Long Acre Read online

  ‘Oh, I made inquiries, you know — around and about at home, before we left!’ he said airily, ‘and was told this was a good enough place, and would not cost us too much and was in a very good part of London for those seeking to be among actors. So, that is where we go!’

  The jarvey at last whipped up his horses and the growler lurched and then gathered speed and Amy leaned forwards to stare eagerly out of the greasy window, her fatigue and hunger quite forgotten again.

  The streets through which they were passing did not look very grand, she thought. And the people — she let her gaze travel across the mass of humanity thronging the sides of the road; men in the flat caps and short dark woollen coats of seamen; frailer, more bent men in neater but undoubtedly threadbare coats that denoted a life spent in clerkly affairs in dingy sooty offices, women in dull stuff gowns with shabby shawls about their heads, children in rags — these people did not look as she had imagined London people would look. In her many daydreams of how life would be in London she had seen it as elegant, if not positively wrapped in grandeur. She had imagined the men as handsome as her brother, the women as well endowed with beauty as herself. But these grey-faced creatures — these were not at all what she had expected.

  But then the cab turned north, into another wider street, and now gradually, as it went at a spanking pace across the cobbles so that the two passengers were thrown up and down like balls in a basket and Amy had to hold on tightly to the loop of worn strap beside the window, the character of the area changed. The men she saw were more prosperous-looking, in dark rich coats and glossy top hats and with an air of importance about their bustling that was familiar to her. They looked, she thought, for all the world like her Mamma’s brothers and cousins, those tedious Cabot and Fenton uncles who had tried so hard to stop the two young Lucases from living their lives in their own way —

  Her lips curved reminiscently as she thought of it all, how she and Fenton had smiled so limpidly upon their careful cautious leathery old uncles and promised them with innocent smiles that yes, they would settle to a quiet life at home in Boston, after poor Mamma’s funeral, and of course they would invest all their money as the uncles thought fit, of course they would. And how they — or rather Fenton — had gone about secretly selling the old house and converting the few poor stocks Mamma had left them into gold and eventually got them both a passage on a cargo ship making its first landfall in Boston, after leaving Valparaiso on its way ultimately to London. The uncles must be beside themselves with rage, she thought gleefully, and stared again at the busy, important, clearly very pompous men bustling along on the pavements, and laughed aloud.

  ‘This is the City, Amy,’ Fenton said, staring out from his side of the cab as eagerly as she was. ‘It is where the money men are — my Uncle Tobias has connections here and he is rich enough for ninety. One day —’ he turned his head and grinned at Amy in the dimness of the dusty cab. ‘One day, Amy, when I have made my packet, such men as those will bow and scrape to me as I drive past them in a carriage of such style as’ll blind ‘em. I’ll show Uncle Tobias and the rest of those dried up twigs at home what Fenton Lucas can do!’

  ‘Indeed you will, Fenton,’ Amy said warmly. ‘I know you will, and so shall I. I shall be the greatest actress the town ever saw, and I shall —’

  ‘Yes,’ Fenton said absently, staring again out of the window. ‘My, Amy, but there’s a lot going on here! Everywhere you look they’re building something new! Oh, indeed and indeedy there’s money to be made in this town!’

  And Amy too stared and marvelled, for still the growler moved apidly through street after street, each of which was clearly more genteel than the one before and each of which, as Fenton had said, showed evidence of vigorous rebuilding and lavish spending of money. London might turn out, she thought, to be much more bewildering than she had expected, and she yawned suddenly, and her belly rumbled and contracted, and she remembered just how tired and hungry she was.

  At which point the cab stopped and Fenton jumped out, and stood on the pavement staring up at the building before which they stood. ‘Albion Hotel’ announced the façade, in well polished brass letters. ‘Family Accommodation. Coffee Rooms. Smokers’ Divan.’

  Amy, climbing out of the cab behind him, looked up too, and the final flicker of her excited anticipation flared and then settled down, for this, at last, after the long weeks of scheming and cheating the uncles, the long weeks of travelling and dreaming and wondering, was the reality.

