Season of Storms

  “They’ve been together quite a long time, haven’t they?”

  “Twenty-two years.” I felt proud of the fact. My whole lifetime.

  “It shows. Australian, isn’t he? I thought so. I’ve seen him around through the years, you know, with Rupert at parties and such, but last night was the first time we actually spoke. He’s quite charming,” she said. “I can see the resemblance between you.”

  “You can?”

  “Oh, yes. Not in a physical sense, but in your mannerisms. It’s very marked,” she told me.

  “Really?” Pleased, I asked for specifics.

  “You both stir your tea in the same way, and do this sort of sideways look whenever you’re amused, and. . . well, I’d have to watch you both together, like I did last night, and tell you when it happens. I should think that it’s all part and parcel of being an actress, having this gift of mimicry. Poppy does it as well, I’ve noticed, with people she admires.” She smiled. “And I notice that both you and Poppy have picked up one of Den’s habits.”

  “We have?” I lifted my eyebrows and Madeleine laughed.

  “Yes, that’s it,” she said, nodding. “The one-eyebrow lift.”

  “Oh, I’ve always done that.”

  “Have you really?” That intrigued her. “Well then, maybe Poppy’s imitating you, not Den. She thinks you’re rather wonderful, you know.” We’d reached the end of the avenue of cypresses, where the trees opened out to the Peacock Pool. Checking her watch again, Madeleine called ahead, “Poppy, love, ten minutes now, and we’ll have to get going.”

  “All right.” Poppy, unimpressed by the half-decayed beauty surrounding her, only seemed to want a few minutes alone with the stone greyhounds, anyway. Climbing the steps of the old mausoleum, she crouched by the pillars and patted the fixed, staring heads of the statues.

  “Dog mad, that girl is,” said Madeleine fondly. “I suppose I should be grateful it’s not horses.”

  We were standing by the shallow pool and looking at the lily pads when Poppy called us. “Mummy, Celia, come and look! The cellar’s open,” she said, pointing down.

  And indeed the large stone that had sealed off the crypt had been shifted to one side, exposing the smooth-edged square opening into the darkness below. There were no steps leading down, but I could see the upper rungs of a rusted iron ladder. A dank smell, damp and airless, drifted upwards.

  “The workmen must have opened it,” I said, noting the few scattered tools round the edge of the hole. “They must be doing restoration here, as well. Edwina will be pleased.”

  “What’s down there?” Poppy leaned forwards, trying to peer through the blackness, and Madeleine grasped her firmly by the collar.

  “It’s nothing you need to be looking at, darling. Just a cellar. Come along now, we’ve had our ten minutes,” she said, “and Den won’t like it if his assistant comes late to rehearsal.”

  Which was more than enough to propel Poppy back down the path, on her way to the theatre, the stone greyhounds guarding the bones of their forebears forgotten. I spared them a glance as I passed, though, and something of the coldness of my dream of last night touched me, and I quickened my steps out of instinct to keep pace with Madeleine, suddenly not wanting to be in this place alone.

  vii

  BRYAN didn’t come to rehearsal. He might have asked for—and received—permission to attend, as Poppy had, but Bryan respected the process too much to want to intrude. “You don’t need the distraction,” he’d told us at breakfast. “I’ll wait till you start your dress rehearsals, when all the technical people are there. Then I’ll hardly be noticed, I won’t throw you off. In the meantime I’ll find something to keep me out of mischief,” he’d promised.

  And he did.

  When we returned at lunch, we found him on the terrace teaching Max and Nero how to balance biscuits on their noses. “Hang on a minute, we’re having a breakthrough,” he told us, without turning round. “My lurcher was brilliant at this. Alex, hand me one more biscuit, would you?”

  Alex, sitting in a nearby chair and clearly amused by the whole undertaking, complied. “Max won’t do it,” he warned. “He’s too greedy to ever—”

  “Now, there you go. Good boy,” said Bryan, grinning proudly as Max held his head perfectly still, the biscuit neatly balanced at the end of his long pointed nose. “All right then, you can have it. Go!” As the dog flipped the biscuit and caught it, Bryan turned to Alex. “See? He’s bloody clever, this one. Never underestimate him.”

