Suspicious Circumstances (20 page)

‘Gutter. Look who’s talking about gutters!’

And I thought, with rage, of Mother’s beginnings. Mother who had invented the gutter. Mother who’d been born in a Bulgarian trunk. Mother who —
Ask Roger Renard. He was actually there when she did it.

‘No, Nickie.’ Delight was in my arms, caressing my hair.

‘Somehow we’ve got to make it all right with Anny. I can wait. Of course I can wait because I love you.’

‘Oh, Delight, baby, I love you too.’

How conceivably could it have happened while I was saying that, while I was holding her close, kissing her, that a demoralizing memory came of Monique lying on the warm sand with her pink-brown legs and her pink-brown arms and her shimmering sun-bleached hair?

That night was our final night at the Casino and it was just as gala as the opening, with even more celebrities reciting even longer poems about Mother. I stood smoldering on the stage while she bowed, thinking up poems myself which were far more to the point. And then, after the show, she was whisked away for her final Social Triumph by Elsa and Schiaparelli and a lot of Greek gentlemen called Onassis and Nyarchos and things like that. It was about two-thirty when finally Delight and I, hand in hand, went out for the last time through the back stage-doorish entrance from the Casino.

As we started out into the gardens, we ran into a man. He was a very little man in a very French tuxedo with a face like a rather pleasant mouse.

‘Pardon,’ he said.

‘Monsieur,’ I said.

‘In the Casino,’ he went on in French, ‘they told me I might catch Miss Rood coming out. I know it is very late but I have just arrived in Cannes and I saw in the journals that this was her final night. I would very much like to see her. It has been such a long time — an old, old friend.’

He bowed then to Delight and, after Delight, to me. ‘The name,’ he said, ‘is Roger Renard.’

At any other time that name would have started a stampede of butterflies, but now, infuriated as I was with Mother, wishing her every ill, I found it gave me a morbid thrill. I glanced at Delight. Delight, too, I could see, was caught up in a kind of awed fascination.

‘Not
the
Roger Renard!’ I said in French. ‘Not the Monsieur who was married to Norma Delanay!’

‘Norma,’ exclaimed the little man. ‘You know then poor Norma?’

‘I’m Anny’s son,’ I said and I introduced Delight and, suddenly, while I was introducing, I knew what I was going to do. ‘M. Renard, I’m afraid Mother’s off at some party but would you perhaps do us the honor of taking a glass with us?’

M. Renard threw a very French glance from Delight to me. ‘But, Monsieur, you and your lady friend ... no doubt you wish to be alone.’

‘No,’ said Delight eagerly. ‘Not at all. Tell him, Nickie not at all.’

So I said not at all in French and M. Renard accepted the invitation and we all got into a taxi and started out for one of those
bistros
looking over the Vieux Port, which stay open indefinitely. And all the time in the taxi I was thinking: Now we’ll know what Norma knew. Finally, we’ll know what Mother did
when Roger Renard was actually there
. Part of me, a very shadowy part, murmured: Watch out, Nickie. You’ll be sorry. But it wasn’t any match for my rage at Mother’s meddlings or — I’ve got to admit — my curiosity.

As we drifted through the warm summer night air of the bistro towards one of the outdoor tables, Roger Renard was a little ahead of us.

‘We’ll get him tight,’ I whispered to Delight.

‘Tight?’

‘That’s the only way. Get him tight and charm him. You charm him, be the fatalest femme since Poppaea.’

Delight clung on to my elbow. ‘You mean —
Roger Renard was actually there when she did it?
’

‘Yes.’

‘But, Nickie — should we?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Definitely yes.’

Then we were all at a table and I was ordering champagne and Delight, who couldn’t speak any French except the lyrics of M. Trenet’s song, was beaming and looking voluptuous and, for all I knew, nuzzling knees under the table, while I talked animatedly on about Norma and how fond of her I’d been and wasn’t it awful what had happened and how wonderful it must have been to have known Norma and Mother in the old days.

To my joy I began to see that M. Renard, unlike almost every other Frenchman in the world, wasn’t very good at holding his liquor. Maybe, of course, it was a combination of champagne and Delight’s devastating long-lashed glances, but first he grew friendly, then he grew friendlier, then he grew positively expansive. And every time he drained a glass, I drained a glass until I found I was feeling rather peculiar, but I was too excited to care.

When the first bottle was over, I ordered another and then another, and by the time we were deep into the third and both time and space started seeming to do very peculiar things, I saw my opening.

