his heart to the quick, the youth with the twilight-blue eyes… I heard loud voices suddenly and threw open my bedroom door-I knew I had recognized my brother's voice in what seemed to be a verbal melee downstairs. I peered over the stairway bannister and there were my mother and father, their backs toward me, marching haughtily to the downstairs library as my brother continued to excoriate them on my account. His words were abusive but not quite billingsgate. It was only after the Marquis shut the library door that James called a halt to his own tongue and leaped up the stairs two at a time to fold me in his arms and to tell me in no uncertain terms that I absolutely was not responsible for Hugh's death, that the coronary he suffered would have slain him in due course, and that I need not atone for having loved Hugh because that had probably given the viscount a happiness he had rarely enjoyed. Then James bade me dress warmly. “What you need to do is walk and talk with me, Clarissa-I daresay you've scarcely ventured forth since the ghastly Lamensfirth contretemps. Come, the night air will brace you…” He took me to London Bridge, that five-arched granite span we proceeded to cross and recross, the traditional fog swirling about us and the clop-clop of the hansom cabs in our ears. “I wanted to come here to begin with,” I told James, “the night Hugh died. I wanted to come here and deliver myself to the Thames.” “It would have cast you back up, as the whale did to Jonah. I doubt your palatability to the fishes, too. In any case, Clarissa,” he said, nodding amiably to a passing bobby, “the British constabulary would have pulled you back before you gained the nerve to jump. The London bobby is famous for his suicide-prevention on this bridge.” “James…” “Yes?” “James, what am I to do? In all seriousness?” “Forget him-forget Hugh Kinsteares. In all seriousness.” “I can't,” I said. “I loved him. I love him even now-oh, not the dead shell, but the spirit of him hovering within me.”
“Dear Clarissa, you sound like a Christian tract.” “My memory of him, then, James. It is the memory I love beyond all bounds…” We tarried at one of the gas lamps on the bridge. We craned our necks to look at the swirling waters beneath but the fog effectively obscured the sight. James shrugged. I removed my coif and shook out my long black hair. James sighed. “One cannot love beyond all bounds,” he said. “One must find the limit and then work backward to expunge it. Because if you keep loving Hugh Kinsteares, the obsession will have your mind.” “I'm afraid it already has my mind.” James gazed at me a very long time. “Do you really think that, Clarissa?” he asked. “Yes.” “Pity. What will you do, indeed?” “I haven't gone beyond thinking of changing my name.
Apparently the Quist-Hagens, with you as the exception, do not want me-at least, not during their lifetimes. It was they who originally suggested I change my name, and I've begun to think it a capital idea-I don't want to commit suicide under an assumed name!” I smiled broadly. “It's good to see you emerging from your despond,” James said. “But you've got to have a program of action, you know. Have you picked out a name?” “Yes-Victoria Collins. Do you like it?”
James mused for several minutes. “Yes,” he said finally, '“and it's given me an idea. One of my drinking cronies at Oxford-chap by the name of George Maytemper, a bit daft but none the worse for it, really-has got together a group of players for a summer tour.
Maytemper's Mummers he calls them, I believe. Now look here, Clarissa, you've never been on stage but you do have a presence and I wager you'd be something of success once you had the acting essentials at your command. In any event, what I can do is get you to talk with Maytemper, and he will decide if you're acceptable or no-he might have you do a reading to that end. Are you game, Clarissa?”
“Clarissa?” “Victoria, then.” “Victoria Collins is quite game,” I said.
9
Mr. George Maytemper was a fat man. It was impossible for me to forget Hugh Kinsteares and the nagging sense that I had misled him-for which I deserved, now, damned little from life -but I liked Maytemper. I liked his corpulence-his Falstaffian abdominiousness-and I wondered if the hump of fuck between his thighs was a member as stout as the rest of Maytemper. But this speculation on my part was not the reason we met at Holishank's Bitters and Sprint, a tavern near Oxford at Thudder's Crossing where ladies accompanied by gentlemen were quite welcome without chaperones.
