Crimson (23 page)

Jenny Bates, wondering whether, at last, she had found a contender for the number one slot, said, “Do you really have to leave for Chicago tomorrow?” NESDAY, 2j APRIL 1958 V,.

must have been something I ate last night maybe those oysters,” groaned Annabel, who had carefully chosen oysters. She knew that only a supervised and non-toowrious illness would persuade Elinor, who could not easily cancel her tour, to leave her granddaughter alone in New York.

The hotel doctor was puzzled.

“I can’t find anything wrong with her, but you say she vomited and suffered from diarrhoea during the night, so she’s clearly not well,” he said.

“She shouldn’t travel yet. Better leave her here under observation she’ll be perfectly safe at the Plaza. I’ll visit her every day and keep you informed of her condition.”

The publisher’s press agent shot him a look of gratitude and relief. She didn’t want Elinor to miss the Chicago plane.

“But I can’t leave a child alone in New York!” Elinor said, “especially if she’s ill.” Nevertheless, she hesitated, knowing how carefully her publisher had planned this expensive tour, and how long it had taken to organize.

There’s clearly nothing seriously wrong with your granddaughter,” the hotel doctor reassured her.

“It’ll probably clear up in a couple of days.”

“No, I can’t leave Annabel alone,” Elinor decided.

“But all the dinners, and the signings … You can’t disappoint all those people who are looking forward to meeting you,” the publisher’s agent pleaded.

Elinor shook her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“Couldn’t you ask Buzz to fly overT Annabel asked.

“Although I’ll probably have joined you in Chicago by the time she arrives.” Elinor considered.

“That might be the answer She went to the phone.

A startled Buzz agreed to get to New York as fast as possible, and then

insisted on speaking to Annabel about her symptoms.

“A touch of colic,” she decided.

“Now you be a good girl and stay in bed with a hot-water bottle until I get there.”

“Oh, I will,” Annabel promised, feeling increasingly guilty.

Annabel stayed in bed until after the plane’s departure. Then she threw back her bedclothes, tore off her nightgown, and danced like a whirling dervish in the middle of the room. She was free! She was alone in New York! Alone at the Plaza! She rushed to the window and looked down on the green treetops of Central Park; to her right, beyond the line of listless horse cabs, a fountain sparkled in the sun. Behind it lay the excitement of Fifth Avenue, and somewhere behind that was the Bates Model Agency, where her future her life perhaps would be decided … Jenny Bates had no idea that Annabel had faked illness to stay in New York. She knew that Annabel had no cash, although she could order anything she wanted at the Plaza; it was the same with all the British, who had to budget on a ludicrously low, government-regulated travel allowance and rely on friends to finance them.

Later that morning, Mrs. Bates took Annabel across the street from the Plaza to Bergdorf Goodman: Bates Model Agency paid for her new clothes, in advance of fees due.

At lunchtime, Annabel telephoned Buzz, hoping it wasn’t too late to tell her not to buy her ticket to New York yet: Annabel’s ‘colic” was much better and tomorrow she might be well enough to join Elinor in Chicago.

“Thank heaven for that,” said Buzz.

“You haven’t half given us a fright. I wasn’t able to get a seat until the morning … Keep well wrapped up, and do as the doctor tells you.”

“I will,” Annabel promised her, and skipped off to Saks.

On the following morning, after another glorious shopping spree, Annabel walked in spring sunshine down Fifth Arden, where a crimson door of Elizabeth ion had been booked for her. Five hours y groomed Annabel emerged with a persona lid make-up chart, false eyelashes, and false nails. Her hair had been trimmed, streaked blonde, and restyled. Roboto had designed a wig and two hairpieces for her one a chignon, but these would take three weeks to complete.

She rushed back to the Plaza to telephone Buzz before her bedtime, and reported that she now felt fit enough to join Elinor.

“That’s good news,” said Buzz.

“Wish I could speak to Nell myself, but it takes hours to get through. The Warminster telephone operator makes enough fuss about booking a call to London, let alone New York!”

“I’ll give Gran your love,” Annabel told her, and dashed off to Bloomingdale’s.

