Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  “Is that what I’m doing, Lewis? Seducing you?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t mean that. I was just teasing.” He went to embrace her, and then something serious and intent in her face stopped him. She lifted her hand and pressed her fingers against his lips.

  “I don’t want to pretend, Lewis. I don’t. I want you to know me as I am. I want to be truthful, Lewis—” She stopped, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling a little, so Lewis suddenly felt an overwhelming protectiveness toward her, an intense and gentle love. He drew her to him, and held her close. He kissed her hair, and her face, and her closed eyes. His Helen. He felt quite certain he knew her, as certain as he was that he loved her. He slipped the black silk over her head, and tossed it to one side. Then he drew her down onto the floor, and in front of the fire, amid the wrappings and the presents, he made love to her. This time, for the first time, she clung to him tightly when he came, and covered his face with shy kisses.

  He took her upstairs, lifting her easily in his arms, slid her into the bed, and under the sheets, where it was warm. Then he climbed in beside her, wanting her again, and made love to her again. Before, he had sensed some resistance in her; like a fine strong strand of gossamer, it would not give. This time, to Lewis’s wonderment and pride, it snapped. She cried out once, though not his name.

  In the morning, the fourth morning, she woke first. Lewis opened his eyes and found her looking down, gently, into his face. He reached for her sleepily, and drew her warm body into his arms, holding her gently and with a sense of happy possession. She waited until she was sure that he was quite awake, then she pressed her slender hands either side of his face, and turned him so he looked at her.

  Then, gently, gravely, faltering only a little, but clearly afraid, she told him the truth. She was pregnant.

  The baby was due in May. She had seen a doctor, and that was what he had said. She would never, could never, she said, see the baby’s father again. It was over, and she never wanted to talk about it. Lewis stared at her in utter stupefaction. He looked down into her face; he looked at the gentle curve of her stomach.

  He walked out of the bedroom, leaving her there, went downstairs, looked at the little Christmas tree, wan in the morning light, and wept.

  He felt betrayed, of course. He felt also the most raging and acutely painful jealousy. It physically affected him, as if knives were being dug into his flesh, as if something monstrous were tearing him apart. Who? What man? What was his name, and what did he look like? Lewis felt he wanted to see that man, to know him, to confront him face to face, and then fight with him. Had she loved him? Had he loved her? What had he done to her? How, how often, where?

  Sexual jealousy is never a dignified emotion. It is ugly and its banality is inescapable. Lewis knew his thoughts were banal and crude, and that fact made the pain worse. Both what he knew and what he did not know tormented him. He looked around the little room, and wanted to cry out, to break things, to howl and to smash blindly.

  He leapt to his feet and ran up the stairs. He flung back the door, lifted her in his arms, shook her.

  “Tell me you love me. Just tell me that. Tell me that, and I swear, I swear, nothing else matters…”

  He could hardly believe it was his voice speaking, this voice which choked on the emotion he felt.

  “I care for you, Lewis.” She sounded frightened. “I care for you very much.”

  He wanted to hit her then. Care was such a little word. A tiny inadequate pathetic word. He hated her for using it. He lifted his hand, and almost struck her. Then he let it fall, slammed out of the room, slammed back down the stairs, feeling like a fool, feeling like an animal.

  He paced up and down the room, back and forth, up and down. He tried to think, to compose his mind, and it went on howling its pain at him. He decided to get drunk, poured out a tumbler of Armagnac, took one swallow, then went into the kitchen and tipped the rest down the sink. He searched for cigarettes, found three empty packets, and one full one, inhaled the nicotine, and felt it calm him, just a little. Then he sat down and stared at the Christmas tree and made himself think.

