‘What are you talking about?’
‘That’s why he wants to make the film here! It makes sense now. Why didn’t I see it? He’s another Canfield, pretending to be friendly while all the time he’s scheming to destroy us! But I won’t let it happen! He isn’t conjuring up those ghosts in my house. If he tries, I’ll kill him.’
Her son was horrified by the venom in her voice. She hated Sebastian, hated him in a way that Nico found deeply disturbing. There was something unbalanced in her face, her voice. What on earth was behind all this?
Laura flew home from Venice in a flat, depressed mood. She had not won an award and she had not been able to talk to Sebastian at the ceremony, had seen him only from a distance because their tables had been miles apart. She’d had a couple of glimpses of him in evening dress, among his film crew, but with Valerie Hyde always between them, leaning forward with one elbow on the table, a bare shoulder turned, as if deliberately to block Laura’s view of him.
Laura had drowned her sorrows in wine. She had drunk far too much, at first to calm her nerves, then to comfort herself because she hadn’t got the award. It was odd: she’d convinced herself that she was cool, it didn’t matter whether she won or lost – yet when she heard the announcement, and knew that one of the others had won, her stomach had dropped away through the floor. Shit, shit, she thought, I really wanted the damned thing, and was ashamed by the strength of her own feelings. Was it her English upbringing that made it so hard to admit she wanted anything that much? That kept telling her it was shameful and embarrassing to care whether she won or lost? That Kipling poem kept coming into her mind … ‘Treat those two imposters just the same …’ Win or lose, succeed or fail, you were supposed to laugh merrily. Well, she couldn’t. Oh, in front of Melanie and everyone else in the world she pretended she didn’t care, but she knew she did.
After all that wine, she had slept heavily last night, and in the morning when she packed she could not find Jancy. The doll had been on her bed before she went down to the award ceremony last night – she had kissed her for good luck before she left her room.
Laura had searched her room, and the bathroom, had rung for the floor housekeeper and questioned the maid who had turned her bed down last night, but both women had denied any knowledge of the doll. Miserably, Laura had had to leave for the airport without finding Jancy, and Melanie had not been sympathetic.
‘It’s only a doll, for heaven’s sake! You can buy another one back in London – and much prettier than that one was too. Look, tell you what, I’ll buy you one myself. How’s that?’
‘Jancy wasn’t just a doll.’
‘No, of course, she was magic – she could nod her head. I’d forgotten. Grow up!’
Afraid she might burst into tears, Laura dropped the subject. Thank God none of the paparazzi had recognised her as she and Melanie walked through the airport. She’d put on dark glasses, not to disguise herself from fans, this time, but to hide her red eyes, the bruise-like shadows under them. She had looked into the mirror before she left the hotel, groaning. She looked like shit. Looked the way she felt: dull, let-down, empty, close to tears.
What on earth could have happened to Jancy? Someone must have stolen her. But why would anyone want a shabby, much-handled doll? Jancy wasn’t an antique – twenty years isn’t old for a doll – and she hadn’t been made by a famous company, nor had she been expensive when she was new.
Laura felt too sick to eat. She refused the food the stewardess brought, just took the orange juice, which at least was drinkable, and black coffee, which she hoped might wake her up.
She would probably never see Jancy again … unless … could Sebastian have taken her, as a tease? He must have seen Jancy the other night, when he left her room before she woke up, and he had known all about her doll anyway. Jancy always came to work with her. If Sebastian had taken her, she could be sure of seeing Jancy again …
Maybe he would use the doll as an excuse to visit her flat in London to give her back. He’d said he would send her that script – but had he been serious about offering her this part? Yesterday Melanie had talked excitedly about the offers they might get if she won the award. Her value would go up instantly and directors would start clamouring for her – but would anybody want her now that she had lost? Would Sebastian? Once she started on that gloomy, downward path she couldn’t stop.
‘You’re very quiet. What’s bugging you?’ Melanie asked, drinking free Italian wine as if it was water. She turned to yell at the stewardess, ‘Hey, can I have another little bottle of this stuff? It isn’t bad.’
