Caught in the Act (16 page)

Carol's eyes snapped open; Gareth pulled away as if he had been bitten.

Diana smiled. ‘I was wondering whether to have the bacon flan or that—it smells re ally
nice.' Her expression was so tight and bright it looked as if it had been painted on.

‘Are you all right?' Carol asked.

Diana nodded. ‘Uh-huh, yes, of course I am. I'm absolutely fine,' she said, settling herself down alongside Carol with much flapping and arranging of her napkin and cutlery in a great show of arriving. ‘Absolutely fine. What time did Miss Haze say we've got to be back? It's going very well, don't you think? This morning went amazingly well.'

Carol stared at her, trying to work out what on earth was going on. Diana, now busily unpacking her tray, was flushed and looked deeply uncomfortable.

‘Are you sure you're all right?' she asked again in an undertone.

‘Oh, yes, just a bit nervous that's all, a bit rusty—but it's been good so far, don't you think? How about you, Gareth, how are you bearing up? We've barely had a chance to speak since you arrived. How are things with you? How's life?'

Carol watched dumbfounded as Diana turned her full attention on him, so intently, so fiercely that it was like a blowlamp—and the questions and her tone were so barbed and so
unlike Diana that Carol knew that she must have missed something.

Gareth, who had backed off a little and turned to start on his lunch, smiled and said, ‘I'm fine, thank you.'

‘And what are you up to these days?' Diana's tone didn't soften.

His smile held fast. ‘This and that. I'm an IT consultant. I'm involved mostly in arts projects. I've got my own company—it keeps me out of mischief.'

‘Does it? And how about the rest of your life?' Diana growled, cutting his answer short. Carol stared at her; it was the most extraordinary performance.

Gareth's expression closed down to neutral. ‘You know how it is. Busy, fortunately. I meant to congratulate you, Diana. You've done a great job with the whole setup. It's a great place, great idea. Well done. It couldn't have been easy to get all this together.'

But it seemed that Diana hadn't finished with Gareth and elbowed his attempt at polite conversation to one side. ‘Are you married? Have you got any children?'

Carol was stunned. Turning, she said, ‘Diana, what's going on?'

Diana shook her head. ‘Nothing. I'm just curious, that's all.'

‘It's not like you—' Carol began and then stopped. Hadn't she just been thinking about how dangerous it was to assume that people were the same as she had left them?

Gareth, still smiling, got to his feet. ‘Don't mind me. I'm sure that you two have got a lot to catch up on. If you'll excuse me, I'm just going to pop inside and get some coffee.' And then looking at Carol, he added, ‘Catch you later.'

As soon as he was out of earshot Carol rounded on Diana. ‘What the hell was all that about? I've never seen you like that before.'

Diana held up her hand in exasperation. ‘Call it a hunch, Carol, he's married—and he's got children.' She paused. ‘There is something about him. I just think you need to be more careful, that's all.'

Carol looked at Gareth's retreating form. Wasn't that what her instincts were already telling her? To be careful?

‘But that isn't what you said last night?'

Diana reddened and then shrugged. ‘I know.'

‘And I've already told you, Diana, he
told
me he was married and that he has left her,'
Carol began in his defence. ‘It's not like he was trying to hide it from me.'

Diana nodded, ‘I know but it all sounds too neat to me.' She paused, watching Carol's face. ‘You'd say the same thing to me if it was the other way round—it's easy to be misled when you only hear one side of the story.'

‘I do know that,' Carol began and then, more thoughtfully: ‘Are you saying that Gareth is misleading me?' She was surprised; maybe Diana had picked up something she had missed. ‘And what's changed? I don't understand where all this is coming from. When Netty was on about Gareth last night you leaped to his defence.'

‘I know,' Diana sighed. ‘Call it a hunch,' she said.

‘That's not enough,' snapped Carol.

‘It's all I've got,' Diana lied.

