Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Then no harm was done,’ Valentina said, relieved.

  ‘Not on that occasion, no. But it shows the way things are moving. There are currency restrictions, and it is impossible to send money out of the country. Mussolini is baying for blood and as for Hitler…’ He shrugged his shoulders expressively.

  ‘But if we left Crete, where would we go? If England goes to war with Germany, there will be no safety for Alexander there. If Italy invades Greece, then we cannot return to Athens.’

  His honey-brown eyes were sombre. ‘There is only America, Valentina.’

  ‘No!’ America was in her past, and she did not want the past rising up to disturb her new-found happiness.

  He took her hand. ‘If the situation in Europe deteriorates any further, we shall have no choice, Valentina. You and Alexander will have to travel to America while it is still safe to do so.’

  Alexander ran over to her, depositing a tiny struggling crab on to her lap.

  ‘See, Mamma, pretty, pretty.’

  For once she ignored him, staring at her husband. ‘Only me and Alexander?’ she asked unbelievingly.

  Paulos removed the stranded crab from her lap. ‘Here, Alexander, put it back into the water. It doesn’t like the dry land.’

  Alexander stared at them both, sturdy legs set wide apart. He had brought them something pretty and they had ignored it. His chin wobbled dangerously and then he picked up the crab and walked back to the sea to do as his father had asked him, the set of his shoulders unmistakeably Vidal’s.

  ‘If Italy invades Greece then I must fight, Valentina. Greece is my country. I have no intention of hiding behind my profession and fleeing to America.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘I’m your wife, Paulos. My place is with you.’

  ‘Not if there is a war,’ Paulos said firmly. ‘As my wife, my love, you will do as you are told.’

  Valentina felt a surge of despair. ‘I don’t want to leave Crete, Paulos. I’ve been happy here.’

  ‘So have I, my love.’

  He kissed the corner of her mouth and gently cupped her chin, turning her face to his. ‘We are two very lucky people, Valentina.’ His lips touched hers, butterfly light and then warm and demanding.

  ‘I think,’ she said huskily when at last he raised his head from hers, ‘that it is time for Alexander to have a sleep.’

  They smiled at each other; the smile of two people with no need for words.

  ‘I love you,’ he said as she rose to her feet. ‘I love you with all my heart, and all my body and all my soul.’

  She wound her arm around his waist, resting her head contentedly on his shoulder, calling her son to her side, walking back to the villa in order to put him to bed and to make love to her husband before the sun had reached its midday heat: the husband who had given her so much.

  That evening they dined on their little vine-shaded patio. As the maid cleared the table and bid them goodnight, Paulos looked out over the still, dark sea and said, ‘I think I’ll go out in the caique for an hour or so. Fresh fish for breakfast would be nice.’

  Valentina cradled a glass of mandarini in her hands. ‘I’ll wait up for you.’

  Their eyes met. She would wait up for him and when he returned they would make love again. He blew her a kiss and ran lightly down the steps leading from the patio to the beach.

  When the storm came it erupted out of nowhere. One moment the sea was calm, the next it was a mass of seething foam. Alone on the patio, as the wind whipped savagely through the pines and jacaranda trees, Valentina waited in increasing anxiety. Lightning seared the sky and she ran indoors for a jacket, hurrying once more out into the garden and down to the beach. The little jetty where Paulos moored the caique was empty, the sea no longer calm and gentle, but thundering up the beach in huge, tumultuous waves. The rain lashed her face, the wind tugging viciously at her hair as she ran back to the villa, trying to raise help on the telephone from the harbour master at Chania.

  Her Greek was not good enough for her to deal with the situation. The harbour master was sorry; the storm was severe. The sea was too rough for any boats to leave the harbour.

  Pulling her jacket high against the onslaught of the screaming wind and driving rain, she stumbled once again down to the beach, straining her eyes for the sight of the caique. The blackness was impenetrable. Her eyes ached as time and time again she imagined a black speck, denser than the waves, heading for the shore. Always it was in vain. She began to run along the shoreline, calling his name, the roar of the elements drowning her voice.