Already several rows away, with her clinking, rickety cart, the woman smiled tightly and came back with one. Melanie always made sure she got her money’s worth on a flight, just as she had filled her suitcase with every freebie from her own and Laura’s bathrooms, the shampoos, shower gels, body lotion, plastic shower caps and tiny bottles of mouthwash. It was a wonder she had had space to pack all the presents she had bought, and the food and clothes. Her case must be as heavy as lead.
‘I was thinking, Mel. As I didn’t get that award, maybe Sebastian won’t want me for his film.’
Melanie had that cynical look she wore when she was talking business. ‘If he ever gets the money together we’ll hear from him, and if we don’t, well, there are other directors. You are going to be a big star, I’m certain of that, with or without Sebastian Ferrese.’
Taking a long swig at the red wine in her plastic glass, Melanie’s eyes gleamed with wicked amusement. ‘And he didn’t win, either, did he? The great Sebastian Ferrese got beaten by an old guy for what is probably going to be his last film. I bet that hurt.’
‘Everyone knows it was a sympathy vote, the poor man’s dying of cancer, after all, and he’s made some great films in the past. I’ve seen all of them and he was a genius. I don’t suppose Sebastian will grudge him a last triumph.’
Mel showed her teeth in a sardonic grin. ‘Sweetie, nobody likes losing, even to an old man dying of cancer.’
‘But Sebastian’s half his age, he has plenty of time to win awards, and I’m sure he will. He’s a great director, too. I learnt a hell of a lot from him.’
‘I bet you did,’ Melanie muttered, hailing the stewardess again to ask for a brandy.
Laura flushed angrily, but didn’t snap back, tried to be calm and reasonable. ‘You said yourself it would be good for my career to work with him on this film. I’m going to read The Lily again.’
‘You’re only taking the part if he comes up with a serious offer. However good the script is, he has to pay our price this time. You’re no beginner now so he isn’t getting you for peanuts.’
Laura didn’t argue but her face set obstinately. If Sebastian offered her that part she was going to take it, whatever Melanie said, in spite of her reservations about him, about the threats in the notes pushed under her door.
All of that weighed nothing in the scales against the heart-stopping prospect of working with Sebastian. He got the best out of everyone on a film – even if you didn’t get paid at all it would be worth doing, just for the sake of what you learnt about your craft.
A little voice in her head added, ‘You mean you can’t wait to sleep with him again!’
Her lips clamped together. No. She knew now that she was as weak as water where he was concerned but she wouldn’t let him seduce her again. He wouldn’t get the chance to catch her alone, for one thing: she would be careful and, staying at Ca’ d’Angeli, he couldn’t force his way into her room – he wouldn’t dare risk a scene under that roof. But then her mind filled with confused and sensual images, his hands, his mouth, his knees nudging her thighs apart … her body as he’d forced her down on the carpet, throbbing with desire for him, burning inside, needing the rhythmic massage of his hard flesh to soothe that terrible yearning.
Even if he did get in touch, send the script, make a deal with Mel, how long would it be before they began filming? She knew how interminable these negotiations
could be. It might be months, years, before they shot a scene. So much could go wrong – and probably would, with her luck.
The script might have to be rewritten, Sebastian might have to wait to get the right people. There were sound stages to book, sets to design, props to collect, other locations to choose – she was sure the hero of the book had travelled around Italy during the 1920s and 1930s, had been in Rome at one time, Milan at another, always on the move from job to job. And even if all that could be worked out, the money might be a problem. Backers were notorious for changing their minds, pulling out of a film, sometimes for other projects they thought less risky, sometimes because they didn’t like the director’s intentions.
The stewardess took away their trays and Melanie yawned. Suddenly she pointed over the shoulder of a man sitting in front of them. She strained forward to a newspaper he held open. He became aware of this and looked round, irritated.
‘If you want it, take it!’ He thrust it into Melanie’s hands and opened another the stewards had given him when they had boarded the plane.
‘Thanks,’ Melanie said, unruffled by his tone, and spread the paper on her lap. Laura glanced at it curiously, then gasped as she recognised the photograph at the top of the page – of herself and Sebastian in the hotel lobby the day she and Melanie had arrived in Venice.
