‘Those are genuine eighteenth-century clothes, aren’t they?’ said Merry. ‘Exquisite.’
‘We thought they were rather dowdy,’ said the tall man.
‘That’s because they’re genuine,’ she told him. ‘Clothes from a theatrical costumier would be cruder but more effective.’
The elderly woman looked pleased. ‘That’s exactly what I said. Are you, by any chance, a professional?’
‘Well, I haven’t done much yet,’ said Merry, modestly. ‘Just … er, repertory. I’m on my way to London, to find work.’
‘How delightful! I was on the stage, many years ago. We must introduce ourselves. I’m Lady Crestover. Lord Crestover–’
she indicated the tall man. ‘My daughters, Georgina and Caroline; they’re twins and it doesn’t matter which is which. My brother, Desmond Deane. He was on the stage, too.’
Merry looked at the elderly man, then back at Lady Crestover. ‘But how terribly exciting! You must have been Donna Deane.’
Lady Crestover smiled quite dazzlingly. ‘How amazing of you to know!’
‘I read about you, in an article on actresses who married peers.’ Merry turned towards Lord Crestover.
‘Oh, my husband’s been dead many years. That’s my son. And this is his son, Tom.’
The boy had come back with the water and brandy.
‘Just water, please,’ said Merry. She drank a tumblerful and held out her glass for more.
‘If you could lay off,’ said Tom, ‘I’ve ordered some champagne.’
‘Tom, how bright of you,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘It’s just the morning for it.’ Again she smiled at Merry. ‘May we know your name?’
For the first time, she said it aloud, and felt that her new self was now truly alive. ‘I’m Merry le Jeune.’
‘What an enchanting name for a young actress,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘Is it real or did you invent it?’
‘A bit of both,’ said Merry.
‘What repertory company were you with last, Miss le Jeune?’ said Mr Desmond Deane.
She felt herself flushing. She hadn’t had time to invent a history for herself. Then inspiration came. ‘Do you mind if I don’t talk about it? You see, I had … rather a difficult time and had to dash away.’
‘Some brute of a man, no doubt,’ said Lady Crestover.
‘Don’t worry her with questions, Desmond. Ah, here’s some food.’
Binner, who was portly as well as stately, arrived with chicken sandwiches.
‘And bring some more, with the champagne,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘I can never see food without wanting some. But these are all for you, my dear.’ She handed the plate to Merry.
‘How kind you are! I really am terribly hungry. Will anyone mind if I eat rather fast?’ She barely waited for the voices that reassured her.
‘Sit down, everyone,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘We’re standing watching her as if she were a wild animal.’
‘Well, I’m eating like one,’ said Merry, and went on eating. By the time more sandwiches arrived with the champagne, the edge was off her appetite and she was talking with her usual ease, though with an assumption of maturity. (Lady Crestover’s aristocratic tones were beautifully catching; Merry gave herself a dispensation as regards the slurred vowels.) Genuinely interested, she reverted to the projected entertainment.
‘We did tableaux at school, once—’ She added hastily, ‘Years ago, of course, when I was a child. They bored people quite a bit. Couldn’t you do a play, or scenes from one? Perhaps Sheridan, if you want to wear those clothes. Let’s see what you have a cast for.’ She assessed the group with a highly professional eye.
‘You should stay and advise us,’ said Lord Crestover.
‘I’d love to – but I have to find a job.’
‘Naturally, I meant on a professional basis.’
She saw Lady Crestover look at him with astonishment which changed instantaneously to warm enthusiasm.
‘What a splendid idea, Claude! Seriously, Miss le Jeune, would you consider it? And you could act with us. A month would see us through our entertainment.’
‘May I suggest a fee of one hundred guineas?’ said Lord Crestover.
‘Oh, goodness!’ How childish that sounded. She added in a more grown-up voice, ‘I don’t earn twenty-five pounds a week yet.’
‘I’m sure you ought to,’ said Lord Crestover.