  He had to come back! He had to! ‘Dear God, let him be safe,’ she sobbed as the lightning forked again and all that could be seen were huge walls of surf crashing down in relentless fury.

  Her jacket was no protection against the torrential rain. Her silk dress was saturated, clinging limply to her legs as she staggered towards the jagged outcrop of rocks that formed one arm of the bay. Perhaps there he had found shelter. Perhaps he was too injured to move. Alive, but too injured to make his way to the villa.

  ‘Oh Paulos! Paulos! Please be alive! Please don’t leave me!’ she shouted against the elements and then, as the rocks were reached and she found nothing but a vortex of surging foam, she sank to her knees on the spray-drenched rocks and sobbed vainly, ‘I love you, Paulos! I love you!’

  They found his body the next morning, washed up in a cove a mere two miles from the one that fronted the villa. Of the caique only a few pieces of smashed wood were washed ashore. It was his mother’s wish that he be buried in Athens. The Khairetis yacht was despatched to Chania to take its tragic cargo home.

  Valentina sat stiffly at the side of the coffin, Alexander’s small hand held tightly in hers. She had closed up the villa and would not be returning to it. Without Paulos it was no longer home. Beneath her black veil her face was ashen. She had known that she had loved him. Not until it was too late had she realized how much.

  ‘Hush darling,’ she said to Alexander as he began to cry. ‘It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.’

  ‘Not all right,’ Alexander said with irrefutable logic. ‘Daddy’s gone. Want daddy.’

  She had made one fresh start in life; now she would have to make another. And with only a four-year-old child as comfort and solace.

  ‘It is going to be all right,’ she said fiercely to Alexander. ‘Daddy would want it to be. He would want us to be brave,’ and she turned her head away so that he should not see the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.

  Chapter Twenty

  Paulos’s mother had wanted her to stay in Athens.

  ‘I cannot, Mama. The last thing Paulos asked of me was that I take Alexander to America.’

  Evangelina Khairetis sighed and nodded. Europe was no longer a healthy place in which to rear a child. She had lost her son and now she was to lose her grandson.

  ‘Paulos was right,’ she said, the heavy drapes in her apartment barring the bright light of morning. ‘You must do as he wished.’

  Valentina kissed her cheek. ‘We will write to you, Mama, and later we will return.’

  Evangelina Khairetis nodded and patted her hand. Strange, she thought, that Paulos’s child had never touched her heart in the way she had expected. He was a handsome little boy. Sturdy and vital. Yet she did not feel the fierce love for him that she had felt for her own children, and for the granddaughter that Maria had presented her with a year ago.

  She laid her hand on Valentina’s head. ‘You brought my son great happiness, my child. Go with my love and with my blessing.’

  Valentina had gone. First to Lisbon and then to London. It was March and the weather was crisp and cold, the newspapers full of the chill news that Hitler had annexed Bohemia and Moravia and proclaimed them a German Protectorate.

  Paulos had been right in his desire for her to leave Europe. The London she now visited was not the London she had known so briefly and so happily on her honeymoon.

  As the black taxi cab hurtled the
m through the narrow streets, she saw that all four of her films were being shown simultaneously in the West End. Her image confronted them from a dozen billboards, and everywhere, below her own name Vidal’s was written in huge black lettering.

  Alexander had stared at them in wonder, not understanding why all the ladies on the giant posters looked so much like his mother. Valentina had looked away. The sight of them brought back too many painful memories. Memories she was not yet ready to face. She needed a breathing space. A time to think.

  She found it in her suite at the Savoy. The large windows overlooked the wind-blown Thames. There were riverside gardens in which Alexander could run and play; and there was privacy. No one knew of her presence in London. There were no reporters to contend with. No phalanx of photographers whenever she took Alexander for his daily walk.

  Three days before she was due to leave for Southampton and the Queen Mary the telephone in her suite rang. She answered it absent-mindedly, assuming it to be room service, her thoughts elsewhere.