‘What do they say?’
‘The usual innuendo,’ Mel muttered, closing the paper. ‘Don’t bother to read it. It will only upset you.’
‘About Clea?’ What else? That was all that interested them, wasn’t it? Rumours of sex, violence, drugs, murder – what else did they have to fill their newspapers? They knew what the public wanted.
‘Ssh,’ Melanie hissed, keeping her voice low so that none of the other passengers could hear her. ‘Of course. Don’t worry, it’s only the same old stories. They just about stay within the law of libel. The only new one is about you and Sebastian meeting up in Venice. It’s given them a chance to speculate about whether or not you’re going to make a film together, and if you do, will the affair be on again?’
‘We hadn’t seen each other for years!’
‘What do they care? It makes good copy, sells papers.’
Laura turned her head away. Clea had been dead for three years but the press kept writing about how she had died, rehashing old gossip. Why couldn’t they let her rest in peace?
Hypocrite! You don’t want peace for Clea, she thought bleakly, you want it for yourself. And you want Clea’s husband for yourself, too.
London, 1997
Two weeks later a parcel arrived at Laura’s London flat. It was not very heavy, wrapped in brown paper, stamped with a London postmark.
Laura’s heart lurched with excitement. The script at last! She had been looking out for it ever since she got back from Venice. She tore off the brown paper and found a cardboard shoe-box. She took off the lid and peered inside, then made a high-pitched, keening noise.
It was Jancy, come back to her. Jancy, with her face smashed in, one bright blue glassy eye dangling on a spring, her nose a jagged crater, her pink rosebud mouth deliberately beaten down inside her head.
Her blue dress had been ripped down the front, her underclothes torn and dirty, as if she was a rape victim.
Pinned to her chest was another of those notes, printed in capitals.
YOU’RE NEXT.
Chapter Seven
Within a week Sebastian had sent the script of The Lily; Laura found it heavy-going, too static, wordy, scenes telegraphed too far in advance, as though the writer believed the audience couldn’t follow the storyline without heavy hints about what was coming. One night he rang to ask what she thought.
Laura was truthful. ‘I’m sorry, but it stinks. It’s more like chunks from the book than a film script.’
‘Yes.’ He groaned. ‘I know. The trouble is, the book’s so long, so much happens over more than twenty years, and if we leave half of it out the audience will miss the nuances – and all the really important stuff goes on inside the heads of the characters.’
‘You need a narrator.’
‘That’s an alternative, but first I need a new writer. Each script I get is an improvement, believe it or not. You should have seen the one I did myself. The sets are finished now – all the pre-production stuff is going like a dream. I just can’t get the script right.’ He laughed. ‘So what’s new? Story of my life.’
‘How are you going to get a unit base anywhere near Ca’ d’Angeli?’ She had been wondering about that ever since he first broached the idea of using the palazzo. All the ancillary services would need to be set up near the location – catering, the master production computer, somewhere for everyone to meet and talk about work, the wardrobe, makeup, not to mention all the electrical capacity for cables, lighting, cameras.
‘We’ve managed to hire an old warehouse not too far away, which should take care of the heavy stuff, and we’re renting a house behind Ca’ d’Angeli, to take Wardrobe and Makeup.’
‘When do you plan to start shooting?’ She hadn’t yet allowed herself to believe this film was going to happen.
‘The early location work ought to be done in February, during the Venice Carnival – that’s the atmosphere I want. To re-create it for the film would cost a fortune in extras and costumes. I’ll set up cameras in the streets and just shoot what goes past – free and spontaneous action, as unpredictable as life itself, can’t be beaten.’
‘Won’t it be cold in February?’
‘Very. And wet.’
‘Cameras always seem to seize up in really cold weather. They’re more delicate than human beings.’
He laughed. ‘True, but Sidney has a few tricks up his sleeve to cope with that. We’ll have to live with it.’ A pause, then he asked her, ‘How are you?’
‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, then plunged. ‘Although I miss Jancy.’
‘Who the hell is Jancy?’ His voice grew rough, as if he was angry. Or was it guilt?
