The First Time I Saw Your Face (32 page)

‘Cress, sweetheart, please calm down—’

‘And the sex, Jen, it makes everything that I’ve got up to before seem clod-hopping.’ There was a high, hysterical giggle. ‘Sorry, I’ve turned into this romantic fool. That’s what happens when you meet someone like this, your brain scrambles. I feel like I’ve been walking around with my eyes closed. It’s … it’s complex, though, Jen, that’s why I need to talk to you face to face, and Auntie Bren and Uncle Ray. I can’t talk about it on the phone, you must understand that?’

‘No, I thought … Cress, hang on, what about the film?’

‘Not needed for a few days.’

‘Look, Cress, you don’t need to trail over here, nothing can be that bad. I mean, I know Mum will be a bit lemon-drop about … the plumber … you know, having a wife—’

Again she thought Cressida had gone, she was so silent.

‘Cress?’

‘I’m here, I’m here. So … you’ve worked out it’s
him
?’

‘Cress, how long have we known each other? Come on.’

This time the laugh from Cress was a wry one.

‘I’ll talk to Mum for you,’ Jennifer said. ‘There must be something special about him if you love him.’

‘You never judge, Jen, do you?’ Cressida said softly, ‘never
ever, not once. Look, I’m coming over, don’t try to stop me. Gotta go now. Love you, Jen … and Jen? I’ve worked out what I wanted to say to you. One life, that’s your lot. You’ve got to grab it with both hands. I know you think yours has slipped away from you, but things happen, Jen, unexpected things, your life can go in new directions. Be Viola, Jen, do it for yourself.’

‘Cress, Cress,’ Jennifer said urgently down the phone, even though she knew Cress had gone.

She turned to see Matt.

‘Cress?’ he asked. ‘Trying to persuade you to do the part?’

She wasn’t really taking in that it was him, or what he was asking. She was still trying to process how Cress could have fallen for a man like Rory.

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘well, only a bit. She’s … she’s coming over to England to explain it all to Mum and Dad. To me.’

‘Explain it all?’

Jennifer was so thankful to be able to talk to him it all came running out. ‘It’s Rory Sylvester she’s fallen for; I suspected it was and she’s just confirmed it. Unbelievable, a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turnaround. I can only think it’s a mistake, she’s lonely and hounded by the press – he’s shown all this interest in her—’

‘Jennifer, stop talking for a minute,’ Matt said, and she was struck by how uncomfortable he looked, as though he’d rather be anywhere else than standing in front of her. She felt him lift the phone from her hands, and then
he bent down, picked up her handbag and shoved the phone into it.

‘Forget about Cress,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve refused to take over from Lisa? Do you want to tell me why?’

CHAPTER 31

Mack wondered if he could have stopped time if he’d clamped his hand over Jennifer’s mouth before she got out the words ‘Rory Sylvester’. But there it was, finally, the confirmation of what he and O’Dowd had suspected for weeks.

Now there was only one thing he could do to sweeten what was going to happen next and he was damned if he’d let her run away from it. He ignored the way her eyes were asking him to give her an easy time, and her heartfelt, ‘You know why I can’t do it, Matt. Please … don’t make me spell it out.’

‘Jennifer,’ he said, ‘just take a deep breath and listen, and don’t worry, I’m not going to wade in with all that blunt honesty you’ve come to expect. I want to start by saying what I should have said that day when I was trying to apologise in the library, remember? Which is … I can’t imagine how you came to terms with having your face scarred; seeing your dream of acting professionally disappear.’ As he’d expected, her chin went right down at that,
and he was looking at her centre parting and her wonderful blonde hair.

‘I don’t know how you cope every time you catch your reflection, or every time someone stares – being reminded that you don’t look like you used to, yet inside you’re exactly the same. It’s hard for anyone, but particularly for a woman, particularly when you wanted to be an actress – you got a kind of double whammy. Suddenly your talent counts for nothing.

‘You’ve shown more courage than I think I could – picking yourself up, getting back out and about; and when incidents like that one in the pub happen, I can understand why you just put your head down and withdraw. The only thing is, Jennifer, if you can’t work out another way of dealing with that kind of thing, if you just go on feeling all this shame and embarrassment, little by little you’ll think all those nosy, rude bastards out there have a point. You’ll believe you shouldn’t try to do anything that draws attention to yourself. You’ll keep on doing the safe thing which probably won’t be the same as doing what you really want.’

