Stardust Page 22

  He kissed her luxuriant head of hair, and held her to him even more tightly.

  ‘What about you and Elizabeth?’ Pippa asked, turning her large grey eyes up at him.

  ‘What about me and Elizabeth?’ Jerome retorted, with a scold in his voice. ‘Who’s talking about me and Elizabeth?’

  ‘Are you both very different?’

  ‘What have Elizabeth and I got to do with it?’

  Pippa frowned, as if Jerome was missing the obvious point.

  ‘You’re a partnership, aren’t you?’

  ‘No!’ Jerome replied, raising his voice dramatically. ‘No we are not a partnership, Pippa Nicholls—’

  ‘Didier.’

  ‘We are not – a partnership, Mrs Didier! And you are never – to refer to us, or even to think of us as such!’ Jerome replied, turning Pippa on her back and pinning her by her arms down to the bed.

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  ‘I mean it, freckles,’ Jerome warned. ‘I am seriously – serious.’

  ‘So am I,’ Pippa replied, before biting him on the arm, and as Jerome let go, rolling away from under him.

  ‘You savage!’ he yelled delightedly. ‘You are now going to pay for that!’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ Pippa laughed, swiping him round the head with a feather pillow as he advanced on her. ‘I really do hope so!’

  Later, when Pippa stirred from the depths of her love-sleep, she found Jerome standing at the darkened windows in his dressing gown, staring at the invisible sea.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked a little anxiously, sensing a change of mood.

  ‘Of course, Mrs Didier,’ Jerome replied without turning. ‘I am absolutely A.l.’

  He took a battered packet of Senior Service from his dressing-gown pocket, and ferreted out a cigarette.

  ‘It’s just that – well,’ he paused to light his cigarette. ‘It’s just that ever since we’ve come out of the play, all the talk’s been of what we’re going to do next. What we’re going to do, Pippa. Not what Elizabeth’s going to do, and what I’m going to do – separately. No. What we’re going to do.’

  ‘You’ve been offered that play. Just you, that is.’

  ‘Yes. But in this case, my love, the play is not the thing. In this case the film’s the thing. And the film – is for Didier and Laurence, as Boska is already billing us.’

  ‘Can you afford not to do it?’ Pippa asked, meaning exactly what she said.

  ‘No, Mrs Didier,’ Jerome sighed from the window. ‘I can neither afford not to do it, nor can I not afford to do it, if you take my meaning. Anyway, I’m contracted! And who am I? Who am I to defy the mighty Dmitri Boska?’

  Pippa sat up, pulled her robe on and around her, and then got up to go to Jerome.

  ‘Jerome,’ she said, putting her arms round him from behind. ‘Tell me what you’re afraid of. I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘I’m afraid of being half of something, Pippa,’ he told her. ‘I’m afraid of being a twin talent. I’m afraid of being Them. Oh I saw Them in Antony and Cleopatra. Did you? No I saw Them in Under The Bridges. I’m dying to see Them in their new film. You mean you haven’t seen Them in their new film? Oh, well She is Just Wonderful. Just Wonderful.’

  ‘And what’s he like?’ Pippa asked gently, resting her face against Jerome’s back.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Jerome replied, still in his vox pop. ‘He’s very good. But it’s her I’ve always liked. I think she’s wonderful.’

  ‘I think he’s wonderful,’ Pippa said, hugging him to her.

  Jerome fell silent, smoking his cigarette, and gazing out at the darkness.

  ‘Elizabeth walked away with the notices for the play, Pippa,’ he said at last. ‘She cleaned me. It was Laurence first, Didier nowhere.’

  ‘That simply isn’t true,’ Pippa argued, turning her husband round to her. ‘The critics praised you unanimously.’

  ‘Second to eulogizing over Elizabeth,’ Jerome replied.

  ‘Nonsense, Jerome,’ Pippa retorted. ‘Sometimes you’re really very childish. The critics were bound to go for Elizabeth over you. The people who wrote about you were all men – and Elizabeth is an exceptionally beautiful girl. Do use your head.’

  Jerome looked at Pippa, and carefully brushed a braid of hair away from her face, before leaning over and kissing her softly.

