Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I think we should talk,’ he said in the car as Dingo drove them to the theatre.

  ‘Not now,’ she replied, a pair of large dark glasses and a hastily applied make-up as always covering the damage done by her tears. ‘We have a performance to do.’

  ‘When then?’

  ‘What is there to talk about?’

  ‘What is there to talk about, Bethy?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop being so bloody theatrical, J. What is there to talk about? I’m just a bit over-tired, that’s all. I’ve just got over-tired.’

  She looked out of the car window, her pale face reflected against the dark behind the glass.

  ‘You haven’t been eating, Bethy.’

  ‘It has got nothing to do with my diet.’

  ‘You don’t eat, you take pills, you drink too much champagne—’

  ‘I shall get out of the car.’

  ‘You don’t sleep, you’re up half the night partying, dancing, playing games, playing charades, drinking, exhausting yourself—’

  ‘I mean it, Jerry.’ She only ever called him that when she was serious. ‘If you don’t stop—’

  ‘No. No! No if you don’t stop, Bethy!’ He turned to her, his dark eyes flashing, his voice already taking on the ring he had given it for Hamlet. ‘If you don’t stop you’re going to kill yourself, or something dreadful. You look ghastly.’

  ‘Thank you. How sweet you are.’

  ‘I meant ghastly for you, Bethy. You look drawn, tired—’

  ‘I am tired, Jerry. I find playing both these parts very, very tiring. Playing them both on top of one another. I find it really rather enervating.’

  ‘Then you should take more care of yourself,’ Jerome said, harshly, already sounding as if he were despatching her to the nunnery as he would do later that evening. I am myself indifferent honest, but yet better my mother had not borne me. While she beside him, as she stared out at New York for Elsinore, was preparing herself for her watery grave, larded with sweet flowers, which bewept to the grave with true love showers.

  ‘You really should take more care of yourself, Bethy,’ Jerome said out of the darkness. ‘Some of these things you do to yourself, and to your body.’

  ‘Would you rather I was fat, J? With a greasy skin, and a complexion like Gertrude’s?’

  ‘Poor Adrienne can’t help it,’ Jerome said. ‘The wretched actress can’t help her complexion.’

  ‘Of course she can,’ Elizabeth retorted. ‘She doesn’t take care of herself. She eats and drinks too much, and as a result, lives over a sewer.’

  ‘I hate that expression of yours,’ Jerome sighed, looking out of the car at the crowds gathering outside the theatre which was now in his view.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she said without sounding it. ‘But it happens to be true. But, of course, if you’d rather I looked like Adrienne—’

  Elizabeth checked her looks in her compact, switching the courtesy light on above her. She applied some more powder before pulling the knot of her headscarf up over her chin, to hide as much of her face as possible. Then she too looked out of the window as the gathered fans started to crowd and jostle around the car as it pulled up at the kerb.

  ‘You might,’ Elizabeth said clicking shut her compact.

  ‘I might what?’

  ‘Prefer me to look like poor Adrienne. But I don’t think they would.’

  Elizabeth waved at her adoring fans as she prepared to alight from the car. Dingo was round opening her door, while on the sidewalk the police did their best to control the crowd.

  ‘Oh my!’ someone gasped as Elizabeth got out. ‘But isn’t she just beautiful?’

  Every night after the performance it was the same. On to Sardi’s, and afterwards to a party somewhere. There was always a party somewhere. Sometimes at weekends the party would be out of town, Long Island maybe, or further afield, in New Hampshire or Vermont. Distance was no object. Fleets of limousines would await outside the theatre to transport those in the company lucky enough, and once or twice unlucky enough, to have received invitations to spend what was left of the weekend with the rich or the famous and sometimes both. Jerome tried to sidestep all such occasions, but never once succeeded since Elizabeth was grimly determined to attend whatever was on offer wherever it was. Initially when he had tried to demur, there had been arguments, frightful arguments, screaming matches in their dressing rooms at the theatre, until rather than face a weekend of tearful and hysterical recriminations, Jerome had finally relented and they had taken off for yet another bash in some huge apartment in Manhattan, or some vast estate in New England.