‘You know. My doll.’
‘Doll?’ he echoed, his tone changing. ‘Oh, I thought this was some guy you were talking about. My God, that doll! I remember it. You’ve had it for years, haven’t you? What do you mean, you miss her? Have you lost her?’
‘In Venice.’ She could not believe him capable of the violence, the viciousness, that had destroyed Jancy.
‘Have you rung the hotel? They may have her in their lost-property box.’
‘I don’t need to. Somebody sent her back to me – with her face smashed in.’
She heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Christ.’ There was a long silence, then he asked, ‘Was there a postmark? Was the parcel sent from Venice?’
‘No, from here, London. And whoever sent it knew my address, which isn’t common knowledge, is it?’
His voice was deep and harsh. ‘That’s worrying, Laura. Have you told the police?’
‘What? That somebody stole my doll and battered its head to pieces? It’s hardly a hanging offence, is it?’ It can’t have been him, she thought. He isn’t an actor, he sounds genuinely worried. ‘There was a note pinned on her, Sebastian. Now, that was scary.’
‘What did it say?’
She told him.
‘Tell the police, Laura. You must. And tell them about the notes you got in Venice, too. These days, you hear so much about stalking – that’s what this could be, some lunatic fixated on you in a very dangerous way. Tell the police at once and get some protection.’
‘I doubt they’d have time to give me a police guard night and day.’
‘Promise you’ll at least talk to them about this. I wish I could be around to keep an eye on you, but I’m off to South America early tomorrow morning to do some retakes.’
‘You’re still working on that film?’
‘You know how it is – it isn’t over till it’s over. I guess I rushed it, to get to Venice and see you.’
Her breath caught.
He went on, ‘Well, I still have to pack.
You must ring the police, Laura. You could be in danger. Promise me you’ll do it?’
‘Yes, I will. Take care, Sebastian, have a good flight.’
When he had rung off she stood for some time with her hand on the phone, trying to nerve herself to ring the police, but what was the point? They would listen politely, pretend to take her seriously, but until whoever had smashed Jancy came back to do the same to her there was nothing they could do.
A shiver ran down her spine. From now on she was going to keep looking over her shoulder, wondering who was behind her, what might suddenly spring out of the dark. She looked out of the window but the street below her flat was empty, except for parked cars; nothing was moving in the shadows or the yellow circles of light around each lamp-post. Not even a cat, although you often saw them walking along walls or sleeping on window-sills in the morning sunshine.
How many people did she know in this street? One or two neighbours in other flats whom she greeted when they got into the lift or when she was collecting post from the boxes downstairs. This was the anonymous London of small flats and single people, who led quiet, dull lives, ate out at local restaurants, perhaps, but shopped in supermarkets near their work, in their lunch-hour, not in any of the corner-shops near here unless they ran out of something. Faces changed frequently: you saw them for a few months then one day you realised you hadn’t seen them for a year.
She had never grown used to living in London – she still missed the quiet, windy green hills below Hadrian’s Wall – but she couldn’t go home. She was working on a three-part TV thriller throughout the autumn, too busy most of the time to be able to think about anything but work. Up at dawn on cold rainy mornings, collected by the taxi company the TV people used, and coming home the same way at night, too tired to do anything much. She always had a long hot bath, a light supper in bed watching TV, before reading through her script for the next day’s shooting. By ten every night her light was out and she was asleep.
Sebastian was busy all that time, cutting and rearranging scenes from his last film, but he still managed to stay on the tail of Jack Novotni, the scriptwriter he had hired to do a better job on The Lily. Jack had read the book several times when it first came out, and was enthusiastic about it, which was a plus. His experience and razor-sharp mind were what Sebastian needed. Jack wouldn’t hesitate to junk everything that wasn’t essential, cut down major scenes to make the film move faster, or even leave them out altogether. He wouldn’t let himself get bogged down in overlong dialogue. Respect for a text could go too far and film worked visually: what you saw mattered more than what you heard. In some ways, Sebastian hankered for silent film: words could get in the way.
Deep and Silent Waters Page 16