  ‘You’re biased,’ he said. ‘You don’t count.’

  ‘You’re cuckoo,’ she replied. ‘You don’t think.’

  She kissed him this time, without holding on to him, without touching any part of him with herself except her mouth on his. But with her kiss she still drew him towards her, daring this time to explore the dark of his mouth with the tip of her tongue, feeling the warm softness of the inside of his cheeks and sensing the curling reply his own tongue made, and the gentle bite of his teeth on her bottom lip. He put his hands on her waist as they kissed again, but she eased them away so that there was still no other contact but their kiss.

  She loosed the sash on his dressing gown so that it fell open on his naked body underneath, and traced the contours of it lightly with her fingernails, down his back and up, down his small firm buttocks and around and up the inside of his thighs, up along the line between the top of his thighs and his pelvis, deliberately just missing his sex which she could feel hardening against her, drawing her nails carefully round it and up slowly on to his stomach, a teasing process which excited Jerome so much he gasped, throwing his head back from her and trying once more to take her in his arms. But again Pippa wouldn’t allow this, whispering to him that he mustn’t, that he must just stand there and do nothing, while she slipped the silky gown down from his shoulders and off his body so that he stood fully naked before her.

  And when he did, she stood back, away from him, not far, just a foot or so, just enough distance for her to see him, to let her look at him up and down and then into his eyes, as they both just stood there, quite, quite still, Jerome naked and ready, opposite Pippa in her white broderie anglaise robe, looking at each other, standing, watching, waiting on the edge. Jerome raised his eyebrows at her unmoving look, feigning his best mock surprise, as if to say imagine-that, while widening his dark eyes at her and trying to force her to smile. But Pippa just stared back at him and stared him out, so that in another attempt to coax a smile from her, Jerome crossed his arms over his naked chest and then his legs as well.

  Pippa refused to be amused by this either, showing her displeasure by suddenly pinching Jerome on his upper arm. Jerome was genuinely surprised by this reprimand, and put his other hand up to rub where he had been hit. But Pippa stopped him from doing that as well, taking his hand and putting it back down by his side, where she also made him put his other hand. Jerome widened his eyes further, turning the look into a mock glare, as if to frighten her, to intimidate her, to reassert his supremacy. But Pippa wasn’t to be deterred by that either. Instead she took him by the hand and led him over to the vast walk-in wardrobe, where taking him utterly by surprise she shut him in.

  ‘Pippa?’ he called from within. ‘Pippa?’

  ‘Sorry!’ Pippa called back. ‘Not at home!’

  ‘Pippa?’ He rattled the heavy doors, but Pippa had them locked. ‘What are you doing?’

  Pippa refused to answer, getting into bed instead, and pinching herself hard under the sheets to stop herself from laughing.

  ‘Pippaaaaa!’ Jerome howled from inside the cupboard, with mock-tragic anguish. ‘Why are you doing this to me? What have I done?’

  ‘You’ve been a complete clot,’ Pippa replied, still pinching herself to keep her voice straight, even though by now there were tears of laughter coursing down her cheeks. ‘And you’re not going to be allowed out and into bed until you apologize.’

  ‘But what have I been a clot – about, Mrs Didier?’ Jerome howled, making himself sound very childish and sad. ‘I cannot begin to reason!’

  Pippa sighed, play-acting every bit as well as Jerome. Then she sig
hed again, clicked her tongue and examined the state of her fingernails.

  ‘What you’ve been a clot about is yourself,’ she called back at last. ‘And until you realize quite how wonderful you are, you are not allowed back into bed.’

  ‘I realize it!’ Jerome whooped from the cupboard. ‘I realize it! I realize! And I’m sorry! I realize just how wonderful I am – and so now will you let me out of here?’

  Pippa did, hopping out of bed quickly and unlocking the doors and then back in double quick time with Jerome in hot pursuit.

  He caught her, just as she threw herself on to the bed, in a despairing last ditch effort to stay out of his reach.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You’ve asked for it.’

  ‘Oh good,’ sighed Pippa.

  Jerome brought the subject up again over dinner, and for doing so he was rewarded with the gift of a brussel sprout in his wine glass.

