Stardust

by Charlotte Bingham

  It was a statement, not a question, because Pippa was at last beginning to feel surer of her facts.

  ‘Like you, Pippa, I can only guess,’ Dr Weaver replied.

  ‘But at the inquest!’ Pippa broke in, ‘I’m sorry, but you said you were quite sure—’

  Weaver held up a closed hand, with just the index finger pointing upwards.

  ‘Your mother was a Christian, Pippa. I’m a Christian. So are you. And you know how the church stands on suicide. I didn’t feel there was sufficient evidence for the coroner to return a verdict of suicide. I still don’t. But I don’t know. Like you, I cannot piece it together and make sense of it. You loved your mother and you can’t bear to think she might have ended her own life, particularly for reasons which might be to do with you.’ Weaver paused, and took his old briar pipe from a side pocket, which he filled from a bowl of tobacco on the table beside him, carefully pushing the dark brown strands down with the end of one thumb before he continued, which he did after he had looked at Pippa long and hard from under a pair of greying bushy eyebrows. ‘You know about your mother and I, do you?’ he asked. ‘Did you know we nearly married?’

  Pippa’s eyes opened wide, and then even wider as she frowned and shook her head. ‘No. No I knew no such thing.’

  Weaver smiled as he put the unlit pipe in his mouth.

  ‘Her father talked her out of it. I was still a medical student. He said I was a bad risk.’

  The irony wasn’t lost on Pippa who returned his smile politely, but remained silent, waiting to hear what else Dr Weaver had to say.

  ‘The point is, Pippa, since it couldn’t be proved beyond reasonable doubt that your mother took her own life, then because of – because it couldn’t be proved, I couldn’t have her buried as a suicide. God is our judge, not a coroner’s court, not the Palace of Westminster. And whatever happened that night, and for whatever reason, it will all have been explained by now. God is merciful, and your mother will be at peace.’

  ‘But I’m not.’ Pippa was suddenly terribly angry, furious with Dr Weaver’s piety and the convenience of his rationalization. ‘I think she did kill herself. I think she did it from—’ She took a deep breath to control herself, a trick she had learned from Jerome. ‘I think she did it for a purpose.’

  ‘To get back at you?’ It was Weaver’s turn to look astonished. ‘No, Pippa. No I really don’t think so.’

  ‘What about the postcard? No-one can explain the postcard! The only explanation can be that once she realized we really were married, and that we were coming down to see her, as husband and wife! Once that truth really dawned—’

  It was Dr Weaver’s turn to interrupt, which he did with a rueful smile. ‘You mean because you signed the card in your married name? No, no. Believe me.’ He lit his pipe, as if the act would underwrite his certainty.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Pippa was on her feet. ‘You didn’t know my mother! No – no, you knew my mother, but not in the way I did! As her daughter! When she took against something, she took against it. And I think somehow that postcard for some unknown reason – I think it infuriated her! And she lost her reason! Why else would she destroy it like that? Tear it up into tiny little pieces and throw it away?’

  Dr Weaver took his pipe out of his mouth and studied the thin plume of blue smoke that was curling up nicely now from the bowl.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he said as he considered the contents of Pippa’s outburst. ‘I don’t think so. Because you see, if she was that angry with you, then why did she keep your other two cards? Why didn’t she throw them all away?’

  This was something Pippa had never once considered, and to which she had no answer. Dr Weaver did, however, at least he had a piece of vital evidence which until now he had deliberately withheld.

  ‘Sit down, Pippa,’ he said, ‘because I think there’s something important you ought to know.’

  Pippa sat down, and waited, while Weaver drew deeply on his pipe to make sure it was still well alight. Then he sat back in his chair, took a brief look at the ceiling, and then a much longer look at Pippa.

  ‘You won’t have known this,’ he said. ‘But your mother was an alcoholic.’

