The Winter King

by Amanda Carpenter

  She nodded with a dry swallow, her huge eyes clinging to his,

  He said gently, ‘In a few minutes you’re going to go to Christopher. I’ve already talked to him about it. You’re going to sit with him in Make-up, and gossip about all sorts of real-life things. You’ll watch his appearance change, and then you’re going to do the scene, and you’ll go back with him to Make-up and watch it all come off I again. I want you to see the illusion for what it really is. Hannah’s father dies, but yours will come back to you. Do you understand?’

  Her chest was constricted. She understood. He had talked her through meticulously, methodically, and the careful attention to every single detail spoke of immense compassion. She whispered, ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  He cupped the side of her face and stroked her skin. ‘I’m sorry I can’t make it any easier on you. We’ll take our time, there’s no rush or panic, and what happens will happen. If we can’t get the scene right today, we won’t get it at all. We’ll rewrite around it.’

  Her sleek eyebrows pulled together. She said slowly, searching his expression, bemused, ‘But that will destroy the integrity of the story. His death is integral to the plot.’

  He sighed heavily, and whether it was from impatience or remorse she couldn’t tell. ‘I don’t really care. The story’s not worth it, not if it costs too much. Are you all right with the change now‘

  She wasn’t at all sure that she was, but the scene would have to be done sooner or later; as he said, it was best done sooner. She gave him the reassurance he asked for.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’

  He gave her an odd look, and shook his head. ‘I’ll see you both on the set, then,’ he said abruptly, and left.

  Christopher was waiting for her. He held her hand as the make-up artist painted his face, and the gaunt, haggard apparition he became was a gay and twinkling clown. She laughed at him heartily, knowing fully well what he was doing for her sake, and loved him more than she ever had before because of it.

  Then they went to the house, and she hung back as he disappeared into Hannah’s father’s bedroom with Adam. She waited, her heart pounding as she listened to the murmur of the two men’s voices, until Adam came out again.

  He smiled at her, and said easily, ‘That’s it, then. The camera’s going to start rolling as soon as you walk into the room. We’re not going to cut, but don’t let that worry you. Just take your time, break out of character if you have to, and get it over with.’

  They weren’t going to cut? What an extravagant waste of expensive film; mistakes and mischievous pranks sprinkled the crew’s everyday life, but camera time was sacrosanct. It was an immense gift he offered. She smiled back at him, blindingly, and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he murmured, and kissed her forehead, and then he walked back into the room. He would be waiting unobtrusively, out of sight behind the cameraman, but she had to dismiss him from her thoughts.

  Yvonne was staggered by the trust, by the consideration, by the sheer love and respect everyone gave to her. She couldn’t fail them; she couldn’t let that happen; this meant too much. It went far beyond the boundaries of movie-making and an imitation of life. It had absolutely nothing to do with either the pursuance or abandonment of a career.

  She closed her eyes and centred herself. She had no idea if she could act the scene. She was a pauper in the face of such rich human experience, and, since she had nothing else she could give them in return, she would give them Hannah.

  She walked to the doorway. The sight of the still, pale figure in the bed slammed into her; the echo of the blow halted her and shook across her face.

  ‘Dad?’ she asked, a fragile and fearful thread of sound. ‘Daddy?’

  The figure didn’t move, didn’t breathe. The silence of the room was vast. She couldn’t approach him, and skirted around the edge of the room, her eyes swallowing up the rest of her face, eloquent, despairing, horrified eyes. She was failing; this was too much for her. Her lips trembled, and then her whole body followed in terrified concert.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered, holding on to the wall. ‘I don’t know what it means. Oh, God, please sit up.’

  And the figure didn’t move. It was unbearable. She couldn’t bear it. She flung herself across the room and across her father, her hands clenched into the sheets covering his chest and her head bowed over them, the classic postures of a woman in the terrible discovery of grief. She sobbed from the bottom of her soul, ‘I love you, Daddy.’

