Crimson (31 page)

She stared at Sam’s bum moving up and down, and beyond it, the startled face of Marie-France.

Clare’s first sensations were of pain and rage, followed almost immediately by sexual self-doubt: just what did that French au pair have that she didn’t? It wasn’tfair! She was making such an effort to improve things, and had just spent a fortune at Fenwick’s! When she could speak, Clare yelled, “Get out of my bed and out of this house. Now!”

She dumped the green boxes on the floor, tore one of them open, dipped into it, and started to pelt the speechless Sam with black lace garter belts, fishnet stockings, half-cut satin bras, black chiffon French camiknickers, a pair of long black satin gloves trimmed with ostrich feathers, and a pair of ridiculously high-heeled scarlet patent ankle-strap shoes.

Leaving the front door open, she then ran out of the house, towards the King’s Road, where she hailed a cab and directed it to Elinor’s flat.

r had decided to sell the flat, for it seemed silly to A for just the occasional use of one person. She rarely ayed overnight in London and could stay at Claridge’s if she did.

When Clare banged on the door, Elinor and Buzz were there, making lists of furniture: what to send to Starlings, “what to store, what to sell, and what to give to Oxfam.

“My dear child, what has happen ed?” Elinor held out her arms, and Clare flew into them.

“I’ve come home,” Clare snuffled against the shoulder of Elinor’s grey flannel Digby Morton suit.

“I never want to see him again! I fV44-fti-fli-found him in bu-bu-bu-bed with the au pair!”

Elinor tried to soothe and comfort her: “Oh my dear, you mustn’t take these things so much to heart. I know you haven’t been married that long, but men are all the same: they have … lusty appetites. You must learn when to turn a blind eye.”

“Your generation might have settled for that, but I won’t put up with it! I’m never going back to Sam!”

While soothing and sympathizing with Clare, over her head Elinor mouthed to Buzz, “Cancel the estate agent.” Sam didn’t think it mattered if he cheated on his wife, provided she never found out: he’d been unlucky. Okay, he was sorry. He grew increasingly irritated as he realized how stubborn Clare could be; no persuasion would mollify her fury.

For over two months, Sam tried to persuade Clare to return.

Eventually his barrage of telephone calls slowed down, then stopped. He figured Clare would either return or not. Time would tell.

In mid-June, three prisoners, using teaspoons, gouged an escape route

from Alcatraz. Reading about this in Elinor’s Daily Telegraph, Clare felt similarly trapped, but without a teaspoon. She had just received the results of her test. She was pregnant. Abortions were illegal. No escape for Clare. Back to Sam.

TUESDAY, 18 DECEMBER 1962

Shortly before Christmas, Adam and Mike escorted Elinor and Buzz to the theatre. The two ladies, so handsomely escorted, felt as glamorous as Adam intended they should. Heads turned towards them as they took their places in the royal box, to watch Peter Brook’s production of King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Afterwards, over supper at the Savoy, Adam said, “I didn’t much care for that. It was too bleak and contemporary for inc.” Again he wondered whether he should have taken the two old dears to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap” Paul Scofield acted very well as Lear,” Elinor pointed out, careful to be positive about an evening that somebody else was paying for.

“But anyone could have told the conceited old idiot what would happen.” Buzz said, “It ain’t always easy to see what’s happening, while it’s happening to you.”

“Very true,” Elinor said.

“Take that bookkeeper we just fired,” Buzz went on.

“Fancy having to go to court for a minor gas bill!”

“An unwise choice. I should never have trusted somebody else’s judgement,” Adam said, annoyed by Buzz’s tactlessness. The incompetent bookkeeper had led to non-payment by Elinor of a heap of small bills, which in turn led to a bunch of complicated small lawsuits, which need never have taken place.

“Paul Littlejohn handled the lawsuit very well,” Elinor said hastily, referring to a junior partner at STG.

uzz had complained several times that there were never problems when Joe Grant handled Elinor’s legal business; he had simplified her affairs and Buzz had always understood them, whereas in less than a year Adam seemed to have made things more difficult.

Elinor reproved Buzz and reminded her that her writing business had become more complicated since Adam restructured it into a group of companies.

Buzz retorted that she didn’t understand the reasons for the restructuring, any more than Elinor did.

