Tears spilled from his lidless eyes, but still he wouldn’t turn around.
‘Perhaps this will change your mind. A note from a young woman, not your wife. I took the liberty of opening your letters when I heard you wouldn’t read them, and this one in particular moved me. Shall I read it?’
Tom shook his head.
‘You can’t very well stop me though, can you, so here goes. My dearest Tom, it saddens me beyond measure to learn of your dreadful accident. I sent you a telegram when it first happened, but you may have been too ill to remember. I imagine that recovering from burns is a painful and traumatic ordeal, but if anybody has courage enough for the fight, it’s you, Tom.
If things ever become too much, maybe Karma can help you, as she has helped me. Shortly before your grandmother died, she sent the principal of Campbell College a sum of money to be held in trust for me, should I resume my studies. It is a generous sum, sufficient to fund my medical degree if I should ever be fortunate enough to qualify for the course. She also sent me a marvellous gift: a thylacine pendent on a silver chain. It’s a figurine of Karma, who she knew we both loved. The note told me to wear Karma for good luck, and also that you had the twin of my necklace. The magic has worked for me, Tom. At my darkest times, I’ve held Karma, and felt her strong spirit running free again in her wild mountains. She gives me some of her strength, along with hope for a better future. I sincerely wish that she will do the same for you.
Congratulations on your marriage. I’m sure you and Kitty are a wonderful support for each other during this difficult time. You must bring your wife home to Tasmania soon to meet me and Harry. As you may know, Harry and I are married now, and it is my dearest wish that you two might one day mend the rift between you. Also, you are needed at Binburra. Mrs Mills and George are growing old, and I worry about those two, living out in the bush by themselves.
Please know that my thoughts and prayers are with you, as are those of your brother, Harry.
Your sincere friend and loving sister-in-law, Emma.’
Tom heard folding paper. He opened his eyes and shakily sat up. ‘Give it here.’ McIndoe handed the letter over and Tom read it once, then twice. ‘No more tantrums,’ Tom said at last. ‘Just do what you need to fix my face.’
McIndoe beamed. ‘Very good. We’ll move you to the recovery ward and begin tomorrow.’ He stood and pointed to the letter. ‘Emma’s a very special young lady.’
‘Yes, she is.’ And Harry’s wife. Tom hated that, despite the fact of his own marriage. ‘And doc?’
‘I suppose you want the pendant mentioned in the letter, my boy. A most unusual piece, by the sound of it.’
Tom tried to smile.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said McIndoe. ‘We could all use a little good luck around here.
* * *
McIndoe kept his word. The pendant duly arrived, discovered after a meticulous search of Tom’s possessions in storage. The silver thylacine hung once more around his neck. Whether it was coincidence, a psychological placebo or genuine magic, he didn’t know, but Karma’s arrival coincided with a period of remarkable recovery.
First, McIndoe replaced his eyelids, using tissue-thin skin taken from the inside of his upper arms. Tom was briefly blind again, but this time he could cope. The burns recovery unit at East Grinstead was unique, and full of comforting noises not usually associated with hospital wards. Music played all day on the wireless; Saturday night dance tunes on the gramophone. Loud voices, laughter, singing and the clink of glasses. Wendy hadn’t been wrong about that keg, although she admitted the beer was watered down. They were happy sounds that helped drown out the inevitable moans of pain, and occasional eruptions of rage or despair.
Next McIndoe reconstructed Tom’s cheeks, and built up the fleshy lump in the middle of his face with skin grafts and pig cartilage, until it looked more like a nose.
Tom launched into months of painful surgeries with such enthusiasm that he boosted the morale of the whole ward.
‘I have a new burns patient,’ McIndoe would say. ‘I can restore his body, but only if he lets me. Talk to him, Tom. He’s frightened, in shock. Nothing inspires these men like a good news story from someone who’s suffered as they have.’
And Tom’s was a good news story, although he thought his injuries mild compared to many. Some RAF aircrew burned in the war had been returning to the ward for years, enduring upwards of fifty operations. Mere boys whose hands had been burned to stumps. Young men who’d lost their ears and chins. In an earlier war they might have rotted as beggars by the road, shunned and reviled by the very people they’d sacrificed their youth and health for.
