Stardust Read online

  ‘I simply feel as if I’m in a maze,’ Pippa frowned. ‘I keep going round and round and ending up in the same place. I really wish there was something positive I could do. Instead of just staring into myself.’

  ‘My Italian blood tells me to be careful here,’ Oscar replied. ‘You know what the Italians say? About helping people? They say teeth-a placed befora-the-tongue give-a the best avvice. But since you’re wondering rather than asking, I’d have to suggest that maybe there is something you can do. You could give yourself a break, stop being so damn hard on yourself, and go out. Get out of here and do something. Anything. Just as long as you get out of here and do it.’

  ‘I haven’t felt like it,’ Pippa said. ‘I’m not sure I can. At least – not yet.’

  ‘Sure you can. Go to the movies. There’s nothing wrong in going to the movies. Or an art gallery. Or a concert. Even the theatre. Go see a play! Just check out of here. You know, don’t you? That if you hide your sorrows away, they never get cured.’

  ‘I’d go to the theatre,’ Pippa smiled, ‘if you had something on.’

  ‘You saw my last play?’ Oscar asked, all innocence.

  Pippa stared back at him, suddenly putting a hand to her mouth.

  ‘I haven’t mentioned it, have I?’ she asked in quiet horror. ‘God, you must think I’m dreadful. I saw your play in Oxford. I thought it was simply wonderful.’

  ‘It was better in London,’ Oscar replied. ‘But don’t worry. I’m glad you saw it in Oxford.’

  Jerome finally returned at tea-time, full of apologies for his unexpectedly long absence, but with a look of quiet triumph in his eyes. If Oscar hadn’t known actors better, he might have mistakenly thought Jerome had been on the nest, such was the gleam in his eye. But Oscar knew that gleam, he knew it was the actor’s gleam, a tell-tale sign of something quite different to a casual sexual liaison. The writer knew from the look in his eyes that the actor had been offered a part.

  However, Oscar wasn’t to be let in on the secret, since Jerome obviously wanted the revelation to be given in camera. He heard Jerome whisper to his wife as he kissed her so fondly that he had some wonderful news, before turning his attention back to Oscar, whereupon Oscar, sensing the moment had come for his departure, looked at his watch mock-aghast and asked for it to be confirmed that that really was the time.

  ‘You don’t have to go, Oz,’ Jerome said. ‘There’s absolutely no hurry.’

  Oscar regretfully assured him there was, that he had to rush off and meet someone, and started to collect his things together. Jerome sighed in well-feigned disappointment and promised to fix another lunch date as soon as possible, which Oscar agreed would be good, not daring to take another look at Pippa in case something showed, and Jerome guessed how desperately Oscar had fallen in love with his wife.

  ‘Are you writing anything, Oz?’ Jerome asked him by the door, as he helped Oscar struggle into his coat.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Oscar replied. ‘But now I’m all systems go.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jerome concluded, with a deliberately mock-serious look, the sort of look Oscar knew actors reserved for writers, the sort of look indulgent parents reserved for children. ‘It came to you over lunch, did it?’

  Oscar considered the question as he redid up the buttons he’d just done up all wrong on his raincoat.

  ‘No,’ he said, looking back at Jerome. ‘The genesis of the idea I got on a train.’

  Then he smiled, said goodbye to his muse, and took his leave.

  Jerome was far too pumped up to notice that Oscar also had a look in his eyes, and even if he had, he would undoubtedly have ascribed the looks to a literary rather than a spiritual inspiration. So he shut the door, and Oscar out of his mind, and embracing his beloved Pippa once again, asked her to guess what.

  Pippa couldn’t, at least she pretended she couldn’t, because even though she didn’t yet have Oscar’s experience with actors, she knew enough to know the only thing this look could mean. But Pippa was also a woman, and she knew instinctively that when someone asks you to guess something, the very last thing they want is for you to guess that something correctly.

  ‘I give up,’ she said. ‘You tell me.’

  Jerome smiled at her, let go her hands, and went and flopped down on the sofa, stretching his arms out either side of him, along the back.

  ‘They want me to do The Master of Kintyre,’ he announced.

