by Diana Norman
And he was vain; she’d caught him looking at his reflection in the coach window and stroking the underside of his chin as if admiring a still-tight jawline.
Which it wasn’t.
As for cadging—he’d have the cross off a donkey’s back. On the way he’d spent liberally enough—‘There, landlord, that’s for a dry bed and a wet bottle’—but she’d discovered it was Aaron’s money, a loan, he was bestrewing on all and sundry.
And Aaron didn’t mind. He was besotted with the man.
‘My dear girl, he is the greatest actor I’ve ever seen.’ Standing in the hall, Makepeace waggled her head and shoulders as she mouthed her brother’s admiration.
He damn well was. He put on like he was the king of Eldorado but as far as she could make out he was escaping from some wrongdoing in Ireland. The reason that Aaron had slipped into England via Bristol and without the rest of his company, with whom he usually travelled, was now explained; he was accompanying a renegade.
‘We thought it better not to go through the bigger ports—in case,’ Aaron answered when they were alone. ‘Somebody who knows his face from over there might have recognized him. He’s very slightly persona non grata in Ireland just now, he needs to stay incognito. ’
‘Incognito? I seen parades of elephants more incognito than him.’
‘That’s why they won’t suspect him. Who’ll notice another eccentric knight up from the shires?’
‘Suspect him of what?’
‘He’s a United Irishman, Makepeace.’
‘What’s that?’ She’d collapsed onto a chair. ‘Oh God, Aaron, don’t tell me he’s another bloody revolutionary.’
He’d sat down beside her then. ‘A radical, not a revolutionary and not a bloody one. They call themselves a brotherhood of affection. They merely want the Irish Parliament thrown open to all Irishmen, regardless of rank and religion. At the moment it’s a Protestant oligarchy.’
Was it? Makepeace’s knowledge of the Irish political scene was hazy—deliberately so. An upbringing in Puritanical Boston had instilled in her its repulsion for the Roman Catholic religion and, since Ireland was full of Papists as well as Protestants who behaved little better, she’d closed her mind on it as a place too queasy to dwell on. Nor had the fact that her father had been Irish Catholic endeared the country to her. In her mind it floated sunlessly in a sea of ill will, its people emerging warped from its bogs into the sun of nicer lands.
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ she’d accused her brother.
Even before the punishment the American patriots had visited upon them both, while she was still a sympathizer with their cause, Aaron had always regarded himself as a loyal subject of King George the Third and had held the English establishment, its style, its dress, as an example to be copied.
‘If you’d played to audiences all over Ireland as often as I have, you’d damn well change your tune as well,’ he said. ‘The real Irish . . . they’re treated like cattle, their language and education stamped on, no positions open to them . . . I tell you, Makepeace, it makes you ashamed, it makes you want to shout this can’t go on. If there isn’t a revolution there soon, there damn well ought to be. For the first time I’ve begun to have fellow feeling with our father.’
‘You didn’t have to cope with the drunken old bugger.’
‘Makepeace, we toured Mayo. Fat estates, starving peasantry. God, no wonder he left it for America.’ Then Aaron had put his arm round her shoulders and she’d known what was coming. ‘I thought perhaps we, you, could put Mick up while he’s here, keep him out of harm’s way.’
‘How long?’
‘Oh, until Viceroy Camden stops seeing a revolutionary behind every shamrock. Things will have calmed down by the time we’ve put on the play.’
And that was another thing . . .
She went upstairs to see to Aaron but Hildy and Jenny were with him, making up a bed on Philippa’s divan for whoever would watch him through the night. They told her to go and eat. She was hungry and Aaron did look better.
She stumped back downstairs again and into the dining room to seat herself at the other end of the table. Constance, one of Sanders’s daughters by his first marriage, hurried in with a dish of chicken and rice, helped her tenderly to it and, at a nod from Murrough, recharged his plate.
‘His heart, then,’ the actor said.
‘So it seems.’
‘Too large, bless him.’
It sounded like an epitaph and she was immediately on the attack. ‘He’s got over worse; he’ll get over this. I’ll see he does.’
