They – the management, the producer, even Derek – thought she was off her trolley, that she wouldn’t come back. She saw it in their pale, startled faces as they wished her a safe journey. There was always this faint sense that they didn’t trust her – not that they thought she’d deliberately deceive them, but that she was a loose cannon, not quite in control. This in spite of twenty years in the business with never a cancelled performance (not counting the great schism) or, she flattered herself, a duff one. But of course they were right without knowing how right they were. Only Stella knew how many small victories went into the delivery of one great song. Her onstage persona was not an escape, but her means of survival.
Anyway, to hell with them. It had been Saturday night, she had thirty-six hours, she needed to be home. She’d driven on auto-pilot with first Missa Luba, then Billie Holiday, finally Brahms, to keep her company. She hadn’t had a drink since leaving the stage, her head was clear and the white line stayed single, but just the same she knew her reactions weren’t a hundred per cent. Once, on the M6 near Wolverhampton, she came that close to ploughing into a juggernaut as it moved into the middle lane in front of her. The driver had signalled with time to spare, she could comfortably have pulled out to accommodate him, but her brain had failed to register the winking light until she heard the hysterical whine of the lorry’s horn, and was flooded by the livid glare of its full-on lights in her rear windscreen.
Then the shock-sweat had broken out all over her. For half an hour after that she’d pushed a hundred, putting time and space between her and the incident, scared that the vengeful (and she was sure misogynistic) juggernaut might pursue her like the one in the Spielberg film.
At around two-thirty a.m. with only a few miles left, she was suddenly poleaxed by exhaustion. She was off the motorway and on the A-road, deserted in the small hours, when her head nodded and for a nanosecond she slept. The car swerved crazily, she was disorientated, it careered back and forth across the road three times before she regained control of it. Had there been anyone else coming, in either direction, she and they would have been killed. No great loss for herself, she was tempted to think, but that was wicked – what about the other people?
Shaken and shamed she’d turned into a lane which crept from the snug fold of the valley round the flank of a hill until suddenly the White Horse had appeared in front of her, huge and strange, a creature of earth and air, leaping towards the heavens like the magic rocking horse of children’s fiction. She’d stopped exactly where she was, knowing this place and confident she was alone on this narrow thread of road. It had once been a track up to the fort; people had trudged, and run, and ridden and toiled up this same road for two thousand years. All that lay between their way and hers was a thin skin of tarmac.
She’d switched off the lights and the engine, and got out of the car. She walked a little way up the grassy slope, trusting to instinct until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then she stood quite still, breathing in the secret deeps of the hillside, the wild, arrested flight of the White Horse, and the glitter of the endless stars.
For the first time in weeks – months – she felt the jagged corners of her spirit soften and extend like the fronds of a sea anemone in the incoming tide. Minute muscles in her neck and face yielded just a little, releasing some of the tears that she’d so far been unable to shed.
After a few minutes she returned to the car, shuffling and stumbling like a drink, scarcely able to walk for tiredness. She took her tissues out of the glove compartment and blew her nose, shattering the spell with a loud, prosaic honk. Then she climbed into the back seat, unlaced her boots and curled up, her arms wrapped around her face. She had nothing to cover herself with, because it was summer, and she had brought nothing with her. She was relaxed. She sank into sleep like a child.
But this morning her body at least was grown-up. A bloody Methuselah, thirty-nine years old, with aching joints, cold hands and feet, an empty stomach and eyes itchy with last night’s stage make-up. A mouth like a fell-runner’s crotch and breath – she tested it warily in her cupped palm – like a car crash. She unwrapped a wrinkled stick of chewing gum, put it in her mouth, and kneeled up to inspect herself in the driving mirror. Her reflection made her flinch. The only time she looked in a mirror was before and after a show when her face, uncompromisingly it, was just a commodity – a blank canvas on to which she painted Stella Carlyle, entertainer. Be yourself? And what, in God’s name, was that? Her raspberry-red hair stood up in wild stooks above her poor, pasty complexion, legacy of two decades of slap. Last night’s healing tears had left snail-tracks of dried mascara down her cheeks. She found a fresh tissue, spat on it and scrubbed at her face and eye sockets. Who the fuck that mattered, or cared, was going to see her anyway?
