Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Why?’ Jerome was curious as to why Pippa wanted a drink, since she never drank anything in the middle of the day. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Don’t even speak about it. Do you know who their Romeo is going to be? No – not me, darling girl. No, Tony Hart.’

  He went through his whole day in painstaking detail, telling her not only about his meeting with Cecil, but about the obnoxious taxi driver who took him into Mayfair, the rude woman in front of him in Fox’s, where Jerome now bought his own brand of monogrammed cigarettes, the fool of an assistant in Hatchards where he had gone to try and buy a copy of Wilson Knight’s essays on Shakespeare, and some half-drunk fan who recognized him as he was flagging down a taxi to take him home. Everyone was characterized and reproduced with Jerome’s usual meticulous attention to detail, and embellished with just enough exaggeration that the monologue was totally compulsive, so much so that by the time he had finished recounting it, Pippa had all but forgotten her distress.

  Jerome then flopped on the sofa next to her and scratched the back of Bobby’s head. Pippa pulled her knees further up under her chin and frowned.

  ‘I had a funny phone call,’ she said. ‘Someone rang, but wouldn’t say who it was. She sounded like someone from home. You know – from the village. She said I – that I was responsible for my mother’s death.’

  She looked at Jerome from out under a fringe of hair which had half fallen across her eyes, not seeking an explanation but rather to watch his reaction. He looked back at her steadily, and thoughtfully, before clapping his hands together once and rising from the sofa.

  ‘Balls,’ he said. ‘Let us have one of your delicious baguettes stuffed with this cheese I have brought home, and then out to the movies. I shall take you to see – A Star is Born.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say, Jerome?’ Pippa asked, as he pulled her up to her feet. ‘Someone rings and says I’m the one who killed my mother, and all you can think of is—’

  ‘Pippa. My sweet, darling child. It was some crank! That village of yours is full of Boeotians! It was obviously some daft old crone who has nothing better to do than cause trouble! She’ll have seen our pictures everywhere, in the newspapers, the magazines – people are very funny about success, you know. Now do come along.’

  Pippa did. She did precisely what she was told and went into the kitchen to make some lunch, while Jerome, having seen into Pippa’s eyes, having seen that odd, flat, half-dead look staring once again back out at him, hoped to God that he was right and that the call was a one-off, the work as he had supposed of a crank.

  It wasn’t a one-off. The woman rang again. And again. Not at once, she delayed her second call until Jerome had begun rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet which he had agreed to do only if he could understudy Romeo as well. Cecil had thought the condition totally impractical, but Jerome had argued his case well, contending that if Tony Hart ever had to be off sick, far better for him to be covered by someone qualified to step into his shoes than a mere understudy. Let the understudy cover Mercutio, he reasoned, and Mercutio cover Romeo. Sir Fiacre O’Neill, far from being outraged, thought the idea a splendid one, and indeed after watching Jerome stand in one morning when Tony Hart was temporarily indisposed with laryngitis, was so impressed he let it be known, and not altogether privately, that he was contemplating the idea of the two actors alternating in the role.

  That evening Jerome and Pippa celebrated the possibility by dining out at Le Caprice. Towards the end of the meal, they were joined for coffee and a liqueur by Elizabeth, who had been dining in a large party hosted by Dmitri Boska. Boska grabbed Jerome by the hand as they were leaving to wish him luck in the play, and the moment, captured by an attentive photographer, appeared the next morning in the Daily Express.

  Pippa was about to leave for her studio when the phone rang. Having all but forgotten the anonymous call, Pippa picked up the telephone in the hall before Miss Toothe could pick up her extension.

  ‘Nice picture in the paper today, my dear,’ said the soft voice. ‘Lucky mother’s not alive to see it.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Pippa asked, letting go of Bobby who was excitedly pulling at his lead. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘She didn’t like your actor, you know. Not one bit. Said you’d never be able to trust him.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Why are you doing this?’

  ‘She couldn’t bear you marrying him. That’s why she did away with herself.’