The barmaid, a shrewish, sharp-chinned biddy who answered to the name of Vivian, at last reached our table. Evidently she was on familiar terms with the university man. She ignored me absolutely.
“What will you have, Master Maytemper?” she asked, barely moving her lips. “My usual, Lady Vivian,” he said sardonically.
“Faugh,” she said, half snarl and half grin on her face as she acknowledged the order and exposed her yellow teeth in their last resting place, gums of an unhealthy whitish pink. “And an ale for my companion,” he said. Arms akimbo, she called over her shoulder to the bartender. “Harry,” she said, “a whisky and soda, and an ale.”
She turned back to the Oxford man. “Will that be all, Master Maytemper?” “I daresay, Mistress Vivian,” he said resignedly, the mass of fat about his eyes making gimlets of them. “It's my business to recommend the kidney on the bill of fare,” she said.
“You've done your business, then, Viv.” “No kidney?”
“None.” She stuck out a hip. “As you wish, Master Maytemper.
I'll be along with the chinks by and by.” “I'll be obliged,” he said flatly. After the barmaid had flounced off, he once again turned to me. “You are James's sister, are you not? There's too much resemblance to put me off.” I admitted to the relationship but begged him to keep it a confidence. “Of course, Victoria.
Certainly you're aware that I've already observed a good deal about you. Your voice is a fetching contralto and your carriage is beyond cavil, but I shall have to teach you a good deal in a very short time-even the rudiments of acting are quite complex. Maytemper's Mummers open in As You Like It in Brighton, in precisely four weeks.
I've a frightful impatience, Victoria, and will no doubt on occasion flay you from head to toe-and we shall still be taking a gamble.
Nevertheless, in deference to your bonny brother, I'm game to make the attempt to put you on the boards.” He smiled, and his eyes very nearly vanished amid the fat. “And you?” “I'm game, Maytemper,” I said.
He winced. “George, please.” I shan't bore you, gentle reader, with the details of my theatrical baptism, but there did, at last, arrive the evening when George Maytemper exacted his due-nor was I averse to Maytemper's piping. As a matter of fact, I had been more than sexually abstemious since Hugh's death-I had even actually denied myself the contrition of masturbation. It was as if May-temper were practically to take a virgin… I had maintained my abstemiousness easily enough-I still considered myself figuratively responsible for Hugh's death. At the same time I thought myself fair game for George Maytemper at any time he might decide to make the attempt. I realize that sounds paradoxical, but in the light of what occurred there was no paradox at all… We had just finished going over-for the fifth time-a scene between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and I was exhausted. I was more than ready to return to Hagen House for the night- we had been working, as usual, in Maytemper's rooms, and the early spring humidity had been stifling. I found myself staring in utter fatigue, and yet with some morbid fascination, at some rather peculiar posters Maytemper had brought back with him from his last trip to Paris-the draughtmanship was acidulous, as if the artist had been determined to eat away at his subjects, mainly currently popular cabaret performers. The artist's name was Toulouse-Lautrec, and he seemed to me an extraordinarily sharp, if obscure, observer of the demimondaine. I remarked on it to Maytemper.
“Yes,” Maytemper said, his belly a billow of fat as he sat back in one of his leather armchairs. “The French painters are altogether incomparable these years-there's quite a host of them…” His voice trailed off. “Do you really care, Victoria, at this moment?” “Not really.” 'Then we really ought to get to bed, don't you think?”
“Does that suit you, George?” He spread his hands as if he were opening a fan. “I think so, Victoria. You're terribly attractive, you know. Rather beautiful, come to think of it. I think you'll grace the stage.” “It's good to hear that from you.”
“Not at all. It really has been a pleasure working with you. I don't think you'll ever be a star, really, but your intelligence assures you of featured roles, at the least.” “Very decent of you, George.” He looked down at his fingernails. “I think so,” he said. He raised his eyebrows. “Shall we get on to bed?” “Of course,” I said. It was a night I shall long remember-for a few choice reasons. One of them was Maytemper himself-he proved to have reserves of a practically interminable nature. I never did learn whether they were interminable or no, for it was I,
