Season of Storms

  “Got spooked, did you?” Nodding understanding, he released my arms. “I know, I feel the same way sometimes, walking through this place. Here, come and sit a minute, catch your breath.”

  I let him guide me three steps to the side, to have a seat on the curve of a low stone wall running alongside this part of the path. The thickly clipped yew hedge at my back offered some sense of safety, of privacy, making me feel more secure.

  Den sat next to me, looking me over again. “Want my jacket? It’s cold out this morning.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He took it off anyway. “Here, put it on,” he advised me. “You’ll freeze.”

  “Den, honestly . . .”

  “I can’t afford to have you catch a cold. We don’t have understudies, remember? Put it on.”

  I put the jacket on, losing my arms in the folds of its sleeves like a child playing dress-up. I did feel much warmer, though. Settling back, I asked, “What brings you out in the garden so early?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, just looking for Rupert. I wanted to go over something with him, and I know he likes to come down here and walk before breakfast. He’s not easy to find, though.”

  “I know.” I confessed I’d been tracking him, too. “He was heading for the orchard when I saw him last, but where he went from there I haven’t a clue.” I smiled. “He’s probably back at the house by now, wondering where we are.”

  “Probably.” Den folded his arms across his chest as though feeling the cold himself without his jacket, but he didn’t complain. Looking round, he asked, “How many gardeners, do you think, does it take to keep on top of all of this?”

  I didn’t know, and couldn’t guess. “There aren’t as many as there used to be, though. Edwina was complaining that the gardens had been rather let go.”

  “I can’t see it, myself. But then I’m not a gardener. I didn’t even mow the lawn, when I had one. I’ve lived most of my life in apartments—I’m back in one now. My ex-wife,” he said, “kept the house with the lawn.” For all he said that lightly I still sensed that underneath his joking attitude there lingered disappointment, that he hadn’t really wanted the divorce. Perhaps he had longed for the house with the lawn, and a wife, and a family . . .

  I looked at him, curious. “Do you have any children, Den?”

  He turned his head, I thought, a little quickly, eyebrow raised. “What makes you ask me that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s only that you seem so comfortable with Poppy, I just wondered . . .”

  “Yeah, well, Poppy,” he said, shrugging in an offhand way, “she’s one great kid. She’s easy to spend time with.”

  “The feeling appears to be mutual,” I said. “She thinks that you’re pretty great, too.”

  “Really? What did she say?”

  Because he looked so genuinely pleased I tried to recall her exact words. “She said she liked you, that you weren’t like all the others.”

  “All the other whats?” he wanted to know.

  I realized my mistake too late to backtrack, so I had to tell him, “All the other men who like her mother.”

  There was a pause while he digested this. And then he smiled. “I see,” he said, neither denying nor confirming it.

  “She didn’t put it exactly like that. She was talking about Nicholas, I think, and how different you were, how much nicer.”

  “Well that,” said Den, “goes without saying.” His smile grew cocksure. “Anyone with taste would like me better.”

  “Shall I tell that to Nicholas?”

  Shrugging again, he remarked, “Wouldn’t matter. His ego’s so big that I doubt if he’d take you too seriously.” And then, as if remembering that it wasn’t very politic to talk about one member of the cast with another, he brought the conversation back around to, “Anyhow, I’m glad that Poppy likes me. I’d hate to think I’d let myself be humiliated at Chutes and Ladders for nothing.”

  My turn to smile. “Oh, so you lost the games on purpose, did you?”

  “Naturally.” Grinning, he slanted a look at me sideways, his gaze dropping down to my neck. “Hey, you’re about to lose your necklace, there.”

  Putting a hand up I felt the open clasp of the diamond angel pendant and refastened it gratefully. “Thanks, I must have caught it on something when I was running. It’s a good thing you noticed—I’d hate to have lost it. Bryan only just gave it to me, for my birthday. He bought it at Tiffany’s.”

  “Well, twenty-first birthdays are special, though, aren’t they?”

