Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘He’s all but got the money, Elizabeth dear,’ Cecil said, carefully boning out what was left of his Dover Sole. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t care whether he’s got the sodding keys to Fort Knox, Cecil,’ Elizabeth replied, ‘I am not playing Lady Fruitcake.’

  She lit up another cigarette before she had quite extinguished her last and stared up at the ceiling, unable to watch any more of Cecil stuffing food into his mouth. It wasn’t that Cecil was an untidy eater, on the contrary, he was fastidious to a degree. It was simply that Elizabeth could not bear to watch other people eat. So for the next five minutes all her conversation was directed upwards, at the chandelier overhead.

  ‘Couldn’t you be ill perhaps?’ Cecil suggested rather feebly. ‘Suffer a slight relapse?’

  ‘Ha!’ Elizabeth dismissed the idea contemptuously. ‘I’m monitored practically every minute of every day and every night! They know when and if there’s anything wrong with me, darling. And even if there was, even if I was dying – Jerome is so obsessed with making this blasted film, he wouldn’t let me die! Heavens, he’d drag me on! He’d drag me from my death bed on to the studio floor and film me dying! The Queen, my lord, is dead, Seyton would say. But all lovely J would be interested in was whether or not he’d got me shuffling off the mortal coil safely in the can.’

  ‘It is something he feels very strongly about,’ Cecil agreed, carefully wiping his mouth and draining the last of his white Burgundy. ‘But for once, I don’t really see what I can do, dear. Do you?’

  ‘Yes I do, dear,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You can stop him, dear.’

  She ceased gazing at the cut glass chandelier above her head, and slowly let her eyes find Cecil’s eyes. And when they did, she turned the headlamps on full beam.

  Cecil really didn’t know whether he was coming or going, starting or stopping, or alive or dead for the next few weeks. Only in the most private of his private thoughts had he ever contemplated actually making love to Elizabeth, yet now here she was regularly in his bed. He knew she had ulterior motives, of course he did, he knew exactly what she wanted, which wasn’t very difficult because it was Elizabeth’s habit to be extremely explicit, but he wasn’t going to let that ruin his pleasure. Ever since their traumatic transatlantic crossing, Cecil had seen himself cast as nothing more than Elizabeth’s guardian and trusted friend, which was really more even than he felt he deserved, but never for a moment had he dared to think beyond that point. Yet here they were now lovers. The woman who had once been the most beautiful woman in the world, and who was without doubt still one of the planet’s most desirable and exquisite females, had given herself to him, humble, ordinary Cecil Manners, and allowed him to make love to her twice a week on the days she came up to London to have her hair done. Cecil was so enthralled by her and so besotted with her he would have killed for her, had he been capable of inflicting harm on anyone, which he wasn’t. Even so, he most certainly would have done anything for her, anything she asked, simply anything, the only trouble being that he was about as incapable of successful politicking as he was of committing murder.

  Nonetheless, he tried. In response to Elizabeth’s request that he get her off the film, he tried his best (which in Cecil’s case wasn’t very much) firstly to persuade Jerome that the filming of Macbeth was a worthy but a financially and artistically misguided venture, and then, having failed in that, to convince him that Elizabeth would be miscast.

  ‘Elizabeth is too divine, too lovely, she’s altogether too nice for Lady Macbeth,’ Cecil reasoned. ‘Alison Agate would be a much better choice. For a start she’s just done it at Stratford and she was sensational. Or there’s Cora Thackeray. You saw her Lavinia last season. She’s already a great tragedian. I just feel that Elizabeth isn’t. Elizabeth is much more the doomed heroine, which is why she made such a wonderful Juliet. And Ophelia. Or perhaps best of all, what about Peggy Franklyn?’

  ‘What about suggesting somebody who isn’t on your books, you clot!’ Jerome laughed, slapping Cecil on the back. ‘Anyway – the answer’s no. Elizabeth has to play the part because of the very virtues you extol. Because of that wicked innocence. And most of all because of her plausibility. She was born to play Lady Macbeth.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Cecil said, ‘but she happens to believe she could die playing it. She’s convinced the part is bad luck.’

