Eden St. Michel

by F. R. Jameson

  Eden leant forward. “What about her mother? Why are you here with me and not with her?”

  All I could do was shrug. “Because Sally didn’t realise she was pregnant until after we broke up. It wasn’t the worst break-up in the world, but there was no way back from it. A few months after I last saw her, I got a message passed to me at work asking me to call her. I remember it so clearly. She was so matter-of-fact when she told me she was pregnant, when she said that she didn’t want me to do the decent thing or anything like that, that she and her mother were going to raise the child themselves. Sally’s dad died in the war, you see? So she never knew him, and to her, growing up without an old man was absolutely fine. The reason she called me was a courtesy call more than anything else, I guess. I think she thought I’d hear the news and run as fast as I could to the hills. But I said I wanted to meet the baby, wanted her to know that I was her Daddy. It took a while of arguing, but eventually Sally and her mum agreed, and so even though I’m not there every day, I am a little part of her life.”

  “And what about the stigma, Joe? Do you worry about that for little Daphne?”

  “Yeah, a bit,” I said and cleared my throat. “I know that people can be cruel, I know children in particular can be cruel. But Daphne is a confident little thing and has so many people who love her. I think she’ll be okay.”

  Eden and I were sat in a red leather booth in Covent Garden’s newest jazz club. Another exclusive members’ place that Eden seemed to have been sent a card for without even asking for it. We were surrounded by a strange mix of polo-necks and Savile Row suits. They were all too caught up in their own images to pay us any attention, which was fine, as we didn’t want to pay them any attention either.

  She was wearing an elegant black dress which was pulled a little off her shoulders but revealed nothing of her cleavage, and smoking a cigarette in a long and equally black cigarette holder. Clearly someone had taught her how to wield that thing in the most stylish way possible, as she was holding the tip at an angle away from her mouth, and tapping the ash off over her shoulder with just the tiniest movement of her thumb – like she was Marlene Dietrich or someone. The ash was dropping to the floor rather than the ashtray, but there were a thousand cigarettes already trampled down there so nobody was going to mind.

  “You really do love her so much, don’t you? Just looking at your face and hearing the tone of your voice as you speak about her, it’s obvious.”

  “Absolutely. I’d be lost without her.”

  A trumpeter was practising scales to warm up for the main event of the evening (well, as far as that club was concerned – for Eden and me, the main event would be happening in the bedroom later), and Eden stared away at him for a minute.

  “I can never imagine myself having children,” she said finally, with no emotion in her voice at all.

  “Can’t you?”

  “Darling, I don’t have a maternal bone in my body. I’m too self-interested, too without patience. If I had a child it would be a disaster of incalculable proportions. I would start off resenting it for all it had done to my figure, and that would continue with all it was now doing to my time. It would swiftly come to loathe me and we’d be a full-blown Greek tragedy in the making.”

  I hesitated and took a sip of my gin. It tasted somewhat bitter to me, and I wished I’d taken advantage of a tonic when the chic French waitress had offered it to me.

  “What about being a stepmother then, Eden? Would you consider that?”

  The amusement on her face was deliciously playful; clearly she was prepared to indulge me my fancy. She brought the long tip of her cigarette holder to her lips, and as always it took a few seconds for the cigarette to actually glow.

  “I suppose I could maybe imagine that,” she said finally. “Perhaps with the right man who had the right child. In that circumstance, being a stepmother might be fun. I’d even try my best not to be too wicked.”

  It was my turn to laugh. The smile she gave at that moment was a snapshot of sexy evil, like a dozen Disney villainesses rolled into one.

  I squeezed her thigh and let my hand linger. Our drinks weren’t long poured, but I wanted to get out of there as soon as we’d finished them. Eden was too beautiful for me to want to share with anyone else, I wanted to get her just to myself. Needed it.

  “What do you love, then?” I asked.

  “What do I love? Oh darling, it would be easier to list all the many things I hate.”

