The Kingdom of Bones

scene of The Purple Diamond, the noisiest of welcomes was followed by the most tense of silences as all strained to follow every nuance and development in the unfolding story…although it would have to be said that this was a drama in which the nuances were very few, and very far between.

But while it may not have been great art, it was damned good carpentry. Primed by the day’s news, the night’s audience had perhaps come along anticipating a drama of shock and sensation rather than intrigue and mystery. If they did, it was of no matter, because they took to the play’s actual narrative with no less enthusiasm.

Whitlock was at his bombastic best. In the climactic scene, although nominally addressing the stepfather as played by the First Heavy, he turned to the audience and cried out, “Let everyone in this house bear witness! Every man, woman, and child down to the smallest babe in arms! This boy is, indeed, your long-lost son, and a finer man to bear your name you could not wish for!”

And the First Heavy replied, “Yes! I knew it not, but know it now.”

James Caspar, as the falsely accused, was standing upstage with Louise Porter’s Mary D’Alroy. Now the First Heavy turned to him, saying, “Speak, my boy, and say what would repair the wrong I have done you.”

“I ask for nothing, sir,” Caspar replied, “save this; the hand of your stepdaughter, to exchange my newfound liberty for a sweeter bondage, and to make my happiness complete.”

“I cannot speak for her,” said the First Heavy, which allowed Whitlock to take the reins again.

“Then let her speak for herself!” he cried in a voice that sent a thrill through the audience and a rattle through the chandeliers. “What say you, Mary? Do you find him true?”

The house seemed to hold its collective breath as Louise turned to Caspar. It was as if the personal happiness of each and every ticket holder would depend on her next words.

Caspar gripped her arms and held her, gazing imploringly at her. This was a new and unexpected piece of business, but it seemed so natural and truthful that she was neither surprised nor thrown by it.

“With all my heart,” she said, and the house exploded.

For a while it was impossible to continue. They roared, they stamped, they cheered, and they whistled. Never had the company known a reception like it. Those onstage had to hold the tableau for a minute or more. Louise gazed steadily into Caspar’s eyes, her breathing shallow and excited, her heart pounding. It continued to pound through Whitlock’s closing speech and on until the moment when, standing in the wings and awaiting her call to sing, she became aware of a presence and realized that James Caspar was standing close behind her.

When he whispered close to her ear, his breath fanned her neck and stirred the odd wisp of hair.

She shivered, deliciously, as he said in a low voice, “Now I can see that there are passions and appetites that are neither loathsome nor unnatural. But which celebrate God and the way that he meant us to be.”

When she turned to look at him, it was to find that he had faded back into the shadows.

When Louise sang her song, it was as if a mist of tears hung in the air above the stalls. Even the uniformed policemen at the back of the house were dabbing at their eyes. Halfway through it she found herself thinking about young Arthur Steffens, taken from the lodging house to the mortuary, and her voice almost gave way. The women had not been allowed to see his body.

When she returned backstage to join the others, most of the company were moving around as if they’d been deafened by a blast. After the morning’s sobering events, the last thing they’d expected to experience was this heightened sense of communal passion. It was as if the atmosphere throughout the theater, both before and behind the curtain, was a potent combination of elation and terror; in the midst of death, they were in life’s most vibrant grip.

The theater had been constructed less than ten years before, but its backstage facilities resembled those of a much older building. Two shows a night, six nights a week, plus matinees and benefits, were bound to pile on the wear and tear. If the management were to spend any money, they’d be sure to put their cash into places where its effects would be seen.

Someone had taken the screen from Louise’s tiny dressing room, so the house carpenter had rigged a corner curtain for her to change behind. Stepping out of her Mary D’Alroy dress, a rugged piece of working costume that would pass for a fine lady’s garment to anyone standing farther than ten feet away, she heard the door to the corridor open and close. A shadow crossed the curtain, cast by the oil lamp that stood over by the dressing-table mirror.

She said, “Mrs. Wrigglesworth? I think I felt some stitches go. It was under the left arm, during the swoon.” She held the dress out through the curtain, and it was taken from her.

“Is there anything from the stage door tonight?” she said as she released the corset and then dropped the first of two petticoats that gave the dress its shape.

There was no response, and so she said, “Mrs. Wrigglesworth?” and put her head out from behind the curtain.

James Caspar stood there. Still in his stage clothes, he was alone in the tiny room and no more than three or four feet away from her. His hands were out in front of him and her heavy stage dress lay across them, like something drowned and brought to shore.

“Mister Caspar!” she said. And then, “James!”

Caspar’s face was somber.

“Send me away,” he said.

“I certainly should.”

“Then send me away.”

“I shall.”

Neither of them moved.

She said, “Mrs. Wrigglesworth will be coming in here at any moment.”

“I suspect not,” Caspar said. “I believe that she is presently stitching Mister Whitlock into his rather tightly fitting lucky silk jacket. He says he wishes to feel at his best when negotiating with the management.”

Nothing separated them other than the flimsy curtain she held in her hand, and the chemise that hung from her shoulders. Which in itself was almost nothing; it was cut straight for a decollete effect and hung from two thin straps. She felt all but naked before him.

“Well?” he said.

“Well,” she replied.

She realized that she did not want to send him away; she did not actually have to send him away; and nothing, other than custom and convention and the disapproval of the world, actually obliged her to send him away.

Her only thought was of the embarrassment she’d feel if others in the company were to know of this impropriety. And there was God, of course…but had they not dealt with him already?

“This has been…,” she said, searching for words that might be equal to her feelings, and failing to find them, “a very unusual day.”

He turned and, carefully, laid her empty Mary D’Alroy dress over the back of the nearby chair. Originally tailored for the role of Ernestine in Loan of a Lover, it had been acquired from the Theatre Royal as part of the Bilston stock and altered to fit.

“And an evening like no other,” he said. “What say you, Mary? Do you find me true?”

“Mister Caspar!” she protested. But by now her heart was pounding as it had on the stage.

“Then send me away.”

On any other day, and under any other circumstances, Louise would have conducted herself in the manner expected of her sex; where young men were wild, it fell to young women to be their governors and leaders in decorum.

But this had been no ordinary day. It had been a day charged with an awareness of life’s brevity, and the immediacy of its potential end. A day with a simple lesson: that all is fleeting, and whatever is not seized with boldness, whether rightly or wrongly, is soon gone.

She drew the curtain aside and stepped out.

“Secure the door,” she whispered, “and do not speak again.”

SEVENTEEN