Free The Trial of Elizabeth Cree by Peter Ackroyd Page A

Philanthropic Society.”
    “That’s us, you see. We’re the friends in need. And we’re very philanthropic, if you know what I mean.” He raised his eyebrows like an old-style Harlequin, and took me firmly by the arm. “Let’s perambulate upon the stage.”
    We walked into the Washington and, as we passed through the vestibule, I found myself in the most wonderful scene—finer by far than the one in the Craven Street theater. There were so many mirrors and glass lamps all around me that I held on to his arm more tightly. I might have been in a cathedral of light, and I was afraid of losing all sense of myself among this brightness. “That’s a good girl,” he said, patting my hand. “This really takes the bun, doesn’t it?” We walked up some steps and onto the stage itself. It had not been swept, and I glimpsed little pieces of star dust lodged between the wooden boards. Someone had left three chairs and a table here, but they were so brightly paintedthat they did not resemble any furniture I had ever seen; they looked like children’s toys, and I would have been afraid to sit on them in case they turned into something else. Suddenly I felt myself lifted off my feet and whirled around: Uncle was spinning me faster and faster, until his silk hat dropped off the stage and he dumped me on the painted table. I felt so giddy that I could hardly speak, and looked up at the ropes and the canvas floating above me. “I had to feel the weight of you,” he said, gasping as he clambered from the stage to retrieve his hat. “Just in case I can get you into a rope dance. A spin does you good, anyway. It sends the blood racing, doesn’t it, as the surgeon said to the jockey.”
    “Don’t let him chaff yer.” I looked down into the theater and, to my surprise, saw Dan Leno standing at the back. “He can be a terrible one for chaffing the ladies, can’t you, Uncle?”
    “That is my way, Dan. But it’s only the way it’s done on the stage.” He seemed abashed in the boy’s presence and I knew, even then, that Dan was the one who mattered in this company. Yet he was such a little slip of a thing—even shorter than I had remembered him from the night before, and with such a wide mouth that he reminded me of a marionette or a juvenile Punch.
    “We were talking about you last night,” he said, coming down the aisle with his pert little step. “Are you out of a shop?”
    “Sir?”
    “Are you not currently engaged in employment? Are you workless?”
    “Oh yes, sir.”
    “My name is Dan.”
    “Yes, Dan.”
    “Can you read?”
    “That’s just the point I was putting to her myself, Dan.”
    “I know what point you would like to put to her, Uncle.” Dan ignored him after that and carried on talking to me in his brisk, intense fashion. “Our prompter ran off with a slangster comique the other day, and sometimes we need a bit of help from that quarter. Do you understand me? Otherwise we might get ballooned off the stage.” I understood well enough that I was being invited to join them, although I had no notion of what a prompter might be. Dan Leno must have seen the delight on my face, because he gave one of those infectious smiles which I came to know so well. “It’s not all lavender,” he said. “You’ll also have to be a general fetch-and-carry kid. A bit of dressing. A bit of this and that. Do you have a neat hand?” He blushed as soon as he had said it, and tried not to look at my large, raw hands. “You can do some play-copying for us, you see. Now let’s have a bit of fun, shall we?” He was wearing an overcoat which almost came down to his ankles, and from one of its many pockets he took out a small exercise book and a pencil which he handed to me with an elaborately low bow. “Write it down,” he said, “as I spoof it.”
    He splayed his legs wide on the stage, put his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat, and then tweaked an imaginary mustache. “I’ll tell you who I am, Uncle, I’m