  The parties were always the same, Elizabeth saw to that. Whatever the hosts might have had in mind when they invited the stars and some of their entourage was rarely if ever realized. Everyone danced to Elizabeth’s tune. She was very skilled at getting her own way, never appearing to upset any applecarts as she went about rearranging people’s parties, charming hosts and hostesses everywhere with that irresistible mix of sweetness and mischief, while making sure that nothing was ever done in anyone’s house or apartment which was not initially approved of by her. She was, as said, very good at it. Whatever she suggested, the idea always apparently arrived impulsively, on the spur of an inspired moment, completely impromptu, never, ever premeditated, and inspired everyone to go along with it by its very spontaneity. It might be an idea for a game or a diversion or a type of dance, but whatever the inspiration was it was always prefaced by the same thoughtful little frown, and then that sudden heart-stopping smile as Elizabeth announced with one clap of her hands that she had suddenly realized she knew exactly what they could do. Even if their hosts had hired a band, or a singer, or a singer with a band, the band played what Elizabeth wanted to dance to, and the singer sang what Elizabeth wanted to hear. And the parties would go on all night, if Elizabeth had anything to do with it, which she invariably had, and if it was a Saturday night they would go on into the dawn and sometimes seamlessly and sleeplessly into the next day.

  Jerome, who hated parties that were thrown just for the sake of throwing a party, was invariably bored. He couldn’t care less if the people who met him socially were disappointed in him, as Elizabeth kept endlessly reminding him they would be if he made such little effort, because Jerome was only interested in exciting or amusing people through his work. When gushy socialites rushed up to him at parties and seized him, telling him that oh, he was that truly wonderful Jerome Didier, he would politely shake them off and tell them that no he wasn’t, not that night, before trying to find somewhere he could have a quiet drink and gossip with a member of the company about the evening’s performance, or failing that, a dark corner somewhere where he could simply sleep.

  Elizabeth on the other hand appeared to live for these mostly appalling occasions more and more. She seemed almost to be just getting through her work in order to play, although to give Elizabeth her due, no such thing ever showed in her performances. There was never a hint of disinterest or indifference. Elizabeth was both far too ambitious and far too much the professional ever to disappoint her adoring public. It was only apparent off-stage, and only to Jerome. Once she had finalized her performance to her own satisfaction, and locked it away in her memory bank, she rarely if ever again referred to what she was doing on-stage. If Jerome noted after a performance that he thought Elizabeth had mistimed a line, or lost a nuance (the faults were always minuscule, and the note sessions scathingly referred to as Jerome’s nit-picking), Elizabeth would just shrug and say whatever was lost would soon come back, which at the next performance it invariably did. Other than that, Elizabeth did no further work on her roles, nor did she ever discuss them once she had left the theatre. All she professed herself to be interested in, an interest she loved to profess in the native idiom, was where the action was.

  ‘I know what it is,’ Jerome said mid-sulk one Monday morning, when they were being driven back from a particularly energetic and non-stop party on Long Island. ‘You can�
�t bear being with yourself any more, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Oh Christ, J,’ Elizabeth sighed from behind closed eyes. ‘Christ Almighty.’

  ‘It’s true, Bethy. We don’t have any time together any more, not just you and I. But it’s not because you don’t want to be alone with me—’

  ‘You flatter yourself, sweetie.’ Elizabeth pulled the car rug higher up around her chest and recurled her legs under her. ‘You’re such a bloody old bore when you’re working. You’re not you, you is somewhere else altogether, but don’t ask me where. And in the meanwhile I’m certainly not going to spend what little time I have to have fun sitting around with moody old Hamlet, or dreary little Romeo boring my beautiful tits off.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that, Bethy, and you know it!’ Jerome retorted. ‘I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, you’ve become a completely different person these last months – this last year.’

