Honor's Kingdom (16 page)

I even think some made a game of touching.

Twas not that I wished to see the show, you understand, for I am one for hymns and not vulgarity. But I had to secure an interview with Miss Perkins. And that demanded entrance and a wait.

Near despair I was, when a fellow with a bright yellow neckcloth come up to me.

“There you go, guv’nor, there you go,” he told me, gesturing to the nearest door and shoving patrons roughly from his path. “A gent like you will want the two-penny row. The better to see what shouldn’t be shown at all.”

I did not want the two-penny row, for one penny seemed a sufficient contribution. And there were decided limits to what I wished to observe. But before I knew it, the fellow had me inside the lobby, such as it was. Thrusting me on like a prisoner bound for execution, he forced me through that welter of flesh and scents—above all, the scent of Woman, which draws as it repels—and I found myself faced with a line of chairs set halfway toward the stage. They were cordoned off from the rest of the room and raised up on a platform, with rows of benches in front and standing-room rearward.

My place was between a fleshy gentleman, who had brought along the drumstick of a fowl to fortify him during the performance, and a twitching fellow who smelled of paints and turpentine.

The tout in the yellow tie took off his hat, revealing a scalp time had begun to harvest, and thrust out his palm toward me.

“Tuppence for your placement, guv’nor. Though something additional wouldn’t be taken amiss, between us gents.”

I saw no choice and gave the fellow his two pennies. Then I added a ha’penny, for I wished the goodwill of all who might assist me on my way to Polly Perkins.

He rolled his eyes and took himself off to secure another victim.

Now I will tell you: Rarely have I seen a room so desolate. A proper theater it was not, nor was it clean, though that is a separate matter. It once had been a house, indeed, but the walls were all knocked through but for the brace beams, opening the space so the crowd could see the stage rigged down in front. Upstairs, the half of the floor had been chopped away to create a balcony. As the benches filled, planks sagged above my head.
The walls had been painted with crude panoramas, suggestive of foreign parts and wild adventures, and the windows that lacked worn drapes had been boarded over, to keep the poor from having something free. Lasses offered ginger beer and papered toffees for sale as the youth of London rushed to claim their places. Rough their language may have been, but they got along in their way, I give them that. They reminded me a bit of fresh-made soldiers, bluffing confidence but raw yet in their hearts. Their manners were crude, but after my shock at their language, I found them a happy lot. And happiness is a rare thing in this world.

The proprietor packed the room as full as ever it might be filled, then a shabby curtain parted to a musical flourish. A little band of piano, concertina and fiddle served the house as an orchestra. And out stepped a fellow got up in a clownish exaggeration of the already-exaggerated dress of the males in the audience.

“Snarky Gifford,” my neighbor explained, enjoying a bite of the drumstick as he spoke, “always makes me larf, old Snarky do.”

The fellow onstage was a patterer. And I must tell you: Shocked I was by his language, but not half so much as I was by his physical gestures. He simulated the grossest of the body’s habits and pantomimed acts that words may not report. In the course of his jokes and skits, he made noises, some of them purporting to be the most intimate of feminine sighs, while others would have made a milch-cow blush. He pleased the crowd, although he mocked its members—many of whom he seemed to know by name.

Next come an artless tenor, one Chauncey O’Dair, who gave us his rendition of “If You’re After Mabel’s Sweeties, You’ll Pay Dear for Every Bite,” followed by “Jimmy Stuck It Where It Shouldn’t Never, Ever Go.” The rhymes in the verses were as inventive as they were indecent. Then he gave us all a proper ballad, which was not so well received by the lads in the back, but put a glisten in the female eye. No great applause followed
that melody of unrequited love, though. It seemed that those who paid had paid for laughter.

Then a fellow took the stage with a magical act. His tricks would not have impressed a Punjab villager. Only when his conjuring had to do with obscene matters did he win some brief approval from the crowd. But they were restless now, with the heat swelling up like a boil. Unruly, they began to stamp their feet, and to whistle and call cats. Plaster dust, and perhaps worse, sifted through the boards above me, dirtying the shoulders of my new coat.

Twas not only laughter that they wanted, though such amusement was welcome enough as a prelude. They had paid their pennies to hear, and to see, Miss Polly Perkins, the Toast of Paris, returned from her Grand Tour.

