Liberty Silk (26 page)

Lisa shrugged. ‘Models.’

‘
Actresses
, Lisa. Real, talented actresses, who could have made it big. Except once he signs them, he doesn’t allow them to work. He keeps them locked up. That man is a serial collector of women.’

‘How come you know so much about him? Oh look – here’s an advertisement for a thingie that rolls away your fat. Listen to this, Sabutage. “‘Rollette’ makes it possible for you to rid yourself of unsightly pounds of fat and have a beautiful slender form without strenuous diets, dangerous drugs or exercise.”’

‘Stop making excuses not to listen to me, Lisa. I know a lot more than you think, about many things.’

‘Fiddle-dee-dee! I’m definitely getting one of these.’

‘And I’m much more grown up than you in many ways, as well.’

‘What thundering rot.’

But on looking sideways into her beautiful friend’s beautiful, wise eyes, Lisa knew that it was true.

That night Lisa had a dream. She was back in Connemara, sitting by a lake shore, nursing her baby, and suddenly the baby was gone. The cry of a hawk made her look up. There, on the top of a hill was little Cat – except she wasn’t little any more. She could have been any age – a sprite, an elfin creature – with a laughing face and coltish legs and wild, sun-bleached hair.

‘Hi,’ called Lisa, and ‘Hi back,’ came the response. And then her daughter was flitting down the heather-purple hillside, and Lisa was holding her arms out to her, yearning. She had waited for ever for this reunion, this embrace.

And then she woke. She could still smell the scent of her child, still feel the place where she had kissed her on her cheek, near to the hollow formed by her jawbone, just by her ear, still hear her laugh.

Lisa accepted the wretched role of the mother. And then she accepted a role as a discarded mistress. And then she accepted a role as a wife and ‘mommy’ of
three
children, with below-the-title billing. Lisa’s star was not only in descent, it was plummeting.

She’d heard horror stories about other stars whose careers had gone off the rails. Frances Farmer had been arrested for drunken driving and vagrancy, and been committed to a mental institution. Louise Brooks had ended up working as a salesgirl in Saks Fifth Avenue (rumour had it that it wasn’t just gowns she was selling), and Sabu had learned that the fragrant June Duprez – erstwhile pink-pyjama-clad star of
The Thief of Bagdad
– had become so impoverished that she was subsisting on a diet of dog biscuits spread with marmalade.

One day, having been obliged by his return from the UK to move out of David Niven’s sumptuous house, Lisa found herself sitting in the kitchen of an apartment infested not by ants, but by cockroaches. Her closets were crammed with classic couture gowns and fabulous shoes, but she could barely afford to shop in JC Penney. She was on first-name terms with the
maître d
’s of the most exclusive restaurants in town, but had taken to frequenting cut-price diners. Recently, she had seen Faith Domergue – one of Howard’s girls – dressed to the nines behind the wheel of a nifty red roadster, and she knew that a life like that could be hers if she was prepared to be just that little bit nicer to him. Howard would look after her, Howard would see to it that she never slipped on a liquor slick, or sloped off to suburbia, or slept rough on Skid Row. So what if freedom was the price she had to pay? She had been disenfranchised years ago, when she had signed away her life to Orion Pictures.

But before she dialled Howard’s number and steeled herself to crawl to Johnny Meyer, she picked up the phone to Phil Gersh, just in case.
Just in case . . .

‘I was about to call you,’ he told her. ‘There’s an offer in for you.’

‘What is it this time?’ she said, trying not to get her hopes up. ‘Down-at-heel mother of eight?’

‘Don’t be smart, sweetheart. I’ve had a long chat with Ziggy. He’s prepared to loan you out—’

‘To Mr Hughes?’

‘No. We’re not looking at a major player here, but it’s a role you may be interested in. Classy.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘How does Madame Bovary sound to you?’

‘Oh!’

‘I thought that’d make you sit up and take notice.’ There was a smile in Phil’s voice.

‘Well, of course it does!’ Emma Bovary, tragic
femme fatale
, was a dream role for any actress. Still, there had to be a catch somewhere. Lisa’s rampant insecurity prompted her to add, ‘You
are
talking about the role of Emma, aren’t you?’ Knowing her luck, she was probably under consideration for the part of a raddled whore, or woman of the roads or some such.

‘For sure they want you for Emma.’

