Cool Repentance Read online

  The restaurant was now empty, Nat Fitzwilliam and Spike Thompson having presumably returned to the theatre.

  Jemima's murmur grew still more tactful. 'You mean - also so much public attention - after' - how should she put it? - 'quite a gap. You mean - the loss of privacy. The publicity.'

  'No, no,' Christabel leant forward and clutched Jemima's hand across the nymph-strewn tablecloth. Jemima could smell the lily-of-the-valley perfume which wafted from her like a sharp sweet cloud. 'Don't you see, darling, I want publicity. That's just why I'm doing it.'

  'Well, of course, I do see—' began Jemima. Although nothing surprised her about the general avidity for publicity, Christabel Herrick might under the circumstances have been an exception to that rule.

  'I don't think you do. When Nat asked me, I jumped at the chance. He thought he had to persuade me. He didn't. I jumped at it. Even his ludicrous underwater Seagull and that maudlin play of Gregory's about Marie Antoinette, never one of my favourites, though it's a good part. I suddenly saw it was the way, the only way.'

  'To get back onto the stage?'

  'No, to be safe.' Christabel's voice was low and very thrilling as she pronounced the words. 'You see, darling, I know I'll feel secure with the eyes of the world upon me. The eyes of television. I'll be safe. Safe at last. Back on the stage. Your programme will be the saving of me.' Her voice grew lower and more tremulous. 'Oh, Jemima, I've been so terribly, terribly frightened, you can't imagine. Locked away at Lark. It's so dangerous . ..'

  She broke off. The low door of the restaurant opened. Gregory Rowan, stooping, entered. He was accompanied by the red-haired woman known as Ketty, and the two Cartwright girls, one tall, one short, who stood rather awkwardly at the door.

  'Here we are, my dear,' said Gregory with the utmost geniality. 'Your jolly old chauffeur, all present and correct, come to fetch you. I brought Ketty too, partly to do some shopping, partly because she wanted to go to confession.'

  'Oh darling, what a shame,' Christabel sounded completely calm. 'I brought my own car. All this way for nothing.'

  'Ah, but what you don't know is that Julian has already driven your car back after the County Council meeting. He thought driving might be rather a mistake after your lunch with Miss World Investigator here - you know. Better come quietly, hadn't you?' he added jocularly.

  Christabel obediently followed him out of the restaurant. Miss Kettering with Regina and Blanche brought up the rear.

  6

  'Mummy, Mummy, Mummy'

  No one could remember afterwards with any certainty who first suggested having the Festival picnic by the sea. Or rather, when it was discussed in the light of what happened later, everyone seemed to have a different version of how the idea arose.

  The Megalith contingent - Jemima, Cherry, Guthrie Carlyle as well as Spike Thompson - received their invitations from Nat Fitzwilliam. This left Jemima with the distinct impression, confirmed by Guthrie, that the initiative had come from Nat in the first place. Unquestionably Nat regarded the occasion as yet another opportunity for exercising his directorial powers. He confided to Jemima that his ideas for The Seagull (that production scoffingly described by Christabel as 'underwater') derived their inspiration from boyhood experiences on the Larmouth seashore.

  'By enclosing the whole production in fishermen's nets, and grounding it in sand, using rocks covered in sea-weed for furniture where necessary instead of that predictably dreary nineteenth-century Russian stuff, I think I'm groping for the symbolism under the symbolism of The Seagull. But of course I'm not forgetting Chekhov's outward intentions as well, not for a minute. I utterly despise the kind of director who simply forgets about the author altogether. I just want to fuse the two - the inner Chekhov then, the outer Chekhov now. By creating this kind of Russian picnic of us all, the whole l.arminster Festival society. I think I shall strike some kind of blow towards that.'

  'It all begins to make sense,' said Jemima solemnly.

  'It needed doing,' echoed Guthrie with equal gravity. These two phrases had served them well in tight corners before now,

  Nat looked pleased. Then a look of slight uncertainty - a rare expression - crossed his face. 'Of course I meant the other way round. The outer Chekhov then, the inner Chekhov now. But you realized that.'

  'Of course,' said Jemima and Guthrie together.

  At breakfast at Lark Manor on the other hand, Julian Cartwright was busy blaming his daughter Regina for the whole thing.

