Beautiful People

by Wendy Holden

  "We couldn't do a sequel," Michael J. Seltzer said shortly. "She got her head chopped off in the last one."

  Belle glared indignantly at Seltzer. "We should have done Anne Boleyn instead. Or Elizabeth…whatever number she was. The one in the big ruffs. Or Henry the whatever. You know, that powercrazed psycho with the six wives." Belle rolled her eyes. "Six wives! How normal was he?"

  The six-times-married Arlington looked predictably thunderous at this. The folly of Bloody Mary struck him anew. Burning desire. What the hell had the studio been thinking of to use that as the film's catchline?

  Or, to be precise, Arlington thought, eyes slitting as he looked at his Creative Head, what had Michael been thinking of? It had been his idea to make the film in the first place; to make it, moreover, not straight and historical, but sex it up, make it like some sixteenthcentury Catholic Playboy Mansion, with Philip of Spain running around pleasuring everyone from the lady's maids to the spit boy. He had even pushed for an alternative title, Burn, Baby, Burn, on the grounds that it was more commercial. It had been his decision to take out all the Protestant-versus-Catholic elements on the grounds it might offend people, meaning that nothing made any sense and the executions looked gratuitous.

  Belle's sunglasses, which she had now replaced, flashed defiantly. "Anyway, Bloody Mary did very well in the Ukraine."

  "Only because they thought it was about alcohol," replied Bob wearily.

  Arlington slid another look at his watch. Shit. He had another fifty meetings scheduled today. This was taking far too long. He looked meaningfully at his head of PR.

  Chase McGiven cleared his throat. He sat with one ankle raised to his knee, on which balanced a blue plastic folder he tapped restively with a fountain pen. "Miss Murphy. We've been doing some, ahem, qualitative personality research…"—he tapped the folder harder—"which I have right here."

  "Some what?" Belle snapped rudely.

  "Qualitative personality research is qualitative research concerning a personality," Chase informed Belle. "See what they think of you, in other words."

  "Was this really necessary?" Mitch interjected, feeling he should say something, anything, to remind them all he was still here.

  Chase ignored him. "According to our research, and, of course, this is confirmed by the figures from Bloody Mary, your popularity is, how can I put this?" He looked thoughtfully at Belle.

  "Huge?" prompted Belle.

  "Slipping," said Chase.

  "Are you sure?" Mitch interjected desperately.

  Chase leant back in his chair and put his arms behind his head. "Her popularity's at rock bottom."

  "Like the takings," interjected Bob, with relish.

  The dog began to yap under Arlington's desk.

  "C'mon, Belle. You know it's true." Chase leant forward. "People are dropping you from projects left, right, and centre. No film will touch you at the moment. You've lost your cosmetics contract, the perfume launch has been decommissioned, and you're not even being considered for that Disney animation about a worm with issues any more. The part's gone to Scarlett Johansson."

  Mitch's breakfast came shooting back up his windpipe in a sudden and unexpected manner. He pulled an apologetic face as Belle ripped off her sunglasses and whipped round to meet his eyes with blazing balls of blue fire.

  "I was gonna tell you," Mitch murmured unhappily.

  Chase ploughed on. "Specifically, what our qualitative personality research tells us is that your recent behaviour has played badly with the fans. You've misread the zeitgeist."

  "I've never read the zeitgeist," Belle blustered.

  Chase stared at her with such a bewildered expression on his face

  that Mitch almost felt sorry for him. He had clearly underestimated the scale of the task before him, but then, who hadn't?

  "People don't want stars like that anymore," the studio PR continued. "Drunken, wild, dressed like hookers…"

  "Hey," interjected Belle indignantly. "It takes a lot of money to look that cheap."

  "You gotta calm down," Chase advised. "Get some respect from somewhere. Get yourself some gravitas."

  "What sort of ass?"

  Mitch wiped the napkin from this morning's purchase of jelly doughnuts over his perspiring brow. He felt a slight tightness form in the wake of the wipe; sugar crystals, he realised too late. He had frosted his own forehead. "What Chase means," he said to Belle, "is that you need people to take you more seriously."

  Belle nodded sarcastically. "Whaddya want me to do, go play Hamlet at the Royal Freaking Shakespeare Company? Huh?"

  "Shakespeare. It's a thought," Arlington admitted.

  Belle gasped in angry disbelief. But Chase interrupted.

  "Fans these days…" he continued smoothly, "want stars they can respect. Caring stars, loving stars. People who care about the big issues. Global poverty. Families. The environment."

  Belle stared at him disbelievingly. "I'm a celebrity. I'm not running for president."

  Chase grinned wolfishly. "Belle, let me tell you, you know what you are. Sort of. People expect their stars to have issues these days. Consciences. Just look around. There's Angelina and Brad there with their rainbow family, Madonna and that little African guy, Clooney and Darfur, Gwyneth Paltrow and, uh, her macrobiotic yoga…"

  Belle's shiny red lips were twisted in a scornful sneer. "So what are you saying? That you want me to—she snorted with disgust— "adopt…"—her eyes rolled incredulously, and she tossed her white hair—"an African baby?"

