by Rachel Rhys
This.
Like this.
The first thing she notices when she opens her eyes is that she is lying on a rock, with a stream of foaming water running from her mouth. The second thing she notices is the pain from her head, her arm, her legs. And the third thing she notices is Noel Lester.
His shirt is soaked and sticking to him, water dripping from his hair on to her face as he leans over her, inspecting the damage.
‘You could have been killed.’
He sounds so cross about it. His mouth set hard, his eyes like green granite. As if she has done it on purpose. As if she had been able to think of nothing better to do than to fling herself off a cliff.
‘If I hadn’t come after you, convinced you’d set off one of the mines the Germans left behind, if I hadn’t heard you scream when you fell—’
‘I didn’t fall.’ Eve raises herself painfully to a sitting position. ‘Something hit me. Or someone.’
She feels again that hot slam, the awful realization of having nothing under her feet.
‘I didn’t see anyone on the path.’
Eve peers through the blood that still streams from her head, mixing with the salt water running off her hair.
‘They could have gone the opposite way from the hotel.’
But already it sounds far-fetched. The sort of thing a person might say to cover up their own innate clumsiness.
Noel, still crouched down so that he is on a level with her, puts out a hand and lifts the strands of her hair that are getting caught in the cut in her head with a gentleness that belies the hard lines of his face. Suddenly self-conscious, Eve tries to raise her own left hand to her hair, triggering shooting pains in her wrist.
‘I think I’ve broken it,’ she cries.
Noel takes her hand very lightly between his own to get a better view of her wrist, already fat and swollen.
‘I saw enough broken limbs during the war to last a lifetime,’ he says. ‘Luckily I don’t think this is one.’
He raises his eyes from her arm to her face. And now there is a most peculiar meeting of gazes, a sense of someone climbing in past her irises, through her pupils until her head is filled with him.
For a moment all of it is forgotten: the blood, which has now slowed to a trickle that snakes down her cheek and into the corner of her mouth, the throbbing in her wrist, the cuts to her legs, which are only now making themselves felt.
Then: He could be your brother. That voice in her head.
She scrambles to her feet, ignoring the way her body erupts into shooting sparks of pain. And he stands too, wet and solid and flint-eyed, and follows as she makes her way slowly back to the hotel, trying not to hobble even though it hurts to bend her knee, because the thought of him touching her is not to be borne. But he doesn’t even try, doesn’t put a hand under her elbow or an arm around her waist. Instead they walk in single file, like strangers who just happen to be going in the same direction.
And then – after the stares of the hotel guests, the mamas with their disapproving eyes and all the bored young things sniffing for something, anything, to take their minds off the relentless pursuit of leisure and pleasure – he drives her home.
She leans back in the passenger seat and squeezes her eyes shut so the tears cannot come out.
22
10 June 1948
‘IT LOOKS RIDICULOUS.’
‘Not ridiculous, exactly. Interesting. Mysterious.’
‘Ugly as sin.’
‘Well …’
Even Sully cannot deny that the deep red scratches that criss-cross Eve’s calves, virulent even under her nylon stockings, are seriously unattractive. And that’s not to mention the deep gash in her forehead or the purple bruising around her eye that no amount of make-up can cover.
Eve stands in front of the large mirror in the villa’s master bedroom, surveying her reflection with a pain in her heart equal almost to the pain in her sprained wrist. The blue dress is just as it was, sumptuous, stylish, beautifully made to tailor itself to her shape. It is her body that lets it down. Scarred with cuts and scrapes and bruises that bloom like blowsy black flowers on her skin, the flesh around them already taking on a greenish hue.
There is a bandage that winds from the tips of the fingers on her left hand to a point halfway between her wrist and her elbow. She has tried to keep it clean but already the edges are fraying and grubby.
And her face. Her poor, ruined face with that clot of blackened blood scabbing over the point where her forehead hit the rock as she entered the water.