  When the thick-accented voice asked if it was Valentina to whom he was speaking, she sat down suddenly on the bed, feeling as if a fist had just been pressed hard into her belly.

  ‘Welcome to London,’ Alexander Korda said jovially. ‘You have managed to keep your arrival very discreet. Not a word in the press. I congratulate you.’

  It wasn’t Vidal. Vidal’s accent had never been so thick. Yet for a brief, unguarded moment…

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, her breath once more coming evenly, her hands steadying.

  ‘Alexander Korda. I heard only today that you were in London, and only then because I was lunch at the Savoy. I am still here. Will you have dinner with me?’

  ‘No. Thank you for asking me, but…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Alexander Korda said expansively. ‘I know that you are recently a widow and I offer you my sincere condolences. My very sincere condolences. We will have dinner. We will talk of your movies; of your plans for the future. It will be extremely pleasant.’

  It was two months since Paulos had died, and she had taken her leave of Evangelina. Since then she had spoken only to maids, waiters, bell-hops and a four-year-old boy. ‘We will dine early,’ Alexander Korda was saying. ‘I will meet you in the American Bar at seven o’clock.’

  Alexander Korda was a director of formidable repute. He would be an interesting and stimulating host. She had to emerge from her self-imposed seclusion eventually.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Korda. I will look forward to it.’

  She rang for a maid to sit in with Alexander in case he woke and was frightened by her absence. Korda was Hungarian. Before she could stop herself, she wondered if there would be any similarity between him and Vidal. For the first time since Paulos had died, a wry smile touched her lips. No one could be like Vidal. He was unique.

  She glanced across at the far twin bed and the small body buried beneath the blankets. No one, that was, unless it was his son.

  Her face grew sombre. When she returned to America she would have to stay far away from Hollywood, for if Vidal ever glimpsed Alexander he would guess the truth.

  Alexander Korda was not remotely like Vidal: his hair was grey; his figure was stout; and he wore thick, shell-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘I am enchanted to meet you,’ he said, raising her hand and kissing it with genuine reverence. ‘You have brought a magic to the screen that is inimitable.’

  ‘I haven’t made a film for four years, Mr Korda.’

  ‘Alex, please,’ Alexander Korda said, realizing at once why his compatriot, Vidal Rakoczi, had dispensed with all other leading ladies, and had worked with her alone until her departure from Hollywood.

  Her beauty had a strange haunting quality that captivated him immediately. He noted the simplicity of her black cocktail dress and remembered that she had been widowed for only a few weeks. The dress was long-sleeved and high at the throat, the waist miniscule, her only jewellery a wedding ring. Yet as they walked from the American Bar into the chandelier hung decor of the River Restaurant, every head turned in their direction and a murmur of admiration and speculation followed in their wake.

  ‘I’m afraid that by inviting you to dinner, I have put an end to your privacy,’ Alex said as the head waiter deferentially seated them at the best table in the room. ‘Tomorrow news that you are in London will be in all the gossip columns.’

  Valentina smiled, and Alexander Korda felt the blood leap along his veins. There was more to her than mere beauty. She had warmth and empathy, and he knew instinctively that here was a woman who could listen as well as talk. A woman who was more interested in other people than she was in herself.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said as the waiter handed her the leather-bound menu. ‘Someone was bound to discover sooner or later that I was here.’

  ‘And you will be staying?’

  ‘No. I am leaving in three days for America.’

  Alex cast his menu aside and leaned towards her, his hands clasped.

  ‘No, no and no!’ he said with an intensity reminiscent of Vidal. ‘That is why I had to talk to you. I am preparing to make a film. The most expensive and daring film of my career, The Thief of Baghdad. Unfortunately, there is no leading female role in it, but I want to plan now for a film that we can make together!’

  She shook her head. Alex frowned at her over the top of his spectacles. ‘You have not decided to retire, have you?’

