Crimson (24 page)

Again Scott breathed lightly down the back of her dress.

“Where do you learn these thing sT Annabel whispered.

“In the brothels of Hong Kong,” Scott breathed.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. I managed to wangle my way out there for a couple of months, when I was working for the foreign desk in Cleveland.”

“You … er … actually met Chinese prostitute sT Annabel was both intrigued and repelled.

“I did indeed. I learned a lot.”

Annabel longed to know what but didn’t like to ask.

In her private sitting room at the Plaza the next day, Elinor stared’again at Annabel. Not only did she look completely different and about ten years older but she behaved with a new self-assurance. How could her darling have changed so in three weeks? “What do you mean you aren’t going back to England with me, Annabel? Of course you’re leaving with me tomorrow, and I don’t want to discuss this again.”

“I know you’re tired, Gran, but if I don’t tell you now, you’ll say I’ve been deceitful. I’m staying in Manhattan.”

“No you are not! Anyway, you only have a four-week visitor’s visa! You’ll be forced to leave!” Elinor’s brain tried to grapple with Annabel’s defiance. Had Miranda behaved like this, she would not have been surprised. But Annabel was so gentle and easygoing.

Suddenly Elinor realized.

“It’s that young man, isn’t it?

The TV interviewer.” She did a double take.

“What did you mean when you said that if you don’t tell me now, I’ll say you’ve been deceitful? Have you been … Have you let him…” Blushing, Elinor said, “I mean … Have you been to bed with this young man? “No, Gran,” said Annabel, truthfully. It had happened not on the bed but on a rug in Scott’s apartment.

“Then why do you want to stay he re?” “Gran, I have a chance at a big modelling job.”

“If you want to be a model, you can be one in London, where you won’t be lonely and don’t need a permit. I can keep an eye on you in London. Manhattan is no place for a young girlP “Gran, Mrs. Bates’s lawyer says that there will be no problem about the work permit…”

“Who is Mrs. Bates, pray?”

“You’d better meet her.” Over lunch, Elinor was slowly reassured. Mrs. Bates was elegant, well-spoken, and well-mannered. Mr. Bates, a Harvard man, projected authority and reliability; he made it clear that he understood and shared Elinor’s concern for Annabel’s safety.

“We pride ourselves on looking after our models as if they were our daughters,” Mr. Bates promised her, “and every one of those girls understands that her reputation is our reputation.” Elinor looked at Annabel’s imploring face, then back to the reassuring bulk of Mr. Bates.

“Very well,” she said reluctantly.

“Annabel can stay for another month, provided she stays in this residential hotel for young women that you recommend.”

TUESDAY, 13 MAY 1958

When Elinor returned to Starlings, Buzz forewarned by looked at her exhausted, miserable face and “No need to look so low Annabel ain’t dead. You call New York any time you please. It only takes an our or two to get through.” Slowly Elinor removed her coat.

“Where arc Clare and “Shopping in Warminster. We wasn’t expecting you for another couple of hours. What you need, Nell, is a nice hot bath., 11 Elinor had a long soak and wondered whether her aching bones were due to old age or that bumpy twelve-hour flight on the Britannia. She then put on her garden coat and gum boots and stumped out for a comforting chat with Mr. Jeffreys, the head gardener, who was planting sweet corn and French beans. After that, she wandered around the garden, hungry to see what had happened in her absence. As she admired the wisteria that fell from the wall above the kitchen, Buzz joined her. They walked in silence, enjoying the weak spring sunshine.

“You can’t keep ‘em with you for ever,” Buzz said eventually.

Elinor said sadly, “I never realized until now that, one day, all three of them will leave, with never a backward glance or thought for us.”

“It’s only natural. You wouldn’t want it any other way.” Elinor was not consoled. Of course she wanted her girls to marry and have children, and obviously, in order to do that, they had to leave home. But Annabel hadn’t left home with a husband, she had left to get a job although heaven knew why the child should want one.

As they scrunched along the gravel drive back towards the house, Buzz said, “Clare’s got another bit of news for you. It ain’t exactly bad, but you ain’t going to like it. No, it’s her business to tell you. I’m just warning you so you don’t get in a temper and say something you’ll later regret.

Remember that Clare can be as stubborn as you are.” BuZK dug in her pocket.

