Lace II

by Shirley Conran

  Suddenly, the house seemed quiet and empty. Pagan picked up the bottle of cooking brandy from the kitchen shelf, and put it to her lips. She felt an emptiness within her. I am worth nothing, nobody cares about me, and nobody ever will again. I don’t want to live. Life is my enemy and death is my friend. The future is black and pointless and threatening.

  By midnight, she had also drained the gin, whisky, and vermouth in the drinks cabinet, followed by the Drambuie. She threw up in the kitchen sink.

  Then she thought, I’m not going to let it happen to me again, and telephoned Alcoholics Anonymous, to find out the date of the next meeting in the crypt of the church at Trafalgar Square.

  * * *

  “Now the openings—push against me, harder … harder … goddammit, will you take that away?” He poked a finger into Lili’s stomach.

  Lili shut her eyes and clenched her abdominal muscles with all her strength to pull her belly concave. “It won’t go any flatter,” she gasped between clenched teeth.

  “Too much tension in your neck, relax.” Again, the Pilates trainer folded Lili’s knees against her chest and leaned on them with all his weight. “You’ll have a back like Makarova by the time I’m finished with you. Okay, that’s enough, now the weights.”

  Lili moved across the studio to the fixed bed. Outside the rain lashed against the skylight; God, she was sick of this New York winter.

  “Are you doing bettter in class, yet?”

  “My ballet teacher’s using me to demonstrate.” Lili strapped the black-leather weight belts around her ankles.

  The trainer believed her. Lili had been badly out of shape a month ago, and he had been surprised by her fierce concentration and tenacity. Accustomed to training professional dancers, he had seldom met with such a capacity for discipline in an actress. He knew that he could be tough with her, because she would fight back and try harder, whereas most actresses would burst into tears and he’d never see them again.

  “You’re not Folies Bergère standard yet, Lili.” He pushed her onto the exercise bed, where she lay on her right side, bending her right leg and extending her left leg straight in front of her.

  “Okay, up and down fifty times,” said the trainer. “You still need more strength in that left leg.” He corrected her pelvis position and watched carefully as Lili slowly grunted to the fiftieth lift.

  “Look—you’re changing,” he pulled her upright, and in the mirror he pointed out to Lili the sleek, long muscles that were appearing on her thighs, the hollows in her buttocks, the flat, taut area below her breasts, where her stomach muscles were developing. It was okay. By May Lili would be in shape for The Best Legs in the Business.

  * * *

  The old London cinema had been especially decorated for the rock concert. It now looked like a giant scarlet parcel topped with a silver-ribbon bow. The red plastic wrapping bellied in the wind, straining dangerously at the nylon ropes that held it together. Each time the wind gusted, the ropes slapped loudly against the giant yellow sign which announced: ANGELFACE HARRIS: GIFTWRAPPED. BRITISH TOUR BEGINS TONITE. APRIL 5 SOLD OUT.

  Eddie thought life had been a lot easier for a publicity agent back in the good old days of punk, when everybody was broke, but they believed in what they were doing and all you had to organize, publicity-wise, was getting one of the band arrested at the start of the tour, then the ballyhoo took care of itself.

  As he approached the star’s dressing room, the door was flung open and a girl was thrown out into the corridor, blood streaming down her lower face.

  “You fucking cow,” she yelled, shoving tufts of black hair back from her pallid face. She struggled upright against the grimy wall, pulling the black-leather miniskirt over her chicken-skinny thighs. “You fucking fat London tart!” One hand checked the silver chain that pierced her left nostril, looped acroos her left cheek and hung from her ear. “Who the fuck d’you think you are?”

  A cheap orange-plastic toolbox was flung out of the dressing room. As it crashed to the floor, the box burst open, spilling greasepaint, wads of dirty cotton, glittering powders, and gels in a dozen crude colors.

  “I’m his wife, darling, and nobody better forget it!” A tiny woman, wearing a white fox, floorlength coat, appeared in the doorway. “Now get your skinny arse out of here before I do you an injury.”

  “Now would that be this week’s wife or the one before?” spat back the girl in the miniskirt. “Or is this one of Angelface’s special relationships and you’re going for a whole month of wedded bliss? Someone ought to organize a grand reunion for Angelface’s old ladies—at Wembley Stadium.”

