Exit the Actress (22 page)

“Darling, the court has moved to Oxford,” Hart said when he returned from his morning ride. Oxford—which is still mercifully uninfected. Please God, let it stay that way.

“Will we join them?” I asked, helping Hart out of his riding coat.

“Ah, but here, we can be alone,” he said, hugging me close.

Note
—Scandalous news from Oxford: Teddy writes that while
la belle Stuart
still refuses the king, she does not refuse Lady Castlemaine. The two of them had a pretend marriage and then climbed into a marriage bed, for all to see. At the last moment, the king hopped in, replacing Castlemaine.
La belle Stuart
claimed indecency and fled, better late than never. I am amazed at what lengths Castlemaine will travel to manipulate the king. All this while the country is ravaged by plague.

Terrible news. Rose writes that Mother is unable to live with Great-Aunt Margaret any longer and is returning to London. London! Unable to live—what she means is unable to
drink
. I despatched Hugh with an urgent note begging her to stay in Oxford or at the least to come here. Fretting. Fretting. Fretting.

She’s done it! Rose writes that Mother has left for town.

“I must go and fetch her!” I repeated for the tenth time. “She is my mother, I cannot just let her return to London! Everyone is dying in London!”

“Be reasonable,” Hart said in his most patronising voice. “It is far too dangerous. I could never allow it.” Sitting heavily in his armchair, he picked up his news sheet, signalling an end to the discussion.

Breathing deeply to collect my calm, I began to explain it to him again.

I slammed the door. Utterly childish, but when one is treated as a child, what options are there? Many options, I know, but I chose not to take them.

Everyone knows that the death toll is at least double what is reported in the Bills. Some say twenty thousand a week are dying of plague. No one can bear to turn in those they love, condemning them to die alone. Unable to stop myself, I imagine Mother bricked up in Drury Lane for forty days, waiting. And on the forty-first day?

They say the stench of the dead is overpowering. Farmers cannot coerce their cattle to enter the city; the poor creatures would rather be whipped to death than venture into such a place.

And Mother is there. Somehow I must get to town.

Hart knocked gently on my closet door.

“I would like a truce,” he said, his large hands held out to me in supplication.

I remained where I was.

“I understand: she must be fetched. Regardless of how foolish she may be, she is your mother, and she is in danger.”

“That is what I was telling—”

He held up his hands to cut me off: a commanding gesture that he uses to quiet the audience when he is about to make a great speech on the stage. I find it irritating. “I do not argue with that. I argue with
your
going. We will send someone to collect her, and you will stay here.”

“When?” I challenged, pressing my advantage.

“Tomorrow. I have already asked Hugh to find someone.”

I left Hart’s sleeping bulk and have come here to think. I know I should feel gratitude, relief, and even tenderness towards him, but I feel curiously bereft, almost robbed of a fight I wanted to have. Why? Why should I wish for discord? It is unlike me. Not discord, I think: freedom.

Daniel, one of the grooms, has gone to fetch her. I made him repeat the directions to Drury Lane twice before I let him leave. He will take Hart’s beaky mask and collect Mother as well as his cousin near Charing Cross. He is strangely undaunted and seems ready for adventure. How foolish.

Not back yet. I am waiting.

I was amazed and appalled when Daniel returned with his cousin Maybeth and her husband, George, but without my mother.

“Where is she?” I shrieked as Henry handed Maybeth down. Maybeth obviously enjoyed her excursion in a fine carriage very much and
seemed utterly unbothered by the plague—it must run in their family.

“Oxford,” Henry said, bewildered. “Farm Cottage, River Meadows, Oxford,” he recited proudly. “See, I remembered.”

“Ellen,” Hart said warningly from behind me. I had not heard him come onto the drive. “Come inside.”

“You sent her to Oxford!” I screeched, wheeling on him. “She ran away from Oxford!” I stormed past him into the house.

“Never in front of the servants, Ellen! How many times must I tell you?” Hart began without preamble. His huge frame looked even bigger in the pale green morning room (it is exquisite; the decorators have just finished it), his body overwhelming the delicate furnishings. I remained in the cushioned window-seat next to Ruby, who had been startled from her afternoon nap.

“You have lied to me for three days, and you want
me
to hold my tongue in front of the servants?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice level.

“Not lied!” he thundered, slamming his hand onto the writing desk and sending scripts flying and a glass candlestick shattering to the ground.

One of a set. I will never be able to match it, I thought irrelevantly, looking at the mess.

“I never said she was to come here!” Hart said, stepping over the broken glass and loose papers. “You simply assumed.”

“Ha,” I snorted. “Not lying is not the same as telling the truth.”

“She won’t run again. I have seen to it.” His meaty pink face took on an air of self-satisfied complacency. I wanted to reach through the thicket of his smug reserve and shake the puffy pride from his fat features.

