Darling Sweetheart

by Stephen Price

  She was sullen for the rest of the holiday and insisted on leaving two days earlier than planned, much to the annoyance of both Lucy and her father who never – as far as she could tell – actually did anything. But she couldn’t relax; every noise on the boat sounded like a headboard banging against a wall, every joke her father cracked became a filthy chat-up line. The night before they left, she burst into tears at the open-air dining table. She refused to explain herself to a puzzled Lucy – what an actress Lucy had been – and her father exploded, calling her an irrational, ungrateful, sodding little bitch.

  When they left the yacht the following morning, he didn’t come out of his cabin to say goodbye, but as they went ashore on the motorboat, she spotted him on the covered deck. He was watching them, but when she waved, he didn’t wave back.

  And that was the last time she saw him. Three months later, she and Lucy were no longer friends and Darling Sweetheart was dead.

  She woke up in a cabin. For a moment, she thought she was on her father’s yacht, but there was a loud drone, a pressure in her ears… she was in the bedroom of Emerson’s private jet. She’d shut herself away before take-off, so that Levine and the pilots wouldn’t see her cry. She had expected to cry more but, instead, had set to thinking about Jimmy and must have dozed off. Now she lay spreadeagled on the duvet, staring at the padded ceiling.

  When had Jimmy’s teenage-groupie thing started? Recently, with the tour? Or perhaps before, when he’d moved to Camden? Or earlier still, when Driscoll had become his manager? Driscoll was a sleaze, she knew that much instinctively. Perhaps he was using Jimmy as bait, prowling the audience during gigs, targeting likely candidates and saying things like, ‘Heyyy, doll, how would you and your friends like to party with the band?’ The kind of proposal Lucy would have leapt at, and often did. Don’t you know who I am? said the rock star to the fly. We can go to my cabin; no one need ever know. It occurred to her that she should tell the police about what she had seen, but she felt paralysed by fear; imagine the headlines if that story got out.

  The jet thumped the runway and her body pressed down on the bed. She peeked through an oval window – the sky was cloudy, but she was back in France.

  It was after eight that evening when they finally reached Beynac. Once again, the main street was packed with gawking tourists and drunken extras. Levine edged the car through the crowd then turned down Rue de L’Ancienne Poste. Peering anxiously over his shoulder, she spotted them at the same time as he did: four men, smoking cigarettes, stood opposite the gate of her apartment building.

  ‘Photographers!’ they cried together. Levine revved the engine.

  ‘No!’ she ordered, ‘don’t! If you drive away fast, they’ll chase us! Just go past slowly.’

  ‘But Miss Palatine, H.E. said if there was any more trouble, I was to take you straight to his place.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be snotty, but the package wants to be alone.’

  The car slid past the men, who flashed off a few shots regardless, but they could see nothing through the darkened glass.

  ‘So whaddya wanna do?’

  She looked out the rear window – the paparazzi watched the car intently but did not follow. Three motorbikes were parked where they stood.

  ‘Go to the end of the street, turn round, then swing back again. But this time, stop in front of them.’

  ‘Are you tryin’ to get me fired?’

  ‘No, I’m trying to get home to the privacy of my apartment.’

  ‘They gonna get you!’

  ‘Stop, and they’ll rush me, but I won’t get out. Instead, drive off again, back to the main street. Hopefully they’ll chase us, but if we’re quick enough, I can jump out and you can draw them away – take them on a nice long drive around the countryside. Wouldn’t you like that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Come on, these bastards cost you a night’s sleep and put me in that bloody newspaper – let’s get some revenge here.’

  Levine grinned. He turned the car around as she suggested and cruised back up the street. Exactly as she had predicted, when he halted at her building, the photographers ran around to get a clear shot of her door, which she opened, then slammed again. Levine mashed the accelerator and the powerful jeep sped off. In a panic, the paparazzi scrabbled to mount their motorbikes. When Levine reached the main thoroughfare, he had to slow for the crowds, but as he turned the corner, she had time to hop out.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘thanks.’

