by Rosie Thomas
Helen loved this library. It had existed for hundreds of years for the quiet academic pursuits which were going ahead now in exactly the way they always had. It was the easiest place in the world to concentrate.
Helen was reading The Rape of the Lock. Pope’s elegantly frivolous couplets danced in her head, suiting her mood to perfection. She felt calm and secure. Darcy and she understood each other. Her friends had scored a huge success. All was as it should be.
She was so intent on her book that it was a long time before she became aware of someone pacing up and down the aisle, stopping and moving hurriedly on again. Looking for somebody.
Tom was almost alongside her when she looked up and, with astonishment, saw who it was. She couldn’t have imagined that Tom, so deeply engrossed in his theatre world, would even know that this place existed. His peacock blue leather jacket looked very out of place among the ranks of crumpled dons and shabby students. And what could be so important that he would look for her here?
He leaned over the partition of Helen’s desk.
‘Thank God I’ve found you. D’you really sit in this warren all day?’ He was gathering up her books and papers. ‘Come on, Helen, I need you.’
‘Ssshh.’ There was a sibilant whisper from the girl in the seat next to Helen’s.
‘What’s going on?’ Helen asked, bewildered. She was delighted to see him because it meant that they were completely friends again. But she saw that he was preoccupied, and serious.
‘Will you be quiet?’ hissed the girl, desperately.
Tom took Helen’s arm and half dragged her from the room. She could hear the tutting of irritation behind them. Tom was hustling her down the steps so fast that she almost fell.
‘I know,’ she panted. ‘Pansy’s broken her ankle. You want me to step in and play Rosalind. “A second, even brighter star is born.”’
‘Don’t joke,’ Tom groaned. ‘It’s infinitely worse.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It’s Oliver.’
Helen went cold. The smile froze on her face. ‘Tell me. Tell me what’s happened. Now, Tom.’
‘Can’t you guess?’
Helen saw with a rush of relief that Tom was angry. Oliver wasn’t hurt, then.
‘No, I can’t guess,’ she answered a little sharply. Then, ‘Wait … yes, I can. It’s Pansy, isn’t it?’
‘Got it in one,’ Tom answered grimly. He had steered her across the curve of the High and now they were plunging down the narrow, cobbled lane that led to the back of Christ Church and Oliver’s rooms in Canterbury Quad. Glancing sideways, Helen saw that Tom’s face was contracted into a black frown. He was very angry and, more than that, he was anxious.
Helen had never glimpsed anxiety in him before.
‘What has happened?’ she asked again, more gently.
Tom slackened his pace. ‘I’d better explain before we get there. Of course it’s Pansy. Pansy floating through the world like a piece of thistledown with never a thought in her lovely head. Pansy wanted Stephen Spurring, God knows why.’ Tom was contemptuous. ‘So she reached out her velvet paw and took him. As if she couldn’t have waited. Thoughtless bitch.’
He sounded bitter too. Helen wondered wryly how much of this outburst was to do with Tom still wanting Pansy for himself.
‘When?’ she asked.
Tom made an impatient gesture. ‘Oh, last night. After the show. There was lots of boozing and horsing around. You saw the way it was going, didn’t you, before Darcy took you away?’
‘I saw Stephen with Beatrice, and Masefield Warren, and Their Royal Highnesses.’ This was Tom and Helen’s name for Oliver’s parents, a joke they had shared at Montcalm. The Christmas Vacation seemed ages ago now. ‘What can have happened with everyone looking on?’
‘Much later. Almost everyone had gone. Somehow poor Beatrice had been packed off home. There was me, and Oliver, and a few others. And Stephen sitting beside Pansy on the sofa in her dressing room. Pansy gave Stephen a long look out of those purple eyes of hers. Then, very slowly, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth. I saw his face across the room. He looked as if someone had just handed him the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Then, a minute later, they were gone.’
Helen remembered Stephen springing up the steps to Pansy’s dressing room. Then she saw Chloe sitting in a patch of sunlight on the faded Persian rug, drinking a toast in cold coffee.
‘Was Chloe there?’
