by Judy Nunn
‘I’ll miss you too.’
‘The little prick’s still in makeup, I take it.’ Simon Scanlon materialised beside them, steaming black coffee in hand, he’d been talking with the lighting director and the ever-reliable Kevin Hodgman, director of photography.
‘I believe so,’ Nick said dryly.
‘Oh well, only one more day to go.’ He echoed Nick’s words as he plonked himself into a chair beside them.
Simon seemed in a remarkably good mood, Sam thought. Normally he’d be fuming about the loss of studio time.
‘I want to shoot the scene in one take, if I can,’ he said. ‘We’ll rehearse the buggery out of it first and we’ll go in for the closeups afterwards, but I want to get the full impact in a two-shot, and I want you to give Brett all you’ve got, Sam. Save yourself during rehearsal and then sock it to him. We’ve got a two-camera setup and the lighting is superb.’
‘Aren’t you going to shoot Brett’s stuff first?’ She was surprised. Simon was adamant about shooting in sequence whenever possible, and there was a scene prior to the reunion where, unbeknownst to Sarah, Wily Halliday watches her through the bay windows.
‘Nup. I don’t trust him.’ Simon drained his coffee, boiling as it was, and signalled a runner for another one. ‘Black, three sugars,’ he called. ‘He’s been out of touch too long, our party boy, and I’m relying upon you to fire him up. After the big scene, he’ll be fine, he’ll carry it through to the shots outside.’
Sam looked uncertain. She wasn’t sure if she wanted the added responsibility, but Simon gave her a nonchalant wink. ‘The little prick’s a different actor when he’s working opposite you, Sam. Don’t give it a second thought, just take him up there with you.’
Sam started to feel nervous. She was already unsure of herself, and Simon’s sublime confidence unnerved her even further. She couldn’t seem to get into character today, all she could think of was Jason and the thought that she would be with him in two days.
Simon grinned, oblivious to any problem. ‘So what are your plans, Sam?’ he asked. ‘You’re off to join Jason in England, Nick tells me, and you’re going to live in a divine Victorian mansion and he’s going to open a medical practice.’
She eyed him with suspicion; he was taking the mickey out of her, surely. But he was leaning forward in his director’s chair, elbows on knees, hands under his chin, giving her his undivided attention. ‘It sounds idyllic.’
Sam looked at Nick, who shrugged in all innocence. ‘You didn’t tell me it was meant to be a secret,’ he said.
‘It isn’t,’ she assured him. She was amazed not by Nick’s divulgence of her plans, but by Simon Scanlon’s interest in her private life. Simon was interested in no-one’s private life. Work was the only thing that mattered to him. Why wasn’t he talking to her of Sarah Blackston and the scene they were about to shoot?
‘Jason’s a good bloke, I’m happy for you, Sam.’
They’d been Nick’s very words to her, Sam thought, and once again she looked to Nick, who simply smiled back. He had a feeling he knew where Simon Scanlon was heading.
‘So long as he doesn’t demand you give up your career of course.’ Simon knew Jason approved of Sam’s career, Nick had told him that too.
‘Oh no,’ she countered eagerly. ‘Even if we have a family, Jason’s happy for me to keep acting. He says I wouldn’t be whole without my career.’
‘Understanding bloke.’
‘Yes, he is.’ Sam remembered the conversation they’d had in Perth.
‘Why should I wish to change you, Sam?’ Jason had asked. ‘It was your passion about your work that first attracted me. Well, it worried me, I admit,’ he’d laughed. ‘It’s quite terrifying to find that you’re falling in love with your own grandmother.’
Sam was jolted out of her brief reverie. ‘There’s not many around who understand actors like that.’ Simon was studying her so warmly that she felt encouraged to continue.
‘Jason says that he doesn’t want to turn me into a doctor’s wife. He says that if he tried, he’d be changing the very person he fell in love with.’
Simon’s eyes didn’t leave hers, but in the background he saw the second assistant director arriving with Brett Marsdon.
‘He must love you very much.’
She nodded.
