Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  Pippa looked round at her mother, and then came over to sit in the armchair opposite her. She took a sip of her drink and then looked up.

  ‘I really don’t see what business it is of Cecil’s,’ she said. ‘I thought people’s managers only managed their business affairs.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very funny, Pippa,’ her mother ruled.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Pippa agreed. ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

  ‘This actor—’

  ‘Jerome. You know his name, Mother, so you might as well use it.’

  ‘I want to know how you feel about him.’

  ‘So that you can send me up to my room without any supper?’ Pippa wondered, half-teasingly.

  ‘I want to know how you feel about him,’ her mother insisted.

  ‘Very well,’ Pippa replied, looking her mother straight in the eye. ‘The way I feel about him is that I love him, and I want to marry him.’

  ‘That’s rather what I thought,’ her mother said, pulling her cardigan round her shoulders. ‘And if that’s the case, I think you should wait. I think you should wait for at least a year.’

  ‘Why?’ Pippa frowned. ‘I don’t see what difference it will make.’

  ‘It could make all the difference.’

  ‘It won’t. All that will happen will be that we’ll have lost a year. And I think that’s unreasonable. I’ve never understood long engagements. You either want to get married, or you don’t.’

  ‘I never said anything about getting engaged.’

  ‘You said we should wait a year.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about getting engaged.’

  ‘I see.’ Pippa raised her eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Well. Being engaged’s only a formality. The point is, the real point, is how people feel about each other.’

  ‘Pippa,’ her mother warned. ‘Remember you are not yet twenty.’

  ‘I shall be twenty next week. You were only eighteen when you were married.’

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Pippa agreed. ‘You were nearly two years younger.’

  ‘Your father came from a proper background. A military background. This young man is an actor.’

  ‘You make him sound like some sort of pariah.’

  ‘Well?’

  Her mother stared at her challengingly.

  ‘You think actors are pariahs?’ Pippa asked.

  ‘I do not think an actor would make the ideal match,’ her mother replied.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right to put on a uniform and go round killing people, of course,’ Pippa said, looking at the photographs of her father and brother.

  In return her mother sighed in deep irritation.

  ‘You’re not only beginning to sound like your actor,’ she said, ‘you’re also beginning to parrot him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but Jerome does have a point, Mother,’ Pippa replied. ‘After all, the very worst an actor can do is bore you.’

  ‘Or leave you,’ her mother retorted.

  ‘I don’t think desertion’s confined to the acting profession, do you?’ Pippa wondered.

  ‘Be serious, Pippa.’

  ‘I am being serious.’

  ‘No, you’re not. Just consider what could happen. Suppose you did marry this boy, and just suppose he did leave you. Where would you be then?’

  ‘Alone,’ Pippa replied. ‘Again.’

  ‘You’re not alone now, Pippa. Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Pippa agreed. ‘Because I have Jerome.’

  Her mother looked at her once more, then having pulled her cardigan even more tightly round her shoulders, held up her empty glass and asked Pippa to pour her another sherry.

  ‘I had no idea you were this serious,’ she said, as she took the replenished glass, breaking the silence.

  ‘Neither had I,’ Pippa replied, going to stand by the french windows.

  ‘No idea at all.’

  Her mother sipped her sherry, while Pippa stared out into the gardens, wondering what or who really lay behind Cecil’s call, and then wondering it out loud.

  ‘You still haven’t really said what Cecil wanted,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not really any of your business, Pippa,’ her mother replied. ‘He came to see me.’

  Pippa laughed, not derisively, but out of genuine amusement.

  ‘Of course it’s to do with me!’ she returned. ‘You said he came to discuss Jerome and me. I don’t see who else’s business it can be.’

  ‘Very well,’ her mother said, after sitting with her eyes closed for a minute. ‘If you really must know, he’s worried about your young man. About his future. He’s not at all sure that getting married would be the very best thing for – for his client at this particular moment.’

  ‘No, mother,’ Pippa shook her head, and leaned her back against the doorway, still looking down the gardens. ‘I don’t really believe that, I’m afraid. If that was so, that would be between him and Jerome. He wouldn’t have trekked all the way down here in the middle of the week to tell you about his professional worries.’