The actor raised his glass to her—Hildy had left a decanter of the best claret on the table for him, now, she noticed, half full. ‘Let us drink to that, ma’am.’
She was too superstitious to ignore such a toast, so, though she was not a great drinker, she poured herself a glass and raised it in return.
‘My presence must be a distraction at such a time,’ he said. ‘Dear lady, I shall remove it from under your roof tomorrow.’
More posturing, she thought; he doesn’t want to go, probably can’t afford to. This was merely a gauntlet thrown down for her to pick up.
She let it lie. ‘You must do as you please, of course.’
Then, because it sounded so bald, because Aaron had asked her to let the man stay, because the Puritan ethic of hospitality she’d inherited was as strong as any desert Arab’s in his tent, she was forced to add, ‘But you will be no distraction, sir. You are welcome to stay.’
He was on it like a dog on a rat. ‘Very kind, ma’am. I thank you.’ He bowed courteously from his end of the table and she, sorry that she’d given way, nodded somewhat less courteously from hers.
I’ve got enough with Aaron, she thought, and there’s John Beasley to be saved from the damn gallows, and now I’m burdened with this, this . . . whirligig.
Trying to find the essence of the man opposite her was like clutching at wet soap, her inability to grasp it deepened her distrust. He talked to Aaron in a slight and not unattractive brogue; to her he used the remoteness and long a’s of upper-class English which, when she rebuffed him as she frequently did, thinned into the acidity with which it was addressed to inferiors.
Even his looks were a contradiction, she thought; his face might have been a round of cheese into which a child had poked a finger to make the eyes and mouth but when he spoke, ah well, then, you heard a voice capable of calling shepherds from their sheep to set them running towards a Bethlehem stable.
And she distrusted it. Either he was so unsure of himself that he eddied in the direction of any prevailing current—and she suspected his self-regard was too high for that—or he was a plain fat liar and he was hiding something. She examined his every statement for the motive behind it.
Why did he profess affection for Aaron? Why had he been so concerned when she wept for the slaves? Was he really an Irish patriot or was he running from a more dastardly deed in a land of dastardly deeds? If he was such a marvellous actor, why was he penniless?
To punish him for his tergiversation, she said, ‘Of course, Oroonoko is out of the question now.’
That hit home. His hand came up to cup his chin and his forefinger tapped against his lips as he considered.
Actually, she was rather sorry herself. To have indulged in the wickedness of the theater while expunging its wickedness, making trumpery serve a fine cause, had been an intriguing prospect. She’d actually been enthused. And Aaron had been so excited by it . . . So had Jacques . . .
The project had arisen while they were all at supper in the inn outside Bristol. Murrough had just returned from his day of doing whatever it was that had kept them waiting for him (and what could that have been?).
They’d taken a private room and Jacques was sitting next to the actor, whom he seemed to admire, listening to every word spoken. His tutor was eating with his usual disregard for anything else. She’d still been wild, talking of expending every penny she possessed on buying slaves and se
tting them free.
‘Dear girl, you can’t buy them all,’ Aaron had said.
The actor agreed. ‘Unfortunately, ma’am, there’s not that much money in the world.’
‘You didn’t see her,’ she’d said. ‘You didn’t see the child. You didn’t hear her. If I buy enough, maybe they’ll be among ’em.’
She hadn’t been able to stop talking about it, sketching the captain and the clerk for them. Oddly enough, it was the memory of the clerk Briggs that obsessed her—the captain she set aside as mere brutish clay.
But Briggs . . . She’d drawn him well because she’d encountered him a thousand times. In Boston, he’d been in the British customs sheds, incorruptible and exacting to the last penny. She’d come up against him in prisons, in tax offices, in harbor masters’ huts where he ignored the entrancement of sea and sail and concentrated on his figures, the epitome of bureaucracy everywhere, neat, dutiful, going home to his wife and children and small garden, attending church on Sundays.
