‘It will be, if you sign with me. I’m not interested in signing Farrell. And I know, because of last night, that you’re not interested in him, either.’
And just like that it was back again, that thing between us. Bodies. We were bodies as well as minds. Bodies with desires very different from what our minds wanted. ‘I thought we agreed to forget last night.’
‘I don’t know about you, but I’m finding that pretty difficult.’
‘Try harder, Lewis,’ I said, and I was pleased at how it sounded, because I was also pleased that he was struggling, and no way should I be pleased about that.
He ran his fingers through his hair, smiling at me. It was a good smile. It went to his eyes. It went to my blood. ‘You look so fragile, like a puff of wind and you’d just float away like a feather, but you’re a tough little cookie underneath, aren’t you?’
‘I know what I want.’ I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did. I shouldn’t have looked at him when I said it, I suppose. Then saying it, while I was looking at him, I thought it. That he was what I wanted. And I’d been wanting him all day. And that was what the food was about, and the dress. And if he hadn’t brought me flowers. If he hadn’t looked so good. If that heat between us, if we’d just managed to keep it at bay. But right at that moment, as if someone had switched on one of those huge big arc lights and shone it directly on us, it was obvious what we both wanted.
Though we still tried to pretend we didn’t. He took a swallow of wine and a deep breath. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘Success,’ I said.
My feet had edged out from under my dress. One of them was resting against his thigh. His hand covered it. I let it rest there. ‘Which you have,’ he said. ‘From what I heard, you can name your price at the studio.’
‘My agent will be delighted to hear that. It will give him an excellent lever when he’s bartering with you.’
He laughed. A soft, throaty sound. His fingers were stroking my foot from ankle to toe, toe to ankle. Rhythmic but not at all soothing. I straightened my leg just a bit, to give him more. ‘I don’t think you’ll sign with me for the money, though I’m happy to match whatever they offer.’
‘What do you think you have that’s so tempting, then?’ I asked, and I admit, I meant it exactly the way it sounded.
He was stroking my calf now, a feathery touch, and it was sending signals, shivers, all the way up. ‘The chance to act,’ he said. ‘The chance to have a say in what pictures you make. Have you got anything on at all under this dress?’
He broke the spell then, swearing and jumping up, finishing the wine in his glass in one gulp. ‘I’m sorry. If you didn’t look so—I’ve never had this problem before. Look, let me just—’
‘It’s not just you. I’m sorry, too.’ Which I was. And mortified. ‘I don’t, either, Lewis, normally. Not this. I’m—I’ve never had this problem before, either.’
Maybe it was because I didn’t pretend. ‘Maybe it’s because it was so great,’ he said. ‘No, strike that. Let’s not. Look, I’m not talking about movies the way you know them, okay? I’m asking you to sign a deal that will let you make talking pictures.’
‘Talking pictures! Is there such a thing?’
‘Not yet. Maybe not for a couple of years. But when it comes—Poppy, it will be a sensation. Listen,’ he said.
And I did. And listening, fascinated, I forgot about the other thing between us for a while, and so did he. We talked through the rest of the wine and through dinner. He knew it all, the technical stuff, but he wanted to know what differences I thought it would make, having sound. To acting. To stories. To casting. Everything. I was enthralled. I was fascinated. I was pleased, to have my brain picked, to be consulted by an expert as an expert. It wasn’t until the end of dinner, when we were sitting back out at the pool with our coffee, that he asked me about the stage. ‘How long since you’ve been in front of an audience?’ he said.
‘Five years.’
‘I know you can act, and you can sing, too, but you need practise. Like I said, it might be a couple of years before we can make sound commercial.’
‘So I’ll keep acting in other movies.’
He was twisting his coffee cup around in its saucer. ‘I was thinking, it would be better if you did a few shows.’
Lewis
Poppy was on her feet, wandering round the edge of the pool, her hair like a halo in the dusk. She walked like a dancer, pointing her toes, her feet so slender on the tiles, her ankles unbelievably slim. So fragile, she looked, but I knew she wasn’t.
