Stratford Jewel

by Oliver, Marina

  'Brrr! Rather you than me,' Emily said, shivering. 'I'm going to curl up by the fire. You aren't one of these hearty hunting types, are you?'

  'Hunting? What sort of hunting?'

  'Foxes. Isn't that the British national sport?'

  'I've ridden with the hunt a few times,' Rosa admitted. 'Do you have fox-hunting here?'

  'Sometimes, but you won't be likely to meet them. Have a good walk.'

  Rosa set off, but it was lonely without Max to share her thoughts and impressions with, and she soon turned back. Her boots were muddy, so she was making for the kitchen entrance when she heard Max's voice coming from the stables. Smiling at the thought of seeing him she changed direction. Then she halted abruptly in the doorway. There was someone with him, hiccuping and sobbing in between a spate of anguished words.

  'Max, I'm so unhappy. I was such a fool. Mama says it serves me right for being disobedient and turning you down. I wish I hadn't now, I didn't know I loved you, but it's too late. I thought you were too old, but I was wrong, it would have been better with an older husband than a silly, stupid little college boy.'

  'Hush, Jenny, it'll be all right, I promise you. We can make things better, however difficult it seems right now.'

  Rosa stole away. She'd heard enough. Jenny had clearly regretted her earlier refusal of Max, and Rosa wondered just how much he queried the wisdom of marrying her. She knew it was irrational, but she felt guilty, and she managed to creep through the house unseen, gaining the sanctuary of their bedroom where she could think it out in peace.

  Max had proposed on impulse, and afterwards, because she'd been so thankful to be able to spirit Jack away from Adam's wrath, he'd not in honour been able to withdraw. Besides, at that time he thought Jenny lost to him.

  She hadn't accepted straight away, she'd tried to tell him he didn't have to, she reminded herself, but he'd no doubt felt committed. Their lovemaking was the most incredible, wonderful experience she'd ever had. Surely it would not be if they didn't love one another? But Max was her only lover. Perhaps the physical excitement was the same with any man. She'd enjoyed Adam's kisses, after all, though she'd drawn back when he wanted more. How could she tell? She could ask Max, but the very thought of such a conversation made her blush with shame. Max, she knew, had made love to other women. She recalled Mrs Corbin in Stratford, and the mere suspicion of that woman in Max's arms, having him caress her body as he did Rosa's, made her cringe in frustrated fury. It couldn't be the same. Not if they weren't in love. And Max had said that though he'd had previous liaisons he'd never before been in love. Could she believe him.

  Might he have thought he was in love when he married her? Had he simply imagined he loved her? Was he secretly disappointed at having lost Jenny? She'd prevented him from having Jenny, marrying as his family wished, and she couldn't find a way out. They were tied to one another. Rosa was unable to resolve the puzzle, and for the first time ever pushed Max away that night, complaining that she felt unwell and needed to sleep.

  *

  'Would you like the part, my dear?'

  Celia laid down her fork and smiled across at her companion. 'It's a fabulous part. You know I'd give anything for it. Just fancy, Celia Greenwood in the leading role at one of London's best theatres.'

  'Anything?' he queried.

  Celia dimpled at him. He was old, at least fifty, and immensely fat. Rolls of fat seemed to crush his eyes, which peered out from behind walls of flesh. Hillocks of fat cascaded down his cheeks and over his paunch. Even his fingers were fat, thick and stubby. He was, though, one of the most important theatrical impressarios in London, and he had interests in America, on Broadway. And Celia had caught his eye.

  'Anything,' she repeated firmly. Thank goodness she was an actress, she thought with an inward giggle. Otherwise she'd never have been able to infuse that single word with the promise and sincerity it needed.

  He smiled. 'Call me Willy,' he invited, leaning forward to pat her hand. 'Where are you living?'

  Celia suppressed a fleeting surge of panic. This was it. 'I have a room in a house near Gower Street.'

  'Gower Street?' He sounded like Lady Bracknell being disdainful about handbags, Celia thought wildly, and swallowed her desire to laugh hysterically. 'We can't have that, for the sort of star you are going to be. I have a charming little apartment in Eaton Square which I would be honoured for you to use, my dear.'