  The bottles she had found around the house, Pippa explained to Elizabeth the next day when she visited Pippa’s studio, were mostly her mother’s, not Mrs Huxley’s as she had first supposed. Mrs Huxley was a drinker, certainly, which was obviously why her mother had chosen her as a companion, although it appeared from what Pippa had learned that her mother had not been constantly alcoholic, but had managed long periods of abstinence, particularly in recent years, and particularly since Pippa had left school, which would explain why the growing Pippa never noticed either any untoward behavioural signs, or ever smelt drink regularly on her mother’s breath. In fact according to Dr Weaver, her mother had started drinking heavily when she had lost Pippa’s father, but for the past five or six years with Dr Weaver’s help she had got it under control, until, it seemed, the fateful night of the bridge party, the eve of Pippa’s and Jerome’s return, when Dr Weaver had noticed with dismay that his friend and patient was back drinking spirits.

  ‘She was perfectly all right, it seems,’ Pippa explained, ‘if she just had the occasional sherry, or even wine. But she couldn’t touch spirits. If she had just one small glass of whisky or gin it would start her off again on another bout.’

  ‘Which was obviously what happened that night,’ Elizabeth said. ‘She drank far too much, she probably went on drinking with Mrs Whatever long after everyone else had gone, and then forgot whether or not she’d taken any sleeping pills. So there you are, darling. There you have your explanation.’

  ‘Not really,’ Pippa replied. ‘You see firstly, why did she start drinking again? If she’d been off it for so long? There would have to be something which would cause her to start up again. And then, of course, it still doesn’t explain the postcard.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Elizabeth pondered, her heart no longer sinking. ‘You attach a great deal of importance to that postcard, darling, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pippa replied. ‘It was the last thing my mother ever saw of me. And she tore it up. She tore it to pieces.’

  Elizabeth put a hand to her mouth as if to stifle a small gasp, and then she reached across to Pippa and took both her hands. Nothing on her face betrayed her innermost thoughts, she knew that. She was far too consummate an actress. Nobody would ever have known that what Elizabeth was really thinking was that if this sort of thing went on, then it was going to take no time at all for the Bumpkin to become quite, quite demented.

  After much heart searching, Pippa decided not to tell Jerome about the latest development. At first she had been convinced she should, since as she explained to Elizabeth they had no secrets from each other, but Elizabeth had persuaded her otherwise. She was afraid for Pippa, it seemed, in case Jerome, wrapped up as he was in the intricacies of his role as Romeo, might not give her news the attention it merited.

  ‘Trust me,’ Elizabeth had counselled her. ‘He’s an actor, and so am I, darling. And when you’re deeply involved in a major role, the outside world seems a very distant place.’

  On the strength of advice seemingly borne from experience, Pippa had decided at least to wait and see before involving Jerome any more in her personal anxieties, and the decision seemed to be the right one when Pippa saw both how totally immersed Jerome was in the part and how much playing it exhausted him. She also knew, the more time she spent by herself, either painting in her studio or walking Bobby in the park, that the problem of her mother was something which only Pippa could solve. Talking to Jerome was a great help, discussing her anxiety with him was immensely therapeutic, listening to what he had to say was enormously beneficial, but she knew even so he could never solve the problem for her, and that finally he would bore of it, and perhaps even of Pippa, at least he would bore of Pippa talking about it, which would mean that a part of him would be bored with a part of her, which was the very last thin
g Pippa wanted. She loved Jerome with all her heart, and she was sure he loved her with all of his, but she knew that to keep him, she must never lose his interest, not for a moment, because while a moment of boredom after passion is often tolerable, the reverse is never true.

  Another undisputed fact was the success of Jerome as Romeo, or more properly, as The Times labelled it, his unqualified triumph in the part. Everyone who saw his performance agreed. He was simply brilliant, the best Romeo, some said, in living memory. He was also a superb Mercutio, as indeed was his rival Anthony Hart, but whereas Jerome scored maximum points in both roles, Hart was a total flop as Romeo. Nonetheless the whole run sold out, because the audiences were happy to see Jerome Didier in either role, although those fortunate enough to catch his Romeo remembered it for the rest of their lives.

