The Lost Girl

by Carol Drinkwater

  He waved his hand and fingers agitatedly as though he were swatting away an irritating gnat. ‘Sure. You’ve got a great body, fine bone structure. You look good on camera, but I want something else. Get up. Move about the room. Go on, do as I say,’ he barked. He wore the sleeves of his pale lemon crisply ironed open-neck shirt rolled to just beneath his elbows. She noticed an expensive gold watch with leather strap wrapped round an arm that was a riot of dark hair. He was virile, a man who was winning, who demanded the best from life, and these observations made her rather afraid of him. She rose tentatively from the chair and paced, measured dainty steps, towards the wall, swung as though skipping and back again.

  ‘You see what I mean? You’re acting walking. Just be yourself. I want to see your body move as it does naturally when no one is watching you. When you’re alone, unobserved. I want to see a private moment, as though I’m spying on you, you get what I mean?’

  Marguerite was at a loss. She stared at the floor, studying her meticulously painted toenails.

  ‘Come here.’

  She hovered, her scuffed, cloddish white sandals glued to the rug on the wooden floor.

  ‘I’m giving you a direction, goddammit.’ He slammed his hand against the desk. ‘This is how we make pictures. I give directions. You take them. Move towards me.’

  Her body was taut, sensing some undefined danger.

  He lifted up a few pages of script held together with a paper clip. Then tossed them across the table. ‘Cinema is about sex. Acting is about seduction. Seduction, you hear me? Anna Magnani, she’s no obvious beauty, but she dominates the screen. She’s all woman. Earthy. Voluptuous. Charismatic. You understand me?’

  Marguerite nodded, although she wasn’t sure where this was leading. Wherever it was going, she was cowed by the tone of it.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty.’ It tripped off her tongue, her well-practised lie. What difference did it make if she was just eighteen? Twenty had a ring to it, mature. The threshold of womanhood, not a grubby teenager who had skipped off from home, missing her brother, shirking family responsibilities.

  ‘You’re just a whippersnapper,’ he snarled. ‘Passion, Marguerite, that’s what this about. If you want me to take you to Hollywood, I need it from you. You want me to take you to Hollywood, don’t you? You’d do anything for this break, right?’

  ‘I c-can do it, Mr Katsidis,’ she muttered. ‘I really feel this role. ‘

  He smirked. ‘Study the script. Maybe I’ll test you Monday.’

  ‘I feel the passion, honest I do.’ She beat her fist against her breast.

  ‘Get lost, I’m busy.’

  On the train back to Antibes, slumped in a corner, the calm sea beyond the window, pale-skinned tourists bobbing within it, Marguerite wept silently. A bitter pain was spreading like heartburn within her, cold tears striping her carefully applied face powder. Three travellers watched her, rocking in their seats, doing nothing. She had behaved like a frightened grasshopper, humiliated herself, exposed her innocence, her ignorance. Her comportment had suggested nothing worldly about her. She was miserable. Her nose was running. How could she portray the emotions of a grown woman when she was just a stupid virgin?

  Charlie was in the garden when she struggled up the drive, wilting and frazzled with the heat, the dust and her own perplexed defeat. The straps of her sandals were cutting into her swollen pink feet. She hadn’t seen much of her friend for days and wondered now whether her lack of attention might have made him lose interest in her. He was polishing Lady Jeffries’ open-top, Robin-Hood-green Riley Kestrel. He nodded when he caught sight of her in the wing mirror but he didn’t slacken his pace.

  When they had first arrived here, several months back, he would have slung his rags to the ground, beamed a great broad grin at her and given her his full, wide-armed attention, but not today.

  ‘Hello, Charlie. Bonjour.’

  ‘Been at the studios?’ he asked, but to her ear the remark rang more like a reproach than an interested query.

  She burned to confide in him about Katsidis’ behaviour but broaching the subject would be tricky. ‘Yep, big Hollywood director.’ She waved her arms in the sunshine, acting carefree, then instinctively let them slap against her thighs before raising one hand to grip her throat. ‘It’s a fabulous opportunity. A very …’ She trailed off, drained of all energy to play-act, recalling the stultifying minutes in Katsidis’ office. She closed her eyes and let her head roll sideways. ‘It’s a very passionate role.’

