For a few minutes she was oblivious as sun freckled through leaves from the blue sky beyond. Then she felt his trembling hands tearing at her belt, unhooking it. She helped him to pull her dress from her body. Together, they tugged off his jeans so that they both lay naked in the long grass. With a low moan, Alexandre flung himself on top of her, his eyes still closed. Again Lili felt that wonderful moth-mouth settling on hers, his hands on her breasts, his hardness on the naked flesh of her soft belly. Aroused again to the point of frenzy, she felt for him. As she guided him, throbbing, into her body she could feel the heavy beating of her heart against his own. More than anything she wanted to feel him inside her, to feel joined to this wild, hard-muscled boy bucking on top of her, thrusting deep inside her body, groaning until he flung his head back to the sky, quivering as he called the name that had possessed his mind for the last three days. “Lili, Lili, Lili!”
He clung to her, his eyes still closed, his downy lashes against the tanned face, and eventually he whispered into her ear, “Was it . . . all right for you?”
Lili wrapped her slender, brown arms around him. “It was wonderful,” she whispered.
So Alexandre made love to her again.
Afterward he was still unable to keep his mouth off her. Lili snuggled against the golden body, purring into his armpits, sniffing the soft down. She felt alive again, excited, exalted. She bent her head so that her cloud of dark hair hung down, and then she trailed the black silken sheet over Alexandre’s body until he flung himself at her again.
He couldn’t stop touching her. Every soft stroke of his hand felt as if he were holding something fragile and precious.
They slithered naked down the bank and stood, waist-high, in the water. Lili felt her toes sink voluptuously into the soft mud as Alexandre pulled her, laughing, spluttering, into the clear water of the stream. For a few minutes they struggled playfully. Then gently Alexandre lifted her dripping, satin body and laid her on the river bank where he sat and looked at her. Slyly, as if it were forbidden, his gaze travelled down her wet brown body. He exulted. He gloated. Like a young wolf, he was unstoppable. He leaned forward and ran his mouth over her breasts again, tugging harder now at the nipples. Lili shuddered in ecstasy as she felt the warm tongue move down her ribs, the wet warm tip trickle across her stomach, dip lovingly into her navel, then trace its slithery route south. She felt his breath in her dark hair and his tongue flicker over her quivering flesh, gently insistent that she yield totally to the pleasure he was giving her.
Afterward they waited in the wood until Alexandre reckoned that everybody was gathered in the drawing room for drinks. Quietly, they slipped from the trees at the side of the lawn to the door of the orangery. Alexandre looked like a tawny, sleepy beast. He was hugely pleased with himself and he still couldn’t keep his hands off Lili, whose hair was a wild tangle and whose dress was grass-stained and ruined.
Inside the glass-walled orangery stood dark green tubs of fragrant white camellias and sour, sharp-scented scarlet geraniums. Orange and lemon trees stood between the carved stone benches that were placed every five meters.
On the end bench, sitting upright in tangerine satin, was Maxine.
Earlier that afternoon, Mademoiselle Janine had pressed her forehead to the window of the blue salon as Lili and Alexandre wandered across the lawn toward the wood. She was not the only person to have noticed their departure, but she was the only one who immediately moved over to the coffee table and murmured the news to Madame la Comtesse. Maxine was suddenly possessed by a violent jealousy that swept away all logic. Like everyone else, Maxine had noticed her son’s infatuation, but she had hardly expected her star guest to take much notice of a fifteen-year-old boy, especially when there were so many more suitable men present. Try as she might, Maxine found that she couldn’t ignore the situation. She was bursting with indignation and rage. She guessed that they would not be back before sunset, when (if Alexandre was anything like his brothers or his father) they would no doubt enter by the little hidden door to the orangery where the woods came nearest to the château.
As they changed for dinner, Maxine asked Charles to look after their guests for a few minutes. He gave her a swift, worried look; something was up when Maxine used that carefully casual voice, but he judged it better to say nothing and do as she wished.
