Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  The damage wasn’t as bad as he had anticipated, and as they rode up on the Downs, Jerome told Pippa that, not with relief but with a feeling of aggravation, to which Pippa replied that not everything was always either black or white, but that there were in fact many shades of grey.

  ‘I don’t like grey,’ he told her. ‘Not at all. I only like things which are positive. Such as the fact that I love you, and you love me.’

  ‘I don’t remember saying I loved you,’ she said, shortening the rein on her horse.

  ‘I don’t remember being born!’ he exclaimed. ‘But look at me – here I am!’

  She laughed, and squeezed her horse into a trot. He followed suit and rode up alongside her.

  ‘You’re such an actor!’ she called.

  ‘And you’re beautiful! Race you to the top of the hill!’

  Pippa won easily, pulling up a good ten lengths ahead of Jerome.

  ‘My God—’ he panted as he reined his horse to a halt. ‘Is there any sport at which you don’t excel?’

  ‘I know, it’s awful, isn’t it?’ she agreed, tossing back her mane of hair. ‘I suppose really I should have been born a boy.’

  ‘I don’t agree at all,’ Jerome replied over-seriously. ‘I think that is one of the very worst ideas I’ve ever heard.’

  He leaned across and tried to kiss her, but both their horses fidgeted suddenly, and moved apart. Pippa laughed in delight.

  ‘Well done, Drummer!’ she said, leaning forward to pull one of the horse’s ears. ‘You really know how to look after me.’

  Jerome ignored the tease, and swung his horse back round alongside Pippa’s, so that they could stand together and overlook the wonderful sweep of the sunlit Downland all around them.

  ‘Tell me about your mother’s accident again,’ he said, after a long silence. ‘She fell over in the kitchen.’

  ‘She fell over in the kitchen,’ Pippa repeated, twisting some of the horse’s mane around her fingers.

  ‘About an hour before you were about to leave for London.’

  ‘You know. I told you. We’ve been through all this.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is the fact that Mrs Whats hername?’

  ‘Mrs Huxley.’

  ‘Your neighbour, Mrs Huxley, was there, and was going to stay with her, and that once the doctor had been—’

  ‘Jerome.’

  Pippa looked round at him, and for the first time Jerome saw a warning light in her eyes.

  ‘Sorree,’ he said, putting on a rustic voice. ‘I were only arskin’.’

  ‘It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen your play, Jerome,’ Pippa continued. ‘It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen it in Oxford.’

  ‘Oxford’s Oxford, Pippa Nicholls!’ Jerome cried. ‘This was the West End! A West End first night! My first night! My first West End first night! And I wanted you there! And because you weren’t there—’

  ‘Oh fiddle!’ Pippa interrupted. ‘That’s got absolutely nothing to do with it! My being there, or not being there!’

  ‘It has everything to do with it, Pippa Nicholls!’

  ‘No it doesn’t, Jerome, and you know it! You’re just making it the reason!’

  ‘Making it the reason? What reason? Making what the reason, Pippa Nicholls?’

  ‘You know perfectly well, Jerome Didier. This is getting boring, so I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go and jump some logs.’

  She cantered off along the ridge to a small copse a hundred or so yards distant. Jerome’s horse wanted to follow, but Jerome didn’t, so he reined him back and turned him round in order to settle him, and then once he was settled, Jerome relaxed his hold and sat back to think.

  He knew what Pippa meant, and he was afraid she was right, which only made him love her the more. Of course, he had been heartbroken that she hadn’t been able to make it, and for all that week he had convinced himself that was the reason why Elizabeth had walked off with the play, and why he had failed to fulfil his promise. But all the time, growing at the back of his mind, was a doubt, a doubt which grew larger and larger every time he stepped on-stage to perform Oscar Greene’s hit play, a doubt which became certain knowledge by the time he was driving down to Sussex to see Pippa the following Sunday morning. When it came to the crunch, Elizabeth Laurence had triumphed not by default, but because Elizabeth Laurence was even more brilliant than he was.

  At least in this play she was.

