Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 7

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This was Dick Hudson’s first tour as The Great Hudson. No more potty little music-halls in potty little towns—no more for ever, he hoped. Leeds last week, Bradford this week, and a fine big town in every week that followed. The Palladium in London. And wherever he went the Star’s dressing-room. All because he could take people off, which meant, of course, put people on, represent them as living beings. He had begun humbly as Dick Hudson, Impersonator, imitating the stars, the radiant and as he thought unapproachable ones of his own profession. Then he lit out along his own lines: the cabman, the hot-chestnut man, the masher, the johnny. One day he wrote a little story with only two characters in it—a toff and a navvy. By quick work behind a screen which concealed changes of clothing he could play both characters. He was a patient chap was Dick Hudson. He practised that small act for a year in theatrical digs up and down the country before he was satisfied with it, and then it went on without a hitch. It was a success, and it showed him his line. In another story he managed three characters on his own; but when it came to four he had to employ a dresser, Harry Pordage, who lurked behind the screen, ready to fling the clothes on to him. Now that he was The Great Hudson, his simple screen had become an elaborate façade to meet the needs of the story: the front of an inn, or a fine house, or a public building, with several doors, so that he could disappear through one as a highwayman and appear through another as a buck or dandy. He could manage six people now, and his stories were romantic. The Great Hudson dwelt chiefly in a Regency world of pugilists and horse-flesh, heavy bets and heavier drinking, and pistol-shots behind the screen announcing that the plucked pigeon had taken the way out. He loved to challenge his own talents with the variety of his simple creations. Because of his fine build and handsome features he had no difficulty with the popular conception of Milord, and that is why he liked to do also little shrinking villainous ugly men. A critic once wrote of The Great Hudson’s ability to shrivel himself, and Dick thought that a far-seeing compliment.

Before the tour started, Joe Kettle, his agent, said: “Well, I’ve pulled it off for you, Dick, as I said I would. Top of the bill and a hundred pounds a week.”

“What am I going to do with all that money?”

“Money? You don’t call a hundred a week money, do you?”

And so it was. A hundred a week was not for long “money” to Dick.

“Now I like my men and women to have a signature, if you see what I mean,” Joe Kettle said, “and I’ve thought of one for you, Dick. Wherever you go, there’s got to be something that’ll make people stare in the street and say: ‘There goes The Great Hudson!’ See?”

“Well——”

“Yes. Well—now what you want to do, Dick, is walk through the public streets, at least once in every town you visit, wearing clothes that’ll open people’s eyes. What about the clothes you wear as Sir Frank Fotheringay?”

“Eh, lad,” Dick said, becoming native Yorkshire in a flash, “Ah couldn’t do that. Ah’d feel fair naked.”

Which, oddly enough is just the effect it had on him, anonymity being the perfect disguise.

“You’ll do it,” Joe Kettle said.

And Dick did it. What made young Chris shake with shame was to be walking through the Bradford streets with Sir Frank Fotheringay. Upon Sir Frank’s head was a hard hat of old-fashioned shape, slightly conical. A dark blue cape, lined with lighter blue, hung majestically from his shoulders. He carried a tasselled cane that he knew how to flourish. There was a froth of cambric at wrists and throat.

The March day was bleak as they set out from Frizinghall and strolled leisurely along Manningham Lane to the centre of the town. Night was closing in. A melancholy flake of snow fell now and then. There was hardly a soul in the streets, and Dick knew well enough that, as publicity, this was farcical. For all his fine air, he was as miserable as young Chris. But he had promised Joe Kettle to do this, and so he was doing it. Till now, he had always chosen the uninhabited prairies of provincial Sunday afternoons for his performance. He would get over this. In time, he would brazenly use the middle of the week’s busiest day, thread his way with a buck’s nonchalance through the crowds and eat his luncheon in the town’s most popular grill-room. But that day he and Chris walked into the town, drank a cup of tea in one of the few tea-shops open, and walked back again. What added to Chris’s woe was that Anthony Bromwich was one of the few people they met. Anthony stopped and stared open-mouthed. Then he took off his cap, and Dick returned the salute, raising his hat with a flourish and saying: “Good day to you, young sir.”

Chris did not so much as let his eyes rest on Anthony after the first frightened recognition. His whole spirit shrank in the certainty that Anthony’s gesture was ribald and derisive. But he was wrong. It was simply good manners towards a person, albeit a surprising one, seen in the company of a boy Anthony knew.