An Experiment in Treason (20 page)

What did she now with her time? Why, insofar as her duties to Lady Fielding permitted, she followed Tom Durham about, ogling him quite idiotically. I was greatly embarrassed for her. He gave her little encouragement. She attempted to start conversations with him, yet he responded only vaguely (though this would change). If anything, he showed even less interest in her than he did in me.

Yes, Tom was indeed different from the sixteen-year-old youth who had bade us a tearful good-bye and called me brother only a few years before. The habit of command had altered him permanently, no doubt. On shipboard, he may have been the most junior of the junior officers, yet each man jack of the crew was bound to hop to at his command, no matter in what peril it placed them. Such circumstances were bound to make an impression upon a fellow, particularly one as young and malleable as he was. There were obvious changes. He talked less than the lad I remembered, and kept his own counsel until such time as he was ready to give an opinion — or make a demand.

I first glimpsed this new Tom Durham after our first night’s sleep together in my little attic room. Admittedly, my narrow bed made things a bit tight, but I, for one, had a fair night’s rest. Yet, next morn at breakfast, when Tom was asked how he had slept, he answered with a groan.

“As badly as that?” asked Sir John. “I recall that when you visited us last, you two managed well enough in Jeremy’s bed.”

“Well, it would seem that we’ve both grown a bit since then. I slept better in a hammock back when I was a midshipman.”

“What shall we do about it?” said Sir John, opening the question to the table.

“I should be happy to share a bed with Clarissa or Molly,” said he.

“Tom!” said Lady Fielding most sharp. She meant to make it clear there would be none of that.

“Just a joke. Mother. Perhaps it would be better,” he added, “if I were to put up at a hostelry. Oh, I’ve plenty of money after all those years at sea.”

“No doubt you have,” said Sir John, “but surely we can accommodate you.”

He was accommodated, of course, by me. I’d given up my bed once previously, when Clarissa, half dead with pneumonia, was too ill to be moved, and mine became her sickroom. The memory of her pale face above the blanket as she struggled to breathe properly came to me unbidden in the way of a dream, and with it an odd feeling that I can only describe as … well, tenderness. I slept on a pallet in the kitchen before the fireplace. Not my best nights, certainly, but I survived — just as I survived once again when pillow and pallet were laid down for me before the fire. I had volunteered, of course.

Having mentioned his heavy pockets, Tom must have felt obliged to lighten them somewhat. If that were the case, he could not have chosen a better and surer way to accomplish this than a visit to the Tyburn Gaming Club, formerly Black Jack Bilbo’s. Already the new proprietor had sent rumors flying that his tables were not governed wholly by the laws of chance.

Sir John passed these rumors on to him, yet Tom paid them little heed. This occasioned a remark from the magistrate, which has stayed with me always. “When a man is determined to throw his money away, there is simply no dissuading him,” said he to me in private. “To do so gives some a feeling of power, though why this should be I cannot understand.” In any case, Tom lost a considerable amount in a single evening — perhaps half his fortune — so he must have felt very powerful indeed.

After a time, it became clear to me that Tom’s guiding purpose whilst in our midst was to displease his mother. I believe I do not exaggerate in this, for he not only took every opportunity to make remarks in a joking manner that would be sure to vex her, but he also created occasions that were sure to cause conflict. I have mentioned his visit to the Tyburn Gaming Club; that caused conflict aplenty. There was also an absence of most of a day and half of a night from which he returned over the shoulder of Benjamin Bailey, chief of the Bow Street Runners, who had collected him from the Bedford Street gutter. When, before all the rest of us. Lady Fielding had demanded an explanation from him, he at first declined to give any. But when she insisted, he said that he had “found an appealing little whore and got drunk with her.” Which may or may not have been true, but distressed his mother no end. There were other such events.

Yet, to a remarkable degree, she seemed to bring it upon herself. She was forever telling him how to conduct himself, what to say and do. He would make no comment, nor pay any attention to her whatever. She insisted, as an instance, upon accompanying him when he went out to search for a new coat to take the place of the one which had been befouled in the Bedford Street gutter. I know not what happened, nor what else said between them, yet I do know that afterward neither of them spoke to the other for a full day.

