Stardust Page 38

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, laying one hand lightly on Pippa’s shoulder.

  Pippa turned and found herself face to face with a very handsome, tall, middle-aged American woman, beautifully dressed in an expensive couture suit, and with a fine head of light grey hair pulled up into an elegant and carefully coiffured knot.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pippa said, noting at once the kindness in the stranger’s eyes. ‘I’ve been hogging this canvas rather, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ the woman replied. ‘Apparently I’m not here to see the paintings. I’m here to see you.’

  ‘Do I know you?’ Pippa stared more closely at the woman, feeling that she did know her, that she was very familiar, and yet totally unable to place her handsome, open face.

  ‘No, you don’t know me.’ The woman answered calmly, standing quite still, her hands clasped lightly in front of her. She seemed completely relaxed and oddly at ease with herself, Pippa thought, she seemed to radiate happiness. But Pippa knew she didn’t know her, because the only American she knew was Oscar. She knew no other American people at all.

  ‘Please, don’t look worried,’ the woman continued, sensing Pippa’s perplexity. ‘You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. But I have a message for you.’

  ‘How?’ Pippa wondered. ‘How can you have a message for me if you don’t know who I am?’

  Pippa frowned, sensing something uncommon, something unforeseen, but the woman just smiled kindly at her in return.

  ‘The message is from your mother,’ she said.

  ‘You knew my mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  ‘Please, just listen. You must listen.’

  She was still smiling at Pippa, even when her eyes suddenly closed and she fell silent, except for a deep intake of breath, followed by a long sigh. There was so much noise in the gallery, so many people were all talking and laughing, that Pippa knew she shouldn’t have been able to hear any of this. She shouldn’t be able to hear the woman’s soft voice, nor should she have heard the long sigh, which had seemed to have been a sigh of relief. But she had. She had heard the sigh, and she could hear everything the woman said to her, not above the noise in the room, but through it.

  And all the time the woman never stopped smiling. For a moment Pippa feared as the woman stood there with her eyes closed that she had been confronted by a mad woman, but nothing about the stranger spoke of madness. Instead the feelings Pippa got were ones of utter goodness, and of peace, while the woman’s smile was almost beatific.

  The stranger’s eyes opened again and she spoke.

  ‘Your mother says she did not tear up the card.’

  She felt it then, Pippa felt it in time. She saw and felt the blackness coming, and as her head began to swim she took a deep breath in, she gasped, and folded over, dropping her head below the level of her heart. As she did she knew she was holding on to the woman, holding her by both her elbows, holding on while she fought the darkness, yet the woman never moved or said a thing. She stood still and firm, and Pippa could feel her strength.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pippa said. ‘I thought I was going to faint.’

  The woman simply smiled some more and then continued.

  ‘Your mother says she had nothing to do with the card.’

  ‘Which card?’ Pippa demanded, suddenly determined to test this woman’s plausibility. If she was genuine, she had to know what the card was. ‘Which card are you talking about? I have to know which one.’

  ‘The third one. The last card. Your mother wants you to know it was Doris.’

  Doris. No-one could have known that. No-one could have known about the card, but even so, Pippa thought, it might have just been some cranky guess, or a practical joke, or something, something which had some sort of explanation. But no-one could know about there being three cards. Only someone who knew, who knew about her, who knew about her mother. And only someone who knew all that, who was real, who was genuine, only they could have known about Mrs Huxley, and that Mrs Huxley’s christian name was Doris.

  ‘Do you know why Doris destroyed it?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me, I’m afraid. Perhaps she didn’t think it was necessary. Perhaps she thought you would know why. She just said she wanted you to know that it wasn’t her. That was the important thing. That it was Doris. And that she loves you.’

  This time she missed it. She missed it because of the glow she felt, the warmth, the light that was flooding through the door. She missed the tell-tale warning signs, as the blood pressure suddenly dropped in the arteries of her brain, as her heart slowed, as the blood vessels in her abdomen relaxed, and because she missed it she had no time to correct the flow, and so her blood rushed down from her head, down from her heart, and into her stomach, as Pippa passed away into darkness.