“But you never question Adam’s decisions. You just do as he says, and in MY opinion, a lot of what he says is what the army calls “That’s quite enough,” Elinor had said crisply, unwilling to consider that Adam was unreliable. What other man could she turn to? What other man could advise her what to do? Adam was understanding and sympathetic; he lifted all the cares from her shoulders, which enabled her to get on with her work: she would be lost without him.

As Adam consulted the Savoy wine list, a waiter approached the table with a silver salver upon which lay a note for Mike.

Mike quickly read it, then twisted around in his chair; he nodded briefly and respectfully towards a group of men in dinner jackets dining at the best table in the room.

After the meal, when Elinor and Buzz had retired to “powder their noses’, Adam asked Mike, “What was that note about?” Mike looked at his brother with a mixture of affection, exasperation, anxiety, and pity.

“I wasn’t going to tell you until tomorrow. I’d no idea that the brothers would be here tonight. I’m sorry, but they won’t give you another extension. You’ve got to pay them back within ten days.”

“Have I ever not paid my gambling debt sT Adam demanded angrily.

“No, but they can’t afford to let other people see that you don’t pay when you’re supposed to pay. Suppose all their debtors behaved like you dor “All debtors don’t provide them with the legal services that I do. I’ve managed to ease them out of some pretty unpleasant situations.”

“Then do the same for yourself.” Mike called for the bin.

Elinor and Buzz returned to the flat in Chester Terrace to find a message from Sam pinned beneath the door knocker: upon a hastily torn-out page of his diary, he had written, “Clare’s gone into labour early. I’ve taken her to hosp ita ., Thirty-two hours later, after a difficult labour, C re gave birth to an eight-pound boy.

As Elinor reverently held Joshua, not yet an hour old, in her arms, she could see the almost imperceptible ridge of his skull join from ear to ear and the slight dip of the fontanelle on top of his downy head. Eyes shut and sleepy, he looked small and fragile, quiet and long-suffering.

Gently Elinor pried open one tiny fist and put her forefinger into it. The sleeping baby grasped it firmly. She marvelled at the tiny fingers and fingernails.

“I hope he’ll wake up soon,” Elinor whispered from beneath her face-mask to Buzz.

“In the first couple of days, before the face has fattened, you can see what the baby will look like when he’s grown up.” Suddenly the baby opened his eyes and seemed to look up at Elinor.

She almost gasped, for the eyes that looked straight up at her were the aquamarine eyes of Billy.

Elinor was not to enjoy her first great-grandson for long. On New Year’s Day, Sam broke the news to Clare that he wanted to return to live in Los Angeles.

Sam hadn’t had a hit since Grain Race, released three years earlier. He didn’t think he’d lost his touch, but he 26o realized that being out of the movie mainstream war out. Working for the motion picture market requires producer’s presence in the marketplace, in the town where the movie action is; the town where each inhabitant, even a waitress or gas-pump attendant, has an agent and at least one lawyer; the town where everyone lives, breathes, eats, talks, and definitely sleeps movies: Los Angeles.

Sam was to find that it was easier to leave than to turn.

WEDNESDAY, 30 JANUARY 1963 After four days in Los Angeles, Clare still felt euphoric, as if she’d stepped off the plane and traded her brain in for a driver’s licence. Nobody could get around LA without a car in some places there weren’t even any sidewalks. But she loved wearing shorts in January and sauntering by the ocean in midwinter. She also loved listening to the way everyone talked; she was fascinated by the quick, flip repartee of Sam’s friends, the languid, spaced-out chat in the restaurants near the beach, the omnivorous movie gossip: by the end of her first week, she was reading the trades over breakfast.

Clare quickly found and furnished a sprawling, split level glass-and-timber ranch house, with pool and patio, in Brentwood. Accustomed to pleasant surroundings, she was determined to make their home a comfortable, quiet retreat from the dazzling, dizzy, absurd, totally unpredictable, and delightfully startling life of Southern California, which fascinated her but also left her breathless.

Josh was far more tiring than LA. Clare had no idea that one small baby could be so exhausting; he was noisy, restless, demanding and seemed to sleep only three minutes a night.