  'That's truly sweet of you, Willy. But I doubt if I could afford the rent, I still don't earn a great deal, and even with this part I need to put some money aside, for times when I won't be in work.'

  He smiled, and his eyes all but vanished. 'Who said anything about rent? It will be my pleasure to provide it for you, and pay all your bills, my dear. All I want in return is a small portion of your time, being permitted to visit you occasionally.'

  All? Celia tried to look as though she believed him. Then she mentally shrugged. He was so gross she doubted whether he would be capable of anything but fondling. And if he proved more agile or inventive than she expected, wasn't it worth it for the chance of jumping straight into the lead in a major play? She'd have had to tour in second rate companies for months, if not years, before such an opportunity normally came her way. She would suffer the indignities he intended, make a success in this part, and then she could afford to dismiss him as other directors clamoured for her talents. And when she reached her small lodging tonight, she would at last answer that pathetic letter from Gilbert, in which he'd grovelled and begged her forgiveness, pleading with her to return to him. She'd give him her new address, and wish him well, but make it plain she did not intend to put up with the sort of insults his friends had offered her. She no longer needed him. She was being more successful on her own, in fact. It was a malign fate which had forced her into marriage with him, but she knew plenty of other married people who lived separate lives, who rarely met their spouses, and she didn't see why she couldn't be the same.

  *

  'Max, your uncle telephoned, Jack can come for a trial weekend,' Rosa said excitedly. 'He's so much better, they want to see how he behaves in a normal home.'

  'When?' Max asked. 'Before Christmas, I hope. We're going to Los Angeles soon afterwards.'

  'This weekend, if convenient. It is, isn't it? We don't have anything else planned. I've bought the presents, all I have to do is wrap them. Your uncle is coming himself to spend the weekend with a friend out at Mount Vernon, so he'll bring Jack here, asks if he might stay for supper, and then go out to his friend's.'

  It was arranged, and Jack, looking fit and healthy, arrived late on the Friday afternoon with Dr Higham. He was bright and cheerful, enthusing about the New York buildings, and to Rosa's anxious eyes looked completely normal. There was no trace of the moodiness, the melancholy and desire for solitude which he'd exhibited ever since he returned from the war.

  'I'm so grateful to you for bringing me here, Max,' Jack said later that night after Dr Higham had left. 'Rosa told them some of the things I did, but I can't remember half of them. I certainly don't recall setting fire to Adam's stables, but they tell me it often happens that way. The mind makes people do uncharacteristic things – I hope those things are uncharacteristic for me,' he added, laughing. 'The conscious part of the brain refuses to remember them, they are so awful.'

  'But you'll soon be better,' Rosa said, smiling happily at him.

  'Yes, I don't want to go back to England. This country is so vast. You can travel ten, twelve times as far west as I came today, and most of it is open space. I'd feel free as a bird. You say you sold the business?'

  'Celia did. She sent our share of the money to a bank here. It's not a great deal, things are bad at home, but it's enough to start a business.'

  'I think I'd like to farm. Land is cheap, and Dr Higham thinks it would be best if I had a quiet occupation. That would suit me too. It's fun to see New York, but I wouldn't want to live here.'

  Jack went back to the hospital determined to spend some w
eeks in the summer exploring further west, searching for land.

  Rosa went joyfully into Max's arms that night, overflowing with gratitude for the change he had helped to bring about. Her doubts at Thanksgiving had been suppressed, for Max seemed as eager as ever to make love to her. He had told her on their return from Woodstock how Jenny had squabbled with her young fiancé, and been dreaming about what she thought of as lost chances. Max had laughed, saying she would be as enraptured as ever with young Dale when they had made up their quarrel. He seemed to have no regrets, and Rosa did her best to forget she had ever doubted him.

  *

  Celia groaned. She felt stiff and bruised, and as she staggered out of bed she wondered whether living in a luxurious apartment and acting in her first starring role was really worth the nightly pummelling and mauling.

