Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘It’s really so odd, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened, I mean. Oscar wrote his play, or rather this part especially for me, so it’s really so peculiar that all of a sudden it should start slipping away from me.’ She bit her lip, while still looking directly into Jerome’s eyes. ‘And the point is, you see I still did have something in reserve. That’s what’s so odd. Actually until I lost it, I was holding back really rather a lot.’

  A sudden darkness clouded Jerome’s eyes, and Elizabeth was delighted to see it. She had allowed him to think he had diagnosed her perfectly, but now she was about to prove him wrong.

  ‘You see, what I think has happened is that you have thrown me,’ Elizabeth said, placing her cool hand on Jerome’s. ‘I think when you joined the cast – you threw me.’

  ‘Me?’ Jerome gasped. ‘Me? But whatever could I have done? You’re not saying – surely you don’t mean – no, no, no! You can’t mean that I am responsible for you losing your performance?’

  ‘Not in the way you mean, Jerome,’ she replied. ‘You haven’t thrown me by doing something wrong, or by bringing something unsuitable to the play.’ She looked down at their lightly touching hands, and then once more up into his dark and bewildered eyes, fixing them with hers, before dropping her voice to a whisper, which was almost a purr.

  ‘I have lost my performance,’ she told him, ‘because of your brilliance.’

  She felt his hand tense under hers, and saw his eyelids drop slightly, half hooding his deep, dark eyes. But the eyes never left hers, and although he moved his hand it was only to turn it upwards in order to hold her own, which he did, slipping his long fingers through her pale and slender ones.

  ‘No,’ he said in a low voice, ‘what nonsense.’

  ‘I promise you. I just feel I can’t live up to you,’ she replied. ‘I feel as if I have been run down. I’m like the moon in an eclipse. When the sun passes between it and the earth.’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Jerome protested, but the tightening of the grip on her hands, the light of excitement in his eyes betrayed him. ‘In fact,’ he continued, now holding her one hand in the two of his, ‘if you must know, Miss Laurence, the boot – is entirely on the other foot. When we read in Cecil’s office – yes?’

  ‘You don’t imagine I can have forgotten that?’

  ‘When I heard you read,’ Jerome went on, silencing her by tightening the hold on her hand even more, ‘I thought, no. No, I can never possibly live with this. Not possibly.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re just being kind,’ Elizabeth replied, apparently giving the possibility no credence. ‘And it’s very sweet of you. To try and give me back my confidence by saying such sweet things. But it’s not as easy as that. Because I now know my limitations. Because you’ve made me aware of them.’

  Jerome let go of Elizabeth’s hands and leaned back in his chair, staring for a moment at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t think it’s me,’ he announced finally. ‘In fact I don’t think it has anything to do with me – whatsoever.’

  For a moment Elizabeth caught her breath, afraid that her best laid plan was about to go awry, but said nothing, and did nothing, except widen her luminous eyes slightly in feigned disbelief at Jerome.

  ‘No, no! It’s true!’ he laughed, catching the nuance, and then leaning forward once again. ‘It has nothing to do with me – nor you, Elizabeth darling! You are brilliant. It isn’t me that’s throwing you.’ He dropped his voice conspiratorially. ‘It’s Richard,’ he whispered.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Elizabeth asked, furrowing her brow deeply. ‘Do you really honestly think so, because if you’re right – oh! Oh, if only you are right!’

  ‘Of course I’m right,’ Jerome replied, almost testily. ‘Richard Derwent is an oaf. It’s him who’s inhibiting you. If you think about it, what’s he said to you since you began to lose confidence? Not a word, not a single piece of direction. And why? Why do you think this is?’

  ‘Why? Jerome? Why?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t like women. And because he does not – like – women, he has just let you—’ Jerome made a rather round sort of gesture with his right hand as he searched for the suitable words. ‘He has just let you – quite literally – fall to pieces.’

