by William Boyd
He was right, she thought. The best 2,000 bucks she’d ever spend. The best. She made up her mind.
“I don’t have that kind of cash on me.”
“But you can get it, right? They must be paying you a fortune on this movie.”
“I’ll try.” Her brain was racing but was muddled by the Obetral. “I’ll ask the production office. The producer.”
“How will you get it to me?”
She thought for a moment.
“Wait with the autograph hunters at the front door of the hotel each day. When I have the cash I’ll slip it to you.”
“OK. But don’t delay, OK?”
He stood up and prowled round her suite, aggressively. The old Cornell Weekes seemed to be back. He fingered the thick curtains, weighed the heavy brass pull that opened and closed them.
“Living high on the hog, eh, Anny?” he said accusingly, sneeringly. “Life must be good.”
“It’s a job. It’s what I do. They provide accommodation.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. It’s disgusting.”
“I’m not ashamed of myself, not for one second. Fuck you, Cornell! You’re happy to benefit from my ‘disgusting’ job, oh, yeah—so you can go and fight the good fight in the jungles of Mozambique. Doesn’t it strike you as ironic? A sacrifice of noble principles? You happy taking my filthy money? Why don’t you go rob a bank, Mr. Freedom Fighter?”
“I have no choice. You do.”
“Funny how it always works out that way. You’re in the right. I’m in the wrong.” She felt the weariness of arguing with him begin to afflict her again. It reminded her of their brief marriage and its unending tensions. Suddenly she longed for Troy—so simple, so straightforward.
“You know what? I think you should go,” she said, striding to the door. “I’ll get your money tomorrow or the next day.” She held the door open for him. He stood there, hands on hips as if reluctant to leave.
“I suppose I should thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Anny. I know it’s not easy for you. But I’ve always felt that you and I had something—”
“I don’t want your thanks, Cornell,” she said wearily. “I want nothing from you, any more. This is the last thing I’ll ever do for you. Ever.”
As he passed her he leant forward and tried to kiss her and she punched him hard in the chest.
“Ouch! That fucking hurt!”
“Never ever try to touch me again.”
“OK. OK. Gimme a break.”
When he’d left she refused to let herself cry, remembering the Cornell edict: crying was a kind of defeat, a sign that she’d lost. But she had lost, she knew, or at least surrendered. What had she done? Wise voices in her head told her she was making a terrible mistake; but other voices from her heart told her she had had no option. She picked up a fork from the room-service trolley and pressed the tines into the muscle of her forearm, hurting herself, damaged nerve endings keeping her mind off Cornell Weekes. She pressed harder, harder. She drew the fork away and saw that she had made a neat red line of four suspension dots on her skin. Deep red. She watched the skin break and the bright blood-beads well up. Four gleaming red dots. She rubbed spit on them—inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling.
For a moment she thought about calling the English detective who’d given her his card but, somehow, she knew she couldn’t turn Cornell in. Poor, sad, mixed-up Cornell. Let him flee to Africa, she thought, embroil himself in the new fantasy of liberating Mozambique from the yoke of Portuguese dictatorship. Cornell off to realise another impossible dream, righting more geopolitical wrongs. In a way, she thought, you had to admire someone like that. They burned brighter than ordinary mortals. Still, it would be money well spent. She began to feel calmer. It was the best thing to do, she reasoned: get him out of my life as quickly as possible.
Then she had another idea. She called the hotel switchboard and gave the operator a number in Paris.
“Allo? Oui?”
It was Jacques. He was back from Guinea. Suddenly obscure African countries were a part of her life. She felt her chest inflate with pleasure.
“It’s me,” she said. “You’re back. Wonderful.”
“I just returned.” She listened to his deep voice as he told her about his meeting with Nkrumah and how Nkrumah had awarded him a decoration: the Order of the Star of Ghana.
“I thought he’d been deposed. In exile.”
“Of course. But he still gave me this medal.”
“Congratulations.” She paused. “Cornell has been here.”
“Putain!”
“Yes, putain. He wants money.”
There was silence.
“Will he leave you alone?”
“I think so.”
“Well, give it to him.” He paused. “Look, I’m going to come over and see you. I miss my pretty little girl.”
“I miss you too,” she said. “When will you come? I still have a month of filming to go.”
“I’ll come in a few days. I’ll call you. I have a few things to do here in Paris.”
“OK. Can’t wait.”
“Je t’embrasse, chérie.”
“Bisous.” She hung up.
She sat there still for a while, thinking. Wondering if it was Cornell that had made her turn to Jacques. Replacing someone so vacillating, flighty and annoying with someone so sure of himself and his value system he seemed almost serene. Why did she do this sort of thing? What did it say about her as a person? What needs were being satisfied? Stop, stop, stop, she told herself. She felt a little tremble of panic running through her, as if her body was being vibrated by a machine, or as if there were some powerful engine thrumming in the room below. It was a sign that her life was becoming too complicated and she knew that wasn’t good for her. First, the demands of the film and now Cornell turning up, and now Jacques saying he’d come over to visit. And Troy. Why was it that her life seemed to arrange itself like this—complication piling on complication? Maybe it was too much. Maybe Jacques shouldn’t come…But then he’d be suspicious if she tried to put him off.
