by Gemma Fox
When Carol looked back not only had the mint gone but so had her glass, her coffee, the remains of her dessert and all the cutlery. She looked at the gang. ‘It’s not big and it’s not clever,’ she said with grudging admiration.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, lighten up. Diana said he’d be here,’ said Jan. ‘Let’s talk about something more serious, like the severe lack of alcohol.’
‘We could go down to the off-licence and buy a few more bottles of wine, Di, unless you’re up for the water trick—or is that just for weddings and the faithful few?’ Netty mimed a magician’s pass over the carafe of water on the table. Diana rolled her eyes and looked heavenwards while Netty continued, ‘It never occurred to me that the place would be dry. The backstage crew have all got the shakes from withdrawal symptoms.’
Grateful to be rescued, Carol nodded. ‘Just tell people if they want to have wine to go and buy some.’
Diana nodded and then very earnestly scribbled a note down on the pad beside her plate. Carol smiled. It was Netty’s turn to roll her eyes and look heavenwards.
The instructions on the invitation were that although Burbeck House was relaxed about appearance, guests and delegates would be expected to dress smartly for dinner. Netty had taken that as a green light to drag out a sparkly cerise and silver cocktail frock from somewhere dark and dangerous that must lead straight back to the eighties, adding a pair of impossibly strappy killer-heeled sandals and a whole heap of diamanté. Everyone else had gone for smart casual or close to it—not that Netty appeared to mind in the least. She was the kind of person who had enough front to carry off wearing a wetsuit and tiara.
Carol had thought very carefully about the clothes she’d brought with her; she might be nearly forty but she didn’t want people to think that she had let herself go. She was wearing a long cotton jersey dress in navy, bias cut, with thin straps and a scooped neck that emphasised her narrow waist, toned body and showed off nicely tanned shoulders. She had added just enough makeup to emphasise those great big blue-green eyes and, with a hint of lipstick, she looked good. Very good.
Earlier, drawing and smudging kohl round her eyes, hunched over the child-sized sink in the communal bathroom next to the girls’ dormitory, Carol had had to spend a while persuading herself that all this effort wasn’t for Gareth—at least it wasn’t just for Gareth. No, not just for him. She wanted to look good for herself.
Alongside her, Netty had grinned from behind her makeup box, face contorting so that she could outline her lips with a bright pink pencil.
‘Just like the good old days, eh? Us lot getting all dolled up in the girls’ loos for a night on the town. Shame we haven’t got any panstick, re ally. You remember the stage makeup Miss Haze used to make us wear for the performances? It was like slapping on magnolia emulsion mixed with margarine.’
‘I’m sure if you ask, Diana has probably got some somewhere.’
Netty laughed. Her makeup kit had lots of lift-out layered trays that were now spread across the sink and adjoining bench; they looked like a cross between a mechanic’s tool box and an artist’s palette.
Carol, looking down at her own small makeup bag, said, ‘I see that you’ve come prepared.’
Netty—once she had blotted—sniffed. ‘Oh, come on, facing forty I need all the help I can get. Polyfilla, glass-fibre, sandpaper…’ She drew a hand over the trays like a market trader displaying her wares. ‘Anything you fancy, you just dive right in. I get a lot as samples from work. How about a teensy weensy bit of glitter? You’re looking a bit peaky.’
‘Uh, no, I’m fine, thanks.’ Carol turned her attention back to the mirror and the kohl.
‘Great to see everyone again, huh?’ There were the sounds of giggling coming from the dormitory, although it was hard to work out exactly who it was. Painstakingly Netty filled in her lips with a tiny brush. ‘It is going to be all right, you know,’ she said, eyes still firmly fixed on her reflection.
Carol looked up in surprise. ‘What is?’
Netty’s concentration didn’t waiver. ‘This whole weekend, the play—you meeting Gareth again.’
Carol stiffened and then attempted to sound casual. ‘It’s no big thing,’ she lied.
