Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Can’t, you mean,’ her mother would correct her.

  ‘Won’t,’ Pippa insisted. ‘I don’t want to leave you. I wouldn’t. Not with no-one to look after you.’

  ‘But you would if there was someone to look after me,’ her mother would reply. ‘You’d be off like a shot.’

  It was an impossible conversation to continue, not only because it was too painful a subject, but because they both knew that a time would come when Pippa would be forced into making a decision, when circumstances would dictate that she must choose between her own young life and what was left of her mother’s. But not just yet, Pippa used to say when her mother was determined to prolong the debate.

  ‘We don’t have to discuss this now, Mother,’ she would say. ‘This is something we’ll deal with if and if ever it arises.’

  But not just yet.

  ‘Please God I’ll die soon,’ her mother would say as her final words whenever they spent the evening debating their futures. ‘I only hope to God I die soon, so that you can have a life of your own.’

  And often, particularly recently, and most particularly since she had met Jerome, Pippa would lie awake in the dark of her bedroom and wonder whether in fact that would not be the most acceptable solution. She knew her mother didn’t want to go on living. She knew all her mother wanted to do was to die so that she could be, as she hoped, with her late husband. Even if she had been fit and strong, Pippa knew that would still have been what her mother wanted, because her mother had regularly said so. And if her mother was dead, and if there was a heaven, then her mother would be happy, and even though she would mourn for her mother, finally Pippa could also be happy, possibly, although she hardly dared think about it, possibly with Jerome Didier.

  But not just yet.

  ‘You’re staying for the evening performance?’ Jerome asked, more as a matter of course than for information. ‘We can dine afterwards rather splendidly. At The Mitre.’

  ‘I can’t, Jerome,’ Pippa replied. ‘I have to get back.’

  ‘You said you weren’t going back to Sussex tonight?’

  Jerome put his make-up down and looked at Pippa in the mirror. She was once again sitting on the sofa in his dressing room, but this time she was much more relaxed, he noted, settled into one corner with her long elegant legs tucked up underneath her.

  ‘I know I said I wasn’t going back to Sussex,’ Pippa replied. ‘But you didn’t let me finish telling you. I have to get back to London. I’m staying at – I’m staying with my aunt,’ she corrected herself. ‘At her flat.’

  ‘Fine,’ Jerome said, returning to the process of making-up. ‘I’ll drive you back down to London, after we’ve had dinner.’

  ‘No,’ Pippa said quickly, trying to kill the idea at birth, instinctively sensing danger. It had been difficult enough to control her emotions after seeing Jerome on-stage that afternoon, and she knew that after an evening performance to a house already sold out by the time they had returned to the theatre, and a dinner à deux, there was every chance that the little resolution she had left would dissolve completely, and she would stay the night in Oxford, with Jerome, and that they would go to bed together.

  ‘No, I really can’t, Jerome,’ she repeated. ‘I wouldn’t get back until far too late. And my aunt would be furious.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Jerome said, this time without even bothering to look at her. ‘You might feel quite different after the show.’

  But it wasn’t Pippa who felt different after the show, it was Jerome. Elizabeth had been a disaster, either practically inaudible, or else playing everything right over the top, as if she was hysterical. On top of all that she either walked through all her laughs, or killed every one of Jerome’s stone dead, by coming in before the audience had barely drawn breath.

  ‘Every line,’ Jerome seethed in the interval to the actor who was playing Jerome’s rival. ‘Every laugh and every damn line she’s in like a Sherman tank! We lost them in the first scene, and we haven’t got them back since! I’m going to have a word with madam, and see what she’s playing at.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Didier,’ Elizabeth’s dresser, Muzz, said, politely barring Jerome from coming into his co-star’s dressing room. ‘Miss Laurence is very upset and she doesn’t want to see anyone.’

  Jerome sighed and leaned his forehead on the doorframe.

  ‘What, Muzz,’ he sighed, ‘has got into her? You tell me. Is she sick or something?’

  ‘She’s not sick, Mr Didier,’ Muzz replied. ‘She’s just rather upset.’