She took another Equanil and called Troy in his room. He said he’d be with her in two minutes.
19
“Oh, yes,” Joe said at breakfast. “One other thing: Miss Viklund would like to see you, privately.”
“That’s odd,” Talbot said. “Any idea what it’s about?”
“Not a clue. She said she’d come to the office. She’s got the morning off. Big scene with Sylvia and Ferdie this afternoon.”
“Right.” Talbot pushed his unfinished kipper away. He was feeling bilious again—best not to overstress his duodenum. He had an unpleasant premonition about the day ahead even though, looking out of the tall windows of the dining room, he could see the sun was shining.
Anny Viklund arrived at Napier Street just before ten. She was wearing sunglasses and she didn’t remove them when she sat down opposite Talbot at his desk. He made sure the door was shut, offered her a choice of refreshments that she declined, asked if she minded if he smoked—she didn’t—and he lit up.
“You wanted to see me,” he said. “I do hope everything’s all right.”
“I need two thousand dollars in cash,” she said.
She was extremely beautiful, Talbot registered, as he managed successfully to disguise his astonishment: smooth white skin, a firm chin with the hint of a cleft, a tiny, perfect tipped-up nose with flared nostrils, as if she were inhaling fiercely. The severe short black fringe somehow had the effect of concentrating one’s attention on the near-flawlessness of her physiognomy. The effect was even more compelling when she suddenly removed her sunglasses and stared at him. Her eyes were a very pale, greyish-blue, her gaze almost startlingly intense.
“May I ask what the money’s for?”
“It’s a personal matter.
”
Drugs, Talbot thought wearily. She has to pay her dealer.
“It’s not for drugs,” she added, as if reading his mind. “I have all the drugs I could possibly need. I just have to buy something with cash. And as you can imagine it’s not easy for me to access such a large amount of cash, here in Brighton.”
“Let me buy it for you,” Talbot said. “Whatever it is. I can write a cheque: it’ll be so much easier.”
“Can you buy me peace of mind with a cheque? I don’t think so.”
“Right. No. I see.” Talbot drew on his cigarette, deciding not to pursue the matter further. It would be politic not to ask any more questions.
“Dollars are a problem. I’d have to go to a bank.”
“Pounds will be fine. I just need cash.”
He did a quick calculation. “Two thousand dollars is about eight hundred pounds. We might even have that in the safe. Excuse me a moment.”
He ran upstairs to the accountancy department and asked for the safe to be opened. They had close to £1,500 in cash. Geoff Braintree, the accountant, was not happy as he counted out the money.
“What shall I put it down to?” he asked plaintively. “It’s complex, Talbot. There’s bookkeeping to be fixed.”
“Personal loan to producer. Whatever, you’ll think of something. I’ll have it back to you in a couple of days. After the weekend.”
He signed the chit and returned to his office and handed the four blocks of £10 notes to Anny. She put them in her handbag and replaced her sunglasses.
“Thank you, Talbot,” she said. “I’m very grateful. More grateful than you can imagine.”
She smiled, showing her small, impossibly white, expertly capped teeth. Talbot stubbed out the remains of his cigarette and walked her to the front door. She was an exceptionally tiny person, he noticed, as he loomed over her—as if she were a prototype or a maquette for a young woman, almost a different species, and the manufacturers had decided that something larger would be more appropriate for the rest of homo sapiens.
“What’s coming up today?” he asked, keen to change the agenda. “Anything exciting?”
“I get to meet my ‘parents’ this afternoon,” she said.
“Oh, yes. You’ll love them,” Talbot said, with forced enthusiasm. “Sylvia Slaye and Ferdie Meares. Old-school British actors. Fabulous.”
“Have they done many movies?”
“Countless. And TV. Legends, national treasures, you know.” He worried he’d gone a bit far, but too late now. He put a paternal hand on Anny’s thin shoulder.
“Promise me you’ll tell me the minute anything’s worrying you, or causing the smallest problem,” he said. “We’re here to do absolutely anything you require.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Now I have the money. Everything’s fine.”
She said goodbye and climbed into the rear seat of her waiting car and it pulled away. What was that all about? he wondered, watching the car turn a corner out of sight. Peace of mind, she had said. Blackmail? Some sort of pay-off? Gambling? A debt? He stopped himself. None of my business, he thought, I’ve got enough on my plate.
His crowded plate became even more crowded after lunch when Geoff Braintree came downstairs with a sheaf of invoices and spread them on his desk.
“What’s this?” Talbot asked.
“More film stock.”
“We’re making a film, Geoff. We need film stock.”
“We could have made three films at the rate we’re burning through this stuff. Way, way over budget.”
“Is that Reggie’s—sorry, Rodrigo’s fault? Is he shooting miles of film?”
“You’d better ask Spencer,” Geoff said. “I don’t understand cinema.”
“That’s why you’re such a good film accountant, Geoffrey.”
After Geoff had left, Talbot put in a call to Spencer Osmond, their editor, who was in a cutting room in London—in Soho—trying to construct a rough assembly of everything that had been shot so far.
