Under the Poppy (15 page)

All week, the town has heard from the hills the growing mutter of the guns. The stream of departing citizens has swelled, then slowed, the remainder having chosen apparently to wait out the storm, at least while conditions are bearable, in the hectic air of making do: Water the tea, use ash to wash the spoons, stash every stub and penny, bear grease will do for pork fat in a pinch. The livery is still open, the train still runs, even the Gaiety still plays although on a somewhat reduced schedule; the champagne at last has run dry. The Palais sits abandoned, unchosen after all as the soldiers’ garrison, inhabited only by twos and threes as a parlor for the Alley whores, whose population has fared hardest, being used and used and used to death.

At the hotel, amenities are scarcer, tempers shorter, the cuisine noticeably more tedious, the same dishes reappearing three nights out of five. As the mayor collects his evening’s guests for the show at the Poppy, unattended this night by Mr. Franz, he must dodge a fracas in the very lobby, apologizing to the trio he leads: “Gentlemen, this town is chasing its own tail. And ’twill be darker before the dawn, won’t it, General?” as that worthy nods, stern and gracious in his fresh-pressed uniform, the last of the laundry’s starch; but not more gracious than the mayor himself, burying the hatchet in the company of not only the General but Mr. Arrowsmith and Jürgen Vidor, all four up front and center as Decca, white-faced in black velvet, her very best dress, herself serves them pheasant and baked hen, the best cullings of the wine, after this they will be reduced to gin and raw whiskey, the first of the worst shortages but one would never know that from her welcome, making a point to press the mayor’s hand as “We are so very pleased and honored that you have chosen to be here tonight,” she says, as Jürgen Vidor lifts his glass: “To
rapprochement,
gentlemen,” including in his toast the General, who returns his nod in a friendly fashion; Jürgen Vidor, it has been noted, has left his bodyguard behind once more, unneeded at the Poppy, a neutral state of
cordon sanitaire
.

Safe himself behind the curtains, Puggy watches the byplay, Puggy in the know at last and a little whey-faced himself: “I thought you said,” to Lucy, trussed tonight in feathers and beads, “that that old cunt Vidor was down on the mecs?”

“Istvan says so, yes.”

“And we’re getting our scratch from him?”

“You’d know more of that than me.”

“So why in the fuck are we flouting him? And the mayor, too?” Dabbing at his neck, he is sweating already. “Is Mr. Rupert going soft in the head as he grows harder in the prick? Why don’t we just burn down the building and be done with it? and kick ourselves in the bollocks whilst we—”

“Guillame,” says a voice in his ear, a whispering, chuckling, insinuating voice that frights him forward half a foot, Pan Loudermilk’s voice and Istvan’s merry gaze behind it, done up like a parson in pious black, white plague mask and roundhead hat and “O ye of little faith,” he says to Puggy, “must I sic the Bishop on you? Mr. Rupert is a certified genius, trust him if you trust nothing else…. Have you our maestro’s cue?” to start the introduction, Jonathan Chopin to play a sweet
é
tude as the plates are gathered and cigars ignited, the General smoking thin Indian cheroots like Rupert’s; where is Rupert? His chair is empty, as all notice but none remark.

It is not until the prelude floats into its last glissando that he appears from backstage, swift and dark and flawless, signet ring winking in the tallow light, to take his seat between the mayor and Jürgen Vidor, who immediately makes some trivial remark, mere pretext to lean closer, that Rupert answers with a noncommittal nod, turning then a grave and courteous smile to the mayor, who replies with one as friendly: “I’m surely looking forward to your young ladies tonight, sir.”

“I greatly hope the performance will please you,” as Jonathan’s piano takes up an eerie, chiming waltz, Laddie wandering onstage alone, his dark suit and bright linen twin to Rupert’s, his hair brushed back to resemble the same. Mr. Arrowsmith and the General exchange a look. Rupert’s gaze is straight at the stage, self-possessed, perfectly at ease. Jürgen Vidor’s hand opens and closes gently on his knee.

“What price love,” says Laddie, half speech, half song; he does not have a voice for singing but can place the words as an actor does, giving them weight, aiming them into the darkness before him as from behind him Pearl appears, ethereal in pale gauze that barely shields her nakedness, hair loose down her back like an angel’s: but no angel ever twined so naughtily about a mortal man as she does Laddie, nor pressed angelic lips so close to skin and flesh.

