Angel

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts,’ Gavin said, cutting her off. ‘I’m taking you back to your apartment myself. And right now.’ He pushed up the sleeve of his sweater and glanced at his watch. ‘It’s four o’clock already. Let’s pack it in here, Aida, call it a day.’

  ‘You go along,’ Aida replied. ‘I must stay for a couple of hours, go over my new budgets and make a few calculations. That battle scene you’ve added is not going to be cheap, I can tell you that. Anyway, let me struggle with it, come up with some answers. You go, Gavin, take Rosie home. I’ll get your car and driver for you.’ As she spoke she lifted the phone.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later Rosie and Gavin were settled in the back of the big Mercedes, heading away from Billancourt Studios in the direction of Paris.

  ‘Aida’s right, you know, you don’t look well,’ Gavin muttered, eyeing her. ‘Too thin. Face too pale, too strained. And dark shadows under the eyes.’ He pursed his lips, shook his head. ‘It’s my fault, I should have eased up on you. Look, maybe you should see the studio doctor. I ought to have thought of that before we left.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’m not ill. A little tired. Maybe.’

  ‘Aha, so you’re finally admitting it. It seems to me that you’re exhausted, and it’s my doing. I’m responsible. Well, as producer of this here movie, I’m ordering you to take a few days’ rest, my girl.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the week, Gavin. I can’t afford to take any time off, not with our schedule.’

  ‘It’s not the middle of the week. It’s Thursday. And you’re going to do as I say.’

  ‘You always have been bossy.’

  He laughed. ‘Enjoy a long weekend. You’ll feel terrific on Monday.’

  ‘All right,’ she finally agreed, lacking the strength to argue with him. The motion of the car was making her drowsy. Her eyelids drooped; she closed her eyes. Ten minutes later she was fast asleep against his shoulder.

  Rosie dozed all the way back to Paris.

  Gavin did not rouse her until the car was pulling up outside her apartment on the rue de l’Université. And once they were inside, he took charge. He insisted she take a hot bath, swallow three aspirins and drink a mug of hot lemon tea which he had made. And then he tucked her up in bed.

  ‘I want you to get some rest for a few hours,’ he said, turning out the bedside lamp. ‘Then later we’ll go out for something to eat. Some nourishing soup, a plate of fish. It’ll do you good. I suspect you’re not eating enough. Okay?’

  ‘Whatever you say, Gavin,’ she mumbled, and closed her eyes as he went out, shutting the door behind him.

  ***

  But, once again, sleep did not come.

  Within seconds she was wide awake, staring out into the darkened room. Thinking of Johnny. He haunted her. The affair was over for her, and she knew it could never be rekindled. Henri had been right in everything he had said to her last week. He had pointed out that after five lonely, deprived years she had been very vulnerable to Johnny, to his adoration of her, to his powerful sexuality.

  It was true. Johnny had made her feel like a woman again, had made her skin tingle, her blood race; he had brought her back to life. He had been exciting; it had been exciting. But it had only been an affair, and a brief one at that.

  Desire. Lust. Sex. White-hot heat. Quick burn-out. Only cold ashes left at the end.

  Those were Henri’s words; how accurate they were. He was such a wise man, and experienced. He knew life; he had lived it to the fullest, had his share of passion and heartbreak; she knew that from Collie. She also knew that Henri had only her interests at heart. That was why she was so glad she had talked to him, confided in him when he had been in Paris. As always, Henri de Montfleurie had given her good advice.

  ‘Look into your heart, examine your feelings,’ he had told her. ‘Ask yourself what you want, how you want to live your life. After all, it is yours, no one else’s. And be honest with yourself,’ he had added. ‘You must be true to yourself, Rosie. And you must never settle for second best.’

  She had been looking into her heart. For days. And she had come up with some essential truths. Everything she had thought several weeks ago had been resolved in her mind. She did not love Johnny Fortune. She had only been infatuated with him. There was no way she could spend the rest of her life with him. He wasn’t a bad person, only different. And they had so little in common.

