London Lark-3
261 Words
Well, that was ten years ago now, and I don’t need to tell you what’s happened since, not unless you was born yesterday and likely not even then. Miss Pandora Piper’s fame has spread to all four corners of His Majesty King Victor’s empire, and it ain’t stopped there neither.
Old Arthur Tunstall retired, and married the widow who kept the gin-house he favoured. It was a short retirement, for the cirrhosis took him six months later, but a happy one by all accounts.
My little sister Lily got her wish to work for a lady what ain’t a battle axe, for she dresses Miss Pandora Piper, the London Lark, every morning and night. Folks say it’s down to her talent with paint and powder that Miss Pandora don’t appear to have aged a day since first she graced the boards. I tell ‘em it’s down to a happy marriage—for yes, while she keeps her stage name for professional purposes, Miss Pandora was married some years ago, in a quiet ceremony in Ludgate Hill. So quiet, in fact, not even the priest noticed it’d happened, but then he popped his clogs three months later after a bilious attack brought on by too many oysters in Mrs Merkin’s bawdy-house, so he ain’t about to cast doubt upon the tale.
And her husband? Or wife, as I’m free to be, when we’re at home tucked up in our cosy bed? It’s a fine and private place, my Pandora likes to joke, because we die in there nightly. But only a little death, mind.
Harry Hodgkins, Esquire, Master Tinkerer, and Keeper of Contrivances and Contraptions at the Criterion Theatre. At your service, gentlefolk.
- Writer