When she come out at last, they howled and screamed. I do believe I heard planks crack above me. And there she was, in pink trimmed up with lilac hems and ribbons, bare-shouldered, and flaunting her stockinged ankles for all to see. She curtsied, not entirely without grace, and blew kisses to her admirers. And while I would not associate such a creature with the lily, the lass was passing pretty, for all the paint on her.

They hushed, those half-wage boys and kitchen maids.

I fear I had been deluded in my expectations, anticipating some attempt at ennobling beauty from the girl on the stage, some lovelorn tune that sought to wrench the heart. Instead the piano plonked into a rollick. The concertina and fiddle joined in, and Miss Perkins danced like a sailor.

“Ain’t that one the fondest bit of baggage?” my drumstick-sucking neighbor cried in my ear.

Modern youth is apt to be ruined by the spectacles allowed them. I do not see how discipline will hold. She kicked up her skirts as she leapt about, pouting and making a hundred kinds of faces. When a particular turn revealed bare knees above satin garters, I shut my eyes immediately. For I admit to an appreciation of Woman. God gave them beauty so we might admire them. And a man wants to have a look, when a look is offered, for such is our nature.

I am a married man, and blessed with every happiness. My wife is all the beauty that I need. It is not Woman’s beauty that brings us down, but our greed in wanting more than we are given. I am a happy man when by my wife. I am content in her love. But Adam always lurks, in every man.

Miss Perkins began to sing at last, in the voice of a thrush, high and mostly true, though lacking force and majesty:

First, ’e tickled my twittle-dee-dee,

Then ’e wiggled ’is twittle-dee-dum,

And ’ere I thought it was just ’is thumb,

’E tore my innocent reputation down!

’E done it, ’e did, what should be ’id,

And I hollered ’is name, in my terrible shame,

And we shivered and shook to wake up ’alf the town . . .

Oh, ’e tore my innocent reputation down!

Now, I was but sixteen and unawares,

When Tommy follied me up my mother’s stairs,

’E follied me into the privatest place,

With the queerest look on ’is ’andsome face,

And what ’e done to me can’t be repaired . . .

Oh . . .

First, ’e tickled my twittle-dee-dee,

Then ’e wiggled ’is twittle-dee-dum . . .

The audience responded with alacrity. They hooted and wiggled their forefingers in the air—I blush to say young ladies did it, too—and sang along on the choruses.

The White Lily bloomed in triumph, to a harvest of mighty applause.

Now, you will say: “You said you closed your eyes, in order to refuse the old temptation.” But I will tell you: My eyes had opened all on their own, even against my will, for the floor
shook under me, and the ceiling shook over me, and the walls shook around me, and, finally, I am a man and just as weak as you.

Judge me who will.

And it was a very good thing that I opened my eyes, see. For just as I wrenched my gaze away from the young gazelle on the stage, turning my entire head away to save myself, I saw the strangest fellow across the room, by the farthest door.

He wore a scarlet mask upon his face.

HE SAW ME LOOK AND STEPPED back through the door. As if he had been watching me and waiting.

I leapt from my seat and went after him, pushing out of the twopenny row and through the crowd. My urgency engendered some dismay, I fear, for the audience was rapt upon Miss Perkins, who had begun another tune, this one with a tear or two in the melody. I shoved with my cane when begging pardon did not suffice, and the White Lily of Kent sang, “Oh, break, my heart, for Harry’s gone away . . .”

I fair raged my way through that density of flesh and odors, though not without a nasty prick from a hat-pin when I had blocked a young woman’s view and tread on her foot.

Out into the lobby I went, where the yellow-scarved tout was sharing a cigar with a colleague.

“Which way did he go?” I cried.

The two fellows gave me such a look of ignorance that I wasted no more time upon inquiries. I broke out through the doors, which near started a mad rush for the interior. As great a crowd had gathered to wait for the second show of the evening as had plunged into the first. Behind me, I heard the charger curse at me and at a boy who tried to slip in past him.

Free of the pack, I looked both ways along the street, but saw nothing. A gloaming had fallen over the city streets and a lamplighter clapped his ladder against a pole. People in plenty there were, honest of aspect and less so, but I saw no sign of a man in a crimson mask.

