The Lost Girl

by Carol Drinkwater

  Charlie was allocated the job of sous-chauffeur, keeping the two cars cleaned and in good running order, while Marguerite was offered light secretarial work. Neither had any experience in either of these roles. Charlie knew a thing or two about plane engines, although he sure as hell did not own up to it.

  In the evenings, Marguerite and Charlie wiled away after-dinner hours together. She was hungry to know the English for everything. And she was a smart, keen pupil. On their free days, fired by the spirit of adventure, the pair took bus rides inland into the scented hills towards the city of Grasse. Palms and lemon trees adorned the coastal strips before the swift ascent to silvery olive groves, vineyards, mountainsides of lavender, jasmine and rose gardens. Beyond, in the distance, the blue outline of the lower Alps stretched into Italy. All around them was natural beauty: the coast to the south, the Alps to north and east. Italy was east and the Var, a famed wine-growing region, stretched out of sight to the west.

  Charlie expressed a desire to settle somewhere there. ‘This’ll do,’ he repeated over and over, gazing about with a stupefied wonder. ‘Has life anything better to offer than this, Marguerite? Magnificent, eh? I’ll put down roots here. This’ll do the trick.’

  Marguerite found her new friend’s satisfaction curious. She had no thoughts of settling anywhere. Her brief stint in front of the camera had gone well and she had been promised another test with a director of great renown, whose identity had not yet been revealed to her. That someone would be in touch had been all the assurance she could winkle out of the first assistant.

  She was growing fond of Charlie, the best friend she’d ever had, but was determined not to fall in love with him. He, though, was smitten. Marguerite’s iris eyes and too-skinny frame – she half-starved herself for ‘her art and stardom’ – plagued his sleeping hours, so intense had his longing grown for this creature who was barely more than a girl.

  Marguerite’s daily chores involved assisting Lady Jeffries in her study: filing papers in cabinets, writing addresses on envelopes, making up lists for the kitchen staff, ordering books, preparing pamphlets, taking dictation and, at the end of her shift, riding a bicycle to the bureau de poste in Antibes with a bag of letters all destined for England or the United States. Lady Jeffries had dedicated her life’s work to the suffrage movement, the rights of and education for the working classes. France had awarded the vote to women later than most, in 1944, just before the end of the war. ‘You must use your vote, Marguerite. Women have died for your right to have it.’

  But Marguerite dismissed such nonsense. Fame was her driving force. She had never before heard talk of politics or women’s rights, except on the wireless.

  The modest wages she received from Lady Jeffries enabled her to settle her debt with Charlie. He was reluctant to accept it but she had insisted, even badgered him, ‘to keep matters clear and even between us’. She had invested in a new frock, booked a visit to a hairdresser – her first ever because at home her mother had trimmed her hair and in Paris she had managed it herself – made a purchase of a small bottle of Revlon nail varnish to paint her fingernails as ruby-red as Rita Hayworth’s, a face cream so that she might take better care of her skin, and a bottle of cheap and nasty perfume, which Lady Jeffries requested she dispense with immediately: ‘I cannot work alongside someone who exudes a body odour so cloying.’

  In return, the dowager offered the girl an unopened flacon of Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue eau de parfum. Marguerite was spellbound by the gift. The bottle had been fashioned by Baccarat and came in a dapper box, sealed with a pink tassel. She carried it carefully to her room and vowed only to use it, one tiny precious drop at a time, for film business.

  Her every free waking moment was dedicated to her career; she invested every spare centime in the purchase of magazines, which she lined up on a shelf to pore over in bed: Ciné, Cinémonde, L’Écran Français, Modes de Paris and, the most treasured of all, the new post-war fashion magazine, Elle. How Marguerite Anceaume drooled over the silk jersey pleated dresses with swing skirts, and Christian Dior’s ground-breaking New Look, with cinched waists and skirts lifted to reveal calves. She read avidly about the accentuation of bosoms. Long hours in front of her mirror examining her own skinny frame and pea-sized breasts did not fill her with confidence. She studied reverently the depiction of the film stars’ universe, their constellations – Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Marlene Dietrich, Loretta Young, Danielle Darrieux – the details of their intimate lives and loves, secret tips, hairstyles, shoes. It became a university of Marguerite’s own making, building experience and the foundations for her upcoming screen test with the big-shot director.

