Little Liar

by Julia Gray

  A voice called out, ‘Brava, child. Better than I ever imagined you would be.’

  Unmoved, Darian took down my score and passed me the green tile bag. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I guess she might be getting the part after all.’

  ‘Definitely?’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, shuffling his tiles with professional speed. ‘Knowing Dad, he’ll keep the game going for a while yet. See if she passes all her exams. Then decide.’

  I said, ‘I’m so happy for her. She deserves it.’

  ‘I don’t know if she deserves anything,’ said Darian. ‘I love my sister, but she’s a total liability.’

  We looked at each other with a grown-up kind of understanding.

  In the end it was Bel, not Evie, who came with me to A Doll’s House, after all. Evie bought the tickets, but at the last minute was called into a meeting about a possible job, so I invited Bel. It felt like the right thing to do. At a loose end after too much revision, Azia asked to join us. I didn’t know whether Bel had forgiven Azia after the Tree Episode, or indeed whether Azia had forgiven Bel. Neither of them mentioned it.

  We met at the box office of the National Theatre one Friday night in May. I loved the National Theatre, a venue I’d never known before I met Bel. This magnificent modern institution, with its sumptuous view of the River Thames, was the place I thought I could happily visit every week for the rest of my life. I’d seen the sign at the side marked STAGE DOOR, and spent happy hours thinking about the greats of the stage who, having made their exits and entrances and curtain calls, had come out into the night, their faces clear of makeup, their attention already turning to the next performance. John Gielgud. Laurence Olivier. Maggie Smith. Judi Dench. Ian Holm. Simon Russell Beale. In my mind’s eye I saw them all, and sometimes, when I dared, I imagined myself in their shoes. I’d always thought that you needed to come from a background of exceptional privilege in order to act, but deep reading on the subject was showing me that this was not the case. What you needed was talent, and desire. And to a greater or lesser extent, to be in the right place at the right time. Luck played a part of its own, but so did hard work, and hard work I was never afraid of.

  ‘Stop,’ said Bel, midway across the Hungerford Bridge. ‘We must make wishes. I always make wishes off bridges. D’you have any coins?’

  I checked the pockets of my jacket. ‘This do?’ I said, offering her a twenty-pence piece.

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  I noticed that she didn’t check beneath her as she hurled the coin over the side of the bridge, to make sure that there were no boats passing. I was sure I knew what she was wishing for.

  ‘What happens now?’ I said. ‘With the movie?’

  ‘Now Papa sort of shepherds it along,’ she told me; I wasn’t sure if she fully understood what this meant, but it sounded believable. ‘In Cannes. The Marché du Film. The most glamorous thing ever, Norie-love. You oughta see it.’

  ‘Will you be going out there too?’ I asked her.

  ‘It depends, I guess. If there’s any meetings Papa wants me to go to.’

  ‘Maybe you should ask your dad,’ I said. ‘If the director is going to be there, wouldn’t it be a good idea to show him you’re willing to travel to meet him? Make it clear how much you want the part.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  She tucked a silky arm through mine as we crossed the rest of the bridge. At the top of the stairs there was a man with a moustache playing the violin, sitting on sheets of newspaper, with a bowler hat in front of him. Feeling for more coins in my pocket, I threw what I had into his hat.

  ‘I always get what I want, you know,’ Bel said. ‘Always. But it never hurts to wish for things, all the same.’

  Azia was waiting for us at the box office. Late nights had pencilled delicate lines across her forehead; although I had no doubt her grades would be stellar, I knew it was in her nature to worry about her performance in the coming exams.

  ‘Just the distraction I needed,’ she said. I saw that she had a copy of the play in her bag.

  ‘Drinkies,’ said Bel.

  A man in black tie and a top hat was playing the piano in the central concourse where the theatregoers wandered to and fro. Approaching him, Bel gave a flowery bow and asked if he took requests. The pianist nodded as he played. ‘Anything for you, sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘Sinatra!’ said Bel, and he segued cleverly into My Way.

  ‘This way,’ said Azia, holding Bel’s elbow gently and steering her towards the bar. Bel made as if to come with us, and then as we reached the bar she doubled back, slipped onto the raised platform where the piano stood, whipped the hat from the man’s head and performed two verses of the song. He played along amiably enough; presumably this was all part of an evening’s work. A handful of people applauded at the end, and Bel gave another bow before stepping down and returning the hat. The high colour in her cheeks told me she’d now had her fix, for the time being.

