Cool Repentance (24 page)

Following this train of thought proved very interesting indeed to Jemima Shore.

She conjured up a whole new set of images. She remembered the Sunday lunch table. Julian giving the orders. Julian, the lord of the manor, very much in command of his household. She reviewed again, still patiently, the picnic on the shore. She concentrated on Julian's assiduous control of absolutely every detail of the picnic, the melancholy which seemed to underlie Christabel's attitude to him, more than melancholy, almost a feeling of shrinking from him.

She remembered Gregory's words: 'I was very surprised. She always said he was not her type: she called him her rich young man. Security, I suppose.' 'Not my type,' Christabel Herrick had said of Julian Cartwright
...

She ran through still more of her conversation with Gregory in her mind. His surprise when Julian had agreed to fetch Christabel, the guilty woman, down to Lark immediately. Why had he rushed up to London so promptly? Why had he brought her down to secluded luxurious Lark, the house she had willingly abandoned? Gregory had given his own explanation: Christabel had been 'totally destroyed', 'scarcely sane', when Julian had fetched her - for Gregory was Julian's friend as well as Christabel's. 'Julian Cartwright,' he had loyally told Jemima, 'is much the nicest character of the Cartwright family.'

Jemima wondered about other things. The death of Nat Fitzwilliam. Nat who had intended to focus his binoculars on the sea-shore from the Watchtower to view the production 'as a whole' and to concentrate on the character of Arkadina in particular: until Christabel had jokingly suggested that there had been enough concentration on Arkadina for one production, and that focusing on Blanche and Ollie, Filly and Gregory, or even Cherry and Julian, might provide more useful insights - into the characters of Konstantin, Nina and Trigorin
...

The death of Nat Fitzwilliam, and that figure in the shadows. That figure - a man - alluded to by Mr Blagge, who knew well where to find the key, because the topic had been discussed in Flora's Kitchen: and knew also just as well as Mr Blagge how to throw it away afterwards so it would never be found. A man who noticed when the Cartwright family and their attachments were ostensibly upstairs in the Royal Stag finishing off Blanche's birthday elebrations, but in fact proved on examination to have been widely dispersed as the evening wore on. All this at a time when beady-eyed Old Nicola, also installed on the first floor near the service stairs, could easily have witnessed an unscheduled flitting from the hotel. Aroused by the noise on the service stairs, she could have looked out of her little back window and seen
someone -
who? - leaving the hotel by the back entrance and the car-park . . . basis for blackmail later. Old Nicola: who was expecting someone 'who can well afford to do so' to provide for her for the rest of her life. 'Someone who can well afford to do so, plenty of money, when you think how Old Nicola herself has to live.'

And then at last Jemima saw it all: instinct helped her to take the last step, where first instinct, then reason, had guided her originally along her path of discovery. She saw it all in one appalled and appalling glimpse in which past and present combined.

Plenty of money. Lark Manor. The lap of luxury. Julian Cartwright. Regina Cartwright. Blanche Cartwright. It all came down to this: could Christabel be forgiven for what she had done to her husband and family? Hadn't Christabel said it herself on their second meeting in Flora's Kitchen: 'It's too late. One can never go back.'

It was at this point that Jemima heard Ketty's imperative knocks. Still startled, slightly shaking in view of the new path along which her thoughts were rapidly carrying her, Jemima undid the door. She took a step back.

Ketty was an astonishing sight: her dark-red hair, normally strained back into its thick bun, was falling round her shoulders. Her eyes were hardly touched with their usual garish eyeshadow; her quivering mouth was quite devoid of its harsh red lipstick. She was wearing a cardigan over her dark dress which was misbuttoned: everything about Ketty's outfit, in contrast to her usual style, had the air of being very hastily assumed.

'Miss Shore, let me in. It's urgent. Really urgent. Otherwise I wouldn't have come. I've driven from Lark. I took the Jaguar - he's got the Land-Rover. I've never driven it before. It's outside. Not very well parked. Oh, my God—' Ketty sat down suddenly on the chaise-longue. A glass of white wine was on the table beside her. She drained it. She did not seem to notice it was not water.

This new defenceless Ketty, looking at least ten years younger than the formidable governess of Lark Manor, was such a surprising apparition, that it took a moment for Jemima to rally her thoughts. Then she realized the full import of what Ketty had just said:

'Who's
got the Land-Rover?'

'He's
got the Land-Rover. Julian. Mr Julian. He's going to the theatre. I know he is, and oh, Miss Shore, you've got to help us.' Ketty was by now trembling violently as though in delayed reaction to her drive.

'How do you know he's going to the theatre?'

'Where else
would
he go? But to her.' Ketty looked up desperately to Jemima, her large face incongruously framed by her mass of rippling auburn hair like the hair of a forties film star: her eyes were imploring. Yes, there was no doubt about Ketty's feelings for Julian Cartwright. 'And that's not the worst of it,' she went on. 'His pistol's gone.
That's
the worst of it. That's why I came to you. I know where he keeps it and it's gone. The drawer in the study was open after he left, when he rushed out of the house—' Ketty gave a sob.

'Oh, Miss Shore, he's been so patient, so terribly terribly patient through it all. I'm frightened—'

'I'm frightened too,' said Jemima grimly. 'Come on. We're going to the theatre.'

Taking Ketty's hand, she guided her down the staircase and out of the hotel, ignoring Mrs Tennant's bewildered face behind the reception desk. With Ketty's hand in hers, Jemima felt for one absurd moment like the Red Queen tugging at Alice: but she was well aware that the situation in which they were all involved was tragic not absurd.

Together they walked, half-ran and then ran across the pretty little square which separated the hotel from the theatre.

