Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  “Just remember what I told you a few minutes ago and you’ll be fine, sweetie,” Merriwether said to Tessa as they walked back into the shadows, Merriwether looking very Promethean beside the slight, five-foot figure of the girl-woman.

  “They’ve edited out the other parts, so there’s just Lear and Cordelia,” Hilliard whispered. But Marc’s attention was riveted on the stage.

  There was a collective intake of breath in expectation of the five howls. Out of Jason Merriwether’s mouth they came, but this time they were more bellowed than uttered, more impressing than impressive. From the upstage shadows emerged this other octogenarian with the rag doll of his daughter draped across his outstretched arms. Merriwether was nothing if not the consummate actor, for, despite his height and imperial bearing, he looked now the bowed and broken monarch, his every wearied step a defeated trudge. Moreover, his hunched bulk rendered the slender, unbreathing Cordelia that much more vulnerable and pitiable. And when he laid her down and began his great speech of self-insight and contrition, there was no anomalous thump, only the cadence of the bard’s pentameter. But, scarcely noticed except by the quickest eye, the old king’s left hand, as it slipped Cordelia’s lower half stageward, lingered a split second more than necessary on the curved clef of her buttocks and, just possibly, gave them an impertinent squeeze. The girl herself gave no sign, not even a blink.

  Marc heard the rasp of Rick’s breath and felt him rising from his chair. With well-coordinated movements, Marc pressed him back down with one hand and placed the other over his mouth in time to throttle the cry of outrage there.

  “They’re only acting,” he hissed, and Rick reluctantly sank back.

  Someone else had noticed the king’s incestuous touch, for Marc saw Mrs. Thedford’s eyes widen in disbelief, then fix upon the girl while Merriwether completed his series of lamentations over her prostrate form, and made a fine, rhetorical demise. Beasley began applauding, but Tessa turned her newly opened eyes upon Mrs. Thedford and smiled—knowingly, Marc thought. Owen Jenkin began to clap as well, and when Tessa rose to take her bow beside Merriwether, Rick joined him lustily. Marc felt obliged to clap politely, but Annemarie Thedford did not.

  Well, well, Marc thought, the acting business hasn’t changed much since I dipped my toes into its roiling waters five years ago.

  THE NEXT HOUR AND A HALF unfolded less contentiously. The company showed a predilection for death scenes, with the demise of Antony, Cleopatra, Romeo, and Juliet being added to that of Lear. All of this gloom was leavened only by the razor-keen repartee of Annemarie and Jason as Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. As far as Rick Hilliard was concerned, and he made his concern quite vocal, Tessa as Juliet (standing in, for today only, in place of Thea Clarkson) was the show-stopper, despite a less-than-satisfactory Romeo (Clarence Beasley), whose Yankee twang nearly ruined the balcony scene and certainly depreciated the glowing iambics of the beloved above him. And while all of the actors essayed some sort of approximate English stage-accent, Marc detected a trace of genuine English dialect in Mrs. Thedford’s speech, even when she wasn’t in character. Her performances as Gertrude and Lady Macbeth, opposite Merriwether’s Claudius and Macbeth, were the highlights of the afternoon.

  The various bits and pieces usually taken by Armstrong or Thea Clarkson were merely read by one of the other players, and Mrs. Thedford agreed with the director’s suggestion that the scenes from The Tempest be dropped from the bill due to the comatose condition of Prospero. Rick groaned at the patent unfairness of a decision that would deprive him of seeing Tessa play Miranda, the quintessential ingenue. Miranda herself seemed blithely unconcerned.

  Just as they were finishing, Thea Clarkson made a dramatic entrance, pale and fevered, and insisted on taking her part as Juliet, even though this set had already been run through twice with clear success.

  “How nice of you to make an appearance, love,” Merriwether said acidly. “You look more like Lady Capulet or the Nurse than a fifteen-year-old virgin.”

  Thea seemed about to burst into tears. Illness or not, she no longer gave the illusion of a woman in first bloom, for though she had a pretty, moon-pale face and striking almond eyes, she had put on weight that did not sit on her bones attractively. Moreover, her expression was that of one whose confidence has been shaken by the discovery of some knowledge still too daunting to admit.