  The lines she spoke were more than flawless. The lines came from her brand new. Adam leaned his head against the wall and said rawly to the cameraman, ‘Stop filming.’

  The man looked over his shoulder. He had been totally absorbed in the pathos of the scene. ‘What?’ he whispered incredulously. ‘But this is fantastic——’

  ‘Stop filming, goddammit!’ The powerful roar shattered the atmosphere. Yvonne’s overflowing eyes blinked several times in rapid succession, and Christopher shot to a sitting position and wrapped his arms around her. Then the pair, father and daughter alike, turned as one to stare at their director in puzzlement and enquiry.

  Adam looked at them both, at the dark eyes so much alike and yet so different. He was white, the incandescence bleached out of him. A true actor became his part, not merely played it. Where were his limits?

  ‘You’re finished for the day,’ he told them through stiffened lips. ‘We’ll use whatever we’ve got.’

  They had barely started. She protested, amazed, ‘But Hannah’s got more lines to say.’

  ‘No more, Yvonne,’ he said, with one fist upraised, and he nearly knocked the cameraman over as he stalked out of the room.

  Yvonne looked up at Christopher, her expression full of bewilderment. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, darling,’ soothed her father, who pressed her chestnut head to his chest and took advantage of the fact to wipe his face surreptitiously. ‘You did beautifully.’

  But she didn’t believe him. She was worried and disappointed; Adam had told her once that she gave nothing to her performance, and then, when she had tried to give so much, he cut her short. She always seemed to be floundering in the land of confusion where he was concerned, never managing to grasp the relevant point.

  ‘He’s just tired,that’s all,’ she decided out loud, and nodded. ‘He’s been working too hard. That’s it. Everybody else has a day off here and there but, as director, Adam never gets a break. It must be a terrible strain. I really don’t know how he does it.’

  The lack of response to her words finally brought her mumbling to a halt, and she glanced around for confirmation. Both the cameraman and her father were looking at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  Her shoulders slumped. Who was she trying to fool? Herself, that was who. Only and always herself.

  Adam had left the site. N o one knew where he’d gone, just that he had decided that everyone was going to take the rest of the day off, and he’d got into his car and driven away. The cat was away and the mice got down to some serious play. A softball game was set up, a party planned for the evening, beer bought.

  Everybody else thoroughly enjoyed the brief hiatus. Yvonne found the whole thing very wearying. She went to bed early, and made the resolution between the midnight hours and morning that she would try even harder the next day to give Adam what he wanted, to perform to the utmost of her capabilities, to live up to his expectations. She couldn’t bear to look into his grey eyes and see disappointment.

  She thought it would be easy the next day, a piece of cake. She’d hardly have to do any acting at all, for her reactions were much in keeping with Hannah’s distaste when her husband tried re make love with her.

  She and Richard had carefully plotted out the whole thing. Actually, knowing Richard’s true lightheartedness, it was difficult to keep a straight face during the rehearsals, and they’d broken out of character several times to guffaw at one another’s cl
umsiness. The laughter was a defence mechanism for both of them, for his nature was repelled as much as she by his character’s actions. He’d handled the preparations with tremendous finesse and unfailing consideration. She was very much impressed with him; there was more substance to the butterfly man than most people suspected.

  Prompt as ever the next day, Yvonne settled into her canvas chair outside and idly swung one bare leg while she waited. She’d had a lazy morning drinking coffee and reading the papers, for she wasn’t needed until the afternoon. She was in costume, barefoot and wearing a drab, faded cotton dress that buttoned to the waist, and raring to go.

  Adam stood some fifteen feet away with his back to her, a rigid, unmoving statue. He’d been that way for the last twenty minutes; sometimes his patience was downright uncanny. He studied the scene, waiting for the afternoon sunshine to enter the barn at just the right angle.

  Richard sauntered over to her. Gone was his usual sleek sophistication and a sweaty, brawny farmer had taken his place. She looked him up and down and made a rude noise through her patrician nose. He grinned, unoffended.

