Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  “I’m not sure I do, no.” He glanced away, and then back. “I always thought he was very close to you, though. Are you saying that’s not the case?”

  Hélène frowned. Somewhat to her own surprise, she realized that she was not sure of the answer. “I don’t think I am—close to him,” she said at last. “No one is. I’ve worked very closely with him, obviously. And I go to his house sometimes—which no one else seems to do. He invites me over, and we have tea, and talk for an hour or so, usually about work, and then I go. That’s all…” She paused. “Really, I feel I know Thad no more now than I did when we first worked together. He’s still as secretive—more, probably. And just as mad…”

  She smiled then, but Greg did not smile back. He was looking at her seriously. There was a pause while the waitress delivered the steaks, french fries, and salad which had been everyone’s staple diet since their day of arrival. Greg picked up his knife and fork, and then put them down again.

  “So you didn’t feel crowded by Thad. You didn’t feel he was closing you in?”

  “Thad? Closing me in? Why should I feel that?”

  “I think you know why. I think that’s what you felt.” He paused. “Okay. You finished Ellis, when? A year ago. Since then you’ve made three films. The one with Peckinpah, the one with Huston, and this one with me. That’s the longest break you’ve had from Thad since you started working.”

  “Yes—but Thad was tied up. He’s been working on Ellis, doing the editing, the post-production. And those films came up, the parts were good…”

  She had spoken too fast, and she could hear the defensiveness in her own tone. Greg could hear it, too, and he smiled.

  “When is Ellis due for release?”

  “September. October perhaps. In time to qualify for the Oscars certainly. Thad wants a big première. And we’re having a party—you must come…”

  “I’d be delighted.” He was not going to be sidetracked, and Hélène could see it. He paused, and slowly began to cut up his steak.

  “And then?”

  “What about then?”

  “We’ll have finished Runaways by mid-July. Ellis won’t open till the fall. What are you going to do next?”

  “I’m going to take a break. Spend some time with my family. With Cat—and with Lewis. I’ve been promising them that for a long time. I’ve been promising myself…”

  “And then, after that? When the domestic interlude is over? What then?”

  “Well, then I’ll do another movie, I suppose. If the right script comes along. The right part…”

  “I see.” He put down his knife and fork, and looked her directly in the eyes. “With Thad?”

  There was a little silence. Hélène looked down at her plate. “No,” she said finally, “not with Thad.”

  “Thank you,” he answered. “You’ve finally told me what I wanted to know.”

  “Cognac. Quite good cognac. Drink it. I want you to talk.” They were in the sitting area of Greg Gertz’s room, just down the hall from her own. Greg Gertz thrust the glass into her hand, lit a cigarette, and sat down opposite her.

  Hélène looked at him: a tall man, rangily built, not handsome precisely, with a clever narrow face, brown eyes, brown hair; he usually wore brown clothes, old unmemorable clothes, clothes that were so indeterminate they were like camouflage.

  “That’s what I’m here to do—talk?” She smiled.

  “That’s right.”

  “What about?”

  “Yourself.”

  “I never talk about myself.”

  “I know that. I’ve noticed it. It’s one of the more interesting things about you.”

  Hélène supposed that was a compliment—a left-handed one. But she liked it. It made her smile.

  Greg Gertz leaned forward. “But first—if it makes it any easier, there’re a couple of things I’d like to say. About you. They relate to this afternoon.”

  “Oh, this afternoon. Listen, Greg, I…”