  She turned her head back to see her mother’s response, but apparently there was none. Her mother was just sitting in her chair, looking at Pippa stonefaced, while she sipped her sherry, holding the glass with both hands. It wasn’t until Pippa had looked away out into the garden again that Mrs Nicholls responded, holding her half-full sherry glass over the hearth, and then deliberately dropping it.

  ‘Damn,’ she said as Pippa whipped round in surprise. ‘I’m sorry for swearing, but I’m getting so clumsy.’

  ‘I’m getting clumsy, Pippa,’ her mother insisted. ‘It has to be faced.’

  They were now having dinner together in the kitchen, a fish pie Pippa had cooked and which her mother was apparently having some difficulty in managing. The subject of Pippa and Jerome had not been re-aired since the accident with the sherry glass.

  ‘You’re not getting clumsy, Mother,’ Pippa reassured her. ‘You were knitting this afternoon when I went out. And you managed your lamb cutlets at lunch all right.’

  ‘Managed, yes,’ her mother sighed. ‘That’s what it boils down to really, when all is said and done. Whether or not I manage. Whether or not I can manage.’

  ‘I think you can manage,’ Pippa said quietly, watching without being seen as her mother made another half-hearted attempt to spoon up some pie.

  ‘It’s easy for you to say, Pippa,’ her mother replied, dropping her spoon and fork as if defeated. ‘But I’m not sure I could manage without you.’

  ‘You could get somebody,’ Pippa said.

  ‘That’s exactly what Cecil said.’

  Pippa now caught her mother’s eye, deliberately, and reached across the table, putting one of her hands on one of her mother’s.

  ‘If Cecil had come here to say how much he didn’t want Jerome and I to get married, Mother,’ she said, ‘then what was he doing recommending that you get someone in to help you?’

  Now her mother really did abandon her dinner, pushing her plate to one side as she balefully regarded her youngest child.

  ‘And what – pray – would exactly happen if you don’t marry this boy?’

  ‘Jerome.’

  ‘Whatever his name is.’

  ‘Jerome.’

  ‘What will happen if you don’t marry him?’

  ‘Nothing will happen, Mother,’ Pippa replied, shaking her head. ‘If I don’t marry him now, if you say I can’t, the world won’t catch on fire or anything. All that will happen is I shall simply wait until I can marry him.’

  ‘I see.’ Mrs Nicholls stared past her daughter for a moment, and then clasped her hands together in front of her on the table, looking down at them. ‘Which means I suppose you’d go on living here.’

  ‘No. It means I’d go and live with Jerome in London.’

  ‘If you did that, Pippa, I’d make you a ward of court.’

  ‘That would be very sad, Mother. But I don’t think
you would. Because we don’t have that kind of a relationship. Do you want some apple pie?’

  Her mother sat in silence once again while Pippa cleared up around her, finally serving her with apple pie which she had already cut into small pieces before sitting back down at the table.

  ‘You’re quite determined, are you, Pippa?’ her mother asked, ignoring her pudding. ‘You’ve set your heart on this young man.’

  Pippa thought carefully before she replied, and then nodded.

  ‘My heart is set,’ she replied. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see,’ her mother said, and then pushed her pudding to one side.

  The following weekend Doris Huxley moved out of her rented accommodation in the village and into Bay Tree Cottage.

  ‘Mrs Huxley is your number one choice, is she?’ Pippa asked her mother, when she discovered what was happening.

  ‘Don’t you like Doris Huxley?’ her mother asked her back. ‘She’s got no-one either, you know. Not since she lost her husband last year.’

  Ignoring the nuance, Pippa simply aired her concern that her mother’s chosen companion might not prove the absolutely best choice for the job. She had heard rumours about Mrs Huxley ever since she was a small girl, although they were never very precise, since children’s gossip is inclined to be rather unspecific, relying more on wild generalizations. One thing which Pippa had heard supposed since she had matured, however, was that Mrs Huxley drank.