  He dropped a light hand on to her shoulder. ‘OK about it?’

  She nodded and rubbed her feet back and forth on the ground to make them even more dirty. ‘We’ll do it just as we said.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Adam suddenly at last. ‘Everybody out of the barn except the two cameramen. We shoot in five minutes.’

  The crew scrambled. Adam swung about and stalked up to Richard and Yvonne.

  She watched him warily. She had never found out where he had gone, or when he had got back. The break had not apparently refreshed him, for his mood was still as black and as volcanic as it had been yesterday. He scared and confused her in the mood he was in, his expression hard-bitten, stress stamping harsh lines in his face, the grey eyes flat and unrevealing as stone. He carried his gracefully proportioned body with dangerous violence.

  Adam halted in front of them. He said to the other man, ‘I want no nudity. You know what you’re supposed to do.’

  ‘Right,’ said Richard, so heartily cheerful that she winced.

  Adam’s shotgun eyes were fierce on the other man. He groaned from between his white teeth, ‘Treat her with respect, Richard.’

  The actor squirmed. Yvonne didn’t blame him. Adam looked ready to tear him apart with his bare hands. ‘Hell, Adam,’ said Richard plaintively. ‘Respect her? She frightens the daylight out of me in real life.’

  She shot out one stiffened fist and punched him in the leg, and Richard rolled his eyes comically and groaned.

  Adam didn’t laugh. He said softly, ‘Get in your places.’

  How it was supposed to go: Hannah would be in the barn taking care of the animals when her husband came. There would be some uncomfortable dialogue, then he was to grab her and force her down into the hay. Simple enough?

  The first take. Richard tripped over the short milking-stool.

  Adam said, ‘Cut. Do it again.’

  The second take. Yvonne stubbed her bare toe and hopped in one-legged agony all over the barn.

  ‘Cut. Do it again.’

  The third take. One of the milk cows took it into her head to moo. a mournful song, and had to be led out of the barn.

  The fourth take. Adam’s unbroken deadly quiet was beginning to affect everyone. Yvonne found herself quite inexplicably shaking with nerves. They started over, and the dialogue and movements went without a hitch. This time it looked as if they were going to get through the excruciating scene; she found herself actually sighing with relief as Richard successfully threw her into the artfully padded hay and fell on top of her.

  Her part was relatively easy. She braced her hands on his shoulders and arched her back away from him, averting her contorted face-towards one camera—in helpless disgust. Almost done now.

  Oh, poor Richard. He was one tangled-up puppy. Somehow he had pinned part of her dress underneath one of his big hands that he braced his weight on, and as she arced and he shifted the thin faded cotton ripped from collar to waist.

  He froze and they both looked down her front. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her flesh from throat to navel was an unbroken clean line between the exposed swell of her breasts. She had room to think, ruefully, that‘ it could have been worse; at least her nipples were covered.

  Richard’s eyes shot up to hers in horrified apology. She grimaced at him in good-natured forgiveness—and Adam plucked the actor off her body, threw him against the side of a stall, and pinned him by the throat.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he snarled hoarsely, his feral eyes molten pools of silver. ‘I said no nudity!’

  Dear God. Yvonne lay sprawled at their feet and stared up at the two men in severe shock. Richard, big man that he was, dangled in Adam’s strangling grip like a child, his mouth hanging open. Adam’s body, from the broad shoulders angled over the tight hips to the bulging extension of the long arm spearing towards the other man’s suffused neck, was one sweeping, powerful weapon of aggression.

  She scrambled to her feet, one hand clutching the torn edges of her dress together, the other hand shooting out to tug at Adam’s arm. It felt like trying to bend a bar of iron. ‘Adam, stop it!’ she yelled sharply into his insane face. ‘It was an accident!’

  Then came one of the most painful things she’d ever had the misfortune to witness. The slow, hard birth of realisation overcame the blind ferocity in Adam’s eyes; the civilised man returned to inhabit the body of the marauding beast, and was sickened with what he found there.