M. Renard, whose expansiveness had turned into heartbreaking melancholy, had gone on for hours about how bad times were for him, how there was a job here, oui, a job there, bien sûr, but it was nothing like the old days when he was one of the first seven cameramen in the French Motion Picture Industry.

‘Ah, Monsieur, yes.’ He leaned back on his rather rickety chair and gazed up at a hideously pruned plane tree which made a sort of arbor above us. ‘You — you are young. Perhaps you will not believe it. But in the old days it was always Roger Renard. Something important happens? Ask Roger Renard. A new star is to be groomed. Will she do? Is she photogénique? Ask Roger Renard. There is An Eye. O là là, there is a cameraman with an Eye. Why, Monsieur, would you believe it? That’s how Anny’s career started. Yes, Monsieur, you might almost say the man who discovered the Great Anny Rood, the man who made her what she is today, was none other than Roger Renard.’

The table seemed to be wobbling slightly but that didn’t matter. I plunged in.

‘Tell us, Monsieur. Mother’s start. Mother’s sudden surge up from the gutter. What could be more inspiring? Tell us. How did it happen?’

‘Ah,’ sighed M. Renard and, for the first time, filled his empty glass from the bottle without an enormous amount of ‘permettez, Monsieurs'. ‘The Great Anny Rood! The beginnings of the Great Anny Rood.’

Then he was off. As I listened, fascinated, wishing the table wouldn’t sway, wishing Delight could understand French and wishing, just a little, that I’d never started this in the first place, the saga began.

There’d been two producers, a M. Dupont and a M. Picquot. M. Dupont had been the genius. M. Picquot had had the firmer control of the money for the backing. M. Dupont and M. Picquot had bought a sensational script with a sensational part in it for a woman. Who should they cast in it? Get Roger Renard, that wonderful Eye. So M. Renard had been hired as cameraman and the search had begun. M. Renard, whose Eye hadn’t been wonderful enough to keep him from marrying Norma, had tried, needless to say, to push Norma but, needless to say, that hadn’t got anywhere. Then one day, while M. Picquot was off somewhere in Lyon making sure of his backing, M. Dupont had gone to a vaudeville show called
Hola Hé,
and there had been Mother helping Uncle Hans to yodel. One look at Mother and M. Dupont had said, ‘This is it'. M. Dupont had gone backstage and talked to Mother. ‘You,’ M. Dupont had said, ‘are it.’ And the next morning he had called Roger Renard and said, ‘Roger, I have found her.’ And then he got Roger to meet Mother at a café near the Étoile and Roger Renard had used the Eye and had seen instantly that here was a great star, and they had all drunk Cinzano Blanes, toasting Mother’s future. ‘Ah,’ said M. Renard, lurching somewhat across the table for the champagne bottle. I lurched first and splashed some wine into his glass and some into mine and started splashing some into Delight's, who said, ‘No, Nickie. No more.’

‘Ah,’ said M. Renard again. ‘There it was. Success had swooped down for the poor little girl, the unknown, humble, obscure little assistant to the yodeller. Or so it had seemed. But success’ — Mr. Renard kissed his fingers at something or other — 'she is a fickle protectrish … pro …’

‘Protectrice?’ I said.

M. Renard beamed at me and then beamed at Delight and suddenly, like a terrifying crab, his hand scuttled across the table and pinched her forearm. The beam went away then and a look of great lugubrosity took its place.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Poor Anny. For there was still M. Picquot, M. Picquot, who was in Lyon organizing the capital, M. Picquot, an homme très sérieux with a rather plump mistress who was called Yvette. Non, j'ai fait une erreur. C'était Madeleine … A voluptuous woman, yes, a worthy mistress for an homme sérieux, but plump. And that is not right for the movies, Monsieur. Plumpness and the camera — they do not make a wedding.’

I knew he was wandering and I knew it was up to me to get him back on to the track, but my mind seemed to be wandering too. With a heroic effort, I said,

‘But — what happened, M. Renard? M. Picquot came back from Lyon?’

