for the play.
But he wasn’t. I realized when I got closer and looked again— the sulphur smoke was ink. So he was a printer’s devil, an apprentice in a print shop. Apparently he wasn’t much good at it either, cos he’d got inkstains all over. He was skinny and shabby, with hands that stuck out the ends of his sleeves and trousers that come halfway up his shins, and it wasn’t handbills for the play he was giving out. It was tracts—you know, the Christian ones, all about living a better life and what happens to you if you don’t. Well, I don’t live the one, so I can hardly afford to care about the other, can I? So I ignored him and elbowed my way in with the crowd, and I’d never have give him another thought the rest of my life, if it hadn’t been for what happened later.
I always loved the theatre. I loved it more than practically anything. Back then, all those years ago when I lived in London, I’d go nearly every night of the week. I’d go see any kind of play, even Shakespeare. I seen Charlie Kean play Hamlet once, and Macready, and afterwards I went with one of them. Not Kean or Macready, but one of the others. We went to a night house nearby, and had a drain or two of pale, and then took one of the little rooms. Nothing happened much, even though I gave it a good try. It just dangled there like a wrinkled stocking, between his skinny old shanks. But he paid up like a gentleman, and we drank some more, and he blubbered a bit and called me his own dear child who reminded him of his salad days when he was young and the world was full of hope—yes, he talked like that—so perhaps he got his half crown’s worth. If he didn’t, ah well. Fuck ’im.
But the ones I really liked were the melodramas. Mrs Dalrymple used to take me when she was alive, and now that she was dead I’d go to the theatre with one of the other girls, or lots of times just by myself. A highwayman and a lass, and a toff who was really the villain, and a first-rate murder and a duel, and everything going horribly wrong before turning out right in the end—those were the plays for me. Or the ones that made you shriek out loud, with blue demons dancing, and red demons rising up, and the Devil disappearing with a BANGthrough a hole in the floor. This particular night—the night I’m telling you about—it was a play about two Corsican brothers. The one gets foully murdered by a villainous French toff, and of course the other has to take revenge. It was the first time I’d seen it, so naturally I had to watch it close.
“This is wrong.”
A voice in my ear.
“What?”
“These are bad places.”
It was him—the Printer’s Devil. He was right behind me in the crowd.
“I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t have come, and neither should you, such places lead us into wickedness.”
He spoke like that, a low worried voice and the words all spilling out on top of each other. He was staring at the stage like it offended him so much he just couldn’t look away from it for a second. I was familiar with that look, from all the times it was directed at me, by gentlemen with high moral principles and low filthy longings. This one was no gentleman, and of course he was just a boy, sixteen maybe, although he was tall for his age. A lot taller than me.
“You’re gay, ent you?” he asked.
“Never you mind what I am.”
“You’re gay, you’re a whore, you’re here to flaunt yourself and have carnal connection.”
“I’m here to watch the play. So fuck off.”
He was right, though—the part about me being a whore. Why deny it? There was lots of us gay girls here—dozens of us, just like every night—and most of ’em had come for the business. At the big music halls, the ones where four thousand punters could crowd in, there might be two hundred girls at work, and private rooms behind the boxes, where a gentleman could retire for half an hour with a girl and a bottle of wine. There were no little rooms at theatres like the Kemp—it wasn’t grand enough for that. But there was the night houses across the way, and alleyways behind, where the world could go round as the world has gone round since Adam met Eve, and will continue doing till Judgement Day comes. But me personally, I was here to watch the play. Besides, there was something just a little bit wrong with this one, the Printer’s Devil with his gabbling worried voice. You get so you can sense it straight off, the ones you’d better steer clear of. So I edged forward, through the crowd.
We were way up top, of course, cos that’s where you’d go for a sixpence. The theatre was packed, like usual, and I’d come in too late to get a seat on the benches, which left me standing at the back. The pit was a shilling, and them who could afford three shillings were in the boxes—merchants and such and the real titled gents and ladies—though they steered pretty much clear of theatres like this. Up here it was tradesmen and shop-girls and apprentices and dollymops, and all manner of riff-raff like myself, crammed in cheek-to-giblets and craning to see round someone’s hat. The smell was what you’d imagine, all mixed in with gunpowder from the explosions and oranges being eaten by the crowd, and the heat was terrible, from all the bodies and the gaslights. But the play was prime.
It had just got to the part where the ghost of the one brother appears to the other, all quavery and beyond-the-grave with his hair standing straight up on end, and blood and gore on his breast from the sword that foully struck him down. There were gasps at the sight of him, and shouts to his brother of, “hear him, hear him!” and “it was the Frenchman done this!”—you know, in case he wasn’t clear on who he should be killing for revenge. For they were enjoying this, and not jeering as they do when the play’s no good, although they weren’t impressed with the actor who was playing the Frenchman’s friend, and there’d been a few orange peels flung at him already.
“They incite the passions, that’s what they do, they stir up our animal spirits, such low and lewd entertainments.”
Fucksake. He’d come up behind me again, talking low and faster than ever.
“The door is open, just a crack but that’s all he needs, the door is open and the Devil slips in. That’s why it’s wrong, I shouldn’t be here, I should leave.”
“Then go.”
“I want you to come with me. I want you to come right now.”
“What for?”
But of course I knew what for. He was pushed up against me in the press of bodies and I could feel it, sticking into my back.
“Christ, would you take that bloody thing—?”
“No, not for that!”
The look on his phiz was pure distress—enough to make you laugh out loud. Cos of course I had him pegged from the first second he started gabbling. One of them bible-thumpers so horrified by the goings-on in his breeches that he torments himself barmy. Suddenly—Gawd help us—he was Bearing Witness. Something about being a norrible sinner and in the Devil’s clutches till he was Saved by the Light and it was someone called the Captain who rescued him.
“The Cap’n loves me, he said ‘I love you Young Joe like a son.’ He said so this very morning and I could of wept with happiness. And I dreamt one time of how the Devil come for me, but the Cap’n was there to stop him. He seized the Devil by the nose, the Cap’n did, and thrashed him with a stick, Cap’n Daniel O’Thunder!”
The name meant fuck all to me, and besides I’d had enough of this. Now he was clutching my arm to keep me from getting away.
“I swear, he thrashed the Devil till he howled, and—argh!”
What you do is, you stamp down hard with the sharp heel of your boot on his instep. It works a treat if you do it right, and I’d had plenty of practice, trust me. With a shriek he lurched back into the punters behind him, who didn’t like this one bit, and let him know it. I slipped through the bodies, quick and nimble, for I can flit like a swallow when needs be. When I looked back I seen his face for just an instant, twisted and clenched, and then he was swallowed up in the crowd.
So I forgot about him, and watched the rest of the play. It was very satisfactory.