Not Without You (18 page)

It was quiet on the lot that day and Dilly and I were left in peace. At nearly 8.30, I was ready to go on set, without the usual agonising over whether my shoes were scuffed enough or whether my lipstick should be darker, when there was a knock from outside.

‘Come?’ Dilly said, and the door opened slowly.

‘Good morning,’ came a man’s voice, and the door opened a little wider. I felt my heart leap, and I craned my neck, away from Dilly’s hands.

‘Hello? Who’s that?’

It’s strange. I remember how wild I felt, how desperate that it should be him.

‘It’s Don Matthews,’ came the voice, and Don appeared, opening the door a little wider. ‘How are we today?’

‘May I help you?’ Dilly said, at her most imperious.

‘I just dropped by to see Miss Noel,’ Don explained. ‘I have something for her.’ He dangled a package in front of me, brown paper tied up with a thin grey ribbon. Dilly tutted.

‘It’s fine, Dilly, he can come in,’ I said, waving him in. ‘Don, this is Dilly.’ Dilly tutted again. ‘It’s good to see you, Don. How are you?’

‘I’m well, thank you.’ He came into the room. ‘You look beautiful.’

I glanced in the three-part mirror. ‘That’s kind but it’s not what we want you to say. I ought to look as though I’ve been hiding out in the inhospitable terrain of the Burmese jungle for two months, feeding myself and twenty orphans on roots and berries.’

He laughed. ‘Well, clearly that kind of living suits you.’

‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Can Dilly get you a drink?’

Just then, a quiet voice spoke up from the open doorway.

‘Good morning. Quite a little gathering we have here.’

Moss Fisher appeared on the threshold. I couldn’t help smiling; I wondered who’d told him Don was here. Moss was like a snake; I never knew when he was going to slither, silently, into view. I hated him.

He advanced into the room. ‘I just came to pay a visit to our star. I hear great things, Eve, you’re setting the place alight. Hi there, Don,’ he said, with all the warmth of an icicle.

Don stood up again; he was too tall for the tiny bungalow, and his lanky limbs seemed to fold awkwardly inside the space. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something. Another time.’

‘What’s that?’ Moss asked, peering at Don. ‘Eve, Refford wants to know—’

‘No,’ I interrupted. ‘Walk with me a moment, Don. I’m going on set.’ I shot Moss a look of annoyance. Damn them, so I couldn’t have a visitor in my room? I could hear them.
What if it got out? What about Gilbert? He’s a writer, for Christ’s sakes, Eve, a writer
.

I called back to Moss. ‘Moss dear, could you be an angel and help Dilly with my shoes? I can’t carry them. I mustn’t mess up my nun’s habit.’

Since the habit was faithfully re-encrusted with pale orange dust every morning before I put it on, this was clearly a lie, but Moss couldn’t say anything. He picked up the shoes and the make-up case as Don helped me out of the trailer, and as I left he gave me a look. I didn’t like it.

The Stars and Stripes were fluttering in the breeze next to the water tower which had stood there since the Baxters opened the lot twenty years ago. A cart trundled past us carrying a vast, elaborate chandelier, as Don and I weaved our way through the lot. People stopped to wave at me, and I waved back.

‘You were great yesterday, Eve!’ one of the guys by the loading bay, a cameraman, called out. ‘They loved it.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, in my most English accent. ‘I’m still terrified. That’s very kind of you.’

Someone else clapped. I smiled as widely as possible. There was a murmur of approval. My head ached, the pins holding my hair in place pulling at my scalp, as the curls, rigid with hair lacquer, began to crack.

We skirted behind the loading bay. Don had his hands in his pockets and was whistling, though I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

‘So,’ I said, as we crossed a tiny road over towards the sound stages. ‘I loved
Rose
. I absolutely loved it.’

‘You read it?’

‘Of course I read it,’ I said. ‘I asked for it after I saw you. They gave it to me a couple of weeks ago.’

He shrugged. ‘Very kind of you.’

‘Listen, Don.’ I turned and looked at him. ‘I’ve asked Mr Baxter. I’ve told him I have to do it. You’re a genius, Don Matthews.’

He smiled and didn’t say anything.

‘How do you know?’

‘How do I know what, Rose?’

‘How do you know all those details?’ I asked him. ‘About women, how we think, what we’re really like. I loved it. I can’t stop thinking about it.’

