101 Pieces of Me (15 page)

H
e looked down on me, his face dark with some elemental force I could not recognize. Even his rage when he had attacked Aidan had not shown itself like this; this was a mask of triumph and loathing, like a man would turn on his defeated opponent after a bloody battle.

“Get up and get dressed,” he commanded. “I don’t care where you go, just get out.”

“David, I beg you, tell me … what have I done? Have I displeased you?” A sob came into my throat and almost choked me, but I blurted the question I had to ask. “Don’t you love me any more?”

These words only increased his fury. “Shut up, you stupid little fool!” he commanded. Then he seemed to soften a little and between heavy breaths said, “Go away and read your contract. If you try to breach it I will sue you.”

I was still sobbing. “But I don’t understand,” I protested weakly. “David, please tell me—”

“For Christ’s sake! Do you think I’ve taken all this trouble for my own amusement?”

“I do not know what to think.” My brain felt useless, stunned.

“Well, I haven’t.” David’s voice was shot through with misery. “I’ve done it to get rid of that bloody woman.”

The memory of Marjorie Cunningham’s cap of golden hair flashed through my head. I gasped for breath. “What woman? Do you mean Mar—”

He ignored me. “Of course, the court case will provide free publicity for the picture too, and keep those damned sharks off my back.”

“What court case?” I was wailing now. “David, please…”

“The
divorce
case, you fool!”

I gasped, silenced by bewilderment. I had never felt my ignorance so keenly. Whose divorce case did he mean?

“Don’t sit there gaping like a fish,” said David. “Here.” His jacket lay on a chair. He searched the pockets, his fingers trembling so much that his wallet got stuck as he tried to pull it out, and in his irritation he tore the pocket flap. He tossed a five pound note onto the bed beside me. “Now, get out of my sight, and don’t come near me again until your contract says you have to.”

E
ven now, it is painful to write about the events of that evening. My heart, still full of the torment David Penn inflicted upon it, will not settle. The words live on the page, pulling me back down into that darkness, as unwelcome memories always do. I wish, despite all that has happened since, that I had never agreed to go to Brighton with him. I wish I had been more suspicious of his too-ready acceptance of my insistence upon separate rooms.

I had been more innocent even than he knew. I had believed, with a naiveté beyond comprehension, that a man would take a woman away for the weekend and be content to meet her each morning in the dining room for breakfast and say good night outside her bedroom door. It still makes me blush to imagine what the hotel clerk must have thought when we registered as an unmarried couple and took separate rooms, albeit with a shared bathroom in between. That we were cousins? Or perhaps colleagues on official business? Or that Miss Williams must be an imbecile? David had called me a “little idiot”, and he was right.

I sat on the bed for a long time, my tears drying on my cheeks. I wiped my eyes and looked at my fingertips; they were smeared with mascara. My actress’s eyes must be a sorry sight. But I could not bear to get up and inspect them in the mirror. I did not want to look at myself. I felt too numb to do anything.

I still did not truly understand why David had done what he had done, but it was clear that I was now mixed up in the sort of affair that was discussed in Haverth only in whispers and never in mixed company or in front of children. There would be two versions of what had occurred in this room tonight – David’s and mine – and no one would believe my version. It would be the word of a … what did people call it? … a
floozy
, against that of a rich, respected film director. A floozy was an ignorant girl who went with men in order to get nice things – oh God, the bracelet! The dress! The dinners at the Ritz and the Café Royal! And in many people’s minds, as Florence had reminded me, an actress was little better than a prostitute.

I went on sitting there, my dismay increasing. How I wished I had taken more notice of my contract! By agreeing to its terms, whatever they were, I had taken a step into the hidden undertow of a world neither I nor my family understood. But there was no retreating now. I could not face my parents and Frank, and especially Mary and Florence. I could never go back to Haverth and be Sarah Freebody again. And how could I face Jeanette and Maria and Dennis, and all the other film people who knew David and whom I had trusted as I had trusted him? I could not go back to the Thamesbank Hotel and be Clara Hope either.

So where
could
I go?

M
y wristwatch said seven minutes to eight. Wherever I decided to go, I had to set off soon or it would be too late to get a train. My head heavy with crying and confusion, I hauled myself to my feet. Slowly, without looking at my half-dressed state in any of the mirrors in the room, I took a clean blouse and a pair of stockings from my case and put them on.