  ‘I thought they wanted you to do this other film. With Elizabeth.’

  ‘Ah ha! They did. That is why I have been so long! That is why I have been out for most of the day, my darling girl! I fought them! I refused – flatly! No more, I said! I am not – the other side of a coin! We are not some – some double headed Hydra!’

  ‘And you won?’

  ‘Won? I triumphed, darling girl! Why else do you think they have offered me The Master of Kintyre unencumbered? With no strings attached! With no Elizabeth Laurence!’

  Jerome, laughing with delight, tapped the seat beside him on the sofa for Pippa to come and sit down, which she did, first smiling at him, and then resting her head on his shoulder, in the crook of one arm.

  ‘Are you pleased, my darling girl?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’re pleased, Jerome, I’m delighted,’ she replied. ‘Is there a tour?’

  ‘Very brief. Oxford again, Brighton, Richmond and then straight in. You’ll come to Brighton, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As she spoke, Pippa turned to face her husband, and as she did, he leaned across and kissed her, and kissed her a second time, before taking her upstairs to bed where at last, and to the great and joyous relief of them both, they once again made love.

  ‘It was the only way, Boss,’ Cecil said. ‘I assure you.’

  ‘Ha. Nuts,’ Boska replied.

  ‘You don’t know him, dear chap. Not like I know him.’

  ‘I don’t want to know him. As like you know him. What I want, all I want is him to work.’

  ‘If that is all you want, please – you really must rest assured. This is the only way you will get him.’

  ‘Might we suppose Jimmy don’t keep his word, huh? After all, might we suppose Jimmy has an interest in this Highland poop.’

  ‘There is always that risk, I grant you. But I think you have somewhat minimized it by also letting Jimmy have an interest in Lady Anne.’

  ‘We shall wait,’ Boska sighed. ‘And we shall see.’

  ‘I’ve already seen, my dear fellow,’ Cecil said. ‘And I could hardly contain my mirth.’

  Cecil Manners was not the only one who found The Master of Kintyre impossible to take seriously. The word on it was out before it even opened in Oxford, so that by the time it reached Brighton the profession and its acolytes were flocking down to the south coast town to witness what was rumoured to be by far and away the most hilarious tragedy staged in living memory. The critic for the Brighton Echo filed the following notice:

  I need hardly bother you with the preposterous plot, except to say it has something to do with a Scottish nobleman who is prepared to sacrifice himself, and does so, rather than have his beloved Highland estate plundered for oil. What should concern us, however, is that the leading role is played by one of our most promising young actors in years, Jerome Didier, who besides being about a generation too young for a part requiring both depth and maturity, in his panicstruck performance has decided bombast equals passion, with the result that we the audience, instead of feeling any sympathy for the wretched Master of Kintyre, wish only that he would return to the drill square where he so obviously belongs. The sole redeeming feature of the appallingly miscast Mr Didier’s performance is that in a kilt, which he perforce has to wear throughout the action, happily he is seen to have extremely good legs.

  Pippa was allowed nowhere near the play, not even now it was in Brighton. After the Saturday performance, perhaps the most disastrous of the week, Jerome returned home to London and took to his bed where he stayed all day Sunday and l
ate into Monday morning until in answer to his persistent telephone calls Cecil finally arrived round at the house at midday.

  ‘Why don’t you take Bobby to the park?’ Jerome called back down to Pippa after she had yelled up to him to hurry and get dressed when she caught sight of Cecil’s car pulling into the mews. ‘I might have to lose my temper! And if I do – I’d rather do it in private!’

  Pippa let Cecil in, excusing Jerome’s absence by saying he was on the telephone, while she picked up her coat and Bobby’s lead from the chair where she had dropped them when she had returned from her walk only ten minutes earlier.

  ‘How are you, Pip?’ Cecil asked, carefully taking off his dove grey gloves and avoiding her gaze. Ever since her mother had died, he had found it quite impossible to look Pippa in the eyes, however hard he tried. ‘You’re looking very well,’ he said, taking off his expensive wool coat and handing it to her.

  ‘I’m fine, Cecil, thank you,’ Pippa replied. ‘Can I get you anything? A beer? A glass of sherry?’

