of them were bareheaded and Comfort had her shawl folded up into a rectangle beside her. They looked quite comfortable there, straight-backed and lordly in the middle of the very top riser. When had they come in? Mrs. Howard was wearing a dark purple dress and I would not have been surprised to find a cape made of ermine at her side or a golden chain-link belt across her vast hips; but when she stood, the dress showed itself to be nothing more than a fitted day dress. Comfort stood up next to her. Why had they come? Hugo started up the aisle toward them and I followed. I could tell from his stiff back he was angry.
“Who are you?” he began in a loud, rough voice, the voice of a coarse Englishman. “What are you doing on my boat? There’s no show today! This is a closed rehearsal! Who gave you leave?” and more in that vein. Mrs. Howard came down to meet him in the aisle with Comfort right behind her, and the four us stood facing each other. There was something of the smell of church coming from Mrs. Howard: dusty hymnals, overly oiled wood, and sweat. She waited Hugo out patiently, a slight but provoking smile on her lips that seemed designed to convey her sense of superiority even when being scolded. No matter what he said, she knew better, the smile implied. From time to time Comfort glanced at Mrs. Howard in the way that a very young wife might look at a husband she is still learning the ways of, gauging her reaction to this tirade.
But when Hugo broke off at last by saying, “Well? And what have you got to say, then? Why are you here?” Comfort was the one who spoke first.
“Why, I’ve come to see May, of course. My cousin. What a delightful play! You must be the director. Mr. Cushing? That was very well done, very well done indeed. As May might have told you, I was an actress myself once.” She spoke as though that time was many years ago instead of only a few weeks. She held her hand out to Hugo. “I know quality work when I see it.”
“Captain Cushing,” Hugo corrected, not taking her hand. He did not look at me but I was aware of his attention shifting sideways.
“I did not invite them,” I told him. “I don’t even want them here.”
“May! May!” Comfort laughed at me. She turned to Hugo with a flirtatious look I knew well. “You’ll have to forgive my cousin; she’s very direct.”
“You don’t need to tell me about May,” Hugo said sharply, and he leaned closer to me as if he was the one who knew me thoroughly and my cousin was the intruder.
“She came to our rooms yesterday . . .”
“But not to invite you here,” I said. “I hardly even told you. You didn’t want to know.”
“Not want to know! Of course I want to know. I’m delighted that you’re working in a theater.” She flashed me another look I recognized: Don’t say anything more.
“All right, you’ve seen her now,” Hugo said. “I’ll thank you to leave.”
Comfort flushed. I wasn’t sure if she was surprised by the reprimand or that her brand of charm wasn’t working on Hugo.
Mrs. Howard decided to take over. “Comfort is perfectly right: the performance was very amusing. For a play, you know, that sort of thing. A light diversion.” Her brand of charm, as usual, held the sting of an insult. She took a deep breath as though settling in for a long speech, but Hugo got there first.
“This is a Sunday,” he said. “I could get fined for performing a show on a Sunday. How dare you just walk in and sit down.”
Mrs. Howard talked over him: “My dear man, we left some money at the ticket office window, right there on the ledge, more than enough for two tickets. And if—”
Hugo interrupted her: “You left money! A paid performance? I could get shut down for that, don’t you know that? They wouldn’t just fine me, they would shut me down! It’s Sunday! Don’t you know it’s Sunday?”
“Of course I know. We were at church only this morning, and I told the reverend how we planned to make a visit . . . and, you know, the interest of someone like me will certainly lend a much greater respectability to your . . .” She looked around the auditorium and I saw through her eyes how narrow it was, and how the benches weren’t nailed perfectly straight. “. . . your charming little outfit.”
“You told the reverend—” Hugo took a step back and for a moment I almost thought he would strike her. My heart was beating fast. I had never seen him so red in the face. He cut through the benches and went to a window, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out.
“If he tells the constable . . . You are a foolish woman!”
I don’t think anyone had ever called Mrs. Howard foolish in all of her life. It took a moment to sink in, and I watched with great interest how the purple of her bodice seemed to bleed its color up from the neckline and into her cheeks. At the same time a vein in her temple rose angrily and her mouth opened slowly like a baby getting ready to cry.
“Impudent man!” she barked.
But Hugo had a voice trained at the Covent Garden Theatre and he could easily outshout her. “Get out!”
