Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  Even so, as she saw the advertisements for the forthcoming film posted all around the village and the town, she felt the presence of Jerome looming ever stronger in her mind, and the compulsion grew within her to tell Jenny her father’s true identity. There were posters on walls everywhere in the village, of Jerome locked in an embrace with a beautiful, haunted looking blonde, and he looked so handsome, so debonair, and so unique the more Pippa stared at his image the more she felt it only right that Jenny should know exactly who her father was. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. If Pippa kept the secret, then her daughter would never have the chance to make sense of herself, to understand herself, to get herself into a proper perspective. Her father was one of the most famous actors England had ever produced, and his daughter had the right to know this, and to find out whether or not she wanted to be part of it, part of what was after all her inheritance.

  It wasn’t the thought that Jenny might find out later by accident, from someone other than her that decided Pippa. Pippa wasn’t that sort of person. What concerned her were simply the rights and wrongs of the matter. When Jenny had been conceived, Pippa and Jerome had loved each other, so their daughter was part of that love and therefore she really had every right to know both her parents. It simply wouldn’t be fair for Pippa to deny her this right, even if in the final analysis Jenny chose to go and find her father and make herself known to him, rather than stay in France with her mother and remain ignorant of who he was and what he did.

  She had told Jenny that he had been an actor, naturally. Pippa knew she had to tell the truth about what Jenny’s father was when Pippa was married to him, but she chose quite intentionally not to tell her daughter any more details. Too often she had heard tales of the children of the famous being victimized for their parents’ notoriety, so she had kept the profile deliberately low. Whenever Jenny had asked if her father had been good, and if he had been successful, and if he was still acting, and if so in what, rather than tell her child a wilful lie, Pippa had answered the question by saying the child’s father had been an actor when they were married, he had been a very good actor, a successful one, but once they had parted Pippa had no longer followed his career. So what was he called? Jenny had asked. What was his name in case he’s someone we’ve all heard of? To which Pippa had replied with complete truth that his name was Jeremy Norman, which is what Jerome’s baptized name was, and which is what his name had been up until the moment he had changed it for the now world famous name of Jerome Didier.

  And now finally the circus was coming to town. Pippa put off the moment of revelation for as long as she could, afraid that once she had told her daughter the spell between them would be broken. She delayed as long as possible, and afterwards she often wondered whether or not she would in fact have finally revealed her father’s true identity at all had fate not forced her hand.

  ‘Maman? Maman!’ Pippa heard Jenny calling for her from outside after her best friend Odette’s old Citroën deux chevaux had squeaked and clattered to a halt in the farmyard.

  ‘I’m upstairs, darling!’ Pippa called down from the top of the stairway as she heard the girls come into the kitchen. ‘I was in my bath!’

  ‘Oh—’ Jenny groaned in impatience. ‘Hurry up, Maman! I want to ask you something!’

  Pippa dried herself off roughly and then pulling on her white cotton underwear and a sunfaded cornflower blouse and denim skirt, hurried barefoot down the stairs to see what the problem was.

  The two girls were sitting by the fire which Nancy had laid and lit earlier against the coming chill of the evening. The October days were still warm and benign, but once the sun had slipped down behind the forests, there was already a hint of winter in the air. Jenny had Bobby’s replacement on her knee, a tangle-haired bundle of mischief and unknown parentage they had rescued when it had been abandoned as a puppy in the village by some itinerants.

  ‘Well?’ Pippa asked, pouring herself a glass of wine. ‘You rang?’

  ‘Are you doing anything tonight, Maman?’ Jenny asked, her dark eyes shining with excitement. ‘Because if you’re not, we’d love you to come into Tours with us. And come and see Le Parc.’

  Pippa’s heart missed a beat, and to cover her confusion she smiled vaguely and got up from her chair to check a pot on the stove which wasn’t even lit. She had been meaning to tell her daughter that evening over dinner, but now events had overtaken her.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, still with her back to her daughter. ‘I have to cook for tomorrow. For your birthday dinner.’

