The Director's Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  There was no doubting that Charlie earnestly believed what he was saying. Cathy licked her lips and tried to sort through the tangle of thoughts that filled her mind. It was a fatal hesitation, however, because Charlie then vaulted the moth-eaten tiger and took her into his arms and attempted to kiss her passionately.

  ‘I believe this isn’t particularly original,’ a dry voice said behind them, ‘but would you kindly unhand my wife, sir?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHARLIE released her and spun round, going as pale as he’d been flushed.

  There was a moment’s silence as Tom’s gaze bored into his dark one, then transferred to Cathy. He was leaning against an iron girder in a way that indicated that he might not have just arrived, and there was something about his negligent, meditative stance, despite that quick, cutting look into Charlie’s soul, that contrived to make Cathy feel curiously hot-handed and adolescent. She wondered briefly how Charlie’s psyche was standing up. He immediately indicated that it was somewhat bruised.

  ‘She may be your wife, but I love her and you don’t deserve her! You treat her as if——’

  ‘That’s enough, Westfield!’ said Tom, and there was no mistaking the contempt in his hazel eyes now or the menace, again, in his voice. ‘You may be prepared to shoot this production down in flames—I’m not. We’re waiting for you on the set. You might recall,’ his gaze was now mockingly ironic, ‘that you and Bronwen are about to embark on a passionate love scene.’

  Charlie opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and despairing futility was stamped into every line of his body. ‘She——’

  ‘Dislikes you as much as you dislike her,’ Tom said evenly. ‘That’s not the point. You’re both actors, or claim to be.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘What’s more, you’re both under contract.’

  Charlie stared at him and Cathy could see the stiffening of resolve overcome the futility. He said coldly, ‘I am an actor, pal, and I will see this production out. That doesn’t mean I can’t make my own judgements, nor does it alter the fact that you’re side-stepping the real issue here. But then where Cathy’s concerned, I guess that’s second nature to you.’ And with this parting shot, he stepped over the tiger and walked away.

  Tom let him go. He didn’t even turn his head. He watched, instead, Cathy’s parted lips and the way her eyes followed Charlie, then jerked back to his. And the way she licked her lips before she spoke.

  ‘I had no idea!’

  He grimaced. ‘None?’

  ‘Of course not—you don’t think…?’

  ‘I’m sure you haven’t led him on in any way, other than getting yourself trapped behind a tiger. What——’ he straightened abruptly ‘—did you make of the rest of his sentiments?’

  Cathy said slowly, ‘I don’t feel like your lapdog, although I can see why some people might… but that’s probably me. The way I am, I mean. I don’t…’ She stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Tom, I think we should leave this until later. It isn’t the right time or place for——’

  ‘I think it will be hard to be spontaneous later,’ he said drily. ‘You were saying—you don’t…?’ Cathy made an effort to concentrate. ‘I don’t believe Bronwen is jealous or that you are—that’s crazy,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t believe I’m going to steal the show either.’ She shrugged. ‘So——’

  ‘But you do believe he’s in love with you?’ he said softly but capturing her gaze.

  A tinge of colour entered her cheeks. ‘He… seems to believe he is, but I don’t know why.’

  Tom raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Well, I’m just so different from all the other girls he..She stopped, then went on a little helplessly, ‘I am, aren’t I?’

  But he chose not to comment on that. He said, instead, ‘What about the “freedom” he offered you?’

  Cathy took a breath. ‘I…’ But she couldn’t go on, nor was she sure why she couldn’t just say it was as ridiculous as everything else Charlie had implied, or that it didn’t appeal to her at all. Then it occurred to her that Tom was treating her like a witness on a stand, like a defendant, in fact, when she had nothing to be defensive about, and she found that annoyed her. ‘Tom,’ she said quietly but with resolve, ‘you’re blowing this out of all proportion——’

  ‘Am I? You don’t think the fact that Charlie Westfield is madly in love with you, that he loathes Bronwen and detests me, is a matter of quite some proportion, Cathy?’ His expression was sardonic.

  ‘Of course! I mean, it’s going to make things rather difficult.’