  She mentioned this to her mother.

  ‘Nonsense,’ her mother declared. ‘Doris likes a drink when we’re playing cards, that’s all. She’d hardly be treasurer of the Parish Council if she was an inebriate, now would she?’

  ‘Someone who drinks wouldn’t be the ideal person, that’s all I was thinking,’ Pippa replied. ‘You know, in case of an emergency or something.’

  ‘It’s simply because she’s a woman,’ Pippa’s mother continued in defence of her chosen companion. ‘If a woman is seen to take a drink, she’s a drunk. If a man has a drink, he’s a jolly good fellow.’

  Pippa laughed in agreement, and put the doubts out of her mind. After all, the two women had known each other for years, ever since Pippa’s mother had moved into Bay Tree Cottage, and in the last ten years had become close friends through their mutual love of bridge. The fact that Pippa didn’t particularly like Doris Huxley was immaterial, since her mother did, and it was her mother she was going to be paid to look after.

  More importantly, much more importantly, the appointment of her mother’s bridge partner as her help and companion meant that her mother had consented to Pippa marrying Jerome. It was never said in so many words, but Pippa took Mrs Huxley’s engagement to mean that the necessary consent was no longer to be withheld, and holding her breath, started privately and then publicly to make the necessary arrangements for her and Jerome to be married. To her infinite relief, her mother raised no further objections.

  They had planned to go to Florence for their honeymoon. They had even bought a book about the city, by Guglielmo Amerighi, a beautiful volume wrapped in a paper cover of faint gold, which Pippa read avidly from cover to cover, not once but several times, with the result that she fell wildly in love with the city long before setting eyes on it.

  ‘In that case, we won’t go,’ Jerome announced one Sunday on their walk.

  ‘Jerome—’ Pippa began.

  ‘No listen, my darling,’ Jerome interrupted. ‘I’m perfectly serious. If the city means that much to you, and as you say if there are so many beautiful things to see, then it’s not the place to go on honeymoon.’

  Pippa was about to protest further when she saw the sense in what Jerome was saying, so instead of arguing she hugged his arm even more tightly with hers, and laughed with delight.

  ‘I’d feel simply dreadful,’ Jerome sighed. ‘Lying in bed all morning, making love to you – going back to bed after lunch to make more love to you, and then lying there in bed, too exhausted to go anywhere. I couldn’t bear the guilt! With that wonderful city out there! And all its wonderful treasures! Unseen! No, we can’t go to Florence until we can bear being out of bed for at least four hours at a stretch. We shall go to Brighton instead.’

  Pippa was hugely amused by Jerome’s outrageousness, as well as secretly thrilled, because she herself could think of little else than lying in a bed somewhere and sometime soon in Jerome’s loving arms. She also knew he was right about not going somewhere quite as wonderful as Florence for their honeymoon, because by the time they got there, they would have eyes not for the paintings of Fra Angelico, the carvings of Donatello, the frescoes of Masaccio, or the architecture of Brunelleschi, but only for each other. Florence would have to wait a little longer, until Jerome and she were grown accustomed.

  They were married in Pippa’s Parish Church, at the end of the first week in February. It was a small ceremony, attended by just family and close friends, which on Pippa’s side included her mother, her Aunt Bea, and her brother, James, home on special leave from his regiment in Germany, who gave her away, and on Jerome’s side his mother, his closest friends from Carriagetown and drama school, Cecil Manners who acted as his best man, and Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth behaved impeccably throughout, the only tears she shed being recognizably theatrical ones when the couple took their vows. She made no attempt to upstage the bride, and impressed everyone present with the modesty of her behaviour and of her appearance, although of course everyone noted and privately commented on her astonishing beauty.

  ‘She’s the most beautiful young woman I have ever seen,’ Pippa’s mother confessed, as she helped her daughter get dressed to go away. ‘I’ve never seen a complexion like it. And those eyes.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Pippa said happily, as she buttoned up her new, bright yellow wool coat. ‘She’s actually very nice as well. As a person.’

