Life Mask (60 page)

They are shared a rueful laugh.

'Sometimes I wonder how people remain friends at all in these tumultuous times,' said Anne in Mary's ear.

There, between the columns of the entrance, was the unmistakable ursine silhouette of Charles James Fox. Anne rushed over to him—her limp barely noticeable now—and took both his hands in hers.

'Well, my dear Mrs Damer,' said Fox, staring up at the statue of his old enemy,
'what apiece of work is a man.'

She laughed, recognising the quote from
Hamlet
and capped it.
'And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?'

'It's a triumph, that's what it is,' he told her. 'The lines flow magnificently, especially that slim leg, revealed where the robes fall open. And the firm, boyish face. Doesn't look a bit like Old Satan!' The insult came out like a fond nickname. 'I see what you're after: it's a symbolic representation of all the best elements of leadership.'

Her heart pounded with gratitude. 'Yes, it's not about the man himself. I felt somehow ... as if it were my duty to carve this statue as a gift to the nation.'

'Well,' said Fox, 'there's no better reason.'

She wanted to throw her arms round him and kiss his hairy, quivering jowls. He seemed tidier than he used to be, it struck her, and his linen was, if not crisp, then fairly white; evidently his Mrs Armistead was taking good care of him. Perhaps it was true about their secret marriage. 'You and I haven't seen as much of each other lately as we used to,' she found herself saying, as if picking at a scab.

'No; I've been shockingly busy,' said Fox, 'and it's clear you have too.'

'One's always in such a hurry nowadays,' she said.

It was a meaningless remark, but Fox nodded as if she had produced some pearl of wisdom. 'Shall I tell you a little secret, Mrs Damer?'

'Do.'

He whispered it in her ear, like in the old days. 'I'd like nothing better than to retire.'

Anne stared at him.
Impossible.
Fox was only in his mid forties; though he'd entered the Commons in his teens, he hadn't yet had his time in the sun. She always used to say that the day he became Prime Minister would be the happiest day of her life. She felt a terrible impulse to tell him that, this minute—except it wasn't exactly true any more. It struck her now that she dreaded to think what might happen to England with Fox and his more radical friends at the helm. Her throat hurt. She realised that she preferred to picture him as always waiting, always full of fine ideals and righteous indignation.

'Oh, I know I mustn't, it would be a gross dereliction of duty.' Fox sighed. 'But I must admit the thought of living year-round in the country is a sweet fantasy to me. Grey could keep up the good fight better than I in the Commons, and Bedford in the Lords.'

Anne knew that people were looking at them and speculating about their conversation. She felt a sort of raging affection. 'Dear old Fox. Our opinions may have diverged, but I revere your character as much as ever,' she told him. 'I've never thought so well of you in all my life as when I've seen you reduced in your followers and embattled on all sides, but persisting heroically.'

He laughed. 'I don't think I'm a natural martyr; I rather liked popularity, if memory serves. But you're very kind, Mrs Damer. Now, any chance of a glass of wine?'

T
HE COLOSSUS
at Drury Lane was open for business at last. Its roof, topped with a statue of Apollo, stuck up on the London skyline as if it were a temple, but the building looked more like a vast barracks. Eliza counted its windows: twenty-seven wide, five high. The interior was like a gigantic airy birdcage. When Eliza walked on to the vast stage, the first day the actors were let in, she felt slightly giddy. The proscenium arch towered above her; it was over a hundred feet high, to allow for the lifting of flats. 'Dizzying, isn't it?' said a voice behind her.

'Jack! I didn't know you were back from America.'

Palmer put his hands round her waist and stole a kiss on the cheek so quickly that she hadn't time to get offended. 'Oh, you can't keep a mole from circling back to his old burrow. Even if it has been polished up a bit,' he added, his eyes taking in all the cut-glass candelabra.

'So you've talked your way into Kemble's good graces?'

'Indeed, though my salary's lower than what it was in my heyday—just to keep my head from swelling,' he said, scratching his democratical crop.

Eliza tucked her arm into his. 'Oh, it's good to be a real company again.'

