Seducing Ingrid Bergman (15 page)

‘So you’re not tired.’

‘I said I’d see him.’

‘You know what time it is?’ Instinctively she looks at her watch.

‘He stays up late.’

‘As long as we’re clear, then. You prefer to be with him than with me?’

‘He’s leaving soon.’

‘So am I.’

There’s a silence in which a host of different odours lifts upwards, composed of her raincoat, the tang of wet hair and the cool sweetness of her perfume. Cars move up and down the square.

She says, ‘Come back with me.’

‘Now?’

She pushes her hair behind her ears.

‘You can get too much of a good thing,’ I tell her.

We both know this isn’t true.

She looks at me, startled for a second, and it feels all wrong, but something stubborn inside me, some pig-headed impulse, some crazy wayward instinct won’t let me apologize or take it back, and I allow Ingrid to get out of the cab alone.

I feel the rush of cold air as she holds open the door. ‘I’ll call you,’ I say. The door thuds shut, making me blink. A bus swishes past massively.

The seat is still warm next to me. I pick off one of her long hairs from my jacket. The traffic lights change, streaking the windshield with colour. Half of me wants to undo the moment, to stop the cab and run out and hold her and never let her go, but I don’t, because whatever it is that is bloody-minded and obstinate in me takes over, and with a show of nonchalance that shocks even myself, I do not once look back.

*   *   *

We don’t see each other the next day. The day after that, I take Ingrid to the races at Longchamp.

We buy programmes and one of the racing papers so we can study the form. From the infield we watch the grooms lead their horses round the ring. The heads of the horses nod rhythmically. You can spot the nervous ones, the jockeys patting them, talking to them constantly, and it’s obvious which mounts carry themselves well. We’re so close, we can see the muscles rippling tensely, the veins in their legs like little ropes, their big muddy eyes. The smell of liniment from the jockeys mixes with the animals, their pungency, to create a sharp stink under the late summer sun.

We make our way to the grandstand. Below the stands, in shadow, the betting booths are the same chestnut colour as the horses. The rails are white against the grass. The odds are posted high on boards.

Poised in the saddle, silks glistening, the jockeys canter their horses to the start.

It’s Ingrid’s first time at a meeting. She’s bought a pair of binoculars for the occasion. She holds them with both hands, training them on the course. Magnified like this, she says, the horses seem to float over the ground.

We sit next to the long window in the bar overlooking the final straight. The sun runs a long fat rainbow across the glass.

She starts talking about her husband, how he’s pestering her to go back home, sending letters and telegrams urging her to return.

I don’t say anything.

‘He’s so mean,’ she says. ‘For years he’s had me on an allowance. I have to ask permission even to buy a pair of shoes.’

‘Why did you marry him?’

‘I was twenty-one. He was handsome, strong…’

‘Wealthy?’

She laughs. ‘He had his own car.’

‘And now?’

Through the big plate-glass window, we see the horses trot diagonally towards the stalls before the main race of the day, a seven-furlong steeplechase. I borrow the binoculars. The long oval of the course seems oddly foreshortened.

‘I never thought I’d be unfaithful,’ she says.

The last horse is blinkered and shunted in, the gates closed. The remote crack of the starter’s pistol reaches us an instant after the blue puff of smoke. Wrens fly up from under the roof.

Ingrid studies her hands for a moment, twists her ring. ‘It’s not easy for me, you know. I was brought up to be very moral.’

The horses complete one circuit of the track. Having bunched at first, they begin to string out. There’s a leading group of three.

She takes back the binoculars, lifts them to her face, hiding behind them. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says. Her tone grows needling, accusatory. ‘You’re thinking we shouldn’t do anything hasty. We’ve only known each other a couple of months.’

I laugh, delay reassuring her. ‘Would that be wrong?’

‘I could have any man I choose.’

‘So why choose me?’

‘I’m used to getting what I want.’

‘You deserve better,’ I say.

Ingrid lowers the binoculars and turns abruptly, her eyes burning. ‘Why are you like this?’

At first it’s funny, then it’s not. ‘Like what?’

‘If I were to give you my unswerving devotion, would you promise to love me always in return?’

‘Of course not.’

The leading group of three becomes two as they sweep around in front of us again.