  ‘Mrs Didier,’ Jerome began, grinning helplessly at the floating cabbage-bud.

  ‘You can’t say you haven’t been warned,’ Pippa interrupted. ‘You can just thank your lucky stars we’re not upstairs.’

  ‘I simply wanted to say one thing,’ Jerome assured her, after a waiter had tactfully replaced his desecrated glass with a clean one. ‘I simply wanted to explain how I felt about this wretched partnership thing. In case at some point you mistook my motives.’

  ‘What motives?’

  ‘This is my last word on the matter, Mrs D. You see, the powers that be, Boska, Locke’s, even Cecil, they really are lining us up to be the next or the new whatever.’

  ‘Laurel and Hardy, you mean?’ Pippa asked, carefully dissecting her sole. ‘Her Laurel, you Hardy?’

  ‘I think they’re thinking more Tom and Jerry,’ Jerome replied. ‘Me Tom, her Jerry.’

  ‘You have thirty seconds,’ Pippa said eyeing him over a lightly laden fork. ‘Starting now.’

  Jerome took a deep breath and began.

  ‘As I told you,’ he said, running all his words together, ‘I didn’t become an actor to be part of some double act a double act that as sure as eggs will turn one of us into a stooge and even if it doesn’t it won’t allow either of us a full and separate identity we’ll always be whisky and soda curds and whey salt and pepper vulgar and flash you name it we’ll be it and that’s not what I want I want to be me Jerome Didier and I want to do the work I want to do without having to be shoe-horned into an unending series of two handers because that’s what it’ll be Mrs Didier mark my words if I weakened and allowed them their wicked way I would spend the best part and by that I mean the worst part of my professional career as one half of a double bill and I don’t want that and I won’t do it so after this film this one film which I can’t get out of and that’s that after this one wretched film with Elizabeth that is it after that I do what I want to do and only what I want to do and if possible only when I want to do it and there’s an end to it.’

  ‘Bravo,’ Pippa put down her knife and fork to clap her hands. ‘It’s your life, Jerome, so you must do exactly what you want with it.’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’

  ‘Of course I really mean it.’

  ‘But do you really know what it means? If I turn my back on this particular devil?’

  ‘It means you get to do what you want,’ Pippa said. ‘Everyone has the right to say no.’

  ‘But their way,’ Jerome warned her. ‘You must remember that their way, Mrs Didier, we could get rich.’

  ‘Socks,’ said Pippa.

  ‘Socks?’ Jerome queried disbelievingly.

  ‘Yes socks,’ Pippa repeated, smiling at him suddenly. ‘What do you mean – we could get rich? We’re rich already.’

  They spent the second week of an increasingly blissful fortnight in Devon, in the back bedroom of an old smugglers’ inn, which nestled in the heart of a sleepy village not a quarter of a mile from the sea. There was no-one else staying, so they had the sole attention of the owners, a retired army major and his wife who spoiled them entirely. After a long breakfast in bed, brought to them by a permanently blushing maid called Brenda, they would go off for the day, to walk the pebble beaches and climb the long steep paths up to the top of the windswept cliffs. On these outings, Jerome would take photographs of Pippa when she wasn’t ready, and Pippa would sketch Jerome when he wasn’t looking. They would take bags of stale bread supplied by the major and his wife to feed the swooping, cawing army of gulls and gannets, along with their own packed lunches of slices of homemade pie, squashy ham or chicken sandwiches, bars of dark chocolate and baby bottles of Green Shield Worthington, to which Pippa took such a liking the bevy became known as Pip’s Tip.

  On their return in the late afternoon, they would tiptoe back to bed, where they would stay until just before dinner, for which they solemnly dressed up, even though they were the only people staying. Dinner was always delicious, and whatever they wanted, which in Pippa’s case was invariably two puddings, and then afterwards they would play darts and shove ha’penny with the locals until they corpsed rotten, which as Jerome taught Pippa was the theatrical vernacular for suffering from a terminal fit of the giggles. Pippa had never even imagined that such a happiness could exist, and neither had Jerome. And there was no need to refer to their mutual state because it was perfectly self-apparent.