  It was 20 October 1866, and they had arrived at their first home in London. And she bowed her head imperiously at the jarvey and then lifted her chin and swept up the pair of steps and in through the big mahogany doors.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They sat side by side at the scrubbed wooden table, contemplating their empty dishes. They had put on a very creditable show of being languidly bored by the need to eat, ordering only a little crimped cod for the lady, and a rather heartier mutton chop for the gentleman, denying any desire for soup or bread or vegetables; but now it was eaten, Amy felt even hungrier than she had been when they had come in here.

  Fenton, now leaning back and picking his teeth with the elegant silver toothpick he had been given by Mamma for his twenty-first birthday, seemed less famished, but then, he had been having the lion’s share of all the food they had bought in the last month, for after all he was a man, and therefore more in need of sustenance. Amy did not grudge him his extra rations, but she was hungry; the cod had been the first food she had eaten since this time yesterday, and then they had only a meat pie bought in one of the little streets nearby to the Gaiety theatre and taken back to their hotel room to be gobbled to the last crumb.

  She sighed a little, and looked round at the rest of the chophouse’s customers in an attempt to take her mind off her stomach. They looked a solid enough lot, mostly business men, she opined, very like those top-hatted ones their cab had passed on the way from the docks. She sighed again as she remembered that. Could it really be a full month ago that they had arrived? It had seemed to be much longer. A full month of trailing from theatre to theatre, seeking managements ready and willing to employ them.

  To start with they had been quite gay, not to say a little arrogant, both of them quite determined they would accept only roles as principals. Not for the Lucases mere supers’ walk-ons.

  They had sailed with great aplomb into the first theatre they had found, the Theatre Royal, New Adelphi, going to the front of the house and addressing the first person they saw in lofty tones, asking to speak with the manager.

  The slattern leaning on her broom had stared at them and sniffed and then said harshly, ‘Mr Terrance don’t see no one no’ow wivaht e’s got an appointed time, an’ anyway, ‘e’s always rahnd backstage. Yer gotta go to the stage door. Yer never finds managers front o’ the ‘ouse of a morning —’

  So they had gone to the stage door, and been sent smartly packing by its formidably large custodian who told them with some force that Mr Terrance was certainly not interested in auditioning anyone at the moment, were they Kemble and Siddons reincarnated, and to be about their business; to which Fenton had retorted with even greater force, pointing out that the custodian’s overbearing behaviour was depriving his manager of the most exciting new talent that had come into the country in years.

  ‘Tell him,’ he had said sumptuously, ‘that we are Mr and Miss Lucas from Boston in Massachusetts in the United States of America. I think he will know the value of adding interesting Americans to his company, even if his lackeys do not!’

  At which the large man had laughed loudly, and not without some genuine sympathy.

  ‘Well, well, my young cock-sparrer,’ he said when his spluttering had ceased. ‘Is that the shape of it, then? Thinks yer special on account of bein’ from foreign parts, eh? Never think it, my lad, never think it! Why, there’s a dunnamany Americans floatin’ around London this very moment. We don’t find the likes o’ you remarkable in the very least, and th
at’s about the shape of it! You take a tip from an old trouper, my friend, one as was one o’ the most successful tumblers in burlesques as ‘ad ever bin, until I broke me leg fallin’ into the pit. You go aht into the small places fust, my cockalorum! Get yerself a bit o’ real experience somewhere’s on the road, working at the public fairs an’ that, afore you comes demanding London auditions.’

  At which Fenton had bridled and lost his temper and sworn mightily, and the man had sworn even harder and they had squared up to each other for a fight, and would no doubt had beaten each other severely had not Amy managed to drag the fuming Fenton away.

  ‘Never mind,’ she had said as soothingly as she could, standing outside on the dirty pavement. ‘It is only the first theatre we have been to, and possibly we chose a very bad one to start! For all we know, we have had a most fortunate escape! Come, we will go and seek elsewhere. I have no doubt we will have found a good management with the sense to take us before nightfall!’

