Wicked Company (72 page)

“I have my suspicions,” he laughed.

Without warning, Hunter bolted out of bed and sprinted naked into the printing room, with Sophie in hot pursuit. He snatched a playbill from the pile stacked on the wooden printing press.

“Why, the old fox…” he said in a breath, staring at the placard. “The rascal restages his ode to beat us to the punch.” Hunter turned to Sophie and encircled her throat with one hand in a sham attempt at strangling her. “I should have known that as his printer, you’ve been privy to these plans.” Sophie stared up at him, refusing to answer. He then relaxed his grip and grinned down at her. “I expect you’ve learned something of
our
scheme as well,” he said, leading her back to the bedstead that was pushed against the wall in the other room. “Too many players are involved… ’twas bound to get about the town.”

Sophie shrugged, climbed back in bed, and pulled the counterpane up to her chin. “I suppose half of London knows by now that Colman plans to satirize the Jubilee,” she admitted.

Hunter slipped beneath the covers next to her, leaning against the mahogany headboard.

“He’s taken the easy path… adapting
Man and Wife
so as to send the main characters to Stratford for the Jubilee.”

“And I suppose he portrays events there as a disaster?” Sophie asked glumly.

“Of course!” Hunter chortled. “I play a character unmistakably like George Garrick. I drink porter night and day, and I’m driven crazy by local rustics who blame the cannons for causing the deluge. ’Tis hilarious.” His smile faded, and he cast her a sidelong glance. “In fact,” he continued, choosing his words carefully, “you could help me prepare for the role.” Sophie remained silent in the face of Hunter’s request. “What were some of George’s most ludicrous foibles?” he asked. “His little mannerisms or phrases that could help me create the part?”

“Surely you do not expect me to aid you in deriding the people with whom I work?” she chided.

“Well…” Hunter replied uncertainly, “I’d hoped you might—” Sophie stiffened and he halted midsentence. “’Tis only a little thing I’m asking,” he protested.

“You are asking me to help you mock a man who’s been unerringly kind to me,” she said in a low voice, “and kind to you. Your play at Covent Garden ridicules a man who gave much of himself—and his pocketbook—to the Shakespeare Jubilee. His brother, George, for all his faults and vanities, is kin to David Garrick… and my colleague!”

Sophie sat up in bed, yanking the bed linen under her arms. Her mouth was set in a grim line and she stared straight ahead.

“Sophie… really, there’s no need—”

“People like your Colman and… and Dr. Johnson find it ever so much simpler to snipe from the sidelines,” she fumed. “None of those people truly wish Garrick well or could begin to work the marvels on stage that he does, yet they both ridicule him while claiming to be his friends. Can’t you see, they’re simply
envious
and they’re using
you
to spread their venom!”

Hunter tweaked her nose playfully.

“’Tis not venom…” he countered lightly. “’Tis for the public’s amusement. Surely you must admit, Sophie, Garrick
is
a mite vain. He’s been good to you and me, but perhaps our production will shrink his head to the correct size.”

Sophie turned to face her lover with clenched fists.

“You simply parrot the backbiting you hear at Covent Garden!” she exclaimed, suddenly furious. “I wouldn’t have thought you capable of repeating such spite.”

“Now, don’t scrape your claws on me, Sophie, my love,” Hunter retorted. “Admit it, lass… Garrick’s a bit of a peacock, like all of us actors.”

Sophie jumped from the bed and angrily donned her dressing gown, tying its sash with an angry jerk.

“I don’t think you should put yourself on the same cast list as David Garrick—yet!” she glared at him.

“God’s eyeballs! What is wrong with you?” Hunter demanded, swinging his long legs over the mattress.

“I
hate
disloyalty!” she cried passionately. “I
hate
uncertainty about who one’s friends are!” She began to pace the room. “There must be people one can count on not to snipe and snivel.
Someone
who wishes one well, wants one to succeed! ’Tis how I feel about
you
!”

“And I about
you!”
Hunter retorted, exasperated.

“Oh,
do
you?” she demanded. “If it advanced your suit at Covent Garden, would you tell Colman what you know of
my
work before it sees the stage at Drury Lane? All this reminds me of
The Parsimonious Parson…
you were willing then to play toady to your employer in service to your own ambitions!”

Hunter was now angry himself.

“As I’ve told you a number of times,” he said coldly, “I had no hand in stealing your precious plot. I didn’t do it then and I wouldn’t do it now—or ever. If you will remember, Sophie, I shared my pay packet with you on that damnable play!”

“To ease your conscience, I suppose!” she retorted.

“How unlike you to be so vicious,” he said quietly.

“No more vicious than your words about David Garrick,” she replied defensively.

“’Tis not the same! David Garrick is certainly a brilliant manager and a sublime player, but anyone would tell you he’s a man with a healthy sense of his own importance.” He gazed at her quizzically. “Why is my simply stating that fact making you so angry?” he asked. “What are you afraid of, Sophie? This display of pique cannot merely be about whether or not Garrick is a wee bit vain. If the truth be known—all we actors are.”

“How true!” Sophie shot back. Then, she heaved a sigh and said sadly, “What I suppose this argument is about, Hunter… is that I don’t know if I trust you to put my welfare… ahead of your desire to succeed at what you do.”

Hunter stared at her for a long moment.

“Perhaps ’tis
all
men whom you distrust after marrying a lying wastrel like Peter Lindsay.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she acknowledged. “And perhaps I’ve had good reason.”

Hunter rose from the bed and quickly donned his breeches. In a trice, he had slipped on a cambric shirt.

