Free Vital Secrets by Don Gutteridge

she was already too far away to hear.
    Lear himself at that moment began to cough, an uncontrollable hacking that continued for a full minute. When it finally stopped, there was an awesome silence.
    â€œYou’ve been at it again, haven’t you? I can smell your stinking breath from here!” Merriwether said with withering contempt.
    Armstrong’s jaw quivered as if it were expecting a word to emerge, but at that moment Mrs. Thedford swept back in, and Merriwether looked to her expectantly.
    â€œThea will be here in a few minutes. I’ve asked Mrs. Frankto prepare her a tisane,” she said, as if she were remarking on the pleasantness of the weather.
    â€œBut I wish to do the Lear first, ma chère . It needs the most work, obviously.”
    â€œ I’m ready to go,” Armstrong said with a pathetic sweep of the cloak about his stooped shoulders.
    â€œHe’s been drinking again.”
    â€œThat’s a lie!”
    â€œSmell his breath.”
    â€œI had one mouthful, for my rheumatism.”
    Mrs. Thedford took Armstrong’s hand in hers and pulled him up to face her. “When we’re finished here, old friend—and I expect you to stay till the last word is uttered—I want you to accompany me to your room and give me the bottle. God knows where you managed to hide it.”
    â€œI’m sorry, love. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
    â€œFor the love of Christ, can we get on with this farce?”
    â€œI think we’re doing that tonight,” Mrs. Thedford said dryly, and drew a giggle and a chortle from the back of the stage.
    â€œAm I the director here or not?” Merriwether said somewhere between complaint and petition.
    â€œYou are, Mr. Merriwether, and a damn good one.”
    Merriwether looked mollified. Then with a sly grin he stepped under the candlelight and into the shadows upstage.
    â€œThen I am making a casting decision that should have been made weeks ago.” Into the spotlight he drew by one tiny whitehand a young woman, barely beyond girlhood, but nonetheless stunning for all that.
    â€œTessa,” Marc murmured before Rick could.
    Tessa Guildersleeve had the white blond hair of an albino, and it fell where it wished in flowing coils over her bare shoulders, its native lustre merely enhanced by the meagre light above it. Her Dutch skin was unblemished and uniformly alabaster from the brow to the rim of her bosom that winked enticingly from the low-cut, frothy shift she wore—which resembled either a priest’s frock or a courtesan’s nightie, depending on the angle of observation. Her diminutive feet were caressed by ballet slippers, and she moved her slim, pale arms with the impetus and delicacy of a prima ballerina’s grand entrance. She was all elfin innocence in movement, but out of the translucence of her blue eyes shone pure desire.
    â€œTessa, my pretty, you have understudied the role long enough. Tomorrow night you shall step onto this stage as Cordelia.”
    â€œYou’re not going to wait for Thea, then?” Mrs. Thedford said evenly, but there was an edge behind the remark.
    â€œThea’s getting too old and fat for the ingenue, ma chère. She’ll be laughed off the stage like she was in Buffalo. We don’t want that to happen again, do we?”
    â€œWhat about Juliet, then?”
    â€œWell, I thought Tessa did splendidly at short notice during the entr’acte in Rochester, didn’t you, Clarence?”
    At this, a young man in his mid-twenties stepped into thecircle of light that now illumined five of the six acting members of the troupe. He was handsome in a feminine sort of way that contrasted sharply with the aggressive masculinity of Merriwether. He had curly red hair, pale freckles, and a pallor to match, and languid blue eyes that most directors would have instantly labelled a poet’s. He peered towards Mrs. Thedford, but she was staring intently