The Kingdom of Bones

EIGHT

Another day, another town, another playhouse. On their arrival, Whitlock and the actors had gone straight to their lodgings while Sayers had arranged the transfer of their stage properties to the Prince of Wales. They were to replace a show called Memories of Old Ireland, and when Sayers reached the theater, it was to find the sets only half struck and several members of the cast snoring loudly under the stage.

Things went rather better at the lodging house, where Whitlock had taken the master bedroom. The room above the bay window went to Ricks and his wife, a former soprano who now played mother roles and Shakespearean dames. Everyone else set their bags down in the rooms that Mrs. Mack, the landlady, had chosen to assign to them. The stagehands, by their own choice, were billeted in rooms above a public house closer to the theater.

There were several hours to be passed until the matinee, and the company chose to spend them in various ways. Some went out to look at the town. Some gathered in the sitting room for idle conversation, while others read alone. James Caspar, seemingly indifferent to his disgrace, went upstairs and threw himself on his bed and slept.

A few minutes after noon, he awoke, changed into a large and threadbare Oriental dressing gown, and went down to the kitchen to beg some hot tea from Mrs. Mack. Mrs. Mack was not easily charmed, but Caspar seemed to manage. Gulliford, the Low Comedian, heard him on the stairs as he was taking the tea back to his room. He went out to accost Caspar, but he was too late; Caspar was back in his room with the door already closed.

Gulliford went to the door and knocked. At Caspar’s response of “Come in, if you must,” he opened it and went inside.

It was a bare room, with an iron bedstead and a table and not much of anything else. Caspar’s stage clothes had been hung up to dry on the front of the wardrobe, before which stood his cabin trunk. Caspar was rummaging inside this, and as Gulliford closed the door behind him came up with a glass preserving jar. He appeared to have wrapped it in a sock, for safety during transit.

“She’s awake, then,” Gulliford said, as Caspar set his jar down on the table and pulled up a chair. He gave the Low Comedian a baleful glance and continued about his business, moving with painful slowness as if every part of him gave hurt. From the pocket of the dressing gown he took a fork, which he wiped up and down on his lapel.

Gulliford said, “I’ve only got one question I want to ask you.” He placed his hands on the table and positioned himself in front of Caspar, where he couldn’t be ignored.

“Why do you do it?” he said.

The jar contained something pickled in murky liquid. Caspar sprang open the clips that sealed on the lid, and poked around inside with his fork.

“Do what?” he said.

“We’re a humble company,” Gulliford said. “I can understand if you despise your place in it. But you act as if you despise the very profession we’re in.”

Caspar speared a morsel of something that resembled a small, dark sausage. “My head hurts,” he said. “Go away.”

“You’re going to hear what I have to say.”

“Great wisdom from the company’s Low Comedian?”

“That’s a role, sonny boy, it’s not a rank. You don’t seem to know the difference. I’ve forgotten more about the stage than you will ever know. You never match your business and you pick up your cues the same way you catch your trains. Well, I’ve seen through you and I know what your game is.”

Caspar stopped munching. He became very quiet and wary.

Gulliford said, “We both know there’s no other occupation where you can rise from the gutter to the very top of society. And from you, my friend, for all your French cologne and your high manners and your one good set of clothes, from you I get the definite whiff of the gutter. You’ve no love of the stage. You just like playacting.”

Caspar sniffed. “If you’re unhappy with my work,” he said, “talk to Edmund.”

“Edmund to you. Mister Whitlock to the rest of us. Don’t think it hasn’t been noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice. No man has hold over me. Nor I on any man.”

“No. But there’s something in it for both of you.” Gulliford reached over and took the new morsel from the end of Caspar’s fork, right under his nose.

“I don’t know what the bargain is,” he said, “and I don’t care. What I want you to remember is this. The rest of us aren’t your steppingstones. This is more than our living. This is our life.”

So saying, he flipped the morsel into his mouth.

It was horrible. He was thrown. After trying to contend with it for a moment, he had to spit it into his hand and place it on the table.

“Sack the chef,” he said and, still wincing at the taste, moved to the door.

“Anything else?” Caspar said.

“I’ve said my piece,” the Low Comedian said. “I’ll see you at the matinee.”

Caspar was left contemplating the spat-out and abandoned morsel. He speared it with his fork.

To the otherwise empty room he said, “I’m heading for places you can never imagine, my friend.”

And then he popped the appalling pickle into his own mouth, crunching it up as if such was the most natural thing in the world.