  I blinked. “The things you hate?”

  “Can’t you tell? Don’t I make it obvious enough? I hate nearly everything of this profession of mine. I hate nearly all of my career. The films I’ve made? Every one of them I loathe. I have to go to the gala bloody premiere of the new one in a couple of weeks, Stranger at St. Paul’s it’s called, and a more ridiculous clichéd stinker it would be hard to find. All my films have been rubbish and frankly I’ve mostly been rubbish in them. Don’t argue!” she snapped. “Right now, I don’t need compliments. Right now, with you, where I’m safe, I really can’t be bothered to pretend otherwise. I hate the people I work with, idiots all. I hate the superficial lifestyle, I hate my hairstyles. Sometimes I even hate the clothes on my back. My whole life – once you strip away the artificially glamorous wrapping – is a catalogue of disappointment.”

  She said it all so calmly, without any bitterness or hurt, as if she was somehow unaffected by all that hate. Yet still I leant even closer in to her, wanting to clutch her tight in my arms. “There must be something you like.” I tried a reassuring grin. “You do get entry into places like this, after all.”

  With a sigh she took another puff of her cigarette. “I suppose there is that.”

  “Come on, Eden.” I smiled. “You do like some of it. I’ve been to your place after all, it’s damn fancy.”

  “Ha!” With studied cool she took another drag on that long cigarette holder. “I guess you’re right. There’s some of it I enjoy. But I do wonder sometimes, if it all just went away tomorrow – the gods giveth and the gods taketh away – would I really, actually, genuinely miss it?”

  My lips were pretty much right next to hers now. “What about me? Do you think you’d miss me?”

  She pouted. “Actually, yes. I think if you suddenly weren’t there, I would miss you. In record time you’ve made it onto the list of people I’d miss, Joe. There aren’t many people in my life who I genuinely care about, but I think I can say that you’re now amongst their number.”

  “You say the most romantic things,” I told her.

  “And you look most sexy when you’re craving affection.” She leant forward and placed the cigarette and holder gently down by the ashtray, then she wrapped both arms tight around my head and locked her lips fully on mine.

  Chapter Five

  Later, after what happened at the premiere of Stranger at St. Paul’s, she leant her head on my shoulder and fingered again that scar on my chest.

  “Tell me,” she said, “if you hadn’t been stopped, what would you have done to that fat bastard?”

  I was still embarrassed, so ashamed of my actions. “We don’t need to talk about that. Can’t we pretend it didn’t happen?”

  “But it did happen, Joe. And it’s only the two of us here. And I promise, if you like, that we’ll never have to talk about it again.”

  In the back of the black cab over to her place, we’d practically had sex. She’d straddled me, and it might have been the cab’s suspension, but it seemed like her thighs were trembling with excitement. Even if the driver didn’t recognise her, he was still getting a great story to tell his mates.

  Now, in the half-light of the bedroom, both of us naked, she was circling that scar again and again with her index finger and her voice was purring.

  “Would you have broken his nose, Joe?” she asked. “Made him spit his teeth out? Smashed his whole round face in? Come on, you can tell me. When you went for him, what was going through your mind? What were you going to do to him? What p
unishment were you going to unleash in my name?”

  I just stared at her. I thought my headache of earlier that night had gone, but now it came pounding back.

  “Or were you not thinking?” Her voice was calm, but still so obviously excited. “Was it animal instinct? Bloodlust in physical form? Were you not thinking and just acting on impulse? And that impulse was protecting my good name?”

  I caught her hand and prised it a quarter of an inch above that scar.

  “Eden.” I locked eyes with her. “That isn’t who I am. Not really.”

  “Oh, darling,” she cooed and yanked her fingers from mine. “It is partly who you are. You’re my big strong man who will fight for me. And I don’t really care what amount of awkwardness it’s caused, I enjoy the fact.”

  Chapter Six

  Reginald Cheesewright was a journalist, a drunk, a homo and a hopeless gambler. He also seemed to have some kind of vendetta against Eden.

