The Sparks Fly Upward (30 page)

‘It's rude,' she had said.

‘It's funny,' Aaron said. ‘It relieves the tension, audiences expect to laugh as well as cry.'

‘I didn't.'

‘Wait until you see it performed, dear lady,' Murrough had told her.

‘That last scene, I shall reduce you to weeping rivers. Didn't it move you when Oroonoko kills the wicked governor and stabs himself?'

‘No,' Makepeace said. ‘I thought good riddance to both of 'em.'

They overrode her; she was unused to reading a script, she lacked the expertise to flesh it out with actors' speech, movement, pauses, dramatic effects. They promised her it would turn London audiences into wholesale abolitionists. In Dublin it had brought tears from the audience that flooded the stalls.

Oh, well, she was a newcomer to this business; she was reluctantly prepared to give way to professionals. But she'd concede to no one when it came to a balance sheet.

In the Green Room they pushed hard on their end of the scales. They were prepared to work merely for their keep—only when the play was a success and the theater established would they take a salary.

I'm keeping that damn Sir Mick already
, she thought.

Look, look, they'd discovered a cupboard the thieves had missed, full of gilded plaster wreaths, garlands, pilasters and fretwork with which to decorate the auditorium, even the molds to make more.

It was Ninon who delivered the coup de grâce. She sprang up. ‘But why do I not think of this? We do not need the carpenter, the scene-shifter,
les ouvriers
, always they are trouble. We have the emigrés. ' She stood with her arms outstretched, waiting for applause. It was slow in coming; even her colleagues were doubtful. Makepeace was mystified.

‘The what?'

‘The emigrés, the nobility, the ones who fly to England from the guillotine. They are here,
des centaines des pauvres
, they are starving.'

‘Ye-es,' said Makepeace patiently.

‘But they will work for nothing, for their food, for two pennies an hour.' She turned to the others. ‘I walk into a hat shop yesterday to look at
un chapeau de paille
. Who is selling it? The Comtesse de Saisseville. I recognize her because once at
la Comédie
she talk all through my grand speech in
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
.' Ninon closed her eyes in bliss. ‘Now she is brought down and well disposed to me. She ask that her daughter do my sewing. They all starve, I tell you. The ladies work, perhaps, the lords do nothing—they do not know what to do.'

She crouched down by Makepeace's chair. ‘We tell them, eh?'

‘Aristocrats?
French
aristocrats?' Makepeace had no high opinion of the English version; as for the Gallic . . . ‘They'd be useless. They couldn't even run their country.'

‘No, no. They are desperate. And . . .' Ninon's voice cooed into Makepeace's ear like a lover's. ‘. . . they have servants who are desperate even more.'

‘Servants?' She was aware that Murrough was watching her with amusement, the rest withheld their breath. She ignored them all.

Tuppence an hour
, she thought.
Servants, handymen, seamstresses . . . we could have every job in the theater filled at tuppence an hour.

Murrough's voice said, ‘A bargain, madam.'

‘Whether it's worth making is another matter,' she said, detecting sarcasm. But
a bargain
. . . the word called to her like a siren. It would be something to create a little working world out of this hell-hole, provide for Aaron's future, employment for the needy and light a flame that might, just might, start a fire to burn all the shackles and the whips, end a darkness . . . at tuppence per person per hour.

She tutted grudgingly, for the look of the thing. ‘I'll see,' she said.

 

 

AT first she was sorry for the exiles; they were so brave. They arrived nonchalantly, the men striding, the women tottering in their threadbare shoes with that peculiarly French upper-class walk of theirs, toe first, heel after, their work-roughened hands delicately pecking the air as they talked.

They had heard . . . but what fun to be involved in a play . . . they had taken part in
beaucoup de théâtre d'amateurs
. . . if they could be of service to Madame?

Ghosts of the headless dead came with them, almost visible, like chains that couldn't be shaken off. Nostalgia gnawed at them worse than the hunger that was forcing them to shame themselves but they affected insouciance; they might have been viewing Makepeace and the theater to see if both were suitable.

