Life Mask (79 page)

N
OVEMBER 1796

Eliza sat in the dressing room with Mrs Siddons, discussing the recent rash of resignations, the most serious of which was Kemble's. 'I'm very sorry for his departure to Ireland, but hardly surprised.'

Mrs Siddons nodded tragically. 'Sheridan had made my brother's position as manager a constant torment.'

'Pop Kemble's retired, too,' said Eliza, counting on her fingers. 'Well, she's not much of a loss, if you don't mind my saying so of your sister-in-law—but her mother Mrs Hopkins and Mrs Powell, too—and Moody, Dodd and Roaring Bob Bensley!'

'The unfortunate young Mr Benson,' Mrs Siddons added, 'if death can be counted as a kind of retirement that makes eight.'

Benson had died of brain fever, which was a tactful way of saying he'd climbed naked out his garret window and split his head open on the stones of Bridges Street. There'd been a Ben for his widow and orphans, but rumour had it that Sheridan hadn't passed on a penny to them yet. 'The Drury Lane Theatrical Fund will be drained, with so many needing pensions at once,' Eliza pointed out.

'Even more worryingly,' said Mrs Siddons, 'we've no one left to play an old man but Mr King and what play has ever been written without two or three hoar sages in the cast?'

'Or a brace of doddering old fools!' Mrs Siddons always brought out cheekiness in Eliza. 'Well, there's nothing else for it: Jack Palmer will have to tie on a ^eard.'

The other actress smiled wanly at the image.

'I believe Jack's nearly as old as Dodd and Bensley, anyway—well past fifty, though you'd never know it from his swagger. But what I don't understand is,' Eliza went on more bitterly, 'how can there be no money for our wages when hundreds of pounds are taken in every night?'

'Nor did my poor brother understand, but then Kemble's a child in business,' Mrs Siddons told her. 'Out of the purest love of the theatre he signed personal guarantees to workmen who didn't trust that Treasurer Westley would pay them—and ended up being arrested for debt in the street!'

The more fool he,
thought Eliza.

Mrs Siddons cocked one ear. 'Do I hear a bustle?'

'It seems early, for Sheridan—'

The women hurried along the corridor. By the time they reached the Treasurer's office they were pushing through a crowd. Most of the actors, singers and dancers were there, together with the carpenters and scene shifters, and the dressers; it was like a meeting of the whole company. Voices rose as the proprietor walked smartly along the corridor. 'Mr Sheridan!'

'Sir—'

'Our salaries—'

'Please consider—'

'Certainly, certainly!' Sheridan broadcast his smile. He was arm in arm with Richard Wroughton, the bland, diplomatic actor who'd been suddenly raised to the status of manager on Kemble's departure.

'Look us in the eye, sir, if you dare,' intoned Mrs Siddons, 'and tell us our time of waiting is at an end.'

Jack Palmer spoke from the back wall, effortlessly enlarging his voice: 'For God's sake, man, pay up.'

'My good people, you shall be attended to directly,' said Sheridan. 'You must understand, the affairs of the nation have been preoccupying me and all my fellow Members. Can you believe this monster Pitt? After shedding oceans of blood and breaking thousands of widows' hearts, he's now suddenly suing for peace with France, which our Party has been urging for the past four years!' This news caused some distraction and a hum of conversation rose from the crowd. The Treasurer's door suddenly opened and let Sheridan and Wroughton in.

There was a rush of bodies. A painter banged on the wood. 'Leave the door open,' he roared.

There was no answer.

'Westley's sweeping the treasury clean of the whole week's receipts,' Eliza murmured to Mrs Siddons, 'then the three of them will hop out through the window.'

'But he promised me,' said the tragedienne confusedly. 'When I threatened to resign with my brother, Sheridan soothed me and gave me his word to pay me in full this very week.'

Eliza smiled at her colleague's
naïveté.
'He promises everyone—he's uncertainty personified. My mother heard that Dora Jordan's refusing to do any new roles till he stumps up. And has poor Storace's widow seen any of the £500 we raised for her, I wonder?'

'It really is astonishing how we all go on, how much we can bear for love of our art.'

'I shall write Sheridan a nasty note,' said Eliza, turning away; 'it seems more dignified than banging on the door.'

