Season of Storms

by Susanna Kearsley

  Edwina noticed the blush. She was, I think, about to comment on it when the dogs, who’d been snuffling for scents on the old marble paving stones, startled us both with a sudden eruption of barking. Heads lifted, they turned now in tandem, hackles rising, noses pointed to a small break in the cedar hedge surrounding us for privacy. And then, in perfect unison, they left the ground in one swift perfect leap and bounded off.

  xiv

  “AND did they catch anything?” Madeleine asked me the following morning, her eyes on my reflection in the mirror as I brushed my hair. We were sitting in what was to be my dressing-room backstage, having taken advantage of our tea break to get acquainted with the spaces we’d be occupying once we began our performances.

  My dressing-room had been designed for Celia the First, and so was predictably pink, like the walls of the corridors, except in here the pink felt warmer somehow; cosy. The wall-mounted mirrors—one above the dressing-table, and another full-length one on the end wall—were framed in a pale wood that matched the dressing-table itself, and I had a small washbasin of polished white marble. My chair, and the one in which Madeleine sat, were upholstered in soft pink brocade. It seemed altogether too pretty a room to be practical, but underneath the finery I fancied that the smell of grease-paint lingered, and there were a few cigarette burns on the top of the dressing-table that hadn’t come out, a tiny but tangible link with the actress who’d sat in this chair over seventy years ago.

  In the reflection of my mirror I could see her image watching me from the black-and-white photographs hung in an arrangement on the wall behind—the same photographs that had once hung in Madeleine’s room, before she’d had them taken down for Poppy’s sake. They were lovely photographs, showing the actress artistically posed at various places around the estate: Celia as Portia, in a long flowing gown like a Renaissance robe, standing sagely by the pillars in the orchard; Celia as La Dame aux camélias, half-reclining on a stone bench in the rose garden, all but buried by a scattering of flowers; Celia looking ghost-like, all in white, with one hand upraised dramatically beneath a gossamer veil through which one viewed upon her face a look of the most sublime terror . . . it had likely been that one, I thought, that had fueled Poppy’s nightmare.

  It was because of Poppy that I’d mentioned to Madeleine what the dogs had done yesterday at the Peacock Pool. “They didn’t catch anything, no. And there may have been nothing there to begin with—I don’t think a person could outrun a greyhound, those dogs move like lightning; but I just thought you should know, because with Poppy going down there all the time, if someone has been hanging round the Peacock Pool . . .”

  “Oh, quite. I’ve already put it off-limits for her,” Madeleine confessed. “I don’t like that open crypt, it’s far too dangerous, and besides, the place is rather isolated, and if the men are doing work there . . . well, one never knows, these days.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. I wouldn’t have felt particularly safe on my own down here, after what I’d encountered backstage these past couple of weeks. Even though the workmen were now finished with these rooms and had cleared out, and though my reason told me that there was nothing and no one to fear here, I still felt wary walking through the passageways, and didn’t want to be alone.

  Even though Madeleine and I were the only people backstage now, I kept the door to my dressing-room closed, to make certain that nothing could intrude and spoil the perfect peaceful haven of this room.

  “Mind you,” said Madeleine, meeting my eyes in the mirror, “I don’t know how much good it will do, my warning Poppy off the Peacock Pool. Twelve-year-olds, I’m finding, rarely listen to their mothers.”

  “Well, she certainly wouldn’t listen to me.” Self-pitying, I set my hairbrush down. “She acts as though I don’t exist.”

  “Oh, darling, I am sorry. She will get over it, you know; she just needs time to think things through. She’s like her father, that way. I’ve tried talking to her—so has Den—but, like I told you, twelve-year-olds don’t listen.”

  “That’s all right. She was bound to find out about Mother eventually.”

  Madeleine still thought the timing unfortunate. “It really was unforgivable, what Nicky did. He can be such a child. When he gets in a temper he fires in all directions; it was just hard luck you happened to be in his sights. Really, it was me that he was angry with—I’d quarrelled with him earlier, you see, about his visits to the Villa delle Tempeste. I’m not a fool,” she told me, with a smile at my reaction, “and I’m certainly not blind. But he’d been getting rather obvious, and I thought he should try to be a little more discreet, for Poppy’s sake.”

  I studied Madeleine’s calm face with new respect. “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why do you stay with him?”

  “With Nicky? Oh, convenience, I suppose,” she said. “And vanity. A thousand women want him and I have him—at my age, that does wonders for the self-esteem. I’m not unlike your mother, that way. Both of us rely on our young men to keep us youthful.”

  I couldn’t let that statement stand. I shook my head emphatically. “You’re nothing like my mother.”

  “You are sweet. But really—”

  A knock at the door interrupted.

  “Come in,” I said.

  Den poked his head round. “Break’s over. We’re starting again.”

  Madeleine twisted to look at the wall clock above her head. “We have six minutes left.”

  “Yeah, I know, but Nicholas is chomping at the bit, and—”

  “We’ll be there,” she said distinctly, “in six minutes.”

  Den grinned. “Fair enough.” Retreating into the passage, he closed the door behind him as Madeleine reached into her handbag and leaned forward in her turn to use the mirror, touching up her lipstick.

