Redlegs (2 page)

Unlike Elspeth, Albert had not seen any special light in the sky that morning; even had he done so, he would have attached no importance to it.

As he took his seat in the Seamen’s Mission, his weariness grew more oppressive. This, most assuredly, would not – could not – be the place where he would find what he had been looking for. If La Scala had failed him, and Drury Lane, and all the arenas, both exalted and profane, of New York, Berlin and Havana, had
not produced the talent he sought, then Greenock, he doubted, would come to his rescue. But the moment that girl walked onto the stage – actually, a clearing in the chairs – Coak’s eyes, and heart, widened. Who would have thought? And isn’t it always the way that the thing you are looking for turns up in the last place you look? He caught his breath at his first sighting of Elspeth Baillie, fought his own incredulity, dampened down his hopes, and sat in rapt attention for the rest of the evening trying to convince himself he was wrong. But there she stood in front of him – comely, hearty, pleasingly presumptuous and certainly affordable – the best candidate he had seen for his project. After so many years in countless theatres and concert halls, he had seen
prettier
girls. Better actresses, or, at the very least, better schooled in the dramatic arts. Finer singers; performers even more brazen and assured than the Baillie girl. Yet her voice was strong and sweet and convincing; her acting surprisingly proficient but still, he was sure, susceptible to tuition and improvement. And her looks, as the night grew on, struck him at every moment as more
remarkable
. There had been contenders in the past whose rejection of his offer had irked him: Italian singers who earned, or were confident they would one day earn, more than he could pay; Londoners who had no wish to exchange the mother country for a colony they thought fit only for convicts and fallen women. He was thankful now that these women had turned him down. The fresh,
authentic
voice that would breathe life into West Indian theatre was found at last, in the middle of nowhere, deep in the slender neck of young Elspeth Baillie.

He did what was necessary: stayed behind in that mean and dispiriting little hall; let his lips touch the “wine” offered to him, and made polite conversation with the entire dreary Baillie family, the vulgar father and feeble-minded mother, all the many
cousins
, aunts and menials that surrounded the nugget he was about to pluck from their midst. Doubtless, he could have avoided the whole tedious business, put his proposition to her directly, and sent her off on a boat the very next morning, her hampered little heart bursting with gratitude. But he was in no rush. The ship he had just that day chartered would not sail for nearly a month and, being a
cautious man, he saw no reason not to double-check a
contemplated
acquisition.

The following morning, armed with a telescope, he spied on the family from behind a tree in a thicket of poplars some
distance
from the harbourside inn the players had leased. He was Galileo inspecting the moons of Jupiter from a million miles away; Napoleon at the head of his Armée d’Orient reconnoitring the unruly malcontents of Cairo. And there was Cleopatra amongst them – more Queen of the Nile this morning, as she shouted and remonstrated with father, mother, cousin and aunt, and stamped her feet on the cobbles of the embankment, than during her death scene the night before. The entourage were taking out the company’s wardrobe, stacking shirts and dresses, tunics and robes, wigs and hats, on to a cart which would trundle them and their owners two hundred yards to the ferry which in turn would take them all to their next engagement, in Helensburgh, across the estuary. The scene was delicious to the watcher: to facilitate their task each member of the company carried a pile of clothes, but also wore wigs on their heads covered by two or three hats, draped cloaks around their shoulders, and stuffed props under their arms. Thus there was an elderly cavalier
sporting
a judge’s thatch and carrying a Redcoat’s musket. An elderly woman with Rapunzel’s locks brandished a Turk’s scimitar. Helen Baillie wore several false beards around her neck and a stack of tricorns on her head, while bearing a severed head under one arm and a life-size puppet that dangled like a sacrifice under the other. Albert warmed to them immediately, and all the more so to the aggravated Elspeth who, flushed with exertion and temper, looked more theatrical in life than she did on stage. Presumably her petulance derived from an argument over her insistence on absenting herself, without providing any good reason, for an hour on so busy a day. Her excuses, he could imagine, would be naive but forceful; this girl would not let him down, and he began to look forward to their meeting.

Lord Coak was a perfect gentleman during the exclusive
performance
. He sat at the far side of the room and listened intently to
her Lady of the Lake – sometimes, to Elspeth’s consternation,
closing
his eyes in appreciation for just a little too long.

The family flitting followed by lengthy wrangling with her father to let her escape for an hour, thereby delaying their ferry crossing to Helensburgh, had agitated her. No one was convinced that she had fallen so in love with the northerly views over the Clyde – a
panorama
she had never been seen to notice before – that she had to spend time on her own contemplating it. She was met with all kinds of accusations, the most foul coming from her father himself, who had no notion of the whereabouts of her tryst but knew perfectly well whom she would be seeing there.

Her discomfort increased on arriving at the mansion of a
shipper
– an associate of Coak’s – set high above the port of Greenock, and being treated by the servants as a scullery maid applying for a position she had no hope of securing. But on being led into a finely furnished room, almost as large as the auditoriums she was used to playing in, where her patron welcomed her with an amiable smile, all disquiet immediately left her. As on the previous night, Lord Coak did not waste time with preliminaries, but set at once to
business
, asking her to perform some little piece for him. Elspeth sang out the opening lines of Sir Walter Scott’s poem with all the lilt and drama she had in her.

“Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast hung

On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan’s spring!”

The colonial gent – as immaculately groomed as before – nodded his way through the recitation, smiling here, frowning there. She did not recite the fiction in its entirety – that would have taken long past the hour the ferry was due to leave, and besides would only give her more scope to make a mistake. The version she used had been edited by her father, who had included as much lyricism, and as much battle and death, as any audience needed. She
finished
boldly, in a strong and steady voice with the subtlest hint of Gaelic in her accent, on lines that she hoped would draw attention to herself, rather than Scott’s heroine:

“A chieftain’s daughter seemed the maid;

Her satin snood, her silken plaid,

Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed.”

