The Dud Avocado (25 page)

Eventually the sun gets too hot and burns the ground under my feet. Then I put on my sandals and go down the stone steps into the sea.

We take sandwiches with us for lunch and spend the rest of the day at the beach. The cat is furious because we’re never around to feed him any more. He’ll probably bring us that mouse again.

Received a sweet letter from Jim today. Must write him soon. Must, must, must.

May 22
Wednesday

Boy, we met a
real
nut on the beach today. A skinny young American with a fierce black mustache called Hugo McCarthy. He’d just left the South of France a couple of days ago, where he’d been kicked out of Somerset Maugham’s villa in Cap Ferrat for the third time. Every time he thought about it he became absolutely doubled up with rage, his whole body trembling under the impact of his emotions.

“Where does he come off giving me the bum’s rush?” he steamed. “Who the hell does he think he is anyway? He needs me, boy, I don’t need him!
I’m
the colorful eccentric all these characters write about. Hey, do you know I’m in three books already? Met an Englishman called Tynan in Spain a while ago and he put me in his bullfight book, and a couple of Americans I ran into last year skiing at Klosters—wouldn’t be fair to tell you their names until I hear how it comes out, but they’re very
well known—anyway they’re
still
fighting about which one’s going to get to have me in his.”

“But Somerset Maugham doesn’t write novels any more, does he?” I asked.

“That’s just it! Of course he doesn’t. Ran out of ideas. Ran out of characters. That’s where I could help him. Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking for money. I’m no bum. I’ll sing for my supper. Let ’em all get rich on me, who cares? All I ask in return is a little hospitality. I’m not completely broke. I’m doing O.K. I’m waiting round here for Irwin Shaw. He’s due to arrive any day now. Any of you writing a book?” he asked hopefully.

We said we weren’t. I asked him what he thought Maugham had against him.

He became even more aggrieved. “That’s just it. Nothing. Not a goddam thing. Hadn’t even seen me! Wouldn’t see me. Always sent someone out to say he wasn’t in. Goddammit, I
knew
he was there. I know where they all are,” he added gloomily.

“What about Françoise Sagan?”

“Been in Paris for the past two months,” he replied promptly. He brooded for a moment. “Anyway, I don’t think she writes my type of novel. Do you think she could use me?”

“Why not?”

“Yeah. Well maybe. I’ll wait and see if she turns up here this summer.”

He flung himself on the sand beside us and asked us where we all came from, and we asked him where he was from and he said New York, originally. He’d been away five years. “Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m no remittance man,” he said. “I’d go back again like a shot except I’m afraid to, if you want to know the truth. You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid of getting killed back there. I’m not kidding. I mean really killed. Shot. Mugged. Beat up. You’ve no idea what it’s like now. You’re walking down the street minding your own business and the next thing you know someone’s come up from behind and slugged you. Taken your wallet. Even if you don’t have a thing in it they give you a going-over just for the hell of it.
Ask my mother. She lives there. She’s got the whole apartment wired for sound. Has to call the police every time she wants to open the window. I’m not kidding. I don’t want to go back to that, no thanks.” He turned suddenly to Bax. “You finished with that sandwich, Bud?”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “What about trying the movies? There’s a film …” but Larry shot me a warning look and I shut up.

“Movies? What movie?” asked Hugo. He’d been lying two away from me on the beach next to Missy, but he sprang up when he heard this and landed with a bound at my side, kicking sand all over my face.

“Sally Jay’s got hold of some rumor that they’re shooting a film here sometime this summer. She’s kind of stage-struck,” Larry explained to him, with a deprecating smile, while I tried to get the sand out of my mouth.

“Yeah? Yeah? Where is this outfit?”

“Over in San Sebastian, we hear.”

He thought it over a minute. “I may hitch on down tomorrow.”

“No hurry,” said Larry. “We heard they won’t be ready for at least a month. You know how long it takes these things to get set up.”

We finally parted, promising to meet him again the next day, same time same place.

