Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  The Regency Theatre, constructed the previous June by Ogden Frank, was merely an unprepossessing extension of the hotel itself. From the south wall of the original two-storey inn, which faced east onto West Market Street, he had erected an unadorned brick rectangle so that it fronted onto Colborne Street, where a false balcony and a sign in Gothic letters provided the only visual enticement to would-be playgoers. The theatre itself was located in the lower storey of the new structure, and entered via two wide, oaken doors. On the floor above the theatre, and separate from the main hotel rooms, were situated several spacious chambers that served as additional space for hotel patrons or, when visiting troupes arrived, as comfortable quarters for the players. Frank and his wife, Madge, lived in four rooms attached to the rear of the tavern but otherwise discrete and private.

  “We’re here by special invitation this afternoon,” Rick reminded them when they had delivered the horses to the ostler and were about to enter the theatre through the main entrance. He did not need to reiterate who in the company had inter-ceded on their behalf. “They haven’t done their ‘Selections from the Bard’ show since last winter, so we’re going to be privy to a truly professional rehearsal.”

  Marc endeavoured to look impressed.

  “Well, it’ll all be new to me,” Jenkin said affably. “I did a bit of song-and-dance stuff in my salad days, but nobody dared call it thee-ay-ter.”

  The oak doors swung open at the first touch, briefly flooding the dark, cavernous room inside with sudden light.

  “Get the hell out and shut the bloody door!”

  The voice came from a raised platform about forty feet away at the far end of the cavern, where the flickering glow from a dozen candles and a single, overhead chandelier exposed five or six individuals. All had apparently been fixated on a tall male figure, downstage centre, but had decided that the novelty of an open door and sunshine was more worthy of their attention.

  A very blond wisp of a girl padded quickly over to the imposing male and whispered something up into his ear. He appeared to smile as he turned towards the intruders and said in a stentorian but not unfriendly tone: “Welcome, good sirs. I mistook you for those ragamuffins who’ve been harassing us all morning. Please, take a seat in one of the far boxes. And be kind enough to keep your lips buttoned. We are engaged here in a serious undertaking.”

  “You shan’t see or hear us, Mr. Merriwether,” Rick called out to him, and then nudged his companions towards a set of crude steps at the top of which was perched a plain wooden box with the front open, like a sort of elevated kiosk.

  “Ah,” Jenkin whispered, “seats for the mighty.”

  They ascended, carefully, found three hard-backed chairs in the semi-dark, propped their elbows on the railing in front of them, and prepared to observe the serious proceedings on the stage, now a foot or two below them and about twenty-five feet away. When their eyes adjusted to the interior light, they found that they could see and hear everything before them.

  The stage itself was rudimentary: two wooden pilasters and a faded velvet curtain that might have once been crimson composed the proscenium arch, in front of which the playing area extended another five or six feet. Canvas “wings” of a mucus-green hue were set back in receding fashion at each side to effect a sense of perspective. Two small chandeliers on long cables could now be seen beside the large one that was presently lit, and arrayed along the curved edge of the thrust-stage were half a dozen Argand lamps, which, when fired up, would provide ample foot-lighting. Along the side walls, that were about fifteen feet high, iron candelabra were inset in the brick to illuminate the pit below, the six boxes, and the gallery teetering across the back wall. A single door, locked and barred, along the wall to the left opened onto the alley outside and a nearby pair of privies. Two small windows, high up, offered the only natural light and ventilation. No wonder theatres burnt down at regular intervals, Marc thought as he turned his attention to the action onstage.

  “We’ll start with the death of Lear. I’d like the scene to run right through. I want everybody watching—you’re the critical audience, remember. But when we’ve finished the scene, I don’t want to hear a peep from the cheap seats, understood? If I wish to avail myself of your comments—after I’ve made my own—I’ll ask for them.”

  “Jason Merriwether, the director,” Rick whispered.

  Merriwether appeared to be very tall, almost Marc’s height at six feet, and perhaps in his mid-forties if the graying sideburns were not the result of makeup. But there was no middle-aged paunch or slackening of the skin around the mouth or under the jutting chin. His bearing was imperial, a man of parts who commanded any stage he chose to grace with his presence. His hair was a tawny shade, his chin and upper lip bare, and his nose of ordinary length, but the eyes were coal-black and penetrating, even at a distance of twenty-five feet.