‘What kind of shows?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Some drama. Some singing. A mix. You’d have a say in that, too. I’m talking Broadway, Poppy. What do you think?’
She laughed. Not at all the kind of laugh you’d expect from her. It was the full-blooded, throw-back-your-head kind. ‘Please. Oh, Lewis, yes, please.’
And she looked so good. So different. Her eyes sparkling. Her bare lips all pink and lush. Not like the woman from last night, and I thought, I couldn’t stop it, I thought, I wonder what it would be like, sex with this woman. Would it be different from last night?
I tried to stop it. I really did try. When she came back from the kitchen with a bottle of champagne and she began to wrestle with the cork, laughing, I tried not to think about that, either. Then it popped, and she gave this little squeak, and the champagne ran down over her hand, and I took the bottle from her and licked her hand, and she went so still. I licked each finger clean. Then I kissed her palm. And she moved towards me, and her lips were no more than an inch away.
‘We can’t,’ I said, more to myself than to her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Though I’ve agreed, haven’t I? I mean, it wouldn’t be like a casting couch or anything.’
Her hand was still in mine, pressed against my chest. ‘We haven’t discussed terms.’
‘My agent does that.’
That fact that I was even thinking about it should have sent me out the door. The fact that I was already doing more than thinking about it—but that’s the thing, I wasn’t thinking. If I had been, I’d have realised that Poppy was the type of woman to get under your skin, even though I never let anyone get under my skin. But she was already there and I didn’t even notice because I was too busy noticing the effect she had on my body to worry about my head. She smelt of something floral. Her hair was soft on my cheek. When I kissed her, she gave this little sigh, and I wanted to give one, too. It felt like a long time since we’d kissed. It felt like way too long.
After that, though we both said it—we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, and just this once, and never again—it was too late. Hands. Mouths. Her skin like silk. It really was like silk, pearly white in the moonlight. She did have underwear on, but it didn’t take long to lose it. We were naked on the terrace without any memory of taking off our clothes. Her nipples were so pink, like her mouth. She tasted so good. Her hands on me felt so good. Stroking. So urgent, so quickly. She was so hot and tight and wet so quickly. Panting. Moaning. Not talking now, except to say there, and there, and slow, hard, fast, there and there, and yes, yes, yes.
The tiles were cool on my back. Poppy was hot on my front, her mouth hot on mine. I was so hard. I thought I would die if I couldn’t be inside her. When she lifted herself onto me, sank down, slid down, pulling me in and up, so deep, so hot, so wet, I could have died then, I swear, and happily.
But she wouldn’t let me. She held me tight inside her, watching me as she lifted herself and then slid down the length of me. Sliding slow, really slow, then faster. Watching me with this smile on her face that drove me crazy. I wanted to drive her crazy, too, so I touched her. Stroked her. Holding her still while I was deep inside her, one hand on the sweet flesh of her ass, I stroked between her legs, found her so tight, so ready, that it was easy, a pleasure, a delight, to keep her there, not letting her go, making her hold on, making her wait, until she exploded, and I lost control then, twisted her onto her back then, to pound
into her as she came round me, crying out, kicking out, nails on my back, her breath on my cheek, so tight around me that it was seconds before I exploded, too. And minutes, long minutes, before I realised we hadn’t used any protection. It was more minutes after that before I managed to care.
And it was days after, when she told me there was no harm done, that I discovered a part of me, a tiny part of me, but part of me all the same, that was disappointed. I should have run then, but I didn’t. What I did was I pretended it hadn’t happened, that I didn’t care, because I never had before, and I was so good at it, the pretending, that for a while it worked.
Chapter Five
Poppy
When Randolph first told me about his affair, I was shocked. He tried, he said, to keep away from her. Every time he told himself that would be the last. It broke his own rules, you see, her being married. He’d never broken them before, but no matter how wrong he believed it to be, he still kept going back.