There was a half-full bottle of tepid Evian water rolling around on the floor by the front passenger seat, along with the usual drift of old newspapers, burger cartons, road maps and dead flowers. She got out, retrieved it, took the gum out of her mouth and gulped down the water as she took in her surroundings.
It was ten o’clock, and now that daylight had restored detail and scale to her surroundings the White Horse seemed farther away. Even at this time on a Sunday morning there was a walker up there, moving at a snail’s pace uphill, along the horse’s back. Looking away, about three miles down the valley to her right, she could see the line of trees of the Mayden watercourse and make out the conical church tower of Fort Mayden. Above and beyond it the hill with its cape of ancient woodland, that protected the old manor house. To her left, the west, the smooth moon-coloured contours of the downs rolled towards Salisbury, forty miles away.
Between where she was now and the main road was a broad, shallow sweep of coarse hill grass, thinly fenced with posts and wire. There were three horses inside the fence, two big alert-looking chaps and a third lying on its side asleep. When she began to walk towards them the two lively ones began to trot and then canter about, arching their necks, kicking, strutting their stuff – horsing around, she supposed. Stella had a lifelong fear of horses, but this artless braggadocio was bewitching. At one point they seemed to charge the fence and be about to leap over it, and she took a couple of steps backwards in alarm, but at the last minute they turned and galloped westward along the inside of the fragile wire, tails streaming, necks snaked forward ears flat, in mock competition.
As they stormed away Stella’s eye was drawn back to the third horse which still lay motionless in the grass. Its head was towards her, and it had not moved by so much as a muscle. Knowing nothing about horses she was nonetheless struck by something fixed and unnatural in its position – something about the way the legs were held. She squinted shortsightedly – could the poor thing be dead?
She returned to the Ka and took her glasses off the dashboard. When she looked again, the two show-off horses had come to a halt and were cropping the grass, tails still switching skittishly, some hundreds of yards away at the north-western corner of the field in the lee of the smooth barrow known as Knights Hill. The third horse still lay in that odd, rigid attitude. Stella’s heart sank. She’d barely slept, she was knackered and famished, her eyes felt as though they’d been sandblasted and she was scared of horses. But her wretched conscience pricked her. To drive away now, in the cosy expectation of tender hugs and home comforts, not knowing whether the animal was dead or alive . . . was that the action of a decent human being?
Praying with an atheist’s bad grace that the fence was not electrified, she bent and very gingerly slipped between the top strands of wire. She took a few steps and paused. The two frisky horses had picked her up on their radar and raised their heads to look at her. One movement in my direction, she told herself, just one, and I’m out of here. But having made their long-distance assessment they began once more peaceably grazing.
Moving very slowly, not wanting to attract their attention again, she advanced. The notion entered her head, unbidden, that Vitelio would have been proud of her.
Last night Robert had embarked on a precipitate white-water ride of furious, focused energy for which he knew he’d pay heavily. He would show nothing to blur his brutal clarity of purpose. This was a small country, nothing was far away in terms of distance or time, and he had at his command a performance car the full rampaging glory of which he rarely indulged. For once he was going to put his foot to the floor and let her go. He hadn’t had a drink, and if he was caught for speeding it hardly mattered. For once, success would be surrender, and it would be cheap at any price.
The arterial roads out of London were virtually empty, dark and hollow as drains. On littered wastes of pavement occasional war parties of teenagers moved from club to club chi-iking, spilling off the pavement, grimacing, gesturing, seething with sex and substances. In the unsmart northern suburbs quiet ranks of semi-timbered respectable homes stood patiently, stoically awaiting the teenagers’ return. Further out in provincial laybys, lorries and their drivers slumbered, with coyly curtained cabs. Others thundered on, winking indicator lights confidingly to let him by – no competition at this hour, they were all knights of the road.