  “No, you listen.” He leaned forward. “Do you know the first time I saw you in a movie? Right at the beginning. Fall 1960. I’d gone to see my sister at UCLA, and she took me to see Night Game—it was playing a limited run at the movie theater near the campus. I didn’t want to go. I’d had movies up to here, at that point…” He gestured at his throat. “I’d been struggling for twelve years to get my work off the ground. Trying to get scripts together. Trying to get backing. Filling in with work I despised, because something had to pay the rent. My marriage was on the rocks, and I’d pretty well decided to throw the whole thing overboard.” He stopped. “It makes me laugh now. The next Thad Angelini—you know they call me that? I’m thirty-seven years old—Thad is, what? Twenty-nine? Thirty, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that when Thad Angelini was still in film school, I’d been out there for years, fighting for a break.” He leaned back in his chair. “Anyway. The point of this story is, it was 1960, and I was sick to death of Hollywood, sick to death of movies, and I got dragged to Night Game, which I didn’t want to see, and I sat there and it was like a revelation. I came out of that movie theater so excited—well, it was like I was drunk. I thought: that’s it. It’s possible to do it, it’s possible to make it work, and when you do make it work, well, it’s just the best thing in the world, that’s all. Better than any play. Better than any symphony. Better than any painting. A great movie.” He paused, looking at her carefully. “The drive came back. I wanted to work again—and, as it happened, I started to get some breaks. Two people did that for me, and I’ll never forget it. One was you, and the other was Thad.”

  There was a silence when he had finished. Hélène looked at him, and Greg Gertz, whose face had been animated a moment before, grew quiet. He leaned toward her.

  “Did you know you were good?”

  “Yes.” She looked down. “I did.”

  “You couldn’t not have known.” He shrugged. “And so—I want to ask you. What went wrong after that?”

  “Wrong? Nothing went wrong,” Hélène answered quickly. “We made Summer, we made A Life of Her Own; we made Short Cut. The others did well, but Short Cut was a huge hit. We won the Palme d’Or, Thad got the backing to make Ellis…”

  “Oh, sure. Thad could write his own ticket after Short Cut, but what about you? I saw you in all those movies. I saw those two he made back-to-back—what were they called? Yes, Quickstep and Extra Time. I saw you in the Peckinpah, and I’ve seen a rough cut of the Huston…”

  “And?”

  “And there’s no need to look so defensive.” He smiled. “You were good in all of them. Very good—what did you think I was going to say, that you were bad? No—you were excellent. A little off in Quickstep, perhaps. I thought that was the weakest…”

  “Yes. So did I.”

  Hélène looked away. They had begun filming on Quickstep soon after the visit to Cannes in 1962. It had been the time when she thought most of Edouard, before she learned the trick of shutting him out of her mind. It had also been the time when Lewis had been most jealous, when he…but no, she didn’t want to think about that.

  Greg Gertz was looking at her closely. She turned back; her chin tilted.

  “You’re coming to a ‘but,’ I can hear it—what is it?”

  “I’ll tell you—but I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll tell you what I saw if you’ll tell me what you felt. Agreed?”

  Hélène nodded, and he leaned forward again.

  “You were good, but you were being confined. That’s what I thought. After all, Thad not only directs, and now coproduces, he also writes his own movies. That’s their strength and their weakness. They’re his, through and through—they couldn’t for a moment be anyone else’s work. And obviously you mean a lot to Thad—he’s never worked with another actress, not in a major role. A lot of European directors do that—but very few Americans. There’s nothing wrong with it, in principle—except it limits you, perhaps. Thad writes your roles, he sees you in a particular way—and really, when
you look at his movies closely, it’s always the same way. You play different parts, the story line is different, Thad is so clever technically, and so daring, that most people don’t notice. But I do.”

  He shrugged. “Different movie. The same woman. Always slightly mysterious, her motives never fully explained. Always ambiguous. A little dangerous perhaps. Haunting, certainly. And…I think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

  “Passive?”

  “Precisely that.” He hesitated. “I didn’t see it at first. But once I noticed it in one movie, I couldn’t miss it in all the others. He wraps it all up so well. The lighting, the editing, the dialogue—it’s all so brilliant that you can miss something very obvious. All the women you’ve played for him. They react. They never—quite—initiate any action themselves.” He paused. “Lise—the part you play in Ellis, is that the same?”

  “Yes. It is. Oh, it’s so difficult to explain!” Hélène stood up, she turned, and walked away a little distance, and then swung around.

