Eden St. Michel

by F. R. Jameson

  I really thought I was dead.

  Whatever was happening right then, I thought it was my number.

  I was convinced, totally and completely, that there was going to be a steel-tipped boot slammed repeatedly into my face. That there’d be a jagged blade thrust up into my balls.

  Instead, as I gasped, I heard a strange panting behind me.

  The sound was a wheeze, but not from a man who was out of shape. Instead it was the satisfied rasp of someone getting a physical thrill from what he was doing. A man who liked violence so much it gave him a tremble of pleasure.

  Slowly – carefully, desperate not to provoke – I lifted my head and turned my gaze back. It wasn’t adrenalin making me shake, I’m not ashamed to admit that it was shock and fear. Moving as carefully as I could, I stared back to try and get an idea what the hell was happening. Knowing that whoever this bastard was, he already had the better of me.

  I had to squint in the May sunshine. Squint to make him out as anything other than a silhouette. He was stood over me with his legs apart like a cowboy in an old movie, his hands on his hips as if about to draw. Even though I still couldn’t quite make out his face, I saw that it was wearing the cruellest of sneers.

  “Don’t you try anything, big boy!” he spat. “You don’t have it in you!”

  Actually I think I recognised his voice before I recognised his face.

  It was Carlisle bloody Collins.

  He was a bastard of the first order. A studio fixer, a drug dealer and an all-round lunatic. Even if I wasn’t already sprawled on the ground, I would never have fought him. Carlisle Collins was a psycho and you do not mess with psychos.

  “This is what happens when you fuck around with my mates!” he yelled. “Ray Wilder is my mate and you fucked around with him, didn’t you, big boy? Didn’t you? And you don’t fuck around with my pals!”

  His voice became high-pitched as he screamed at me. I was expecting it this time and managed to flinch as he swung his right boot straight into my gut. Still, though, he caught me on the kidney. My knees doubled up to my chest and I buried my head, and I lay there – a big, tall, strong man – curled up, frightened, in a ball.

  “Do you understand me?” he yelled.

  Somehow, even though I was completely scrunched up, I managed a nod.

  “Good! Because if you so much as look funny at him again, or push ahead of him when you’re getting in a lift, or take an iced bun he wants at the commissary, I will fucking cut you up! Do you hear me? I will fucking cut you up!”

  Again, as best as I could with my head tucked away, I nodded.

  It was only the two of us in the Motspur Studios car park. Seemingly, right then, in the whole of Motspur Studios. Or perhaps, if someone did witness it, they were just smart enough to realise that you didn’t mess around with Carlisle bloody Collins!

  “Good!” he roared loudly enough for the word to echo back at him from the studio walls. It seemed like he was yelling, triumphant, to the sky. Then he took a step back and lurched forward to spit, spraying me with warm, dark phlegm.

  “Learn your fucking place, you big Welsh bastard!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Carlisle Collins!” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe you got me tangled up with Carlisle bloody Collins!”

  I was sat on Eden’s sofa. There were tears of shock in her eyes as she tended the back of my head with surgical spirit and cotton wool balls. Dried blood was now matted through my hair. Really I shouldn’t have driven myself back into town, but when I realised I was alone in the car park – when I realised that Carlisle Collins had returned to whatever dark hovel he called his own – I wanted to get away from there as fast as possible. I didn’t want to hang around any longer than I had to.

  A piece of cotton wool was dripping white and red between her pinched fingers. “My God! I can’t believe he did this to you. He surely can’t be that dangerous.”

  “Can’t be that dangerous? This is Carlisle Collins we’re talking about. He deserves to be banged up in some asylum somewhere.”

  She sniffed, as if not enjoying being contradicted, as if – with a hole in my skull – that was the biggest issue right now.

  “I don’t know him that well, but I never knew there was this side to him.”

  “That’s because you’re a girl, and it was always his thing to be as charming as possible around you girls in the hope of tearing open your knicker elastic. But the man is a nut. A lunatic!” I winced as the antiseptic stung my skull. “The last few years in particular, I don’t know what’s been happening – maybe he’s been using too much of his own supply of drugs – but he’s really been losing it. Why didn’t you tell me he was in Wilder’s pocket?”

  My voice rose. Frustration, hurt and anger all wrapped together.

  She was kneeling on the couch beside me, and pulled back a little. “I didn’t really know he was so dangerous. How on earth could I? So I didn’t see how it mattered.”

  “And if you had known how dangerous he was, would you have actually cared, Eden?” I snapped.

  It was probably swift, but it felt so slow at the time. She wasn’t working that day and when I’d arrived she was wearing a pristine white housecoat. If I’d squinted she would have looked like a nurse, my ministering angel. The plan had been for us to take a lovely afternoon stroll down to St. James’s Park together. But suddenly Eden’s hand pulled away from my damaged skull, her body was no longer pressed tenderly against me. There was a gap between us.

  I could feel that was she was going, that this was a crucial moment that could either bring us closer together or leave us with regrets. Even then, despite my pain and anger, I understood that. It didn’t stop me, though. I still used my tongue to land another blow.

