Alms for Oblivion by Philip Gooden Read Free Book Online Page B

actual play for
the following afternoon and a practice for a different one in the morning, both of them at the Globe. So when Peter, half sitting up on his straw mattress and wiping abstractedly at his bloody
forehead, said, “You know what Master Shakespeare said to me?” I merely grunted. This didn’t deter Peter, who continued, “He smiled at me and said I had the makings of a
player. He smilingly said.”
    Anyone not absolutely dead could be said to have the makings of a player. I didn’t tell Peter that from WS these words were faint praise. If they’d been said to me I would’ve
packed up straightaway and headed home to Somerset. Then I felt guilty for thinking such thoughts. Instead of grunting again, I asked Peter a question which had been nagging at the edge of my mind
during the day.
    “How did you know where to find me this morning?”
    Now it was Peter’s turn to grunt or make some similar non-committal noise. He lay down on his penny-and-a-half-a-night bed. I’d been about to snuff out the candle. The wick was
guttering like a very small man drowning in a great greasy sea. It was my curiosity that flared up instead.
    “I mean, you didn’t go to the playhouse first, did you? It wasn’t one of my fellows who told you where I lived?”
    “Not exactly,” said Peter.
    “Who then?”
    I looked down at him lying there, his forehead painted with blood which he’d wiped at ineffectually and which showed up dark in the little light.
    “I’m bleeding.”
    “A flesh wound only,” I said. “Who told you about my lodgings?”
    Peter tried to avoid my eye. What didn’t he want to tell me?
    “I reached London yesterday,” he said finally. “Not knowing where you lived of course, I thought I’d apply at the playhouse. And I had to ask where
that
was first.
On the way to the Globe playhouse I passed a place called Holland’s Leaguer . . . ”
    Oh, I saw where he was headed now.
    “I suppose you’re going to say, my friend, that you wandered in there all innocent.”
    The remark came out sharper than I intended and Peter seemed to bristle.
    “I had heard of the place, naturally. Even in the depths of the country I had heard of it.”
    “And you thought you’d just have a taste.”
    “It seemed an – appropriate thing to do on arriving in a new town,” he said. “And I’d had a drink or two.”
    “Of course. I’ve done the same.”
    “Had a drink?”
    “Visited a brothel early on.”
    Had I? I couldn’t remember. Did I enter a brothel on my first night in London town? The second or third night possibly – it could take that long to summon up the nerve – and
then it would’ve been somewhere modest, where one could blush unseen, and not the famous, semi-fortified place known as Holland’s Leaguer. Anyway, my comment had the effect of putting
Peter at his ease, even making him combative.
    “Yes, you
have
done the same, Nick, so you can get off that high horse.”
    No use to contradict him so I said nothing. I was very much afraid that I could see where he was headed now.
    “I met a friend of yours in Holland’s Leaguer.”
    “A customer, you mean?”
    “A
resident
of the place.”
    “Any whore is friend to half the men of London, to hear them talk. The whores, that is.”
    “No, this was a very particular friend of yours. After we had finished the business which we had contracted for, we exchanged a few words. Since she could see I wasn’t a townee she
asked me where I came from. And when I told her it was a Somerset village she grew attentive and when I told her the name of the village she grew more attentive still. She even asked me if I knew
one Nicholas Revill, the parson’s son.”
    I rather wished that Peter had bashed his head hard enough on the lintel to knock himself right out. Or perhaps I should hit him over the head myself to stop him going on.
    “‘Know him!’ I exclaimed,” said Peter. “‘We have known each other since we were boys. I have come to