Page 3

‘Certainly, Miss Stafford. But tell me, do you intend to read it with Elinor?’

The young woman looked at him, hesitated and then replied, ‘I thought it might amuse and instruct her.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it will. She’ll start her plaints again about wanting a sister.’ His voice was amused. ‘Just don’t read her The Deserted Village else I’ll have to sacrifice my Capability Brown vistas to rebuild the village and smallholdings that once inhabited my parkland.’

Nicholas Digby smiled. ‘Ah, but that desecration of rural cots and productive land happened in your grandfather’s day.’

‘You know, Nicholas, that to you radical social reformers it don’t much matter when it happened. It must be redressed.’

The young man laughed in acknowledgement. He then noticed his employer’s usually unruffled manner was a trifle discomposed. ‘Are you heading for Brooks’s later, sir?’ he enquired in a mild voice.

Ivor Asprey had taken the letters from his secretary’s hand and was reading and signing them with an abstracted air. Eventually he answered, his usual languor returned. ‘I will tonight. But, Nicholas, could you get me a ticket for the theatre at Covent Garden tomorrow. There’s a performance of Hamlet that’s proving very popular.’

‘Just one ticket, sir? You may have to share a box.’

‘Yes, just one. This is family business, not entertainment.’ His voice was grim.

Both Nicholas Digby and Miss Stafford exchanged a fleeting glance before the young governess bade her farewell and left the room, the volume of Goldsmith’s novel in her hand.

* * *

‘I’m late! I’m late!’ Two young women ran across the Piazza towards the artists’ entrance to Covent Garden Theatre. The building with its grand colonnaded façade had been rebuilt after a devastating fire six years before and the stone was still gleaming, the pillars rising nobly above the busy street where grubby urchins played, hawked cheap goods and begged.

Laughing, the girls dashed into a small dressing room in the ill-lit warren of spaces backstage. One was Mary Summer, dark-haired with a whimsical cast to her features, always in motion and full of humour. The other, her mistress, Angelica Leigh, was so astonishingly beautiful that strangers paused in conversation at the sight of her. This was as much to do with a sparkling sweetness and humour in her expression as her remarkable colouring. She was blessed with clouds of fine wavy hair of a brilliant red-gold which owed nothing to the cosmetical administrations of beet juice or saffron and carbonate paste.

Angelica threw herself into the chair by the glass, undid her loose bun and began to drag a comb through her long curling hair. She turned to her maid, who was happy to act as her theatrical dresser, and said in a low musical voice, ‘Mary, can you make sure that diadem of myrtle and honeysuckle is not wilting or dead? And that the rosemary, pansies and daisies will last another day before we get more from the market tomorrow?’ She turned back to the looking-glass. ‘Oh, how I wish I could cut this hair!’ she muttered almost to herself, disentangling the comb.

‘Your contract demands your hair remains long, Miss Angelica.’

‘Fiddlesticks!’ Her face was fine-boned with translucent skin, enlivened by her large, heavy-lidded eyes of a striking hazel-green. She was small and slightly built but emanated an energy and sensibility that made her such an affecting tragic presence on stage.

The white muslin dress for the ‘mad scene’ hung on the wall behind her, ready for the evening’s performance. Mary had stitched silk forget-me-nots onto the bodice and skirt in a delicate tracery of green and pale blue. This was the second identical costume that had been made for her as the first was still drying after the previous evening’s performance. Beside it, Mary hung the evening dress they had brought with them, a gauzy green affair in tulle and silk ribbon with a low tucked bodice and a ruffled hem.

Angelica had slipped out of her day dress and was instead attired in a dressing gown of pink satin that she tied round her narrow waist. ‘Miss Angelica, shall I assist with your cosmétique?’ Mary was beginning to prepare the pearl powder to dust over her skin to make it paler and more translucent in the soft stage lights. She then reached for the Indian cochineal pigment and corn starch stored in a small glass-stoppered pot to add a flush to the cheeks and lips.

At this point there was a rap at the door and without permission, Mr Dunbar, the theatre manager, entered the room. He was middle-aged and had been an actor himself but now was balding and corseted, with a harassed, irascible air. ‘Miss Angelica, the tank for the stream was leaking. We’ve put mastic in it now. But when it’s refilled the water will be colder than usual.’

