All That Glitters (33 page)

There was a new star up there in the Hollywood sky, and as I say, it made a lovely light. And the light had turned green, it was
GO
all the way. She won the Photoplay Award, then the Look Award;
Life
did a cover story backing up the original cover shot; she was made guest of honor at a Foreign Press Association Christmas luncheon (she came and left with Hedda); she’d been on three cross-country publicity tours, two of them with Bud (well chaperoned, of course). She went on working with Feldy at the Stage Society, and was taking her work very seriously. Then the head of studio publicity took her to lunch at the Derby “for a little private talk.” He talked about careers and how hard they were to build and how much stood at risk by unsavory personal associations, and why didn’t she give some thought to tying the knot with Bud, who adored her anyway. And the fans would eat it up. The studio would foot all the bills, including two weeks at a first-class hotel of their choice.

Over her Cobb salad, April explained that she wasn’t interested. Dore Schary, then top dog at MGM, had a talk with her: Stop seeing Frank on a private level. Remember, he was a married man, his wife was a prominent figure in her own right and had the Bishop in her pocket. April accepted Dore’s warning with thanks but chose to ignore it.

By this time there was no stopping either the career or the affair. Each was going its own way, soaring up among the stars, where when you fell you fell a long way. Until the release of
Brighter Promise
the affair hadn’t in the strict sense been consummated. But sooner or later there comes a time for everything, especially lovemaking, and the point at last arrived when they mutually agreed that the time had come. Jack’s-at-the-Beach was okay for quiet talks and furtive hand holding, but the moment had arrived to put away childish things and act grown up about it all. The place they decided on for this consummation was Frankie’s beach house.

They drove out to Malibu. Since Frances had decided she really didn’t care for the beach, Frank had the place to himself, and it was here that the big romance really took fire. The beach house was romantic and invested with a sort of trembling aura of magic. The weather report was lousy, but if you thought about it, it really didn’t matter. He was with her, she was with him, they were together. They had the whole weekend. Only fifteen miles from town, but no one would know where they were.

Since noon the Coast Guard had been posting storm warnings all up and down the line from San Diego to Point Mugu, and it looked as if Malibu was in for a heavy blow. Inside the house all was cozy and warm. Frank built a fire and carried in a good supply of wood to keep it going. He put on his old beat-up weekend clothes, his Black Watch shirt and turtleneck, his belted corduroy jacket, and later they went for a walk on the beach, where the surf was thundering onto the sand, sending up geysers of white foam.

The gathering storm exhilarated her, roused feelings that choked her with their intensity. People went by, and she felt odd, nervous. Everyone was out walking, it seemed, the world was out walking. She slipped her hand in his jacket pocket and they made it all the way up to Paradise Cove without saying much. A dog, a golden retriever, joined them and they threw a stick for him to chase. The wool of Frank’s turtleneck scratched her when she nuzzled him or they kissed, and the waves drew the sand in pockets from beneath their bare feet. “It’s like the end of the world,” she murmured, gazing out to where the overcast rolled forward across the surf, and the salt blow pricked her eyes. Everything looked gray and pewtery and the gulls flew as if on kite strings against the wind.

It was dark by the time they got back to the house, and they’d forgotten to turn on the lights. Suddenly she felt intimidated, afraid to go in. It wasn’t her house, she was an interloper. Another woman’s house, another woman’s husband—nothing was hers. Even someone else’s dog.

“Shoo! Shoo!” she told it, trembling. “Go home!”

Inside, Frank blew up a fire with an antique leather bellows studded with brass nail heads, a present from Frances, then put steaks on to broil; corn was steaming in a pot. She went around turning down the lights—she had the feeling people could see in, and this bothered her.

