He got up from the couch and followed her to the centre of the room, where she stood at the kitchen island pouring out the coffee into their mugs.
“Manage to do what?”
He reached for a violet macaron as she handed him his cup.
“The romance stuff…” she busied herself washing a few pots in the sink and then continued casually, “I know you had the Darcy and Elizabeth kiss today and you have to make it seem really real. You’ve never worked with Jenny Graves before have you?”
“No, but she does make me feel like Mr Darcy should be on some kind of register.”
“She’s the right age to be Lizzy though. It’s not her fault that you’re old enough to be her dad.”
“That’s pretty rude!”
“True though.”
“She is so young, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she’s only four years older than Harriet, which makes me feel super old. She is an amazing actress though, I adored her in ‘Soul Shine Blue’.”
“Yeah, she was brilliant in that, has a really good eye for scripts, which reminds me…” he said quickly, reaching into his bag and pulling out a thick wodge of papers. “I decided on the next script.”
Lizzy crossed her fingers, she had read four of the scripts he had brought over and fallen in love with ‘Lilac’, a small arthouse project from a young London writer who was now based in LA. It was very dialogue heavy and she had fallen in love with it on first read – imagining Benn playing the troubled, vulnerable Oscar. It was so different from his usual work, but she knew, without question, that he would be amazing. She hoped he had picked up on her vibes.
“Lilac was the best one, you were right!”
“I’m always right,” she laughed, taking the pages from him. “It bodes well for you if you accept that sooner rather than later. Can we have a read of it?”
“Of course we can,” he passed her the script, “where do you want to start?”
She flicked through the manuscript and landed on a random page,
“Okay, here we are. Sc 35: Venice Beach. Ext. Day. Janey stands
with Oscar. Things are tense.”
“So, right now?”
“You need the practice, from what I heard you were awful with your lines today!” She said it teasingly, but saw a look of doubt cross his face, “we’re all entitled to off days, Benn. Even you.”
Benn smiled, despite himself, tried to stop himself from laughing at her raised eyebrow and flirty tone of voice.
“Right Lizzy,” he said firmly. “Let’s do this. Scene 35.”
He glanced over the script, pulling his glasses down from the top of his head and concentrated for a moment.
“You know it’s basically a rip off of a Hemingway novel, right? ‘A Farewell to Arms’…that’s how I read it, anyway… I could be wrong.”
“You’re never wrong, Elizabeth.”
He looked up at her over the rim of his glasses, and she did a quick nod in agreement.
“Okay. Scene 35,” she paused for a moment. “You won’t take the piss, will you?”
“Can’t promise that, I’m afraid! Just read it, I’m sure you’re perfectly adequate.”
“Perfectly adequate? Well thank you for the vote of confidence!”
The first line was hers, but she felt overcome with a strange embarrassment, even as he stood there with an expectant look on his face, and she swallowed hard. In a laidback LA lilt, she said:
JANEY:
I always wondered what you would have said that day.
He noted her accent, it was good, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
OSCAR:
I would have said that you needed to get the fuck out of my life, because I was sick of dealing with your bullshit
JANEY:
There was no bullshit, that was all in your head. You –
“Hang on, Lizzy… You need to pull it back a bit.”
“Alright, Mr Kubrick,” she grinned.
This was fun. She composed herself, reined it in.
JANEY:
There was no bullshit, that was all in your head. You never saw it, did you?
OSCAR:
Saw what? How you threw all of your problems and trauma at me and expected me to deal with it for you, like I did every single fucking time before.
He looked up at caught her smiling at him.
“What?”
It was a tone of exasperation. Amateurs must annoy him, she thought.
“It’s just really impressive. I forget that you’re a real actor, forget how good you are. Look, I’ve got goosebumps!”
She brandished her arm out on front of him so he could see how dimpled the skin was.
“Lizzy. Stop it. Do your line.”
She rolled her eyes and continued but noticed that he smiled a little bit too. He might not accept compliments graciously, but she was sure that he secretly appreciated them.
JANEY:
You love sorting things out, Oscar. You love being the hero. You love riding in on your white horse and saving me.
Benn noticed the little wobble on her accent as she stumbled over some of the lines, concentrating on her delivery. He thought it was adorable, but he most definitely wasn’t going to tell her that.
OSCAR:
It was never about that.
JANEY:
What was it about?
OSCAR:
It was about you wanting me to save you
(beat)
When you knew that all I wanted you to do was save yourself.
He leaned into her, close now pulling her towards him, putting his hands on her shoulders, gazing deeply into her eyes. Benn was in full-on actor mode now, and she sensed the difference in him; he was no longer Benn but a brand-new person she had not met before. She glanced down at the next line on the page.
JANEY:
I did save myself, and I did it without your help.
OSCAR:
I always knew you could.
JANEY:
So why are you back now? Do you want to break me again, so you can watch me rebuild, over and over? You sick fuck.
“Ooh,” she squealed. “This is so good.”
“It doesn’t say ‘sick fuck’ in my script,” he double checked the page.
