Not Without You

by Harriet Evans

  ‘No way.’

  Sara’s blue eyes are fixed on me. I think again, fleetingly, how alike we are.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Fucked-up, isn’t it?’

  ‘He probably thought he was helping.’ I search her face, still a little worried. ‘Listen, Sara—’

  There’s a tap on my shoulder and I yelp. Angie and Gavin immediately stand up, facing me.

  ‘My goodness, I’m sorry,’ says someone politely. I turn round to see T.T., Paula the assistant director and Carl, one of the executive producers, and with them a man who looks like an advert for an English gent.

  ‘Sophie,’ says T.T., pulling at his hair with both hands. ‘Meet Tony. The British guy, the producer. He’s gonna sort it all out. He has to. Because I’m telling you I cannot do this shit any longer. I can’t do it! It’s doing my fucking head in! The weather! These people, the money, this stupid hotel …’ He shrugs, and rolls his eyes, and I think he might start crying.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ says Sara, concerned. I ignore him. T.T. is like this every day.

  Carl, who is totally useless, and only on the picture as a producer because I think he is the boyfriend of the VP’s daughter, says, ‘Dame Judi Dench. I keep telling the guy, let’s get Dame Judi Dench!’

  ‘Good evening, Sophie.’ Tony Lees-Miller leans forward, ignoring the others, and shakes my hand. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a great fan of yours, you know.’

  I want to laugh. ‘Really?’

  He nods. ‘Of course. The Bride and Groom is one of my favourite films. A Cake-Shaped Mistake, too. The bit with the waterskis, it makes me absolutely roar with laughter, every time.’

  Is he joking? I assume he must be.

  Carl jabs him in the arm. ‘You seen The Girlfriend? Opening weekend of twenty-three million dollars, this girl. She’s gold! We got Sophie Leigh!’ He shouts this around the room, and shame prickles across my skin.

  Tony fiddles with his watch. ‘Yes. I’m afraid I didn’t much care for The Girlfriend, if you’ll forgive me. Not your best work.’

  There’s a short silence. Carl looks at Tony like he’s just grown three heads. He puffs out his chest. ‘Listen, mister—’

  ‘Why not?’ I say.

  Tony has his hands in his pockets. He says, semi-earnestly, ‘I didn’t like the lead chap. Rob something? And I don’t like it when they make you act so terribly daffy.’ He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his face, scrubbing the linen roughly across his skin like he’s a little boy being cleaned up by a nanny. ‘I have a theory about you, you see. You’re chronically underused. And you could be one of the best comedic actresses since Diane Keaton. Plus you’ve got soul. And of course this is obvious and everyone knows it, but you really are very beautiful.’

  He says it complacently, as if I’ll be so sure of this. And I, who am so used to hearing compliments, I who know how to accept them gracefully, with a smile and a word of thanks, I blush, and bite my finger, to stop myself smiling with pleasure, because for once I desperately want to believe he’s telling me the truth. ‘Well, that’s really kind of you.’ I touch his arm, almost shyly. ‘How was the meeting? Have you found a solution to the Cara problem yet?’

  ‘No, alas,’ Tony says. ‘But Paula, T.T. and I have just re-jigged the shooting schedule.’

  ‘I thought we didn’t have the money to shoot the later scenes.’

  He waves this away as if it’s a minor problem. ‘I encouraged the financiers to release it to us.’

  ‘Really?’ I’m impressed.

  ‘I’m a very persuasive person,’ Tony says, smiling. ‘We’ll just shoot around Cara’s scenes for as long as possible. I’ve spoken to Bill Claremont about it – he thinks he can sort something out.’

  ‘Dame Judi Dench,’ Carl hisses, at his elbow.

  ‘What an excellent idea. Alas, I suspect it is more than likely Judi is not free at such short notice, but I will certainly check,’ Tony says, unruffled. ‘I think we need something, or someone, more unexpected than that.’

  Carl looks angry and runs his hands through his slicked, thick hair. I ignore him – he has no idea what he’s talking about. I turn to Tony, trying not to smile.

  ‘I’m sure you know this but maybe we should be shooting all the scenes inside Anne Hathaway’s house first. Cara’s not in any of them, and—’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he interrupts me politely, ‘the Anne Hathaway house people are saying they don’t want us back there. This is another problem for which, as yet, I have no solution.’