  He bared his teeth into a miniature snarl, hissing the word ‘pieces’, giving it just enough of the right inflexion to make the state of going to pieces sound like the onset of a fatal disease. Elizabeth shuddered privately and pleasurably, finding she was even more thrilled by Jerome in private than she was in rehearsal.

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ she wondered softly. ‘What should we do? I mean – he is the director.’

  Jerome leaned his head back and smiled at the ceiling, because he had already decided what course of action they should take. To his way of thinking there was only one course of action open to them.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked suddenly. ‘This evening?’

  ‘Why – nothing.’ Elizabeth looked puzzled, as if she didn’t have any idea at all of what Jerome was about to suggest. ‘I was going home to study.’

  ‘Then you must take me with you. The only way back, my darling, is for you and I to work on the play, and our performances, both our performances – together.’

  Elizabeth stood up, and smiled to herself as she thought of how completely right dear Oscar had been. He had told her that the best possible way to get someone in your debt was not as you would suppose, to help them, but on the contrary to allow them to help you.

  ‘That way,’ he had concluded, ‘they will feel obligated to you. And it’ll be quite a considerable sense of obligation. Because it’ll be based on the very real fear that in advising you they may well have given you the wrong advice – and in doing so, messed up the rest of your life!’

  Jerome had never given the off-stage life of Elizabeth Laurence a second thought. There had been no reason to do so. Elizabeth and he were simply members of a cast doing a play, and when work was done they went their separate ways. Besides, his head was always too full of Pippa. Until the moment Elizabeth invited him to her home, therefore, he hadn’t thought of her as having an existence outside the rehearsal room.

  He hadn’t even been curious as to how she lived, or where she lived, or with whom, and although at some point he had been told that she was married, he had long since forgotten the fact. To Jerome, Elizabeth Laurence was an actress, a leading lady of the play in which he had been somewhat precipitously cast. She was very beautiful, and she was gifted, but it was this that concerned Jerome the most. For while there were plenty of pretty actresses, and while there was a handful of beautiful ones, there were few who were also genuinely gifted, and almost none who combined both beauty and exceptional talent. This was what had prompted Jerome to take her under his wing. He was on her side, he wanted her good, she had to be good to make the play work, although he must be careful that she wasn’t altogether too good.

  He was so busy thinking about this that it wasn’t until after he had paid the taxi off and Elizabeth was actually knocking at the door of a pretty little white painted Regency villa that Jerome took stock of his surroundings. He immediately assumed this had to be her parents’ house, for certainly no relatively untried or unknown actress of Jerome’s somewhat limited acquaintance lived in anything but lodgings, or at the very most, a garret in someone else’s house. And this was such a perfect little house, with its black-glossed, brass-knobbed front door, and window boxes teeming with lobelia and bright red geraniums. It was in fact precisely the sort of house about which Jerome dreamed.

  Elizabeth rapped on the door once more with the brass knocker, and then turned to Jerome with an apologetic smile.

  ‘I’ve only forgotten my key again,’ she said. ‘I suppose one day I’ll remember it.’

  The door was answered by a smartly uniformed housemaid, which only went even further to confirm Jerome’s original suspicion that the house was not Elizabeth’s own.

  �
��Good evening, Mrs Ferrers,’ the maid said, standing aside. ‘I’m afraid you’ve just missed Mr Ferrers, ma’am.’

  Elizabeth handed the maid her coat and gloves, while Jerome half closed his eyes, and rocked slightly back on his heels, just as he had seen Daniel Morrow do as Hamlet when he learns of Ophelia’s death. Of course! She was married – of course! How could he have forgotten? Most probably, Jerome thought as he crossed the threshold of her house, because she never once had mentioned her husband.

  ‘Poor Mr Ferrers,’ Jerome heard Elizabeth sigh to her maid. ‘I’d quite forgotten he was dining with his old regiment tonight. Did he say what time he would be back, Maggie?’

  ‘Late ma’am,’ the maid replied, now taking Jerome’s coat. ‘He has to take his father home, so he said as not to wait up.’

