Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  Then quite soon, Helen saw that Darcy cared about her too. He was very gentle, almost tentative in suggesting places that they might go together, diffident in asking when he could see her again. But there was no pressure from him. Only once or twice, from the look in his eyes, did she see that she was more to him than just a friend to share his walks and meditative pints in country pubs.

  The implications of that stabbed Helen with anxiety.

  I shouldn’t let this happen, she told herself. It isn’t fair to him. But when she half resolved to see less of him, she missed his company at once. Why? she thought. Why cut off something that gives pleasure to us both out of some vague, groundless fear? I don’t want not to see Darcy any more. And so they had gone on together.

  Without having talked about it, they had both accepted that their relationship was an exclusive one. They never saw anyone else. Helen never mentioned Darcy at Follies, and now they usually met in other places.

  They’re all busy, Helen thought defensively. After the play is over, perhaps then we can all meet together. But the prospect was not an inviting one, and she put it quickly out of her mind.

  One day Darcy took her to Mere.

  The working half of the Montcalm estate was centred on a low-lying Cotswold village, honey-coloured stone cottages lying in a fold of rich farmland. As they drove through Mere village, Helen noticed that the pub sign was a brightly painted coat of arms with the name ‘Mortimore Arms’ above it. Almost simultaneously she saw a pair of farmers talking by the roadside. They touched their caps in greeting to Darcy as he drove past. Of course, she told herself. Darcy would be known and liked here, in his own home. It was only the rest of the world that didn’t care about him any more than he cared about it.

  Mere House itself looked different from the rest of the village. It was a low, grey house, very old, set slightly forbiddingly against a belt of dark yew hedges. There was nothing of the stately home about it. It was solid, square and functional, a country landowner’s home without architectural frills or unnecessary decoration. Darcy told her that it had been the original family seat before the eighteenth-century Mortimores became gradually more powerful and, with the power, hugely wealthy. They had built Montcalm and settled to a fashionable life amongst their terraces and parterres, away from the business of the land. But the sons of the family had traditionally lived at Mere before inheriting, overseeing the business of the estates and the comings and goings of the tenant farms.

  Darcy led her round to the front of the house. The paving under the small, heavily leaded windows was cracked and lined with dark green moss. Under the yew hedges were great clumps of daffodils, palest cream to brazen orange. The land dropped away in front of them towards the village, newly ploughed, dark soil alternating with clipped pasture. In the quiet Helen could hear the steady chug of a tractor and, carried on the wind, the high bleat of new lambs.

  Darcy’s eyes were on her face, turned slightly away from him as she looked at the view. From the placid, well-ordered landscape under the spring sunshine she turned back to the house. It looked as if it had been standing there for ever. Back into her mind’s eye came Montcalm with its fantastic turrets, pinnacles and balustrades.

  ‘Why did they bother?’ she murmured to Darcy, laughing.

  ‘My feelings exactly.’ There was clear approval in his eyes. ‘You like this better?’

  Helen hesitated for a minute, then said softly, ‘Yes.’

  Darcy looked out across the fields again. ‘I love it,’ he said simply. ‘I shall miss it when I have to … leave.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But one day, just the same.’

  The wind carried birdsong, and the noise of the tractor as it trailed evenly up and down the long field.

  ‘Come inside,’ Darcy said at last. ‘We’ll have some lunch, then I’ll take you round the farm.’

  There was no exquisite antique furniture or fragile porcelain here. Mere was furnished in heavy dark oak that looked as old and solid as the house itself. The rooms were shadowy, making the sunny patches that fell through the small windows look startlingly bright.

  In the big, square, low-beamed dining room there was only one place laid by the carver chair at the head of the table. A silver tankard stood ready with a bottle of beer beside a copy of Farmer’s Weekly.

  How lonely he must be, Helen thought, with a sudden shock of sympathy for the quiet man beside her. The solitary place setting looked so isolated in this silent, sombre room. Mere House would have to be filled with the noise and activity of a huge family, she reflected, before it would feel homely.