  Pippa knew she would never forget it. In all her life she had never seen or heard anything so beautiful, and she knew that if she lived to be a thousand she would never see anything as beautiful ever again.

  She saw his every performance, and long before the end of the run she knew the play by heart.

  ‘Give me my Romeo,’ she would sometimes whisper to him as they were about to make love, or after they had done so. ‘And, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.’

  ‘It’s just as well you’re not playing Juliet,’ Jerome told her. ‘Or the Lord Chamberlain would close down the theatre.’

  Pippa picked up the phone without thinking. She was on her way out to see Jerome perform when it rang, just as Pippa hurried past the hall table. It had been weeks now without any word from her tormentor, so Pippa had put any thought of her out of her mind, and certainly that evening in her hurry to leave the apartment she had forgotten the code, she had forgotten about letting the phone ring to see if it just rang twice for friend, or more for foe.

  She picked it up as it barely finished ringing once.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the voice. ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten me.’

  Pippa slammed the receiver back down immediately and stood staring at it, aware that she was shaking all over, and furious that she had forgotten the rule. Then she turned and hurried across the hall. As she reached the front door, the phone rang again, but this time Pippa ignored it, although she could hear it ringing in the empty hallway as she ran down the stairs and into the street, and all the way through the play and well into the night.

  The next letter arrived two days later, and again Pippa was caught. Jerome had ordered her to tear up unread any more letters which arrived addressed in that particular childish handwriting, but the name and address on this particular letter were typed, and the notepaper was also different. So Pippa was unaware of the sender as she opened the letter over breakfast.

  YOU KNOW THE CAUSE OF MOTHER’S MISERY. YOU’RE MARRIED TO IT.

  All in all over the next month there were seven more letters, which arrived at irregular intervals. By the time the third one dropped through the letterbox, different type face, different envelope, but the same postmark – Haslemere – Pippa knew the time had long come to tell Jerome.

  He was furious. Pippa had never seen Jerome in a temper, a genuine rage, a proper fury. She had seen him cross, irritable, angry, but never like this. He sat across from her at the table, white-faced, gripping her by her wrists.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he hissed. Even his lips had paled.

  ‘You know why. I’ve told you. I thought I could cope with it.’

  ‘By yourself.’

  ‘You were far too involved.’

  ‘For you?’ Jerome sounded totally disbelieving.

  ‘With the play.’

  ‘I am never – too involved for you, my darling girl. Never.’

  It was the way he said the word – nevah – just the once, but it was enough to give Pippa the fleeting impression that Jerome was acting. Then she put it from her mind. She was tired, terribly tired, tired out by the mental battle, exhausted from trying to work out not how but why. And because she was so devitalized by all the conscious and subconscious worry, for a moment she had even lost her trust in Jerome. Stemming back a tear, biting hard down on her lower lip, she looked up and across the table at Jerome, who when he caught her eyes with his widened his own as wide-as-can-be.

  Then he smiled slowly, with just a tinge of regret, and once again Pippa had to remind herself what he was doing was real, and that he was not play-acting.

  ‘I was only angry,’ he said, ‘because you excluded me. And by doing that, I felt that you didn’t trust me.’

  ‘You told me when you’re acting to leave you alone.’

  ‘Not about important things, my darling girl. Only the day to day things. Only the day to day. Now, what are you going to do? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to the police.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the police, Jerome.’

  ‘You’re going to solve this single-handed?’

  ‘It has to be someone in the village. It can’t be anybody else. Nobody outside the village could possibly know all – all the details. The village is tiny – what? Hardly a hundred people. And it’s a woman, so that probably halves the list of suspects. No – more. Because I haven’t counted the children—’

  ‘Sssshhh!’