‘Listen, I’ve changed my mind,’ he said simply. ‘I don’t think you’re right for the part any more.’

I stopped in the middle of the road, holding the black sacking of my habit over one arm. ‘What?’

‘Sorry.’ He carried on walking. ‘I was wrong. I think someone else would be better in the part.’

‘But it’s me, this film,’ I said, trying not to sound childish. I looked at him, trying to work out what was going on. ‘Why have you changed your mind?’

‘I haven’t – just that I was wrong, as I say.’ Don shoved his hands in his pockets and carried on walking.

A group of Red Indians – a squaw, a chief and some children – passed by with a cowboy in leather chaps that creaked as he walked. One of the children pointed at me and whispered something to the chief. I smiled perfunctorily at them as they turned the corner.

Then we were alone in the middle of the quiet, fake road, the sun rising higher in the silver-flecked sky behind Don. He nodded towards the stage ahead of us. A lighting technician was carrying a huge arc lamp in through the open door. The beam of the rising sun behind us meant you couldn’t see anything inside, just a black hole.

Suddenly I was angry. ‘I don’t understand this, Don. You told me when we met at Romanoff’s—’

‘I ran into someone from the publicity unit, an old friend. You’re marrying him, aren’t you, Rose?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, that night at Romanoff’s?’

My mind was racing; it took me a moment to catch up with him. ‘Gilbert? Yes, I am.’

He nodded. ‘When?’

‘Just under two weeks’ time. At his house.’

‘
His
house?’

‘Our house – his – oh, does it matter who’s paying for the house? What’s that to do with it?’

‘I – I don’t know,’ he said, almost angrily. ‘It doesn’t matter at all. You’re right.’

‘I love Gilbert. He loves me. We can’t live together without being married – too much scandal. And – well, it’s right for both of us.’

‘You mean it’s right for the studio,’ Don said. ‘It’s not right for you. You can’t love him.’

He said it quite matter-of-factly.

‘Well, I do,’ I said, struggling to keep calm. I thought about Gilbert and smiled. ‘You have no idea. I think he’s wonderful. I can’t believe I’m going to be his wife.’

‘A schoolgirl’s fantasy, not real life.’ Don shrugged. I faced him, square on, only inches separating us. Underneath the sacking cloth of my costume I could feel my heart, pounding in my chest, almost aching with some strange feeling I did not understand.

‘Don’t treat me like a child, Don. I know what I’m doing.’

He took my hands, and then enclosed them in his warm palms, his fingers tangling with mine. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said calmly. ‘You don’t belong here, Rose. Go back home. Go back to England, be an actress there. You’re running away from something, I know you are, but whatever it is, you won’t find what you’re looking for here. Trust me.’

I looked down at my dusty habit, at my white hands enclosed in his, then up at the mammoth studio buildings curving away from me against the endless blue sky.

‘This place is a nest of vipers, Rose. It’ll destroy you. I know you. I know you and you don’t even know yourself.’ He faced me, his jaw rigid, and I almost flinched under the intensity of his gaze. ‘Moss ruins people’s lives with the stroke of a pen. And the Baxters, they don’t care. You’re fresh meat to them, goddammit, and when that beautiful face gets the hint of a wrinkle they’ll spit you out.’

Joe Baxter’s blubbering lips, his clammy hands on my body … I shuddered, completely involuntarily, at the memory, then closed my eyes, trying to block it out. Rose’s face appeared, as it always did when I was trying to forget something, pushing something bad away.

‘
Hello!
’ she said, her hair a black tangle around her flushed face. ‘
Hello, Eve! Come and play with me!
’

And as always, before I could reach her, she got up from the grassy bank where she was sitting and ran away, her skinny white limbs flashing through the dappled green tunnel of memory … then the sounds I’d heard that haunted me – crying in the night, the screech of brakes – and the lights flashing …

I could hear her calling for me. The strange thing is, I heard it more and more these days. I kept having the same dream: the car that came in darkness, the sound of screaming filling the house, and then I always woke up, heart thumping, drenched in sweat, calling out her name.

‘Miss Noel!’ A voice calling out behind us. I jumped, recalled in an instant to the present. I wrenched my hands away from Don’s and turned to see two ladies from the French court, slowly gliding towards us in vast powdered wigs and huge, bell-shaped crinolines. ‘Miss Noel, I’m such a fan, oh, my goodness! May I—?’

‘Hold on, please,’ I said to them, for the first time in my life. I walked down the little alleyway in front of us, and Don followed me.

