Free Skylark by Jenny Pattrick Page B

a lady,’ he said lamely.
    All very well, but he couldn’t have it both ways. The crowd liked me, I could tell. Jack was proud of my singing and my good looks. Rosie Short’s name had been up on the billboards more than once, and I was called on for a song now and then.
    â€˜This is my life,’ I told him. ‘I want to be as famous as Mrs Foley, and one day I will be. I don’t want to settle down, Jack.’
    The truth was that Jack was older than me by several years. He was ready for a wife and children and the status that gives a man in society. But my heart, I believe, was still childish. Perhaps the loss of parents and hometown had kept me from developing. Perhaps I needed a family more than a husband. Many sixteen-year -olds were ready for marriage, but I was not. It hurt poor faithful Jack, but I was not ready to break from theatre life, my new family, so soon.
    But alas, the dreadful aftermath of the January celebrations shook my resolve.

T HE F IRST A BDUCTION S CENE
Enter the blackguard
    Now we have come to the villain. Be ready to hiss. It is the latest fashion in melodramas in England to hiss and boo the villain. The louder the better. And it is catching on in New Zealand too. Imagine you are here, in the Royal Victoria Theatre, Willis Street, Wellington. It is about nine p.m. on Tuesday the twenty-third of January, 1855. The theatre is packed with a noisy, revelling crowd, many of them from out of town. This is the end of a two-day holiday, celebrating fifteen years of European settlement in Wellington. The melodrama has finished and also the musical interlude. Stage hands are rolling away the painted backdrop of the fearsome Duke’s castle and sliding into place the sunny picture of thatched cottages and colourful hollyhocks for that hoary old farce, favourite of all and sundry, The Village Lawyer .
    Every detail of that night is etched into my memory. Mr Marriott was onstage, warming up the audience with a few bumbling antics; I stood behind the backdrop, buttoning on my smock with one hand and dabbing a little rouge on my pretty cheeks with the other. Mrs Foley had gone back to her boarding house.
    Old Mr Franklin played a chord on the piano, and Mr Marriott clapped his hands for attention. ‘Lovely little Miss Rosie will now sing to us that sweet old number “Kate Kearney”, to remind us of all our loved ones back in the Home Country.’
    But the crowd was ready for the farce. Someone called for The Village Lawyer and the chant went up. There I was, marooned on stage, scarcely able to hear the opening chords. I swallowedand took a deep breath as Mrs Foley had taught me. In those days I had not the knack of quieting an unruly audience. ‘Stage Presence’, Mrs Foley called it. At this moment a large fellow seated near the back in the five-shilling seats rose.
    ‘That’s enough o’ that,’ he bellowed. ‘Let’s have silence for little Rosie.’
    The man had a strange effect on the audience. Those close to him looked away; those in front turned to see who was shouting, then quickly returned their eyes to the stage. The silence was profound and eerie. I had the feeling that the crowd knew and feared him — or were they in awe? The big fellow was not dressed like a wealthy man: his jacket was rumpled, his collar open. The cap he wore had seen better days. He stood there, dark-haired, burly, belligerent, swinging his body from side to side, fists on hips as if ready to clout anyone within reach.
    Still standing, he nodded to the stage. ‘On with it then, Rosie my dear,’ he said with a wink and a grin. ‘They’ll listen to ye now.’
    I opened my mouth to sing. No sound emerged, for at that moment I felt a slow rumble growing in the room. Were the patrons angry? The room swayed and oh! I suddenly felt I would faint. Was I ill? Had I stood too long on my injured foot? Then a grinding, roaring hell threw the whole theatre into panicked confusion. I fell to the floor; it heaved