Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  Later, fully three months later, when she knew, when she was certain, in the middle of that terrible, terrible time, once Pippa knew and worked it all out, she realized that was the night that she had conceived.

  13

  Sebastian arrived back from abroad the day before Elizabeth left on the tour of Tatty Gray, and said (not complained) that he never saw her. Elizabeth was heartbroken with regret, and to compensate spent as much of that Sunday afternoon as she could afford in bed with her husband. It wasn’t a very successful sexual encounter, as the travel weary Sebastian had drunk too much wine at the lunch they had attended and Elizabeth’s mind was quite elsewhere. It was the last time they were to make love as a couple.

  After their second attempt at making love, and while Sebastian lay curled up in a deep sleep back in his own bed, Elizabeth lay wide awake thinking how well everything had gone to this point. The Bumpkin had cracked so readily it was almost too good to be true. Of course, the choice of the neurologist that Elizabeth attended herself in Harley Street had been a good stroke. All apparently mild nervous disorders were awarded the blanket diagnosis of a nervous breakdown by Mr Sessions who had long ago come to realize all that most of the highly strung, spoilt and neurotic women who attended his clinic required was a compulsory break from the absurd life they were leading. Bed-rest was a wonderful panacea, and an excellent way of notching up unlimited house calls.

  Even so, Elizabeth had anticipated a far greater resistance from her rival, which was why she had given such long and such very hard thought to her plan. First and foremost it had been vital to gain the Bumpkin’s confidence, but once again – thanks to Jerome’s indulgence, that had been handed to her on a plate the day the Bumpkin had been given the key to her studio. After that, it had more or less been a cakewalk. The Bumpkin had trusted her so readily and opened up so easily that Elizabeth very soon had the material necessary to make both the anonymous telephone calls and letters positively reek (as she liked to think of it) with authenticity. God Has Not Forgiven Mother. She was especially pleased with that one, not so much for its content, but for the fact that she had persuaded the Bumpkin not to tell J about her call on the family’s perfectly dreadful sounding sanctimonious doctor, which must surely have gone a long way to convincing the Bumpkin that her persecutor was someone if not within her family’s immediate circle, then at least it had to be someone in the village.

  She was rather pleased with her voice, too, the caller’s voice, the anonymity of it, the blankness, the impersonality.

  You don’t know me. You don’t need to neither. But I knows you. And I knows who killed mother.

  The accent of course had presented no problems. Elizabeth was a born mimic, as indeed was J, with whom she would often and quite deliberately verbally fool around in rustic accents. A hankie placed carefully over the telephone receiver had done the rest.

  I knows who killed mother.

  Elizabeth whispered it to herself now as she lay in the bath while Sebastian slept on, she whispered it over and over again until she had frightened herself so much her pale white skin goose-fleshed, and then she smiled with deep pleasure as she slid slowly lower into the hot soapy water until the oval of her beautiful face was all that was left above water, framed by the floating strands of her dark wet hair.

  ‘Sweets to the sweet,’ she smiled to herself. ‘Farewell! Bumpkin.’

  The flower-strewn body of Pippa was floating down the stream already, beyond J’s reach, beyond the reach of anyone. Elizabeth sighed happily as she sat before the fire, brushing out her drying hair until it gleamed once more like a raven’s coat. She had got J to do the play, and how she had done that was her pièce de résistance. She had gone for his weakness, one he shared with every actor, she had played on his superstition. Don’t wish actors good luck. Don’t come round before a performance. Don’t whistle in the dressing rooms. Don’t call the Scottish play anything but the Scottish play, never by its true title, never ever Macbeth. See a butterfly on-stage and you see the spirit of a dead actor. Find the answers not in your selves, but in your stars. Follow the yellow brick road.

