Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  Another eighteen-year-old who woke up to find herself a star, albeit one with only a single film to her credit, might well have spent her money on furs or jewelry or a car, or even been too overwhelmed to spend it at all.

  Delphine wanted only one thing: a fortress. She had always lived in houses in which somebody older was in a position to hold her accountable for her actions. The house in the Villa Mozart was her guarantee that the growing demands of her body could always be satisfied in privacy.

  There was no curious, officious concierge at the foot of the main staircase, as there was, by law, in all Parisian apartment buildings, to note the comings and goings of her visitors. In the Villa Mozart there were only a busy guardian and his wife, Louis and Claudine, who lived at the entrance to the street, several hundred feet away from Delphine’s front door, literally out of sight, since the street curved away from their windows.

  Whenever she notified them that she would be expecting a guest, they opened the gate that barred the cul-de-sac to casual traffic, as soon as her name was mentioned, without demanding any further information. She tipped them well and often. Although they weren’t installed on her premises, she was already enough of a Parisienne to be aware of the necessity of their goodwill.

  Delphine hired a staff, but required that none of them live in the house. Her driver, Robert, her personal maid, her cook and her femme de chambre all came to work early in the morning and left when their jobs were over. She paid them handsomely—far more than if she had provided room and board—but it was well worth it to her. Whenever any of them saw evidence, in the morning, that Delphine had not slept alone, they were far too pleased with their easy jobs to let her suspect that she wasn’t leading her life in the complete privacy she had constructed so carefully.

  To each other they had a good deal to report about Monsieur Nico Ambert and their young mistress. Louis, in admiration, announced to his wife that Ambert had spent the night five times last week. Yes, he even had his own key to the front door. Annabelle, the personal maid, who had the news directly from Claudine as she entered the street, whispered it with a wink to Helene, the cook. Claudine had installed her sister, Violet, as the femme de chambre, who did all the housework, so she knew each detail of the condition of Delphine’s bedroom, and how many times clean sheets were required on the bed, and precisely why. He must be a hot-blooded brute, that Nico Ambert, she told them all, with an envious grimace. Not soon satisfied, and as rough as a stevedore, that was easy to see. Well, he was young.

  Delphine, in her fortress on the Villa Mozart, was the center of a web of information more precise and more explicit than if she had chosen to live in Hedda Hopper’s backyard, yet she would never be enough of a Parisienne to realize it.

  Nico Ambert had lasted six months, until Mayerling was completed and Delphine had signed to star opposite Claude Dauphin in a film called Rendez-vous d’Amour.

  Ambert had taught her more than he had intended, and Delphine, only hours out of his arms, would stroll slowly across a film set, as if she were contemplating her next scene, while she wondered which of the many men working there had begun to stiffen in arousal, as their eyes followed her passage. She would linger, from time to time, to greet a strong young assistant in any of the crafts and let her eyes wander down to his crotch, measuring his size with an imperceptible, practiced glance, as she asked a sensible question about his work. She would suck on her bottom lip in reflection as he answered while she looked steadily at his mouth, and only when she saw his face become flushed with desire would she quickly lower her eyes again to see how big he had grown, how far his trousers were bulging. Then she would bid him good-bye with a friendly smile, seeing in her mind the heavy, engorged member that she could so easily have drawn out from its hiding place, that marvelous hardness of blood-swollen flesh that she was utterly prepared to take, that she herself was now ripe to shove up deep inside her body.

  But she never did. She fed gloriously on the lust of the crew, inflamed them without giving them a valid excuse to brand her a tease. Delphine became addicted to sexual need. She adored the blissful, giddy, pleasurable pain of her mounting tension, her maddened imagination; she gladly spent hours of excruciating desire, wet and needy, until the lights went on, until it came time for the cameras to turn, until the director unleashed her. Only then would she allow herself the orgasms she concealed so well.

  She threw Ambert over for the director of Rendez-vous d’Amour. He had been reluctant to return the key to her front door, and she never made that particular mistake again. When she started her next film, Affaire de Coeur, with Charles Boyer, she moved into the arms of the producer. The director had not tempted her. She paid no attention to actors. They were too self-centered to interest her. The better looking they were, the less attractive they were to her. Their screen kisses never had the sensual reality of the sight of the big hands of a master electrician at work.

  The passion that the camera captured in Delphine’s most exquisitely romantic scenes of love was inspired by her certain knowledge that the crew, if they had half a chance, would have fallen on her and taken her, one after another. And, she thought avidly, still relishing her morning in bed, she would have been ready for them. More than ready. But they were forbidden. They would boast. One slip, one false move, and everyone would know. Directors, producers, composers, designers or writers were acceptable partners for a star, but she could not risk gossip about working men, no matter how their raw, rough masculinity made her quiver inside.

  She hadn’t so much as hinted to Margie. Her friend had come over to visit at Christmas and Delphine had imagined, before she arrived, that she might confide something of her new life to her old pal. What a bad idea that would have been, she thought wryly. Margie Hall had been so visibly impressed with Delphine’s stardom that she was no longer capable of treating Delphine with the free-and-easy camaraderie of outlaws that Delphine still took for granted.

