They say snakes hide where you least expect to find them. This time the snake was hidden in a box of books for which Pippa had sent away to Foyles in Charing Cross Road, hidden in the rolled up newspaper sheets used to pack the ordered volumes tightly in the bound and sealed cardboard container which had just arrived at the small farmhouse in the Loire that sunny spring morning. Jenny was helping her mother unpack the books, sitting at the scrubbed wood table with old Bobby asleep at her feet, and smoothing out the crumpled newspaper as Pippa stood examining and leafing through each precious book. Occasionally Jenny would read something out in English from one of the sheets of newspaper, or intrigued by some strip cartoon she had never seen before, like Flook, or Fred Basset, she would sit with both her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her clenched fists while she earnestly studied the comic activities of the strange comic strip characters.
‘What is this, Maman?’ she would ask occasionally. Or, ‘why are they doing this? Who’s this meant to be, Maman? And why is he saying that?’
It was during one of these enquiries that Pippa saw her, on the other side of the double page Jenny had just straightened out in order to read. It was the lead story, with a large picture of Elizabeth and a smaller picture of Jerome inset into the paragraphs below. STAR FORCED TO QUIT PICTURE the headline read, and then underneath: ELIZABETH LAURENCE HOME IN ILL HEALTH.
Pippa took the page, having torn the strip cartoons off for Jenny, and sat down on a sun dappled seat under one of the kitchen windows. For a while she just stared at the news pictures, testing herself, curious to see how she felt now that she was seeing Jerome for the very first time in twelve years, since the day she had found him lying in bed with this little old woman in dark glasses and silk headscarf who was coming down the gangway on the arm of Cecil Manners.
The photograph was good enough and big enough to show quite clearly the state of Elizabeth’s physical health. She was bird-like, her once slender and elegant hands claws hooked round Cecil’s elbow, her previously flawless skin stretched tightly over hollowed cheeks and too prominent bones, her once enviable mouth no longer a rosebud, but now a thin tense line pursed shut, and the world famous eyes hidden behind the black orbs of her sunglasses. And even though her body was invisible under her mink coat, Pippa could sense its sickness and its infirmity from the way Elizabeth was stooped round-shouldered, appearing to lean all of what little weight she now was on the arm of her agent. Even her beautiful legs looked emaciated and shapeless.
Pippa was horrified. The sight of Elizabeth in such obvious distress gave her not one frisson of pleasure, not one moment of schadenfreude. The woman looked as if she was dying. This fabulous creature whose beauty had defied description seemed to have aged beyond belief, and to have withered into nothing.
On the other hand, Jerome looked marvellous, Pippa noted, more handsome and compelling than ever. The photograph of him was obviously a publicity still, taken and processed to accentuate his stunning good looks, but even so there was no doubt in Pippa’s mind that those looks had improved with maturity, because the slight weakness around his mouth had gone, and while the vulnerability was still there in those famous eyes, those eyes were now more determined, and the jawline more square.
And yet all Pippa could think about was Elizabeth. She studied the picture of her ex-husband, of the only man she had ever loved with an almost clinical detachment, almost as if all she had been was one of his fans, perhaps his most adoring fan, but one who nonetheless had stopped admiring her hero after he had made a picture or been in a play she had hated. Her feelings didn’t frighten her at all. They might have surprised her, she may well have been confounded that her heart no longer beat the faster and that her breath caught no more in her throat at the very sight or thought of him, but she wasn’t appalled, she wasn’t devastated. What she was, as she later discovered when analysing how she really felt about seeing his image once again, was purely grateful, deeply grateful because emotionally she found she felt nothing whatsoever, not even rage.
He could have been anybody, Pippa eventually realized as she walked the banks of the Loire later with her daughter running ahead of her, and her old and faithful dog following slowly on behind. She had been so untroubled by it, the photograph could have been of any famous actor, or more accurately of anyone, famous or not. Jerome was no longer someone, he was just anyone. Jerome was now not just in the past, Jerome was the past.
