Seducing Ingrid Bergman (20 page)

She faces the fact: her marriage is unravelling. When she looks in the mirror, it is another woman she sees.

She confesses it all to Hitchcock with such a look of anguish that he sends away his driver and pours himself another Scotch. Now in his mid-forties, though seeming older because of his weight, Hitchcock impresses her as wise, long-married, and a dispenser of common sense. At the same time, she’s aware that he has a little crush on her, which she can never quite bring herself to discourage.

She refuses to deceive herself, she says. She no longer loves Petter and is finding it hard to conceal the fact. She’s been prepared to take things minute by minute, she says, to proceed hour by hour. A person can manage for a long time like that. Maybe for ever.

Hitchcock allows a silence to develop. His face remains rosy, jovial, though his eyes hold a sorrow. He looks at her as if watching a perilous experiment unfold.

Now, she says, instead of intimacy, it is suffocation she feels. And there are occasions when she looks at him – when he’s pouring a drink or tapping a pencil, or just lifting a fork to his mouth – that she loathes him, can’t stand the man. His feet are cold in bed, she says. And he snores.

Hitchcock sinks the last inch of his whisky. Beads of perspiration line his brow.

The truth is, she says, she prefers men like her coffee, dark and bitter. To be consumed in a few quick swallows. Hot.

It is now that she tells him about Capa. Her blissful time in Paris; his arrival in Los Angeles; her need to keep their love a secret; her anguish that they are so frequently apart.

Hitchcock seems to have trouble breathing. His face is red from the whisky. He rises from his chair and moves to hug her. He says that he had no idea about any of this or how she was feeling, that she must be a saint to conceal all these difficulties, and heroic to soldier on. He calls her
my darling
and strokes her hair. He kisses her on the forehead, and she feels his weight press against her. The smell of his sweat and the whisky on his breath rise like a cloud around her. He says that he feels flattered by her faith in him, that he will always be there for her, and is delighted to have this intimate chat. He says she is doing a great job as Alicia and that work can be a great consolation.

She says he is a sweet man, like a father to her, and of all the people she knows, she is sure she can trust him with her secret.

Next day it’s the most ambitious shot of the film. Everyone is there to watch.

Hitchcock has ordered the manufacture of a large gantry and small elevator to house the camera so that it can swoop seamlessly from a high ceiling with a wide panorama down past a chandelier to a marbled foyer where guests are mingling at a party, before moving in for a tight focus on Ingrid’s hand in which she clutches a key.

Ingrid has to keep absolutely still except for a little twitching of her fingers so that the lens can reveal what she conceals.

Capa is so used to snapping away without anyone paying attention, he doesn’t notice how silent it is once filming begins, so when he raises the Leica to his face, clicks and winds on in two swift movements, everyone glares in his direction.

Hitchcock calls ‘Cut’. He looks at Ingrid, rather than directly addressing Capa. ‘I’d be grateful if you could remain quiet on the set when we’re shooting. Your camera may be tiny, Mr Capa, but it still makes an irritating noise.’

Hitchcock winks at Ingrid.

Ingrid winks at Capa.

Capa noiselessly apologizes, lets his hands fall to his sides. In the next take, she’s conscious of him watching her as the camera swoops down towards her on the gantry. She doesn’t find it at all hard to convey that little bit of panic beneath the poise.

*   *   *

At midnight, at a party on New Year’s Eve with Petter, with the firecrackers going off outside, Ingrid retires to the bathroom, looks at herself in the mirror, and cries.

She tries to tell herself it’s not her fault that all this has happened. She knows, though, of course, that it is. She has succumbed to temptations that ought to have been resisted, given in to the most primitive of impulses. With a little more strength and self-discipline, she considers, it could all have been avoided.

When they return home an hour later, she heads straight upstairs. She pushes open the door to Pia’s bedroom and sees her daughter, her face white in the darkness, surrounded by her long-lashed dolls.

Ingrid approaches, adjusts her bedcovers, and the girl stirs, awake. Immediately Ingrid offers her a drink. Pia seizes both sides of the glass and insists with a seven-year-old’s greediness on drinking down to the bottom. Finished, stupefied with milk, the young girl flops back onto her bed. She’s getting heavy now, Ingrid recognizes. The girl has taken on a definite heft. In just a few months she has grown taller, and her legs are so long and lovely she doesn’t know what to do with them.