  “You knew about Wilder and bloody Carlisle, but you still sent me over to Wilder’s place! You still sent me round there to do your dirty work, and didn’t give a damn about the consequences! Do you for one second care what happens to me, Eden? Actually and genuinely care?”

  It was like she jumped back. She was suddenly on her feet, as if I’d let off a bad stink she had to get away from. Her arms went tight across her chest and her voice stayed level, but clearly wasn’t far from the edge.

  “How can you possibly say that? Of course I care. I care about you so much.”

  “Well, because of you I’ve been smacked and kicked around by a maniac. You haven’t said you’re sorry to me, have you? You may be dabbing my head, but you haven’t said that you’re bloody sorry!”

  Her head shook adamantly from side to side. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know any of this about Carlisle.”

  The coolness of her tone, even though I could see the blaze burning in her eyes, wound me up even more. She could control it, while I had no way of reining myself in.

  “Why the hell not, Eden? Why don’t you open your ears once in a while and listen to the kinds of things people say about Carlisle Collins?” I was yelling now. “Oh, I know, it’s because it doesn’t directly affect you and your wonderful life! It doesn’t affect you until I show up here with blood pouring out of my head like an idiot, and by then it’s too late!”

  I didn’t properly notice her doing it, but it was like she was already halfway out of the room.

  “You need to calm down, Joe. This isn’t my fault.”

  “Then whose fault is it?”

  “It’s Wilder’s! It’s Carlisle’s! They’re the ones you should be angry at, not me. They’re the ones you should be yelling at, not me!”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” I was on my feet now. The two of us were four feet apart in her small living room, but our voices were raging like we were in a storm. “Another confrontation with them both. Wilder and his pet thug. Maybe I’ll get the sneaky blow in this time, and he can take his licks. Then when that’s done I can go and get whoever else is on your list.”

  Tears came fast to her cheeks. “You came to me. I’ve tended to your head. That has to mean somethi
ng to you?”

  “You sewed me up the very first night we met. You did that when you didn’t even really know me. This is not a sign that I actually mean anything to you.”

  She put her hands to her face to smother her tears, her chin trembling.

  “I love you, Eden.” The words came out of my mouth as if they were a challenge. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know it.” She’d moved so far away from me, she was nearly lost in the darkness of the hallway.

  “I know you know it. I bloody tell you often enough. But you’ve never really said it back, have you? Do you love me too? That’s what I want to know. Do you actually love me too?”

  She hesitated. There was something burbling on her lips for a second before she turned her gaze down and away, so I could barely even see her face any more.

  “Fine!” I exploded. “If that’s the way it is then that’s the way it is! At least I know now, at least I understand!” I caught my breath and swayed on my feet, my cut head stinging, my insides churning. “I don’t have to stay here, though. If you don’t love me, then I don’t have to stay with you.”

  I thought she’d be glad to see the back of me, that she’d slam the door as I retreated angrily into the fading daylight. But instead she stood in front of me and tried to block my path. All too late, her eyes pleaded with me. “Please,” she murmured. “You have to calm down. Joe, you don’t understand!”

  “And I don’t want to!” I snapped. I shoved past her into the hallway and grabbed my jacket off the hook. “I’ll see you round, Eden.”

  She stared after me as I went. I could feel her tear-filled gaze on me as I slammed her front door. Pulling it hard and final behind me. And then I was alone next to a deserted Green Park, feeling regret like I’d never felt it before.

  From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

  “Oh, it was stupid, so stupid of me to let him go that night.

  “All over three little words. Three little words that I’d uttered so many times in front of the cameras.

  “I’d uttered them to men with halitosis, I’d uttered them to men old enough to be my father who lingered a little too long in the kissing scenes. I’d even uttered them to men who I’d compared notes with on the kinds of men we each liked to have in bed. But right then, when it mattered, I couldn’t utter them to him.

  “He was yelling at me, though. He was intimidating me. And I know I could have mollified him if I’d told him. He’d have purred like a kitten if I’d told him what he wanted to hear. But I was shaking too much inside to bring myself to do it.

  “The stupid thing was that I did love him. I loved him so very much. My Joe was everything to me. But right there and then, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Even beforehand, when he’d been hinting for them, I’d seen those hints and ignored them. I hadn’t realised that there was a ticking clock and he was liable to explode on me.

  “The fact was that I thought then, and had long thought, that those three words – uttered in a meaningful and meant way – had been ruined for me forever.

  “That I couldn’t bring myself to say them. That the very sound of them – uttered with meaning – scared me.

  “And as a result of that I let my Joe go. I let him open the door and walk out on me. I may have been scared to say those words, but I’m not scared to confess that my heart broke right then and I cried for days.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  What was life without Eden St. Michel?

  It was awful, desolate. The loss felt constant, terrible, as if everything good in my life had been burnt away and I was left with a pile of cinders and ashes.

  Every morning I tried to tell myself that it was my choice. That I’d stood before her proud and righteous and made the decision to walk away.

  And from the back of my mind came the echo that I’d only done it because she didn’t love me. With all I felt for her, she apparently didn’t love me.

