All That Glitters (35 page)

“But what does it matter?” I heard Frank say. “The only important thing is that we love each other, isn’t it? A picture in the paper isn’t going to hurt us, is it?”

He cajoled her until her tears subsided; then I heard her laugh, that pretty sound that was so much hers. Leave it to Frank to get her smiling again, and so quickly. Still, I knew this little episode was only the precursor to others, the foreshadowing of further tears to be shed.

The low murmur of Frank’s voice went on; I didn’t catch the words but I could imagine them.

“Darling, we belong together, that’s all that’s important. The hell with the rest of them. Frances is only playing a waiting game, but in the end she’ll come round. She’ll try to make us miserable as she can for a while, but in the end she’ll give in, you’ll see.”

And April’s bright response: “Yes, of course, you’re right, you’re always right. I’m just being foolish. Let’s forget the whole thing.”

And of course it was forgotten; at least no one spoke of it, though I doubt anything was
really
forgotten. You didn’t just forget about Frances, even though she was ten thousand miles away… except, damn it all, she wasn’t ten thousand miles away, but a lot closer, as events were shortly to prove.

Though Frank had brushed off the incident, nonetheless their having been recognized at Anacapri had its effect. Somehow the word got out, the
paparazzi
arrived in swarms, and the lovers decamped while Jenny and I laid a general smoke screen. They went into hiding again. What little dignity remained to them was spent in fleeing by car up the Autostrada del Sol, heading for a safe haven and the high walls of a villa belonging to Frank’s kind friend, the celebrated and newsworthy Contessa Dodi Ingrisi.

Dodi was a rich American heiress who owned a luxurious antique villa at Civitavecchia, built on the ruins of one of the Emperor Tiberius’s play spots. Sixty-five and more, Dodi was gay and charming, wore lots of Puccis—screeching pinks and parrot greens and lavenders—and ran about her estate in a pink-painted golf cart. She was a doyenne of the Rome social scene, but was as the veritable tomb when it came to keeping a secret.

It was here at the ochre-tinted Villa Pinati that the lovers managed to catch their breath. Here no one bothered them; few even knew they were in residence. Dodi was happy to share their company if they were so inclined; otherwise she gave them the widest kind of berth. And for eleven days they remained sequestered, safe from prying eyes and the probing lenses of the
paparazzi.
They strolled in the cool gardens that were filled with blank-eyed tufa statues and tall palms, played games of
bocci
on the lawn that looked like a billiard table, rode horseback along the ragged Mediterranean shore, climbed among the rocks looking for crabs, or went out in the little pink-hulled ketch that Dodi had supplied them with.

This pink ketch was their undoing. Christened the
Dodo Bird
by its owner (who never boarded the vessel; Dodi hated being on the water), it was for Frank the answer to a prayer. Once at her helm he could put himself entirely at ease, cutting himself off from everything except the sun, sky, and salt water he loved. And by dint of lashing her tiller and setting her a straight course, he could contrive to enjoy his inamorata in the cozy cabin below decks, where there were two narrow bunks, one of which they appropriated for their own uses.

One afternoon while they were love-wrapt in the cabin, a squall sprang up out of nowhere and came rushing across the bay to fling itself upon the little boat. Taken unawares, Frank staggered above deck to find his craft about to capsize. While he jumped to unlash the rudder, April gamely hauled down the flapping mainsail, and together they tried to muscle out the driving squall that seemed bent on destroying both the boat and themselves. The sky had gone an eerie black, the waves were dangerously high, and there wasn’t another vessel in sight. And while they were in full view of the beach, a quarter mile distant, there were no people in sight.

Frank was a good sailor and he put up a brave fight, but though he kept his bow headed close into the wind, the waves were choppy and the gale sprang now from one quarter, now another. They began shipping water, bailing became a hopeless necessity, and soon the boat started to go down.

They abandoned the sinking craft and struck out for the shore. The waves were strong, and when April tired, Frank put his arm around her and hugged her close, certain the wind would carry them to the shore. April couldn’t speak, but Frank kept muttering in her ear, “I love you, baby,” over and over. “I love you, baby, love you, baby.”

