Photographic (20 page)

“There is a man. Here. At the flat. He showed up and he told me his name…shoot! What was his name, something like, Creature, or…Seltzer, oh, damn, I don’t want to ask him. Okay, who have you given keys to? That’s the important part. He says he’s your mate. Do you have a mate?”

“Oh, God.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d given other people keys? This is a very awkward situation.”

“Oh, God. I forgot. It’s my fault. I didn’t think there was any chance of him crashing when you were there because he’s supposed to be…somewhere else. It’s Beezer.”

“That’s him! What do I do?”

“Well, tell him he can’t stay there, because you’re using it, and you don’t know how long you’ll need it, and I said it’s yours for the duration.”

“But what about tonight?” Jane danced back and forth from one foot to the other, gnawing on the second joint of her index finger.

“Well…you could put up with him for the night, couldn’t you? Just put him in the downstairs bedroom and see him off tomorrow. He’s harmless enough. Don’t worry about it. Jane?”

“Okay!” The bright confidence of her voice was a put-on.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to give you any extra trouble while you were there.” 

“Mm-hmm.”

Jane closed her phone and looked down at the silent door. She tiptoed downstairs, quiet, for some reason, seeming essential, and unlocked the door. As she flicked on the light over the doorstep and opened the door she got her first good look at Beezer. He was short, portly, and rumpled, in khaki trousers and a blue cotton shirt, with suspenders giving his clothes a dapper air. He sported a goatee and carried a large canvas bag over one shoulder. A black rolling suitcase sat propped behind him. 

“Marta’s given you the seal of approval. For the night.”

He pulled his suitcase in with him and headed straight for the living room, where he unhanded his possessions and sat down on one of the cream sofas with a sigh. Jane turned on the light and looked on as he lay back in exhaustion. 

“You can have the downstairs bedroom. Sorry about before.” 

He lay supine. 

“If you want to take a bath tonight, that’s fine with me. I always used to take a bath after a trip.”

“Just to be still for a while, luv.” His eyes were still closed.

She nodded, shifting from one foot to the other. 

He opened his eyes. “Thanks for letting me in, calling Mart; I needed this tonight.”

“You’re welcome. I was just being careful.”

He lay with his head back on the couch, eyes half-closed, watching her. “I thought Marta might be home. You don’t have to apologize, luv. It’s only natural. You’re protecting yourself.” 

“My daughter and me. Tam is my daughter.”

“That’ll make you brave as a lion, now, won’t it. Tam. Is that short for something?”

“Yes. Tamsin.”

“Lovely.” He felt around in his canvas bag and brought out a miniature bottle, which he cracked open and took a swig from.

“Does that one make you big or small?” Jane tried on a matey confidence she didn’t quite feel. 

He cocked his head at her, tightening the tiny cap on the bottle. “Depends what sense you mean, I reckon. Care to join me? There’s more here than it looks.”

“Oh.” Jane gathered her robe around her in embarrassment. She really hadn’t been trying to make a dirty joke. “I just meant Alice…it’s one of my daughter’s favorite stories.” 

“That’s one of everyone’s favorite stories.”

“Yes. I suppose it is.”

“Go to sleep, now. Don’t mind about me.”

Jane nodded and swept up the stairs, her robe gathered in her fists. It seemed the free flat came with a price.

In the morning, Tam woke to the faint, sharp smell of coffee, an early morning smell that to her meant one thing. She rolled out of bed, kicking the lumpy form of her mother still buried under the duvet. 

Running to the door, opening it, stampeding down the stairs, she called, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Da, Da, Da,” with each breath. Wheeling around the corner, she came to the entrance of the kitchen and stopped short. The man sitting at the kitchen table was not her father. She reached her right hand up to scratch her neck and backed up two steps as she studied this new person. He sat at the kitchen table with a paper in front of him and little glasses perched on his nose, a coffee cup in his hand.

“Hullo.” He peered at her over his glasses.

“Hi.” She wanted to run back up to her mother’s room as fast as she had run down, but too embarrassed to do it. 

“I’m Beezer. I got here last night.”

Tam stared at him for a moment, then nodded.

“I’m a friend of your Mum’s friend Marta. Do you know her?”

Tam shifted around on the cool tile. “Yes.”