Could this staggering offer be a trap? The room was littered with London newspapers. If her photograph had been in a local paper, might it not be in these, too? Had she been recognized?
Mr Desmond Deane was saying: ‘You mustn’t rush her. She’s had a difficult morning. Starts off without breakfast, exhausts herself by a long walk, sees ghosts, faints – and now, I suspect, is being given champagne when she still wants water.’
Merry shot him a grateful if puzzled glance; though his words were kind he still sounded satirical. She said: ‘I would like some more water. And then, please, could I be left alone for a few minutes, to think over your very kind offer?’
‘But of course,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘Or would you like a bedroom to rest in?’
‘Oh, here will do nicely,’ said Merry. She wanted to be left alone with the newspapers.
‘There’s no hurry to decide,’ said Lord Crestover. ‘Why not stay for a few days, anyway, and see how you like us?’
‘Thank you, but I must decide quickly – because of appointments in London.’ This sounded most authentically professional.
‘Then we’ll leave you to think. We shall be in the drawing-room – just across the hall.’
Could he smile like that if he meant to trap her? She smiled in return and said: ‘You do really want me to stay?’
Both he and his mother assured her they did. And the twins too said they would like it – speaking together, in girlish voices; though Merry had now realized they were very elderly girls.
‘Well, I’m terribly tempted.’ Pleased with her sophisticated tone, she lay back and watched them file out of the room. The doors closed behind them. She waited a few moments, then dived for the papers.
There was no mention of her on any of the front pages. It would take ages to go through so many papers carefully but she could quickly spot a photograph – and only a photograph would endanger her. She was about to hunt for one when she saw the local paper the woman on the bus had been reading – and there was the photograph.
But it was not a photograph of her. It was of a local bride and bore no resemblance to the snapshot she had mistaken it for.
‘You just panicked again,’ she told herself furiously. But panic had brought her here – and to an offer of one hundred guineas. How splendid to have so much in hand when she besieged London! Not that she would keep it all. Some should go to Richard from ‘A friend and well-wisher’. Dear Richard – she finished glancing through the London papers – he had not betrayed her.
But she was still wary. It was true she was capable of helping these people with their theatricals but could they have guessed that so quickly? It was Lord Crestover who had suggested it, Lord Crestover who had admired her as she lay on the floor. Could he have fallen in love with her on sight?
The adult in charge of a child began to formulate a warning but was cut short. She could cope. She found her unfinished glass of champagne, raised her glass and gave it a smouldering glance between half-closed eyes, then drank to herself coping.
Now she must do some quiet thinking, before telling her new friends she would be delighted to stay with them. Slowly pacing up and down the library, she began the comprehensive invention of a suitable past life.
5
Marble Halls
She was ageing fast – and she knew why. At home, though loved and admired, she was frequently quelled. There was a tendency to think her conceited and too talkative; someone was always saying, ‘That’s enough, Merry,’ or otherwise attempting to deflate her. And she was never treated as a grown-up. Here, she was so frequently inflated and h
er good sense discounted some of the compliments. And she was not only treated as a grown-up but also as a grown-up of unusual intelligence, talent and charm – and this by every member of the family. She had at first thought Mr Desmond Deane was a trifle antagonistic but he had soon become particularly kind. And if he still, at times, looked at her quizzically, no doubt that was just his dryly humorous way.
Never had she run into any difficulties. She had told them she was an orphan, brought up by an aunt now dead, in the Lake District. (Having spent a holiday there, she could come out strongly as to local colour.) She’d admitted that much of her acting had been with amateurs, when she’d had the chance to play important parts. No one had questioned her further about her ‘difficult time’ in repertory. Her reason for travelling through Suffolk on a bus was that she’d been staying with a married schoolfriend in a remote village with – as she laughingly said – the unlikely name of Long Wimple. Occasionally she wrote letters to this friend, leaving them on the hall table to be posted. She also left letters addressed to London theatrical managers – ostensibly, to postpone appointments. All envelopes contained blank sheets of paper.