  ‘She’s very nice,’ her mother agreed. ‘She’s not a bit like an actress. Now let me look at you.’

  Her mother turned her daughter to her, then she looked at her, searchingly, her eyes roaming over Pippa’s face, as if she was seeing her for the very first time.

  ‘I just hope this young man deserves you, Pippa,’ she said, brushing her daughter’s wayward hair from her eyes.

  ‘Jerome,’ Pippa groaned. ‘Just for once call him by his name. After all, he is your son-in-law now.’

  ‘He looked very handsome in his morning dress,’ her mother commented. ‘Quite the part. And you looked lovely, too. It’s just a pity your father isn’t alive.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pippa agreed, pausing in her preparation. ‘I know. But I felt him watching.’

  ‘I wonder what he thought,’ her mother mused, adjusting the angle of Pippa’s hat. ‘I just wonder.’

  ‘Thought about what exactly, Mother?’

  ‘You know. You being married. You being married so young. You’re still so young.’

  There was a knock on the door, precluding any more of this particular conversation.

  ‘Everyone’s waiting, Pip,’ her brother said, putting his head round the door. ‘Or are you going to be even later than usual?’

  James grinned at his sister, and then came in to give her one last kiss and hug before she left home.

  ‘Mind her hair, James,’ Mrs Nicholls said. ‘And her hat. For goodness sake.’

  ‘I’m so glad you could make it, James,’ Pippa whispered. ‘And so is Jerome.’

  ‘I only hope I marry someone as beautiful as he is handsome,’ James replied. ‘You just keep your eye on him.’

  ‘No point in him keeping his eye on me I suppose?’ Pippa asked, tongue in cheek.

  ‘An ugly old frump like you?’ James laughed. ‘Heavens, no!’

  Brother and sister kissed each other once more, and then James was gone, hurrying away to make sure all the tin cans were still in place underneath Jerome’s sports car.

  ‘Well,’ her mother said, taking one of Pippa’s hands. ‘Well, there you are. You’ve got what you want, Pippa. Now all
we must hope is you want what you get.’

  ‘That’s a happy little parting thought, Mother,’ Pippa laughed. ‘Where did you read that? In some Russian Christmas cracker or something?’

  ‘We all make our own beds you know, Pippa.’

  ‘I know, Mother.’ Pippa picked up her new navy blue leather gloves and began to put them on. ‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘And this is mine, and I’m more than happy to lie in it.’

  ‘Good,’ her mother replied. ‘And just remember one more thing. Despair doesn’t have to be tolerated, you know. There’s no rule that says that it does. If, and I’m only saying if, if any situation becomes intolerable, there is no shame whatsoever in walking away from it. Just remember that. The way out can just as easily be the way in, sometimes.’

  Pippa paused before picking up her handbag, and looked back at her mother, who was standing looking back at her. Then she put her arms around her gently and carefully, and held her in her arms.

  ‘Goodbye, Mother,’ she said softly, almost in a whisper. ‘Take care of yourself.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ her mother wished her, reaching up to kiss her daughter on one cheek. ‘Goodbye, darling Pippa.’

  ‘Why do you think we love each other?’ Pippa asked Jerome, as they walked the windswept seafront at Brighton with their arms wound tightly around each other. ‘I wonder why it is.’

  ‘It’s because we’re completely different,’ Jerome announced later, as Pippa and he lay in each other’s arms in the bed of the bridal suite in the Grand Hotel, safe from the storm that was raging outside. ‘That’s why we love each other, because we’re so completely unalike. And that’s why we’ll endure. Because for any marriage or partnership to succeed, that’s what it has to be. What we are. The union of opposites.’

  ‘Do you think that’s really what we are?’ Pippa asked, suddenly afraid that she might be altogether too different from Jerome for her ever to understand him.

  ‘We couldn’t be more different, my love,’ Jerome whispered, running his fingers through her hair as she laid her head on his chest. ‘Which is the very reason I shall always be so utterly intrigued by you. I shall never get to the bottom of you, never. Nor you of me. Until our dying days, we shall never, ever fully understand each other.’