  The phone burred dead in Pippa’s ear as the caller disconnected. Pippa stared at the hateful instrument for a moment, then banged it down, picked up her dog’s lead, and dashed out of the door.

  ‘This is simply terrible,’ Elizabeth said when Pippa told her at lunch. ‘You poor, poor darling. What a simply terrible business. Of course, you must tell the police – and you must change your number. You simply cannot have this sort of thing happening to you. No-one can. It’s like Gaslight, darling. You’ll go mad. What a terrible business. Who do you think it is?’

  Pippa had a thought who it was. She thought it was Mrs Huxley, her mother’s friend and companion. She was certain it was her, because Mrs Huxley and Pippa had never really liked each other, because Mrs Huxley had only been left small items of sentimental value and no money in her late friend’s will, and because Pippa couldn’t imagine anyone else she knew in the village who would do such a mean and spiteful thing. She was positive it had to be Mrs Huxley, but there was no way she could prove it, so she said nothing to Elizabeth of her suspicions.

  ‘The voice,’ Elizabeth wondered. ‘Do you recognize the voice?’

  Oddly enough, Pippa didn’t, but then it sounded as if the caller was making sure that her voice wasn’t to be identified, since it sounded as if she were speaking from behind a hand, or perhaps a handkerchief. Both the calls had been oddly muffled, almost indistinct. In fact the more Pippa thought about the calls, the more she wondered at them. There was something unreal about them, something detached. Of course, Pippa was no expert on this sort of behaviour. She had no previous experience of anonymous telephone calls whatsoever, so she was in no position to give an opinion as to whether or not this was a normal hate call, that this was the way people always spoke when they rang up to frighten or to threaten you, flatly, unemotionally, distantly, carefully, as if they were repeating something over and over again, something which they had already prepared.

  ‘One thing that does bother me,’ Pippa admitted to Elizabeth, ‘something that keeps bothering me. And that’s how did the caller, whoever she is, and since we’re exdirectory, how did she get our number?’

  Elizabeth put down her lightly laden fork, and looked across the lunch table at Pippa, her green eyes catching the sunlight reflected in her wine glass.

  The question gave her a long pause for thought, a time she filled by carefully wiping the corners of her mouth with her table napkin and then by signalling the waiter to clear her unfinished food away.

  ‘Darling,’ she said finally, after a scrupulous examination of the varnish on her nails. ‘It’s a horrible thought, but one that just has to be faced. She must either know a member of your staff, or it must be someone who has actually come to your house.’

  When Pippa asked him, Jerome considered the matter at once of changing their number, but because they were now very near to opening Romeo and Juliet, and since it had in fact been decided that Anthony Hart and he should indeed play the leading role alternately, his professional life was once again extremely hectic, so he asked Pippa if they could delay making the change until things had settled down again, since circulating a new telephone number at such a moment might well cause untold chaos. As a consolation he made Pippa promise not to answer the telephone at all during the day when Miss Toothe was on duty, and told all their friends and acquaintances if they rang at any other times to let the phone ring twice and then hang up, before calling back, so that if Pippa was alone she would kn
ow from the code it was a friendly call. To the relief of both of them, the system worked perfectly and there were no more anonymous calls.

  Instead Pippa’s persecutor turned to the post. Not at once, in fact she gave Pippa quite a generous amount of breathing space, enough to lull her into a false sense of security before she sent the first letter, which arrived on the morning of the very day that Jerome was to make his first appearance as Romeo.

  The letter was in a small, plain white envelope, postmarked Haslemere, and addressed in childish block capitals, as was the contained note, written on an inferior light blue lined writing paper, and read:

  THINK OF MOTHER. THINK OF HER, A GOOD CHRISTIAN, A GOD FEARING WOMAN, TAKING HER LIFE, NOT SEEING HER MAKER. THINK THEN OF HER SHAME.

  Jerome was still asleep when the post arrived, having left strict orders for him not to be disturbed until late morning. So after Pippa had sat staring pointlessly at the terrible message, she locked it away in her old blue writing case and took Bobby out to the park.

