The Queen's Cipher (32 page)

St Cross Building Theatre 2 was a small claustrophobic room with dark wood panelling, a low ceiling and no windows. It looked like a sauna and, when fully occupied, felt like one too. Most of the public lectures here were sparsely attended but today was an exception. Almost every seat was taken for Dr Brett’s talk on ‘Shakespeare and the Police State.’ 

The lecturer’s shame-faced arrival was greeted with loud cheers and the waving of pro-Brett banners. He put a sheaf of notes on the lectern, keeping his head down to avoid eye contact with his audience.

“Let me begin with a clear statement,” he said, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. “I do not yearn for old style Shakespearean criticism with its emphasis on imagery and symbolism and no political dimension. Those days are gone and good riddance to them. Shakespeare did not exist in a vacuum. His writing was shaped by events.”

“Right on,” yelled an encouraging voice from the back of the room.

“What New Historicism has done is to highlight the centrality of political issues in the interpretation of Shakespearean drama. Take
Hamlet
for example. The first draft was written in 1601 and expanded to its finished form three years later. In those years the main political questions in the public mind were the rights and wrongs of the Essex conspiracy, the Scottish succession to the throne and the increasing paranoia of the Elizabethan police state. It is my contention that these issues were skilfully woven together in this truly magnificent drama.”

Freddie told his audience
Hamlet
wasn’t about madness, real or assumed, but about the intrusiveness of spying. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern spied on Hamlet; Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius spied on Hamlet and Ophelia; Polonius even spied on his own son. Political satire was still in its infancy when Shakespeare was writing his plays and he had to tread carefully. The country was full of what Ben Jonson called ‘mice-eyed informers’ with citizens encouraged to eavesdrop on their neighbours by an increasingly totalitarian state.

“
Hamlet
is a Jacobean revenge tragedy in which the justice of revenge outweighs the horror of tragedy. It is a play about the abuse of power and how fear blinds people to the truth. Yet even a corrupt Elsinore court recognises it is being managed and manipulated and hints are dropped about the former king’s murder and his wife’s shameful second marriage. Denmark is ‘a prison’ in which the only possible justice is an act of vengeance.”

This was, of course, a concealed comment on the relationship between the individual and central authority in Elizabethan England. Revenge was outside the law but how else to seek satisfaction when the truth was covered up? That was why Hamlet’s anger and frustration had resounded through the centuries, uniting past and present. Freddie understood this only too well.

“‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ and the smell emanates from a royal palace that is simply humming with intrigue. Nowadays such a smell would hardly be noticed. We have been desensitised by corporations and data banks with vast information capabilities that are used to subdue and control us; robbing us of our essential human rights. We live, as Hamlet says, in ‘an unweeded garden’ of ‘things rank and gross in nature’ and do nothing to root them out. The politics haven’t changed since Shakespeare’s day.”

To emphasise the point, he smacked the lectern with the palm of his hand, scattering his papers far and wide. As he bent down to retrieve them the door burst open and a girl came in. All he could see was a pair of long legs and a disconcertingly short skirt. As he stood up, Cheryl Stone took off her shoulder bag and found a place in the front row.

Wondering what she was doing here he resumed his lecture. The Elizabethan authorities suspected playwrights of having political motives and Shakespeare reflected this obsession by making his prince commission a play to awaken Claudius’ conscience.
Hamlet
was a biting satire as well as a great tragedy.

“And the rest, as the prince said, is silence.”

Freddie was wrong about that. The small lecture theatre erupted into a standing ovation. Embarrassed by his reception he rushed outside to find Cheryl waiting for him.

“Ready,” she said.

“Ready for what?” he wanted to know.

“For what comes next.”

“And what might that be?”

“Take me to lunch and find out.”

They went to Fishers, a popular seafood restaurant on St Clements Road, and ordered fish soup and sea bass which they ate almost in silence. Cheryl was biding her time. It came with the coffee.

“Where did you disappear to last Sunday, leaving that silly note?”

“I had to go to a cocktail party at the Manor.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so instead of going all moralistic on me? I mean, let’s face it, tutors and students are having it off all the time.”

This was a novel interpretation of Oxford’s staff-student relations but, like so many hypotheses, it contained more than a grain of truth.

