Free New Albion by Dwayne Brenna Page A

next.” He smiled a moment longer, and then his smile turned into a vacant stare. “You’ve come to see me about something, I presume, Phillips.”
    “Yes,” I said, after an awkward pause. “It’s Pratty again. He insists that Mr. Tyrone will write the panto.”
    “And is Mr. Tyrone capable?”
    “I’m not certain of what Mr. Tyrone is capable,” I said, “but no play script has been forthcoming.”
    Mr. Wilton sighed heavily. He looked for a moment like a man who would rather do anything than what he had to do next. He slumped back in his rolling armchair and, looking like a caged bear, he said, “Perhaps you and I and Colin Tyrone and Farquhar Pratt should meet and have a discussion.”
    Wednesday, 16 October 1850
    Mr. Hicks was ivre during last night’s performance of Crosby Ravensworth . Because of his drunkenness, he had to be prompted at least twenty times and nearly succeeded in setting the Parisian Phenomenon’s crinolines on fire for a second time at the end of the play.
    To make matters worse, the Lord Mayor was in attendance with his wife. After the performance, some of the leading actors were escorted to their private box above the stage, where Mr. Hicks bellowed a few lines of Shakespeare, something about women trotting, ambling, and lisping, and then clasped the Lord Mayor’s wife to him and kissed her ardently upon the lips. The Lord Mayor’s wife, a thirty-fivish lady who might in some lights be called handsome, emitted a high-pitched squeal and wriggled out of Mr. Hicks’ alcoholic embrace. In an eye blink, she was standing on the other side of her husband and squeezing his elbow. “For gawd’s sake,” she whispered hoarsely to the Lord Mayor, “keep that wretched man away from me.” I do not think that Mr. Hicks’ ill-mannered behaviour will enhance the reputation for sobriety, moral rectitude, and high art that the theatre’s management is trying to inculcate in the face of a Police Commission study.
    At nine o’clock this morning, the stock playwright and his apprentice met with myself and Mr. Wilton in the latter’s office. Mr. Wilton was smartly dressed in a waistcoat and cravat, as usual, but he stood and fidgeted near his empty bookcase like a man with swimmer’s itch. Mr. Tyrone sat in the chair nearest Mr. Wilton’s desk with a look on his face which intimated that nothing was too good for him. I sat next to him, and Pratty isolated himself by sitting in a chair near the door.
    Mr. Wilton cleared his throat before speaking. “I am given to understand,” he said, “that little progress has been made on the pantomime. This despite your assurance, Mr. Farquhar Pratt, that the script would be delivered to Mr. Phillips by the fourteenth of October.”
    “I’m leaving the panto to young Tyrone,” Mr. Farquhar Pratt said curtly, his face taut.
    Looking first at me and then back at Pratty, Mr. Wilton cleared his throat again and said, “But Mr. Tyrone has no experience of writing pantomimes, sir.” Having been an army man, Mr. Wilton is fond of calling people “sir” in moments of conflict.
    “Nevertheless,” said Pratty, manufacturing an air of nonchalance, “he is my apprentice, and that is the exercise which I have decided would create the best possible learning experience for him.”
    Old Stoneface drew in an audible breath, and it seemed to me that he was counting silently to a thousand-and-one in an effort to contain his emotions. “I do not have to tell you, Mr. Farquhar Pratt, that the pantomime is the single most important event of the season at this establishment. It makes more money, by far, than any of your other plays have done.”
    “Have done here,” corrected Mr. Farquhar Pratt. “You have forgotten that The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl ran for a hundred nights at the Royal Victoria.”
    Subtext and innuendo are not Mr. Wilton’s forte, and I could see that he was rapidly losing his patience. “Damned insolence!” he responded, his voice