Stars Don't Cry (The Silver Bridle Book 2)

by Caroline Akrill

  Mr Vincinelli clattered out another batch of cups and saucers. He stuck another jug of milk under the steam spout. “I like to see Mr Stanislavski for myself at this moment,” he said explosively. “I like to show him what he has done to my business, to the Café Marengo! You know what he say to me? I have to split, Vincinelli, he say to me; the Café Marengo it is too noisy for me, it is too crowded, it is affecting my business! I ask you! Is that his fault or mine?” He topped the coffee and raced off along the counter.

  Further down the page there was a smaller photograph of Emma Hall standing outside the Café Marengo. In the doorway stood Mr Vincinelli in his apron, looking harassed. ‘My agent works from a Soho café,’ says the girl who is set to be the toast of London’s West End. ‘At first, even he refused me. But I wouldn’t give up. I was determined to succeed. Chance had nothing to do with it. Luck had nothing to do with it. It was hard work and perseverance that got me the break I needed.’

  Mr Vincinelli returned, throwing out more saucers, cups, spoons, pouring more coffee, steaming more milk. “Mr Stanislavski he say to me: Vincinelli, this publicity forces me to go legit. I have to get licensed. I have to get an office! I would like to say this to Mr Stanislavski! Look what this publicity has done to me! Look what it has done to the Café Marengo!”

  I should have been pleased for Emma Hall, I should have been delighted for her sake. But the headlines dug into my heart like a knife. Because I had wanted to be Ziggy’s biggest success. As a reward for all his encouragement, his advice, his faith, I had wanted it to be Grace Darling who made his name. These headlines should have been mine.

  “Mr Vincinelli, where is Ziggy? Where can I find him?”

  Mr Vincinelli leaned backwards away from the machine and grabbed a business card from a shelf. He pushed it through the gap. “You go and see Mr Stanislavski now, Miss Grace Darling, and you give him a message from Mr Vincinelli! You tell him I need more staffings, I need more tables, I need bigger café, but most of all I need to sleep!”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Over the counter someone said to the new face, “Which is the agent’s booth? Is he here today?” I ran out into the street and collided with Richard. He looked at the card and hailed a cruising taxi.

  The address was just a few streets away. On the pavement a young man was screwing a brass plate below all the other brass plates on one side of the doorway. Z. STANISLAVSKI. STARLIGHT PROMOTIONS, it said, 5TH FLOOR.

  There was no lift. I raced up the five flights leaving Richard to follow at his own pace. On the fifth floor I burst through a door and was confronted by a girl sitting at a desk with a typewriter, two telephones and a goose-foot plant.

  “Can I help you?” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”

  It was a far cry from the corner booth in the Café Marengo.

  “I don’t need an appointment,” I gasped. “I’m Grace Darling. I need to see Ziggy. It’s urgent.”

  “Grace Darling?” She frowned slightly. “Should I know the name? Mr Stanislavski isn’t actually here at the moment. I don’t expect him back until four.”

  “Four?” I looked at my watch. It was half past two.

  Richard now appeared through the doors. “Grace, I can’t wait until four. It’s impossible. I have to be back in Wallingford by seven for a company dinner. I can’t miss it. I have to make a speech.”

  Nor could I wait. I had a celebration dinner to cook.

  I flopped into a chair next to the goose-foot plant and poured out all my troubles to the receptionist. She was sympathetic but there was not a lot she could do. She said I should go back to Moat Farm and telephone from there at five o’clock. By that time she would have explained the situation to Ziggy, but that she was sure I was over-reacting. Scripts were often late, she said, writers seemed unable to keep to any kind of time schedule. She was sure nothing had gone wrong.

  Speeding back down the motorway, I sank back into my seat, drained and exhausted. Had I over-reacted? Perhaps I had, but at least I now knew why it was the Café Marengo had gone ex-directory. And I knew where to find Ziggy, and that was the important thing.