“I almost forgot! I’ve got a letter here that might cheer you up. The rest of your post can wait till tomorrow., Elinor held out her hand for the opened cream envelope with the O’Dare crest on the flap. Quickly she read the short letter from Marjorie, her sisterin-law.

“.. . Since John’s death … Of course, my daughter-in-law is very capable … To be blunt, I feel unwanted here … hope you will let bygones be bygones … would Eke to come and stay with you … seems such a long time … frankly lonely…” Elinor stared at the letter. For years, she had suffered Marjorie’s spiteful arrows. Now it looked as if the time had come for retaliation. Perhaps she should invite Madorie to Starlings to subtly hurl her success in her face. Or write back a barbed letter, reminding Marjorie of the many occasions on which she had been wilfully cruel to Elinor.

She reread the letter which in the past would have brought her such reassurance. Now that revenge was within her grasp, Elinor found it worthless’ pointless demeaning.

Slowly she tore the letter into small pieces.

“No reply,” she said, and tossed the pieces to the breeze.

From her bedroom, Elinor heard Clare’s Triumph two seater slide on the gravel. She heard shrieks of laughter, the barking of the Labradors, the bang of the front door.

Clare, in dark grey sweater and slacks, and seventeen year-old Miranda, in her lumpy green school uniform, tumbled through the bedroom door and flung themselves upon Elinor.

“Darling Gran, we’ve missed you so.”

After Elinor had presented the girls with gifts suits and shoulder bags from Bloomingdale’s, and had filled them in on the news of Annabel’s stab at modelling and her boyfriend, she said half playfully, “What’s this surprise you have for me, ClareT Clare was standing in front of the mirror, holding her raspberry linen suit before her. She took a deep breath and said, “I’ve started to do voluntary work in London.”

“But I think that’s a very good idea. The Red Cross?”

“No,” Clare said.

“CND. Ban the Bomb. When you thought I was staying with the Bedfords last month, I was ctually on the Aldermaston protest march, with twelve thousand other people.” Clare looked pleadingly at Elinor.

1% Gran, if you could have seen all those people especially the mothers with young children, who don’t want them blown to bits … Anyway, while you were away, I agreed to work in their London office.”

“And what about your sociology cour seT Elinor asked.

“That can wait. This can’t. No use having a sociology degree if the world is blown to bits.” Elinor was grateful for Buzz’s warning. She had just said goodbye to one granddaughter; she didn’t want to drive another one away. Biting back her consternation, she said, “I’m proud of you, Clare. I want to hear all about it and I’d like to help. Now, where have I put my chequebook?”

SArURDAY, 24 MAY 1958 Scott’s studio apartment on East Eleventh Street seemed simultaneously bare and covered by paper: newspapers, letters, and files were heaped on tables, chairs, and the floor.

The afternoon was an advance warning of the muggy heat of summer, and Scott wore only blue jeans. He leaned back in a big black-leather swivel chair, took a sip of white wine, switched on the record player, and said, “Okay, I’m ready.” A sensual rhythm with a steady tempo

started. Annabel slid out of the kitchen, wearing her severe, sophisticated black linen suit from Bergdorf. She looked selfconscious and very embarrassed.

“Not too many clothes with not too many buttons, or I’ll go to sleep,” Scott warned.

Annabel untwisted her golden chignon and hair fell upon her shoulders. Moving slowly and stiffly to the rhythm of the music, she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, which left her wearing a wasted jacket, black French knickers, garter-belt stockings, and four-inch heels with ankle straps.

“Even slower,” Scott said, “and look proud. This is a therapeutic exercise to overcome your physical shyness, so that I can turn a light on now and again.”

“This jacket has only two buttons and I’ve still not taken it off. Can’t be much slower than that.”

“Don’t take your shoes off,” Scott reminded.

“How can I take my stockings off if I don’t take nity shoes off?”

As Annabel spoke, the telephone rang. She froze, her eyes fixed upon it.

“Should have left it off the hook,” Scott said.

“Ignore it.”

“Darting, I can’t. I gave the agency your number. They said they might know early this evening.” Annabel flung herself at the telephone.

“Hi! Yes… I have? Oh, that’s wonderful news!” She turned from the telephone.

“I got it, Scott!”