Elizabeth was the past as well, Pippa realized, which was why she was able to feel concern and compassion. If Elizabeth Laurence had still been what Pippa thought she was, someone to hate, someone to curse, someone she had once wanted to harm, she could never have returned to look at that terrible photograph, and reread the accompanying story, nor could she ever have picked up the telephone and called Cecil to find out how Elizabeth now was.
‘Oh, she’s fine,’ Cecil told her, after he had got over his initial surprise and delight at this out-of-the-blue call from Pippa, particularly since no-one had heard another thing from her since the formality of the divorce. He, Cecil, had it seemed been the first person to hear from her again, a designation which added relish and pleasure to his joy. ‘No, no, it was just a case of nervous exhaustion, nothing more and nothing less, Pippa, than a case of burning the famous old candle at both ends,’ he continued. ‘Elizabeth has never been, as I’m sure you appreciate, one for half measures.’
‘But how is she now, Cecil?’ Pippa asked. ‘I mean there’s nervous exhaustion and there’s nervous exhaustion. That photograph. I simply wouldn’t have known that was Elizabeth.’
‘Oh, it was a terrible picture,’ Cecil said dismissively. ‘You know the Press. They print what they want to show. World Famous Star Collapses. You know? You can’t exactly head some trumped-up story with a photograph of the so-called collapsed World Famous Star smiling and waving now, can you? No, no, it had been a particularly horrendous crossing, we were all as sick as dogs, and that’s what did poor Elizabeth in, that on top of the sheer exhaustion.’
It all came trippingly off Cecil’s tongue, as indeed it should have done, so often had Cecil recounted the official reason for Elizabeth Laurence’s dramatic and pitiful return to her native shores. Except for the one unguarded moment on the ship’s gangway, when a press photographer disguised as a sailor got close enough to take that one all-too-revealing photograph, Cecil had done his job admirably, keeping the reporters at bay with his well-phrased bulletins, while managing to complete the advance arrangements for Elizabeth’s admission to The Hermitage in absolute secrecy. By the time the story broke about the nursing home, Cecil and the doctors had already drafted their explanatory and carefully sanitized statements, and no-one had seemed any the wiser. Certainly no-one knew what had gone on behind the scenes.
It seemed, however, that Pippa’s concern was not to be so easily assuaged.
‘But why The Hermitage, Cecil?’ she was asking, in precisely the same tone she had used to use, Cecil noted irritably, when questioning his selection of shot on the croquet lawn. ‘The Hermitage, as far as I remember, that’s a place for the seriously disturbed. They don’t take you in there just for fun. Just to get over a few late nights.’
Fortunately Cecil had fielded this one countless times before as well, so this answer, too, came well rehearsed.
‘That was a slight backfire,’ he said. ‘The point was we needed somewhere where Elizabeth could have a complete and undisturbed rest, somewhere where the phone doesn’t ring, and the traffic doesn’t stream past, where people don’t bang the doors, and turn the television on, so what better than a nursing home, and what double better than probably one of the most secure nursing homes in the country? No-one could bother the patient there, and after all, money was no object.’
‘So what happened?’
‘There must have been a spy, a paid informer on the staff. The wretched newspapers have them everywhere. The next thing we knew they were running this ridiculous story – this ridiculous and damaging
story – about a total crack-up and all sorts of things.’
Cecil did the best he could to control the anger in his voice because he was still furious about the betrayal. It hadn’t been anyone in The Hermitage. It had been one of Elizabeth’s wretched camp-followers, anxious both for a little extra pocket money no doubt, and the chance to make Jerome look unlovable and uncaring. Cecil had more than just a faint idea who that particular person was.
But Pippa, it seemed, had read or heard of no such thing. Or else, he suddenly realized, she might be trying to test his mettle, to fault his story.
‘What do you mean crack-up?’ she asked. ‘And all sorts of things? They obviously weren’t referring to another of her so-called nervous breakdowns, were they? You mean they were trying to make it look like something different altogether. The real McCoy, in other words.’