  ‘Oh balls,’ Jerome said. ‘Macbeth is a play like any other play, Ces. It hasn’t any hidden powers, any special black magic. It might be a difficult play, it might be an exhausting play, but that’s all it is, dear chap. It’s a play. And the men and the women who are going to perform it are merely players. Pass it on.’

  Cecil wasn’t quite sure about Jerome’s last remark. For a moment from the look in Jerome’s eye and the inflexion he gave the phrase, making it sound childishly conspiratorial, Cecil imagined that Jerome knew about Elizabeth and him. But then he knew he was just imagining, because Jerome gave him a dazzling smile, another slap on the back, and then wandered off whistling happily to go and talk money with Boska.

  Cecil had already approached Boska on the subject. He had hinted to Boska that Elizabeth might not be physically up to the role, that she might not be able to stand the strain, without realizing these had been Boska’s own initial concerns, and for a while he thought he might have won, as Boska appeared to take this second opinion on Elizabeth’s condition very seriously.

  ‘There’s too much money at stake here, Cecil,’ he’d said, rubbing the stubble on his chin, a five o’clock shadow which appeared daily around noon. ‘The dibs is too big for any might or might-not-haves. I have to check this out, so just leave it with me on my desk, OK? You just leave it with me for a day or so.’

  Cecil was only too glad to do so, and when the call finally came back from Boska nearly a week later, Cecil was convinced he had pulled it off. He had indicated this to Elizabeth the day before, just before she left to go to her hairdressers in Hill Street, and in return for his high hopes and in anticipation of a hard earned victory, she had rewarded him with what she referred to as a Mistress-Quickly before pulling her clothes back on, kissing him haphazardly in one eye and dashing out to catch a taxi.

  ‘Well done, Cecil,’ Boska said down the phone, raising Cecil’s hopes even higher. ‘Your remark about your worries, good for you, dear boy. It reminded me to check through the insurance cover, in case they were thinking of penalizing us for Lizzie’s previous collapse. But happy day, Cecil – they see that as a one-off, there’s no exclusions, and they haven’t even loaded the premium. Even so, I owe you for making me check it out. You never know with these insurance shock-a-lollies.’

  Cecil called Elizabeth at her hairdresser’s.

  ‘Can you come and see me before you go home, Elizabeth dear?’ he asked.

  ‘Cecil, dear,’ Elizabeth replied, as heavily as she could even though she knew her sarcasm was wasted, and that Cecil would persist in calling her the dreaded dear come what may. ‘Cecil, dear,’ she repeated, ‘no. You are insatiable, and anyway I’ve just had my hair done.’

  ‘And I’ve just had Bossy on the phone, Elizabeth dear,’ Cecil replied, ‘and it’s not good news. In fact it’s very bad news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What’s very bad news, Cecil dear?’

  ‘I’ve done my very best, Elizabeth, but I’m afraid it’s a lost cause. You start filming three weeks on Monday.’

  Elizabeth said nothing. She just dropped the telephone so that it dangled on its cord, and returned to her seat, leaving Cecil to call after her in vain.

  She had dropped the phone because she was dropping Cecil, because there was no point in persisting with him any longer. Elizabeth thought it all out as she sat having her hair dried. Cecil was out, and even the thought of him irritated her. It wasn’t the sex, it was the boredom of it all, the time wasted in his boring company. She really hadn’t objected to having sex with him, even though the experience had been totally unremarkable, she hadn’t minded th
e sex at all because it hadn’t meant anything. It never did, not any more, not to Elizabeth. Sex meant absolutely nothing to Elizabeth. Bethy wouldn’t have done what she’d just done, because it mattered to Bethy. Bethy only did it with J, and when they did it, it was fantastic. Even just thinking about it, Bethy got a thrill, even though she couldn’t quite remember the last time Elizabeth had allowed Bethy to do it with J. But Bethy wouldn’t have done it with anyone else, she never had.