“Is Reggie shooting miles of film?” Talbot asked. “You know: take after take.”
“No, actually,” Spencer said. “Three or four takes on average. Doesn’t print them all. There’s the odd day when he goes a bit film-school auteur but on the whole he’s behaving himself.”
Talbot hung up. Someone was stealing their film stock and therefore, most likely, it was someone in the camera department. He felt the acid bite in his innards. He needed some time off—the weekend was just around the corner, thank God. He would investigate next week, discreetly. He needed to think about this carefully.
One hour later, Reggie called.
“Serious problems, Talbot.”
“Fire away.”
“Anny won’t work with Sylvia and Ferdie.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“She says, and I quote: ‘These people could never be my parents.’ She’s adamant.”
“It’s called ‘acting,’ for God’s sweet sake.”
“She won’t do the scene with them. Flat refusal.”
“What do Sylvia and Ferdie say?”
“I’ve fobbed them off. Told them it was a technical problem to do with lenses. They don’t know what’s going on.”
“Good. Well done. I’ll be right over.”
Talbot had a car take him to the bungalow on the outskirts of Shoreham-by-Sea that was doubling for the Bracegirdle family home. He told the driver to pull up behind the double-decker bus that was the crew’s mobile canteen—he had no desire to bump into Ferdie or Sylvia. He found Reggie and together they made their way to Anny’s trailer.
“Is she hysterical?” Talbot asked.
“Not in the least—surprisingly calm and rational.”
Reggie knocked on the trailer door, announced who they were, and seconds later Anny let them both in. They sat down on the narrow bench seats. She did seem very composed, Talbot thought—almost serene, in fact—and unkindly wondered if she’d taken anything chemical to bring about this tranquillity.
“Anny, please. What’s wrong with Sylvia and Ferdie?” Talbot asked, bluntly.
“I just can’t believe these two people as my parents—Emily’s parents,” she said, reasonably. “Emily Bracegirdle would never have parents like that. It would be impossible to play the scene with them. I can’t relate to them as people. I can’t talk to them.”
“We can’t choose our parents, you know.”
“But I’m being asked to act—act like they’re my parents who created me, like that woman is my ‘mother’ who gave birth to me. I have to love them. It’s completely impossible.”
In a funny sort of way Talbot knew what she was talking about. There was indeed something grotesque, something rebarbatively Grand Guignol, about Sylvia Slaye and Ferdie Meares as a couple, as putative mother and father. But he had to put the opposing argument.
“But, surely if you—”
“It’s like you presented me with a dog and a rat, or a spider and a flea, and you said—these are your parents.”
“Bit extreme, Anny,” Reggie said tentatively.
“I’m just trying to make you see what I’m feeling. I can’t do it. I can’t act that. It makes me sick. I’m sorry.”
Talbot tried to reason but he knew a brick wall when he was confronted with one.
“Well, let’s all have a think and maybe we’ll come up with a solution,” he said lamely. They smiled at each other and took their leave.
“I’m not doing this to be bad, or because I’m some neurotic actress,” Anny said. “I’m doing it for the sake of our film. For its…” She paused and Talbot could sense her searching for a word. “Its veracity.”
He and Reggie stood outside in silence, both looking at the ground as if a solution to their problem was to be found there amongst the muddy footprints
and the crushed grass stems.
“Fucking veracity,” Talbot said.
“Fucking disaster,” Reggie said. “Could we recast?”
“No. Scandal, lawsuits, money, money, money. You know those two.”
“Fucking disaster,” Reggie repeated. “Never saw that coming. Not in a million years.”
“Is there a pub near here?” Talbot asked.
“There is, actually.”
They walked half a mile into Shoreham-by-Sea and found a pub called the Captain Bligh. Very apt, Talbot thought, given their own current mutiny. What would Captain Bligh have done if this had happened on the Bounty? he wondered. Fifty lashes of the cat all round.
The pub was gloomy and empty, having just opened for the evening session. It had a patterned carpet whose pattern was barely visible, tramped into grimy grey uniformity by the soles of a thousand drinkers’ shoes. The ashtrays were still full of the lunchtime clientele’s cigarette butts and the smell of stale smoke and sour beer hung in the air like fine moisture. A surly plump girl with a bubble perm poured them each a large whisky and they took their glasses over to a window seat where a view of Shoreham harbour and its houseboats was half obscured by dying geraniums in a window box.
“There’s got to be some way round this,” Reggie said. “Got to be.”
“Can we cut the scene?” Talbot asked.
“No. It’s crucial. It’s when the Bracegirdles—the parents—discover that Emily’s been having an affair with her driver—Troy. There’s a huge big barney—screaming, shouting, throwing plates. You can imagine Sylvia and Ferdie going for broke. Everything subsequently pivots round it.”
“What about rewriting? Can we write something different?” Talbot didn’t really know what he was talking about but he saw Reggie’s expression change. It brightened.
“In fact…That might be the answer…” Now he looked a bit awkward. “I meant to tell you, Talbot…” He cleared his throat. “But Janet’s actually here. Has been for a week.”
“Here in Brighton? Janet Headstone?”