Slammerkin (51 page)

T
HE SPRING
Season was in full flow, now, and the tiny diamond that was Mayfair (tucked between Hyde Park, Oxford Street, Bond Street and Piccadilly) was criss-crossed every night with carriages lit up like fireflies, taking their occupants to routs, drums and assemblies, ridottos of 10,000 or musical evenings for a dozen. There were alfresco breakfasts (everyone still in their furs) and calls to pay from afternoon into evening. The World watched a balloon ascent in Hyde Park, and kept an eye out for the sumptuously dressed Prince of Wales and his pink-cheeked Mrs Fitzherbert dashing by in an open phaeton with a pair of bays. Mayfair residents roamed outside their preserve only for certain purposes: the gentlemen to debates at the Lords or Commons in Westminster Palace, or to gamble at their clubs on St James's, perhaps to buy a hat at Lock's, or wine at Berry's; the ladies to shop on the Strand or admire the crocuses at Kew. And, of course, everyone drove east to attend the Opera House and the two patent theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

Every few days, now, the Richmond House Players (as they affected to call themselves) made their way south-east, on horseback, in sedan-chairs or carriages, from their Mayfair homes to the great
house in Whitehall. Already they were experiencing that united delusion, that derangement of the senses known as theatre. On waking, or during the tedious hours it took for them to be dressed for dinner, they muttered their lines, sketched their gestures on the air. They'd never worked so hard in their lives, or felt so necessary.

Today they were to rehearse in Richmond's library, where all the furniture was white and gold. Eliza found Mrs Damer standing at the window, looking remarkably handsome for nearly forty. Everything about the sculptor was pointed—a long chin and aristocratic nose, sharp cheekbones, precisely etched eyelids—which should have been off-putting, but wasn't; her vitality warmed and softened all her lines. Eliza looked past her, to the Privy Garden's constant traffic of Members of Parliament, clerks, messenger boys and lovers. 'A sort of stage on which all London struts and frets its hour.'

Mrs Damer spun round, her brown eyes lively. 'Exactly. All so busy—and so aware of being looked at—'

'But restless, as if they might forget their lines at any moment.' Eliza stared past the Banqueting House to where she could pick out the clean white spire of St Martin-in-the-Fields. A gentleman, Derby had once remarked, was a man with no visible means of support. In her mind's eye a little fellow deftly walked the high-wire between two spires, tiptoeing across the abyss as if to fall was inconceivable because he had invisible means of support: angels, perhaps, holding up his hands and feet. Eliza sometimes felt like that herself these days. Yesterday, for instance, when the Duke had mentioned how lucky they were to have secured the aid of
a lady of such genius,
Eliza had felt the thin wire vibrate under her foot and wondered what tiny, unseen fingers were bearing her up.

Are you lost in admiration of the Medici Faun?'

Eliza's head turned. 'Oh. Indeed,' she lied. That must be the statue standing in the window.

'The one that moves me is the Apollo Belvedere,' said Mrs Damer, reaching out to touch the shoulder of a handsome curly-haired god shown from the waist up, gazing to one side.

'What a quantity of lovely antiquities your brother-in-law has collected,' said Eliza, looking around the library.

Only the tiny pause told her that she'd made a faux pas. 'Yes,' said Mrs Damer breezily, 'it was back in the days of his sculpture academy that Richmond commissioned these copies for students to work from.'

'Oh, was that when you took up your art?' asked Eliza, a little hot-faced, but she didn't think it showed. Well, how could she have known? Richmond was certainly rich enough to buy a dozen old statues.

'No, I was only a child at the time,' said Mrs Damer, 'this was back in the late '50s. The students were rather wild and, if the casts were plaster, they'd break off the fingers and toes, just for devilment.'

Eliza produced one of her tinkling laughs.

'That's why Richmond had to invest in marble copies. But when I took up carving myself, after I was widowed, I did find them very useful to study. That's from the
David,
of course,' Mrs Damer murmured, pointing to a large, graceful foot.

Eliza thought it looked odd, standing there on a plinth as if it had been ripped from a giant's corpse, but she nodded respectfully.