  We had bought one programme to share; I read it all while Azia and Bel talked. The actress playing Nora was called Hannah Corbett. Hungry with curiosity, I stared at the black-and-white photographs of rehearsals. They looked so calm and steely and professional, these actors, clad plainly in T-shirts and comfortable trousers as they worked. Camouflage clothes, like Old Nora wore. Hannah Corbett had dark hair and a round, open face. I looked forward to seeing her Nora. It would be different to mine, I was sure, and no doubt better, since she was a trained actress.

  ‘I should do more theatre,’ Bel said. She exaggerated the pronunciation: thee-yetter.

  ‘What happened to your agent?’ asked Azia.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t stand him,’ said Bel.

  ‘You fired him?’

  ‘He fired himself, after Teen Spirits,’ said Bel, putting her feet up on the seat in front. A white-haired man twisted round and frowned. She took them down again. I sank back into my seat, absorbing the calm hum of anticipation. A recording played, asking for mobile phones to be switched off, and we all dutifully did so. I heard a woman further along our row say to her companion, ‘At the National, curtain-up is always on time,’ and indeed, at seven thirty precisely, the lights went down and silence swelled to fill the auditorium in a way that I found peculiarly thrilling.

  Bel’s fingers found mine in the darkness.

  We said our goodbyes at the foot of Embankment Bridge. Azia had money for a taxi, and Bel wanted her to drop her somewhere along the way home, although I knew most likely Azia would end up paying for Bel to travel all the way back to Rosewood Avenue in the safety of the cab. I said I would walk. There’s a certain way I get at the end of a really good book, or film, or – now I’d seen a few of them – a stage play, and it was like this: I was filled with a wanting … a wanting to go out and do something, something wonderful and watchable and wish-fulfilling. And I wanted to be alone with that wanting.

  The man with the violin was gone from the top of the stairs; the bridge was neither full nor empty, the moon somewhere in-between as well. As Bel and I had done a few hours previously, I stopped in the middle of the bridge. For a while I imagined it was not the Thames that I saw, but the Seine: more slender, more feminine, lit by different lights, edged by different buildings, filled with different boats. Notre-Dame not far away. Our little apartment tucked away under shingled rooftop. Evie behind a bar, speaking her rather good, though strongly accented, French to the locals who came in for beers and petits rouges. Me at nursery school. And my father, working at his slanting desk. In my memories, he appeared like one of his pencil sketches. I wished, not for the first time, that I could remember his face.

  Where would we be, we three, I wondered, if he were still alive? Would Evie make costumes? Would the Trace Incident have occurred? And would I, Nora, ever have become interested in acting?

  I had one coin left, and it was only a 2p piece, but better than nothing. A slight wind licked at my hair as I raised my arm and cast the coin over the rail. A metallic twinkle, fleeter tha
n an eye blink, and then it was gone.

  3

  ‘Just smell the air, darling,’ said Bel.

  I sniffed. Smoke and saltwater, tomatoes and wine, and the heat of the day still weighing down the breeze. Bel and I were walking down a narrow, touristy street, where the shops were a throng of lavender bags and baskets, bread and honey and shoes. It was the first time I’d been back to France in ten years; this was a fact that I found very odd. Of course, I didn’t know the south at all, and because I was with Bel the people we had met so far had assumed that I spoke no French. I found myself unsure of what language to use, and when I did speak French, it came out halting and hesitant.

  ‘Oh, Cannes, I’ve missed you,’ said Bel. ‘Look all around you, Nora.’

  Dutifully, I looked. We had come out onto the Boulevard de la Croisette, the main road that ran along the waterfront. The harbour was stacked with kitted-out yachts; the buildings of the old town glowed apricot in the evening light. In front of us, the great Palais des Festivals loomed geometric against the sky, with a red-carpet moat. It was here that films were screened and awards given; it was here that crowds waited to see the stars appear.

  ‘Picture people,’ sighed Bel.