  Elizabeth opened one eye and stared at him, glintingly.

  ‘Shut up, darling,’ she said. ‘All right?’

  ‘I can’t even remember the last time we made love.’

  ‘Ask Dingo.’ Elizabeth nodded in the direction of their chauffeur. ‘Dingo probably knows.’

  Jerome leaned forward quickly and pushed shut the glass division between the compartments which wasn’t fully closed.

  ‘Well?’ he said, leaning back.

  ‘Well what, darling?’

  ‘Can you remember when we last made love? Darling?’

  ‘J sweetie,’ Elizabeth sighed, taking her dark glasses off to look at him with eyes dark-rimmed with fatigue. ‘This is my last word on the matter, all right? Because I was asleep. And I really couldn’t care less how you answer this, just as long as it stops you banging on. I can either be Elizabeth Laurence, and all that it entails, or I can be little Mrs Didier, the dutiful and loving wife. Now which do you want to be married to, darling? Elizabeth Laurence? Or little Mrs Mouse? Because I cannot be both things at once, do you understand? I cannot possibly play Ophelia, Cordelia, Juliet, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Lavinia, Desdemona and all these other poor tragic, lamentable bitches you want me to play all the time and be your dutiful little wife. Do you understand, sweety-pie?’

  Jerome stared back at her, stroking one side of his unshaven chin with two fingers.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he said after a very long time. ‘You look awful.’

  The trouble with all the women Elizabeth had mentioned was that they all died. They all either died young, were murdered or killed themselves, and she really was finding the whole thing frightfully depressing. Some of the roles she had yet to play, admittedly, but she knew they were all there lying in wait, they were all on the agenda, and frankly, at this particular moment in her life she wasn’t sure she wanted to play them. She wanted something that was a bit more fun, something that was a bit more glamorous, something that was a bit more suited to her mischief, her sense of devilment, something in which she could radiate.

  Some Shaw, perhaps. Pygmalion, perhaps. Perhaps Caesar and Cleopatra. Or even some more Sheridan, The School for Scandal this time, or something American, and sexy, like Tennessee Williams, like Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, something in which she could be sultry and seductive, or just downright provocative. (She made a little moue at herself in her dressing mirror – mmmmm!) Something, anything as long as it wasn’t another of the Bard’s infernal tragedies. She was sick of the Bard. She was sick of weeping and wailing. She was sick of playing mad. She was sick of dying. She was sick to the teeth with it all. It was all of it getting her down.

  And she didn’t look awful. Jerome was talking through his hat. She didn’t look at all awful. She hadn’t even looked awful on her arrival that night, before she’d put on Ophelia’s face, not even a tiny bit awful. Tired perhaps, but then it had been a terrific party, simply terrific. Frank Sinatra in person, among all those other famous faces. But no-one like Frank Sinatra. And he had sung, to her. Sinatra had sung to her. He’d sat by her on the sofa and sung her ‘The Nearness of You’ while holding her hand. Elizabeth sighed and wondered to herself what she would have done if Jerome hadn’t been there.

  But she didn’t look at all awful, then or now. Then, at the party, everyone, everyone had said how beautiful she was looking, how young, how she hadn’t changed at all. They wanted to know how she did it, working as hard as she did, playing as hard as she did, how did she do it? How did she do it? she wondered, looking at her made-up reflection. How did a woman in her thirties (her early thirties) manage to look like this? Like a child of sixteen? It was wonderful. She was wonderful, and it was worth all the unpleasantness, and all the discomfort. Jerome was just being horrid, and she hated him for it. He was jealous of her, that was the trouble, jealous of her seemingly indestructible beauty, and of her ineffable talent. She could fill, and he couldn’t. He could do what he liked, play what he liked, but without her, there were always some empty seats.