It took him only three hours to reach Manchester, twenty minutes to locate the hotel. The night porter was initially the very soul of discreet intransigence, but mellowed under the influence of a fifty-pound note.
The party in question had returned from the theatre, but he couldn’t recall Miss (no chance of a Ms here) Carlyle being with them. Then could you, Robert had asked with unusual politeness, possibly, as an enormous favour, call Mr Jackman’s room, say it’s Mr Vitelio, an old friend of Miss Carlyle’s?
The porter pointed out that it was one in the morning. Robert’s turn to be intransigent. This was absolutely crucial.
Jackman came on the line, sounding surprisingly alert considering the hour.
‘Mr Vitelio? Are you who I think you are?’
Robert thought, How the hell should I know?
‘Possibly.’
‘Stay there, I’ll come down.’
Robert replaced the receiver and addressed the porter. ‘He’s on his way.’
Unlike most performers seen offstage, Derek Jackman was bigger and taller than Robert had expected. He was tousled, but wore black trousers and a denim open-necked shirt. He held out a hand the size of a teatray.
‘How do you do. What can I do for you?’
‘I want to contact Stella.’
‘Shall we sit down?’ Jackman led the way to an enclave of sofas in the corner of the lobby. ‘Do you want anything, the porter’ll get it?’ ‘No, thanks.’ Robert perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘I want to contact Stella.’
‘She’s gone home.’
‘What?’ He was rocked back. ‘London?’
Jackman shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Down south to see her mother, her sister . . . Barmy thing to do after the week we’ve had, but she wasn’t about to listen to us – off she went about – what? – a couple of hours ago.’
‘Jesus!’ Robert pressed his hands over his eyes, trying to hold himself together.
‘Sure you wouldn’t like a drink?’
He shook his head. Lowered his hands and placed them, fingers spread, on his knees.
‘What a stupid bugger I was not to ring first.’
‘It wouldn’t have done any good, she made up her mind on the spur of the moment and that was that. Typical Stella.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell you what though.’ Jackman looked into his face, man to man. ‘You will be a stupid bugger if you let her get away this time.’
In any other circumstances Robert would have resented this presumption of understanding, but now he was too unmanned by tiredness to object.
‘I know that.’
‘Her sister lives in a barn conversion at a house called Bells near a village called Fort Mayden, not too far from Oxford. There’s a White Horse there, if that means anything to you. That’s as much as I know.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So what are you waiting for?’ They rose, shook hands. ‘Good luck.’
He hit the road again at once, not lingering for so much as a sandwich or a cigarette. He wanted swiftly and seamlessly to rewind the long tape of motorway, to kid his system into believing that the previous three hundred miles had been not a fruitless diversion but a means to an end.
At the first all-night services he came to he stopped for petrol. He also bought two large bars of plain chocolate, one of which he opened and broke into chunks. He spread these out on their foil wrapper on the passenger seat – a drip-feed of artificial energy.
By the time he was passing through the western outskirts of London the everyday world was beginning to wake up. He resented the lightening sky, the first trickle of domestic cars dithering along at a conscientious seventy. It was business as usual with the lorries too – any small-hours camaraderie was a thing of the past, it was every man for himself and the devil take the middle lane. Once he’d passed the city he was going against the prevailing tide of traffic heading for work, so there was at least a grim schadenfreude to be enjoyed in watching the poor devils crawl into town.
He remembered Stella mentioning the White Horse, and he knew which one it was. He’d have to get there and then ask. Beyond Oxford, there were roadworks – winding columns of cones, narrow lanes, innumerable contraflows and a bloody diversion. All this, with the chocolate and the sleepless night, initiated a pounding headache over his right eye. Once the open road spun out again in front of him and he was closing on his objective he experienced a rush, though whether for fight or flight he couldn’t say. His sole aim had been to get to where she was, and now that he was within a few miles of the place he realised that he had no idea what he intended to do. He had not mentally rehearsed a single word or gesture, was rashly trusting to instinct to see him through.