  She had just poured Cecil his glass of sherry when the unshaven Jerome appeared, sliding an arm into the black polo neck sweater he had already pulled over his head.

  ‘Cecil, dear boy,’ he said in greeting. ‘I do hope you’ve put in your teeth.’

  ‘What are you talking about, my dear chap? You know perfectly well all my teeth are my own.’

  ‘It was a metaphor, Cecil, old boy! Meaning you are going to have to bark for a change! Yes? Instead of just fawn!’

  They were still arguing when Pippa and Bobby got back from the park, or rather Jerome was. Pippa could hear his voice as she walked towards the door. She hesitated before she put her key in the lock, waiting to see how far the argument had progressed, whether Jerome was winning or losing.

  ‘I am not going into tow-ern – in this, Cecil!’ Jerome howled, giving two full syllables to the place he wasn’t going. ‘There has to be some way out!’

  Pippa couldn’t hear Cecil’s reply, but it was obviously not to Jerome’s liking because the air was again rent with one of his wolverine wails of anguish.

  ‘No, Cecil!’ he cried. ‘No, you got me into this, now you get me out!’

  From where she stood by the front door, Pippa could see her husband in their sitting room. She watched him as he howled, and then as he stood with his back to the window, listening to what Cecil had to say. Cecil looked completely unflapped by Jerome’s excess of emotion. He was seated in the library chair, smoking his cigarette as always through a holder, while he obviously told Jerome once again why there was no getting out of the play, at least, Pippa guessed, not under the terms Jerome wanted. She knew it would come to this. Even though she was not at all conversant with the way the theatre worked, from the moment the script of The Master of Kintyre had dropped through their letterbox, Pippa had at once and for no known reason, been extremely uneasy.

  Everything about the project seemed wrong. For a start, although she had no experience of reading playscripts, even Pippa could see that Jerome was not only far too young for the leading part, but that he was the wrong physical type. The play apparently required someone who commanded attention by his sheer presence, and while Jerome was undoubtedly magnetic on-stage, his appeal was diametrically opposite to that of the Laird of Kintyre. Jerome was broody, introspective and mercurial, while the Laird was meant to be a big red-haired Highlander, someone who could haul up the drawbridge on his castle singlehanded, not someone who would look better suited to sitting by a lonely lake writing sonnets.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Jerome had asked impatiently, having given Pippa the script to read. ‘Don’t you think it’s simply marvellous? I shall play it in a wig, of course. And most probably a beard. And I shall have to go to the gym and put a bit of weight on. But don’t you think it’s marvellous! He’s so strong. And contained. And – and all that power! He needs to be very quiet, when he isn’t speaking. Very still. The silence of real authority. But when he speaks – he has this inner force. This – this strength.’

  ‘Can you do a Scottish accent?’ Pippa had asked, and Jerome had fallen across her in the bed, laughing and lying over her knees.

  ‘What’s a Scottish accent, Mrs Didier? What sort of Scottish accent? What’s an English accent? There are hundreds of English accents! From Land’s End up to the Borders! I shan’t do a Scottish accent. I shall find where this man comes from, where exactly in Scotland, and I will do – his accent.’

  ‘It seems such a strange part to offer you. It just doesn’t seem to be your sort of part at all.’

  ‘There is such a thing, Pip, as casting against type. And when it works, it’s the most exciting sort of casting that there is.’

  There was no point in any further discussion, because as Pippa well knew Jerome had made up his mind to do the part the moment it had been offered to him, not because the part was right for him, but because there was no part for Elizabeth Laurence. But if that was all there had been to it, Pippa would not have worried. Jerome was young enough to make a fool of himself once or twice without it damaging him permanently, Pippa had learned that from listening to what was said. One piece of miscasting was certainly not going to bury a talent as prodigious as Jerome’s. Nonetheless, Pippa’s suspicions had been raised, and they wouldn’t lie down. She would have loved to have known, for example, precisely why all the people with whom Jerome was so closely involved, Cecil Manners, Jimmy Locke and the all-powerful Dmitri Boska, who normally went to great lengths to monitor Jerome’s career, why they should all suddenly have decided that the very best thing for their most up-and-coming talent to do at such an important point in his career was be seen in the West End in such a ludicrous play. It just didn’t make sense. Nothing about it made sense.

