Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

by Margaret Pemberton

  He didn’t ask her why she hadn’t considered it. He knew her well enough to understand. ‘Will you marry?’

  Her eyes clouded and she wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘No, he’s already married.’

  Her shoulders were square and firm, her eyes full of courage. He knew then that he would marry her. ‘Let me make you another cocoa,’ he said gently, taking her cup from her lifeless fingers.

  He went into the kitchen and she stared into the unlit log fire wondering where Vidal was; what he was doing.

  ‘You would like Europe,’ Paulos said when he returned, setting a steaming cup of cocoa down in front of her. ‘There is sham and hypocrisy there, as there is all over the world, but it is not so obvious as it is here. It is not overpowering. London theatre is marvellous. Paris is a poem and Rome is beyond description.’

  Her mouth softened once more into a smile. ‘I don’t think that I shall go so far, Paulos. Perhaps I shall go to the east coast; to New York.’

  Paulos stared at her, horrified. ‘The press will murder you in New York! The women’s clubs! The Legion of Decency! Once the news becomes public property, the whole wrath of outraged America will fall on your head!’

  ‘But why should it matter to anyone once I have left Hollywood?’ she asked in bewilderment.

  He took her hands, his sculptured features sharpened by the intensity of his emotions. ‘Don’t you understand what you are to the people who watch your movies? Don’t you understand what you have become? Leaving Hollywood, not making any more pictures, is not going to be enough to protect you. You’ve become public property, Valentina. An idealized vision of beauty and femininity. You are on a pedestal and there is no way that you can step off that pedestal; you can only fall.’

  Her face had paled. She had not thought beyond leaving Vidal. Beyond leaving Hollywood.

  ‘If people are cruel to me, I shall just have to bear it,’ she said at last, her voice barely audible.

  Her vulnerability was total. If he had any lingering doubts about his decision, they were all dispelled.

  ‘Your baby will have to grow up with the stigma as well, Valentina,’ he said quietly.

  She gave a low moan, memories of her own childhood engulfing her. ‘No!’ she whispered, pressing her hand against her mouth. ‘No, I couldn’t bear that!’

  He took her hand once again. ‘You don’t have to bear it, Valentina,’ he said gently. ‘There is a way…’

  ‘How?’ Her voice was anguished. ‘Everything you have said is true. I hadn’t thought beyond leaving Hollywood! I hadn’t realized my life would still be public property!’ She slipped off the sofa on to her knees, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. ‘I want this baby, Paulos. I want to love it. To cherish it. Above all, I want it to be happy!’

  ‘And I want you to be happy,’ he said tenderly. ‘Let me help you love and cherish your baby, Valentina.’

  She gazed up at him, not understanding.

  ‘Marry me,’ he said simply. ‘If you marry me, the baby will have a father, and the only outcry will be because you have left Hollywood. I cannot remain here. My life and my work is in Europe, but they make films in Europe too, and…’

  ‘Marry you?’

  He nodded. ‘I don’t mind if we only remain friends in marriage,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind if you can never love me. But I want to be with you. I want to take care of you.’ His finger gently traced the outline of her cheek. ‘I want you to be my wife.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was the longest night of her life. Paulos was offering her love and security, and stability for her unborn child. She tossed and turned, pummelling her pillow. She was not in love with him. She was in love with Vidal. She would always be in love with Vidal. Yet she felt safe with Paulos. There was honesty between them, and she felt certain that, with time, there would be more. Much, much more.

  She flung the bed covers aside and walked to the window. The moon rode high in the sky, serene and untroubled – and remote. She pressed her cheek against the cool pane. She had been going to marry Rogan, and she had never been in love with him. She sighed. Nor had she ever been in real danger of marrying him. Her acceptance of his proposal had been an aberration. Accepted in the same mood of reckless impulsiveness that it had been proffered.

  Paulos was not Rogan. She knew instinctively that it would never be his habit to embark on violent and short-lived love affairs. Beneath his gentle manner was a depth that was reassuring. She liked Paulos Khairetis immensely. His sincerity and integrity were a welcome change from the sycophants who haunted Hollywood.