  “I’m twenty-two.”

  He seemed surprised by this. “My file said twenty-one. And I could swear that Rupert told me . . .” Here he stopped, and paused.

  I heard it, too—a cheerful whistling, coming up the path the way I’d come. I recognized the tune, and turned expectantly as Rupert strode with characteristic briskness into view. He slowed when he caught sight of us, the whistle dying on his lips. Even at a distance, I knew his expressions well enough to know he wasn’t thrilled with what he saw—me sitting here alone with Den in this secluded corner of the gardens, and wearing Den’s jacket at that, and so I tried my level best to make it clear he hadn’t interrupted anything.

  “Good morning,” I said. “We’ve been trying to find you.”

  “Oh, yes?” Drawing level, he stopped; looked from Den’s face to mine.

  “Yes. You lost me at the orchard,” I explained. “I wasn’t sure which way you’d gone, so I came this way, and ran into Den.”

  “In the literal sense,” Den put in, with a smile. To Rupert, he said, “Are you done with your walk, now? Because if you have a minute, I’d like to get your input on the scheduling of our next production meeting. I’m supposed to call the lighting guy this morning.”

  “Yes, I’m finished,” said Rupert. He glanced at the time. “It’s nearly eight, anyway—we ought to head back and have breakfast.”

  Den made a face as he stood. “Let’s hope it’s better than yesterday’s breakfast.”

  I teased him, “Missing Teresa, are you?”

  “In the worst way. This new woman fries rubber eggs.”

  Rupert smiled in spite of himself. “Chin up,” was his advice. “I’m sure Teresa will be back before too long. Once she gets the funeral over with—”

  I interrupted, frowning. “When is the funeral?”

  Rupert thought it was today. “This afternoon, I believe. Why, were you thinking of going?”

  “Heavens no, I hate funerals. I wondered, that’s all.” Alex would doubtless be going, I thought. And for all I knew Daniela would be going with him. She seemed to have reclaimed her territory in a deliberate way since Monday evening—I hadn’t seen Alex at all yesterday except for at dinner, and then he’d been quiet as always, politely withdrawn.

  “—rotten shame,” said Rupert, clearly finishing a comment that I’d missed.

  I glanced up, guilty at being caught daydreaming, but he hadn’t been talking to me.

  Den was nodding. “It just goes to show you, you never can tell what’s around the next bend.”

  Pushing Alex to the back of my mind, I wrapped Den’s jacket tighter around me to shut out the chill of the rising wind, and fell into step behind the two men.

  iii

  “WICKED bloody weather,” Nicholas complained, crossing the stage to gaze blackly out over the dripping wet landscape through the cascades spilling down around the edges of the high roof overhead.

  We’d had a solid week of this, cold days and bitter nights and rain that came and went and came again, relentless. Rupert, keen to move us out of the rehearsal room and onto the stage, had been hoping for a break, and when this morning had begun with sun and lightly scattered cloud and all the signs that it might be a nicer day, he’d wasted no time in transporting us down here, to Galeazzo’s theatre-in-the-round.

  But the thunder had come on suddenly around eleven, with heavy rain that fell straight down and bathed the green surrounding hills in thick rain-forest mis
t. It didn’t stop us from rehearsing—the roofed area over the audience seats was more than wide enough to give sufficient shelter. But the thunder added unexpected drama to what was meant to be a quiet, poignant scene, and the chill wind that whipped round my skirts now and then made me lose concentration.

  After nearly two weeks without my script in hand I’d managed to regain my earlier confidence, but this morning I’d found myself once again asking for lines. It wasn’t entirely my fault. This morning we’d been doing scenes from Act Two, between Nicholas and me—the scenes in which we, having been reunited by the medium for one brief hour, discussed the details of his death, the nature of the afterlife, the morality of war . . . The dialogue, plagiarized from Sophocles or not, was beautifully written and rich with emotion, but Nicholas had an unfortunate habit of editing his lines to suit himself, which not only confused me at times but occasionally had the effect of making my next line sound out of place, as though I weren’t responding properly to what he’d said. And that confused me more.

