Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

scars. 'I shall be Theseus or I shall set fire to my head! Why do you torment me? Why am I persecuted? It is because I have been a great murderer of animals. Ay, I know it.' His eyes crease, tears squeeze down his cheeks. 'You are right to persecute me.'

Mr Hobbes embraces him.

James says: 'Let him be Theseus. I do not know one part from another.'

Rose says: 'You are kind, sir. But I do not know if the weaver is right for you.'

Says James: 'It is one to me.'

Mr Rose consults his watch. 'We can settle this another time. I am certain when Mr Dee has seen the parts . . .'

George Dee unclasps from Mr Hobbes, wipes a wing of snot from his nose, stares delightedly at James. 'YOU shall be the arse! I shall be Theseus! I am Duke of Athens!'

He starts to hop, to dance. It is infectious. The lines dissolve.

Dot tugs at James's arm. He staggers after her. Those who cannot dance stand and shake like prophets. Miss Forbellow, skipping near to the fire, ignites her skirts. She is extinguished. A footstool sails through the air, shatters one of the windows. Over the stamping, the whoops, the barking. Rose calls. 'Until tomorrow, my friends! We shall all be perfectly famous!'

The keepers move in, swing their ropes, swing their canes. The lunatics flee before them.

On dry days they rehearse in the gardens, filing out, blinking like the denizens of an underground city, in their hands the tatty chap-book copies of the play. Rose mimes the parts, sings all the songs, shows the fairies how to dance, his legs like the legs of an elegant frog.

There are incidents. Helena head-butts Demetrius. Lysander unexpectedly shits himself Dot, for chewing a keeper's nose, is confined for a week to the Coffin. Through it all Rose operates his craft. He is unshakeable. From the chaos of the early meetings a play emerges, not unlike the one intended. James, reluctant to begin with, miserable, mumbling his lines, at length takes refiage in the character of the weaver and, concealed in the weaver, he starts to move and speak with a freedom that amazes him. His mind grows lighter, his pains ease. On his hands the wounds of Gummer's needle. Canning's pincers, begin to dry. He hears himself laugh; it stardes him. He has no recollection of the last time he laughed.

Dot shines; she has the knack. Her presence, though always fierce, even when she is tender or playing tender, no longer intimidates James. He makes eyes at her, walks close beside her

so that sometimes the skin of their hands touch. There is still no love-talk between them. He cannot explain his heart to her; a lack of language more than a want of resolve. But when they make their scenes together, waking in imaginary woods under the imaginary moon, Rose and the lunatics hushed in a circle around them, then they are intimate and speak their lines as though they have invented them.

'Come sit thee down upon this flow ry bed While I thy amiable cheeks do coy. And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair long ears, my gentle joy.^

[They sit; she embraces him]

The week after Easter the properties arrive. Pillars, schematic trees; a moon with the face of a man sleeping off his dinner. There is a basket full of clothes, wooden swords and crowns. Cloaks, doublets stiff with powder and the sweat of other players. Gowns in brilliant colours, harsh on the skin, none with its full complement of buttons or ties. And an asse's head. Rose presents it to James. James sits it on his shoulders. It is heavy and stinks of decaying hide. He looks out through the not-quite-even eyes. His breath sounds in his ears hke the tide in a shell. The company is bunched about him. Rose cries: 'Oh, Bottom, thou art changed!'

James turns. Through the thing's left eye he sees Dot, naked, pouring over her head the gaudiest of the costumes; golds and scarlet. The dress is too big for her. She gathers it in her fists, turns, curtseys and comes towards him. He closes his eyes. Tears gum in the stubble of his chin. His hands shake. He staggers; he is afraid that he will fall. Someone takes the ass's head, lifts it off; someone else supports him. He blinks away the tears. The air wraps his face like a scarf. Dot is smiling at him. She is beautiful.

An evening in May. In the garden. The quaUty of Athens, the lords and ladies of the fairy world, make their exits and entrances under the creeping shadow of the hospital. Miss Poole, a tall, pocked, lunatic seamstress from the Isle of Dogs, is speaking as Helena. Adam - Puck now - dressed in a petticoat, hovers about her to work his magic. James squats outside the D of their arena. His cue is: 'The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.' He is wearing the head. He is quite accustomed to it now. He does not see Dot until she is sat beside him.

Adam says: 'On the ground, sleep sound; I'll apply, to your eye . . .'

Dot takes James's hand. Presses her lips against the scars, then guides it into the top of her dress, holds it against the swell of her breast, the nipple stiffening under his palm. He can feel the pulse of her heart.

Puck is singing. 'Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill . . .'

What gifts are these? It is raining joys.

A voice summons them. They struggle to their feet, walk tipsily across the grass. James hears the whirling of a beetle, then Dot saying: 'Come, sit thee down upon this flowWy bed . . .'

Each time they meet they are bolder. They grope behind the wooden trees, in the shadow of the wooden moon or pressed against the stone face of the building. Around them