  What would happen to her unborn child if she didn’t marry? In the stillness of the night the years sped away and she could smell again the waxed floors of the convent, see the jeering triumph in Jessie Sullivan’s eyes as she shouted, ‘Bastard! Bastard!’

  She shivered. Hollywood society would be even more cruel. There could be no future for them on the west coast. Or the east, or even Europe. Her face was too well known. However hard she sought it, obscurity was now beyond her grasp. But she could marry a man she liked and respected. A man who knew that she didn’t love him and was uncaring. Suddenly it all seemed so very simple and so right.

  She was going to marry Paulos Khairetis and she was going to bear Vidal’s child. There were no more decisions to make. No more doubts to dispel.

  The next morning she smiled at her chauffeur as he opened the door of her limousine. She would see Theodore Gambetta today.

  ‘You don’t look quite so pale this morning,’ Wally Barren said to her as he applied her make-up. ‘Guess the end is in sight now.’

  ‘The end?’ She looked up at him, startled.

  Wally grinned. ‘The movie. The last few weeks are always the worst. I don’t suppose you have more than a few retakes to do now.’

  Her pulse beat returned to normal. ‘No. I have only one. It should be wrapped up in two weeks, Wally.’

  ‘When it is, you should take a rest,’ Wally said sagely. ‘I’m probably the only guy who ever sees you without make-up and let me tell you that your workload for this past two years has left you physically depleted. Look at those shadows beneath your eyes. It takes me twice as long to make you up these days.’

  ‘I’ve had a lot of late nights, Wally.’

  ‘Late nights, rubbish,’ Wally said, wielding a brush on her closed eyelids. ‘Your health is about to go. Don’t argue with me. I’ve seen it happen too often. Too many pictures, too much pressure, too little rest. You’re overworked. You give everything you’ve got to the part you’re playing and it’s depleting you. Don’t let Mr Gambetta or Mr Rakoczi bully you. Insist on a rest. You need it.’

  Valentina smiled wryly. ‘Don’t worry, Wally. I’m going to have one. And I think it’s going to be a long one. Longer than even you would advise.’

  The cast and crew were unusually silent as Valentina took her place opposite her co-star for her last take of the film. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife. Vidal had been on the set since five. Rumour had it that he had slept the night in his office. He had reduced the continuity girl to tears; yelled at Don Symons that his lighting was a disaster; and had stalked the sound stage with a face like thunder, finding fault with everyone and everything.

  ‘Right,’ he snapped at last. ‘Let’s take it in one.’

  Valentina drew in a deep breath. This was where she had to stop thinking about herself. Had to stop being so acutely aware of Vidal’s nearness. The Heiress Helena was a comedy, not a tragedy. The crew waited with baited breath. Her co-star’s eyes were agonized. Valentina smiled at him reassuringly and shed her own personality as easily as if it were a silk-lined coat.

  ‘Darling, spring in Rome will be divine,’ she said, her eyes dancing, her whole being suddenly suffused with tantalizing vitality.

  Harris breathed a sigh of relief. It was going to be all right. Whatever had happened between Rakoczi and Valentina wasn’t affecting her performance.

  Vidal scowl
ed in silence. The scene came to an end. Valentina and her co-star waited with increasing nervousness. The crew shifted from one foot to another and looked at each other with growing anxiety. The take had been perfect. If Mr Rakoczi demanded another, then nothing would please him and they would still be working on the damned scene twelve hours later.

  Vidal’s eyes were on Valentina. Black and hard as obsidian. A minute went by and then another. Sweat broke out on the forehead of Valentina’s co-star. The Heiress Helena was the first movie he had ever made with Mr Rakoczi and he had not found the experience a happy one.

  The make-up girl stepped forward to powder away the beads of sweat and then hesitated. Mr Rakoczi had not requested that she do so and she had no desire to draw unwanted attention to herself.

  Valentina clasped her hands lightly in front of her and kept her eyes firmly lowered. She could not look at him. The agony would be too great.

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Can it.’

  Harris breathed a sigh of relief. He’d worked with Mr Rakoczi on a lot of movies but he’d never seen him like this before.