This misadventure ended happily when they washed up on the sand, where they were helped by locals whom an anxious Dodi had dispatched in search of them. The ketch was gone forever, beneath the Civitavecchian waves, not so far from the spot where the poet Shelley had suffered a more fatal mishap 150 years before.

This dramatic business of the shipwreck led to notable results. First, it served to strengthen the ever-deepening love between Frank and April. Having faced the peril of the storm in each other’s arms, they were more than ever resolved to cleave together, whatever this might entail. Nobody could prevent their being together, and if Frances wouldn’t give him the divorce he demanded, so be it. He’d find another way; he had to.

Second, and worse luck, the mishap again set the bloodhounds on their tails. Not unnaturally, such an incident was bound to attract the attention of the press, and upon learning that the lost vessel had belonged to the Contessa Ingrisi, reporters gathered to investigate. Since April was still presumed to be with Jenny and me at Capri, and Frank in London, no connection was yet made between them and the pair on the boat, whom Dodi passed off merely as relations of her former husband. The reporters bought it, all but one droll type who, with considerable resourcefulness, made a friend of the cook’s scullery boy and learned from him that an “American couple” was being sheltered under
la Contessa
’s roof—no names, but the boy thought maybe
il cinema
, maybe, they talked
molto molto
about the movies—and in no time the wind was up. Accompanied by his photographer, the reporter camped out in a van in a nearby pine grove until Dodi called up the local
carabinieri
and had them dislodged.

Still their identities went undetected, and after a day or two they relaxed vigilance. They were idling on the villa’s
terrazzo
; April was trimming Frank’s hair. Out in the bay a yacht was lying calm in the water; Frank recognized it as the
Calliope
but paid no attention as his black curls fell about his chair seat, an antique bronze lion on which she’d perched him. Too late he saw that the yacht had been slipping closer inshore. He could make out figures along the rail, and he realized that binoculars were trained their way; maybe even cameras? The barber and her customer hightailed it inside, but the damage was done: pictures of this intimate domestic scene appeared in Thursday’s
Oggi
with suitable comments.

Now the jig was up for sure and they fled in earnest and nocturnally, this time in the Contessa’s Karman-Ghia. With Dodi herself chauffeuring them, they crouched ignominiously on the floor, covered by blankets and some valises, arriving in Rome during the early hours, before the heavy traffic had begun its din. At a convenient corner Frank was let out to get back to his hotel by taxi, while April was driven straight to the Stazione Termine, where she boarded the
rapido
for Naples. By lunchtime she was again with us on the terrace of the Quissisana.

Meanwhile, when Frank came strolling into his hotel he found a worried Tonio Gatti in the lobby. He’d been there for nearly two whole days, waiting to warn him. The word was out all over town, and, worse, Frances was upstairs. “And, Franco, I’m-a sorry to tell you this, but you must know. She ’ave brought
un amica.
Ees ’Edda ’Opper.”

Grounds for suicide.

It was true, with Frances had come the GrassHopper, Hedda herself, all ready to twang her legs and bare her pancaked breast to the world. The whole thing stank of trouble, the serious kind that makes headlines and ruins careers—and lives. Hedda would doubtless sharpen up her pen and pillory Frank and April the same way she had Ingrid Bergman years before. Frank would be made the villain of the piece, the philandering playboy-agent husband, while April would be painted up in shades of scarlet, the conniving home-wrecker, leaving Frances to continue in her adopted role as the long-suffering wife, come to extricate her poor blind spouse from the clutches of this collegiate femme fatale.

As a background for drama, Rome now became a potential setting for public exposure, denouncement, and shame. How we hated to let Frank face it alone, but he was determined to protect April however he could.

The plan was, we would stay on Capri until the coast was clear; then, when the Dread Hopper had been disarmed or otherwise knocked out of commission—Frances, also—we would return to Rome, where we would be met by Kit Carson, at which point we would then all four reappear along the Via Veneto, a happy young American quartet returning after a private holiday. Let Hopper write what she wanted, no one could really be sure what had happened. We thought it was very clever.

