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

it. From a high window a madman screams. Pigeons scatter. The carpenter looks up, spits for luck, shoulders his bag. The dog watches him go, then climbs on to a bench, turns, and settles into wary sleep.

The company are in the room they first rehearsed in. They have had wine at Mr Rose's expense, though no one is yet drunk except for two of the keepers. The costume basket has been drained of its contents. There have been fights over the choicer items - a paste tiara, a pair of extravagantly pointed boots, a plumed helmet from a forgotten production of Tamburlaine. But now they are peaceful, some conversing with themselves, some hand in hand, staring at the floor, some rocking in a corner.

James sits on top of the empty basket. Dot is beside him, dressed as the fairy queen, her face disturbingly painted. He has the asse's head on his lap. He strokes its bristles and wonders how it is he can remember none of his lines. Rose and the Physician come by, inspecting them like generals taking a turn in the camp on the eve of battle. After they have gone the flambeaux are lit around the stage and the first guests arrive, then the musicians, setting up at the side of the stage, trying their strings, their reeds. Concentrated, unobtrusive men.

When the benches are full - the women fanning themselves, the men loud, the servants at a distance, hot in their liveries - Mr Rose emerges from the hospital. There is light applause, some heckling. Rose raises a hand, welcomes them all to the Mad House. He says: 'Expect the unexpected. Tonight we shall dream together, but the

manner of the dream, that I must leave to our players. Ladies, be not afraid . . .'

On first is Mr Dee with Mrs Donnelly. They reach the green in front of the benches and stand like lost children, huddled together, staring fearfully at the faces of the strangers. From the audience there is a fascinated silence, then a muffled remark, a gust of laughter.

Mrs Donnelly begins to speak, first her own part, then Mr Dee's, both at enormous speed. The audience cheer, someone flings an orange. The butcher sits on the grass, takes off his shoes and rubs his feet. A young man in a gorgeous coat darts out and steals the shoes; a voice mimics the bray of the huntsman's horn and Mr Dee chases the young man around the back of the benches. The Collins brothers come on. Mrs Donnelly, eyes tightly shut, speaks their lines, until Nathaniel Collins pushes her to the ground. Mr Dee reappears with one of his shoes. He has a bloody lip. He waves the shoe over his head. There are cries of'Bravo!' Mr Rose comes on. He looks happy, as though the evening were progressing far better than he had hoped. He settles the audience, winks, and points to Dot Flyer, padding downstage with her attendant fairies. The flames of the torches show in her hair. She delivers her lines - part Shakespeare, part babble of her own - with a sweetness, a lewdness, an endearing distractedness, that seduces the audience to silence. Hecklers are heckled. Coins are tossed into the grass at her feet.

James acts his part as though he were sitting in the air above his own right shoulder, watching himself For an instant, in the middle of the play, he slips violently through time, and becomes again the creature of his past, cool and proud. It is a shock, nauseating him like a blow to the solar plexus. Then it passes, and the words he feared he had forgotten spill out of his mouth and his hands resume the gestures Mr Rose has so patiently taught. He is a broody, melancholy Bottom, but this makes his gambols the more ridiculous and Titania's love of him more absurd. There is

laughter from the benches; they are authentically amused, and when Dot embraces him they clap, sentimentally.

On the second night, the players are calmer. It is the audience who threaten. Sunday-drunk, restive, spoiling for a fight. They are quick to cheer, quick to turn. A quarter-hour before the end of the play part of the tiered benching collapses, men and women spilling backward, howling on to the grass or into their neighbours' laps. One woman's arm is snapped above the elbow. No one is killed. A bottle is thrown at Rose's head at the end of the play. He dodges it neatly enough. The Physician is fiirious. There is no celebration that night; no wine, no dancing. Adam sits with James in his cell. Distantly they can hear them. Rose and the Physician, shouting at the top of their lungs in the offices below.

James says: 'Have you loved? Loved a woman?'

1 had a wife, James. It was long ago. She was young. She died.'

'I am sorry for it.'

'It was long ago. I have seen how you are with Dot, James.'

'Ay, but I cannot tell if it is love, for I do not think I have ever loved before.'

'I have seen the light in you, in your eyes when you look at her. That light is love.'

'Adam, I cannot say what I fear most. That she will love me or that she will not love me.'

'It is always dangerous, brother, loving.'

The third night of the play. The final performance. The benches are shored up, the Physician is in temper again. The players recite their parts lovingly, taking their leave of the borrowed words. After the performance Lord C sends a guinea to Dot who gives it to Dolly Kingdom, an elderly, honest keeper, sending her out for wine and oysters. The players dance again, still in their costumes. When the wine and oysters come, Dolly Kingdom and a boy from the wine shop carrying them between them, the music pauses, the bottles are emptied, the oyster shells crunch underfoot. The air is rich with sweat and sea smells.

James