  Jerome tightened his grip on Pippa’s wrists, as the expression changed on his face. Pippa watched curiously as he worked the muscles in his jaw, tightening them and slackening them, while he gently drew her closer to him across the table, and wondered why to herself, why did she think this was all so unreal?

  ‘Jerome—’ she began.

  ‘No,’ he said, firmly, but still with a smile. ‘No, you’re to listen to me, young lady. You are not going down to Selham to knock on everyone’s door and ask all the wives and mothers if they’ve been sending you poison pen letters. There is no reason why it should be someone in the village. It could just as well be somebody outside the village, or in the next door village, or the next one. It’s a close community down there, but it doesn’t run into twenty or so suspects, darling girl. It could be a list of hundreds. And you won’t know by asking, and you certainly won’t tell by looking. So you’re going to do as I suggest, and hand all this over to the police.’

  Pippa was losing touch, but she couldn’t say anything, she couldn’t tell Jerome, because Jerome was suddenly so far away, and he was so very small, and his voice was echoing only faintly as if they were either end of a long pipe or alleyway underground. She called out to him, but no sound would come, she called again, and again. But still there was silence from her and only the faintest of noises from the other end of the pipe or alleyway where they were, at either end, and where she could just, but only just, about see there was still some light. The light was still there, but growing ever fainter, when at last she managed to call, she called his name and as she did so – Jerome – her head suddenly crashed down and forward on to the table as the light disappeared completely.

  11

  ‘You still call it that over here?’ Oscar asked. ‘A nervous breakdown?’

  This genuinely puzzled Elizabeth and she allowed her brow to wrinkle, but only lightly.

  ‘Obviously you Yanks have a much more up-to-date name for it,’ she said. ‘Something marvellously technical, something altogether more suitable.’

  They were sitting having drinks in Elizabeth’s drawing room, discussing Pippa’s sudden collapse and subsequent confinement. Elizabeth had thought it a nice idea to ask Oscar round to discuss their affairs, with Sebastian safely out of the way on business abroad, ‘off-stage’ as she liked to think of it.

  ‘No, no,’ Oscar hurriedly corrected her, dropping cigarette ash on Elizabeth’s white carpet without noticing. ‘We don’t have any fancy new word for it, it’s just that the term nervous breakdown has been kind of discredited.’

  ‘What a pity,’ Eliza
beth sighed, eyeing the snail of grey ash at Oscar’s feet. ‘I always think it has a rather nice dramatic ring to it. He’s suffering from a nervous breakdown. As if wretched old life has just become far too much. Don’t move.’

  Oscar frowned as he watched someone who was surely one of the world’s most beautiful women get down on her hands and knees to crawl across to him and carefully scoop up his snake of fallen ash with the lip of an unsealed envelope.

  ‘Hell,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oz, darling,’ Elizabeth replied, neatly tapping the ash into his ashtray, ‘you know it’s said to keep the moths away. Do go on with what you were saying.’

  Elizabeth sat back in her chair and ran a moistened finger along the collar of glue on the pale coloured envelope, sticking it down. She put the envelope beside her on a round table, face down, with some other letters.

  ‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘You were going to tell me the fancy American term for a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘There really is none,’ Oscar replied, wishing instead to talk about the play. ‘No-one knows where or what the mind is, so the term nervous breakdown can really have no technical meaning. All it can do is loosely, very loosely, be used to describe various mannerisms manifested by those suffering from anxiety, or extreme nervous tension.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Elizabeth said. ‘All of which goes for poor Pippa.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  Elizabeth shook her head. ‘Have you?’

  ‘I gather she has to have complete rest. An impossibility I’d say, given the amount of traffic that flows through that apartment.’

  ‘Poor darling. She must need a rest. After what she’s been through.’

  In time Oscar just caught the next half inch of ash in the palm of his hand as it flaked off his Lucky Strike. He tipped it at once into the ashtray, followed by the stub of the cigarette.