  “There’s no need for gratuitous cruelty,” Mrs. Thedford said to Merriwether. “Thea, dear, you and Clarence can rehearse the Romeo and Juliet scenes tomorrow afternoon. You need to rest now so you’ll be fresh for the farce tonight. After all, it is you who must carry the piece.”

  Thea beamed her a bright smile, then began to weep quietly.

  At this point in the proceedings, Dawson Armstrong woke up. “Where in hell did my Cordelia go?”

  “Don’t you just love theatre people?” Rick exclaimed.

  SIX

  “Tessa has offered to give us a tour of the facility,” Rick called down to Marc and Jenkin, who were standing by the potbellied stove warming their hands. “And Mrs. Thedford has invited us to stay for the supper the Franks are laying on for the company in the hotel dining-room.”

  “We’ll take the tour,” Marc said, “but this is my night to have supper with Aunt Catherine at the shop.”

  “Speak for yourself, young fellow.” Jenkin laughed. He winked at Marc: “That Thedford woman’s a fine specimen of her sex.”

  Rick hopped down, and they followed him through a curtained doorway to the left of the stage and into the gloomy space beside it, where the actors could rest between entrances. Tessa was waiting for them, her blond hair shimmering in the near-dark. She led them down a long, narrow hallway, on either side of which were several cubicles that Tessa, still leading the parade, referred to as dressing-chambers. Rick insisted on exploring the one assigned to Tessa and Thea Clarkson, professing his amazement at the drawerful of makeup paints and glues, the wig-stand, and the bedraggled mannequin with the evening’s costume in place upon it. Marc peered into Merriwether’s carrel, where several playbills caught his attention. One of them, an advertisement for Hamlet at the Park Theatre in New York, featured a sketch of a younger Merriwether as Claudius, with a wig of curly black hair, bushy brows, and a trim Vandyke of similar hue—looking very much the smiling villain of the piece. Having exhausted the wonders of the airless, windowless dressing-rooms, they retreated as they had come in, and Tessa pointed up the steps to the stage itself, indicating that they were to cross to the other side.

  “Where does that door go?” Rick asked, glancing to his left.

  “Oh, that takes you into Mr. Frank’s quarters,” Tessa burbled, reaching down for Rick’s hand. “The Franks’ve got the most beautiful furniture you’ve ever seen. It’s just like a doll’s house!”

  They crossed the stage—the chandelier was now extinguished—and, through the wings on the right, down into another unlit space. There was a door to their left and a set of steep stairs straight ahead. The door appeared to be the only link between theatre and tavern. Tessa eased it open. They could see the bar just ahead and beyond it a room full of boisterous patrons, not of the drama but the bottle. Tessa eased it closed again.

  “Show us your rooms,” Rick suggested slyly.

  “Oh, wait till you see them! We had nothin’ like this in Buffalo!” Tessa testified, and skipped up the stairs with Rick on her heels. The party paused on a landing, and then continued up again to the second floor directly above the theatre.

  “Is this the only way in here?” Marc asked anxiously. The upper storey of Frank’s addition appeared to be self-contained and separate from the original building.

  “That’s right,” Tessa said. “Unless you want to go through that window at the far end of this hall and jump off the balcony onto the street.”

  “I could call for you like Romeo from underneath the balcony out there,” Rick teased.

  “What if there’s a fire?” Marc asked.

>   “My, would you look at this!” Rick cried, ignoring Marc’s question. He pointed through the partly opened door to the first room on their right.

  Tessa blushed, giving the effect of a white carnation magically transformed into a red one. “That’s our bathroom. You ain’t supposed to peek in there!”

  But peek they must.

  An elephantine copper tub squatted ostentatiously in the centre of the room, around which, on clothes-horses, were arrayed a dozen bath towels of varying pastel tints. In a far corner a Chinese folding-screen offered privacy to the diffident bather. On top of a pot-bellied stove, spitting and aglow, sat a kettle big enough to swim in.

  “The Franks have a maid who readies the bath whenever we wish,” Tessa said.

  “Looks like that tub could hold more than one person,” Rick said, and was rewarded with another full-petalled blush.

  A guttural cry directly across the hall from the bathroom interrupted this bit of by-play, as if someone had muttered a curse while stumbling over a coal-scuttle or bag of nails.

