Anonymous - Dara

I didn't know where I was or in which direction I was going. Emotionally stunned and stumbling like someone who has had too much to drink in one of the numerous beer houses on Broadway, I sought only the well-lit areas where there were many people to keep me company. As I walked the streets seeing myself, as you might say, under the all-seeing eye of eternity, I felt desolate and very lonely. In this pitiable condition I could see no future for me in America or for that matter in England.

Pausing for breath before a billboard with the words 'Pfaff's Beer-Cellar' I felt a great desire for a warm, cosy atmosphere and quickly descended the steps to find myself amidst a crowd of people of both sexes, some sitting at tables, others standing talking noisily in groups filling up the space before the bar. There was an under-swell of conversation that confused the ears. Overwrought and ready to tumble to the floor with tiredness, I have only a blurred recollection of pushing past people to an empty chair placed at a small table occupied by a young gentleman. Sitting slumped in the chair, with that awful hopeless exhaustion that comes when you are drained of all emotion, I slowly became aware that the young man sharing the table with me was attempting to claim my attention.

'If you don't mind me saying so, you look like a young lady who is about to swoon. May I suggest a glass of brandy? The recuperative powers of brandy would be just the thing if you are feeling ill.'

His speech had the accent of the well-bred Englishman who had lived at a high social level. As he bent over me with an expression of concern on his face I couldn't help noticing a birthmark on his neck that looked like a spotted red ladybird.

Sipping the brandy, I viewed him with curiosity. Elegantly dressed in a dark blue frock coat, a pleated white shirt topped with a fine white muslin cravat and a pale blue velvet waistcoat, he looked every inch a gentleman of fashion and good taste. Beneath the fair curly hair his sensitive features still showed anxiety for my health.

'Feeling better?' he asked. 'Allow me to introduce myself: James Richard Kennet at your service,' he said with a slight bow.

'Miss Dara Tully,' I replied with a faint smile. 'Like yourself, I am also from England. How do you do?'

Shortly after my arrival in New York I was sitting in Pfaff's Beer-Cellar pondering idly whether to have another beer or move on to a theatre when a young girl approached my table and flopped into a chair opposite me. She was obviously ill and in a state of extreme distress. Although all types of people frequented Pfaff's, they were mostly representatives of the arts and the theatre. In other words, a motley crew of cultured and well-educated idiots, living under the illusion that they had within them that spark of genius which would make them famous some day.

The girl intrigued me. She was respectably dressed, pretty, obviously without a male escort and afraid. But of what, I asked myself, as she sipped the brandy I had given her. I introduced myself and she in turn informed me that her name was Dara Tully. Although she spoke with a slight American accent, she proclaimed that England was her native land. The brandy loosened her tongue and upon discovering that I was a fellow countryman she unburdened the cause of her distress. Troubled by some experience which had shaken her somewhat, she was almost incoherent on occasions as she gave an account of her journey from Chicago accompanied by a doctor dying from consumption. From what I could gather she had sat in a darkened room listening to this man talking to his dead relatives until something had snapped inside her and she had fled from his bedchamber.

It sounded a very eerie affair to me-not the sort of thing to be inflicted on a delicate, sensitive young lady. I offered to accompany her back to the hotel when she became agitated at the thought that she had deserted this doctor when he most needed her.

When we arrived at the hotel, Dara was very reluctant to enter the building but I insisted on her showing me which room the doctor was occupying. It was in total darkness. Pioneering my way with outstretched hands and following Dara's directions, I managed to locate the gas jet to bring some light to the bedchamber. I must confess it was a bit of a shock for me, seeing the head of the recumbent man slouched down on the pillow, jaws agape, and staring straight at me with unseeing eyes. I am always nervous in the presence of the sick or the dead. Trying to move him onto his back brought forth from him a loud, stinking belch of wind which sent me scuttling back in haste to the, door and Dara.

She asked in a hoarse whisper, 'Is he dead?'

'I don't know,' I said doubtfully.

Ashamed of my sudden loss of nerve I straightened my shoulders and walked back to the bed, determined to find out whether the man was dead or alive. The body was still warm but, after putting my hand on his chest and feeling no movement or heartbeat, I decided the good doctor was indeed dead.

I had heard somewhere that in a situation like this one must straighten the limbs while the body is still warm for, once it gets cold, they remain fixed as at the point of death, creating problems for those responsible for getting the corpse into the narrow confines of a coffin. Removing the pillow so that his head was in line with the rest of his body, I then brought his legs together and placed his arms by his sides. Taking the cravat from my neck, I placed its middle under his jaw and closed the gaping mouth by tying the ends at the top of his head. His eyes were still wide open.

I remembered, as a boy, being taken to the home of one of our grooms to pay my respects to his three-month-old daughter who had died the previous day. When the baby had expired they had placed, as was the custom, a penny coin on each of the eyelids but, unfortunately, one of the coins had fallen during the night. The body had got cold and nothing they could do the next morning would close that child's eyelid. It gave me belly wobbles seeing that baby with one eye closed and the other with a fixed stare heavenwards. What made it worse was that I was asked to kiss the little monster on the lips and to say a prayer for its soul.

The picture of that baby's wide-open eye staring eternally upwards remains vivid in my memory to this day and makes me shudder whenever it comes to mind. I, therefore, took care to see that the coins that I placed on the doctor's eyelids were firm and secure. Having performed these necessary tasks for the corpse, I was extremely nervous and trembling when I returned to Dara and desperate for a reviving glass of brandy. We made short time in getting back to Pfaff's where I quickly downed two glasses of the restoring liquor while Dara was still sipping at her first brandy.

A few more drinks brought the colour back into her cheeks and her hazel eyes lit up with interest when I told her of my wish to join a theatrical company that was about to be formed at the National Theatre under the direction of a well-known New York actor-manager, Jonathan Ede. Dara, I discovered, had a warm, expansive sense of humour and was soon giggling as I described the antics of some of the players that I had met on my first interview with Jonathan Ede.

We were both in a merry mood by this time and, to my astonishment, when I informed her that rehearsals had commenced for Shakespeare'sHamlet, she cried, 'Ah! Ophelia. Do you think as I do that she was “as chaste as ice, as pure as snow", a character of simple unselfish affection, or are you of the opinion that she is not all she seems on the surface, secretly harbouring lewd thoughts and desires behind her madness?'

In truth, I didn't know how to answer the girl and was given no opportunity to do so as she commenced to quote various passages from the play. Although her speech was slurred by the brandy that she had drunk and interrupted occasionally by giggles, I knew she was word perfect as recently my time had been taken up studying the play and learning the lines of the part I hoped would be given to me when next I met Jonathan Ede. As I listened and laughed at her I couldn't help thinking there was a lot more to this girl than what first appeared.