  Which, Jerome reasoned as he had driven down from London, was not altogether surprising, because after all the play had been handwritten for her talent, not for his. The day would come perhaps, and perhaps soon, when someone would write a vehicle for him, and then he would triumph in his own right, but until then he would only be able to come to terms with himself by telling himself the truth. In this particular play, Miss Elizabeth Laurence was knocking Mr Jerome Didier into a cocked hat.

  At first with Pippa he had gone back to his old ways, and tried to play it for her sympathy, trying to make her believe that it was her enforced absence which had so disconcerted him. But he saw from the outset she didn’t believe him, and once he realized she didn’t believe him, he himself could no longer believe in the pretence well enough to go on pretending. So now as she rode off with a final reminder for him to face the truth, Jerome left the disappointment of the play behind and turned to an even more pressing matter, namely how to marry Pippa. Because marry her was what he undoubtedly intended to do, despite the objections of her mother. In fact, he thought as he kicked his horse on to a canter, he would marry Pippa because of her mother’s objections, and by doing so, he would show her and the world on what uncertain ground such ridiculous prejudices were based.

  As he cantered faster and faster along the ridge to find Pippa, he laughed out loud, as he saw himself, lance in hand on a strong white charger, off to do battle, to joust for his lady’s hand.

  ‘Cry God for Harry!’ he suddenly shouted, ‘England! And Saint George!’

  He found himself alone with her finally after tea, when Pippa had disappeared to wash up, alone but not quite face to face, because Mrs Nicholls continued to read, head bent over her book, as if Jerome wasn’t there. Even when he spoke, she didn’t look up.

  ‘Mrs Nicholls,’ he began. ‘I want to talk to you about Pippa and I.’

  ‘Very well,’ Mrs Nicholls replied, turning a page slowly.

  ‘I think you know what I’m going to say,’ Jerome said, and gave a smile, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea at all what you’re going to say, young man,’ she corrected him, at last looking up and staring at him lengthily over her half moon spectacles. ‘Why on earth should I?’

  Jerome drew two deep and well concealed breaths, in and out through his nose, barely moving his diaphragm, just as he had been taught, and then put one hand into a trouser pocket and rested the other on the back of a small buttoned armchair.

  ‘Mrs Nicholls,’ he said, evenly and calmly, his nerves well in check thanks to his deep breathing. ‘Mrs Nicholls, I would like to marry your daughter.’

  There was a long silence, during which his adversary tilted her head even lower, the better to stare at him over her spectacles. Finally she raised her eyebrows briefly, sighed and returned to her reading.

  ‘Mrs Nicholls—’ Jerome began again.

  ‘I heard what you said, young man,’ Mrs Nicholls replied. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Have you nothing to say on the matter?’

  ‘If you must know, I have plenty to say on the matter.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Very well.’

  Pippa’s mother closed her book and placed it carefully on the table beside her, next to the photograph of Pippa’s brother, the position of which she adjusted fractionally before returning her gaze to Jerome.

  ‘You say you would like to marry my daughter,’ she reminded herself.

  ‘Yes,’ Jerome replied. ‘That is exactly so.’

  ‘Then what I would like to
know, young man,’ Mrs Nicholls asked, ‘is why?’

  ‘Why?’ Jerome frowned deeply, and then leaned forward slightly, placing both of his hands now on the back of the chair. ‘Why – for the very reasons most people wish to get married, Mrs Nicholls! Because I love her! Because I wish to spend the rest of my life with her! Because I want to have children with her!’

  Mrs Nicholls shook her head.

  ‘No, please,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to shout. You’re not on-stage now.’

  As if in recognition of the reprimand but in fact to hide his look of fury, Jerome bowed his head for a moment, still holding the back of the chair, before straightening up once more and putting both his hands behind his back.

  ‘Mrs Nicholls,’ he said. ‘I want to marry Pippa – because I love her.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ Mrs Nicholls replied, but now with a smile, which made Jerome feel he had said something odd or foolish, which was precisely her intention. ‘But you see, people like you,’ she continued, ‘you shouldn’t get married. People like you, actors, you’re always away, or on tour, you’re not really what I would call homebirds. You shouldn’t really marry and have children. It really isn’t fair. At least it isn’t fair if you don’t marry into your own world. People outside your world, they don’t really understand. They know nothing of how people like you live, what you want, and why you want it. It really is much more sensible for people like you to stick to your own sort.’