  Poppy, delighted, moved forwards. “Can I try?”

  “Of course you can. Alex, biscuit? Thanks, mate. Now then, darling, you just put it there . . . right there, like that . . .”

  Over the instruction, Alex met my eyes and smiled. “How is your rehearsal going?”

  Momentarily dazzled by the smile, I had to wait until I’d sat against the parapet to answer him. “Not bad.” Rupert approached and I turned to include him. “I’m still having trouble with that final scene, though. I can’t seem to get the knife stab right.”

  Bryan must have kept his word last night and talked to Rupert, because Rupert seemed a different man this morning—more his old self, mild and cheerful, his patience restored. “Yes, well, we can work on that this afternoon,” he told me, “if you like.”

  Alex, frowning a little as he tried to remember the plot of the play, asked, “You stab someone?”

  “Myself,” I said. “At the very end, when I commit suicide so that I can follow my husband over to the other side. Only the action doesn’t feel right, yet.”

  Nicholas, standing a few feet away, overheard me and added his expert opinion. “It’s the weapon that’s the problem. I mean, honestly, it’s too archaic. Women in the Middle Ages might have stabbed themselves, but we’re talking about, what? Nineteen eighteen? Surely you’d be able to lay your hands on a smart little pistol by then that would do the trick quickly.”

  Rupert remarked that the classical nature of my character’s suicide was probably intentional. “Like in a Sophoclean tragedy.”

  “Rubbish,” said Nicholas. “In a Sophoclean tragedy the widow would have stabbed herself offstage. The Greeks never did their violence in the open—they always went off and were killed or whatever and then someone came back on and told the audience all about it. And anyway,” he added, “I don’t see why we have to worry so much about keeping to the script exactly. Art should be open to interpretation.”

  Madeleine breezed past him, her expression almost motherly. “Nicky, darling, I believe you’ve lost that battle once.”

  He sulked at the reminder of his argument with Rupert. “Well, my lines were an improvement.”

  Rupert smiled, his restored good humour made all the more evident by his efforts to be tactful. “I never said they weren’t. I merely pointed out that, in the interests of this particular production, we should opt for authenticity.”

  “All right, all right,” said Nicholas. He raised both hands dismissively and looked at me. “But mark my words, it’s the knife that’s been giving you problems. No twentieth-century woman would use a knife to kill herself.”

  “I take your point,” I said, “but I’m not sure I’d use a pistol, either.”

  Madeleine agreed. “Shooting yourself in the head in the middle of somebody’s sitting-room, Nicky, is hardly a feminine thing. It’s too messy. I simply couldn’t die in peace,” she told him, making light of it, “knowing that someone would have to clean up.”

  Den had been last to come up on the terrace and, coming late as he did to the conversation, changed its tone entirely, leaving me wondering how a simple question asked of me by Alex had evolved into a sort of parlour game. Looking at Madeleine, his grin an open challenge, Den asked, “So how would you do it, then?”

  “Kill myself? Oh, sleeping pills, I suppose. But in my own house,” she insisted, “reclining on the bedroom sofa, wearing something stylish. With Puccini on the stereo.”

  “You’ve got it all thou
ght out, I see.” Den’s grin grew broader. “Me, I’d take a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch and go sit in a blizzard.”

  “You’d freeze,” she objected.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “What I mean is, it would be uncomfortable.”

  Den didn’t think so. “No, only for the first few minutes. Then the cold would make you drowsy and the Scotch would make you happy and then bam!”—he snapped his fingers—“you’d be out.”

  “Brilliant,” drawled Nicholas, exhaling smoke as he lit a cigarette. “And what happens if you don’t find an obliging blizzard?”

  “You drink the Scotch anyway,” Den said, not missing a beat.

  Madeleine laughed. “Go on, Nicky, it’s your turn. How would you do it?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Hypothetically,” she urged him.