She wondered why so many wanted theater work rather than other menial jobs that were better paid and came to realize it was because they'd be out of the public view. Exposing themselves within these confines—and this was a much later realization—didn't matter because actors were dross whose opinion didn't matter anyway.

She stood in the orchestra pit, her elbows resting on its rail, as each one took a seat before her in the front row. Ninon sat on a stool beside her, out of sight, ready to be consulted.

A few brought servants with them—for the sole purpose, as far as Makepeace could see, to have someone to announce them. The worst were those who brought their children . . .

‘You see, Countess, we're not casting for the play, we want laborers.'

The Comtesse d'Arbreville indicated her seven-year-old son. ‘We are most strong, are we not, Henri?'

‘Indeed, Maman. I am like Hercules.'

Makepeace sank down below the partition. ‘What do I do?'

‘Send them away,' Ninon told her. ‘They are no use.'

‘I
can't
. He's so small. They're both small.'

Ninon shrugged.

Makepeace stood up. ‘Can you sew, Countess?' They needed seamstresses to make costumes.

‘I embroider, of course.'

Makepeace shook her head. There wouldn't be time to do other than suggest embroidery by putting on
appliqués
; what they wanted was cutters-out and good old fashioned sewers. ‘Perhaps later ...'

When they'd gone she called up to Polly Armitage, who was cleaning the stage so that rehearsals could begin, and put a guinea in his hand. ‘Run after them, tell her she dropped this when she sat down.'

The toll on her pity and her purse grew. So did her irritation.

‘Monsieur the Count, I'm afraid the work we're offering ain't suitable for you, but if I could talk to your man here ...'

‘I answer for Joseph.' The Comte de Penthémont had lost an arm somewhere, an empty sleeve was pinned to the tattered sash of his uniform. Joseph, on the other hand, had all his limbs and looked competent.

‘Perhaps he could answer for himself. Now then, Joseph, what work can you do?'

Joseph looked at his master who gave permission in French; few of the servants spoke English.

Makepeace bobbed down into the orchestra pit.

‘A handyman,' Ninon said. She listened—Joseph was going stolidly on. ‘Also he built huts in the royal army at Coblentz when they served together, also he saw to their drains, also ...'

‘Lord love him,' Makepeace said and bobbed up. ‘Can he mend that ceiling?'

The Comte de Penthémont looked calmly upwards then down again. ‘Only if I hold the ladder.'

‘I ain't paying tuppence an hour for somebody to hold a ladder.'

‘Then I fear ...'

‘Oh, all
right
. Threepence an hour for the two of you.'

‘Four pence.'

‘Three and a half. My final offer.' If Joseph lived up to his curriculum vitae, it was still a bargain.

‘Done.'

As she leaned across to shake the Count's only hand, she said, ‘You ever thought of going into business?'

‘It would be beneath me, madame.'

She shook her head, watching him go. ‘I don't understand these people.'

‘It is your fortune you did not have to,' Ninon said.

Makepeace looked down at her. ‘You're enjoying yourself, ain't you?'

‘But yes,' Ninon said and Makepeace saw that not all the ghosts in the theater that day were being dragged in by the royal exiles. Already Ninon had vetoed the former abbé of a church in Montmartre. ‘
Non
,' she'd said on hearing his name.

‘He's a priest,' Makepeace hissed at her. ‘He says carpentry was his hobby. We need a carpenter.'

‘His hobby was little girls,' Ninon said, which put an end to the matter.

The Chevalier Saint Joly, who wore the Order of Saint Louis on his breast, was hired instantly. A sensible-looking young man, he'd also served in the ragtag royal army that had been defeated so comprehensively by the Revolution's forces and where, he said, he'd had to turn his hand to anything.

One of the last to arrive was Makepeace's old waltzing partner.

‘I'm very sorry, Marquis, we don't need dancing masters just now.'