  He had. She had helped, of course. The letter from Sybil Dodona (Sybil Dodona!) had been masterful, although sadly not original. The letter had been composed from speeches gleaned from a perfectly dreadful film Elizabeth had been offered and rejected, in which the young frightened heroine was nearly but not quite lured to her fate by a phoney astrologer. Elizabeth had embellished the letter, of course, with little touches of her own (unlike those millions of others, I do know you and I know you very well . . . a fame greater than any English actor before you . . . etc.), but the body of the work had been created by another. Even so, Elizabeth thought, it was her idea to use it, to turn the speeches into a letter of prophesy, and once delivered into J’s hands, there was only ever going to be one outcome, because as Elizabeth knew, J would never risk letting his chance of singularity be damaged by his determination to plough a single furrow at any cost.

  It was all such nonsense, Elizabeth laughed, such a tomfoolery. But J had fallen for it, hook, line and loaded sinker. And bang-bang, she thought, bang-bang Bumpkin, you are dead.

  She sat back from the fire now her dark hair was dry, and lit another cigarette to take the edge of her increasing appetite. Above her she heard Sebastian moving around the bedroom as he got dressed, and for a moment she felt sorry for him, sorry for what she was about to do to him, sorry that she hadn’t been a better wife. He was a nice man, she remembered as she drew deeply on her Sobranie, sitting now in her armchair, Sebastian’s silver-framed photograph in her hand. He was nice, honest, decent and certainly more than good enough to be seen with. But frankly he bored her. He always had, because he was a civilian, and she was not. In fact now she came to think of it, she never had been. She had always belonged to the land of the red and the gold, always, a land which alas had no room for civilians, none whatsoever. Never mind, she thought, all feelings of pity gone as she replaced his photograph on the table, with looks like his, and with his money, never mind, Bethy darling – he’ll soon find someone else.

  She tapped some non-existent cigarette ash into the fire and stared at the flames. Why was she so confident? How did she know she was going to succeed? What a silly question, she said out aloud, as she stood and smiled, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Good heavens, as far as J was concerned, right from the word go it had only been a question of time. A time that was now coming right, a time that was about to come round at long, long last.

  Because Jerome was doing the play and darling Oscar was directing it.

  That alone called for a drink, just a small quick gin before Sebastian came down, looking for something to eat. She poured an inch of gin in a tumbler and drank it straight down, before sucking hard on a slice of lemon to remove any trace of alcohol. Then she lit another cigarette, all thoughts of food now firmly banished from her own mind. Instead, while Sebastian ferreted around in the larder, she would concentrate on remembering every small detail of her triumph, right up to the moment she had so regretfully had to veto poor Booble’s costume designs for Tatty.

  ‘No, darling,’ she’d sighed, one pale and slender arm linked lightly through the designer’s horrid pink and fleshy one. ‘They are beautiful, but too beautiful. Like everything you do. Tatty is a sprite, you see, someone who only exists in this man’s mind. We think.’ She smiled here, and squeezed Booble’s arm, a moment of mischievous conspiracy which meant nothing whatsoever. ‘So I don’t think she should wear normal clothes, that is to say beautiful clothes like yours which would have needed to be designed for her. She’s a little wild thing, a phantom. And remember, when she sings, she doesn’t sing like a human – she sings like a bird. So I think it’s that sort of Peter Pan look we want, except updated. I think Tatty Gray is the sort of girl who would wear an old tennis shirt, a pair of boy’s shorts, and any old thing on her feet. Like I don’t know’ – which she did – ‘let’s say no socks and a pair of plimsol
ls.’

  Oscar had been so delighted when he heard she had rejected Booble’s spangly designs that he had clapped, and then hugged his star so hard he had broken the spectacles which he’d just stuck in the top pocket of his jacket.

  When Sebastian finally appeared, looking like something out of a Hollywood picture in a white shirt, paisley cravat and dark slacks worn under a handmade silk dressing gown, Elizabeth hardly noticed because she was still laughing so much at the memory of it.

  The play was very difficult, much more so than had been imagined. It had been agreed that because of the subject matter Tatty Gray represented a new direction for Oscar, but difficult plays are often very much easier to read than to perform (the same goes for the reverse), and initially no-one foresaw any difficulties. As a piece, Tatty Gray read seamlessly and enchantingly, and as a play was practically impossible to rehearse.