  I could feel a kind of relaxed interest in us as we wandered from place to place. Who were we? Or, more precisely, who was Bel? Her aura, as ever, was starry and self-contained; it was as though she were already famous. I saw a woman with a backpack stare at Bel’s face and then down at her camera, trying to decide whether she ought to take a photograph. The smart-casual men with week-old stubble and festival passes slung around their necks took notice of Bel as she passed their café tables. No kimono today; it was late May, and the day had been hot; she was wearing a white sundress with a pattern of green leaves. I imagined that it had belonged to Phyllis Lane. I knew that Bel knew that people were looking at her, and how much it pleased her. I could see her performing, subtly: holding her arms aloft as though to balance along an invisible walkway, letting her clear laugh carry over the cobblestones.

  ‘Mama came here for the first time the year that Jacaranda was in competition for the Palme d’Or. That’s the prize for best film, you know. She stayed in the Hotel du Cap. We should go there, some time.’

  Now Bel was looking around her in that focused yet vague way that she had, and I knew she was wondering where the next piece of entertainment would be found. I pre-empted her.

  ‘Drinkies?’ I said, in her language.

  She smiled delightedly. ‘I know just the place.’

  Leading me by the hand, she danced along the main road, weaving in and out of tourists and lampposts, past canopied restaurants and shops full of designer goods, until we came to the grass-covered terraces of an enormous hotel called the Grand. There was an outdoor bar and a plethora of glass-topped tables and cushioned chairs; flinging herself into one, Bel gave me twenty euros and asked me to get her a gin and tonic.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, when I returned with our drinks. ‘Well, Nora, here’s to you.’

  ‘Why me?’ I said, setting the bottles of tonic water neatly beside an ashtray.

  My smile matched hers as we clinked glasses; I thought we looked older than seventeen and eighteen, sitting there in our dresses on the manicured terrace. No one else from Lady Agatha’s was attending the closing of the Cannes Film Festival; of that I was sure. A year ago, six months ago – three months, even – I would never have been able to imagine myself somewhere like this.

  ‘Because you’re the real reason we’re here.’

  ‘Why?’ I said again.

  ‘You speak perfect French, for a start,’ Bel said. ‘You’re some kind of academic genius …’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Come on. We both know how smart you are. It’s no use pretending. But better still, you’re responsible. No way would Daddy have wanted me here, had it not been for Knowledgeable Nora, to keep me on the Straight and Narrow. I assure-ya, Nora.’

  She finished her drink.

  ‘Another,’ she said. ‘Oh, look, you need one too.’

  Waiting again at the bar, I watched a rich-looking man buying a whole bottle of vodka. It made me think of Old Evie. My mother was delighted that someone had invited me to Cannes for the weekend – for Anton had bought my ticket as well as Bel’s, and paid for everything from taxis to tiramisù. Evie had given me a hundred euros, which made a handsome belated birthday present, although I knew she didn’t expect me to spend it all. She’d spoken to Anton on the phone and found him charming, and had driven me and Bel to the airport herself. What she made of Bel I didn’t know; I expected she’d tell me when I returned.

  I thought back to dinner at the Ingrams’ house, not long after Bel and I and Azia had gone to the theatre; all of us at the table – Darian, me, Bel and Anton – while the cat watched from the chair and the empty ash-jar watched from the windowsill.

  ‘Dadd-ee,’ said Bel. ‘Can I come out to Cannes for the end of the festival?’

  ‘You’ve got exams,’ said Darian.

  ‘It’s half term right after,’ she said. ‘Plenty of time to keep working when I get home.’

  Anton got up to carve second helpings from a roast chicken.

  Bel said to his back: ‘I deserve a break. But more importantly, I do need to meet Gabriel Glass. Don’t I? And he’s going to be there. It said so in Screen Daily.’

  Coming back to the table with an oval platter, from which we helped ourselves, Anton said: ‘It is an idea. You should meet Gabe. If not now, then soon.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Bel. ‘It’s meant to be. Ooh. I can wear some of Mama’s Riviera dresses.’

  ‘And there’s room in the apartment,’ said Anton. ‘The problem is … if you come out to meet him, you’ll have to be on best behaviour. Your mother was always exemplary about meetings. A true professional. It’s her attitude I’d like you to inhabit, not just her dresses. No nonsense, Annabel. No drama.’

  Bel looked appalled. ‘As if I would!’

