The Sparks Fly Upward

by Diana Norman

  ‘Perhaps he could answer for himself. Now then, Joseph, what work can you do?’

  Joseph looked at his master who gave permission in French; few of the servants spoke English.

  ‘Je suis homme à tout faire de M le Comte.’

  Makepeace bobbed down into the orchestra pit.

  ‘A handyman,’ Ninon said. She listened—Joseph was going stolidly on. ‘Also he built huts in the royal army at Coblentz when they served together, also he saw to their drains, also ...’

  ‘Lord love him,’ Makepeace said and bobbed up. ‘Can he mend that ceiling?’

  The Comte de Penthémont looked calmly upwards then down again. ‘Only if I hold the ladder.’

  ‘I ain’t paying tuppence an hour for somebody to hold a ladder.’

  ‘Then I fear ...’

  ‘Oh, all right. Threepence an hour for the two of you.’

  ‘Four pence.’

  ‘Three and a half. My final offer.’ If Joseph lived up to his curriculum vitae, it was still a bargain.

  ‘Done.’

  As she leaned across to shake the Count’s only hand, she said, ‘You ever thought of going into business?’

  ‘It would be beneath me, madame.’

  She shook her head, watching him go. ‘I don’t understand these people.’

  ‘It is your fortune you did not have to,’ Ninon said.

  Makepeace looked down at her. ‘You’re enjoying yourself, ain’t you?’

  ‘But yes,’ Ninon said and Makepeace saw that not all the ghosts in the theater that day were being dragged in by the royal exiles. Already Ninon had vetoed the former abbé of a church in Montmartre. ‘Non,’ she’d said on hearing his name.

  ‘He’s a priest,’ Makepeace hissed at her. ‘He says carpentry was his hobby. We need a carpenter.’

  ‘His hobby was little girls,’ Ninon said, which put an end to the matter.

  The Chevalier Saint Joly, who wore the Order of Saint Louis on his breast, was hired instantly. A sensible-looking young man, he’d also served in the ragtag royal army that had been defeated so comprehensively by the Revolution’s forces and where, he said, he’d had to turn his hand to anything.

  One of the last to arrive was Makepeace’s old waltzing partner.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Marquis, we don’t need dancing masters just now.’

  He looked more dilapidated than ever but just as self-possessed. ‘You will need musicians, Madame. I have some small talent in that direction.’

  ‘Will we need musicians?’ asked Makepeace, sotto voce.

  ‘Yes. Who is it?’

  ‘Marquis de Barigoule.’

  Ninon was instantly on her feet. ‘M le Marquis, vous êtes vraiment bien.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Adèle. Suis enchanté.’

  France, Makepeace decided as the two chattered, was a small world.

  ‘That is very good,’ Ninon said when the Marquis had gone. ‘Already he play in a sextet with friends for his own pleasure, now they play for us.’ She looked sideways at Makepeace. ‘I suggest sixpence an hour.’

  ‘For amateurs?’

  ‘Mozart has compose for him. Surely you have heard the “De Barigoule Sonata”?’

  Makepeace, who was tone deaf, had hardly heard of Mozart. However, she assumed they must have musicians; from what she remembered of the theater there were always tunes. She’d have to consult Aaron. ‘I’ll see,’ she said. Ninon was relishing her power over a class that had exercised power over her—obviously, in most cases, none too kindly—and getting above herself in the process.

  Still, it hadn’t been a bad day’s work. She’d hired three seamstresses—one of them a lady-in-waiting who’d created costumes for Marie Antoinette—three and a half handymen, if one counted the Comte de Penthémont, and four of the more robust-looking nobility as plain laborers. Also, because she couldn’t get the Countess with the little son out of her head, she had sent a note around to their lodging and hired them, too.

  All of them, supposing they came up to expectation, were to begin work the next day. Since time was money, she’d decided that rehearsals for the play must start right away; the cleaning and restoration of the theater would have to go on around them.

  ‘I want to open in three weeks,’ she told Murrough and Jacques as they traveled back to Chelsea.

  She’d expected the actor to ask for more time but he merely nodded. It was Jacques who said, ‘As long as I can get the cannonballs.’

