Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [66]
‘I dispute that, sir,’ the curate said.
‘You may dispute it, sir, till you are blue in the face. If we go by the indications of the play, these two charmers have never clapped eyes on a man before, never flirted, never known the sweets of love. That is the brilliant new feature of the piece as Davenant has given it to us. He has taken the original, not generally regarded by our cognoscenti now as more than indifferent good, and he has brought it to the point of genius. By introducing a sister for Miranda and bringing in Hippolito as a counterpart to Ferdinand, he has given us two couples to play out the comedy instead of just one. So you get all the complications of jealousy among ’em.’
‘All the complications of jealousy, aye, there it is,’ Bulstrode repeated, nodding his head. He had become very sycophantic towards the director and often repeated his words. ‘Twice two is four,’ he said. ‘They have doubled the comedy.’
‘Egad!’ Adams said. ‘I have seen Mrs Belmont do Miranda to a miracle, that turn of the head and swirl of her skirts, you know, and that sly look at the audience. These two innocents know a deal more than they are supposed to; the thing is full of double meanings, it is all brilliantly paradoxical. It is a play exactly suited to the age, full of raillery and sensibility and refined manners. Mrs Belmont is shortly to appear in a trifle of mine.’
He had looked rather deeply into Miranda’s eyes as he spoke of the play’s ambiguities, or so at least the feverish Erasmus fancied. And not much later he was making remarks about Ferdinand that added insult to injury. ‘Lord love me,’ he said, ‘you are supposed to be charmed by wandering airs, bemused yes, bewildered perhaps, but not, my dear young friend, as if struck by a butcher’s axe.’
As this was not said to him personally but in his character of Ferdinand, there was nothing Erasmus could reply, resent it as he may; and the words had a spiteful aptness that made several laugh, the tutor with sycophantic loudness. Miranda did not laugh, but she looked vexed, which Erasmus thought almost worse. Later, for no good reason that Erasmus could see, Adams placed a hand in the small of her back, in the elegant concavity just above her bustle, and kept it there for at least fifteen seconds while he spoke quite close to her ear.
It was at this moment that Erasmus, smarting with humiliation and furious with jealousy, formed his intention to depose Adams and ruin the proceedings. Though hardly at first so definite as this to his mind, he saw soon enough that the thing brooked no delay. He knew that he was living on borrowed time. From the first the director had regarded him as an unmitigated disaster in his role of Ferdinand. He now suspected that Adams had designs on Miranda. With both these factors combining, it was only a question of time before he was put out of the play altogether and someone else brought in to look into her eyes and declare his love. Perhaps even Adams himself …
The idea was intolerable. The very thought of it made him flush and clench his fists. He thought of sounding the rest of the cast for support, attempting to incite a mutiny among them; but he was not sure of finding immediate support and there was no time for persuasion even if his pride had allowed it. No, he would have to act alone.
Intimately joined with these thoughts was the pain of Miranda’s complaisance. As the last days of June passed into the first of July and the open land around the town was deepened and made vivid by the colours of the young corn, he struggled to understand why she showed no repugnance, why her face had no shadow on it when that posturing jackanapes issued his vinous breath close beside her, made his insinuations, put his reprobate hands upon her …
Finally, in order to bind himself and guarantee success, he translated his intentions into a solemn vow. He had carried from childhood the belief that if one promises hard enough anything can be brought about. At home, in the silence of his room, in the midst of objects sanctified by familiarity