  “What on earth was that?” Jenkin asked.

  “Oh, that’s just Jeremiah’s babble-talk,” Tessa said. “Don’t pay him no mind.”

  At this, the three men turned to the open doorway of a storeroom, where a huge black man was staring at them with white-eyed, menacing curiosity.

  Tessa made what appeared at first to be several flirtatious gestures with her hands and fingers across the top of her bosom. Jeremiah, if that’s who he was, relaxed immediately, and greeted the newcomers with a gleaming smile that consumed most of his large, round face and bald head.

  “He doesn’t speak English?” Rick wondered.

  Tessa laughed, a bubbling little-girl laugh. “He don’t speak at all.”

  “He’s mute, then?” Jenkin said.

  “Aaargh,” Jeremiah said forcefully, with a painful contortion of both lips.

  “He’s deaf and dumb,” Tessa said matter-of-factly. “But he can read and write and read lips a little—can’t ya, Jeremiah?” Here she flashed him a sign, and he nodded vigorously.

  “He does the haulin’ and settin’ up of the flats. Annie—Mrs. Thedford—picked him up off the street and gave him a place to sleep. I told her he was probably a runaway slave but she don’t bother listenin’ to anyone, especially when it comes to pickin’ up strays.”

  Like you, Marc thought, and raised his opinion of the imperial Mrs. Thedford another notch.

  “What’s that?” Jenkin asked, indicating a slate that hung by a rope from the man’s neck.

  Jeremiah smiled, and Marc could discern the intelligence in that face, whose age might have been twenty-five or forty. He realized that the overly demonstrative facial gestures and hand movements were an attempt to communicate almost physically, but might easily lead people to assume he was a simpleton. Marc thought of Beth’s brother Aaron and winced inwardly.

  Jeremiah drew a piece of chalk from a big pocket in his smock and wrote something on the slate: “My name is Jeremiah Jefferson.” Then he held the slate out to Major Jenkin, who erased what was there with the sleeve of his tunic, and wrote: “I am Owen Jenkin.” and accompanied her command with several intimidating hand-signs. “You got props to get ready for the farce tonight.”

  Jeremiah did not seem to take offense at this rude outburst. He merely bowed his head and backed into the storeroom, but what lay behind the mask of his eyes and his practised public demeanour could only be guessed at. In the room behind him, they saw a straw pallet surrounded by half a dozen steamer-trunks.

  “You brought all this with you?” Rick said with enough interest to have Tessa pause and lean against his nearest shoulder.

  “Those are trunks with the props and costumes we’re gonna need in Detroit next week but not here. There’s one or two more downstairs somewheres that Mr. Merriwether’s plannin’ to send back to New York—stuff we used in Buffalo but don’t need no more.”

  “But how on earth do you haul all of this stuff?” Jenkin asked, his quartermaster’s curiosity piqued. “Not over our roads?”

  Tessa gave him an indulgent smile, glanced at Rick, and said, “Our stuff comes down the Erie Canal on a barge and then up from Buffalo by boat on the Welland Canal. That’s what we got Jeremiah for—to ride with it. And, of course, to protect us from dangerous strangers.” She batted her near-invisible lashes at Rick.

  “But he’s deaf,” Rick said with real concern.

  “He sleeps right there at the top of them stairs with the door open all night. The teensiest vibration will wake him up straightaway.”

  Jeremiah was busy opening one of the trunks as they turned to move farther along the carpeted hallway.

  “We each got a trunk in our rooms. We’re responsible for our own costumes once they get here, though we do help each other dress.” She checked out Rick’s response to this double entendre, and was not disappointed.

  “Who does the repair work?” Jenkin asked, ever interested in the care and deployment of uniforms. He stumbled for a second over a decorative spittoon near one of the doors, righted himself, and continued: “You must have a lot of it with all the costume changes.”

  “Thea does the little bits of stitchin’ an’ patchin’. She’s real handy with a needle. But if we’re stayin’ put for a week or so, like here, Mr. Merriwether finds us a local seamstress.” They were moving down the hall now, where doors on either side indicated the sleeping chambers of the cast. Tessa revelled in her role as tour-guide, with Rick at her elbow endeavouring to bump against her at every opportunity. “This here’s Clarence’s room and that one’s Mr. Armstrong’s,” she said, pointing to the next two rooms on the right, and then putting a forefinger against her pretty lips. “They like to have a snooze after the afternoon rehearsal.”