He saw her chin come up sharply at that and then she was bending for her bag and he knew she was intending to run. He got hold of her wrists and coaxed her back into a standing position, kicking her bag to one side as he did so and pushing her gently against the wall. He really had to fight the urge to press his body right against hers and feel her against his chest.

‘Which brings us neatly to acting,’ he said, staring
directly into her eyes, daring her to lower her chin. God she really did have beautiful eyes, like the sky in summer.

‘Now if, hand on heart, you tell me that you can’t stand in for Lisa because the words are too rusty, or you don’t know the moves, or the costume won’t fit, that’s fine.’ He tried not to look at the way her chest was rising and falling as if she was panicking. ‘But if none of those things is true, you’ve got to ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen tonight? You’re on home ground here. People will be rooting for you and yes, they’ll look at you, but I’m betting that after ten minutes they’ll just be thinking about Viola.’

She didn’t say anything, didn’t look like she was going to and that was when he let go of her wrists and put his hands gently on her shoulders. It would have been so easy to have kept on going and wrapped his arms right around her, if she’d have let him.

‘So that’s a “no”, about the acting?’

She did something that looked like a nod.

‘OK, then I lied about the blunt honesty: here it comes. If you don’t do this tonight, that bloody windscreen has won.’ Her eyes flared at that, and he felt her start to struggle. He continued to hold her. ‘It’s won, Jennifer, and all those people who believe we ought to be airbrushed into looking the same, they’ve won too; and everyone who really believes that people who are a different shape or size or even colour from them are somehow inferior. And those who don’t like to see people with disabilities out and about. Oh, and those men in the pub, they’ve won
too. In the end, you’re living the life those kinds of idiots want you to live – apologetic, not making waves, buying into their narrow view of what people should look like. Whereas don’t you think you should be living the kind of life you want? And really, Jennifer, why are you paying those wankers more attention than the people willing you on? Your mum and dad, Bryony, Danny, Cress? Everyone who really wants to see you being you?’

A little part of him wanted her to register he hadn’t included Alex in that list.

She was now looking like he had slapped her repeatedly.

‘It’s not fair, Jennifer. None of this is fair. People can have the blackest hearts and look like angels, and yet you’re kind and true and lovely and you have to put up with all this crap. You’ve got scars on your face, but they’re just a part of you, Jen. They don’t define you and if you let them do that, they’re always going to dictate what you do with your life.’

This time he didn’t hold on to her when she tried to struggle free.

‘I can’t, really I can’t,’ she wailed at him, her voice coming in gasps. ‘Don’t talk to me like this, you have no idea what it’s like, how sick I feel just thinking about going on that stage.’ He saw tears start to well in her eyes and it made him want to smudge them away with his thumbs. ‘I would love to do it, just love to do it … but it terrifies me.’

‘Of course it does. But just think beyond that first step
… you might get to fly again. That’s what I felt yesterday, like I was right there in that moment, flying.’

Whatever happened, he would always remember that look she gave him, as if he had jabbed his finger in the most sensitive nerve he could find. She stooped for her bag and barged past him so hard she almost knocked him backwards.

Had he made it worse? Should he have even tried to make her brave when he was about to sabotage her recovery so spectacularly? He had a nerve … but maybe he was the only one that did. Or perhaps he was trying to give her this one night of doing what she loved to make himself feel better. He was too strung out to think about it any further.

He walked round to the front of the hall and looked at all that green. Soon it would be a memory and he’d be back in the streets of Bath, a richer and an infinitely poorer man.

He had no idea how he would go back to his old life. This place he’d started by hating now seemed the only logical home for him. With Jennifer. The thought of leaving it and leaving her twisted something inside him, but whether it was his heart or his guts he didn’t know.

He looked back at the hall. If he’d got it wrong she wouldn’t do the play and he would leave her with nothing but the bitterness of all his deceit and lies. He looked at his watch. Three p.m. already. He’d give it a few more minutes and if nothing happened, he’d go back to the cottage, pack his bags and call for a taxi. That would be
it. He could barely breathe with the thought that he might just have seen Jennifer for the last time.