‘Chloe? Oh, I see. No, she’d left. But Oliver was, and you can guess how the night panned out after that.’ In spite of himself a flash of cynical amusement showed in Tom’s face. ‘He embarked at once on a binge of epic proportions. He’s destroying himself, but he’s doing it in the grand style. Champagne, with brandy chasers. I stayed up with him. My naive plan was to see him through the worst in a brotherly way, put him to bed when the time came, and follow up in the morning with Alka-Seltzer and some brisk advice to forget all about her.’
‘That wouldn’t have worked,’ Helen said sadly. There was nothing in the story that amused her, and a heavy, uncomfortable weight of foreboding pressed on her.
They passed through the College gates. It was the middle of a busy afternoon and hurrying people jostled past them. A forest of bicycles stood tangled against a sunny stone wall.
‘No, it didn’t,’ Tom agreed. ‘There was a kind of grimness about his hitting the bottle that I’ve never seen in him before. We’ve got drunk together often enough, God knows. But last night it was different. He was determined to go on, and on. I tried to get him to talk, but he wasn’t interested. He got very aggressive when I tried to take the bottle away. And I wouldn’t fancy a fight with Oliver, drunk or sober. In the end it was me who collapsed.’
Helen nodded. ‘And today?’
‘The same.’
‘Poor Oliver,’ she said.
‘Poor nothing.’ Tom’s anger flashed up again. ‘What Oliver chooses to do to himself is Oliver’s business, any week except this week. But tonight, and for the next ten nights, he has to get on that stage and act. Now he says that he won’t do it. I’ll see that he does, but I won’t have him walking through it pissed. Jesus, I hate all this backstage drama. It’s unprofessional.’ To Tom that was the sharpest criticism of all. Helen almost laughed.
‘They aren’t professionals.’
‘They are while they’re working for me.’
Yes, Helen thought. You’ll see to that.
‘You know,’ Tom said, ‘I saw all this coming. I had a row with Pansy about it. In the end she told me – promised me – that she would keep Oliver happy until the show was on.’
So that explained the raised voices she had heard in Pansy’s room.
‘You mean you arranged it between you in advance? Rather cold-blooded, isn’t it?’ Only last night she had thought that Pansy and Oliver looked the perfect couple again.
‘Yes,’ Tom said levelly. ‘That’s the way it often has to be, Helen. Not pretty, but realistic.’
They reached the low doorway in Canterbury Quad that led to Oliver’s rooms. Helen read the white-painted name board again, Lord Oliver Mortimore. Tom turned in the doorway.
‘As it happens I wasn’t quite realistic enough. Pansy only understands surfaces. I should have known that as soon as the first night was over, and she was sure of a critical success, she would think that the rest of the run wasn’t important. She wanted to go off with Stephen Spurring, and that was what mattered.’
Helen understood. But she was pricked by what she saw as Tom’s coldness. Her sympathy was all with Oliver. He had lost Pansy now, and Helen remembered vividly what that loss felt like.
‘What do you want from me, then?’ she asked flatly. They stood at the foot of the staircase. Tom’s hand was resting on the newel-post, very close to her own, but neither of them moved. They looked into each other’s eyes, weighing up.
Then Tom said, ‘I need your help. I think Oliver will listen to you. He was … talking about you, last night
.’
There was a long silence. Looking away from Tom, Helen could see the corner of Oliver’s door, shut fast. If there was anything she could do for him, of course she would do it. And in spite of her irritation with him, she was flattered that Tom had thought of asking her for help.
‘Please, Helen,’ Tom said, very quietly.
‘I’m coming,’ she answered. They went up the curve of stairs to Oliver’s door in silence.
Whatever chaos of empty bottles and overturned furniture Helen might have been expecting, she was surprised to see that everything looked as usual. Oliver’s long, elegant room with its view of the classic proportions of the Quad was tidy, quiet and sunlit. Oliver himself was sitting in an armchair, his clean white shirt accentuating his healthy tan. There was a half-empty bottle of white wine at his elbow, and a glass in his hand. He was unshaven, and his eyes glittered, but otherwise he looked as he always did. Then Helen saw the fan-shape of his key ring, with the little silver propelling pencil, thrown down on a low table beside him.