  Elizabeth had, and Elizabeth did, and she didn’t care, because nothing happened when she did it, it had no resonance, the reason for this being simple, the simple reason why it had no resonance being that Elizabeth had no feelings. They had taken away Elizabeth’s feelings when they had taken him away out of the house. Go and say goodbye to him, she’d been told, say goodbye to him and don’t mind the pennies, everyone has pennies on their eyes, dear. You wouldn’t want him staring at you and frightening you now, would you? When they’d taken him away at last, after what might have only been days but had seemed to the seven-year-old Elizabeth like weeks of him in constant pain, forever groaning, and then moaning, and then finally screaming in what was no longer pain but had become agony, after him lying there screaming with the pain, when he had died so suddenly and they’d come and taken all that was left of him away, they’d taken Lizzie’s feelings away as well. Her feelings had gone with him in the box, and been buried deep down into the dark earth. Elizabeth had watched as they lowered her feelings into the ground with his cheap coffin and thrown earth that was already sodden with the winter rain on top of him and on to her feelings, and so it really didn’t matter what they did to Elizabeth now. It didn’t matter what they put in her body with their needles, or what they put on her head when she was asleep, because there was no feeling left anywhere, they wouldn’t be able to find one anywhere, not in her fingers or her hands, not in her heart or in her soul. When her foster parents had put her dead twin brother in the ground, Elizabeth’s heart had been buried in the coffin with him.

  ‘What is it?’ someone was saying. ‘Is everything all right, Miss Laurence? Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right!’ she laughed, looking up at herself in the mirror, seeing Elizabeth with her wonderful green eyes. ‘Of course I’m all right, darling! Why shouldn’t I be all right?’

  ‘Is there something the matter with your hands?’ her hairdresser was asking, and Elizabeth saw he did look rather worried. She frowned at him in the mirror. ‘I wondered if there was something wrong,’ he continued, dropping his voice, ‘because you keep – you keep washing them.’

  ‘I’m washing my hands, darling boy,’ she said, ‘because they’re very dirty.’

  ‘But there’s no water in the basin, Miss Laurence,’ the young man said. ‘The handbasin’s empty.’

  She looked at him, again through the mirror, but this time she saw Elizabeth’s eyes were now glinty little slits.

  ‘Really?’ she heard Elizabeth saying. ‘Isn’t there? Then run some water in, you stupid little bastard!’

  Fortunately both Jerome and Sir David Appleby were in London and at hand when Cecil called them. By good judgement rather than luck, Cecil had hurried straight round to Hill Street once he realized Elizabeth had left him hanging on the phone, suddenly fearing that if Elizabeth interpreted the news he had just given her as calamitous, it could precipitate an attack. He could never explain to himself or others why he felt it necessary to leave his office and rush to Elizabeth’s side. It was a perception, a sudden intuition. At that moment all Cecil suddenly knew was that he had to go to Elizabeth.

  His offices were in Old Bond Street, just a block or so away, and Cecil got to Hill Street just in time, just as Elizabeth was about to establish her total superiority over Bethy, just as Elizabeth was beginning to turn on the other women in the salon, just as Elizabeth was beginning to berate them for being what they were, just before Elizabeth managed to get hold of her hairdresser’s scissors.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told the proprietor who was about to call for help. ‘There’s no need to call anybody. It’s perfectly all right.’ He had hold of Elizabeth now, firmly by her arms above the elbows, holding her close with her face towards him, so the other women in the salon couldn’t see the contortions which were transfiguring what had once been the most beautiful face in the world. ‘It’s perfectly all right, just get Miss Laurence’s things, and call me a cab. I’m her doctor, and I’m afraid Miss Laurence is taking some particularly strong medication, which can have delirious side effects.’ Cecil didn’t know where all this was coming from, and he didn’t stop to wonder. He just hoped it would keep coming. He glanced back down the salon and noticed to his relief that most of the women were under hairdriers and couldn’t hear the stream of verbal abuse Elizabeth was now directing at him as he manhandled her into the lobby away from their quizzical stares.

  ‘Now please don’t say anything about this,’ Cecil said to Elizabeth’s hairdresser as a cab drew up. ‘This is a purely chemical reaction, and we don’t want something which is purely medical being misinterpreted, do we? It wouldn’t be good for you either, I feel. Because I’m quite sure you don’t wish to lose Miss Laurence’s valued custom.’

  With that, Cecil bundled the still screaming Elizabeth into the cab and took her straight back to his flat.