  When she awoke, she was in an office, small, cluttered, smelling of oil paint and leather. A pretty girl was sitting by her, and behind the girl, a tall man in glasses and a pin-striped suit hovered anxiously.

  ‘Oh good,’ said the girl who was holding her hand. ‘Thank heavens.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the tall man said. ‘Oh dear, you have had us worried.’

  ‘The doctor’s on his way,’ the girl said, pulling the tartan rug which covered Pippa higher up her chest. ‘You just lie there now.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Pippa said, blinking at the light, and taking slow, level breaths. ‘I’m perfectly all right, really.’

  ‘You fainted,’ said the girl, smiling.

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s not a habit, but it happens. From time to time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the girl.

  ‘The noise probably,’ the tall man said, taking off his glasses and holding them against the light. ‘I’m afraid it was terribly hot in there. And frightfully noisy.’

  ‘It wasn’t the noise.’ Pippa folded the rug back and sat up slowly. ‘And honestly, I don’t need a doctor.’

  ‘Oh, I think you should let the doctor see you,’ said the girl. ‘You have been out for an awful long time.’

  ‘Surely not?’ It was Pippa’s turn to be perplexed. ‘It’s usually only a matter of a minute. Less.’

  ‘No, no.’ The man was carefully putting his glasses back on, looping the flexible ends individually over and behind his ears. ‘No, you were unconscious for fully ten minutes.’

  ‘More like quarter of an hour,’ the girl said.

  Pippa sat back in the old leather chair and stared at nothing in particular, because she had never fainted for as long as that before.

  ‘The woman I was talking to.’

  She was half expecting, more than half expecting them to tell her there was no woman, to look blank, or to look at each other.

  ‘Yes, the woman I was talking to—’

  ‘She’s gone, I’m afraid. Your friend, you mean?’

  ‘My friend?’

  ‘The American lady.’ The tall young man leaned forward, and rested his hands on the back of an upright chair. ‘She helped bring you in here, but then she had to leave.’

  ‘She told us not to worry though,’ the girl added.

  ‘That’s right, Mrs Didier.’

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘We checked your invitation. I hope you don’t mind. We wanted to know if there was anyone we should call, but your maid—’

  ‘We called your home, you see. The number was in your diary.’

  ‘Your maid says your husband is away.’

  ‘The American woman,’ Pippa said.

  ‘She told us you would be fine,’ the girl said. ‘That there was nothing to worry about, you’d just fainted, as you sometimes do. At least according to your mother.’

  ‘My mother?’ Pippa sat forward with a start, dropping the rug off her knees, trying to rise. The girl put a hand out to stop her, to ease her back into her chair. ‘My mother?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the young man said. ‘That’s what she said.’

 
‘About you fainting,’ the girl added. ‘She said your mother had told her.’

  Pippa sat with one hand across her eyes, blanking it all out for a moment while she thought. Then she looked at them both, at the sweet-faced girl and the tall, young man.

  ‘Do you know who the woman was?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t,’ the young man replied, and then frowned. ‘Why – don’t you?’

  At this very moment, Elizabeth leaves her hotel for the theatre and the first performance in Manchester of The Tale of Tatty Gray. By now Jerome has made love to her not twice but three times within the space of that hour and a half between the end of rehearsal and curtain up. Elizabeth gets dressed first and leaves before Jerome does, because she thinks it best. When she gets to the theatre, she instructs Muzz to lock the dressing-room door, and she refuses all calls from everyone until she is ready to give her performance. She doesn’t see Jerome again or speak to him until they meet face to face across the stage.

  Everyone backstage knows that something is up, but no-one knows what. All they know is that since Elizabeth and Jerome have returned to the theatre and sat closeted in their separate dressing rooms, backstage is a different place. Backstage there is this feeling of expectation, although no-one has any explanation for this sudden surge of excitement other than the fact that it’s another first night, and that each first night is different, and on a first night anything might happen, and sometimes even does.