Slowly, Oliver moved his head to look at them.
‘I said no, Hart. I don’t want to act in your play. I want to sit here on my own and get quietly drunk. Is that unreasonable?’
Helen realised that he was talking with exaggerated care. He was drunk already, she saw, and her heart sank.
‘Yes, under the circumstances,’ Tom said crisply. He glanced at his watch. ‘Three o’clock. I’ll be back at six-thirty to take you to the theatre, and I want you sober. You said you’d like to see Helen. Here she is. Now get a grip on yourself.’
Tom picked up the bottle of wine and went to the door. His face softened as he looked back at Helen.
‘Can you cope?’ he asked.
She nodded, but she was very afraid that she couldn’t.
‘Helen, thank you. I knew that you at least wouldn’t let me down.’
The door closed behind him and she looked at it until she was forced to accept that he was gone.
‘Screw your play,’ Oliver called. Then he sank back into his chair and wearily shut his eyes. ‘And everything else.’ His hand groped for the bottle of wine, then he remembered that Tom had taken it. He laughed, scornful. ‘Does he really imagine that there isn’t any more? Be a darling and bring us another bottle from the fridge. The kitchen’s out on the staircase.’
‘No,’ Helen said. ‘But I’ll make us some tea.’
‘I don’t want bloody tea,’ Oliver said, but she brought it anyway. Carefully she set the tray down between them and then knelt beside his chair to pour it.
‘I’m sorry about Pansy,’ she said at last, her head still bent over the teacups.
‘Oh, Pansy doesn’t matter. Not now, anyway.’ He took his cup and wound his fingers around it as though his hands were cold. ‘Pansy’s going is just a symptom.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of the awful, repetitive sameness of everything. I thought, for a little while, that Pansy was going to be something special. But no. She turns out to be just as monotonously rotten as everything else.’
Suddenly, Oliver reached out and tangled his fingers in Helen’s mass of dark hair. He drew her head towards him until it rested against him. Somehow she felt at once how tired he was. His usual restless energy had seeped away, and now he was simply weary. For a moment they sat quietly. Helen felt charged with sympathy for him, and at the same time impotent to dispel the strange blackness that seemed to be gaining the upper hand inside him.
Oliver lifted one of the black curls and watched it wind around his finger. ‘I should have held on to you, Helen Brown, while I had you. You’re calm, and reasonable. You almost had me convinced I could be the same.’
Helen sat motionless, not trusting herself to speak. She was only aware of fear that it would all start up again inside her, that Oliver would come back to tear like a storm through the flat, ordered landscape of her life.
Oliver went on, half to himself. ‘But I wouldn’t have made you happy, you know. What happened was the best thing. I did feel guilty, but I don’t any more.’
Did giving me the money help? Helen wondered. The money that was all gone now, but had kept her family for a few vital weeks. She wanted to talk about it, but Oliver’s train of thought was moving rapidly, half connectedly on.
‘And now it’s too late. I suppose you’re Darcy’s, now.’
‘I’m not anyone’s,’ she protested gently, but Oliver was not to be interrupted.
‘Much better,’ he was saying. ‘Much, much better. I like him, you know. The trouble is just that he doesn’t like me. Not that I’ve ever given him any reason to. Ever since we were tiny, I’ve acted as if he was some kind of not very subtle joke. Not calculated to make people like you, that.’ Suddenly he shivered violently. ‘Christ, I’m so cold.’
Helen stood up and wrapped her arms around him, resting her cheek against his hair. The true gold reminded her of how she had seen the sun shining through Darcy’s and, for a split second, confused him with his brother.
‘How long have you been sitting here?’
‘No idea. Hours. Since last night.’ He looked round vaguely. ‘Hart got my scout in to clear up. And he made me change my shirt. The other one got muck on it.’
Suddenly, he laughed, and Helen saw thankfully that he looked almost himself. He had drunk two cups of tea, thirstily. ‘It doesn’t really suit him, playing nursemaid.’