  What was worse, Margie, at twenty, Delphine’s age, had remained a virgin, continuing to live by the good-girl code that they had been faithful to in college. It was Margie’s senior year at UCLA, and she was engaged to a promising doctor from Pasadena, and, it seemed to Delphine, she had been profoundly altered by the solemn prospects of a gigantic June wedding. After one or two trips out to the studio, she’d confessed that she’d rather spend her time in Paris fitting custom-made lingerie for her trousseau, buying gloves and perfume and ordering handmade table linen for her future dining room table. Her dining room table, Delphine thought in disbelief. Yes, Margie Hall was about to settle down and become a Pasadena matron in a few months. One day, not too many years from now, she’d find a strand of gray in her yellow curls, and she wouldn’t even consider doing anything about it. One didn’t, in Pasadena.

  How was it possible to grow apart so totally, Delphine wondered. Margie in love was an utter stranger. Love. Would she ever fall in love? She hoped not. It changed people, and she had no desire to change anything about her life. Margie had as little in common with her now as the people who lined up at the box office to see her films. There had been seven of them since Mayerling, and each one of them a success. Her only equals in the eyes of the French public were Michèle Morgan and Danielle Darrieux.

  The existence of those two actresses was the reason that she hadn’t been tempted by the Hollywood offers she’d received. Both of them were making films in France at a rate equal to her own. They were older than she, ravishing both, and as ambitious as she was. If she took the time away from her triumphant career to make a movie in California, one or the other of them would be sure to pick off a role that should have been Delphine’s. She’d been deeply upset when Morgan got the part she coveted opposite Gabin in Quai des Brumes. The Marcel Carné film was about to open and everyone she knew had been talking about it for months, using that infuriating word masterpiece.

  Delphine picked up a copy of Le Figaro that Annabelle had put on her breakfast tray, and opened it to the page on which Carné w
as interviewed, a page she had already read from top to bottom. She had not yet worked with either Carné or Gabin, and until she did, she wouldn’t be content.

  She turned away from the interview with a frown of irritation. To take her mind off it, she scanned the front page. Ninety-nine-point-seven percent of the voters of Austria had cast ballots in favor of Hitler’s “reunification” of their country with Germany—that number seemed insane, she thought idly. Otto von Hapsburg, she noted, hadn’t been allowed to vote because he had been arrested on suspicion of high treason for demanding that the great European powers react against Germany. Well, the Hapsburgs hadn’t been at all nice to little Marie Vetsera, had they? In France, Leon Blum was out, and Daladier was in—who could tell one from another? What difference could it make? Who gave a damn? French politics were even more confusing than world politics, but she supposed that she should try to be aware of them since people seemed to talk about it all so much. It didn’t do to look utterly ignorant. Tunisia was in some sort of uproar … but wasn’t it always? There was a new way to travel—William Boeing had brought out a huge plane called the 314. It was the only really interesting thing in the paper. Apparently the passengers could walk down an interior staircase and meet in a bar.… Delphine wondered what Freddy was doing now. She’d gone to see Tail Spin and she hadn’t been able to see any sign of her sister, try as she might, but she knew, from her mother’s letters, that Freddy was going from work on one picture to another, just as she was. Only Freddy was not a star. Delphine threw the boring newspaper on the floor. A matinée grasse must never include newspapers. She’d instruct Annabelle.

  Tonight she was having dinner with Bruno, Delphine remembered, and her momentary petulance vanished. It was wonderful to have a brother you could trust. Bruno and she had a relationship unlike one she could have with any other man. He never pried, never asked questions about her private life, never judged or tried to act as if he were supposed to be watching over her, yet she could ask him for any kind of advice and count on him to give her an unbiased answer.

  Bruno understood the subtle nuances of French life in a way she had to admit she never would. He knew which tempting invitations she must never, under any circumstances, permit herself to accept; what dressmakers she should patronize; where to order her note paper, and which was the only correct way to have it engraved; and why it was necessary for her career to attend the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe and the Prix Diane, but not to be seen at Monte Carlo. He’d stocked her cellar, recommended the bottier who made the best shoes in Paris, insisted that she throw out all of her American clothes, and picked out the perfect car for her position. Delphine knew that it was a blessing for her that everyone, from her agent to her servants to her producers, knew that she was under the protection of her brother, the Vicomte de Saint-Fraycourt de Lancel. God, but the French were impressed by a title.

  In return she made herself available as a hostess for Bruno whenever he asked. “Cherie,” he’d call and say, “could you do me a great favor and preside over my table next week? There is an elderly gentleman coming to dinner whom I shall put at your right—he has an enormous amount of money which he hasn’t decided how to place.” And she’d dress in her most alluring new evening gown and charm even herself by playing, in stunning balance, a dual role at one of Bruno’s perfect little dinner parties; Delphine de Lancel, film star, and Mademoiselle de Lancel, daughter of the old aristocracy of Champagne, who depended totally on her brother’s advice in everything. Only a glance now and then at Bruno would reveal his admiration for how well she carried out her role. He made a splendid partner. They were two of a kind, Delphine thought, and perhaps the best thing about Bruno was how emphatically he agreed with her about love. That utterly useless, inconvenient emotion, he called it, invented by someone with too much imagination and nothing better to do. Some petit-bourgeois unemployed troubadour.