Frank’s call was long in coming, and though he treated serious matters with his usual bantering style, I knew he was being made to run the gantlet. When he glibly reported that he had Hedda eating from the palm of his hand, I had a good idea what that must have cost. It had cost plenty. In exchange for the columnist’s solemn agreement not to break the story of Frank’s errant holiday, he had promised not to see April again. Rather, he must reestablish himself with Frances as her spouse—in all senses of that word—and when his current business was finished in Rome, he was to depart without having made an attempt to get in touch with April by
any means
whatsoever.

There was no help for it; Frank had already heavily impressed this fact on me. He would keep his end of the bargain at all costs, as he knew Hedda would keep hers. Bitchy though she could be when it came to handing out public reprimands and scourgings, bigoted and contentious in her opinions and political beliefs, Hedda had a good side as well as a bad; she could be both a good friend and a dangerous enemy, but at least you pretty much knew where you stood with her. And she had always had a warm spot for the Swanky Wop.

The hot wind cooled, the whole storm blew over—for the moment. April’s career, along with Frank’s marriage, was saved, and only the parties involved were privy to what had actually taken place. When the three of us sneaked into Rome, tails between legs and still scared to hell that something would leak out, we learned that Frank and Frances had already departed, but the lady scribe was still in town. We took rooms at the Hotel de la Ville, next door to the Hassler atop the Trinita de Monte.

The day after our arrival, April announced that she was going shopping. Not with Jenny, who occasionally accompanied her on such forays, but with Tonio and his wife, Djiberta, who called promptly at ten and off they went to the Via Condotti. Jenny was rinsing out some things in the washbowl and I was sitting out on the balcony when who knocked at our door but the GrassHopper herself! She looked like a Helen Hokinson club lady in her dotted shirtwaist dress, with a giant garden hat tied under her chin and a large bag of dyed raffia clutched in her hand. Grim as iron, she marched to the center of the room, where she stood in that bandy-legged stance so inimitably hers.

“All right, don’t play games with me,” she began, looking around the room. “Where is she?”

“If you mean Jenny, she’s Luxing out her undies, the way Irene Dunne used to do.”

My attempt at humor fell flat. “Don’t fool around with me, Charlie. You know who I mean.”

I explained that April had gone shopping and wasn’t expected back. “Not till late, anyway,” I added.

“Jenny! Come in here,” Hedda commanded.

Jenny dutifully appeared, drying her hands and facing the music. “Now, look, you two,” Hedda began, “I’m going to say something to you both and you’d better get it straight because I won’t say it again. I want this thing stopped. Got it? No, don’t stand there making sheep’s eyes at me, you know darn well what I’m talking about. You all think you’re mighty clever, running all over Italy, playing the Innocents Abroad. Well, you’re abroad all right, but you’re not innocent.”

When I tried to protest this high-handedness, I was warned not to interfere, and I made no attempt to test her powers of destruction.

“Now, I’m leaving for London this afternoon,” she went on, “and I just stopped by to tell your friend that if she dares to see Frankie Adonis even once, I’ll blast her and her career along with her! Understand? You just tell her she’s to keep away from him—”

Jenny interrupted. “I don’t see how she’s to do that, when he’s her agent.”

“Agents have been known to work out of their offices, or in the commissary or on the set. I’ve no quarrel with that. I’m talking late-night tête-à-têtes and snuggling down at Dodi Ingrisi’s. My God, Charlie,
you
should know better if these other ninnies don’t.”

“Why should Charlie know better?” demanded Jenny.

“Because he’s been around, that’s why! And if you haven’t got the sense God gave a chicken, someone should. Frank’s gone to London. With Frances. They’ve made it up; they did it in front of me, so I know. But you can tell little Miss Betty Coed that if I hear of any more cute pranks on her part, I’ll hand MGM an earful that’ll get Frank barred from the lot for the rest of his natural-born days. Get it? Good!”

There was more in this vein, and then, just as Hedda snatched up her bag and turned to go, the door opened and Tonio and Djiberta Gatti appeared on the threshold with April between them.

“Were your ears burning, dear?” Hedda called out sweetly as they trooped in. Tonio’s helpless expression said nothing yet spoke volumes, while April seemed dazed as she stared at her persecutor. Hedda walked to the door, gave it a good slam, then marched back to April and began another harangue of the sort we’d just been treated to, shaking her finger under the speechless girl’s nose.