Under the Poppy Read Online Free PDF Page A

to do this day.”
    She knows the truer source of his agitation; she bites her lip. “And what of you? You were abroad early.”
    “Vidor sent for me this morning. Apparently he must have Redgrave and that idiot Franz attending, as well as the colonel and his retinue. And the man from abroad, all expecting our ne plus ultra , he says.” He rubs his forehead again. “Kippers and bacon fat, Jesu. And swilling tea by the gallon.”
    “Did he—”
    “What,” flat. “Did he what.”
    “Will he,” carefully, “be returning to the hotel, after the show?”
    “How the devil should I know?” although Decca knows that he does, knows that she knows, as well. She and Rupert never discuss Jürgen Vidor except in business terms—his river of money first a bonus, now a lifeline for the Poppy as times grow darker and rumors escalate—but this is the heart of that business, the wizened byzantine heart of an aging man, aging out of everything but wealth and acid need so “Let it be,” Rupert says now, and “Yes,” she says. So much of what she wants to say, longs to say, can never be uttered, ever. Especially to him. “So, you breakfasted, then?”
    “On fucking kippers, yes…. What about that other?” nodding upward, the merest motion of his chin, face a forced blank, as Decca shakes her head: “Tomorrow,” she says softly. “Let him bide for the evening, this day has trouble enough.”
    Watching them both, seen by neither, is Jonathan, sheet music in hand, paused at the lobby door he has opened as he does everything, quietly. Thin shadow waiting until they separate, Rupert up to the parlor office, Decca down to the kitchens and the yard, making sure they have safely gone before he climbs the stairs himself, past receiving rooms empty in dim daylight, past Velma on her knees with a bucket, toward the half-open, beckoning door of the Cell.

Guillame
    I always knew it would be the theatre for me. It was all I wanted, even before I had a name to put to it: the miracle of make-believe, the astonishing power of pretense. What you believe—what you make believe, yes—it can put you right where you most want to be.
    As an urchin boy outside the factory gates, waiting for my old da, I’d do a bit of a dance, a buck-and-wing, water dribbling through my boots, to see if I could make them stop and watch me, the heedless passersby: whistling shrill and villainous through my teeth the Vive le Monde , or “Madame By-Your-Leave,” anything with a gleeful melody. First one would pause, then a few more, then a biggish crowd; they’d clap for me, or sing along, sometimes they gave me pennies. My da would come trudging out with his beer bucket, grime to the eyebrows, and he’d say Are you a poofter then, son? Dancing like a woman in the street? And then take the pennies. It was a good lesson for me.
    Other lessons I had little of, and wanted less: I was more or less lettered on my own stick, and I could cipher, and who would have spent tuppence on the curate to teach me any more? Any coins I kept, I used for mugs of milk, or buns. I’d have had to save them all for a theatre ticket, the high-type theatres, but there was nothing like that where I was, so I learned from whatever I saw in the streets: the corner opera, and the Punch-and-Judy man, the blackface boys with the trained larks…. It was a sort of theatre, too, when my da fell ill, and the fever settled in to stay: coughing and babbling, eyeballs rolling as if to catch death coming on, like a bad actor overdoing the role, and nothing for me to do but sit and watch, sponge his mug and tell him stories to put his mind off it. With small success, I suppose, but between the stories and the wine the landlady gave us—the Missus Potts’ special, wine with who knows what mixed in, Godfrey’s Cordial or some other dope—he entered eternity rather peacefully, poor old geezer, wrapped up in the coverlet he and dear Maman once shared…. If there was a dear maman; actually I