An Inconvenient Woman (44 page)

“All that,” said Cyril, like a miser gloating over his gold. “It will be the story of my career.”

“But you have nothing from any of the principals. You must interview Flo March. If you get an interview with Flo March, I will give you the cover,” said Lucia.

“The cover,” gasped Cyril. It was beyond his wildest dreams.

“In the meantime, start planting things in your column,
little hints. That will build up your audience for the story when we’re ready to go with it.”

SQUIB from Cyril Rathbone’s column in
Mulholland:

Madge White, who was loyalty itself when it came to her friends, did tell Rose Cliveden, in strictest confidence, that she had actually met the girl—“so common, you wouldn’t believe it”—at a steak house on Ventura Boulevard.

“No!” gasped Rose. Although Pauline Mendelson was Rose Cliveden’s very best friend in all the world, as Rose frequently told anyone who would listen, Rose was not averse to hearing just the slightest little bit of gossip that just might put a chink in the armor of Pauline’s perfection.

“Jules pretended he couldn’t remember her name, and he told me the most awful lie about Sims Lord being in the men’s room, and that the girl was actually with Sims, but, you see, my Ralph really
was
in the men’s room and he would have known whether Sims Lord was in the men’s room or not, and he wasn’t.”

Rose didn’t want to hear about Ralph White in the men’s room of a steak house in the Valley. “It’s too sad,” said Rose. “Poor Pauline. Do you think I should say something to her?”

“Heavens no, Rose. You mustn’t.”

“But she’s my very best friend in all the world,” said Rose.

“She’d die. She’d simply die, if you brought it up,” said Madge.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Rose.

“We must keep this to ourselves, Rose. Not a word to anyone.”

“Oh, darling, my lips are sealed.”

When Rose hung up on Madge, she called Camilla Ebury and told her, in the strictest confidence—“No one knows but us, darling, so not a word to anyone”—that Jules had his
heart attack at the home of a common prostitute. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“Madge actually saw her.”

That night Camilla Ebury dined with Philip Quennell at Morton’s Restaurant. Because of Camilla’s great friendship with the Mendelsons, Philip had not told her that Jules Mendelson had been instrumental in having him fired off his documentary film. Camilla seemed unusually quiet throughout the meal, as if her mind was on something else.

“Is anything the matter?” asked Philip.

“No.” She looked around her at the restaurant. “I never know who any of these celebrities are they make such a fuss over. Do you know any of them?”

“That’s Barbra Streisand you’re staring at. You certainly have to know her,” said Philip. It always annoyed him that the social Angelenos he met through Camilla took such pride in distancing themselves from the film people.

“Why do you suppose she does her hair in that awful frizzy way? It’s so unbecoming,” said Camilla. “She should go to Pooky.”

“You’re changing the subject. I asked you if anything was the matter. And there is. I can tell. When you’re silent like this, there is always something troubling you.”

“Rose told me something today that is so upsetting I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“What’s that?”

“I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

“All right.”

“But I want to tell.”

“Then tell.”

“It’s about Jules and Pauline.”

Philip looked at her. “What about them?”

“Do you know where he had the heart attack?” asked Camilla.

“No,” replied Philip, although he was pretty sure he did know.

“At the home of a prostitute.”

Philip, understanding, nodded slowly. “She’s not a prostitute,” he said. “She’s a mistress. It’s a very different thing.”

“Jules has a mistress?” asked Camilla.

“Yes. For quite a few years.”

Camilla stared at Philip in disbelief. “How could you possibly know such a thing?”

“Because I know her.”

“You constantly amaze me, Philip.”

“You know her too.”

“I do?”

“You met her. Flo March.”

“You mean that pretty red-haired girl wearing an evening Chanel suit in the morning, who was sitting in your room at the Chateau Marmont?”

“Yes.”

“She said she bet you looked cute in Jockey shorts.”

Philip smiled.

“At least she didn’t mention your tattoo, down there.”