  She must go to Johnny as soon as possible and tell him that it was over between them. She would go to New York and tell him to his face. There was no other way. He had behaved decently to her; therefore, she must behave decently with him.

  She knew she had made the right decision. And yet she dreaded the thought of breaking it to him. He would be so hurt. He was in love with her and wanted to marry her. If it was upsetting to her, then it would be excessively painful to Johnny. After all, he had never felt this way before.

  Johnny would be leaving Australia in a week, flying directly to Los Angeles. From the middle of April through the whole month of May, maybe even longer, he would be in New York. He was going to be recording his new disc at the Hit Factory, the well-known recording studios in Manhattan.

  He had reminded her of this when he called her from Perth the other day. ‘I’ve been miserable without you, honey,’ he had grumbled, sounding so close he might have been in the other room. ‘We can’t be apart like this ever again. I can’t take it, Rosie. It’s a lousy way for me to live, without you. I’m just not going to do it.’ He had gone on and on.

  Murmuring something soothing, calming him down, she had managed to get off the phone finally. But there was no denying that his words had worried her. It was obvious that his feelings for her had not changed. If anything, they had intensified.

  Thinking again of what she had just resolved to do, Rosie shivered. Burying herself in the pillows, she pulled the sheet up and closed her eyes. It took her a long time, but eventually she fell into an exhausted sleep.

  She dreamed of her mother and of being a little girl again in Queens.

  ***

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ Rosie asked from the doorway of the living room.

  Startled, Gavin glanced over his shoulder. ‘God, you made me jump!’ he exclaimed, getting up out of the chair. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and looked down at the pages of the script which were scattered on the floor around the chair. ‘Working again, I see. You’re worse than I am.’

  ‘Perhaps. Anyway, you look better. The three hours’ sleep did you good.’

  ‘I feel rested actually,’ she answered, walking into the room, sitting down on the sofa. She eyed the bottle of white wine he had opened and said, ‘I wouldn’t mind a glass of that.’

  Picking up the bottle, he filled the glass he had put out for her earlier and brought it to her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, and raising the glass to him she added. ‘To you, Gavin, and thanks for being so considerate. Thanks for looking after me.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure. You’d have done the same for me. Anyway, it was my fault.’ Lifting his goblet, he added, ‘And here’s to you.’ After drinking some of the wine, Gavin put his glass down and began to pick up the pages of the screenplay, saying to Rosie, ‘I’m beginning to worry about Josephine. I mean about who’s going to play her. Casting has not come up with very many bright suggestions yet.’

  ‘What about Sara Sommerfield?’

  Gavin straightened and threw her a withering look. ‘Sara Sommerfield,’ he repeated. ‘Her face is so empty she can’t hold a close-up.’

  ‘She’s beautiful enough.’

  ‘An eight-by-ten glossy and that’s all. We need a bit of character here, Rosie.’ He clipped the loose pages inside the cover of the script and put it on the coffee table. ‘I’d thought of Jennifer Onslow, she’d be good. But she’s not available. That’s the problem, there’s always something.’

  ‘You’ll find the right actr
ess, Gavin; you always do. And there’s still time, you know. We have four months before we start shooting.’

  ‘Yep, that’s true.’ He fell down into his thoughts for a few seconds and then he looked across at her and said, ‘How about Miranda English for Josephine?’

  Rosie pulled a face. ‘No, I don’t think so. She’s sort of… weird. But she’s a good actress.’

  ‘What do you mean by weird? That she’s on drugs?’

  ‘Is that what they’re saying?’ Rosie shook her head. ‘But no, I didn’t mean that actually. I just think she’s a bit creepy.’

  ‘Do you ever think about Sunny? What drugs did to her, I mean?’

  Rosie nodded and a shadow fell across her face.

  Gavin got up and walked over to the skirted table where Rosie kept her collection of photographs. He picked up the famous one of the group and studied it for a moment before putting it back in its place. Glancing at Rosie he said with a faint smile, ‘It’s funny how we all cart that picture around with us, isn’t it? You and me and Nell and Kevin.’

