A Christmas Homecoming (5 page)

“It makes me think of those at sea,” Eliza said unhappily, staring at the snow-coated glass. “I feel almost guilty to be so safe.”

“I can’t imagine why anyone wants to go to sea, especially in the winter,” James observed.

“They probably don’t.” Vincent looked at him witheringly. “Poor devils have little choice. We can’t all be actors.”

“Indeed we can’t,” Joshua retorted. “Not even all those of us who try.”

Lydia laughed, then winced as apparently someone kicked her under the table.

Douglas Paterson looked at her with quick appreciation, then straightened his face again and pretended he was not amused.

After the meal Joshua asked if he and Caroline might speak with Netheridge. He showed them into
his study, a large, extremely comfortable room with leather-covered armchairs and a fire burning briskly in the hearth. A huge oak desk was littered with the implements of writing: pens, papers, two inkwells, a sand tray, sticks of sealing wax in various shades of red, matches and tapers, and several penknives and paper knives. The walls were lined with books, set by subject rather than size, as if they were there for use.

Caroline wondered why Joshua had asked her to accompany him.

“I can’t help,” she had said, meaning it as an apology, not an excuse.

“Yes, you can,” he had told her with a tiny, twisted smile. “If you are there at least he will hesitate to lose his temper. So will I.”

Unfortunately Douglas Paterson had also decided to join them. Since he was Alice’s fiancé it was difficult to protest his presence.

Netheridge stood in front of the fire. Joshua accepted the invitation to be seated, even though it placed him at something of a disadvantage. Caroline sat opposite him, already feeling defensive, in spite of the agreeable smiles on everyone’s faces. Douglas Paterson
stood by the window, his back to the ever-increasing storm.

“Well, Mr. Fielding, how is it going?” Netheridge asked. “Do you have everything you require? Is there anything else we can provide for you?”

Caroline felt her throat tighten.

“We have read through the script a couple of times, to see how it works,” Joshua replied. “That is customary for a new piece. What seems powerful on the page does not always translate to natural speech.”

Netheridge grinned but he did not interrupt.

It was Paterson who spoke. “Is that the beginning of an excuse to say you cannot perform it?”

Joshua swung around in his chair to face him. “No, Mr. Paterson. If that was what I had meant to say, I would’ve been plainer about it. Mr. Netheridge deserves the truth, as far as we can discern it.”

“The truth is that Alice has some rather impractical dreams, and it would be better if you didn’t indulge her in them,” Paterson said bluntly.

Caroline remembered Alice’s face as she sat in the audience and listened to her words read on the stage: the awe, the excitement and hope, the embarrassment.
Joshua must make the play work, she decided, although she had no idea how.

“As I see it, it is a work that needs some attention. Possibly the order of certain scenes should be changed, so that we can give it the passion and drive it requires to move it from one medium to another,” Joshua answered Paterson quietly but firmly.

“So are you saying you can do it?” Netheridge asked directly.

Joshua hesitated for only a second, but Netheridge saw it. His jaw hardened. “You doubt it!” he challenged him. “Be honest, man. Alice is my only child. She’s willful, a dreamer, perhaps a little naïve, but I’ll not have her made a fool of, by you or anyone else.”

Paterson smiled, and the tightness in his shoulders eased a little. The shadow of a smile softened his face.

Netheridge looked at Joshua. “Are you prepared to work at this thing and make it right? Give me a straight answer, man.”

Joshua took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The clock on the mantelpiece over the fire moved two seconds. “Yes, I am.”

“Right! Then what is it you want from me, Mr. Fielding?
The party is set for Boxing Day, December twenty-sixth. Can’t change that now,” Netheridge said with a frown.

“I understand,” Joshua replied. “We will have to work very hard. I will need the time with no interruption, other than for meals. Possibly I might request to eat in the theater room, if the cook would be kind enough to make something simple that can be served there. And perhaps Mrs. Netheridge would help my wife to find a few articles we might borrow as props to dress the stage?”

“Done,” Netheridge said. “She’ll be delighted. What else?”

“A good supply of paper and ink, more than I thought to bring with me. But most of all I would appreciate your assistance and even support in explaining to Miss Netheridge that all this is necessary if we are to make the play a success—”

“A success?” Paterson interrupted. “We’re doing this as a Christmas gift for Alice, not to see it performed on the London stage. How on earth can you judge what is a success? If it pleases her that’s all that matters. If it isn’t going to work, then perhaps the most honest thing
would be to tell her so now, to save her from being humiliated in front of her friends, and her family’s friends, the people she will mix with long after you all have gone back to London, or wherever it is you come from.” There were two spots of pink in his cheeks, and he had moved a step closer to them.

“I judge a success as something that entertains and enthralls an audience, Mr. Paterson,” Joshua replied, his voice gathering emotion. “Something that suspends their disbelief for an hour, makes them laugh or cry, think more deeply about their lives or create new dreams in their minds. And a failure is something that bores them, has no integrity within itself, and does not for a moment take them somewhere they have never been before. If we are to capture and hold their imagination, then we must iron out the inconsistencies and improve on the strengths.”

“Then why are you here instead of in the theater doing that?” Paterson asked, but his tone had lost its belligerence. He looked puzzled and anxious.

Caroline realized how far out of his depth he was. He did not know Alice as well as he had imagined he did, and realizing this frightened him.