  Instead they spent their time teasing each other, and playing games, Jerome discovering to his delight, although not to his surprise, that Pippa was not only well up to him, but in many cases way in advance of him when it came to what they christened juss-kiddin’. She once managed to juss-kid Jerome for a whole day, much to his astonishment when he found out the truth at bedtime.

  ‘You amaze me, Mrs D,’ he said, as they got into bed. ‘You’re quite an actress.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ Pippa replied. ‘You’re just a sucker.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Jerome told her, removing from her the nightdress she had only just put on. ‘Maybe this new-found talent is too good to waste.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Pippa disagreed, idly counting the hairs on Jerome’s naked chest. ‘I don’t really have the need to act.’

  ‘You mean I do?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pippa replied. ‘Of course you do.’

  In this way, as in every way, Pippa was good for Jerome. Having never been let off a hook in her life, even by herself, she expected the same from everyone else. She expected people to face up to whatever home-truths they needed to be told, since she believed this was the only way to discover who you really were.

  ‘It’s true, you know, Jerome,’ she said one midday, as they sat in the shelter of an enormous rock having their picnic. ‘The proper study of mankind is man.’

  ‘I disagree,’ Jerome replied. ‘I think the proper study of mankind is women.’

  ‘Really?’ Pippa said, throwing a crust to the gulls. ‘Do you regret getting married then?’

  ‘Why should I regret getting married, Pippa Didier?’

  ‘If you like studying women that much.’

  Pippa shook her hair out, and turned to look at him.

  ‘I’m sure I shall regret many things in my life, Pippa,’ Jerome replied. ‘But the one thing I shall never regret is having met and married you.’

  Their return to London was not a bit like going back to school, which during dinner on their last night Pippa had said she very much feared that it might be. Jerome at once cheered her out of any impending depression by reminding her they had a brand new home awaiting them, a pretty little unfurnished mews house Jerome had rented for them, immediately off Kensington High Street. They were doubly lucky in that Jerome was also in work, with filming on Dmitri Boska’s production of The Eve of Night due to start the following week. Not only that, as soon as they were unpacked and settled in the intention was to drive straight down to Sussex to have lunch with Pippa’s mother and to collect Bobby, who much to Pippa’s delight was to come and live with them in London.

  ‘So there you are, Mrs Didier
,’ Jerome had said, raising his wine glass. ‘It won’t be even remotely like returning to school, or Real Life as you so gloomily predict. It will be the start of a whole new adventure.’

  They had stayed up so late unpacking and sorting everything out on their return that they slept through the alarm the next morning. In fact, when Pippa heard the ringing, she reached out sleepily to turn off the clock only to find the bell had long ago sounded. A moment later she realized it was the telephone, and so she nudged Jerome awake to tell him.

  ‘Why don’t you answer it?’ he mumbled from beneath the bedding. ‘You live here too, remember?’

  ‘It’s bound to be for you,’ Pippa replied, putting the pillow over her head. ‘Like last night. Yet another change of call.’

  Jerome groaned, rolled out of bed and staggered off to answer the phone. While he was gone, Pippa turned over to settle herself even more deeply under the thick warm blankets and found herself staring at Fred Bear, Jerome’s one-armed and almost bald Teddy, which travelled with him everywhere.

  ‘Good morning, Fred,’ Pippa smiled and yawned. ‘Welcome to Heaven.’

  By the time Jerome returned, Pippa had fallen back into a gentle drowse, with Jerome’s childhood toy held in the hand of an arm outstretched across his pillow. For a long time he just stood looking down on the girl he loved already so deeply, before taking a slow deep breath and sitting down on her side of the bed.

  ‘Who was it?’ she murmured, turning and putting her arms around his waist, still clutching the toy. ‘Don’t they know it’s Sunday?’

  ‘It was for you, my darling,’ Jerome answered, staring at the white painted wall, wondering how to tell her.

  ‘Was?’ Pippa yawned, now resting her head against his back. ‘If it’s a “was” call and they didn’t want to speak to me, it can’t have been important. So come back to bed.’

  But Jerome stayed where he was.

  ‘It was important, Pip,’ he said quietly. ‘Something purely dreadful has happened.’

  ‘What?’ Pippa sat up at once, grabbing Jerome by the shoulders. ‘What has happened?’