“What price bliss?” asks Laddie, louder, and here comes Vera, bare legs and dark lace, she makes a swooning face as she wraps her arms around Laddie from behind, while aiming a sly ankle at her rival in gauze, a martial gesture that tweaks a laugh from the audience: it is a full house tonight, expectant but unsure. Soldiers line the wall by the doors, but as yet have been quiet, or quiet enough. Omar watches them, flanked by perspiring Puggy and a likely boy from town, all of them armed: Omar with his truncheon and a knife inside his vest, the boy with a stout stick of hickory that can break a bone if used correctly, Puggy with a tiny nickel-plated revolver with two bullets that is mostly for show. Even Velma is armed, with an iron meat-fork abstracted from the kitchen, though just now she is busy with the slops. Decca stands straight as a ramrod, arms folded, as if she herself is a weapon ready to be used. Last night she hardly slept, her eyes are dry and tireless. She watches Rupert; she watches the stage; she watches for Istvan, whose feline high spirits have disturbed her all week: When do you go? she asks him again and again. It is dangerous here for you, can you not understand?

It is dangerous everywhere,
his smiling shrug.
There’s a war on, yeah? Stop fretting, we know what we’re about.

“We”?

All of us. Jesu, stop.

Now the girls turn their attentions to each other, dark and light in a tight embrace, as Laddie advances to the lip of the stage, to address the audience directly: “What price would you pay? For a saucy kiss?” but before anyone can answer, to heckle or support, a lean figure glides forward—parson’s black, plague mask—bearing before it the grinning form of Pan Loudermilk, newly spiffed in cravat and top hat, savior and demon, knave of hearts and “Gentlemen!” it, he, cries, to the scattered burst of welcoming applause, “won’t you give ear to my little song?” as Jonathan’s waltz sprints into a barrelhouse scherzo, and the taunting tenor rises in the dark:

“A gentleman needs a bit of fun (A bit of fun! A bit of fun!)

For he works all day from sun to sun (He works so hard, he needs his fun!)

So when the time comes for to play (Let the gentleman have his say!)

He needs a taste of fluff afore he’s done!”

It is extraordinary, but two voices come in rapid counterpoint from the little man, the higher melody, the deeper parenthetical growl, as if the brain speaks its rational mind while the body replies in a voice overriding all morals or conscience, the irresistible voice of the blood. At the center table, Jürgen Vidor, silent, grips his glass. The General smiles at Mr. Arrowsmith, who nods in connoisseur’s agreement. Rupert, absolutely calm, leans to murmur one soft word into the frowning mayor’s ear.

Now a lamp flickers at stage right: Lucy, bewigged in red, bangled and feathered, Miss Lucinda in blue and gaping bodice linked elbow-to-elbow like a special chum, standing over Jennie arrayed topless on the chaise, as Laddie, Everyman now, canters over to mime greeting, to shed his topcoat, to climb willingly aboard the pliant Jennie, her half-mast eyeballs spinning with dope though only those onstage can see. The audience claps in time, now, to his thrusts timed to the song itself, as the verse repeats—“A bit of fun, a bit of fun”—and Pan Loudermilk seems to lean forward on his own, independent of his anonymous handler, to meet with his carved and gleaming eyeballs the heating gaze of every man in the house:

“But who’s to say what fun is had? (Such special fun! This lovely one!)

Can anything so sweet be bad? (She’s slippery-tight! It feels just right! I could go on like this all night!)

O Missus may frown, but when Mister’s in town (here at this house of greatest renown)

He aims to frolic randy as a tip-top lad!”

Laddie pounds away at lolling Jennie while Lucy, leading Miss Lucinda, beckons the other girls to the opposite side of the stage, her gestures broad and comically vulgar, if Laddie is Everyman, she is Every Madam. Now the mayor’s chuckle, nodding in time to the music, the General and Mr. Arrowsmith, too; even the soldiers are laughing as they advance, not as members of the army but as men wanting to see, to get close to those two bare girls squirming away, busy with each other until Laddie, beaming, gains his feet again, steps away from the chaise to be claimed by the eager pair, red lips and rouged tits, he is fairly overrun.

And Pan Loudermilk, avatar, accomplice, grins upon them all, the girls, the soldiers, the ones up front in the place of honor, men of business and repute who nevertheless like their bit of fun, too, his wicked, glinting gaze seems to say, to know, it is amazing how alive he is though he, it, is only a chunk of wood manipulated by a man, a chunk of wood that nevertheless seems to see straight into one’s mind, heart, soul, prick stirring in the trousers, a master of revels who revels in license, whose mocking voice soars in tandem with Jonathan’s drummed finale:

“So let us each to each incline (A bit of fun! Tonight for one!)

What’s yours is yours and mine is mine (Although our tastes may yet entwine)

A bit of pink, a touch of stink (and wash your prick, sir, in the sink)

And trust the Poppy’s flowers to be kind!—Now get in line!”