  Valentina glanced up at the studio clock. It was nine o’clock. The perfect time to catch Mr Gambetta before he became involved in his first business meeting of the day.

  Vidal’s hands tightened over the wooden arms of his director’s chair as she walked away from the set. He half rose to follow her, his eyes devouring her, his longing for her overwhelming.

  ‘Mr Cassandetti wants to know if we’re shooting him in right profile or left profile in the next scene,’ Harris said tentatively.

  Vidal’s eyes were still on Valentina.

  She wasn’t staying to watch the rest of the shooting as she normally did. She was leaving the sound stage. What could he say if he strode after her? He had said everything. He turned to face Harris.

  ‘Tell him we’re doing it from the left,’ he said curtly, and there was a flare of such pain across the strongly boned face that Harris stepped back as if from a blow.

  ‘Yes, Mr Rakoczi.’

  The crew’s commissary talk was wrong. Rakoczi was not an unfeeling bastard. He was a man capable of feeling – and suffering – very deeply.

  Valentina walked with hip-swaying grace across to her car. He hadn’t spoken to her, not one word. Yet wasn’t that what she wanted? She tilted her head a fraction higher. Vidal Rakoczi no longer formed any part of her life. His son would be her whole life. She passed a hand lightly across her stomach and began to walk towards her car. Strange how sure she was that the child she was carrying was a boy.

  ‘Mr Gambetta’s office, please,’ she said to her chauffeur, and sank back against the plush upholstery. There were still some scenes to retake on The Heiress Helena but she was not required for any of them. She could leave Hollywood as soon as she had spoken to him.

  He would threaten to sue her. He would sue her. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. She was uncaring. The three movies she had made with Vidal had grossed more for Worldwide than all the movies it had produced in the same period put together.

  If she offered to stay and continue making movies for Worldwide after the birth of her illegitimate child, he would have a coronary. He would insist that she have an abortion. He would probably also insist on knowing the identity of the father and coming to one rapid and very correct conclusion.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gambetta is on no account to be disturbed,’ his secretary said apologetically as she entered Theodore’s outer sanctum.

  Valentina smiled. ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said, ‘because I’m going to have to disturb him.’

  Theodore was lacing his morning coffee with a healthy amount of Scotch. He halted, bottle in the air, stunned by the uninvited intrusion.

  ‘I had to see you, Mr Gambetta,’ she said composedly, ‘and I knew that you would have a busy day ahead of you. I thought now would be the best time.’

  Theodore regained his equanimity with speed. He smiled broadly, mentally making a note to fire his damn fool secretary.

  ‘Valentina, my dear. You couldn’t possibly call at an inopportune moment. What is it? Some studio politics that need smoothing out?’

  ‘No.’ She sat down opposite him and crossed her legs at the ankle, and Theodore made another mental note. They must get her into a movie that showed off those legs. They were sensational. Eye-rivetting.

  ‘I shan’t be able to make The Gypsy and the Marquis when The Heiress Helena is finished.’

  Theodore drew in a deep breath, folded his hands on top of his desk, leaned towards her and tried to look benign. It happened all the time: a starlet was grateful for anything. A star of Valentina’s calibre began to want some choice in her parts. They never would have as long as he ruled Worldwide. He knew the parts that would bring in cash at the box office. He also knew how to be patient when the need arose.

  ‘It’s a superb part, Valentina. Romana de Santa would screw Quasimodo to get it.’

  Valentina suppressed a grin. ‘I know it’s a good part, Mr Gambetta. I’ve been through the script several times.’

  ‘Well then…’ Theodore beamed expansively and spread his hands wide.

  ‘It’s just that I’ll be pregnant all the time it’s being filmed.’

  ‘You’ll WHAT?’ Theodore’s eyes bulged.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ Valentina said as Theodore rose threateningly to his feet, his Scotch-laced coffee spilling in a steaming stream across a mass of typewritten notes.

  ‘Over my dead body!’

  Valentina moved her legs away from the scalding downpour. Theodore Gambetta’s face was mottled, the tendons in his neck bulging, straining at his restricting collar.