  ‘Go, girl! Get outta here!’ Motorbike engines screamed behind them. She stepped nimbly into a shop and watched through the window as the paparazzi wrestled their machines through the tourists, trying to follow the black Range Rover down towards the river. When they disappeared from view, she bought a litre of water, a bottle of dry white wine and a packet of Marlboro Lights and then walked home along the now-empty street.

  The smell hit her the instant she opened her apartment door. Sweet white roses: a bunch on the coffee table, one in her bedroom and another in the kitchen.

  ‘Bloody fucking… bloody…’

  She slammed her provisions down, seized the bouquet from the table and, swearing incoherently, opened the balcony door and flung it off. It landed in the garden, which belonged to the ground-floor flat, and the other two bunches followed. Her hands were crisscrossed with scratches from the thorns but she was so angry, she didn’t feel them. After the bloody day she’d had! Who the hell was invading her private space with flowers she didn’t want? It wasn’t Emerson – or so he said – and Jimmy had never sent her a flower in his self-centred sodding life… She rummaged through her handbag for her mobile phone, before recalling that she’d thrown it away. She grabbed the apartment’s landline and tore through a local directory until she found the number she wanted. Hotel Duchesse, Sarlat.

  ‘Bonsoir. M’sieur Tress, s’il vous plaît.’

  ‘Oui, ne quittez pas…’

  An extension rang.

  ‘’Allo?’

  ‘Peter, it’s Annalise.’

  ‘Annalise! How are you?’

  ‘You don’t happen to know how a ton of bloody roses ended up in my apartment, do you?’

  ‘I am sorry, but can you repeat that?’

  ‘White roses, in my flat – did you put flowers in my apartment? And in my trailer, the day before yesterday?’

  ‘Uhh… you are asking if I have sent you flowers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You would like flowers? You are angry because I do not send you flowers?’

  ‘No, I’m… God, sorry. Look, someone’s bothering me with flowers and I thought it might be you. I’m sorry, I’ve had a rotten day.’

  ‘What is wrong? Where were you this afternoon? Harry said that you needed a break – something in a newspaper that upset you?’

  ‘Yes. Something this morning… Jesus, it seems like last week. I shouldn’t have missed filming today. I apologise, it was deeply unprofessional of me. What time do you need me in the morning?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. No. I’m not okay, but I will be by tomorrow. Six-thirty on set?’

  ‘Only if you are okay…’

  ‘I’m fine! What are we shooting tomorrow?’

  ‘We are set up for the rescue – if you feel ready for it.’

  ‘But what about the night scene in the forest and the interior scene I didn’t finish with Robin?’

  ‘We will try both again soon. Emerson is keen on action scenes at present – he is in a very boisterous mood. Are you sure that you are okay?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘We could have dinner, if you like. It would be nice to talk.’

  ‘Thanks, but some other time, I really couldn’t tonight. See you in the morning.’ She hung up. There was blood on the receiver from the scratches on her hands. She went to the bathroom and held them under the cold tap. The mirror made her eyes look big; her eyelids were puffy and rimmed with red.

  6

  She was playin
g by the duck pond when she heard the noise. The duck pond was in the cobblestone courtyard behind the house. Mr Crombie said it was fed by a stream. The stream fed the pond and she fed the ducks with her breakfast crusts every morning. Mrs Crombie was watching her from the kitchen window. She said the duck pond was too shallow for Annalise to come to harm, but you should always watch children around water anyway. Once, Annalise had walked out into the middle and overflowed her Thundercats wellies and Mummy had been cross and smacked her.

  The crusts were all done and she was watching the boy ducks chase the girl ducks across the pond. It didn’t seem right that the boy ducks were lovely colours and the girls were just brown, but Mrs Crombie said wasn’t it lucky that people were the other way round.

  The noise came suddenly and was very loud, like a tractor, but there was nothing in the yard except her and the ducks. Then she looked up and an aeroplane blocked out the sky then it was gone again. She started to run. Mrs Crombie shouted out the window for her to wait, but she pretended not to hear and ran down the muddy lane behind the sheds, through the gooseberry bushes and into the back garden. Hens scolded as they flapped out of her way. She jumped into the meadow and ran along the grass tunnel she’d made just in case. Mr Crombie had laughed at her tunnel, but the grass and the meadow flowers were higher than her head, so it had definitely been a good idea.

