Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  But Stephani’s grief seemed genuine. It was only gradually that Hélène began to notice things wrong with her stories, small discrepancies, like the one today. And this disturbed her greatly. Stephani, she began to suspect, had made herself up. Perhaps some of this lurid past was true, but other parts of it, Hélène became more and more sure, were invented. She never pointed this out too directly to Stephani, for she knew that it would hurt her. Stephani clearly believed her own tales, and it was when Hélène realized this that she knew what it was that had drawn her to the girl—she understood her own sympathy.

  Had she herself not done a very similar thing? Hélène Harte, with her shadowy and vaguely glamorous European past—this Hélène Harte was every bit as much of an invention as Stephani Sandrelli.

  When this first occurred to her, it made Hélène impatient, and she dismissed the thought; after all, whatever stories were spun in the newspapers by journalists desperate for copy, she did not believe them. She knew who she was…And then she began to wonder: was that the case? Was she herself entirely sure, always, where truth shaded into fabrication?

  Sometimes she felt very sure that she did. When she was at home in Los Angeles, with Cassie, who had been with her now three years, she felt sure of her own identity. Her first action, when she had been paid in full for her first film, had been to repay Cassie the money she owed her; they remained in touch after that, and when Cassie wrote and said that the beauty parlor was getting too much for her, and she was thinking of selling it, Hélène at once asked her to come to work for her in Los Angeles. It was a decision she had never regretted, and her reliance on Cassie had grown. Perhaps, to some extent, Cassie had taken the place of her mother: certainly, she felt free with Cassie in a way she felt with no one else. With Cassie she could talk about the past; Cassie would read out loud to her the letters she received from friends in Orangeburg, and Hélène’s sense of who she was would grow strong. The South, the trailer, her mother, the feel of being poor, it all came back to her so sharply, and so vividly.

  But at other times, her childhood seemed very distant, a country of the mind.

  Lewis did not know the details of her previous connection with Cassie; Cassie did not know the truth of her relationship with Lewis; and there were still parts of her past that Hélène spoke of to no one.

  So the truth was not a simple thing; it was layer upon layer of truths, so mixed in with lies that sometimes Hélène felt afraid, and she could not quite remember, any more than Stephani could, which truth she had told to which person, or which lie.

  Sometimes, when she was with Cassie, she would think, I am still Hélène Craig, and she would be able to see the long chain of connections between the girl she had been and the woman she had become. But at other times, those connections were severed; she would lose all sense of who she had been, could not relate that person to the person she was now. For now, she had a public identity: she was Hélène Harte, and Hélène Harte, she felt, was a barrier between herself and other people. They did not look at her now and see Hélène Craig, who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. They saw a famous and successful woman, apparently assured, apparently independent, born to a life not dissimilar to the one she led now. She had become famous, not just for her performances, but for other, trivial things as well. For her taste; for the clothes she wore; for a certain restraint in her manner which was interpreted as coldness; even for the fact that, unusually in Hollywood, she was never seen with a man other than her husband, and even the most energetic gossips could not drum up a breath of convincing scandal.

  It was now impossible for her to enter a room without everyone in it being aware of who she was: people felt that they knew her before they met her; their opinions of her, for or against, were formed already, on the basis of films seen, or stories read. There was her reputation—a wall between her and the rest of the world—and there was Hélène, the woman she felt herself truly to be, imprisoned on the other side of it.

  Thad said, when she tried to explain this to him once: “So what? You’re famous. What did you think would happen?”

  Not this, Hélène had wanted to reply. But she was ashamed to confess that she had been so naïve; it had never occurred to her that once she was famous, she would cease to feel free.

  There was a knock on the trailer door. The location manager—they were ready for her scene now. Hélène turned to the mirror and stared at her own face. Who was she?

  Well, today she was Maria, a small-town girl, a rebel, on the run with her teenage lover, caught up in a romantic elopement that went hideously wrong. Maria was about to die, just when she was about to grow up, and die suddenly, and pointlessly, as a result of a silly argument, a lovers’ quarrel that went murderously off the rails.

