Angel in Scarlet

by Jennifer Wilde

  The girl tittered and kicked one leg high and tried to grab the empty bottle. A plump, middle-aged woman in black wig and luscious pink satin gown told Lambert the girl’s lover had deserted her that afternoon, and Lambert glared at her and then placed his hands over his temples and shook his head, looking woeful now, looking tragic. “I’m cursed!” he cried. “Cursed!” Although Dottie had never mentioned it, I was willing to bet a month’s salary James Lambert had spent some time as an actor. They probably booed him off the stage, I thought. Lucky they didn’t stone him.

  “What are we going to do?” Dobson asked. “The house is packed. We can’t turn them out!”

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do! I’ll think of something.”

  I decided it was not a propitious time to collect my five pounds and started toward the hall leading to the stage door as unobtrusively as I could. Lambert looked up then. He saw me and stood up straight, suddenly galvanized with purpose.

  “You!” he shouted. “Stop where you are!”

  My heart leaped. I was terrified. He rushed over to me and fixed me with a hard stare and then nodded. He seized my cloak, seized the bag, tossing them aside. “Get that apron off her!” he ordered. “Bring it over here!” And then he reached up and pulled the puffed sleeves of my violet silk dress down off my shoulders. I should have slapped him across the face as hard as I could, but I was too stunned. I stumbled back. James Lambert clamped his fingers around my wrist and held on tightly.

  “You’ll do. You’ll have to do! The dress is all wrong but the apron will help. Yes, I think it might work. Get that apron over here!”

  “Let go of me!” I cried. “Have you lost your—”

  “You’ve got to help us out, wench. It’s an emergency. I want you to do a little favor for me. It’s very, very simple, and I know you can do it, and you will do it, do you hear me? You’re going to go onstage tonight. You’re going to—”

  “You’re out of your bloody mind!”

  I tried to pull free. His fingers tightened around my wrist. I was genuinely terrified now, and James Lambert saw it and sensed he’d better change his tactics and smiled a reassuring smile.

  “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about,” he assured me, speaking in that persuasive voice I had heard him use on Dottie. “When the curtain goes up the audience discovers Mrs. Tallent and Mrs. Pearson sitting at the table in the garden and you’re in the background, you’re the maid, you’ve been gathering flowers and—”

  “I won’t do it! I couldn’t possibly! I—”

  “—and you’re just loitering there in front of the backdrop, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. Mrs. Tallent and Mrs. Pearson are talking about Prince Karl whose armies have conquered the country. The Prince has requisitioned the villa and will soon arrive to take over. Mrs. Tallent looks fearful and shakes her head and says ‘I fear we’ll all be ravished’ and when she says those words, you point stage right and say ‘Lo! The Prince and his army approach!’ and then you drop your flowers and flee stage left in terror.”

  “You’re mad!” I protested. “I’ve never been on a stage in my life! I’ve never even been inside a theater until tonight! If you think I’m going to—”

  “I know you’re a bit nervous, wench, and that’s understandable, but you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about. No one is going to pay any attention to you, they’re going to be looking at Mrs. Tallent and Mrs. Pearson and listening to their exchange of dialogue.”

  “I don’t care! I—”

  “You just have that one bit, that one line—‘Lo! The Prince and his army approach!’ You can remember that! Then you just drop your flowers and run offstage and that’s it, that’s all.”

  “Let one of the supers do it!”

  “I don’t have any female supers. They’re all men. They’re all soldiers. You can’t expect me to slap a dress on one of them.”

  “They did in Shakespeare’s time!”

  “This isn’t Shakespeare!”

  “That’s for bloody sure!”

  A man came rushing up with the white gauze apron. Lambert seized it, eyes flashing dangerously. He jerked me to him and angrily tied the apron around my waist and then, fingers clamped on my wrist, dragged me toward the stage. I struggled furiously. “Be still!” he snapped. Mrs. Tallent and the middle-aged woman in pink satin and black wig were sitting down at the table onstage. James Lambert dragged me past the white plaster statue, past trellises and shrubs, finally stopping.

