Crimson (26 page)

Equally firmly Elinor said, “You’ve got to learn the social graces, and I don’t want to hear another word about it, Miranda! You can’t always do as you please.” been doing what pleases you for seventeen yearsl” retorted.

“Why can’t I stay in London? Why do I ‘I’ve to come down here for weekends? You let Clare stay London by herself.”

“Clare has work to do. You’re not old enough to stay Slone in London without a chaperon, and that’s final!”

Glaring, Miranda stormed off to her bedroom. She knew, Why Clare stayed in London at the weekend, and it wasn’t ‘extra work for CND, as Elinor thought: Clare was at last in love with an older man who was what sophistication! divorced Miranda, of course, could be relied upon to tell nobody, and Clare had decided that, for the time being, it was prudent to keep this a secret. In Britain in 1958 the subject of divorce was for other people’s families perhaps but not for one’s own, never mind allowing such a person into the family. Clare did not want to risk upsetting her grandmother unnecessarily, should her romance not end in marriage.

Just then Buzz bounced into the hall from the kitchen.

“All the guests go neT “Did you hear what Miranda said?” Elinor exclaimed. She knew Buzz had been listening.

“A bit of it,” Buzz admitted.

“And that girl has had all the advantages we never had!”

“She’s at the rebellious age,” Buzz reminded Elinor.

“She’s a teenager.” The teenager was a recent phenomenon: for the first time in British history, young people were earning good money, so after years spent obeying their parents, they could now do as they pleased. They spent their pay cheques on clothes and cosmetics, music and dancing.

“Wasting it,” their fathers grumbled, but their mothers, who knew what lay ahead for them in life, said, “They’re only young once.” Christened the “Youthquake’, this new market force had invaded the

media, music, fashion, and photography; the boys mode fled themselves on James Dean; the girls wore black Jeans and sweaters, long shaggy hair, and no makeup except for their Cleopatra eyes.

Buzz knew that, by nature, Miranda did not feel at home in the soft, predictable world of the debutante. With her marmalade ponytail and pale pink lipstick, Miranda, a natural rebel, belonged with the Youthquake.

Elinor gazed up at the triple portrait.

“None of those girls have any respect or gratitude! Sometimes I feel as if my heart is broken.” Firmly Buzz said, “Save that over dramatic sentimental rubbish for your next novel! The girls are growing up! You should stop thinking of them as children and treat them as young women. Remember what we was doing at their age fighting a war! You’ve got to let them go, Nell! Then they’ll come back to you. But if you try to stop ‘em, they’ll only resent you: then a visit to you will be a duty and they’ll only come when they can’t put it off any longer.” Elinor glared at Buzz. Eventually she said, “Of course, you’re right, as usual. But I do remember the tough times we had. I want to protect them from that … from danger and poverty, give them all the things that poor Billy tried so hard to provide for Edward…”

“Hey, wait a minute, Nell. This is Buzz you’re talking to … remember? We’ve been through this before, and I ain’t buying it. Usually I’d hold me tongue, but you’d better remember that the real Billy isn’t the Prince Charming you talk about at tea parties. It’s about time, Nell, that you started to live life as it really is.”

the Tuesday following Clare’s first meeting witIg Sam, in Race finished shooting. Clare attended the wrap at which almost everybody quickly became drunk, to the release of so much nervous tension. Tite film crew was friendly but cautious and overpolitc to Clare: they had known before she did that Sam Shapiro had his eye on her.

After the party, Sam fished a black bow tie from his pocket and took Clare to the Four Hundred. Women in frivolous cocktail hats and taffeta dresses energetically danced the samba under the benign eye and baton of Edmundo Ros. Sam suddenly felt very tired.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, Clare,” he said.

“I want to talk to you.” During the limousine’s short journey to Sam’s flat in Hill Street, he sat with his eyes shut, his head thrown back. Clare, sensing his weariness, said nothing.

Once, Sam turned his head to look at Clare, pretty in lime taffeta. He patted her hand.

Later, in his comfortably impersonal beige sitting room, Sam put his arm around Clare in a paternal rather than lover like gesture and said, “There’s no nice way of saying this, but I think we should stop seeing each other.” Clare felt as if her stomach had gone into free-fall. Why? What have I done wrong?” She was hurt, astonished. I’There’s only one reason, but it’s insurmountable. I’m twenty years older than you.”