For barely a second he considered stopping and getting his head together, before telling himself that since the whole enterprise was impulsive, to lay the dead hand of planning on it at this stage might be to render it dead in the water. He was astonished to realise that he was actually afraid – afraid of reflection and hesitation, afraid of weakening – painfully afraid of failure.
There was no problem finding the house, the first farmworker he asked knew exactly where it was. He arrived there at half-past nine, and approached the converted stable block.A heavily pregnant woman in baggy joggers and a sweatshirt bearing the legend ‘Ski Colorado’ opened the door.
‘Good morning!’
‘You don’t know me—’
‘Thank God for that, I thought I might be having a senior moment.’
He detected a familiar note in this remark – he had come to the right place.
‘I’m sorry to turn up on your doorstep like this. I’m actually trying to get in touch with Stella Carlyle and someone indicated that she might be here.’
‘They did?’ A small girl appeared and the woman pressed the child’s head absentmindedly against her thigh.‘Well, I’m her devoted sister – Georgina Travis, by the way – so there is always that likelihood, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
His face must have been an open book, for on hers he saw first sympathy, then dawning realisation.
‘You’re not by any chance Robert Vitelio?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ He had no idea what effect this information would have. How did he stand with Stella’s family? Was he the one that got away? Or a bounder, a bastard, an untouchable?
‘Put it there—’ she held out her hand ‘—you are the only man ever to have got under my sister’s skin.’
‘It’s mutual.’
‘Look, what am I doing keeping you hanging about on the doorstep? Come in.’ She stood aside, but he didn’t move. ‘My husband’s gone to collect the children from school for the day. This is Zoe.’
‘Hallo.’
‘When we get the baby,’ Zoe informed him, ‘I’m getting a pony.’
‘Not from the same place, I tru
st.’
The child stared suspiciously at him, but Georgina laughed and said again: ‘Come on in, do.’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t, thanks.’
‘Whatever. Who told you she’d be here?’
‘Derek Jackman.’
‘Well, he’s a fairly reliable source. But aren’t they in Manchester? I remember her saying what a pig it was that they had to go straight from the Parade up north without a break.’
‘They are up there, but Jackman told me she’d driven down here last night.’
‘So we’re no farther forward.’ Georgina folded her arms, frowning. ‘Have you tried her London number?’
He shook his head. ‘Jackman seemed sure she was coming here.’
‘Okay . . . So what would you like to do?’
‘He mentioned your parents – might she have gone to them?’
‘I doubt it, not first anyway. Dad’s not well, they’re not up to receiving company before ten at the earliest. Do you want me to ring and ask?’
‘No, no, don’t disturb them. Perhaps if I—’ he wracked his brains while she stood there smiling encouragingly ‘—if I go and stretch my legs, it’s a fine morning – and then I could call back a bit later.’
‘Sure, if that’s what you’d like. You know where we are.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Pleasure. If she turns up I’ll tell her you were here, and that you’ll come back.’
‘Thanks.’
He turned, and as he began walking away, she called after him: ‘Stella will be so pleased!’
He started the car and gunned the engine noisily out of the drive, fighting down his feelings: corralling them for when they would be needed. Nonetheless his eyes smarted and the outline of the White Horse shimmered on the other side of the valley.
That’s what he’d do, he’d go for a walk. Fresh air and exercise were restoratives he frequently commended to his post-operative patients but rarely employed himself. Get some space around him, and into his head. He took the road back down into the valley and turned westward, away from the village. After about half a mile he came to a green footpath sign pointing south, towards the hill fort. He parked and got out of the car. The path could be seen wriggling through the first field, beyond the gate, but there was no sign of a stile, or of the right of way having been maintained beyond that.
The Grass Memorial Page 2