Free The Trial of Elizabeth Cree by Peter Ackroyd Page B

a recruiting sergeant. The other day I was standing at the corner of the street when I saw you, Uncle, as is your wont.” Then Uncle stood up very straight, as Dan stalked over to him with as much ferocity as if he were eight feet high. “Do
you
want to be a soldier?”
    “I don’t. I’m waiting for a bus.”
    “Oh dear! Oh dear! My word! What a life! But it puts me in mind of a very delicate little story concerned with my profession. A fine young fellow came up to me the other day and said, ‘Governor, will I do for a soldier?’ I said, ‘I think so, my boy,’ and walked around him. But then I noticed that he walkedround
me
at the same time. When I got him before the doctor, the medicine man said, ‘Dan, you do find them.’ Then we discovered that he had only got one arm. I never noticed because we were perpetually walking around one another. Well, what a life!”
    I wrote all this down as quickly as I possibly could; then, at the end, he jumped down from the stage and stood on tiptoe to look over my shoulder. “That’s a good girl,” he said. “You’re as neat as a shipping clerk. Uncle, will you sing a nice patter for Lizzie, just to see how fast she can go?” I understood now that part of my new employment was in writing down what Dan called “extempore vocalization,” so that anything said “off the cuff” could be used in later performances. Uncle took off his hat and then squatted upon it, just as if he were about to relieve himself. “Now then,” Dan said, very sternly, “none of your blue stuff here. Not in front of the girl. Do your patter song, or get off the stage.” I had never heard such authority in a young man, but Uncle dutifully put on his hat and, with his hands out in front of him, began to sing:
    My love was no foolish girl, her age it was two score
—
    “Did you get that, Lizzie?”
    I nodded.
    My love was no spinster, she’d been married twice before
 …
    I was a quick study, and I soon caught up with the words when he started repeating the chorus. Dan was obviously delighted by my progress. “How does a pound a week suit you?” he asked me after he had taken my notes and put them back inthe pocket of his overcoat. It was as much as my mother and I had ever earned, and I did not quite know what to say. “That’s settled, then. You get your packet from the money-taker at the entrance on Friday nights.”
    “He’s very cute in business, is Dan,” Uncle said. “He’s not in the nursery now.”
    “And never was. What about diggings, Lizzie?” It was clear that I did not understand what he meant. “Do you have a lovely palace to hide in, or only a hole in the ground?”
    Now that I felt so transformed, I did not want to return to Lambeth Marsh. And I could see no harm in playing the orphan girl. “I am quite alone in the world, and the landlord will not see his way to letting me stay unless I—share his rooms with him.”
    “That’s really rubbing it in. That’s the kind of thing that makes me volcanically mad.” Dan walked around the stage for a moment, and then turned to me. “We’ve got some nice little lodgings in the New Cut. Why don’t you pack up your bag and join us?”
    This was a wonderful chance, and of course I seized it at once: “May I?”
    “You may.”
    “It will take me no more than an hour or so. I have only a very few possessions of my own.”
    “Write it down now then. Number 10 at the New Cut. Ask for Austin.”
    So all was settled, and I made haste to leave before I discovered that the whole business was some dream of my own. I had just reached the theater entrance when I heard Uncle calling down to Dan. “Couldn’t we put her in a living picture, Dan? Now that Elspeth wants to try the wires?”
    There was a moment’s silence. “Too soon, Uncle. Too soon. Anyway she might make a good gagger. You can never tell. She’s got the dial for it.”
    “You can say that again.”
    “She’s got the dial for it.”
    I ran home as