  “I’m really terribly grateful to you for doing this,” I told Richard. “Given the situation, most people would have refused.”

  “I know.”

  “Most people would have driven away and left me to rot.”

  “I almost did.”

  “I do appreciate it, Richard, honestly.”

  “So you should.”

  “I had no idea it was the company dinner tonight.”

  No reply. Richard stared straight ahead.

  “Last year, you invited me to go with you.”

  “Last year and the year before that,” he reminded me.

  “But not this year.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Last year you were in London, looking for work. The year before you were at Drama School. This year you are at Moat Farm.”

  “But you could have asked.”

  “To give you the pleasure of refusing?”

  “I might not have refused.”

  “With a cast iron excuse like Moat Farm, I rather think you would have.”

  “I suppose so.” I was rather peeved though, not to have been asked. “So you’re going alone.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Not exactly. You mean you’re not going alone?”

  “I’m not going alone,” Richard confirmed.

  “Then who…?”

  “I’m taking Marcia Cunningham.”

  I might have known it. Marcia Cunningham was Richard’s ever-ready standby. Marcia Cunningham with her lavish statistics, her pouting lips and her luxuriant mass of auburn hair. I loathed Marcia Cunningham. I sat up in my seat, outraged. “After all the fuss you made today about an innocent kiss, now you’re telling me you’re taking Marcia Cunningham to the company dinner tonight! Richard, how could you?”

  Richard removed his eyes from the road long enough to give me a coolly amused glance.

  “I suppose you’ll kiss Marcia Cunningham!”

  “I expect I shall do rather more than that.”

  I froze. All the way back to Moat Farm I sat stiffly in my sat and maintained a stony silence. Richard, having turned the tables in his habitual manner, drove with infuriating composure. When we arrived he opened the car door for me with polite attention, pecked my frozen cheek and drove away down the bumpy drive towards Wallingford, towards the company dinner, towards Marcia Cunningham. Had I a gun I would have put a bullet through every tyre.

  The farmhouse kitchen was empty. So was the office. There was a note beside the telephone written on a piece of crumpled paper retrieved from the wastepaper basket. RING DIRECTOR ABOUT FLYING HORSE SEQUENCE – CONVEYOR BELT?

  As I dialled Ziggy’s number I turned over the crumpled paper in a furious and distracted manner. It was a page of script for The Silver Bridle.

  I flew out of the farmhouse and down the nettle path like a madwoman. Past the muckheap I pounded, past the open doors of the barn, into the stable yard, red hot with anger, looking for somebody, anybody.

  I found Angel. She came out of The Raven’s stable with his day rug over her arm. “Oh good,” she said, “you’re back. I was just beginning to wonder about supper.”

  “You can forget supper!” I shouted.

  She looked at me in astonishment. I thrust the crumpled paper at her. “I want an explanation for THIS!”

  Angel looked at the paper. “Ring Director about flying horse sequence – conveyor belt? Well,” she said, “it’s not so difficult really. We have to teach the horse to canter on a conveyor belt because then the action can be filmed in a studio against a plain blue background, after that the sky is shot separately…”

  I thought she was being deliberately obtuse. “Not that! Look at the other side!”

  Calmly she turned over the paper. There was no mistaking where the page was from because the title of the serial was on t
he top in bold type. “Oh dear,” Angel said. “Now I suppose you will have to know everything. How annoying.”

  “Annoying? Annoying!” I stared at her in fury. “Annoying for whom, may I ask? Any annoyance is surely mine. I’m the one who is entitled to be annoyed, and that’s the understatement of the decade!” I made a grab at her but she moved out of range. “What happened to my script?” I demanded. “What have you done with it?!”

  “I haven’t done anything with it.” Angel fenced me with the rug. She looked apprehensive. “Grace, you don’t understand!”

