“Do come out with me tonight, Kennett,” urged Kit, lounging in the shadows outside the ladies’ dressing room. “There are so many men far more agreeable than Mr. Crowder in this neighborhood."
“I have had quite enough of men for the moment,” Jenny muttered. On the last two Saturdays since her benefit night, Mr. Budge had appeared like clockwork to claim her salary for Mr. Crowder. Jack, cool as ice, had handed over precisely two crowns to the odious little man each time, while that clever Mr. Belair diverted her true salary into a fund marked “sundries” in the books. “Present company always excepted, of course, dear.”
“But it is our last play night in Thornhampton and there is the most delicious little riverside grog shop I’ve discovered. Would you not rather carry away some happy memories from this place?”
“I shall be very happy to be gone.”
“Yes, but in the meantime, I can’t bear to think of you all alone in that drab little room of yours with nothing whatever to cheer you.” He dropped his voice and leaned closer as Ashbrook emerged out of the wings and trotted past them up the stairs. “You are a woman in full bloom, my dear. Why not have your revenge on Crowder in the most pleasant way?”
Jenny could not help smiling at Kit’s exaggerated leer. How could she explain to him how little pleasure there was for her in the arms of anonymous men now that she was forced to contemplate again the full ruin of her life? She had thought to escape Crowder’s control, but she saw now she was only a puppet dancing to his tune. Her amorous encounters were as empty as every other part of this life that could never be her own. But she would not inflict her malaise on Kit, who still preferred his pleasures immediate and uncomplicated.
“Run away, my darling,” she smiled. “You have never needed me to enjoy yourself in the end.”
“In the end, perhaps not. But who shall hear my witty comments beforehand? With whom shall I share all the lurid details of my conquest? It’s your company I crave,” pouted Kit.
“I have been poor company, of late.“ Jenny sighed.
“Then at least lend me your presence. With you on my arm, I might at least fend off these females who dog my every step since I have begun playing Captain Starhawke.”
“Poor Kit, too attractive for your own good.” Jenny laughed. “Have they been trying to convert you?”
Kit assumed a shocked expression. “Heavens, Kennett, what are you suggesting?”
“It must break their hearts,” she teased. She could not resist putting out her hand to gently stroke back a careless strand of his pale cornsilk hair and in that moment, his dark blue eyes locked urgently onto hers.
“I cannot bear to see you lonely, Jenny,” he told her, all sarcasm gone. “You do know that if it were at all within my power to bring you . . . any sort of pleasure or comfort . . .”
She drew one finger down to cross his beautiful lips.
“I know,” she whispered. “You are a very sweet, very generous man to say it."
"You deserve so much," said Kit. "If I were made differently —"
"Surely, darling, no one has ever had cause to complain of how you are made." Jenny smiled. "I shall not be the first! Anyway, it is your friendship I treasure above all else. Besides, it would be a kind of incest, would it not? I feel like you are the only family I have in the world. And I cherish you for it.”
Kit sighed and slouched away from the wall, his eyes still wistful but his mouth beginning to quirk back into a feline grin.
“Then I shall speak to you like your old Auntie Kit. Don’t shut yourself away. Soon enough, your Mr. Crowder will grow weary of this foolish game and hie himself back up to Grimtown, or wherever it is he hails from —”
“Leeds.”
“Exactly. And then, Kennett, the mice shall play.”
The Fairweather Company removed itself from Thornhampton to reopen on May Eve in the sail-making town of Charton-on-Crewe on the coach road near the Dorset border. The playhouse was an old converted sail loft with a row of gloomy cubicles behind the stage to serve for manager’s office, dressing rooms and wardrobe and the rickety loft above for the paint room and carpentry shop.
Jack opened on a Tuesday with Pizarro, to show what they were made of, followed by Prospero And Ariel. They hadn’t the means to get up a full production of The Tempest, but by cutting out the clowns and most of the masque, but for a pretty little ballet by Miss Bishop, to focus on Prospero and Ariel and their revenge against the usurper Duke, and the romance of the lovers, Jack was able to turn it into a serviceable after-piece. Thursday next, he brought out The Lure Of The Indies and one of Richard’s most popular farces, concluding the first week on Saturday with Plumleigh as Richard III and the feminine farce, In Society.
They drew very respectable houses and later that night, Jack was wondering how to slip a few extra shillings into everyone’s pay without Alphonse noticing. Then he looked up and saw the face of Budge, the solicitor, gazing down at him like a recurring nightmare.