Philip laughed.

“Do you know something, Philip?”

“What?”

“I kind of liked her.”

SQUIB from Cyril Rathbone’s column in
Mulholland:

“Hello?”

“Miss March?”

“Yes?”

“This is Cyril Rathbone.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I hope I haven’t caught you in the middle of a suicide attempt.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cyril chuckled. “Just a little joke, Miss March.”

“You’ve got some sense of humor, Mr. Rathbone.”

“Well, you sounded so, what shall I say, so desperate. Is that the right word? Desperate?”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to see you, Miss March.”

“Oh, no.”

“I would like to do an interview with you.”

“Oh, no.”

“Why?”

“No.”

“You are being credited with saving his life, Miss March.”

“I am?”

“The mouth-to-mouth resuscitation you did on Mr. Mendelson that you learned when you were a waitress at the Viceroy Coffee Shop.”

“How did you know that?”

“I was in your house.”

“You were? When?”

“I was the one who called the ambulance for you.”

“That was you? The guy in my house was Cyril Rathbone, the columnist? That was you?”

“Exactly.”

“Listen, Mr. Rathbone.”

“I’m listening.”

“I always thought I’d die happy if I could be written up in your column, just once even, but now I don’t want to be written up in it anymore, even though you don’t use my name.”

“I think we should meet.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid I have to hang up now, Mr. Rathbone.”

SQUIB from Cyril Rathbone’s column:

Outside the hospital and then again outside the gates of Clouds, Pauline stayed by Jules’s side the whole time, holding his arm and maintaining a pleasant countenance as the photographers
took their picture what seemed like a hundred times, or two hundred times, strobe flash after strobe flash.

Inside the gates, the Bentley, moving slowly, appeared at the turn in the drive and then came forward into the courtyard. The chauffeur, Jim, jumped from the car and opened the rear door. First Pauline got out. Then Jim reached in and pulled Jules out of the car. Dudley, the butler, ran forward from the house pushing an empty wheelchair. For a moment Jules stood leaning on a cane, until the wheelchair reached him. The staff who watched him out of the various windows of the house were not prepared for the drastic change in his appearance. He looked shrunken. He had become an old man, although he was not yet sixty.

Inside the house, finally, with the door closed behind them, Pauline maintained the same composure in front of Dudley. “I would like some tea, Dudley,” she said, anxious to be rid of him before he said anything sympathetic, which she felt he was going to do. “And a drink. I’m sure Mr. Mendelson would like a drink, wouldn’t you, Jules?”

“Yes, yes, fine, a scotch, Dudley, and a little Pellegrino water,” said Jules. His complexion was pale, and he had lost a great deal of weight. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“But make it quite light for Mr. Mendelson, Dudley,” said Pauline. “I forgot to ask Dr. Petrie if it was all right.”

“In the library?” asked Dudley.

“Fine, yes, fine,” they both said together.

Alone, still in their splendid front hall, their staircase floating upward, their six Monet paintings of water lilies lining its wall, their blue-and-white Chinese cachepots filled with orchid plants from their greenhouse amassed at its base, Jules and Pauline Mendelson looked at each other.

“I have to rest here for a while, Pauline,” he said. “I can’t make those stairs.”

“Of course. Sit here. Olaf will be arriving any minute, and he can carry you up the stairs,” she said.

“Imagine me being carried,” Jules said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to watch me when he does lift me.”

“But you didn’t want to leave the hospital on a stretcher, Jules.”

He nodded. “I wanted to walk out of that hospital under my own steam, no matter what. All my life I’ve avoided the press, and I wasn’t about to allow those sons of bitches to
photograph me being carried out on a stretcher. It would make me look sicker than I really am.”

Their eyes met for a moment. Each knew he was far more ill than described in the optimistic propaganda about his condition that was being carefully circulated in business circles by Sims Lord and other associates. Jules sank onto the caned seat of a gilded chair, one of a set of six, which he had never sat on before in the twenty-two years that he had lived in the house.