  Charlie had his back to her, bent low over the carrosserie, the bodywork, which was gleaming, blinking in the sun with great enamel saucers of light. His naked arms and shoulders were striped with black grease. She recalled Katsidis’ lower arms and the watch.

  ‘That car still looks pretty dirty,’ she joked, but Charlie wasn’t looking at her. ‘I’ve got the afternoon off, rest of the day free,’ she trilled. ‘Wondered what you’re up to.’

  No response. He was angry.

  ‘We could take a picnic somewhere.’

  ‘What do you need, Marguerite?’ he butted in, rubbing his nose with his greasy fingers, not bothering to give her as much as a cursory glance.

  ‘Company,’ she whispered tremulously. ‘Sorry if I’ve been a bit … you know … thoughtless. This role, it –’

  ‘Means a great deal to you. Yes, we know. We all know it, Marguerite. The whole household is aware of it, suffering your moods, airs and graces, your food fads, different diets every day. And after this role, so will the next one, and so it goes.’

  ‘Please don’t –’

  The gardener’s pointer barked somewhere beyond the garages, drowning her sentence.

  Charlie tossed his soiled rag onto the gravel. He swung on his haunches to face her, to give her a piece of his mind – his hair, almost the colour of pine resin, shone damp and amber from exertion and heat – but he stopped short when he saw the desolation in her face. The quivering lips, the smudged mascara, the pallid cheeks. He rose to his feet and loped towards her. ‘Hey, what happened? You didn’t get the part?’

  She nodded, then shook her head.

  ‘You got it or you didn’t?’

  ‘We’re rehearsing,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Still rehearsing? Well, that’s positive, isn’t it?’

  ‘Americans. They’re … they’re tougher. Seem to want more insurance, you know. Director needs to be more persuaded of my … ability, my inner … before he makes a final commitment for Hollywood. I have to go back on Monday.’

  ‘Hollywood, eh? You’ll be fine.’ Charlie turned on his heels to continue his chores when Marguerite touched him, holding him gently by the elbow, face up against his profile, but careful not to let her new cotton skirt get stained with oil. ‘If you’re free later, how about we go for a drive? We could take a spin in this beauty, eh? One day I’ll own one of them.’ She caught the flash of scepticism that crossed his face. ‘Oh, Charlie, I’m just kidding. Let’s take a bus somewhere, you and me, go for a jaunt. Hey, I’d like to see the plot you’ve found. Let’s do that. All those vine- and flower-clad hills you’ve been describing.’

  ‘I thought you said you had no time.’

  ‘Of course I have. I want to picture where you’ll be when you leave here, when we go our separate ways. I can think of you there when … when I’m in Hollywood. Katsidis says if I get this right, he’ll be taking me.’

  The man crouching winced.

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You don’t want me to know where you’ll be?’

  ‘I haven’t signed all the papers yet. It might not work out.’

  ‘But we could take a look. Wiggle our toes in those grasses where your dreams will grow. Please, let’s, Charlie …’

  ‘I’ll be free in an hour or so,’ he conceded.

  ‘Perfect. I’ll get my glad rags off, wash off the stickiness and throw on some slacks. It’s like standing in a greenhouse out her
e. See you out front at two. How does that sound?’

  ‘Fine.’ You always get your own way, don’t you, Marguerite? He sighed but he didn’t voice his regret because he couldn’t resist her, couldn’t resist her ebullience, her shiny optimism. Instead, he watched the reflection of her retreating figure, her splendid hips, distorted in the car’s polished wheel hub. ‘Hey,’ he called after her, ‘why don’t I get us some cold drinks from the kitchen on our way out?’

  ‘You’re a pal, Charlie.’

  It was a fertile valley with views sliding all the way south to a distant V-shaped crack of turquoise sea, an empty scoop in the folds of hills not yet planted, save for an old fig tree and several contorted almonds possessing few leaves. On the far side of the valley, the hill dotted with pines and local oak rose up again until it reached a flat surface, a crest, which Marguerite supposed was the road that circled the land. The inclines surrounding where the pair of them were standing were wild with thyme, savory, juniper and boxwood. There was not a hamlet or farmstead, not even a shack to be seen. Nothing but nature, where wild grasses had shot up, tall and burly.

  Charlie had been reading up on the landscape, the Mediterranean vegetation, and was calling out the names of each plant for Marguerite’s benefit.