  “Annemarie, ma chère, would you please give the king your shawl. It may help Mr. Armstrong get in role.” The latter half of this remark was spoken with spitting sarcasm and directed at a bent, gnarled man who hobbled forward at the mention of his name. While he could not have been sixty—the dark swatch of unkempt hair was merely speckled with gray—he looked Lear’s age without need of makeup or costume. For he had once been a big man, perhaps five foot seven, large-boned and full-fleshed, but the skin on his face, neck, and wrists now drooped as if the flesh had been sucked out from under it without warning. The eyes were murky dots in smudged sockets, and the lips hung loosely in what seemed to be either a permanent sneer or a perpetual whimper. He looked to Marc like a man who wished to hide from himself.

  “I don’t need your advice to tackle a scene I’ve played on two continents,” he muttered at Merriwether, but did not look his way.

  “I think the shawl may help, Dawson,” said a tall woman who stepped under the candlelight and gently laid her knitted shawl over the hunched actor.

  “Annemarie Thedford, the boss,” Rick whispered again.

  “It’s a bit drafty in here, and you know how easily you catch cold and lose your voice.”

  “All right, then,” Armstrong said sullenly, but he did glance up at Mrs. Thedford like a dog both surprised and grateful that he had not been kicked.

  Mrs. Thedford, the owner-manager of the Bowery Touring Company, was also exceptionally tall, near five foot seven or eight, which left her looking down at almost every woman and three-quarters of the men in the colony. Her thick, honey-coloured hair was neatly coiffed, and though her fair complexion would require makeup to project her expression across the footlights, the face itself was the picture of elegance and inborn grace. Her walk could only be described as regal, the consequence of an upright posture and confident carriage. Here was a woman of the world, unbowed by its travails, whose lean and handsomely proportioned figure commanded your attention first, then drew you on to the gaze that held and appraised and fascinated. Marc could not take his eyes off her.

  “Where in Sam Hill did Thea get to?” Merriwether roared, making Lear recoil and drop his cloak.

  “She was here just a second ago,” piped a male voice from the upstage shadow.

  “I think she went to puke again,” said a sweet and timid female voice.

  “That’s my girl,” her suitor mouthed in Marc’s ear.

  “I’d better see to her,” Mrs. Thedford said with evident concern, then strode quickly across the back of the stage to the right and disappeared.

  “Well, she can’t very well lie dead in Lear’s arms and then start puking at the audience,” Merriwether growled after her, but she was already too far away to hear.

  Lear himself at that moment began to cough, an uncontrollable hacking that continued for a full minute. When it finally stopped, there was an awesome silence.

  “You’ve been at it again, haven’t you? I can smell your stinking breath from here!” Merriwether said with withering contempt.

  Armstrong’s jaw quivered as if it were expecting a word to emerge, but at that moment M
rs. Thedford swept back in, and Merriwether looked to her expectantly.

  “Thea will be here in a few minutes. I’ve asked Mrs. Frank to prepare her a tisane,” she said, as if she were remarking on the pleasantness of the weather.

  “But I wish to do the Lear first, ma chère. It needs the most work, obviously.”

  “I’m ready to go,” Armstrong said with a pathetic sweep of the cloak about his stooped shoulders.

  “He’s been drinking again.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Smell his breath.”

  “I had one mouthful, for my rheumatism.”

  Mrs. Thedford took Armstrong’s hand in hers and pulled him up to face her. “When we’re finished here, old friend—and I expect you to stay till the last word is uttered—I want you to accompany me to your room and give me the bottle. God knows where you managed to hide it.”

  “I’m sorry, love. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “For the love of Christ, can we get on with this farce?”

  “I think we’re doing that tonight,” Mrs. Thedford said dryly, and drew a giggle and a chortle from the back of the stage.

  “Am I the director here or not?” Merriwether said somewhere between complaint and petition.