  But they had not found such a management that day, nor the next, nor the one after that. They had gone at first jauntily and then with deepening depression, from the Royal Italian (‘Actors? No ducks. We wants singers and ballet dancers. You oughter ‘a known that!’) to Drury Lane (‘Experience? Where? In Boston? Oh, dear me, no! What we want is people with experience here. You go get some good work out of town and then come back and we’ll think again.’) to Terry’s, to the Royalty, to the Globe, to everywhere they could find.

  And everywhere it was the same. Coolness at best, downright insults at worst. There had been the man who had ogled Amy and offered her ‘good money’ for some unspecified but clearly highly dubious activity that mainly seemed to involve wearing hardly any clothes at all, to reward which suggestion Fenton hit him hard and had the satisfaction of making his nose spurt blood; there had been the man who had told them that he knew of an out-of-town company that might take them both on and train ‘em well for the London stage for a premium of just a few pounds apiece, to which he would gladly introduce them in exchange for a reasonable commission for himself; there had been the sneering ones, the tired ones, the bored ones and the angry ones, and with each passing day Amy had become more and more dispirited and Fenton more and more irritable and quixotic, so that Amy was hard put to it to keep him reasonably happy.

  And although she did not realize it, her very real acting ability spoke against her in their present circumstances. As her speech teacher Miss Farraday had so accurately said, Amy Lucas had a very speaking countenance; her depression, her anxiety and her hunger and fatigue showed clearly in her face, so that much of her charm and sparkle, which could be so captivating, was quite missing. So, when they presented themselves at stage doors, all too often all that those they sought to impress saw was a passably pretty but not particularly engaging little scrap of an American girl who might have been considered for some sort of walk-on, had she not been attended by so belligerent and occasionally pugnacious a gentleman.

  For this was Fenton’s problem, had he but known it. His good looks were in no way dimmed by his emotional state; indeed, his anger added a glint to his eye which could be very fetching to a certain type of female audience, but managements in theatres were careful, canny people, and knew better than to risk backstage fights and problems by deliberately taking on a bruiser. It happened by accident often enough, God knew; many were the meek and apparently biddable young actors who had seemed so eager and grateful for the job at audition who had turned out to be hell raisers and thorough trouble-makers with their truculence. So no manager in his right mind would consider Fenton as long as he approached would-be employers with the arrogance he did.

  And this very morning his rage had been enormous, as he realized that they had but three shillings left between them. He had marched about his room stamping and kicking at the furniture with such abandon that Amy, dressing in her room next door, had come running to see what ailed him and had needed close on fifteen minutes to calm him down so that he could tell her.

  And when she had realized that not only had they only three shillings left, but no money with which to pay their by now very large hotel account — for Fenton had managed to persuade the management, she knew not how, to wait until the end of the first month of their stay for their settlement — then she was very frightened.

  ‘Oh, Fenton!’ she had said, her eyes wide and dark with anxiety. ‘What shall we do? We know of no one here who can help us — no one! And we have no money to go home — oh, I wish you had listened to me and agreed to search for Papa’s family as soon as we arrived here! Then we would perhaps have had someone upon whom we could throw ourselves!’

  ‘Well, complaining at me now is no answer!’ he had shouted. ‘And you can’t be sure we would have found them so easily, anyway! How would you do it, hey? How would you do it? Stop people in the street and simper at them and say, “Did you know my Papa? He used to live here in London when he was a boy. Mind you, he’s been dead these ten years, and lived in Boston for ten years before that, but never mind — I’m sure you know him!” Is that what you would do? If you’ve nothing better to say than that, then keep quiet, you fool! I’ve enough to worry about without such —’

  This time she had burst into tears, and since this was something she very rarely did, and only under extreme provocation, he was first nonplussed and then angry and finally, as her sobs grew louder and her distress even more painful, contrite, and he had hugged and kissed her and told her stoutly that it was all a nonsense anyway — he had been giving in to his megrims and should know better.