‘You know, the French have a neat term, l’appel du vide – meaning the impulse that comes over you when you’re standing at the top of a building or a cliff, just to fling yourself off. I had it myself once on the Eiffel Tower.’
‘I did not fling myself off.’
Outrage makes her shrill and Sully holds up his hands in mock appeasement.
‘Still, you could have been killed.’
Eve has heard this a lot over the twenty-four hours since Noel first said it as he bent over her on the rocks, and now she fervently wishes never to hear it again.
Ruth Collett arrives to help prepare her hair for the wedding.
‘Oh my,’ she says, standing in the doorway, transfixed.
‘Please don’t try to tell me it’s not as bad as you thought.’
‘No, it’s far worse,’ admits Ruth. ‘But it gives you a back-story. Something to make you stand out amongst all the starlets and society madams. It makes you look mysterious and interesting.’
Eve groans and sinks down on to the bed with her head in her one good hand.
‘But I don’t want to be mysterious and interesting. I want to be ravishing.’
Ruth does her best with Eve’s tangle of hair. Washing it over the sink in the bathroom and combing it out with a little drop of oil before drying it using a square-backed brush so that it feels for once silky and controllable, and then twisting it up and holding it in place with a handful of dark pins.
‘Though I don’t know why I’m bothering,’ she says, standing back to survey her handiwork. ‘The forecast is for a storm later. Then everyone will look like drowned rats.’
Eve has to admit her hair looks better than it ever has before, but with her forehead still gouged with a deep claret line and her eye ringed with purple, the effect of the whole thing is of an attractive set of curtains framing a view of a bomb site.
Matters only deteriorate once they arrive at the fairytale house with its icing-coloured tiers and fight their way to the gate through the crowds of people and police, and the unlucky members of the press pack who haven’t managed to wangle an invitation to the event itself.
‘All the women are so beautiful,’ says Eve despairingly as they step on to the terrace, following the sound of the band who have set up on the far side of the enormous swimming pool.
‘But none of them have thought to decorate their skin,’ says Sully. ‘You’ll see. You’ll set a trend. They’ll all be going home to scratch their arms and legs.’
He is smiling, but his voice has that hard edge Eve has come to recognize. She knows he has been drinking since the morning. Bourbon, which he swigs from a small metal flask he keeps in the pocket of his black suit jacket.
‘What is that strange smell?’
Eve had first smelled it on the way in through the front door, but out here in the back it is overpowering.
‘Laurent has had the swimming pool filled with Gloria’s favourite cologne,’ says Sully. ‘Romantic, isn’t it? If you can get past the urge to gag.’
Eve doesn’t believe the vast pool can be entirely filled with perfume but she doesn’t want to argue with Sully in his current mood. Whatever the ratio of cologne to water, it is clearly far too much.
They mingle uneasily with the other guests, waiting for the wedding party to arrive from the ceremony in Vallauris. Eve had been surprised at first to learn that the glamorous couple planned to marry in a simple town hall, unt
il she remembered Gloria’s divorcee status.
‘My God, are those tribal markings?’
Clemmie Atwood is standing in front of her, looking immaculate in a floor-length pink gown slashed practically to the navel, her hair piled up high and woven with silk roses the exact shade of her dress. Her skin glows, healthy and rose-cheeked – and entirely unblemished.
Next to her, Duncan looks sallow and ill at ease, for once not bothering with the world-weary facade he usually tries to construct. And indeed, what would be the point of pretending to be anything in this company, where Eve has already spotted Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich and the man, whose name she forgets, who is being feted as the fastest runner ever recorded. She has glimpsed the Windsors talking to a trio of singing sisters from America. Rumour has it Picasso is here somewhere, and she keeps an eye out for him, hoping to be able to report back to Jack Collett. The fashion designer Coco Chanel stands in the centre of a little knot of admirers, wearing a plain dark gown looped with strings of pearls.
In such a crowd of the world’s highest achievers it would be foolish to attempt to appear bigger or tougher or richer or more successful. Better just to observe and absorb and be dazzled.