“Right on time for your weekly pound of flesh, I see, Mr. Budge,” Jack observed.
Beside him, Alphonse made a notation in the books and nudged two crowns toward him. “I should think your master incurs far more expense sending you to follow us all round the countryside than he shall ever wring out Mrs. Kennett’s wages.”
“My client is a very wealthy and determined man, Mr. Dance,” sniffed Budge. “Expense is not his object.”
“Then what is his object?” Jenny had just come in on Kit’s arm. Her complexion paled in dismay to find Budge there, but her tone was furious.
“Even you ought to have guessed that by now, Mrs. Crowder,” the solicitor replied, turning to face her as he tucked the two silver coins into his purse. “He wants you home in Crowder House where you belong.”
“Crowder House has never been my home,” said Jenny.
“Nevertheless. You are his wife and you owe your husband the duties of a wife.”
“I owe him nothing!”
“Tut, Madame,” and Budge shook his head and held up a hand. “It is none of my affair, the intimacies of your marriage. But I will tell you this. My client will not indulge your whimsy forever. There is only so much disgrace he will endure.”
“Then let him divorce me. I shall not contest it.”
“Divorce is such an ugly thing. Mr. Crowder shall not inflict it upon his son, and if you had any natural maternal feelings —”
“That’s quite enough out of you, Budge,” Jack exclaimed, charging around the desk to close on the solicitor. “You have no legal right to harry my people. Run home to your keeper and tell him to use a muzzle next time he sends a dog to fetch for him.”
“Do not imagine we don’t know how you’ve been cheating us,” Budge rounded on Jack, even as he was prudent enough to fall back toward the door. “And don’t you imagine,” he flung, in turn, at Jenny, “that these gallants will continue to protect you when your upkeep becomes far more trouble than you are worth.” And he shouldered past Kit and out the door.
“How can I be rid of him?” Jenny groaned. She and Tory sat in the coffee room of the coaching inn in Charton-on-Crewe. Jack had taken rooms for all the single ladies upstairs, for security, and he and Tory were lodging cheaply in a room over the dry goods shop next door.
“I’d march into Smithfield Market with a yoke round my neck to be sold at auction, just to be free of him,” Jenny declared.
Tory’s head bobbed up, but she held her tongue. She had been sold at auction for a slave, once, and the humiliation and helplessness still burned within her. But she dared not confide that to Jenny.
“There must be something less dramatic you can do,” she said instead. “Are there no other legal means to effect a separation?”
“There are ways, of course, but they must be initiated by the husband or by mutual consent,” Jenny replied. “And Mr. Crowder appears to have no intention of letting me go.”
“But can you do nothing to separate from him? Even after he beat you?” Tory had lowered her voice, although at midday, there was scarcely any other custom in the place. “That must be grounds for some sort of legal intervention.”
“It is,” Jenny agreed. “In theory. But, Tory, the poor woman must be half dead or else the husband must be caught in the act to support the charge. Otherwise . . . ” she broke off and gazed down into her glass.
“Otherwise, what?”
Jenny sighed and raised her eyes again. “Husbands beat their wives every day. It’s the natural order of things. Without immediate and convincing proof, it’s a very difficult charge for a woman to get taken seriously. Especially if the law decides that her actions warrant a beating.”
Tory did not trust herself to reply. Back in the islands, they had convinced themselves that England was the most enlightened place for them to flee to because no one owned slaves there.
“He might divorce me, if he chose, but he won’t,” Jenny continued, miserably. “He could afford it, he’s well-connected enough to secure one and my infidelities would give him a legal claim against me. But the scandal would be prohibitive. And any lesser separation will be just as humiliating to him. Even if it’s all my fault, it would reflect poorly on him, that this powerful personage could not keep his wife in order. A runaway wife is an embarrassment. He’s paid for a wife and he will have her under lock and key, where a wife belongs.”
Tory glanced around as if she might find a word of encouragement to draw out of the air and noticed Mr. Ashbrook just coming in the door. He was not in his painter’s smock, for once, but wore a slightly rumpled tan-colored jacket over loose brown trousers, like a rustic. And Tory felt a pang of longing for the comfort of simple male clothing. How could she lecture Jenny about freedom when she had submitted herself to stays?
Ashbrook saw them and hesitated, but Tory waved him over.
Mr. Dance said I might find you here,” he told them, hovering near their table. “But I shall fly away if I’m intruding.”