‘You know papers,’ was all Cecil was prepared to add, anxious to close the subject, convinced that Pippa knew more than she was letting on. If she did, he had absolutely no desire whatsoever to find himself once more arguing the pros and cons of electroconvulsive therapy. ‘Papers will have you believe what they want you to believe and most particularly when it isn’t true,’ he said. ‘The point is Elizabeth is fine now, Pip, she is one hundred and one per cent her old self. She’s been home for four months now, and Jero – um – and she’s back home in the bosom of her family—’
‘It’s all right,’ Pippa cut in. ‘You can say his name. You can say Jerome. If I can, then you most certainly can, Cecil.’
‘The point is, Pip, and I can’t tell you how sweet it was of you to call, and how lovely it is to hear your voice again, the point is, my dear, all is well. There are no problems, Elizabeth is quite recovered, and the world’s most famous couple—’
‘Show business couple,’ Pippa corrected him.
‘The world’s most famous show business couple are about to launch their new season at the Princes,’ Cecil finished. ‘They open with Antony and Cleopatra, followed with The School for Scandal.’
‘They should make the perfect Antony and Cleopatra,’ Pippa said, without a trace of rancour, ‘and a simply marvellous Sir Peter and Lady Teazle.’
‘You should come and see for yourself,’ Cecil said magnanimously and foolishly. ‘Everyone would love to see you.’
‘You are a chump, Cecil,’ Pippa laughed. ‘Anyway, I don’t go to the theatre any more. Goodbye.’
She hung up before Cecil had time to ask where she was, which was what she intended, since she had never let it be publicly known where she now lived, even during the divorce proceedings. And Cecil was dismayed, because he knew he would look foolish if he said he’d spoken to her but he hadn’t an idea where she was actually speaking from. But that was the only reason for his dismay. The hopes he’d secretly nursed that Pippa would one day be his had long since gone, gone since that horrendous transatlantic crossing, since the time Elizabeth had reminded him of his part in their famous conspiracy, since the moment he realized as he had nursed Elizabeth on that last and fateful day of their journey that it wasn’t Pippa whom he loved, but the mad woman entrusted to his care.
As for Pippa, she had known Cecil was lying from the start. She had known Cecil too long both as boy and man not to know when he wasn’t telling the truth, and Cecil, like most other bad liars, was always lying when he sounded most as if he was telling the truth. Not that there was anything she could do about Elizabeth and not that she was any of her business, far from it. Pippa was simply concerned because she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the wretched creature, and for the unhappiness she must have been suffering from to induce a nervous breakdown, a proper nervous breakdown. Pippa sympathized deeply, because although her own malaise had been nowhere near as severe as she imagined Elizabeth’s to have been (from the look of her and from the sound of Cecil’s glib prevarications), Pippa had been near enough the edge to see how high the clifftop was.
She found the newspaper cutting again, where she had screwed it up in the fireplace and took another look, not at the photographs but at the date, and sure enough it was an old newspaper, a six-month-old edition of the London Daily Mail. Then curious to see what else the box from London had contained in the way of old news, Pippa sorted through the packing and found several pages from papers only weeks, and in some cases, only a few days old. On one quite recent page she located the columns with the theatre advertisements, and scanning them for any announcement of forthcoming productions, she found a box containing details of the New England Players’ forthcoming season at the Princes. It was headed simply:
The Didiers
in
and followed by the titles of the plays in which they were to appear.
For one brief moment Pippa suffered, as always just at the moment which is least expected. For an instant there was a stab of pain in her heart, and very nearly tears, and all because of the name, The Didiers, who were the people she and Jerome had once been, the two halves of what they had sworn would be an inseparable couple, two people to be parted only by death.
But then she recovered, screwing the paper again into a ball and tossing it into the unlit fire. She knew she mustn’t weaken, particularly over something so trivial, particularly as she had long since ceased being a Didier, having renounced the name the day she left England, the day she had reverted to her maiden name, the day she had landed in France and become Madame Nicholls, which very soon had become Madame Nichole.
‘Madame Nichole! Madame Nichole!’
At first, so immersed was she in her thoughts, Pippa only vaguely heard the agitated cry of her neighbour, Madame Theroux. And then she heard it clearly, and noting the sound of urgency in her voice, hurried outside into the sun filled farmyard to see what the matter was.
