Life Mask (80 page)

There was a hammering at the front door. Anne was out of bed and into her dressing gown before she knew it. Her pulse pounded.
How can anyone have guessed?
she thought.
What can have given us away?

She met the sleepy-eyed maid on the landing. A note from Goodwood, madam.'

Goodwood? Anne tore it open, puzzled. It was very short.

I am sorry to tell you that the Duchess died at twenty-five minutes past ten. Can you come down in the morning and bring your mother?

In haste,
Richmond.

When she'd read it through twice she went back to her room. 'What is it?' hissed Mary. 'Shall I light the lamp?'

'No, no,' said Anne, climbing into the creaking bed. 'My sister's dead,' she said, and laid her head on Mary's breasts and shut her eyes tightly.

Mary held her without saying anything for a long time, so long that Anne thought she might have fallen asleep. 'I knew she was ill,' Anne said at last into the soft cotton of Mary's nightgown. 'Yes.'

'But no particular disease, nothing the doctors could identify. I didn't realise she was in danger.'

'Of course you didn't,' said Mary, as if hushing a child.

'I should have visited Goodwood more these last years.'

'Everyone thinks that when someone dies.'

'No, but—' Anne felt the tears swimming up through her head.

'We were so unlike. I never cared for Lady Mary, not enough, not as a sister should.'

Mary was honest enough not to deny that.

One couldn't pick whom to love, thought Anne. The woman beside her was friend and sister and lover and many things besides. One could only hope to recognise love where it grew, and get a grip on it and hold on.

JANUARY 1797

Dear Mr Wroughton,
I'm afraid I can't think of playing Lady Dorville in
The Force of Ridicule
tonight
[Eliza scribbled, at her narrow
secrétaire
in Green Street]
till I receive word that you or Mr Sheridan has given an order for Westley's payment to me of at least £400 of the Amount owing.

Yours,
E. Farren

She wasn't claiming to be ill this time; the quarrel was out in the open. Richard Wroughton had turned out to be all steel, under his mild surface, and rumour had it that he'd only agreed to replace Kemble after bargaining Sheridan up to the extraordinary salary of 800 guineas a year.
Guineas, like a gentleman,
thought Eliza vindictively. She was nostalgic for the old days; Wroughton had none of Kemble's ambition or daring and the playbills made dull reading. But the real problem was money. Eliza had been on £18 a week for many years now and hadn't pushed for an increase, even though her bills at Green Street seemed to mount all the time. Did this delicacy win her respect or special treatment? Anything but; Drury Lane now owed her the fantastical sum of £1100. Why, one could buy a house with that! It was time to do what Mrs Jordan had done long ago and stand firm.

She sat and waited; to calm her nerves she read Miss Burney's
Camilla,
as everyone was this season. At half past four she got Wroughton's tetchy answer and a blunter one from Sheridan.

Miss Farren,
I've just come from the Commons & found your latest Note. Getting you £400 tomorrow is out of the question. If I find you £100, will you give over this nonsense?

R. B. S.

She made the messenger wait for her brief response.

Finding you don't take my claim seriously, I am obliged to put
the matter in the capable hands of Shawe, my lawyer.

'I saw Gillray's latest cartoon in a window today,' Mrs Farren mentioned, looking up from her knotting. 'It shows your dear Fox as a revolutionary in shirtsleeves, firing a pistol at a target marked
Crown, Lords and Commons.'

'Well, no one pays any attention to Gillray's views any more, Mother,' said Eliza sharply, 'since he's been gagged by a pension from Pitt.'

After dinner she sat wrapped up warm against the draughts, ploughing through her novel—but she couldn't concentrate: her eyes went back to the top of the page. Would they have pulled
The
Force of Ridicule
already and given out an old play? Or would Wroughton be counting on her to turn up ten minutes before the curtain rose? She'd only done this—missed a performance—a handful of times in her whole career; it made her feel sick.

The messenger knocked at the door, as she'd been expecting, at ten past six. Her mother sent him away.