  She climbed the ditch beside her favourite tree – Mr Crombie said it was a sycamore and he’d tied a blue rope to one of its branches so she could swing like Tarzan. She swung across the ditch, into the bottom field, and picked herself up just in time to see the blue-and-white aeroplane stop beside the hangar. She shrieked and ran towards it. She saw him pull off his earthings then he climbed out the little door beneath the wing. He wore a leather jacket and a white scarf. He looked up when he heard her screaming then he started to run too, his arms wide, running slowly like they do in the films when the girl and the boy see each other and they’re very much in love. But then he did funny things with his legs and pretended to have problems. She started laughing and he span around and shouted, ‘Nooo-o-o-o-o’, and fell backwards on the grass and pretended to be dead. So she sat on his tummy and tickled him under the arms, where he couldn’t not laugh. He hugged her and held her tight.

  ‘Hey, it’s good to see you, Schnopple-kopf. Sorry I’ve been gone for so long.’

  ‘It’s okay, Darling Sweetheart,’ she patted his cheek, ‘I’m not cross. You’re a good boy because you came back to me again.’

  ‘Do you know something?’ He fixed his glasses. ‘You get more and more beautiful each time I see you.’

  ‘I have a cut on my leg.’

  ‘I have a pain in my heart.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m so happy.’

  Mr Crombie drove across the field in his old green jeep. He took two suitcases from the plane and they all drove together up the muddy lane back to the house and she sang the song from Thundercats. Thundercats are go! Darling Sweetheart asked if it should be Thunderbirds but she said it was definitely Thundercats.

  Mummy was at the front porch. Darling Sweetheart said, ‘God, Gabriela, you look good,’ and they had a family hug. He carried Annalise into the house on his shoulders and said, ‘Just you wait until you see what I have in my bag!’ Mr Crombie brought the cases from the jeep and Darling Sweetheart made her sit on the sofa and close her eyes. Then a funny voice said, ‘Hey, what’s up, bug-face? You asleep?’

  She opened her eyes and there was a frog on Darling Sweetheart’s knee. He was dark green with black beady eyes and his mouth was sort of smiling, but sort of not.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked it.

  ‘I don’t have a name, bug-face. I was hoping you could help with that.’

  ‘I think I’ll call you Fernando!’

  ‘Ugh!’ The frog recoiled. ‘Do I look like something out of a fecking Abba song?’

  ‘David!’ Her mother smacked Darling Sweetheart’s arm.

  Annalise tried again. ‘Freddy! Freddy the Frog!’

  ‘No, Freddy sucks. And Kermit is taken, by the way.’

  ‘Simon?’

  The frog looked up at Darling Sweetheart. ‘She’s not very good at the giving-frogs-names thing, is she?’

  ‘Be patient,’ Darling Sweetheart said in his own voice, ‘naming frogs is an art-form that very few humans have mastered.’

  ‘Froggy!’ she shouted. ‘I’ll call you Froggy!’

  ‘Full marks for originality,’ Froggy said drily, ‘I guess it will have to do. Here, gimme a kiss.’ He leaned forward and she kissed him on his nose. He looked around as if expecting something. ‘Oh crap. They must have lied about the prince thing.’

  ‘David!’ her mother laughed. ‘She’s at that age where she copies everything!’

  ‘Here,’ Darling Sweetheart handed Froggy to Annalise, ‘you go play with your new toy, while Daddy catches up with Mummy.’

  ‘If you need a name,’ her mother suggested, ‘you could call him Nun.’

  ‘None?’ Darling Sweetheart put on a deep voice. ‘Out of the west, rode the frog with no name…’

  ‘No, Nun spelled n-u-n. He was the Egyptian god of chaos; he had a frog’s head.’

  Her father patted Annalise. ‘You must ignore your mother’s mystical babblings, child.’

