A Walk With the Past

Chapter Three

Tom took a bite of his salad while Antony sipped from a glass of chardonnay. Gregory had been called away by a costume crisis, and Tom silently thanked the Fates for his departure.

“You were going to tell me about the woman?” Tom spoke after swallowing a forkful of lettuce and cucumbers.

“Ah, yes,” Antony replied. He eyed Tom, and then leaned forward in the restaurant chair. “How many times has she shown herself to you?”

Tom gave Antony a confused look. “Shown herself to me?”

Antony nodded, and a shrewd grin displayed itself on his face.

“Not everyone sees her, you know,” Antony informed him. “I like to think only those of us that truly love the Bard is graced by her appearances.”

Tom’s expression twisted with even more perplexity.

“But what does she have to do with Shakespeare?” he inquired. “And if you’re correct about only those who truly love him get to see her, then I would suspect that Doran knows about the woman in the hat as well?”

Antony took another drink of wine and shook his head.

“Gregory, no doubt,” he spoke after swishing the cool liquid around in his mouth and letting it trickle down his throat. “Is a master at his trade, that is undeniable.” Antony raised a finger and arched an eyebrow. “However, that does not mean he loves Shakespeare.”

Tom could not believe that anyone – let alone Doran’s own husband – would challenge the director’s devotion to the Bard.

Seeing Tom’s astonishment, Antony felt the need to clarify.

“What I mean is,” Antony explained. “That while my partner knows, appreciates, and professes his adoration for the Great Writer, he lacks the fundamental ability to feel Shakespeare in his soul.” He gave the actor a moment to digest this. “Gregory is incapable of such profound emotion; such unequivocal, irrational ties to something. It really is just as simple as that.”

Tom was floored.

“So, you are telling me that the masterful director behind so many explosive and well-received renditions of some of Shakespeare’s most difficult works does not feel Shakespeare himself?!” he questioned Antony, aghast.

Antony chuckled; humored by Tom’s shock and awe.

“Not the way that you and I do, apparently,” was his only elaboration. “Or else he would see the woman, wouldn’t he?”

Tom shut his mouth, which had fallen open during the course of their conversation.

“But there again, how do you know that’s the condition on seeing her?” Tom insisted. “True love of Shakespeare, I mean.”

“Look,” Antony told him as he leaned forward. “Go to the library on Henley Street. Tudor building just below where old Willy himself was born – can’t miss it. Look up the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre fire of 1926.”

Tom made a mental note of Antony’s explicit instructions.

“See what you can dig up, come back to me, and then we’ll talk some more, hmm?” Antony sat back in his chair, finished his glass of wine, and then motioned to the waiter for a refill.

They finished their lunch over amiable conversation. Tom found that after a few attempts to steer their talk back to the mystery woman Antony simply would not address her again. He told Tom to do his own research, and then they would review Tom’s findings together.

The library was closed by the time Tom got out of rehearsals later that day. The sun was already fading in the overcast sky. A cold wind had stirred up, and Tom pulled the collar of his navy wool pea coat tight around his neck. It began to rain just as he made it inside.

Tom shuffled into his room at the Arden Hotel. Blowing on his numb fingers, he fumbled with the settings on the heater until it clicked on. Tom rang down for a pot of tea to be brought up to him, turned on the tap in the bathroom, and undressed while the steam from the shower warmed the chilled air. The tile floor was cold on his bare feet, and he welcomed the hot water when he stepped into the tub.

Tom answered the door and accepted his tea in only a towel. He noted with a satisfied smirk that the female clerk ogled his naked torso and turned crimson when he tipped her.

Much warmer now, Tom sat down at the desk in his small but lovely room. He opened his laptop and typed ‘Shakespeare Memorial Theatre fire’ into the search engine. Various results popped up, and Tom took a drink of tea as while opening up several different links.

The impressive structure of the original theatre built in 1879 was called a flamboyant piece of Victorian gothic. The interior sported a proscenium-arch stage, and seated fourteen hundred on three tiers. For some reason, the fact that the balcony seats could only be accessed by means of a staircase to the side of the building stuck out to Tom.

He discovered photographs, brief articles, and even an old short silent film showing before and after shots of the once glorious building. Tom learned that the complex consisted of a theatre wing, and a library and museum wing linked by a galleried bridge. The fire took the theatre only, and left but a shell. In 1932 a new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was erected next to the ruin. The remaining structure was eventually incorporated into what was now the Swan Theatre and Ashcroft Room, which adjoined the modern Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre.

Apparently, not everyone saw the loss of the building as a bad thing. Tom was a bit appalled when he stumbled across an article referencing George Bernard Shaw’s response to the tragedy. The telegram he sent the Festival Chairman said it all:

‘It will be a tremendous advantage to have a proper modern building. There are a number of other theatres I would like to see burned down….’

The saving grace of the fire was that not a single priceless Shakespearean relic was lost.

Try as he might, Tom could not discover a solitary clue alluding to the cause of the fire.

And he certainly found nothing about the woman.

Exhausted and already dreading what cutting remarks Doran would have for him tomorrow, Tom shut the computer down, discarded his towel, clicked off the light, and then curled up in his bed.

Sometime in the early predawn hours Tom’s eyelids fluttered open. He had the terrible sensation that someone was watching him. Tom moved his head to scan the room.

The rain was pounding down now, and cracks of lightening occasionally lit up the darkness.

A slender feminine outline donned with an unmistakable cloche hat stood silently at the foot of his bed.

Tom jolted upright in frightened alarm. He jerked to turn on the light, but only succeeded in knocking the lamp off the bedside table. It clattered to the floor, but did not break.

The woman did not move at Tom’s abrupt action.

“What are you doing here?!” he called out to her.

She did not answer him.

Tom noticed how very cold it was in his room again, even though he could hear the fan on the heater running.

“Who are you?!” Tom demanded.

Still, he received no reply.

Unnerved, but determined to put an end to this madness, a nude Tom moved from his bed to retrieve the lamp on the floor. He set it in its upright position back on the end table, and then switched it on.

Just as he suspected, Tom found himself alone once more.