  Anyone familiar with the charity and masochism of intense love—and Lewis was both intensely in love and naturally kind—would be able to predict the course of his thoughts. They were predictable even to Lewis himself. First forgiveness. Then, after a period of further raging, excuses. There his mind became extraordinarily creative. Suddenly he could think of a thousand reasons, a million, why this should have happened, and why Helen had acted as she did. The man had duped her, used her. Maybe she had loved him, but he must have rejected her, because otherwise she would be with him. Maybe she hadn’t loved him after all—that lifted his heart for a second. He leapt up from his seat, found a calendar, and began to count weeks like a madman. The time she left them in Paris, those weeks, he decided. Then. And she had come back to them then, of her own accord: he felt his hope soaring. Forgiveness turned to pity. He remembered how ill she had looked sometimes in Rome. He remembered standing outside her bedroom door at the palazzo, and hearing her weeping. She must have been so afraid, so lonely. At once she seemed to him brave, to have kept her fears to herself. He felt admiration for such strength, fury with himself for being so obtuse, so unnoticing. In a second, pity had winged into love, love into protectiveness. She had turned to him. She had told him. He looked around the little room, and saw it again with yesterday’s eyes.

  Lewis sat there two hours altogether. At the end of that time, exhausted, cold, unable to force his mind to think anymore, he knew only one thing with any certainty. He loved her. There it was.

  Lewis went back up the stairs. She had not moved. Her face was pale and swollen, and he thought she had been crying. Awkwardly and gently, Lewis sat down on the bed and took her hand.

  Then, because he didn’t know what else to do, he asked her to marry him.

  She sat very still. Lewis lifted his face to hers, and clasped her hand.

  “Please,” he said. “I love you. I wanted to marry you anyway. I’ve been thinking about it every day since—” He broke off. “The baby doesn’t make any difference. Why should it? I’ll look after you and I’ll look after the baby. I want to, Helen. Please, say you’ll marry me. I can’t bear this. I’m going mad.”

  Hélène felt terribly afraid. She could see Lewis had been crying; the expression on his face made him look very young, almost like a boy, and for a moment she saw them both, herself and Lewis, as if from far away: two frightened children, clinging to each other for support.

  She was absolutely certain then, for a brief second, that she should refuse. Then she thought of the baby, and how it would be, trying to work, trying to bring up a child on her own. She could see how it would be; the picture was hideously clear in her mind. I won’t let my baby live like that, she thought, and, taking Lewis’s hand, she said “yes.”

  On the sixth day, Thad arrived from Paris, unannounced. He hammered at the door, and came in, bustling. Thad came—and the world came with him.

  Lewis, still in bed, exhausted by his lovemaking, heard Helen open the door to him, heard his voice, and groaned.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said when she came back into the room. “He couldn’t get through on the phone, so he’s come in person.”

  “That’s right.” She was putting on some clothes. She did not look around.

  “I’m going to tell him.” Lewis threw back the covers and bounced out of bed, suddenly purposeful. He grabbed her from behind, and hugged her.

  “Now?”

  “Why not? He has to know, sooner or later. Everyone does. And I want them to know. I want the world to know. I feel like shouting it from the rooftops.”

  “I suppose so. It’s just—I’m a little afraid of Thad.” Something in her face made Lewis pause. He remembered the scene on location that last day in Trastevere. It had never been explained, never even referred to again. However, now was not the moment to start asking questions about that; it was prob
ably nothing of any importance, and she would explain it to him another time.

  In that supposition he was wrong, but, that morning, nothing could shake his confidence, not even Thad. He kissed her, aware that the complicity between them, which excluded Thad, gave him pleasure. He began to look forward with relish to the moment when he broke the news, when he saw the surprise register on Thad’s face.

  In this ambition he was disappointed. He broke the news to Thad with sly charm, his arm around Helen’s waist. Thad blinked once, twice, three times—that was all. He continued to sit still, nursing a mug of tea in his plump lap. Hardly missing a beat, he said amiably, “Hey. That’s great. When?”

  It was Lewis who blushed, to his own annoyance. He suddenly realized that the way he had said it—Helen is having a baby; we’re going to get married—it sounded as if he were the father. His own impetuosity, his perverse desire to score off his friend, had now precipitated them into a very awkward situation indeed. Thad was looking at him imperturbably. Lewis threw him a smile.

  “Which? The wedding, or the baby?”

  “Both, I guess.” Thad took a sip of tea.

