Desperate Acts (22 page)

“Now, Titania dear, you are to deliver the
speech indicating your unquenchable passion for the donkey-eared
weaver,” Sir P. said solemnly. “The comedy lies in the contrast –
of beauty and beast, of overweening pride and fatuous vanity, of
love and its wholly unsuitable object. So, your actions here cannot
be over-exaggerated. Proceed.”

As Titania, like Bottom, knew her lines by
heart, she could recite her speech and improvise appropriately
hyperbolic gestures:

Titania:
I pray thee, gentle mortal,
sing again.

Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;

So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape

And thy fair virtue’s force doth move me

On the first view to say, to swear, I love
thee.

As Lady Mad uttered the phrase “enthralled to
thy shape,” she paused and began to trace with her fingertips the
particular hillocks and promontories of Cobb’s eccentric figure –
not touching him but coming close enough to simulate a sinuous
caress. As her right hand passed over his thighs, her left one gave
Bottom’s testicles a quick but definitely libidinous squeeze. Cobb
gasped and gaped – and the spectators, assuming these responses to
be the donkey’s idea of ecstasy, burst into applause.

What kind of loony bin have I gotten myself
into? was Cobb’s thought – when his heart stopped thumping long
enough for him to have one.

***

Once again Cobb was offered a lift to King Street in
Andrew Dutton’s buggy. On Tuesday, Dutton had said nothing, except
to the horse. So Cobb was surprised tonight when the retired lawyer
initiated a conversation.

“You married?” he said from the folds of his
cloak and scarves. It was almost November and the Indian summer had
left them without prior notice.

“I am.”

“Children?”

“A girl an’ a boy – thirteen an’ twelve, if I
remember rightly.”

“You’re a lucky man, then.”

“I count myself so. I been told you was
married once.”

“Twice, as a matter of fact.”

“Missus Cobb says yer wife took sick an’ died
on her way home to Ireland.”

“Yes, she did. We’d been married seven years.
No children. Then Felicity took ill with what the doctors called
melancholia. I decided she should see her family back in Cork in
hopes it might bring her around. We got as far as Montreal, when
she caught a fever and passed away suddenly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” Dutton’s voice had become low
and solemn, but he obviously wanted to talk.

“But you did marry again?”

“I waited ten years, then married my young
housekeeper. I didn’t love her like Felicity, I was simply
desperate for an heir.”

“What happened?”

“She died in childbirth. And the babe with
her.”

Cobb said nothing to that. Such tales were
commonplace, but nonetheless tragic for those involved.

“After that, I stuck to lawyering.”

Cobb got off at the corner of Sherbourne and
King. As he watched the buggy disappear in the darkness, he felt
sorry for Dutton. It also occurred to him that a lonely, childless
man no longer busy with his profession might find comfort in the
company of someone as alive and ingenuous as Lizzie Wade. What kind
of comfort was the question.

Across the street Cobb noticed that Marc was
still up in Briar Cottage. He had nothing concrete to report, but
the possibilities had increased dramatically.

TWELVE

The Legislature was set to open on the first
Monday in November, and Brodie’s trial on the following Thursday.
Marc made sure he spent at least one hour a day with Brodie at
Harlem Place, not because he had anything yet to tell him about the
plan for his defense, but because he wanted to keep the lad from
falling into a depression. Marc encouraged Brodie to talk about the
man they had both admired, Doubtful Dick Dougherty, and Brodie
responded enthusiastically. He reminisced quite happily about
Dick’s famous and infamous trials – what he knew of them as he
watched and listened in the sanctuary of his boyhood home and what
he learned later by secretly reading the old New York newspapers
stored in a nearby room. Diana Ramsay, of course, wanted to visit
him as well, but Brodie, fearing for her reputation, forbade her to
come. Instead, the lovers corresponded by letter, twice daily.