  She talked of little else, breathy paragraphs of gleaned glamour statistics, while Charlie, reflective at her side, was thinking of moving on, investing his hard-earned illicit francs, still carried about with him in a hidden bag, in a plot of land. A smallholding of his own. He fancied the idea of growing sweet-scented flowers close to one of those Grassois villages they had visited on the bus, drawing upon his own farming experience. He was not comfortable on Lady Jeffries’ estate, or strolling the seaside villages thereabouts. The war was behind them. Tourists were returning. And he never felt entirely at ease. He worried about the arrival of English guests for the summer. The odds that someone from his own past might turn up was remote in the extreme, but he couldn’t afford to take any chances. He was a man on the run and Lady Jeffries was too well connected. Unnervingly, she also asked a heap of questions. Curious in the extreme, the old dear was, though he believed it came from goodwill and a genuine interest in the world and people around her.

  His cover was rock solid, he was confident of that, but what if the British government made it their business to hunt down deserters, hand out leaflets with faces printed on them? On all occasions he avoided having his photo taken, which amused Marguerite no end because there was nothing she delighted in more. There were nights when the fear, the shame, nearly drove him out of his skin. Should he have gone further afield? To a plantation in Africa? There were daily sailings from Marseille to the top of Africa, the French colonies. It was not too late. He could still make his way by train back along the coast and buy a one-way passage, sailing out of the great port. It would be more prudent to disappear from Europe altogether – and his money might go further in Africa. Nothing in the world stopped him. Except … except Marguerite. Foolish of him but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her, to abandon her to her own gullible ambitions. How would she fare? What were her chances of success in so risky, so ephemeral a business as the film industry?

  The promised rendezvous with the illustrious director seemed never to materialize. Day after day, Marguerite hovered in the hallway, staring hard at Lady Jeffries’ beastly silent telephone, and each day she grew more disheartened and more desperate. Had the studios forgotten her?

  Charlie hated to see her so wound up, so racked with disappointment. If he could only make her forget all this pie-in-the-sky nonsense …

  On her free afternoons, Marguerite no longer felt inclined to accompany Charlie into the hinterland, to the fertile lands of sloping vineyards, olive groves and yellow-blossomed broom hills, to wander aimlessly about meadows, climbing through orange groves and plots of land covered with nothing more interesting than stone pines, grass and wild flowers. Each field, to her eye, seemed identical to the last, aside from it being smaller or larger, flatter or more inclined. She judged him dull to take such an interest in horticultural matters.

  Instead, she rode the bus to Nice, retracing her steps to the Victorine Studios, batting her big lilac eyes at the gatekeeper, joshing with him, gaining entry to the compounds without an appointment whenever she wished. Once within the magical territory, she mooched about the lots, contriving to meet people, put herself in the path of famous directors, and flirted with crew members in the hope they might pass on the unannounced comings and goings of the famous. The reality was that she spent hours sitting on walls, kicking her legs, watc
hing others who paid her little attention as they hurried to and fro about their business.

  René Clément was at work at the Victorine on an epic picture, a gritty film noir, Les Maudits – The Damned. The sound stages were bustling with activity. Cameras were being wheeled from one location to the next; make-up artists, heads bent close over ermine brushes, sponges and Max Factor pancake, gossiped about who was sleeping with whom. Each started at the call of their name. Red lights flashed, green lights flashed. Recording! But there was nothing in this movie for Marguerite. She slipped inside one of the studios and peeped at the innards of one section of the make-believe submarine. Everywhere smelt of freshly sawn wood, of turpentine and paint. There, she caught sight of assistant director Julien in intimate conversation with Jean Cocteau. ‘Bonjour, Julien, c’est moi.’