Sir John bore up well. To me he confided that he felt that both were wrong.

“Kate seems to believe,” said he, “that she has still the right to assert the parent’s authority. She refuses to recognize that her boy is now a man. And Tom, for his part, sees no way to declare his manhood than by making himself as offensive in his behavior and speech as possible. He is simply playing the bad boy, which in a sense is just what she wishes.”

“Hmmm,” said I, “why then do you not speak to them that they may adopt more reasonable ways, each with the other?”

He considered that for a moment, then did he shake his head in the negative. “No, Jeremy,” said he. “I fear they must find their own way. She must allow him to be a man, and he must find better ways to demonstrate to her that he has become one, than he has so far discovered. Yet perhaps I can do something that may give the two of them a bit of a rest from these emotionally exhausting pursuits.”

“What had you in mind?”

“A trip to the theatre. David Garrick stopped by whilst you were away on your afternoon errands, and he told me that his new production would be of considerable interest.”

“Shakespeare, of course.”

“Of course,” said he. ” Romeo and Juliet. He has offered us his box for tomorrow night, should we wish it.”

“Oh, I wish it,” said I with great enthusiasm.

“And I also,” said he. “Consider it done then. Between us we shall overcome any reluctance on Tom’s part, or Kate’s.”

So we did. I could not imagine Lady Fielding declining an invitation to the theatre, yet I knew naught of Tom’s interest — in Shakespeare, particularly — indeed whether he had any at all. Yet for all of his ill-tempered behavior, he had managed to be quite civil to Sir John. Perhaps he had somehow been made newly aware of Sir John’s reputation — or perhaps he merely liked and respected him.

In any case, there was neither resistance nor reluctance when Sir John announced at the dinner table that he would be taking all to the Drury Lane next evening.

“And what is the play?” Tom asked.

“What indeed but Romeo an? Juiiet?” I responded.

“Ah well,” said he, “not my favorite, but doubtless a work of considerable worth.”

“You’ve seen another production, have you?” asked Sir John.

“No, but I read it long ago while in school.”

“It is unquestionably the greatest of all Shakespeare’s plays,” said Clarissa with great authority, raising her eyes heavenward. “To me, there is no more beautiful and tragic theme than young love … thwarted.”

Following that announcement, there was a good deal of coughing and shuffling of feet round the table.

When we settled into our seats there in the box which Mr. Garrick had provided, we found it a bit tight. There were, after all, six of us.

and the box, which was located closest stage left, was smaller than the rest — or so it seemed to me. Still, snug or loose, we fitted it in separate rows — Sir John and Lady Fielding, together with Tom Durham, sat in front of Clarissa, Molly, and me.

There were some minutes before first curtain, and so, while the others buzzed in anticipation, I opened the program and glanced at the cast list. Of a sudden did I understand Sir John’s hidden purpose in organizing his expedition to Drury Lane Theatre. I looked round me — at Tom, feigning boredom, at Clarissa and Molly beside me, deep in whispered conversation, and Lady Fielding, straining back to listen in — and saw that none of them had even so much as opened their copies of the program. I decided to say nothing of my discovery. Let them find out in the manner that Sir John had intended.

A £ew minutes later the curtain came up on that street in Verona and on the two male servants of the Capulets, and soon the air was filled with scurrilous ambiguities. In the next scene, the Montagues arrived, and we saw the two feuding houses clash for the first time. I waited impatiently for the third scene of the first act, for I knew that, in the course of it, Juliet would make her first appearance. Yes, here it was, and here she came: Miss Anne Oakum, as announced in the program, in the role of Juliet. Twas our Annie, our former cook, in her first leading role at the Drury Lane — thus the visit by Mr. Garrick to Sir John to put him on notice that she would be appearing as Juliet. He was certain that we would all wish to attend.

Though Clarissa and I had seen Annie in some of her appearances as she served her apprenticeship with Mr. Garrick s company, we had not seen all. We had not been aware of her swift progress from supernumerary roles as a lady-in-waiting to the role of Juliet, one of the most demanding of Shakespeare’s female parts.

