Chapter 8 #3
Rita waited at the edge of the stage for her entrance, in full view of the audience but frozen in tableau. She used the precious few minutes she stood there, unmoving, to watch the patrons. Their faces. Who was awake and interested, who was already drifting off.
She was going to bring them along with her, every one of them, on Juliet’s tragic, twisting journey.
She would not leave a single soul behind, whether they liked it or not.
But right now, still waiting for her cue, Rita remained motionless, her head lifted, her hands clasped modestly together.
Her velvet skirts rippled; the tassels on her sleeves bobbed.
She’d forsaken her usual stiff headdress for a more simple jeweled net, gleaming with false gems, and so at least her hair was contained, if not her costume.
She listened. She waited.
The nurse and Lady Capulet, discussing Juliet’s age.
The nurse calling lamb, calling ladybird, summoning her charge as if she might be years away, not rooms.
And then her cue.
Rita dropped her pose, took up her skirts. She rushed to the heart of the stage, obedient, smiling, youthful and joyous. Entirely unaware of her fate.
How now, who calls?
Your mother.
Madam, I am here. What is your will?
WHEN RITA HAD told the great producer Mr. William Poel that she had no sweetheart, she hadn’t been lying.
There was no man in her life who particularly tugged at her heartstrings, although she’d received a couple of not-so-subtle propositions during Much Ado.
One from a fellow cast member (an older roué playing her character’s father, thankfully not included in this tour) and the other from a member of the crew, a comely fellow her age named Freddy who had a cheeky smile and a talent for carpentry, for building things.
Houses. Bridges, perhaps. But more practically for the tour, a movable, puzzle-piece set and the large, ungainly flats that would stand behind it.
She’d declined both of them as diplomatically as she could. She’d made certain to avoid the roué whenever possible and practiced her charm from a distance on Freddy Stern, not wanting to alienate him.
But other than that, she survived alone. She thrived alone.
The tour wound on, Brighton to Southampton, on to Exeter, Plymouth, Bristol.
Sometimes it felt peculiar, this deliberate slow march across the land, never staying in one town more than a fortnight or so.
But mostly it was fine. More than fine, because she was enthralled with the wonders of this vagabond acting life, even when the hotels were so threadbare there was no hot water, or all the food from the kitchen came boiled and served with cabbage, or there weren’t enough rooms to let, so she would share with Ellen, who snored.
Within a little under two months, Rita had settled into the rhythm of it.
She knew who of their group would stay up late at the pubs, drinking more than they should; who told the best jokes; who told the worst. Who could be counted on to share a bite of bread and cheese on the road, or a nip of gin.
Surprisingly, the lack of reliable laundry service would turn out to be their most vexing problem.
Eventually, the costumes began to reek, and their everyday clothing began to reek.
The actors began to shy away from close contact onstage.
Even Rita and her Romeo suffered through it, holding back grimaces as they kissed.
Most of the inns they frequented had at least a local girl who could do the basic wash, but the costumes were another story entirely.
Elizabethan layers of velvets and braiding and feathers and starched lace collars—nothing ordinary, nothing plain.
The costume designer was supposed to have tended to it all, but she’d gotten word that her daughter had come down with the pox.
She’d abandoned them for Glasgow a bare eight weeks into the tour.
They’d endured nineteen performances without her. Nineteen performances under hot lights. Nineteen evenings of moving and sweating and making the scenes run like that locomotive, making the dialogue swift and believable. Poel had had scant luck finding a qualified replacement on such short notice.
A London tailor agreed to join them in Plymouth, a connection of a connection, but took an unflinching look at the work ahead of him and quit within the day.
“I think I know who can save us,” Rita had finally said to her director, desperate for a reprieve. Her entire world smelled of the great unwashed, and it was sour and awful.
“Yes?”
“There’s a good salary for the position?”
Mr. Poel pinched two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Miss Jolivet, at this point, I would hand over my own salary to fill the position. In gold doubloons, if necessary.”
Rita wired her mother.
NEED COSTUME HELP STOP EXPERT TO CLEAN IRON MEND STOP MUST STAY THE ENTIRE TOUR STOP CANNONT STAND THE SMELL STOP WHAT TO DO QUERY COMPANY CAN PAY STOP
The remarkable Jolivet wheels and cogs turned, efficient as ever.
In less than five days’ time, Pauline directed a pair of widowed cousins from Cornwall, a seamstress and a laundress, to the troupe.
Both of their husbands had been roustabouts for Mr. Magellan’s Magickal Circus.
They were well accustomed to a vagabond life.
William Poel thanked Mrs. Jolivet most kindly.
He sent tiger lilies to Pauline and handed, in person, a binding contract and a generous cash bonus to the cousins, who eventually used the funds to help purchase a retirement cottage in Trythogga, a cozy, shingled place with roses and lavender and a resident cat to chase the mice.
RITA WAS FULLY Juliet, falling desperately in love and marrying and dying, then dying again, before a fresh applauding audience every night.