She had chosen to be twenty-one, because it gave her a feeling of independence. No one had accused her of looking younger. The only comment made when she mentioned her age had been Lord Crestover’s: ‘What a delightful age to be!’
Even the problem of her lack of clothes had been speedily solved. She had said frankly that she owned little more than she stood up in, owing to a fire in some theatrical lodgings. (No loss of life, fortunately.) It had then been discovered that she was the same height, and much the same build (if she flattened her bra a bit) as Lady Crestover and the twins, and she’d been invited to use their wardrobes like a circulating library. Every night, a dinner dress (usually dull, but undoubtedly expensive) was laid out on her bed, and many things had been given to her outright – sportswear, underwear, shoes … Such kindness! As she frequently remarked.
Everyone liked her, everyone thought her brilliant – and compared with some of them, she certainly was. There were times when she wondered if Lady Georgina and Lady Caroline were quite normal, so little did they say and so blank were their long, gentle faces. They were thirty and looked it, yet they also managed to look completely immature. And Tom, who had now gone back to school, was hardly brainy even for a boy of sixteen.
She did not consider Lord Crestover stupid; merely quiet. He was thirty-nine, she had discovered (not really middle-aged), and had been a widower for five years. When first she had seen him in an ordinary suit she’d been a little disappointed; blue brocade and lace ruffles had done quite a lot for him. And she did not, as a rule, admire aquiline noses. But she had got used to his; like everything else about him it was so truly aristocratic. Still, she hadn’t fallen in love with him, and though he treated her with the most flattering attentiveness, she had stopped thinking he might have fallen in love with her; certainly, she’d never had to do any coping. He just liked her, as did all these kind people.
Lady Crestover, in spite of her black hair, must be getting on for seventy, judging by an old theatre magazine Merry had found in the library, which showed Donna and Desmond Deane in a musical comedy of 1913. It had been puzzling to see that though Donna looked very young, Desmond looked much as he did now; but the letter-press revealed that he had always specialized in elderly, eccentric parts. Sometimes Merry pretended to herself that he was still a young man disguised as an old one. She liked him extremely, even more than she liked Lady Crestover whose kindness was a little gushing; not insincere, exactly, but a little overdone, like her tendency to smile too often, and too widely. She and her brother were certainly not stupid, though they didn’t seem to read any books. Merry often got them to talk about their life in the theatre. Lady Crestover had retired on her marriage, Mr Deane when he was sixty; he was now seventy-two.
‘There was no fun in playing old men when I became one,’ he told Merry. ‘And I got too stiff for eccentric dancing.’
But he was still a marvellous ballroom dancer. He felt like a bundle of twigs but held one with the most delicate strength. She could follow even his most intricate steps. They often danced after dinner. Lord Crestover was far more difficult to follow. He seemed nervous when dancing and that made her nervous too.
Plans for the entertainment were now progressing well, after an unpromising start. Urged by Merry, Lady Crestover had telephoned to London for enough copies of Sheridan’s plays and Merry had organized a reading of The Rivals. She had cast herself as Lucy, the twins as Lydia and Julia, Lady Crestover as Mrs Malaprop and Mr Deane as Sir Anthony Absolute. Lord Crestover had doubled the parts of Captain Absolute and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, it being Merry’s idea to try out her cast and see which scenes suited them best. Mr Deane had been excellent, Lady Crestover efficient (though Merry doubted if Mrs Malaprop had ever before been interpreted with enormous charm and a crescent-moon smile). Unfortunately the twins seemed barely capable of reading, let alone acting. And though Lord Crestover read without difficulty, he also read without expression.
‘Now you’ll see why we thought of tableaux,’ said Mr Deane, when they paused for a discussion.
‘They just can’t act,’ said Lady Crestover. It was obviously no secret.
‘What did you do last year?’ Merry inquired.
The twins, it transpired, usually played a piano duet, but had run out of piano duets. Lady Crestover and her brother usually did a duologue but had run out of duologues. Lord Crestover merely made speeches to open and close the show. ‘You know the kind of thing,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘Hoping people will enjoy themselves – and then hoping they have.’