  ‘Only rather?’ he mocked.

  ‘Very difficult, then,’ she said through her teeth. ‘But it’s not my fault.’

  ‘On the other hand, if you hadn’t insisted on doing Chloe, none of this would have happened,’ he said harshly.

  Cathy gasped. ‘That’s—you agreed—how unfair can you be?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of being fair or otherwise—it’s a fact of life.’

  ‘But Charlie would have loathed Bronwen anyway, probably, and could just as easily have fallen in love with whoever did Chloe, so——’

  ‘Oh, he could,’ drawled Tom. ‘I suspect our Charlie falls in and out of love regularly, but if someone else had done Chloe, she wouldn’t have been my wife—do you see, Cathy?’

  Cathy stared at him, then she stumbled round the tiger and ran past him towards the refuge of her dressing-room.

  There was, fortunately, not the opportunity for any further words on the subject until later that night, by which time some of Cathy’s rage had abated to a slightly duller emotion. She also left the set midafternoon and occupied herself at home until Tom came in after ten, which helped calm her down a bit.

  But it was a set, cold face she turned to him when he closed the front door behind him and came towards where she was sitting in the lounge with a book.

  ‘I gather you’re still not talking to me,’ he said briefly when she turned back to her book.

  ‘Now that would also be ridiculous,’ she said coolly. ‘But while I may talk to you, it doesn’t mean I’ll enjoy it.’

  A faint, dry smile lit his eyes. ‘I’m suitably damned,’ he murmured, and cast himself down on the settee opposite her. ‘However, I’m sure it would be better for you to get it all off your chest.’

  Cathy took a breath. Then she said acidly, ‘You’re wrong, you know. Talking about it won’t change anything, it won’t change you, particularly, and the only thing, to my mind, that we can do now is get this movie over and done with.’

  ‘In a state of armed neutrality?’ he queried.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied baldly.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he said thoughtfully and with a smothered yawn, ‘I’m uncharacteristically exhausted, and without the energy to prise it out of you or do much more than go to bed, but don’t hold that against me too, will you, Cathy? By tomorrow morning I’m sure I’ll have come up with a better plan.’

  ‘You——!’ Cathy said hotly, and stopped abruptly as she realised his face was uncharacteristically lined with tiredness and his eyes heavy-lidded. ‘… Are you sickening for something?’ she asked uncertainly.

  He grimaced. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘You have been working awful hours, but then you always do and it never seems to affect you…’ She stopped with a frown in her eyes. ‘All right,’ she said with sudden decision, ‘you’d better go to bed.’

  ‘Are you coming with me, or is that too much to ask?’

  Cathy compressed her lips, then was struck by the memory of once accusing him of being adolescent for sleeping in the spare room. ‘Why not?’ she said, but added coldly, ‘When I’m ready.’

  His lips twisted, but he said no more, and it was with an obvious effort that he pulled himself together and took himself off to bed.

  ‘I hope it’s conscience,’ Cathy said, but to herself.

  It was conscience that had tired Tom out so unchar
acteristically, but not about her, she was to discover the next morning after a restless night during which he tossed and turned in his sleep to an extent that really worried her.

  Then she fell deeply asleep in the early hours, and when she woke with the sun streaming over the foot of the bed she was alone.

  She lay for a while in the rumpled bed, sleepily gathering her thoughts which, surprisingly, had lost a lot of their hard certainty, she discovered. Not that she believed for one minute that she was stealing the show—or that Tom was jealous of her. Nor, on reflection, was she less annoyed with Tom’s attitude, but Bronwen…? Bronwen isn’t happy— the thought surfaced in her mind and refused to be banished. Why? Because of the antagonism between her and Charlie? No…it’s more a bone-deep unhappiness that she hides rather well, but it’s when you see her in the odd times she forgets, when you see the vitality and the energy, the intelligence and the humour—that’s when you realise it’s mostly smothered.

  ‘Is it because she’s discovered she made a terrible mistake about how much Tom means to her?’