‘Yeah, right. You’re not fooling anybody, you know. Relax, it’ll be OK. Forty-eight hours on a magical mystery tour down memory lane and then nothing. Zilch, zippola. We meet up, we all cry buckets and on Sunday afternoon we’ll all go home back to our own lives. And before you say I’m being cynical I’m not—not at all. I just know it’s true. I went to a tech reunion last year with the crew I’d learned hairdressing with. Panda-eyes, mascara and big snotty hugs. It’s all very lovely but, trust me, it won’t make a blind bit of difference to your real life.’
Carol felt her colour draining. ‘What won’t?’
‘Old passions, old pleasure—old boyfriends. People change. They move on. They grow up. Even if you shag Gareth Howard blind all weekend, chances are that Monday morning, half-past seven, when you look in the bathroom mirror, nothing will have changed. Trust me, I’m a hairdresser.’
Carol felt a lump catch in her throat. ‘I—’ she began.
‘You what?’ said Netty, gaze swivelling to fix Carol’s eyes reflected in the mirror. ‘You are still carrying a torch for him, aren’t you?’
Carol nodded, not trusting herself to speak. How very silly it sounded spoken aloud.
‘Trust me, you’re way better sticking with the fantasy.’ Netty glanced over one shoulder in case there was anyone within earshot. ‘I’ve never told anyone this, not even Jan, but I had a crush for years on one of the boys in our year. Even after we left I used to fantasise about him and me. Sometimes it was wild sex and lots of snogging, but mostly it was all that happy-ever-after stuff. Two kids, him going off to work with me in a pinny. He worked in the bank in Belvedere for a while after we all left school. I’d volunteer to go and bank the takings from my mum’s salon. Twice a week, come rain, come shine, I’d toddle off down to Barclays in full makeup and an outfit to die for, and then after about a year he moved away. I was so gutted, I can’t tell you. And you know what? He’s going to be here this weekend.’ She smacked her lips and admired the effects.
‘re ally?’ said Carol incredulously. It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone else was dreaming about might-have-beens. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say something? Are you excited about seeing him again? How come you never told anybody? Who is it?’
Netty wound up a lipstick and dibbled the brush over the end to touch up a bald patch. ‘Peter Fleming.’
‘No, re ally? re ally? Not Peter Fleming?’ Carol couldn’t quite keep the incredulity out of her voice, despite trying re ally hard. Peter Fleming was real dyed-in-the-wool ginger, with hair the colour of bright copper and skin the colour of skimmed milk, and enough freckles to keep a dot-to-dot fanatic happy for hours. She had never dared let her mind wander to where exactly the freckles might stop—did freckles fade just below the collar or were they an all-over thing? Netty had them too but in a cute all-over-the-nose way. Carol tried to drag her mind from what might happen if two freckly people had kids. Was there an optimum moment when they just had one big all-over freckle?
‘Peter Fleming?’ she repeated.
He was nice enough but he had never struck Carol as sex on a stick, and certainly not the kind of man or boy that someone like Netty would be interested in.
Netty nodded. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, as if she could read Carol’s mind—except perhaps for the freckle thing. ‘Strange but true. Can you imagine what Adie would have said if he’d known? He would never have let me live it down. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Between you, you would have made mincemeat of me, and despite what you think I’m not as tough as I look. So I just admired and lusted after him from a distance.’
‘You lusted after Peter Fleming?’ said Carol.
Netty pulled a don’t-push-your-luck face.
‘OK, OK—so are you excited about seeing him again?’
Carol asked struggling to gain some ground.
Netty shook her head. ‘Nope, not so much as a flutter. You see, unlike you, I’ve already tried living the dream.’ She said the last few words in a hideously camp American accent and waved her hand dramatically across the mirror, tracing the arc of a cartoon shooting star.
‘re ally?’ said Carol, aware that her mouth was open, aware that with one eye made up and the other one bare she looked daft, but who cared. ‘You tried living the dream with Peter Fleming?’
‘Don’t say it like that,’ growled Netty. ‘Yes, with Peter Fleming. I did see him again, we did meet up. It was maybe ten years ago, in a supermarket of all places. By coincidence we were both home for a visit, so we had a coffee and—well, we flirted and laughed and reminisced about the good old days and then I’m buggered if he didn’t ask me out. He said he had always had this thing about me and that he thought our meeting up again was fate.’ Netty paused.
