Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘In a two-bitapartment not fit for a maid?’ Denton said derisively. ‘You’re a star. What will your public think if you move into an apartment any one of them could rent?’

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Alexander adores Leila. The apartment is home to him. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ There were white lines etching his mouth and his voice was sharp. ‘You’re overtired. If it disturbs you so much, we’ll forget about sending Alexander away to school. Alternative arrangements can be made.’

  ‘And I will make them,’ she said quietly. ‘You don’t like Alexander, Denton. No matter how hard you try to disguise it, it shows. He will be happier and more settled at Leila’s.’ He began to protest and she said steadily, ‘…and so will I.’

  The parting had not been amicable. Denton did not take kindly to being rejected, and his comments about her to the press were scathing and derogatory. Valentina remained firmly silent.

  ‘For goodness’sake, Valentina,’ Stan said exasperatedly, ‘you’ll have to make a statement in retaliation. He’s saying that in abandoning his own business affairs to conduct yours, he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.’

  ‘It isn’t true.’

  ‘I know it isn’t true? But what about the gullible public? Are they going to believe that? Denton can sound very credible when he chooses.’

  ‘I know,’ Valentina said with a wry smile. ‘But I’m not going to descend to the level of hurling insults in public.’

  Stan shook his head in mock despair and grinned. Denton’s statements made headlines but carried no weight: in the eyes of the great American public, Valentina could do no wrong.

  In the summer Europe plunged deeper and deeper into chaos and her letters to Evangelina received no reply.

  ‘If only I knew if she were safe,’ she said despairingly to him.

  He patted her hand. ‘All you can do is keep writing,’ he said compassionately. ‘Things must get better. They can’t possibly get worse.’

  But they did. In the autumn, Germany invaded Poland.

  ‘I doubt if you’ll hear anything now until the war is over,’ Stan said as they sat drinking coffee. ‘I had a letter from David Niven the other day. He thinks America is bound to pitch in soon and that once we do it will soon be at an end.’

  ‘David left Hollywood and enlisted almost immediately, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He’s British. He went without any hesitation.’

  ‘And Vidal is Hungarian, and he went too,’ she said, her voice thick with suppressed emotion. Stan looked at her sharply. Vidal’s name was rarely mentioned.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, keeping his voice casual. ‘It was a strange thing to do. Leaving Hollywood the day the British declared war on Germany.’

  ‘Vidal would hate the Nazis and all they stand for,’ Valentina said her hair swinging down softly on either side of her face. ‘He wouldn’t sit on the sidelines. Dear God, why can’t this country see what is happening? I’m so sick of Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy and their pompous isolationist statements. People are dying in their millions and we’re just sitting here, waiting for Hitler to defeat Britain. What sort of Europe will it be if he does?’

  ‘God knows,’ Stan said wearily, thinking of his own cousins in bomb-shelled London. ‘But you can’t to any more than you are now. You’ve organized more benefits for British War Relief than anyone else I know.’

  ‘It isn’t enough!’ Valentina said passionately, her fists clenched. ‘Not for people like Evangelina and Maria and Aristea.’

  ‘What are you two looking so gloomy about?’ Leila asked as she joined them.

  ‘War,’ Stan said briefly.

  Leila shrugged her shoulders dismissively. ‘Can’t you two ever talk of anything else? Sex, for instance. Glorious, glorious sex.’

  Stan and Valentina laughed. If it wasn’t that she was still performing nightly as Thea Elvsted, both doubted if Leila would ever surface from Rory O’Connor’s bed.

  ‘Korda is going to make a romance-adventure based on the life of Lord Nelson, one of England’s foremost naval heroes, and Lady Hamilton,’ Leila said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Rumour has it that he wants Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the lead parts.’

  ‘There’s a film originated by the war spirit if I ever heard of one,’ Stan said, rising to his feet.