Quietly the door to the orangery opened and they slipped inside. Alexandre immediately pulled Lili to him again and bent his head down to her throat, but she gently laughed. “You must never touch me when anyone might see.”
“Then may I come to your room tonight?”
“You will go to your room now, Alexandre.” It was his mother’s voice. Caught off guard, the tall boy suddenly looked like a guilty six-year-old who had been caught stealing candy.
He hesitated. Lili gave him a little push toward the corridor and he fled.
Shaking wth anger Maxine looked at Lili. “Couldn’t you leave my son alone? Did you need to seduce a fifteen-year-old boy? Can’t you leave any man alone?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He seduced me. . . . Is he really only fifteen? . . . I thought eighteen . . . or maybe seventeen.”
“I hate to think of his touching you.”
“But what is so dreadful? It was obviously not the first time.”
“He should love someone of his own age and his own kind.”
“I’m only twenty-four.”
“I don’t care how old you are. You’re no better than a whore.”
Maxine had gone too far. Lili was suddenly furious. “You are jealous because I had him and you can’t.”
Stepping forward, Maxine slapped the face of this creature who had bewitched her youngest and favourite son.
As fast as a fighting cock, Lili flew at Maxine and her hand flashed across the older woman’s face. Blood flowed in three small trickles down Maxine’s cheek.
Crying with indignation, Lili again flung herself at Maxine, pounding at the older, bigger woman with arms flailing, engrossed in her rage and her need for revenge. Aghast, Maxine flung up both arms to protect herself from her attacker and kicked Lili away with one tangerine satin toe. But Lili sprang back at her, eyes narrowed, lips drawn back.
Maxine was ashamed, mortified and alarmed. She had never hit anyone in her life, not even her sons when they were children. Yet she had now allowed herself to behave as badly as this slut. She broke away and fled to her room, her hair falling down on one side, her cheek bleeding and her dress torn.
She flung herself on the blue silk bed, grabbed the ivory house telephone and dialed the housekeeper. With difficulty she kept her voice calm. “Please pack Mademoiselle Lili’s clothes straightaway, and tell Antoine to bring her car to the front door. She will be leaving immediately.” Then she rang for the butler to come to her bedroom.
She changed quickly into her bathrobe, brushed and pinned her hair into place, bathed her scratched cheek, which had stopped bleeding, and dabbed Concealstik on the wounds. When the butler arrived she simply said, “There has been a slight disturbance, Lamartine. Miss Lili is leaving. I want you to see that she is out of this house within half an hour. And Lamartine—the meal had better wait until she has gone. We do not want to disturb the other guests, and we don’t want a scene. Serve more champagne, please.”
Lili was already flinging her clothes into her suitcases. She left the house with head held high, conscious of the expressionless, watchful Lamartine in his role of upper-class bouncer.
Shrouded in twilight, the beautiful château receded in the rear-view mirror as the Jaguar sped down the drive. As soon as the car had nosed out of the gate, Lili pulled to the side of the road and collapsed in tears.
But the episode had not yet ended. In the following issue of Paris Match there was no photo coverage of Maxine ’s glamorous guests at her anniversary ball. Instead there was a single colour spread under a banner heading that read “Chateau de Chazalle—A Place to Make Friends.”
It was the first of an idylli
c series of photographs of a young couple lying in a forest clearing. There, unmistakably, lay Lili in the long grass and it was undoubtedly Alexandre who leaned over her. There was a close-up of Alexandre’s mouth and his hand on her breast. There they were clasped together and laughing as they fell through the spray of river water.
It was fairly discreet as these things go—no nipples, no pubic hair, no sex organs, no navels—but it was unmistakably erotic.
Andi Cherno’s telephoto lens had snapped another scoop.
When she saw it, Maxine sat up in bed and burst into tears of mortification.
So did Lili.
