Ollie's Cloud (21 page)

Chapter 25

It is a cold winter in London. Another Christmas is past, the bleak phantom of February haunts the cheerless whole of England, and only the promise of an evening’s entertainment saves Ollie from suffocating under the tedium of school.

The rumbling carriage drops Ollie just outside the George & Vulture. He finds Charles inside, his upper lip moist with foam (the ale purchased on Ollie’s account, as usual). He is entertaining the well-lubricated patrons with his uncanny impressions of the low population of the streets, the popular singers, the loathsome bureaucrats, the leading actors, and any Shakespearean play, including all the speaking parts in a chorus of voices.

“Where is William, have you seen him?” Ollie asks Charles, referring to a mutual friend. “I was late arriving, and he’s usually early, always anxious for a free pint or two on the Chadwick estate.”

“Not here, so far as I know. Of course, the Queen of bloody England could be here and I wouldn’t know it.”

William suddenly appears into the empty space between Ollie and Charles. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, “but I have a wonderful surprise. The evening’s entertainment is on me for a change.”

Charles holds up a hand. “Something’s wrong here,” he says in a mocking tone. “I didn’t even know that you carried money. Do you have any experience actually buying things?”

“You should talk!” William shouts, feigning offense. “When was the last time that you paid for an ale when your good friend Ollie was present? Or dinner at the George & Vulture?”

Ollie interjects suspiciously: “This entertainment you speak of—what is it? I’m not in the mood for another bear-baiting.”

“It just so happens to be opening night of a new spectacular at the Surrey.” With a flourish, William produces a tube of tightly rolled paper and waves it rhythmically like a conductor’s baton. “Strike up the fanfare now!” And then he hoists the tube aloft with his right hand and with his left unfurls a colorful playbill for the Surrey’s new show.
Escape from the Harem!
it screams in garish blood-red letters and a suggestive collage of images: a half-naked harem girl precariously reclining against the gleaming blade of a giant curved scimitar, galloping camels chased by turbaned ghouls on hard-charging Arabians, a sneering, evil-eyed villain with a beard like a briar patch and brows like untrimmed hedges.

Ollie stares at the playbill, not fully comprehending it until he reads the orange sub-heading:
Starring the hypnotic Anne Chadwick in a Reenactment of her Astonishing FLIGHT from SAVAGE CAPTIVITY through the Mountains and Deserts and across the Sea to Freedom and London society.
Ollie can feel the blood race from his head. He slumps in his chair like an empty potato sack.

William looks at his dispirited friend. The broad grin evaporates. “I thought you’d be happy to see your mother.”

“William, you’re a sap,” Charles says.

Ollie looks up. “It’s all right, William,” he says. “I knew that my mother had gone into the theater.”

“We don’t have to use the tickets,” he says. “But I’ll bet it’s a rollicking good show. Lots of animals on the stage.”

“Shut up, William,” Charles says. “I’ll wager a bet that Ollie’s part of the story has been cut out.”

“I certainly hope so!” Ollie snorts. “William, let me see that playbill again.”

William hands the gaudy poster to Ollie, who stares at it.

“This bearded, satanic creature looks nothing like my father, though I’m sure it’s intended to be him. And this harem girl—”

“A bit more bosomy than your mother, I’ll grant you that…”

Charles kicks William in the shin. “Do you practice your buffoonery?” he chides.

William ignores the reprimand. “…but not as pretty by a long shot,” he adds, as if his previous remark had been interrupted. “After the incident at Almack’s—”

“You knew about that?” Ollie injects.

“Ollie,
all of London
knew about it,” William replies. “Afterwards, your mother went to Dibdin at the Surrey and offered herself to him.”

Charles rolls his eyes heavenward. “My God, you have such a way with words,”

“What I mean is—your mother offered herself as an actress to the Surrey Theater,” William says. “You knew, I’m sure, that Dibdin was quite taken with, well, with your mother’s physical presence, and had been after her to star in something or other at his theater. He’d been dreaming up one spectacular after another with her in the starring roles, but I’ll bet that he never thought he’d get her.”

Ollie stares at his friend. “You know a lot about this.”

“Of course. Dibdin is a friend of the family. It’s how we got tickets in the old days. He thought you should be there for your mother’s first performance in London.”