  “You can do it,” he said tenderly, wooing me with his voice. “I know you can. You just stand here and gaze at the sky and—”

  “What the hell is going on!” Mrs. Tallent cried. “What’s she doing here? Where’s—”

  “Shut up, sow! And when Mrs. Tallent says ‘I fear we’ll all be ravished,’ you spot the army in the distance and point stage right and say your line, then drop your flowers and—Where are the bloody flowers! Bring me the flowers! I know you won’t let us down, wench. I know you’ll make us all very proud. Just think, this could be the start of a wonderful career in the theater.”

  “I don’t want a career. I just want to go back ho—”

  “Stop whining and do as you’re told!” he ordered, seizing a bunch of artificial flowers from a panicky stagehand and thrusting them into my arms. “Curtain’s going up in thirty seconds. We’re counting on you!”

  He dashed offstage then and left me standing there with the bunch of flowers, and I was so stunned, so disoriented I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. Less than ten minutes ago I had been leaving the theater, and now … my heart was pounding. My throat was dry. Mrs. Tallent glared at me and then turned to Mrs. Pearson and picked up her purple lace fan and looked nervous, looked alarmed, getting into character, and then there was a creaking sound and a sudden cessation of the buzzing, humming noise I had paid no attention to before, noise made by over three hundred people sitting in the theater, quiet now as the pulleys creaked and the curtain slowly rose. The footlights were blinding, and behind them … My God! There they were! Hundreds of blurry faces in the darkness, all of them staring! I thought I was going to faint.

  “It was a black day indeed when the invaders swarmed over this lovely land of ours,” Mrs. Pearson declaimed in a deep, dramatic voice. “We have surrendered our freedom, and now we must surrender our villa as well. They say Prince Karl is a demon.”

  “A demon with women,” Mrs. Tallent replied. Her voice was dramatic, too, phony as could be. “I’ll not give up, Lucinda! Somehow … somehow I am going to save our villa, save our honor, too!”

  Lord! It was a wonder they didn’t stone her. She was abominable, but she did look stunning in the purple and mauve gown. I began to relax a little bit, began to catch my breath. You’re a maid, Angela, and you’ve been picking flowers and you’re apprehensive about the soldiers coming and this will all be over with in just a few minutes. I swallowed and gazed at the imaginary horizon and then lifted the flowers up and sniffed them. They were dusty. I sneezed loudly. There were several titters in the audience. They thought I was funny! I sighed and then gazed at the horizon some more and managed to look very apprehensive. There wasn’t anything to this acting business, I decided. It was as easy as could be. You just had to relax and pretend you were someone else. I got up my courage and turned and casually peered at the audience and the first thing I saw were two familiar faces there in the second row. I gasped. Timothy and Johnny! What were they doing here? Both of them were grinning broadly. Timothy waved. Without thinking, I waved back, and several people hooted with laughter.

  Mrs. Tallent was livid. I could tell. She kept right on speaking, louder now, and there was an angry edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before. I suppose she thought I was deliberately trying to undermine her performance, if you could call it a performance. I gazed at the horizon again, shading my eyes with my left hand, clutching the flowers with my right, and Mrs. Pearson started declaiming again and
a curious hissing noise began to spread in the audience and I realized they were whispering. The whispering grew louder. Mrs. Pearson was quite discomfited, fanning herself vigorously as she spoke her lines. What in the world were they whispering about?

  I could sense a wave of excitement sweeping through the audience. Puzzled me completely, it did. What were they excited about? Certainly not the dreary dialogue Mrs. Tallent was speaking now. She was afraid the villa would be thoroughly destroyed, burned to the ground, afraid we’d all be ravished. The hiss of whispers was even louder now, and people were shifting about in their seats. In the wings on the right the soldiers were all lined up, the actor playing the prince in front, in a long cape and a gleaming helmet. He was waving his hands at me and silently mouthing something, looking quite upset. Terribly distracting, it was. I pretended not to see, gazing at the imaginary horizon

  “I fear we’ll all be ravished!” Mrs. Tallent repeated angrily.

  “Oh!” I cried.

  “It’s her!” a man shouted. “It is her! It’s the Angel!”

  “It’s the Angel in Scarlet!” another yelled.