  Normally, when one of us got a line wrong, Den simply made a note of it for later and the rehearsal went on uninterrupted. Rupert only rarely stopped rehearsals to correct us in our speeches. But this morning for the first time I had seen him losing patience.

  Like the weather, he’d gone on watching for a time in an increasingly brooding silence, and then as the first clap of thunder had rolled overhead he’d exploded as well. At least, to me, who’d only seen him lose his temper on a handful of occasions, it had seemed like an explosion. Den and Nicholas would probably have deemed it rather tame: a quick slamming down of his pen on the clipboard, the order to break, and the slamming again of his clipboard down onto the seat in the front row beside him as he’d risen to his feet. Striding firmly up the aisle he’d stopped beneath the overhanging roof to stand, hands clasped behind his back.

  Knowing that meant he was cooling his temper, I had prudently stayed silent, taking the opportunity to stretch my tense shoulders while Nicholas had moved to where he now stood at the far edge of the stage, head bent to light a cigarette.

  The tone of rehearsal, I thought, was always different without Madeleine. She hadn’t needed to be called this morning, naturally, because she wasn’t in the scenes that we were working on. Other times all three of us were needed; sometimes only Madeleine and me. The curse of my particular part was that I was onstage the whole time, from beginning to end of the play. While the other two actors got breaks from rehearsing, I didn’t.

  Mind you, I still had it better than Rupert and Den, who in addition to their long days at rehearsal had to make time for production meetings afterwards some nights, and deal with the technical people and everything else. They’d had a production meeting last night that had gone on till all hours, and the strain of that was showing a little on Den’s face this morning.

  He normally broke the silence of a break by whistling or telling jokes, but this time he stayed quiet like me, making notes as he lounged in his front row seat, feet propped casually on the rail that encircled the stage.

  The stage looked much the same as it had on the first day I’d stood here, except that now the furniture was in place—the chairs and table underneath a gorgeous reproduction gas-lamp with a red glass shade, suspended like a rare jewel by a cable from the lighting bar above.

  I was looking up, examining its structure, when I heard Rupert’s footsteps returning down the aisle towards us.

  “Nicholas,” he said, “I’d like a word.”

  I knew that tone. Its measured calm spelled trouble. And though part of me wanted to stay and watch Rupert put Nicholas in his place, experience had taught me that the best thing to do was to duck out of range for a few minutes. Catching Den’s attention, I said, “I’ll just be . . . you know.” I nodded at the gangway leading backstage. “Back in two ticks.”

  “Oh, sure, no problem.” As I started off the stage he called after me, “Be careful using water in this thunderstorm—don’t keep your hands under the taps for too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And watch your step back there. The workmen aren’t quite finished.”

  He was getting every bit as bad as Rupert, I thought, worrying about my health, though with our opening performance scheduled for Saturday week I supposed it was part of his job to be cautious. Losing any one of us to illness or to injury would mean, at best, delays, and lost tour revenue for Alex.

  Accordingly, I watched my step going down the gangway.

  The passage was dim, lit by what little natural light filtered in from the stage, and at its farther end by a single wall-mounted fixture that showed me a rough concrete floor whose downwards slope carried me several feet under the seats overhead. Here the gangway ended in a broad semicircular passage that followed the curve of the stage, its plain block walls painted an unlikely pink.

  That had been the original colour, so Alex had said. Apparently pink had been a favourite of Celia the First, and Galeazzo had, after all, built his theatre to please her.

  The washroom was pink, as well, beautifully restored with lacquered white stalls and gilt-rimmed mirrors over twin pedestal basins. I dawdled as long as I could at the basin, although remembering Den’s warning about thunderstorms and water I only washed my hands one time, and quickly. I was watching my reflection in the mirror, testing various expressions, when something flickered at the corner of my vision.