As she spoke Diana watched Gareth heading in through the French windows. This was so difficult. She had promised Leonora faithfully that she wouldn't let Gareth know that Leonora knew where he was, but now that she understood what kind of man Gareth was, it was almost impossible to watch Carol with him. Who was she meant to protect? Diana looked
across at the woman who had once been her best friend and wondered how much she could tell her—and decided on balance that it might be better to tell Carol nothing at all, at least not yet. It was a very hard decision to make.

Carol shook her head. ‘All the years that I knew you I've never seen you like this before. You were re ally rude to him.'

Diana laughed. She
would
tell Carol the truth, but not now, not when Leonora was so vulnerable. Surely Carol would understand? Meanwhile, she had to lighten the mood between them. ‘Was I? Sorry. Maybe it's the stress of the weekend finally getting to me. Maybe it's my age. Who knows? Anyway, I'm sure he'll survive. He's a big boy.'

‘Who were you talking to?' asked Carol.

Diana felt a little jolt; surely there was no way Carol could know or guess. ‘Sorry?' she said, not quite meeting Carol's eye.

Carol nodded in the general direction of the bench where Diana had been sitting earlier to talk to Leonora, as if her ghost still lingered there. ‘On the phone. Seems to me that you were all right up until then, and then you stormed across here like Medusa on a bad hair day.'

‘Hedley,' Diana lied with barely a second's hesitation, transposing the conversation of the night before with the one she had just had with Leonora. ‘I thought he had had a run-in with the Chair of the Mother's Union but apparently they are all hunky dory and he's had Dylan put their frozen dinners in alphabetical order to make life easier.'

Carol laughed. ‘Easier?'

Diana, starting on a pile of potato salad, nodded. ‘That's what he said.'

‘I'm not sure that would make me that mad, though,' said Carol after a second or two's reflection. ‘Then again I've never been married to a vicar.'

Diana smiled and turned her attention back to her lunch.

‘So, everybody, just to recap on this morning's efforts, you all did very, very well. Miss Haze's notes covered most points.' Mr Bearman bowed appreciatively in her direction. ‘What I'd re ally like to do is go again from Act one, scene six, at Macbeth's castle.' George Bearman glanced at Miss Haze as if for her approval. She gave a tiny nod and he continued, ‘Where the king has arrived to stay with Macbeth, and he and
his wife have plans to murder the old man while he sleeps. It's a nice contrast too: Lady Macbeth, the perfect society hostess, greeting the old man and taking him in to meet his host, Macbeth, followed in the next scene by Lady Macbeth browbeating her husband into murdering the poor old chap. Then we have Macbeth meeting Banquo and his son on the battlements, and from there we're straight into Macbeth's magnificent speech. “Is this a dagger which I see before me”.' Mr Bearman stepped forward and straight into the role with great gusto.

‘Looks like beer belly I see before me from where I'm sitting,' hissed Netty.

Carol suppressed a giggle; Adie and Jan snorted while Fiona glowered at them.

‘When I was at Stratford—' Fiona began, but Carol had already turned her attention back to the stage. While it might only be a rehearsed reading—and despite occasional outbreaks of late-onset regression—everyone was taking the whole thing remarkably seriously. Diana had said that those people not needed in a scene would be free to wander off in the grounds, but it appeared that nobody wanted to go anywhere—except for Diana, who said she had to go and make a couple of phone calls.
Everyone else, the cast and the crew, sat in the hall watching the action intently.

Further along the row of seats Gareth cleared his throat. Carol looked across and caught his eye. He smiled and waggled his fingertips at her in a tiny wave and instantly she felt her whole body tingle in response. Carol would like to have heard what it was he was going to say to her before Diana interrupted them over lunch.

‘Carol, I want you to know that I've always lo—' Lo what? Loathed your taste in eyeliner, longed to see you dressed in a wet suit clutching a fresh haddock, or was it simply, I've always loved you?

Was that possible? She shivered and looked away.

Mr Bearman was up on the stage alongside Miss Haze, who was consulting the notes she had made during the morning session. It had to be said that time had not been so generous with Mr Bearman as it had with the sylphlike Miss Haze. Despite her age she still had a real spring in her step and a slim well-toned body buoyed up by a huge amount of natural enthusiasm; George Bearman, by contrast, seemed leaden, plump and terribly old.