  Within a week of his dinner party, often sooner, she’d receive a magnificently jeweled trinket from Cartier with a note from Bruno, telling her that the gentleman had now decided—most intelligently—just where to place his funds. It was such great fun to have Bruno with whom to play these little games, Delphine mused, and the fact that they were family made their interests mutual.

  After all, one day she and Bruno and Freddy would own the House of Lancel. Fortunately, he would know what to do with the vineyards, because certainly neither she nor her sister would want to shoulder that responsibility. Although … on second thought … it might be amusing to own a château. Michèle Morgan did not have a château. Nor did Danielle Darrieux. And even if either of them were to buy a château, it wouldn’t be the same as inheriting one. Still, Valmont was too totally tedious to consider, Delphine decided, getting out of bed and stretching. She loved her little house, and when she left it, it was only for a suite in a great hotel at some resort, for a brief vacation between pictures.

  As she rang for her maid she realized that her lazy morning was over. This afternoon she had the first meeting with the director on her new film, Jour et Nuit. His name was Armand Sadowski, and everyone in the world of the cinema was buzzing about him and his first three films. Brilliant they said, difficult they said, a genius they said, impossible they said. But what did he look like, Delphine wondered, as she waited for Annabelle. Would she want him in bed? How good would he be? Questions she could hardly ask her agent.

  Normally, Delphine would first meet with a new director in a restaurant chosen by her agent, Jean Abel. Abel liked to control his business as much as possible, and the man who picked the dining place, ordered the wine and paid for the lunch became, if he did it well, in charge of the occasion. The negotiations for Delphine’s participation in Jour et Nuit had long been over. There had, of course, been no need for an audition. The contracts were signed, but nevertheless there were bound to be conflicts in the course of the making of any film, and Abel wanted to start out on a strong footing with Sadowski. However, the director was busy supervising the editing on his latest pictue, and he had refused to leave the set long enough for lunch.

  Instead, he had given Delphine a rendezvous toward the end of the afternoon, all the way out at his own office at Billancourt, to which Abel had finally, and most reluctantly, had to agree, since Sadowski was finishing his current picture and starting Delphine’s new film with only a weekend’s break, Abel planned to pick Delphine up and escort her to this much-too-businesslike meeting, unwarmed by the consumption of food and wine, but she had told him that it wasn’t convenient. She preferred to be driven out to the studio in her own car, since she needed it afterwards to go on to a long-planned fitting at her lingerie maker. He could meet her at Billancourt.

  Delphine dressed carefully to meet Sadowski. The part in Jour et Nuit called for her to play a scatterbrained rich girl, suspected of murder, who falls in love with a police inspector. She knew already that the costumes, designed by Pierre Goulard, had been inspired by Schiaparelli’s surrealistic, witty, often downright crazy clothes. Inspired? “Copied” was a more honest word, she decided. The clothes, strident and showily aggressive, would be right for the character, but wrong for the way she wanted any unknown director to first think of her.

  Delphine had mastered the art of underdressing. The more famous she became, the more powerful she found underdressing to be as a weapon in any relationship. Everyone expected a film star to look like a film star. But that was too easy to do, too orthodox. Obvious. It was forgivable to be orthodox, perhaps, but never to be obvious. A film star decked out in the newest dress from dear Jean Patou, wearing Paulette’s most extravagant hat, dripping silver fox from one arm—no, never. That was fine for public appearances, but not for the beginning of an uncertain skirmish in which all of her armament might have to be employed. Why alert the director’s defenses so soon? She might, after all, detest the man. It had happened.

  She picked out an absolutely plain, thin wool sweater in a shade of gray so misty, so insubstantial that it underlined the matte whiteness o
f her skin, even more than black would have done. She added a perfectly simple, supremely well-cut skirt in gray tweed, one shade darker than the sweater; pale gray silk stockings; low-heeled, unadorned black kid pumps; and a classic, belted raincoat from England. Small jet earrings and a little black velvet beret, such as students wore, completed the ensemble. She could be anonymous, she, could be nobody, she could be anybody, if one didn’t look at her face, if she didn’t happen to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, Delphine thought dispassionately. She was not vain. In her career, her looks had to be weighed and considered as coldly and seriously as the quarterly report of a large company. A diamond cutter in Amsterdam didn’t judge a stone any more severely than Delphine did the angle of her nose, the perfect curves of her upper lip, the shadows below her cheekbones. Satisfied, she tightened the belt of the raincoat and pulled the beret down so that it covered the widow’s peak that made her instantly recognizable.

  At the studio she made her way toward the editing department. Abel should have been waiting for her in the parking lot, but perhaps he had been delayed; the traffic was snarled by the rain. She passed a number of people she knew casually, but none of them noticed her unless she deliberately caught their eye, smiled and nodded. This raincoat really managed to transform her into one of the masses, she thought, pleased.