‘I’ll wager he has a hobby,’ she’d said. ‘He collects coronation medallions or grows pumpkins. He counted those slaves in and he drew a line on the list when they’d gone. He didn’t think it was wrong. He was doing a job.’
And the actor had said, ‘I know him. We have him in Ireland. The banal functionary. Cruelty en masse couldn’t do without him.’
Which, she had to admit, described the man exactly.
‘I’ve got to do something,’ she said.
‘There’s the Abolition Society,’ Aaron said, doubtfully.
‘I’ve joined. But it ain’t enough, they’re too slow, and they’re preaching to the converted half the time. It’ll take years for Parliament to vote in abolition. If it ever does.’
It was then the actor had turned to Aaron. ‘Your sister saw it, d’ye see? Not three thousand miles away in the slave ships and the cotton fields, it was in front of her, she heard the cry. She saw it, Aaron. What if we make thousands see it, hear it?’
And Aaron’s eyes had widened and the actor had smiled and both together they had uttered an owl’s hoot. ‘Oroonoko.’
‘What’s that?’ she’d demanded, irritably.
‘It’s a play. Listen, Makepeace ...’
They’d been offered the use of a playhouse; it was why they had come.
Lord Deerfield, an Irish peer, had seen the Othello Aaron had put on in Dublin—with Murrough as Othello. Joining them in the Green Room afterwards, his lordship had mentioned that he’d bought almost an acre of the City of London’s decrepit alleys near the river as a speculation with a view to knocking down its buildings and raising on it a club and a square of gentlemen’s houses.
‘He’s bribing every alderman he can get hold of for the licence to build but in the meantime he’s losing money on his investment.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Makepeace, dubiously.
The actor chimed in. ‘And on that blessed, dingy piece of land, dear lady, there stands an ancient altar to Thespis, the father of Greek tragedy. . . . Thespis, the first professor of our art, at country wakes sang ballads from a cart . . .’
‘It’s called The Duke’s Theatre,’ interrupted Aaron. ‘The Duke’s Company played there before they joined up with the Theatre Royal. It’s been renovated since, of course ...’
‘Betterton strode those boards, Kynaston, Gwynn ...’
‘Nell Gwynn?’ asked Makepeace, sharply. The name of Charles II’s mistress had always been synonymous with the Whore of Babylon for Puritan Boston and, for her, still carried an automatic charge of disapproval.
‘The point is,’ Aaron said, ‘it’s been empty for years but we persuaded Deerfield to let us have it at a reduced rent and a share of the profits until they pull it down.’
‘And what better opener could we have to touch minds and consciences than a tragedy whose hero is enslaved ...’
‘Thomas Southerne dramatized it from a book written in the days of Charles II—this will attract you, Makepeace—by a woman.’
It didn’t attract Makepeace; she hadn’t got over Nell Gwynn.
The two men kept on, however, overlaying an image of oranges and bare breasts with assurances of Oroonoko’s Christianizing effect on audiences. ‘It’s a certain touchstone. Tell her, Aaron. Didn’t we do it in Cork and didn’t it have them in tears and didn’t a bunch of them rush off to free Captain Bulmer’s second coachman who was black?’
‘That’s it, you see, Makepeace. There’ll be no change for the better until the mass of the public demands a change; people have got to be affected. We could have petitions in the foyer for when the audience comes out ...’
‘What happened to that second coachman?’ Makepeace wanted to know.
‘Well, actually, he went back to Captain Bulmer; turns out he was content in his job. But the point is ...’
They made it again and again. With the Abolition Society pushing and Oroonoko pulling, audiences, people, could be brought to see slavery for the evil it was. The outcry would force Parliament into submission.
‘We’ll invite the King and Queen to the first night ...’
‘To hell with the King and Queen . . .’ This was Murrough and, actually, the moment when Makepeace was caught. ‘It’s Mrs Briggs we want at the first night and every night. When we’ve done London we’ll tour the country, Bristol, we’ll play to the Mrs Briggses, the women, that untapped force of true persuaders ...’