‘Right, if we can have Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, the king and his entourage, Banquo and the others up here on the stage,' he said, waving them up to join him. As the players shuffled along towards the steps, Mr Bearman added, almost as a throwaway line, ‘You know, I re ally think we ought to try putting some of the action up on its feet, even if we are still on the book. It makes the whole thing so much more powerful—and if it doesn't work then we've lost nothing by trying.'

A little buzz of anticipation went through the hall. Real acting.

Carol groaned, ‘Do we have to?' to Adie, who grinned.

‘You're just jealous that we get swords,' he said, taking up a fighting stance. ‘And, let's face it, it's what we're all here for, hon, the play is the thing, to quote another of Mr Shakespeare's tragedies. Come on. Lighten up, you'll be fine. You used to be re ally good at this kind of stuff.'

Fiona swung round, all smiles and expectation. ‘It is terribly nerve-racking, isn't it? Obviously if you're not keen, Carol, I'm sure everyone would understand. I re ally don't mind standing in for…' Her voice and smile faded as Carol got to her feet.

‘I'll be just fine,' Carol growled, winking at Adie, and made her way along the row, arriving at the steps at the same time as Gareth, who very gallantly took her hand and guided her up onto the stage. Carol was aware of the eyes of the whole company on them as they climbed the stairs, and wondered if there was anyone who didn't know their history, and anyone who wasn't waiting to see what would happen this time around.

When they were at school it had been different. The whole drama group had been heaving with raging hormones and budding romances, or what passed for romance back in those days. Carol looked round the faces in the hall, playing join the dots with them and other people from school, wondering if any of them had got married. Some of them must have married childhood sweethearts, surely? And she wondered if they were still together or did they, as Gareth said, now hate the sight of each other?

On stage, with half a dozen stacking chairs, a trestle table and a few chalk marks on the floor, Callista Haze had managed to whip up a fairly passable imaginary Scottish castle. George Bearman walked them all through it,
opening imaginary doors as he went. The castle gates, the door to the king's bedchamber, the battlements. Easy as one, two, three.

‘Right, places, people, please and can we have a little bit of hush,' he said peering out into their makeshift audience.

As Carol took her place in the wings, she looked around and there, before she could stop herself, from somewhere deep in her imagination, clear as day were a whole reel of images from the last final rehearsal, the very last runthrough before they had gone on tour all those years ago, filling her mind like some amazing Technicolor double take.

Gareth, eighteen, smiled at her and she sighed. God, then and now it had been so tortuous. ‘Can we get together when we've finished here?' he whispered, straightening his cloak.

‘To talk?' she asked lamely in a tiny voice, trying hard to keep her concentration on the stage.

He nodded. ‘To talk.'

Hadn't they already talked enough? Talking had become a euphemism for him kissing her, touching her, getting bolder and bolder over the days, trying very hard to wear down her reserve
and her nervousness and reluctance. Out on the veranda at the cricket pavilion, in quiet corners in empty classrooms, sitting out on the bank shaded by trees. Every time he came near her during rehearsal Carol felt a surge of heat that all these years later she knew was lust but back then made her wonder if she was coming down with flu. And so they had waited in the wings for the play to begin, far too near to each other for either of them to feel truly comfortable.

‘Much closer and I'm going to have to throw a bucket of water over the pair of you,' one of the crew had hissed as they waited for their respective cues. Gareth had grinned at her and as he did so, Carol felt the desire arc between them like lightning. She shivered.

‘Whenever you're ready, off we go…' said Miss Haze to the players, then and now. Carol took a deep breath and as she did, the here and now of the drama tour reunion at Burbeck House pushed away the memories of the final school rehearsal. She watched as Duncan made his entrance, waited for her cue and then stepped out onto an open stage for the first time in twenty years and looked out into the auditorium.

For a second Carol faltered as she saw the
faces and then as she began to read she found that the words sprung into her mind as if she still knew them. It felt like she was flying. In the wings, in the shadows, Gareth smiled appreciatively and her pulse cranked up a gear.

‘Hello, is that Raf O'Connell?' said a cultured female voice.