  Oh, Lord! I was in a panic now as the audience grew more and more excited, more and more unruly. I desperately tried to remember my line, looking frantically about the stage as though to find it there. “Uh—Lo!” I cried nervously. “Here come the Prince! He’s got his soldiers with him, too!” And then I threw the flowers down and rushed offstage and into the arms of the prince who seized me by the shoulders. “Not this way, you idiot! You exit stage left!” He gave me a shove and I stumbled back onto the stage and almost tripped and bumped into one of the artificial shrubs and sent it skittering across the stage. The audience roared with laughter, hearty, boisterous laughter that grew louder and louder, demolishing me completely.

  “They’re still coming!” I shouted.

  I ran blindly across the stage and smack into one of the trellises. It toppled over with a noisy clatter and hit against the side of the pedestal on which the plaster statue stood. The Greek goddess wobbled precariously for a long moment, then fell with a deafening crash. “Bloody hell!” I exclaimed. The laughter was tumultuous now. People began to applaud. I leaped nimbly over the shattered plaster and raced offstage again and James Lambert grabbed me and held me fast as the applause thundered. Mrs. Tallent and Mrs. Pearson were still at the table, faces quite pale despite their heavy stage makeup. Lambert’s face was a chalky white, his eyes a blazing emerald with brown flecks.

  “I—oh, Jesus, I—I’m sor—I’m sorry!” I stammered.

  “Shut up!”

  The applause continued to thunder. The whole building seemed to shake with it. “Angel!” people began to shout. “Angel! Angel! We want Angel!” And his mouth tightened into a hard line and his fingers dug savagely into my upper arms and he took a deep breath. I tried to pull away. His fingers dug deeper, and I winced at the pain. “Angel! Angel!” they yelled, and they were stamping their feet now. “We want Angel!”

  “Let go of me!” I cried.

  James Lambert didn’t seem to hear me. He was looking over my shoulder at a point in space, lost in thought, and I could almost see the idea taking shape in his mind. He took another deep breath and looked down into my eyes as the furor continued.

  “I am going to murder you,” he said in a flat voice. “You’re going to die very slowly, very painfully, but first you’re going out on that stage and you’re going to take a bow. They think it was a stunt. They think it was all planned. We’ll let them go right on thinking that.”

  “I—I’m not going back out there! I—”

  “You’ll do as you’re told,” he said sternly.

  “I’m not your bloody servant! I’m not one of your employees, either. You’ve got no right to—”

  He clamped a hand over my mouth, smothering my protests. The audience continued to go wild. They’d start ripping the seats out next, start throwing them at the stage. I struggled with all my might as he slowly maneuvered me over toward the stage, his hand still clamped over my mouth.

  “They love you,” he murmured into my ear. “Listen to that applause. I’ve never heard anything like it in all my years in the theater. Go out there, Miss whoever-you-are—I don’t even know your name. Go out there and take a bow, let them love you.”

  He let go of me and placed his palm in the small of my back and shoved violently. I stumbled forward, and there I was in front of the footlights again and the people were standing and cheering. Never heard such a commotion in my life. And me the cause of it. They weren’t angry. They were happy. They were cheering, not shouting. They liked me. I smiled a timid smile, and then I gave them a curtsy. They loved it. I curtsied again. I saw Timothy and Johnny yelling and stamping with the rest of them, undoubtedly the ringleaders of the brouhaha. I blew them a kiss. The audience roared. I blew kisses all around and made another curtsy, and then I turned and blew a kiss to Mrs. Tallent who looked like someone had just embalmed her.

  James Lambert came out on stage then. He’d put on a brown frock coat and a green silk neckcloth and he was smiling warmly and carrying a bouquet of beautiful pink roses, real ones. Heaven knows where he got them in such a hurry. His wavy brown hair gleamed richly in the glow of the footlights. He looked impressive indeed, tall and striking and, yes, marvelously attractive, even though his nose was a bit crooked. He bowed to me and handed me the roses. I pretended to be overcome with gratitude. I sniffed them. I smiled. I pulled one out of the cluster and tossed it to Timothy. Lambert continued to smile.

  “Don’t overdo it, you little baggage,” he said between his teeth.