Yes, she thought. The mountebank’s right. I suspect his reasons but he’s hit the nail. The transformation must be made in the home or not at all. Mrs Briggs, wife to the bureaucratic clerk, was the slaves’ secret agent. She has children; no mother could hear the wail I heard and not be ashamed to the stomach. If Briggs’s conscience lies anywhere it is in his hearth, which can be undermined.
And the neighbors, she thought. Mrs Briggs won’t like her neighbors looking down on her husband’s job.
Makepeace was no upholder of women’s rights; she thought Philippa’s enthusiasm for them misguided. Like anybody who’d achieved a privileged position through hard work, she discounted the luck that had also attended it; if she could do it, so could others; it only needed a bit of spirit. But she did not underestimate, indeed she lauded, the influence of the wife and mother in the home. There lay woman’s true dominion, in loving persuasion, in example, in nagging, in, as a last restort, shunning the offending mate’s bed until he’d purged the offense—Makepeace hadn’t heard of Lysistrata but she’d have approved the method.
She was also a businesswoman. ‘Will it pay for itself?’
Ah, well. It would, undoubtedly it would. If the play ran long enough—and that was a given—it could make a small fortune. They would put on other popular plays during the course of the season and, well, a season at Drury Lane, for instance, could make a net profit, profit, of £6,500, and had. Naturally, there would be an initial outlay . . . just to get the theater into fettle after its long disuse . . .
‘A little dusting, maybe,’ the actor said.
‘A lick of paint,’ Aaron assured her.
‘And mine’s the initial outlay, is it?’ Makepeace asked acidly. They weren’t peddling the play to her this energetically just to get her blessing.
‘A hundred pounds here or there,’ Aaron said, airily. ‘My dear girl, a minute ago you were going to spend all you had on a venture that could not have been maintained. Ours will alter the stars in their courses.’
The stars would probably stay in their courses but public opinion could veer slave-owners from theirs—they had convinced her of that much. And if this outlandish-sounding mummery would help to do it . . .
At this point Jacques broke in. ‘The theater, missus. It is full of mechanical devices—Papa took me to the Comédie Français and a demon rose from the floor and there was magic, toute mécanique. How I should adore to work in the theater.’
‘It ain’t run by steam,’ she said. If the boy thought he was going to imperil his immortal soul by going anywhere near a playhouse, he co
uld think again. But his enthusiasm emphasized the draw the theater had over the young. The next generation must also be persuaded.
‘You sure it’s a Christian play, Aaron?’
It was the actor who answered. ‘Madam, it was the first outcry against slavery and still the best. It gives voice to the pain. You can’t be more Christian than that.’
With a rich part in it for yourself, she thought. Always the double motive with you. ‘It’s your troupe, Aaron,’ she said. ‘Why ain’t you taking the lead part?’
Her brother nodded towards Murrough. ‘Because I saw him play it.’
She’d sighed, showing more reluctance than she felt. ‘I suppose you’d better go ahead, then.’
And, as they’d traveled homewards, their ceaseless discussion of the subject had drawn her further and further in so that, now, with Aaron hors de combat, with only anxieties for him and for John Beasley to contend with, the future looked unlit and flat compared with the flare that had so briefly illumined it. Now she must discover some other means of combating slavery.
The only comfort she could draw from the loss was that the play actor was more cast down than she was.
So much for you and Nell Gwynn, she thought and, excusing herself, went upstairs to bed.
ALEXANDER Baines was at Reach House early the next morning and pleased to find Aaron better. ‘But he’s sore afraid,’ he said, when he and Makepeace consulted outside the sick room door.
She knew that. During the night she’d been attentive to her brother’s every movement, every moan. In the candlelight his eyes had beseeched her for reassurance that he would not die. He was afraid to move in case it instigated another attack on his heart—and it tore at her own to see the years roll him back to the days when it had been a possibility that the tortured muscles of his back might not allow him to walk normally again, and, almost as bad from his point of view, that the boiling tar had so scarred the back of his head that hair would never grow on it again. He’d had to wear a wig ever since—even now, when false hair was out of fashion.