“Fancy a coffee?”

Tam’s face curled up into an expression that could have been amazement or delight. 

“Okay.” She came over to the table and sat down.

He poured her a café au lait: half-coffee, half-milk. He spooned in two teaspoons sugar. 

“Stir that up good, now.” 

Tam did. She tasted it, holding the mug with both hands. 

“How’s that, luv?”

“Good.”

“How old are you now, then?” Beezer asked in a considering fashion, as if he’d known once and had forgotten.

“Six.”

“Your mum’s a nice lady.”

Tam nodded and looked off to the side, out the kitchen window, pressing the top of her mug up against her upper lip.

“What does your da do?”

“My da…my daddy!”

“That’s right.”

She was puzzled. “That’s my name for my daddy. How did you know?”

“My da was a Dubliner. Though I was London born we called him Da like they do round there.”

“I’m the only one who says it where I live.” Tam was startled by this new universe of da's opening up before her.

“Right. As I was saying…do you know what your da does for a living?”

“’Course.” Tam took an especially large slurp of coffee.

“What’s that, then?”

“He’s an actor.” She finished the last gulp of coffee, smacked her lips, made an “Ahhhh…” sound, and looked in the direction of the stove. 

“An actor, that’s interesting.”

“I guess.” She perked up in her chair when she saw Beezer go over and get the coffee pot to refill both of their cups. She got milk again. This time she put the sugars in herself. 

“So what’s it like, then, when your da’s an actor.”

She turned her head to one side. “He goes away a lot. He has to make his movies and they can’t make them near us because there isn’t the right kind of woods or mountains. I like it when he’s at home all the time. That’s when he’s not working. He’s just Da then. He’s my best friend.”

“What do you think of his movies?”

“Oh, well.” Tam shrugged with a doleful expression. “I’ve only seen part of one. I saw part of
Plunder
. I wasn’t supposed to. But I saw one little part. My mom won’t let me see the others. It was so good.
Plunder
is a really good film.” She dared Beezer to contradict her. 

He nodded, lower lip pushed out in acknowledgement of her superior information.

She considered her mug. 

“That’s a right shame, not being old enough to see your da's films,” Beezer said after contemplating her point. “Hasn’t he made any for kids?”

“They
say
they’re not for kids.” Tam shook her head, disagreeing with this assessment. “I could handle it.”

“
Plunder
was pretty grown up if I remember rightly.” 

Tam frowned. “I’m not a baby.” 

“’Course not. But you have to leave something for shock value in your teen years.”

Tam glowered and drank a sip more coffee. “I’m almost in my teen years. I will be. Why do I have to be
thirteen
to see them?”

Beezer shrugged in sympathy. The world was unfair.

Later, still around the kitchen table, as they ate Beezer’s special pancake recipe from ingredients he’d bought at the shops before either of them had awoken, Beezer told Jane about his work as an on-set stills photographer. The secrets it made him privy to; the stars it gave him personal dealings with. At first she thought he wasn’t aware who her husband was, but then she got the sense he was dancing around something, and that might be it.

“I know them all, darling. Shite. I would never sell what I know. They couldn’t print what I know. It’s not fit to print. But I live with the knowledge. It’s a burden, but I carry it. I carry it willingly. Part of the job. People don’t want to know the really bad stuff. Somebody knows what happens. You wouldn’t think it would be me, would you. Might think, he’s in the business, he’d sell anything for any price. Especially the right price. I keep the stories locked inside, the ones that shouldn’t come out. Those will go with me. Because I know the meaning of honor, even though you might not think it. Legitimate photography is a far sight from what the celebrity scoundrels get up to, let me tell you.”

“And Marta?” Jane mopped up her last bit of syrup with pancake. “What about her?”

“Oh yeah, well, Marta. Everybody has their price, as they say. She’d screw you going and coming, Marta would, never meaning harm by it, mind you.”

Jane set down her fork and wiped her hands. She felt anger rising up in a sudden storm, one wave that pushed up against her heart and lungs and eyes until she could only see the spangled blackness behind her eyelids and feel the up-swelling pressure inside her chest. 

“Why do you say that?” she said. “What do you mean?”

Beezer shook his head and scrunched his shoulders up, shivering as if he were cold. He made a tisking noise and sucked on his teeth a bit. 