“Because Alice needs your support,” she answered for Joshua. “When you have created something as she has, there is so much of yourself in it that it becomes very hard to accept criticism. We all need praise, even when we are being shown how our work could be better. Why, everyone needs their loved ones to believe in them, to believe that they can succeed.”

Douglas chewed his lip, glanced at Netheridge, then back not at Caroline but at Joshua. “If you change it into your work, what will be left of it that is hers?” There was uncertainty in his eyes, and still a degree of challenge.

Netheridge nodded. “Yes, Mr. Fielding. Douglas is right. If you change it as much as you say, whatever our friends think, she’ll know it isn’t hers. And she’s honest, Alice is. She won’t take the credit for your work.”

Caroline looked at him still standing in front of the fire: a self-made man who owned more than all his ancestors put together, a father who loved his only child but did not believe in her talent. And perhaps he was right not to. Joshua had said the play, as it stood, was unperformable. What answer could Joshua give that would be even remotely honest?

“I’m not going to rewrite it for her,” Joshua said softly. “I’m going to help her rewrite it herself. It will still be hers, but with a lot more knowledge of what stagecraft can do.”

“Ah.” Netheridge looked pleased. “Good,” he said firmly. He turned to look at Paterson. “Told you, Douglas, got a good man here. Right you are, Mr. Fielding. You’ll get everything you need from me. Thank you for your honesty.”

Joshua rose to his feet and straightened his shoulders. Perhaps only Caroline, who knew him so well, could see the overwhelming relief in him.

When they were outside the door and it was closed again behind them, he turned to her with a shaky smile.

“Thank you,” he said in a whisper.

She found herself suddenly absurdly emotional. Her own voice was husky when she spoke. “How are you going to do it?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “But God help me, it’s probably beyond anyone else’s ability.”

She moved a little closer to him and slipped her hand into his. She felt his fingers tighten, warm and
strong against hers. She wanted to say something encouraging, full of certainty, but it would have been a lie. He would have known it, too, so she said nothing, just held on to him.

Caroline found Eliza delighted to help.

“I’m sure we can find all sorts of things,” she said eagerly when Caroline asked her. “Just tell me what you need.”

Caroline had already given it much thought. It was of great importance to her that she help Joshua, because their success mattered so much to the company, but also because she had a hunger to be a real part of the production, not merely an onlooker. Too often she had participated only in the role of Joshua’s wife, permanently on the fringes of the emotion and the companionship.

“We need something to suggest Mina’s home,” she replied, and Eliza led the way to one of the box rooms where unused furniture was stored. “Chairs, perhaps? And a spare curtain, if you have one. It would suggest warmth, and height. I think that would be good. We can’t have anything too heavy to move.”

“Oh, yes, I see.” Eliza opened the door to the box
room and led the way in. It was piled with all kinds of discarded chairs, tables, cupboards, cushions, curtains, a couple of cabin trunks, and two or three carved boxes. There were also a lot of jardinières, lamp brackets, and some large and colorful vases that would not have fitted anywhere in the parts of the house Caroline had seen.

Eliza saw her glance and give a tiny, rueful smile. “Choices I shouldn’t have made,” she said quietly.

“I like them,” Caroline responded before she thought. The colors were warm and unusual.

“So do I,” Eliza agreed, biting her lip. “But they don’t fit in with my mother-in-law’s taste.” She did not offer any further explanation, but it was unnecessary. The stamp of that dominant personality was heavy in every room Caroline had seen so far.

“My mother-in-law’s taste would have been good for a funeral parlor,” she said sympathetically. “She made one quite naturally feel in mourning, whether they had lost anyone or not.”

Eliza gave a little giggle, and then stifled it quickly, as if she felt she should not have been amused. She met Caroline’s eyes in a glance full of humor. “Just right for
a vampire story, then, don’t you think?” she asked, then blushed.

Caroline found herself liking this side of Eliza immensely. “Perfect. But thank goodness she’s safely in London with my younger daughter. If we could use that red vase with the flowers, it would give Mina’s house something warm and bright, and the audience would remember it and know immediately where the characters are when they see it again.” She looked around the room. “And we could use that dark curtain over there to suggest the crypt where Lucy is buried.”

Eliza gasped, then burst into laughter, her hands flying to her mouth to quiet it.

“I’m sorry, is that not … acceptable?” Caroline felt awkward.

“No, no, it’s perfect!” Eliza shook her head, dismissing the apology. “It was my mother-in-law’s favorite. It took some five years to get it out of the withdrawing room. Charles and I still have disagreements over it.” The laughter vanished.

“Would you rather not remind him of it?” Caroline asked. “Or maybe it would hurt his feelings, do you think? I mean, if we use it to suggest … a crypt?”

“It’s perfect for a crypt,” Eliza said decisively. “It looks like grave hangings anyway. Let’s see what else we can find.”

Caroline took a deep breath and followed Eliza through the piles of furniture. She hoped she was not going to cause this warm and vulnerable woman more heartache after they were gone.

oshua spent the afternoon attempting to rewrite at least some of the major outline of the play. It was a difficult work for an amateur to adapt, particularly because, like many novels, much of the tension came from the characters’ inner thoughts, and was impossible to dramatize without creating scenes that did not exist in the original book. There were also a great many letters in it, impossible to translate into action.