Helen had been hunting in the bedroom, and now she produced a thick cable-knit sweater. ‘Come on. Let’s go out for a walk.’
Oliver pulled the sweater on gratefully, but he looked out at the bright afternoon unwillingly.
‘What for? At least let’s have a drink, first.’
‘No.’ Helen took his arm and began to steer him to the door. At first he pulled back angrily, but then he looked around the empty room, shivered again, and let her draw him away.
Helen walked out into the sunlight with Oliver leaning as heavily on her as if he were an invalid. They crossed the College and came out into Christ Church Meadows, open and inviting under the blue sky. Without speaking they took the majestic tree-lined avenue that led like an arrow to the river. There was a mist of pale spring-green everywhere, and the full-throated gurgle of wood-pigeons in the elm trees.
When they reached the river, they turned to walk past the College boathouses. The big double doors of several of them stood open, and they peered to see the glossy shells of rowing eights stacked inside. The air smelt of varnish and linseed oil.
Oliver paused to watch a couple of eights flash past on the water, sending up rainbowed droplets of spray. The oarsmen strained forward and the coxes sat hunched forward, calling the strokes. A rowing coach bicycled past on the towpath, anxious, his stopwatch bumping against his chest.
‘I used to row at Eton,’ Oliver said, ‘until it struck me that there have to be at least a thousand easier ways of getting from A to B.’
There was a pleasant ordinariness in their laughter that was like music to Helen.
Slowly they made two circuits of the Meadows. Oliver kept his arm firmly linked in hers, but otherwise they might have been enjoying any pleasant afternoon stroll. When they spoke at all, it was desultorily, about their immediate surroundings.
At last they stopped on the wide gravel walkway in front of Meadow Building. The sun had disappeared behind it and the air was suddenly cold.
‘Six-fifteen,’ she said, as coolly as she could. ‘We must go back to meet Tom.’
When she looked up into Oliver’s face, she saw that the ominous glitter had faded from his eyes. His voice sounded natural and steady again. She thought that he must be almost sober. She would have to suggest it to him now.
‘You will go on, won’t you? Oliver, there’s no-one else to take your part. You must do it, for Tom’s sake.’
Oliver stared back down the long avenue of elms. Helen heard him jingling his key ring in his pocket. At last he shrugged.
‘I suppose I have to.’ His voice wa
s flat.
Quickly, before he could change his mind, Helen steered him back to his rooms. Tom was waiting for them. His black brows went up a fraction, and Helen nodded swiftly to reassure him.
Silently his mouth framed the words. ‘Thank you.’
With breathtaking speed, they hustled Oliver between them to the theatre.
‘We can do it, between us,’ Tom whispered to her. ‘Keep him on the rails, just for another few days. And by then the worst will be over. I’ve seen him in these black fits before, although never quite as bad as this, and they don’t last for ever.’
I hope you’re right, Helen thought grimly.
Tom supervised Oliver’s application of his make-up, waited as he changed into his costume. Orlando began to appear again out of the white-faced, mechanically moving Oliver.
Helen sat in an armchair watching, and listening to Tom’s brisk instructions. Once or twice she went outside to bring them coffee in paper cups from the vending machine beside the stage door.
Soon a stagehand peered into the dressing room.
‘Ten minutes.’
‘I must do a quick round of everyone else,’ Tom said. ‘You’re not the only actor in this show.’ There was no question that he would betray his anxiety to Oliver.
When he had gone, Oliver’s reflection in the wide mirror stared back at Helen. He looked odd with his layer of lurid make-up.
‘Don’t go, will you?’ he said.
‘No, I won’t go if you’d like me to stay here.’
The head reappeared in the doorway. ‘Five minutes. On stage, Oliver.’
He stood up, then slammed his fist down so hard on the table that the clutter of tubes and jars rattled.
‘Why in God’s name am I doing this? I don’t want to go out there and be stared at. And I don’t want to act opposite her. How can I?’
Helen jumped to her feet.
‘There isn’t time for this now. They’re waiting.’
‘Let them wait. I want just one drink.’
