Secret Lament

by Roz Southey

  “I don’t believe it,” I said forcibly.

  “Oh, our Ned’s serious all right.” She rubbed her fingers together. “He’s after the money. She’s the worst singer and actress I ever saw, but she knows how to woo the gentlemen. She’ll make a fortune for her husband – while her looks last at any rate.”

  “But Ned…” I trailed off. Some things are acknowledged but never spoken of.

  Mrs Keregan was watching with some cynicism. “There’s more than one gentleman with tastes of that kind who escapes the attention of the law by marrying.” She cast a glance at Richard.

  “It’ll be a disaster.”

  “Oh certainly, but don’t worry about it. Papa will never allow it.”

  I looked across to where Mazzanti was still playing the wounded hero. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d approve of Ord, either.”

  She crowed. “He’s after a duke, at least!”

  That hadn’t been what I meant. “I’m surprised he’s contemplating marriage at all.” The moment Julia married, her income would pass into her husband’s hands, which meant that John Mazzanti and his wife would be dependent on the Signora’s income. And the Signora was getting older and fatter, I was told.

  Mazzanti looked round and saw his daughter, and Ord and Ned facing each other over her pretty little head. The change in him was remarkable. He leapt up, strode across and seized Julia by her arm. She was distributing her favours equally, it seemed, simpering at both Ord and Ned as Mazzanti raged about so-called gentlemen who took advantage while his back was turned. And – was it my imagination – or did he have just a touch of desperation about him too?

  Mrs Keregan sighed. “That’s no way to handle a girl of her age. It’ll end in disaster, mark my words.”

  Mazzanti bore his daughter off, up the stifling theatre towards the stage, calling for the rehearsal to begin. The sunlight through the windows haloed the girl with gold. Mrs Keregan, a much more mundane figure, extricated herself from her armchair with difficulty, and went off fanning herself furiously with a piece of paper. Ned followed the Mazzantis, still with that predatory air about him; Ord, more inhibited, or more cautious, fumed impotently at the doorway.

  Richard fussed around me, gathering up the empty tankards; his head was down, his shoulder turned. When I spoke, he muttered an incoherent reply. I started to talk to him then Ord interrupted, strolling across to me with as much insouciance as he could manage. Richard hurried off.

  I slid my fiddle from its case, plucked the strings to check its tuning. Ord was gazing about with his usual insolence, but there was an edge of bravado to it. Well, if he was ashamed, so he should be. I could sympathise with Ned’s plight even if I disliked his idea of using marriage as nothing more than a smokescreen and a source of money; Ord, however, I could only condemn. Not so much for the idea that he was thinking of taking a mistress – after all, so many men did – but to be courting an actress at the same time as negotiating his engagement was unfeeling.

  Besides Lizzie Saint would get wind of it – someone would tell her. Someone always did.

  “Miss Mazzanti is a fine performer,” Ord said, as they began rehearsing some dialogue. I said nothing; there was nothing diplomatic I could say. “As a music-lover, I admire her greatly.”

  He was trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I was outraged that he should be so hypocritical and that he should think me gullible enough to believe him. “She is, of course,” he added, “not a lady.”

  I could not contain myself. “Not like Miss Saint,” I said.

  Ord flushed. “Damn it, Patterson, it’s not your place to bandy about the names of ladies!”

  He stalked off.

  I started to tune up; Mazzanti on the stage swung round angrily and demanded silence. I retreated to a hot little room off the theatre, which at other times Mr Usher used as a counting office. Richard was in there, cutting up chunks of bread and cheese; he glanced round, coloured, bent over his task. I plucked at the E string of the violin and it broke. Cursing, I loosened the peg to take off the broken ends.

  “Do you think he will marry her?” Richard asked.

  I hesitated. “Ord?”

  He nodded. “He has lots of money,” he said eagerly. “She’s bound to like that.” He offered a shy smile. “Julia likes money. Those ribbons she’s wearing – the yellow ones? They have a diamond in the centre of each flower.”

  More like paste, I thought cynically, unwinding the last fragments of the broken string at last. “She might marry him, he’ll not marry her.”