I watched closely to see which of our party would be first to recognize her. I expected that it would be Tom — for hadn’t he and Annie been lovers, in their fashion? — but indeed it was not Tom. I saw him frowning down at her, as if asking himself who this Juliet could be who looked so familiar. He continued looking until Clarissa leaned forward and provided the answer. At about that same moment, Lady Fielding clapped her hand to her mouth that she might trap the exclamation of surprise which leaped to her hps; something of it escaped, a kind of muffled gasp, which seemed to amuse Sir John sitting close beside her.

The acts went by. Dear Annie proved more than equal to the part. To some extent, I would have to say that she was only held back a little by the performance of her Romeo. David Garrick had cast himself in the role, and she could hardly have asked that another be given a chance, for after all it was his company, was it not? The voice and the sense of the poetry in the lines were all very well, of course, but it was painful to see a man into his fifties attempt to play a boy forty years younger. He lacked the swiftness of youth, the sense of impetuous passion of a much younger man. He should not have attempted it.

If anything, Mr. Garrick’s performance seemed to heighten Annie’s and reveal the energy and spirit behind it. Only once did she falter, and that was during the famous balcony scene. In the course of one of her longest speeches, she did raise her eyes and, for the first time, spy Tom Durham hanging over the railing, consuming her with his own eyes. I’m certain that she recognized him immediately, for she grew flustered and repeated a line, yet did so in such a way that she seemed carried away by the excitement of the moment — just as Juliet might have done. A graceful recovery.

During intermissions, the women buzzed about Annie — how well she was doing, how beautiful she looked in costume and makeup — while the males in our party (each for a different reason) kept silent. Sir John, I believe, said not a word till the play was done. Only after the thunderous applause had subsided and the final curtain rung down, did he speak.

“Well,” said he, “I think we must all go down now and congratulate Annie upon that magnificent performance. What say you all to that?”

All were eager, right enough, and so with Clarissa and me leading the way (since we knew it best), we journeyed through the lower depths of the theatre to the row of dressing rooms at the far end. After knocking on a few wrong doors, we came upon the right one. Something was called out from inside in answer to my knock, and I boldly threw open the door — only to find the room crowded with those, like us, who had come to congratulate her upon her triumph (for triumph was what they called it). There were members of the cast — including Mr. Garrick himself and the actress who had played the Nurse — and a few of the audience who were themselves costumed so elegantly that they must be nobles. And in the midst of this array of talent and riches was our Annie, dressed still as Juliet, recognizable as such beneath her makeup. Clarissa dove through the crowd and was at her side in no time at all, hugging the very life from her. The rest of us hung back somewhat timidly. Sir John, and I with him, were taken aside by David Garrick, who was smiling broadly, looking happier than I had ever before seen him.

“What think you now of your little cook. Sir John?”

“I am as pleased as I can be,” said he. “I blush to think how close one can be to such talent and never recognize it as such.”

“Talent is one thing,” said the actor, “but ability another. True, she had a good deal of talent when she joined the troupe, yet I have never had an apprentice who took so well to teaching, nor a young actress who responded so well to coaching. Talent is more common than most would suppose, but ability on the stage such as hers is rarer than any would guess.”

“Indeed,” said Sir John, “that, coming from you — “

“Must never be repeated to her,” said Mr. Garrick, interrupting. “It would not do for her to know how good she really is.”

Sir John threw back his head and laughed at that. “You might lose your hold upon her, eh?”

“Actresses can be very difficult.”

With that he gave a polite little bow to the magistrate and a wave to me. He whispered good-bye and left for his own dressing room. Little by little the room emptied. The other cast members were the first to go. Then, almost reluctantly, the more gaudily dressed of the nobles drew away and, bidding good-bye, departed the room. Only then, cautiously, did Lady Fielding and Molly Sarton move forward. Tom Durham held back still.

I had an opportunity to study him. He was off in one corner of what was really a rather small room, and though I had an opportunity to study him, I may as well have been completely invisible to him, for he looked neither to the right nor left, but rather did he concentrate with all his energy upon Annie.