Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

Merriwether played the ageing, and alas married, roué with stolid good humour, while Mrs. Thedford shone as the outraged wife, even though her scenes were few in Act One. Clarence Beasley played the hapless bumpkin from the country in hopeless pursuit of Mistress Thea with much body-wit and mugging of face, qualities that Marc would not have inferred from the young man’s somewhat wooden attempts at Shakespeare. Here the dreadful nasalities from south of the border were deliberately deployed to great comic effect. Finally, if Dawson Armstrong had unearthed another bottle of whiskey, it did nothing to diminish his polished performance as the innkeeper who is the ostensible friend and co-conspirator of the cheating spouse but at the same time lusts after his chum’s wife when he isn’t ogling the maid.

The first act ended with a burst of applause and approbation that was sustained for a full minute. In the midst of which it occurred to Marc that here in this simple chamber was represented a cross-section of Upper Canadian society, including the staunchest members of both the Tory and Reform parties, and they had just joined together, spontaneously, in a kind of communal laughter in which social boundaries and political divisions had been magically dissolved. It was hard to believe that at this moment treasonous rallies might actually be taking place within a mile of where they were sitting.

“You can bring me up a glass of wine if they have any,” Aunt Catherine said to Marc as he started down the ladder from their box. “I don’t fancy risking those steps again.”

Marc nodded and stepped down into the crush below. After he had handed up a glass to Aunt Catherine, Marc nudged his way through the throng and thickening pipe-smoke to where Cobb and Dora were standing at the foot of the ladder to the gallery, munching on apples they had brought with them. They had not spotted him yet, so Marc stopped for a second to have a long look at Cobb and gain some first impressions of his wife.

Cobb looked much the same as he always did, a sinewy troll of a man with a face that could have played Nym or Bardolph on the Regency’s stage without makeup, and an incongruous pot-belly that had no forewarning slope to it, top or bottom: it was as abrupt as a butte on a prairie. Tonight, though, it was partially camouflaged by the waistcoat of the suit he was wearing, one that had probably been his wedding attire, with the trousers now let out several inches and lapels that were a good foot from meeting each other. A bowler hat concealed the uprising of his soot-black hair. And while the angular features were softened by shadow, the mellow but flickering candlelight accelerated the glow of his big nose and the wart blinking nearby.

Mrs. Dora Cobb was something else again. Marc thought instantly of Mr. Spratt and his missus, for Dora was as round as she was high (which wasn’t more than four foot ten), but her obesity was modulated by the perfect neatness of her dress and person, by the tightly curled black hair, by the Indian-bead necklace placed just so, by the exact meridian of her wide leather belt, by the creaseless fit of her blouse and skirt, and by the trim shoes on surprisingly tiny feet. She so resembled a child’s bulbous top that Marc was chary of bumping against her for fear he might set her rolling out of control. Her expression peered out at the world from a penumbra of cheeks and chins that merely accentuated the cheerful kindliness of her whole demeanour, while the eyes alone signalled that here was a woman who, when challenged, would brook no nonsense and give no quarter.

“How nice to see you again, Constable,” Marc said heartily.

“Evenin’, Major,” Cobb said, using his nickname for Marc. “Enjoyin’ the carryin’s-on?”

“And this must be-”

“Dora Cobb,” said Mrs. Cobb in a rich alto voice, amplified no doubt by her diva’s lungs and bosom. She darted a critical glance at her husband for his lapse of manners.

Cobb winced, but kept his smile going.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.” Marc reached out to take her hand preparatory to bussing it. Before he could accomplish this standard gesture of courtesy, Dora latched onto the offering with both of her ample palms and began levering it up and down, as if she were trying to prime a balky pump.

“Well, it’s bloody well time we met,” she boomed. “I was beginnin’ to suspect Mr. Cobb was deliberately keepin’ you to himself. Either that or you had two heads an’ three eyes!”

“Now, Missus Cobb, you know that ain’t-”

“Truth is, you’re as high up an’ as handsome as the ladies of the town-if I may defer to them as such-have been tellin’ me. You’re enough to make a gal’s knees buckle.”

“Now, Missus Cobb-”

“I’d be pleased, Mr. Cobb, if you’d desist and decease from ‘Missus-Cobbing’ me like some woodpecker with his peck jammed!”

“Are you enjoying the play?” Marc said quickly.

“A powerful lot of jumpin’ in an’ outta bed, wasn’t there?” Dora said approvingly, “accompanied by a great deal of ‘pleasure inta-ruptured ’!” She shot a teasing glance at Cobb to be sure he had caught her mimic of his habitual play on words.

Cobb was about to protest but thought better of it.

“I am pleased to see so many people come out to the theatre,” Marc offered.

“And I see you’re a mite surprised to spot the likes of us here?” Dora said with a wry grin.

Marc denied any such thing, while silently remarking that little in the behaviour of those around Dora Cobb would go unnoticed or unappraised.

“In my case, curiosity, more’n anythin’ else,” Cobb said.

“Nonsense, Mr. Cobb, an’ you know it!” She turned to Marc, pivoting her entire person to do so. “Why, old James Cobb was a regular thesbian in his day. He’d rather jump on a stump an’ recite a bawdy ballad than he would haul it away to make room fer his corn. And at our weddin’ in Woodstock, the old rapscallion hopped on a table durin’ the toasts an’ spieled out every last verse of Mr. Gray’s ‘ Eligible in a Country Church’!”

“Now, Missus Cobb, do not eggs-agitate -”

“An’ this crab apple here-warts an’ all-didn’t fall far from the tree.”

Dora began a chuckle somewhere deep within, and while it worked its way out, Cobb said to Marc, “Funny, but we ain’t had a gen-u-wine murder in town since you an’ young Hilliard skedaddled off to the fort last year.”

“Then I must be sure to stay put.”

“So, when are you gonna come to our place for supper?” Dora said loud enough to turn heads ten feet away. “All I get is feeble excuses from Mr. Cobb, but now I’m lookin’ right at the flesh-an’-blood-”

“You’re embarrassin’ Marc,” Cobb said, part plea and part warning. “Ain’t she, Major?”

“Not in the least. I’d be pleased to come,” Marc said, initially out of politeness and good breeding, but then with a growing sense of enthusiasm. Why shouldn’t he have supper with these good people? Who was he, pretending to be a gentleman, when he himself was the offspring of a gamekeeper and his peasant wife, and one who had had the undeserved fortune of being raised up by a lonely bachelor and member of the petty aristocracy?

“How about Wensd’y? Say, six o’clock? I’ll hide the chickens an’ make the pig stay outside till we’re done.”

“ Missus Cobb!” The constable’s wart ignited.

Marc laughed. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Long as they don’t wake the goat!”

At this point Cobb was spared any further discomfort by the reappearance of the players upon the stage, announced by three blasts of a trumpet from the wings. Jeremiah Jefferson making a wayward, joyful noise, perhaps?