  ‘It’s coming over as whimsy,’ a doomy Oscar noted at the end of the second week of rehearsals, ‘and whimsy is the very last thing we want. I’d rather it came over as a satire.’

  None of the cast laughed at Oscar’s literary joke, not so much because they failed to understand it, which they had, but because they didn’t really feel like laughing. Jerome felt positively suicidal. He missed Pippa, he couldn’t get to grips at all with the part of the diffident and introverted painter, Sam, and because he couldn’t he missed Pippa all the more. He needed Pippa badly, not because she offered active criticism and advice, which she didn’t, but because her calm and matter-of-fact approach stopped Jerome from going over the edge, which was where at this moment he was most definitely headed.

  For as always, when Jerome was uncertain of what he was doing, he was overdoing it, going over the top, relying on a display of vocal and physical pyrotechnics rather than finding the truth from within, with the result that he was fast turning the gentle, ironic, self-teasing Sam into an aggressive, sarcastic and tormented monster. Fortunately for his sanity, Oscar, who after much politicking had been allowed to direct his own work, knew exactly what sound it was he wanted to hear, and so he kept the lid on it all and didn’t let it boil over. Most other directors, particularly those whose idea of directing comedy was simply to have everyone play everything faster, louder, bigger and brighter come what may, would have already hit the panic button and the delicate play would have been doomed to an instant failure. But Oscar knew the touch it required, and knew that he must wait until his actors found it, he knew that he mustn’t press. One push too hard and too soon and the play would be gone beyond the point of recovery.

  Elizabeth too seemed uncertain of where exactly (in Oscar’s terms) to pitch it. In the morning she would try one approach and in the afternoon another, gamin before lunch, unbridled mischief after it. Then the next day, having settled for one of the two possibles, she would start to build a performance, and the moment that she did the play started to live, and Jerome began to descend from the heights of unreality to the plain of naturalism. And Oscar would sit at his table as a hush came over the rehearsal room and hold his breath, an unlit Lucky in one hand, a pencil stub (for once not taking copious notes) in the other, while magically time was suspended and the world outside the doors of the buildings was put on hold, only for the spell to be shattered by Elizabeth suddenly breaking off, throwing her script down, or picking it up, going to sit in a corner and begging to be left alone, or coming over to hug Oscar and hang her head in silence on his shoulder in contrition.

  ‘It’s wrong,’ she might whisper. ‘It’s nearly right. So nearly. But I can’t go on any further.’ Or she would simply apologize to a silent Oscar, over and over again, and Oscar, who by now knew better than to question her repentance since it always led to tears, would call a break instead, gathering the cast of five around for coffee or tea and talk, and let them talk about everything but the play, while all of them, Oscar included, they all delayed the resumption of rehearsals in case inspiration was still lacking and they would once again find themselves stumbling up yet another blind alley.

  Privately Elizabeth was enjoying it all enormously. She knew exactly how Tatty should be played. She should do, because she had her role model, a characterization she had perfected in camera long before the cast had assembled for the very first rehearsal. But she knew better than to show her hand yet, for if she did and Jerome found the way to play Sam, which Elizabeth knew full well he would – he simply had to the moment she revealed who her Tatty Gray was – then she would have no cards left to play, or rather more importantly, she would not be able to produce her trump card, her ace in the hole.

  So she waited. She didn’t mind waiting. She had waited this long, so what was a few more weeks? Besides, she loved playing games, she was addicted to her tomfoolery, and this was the very best of games, with the very best of rewards. So while she waited she kept herself amused by pretending she was lost, and unable to find the key for Tatty, while every now and then, for Oscar’s peace of mind as well as for her, allowing a sudden flash of the brilliance that was to come, before once more play-acting within the play-acting, and pretending it had vanished, gone as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had arrived.

  It infuriated Jerome, as Elizabeth was hoping that it would. He was floundering hopelessly, nowhere near an even halfway acceptable interpretation of a man bent on self-destruction rather than find the courage to face up to the genius he knew lay inside him. He would walk back with her to their hotel, artsick, heartsick and homesick.

