Leading Lady (28 page)

The first role to be cast was that of Jacob Twig, the bailiff, and while not the lead, it was not a small part. When his name was called, Noah put his index finger into the playscript to mark his place and walked out onto the wing.

Stand tall,
he reminded himself, taking a deep breath. He walked out to center stage, where the actor who would read the part of Mr. Doggrass waited. Blessed with a good memory, Noah felt his confidence build as he quoted two sentences at a time before having to glance down at the playscript.

“Yes; I was in the public-house when the Captain was brought in with that gash in his shoulder!”

Heat rose from the footlights and wafted down upon him from the battens. The trickle of sweat meandering down Noah’s back signaled for the itching to strike full force.

“I stood beside his bed; it was steeped in blood. . . .”

He had to ignore it. He may be new to London, but he had experience enough to ignore outside distractions and focus totally upon his part.

“ . . . when I looked on the Captain’s blue lips and pale face . . .”

The itching made the sweating worse, and vice versa. But he was Jacob Twig, he reminded himself. Not the Noah Carey whose skin was on fire.

“ . . . I thought what poor creatures we are; then something whispered in my—”

“Thank you, that will be enough” came from the first row. “Mr. Black will show you out.”

“Oh, but I’ll be reading three other parts,” Noah said, peering into the dimness.

“Sorry. We don’t really have a place for you. Better luck next time.”

****

“I say, Noah, stop thrashing about! I’ve rehearsals in the morning!”

“Sorry,” Noah muttered, wondering if any night had ever been so long.

“It’s time you saw a doctor!” Jude groused.

“If it’s no better in a couple of days, I’ll—”

“ ‘To sleep!’ ” bellowed through the thin adjoining wall. “ ‘Perchance to dream!’ ”

Noah and Jude both smothered chuckles, and then Noah attempted to lie still and ignore what felt like a dozen ants performing morris dances upon his skin. That, and cling to his side of the concave mattress to keep from rolling against Jude.
Three more days,
he reminded himself. He would have his own room and bed and could thrash about without robbing anyone else’s sleep.

Most times during the day the itching was more tolerable, what with his excitement over living in London, pouring over the
Stage
and the
Era
to line up audition dates, touring the great city on foot and by omnibus. But at night there were no distractions, save Jude’s occasional snoring and the laughter and music coming through the open window from the Hotel de Province next door.

Paying dues,
Noah reminded himself.
Grandchildren on your knee at fireside, remember?

A few seconds more of trying to ignore the itching, and he was praying,
I’m not quite sure I can afford these dues, Father. Please make this itching go away.

****

“Sorry, old chum,” he said to Jude in the morning after coming up from the kitchen with a pitcher of hot water to make it up to his long-suffering friend.

Because the one bathroom had to serve a dozen lodgers—thirteen until the trombonist left—the Savill family, and two servants, it was reserved only for a once-weekly tub bath. Pitchers and bowls in the rooms served for shaving, brushing teeth, and sponge bathing. Fortunately, three days ago Noah had discovered a public facility on Orange Street off Leicester Square, St. Martin’s Baths, that charged only a
tuppence for a cold bath in the evenings. Jude laughed at his fastidiousness, but Noah reckoned he would walk as much as possible and save his pennies rather than go about with oily hair. And now with this itch, he had more reason to want to scrub down completely.

“And
I’m
sorry for complaining,” Jude said, lathering his face with a shaving brush. He gave Noah a worried look in the cracked wall mirror. “Are you positive you’ve not gotten lice somehow?”

“If I did, surely you’d have them by now.” Noah eyed the worn blanket that served as a coverlet on the bed. “Don’t they crawl?”

“I believe they hop,” Jude replied, scratching his bare shoulder with his left hand. “Like jackrabbits.”

Noah’s eyes widened. “Why are you—”

His friend turned to raise innocent brows at him. “Beg pardon?”

“Jude!” Noah laughed, shaking his head.

“Seriously Noah,” Jude said on the narrow staircase a few minutes later, “It’s time you saw a doctor.”