  ‘You said you weren’t going to start cooking till the morning,’ Jenny countered.

  ‘No,’ Pippa said. ‘I decided there’s too much to do to leave it all until tomorrow. I really have to make a start this evening.’

  ‘Oh—’ Jenny moaned with genuine disappointment, the way only the young can, making the one plain syllable into at least two, if not three. Pippa smiled but remained resolute. ‘Please,’ her daughter pleaded. ‘Please?’

  ‘Please,’ her friend Odette added for good measure.

  ‘It won’t be the same without you,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Pippa laughed. ‘You can tell me all about it when you come home. And if it’s good, perhaps we can all go at the end of the week.’

  ‘Bien sûr,’ Jenny said. ‘Lots of people at school have already seen it in Paris, and they say it’s sensas. At least they say he is sensas.’

  ‘Yes?’ Pippa heard herself saying from somewhere far away. ‘And who’s he?’

  Jenny groaned again, this time in mock despair as she and Odette rose to leave.

  ‘The man in it,’ she said. ‘This very famous actor, Jerome Didier.’

  Pippa made supper in advance of the girls’ return, but she ate nothing herself as she waited. Instead she took the bottle of wine and sat in her favourite window seat in the sitting room watching the sun set and then the night fall, while she wondered what her daughter was thinking, and how and exactly when she was going to be able to tell Jenny the real identity of the man she would be watching at this very moment, a man who would undoubtedly as always be lighting up the big silver screen.

  She couldn’t tell her over supper, because Odette stayed. Not that Pippa could have got a word in edgeways, so intense and non-stop was the girls’ conversation. The film was fantastic. It was the best film they’d ever seen. It was brilliant. It was amazing. It was incredibly exciting, and so moving. The girl was wonderful. The girl was brilliant. She was fantastic, you really believed her, you really believed in her, she was so convincing. And she was so beautiful. Pippa had to see it. She just had to, she had to see it straightaway. They’d go and see it on Wednesday. The girls couldn’t wait to see it again, it was utterly and completely brilliant. And as for him. They sighed. They closed their eyes. They opened them and looked at each other, and laughed, then they closed their eyes again and sighed. While Pippa asked carefully, yes? Well? What about him? Oh, he was something else. Something else? Pippa shook her head and wanted to know what this something else was. And Jenny laughed and said her mother knew, she knew something else was something other, that it was American argot for something, or someone, Odette prompted, for something or someone who defied description. Which was what he was. He defied description, he was so handsome, so brilliant, such an incredible actor, and so sexy.

  Pippa started to clear the plates away and apologized for breaking up the party.

  ‘I don’t want to spoil the fun, Odette,’ she said, ‘but it’s very late, and it’s a big day tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course,’ Odette agreed, and then with a mock horrified look at her watch admitted she had no idea of the time. Jenny saw her friend out to her car, and while they were gone, Pippa drained half a glass of wine in one and sat herself down by the remains of the fire.

  Jenny came back in, singing some new song as she started to clear away the table.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to her mother. ‘I’ll help you do these or we’ll never get
to bed.’

  ‘No, darling,’ Pippa said. ‘Pour yourself a drink and come and sit down.’

  ‘I don’t really want any more to drink,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll just finish up the coffee.’ She poured herself a half-cup and then came and sat opposite her mother. ‘I thought you wanted to go to bed?’ she asked.

  ‘I had to get rid of Odette,’ Pippa explained, ‘because I have to talk to you.’

  ‘Zut,’ Jenny grinned. ‘I hope it’s nothing sérieuse.’

  Pippa drank some more wine, and then eased herself over in her chair to make room for her dog who had just jumped up, deciding he wished to sleep alongside her leg.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jenny asked. ‘You never normally drink so much wine.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Pippa agreed. ‘I’m trying to summon up the courage of my convictions.’

  ‘Something is wrong, isn’t it, Maman?’

  ‘No, cuckoo. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong except for my timing.’

  ‘Come on, Maman,’ Jenny said sweetly. ‘You know you can tell me. You know we can talk about anything.’