So did Alexandre. He had been painfully humiliated. Lili had left without a word, and he had then been ferociously punished by his parents. Nevertheless, after Paris Match appeared, he could feel the wordless, amazed admiration of his father and brothers and the awed respect of every single boy in his class.
But he would rather have had Lili.
55
THE WINTER OF 1975 was unusually cold in Paris, and the scarlet Jaguar skidded slightly as Lili drove—rather too fast—along the cobbled streets.
“Slower,” Zimmer suggested, as they slid sideways toward an ornate, dark green urinal. Lili steered into the skid, straightened and continued as fast as before. Zimmer said, “I don’t know what’s got into you, Lili, but I know something’s wrong. What is it? We’ve made nearly a dozen movies together, and in the last year or so you’ve had two wonderful parts. You’re only twenty-five and you’ve won every European acting award there is. What’s eating you?”
Lili was silent. After Stiarkoz’s death, she had felt like an outsider among the rich. She buried her grief in the one distraction that had never failed to absorb her—her work. She started to work with a passion and discipline, as if her life depended on it. Which it did. Even Zimmer was surprised by her fierce concentration and tenacity. He’d always known she had star quality, but it had originally been hampered by lack of ambition, lack of self-discipline, lack of direction. Now, at twenty-five, Lili seemed to know what she wanted, where she wanted to go. There was no holding her.
And Zimmer was the perfect counterbalance of their relationship. He knew, with cynical self-awareness, that he wasn’t egomanic enough ever to be a great director, he couldn’t be tough enough with himself or anyone else, but with Lili his work was outstanding and so was hers. She trusted him completely, she seemed to know instinctively what he wanted and he always drew a first-class performance from her. Until now.
“Why are you finding this part such a problem?” Zimmer sounded puzzled, although he knew the answer perfectly well. “You’ve got one of the best female roles ever written.” He twisted around to look at Lili’s profile, the little jutting chin, the slightly predatory nose. “Think of the women who have already played Sadie—Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth—it’s a classic. But for the first time since I’ve worked with you, Lili—you’re overacting. You’re hamming it up. What’s the matter?”
Lili snorted and drove a little faster.
“What you need is a man,” said Zimmer, with irritating conviction, knowing it was a remark that always annoys a woman, especially when it’s true. He wanted to get a reaction from her.
“It may be the answer for you, but it isn’t for me. So stop pushing Schenk at me!”
“You’re not very sophisticated in your business moves, Lili,” Zimmer said, with a shrug. “After all, Schenk is putting up forty percent of the money for Rain. Why did you have to turn down such a powerful man so publicly?”
“Because he asked me so publicly! And he made it clear what I had to gain. Look where that sort of filth got me before I met Jo. I never want to go back to doing anything I’m ashamed of. Those pictures in Paris Match were bad enough!” The little red car screamed around a corner and Zimmer grabbed the dashboard.
“Oh, my dear, it’s exasperatingly self-indulgent of you to ignore Schenk. You’re like a self-willed little girl who’s just been told not to step on a banana skin, but insists that she’s got the right to break her own leg.”
“Oh, God! Does the whole world revolve around sex and money?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have to obey Schenk. It’s not a royal command. What can he do, anyway? Ruin my career?” She snorted again.
“My dear, don’t think he can’t.” The light from the dashboard glowed green over Zimmer’s tense face. “Nobody gets a big role by screwing, but anybody can lose one by not screwing. Of course, it wouldn’t be attributed directly to that, you’d be described as ‘uncooperative’ or ‘neurotic.’” Briefly Zimmer mentioned the name of a Hollywood studio chief and a once-famous star whose career had suddenly seemed to dissolve.
“I’ve heard your story dozens of times,” Lili said, “and each time about a different actress. It’s amazing how people will believe anything if it’s nasty enough. Look at the rumours that fly around about me, although I haven’t slept with a man for months.”