The day he found her sunburned after she fell asleep by the pool, Sam took pity on her. Putting his arm around Clare’s blistered shoulders he said, “Get a nanny. No more argument about it.” To Sam’s surprise and the astonishment of his friends, he doted on the baby. When Josh was one month old, Sam certain that the baby could focus dearly on him, although told him that it wasn’t possible. At two months, Sam that those were real smiles, not wind. At three months, e was real laughing and excited waving of fists whenever appeared, and Josh clearly recognized his father. Sam’s problems always vanished when he lowered the ed, wriggling Josh into his bath, or made silly goo-goo at the pram, or crawled on the terrace like a bear, or ‘0 11MIMC.1csfully to coax the four-month-old Josh to “.1gy’Dad’. Elinor hired a young English nanny who reminded Clare of a small, bright-eyed blackbird. In the way that people tend to gravitate towards each other when feeling slightly homesick, they quickly became friends, and from the day Kathy arrived in LA, Josh metamorphosed into a quiet baby; he lay in his pram or crib or rug, blew bubbles, gurgled, burped upon demand, and gave no trouble: Clare thought it most unfair but was delighted, and so was Sam.

After Kathy’s arrival, Clare started to entertain. In LA, this, was serious business. nothing like having your friends over for supper. Sam needed backup, and Clare was determined to help her husband as much as she could: she remembered the success of Elinor’s daily tea parties, and methodically applied her considerable organizational ability to throwing lavish soirees. Clare was not needed at Sam’s business breakfasts in the El Padrino Room of the Beverly Wilshire or lunches at the Brown Derby or Scandia on Sunset Boulevard, but she presided over all evening entertaining, whether at home, in the leafy courtyard of die Bel Air Hotel, or at Romanoff’s. Sam’s oldest friends were particularly impressed by his classy English wife, granddaughter of an internationally famous, best-selling author; not only was she pretty and young, Clare was an effortless and charming hostess which is more than anyone could say for either of Sam’s previous wives.

sam had to work hard to reinstate himself, and the first order of business ‘was to locate the right script. He spent his time searching for material, while trying to ignore the cold claw that gripped his stomach and pocketbook as he realized the world’s indifference to Sam Shapiro. Sam had reached the time of life when it wasn’t so easy any more: he was still in the game but only by the skin of his teeth, and he knew it. So did everyone of consequence in LA, except Clare. Sam was still welcomed with a flourish by the maitre d’s. Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra still nodded to him. But there were little things, like being demoted from Swifty Lazar’s “A” list to the agent’s V list: these things reminded everyone that Sam hadn’t had a hit since Grain Race.

Clare had known before she came to LA that being married to a movie producer wasn’t as glamorous as she and her envious and astonished girlfriends in England had once thought. She learned quickly that the annual seasons were no longer spring, summer, autumn, winter, but research and development, preproduction, production, post production and marketing. But Clare did not know that Sam’s money was running out: the income from the big hits had gone in taxes, alimony, and surprisingly high overheads.

Not realizing that Sam couldn’t afford it, Clare continued to entertain lavishly. One evening in late April, she telephoned Annabel in New York and reported, “We’re having seventy-five to supper this evening. I’ve had such a pretty, yellow-striped marquee set up beyond the pool.”

“I don’t get time to entertain formally at home,” said Annabel.

“So if it’s business, we take them to “21”, and if it’s friends, I invite them for brunch on Sunday.” Clare giggled.

“That wouldn’t do in LA. Sunday brunches are considered tacky. So are beach picnics or any casual get-together. Here the entertaining is rather oldfashioned and formal. I give big parties and dinners for up to at home the caterers are wonderful, by the way anything in between takes place in some smart hotel.” And are these parties filled with beautiful actresses and sexy starlet sT Clare giggled again.

“Never. The important people are -family men, so there are never any beautiful starlets at the bat parties, in case they make the wives feel insecure. A lot of sensational-looking women wander in and out of the i-Ikotels and restaurants but you’ll never find them at the best parties. And you never invite unimportant actors, in case they might pester someone for a part. No, the whole point of these parties is to do deals, to put all the right people together so that the next picture gets made.” None of Clare’s entertaining showed the returns for which Sam hoped, however. I Because of his anxiety over his career and his failure to reinstate himself, Sam had neither surplus energy nor libido. He and Clare made love regularly, and Sam dutifully gave orgasms to Clare, who although she didn’t say so still felt that something was missing. There was no spontaneous excitement, no loving warmth; she was not swept to the stars in his arms. Crossly Clare told herself that her expectations had been as stupidly unrealistic as one of her grandmother’s breathlessly ecstatic heroines.