That evening, Annabel also used maybe-tomorrow tactics when Elinor telephoned. Considering that mothers have been daughters, Annabel thought, as she waited for Scott to finish his broadcast, it’s surprisingly easy for a young girl to deceive them. I Early the next day, Annabel returned to Elizabeth Arden’s pink gymnasium for a personal head-to-toe reshaping course, during which her exercise expert found body exercises for muscles that Annabel never knew she had. She also had her posture corrected; she was taught to lift her rib cage and ‘box” her stomach and rear with her hands, as ballet dancers do before dancing, and also to walk as if she were lightly holding a coin between her buttocks.

“I never realized that being beautiful is a full-time busines,” Annabel told Scott that evening as they sipped martinis in the Plaza bar.

Scott looked at her with bemused surprise: in four days, Annabel seemed

to have changed into a taller, paradoxically 18q wwldr,but-sleeker version of herself. She now projected feline delicacy, a demure but concentrated look, as if deciding whether to pounce.

This air of being totally in command of herself was what Jenny Bates hoped Annabel would project on film; this was the quality that distinguished her from the other models in the Bates stable. It was, Mrs. Bates hoped, the look that matched the female mood of the moment the look of the approaching sixties.

Mrs. Bates decided that before she was presented to Avanti, Annabel needed to lose her selfconsciousness and gain modelling experience’ before the camera, or she would photograph at only twenty per cent of her potential. As she was inspecting Annabel’s composite sheet of photographs, a frantic photographer telephoned the agency. A model had been taken ill at his studio and he needed an immediate replacement; the client had specified a blonde.

“Would you try a very promising beginner?” Mrs. Bates asked.

“Send her around fast.” On her first assignment, Annabel was stiff and nervous. She felt like an artist’s lay figure: it seemed to take a conscious effort to move her limbs.

“You need to, like, loosen up,” said the photographer, who had been suggesting this for thirty years.

“Forget everything except the camera. Ignore everyone else in the studio. Look, talk, smile to the camera, as if you were in love with it.” He knew he was lucky to save his session, but he also knew that the shots wouldn’t be very good. Beginners had a lot to learn.

Beginner models were easy to exploit too, as Scott told Annabel that evening, over fettuccine Alfredo at the cafe des Artistes.

“Young models are notorious prey for lecherous photographers,” he warned, “especially the older ones.

It be fooled by their masterful act; don’t let therik rize you with their charisma of authority or their Y-will-look-after-you pitch. These guys like to be seen over town with the face of the moment; they’re often domineering and frequently abusive, to keep the girls under hair control.”

Then you’d better keep an eye on me,” Annabel said.

“I’m going to be guiding you every step of the way,” Scott assured her.

“Lucky me,” Annabel breathed demurely, batting her eyelashes and ignoring Scott’s warning. She had never had any trouble with older men. She could twist them around her little finger as easily as she could younger men; what intrigued her about Scott was his refusal to be thus manipulated. He was also refreshingly non-judge mental the first man she could talk to as openly as to her sisters, and the two of them laughed a lot. Besides, Scott was even better looking in real LIFE than he was on a TV screen.

On her way to appointments, Annabel would peer from yellow cabs at the city. Her favourite sight was the silver, spiked top of the Chrysler Building, which might have been built by the Wizard of Oz; that apart, clearly the only bit of Manhattan featured in movies was the relatively small area. of glittering glass and steel skyscrapers around Central Park South. Although other parts of the city were endearingly eccentric apartment buildings were topped by ancient Egyptian temples, Gothic towers, or Moorish arches most of Manhattan was unglamorous, noisy, crowded, and dirty. But Annabel gazed with excitement at the hectic, nonstop life of the street, where fire sirens wailed constantly and steam mysteriously billowed up from manholes, as if direct from hell. The polyglot mix of nationalities, colours, and religions seemed to tolerate any behaviour: it was clear that you could do exactly as you pleased in New York City.

Igo Afw his fifth ‘house” call, the weasel-sized hotel doctor looked over his spectacles at Annabel and said rather coldly that in spite of her symptoms, he could find nothing medically wrong with her and would inform her grandmother accordingly.

“You’ll have difficulty getting in touch with her,” Annabel warned.

“Gran is in Chicago; then she’s going to Los Angeles. All day she gives lectures and autographs books, and then in the evening she has literary dinners; she says she’s kept very busy.” On her telephone calls to Annabel, Elinor had sounded weary, and her American accent had become more pronounced, as always happened when she was tired.