  “You are, Mr. Merriwether, and a damn good one.”

  Merriwether looked mollified. Then with a sly grin he stepped under the candlelight and into the shadows upstage.

  “Then I am making a casting decision that should have been made weeks ago.” Into the spotlight he drew by one tiny white hand a young woman, barely beyond girlhood, but nonetheless stunning for all that.

  “Tessa,” Marc murmured before Rick could.

  Tessa Guildersleeve had the white blond hair of an albino, and it fell where it wished in flowing coils over her bare shoulders, its native lustre merely enhanced by the meagre light above it. Her Dutch skin was unblemished and uniformly alabaster from the brow to the rim of her bosom that winked enticingly from the low-cut, frothy shift she wore—which resembled either a priest’s frock or a courtesan’s nightie, depending on the angle of observation. Her diminutive feet were caressed by ballet slippers, and she moved her slim, pale arms with the impetus and delicacy of a prima ballerina’s grand entrance. She was all elfin innocence in movement, but out of the translucence of her blue eyes shone pure desire.

  “Tessa, my pretty, you have understudied the role long enough. Tomorrow night you shall step onto this stage as Cordelia.”

  “You’re not going to wait for Thea, then?” Mrs. Thedford said evenly, but there was an edge behind the remark.

  “Thea’s getting too old and fat for the ingenue, ma chère. She’ll be laughed off the stage like she was in Buffalo. We don’t want that to happen again, do we?”

  “What about Juliet, then?”

  “Well, I thought Tessa did splendidly at short notice during the entr’acte in Rochester, didn’t you, Clarence?”

  At this, a young man in his mid-twenties stepped into the circle of light that now illumined five of the six acting members of the troupe. He was handsome in a feminine sort of way that contrasted sharply with the aggressive masculinity of Merriwether. He had curly red hair, pale freckles, and a pallor to match, and languid blue eyes that most directors would have instantly labelled a poet’s. He peered towards Mrs. Thedford, but she was staring intently at Merriwether. “Tessa always gives her best,” he said guardedly.

  “Thea will play Juliet tomorrow night, if she’s well enough,” Mrs. Thedford said.

  “You could let her take the role of Beatrice,” Merriwether said, staring straight back at her with his intimidating, black gaze.

  Mrs. Thedford smiled cryptically. “Meaning that I myself am somewhat too advanced in years to play the part?”

  “Not at all, my dear. You’ll be acting Beatrice and Cleopatra when you’re eighty, should you wish to. What I’m suggesting is that, outside of the farce, there are not, in the makeup of our current program, any roles now suited to the peculiar talents of our Miss Clarkson. That is all.”

  “I would be more than happy to let Thea play Beatrice, Jason, but then it would be incumbent upon us to find a Benedick young enough to be credible.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it—” Clarence Beasley said, looking abashed at both the director and the proprietor.

  “But I’m ready to play Juliet! I am!” There was no sweetness in the ingenue’s statement of fact, only the petulance of a child approaching tantrum. Tessa’s pretty features were suddenly contorted, and flushed with an unbecoming rush of crimson pique.

  “If you carry on like that, missy, we’ll have to put you in the Punch-and-Judy show with a slapstick.” Mrs. Thedford spoke in the way a mother might in gently reproving a much-doted-on daughter. “Be content with Cordelia, for the time being.”

  Rick Hilliard stirred beside Marc, who put a restraining hand upon his friend’s arm and one finger to his lips. It was obvious that the actors, in the intensity of this interplay, had forgotten they were being observed, and Marc was thoroughly enjoying his invisibility.

  Tessa’s face lit up instantly, and all traces of tantrum vanished in the unrepressed joy of her response. “Oh, Annie, you are such a dear! I could hug you to death!”

  When she threatened to do so, Mrs. Thedford held up a hand and said, “Save that ardour for Cordelia and Miranda tomorrow night.” She turned to Merriwether. “Get on with the scene, then, Jason dear. I’ll just go and see how Thea’s getting on. We’ll need her for the farce tonight.”

  “We’ll need everybody,” Merriwether said, glaring at Dawson Armstrong, who had taken advantage of the diversion to squat on his haunches and drift into a doze.