  ‘Have I upset her, Muzz?’ Jerome asked, managing to ease the door open a fraction more, allowing himself sight of Elizabeth curled up in a silk gown on the couch with her back to them. ‘Because if I’m the cause of the upset—’

  ‘She’s best left alone at such times, Mr Didier,’ Muzz reminded Jerome, taking control of the door once more. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Jerome muttered, as the door was shut against him. ‘Actresses.’

  As Jerome was heading back for his dressing room, racking his brain for the best plan of action, Elizabeth turned her face from the back of the couch where she lay to smile sweetly at her dresser.

  ‘Thank you, Muzz dear,’ she murmured. ‘What would I do without you?’

  Or rather more to the point, she thought as she sat up to allow her dresser to plump up the silk-covered, monogrammed cushions behind her on the couch, what would Muzz do without her? Elizabeth considered it had been one of her rather more inspired notions, instructing Cecil to ensure she was allowed to choose her own dresser. Lalla had pointed out to her the importance of such a move, telling Elizabeth that at all costs and at all times it was vital to have someone backstage in whom she could confide, someone whose loyalty would never be questioned. So who better than old Muzz? After all, it had been Muzz who had rung Elizabeth first to sound out (albeit indirectly) whether or not there was anything in Elizabeth’s new found career for her, so what could possibly be better than the job of her dresser? Elizabeth knew she could confide in Muzz, she knew she could trust her and count on her total loyalty, because she knew Muzz needed the job as much as Elizabeth needed her to do it. And so far, Elizabeth thought as her dresser draped a pretty lace shawl around her shoulders, so far and like most things at present in Elizabeth’s life, it was working out absolutely perfectly.

  ‘I don’t actually think it’s right, making you go on at these times,’ Muzz said, opening a jar of aspirins which were on Elizabeth’s dressing table. ‘I’m quite sure men wouldn’t if men had it. But then I’m afraid that’s typical men.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, Muzz,’ Elizabeth agreed, pulling the shawl around her shoulders. ‘But you know the saying, darling, the show must go on.’

  Elizabeth gave a sad little yawn and smiled bravely. She had deliberately allowed her dresser to believe that the reason for her loss of control in Act One was a feminine one, which indeed it was, but not the one her dresser believed it to be. The reason Elizabeth had decided apparently to lose control on-stage and disconcert Jerome had to do not with Elizabeth’s womb, but her heart.

  She lay back on her mountain of feather-filled cushions and sighed with the pain of it all, a sigh which earned another look of the deepest sympathy from her dresser, who hurried over to her with two aspirins and a glass of water. Elizabeth pretended to take them, while in fact hiding them, one in either cheek, until Muzz had turned away and Elizabeth had a chance to get rid of them.

  ‘Five minutes please, Miss Laurence!’ the boy called with a knock on her dressing-room door. ‘Act Two beginners five minutes please!’

  Elizabeth held a lace hankie to her mouth, as if feeling nauseated, but in reality to conceal the fact she had pouched the aspirins.

  ‘They’ll have to hold the curtain, Muzz darling,’ Elizabeth stage-whispered to her dresser, one hand to her mouth and the other pressing the newly refilled hot water bottle to her stomach. ‘Just for a few minutes. Just until the aspirin begin to work.’


  The tablets were starting to melt in her mouth and the taste was disgusting, but then, Elizabeth decided, when you were acting, obviously you had to put up with all sorts of horrid things.

  Act One had left Pippa totally confused, as it had indeed left most of the audience. At least the play still made sense, she thought as she sat and slowly ate an ice cream from a tub, but no sense could be made of Elizabeth Laurence’s performance. If Pippa hadn’t seen the matinée, she would have had to conclude that Elizabeth Laurence, despite the rave notices quoted on the billboards outside the theatre, was one of the worst young actresses she had ever seen.

  Fortunately this conclusion could only really be reached by those who had seen how brilliant she normally was, for they had a yardstick. Others who had not witnessed Elizabeth’s true talent, in other words every other member of that night’s audience, could only speculate, and wonder whether or not such an eccentric performance wasn’t in fact part of the character the beautiful young actress was playing, so that when the curtain rose on Act Two, instead of there being a feeling of utter disbelief, which was what Pippa was experiencing, there was instead an atmosphere both hushed and expectant.