  ‘I didn’t tell Mrs Maitland that you were coming,’ Darcy confessed. ‘There’d have been a huge to-do of preparation. I’ll call her and tell her now.’ He pressed an old-fashioned bell. From the time that it took Mrs Maitland to arrive, Helen guessed that the kitchen quarters were miles away. While they waited, Darcy poured her a glass of sherry. Helen noticed that the bottle was slightly dusty. Evidently Darcy had few visitors.

  ‘Mrs Maitland?’ she asked, interested.

  ‘Mmm. Sister to your friend Mr Maitland at Montcalm. See how inbred we are? Not married, actually. The “Mrs” is a courtesy title, you know.’

  When the housekeeper arrived, Helen saw that she had the same imperviously correct exterior as her brother, but her manner was noticeably friendlier.

  ‘I’ve brought a guest for lunch, Mrs Maitland,’ Darcy said. ‘Bit short notice, I know, but I’m sure you’ll manage something.’

  ‘Well, my lord,’ she said, after only the briefest surprised glance at Helen, ‘we’ll rustle something up. It won’t be anything very smart, you know.’ They smiled at each other, evidently the best of friends. The ‘my lord’ had startled Helen for an instant. It was hard to remember who Darcy really was, and for a long time now he had been just ‘Darcy’ in her thoughts.

  When they sat down together at the long table Mrs Maitland served them with dark pink cold beef, tiny new potatoes and a crisp salad, and an impressive selection of home-made pickles. Everything was perfectly simple and very good.

  Helen looked at Darcy over her last spoonful of rhubarb compote and said, ‘I enjoyed that.’ They both knew that she meant more than just the food. It had felt very different, being with Darcy in his home rather than in the anonymity of the places they had visited together, but she was just as comfortable with him.

  He leaned back in his tall chair. Against the light from one of the windows in its deep embrasure she couldn’t see his face, but she heard much more than conventional politeness in his response.

  ‘I’m glad, Helen.’

  Be careful, Helen warned herself, and then countered it. Why? Darcy was her friend, a close and valuable friend now.

  In the mild afternoon sunshine, Darcy took her over the farm. The stone outbuildings rambled behind the main house. There were tall, mellow barns with steeply sloping roofs, long open-sided sheds displaying gleaming yellow and scarlet farm machinery, scrubbed pens with white-painted rails and busy farm-workers who greeted Darcy respectfully, and with obvious liking. Even Helen’s unpractised eye could see that Darcy ran Mere with loving efficiency.

  Around one corner they met a man in muddy wellingtons who was climbing into a Land Rover. Darcy shook his hand enthusiastically and introduced him as ‘Tim Oakshott. Best vet for miles around.’ Helen stood aside as the two men worried over a sick ewe, thinking with amusement how alike they looked. She recalled how she had thought at first, in the billiard room at Montcalm, that Darcy himself might just be a country vet.

  ‘I see a lot of Tim,’ Darcy told her as they waved at the disappearing Land Rover. ‘More than anyone else, I suppose. Except for you, now.’ And he gave her an odd, half-defiant sidelong glance.

  After their tour they had tea together in Darcy’s sitting room, a dark little bachelor den that doubled as an office. There was an old-fashioned desk in one corner, heaped with an orderly pile of papers.
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br />   At last, in the early evening, Darcy walked her back through the house and out to the sheltered corner where he had left his car. The farm seemed deserted now. Helen supposed that the farmhands had gone for the day, back to their honey-stone cottages in Mere village.

  It was very quiet.

  Darcy leaned past her to open the passenger door for her. Dimly, Helen heard the rooks calling in the tall elms two fields away.

  Then Darcy bent his head and kissed her. His mouth was gentle and his skin against hers was very soft. She saw that there was a tiny piece of yellow straw caught in the wool at the neck of his sweater. Then as her eyes travelled she saw his hair with the sun shining through it, and it was exactly the same gold as Oliver’s. A spasm of loss and longing, the more breathtaking because it was so unheralded, hit her so sharply that she almost doubled up.

  Then, just as quickly, it was gone. It was Darcy who was kissing her, in the sheltered angle of a stone wall with the sun on crumbling yellow lichens and the smell of woodsmoke in the air.

