curtain that one of the stagehands had been assigned to hold open for her.
When a shout came in response to his knock, he swung it open to find the Low Comedian and Ricks, the company’s First Heavy, already dressed for the street and removing the last traces of pancake from their faces.
“Cabs at the stage door in twenty minutes,” Sayers repeated. “Make sure you’re ready.”
“Cabs!” the Low Comedian said. “Does this mean the boss finally remembered what his pockets are for?”
“It means we’ve a train that goes at midnight and if we miss it, no matinee tomorrow.”
Usually, a run would end on a Saturday night and then the company would have all of Sunday to travel. All over the British Isles, stations like Crewe or the Exchange in Manchester would be abuzz with actors and stage workers, all meeting on the platforms and in the public rooms and catching up with the news as they awaited their connections. The public would turn out, just to see the spectacle of it all.
But with half-week bookings—Monday to Wednesday in one town, Thursday to Saturday in the next— everyone had to scramble. And when the dates were so many miles apart, as sometimes they had to be, then there was little room for error in the acting-manager’s organization.
As Sayers pulled the dressing room door shut and turned away, he had to step back for fifteen-year-old Arthur Steffens, the company’s callboy. Arthur had an armload of newspapers and was moving at his usual speed. He was always running five errands at once, being in no position to refuse any of them. Caspar used him more than anyone, and did not treat him well.
“Arthur!” Sayers called after him.
“Mister Sayers?”
“Don’t waste your time looking for Mister Caspar when the cabs arrive. I just saw him leave the building.”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. Was there anything else, sir?”
“If he comes back with his costume ruined, you can tell him it’ll come out of his wages.”
The boy looked so stricken at the thought of the task that Sayers had to relent and let him off the hook.
“All right, then, Arthur,” he said. “I’ll tell him myself. Get on with you.”
Arthur scuttled off down the corridor, and Sayers moved along to the next dressing room. Without contriving it, he somehow reached the door in the same moment as Louise.
“Miss Porter,” he said.
“Mister Sayers,” she responded. Their formality was only half-serious. It was a joke that they’d been sharing for most of the year. Sayers liked to believe that her ease in these exchanges signaled the eventual possibility of some deeper feeling.
“I watched you sing,” Sayers said.
“You always do. I’d think my luck had turned bad if I didn’t see my little mascot standing there.”
Sayers affected dismay. “Your little mascot?” he said. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You know I’m teasing. Was I good?”
“I could hear their hearts turning over. How do you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It must be all the great suffering I’ve endured. I suppose it’s third class again tonight.”
“I’ve reserved a private compartment for you.”
“Oh, Tom,” she said, genuinely surprised. “However did you manage that?”
“Never ask a magician to explain his effects.”
“Bless you, Tom. Whatever would I do without you?”
“I’ve no doubt some other devoted servant would rush forward in my place.”
“I’d never find one as devoted as you are, Tom,” she said, and with that she seemed to float into her dressing room with the sewing woman following close behind.
The dressing rooms were small and had bare walls of painted brick. Louise Porter’s had a stove and folding screen behind which she could get out of her stage costume. As she sat to unpin her hair, the sewing woman showed her the tray that she was carrying. Silver-plated and a prop from their last production, it had borne Whitlock’s port and towel only a few minutes before. Now it carried a number of engraved visiting cards and a single red rose.
“For you, Miss Porter,” said the sewing woman. “Sent through by the stage doorkeeper. With the compliments of various gentlemen.”
Louise looked over the cards with the mildest of interest. Gentlemen? Here? Mining engineers and merchants at best.
“Only five?” she said after a quick count. “How ancient and ugly I must have become.” And then, shaking her head once so that her unpinned hair fell loose, she rose to go behind the screen.
Raising her voice, the sewing woman said, “Shall I deal with them in the usual way, ma’am?”
“Have the doorman give them each a picture.” During their last London dates, Whitlock had sent her along to Window and Grove’s on Baker Street to sit for a postcard. She’d posed as Desdemona, a role she’d never played. Then he’d docked the cost of the prints from her wages.
As Louise shrugged herself out of her stage dress and the first layer of the underwear that went with it, the sewing woman moved to the iron stove. She picked up some tongs with which to lift the lid.
She said, “Tom Sayers stopped to hear your song.”
“Yes,” Louise said absently. “Isn’t he sweet.” She might share jokes with Sayers about service and devotion. But the truth of it was that the acting manager usually went from her thoughts in the same moment that he left her sight.
“Last night, Mister Caspar did the same.”
Louise stopped. She put her head out from behind the screen.
“Did he really?” she said.
The sewing woman made a face of assent as, tongs in one hand and tray in the other, she let cards and flower all slide into the flames together before replacing the stove lid with a clank.
“Well,” said Louise.
She drew back behind the screen. But she mused on the thought for a moment before she continued to undress.
Well, indeed.
Members of the company were now starting to gather around the stage doorkeeper’s office, where Sayers had posted the movement order and from where the cabs would pick them up. Whitlock had stepped inside with the doorman and was still keeping a tight hold upon his cashbox. Usually the Silent Man was at his side, shaven of head and bony of skull, a forbidding presence and a deterrent to all.
When Whitlock saw Sayers through the glass, he beckoned him in. Like all doorkeepers’ offices it was a cramped and cozy space, and the doorman was unhappy to share it.
Whitlock said, “What do I hear about Caspar?”
“He didn’t wait for the carriages,” Sayers told him.
“Does he know where to go?”
Sayers made a helpless gesture. “If he read the order. Who can say?”
Whitlock glanced away for a moment, thinking hard and none too pleased.
“I’ll speak to him on the train,” he decided.
“Assuming he catches it,” Sayers said. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”
When Sayers came out of the doorkeeper’s office he was collared by the Low Comedian. The man’s true name was Gulliford, but in the profession he went as Billy Danson (a Baggy Suit and a Big Smile). He had his traveling bag in his hand, and he’d been reading the movement order over the heads of the others.
He said, “The train list says you’re in with me.”
“That’s right.”
“You always get a private compartment.”
“Not tonight,” Sayers said, and went off to make sure that the scenery and props were on their way.
