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Authors: Michelle Lovric
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later.
Valentine summons the carriage that crawls behind him and draws her into it with his silver coin.
A few circuits of St. Giles and still it is not done. Valentine Greatrakes fumbles but fails. The girl is encouraging and blames herself. This predicament is unknown to him. She gently suggests that a glass of warm wine will set him up. He shakes his head, rebuttons, stares straight ahead. Passing another stall, he leans out and buys the girl a new bunch of flowers to maul and deposits her back at the Seven Dials. He assures her discretion with the additional tribute of a shilling.
His head is far from clear. This is not at all what he intended.
Worse, his eunuched encounter with the flower girl gives him cause for worry about the Venetian woman. He does not like to envision her similarly available for such use.
I don’t want to be throwing apples into an orchard.
He shrugs off the thought and orders the carriage back to the theater, where he is unsurprised to find the manager still at his desk, working by a mean rushlight. It is a desk that hosts two sets of books: one that records the ingoings and outgoings of the theatrical side of the business, and another that keeps record of the items “free-traded” into London in the costume coffers of the troupes he imports from Italy, often in alliance with his esteemed colleague Valentine Greatrakes of Stoney Street, Bankside.
“Greatrakes, you great scoundrel, how goes it? Tutto bene?”
Massimo Tosi, bulky and fragrant as a hay-bale, lumbers from his desk. Seamed into his cushioned face is a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. It’s a finely judged thing, to call Valentine Greatrakes a scoundrel. And it seems Massimo has miscalculated tonight. His visitor regards him coolly, greeting him: “And what can you do for me? Isn’t that right?”
“Exactly, exactly,” simpers Massimo. “All was well with the shipment? You need a box for some of your foreign colleagues? Champagne buffet? Some girls for after?”
“Maybe you’d do me the courtesy of thinking sweeter, Massimo.”
The manager’s face grows troubled. “The leading lady’s not… available this time, Valentine.”
“Soon you’ll be telling me she’s a nun! An actress? An Italian actress?”
Valentine makes the appropriate voluptuous gestures, pouring a torrent of enthusiasm into the motions. Even his large hands are almost musically attuned.
It is a pleasure to watch him , thinks Massimo. What a shame the business is impossible.
Aloud, he responds: “She is not like the others. She’s—she’s a genuine oddity. I don’t know what it is with her. Never came here before, and she was substituted at the last minute. The original was taken with child or some such thing. She is competent, as you saw but there’s something not quite right about her, anyway. Don’t waste your time on her. You are not the first to come to me with an interest in her.”
Valentine feels a lurch in his stomach at the unforeseen presumptuous bastards who have attempted to get there first. His mind’s eye drenched rosily with images of revenge, there’s a buzzing in his ears.
But the manager is explaining that no man has obtained what he sought from Mimosina Dolcezza, that the actress does indeed live, most unusually, a blameless existence when she’s not on the stage. She seeks no dalliances, not for pleasure, nor for gold: that purses are regularly sent back to their owners and there are no late suppers in her rooms. Those rooms are not in the usual garish quarters in St. Giles but in Soho Square, a salubrious area more favored by foreign ambassadors than actresses. She does not let her creditors’ notes decay. To add to this strangeness, she is always quiet and modest in her bearing; she makes no outrageous demands, not even upon the patience of the dressing women. She seems afraid of everyone greater or lesser than herself: In fact, in all ways she appears to resemble the trembling and virtuous maiden
Valentine summons the carriage that crawls behind him and draws her into it with his silver coin.
A few circuits of St. Giles and still it is not done. Valentine Greatrakes fumbles but fails. The girl is encouraging and blames herself. This predicament is unknown to him. She gently suggests that a glass of warm wine will set him up. He shakes his head, rebuttons, stares straight ahead. Passing another stall, he leans out and buys the girl a new bunch of flowers to maul and deposits her back at the Seven Dials. He assures her discretion with the additional tribute of a shilling.
His head is far from clear. This is not at all what he intended.
Worse, his eunuched encounter with the flower girl gives him cause for worry about the Venetian woman. He does not like to envision her similarly available for such use.
I don’t want to be throwing apples into an orchard.
He shrugs off the thought and orders the carriage back to the theater, where he is unsurprised to find the manager still at his desk, working by a mean rushlight. It is a desk that hosts two sets of books: one that records the ingoings and outgoings of the theatrical side of the business, and another that keeps record of the items “free-traded” into London in the costume coffers of the troupes he imports from Italy, often in alliance with his esteemed colleague Valentine Greatrakes of Stoney Street, Bankside.
“Greatrakes, you great scoundrel, how goes it? Tutto bene?”
Massimo Tosi, bulky and fragrant as a hay-bale, lumbers from his desk. Seamed into his cushioned face is a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. It’s a finely judged thing, to call Valentine Greatrakes a scoundrel. And it seems Massimo has miscalculated tonight. His visitor regards him coolly, greeting him: “And what can you do for me? Isn’t that right?”
“Exactly, exactly,” simpers Massimo. “All was well with the shipment? You need a box for some of your foreign colleagues? Champagne buffet? Some girls for after?”
“Maybe you’d do me the courtesy of thinking sweeter, Massimo.”
The manager’s face grows troubled. “The leading lady’s not… available this time, Valentine.”
“Soon you’ll be telling me she’s a nun! An actress? An Italian actress?”
Valentine makes the appropriate voluptuous gestures, pouring a torrent of enthusiasm into the motions. Even his large hands are almost musically attuned.
It is a pleasure to watch him , thinks Massimo. What a shame the business is impossible.
Aloud, he responds: “She is not like the others. She’s—she’s a genuine oddity. I don’t know what it is with her. Never came here before, and she was substituted at the last minute. The original was taken with child or some such thing. She is competent, as you saw but there’s something not quite right about her, anyway. Don’t waste your time on her. You are not the first to come to me with an interest in her.”
Valentine feels a lurch in his stomach at the unforeseen presumptuous bastards who have attempted to get there first. His mind’s eye drenched rosily with images of revenge, there’s a buzzing in his ears.
But the manager is explaining that no man has obtained what he sought from Mimosina Dolcezza, that the actress does indeed live, most unusually, a blameless existence when she’s not on the stage. She seeks no dalliances, not for pleasure, nor for gold: that purses are regularly sent back to their owners and there are no late suppers in her rooms. Those rooms are not in the usual garish quarters in St. Giles but in Soho Square, a salubrious area more favored by foreign ambassadors than actresses. She does not let her creditors’ notes decay. To add to this strangeness, she is always quiet and modest in her bearing; she makes no outrageous demands, not even upon the patience of the dressing women. She seems afraid of everyone greater or lesser than herself: In fact, in all ways she appears to resemble the trembling and virtuous maiden
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