Zimmer said nothing. The humiliating episode at the Chateau de Chazalle had had the effect of making Lili retreat further into the shell of privacy that she had carefully constructed after the death of Stiarkoz. Now her reputation as a serious actress was suffering because those magazine pictures reminded everyone of the way in which she had originally become notorious. She slammed her foot on the accelerator and burst out, “Oh, what’s the point of working so hard when my every move is misinterpreted to fit their filthy image of me so that they can feel better about themselves! You know how hard I try, Zimmer.”
Zimmer nodded. He knew the tough, self-imposed routine she followed when not working. Exercise and dance classes, drama and voice lessons, early to bed and a careful diet.
At one point Zimmer had feared that he was in danger of becoming her substitute for Stiarkoz, but he realised quickly that Lili didn’t want to lean on anybody, she wanted to stand on her own feet. She was determined to succeed, to carve her way like Jo.
Lili didn’t like to think too much about Jo, for the sharp sting of her loss was still too painful. Instead, she found—just before she fell asleep—that her thoughts were turning childishly again to her unknown real mother. Increasingly, Lili saw that shadowy maternal figure as her invisible guardian angel. Yearning for such warmth, Lili had started to daydream again, to wonder who her real mother was, whether she was still alive.
The scarlet Jaguar swerved dangerously as Lili remembered that Sunday afternoon when Serge had telephoned her—speaking in his old masterful voice as if he’d last seen her only the day before. “Lili, darling, it’s like trying to get the fucking President’s telephone number. I’ve missed you, you naughty little girl, and I wondered if you felt like having dinner tonight, for old time’s sake . . . ?”
Carefully, gently, Lili had placed the receiver on the table and walked away, leaving Serge talking to the air. At the memory, Lili felt so agitated that she braked too late and the Jaguar nearly hit a Renault in front of it. Impatiently, Lili waited for the light to change.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Lili,” Zimmer urged again. “Before you fucking kill us both.” She was silent, so he thought he’d better tell her. “When an actor works on a part that’s so close to him, he often can’t see it objectively, so he feels frustrated and angry because he feels he has no control over his part. What such an actor finds difficult to realise is that what he has to do is—nothing.” The Jaguar passed dangerously close to a truck, which blasted its horn. Zimmer continued gently, “You know what humiliation feels like, Lili, you know what it’s like to feel worthless, you understand exactly how Sadie feels, so what you should do with this part is—just let it happen.”
“Shut up, Zimmer!” There was an explosion of wrath from Lili as the little scarlet car skidded again, swerved around 180 degrees and slid sideways into an ornate lamppost. Lili and Zimmer were flung forward, than yanked backward by their safety belts as the car stopped abruptly—the right front fender crumpled like a discarded tomato can.
“Now, look what you’ve made me do!” cried Lili. “If you’re going to analyze my acting and my character, you should have picked a better time!”
A small crowd started to gather around the sports car. Lili took no notice of them as she said angrily, “Of course I understand Sadie. She’s basically a nice, cheerful tart who likes a good time because it makes her forget that her real life is such a mess and she hasn’t enough imagination to see that things could be different. But that sanctimonious missionary rams home the fact that she ’s worthless until Sadie actually believes it. Then he promises her he can provide salvation, so Sadie starts to hope. . . . But then the dirty bastard rapes her and that . . . destroys her hope, rapes her soul.”
A blue-cloaked gendarme was hurrying toward the car but still Lili took no notice. “That’s not going to happen to me, Zimmer. I’m not Sadie—and no man is going to do that to me! I’m an actress and my imagination is what makes me an actress. I had to develop it to survive those dreadful years. It’s all I have to show for them. That’s why I can think myself into someone else’s head so easily.”
The gendarme had nearly reached the car. “Oh, I know I’m calm and efficient on the set. That’s because I know exactly what has to be done and how to do it. But off the set I have to be me and I don’t know how to do that, I don’t know my lines, I don’t understand the plot and I don’t know who I can trust.”
Zimmer nodded.
“On the set I’m a star, off the set I feel that everyone’s sneering at me . . . and it’s such a damn lonely feeling.” She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
Lace Page 60