  ‘This is Mr Didier, Maggie,’ Elizabeth said, adding in explanation that he was the star of the play she was rehearsing. Jerome practised his best matinée idol smile on the apple-cheeked girl, and at once brought even more colour to her face.

  ‘Mr Didier and I are going to rehearse our parts in the drawing room, Maggie, so would you mind bringing us up some sandwiches? And a jug of very strong coffee, please?’

  ‘Is this all right?’ Jerome asked, as Elizabeth led him into the drawing room. ‘I mean you are sure your husband won’t mind my being here?’

  ‘It’s not really any of his business, wouldn’t you say?’ Elizabeth asked, taking the sting from the question by gilding it with a naughty-kitten smile.

  ‘But of course, you will tell him?’ Jerome said.

  ‘Do you think I should?’ Elizabeth enquired, still being a kitten.

  ‘Of course you must!’ Jerome laughed. ‘If you don’t tell him, your maid most certainly will!’

  Elizabeth laughed, all the time watching Jerome in the antique looking-glass while tidying her perfectly tidy lustrous dark hair. Once she had finished, she flopped down into a large chintz covered armchair, and closing her eyes, stretched her arms out wide so that the fabric of her thin blouse tightened over the shape of her firm young breasts.

  ‘Heavens,’ she sighed, stifling a small yawn, ‘isn’t acting absolutely exhausting?’

  ‘If you’re that tired—’

  Jerome picked up his script which he had placed on the table beside him, and tapped it against his hand.

  ‘Oh no!’ Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked up at him, happy to see he was still looking at her. ‘I didn’t mean I was tired, Jerome. I just meant that acting – is exhausting! Heavens – I intend to work until I drop.’

  She smoothed out her skirt, and picked up her play script.

  ‘Where do you think we should start?’ she asked.

  ‘I think we should take the King’s advice,’ Jerome replied gravely. ‘And begin at the beginning, and go on until we come to the end. And then we should stop.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Elizabeth clapped her hands with delight. ‘Even if it takes all night.’

  It took a lot less time than that for Elizabeth to recover her lost performance. Long before Maggie appeared with the welcome tray of sandwiches and coffee, Elizabeth was back on song, so much so that she and Jerome forgot all about eating until they had worked right the way through to the end of Act One.

  ‘You did that without a note, hardly a note,’ Jerome told her, helping himself from the tray. ‘I didn’t have to tell you one thing.’

  Elizabeth took a sandwich from the plate, eating just the chicken and leaving the bread.

  ‘I think,’ she said, after a moment, having digested the sliver of chicken breast, ‘I think it’s because of the way you’re playing it. I think that’s what it is.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything different,’ Jerome countered.

  ‘Yes, you are.’ Elizabeth shook her head, and carefully pulled another sandwich apart. ‘You are doing something different, darling. You’re listening. And I’m listening to you. We didn’t listen to each other before.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jerome looked back at her and saw an added sparkle in her eyes. He could sense her excitement, and he was sympathetic to it, because he too felt the excitement.

  ‘I’m probably playing it less—’ he searched for the words, one hand once more describing a circle. ‘I’m playing it less forcefully, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth agreed. ‘Much less.’

  ‘Less bombastic?’ Jerome enquired.

  ‘Less bombastic, yes,’ Elizabeth frowned up at him, ‘and much less forcefully.’

  Jerome frowned back at her.

  ‘It’s probably because I’m here, that we’re doing it here,’ he said. ‘In your house. On your home ground.’ Elizabeth turned away and taking the coffee she had just poured herself, went and sat on the floor in front of the fire.

  ‘I don’t think so, darling,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I really don’t think we were listening to each other before. I think it’s as simple as that.’

  Jerome brought his coffee over and came and sat down on the rug beside her.

  ‘Well, well,’ he sighed. ‘I thought it was going to be me helping you.’

  ‘You have,’ Elizabeth assured him, quietly, putting a hesitant hand up to his cheek and touching it. ‘You’ve got us both to listen.’