  Neither Elizabeth nor Jerome appeared in the first part of the Act Two, scene one, which was devoted to a sub-plot concerning the supporting characters. It was a very funny scene, and the audience, reassured by the lightness of the comedy and the adroitness of the players, relaxed and prepared once again to enjoy themselves.

  They were not disappointed.

  Elizabeth Laurence was utterly brilliant. From her very first entrance in the second act she took the play by the throat and never once let go, exciting, amusing, bewitching, enthralling and finally breaking the hearts of her audience. And it was her audience, totally hers, because in her wake Jerome Didier all but disappeared from view.

  It was obvious to Pippa what was happening, but not to that evening’s audience, who simply more or less forgot all about him. They weren’t to know that from his reappearance all Jerome was concerned about was holding the play together, and trying to control someone who in the first act had been totally aberrant. Neither were they to know that the look of utter astonishment on his face as he saw Elizabeth leaving him for dead wasn’t part of the character he was playing, nor was the half-stutter he began to develop, and the sense of complete bewilderment he began to display. The audience understood this part of the play, that this was the effect that this wonderful, beautiful and divine creation called Emerald Glynn had on her lover, that she reduced him to shreds, that she turned him from a proud, self-confident, assured Adonis into a stammering, mumbling, uncertain shadow of a man, wrecked by the love of a woman who finally left him in order to save him.

  The cheers were all for Elizabeth as she stepped forward, ushered from the line of actors by Jerome who even though he walked forward with her, found himself standing one step behind. Several, many and finally most of the audience got to their feet to call their bravos!, and as Elizabeth smiled her sweetest smile, many of the men unplucked their buttonholed flowers and threw them on-stage. Elizabeth smiled again and bent to pick up one of the many red roses. As she did so, she caught the eyes of Pippa who was seated in the middle of the front row, and just for a moment the smile became fixed, and her green eyes glinted like uncut emeralds.

  Then she stood, and tossing her dark hair back, held the red rose against her pale white face and blew the audience a kiss they could all share, as the final curtain fell.

  ‘What happened to you, darling?’ Elizabeth said immediately to Jerome, barely before he had drawn breath. ‘Where were you?’

  She had him by the hand and was drawing him aside from the rest of the cast, who were trying not to be caught watching, but were nonetheless all watching.

  ‘Where was I!’ Jerome hissed in amazement. ‘Where were you in the first blasted act!’

  ‘I was waiting for you, my darling,’ Elizabeth whispered as she led him off-stage. ‘You seemed so oddly distracted tonight. As if your mind was elsewhere.’

  Jerome stopped and stared at her, as if she were mad.

  ‘I have never played the first act better,’ he said, breathing in deeply and fixing her eyes with his. ‘You were the one who seemed – distracted. As if your mind – was elsewhere.’

  Elizabeth smiled, kissed him on the cheek, brushed his cheek with the back of one slender hand, and then squeezed one of Jerome’s hands.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, my darling,’ she said, turning him towards the stairs. ‘We all have the odd off night.’

  By now, as they started to climb the stone stairs, they were surrounded back and front by other members of the cast, seemingly chatting, but more obviously keeping one ear cocked on the conversation of the stars. Aware of this Jerome politely but firmly removed his hand from Elizabeth’s and suggested that they should have a talk.

  Elizabeth had an even better idea.

  ‘I think we should have dinner,’ she said.

  By the time Pippa had fought her way backstage through the crowd and up to Jerome’s dressing room, Jerome was stripped to the waist and washing himself briskly in the small sink in the corner. He paid no attention at all to his state of undress, but grabbed Pippa by both hands as soon as she appeared at the door, closing it behind her.

  ‘You saw what happened,’ he said, letting go of her hands to finish towelling himself dry. ‘You did see what happened?’

  ‘I saw what was going on,’ Pippa said, ‘but I couldn’t say what was happening.’