She was positive she wouldn’t be hungry, but she was. They had all of tonight and all the rest of tomorrow, then all of Sunday, too, till seven, when she’d promised Donna she’d be back. She wanted to talk—there were important things to talk about—but somehow they only joked, all of it casual. Afterward, when they had got rid of the dishes and were curled up by the fire, there was a bang on the door; they jumped up. Frank’s neighbor: the surf was getting high. Coast Guard lights flashing up and down the beach. A power boat was having trouble making it down to the marina. Just letting him know. When Frank followed him outside she sat huddled in the window seat under a red-and-black buffalo-plaid blanket. It made her think of horses, and that made her think of
The Scarlet Roan
, the film about the stallion in which she’d made such an impression, and
that
made her think of careers, and
that
made her think of all kinds of problems. Suddenly, faces appeared at the window to frighten her. Blessedly, one of them was Frank’s, but by the time the three men trooped in, she was hiding in the bathroom.

They didn’t stay long, and when they left Frank coaxed her out.

“Sweetheart, don’t—it’s all right. They’re friends, they won’t say anything.”

Outside, the rising wind screamed itself into a tearing tumult and the heavy waves kept crashing underneath the house. It will wash us away, she thought, as she heard the tide rattle the stones and pebbles. This was all there was, this fire, this room, and the two of them. They were “Outward Bound,” passengers on a fog-shrouded ship carrying them—whither? How sweet, how blessed it was. She was ready; tonight she would give everything. She loved him, and something told her she would never love another man. It was this one; this one or none at all. They were in love. Nothing like this, ever. All beings should love like this, this was what it was meant to be, what the gods intended from the beginning. This, only this. She’d give anything—anything to have it, keep it, guard it.

That night he carried her to bed and it was everything they’d hoped for, more, and they knew now it had to be, somehow had to be. Gone were thoughts of Frances. This was their bed, their sheets, their pillows. Hungry bodies ate and tasted, ate again, and still not enough. More, I want more; the dark lay all around and they reached and touched so close they could wrap themselves in each other’s skins. He had her hair across his lips, he could taste it; drew the strand away, spoke in her ear, his voice rumbling deep in his throat.

The angry sea roared and rushed about the under-porch pilings, jolting the house; the wind tore at the shingles. There was something ultra-theatrical about it, as if the storm had been engineered just for them. They slept a little, woke up, made love again in the gray early morning, slept some more. The oystery eye of dawn opened in the east; she could hear early-Saturday-morning traffic out on the road; the sky lightened bit by bit. She felt prescient. Something boded.

He slept late. She tidied up, bathed, dressed, was reading an old
National Geographic
about the Eskimos in Baffin Island when she happened to glance up and was startled to see a man standing outside on the porch, peering in at her. He wore boots and a slicker and a sou’wester, and he watched her intently. Then he clumped across the deck and out of sight. Fisherman? Irate neighbor? What business had he around there? The same bedraggled retriever came back, scratched to get in. She ignored the animal, then tossed it the T-bone from last night. He trotted off with it between sandy jaws. Once he stopped, looked back, went on. The sea had quieted now.

Frank woke up; she cooked breakfast. They had curried eggs and popovers and Bloody Bulls with celery stalks to swizzle. He told her her coffee was the best. She told him about the man on the porch; he wasn’t overly concerned—maybe the guy was checking for damage. They lazed around all morning; then when she started lunch he said he wanted to go next door.

She thought of Frances as she looked through the kitchen drawers, saw her as a tallish, darkish, forbidding statue, bronzy and cold to the touch, intractable, implacable, remorseless. “He’s mine,” she heard her say, “I found him first, you can’t have him.” She looked at all the photographs on the hall chest, autographed to Frank and Frances. Belinda, Babe, Maude and Crispin Antrim—how much a “couple” they seemed, how well suited to each other, how they “shared” the space in the picture. She felt as if she were prying among secret things, fingers poking into private little corners. A life, but another’s. Hers was on Tennessee Avenue with Donna, not in Malibu.

Frank wasn’t gone long. There was a lot of damage along the beachfront, he reported; several houses had flooded, one had washed away. He was lucky; his house was well built. The storm had washed a sea beast onto the strand, a small whale. Weak, dying, nothing to be done for it; the Park Service was making arrangements to tow it away. April didn’t go out to view it, didn’t even go onto the deck. She felt time pressing at her, heard its hoofs thundering amid the crash of the waves.

He explained that the neighbors wanted them to come over later for cocktails. The thought frightened her, but she said all right and when the time came she put on slacks, a cashmere sweater, and a jacket and they went. It was the local beach crowd, eight of them. All perfectly cool, no one thought—no, no one
said
—a thing. No Frances. Frances didn’t exist here.