  ‘I know, darling. I know.’ Pippa took a deep breath, and then dived straight in. ‘Very well. It’s about your father.’

  ‘Yes? What about my father? Has something happened to him?’

  ‘Only indirectly. You’ve just seen him. Although he didn’t see you.’ Pippa looked at her daughter and smiled, hoping her attempt at being enigmatic might remove or at least lessen any possible shock wave.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Jenny said, leaning forward. ‘How could I possibly have just seen my father?’

  ‘Think about it, cuckoo. Think about what you have just seen. Think about everything I have ever told you. About you, about me, about your father. About the father you have just seen.’

  ‘What I have just seen,’ Jenny said, slowly, cautiously, ‘is a film. What I’ve just seen is Le Parc. And my father was an actor. No. You mean? You mean my father was in Le Parc?’ Pippa nodded. ‘My father was in Le Parc? Which one was he? Maman – there are masses of people in the movie! Which one was he?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the film, Jenny,’ Pippa said. ‘So if I know, how do I know?’

  ‘Stop playing games!’

  ‘I don’t mean to.’

  ‘Well, you are! You’re playing games! You’re teasing! And I don’t like it!’ Jenny was on her feet now, standing in front of her mother. ‘Which one was my father?’

  ‘Ma petite—’ Pippa said, extending both her hands to her daughter. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tease. Not at all. I’m just trying to find in my clumsy way the best way of telling you.’

  And then Jenny knew. She knew at once, and at first she smiled and raised her eyebrows, and her shoulders, and then she suddenly looked like crying, as her forehead creased into a sudden troubled frown, and as she bit hard on her lip.

  ‘You mean that man in the film?’ she whispered, ‘that man? The man in the film – Jerome Didier? Jerome Didier is my father?’

  ‘Oui,’ Pippa nodded almost mechanically. ‘Oui, ma petite, c’est vrai.’

  ‘Sacre bleu,’ Jenny murmured as she sank back down into her chair. ‘Jerome Didier? Oh Maman. Oh merde.’

  Upstairs, later, talking it over together in Jenny’s room, Jenny would keep getting up off her bed to take a long look at herself in her dressing mirror as if to make sure of who or what she looked like now she had ascertained who she really was. Whenever she did, she’d ask her mother who she thought she most looked like, her or her father, to which Pippa always replied the same.

  ‘You don’t look like either of us. You look like you.’

  Pippa knew it would take time to sink in. More importantly she knew she must give it time. Jenny would have all sorts of adjustments and decisions to make, and the making of them would all require time as always. During the night she had learned the truth of her parentage, Pippa had witnessed her daughter’s incomprehension, her stupefaction, her incredulity, her confusion, her wonder and finally her quiet pride, but she knew that all this mixture of emotions needed to be put into the melting pot, brought to the boil, allowed to simmer and then put aside until set into their final shape.

  In a way Pippa deeply regretted telling her daughter, because she knew that her hard won peace was over, and that now there would be new mountains to climb and new valleys to be negotiated. And she also knew she had made a great problem for her child, since it would be hard enough for any young person finally to discover the identity of a previously unknown parent, let alone to realize that person was one of the most idolized people of the time. But great though her present regret was, Pippa knew in her heart that it had been the right thing to do, and that had she not done it, any regret she would have felt at a later date would by then have turned to remorse, and quite possibly finally to sorrow.

  For the rest of that week, and most of the week after that, Jenny was never home until late evening. Pippa knew where she was, but made no reference to these continued absences. Instead she just cooked dishes that could wait, and Pippa would wait too, until Jenny bicycled up the lane and into the farmyard at around a quarter past nine every night, at the precise time it would have taken her to catch the bus back from Tours after the first showing of Le Parc, pick up her cycle from behind the café in the village and complete the second leg of her long journey. Finally, mid-way through the second week, Jenny put down her knife and fork and stared across the lamp-lit kitchen at her mother.

  ‘Alors, Maman,’ she said. ‘J’ai pensé que ça serait sympa si nous allions voir le film de Papa tous ensemble, n’est ce pas?’