Here came Derby at last, hurrying into the library but without any unseemly scramble. That was the aristocratic walk that her colleague Jack Palmer caught so well when he was playing lords: a swan's glide. Today Derby was elegant in blue silk. 'My apologies,' he murmured and Eliza let him kiss her hand, but her cheeks flamed up a little again, because really he should have gone to Mrs Damer first, then to Mrs Bruce and so on down, distributing his
politesse
according to rank. She knew how to be with Derby in public and how to be with him in private (with her mother for a chaperone), but these rehearsals at Richmond House were something peculiarly in between.

When he began his scene as Lovemore, the yawning rakish husband, Eliza stiffened a little, as usual, but actually he was remarkably
good. Of course, Derby had a fine-toned voice and plenty of spirit, but what surprised her was that he took so naturally to the role of a callous husband. (She herself had never known him as anything but quietly, relentlessly gallant.) His looks gave an extra twist to the role, Eliza thought; it was quite sinister that this ugly little man should be so indifferent to a wife as tall and handsome as Mrs Damer.

A
FTER EACH
rehearsal Eliza felt relief whenever Derby's carriage dropped the Farrens off at their respectable but unfashionable second-floor lodgings on Great Queen Street, just round the corner from Drury Lane. She was always tired out. She'd come this far by pleasing, but still she couldn't risk failing to please. She knew it was absurd to complain of the strain, given that her whole life since coming to London at fifteen had been aimed like an arrow at the ranks of the Beau Monde. 'They're strange beings, though, carriage folk,' she told her mother over a dish of ragout.
Carriage folk
was what her father used to call them, in caustic homage: people who had their own carriages.

'But you're one of them, Betsy, or as near as makes no matter.'

Eliza shook her head. 'I only borrow Lord Derby's carriage, I don't own it, and you and I still ride in hackneys on occasion. Besides, I'll never be
one of them
if you keep saddling me with
Betsy.'

'Eliza,' Mrs Farren corrected herself. 'I do try, really; I never call you the old name in company at least.'

'Thank heaven for that!
Betsy Farren
sounds like the kind of jolly hoyden Mrs Jordan might play, who pops into breeches for Act Three to play a trick on her lover; I don't know how I bore it so long.'

'I rather favour what we christened you: Elizabeth; you can't go wrong with a good old saint's name.'

Eliza's mouth set; she thought she'd won this skirmish years ago. 'Eliza's vastly more elegant. Your chin, Mother—'

Mrs Farren snatched up her napkin to wipe away a trace of ragout.

Eliza did feel slightly guilty for her impatience with her mother. After all, should she—as a public figure—not be considered a sort of business, a joint enterprise in which Mrs Margaret Farren, no less than her eldest daughter, had sunk all her energies and resources? Hadn't the woman invested in Eliza's rise all the pragmatic cunning gained in a long hard career as an untalented actress in a barnstorming troupe and wife to its drunkard manager—and now this new business was so flourishing, wasn't she even to be consulted about the name under which it traded? The two partners might disagree on small points, but they had a common goal: the fame and lasting fortune of Miss Farren of Drury Lane.

'Don't you like 'em, then, the titles and Honourables at Richmond House?' asked her mother, mopping her plate with a crust.

Eliza hesitated. 'The Richmonds are very kind and Mrs Damer's delightfully enthusiastic; she's the only one who's learned most of her lines. But all in all ... I don't know, Mother, it's like a tasty dish that's hard on the stomach.'

'Ah.' Mrs Farren nodded in sympathy.

And how tiring! These
soi-disant
Players know nothing, they can't tell Prompt Side from Opposite Side and Sir Harry's mispronounced the opening line of the play a dozen times now. They've never done a day's work in their lives—well, except for Mrs Damer, I think she's learned discipline from her sculpting. But the fact remains I can't click my fingers or lose my temper with them as if they were apprentices at Drury Lane; I have to hint and request and
if it wouldn't be too much trouble, sir and madam, might I suggest
? And Mrs Hobart's always asking for "a brief respite", and then Dick Edgcumbe suggests she might feel the better for "some restorative cordial", meaning port all round at two in the afternoon!'

'They're charming people, though,' said Mrs Farren with a foolish smile. 'How they dress and deport themselves, and how they converse...'

'And how they drink and gluttonise, and gamble their fortunes away,' added Eliza, grinning despite herself. 'But seriously, I admit all the charms of the well-born. Isn't it odd, though, with what relish they take the lowest roles?'