He looked more dilapidated than ever but just as self-possessed. ‘You will need musicians, Madame. I have some small talent in that direction.'

‘Will we need musicians?' asked Makepeace, sotto voce.

‘Yes. Who is it?'

‘Marquis de Barigoule.'

Ninon was instantly on her feet.
‘M le Marquis, vous êtes vraiment bien.'

‘
Mademoiselle Adèle. Suis enchanté
.
'

France, Makepeace decided as the two chattered, was a small world.

‘That is very good,' Ninon said when the Marquis had gone. ‘Already he play in a sextet with friends for his own pleasure, now they play for us.' She looked sideways at Makepeace. ‘I suggest sixpence an hour.'

‘For
amateurs
?'

‘Mozart has compose for him. Surely you have heard the “De Barigoule Sonata”?'

Makepeace, who was tone deaf, had hardly heard of Mozart. However, she assumed they must have musicians; from what she remembered of the theater there were always tunes. She'd have to consult Aaron. ‘I'll see,' she said. Ninon was relishing her power over a class that had exercised power over her—obviously, in most cases, none too kindly—and getting above herself in the process.

Still, it hadn't been a bad day's work. She'd hired three seamstresses—one of them a lady-in-waiting who'd created costumes for Marie Antoinette—three and a half handymen, if one counted the Comte de Penthémont, and four of the more robust-looking nobility as plain laborers. Also, because she couldn't get the Countess with the little son out of her head, she had sent a note around to their lodging and hired them, too.

All of them, supposing they came up to expectation, were to begin work the next day. Since time was money, she'd decided that rehearsals for the play must start right away; the cleaning and restoration of the theater would have to go on around them.

‘I want to open in three weeks,' she told Murrough and Jacques as they traveled back to Chelsea.

She'd expected the actor to ask for more time but he merely nodded. It was Jacques who said, ‘As long as I can get the cannonballs.'

‘What cannonballs?'

‘Sir Mick wants a thunderstorm in Act Three, and I have had an idea superb.' He turned to Murrough. ‘Do you remember at the armaments factory in Saint Cloud when we went with Papa, the noise cannonballs made when they rolled from the foundry? Like thunder?'

‘I remember. A grand idea.'

Makepeace was silent for a while, then she said, ‘You're not going to the theater again, Jack.'

‘Please, missus, please.' The boy was distraught. ‘Already I am working on the traps. It is an education much better than Latin,
oh please
. Tell her, Sir Mick.'

‘It's a matter for the lady, Jack. I'd merely point out that with you involved in this production, your tutor'd be free to give us a hand as well.'

The thought of Luchet doing hard work for a change was a happy one but Makepeace was not to be seduced by it. She said, ‘We'll see,' merely in order to gain peace for the rest of the journey in which to think.

So the actor and Jacques had met before; what she'd assumed to be instant liking rested on former acquaintanceship. He knew who Jacques was. He and de Vaubon has visited an armaments factory together.

She began collating her suspicions about the Irishman. She was sure he'd left Ireland because the place had become too dangerous for him. Only this morning when, because of the weather, she'd intended that the three of them be driven to London in the open carriage, Murrough had asked that they use the coach instead. ‘My public, dear lady . . . recognition can be embarrassing, demands for keepsakes, that sort of thing.'

His public my arse
, she thought.
The only keepsakes he's worried about are a pair of handcuffs and jail.

The actor had closed his eyes, either in sleep or feigning it, and she studied him. A plastic face, like a piece of dough that could assume any expression. An actor's face. Or an agent's.

You're a spy
, she thought,
that's what you are, a bloody spy. For which side?
Not that it mattered. He was dangerous whichever way the cards fell.

When they reached home, she sent Jacques off to his supper, invited the actor to join her in the parlor and closed the doors. She faced him, his size reducing hers. It wasn't that he was fat, it was the sheer bulk; there was a massivity to him which was menacing on its own account; he bled Philippa's demure parlor, made it lopsided, as if a rhinoceros had entered it.