  ‘Whose preposterous idea was this to rehearse away from home anyway?’ he would moan. ‘It’s unheard of. Absolutely unknown.’

  ‘It was Oscar’s,’ Elizabeth would remind him, perfectly truthfully, while hiding the rest of the truth which was that it was she who had sowed the seeds of the idea in Oscar’s head by wondering whether a play which would require the actors to strip themselves metaphorically and spiritually bare would not benefit by being assembled well away from the loving security of their homes. This appealed to the amateur psychologist in Oscar just as Elizabeth thought that it would, with the result that the cast, the stage management and their director were despatched to York, three weeks in advance of the play opening there.

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ Jerome had complained early on. ‘This tour. York, Nottingham, Manchester, Leicester, Cambridge – Christ knows where.’

  ‘That’s all,’ Elizabeth would laugh, as if the whole thing could only be what things should always be – fun.

  ‘Who planned it? Who? This play is a south of England play if ever there was one! We’re going far, far too North to survive!’

  ‘I understand the idea is – was? Anyway, the whole idea, J, is to give the play on tour the worst possible chance.’

  ‘Meaning if we can survive Nottingham and Manchester with this sort of play, we really have a play?’

  ‘I think that’s the general idea, J. And I suppose it has a certain novelty value.’

  She had taken to calling Jerome by just his initial the day they remet after he had agreed to do the play. It helped her to reduce him just to his initial, it depersonalized him just enough in her mind for Elizabeth to be able to carry out her plan. Jerome belonged to the Bumpkin, but J was going to be hers. She also, much to her delight, found knowing him just as J oddly exciting.

  ‘Bethy,’ he said this particular evening as they walked through a light drizzle of rain back to their hotel. In response to the intimacy of her nickname, she slipped an arm lightly through his and smiled. ‘Bethy darling—’ the darling being a groan, rather than an endearment. ‘What, my sweet, if you’ll excuse the vernacular, [here Jerome inserted a swear word so normal to theatrical ears that it might well have been a nursery word] are we going to do?’

  Not yet, Elizabeth thought to herself, however tempting the feed, not yet, just contain yourself and wait. She laughed instead, in no way outraged by the blasphemy. On the contrary she was encouraged by it, because actors swearing to each other was all part of their code of behaviour. It bond
ed them, like soldiers in a war.

  ‘I asked you a question, Bethy,’ Jerome reminded her. ‘It is us, you know, not the play. The play is wonderful, and we aren’t. Not very. Not even ever so.’ Ever-so was done in his stage cockney, a dreadful whinge, with an elongated o that made Elizabeth laugh (this time) quite genuinely.

  ‘You shouldn’t laugh, Bethy!’ Jerome chided. ‘I’m only fooling around because it’s so deadly bloody serious! You’re just about keeping afloat, darling, you’ll probably make the lifeboat, but not me. The water is already – in my lungs.’

  They walked on in silence, the rain heavier now, Elizabeth pulling the collar of her coat up one-handed but not stopping, liking the drama of the rain, thinking how well it fitted the mood of the scene. Their feet started to splash through the quickly forming puddles on the pavement, and Elizabeth could just see the tracking shot of both their legs, hers beautiful, contained in skins of nylon, with the swill of her camel wool skirt swinging below her knees, his feet brogue-shod and his long legs trousered in tapering twill, then the camera travelling up to their faces, to find them as they were, stopped by the kerb, all at once looking at each other.

  ‘I need your help, Bethy,’ Jerome said after a moment. ‘I’m holding you back, I can see that because you keep showing signs that you’re getting there. But I’m not. I’m nowhere near it. And I need your help.’

  The italics were hers. Elizabeth put them there, she put them there in her head, because these were the words she wanted to hear, the words she’d been waiting for, the words she knew sooner or later he had to utter.

  I need your help.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded, swinging her round by her arm, almost roughly, and she could hear his breath, shorter, and shorter, as if they were already making love. ‘Bethy – I am serious. I will not get there otherwise!’