  There was a dead silence.

  Arlington's eyes burned, and his mouth rushed with water. His groin felt suddenly tight, as in moments of extreme sexual excitement. This was the answer. The idea they had been looking for. If anything could turn round Belle's career and reputation—and she was, after all, one of his most expensive stars—it was this.

  "That's exactly what we want you to do, Belle," he said. "And if you don't, you're dumped."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Niall made no bones—well, his father was a butcher—about his disapproval of her going to L.A. "You're an artist, Darcy," he stormed, his freckled Scottish face pinked up with anger, his brows drawn together in one long, disapproving, fox-coloured line. "You're supposed to be serious about acting. And Hollywood isn't acting. It's crap. Money-spinning, commercial crap with no moral or artistic value whatsoever."

  A huge, hot wave of unease and embarrassment almost overwhelmed Darcy as she tried to defend herself. Niall on the attack was a formidable opponent. She could imagine him, like the Highland ancestors he so often spoke about, like the one Hollywood film he did approve of, Braveheart, running, bellowing down some glen side, and brandishing his sword, his ragged tartan billowing behind him.

  Niall drew himself up to argue. He was stocky and powerfully built, but not tall. "Galaxia," he growled. "It sounds bloody awful. Simpleminded, commercial space trash. How can you even consider it?"

  Darcy twisted her fingers and shot him uncomfortable looks. What could she do? She had given her word to Mitch Masterson now. And she was still curious about Tinseltown. What was wrong with going to have a look?

  "Because they'll suck you in," Neil thundered, reminding Darcy of some handsome but terrifying Calvinist preacher shouting from a lofty pulpit in a grey-stone Edinburgh kirk. "They'll corrupt your values. Twist your mind."

  Darcy felt half-mortified, half-exasperated. It was an audition she was going to. Not the Moonies. He was over-reacting, surely. Perhaps even over-acting; the sense, with him, even with her parents, that she was participating in some scene from a play never quite went away. Of course, they were all four of them actors. But that impression of slight distance, of watching herself from the outside, had been with her for so long Darcy felt it was quite normal and that everyone experienced it.

  "Look, I'm not planning to become a Scientologist," she told Niall doggedly. "It's only an audition. It might not come to anything. They don't always," she added, with meaningful emphasis. The f
act that Niall's Hamlet at the National Theatre hadn't come off was still a raw subject.

  She regretted such below-the-belt tactics immediately. Niall's entire face changed. He looked at her, his—whatever he said about it—Tiffany blue eyes large with childish bewilderment, appearing larger and more childish still because of his pale blond lashes. Her heart twisted; he looked like a five-year-old unable to understand why anyone would want to hurt him. Which she obviously had.

  "Thanks," Niall said bitterly, the bewilderment changing to a resentful stare. "That's right. You swan off to Hollywood, and I'll carry on trying to land a part as third spear carrier somewhere. But if I don't, there's always a part as a Scottish pisshead to fall back on."

  She flung herself at him at that, full of the urge to comfort and reassure. "You're a great actor," she soothed, stroking his turbulent dark-red curls. "One of the very best. And people will realise it. They will. You'll get the recognition you deserve—"

  "When?" he ground into her slender shoulder, gripping her to him hard.

  "Soon." She looked earnestly into his eyes, pushing back his russet hair with both hands to expose his face. "It's got to happen," she added rather desperately. "Probably before I even get back."

  He broke into a grin at this, shook his hair back over his broad shoulders, and rolled his blue eyes ruefully. "So you're definitely going, then?"

  Darcy smiled back, trying to keep the mood light. "Why not? It might be fun to have a look at the whole crazy place. See what we're not missing."

  "But you're a serious actress," Niall repeated, although his expression remained indulgent and open, not bunched and thunderous as it had been before.

  "Alec Guinness was in Star Wars," Darcy reminded him, displaying her trump card and deciding not to tell her what Angharad had said about this.

  "He regretted it the rest of his life," Angharad had declared, when Darcy had got to this bit of her speech with her mother. "Serious actors always do. I remember when Larry…"—Olivier, Darcy knew—"made a film with Neil Diamond in the eighties. He said he was more embarrassed about it than anything he'd ever done and it made him sick to think about it. Still, it's up to you, darling." Angharad smiled brightly at her daughter, having launched this fusillade at the idea. "You're at liberty to make your own decisions. Unlike so many people in the world, which reminds me, I've got a Free Tibet meeting at lunchtime. Must dash, darling."

  Mitch, ramping up the glamour and excitement for all he was worth, had claimed that the Heathrow-LAX first class had, at any given time, almost more famous people on board than luggage. But Darcy arrived late at the airport, thanks to the Tube train she had taken as a sop to Niall and keeping it real. Now, on board, the possibility that she was surrounded by stars was tantalising. But a sort of shell surrounded each seat, from which protruded various crossed legs dressed in expensive-looking trousers and feet with shiny leather shoes. Impossible to tell if some belonged to George Clooney or Brad Pitt.