“It can wait until I’ve found a job.”

“And what if it gets worse in the meantime? If you’re worried over running out of money, I still have some of what you lent me when I—”

“No.” Noah scratched above his right elbow through his sleeve. “But I appreciate the offer.”

At the bottom of the staircase, they stood aside to allow room for Horace Fletcher, who had fallen in behind them on the first floor and tromped down the steps like a company of infantrymen without thought for those still asleep.

“Everyone on his floor is ready to hang him,” Jude muttered as the utility actor disappeared through the dining room doorway. “And by the way, it’s quite selfish of you . . . not taking some of your own money back for a doctor.”

“How is that selfish? You’re already sharing your room.”

“For which Mr. Savill charges you full rent.” Jude’s nostrils
flared the tiniest bit. “Why was it all right for me to accept money from you, but you can’t take some of it back from me? Is it because your
Lordship
is too high and mighty to—”

“Jude . . .” Noah glanced toward the open dining room door. He had asked Jude not to spread word of his title.

His friend continued, but with voice lowered. “ . . . take charity from—”

Noah clapped a hand upon his shoulder. “I’ll take the money, Jude. And thank you!”

The dining room was as tiny as any of the other rooms, with four seats available at each of two square cloth-covered tables. But as the lodgers kept varied hours, Noah had yet to see anyone have to stand to eat. Meals were served à la carte, with Mrs. Savill or her kitchen maid, Eweretta, standing by for portion control. From eight until nine, there were rolls and butter, sausages, wedges of yellow cheese, and tea or coffee. Sundays were the only variation of that theme, with ham and potato pancakes and poached eggs.

According to Jude, Mrs. Savill had realized long ago that those in-house for lunch were often absent from supper and vice versa. So to lighten her load, she cooked a huge kettle of soup to serve for both meals with crusty brown bread and butter. And to economize, every odd day’s soup contained no meat. There was goulash soup on Mondays, lentil soup on Tuesdays, oxtail soup on Wednesdays, potato soup on Thursdays, hunter’s stew on Fridays, and bean soup on Saturdays. The only sweets were at tea time, which included such savories as warm apple strudel or plum cake, with no seconds allowed, though coffee and tea were plenteous. Sundays were nonsoup days, and again, the same meal was served for lunch and supper. On Sunday past it was
sauerbraten
with dumplings and red cabbage, and Noah had no complaint, for it was delicious both times.

“Your turn to watch the telephone, Carey,” said Lionel Rye at their table that morning. The older actor had played utility roles at a dozen theatres, but his passion was the novel
he was writing, and many times during the day Noah could hear the tattoo of typewriter keys as he passed the second-floor landing. “I’ll relieve you after lunch.”

“Yes, very well,” Noah said, buttering his roll. After breakfast he accompanied Jude upstairs to fetch stationery and stamp and a copy of the
Midsummer Night’s Dream
playscript he had borrowed from an actor on the second floor. He accepted reluctantly the fiver Jude dug out of an old flat tobacco tin he kept stashed in the short space beneath an ancient wardrobe.

“There’s a doctor on the north side of Coventry, before you get to Piccadilly Circus,” Jude advised, taking up bowler hat and umbrella.

In the sitting room, which also served as hotel lobby, an amiable fellow named Basil Manning sat at an ancient piano, softly singing his tenor part in the chorus in
H.M.S. Pinafore
at the Savoy.

Piano notes became even softer as Mr. Manning turned to give him an apologetic look. “Are you about to study lines?”

“Not until I’ve written home,” Noah said, folding himself onto the low and lumpy brown sofa. “And I can block you out. Please continue.”

As he picked up an outdated issue of
Era
from the lamp table to use as a lap desk, he returned the smile of Frau Roswalt, sitting in the light of the window and darning stockings, for which lodgers paid her a halfpenny each. She looked fragile, with skeletal fingers pulling a needle through the wool, but according to Jude, she could reach and hang up the telephone on the adjacent wall in mid-ring. Mr. Savill simply shrugged whenever anyone complained, and with
every lodger certain he was but one telephone call away from a job or better opportunity, guard duty was the only option.