“I thought it needed it,” she shrugged.
“It doesn’t.”
“Spoilsport.”
She jumped on the counter, got a mouthful of coffee.
“Do you want to finish the scene or not?”
She nodded, and he began again.
OSCAR:
I don’t want to break you.
JANEY:
You can’t break me anymore, I won’t let you.
OSCAR:
Don’t ever let anyone, promise me that at least.
He reached over and pushed a stray curl from her face, placed his hand on her cheek. Lizzy felt the blush spreading all over her body.
JANEY:
What are you doing?
OSCAR:
Kissing you goodbye.
He leaned in to kiss her, and then stopped suddenly and pulled back. She looked up at him expectantly, her eyes wide, and he suddenly realised that he wanted to kiss her, wanted to see if her pink lip balm actually tasted like cherries, felt that if he didn’t do it now then he would never do it.
“Benn,” she said, “this would be acting, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, “all the romance stuff.”
He took a deep breath, could see her gently tilt her chin, her lips parting to receive his mouth on hers. Focusing on the tiny details of her face, he could see the little flakes of mascara under her eye, the faint smear of gold on her eyelid.
“Don’t let me interrupt anything!”
Harriet called out from the stairs, standing in her pyjamas, as she watched her mum and Benn Williams fluster about the kitchen like naughty schoolchildren.
“Shall I put the kettle on?” Benn grabbed a cup, and the moment was forgotten.
/>
1914
The younger male servants were the first to leave, parading to Lambton in their smart khaki uniforms, after photographs were taken on the courtyard steps of the Pemberley Pals; twenty-three footmen, under-butlers, gardeners, stable hands and the middle Darcy child, Albert, had signed up to fight the Hun. Only two of them would return.
The Duchess was summoned back to her father’s estate on Long Island in the early months of 1915. He was ill, frail; hoping to see an end to this silly British war before his time was up. The Duchess packed up her luggage and booked a passage to New York with Cunard.
“You will be home soon, won’t you, Mama?”
“Not long, my darling,” she said, trying to calm any fears her daughter might have. “Grandpa Drew is not going to be in this world much longer I believe, and it will be much emptier without him.”
“Do you have to go?”
“Penny,” she rarely used the pet name from the nursery, “if it were your Papa and this may be the last chance of your ever seeing him in this world, I know you would too.”
“I know we have our differences in opinions,” she took her mother’s hand. “But I will miss you.”
“I will miss you too, my darling girl.”
Millicent held onto Cecily’s hand tightly, embracing her gently before she climbed into the Daimler and waved them all goodbye with a joyous wave and a tinkling laugh.
She would never see her mother again.
Later, as the war continued longer than the world anticipated, more of the residents of estate were conscripted, including George. The heir was not scared about what lay before him, he was determined to seek revenge on those who had blown up an ocean liner and murdered his dearest Mama.
“Please don’t go, Georgie,” Millicent pleaded one May afternoon, when the sun was high in the sky. “You don’t have to go to France, at least. Ask Papa to find you work in the War Office.”
“Penny, you know I have to go.”
“You do not.”
“Yes, I do.” His voice reverberated in her heart and they both knew her argument was futile. “You and I both know that one cannot be exempt for serving one’s country simply because they are the future Duke of Derbyshire. What use is a peerage if we are all speaking German?”
“I know what you are saying,” she stared out at the lake, knowing that if she looked at him, she would be unable to prevent the tears from flowing, “but Mama would not have wanted you to have gone.”
“Mama would have wanted me to do what was right,” he said firmly, “don’t worry, everything will be alright, you’ll see. We’ll all be home and having tea on the lawn before you even realise.”
If Millicent had known that she would only see her brother again one more time, she would have imprinted the smell of him and the sound of his voice more deeply into her heart. The eldest Darcy boy – the Earl of Berkshire - would lose his life during the Battle of the Amiens. Also lost that day was his cousin, the sixth and youngest Fitzwilliam boy, Thomas, not quite nineteen, who would die screaming for his mother under the cerulean summer sky.
Albert, now with his brother’s birth right, returned at the start of 1919. He had been injured but approached this with his usual good humour, laughing and joking with his sister as she wheeled him up and down the ravine. The scars were deeper, more ferocious than the angry red stump where his arm used to be. The sights and sounds he had witnessed were emblazoned across his mind, and he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the masses of obliterated comrades, bleeding on the battlefield. Music caused his heart to race, laughter caused his body to shake with fear. He disappeared into the woods one freezing cold night, shuffling off during a dinner party held by his father to celebrate his return. Searches proved fruitless until Albert was found dead three days later by Arthur Wickham, the private who had served with him on the front, the last surviving Pemberley Pal.
There was never going to be a winner in a war such as this. There was a victory, but it was hollow and empty like a drum. Nobody wanted to celebrate, they simply wanted to mourn.
Every family on the Pemberley estate lost somebody, but it seemed as if the Darcys lost the most of all.