  “Oh yes I do! I understand that it arrived, and I understand that for reasons best known to yourselves, you and Anthony appropriated it!” I lunged forward, pulled the rug out of her hands and threw it at her. She ducked. The roan horse who was loose because he liked to be loose shied away in horror and cantered off, splattering us with gravel. “Tell me about it!” I yelled. “Tell me what you have done!”

  “I can’t.” Angel was unnerved but accustomed to dealing with dangerous animals. She began to back away slowly, maintaining eye contact and talking all the time. “You don’t understand… it wasn’t like that at all… Anthony was just…” I wasn’t having any of this. I stalked her up to the open doors of the barn. A tactical error on Angel’s part, surely. Go on, I thought, just a bit further, then I can close the doors before I choke all of the lying breath out of your body. I was livid, and ready for violence. But suddenly Angel turned on her heel, ducked under my outstretched arms, and fled.

  I raced after her. “No wonder you always got to the postbox first!” I cried. “No wonder you didn’t want me to call at the Post Office!”

  “That wasn’t the reason,” Angel gasped. “Grace, you are wrong about this!” She sped past the muck heap.

  “No wonder you knew I was in wheelchair!”

  Angel ran faster, but so did I. “I shall catch you,” I panted, “no matter how far you run! And whilst you are explaining why you stole my script, you can also explain why you failed to tell me that Richard was coming today!”

  Angel raced along the nettle path. “I forgot! There was a message and I was going to write it down, but I couldn’t find the pencil!”

  I didn’t believe it. “That isn’t true!” I yelped. “It was all part of some crazy plan, Angel! Admit it!”

  “I won’t! It wasn’t! I’ve told you, I just forgot to pass on the message! You told me he was ugly and boring! You said you wished he would leave you alone! It didn’t seem all that important!” Angel cried.

  She sped across the wilderness, towards the wood. I got near enough to grab the back of her shirt. “Don’t! Let me go!” She was terrified.

  “Where is my script!” I yelled at her. “What have you done with it!” I made a wild lunge towards her streaming hair. She screamed.

  Along the hoof-flattened path we flew. Into the wood. Into the darkness. Up to the pantomime cottage. In through the door.

  Once inside Angel threw open another door leading into the only habitable room, the one where the glass was still intact. Leaning against the wall was Anthony. Sitting at a table behind a forest of whisky bottles and a typewriter was somebody who, viewed through a heat-haze and at a distance, could have been Anthony…

  Angel collapsed against the door frame. Her breath came out in desperate sobs. “I had to bring her,” she apologised as soon as she could speak. “I thought she was going to murder me.”

  Brothers! Anthony Sylvester and Tom Silver were brothers; Silver was Tom’s professional name. I should have realized, they were so alike, and of course Angel had not been beating me to the post to appropriate my script, but to prevent me from seeing letters addressed to Tom Silver. That would have given the game away. And Tom had been adamant that I should not know he was working so close, he knew I would have pestered him for bits of the script, for the story, for details of the character I was to play. And when I had calmed down enough to consider it, I had to admit that he was right.

  There were six at the celebration dinner. Ziggy drove from London to be there. Many toasts were drunk to the new partnership, to the engagement of Angel and Hender, to the completed script, to my success in the part, to Ziggy’s new premises, to the birth of the colt, even to Emma Hall’s West End debut.

  But later on, I slipped away under the pretext of checking the mare and foal and wandered round the stable yard. I stood and looked over the stable door at the mare who had been the best faller in the business as she lay serenely in the straw with her sleeping son. The roan with the long white stockings who was loose because he liked to be loose came to stand beside me.

  I had only been at Moat Farm for three weeks but it seemed like years. Horses were part of my life now. And ahead was the making of the series and whatever adventures that might bring. One thing was certain, as an actress, I would either be a success or a failure at the end of it.

  But I was to have my chance and that was all I had wanted. And if somewhere in Wallingford, Richard was heavily involved with Marcia Cunningham, I supposed that everything had its price.