  “There was talk of it in London.”

  “You saw him there?”

  He nodded. “He came to the theatre to see Julia.”

  “Did he show any partiality for her?”

  Richard sniggered. “That’s not what Ned called it.”

  “I can imagine,” I said dryly. The new string was proving recalcitrant, refusing to wind round the peg properly. And it was my last spare too.

  Richard said again, “Do you think he’ll marry her?” He was plainly not referring to Ord any longer. From the theatre behind us, we heard the tones of Ned’s voice; it was a love scene with Julia but something had annoyed Ned – the loving words were in distinctly unloving tones. And I couldn’t hear a word from Julia – someone ought to tell her to speak up.

  “She’s so beautiful,” Richard said wistfully, “And so kind. She’s always happy to talk to me.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Or what was the truth. “Don’t concern yourself,” I said. “He’ll come to his senses.”

  “Yes,” Richard said, sounding older than his years. “That’s what I feared.”

  I watched him walk off into the theatre, feeling sombre. My own situation with Esther was difficult enough but nothing like the difficulties Ned and Richard faced, with the full force of the law and the revulsion of society against them. I myself found the whole affair rather odd, like a man who hates turnips stares at another who thinks them the best food in the world, but I couldn’t for the life of me see what harm they were doing anyone.

  Which was the point, I supposed. If Ned did succeed in marrying Julia, he risked doing a great deal of harm indeed – to Julia’s happiness, to Richard’s and to his own well-being. For I’d known Ned a long time, long enough to know that he found it dangerously easy to despise himself.

  Through the open door into the theatre, I could see part of the stage. Julia was prettily shrinking away from the unlit candles along the stage edge and saying something inaudible. Mr Keregan was giving a fine performance totally against his own character, of the despotic father. Ned was simmering in fury even as he pronounced his undying love for the girl from whom he was about to be parted for ever (or at least until the last scene).

  Dear God. The idea came to me with a start. Ned was set on marrying Julia, for her money and for the disguise she could give him. Mazzanti would never agree. Which meant that if Ned’s plan was to succeed, Mazzanti needed to be removed from the scene.

  Was Ned the one trying to kill Mazzanti?

  8

  All the world meets in a town of this size.

  [Letter from Lady Hubert to her sister, 9 April 1732]

  Halfway through the afternoon, Signora Mazzanti came into the theatre and sat at the back of the hall. She was accompanied by her landlady, Mrs Baker, who lets her house for lodgings and frequently accommodates members of the theatre company. Signora Mazzanti was not fat – certainly nothing like Mrs Keregan – but the plumpness was eating into what had plainly been a remarkable beauty. She sat well and smiled well, and moved well, and pretended that she didn’t mind the company ignoring her very well indeed.

  Mrs Baker, a comfortable homely woman of about fifty, gave me an expressive roll of her eyes. With one accord, we strolled towards the back of the theatre and met over the rickety old table that Richard had set up at the back of the theatre, with a dozen tankards and two or three glasses, a cask of beer and a bottle or two of poor wine. Bread and cheese were cove
red in cloths, reminding me of the chunk of bread I had seen in the other world, in the girl’s room.

  “Mrs Baker.” I gave her an admiring look. “I wonder if you would introduce me to the Signora?”

  Her look was flirtatious. “Would you not rather speak to me, Mr Patterson?”

  “Much rather,” I said, promptly. “But alas…”

  She laughed but looked at me shrewdly. “You are getting quite a reputation, Mr Patterson, as the man to go to when trouble looms. And now you want to speak to Mrs Mazzanti. Is this anything to do with the attack on her husband? And the attempted burglary last night?”

  It was and it was not. I had resolved to leave the matter alone, but that glimpse of Julia Mazzanti in the other world had undone my resolution. She had sneered and looked at me with contempt, but there had been something in her eyes that the Julia in this world did not have – spirit. I admired that, even while a little feeling of disloyalty to Esther prodded at me. Besides, there was the matter of the burglaries – one at Esther’s house, one at the Mazzantis’. If they were connected, solving one puzzle might help me solve the other.