  ‘No. Now that Paulos is dead I want to work. I need to work. Without work there is too much time for thinking and remembering.’

  Alex nodded understandingly. ‘Then you must work here. In England.’

  ‘No. There is going to be a war, Alex. I cannot remain in England.’

  ‘There will still be films to be made,’ Alex said vehemently.

  ‘Films that will lift the country’s spirits: films that will fill the nation with hope and certainty of victory.’

  She shook her head again. ‘I’m sorry, Alex. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to work with you, but I have a child to consider. There is no way that I can remain in England.’

  Alex leaned back in his chair. He had forgotten about the child. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, reaching for the menu again, ‘if there is no war, you will return.’

  ‘If you want me to, then I will.’

  Alex cheered visibly. ‘We will make great films together, Valentina. Films to rival even the masterpieces that you made with Rakoczi.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice steady as she changed the subject. ‘I think I would like to start with the caviar glacé, Alex, please. And then perhaps the crêpe Versailles.’

  Alex ordered, a splendidly majestic figure in his silver-grey double-breasted suit, his Sulka shirt, his Knize tie, and his Lobb shoes. It was perhaps better the way it was. Merle Oberon, his bride-to-be, would certainly not have been pleased if he had made plans for a film starring Valentina rather than herself. Time was on his side. He had met Valentina, and she was willing to be directed by him. The story would have to be exactly right. He would use Technicolor, and in England at the moment Technicolor was an expensive and difficult process. No, it was better as it was. For a little while.

  The waiter served the hors d’oeuvres and Alex grinned. ‘I’ll never tell Vivian, but you’re the only other actress who would have been a serious contender for the part of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. As Scarlett, you would have been terrific!’

  ‘I imagine Miss Leigh will be pretty terrific,’ Valentina said, sipping her wine.

  ‘Oh, she will be,’ Alexander said confidently. ‘Vivian is my protegée as you were Rakoczi’s. When I first saw her, she had only played bit parts and was doing a play, The Mask of Virtue. I signed her up then and there, and now she has the plum part of all time.’ He beamed, as if he himself were responsible for David O. Selznick casting Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara.

  Valentina suppressed a smile. She imagined that the avuncular Alexander Korda had made a substant
ial profit by loaning Vivien out to Selznick.

  ‘Still, it would have been a hard choice,’ Alex continued, spearing a mushroom, ‘you or Vivien for Scarlett.’ He paused, wondering yet again why Valentina had turned her back on Hollywood when she had married. It had perplexed Hollywood. It had perplexed him. It still perplexed him.

  Paulos Khairetis must have been a most remarkable young man to have lured a woman like Valentina away from her natural environment. Away from the sound stages and kleig lights. Away from the heady intoxication of movie-making.

  ‘We must make a great movie together,’ he said, leaning once more towards her, ‘Greater than even Gone with the Wind. Greater than anything that has been made before. Where should it be set? Ancient Rome? Egypt? Or should it be a classic? A Jane Eyre? A Madame Bovary?‘

  The years of self-imposed indifference to the world of movie-making fell away as if they had never existed. She was once again caught up in the fevered fascination of suitable parts, suitable films. This was how she had talked with Vidal. Suggesting projects, rejecting projects, discussing until the long hours of the night had pearled into dawn.

  Alexander Korda’s eyes twinkled behind his shell-rimmed spectacles. Though the world would never know it, and Valentina herself was unaware of it, he, Alexander Korda, had reawakened in her the lust to appear before the cameras. It had been a good day. A satisfying day. A day he would not soon forget.

  When they parted it was on the understanding that Valentina would star as Queen Guinevere in a vast Arthurian epic to be made by Alex some time in the unspecified future.

  Alex left the Savoy humming to himself, and Valentina returned to her suite and her sleeping son. For a second, as the gilded lift bore her upwards, she imagined she could feel the heat of kleig lights against her face. She laughed at her fancy and stepped from the lift. Soon, very soon, she would do so. It was what Paulos would have wanted, and it was what she now wanted for herself.