  It was a fine autumn morning, and the park was bathed in a warm but fading sunshine. Pippa and Bobby walked all the way round, from opposite the apartment, down to Hyde Park Corner where they met the Household Cavalry returning from exercise, along Rotten Row to the Albert Memorial, round the Serpentine, up to Marble Arch and Speakers’ Corner and then back down to their starting point, from where they commenced to walk all the way round once again.

  The tears Pippa shed on her walk were long since dry by the time she looked into the bedroom on her return. Jerome was still fast asleep, so Pippa sat herself down on the chaise-longue under the curtained window and thought some more while she watched Jerome slumber. She knew she would say nothing of the letter, not now, not on the morning of such an important day in Jerome’s life. She ached to tell him, to have him comfort her, to hear him laugh and dismiss it with some mild obscenity, consigning it to the action of someone sick, someone unhinged. She needed him to tell her that it had no relevance, and that it contained no truth, because she was wounded, deeply, and she needed him, she needed his love.

  But on this day he needed all his strength, Pippa knew that. Jerome had warned her right from the beginning, from the moment they knew they would marry, that there would be times she would find impossible. Pippa had denied this, confident that she could learn to deal with all the idiosyncrasies of an actor’s life, but Jerome had insisted this would not be the case. There would be times she would find it difficult to understand him, he had warned her. There would be times, if he was to succeed, and not just succeed but if he was to achieve greatness, when he would no longer be himself but just a shell, a receptacle empty and ready to be filled by another persona, a mythical persona, by someone who didn’t exist. And at these times she mustn’t look for normality, rationality, regularity. She must detach herself from him, as he would do from her, and although they would know each other, there would be no familiarity, no contact, no dialogue, not while the actor prepared.

  At first, Pippa hadn’t altogether believed him, thinking that perhaps it was all a rather charming but nonetheless over-dramatic prophesy. Then once they were married and she saw exactly how Jerome worked, she realized how precise his prognostication had been. The nearer he got to a performance the more remote he would become, sometimes blanking himself out so entirely that early on in their relationship it would seriously worry Pippa. The same went for the immediate aftermath of a performance, except in reverse. Pippa would hardly recognize the person who greeted his friends and admirers backstage, an equally empty vessel but this time one full of sound and sometimes fury. If the performance had been a success, his energy would be formidable, and he would rarely come back to earth until the small hours of the morning, by which time Pippa would have been long ago ready for sleep.

  She had learned quickly, though, that if she wanted to see the Jerome she knew and loved, she would have to keep Jerome’s hours, otherwise all she would see would be the empty vessel, the blanked out receiver, or the hyped up, larger than life victor, the David who had entered the ring yet again to meet his Goliath and who had yet again triumphed over the odds. So she changed her routine, sleeping when Jerome slept, through long afternoons when he was in the theatre, and for short nights when he was filming, rising with him at the dawn, and then back to bed for a two hour doze before it was time to get up once again and take Bobby out.

  Sometimes, when she knew they were going on somewhere after the theatre, she would go to bed for a couple of hours in the evening while Jerome was on-stage, in order that she would be able to keep pace with him wherever they went afterwards, always making her needs secondary to his, doing her best to understand what he did, and learning all the time that when he acted he no longer belonged just to her, but to everyone who owned a part of him, to all the girls and women who had his picture on their walls, by their beds or even under their pillows. But the more she watched and marked, the more she saw that he was a sculptor working in snow, and that when the snow melted, which it had each night by the time they tumbled exhausted into bed, Jerome once again was hers, and hers alone.

  Not this morning, however, not the morning during which he must sleep until he could sleep no more, when he would awaken and begin a ritual which would take him through the day and away from her, ever further away and on to the theatre and up on to the stage. This morning she would just wait for him to wake, not kiss him awake as she could on ordinary days, nestled into the warmth of his back, an arm round his waist, her lips against his bare shoulder or neck. Today she would wait, and when he woke she would say nothing of the letter. She would make sure he had everything he needed on days such as these, she would run his bath, make him a light breakfast, and keep out of his way, unless there was anything he specifically wanted, anything she might have overlooked.