“Did Dr. Petrie give you the pills?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Pauline.

“May I have one?”

“He said one every four hours, Jules. It’s only slightly more than an hour since the last.”

“I’m weary from the drive. I want one now.”

She opened her bag and took out an amber plastic container. He took the pill she handed him and swallowed it.

“Is this what our life is going to be like, Jules?” asked Pauline. “Photographers lying in wait for us outside the gates of our own house? Reporters screaming rude questions at us? There is a limit, Jules, to the obligations of the marriage vows, and I think I can honestly say that I have reached that limit.”

He weakly nodded his head in recognition of the truth of what Pauline had just said. Pauline again noted how old Jules looked.

“I am not the first woman whose husband has had a mistress,” she continued. “I might not like it, but I could have learned to deal with it, if it was a thing that never encroached on my life; but this way—no, never. This common little strumpet has made a mockery of my marriage.”

“Don’t think of her as a bad girl, Pauline. She’s not a bad girl. I may be a bad man, but she’s not a bad girl. If you only knew her, you’d agree.”

“Knowing Miss March is a life experience that I intend to deprive myself of, Jules,” said Pauline. “I don’t know which I dread more, having everyone I know, and tens of thousands of people I don’t know, gossip about me. Or pity me. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been gossiped about in my life, and, in certainty, I have never been pitied.”

Jules, drained, could only stare at Pauline. “Don’t leave me, Pauline,” he said.

“No, of course, I won’t leave you, not now, not with you so weak and sick.” She started to say more, but stopped herself.

Instead she walked over to the foot of the stairs and broke a yellowed leaf off an orchid plant.

Jules nodded his head, understanding.

“How terrible, Jules, to end such a distinguished life in a cheap sex scandal. That is what people will remember about us,” said Pauline.

Jules nodded again. He knew what she said was true, but he could think of no reply. “I’ve never sat in one of these gold chairs before,” he said.

“They were a wedding present from Laurance and Janet Van Degan. Absolutely authentic, of the period. Whatshername at the Getty Museum verified them, Gillian somebody, but you didn’t like them. You said you hated gold furniture. Too spindly, you said. So I put them here in the hall where they wouldn’t be sat upon too often.”

Jules nodded. “Thank you, Laurance and Janet Van Degan,” he whispered. From the courtyard came the sound of cars and voices. He rose slowly from his seat and looked out of the window. “What are all those cars coming into the courtyard?” he asked.

“Cars?” asked Pauline.

“Three, four, six of them, eight of them, with a lot of ladies in flowered hats getting out. What is this?”

“Oh, my God,” said Pauline. “I forgot.”

“What?”

“It’s the Los Angeles Garden Club. I agreed weeks ago, months ago, to give them a tour of the gardens and the greenhouse. They heard about the yellow phalaenopsis that Jarvis and I have developed, and I promised.”

“I’ll tell Dudley to tell them you’re not well and can’t come out. They can come another day,” said Jules.

“You can’t do that, Jules,” said Pauline.

“Then let Jarvis take them on the tour.”

“No, Jules, no. They’ve paid fifty dollars each for the tour. Let’s face it, it’s me they want to see as much as the yellow phalaenopsis, not poor Jarvis, who did all the work.”

“I was only thinking of you.”

“I know.”

They looked at each other.

“We’re acting as though we’re still very married, aren’t we?” said Pauline. She touched his shoulder.

Dudley entered the hall, making a coughing sound to
announce his entrance. “There are people arriving who say they are expected.”

“Dudley, I completely forgot that this is the day that the garden club was coming to see my yellow phalaenopsis, and the ladies are outside in the courtyard. I’ll go out and take them around. Tell Gertie in the kitchen to make tea for I don’t know how many, and some cucumber sandwiches, and to use those lemon cookies she made yesterday. We’ll have tea in the library. They’ll love the
White Roses
, the perfect group for that.”