New Albion (25 page)

“Well,” said Mr. Wilton, taking stock of my reaction. “I
must whisk Mr. Heywood off to the Green Room now and rein
troduce him to the acting company.”

Later this afternoon, when the actors were busy rehearsing Heywood’s
Hector, the Pirate of the Spanish Main
, I sat in the back of the auditorium and marveled at the new emptiness of the theatre. The actors seemed to be rehearsing out of context. Gone from the theatre, as if swept clean by a celestial dustman, was the air of tradition that Mr. Farquhar Pratt had brought to the place. We were no longer rooted in a rich and storied past, in the way it had always been done and always would be done. We had washed ashore in some Illyria where anyone could see by our unfashionable attire that we were strangers.

Friday, 3 January 1851

This morning, a detective arrived at the theatre. He was the same detective who had fired upon the rioter on Boxing Day. I recognized him by his greatcoat and also by the lines which creased his face from the corners of his mouth nearly to his eyes. So many lines upon his face for so young a man.

He approached me through the backstage gloom. It was early and the work lights on the stage were not fully illuminated. At first I thought he had come to see me about the riot, and I was not certain that I wanted to reveal what I had witnessed. He showed me his badge. “Are you employed here?” he asked.

“I am, sir. I am the Stage Manager at this theatre.”

He seemed to be trying to see right through me. “I’m looking
for a Mr. Pratt. Does he work here?”

“Mr. Farquhar Pratt,” I said, “is no longer in the employ of this theatre.”

“Any idea where he is, then?”

“Is Mr. Farquhar Pratt in some kind of trouble?”

“That he is, sir,” was the young detective’s grim reply. “He’s absconded from his lodgings with stolen property.”

I was incredulous. “But that is not in any way consistent with Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s character. What is it that he has been accused of stealing?”

“The usual,” the detective said. “Bed linens, furniture, kitchen utensils.” He spoke in a guarded manner, careful of not giving me too much information. He handed me a card. “I expect if you hear from him in the near future, you’ll give me a shout.”

“Yes, sir, certainly.”

He fished a notebook out of the pocket of his greatcoat and wrote something down. “Your name is?”

“Emlyn Phillips.”

“Em-lyn Phil-lips.” He repeated my name slowly as he wrote it down. His tone of voice intimated to me that I was somehow guilty in the affair of Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s disappearance until proven innocent. “Very good then.” He turned and was gone.

Later, while the company was rehearsing
Hector, the Pirate of the Spanish Main
, I absented myself from the theatre and walked briskly to Farquhar Pratt’s flat in Bethnal Green. Knocking and hearing no response, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. “Mr. Farquhar Pratt,” I shouted. Still no response, no sound, not even the caterwauling of the infant upstairs which had jangled my nerves during my last visit. The apartment, which I had hardly thought could be more austere than when I first witnessed it, was entirely devoid of furniture. The plain wooden table and chairs were gone. The bed and the washstand had been removed from the bedchamber. Only the peeling wallpaper had been left intact.

“Oo’s this then?” It was a plain Cockney voice, plain as a hard scrubbing on a street urchin’s face. I saw in the doorway a brawling woman of approximately forty-five years, her costume that of coster lady. She was wielding a small saucepan.

“I’m here to inquire after Mr. Farquhar Pratt,” I said.

“Ere, are you another one of em Peelers?” She relaxed her grip on the pan momentarily. “You don’t look li a Peeler.”

“No, madam,” I replied, “I am a former colleague of Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s.”

“A former colleague, is it? Maybe you would see fit to pay for wot he stole, then.”

“Are you his landlady?”

“Was his landlady,” she replied. “I provides quality lodgins at low prices, and this ere is ow I’m repaid. Wiff thievery and abscondment.”

“What exactly is it that Mr. Farquhar Pratt is accused of stealing?”

“Not accused, sir,” she replied menacingly. “E did steal it.” She surveyed the room using her saucepan as a pointer. “Everything you see wot’s missing from this room e took. I ad a lovely chair over there and a footstool and a sideboard and a table and fine pictures on all the walls.”