  “Sit down, Celia. Nicholas can wait,” she told me. “Chomping at the bit or not, he still can’t make his entrance till we’ve finished with the séance scene, and I won’t be done with that until I’m satisfied I’ve got it right. I’ve half a mind to bring Edwina in again for guidance.” Fitting the top to her lipstick, she sent me a smile in the mirror. “She did tell you why she came back, didn’t she? No? Oh, my dear, it’s just too marvellous. I overheard her telling Alex yesterday, right after she arrived, because apparently she hadn’t planned to come back here at all; she had a ticket booked to fly straight home from Athens, or wherever, so he asked her what had changed her mind, and she said she’d had word that she was needed. And when Alex asked her who had told her that, what do you think her answer was?”

  I didn’t have a clue. “A ghost,” I guessed.

  “You’re not far off. Her spirit guides. Now, don’t you think that’s wonderful? She claims to have these spirit guides who act as her advisors, and they popped up out of the blue while she was on her tour in Greece and told her, so she says, that something momentous was going to happen at Il Piacere, quite soon I believe, and she ought to be here when it happened.”

  I could only imagine Alex’s reaction to the news. “I don’t suppose these spirit guides gave any clue as to what this momentous event might be?”

  “Unfortunately not.” Amused, she swivelled in her chair. “Perhaps they meant our opening night. That’s soon.”

  “Don’t remind me. I’m panicked enough as it is.”

  “I thought you might be.” Meeting my enquiring look, she said, “You’re not your usual smiling self today. I thought you might be thinking of how close we are to giving our first performance.”

  I hadn’t been, actually. I’d been thinking of Rupert, watching his expressions and his movements with the urgency of someone who would soon be going blind, trying to construct a memory of him and carefully store it away so I wouldn’t forget . . . But I couldn’t tell Madeleine any of that, so I shrugged and said, “Well . . .”

  “You’ll be fine,” she said, smiling.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  xv


  BY midweek our rehearsal hours, which until now had regularly been from ten to six o’clock, had shifted round to run from noon to midnight as we started into technical and dress rehearsals, a hectic and exhausting time when technical and backstage staff from all departments—lighting, sound, electrics, props, and make-up, wardrobe and the like—came on board at last to do their bit. The first day, Wednesday, was the longest and the worst, being our technical dress rehearsal or, as everyone I knew preferred to call it, our ‘stagger-through.’

  The purpose of this session was to fix each problem as it surfaced, and it seemed like every several lines we had to stop acting at Rupert’s command while someone adjusted a light or complained about something.

  Not that we were really acting, anyway. It would have been impossible for us to keep in character with all the interruptions, all the stopping and the standing round and waiting till the problem had been sorted out and people had stopped grumbling and Den had given us our cue to go ahead.

  This was the week when the reins of control were passed subtly from Rupert to Den. It began in the stagger-through—Rupert told us when to stop, but only Den could tell us when and where to start again. By Thursday he was totally in charge, running the nonstopping dress rehearsal in the same way he would a performance, while Rupert sat quietly several seats back, taking notes.

  The tension between the two men seemed to have eased off a little, and I mentioned this to Bryan as we sat out on the terrace Friday morning with our coffee in the unexpected sunshine.

  “Your talking to Roo must have had some effect,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I do have my uses.” He stretched out his legs and leaned back with a smile, looking down across the pointed tops of the cypresses to the glimmering blue lake. “Mind you, it’s probably the pace of work this week, as much as anything, that’s mellowed him. He’s been too busy lately to be rude.”

  “We all have.”

  “All of you except Nicholas. He seems to be able to be rude under any circumstances.”

  I smiled and said, “I meant we’ve all been busy.” All of us including Alex—I hadn’t seen him at all since last Sunday, not even at mealtimes. Ordinarily, I might have let that worry me; I might have wondered whether what had passed between us last Sunday had meant more to me than to him. But as it stood, with this being our production week, I simply hadn’t had the time to think.

  “You know, I’ve never understood the logic,” Bryan said, “behind the scheduling of these last few days before first night. You all come out bloody exhausted and borderline ill, which to me seems a hell of a way to begin your play’s run.” He turned his head to look me over. “I mean, have you seen yourself this morning?”

  I confessed I’d been avoiding mirrors. “It’s all right, though. Today’s our last long day—our final dress rehearsal.”

  “Well, just see you don’t collapse. More coffee?”

  “Please.”

  He poured from the pot on the little round table between our two chairs and I watched him, thinking of all the times he’d done this for me; all the second cups of coffee we had shared while talking through my problems. “Bryan?”

  “Mm?”

  “Do you remember Rupert’s mother dying?”

  Setting down the coffee pot he handed me my cup with care. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Was it very horrible?”

  “It wasn’t pleasant.” Bryan had never been one to sugar the pill. “It’s a nasty disease, but it’s slow, Angel. Roo will have years, yet.”

  “But it’s changing him already, isn’t it? That’s why he’s retiring.”