Since the old stock scenes were now too small, Kemble had hired Mr Capon to paint exquisite flats and wings, many in the Gothic style which Walpole's toy house at Twickenham had helped to make so fashionable. 'This is the finest theatre in Europe,' Sheridan kept saying with a shark's smile that defied anyone to disagree with him. He claimed it would take in
£700
at every performance; he referred to it as his Grand National Theatre, but everyone else simply called it New Drury.

Since its official opening had the bad luck to fall during Lent, it was celebrated with a concert of Handel's sacred music rather than a play. The real opening was the first performance of
Macbeth
on Easter Monday, with fifteen new pieces of scenery that dropped down on rollers as if by magic. For the first time the weird sisters really would be seen flying through
the fog and filthy air.
As an innovation Banquo's ghost was going to be invisible; Kemble's horrified gaze alone would persuade the audience that there was something there, or so he claimed.

Eliza wasn't in the play herself, but Sheridan—with a touch of malice—had written her a speech to introduce the new fire curtain. She shivered with cold as she applied her paint. 'I must say these new dressing rooms are no improvement on the old; narrower, if anything.'

'Oh, they can't be, Miss Farren,' said Pop Kemble with mild reproach.

'Half the size,' cried Dora Jordan. She had no role tonight, but much to Eliza's irritation had come to
pay a call
and was sitting in a corner suckling the latest boy she'd presented to the Duke of Clarence. 'Your memory deceives you, Mrs Kemble; it's been three years since poor Old Drury got knocked down.'

Mrs Siddons, darkening her eyelids with kohl, spoke up gravely. 'Whatever about our backstage conditions, to my mind the theatre itself is entirely beautiful.'

Despite Lady Macbeth's classical draperies she looked huge; could she be carrying twins this time, Eliza wondered? Mrs Siddons was known to need the money too much to withdraw from the role, but her
I have given suck
line would be sure to raise some titters tonight.

'First call, Miss Farren,' said the boy, his head in the door.

Eliza's mother hurried after her down the corridor. 'You've forgotten your hammer.'

'Oh! Thanks.' Mrs Farren tugged at her daughter's ringlets to lengthen them. 'Don't fuss,' Eliza told her, 'I'll only be on a few minutes.'

'Oh, but your speech will be the highlight of the night,' Mrs Farren assured her. 'People can't but take an interest in whatever'll stop them being burnt to cinders!'

Jack Palmer had a curious philosophy about that, she remembered; he said all theatres were doomed to burn to the ground in the end, being as mortal as men. But Sheridan insisted that modern progress had finally solved this problem and that the new Drury Lane was spark-proof. Eliza remembered the terrible night in February when the King's arrival at the Haymarket had triggered a crush and a dozen members of the audience had been trampled to death. 'I wonder if Old Satan felt responsible at all when they told him what happened,' she said, not needing to explain her thought.

'Oh, I doubt it,' said her mother, shaking out Eliza's skirt like a bridesmaid. 'Bringing such vast crowds under one roof will always have its hazards. Theatregoers are great excitable children, always ready for riot and tumult; they couldn't form an orderly line if their lives depended on it—which they did, that night, I suppose,' she added with a shiver.

New Drury held 3600, almost double the capacity of its predecessor, but the moment Eliza stepped on stage—passing Kemble in Highland dress, with a huge bonnet trimmed with black ostrich feathers—she could tell the house was packed like a barrel of fish. She gave a sweeping curtsy to her friends in the boxes.

The conceit of Sheridan's speech was that Eliza, in apron and mob cap, was a housekeeper giving the public a tour of the treasures of some tided collector. (She'd borrowed the mannerisms of Walpole's Margaret.) With her long feather duster she pointed grace-fiilly to the walls of the theatre, which she happened to know were only wood, behind a thin facing of stone, but never mind.

Our pile is rock, more durable than brass,
Our decorations gossamer and gas—

She had the uneasy feeling that her words weren't reaching the fifth gallery, where the crowd seemed restless. Could they all see her from that height, even? She felt dwarfed, muted, overshadowed by the racks of stacked faces. She threw out her voice as she swirled round, her arms soaring.