“If you do not trust me after all we’ve shared—and especially after these last weeks,” he said, his words clipped, “perhaps you are incapable of trust itself.”

Stung, Sophie blinked back tears. A heavy weight seemed to press against her chest. She turned her back to him and tried to control her emotions. Hunter lay a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Surely you know I love you,” he said softly, “… that I would do nothing to hurt you.”

“You
have
hurt me,” she said with more sorrow than anger. She turned to face him. “You do not hesitate to chastise me for what I fear myself—that I shall never feel safe or trust men who believe their welfare and advancement invariably and quite suitably come first, regardless of how much they convince themselves they love a woman.”

Hunter didn’t reply and his silence hung heavily between them. At last he said, “We work for rival playhouses. As you mentioned on our last night in Stratford, ’tis a situation fraught with peril. I said then, ‘Why not write your comedies for Colman?’” He placed his hands on both her shoulders and added insistently, “Why do you not? ’Twould help untangle this coil.”

“I don’t think you’ve been listening very carefully,” she replied tiredly, looking away to stare out her window at the morning traffic in the street below. “Garrick has been my champion—he even brought us back together! I cannot be disloyal to him now, when everyone is out to humiliate him. Including you.”

“Well, what about your loyalty to
me?”
Hunter protested. “You’ve known me far longer than David Garrick—and I’ve certainly championed you in a few scrapes.”

“You’ve done that to be sure, Hunter,” she agreed, seeking common ground. “And I do love you for it… just as I love Garrick for the care and kindness he’s shown us both.”

“Just
as you love Garrick?” he quoted with feigned dismay. He sat on the bed and grasped her hand, pulling her next to him.

“Well, not
exactly
as I love Garrick,” she admitted with a ghost of a smile, impulsively kissing him beneath his ear. Then, her hands flew suddenly to her face. “The placards!” she said urgently. “I must deliver the placards!”

***

Garrick’s
Ode to Shakespeare
was as resounding a success at London’s Drury Lane as it had been in the waterlogged Rotunda in Stratford. Then, a week later, Colman’s spoof of the Jubilee made its debut. Anyone not performing at Drury Lane that night trooped down Bow Street to join excited audience members crowded into Covent Garden’s large hall.

“God’s bones, what if it’s brilliant?” Sophie whispered in Lorna’s ear as the orchestra commenced playing an overture that was clearly reminiscent of “Dawn Serenade.”

It soon became apparent, however, that Colman’s effort at Covent Garden was far from stellar. It was not even very original or witty, despite Hunter’s hilarious mimicry of the well-known idiosyncrasies of George Garrick. In Colman’s grand finale, the parade of Shakespeare characters wore lackluster stock costumes and his players strolled across the boards in no particular order.

“I do believe Colman’s best cannot sink our ship.” Lorna beamed smugly at Sophie.

Lorna’s confident prediction proved resoundingly true. As Hunter had surmised, along with many of his fellow players at Covent Garden, David Garrick, indeed, had yet another card to play.

“You knew Garrick was mounting more than just the ode, but you never said a word!” Hunter exclaimed, as he and Sophie took their seats in the gallery at Drury Lane on opening night of Garrick’s
Jubilee
satire. Members of the Covent Garden company who were not working on this particular night had flocked to the rival theater.

“I’ve repeated nothing about what I know of this play, nor has anything you told me about Covent Garden’s spoof been repeated to Garrick or his people,” she protested. “’Tis all I can think to do in such a situation!”

He nodded an acknowledgment as Drury Lane’s curtain parted and comedian Tom King trotted on stage, dressed as a waiter, to recite the prologue. Soon, the audience was convulsed as scene after scene realistically depicting the astounding, ludicrous, and outrageous events of that momentous rainy week in Stratford unfolded brilliantly in front of their eyes.

At one point, the crowd exploded with laughter as an ostensibly empty coach parked on stage began to rock wildly back and forth. Mavis Piggott’s former amour, Geoffrey Bannister, playing one of the morning serenaders, stepped forward and made his musical observations:

Blankets without sheeting, Sir,

Dinners without eating, Sir!

Naught without much cheating, Sir!

Thus ’tis night and day, Sir,

I hope that you will stay, Sir,

To see our Jubilee!

“He’s portraying
you,
darling!” Sophie whispered teasingly.

Hunter pursed his lips and did not reply because the stage was now filled with a whirl of activity. Porters juggled baggage, waiters flew back and forth carrying trays piled high with food, a cook chased two men stealing ribs of beef. Even a figure dressed like James Boswell in a Corsican costume—drenched with water—ambled across the stage offering his rain-soaked book for sale while the sounds of exploding cannons blasted, along with waves of rolling thunder emanating from offstage.

Sophie and everyone around her howled with laughter at the comical sights that cheerfully satirized everything negative that had been said or written about the actual Jubilee—including comments George Colman had himself published as a “correspondent” for the London news journals.

Sophie glanced sideways at Hunter, who appeared glum despite the prevailing hilarity. He slumped deeper into his chair as the pageant of Shakespeare’s characters finally made their much-heralded entrances.

Garrick had wisely identified each of the bard’s plays with a short, instantly recognizable vignette—Shylock pleaded for justice in
The Merchant of Venice;
Titania and Oberon swept across the stage in a gilt carriage drawn by cupids and butterflies as part of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

If that weren’t enough, banners identifying each play guaranteed that everyone would get the message. Sophie’s eyes widened at the scores of characters brandishing flaming swords, brass trumpets, and gaudy umbrellas. Garrick had employed everything and anything to achieve a startling visual effect. It was the largest spectacle London theatergoers had ever witnessed.