Strutting and Fretting: chapter two
“How with mine honour may I give him that which I have given to you?”
Sylvie gazes at Constance. At Olivia. She shuts her eyes and reaches, cradling Constance’s face, pressing their foreheads together.
“I will acquit you,” she says, as gently as she can, presses a kiss to Constance’s cheek, and leaves quickly.
“Well, come again tomorrow!” Constance calls after her. “fare thee well: a fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell!”
Sylvie waits for Constance to finish, then goes back out onto stage to get her notes. She and Constance walk back to their dressing room arm in arm.
“Last night, tomorrow,” Constance says. “You ready to move on?”
“I’m going to have a holiday. With Athos.”
“Oh, with Athos,” Constance says, pressing close.
“Mm hmm,” Sylvie says, grinning. “And with the other three. In a canal boat. I think there is going to be far less sex than I would deem ‘good’.”
Constance snorts and sputters into unquenchable laughter. They’re sharing a dressing room, to help them have great gay chemistry on stage or something. It’s helpful, really, because getting in and out of Olivia’s posh dresses is a pain. The costumes are period, not updated for once, and intricate and difficult. Constance is always boasting that she gets simpler ones she can get easily in and out of, to become Cessario.
“I definitely have the better part,” Sylvie says, helping Constance out of the dress. “Babe, where are your knickers?”
“They didn’t like the line of them!” Constance says, standing in nothing but her bra. “Are you going to ravish me, Cessario? Best part? Um, nope, I get to be gayer.”
“I get to be trans-er,” Sylvie says, finding Constance’s pants and throwing them at her.
“Okay, we’re both happily queer,” Constance says. “You want help getting out of your trousers?”
“Go away you lech, why are you trying to flirt with me?”
“I’m bored, and a bit horny. d’Art’s away with your Athos, soaking in wine, meandering in probable-wiggly lines on the canals of England. Being a bloke.”
“He’s the least gay of us all.”
“Oi, he’s bi, and he’s happy, and he loves me, and fuck off,” Constance says, more stung than Sylvie meant by the teasing.
“Sorry,” Sylvie says, turning away to get out of her costume.
“Just something someone else said,” Constance mutters. “Come here and help me get these breasts right, I think they’re too high on my chest, they’re gonna pop out and hit me chin.”
Sylvie is half-sure Constance’s insistent nakedness (she is quite often parading about without her clothes) is a demand, from both herself and Sylvie, for acceptance. Sylvie is happy to give it. She’s also happy to adjust Constance’s bra and padding.
“I love these fake boobs,” Sylvie says, giving the gel a squeeze.
“I’m the lech?” Constance says, pushing her away, then pulling her back. “I want to kiss you.”
“I don’t know if Athos would approve,” Sylvie says, breathing in Constance’s space, hand clenching in her shirt. “Come with me. See d’Artagnan, have sex, find out?”
“I do like d’Artagnan. He’s so lithe and skinny, like a fish.”
“You want to have fish sex?”
Constance laughs and shoves Sylvie away, cajoling her until she dresses, so they can go for drinks. Everyone else is gone, they were kept back to go over that stupid scene. Apparently it wasn’t sexy enough, tonight.
“I’ll come with you,” Constance says, later, a little sozzled. “Athos has grrrreat taste in wine.”
Constance gets more than a little sozzled, on closing, and when they drive down through Warwickshire toward the postcode Athos sent her, Constance is supremely hungover, and supremely useless as company. Sylvie puts on the radio instead, and sings along to JLS. It has the added bonus of making Constance groan.
“It’s your own fault,” Sylvie says, cheerfully. “I’m hungry. Do you think the boys have food, as well as wine?”
“No. I don’t think they do. They probably think the grapes in the wine count as food,” Constance says.
“Twits,” Sylvie says, feeling fond and happy and pleased with herself and the world around her.
She parks at the house Athos promises her is perfectly happy to host her car. Apparently it’s his and he rents it out but he reserves the right to use the garage because it’s near the canal. Or something. It had been convoluted and he’d been tipsy. It’s just outside a tiny little village, Napton-on-the-Hill, little more than a canal and a handful of houses.
“What are we looking for?” Constance asks, trudging down the canal path after Sylvie.
“A Marina, and then, apparently, A Strange Fish,” Sylvie says.
The canal is pretty. They find the marina, and A Strange Fish. It’s not too hard, what with d’Artagnan shoving Aramis off the stern into the water and Aramis shrieking first in shock, then in outrage, and then chasing d’Artagnan around. Sylvie and Constance both climb aboard.
“Ahoy!” Sylvie calls, scrambling along the side to reach the stern where Athos is.
He’s sat on the edge of the roof, feet dangling over the hatch. As Sylvie shouts he jumps down and comes to meet her, catching her in his arms and lifting her down, kissing her senseless, breathless.
“Stop it,” Constance says. “Why did Aramis get pushed in?”
“Dunno, either he farted, or he ate d’Art’s breakfast, or he did something else,” Porthos says. He sounds about as grumpy as Constance.
“We need to go,” Athos says. “I got us a place to stay, down the canal a bit. A little cottage.”
“Not me, I suppose,” Porthos says. “I suppose I’ve gotta stay on board and get scurvy.”
“Told you they wouldn’t have food,” Constance
says.
Athos is casting off, hurrying around the boat, beaming. He stops whenever he passes Sylvie to kiss her, cradle her cheek, smile widely at her. She sits on the roof where he was and watches. Porthos and Constance duck inside, both grumbling, both after food, exchanging hungover commiseration.
“Oi!” Aramis yells ,from the dock, sprinting up as Athos starts to pull away from the mooring.
“Knew you’d make it,” Athos says, equably.
d’Artagnan has to jump, but they both get on board. They join the grouchy people inside, leaving Sylvie and Athos alone.