A
FEW DAYS
after their return from Bognor Mary met Anne at the door of the library at Strawberry Hill. 'He's in a mood,' she whispered.

Anne steeled herself as they went in. She greeted Walpole very pleasantly. 'I'm sorry I'm late, but Mother's only just arrived from Goodwood.'

His pouched eyes were on the fantastically painted ceiling. After a long moment he said, 'So Bognor was all it promised, then.'

'Yes,' she said, gulping a little on the word. 'Very healthful.' This was going to be more difficult than she thought.

'Our Elderberry seems raised from the dead, if I may put it so blasphemously.' His tone was not cheerful. 'What do you say, Miss Mary, have you undergone some
sea change, into something rich and strange?'

Mary went the colour of a plum. It happened all at once; there was no gradual pinking, but a startling rush of blood from her throat to her hairline. Anne, staring at her, willed her to say something, give some credible explanation. 'Excuse me,' said Mary and ran from the room.

In the silence Anne thought,
He knows.
She sat down by the fire as calmly as she could manage.
Somehow he can do the impossible, see right into our hearts.
'I'm afraid she's still not quite herself.'

'Evidently.'

Walpole was looking at her so piercingly, so knowledgeably, with those weasel's eyes.
He knows, damn him.
Anne didn't dare say a word; if she spoke of Mary, or if she avoided speaking of her, either would give her away. And how have you yourself been? Since your last letter, I mean.'

That of the third?'

She could never remember the dates of letters. 'I think so. You mentioned in it—something about the builders having finished the New Offices.' Her eyes were straying towards the window.

'That was my letter of the twenty-ninth,' Walpole told her. 'Didn't you receive my next, of the third?'

'I'm sure we did, I'm sure I did,' she corrected herself.

'Do check, wont you, and let me know; you really must keep better track of your correspondence. I hate it when letters go missing,' he snapped. 'There's no excuse for it in this day and age, unless shipping routes are in question.'

'No,' said Anne guiltily. 'So ... now the Offices are complete, what will you build next?'

'I'm finished,' he said, looking into the fire.

'What—couldn't Strawberry Hill benefit from another tower or two, or a hermitage in the garden?'

He shook his head. 'My labours are accomplished.'

The phrase chilled her. 'Have you been well?' she said. She'd already asked that.

He gave one slow shrug, like a crow adjusting its wings. 'What does that mean,
well,
to a man of seventy-nine?'

Anne was about to correct him, then she remembered. 'Your birthday! Your seventy-ninth. How could we have let it slip by without sending congratulations?'

'It hardly matters.'

'Mary will be so distressed.'

Walpole gave her a sharp look. 'You speak for her, now?'

'I know what she feels on many matters, that's all,' she said as firmly as she could.

'I'm sure you do, since the two of you have spent the summer entirely secluded from society, writing to me barely once a week. I'm all too aware who holds the first place in her affections these days. Of course, your company has so much to offer her that mine lacks.'

Anne stared at him.

'Health and energy, to name but two,' Walpole said violently, 'all the sensibility and sweetness of your own sex, combined with the strength and vigour of. the other.'

She rose to her feet. 'I seem to have come at a bad time.'

Silence.

'I'll put up with much,' said Anne, 'because you're my godfather, my cousin and my dear friend. But you're overstepping the mark. Now, have you finished with your jealous insinuations, or do you want to accuse me of something?' The question hung in the air and she was terribly afraid. 'Should I leave?'

How Walpole must have been tempted to say,
As you wish.
She watched his lips. They formed, at last, into a
No.

Greatly relieved, Anne ploughed on. 'I'm most dreadfully sorry—that we missed your birthday, I mean. We'll make a great fuss of you next year, for your eightieth. Perhaps a party!'

'I'm afraid I can't promise to attend,' said Walpole drily.

She caught his eye and started laughing; she couldn't help it.
Oh, please God, let him not demand that I explain what's so funny about the prospect of his death!
That made her laugh all the harder.

A creaking sound, like a gate in a high wind. To her enormous relief, Walpole had joined in. When he stopped laughing he said, 'William Beckford is back in England.'

'Oh, yes?' Anne was startled by the change of tone.

'He wanted a diplomatic mission, of all things, but Loughborough and Portland have blocked him.'

