In this era, physical intimacy is for couples and, even then, only in the bedroom. Hugs between friends are not a thing, and I find myself missing that and cherishing the moments where I have an excuse to do something like hold Gray’s arm.
As we near the theater, we need to merge into a stream of fellow attendees. Though everyone is dressed in their finest, not all of it comes from New Town shops. There are plenty of second- and even third-hand dresses and suits. It’s appropriate that a Dickens reading should be accessible to the working class. It would be even better if it were accessible to thepoor, but that’s too much to hope for. Gray said that the stalls are priced at five shillings, which my math skills tell me is about thirty dollars in my own world.
As we draw near the music hall, the jabbering of voices whisks me back to sporting events in Vancouver. It sounds like resellers offering overpriced tickets to a sold-out game, but as I draw close, I realize it’s actually the other way around. People are banging on the ticket booth, offering to pay as much as five pounds for those cheap seats, as if the venue might be hiding some in reserve. I also notice that no one is stepping forward to selltheirtickets for that price.
The commotion, however, means we need to slow with the desperate would-be buyers partly blocking the entrance. McCreadie grumbles about that.
“Someone should have had a few officers assigned for crowd control,” I murmur to him. “Pity we don’t know anyone who could help them out now.”
“Be my guest,” McCreadie says. “If I take on that lot, I won’t be seeing the performance.”
“And so you will not interfere,” Isla says, tightening her grip on his arm.
“I will not,” he says. “I can still grumble, though.”
Slowing means we’re stuck standing outside. Being stuck standing outside means people start gawking around the queue. Gazes swing to Gray. That’s understandable. He’s just over six feet, with broad shoulders and striking—if severe—features. Admittedly, McCreadie is better looking, remarkably handsome even with fashionably thick whiskers. Yet the gazes fall on Gray, and it’s not his height that does it. It’s his brown skin. He might have been raised by Frances Gray, but his mother was Irvine Gray’s mistress, and obviously a woman of color, though Irvine took any details to his grave.
We’re in the days of the British Empire, when travel and immigration is easier, if not exactly easy. I can look down the queue and see several people of color. Most, however, are clearly working class. The one young Black woman in a fashionable gown accompanies an older white woman in a manner that suggests she’s a companion or lady’s maid. I have to crane my neck and squint to see any person of color who looks middle class.
What gets people’s attention isn’t that Gray is a person of color; it’s that he dresses as if he’s wealthy enough to have a tailor, which he does. Admittedly, sometimes they also look because he hasn’t bothered to change out of a shirt spattered in blood, but that’s thankfully not the case today. These days, though, there’s another reason people gawk, and that’s what I’m on the watch for.
A few months ago, someone started chronicling Gray’s adventures in crime solving. Those adventures may have coincided with him taking on a certain assistant, but I’m still blaming poor McCreadie. Between the three of us—and Isla, when a case interests her—we’ve solved a few murders. The person who interested that writer, though, was Gray. Well, Gray and his pretty assistant, but my role in the stories seems mostly window dressing.
The Mysterious Adventures of the Gray Doctorhas recently changed writers and—thankfully—titles. The previous author has been shut down, by methods known only to the new author, who granted Isla a cut plus editorial oversight. There was no way of getting rid of the stories altogether, so taking control of the narrative was our best bet. For now, they’re a niche publication, mostly appealing to mothers and their children. Why are women and children the primary market for tales of murder and mayhem? Because these are Victorians.
Tonight, while I do see one mother and her children gesturing at us and whispering, they don’t approach, so we can pretend all is well and we are safe in our bubble of anonymity.
Soon we’re inside the music hall. Our tickets are for the balcony. In the modern world, I like seats in the orchestra, where I can truly appreciate live performances. Here, the orchestra seats are the stalls, which are for those who can’t afford better. My disappointment evaporates when Iseethose stalls. Most of the seats are on church-like pews, with hundreds of people jammed into an area that defies any sort of safety code. One scream of “Fire!” and dozens would be trampled. I decide I’m fine with the balcony.
We aren’t in actual balconies, either. More like having seats in concert stands. McCreadie goes down the aisle first, followed by Isla, followed by me and then Gray. While Isla and I would have chosen to sit beside each other anyway, this arrangement is natural for the time period—the men flanking the women so they don’t need to sit beside strangers who might be male.
We settle in, and we all remove our hats, which is expected and even mentioned on the tickets. As we wait, Isla and I discuss Dickens’s latest work,No Thoroughfare, which he wrote in collaboration with Wilkie Collins. Isla has seen the show. I have not, though I read the novel form in the twenty-first century.
“I hear he is working on a new book,” Isla says. “I am hoping he will discuss it tonight.” She wags her finger at me. “And no spoilers from you.”
Which novel would that be? Admittedly, I’m not great with dates. I know Dickens’s work but not the order or years of publication. I think back to the library at the town house. Which book is missing? I’m still working through that when someone steps on the stage to announce the main event.
The music hall venue is appropriate, because this feels much more like a concert than an author reading. I can’t hear what the MC is saying, as people keep chattering and others keep shushing them, often louder than the actual talkers. Finally, I catch the tail end of the MC’s speech.
“—will begin with a seasonal reading ofA Christmas Carol.”
I look at Gray and arch one brow, and there must be accusation in my eyes because he leans over and whispers, “The poor man will be hanged for certain now. Such a loss to the literary world.”
It’s the week after Christmas, and while thereweresome shop and house decorations, overall, it was far less than I’d expected. I know from my father that the Victorian era was the time when Christmas was still becoming the spectacle it is in the modern world. Credit—blame?—for that can be laid, at least in part, at the feet of the man about to mount the stage and the story he is about to read.
In North America, a secular Christmas revolves around the family, especially children. You get together with your nearest and dearest, and you make a magical day for the little ones in your life. You also share your bounty with the less fortunate—’tis the season to be charitable. All that comes fromA Christmas Carol, which refocused a community-based celebration on the family, especially the children, as well as shining a spotlight on the plight of the poor and the obligations of the wealthy.
Isla had asked whether there was any particular part of Christmas I longed to celebrate. I said no, Hogmanay would do the trick well enough, but I did wake to a plate of sugarplums on Christmas morning. May I also say that, like Turkish delight, sugarplums are not at all what I expected? There’s no actual plum involved. It’s more like a jawbreaker, with a seed at the center and then layers of sugar. Disappointing, but not nearly on the scale of the Turkish delight debacle. I swear I can still taste the cloying rosewater fromthat.
On the stage, the MC is walking away, and I realize the man standing there now...
It’s Charles Dickens.
This is the Dickens I know from photos, mostly taken in this era, showing a man with kind eyes, balding hair, and a somewhat unkempt long beard. In those photographs, though, he’s always dead somber, and that is not the man I see before me. He is smiling and animated and moves spryly to center stage.
As Dickens begins, I ease back in my seat, prepared for a relaxing literary performance. I’ve attended readings ofA Christmas Carolbefore. I even participated in a group reading for one of my dad’s university classes. Being the only child among the actors, you can guess who I played. God bless us every one.
Although that had been a reading rather than a dramatization, I’d treated it like a full-blown performance, limping around the stage and looking pathetic but hopeful as only Tiny Tim can. I had, in short, hammed it up... and as Dickens begins to read on stage, I realize I might have underplayed it.