  ‘What if you get lost again?’ said Darian. ‘Like last time. You can’t speak a word of French.’

  ‘True,’ said Anton. ‘On balance, maybe it’s best if you don’t fly out, Annabel.’

  Bel began to protest. With an awkward movement of my arm, I knocked over the salt cellar. I think they’d forgotten I was even there, because they all looked at me as I rescued the grains of salt from the table. I looked up, apologetic. I caught Bel’s eye. We had rehearsed this, the two of us.

  ‘What if Nora comes too?’ said Bel. ‘She can help with everything. Revision, French-ism … best behaviour.’

  This last she said in a dainty, childish whisper.

  Anton and Darian looked at each other.

  ‘Nora,’ said Anton. ‘Would you … would you like to go too?’

  You shall go to the ball, said the fairy godmother.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked the barman in English, interrupting my thoughts.

  I ordered in French; my fluency was back and he shot me a look of gratitude, as if to say: here’s someone, perhaps, who really belongs here. But, as you know, I do not belong anywhere. From what I’d read about successful actors, it seemed many of them felt the same way. Stay true to yourself, Nana would say. But in order to do that, one needs to know the self to which to be true. Easy for Nana: from the West Coast of Scotland to the waterfalls and plains of South America, she never varied her Bible-verse stance on life as she buried her husbands and ferried her beloved dogs and murder mystery novels from city to city. Nana belonged everywhere, because Nana knew who she was. I looked over my shoulder at Bel, who was being chatted up by two men in pastel-coloured linen jackets. Bel also belonged everywhere, I felt, because she belonged to herself.

  When I got back to our table, Bel said: ‘Let’s go on from here to a bar on the beach. And there’s a party a bit later, so these guys say.’

  The pastel-jacket men had gone back to their own crowd; one of them turned a little and smiled. His blond
hair reminded me of Darian.

  ‘That one’s Claude and that one’s Eric,’ said Bel. ‘What do you think? Or shall we just have dinner?’

  It was a fact well known about Bel that if she drank on an empty stomach, things generally proceeded downhill at considerable speed.

  ‘Might be a good idea,’ I said, in a tone of voice that implied that I did not mean it.

  ‘Do you have any money?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not really. But if you want to, we should eat. Don’t forget you’ve got lunch tomorrow with the director.’

  A lunch meeting had been set up between Anton, Bel and Gabriel Glass for the following day.

  ‘Not until one o’clock,’ Bel said. ‘It’s early yet. I feel like more drinkies. And a party or two. If we don’t like it we can always come back here. It’s jumping until the small hours. They drink rosé by the magnum. Everyone in Cannes does. Nora, I do believe you’ve already drunk two gin and tonics. The air must agree with you!’

  I laughed loudly at this.

  ‘I think we’ll let Eric and Claude buy the next round,’ said Bel. ‘I haven’t told them our names yet, by the way.’

  ‘Maybe we should make up some new ones,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bel. ‘I think we should.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, anagramming at speed in my head. ‘I shall be Ronia Sabot. And you …’ I wrote out her name on a cardboard beer mat, using both hands to amuse her, and then gracefully rearranged the letters. ‘Lianna Bergman,’ I said. ‘A possible descendant of Ingrid, don’t you think?’

  ‘I love, love, love it,’ said Bel. She raised her glass. ‘Lianna and Ronia,’ she said. ‘May our shadows never grow less.’

  Given the quantities of gin and tonics that were imbibed that night, I ought not to remember what we did and where we went. I shouldn’t be able to recall the thudding techno music that we (even I) danced to, standing on tables at the bar on the beach, or the half hour that Bel disappeared for with Eric, or perhaps Claude, while I searched up and down the sands for her in vain. I shouldn’t remember the names of the people we spoke to, or the street corner where we hailed the cab that took us up to a party in a villa in the hills above Cannes, where Bel eventually forgot that she was Lianna Bergman and told everyone that she was the daughter of Anton Ingram and Phyllis Lane, which took place just before she was sick in the outdoor hot tub. I should not be able to recall with word-perfect accuracy everything I said, to everyone I spoke to, but I do. I was Ronia Sabot, a drama school graduate with an intriguing future ahead of me; I was Ronia Sabot, apprentice chef; I was Ronia Sabot, sculptress.