‘And now?’ Oscar asked, looking at the face he had always loved, warmed by the glow of the firelight. ‘Now that we’re laughing again, together. Because you have laughed today. And so have I, and for real. Probably for the first time since I last laughed with you. I mean if I manage to say it, if I find a way somehow to tell you I love you, what would you do?’
‘I don’t know, Oz. I don’t know.’
‘OK. I’m going to give it a go. I love you, Pip. You hear me? I love you. So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know, Oscar!’ Pippa repeated. ‘I don’t honestly know!’
‘You don’t know what to do? Or you don’t know if you love me?’
‘I don’t know anything, Oscar! I’m the most useless, stupid bloody woman in the world!’
He was on his feet in a second, and he had her up on her feet too, long before she could start crying the tears she wanted to cry.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s not an answer to anything.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Tears. You can’t see your way through tears.’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘Yes. If you don’t know whether you love me, but I do,’ Oscar replied, ‘then I think the only thing for it is to go to bed.’
‘Us, you mean? You mean for us to go to bed?’
‘You got it. I think we should go to bed and make love.’
‘I haven’t made love to anybody since I left Jerome.’
‘You won’t have forgotten how.’
‘What about you?’
‘I haven’t forgotten how either.’
‘I meant— I meant—’
‘I know what you meant, and I don’t think it’s any of your dam’ business.’
Pippa looked at him and saw the spark in his eye.
‘All right. Then why do you think we should go to bed?’
‘Why do I think we should go to bed.’ Oscar rubbed his chin. ‘OK – one: I think it would be fun. In fact I’m sure it would be. Sex is certainly the most fun you can have, you know, without smiling.’
Pippa smiled.
‘Good,’ said Oscar. ‘And two: I think you might find out that way, whether or not you love me. And if you don’t, OK. If you don’t, at least I’ll have a reason for going away unhappy.’
Oscar didn’t have to wait that long, and he didn’t have to go away unhappy. Pippa knew she loved him the moment he took her in his arms there and then and kissed her. But she didn’t tell him. She made him wait. She made him wait until he’d made love to her, and then she told him.
‘All right, Oscar,’ she whispered to him. ‘I love you.’
‘Of course you do,’ Oscar sighed. ‘You’d never have come to bed with me otherwise.’
They were married two months later on a blazing hot day in July. It was a civil ceremony, and afterwards there was a party for all Pippa’s friends and neighbours in George’s Bar in the village. The celebrations lasted long into the night, but by then Oscar and his bride were on their way to Provence, for a weeklong honeymoon which they spent at a small hotel high in the hills above Grasse. On their return they continued their honeymoon, lazing the long hot August days away at the farm, walking, bicycling, swimming in the river, fishing, Pippa painting, Oscar writing, and both of them making love. Come September they began making preparations for Jenny’s departure to London and art school, with Oscar making discreet arrangements for his stepdaughter’s accommodation, since it had long been agreed between mother and daughter that she would travel and study under her mother’s ‘adopted’ French name of Nichole.
‘As a matter of fact, Maman,’ Jenny concluded during the preparations for her departure, ‘it’s even easier now, now that you’ve remarried. I can be Jane Greene, which is even more anonymous. There’s no way they could ever connect me with my father now.’
It was a sensible precaution, since Pippa had always worried just in case someone had made the connection between her as Philippa Nichole and her as Pippa Nicholls. It would be most unlikely, but there was always the slim chance of a coincidence, or a clever piece of detective work, or of some connection or other being made, and the last thing she wanted was her daughter being hounded by the Press. At least that is what she told herself, that is what she allowed to be known. Privately and in truth what Pippa really dreaded was Jerome finding out and claiming her, not legally because he had no grounds, but emotionally.
She had been very honest with Jenny about this, as was always Pippa’s way.
‘Your father is not just a very attractive man,’ she had said. ‘He is one of the most attractive men you could imagine, just as attractive off-screen or stage as he is on. This isn’t usually the case, Jenny. Actors in their private lives can sometimes be much less than the sum of their parts, and are either shy, shallow or just plain dull. Your father is irresistible. So if you do ever meet him, be careful, that’s all.’
Jenny had laughed dismissively, and said firstly she had no plans to meet her father, and even if she did, she’d be so overcome in advance that she would run a mile at just the thought of it. And then when she had seen the doubt cloud her mother’s face, she had hugged her reassuringly, and told her she had no desire whatsoever to meet her father, because since he was such a famous actor she had the privilege of always making the best of him, without ever having to know the worst.
‘So now here you go,’ Pippa said as she helped close up Jenny’s suitcases. ‘It seems such a very little time, and now you’re leaving home.’
She said it very factually, not despondently or remorsefully, although she naturally felt regret. But she had to say it because she felt it, she felt how short the time had been since Jenny was a child, a child playing outside in the yard, the child in the painting.
‘You know,’ Jenny said, squeezing her largest case finally shut. ‘I was thinking last night as I lay awake. That if you hadn’t remet Oscar, I think I’d have cancelled. I don’t think I could have left.’