Fourteen
It had been the turn of summer when Matthew Wickham, all packed up for his return to London with clean clothes and Warburtons bread, had ventured up to the Lantern and found her there in the soft light of dusk. The evening air was still warm, the house silent, the grounds dark. She was drinking a can of lager and smoking a cigarette, until she coughed and spluttered, stubbing it out and placing it in the empty can. She was always very vigilant about the risks of forest fires, he remembered.
He walked over and pulled her under the blanket with him, and she nestled into the crook of his arm and snuggled into him in the same familiar way that she had for as long as he could remember; he knew it was a comfort, an escape from the grief and confusion still abound at Pemberley. They settled in the silence, gazing down at the dark building nestled in the land below.
“Come a little closer,” he murmured.
“Closer?”
“Yes.”
“This close?”
Her face was inches away from his now, he could see the traces of mascara in the corner of her eye, could smell the sunscreen she had applied earlier that day, the soft pinkness of her lips caused by that shiny lip balm she used. He moved closer, so he could feel the heat of her breath on his face, the smell of tobacco on her skin. He looked down at her mouth, she was biting her lip and he knew she was nervous. She pressed her head against his own, a giggle escaping and lingering in the air.
This was serious now though because they both knew that this would change everything, this one event would change their friendship irrevocably. He could see the reticence in her eyes, could see her reluctance, understood it, but he did it anyway, kissing her fully, feeling her yield to his embrace.
It had been nearly eighteen years, but every minute detail of that night, fuelled by cheap beer and adrenaline, was still branded on his memory.
Lizzy took her well-worn route up the Lantern, she needed to feel the cool morning air in her nostrils and shake the cobwebs out of her head. It was always good to get up onto the moorland before the fell runners and the mountain bikers and the dog walkers, just so she could feel completely alone.
After only five minutes of walking up Lime Avenue, the grand parade of lime trees that lined the old south drive, she could no longer hear the gardening team trimming the hedges, couldn’t see anyone else on the dewy grass paths that led up and out of the estate. She plodded on up the small incline and through the gate that led into Knightslow, the medieval wood with its ancient arcing trees that hid secrets and spectres, and then out into the wide expanse of the parkland which lay before her, vast and indifferent.
There was no-one else this far into the park so early on a Sunday morning, the formal gardens of Pemberley were always so full of people that she found she basked in the isolation of the empty hills. She was halfway up her final ascent when the heavens opened, and the rain began to pour. Running the last stretch of the way, she heaved herself over the stile, and found relative shelter under the canopy of oaks and sycamores in Lantern Wood, sprinting awkwardly towards the shelter that would be found in George Darcy’s folly.
“Oh, hello,” she hadn’t expected to see him.
“Lizzy,” he was shocked, equally as surprised to see her there. “I didn’t think you came up here anymore.”
“Oh, I do,” she rose to her feet, shifting nervously.
“Right,” he sat down.
She stood awkwardly before taking a seat next to him on the smooth step that led the way into the stone structure. There was that feeling again, those words getting ready to burst out of her mouth; but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to say them yet, wasn’t sure if she needed to.
“Lizard, we need to talk.”
She feigned surprise before realising it was pointless; he knew her like the back of his hand
. This was going to be a hard conversation. They had been dancing this familiar dance for a long time now, but he knew that it had been for too long. Now they were just stepping on each other’s toes, afraid to let go and spin off across the dancefloor in case the melody was just too different, the steps too cumbersome.
But they both knew it was time, and she nodded.
“We do.”
“This place…being up here,” he said, grasping at a memory he had hidden away. “It always reminds me of you. Everything here reminds me of you. I was up in the long gallery yesterday…” the words stuck in his throat, hard to say as he remembered, “…can you remember when we danced?”
It flashed into his head, like a scene from a film, a flashback sequence replaying in glorious technicolour. They were sitting there on her bed, watching the little portable black and white television flicker away in the darkness; the late night film that neither of them were watching, the nervous thud of his heart as he waited for the right time, the time that never arrived, the heart that flickered and jumped as she leaned on him, her head on his shoulder, her face temptingly close.
She remembered it, the details faded around the edges, had already disappeared into the periphery, but the feeling, the anticipation… yes, she remembered that, all too well. How her fingers had felt against the soft wool of his jumper, how he had smelled like soap and washing powder, how she wanted him to make the first move, scared of the rejection in case she had misunderstood.
He had jumped up, turned off the television, putting on the Nina Simone record from Winston’s collection, the voice crackling into life, the music echoing across into the long gallery. He had taken her by the hand and led her into the moonlight, pulling her into a dance, shuffling and turning on the wooden floor boards as the moonlight shone, casting the shadow of the sash window onto the floor like a checkerboard. It had felt surreal, and as sweet and heady as the lilac wine in the lyrics of the song.
They were treading water in the shared memory, the time when they were almost something bigger than what they were. If she thought about it, she could still smell the wax on the newly polished floor, could still hear the pounding of his heartbeat against his chest.
Becoming Lady Darcy Page 22
