towards the stage. She had silver-blond hair, cut fashionably short and feathery to show the oval perfection of her face. Her wide-set dark blue eyes flicked from one to another of them and she smiled again, teasingly, and with a little challenge now. Although she was young, no more than nineteen, the newcomer was evidently used to the effect of her appearance.
‘Who is this vision?’ Chloe breathed to Stephen.
‘No idea. But I’m not going without finding out.’ He winked at her, and Chloe had the pleasurable sensation that there was already an understanding between them.
Tom collected himself first. ‘Yes, we’re auditioning now. You’d like to read for us?’
The girl turned her dazzling face to him.
‘May I? I don’t want to butt in. Let me explain first – my name’s Pansy Warren, and I’ve just come to live at Follies House. The landlady, Rose Pole, told me that you were looking for a Rosalind. I’d love just to have a try. I’ve acted a little bit, at school and in Switzerland, but …’ Pansy shrugged, self-deprecating.
‘Okay,’ Tom’s voice was crisp again. He handed his copy of the text to Pansy and helped her up on to the stage. Oliver bent to take her hand, and between them they led Pansy into her scene as if she were a piece of priceless china.
Helen sank lower in her inconspicuous seat. I could never, she thought, ever have walked in here as she did, unknown and unexpected, and asked to be auditioned. But then I don’t look like that.
There was a faint shadow on her face as she watched the players begin on the familiar lines again.
Pansy was wearing a loose roll-collared sweater that masked her slim, small-breasted figure, jeans, and soft suede ankle boots. With her cap of tousled hair she looked completely the girl-dressed-as-a-boy which the scene demanded.
‘Love is merely a madness,’ read Pansy, ‘and I tell you, deserves as well a dark house, and a whip, as madmen do.’
Her voice was soft, but surprisingly resonant.
There was no need for Tom to tell her to speak up.
She’s good too, Helen told herself. Good in the same way that Oliver is. She doesn’t care who is looking at her, or what they think. She can just be herself because she’s sure of being right. Like Oliver, she doesn’t have to try.
Helen was too intent on Pansy herself to notice something else, but Chloe saw it. There was a crackle between this Orlando and Rosalind that had been completely missing from the earlier attempts. There was a new edge of seriousness in Oliver’s performance as the youth in love with love, which made his posturing credible. Before, it had only been amusing.
And Pansy’s Rosalind, although she was mocking her lovesick youth, showed the girl’s attraction to the young man too.
That was right, as well.
‘With all my heart, good youth,’ said Oliver softly.
‘Nay, you must call me Rosalind.’ The balance of humour and longing in Pansy’s exit line was perfect. They want each other already, Chloe thought. And people like those two always get what they want. She shot a quick glance at Helen’s rapt profile and sighed for her.
The spatter of involuntary applause brought Oliver and Pansy to the front of the stage, flushed and pleased.
‘Weren’t they good? Wasn’t Oliver good?’ Helen was beaming at Chloe.
‘Very good,’ she answered shortly. ‘Unless the director is as blind as a bat, Follies House has provided the world with a Rosalind. What do you think of our house-mate?’
They looked at the slim, silvery figure between Tom and Oliver on stage.
‘How exotic to be living in the same house as someone like that. But she looks nice, don’t you think?’ Helen kept her voice deliberately neutral.
‘Mmmm.’ Chloe thought that indeed she looked nice, but it wasn’t the kind of niceness that Helen would benefit from.
Clearly the auditions were over. The two disappointed Rosalinds had slipped away and now Tom was flicking off the lights. Helen stood up uncertainly, longing to go to Oliver but too shy to make the first move. Behind her, she heard Stephen Spurring murmuring to Chloe, ‘There’s still time for some lunch. Would you like to?’
Tactfully, Helen hurried to pick up her things. She didn’t want to make Chloe feel that she should be invited too. ‘See you later,’ she said firmly. Oliver and Pansy were still standing at the edge of the stage.
When they spoke, neither of them mentioned their first meeting in the mist on Folly Bridge. Instead they let the memory of it hang between them like a shared secret.
‘You read well,’ said Oliver. ‘It was a good scene.’
Pansy’s eyes looked straight back at him.
‘Thank you. You weren’t too bad either. Quite good, in fact.’ When she laughed, Pansy’s prettiness took second place to her overflowing vitality. It was an irresistible combination. ‘We should do quite well together. If your friend the director gives me the part, of course.’
‘Oh, I think he will. Unless he casts you as my Rosalind, he’ll find himself with no Orlando either.’
Oliver vaulted down from the stage and, reaching up for Pansy’s hands, swung her down beside him. At once Tom went to join them.
Helen saw that they were absorbed and oblivious to her. Don’t get in the way, she told herself. They’re busy. He’s busy. She walked away to the exit briskly enough, but then she found herself lingering bleakly in the deserted foyer. She wanted to see Oliver. The prospect of going back to her books without even a word from him seemed impossible. But how could she go back and interrupt him?
She was still hovering indecisively when the three of them came out. They saw her at once.
‘Hello again,’ Oliver said lightly, as if they had last met at a bus stop or in a cinema queue. ‘What did you think of it?’
‘It was good,’ Helen said weakly. ‘Both of you … very good.’
Is that all? Then, more sternly, she reminded herself, what else could he say? In front of … other people?
‘Are you part of the cast?’ Pansy asked warmly. At close quarters her eyes showed a dozen different shades of blue. She was wearing a scent which reminded Helen of summer gardens.
‘No. But we will be seeing each other again. I live at Follies House too.’
‘Really? That’s wonderful. Isn’t it weird? And the woman who runs it all, Rose, what d’you make of her?’
‘Be careful,’ Helen warned her, ‘she’s a relative of Oliver.’
Oliver shrugged, not interested in the turn the conversation had taken. ‘A very distant one, for whom I accept no responsibility.’
Tom was impatient too. ‘Let’s go and eat, for God’s sake. Come with us, Helen. Are you sure you can’t do something for my production? Backstage, perhaps.