  'For God's sake, Rina.' Fie spoke in a distinctly testy voice, 'Poor Mummy's already getting absolutely exhausted. You know how tired she gets when she's working. You don't remember? Well you know now. And then this bloody picnic' He pulled himself up with the air of one who had been sufficiently sorely tried to desert a principle. 'I apologize. This disastrous picnic. We could have had a peaceful Sunday lunch. Whatever induced you, Rina, to suggest it?'

  'We always used to have lovely picnics at the sea on Sundays in the summer.' Regina for once sounded as sulky as Blanche. 'Besides, I want to ride Lancelot down to the sea and let the wind flow through my hair.' She shook back her thick black tresses ostentatiously before adding: 'Anyway it was Blanche's idea, not mine.'

  'As a matter of fact, Daddy, the picnic was probably Ketty's idea in the first place.' Blanche, in contrast, was in unusually high spirits. 'She wants to meet all the actors in the Festival. She keeps droning on about the old days at the Gray Theatre. And since the Blagges do all the work I don't see it's such a terrible problem for Mummy.'

  'Sand in the sandwiches! Tepid coffee, empty lemonade bottles.' Julian Cartwright's handsome face flushed with irritation as he too cried 'Ugh' in his turn. He was so unreasonably bad-tempered that both girls burst out laughing.

  'Oh Daddy,' cried Blanche, 'as if Lark Manor picnics were ever like that! No, we shall have our usual sumptuous food, served in our usual sumptuous style, and the actors are going to cook theirs on a huge fire—'

  'Which means,' chimed in Regina, 'they will eat up all ours and be rather embarrassed and we will eat up all theirs and not be embarrassed at all. Then footing it featly, we'll all rush into the sea together, all taking hands, chanting "Come unto these yellow sands . .. curtsied when you have and kiss'd - the wild waves whist.'"

  'Talking of wild waves, you will not be swimming today, Regina. Nor you, Blanche.' Ketty had come into the kitchen, surprisingly quietly, through the louvred doors. There was no expression in her voice. She stood surveying the little breakfast party with her narrow lips slightly pursed. She was wearing a dark-green dress with a full skirt, rather too long for fashion, and two rows of enormous amber beads. Her thick knot of hair was skewered with a tortoise-shell pin. Without her garish lipstick and green eye-shadow, thought Julian, Ketty would really be quite a good-looking woman: but who could imagine Ketty without her warpaint?

  'Jim Blagge says there's quite a sharp breeze at the point,' continued Ketty. 'He went fishing this morning. The tide will be going out at lunch-time. The river makes odd currents at low tide. It's far too dangerous. You could be carried out round the point.'

  'It's very hot here, Ketty, no breeze at all,' Julian spoke mildly. 'Very hot night altogether. Mrs Cartwright couldn't sleep at all. In fact I must speak to Blagge about her shutters.' He paused and said in an even more diplomatic voice: 'She was thinking of swimming herself. I think she wants Mrs Blagge to help her find her old bathing-costumes, and there should be some old bathing-caps somewhere too.'

  'I'll tell my sister, sir,' Ketty stalked out.

  'Of course we're going to swim!' exclaimed Blanche before the doors had swung shut. 'All the actors will swim. I've been talking to some of them. It just makes the day quite perfect if Mummy swims too.'

  Julian thought that with her flushed cheeks his elder daughter looked really quite attractive: it remained a pity that she would never be so pretty as Regina (nor for that matter as glamorous as her mother) and additionally unfair that Regina had also turned out to be more intelligent
. If only Blanche could discover some real interest in life as Regina had turned to poetry. Not the theatre however. He shuddered.

  'Lancelot and I are definitely going to swim,' said Regina in a loud obstinate voice.

  In the pantry of Lark Manor — a kind of inner kitchen lit by a circular window looking onto the courtyard garden - Mr Blagge counted out rows of bamboo-handled knives and forks, considered suitable for picnics. Mrs Blagge folded a cotton table-cloth printed with a pattern of shells and other artistic forms of marine life; then she began to sort out its matching napkins. Her husband shot her a sideways glance.

  'How many does that make, then?'