  “Yeah.” He topped up his own cup and sat back again. “He’s starting to forget things, and the moods are getting worse. There are some physical things as well, movements he can’t quite control. He’s been good at hiding them so far—that’s why he likes to keep his hands clasped—but they’ll only increase. Eventually he won’t even be able to walk.”

  “He’ll hate that.”

  “He’ll adjust. We all will.” Levelling his eyes on mine he told me, very gently, “Look, I know it’s hard, but try not to dwell on it, okay? You never know what lies ahead, what medical advances they’ll come up with in the next few years. There’s no point in worrying too much until we’ve got something to worry about.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Anyway, Roo wouldn’t thank you for worrying,” Bryan reminded me. “Not now, when you’ve got the play to be thinking about. I’m sure he’s kicking himself for having told you at all.”

  I might have pointed out that Rupert likely wouldn’t have said anything at all had Bryan not been urging him to tell me the truth, but at that moment the door to the house swung open behind us and Poppy came out onto the terrace. On seeing me she stopped and stood, a little hesitant at first, then turned her head in an exaggerated gesture as though wanting me to recognize the snub for what it was. “Good morning, Bryan,” she said, in tones that quite clearly implied he was the only person present.

  “Morning.”

  “I’ve finished my breakfast,” she informed him, “if you want to play that game again.”

  “You’re on. You go set it up, then—I’ll be in just as soon as I’m done with this coffee.”

  As she turned and went inside again, I arched an enquiring eyebrow in his direction and he answered my unspoken question.

  “I’m teaching her cribbage.”

  “You cheat at cribbage.”

  “Exactly. I got tired of being beaten at Snakes and Ladders.” Raising his cup to drink, he added, “You really should talk to the girl, Angel.”

  Surprised by the advice, I said, “She doesn’t want to talk to me. You saw her just now. She ignored me.”

  “That doesn’t mean she wants you to ignore her in return. A twelve-year-old isn’t a rational being. Believe me, I know.” His expression was wry. “If I had a penny for every time you stopped talking to me back when you were that age, I’d be retired now and living off the interest.”

  “Was I really that bad?”

  “You were deadly. The trick is, I never stopped talking to you,” he explained. “To a child, when a person stops trying, it means they don’t care.”

  “I do care. I like Poppy.”

  “So talk to the girl.”

  “Well, I couldn’t do it today,” I hedged. “I’ve got that reception thing with the press before lunch, and then photos, and then final dress . . . I’ll be lucky if it’s over before midnight.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a minute somewhere.”

  I still thought it would be a waste of time, and told him so. “She isn’t going to listen.”

  “Take a chance. She might surprise you.”

  xvi

  POPPY did surprise me, later, by turning up to watch our dress rehearsal. She hadn’t come out for a week, and it caught me off guard when, taking my place on the darkened stage for curtain-up, I noticed Poppy sitting halfway up the centre aisle. Bryan had settled himself, as was his habit, in the very last row, ostensibly so as not to distract me, though I’d always suspected he did it so I wouldn’t be able to see his expression if the play was a bad one. At any rate, the only person whose presence might have distracted me wasn’t in the house. Not only was Alex nowhere in sight, but Poppy appeared to have charge of the dogs for the evening—they sat calmly curled at her side, Nero half-sleeping while Max fixed his gaze on the stage with the well-mannered patience of a seasoned theatregoer.

  I didn’t notice whether Edwina and Daniela were there, because by then the lights had come up and the play had begun and my concentration shifted of necessity to the performance, and stayed there till the lights came down again sharp at eleven.

  For the first time we were greeted by applause, an unexpected sound that sent a surge of pleasure charging through my system and reminded me why I so loved doing this for a living. It was scattered applause to be sure, coming mostly from the technicians and Bryan, but coupled with the smile on Rupert’s f
ace it was reward enough.

  “Excellent,” said Rupert. “You should all be very proud of yourselves. Just do it like that again tomorrow, and you won’t have any problems. Now, I only have one or two notes . . .”

  As I’d predicted, it was getting on for midnight by the time I’d changed out of my costume and wig into jumper and jeans, and Poppy had already left. No one remembered her leaving, but Den put Madeleine’s worries to rest.

  “She’ll be perfectly all right. They’ve installed all those lights on the path to the house, now,” he said, “so she can’t lose her way. And she’s got the dogs with her. I’m sure she’s just gone back to go to bed. We must have bored her to death. Now, have a glass of wine, you’ve earned it.” Filling the glass as he passed it to her, he looked at me and held the bottle up in invitation. “Celia?”

  “Oh, no thanks, I’m totally done in. I’m going back to get some sleep, myself.” To Madeleine, I offered, “I can look in on Poppy, if you like, and see that she’s all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s no bother.” It might be a good time, I thought, to take Bryan’s advice, and try to have a heart-to-heart with Poppy; try to smooth things over.

  Refusing Bryan’s offer of an escort home, I left the others drinking wine and celebrating while I walked slowly back on my own along the newly lighted path, working through, in the silence of my own thoughts, how best to attempt to make peace with the girl. It was not an easy exercise. I’d thought of and discarded four potential opening lines before I finally became aware of the sound of a dog barking, off to my right in the gardens, a short distance up the hill.