She gave a little bow and found that, now that she had stopped performing, the trepidation she had felt at the start returned. Lord Coak sat still, nodding quietly to himself, and stared out the window onto the river below, for such a protracted period that she began to worry that she had disappointed.

“A native talent. You would be surprised, Miss Baillie, at how many – if I may say so – far more experienced actors fail to convey their own comfortableness before an audience and delight in performing.”

He looked back out the window until Elspeth wondered if her presence was no longer required. As she moved towards the door, however, he stirred, raising an arm. As if on a spontaneous whim, he asked her to delay a moment. She stood, watching him while he lost himself again in some unfathomable thought. At last, he spoke the thoughts out loud: “I will understand if you judge my next request as scurrilous. You must not think it so and, if you decide not to comply, I hope you will not think ill of me.”

His lordship did not have any particular quality to his voice that demanded obedience; on the contrary, there was a softness about his manner and his speech. His position and title, though imposing, gave him no authority over her. She felt he was a shy man – regardless of what he was about to request – and one over whom she began to feel a little power. She said nothing, but looked attentive.

“You would not, I don’t suppose, consider speaking the opening stanzas again for me, Miss Baillie, but on this occasion disrobed?”

He looked, for a moment, as if he might explain his flagrant proposition, and then waved it aside, turning away once more, and leaving her to decide without further inducements or justification. Elspeth felt her colour rising, though her awkwardness was not caused by any sense of outrage. She would have been more
scandalised
if a man – of any rank – did not wish to gaze more fully at her. No, the difficulty at this not entirely unsuspected turn of events, was more a matter of policy. If the request were granted would it lead to a further, unwanted, pass? Though she had no objection, now that she considered it, to having her nakedness looked upon, she was quite unwilling to have to return the gaze at any disrobed
part of the old man. More importantly, if she were to decline, would any offer he was considering making be lost to her?

He waited until she had made a move, noting that it was not towards the door, before speaking again.

“Great actors, my lady, must lay themselves bare before their audiences. You must not construe any other meaning into my suggestion – strange, I grant, as it must seem.”

All she had done was shift from one foot to another, but from that he had deduced that she was agreeable to his suggestion. He knew before she did. Despite the differences between them she felt this stranger understood her in a way she did not yet understand herself and knew that he spoke not to convince her or defend
himself
but to cover the embarrassment between them as she began to undress. He let her do so without once glancing at her. As she unbuttoned her dress she decided to make her voice heard.

“I suggest, your honour, that you retreat further into the bay of the window while I stand closer to the door. You can assure me, I hope, that no one will come in in the meantime?”

“No one shall disturb you either from within or outside the room. You have my word.”

As he spoke he got up and pushed his armchair so close to the windowpanes that she feared he and it might tumble through them. Elspeth placed herself behind the door, and turned away from him.

Privacy, she told herself, unlacing her chemisette, was a luxury to which travelling players, dressing together in sheds behind halls and barns, should not become accustomed. However, looking now at her underlinen, a new worry caused her to colour again: what must such a perfectly tailored man think of her poor, greyed, and stained clothing? To be sure her mother had always seen to it that her simmit and unmentionables were regularly scrubbed, but they were a far cry from new and crisp. It was too late to go back now, though; nothing to do but hope that her blushing did not cover her like a rash and conceal the bonny cherry-blossom tone of her skin of which she was so proud.

When she was quite bare she turned and looked in his
direction
. Coak waited a moment then turned to her. He kept his glance
markedly above her neckline, gawking even at some point above her head, which gave her the chance to inspect him. She
satisfied
herself he was not an impostor: his weather-beaten face and wild hair spoke plainly of long voyages and hot, distant lands. His clothes could be afforded only by the wealthy, and there was none of Thomas’s wheezing and ruddiness in the presence of feminine flesh. She had lost the fledgling feeling of power while taking off her faded underclothes, but naked now, and he so resolutely
looking
above her, it returned to her. She let a hiatus open up between them: she would not begin her recital until she had his full
attention
, so she stood straight and dignified until he was forced to glance at her.

“When you are ready.”

Hearing her own voice speaking the first stanza of the poem she recognised it to be even stronger and more masterful than before. Unrestrained by shifts and chemises, and in the full knowledge of having nothing further to shed or lose, she limited her gestures but sensed each one to be all the more graceful and effective in its restraint. She chose other verses rather than repeat herself,
leaving
in only those which she felt lent themselves to her
particular
talents, and choosing more menacing phrases from elsewhere in the epic. She let the words and the images build, not so much in volume or drama, but in intensity, and finished with an almost pained flourish:

“The wizard note has not been touched in vain.

Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!”

Throughout, his lordship had continued to take care not to let his eyes drop too often or too conspicuously below her shoulder, and, once she had reached her finale, he managed a smile that she suspected masked tears. He clapped quietly and murmured, “Bravo.”

“There is the most exquisite cadence in your delivery, child. Quite natural, and quite remarkable.”

He spoke on in this vein as each turned their back on the other, his words complimentary but serving merely to bridge the tricky business of her dressing and the announcement he was getting ready to make. He rehearsed over again the argument of acting
being a stripping away of layers and false coverings, this time, she thought, a touch more apologetically. Once the matter of making herself decent was accomplished and out the way – her jacket and skirts fixed and tattered shoes replaced – the arrangements were immediately concluded for her passage on a cargo vessel to the island of Barbadoes, in one month’s time.