Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“Annemarie Thedford, the boss,” Rick whispered again.

“It’s a bit drafty in here, and you know how easily you catch cold and lose your voice.”

“All right, then,” Armstrong said sullenly, but he did glance up at Mrs. Thedford like a dog both surprised and grateful that he had not been kicked.

Mrs. Thedford, the owner-manager of the Bowery Touring Company, was also exceptionally tall, near five foot seven or eight, which left her looking down at almost every woman and three-quarters of the men in the colony. Her thick, honey-coloured hair was neatly coiffed, and though her fair complexion would require makeup to project her expression across the footlights, the face itself was the picture of elegance and inborn grace. Her walk could only be described as regal, the consequence of an upright posture and confident carriage. Here was a woman of the world, unbowed by its travails, whose lean and handsomely proportioned figure commanded your attention first, then drew you on to the gaze that held and appraised and fascinated. Marc could not take his eyes off her.

“Where in Sam Hill did Thea get to?” Merriwether roared, making Lear recoil and drop his cloak.

“She was here just a second ago,” piped a male voice from the upstage shadow.

“I think she went to puke again,” said a sweet and timid female voice.

“That’s my girl,” her suitor mouthed in Marc’s ear.

“I’d better see to her,” Mrs. Thedford said with evident concern, then strode quickly across the back of the stage to the right and disappeared.

“Well, she can’t very well lie dead in Lear’s arms and then start puking at the audience,” Merriwether growled after her, but she was already too far away to hear.

Lear himself at that moment began to cough, an uncontrollable hacking that continued for a full minute. When it finally stopped, there was an awesome silence.

“You’ve been at it again, haven’t you? I can smell your stinking breath from here!” Merriwether said with withering contempt.

Armstrong’s jaw quivered as if it were expecting a word to emerge, but at that moment Mrs. Thedford swept back in, and Merriwether looked to her expectantly.

“Thea will be here in a few minutes. I’ve asked Mrs. Frank to prepare her a tisane,” she said, as if she were remarking on the pleasantness of the weather.

“But I wish to do the Lear first, ma chère . It needs the most work, obviously.”

“ I’m ready to go,” Armstrong said with a pathetic sweep of the cloak about his stooped shoulders.

“He’s been drinking again.”

“That’s a lie!”

“Smell his breath.”

“I had one mouthful, for my rheumatism.”

Mrs. Thedford took Armstrong’s hand in hers and pulled him up to face her. “When we’re finished here, old friend-and I expect you to stay till the last word is uttered-I want you to accompany me to your room and give me the bottle. God knows where you managed to hide it.”

“I’m sorry, love. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

“For the love of Christ, can we get on with this farce?”

“I think we’re doing that tonight,” Mrs. Thedford said dryly, and drew a giggle and a chortle from the back of the stage.

“Am I the director here or not?” Merriwether said somewhere between complaint and petition.

“You are, Mr. Merriwether, and a damn good one.”

Merriwether looked mollified. Then with a sly grin he stepped under the candlelight and into the shadows upstage.

“Then I am making a casting decision that should have been made weeks ago.” Into the spotlight he drew by one tiny white hand a young woman, barely beyond girlhood, but nonetheless stunning for all that.

“Tessa,” Marc murmured before Rick could.

Tessa Guildersleeve had the white blond hair of an albino, and it fell where it wished in flowing coils over her bare shoulders, its native lustre merely enhanced by the meagre light above it. Her Dutch skin was unblemished and uniformly alabaster from the brow to the rim of her bosom that winked enticingly from the low-cut, frothy shift she wore-which resembled either a priest’s frock or a courtesan’s nightie, depending on the angle of observation. Her diminutive feet were caressed by ballet slippers, and she moved her slim, pale arms with the impetus and delicacy of a prima ballerina’s grand entrance. She was all elfin innocence in movement, but out of the translucence of her blue eyes shone pure desire.

“Tessa, my pretty, you have understudied the role long enough. Tomorrow night you shall step onto this stage as Cordelia.”

“You’re not going to wait for Thea, then?” Mrs. Thedford said evenly, but there was an edge behind the remark.

“Thea’s getting too old and fat for the ingenue, ma chère. She’ll be laughed off the stage like she was in Buffalo. We don’t want that to happen again, do we?”

“What about Juliet, then?”

“Well, I thought Tessa did splendidly at short notice during the entr’acte in Rochester, didn’t you, Clarence?”

At this, a young man in his mid-twenties stepped into the circle of light that now illumined five of the six acting members of the troupe. He was handsome in a feminine sort of way that contrasted sharply with the aggressive masculinity of Merriwether. He had curly red hair, pale freckles, and a pallor to match, and languid blue eyes that most directors would have instantly labelled a poet’s. He peered towards Mrs. Thedford, but she was staring intently at Merriwether. “Tessa always gives her best,” he said guardedly.

“Thea will play Juliet tomorrow night, if she’s well enough,” Mrs. Thedford said.

“You could let her take the role of Beatrice,” Merriwether said, staring straight back at her with his intimidating, black gaze.

Mrs. Thedford smiled cryptically. “Meaning that I myself am somewhat too advanced in years to play the part?”

“Not at all, my dear. You’ll be acting Beatrice and Cleopatra when you’re eighty, should you wish to. What I’m suggesting is that, outside of the farce, there are not, in the makeup of our current program, any roles now suited to the peculiar talents of our Miss Clarkson. That is all.”

“I would be more than happy to let Thea play Beatrice, Jason, but then it would be incumbent upon us to find a Benedick young enough to be credible.”

“I wouldn’t think of it-” Clarence Beasley said, looking abashed at both the director and the proprietor.

“But I’m ready to play Juliet! I am !” There was no sweetness in the ingenue’s statement of fact, only the petulance of a child approaching tantrum. Tessa’s pretty features were suddenly contorted, and flushed with an unbecoming rush of crimson pique.

“If you carry on like that, missy, we’ll have to put you in the Punch-and-Judy show with a slapstick.” Mrs. Thedford spoke in the way a mother might in gently reproving a much-doted-on daughter. “Be content with Cordelia, for the time being.”

Rick Hilliard stirred beside Marc, who put a restraining hand upon his friend’s arm and one finger to his lips. It was obvious that the actors, in the intensity of this interplay, had forgotten they were being observed, and Marc was thoroughly enjoying his invisibility.

Tessa’s face lit up instantly, and all traces of tantrum vanished in the unrepressed joy of her response. “Oh, Annie, you are such a dear! I could hug you to death!”

When she threatened to do so, Mrs. Thedford held up a hand and said, “Save that ardour for Cordelia and Miranda tomorrow night.” She turned to Merriwether. “Get on with the scene, then, Jason dear. I’ll just go and see how Thea’s getting on. We’ll need her for the farce tonight.”