When Elinor next called, Annabel announced her recovery and said she’d really like to stay in New York. There was so much to do there; the Metropolitan was about to start a series of lectures on the Impressionists, and at tea in the Palm Court, she’d met a nice girl who was studying history at Sarah Lawrence. Couldn’t Elinor ask her pub fisher to introduce Annabel to one or two more nice girls?

After a certain amount of argument, Elinor admitted, “I’m certainly not having much fun -it’s all too tiring.”

“So you see, Gran, why drag me along?” “Perhaps it’s best that you’re in New York … I’m glad you aren’t lonely, darling. Incidentally, have you heard from that charming TV interviewer?” “Had lunch with him yesterday, “Annabel said as nonchalantly as possible.

“He showed me around the TV station.”

“You sound a little feverish,” Elinor said anxiously.

“Are you sure you’ve recover ed?” “Oh yes,” Annabel said.

“I’ve started to go on long walks. Get plenty of exercise. There’s a lot to see.” Now shut up, she told herself. Miranda said that she always knew when Annabel was fibbing, because she said too much, too fast.

In fact, Annabel wasn’t seeing as much of Scott as she had hoped. He seemed to work nonstop from ten in the ing until eleven o’clock at night, when the news broad ended During these hours their meetings were brief, after the broadcast Scott took Annabel to dark bars where tinkling pianos played brittle 193os Gershwin, or to Ii smoke-filled jazz clubs, or to parties given by dimly it, avant-garde painters in the lofts or converted warehouses of SoHo. Scott seemed to find it amusing that bohemian artists now lived where once the city’s vegetables had been Jtored.

By the beginning of her second week in Manhattan, Annabel had learned to relax in front of the camera. She preferred studio shots to location shots, where there always seemed to be lighting problems and something vital was always forgotten.

To Annabel’s surprise, she found that it was very exhausting work to dress and undress all day long. And at the end of the day, when everyone was exhausted, she must not let tiredness show on her face; grimly she learned to dredge up vitality on demand.

Annabel also” found it surprising that the models were treated as if they were wooden cigar-store Indians, with no brains or feelings; nobody paid the slightest attention. to them they were the meat until the girl was needed before the camera … when she was cooed at, encouraged, and flattered.

By her third week, Annabel’s feet ached permanently, but now, immaculately groomed, she felt her selfconfidence increase with each assignment and harden with each rejection. No matter how experienced or famous, a model always had to audition for the next job, and if ten girls were interviewed then nine were rejected. Often this was not because of any lack of beauty but because one was too tall, one was too short, another was in some other way not ‘right” for what the creative

director had in mind. Young models were philosophical about this, but tension and anxiety were visible on the faces of those who were approaching their twenty-fifth birthday: after that day, the skin started to lose its bloom.

SATURDAY, 10 MAY 1958

On the day before Elinor was due to return to New York, Annabel was called for her preliminary audition for Avanti.

In a big attic studio on Forty-sixth and Fifth, coloured background papers fell from overhead rollers, lights stood in groups, and black cables snaked on the black linoleum floor, a hazard even when you knew they were there. A group of horn-rimmed male executives from the cosmetics firm and BBSQ, the advertising agency, were seated in a corner on dark slab chairs; this part of the room was dimly fit.

The batteries of harsh lights in the studio were focused on a black backdrop, in front of which each model had to walk, stand, turn, and hold her smile-.

The door of the models” dressing room opened.

“Annabel O’Dare,” an assistant’s voice called.

Annabel, who had refused a seat in order to avoid crumpling her white pique dress, stepped out and into a blaze of light.

Late that evening, in a dimly lit nightclub, Scott murmured, “Of course you’ll get the job.” He eased Annabel’s collar away from the back of her neck and blew gently down her dress. She quivered as she felt his warm breath lift the hairs of her spine: she could not have stood up at that moment. A hopeful trance of lust enveloped her body, but Scott made no further move. He guessed that a gaggle of lovelorn young men danced attendance on Annabel, so he d decided not to pounce until a disappointed Annabel s wondering why he hadn’t. He knew that she saw other men during the day, but as she had a standing date with Scott at eleven p.m.” he also knew that these men were not a serious threat to his intention, which was that Annabel should fall in love with him so thoroughly that she would pursue him.