  ‘What cannonballs?’

  ‘Sir Mick wants a thunderstorm in Act Three, and I have had an idea superb.’ He turned to Murrough. ‘Do you remember at the armaments factory in Saint Cloud when we went with Papa, the noise cannonballs made when they rolled from the foundry? Like thunder?’

  ‘I remember. A grand idea.’

  Makepeace was silent for a while, then she said, ‘You’re not going to the theater again, Jack.’

  ‘Please, missus, please.’ The boy was distraught. ‘Already I am working on the traps. It is an education much better than Latin, oh please. Tell her, Sir Mick.’

  ‘It’s a matter for the lady, Jack. I’d merely point out that with you involved in this production, your tutor’d be free to give us a hand as well.’

  The thought of Luchet doing hard work for a change was a happy one but Makepeace was not to be seduced by it. She said, ‘We’ll see,’ merely in order to gain peace for the rest of the journey in which to think.

  So the actor and Jacques had met before; what she’d assumed to be instant liking rested on former acquaintanceship. He knew who Jacques was. He and de Vaubon has visited an armaments factory together.

  She began collating her suspicions about the Irishman. She was sure he’d left Ireland because the place had become too dangerous for him. Only this morning when, because of the weather, she’d intended that the three of them be driven to London in the open carriage, Murrough had asked that they use the coach instead. ‘My public, dear lady . . . recognition can be embarrassing, demands for keepsakes, that sort of thing.’

  His public my arse, she thought. The only keepsakes he’s worried about are a pair of handcuffs and jail.

  The actor had closed his eyes, either in sleep or feigning it, and she studied him. A plastic face, like a piece of dough that could assume any expression. An actor’s face. Or an agent’s.

  You’re a spy, she thought, that’s what you are, a bloody spy. For which side? Not that it mattered. He was dangerous whichever way the cards fell.

  Ain’t I got enough? There’s John Beasley, there’s Jacques and now there’s you.

  When they reached home, she sent Jacques off to his supper, invited the actor to join her in the parlor and closed the doors. She faced him, his size reducing hers. It wasn’t that he was fat, it was the sheer bulk; there was a massivity to him which was menacing on its own account; he bled Philippa’s demure parlor, made it lopsided, as if a rhinoceros had entered it.

  She asked him to sit down so that he’d be less intimidating. She stayed standing and went hard into the attack. ‘Are you a danger to that boy?’

  ‘Your pardon, ma’am?’

  ‘Don’t you pardon me.’ Pugnacity was ever her weapon when she was scared. ‘You’re up to some hocus-pocus and I’ve a right to know if it can harm that boy. He’s my responsibility, his father put him in my care and I’m not having him put at any more risk than he is already.’

  ‘Ah.’ Murrough flicked a piece of lint from his sleeve. ‘The armaments. ’

  ‘Exactly. You didn’t tell me you knew de Vaubon.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  ‘I’m asking now.’

  To show him that they were there for the duration, she pulled up a stool and sat in front of him.

  He was considering. ‘Dear lady, if I told you I’d not harm a hair on that boy’s head, would that do for you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t. And I’m not your dear lady.’

  ‘Are you not? That’s a shame then. Well, it’s
like this . . . Could we be having a dish of tay? I bare me soul better when I’m not parched.’

  She felt powerless to get through the veneer of banter, the mock politeness, whatever it was, that kept her from the truth of him. She sent for a tray of tea so that he’d have no excuse and because her own mouth was dry. When it came she poured them both a cup. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Talk to me. To me. Stop being so . . . so Irish.’

  ‘I am Irish,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you? Isn’t Aaron?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re American.’ No law of marriage was going to take that identity away from her. ‘And proud of it.’

  ‘Rightly so. A people who chose freedom rather than pay British taxes. But in Ireland, now . . . well, taxes are the least of it. Aaron says your father told you. The Burkes of Mayo were never a clan to be silent on their grievances. Did ye listen?’