  Darcy lifted his head. ‘Helen?’ he said softly, and his voice was eager. ‘You … didn’t mind?’

  Helen saw him very clearly then, the plain, good-natured face and the colourless hair, nothing like Oliver’s now, falling over his eyes.

  She had the sense of standing at a junction, deciding which path to take. The world was very still and silent around them. How could she mind him kissing her, Darcy whom she liked and wanted to be with, just because he wasn’t someone else? Someone who didn’t even exist.

  ‘No,’ she said, so quietly that he had to stoop to hear. ‘I didn’t mind.’ Helen had to turn and duck into the car, away from the joy that leapt into his eyes.

  At the same moment that Helen was groping into Darcy’s car, suddenly shivery even in the spring-evening warmth, Tom Hart was closing his script on the final dress rehearsal of As You Like It. The actors crowded forward on the stage, jostling each other silently, waiting.

  Tom stood up and his seat snapped back, startling them with its clatter in the hushed auditorium. He walked thoughtfully down the aisle and stood below the stage, looking up at the circle of faces. The anxiety for his final verdict showed in each of them, from Pansy and Oliver to the non-speaking lords and shepherds. Everyone was fully costumed, and there was a faint starched whispering from Pansy’s petticoats under her hooped skirt.

  At last Tom’s face broke into a wide smile.

  ‘You deserve a huge success. That was sensational. Do it as well tomorrow night and we can’t fail.’

  A murmur of smiling relief spread round the circle.

  ‘You’ve all worked very hard. Thank you,’ Tom said simply.

  At once a clamour of talk broke out. Oliver pushed his way to the edge of the stage and looked down.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, grinning. ‘If anyone deserves a success, it’s you. You’re a slave-driving bastard, but you’re probably right to do it.’

  In Oliver’s wake, everyone else crowded forward, calling their thanks.

  ‘Don’t get excited yet,’ Tom told them coolly. ‘It’s tomorrow that counts.’ He turned away and picked up his jacket. He felt, as he always did when the direction of a play was as good as over, drained and exhausted. It felt like a very long time since he had seen the inside of his home.

  ‘Come and have something to eat,’ Pansy called after him.

  ‘No. I want to go home.’

  Tom walked through the darkening streets. The trees that lined the quiet roads were knobbed with sticky green buds, but he didn’t see them. His dark face was intent, marked by a slight frown.

  He had done all that he could do, now, but anxiety still nagged at him.

  Then when he reached his front door he shrugged as he took out his key. Just a few more days, he thought. If this fragile balance could only hold for just a few more days.

  Eight

  The theatre foyer was a seething mass of people. They spilled out through the open doors and stood in gossiping groups on the pavement. The constant new arrivals peered with interest at the production photographs in their glass boxes on the theatre walls. Oliver and Pansy as a pair of wistful boys in the mock wooing scene, jerkins and white open-throated shirts over breeches, stared out at the world.

  ‘Ve-ery fetching,’ someone said. ‘That’s Lord Oliver, but who’s the girl?’

  Inside, in a discreet corner, Tom looked at his watch. Seven-twenty. Another ten minutes to go. The audience was already beginning to filter into the auditorium, rustling programmes and banging seats and greeting each other across the aisles.

  Tom glanced at the heavy red curtains that hung motionless across the stage. Time to go backstage and wish everyone luck. Before he moved away he saw, in the centre front stalls, that two of the seats reserved for the critics were already occupied. The serious national dailies always sent someone to the annual Oxford University Dramatic Society’s major production and they would be here with added interest this year to see how Greg Hart’s son performed. Tom stuck his hands in his pockets and stared across at them. The bland-looking critics were talking desultorily together. He recognised both of them. They were important names, and he felt a momentary pleasure that the papers had sent their top men.

  I’ll show you, he thought. And you too, Greg. This may only be half-assed student drama, but by God it’s going to be the best.

  Now he saw Lord and Lady Montcalm sailing majestically towards their seats in the front stalls. A little flotilla of attendants and subordinates fussed behind them. Tom crossed over to speak to them and was greeted almost warmly.