  “I thought it was just me. I tried to ask Thad about it, but he said I was imagining it, making difficulties that didn’t exist. ‘This happens,’ he said, ‘and this. There’s plenty of stuff going on.’ He didn’t know what I was talking about. And it’s true—lots of things always happen in his stories.”

  She made a wry face. “Love affairs, intrigue, bereavements, betrayals—you can’t imagine all the things that happen to Lise. But they happen to her. She changes, of course—you see her change, you always do in Thad’s films. But she never does anything, she’s just endlessly, mysteriously feminine. Like all the others.”

  There was a little silence. Hélène’s color had risen. She suddenly felt that she wished she had said none of that—it was disloyal to Thad, perhaps. She returned to her chair, and sat down again.

  “You see?” She gestured at her glass. “It’s the brandy—just as you said. I’m sorry…”

  “Why should you feel the need to apologize when you say what you think? You do it rarely enough.”

  He paused, watching her closely, then he said, “So—did you make a conscious decision to break away—when you did the Peckinpah film?”

  “No. It wasn’t conscious then. It’s conscious now. I’m pleased with the work I did on Ellis—I’m even proud of it. But I don’t want to work with Thad again—not for a while.” She hesitated. “I’m not even sure how much I want to work at all. It sometimes feels very empty, and a little false. I spend so much time playing other people that I never have time to be myself.”

  “It takes more than time to do that,” Greg said seriously. He looked at her intently. “Is that what went wrong this afternoon?”

  “Yes. It was. And I know you’re right about that—I know that it isn’t just a question of time.”

  She bent her head and looked at her hands. Clear in her head, she heard her own voice: When I am with you, Edouard, I don’t have to be anything. I just am.

  She straightened up, and smiled at Greg brightly.

  “Anyway, it’s late, and I should go and get some sleep. I’ll be better tomorrow. I know it was a mess this afternoon…”

  She rose, and Greg stood also. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he turned away to a chest on the far side of the room, opened a drawer, and drew out of it a large manila envelope. He handed it to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “A script. The best script I’ve ever been offered. I want to film it, and I think I can get the backing. I want to do it early next year. In the spring. And I want to do it with you. If you like it.” He paused. “If you feel you want to work, and I know you will. Read it. Let me know what you think.” He paused again, and the intelligent brown eyes met hers. She saw the habitual wariness return to his face, and—perhaps aware that they were standing quite close—he stepped back.

  “It’s about a divorce. You may find…well, see what you think anyway.”

  “All right. Thank you, Greg.”

  She knew that this was the moment to go, and yet, for some reason, she hesitated. There was a peculiar tension between them now, an alertness that had not been there earlier when they were discussing films, and which had crept up on her unawares, perhaps because of his proximity.

  Greg looked at her, and she looked back. He gave a sad, slightly crooked smile, lifted his hand, and touched her face.

  “It wouldn’t be a good idea, would it?”

  “No. Probably not.”

  “We’re both too unhappy, and that’s never a good thing.”

  “Are we? Am I?” She raised her eyes to his.

  He smiled again, and let his hand fall.

  “Oh, yes. You know that. It was the other thing wrong this afternoon.”

  He was right, of course.

  “Does it show that much?” Hélène asked bitterly.

  “Sometimes,” he answered. “Yes, it does. You might find it easier if you accepted it. I did. See if it helps, tomorrow. Good night, Hélène.”

  In her own room, she shut the door, and leaned against it. She knew what she had wanted then, and she was ashamed that Gregory Gertz should have seen it, as she knew he had. Not even to make love necessarily, but to touch, to hold and be held—yes, she knew she had wanted that.

  It was so long a time, she thought, and the body could grow starved for affection as much as the mind. She moved restlessly around the room: eighteen months—no, longer than that. Lewis had not touched her, not so much as held her hand, in that time, and neither had any other man. Lewis had, quite suddenly, closed himself off from the possibility of further sexual failures. He slept in his own room; he looked at her, sometimes, with a mixture of longing and revulsion, as if wanting her were a risk he was no longer prepared to take. More than eighteen months: how stupid she was. It was two years.