  They had her sedated and down to Sainthill by the end of the afternoon, and no-one was any the wiser. Sir David Appleby accompanied them, and stayed overnight in order that he could supervise and set in motion another course of ECT. By the end of the week, after her enforced sojourn in the suite on the third floor, Elizabeth’s condition had completely stabilized, and one week later shooting commenced on Macbeth. In deference to her condition, however, Jerome altered the schedule so that Elizabeth didn’t have to begin work on what was to prove a highly arduous and gruelling shoot until her doctors expressed complete confidence in her recovery.

  They did so unanimously one week later.

  It was an extremely difficult shoot, not because it was beset by difficulties because it wasn’t. Jerome had done his homework and done it thoroughly, so technically any difficulties encountered were only small ones. What made the work so intense was the level Jerome had decided to pitch the film. He had eschewed any thought of it being a spectacular, or a blood and thunder epic (all the murders were filmed in long-shot and as a consequence were that much more disturbing), and had chosen to concentrate instead on the ambitions and the anguishes of the main protagonists, of Lord and Lady Macbeth. The end result, shot entirely on location in and around a castle in Northumbria, was a very dark, and deeply disturbing version of the play, a sort of tragic film noire, with daylight only ever being glimpsed through the arrow slits of the castle, or distantly high on battlements seen from the foot of stone stairwells. Otherwise all seems to be perpetual night, a gloom which was finally relieved only when Macduff severed Macbeth’s head from his body.

  Elizabeth found her time filming almost intolerable. For once she was unable to lock a performance up and just turn it on, as Jerome so often accused her of doing, and instead she had to search deep inside herself each and every day she was on the set. What she found there deep down the camera read and loved, but Elizabeth hated. It was much too real, much, much too real.

  Several times she tried to make Jerome temper the demands he was making on her as an actress, but he refused, pushing her harder and harder, and causing her to search herself more and more. For once he even made her watch her rushes in an attempt to get her to realize the brilliance and scope of her performance.

  ‘No-one will ever better you, Bethy,’ he used to whisper to her in the dark of the viewing theatre. ‘In fact no-one will ever even get near you. Believe me, this is going to be the definitive Lady Fruitcake.’

  The Fruitcake joke was the only one they shared on the whole film. Jerome was sensible to the feelings Elizabeth had about the roles they were playing, and while he refused to give in to superstition, he did at least
go along with his wife’s insistence that the Macbeths at all times be referred to as Lord and Lady Fruitcake. It was a good move, it seemed, because somehow the joke never staled and kept the atmosphere on the set as light as was possible under what were proving daily to be the most taxing of emotional conditions.

  It was in fact a dark and searching time for the leading actors, a time finally when they had to dig a little too deep, and when they did, what they found put their private relationship beyond redemption.

  Jerome had left shooting the sleepwalking scene until last. He knew Elizabeth would find it difficult, in fact she had already inferred that she couldn’t find a line on it, and that as a consequence she was frightened of over-playing it. She had even pleaded with Jerome to shoot the scene in such a way that she could dub the voice on afterwards and simply go through the physical actions for the camera.

  ‘It’s a pig, Jerry,’ she had said, ‘you know it’s a pig. Out, damned spot, out I say – it’s become a melodramatic cliché, and until I find a way of doing it, I won’t. I can’t.’

  ‘You’ll have to do it some time, Bethy,’ Jerome had warned. ‘This isn’t like a difficult Dumb Crambo at a party. You can’t pull a face at this one and say oh no, Jerry! Do I really have to do this one? But don’t worry. Just put it out of your head and don’t think about it. Allow it to happen, let it just emerge. We’ll leave it until you’re ready. We’ll leave it right until the very end if you prefer.’

  ‘What I would prefer, Jerry darling,’ Elizabeth had sighed, ‘is to leave it out altogether.’

  Jerome thought it might be the hand-washing that was causing her this advance distress, that Elizabeth was frightened in case she would not be able to reproduce in the playing a symptom of guilt and madness which she herself had manifested. He had always known at the back of his mind that this might prove Elizabeth’s undoing, but had gambled on her professionalism. He had never known anyone as professional as Elizabeth, and when he had finally decided that she was fully capable of playing the part, it had been this that had counted for most, for Jerome thought that once Elizabeth could be persuaded to undertake the role, her innate professionalism would see her through.