Anne Perry - A Christmas Homecoming

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.