Voices from the Past Part 103

I would not change the story.

Henley Street

Mother-memories of you are mostly memories of songs you used to sing when sleep was near, lovingly, patiently, sung in my room, close to the varnished beams, curtains drawn, as you sat or lay beside me or rested in a nearby chair.

Our favorite song was "Happy be thou, heavenly queen...man's comfort and angel's bliss...of all women thou hast the prize..."

And I remember each word of Sanctus-and hear each word as you sang it lingeringly; sometimes your hand kept time; sometimes your fingers covered mine.

Stabat Mater Dolorosa...

So many years have lapsed that I have forgotten how you looked, only your eyes and thin figure and voice remain: I hear you when you called us in from play: "Too-lee- looly-loo," you called, shepherding your six for supper and bed.

I roam about, room to room, stooping for a bedroom doorway, floors creaking, the varnished beams always the same, three floors of thinking about me, windows you used to look out of, beds you used to make-or was that another house, another time, another illusion? My house, your house, our house-who owns, who makes traitorous gifts, decisions, contracts, to pile millions of acres of dirt on top of us later?

At the Globe, when I was young, I received quite a visitor! Ben Jonson brought Sir Francis Drake. Ben was a sharer of friends. I was dumbfounded but "El Draque,"

contemptuously at ease, sat on my backstage table, his plumed hat and red gloves flung on top of a litter of plays. He and Ben discussed a masque Jonson was to produce.

Young as I was, it took courage to speak to "El Draque"

because even his purple hat shocked me. But I managed to ask about his attack on Cadiz. Lines warped his mouth, and he said, stroking his corn husk chin:

"It was a matter of guns...we singed the King's whiskers through our superior armament. Ah, good winds too. We had great luck! Don't you believe in luck? When you write a play, isn't it luck, lucky weather, luck with your players, luck with your attendance, the right kind of royalty attending at the right time?"

I saw him again after the defeat of the Armada, at a crowded Thames anchorage. Wounded, he looked older, livid scar on his cheek, the fire dead in his eyes, his expression one of cynicism and fatigue. He wore a squat, official hat. No rings. Leaning against a spattered capstan, he seemed smaller than I had remembered him; he did not recognize me.

"Our fire s.h.i.+ps forced the Armada out of anchorage, broke up their plan!" he said, talking to a group of officers.

"Put yourself on a fire s.h.i.+p," he boomed. "You're at the rudder. She's aflame-flames are roaring aft! Your whole s.h.i.+p's blazing but somehow you b.u.g.g.e.r her against a Spanish hull. You're beaten off. They're afraid you have a powder mine in your hold. There's cannon shot! You dive overboard. It's a long, icy swim. Most men never make it out of that water...

"What we needed was more gun shot, more ammunition, kegs and kegs of powder; then, by G.o.d, we'd have run them clean to Spain, run them, not waited, our guns useless.

We had to sit it out, wait-no powder. We didn't dare take a chance. Think of it, everything to our advantage but we dared not move. We had to bluff."

I wrote down his words-but I still hear them, it might be five or six years ago, not thirty!

Deceptions of mind bother me: unrehea.r.s.ed, the brain bedevils and stacks lie on lie...in the lays of time. I turn my gla.s.s and am alone, the cuckold of myself reflected in three hundred sixty-five mirrors. My spirits, as in a dream, are bound up, and like the Armada, strewn on sh.o.r.es and still more rocky sh.o.r.es...

Henley Street

May 18, 1615

Memory's snowfall rattles every door and window in my house. Was it the once lost winter thirty years ago in London? From door to door, I begged for work: my hands blue, legs quaking, face frost-galled. Belly empty, pocket empty, I harried taverns, bakeries, homes. People mistrusted me, that wild-haired kid, goat-bearded-doors slammed in my face. Blinded by snow, I headed for the Thames, for the bridge-shelter there. On the way, I pa.s.sed a tavern and opened a door: a crowd of young men faced me: I asked for work and was given a scullery job, supper and a mat by the stove: I'll never forget the warmth of that mat by that stove: I wanted nothing more: cherry voices and warmth: it all comes back!