“Don’t you want to shag me anymore?”

A distinct hush fell over the restaurant as male diners pondered the question and waited for an affirmative reply. Freddie disappointed them by asking for the bill.

“You’re coming with me,” he grabbed her wrist. “We’ll talk about this at my place.”

“You’re hurting me Freddie,” she said, as he tightened his grip on her arm, frog-marching her along the High. “But I like a masterful man.”

Outside the flat in Walton Lane, Simon Nicholas was packing the boot of his Ford Fiesta.

“Hello, I’m off to Brighton for a very long weekend.”

Catching sight of Cheryl’s coppery tresses he stopped what he was doing and turned to Freddie. “Tell me, dear heart, what is this reincarnation of Lizzie Siddal doing on our doorstep?”

“I ain’t no artist’s model, sir, I’m a respectable girl.”

“No, you’re not. I can see that for myself.”

“Garn, I’m a good girl, I am,” Cheryl wailed in imitation of a cockney flower seller before abruptly changing her tune. “Alright, it’s a fair cop, guv’nor. I’m a lap dancer from Hackney hired to show your Freddie a good time.”

“Well, mind you do,” Simon replied sternly, aware his chain was being yanked.

Freddie found his key and opened the door for her, conscious of the flat’s shortcomings. It looked like a student pad: small, transitory and impersonal. The kitchen was much the best room with an Aga cooker, fitted cupboards and a breakfast bar.

“Wow,” cried his eager guest, throwing her bag on the table. “This is better than my dump.” 

“We need to talk,” he muttered darkly as he put on the kettle.

But what was he going to say. That she should curb her tongue when, in reality, he found her imperfections and complexities quite beguiling? That he didn’t want to have an affair with her, that it was unprofessional, that he didn’t even like her. If he couldn’t believe these things, why should she? Watching her settle down at the kitchen table with her long hair, heart-shaped face and high cheekbones, he felt an almost irresistible urge to kiss her.

I’ve got something for you.” Cheryl rummaged around in her shoulder bag. “It’s only a small gift.”

He was both touched and disconcerted by the gesture. “You shouldn’t have,” he muttered mechanically, ripping the wrapping paper off her parcel. She had bought him a DVD.

“I thought we should celebrate my dissertation subject. It’s Kenneth Branagh’s version of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
. I hope you haven’t seen it.”

“No, I missed it. But I like Branagh’s Shakespeare movies. I thought
Much Ado about Nothing
was particularly good.”

He took her into the lounge, put the DVD into the playback machine and slumped down on the sagging sofa, all thoughts of a serious conversation forgotten.

The film came as a complete surprise. Lasting only ninety minutes, it began retro-style with a thirties musical score over the opening titles. Branagh had time-shifted Shakespeare’s most enigmatic comedy and repackaged it as a salute to the Hollywood musical with songs by Berlin, Gershwin and Cole Porter. And while production numbers like ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ were performed with gusto, they only served to emphasise the thinness of the plot. The screenplay was enough to give Oxford’s English Faculty conniptions.

“What did you make of that?” he asked in a shocked voice as the final credits rolled.

Cheryl smiled knowingly. “Putting the Bard on Broadway? Load of bollocks, if you ask me. Not much of the play was left. Not that it’s much of a play in the first place.”

“Then why are you doing a dissertation on it.”

“Because I find
Love’s Labour’s Lost
intriguing: it’s the only comedy that doesn’t have a happy ending. There must be more to it than meets the eye.”

“Yeah, God knows what is going on. After a couple of early productions it was given the rotten tomatoes treatment and never performed again until the nineteenth century. I studied the play as an undergraduate. My research notes are over there.”

He bounded across the room to retrieve a box file. Maybe Cheryl was right about the comedy having hidden depths. Hadn’t he been talking about this very thing in his lecture? Operating in a dangerous domain where sedition was always suspected, dramatists like Shakespeare relied on insinuations and shades of subtle meaning to get their message across, particularly when their work was given a royal command performance. First acted before the Queen,
Love’s Labour’s Lost
was a cat’s cradle of a play, full of elaborate wordplay, obscure puns and strange paradoxes.