  ‘I think we can win them round again, if we tread carefully, you know,’ I say. ‘The lady who runs the inside of the house, not the garden, is a big, big fan of Alec’s. She specifically said today to ask her if he needed anything. If we can use her to get them on our side and agree to let us finish the filming there we’ll have all that in the can by the end of the week.’ I think back to Margaret’s face of grim adoration as she watched Alec. ‘Yes, I’m sure she will. And then shoot around Cara’s character so that if we absolutely can’t find anyone else Tammy can rewrite it, so we use what we’ve got of Cara as the older Anne but cut her character right back. It’ll be a blow, because she’s kind of the heart of the film, but I don’t see another option. If we do it cleverly it should only mean one, two new scenes.’

  Tony’s nodding. ‘Thank you, Miss Leigh,’ he says. He opens both his hands, then shuts them. And he gives me a funny look. ‘I was right about you.’

  ‘Were you?’ I grin at him. ‘Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.’

  ‘I will,’ he says. ‘Very good to meet you.’ He holds my hand for a second, and then his phone rings and he looks at it. ‘I have to take this, I’m afraid.’ He moves out, Carl and T.T. following in his wake.

  I watch him go, mulling over what he’s said. Something, or someone, more unexpected than that. Beside me, Sara checks her watch and stands up again. ‘It’s nearly lunchtime in LA. I have to speak to Tommy,’ she says. ‘Something about the publicity for the DVD of Blue and Gold Dress.’

  ‘OK, great. By the way,’ I say suddenly. ‘You never did get any news from Eve Noel, did you? Her agent never replied to you, right?’

  Sara gets that rabbit-in-the-headlights look she so often has when I ask her something, like she’s terrified she won’t know the answer. She shakes her head. ‘Um, no. Why?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. I’m about to add something, but I stop. ‘Listen, thanks for everything today.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course! I’m so glad you’re here.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ she says. ‘I’m really enjoying this experience with you. I’m so happy Tina had to take the time off.’ Her eyes widen. ‘That sounds terrible. Please, I don’t mean it like that.’

  I sometimes wonder if Sara has a touch of Asperger’s. Or something like that. She is so efficient and organised, so up all the time, almost robotically so, that I find her kind of scary and then she’ll say something completely off the wall and I realise she is bonkers. She picks up her iPad, muttering something to herself. I smile at her.

  ‘Hey, no problem. Are you coming for a drink?’

  She frowns. ‘No. I’d better not. I – I’m going to get some sleep. Unless you need me?’

  ‘No. See you tomorrow.’ I watch her go and then head through to the bar, Angie and Gavin following behind.

  The huge old hearth has a fire crackling away. I sit on the oak settle and tuck my feet under me, it’s really quite cold. This summer is a total washout. I gaze at the flames leaping in front of my eyes. I feel strange today. Tired, uneasy.

  A line from A Girl Named Rose pops into my head. Oh, it’s such a sad film. Rose is saying goodbye to her boyfriend Peter from the small town; he’s marrying someone else because she’s gone to the big city and he thinks she’s dumped him. It’s Conrad Joyce, whom I love, playing Peter and he’s on his way to the church when he sees her in the window of her parents’ house and realises she’s come back, and it�
�s too late, he has to marry drippy Samantha.

  ‘You’ll be fine, Rose. You’re always fine. Just think of me occasionally, will ya?’

  And he leaves and walks off, and Rose watches him go and she says, ‘My thoughts are yours already, Peter darling. You know that. I’ll never love anyone else. Never.’ And then it says ‘THE END’ and the music starts.

  Oh, man. It makes me cry every time. Eve Noel, when she says it, she just looks so totally, totally heartbroken. She’s staring into the distance, not at him, and her eyes have tears in them, but she never actually cries. It feels so real. She should have won the Oscar that year, every moment she’s on-screen you can’t see anyone else. She is mesmerising. She glows with something – love, happiness, urgency, I don’t know what it is. She had her first breakdown a year or so after it came out. I know it’s because of that film. I don’t know why, I just know it is. It scares me too, because I’m afraid of what would happen if you poured yourself into a part like that. It seems to consume her: she’s acting, but it’s more than acting. It’s her life.