Tonight at supper I asked Larry what the big idea was of giving poor old McCarthy the double-cross about the film company. I said except for his mustaches I thought he wasn’t at all bad-looking. So Larry sighed and shook his head and gave me one of his when-are-you-going-to-wise-up looks, and started off as though he were speaking to a two-year-old, with it’s like this see, and I’ll explain slowly, and so forth. He said if I’m really serious about getting a part in the film tomorrow
(am
I!), the easiest way to louse it up would be to turn up with a hundred other people climbing on our backs trying to horn in. Then Bax said if that was the case he’d be perfectly willing to let Hugo go in his place, but Larry said no, definitely not. He
wanted Bax to go as planned. We’ll all of us go, he said. But we’ll go just by ourselves.

“What do you mean all of us?” asked Missy, deeply offended. She said she had no intention of becoming a Movie Star. She said her mother would jes’
die
if she ever saw her daughter on the screen in front of all those people in a public movie house, and Larry raised his eyebrows and said her mother had a lot to learn about her little daughter, he wondered what she’d do if she ever saw her in action behind a certain screen in some
private
house, and far from climbing on her high horse as I’d expected, Missy giggled and said, “Hush yo’ face,” and then smiled dreamily into his eyes and got all silky and proud like a well-fed lioness, and they went into another of their prolonged necking bouts. This sloppy stuff is really getting revolting. I can’t look at it any more. Makes me want to urp. But finally Larry came up for air long enough to reach over the dinner table, rumple my hair, and assure me that he was going to take an active interest in my career. “Just put yourself in my hands, Gorce,” he said. “I’m planning the strategy.”

Thank God for that, I thought.

“We’ll all turn in early tonight,” he said. “We have to be up at eight, looking our best.”

But Missy got stubborn and dug in and refused to come.

“O.K.,” said Larry. “You keep McCarthy occupied on the beach tomorrow. Tell him we’ve gone to Biarritz to look at the Virgin on the Rock or something.”

Missy pouted, and said that sounded right
mean
to her. She said she thought the poor boy looked mighty peaked. And Larry said never mind, that we’d do him a lot more good getting somewhere ourselves first. Larry is really brilliant about this sort of thing. I see exactly what he means.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the film. I mean it really would be the most terrific break if I got discovered down here, wouldn’t it. Like Audrey Hepburn.

I’ve been wondering what sort of parts there are that I’d be right for. At the Club de Caveau that night I asked Stefan why they were shooting a picture about a Bullfighter in a French fishing village, and he told me not to worry my pretty little
head about it. I got the feeling he didn’t know either. But that’s the whole point. Will they want me to be French or Spanish or English? French I hope. I think I look more French than anything else right now.

My hair has turned a very strange color. The sun’s been working on its original pink dye and it’s a kind of greenish yellow. But I don’t think it looks too bad, though. I have a gorgeous sun tan (I adore watching myself change color) and I’ve noticed that all the girls on the beach have had approximately the same thing happening to their hair.

But it would have to be
modern
French. I mean suppose it’s a costume picture? French girls in period movies would tend to have black hair, I feel. Or maybe they’re all going to be Spanish, because of the Bullfighter. I bought some carbon paper at the bookshop this evening and I can’t decide whether to rub it on my hair and become a brunette or just leave the old straw as it is. I wonder what the sun does to carbon-papered hair. I’d better not try.

Got
another
letter from Jim today. It’s awful. He says he misses me terribly, more than he ever imagined he would, and that it’s so unbearably lonely in his studio he’s going off to Florence. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to feel his pain. I must write to him. I must, must, must. I’ll write tomorrow. I’ll have something to tell him then and anyway I’m too tired now. The sun makes me so sleepy.

Up early tomorrow, glug, glug. Gosh, I’m getting so nervous and excited I bet I don’t sleep a wink anyway.