  At first Rosie didn’t reply. Then she said, ‘I wonder if Sunny has her picture with her in the mental home in New Haven? And whether Mikey took his with him when he disappeared?’

  Gavin was half way across the floor, and he spun around to face her. There had been the strangest intonation in her voice, and he saw at once that she had the oddest expression in her eyes.

  ‘You sound funny, and you look even more peculiar. What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Gavin. It just struck me the other day, quite forcibly, that none of us has behaved very well.’

  ‘What are you referring to, Rosie?’

  ‘The way we’ve treated each other. I mean, we said we were a family when we were kids—orphans—and we promised to be there for each other. But we weren’t. We broke our promises to each other, and that’s the tragedy. We’re all guilty.’

  Gavin was silent. He took a sip of his drink, carried it with him to the chair and sat down. ‘Guilty of what?’

  ‘Neglect. Of each other. Selfishness. Self-involvement. Pride. Ambition. All of those things somehow got in the way. But neglect is the worst of all. We neglected Sunny at one moment, Gavin, when she needed us the most. We let her down. The same with Mikey. We let him down, too.’

  ‘Sunny yes, I agree with you there. We should have noticed she was getting hooked on drugs. But I don’t understand what you mean about Mikey.’

  ‘We didn’t help him when he was floundering, after he split up with Nell, when he was at odds with himself in every way and not sure about being a lawyer.’ She lifted her shoulders slightly, gave a weary shrug and shook her head. ‘I sometimes think that Mikey disappeared just to get away from all of us.’

  Her words startled Gavin and he exclaimed, ‘I don’t believe that, Rosie! Anyway, you have always been wonderful to all of us, so don’t knock yourself.’

  ‘I broke my promise to you.’

  ‘Oh come on—’

  ‘No, listen to me, I did,’ she interrupted. ‘When we were kids, I promised to understand about your acting, the crazy life you led, working as a waiter in the Village, throwing yourself into those off-Broadway plays, doing soaps, studying with Lee Strasberg. But I didn’t understand, not in the end. And I broke my promise to you. After we had that horrible quarrel, which was my fault, I was too proud to come and apologize to you.’

  ‘And I met Louise, had an affair with her, and the next thing I knew I was married to her.’ Gavin paused, and held her eyes with his. ‘I broke my promise to you too, Rosie. Let’s face it, I did. I did say we were going to get married and work together in the theatre and in films, that we were going to be a team.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t look so woeful. We do work together, and we are a team. Sort of.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anyway, I was pretty stupid. A headstrong girl. So immature. I ran off, came here to Paris and got married to the first man who asked me.’

  He smiled at her. ‘My mother used to say something that’s proven to be very true. Marry in haste, repent at leisure.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Rosie lifted her glass, took a long swallow of the wine. ‘I broke my promise to Kevin, you know. I always told him I’d stop him if I thought he was doing something foolish, and yet I let him follow in Dad’s footsteps, let him become a cop.’

  ‘Good God, Rosie, you couldn’t have stopped him from joining the NYPD! He was hell-bent on it!’

  ‘Yes…’ Slowly, she twisted the glass in her hands; her eyes were far away; she was turning something over in her mind. ‘But there was that moment when he was indecisive. I could have talked him out of it, I think. He was always interested in law, had even mentioned becoming a lawyer once.’

  ‘I remember that…’

  ‘And then there’s Nell.’

  ‘How did we let Nell down?’

  Rosie offered him a small smile. ‘She’s our saving grace. I don’t think you’ve let her down, nor have I, and I’m sure we haven’t broken any promises to her. But…’

  ‘But what? Finish what you’ve started, Angel Face.’

  ‘I think that maybe Kevin has let her down.’

  ‘Oh. How?’

  ‘Staying with the force, working as an undercover cop. It’s killing her, Gavin. She lives with fear on a day-to-day basis. I welcomed their relationship when I first found out about it, but now I’m not so sure that they should continue. Not if he stays undercover. I think Kevin should quit for his own sake as well as Nell’s.’