  Her grossly fat protector was more agile and demanding than she had ever expected. While they were in rehearsal he escorted her to expensive dressmakers, and gave lavish orders for gowns, shoes and hats. Every evening they attended other theatres, fashionable restaurants and nightclubs, where he showed off his new toy with the enthusiasm and delight of a small child. Celia endured the sly looks and knowing smiles, telling herself that it would be worth while when the play opened. But in the mornings, sore and aching from his enthusiastic and heavy-handed sexual appetites, often sustained until she thought she would be ironed flat with his enormous weight pounding her into the mattress, she had her doubts.

  Today was the dress rehearsal, and while she waited for the bathtub to fill with steaming water she practised the words which would, she hoped, gain her a respite for at least one night.

  'I didn't sleep all last night for nervousness,' she mouthed, wiping away the steam from the mirror so that she could study her reflection and gauge the effectiveness of her innocently widened eyes. 'I need to take a pill and go to bed early tonight if I'm to be bright and sparkling for the first performance.'

  Surely he'd agree. He must. Then, looking on the bright side as she had rigorously trained herself to do ever since that devastating first night when he had brought her to this apartment, she thanked her lucky stars he didn't stay with her all night, but went home to his equally fat wife and children. It was his wife's money that paid for his interest in the theatre and young actresses, she'd discovered from her dresser. The daughter of a manufacturer of guns who had made a fortune during the war, she financed her husband's theatrical ventures and added a huge allowance on condition that he didn't spend nights away from home. She had to be respectable amongst her Hampstead neighbours, and that meant having her husband at the breakfast table, seen leaving the house each morning for his office in the West End. It didn't matter how late he returned at night, he could be assumed to be working, but he must return.

  Bathed, perfumed, dressed in her latest pale blue woollen two-piece, and the matching coat trimmed with sable collar and cuffs, Celia took a taxi to the Ritz for lunch. Willy was waiting in the bar, and swept her into a stifling hug. Celia laughed and clutched her cloche hat. 'Darling, it's new, don't squash it before you've even seen me in it.'

  When he had gorged his way through a meal of venison soup, roast beef, steamed pudding and several varieties of cheese, while Celia toyed with a morsel of smoked salmon and a lemon sorbet, she falteringly made her request. To her fury it did not emerge in the confidently appealing way she had rehearsed. She sounded, even to herself, plaintive and faintly resentful.

  Fortunately Willy didn't appear to notice. 'My little flower, of course I understand,' he boomed, patting her on the knee. 'To be perfectly honest, I'm getting worn out myself keeping up with you, hot little lady that you are. I've never known anyone as keen on it as you are.'

  Celia cringed, sure that everyone could hear him, but she kept her smile in place, thanked him effusively, and promised to make it up to him when the first few performances were over and she was more relaxed. 'After all, we don't want to spoil your investment, your faith in me, by my giving a bad performance, do we?' she asked sweetly. Then she glanced at her watch, a jewelled affair he'd given her the previous week, and gasped. 'Willy, I must fly, or I'll be late, and that would never do.'

  He insisted on escorting her to a taxi, assuring her he would be at the theatre early for the dress rehearsal, How different, Celia mused as she sank back against the squabs, from her first exit from the Ritz, late at night and sure that the porters and commissionaire were laughing at the bride leaving alone from the honeymoon suite. But despite Willy's disadvantages, she had done far better alone than with Gilbert. Now she must concentrate, make her performance so good she could soon dispense with Willy too.

  *

  'Can you be ready to leave by Tuesday?' Max asked as he came into the kitchen where Rosa was cooking supper.

  'Tuesday? for Los Angeles?'

  'With many stops on the way. It's a marvellous chance for you to see right across America. I've fixed my itinerary, we'll train-hop, and we'll take at least two weeks, probably longer. A couple of weeks there, and we'll return via Texas and the south, and take advantage of warmer weather down there. You don't seem to like the New York winter.'

  Rosa laughed. 'I've never been so cold. Max, it sounds so exciting. Of course I can be ready. Do I need summer clothes?'

  She was frantically busy for the next few days, preparing and packing for the trip, and then on Monday morning Dr Higham called.

  'Do you think Jack could come again soon?' he asked. 'He was so much better after the first trial weekend.'