  'Enough,' said Mrs Biagge sharply, setting her lips firmly together much as Ketty had just done. 'The Lark Manor party, including the Major. Mr Rowan of course, as usual. And the television people, as instructed by Mr Julian. I am not catering for the actors. Mr Julian did not mention them. They must make their own arrangements. It makes too much work.'

  Mr Blagge fetched down a row of tumblers painted with shells from a shelf - as pretty as plastic tumblers could be. 'I thought I heard you suggesting the picnic to Mr Julian the other day as making less work in the house at lunch-time.'

  'What's the difference?' countered Mrs Bhigge even more sharplv. 'Lunch on the shore, lunch in the dining-room. It's all work, isn't it? But I didn't suggest it. I have no doubt it was Katherine's idea. She's more pleased with herself than ever these days, despite the return of - Mrs Blagge paused before pronouncing disdainfully, 'Her. You must have heard the high and mighty Miss Katherine Kettering suggesting it.’

  'People do say your voices are very similar,' was Mr Blagge's only comment.

  Upstairs in her cool bedroom, Christabel Cartwright lay between white linen sheets edged with tiny scallops of lace. The vast bed was left unstirred by her slumbers: she might have been a corpse lying there for all the signs of occupation the bed showed. Her eyes were closed.

  Christabel knew exactly who it was who wanted the picnic to take place. She put off as long as possible the moment when she would have to leave the safe and silent bedroom and face the day. She drew the white sheet over her head and thought about what might happen at the picnic on the sea-shore. She thought about swimming in the sea, whether it would be safe to swim in the sea.

  A few hours later, on the Larmouth beach, it was a very different Christabel Cartwright who emerged. She was now officially Christabel Herrick - perhaps that was the difference. It was Christabel Herrick who was beguiling the whole King Charles Theatre Company as well as enslaving the more susceptible representatives of Megalith Television -Guthrie Carlyle, for example, and Cherry. (Spike Thompson on the other hand showed no particular signs of joining her court as yet, but remained beside Jemima.]

  Christabel even clowned for all their delectation in one of the extraordinary bathing-caps which had been rooted out of some cupboard by Mrs Blagge. She ignored a plainer-looking one beside it. Op Art? Pop Art? With its black and white rubber rosettes springing up all over the scalp, the cap she chose certainly belonged to some vanished era of garish fashion.

  'I look like a mad magpie especially with this ghastly vulgar bathing-dress,' exclaimed Christabel. 'All the same, I think I should go the whole hog and wear the turquoise one, don't you? You'll certainly all be able to keep an eye on me in the briny. Make sure I don't sink without trace.'

  'Are you really going to swim, Mummy?' enquired Blanche solicitously. Regina, who had ridden down to the shore on Lancelot, kicked her heels into the horse and trotted away down the beach. Jemima noticed Julian Cartwright frowning.

  'We'll have to build a monster fire in honour of our leading lady's dip,' said a young actor in striped bathing-shorts and rugger shirt, in whose direction Jemima noticed that Blanche Cartwright had been casting yearning glances. He was called something like Ollie or Obbie Summer-town and Jemima vaguely recognized him from various small parts in television: junior detectives, young policemen, and other budding representatives of law and order. He had already been tearing about the beach gathering driftwood; but Jemima had imagined it was for the benefit of Filly Lennox rather than Blanche Cartwright.

  The fame of Filumena Lennox, like that of Jemima Shore, sprang from television. In Country Kate Filly's ingenious depiction of a disaster-prone city girl trying to run the farm left to her by an unknown admirer had left a deep impression on the public. She was much less experienced on the stage, a state of affairs she was at present trying to remedy by working with the King Charles Company. It seemed that, unlike some famous television stars, Filly Lennox was able to make the switch effectively. Provincial reviewers - and the odd visiting critic from London - had admired her during the previous season.

  Jemima, appraising her with interest (she had to admit to a secret fascination with Country Kate), thought that Filly Lennox was a good deal less pretty in real life than on the screen. Her floppy fair hair -presumably she had worn a curly wig in the series - made Filly's nose look rather unexpectedly beaky in a small pointed face. In a way she was not unlike a much younger version of Christabel Herrick, although neither lady would probably have relished the comparison. Only Filly's wonderful eyes, large, hazel, fringed by what were clearly naturally long and black eyelashes, remained to startle.