  Someone taps my arm, and I uncurl, shaking myself out of my reverie.

  ‘You look like a heroine in a film, Sophie,’ Bill Claremont says, sitting down, a pint in his hand. ‘Mind if we join you?’

  ‘Course not,’ I say, moving over. The camera crew – all identical-looking men with close–cropped hair, paunches hidden by heavy flak jackets, jeans and trainers, and variable only by age – sit down. They are always together, and apart from Bill, their leader, and Rick, the one I fancy, I haven’t quite got a grip on all their names. I know only that one of them is called Wally. So I’ll say ‘Wally’ vaguely from time to time and look round at them all and that seems to cover it.

  Someone puts a vodka, lime and soda down on the table for me. That’s ‘my’ drink here at the Oak. We know what everyone’s tipple is now. I like being in a gang again.

  ‘Ta,’ I say.

  ‘Got sick of waiting for Alec to appear and buy the drinks, eh? Don’t worry, we’re here.’ Bill smiles, but I don’t smile back. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’

  ‘Oh … nothing. Just thinking.’ I look round. ‘Hi, guys … Wally. Er … Hi, Rick.’

  Rick raises a hand in greeting. I stare at him hopefully. But he doesn’t look like Patrick, I realise. He’s good-looking, in fact his face is more chiselled than Patrick’s. But there’s something missing. I close my eyes to see his face again, dark eyes melting as he asks me if I’m OK and I sigh, annoyed with myself. This Patrick thing is ridiculous. You don’t even know him. Of course he’s gorgeous, he’s a film star. Of course you fancy him. He’s a player, right? Remember the photos of the girls, the TMZ footage of him drunk, the crappy movies, the idiotic behaviour … ? just get over it, Sophie, get him out of your head.

  Bill takes a sip of his pint. ‘What are they going to do about Cara, have you heard?’

  ‘No idea,’ I say. ‘I did think maybe—’ Then I shrug. ‘Forget it. I’m sure Tony’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Good guy, Tony,’ says Bill. ‘Been around. Knows his onions. We worked together on David Lean’s last film. Clever old boy.’

  ‘You worked on A Passage to India?’ I ask.

  Laconic Bill moves his pint across the table. ‘Ah. Yes. You’re good, Sophie. You know your stuff, don’t you.’

  ‘I like films. Maybe it’s being back here. I’m remembering a lot of things I’d forgotten.’

  But as I sit in this dark, wooden English corner, the thick greenery of the summer lashing against the old lead windows, I wonder, again, for the fiftieth time, where Eve is. How great it would be if she joined the film, if I could just somehow find her. If only she’d let us know she is all right. Because now I’m back, only miles away from her old home and my home, I get the strangest feeling she’s nearby. That she wants to be found.

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills

  YOU SEE, AT first I thought Don was coming. I was stupid, I suppose. I should have learned by then that nothing is as simple, as good, as nice as that. And I’d stopped being the Eve who had a fire inside her so long ago now that even those few blissful weeks I had with him in Big Sur weren’t enough to turn me back to my former self. The eighteen-year-old Eve Sallis who berated the lounging, bequiffed Teddy boys at the bus stop for not giving up their seats to the old gentlemen beside them, who complained that the girls weren’t given the same quality of parts as the boys at Central, who demanded that Clarissa do her share of the laundry and the dishes: she was nothing more than a distant memory, like Rose. She had left me, a long time ago.

  I was driven back to Los Angeles, the day I left Don and Big Sur behind. We didn’t arrive at the long white house on Mulholland Drive until after midnight. Being back at home roused in me no emotion; and I realised then how I had been skating along pretending to feel these things, when the only thing that was real was how I felt for Don. I didn’t need anything but him, not the pool, the closet full of clothes, the jewellery.

  Gilbert’s bedroom door was closed and I stole noiselessly into my room, crawled between the sheets and lay awake, listening to the call of a hoarse, lonely crow high in the hills behind me as the enormity of what I would do the next day sat upon my chest, like a physical weight.