  “And where is your room?”

  “Here at the end,” Tessa said, “across from Mr. Merriwether’s.”

  As Tessa opened the door on the left, Marc glanced out the dusty window onto Colborne Street, and noted that the balcony which adorned the front of the Regency Theatre was indeed a false one, making it a dubious escape mechanism for those fleeing a sudden fire and a precarious perch for would-be Juliets.

  “The maiden’s bower!” Tessa gushed as they followed her inside.

  Marc had to admit that the room was nicely decorated, with lavender wallpaper aflutter with sprites and fairies, a thick carpet in some neutral shade, a commode-and-vanity with tilting oval-mirror, a quaint Swiss clock, a settee embroidered with daisies, and a four-poster bed swathed in pink. On a night-table, a decanter of sherry winked at the interlopers.

  “Mrs. Thedford insisted I take this room. Usually I have to share with Thea.”

  “Where does Thea sleep?” Rick asked. “With Mrs. Thedford?”

  “Lordy, no. Annie always stays by herself. Thea’s sleepin’ on her own in a little room in the Franks’ place. Annie’s afraid the rest of us might catch whatever she’s got.”

  “You’ve a fondness for sherry,” Jenkin said with a smile.

  “Oh, that. It’s somethin’ Mrs. Thedford taught me—to have one or two small glasses after a performance to help me sleep.” Giving Rick a sidelong glance, she added, “’Course I do share it once in a while.”

  “Well, that leaves us with all but Mrs. Thedford accounted for,” Jenkin said in what he intended to be a disinterested tone.

  “We’ve gone past her rooms,” Tessa said.

  “Rooms?” Jenkin asked, intrigued.

  Tessa led them back into the hall and pointed to the door next to her own room. “I’ll just give a tap an’ see if she’s still up.”

  “Oh, please don’t disturb her,” Rick said.

  But Tessa, who apparently liked to have her own way whenever it could be arranged, had already rapped, and a moment later the door opened.

  “Oh, do come in, gentlemen,” Mrs. Thedford said. She stood tall and elegant in the doorway, clad only in a satin kimono, her coiffed hair almost touching the lintel abov
e her. “I heard you in the hall and was about to step out and invite you in.”

  Jenkin demurred. “We don’t wish to disturb you at your …”

  “Toilette?” She laughed, giving the word its French pronunciation. “Don’t worry, sir, you’re not invading milady’s boudoir.”

  As they followed her in, they realized that the owner-operator of the Bowery Touring Company had a suite of rooms befitting her status. After introductions were made and requisite courtesies completed, Mrs. Thedford offered them sherry, sat them on her comfortable chairs and settee, and regaled them with witty tales of theatre life in New York. Marc noticed two things: Owen Jenkin was quite taken with the woman, and she herself appeared as regal, confident, and genuine as the image she had projected from the stage. Nor did she seem to be playing a role, of which she was perfectly capable. And if she were, it was one she believed in.

  At one lull in the conversation, she looked at Marc and said, “Edwards … my, what a fine English name.”

  “I can’t take credit for having applied it to myself,” Marc said, and it was plain from her approving expression that Mrs. Thedford—who slept alone in the adjoining bedroom and was, according to her story, long a widow—appreciated the witticism and the lineaments of the man who’d made it. Good Lord, Marc thought, surely I’m too young for her attentions. Besides, it was Major Jenkin who was paying court to her with all the Welsh charm he could muster.

  “I noticed the lovely lilt of your accent,” the major said gallantly. “Do I detect a shadow of English in it?”

  Mrs. Thedford gave him a smile worthy of Cleopatra.

  “The merest shadow, Mr. Jenkin. My father was English, but he brought me to Philadelphia when I was still a toddler. I have, alas, no memory of my birth-country, only a few of the unconscious traces of its glorious speech.”

  “Which is no drawback in the theatre,” the major replied.

  “Those pieces on your commode there look very English,” Marc remarked, admiring a pair of silver candlesticks. “I remember seeing something of that design in London.”