  She’d listened. And listened and listened during endless maudlin sessions when her father had wept tears of pure rum. ‘They made us cattle, Makepeace darlin’. Fokkers took our language, our education, advancement, our religion, our bloody souls. Cattle in our own land.’

  It had been his justification for failure and drunkenness; eventually she’d stopped listening and become irritated, as with a beggar that wouldn’t go away.

  ‘We Americans did something about it,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed ye did, indeed ye did.’ Murrough waved a congratulatory hand. ‘And, if I remember rightly, ye did it with the help of the French.’

  She put her cup down. ‘Dear God,’ she said. ‘Are you doing the same? You’re planning an Irish rising. You’re a traitor.’

  She heard the word fly out of her mouth and buzz round the room like a blue-bottle fresh from the shit-house.

  It didn’t land on him. ‘So I am,’ he said. ‘So was Jefferson, so was Benjamin Franklin. All traitors to the British in their day. So was Sam Adams—a gentleman of your acquaintance, I believe.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘Sam used to come into my tavern in Boston.’

  They were different, she thought. They were good, clean, intelligent men seeking liberty. But the Irish . . . Father, running footmen, double-dealers, Papists, potato-eaters, bog-trotters, the butt of jokes, always jokes . . . A drip, drip of prejudice that turned sympathy to stone.

  He was watching her out of his little eyes, like an amused, intelligent pig’s. ‘Not the same? Independence too good for the Irish?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Abolition will only stretch as far as the negroes, eh?’

  ‘You’re not slaves.’ She was only nettling herself; she couldn’t disturb him. She felt like a fighter unable to land a punch on a superior opponent.

  ‘Was your father a lazy man, Mrs Hedley?’

  Dear God, how much had Aaron told him? ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Mine was,’ he said. ‘Lord Altamont complained of him though, living mostly in London, he didn’t know Dada, but he disapproved of not getting enough rent off him. And his overseer disapproved of him, too. “Will you not improve your land, O’Leary, so’s we can kick ye off it and charge a higher rent to somebody else?” ’

  O’Leary? Not Murrough? The man hadn’t even kept the name he’d been born with.

  ‘They put the rent up anyway,’ Murrough went on, companionably. ‘I’ll tell ye one thing your dada didn’t do, you being born in Boston. He didn’t give you up to the overseer’s bed in exchange for rent. Mine did that to me sister. A pimp, you’d maybe call him and starvation for the rest of us no excuse.’ He settled himself more easily in his chair. ‘And, silly girl, didn’t she go and hang herself ?’

  Her father had asked for too much sympathy; Murrough was shrugging it off, merely making a point on his way to whatever explanation he was giving her, a brief glimpse into the night, lightning transfixing a scene in rain.

  She got up and went to the sideboard to get them both a glass of malmsey—again more for her sake than his. She heard his voice as she poured the wine into the glasses. ‘It’s grand training for an actor to be Irish. We learn it at the mammy’s knee, d’ye see, how to mop and mow, how to please, tell the lords what they want to hear. Some call it blarney, others call it deceit. I call it acting.’

  She went back to her stool and handed him his glass. ‘And de Vaubon?’ she asked.

  He brought his eyes down to look at her as if he’d forgotten she was there. He said, ‘Isn’t that the coincidence? I don’t know the man well, he was one of a succession of the bigger frogs in that revolutionary pond I was wading in . . . did ye know Robespierre has a greenish complexion? Green as a shamrock. Tiny fella, like a leprechaun. Came up to me knee. It was like asking the Little People for help.’

  ‘But you got it,’ she said.

  ‘I got their promise,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see what that’s worth.’

  She persisted. ‘So the French are going to help Ireland rebel.’

  ‘They’ll maybe help Ireland to its freedom.’

  ‘Send arms, troops?’ She was a woman who needed the words said.

  ‘Such is the plan.’ He swigged back his malmsey and slammed the glass down on the little table by his chair. ‘If it’s good enough for America, it’s good enough for Ireland.’