  In fact after the triumph of his Romeo, and during its immediate frantic aftermath, when once again their home was besieged by the third estate, Pippa decided to go it alone, and confront her suspected adversary, whom by now she was utterly convinced could only be Mrs Huxley.

  She rang from her studio.

  ‘Yes?’ said a voice on the other end of the telephone, a male voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pippa said carefully. ‘Is that Mrs Huxley’s house?’

  ‘It was,’ the man replied, ‘until I moved in.’

  ‘And that was—?’

  ‘Who is this, please?’

  ‘My name is Mrs Didier. I know Mrs Huxley. She was a friend of my mother’s.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the man said, after a short silence. ‘I know. Well. I’m sorry I can’t be of any help, but—’

  Afraid he was about to hang up on her, Pippa cut in hastily. ‘I’m sure you can. I mean, have you just moved in? I do need to know. It is rather important.’

  The man laughed, without humour. ‘No, no young lady. I moved in over a year ago. And I can’t tell you the whereabouts of Mrs Huxley neither. Beyond the fact that she’s living in Australia.’

  The second letter arrived exactly one week later. It was identical to the first, all except for the message. This one read:

  YOUR MOTHER DIED OF SHAME.

  ‘Your mother died of shame.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s all it said?’

  ‘Yes. It’s enough, don’t you think?’

  ‘And the other one, the first one?’

  Pippa could remember the exact wording without difficulty. It was etched in her mind. She told him. ‘“Think of mother,”’ she said. ‘“Think of her, a good Christian, a God fearing woman, taking her life, not seeing her Maker. Think then of her shame.”’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I don’t think she killed herself.’

  ‘The author of these letters does. Sorry, no – she thinks I killed her.’

  ‘We’re all in some way responsible for the fate of others.’

  ‘I just don’t see how I can be held responsible for my mother’s death.’

  ‘You can’t. Unless you fee
l yourself that you are responsible. Do you?’

  ‘I’m being made to feel that I do.’

  ‘But do you?’

  ‘I really can’t say. Not with any honesty. I can’t say because I don’t know how my mother felt. I know she disapproved of me marrying—’

  ‘She disapproved not of you marrying. She disapproved of who you married.’

  ‘Did she really? Do you really think she did?’

  ‘Pippa. I know that she did. She told me.’

  Pippa rose from her chair and went to a window where she looked out unseeing, at a meaningless landscape. The man behind her offered her some more tea, which she declined, then she heard him sigh quietly as he poured himself a second cup.

  ‘I was wondering when you’d come and see me.’

  ‘You don’t mean if?’

  ‘No, no. No, I meant when. I knew you’d come. Heavens above, child, I’ve known you all your life. I helped bring you into this world. I’m not just the family doctor, you know. I’m a family friend.’

  Pippa came and sat back down opposite Dr Weaver. She smiled at him as she crossed her long legs and folded her hands together over her knee.

  ‘I know what you are,’ she said. ‘And I wish I’d come and talked to you sooner.’

  ‘Why should you?’ Weaver replied. ‘You have a perfectly good husband. And a perfectly intelligent one. And a perfectly nice one. Look Pippa, I don’t think for one moment your mother would have approved of whoever you had married. Because knowing you like I do, I don’t think you’d have ever been the remotest bit interested in the sort of young men of whom your mother did approve.’

  They both smiled then, knowing it to be true, knowing that Pippa’s mother had only really ever approved of soldiers or clerics, and the memory of that knowledge gave Pippa hope.

  ‘So what you’re saying, Dr Weaver, is that even if my mother didn’t approve of Jerome—’

  ‘No if, Pippa. She didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, all right. So even though she disapproved of Jerome, you don’t think that’s a sufficient motive—’ Pippa paused, not quite sure how to phrase exactly what she wanted to say. ‘You don’t think that would have been sufficient motive for what happened.’