  The boy called the five. He knocked on her door and she called back yes, my darling one? And he popped his gorgeous young head round the door and said five minutes please, Miss Laurence, and she smiled at him sweetly in the mirror. Thank you, darling boy, she said, but I’m ready. Then when he was gone she called Muzz over, with a conspiratorial look and a wave of one finger.

  ‘Perhaps really I should feel sorry for him,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘What do you think? Should Elizabeth feel sorry for him?’

  ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, dear,’ Muzz replied, smoothing out the shoulders on Elizabeth’s costume. ‘I never know what you’re talking about half the time nowadays.’

  ‘I’m talking about Jerome, darling. He was beastly to me today, and made me cross. But really I think what I should be doing is I should be feeling sorry for him.’

  ‘He’s doing all right, never you mind. Jerome can look after himself.’

  ‘Oh, I know he can. J can look after himself very well.’ She smiled at herself in the mirror, putting her head a little to one side. ‘But even so, sometimes he’s such a poor old thing. And the last thing Bethy wants is for it all to go wrong, not after all this. Not after all we’ve done. Don’t you agree, Muzz dear?’

  Muzz finished straightening Elizabeth’s costume and then stood back to look at Elizabeth in the mirror.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I really don’t. Sometimes I really wonder where you get it from, you know, Elizabeth. I suppose it must have been from your father. Because it most certainly wasn’t from me.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes glinted back at her in the mirror.

  ‘Be careful, Muzzie darling,’ she said with one of those smiles which never reached her eyes. ‘After all, we don’t want to lose our precious job now, do we?’

  ‘I’m sure I could get another one,’ her mother replied evenly.

  ‘I’m sure you could,’ Elizabeth countered, never taking her eyes off her mother in the mirror. ‘But that’s not what you thought when you arrived back in England, penniless, and without a husband, and I took you in, gave you a job, gave you your respect back, was it? When you suddenly and so conveniently remembered you had not just a dead son, but a living daughter? It was all very well when you were living it up in Ceylon, but when hubby runs off with a native girl and leaves us high and dry and middle aged, we suddenly remember, oh, so conveniently our little daughter who was such a bore before.’

  ‘We have been over this before, Elizabeth, time and again. And time and again, dear—’

  ‘Stop calling me dear, I’m not your dear. Now let’s hear again why it was that you left Peter and me in England.’

  ‘You know why we did, Elizabeth,’ her mother replied suddenly sounding weary.

  ‘No, I don’t know the reason, Muzzie,’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘I only know the excuse.’

  ‘Beginners please!’ the boy called in the corridor, before knocking and putting his head round her door. ‘Beginners please, Miss Laurence!’

  ‘
Thank you, darling!’ Elizabeth waited until the boy had gone before staring once more at her mother in the mirror. ‘Oftentimes excusing of a fault, doth make the fault worse by the excuse. Did you know that? No? Well you know it now. So go and pour me a drink and shut up. I have a performance to give.’

  17

  In response to the call Cecil caught the first plane he could and Jerome met him at the airport.

  ‘She’s not going to be able to do the film,’ he said to his agent on the way back into town.

  ‘Why not?’ Cecil asked, alarmed by the note of controlled fury in Jerome’s voice.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Jerome said very little else as the limousine sped across the bridge and back into Manhattan. He just smoked tipped cigarette after tipped cigarette, and drank whisky poured from a cut glass decanter. Cecil knew this mood, he knew how dangerous it was, so he stayed quiet, and sipped the drink Jerome had silently offered him while enjoying the Manhattan landscape.

  Elizabeth was in bed when they arrived up at their apartment. A maid was busy clearing up what looked like debris from a party the night before, while Miss Toothe was already busy at her desk. Miss Toothe nowadays travelled everywhere with them, as indeed did Dingo and the monosyllabic Miss Page, whom Elizabeth had put on her personal payroll.

  ‘Go in and see her,’ Jerome instructed Cecil, before Cecil had even had time to remove his top coat. ‘It’s perfectly all right. She’s heavily sedated.’