“That’s not a good reason to stop seeing me!” Clare said fiercely. With sudden insight, she realized that Sam,s suggestion must mean that his feelings were engaged, that he cared for her, that he preferred her to those confident, beautifully groomed actresses who had tonight changed from their drab nineteenth-century outdoor costumes into clinging silks and satins.

Sam looked down at Clare.

“I’m too fond of you to hurt you.” He had reluctantly decided that she was too young to bed without a lot of post-coital trouble, Clare twisted away from him. She couldn’t think properly couldn’t think at all with Sam holding her gingerly, the way some uncle might do. She threw herself into one of the elephantine leather armchairs. Sam had practically said that he loved her. There was no reason why he shouldn’t have an affair with a much younger girl … unless he cared a lot for her … enough to marry.

Like a candle, hope fit Clare’s small, pale face; she glowed with radiance and sat up. She wanted to rush back into Sam’s muscular arms, smell his curly hair, feel his bristly square jaw against her own. But not in the frustrating grab-and-tussle embraces they bad shared before.

She said, as seriously as she could, “I think your age is irrelevant. I love you. I want to marry you.” Sam had heard many a veiled proposal usually from beneath tousled sheets but never had he had such a direct one. He felt spellbound by Clare’s aquamarine eyes.

“What will your folks say?” “I don’t care what they say!” Clare rushed into Sam’s arms, and he wrapped his hard body around her until she felt that her legs could no longer support her.

“Do it,” Clare said.

Sam picked Clare up and, still kissing her, carried his lime-taffeta bundle towards the bedroom door. Moonlight fell through the ugly steel-framed windows. Without speaking, he laid her upon his bed, and gently slipped her lime shoes from her feet, as if even her feet were precious him. Then slowly he undid the long row of tiny, taffeta buttons that reached from her breasts to her knees. He gazed at her body with anticipation and frustration: a white lace, boned corselette stretched impenetrably from bosom to mid-thigh.

Clare trembled with passion and fear, eyes shut, waiting. She knew that this was the moment. She was glad that it was about to happen with someone mature, experienced not with a fumbling, clumsy youth.

Sam slid off her pale stockings, stroking her thighs, then felt the dark, damp area that lay between them. Smoothly he unhooked her lace corselette, with nimble expertise, Clare, who neither moved nor spoke, felt eroticism surround her like a cloud. She thought that she would swoon from pleasure. As Sam started to caress her breasts, her excitation built gradually towards its peak. He felt for her hymen with his middle finger, which he gently and slowly inserted into her delicate little body. It hurt her, a bit.

Without speaking, Sam stood up and stripped, fast as a Buster Keaton sequence.

Clare was glad that he hadn’t switched on the light, so she didn’t have to look. But she felt it, firm against her thighs, before Sam gently pried them apart and slid into her. She felt his body on hers, and smelled his odoun his scent reminded her of a sweaty horse, tired after a good gallop; she loved it. She felt his heavy masculine body ride her. Sam grabbed her buttocks with both hands and pulled them up to meet his thrusts: as the tempo of his drive speeded up, he gasped faster and faster.

Suddenly his body shot forward, then relaxed upon ker, as if boneless.

Sometime later, Sam murmured sleepily, “Darling, you were wonderful.”

Clare did not dare move. She felt sticky liquid trickle down, her inner-thighs, then a sticky tongue of flesh fall bn-them.

Sam shifted his body and lay beside Clare. He put his hand on her breast and whispered, “Happy, baby?” In a moment, he was asleep.

Clare lay rigid in the moonlight. She felt breathless, as if she needed more oxygen in her lungs. There was a turgid ache in her lower back. She wished Sam would wake up and kiss her, she longed to feel again his mouth tugging at her nipples.

An hour later, Clare still lay wide awake. She felt unhappy, disappointed, and resentful not of Sam but of something. She didn’t know what.

Perhaps love was addictive, like caviare; perhaps you had to practise it and get used to it. Clare wished she could talk to Annabel, in case she was doing something wrong.

Two hours later, Clare wriggled away from Sam, moving one limb at a time in order not to awaken him. She groped her way to the bathroom. Closing the door slowly to avoid any noise, she groped around the unfamiliar space until she found a light. She allowed herself only a glimpse of the dishevelled person she saw in the mirror, quickly turning on the basin tap to disguise the tinkling sound as she peed. She then washed her hands something she normally never bothered to do, except in a cloakroom where someone was watching her. Subconsciously Clare hoped that the righteous and justifiable noise of the tap would wake Sam up, but it didn’t.