Lord Loughborough was the boy's uncle, Anne remembered, the boy who'd grown up to be Viscount 'Kitty' Courteney.

'Once an exile, always an exile. The verdict of society went against Beckford back in '84 and against that sentence there is no appeal,' said Walpole.

Was he trying to tell her something?

'He means to build an abbey at Fonthill, out-Gothicise Strawberry Hill,' said Walpole disdainfully. 'I hear he calls this place a little mousetrap.'

'The cheek of him!'

'He's told his agents to stay poised to buy up all my best antiquities at auction the moment I'm dead.' A heavy pause. 'I shall have to live to be ninety at least, to thwart him.'

'I hope so,' said Anne, her throat sore.

I
T WAS A COLD
November night in Grosvenor Square; Anne and Mary lay knotted up in each other's arms under heavy blankets. They rarely had this opportunity; only when Mary's family could spare her. It still felt strange to Anne. They weren't in Bognor any more, cut off from the World in their private bubble; they were in her house, with her mother sleeping two rooms away. Anne had been afraid that perhaps once they were in London everything would go back to the way it had been before—but no. She hadn't lost Mary, this new, wild Mary; nothing had been lost. She smiled in the darkness.

'What did you mean,' came a whisper, 'when you said you knew no more than I did?'

'When?'

'At the start,' said Mary, betraying a little awkwardness.

'Ah,' said Anne, remembering that night in Bognor after their sea bathe. 'I thought you wanted
never to speak of it,'
she added teasingly.

A thoughtful silence. 'I'm ready now. So what did you mean?'

'When I said I knew no more than you? Just that.'

'But Anne—that can't be so.'

'Why can't it?' asked Anne in her ear.

'Because you've always—it's been quite clear to me that you ... knew what to do,' said Mary.

Anne laughed shyly. 'No more than you.'

'But didn't you—hadn't you already'—Mary was a little gruff now—'oh, don't make me spell it out!'

'My love,' said Anne, a phrase that made her shake now, though she used to say it without thinking before Bognor.

'I think ... I was not the first,' said Mary rather formally.

'Indeed you are.'

Mary's head twisted towards her. 'But—'

Anne cut in before Mary could form the syllables of
Miss Farren.
She didn't want that name spoken in this bed. 'Those I desired, without knowing it—I can say that now, as I never could before,' she added with difficulty,'—they didn't desire me. Or, perhaps they may have,' she said, thinking of that extraordinary scene in which the actress had forced a defiant kiss on her, 'but not enough to risk admitting it. I can't be sure.'

After a long pause Mary said, 'I think that was my own situation. So you're telling me that even before—'

'The person in question,' said Anne stiffly.

'Yes, before that, there was nothing?'

'A kiss, once, in Italy,' she added, scrupulous, 'that was all.'

'Then when you told me those rumours were pure invention—'

'I was speaking the literal truth, yes,' said Anne, a little irked. 'Didn't you believe me?'

'I thought I did,' said Mary, 'but now it seems that in some dark little corner of my heart I didn't.'

'You thought me an accomplished Sapphist, in fact.' Anne threw the word into the darkness.

Mary twitched at that. 'I suppose I must have done.'

'Why weren't you afraid of me?'

'Oh, I was,' Mary assured her. 'And afraid of what you brought out in me. I think now that may be why I succumbed so quickly to O'Hara.'

The name still had a strange power; Anne could almost feel the solidity of him in the room.

'I did love him. I thought he'd save me. But then I couldn't bear to leave you behind. That should have told me something.' And Mary curled her head into the curve of Anne's shoulders.

'You're happier now, aren't you? Happier than before, I mean.'

'So much. Need you ask? But don't expect ever to see me
perfectly
happy,' said Mary, rueful, 'since by nature I'm such a prey to emotion. I worry about the future.'

'Our future?'

'No, no. When my father's taken from us—the fact is, Agnes and I will have no more that £350 a year apiece.'

My God,
Anne thought,
I spend that much on marble.
She spoke firmly. 'When that day comes I can't think you'd break my heart by refusing to share my fortune.'

'Oh, my dearest. I wasn't asking—'

'Mary, I would have offered years ago, but I thought it needed no saying.'

A hush between them now, the pressing of cheek to cheek.