A piece of bread in one hand, I fell contentedly asleep. An elephantine man, with florid face and scraggly beard, wakened me roughly.

"Next time you go to sleep don't let the rats share your bread," Falstaff guffawed.

Stratford

May 23

Falstaff helped me find an old cloak and helped me borrow boots and gloves. He got me a stagehand job.

Later, he showed me where I could purchase stolen things, sharing his room with him: ribaldry, punning, gargantuan laughter, thievery, friends, foolishness, foppery, wit and wine. Little did I think of using him in a play during the weeks I lived with him. In those days, I had never written a line.

Like an umbrella, his character sheltered me from depression: he introduced me to Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson.

Years later, I introduced him to Alleyn and Burbage; Burbage wanted him on stage but Falstaff had his own stage where he could dupe and bedevil, unmolested by paid gapers. By then, he was getting old and liked puttering and sleeping best.

Those were mad times, those days with Falstaff, and yet, behind every laugh lay the threat of poverty, the knife blade of quarrels, reason gone unreasonable. Night after night we went to sleep hungry. With glue and nail we pieced our shoes together, for one more day. With needle and thread we patched our clothes. Falstaff pulled my wisdom tooth to save the barber's fee: "Open wide, yell! There, I've got it, Will, spit now. Spit, boy."

In a few ways Falstaff resembled my father: both were una.s.suming, generous, dilatory: their fat portraits hang side by side in my mind: the last I heard from my friend was a brief word from Dover where he was working for a s.h.i.+pbuilder and lived in a shanty by the sea.

He would have roared at his role in my plays: he would have objected to his cowardice, upheld his zeal, begged me for a thousand pounds, and tried to bribe me for the address of a pretty woman.

Friend...you were eel-fish, bull's pizzle, dried neat's tongue and stockfis.h.!.+ When you were born the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes and the goats ran from the mountains.

Henley Street

May 25, 1615

A c.o.c.kroach creeps about my room, an X on its back, the only roach branded in my roost. I see it in the morning, when I sit down to write. It favors a corner, where there is a deep crack, in case of an intruder or wrath on my part. It has a stiff carriage-much more so than any of the others. Ruler, no doubt, with excessive responsibilities! So I have decided to call it Bill.

Certainly all other roaches seem afraid of this Conqueror. When I find it on my table, I make a pa.s.s at it and it leaps with a scut. It eats paper-old and new.

It munches leftovers, liking cheese best, though I think the cheese is pretty well divided between the roaches and the mice.

Henley Street

May 26, 1615

Why am I disliked in Stratford? Is it because I drive a hard bargain? Is it because I have a.s.sumed, at least at times, an actor's air? They say I stand aloof but is it possible to cross the Avon to their side? My side is Ptolemy's, Priam's, Cleopatra's, Coriola.n.u.s'. We four are difficult to appraise as we walk along Henley Street. The local folk have never heard the creak of chariot wheels.

Lonely...I have been lonely and am lonelier now, but which is lonelier, the pod with one pea or the pod with aliens? True, I have sued for money; true, I have acquired property. And the city man and country man mistrust one another: the writer fits in nowhere: yet, since this is home, I try to accommodate myself, say "yes" to Mr. Combe, and help if I can. "Yes, M."

I never could introduce Ann to Londoners and she has been unable to introduce me to Stratford people. If I were well, if I could write, I would spit on Avon.

Combe is the only person in S. who has seen any of my plays; however, when I talk with him, he confuses scenes and characters; his appreciation is based on pride that says "I can speak of Shakespeare." A Puritan, he patronizes incoming Puritans more than most, helping them infest this town, making it a sawtooth of moral crud, chair and whip in line, summoning whispered inquisitions.