  “No, I’m serious. I wouldn’t. I think that it’s morally wrong.”

  Bryan pulled his attention from Poppy and the greyhounds and looked round. “What is?”

  “Suicide,” said Nicholas.

  “Ah.” Bryan stretched his shoulders back, relaxing as he always did when starting a debate, but Rupert beat him to it, saying, “I suppose it depends on the circumstances, really. I remember you telling me that story, Bryan, about the farmer who lived near to you . . .”

  “What, the one who got cancer?”

  “That’s right.” To the rest of us, Rupert explained, “This man simply took his gun one morning and rode out to a place where he knew his wife and children wouldn’t go—where he could be fairly certain it would be one of the station hands who found him—and he shot himself. Nice and quick, no fuss. To him, I suppose, that was the moral thing to do. No one likes to be a burden to his family.”

  Nicholas turned to Bryan, and his voice was condescending. “So is that the Australian way, then? That what you’d do?”

  Bryan was still watching Rupert. He glanced up. “Who, me? Nah, I hate guns.” Flashing another of his trademark grins he turned back to the dogs. “Me, I’d pour a beer and put the telly on and take a shot of insulin, enough to do the trick. The best part is it doesn’t leave much trace, see, so they couldn’t stop my insurance.”

  For everyone’s benefit, Rupert explained that Bryan worked in pharmaceuticals. “He’s rather an expert on medical poisons.”

  Nicholas blew smoke. “Is that a fact? I shall have to keep him away from my lunch, then.”

  “Speaking of which,” Den cut in, with an appreciative sniff of the air, “something smells terrific in there. Smells like chicken.”

  Alex smiled. “Teresa’s back.”

  “She is?” To see Den’s face light up you would have thought he’d won the lottery. “That’s great,” he said. “I’d better go wash up.”

  His departure, coupled with the news that our lunch was being cooked by Teresa, seemed to be the signal for a mass exodus from the terrace. Madeleine went first, having pried Poppy away from her game with the dogs. Nicholas, a little unconvincing in his indolence, yawned and pitched the spent end of his cigarette over the parapet before strolling after them, his eyes fixed on Madeleine’s back with a thoughtful expression that made me wonder if he hadn’t begun noticing the way that she and Den were getting on.

  Rupert was settling into a chair when Bryan, with a sharp glance at Alex and me, rose and stretched with purpose. “Come on, Roo, I need a wash as well. My hands are all covered in dog hair.”

  “Oh. Well, the washroom is just—”

  “No,” said Bryan, “you’ll have to show me. I can’t find my way round this house on my own.”

  With a sigh, Rupert rose as well and led Bryan into the house, leaving the terrace to Alex and me and the dogs.

  I almost never saw Alex, these days. His business seemed to be keeping him unusually occupied.

  His face was difficult to read, and so expressionless at times that I tended to project onto it what I wanted to see. Now, for example, I thought I saw warmth as he looked at me.

  “I take it you’re enjoying having Bryan here.” He wasn’t really asking me a question, but I nodded.

  “Yes, I am,” I told him. “Very much.” And then, because I realized that I hadn’t properly acknowledged what he’d done, I added, “It was really kind of you to invite him, and to fetch him from the airport, and everything. Thank you.”

  “It was no trouble.”

  “Well, of course it was. But anyway, it’s meant the world to Rupert.”

  Alex fixed his gaze on me a moment, then he looked away and said, “It wasn’t Rupert I was thinking of.”

  I answered, “Oh,” because that was the only thing that came to mind, and then I looked away, too, watching the play of light over the lake, and in the brief silence that followed I could feel both greyhounds watching us with interest, as though they were the audience and we the actors, waiting for our lines.

  I was, as it happened, trying to decide if he had meant what I had thought he’d meant, and if I ought to let his comment pass, or follow up on it, or . . .

  “Actually,” he told me, “it was curiosity on my part, mostly.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “You’re always saying ‘Bryan told me this,’ or ‘Bryan says,’ You use his name in conversation even more than you do Den’s. It made me want to meet him.”