Part artist, part surgeon, McIndoe used pre-injury photographs to guide him. He rebuilt their bodies and their spirits, one operation at a time. He dispensed with the regulation RAF hospital clothes made of bright blue calico and resembling prison garb. The men could wear their service uniforms instead.
He restored their self-esteem, recognising the importance of socially reintegrating his patients. No longer were they hidden away so they wouldn’t frighten the children. McIndoe convinced the locals to support his boys as heroic and deserving young men, who’d helped win the war and save all England. Instead of cringing, people welcomed them at the shops and pub. They invited them to dances and into their homes. Grinstead became known as the town that does not stare.
Much to Tom’s disgust, McIndoe also overlooked the outrageous flirtations of these lonely young men with the nurses, flirtations that at times amounted to assault. McIndoe expected his female staff to be broadminded, and deliberately hired pretty women to make his ‘naughty’ boys’ lives more cheerful. Their happiness was paramount, trumping the basic rights of his staff to a safe workplace.
Tom became a particular champion of the young Red Cross volunteers; naïve girls, many still in their teens. They didn’t know how to deal with difficult, amorous patients, and were offered no protection. ‘Save us from the heroes,’ complained Eve one day, after a patient roughly grabbed her breast while she changed his dressings. It horrified Tom to think of Emma or Kitty in such a vulnerable position.
Tom’s inclination to defend them made him a favourite among the nurses, who remained critical of his wife for staying away. ‘Don’t give us that rubbish about her making a movie. You’re more important than some stupid film. She doesn’t deserve you, she doesn’t.’
They were wrong. It was the other way around. He still couldn’t recall a lot about Kitty or their marriage. How could he expect her to love him under those circumstances? And he had another fear, one common to every man in the ward. His face was a vast improvement on the one he’d arrived with, but he’d never look the way he once did.
For some women, the disfigurements suffered by their loved ones were too much to bear. He’d seen wives and girlfriends turn from injured men on their first visit, never to return. He’d seen them faint clear away. He’d heard stories that during the war, some women failed to claim their unidentified, unconscious and badly-burned men, pretending not to know them. With distorted faces and fingerprints burned off, such patients remained nameless until they could speak for themselves, be identified by a process of elimination, or died.
Some women concealed their disgust and disappointment, putting on a brave face at first, then visiting less and less frequently before fading entirely away. Shattered engagements, broken hearts and broken marriages – all common enough.
Some women stayed out of duty. Some women stayed out of love. Some didn’t stay at all. What sort of woman was Kitty?
Chapter 30
‘Cut!’
Kitty swore under her breath and brushed the flies from her eyes. This heat was impossible. Sweat dripped from her brow, ruining her makeup. She climbed down from the top rail of the corral. Alan Duffy, the director of Secret Heiress, was an old-school nightmare to work with – demanding and uncompromising, criticising everything she did. Kitty glared at him. ‘What now?’
‘Y
ou don’t know your lines, that’s what. Your beloved Buck Carter is about to risk his life on the roughest, toughest, most dangerous Brahman bull in the west, and you just referred to it as a cow.’
’What’s the difference?’
‘A cow has no balls.’
‘Well, do you think I’m going under there to check? It’s an easy mistake.’
‘No, Kitty … no it’s not. And while we’re on the subject of mistakes, I thought you said you could ride?’
‘So?’
Alan snorted with contempt. ‘A donkey at the seaside, maybe. I just talked to our head wrangler. He reckons you don’t know a horse’s head from its arse.’
Alan puffed on his black Sobranie while Thelma, his dowdy little assistant, gave him a weaselly smirk. How Kitty hated that po-faced bitch. Always trying to make trouble. According to the makeup girls, Alan was screwing her. God knows, he’d tried it on with every other female on set. Thelma was probably all he could get.
For the past fortnight Kitty had been shooting location scenes at Worldwide Studio’s movie ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains. She hated the dust and flies. She hated the stark rocky peaks, standing lonely and forbidding against the horizon. There could be bears out there. Maybe wolves and mountain lions as well. She hated the isolation and the ranch’s ‘boy’s own’ culture. In short, it wasn’t going well.