“We were only considering my future life of bondage,” said Jenny, with an acerbic twist to her smile as she lifted her glass again. “We are ripe for a change of subject, Mr. Ashbrook.”
“Yes, I saw that Budge fellow lurking about the place last night,” Ashbrook agreed, drawing up a chair. He carried a piece of parchment rolled up like a scroll which he laid across his lap when he sat. “But you mustn’t let a person so insignificant upset you, Mrs. Kennett.”
“Mr. Crowder has threatened to drag her back to Leeds,” Tory told him. “That is what’s upsetting.”
Ashbrook gazed thoughtfully at Jenny for a moment through his little spectacles. “Perhaps he cares a great deal for you, to go through all this trouble,” he suggested, at last, “and has no other means of expressing it.”
Jenny cast him a sidelong glance.
“It is clear you’ve never been married, Mr. Ashbrook.”
“But I very nearly was!” Ashbrook grinned. “To look at the relic I’ve become, you may not think that once upon a time, I was a dapper young fellow with prospects. I owned my own little shop and had a most fashionable little fiancee to go with it. A license was nearly procured.”
“What happened?” asked Tory.
“I took it into my head to throw off Commerce for Art. I could not help myself. I sold my shop and promptly lost my fiancee, whose affections were more attached to the shop than to myself.”
“You were better rid of her if she cared so little for you,” said Tory. She was secretly delighted to hear of someone who had dared to defy civilization and live according to his own rules, at whatever cost.
“I suppose so, Mrs. Lightfoot,” Ashbrook replied cheerfully. “And yet I grieved for her loss a good long while, as any foolish puppy might do. But a wife is a luxury one can ill afford without an income, or so I have learned. Since then, I have had only Art to console me. Which . . . er, leads me to my business.”
He lifted the scroll from his lap and pointed one end tentatively at Jenny.
“What is this, Mr. Ashbrook?” Jenny asked.
“I’m afraid I overheard Mr. Bell complain of how drab your room was, since the plunderings of your husband. I thought perhaps a little something to cheer it up?”
Jenny took the paper and unrolled it flat on the table. It was a painting done in lavish and provocative shades of purple and gold and deep green. Craning her neck to see, Tory thought at first it was a color sketch of the grotto scene Ashbrook had painted for Prospero And Ariel. But then she saw the swirling cave-like shape was alive with fanciful creatures and stars and flowers. It had an eerie sense of depth, like a tunnel in the world one might fall through. And human figures in long, gossamer gowns, plucking musical instruments or playing with children or cats floated like spirits all around the image.
It took Jenny a long time to raise her eyes from the painting and look again at the painter.
“What is this place?” she asked softly.
“It’s a place for dreaming.” Ashbrook smiled.
“I am too old for dreams,” Jenny murmured, her eyes falling again to the painting. As odd a thing as it was, there was something hypnotic about it.
“One cannot live without dreams, Mrs. Kennett.”
She glanced at him again. “It is too fine a thing for me to accept as a gift . . . ” she began.
“Oh, nonsense, we are not children gamboling in the dew!” Ashbrook laughed. “I made it for you and it shall never be at home anywhere else. If you’ll have it. But, if not . . . ”
He reached over to retrieve it, but Jenny snatched it away.
“Mr. Ashbrook, you have convinced me,” she grinned. “I shall give it pride of place among my things, which, granted, are not so numerous at the moment. And I shall thank you every day for your kindness.”
Ashbrook beamed back at her, relieved.
“Perhaps you will learn to dream again,” he suggested.
But Jenny’s expression wilted a little and Tory leaned earnestly toward her across the table.
“There must be a law to protect a woman from a cruel husband,” she reasoned. “Even in Leeds.”
“He owns Leeds, and everyone in it,” Jenny sighed, gazing down into the painting again. “He is one of the most important textile manufacturers in the town. He employs hundreds of people and sits on every board there is. He owns the law.”
“He doesn’t own us,” said Tory.
Jack did not believe they would be able to eke out an entire month in Charton-on-Crewe. The modest River Crewe was not so bustling as the River Thorne to Bristol, and while the theatre did well enough on market days, they were about played out among the local people. He’d had to begin scheduling bens almost immediately and already, some of their audiences were trading sailcloth for admissions. Rather a boon for Ashbrook and the scenery shop, but it showed poorly in the account books.
