The Director's Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  A nineteen-year-old Cathy Kerris in her first year at NIDA, having won a place in the acting school for, oddly, a flair for comedy. Tom West, acclaimed director doing a teaching seminar in a most practical way—directing a play put on by the students, who were, almost without exception, quite bowled over by the experience—and the possibility of being ‘noticed’ by the great man. A love scene, during which Cathy was to be passionately kissed by the leading man and was expected to kiss him back with equal passion. One problem—Cathy Kerris, despite her looks, despite her fledgling talent, had apparently been miscast.

  ‘Look——’ Tom West had stridden down the stage towards them, ‘—that was about as effective as two frozen cod kissing each other! Haven’t you ever kissed or been kissed?’ he demanded, his hazel eyes running over her flushed, embarrassed face, her figure, and returning to her face with an acute degree of scepticism in them.

  ‘Not… actually,’ she mumbled, and cringed inwardly as everyone laughed.

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ he drawled. ‘Your eyes alone are—where have they kept you since you left school?’

  She was unable to answer, only able to stare at him like a mesmerised rabbit until he made an impatient gesture and said drily, ‘Well, in the interests of your career, perhaps you’d better acquire some experience to call upon. This,’ he added with a satirical twist of his lips, ‘is how it’s done.’

  It was a kiss that would go down in NIDA’s history, Cathy suspected. It certainly held the whole cast and everyone else who was there spellbound. What it did to her was also history, she’d thought often, and just as often wondered how in her awful embarrassment and confusion, it could have affected her so. But there was no doubt that it did. Some attraction to this tall, worldly man had obviously sprung up in her as soon as she’d laid eyes on him, she’d reasoned later, but because of so many things, so many poles between them, she had not even admitted it to herself. Yet, when it had ended, when his mouth had left hers and he had held her away from him, not only had there been stunned shock in her eyes but something else, an awakening and an unlocking, an unspoken admission that the feel of his arms around her, the feel of his hard body against hers, his sampling of her lips, his teasing them apart, his fingers moving up the back of her neck and into her hair—all of it had been a revelation.

  Which he had seen in her eyes, with a faint frown growing in his own. To make matters worse, they had all seen it, and people had begun moving awkwardly, looking away… That was when he’d ended it—not only by releasing her but abruptly calling an end to the rehearsal. Cathy came to life and stumbled away, conscious of the fact that she doubted she’d have the courage to face him again, or NIDA.

  Mercifully everyone left her alone as she gathered her things and escaped with relief out into a dark, wet winter’s afternoon.

  But as she almost ran along the pavement, a sleek green foreign car pulled into the kerb and the driver leant over and opened the door. It was Tom West.

  ‘Cathy?’ he said. ‘Hop in.’

  She had to bend down to see him properly, and her tongue tied itself into knots as she sought to speak.

  He waited for a moment, then said wryly, ‘All I had in mind was buying you a drink—assuming you drink—or a cup of coffee, and apologising.’

  The bar he took her to was warm and dim and after disposing of her coat and long scarf Cathy accepted a brandy and dry, then with some helplessness looked across at him. His hair was damp and ruffled and there were droplets of rain on his tweed jacket; he’d stretched his long legs out sideways to the small round table and he was twisting his glass around absently, staring down at it. And her heart started to beat oddly again—but what was the use? she thought with some despair. They were still poles apart, this was only an act of kindness—there was no way this tall, experienced, clever, sometimes satanic man could be interested in her.

  He lifted his eyes and disturbed the fixed way she was looking at him, and raised an eyebrow ruefully. ‘I wish I knew what was going on behind those beautiful blue eyes now, young Cathy, and for what it’s worth I do apologise for putting you on the spot like that. I hope you don’t think I’ve blighted your career or——’ he paused ‘—made it too difficult for you to go back. It’ll all be forgotten by the next rehearsal, you know.’