  As Mrs Baker led me to the Signora, I saw Proctor the psalm teacher come into the theatre, sheened all over with a thin film of sweat, hugging his bassoon case to his chest. He looked lost. I smiled at the Signora, bowed over her hand. The skirts of her dress were so vast that I could hardly get near her. The fabric was embroidered with a thousand tiny flowers – silver thread on white material; I wondered how many seamstresses had lost their sight over it. Like Julia, she wore too much lace and too many ribbons, and much too much jewellery, though whether the latter was real or fake I could not tell. Her hair was improbably gold, her skin improbably white. She murmured pleasantries and I realised she was as English as her husband; she even had a grating London twang in her voice.

  And only lastly, after taking in all this ornamentation, did I look at her face. She was not looking at me, but at the stage, even while she acknowledged my greeting. And there was such bleakness in her expression...

  “I was distressed to hear, madam, that you were burgled last night.”

  “It’s my fault,” she said. On the stage her daughter was prettily wheedling her supposed father, Mr Keregan; as usual, Julia was inaudible at the back of the theatre.

  “But surely…”

  “Now, love,” Mrs Baker said comfortably, coming round to pat the Signora’s arm. “You know it’s nothing of the sort.”

  “If only I got more engagements. They don’t ask me like they used to.” She probably had not even heard my reference to the burglary, I thought. “Julia should not have to bear such a responsibility,” she said.

  I frowned at Mrs Baker; she mouthed “Money” at me and gave me a knowing look.

  It sounded more like envy to me; I said: “Your daughter still has a lot to learn.”

  For the first time she gave me her attention, in a slightly startled, almost shy way. I saw her daughter in her very clearly. “You think so?”

  “Stagecraft and the art of singing and acting well only come with experience,” I said, truthfully. “We should acknowledge maturity, not worship callow youth.”

  Mrs Baker gave me a look, as if to suggest I was a flatterer. The Signora was preening herself a little, in a charming way – she plainly did not realise she was doing it.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I think one must simply have faith in God that all will come right in the end.”

  I nodded.

  “Always bearing in mind that God needs a little push from time to time,” Mrs Baker said with a wink. “He helps those that help themselves.”

  “Yes,” the Signora said dubiously. She held out her hand gracefully. “My dear sir, do come to visit us when you have the chance. We are always glad to see friends.”

  And, immensely graceful, she gathered up her skirts, got up and swept out of the theatre.

  “Don’t come,” Mrs Baker said out of the corner of her mouth as she prepared to follow. “You won’t like it, Mr Patterson. The whole house stinks! Drink. Him, not her.”

  And shaking her head, she hurried after the Signora.

  I didn’t know what to make of this conversation; in a way I was embarrassed to find myself in the middle of what was plainly family jealousy. But I was tempted to take up the offer of a morning visit, to see if after all I would have a chance to quiz the Signora about the burglary. I was standing irresolute when Proctor came hurrying across. “Who’s that fellow?” he said urgently. He gestured at the stage. “He’s making up to her!”

  “Ned? He’s supposed to. He’s the hero, she’s the heroine.”

  Oh Lord, I thought, looking at the thin nerve-ridden face. Proctor, the unworldly, ineffectual soul, was in love with Julia. He is four or five years older than me – thirty or thirty-one – and I felt a decade older. Anyone less likely to appeal to Julia I could not imagine.

  “Ned’s like that with everyone,” I said soothingly. Which was a lie, but if it soothed Proctor, it hardly mattered.

  I was about to say something more but then I caught a flash of light in the corner of my eye. Proctor shrieked and flinched away. God, he was in a state! “It’s only a spirit,” I said. “Look.”

  But the spirit had taken offence and darted off to a high cobwebby corner. Proctor retreated to the door, his gaze never leaving the spirit’s gleam.

  It was a tedious afternoon. Mazzanti was intent upon rehearsing the love scenes, which he said were at the heart of the comedy. They weren’t. The machinations of the villain, playing first upon the father with false promises of wealth, then upon the daughter with visions of fine dresses and jewels – those were at the heart of the play. Julia only had to look pretty and Ned handsome and dashing, which they could both do effortlessly.