Eliza was still in her undress robe the next morning when Jack Palmer was shown up. 'Jack,' she said with startled pleasure.

He wasn't smiling. He threw himself into a chair beside Mrs Farren. 'What do you think you're doing, Eliza?'

She didn't know how to answer him.

'Last night was ghastly. After the orchestra'd dragged through every tune Handel ever wrote, I had to announce that you were too ill to leave your bed and the audience could have their money back at the doors, or stay to see Siddons in
The Fatal Marriage.
We had to yank the poor woman out of a box at Covent Garden for that; by the time she'd driven to Drury Lane and dressed, most of the crowd had gone home.'

'I'm sorry,' said Eliza, 'but she must understand: I'm using an actress's only weapon.'

He snorted. 'Your situation's not unique. All our wages are in arrears.'

'By £1100?'

He was jolted by the figure, she could tell, but he pressed on. 'For God's sake don't act the pauperess when you're a countess-in-waiting. You know it, we all know it, the entire British public knows it. You can draw on the resources of the richest man in England.'

Her mother had risen to her feet, mouth quivering, as if she was trying to find the nerve to order the actor out. Eliza pointed her fan at Palmer. 'I have never accepted a penny from the Earl of Derby. Not presents, not so much as a bracelet. Not that it's any of your business.'

'All I mean is that you can't possibly fear poverty. You've never heard your brats wail because they're hungry,' growled Palmer. 'So don't pretend this is about money.'

'It's about dignity, then.'

'There we go. Your foolish, feminine, damnable pride.'

'How dare you!'

'Mr Palmer—' began her mother.

'You're wasting the little bit of your career you have left. We expect to lose you at a day's notice,' Palmer told Eliza, 'whenever the paralytic Lady D. shrugs off her mortal coil. We're resigned to that. But in the meantime, don't muck about and pose and pout. The theatre needs you.'

'And you need to learn some manners, late in life,' she told him. 'Barging in here—'

'Eliza, I've known you nearly twenty years,' he said, 'and I've slapped out the flames when your dress caught fire in the middle of the
Spanish Barber.
What, am I to leave my card at the door like a stranger?'

She didn't know what to say.

'Come back with me. Let's open this comedy tonight; it could be the hit we all need.'

'I'm sorry, Jack. Not till this is settled.'

In the window, watching the tall, pot-bellied fellow stalk down Green Street, she felt a ridiculous urge to cry. None of them was young any more. Mrs Farren began to complain of the fellow's manners, but Eliza refused to talk about it.

The day dragged by, with no note from Sheridan or Wroughton; it was another brutally cold one. The papers were full of stories of beasts freezing to death in the fields, mothers arid babies found stiff in ditches. The army and navy were running out of soldiers, because so many had died in the war, or through fever in the West Indies, or had been discharged unfit; all over the city, hard-faced amputees begged for pennies.
The Times
was urging ladies to refuse to patronise any shops (especially milliners) that employed men to do what women could; in these dark times such men were a disgrace to their sex and should go to war immediately, leaving the jobs for the many distressed females who needed them.

Her mother was clucking over something in the paper.

'What is it?'

'It says here a dressmaker was looking after her poor crippled mother, a Mrs Lamb, when suddenly she upped and stabbed the old woman to death in a frenzical fit!'

Amazing,' murmured Eliza, hiding a smile.

In the late afternoon the messenger brought Sheridan's letter.
Farren
, it began brusquely,

I think this the dirtiest trick you've ever yet played. These coercive measures are unworthy of a lady
(soi-disant)
and contrary to your Articles of Engagement. £150 is the very limit of my resources at the moment & you shall immediately have a draft at a short date on ourfirm for that sum. May I give out
The Force of Ridicule
for tonight?

Eliza steeled herself and sent back a single line:
My answer remains the same.
She went to bed early.