I looked at Comfort with mixed emotions as I tried not to laugh. Not that I thought it was funny exactly—or maybe just a little. Comfort looked back at me angrily as if all this was my fault. But it wasn’t my fault.
“Well, May!” she said. “You might intercede on our behalf.”
“On your behalf? Why, the whole company could be in trouble for this, you know that. You of all people should know that.” I was thinking of her mother, and she understood me. Her face grew red.
“No one would mistake us for an audience!” she replied angrily. “There are only two of us! Or is that the number you regularly serve?”
She said this last over her shoulder as she turned to go, whisking her hat up so that its crimson ribbons flew up and then down. I wanted to remind her that she was the one who chose Mrs. Howard. The hat she was waving around was new, her dress was new, and she was plumped out from all the good meals served to her on Mrs. Howard’s second-best china. As for me, I would soon go upstairs to eat soup made from fish stock: whatever Leo happened to catch yesterday—something spiny and black, I remembered, which I had gutted for him. But I was fine with soup. I liked it, in fact. I liked being on the winning side. Hugo, I decided, was the winning side.
Mrs. Howard closed her mouth and put her hat on her head but her face was still mottled and her expression was as close to being chastened as it was ever likely to get. She thrust a long hatpin violently into her hat like a jouster blindly attacking the air, and then she settled her fierce eyes on me. “May, might I have a word with you?” Each syllable a jab.
“Oh. . .” I said, getting ready to refuse.
“Just a quick moment,” she said. “I have a piece of news about your family.”
Hugo glared at Mrs. Howard as she passed him, and she lifted her chin right back at him. I had no family except Aunt Ann and a couple of cousins in Germany whom I’d never met, but my curiosity got the better of me, and after a moment I followed after her, not looking at Hugo.
Outside, clouds were rolling over the river in the fast way they sometimes do. A couple of geese pecked around at the bottom of the stage plank while Comfort stood watching them from the rail, her hat still in her hand. She didn’t turn to look at me. The tide was going out.
“Now, my dear,” Mrs. Howard said to her, “you go on up to Donaldson. He’ll be waiting on the road.”
I looked at Comfort’s back. Her collar was crooked and not altogether clean. I could see how easily I might fall back into my old pattern, looking after her clothes and feeling as though in this way I was part of a certain life. Her life. Yesterday I had fallen back into the old pattern, but today, here, on Hugo’s boat, I felt stronger. What I had now was better. Comfort was never going to give me all this. Before this summer, I didn’t even know that I’d wanted it.
&n
bsp; “Good-bye, May,” Comfort said in a strained voice, turning to look at me at last. “I hope you can come to one of my lectures. I’ll write you out a list of the towns we’re visiting.”
Her face was like stone, still angry, but I saw that she was making an effort and I relented a little myself. “How was the lecture yesterday?” I asked.
“A mashed peach hit me on the shoulder.”
“Is your dress ruined?”
“Oh, I hope I’m not so shallow as to care overmuch about the state of my clothes.” A parting insult to me.
I watched her walk carefully down the plank and up the muddy path that led away from the river, picking her way around splats of dark green geese droppings. She had said nothing about my birthday. When I turned back, Florid was pulling on a stiff pair of buttermilk-colored gloves, and without buttoning them she turned to scoop up the coins she had left on the ticket window ledge. Not so much as she led us to believe, I noticed: only four dimes.
“Your captain thinks he’s teaching me a lesson.” She opened her purse and dropped the dimes inside. “Well. Lesson learned.”
She turned to face me. “That man is trouble, May.” I watched her pull again at her glove; the leather fingertips, I noticed, were very soiled. “Tell me this: Where exactly did you go when you left my house? Did you come straight here to this boat?”
“I needed a job and I found one.”
“That money I gave you—that was only a loan, you know. I expect to be paid back.”
That was not what she’d said when she had given me the money. I considered telling her that the color she chose for her gloves was the very worst color for showing stains next to white, but at that moment Leo came out from the office. He didn’t look at Mrs. Howard.
“You all right, Miss May?” he asked.
I told him I was fine.
“There’s a celebration upstairs. Don’t be too long, now.” He smiled at me, still ignoring Mrs. Howard. She noticed this.
“We’re perfectly well here, young man. Miss Bedloe will be with you in a moment.”
The Underground River Page 17