  Of course I knew his name, but had never much bothered with the tittle-tattle rubbish he wrote about in his twice-weekly column for The London Chronicle. About a week or two after Eden and I became a couple, though, I chanced upon one of his pieces. It was in a copy of the paper which looked like it had been crumpled in a flash of rage and then flung against the living room wall in Eden’s flat. It was lying on the carpet behind the sofa. I found it when I was retrieving a threepenny piece which had got away from me.

  In it, this Cheesewright character was amusing himself talking about Eden’s ankles and how the heels of her shoes had to be reinforced because they were so sturdy these days. The entire article was one long spew of bile and nastiness. All of it suggesting that Eden shouldn’t be allowed in front of any camera any more because this smug Cheesewright git – who I knew for a fact sported at least eight chins – said she’d put on too much weight.

  All of it was nonsense, of course. She looked fantastic, genuinely amazing. Eden St. Michel was a proper movie star and she looked every part the proper movie star. I’d seen her naked and so knew how lean and slim she was, how all the curves she had were in exactly the right places. The only sort of person who’d write something like that was a hate-filled, spiteful little man – in a word, Cheesewright.

  I’d not really met him, but I’d seen him about, and I definitely knew of his reputation. When Cheesewright went out to the studios for an interview or some other publicity junket, he liked to barge his way into the bar afterwards and hang around with the crew. He would open his wallet wide and buy round after round for the carpenters and the electricians and the gaffers and sometimes even the stuntmen. Rumour had it that he had the taste for rough trade and that his thing was to get some hairy-arsed bloke pissed enough that he’d let Cheesewright suck him off.

  That wasn’t really my scene, so I’d never spoken to him myself. Not that I had anything against him as a homosexual. After years working in the film industry, I knew that what went on in other people’s bedrooms was none of my business. But I also knew, fairly instantly, he’d be someone I’d never call a friend. Despite his doughy figure, there was a sharpness to him, an ill-hidden nastiness. So I’d avoided him, and not thought much of him. But seeing those unkind words on the page, and thinking of his bloated face and his eyes too close together and his smug little smile, just made my blood shoot right to the top of the thermometer.

  Eden – despite obviously having hurled the paper across the room when she first read it – didn’t seem too bothered by it when I mentioned the article. She’d been briefly angry, yes, but then her normal beautiful calmness had taken over. I wasn’t Eden, though. After years of paying no attention to what the lard-arsed bastard said, I now devoured every word, picked up his paper as soon as I could get a copy. The insults seemed endless – slagging off her weight, her looks, her intelligence – a one-man campaign to bring Eden St. Michel down. But whenever I mentioned what he’d written to her – holding out a copy of his latest cruelty with outrage reddening my skin – she just shrugged and murmured: “You can’t control what the press say about you, darling, you really can’t. There’s no way you can make absolutely everyone like you, is there?”

  But if I ever found a copy of The London Chronicle in her flat, it was inevitably folded down on his latest bitchy attack. As if she’d read so far into the paper and then couldn’t get any further. Or maybe, like me, she went straight to it, read his latest salvo and discarded it in disgust (or hurt). A copy would be hidden away under magazines, or used clumsily as a coaster, or flung once again behind the couch. His column would come out Tuesdays and Fridays and – even though I’d have already read it earlier in the day – I found myself in a strange solo game of hunt the newspaper. She always bought a copy and never just dropped it half-read into the bin. It was as if she wanted me to find it. She wanted me to voice the rage that she herself hid so expertly.

  “Why does he write this stuff?” I asked her angrily one day. “What’s wrong with the man? What the hell has he got against you?”

  “I’m sure in his mind the reason is perfectly acceptable,” she said with a little shake of her head, “but, really, it’s so boring. Do you genuinely want to know?”

  “Yeah, absolutely. I want to know why this bastard is targeting my girlfriend.”