With a novice’s optimism, Noah had hoped his first letter home would bear good news. But he had failed to land a part in yet another casting call, held yesterday at the Gaiety Theatre on the Strand for a minor part in Henry Jones’s
Heart of Hearts.

Before I even opened my mouth, the stage director thanked me for coming and said I was too tall,
Noah wrote while scratching his chest through his shirt.

He did not mention the itching. What would be the point of worrying her? After sealing the envelope and rising to drop it in the letter box, he studied the playscript until lunch, even though he had seen Shakespeare’s play performed twice and read it three times over his lifetime. After lunch he set out on foot up Coventry Street, scanning the names upon bronze plaques outside doors. He found one inscribed with the incongruous name of
Amos Payne, Doctor of Medicine.

“Step into my surgery and take off your coat and shirt,” instructed the physician, who looked younger than Noah’s twenty-seven years. He pressed his thumb into the rash upon Noah’s upper arm. “Hmm. Not measles.”

“I had them when I was an infant,” Noah offered.

“Do you ever go out into rural areas?”

“Not since a week ago.”

“A week ago?”

“I lived on a sheep farm in Yorkshire.” Which was true, though he had started to say
estate
and changed his mind at the last second. The waiting room furniture and the desk inside the surgery looked expensive. His experience with Doctor Ryce had shaken his belief that all doctors chose their profession for altruistic reasons. He wished to give Doctor Payne no temptation to increase his bill.

“Hmm. That’s it, then.” The doctor backed up, folded his arms. “You’ve stumbled across some sort of poisonous plant. Some wild parsnip, probably.”

“I can’t recall doing so.”

“You don’t have to be in direct contact. Just being downwind from wild parsnip mixed in a pile of burning leaves can affect you.”

Who burns leaves in July?
Noah thought.

“Or petting a cat or dog whose fur rubbed against it,” the doctor went on.

Noah nodded. In the course of visiting some of the tenants’ cottages for farewells the Sunday afternoon before leaving, he had held Mrs. Gale’s cat after the animal jumped up in his lap.

When he admitted such to Doctor Payne, the doctor smiled and said, “Lanolin will take care of the problem.”

Thank you, Father!
Noah prayed.

“But it may take several days,” Doctor Payne went on, “with such a severe case as yours. Be patient.”

“I can be patient,” Noah said.

The examination and large jar of lanolin amounted to a reasonable twelve shillings and sixpence, causing Noah to feel guilty over his misgivings. Stepping over the threshold and out again onto the pavement of Coventry Street, he decided that he would deliver the good doctor a couple of theatre tickets as soon as he landed a part. And he was positive one waited just around the corner, now that the itching was on its way to being a thing of the past.

Twenty-One

“And you say acting has been your dream ever since you were a child?” asked the reporter for the Arts section of the
London Chronicle
in Muriel’s parlour on the afternoon of the twentieth of July. Mr. Fines’s dark hair was heavily oiled and divided by a precision part above the beginning of his left eyebrow. The pencil in his long fingers made curious swirls and loops upon his notebook page, symbols he had explained to Muriel as “shorthand.”

“Yes,” Muriel replied, allowing sentiment to soften her voice. “My parents took me to see
The Countess Cathleen
when I was nine. I was smitten! Afterward I gathered my little playfellows into the garden, where we staged our own production for parents and servants. Naturally I played the part of the countess.”

Mr. Fines was smiling as the pencil moved. It paused a second later, and he looked up. “Are you quite sure it was
The Countess Cathleen,
Lady Holt? Yeats only wrote it six or seven years ago.”

Muriel rolled her eyes prettily. “Well, it couldn’t have been that, then, could it have?”

The reporter chuckled. “The actual play doesn’t really mat—”

“It was
Hamlet,
” Muriel corrected with no fear of contradiction, for she reckoned Shakespeare had been dead for at least a hundred years. “And I pretended to be Ophelia.”