101 Pieces of Me (8 page)

Looking back, such speculation was childish, but I was not so much a child as to betray any confidences to my parents. I told them nothing, though all I could think of as I wrote was the delicious knowledge that David had singled me out and taken me to the smartest hotel in London. When he had opened the car door for me to go home alone because he had decided to stay at his club for the night, he had put his hands on my shoulders and kissed my cheek softly, his lips barely brushing my skin. “Good night, princess,” he had said. “Thank you for a wonderful evening. Sleep well, and I’ll see you at seven o’clock.”

Dazed and happy, I had climbed into the car. And before he closed the door, he had leaned in and kissed me again, with a little more purpose.

O
f course, the next morning I felt ill. I staggered downstairs and into the car, and at the studio Maria looked at me, smiled and brought me a glass of water. I drank it, and several more, and took with gratitude the aspirins she offered. “I must be sickening for something,” I told her apologetically. “I hope I don’t start sneezing in the middle of a scene.”

She was still smiling. “You won’t.”

Luckily, David wanted to film other people’s scenes first that day. I lay on the sofa in my dressing room, waiting to feel better. In the middle of the morning, there was a knock on the door.

Assuming it was David, I sat up eagerly. “Come in!”

It was Aidan. He was in costume, without his wig, as usual, and looking untidy; it took me a few seconds to realize that he had not yet shaved that day, and the make-up people had not started on him. “Your dressing room’s bigger than mine,” he said mildly. “I suppose that means you’re the star of this fiasco. So, I hear you and David hit the town last night.”

“Well, we went to the Ritz,” I told him blankly. Keeping my voice unenthusiastic would, I hoped, encourage him to go away.

“Judging by the look of you, you must have put away a fair amount.” He smiled, not very sincerely. “More than David, I’d say.”

I neither remembered nor cared how much David had drunk. I did not reply but closed my eyes and lay back on my cushions. I heard nothing for a couple of minutes. Then, assuming Aidan had gone, I opened my eyes. He was sitting on my dressing stool, his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely. On his face was a look of such … intensity, I can only call it, that I actually flinched.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

His tone was not his usual light, careless one, nor was it his “acting” one. There was something in it I had not heard before. And he went on looking at me, his eyes full of questions.

“I do not know what you mean,” I said truthfully.

“Just then, when you saw me. You started, as if afraid. Why?”

“I was surprised. I thought you had gone.”

“Is that all?”

“Of course.” I swung my feet down to the floor and faced him squarely. “Aidan, I do not feel well, and I do not wish to answer these pointless questions. Will you please let me alone? I will see you later in the studio.”

Suddenly his hands shot out and grasped both mine. “Clara, you must take care. Promise me you will take care?”

I tried to pull away, but he held my hands very tightly. “Let go!” I protested.

He did not loosen his grip. Understanding that he wouldn’t do so until I answered him, I sighed and spoke patiently, as if to a child. “Look, Aidan. What could I need to ‘take care’ about? Nothing the slightest” – what was that word David had used about Aidan’s behaviour? – “untoward has happened.”

“Very well.” Dropping my hands, he took hold of a pen I had left on the dressing table and fumbled under Comte de Montfort’s embroidered jacket until he found a small piece of paper. He smoothed it out; it was a cigarette paper. “Please, Clara, take this.”

I waited, irritated, while he wrote something on the paper. “And be aware, too,” he went on, “that some people care about you a great deal and will be there if you ever need their help. Do not disregard them.” He looked at me sadly, holding out the cigarette paper. “And do not disregard yourself.”

T
hat night I dreamt I was in Haverth. But a dream-village had been substituted for the Haverth I knew. The church and the school and the pub were in their usual places, but surrounding them were hordes of people. They were silent, as people in dreams often are, but it was clear they were angry. My gaze travelled over the crowd like a camera. Many people looked back at me; some turned their heads away. Each of them – hundreds and hundreds – carried an unmistakable air of disapproval.

I was standing on the steps of the school, where Mr Reynolds always stood when he rang the bell in the mornings. Haverth School’s register was a formality; the headmaster made a point of greeting every child by name as they entered and bidding them goodbye at the end of the day. But in my dream there were no schoolchildren, just this hostile crowd pressing towards me from all sides. And, I realized in horror, I was standing there in my petticoat. I tried to cover my body with my hands, but other hands came from nowhere and tore mine away, determinedly exposing me.