  ‘Don’t be so patronising! There are forces in this world that we do not fully understand…’

  ‘There’s a force in my trousers I don’t fully understand.’

  ‘Honestly! You really are the most perfect swine!’

  ‘Oink, baby, oink!’

  ‘I’m not sure I like that toy – it’s sort of sinister. Where did you get it?’

  ‘Hamley’s. You could say it spoke to me.’

  ‘Darling Sweetheart!’ Annalise thrust Froggy at her father. ‘Make him talk again! Again! Again!’

  ‘In a minute, poppetty – go play with him upstairs.’

  ‘But I want Froggy to talk!’

  ‘Hey, bug-face,’ Froggy spoke. ‘I gotta great idea! I hear you got ducks here somewhere – I wanna see a duck stick his arse in the air!’

  ‘David! She’ll repeat that language in school!’

  ‘Show me around the house!’ Froggy commanded. ‘Show me everything!’

  She ran into the hallway. Mummy called after her, ‘Annalise – stay out of the pond! And be careful on the stairs!’

  ‘Gabriela,’ she heard Darling Sweetheart say, ‘I do wish you would hire a nanny.’

  ‘I don’t want a nanny. I want to raise my child myself.’

  It took a long time to show Froggy everything. She showed him the ducks in the courtyard, then they went up the back steps from the kitchen, called the servants’ stairs. She showed him her bedroom, then all the other bedrooms; Mummy’s room, Mummy’s dressing room, then the library, the gallery and down the big stone stairway to the drawing room, which was a funny name because she wasn’t allowed to draw in it. Next, she went along the darkest corridor, as far as the chapel door which was why the house was called an abbey. Mr Crombie said the house was never a real abbey, just tarted up to look like one by some egg-centric landowner. She didn’t show Froggy inside the chapel, just the door, because she didn’t like the statues in there or the faces in the windows. Instead, she scurried back to the empty ballroom, then the dining room, the kitchen, the pantry, the boot-room and her downstairs playroom that had a television set and a video recorder with lots of tapes.

  After that she felt tired, so she went to find Mummy and Darling Sweetheart, but they were gone. She called their names, but no one answered. She went out to the front porch: there was no one there either. She thought maybe they had flown away in his aeroplane and that nearly made her cry, but then she heard Mummy laughing and knew where they were. She ran across the gravel drive to the walled garden, through the little arched gate, and they were sitting on the bench beside the fountain. Mummy was holding a rose. Darling Sweetheart called Annalise over and pulle
d another one off the bush beside the bench and said now let us see if you are as lovely as the wild, white rose. He stuck it in her hair and she sang ‘My Name is Tallulah’, from Bugsy Malone. He laughed a lot and when she finished he and Mummy clapped their hands together in the warm, sweet air.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz. She opened her eyes. It was dark. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz. This time, she knew what the sound was, but she couldn’t believe that she was hearing it. The little travel clock she’d found in her luggage said twelve fifty-two a.m. Bloody paparazzi! She moaned and rolled over then Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz again, this time accompanied by a loud, insistent knocking on her actual apartment door. She didn’t know whether to be angry or afraid.

  ‘Annalise! Open up! It’s me, Peter!’

  Tress. What the hell was Peter Tress doing at her door in the middle of the night? She sat up. She was so tired, her entire body ached. She had no dressing gown, so she pulled her red raincoat over her T-shirt and pyjama bottoms and walked barefoot to the door. She opened it a crack.

  ‘Did any photographers come in?’

  ‘No, just a director, all alone.’

  She opened up wider. ‘Peter. What can I do for you?’ He was leaning against the metal railings of the staircase.

  ‘A drink would be nice.’

  ‘I don’t have any–’ she began, but he held up a bottle of cognac, like a prize won at a fairground.

  ‘A good director always comes prepared!’ He lurched forward, without being invited. Hestitantly, she stepped out of his way.

  ‘It’s very late. I was sleeping.’

  ‘Actors!’ he guffawed. ‘Always obsessed with your beauty sleep! I think you need to live a little!’