‘And you love him too, don’t you?’ She was glowing with it, he thought. He caught the signal from Kevin the DOP, and gave an acknowledging response with his right hand, which Sam didn’t notice.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do.’
Her face was radiant. She looked exactly the way he wanted her to look.
‘Then use it, Sam.’ The mesmeric gleam was back in the pterodactyl eyes. ‘Use it!’ And Simon Scanlon left just as the second assistant arrived.
‘We’re ready for you, Miss Lindsay,’ the second said.
Sam turned to Nick. ‘I’ve been conned, haven’t I?’
‘Yes.’
Sarah opened the door. A man stood silhouetted in the late afternoon sun. An emaciated man, she couldn’t see his face. But she’d been expecting a new arrival that day. She looked for the hospital attendant who should have been with him, but the man was alone. Strange, she thought.
‘Welcome to Huxley House,’ she said. ‘Please come in.’ She closed the door after him and led the way into the drawing room.
‘Would you like some tea before we settle you in to your new quarters?’ she asked, about to ring the bell for Beatrice.
‘No thanks, I’m fine.’
She recognised the voice.
‘Wily.’ She whispered the name, not daring to face him.
‘Lieutenant Wily Halliday, at your service, ma’am.’ He smiled, tentative, unsure of her reaction. He’d enquired and he knew she wasn’t married, but there could have been someone in her life, it had been three whole years.
She turned. He was lean and weathered, a man twenty years older than his years, but the eyes were the same, and the smile, uncertain as it was, held a vestige of the old cheeky challenge.
‘Wily.’ She could have reached out and touched him, but she didn’t. She stood breathlessly drinking in his image. ‘That’s short for William, is it?’
‘Nope.’ The smile broke into the grin that she knew so well. ‘I was named after Wily Post.’
‘First man to fly solo around the world,’ she said, ‘seven days, eighteen hours and forty-nine minutes.’ Her eyes didn’t leave his for a second.
‘That’s right. You remembered.’
‘No. I looked him up at the library.’
They stood motionless in the sunlight that streamed through the bay windows, the love between them palpable.
‘Cut!’ Simon called. If the producers wanted a final clinch, they could get fucked, he’d decided, and he wasn’t going to shoot one to give them the option. ‘Well done, Brett, good stuff!’ He smacked Brett heartily on the back.
‘Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it.’ Brett had been knocked out by the connection he and Sam had shared, and he accepted the congratulations as his due. Man, but they’d soared, he thought. He gave her a wink. ‘The A team, Sam,’ he said.
Simon Scanlon was pleased. Just as he’d anticipated, she’d taken the little prick right up there with her.
He hugged her closely. ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ he whispered.
‘Yes, you cunning bastard.’ She’d thought of nothing but the love that she felt for Jason as she’d looked at Brett. She hadn’t been Sarah Blackston and she hadn’t been Jane Thackeray. It had been a total cheat, but it had worked.
‘So this is Chisolm House.’
Jason had pulled the car up just inside the main drive and they stood, rugged up in their heavy overcoats, arms about one another, surveying the elegant facade and the front garden, stark in its winter nakedness.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ he said.
‘I knew you’d love it.’ She grabbed his hand. ‘Come on.’ And together they ran to the front door.
> They’d driven directly from the airport and collected the keys from the real estate office, Jim Lofthouse having good-naturedly opened early in order to await their arrival.
Sam headed straight for the front drawing room, Jason following, and there it was.
‘Meet Jane’s best friend, Phoebe Chisolm,’ she said, and Jason gazed up at the James Hampton portrait of the girl with the tantalising smile, captured so perfectly in the shaft of light.
‘Hello, Phoebe,’ he said, ‘you’re very beautiful.’
They explored the house from top to bottom, Sam deciding which rooms could best be converted to Jason’s surgery. ‘Reception here,’ she said, ‘you’ll need a secretary of course. A middle-aged one, very plain,’ she grinned, ‘and through here would be your consulting room.’ She raced ahead and he followed her. ‘Just like the drawing room, lovely and light, more bay windows, and the smaller room over here would be your examination room …’ Jason caught her midway in her dash from one door to another.