Everyone was staring. They began to point and whisper and jeer, and although they were as silent as if they were in a film, I knew what they were saying.
Act-ress, act-ress, act-ress
, they chanted.
Furs
and
pearls
and
champagne
! One woman, a stranger like the others, put her face close to mine and whispered,
Do you think you are impressing us, Clara Hope? You’re just a country girl, as ignorant as a cow in your da’s field, and we all know it!

I clutched the sheet around me. Light was flooding my bedroom; I surfaced from the depths of sleep. I lay there with my eyes still closed, confused and uncomfortably hot, and with a pain I can only describe as heartache in my breast.

I opened my eyes and stretched my stiff limbs. The hotel room was as I had left it the night before – thickly carpeted, with a high ceiling and tall windows, as unlike any house within twenty miles of Haverth as it was possible to be. Sighing, I pushed back the covers. The people in my dream had frightened me. But however much my heart ached for all that was familiar, I had come too far to retreat. The cinema audience, who would pay for their ticket and expect to be entertained, were the ones who would pass judgement upon me.

“M
arjorie!” exclaimed David. “My dear, how
delicious
to see you! How was New York?”

“Oh … you know – American,” said the woman Jeanette had just ushered into the studio. She was young, very slim, very well groomed and very expensively dressed. Her hair was the shiniest blonde I had ever seen – unnaturally so, like a gold skull cap – and her face was as delicately painted as a doll’s. “And hot, so hot!” She sat down in David’s director’s chair and gave him a conspiratorial smile. “I am not interrupting anything
vital
, am I?”

“Not at all.” David swept his arm around the room in a theatrical gesture. “All right, everyone, we’re finished for today.
Au revoir
, till seven tomorrow!”

I was intrigued by the sudden appearance of this woman and by the effect she had on David.

He did not usually say things like “delicious” and
“au revoir”
, or allow anyone to sit in his chair, or pretend visitors were not interrupting. His normal reaction was to shout at them to get out, and what did they think this was, Piccadilly Circus?

No filming had been in progress when she arrived or she would not have been allowed into the studio. We had been preparing for tomorrow’s work. David had been discussing the scene we were to do first thing the following morning, which would include a fight between Aidan and two men called “stuntmen”. They were playing ruffians who set upon the Comte in a back street. I had to show horror, hit one of them with the pistol Aidan had dropped, and, when the villains had run off, sink to my knees “gracefully, Clara, not like a sack of potatoes!” and go to his aid as he lay on the floor.

It would need quite a few takes. We would do it several times, then the best would be edited together afterwards. It was always very tedious waiting about in full costume under hot lights while David decided whether or not to do another take. Maria was forever powdering my face, as perspiration was only allowed to appear on screen when demanded for the drama. And if David wasn’t quite satisfied, we would have to set the whole scene up another day and do it yet again.

People began to leave. I noticed Jeanette give David a look as she pushed the studio doors, but I did not understand its meaning. Aidan nodded carelessly to Marjorie but did not speak to her. Instead, he turned to me. “Well, David seems occupied this evening. Shall you and I have dinner together?”

I
could not think of an excuse quickly enough, so I found myself sitting opposite Aidan in the almost deserted dining room of my hotel. I pushed pieces of chicken around my plate while Aidan lounged in his chair, smoking, his other hand around a tumbler of whisky, his dinner cooling on the table.

It was not like being with David. I did not feel elated or even tipsy, though I had ordered wine in the hope that alcohol would anaesthetise me. I felt disappointed that David had ignored me and curious about the woman, and resentful of Aidan’s ability to needle me. Eventually, as Aidan at last picked up his knife and fork, I could no longer restrain myself. “So who is she?”

“Who?”

“You know perfectly well.”

He put his head on one side and considered his Dover sole and potatoes. “Jealous?”

“Why on earth would I be jealous?” I replied steadily. “I am merely asking for information, since no one introduced her to me.”

“Her name is Marjorie Cunningham.”

“I did not ask her name. I asked who she is.”

“She is Marjorie Cunningham.”

“Aidan!”

I had spoken louder than I intended. A waiter looked up from folding napkins in the corner, gave me a sour look and resumed his work. “Aidan,” I hissed. “You know what I mean, so please stop being so tiresome. Is she … well, is she David’s…”

“Lover?”

“I was going to say ‘lady friend’.”

He grinned. “How quaint!”

I strove for patience. “Can you not just give me the information without this performance?”