Carol waved her on. ‘For God’s sake, don’t stop there—what happened?’
Netty pulled out an eye pencil. ‘Fate has got a very nasty sense of humour. It was a total and utter disaster. We had nothing in common, nothing at all, zilch, zippo, nada. They had all gone, my fantasies, my dreams—his too—just ashes, dust, a mirage.’
‘Oh, Netty,’ murmured Carol as she heard the catch in Netty’s voice. ‘I’m so sorry. I’d no idea.’
Netty snorted. ‘Don’t look like that. It was fine. re ally. Take my advice. Monday morning, take a look in the bathroom mirror, and see if anything has changed.’
‘Do you think I should say a few words now?’
Carol swung round in surprise, snapped back to the present by Diana’s voice. ‘What?’
Diana, sitting beside her, was clutching a notepad. ‘I re ally ought to have said something before supper started, but I would have liked everyone to have been here.’ She glanced round the room, heaving with the rest of the cast and crew. Miss Haze had taken her place on the top table, alongside Mr Bearman. Only Macbeth and Lady Macduff were now conspicuous by their absence.
‘I think you should go for it,’ said Carol, nodding. ‘God alone knows what time—’ she tripped clumsily over Gareth’s name—‘the others will be getting here.’
‘That’s true.’ Diana nodded and, clearing her throat nervously, got to her feet. A little further down the table Adie obliged by banging a spoon against one of the institutional tumblers. The room quietened for an instant, Diana reddened and then beamed at the assembled group. When people realised who it was, there was a lot of good-natured rumbling and whistling and clapping, which swiftly faded into a warm convivial silence.
‘Good evening,’ Diana said hesitantly. ‘I’m not very good at this kind of thing; I’m much happier behind the scenes but I would like to say how wonderful it is to see everyone again. Thank you for making the effort to drive all this way. I was worried you might not come or that only a few of you would say yes—but it looks at the moment as though we will be having a hundred per cent turn-out. Also I have to apologise for the fact that we’re going to be staying in dormitories.’
‘Enough with the dormitories already,’ growled Netty, with a heavy New York Jewish accent. ‘We don’t mind, and if we do—well, what can ya do?’
There was a ripple of laughter from the room.
Hitting her stride, Diana flipped the page on her notebook and half reading, half remembering, launched into her spiel. ‘This evening is quite informal, giving everyone a chance to catch up and renew old friendships—and then tomorrow rehearsals will start in earnest after breakfast at ten in the conference room at the end of the corridor. It will be marked so there is no need to worry about finding it. If everyone could at least come to the first get-together, that would be lovely. This is meant to be fun, but if we’re going to pull it off it also includes quite a lot of work. I’ve drawn up a rehearsal schedule, which everyone should have.’ She waved a photocopied sheet in the air. ‘Those people who aren’t needed are very welcome to use the grounds, there’s an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts—details of the facilities are on the sheet too—and there’s the village, which is particularly attractive.’ She paused and then laughed. ‘Sorry, I sound like a bad travel brochure but there is just so much to remember. The plan—as I hope you all know now—is to put on a rehearsed reading of Macbeth on Sunday afternoon. I am hoping all your families as well as lots of other old schoolfriends will turn up to share the performance and the strawberry tea afterwards.’ Diana giggled nervously. ‘I think that’s about it, actually. Oh, except to say that although the hall hasn’t got a bar you are very welcome to bring wine or whatever in for supper. And besides that, I just wanted to say how very nice it is to see you all again and I hope you enjoy the weekend.’ And with this, Diana collapsed into her chair with a grin, to a round of rapturous applause.
Adie got to his feet, lifting a glass of squash in a toast. ‘Thank you for the itinerary, Judith Chalmers. I think we should give Diana a big hand for arranging this weekend and I imagine we are all agreed that she is totally mad to take this on—so no change there. The teetotal toast is Diana.’
The response went around the room like a low rumble of thunder. ‘Diana.’