  ‘For we can get out of here as right as ninepence without fretting over the bills, for have you not a little balcony outside your room? I can hand the luggage down to you, late tonight, and we’ll be on our way, and no one the wiser! And then we’ll find another hotel and start again — come, don’t weep, Sugar-Amy, please don’t weep, for it makes me feel very put about —’

  And at the use of her childhood nickname and with his dear arms about her she was able to stop weeping, and feel that perhaps after all they would manage. They always had, after all. All through the ten years of their mother’s bewildered widowhood — for she had never really recovered from the loss of her dear but feckless husband (who had died so saddled with debts that even the lawyers had been in awe of the total) — they had managed.

  They had lied and cheated their way into and out of all sorts of agreeable escapades, while at the same time convincing their poor, dear, oh-so-upright and oh-so-proper Mamma that she was succeeding in bringing them up to be respectable members of her own clan, the Fentons and the Cabots. To the day of her death she had not known how many scrapes they had been in, and wriggled out of, how near to the wind Fenton had sailed on so many occasions, gambling both with the money and feelings of tender and very rich young ladies who allowed themselves to be captivated by his Apollo Belvedere appearance. Surely, surely, they could manage again!

  So Amy had returned to her room to complete her dressing and wash away her tear-stains with cold water and sally out with her dear Fenton to spend their precious three shillings on the day’s food.

  She had thought they would do better to go to a cookshop and purchase as much as they could get for their cash there, but Fenton had said grandly, ‘You must behave always as you wish matters to be! To go again to one of those cookshops is not to be considered. They are vulgar and low, and not fit for you, my dear sister. We shall eat in decent style, even if frugally. Come!’

  And he had taken her through the bewildering network of streets among which their hotel lay, to Maiden Lane, to Mr Rule’s chophouse, and ordered the cheapest fare he could; and if, in ordering his mutton chop because he could not abide fish he had deprived Amy of some of her share of the nourishment that was available for three shillings, well, she was not the sort to complain.

  She stirred now and sighed. The chophouse was beginning to empty, as it was now close on three o’clock, and those who dined unfashionably early were making way fo
r those who would come shortly to dine elegantly late.

  ‘I suppose we must be on our way, Fenton,’ she said timidly, for h seemed abstracted to a degree, and was sitting staring unseeingly at the yellow painted walls with their new gaslight sconces. ‘Though quite where we are to go, I do not know —’

  His eyes shifted then, and he nodded, a trifle heavily. ‘I was wondering if we could leave here without paying, but we ate so little, it hardly seems worth the effort of trying.’ He threw their three shillings on the table and stood up. ‘Well, come on. We shall go.’

  ‘Where?’ she said again, hurrying along beside him as they came out of the warm sawdusty rooms into the chill November blowiness of Maiden Lane.

  ‘I think I saw in the Strand a jeweller’s shop,’ Fenton said. ‘One that is a pawnbroker’s as well. They had the three balls of the Medici on display, anyway. We shall see what my toothpick will fetch —’

  ‘Oh, no — Mamma gave you that!’

  He shrugged. ‘She gave me an appetite too, and I daresay she would as lief I pawned her present as starved for want of something to use my teeth upon. Anyway, I shall but pawn it. It will be possible to redeem it as soon as we have earned some money —’

  And she hadn’t the heart to point out to him that it was their inabilty to find anyone who would let them earn money that had brought them to the present pass, so she kept silent, and trotted along beside him, down Maiden Lane to the Strand.

  The Strand was very, very busy. Already the winter afternoon was dwindling to a close and shop fronts were ablaze with lights which spilt out onto the pavements and made the bleak light coming from the sky seem even more limited than it was. They stood for a moment staring at the crowds, the fashionable women in their huge crinolines sailing along like galleons, their bell-like skirts dipping and swaying. They made Amy feel very unfashionable, for her skirts, while quite wide and well petticoated, did not surmount a wire crinoline cage, and could not until she had a chance to earn the money to buy one. These passers-by wore fur-trimmed pelisses, too, and delightful chip bonnets with ribbons trailing half-way down their backs, and she had none of those refinements in her dress, and her gloom deepened. And Fenton too looked at the men and glowered, for where was his furtrimmed short coat, where were his elegant narrow trousers and high-lapelled waistcoat? Above all, where was his silver-headed cane? Every man in this busy glittering thoroughfare had such a one and he felt very deprived. And said as much to Amy.