How amazing that she could traverse the kingdom with friends (all right, friendly acquaintances), seeing places she’d never seen before.
Stepping on grass she’d never pressed a foot against before, leaving a mark, fleeting as it was.
Breathing in the fragrance of trees and shrubs that she’d never encountered before, that she didn’t know the names of and could not guess.
It wasn’t long before she realized that many of England’s more populated towns resembled each other to an extraordinary degree, especially in the antiquated quarters, places that had existed since the Romans had first invaded and chiseled out their long, straight roads, established their bathhouses and their forts and temples amid the native druids and wolves.
The wolves were gone now, the druids mostly too.
Yet surviving still were the many cobbled medieval roads that traced those Roman town lines, with deeply trenched funnels down their middles, ready to slough away rainwater and waste, to keep the city clean.
Thatched and patched buildings of all sorts loomed over those old pungent lanes, blocking out the sky.
Some stood braced by timbers, but many were simply bowing back to the earth.
Rita would sometimes walk beneath them, marveling at people’s faith in a few stilt poles to keep time from having its way.
Every quaint country church seemed fronted by a graveyard spilling with lopsided headstones, lichen crawling green and rust along the granite and bricks.
Every tea shop seemed to sell the same scones and Eccles cakes and pork pies. The same rigid ritual of tea, cake, tally, get out.
Every theatre they visited seemed afflicted with drafts tinged with the aroma of linseed oil and face powder and oranges—although the oranges were probably Rita’s imagination, a leftover fantasy from the Bard’s time, when the common people stood crowded against the proscenium to watch the show, digging into the fruit with their bare fingers, dropping the peels to the straw-covered floor.
And the ghost lights, of course.
All the theatres on the tour had a ghost light burning, some small oil lamp usually, a slender pale flame flickering from the center of the empty stage, a brave stab at the dark.
“Oh, don’t you know?” Ellen had said, when Rita had asked her about it after noticing the first one. “It’s the ghost light. You have to keep it lit when the theatre’s empty, no matter what. It’s bad luck otherwise.”
That was early on, a bare month into the tour.
The company was staying in a small but picturesque inn on High Street in Southampton.
Every room was taken; a few disgruntled crewmembers were forced to bunk in the stables.
For the next two weeks, she and Ellen would share a plain, white-plastered chamber fitted with two simple beds and a fireplace that slowly leaked smoke whenever lit, because the chimney didn’t quite draw properly.
That first night, heated bricks had been tucked between the bedsheets; chamber pots had been tucked beneath the beds.
They’d already settled in, sated from a dinner of lamb stew and a few glasses of red wine from the pub below, drowsing in the fading light of the fire.
Rita’s feet hurt from the slightly too small slippers Juliet had to wear.
“Bad luck?” Rita had said, half-asleep, her toes aching. “From angry ghosts?”
“Or the lonely ones,” Ellen answered from her side of the room.
“Which can be just as unlucky, as it happens. Every theatre has a ghost.” She turned her head against her pillow, her braid a tawny slash across the paler case.
“You smile, love, but it’s a fact. The lights appease them, keep them calm, or restful, or whatever they prefer.
” She paused on a yawn. “Remembered, usually. That’s what I think.
Unforgotten. An unhappy ghost can doom a whole production, everyone knows that. ”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She’d never once seen a ghost light burning at the Catharine. Perhaps that explained a few things.
Minutes passed. The shadows in the room melted together, stretched from charcoal into black. The last ticking log in the fireplace fell apart with a sigh.
Ellen said sleepily, “We all hope to be remembered, even the dead.”
AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, THE entire company lingered an extra day in honor of the Bard.
They gathered after the evening’s performance at the Toad and Goose, a fine establishment almost right upon the river—or so swore Freddy Stern, a local son determined to get them there—but down only just a few crooked alleyways first.
SHAKSPAIRE STAYED HERE, declared the sign swinging above the entrance, the paint peeling away in curls.
It might have been true. The tavern looked old enough, with its rough thatched roof and worn wattle.
Framed prints of sheep and geese and dogs climbed up and down the walls (along with a few toads); most of the windows were frosted, several panes cracked.
The bar was long and carved with leaves, the top polished but uneven in spots, as if generations of keeps had rubbed their rags too long in one place, over and over.
The troupe took over the entire bar and most of the tables, there were that many of them.
Rita sat with Ellen and two other actresses, all of them careful with their pints because the floor was uneven and the table wobbled.
They ordered shepherd’s pie and bangers and mash, steak and chips and potted shrimp.
Rita had the steak and chips, which was so hot and delicious that after weeks of cold, greasy fare, she felt her eyes sting with pleasure.
Someone propped their elbow on the tabletop and the entire surface tilted, dashing ale across the wood.
Rita lifted her glass and took a hefty swallow as the other women laughed and grabbed for their napkins.
She lowered her glass. Freddy sat at the bar. He grinned at her, still cheeky. With the warmth of the ale sliding through her, with the fragrance of good beer and good food filling her nose, expanding through her chest, Rita decided to grin back at him.