  I knew I quoted Bryan, but I hadn’t been aware of using Den’s name. I would have to pay attention, to avoid upsetting Rupert. “And so what is your opinion?”

  “He seems very easygoing, very nice. I like him.”

  “Well, he likes you, too,” I said. “He told me he approved—”

  I stopped myself too late, and flushed, and looked away again as Alex asked, “Approved of what?”

  “Oh, you know, just of you in general.”

  “Ah.”

  “That chicken does smell good,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I suppose we ought to—”

  “Celia,” he said, calmly, “when do you have time off next? On Sunday?”

  He ought to have known that, I thought, without asking. My schedule hadn’t changed these past few weeks. But it appeared that he was only wanting confirmation, anyway, because without waiting for my answer he went on, “I was thinking we could take the boat out, maybe for the afternoon.”

  “ ‘We’ meaning . . . ?”

  “You and me,” he said. “The two of us.”

  I waited several seconds before answering. “Daniela wouldn’t like that.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “I thought that it might bother you.”

  “Daniela doesn’t run my social life.” He paused a moment, thinking, and then said, “Or has she tried to tell you differently?”

  I felt the subtle shift of power; knew I could have told him, then—I could have told him everything I knew about Daniela, could have told him she was seeing someone else behind his back, and that she’d threatened me . . .

  But even as the knowledge filled my mind, I bit my tongue. I didn’t want to play Daniela’s game, to sink to her level. Instead I said, “Of course she hasn’t.”

  “Then you’ll come with me on Sunday?”

  “That depends on where we’re going.”

  “Anywhere you like,” he said. “I just want to go somewhere away from this house.”

  “Why?” I asked, but before he could answer me Rupert interrupted from behind us, poking his head round the door to announce: “Lunch, you two.”

  Alex looked at me and smiled a small and private smile. “I can’t imagine.”

  viii

  “CELIA, love, do please keep your mind on what you’re doing. Thank you.” Rupert settled back and began again. “Now, try crossing downstage left. . . there, just there . . . turn with the knife in your hand, so the audience sees it, and . . . that’s it, you feel the point first, test it . . . both hands now, push it in. Good. That’s much better.”

  I let my upper body arc around the imagined blade, and then crumpled and
fell to the side as we’d practised. It did feel better that way, but, “I’m still not sure,” I said. “It still feels rather awkward.”

  “Do you know,” said Den, speaking up only when it became clear that the flow of the rehearsal had been broken, “much as I hate to agree with Nicholas, I think he might be right about the gun.”

  Nicholas pivoted in his position next to Madeleine, upstage. “Well, thank you very much.”

  Ignoring him, Den made his case to Rupert. “Not only would the action be easier for her, but it’s easier to pull off in a theatre-in-the-round. Right now her body blocks the knife from half the audience, you see? Whereas a gun to the head would be visible to everyone. And then there’d be the sound of the gunshot, too, to let people know what had happened—they wouldn’t just see her fall over for no apparent reason.”

  “But they’ve seen the knife,” was Rupert’s argument. “She takes it out and holds it while she makes her final speech, and turns, so everybody sees it. Besides, it’s quite clear from her words what she’s planning to do.”

  “I’m just saying the gun might work better, that’s all.”

  Rupert passed the decision to me. “Celia, what do you think?”

  I hesitated. Personally, I had to admit that the gun idea made more sense, but when I looked at Rupert sitting so belligerently in his chair, his eyes compelling me to answer, I couldn’t help but feel whatever choice I made would somehow be, to him, a choice between the two of them, between himself and Den. A test of loyalty.

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t know that my character would use a gun. A knife seems more her style.”

  “Right then, let’s try the blocking one more time,” said Rupert, in a final tone that ended the debate.

  We ran it through again, and then again, and I was plunging the imaginary knife into my breast for what seemed like the hundredth time when Poppy screamed.

  I wheeled in unison with Madeleine, to face the chair where Poppy had been sitting, but she wasn’t there. It took a second scream to tell me she had gone backstage.