She hears Pia smack her lips, and watches for a second as her daughter scratches her head in drowsy puzzlement. She listens for the familiar rhythm of her breathing, waits to see the up and down movement of her chest. Her sleeping peaceful face hovers like a little moon in the dark. Her cheeks are flushed, her hands clammy, her brow feverish with dreams.

Seeing her like this, she wants to be with her always, to protect her for ever, to keep things as they are. She resolves never to put her secure little world in jeopardy again. Certainly not for another man.

The next morning, however, when she wakes next to Petter on the first day of this new year, and before the maid returns from her few days away, she prematurely packs away the Christmas tree and greetings cards, clears up the litter of pine needles and stray bits of tinsel. She copies all her friends’ telephone numbers and contacts into a new black leather address book, though when it comes to her own name and telephone number, she leaves the details blank.

14

Ingrid makes a deal with the girls on the switchboard at the studio. She gives them my name and tells them that, whenever I call, they should connect me directly. She tells them I’m her personal photographer and responsible for her publicity shots. The women on the switchboard relish this sisterly conspiracy and are always eager to put me through.

The shots I take are syndicated to newspapers and magazines world-wide. It’s an easy job and a large market, and pays very well. I’ve never had so much money, and for so little risk or effort.

The only problem is, there’s nothing else for me to do. I go to the odd screening, spend a little time in the cutting room, and hang around the set, hoping to catch a few minutes with Ingrid or even just a glimpse of her.

She works most days. It takes two hours each morning to put on her make-up so it can hold up under the Klieg lights. And then eight hours on the set to produce just two minutes of film. It doesn’t seem much of a return for a day’s work. The whole operation seems so ponderous and repetitive, and entirely without glamour, it’s like living your life in slow motion.

When I’m not required on the set, which is most days, I head out to the track at Santa Anita, play tennis, walk along the beach or lounge around the pool drinking cocktails with strange names. All of which is great, of course, but I grow bored doing nothing, and after a time it’s hard not to feel a bit empty like one of the town’s vacant lots.

Then in the evening there are the parties.

*   *   *

Tonight the drive of David O. Selznick’s mansion in Beverly Hills is packed with cars and jammed with vans from Los Angeles’ florists and catering firms.

I hand my printed invitation to one of the heavies on the door, slick my hair back, and adjust my bowtie. The tuxedo feels too long in the arms, but it was the nearest fit in the rental shop. With a little tug on each of my cuffs, I slip inside.

I walk past a high-ceilinged library, an oblong screening room, and a ladies’ room where the mink coats are piled high. I arrive finally at a set of French windows. Exotic plants are painted on the wall, their green tendrils extending like fingers towards the lights.

Two gold-coloured sofas seem to float on the marble floor and each supports a trio of expensively dressed young women, their legs all crossed the same way as if someone has been practising knots. Beyond the window, a large white marquee glimmers in the light from an oval swimming pool. The silhouettes of men and women mingle inside and move like shadows in a puppet show.

Cicadas rattle in the grass. Waiters circulate with pitchers of drinks and trays of ice. Bottles of Moët bob in iced water held in enormous tubs. Daiquiris are served in coconut pots with pink parasols.

The grass under my feet feels stiff and artificial, and the garden bristles with these spiky, vivid flowers that seem part of a futuristic film set.

Selznick himself is a tall man with owl-eyed glasses. He never stops talking or shaking hands, presiding like a minor deity over the stars.

Introduced to him by Ingrid, I ask what the O stands for in his middle name.

‘It stands for nothing,’ he says, and laughs.

He jokes with Ingrid about a film the studio is working on. ‘The rough cut was four hours long.’

‘Was it good?’

‘It was terrible.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We cut it in half.’

‘And?’

‘Now it’s only terrible for two.’

In the last couple of months, he has left his wife for the actress Jennifer Jones. Wracked with guilt over the affair, he’s busy telling everyone how he’s been several times to see a psychiatrist, paying double the usual fee. After listening carefully for a number of weeks, it seems the analyst agrees that in fact he’s done the right thing and acted honourably in leaving his wife. So now he’s going around cheerfully informing people that he had no option, that it was the only course open to him.