  Otherwise, there is just this feeling, this tension, this electricity. Oscar sees Jerome and Elizabeth arriving separately, and observing that they are not speaking, fears they’ve had a quarrel and that as a result the play is going to be an even greater dog than it was in York and Nottingham. But then he too feels whatever it is in the air, and instead of giving his leading players their usual set of notes, or trying to find out what has happened between them, he leaves them alone. He never says one thing to either of them before the curtain rises, he doesn’t even wish them the traditional wish of merde because although he doesn’t know what it is, or why it is, he knows something has definitely occurred and that a miracle might be just about to happen.

  And happen it does. From the moment Jerome, as Sam, opens his derelict studio and finds the girl perched on a high stool by his old easel, disbelief is suspended. He asks the girl what she thinks she is doing in his studio and the girl laughs, she laughs like someone Oscar knows, like Pippa he realizes – that sudden infectious, impetuous and pure laugh, and she tells the artist no, that he mustn’t ask questions, that they can tell each other things, but they mustn’t ask questions – otherwise the spell will be broken. What spell? the artist wants to know, and the sprite laughs once more, again, just like Pippa, and says as she jumps off the stool, just like Pippa, there you are! That’s a question! But that’s your very last one!

  Now it seems to Oscar that everyone in the theatre is sitting forward, as if the whole audience knows they are about to see magic performed, and that they are all holding their breath, and that no-one breathes out again, not until the curtain finally falls.

  Like Oscar, Jerome also senses it from the start, from the moment he sees Elizabeth on the stool. She is even sitting differently, she is sitting, Jerome realizes, just like Pippa does, and when she talks, it’s Pippa talking. Jerome now sees she even looks like Pippa, her clothes, and even her hair which she has done as a wonderful wild cascade. The impersonation is so brilliant, the characterization so fully realized, completely capturing Pippa’s open affection, her honesty, her frankness, even her very elusiveness, that Jerome no longer has to worry how to play his part. He knows he has now only to be himself, and show the Jerome whom Pippa knows and loves and who knows and loves Pippa, he knows that’s all he has to do for the play to work. And so that is all he does. He plays Sam as himself, because Elizabeth is playing Tatty as Pippa, and all at once they are the clarinet and the piano, they are perfect and sublime music, they are wonderful together, they are in harmony, and the play is an absolute and unqualified triumph.

  They take twelve curtain calls, and they could have taken twelve more. As the curtain finally falls, Elizabeth slips her hand into Jerome’s and squeezes it before walking off to her dressing room where she locks herself in. Jerome leaves her alone for the moment, thinking she is overcome, thinking perhaps she is crying, which is what Elizabeth wants him to think, but in fact she’s hugging Muzz and opening a bottle of champagne for them both to celebrate her double triumph.

  Meanwhile, alone in the stalls Oscar sits, long after the last member of the audience has departed. He has long since worked out what happened at the hotel between the end of the disastrous rehearsal and curtain up, and now he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He wants so badly to laugh with delight, to clap his hands and throw his cap in the air, but he knows that what he should really be doing is crying with despair, because whoever is responsible for what has happened, he knows that in fact no-one is more responsible than he. So instead of laughing and instead of crying he determines to get stone drunk, and begins by drinking two large whiskies in quick succession in the pub across the road before going backstage to hug and kiss and thank his leading actors, as well as to congratulate them for giving the two finest performances of their kind he has ever seen.

  At this very moment, Pippa came to terms with what had happened to her at the gallery. After the doctor had examined her, superficially, assuming her to be a socialite who had drunk too much champagne, a notion which Pippa had encouraged in order that she could at once return home, she took the taxi provided back to Park Lane. No-one had known who the woman was, and there was no point in trying to find out who she was, because it was perfectly obvious she hadn’t known Pippa from a total stranger. She was some sort of medium, her mother had spoken through her, and that was that.