Towards dawn, Clare cried quietly into her hands, then fell asleep.

Shortly after sunrise, Sam woke and again made love to Clare. Afterwards, he felt refreshed and vigorous: he whistled in the shower.

At eleven o’clock, breakfast for two was sent up from restaurant on the ground floor. A subdued Clare or only hot milk and toast; Sam ordered a full English St. As they ate breakfast in the beige satin bed, leaning against the art deco headboard, Clare felt an urgent need to know further details of Sam’s divorce. Feeling immodest because she was bare-breasted while eating marmalade and toast, she wondered how to tactfully approach the subject.

He had already told her about his parents, Russian immigrants who had lived in New York and worked on Seventh Avenue: his father had been a tailor, his mother a presser. Sam was their only son.

“I suppose everyone asks how you got into show business?” Clare ventured.

“No. Nobody except you has shown a burning desire to know anything about me. It was through my first wife.” Sam poured his second cup of coffee.

“First wife!”

“We met when I was on leave.” Clare knew he had been a naval supply officer during the war.

“I would go to LA,” Sam said. San Diego was a staid, naval town: the women were in Los Angeles.

“After I left the navy, we got married. It was 1945. The only job I could get was in a supermarket. Sheila was assistant to a story editor at MGM. I read for her when she had too many scripts. She said I summarized well: the navy taught me that.” Timidly Clare asked, “When did you break up?” “We only lived together for a few months. Then she ran off to Toronto with another guy, but found she was three months pregnant by me, after which the other guy ran off.

I haven’t seen her since she left me. The baby died at birth.”

“I’m sorry.” But Clare felt relieved. No threat, no passion, no rivalry there.

“So how did you become a producer?”

Sam said, “I went to night school to study screen writing then took a folder of my MGM summaries to the chief story editor at Paramount. Some months later, there was a vacancy. I was taken on as the story editor’s assistant.” No need to tell Clare of his passionate affair with Rhona, the chief story editor.

“And then?” Clare prompted.

“In 1948, I gave an NDG assessment to a sea story script called “A Life on the Ocean Wave”.”

“NDG?” “No Damn Good. After we turned it down, I met the screenwriter.” Sam had telephoned him, pitching himself as an independent producer with special naval history expertise: they arranged to meet for dinner at Chasens. Over the meal, he persuaded the writer to agree to a contract that gave Sam exclusive rights to the rewritten script for three years and allowed him fifteen per cent of the sale price, should. Sam manage to sell it. The writer also agreed to equal billing. He figured, what did he have to lose? The script had been turned down all over town. Even his agent stood to gain if Sam sold the script.

Sam added, “After we’d rewritten the script for costume and called it “Windjammer”, I persuaded a … friend of mine to get her boss to read it. He liked the script and wanted to buy it, but I said I wanted to produce it. The studio refused, but they’d shown the script to Bogart. He liked it, so Paramount eventually agreed to my terms, I agreed to their money, they gave me a good line producer, and Windjammer was a success. Then Bogey and I did Whaler, and after that, they rang me. Anything el seT In a low voice, Clare asked, “Any other wive sT Sam laughed and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“So that’s what you really wanted to know about. Yes, I’ve been married twice a very low average for LA. Louise and I split up three years ago, after five years together, no kids.” “No more?” “M swear.” Clare said, “I don’t know how I’ll tell Gran.”

“Is there any need to tell her anything yet?” moved into post production which took over 6rain Race 4bree months of barely controlled frenzy as everyone worked against the clock to release the film in time for the “Christmas holiday season.

Sam flow to LA, first to negotiate terms and play dates with release theatres and then to schedule the previews, at which he and the director sat among the audiences to check reaction: by torchlight, they scribbled notes about timing mistakes, any unscheduled mirth, or, worse, comedy that didn’t make people laugh.

When Sam was in London, Clare was caught up in the excitement for Grain Race: she was whirled into the kaleidoscope of action and drama in which Sam seemed to move. But when he left for Los Angeles, she felt deflated: every morning, she battled against inertia in order to get out of bed. During this period, it dawned on Clare that her passion for Sam was matched by his passion for making movies: more demanding than most careers, producing dominated his life and thoughts. At times, Clare felt a little jealous.