‘Oh, Phil! If you weren’t on the other end of the line, I’d kiss you! Who’s directing?’

‘Emile Legrandin.’

So there
was
a catch. ‘Emile Legrandin? Hasn’t he been blacklisted by the HUAC?’

‘Yes. But he’s relocating to France.’

Lisa guessed that relocating to France was the only recourse for a maverick
auteur
such as Legrandin. Once any Hollywood player came under scrutiny by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was suspected of leftist sympathies, their career in Tinseltown was over. However, since the end of the war, movie-making was no longer confined to the backlots of Orion or MGM or Universal: the entire world was now a director’s oyster, and new horizons beckoned north, south, east and west.

‘He wants authentic locations,’ continued Phil.

‘Nothing to do with politics, then,’ deadpanned Lisa.

‘Politics and art don’t mix. Never have, never will.’

‘So I’d have to go to Europe.’

‘Yep. No hardship in your case, I’d have thought. You can catch up with family.’

‘True.’ She’d be able to travel to London to see Gramps and Eva, and catch up with Dorothy. Róisín might even bring Cat to her there for a visit! ‘What about finance?’

‘There’s a backer. It’s not a huge budget, but in terms of kudos you can’t go wrong.’

Phil was right. If she stayed on in LA, she’d end up playing grannies soon. Emma Bovary was a peach of a part, and it was high time she proved that she could give serious actresses a run for their money.

‘Will I be based in Paris?’

‘No. Rouen.’

‘Rouen! Of course – the novel’s set near there.’

‘You mean you’ve actually read it?’

‘Yes.’

How proud she was to be able to say that! Since David Niven had made himself responsible for her education, Lisa could now consider herself reasonably well read. While she might not have managed the complete works of Dickens, as once claimed by Myra Blake, she had at least read some of the abridged versions.

‘I’ll get a script over to you, Lisa,’ said Phil.

‘“
Madame Bovary, c’est moi
”,’ she murmured.

‘What?’

‘It’s something the author said about his novel,’ she said. ‘It means, “I
am
Madame Bovary.”’

‘I wouldn’t make that claim until you’ve signed the contract.’

‘Pragmatist.’

After she had put down the phone to Phil, Lisa went to her wardrobe and took out the biscuit tin with the pattern of peonies on it, the one in which she had stored her mother’s letters, and selected one dated November 1918, postmarked Rouen.

She’d be visiting the town where her mother had met her father, where they had fallen in love and become engaged after just one month. How could she say no?

TYPICALLY, GERVAISE DECIDED
not to mourn Boy, but to celebrate his life in a pilgrimage: he and Jessie would drive to the south coast.

‘We’ll run away for a while,’ he told her, after the funeral. ‘Make ourselves scarce. It’s time to get out of Paris, anyway. It’s starting to madden me.’

‘Where shall we stay?’

Gervaise narrowed his eyes speculatively. Then he touched the tip of his index finger to her nose and said: ‘I know exactly where we shall stay.’

‘Where?’

‘It’s a surprise. Let me call in some favours.’ He smiled at her expression of frustration. ‘Trust me,’ he said.

‘But I never trust
anyone
who says “Trust me”!’

‘Allow me the privilege,’ he said, ‘of being the exception that proves the rule.’

For the remainder of the day Gervaise was infuriatingly enigmatic. He wrote letters, made telephone calls, sent for messenger boys, and finally left the apartment without telling her where he was going. When he returned later that evening she was dressing to go out to dinner.

‘Let’s not go out tonight,’ he said, dropping a kiss on the nape of her neck as she hooked on her earrings. ‘Let’s eat in.’

‘That suits me. I’m whacked.’

‘Come with me,’ said Gervaise, taking hold of her hand and pulling her to her feet. ‘I’ve brought home a surprise.’

He led her into the main body of the atelier, where she saw to her astonishment that the table had already been set. It was most unlike Gervaise to be so domesticated! But – but—

‘What on earth?’ she exclaimed, as she approached the table.

The plate he’d set for her – a Georgian silver salver – displayed a work of art, a seascape in collage. The sea was represented by a mass of dried and crumbled lavender flowers, and a narrow white trail of crystalline salt marked the shoreline. The beach was of pale golden sand, scattered here and there with Lilliputian shells and tiny dried petals like miniature sea pinks.