  He was saying there was no difference. But there is, she thought. Ireland’s too close, too poor, too Catholic; the English have owned it for too long; it is a postern into their castle. They’d fight for it as they hadn’t been able to fight for America—and to the death.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not yet. When they’re ready. And when we are.’ He yawned. ‘And that, madam, was me one and only foray into the dirty world of secret negotiation. No connection any more between Michael O’Leary, agent and courier, and Sir Mick Murrough, actor. You need have no worry on that account.’

  He was reassuring her; he thought she was worried about him being a threat to the safety of her house. Come to think about it, she was.

  ‘There is a worry, though, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘Why did you slip out of Ireland like you did? Why don’t you want to be seen in the streets?’

  ‘A tiny precaution, madam.’ His vast shoulders shrugged it off. ‘There’s maybe one or two double agents who saw O’Leary in Paris that shouldn’t have. But they’ll not connect him with Sir Michael Murrough.’

  ‘And Mick Murrough capering about onstage in full view of some of ’em won’t give them a clue?’

  He was indignant. ‘I’ll be blackened, ma’am. And I’m an actor. Me own mother won’t recognize me.’

  If you had a mother, she thought, bitterly. She’d found out a lot about him, but merely as much as he’d chosen to tell her; at no point had he spoken to her as an individual, only as an audience. She knew as little of the essence of him now as she had when they came into the room. Perhaps there is no essence, she thought; perhaps the actor’s all there is. Even his spying for Ireland is just another role.

  ‘Well, madam?’ he said. ‘Do I go or do I stay?’

  She looked up. He was smiling—and not unattractively. That had ’em lining up at the stage door, no doubt—Aaron had said women threw themselves at the man’s feet. Lord knew why.

  But she was surprised by her reluctance to tell him to go. He’d insinuated himself into the household; he’d leave a gap. Jacques would miss him, Aaron would be cross with her—though how much he’d told Aaron about his activities was something she’d have to investigate.

  And how much danger was there? If he were discovered, which, as he said, was unlikely, she could disclaim all knowledge of what he’d been up to. And she would, oh she would.

  One thing, he’d safeguard the secret of Jacques’s connection with de Vaubon for fear of revealing his own. She had a hold over him there.

  Immediately, it occurred to her that his hold on her was as tight. If he was in danger of exposure, so was Jacques.

  All the more reason for keeping the bastard under her eye.

  ‘I’ll
see,’ she said.

  ‘GOOD for him,’ said Aaron.

  ‘It’s not good for him, it’s not good for any of us. Every revolutionary in Europe thinks he can hide out in this damn house. Government spies must be counting ’em in. Beasley, de Vaubon’s boy, your Irishman. Even Philippa and her rights for women.’ Makepeace flung out her hands. ‘And I don’t agree with any of them.’

  Aaron grinned at her. ‘But you’d fight for their right to do it.’

  ‘Looks like I’ll bloody have to. Now, about these damn musicians ...’

  MAKEPEACE and Murrough started quarrelling on the morning of the first day that Oroonoko went into rehearsal and restoration of The Duke’s Theatre began. If Makepeace had wondered what was the essence that lay beneath the shifting character of Mick Murrough, it was made apparent to her then and in the days to come. At base, the man was a fanatic.

  The war started with shouting but, then, it had to. The hammering and sawing, cries and orders, competed with the thump of Jacques’s traps opening and closing that in turn competed with repetition of a phrase from de Barigoule’s violins and trumpets, all of it rendering normal converse impossible.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said stop this damn noise. We can’t hear each other rehearse.’

  ‘Go somewhere else then.’

  ‘We need to be on stage, woman. I need to show them their positions. ’

  She won that one; the work couldn’t be stopped. Watching him lead the rest of the players to rehearse elsewhere, she felt that she had established who was in charge.

  An hour later, she erupted into the Green Room. ‘Who said they could dismantle the boxes on the sides of the stage?’

  Murrough flung his script onto the floor. ‘In the name of God . . .’ He turned on her. ‘I did.’

  ‘What for? They could hold twenty people. More.’

  ‘They’re old-fashioned, they’re a damn nuisance and they’re going. I need the space.’

  Ninon who, for some reason, had been standing on a chair, got down. ‘It is true, cherie. Stage box customers, they are affreuses. They drink, they comment. Also they come on stage ...’