The glass of the pentagonal theatre was thoroughly illuminated. Across its central facade hung an enormous white banner. It concentrated on essentials:
tonight
, it read,
christabel
herrick in 'the seagull'
.
There was no mention of such details as the author's name, the director, let alone the names of any of the other actors in the King Charles Theatre Company.

But when Jemima entered the theatre itself - rushing past the surprised attendant who exclaimed: 'I thought you telly people were all gone' -
Christabel Herrick, the star of the occasion, was not visible on the stage. Jemima shoved Ketty down into a vacant seat on the left-hand aisle (she thought it must have been one of Megalith's unused seats, but it had in fact been vacated at the first interval by Father O'Brien, who had returned home to watch one of his favourite programmes on television). Jamie Grand, the powerful editor of
Literature,
was sitting in the same row: as usual when he was at the theatre - as opposed to reviewing a book - there was a pleased expression on his face; an unknown blonde girl was next to him. Neither of them took their eyes off the stage for a moment but Jemima saw another face look up at her with a frog-like air of injured astonishment at the disturbance. She recognized a London critic, come down to Larminster to witness the return of Christabel Herrick to the stage. There was no sign of Julian Cartwright in the crowded and darkened auditorium - but that was not where she expected to find him.

Trying to catch her breath, Jemima surveyed the stage. Emily Jones was at the beginning of Nina's last speech: 'I'm a seagull
...
No, that's not it. I'm an actress
...
I'm a seagull. No, that's not it again
...
Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came along by chance, saw it and destroyed it
...'
She was ploughing on gamely and not unsuccessfully, if much faster than had been planned at rehearsals. Ollie Summertown as Konstantin was sitting listening to her.

There was still time, time to get round to the back of the stage.

'Slow up, Emily, slow up anyway for your sake as well as mine,' Jemima prayed desperately. 'Nina does not gabble.' And she turned and ran back out of the theatre, round to the Stage Door, in past an equally stunned door-keeper - 'Well, hello there Miss Shore, I thought—' But Jemima did not stop. She knew now exactly what had happened, what might happen. She got to the wings of the stage. Still she did not see the man she was looking for, Julian Cartwright, nor the woman, Christabel.

Emily had reached the end of her speech and ran down the steps which, for lack of a proscenium arch, stood for french windows on the set. Konstantin was still tearing up his manuscripts: ending his work preparatory to ending his life. In the absence of a desk, he had to take them out of a seaman's canvas bag. It was a long-drawn-out process. Jemima noticed that Ollie's hands were trembling.

At that moment there came a loud report from the direction of the dressing-rooms. A look of amazement followed by slight embarrassment crossed Ollie's face: as though he feared that he had somehow shot himself prematurely and would get into trouble for still being on stage tearing up manuscripts when he should be officially dead off-stage. There was a faint disconcerted rustle in the audience as though some of those who prided themselves on being Chekhovian
cognoscenti
were having the same reaction.

But Jemima had no further time to consider what was happening on stage. She looked round frantically. She still could not see any sign of

Christabel, although any minute Madame Arkadina was due to make her last entrance and Trigorin and Masha were already in place.

It
was Julian Cartwright who provided the solution to the mystery of Christabel's whereabouts. He came slowly towards Jemima from the direction of Christabel's dressing-room. Vic Marcovich and Anna Maria, who were waiting to enter, stared at him. The voice of Dr Dorn could be heard on-stage: 'That's strange. The door seems to be locked
..
.' Without the benefit of his aged-up appearance, Tobs still sounded oddly young.

Julian Cartwright moved like a sleep-walker. But his voice when he spoke was as clear and strong as normal. So that a good many members of the audience must have heard him when he said:

'Get everyone out of here. No, don't go into the dressing-room. Christabel has shot herself

Inside the star's dressing-room, with all its as-yet-unopened good-luck telegrams and all its sweet-scented flowers from Lark Manor, all the flowers she loved, lay Christabel Herrick. She was still just conscious enough to be aware that she was dying at last, killed by her own hand as she had always intended, shot, immolated, ended.

Then the person who knew that Christabel could never be forgiven for what she had done, closed her eyes. The person who hated Christabel died together with her, and at the same instant and in the same body. United in death, all her voices, good and evil, ruthless and repentant, found peace at last.

17

Obsession and After

They pieced it together afterwards, all of them. Christabel, the person who had killed three times, once in a sudden fit of murderous jealousy -Filly Lennox, a younger rival; twice to protect herself from the consequences of her crime - Nat Fitzwilliam who had seen something through his binoculars, and Old Nicola who had seen something else from her vantage point at the Royal Stag hotel. Christabel, the schizophrenic murderess. Christabel, the person who hated herself for what she had done, and so in the end thankfully destroyed herself.

The people who pieced
it
all together included Jemima Shore, who had reached the truth in a flash of illumination at the end - but too late to save Christabel from her final desperate act; Julian Cartwright, who knew only too well about his wife's unbalance but feared to face its consequences; Gregory Rowan, who had talked so convincingly to Jemima about Christabel's self-hatred - Christabel as her own worst enemy - and yet likewise feared to face the agonizing truth.

'I think we were both blinded, Julian and I, by the fact of her leaving us,' Gregory told Jemima. 'We were obsessed by her absence, by what she had done by abandoning us. So when she did return, we were determined that everything should be just the same: it had to be. Back to normal. That was our motto. You see, it was our conspiracy to pretend that everything was back to normal, not hers. She was merely acting out what we wanted her to be. And giving a superb performance, too. That extraordinary radiant composure, which the world took for brazenness -acting, all of it. Beneath
it
all, she was terribly frightened, must have been frightened of going mad, frightened of what she might do if she did.'