  He could not recall her until she nudged his memory. ‘Right, right, you’re the gamine who played the scene in Maurice’s picture. I saw the rough cut and you look pretty good. Keep in touch,’ he called blithely, as he hurried on his way, locking his arm in Cocteau’s.

  She watched them disappear into the great shadowed warehouse of illusions, cringing and cross at being described as the ‘kid’, la gamine. When would they take her seriously?

  Before returning to Le Rêve, she walked into town, browsed the Nice open-air market down near the port and spent her few francs on false eyelashes, plastic bracelets, hair slides and sometimes lemonade.

  On each of these unfruitful afternoons, she took the bus or train back to Antibes in the growing heat, downhearted, flicking through her latest issue of L’Écran Français for which she had just handed over twenty francs anciens, dreaming, or clutching at and fiddling with her paper bag of gaudy trinkets.

  Eventually, the long-awaited contact from the studios came through. Marguerite, alone in the entrance hall with its black-and-white-chequered marble floor and vases of tropical flowers, grasped the receiver with the prickly fingers of her right hand. Her touch smudged sweat prints on the polished black Bakelite.

  ‘Hello?’ With her spare hand she was winding the braided handset cord around her fingers as though it were her hair.

  Her test was scheduled for one week hence. The director, Leo Katsidis, was mid-passage from the States, having set sail from New York. He was planning to attend the second Cannes Film Festival, which was due to run from 12 to 25 September. He was billed to present his latest movie, Rebound, based on a modern American murder story. Leo Katsidis. She mouthed his name with the reverence her mother gave to her own hero, Pope Pius XII.

  Marguerite had seen and admired Katsidis’ first picture, The Seamy Streets of Brooklyn. He was big news, she bragged to Charlie that evening, as they sat drinking chilled beers from tall glasses down at the waterfront in Juan-les-Pins.

  ‘This is the break I have been dreaming of, Charlie. I’ll be packing and on my way before you know it.’

  The Greek-American, she was informed, had been sent the screened audition she had recorded when she first arrived in the south, as well as rushes from a few of the takes in Maurice’s film. Katsidis had been impressed by what he had seen and had requested of the studio, in his absence, to ‘give the girl a screen test for the supporting female role’ in his upcoming picture. If he liked what she delivered, he would meet with her and try her out in front of a camera again. The second audition, he would direct himself. ‘If what he sees pleases him. Oh, Charlie, this is it. No more horrid secretarial work, and no more hanging about the studios in the vain hope someone will say hello, that some junior director’s assistant will recognize me. “Marguerite Courtenay” will soon be writ in big, bold letters and flashing lights. All over France, Charlie, and before long, winging its way across America too.’ Arms waving in exaggerated circles to describe the extent of her notoriety, she almost knocked her glass over. She was walking on clouds, puffed up and pleased with herself. ‘I’m going to blow every centime I earn this week on a fancy new frock. The stripy one I told you about at the market in Nice.’

  Charlie sipped his beer, stared out at the fancy yachts ploughing through the water and felt a sinking dread for the disappointment she was bound to suffer. He was bursting to ask her to marry him, but he knew she’d guffaw in his face.

  At that moment a man bearing a camera strolled by. A seaside photographer in a coloured hat. He lifted the lens to snap their picture. Charlie, catching sight of him, buried his face in Marguerite’s shoulder, tilting her backwards off her chair. Her beer glass went over and the sticky liquid spilt. Marguerite jumped to her feet, worrying about her outfit. ‘Charlie!’

  The photographer slid away awkwardly.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  Charlie wiped the table with his handkerchief. ‘Sorry, I …’ This had been a warning. He must not forget the risks. He must set his mind to his own plans. Move on, find himself a remote spot and build a new life before someone came hunting for him.

  As the days progressed, Marguerite had little time for Charlie, who had found a decent patch of land near the hamlet of Plascassier, seven kilometres from Grasse. He was intending to put in an offer and invited Marguerite to visit it with him. He wanted her to be excited by it, but Marguerite’s mind was elsewhere. ‘You chose that quickly, Charlie,’ was her only comment.