May 23
Thursday

We very nearly didn’t get to the village at all this morning. The Citroen had one of its coughing fits and we had to roll it all the day down the hill before it started. The offices of the Anglo-American-Franco-Spanish film company, I think it’s called Cherwell or maybe Starwell Productions, are in a broken-down warehouse on the wharf. Stefan came beaming down on us almost as soon as we got there, and Larry said, watching him
approach, “Who does he think he’s kidding?” He was a sight all right. He looked like a Hollywood director out of a
New Yorker
cartoon; full-flowing foulard, red shirt and beret, the works except for riding boots and a megaphone. He was in high spirits, very pleased with himself, absolutely delighted to see us. We admired the color of his shirt and scarf and he admired the color of my arms, pinching them a couple of times, and before we knew it we were ushered into the Casting Director’s office, where the keen-eyed quivering-nosed smooth-haired Englishman (I almost said terrier) looked up from behind his desk and said through his teeth, “C’m in, chaps, c’m in. Nice of you to drop in. Always helps to run into people who speak the same lingo, eh?” Only he had to repeat the last sentence several times before we understood him.

Then Stefan said, “Well, what do you think of my youngsters?” and Larry shoved Bax and me forward, and the Casting Director looked at us awhile and said, “Remarkable, absolutely remarkable. Let me take their particulars.”

“And who is the other gentleman?” he asked finally.

Larry stepped forward. “Larry Keevil’s my name,” he said suavely. “This is my client. I handle Miss Gorce.”

I waited for them to laugh us out of the room, but they didn’t turn a hair. They acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world for an unknown actress to show up out of the blue, agent in hand.

“And Mr. Baxter, Mr. Keevil? You handle him as well?” Larry said he did.

“Well the position is——” began the Casting Director, but he got no further. Stefan, who had been talking on the intercom, suddenly turned and said dramatically, “He’s here! They arrived an hour ago and he’s out
side the office now.” The Casting Director sprang into action, whipped the papers off his desk and said,, “Show him in, old boy, show him in immediatlih.”

The door opened and in came a beautiful little brown boy in a pale gabardine suit two sizes too big, almost completely hidden by several other large Spaniards. They were all smoking cigars. The Bullfighter. I knew it immediately. I tried not to stare but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Stefan asked us to wait outside until they were finished and we filed out of the office, and as I passed, one of them—I
think
it was the kid himself, took the cigar out of his mouth and said “Wappa,” something like that, and then another one said, “Mwee wappa,” at least that’s what it sounded like.

We sat around outside for about fifteen minutes, and then the door flew open and Stefan poked his head out, winked at me, and called Larry in. Then another fifteen minutes passed, the door opened again, and I heard the Casting Director saying to Larry, “Well, if she wants to do it, we’re delighted,” and Larry answer, “Of course she will. Just let me handle it.” Then they came out and the Casting Director said, “Good-by, Miss Gorce, Mr. Baxter. Good of you to drop in. We’ll be seeing a lot more of you, I expect,” and the door closed again.

“Will I do what?” I asked Larry excitedly.

“Shut up. Wait till we get out.”

We found a café near the wharf and sat down. “I’ll buy us a drink,” said Larry, “we need it.”

“What: happened, what happened? Don’t sit there like that. Come on, tell us, for God’s sake!”

Larry had tilted his chair back from the table and was balancing back and forth looking at us both, shaking his head in wonder. “Whew!” he said. “Wait’ll you get a load of this. I’ve had a lot of shocks in my life but this caps it.” Then his chair came forward with a bang and he leaned over and started playing with his St. Raphael while we breathed all over him with impatience.

Finally he turned to Bax.

“They are crazy about you, boy,” he said simply. “Really crazy. They think you are a find. They want to test you for a big part, and if you shape up right they talk of putting you under contract.”

Bax was calm; almost despondent. “Is that all? No thanks,” he said in a bored sort of way.

“No thanks? It’s the chance of a lifetime!”

“Look,” said Bax, “I only came down today because you thought it would help Sally Jay if I did. I don’t know why, but ever since I can remember I’ve been followed down the street
by talent scouts wanting to discover me. I’ve been all through this before. I even resigned from the Mask and Wig Society at college, and I’m crazy about the theater, because every time I wanted to do something artistic like designing scenery or getting on the board that chose the plays someone tried to talk me into acting. Or some director or producer or agent would come to give us a lecture and take me aside afterward and ask me if I wanted to go into the movies. They always picked me out. I don’t know why. I look just like everybody else. But get this straight, Larry, I don’t want to be another Rock Hudson or another Gregory Peck or another anybody under contract to anyone. And I don’t like horses. And that’s final.”