I expect you see where this is going. Lewis wasn’t married. Had never been close, from what he told me, just like me. But despite the fact that it was breaking one of our strictest rules, we couldn’t seem to stop. We told ourselves every time that it would be the last. Then we did it again. ‘It will wear itself out,’ I said to him. We’d been at his studio all day trying out all sorts of technical things with sound recording equipment that looked like something from a hundred years in the future to me. My voice sounded scratchy when he played it back, but it was still my voice. The little room with the big microphone thing was empty by then. I was exhausted. Sex should have been the last thing on my mind. It was the first.
It was Randolph who came up with the get-out clause. ‘You’re sure it’s just the sex?’ he asked me over lunch one day. And when I nodded, though he looked quite unnecessarily sceptical, he said more or less what I’d said to Lewis. ‘Then it’s just a case of riding it out, if you’ll forgive me being so crude. And if you can get a bit of publicity for yourself, then all the better. Throw me over for Cartsdyke,’ he said when I looked confused.
‘I can’t. He would hate it. And then when it was over…’
‘This is 1924, Poppy, not 1824. Infidelity is all the rage, and I’m not suggesting that you’re unfaithful, my dear, I’m simply suggesting you abandon your butter-wouldn’t-melt image and become more of a Modern. You’re beautiful and you’re a star. Make the most of it, and of your passion for that man, because neither will last forever. And as to him hating it—honestly? I’ll bet you anything you like he’d hate it even more if you and I continued to tell everyone we were an item. Ask him.’
So I did. I asked Lewis, and after a lot of frowning, he said it was a neat solution. Publicity. No-guilt, no-strings sex for as long as we wanted. And no rule-breaking, not really, because this was in its own way a business deal. And that’s how I salved my conscience, too, though I have to say my conscience didn’t need much salving.
Word got out about Bunty’s when I signed to Cartsdyke, and anyway I was singing in the studio, taking lessons, too, so I didn’t miss it. I was happier than I’d been in a long time.
I was happy before. I think I said that. I thought I was, anyway. As happy as I could be, considering I’d had to learn to live without the only family I’d ever known, the only person I’d ever really cared for, to say nothing of exiling myself and starting out on a brand-new career all alone. I hadn’t been happy when I arrived in California, mind you. I’d been cut up, lonely, miserable, grieving.
But I tried never to look back. I couldn’t change it, so I wouldn’t waste time doing the woe-is-me thing. Another thing I’d learned early on. When you’re one of hundreds with not even a distant relative to come visit you every now and then, there’s no one to feel sorry for you. So when I got to California, I rolled up my sleeves and got on with my life and until I met Lewis, my life was exactly the way I wanted it, going along at a nice even keel. I mean, yes, I was frustrated sometimes with the parts I had, but not enough to have rocked the boat. I had my singing to balance that out.
Then Lewis came into my life. He gave me the chance to act. We were a perfect match physically, and mentally we clicked, you know? We both had the same rule book. We played the same game. It was a game I started to enjoy way too much, but I didn’t notice, because you don’t, do you, when you start to climb up the happiness scales. You don’t think about it until you start to fall again.
So you see, the rule I’m talking about breaking isn’t the business-and-pleasure thing. Don’t get me wrong, it was bad enough his being my boss, but we’d already managed to bend that rule to fit us. No, it was the other one. The not-getting-involved one. The one about being self-reliant and independent and not letting anyone get too close. For a few weeks, we stopped worrying about the little game we were playing and just enjoyed playing it. And then…
We were having dinner, Lewis and I, at the Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, because then there would be photographs, which was good business. That’s when it all fell apart. I didn’t see it coming, because I’d stopped looking out for it. He was already there, you see, in that space under my skin, leaving me vulnerable, exposed, leaving me with no option but to rip him out before he destroyed me.
Lewis
She saw it coming before I did. That day at Musso and Frank’s, all I had on my mind was Broadway. I guess I knew, deep-down, that I was in deep, but it had been so long since I’d let myself look deep-down, I’d pretty much succeeded in kidding myself that I was immune. Don’t get me wrong, things between Poppy and I were amazing, I knew that. Not just the sex, but the way our minds worked. As though we were in tune. But you see, I thought that was work—that’s what I told myself. We wanted the same things, we were both ambitious, we complemented one another. It was a business relationship with sex thrown in. Yeah, I know, I ought to have taken a look in the mirror, but I didn’t. Not until that day. Then Poppy made me look.