'That's right,' said her mother. 'Who'd have thought that stiff Mrs Bruce could stoop to play a saucy maid like Muslin?'

'She adores it! Whereas I've always played higher than myself at Drury Lane and even now I dread making an uncouth gesture or a slip of the tongue. Do you remember that cruel critic who said my laugh
still smacked of the barnyard
?'

'Oh, my sweet, that must be seven years back, now,' protested her mother.

'I remember, I practised in the parlour,' said Eliza, 'laughing as musically as I could.'

'Until I begged you to stop, in case the neighbours thought we had a madwoman locked up in the house!'

Eliza let out a small sigh. 'I don't dislike the Richmond House Players, but I'm not at ease among them. Being their manager is the hardest part I've ever taken on and I'm not getting a shilling for it.'

Ah, but it's sure to pay off in the long run,' said her mother with a wink that screwed up half her face.

Eliza wished she wouldn't do that; it was like something out of a burletta or pantomime. 'You mean that with these new connections I'm on the brink of entering the World?'

'I mean, my dear child, that you're on the brink of becoming the next Countess of Derby!'

'Mother,' said Eliza, 'you mean to annoy me.'

'I don't—'

'We've agreed, haven't we, that such speculations are both pointless and tasteless as long as the person in question has a wife still living?'

Mrs Farren's mouth was sulky. 'She's said to be in very poor health. I see a lot, during rehearsals, over my sewing; his Lordship's
showing you off to his old friends and they couldn't be more enchanted.'

Eliza got to her feet.

'Oh, won't you take some more ragout? Or a custard? Some nuts, to finish? You'll need your strength tonight for your Ben. You never seem to keep any fat on,' fretted her mother.

'I'm perfectly well,' said Eliza, giving her an exasperated half-smile.

L
ADY
M
ARY
was all blithe humour and never meddled with the preparations for the theatricals at Richmond House, Eliza noticed, but she never let them put her out either. One night, when the dining room was full of props and scenery, she went down to the steward's room quietly and ate her supper there. Eliza was studying the Duchess's serene self-containment; there was a trick Lady Mary had, of smiling beatifically as she said something critical, which Eliza was memorising to use on stage.

Mrs Damer couldn't have been more different from her sister. Well, they had different fathers, after all; Anne Damer was said to take after hers, the veteran soldier and politician Field Marshal Conway. She could be tactful, but also startlingly frank. The sculptor struck Eliza as a natural for tragedy, with her tireless vitality, her bony hands and long diamond-cut face. Unfortunately,
The Way to Keep Him
was a comedy.

'Say the line for me, would you, Miss Farren?' asked Mrs Damer.

Eliza hadn't got enough sleep after her Ben and her head was aching. There were still all the comic servant scenes to run through; Sir Harry and Mrs Bruce hadn't spoken a line yet today. She sat down at Mrs Lovemore's imaginary tea table, in the corner of the pink saloon, and began with a careless shrug.
'This trash of tea! I don't know why I drink so much of it. Heigho!'
Major Arabin clapped; Eliza ignored him.

'Oh, I see,' said Mrs Damer. 'I never knew quite how to do the
Heigho.'

Behind them, Dick Edgcumbe failed to suppress a yawn; Mrs Hobart was lecturing Mrs Blouse on hairstyles in a whisper.

'Lighter, simpler, that's what you must remember,' said Eliza. 'From the top—'

This time Mrs Damer began merrily enough with the tea line, but then sank into lugubriousness on '
Surely never was an unhappy woman treated with such cruel indifference.'

'The audience must pity you, but don't give way to self-pity,' Eliza told her, 'and for sorrow, by the way, one touches the right hand to one's heart, not the left.'

Mrs Damer switched hands, frowning in concentration.
'I care not what they say. I am tired of the World, and the World may be tired of me, if it will.'
Her tone was guarded, almost bitter.

Eliza nodded. When this woman got it right, she could act the rest of the Richmond House Players off the stage. 'Now let's try your transformation scene.'

The others leafed through their parts, but Mrs Damer simply closed her eyes for a moment to summon up the lines, then took up position down front.
'Adieu to melancholy, and welcome pleasure, wit and gaiety,'
she pronounced, sardonic. She marched from side to side of the saloon, singing
'La, la, la'.
The effect was oddly intimidating.