  She knew Maria; she recognized her, Hélène thought. She knew exactly how Maria moved and thought and hoped. She could hear Maria’s voice, and she could speak with her accent. She knew everything, from the way Maria dressed and did her hair, to the little characteristic gestures she had, one of which she would use now, for the sentences Maria spoke before she died. Oh, yes, she recognized Maria, and understood her, even if she did not always understand or recognize herself.

  That thought calmed her, as it always did. She felt it again, that quietness and sureness that she had first discovered in Rome, working on Night Game. She stood up, opened the door, and walked down the trailer steps. Stephani was back at her usual post, on the fringes, watching. As Hélène passed her, she smiled, and held up two fingers, crossed.

  Hélène stood in the shade, and people fussed around her. Someone was adjusting her hair; someone was touching up her makeup. The special-effects man was making the final adjustments to the harness concealed beneath her dress. It contained tiny plastic bags of artificial blood, and a device that would burst them at precisely the right second.

  Hélène was hardly aware of the people fussing and adjusting: she was in that narrow space, that limbo, between herself and Maria, waiting for the moment when the production team left her alone, and Maria would come to her.

  They had finished at last; she moved forward impatiently toward her mark, and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of Stephani, just in the corner of her eye. She stopped; then moved forward again. She thought: of course—I know why I like Stephani and why I pity her. She is a mirror image of me. A distorted image, perhaps, but a reflection nonetheless. It’s true: neither of us knows who we are. Is that why we both want to act?

  She had reached her mark. She lifted her head and looked around her. The wrecked car; her costar, holding two shotguns; the desert stretching away into the distance; equipment; cameras; people—and where was Maria?

  She lifted her hand to her eyes; the hot air shimmered.

  A voice, Gregory Gertz’s voice, called: “Are you okay, Hélène?”

  “What? Oh, yes. I’m fine.”

  “Right. We’re going for a take…”

  Sound on; camera rolling; action. She had only two lines, then she must begin to run forward. They had rehearsed it before, and now she did it. The guns were lifted; the blanks went off; the harness device worked; bright chemical blood spouted, and she died beautifully.

  “Great,” Greg said afterward.

  He came across to her, a puzzled frown on his face. He looked at her, pressed her arm, and then turned away.

  “Right. Let’s get Hélène fixed up, and then do it again.”

  She died beautifully five times. But it was Hélène who died, not Maria. Maria had gone; she would not come back to her.

  After the fifth take, Greg said: “That’s it. We’ll break for the day. The light’s wrong, anyway.” Then he came across to Hélène, and looked down at her, still with that puzzled frown on his face.

  He put his arm around her waist, and said, “It’s so goddamn hot. Don’t worry about it. Listen—have dinner with me this evening.”

  It was nearly six when she returned to the trailer, half-past by the time her dresser had gone, and v
arious production people checking the details of the next day’s shoot had finally left her, and she was alone.

  She felt tired, and depressed by the failure of the scene, irritated by her inability to explain it. Obviously there had been times in the past when things had gone wrong, when she had not felt satisfied with what she had done, but she had never felt that blank emptiness before, the sensation that she was outside herself, watching herself failing.

  Angrily, she began to rub off her makeup. It was then, reaching for some cotton, that she noticed the photograph of Cat was missing. She looked around the dressing table in confusion: it had been here, she had been looking at it, just a few hours before…She pushed aside bottles and jars; no, it was not there. She bent, and looked on the floor, to see if it had fallen—but no, it was not there either. Straightening up, she thought, Stephani.

  Stephani herself turned up five minutes later. She put her platinum head around the door, cautiously, and Hélène turned and looked at her coldly.

  “There was a photograph of my daughter, Stephani. On my dressing table. Have you seen it?”