  Somehow, though, even with how desperate and broken and hurt I felt, life had to find a way to plod along.

  Fortunately, that English Civil War film had started shooting, and production began with a huge battle scene while we waited for its lead actors to arrive from Hollywood. Jeffrey Hunter was going to be dropped in through the magic of close-ups later on, dirt and sweat on his brow, but miles and weeks away from any actual action.

  I was one of numerous Cavaliers, decked out in a fancy hat and a fake moustache, and riding in to charge on horseback. On the first day I was felled by an arrow. It was a sword the next.

  Stuntmen are by nature cautious people: we don’t want to get hurt, and do all we can to make a stunt look good without getting near being hurt. Sometimes, though, we – or, at least, I – have those odd, dark periods where we relish the possibility of being injured. More than once I had to pull myself back at the last second and remind myself that breaking a bone would be a different kind of pain to feel, but it wouldn’t do me any good in the long term.

  My evenings were spent drinking, they were spent carousing, out on the town with a series of dissolute friends. Or not even really friends, just other desperate drunks who didn’t want to be stuck at home either. We got together and threw back beer and whisky and wine and whatever else we thought would give us the buzz of stupidity.

  People think of the Welsh as a lyrical people; they might imagine that I’d probably have written a poem or two after a heartbreak like this. Well, bollocks to that! That was just misty-eyed, romantic nonsense. If you went around St. Mary’s Street or The Hayes in Cardiff on any given weekend, you’d see lots of blokes disappointed in life and disappointed in love who were just dealing with it by getting wrecked as sloppily as possible.

  I was one of them now. Even though I was two hundred miles distant and could afford to get out every night, I was still following a long winding path carved by my fathers.

  When we got ourselves together for the evening, we didn’t go to Mayfair or Chelsea or anywhere fashionable. I made a point of that. And since I was the one buying most of the drinks, the other bastards had to listen. Instead we went to places I didn’t really know in London, like Bermondsey or New Cross or Whitechapel. Areas I’d never properly been to before, but which I knew had a good pub culture, a few after-hours venues if you knew where to look, and the chance to pull.

  Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley was on regular play on the jukeboxes. A good one to slow-dance to.

  Not that I had a lot of luck really. Not that I properly put my all into it.

  The blokes I was with had a better time of it. They let me pick the venue and buy most of the rounds, but then scored the most presentable girls for themselves. They were loving it. No wonder they always responded when I made the call.

  I did try my luck with a few ladies, but they were all so insubstantial compared to Eden. They weren’t as beautiful as her, or as sexy as her; even their eyes were no match for Eden’s heavy-lidded gaze. I knew I should do it, that it would help me flush Eden from my system, but I just couldn’t bring myself to push for it when the moment came. In comparison, these women just seemed like stupid teenage girls, even when they weren’t really teenagers at all.

  Girls who responded to me telling them what my job was with:

  “What’s that then?”

  Or

  “Don’t be silly!”

  Or some other sign of bafflement or confusion that I found it difficult to get past.

  And because they were so unlike Eden, they made me miss Eden all the more. But then if they’d been like Eden, they wouldn’t have been as good as the real Eden and that would have made me miss her dreadfully too.

  Despite all I did to numb my senses and deaden the hurt, she was still all I thought of. When I found myself again fuzzy-headed and depressed at the end of a session, the only thing that seemed real to me was Eden and how much I missed her and how much I still – despite everything – loved her. There was no way around it, I loved her with all I had.


  Each morning started with steaming black coffee and me desperately trying to get my focus right, as I went over with Hank what that day’s stunts were going to be. The promise in my head was freshly made that I wouldn’t injure myself today, even though a huge part of me craved that distraction of a serious wound.

  Somehow, I made it through unscathed. I suffered nothing more than bruises. But at the end of it, I knew that I couldn’t go back to my squalid hole in Pimlico and sit with my own thoughts. So I rounded up the troops and went out again.

  One evening, when I was making my way home, I passed a large colour poster for Stranger at St. Paul’s outside the ABC on Pimlico High Street. I was so overwhelmed I had to step into a doorway to stop myself bursting into tears. Or at least, hide those tears from the world.

  I vowed not to walk down the High Street again until I knew the film’s run was over.

  That’s how bad I was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The day which sobered me up, the day I realised that I’d let go of all good sense in my life, was the day I let Archie talk me into going with him to Kempton Park racetrack.

  Even though I wasn’t working, it was the day which brought me closest to serious injury.

  When I think back to Archie, it’s the day which fills me with endless regret. I should have tried so much harder to talk him out of his plan. He was a man with a fervour, true, but I should have gone beyond words and physically stopped him. Knocked him out, sat on him, done anything I could to stop his madness.

  Instead, I know I got nowhere close to persuading him. I went along with him far too easily.

  I said to him, “Luca was clear, mate. You can’t go to any of the tracks.”

  He shook his head and grinned, a bright light of expectation in his eyes. “No, that’s not the message I got. He said I wasn’t to put on any bets. That’s what his geezer specified to me. He didn’t say anything definite about me not going to any tracks. There’s no Berlin Wall between me and them.”