‘Do you want children?’

‘Me?’ I laugh.

‘Is that so absurd?’

‘You’ve only just finished telling me you don’t want to get pregnant.’

I weigh the silence that follows.

Her whole face has changed, her eyes look tragically unhappy. ‘Marry me, Capa.’

My blood jumps. I expected something – perhaps a sharp remark or teasing riposte, something ironical maybe, but not this. It’s not a question, it’s a directive. It takes every ounce of my energy not to leap out of my seat. ‘Are you serious?’

An announcement on the tannoy is so loud and crackly, it’s inaudible.

My stomach falls. I’m not up to the moment. I find it impossible to be solemn. ‘Can I have a few years to think about it?’

She shakes her head, regards the mangled end of a cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I knew you’d laugh it off.’

I don’t tell her how much I long to say yes. I don’t tell her that I can think of nothing better. I don’t tell her how every bone in my body aches, every sinew strains to respond positively, nor do I tell her how I need every bit of willpower, every ounce of self-restraint to stop me launching myself into her arms.

She looks at me, so lovely and naïve, as if I have answers to everything.

‘I’ve told you already,’ I say. ‘I can’t allow myself to get attached. If they say China tomorrow and we’re married and have a child, I won’t be able to go, and that’s impossible.’

One of the horses begins to pull away.

‘In my mind, you marry the man you love and that’s the end of it.’

Needing to do something, I reach across for my drink.

‘I believe in marriage,’ she says, flatly.

The strain of stretching enters my voice without me wanting it to. ‘As a fairy tale or an institution?’

‘Both.’

‘Suppose I’m not the marrying kind?’

The race moves into its final circuit. There’s mounting excitement in the bar. Patrons wave their papers and shout encouragement. The lead horse, it seems, is slowing. The grey in second place is catching up.

‘You’re impossible,’ she says.

‘You made a mistake with your dentist. How do you know you’re not doing the same with me?’

‘You think this is a mistake?’

The window is blind with sun.

‘What about your daughter?’

‘You’re happy that I’ll leave and we’ll never see each other again?’ Her eyes are clouded with tears.

The race approaches its climax, the two front horses involved in a very close finish.

‘Come to Hollywood, at least,’ she says. ‘The studios are always looking for photographers.’

‘You want me to take publicity shots?’

‘You should consider it.’

The feeling of resistance continues within me. I know what I should say, what I want to say. I hate myself for not saying it, realize how stupid it must seem, but I’m determined perversely not to appear impressed. My mouth opens like a bubble between my lips. ‘I will,’ I say. ‘Consider it.’

‘I could keep you.’

‘I don’t want to be kept.’

‘You want to spend the rest of your life in crummy hotels?’

‘I’m just not sure I’m ready.’

‘If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting all your life.’

My leg jiggles. I hear the nail of her index finger tick against her glass.

The race ends. It’s neck and neck at the finish. The horses are moving easy now.

The sound of a few cheers mixes with a more general groan of disappointment. People crowd around the bar. There’s a renewed flood of sunshine through the glass. The angle of the light now blinds me, so that I have to avert my eyes.

The ticking of her fingernail stops. We keep our separate silences, become strangers for a few seconds. I’m not used to thinking beyond tomorrow, so it’s bewildering to consider how the rest of my life might unfold.

She says, ‘We don’t have long.’

My mouth opens but I can’t think what to say.

‘You’ve got something against Hollywood?’ she asks. ‘Or is it just me?’

‘That’s where Irwin is headed.’

‘I know. He told me.’

Another silence.

‘You think they’d take me?’

She manages a smile. ‘They let anyone in these days. That’s why it’s such a great country.’

‘I’m not making any promises.’

‘You can’t die, Capa.’ A new decisiveness enters her voice. ‘I won’t let you.’

A plane flies low over the race-track. Its wings sparkle for an instant. The noise drowns out the sound of an announcement. Numbers are slotted onto the board. The winning number looks familiar. I rummage in my pocket, check my yellow betting slip. ‘Hey, look.’

‘What?’

‘We won!’

I plug my cigarette into the side of my mouth, double-check the slip. It’s true.

Without smiling, Ingrid turns to the window and its view of a still brilliant sky.