  The long hand at Richard’s throat loosened, and fell away. He straightened, his face like stone, his eyes like marble rocks, as the other man gasped. He said quietly, ‘I’m so sorry, Richard. I don’t know what came over me. Are you all right?’

  ‘Quite all right,’ the actor gurgled, his eyes askance. ‘Don’t mention it.’

  Adam wiped his face with a shaking hand, his struggle for control awesome in its extremity. ‘I think we’re through filming for today,’ he said in that deadened, polite voice. ‘Wrap it up and go to dinner, gentlemen.’ Then he turned and walked into the sunshine that brought his erect, regal figure into pitiless exposure, and he disappeared.

  Yvonne stared into the space he had occupied. She was rooted to the ground where she ‘stood. He hadn’t even looked at her.

  Richard touched her arm with a tentative hand. ‘Yvonne, I’m sorry—’

  ‘Oh, don’t you start too, you silly man,’ she said through numb lips. ‘Are you really all right?’

  “Oh, sure.’ Richard had bounced back like a rubber ball arid waved away the little scene with a careless hand and a laugh. ‘I mean, that wasn’t anything compared to some of the fights we got into three years ago when I was filming a movie in—’

  She looked at him, her -dark gaze terrible. The actor coughed the rest of the sentence away. ‘I don’t understand why he did it,’ she said blankly. ‘I thought we were doing fine until he—lost his temper.’

  Richard’s eyes sparkled with worldly amusement. He drawled intimately, for her ears alone, ‘Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t stand the sight of another man touching your delicious body, even in make-believe.’

  Yvonne looked as if he had just dumped a ton of bricks on to her head. The actor smiled at her, patted her ashen cheek like an uncle, and strolled off, whistling, to his supper.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there, blinking at nothing in particular, listening to the airy, dust-mote-filled silence. It must have been forever.

  When she finally moved, she started out calmly. She strolled to the dressing trailer, let the costume designer cluck over the ruined dress, and slipped on a terry robe. Then she went to her own trailer. Dinner, she could see from one of her windows, was being served outside. Adam wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  Then she began to up-momentum. She quickly showered, dragged on oxfords, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. By the time she notic
ed the hay sticking out of her hair, she was frantic, and yanked her hairbrush through the mass with brutal disregard for her appearance or her own scalp. When she exploded out of the door and down the steps, she was going at high speed and gunning for full throttle. Her long legs flashed as she raced across the deserted expanse to Adamis trailer.

  She had left it too late to meet him halfway. That she would have had to do the night he had been in her trailer. Please let him be there. Please don’t let him be gone.

  She had such a long, long way to go.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  YVONNE burst into Adam’s trailer.

  Her entry was unsubtle. The door banged against the outside and then whipped back to slam shut with a force that nearly ripped it from its hinges. She managed to rocket to a halt before her impetus sent her crashing into the opposite wall, and she stood there swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet, trying to recover her equilibrium.

  Adam sat at the small dining-table that was littered with computer paper, broad shoulders hunched, his auburn head in his hands. He didn’t bother to look up. He bit out harshly, ‘Whatever it is, just leave it until morning. I don’t want to hear about it.’

  Her brow wrinkled in distress. He wasn’t supposed to say that. Didn’t he listen to everybody? This couldn’t wait, she decided as she stared down at her hands, and for lack of anything better to do with them she twisted them together.

  ‘I get all tangled up sometimes, you know?‘ she said. Her narrow fingers locked together urgently, and unlocked, and reconfigured.

  ‘Yvonne,’ said Adam, his voice flat with hostility, ‘get out.’

  That hurt badly enough to send her pacing.

  ‘It gets snarled, all of it,’ she said agitatedly, her head bent. She went into the kitchenette space, turned around, and blundered straight into a cabinet. ‘It’s just a big snarl. I don’t quite know how to get out of it half the time. I fight so hard and come to a standstill, and there’s nothing around me but just this—