Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [58]
That all came back to him now as he drove home through the quiet streets and the darkness.
Carr-Gomm’s letter to the Times was written the next morning and delivered by hand. It appeared the following day, featured with gratifying prominence, and was read in many of those homes that might be expected to contain persons of influence. It was read by judges and barristers, by city men and “men of affairs,” by statesmen and royalty, by Lords and Ladies, by those who were rich and titled, and by those who were merely one or the other.
It was read also by William Kendal as he sat in his dressing room at the Apollo Theatre waiting to go on as Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. He had already played his early scenes, and now there was a gap before he would be needed again. Orsino was not a long part and it gave him some time to himself.
Mostly he used that time dealing with the numerous affairs that needed his attention as the Apollo’s manager as well as its leading actor. There were many who wondered why he chose to put on and appear in plays in which his own roles were often so small, and his wife’s so large. But William Kendal was an astute man. He knew that it was Madge’s stunning beauty and equally stunning acting ability that the town came to see, and he chose plays that would show her to an advantage rather than himself. It was good for business, and William liked good business.
Between them he and Madge had brought a certain amount of social respectability to a world that was known for its tawdriness and tinsel glitter. Since Madge Kendal was so obviously a lady, it was possible for a lady to be an actress. And since she was too elegant to act in the mannered declamatory style that was usual, she adopted her own natural style, and soon other actresses began to copy her.
When the final curtain had fallen they changed together in the dressing room they shared, commenting on the play, the audience, the state of the box office, in the casual affectionate way of people who have been happily married and engaged in the same business for twenty years.
He finished first and went off to put some final touches to essential paperwork, leaving her to put out the lights. She yawned and stretched, feeling desperately tired. It had been a long evening and Viola was a demanding role. She made a mental resolution that after this season she would never play it again. After all, she was thirty-nine, and whatever William might say, she could see the lines creeping across her lovely face. She leaned closer to the mirror, examining her complexion nervously.
As she did so, her eye fell on the copy of the Times that her husband had left lying there. She dropped into a chair and began to read casually. William would get involved in his paperwork and keep her waiting a long time. By the time she was halfway down the letter page she had become very still.
“Terrible though his appearance is,” she read, “so terrible indeed that women and nervous persons fly in terror from the sight of him, and that he is debarred from seeking to earn his livelihood in any ordinary way, yet he is superior in intelligence, can read and write, is quiet, gentle, not to say refined in his mind.”
After a moment she fumbled in her bag and took out a pencil and a little notebook. She cast her eyes back over the letter, searching for a name. When she had found it she wrote neatly in the book, John Merrick.
“I’d very much like to meet that gentleman,” she said to herself. “He sounds almost … Shakespearean.”
Chapter 11
It would take two weeks for the rooms off Bedstead Square to be ready for Merrick’s occupation. In the meantime it was tacitly agreed that he would stay where he was—which was as much as to say that Carr-Gomm was determined to leave him there and if Broadneck found out and objected, Carr-Gomm would cross that bridge when he came to it.
Treves decided to leave it to the last minute before telling Merrick, whom he knew was beginning to feel at home in