  ‘Like tinkers, you mean?’ Jerome asked, over-lightly. ‘Like the people of the road.’

  ‘Young man,’ Mrs Nicholls said, the smile gone from her face and a quite different look came into her eyes. ‘There are hundreds of pretty girls in your profession. Beautiful girls, actresses, dancers, singers, what have you, girls who have the same kind of life as you, who understand the same things. Girls who would give their eye teeth to be married to a handsome young man like you. Girls who would be much more suitable. It really wouldn’t work out with Pippa. She’s very different to you. She was brought up in an entirely different manner. And I’m very much afraid that if you married Pippa, she would only end up being very unhappy.’

  ‘I see,’ Jerome said, floundering momentarily, bouleversed by the display of Mrs Nicholls’s will and of her resolve. ‘And is that all?’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Nicholls replied. ‘Not quite. There is one other thing, something which I simply don’t understand. And that is what a young man like you, surrounded as you are by beautiful girls, such as, I believe, this girl you’re acting with at the moment, I just don’t understand – I mean . . . why Pippa?’

  Jerome saw his exit, and was not going to forgo the opportunity.

  ‘My dear Mrs Nicholls,’ he said, turning a photograph of his beloved Pippa to face him, ‘if you have to ask that, then you do not deserve to have such a daughter.’

  Then with a final look at Pippa’s image, he replaced the photograph and went out into the garden.

  Pippa found him right down at the end of their gardens, sitting on an old swing which hung from a branch of a vast oak.

  ‘I gather you two had words,’ she said.

  Jerome was pushing himself slowly backwards and forwards on the swing, staring all the time at the ground.

  ‘All I told her,’ he said, ‘was that I wanted to marry you.’

  ‘Move up,’ Pippa ordered him, and then squeezed herself in beside him on the broad seat of the swing.

  ‘Oh Pippa!’ Jerome suddenly exclaimed, looking upwards into the bright blue sky. ‘Why is love so blasted difficult?’

  ‘If it wasn’t,’ Pippa replied, beginning to push with her feet, ‘it would simply be just another form of friendship.’

  She pushed against the ground harder, and the swing began to rise higher. Jerome joined in, pushing his feet against the ground in unison with hers. They crossed their hands and arms, each holding on to the chains either side, and as they did, Jerome looked at Pippa, and leaning towards her, buried his face in her hair.

  ‘Do you know love?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a deceiver, isn’t it?’ she wondered.

  ‘It?’ Jerome pushed even harder against the ground. ‘Love’s a he or a she, surely? Not an “it”. He’s Eros, or she’s Aphrodite, Cupid or the Sovereign Queen of Secrets. She who can induce stale gravity to daunce.’

  ‘Push harder,’ Pippa urged. ‘I want to see if we can get as high as my brother and I used to get.’

  ‘And how high was that, Pippa Nicholls?’

  ‘So high that the chains used to buckle!’

  Jerome and she pushed the ground some more.

  ‘You want to be careful of swings!’ Jerome laughed. ‘They can induce some quite unexpected effects!’

  Pippa turned and frowned at him as they flew ever higher.

  ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Come on – you’re not pushing!’

  They now swung in silence, until they were swinging so high and so fast they could barely get any more impulsion. So together they used their weight, shifting it at the prime moment, urging the swing even higher, until at the height of their arc they were all but parallel to the ground.

  ‘Enough!’ Jerome cried. ‘I concede!’

  ‘Don’t be wet!’ Pippa retorted. ‘The chains are still straight!’

  So on they flew, flying through the air face down and up again backwards until for one heartstopping moment the chains lost their tension and it seemed to Jerome there was nothing left holding them up.

  Pippa gave a great cry of joy.

  ‘Yes!’ she shouted. ‘We’re there! We’ve done it!’