Angelica turned her large eyes towards him and shivered. ‘It’s frigid enough as it is. You don’t want your Ophelia getting pleurisy and really dying, do you, Mr Dunbar?’ Her voice was light but the death scene was an ordeal she had to go through every night. The management had been envious of the success of the theatre at Sadler’s Wells with its water extravaganzas and mock sea battles on stage and Mr Dunbar had decided that Ophelia should not drown off-stage, as Shakespeare had intended, but stumble beneath the ‘willow grown aslant’ and slip into a real stream in full sight of the audience. This affecting death scene had been a triumph. Those of a more sensitive disposition almost fainted with sympathy and grief while the rowdier elements, carousing in the pit, savoured the sight of Ophelia being retrieved from the water, her flimsy chemise so sodden it clung to her lovely, lifeless form. Even the most drunken and prurient were silenced by the pathetic sight.

Mr Dunbar congratulated himself on this innovation, together with his foresight in engaging Edmund Kean to play Hamlet for a season. This young actor had taken the theatrical world by storm with his portrayal of Shylock earlier in the year and was newly hailed as a great tragedian. Both attractions ensured a full house every night, but Dunbar was insensible to the demands it made on his young actress.

He was about to leave as abruptly as he had arrived, but at the door turned with another thought. ‘Miss Angelica, this play and your performance seems to have attracted more disreputables than usual.’ He looked uncomfortable. It was not in his character to reassure, but the audiences had been particularly rowdy and he thought it necessary to show some sympathy for his troupe. ‘It is hard for you actors to endure the bawdy catcalls when the Prince speaks unchastely to Ophelia. Silence them with the power of your acting.’ He nodded and left.

Angelica looked at Mary with her eyebrow raised. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Mr Dunbar show any concern for us before. Perhaps he’s afraid my delicate spirits won’t survive the rudeness from the floor and I’ll cry off and leave him in the lurch?’ She was tucking her luxuriant hair into a net, ready for the wig. ‘What do you think, Mary?’

‘He’s a prosy fool and knows nothing other than how to turn a penny. Pay him no heed, Miss Angelica,’ Mary said over her shoulder as she pulled an orange and purple brocade dress from the closet and retrieved the long corset from behind the door. Mary had grown up on the streets of Covent Garden, picking up discarded fruit and vegetables for a living, until Angelica’s mother had stumbled over her one night after the theatre. The scruffy, half-starved child had been trying to sleep in a doorway and Mrs Leigh, knowing too well the dangers of the street for young girls, took her home to train as a maid. She was not much older than her own daughter and so Mary and Angelica grew almost as close as sisters, despite the disparity in their positions in the household. They were each protective of the other.

Angelica slipped out of the dressing gown and stood before Mary in the flimsiest of chemises over which the corset was fitted and tightly laced. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the discomfort. To think our grandmamas had to wear these every day!’

‘Your grandmama might but mine would ’ave bin toiling in the fields with everything hangin’ out, no doubt.’

‘Oh, Mary!’

‘Just tellin’ as I know it, Miss Angelica.’

The production had been updated to a Georgian tragedy, with costumes from the end of the last century, and Angelica stepped into the richly embellished dress with a triangular bodice that emphasised her tiny waist. This too was laced up the back. She then lifted a white powdered wig from the wig-block on her dressing table and placed it over her netted hair. Both women inspected her reflection in the speckled looking-glass. Angelica appeared grand but impersonal in the armour of boned corsets, brocade and elaborate wig. The contrast with this and her later dishabille in her last scene added drama and pathos to her performance. The ‘mad scene’ became all the more shocking for the audience when for the first time they saw her natural hair undressed and flaming in colour, her garments reduced to a simple lawn chemise.

Angelica was in full costume and seated, leaning towards the glass, outlining her eyes with a sooty waxy paste when there was a soft tap on the door. They turned to see the handsome face of a young man with wavy brown hair and amused eyes peering into the room. ‘Miss Leigh, are you accepting visitors?’ he asked with a flirtatious smile.