  It was a whispered question Cathy asked herself, and one that she didn’t have to search for an answer to. Instead she thought with some bitterness that she herself had spent the last weeks with her head buried in the sand, and it had taken Charlie of all people to make her see that Bronwen was deeply hurt and desperately battling to put a brave front on it. And on top of it all, she thought, she has to put up with seeing herself usurped by a lapdog. If…just say I could ever fall in love with someone nearer my own age, someone like Charlie Westfield, her thoughts ranged on, how would I be, I wonder? Free and able to spread my wings? Able to do things just for the hell of them? Tom does sometimes…

  She sighed, pushed away the sheet and got up, then she caught sight of the clock, and because it was so quiet, guessed Tom had already left for the set.

  But when she walked noiselessly down the stairs in her bare feet and white nightgown, he was sitting at the breakfast bar surrounded by a sea of papers and with his head in his hands. He wore only a pair of jeans, and the Queensland sun had tanned his body a deep smooth gold and lightened his hair.

  ‘Oh,’ Cathy said at the bottom of the stairs.

  He looked up slowly and their gazes clashed.

  Cathy was the first to look away. ‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said coolly, and walked into the kitchen, where she opened the fridge and took out the orange juice and poured herself a glass. ‘Don’t you feel well after all?’

  His hazel eyes followed all her movements, the way her breast tautened under the fine cotton as she reached up for a glass, the disorder of her hair and the faint flush of sleep still on her cheeks, her slim hands adorned only with his gold wedding ring, the lack of interest in her blue eyes.

  ‘As a matter of fact I feel bloody awful,’ he remarked after an age, ‘but not because I’m sick.’

  Cathy raised her eyebrows and sipped her orange juice. ‘I suppose it would be too much to expect that it might be conscience after all,’ she murmured.

  ‘Conscience,’ he said slowly, and surprised her by grinning unexpectedly. ‘I guess you could call it that. The fact is, this blasted movie has “gotten” away from me—as your besotted young swain would no doubt express it.’

  ‘He isn’t… I hate you sometimes, Tom!’ Cathy hissed, then took a deep breath. ‘I’m—’

  ‘As pure as the driven snow, I know,’ he broke in. ‘Although I wonder for how long—but be that as it may.’ His lips twisted ironically. ‘We did agree to be professional about all this, didn’t we? Well— your favourite word this time—now’s the time that I need some pure professionalism, my dear,’ he said laconically.

  Cathy stared at him through narrowed eyes and felt a cold rage such as she’d never known flood her. ‘All right,’ she said abruptly, ‘if it’s advice you’re talking about, I’ll give you some. This movie’s gotten away from you for one simple reason. It’s not only the fact that Charlie and Bronwen hate each other that’s making it impossible to get the right sparks from them, it’s because Bronwen is desperately unhappy and would find it hard to act in a Christmas pantomime at the moment. I’ve seen her on screen, and she just doesn’t have her usual lustre and verve. Now normally,’ she paused, ‘I’m sure your directing skills would be able to overcome this “block” she’s experiencing, but since you’re the object of this deep unhappiness of hers, you can’t. And for your information, Tom West, the biggest mistake you made was not agreeing to me doing Chloe but agreeing to work with Bronwen—and it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been doing Chloe or not. You say it’s over, she says it’s over, but it’s pretty obvious it’s not—for her, at least.’

  She stopped, gulped down the last of the orange juice and continued quite evenly, which was not a true reflection of her emotions, ‘Actually there’s something else wrong, while we’re on the subject. You’re trying to get Bronwen to come over as a beautiful bimbo, but Portia wasn’t like that in the book. She wasn’t just gaily and illogically, madly in love with Robert, she was also deeply torn by her love for him and the fact that she knows he’ll never love her as much as she loves him, although he goes back to her in the end. It was a real love-hate relationship, and it made sense that way. It doesn’t this way.’

  Tom had studied her through narrowed eyes as she spoke, and he now said with irony, ‘Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Cathy?’

  She shrugged. ‘You said you needed professionalism.’

  ‘I do, but the whole tone of this movie is-’

  ‘I know,’ she interrupted, ‘light fantasy. Personally, I think it could do with a touch of realism.’