  Stephani blushed slightly under the heavy makeup she wore. She lowered her eyes, hesitated, and then came into the trailer and shut the door. She opened her purse, took out the photograph, and handed it to Hélène without a word.

  “For God’s sake, Stephani…” Hélène’s temper snapped. “Stop doing this, will you? All right, if you want to borrow a lipstick or something. But not a picture of Cat. That’s mine. It’s private. Please don’t do anything like that again.”

  Stephani slowly lifted her head. She looked at Hélène shyly. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, in her breathy voice. “I knew I shouldn’t. I knew it was wrong. It’s just that—she’s so pretty, isn’t she? I wouldn’t have kept it. I only wanted to look at it…”

  “Stephani. Doesn’t it occur to you that I might want to look at it too? Cat’s my daughter, and I miss her. I miss her very much. And I like that picture to be here. Where I can look at it.”

  “I won’t do it again.” Stephani passed her tongue across her lips. They were shiny with Hélène’s lipstick. Hélène turned away in exasperation. She wiped off the last of her makeup; Stephani did not move. She watched Hélène in the mirror. After a pause, just as Hélène was about to ask her to go, she said in a small voice, “You look so lovely. Just like that. With no makeup on at all. I wish I looked like you. I wish…You always look so cool, so elegant. I wish I looked that way. I wish I looked beautiful, and rich.”

  Hélène stared at her reflection. She could think of no reply. Stephani gave an odd, sad little laugh.

  “Anyway,” she said. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t be bothering you anymore. I’ve only got one more scene—tomorrow. Then I’m going back to L.A.”

  “One more scene?” Hélène turned. “But I thought…”

  “Yeah. So did I.” Stephani shrugged. “They cut all those other scenes. Greg Gertz doesn’t like me. I guess. Anyway. It’s okay. I’ve got some work. I talked to my agent just now. He thinks he can get me in on some vampire movie—they’re shooting in the studio now. But one of the girls got sick.” She paused. “Six lines, he says. And a scene with Peter Cushing. That ought to be okay. I suppose.”

  “Stephani…” Hélène felt suddenly contrite.

  “So. I’ll come and see you before I go. And I’m sorry about the photo. Really.”

  She had just reached the door of the trailer. She was about to step out, when she stopped and frowned, a small puzzled slightly speculative frown.

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s odd, you know. I never thought of it before, but it’s kind of weird.”

  “What is, Stephani?”

  “Well, you always have a picture of Cat. Right there, on your dressing table. But you never have a picture of your husband. Not there, not anywhere…”

  “Stephani. This isn’t a picture gallery. It’s a dressing room, a place to work in…Why should I have a picture of Lewis?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Stephani gave a small dimpling smile. “He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?” She shrugged. “I would, but then, we’re very different, I guess…”

  She lifted her hand in a small wave, and tripped down the steps.

  “Would you like steak? Or steak?” Greg Gertz smiled at her over the top of the menu.

  “Oh, steak. What a lovely idea.” She smiled back at him. He turned to the waitress to give their order, and Hélène leaned back against the plastic banquette. The film star’s life! She knew, from the letters she received from her fans, how most of them imagined such a life. A succession of beautiful restaurants, champagne, parties, handsome escorts and exquisite dresses. And that was part of it, sometimes. But this was part of it too. A small town eight miles from Tucson, stuck down in the middle of the desert. Gas stations; a cluster of houses; the railroad and the highway; a town in the middle of nowhere, a town that people stopped off in, and that happened to have a large motel.

  The motel was their headquarters; they had taken it over for the duration of filming. It was their home, their club, their restaurant, and for one simple reason—there was no alternative.

  She looked around her: walls covered in an unlikely tartan wallpaper; a line of stags’ antlers; a lot of varnished wood; a bar; red banquettes. She could have been anywhere in America. It was smaller, but not very different from the Howard Johnson’s where Billy took her for her fifteenth birthday.