When not cheering up his client or playing
with Maggie at Briar Cottage, Marc spent his time in the service of
the Durhamites. Robert Baldwin’s stratagem of winning over the
moderate conservatives in the Assembly by feeding Governor Thomson
the arguments he would need to do the actual persuading was working
better than anyone had anticipated. As opening day approached, it
looked as if there would be fewer than a dozen dedicated Tories
left to vote against the union in the form desired by the Governor
and the Whig administration back in London. However, the hardliners
were expected to mount an indirect challenge by offering amendments
that would in fact gut the main bill itself. Hence, Robert, his
father, Marc, Francis Hincks and other Reformers continued to meet
quietly with individual MLAs as they arrived in town in a concerted
effort to keep the temporary coalition shored up. Having the Reform
party itself keep a low profile while Governor Thomson did the
arm-twisting and blandishing was paying huge dividends so far.
Still, the entire enterprise was as fragile as a house of
cards.

***

The rehearsal on Saturday evening began right on
schedule. As promised, the director called on stage only those
involved in the particular scene to be worked on. The blocking and
the delivery of lines (script in-hand, still) was patiently
monitored by Sir P., with interruptions that he presumed to be
warranted and judicious, though they were not always accepted in
that spirit. As Cobb’s first scene was forty or fifty minutes away,
he asked if he might begin painting the flats. So, while the
Crenshaws, as Demetrius and Hermia, continued to flounder and
squabble, on stage and off, and fray the sweet temper of their
director, Cobb was supplied with bottles of paint and brushes by
Mullins the gardener from a stock located, Cobb assumed, in the
summer kitchen some distance away. As Mullins communicated
exclusively in grunts, punctuated by the occasional monosyllable,
Cobb was not quite sure where that room was, but he did understand
that, from now on, he was on his own. Which suited him just
fine.

Donning a plasterer’s smock that dropped to
his knees, he set the flats up against the inner wall near the
curtained-off wing to the right of the stage, in which Sir P. had
had Mullins place four comfortable chairs upon which the actors “on
call,” as it were, could sit and converse quietly. As Sir P. had
boasted to Cobb, his talented lady had sketched several backdrop
scenes to suggest various parts of the magical forest: mostly bushy
trees, dark starlit skies, a cloud-besieged moon, a brown boulder
or two, and one flowering shrub. He began with the sky, of which
there was plenty. As he daubed slowly away at this task, he was
able, off and on over the course of the next hour, to eavesdrop on
a number of nearby conversations.

Thus:

Clemmy
: I still can’t understand why
Sir P. would ask a common peeler to Oakwood Manor. He might as
well’ve asked the gardener!

Dutton
: I think there’s a lot more to
Cobb than meets the eye.

Clemmy
: He looks perfectly stupid to
me. Cyrus an’ me didn’t join this silly play-business to concert
with the likes of him. My husband’s daddy was a war hero, you
know.

Dutton
: He’s learned all of his
lines.

Clemmy (indignant)
: He had a head
start!

Dutton
: And he’s quite comical, you
must admit.

Clemmy
: With that nose, who wouldn’t
be?

And:

Crenshaw
: I’m beginning to regret I
ever suggested this play to you. You’re embarrassing me in front of
the very people we’re hopin’ to impress.

Clemmy
: We’re every bit as good as
they are!

Crenshaw
: Of course we are. But I
don’t get invited to Bishop Strachan’s for dinner once a month, do
I?

Clemmy
: Just because he’s got a title
an’ oodles of cash.

Crenshaw
: And donated a good chunk of
it to the vicarage restoration fund.

Clemmy (after a pause)
: I just wish
you’d keep yer eyes offa that creature!

Crenshaw
: I told you to quit harpin’
on that. It’s a dead horse.

Clemmy
: I think I better go to the
ladies’ room.

Crenshaw (in an angry whisper)
: You’ve
had enough of that stuff!

And:

Lady Mad
: Is he bothering you,
Lizzie?

Lizzie
: Who?

Lady Mad
: Mr. Dutton.

Lizzie
: No, not at all. He’s lovely
and kind. Like a grandpa.

Lady Mad (whispering)
: Just keep an
eye on his hands, luv.

And:

Clemmy
: Don’t you find it hard to keep
good servants these days?

Lady Mad
: I brought my maid with me,
and Perry brought Chivers, of course.

Clemmy
: An’ the grammar they talk! Ya
practically haveta teach ‘em their own language. An’ the pertinence
of some of them!