‘Ah. M. Picquot sends a telegram from Lyon. He will arrive the next day at the Gare de Lyon. And M. Picquot has to meet Anny too for he too must okay her. So M. Dupont says to me, ‘Who best can convince M. Picquot that this Anny Rood she is a great, great star? Not me, for M. Picquot and I have our differences, but it is you, Roger. You — with your Eye. You will be the one.’ So the next day I meet M. Picquot at the Gare de Lyon, although I have little time, being then on another movie, and I take him in a taxi to the little hotel where Anny is living. In the taxi M. Picquot says, ‘So you and Dupont have found our star?’ And I said, “Yes, she is ravishing. C'est une merveille.” And M. Picquot says, “I will inspect her, this merveille, but it is already decided in my mind. It came to me in Lyon when I was lying again with Madame Ma Femme. There is only one woman who is perfect for this part and this is my Madeleine.” ’

M. Renard picked up his empty glass, tilted it exaggeratedly to his lips and when nothing happened he giggled. ‘Ah, my heart sank to my boots. You can imagine. For I knew M. Picquot. Not a genius like M. Dupont, no, but a man who, when his mind is made up, digs in, in with his heels. So I try to argue, but all the time it does not work and we come to this little hotel where Anny lives. The squalor. You cannot imagine. Way, way up beyond Montmartre, a worker’s quartier of a sordidness that is not imaginable. And there, in a lamentable little suite of two rooms, is Anny because M. Dupont has alerted her and she is — ah, the poor girl, she has done everything to make herself beautiful, all is perfection. The Eye looks. It says, Never in a thousand years can there be such perfection of bone for the cameras. And I introduce them and M. Picquot looks at her and he grunts and then he says, “Mademoiselle, I am truly sorry, but the part is already taken.” And to see Anny’s face! I shall never forget; it was the face of all women, all struggling women with the courage, the ferocity to reach to the top, looking at a man who is saying to her, “I am sorry, Mademoiselle, but the role is taken.” And then ... and then …’

Some dreadful memory of Ronnie’s ‘and thens’ swept over me. Suddenly, even though everything was wobbling and swimming around me, some part of me, deep inside, was sober again — horribly, terrifyingly sober and it was thinking : Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I say it would be disaster?

Delight was leaning tensely forward in her chair. She hadn’t been understanding, of course, but she must have understood enough to make her look the way she did.

‘And — ’ I said in a sort of groan.

‘Ah.’ Roger Renard’s mouth was crumpling in nostalgic sympathy. ‘My heart, it is bleeding. But what can I do? The one with the money — who is he but M. Picquot? And it is late and I have my engagement at the distant studio. So I have to go away. But before I go away, I plead once more. “Ah, M. Picquot, Madeleine, she is a woman of many charms, but this one — this Anny Rood — this is something, this is what does not happen every day.” But M. Picquot had the heels dug in and, as I leave, once again, I hear him say, “I am desolated, Mademoiselle. M. Dupont is ravished to have you for the part, but unhappily M. Dupont is only the one half of Picquot and Dupont and this part of Dupont and Picquot has already filled the role.” ’

M. Renard took a very large white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his tuxedo and mopped his face. The butterflies were there, of course they were, and they were worse than they had ever been because now they were butterflies rendered absolutely Bacchic by champagne.

‘But ...’ I said, ‘ ... but M. Renard, it can’t have ended that way because — because Mother got the part.’

‘Ah,’ said M. Renard, reappearing from behind the handkerchief with the happiest of beams on his mouse face. ‘Have I not said that success she is the most fickle of protectresses? The stair-rail in Anny’s hotel — it was terrible, shocking, the condition of the whole hotel, it was inouï. What happens? I leave. Soon after me. M. Picquot leaves too and, as he leaves — M. Picquot was a bulky man — he leans on the stair-rail and ... and …’

‘And!’ I gasped.

‘Pan! goes the stair-rail. Crash goes M. Picquot. Five étages he falls into the foyer. Poor M. Picquot. But there was no pain, they say. The neck it was broken — instantly.’

M. Renard picked up the empty champagne bottle and looked at it blurredly.

‘Mon Dieu, quelle chance, n'est-ce pas? But fortune favors her own. Without M. Picquot, all the money comes under the control of M. Dupont. There were, of course, the police. They make trouble for Anny, so cynical, so unsympathetic, the flics. But what do they prove? Nothing but that M. Picquot falls. So all is well. The movie is made. Anny Rood, she is a sensation — a triumph.’

He put the bottle down on the table and looked as if he might pinch Delight again.

Being drunk and sober at the same time was the most awful sensation. We knew now what Norma and Sylvia had known. Of course we did. But how could I face it? How could anyone face it? And then, making it even more unendurable, I realized that I must have been there at the time. A terrible baby. Where? In the other room, back in the other room of the sordid little suite?