On the third morning, Sunday, the messenger brought a draft for £300 on Coutts the banker, signed by Westley, the treasurer. Eliza looked at it wearily. Well, she supposed it would have to do for now. Every day she stayed away from Drury Lane she felt further adrift.

F
EBRUARY
1797

Berkeley Square was quiet, that Tuesday morning, except for the rustle of the plane trees. Derby's coachman drew up at no. n, where the street was thickly strewn with straw and the door knocker was muffled in cloth: two bad signs. 'I may be some time,' Derby said to the driver. 'Why don't you see if Miss Farren needs the carriage? If my business is finished before you come back I'll take a hackney.'

'Very good, M'Lord.'

Derby tapped the knocker gently. The door was opened by a footman, almost at once. When he was shown into the dark room he couldn't see a thing. 'Your Lordship, what an honour you do me,' came a creaking voice from the bed.

'I wasn't sure you'd be up to receiving visitors, sir.'

Walpole's valet dragged him up a little on the pillows. Derby's eyes were adjusting to the dim. 'Oh, when I'm not in pain I'm still capable of being amused,' drawled the old man, 'which is not to say that every visitor achieves it.'

Derby laughed under his breath as he took a seat. 'I must do my best.' He had only got around to paying this visit because he'd heard at Brooks's that Walpole was on his deathbed. He wondered whether to ask after his health or not.

'Oh, I have great hopes of you,' said the small voice. 'Most of my visitors these days are charitable elders, together with about fourscore nephews and nieces of various ages, brought along to stare at me as the Methuselah of the family.' His words came out slow and faint, but he seemed quite coherent, which was a relief to Derby. 'They never troubled themselves much about me before, but now they begin to see me in the light of a legator they grow very attentive, and send game and sweetmeats, none of which I can eat. They can speak only of their own contemporaries, which interests me no more than if they chattered of their dolls or bats and balls.'

'I hope I'm old enough, at least, to provide congenial conversation. Who was your last amusing visitor?' asked Derby.

'Hm. Mr Lysons the clergyman is not very amusing in himself, but he did tell me about a Welsh sportsman who recently had his daughter christened—let me get this right—
Louisa Victoria Maria Sobieski Foxhunter Moll Boycott.'

'I congratulate you on your memory.'

'That'll be the last faculty to go,' said Walpole, 'some days I feel like a great sack of memory. Now what can you tell me about politics?' he asked almost briskly. 'Really, these days I see nobody who knows anything.'

'Well, the story that's flying round Brooks's this week,' Derby began, 'is of Pitt's broken engagement.'

'Engagement?' Walpole's eyes bulged in their sallow sockets. 'Has the man not enough to do to keep this country out of the abyss, in these mad times, but he must go looking for a wife?'

'I believe it was the other way round. Pitt's such a gloomy monk, he barely sees his friends, let alone going a-wooing. No, it was his neighbour Lord Auckland who tried to foist his eldest daughter on to our PM, but Pitt seems finally to have made his excuses and fled.' Derby was going to go further and report that Pitt was said to have blamed his withdrawal on
certain insurmountable obstacles
that he wasn't willing to discuss with Auckland. According to Sheridan, this was proof positive that Pitt was the molly he'd always thought him. But it occurred to Derby just in time that Walpole himself had been dogged by such rumours for most of his life.

'Tell me, what information have you on the French fleet?' asked the old man.

There'd been several alarming attempts at invasion. At Christmas General Hoche had tried to land 15,000 men on the southwest coast of Ireland in a high gale. 'Have you heard about Wales, sir?'

'What about Wales?'

'Well, I don't mean to alarm you in your present state of health—'

'Tush,' said Walpole, waving one claw.

'—but a legion of French convicts landed there last week.'

'How alarming!'

'It seems they hoped to attract the locals to their standard,' Derby explained, 'having read exaggerated reports of the rebellious state of the Welsh. But they were quickly routed by a band of Pembrokeshire females! Can't you just picture the women, in their red cloaks and black top hats, waving pitchforks and reaping hooks?'