Her neighbour, a large, red-faced woman, with a shock of bright white hair, was hurrying towards her as fast as she could, scattering the chicks and chickens, her one arm raised in alarm, the other hand clasping her voluminous skirts.
‘Oh, Madame, Madame!’ she cried as soon as she saw Pippa. ‘C’est votre petit vieux chien! Oh Madame! Madame Nichole! Mais il est mort! Je pense qu’il est mort!’
Pippa began to run, stumbling on the cobbles, nearly tripping over the squawking chickens as she followed Madame Theroux out of the farmyard and along the grassy path, away from the old house and down across the meadows. There was no sound but the two women’s breath as they hurried across the lush grass, putting up wild birds which cried in sudden fright and scattering a line of ducks which were crossing their path. She had wondered where Bobby had gone, for one minute he had been asleep as usual by her feet, but then when she had telephoned London she remembered him wandering a little groggily as he did nowadays out of the shade in the kitchen and into the warmth of the sun. She had assumed he had just gone outside for his usual sun-drenched nap, his regular late afternoon habit, but he must have strayed, which was so very unlike him.
They were on Madame Theroux’s land now, running in the woods, the sun flashing and glinting through the gaps of the trees, and Jenny was with her, by her side. Pippa suddenly became aware that her daughter was beside her, grabbing her hand and wanting to know what was wrong.
‘I don’t know,’ Pippa replied breathlessly. ‘There’s something wrong with Bobby.’
Suddenly Madame Theroux stopped, grabbing hold of a tree to do so, to stop her running past the appointed place. With a hand clapped to her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears she pointed to a place on the ground, at the foot of the tree.
Bobby lay there, curled up, as if fast asleep, his head tucked down into his chest as always, and one paw over the end of his grizzled grey muzzle. He looked so sweet and so comfortable as he always did when he slept. But this time there was no light in his eye, this time his eye was fixed open.
No-one said anything, there was nothing to say. They knew he was old, very old, and they knew his time was near, but their hearts ached with sadness all the same. Pippa picked him up, his body still w
arm from the last of his life, still warm from the sun, and she carried him back to the farmhouse where Jenny and she buried him by the stream that ran down from the hill behind the house and from which he had loved to drink.
Her ever faithful and beloved dog had gone. He had got up and left as if someone had called for him, and had wandered off in the late spring sunshine to find himself the very best spot to go to his final sleep. Pippa cried now, as did her daughter, hand in hand they both cried as they stood where Bobby lay, Jenny for her dearly loved old friend, and Pippa also. But Pippa was also crying because she knew that now with Bobby gone, that was the last full stop in the chapter which had been Jerome.
ACT FOUR
Later
Some time in the Seventies
19
‘It will restore your reputation, Dmitri,’ Jerome said.
‘And consolidate yours,’ Boska replied.
‘A filmed classic would help,’ Jerome admitted, pushing the box of Havana cigars across the table to his guest. ‘It would certainly be a feather in the cap.’
‘Or the jewel in a crown.’ Boska clipped the end of his cigar and lit it, deliberately leaving the band still in place. Boska was known to delight in the making of such social solecisms. ‘Any rate, what’s wrong with my reputation?’ he asked. ‘My reputation’s not so rusty.’
‘I think you mean dusty, my dear chap,’ Jerome smiled across at Boska as he lit his own cigar. ‘And no, it most certainly isn’t. You’re responsible for making some of the most notable British films since the war. The only trouble is, Bossy, the war’s been over some while now, and man can neither live by bread alone, nor by reputation. You need to make another film, my dear friend, and it needs to be something remarkable.’ Jerome rose, and began to pace the flag-stoned dining room. ‘It needs to be the sort of film no-one else is making in this country now, or anywhere for that matter. A film which shows the depth of our native talent, on both sides of the camera, a technical and artistic tour de force. So naturally it must be a classic, and equally naturally it must be Shakespeare. No other country – not in the final analysis – they can’t do Shakespeare. The Americans had a go, and not a bad go at that with Caesar—’
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