‘Tell me about your sister,’ I said to her once our steaks arrived. I’d been working on an idea, you see, though I hadn’t told her. I’d even put in a few calls. I thought it would be a surprise for her, and I’d decided to sound her out. It would make for great business, too, if I could pull it off, but truly, it was Poppy and not business I’d been thinking about.
But she got all defensive straight away. ‘Why? What do you want to know?’
‘You were an act once,’ I said. ‘Tell me about it. Did you sing?’
‘Yes.’
Just that. Yes. A very clipped yes, all English accent and icicles. I should have stopped there. One of the rules we’d stuck to was not getting too personal. You might think that sounds ridiculous, considering how very physical our relationship was, but that’s it, you see. We had work and we had sex but we didn’t do the bit in-between. Yes, we talked and told each other stories and made each other laugh, but it was all around the business. Movies. The theatre. Hollywood. Broadway. So when I persisted with the questions, she started to give off those no-trespassing signals, and they’re the kind of signals I’d give out myself if she asked me, say, about France, which she wouldn’t because she had no idea. And, see, once I thought that, once I realised how little I’d told her about me, it made me realise how little she’d told me about her, and I wanted to know more. So I thought, in my convoluted, totally unprepared kind of way, that the way to do that was to keep asking what she obviously didn’t want to tell. ‘So,’ I said, ‘what happened when you broke up the act, left her for Hollywood. Was she mad?’
‘No.’
‘Couldn’t she have come with you? To LA, I mean, didn’t they want the two of you?’
‘Yes.’ She sighed heavily. ‘They did want us both. Only Daisy, I told you she lost her husband, and she—why are you asking me this, Lewis?’
‘Why are you being so touchy?’
‘I’m not! I just—my sister and I—I told you about it. It wasn’t me who broke up our act—it was Daisy. Actually, she broke up. Literally, pretty much, and that
broke me up because I couldn’t help her, and she stopped singing, and she stopped talking for a while, and no matter what I did it seemed to make her worse, because she knew she was killing my career as well as her own, and… It didn’t happen all at once. She went back on-stage at first, within weeks, and I thought—we all thought she was coping. But she wasn’t.’
Poppy pushed her plate away, the steak for which Musso and Frank were famous, almost untouched. When she brushed her hair out of her eyes, her hands were shaking. ‘I lost my sister, Lewis, because of the war. I’m sorry, but thinking about it tends to make me touchy, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to change the subject.’
And that’s when I said it. I said what was in my head, without thinking. I don’t often do that, though I’d started to do it a bit more around Poppy. ‘That’s why you’re scared,’ I said.
She’d picked up her fork again to mess around with the leaves on her salad plate, but when I said that, it clattered onto the table. ‘Of what?’
I hesitated, but I knew I’d already gone too far. ‘Right from the start, you’ve been so careful to stake out your ground. Here’s the bit that’s mine. Here’s the bit that’s yours. God forbid we meet in the middle.’ And saying that, I began to realise how much I wanted to meet in the middle. Yeah, it should have scared me, but at the time, I was thinking it wasn’t down to me to make the move. That didn’t occur to me. I was thinking it was down to Poppy. At least, I wasn’t exactly thinking that in a reasoned way. Reason came much later. I’m just trying to explain—you get the picture, right? I pushed her. I did push her. I just didn’t think she’d push back. Even though I was the one who said how much we had in common, I didn’t think this was as much about me as her.
‘You hold back,’ I continued, as if I hadn’t said enough. ‘With us. It’s been two months since Bunty’s. We’ve been together nearly every day, but you keep insisting it’s nothing. It means nothing. You’ve never even let me—in your house, I’ve never even been in your bedroom. And all this, it’s because you’re scared.’
The Awakening of Poppy Edwards Page 4