He knew he must decide what to do, next, but all the choices looked equally bleak. A few scant weeks among the livestock traders of Yeovil, and who knew what sort of storehouse or stock-pen to serve as a playhouse? But this tiny office where he and Alphonse must constantly bump elbows at their work, the cramped, inconvenient dressing rooms on either side and that long, high, narrow cavern masquerading as a playhouse out front were as rustic a theatrical arrangement as he ever hoped to encounter again. A summer idled away decamping from spa town to race week like common boothers, somehow finding wages for his players and feed for his draught horses, was the sort of prospect that made him crave a quiet, simple life of piracy.
The only sensible choice, it seemed, was to disband. Pay his people off however he could and then scramble to find places for Tory and Alphonse and himself in some other summer company. As if the last half-year had never happened and they were newly arrived in England to begin all over again. Of course, it was Maytime, now, the start of the fair season; the country around Charton-on-Crewe was as green and blooming as a fairy dell, like one of Ashbrook’s enchanted paintings. But Jack shook such romance out of his head. Summer would end soon enough and he had pledged to build a life for Tory, not drag her around in endless vagabonding. But running a company was an expensive business, even a small enterprise like theirs with so few members and no permanent tailor, carpenter, wardrobe-keeper or musicians. And the deprivations of Charles Crowder had not helped matters. On the other hand, he could not think of leaving Jenny unemployed and vulnerable to her madman husband. But how on earth were they to proceed?
Jack dropped his face into his hands, elbows propped up on the desk before him, and groaned. Alphonse blinked up from his books.
“I wish I could tell you it looks better from where I sit,” he said.
There was a smart rap on the door and Kit Bell poked his head in.
“Here you both are. You’re missing a lovely day outside.”
Jack groaned again into his hands.
“Have you any plans for the summer, Mr. Bell?” Alphonse asked.
Kit frowned as he entered the room. “As bad off as that, are we? Well, I expect I’ll idle away my days playing handsome young dullards in the North Midlands or some other wasteland.” He shrugged off the prospect. “But, you know, I’ve just heard the saddest story in a tavern.”
“That’s the only kind one ever hears in a tavern,” Jack sighed, peeking up over his fingertips.
“Young fellow was having a pint in the tap room of the coaching inn,” Kit continued. “He was off to the coast to supervise the remains of a deceased parent. It seems the old gentleman had bankrupt himself and his family a few years back in some foolish enterprise. And now that he was solvent again and ready to reclaim the venture in triumph . . . “ Kit shook his head. “His heart gave out. Died on the spot.”
“What sort of venture?” asked Alphonse.
A playhouse.”
Jack’s face rose up out of his hands. Kit acknowledged his interest with a pregnant nod.
“Where?”
“Heathpoole. Godforsaken crag of a place on the Dorset coast. Not as grand a place as Portsmouth or Plymouth, as seaports go, but popular in the timber and smuggling trades since ancient times.”
“I know Heathpoole.” Jack nodded. “What sort of a playhouse?”
“Purpose-built, so I am told. Five or six years old, perhaps more. Standing empty much of that time after the builder defaulted.”
“Who holds the lease?”
“The town fathers. I’ve heard they hold mariners’ auctions there, from time to time. But the gentleman who built it took out a new lease on the place for the season this summer. He was just down seeing to the details, when . . . ” Kit shrugged.
Jack frowned. “What made the poor fellow think his luck would change this time around, I wonder?”
“The expense of building was all done with. And of course, now there is Heathpoole Wells.”
“What’s that?”
“Some Dorchester squire discovered a hot springs in the rolling heath above the town. Built himself a second country home and now, an entire resort. A great many people of fashion come down for the waters; they cannot all crowd into Brighton.”
Jack glanced at Alphonse, whose shrug was noncommittal, but certainly not a rebuke.
“Kit, you are a genius,” said Jack. “I should like to know a great deal more about this place. Can you and Alphonse be ready to go down to Heathpoole by the next coach?”
“Me?” Kit sounded genuinely astonished.
“Hellfire, lad, you were practically born in a booth. You know what’s required of a proper theatre. Alphonse knows what meagre sort of terms we can afford to make.”
“Well . . . I’ll go straightaway,” said Kit, eyes shining at the prospect of this unexpected adventure. “Mr. Belair?”
“In front of the theatre in an hour, Mr. Bell.” Alphonse nodded. And Kit hurried out.
“Get me a playhouse, Alphonse,” Jack urged, as his friend closed up his books. “And I’ll make the season pay. I promise.”
“You had better,” Alphonse agreed.
Top: Wifeselling, French print of an English caricature, 1820
Above: Sea Queen (detail), James Aschbacher © 2023
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