Exit the Actress (31 page)

London is dismal. The rebuilding is slow and messy, and people seem to be leaving the city, rather than suffer to live here. Dirt, stone, and building crews everywhere you look. The City still looks blackened and charred and frankly depressing—but it is better than my wife’s family in Suffolk.

I miss your gay heart and loving company. Do not stay away forever. I couldn’t bear it.

All the loveliest love I have,

Teddy

Note—
Have you heard? Henry Jermyn has been sent away from court for fornicating (what a brilliant farmyard word) with Castlemaine—or aspiring to! She denies it,
naturellement.
Hart disappears directly after the show each night. It is said, to be with her. I thought you would wish to know.

I read and re-read Teddy’s letter, my heart eased by familiarity. It is loneliness, I realised. I am lonely. But I do not know him yet, my heart reasons. Perhaps when I do he will … he will … he will what? He doesn’t even seem to like me!

Four nights alone! I hear them come into the house. The whole street can probably hear them, as these boys make no effort to be quiet. Some sleep where they land (Buckingham never seems to make it upstairs, and I always find him tangled up in the cushions on the floor), but Buckhurst is always careful to retire to his bedroom. He opens my door and wishes me a formal good night, never suggesting I follow him. When I try to suggest it, he pretends he has not heard me. A blandness has come over him, obscuring all the sharpened intensity that came before. In truth, my heart is not engaged either—only my pride and my hope.

I know I have made a terrible mistake.
But I dare not correct it. I feel painted into this unhappy corner. Why is admitting I am wrong so terrifying? Not that I am wrong, I think: that I am unloved—that is where humiliation lives. This is not the love I have sought, and I have travelled too far down this wrong road. I must make my way back. I feel small in my foolish disappointment.

Late:

The boys went out carousing, Buckhurst, it seems, would rather common whores to me, and I was enjoying an evening of blessed quiet, cosy in my nightgown and socks, with Ruby asleep in her basket and Catherine, Sedley’s ten-year-old daughter, asleep upstairs, when Johnny Rochester returned early.

“Still up, my Ellen chickie?” he asked, lightly kissing my brow. He smelled strongly of drink. He pulled off his curled wig and scratched his short, dark hair. “Ah, you have tidied up! I was hoping you would. I thought if we left it long enough—”

“Why doesn’t he want me?” I burst out unexpectedly. I had not planned to confide my woes to anyone, but they could not be contained any longer.

“Because he got what he wanted, naturally,” he said easily, dropping onto the settle opposite. Even drunk, Johnny retains his grace.

I looked at him, uncomprehending.

“Ugh,” he said, impatient with my slow absorption. “He wanted to see if he could get you here. And he did. So?”

“But we—”

“Bedded?” he asked crassly, sounding bored and kicking off his shoes. I winced. “Well, yes, of course you did, but that was just for form’s sake, really.”

Form?

He yawned and looked at me. “Bucky is only interested in what he
cannot
have. Once he
can
have it, there is no joy. That is the trouble with people who
have
everything. Terribly dull way to live, really.” He yawned again, but beneath the veneer of dispassion, I sensed an earnest care. “See, for myself, I seem to enjoy nothing. Neither what I
can
have, nor what I
can’t
have—which is even duller.”

“He does not want me?”

“No. Best thing you could do is run away.
Go.
Leave tonight. Then he will
always
want you.
Vite, chérie! Vite!
”

Vite. Vite.
I am packing.

Hart’s burning passion has turned to impenetrable coldness. I am not sure I mind. It is easier to navigate his anger than his unfinished love. He opposes my return to the theatre. Dryden and Tom are interceding, but as a star and shareholder Hart carries much weight. I am desperate but try not to show it. We certainly cannot play
mad couple
parts at the moment.

I have engaged a cleaning woman for Drury Lane with the little money I have left from Buckhurst. Ridiculous for so dilapidated a house, but I cannot live in such a mess. I do not think Mother has washed the sheets since I left. Jill, a sweet girl from up the lane, starts tomorrow and will come twice a week. Four shillings. I feel weary with change.

Compromise—
at last
. I am to perform, but in Dryden’s
Indian Emperor
(Cydaria
again
to Hart’s Cortez), and then Samira in Dryden’s
The Surprisal
—not comedies.
Heigh-ho.

“This way he can exude
gravitas,
” reasoned Dryden.

“Not sure Cortez had gravitas,” countered Teddy.

“Well, he certainly killed a lot of people,” said Tom, “which Hart is
certainly
up for at the moment.”

Oh dear. Will he hold a grudge
forever
?

“A wounded pride strikes more deeply than a wounded heart—but then you rather smashed both, so I don’t know,” Tom offered. “But both mend in time.”

Any idea how much time?

We get through it. Hart manages to convince the audience that he is in love with me, despite never looking me in the eyes and flinching when I touch him. I manage to appear an adoring mistress, though I am a tightly wound ball of contempt. Until the epilogue. Hart claimed the prologue, but the epilogue is my moment. The audience—ever up on current gossip—watch us closely for outward signs of our turmoil. Dryden has tactfully written out the kiss at the end. Thank God.

Note
—I feel as if the audience has cooled towards me. I am perceived as a wayward harlot. Johnny confirmed it this evening. I am the talk of the town. I am thought to be a fickle, money-grubbing orange girl, raised above her station. My switch from orange girl to actress used to enchant them. I mind much more than I expected.

Note
—Teddy was right. Hart does disappear just after the show.

August 30, 1667

New Dorset House

My dearest Mrs. Gwyn,

Epsom was desolate without you. I have returned seeking only your company. Will you do me the honour of dining with me tomorrow evening? My soul wastes without you.

I wait upon your reply,

Lord Charles Buckhurst

His
soul
—what rot. His soul did not notice I was there, so I think it will do nicely without me. Mother is already ordering poor Jill about, and so I have raised her wage to four and a half shillings. At this rate I must get back to playing leads soon.

“You see.
Now
he is on the run,” Rochester said, pouring brandy into his coffee (it was only ten in the morning).

“Goodness, you people get up damnably early,” Etheredge said, trying to shake himself awake.

“
We
would rather be in our beds, but duty calls,” said Teddy, addressing Ruby in a sing-song voice, dunking his toast wedge into his coffee. I had requested an emergency family conference at the coffee-house and insisted they rise before noon. Buckhurst’s notes were arriving in droves, and I needed help.

“But I do not
want
a man who only
wants
me if I run away,” I said, to no one in particular.

“Then you do not
want
this man at all,” said Rochester.

“Keep running,” said Teddy.

Johnny is right: I do
not
want this man at all. I wanted to be free of Hart, to be swept away by an ardent lover, to be reckless, and, most of all, to be loved. I have returned in defeat, and I have no interest in trying again.

Note
—After several unanswered notes, I finally stopped by Madame Ross’s (still terrifying) in search of Rose. I was astonished to learn that she no longer works there. Then where is she? Worrying.

Wrapped in my counterpane, I am curled in the window-seat. The glass is cool against my forehead as I look out to the sleeping street below. A mother cat and her new litter are nestled into a pile of loose sacking against the next house, the lamplighters are working to repair the lamp across the street, and the baker and his wife are having a row in their house on the corner. It is a poor neighbourhood, one I had hoped to leave by now.

The money from Buckhurst is dwindling, and I have already had to dismiss Jill, although I recommended her to Peg, and so she is assured a far better position. I am unable to support Mother any longer. I hope that she will return to the tavern, but I fear that she will resort to her other profession and seek out a group of girls to sell—will I ever cease to be shocked by her selfishness? At least Grandfather has found work once more in Oxford and is happily occupied in the library at Christ Church.