  Mrs. Thedford left, and the director clapped his hands for attention, as if he were orchestrating a cast of hundreds. “All right, Dawson, you know the routine. Tessa, my sweet, while you have no lines for this particular scene—we’ll rehearse your other scene later—it is vitally important that you lie absolutely limp in the old man’s arms. I suggest that you let the arm facing the audience droop—like this—and your head should be tilted back so your beautiful, long tresses hang down to almost touch the floor, and you can let one slipper dangle from your toes, and contrive to let it fall just as Lear moves from his ‘howls’ to his speech.”

  “Must I wear Thea’s costume?”

  “I think not. We’ll try something gauzier that will let your figure show through—in a modest way, of course. Thea’s figure, alas, has to be disguised wherever possible: that was the point about her age I was attempting to make.”

  “I do hope Thea won’t be too upset. She’s a very nice woman.”

  “Dawson! Wake up and take your place!”

  Armstrong glared at Merriwether’s knees, got up, and strode manfully back into the shadows upstage. Tessa padded after him. Clarence Beasley came and stood as close to Merriwether as he dared, anticipating the action to come. A moment later, Lear began his escalating sequence of howls.

  Marc felt a chill down his spine. Lear’s cri de coeur was heart-wrenching: a deep animal howl bred in the flesh and bone of love and loss. Armstrong might be old, but he was not past his prime as a tragedian. Slowly the howls came nearer and the ruined old king staggered forward with the hanged Cordelia in his arms and floating, it appeared, on the cloak. Tessa looked lifeless, one arm adroop, the body arched but limp, the hair lifting and falling with the cadence of Lear’s step, as if something of her was yet living and not ready to die. Marc was moved deeply, and braced himself for the speech he knew by heart.

  It was at this critical point, and just as Cordelia’s slipper struck the floor like a severed appendage, that Dawson Armstrong staggered, careened, and toppled sideways. Then, in a pathetic effort to maintain his balance, he dropped Cordelia upon the boards with an ugly thump.

  “What the fuck are you doing, you goddamn moron, you drunken pig, you stinking excuse for an actor!”

  Marc leaned forward in alarm, as did Rick and Jenkin. />
  But having spewed this venom at the toppled Lear, who lay semi-comatose where he had fallen, Merriwether dashed to Tessa’s side, almost colliding with Clarence Beasley.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Tessa said, whipping her dress down over her prettily exposed knees and scrambling to her feet. “I fell on my derriere.” She giggled, and gave that part of her anatomy a reconnoitring rub. “An’ there’s nothin’ much to hurt down there!”

  Beasley insisted on taking her hand, as if she were still on the floor, and giving it a gentlemanly tug.

  Tessa rewarded the effort with a dazzling smile. “What’ll we do now?” she asked Merriwether.

  “First, I’ll drag this intoxicated sot into the wings, where he can sleep it off. Then you and I will do this scene properly.”

  “I’ll see to Dawson,” Beasley said. He went over to the old man, spoke softly into his ear, then helped him over to the wings on the left, where he collapsed peacefully.

  “We better wait for Annie,” Tessa said nervously.

  “I’m the director, love.”

  Just then Mrs. Thedford returned. “Well, Jason, you were right. He’s found a bottle somewhere and downed it. I’ve searched his room, but when he sleeps this off, we’ll have to watch him every minute until the show opens at eight-thirty.”

  “He’ll never make it,” Merriwether said.

  “Now, you know he’s an old pro. If he’s awake and no more than half drunk, he can outact any of us.”

  “Jason says he’s going to play Lear tomorrow night,” Tessa said with just a hint of little-girl mischief in her voice.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now I’m more concerned with Dorothea’s health. She’s taken a tisane to help her sleep. She insists she’ll be ready for the farce tonight. And I believe her. She made no objection when I told her Tess was going to play Cordelia—to lessen the load on her till she’s feeling herself again.”

  “Oh, thank you, Annie. Thank you!”

  “So, whether Dawson does Lear tomorrow night or you, Jason, Tess needs a couple of run-throughs right now. Clarence and I will observe.”