  “Sod off,” I said sweetly.

  I threw Johnny a rose, too, then tossed a few more just to defy him. After a few moments Lambert raised his arms up, asking for silence, and the crowd grew quieter and in a deep, beautifully resonant voice he told them he was frightfully pleased they’d enjoyed “our little jest” and begged them to let the drama resume. He took my hand. I made a final curtsy. He led me offstage and led me deep into the wings. The Prince and the soldiers marched onstage and Mrs. Tallent screamed and Mrs. Pearson pretended to faint. I pulled my hand free, feeling rather pleased with myself. I handed the bouquet of pink roses to a passing stagehand and began to take off the apron. Several people stood around, staring at us. Andy Dobson looked shaken.

  “Quite a performance,” James Lambert said ominously. “You and I have some things to discuss.”

  “We have nothing whatsoever to discuss,” I said, “besides the five pounds you owe me.”

  I handed him the apron and went over to pick up my cloak and put it on. He came storming after me. I gave him a frosty look, enjoying myself immensely. I hadn’t felt quite so feisty since … in a very long time. I tied the ribbons of the cloak around my neck and picked up the bag of sewing things. Lambert was glowering. A thick brown wave had tumbled over his brow, giving him a curiously boyish look, and those marvelous green-brown eyes were full of angry admiration. He thrust out his lower lip in an attempt to look menacing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me who you are?” he demanded.

  “I’m an humble seamstress who works for your friend Mrs. Gibbons.”

  “You know bloody good and well what I’m talking about. You’re the toast of London. Every hack on Fleet Street has written reams of copy about you. Prints of your portrait are selling by the thousands.”

  “That’s none of my doing,” I said blithely. “If folks want to make a fuss over Mr. Gainsborough’s painting, it has nothing to do with me.”

  “It has everything to do with you! You’re famous, wench. You saw how they carried on out there.”

  “It was something, wasn’t it?”

  “And you loved it! I saw your face when they were cheering and applauding. You were glowing. The way you curtsied, the way you tossed those roses—I’ve never seen anyone take to the stage the way you did, nor have I ever seen anyone with such natural stage presence. With the right part, the right pro—”


  “I’ll take my five pounds now, Mr. Lambert.”

  His mouth tightened. His eyes flashed. He dug into the pocket of his coat and pulled out some creased and rumpled bills and counted out five pounds, shoving them into my outstretched hand. I smiled politely and thanked him and started toward the hall. He scurried after me and seized my arm and jerked me around quite roughly. I was furious.

  “You’re not leaving!” he cried. “We’ve got things to talk about, plans to discuss. I’m going to—”

  “You’re going to let go of me this instant! I’ve had enough of your bullying, Mr. Lambert! You think you can just—just—”

  “Calm down,” he said pleasantly. “I have tremendous plans for you, wench. Come along. We’re going to my office.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  He arched an eyebrow. “No?”

  “No!”

  He chuckled and took the bag out of my hand and gripped both my arms, smiling a wicked smile. My anger amused him. He was having a dandy time, relishing every minute of it. My anger rose. My cheeks flamed. I brought my knee up and made sharp contact and James Lambert yowled and staggered back, doubling over in pain. I balled my right hand into a tight fist and smashed it across his jaw as hard as I could and he reeled against the wall and crashed into a pile of flats. I picked up the bag and hurried down the hallway and out the stage door, feeling a strange exhilaration, feeling wonderfully, gloriously alive for the first time in years.

  “I do hope you didn’t do any permanent damage to the family jewels,” Megan said the next afternoon. “Women all over London would go into mourning.”

  “I don’t think I actually hurt him,” I told her, “but I imagine it smarted quite a bit.”

  Megan smiled. It was Saturday and we both had the afternoon off. Dazzling rays of sunlight streamed in through the front windows, making shimmery patterns on the floor. I was curled up on the dusty-rose sofa, wearing a light blue muslin frock, and Megan, in rust and cream striped linen, was pouring herself a cup of tea. Her long auburn waves glistened with rich highlights in the sun. Timothy and Johnny had left a short while ago after recounting their version of last night’s event with customary gusto.