  To her surprise, Cathy heard herself say, ‘But I don’t think I’m right for the part, so…’

  He studied her rather intently for a moment. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said slowly. ‘Not yet, anyway. How come——?’ His hazel eyes narrowed. ‘I mean, for a budding actress you do seem… not quite the type.’

  ‘I’m much better at deadpan comedy than kissing,’ she told him with a grimace, ‘although I did think I could broaden my scope, should broaden it. Now, I don’t know. I certainly couldn’t…well…’ She stopped in confusion.

  ‘Kiss just anyone passionately?’ he queried with a glint of amusement. ‘That could be due to a conflict of interest—a conflict with your upbringing, perhaps. Tell me how you did grow up.’

  Half an hour later, Cathy stopped selfconsciously and realised she’d told Tom West her whole life story. How her parents had died when she was four and her grandmother had brought her up with the help of an exclusive convent boarding school. Told him about her grandmother, who was dead now too and had been an old-fashioned autocratic lady in her sixties when she’d taken on her orphaned granddaughter.

  ‘I’m amazed you ever got as far as NIDA,’ he had commented once. To which she had replied that the Kerrises, her father and grandmother, had both had a stubborn streak and she guessed she’d inherited a little of it.

  ‘But why acting?’

  She shrugged. ‘Why does anyone——?’

  ‘I know that,’ he said, ‘but in some cases it’s a form of rebellion. In your case, against your extremely sheltered, even repressed childhood.’ Cathy considered, then she said seriously, ‘You don’t think I’ve got any talent?’

  Tom sat back with a grimace. ‘I didn’t say that. It’s only your first year, and you must have shown someone something to have got in. As a matter of fact, I have to admire your tenacity, and one certainly needs to be tenacious for this profession. So,’ he put his head on one side and those clever hazel eyes watched her curiously again, ‘apart from NIDA, what else do you do with your life?’

  ‘Lots of things,’ Cathy said vaguely.

  ‘Do you live alone?’

  ‘Yes. I inherited quite a bit of money, so I can… afford to,’ she said with a trace of awkwardness.

  ‘Are you ever lonely?’

  She looked at him, then away. ‘Sometimes. But you get used to it. And I do do lots of things. I go to a cordon bleu cooking school, I belong to my church’s fund-raising committee and I have friends. You don’t have to feel sorry for me,’ she said with sudden dignity.

  ‘No,’ he said, but thoughtfully. And not long afterwards, he drove her home. But on the way, he said to her, ‘I hope I’m forgiven, and would you object to changing roles in the play?’

  She tensed.

  ‘Cathy,’ he said quietly, ‘believe me, I can do it without any loss of face for you—further loss of face,’ he added with an oddly grim twist to his lips. ‘That way—well, it will be better for everyone, but especially you.’

  ‘All right.’

  He was as good as his word. He achieved the recasting with the minimum of fuss, and although it was a smaller role, Cathy was undoubtedly happier playing an old woman rather than a passionate one. And such was Tom’s mastery not only of the play but of everyone in it that the subject of the kiss was not alluded to, to her, although she doubted it would ever be completely forgotten. But the fact that Tom West didn’t single her out for any special attention, and treated her exactly as he had before, helped.

  Treated her exactly as before at NIDA, that was; but when they bumped into each other in a rush-hour crowd a couple of weeks later and he all but knocked her down so that she had difficulty getting her breath back
and the contents of her handbag rolled all over the pavement, he insisted, with a rueful glint in his eyes, that he should be allowed to compensate. He took her to the same bar and she had the same drink, and he exercised the same knack so that she was able to talk freely to him and even invite some confidences in return. Such as that film directing was his great love and, he felt, his forte, but he liked to keep his hand in with live theatre from time to time.

  Then Cathy got a cold and had to miss a rehearsal and at the next one was still a bit pale and pulled-down-looking, and once again Tom caught up with her just after she’d left the building and told her she looked as if she needed a good meal and that was what he proposed to do with her— feed her.

  He took her to a subduedly elegant restaurant where the food was superb and the atmosphere calm and restful. And remarked at the end of the meal, with his hazel eyes resting on the faint colour in her cheeks, that he’d been right and had she no living relative to look after her?