  ‘So brave of you to cast Oliver,’ Lady Montcalm said. ‘I can’t imagine how you’ve coaxed anything out of him. He’s such a frivolous boy.’

  ‘Oh, I think he might surprise you tonight.’

  ‘And dear little Pansy, too.’

  Lord Montcalm’s face turned a little redder when he heard her name and he cleared his throat, running his finger around under his black tie.

  ‘Pansy’s quite an actress,’ Tom said. ‘I think she’s got a long way to go. I hope you enjoy the show. Will you excuse me now?’

  Backstage there were white faces under heavy make-up. Oliver’s gold head was bent as he stood already in position, waiting. Beside him the face of the actor playing old Adam was, at this close range, an unconvincing mass of brown and grey lines and wispy tufts of stuck-on grey hair.

  Stagehands in jeans and T-shirts were padding to and fro making last-minute checks. Tom saw Chloe in the wings. She winked at him.

  Tom went over to Oliver and touched him on the shoulder.

  ‘Good luck,’ he murmured. Oliver nodded absently and went on listening to the opening lines which pounded in his head. He would have admitted it to no-one, but he felt stifled with nerves. The noise of the audience, beyond the curtain, sounded a threatening muffled roar.

  When he was assured that everything was in its place on stage under the expert eyes of the stage manager and Chloe, Tom went up to the dressing rooms. Pansy was unconcernedly playing Scrabble with Anne, the actress taking the part of Celia. Pansy looked exquisite in her tight-waisted Elizabethan dress with its billowing skirts. The stiff little white half-ruff behind her head framed her lovely face. The heavy stage make-up only accentuated the perfection of her features and made the myriad blues in her eyes shine even brighter.

  ‘Good luck,’ Tom said to both of the girls.

  When he dropped a kiss on Pansy’s forehead, he thought for the hundredth time how sweet she smelt and tasted.

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ Pansy said. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tom stood in the doorway. ‘Pansy? Thanks for … holding off.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  A bell was ringing. One of the stagehands appeared.

  ‘One minute to curtain up.’

  Tom made his way back down to the wings. In an unoccupied corner he sat down on a bench and waited.

  Helen and Darcy arrived at the theatre just as the on
e-minute bell was ringing. Darcy had held back for so long that Helen was convinced they would be late. But in his loyalty to his brother he was determined not to miss a second, and he timed it perfectly. The house lights were dimming as they slipped into their seats and no-one even glanced at them.

  The curtain went up and with it the lights on Oliver. Helen heard the tiny gasp around her as he turned his head. He was beautiful. Even to Helen, who knew his face as well as her own, startlingly beautiful.

  His voice was perfectly measured as he spoke the opening lines.

  ‘As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion …’

  Slowly, very slowly, Helen breathed out. Darcy’s fingers, tangled so tightly in hers that it hurt, relaxed a little.

  They sank back into their seats, and let the magic of the play break over them.

  From her vantage point in the wings, Chloe knew that it was good. She had watched the production through so many times, but still tonight its streamlined fluency startled her. Not one movement or inflection was superfluous or wasted. Clever, clever Tom Hart, she thought.

  At the opposite side of the golden-lit arch of stage, Tom sat with his chin cupped in his hands. Around him the technicians worked and the actors waited for their entrances.

  The play was out of his hands now.

  It’s okay, Tom told himself. Oliver was doing fine. His physical presence was enough to hold them, but he could act too. In this role, at any rate. But the moment that Tom was waiting for came when Pansy made her first appearance.

  You can do it, the refrain ran in his head. Show them.

  And Pansy did.

  As soon as she began to speak, she held the packed theatre in the palm of her hand. There were subtle, intelligent nuances of feeling in her acting which never appeared in the Pansy of real life. She moved and breathed the merriment and poignancy of Rosalind as if no Pansy Warren had ever existed. She’s a born actress. Tom had known it ever since her first audition, and now he smiled in triumph. And as he listened to her liquid voice, something else sang in his ears.