  That - and her figure. Gazing speculatively at what could be seen of it already in white cotton trousers and white ‘I-shirt printed with heart and arrow, Jemima thought that for once Flowering Cherry, the toast of Megalithic House, might have to look to her laurels. She need not have worried. The moment when Cherry threw off her fringed purple poncho, edged with jingling bells, was dramatically superb; and what was revealed beneath more than justified her performance of disrobing.

  After that Ollie Summertown decided to stop gathering driftwood quite so energetically and strip off his own rugger shirt 'to get some decent sun before lunch'. As if by chance, he lay at Cherry's feet, and was thus conveniently able to share the sun-oil with which she rubbed her gleaming olive legs and shoulders, Blanche looked wistful. Cherry hoped that Julian Cartwright would feel jealous and oiled Ollie's back.

  Filly Lennox, unfazed by Ollie's defection, started to flirt quite blatantly with Gregory Rowan: 'Oh, you should have seen my Baroness Anne in your Tower! Well anyway the dress. You see, we had this designer - Knocky Pallett - don't ever work with him - if you'd seen what he did to your lovely play ... somehow he insisted the period was entirely topless. . .'

  To Jemima's surprise, Gregory Rowan seemed to take to this dialogue with enthusiasm.

  'Nonsense, my dear, perfectly historically correct. The part shall never be played any other way in my lifetime. Now can we get down to discussing your costume in Widow Capet? No false modesty here, I hope. The girl's a brazen hussy, you realize that. What's Knocky Pallett doing these days, I wonder? We might get hold of him for some last-minute liberating suggestions. Nat, what do you think?'

  But Nat Fitzwilliam was sitting literally at Christabel's feet, recapitulating for her benefit the triumph of his Sung Dynasty Hamlet. Despite the heat he was wearing an anorak and his habitual long scarf which completed the schoolboy look. An expression of outrage crossed his face at the mention of the name Knocky Pallett, but whether at the mere idea of someone else's liberating influence on his own production or at Knocky Pallett's in particular, was not clear. Nevertheless he did not pause in the flow of his disquisition.

  Jemima thought that the whole set of Christabel's face looked rather melancholy now that it was in repose. The lines round her mouth were more obvious and there was a sad downward curve to her lips. Perhaps she did not care for the attention Gregory was paying to the flirtatious Filly Lennox: Jemima thought there might have been a gleam of jealousy there. Christabel was certainly a woman accustomed to being the centre of attention as of right. But it was impossible to tell the true expression in her eyes, behind her dark glasses, as she contemplated Nat. She looked beautiful of course - in her own style. A couple of gold chains strung with real she
lls set in gold hung to her waist. A leopard-skin printed scarf protected her daffodil hair from the sun. Her long diaphanous robe of the same leopard-skin printed material, worn over a matching sun-top and shorts, made the young things' display of nudity look rather odd - or vice versa, thought Jemima, depending on your taste.

  As yet Christabel showed no signs of taking to the sea; although the bathing-costumes and caps discovered by Mrs Blagge - including the despised turquoise ruched number and magpie cap - remained by her side. 'Safe at last' - among a company of actors - she had told Jemima. She did not give the impression of one who felt safe.

  A group of the other actors - male - were sitting by the fire discussing the Test Match with great earnestness; such was their absorption that the flames would have died down altogether had it not been for the work of Mr Blagge who ended by coping with both the grand Lark Manor picnic and the actors' barbecue. The actors' voices rose and fell, making soothing patterns, no two phrases absolutely the same, but all phrases remarkably similar, like Bach variations played at a distance.

  Victor Marcovich, who would play Trigorin in The Seagull and the jailer in Widow Capet, looked heavily distinguished on the beach with his fine bald dome and fleshy Roman features. He also looked much older than another actor generally addressed as Tobs, who would play the ageing Dr Dorn in The Seagull as well as mopping up a number of revolutionary and aristocratic parts in Widow Capet. Tobs told Jemima that in the latter production he had to alternate between wearing a Jacobin cap and a powdered wig; as a result he had a recurrent nightmare of getting the order wrong and going finally to the guillotine wearing a Jacobin cap.