‘It’s perfect, my love.’ His arms were about her, beneath her open coat, holding her body close to his. ‘Everything is just perfect.’ They kissed.
‘I’ll show you the stables,’ she said.
But she didn’t give him a guided tour of the stables. She took him straight upstairs to the loft instead, and they made love on the bare mattress of the double bed.
Afterwards, she jumped up and grabbed a doona from the linen closet. ‘I’m bloody freezing,’ she said as she threw it over them and snuggled in beside him.
‘Serves you right for being so wanton.’
‘I forgot to switch the heating on.’ She was about to jump up again.
‘In a minute, my love, in a minute.’
They laughed as they rubbed warmth into each other, rolling about beneath the doona, and half an hour later they made love again.
‘Why don’t you sleep for a while,’ he suggested, kissing her forehead. ‘I’ll pop out and buy some supplies.’
‘No way.’ She bounded instantly from the bed. ‘I’m coming with you.’ She didn’t want him out of her sight for a minute.
‘You just got off a twenty-six hour flight, Sam.’
‘Eight hours of which I slept like a baby. First class, remember?’
‘There’s such a thing as jet lag and body clocks, you know.’
‘Bugger them both, I don’t believe in them.’ And she raced downstairs to turn the heating on. It started as soon as she flicked the switch. Thank goodness, she thought gratefully, remembering how the system had refused to operate that morning a lifetime ago when she’d left the stables. She recalled her fanciful notions about the house telling her to go, and she smiled to herself. I’m being welcomed back now, she thought happily. Then she ran upstairs to jump under the shower.
The next several hours were spent shopping and exploring the town, Sam delighting in sharing her favourite haunts, which included a beer at the Red Lion. When they returned, she still refused to give in to fatigue and he watched her as she happily set out the crockery and lamps and cushions they’d bought from the local interiors store. It had been decided they would stay there for the next month whilst they furnished the main house. Her energy seemed boundless, he thought, but she’d crash soon.
He insisted on preparing them an early dinner that night. Sam had discovered during their stay in Perth that he was an excellent cook, a fact that hadn’t surprised her in the least.
‘I’m hopeless,’ she’d admitted. ‘I suppose I’ll have to learn.’
‘Not if you don’t want to. I enjoy it.’
It was cosy and warm, and as she curled up beside him on the sofa, she could barely keep her eyes open.
‘Come on my love,’ he whispered, ‘bedtime, you’re exhausted.’
‘Mmm,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve crashed.’
He half carried her up the stairs and helped her into her pyjamas as he would a drowsy child, and the moment her head touched the pillow she was fast asleep. He returned to the kitchen where he cleared the remnants of their meal and did the washing up. Then he sat down with a book and tried to read, but he couldn’t concentrate on the words. He was too happy, he realised.
Ten minutes later, showered and pyjama-clad, he slipped into bed beside her and watched her as she slept. She was so beautiful, he thought, so serene in her sleep. He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t dare for fear of waking her. He had no idea how long he watched her, but when he finally drifted off himself, it was with a sense of sheer bliss.
Sam didn’t know what time it was when she awoke, but he was sleeping soundly beside her. She didn’t know what it was that had awoken her either, and she lay in the darkness listening.
There was someone downstairs, she thought. She could hear no movement, no creaking of floorboards, and the stable floor did creak, but she could hear a voice. Then another voice responded.
She sat up, about to wake him, but even as her hand went to his shoulder she stopped herself. There was something familiar in the voices. She’d heard them before, she realised. But this time they were not the voices of excited girls, they were the voices of two young women in subdued conversation. She strained to hear their actual words, but she couldn’t make out what it was they were saying.
She crept out of bed, careful not to disturb him, and at the top of the stairs she flicked the switch that operated the downstairs light. The voices stopped, and she walked down the steps into the room that she knew would be deserted.
Perhaps if she sat quietly in the dark the voices might return, she thought. She switched off the light and felt her way over to the sofa. Jason had turned the heater off before retiring, but the room still retained its warmth, and she curled up comfortably to wait.