“She’s been performing since the day we arrived,” Ollie says. “She’s a very experienced actress. The tickets—they’re from Dibdin?”

William nods yes. “Not that I’m unwilling to pay for our entertainment some evening. Just so happens that this evening…”

Ollie abruptly stands. “He’s right, Dibdin is. I should be at my mother’s first performance. What’s there to be afraid of? If she wants to make a fool of herself, the least I can do is to be there to enjoy it.”

“Are you sure?” Charles asks.

“Very sure.”

“Excellent!” Charles jubilantly exclaims. “I’m always up for a night of theater.” He glances at William, catches his eye. “Especially if there are lots of animals involved.”

The clatter of the carriage over chunks of ice and crunchy wheel-ruts jars Oliver’s brain, or perhaps his disorientation is from the disjointed recollections of another wintry night: a wooly Man-Monkey clambering up a balcony; a bloated priest rising from his watery grave. The idea of an evening at the theater is becoming a terrifying thing despite the mirth of Oliver’s companions.

The Surrey Theater looms ahead like a mausoleum for dead memories and those hanging on by a thread: Ollie’s mother, head tossed back, laughter spurting from her throat like water from a fountain; the flowing mane of a white stallion soaring above the tangerine sand of Bushruyih; broken shards of sunlight blinking through the rustling leaves of a Judas tree. Almost dead now are these dusty, fleeting images. And good riddance! They have no relevance for Ollie today. Better to sweep them out the door and let the cold winter breeze scatter the rubble.

Why, then, is his pulse racing and his head pounding? His mother is dead to him. Has been for months. He has grieved the loss of Anisa, applauded the death of Anne, mourned the disappearance of Mrs. Eaton, and buried the evangelical saint, fervently praying that she not rise again like the Messiah she feigned to worship. Yes, that’s it!
She has been resurrected
. She has ghoulishly recreated herself in the outlandish form of an actress—a painted face masking her evil self, fanciful costumes camouflaging the decay of her soul. If Ollie sees her thus risen from the grave he will have to acknowledge that she will not die and will haunt him like a demon that cannot be cast out.

Nonsense. Get a grip!

The carriage rumbles to a halt. Ollie steps out, begins to walk toward the illuminated theater entrance. He slips on the frozen mud but catches his balance. Walking unsteadily toward the crowded entrance, he understands suddenly that he is the unholy progeny of a carnivore and a chameleon, a monstrous corruption containing the foulest characteristics of each. His destiny has been predetermined by the potent blood of his parents, a crimson river of deceit and treachery that will almost certainly sweep him into its surging path to perdition. His true inheritance is not the wealth of the Chadwick’s, but the inevitability of damnation. The sins of the father are multiplied by the iniquity of the mother. He is a man without a country holding a passport to hell. He hates his parents not for who or what they are, but for the abomination that their union has produced.

In other words, he hates himself.

As proof of his powerlessness to fight the unalterable course of his life, he knows that he will do nothing to reverse his most spiteful act of vengeance. The pangs of guilt will not do it; neither will the personal shame of his actions. He has shrugged off these minor pains—all too easily, he knows—in exchange for the temporal satisfaction of revenge. The image of Eardley Pickwick squatting in a hovel amidst the thousands of other debtors in the Marshalsea fills him with an exquisite pleasure barely tinged with sadness. With his father departed for Persia and his mother mortally wounded, Ollie had unleashed his rage on the only target within range. At considerable expense Ollie had hired agents to investigate Pickwick’s failed financial relationships, and then had organized the unpaid creditors into consolidating their claims against him. Having gone mostly unpaid by his faithless Qajar employer, Pickwick’s financial dilemma had worsened. Eventually the court had sentenced him to the wretched debtor’s prison. Pickwick had owed such a large sum that surely he would never again see London as a free man. On most nights Ollie sees this as justice; only occasionally does he wonder about the fairness of it, or the collateral damage to Pickwick’s family.

Ollie yearns for the kind of personal transformation that religion says is possible, a salvation from his genetic preordination, but cannot fathom that a God Who has become increasingly reclusive can overpower the inexorable forces of nature that are shaping his character.