  Except to Jerome. To Jerome it made perfect sense because it was going to prove two things, his versatility, and more importantly, his solo worth.

  ‘It’s a wonderful play,’ he had announced time and time again to the increasingly doubtful Pippa. ‘It’s a marvellous, original allegory, and we shall fill everywhere!’

  When Oscar had looked in one Sunday for drinks with some of Jerome’s other friends, Pippa had asked him privately for his opinion.

  ‘I haven’t read the work in question, Pippa,’ he had told her, ‘but I’d be worried by that word allegory. George Kaufman, one of my heroes, one of our great comic playwrights, George says that Satire closes Saturday. And I have a very distinct feeling if you asked him about Allegory, he wouldn’t even give it that long. He’d give it till Thursday at best.’

  And now Jerome was trying to get out, and do it before Thursday. But he wasn’t getting anywhere with Cecil. Pippa could see that from the way Cecil was smiling continuously, without really smiling at all, smoking his cigarette with distinct relish, while in front of him Jerome was visibly shrinking, until he finally flopped over the back of the sofa which was in front of him, and lay there, like a rag doll. Pippa watched them both through the window, unseen but all seeing, and as Jerome lay collapsed face downwards over the back of the sofa, she saw the smile disappear on Cecil’s face, to be replaced by a cold look of seeming disinterest.

  ‘Hello, Cecil,’ Pippa said, as she shut the door behind her, having decided Jerome needed rescuing. ‘You still here?’

  The smile returned at once to Cecil’s face as he got to his feet.

  ‘We’re almost finished, Pip,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep him much longer.’

  ‘I shall get a wishbone stuck in my throat, Cecil,’ Jerome growled a warning from the sofa, ‘I shall have a breakdown! I may even get pregnant!’

  Cecil laughed easily, his old light-hearted self again, and leaned across to tap Jerome on the back.

  ‘There is a way out, Jerome, you know that,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Jerome, burying his face in a cushion. ‘I would rather stay on the bridge while we sink with all hands.’

  ‘Dear boy,’ Cecil sighed and sat back down, while Pippa let Bobby off the lead and
hung up her coat. ‘You might have been able to put up with it in Oxford. You might just be able to endure it in Brighton, and shrug it off in Richmond. But you will not recover from a flop of this dimension in the West End. They will simply flay you alive. And from past clients’ experiences, it is not the very best of things for the old confidence. Particularly in the young.’

  ‘No, Cecil.’

  ‘Think, dear boy. Think of afters. You may not get another offer for who knows? Six months? A year? Yes, of course you will get another offer. Someone as good as you is bound to get another offer, but of what? I mean you do not have a lot under the belt, do you? One play, one film.’

  ‘Both hits.’

  ‘A hit play, especially for Elizabeth, and a successful film.’

  ‘A successful film – for me.’

  ‘But what next, dear boy? You won’t want second billing, but then after The Master, are they going to offer you top? Are they going to offer you anything? This business, believe me, this business is all start and stop and start again, if you’re not very, very careful.’

  ‘What’s the alternative, Cecil?’ Pippa asked in the ensuing silence. ‘Because there obviously is one.’

  ‘Pippaaaa—’

  Jerome raised his head from his prone position for the first time for a long time.

  ‘This is nothing to do with you, my darling girl.’

  ‘I only wanted to know the one way out, Jerome. I don’t think you should be unhappy in anything. Not at this stage.’

  Jerome stood up and took a deep breath, closing his eyes.

  ‘Does it ever occur to any of you?’ he asked, and very loudly. ‘That all is not lost? That the blasted out of town critics might just be wrrrrrong? That this is typical of tours – and that with a little extra rehearsal, and some judicious rewriting, not to say recasting, and one more date to play it all in before London, that might be all that is needed? Instead of hitting the panic button? Look at The Parade Gone By! Disaster! Everywhere it played – disaster! And what did they do? They replaced the juvenile lead, they wrote a new last act, they built a new set, they changed the first act and put in Alistair Stuart! And it ran for two years!’