The minutes ticked by, her eyelids felt like lead, and she knew she was on the verge of sleep. She was too comfortable, she told herself, and she abandoned the sofa for a carver chair, sitting straight-backed, jerking her head up each time she felt herself nodding off.
Then gradually she heard them, again not the words, but the voices; they came to her as if from the past, carried on the very air that surrounded her, and as sleep engulfed her she saw the images of two young women, one fair, one dark.
‘All things are meant for a purpose, Jane,’ Phoebe said.
It was late in the afternoon, the day before Jane and Martin were due to depart for Liverpool, and from there for the New Hebrides. It had been Phoebe’s decision that they say their personal goodbyes in the stables; there would be others around the following day.
Jane sat on the sofa. The very same sofa where Marty had proposed to her, she thought, and where he had tried to voice his misgivings about their marriage. ‘You’re young and strong, Jane …’ he’d said. But she’d refused to listen, the decision had been hers and she knew she would never regret it. She rocked the baby gently, Ronnie comfortably asleep in her arms. Phoebe was right, she thought, all things were meant for a purpose.
Phoebe was sitting, straight-backed, in a carver chair, unusual for Phoebe, who liked to lounge in comfort, but Jane knew why. Phoebe was prepared for the discussion she’d been avoiding over the past three days. They’d spoken of everything else in such detail. The past and their childhood, the future and their aspirations, but the time had now come, and Phoebe knew it. It was why she’d suggested the stables and why she’d chosen the hard-backed chair. In customary style, she got straight to the point.
‘You will tell him nothing, just as we discussed in Edinburgh.’
‘I thought that perhaps it was too soon then Phoebe, too soon for you to know your own mind. Is it really what you want? Are you sure you don’t wish me to tell him when he comes of age?’
‘Quite sure. No-one but you and Martin must ever know. Least of all the boy.’ She looked at the baby Jane held in her arms. ‘He is your son, Jane. God meant it that way.’
Phoebe stared through the windows at the cobbled courtyard and Chisolm House beyond. She could have kept James Hampton’s child, she
thought, she was strong enough to have borne the stigma. But her mother wasn’t and, although she knew her father would not have disowned her, it would have ruined Arthur Chisolm’s career.
All things were meant for a purpose. She repeated the message to herself. She was a noble figure and she had played her part in an ingenious plan of God’s doing. A plan that had been set in train the day Jane had nearly drowned and their lives had become inextricably bound. Martin Thackeray was unable to sire children, and giving birth to Jane’s child had been her destiny, Phoebe told herself.
Jane sat in silence. She had never seen Phoebe look sad. Angry, yes, sullen and sulky, even morose on occasions, Phoebe was a mercurial creature. But never sad. Jane rose, the sleeping baby cradled in her arms.
‘Phoebe?’ she said quietly.
Phoebe stopped gazing out the window and looked up.
‘Hold him.’ Jane offered her the child.
‘Oh good heavens no.’ Phoebe laughed. ‘I’m hopeless with babies, you know that.’ She stood. ‘Don’t look so tragic,’ she said and she smiled brightly as she kissed Jane on the cheek, ‘I’ll have another child one day.’
She dropped the frivolity as quickly as she’d adopted it, preferring instead the drama of the moment. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Jane, the way it’s all fallen into place? You always said I could make things happen.’
‘Yes, I did.’ Jane wasn’t sure whether she was agreeing because Phoebe wished her to, or whether she truly believed it. ‘And you have, Phoebe. You have.’
The room was cold and Sam awoke, freezing. She sneaked guiltily back upstairs and slipped into bed beside Jason, hoping that the chill of her body wouldn’t wake him. He’d have every right to be annoyed that she’d sat up half the night in the cold, dreaming fanciful dreams of the past. But were they fanciful? she wondered. She knew he didn’t believe there was any force at work in the house, that it was all in her imagination, and he was possibly right. But the images had been so clear.
She felt herself drifting off to sleep as the warmth of his body seeped into hers. Two young women, one dark, one fair, she could still see them. She wondered what they’d been discussing in such earnest.