Or I may have got some of that wrong, because by this time I was near cross-eyed with tiredness and my only lusty flirtation was for my own quiet rooms. He had been telling me about a 900 verse ode he had written to pirates, or perhaps about pirates, some years before, when I broke in to inform Pessoa – or de Campos – that I was tired, that we both were needed at the theatre by nine o’clock, and that if he did not have a word with his friend the pirate king about keeping his retainers under control, Fflytte would fire the lot of them and take his company off to Morocco, seeking his piratical actors there.
And I left the poet with his multiple personas at the table, and shall now stagger off to bed.
Saturday, 6:30 a.m.
I finish this seven hours later, in what will no doubt be my only quiet moment of the day, before setting off for my theatre of the mad.
You might, by the way, enjoy the antics of our pirates, and especially our designated Pirate King, a man who would have the air of a brigand even were it not for his gold earring and the considerable scar down the side of his face (which must have come near to taking out an eye, if not the throat itself). La Rocha lacks only a peg-leg and parrot to complete the storybook image. He impresses Randolph Fflytte mightily, as well as the men hired as his pirate band. Which is good: If he can keep that rabble in line, this film may actually get made.
Your,
R.
Postscript: Again, I fear I have given the impression of having greater concern with the demands of my façade employment than with the darker matter that may be at its core. I confess, I keep hoping that word will reach me of Miss Johns’ safe reappearance at her flat. Still, lest you (and Lestrade) imagine me taking my ease here, I assure you that I am pressing forward, albeit on an indirect path. If there is wrongdoing on the set of Pirate King along the lines of the guns of Small Arms and the drugs of The Coke Express, it may be possible to anticipate the new crime and solve the old at one and the same time. I merely have to figure out what it may be. If, as I say, crime exists.
– R
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ALL: How pitiful his tale! How rare his beauty!
SATURDAY MORNING BEGAN at the specified ungodly hour of nine o’clock, when a cohort of unkempt and ill-shaven pirates came face to face with a flock of scrubbed and radiant young ladies. It would be hard to say which side had the greater shock. The girls put their curly yellow heads together and giggled; the men turned (according to their age) surly or scarlet beneath their stubble, kicking their dusty boots against the boards.
Fflytte mounted the stage steps and took up a position between the two groups, rubbing his hands in anticipation. “Now,” he said with the air of a schoolmaster calling together his unruly class, that they might be inculcated into the amusements of the Latin deponent. “Here we are! We’ll be working together for several weeks, and although some of us know each other, many of us are strangers. Let me do a quick run-through on the story we’ll be working on, just to remind you, and then I’d like to introduce each of you before we split up to begin our rehearsals.
“Once upon a time,” he began (thus proving himself a quick judge of an audience), “there was a musical stage-play about a young pirate named Frederic.” He lit into the worn tale as if he’d just invented it that instant: Frederic repudiates the pirate band to which he has mistakenly been apprenticed all these years; repudiates, too, the affections of his middle-aged nursemaid; encounters a group of pretty sisters, bathing on the shore; falls instantly in love with Mabel.
Hale and I stood looking on, Hale with amusement, me with amazement: The little director might have been a storyteller around a camp-fire, flitting between the interests of the girls (romance!) with those of the men (sex!) and weaving together apprehension (the police!) and tension (can Frederic and Mabel ever be together?) with humour (the sisters speak pointedly of the weather, to permit the flirtation of the young lovers) and satisfaction (a good fight scene!). The girls gasped when Fflytte revealed that the pirates were taking them captive; the pirates looked uneasy when they heard that the Major-General was bringing in the troops. And when Fflytte revealed that the pirates were, in fact, noblemen in disguise, and thus acceptable husbands-
I pray you pardon me, ex – Pirate King!
Peers will be peers, and youth will have its fling.
Resume your seat, and legislative duties,
And take my daughters, all of whom are beauties.
– they applauded, one and all. Personally, I’d found the story both thin and somewhat distasteful, a sort of nineteenth century precursor of The Sheik, concluding that because the pirates were peers (and marriageable) the abduction of a group of young girls would be forgiven. Still, both girls and pirates seemed to find the story satisfactory, and Fflytte bowed.
When the huzzahs and buzz of conversation died down, Fflytte went on. “However, we are not making a movie about The Pirates of Penzance. The subject of our tale is the movie crew who is making a movie about The Pirates of Penzance, and whose lives come to intertwine with the lives of their stage counterparts. For example – Daniel, stand up, if you would – Mr Marks here plays Frederic, and he also plays the man directing the film about Frederic. And – Bibi? – this lovely lady is at one and the same time Frederic’s Mabel, and the director’s fiancée. And our Ruth – Mrs Hatley, please? – is also the fiancée’s aunt. Major-General Stanley, the father of all those girls – Harry? – is also William Stanley, the director’s fiancée’s father and financial backer of the film.
“And now for the daughters themselves.”
Fflytte’s voice paused for the translator to catch him up, yet Pessoa went on, and on. The pirates were all gawping at him with expressions ranging from confusion to outrage, and he went on, with increasing volume and insistence, until his gestures began to look more like those of Álvaro de Campos than those of Fernando Pessoa. Eventually he ran out of breath, and in the pause, questions shot across the stage at him. In an instant, we were back in the same wrangle we’d had before. The voices climbed in volume until, at a crescendo, La Rocha’s squeaky voice cut in with a sharp question. To which Pessoa responded, in a state of considerable frustration, with a brief phrase, half of which I’d heard the previous morning from the startled man in the breakfast-room. The phrase was accompanied by a hand flung in Fflytte’s direction, and its meaning was crystal clear: “Because he’s a [blithering] madman.”
It must have been a strong adjective, because as one, the pirates blinked, looked at each other, looked at the waiting Fflytte, and burst into laughter.
This time, La Rocha got them back into order before Fflytte could blow up. The pirates rearranged their faces and pasted a look of expectancy over their mirth. Fflytte glared, but the techniques of working with actors could be applied to Portuguese non-actors as welclass="underline" He stretched his arm towards the girls, to regain the men’s attention, and began to introduce them.