“But I was here, madam, less than two months ago,” I replied. “I saw no chairs and footstools and sideboards then.”

The landlady’s face hardened momentarily and then she smiled at me, a thin leering smile. “Well, e must ave absconded wiff them, then,” she replied. “Lord knows I’m just an elderly widow oo’s got to make a living sime as everybody else. And then e comes along and robs me blind. Is wife’s no better. A woman who lives off the aviles of er usband’s thievery ain’t no better than er usband, I reckon.”

“If I could get an accurate appraisal of what Mr. Farquhar Pratt took,” I said, “and if I could manage to raise the money to pay for it, would you then drop the charges?”

“Not bloody likely,” she said, pointing her saucepan at me as if I were the one who had stolen the articles and not Mr. Farquhar Pratt. “Anging’s too good for a man oo would stoop to rob a poor widow of her bed linens.”

It was almost noon when I began my trek back to the New Albion, marveling how in this vast and confusing metropolis, unhappiness seems to breed further unhappiness. Passing a cafe, I noticed a young and fashionably dressed lady having a cup of tea and a scone. I watched through the cafe window as she methodically buttered the scone, heaped a mountain of clotted cream on top and then strawberry preserve. My mouth watered as she bit into the scone, herself savoring the cacophony of tastes. I thought of the theatre again, and of new plays to be rehearsed, new puffs to be written and released to the press. And then I watched the beautiful young lady enjoying her scone and tea, and I realized that the business of the theatre could wait until I too had eaten and made her acquaintance.

* * *

When I returned to the theatre,
some time after two o’clock, there was a note on my desk from Mr. Wilton, requesting the pleasure of my presence in his office. I ascended the stairs and found Mr. Wilton at his desk, in his shirt sleeves. “Business elsewhere keeping you away from the theatre, Phillips,” he said, not looking up from his paperwork. “We missed you at the morning rehearsal.”

“I walked over to Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s lodgings in Bethnal Green,” I admitted.

“I suspected as much,” Mr. Wilton said. “A detective has been snooping about the place and asking questions. What has Pratt done?”

“He is accused of robbing his landlady and of absconding without paying his rent.” I was still standing in front of Mr. Wilton’s desk, like an errant schoolboy waiting to receive his punishment.

Old Stoneface peered up at me. “My advice to you is not to get involved, Phillips. We do not want the theatre dragged into something which is no longer the theatre’s affair.”

There was a shaft of light entering through the greasy window behind Mr. Wilton’s head, and it assaulted my eyes. “Yes, well,” I said, not really clear what was going to come out of my mouth next, “I’m afraid I have to give notice, sir. I can no longer remain in this theatre after the end of the month.”

His face drained of colour. “But Phillips,” he said, “we have been together, what, almost fifteen years?”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“Have you been unhappy in my employ? Are you not being handsomely rewarded for your labours?”

“I have had a letter from my brother in Manchester,” I replied. “He has asked me to return to the family enterprise.”

“And you have agreed to do so?”

“I have, sir.”

His face hardened momentarily. “Then it is settled, Phillips. A man’s word is his honour. I shall be sorry to see you go.”

Monday, 6 January 1851

We received word in the theatre this morning that Pratty was apprehended at an address in Shoreditch over the weekend and that he is committed to go before a judge this morning in Worship Street. I requested Mr. Wilton’s permission to have the afternoon off so that I could attend the court proceedings and offer moral support to Mr. Farquhar Pratt. He acceded to my request but not before determining my involvement in the deliberations.

“Are you testifying, sir?” he asked, his wild eyebrows arched critically.

“No, sir. I am only there as a spectator.”

“Good. And I trust you will see to it that the New Albion’s name is not further besmirched in this affair.” He could hardly bring himself to look me in the eye as he said this.

The judiciary court in Worship Street is a fancy brown stone affair, as solid in its foundation as Justice should be. The interior is of dark wood, dark and brooding as a judge.