—this last command delivered as if spontaneously to the soldiers swarming as though they may try to gain the stage, passions aroused, the line between lust and frustration a thin one: yet because they are admonished not by a man but a toy they can laugh, and in that laughter is time enough for the curtains to safely close. The effect is perfect, and perfectly timed, and given a last fillip by Rupert’s rising to his feet to announce “First toss half-price for the military!” that brings a gleeful shout in return: they are docile, now, ready as children to receive their treat.

And resuming his seat, Rupert turns in that same motion to the mayor, one arm on the back of his chair and “Of course you follow my reasoning to restore,” Rupert says, serious and leading, under cover of the noise. “Do I now have your assent as well?”

“To have ’em back? The puppets, you mean?” Already the mayor is nodding, ready to be given words to frame the thoughts he thinks he has, the rationale so “I believed from the start that you would agree,” says Rupert. “It’s why I asked your forbearance, to see the playlet fully to its end. To say the truth, sir, I feared that the total absence of those toys would lead to a different kind of trouble—you heard that applause! But your own, how shall I say it, difficulties with the other—”

“ ’Twasn’t me so much, you know, as Mr. Franz. He’s young still, young and hot-headed, he’s—”

“This time we sought to keep the focus on the young ladies particularly, I think our Pearl did particularly well, don’t you?”

“Oh, Pearl was capital!” as Rupert tips the whiskey to the mayor’s glass, none for himself tonight as Jürgen Vidor marks, Jürgen Vidor who, after the puppet’s first appearance, watched nothing but Rupert: his faint smile, his absorption, his attention to the plague-masked figure’s every move, the glance they seemed to share as the curtains met…. Jürgen Vidor drains the dregs of his wine, reaches for the gin, juniper reek as the General nods briefly in his direction, meaning what? These soldiers with their hierarchy, their unthinking habit of command—

—and “Mr. Bok,” the General genial. “May I borrow his ear a moment, Mr. Redgrave?”

“Why certainly,” as Pearl, beckoned by Rupert, emerges to stop by the mayor’s side, damp gauze exchanged for pale muslin that hides little more, the mayor rising, beaming, as Rupert pushes back his chair to follow the General but “When you have finished with General Georges,” says Jürgen Vidor, in an odd and arid tone, “I would converse with you, Rupert.”

Rupert meets his eyes straight on. “Of course, Mr. Vidor.”

Jonathan’s piano dances into life, a jaunty jangly tune to drive the shared air of hilarity, of an unnamed crisis averted safely for now. Gin flows like water, whiskey like the wine unmissed. The line for the girls is expansive, the men joking as they wait of the cackling puppet, the ribald song: “A bit of fun! A bit of fun!” Omar, truncheon back in his belt, joshes the would-be bravo boy, who has been visibly affected by the antics of the girls. Puggy hustles backstage as Istvan emerges unmasked, his gaze at once seeking Rupert who moves toward the door beside the General; as if the gaze is a touch, Rupert turns to look, to smile at Istvan who smiles at him, extravagant, exultant, neither marking Jürgen Vidor who watches them both.

Mr. Arrowsmith has been watching as well; now he lifts his whiskey glass: “To amicable relations. To the just rewards of commerce, sanely conducted…. You are shrewd, Mr. Vidor, to give the mayor room enough to turn around.”

“The mayor’s wits could turn safely in a thimble, Arrowsmith. Let us offer one another the courtesy of truth, shall we?”

Mr. Arrowsmith pauses; he sets down his drink. “Georges’ presence tonight has calmed the waters considerably—and it’s rumored that he will quarter here. In truth, is that your doing?” Jürgen Vidor stares at him, but does not reply.

When Rupert returns, alone, Mr. Arrowsmith has gone. Jürgen Vidor splashes his glass again with gin. “Sit down.” Music swirls around them, voices, smoke. “That performance—I thought I had made my wishes plain, Rupert.”

Carefully, Rupert takes his own glass, pours a finger of whiskey, drinks. “ ‘Your house. To do with as you decide.’ And it seems it was a prudent decision, since the mayor’s more than placated—”

“
Yours
, yes. Mayhap you have evolved past my patronage.” The gin is gone. “I can always disburse my funds elsewhere, you know.”

“Certainly you may.” The man’s stare is locked to his, disturbingly familiar, like being handled in an intimate place; still Rupert will not look away. Disburse the funds elsewhere, yes, old masher, old monster, go ahead. An orphan learns early what it is to be without, to own nothing but hunger and sweat; but there is more at stake here than mere money, far more, and far more dangerous. Still he pushes back, carefully, inexorably. “Your aid is yours to offer as you will, to whomever you will, though we shall always be grateful for your past generosity.”