  ‘If you look carefully, squint hard and focus, you can see that on the far side of the valley, where the land rises up again, there are the outlines of ancient stone terraces, restanques, the locals call them. They’re overgrown and tumbledown in places, but I’ll rebuild and reinstate them.’

  ‘All of this will be yours?’ she crooned incredulously. ‘It’s a bit of paradise, eh?’

  Charlie was opening two bottles of beer. He passed one to the girl at his side. She tipped it to her lips and swallowed. After the climb, the tepid, bitter liquid slipped smoothly down her throat. She was deliberating about when she could broach the subject of her meeting at the studios earlier. Would Charlie be able to advise her? He was a man, after all. He’d know about … such things. She glanced about her, absorbing the stillness. A site to make anyone forget their troubles. ‘It’s sure peaceful here, isn’t it, Charlie?’

  No one’ll come calling, he was thinking. ‘And there’s good money to be made in these hills,’ he announced, wiping a moustache of foam from his upper lip. He was proudly surveying the acres, his acres, as though he were a miner and the first to discover gold in the hills. ‘We’re at an altitude of three hundred metres above sea level. It’s nicely tucked away, private, few passers-by, and it’s prime growing country for jasmine and roses. Rosa centifolia. And the petals of both blossoms sell for a good price in these parts. Harvested with care, picked by hand by those who have the skills, we – erm, I mean me … I’ll be able to sell everything on. All the other producers round here are retailing their flowers to the perfume companies in Grasse.’

  Marguerite listened to Charlie eulogizing; his ardour for this scrubland made him glow. She was brushing at the bib of her blouse, trying to keep the wind from messing up her clothes and hair. She wished she could love somewhere the way he did, wished she could get so excited about plants and a green valley. Was that what Katsidis meant by ‘passion’? She had to extend her experience, and develop passion. And she had to do it before Monday.

  She observed Charlie bursting with enthusiasm for the flowers. Jasmines, he fancied in particular. Chanel No 5, he cited. ‘I bet you’d kill for a bottle of that perfume, eh, Marguerite? One day, with these fields patterned with pink May roses and jasmine, I might be able to afford to buy you a flask.’

  ‘Where’d you learn to love the land, Charlie? It certainly makes you full of zest.’

  He responded that it was in his blood. He’d learned the basic skills from his father, who’d been an apple farmer in Kent. He let it slip, cock-a-hoop that Marguerite was taking an interest. The words spilling out from his memories, the beer lubricating his tongue. His guard dropped. ‘I used to love the autumns when I was a kid, those days when we carted the wooden ladders out into the orchards to pick the fruit, two of us working each tree. Heads poking up to the heavens through the gnarled old branches, leaves flicking against our cheeks, a clear sky above us, trying to keep the late-season wasps from fighting with us over the fruit. I’d be nattering away nineteen to the dozen to my father … After, we’d lug the loaded buckets into the barn, ready to press the apples, even my small sister, Syl–’ He stopped short, bowed his head and kicked the stony earth with the toe of his boot. He was tussling with ghosts she could not see and would never become acquainted with.

  His silence drew Marguerite’s attention back to the present, tuning her into the reminiscences of the man standing close by her. He appeared to be so ordinary, so buoyed by enthusiasm, and then she read the expression in his eyes. The pain there. ‘Hey, what’s wrong, Charlie?’

  He shook his head from side to side, and for one crazy moment she thought he might be crying. ‘Charlie?’ She took a step towards him and lifted her hand. An impulse to stroke his cheek, to draw his focus in line with hers. Instead she tugged at his sleeve as a dog might do to a troubled master. ‘Hey, Charlie, tell me about your flowers and your plants. I’m here listening. I am, I promise.’

  Without further ado he wrapped an arm around her and drew her tight against him, pressed his moist face into the nape of her neck and began to sob. Her thoughts flashed back to Katsidis, his horrid manner earlier that morning.

  ‘Don’t you feel anything at all for me?’

  ‘Mais bien sûr, I do, Charlie. You’re the best friend I ever had.’ She was inching herself out of his grasp, wriggling to get some air, to extricate herself from the intensity of his emotion. A gust of wind blew through them, lifting the back of her blouse. She tugged at it with a frenzy, tucking it back beneath the waistband of her trousers.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he begged. ‘Kiss me.’