“Would you like us to send you home, Ollie?” Charles speaks softly. Both he and William are staring at Ollie’s frowning face. “You don’t seem up for this.”

The three young men push through the clotting crowd of blue-bloods who have turned out to see the sequel of Anne Chadwick, the fabulously beautiful and publicly humiliated society dame. Many of these theatre-goers would rarely be seen on the east end, but this of course is a special occasion. A spectacle that flaunts scandal. Ollie can almost smell the morbid curiosity. Any other English woman who had been so visibly expelled from the
ton
would have merely wilted away, but not Anne Chadwick. Not Anisa.

At last the performance begins. Ollie can make no sense of it. The story begins with a loud battle scene with remarkably placid horses and a camel. A young girl is captured by slinking black-clad marauders and her parents brutally slain to the collective gasp of an audience that seems wholly unprepared for the violent opening act.

The next scene is a garish tableau in which the young girl is sold into slavery and forced to work as a servant. Her brutish owners whip her into submission, accompanied by the boisterous boos of the blue-bloods who are now warming to the tragedy. The girl spits venomously at her captors and resists their sensuous advances (cheers!) only to be viciously beaten (hisses!) But then an even more menacing figure appears on stage, a leering, demonic character who purchases the unbroken young girl, marries her, and rides off stage with his new wife chained and stumbling behind his horse.

The village of the next scene looks nothing like Ollie’s cherished Bushruyih. The kelauntar is too obviously evil, the anderún too much like an etching from the
Arabian Nights
. For the first time Anne Cranston appears as the grown-up Anisa and the audience buzzes. This is what they were waiting for. But that boy caressed by Anisa is a complete mystery to Oliver, as if his mother had borne and raised another son in secret.

There is no loyal Jalal in this tale, no dashing Gordon Cranston, and the other wives of the kelauntar are ugly, evil women who spitefully mistreat the saintly Anisa and her son. This is not history, but fantasy. And into this fictitious world is inserted an unlikely zoo of animals. A lion (clearly in the wrong neighborhood) bursts into the anderun and threatens the women with a remarkably bored roar, performing it only after repeated prodding by his off-stage trainer. Anisa’s son rides a baby elephant, undoubtedly left over from the invasion of Alexander the Great. Peacocks strut the stage, a mule defecates to the wild amusement of the audience, a camel spits in the face of a villager and then, as if knowing it has blown its lines, crashes through a wall attempting to escape.

Then comes a quiet scene, intended to hush the audience and prepare it for an exciting chase across the desert. As Anisa dramatically kneels in prayer, asking for the assistance of the English God that she has never forgotten, she looks heavenward—and slightly to her right. Her eyes open widely and she stares directly at Ollie. The radiance of her face shines through the thick make-up and her pleading eyes seem to implore him to… what? Is she really looking at him, or is she just acting? Had she arranged for him to be in that box so she would know where to find him? He cannot be sure that she is looking at him, but somehow senses communication between them.

As she looks upward, she says her lines: “I know I have sinned, my God, but please forgive me. I want nothing more than to return to my Christian home.”

Her words penetrate Ollie to the bone. Is she asking for
his
forgiveness? He hates her, but desperately wants to feel her arms around him—the way she held that artificial Ali on the stage—and to hear her tell a story again.
The
Enchanted Horse
. Oh, if only he could leap onto that horse and fly into the past, into the world he had left behind, before things had gotten so complicated.
Yes, I can forgive you, mother
, he thinks.
I can forgive you, if you ask
.

But then the trance is broken. On the stage Anisa looks away from Ollie and stands. As her eyes peel away, it feels like skin being ripped from his body. Anisa walks to a sleeping mat and looks down at the small figure of her artificial son and says, “I must leave you here, my son. It is too dangerous a journey that I embark on, and I cannot risk your life. Your father will take care of you. It is a man’s world here—not a woman’s. Be well, my son.”

She reaches down and touches her son’s forehead. Ollie can almost feel the warmth of her hand all the way up in his box seat. As she withdraws her hand, Ollie is startled. He now realizes that his mother has chosen to leave him. She is abandoning him forever. She is announcing to the entire world that she has given up her son in exchange for another life. And the audience—so dense they are, so willing to accept this decision as a noble and courageous act to spare a son.