  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought America into the war, Valentina felt only relief. She threw herself totally into the organization and support of cocktail parties, concerts, bazaars, all in aid of the War Relief funds. James Stewart enlisted in the United States Air Force, and was stationed in Great Britain; Clark Gable followed suit. Valentina corresponded with both, asking casually after the welfare of David Niven, of Vidal, of the many other Hollywood inhabitants stationed there. But it was Vidal whose name she fearfully searched for every time a letter arrived in reply. Vidal who was never far from her thoughts every time she read a news report or saw newsreel pictures of the fighting.

  ‘You look tired. You really must give it a rest,’ Sutton Hyde said to her one evening as they sat nursing after dinner coffees.

  ‘I’m fine, Sutton. Please don’t worry about me.’

  Sutton noticed the faint blue shadows beneath her eyes. She was lying and he knew it.

  ‘What costume drama is Theodore planning to star you in now?’ she asked, changing the subject. She enjoyed Sutton’s company. Being with him reminded her of the making of The Warrior Queen; of her marriage to Paulos. She was grateful that his age made it pointless for him to return to Britain.

  ‘Captain Black,’ Sutton replied, raising his eyes to heaven. ‘I am to be an English earl captured for ransom. It will be a debacle of course. Theodore has no historical bent. He’s lost without Vidal.’

  Vidal. The name fell between them like a shadow. Her heart ached. Was he safe? Was he happy?

  ‘I’m cold,’ she said, though the evening heat was stifling. She drew a cardigan around her shoulders and asked the maid to light the fire, but its warmth did not ease her. The cold she suffered from was too deep.

  ‘What happened between you and Vidal?’ Sutton asked gently. ‘I saw the photographs taken at the première party of Hedda Gabler. When I saw you together I thought…’ He raised his shoulders expressively. ‘I thought that there would be a happy outcome for you both.’

  The maid brought in a tray with wafer-thin china cups and a pot of Sutton’s favourite Earl Grey tea. Valentina waited until she had departed and then she said, speaking of it for the first time, ‘So did I, Sutton. It was the happiest night of my life.’

  The firelight shone on her hair, accentuating the purity of her cheekbone and jaw. She was the loveliest woman he had ever seen. His breath caught in his throat. And the saddest.

  ‘When Vidal returned home the next day, it was to tell Kariana that he was divorcing her. We were going to be married, Sutton. We would have been married if…’ Her eyes darkened and her fists clenched. ‘If it hadn’t been for that damned fire!’

  The naked anguish in her voice seared him. ‘I can understand the fire meaning a change in your plans. Kariana was badly injured, but surely, in time…’

  ‘He didn’t wait for time,’ she said, and the anguish had gone. Her voice was bitter and hard. ‘He cabled me from his hospital bed the next day. There was to be no divorce. He would not be seeing me again. He was staying with Kariana. He had a choice to make and he made it.’ Her amethyst eyes were bleak. ‘He chose Kariana.’

  When Hedda Gabler came to the end of its long run, she did not embark on any of the movies that had been offered. Instead, she went to the Office of Strategic Services to offer her help.

  The officer interviewing her was overawed but cautious. ‘We need entertainers for the troops. Singers, dancers, that sort of thing.’

  Valentina’s eyes gleamed. ‘Lieutenant, I am an entertainer. I can sing and I can dance and I can make those men forget, for a short time, the horrors
that they are living with.’

  The lieutenant grinned. ‘One sight of you, ma’am, and they’ll certainly do that!’

  When Rogan Tennant heard of her plans, he asked if he could accompany her. They could put some sketches together. He could sing. He was tired of playing war heroes behind the safety of studio lights whilst his compatriots were dying on real battlefields. It was too late for him to enlist, but he could at least do this.

  Valentina had taken him along to the USO headquarters at One Park Avenue. The military had been delighted at the offer of Rogan’s services, and Rogan had been delighted with the honorary rank of colonel he was given in case of capture by the enemy.

  In a battered C-54 they flew via the Azores to Casablanca and then on to Algiers and Italy. The past was never mentioned between them.