  There was no other explanation, and to look for one would be a waste of time, because in terms of everyday life, of normality-so-called, this was something inexplicable. No-one except her mother could have told the American woman what the American woman had passed on to Pippa, that was indisputable. Her mother had not torn up the postcard, Doris Huxley had, and her mother loved her.

  For a long time, so that it all could sink in, Pippa lay on their bed in the dark with Bobby beside her. The traffic passing below swished through the rain, while Bobby snored contentedly and Pippa watched the lights criss-cross the ceiling.

  Her mother loved her. She hadn’t torn the card up. She hadn’t been enraged. Doris Huxley who for some reason had always disliked Pippa had done it, perhaps to make it look as though her mother had suddenly taken leave of her senses, to make it seem she had become enraged about Pippa returning home as a married woman.

  But then, Pippa thought, Doris Huxley could only have done that after her mother had died. So what had really happened that evening after the Weavers had finally gone home? Pippa reasoned that Doris had wanted to go on drinking, and having managed to get Pippa’s mother back on spirits so that like all alcoholics she could have someone to drink with, they had sat up together into the small hours, with her mother just keeping Doris Huxley company, rather than getting drunk. She didn’t think her mother could have got drunk because when they had found her she had been in bed, in her nightgown, in an orderly not a disorderly fashion. She must have gone to bed, very late, Pippa decided, obviously having had more than she should to drink, become confused about her pills, exactly as Dr Weaver had indicated, and accidentally overdosed herself.

  It wasn’t suicide, and it certainly wasn’t a revenge suicide, as had been suggested by her anonymous tormentor, that at least Pippa knew now she had received her mother’s message. Otherwise why would her mother have said that she loved her? Her mother had died by chance, by accident, just as if she had forgotten to look when she was crossing the road and stepped out under a car. There was no blame. The only blame had been the one Pippa had put on herself, a blame born from contrition and grief, from the guilt people always feel when loved ones die
too soon or suddenly. But now the burden had finally been lifted, and Pippa once more could be at one with herself.

  She had lain there in the dark, long after she had reached her conclusions, while the tears of relief slid slowly down from the corners of her eyes to dry in her hair. She thought how strange it all was, how very close they were to disaster all the time, all of them, because had she gone to see Jerome in Manchester that evening, she wouldn’t have gone to the gallery, so she never would have met the American woman, she never would have got her mother’s message, and so she would have gone on thinking an entirely wrong set of thoughts, probably for the rest of her life. She would have remained convinced that her mother had died in anger because of her, because of her marrying Jerome. But she hadn’t. Her mother had died accidentally. Her mother loved her. Perhaps she had even loved Jerome.

  At twenty-five to eleven she got up and rang the theatre, but the line was engaged. She waited and tried again, but again she couldn’t get through. The apartment was still in the dark as she sat in the big chair by one of the windows, waiting to call again, and while she waited Bobby jumped off the chair, and padded through to the kitchen for some water. The line was still busy on her third attempt, and Pippa suddenly sensed that something else had happened that night. She felt it quite suddenly, it was an intuition, but she knew she was right as she stared out across the darkness to the park.

  The play had come good. She told Bobby as he wandered back in from the kitchen, his whiskers dripping cold water over her bare feet as Pippa rubbed his head and pulled his ears and told him of his master’s triumph. ‘The play’s a hit, Bobby,’ she said. ‘I know it. I can feel it.’

  She finally got through at quarter-past eleven, catching the last person out of the door, one of the stage management. No, he’d said, they’d all gone, everyone had gone to the pub over the road and then they were going to a party somewhere. Sorry, he’d said, he wasn’t sure where, it was at some rich bloke’s house, someone who had some money in the play, but sure – of course he’d tell Jerome she’d rung. It had been such chaos back here, he told her, backstage, since they’d come down it was no wonder she couldn’t get through. Why? Pippa asked, knowing the reason already, what happened? What happened? the voice laughed delightedly in her ear. What happened? What had happened was fantastic. What had happened was it had taken off. The play was a hit, Mrs Didier, that’s what had happened.