  ‘So,’ a muscle flickered in his jaw and there was something frighteningly intent about him now, and angry, ‘you’re not just a pretty little lapdog after all, dear Cathy. And if Bronwen can’t act her way out of a paper bag at the moment,’ he added mockingly, ‘how am I going to get her to come up with some reality?’

  Cathy stared at him, then she said huskily, ‘Tell her to imagine Robert is you, Tom. That should do the trick.’ But she didn’t leave it there. She picked up the empty glass and hurled it across the breakfast bar at him, then whirled around to run upstairs again.

  He caught the glass in a lightning reflex action, and he caught her halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said through her teeth. ‘This lapdog has had enough!’

  ‘That’s the trouble about being a lapdog,’ Tom countered grimly, standing on the step below her but still towering over her, ‘they’re not very ferocious.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Tom,’ she warned. ‘I’d have no qualms about biting and scratching and screaming my head off—in fact, I’d enjoy it right now.’

  ‘Your convent would be shocked to the core,’ he drawled.

  ‘Do you think so? In fact it was a certain Sister Margaret Mary who once told us exactly where to aim for.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ he said gravely with a suddenly different light in his eyes.

  ‘Just…go away, then!’ she blazed, and with a twist of her body ran up the remaining stairs and into the bedroom. She was not quite quick enough about slamming and locking the door, however, and as he shouldered his way in, she retreated to the bed, but her eyes were still a deep, furious blue, her cheeks pink and her hands shaking with rage.

  ‘Don’t you dare——’

  ‘Cathy.’ Tom closed the door and leant his shoulders back against it. ‘Calm down. I’m not going to touch you.’ He paused, then said rather wryly, ‘As a matter of interest, what are you imagining I’m about to do to you?’

  ‘Do?’ Her lips quivered. ‘Probably try to make love to me. That’s your panacea for everything, isn’t it? Well, I have to tell you the days of it converting me back into a “pretty little lapdog”,’ she said with tremendous scorn, ‘are over!’

  There was a moment’s taut silence. Then he said softly, ‘So he did get through to you.’

  ‘Yes, h
e got through to me,’ she flashed. ‘Why shouldn’t he? It’s obviously the way you saw me yourself. You just said——’

  ‘That didn’t come out quite the way I meant it, Cathy,’ he said abruptly. ‘I was somewhat piqued.’

  Cathy sat down and ran her hands through her hair. ‘And that’s another thing, you’re treating me with the utmost suspicion as…if,’ she stammered wrathfully, ‘I’ve got something to be ashamed of, and then you’ve got the nerve to tell me you’re piqued when it’s all a figment of your imagination!’

  ‘You agreed a moment ago that Charlie——’

  ‘I meant—he opened my eyes about a lot of things.’

  ‘Cathy,’ he said roughly, then with an effort perhaps to still his hands, folded his arms. ‘Cathy, we’re at cross-purposes here. When I said what I did downstairs it was in a moment of resentment because you’re right.’

  She laughed hollowly. ‘What about?’

  ‘Trying to portray Portia as a mindless bimbo. It’s been—for some time now I couldn’t put my finger on what I was doing wrong. More amazingly, Pete didn’t see it either. You have to admit that even in the book Portia does sort of stray into bimboish country.’

  ‘When she’s on the defensive,’ Cathy said wearily. ‘Well, perhaps it is a fine line—how come Pete…?’ She lifted her head and looked into his eyes curiously, her rage temporarily forgotten.

  ‘Pete’s a novice at the more subtle nuances on a screen. He’s also been very busy trying to learn so many tricks of the trade,’ Tom added with a ghost of a smile in his eyes.

  Cathy thought of Pete and how he’d been over the past weeks—intense, eager and under everyone’s feet. She had to smile shakily herself.

  ‘Am I forgiven?’ asked Tom after a long pause, during which he hadn’t taken his eyes off her, although she’d been studying her hands distractedly.

  She raised a hand and pushed her hair back again, fighting some sudden weak tears. ‘No,’ she said desolately. ‘Except in public.’