“Dear Clarissa, you sound like a Christian tract.” “My memory of him, then, James. It is the memory I love beyond all bounds…” We tarried at one of the gas lamps on the bridge. We craned our necks to look at the swirling waters beneath but the fog effectively obscured the sight. James shrugged. I removed my coif and shook out my long black hair. James sighed. “One cannot love beyond all bounds,” he said. “One must find the limit and then work backward to expunge it. Because if you keep loving Hugh Kinsteares, the obsession will have your mind.” “I'm afraid it already has my mind.” James gazed at me a very long time. “Do you really think that, Clarissa?” he asked. “Yes.” “Pity. What will you do, indeed?” “I haven't gone beyond thinking of changing my name.
Apparently the Quist-Hagens, with you as the exception, do not want me-at least, not during their lifetimes. It was they who originally suggested I change my name, and I've begun to think it a capital idea-I don't want to commit suicide under an assumed name!” I smiled broadly. “It's good to see you emerging from your despond,” James said. “But you've got to have a program of action, you know. Have you picked out a name?” “Yes-Victoria Collins. Do you like it?”
James mused for several minutes. “Yes,” he said finally, '“and it's given me an idea. One of my drinking cronies at Oxford-chap by the name of George Maytemper, a bit daft but none the worse for it, really-has got together a group of players for a summer tour.
Maytemper's Mummers he calls them, I believe. Now look here, Clarissa, you've never been on stage but you do have a presence and I wager you'd be something of success once you had the acting essentials at your command. In any event, what I can do is get you to talk with Maytemper, and he will decide if you're acceptable or no-he might have you do a reading to that end. Are you game, Clarissa?”
“Clarissa?” “Victoria, then.” “Victoria Collins is quite game,” I said.
9
Mr. George Maytemper was a fat man. It was impossible for me to forget Hugh Kinsteares and the nagging sense that I had misled him-for which I deserved, now, damned little from life -but I liked Maytemper. I liked his corpulence-his Falstaffian abdominiousness-and I wondered if the hump of fuck between his thighs was a member as stout as the rest of Maytemper. But this speculation on my part was not the reason we met at Holishank's Bitters and Sprint, a tavern near Oxford at Thudder's Crossing where ladies accompanied by gentlemen were quite welcome without chaperones.
The barmaid, a shrewish, sharp-chinned biddy who answered to the name of Vivian, at last reached our table. Evidently she was on familiar terms with the university man. She ignored me absolutely.
“What will you have, Master Maytemper?” she asked, barely moving her lips. “My usual, Lady Vivian,” he said sardonically.
“Faugh,” she said, half snarl and half grin on her face as she acknowledged the order and exposed her yellow teeth in their last resting place, gums of an unhealthy whitish pink. “And an ale for my companion,” he said. Arms akimbo, she called over her shoulder to the bartender. “Harry,” she said, “a whisky and soda, and an ale.”
She turned back to the Oxford man. “Will that be all, Master Maytemper?” “I daresay, Mistress Vivian,” he said resignedly, the mass of fat about his eyes making gimlets of them. “It's my business to recommend the kidney on the bill of fare,” she said.
“You've done your business, then, Viv.” “No kidney?”
“None.” She stuck out a hip. “As you wish, Master Maytemper.
I'll be along with the chinks by and by.” “I'll be obliged,” he said flatly. After the barmaid had flounced off, he once again turned to me. “You are James's sister, are you not? There's too much resemblance to put me off.” I admitted to the relationship but begged him to keep it a confidence. “Of course, Victoria.
Certainly you're aware that I've already observed a good deal about you. Your voice is a fetching contralto and your carriage is beyond cavil, but I shall have to teach you a good deal in a very short time-even the rudiments of acting are quite complex. Maytemper's Mummers open in As You Like It in Brighton, in precisely four weeks.
I've a frightful impatience, Victoria, and will no doubt on occasion flay you from head to toe-and we shall still be taking a gamble.
Nevertheless, in deference to your bonny brother, I'm game to make the attempt to put you on the boards.” He smiled, and his eyes very nearly vanished amid the fat. “And you?” “I'm game, Maytemper,” I said.
He winced. “George, please.” I shan't bore you, gentle reader, with the details of my theatrical baptism, but there did, at last, arrive the evening when George Maytemper exacted his due-nor was I averse to Maytemper's piping. As a matter of fact, I had been more than sexually abstemious since Hugh's death-I had even actually denied myself the contrition of masturbation. It was as if May-temper were practically to take a virgin… I had maintained my abstemiousness easily enough-I still considered myself figuratively responsible for Hugh's death. At the same time I thought myself fair game for George Maytemper at any time he might decide to make the attempt. I realize that sounds paradoxical, but in the light of what occurred there was no paradox at all… We had just finished going over-for the fifth time-a scene between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and I was exhausted. I was more than ready to return to Hagen House for the night- we had been working, as usual, in Maytemper's rooms, and the early spring humidity had been stifling. I found myself staring in utter fatigue, and yet with some morbid fascination, at some rather peculiar posters Maytemper had brought back with him from his last trip to Paris-the draughtmanship was acidulous, as if the artist had been determined to eat away at his subjects, mainly currently popular cabaret performers. The artist's name was Toulouse-Lautrec, and he seemed to me an extraordinarily sharp, if obscure, observer of the demimondaine. I remarked on it to Maytemper.