  ‘But you know he won’t.’

  ‘I guess not. As he says, he’s a fourth-generation cop.’

  ‘We can’t interfere, Rosie. People are the authors of their own destinies, and they live with what they themselves create.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. So why did you get ma—’ She broke off, flushing, turned her head, straightened one of the frames on the table.

  ‘Go on, finish it,’ Gavin said softly.

  There was a small silence. Finally Rosie looked him directly in the eye and asked, ‘Why did you marry Louise?’

  ‘Because she was pregnant. I felt it was my responsibility. My duty to stand by her.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘You never asked.’

  ‘But the baby died…’ Rosie discovered she could not continue. She felt awkward suddenly.

  ‘And you’re wondering why I stayed with Louise when that happened.’

  When she remained silent, Gavin said slowly, in a voice that was profoundly sad: ‘I’ll tell you what really happened, Rosie. The baby didn’t die at birth, as we let everyone think. The baby died inside Louise, about two weeks before it was due to be born. She had to carry the baby full-term. So she walked around with a dead child in her for fourteen days, and it just about did us both in.’

  ‘Oh God, Gavin, how terrible! What a horrifying experience. Poor Louise. And you. It must have been the worst nightmare for you to live through. What a dreadful tragedy.’

  ‘Yes, it was. I stayed with her to help her through it, and to help myself by helping her—’ Gavin broke off, sipped some wine. ‘But all that was a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked those questions, Gavin. I really shouldn’t have.’

  ‘It’s all right, and don’t start chastising yourself. Now, how about dinner? It’s a bit late to go out, isn’t it?’ Before she could answer, he rushed on briskly. ‘I know, I’ll make us a nice Italian dinner. You have pasta in the cupboard, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, and that’s where it’s going to stay. You might be a great actor, but you’re a rotten cook.’

  ‘You used to tell me I made wonderful meals.’

  ‘I was young then and didn’t know any better,’ Rosie laughed. ‘I think it would be better if we went to the bistro on the corner. Come on, let’s get our coats. Make a dash for it before they close.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Gavin Ambrose sat on the sofa in the sitting roo
m of his suite at the Ritz Hotel, surrounded by casting directories. Sipping a cup of coffee, he turned the pages of the Academy Players Directory of leading ladies.

  That’s what he was looking for, a leading lady, an actress with heart and soul, to play Josephine to his Napoleon.

  Rosie had been right last Thursday when she had said he had plenty of time; on the other hand, a lot of big pictures were on the slate, and the best women were being signed up at a surprising rate. There was another Kevin Costner film in the works; Dustin Hoffman had just announced one; Sean Connery was getting ready to film a mighty epic adventure. All this sudden production activity made him nervous inasmuch as he was a perfectionist about everything, and most especially his cast. Last week he had turned down the three actresses he and Rosie had discussed, for a variety of reasons.

  Finishing his coffee, he placed the cup on the tray and walked across to the window, looking out into the Place Vendôme. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, a week before Easter, and he wondered what he was doing cooped up in the hotel, looking at photographs of female Hollywood stars. Because it’s your job, buster, he reminded himself. But to hell with it. He was going to call Rosie, see what she was up to on this beautiful April day.

  She answered on the first ring.

  ‘Are you sitting on top of that phone?’ he asked, laughing.

  ‘Sort of. Actually, I was just about to call you, Gavin.’

  ‘Well, here I am, Angel Face! And you didn’t even have to spend your quarter. Why were you about to call me?’

  ‘I had a brainwave about ten minutes ago. It suddenly occurred to me that you could use a French or English actress. You don’t have to have an American star. You’re the box-office draw, as usual. I just remembered Annick Thompson. She’s French, but her English is good. She’s lived in London for a number of years, ever since she married Philip Thomas, the director. Anyway, I think she’s very talented and could be just right for Josephine.’

  ‘She’s great, you’re right, Rosie. Why didn’t I think of her? Oh, I know why. She’s very tall.’

  ‘She could stand in a hole, you on a box,’ she teased.