Mr Featherstone looked furious; his red nostrils flared and his moustache bristled, actually bristled. I’d discovered in my whirlwind dealings with him that he had no love for a joke. I knew what Mr Matthews was talking about, though. Every film made these days seemed to be an epic, a biblical legend, a classical myth, a story with huge spectacle, as if Hollywood in its death throes were trying to say, ‘Look at us! We do it better than the television can!’
‘We’ll come by and meet with you properly,’ Mr Featherstone told Joe and his brother. ‘I’d like for you to get to know Eve. I think she’s very special.’
‘We should … arrange that.’ Joe Baxter was looking me up and down once more. ‘Miss Noel, I agree with Louis, for once. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ He took my hand. His was large, soft like a baby’s, and slightly clammy. He breathed through his mouth, I noticed. I wondered if it was adenoids. ‘Yes,’ he said to Mr Featherstone. ‘Bring Miss Noel over, we’ll have that meeting. Maybe we’ll – ah, run into you again tonight.’
‘Bye, fellas.’ Don stubbed out his cigarette, and winked at me. ‘Miss Noel, my pleasure. Remember to enjoy the sunshine while you’re here. And the butter.’
He touched my arm lightly, then turned around and walked out of the door.
‘Who was that?’ I asked Mrs Featherstone, who was ushering me towards another group of short, suited, bespectacled men.
‘Joe and Lenny Baxter? They’re the heads of Monumental Films, have you really not heard of Monumental Films?’
‘Of course, yes,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise. That’s – gosh.’ I cleared my throat, trying not to watch Don’s disappearing form. ‘And the writer – Don?’
‘Oh, Don Matthews,’ she said dismissively. ‘Well, he’s a writer. Like they say. I don’t know what he’s doing here, except Don always was good at gatecrashing a party. He drinks.’
‘He wrote Too Many Stars,’ Mr Featherstone said absently, watching the Baxter brothers as they walked slowly away, to be fallen upon by other guests. ‘He’s damn good, when he’s not intoxicated.’
I gasped. ‘Too Many Stars? Oh, I saw that, it must have been four, five times? It’s wonderful! He – he wrote it?’
‘She’s got enough people to memorise without clogging her brain up with nonentities like Don Matthews,’ said Mrs Featherstone, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Who’s next?’
‘Well.’ Mr Featherstone scanned the crowd. ‘I wanted to get the Baxters, that’s the prize. If I could put her in front of them they’d see—’ He nodded at me, his expression slightly softening. ‘Honey, you did very well. Make nice with the Baxters if you run into them again, OK? I want them to help us with the picture.’
It was hot, and the smell of lilies and heavy perfume was overwhelming, suddenly. ‘May I be excused for a moment?’ I heard myself say. ‘I’d like to use the – er –’
‘What? Oh, yes, of course.’ Mr and Mrs Featherstone parted in alarm; any reference to reality or, heaven forbid, bodily functions, was abhorrent to them. I’d discovered this the evening I arrived in Los Angeles, tired, bewildered and starving after a flight from London that was exhilarating at first, then terrifying, then just terribly tiring. When we got to the hotel I’d said I felt I might be sick, and both of them had reared back as if I was carrying the bubonic plague.
I slipped through the crowd, past the ladies in their thick silk cocktail dresses, heavy diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires on their honey skin, in their ears, on their fingers – and the gentlemen, all smoking, gathered in knots, talking in low voices. I recognised one ageing matinee idol, his once-black hair greying at the temples and his face puffy with drink, and a vivacious singer, whom I’d read about in a magazine only two weeks ago, nuzzling the neck of an old man who I knew wasn’t her husband, a film actor. But they all had something in common, the guests: they looked as though they were Someone, from the piano player to the lady at the door with the ravaged, over-made-up face. The party was for a producer, thrown by another producer, to celebrate something. I never did find out what, but it was like so many parties I was to go to. It was the first of a template in my new life, though I didn’t know it then. Old-fashioneds and champagne cocktails, delicious little canapés of chicken mousse and tiny cocktail sausages, always a piano player, the air heavy with smoke and rich perfume, the talk all – all, all, all, always the business. Films, movies, the pictures: there was only one topic of conversation.
It was early May. In London winter was over, though it had been raining for weeks by the time I left. But here it was sunny. It was always sunny, the streets lined with beautiful violet-blue blossoms. The air on the terrace outside was a little cooler and I stood there, relief washing over me, glad of the breeze and of this rare solitude. There was a beautiful shell-shaped pool, and I peered into the shimmering turquoise water, looking for something in the reflection. The trees lining the terrace were dark, heavy with a strange green fruit. Idly, I reached up and touched one, and it dropped to the ground, plummeting heavily like a ripe weight. I picked it up, terrified lest anyone should see, and held it. It was shiny, nobbly. I turned it over in my hand.
‘It’s an avocado,’ a voice behind me said.
I jumped, inhaling so sharply that I coughed, and I looked at the speaker. ‘Hello, Mr …’ I stared at him blankly, wildly.
‘It’s Don. Don’t worry about the rest of it. You’re very – er, polite, aren’t you?’ He finished his drink and put it down on a small side table. I watched him.
‘What do you mean, “er, polite”?’
He wrapped his arms around his long lean body, hugging himself in a curiously boyish gesture. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I just met you. You’re awfully on your guard. Like you’re not relaxed.’
I wanted to laugh – how could anyone relax at an evening like this?
‘I – I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Back in London …’
But I didn’t know how to explain it all. Back in London I was always late, I was always losing parts in class to Viola MacIntosh, I never had enough money for the electricity meter, or for a sandwich, and my flatmate Clarissa and I alternated sleeping in the bedroom with its oyster-coloured silk eiderdown that shed a light snowfall of feathers every time you moved in the night, or on the truckle bed in the sitting room, with the springs that pierced your sides, like a religious reproach for our sinful ways.
Whoever I was back then, I wasn’t this person, this cool demure girl, and I knew I was always relaxed. This was my dream, wasn’t it? Training to be an actress. And that’s all I’d ever wanted to do since I was a little girl, playing dress-up with Mother’s evening gowns from the trunk in her dressing room. First with Rose, then by myself after Rose died. There was a brief period during which my increasingly distant parents were concerned about my solitude enough to organise tea parties with other (suitable) children who lived nearby, but it never took. Either I wouldn’t speak or I went and hid. A punishment to myself, you see. If I couldn’t play with Rose, then I wouldn’t play with anyone.
One night, when I was older, I had crept back downstairs to collect my book, and heard their voices in the parlour. I stood transfixed, the soles of my feet stinging cold on the icy Victorian tiled floor. And I remember what my father said.
‘If she’s as good as they say she is, we can’t stand in her way, Marianne. Perhaps it’s what the girl needs. Bring her out of her shell. Teach her how to be a lady, give up this nonsense of pretending Rose is still here.’
My father, so remote from me, so careworn. I looked down at the avocado in my hand. I found it so strange to think of him and Mother now. What would they make of it all? How would I ever describe this to them? But I knew I wouldn’t. When I’d left the cold house by the river eighteen months previously to take up my place at the Central School of Speech