‘Why don’t you and Mr Deane revive some of your musical comedy songs?’ suggested Merry.
It was said to be out of the question – they hadn’t sung for years, they’d be undignified, old-fashioned … But Merry got them to try and was enchanted.
‘You’ll be an enormous success,’ she insisted, and eventually she prevailed. The twins would share the accompanying, Lord Crestover would make his usual speeches, and – as they all so much wanted her to appear – she and Mr Deane would play the Teazles in the quarrel scenes from The School for Scandal.
‘We must warn the village amateurs we’re going to hog half the show,’ said Lady Crestover. ‘They won’t mind. What they really come for is the supper.’
Since then there had been plenty to plan and rehearse and time was passing incredibly fast – in spite of which, Merry felt years had elapsed since she had run away from Dome House. She seldom, now, thought of herself as a child pretending to be grown-up. Almost always she felt grown up, and her grown-up behaviour was becoming more and more automatic instead of considered.
The pattern of the swiftly flying days varied very little. Breakfast in bed came at nine. She had been given a beautiful room overlooking the marble steps leading to the front door. The bulbous, elaborately inlaid furniture must, she thought, be valuable; the bed, she knew, was uncomfortable – but how romantic, with its brocade draperies held up by a gilded cupid! Sitting up drinking chocolate (never before had she been given the chance of chocolate for breakfast) she felt like an eighteenth-century marquise – except for the eiderdown she wrapped round herself as soon as the maid who brought the breakfast tray was gone. The room was so cold and so large and the small electric fire in the vast marble hearth made little impression on it. All Crestover House was cold, the radiators few and far between and never more than lukewarm, and the prevalence of white marble added to the coldness.
After breakfast she had her bath in her own private bathroom which was even colder than the bedroom. For her first few days the water was nowhere near hot. Rising rather earlier one morning, she got a comfortable bath – since when, she had made a point of running her bath water before nine-thirty. While lying in it, she often wondered whose hot bath she was stealing.
She always spent a long time dressing, making-up carefully and taking trouble
with her hair (after a week she had, with great trepidation, washed it; all had gone well). There was no point in getting down before eleven as no member of the family put in an appearance before that time, when coffee was served in the library; after which there was usually a rehearsal – much interrupted by conversation, in spite of Merry’s attempts to be professional. Lord Crestover had nothing to rehearse but he made an enthusiastic audience and he, plus all the others, frequently incited her to entertain them with speeches from her repertoire. She treated them to Shakespeare, Shaw and Chekhov and they praised everything, except that the twins did not greatly like ‘that one where you keep saying you’re a seagull’.
Luncheon was at one-thirty, quite an elaborate meal though not well-cooked. After that, Lady Crestover and her daughters rested until tea-time while Lord Crestover and Mr Deane entertained Merry. Sometimes they walked in the park; sometimes they drove round the countryside in a large Daimler. The drives made Merry anxious as she had soon realized she was only about thirty miles from Dome House; but they never went anywhere near it. On wet days they sat over the library fire. Occasionally Lord Crestover was absent on some business connected with the estate, thus leaving her alone with Mr Deane. But never was Mr Deane absent, leaving her alone with Lord Crestover.
After tea it was soon time to dress for dinner, which was more elaborate than lunch and no better cooked. Here Merry ran into a problem: a number of wines were served. She was nervous of drink, thinking it might be bad for her and also loosen her tongue dangerously. So at her first dinner she said she was teetotal except for champagne on ‘occasions’. Lady Crestover then said she was always glad of an excuse to drink champagne, and had it served to herself and Merry every night. Merry limited herself to one glass. It had no effect on her except for a pleasurable sense of guilt at becoming such a hardened drinker.
After dinner they talked, danced, and only very occasionally watched television. Lady Crestover complained that it tired her eyes and she disliked hearing so many ugly voices. Merry found it made her homesick: would they, at Dome House, be watching what she was watching? She was always glad when it was turned off.