  ‘Don’t you miss Alexander?’ he asked her one day as they drove through the black-out to the theatre in which they were to perform.

  ‘Yes, but he understands why I am doing this. He’s staying with Leila while I am away.’

  The tour was arduous. They travelled in great discomfort and often in great danger, but the tumultuous welcome she received everywhere she went, more than made up for it. On stage she wore the most daring, breathtaking gowns of her career.

  ‘Those men haven’t seen a woman in months,’ she said when a colonel timidly suggested she dress a little more modestly and avoid a riot. ‘I’m here to remind them of what one looks like.’

  ‘You sure do that, ma’am,’ the colonel said, loosening his collar.

  She had been dubious of her singing voice before the tour began, but her choice of songs, sexually explicit, full of double entendres, had the troops cheering until they were hoarse. She had gone to the front lines to provide battle-weary men with glamour and she gave them it in abundance.

  In London she took a few days off and Rogan drove her down to David Niven’s cottage near Windsor. She wasn’t the only visitor. James Stewart was there in his uniform of lieutenant-colonel. Clark Gable had only just left for the Midlands, where he was stationed.

  She played with the Niven children in the garden, recounted her exploits in occupied Europe and caught up with the news, both professional and personal. Errol Flynn was still in Hollywood; Sterling Haydn was rumoured to be fighting with the Partisans in Yugoslavia.

  ‘And Vidal?’ Valentina asked casually. ‘Does anyone know where he is?’

  ‘He’s in the Peloponese acting as a British liaison officer between our chaps and the Andartes, the Greek guerillas under Zervas,’ David said. He grinned suddenly. ‘God knows how he got a pip like that. I thought he was a Hungarian, not a Greek.’

  ‘If it got him into hand-to-hand combat, he would have convinced the powers-that-be that he was Ghenghis Khan,’ Rogan said, laughing.

  The precious bottle of Scotch that Jimmie Stewart had brought from the American PX for his less fortunate English friends was passed around and the conversation turned to other things.

  Valentina did not join in. Her fingers tightened around her glass. Vidal was in Greece. What if he died there, as Paulos had? She closed her eyes and fought back a wave of nausea. He couldn’t die. He may have abandoned her for Kariana. He may have turned his back on her and not given her another thought, but he couldn’t die. She wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  ‘We’ll have to be going,’ Rogan was saying to her. ‘You’re dining with the top brass tonight.’

  She smiled and rose to her feet. Though she could not say so, she was dining with Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. She wondered if he would give her any up-to-date information on an Hungarian serving as a British liaison officer in the Peloponese, but doubted it.

  ‘Rome next week and then Aachen,’ Rogan said buoyantly as they drove back to London. ‘How do you feel about the prospect of setting foot on German soil? Doesn’t it scare you to death?’

  ‘No,’ she said, smiling at his boyish enthusiasm. She had only ever been afraid of one thing in life. Losing Vidal. Now that she had lost him, there was nothing left to fear. She was seeing a special operations officer in the morning to map out the rest of her route. He would be able to tell her what the present situation in Greece was, but not if Vidal was still alive; or Evangelina; or Maria; or Aristea.

  ‘Damn Hitler!’ she said with sudden vehemence. ‘May he rot in hell for the suffering he has caused!’

  ‘And so say all of us,’ Rogan said light-heartedly, swinging the car towards the blacked-out suburbs of London.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  If Britain’s Prime Minister was working a twenty-hour day, and fighting for the future freedom of untold millions, he showed little sign of it at dinner. His interest in Hollywood was unlimited. Over champagne he disclosed to Valentina that he knew Alexander Korda well and that Korda’s film, Lady Hamilton, starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, had been his own idea.

  ‘In 1940 a great mass of public opinion in America was against any involvement in the war,’ he said, his full, heavy lips pursing. ‘I recommended the subject of Nelson to Korda. I wanted him to produce a movie that would create a more sympathetic attitude towards England and ultimately create a demand in America for the United States to help us.’

  ‘And the Japanese did it for you,’ Valentina said impishly.