There is no sign of Noel. Good, thinks Eve.
A hush now. The musicians fall silent. The crowd around the entrance to the house parts and then erupts into a spontaneous ooh as the newly married couple make their entrance amid a lightning storm of camera flashes from the press, who are penned up along the sidelines of the partygoers.
Eve can tell right away there is something wrong. Gloria looks as beautiful as it is possible for a human being to look, in a white dress that moulds itself to her like a second skin, her red hair tumbling in thick, perfect curls over her shoulders. But she is leaning on her much shorter new husband as if nursing some injury and the famous smile seems painted on to her face. Eve looks for the bruises she’d seen on the actress’s arm, but the long satin sleeves of the dress cover her from shoulder to wrist. Next to Eve, Sully reaches his hand into his suit pocket as if checking that the flask is still in place.
Laurent leads Gloria to stand by the pool, facing the band, who have launched into a gutsy version of the ‘Wedding March’, to pose for choreographed photographs. Her smile never wavers, and her eyes have that wide, glassy look Eve now recognizes.
‘My dear Eve. What has happened to your lovely face?’
The soft, French accent is unmistakeable even before Eve registers that Victor Meunier is standing by her shoulder, appraising her with an expression of such tender solicitude that she feels like crying. For a moment she forgets all about the photograph and the gossip that has been flying around about her and the Frenchman. She sees only the sympathy in his eyes, and the way the smooth planes of his face stretch out in concern.
‘I fell,’ she says. Already the idea of someone deliberately slamming into her as she peered over the edge of the rocks seems preposterous, a memory her treacherous mind invented to save itself from the shame of having allowed herself to topple forwards.
‘You must take better care of yourself, my dear Mrs Forrester.’ Victor’s words are like a soothing compress.
He leans towards her and reaches out one of his long, elegant fingers to her forehead, the lightest of touches on the hard shell of her cut, and she briefly closes her eyes. When she opens them again, there is Noel Lester, directly in her line of sight, wearing a black suit that brings out the fierce green of his eyes. Staring at her as if she is someone he doesn’t know. Someone he doesn’t want to know.
Now Duncan breaks away from the group and steps in front of his brother. Eve sees him lay a hand on Noel’s arm, murmur something in a low voice that makes Noel nod and, finally, drop his eyes. Eve guesses she is the subject of their discussion and her cheeks burn as Noel turns to disappear back into the crowd as if he was never there.
‘The boys are in a celebratory mood, I see,’ says Sully, who has been observing the interaction between the brothers. ‘You’ve got to admire Duncan’s nerve, showing up here when he’s so in hock to the groom. If I were him I’d be keeping my back to the wall.’
Eve notices how Sully’s words are slurred together and how he keeps one hand resting on his flask inside his pocket even while holding a newly replenished glass of champagne in the other.
On her left, Victor leans in towards Eve, creating the illusion that they are alone here in the midst of this public circus.
‘That photograph,’ he says, his face so close to hers she can feel his warm breath on her cheek, sweet from whatever he has just been drinking. ‘I hope it has not made things difficult for you. Your husband …’
‘If my husband receives such a photograph he will see it for what it is,’ says Eve, moving slightly away in case Noel Lester should happen to glance over again. ‘Somebody attempting to make trouble.’
Her voice comes out more clipped than she intended.
There is a crash from the swimming pool area behind her, followed by a collective cry from the crowd. Eve turns towards the source of the disruption and sees to her horror that Gloria has fallen over and is sprawled inelegantly on the floor, her dress hitched up around her thighs, exposing the legs that the studio uses to great effect to promote every Gloria Hayes picture.
Laurent leans down to help her back to her feet.
Even from this distance Eve can see the vein throbbing in his high forehead, the fingers closed like a vice around Gloria’s arm as he tries to drag her upright. Everyone around them is staring in appalled fascination as if this is just another part of the spectacle that has been laid on for their entertainment. Even Laurent’s henchmen hold back, unsure whether their intervention would be welcomed.