  Such ardour came as a bolt out of the blue. She giggled awkwardly. She had never seen Charlie expose this side of himself. He was English and stable, not excitable like her or peculiar and heavy-breathing like Katsidis. She leaned forward hesitantly, stretched upwards on tiptoe and pecked at his clean-shaven cheek, lifting her hand to make contact with his flesh, which smelt of carbolic soap, to press the palm against the right side of his face. As she did so, his head tilted towards her hand and was surrendered into her grasp.

  He felt the warmth of her young flesh and was at peace, but longed for more.

  She watched him. His eyes were swimming with such a well of hurt, of anguish. ‘Are you ill?’ she asked him. ‘Shall we sit on the grass for a bit and look at your land, or do you want us to start walking back towards the bus stop?’

  Without waiting for his response, Marguerite pulled away from him and threw herself backwards onto the ground, laughing as she fell, kicking her slender legs into the air, play-acting. High above them, an eagle soared. ‘Where will you live?’ she asked him, attempting to dissipate the mood. ‘Show me the spot from here. Describe how your house will look.’

  He remained upright, appearing not to have heard her, lost in a place she had never visited and would never be familiar with. It occurred to her then that they were acquainted with such tiny fractions of each other. They never talked of their pasts, of where they had come from, of what their stories were. It had become an unspoken agreement between them, a pact. Still, she tried to picture him in his father’s apple orchards, just a kid, lean and sandy-haired, lugging wooden wheelbarrows of fruit. A world before war. Did he have brothers or sisters? Yes, he had just mentioned a sister, hadn’t he? Had he said her name? She had never talked of her own brother, her beloved Bertrand, who had gone to fight and never come back. Their souvenirs from childhood they had both kept locked within them and each held tight their key.

  ‘Where’s Kent?’ she asked. ‘Is it near the sea? I love being here by the sea, don’t you, Charlie? All that distance ahead of you to the horizon.’ She patted the ground beside her, fingers rippling through the long grass and the spatteri
ng of yellow and pink flowers, beckoning to him.

  Slowly he dropped to his haunches and settled himself close, colliding against her shoulder, causing the fall of her curls to brush her blouse. The gingery hairs on his arms glistened like golden feathers in the sunlight. She dismissed a fleeting memory of a goldcrest spotted in a wood with Bertrand when she was small. She noticed Charlie’s freckles for the first time and how his skin was roasted pink in the heat before it turned brown. Light brown, not a deep Mediterranean baking. Not olive like Katsidis. Charlie’s skin was younger, more pliant, kinder to the touch, not threatening. Being in Charlie’s company was not oppressive. He always made her feel less troubled.

  He was her brother now. He must be somewhere not far off Bertrand’s age. She furrowed her brow, curious as to why her companion had never gone home to the apples and his family. He had never before uttered a sentence about England. Had a girl broken his heart? Might Bertrand be sitting in a field somewhere with a sweetheart and all the while she and her mother had thought him dead and gone? She should write to her mother, let her know she was safe.

  She lay back in the long grass, which smelt so sweet, so pure, almost of honeysuckle. A bee approached, a fat furry thing with black legs and stripes, hovering near her nose, buzzing low and loud. She waved it away from her face. ‘I don’t want to get stung.’ She giggled nervously.

  ‘Don’t hit at it. You’ll hurt it. Let it be. It’ll fly away quietly in its own time. The bee means you no harm.’

  The mighty brown bird circling overhead had disappeared too and the sky was wide and empty, watching them, amused by their secrets and the dark futures they could not yet foresee. Marguerite closed her eyes and saw coloured circles in the blurred light. The afternoon was silent save for the humming of insects. She heard a cart’s wheels turning slowly in the far distance, the bray of a donkey, but there was no one in sight, just the two of them and the perfumes emanating from the hills around them. Strangers. Strangers who had been looking out for one another. She was debating about whether now was the moment to confide in Charlie about her meeting with Katsidis, but she feared he might accuse her of having, in some imperceptible way, done wrong, behaved in a manner that had been inappropriate and had provoked Katsidis’ talk of sex. Had she behaved like a tart, a whore? A whore. That was what her mother might have accused her of. Her heart was troubled and she had so little time to resolve her dilemma. ‘Is London in Kent, Charlie?’ She delivered the question as casually as she could without opening her eyes, without wanting to interrogate him, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face and for one fleeting moment not caring about the possible reddening of her skin or her screen test. Just being here alone on this hillside with her friend hushed her concerns.