‘I’d have been all right. I’ve managed before.’
‘Not really, Maman,’ Jenny smiled. ‘You’ve always had me. You were carrying me when you arrived here. We’ve always been together.’
‘I shall miss you, darling,’ Pippa said. ‘It’s no good pretending. Then it never is. But you’re right, if I hadn’t married Oscar, you wouldn’t have gone. Because I don’t think I could have let you go.’
‘I’m not leaving home, Maman,’ Jenny said as they embraced. ‘When you’ve been as close as we have—’
‘Past tense,’ Pippa said. ‘There you are, putting us in the past tense.’
‘OK,’ Jenny laughed. ‘When two people are as close we are, you don’t leave home. You never leave home. You can’t leave where your heart is.’
‘Until you fall in love.’
‘But you’re in love! So what are you talking about! You’ll be thrilled to pieces once I’m on that plane! You and Oscar will have this wonderful place all to yourselves!’
‘Damn. You’ve seen through me. I thought I was putting up a pretty good show.’
‘You were, Maman,’ Jenny said, and kissed her. ‘But then you always do.’
Oscar accompanied Jenny to London. The plan was that he should help settle her in, since he had to be in London for business before flying back to New York to wind up his domestic affairs there, although it was agreed between Oscar and Pippa that Oscar should keep on his apartment in Manhattan as there was no doubt he would be having to commute to the States regularly.
‘Don’t you count on it,’ he’d said. ‘The game plan is with decreasing regularity. If you want to be a popular writer, be dead. And if you can’t be dead, be the next best thing, absent.’
As far as settling Jenny in, everything went according to plan. Oscar had chosen lodgings for her with the greatest circumspection, in the house of a second cousin of his who had married a banker, a household which had no connection with the theatre or the cinema whatsoever. Jenny took to
the family at once, and they to her, the house was extremely convenient to the college, and Oscar’s second cousin had a pretty daughter called Susie who was the same age as Jenny and in her second year studying English at London University. When Oscar stopped by on his way home from New York, again having been diverted to London for some further talks on his latest movie, he found Jenny more than happy with her situation. She loved the Slade, she loved her lodgings, she was great friends with Susie, and had made plenty of new friends at college.
‘Tell Maman not to worry,’ Jenny instructed Oscar. ‘Tell her it’s like a second home.’
All this Oscar duly reported back to Pippa, who was delighted to hear it. She had been worried that she might have made the wrong decision, allowing Jenny to go to London rather than insisting she went to Paris, but Oscar praised the decision, because it was something Jenny wanted, and when people got what they wanted, the responsibility for the decision and the consequences of making it were theirs and theirs alone.
‘So now let’s have a drink, sweetheart,’ Oscar said, mixing them a Martini apiece, ‘and then some of that food you’ve been cooking that smells just out of this world.’
‘Oz,’ Pippa began at one point over dinner.
‘No,’ Oscar said at once. ‘No dice, Mrs Greene. Jenny is fine. She couldn’t be happier. So raise your glass, and drink to us. Believe me. You really have nothing to worry about.’
As a writer, Oscar should have known better than to be quite so confident. Oscar knew his Somerset Maugham. As a student of English he’d read The Summing Up time and time again until he practically knew it by heart. So if he’d really given it some thought he’d have recalled Maugham’s dictum that really the only thing you can be utterly certain about is that there is very little about which you can be certain.
Which indeed was the case in this instance. For the time Oscar had chosen to give Pippa such a confident assurance that all was well was the time Elizabeth Laurence decided she was going to leave Jerome, and it was that decision and none other which drew Pippa’s daughter inexorably into her father’s life.
22
Elizabeth blamed it all on Macbeth. Not that she ever called the play by its rightful name. In the superstitious tradition of the theatre she elected to refer to it at all times as The Scottish Play, maintaining like all actors that the play was bad luck, and with good reason since practically every previous production of the tragedy had either suffered terrible luck, freak accidents, or sometimes had even been tainted with tragedy of their own, such as the death of one of the leading players. No-one ever enjoyed doing The Scottish Play, it was said, and Elizabeth Laurence was determined not to join their number.
She had argued and pleaded with Jerome about the wisdom of them performing it, but in the end he had prevailed, mostly by dint of persuading her that she would make the greatest Lady Macbeth of them all. And he had been proved right. When the film, which Jerome himself directed, was finally shown it was an unparalleled artistic, critical and popular success, winning five Oscars, for best actor, best actress, best director, best cinematography and best costume, and it established the Didiers beyond any reasonable doubt as the undisputed monarchs of both the British theatre and its cinema. It also ended their marriage.
Afterwards Jerome argued to his friends that the marriage had been foundering for some time, and his friends had all done their best to express the necessary surprise, since most of them had seen the writing on the wall well in advance of Jerome. They all knew of Elizabeth’s affairs, which equally they all knew Jerome liked to think of as just flirtations, and likewise those with their ears closest to the ground knew that once or twice these flirtations had very nearly ended with Elizabeth doing a bolt over Sainthill’s old monastic wall, particularly when she became hopelessly infatuated with Russ Jason, the American actor who had co-starred with her in the psychological thriller Someone At My Door. Jerome had become very agitated at this time, and had stepped very quickly in once filming was over to rush Elizabeth away to the other side of the world for an unscheduled holiday, his given reason being that the content of the film had greatly upset Elizabeth and as a consequence she had been ordered to take a complete rest.