Are they all just going to stand and stare? Will no one help?
Eve can bear it no longer. She hurries forward on her silly heels, crouching down beside Gloria so that she can put her good arm around her waist and get some leverage to help lift her to her feet.
‘Why, bless your heart,’ says Gloria, turning her full-watt smile on Eve. The lipstick is smudged towards the corner of her mouth. ‘I think I must have tripped on something. Laurent, darlin’, you need to make this terrace more level.’
Eve looks down at the perfectly flat tiled surface. She does not dare look at Laurent himself.
‘Stand up straight, you drunk whore.’
The words are hissed so they don’t carry to the press photographers, snapping from the sidelines, or the guests, still gawping in their finery.
For a moment Eve is too shocked to register what she has heard, then – whump – it hits her like a punch to the stomach.
But Gloria herself doesn’t seem to notice.
‘I’ll be right as rain now, honey,’ she says to Eve, finally upright and straightening to her full impressive height.
She produces a smile for the assembled crowd as if she has just stepped out of a limousine at a premiere.
Eve looks at her eyes, noticing their lack of focus, and the way Gloria seems unaware of the dirty marks streaking her white gown, or the single mascara-blackened tear sliding down her face. And she realizes that wherever the star is in her head, it is not here, present at her own wedding.
‘I’ll certainly have someone come to flatten down those tiles just as soon as the wedding is over. Anyone could have fallen over them,’ says Laurent, talking at a normal volume for the benefit of the onlookers. ‘Thank goodness you weren’t hurt, my sweet.’
He makes a gesture with his head, a jerk so slight it might almost have been a stretch. Instantly the two henchmen from the other night are by his side.
‘Now why don’t you go with Hugo and Marc, my love, to freshen up.’
The way he says it, it’s not a question.
Eve becomes aware now of a movement to the side of her. Sully is making his way slowly through the crowd. Though his eyes are fixed on Laurent he still has his hand in his suit pocket. Really, can the man not do without a drink, even now? Her stomach f
alls away when she sees him withdraw from the pocket not the flask she is expecting, but—
The pistol Sully is holding is compact. Small enough to fit into the palm of a hand. No one else seems to have noticed it.
Propped up between the two expressionless bodyguards, Gloria allows herself to be led away in the direction of the house. The crowd parts to let her through. All the time, she is beaming, a queen on walkabout among her subjects, head hold high as she sails through, steered by her two silent companions.
Eve feels as if a hole has opened up deep down inside her. She keeps her eyes trained on Sully. Don’t, she says to him wordlessly. Don’t. Still he approaches, the gun now tucked just out of sight inside his pocket, a curiously detached expression on his face.
With the bodyguards out of the way, Laurent is alone.
Sully reaches the front of the crowd. Stops.
His hand reaches once again for the pistol.
Eve finds her feet and plunges forward, placing herself between Sully and his target.
For a moment, Sully’s expression doesn’t change, as if he doesn’t see her standing in front of him. Then his eyes refocus.
‘Are you crazy? What are you doing?’
Sully blinks as she speaks. Sways.
‘It’s not loaded,’ he says finally, letting the gun fall back into his pocket and dropping his hands by his side. ‘I don’t even know if it’s real. I won it from a French soldier in a drunken bet in a bar in Monte Carlo. I just thought I should do something. Act. You know. Rather than stand there watching. Acting is the thing.’
So drunk he hardly makes sense.
‘You scared me half to death.’
Weak with relief, Eve takes him firmly by the shoulders and turns him roughly around.
She begins to follow Sully away from the house, but feels a tap on her bare shoulder. Turning, she sees Laurent standing there. He looks her up and down so intently that she feels the throbbing from the wound in her head and the ache of her wrist under her bandage and the sharp pain of those deep scratches on her shins.
‘Go home, Mrs Forrester.’