  Churchill chuckled. He was enjoying the company of his dinner guest. ‘They did, but never tell Korda. He believes he orchestrated the whole event himself.’

  As brandy was poured for the Prime Minister and Valentina lightly covered the top of her glass with her hand, she said, ‘Would it have been easy for an Hungarian to have become a British liaison officer?’

  ‘It would have been damned odd,’ Churchill replied, regretting that the dinner would soon have to come to an end.

  ‘A friend of mine did so. Vidal Rakoczi, the film director. I believe he’s in the Peloponese. I’ve had no news of him for a long time.’

  Churchill patted her hand reassuringly. ‘When there is news I will see to it that you receive it. Now, I am afraid that you must excuse me,’ and he returned to his desk and his maps and his waiting staff officers.

  The special operations officer the next morning was no more helpful. For a man serving in Vidal’s capacity, no news could be expected. Valentina sought solace in writing a long letter to Alexander. God, how she hated the war. Its effects had scarcely been noticeable in Hollywood. Here, in Europe, they were all around her.

  She didn’t want to return home but she was under orders from the Office of Strategic Services, just as the soldiers she had been entertaining were under orders.

  After a joyous reunion with Alexander she boarded the Santa Fe Chief and headed back to the town she had left so many years ago.

  Hollywood welcomed her back rapturously. On her first evening she attended a concert at the Hollywood Bowl and as she entered, the star-studden audience turned in her direction and whispers began to cascade from tier to tier. Then, quite simultaneously, before the performance began, they rose to their feet and began to applaud. Valentina smiled and waved and felt the tears sting the back of her eyes. She was home where she belonged. Where she had always belonged ever since she had first walked on to the set of The Black Knights at Worldwide.

  It took Theo a bare twenty-four hours to call on her. It was the first time they had met since she had walked from his office nearly ten years previously. He eyed her appreciatively. Only a few of the stars who had been famous when Valentina had been the queen of Worldwide had managed to retain their success and their beauty. At twenty-nine, Valentina was more beautiful than she had ever been. There was an indefinable quality about her that he had never encountered in all the thousands who sought to imitate her.

  The long, shoulder-length fall of hair, partially obscuring the face and so beloved by his current leading ladies, was not affected by Valentina. Her shining black hair was held away from her face by two heavy tortoise-shell combs. Her eyes reminded him of onyx, dark and rich. Adulation h
ad given her no tiresome pretensions. Yet she had changed. The quick laughter that had always been in her eyes during the years she had worked with Vidal, was no longer there. Instead, there was a far more disturbing quality. A haunting sadness that not even her smile could disguise.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Gambetta,’ she said, walking forward to greet him with gentle hip-swinging grace.

  ‘What’s with the “Mr Gambetta”?’ Theo said expansively. ‘The name is Theo.’

  ‘It was Mr Gambetta the last time we met,’ Valentina said with a spark of mischief.

  Theo had the grace to blush. ‘A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.’

  ‘And a lot of bucks,’ Valentina added demurely.

  Theo, remembering the huge settlement she had paid for the privilege of leaving his employ, threw back his head and guffawed. She had always been bright. Always been more than a match for him in their verbal battles. There were not many women he had liked as much, and yet… His laughter faded. This was the woman who had deserted Vidal when he lay in a hospital bed with appalling burns. The woman who had never even telephoned to ask after the condition of the man she had been going to marry, and who had allowed Vidal to learn of her intended marriage to another man in the Los Angeles Times?

  He thrust the memory from him. He was here on business and personal feelings had no place where business was concerned.

  ‘Sit down, Theo. Tell me why you are here.’

  ‘As if you didn’t know,’ he said, his dark thoughts banished, his grin once more relaxed. He looked around the room. It was light and airy with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the canyon below. Outside was a patio with a glass-top dining table surrounded by birds and flowers and in the distance he could see the shimmer of a pool with white blossom floating on the surface. She had always had a talent for making any house she moved into instantly a home.