“Congratulations,” Scott said in a voice that didn’t sound very enthusiastic. He knew that from now on, Annabel would be a pampered, glamorous figure constantly in the limelight. By later this evening, she would be the talk of New York, and a clutch of handsome young men on the make would telephone her, send her flowers, and ask her out to dinner.

Annabel whirled around excitedly with her arms in the air.

“How shall we celebrate, Scott?” tt said firmly, “Let’s get married.” shod, Annabel stopped dancing.

“You really mean 4ut me prove it.” Some time later, Scott’s tousled head looked up from the crumpled sheets. He said, “I cannot go to the altar with IL lie upon my lips., -What do you meanT “I’ve never been to Hong Kong.”

“You invented that sexy rubbish?” “Not quite … Owl Owl My brother works for a toy inaporter and they sent him to Hong Kong for six months. He come back with these strange stories. Owl”

TUESDAY, 27 MAY 1958 Clare, who had always longed to see how a movie was made, wangled an invitation to the set of Grain Race from a quiet, stout young man with black curls, tight as a sheep’s. She had met him on the Aldermaston march; Steve, a graphic designer, was working on the titles sequence for the movie, which was based on a nineteenth-century seafaring story.

Clare shivered on Cargill’s Wharf, a disused area of the London docks just below Tower Bridge on the River Thames; it was a cold, bright day more like March than May, Clare thought, wishing she’d worn a scarf. Wearing a Burberry mackintosh over her green tweed suit, she had been introduced as a freelance journalist and was doing her best to make herself invisible on the set, standing in front of a pile of barrels, well back from the scene, at the rear of the cobbled wharf, where actors in nineteenth century clothes were waiting to be shot as extras.

During the previous week, the interior scenes had been finished at Pinewood Studios, and now they were shooting the final exterior shots. Some of these were supposedly set in the Port of Liverpool, but the old Liverpool docks were silted up and couldn’t be used, so the scenes were being shot at Cargill’s Wharf, away from the portion of the dock still in use, GrainAace was the story of two competing brothers: the elder one was an adventurous buccaneer, the younger a charming, deceptively mild, devious man. After inheriting a three-masted trading schooner, the brothers, with a bination of ruthlessness and good luck, built a shipping i from which the younger gradually ousted the elder. -neir final confrontation came when each brother, in a different ship of their fleet, competed in a grain race around Cape Horn; they also competed for the wife of the skipper jDf a third ship.

The actors, wearing seafaring clothes, sat talking with it director, a lean and anguished-looking man who wore jeans. Clare could just hear William Holden, who was playing the elder brother. Justin Walton, a thin, supple man with red-gold hair who was only just getting good parts, played the less important part of the younger brother. Simone Signoret also sat with them; she played the third skipper’s wife.

Holden was arguing over the emotions in one scene.

“Anyone who spots the way Simone looks at me would know she’s crazy about me.” Heedless of the cold, Clare watched in fascination as the three actors walked through the scene, rehearsed it twice, made minor adjustments. The director opened his mouth to say “Action!” Then he paused.

“I want more barrels a bigger stack. I can see a modern window in that far building. We need to block it out.”

A group of assistants moved towards Clare, who was still standing in front of the stacked-up spare barrels. She dodged out of the way, then crept back to her previous position.

The clapper board now reading “Take 2’, was held in front of the camera. The director called “Action!”

Clare screamed. From behind, a man had pushed her, sending her flying violently forward. She landed on her face with a strange, heavy body on top of her, pinning her to the ground. Barrels bounced around them, rolling over the cobblestones.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the deep voice above Clare roared.

“T’hose barrels weren’t properly stacked. If I hadn’t pushed this girl out of the way, they would have fallen on her she might have been injured.”

The man scrambled off Clare’s back and helped her to her feet. He was built like a bear, with a well-worn, tanned face, merry black eyes, and abundant black hair: his wrists were hairy, and so was the top of his chest, which showed above his unbuttoned collar. He looked carefully at Clare’s skinned hands, her dirty face and clothes.

“Come to the dressing rooms and we’ll call a doctor.” His accent was, clearly American.

“Oh, don’t bother with a doctor. I just need cleaning up.”

“Call a doctor!” the man ordered. He wanted to establish that there was no serious injury, in case of a phony insurance claim later. When he smiled at her, Clare noticed he had slightly crooked teeth obviously because he couldn’t be bothered to get them fixed: all the other Americans on the set had expensively perfect, gleaming choppers.