  I turned my head, but the impression vanished. Nobody was in the room but me. Still, when the thunder crashed above a second later and the lights went out and plunged the washroom into total darkness, I leaped for the door as if a whole army of ghosts was in pursuit.

  The passageway was dark, as well, but at its end where the gangway came down from the stage there was light of a sort, filtered daylight, dim and mist-like, but enough to guide me out. At least, it would have been, if I hadn’t been frozen in place by a sense of sheer terror; a feeling . . . no, more than that, really—a sudden certainty that I was not alone.

  No imagined ghost, this time, but a living, breathing, solid human being. Close behind me. The stirring of the air, the hint of warmth, the faintly sweaty smell, these were no more imagined than the prickling rush that climbed my spine to settle like ice at the nape of my neck. But still I couldn’t move.

  Ahead, from the gangway, Den’s voice called me. “Celia?”

  I wanted to scream to him: “Here! I’m down here!” but my vocal chords weren’t working, either.

  “Celia?” He was in the passage, now. I saw his outline, grey and uncertain in the dimness, looking small and quite far off. He was holding a torch, beam pointed to the floor to help him find his way. “Are you all right?”

  Again the air behind me warmed as though with someone’s breath, and with a giant effort I wrenched myself free of the paralysed stance I’d been locked in and, aiming myself towards Den, I began to run.

  For the second time in as many weeks, I nearly knocked him over. Only this time, instead of struggling to break free, I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung, face buried in his chest.

  “Hey!” He stood in surprise for a moment. Some men, I suppose, might have misinterpreted the embrace, but not Den. When his own arms finally closed around me, slowly and uncertainly, they offered only comfort, nothing more. “It’s all right, nothing to be scared of,” he assured me. “The storm’s just blown a power line down, somewhere. It’s—”

  “There’s someone there,” I whispered, panicked, into his shirt-front.

  “What? Someone where?”

  “Outside the washroom door. A man, I think. I felt him standing right behind me.”

  His hand moved at my back as he angled the torch to shine it down the passageway, sweeping the darkness from side to side. “Nothing there now.”

  Still clinging to him, cowardly, I turned to look, and as I did the lights flickered on again all down the long curving corridor, showing us nothing but empty pink walls and the bare concrete floor.

  “S
ee?” said Den. Raising his free hand he lifted my chin and dropped a quick kiss, reassuring, on top of my head. “No one’s there. You were only imagining things.”

  A small cough interrupted us.

  Standing halfway down the gangway, Rupert looked from Den to me, expressionless. There was absolutely nothing sexual in the way Den was holding me—I might have been a child as young as Poppy; younger, even—but from where Rupert stood I knew he wouldn’t see it that way.

  Aboveground the storm rumbled on and I could feel a corresponding swell of tension rise between the two men, trapping me between them. And then Rupert simply told us, “When you’re ready.”

  And without another word he turned and walked back out onto the stage.

  iv

  “YES, I know, but—” A truck rumbled by and I set my back to the door of the call-box, trying to shut out the worst of the street noise behind me as I cradled the receiver to my shoulder and begged the international operator to try the line again. “Just once more, please. He’s always home by now.”

  I could almost hear her sigh as she complied.

  I was telling the truth, though. Bryan’s routine could be timed by the clock: he always walked home from the office and came through the door of the flat at precisely ten minutes to seven; by ten minutes past he was sitting in his favourite chair with bottled beer in hand, deciding what to do for dinner. Even on the rare nights he decided to eat out, he never left the flat till eight. Which meant he should have been, at seven-thirty, sitting in his favourite chair and finishing his beer, beside the telephone.

  The ringing, though, went on and on, unanswered, at the other end, until the operator told me I should give it up. She said it rather more politely than that, of course, but this time I could hear the firmness in her voice. I didn’t argue.

  “Right,” I told her. “Thank you.” Replacing the receiver, I pushed open the door of the call-box and stepped out, defeated.