‘Just now you said five ki-’ I started to say before the playwright threw a warning glance at me. His brown eyes didn’t look so benevolent, but when he turned back to the boatman he spoke softly, almost kindly.
‘I know how hard it is to earn even a modest living in these times,’ he said. ‘I know how our business depends on you boatmen. Without you, I think we would not be here.’
Our author spoke the truth. There was a constant traffic to our side of the river, for the playhouses, the bears and the whores, and the single Thames bridge was convenient only for the few who lived either side of it.
‘What business would that be, sir?’
‘The play business.’
‘Beg pardon, sir, I took you for a gentleman.’
Now it was my turn to take offence. Despite my having just recovered breath and wits, despite my having escaped death by a hair’s width, I was ready to take up arms on behalf of my calling. But our author smiled as if he agreed with the boatman — and the common opinion was with him, it must be said — that the playhouse was no place for a gentleman to work.
‘Tell me who was the first gentleman, boatman,’ he said.
‘I’m not educated in the way of answering questions of that sort, kind or shape, sir.’
Our ferryman might have no respect for players in general but he seemed prepared to make an exception for the playwright.
‘Then I shall tell you, master boatman. It was Adam was the first gentleman,’ he said.
‘That’s my name!’ said the boatman, as eager as a child.
‘A happy coincidence. Your ancestor and my ancestor Adam, Adam, was a gentleman, for he bore arms. You know it is the right of a gentleman to bear arms?’
‘Most infalliably, sir,’ said the boatman, now thoroughly mollified.
‘Adam ’ad arms, one might say,’ said the playwright, who appeared more pleased with his words than the circumstances justified.
‘How’s that, sir?’
‘The Scripture tells us that he digged — and could he dig without arms?’
The playwright seemed over-amused at what I considered to be only a mediocre joke. A stale one too. I was sure I’d heard it somewhere before. But whatever I thought, the words seemed to work some kind of magic on the boatman. His mouth cracked open to reveal teeth like boat-ribs, while gurgles of laughter sounded like water in the bilges.
‘Very good, sir. . dig. . yes, how could he. . without arms. . very good.’
‘Now, Adam, take this for your lost custom, and as a mark of my general respect for your profession.’
The boatman’s grin remained. He didn’t glance at the coins; long practice made him familiar with weight, size, number, amount. Oh, he knew a gentleman when he saw one.
‘Thank you, sir. And I’m sorry if I crashed into you. . sir.’ It cost him an effort to speak to me in almost the same tone that he managed with our author. ‘I’ll remember what it was you said. What was it again?’
‘Oh, pleonasm,’ I mumbled, thoroughly embarrassed now and wanting to be shot of him and the whole business.
‘Pleenasm,’ said Adam, and then to my rescuer, ‘And if you ever need a boatman for something special, sir, you just bear your old Adam in mind.’
‘We should all bear our old Adam in mind,’ said the playwright.
‘Adam Gibbons you will ask for. On either bank they know my name and face,’ said the boatman, and he lumbered round and headed off in the direction of the river.
‘On either bank they know my name and face,’ repeated the playwright, giving the words a tum-ti-tum lilt. Then, ‘Well, Master Revill, you have come to us from the Admiral’s. I can never get used to calling them Nottingham’s Men.’
‘I, yes, I. . thank you for helping me just then. If you hadn’t come along. . I don’t know what would have happened.’
The playwright shrugged and turned to go. I was taken aback: he already knew the name of an insignificant jobbing actor, as well as the company I had briefly been associated with. Also, I felt that he would have been fully entitled to lecture me on the perils of crossing swords, or paddles, with a runaway boatman. He could at least have called me a foolish young man. Yet he said nothing. I was almost disappointed.
Unwilling to have him leave me so abruptly, I caught up with him in a couple of strides. This area around the theatre was criss-crossed with ditches, a little stirred by the tidal slop of the river. Because the bridges across them were narrow, hardly more than a few pieces of planking, I was compelled to hover at my rescuer’s shoulder as we traversed one little inlet after another.
‘You appear this afternoon?’ I said, more to make conversation than anything else. Speaking was a little painful after the boatman’s assault. I visualised a red weal across my throat.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You have Jack Wilson’s parts, don’t you? He makes a good ambassador in my thing today but he has not quite the look for the poisoner in the play, I mean the play inside the play. There is something a little straightforward about Wilson — although perhaps that is the best guise for a poisoner.’
‘King Claudius seems straightforward enough, sort of a hail-fellow-well-met sort and he’s a poisoner,’ I said, my words tumbling over themselves in my eagerness to impress the playwright.
‘You know the play?’
The same words, the same intonation as Master Burbage’s. Evidently, it was surprising that a mere player should show himself capable of judging characters rather than merely being them.
‘I saw it a couple of months ago.’
I would have gone on to say something to the playwright about how magnificent he’d been in the part of the Ghost, but the fact was that, although I remembered the Ghost, I couldn’t remember him as the Ghost, if you see what I mean.
The playwright glanced at me, and seemed to approve.
‘You have more of the saturnine in your face than Wilson. Remember that you must grimace.’
‘Master Burbage said that I should play, as it were, badly.’
Master WS appeared amused. ‘That’s typical of Dick, I think. I’m not sure I’d give anyone the licence to play badly, as it were, or in any other way — but it’s true that I have made Hamlet say something about “damnable faces”, so perhaps he is right.’
‘And then I am Cinna in your Caesar,’ I said.
‘Which Cinna? The conspirator?’
‘The poet, I believe.’
‘Torn for his bad verses. Alas, poor Cinna. Of course we are all poor sinners.’
It was a moment before I grasped the pun, which the playwright stressed in case I missed it. As with the joke to the boatman about Adam and his arms, I have to confess that I found his sense of humour a bit. . well. . obvious.
‘Like Orpheus,’ I said, trying to elevate the conversation.
‘Who is like Orpheus?’
‘Your poet Cinna. Torn to pieces by the mob, just as Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Thracian Maenads.’
The reference, intended to show my nimbleness of mind and range of learning, did not appear to leave its mark upon the playwright.
‘I suppose so,’ he said. Then, ‘You are lodging near here?’
‘Yes, in Ship Street,’ I said. In fact, we were walking in the opposite direction to that in which my squalid accommodation lay. I was so reluctant to leave my rescuer’s company that I pretended to be sharing his destination.
‘Then you will need to go the other way.’
‘What — oh God, how stupid!’ I clapped my hand to my head in showy forgetfulness. ‘Yes it’s the other way.’
The playwright stopped on the far side of a little ditch. Behind him was the Bear Garden. Outside was the usual crowd of loiterers and ne’er-do-wells. Somehow, I was on the opposite bank of the slimy channel.
‘Till this afternoon,’ he said.
‘You’re the Ghost,’ I said, but he’d gone already.