Once I was wearing my skirt and jacket again, I took up my hairbrush and sat down at the dressing-table. In my reflection I looked bony and black-eyed, like a small animal chased to the point of exhaustion, waiting for the hounds to gather for the kill. I began to brush my hair, moulding the waves round my fingers, musing on the fact that I was not a beautiful actress at all. I was the unfortunate victim – quite possibly deservedly so – of a confidence trick, and I certainly looked the part. Dejected, years older than my age, wondering if I could ever again believe what anyone said.

I took off the make-up round my eyes and did not renew it. But I decided to put on lipstick, as my lost alter ego, Sarah Freebody, had always done. Suddenly, I wondered what had happened to that stick of lipstick from the chemists in Aberaeron, the first and only one Sarah had ever bought. Was it still in my make-up bag? I had an overwhelming desire to find it.

The bag, a quilted satin one I had bought in Selfridges the same day as my fur, lay in a corner of my case. I rifled it desperately, hoping for a sight of that familiar brass tube. It was not there. I tipped the contents of the bag out onto the dressing table. Compacts, bottles, boxes and jars clattered on its glass surface. My old lipstick wasn’t there, but my eye caught a crumpled piece of paper with something written on it. Puzzled, I picked it up.
23, Raleigh Court, Bayswater, London W2
.

I read it twice, and realization dawned. This scrap of paper had been in my make-up bag since that day when I lay in my dressing room, suffering from my first hangover. Without doubt, the address belonged to the person who had written it: my erstwhile leading man, Aidan Tobias.

I
stared at the cigarette paper. It was such a small thing, so thin it was almost transparent, and the ink Aidan had written the words in was smudged and discoloured from its long sojourn among my cosmetics. But it was a miracle that it was there at all. Why had I not thrown it away as soon as Aidan had left the room that day? Contemptuous of him as I was, what had made me keep the paper? And what had he said as he had written on it? I closed my eyes and searched my memory. He had wanted me to take care. “Do not disregard yourself,” he had said, with a sadness I had not understood.

I opened my eyes. Aidan had said something else that day. He had told me not to disregard “some people” who cared about me, which I had assumed meant himself. Knowing he was jealous of my affair with David, I had dismissed his words. But now I remembered them clearly. “They will be there if you ever need their help.”

Aidan was the very last person on earth I wanted to see. Normally I would have run as far away as possible from his voice saying, “I told you so”. But things were not normal. With one stroke my journey away from Sarah Freebody towards a wise and sophisticated Clara Hope, capable of enchanting both David Penn and the cinema audience, had been derailed. I could not go in either direction, but I could not stay where I was either. However wary events had made me, I would have to take Aidan at his word. At least for now.

I put the paper in my jacket pocket, crammed my hat on my head, touched my lips with lipstick, packed my case, picked it up along with my handbag and fur, put the key on the bedside table and left the room. I did all this as quickly as I could in order to stop myself thinking. I had to get out of the Royal Albion, and, for good or for ill, Aidan had offered me an escape route.

In the corridor, I pushed the door to the stairwell and listened. The only sounds came from the dining room, where dinner was in full swing. I felt I would rather die than pass by the reception desk, with the clerks smirking and whispering. As quietly as I could, struggling a little with my case, I went down the stairs. At ground level there was a door bearing a notice saying
Fire exit only. Please keep locked
. My heart sank, but when I tried it I found it had the kind of lock you could open from the inside, but not the outside, without a key. Limp with relief, I twisted the latch, slipped through the door, pulled it behind me and stepped into the darkness.

V
ictoria Station was as busy as usual. By the time the Brighton train arrived there the clock on the station forecourt said twenty to eleven. The ticket collector asked me if he should summon a porter, but I refused, embarrassingly aware that the five pounds David had given me might be the last money I acquired for a long time. So I carried my own case to the taxi rank.

The night was cold, with that smoky edge London air always seems to have. Crowds of men and women, bundled in fur collars and gloves, their breath misting, flowed in and out of the station entrance. Ahead of me in the taxi queue, a couple no older than myself stood close to each other, her arm through his, their faces pink with expectation. Where were they going? Where had they come from? Why were they so happy? I tried not to look at them. The sight of all these people doing whatever they were doing on a normal Saturday night, laughing and talking and being with each other, deepened my already bitterly low mood. I dug my feet into the pavement and my hands into my sleeves and wished to die.