  “The wedding—as soon as possible. And the baby…”

  “In the spring,” she finished quietly, and Lewis felt a quiet glow of triumph; she had taken her cue from him. The sense of pleasurable complicity intensified.

  “Terrific. That’s really terrific.” Thad put down the tea and stood up. “I’m really glad for you both. Now—about the movie. Or maybe I should say movies.” He gave a little smile, and his voice took on a wounded note. “There have been developments, you know. I’ve been trying to get you two on the phone for days…”

  Lewis and Helen exchanged glances. The telephone, Lewis saw, was now back on its cradle. He hoped she had put it there unobtrusively: Thad didn’t miss much.

  He and Helen sat down, and Thad began to pace up and down, waving his arms. He launched into one of his monologues. The editing on Night Game was nearly finished. He had a rough cut; Truffaut had seen it. Various other friends in Paris had seen it. They had all been knocked out…

  Thad was never modest; he saw no need to be now. The way he talked about it, Night Game was going to be like Citizen Kane: it was going to change people’s ideas about cinema overnight. It was going to establish his reputation at a stroke, and—unlike the Welles picture—it was going to be an immediate box-office success…

  Lewis listened to this, his attention starting to wander. He had heard Thad hold forth about his own work in this vein before, and had been impressed by it. But that had been in Los Angeles, when they first met. In Rome, he had had his doubts when he watched Thad at work; now, they returned to him. Really, Thad laid it on a bit thick. Did he realize how absurd he sounded? He would reserve judgment, Lewis decided, until he actually saw the film, and saw what happened to it. Meanwhile, Thad sounded boastful, and, as usual, his monomania made him untactful. He had not mentioned Helen’s performance once so far, and that oversight irritated Lewis. He glanced at her, and their eyes met. With a sense of satisfaction, Lewis decided she was of the same opinion as himself.

  “Now…” Thad had turned to the subject of Henri Lebec. Henri Lebec was a rich, homosexual, indolent young Frenchman, heir to the considerable fortune his father had made bottling mineral water. Lebec saw himself as a patron of the arts, and hung around with a lot of film people. Thad had met him through Truffaut, and it was Lebec who, together with Lewis, had put up the money for Night Game. Fifty thousand dollars each. Lewis sighed. If Night Game died, he would lose that money—but then, he could stand the loss, and so could Lebec. He had been prepared from the first to lose it.

  Lewis, who had always had more money than he needed, never thought about it a great deal. He had been prepared to gamble on Thad, and to help him, but if Thad was leading up to a suggestion of further investment in some new project, Lewis knew he intended to refuse. One loss, yes; but he was not profligate and he was not a fool. And from now on, his financial circumstances would be very different. He would have a wife to look after—and the baby.

  It became gradually clear, however, that this was not Thad’s drift. Thad was now talking about money, quite big money, but it wasn’t Lewis’s, or Henri Lebec’s.

  “So the thing is…” he was saying, “the word is out. And the distribution deals on Night Game are just falling into place. Like, suddenly, everyone wants it. We’re hot. Truffaut thinks I ought to enter it for Cannes. We might even get American release—limited, you know—movie theaters near campuses, a few art houses in New York, that kind of thing. But it’s a start. I mean, we could win the fucking Palme d’Or at Cannes and it wouldn’t mean a goddamned thing back in L.A., but if we get an American showing, and some good returns, that will mean something. Then we make one more picture in Europe—I’m thinking about London—and then we go back to America with the third. Then we stay there, of course. We won’t need to piss around in Europe then. But if we get this backing, the whole process can be speeded up, that’s the point. Film Three can be big. And Film Four can be—”

  “Backing? What backing?” Lewis interrupted testily, and Thad turned around to him, looking injured.

  “You haven’t been listening, Lewis. I just told you…”

  “Tell me again. I didn’t quite grasp it the first time.”

  “Okay.” Thad sighed, sat down again, and adopted a patient tone of voice. “There’s this distribution company called Sphere. It’s an American distribution company, right? You’ve got that, Lewis? It was in a bad way, but it’s been bought. By Partex Petrochemicals.”

  He produced this name—with which Lewis, a banker’s son, was familiar—in the manner of a conjurer producing a rabbit from a hat.