  She turned her face to the window; black plate glass, the desert beyond, but invisible. Tonight Orangeburg felt close, and she knew why that was. It was because the moment was approaching when she would go back there. She was almost prepared, almost ready, there were just a few last moves to make…For a moment she saw Billy’s face, and then Ned Calvert’s, and realized what it was that had provoked the memory. The motel restaurant had Muzak. It was playing a medley, and the latest tune was “Blue Moon.”

  Greg Gertz had said something. She jumped.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re miles away, you know that? I said—how’s Cat…” He hesitated, just a fractional pause. “And how’s Lewis?”

  “Cat’s fine. Very well. I missed her birthday…”

  “I know that.” Greg Gertz was looking at her steadily.

  “And Lewis—Lewis is fine. He’s working on a new script. Writing, you know. It’s going very well. I think.” She hesitated. “I don’t like to ask too much, not when he’s right in the middle of it. You know what writers are like…”

  “Oh, sure. Don’t we all?”

  Greg Gertz smiled easily, but his perceptive eyes did not leave her face. Hélène felt uneasy. She hated to be asked about Lewis; she hated to have to talk about him. This was Lewis’s third script. The first had gone to every producer and director in town, and was now languishing in a file at his agent’s. The second had been optioned by Sphere—and that option had just run out, with no prospect of renewal or production. The third, the one Lewis was working on now, was a love story called Endless Moments. Lewis had announced his intention was to package and produce it himself.

  Lewis, as a writer, was a failure. She knew that, Lewis knew it, and she suspected that Greg Gertz, along with the rest of Los Angeles, knew it. The shared knowledge hung between them for a moment, unspoken. Hélène looked away, quickly.

  She would never admit this failure, not to Lewis’s friends, not to Thad—who questioned her most of all on the subject—not to Greg Gertz; she tried very hard not to admit it to herself, and she tried especially hard to hide her knowledge of it from Lewis. She did not always succeed: Lewis could read it in her eyes, the awful painful hope that this time what he was doing was going to work, and the equally awful and painful fear that it was not. Her doubts hurt Lewis; they also made him violently angry, particularly when he had been drinking, or when he had taken some of his new pills. The pills made him wildly euphoric and confident; when they wore off they left him in the blackest despair. Lewis would not give th
em up; he would not give up the alcohol. He said he needed them for his writing, that they made the words flow.

  “Stop interfering. Stop putting me down!” Lewis would shout. It was a constant refrain. She heard it daily. No, indeed, she did not want to talk about Lewis.

  Greg Gertz, she suspected, knew this. He was a clever man, with sharp instincts, a quiet man who said little, and saw much. She had grown to like him over the weeks they had worked together; she had grown to trust him—as much as she ever trusted anyone, which was not very far. He was wary, as she was, and kept people at a distance. He was also divorced—it had been a particularly ugly divorce, with a protracted custody battle. The three children had gone to his wife. This he never discussed. She also liked him for that.

  He was looking at her now, still with that slight frown, as if he were trying to figure something out. Hélène knew he wanted to ask her what had gone wrong that afternoon, and she also knew that he would wait. Meanwhile, though he had to know she would have preferred to change the subject, he persisted.

  “I hadn’t realized Lewis was still writing. I thought he might have decided to go back to producing for a while. He was very good at it once.” He paused, realizing he had been untactful. “I don’t know. Work with Thad again, perhaps?”

  “I don’t think so. That was another era.” She forced herself to sound bright. “Lewis hasn’t produced Thad’s last three pictures—well, you know that. Thad handles most of that himself—he likes to coproduce now, he told me. And I suppose it’s relatively straightforward, because of the tie-up with Sphere…”

  “But they’re friends still, presumably?” He put the question suddenly, and because she knew he knew the answer anyway, Hélène felt suddenly tired: why lie?

  “No,” she said, looking at him directly. “Not really. They hardly see each other at all. They didn’t quarrel. There was no fight—nothing like that. They just drifted apart. Besides, Thad is a loner. He’s close to no one. You know what he’s like.”