  ‘Not even two ugly sisters like Cinderella,’ she replied with a grin. ‘But you don’t have to worry about me.’

  ‘For some reason, I do,’ he said, rather drily, she thought. But then he changed the subject, and presently he drove her home.

  To her immense surprise, she actually got up the courage to ask him to come up for coffee and, even more to her surprise, he came. And it was obvious her flat was something of a surprise to him—the really good pieces of furniture she’d saved from her grandmother’s home, the paintings, rugs and porcelain—and she sometimes wondered afterwards if those things had led him to believe she was more sophisticated than she actually was—led him to believe he was safe from an adolescent crush.

  Whatever, after that night, their meetings were no longer chance ones. Every now and then Tom would ring her up and ask her out to dinner or to a movie and dinner or to a concert, and he kept up the practice after the play had come and gone and his seminar at NIDA was finished. But it was four months after their first kiss that he kissed her again, and then somewhat reluctantly.

  It happened one night when she had asked him to dinner, when she knew she had fallen deeply in love with him but was determined not to show it because she was quite sure it would ruin their friendship. But after what he told her was an excellent meal with his usual faintly wry smile, she went to get the coffee and tripped, and he stood up quickly to save her from falling and she ended up in his arms.

  For a moment, the world seemed to stand still for her and her breathing altered as she stared up into his eyes, and her lips parted—and all her determination to hide things from him went for nothing.

  And Tom stared back, then he closed his eyes briefly and said softly, ‘Oh, hell.’ And gathered her closer and kissed her.

  But when it was over he put her away from him and said abruptly, ‘Cathy, we shouldn’t do that again.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I know.’

  ‘What do you know?’ he queried with a sardonic little twist to his lips.

  Cathy said with an effort as she smoothed her dress agitatedly, ‘That…it’s not the same for you.’

  He raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Kissing you seems to come fairly naturally to me, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s more that you enjoy teaching me rather than doing it because it’s me. Does that make any sense?’ she asked anxiously.

  He grimaced. ‘Yes—and no. I suppose most men would enjoy teaching you, but I’m not so sure we can separate the inner you from the outer you— does that make any sense?’

  Her lips parted and, unbeknown to her, a glimmer of hope lit the deep blue of her eyes.

  But he saw it and he said roughly, ‘Cathy, I think it’s best if you just forget about me. I’m not the type of man for a girl like you; the kind of arrangement I usually have with women… is not for you.’

  She turned away. ‘No…I always knew that. That’s why I didn’t want this to happen, you see, and it wouldn’t have if I’d watched where I was going.’ She made a small gesture with her hands. ‘You can go now—I mean, I understand, I really do.’

  He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her back and said something under his breath, then, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Cathy lifted suddenly calm eyes to his. ‘What for? It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was,’ he said grimly. ‘I should never have…’ He broke off and swore, then he said, ‘Can you really understand that it’s best if I do go?’

  She nodded, and he stared down at the pale oval of her face, the deep blue eyes, her long loose cloud of fair hair, and he said with a sigh, ‘Goodbye, Cathy Kerris. Look after yourself—promise me you’ll do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  But two weeks later he was back. He simply turned up unannounced, causing her to gasp and then go pale as she opened the door and saw who it was, and be struck speechless.

  ‘Cathy?’ he said, and added with an oddly selfdirected note of mockery, ‘Will you marry me, Cathy?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said later, but by then Tom was sitting on her settee with her in his arms.

  ‘It’s quite simple.’ He smoothed the Peter Pan collar of the blouse she wore with jeans. ‘I couldn’t get you out of mind. I couldn’t-’ his lips twisted, ‘—concentrate. Nothing seemed to have much purpose for me—quite simple,’ he repeated, and above her head grimaced.

  ‘But do you really want to marry me? That’s what I don’t understand.’ Cathy looked up gravely into his eyes.