  ‘Jesus F. Christ! Of all the stupid, idiotic, dumb things to do!’ He marched around to her, controlling himself with difficulty. ‘You’ll have to have an abortion. It’ll take no time at all. Leave it all to me.’

  He mopped his face with his handkerchief, his composure returning. ‘You were right to come and tell me without trying to sort it out on your own. Hell, some abortionists in this town are nothing short of get-rich-quick butchers.’ He patted her hand. ‘It’ll be okay, honey. We won’t even have to delay the schedule on The Gypsy and the Marquis.’

  ‘I think it could make shooting The Gypsy and the Marquis quite difficult,’ Valentina said, trying not to feel sorry for the all-powerful Mr Gambetta. ‘You see, I’m not going to have an abortion.’

  Theodore Gambetta stared at her. ‘But of course you are…’

  Valentina shook her head firmly. ‘No,’ she said, her voice steady. ‘I’m not going to have an abortion. I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘Now look here,’ Theodore Gambetta leaned towards her threateningly, ‘there’s no way in this town you’re going to have a baby! There’s certainly no way in my studio that you’re going to have a baby! So what are your options? Come out of dreamland, honey, and face the real world. You’re under contract for seven years and there’s still another five to go. You’re the biggest star in the studio. And you’re not going to have a baby!’

  Valentina rose to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gambetta. I didn’t mean to get pregnant. However, now that I am, I’m not taking any so-called easy way out.’

  ‘You have no choice!’ Gambetta yelled, spittle forming at the sides of his mouth.

  ‘I have every choice,’ Valentina said quietly. ‘I can choose to have my baby or I can choose to kill it. I’ve told you what my choice is.’

  Valentina’s eyes met his unflinchingly. Gambetta felt sweat break out on his forehead. ‘By getting pregnant you’ve broken your contract.’ He paused, breathing harshly as a new thought occurred to him, ‘Is it more money that you’re after? They’re queueing up all the way from ’Frisco to Boston to see The Warrior Queen. Money is no problem.’

  Valentina shook her head, her dark hair swinging close against her cheeks: ‘I’m not trying to blackmail you, Mr Gambetta. I know that I have a contract. I know that by having the baby I will hav
e broken it. I know that you can sue me and probably will. I made my decision before I came in here and I’m not going to change it.’

  ‘Have this baby and you’ll never work in this town again!’ Theodore Gambetta said ferociously.

  ‘I know,’ she said, and at the tone of her voice Theo rapidly changed tactics.

  With great difficulty he softened his voice. ‘He won’t marry you, Valentina. An abortion will be the best thing for him as well.’

  The blood began to beat more rapidly along her veins. He was speaking of Vidal. Now was the time for the first inevitable lie. ‘That’s just where you’re wrong, Mr Gambetta. He is marrying me.’

  Theodore Gambetta looked as if he had been hit with a sledge hammer. ‘Rakoczi is? Are you sure? Has he said so?’

  Valentina looked steadily into Theodore Gambetta’s incredulous eyes. ‘I’m not marrying Mr Rakoczi. I’m marrying the father of my child.’

  ‘But I thought…’

  ‘Then you thought wrong. I am marrying Paulos Khairetis. He is a Greek pianist and composer who came to Hollywood to work for MGM.’

  Theodore Gambetta let out his breath slowly; it wasn’t so bad after all. There would be a marriage. A premature baby. It was nothing that the studio couldn’t handle. Not for a star who pulled in the public the way Valentina did.

  ‘We’ll make a big thing of it,’ he said. ‘The wedding of the year number. We can put The Gypsy and the Marquis on ice for twelve months. We’ll tell Louella that the engagement has been secret for months. That you were only waiting for The Heiress Helena to be completed. Hell, we’ll even lay on a honeymoon for you!’

  There was no relief in her eyes at his magnanimity; only a sadness that he couldn’t understand.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gambetta. My fiancé doesn’t intend staying in Hollywood.’

  Theodore gazed at her uncomprehendingly.

  ‘I think he’s going to New York. Probably even to Europe. Wherever he goes, I shall go with him.’