  For a moment she thought she must be wrong; it was not a calculation she had wanted to make. But now that she forced herself, she knew she was correct. Two years, yes; that was when the estrangement between them had begun—in 1962, not long after they left Cannes.

  The realization frightened her a little. She was always promising herself that it was temporary, this awful coldness between them. She was constantly hoping that the next time they were together, it would somehow heal—for the breach between them made her guilty. Lewis had told her so many times that it was not his doing, it was her fault.

  “It isn’t me that you want,” he had said many times, and since in her heart she knew that was true, she never answered him.

  She knew who she wanted, then, standing alone in her room.

  Not Lewis. Certainly not Gregory Gertz, who had simply been there and seemed kind. She stood still, and let thoughts of Edouard enter her mind. It did not make her any happier, but it did calm her.

  She looked, with longing, at the telephone. There was a certain ritual which she had come to perform when the loneliness and the unhappiness were very strong, as they were tonight. That, too, did not solve anything, but it sometimes helped her. But she had placed the call to his number once already from this telephone, just a few days before. It was too soon—and it was foolish anyway.

  With no sense of achievement, she pushed the temptation aside: no, she thought, not tonight.

  “I’m going now. One of the boys is giving me a lift to the airport.”

  Stephani came tripping up the trailer steps, opening the door with a blast of hot, dry air. She was dressed in a short skin-tight skirt, shoes with four-inch stiletto heels, and a low-cut blouse. She did not appear to be wearing stockings, underpants, or a bra. Why did she invite what she also ran away from? Hélène wondered.

  She looked at Stephani resignedly. This good-bye was not well timed. Hélène was about to reshoot her death scene, and the failure of the day before felt close, very close.

  “I wanted to say—how grateful I am. You’ve been kind to me. Really kind. Not like some of the others. I’ll never forget that.” Stephani lowered her head, looked up again shyly. “I brought yo
u a present. To say good-bye.”

  She held out a small white paper bag, eagerly. Hélène took it, and opened it. Inside was a small box containing a bottle of Joy.

  “Oh…” She stared at it a moment, and then, recovering herself, eager not to hurt Stephani’s feelings, she looked up with a smile.

  “Stephani—how lovely. How kind of you. I love this. It—reminds me of my mother. It was the scent she always wore.”

  “I got it on a plane sometime.” Stephani spoke a little quickly, with a certain note in her voice that Hélène had come to recognize. On a plane, Hélène thought, or from a man? At once she hated herself for being so uncharitable.

  “You never use perfume. I noticed that…” Stephani sounded almost accusing.

  Hélène stood up. “I shall use it now. Thank you, Stephani.” She held out her hand. “And good luck with the vampire movie…”

  Stephani clutched her hand. She held it very tight, then quickly, she reached forward, and planted a sticky kiss on Hélène’s cheek.

  “I wonder…” she was still holding on to Hélène’s hand. “I wanted to ask you this, and I didn’t quite dare. I mean—why should you? But…” She paused, and lifted the china-blue eyes to Hélène’s face. “But—would you let me have your number in L.A.? I wouldn’t bother you. I wouldn’t give it to anyone else—but I’d like to know I could call you up sometimes, when you get back. We might get together. Have a talk…”

  Hélène was taken aback. As Stephani certainly knew, her number was unlisted, given to only a very few people. For a moment, she thought of giving Stephani her agent’s number—but no, that was too unkind, too rude.

  “All right. Here. I’ll give it to you.”

  She found a piece of paper, scribbled the number, and handed it across. Stephani watched her do this. She took the piece of paper, folded it in careful quarters, and put it into her purse. To her consternation, Hélène saw that the wide china-blue eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Gee. Thank you, Hélène. I’ll never forget you, you know that?” Stephani gave a little breathy gasp and pressed Hélène’s hand. “Good-bye,” she called from the bottom of the steps, and began to wiggle away.