  Rosa's heart sank at the thought of having to give up her trip. Then she felt utterly selfish at wishing to put her own pleasure before Jack's return to health. She and Max had a lifetime together to look forward to, but a setback now for Jack could be crucial.

  Dr Higham sensed her hesitation. 'Did you and Max have other plans?' he asked. Rosa explained, and said she was sure Max would understand, but his uncle interrupted her brusquely. 'No, you can't put off such a trip. I have an alternative suggestion. Jack's been talking so much about buying a farm that I want to take him to see some of the country – maybe even get as far as Kentucky or Ohio if we spent several days. As Jack likes horses they'd be good choices, and not too far away from you and Max. Certainly we could see some of West Virginia. I could discuss it with Jack and he can start looking forward to his future more practically. Then when you and Max are back he can spend a weekend with you and talk it over. How about it?'

  Rosa, feeling rather battered, meekly agreed and tried not to feel relieved. Jack would be fine, and she and Max could enjoy weeks of travelling.

  'It's like a second honeymoon,' Max whispered on their first night in California. Rosa, contentedly replete, and aware that the intensity of their desire for one another had in no way diminished, sleepily agreed.

  'I do love you so much,' she murmured, and fell asleep in his arms.

  *

  'Darling, you were utterly fabulous.'

  'You took the shine out of everyone else.'

  'Next stop Broadway.'

  Celia smiled her thanks, and tried not to preen too much. Her dressing room was awash with bouquets of flowers, and there was scarcely room for all her admirers to crowd in. Their perfumes, the heady scents of the flowers, and the champagne she had drunk, were beginning to make her head ache, and she was dreading the night to come. Willy, after his forbearance the previous night, would be more voracious than ever. First, though, there was supper and the early papers. They, Celia knew, would seal her fate. If the reviewers liked her she could soon dispense with Willy, and not have to put on a performance every night in bed as well as at the theatre.

  Gradually the hubbub subsided. The leading actors and actresses gathered with their chosen friends at a nearby nightclub, and as the night progressed Celia began to hope that Willy's need to be back in the marital bed before breakfast might prevent him from joining her in hers. The papers arrived, and reviews read. The play was mundane, but the actors had, in the words of one reviewer, 'mad
e the best of it that could be expected.'

  'Celia, darling, they liked you anyway,' her leading man exclaimed, bending languidly towards her to kiss her.

  'What do they say?' she asked breathlessly.

  'Beautiful, well, we know that, and delightfully light-hearted. Impressive, enchantingly pretty, an excellent début. And I'm suave and enigmatic, handsome and confident, as ever. Between us, they say, we'll satisfy all playgoers who want to be entertained with an easy, undemanding but pleasant to look at spectacle. Hm. I think there's a sting in that little tail. But it's one I can live with.'

  Celia was lost in a glow of wonder. Her West End début had been a glittering success. She was a star. She came out of her abstraction with a jerk when the leading man suddenly put his arm round her shoulder and shook her.

  'Wake up. Look who's here.'

  'Who? What?' she stammered, and looked up to find a tall, thickset man beside her.

  'Celia Greenwood,' he stated rather than asked. His accent was pure Brooklyn, and his clothes loud and vulgar in the discreet setting of the nightclub where all the women wore evening dresses and the men dinner jackets. He wore a brash check suit, a clashing striped shirt, and a red bow tie liberally scattered with black and white spots. He sat down in the chair next to Celia without invitation, and turned it so that his back was to the others in the party. 'Who's your agent?'

  'I – I don't have one,' Celia stammered.

  'Yes you do,' her leading man intervened. 'As of this minute it's my agent, darling,' he added, smiling broadly at the American.

  He received a frosty stare but kept his imperturbable smile in place.

  'Then I'll talk to him. What's his address?'

  Supplied with it he grunted, seized the nearest champagne glass, drained it, carefully lit an enormous cigar, and with an abrupt nod rose and departed.

  'What on earth was that about?' Celia demanded. 'And I don't need an agent.'

  'Yes you do, my love. That was Freddy Silberbaum, and he's a Hollywood talent scout. If he wants to talk to your agent it's because he wants to lure you to Hollywood. And if you go there you need someone to protect your interests. They're all sharks.'