  But Mazzanti wanted Julia to shine. She had to be at the centre of the stage at every moment and Ned was always to be behind her, obscured by her if necessary. I saw Ned gritting his teeth in an effort to stay calm – he knew, I thought wryly, that any outburst would ruin his chances of getting Mazzanti to agree to a marriage with Julia.

  Mazzanti was seconded in all things by Philip Ord who stayed an hour or two, calling advice from a chair placed in solitary splendour in front of the stage. Mazzanti ignored him almost totally, but Julia played to him, simpering and smiling coyly, and, at one point, bending down provocatively to consult him, showing off her immature breasts. Ord plainly enjoyed this and looked set to stay the afternoon, until a servant came in to remind him he had a business appointment.

  Julia insisted on seeing him to the door, and they stood in private conversation for a good five minutes. She seemed to be impressing something on him, for she stood as close as she dared, and a good deal closer than was proper. Oddly, he looked less than happy – he looked round once or twice as if embarrassed. When he met my gaze, his chin lifted defiantly; he smiled with renewed vigour at Julia. He must have known I was thinking of poor Lizzie Saint.

  Then I saw Julia’s expression as she turned away from Ord to go back to the stage. For a moment, the demure smiling child was gone and in its place was an almost wretched young woman – heavens, did she want Ord that much?

  I spent the afternoon with my violin in its case, fuming because Mazzanti didn’t want me to play, yet refused to let me go. I consoled young Richard as best I could – at least the boy had the sense to pretend unconcern in public even if he could not stop talking about the matter to me. We were all bad-tempered. Mrs Keregan grumbled all afternoon, Mr Keregan fretted over box office receipts with so bad a performance. Proctor gazed adoringly at Julia and kept asking why Mazzanti didn’t tell Ned to move further away from the girl. Athalia came off the stage in a rage because Mazzanti had told her not to ‘flaunt herself’ so much; we all knew that Athalia’s red-headed vitality threw pale Julia completely into the shade.

  “I’ll strangle that girl myself,” Athalia hissed. “Will someone tell her the whole point of singing is to be heard!”

&nb
sp; I drank too much. And the heat ate at us all.

  After two hours or so, not long after Ord had departed, I went outside for a piss and came back in to find my acquaintance from the street standing at the door staring calculatingly at the stage. I didn’t for one moment believe his name was Domenico Corelli but I certainly believed he was Italian, or possibly of Italian ancestry; his sallow skin and black hair gave the game away even if he was tall enough and bulky enough for two men – all the previous Italians I’d met had been slight.

  He gave me an amused look as I came up behind him. “I can’t hear a word she’s saying.”

  “No one can.”

  “The other fellow’s good.”

  “Ned?”

  “Should be in London.”

  “He plays there sometimes.”

  Silence. As if he knew I was wondering why he was there, Corelli said, “I came to see the father.”

  “Mazzanti? Do you have business with him?”

  He shook his head. He was still dressed in his heavy coat, even in the stifling theatre, and still did not appear to be sweating. “I am intrigued. He was the fellow shot at, wasn’t he? I was there when he was attacked in London.”

  “In Drury Lane? You didn’t see the attacker?”

  He laughed. “Half the world was there! The theatres had just turned out and the street was crowded. The villain lost himself in the crowds. And everyone was fussing over the victim, or running for cover.”

  I watched Mazzanti gesturing Ned and Mr Keregan further back on the stage. “I can understand why someone might take offence at him.”

  “A man of no talent making a living from those that do,” Corelli said. I thought I heard a trace of bitterness in his voice.

  “Julia has no talent.”

  “Her mother does. She has a magnificent voice – do you think Handel would have accepted anything less?”

  “I’m surprised she hasn’t sung more for him.”

  Corelli laughed, showing white teeth. “Mazzanti got too greedy and the great man wouldn’t take it. Handel’s a great composer but a greater businessman – Mazzanti’s demands would have bankrupted him!”