Don Gutteridge - Desperate Acts

When not cheering up his client or playingwith Maggie at Briar Cottage, Marc spent his time in the service ofthe Durhamites. Robert Baldwin’s stratagem of winning over themoderate conservatives in the Assembly by feeding Governor Thomsonthe arguments he would need to do the actual persuading was workingbetter than anyone had anticipated. As opening day approached, itlooked as if there would be fewer than a dozen dedicated Toriesleft to vote against the union in the form desired by the Governorand the Whig administration back in London. However, the hardlinerswere expected to mount an indirect challenge by offering amendmentsthat would in fact gut the main bill itself. Hence, Robert, hisfather, Marc, Francis Hincks and other Reformers continued to meetquietly with individual MLAs as they arrived in town in a concertedeffort to keep the temporary coalition shored up. Having the Reformparty itself keep a low profile while Governor Thomson did thearm-twisting and blandishing was paying huge dividends so far.Still, the entire enterprise was as fragile as a house ofcards.

***

The rehearsal on Saturday evening began right onschedule. As promised, the director called on stage only thoseinvolved in the particular scene to be worked on. The blocking andthe delivery of lines (script in-hand, still) was patientlymonitored by Sir P., with interruptions that he presumed to bewarranted and judicious, though they were not always accepted inthat spirit. As Cobb’s first scene was forty or fifty minutes away,he asked if he might begin painting the flats. So, while theCrenshaws, as Demetrius and Hermia, continued to flounder andsquabble, on stage and off, and fray the sweet temper of theirdirector, Cobb was supplied with bottles of paint and brushes byMullins the gardener from a stock located, Cobb assumed, in thesummer kitchen some distance away. As Mullins communicatedexclusively in grunts, punctuated by the occasional monosyllable,Cobb was not quite sure where that room was, but he did understandthat, from now on, he was on his own. Which suited him justfine.

Donning a plasterer’s smock that dropped tohis knees, he set the flats up against the inner wall near thecurtained-off wing to the right of the stage, in which Sir P. hadhad Mullins place four comfortable chairs upon which the actors “oncall,” as it were, could sit and converse quietly. As Sir P. hadboasted to Cobb, his talented lady had sketched several backdropscenes to suggest various parts of the magical forest: mostly bushytrees, dark starlit skies, a cloud-besieged moon, a brown boulderor two, and one flowering shrub. He began with the sky, of whichthere was plenty. As he daubed slowly away at this task, he wasable, off and on over the course of the next hour, to eavesdrop ona number of nearby conversations.

Thus:

Clemmy : I still can’t understand whySir P. would ask a common peeler to Oakwood Manor. He might aswell’ve asked the gardener!

Dutton : I think there’s a lot more toCobb than meets the eye.

Clemmy : He looks perfectly stupid tome. Cyrus an’ me didn’t join this silly play-business to concertwith the likes of him. My husband’s daddy was a war hero, youknow.

Dutton : He’s learned all of hislines.

Clemmy (indignant) : He had a headstart!

Dutton : And he’s quite comical, youmust admit.

Clemmy : With that nose, who wouldn’tbe?

And:

Crenshaw : I’m beginning to regret Iever suggested this play to you. You’re embarrassing me in front ofthe very people we’re hopin’ to impress.

Clemmy : We’re every bit as good asthey are!

Crenshaw : Of course we are. But Idon’t get invited to Bishop Strachan’s for dinner once a month, doI?

Clemmy : Just because he’s got a titlean’ oodles of cash.

Crenshaw : And donated a good chunk ofit to the vicarage restoration fund.

Clemmy (after a pause) : I just wishyou’d keep yer eyes offa that creature!

Crenshaw : I told you to quit harpin’on that. It’s a dead horse.

Clemmy : I think I better go to theladies’ room.

Crenshaw (in an angry whisper) : You’vehad enough of that stuff!

And:

Lady Mad : Is he bothering you,Lizzie?

Lizzie : Who?

Lady Mad : Mr. Dutton.

Lizzie : No, not at all. He’s lovelyand kind. Like a grandpa.

Lady Mad (whispering) : Just keep aneye on his hands, luv.

And:

Clemmy : Don’t you find it hard to keepgood servants these days?

Lady Mad : I brought my maid with me,and Perry brought Chivers, of course.

Clemmy : An’ the grammar they talk! Yapractically haveta teach ‘em their own language. An’ the pertinenceof some of them!

Lady Mad : But you must remember, mydear, we live among colonials.

And:

Dutton : How’s Bernice holding up?

Fullarton : Quite well. Thank you forasking. I feel terrible coming out here three evenings a week andleaving her alone. But she insists that I do.

Dutton : She’s a fine woman.

Fullarton : Yes, she is.

Dutton (after a pause) : Have you beenup to see young Langford?

Fullarton : He sent word that I was notto come.

Dutton : I can’t believe they’llconvict him.

Fullarton : All I can do is offermyself as a character witness. Which I’ve done.

Dutton : Yes. I’ve done that, too.

Cobb’s own scenes went well. The first one, whereTitania wakes up and falls in love with him, particularly pleasedSir P., whose rubicund face had grown alarmingly more rubicund ashis frustration with the Crenshaws accelerated. Cobb was gratefulthat Lady Mad had chosen to lay a scarf over her décolletage and toomit the unscripted testicle-squeeze. In the second scene Bottom isfound in his lover’s bower, surrounded by her fairies who, whenthey were finally released from their half of Oakwood Manor, wouldbe feeding him delicacies while his inamorata caressed him withword and deed. He thought he might suggest to Dora that she payespecial attention to the action in this scene and the salubriouseffects it worked upon the male in question.

By nine o’clock Sir P. decided he hadsuffered all the indignities and disappointments a baronet oughtto. A glassy-eyed Hermia had just tripped over one of the chalkarrows and upended Demetrius when an abrupt halt was called to thedismembering of the Bard’s divine comedy. With seething politeness,Sir P. ordered his actors to seek out a quiet spot and study boththeir lines and their blocking assignments – along with the manysuggestions offered for their execution. He himself was going offto the solitude of his library for half an hour, after which hewould return, like Achilles from his sulking-tent, to deliver themthe director’s “notes.”

Cobb returned to painting another sky. Andsoon discovered he was out of blue paint. Over at the long-table,he asked Lady Mad for directions to the summer kitchen. She pointedhim to the door next to the ladies’ room, the one that Sir P. hadhuffed through just ten minutes before. It opened onto a longhallway, at the end of which Cobb had been assured lay the kitchensand, beyond them, the summer kitchen. On each side of the hall henoted that several doors marked the presence of the Shuttleworth’svarious dens, sitting-rooms and such. They were all closed, exceptone. And as Cobb passed it, he was startled by the high-pitchedscream of someone in distress.

“ Oh, you mustn’t! I’m a lay-dee! ”

The door was ajar less than a handspan. Cobbhesitated to push it open, but the thought of someone behind itneeding help encouraged him to do so. Perhaps Mrs. Wade, Lizzie’smother, was being threatened by an intruder (the burglar with aprice on his head?). Anyway, he was a policeman and bound to do hisduty. He barged into the room with a bang.