‘Now, look, we were going to my parents in Comerford, remember?’ Help, she’d got him talking in the wrong tense now! ‘We are going!’
‘Yes, of course! I haven’t forgotten anything. If you say so, when you know… if they say so, that’s where we’re going. I wouldn’t ditch them for anybody in the world. You know that. But wait till I tell you what she offered us…’
‘Us!’ Yes, give her that, Tossa had made sure that he was included.
‘It isn’t what you think, she doesn’t want us to go to her for Christmas! Not a thought of it! She’s totally taken up with this film, all they’ll do about Christmas is throw a party right there on the set, and get as high as kites, and then go right back to work. That’s the stage they’re at, I’ve seen it all before. No, this is something that only happens once. That’s why I didn’t just say no. I couldn’t! I mean, with only one lifetime, and money not all that easy to come by… Well, what would you have said?’ she challenged warmly.
‘How do I know, until I know what you’re talking about? What does she want us to do?’
‘She wants us,’ said Tossa, her voice growing faint with mingled wonder and disbelief, ‘to take a little girl to India.’
Dominic sat down abruptly on the suitcase and the stubborn lock, as if electing itself a sign and portent for the occasion, clicked smugly into place, ready for off. Though it wasn’t as simple as that; for India, at this time of year, you’d want… what? Not the winter casuals of workaday Oxford, at any rate. Cottons? Light sweaters? Good lord, what was happening? He was taking it seriously, and it could only be some sort of mistake, or somebody’s idea of an elaborate joke. He sat staring at her warily, and pushed resolutely out of his mind visions of temples and royal palms, and the legendary beach at Kovalam, and…
‘You did say “India”? And you’re sure that’s what she said?’
‘I asked her again. She said it twice. She said “Delhi”, too. There isn’t any mistake.’
‘And both of us can go?’
‘She said so. I said I’d be scared alone.’ That was a useful formula, and he knew it; what it meant was: ‘Not without Dominic!’ and he was duly grateful for it. There were many things of which Tossa was wary and suspicious, after her experiences with parents and step-parents, but very few of which she was scared.
‘All expenses paid?’ That was how it had sounded.
‘Money’s no object.’
‘But whose money?’ The only little girl Chloe had was sitting there on the edge of the bed, staring at him with eyes so wide in wonder that the highlights in them soared into silvery domes like the Taj Mahal. And in any case Chloe spent her money as fast as she earned it, not to mention making formidable inroads into her husband’s as well.
‘Dorette Lester’s. It’s her little girl we’re supposed to escort to Delhi.’
‘Who’s Dorette Lester?’ demanded Dominic, unaware of his blasphemy. Only Julie Andrews shed more sweetness and light, but then, the few films he did see never seemed to be that kind of film.
‘She’s the American star they brought over to play Marianne in this film Chloe’s making. I told you. Everybody thought they’d fight like tigresses, and they fell into each other’s arms on first sight, and have been as thick as thieves ever since. That’s how it comes that Chloe’s willing to lend me to help out Dorette over the kid. She wants us to drive down to Bath and hear all about it, and get fixed up about dates and everything. I suppose we could do that much, anyhow, couldn’t we?’
‘Today? Now?’
She nodded. The scintillation of desire, fever-white, was still in her eyes. You don’t get offered India on a salver every day. ‘We can still say no, if we want to.’ But she didn’t want to, and neither did he. Not if this was on the level. They eyed each other thoughtfully, still chary of believing in such luck.
‘There has to be a catch in it,’ said Dominic firmly.
She didn’t argue; she knew her mother even better than he did, and it was a reasonable assumption that they would trip over a string or two sooner or later. ‘It would have to be a big one to tip the scale much, wouldn’t it?’ she said honestly.
Dominic got up and hoisted the suitcase on which he had been sitting. The coy lock held, ready for any journey. ‘You’d better call her back, hadn’t you,’ he said, rather as if it had been his idea all along, ‘and tell her we’re coming.’
Some youthful genius from down in the boutique belt, who hatched outrageous ideas on the side and sold them in much the same way as he did outrageous clothes, had come up with the improbable inspiration of making a big musical out of Sense and Sensibility, and with his usual luck had found suckers all round him ready to buy the notion that Jane was with it. He had besides – and it was his chief asset – a gift for concocting elegantly dry, agreeable and piquant music, so witty that it turned the most banal lyrics into epigrams, and it was an even bet that the film he had conned his less well-read contemporaries into making would turn out to be not merely a box-office bonanza, but also a surprisingly good film. They had gone the whole hog on casting it. Most of the money in the venture was American, and the producers had insisted on getting Dorette Lester to play Marianne, the ‘sensibility’ half of the two sisters. The English director, with equal certainty, had declared that no one but Chloe Bliss would do for Eleanor. Chloe’s daughter might have cocked a quizzical eyebrow at the idea of her mother standing for ‘sense’, but it was what she could suggest before the cameras that mattered, not what she really was, and before the cameras or an audience there was nothing Chloe could not be, from an electrifying Ariel in The Tempest to an awe-inspiring grande dame in Wilde. Musicals were something new for her, but she took to the form like a duck to water. She sang the outrageously clever songs of the boy genius, half-pop, half-avant-garde, with such conviction that even the composer was startled. He had never taken them all that seriously himself. What he did was juggle the notes and words around a little, and the money came rolling in. He had never ceased to find it funny, but was a little unnerved when he found it could also be moving.
One of those ladies hired to play the youthful Dashwood sisters was turned forty, and the other was thirty-six, and there were plenty of genuine teen-age actresses to be found, what with half the pop singers taking to the boards or the screen or both as to the manner born; yet nobody seemed to find the casting at all strange. Only a year ago Chloe Bliss had added a superlative Peter Pan to her repertoire. And as for Dorette Lester, one of her most passionate admirers had once said that she couldn’t sing, couldn’t dance, couldn’t really do very much in the acting line, and didn’t have to; just looking at her was enough. But if she had to act, it had better be in some such part as the hypersensitive and emotional Marianne Dashwood, where over-acting, controlled by an intelligent director, wouldn’t show.
Dorette had been married in her early twenties, before she became a star. Tossa told Dominic all about it, or as much as she herself had gleaned from Chloe’s thumbnail sketch, on the way down to Somerset in the Mini.
‘The way I see it, she can’t have been much then, and apparently he was rich, and must have been no end of a catch. A couple of years later, and she probably wouldn’t have looked at him. He was a graduate from the University of the Punjab; doing post-graduate work in research physics and chemistry over in the States. Anyhow, she married him. And they had this little girl. And then things clicked into place, the way they do at the wrong moment, and she made a hit and grew into a star. And I suppose she got very busy and involved with her job, and he was just as busy with his, and maybe they were too far apart ever to make a go of it. Anyhow, they didn’t. She divorced him years ago, and gave herself wholly to her career. And he went back to India, and presumably devoted himself to his.’