“Meaning you gave her enough money so that she can drink herself silly and have no need to run away?” I threw the words at him like sharpened icicles. They hit their mark, and he crumpled into petulance. This was a dangerous course for me to take. Hart could not bear any slight to his pride, but this was the health of my family he was risking. I threw my rage onto the table and waited for his response.

“I did not have to do anything for her,” he said brutally. “Or for you. You are not my wife. Be grateful I did as much as I did.”

I did not respond, as there was nothing to say.

Supper in my closet tonight. It is true. I am not his wife. But then, do I wish to be? I know what I do not wish—to be out there, where death walks hungrily through the town.

Church was awkward. He pretends nothing was said, and I pretend … what do I pretend? I feel unravelled and adrift.

“Ellen, would you please ask Cook for lemon cake instead of cinnamon?” Hart asked when he met me on the stairs. It was the “please” that caught my attention. “I think it might be the cinnamon that has been upsetting my stomach.”

“Your stomach? Do you not feel well?” I asked, surprised out of my reserve, as Hart rarely admits to frailty of any kind.

“I have felt sincerely unwell of late,” he said, taking my hands and bringing them to his lips. “Sickened from missing you.”

I have relented. Peace: if not passion, then peace.

A lovely day. Tom Killigrew sent a box of new scripts (not that we will get to perform any of them soon), and we spent the day reading the parts aloud. Hart particularly enjoyed my Julius Caesar, complete with a tablecloth toga and a walking stick sword. We are both trying.

I have become a passionate gardener—well, student of the garden, anyway. It is lovely to spend afternoons in the quiet green. Hart takes my industry for contentment and is happier than ever.

Foley, Hart’s man of all work, has been taking me after luncheon, and slowly, slowly, I am learning to tell the plants from one another—medicinal, flowering, fruiting, perennial, coniferous. Ruby is not impressed. She does not care for dirt. I work with Cook each morning, choosing the menus—although we often have surprise guests, so they tend to change. Still, it is something to do, something to ward off the devouring boredom of this house. Hart is all my safety, I keep reminding myself—trying to rein in my wandering heart.

Note
—Our neighbour in Drury Lane, Mrs. Gresham, writes from Warwickshire that her husband has died, leaving her alone with the three children. He died when he went back to town to find work. He never returned to the country but suffered his quarantine and sad end alone. She does not know where he is buried, as the city has stopped keeping records. I send up a quick prayer of thanks for the safety of my own family.

Rose writes that Mother has been drunk for three weeks.
Heigh-ho
. Drunk but alive.

Hart is called to Oxford to entertain the king! We leave tomorrow. What luck! Frantically packing.

Can’t find: my violet embroidered dancing slippers, riding gloves, new dandelion-yellow hat with the grosgrain ribbon, veiled hat with the striped ribbon that needs replacing, my silver hairbrush, or my copy of Fitzherbert’s
Guide to Husbandry.
Hart can’t find his gold-tipped walking stick for town,
his
silver hairbrush, his good riding boots, or Dryden’s new manuscript—disaster: Dryden is travelling with us and will be so cross if it is left behind. Hart has asked Dryden particularly
not
to employ his new chicken-dung remedy for baldness during the journey.

Betsey had taken our brushes for polishing, my book was in the garden shed, and Dryden’s script was under the armchair. Must remember to…

No idea what I was trying to remember. Life has
finally
settled down here. Betsey no longer gets lost on her way to the market. Hugh has found a man able to mend the coach wheel—the
new
coach wheel. Cook has ordered replacement pots from London, as these are not up to her standard, and Ruby has piddled on every tree in our garden—something Hart feels I should not allow: even his dog must show decorum. Some things can be taken to excess.

Hart has yet to do much entertaining as the king is mostly entertained by Lady Castlemaine, but is regardless away all day with the court. I find it lovely to be in the city of my birth. Hart has rented a large house on Long-wall Street, very near Magdalen College, with its even quadrangle of golden stone. The house is light and airy and has an enormous, gracefully weeping willow tree in the garden.

Grandfather remains in Farm Cottage by the river with Great-Aunt Margaret, who is bossy but good-hearted, but Rose and Mother have come to live with us here. I am quite strict and will not permit their ridiculous quarreling. Mother is difficult to manage, and I have taken to locking the pantry closets against her drinking, but I would rather her here than with Great-Aunt Margaret, who heartily and loudly disapproves of her. At least I know she will not try to return to London again. When she arrived in town, she passed Jane Smedley’s house and could hear her inside beating upon the red-crossed door, begging to be let out. Mother hurried past, unable to help. When next she passed the house, it was silent, the door hung with black ribbon.