The Grace in Older Women Read Free Page B

when they've
been downright rude? I still hadn't seen his face. I felt for my hankie,
decided not to bring it out because the women would holler it should have been
washed last Easter, and instead blotted my dripping forehead with my frayed
sleeve.
    'Isn't it a stupendous gift?' Addie shrilled. 'Can you imagine ?
Coming over queer for a moment, then you simply know genuine? I've known Lovejoy for ages , ever since . . .'She coloured, ahemed.
    'Lady, leave orff.' Tinker coughed, the burbling notes of his
emerging phlegm magically clearing a space round us. His chest heaved, his old
threadbare greatcoat swaying as his wheezes shook him into rigor. A fetor
wafted away the delectable aroma of dust and must. Everybody wilted. 'Come on,
mate.'
    We got out, him marching me along the pavement like a squaddie to
the guardroom. I shook my arm free.
    'Where are we going, you stupid burke?'
    'Forgotten, you pillock?'
    'What? Forgotten what?' We'd reached Marks and Spencer's, stood
there getting buffeted by prams and shoppers.
    'The law, that's what. You're due in court.'
    'Oh.' He was right. 'Have I got to?'
    'Better had,' the scruffy old devil ground out. 'A bird's
following you.' He jerked his chin stubble at the window. The girl in the
bright peach frock was reflected at the bus stop, staring intently.
Coincidence?
    Anyhow, I'd no time. I had to get thinking about theatre glasses,
as used by London's elegant ladies in 1750 to spy on other women making love.
    “I say! You there! Lovejoy!'
    The thunder man's voice, dopplering as he approached. I didn't
even look. Tinker was right. The law wanted me.
     
    3
    Nothing gets very far from love. Antiques are already there,
because they personify love like nothing else. Antiques are it. Look at 'opera'
glasses, for instance.
    As theatres and technology grew in the eighteenth century, so did
innovations among theatre-goers. Gentry moved into boxes, snootily quaffed and
noshed during the plays on balconies, far removed from the hoipolloi rioting
with pies and beer in the stalls below. But grand ladies found it irksome to
merely watch actors giving their all. They'd mostly gone for gossip, a chance
to suss out the gorgeous apparel of rival beauties. Even with the aid of 'prospect
glasses' - miniature telescopes - to observe the actors' dastardly deeds, shows
could be pretty dull. These 'lorgnettes', as the French called them, could be
put to more interesting use, especially if one's dear friend was in another box
across the other side of the theatre. What could be more interesting than
swivelling the prospect glass to watch her instead of Ben Jonson's play?
    It could be more interesting still if one's best friend got up to
no good in the gloaming of reflected limelight, just when she thought she was
secure and incognito. And women crave to see other women at it - as long as
they themselves go unnoticed.
    But ladies who planned assignations in theatres learnt cunning.
They came with fans, wore masks, adopted fanciful garb, used screens, employed
disguise. And gentlemen took umbrage at being overtly observed while in some
deep sexual intrigue. It became especially troubling when the lady concerned
turned out to be no lady at all, but some tart picked up in Covent Garden.
Duelling was in the air. Reputation was everything. Scandal was a fitting
reason to go about killing people who spread it.
    Enter the inventiveness of Georgian London. Lorgnettes were hidden
in the handles of the gentleman's walking canes, in ladies' fans. Prospect
glasses were sold that folded, or shrank to minuscule proportions. All clever
stuff. But the worrisome fact remained, that if you wanted to spy on a friend
making love in the theatre's cosy dark, you still had to dangle out at an
ungainly angle and ogle with your mini-telescope in an unseemly way. You simply
could not pretend, when pretending is the woman's love game, always has been.
Another urgent call on Georgian instrument makers.
    They solved it brilliantly, with a