“Always had an eye on the main chance, did Marta.” He shook his head. “She might have changed.” He reached out and patted Jane’s hand. “Mind you, I’ve known her a sight longer than I have you. But I can’t let a train hit someone standing on the tracks without shouting ‘Oy!’”

“What? What is it? What’s going to happen?” 

Beezer gave her hand another pat. “I do believe you and Ian are her ship come in. That’s how she sees you. I hate to say it of a friend, but I think she’ll take advantage wherever she can.”

Jane pulled her hand out of patting range. “She could have done that before now and she hasn’t.”

Beezer held up his hands and pulled his head back, playing it off. “Don’t let me convince you of anything. Perhaps she’s changed. What’s a bloke like me know?”

“Well, thanks for telling me what you think, anyway.”

Beezer pulled on his braces. “Whatever you like, m’dear. A mistake could prove costly, but it’s your life, luv.” While he wandered off in the direction of his room, Jane surveyed the wreckage of the table, deep in thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

T
HERE
WAS
MORE
than a flat to draw Jane to London. The film was in post-production at Pinewood. More than one cast member resided there. It had taken one phone call to get the number she wanted. And another phone call to get the other thing she wanted most of all.

It was time to meet Calypso.

Vaughn and Jane found some comfortable chairs at the front of the café, in the window. As Jane sipped her coffee, she stole glances at Vaughn, as Vaughn added milk and sugar to her tea. In the sunlight Vaughn’s pale hair glowed around her head and neck; her green eyes burned clear as an arctic sky. Jane could see the goddess in her bearing, even in these everyday surroundings. 

“How do you like London?” Vaughn settled back in her chair, the red velvet a dark foil for her light coloring.

Jane swallowed the coffee in her mouth and nodded. “Very much.”

“Me too.” They resumed sipping. “Have you been here before?” 

Jane put her cup down in its saucer. “Yes. When we were first married, Ian had a play here. We stayed for three months.” Her reminiscent smile, threatened by an opposing downward turn of her mouth, wavered back into being. “It was a happy time.”

“It would be, just married in a new city.” Vaughn smiled when Jane looked up; her face transformed from remote and goddess-like to warm and confidential in a brief flash. 

Looking at Vaughn’s cool beauty was such a strange pleasure, Jane caught herself staring in abstraction. “You must think me odd to call you up like this when I don’t know you at all. Thank you for coming.”

“It’s quite all right. Anything for Ian and family. Did you want to get together since you’re here on your own?”

Jane put her cup and saucer on the table from where she held it on her lap and brushed off imaginary crumbs. She pushed her hair behind her ears and rubbed the back of her hand against her lips for a moment. Her mouth was dry. 

“I don’t know how to begin, except to say that…I know what happened.” Her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat. “In the caves.”

Vaughn’s half-smile remained fixed, the corners of her full mouth tucked back. Her lips parted and then pursed. “Balls.” 

She picked up her tea and downed half of it as if it were a cocktail. After setting down her cup, she took off her coat, tossing it on a chair off to one side. With restless fingers, she fiddled with the top button of the blouse she was wearing. She leaned back in her chair and pulled her legs up, crossing them yoga fashion and resting her elbows on her knees. She shook her head, staring at the table between them.

“How’d you find out.” She wasn’t so removed and distant now.

“Ian told me.” Jane was bewildered by this array of behaviors. “Someone…from the press, told me about some rumors, during shooting. There were even pictures to go with it. But it was about Delaney and Ian, not you two. It was all wrong.” Jane brooded for a moment. “They were in the wrong cave, I guess.”

“There wasn’t any romance on the set, between anyone.” Vaughn’s drawl sharpened into harder consonants as she bit off her words. She steepled her fingers, resting her chin on her fingertips. “You wouldn’t be here if this hadn’t flipped you right into the stratosphere, am I right?” Gazing at Jane shrewdly, she unfolded her legs and stretched them out onto an empty chair, her pointy-toed black boots crossed. With a toss of her hair, she leaned back in her chair, her fingers rubbing her forehead. She dropped her hands into her lap. Her voice became confiding, persuasive. “I’m a mirage. If you think there’s an answer here to whatever problem you’re having, you’re wrong. You’re in the wrong cave.”