  There was a moment of electric silence and then Maggie, the fourth Mrs. Angelface Harris, stepped forward on her six-inch high-heeled silver cowboy boots, and raised her tiny hand to the other girl’s face. But instead of slapping her, Maggie hooked two fingers through the silver chain that ran from ear to nose and yanked it hard. The girl screamed, as blood spurted from her nose and streamed down the length of her body, like rain down a windowpane.

  Eddie, the publicity man, muttering “For Chrissake” as he ran forward, pushed Maggie aside, then hurried the bleeding, screaming girl upstairs to the boxlike room behind the stage where the two Red Cross volunteers were reading paperbacks.

  Eddie reached for the radio in the back pocket of his jeans. “Kev—the makeup girl’s had an accident. Get a car round to the stage door and take her to the hospital. And there’s a bit of a mess outside Angelface’s dressing room. Get someone to clear it up.”

  He walked into the dressing room and waved at Angelface Harris, who was standing at the counter, finishing his makeup. He wore only a dancer’s support, the small black-elastic pouch kept in place around his genitals by a G string running between his hollow-cheeked buttocks.

  “Everything under control?” Angelface raised his cherubic eyebrows, widened his innocent blue eyes and put down the Daily Mail. Even with red greasepaint streaked down his cheeks, his face had an appealing urchin impertinence. Eddie looked at the white, sinewy body and wondered what was the secret of Angelface’s legendary, evergreen youthfulness. Whatever he’s on, I’d like some, too, Eddie thought to himself, as Angelface squirmed into a red-and-silver striped leotard and then clipped on a massive, winged silver collar, studded with rhinestones, which swept out beyond his narrow shoulders. Angelface now had a V-shaped silhouette of a body builder.

  Of course, Angelface’s musical secret was that he had always stuck, leechlike, to the spirit of rock’n’roll, which was a mix of black American blues and American country music. Angelface had been one of the original rockers of the fifties; then in the sixties he’d reinvented himself, with a band, as a lead singer of the Dark Angels. Every time rock’n’roll rushed up a blind alley, Angelface’s career had wobbled. In 1967, he had been buried by psychedelic rock but, by 1977, Angelface was top of the heap again, and Rolling Stone magazine was wondering how many times this lovable old strummer could be recreated, as Angelface relaunched himself in black leather and studs on the crest of the punk-rock wave.

  It was simple, really, Eddie thought. Every time a new generation of fans rediscovered rock’n’roll, they also discovered Angelface; two years older than Mick Jagger, he still looked as cute and skinny as the day he first stepped into the spotlight.

  Maggie buttoned rhinestone-covered silver gauntlets around her husband’s wrists, then fitted silver wings around her husband’s Flash Gordon boots. Angelface peered into the dressing-room mirror and made a few, tentative passes at his eyebrows with the black greasepaint.

  “I hate doing me own makeup, Maggie,” the singer grumbled to the bundle of white fox that covered his sulking wife. “I wish to God you’d kept your hands off the makeup girl until she’d finished my face. You know I’d never touch a nasty scrubber like that.”

  “Filthy bitch bled on me,” muttered his wife, sponging a spot of blood from the white fox. “Right, I’m off to get me hair done for tonight.”

  After s
he left, Angelface sucked in his small beginnings of a belly and leaned toward the mirror again. Sometimes he wondered if Maggie wasn’t a bit of a nutter. Chicks always got uptight when they thought it was expected of them, but Maggie sometimes went over the top with jealousy. Last week she’d set fire to that chick’s hair, just because he’d touched her bum as he came off-stage; one click of Maggie’s cigarette lighter and the girl was a hospital case. This week she tears the makeup girl’s nose in half. What the hell was he in for next, Angelface wondered, as he picked up the telephone and dialed a New York number. “Judy? Yes, it’s me again. Gotcha at last. Listen, don’t hang up on me or I’ll reach for me lawyer … I’ll tell you why I’m phoning. Says in the Daily Mail that Lili’s due to film in Britain next month … I’ve told you before, I don’t believe you … You know bloody well that the reason I couldn’t help you when the baby was born was because I was as broke as you were, but that ain’t the case today, Judy. Today I’m worth eleven big M’s and I want to get to know me daughter. I want to meet Lili … what d’ya mean, I can’t. I’m entitled to … don’t you tell me I’m entitled to nothing … it’s a bit late to tell me that I’m not her father, and I don’t bloody well believe you, Judy … don’t give me that line again about being irregular and getting your dates wrong. I gotta memory, Judy, and I remember you was crazy about me … Judy, I’d hoped that you’d be nice about this, but since you aren’t, I’m telling you. First, I know I’m her father. She gets her looks from me, don’t she? Second, I’m gonna meet her without telling her … because I’m gonna make sure she likes me for meself, before springing the big surprise. And you can’t stop me, Judy, so don’t bitch it up from your end, or you’ll be sorry. That’s what I wanted to tell you!” Angelface slammed the phone back in its cradle.