  “And?”

  “And Partex has big plans for Sphere. They’re pouring money into it, Lewis. Oil money. They’re expanding the distribution side as of now, and they’re going to launch a production financing arm. They want to back independent films. My films.” Thad gave a smug little smile. “They’re smart. They’ve seen the falling attendance figures in America. They know all about the effect of TV—who doesn’t? And they aren’t fazed. Because they think, and I know, that there’s a whole new audience out there, just waiting to be tapped. The youth audience, Lewis. The ones who are sick to death of watching reruns of Gunsmoke every night, the ones who are going to start pouring back into the movie theaters once someone is smart enough to give them the right product. Movies that talk to them. Not Jane Russell and dancing girls and all that studio crap. Real movies. American movies. The kind of movies I make.”

  “You’ve only made one so far.”

  “Lewis. Lewis. Please. I’m being serious now…”

  “Okay. Okay.” Lewis shrugged. “And you’re saying this company—Sphere—they might want to back you?”

  “They want in on the distribution of Night Game, and they’re talking money about Film Two right now. Not six-figure money, Lewis, seven-figure. We’re not talking small time now.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lewis leaned back. Thad’s blithe confidence was irritating him more and more. He longed, suddenly, to puncture it. All right, so Thad had always claimed not to understand the complexities of finance—he was just the director, he used to say, back in L.A.; that was where Lewis came in; he needed Lewis because Lewis understood figures.

  Lewis did, up to a point. He had lived with high finance day in, day out, for the first eighteen years of his life. He could read a balance sheet, sure. He used to read The Wall Street Journal, and then face his father’s inquisition on its subject matter. He had taken an economics course at Harvard—though that had been mostly theoretical. If he had gone into Sinclair Lowell Watson, he would have been painstakingly trained by his father, and Lewis had always grandly assumed that he would have been more than able to cope. But film finance? That was a minefield. He had listened to the talk in L.A., carefully. In Paris, before it was decided to keep Night Game very low budget, and finance it through Lebec and hi
mself, he had briefly, with the aid of Lebec and various contacts of Thad’s, tried to raise outside financing, bigger financing, for the picture.

  It had been like juggling bubbles. A lot of wheeling, and a lot of dealing. Tax shelter deals. Completion bond deals. Overhead provisions. By the time Lewis felt he was beginning to grasp it, he realized that the people he’d been talking to were not going to deliver. One by one the bubbles had burst.

  Rather admiring his own experienced cynicism, he now remarked that the fact that Sphere was talking money meant precisely nothing. When they signed a deal, and, better still, a check—then, he said with a glance at Helen, he might start getting impressed.

  Thad looked hurt. “I guess you’re right, Lewis,” he said in a small humble voice, so Lewis began to feel like a bully. “I don’t understand these things too well. I never did. I mean, the guy I met from Sphere—he’d take one look, and he’d know I was a sucker, right?”

  “Well, not exactly, Thad.” Lewis shifted uneasily. “You could be right. They could be serious. If they made the first move…” He hesitated. “How come they heard about us in the first place?”

  Thad looked complacent. “They’ve got their ear to the ground, I guess. There’s a lot of interesting work being done in Europe right now, and I’m American. Maybe they picked up on the word about Night Game. I don’t know. But when this guy Scher saw the rough cut of Night Game, he said he liked it a lot. He was just being polite, I guess. Didn’t want to hurt my feelings…”

  “Oh, come on, Thad.” Lewis leaned forward. “Are you trying to make me weep, or what? If he said he liked it, he probably did. It’s just that that’s not the same as writing you a big fat check for the next film, carte blanche, that’s all…”

  “I know that, Lewis. Now that I think about it. And I never thought it would be carte blanche exactly…” He stole a little look at Helen. A little look at Lewis. Spread his hands.

  “Maybe you see, now, Lewis, why I had to come over. I need you back in Paris. I need your help. I can’t handle all this without you, Lewis.” He gave a gusty sigh. “Still. I suppose I’ll have to try. For a while.” He gestured at Helen. “Now that all this has happened. Yes?”