Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [100]
At last the lights dimmed, the audience fell silent, and the curtain rose.
The play was superb, subtle, intelligent, and funny. Many times she found herself laughing aloud. During the first interval she glanced across and saw Mr. and Mrs. Marchand, smiling and at ease. She was too far away to read their expressions in detail, but their gestures made their pleasure evident.
Suddenly Caroline was aware of hurt, even defensiveness. She did not want them to be disturbed; she liked them and understood them, she wanted their friendship and perceived both its values and its limitations. And yet complacency was a kind of death. Something that did not stir thought, awaken new emotions or challenge preconceptions was agreeable, but no more than that. And she knew that Joshua would despise himself if that was all he did. He did not wish merely to entertain. That was at least in part why he admired Cecily Antrim so profoundly. She had the courage to say what she believed, whether one agreed with it or not.
The second act was swifter moving, and it was almost over before she realized there were deeper emotions drawn from her than in the first, and becoming more complex. It was painful, and it was also a kind of relief. She began to think again of Mariah Ellison and how the sudden knowledge of her suffering and anger over all these years had changed her own life.
Twenty-four hours ago she would not have believed that civilized people would even think of the things the old lady had said Edmund Ellison had forced on her most nights of her married life. And yet even sitting here in this exquisite theatre, watching drama so perfectly performed, acted, pretended with consummate skill, surrounded in the half dark by hundreds of exquisitely dressed people, she did believe it. That darkness might lie behind any number of these calm, smoothly groomed faces. She would never know.
She thought of the old lady sitting in growing terror every time Samuel called, then at last planning her terrible, destructive escape. Had she thought that if Joshua left Caroline, threw her out for immorality, just what that would mean? Surely she had. And yet she had known nothing but bitterness and humiliation in marriage, and she could not live with the thought that her family, to whom she had perpetuated the lie for so many years, would at last know that.
What terrible isolation, what loneliness and fear all the time that Caroline had never guessed, horror that had never entered her imagination.
Perhaps some of these things needed to be said, emotions stirred and disturbed, painful questions asked, so a thread of understanding could be woven between people who would never experience for themselves the things that tortured others who sat only a few feet away.
She leaned forward to watch the third and final act of the play.
Afterwards she went backstage to his dressing room, as she always did after a major performance. She was as nervous as if she herself was about to step out in front of the audience and she did not know her lines.
She had rehearsed a dozen times what she was going to say to him, but what if he would not see her? What if he would not listen? She would have to make him . . . insist. She could be as determined as Cecily Antrim or anyone else. She loved Joshua, wholly and completely, and she was not going to lose him without fighting with every skill and strength she possessed.
The dressing room door was closed. She could hear laughter inside. How could he laugh, when he had left her in the morning without speaking?
She knocked. She would not go in uninvited. She might see something she would prefer not to. That thought was like ice inside her. It made her feel sick.
There were footsteps and the door opened. Joshua stood there in a robe, half changed from his costume. He looked startled, then his face softened a little. He pulled the door wide without saying anything. There were two other people inside, a man and a woman.
Relief flooded over Caroline, and guilt. He had not been alone with anyone.
They