  In Manhattan, Judy slammed the phone back in its cradle.

  And somebody in the adjoining room, quietly, carefully, replaced the extension telephone.

  May 1979

  * * *

  Lili stalked furiously across the café, ripped the lighted cigarette out of the man’s mouth and slapped him across the face. Energized with fury at her insolence, he grabbed the cigarette back from her pouting lips. Again, Lili snatched it from his mouth, so he flung her to the floor by the old, upright piano, then spat insults at her, as she scrambled to her feet. Then he grabbed her arm and savagely whirled Lili into Mistinguett’s famous apache routine. Lili kicked the man and he dealt her a brutal blow to the head. She fell to the floor again, and again he dragged her upright. She spat in his face as he ripped her skirt off, and so they danced on, portraying a lover’s quarrel, at the end of which Lili groveled at the man’s feet in an ecstasy of masochistic passion.

  “Cut!” Zimmer shouted. The technicians and the watching dancers softly applauded. Lili’s magnetic animal sensuality effortlessly supplied the passion that was needed for the apache number.

  “Zimmer!” Lili called, still on the floor of the French café set. “Do I really have to hit him so hard?”

  “But of course,” Zimmer shouted back, “the apache number has to be savage and sadistic. It’s about the eternal battle for supremacy between a man and a woman. You must hit him hard; you are hitting back for all the oppressed women of the world, remember! That’s it for today, everyone.”

  * * *

  Zimmer nodded. “Action!” The clapboard snapped.

  Thirty-six showgirls in flesh-colored fishnet tights, holding up their ten-foot-long white ostrich-feather trains, paraded down the glittering staircase, their tall feather headdresses nodding as they walked.

  At the top of the staircase, Lili stepped forward. She was wearing a few square inches of spangled gauze, a spangled chastity belt and a huge, blue peacock tail.

  “CUT!” bellowed Zimmer. “What is this on your legs?”

  “Tights,” Lili shouted back into the dark emptiness beyond the pool of bright light.

  “Get them off—I want shiny legs!” the director hollered. “Take five, everybody!”

  Back in her dressing room, Lili peeled off the fishnet tights and said, “I should have listened to you, Guy.” Guy St. Simon was Lili’s personal wardrobe designer for The Best Legs.

  “He’s edgy because he’s so anxious,” Guy explained. “This is the biggest budget picture that Zimmer’s ever made. He merely wants your legs to have that smooth, shiny, twenties look. Let’s get you into the silk tights.”

  Carefully, they eased three pairs of silk tights over Lili’s legs. Lili replaced her spangled chastity belt, the designer fixed the huge blue peacock tail behind her, and they looked in the mirror. Lili wailed. “My legs look like sausages!”

  Guy nodded sorrowfully. “Mistinguett must have had legs like sticks, to get away with three pairs.”

  Lili started down the staircase again.

  “CUT!” yelled Zimmer. “Your legs look like saucissons”

  “You wanted Mistinguett’ sauthenticcostume,” Lili shouted back. The technicians let out a mass sigh of ennui as another break was called. Lili released her cumbersome feather tail and ran down to the footlights, her breasts bouncing under their crust of glass jewels. “Where are you, Guy?” She searched the darkness for the designer. “Quick, I’ve had an idea.” The footlights flung dramatic black shadows over Lili’s face and silken legs as she leaned over and peered into the dim stalls.

  “Doesn’t she look like an early Toulouse Lautrec?” murmured Zimmer, who collected French music hall paintings, to his visitor.

  “Yeah,” said Angelface Harris, “that dwarf painter.”