*   *   *

Along with Irwin, I dodge a row of cars on the place de Clichy. The policeman’s whistle is just audible above the traffic.

We go to Scheherazade, a favourite haunt of Irwin’s, not far from Montmartre. The waiters are Russian. They wear tight red tunics with gold braid on the shoulders and wheel drinks and hors d’oeuvres along on small trolleys. Lit from beneath, the tables have transparent glass tops. The club is full of smoke and loud with gypsy music.

I tell him what happened yesterday with Ingrid.

‘Are you nuts?’

‘Probably.’

‘Let me get this straight. The world’s most beautiful woman asked you to marry her and then asked you to follow her to Hollywood – and you said no?’

‘Guilty on both counts.’

‘You could do a lot worse, you know.’

‘I have,’ I say. ‘Several times already.’

‘I can give you the name of a good doctor.’ His tone of mockery shades into disapproval.

‘I’m sure she only asked because she knew I’d say no.’

It’s true, I’m certain. And what she said was not premeditated. I’m convinced of that. It was a rash offer, made on impulse, a sudden whim. She took me for a gambler and called me, but it was obvious that she hadn’t thought it through. For all her pantomime of disappointment, a large part of her must have been relieved when I said no. I’m sure it would have scared the hell out of her if I’d said yes. Maybe I should have, just to see how she’d respond. Anyway, the whole thing has left me feeling utterly confused.

I tell Irwin, ‘I’ve never been able to read a woman’s mind.’

‘If you don’t know her mind, how can you love her?’

‘For the mystery.’

‘And when the mystery is gone?’

‘Oops.’

He laughs. ‘There’s a larger mystery still.’ He lights a cigarette, shakes out the match.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why do men run away from women who want them?’

‘It’s not that men run away,’ I tell him. ‘The women just stand still.’

A column of blue smoke rises from his mouth. ‘Maybe they stand still for a reason,’ he says.

*   *   *

Ingrid finishes reading a letter from her husband and sits motionless, contemplative for several seconds.

Petter complains of her folly and self-indulgence in not coming back straightaway as planned. He tells her again how she risks compromising her career and breaching the terms of her contract; how, while she lingers in Paris, there are hundreds of pretty and talented young women knocking daily on Selznick’s door, begging for a part. She can’t take it for granted, he says, that the studio will have her back, and she has to be careful now that she’s turned thirty. Few female stars survive long after that. And he tells her how much Pia misses her, crying often, feeling abandoned by her mother. She’s grown afraid of the dark, he says, and needs her bedside lamp switched on all night so she won’t be scared.

He’s exaggerating, she’s certain. It’s not as if she doesn’t see Pia. And she has not done what many of her fellow stars do, which is to ship any children straight off to boarding school. She sees Pia most days when she’s not working, and pretty much every weekend, then for weeks at a time at Christmas and Easter, and for much of the summer holidays. They go cycling and swimming together. They go shopping in the stores, and for walks in the hills. Pia is no different from many other young boys and girls in Hollywood – pretty, spoilt, precocious, a little bit lonely maybe without a brother or sister to play with – but with every benefit of American plenty spent on her education and leisure. The loneliness she won’t apologize for. Wasn’t she lonely as a kid, being an only child? After all, her own mother was dead before she had a chance to know her, and she survived all right, didn’t she, learning to be self-reliant? And wasn’t it out of loneliness that her imagination flourished? And from that grew her love of dressing up, her love of dreaming and reading, her longing to act. And while she wouldn’t wish the grief of orphanhood on her daughter for the world, it was out of this she knows that her inner life quickened, her sense of independence and self-possession thrived. This is a low trick of Petter’s, she considers, to use their daughter’s affections as a bargaining chip to get her back. It’s wrong and simple-minded to think that a child can’t survive without the constant attention of her mother. The important thing for Pia is to know that her mother loves her, and Ingrid loves her without reservation. She is confident that Pia recognizes this as a fundamental fact of her life.

Seeing children in the sandpit in the Champs de Mars this morning, though, playing with their mothers, made her want suddenly to hold her daughter’s hand, to reassure her, to catch up on what she’s been doing and to meet her friends. She thinks of the girl she saw who reminded her of Pia, skipping between two long ropes twirled in opposite directions, and experiences a pang.