Actually she liked them, the beach crowd. Warm, friendly, interested, admiring of Frank. “Isn’t he the best guy!” exclaimed the one called Barb. “Some girls have all the luck, no kidding.” April had the grace to blush. She heard the others talking in the kitchen about divorce and Frances’s name was being bandied. But they were nice to her; they made it clear that all they wanted was Frank’s happiness.

The two of them were sent home with a pitcher of martinis and plastic throwaway cups. Carrying these, they climbed out onto Seal Rocks, where the sea, calmer now, lay before them, pitted with brazen gold and throwing glittering flecks of light onto their faces. They sipped their drinks and gazed out to sea, saying little, nothing, volumes.

The waves had greedily eaten away at the beach, cutting away a four-foot shelf that the neighbors’ kids were gleefully leaping from into the foam as it rolled onto the strand. The air was filled with spindrift, which settled on their faces; the whole world seemed painted in sunset hues all the way up to Point Dune, whose jutting headland cut off the further view. “Look, how pretty they are,” April said, pointing up the beach. Slowly approaching them were two riders on horseback; at the angle they resembled centaurs.

“Come again?”

“Centaurs,” she repeated.

He laughed. “I thought you said ‘senators.’ I know—centaurs. Who were they?”

“A mythological race of man-horse creatures who lived in Thessaly.”

“Sicily? Cecily? Sassily?”

“Thessaly. They were killed by the Lapithae and driven out of Greece forever.”

“Poor senators. Impeached. Where did they end up?”

“There.” She pointed down the beach. “They came to Sunny California.”

“With the rest of the cast-me-offs and nutburgers.”

The horses had stopped, their riders side by side gazing outward to the horizon, figures unreal and merely imagined, mythic beasts in the coppery sea. She stirred in his arms and he heard her voice in his ear.

“
One by one in the moonlight there

Neighing far off on the haunted air

The unicorns come down to the sea
.”

She trailed off.

“Pretty. Whose?” he asked.

“Conrad Aiken.”

“My Aiken back? I know him well.”

“Joker. Fool. Madman. Aiken’s poem. Called ‘Evening Song.’”

“Nice. Pretty pretty.” He crooned in her ear, nuzzled her cheek. Gin and love were at work together; love instead of dry vermouth. Ah, sweet sweetness. He wished for no more than this. This was happiness, only this. The hell with 430 North Rodeo. The hell with movies and studios and Sam Ueberroth. This was heaven in the here and now. His arm circling her back, her blowing hair tickling his nose, her smell, touch, sound—her all. From his heart came the longing shout for freedom—
Let me go
,
damn it
!
Slip my bonds
,
crack my fetters
,
release me
—and the pale face of Frances, his wedded wife, swam to him from out of the gathering fog, spoiling the moment. Frances the lumberman’s daughter. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. God. April made a tiny murmur and stirred in his arms.

He apologized, hadn’t realized he was squeezing so hard. “Some more, please,” he said in a husky voice. “More lines.”

She thought a moment, then recited,

“
It is evening
,
Senlin says, and in the evening
,

By a silent shore
,
by a far distant sea
,

White unicorns come gravely down to the water.

In the lilac dusk they come, they are white and stately
,

… One by one they come and drink their fill
;

And daisies burn like stars on the darkened hill
.”

He liked it; pretty images. “What’s it called?”

“Senlin,” she told him.

“Senlin who?”

“Just ‘Senlin.’”

He got up, brushed his trousers, and held out his hand. “Let’s go back, want to? Play doctor?”

She laughed that laugh and sat up, touched his cheek, murmured something he failed to catch, words lost to the wind. It was no longer Malibu but the Cornish coast. He was Tristan; she, Isolde; Francis King, Mark; and their love was the love of the ages. At twenty-five, April Rains was legendary. He kissed her. They clung together, lost out on the Cornish rocks in the rolling fog. Horses and riders had gone. Darkness was theirs. No one to see, no one to care. “I love you. Darling, I love you. Love me. Please love me.”