Jessie turned uncomprehending eyes on him. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked. ‘Have you gone stark, staring mad, Gervaise?’

He took a handful of fine sand, and his smile was wicked as he trickled it onto her palm and closed her fingers over it.

‘It’s your escape,’ he said. ‘It’s your very own beach. Your piece of paradise. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, it’s called Salamander Cove, and it’s on the Riviera, near Antibes. It has a rather splendid villa attached. And I’m offering it to you on a plate.’

The Villa Salamander – soon to be renamed the Villa Perdita – had belonged to Gervaise’s brother-in-law, the comte de Valéry, scion of an important banking family. However, since the war, the comte had fallen on hard times, and had been obliged to retrench. He and Gervaise had agreed a fair price.

Gervaise and Jessie motored south in his Buick, and Jessie kept him entertained as he drove, with stories of growing up in England and her Cambridge days. She taught him English slang and laughed at his blustering accent when he repeated phrases like ‘by Jove!’ and ‘what the deuce!’ and ‘Great Scott!’ and she told him about her charming little cat Purdy, and invented a comic saga that kept him entertained from Beaune to Montélimar – a journey of some three hours.

And at the end of the journey, Gervaise took her face between his hands and said: ‘I would never have been able to do that drive without you,’ and she knew that on the bend of the road where the tyre on his roadster had burst, the ghost of Boy Capel had been in the car with them.

Salamander Cove was a pocket Venus of a beach, small, but perfectly formed. The first thing they did upon arrival was take off their clothes and dive into the sea, despite the wintry weather. And afterwards they towelled each other dry and ran the length of the strand and back, over and over until they got warm. And then they sat together on the steps that led to the villa, taking nips of brandy from Gervaise’s hip flask, and Jessie hugged her knees to her chest and smiled; but when Gervaise asked her what she was smiling about, she gave him a sphinxy look and said, ‘Nothing!’ because she didn’t want him to know that she was planning, after the baby was born, to present him with a little Purdy cat of his own – a Siamese, maybe, like the one Jean Cocteau had.

The villa was in a state of disrepair, but still habitable. It was set back from the road behind wrought-iron gates intricate as cobwebs, and it wore an air of faded grandeur that Jessie found achingly romantic. The terraced garden at the rear of the house was overgrown with nettles and brambles and bindweed, and wild honeysuckle had almost strangled the bougainvillaea that had once been abundant: but ever since Jessie had read
The Secret Garden
as a child she had harboured a desire to bring such a place back to life. She explored with childlike glee. An ivy-covered pergola afforded a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean, a table for al fresco dining ran the length of one of the terraces – its marble surface cracked and bleached by sun and sea air – and a crumbling neo-Gothic angel, pinions poised for flight, stood guard over a weed-choked lily pond. The garden enchanted her.

As did the house. Inside, a dusty chandelier hung from the ceiling of the hall, where a cantilevered staircase unfurled upward to the first floor.

While Gervaise set about opening windows, Jessie wandered from room to room, pulling dust-sheets away from furniture. Most of the furnishings were of the formal variety: rigid occasional chairs and sofas in the drawing room, self-important escritoires in the library. In the dining room she uncovered a gargantuan sideboard and a table that could have accommodated a platoon of guests. In a niche in one of the smaller salons, a Louis XVI bust of some stoic-looking Greek gazed heavenward with vacant marble eyes. She was reminded of her parents’ house in Mayfair, with its heavy Victorian chiffoniers and whatnots, and overstuffed armchairs.

Upstairs, a grandfather clock stood sentinel on a landing that opened onto bedrooms swagged with tapestries and heavy velvet, shuttered and carpeted against winter draughts. The bathroom was preposterous, boasting a throne-like lavatory and stained-glass panels in the door, and plumbing so elaborate it might have been devised by Heath Robinson.

The only room in the house that lacked pretension was the kitchen. It was furnished with simple country pieces: a Provençal dresser, bentwood chairs, a scrubbed pine table, a bread press.

‘We’ll get rid of all the furniture,’ Gervaise told her, ‘clear the decks, and let some light in. We don’t want to live in a
fin-de-siècle
mausoleum. We can kick up our heels here, invite friends to stay.’

‘Let’s not get rid of the grandfather clock! There’s something incredibly soothing about the ticking of a clock.’