  ‘I do really want to marry you—for one thing, I don’t want anyone else to be able to teach you anything. I want you, Cathy.’ And for once his hazel gaze showed no amusement or mockery, no compassion or irony. ‘And I can’t envisage not wanting you.’

  ‘But I might be a terrible disappointment to you—I have no experience, you see.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘Cathy, how have you felt these last couple of weeks?’ he asked abruptly.

  She stared up at him, then shivered suddenly and buried her face in his shoulder, recalling the loneliness and the sense of sorrow that not even the fillip of getting a shampoo commercial had been able to pierce.

  ‘So you see,’ he said, cupping her cheek, ‘we’re in the same boat. As for experience-’ his fingers roamed behind her ear and there was a slightly wry glint in his eyes as he continued ‘—you seem to be very much at home here, in my arms, so…’

  Cathy raised her head with a hectic little flush burning in her cheeks and a stricken look in her blue eyes which caused him to smile faintly down at her. And to say, ‘Believe me, that’s a good sign. I don’t think your inexperience is going to be a problem at all.’

  It hadn’t.

  Not the way Tom had handled it. And handled her body—but only after he’d married her, which he’d done quite quickly—gently and with care, so that it had flowered for him and her love for him had grown, and she’d thought she was even learning to match him, to develop a sensual style of her own that not only accepted his lovemaking but added to it.

  So where did it all go wrong? Cathy West asked herself that beautiful summer’s day at Mount Macedon, standing at her bedroom window. Should I have insisted on staying on at NIDA? Or accepted the couple of commercials I was offered after the shampoo one? But I knew he wasn’t keen on that, and it wasn’t really practical for him to have a wife studying to be an actress—or studying anything away from home, for that matter. Nor did I really think twice about giving it up—it was as if I’d come home at last. Should I have given a lot more thought to why he wanted to marry me, though? Was it, talking of being practical—was it a practical decision for him—to take a wife?

  The door clicked open and Tom stood in the doorway for a moment. Then he closed it, but didn’t cross the room to her. Instead he leant his shoulders back against it and let his hazel gaze rest on her thoughtfully.

  And finally, as her nerves began to tighten, he said abruptly, ‘Tell me why you want to do this, Cat.’

  CHAPTER TWO

>   TO PROVE to you that I’m a woman, not just a body, not just an orphan you took under your wing and are fond of… The urge to say it was almost uncontrollable, but something held Cathy back—a lack of confidence to open that subject with him, a lack of articulacy to match his, the lack of courage to risk his sometimes cruel remarks… Yet it’s all there inside me, she thought with despair.

  ‘Cat?’

  Tom’s own private name for her that he never used in public—did it mean he wanted to understand?

  ‘I thought you were happy with this life until you started looking all… wistful and mysterious,’ he said with an ironic twist to his lips.

  No, he didn’t. ‘I am happy here—I love it, but I did always want to be an actress. You love it here too, but you combine a career with it.’

  ‘Is this,’ he said after a moment, ‘a calculated backlash against the fact that I’m not in any great hurry to start a family?’

  Cathy turned away and laid her fingers on the curtain again. ‘No. I don’t think it’s a good idea either—yet.’

  ‘That’s a sudden change of heart,’ he said softly. Then, ‘If you feel so strongly about it, let’s go ahead.’

  ‘No!’ The word was torn from her.

  ‘Cathy——’

  But she swung round with her eyes blazing. ‘What’s the use if you don’t really want to?’

  He’d started across the room, but he stopped mid-stride, his eyes narrowed and his mouth set grimly. ‘So, ’ he said curtly after a moment, ‘I gather the state of our marriage is not pleasing you at present and you’re aching to change it, but if you think playing Chloe is going to improve it, I have to disagree and we’ll have to settle for the other option so dear to your heart. Unfortunately, because we’re due to start shooting in about three weeks, that’s all the time we’ll have for a while to have a really concentrated go at it. Should we start now? ’ he queried with a glance to the bed, then a mocking, deliberate glance at her that stripped her naked and brought dull colour to her cheeks.