Blow wind—come wreck—mages yet unborn,
Our castle's strength shall laugh a siege to scorn.
The very ravages of fire we scout,
For we have wherewithal to put it out!

Here the curtain was drawn up—
come on,
Eliza thought,
speed it up
—and she ran to the edge of the stage. In response to her feathered wand, a great iron shutter was lowered. There was a storm of clapping.

She drew the hammer out of her apron—thank goodness her mother had remembered it—and gave the iron curtain a bang. This produced the heartiest applause so far, especially in the top gallery;
well, at least they heard that.
What a silly spectacle this was—but Eliza couldn't help enjoying herself. She waited for a hush and held up one finger to let the audience know there was more to come. She waved her wand to raise the iron curtain, revealing a shallow artificial lake, which brought on much more applause.

In ample reservoirs our firm reliance,
Whose streams set conflagration at defiance.
Panic alone avoid—let none begin it.

She wagged her finger scoldingly at her friends in the boxes, one by one: Anne, Derby, Bunbury, Fox, Richmond...

Should the flame spread, sit still—
there's nothing in it—We'll undertake to drown you all in half a minute!

This raised the first great laugh of the evening. It was followed by
oos
and
ahs
as a huge tank was revealed and tipped forward; water plunged into the lake. Eliza had to raise her voice to be heard.

The hottest flame shan't singe a single feather,
No! I assure their generous benefactors,
'Twould only burn the scenery and actors!

How the audience howled at that. A tiny boat floated on to the lake, with Bannister Senior and Junior in it back to back, trying to row different ways, and the band struck up 'The Jolly Waterman'.

M
AY 1794

Derby left Newmarket after barely three days. His horses had come to nothing. Familiar faces were missing from the stands; bets were down. 'With the economy so uncertain,' Bunbury complained, 'no one's risking their money.' But it was more than that, Derby thought. There was an unease in the crowd; it reminded him of birds before a storm, hunkering down in the branches.

Brooks's was a madhouse; everyone seemed to be eating bloody steaks. Sheridan collared Derby. 'Home Tooke's been arrested,' he said without preamble, 'and Hardy, and Holcroft, and a dozen others.'

'Whatever for?' asked Derby, blinking. He knew that Hardy's London Corresponding Society had held some large public meetings recently—drawing up to
4000,
on one occasion at Chalk Farm—but that wasn't against the law.

'Sedition,' said Sheridan, 'that commodious portmanteau of a word which covers anything and everything Pitt dislikes! He's set up a Secret Committee—our former friends Portland and Loughborough are on it—which has seized the papers of the LCS for examination.' He knocked back his brandy like medicine. 'Holcroft, Jesus Christ, little Tom Holcroft! The tribe of playwrights have committed many crimes against the British public—implausibilities, tediosities, hideous rhymes—but nothing that deserves the gallows, a spell in Newgate, or Botany Bay.'

'But what's Pitt after?' asked Derby.

'A complete stranglehold on the nation,' growled Sheridan. 'He means to suspend habeas corpus for a year, to allow for arrests and detentions at will. His spies claim the Reform Societies are plotting to call a pan-British convention as a rival to Parliament, and
simultaneously
inviting the French to invade.'

'Oh, what fantastical notions.' Derby could feel a headache starting up behind his eyebrows.

'We'll fight the Bill on the second reading but I don't know...' Sheridan scratched the flaming patch of skin on his nose. 'Did you hear about the judge who calls it an act of treason to speak the word
republic
?' He kicked the table leg like a child.

'Now, now, none of that, sir,' said the manager of the Club, hurrying over.

'And how many of us will be left to buy your mangy steaks and urinous wines,' roared Sheridan, 'when the King's Eunuch has arrested every man who dares to disagree with him?'

Derby covered his jaw with his hand. He had a sudden vertiginous vision of being called into court in defence of Sheridan.
Yes, Your Honour, I did hear him say those words in Brooks's Club, but only as it were in jest...
He put an arm round Sheridan and bent to his ear. 'Mind what you say. Spies are everywhere.'