Lady Mad
: But you must remember, my
dear, we live among colonials.

And:

Dutton
: How’s Bernice holding up?

Fullarton
: Quite well. Thank you for
asking. I feel terrible coming out here three evenings a week and
leaving her alone. But she insists that I do.

Dutton
: She’s a fine woman.

Fullarton
: Yes, she is.

Dutton (after a pause)
: Have you been
up to see young Langford?

Fullarton
: He sent word that I was not
to come.

Dutton
: I can’t believe they’ll
convict him.

Fullarton
: All I can do is offer
myself as a character witness. Which I’ve done.

Dutton
: Yes. I’ve done that, too.

Cobb’s own scenes went well. The first one, where
Titania wakes up and falls in love with him, particularly pleased
Sir P., whose rubicund face had grown alarmingly more rubicund as
his frustration with the Crenshaws accelerated. Cobb was grateful
that Lady Mad had chosen to lay a scarf over her décolletage and to
omit the unscripted testicle-squeeze. In the second scene Bottom is
found in his lover’s bower, surrounded by her fairies who, when
they were finally released from their half of Oakwood Manor, would
be feeding him delicacies while his inamorata caressed him with
word and deed. He thought he might suggest to Dora that she pay
especial attention to the action in this scene and the salubrious
effects it worked upon the male in question.

By nine o’clock Sir P. decided he had
suffered all the indignities and disappointments a baronet ought
to. A glassy-eyed Hermia had just tripped over one of the chalk
arrows and upended Demetrius when an abrupt halt was called to the
dismembering of the Bard’s divine comedy. With seething politeness,
Sir P. ordered his actors to seek out a quiet spot and study both
their lines and their blocking assignments – along with the many
suggestions offered for their execution. He himself was going off
to the solitude of his library for half an hour, after which he
would return, like Achilles from his sulking-tent, to deliver them
the director’s “notes.”

Cobb returned to painting another sky. And
soon discovered he was out of blue paint. Over at the long-table,
he asked Lady Mad for directions to the summer kitchen. She pointed
him to the door next to the ladies’ room, the one that Sir P. had
huffed through just ten minutes before. It opened onto a long
hallway, at the end of which Cobb had been assured lay the kitchens
and, beyond them, the summer kitchen. On each side of the hall he
noted that several doors marked the presence of the Shuttleworth’s
various dens, sitting-rooms and such. They were all closed, except
one. And as Cobb passed it, he was startled by the high-pitched
scream of someone in distress.

“
Oh, you mustn’t! I’m a lay-dee!
”

The door was ajar less than a handspan. Cobb
hesitated to push it open, but the thought of someone behind it
needing help encouraged him to do so. Perhaps Mrs. Wade, Lizzie’s
mother, was being threatened by an intruder (the burglar with a
price on his head?). Anyway, he was a policeman and bound to do his
duty. He barged into the room with a bang.

It was a bedroom, a man’s bedroom if the dark
curtains, carpet and coverlet were any indication. But it was
definitely occupied by a woman. Alone. Standing in front of a
three-sided, floor-length looking-glass. In her corsets!

As the flung door rattled against the wall,
she jumped with a jiggling of stays and a crackling of whalebone,
and turned towards the sound. Her face had been trowelled with
makeup and dusted with talcum. Her lips were a crimson slash and a
blond wig, cockeyed and frizzled, teetered precariously upon her
head. Below the corsets, her nether extremities floated in a pair
of pantaloons.

But this was no lady.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Cobb?” Sir Peregrine
said, squinting through the black bars of his eyelashes. He was
breathing heavily – either from his screaming performance for the
mirror or startlement at Cobb’s arrival – which had caused his
stays, stuffed with silk handkerchiefs, to undulate.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. But I heard a scream an’
thought – ”

Sir P. laughed nervously with his clown’s
lips. “Ah, that. I was just – ah – rehearsing. As I often do when
I’m alone and unobserved.”

“Is that yer Puck get-up, then?” Cobb said
with suitable sarcasm. What on earth was the fellow up to? This
behaviour, whatever it was, seemed outrageous, even for a
baronet.