  We were sat on her sofa, which was small and cosy in her front room. It was made to feel even smaller and cosier by the large bay window overlooking the park. She was curled up in the corner, wearing check trousers and a cashmere jumper, and looking so fresh-faced and lovely.

  With a sigh she leant over to the coffee table and got herself a Gitanes. She always liked her French cigarettes, Wordlessly, she offered me one and then waited for me to light them both, which took a moment as my lighter was nearly empty and only flickering tentatively into life. Once I had them aglow, she took a long puff and fixed me with a steady gaze.

  “Once upon a time,” she said, “when I was a young actress and he was a younger columnist, we found ourselves at the same party. There was a waiter there: this genuinely beautiful Spaniard, and Cheesewright seemed to fall in love with him instantly. There was no chance, of course, but Cheesewright spent the whole evening mooning over him, desperate to be with him. I may have made a joke about it, and in my drunken state made that joke in a voice that was just a bit too loud. So loud, in fact, that Juan or Pedro, or whatever he was called, may have overheard and made his swift escape to the kitchen. And from then, well, the embarrassment on Cheesewright’s face said he was never ever going to forgive me.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, incredulous.

  “That’s it. I’m afraid. One poorly timed, semi-comic remark at a largely forgotten party years ago, and Mr Cheesewright has had it in for me ever since. I get the impression that my flourishing career, and the fact that I look to be so successful, is a constant affront to him.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “If the studios had their way, the only pieces I’d ever read would be about how ridiculously attractive I am. About my general wonderfulness as an actress and a human being. I’m only ever forwarded the most gushing of fan mail, nothing at all from the people who think my films stink – and given the quality of the films I make, those people must be out there. It’s nice sometimes to have a jug full of cold water poured over my head.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe her.

  As I watched her speak, it was like I was seeing a private show performed by Eden St. Michel, movie star. The supremely cool sex goddess who would obviously never let the opinion of a hate-filled, spiteful little man like Cheesewright get to her.

  Even though the real her kept inviting his column into her home every Tuesday and Friday, and receiving a slap from it nearly every week.

  Those ludicrous, over-the-top jibes about her weight had started just before we got together. The studio had sent her to the premiere of a romance film starring Kenneth Moore and – making her first film in a couple of years – Alice Rackham. It was the normal glitz and glamour sp
ectacular of the kind that Eden always said she found boring.

  The powers that be had told her she had to wear a particular pink dress with a big bow tied around the middle. Apparently she told the publicity department (and the costume department) that she really didn’t like the dress. That the style didn’t suit her, nor did the colour. When she tried it on, she told them, it didn’t even really fit her. Until she was nearly hoarse, she made it clear to them that the photographs they were going to get from her appearance would be disastrous, rather than the tantalising snaps they clearly wanted.

  She even marched up to the office door of the studio head himself, Mr Arthur Hamside. A brave move, given he was one of the most despotic and unsmiling bastards this side of The Third Reich. Surprisingly, he listened to her complaints, and, at the end of her detailed description of all the faults with this dress, he took a deep breath and dismissed them completely. It was incredible to me that anyone could resist the force of Eden once she really wanted something, or stand tall in the face of her glare. But he managed it. Somehow that old, crusty, humourless bastard held his own. She had a contract, he told her, and if she bothered to read it she’d see that she was duty-bound to promote the designs of the costume department. And so, with no choice in the matter, she ended up walking down the red carpet at the premiere in that dress – big pink bow and all.

  But as she’d predicted, the resulting press shots looked hideous (or as hideous as any picture of Eden St. Michel could possibly look). As she put it: “I looked like I was nine months gone with a mewing brood of triplets and was just about to pop.”

  Most people in the industry who saw the photos understood. There were a few remarks about the dress, though they were more aimed at whoever the hell had dressed her that night. One bad dress did not an ugly woman make, and everyone knew that Eden St. Michel was a fantastically beautiful and desirable lady.