‘Hoy!’ It was Doug, running out of the hall with that huge brick of a mobile. ‘Someone wants to speak to you.’ His masking-tape eyebrows all but disappeared under his hair.

The voice on the other end of the phone was clipped, cultured.

‘Cressida here,’ she said, ‘Cressida Chartwell,’ as if the surname was at all necessary. ‘Jen’s just told me you’ve given her a real dressing-down.’

‘Uh, yes. I have.’ He was sure she must know he was a lying, cheating scumbag just from the sound of his voice.

There was a softening of her tone. ‘Well, I don’t know what you said to her, Matt Harper, but she’s just rung me back to tell me she’s going to try and do it. She sounds a bit wobbly, but I’m sure if you hold her hand she’ll get through it. And, Matt …’

‘Yes?’

‘This isn’t Hollywood speak, this is me. I will love you forever for doing this. I can’t wait to meet you when I come over.’

She finished the call, and he walked towards Doug, waiting in the lobby.

No, you won’t love me forever, Cressida. In fact, come Sunday, I’m going to be right up there at the top of your hate list.

CHAPTER 32

Jennifer knew there was a time when she would have to let go of Matt’s hand, and when it came he pushed her towards the steps leading up to the wings.

‘Go on,’ he said, ‘show them how it should be done.’

She lifted her head and breathed from her diaphragm. She pulled her mouth wide and then made it as narrow as possible, ignoring how one side of her face felt stiff and as if it was lagging behind the other. She focused on Viola.

She remembered climbing the steps and heard her cue, but she couldn’t recall walking out on to the stage. She was waiting for a gasp from the audience, but there was nothing, just the front two rows of faces visible in the lights, turned towards her expectantly – Ray and Brenda, Danny and Bryony, Marjorie, Sheila and just on the edge of her vision, Sonia and Gregor.

‘What country, friends, is this?’ she said, and then it happened. She was flying … flying … flying …

*

Mack let go of her hand and knew that at least he’d done something right. He hadn’t rung O’Dowd with that final confirmation and he hadn’t told him Cressida was on her way to the UK. For now, at least, he could pretend he was innocent.

He watched Jennifer from the wings. Even in a costume that did not fit her properly, she looked vibrant and alive and the way she moved was sublime. She was a woman pretending to be a man and she had it perfectly, every little nuance, even down to the way she set her hips. After the first few minutes he stopped worrying that she was going to forget her words or freeze under all that attention, and he felt the play change in her hands to become something bigger, more affecting. Now the audience didn’t simply understand the poignancy of Viola having to woo Olivia with words she yearned to use on the man she loved, they felt it too. Jennifer’s passion wrapped itself around Jocelyn, and she responded, looking almost drunk with it. Angus, watching from beside Mack, went ‘Ohh’ in a way that suggested he would be thinking about that scene in all kinds of inappropriate ways later.

Mack clung on to the part of Sebastian like a raft, unable to comprehend how his life after this play would unfold. He could not take his eyes from this woman on the stage, revelled in the confident side of her soaring and swooping over the audience, yet knowing he was about to whisk all of this new-won happiness away from her. He did his scenes as if dreaming, amazed that nobody could see him disintegrating and the only lines he heard were those that
seemed to be calling out to everyone that Matt Harper was the only impostor here, the rest of them were merely acting. ‘I am not what I am,’ Jennifer said and each word thumped into his head.

Near the end of the play, when he and Viola were reunited, he felt Jennifer run her hand down his arm as she had done when she measured him. It was the only time he heard her stumble on her words and he had to think of the cold North Sea to prevent the audience wondering whether Sebastian’s relationship with his sister was entirely wholesome.

And finally, finally he got his scenes with Jocelyn right, allowing himself to think of Jennifer as he did them. When he said, ‘If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep,’ he could not remember anything he had ever said in his life before that he had meant so much.

At the end people were on their feet, clapping and cheering, and Mack saw Jennifer struggling to retain her composure. Most of the cast had given up trying – they knew the bigger drama that had been played out on the stage tonight.