Diana blushed crimson and seemed about to say something, when at that precise moment Carol caught a movement at the corner of her eye and felt her stomach do that instinctive flippy floppy nippy happy thing. Standing on the other side of the room, framed by the French windows, was Gareth Howard and, worse still, he looked gorgeous, a stray breeze ruffling his dark hair. Merchant Ivory couldn’t have staged a better entrance. To her total amazement he scanned the room and, as their eyes met, Gareth grinned, a big warm, pleased-to-see-you grin, and then raised a hand in salute.
Oh my God, Carol thought, blushing furiously, trying very hard not to overreact as she smiled back. Resisting the temptation to wave like a demented chimp, Carol coolly tipped her fingers in his direction before putting her hand over her mouth and huffing noisily, wondering if her breath smelled and whether she had any mints in her handbag. Crazy. Was it worse waiting for him or him showing up? Carol’s stomach did another little back flip with a halfpike and twist as he made his way across the dining room towards her.
Away over her shoulder Adie’s remarks, despite the peels of laughter from the diners, had become no more than a distant drone. Carol felt hot and then cold and then she gasped as Fiona slipped in through the door behind Gareth and he caught hold of her arm and guided her between the diners towards the top table.
Gareth and Fiona. Oh God, please, please, don’t let them be a couple, Carol thought as her heart was holed and sank.
But as he walked up towards the table it was Carol Gareth was looking at; she didn’t know whether to feel flattered or intimidated. It was a very close-run thing.
‘Would you like to say a few words?’ Carol looked up dumbly into Adie’s face as he spoke to her.
‘What?’ she snapped.
Adie smiled and then said more slowly, ‘Watch my lips—I thought you said, when we were walking back from the pub, that you would like to say something too. A few words, remember?’
Carol shook her head. ‘No, no—it’s fine, you’ve said everything,’ she said hurriedly. The last thing she wanted to do now was speak publicly, not while Gareth was watching. She was just bound to say something stupid and make a complete and utter tit of herself.
Adie shrugged and turning back to his audience, lifted his hands in a fair impression of a Roman emperor. ‘In which case, let the games commence.’ His words brought another explosive round of applause, not to mention much stamping and a volley of whooping cheers from the assembled cast and crew.
A little way along the table Fiona settled into her chair, helped by Gareth, and then he made his way back along to Carol and said warmly, ‘Hi, great to see you. How have you been?’ His voice was as low and dark and sensual as brown velvet, and hearing him speak again after all these years made Carol’s scalp
tingle.
She opened her mouth to say something but before Carol could speak Gareth leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about you,’ he purred. ‘You look absolutely fantastic.’
Carol tried very hard to think of something witty to say, something sharp and clever, but settled for giggling inanely instead and saying, ‘Do I? re ally? Right—OK. Um, you too. Are you and Fiona, you know…’ she nodded in Fiona’s general direction while praying the ground would open up and swallow her whole. ‘You know…’
Gareth pulled a face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you.’
Carol felt as if she was clinging on by her fingertips to any remaining shreds of a decent opening conversation. ‘You and Fiona, are you—are you a couple?’ she stammered. ‘I mean, you arrived together.’ It was too big a question too soon.
‘I met her in the car park just now. We couldn’t find the way in,’ he said.
Carol was so overcome by relief she felt dizzy.
FIVE
All day long Leonora had been unable to shake the sensation that she was walking through a dream or maybe an abandoned film set, after the actors had left. The thought made her shiver; perhaps she wasn’t so far from the truth.
What heightened the feeling was that the whole house, particularly their bedroom, was deliberately theatrical. In the master bedroom a huge bowed double-fronted walnut wardrobe dominated one wall. It had been there when they bought the house, far too heavy and too expensive to be moved and far too wonderful, far too The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to be smashed up and skipped. So as an homage to the wardrobe they had decorated the walls with period flock paper—brothel paper, Gareth called it—in the richest purples and golds, adding matching velvet curtains that hung from floor to ceiling on gothic black poles. There were brass and crystal sconces for light fittings, a great big brass bed with white linen bedclothes and a crushed velvet throw the colour of ripe aubergines. The room was as rich as a jewel box and—it occurred to Leonora, still with the shiver lingering in her blood like ice crystals—almost as cold.