  By the time Jerome left just before midnight, they had worked right through to the end of the play. And when they reached the end, they had stopped and sat in silence, staring into the dying embers of the fire before Jerome had finally got to his feet.

  ‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘I have to go home.’

  When she had seen him out, Elizabeth went upstairs to her bedroom, undressed at once and slipped straight into her single bed, putting out her light immediately, in case Sebastian returned while she was still awake. Elizabeth didn’t want to talk to her husband, not now, because there was no way she could explain what she felt, no way she could describe her state of intense excitement, or what had caused it. For Elizabeth believed in truth she had won Jerome.

  She lay there in the dark remembering. She remembered the looks he had given her, and the way he had given those looks. She remembered the touch of his hand as he had held hers, and the softness of his cheek when she had put her hand to it. But most of all she remembered the feeling of power, the power she felt she now had over Jerome. All Elizabeth felt she had to do was choose the moment for him to fall, and when she did, he would.

  She was certain of it. She was so certain, she was so overjoyed. She felt like laughing out loud in the dark as she lay there in her bed, her brilliant black hair spilt in thick strands on the hand embroidered Italian pillowcase, her slender hands lying flat, palms down on the silk counterpane, floating blissfully in the dark. Jerome Didier was hers, to do with as she liked, as she had done that very evening, for from the word go he had done exactly what she wanted him to do, and she had got him to do that by pretending that she would do exactly what he said. It was as simple as that.

  Elizabeth smiled, because she believed she had achieved both her objectives, namely to enslave Jerome publicly as well as privately, to make him hers on-stage as well as off. She was certain she had been doubly successful, because in the end, by pretending she was going to do exactly what he advised, she had instead turned the tables on him, and got him to do exactly what she wanted, which was to stop overplaying, to stop being selfish, and to start listening, all of which things he had begun to do, and as a result there was once again room for her.

  So now, she thought as she lay watching the lights of passing cars playing on her ceiling, perhaps people would start watching her again, and she could go back to doing in the play what she had been doing before she had been – as she liked to think of it – run over. After all, it was her for whom Oscar Greene had written the play, her, Elizabeth Laurence, not Jerome Didier. And it was her that people would be queuing up to see, not Jerome Didier. Elizabeth would make sure of that, however much and madly she loved her leading man.

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sp; 5

  When the telephone finally rang for her, Pippa was in bed reading. It wasn’t late, but she had preferred to go to bed and read Anna Karenina than to stay up on her own by the dying fire. Her mother had for once gone out for dinner, to a small party at The Vicarage, to which fortunately for once Pippa had not been invited. She had driven her mother over, but had been excused fetching her home by the offer of a lift from one of their neighbours.

  When the telephone finally rang, at first Pippa hardly noticed it. She was so deeply involved in her book she never heard it ringing, until it stopped. Then she suddenly looked up from her reading, aware there was a silence where a moment ago there had been ringing, and in that moment she knew it was Jerome.

  By now she was half out of bed, long legs dangling over the edge, her feet trying to find her slippers, pulling her old, warm dressing gown on around her shoulders, as if there was still a point in getting up. And then when she came back to her senses, and realized the phone had long since stopped ringing, she suddenly sat very still and stared at the floor.

  ‘Blast,’ she said. ‘Hell.’

  Bobby, who was sleeping on the end of her bed, had woken up in the sudden flurry of activity, and lain with his head half cocked, watching for developments. When he realized Pippa was not going to go anywhere, he yawned very wide, and then rolled over on to his back, sticking four short legs into the air. Pippa rubbed his little, fat tummy affectionately, and with a sigh kicked her slippers back off again.

  Which was when the telephone rang again. This time Pippa was taking no chances, rushing barefooted straight down the stairs to the hall. Bobby followed at once, barking joyously at the thought of an unscheduled walk or game, reaching the telephone table well before his mistress, and jumping up and down against her bare legs as she reached to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Ow!’ she exclaimed, pushing the dog down. ‘Knock it off, Bobby.’