Thelma touched Alan on the arm. She kept her voice low, but Kitty could still hear. ‘We’ll need to use a double for Miss Munro in the cattle drive scenes. Shall I organise that for you, Mr Duffy?’
‘Yes, Thelma. And while you’re at it …’ He gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘Save my life and get her a double for the rest of the whole damn movie.’
Their mocking laughter was the last straw. ‘Fuck you!’ screamed Kitty, hurling away her ridiculous Stetson hat. It landed in the corral, where the bull ground it into the dust with his horns. ‘Get yourself another star.’
Kitty stalked off across the scorching yard that stank of horses and manure, to the shelter of her air-conditioned trailer. She’d made an empty threat. With an airtight contract and a half-finished movie, the studio couldn’t afford to let her go. But maybe now Alan would treat her with some respect.
Kitty unbuckled the torturous leather belt that bit into her skin, cinching in her already tiny waist. She gulped in a delicious breath of cool air, and poured herself an icy drink. If only she could stay here all morning, drinking champagne and staying out of the withering sun. Out of Alan’s line of fire.
This movie wasn’t at all what she’d imagined. The studio had sold it as a sparkling romantic comedy, with a potentially award-winning script. Kitty had been so excited by the offer that she’d taken her agent’s word for it without reading the part for herself. She was starring opposite Montgomery Grant, a Hollywood icon and someone she’d admired for years. He hadn’t done a movie for some time, so she imagined Secret Heiress must be something special to lure him back to work. His casting had convinced her that the film would be taken seriously, by both industry pundits and audiences alike.
How wrong she’d been. The script was lightweight, lacklustre and predictable. The supporting cast consisted of no-names; hack actors, either on their way out, or too new to know what they were doing. Some of them were downright useless, always bungling their lines. And then there was Monty, the biggest disappointment of all.
Montgomery Grant and his square jaw had loomed large upon the silver screen all through her youth. Kitty had been star-struck, and why not? Dark-haired, dark-eyed and with a brooding sexuality that made women swoon. He’d played leading men to the finest: Rosalind Russell, Merle Oberon, Barbara Stanwyck. Being paired with him would surely catapult her to similar levels of fame.
The first day Monty had arrived on set, Kitty realised her mistake. He was ancient, for one thing. Almost fifty, and he looked it. Kitty could barely recognise the former heartthrob of her girlhood fantasies. On the contrary, he was the opposite of everything she admired in a man. Lecherous and egotistical, with bloodshot eyes and an almost manic intensity. Far shorter than he looked on screen. Bone thin and with groping arms, like a spider monkey. Alcohol and drugs had taken their physical toll. Monty lived on coffee and whisky, popped bennies like lollies, and there wasn’t enough pancake makeup in the world to disguise the ugly cracks and pus-filled pimples in his craggy face and neck. He’d been criminally miscast as Buck Carter – her handsome, cowboy lover. Kitty found him repulsive in every respect.
Romantic scenes were the worst. She tried to imagine being with her beautiful Tom instead, tried to summon up some vestige of the unrestrained heat of their passion. Impossible. The lack of chemistry between her and Monty was plain for all to see. Kissing his slobbery lips was like kissing a wet ashtray, and he loved to force his tongue down her throat. She flinched when Monty held her, unable to disguise a shiver of disgust. He always pressed against her crotch or squeezed her breast, pretending it was accidental. They both knew it wasn’t, but Kitty repelled every advance. Movie stars, even washed up ones like Montgomery Grant, weren’t used to rejection and she could feel his cold resentment rising daily.
Kitty cast thoughts of Monty from her mind, lit a cigarette and sat down to wait. She picked up the latest Modern Screen magazine. A devastatingly handsome photo of Gregory Peck graced the cover. Now if he’d been her co-star, she’d have been tempted, marriage or no marriage. After all, her husband was in hospital, a world away. She loved Tom, she really did, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and she was a woman with a healthy sex drive.