  Angelface had dropped his well-brought-up English accent. He no longer spoke correctly and enunciated clearly. Like so many pop stars, he dropped his h’s and adopted a pseudo-working-class accent with a mid-Atlantic twang.

  Angelface sat, unusually still and silent, as Lili pushed back her cloud of hair and called again for her costume designer. She was the most beautiful, amazing chick he’d ever laid eyes on. And she was the sexiest chick he’d ever seen, he thought, as he watched it all spill out of the spangles.

  “Anyone screwing her?” Angelface asked suddenly.

  He can’t wait to get in there, thought Zimmer, as he shrugged his shoulders. “No idea. You can’t meet her today. She’s not to be distracted.”

  But Angelface had not felt lust; he had suddenly felt a burning desire to flatten whoever was screwing his daughter.

  Twenty minutes later, plumes once more in place, Lili again started down the staircase, her legs gleaming under a thick application of oil.

  “Perfect,” said Zimmer as Lili reached the front of the stage, the microphone swung over her head and she began to sing. “C’est Paris…” Lili’s confident, throaty voice rang through the empty theater as the chandelier twirled and the thirty-six showgirls twitched their feather tails and stepped forward.

  “She can sing.” Angelface sat up in surprise. “Her phrasing is great. She’s got a sort of harsh quality in her voice that chicks can’t usually get. It’s a strong voice and a sexy voice, but not a sweet voice.” Angelface hadn’t expected Lili to be able to sing. But he knew who she got her voice from.

  “CUT!” Zimmer yelled. “Mike in shot.”

  And so it went on. Unlike the rest of the cast, Lili was in almost every scene and, when shooting finished at nine o’clock that night, she was too exhausted to absorb further criticism and her left eye had started to squint slightly, as it always did when she was tired. Nevertheless, Zimmer appeared in her dressing room with a sheaf of notes. “About your singing, Lili.”

  “I’m sorry I missed that top G,” she said quickly. “I lose my range when I’m tired.”

  “All your singing is wrong. Mistinguett, she had a voice like a cement mixer, you are singing too well. I want you to rasp!”

  Three months with the Met’s voice coach. Why did I bother? Lili snapped, “If you want me to sing like Louis Armstrong, why not dub my voice with a cement mixer?”

  * * *

  A mo
nth later they were shooting in the countryside and Lili no longer had to try to roughen her voice because it was hoarse with overuse. A scarf was wound around her neck to protect it against the damp air of the May evening as Lili strolled by herself through the field.

  Her calf muscles ached and her battered joints protested as she climbed over a five-barrel gate.

  Physically, Lili was exhausted, but mentally she was content. Halfway through the shooting, Mistinguett looked very promising, although Lili knew that you couldn’t consider a film successful until you saw the final print. A film could be spoiled in the editing, badly dubbed or lost in a film industry vendetta, never to be screened. But the dailies were good and so was the atmosphere on set. There was a hopeful buzz about the whole production. Zimmer was no longer tense and had even grunted, “Pas mal” today. He was rapidly turning back into the charming, supportive colleague who had been the first person to treat Lili as a serious actress, and who could coax a better performance from her than any other director.

  Swallows cruised against the iridescent pink of the evening sky as Lili sauntered into a muddy lane. On either side of the road, rainwater chuckled down the ditches, bluebells gleamed in the hedgebanks and raindrops dripped softly from fern fronds. England was very pretty, when it stopped raining, Lili thought, as she paused in the middle of the lane to re-tie her headscarf. Listening to the faint call of the swallows, Lili was hardly aware of a thin, insectlike whine in the distance, until suddenly the whine became a roar and a black shape leaped from the corner in front of her, mud and water spewing from under its wheels. Lili shrieked as she threw herself against the hedgebank.

  The car howled past her, then screeched to a halt, further up the lane. A man in dirty mechanic’s overalls flung himself out of the car and raced back toward Lili, calling, “Are you okay?”

  “Of course not!” yelled Lili angrily, as the man reached her. This reckless fool could have killed her.

  “I’m most awfully sorry.” He helped her to stand upright. She winced with pain and started to pull the brambles from her hair, as he continued, “I never expected anyone on this road, because it’s private. And this part of the country is always deserted in May—even in the holiday season it’s only used by ramblers. Are you on holiday?”