  In the morning, I got up early and swam in the pool until my skin was wrinkled and my lips were blue, till there was no trace anywhere on me of Don, every last touch of his washed away. The early sun had not reached the terrace, and it was cold. I floated on my back, watching the hydrangea leaves the gardener hadn’t cleared from the pool. They lay on the tension of the water, moving slowly against the bright blue, tiny waves lapping gently over my shoulders.

  Victoria brought me my breakfast. ‘Good morning, Miss Eve,’ she said, wiping her hands on the yellow apron she wore every day before lunch. All these things about home that I’d forgotten. ‘Welcome back.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I climbed out of the pool and wrapped myself in a towelling robe. ‘How are you, Victoria? How is your foot?’

  ‘Ah, my foot, you don’t want to know,’ Victoria said. ‘Have some corn bread, dear.’ She peered at me. ‘You look wonderful, you know? The trip was good?’

  ‘The trip was fantastic,’ I said, smiling, then I adjusted myself. I sat down. ‘It all went very well, thank you. Where’s Mr Travers?’

  She shook her head. ‘He didn’t tell you? He’s back tomorrow, maybe Monday. He got held up. Something overran.’

  ‘What?’ I said, raising my hand to my head in dismay, and in the process knocking over the coffee cup. ‘Oh – oh, God.’ I dabbed at the rapidly browning linen. ‘Oh, good grief.’

  ‘Stop it. I’ll do it later.’ Victoria gently brushed my hand out of the way. Again she said, ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. I closed my eyes. One extra day to go. One more day. I couldn’t bear it. Don and I had said we wouldn’t contact each other until he had been to Las Vegas and asked his wife for a divorce, until I had told Gilbert, and until he was back in LA. I wondered where he was now, if he had arrived in Vegas. He was driving back to LA and then heading straight on to Vegas, he meant to get there by late Friday night. Perhaps he’d cross Gilbert, on his way back from somewhere in Nevada. I clutched my napkin. Victoria looked at me. She was Gilbert’s old maid and I had never really trusted her; I don’t know why. I felt she was on his side.

  ‘You miss him, it’s too bad,’ she said tenderly. ‘Ah, dear.’ She reached out a hand. ‘You poor girl.’

  Tears came to my eyes; inside my head, the old voices started, jabbing at me, telling me how rotten I was. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I do miss him.’

  I spent the day at home. I unpacked, I read a little of my book, I watched the television, but I couldn’t find anything I liked, anything to latch onto. Mostly, I sat in the sitting room, looking out towards the west of the city, over the hills. A psalm Rose and I had been taught to sing at school kept coming into my head. I will lift up mine eye
s unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. It was hot, humid, and there was no wind. I felt terribly alone, though Victoria sang all day in the kitchen. June telephoned, wanting to know if we cared to join her for dinner, her voice lightening noticeably when I said Gilbert was away. We spoke fondly for a while about the wonderful time we’d had up in Big Sur, and I wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be fun to meet up with her.

  ‘No point in moping around after Gilbert, dearest,’ June said. ‘Come out with me. I’m trying to get hold of Conrad. We’ll wow the town, show them all we’re back. It’ll be a riot, darling.’

  But I said no, though I missed June and especially Conrad, his funny jokes, his witty repartee, his shy, kind heart, already. I simply felt I couldn’t leave the house and live a lie when I hadn’t told Gilbert, when Don hadn’t arrived yet. But Gilbert won’t come until at least Monday, you know he won’t. There’s no way he’ll be here tonight. No matter how many times I told myself this, I couldn’t bear to leave the house, just in case.

  I was a prey to my own fears, when in Big Sur everything had seemed so simple, so wonderful. Gilbert, what would he do? Where would he go? What would people say?

  It was an interminable day, but I almost welcomed it. I felt as though I should have to live through this, to have the happiness I thought was almost with me.

  And then it was Sunday.

  ‘Where are you, Eve?’

  It was mid-morning, and I’d been reading in bed. At the sound of his voice, I jumped up immediately.

  ‘Eve?’

  ‘Here, dear. I’m here,’ I said, standing up by the bed, as if I’d been doing something illicit.

  Gilbert came striding into the room. He looked around, as if he thought someone were here. ‘Ah,’ he said. He nodded, looking me up and down.

  ‘You seem well,’ he said. ‘Had a good time, then?’

  There was something about his tone I couldn’t quite make out. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hard work, but it’s a wonderful place.’