Chapter 4
And then, reality galloped apace and caught up with us. Ha.
I know your grand theatrical debut didn’t go as planned, but what a wild, mad gift it turned out to be anyway. When the Fates decide to catch you up in their grip, there’s no avoiding it, I guess.
For weeks, I watched you coming and going at odd hours, practicing your lines in mirrors, refining your character.
Throwing yourself into rehearsals, all for that mindless bit of candyfloss that didn’t nearly deserve you or your gifts.
And you never complained. You never showed any anger or dismay or trepidation. I would have, in your shoes.
If I hadn’t run lines with you so many times, I might have been shocked by how things ended up. But I did. So I wasn’t.
My sister, my twin heart, I will write this down in strong India ink and pray you never, ever forget it: You were always a shooting star, meant to streak fire across the heavens.
Even when we were going over your lines, those boorish old things, I could see the magic blazing in you, incandescent.
It was only a matter of time before you burned away everything mediocre around you.
JANUARY, 1902
LONDON, ENGLAND
It didn’t take long for the delirious promise of the Catharine to disintegrate into a harsher truth.
Three days at most. Three days of rehearsal, and the unheated air, and the other actors either ignoring Rita or else addressing her with exaggerated, upper-crust enunciation, as if she could not understand them otherwise.
Three days. Discreet inspection of the ornamentations revealed that much of the gilt was flaking, and the plaster murals decorating the ceiling and walls had been repaired so frequently, and so carelessly, that great patches of color no longer matched.
A towering figure of Aphrodite on the western wall wore a perilously draped tunic now three different shades of cantaloupe, and Adonis, his hand in hers, had two different colored eyes, one green, one gray.
The red velveteen seats were worn shiny along the seams, and once, when an errant limelight dashed light across the closed curtains, a punchboard of moth holes was revealed, countless dazzling dots chewed through the cloth.
Everyone caught unaware backstage was blinded for minutes.
But the worst was the play. Or perhaps it was Ansel Lurie, director of the play.
Or, most likely, it was both of those things.
Thin-haired and slumping into middle age, Lurie had come into modest fame a decade earlier, mainly by directing plays exactly like this one: vacuous, broadly painted, barely saved by the vaudevillian titillation of a plot verging on bawdy.
It was clear to Rita that he deplored the limitations of his reputation.
Lurie was a titmouse that dreamed of being a hawk; he spoke of Shakespeare and Molière and Kyd as if he had known the men personally.
She’d realized quickly that he had hired her for the sharpness of her wit along with her looks, and that deep down he likely despised her, the girl who’d lied to him, who’d used her connections to pry her way into his realm and then turned out to be the best of the lot anyway.
The very first thing he’d said to her, that Monday when she’d shown up for their initial rehearsal, joy and excitement bubbling through her, was, “Listen, Miss New. I have rules, and you’re going to follow them.
I expect you to be prompt, to learn your lines, and to shut your gob when I tell you to, instantly and at once.
Oh, and I’m not going to bother to learn how to pronounce your bloody name. ”
“Yes, you will,” Rita had replied calmly, the only possible response.
And so he had, although it had taken over a month. Neither of them had mentioned it again.
Yet the only time her director ever praised her work was when he could contrast it to one of her fellow players.
No, no! Do it as Miss Jolivet does! Listen to her!
Watch her face, her movements, how she always reacts!
Are you an idiot? Be more like her. Great God, it’s her first sodding play, and she’s waltzing circles around you all!
Which hardly endeared her to the rest of the cast.
Callie Slater, the gray-eyed blonde who had shunned her at the audition, was now playing her bosom friend, Verna.
The other lead, Josie, was played by an actress named Mayme with beautiful auburn tresses and a cockney accent so thick that it had even Rita wincing, although she tried not to show it.
Onstage, Bessie and Verna and Josie bantered and embraced and showed off their cleavage and ankles, giggling at the antics of their suitors.
Offstage, both Callie and Mayme treated Rita with an icy hostility that no amount of friendly overtures would thaw.
She was still someone’s bit of fluff, uninvited, unwelcome.
The women shared a single small dressing room in the upper reaches of the theatre’s attic.
The men shared a larger chamber in the basement, although Rita didn’t envy them the space, as the walls down there were dank with moisture and the ceiling a patchwork of black mold.