  ‘Je ne sais pas, chérie,’ Pippa replied. ‘Je ne sais pas ce que je pense en ce moment.’

  And for once Pippa really didn’t know what to think, or what to make of such a suggestion, Jenny’s idea that they should go into Tours together and sit together in the darkened cinema watching a long lost lover and a newly found father up there on the screen. She was frightened, afraid for the first time for a long time that all those old and now well-buried feelings might be awoken somewhere in her, and that the sight of Jerome would resurrect her love for him, a love which for all she knew might never have really died.

  ‘You’re going to have to, sooner or later you know, Maman,’ she heard her daughter saying.

  ‘I’m going to have to what, Jenny?’

  ‘You’re going to have to face it sooner or later. Or rather – him.’

  ‘You said that just like your father.’ Pippa smiled and cut herself some cheese as a distraction. ‘Or rather – him. A great one for the telling pause, your Papa. Something he was taught as a young actor. How to surprise. How to take the breath in the wrong place, how to fool the audience, how to stop, to stall almost, like a car – and then – finish – comme ça.’

  ‘He does that quite a lot in the film.’

  ‘He always does it. Did it.’ Pippa ate some of the local brie off her knife.

  ‘Come on Maman. We really should go together.’

  ‘Why, Jenny? Why should we?’

  Her daughter smiled at her and stretched out a hand.

  ‘Because I don’t want you going by yourself.’

  It was a simply wonderful film, everything Jenny had said that it was, enthralling, exciting, passionate, and finally very moving. Dorothy Brooks moved Pippa to tears, and Jerome broke her heart.

  ‘But only on screen,’ she laughed on the journey home. ‘Only in the film. Otherwise, and it really is most odd, otherwise he really could have been anybody.’

  ‘But then surely that’s because it was a film?’ Jenny asked, carefully breaking a bit of chocolate off and handing it to her mother. ‘I mean I feel a bit the same. I look at the screen and I say that man is my father. And then another part of me says don’t be so silly, that man is a murderer, or at least we think he’s a murderer – oh God – isn’t it awful when you think he’s going to push her off the building?’

  ‘It’s terribly good,’ P
ippa agreed, looking for the turn they needed, ‘in fact it’s a marvellous film altogether.’

  ‘Did you think he was a murderer? That he really was going to kill her?’

  ‘I have to admit I have read the book. Some time ago, but I remembered the end.’

  ‘They could have changed the end. And anyway, if you knew, Maman, why did you keep blocking your ears?’

  ‘I always block my ears in the exciting bits,’ Pippa laughed. ‘You should know that by now.’

  They drove on for a while in silence, along a straight and deserted road lined with trees.

  ‘Are you glad you came?’ Jenny finally asked. ‘Are you glad you saw it?’

  ‘Yes, darling, I am,’ Pippa replied. ‘And I have you to thank for it. I don’t suppose I’d ever have been quite sure otherwise. Not absolutely.’

  ‘And you are now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Supposing you saw him again not on the screen, but really, Maman. In the flesh. Would you still be sure?’

  ‘Oh, I think so, yes. Yes. I’m sure I would.’

  ‘Yes? How can you be so sure?’

  Pippa looked sideways at her daughter, and seeing how genuinely perplexed she was, she smiled.

  ‘I’ll tell you why, ma petite,’ she said. ‘Because I didn’t feel a thing when he kissed the girl. I thought I might feel a twinge of jealousy, something, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel a thing. I couldn’t have given two hoots.’

  Pippa sounded her car horn twice as she drove on with a laugh and a feeling of very real relief into the still, dark autumn night.

  What Jenny did next took Pippa unawares. When she thought about it afterwards, of course, she realized such a move was entirely predictable, and if she’d had her senses about her it wouldn’t have taken her so much by surprise. As it was, she was so busy preparing for her latest and biggest exhibition, to be held in the Galerie Lefebre in Tours, she was caught on the emotional hop. What happened was Jenny decided she wanted to try acting.