Cheryl snuggled up to him on the sofa as he opened the box and took out his youthful notes. “You can have these if you like,” he said.

His eyes widened as he reminded himself what literary critics had had to say. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch couldn’t understand the play’s ‘separate topical riddles’; the Polish scholar Jan Kott considered its allegories and allusive imagery had ‘a secret meaning for the initiated’; Richard David, the Arden Shakespeare editor, thought it contained a puzzle that would ‘satisfy the most rabid detective ardour’ while Walter Cohen, a Norton Shakespeare editor, believed the comedy had ‘false bottoms.’

“Leaving the false bottoms aside,” said Cheryl, “it’s a really dirty play with more sexual innuendos than you could shake a stick at.”

He pointed to the bookcase. “Pauline Kiernan’s book,
Filthy Shakespeare
, is over there, next to Eric Partridge’s
Shakespeare’s Bawdy
.”

Like an obedient puppy, she fetched and carried, before perching on the sofa’s armrest. “It says on the dust cover that Dr Pauline became a research fellow at Oxford before realising she could make more money out of screenwriting.”

Freddie watched Cheryl thumbing through the pages. Their increasing intimacy disturbed and excited him. He wanted to run his hands through her long, lustrous hair and to kiss the tendons in her slender neck. Was he addicted to sex? We are addictive creatures, he thought, blundering through the empty ceremonies of life without quite knowing why.

“How about this! Act 2, Scene 1,” she exclaimed. “Biron and Rosaline meet up and he goes, ‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’ and she goes, ‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’ ‘Dance’ was a synonym for shagging and ‘Brabant’ was the Low Countries and therefore a pun on below the belt. They’re arguing about who did the fucking.”

Cheryl threw the book on the floor. “This is turning me on,” she said sliding onto his lap. “Let’s dance. I want to be ravished on your chesterfield.”

Her body coiled around him, fitting to the angle of his hip, while a hand dropped into Brabant country seeking signs of life. His thoughts scattered as her skimpy skirt rode up to reveal a lacy black thong. The softness of her lips and the way they responded to the thick insistence of his tongue was a promise of things to come.

Suddenly he broke off and shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t do this. It’s not right.”

Seriously absorbed with her needs, Cheryl struggled for composure.

“Of course you can do it,” she panted. “We already have, more than once, and I’m not leaving it there, Freddie Brett, just so you understand. But I’ll bide my time, if that’s what you really want.”

Freddie grinned sheepishly. “Let’s get to know each other better.”

He lifted her off his lap while trying to hide his erection. She pretended not to notice.

“I’ll tell you something though. Lashings of smut may have kept the groundlings happy at the Curtain but is it the kind of show a crabby old Virgin Queen would want to watch?”

“Yes and no,” he said, trying to establish a more appropriate staff-student relationship. “A courtly drama poking fun at French historical figures and their vices must have gone down well in Whitehall Palace. Having renounced his faith to gain the French crown, Henry of Navarre was no longer the Protestant poster boy and, therefore, fair game for a bit of mockery. The play involves a faithless King of Navarre. No sooner do he and his noble companions vow to abstain from sex than the arrival of the French princess and her ladies persuades them to break their oaths. The real-life princess is Henry of Navarre’s estranged wife Marguerite de Valois, who had many lovers, and her ladies-in-waiting are the notorious ‘flying squadron’ who slept with admirers to learn their secrets. A satirical comedy in which a notorious lecher like Henry of Navarre issues a self-denying ordinance to keep his hands off women only to be caught in a honey trap would have tickled Queen Elizabeth’s fancy.”

Cheryl pretended to straighten his tie. “How long do you plan to keep away from my honey, Dr Brett?” she whispered in his ear.

“I don’t think you are taking this extra tutorial session very seriously, Cheryl. Let’s change the subject. Tell me about yourself.”

He could see the joy on her face. It was the first time he’d used her Christian name.

“What do you want to know?”

“How a down-to-earth outspoken girl who went to a poor school in Hackney ends up studying Shakespeare at Oxford. Quite a leap, isn’t it?”

He made a place for her on the sofa. She sat inches away from him and spoke of growing up in a tower block on a sink estate in London’s East End.