  Slowly then they came back to earth, the momentum gone, the pendulum swinging easier and easier, silent again with nothing but the sound of the wind in their ears. Neither of them put a foot to the ground to break their progress. They just sat quite still, one arm around the other’s waist, until at last the swing came to a rest, turning slowly left and right on its creaking chains before finally settling.

  Jerome exhaled quietly, and pushed his hair back out of his eyes, while Pippa laughed and untucked her skirt from between her knees.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Jerome concluded. ‘Remind me to do that when we’re married.’

  Pippa looked at him, very seriously, and then kissed him gently on the lips.

  ‘I can’t marry you, Jerome,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘When?’ he asked impatiently, tightening his arm around her waist. ‘I don’t think I can wait until you’re twenty-one.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Pippa said, looking suddenly puzzled. ‘Please, Jerome.’

  But it was too late, far too late, for by now Jerome was kissing her, while lifting her with the arm which was around her waist off the swing so they were standing and kissing, with their bodies pressed against each other.

  ‘No,’ she kept saying between his kisses, as he ran his hands first through her hair, and then along and around the shape of her body. ‘No, Jerome, no please.’

  ‘What do you mean by no?’ he whispered. ‘Do you mean no you want me to stop?’

  ‘No,’ Pippa whispered back. ‘I just mean no I don’t want you to go on.’

  ‘Any further, you mean.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  By now Jerome had undone the buttons down the front of Pippa’s red and white cotton dress, carefully and slowly lest he frighten her, and then carefully and slowly he put one hand inside her dress and on to the soft, smooth, firm skin of her young body, surprised as always at exactly how exciting he found such a simple act. He caught his breath as his hand slipped around Pippa’s waist and he felt her catch her breath, too. He moved his hand round further, drawing her to him, and she leaned back her head, letting her waves of dark hair hang straight down in a tousled cascade, while she slowly closed her grey-green eyes, but only half closed her pretty pink mouth.

  ‘Yes?’ Jerome whispered, as he moved his hand down her back again, easing his little finger inside a line of softly covered elastic, feeling with the tip of hi
s finger the top of a curve of warm, firm flesh.

  ‘Yes what?’ she sighed, letting her head now fall on to his shoulder as the top of one of his fingers became the whole of his hand, which he then moved slowly down to caress the whole of that warm curve of flesh.

  ‘Yes will you marry me, Pippa Nicholls?’ he murmured, letting his hand drop to the top of a thigh which he then drew slowly towards him. His other hand was on her shoulder, outside her dress, and with it he tilted her chin up so that her eyes met his. ‘Yes will you marry me? I asked,’ he said.

  ‘Why do we have to get married, Jerome?’ Pippa sighed. But that was all she was allowed to ask at that moment, since Jerome silenced her with another kiss, a long, lingering kiss which explored the dark red warmth of her mouth. ‘We don’t have to get married, Jerome,’ she finally gasped as he finally stopped kissing her. ‘We really don’t.’

  ‘Yes, we do have to get married, Pippa Nicholls,’ Jerome countered. ‘We have to get married because I love you, because I love you more than I thought it was possible to love anybody, because you love me, because you love me more than you thought it was possible to love anybody, and we have to get married so that I may take all your clothes off, and take you to bed, and get at this delicious, this wonderful body of yours, and make love to you endlessly, make love to you continually, infinitely, perpetually and eternally. That is why we must – get married.’

  He kissed her again, now drawing his hand up and along her warm body, up round the front of her waist, up higher, up to the satin which cupped her warm breast, his thumb on the edge of another curve of her flesh, a softer curve, which moved with his touch.

  ‘We don’t have to get married, Jerome,’ she breathed, putting her hand to his face, then round to the back of his neck. ‘We could be lovers instead. I could come to London and see you. Visit you in your flat. We could have an affair. I don’t mind, do you see? Because I want you, Jerome, as much as – as much as you want me. I want you to make love to me. Because I love you, Jerome, and I want you so very much. So you see you don’t have to marry me. We don’t have to get married just to make love.’