‘It’s all been scientifically proved,’ he says. ‘Better than a goddamn Gallup poll.’

Behind him the swimming pool shimmers, milky and inviting. Is there anything more beautiful than the blue of a swimming pool lit up at night? All that’s needed to complete the scene are half a dozen bathing belles performing some Busby Berkeley number.

Producers and actresses shuffle and re-group. I recognize Miriam Hopkins, George Sanders, Lana Turner, Joseph Cotten, Hedy Lamarr. And Charles Boyer, who is so small that when he played Ingrid’s husband in
Gaslight
, he had to stand on a box in order to kiss her lips.

Everywhere I look there are movie stars, half-familiar faces in small constellations. Guests circle like fireflies about the garden, with the moon tilted and pink as a grapefruit above.

It’s at the parties that I get to meet and speak to Ingrid.

She stands nursing a wineglass in her hands, her legs crossed at the ankle. She’s wearing a black evening dress and looks fabulous. Her white arms emerging from short black sleeves seem long and lovely. Her white gloves extend to the elbow. When she speaks to me, it is with a practised casualness, and she’s careful not to let on. She puts a glass wall up, smiling sweetly and speaking out the side of her mouth with a kind of regal disregard. At least once a week she’ll slip me a hastily scrawled note on a bit of lined paper asking me to meet her at a rented apartment or at Irwin’s beach house in Malibu.

Petter is here tonight. It’s the first time I’ve set eyes on him.

He’s taller than I imagined, more convivial, drinks a lot and has an explosive laugh that echoes round the pool. He’s a talented dancer, too, incredibly energetic, spinning out his partners with accustomed grace across the floor. He performs the jitterbug, rumba, and samba. But he perspires a lot and has to change his shirt at least twice during the next three hours.

We’re introduced by Ingrid. She tells him how we ran across one another in Paris, that I was a famous war photographer – I notice the past tense – and that I’m looking for a position in Hollywood.

I could argue, qualify, correct her, but I don’t.

She leaves us alone, gliding off to charm another knot of people, her hand raised in greeting as if she hasn’t seen them for years.

Petter’s handshake is intimidating, fierce. It’s odd, I know, but it’s only when I speak to him that at last I grasp the reality of his marriage to Ingrid. Until now, I’ve appreciated it as an idea, an abstract concept, but it’s been hard to think of him as her husband in any meaningful way. And here he is, living, breathing, telling jokes. I surprise myself by finding his presence immediately offensive, the way he borrows his glow from Ingrid, the way he basks in an atmosphere of associated greatness. This is the man who sleeps next to her every night, who shares her bed, and who, as her manager, agent, as well as husband, owns and controls her like a piece of real estate. The thought touches a cold, hard place inside me.

‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘You believe in Marxism?’

‘You believe in the Virgin birth?’

‘That’s a dangerous question.’

‘And yours isn’t?’

In his one genuine aside, he bemoans the weakness of American beer, comparing it to piss. He winks, appealing to me as a fellow European.

‘Don’t drink it, then,’ I say, not wanting to play along.

He looks at me, grins. ‘I don’t.’

The encounter disconcerts me in a way that I didn’t expect it to. He’s no monster or villain, but he exists, and that’s enough. He moves off to curry favour with a producer, telling him loudly so everyone can hear how, in his opinion, Hollywood has mangled the theories of Sigmund Freud.

For once, I’m surprised but happy to see Joe. He looks more tanned and has grown a moustache since I last saw him in Paris.

‘You look good,’ I tell him.

‘It took me ten years to get invited to parties like this, Capa. And you just walk straight in.’

‘You sound bitter.’

‘Damn right, I am.’

I laugh, offer him a cigarette.

He refuses, starts to smile, but something in the tension of his cheeks prevents him. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘You want to try and stop me?’

‘That’s what they pay me for.’

‘Do they pay you enough?’

He gives me a dark look that has a glimmer of sympathy in it, as if to say I should count myself lucky – most people don’t even get warned.