  Her disappointment melted as the champagne came round, along with a supply of new glossy magazines. Darcy took one avidly. HotStars America was exactly the kind of publication she would never have dared touch with Niall about. She flicked through with a guilty speed; then, as her eye hooked on the more sensational headlines, her perusal slowed.

  CELEBRITY GRILL We meet an A-lister for lunch

  Actress Belle Murphy, 25, shot to fame last year in Marie, a bosomy biopic about Mary Queen of Scots. Since then, she's rarely been out of the gossip columns. To celebrate the release of her latest film, Bloody Mary, we caught up with Belle and her inseparable companion, her Chihuahua, Sugar, in New York's hottest new restaurant, the pink-themed Rosie's…

  There was a large, accompanying photograph of Belle Murphy sitting in a pink, fluffy armchair wearing what looked like a black latex bikini.

  HS: Belle, you're looking great. That's an incredible outfit you're wearing.

  BM: Thanks. I like to keep my style original, but I always dress for myself.

  HS: Belle, how do you keep so slim?

  BM: I don't weigh myself, but I guess I have a really fast mentabolism.

  HS: You mean "metabolism"?

  BM: Yeah. I just can't put on weight. It's just so bizarre. I mean, I try. Last week I had four MacDonalds in one sitting. And you should so see me on the set when the sandwiches come round. I'm so like, "Whoa, hey, over here with that big old tuna melt!"

  HS: Talking of sets, how exactly is Bloody Mary doing at the box office, Belle? Is it true the figures are a little, how do we put this…?

  BM: No! It's doing great. I mean, I don't have the exact figures, but it was the number five film in Serbia last week.

  HS: Would it have helped if Bloody Mary had had more nude scenes, do you think? After all, these were a feature of Marie.

  BM: I really believe that the nudity in Marie was integral to the character.

  Darcy chuckled. She had seen Marie. Niall had lifted his usual Hollywood embargo on the grounds that it was a film about a former queen of Scotland. Although, in the end, Scotland had played the most minor of roles, far more minor than the two main ones played by Belle's bosoms.

  HS: On a different subject, we were sorry to hear about your break-up with Christian Harlow…

  BM: Yeah. You know, it was fun with Christian while it lasted. But he wanted serious commitment, and I don't want to be tied down. He's got over it now, and we've both moved on. It's been very amicable. We're still great friends and call each other all the time.

  HS: But now there's a new man in your life, we understand. A baby! Called Morning? Congratulations!

  BM: Thanks. Yeah, motherhood's just, like, awesome. It was like all of a sudden I knew the secret, I became a member of this tribe of mothers and felt, like, really interwoven with everything, you know?

  HS: You adopted Morning, right?

  BM: Yeah. He's African. From an orphanage. You know, I feel a great empathy with African people. Particularly ones in orphanages. They have, like, nothing, but they always seem so happy with their lot. It's kind of humbling, you know?

  HS: Are you looking after him yourself?

  BM: Yeah. I've got this great British nanny. Called Jacintha; Lady Jacintha, in fact. She's from some top nanny college where they wear special hats and badges. Used to work for a famous author. She's very cool. Her ancestors go back to the Mediaeval Ages.

  HS: So you're enjoying family life?

  BM: It's beautiful, just the greatest. The moment I first held Morning, I felt, you know, kinda so connected to the world. I didn't know I was capable of such love.

  Darcy shoved the magazine in the plush seat pocket. The champagne suddenly seemed to be curdling with the truffles and foie gras in her stomach. The interview she had just read was everything her mother and Niall most despised. That she had once affected to despise herself. And yet Belle Murphy was a Hollywood star, and Darcy herself was about to enter the same machine. Perhaps she really was selling out, being sucked in, having her values twisted, after all. Perhaps she really was making the biggest mistake of her life.

  "Another glass, Madam?" The male air hostess was beaming at her side. Darcy looked miserably up at him. As he proffered the bottle, the tightness inside her relaxed. She watched as the foaming, pale-gold liquid tumbled into her glass. On the other hand, all this might just be great fun.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The African adoption should, Belle knew, have swung everything in her favour. It had not been an easy business and had involved a great many dull meetings with embassy officials, as well as even duller ones with the baby itself. Belle lacked a single maternal fibre in the whole of her emaciated body and had found pretending to be transported with delight whilst holding a child one of the most difficult acting jobs she had ever had to do. Especially after it possetted on her Zac Posen dress.

  But what was especially infuriating was that her Zac had been ruined in vain. None of the effort had achieved the expected results. While there had been coverage—an i
nterview in Hot Stars and a couple of others—and even a few photo shoots with Morning, the general effect on the press had been far from electrifying. The consensus seemed to be that everyone had seen it all before. Celebrity African adoptions were nothing new. Madonna and Angelina Jolie had got there first.

  Damn them, thought Belle, with more venom even than when she usually damned them. Damn them to hell. Because now here she was, stuck with a baby she didn't want, who she wouldn't even be able to dump without a great deal of the wrong sort of press interest. It would be years before he could quietly be packed off to some boarding school somewhere and she need never set eyes on him again. The whole enterprise had been a disaster.