He said, ‘Listen, it’s none of my business, I suppose—’

‘You’re damned right it isn’t.’ The force of my anger surprised me; people were always telling me they knew best, and I didn’t know why this upset me so much. ‘Me, I’m the one they go to see. I’m the one they look at, I’m the girl on the poster. You write what they tell you to write, do what they say. Who the hell are you anyway? Nobody,’ I said, flinging the words at him. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

‘I know you lost your sister and you blame yourself. I know you’re homesick and you don’t understand why, and you’re worried you’ll do something wrong. I know they’ve ripped out your teeth and plucked out your hair to make you look less like yourself and more like some ideal that doesn’t exist, because they don’t understand you, Rose, not the way I do. I know you like avocados, and Frank Sinatra, and butter, and sunshine, and I wrote that damn script for you, but I won’t let you do it as you are now. You shouldn’t be here—’

I reached up and slapped him, my fingers stinging as they hit his smooth chin. ‘You pig. Leave me alone. You can’t talk to me that way.’

‘I know. I’ll go.’ His dark eyes were black. ‘I just wanted to see you again. Tell you why I—’

He gave a growl of impatience and then pulled me towards him, his hands on my elbows. We stood there for a second, firm against each other, completely still. I think he was waiting to see if I’d pull away. But I didn’t and so he kissed me swiftly, there on the street, his lips firm on mine. I could hear his breathing, rushed and erratic, as our bodies met briefly, and then I stepped back and pressed my hand to my mouth.

‘How dare you,’ I said, looking frantically around, praying Moss wasn’t nearby, that no one had seen us. ‘Don Matthews, I’ll report you—’

‘So report me,’ he said. ‘I wrote
Rose
for you, you know. Do it if you want, but if you do, do it as you, the girl you were. Stop letting them bend you whichever way they want. They’re trying to make you perfect, Rose, but you were perfect before. You promised me the other week you weren’t going to let them push you around. So don’t marry him. He’s a pig. He’ll break your heart.’ He took my hand, squeezing it so tight it hurt. ‘And Rose, I couldn’t bear that, I couldn’t. Goodbye.’

Someone was approaching behind us in a slow car; two of the crew stepped out from another stage, carrying ladders, a huge arc light on a trolley. Dilly appeared at the door of the sound stage. ‘Miss Noel, what you doing out there?’

‘I’m just coming,’ I said. I turned and faced him. ‘I’m making the movie,’ I told Don. ‘Don’t come back here. Don’t destroy me just because you want to destroy yourself, Mr Matthews.’ I walked into the building, holding my habit, without looking back at him.

I had forgotten about the parcel. When I came back to my dressing room for lunch, four hours later, my head pounding from the huge arc lights, there it was on the table, the brown paper parcel tied up in grey ribbon. Written on it in a scrawling, huge fist, was the inscription:

For Rose from Don, in the hope she never needs it.

It was that Sinatra album,
In the Wee Small Hours
. On the inside of the brown paper he’d written:

‘YOU’RE THE BEST! You can do it, Sophie! Three more! Two! One! Go! Feel the burn, reach it reach it reach it REACH IT! Yes! Fulfil your goal, do it now, on the floor, go go GO! One, two, three, that’s the goal, yes! Yes!’

Laney, my trainer, comes over twice a week to work with me. She’s mean and hardcore. We do squat thrusts, we do bench-pressing, we run on the spot, we stretch, we do sit-ups and more sit-ups, and all the time she’s yelling at me, in her intense Californian way, ‘You can do it!
You can do it!
’

I have a slight girl crush on her. She is a brilliant mixture of loony zen and Nora Ephron. She looks like she’s been styled before she comes over, and as she gets here at 6.30 in the morning twice a week, I don’t know how she does it. She has thick brown wavy hair in a Rachel-Zoe-without-being-super-evil-style centre parting. I have realised I’m getting sick of my bob. The studio won’t like it but I might even start growing it out. In
My Second-Best Bed
Anne Hathaway has long hair, and the modern-day Annie a crop, so if I did the film I’d have to wear a wig anyway.
If
.

Laney’s skin is flawless, glowing with the zeal that totally focused exercise-Nazis get, and her body is amazing, slim and toned and slightly tanned. I was born to be a bit podgy. Nothing much, just a bit. Being this thin doesn’t sit well with me, I know it. Laney was born to it.