What happened when they got to their island was the very opposite of the publicly imagined peace and quiet. From the moment they landed on Paradise Island to the moment they upped and left prematurely, Jerome and Elizabeth fought incessantly and violently. In her memoirs Elizabeth was to claim that Jerome mocked her and beat her constantly, in an effort to break her will and get her to agree to the filming of Macbeth, a project she claimed he knew would set the seal on his reputation, after which she said he had planned to discard her for an actress called Catherine ‘Kikki’ Bentall. In his own autobiography, while admitting that he had enjoyed a brief affair with Catherine Kendall, Jerome claimed there were no serious intentions on either side, while discounting totally Elizabeth’s allegations of violence. In fact Jerome was to argue that the very reverse was true, that he himself had been the subject of constant verbal and physical assaults by Elizabeth, and fearing once again for her sanity he had relented to her persistent demands that they return home immediately.
That was the only concession Jerome made. Again, they both would have differing accounts of what happened on their arrival back in England, Elizabeth maintaining that Jerome kept her a virtual prisoner at Sainthill with the connivance of her doctors, while he visited her American lover who had stayed over in London, and successfully deterred him with such wildly exaggerated accounts of Elizabeth’s mental instability that the actor took fright and the very next plane out, back to his long-suffering wife in California. For his part, Jerome would later dismiss these assertions as nonsense, arguing that Russ Jason had already got wind of the rumours concerning Elizabeth’s mental health and had long since flown by the time the Didiers returned from their truncated holiday. His argument was the most convincing since it proved conclusively that from the moment filming stopped on Someone At My Door and Jerome whisked Elizabeth out of the country to the time they returned from abroad, Elizabeth never saw or heard from her American co-star again, which would mean there was no way of her knowing whether or not Jerome had visited Jason or indeed what he might have told him.
In the Hebrew culture, there is a maxim which runs that there is your story, there is my story, and then there is the true story, which was doubtless the case in this instance, because when Jerome and Elizabeth arrived back in England, what happened was something different altogether. What happened was that Elizabeth went to bed with Cecil.
Like Jerome, over the years Elizabeth had become inordinately interested in horoscopy, and by this time there was even an astrologer as a paid up member of her staff, one Rupert Hunter, a large, sycophantic ex-actor who just happened also to be the boyfriend of Roberty Dunster. In his latest prediction, Hunter foresaw nothing but doom and gloom for Elizabeth should she obey the wishes of another, and bend to the will of someone who was really opposed to her. The stars and their moons could not be in a worse possible position, Hunter told her, for the making of any major decision. A conclusion reached now while Neptune was in such a revolutionary location could be disastrous and might reverse all her previous good fortune. Proper health care was imperative. This was not a time but the time to rest up, to do nothing untoward, to take the greatest care, and above all not to be influenced by any one particular person or contact, because that person’s influence could make her overstep her mark. Most disturbing of all, however, was that Hunter could see something in the skies, something falling to earth, a very bright light, and he was afraid of it, whatever it was, and he was most afraid of it for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth listened intently, her hand in Rupert Hunter’s as he looked at and checked her palm, taking all this to mean that she must not agree to play in Macbeth, which suited her purposes admirably, because she had privately determined not only now but never to play a part she truly believed to be genuinely cursed. Then she thanked her
friend and astrologer with an intensity which surprised him, before kissing him goodbye. Roberty thanked him and kissed him as well when Rupert returned to London, although Roberty’s other reaction was nothing but pure, undiluted mirth.
‘You’re a great, fat wobbly wonder, Roopie dear,’ he exclaimed. ‘I sometimes don’t know where we’d be, dear, without your magic. My – but you could have been straight off the deserted heath yourself! Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble, you naughty old witch, you.’
It had been Roberty who had prompted his friend to make Elizabeth’s latest horoscope as doomy and gloomy as possible (without being too obvious) because Roberty had career reasons of his own for not wanting Jerome to do The Scottish Play. For should Jerome fail to get the finance for the film of Macbeth the contingency plan was for Jerome and Elizabeth to star in the première of David Pursar’s new play The Magnate, in which Elizabeth as part of the deal had made Jerome secure the main supporting role for Dunster.
‘By the pricking of my thumbs,’ Roberty sighed in blissful anticipation, ‘something wicked this way comes.’
He was right, although no-one, not even Roberty Dunster in his wildest moments, could ever have foreseen Nemesis in the shape of the tall, balding and by now semi-corpulent Cecil Manners.
‘It’s no good, Cecil darling,’ Elizabeth told him, trying her hardest not to watch Cecil eat. ‘Jerome’s being a complete and utter bastard and he won’t even listen.’
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