‘Joan. They have decided not to renew my contract. It’s better this way. I can do no more for you.’
She pretends to be angry. She tells him that it’s his own fault. He replays the same theme, over and over again, the man who suffers for his passion, who throws himself away on a vulgar guttersnipe who tortures him for her pleasure. She’s sick of it. Why does she always have to play a cold-blooded whore?
He glares at her. ‘Why do you think?’
In this picture he reveals his torture about their relationship: ‘That woman has ice, where others have a heart.’ He has her speaking a contemptible line to her lover: ‘If you really loved me, you’d kill yourself.’
He tries to take it out on her with his art, but he is a fool. She doesn’t care. Anyone could see that. He could never pull her strings. She is the girl tossing him into the air. One evening after a day’s filming, she loses her cool and screams at him: ‘You made me in your image. Now deal with me.’
But she suffers, too. One evening, she returns to her dressing room, exhausted. Her head aches. Nellie has made little braids of Madou’s hair and wires a large comb to her head. A heavy mantilla is attached to the comb. Madou sits at her dressing table and Nellie takes out her wire cutters, snips the bands and releases the comb. Madou falls forward, exhausted from pain, and rests her arms and head on the table. When she comes up, tears are coursing down her face.
The film is a box-office disaster, but I have a feeling that one day, probably after Mo’s death, the critics will reassess their verdict and pronounce it a masterpiece. While the rest of Hollywood is producing screwball comedies, he is the one exploring the agony of love.
I can imagine the scene. She will be an old diva. They will ask her if the film was a metaphor for his hopeless love and disillusion. She will laugh: ‘We were just making a picture. It was our last collaboration. They say it was all about Mr von Goldberg and me. Such affectation. Nebbish. But I was most beautiful in that film. It was all down to Mo, of course.’
That appalling little lace-maker is finally out of her professional life, but there is one final, ugly scene that I am forced to witness. Although he will no longer work with her, he hasn’t yet learned how not to be in her bed. But he won’t stand for it, when she flaunts her love affairs in his face. Now, he will leave.
Mo kisses her softly on the back of the neck, and takes a last glance at her reflection in me. He is wearing a degraded brown hat, and absurd Turkish boots.
She isn’t going to let him leave without a fight.
‘So, you are again throwing me to the wolves? You bring me to this dreadful country and you throw me away, like a piece of rotting fruit. I gave you everything.’
‘Yes. I have never denied that you have been a sublime inspiration.’
‘Then why are you deserting me?’
‘If you don’t know the answer to that question, there’s no use my trying to explain.’
‘Mo, that’s a woman’s line.’
‘Perhaps our roles have reversed?’
‘Don’t be clever. If you want to leave, then leave.’
‘It is better this way. For us both. We have gone as far as we can together. Now I have to save myself.’
‘So you are going?’
‘Yes, my love.’
And he leaves. Just. Like. That.
She gazes into me for a long, long time. There have been endings before, fights, and reconciliations. But this one is different. I do my best to give comfort. She expects it of me. She has no one else to turn to.
‘Darling Joan, in moments of private chaos, it is better to be alone. Loving advice merely increases the misery. But I will never let you down, and I will always speak the truth: Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?
She finally speaks: ‘Yes, I do.’
She snaps on Mo’s resplendent bracelet of diamonds and sapphires and she sweeps out of the dressing room.
Mo vanished out of our lives almost overnight, and a new man appeared in the House of Mirrors. He was a tall, blond, blue-eyed Englishman, who loved Shakespeare, the theatre, and my mother. And I think he loved me. I know that I adored him. He listened intently when I asked him a question, and he spoke to me as if I were a grown-up. He was a classically trained actor, with the most beautiful cut-glass English accent. Of all my mother’s lovers, he was the man I most wanted to be my father. His name was Lacy.
He gave me my first Shakespeare play, told me to read it slowly, and not to be frightened by the difficult words, but to keep a dictionary beside me. It was the start of a life-long love affair. The play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I was enthralled. There was a funny man called Bottom, and he was transformed into a donkey, and the Queen of the Fairies fell in love with him. She reminded me of my mother. The queen loved the changeling child, just as my mother loved only me, and said I belonged to no one else, not even Papi.
There was another Shakespeare queen, too, who was a bad queen. I told Mother all about her. She snorted: ‘Lady Macbeth. Peculiar idea of hospitality!’
I had displeased Mother. I didn’t know then that an adult could feel jealous of a child. She didn’t like Lacy giving me so much attention. It was she who had insisted that the studio find her a new leading man, and they brought him over from England, especially for Mother. Mother wanted my undivided attention. When she was angry, she never raised her voice, she simply pretended that I didn’t exist, or gave me ‘the freeze’ – that look of hers that was as cold as Siberia. Her mouth full of lemons.
In the morning, she left for the studio without me. For once, I could lie in bed. I remember waking to an odd sound, a low shuddering sound. I looked at the mirrored closet doors … they were rattling. The next thing I knew, the new maid ran in and grabbed me. She was gibbering in Spanish and I just about made out, ‘the door frame … is the safest place’. The earth was moving, and I was excited and terrified in equal measure. As we headed down the staircase, it began moving up towards us, and the huge chandelier in the hall was shaking and jingling ominously. We just about made it to the huge oak front door, as the chandelier crashed behind us. Then all was silent.
Mother had no way of knowing we were safe. All the phone lines were down. Luckily, she had not even left her dressing room at the moment that the first tremors began. Lacy rushed to find her, shouting that at least they could die together. Mother was horrified. She pushed him out of the way and ran to find a phone.
On the way, she met another famous actress; she never would tell me her name.
‘Joan, why are you running?’
‘My child. I’ve left her at home. I need to reach her.’
‘It will be fine. Don’t worry, my children are at home, and I’m not worried.’
‘Yes,’ my mother cried, ‘but your children are adopted!’
My memory is hazy about our reunion. How did Mother get to me? The phone lines were down, and people were terrified of the aftershock and hid under tables and door frames. All was quiet. I guess I’ve seen so many film sets that the sight of Hollywood diminished to rubble didn’t seem so peculiar. I always had a problem distinguishing between appearance and reality, and who could blame me?
Find me she did. Our maid took me to her church, which was still standing, though its windows had been blown out. Long Beach was levelled, the House of Mirrors was a mountain