  ‘Trouble,’ Jerome said grimly, taking a clean shirt from his dresser, a short, sharp-faced man in a sandy wig. ‘She must have done it deliberately.’

  ‘That’s us girls for you, Mr Didier,’ his dresser sighed. ‘We’re much more deadly than you boys.’

  Unsure of what to do while Jerome finished dressing, and unsure of what they were going to do when he had, Pippa turned her back on him and was staring once again up at the play poster on the wall when a voice behind her asked when her last train was. Just in time, she stopped herself from asking why, and instead looked carefully at her watch.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ she told him. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Sandy will get you a taxi,’ Jerome said, knotting his tie quickly and efficiently. ‘You’ll do it with time to spare – if Sandy gets a move on.’

  ‘Goin’, massah,’ Sandy replied, pouting his lips and shuffling to the door. ‘I’s a goin’ now, boss.’

  Jerome brushed his hair, and then ran his fingers through it, checking how he looked in the mirror once more.

  ‘Look,’ he said, loosening the knot on his tie just a fraction, ‘I’m dreadfully sorry about dinner—’

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Pippa interrupted. ‘It’s much better this way.’

  ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

  He straightened up from looking at himself in the mirror and now looked at her.

  ‘We do have rather a crisis.’

  ‘Of course,’ Pippa replied. ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow afternoon,’ Jerome told her, opening the door. ‘And I’ll make it up to you when we get to London. I really am most dreadfully sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Pippa said, allowing him to kiss her but only on the cheek. ‘It’s much better this way.’

  She was gone before Jerome could ask her why that was so, why and how possibly it could be better that they didn’t dine together, that they didn’t spend the rest of the evening together, and perhaps even the night, gone with her heels clattering down the stone steps, gone past Sandy in the alleyway as he returned from reserving her a cab in the rank, gone to the main line station and the last train back to London.

  He was about to go straight into Elizabeth’s dressing room, and then thinking better of it, shut his door and poured himself a stiff Scotch from the bottle Sandy had told him to keep for important visitors. Then he sat down once again in front of his mirror to stare at his image, rubbing o
ne index finger along the line of his lips while he did so, while he thought about the best way of discovering what precisely Miss Elizabeth Laurence was playing at, and what Pippa Nicholls had meant precisely by what she said.

  Finally, deciding it was time, he went to collect Elizabeth to take her on to the dinner he should have been having with Pippa, but which he knew he would have to side-step halfway through Act Two when his world seemed to be collapsing around him.

  Muzz answered his knock, and when he went into the Number One dressing room there was no-one else there besides her.

  ‘Where’s Miss Laurence, Muzz?’ he asked, thinking perhaps she might still be changing behind her ornamental screen.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s gone home, Mr Didier,’ Muzz replied, carefully folding up some of her charge’s handmade lingerie. ‘She went back to the hotel without even removing her make-up.’

  ‘Back to the hotel for dinner, you mean?’ Jerome asked. ‘I take it you mean she’s gone on ahead of me?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Didier,’ the dresser replied, ‘I think she went straight back to bed. She’s rather indisposed, I’m afraid, poor girl.’

  All the way back to London, Oscar Greene tried not to keep staring at one of the most beguiling faces he had ever seen. But it was such a nice face, so unspoilt, so fresh, and so innocent that his eyes kept being drawn back to it, over the top of the manuscript he was trying to correct, to steal another secret look at the girl with the light grey eyes and the tousled brown hair, and all those tiny freckles.

  Oscar loved freckles. Back home in Connecticut, one of his very first serious girlfriends had a face like this girl, different eyes, admittedly, Joni’s eyes had been blue, but Joni’d had a face with more than a dusting of freckles, tiny tawn specks that ran in a ribbon across her snub nose, and on to her bright cheeks, just like this grey-eyed girl’s did. Except this girl’s nose wasn’t snub. This brown-haired, sweet-faced girl’s nose was totally perfect, small and only slightly tip-tilted, with the sort of perfect and pretty little nostrils Oscar imagined you would find on a fledgling angel.