At least the attic trapped whatever precious heat there was in the building, scant as it was.
As the weeks wound on, little things of hers began to go missing.
A pencil from her reticule. The middle button from her shirtwaist, hanging unprotected as the rehearsals inched closer to opening night and they all had to be in costume.
A porcelain pot of kohl, brand-new, plus the brush.
A tortoiseshell hair comb, plain and unremarkable except that it had been a birthday gift from Alfred when she’d turned sixteen, and that was when Rita decided she’d had enough.
The next afternoon, the afternoon of the final dress rehearsal, she brought a silver flask with her, discreetly tucked in her purse. It wasn’t really silver, only pewter with a wooden stopper, but there could be no mistaking the brandy inside it.
“BESSIE!” YELLED LURIE from the audience, his tone threaded with impatience. “Show them again what you just did, stage left and cross up, then down right again. People, pay attention! There are musical cues, just follow them! Blood of Christ, how many times must I say it?”
It was the night before the opening, and Lurie’s temper was a storm inside him, a jittery squall, one he let loose on the entire cast at any slight infraction.
Not just the cast and five-man band, but the crew as well, which was always a risk.
Offend the stage manager enough, and perhaps the footlights might fail.
Berate the props mistress enough and the cold, shellacked goose needed for Act Two might mysteriously vanish.
Costumes might no longer fit, belts lost, hats misplaced.
Ansel Lurie always seemed to contain his temper just short of having anyone walk out. However, tonight he seemed especially irate.
In a way, Rita didn’t blame him. The play wasn’t quite in shambles, but it was certainly rough around the edges.
All the ladies knew their lines, but the gentlemen were less certain.
The actor playing Bessie’s beau, Alonzo, sandy-haired and sinewy, tended to chew his way through his lines, with frequent uncomfortable pauses.
His real name was Frank Monroe. He was impossibly comely and impossibly unsuited for the stage.
Offstage, he would barely acknowledge her, but the moment he forgot what he was supposed to say or do onstage, he’d turn to Rita helplessly, puppy-eyed, and she’d have to improvise something to prod him along.
Tomorrow night the show was to open. Posters had been plastered across town; newspaper advertisements had been prominently placed. Both featured excerpts from the reviews of the show’s New York run.
A saucy romp for all! Laughs aplenty! Go on, boys, bring along your best gals and prepare for an evening of cheeky delight!
And, added just for the British premiere: Come and let the three prettiest lasses in London entertain you!
“Alonzo,” snarled Lurie, walking down the center aisle to brace his hands along the edge of the stage, “Alonzo, don’t just gawk at her! You’re supposed to go to your knee here, remember? The big proposal! Oh, God, man, remember?”
“Yes,” said Frank, sounding aggrieved. “Yes, sir, Mr. Lurie. It’s not my fault, though. Bessie didn’t give me the right cue. She dropped her last line, and how am I supposed—”
“I certainly didn’t,” cut in Rita.
“She didn’t,” the director agreed. “We all heard her. I need you to bloody listen—Verna, what’s wrong with you?”
Rita turned to see Callie, done up in a wild froth of jonquil petticoats and lace, standing still as a statue, her face gleaming with sweat. She hugged her arms over her chest and shook her head at the director.
“Are you ill?”
She shook her head again, her mouth a thin, tight line.
“Oh dear,” said Rita, going to her. She placed a hand on the other girl’s arm. “You’re looking a bit off the mark, dearie. Was it something you ate? Or … drank?”
Beneath the burning lights, they locked eyes. Rita smiled.
“Oh,” groaned Mayme suddenly, farther upstage. She bent over and vomited her lunch across the boards.
Everyone except Rita cried out, especially when Callie jerked away and tried to stagger offstage, but didn’t quite make it before retching too.
“WHAT WAS IT?” Inez asked much later that night, well after midnight, both of them nestled by the fire, Inez in her eiderdown, Rita in warm flannel, clean from her bath.
The moon shone cold and distant through the windows.
A block or so away, a pair of dogs called the watch, short barks, long yelps.
“What did you give them? Nothing dangerous, I trust.”
“No, nothing dangerous, just something from our nursery days that Mrs. Corbyn was good enough to procure for me. Castor oil.”
“Oh …”
“Just a touch. Still, you’d think they would have tasted it, wouldn’t you?”