There were not many present to witness the spectacle of an elderly stock playwright’s downfall, and several of those few who sat beside and behind me on wooden benches in the spectator’s area were probably awaiting their own arraignment. There were two young ladies who sat near me, one of whom explained in intimate detail for the bespectacled Judge, who was nonplussed, and the Prosecutor, who was grinning wickedly, the process of administering a threepenny knee-wobbler to a sailor against an archway in Seven Dials. There was one young boy of eleven or twelve who was perhaps a palmer or a stargazer, dressed in swell attire which made him seem twice his age, accompanied by his unkempt, unshaven kinsman. There was also, near the back of the room, a well-dressed gentleman of thirty-five or forty, whom I took to be a swellsman or some such fancy criminal posing as an aristocrat. At one point during the proceedings, the Judge directed his attention to me, asking drily what my business was with his court. Taken aback, I mumbled something about being there as a spectator only, at which point the Bailiff angrily shouted at me, “Stand when you address His Worship.”

I leapt to my feet and blurted, “Only a spectator, Your Worship.”

“I see,” the Judge said, his eyes lingering on me. “Here to learn how justice is done?”

“Yes, Your Worship.”

“Very good then. You may sit down.”

Mr. Farquhar Pratt was called to the dock. He was clearly in a state of mental turmoil. He had been divested of his signature greatcoat. His shirt was ripped horrendously and open at the neck; he wore no cravat. His face betrayed a lack of understanding
of his immediate circumstances. The light of wit in his eyes was distant if not altogether extinguished. The Bailiff read the charges, and Pratty was asked if he fully understood the nature of the accusations.

There was a long silence, and when Mr. Farquhar Pratt spoke it was not with his own rich melodious voice but with a voice so distant from him that it could only have been retrieved from his childhood. “I believe I do, sir,” he said haltingly.

“Where do you currently reside, sir?” the Judge demanded, scrutinizing Pratty’s face over his spectacles with the intensity of hot summer’s sunlight.

“On Glover Street, sir, in the Green,” Mr. Farquhar Pratt managed.

The Judge scrutinized him further and then scrutinized a piece of paper on the desk at his fingertips. “You are still living at Mrs. Carmichael’s lodgings in Bethnal Green?”

Farquhar Pratt grew flustered. “Oh no, sir, not there, sir,” he said, stalling for time. “I have moved from there, sir.”

“And where do you currently reside?”

“In the Nichol, sir. Near the Nova Scotia Gardens.”

The Judge exhaled impatiently and stared at Mr. Farquhar Pratt. “Are you quite well, sir?”

The words seemed to churn up from Pratty’s belly. “I am in
extremis
, sir. I have not eaten these three days.”

“I see,” the Judge replied, betraying no emotion. “There will be food for you in prison. You stand accused of stealing and pawning various furnishings from the house of your landlady, one Mrs. Carmichael. Have you engaged a lawyer?”

Mr. Farquhar Pratt looked about the courtroom frantically. “I have not, sir.”

“And how do you answer the charges?”

“I am guilty, sir.”

The silence in the court was thick with unsaid words. A somewhat befuddled smile curled on the Judge’s lips as he met the Prosecutor’s gaze. “Then I have no alternative,” the Judge responded, looking over his spectacles, “but to remand you to Westminster Bridewell for a period of six months. Unless anyone is here today who wishes to post a bond for this unhappy gentleman.” The prosecuting attorney looked decidedly unhappy; he had not even had the opportunity to speak to the case.

At which point I heard the swellsman at
the back of the spec
tator’s gallery rise to his feet. I turned in my seat to have a better view of the man, as did everyone present. The Judge cocked his head at the fellow. “You have something to say, sir?”

“I do, your Worship,” the man said, his voice rich and well modulated. “Mr. Jonathan Edwards, proprietor of the Standard Theatre, has instructed me to post bond in whatever amount you require. Mr. Edwards has neither forgotten Mr. Farquhar Pratt nor his longstanding service to the National Drama.”