Time ticked by. More than an hour passed before a rapid knock came at the door. She poured herself the last of the champagne. Probably Alan, coming crawling back. Or maybe prune-faced princess Thelma. Kitty took a deep breath, determined to stick to her guns. She’d come back on set in return for a full apology. Nothing less would do.
Kitty lounged on the bed at the end of the trailer, looking as stylish as it was possible to look in jeans and an ugly check shirt. ‘Come in.’
But it wasn’t Alan or Thelma standing on the step when the door opened. It was Monty, his face twitching and bloated and red. Even from that distance, she could smell the stink of whisky on his breath. Kitty shrank back on the bed, a swooping, sinking feeling in her stomach. She recognised that look. Her father had worn the same look on his scarred face when he’d come home late at night, drunk and angry, to tear the house apart. To beat up on her mother as Kitty and her sisters trembled in their beds.
Monty stumbled inside and slammed the door shut behind him. ‘Know what you’re doing, you dumb bitch?’ He banged his fist on the table. ‘You’re ruining my fucking comeback. Have you seen the goddamn dailies?’
Kitty slowly shook her head. Alan hadn’t invited her to view them, but in any case, like many actors, she believed it was bad luck to watch her performances back.
‘That love scene yesterday made everybody cringe. No fucking wonder. You had all the sex appeal of a dead fish.’
Kitty wondered whether, if she made a dash, she could get past him before he could react. He was drunk, but then she was a bit drunk too. If only she hadn’t opened that damned champagne.
‘Know what you need, bitch?’ Monty’s tone, low and menacing, alarmed her as much as his words. ‘You need a damn good rogering.’ He swayed as he moved towards her, his bulk blocking her exit.
Kitty started rocking softly, blood hammering in her ears, as terrifying flashbacks of her father assaulted her senses. She had to act soon, or Monty would be upon her.
He peeled off his trousers, paused to empty some bennies into the palm of his hand, then washed the little pills down with a swig of whisky from a silver hip flask. Kitty’s muscles tensed for flight. This was her chance to get past him while he was distracted.
She made a wild dash for the door. Not fast enough. Monty’s arm snaked out with astonishing speed and latched on to her. ‘Be nice to me, Kitty.’ He fondled his groin and raised his eyebrows, urging her
to make the next move. ‘Otherwise I could make a lot of trouble for you at the studio.’
Kitty tried to twist away and he threw her onto the bed, pinned her arms over her head with one hand, and fumbled at her waist with the other. She lay still as a stone, but her mind was working overtime.
‘Your belt’s undone.’ He thumped down on top of her. ‘Were you expecting me?’
Her heart was racing, but she could feel Monty’s beating faster still, as if it might explode from his chest. He bent over and licked her neck. She shuddered as his thick tongue trailed along on her sensitive skin.
Kitty spat in his eye. He released her arms to give her a double-handed slap. Seizing her chance, she brought her knee up hard between Monty’s legs, and heaved him away. He fell off the bed onto his back, his head hitting the floor with a sickening clunk. Kitty leaped over him to escape, but when she reached the door, something made her turn.
Monty lay where he’d fallen, gurgling and clutching at his chest. Foam bubbled from between slack lips and glassy eyes stared at her, bulging from their sockets, as if beseeching her for help. Slowly she returned, horrified and fascinated all at once. Monty’s mouth gaped open as she knelt down beside him. He was trying to say something, clawing at her arm.
Kitty leaned over and whispered in his ear. ‘Screw you.’ She took a pillow from the bed and held it over Montgomery Grant’s face until she was sure he was dead.
Chapter 31
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Alan tried to keep a lid on it, but even way out here at the ranch, movie sets were busy places and riven with gossip. Within hours the news got out that Montgomery Grant had died in Kitty Munro’s trailer – with his pants down.
Kitty waited in a corner of Alan’s office while he made a frantic phone call to the producer. The conversation went back and forth for half an hour. What were they going to do? What if the press got wind of it? How on earth were they going to finish the movie now their star was dead? Easy, Kitty wanted to say. Hire a replacement for Monty, somebody she could work with this time, and reshoot the location scenes. But nobody bothered to ask her opinion. Thelma brought her cups of coffee, but otherwise people either ignored her, or cast brief, pitying glances her way.
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