Then I marked the alley, set back between two shops.

Down it I went, stabbing the broken cobbles with my cane. I thought I glimpsed a figure at the far end and nearly tripped over a cat, whose scream reverberated between the old brick walls. On I went, through slops and slippery what-not, furious at my bothered leg and the weakness of the flesh.

The alley was a fetid place, where all the day’s heat had gathered to make a last stand, yet there was life in it, too. Women too far gone to risk the lamplight of the streets lurked in black doorways. Quick to lay a hand on a sleeve, they stank of things infernal.

“You doesn’t ’ave to ’urry, sweetie,” a wretched voice proposed. Her long fingers sought me. “I lets a gent take ’is time.”

Another said, “Give Mamie a try, why not? ’Alf a crown for any satisfaction.”

Even in the murdered light, her face was a thing of horror.

I must have exploded from the other end of that corridor of doom, for I ran smack into a policeman.

“What’s this, what’s this?” he said, separating himself from me and laying a hand on his truncheon. A bull of a fellow, he straightened his back and thrust out his manly stomach, asking, “And why are we all in such a great hurry, do tell?”

He must have thought me in flight from a misdeed. But time was a greater matter than my pride.

“Did you . . . did you see . . .” I began, a bit winded, “ . . . a fellow come by with a red mask over his face?” I got my lungs full and added, “Made of silk, perhaps? Or crimson satin?”

The constable inspected me more closely. “’Aven’t been sampling the gin, now, ’ave we?”

“Please. I’m serious. This may be a police matter.”

“Indeed, it may.”

“Did you see a man . . . in a red mask?”

Close enough he come to sniff my breath. “Can’t say as I ’ave,” he told me. “But I ’ear there’s camels and ellyphunts over on Lombard
Street. And lions and tigers in pairs, and a big brass band. So, why don’t you be a clever gentleman and take yourself off? Go see the free parade they’re giving on Lombard Street, where Constable Edwards ’as the duty. Maybe ’e’s seen your gentleman in the mask.”

You cannot change a policeman’s mind, once he has made it up.

With failure attending, I turned back toward the gaff. I chose the long way round, down proper streets, although that did not spare me whispered offers. On a corner, a fellow with a barrel organ and a dressed-up monkey played and sang “The British Grenadiers,” a tune for which I have an old affection. I gave the little creature a ha’penny for his cup.

I was burning money like kindling, and it galled me. But I did not rue the copper I dropped in the animal’s cup, for which the tiny fellow saluted me. I had a pet monkey in India, see, though it favored Jimmy Molloy, who fed it sweets. Not all of my memories of distant service are cruel. Things of great beauty there had been, though they ended in greater heartbreak. But I will tell you of that another time. So let that bide.

Back at the penny gaff, the crowd was just let out, with the next lot thrusting themselves in through every door. I had some experience of matters now and meant to ease inside and take a penny seat, but the tout in the yellow scarf was lying in wait.

“Back again, is ’e? And ’im what couldn’t bear the look of Polly Perkins in ’er golden beauty, but ’ad to run out and visit Clobber Alley for ’is relief.”

A look of horror must have crossed my face at such a misapprehension, but another kind of shock entirely interrupted my denials.

I understood what had happened, see.

If the man in the red mask had not gone up the street or down, he could only have taken himself into that alley. And if he had not come out the other end, where the constable would have seen him sure, he must have made a rapid contract, of one nature or another, with one of those ravaged women. Either that, or he had a door of his own.

My heart sank. For I saw that I would need to take me back there, after I had finished my interview with the White Lily of
Kent. Oh, it is one thing to glimpse a well-formed leg upon a stage, but quite another to visit the ruination of Eve in its final stages. And at night.

There were four shows in all and I sat through every one, for I did not intend to miss my chance. Each time, I had to pay for a two-penny seat, for the man in the yellow neck-cloth would have no less of me. Perhaps he took me for a wealthy man, which I do not pretend to be. In the strangest way, he seemed to know my purpose. For after the fiddler had put up his instrument and the curtains had closed on the stage for the final time, the tout pushed through the last mopers from the audience and stepped toward me.