“Journeys end in lovers meeting,” Athos says, smiling up at her. “How was your run?”
“Good, I think. We got good reviews. Did you read the Guardian one?”
“Online, when you sent it to me. Well, two days after you sent it to me when Porthos managed to cadge us some wifi. Very complimentary, well deserved. You’re brilliant.”
“I am.”
Athos lets go of the tiller to lean up to her, and their breath mingles before he kisses her.
“You smell of wine,” Sylvie says.
“I had it for breakfast.”
“Not an antidepressant I approve of, but I’m not your nurse, so drink on.”
“If wine be the food of love, drink on,” Athos says, chuckling to himself.
They bump into the bank and get shouts of outrage from inside. Sylvie laughs, tugging Athos into a better kiss before letting him get back to steering. They bump into several more things as they go, including another boat. Athos ties them up for a while, and kisses her silly until Porthos comes up and goes to open the locks.
“I’ve never been on a canal boat. Well, except the time I attempted to use you as the sexless inn-keeper,” Sylvie says.
“But I melted your heart with my big beautiful eyes,” Athos says.
“It was that ponytail, and the tights,” Sylvie says. “And what can I say? Prince Hal turns me on. It was for Harry, England, and saint George.”
“Hal is Henry the Fourth, I was Henry the Fifth.”
“You did the Harry England and st George bit.”
“I did. It was great. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close up England with our dead! No, wait... Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
then imitate the action of the tiger.”
Athos dramatizes it as he goes, fleshing out the words, evoking the battle field, the prince, the glory of war. Then he does a little growl, and a clawing motion with his hand, and falls about laughing, bumping the boat into the wall of the lock as they rise up.
“They rise knees up, knees
up, knees up, they rise knees up, knees up high!” Athos roars, as they bob slowly higher, laughing at himself, beaming at Sylvie.
“Christ you’re jolly,” Porthos mutters, as he climbs back aboard. He wraps himself briefly around Athos on his way past, and smiles warmly at Sylvie, as if this is her doing and he approves.
Sylvie puts her legs to the side to allow him entry back into the barge, biting her lip, pleased with his welcome of her. Athos is jolly, either with wine or with sunshine or, and this option Sylvie hopes is the reason, with her. She likes him, likes him as Henry, likes him as Athos, liked him an awful lot as Antonio, when she was Malfi. That was a beautiful costume.
“Heaven fashion'd us of nothing; and we strive
To bring ourselves to nothing.--Farewell, Cariola,
And thy sweet armful.--If I do never see thee more,
Be a good mother to your little ones,
And save them from the tiger: fare you well.”
Athos’s kiss stills and silences Sylvie for a moment. She can’t help herself; it’s him, not Antonio, not acting, just him, his body against hers. His familiar body. She is going to break her promise to herself, and sleep with him again. She can’t deny herself this. She plays with the moment, coming back to her Malfi, opening her eyes as if they drag.
“Let me look upon you once more, for that speech
Came from a dying father. Your kiss is colder
Than that I have seen an holy anchorite
Give to a dead man's skull.”
She lets her voice rise in pitch at the last, lets herself reach for him, lets herself drop back, let him go. The dead man’s skull echoes, before Athos draws the scene to a close. He lets Sylvie have the stage, lets his closing line be an addendum, lets her take the scene from him. She doesn’t mean to do it, but he allows it, gives it. As Antonio would, and should. She turns to the audience, and slowly turns away, letting the weight of their parting lie.
They get a standing ovation, and a second call to bow, and when they finally are released from notes and going over bits of text and being told off for forgetting a line (Athos) and tripping over a sword (Sylvie), they can finally, finally bundle into Athos’s dressing room. Sylvie gasps against his mouth, pushing until he kneels, the costume of Antonio carefully muted, simple, flattering. Easy to see at her feet, on his knees. Soft and tight enough to follow his curves and planes and muscles.
Sylvie unbelts his sword and takes it for herself, laying it against his shoulder, his neck. He gazes up at her as if wrapt, awed, seduced. Hers. Entirely hers.
“Drink to me with thine eyes,” Athos says, bending to fetch a wine bottle, half empty, “and I shall… what comes next? Fuck. Aramis is better at Jonson, and the poetry of seduction. He’d probably blurt Donne at you.”
“I wouldn’t, actually,” Aramis says, popping up between her thighs. “Oh! Hello, legs. Sorry!”
“Move you twot,” Sylvie says, shoving him so he’s no longer right there.
She’s known Aramis a bit longer than Athos, and likes him quite well. He’s fond of her, too, which doesn’t hurt.
“What should I quote, then?” Athos asks.
“Sleep on while I am talking, I am just arranging the curtains over your naked breasts,” Aramis says.
Sylvie laughs, hopping down to get the wine from Athos, tucking herself in behind him, out of the way of the tiller, holding on so as not to fall in.
“My breasts aren’t naked,” Sylvie says.
“My darling’s napping,” Aramis says, sighing. “I thought I’d come steal the company of yours, Athos.”
“Nope,” Athos says. “She’s keeping me company. Wait, did you mean Sylvie? Is Sylvie my darling?”
“Yes, you fish,” Aramis says.
“Everyone’s got fish on the brain,” Sylvie says. “Do you think d’Artagnan particularly piscine?”
Aramis ducks back inside, leaving Athos to contemplate the fish-like-ness of d’Artagnan without help. He doesn’t bother to answer, and before long, he’s mooring them again, ducking inside for her bag and another, his own, and handing her up onto the bank. He takes her to a small cottage, a large bed, a kitchen. He makes her dinner and gives her wine and quotes sonnets at her, and then she cuts him short before he gets himself too tangled up, or too drunk, and takes him upstairs.
Chapter Three