  During the hours she spent locked away with Lady Jeffries in her library, time dragged. Lady Jeffries was firing off letters to English newspapers concerning the unsettled situation in Mandate Palestine and the recent murder by Zionists of two British army sergeants found hanged and booby-trapped in a eucalyptus grove near the city of Netanya. A backlash back home in Britain was gaining in force against the Jewish refugees, anger fuelled over these brutal acts.

  ‘We must not allow the Irgun or any militia group to gain the upper hand: no one should tolerate these shocking atrocities. Nonetheless, the Jewish people have suffered profoundly and Britain must support rather than ostracize or condemn them. Many have come to Britain as asylum seekers. It is our duty to protect them, not threaten them. Marguerite, we must voice our concern. I’ll dictate a letter. Dig out my files for The Times and the Foreign Secretary, please. If the British pull out of Palestine, as they will, I fear for a Middle Eastern war, and who knows where that will end?’

  Marguerite was struggling with such meddling politics. She didn’t know who these people were that Lady Jeffries was trying to save. Her mind was elsewhere, until she was stringently chided: ‘Everyone here is cheering for you, dear child, but you cannot drop everything else around you. You are neat, smart and efficient, and you are doing admirably with the book-keeping, learning fast, but I require your full concentration, please, or I will be obliged to replace you.’

  Marguerite bit her lip. She needed employment until her film career took off. Still, she had outgrown these living arrangements, this situation. Even Charlie, who was her pal but had been acting strangely, was hell-bent on moving on.

  Her restlessness, her air of rebellion, escalated when she received a message to say that her second Victorine test had been positively received. The American director, Katsidis, had requested an interview with her during the week following his arrival on the coast. She scooted outside into the palm-fronded summer garden where only the cicadas gave voice. There, she squealed and jumped with delight. It was time to take flight, and she intended to rise up like a butterfly, soar like a balloon. She’d cut the string and sail into the skies, across oceans, scudding above the clouds, the war memories, never to bump back to earth.

  The assistant escorted her through an open door, then announced her name: “Marguerite Courtenay, sir.’

  Marguerite was trembling from head to foot as she stepped into a large room with a wide picture window that looked out over one of the exterior film lots. The room reeked of stale cigar smoke. She was back at the Victorine where her first encounter with the up-and-coming god of modern American cinema, Leo Katsidis, was about to take place. An overhead fan turned slowly and did nothing to alleviate the stagna
nt air.

  Katsidis was seated behind a desk, one leg folded over the other thigh. He was a small, muscular man with a crooked nose … flinty, penetrating eyes, heavy peat-brown brows and a crop of lustrous dark wavy hair. There was an aura about him of one who knew who he was and feared the opinion of nobody. He surveyed her entrance while swivelling from side to side in his chair.

  She hovered at the edge of the carpet in a quandary, awaiting instructions. The door behind her closed discreetly.

  ‘Sit down.’ He gesticulated at a leather chair on the far side of the desk. The desk was empty but for an ashtray spilling over with the butts of cigars and cigarettes, a large blotter and a tall half-filled tumbler. It was as vast as a brown lake.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  She was perplexed. He must know who she was. Someone had just announced her. She enunciated it anyway, and he replied that he liked the way she looked on camera.

  ‘So have I got the part?’ she squeaked.

  He lifted a thickset hand, staying her excitement. ‘In spite of the fresh image you present, there’s too much goddam acting. If we’re to work together I’ll need you to lay yourself bare, hear me?’

  She nodded effusively. It couldn’t involve more than another screen test, surely. Her blood throbbed and pulsed with the almost tangible taste of success. She could barely stay in the chair, she was so excited.

  ‘I will require you to let yourself go.’

  Marguerite listened intently while clasping her damp hands tightly in the lap of her skirt, which she had purchased only a few days earlier. Its newness itched her thighs. She fluttered her eyes, attempting a smile, Ginger Rogers allure, hoping to win over the short stocky man, flirt with him, break through to him.

  ‘You have to trust in me.’

  She was confused by the American’s words and his apparent lack of response to her charms. ‘But you are pleased with the test?’ she persisted, flustered.