Princess

by Alison Fraser

  One brisk November morning she went exploring farther afield than usual and took a spill when Gypsy, the chestnut, decided at the last minute that she didn’t like the look of a hedge directly in their path. Serena landed on the other side without any serious injury, but Gypsy’s turn had been too dramatic and resulted in a pulled muscle. Luckily they were on relatively low farmland, but after an hour of leading the horse by her rein, Serena admitted she was conclusively lost. And Gypsy, who at a trot or gallop unfailingly knew her way home no matter how new the territory, was completely directionless at a limp. They skirted yet another field of cattle, but when the bolt on the gate defeated her and put the road on the other side out of reach, Serena subsided on to the stile, and horse and human looked disconsolately at each other.

  Four fields back they had also drawn the notice of the farmer, standing on higher ground and surveying his land through a pair of binoculars, but when John Saxon finally caught up with them in his Range Rover, the word trespassing instantly fled his mind at the first sight of Serena rising to her feet on the other side of the gate.

  ‘Am I on your land?’ Serena asked ruefully. ‘I’ve got a bit lost and my horse has hurt her leg.’

  Banal words, but the voice, soft and shy, matched her angelic looks and completed John Saxon’s fall. At that instant the girl could have driven a tank through his prize herd of cows and he would have smiled benevolently on!

  For her part no ground shifted under Serena’s tired feet. The young, blond farmer looked dependable, and with concern for her horse uppermost, she accepted his offer to stable her horse at his farm and call the vet from there, for she was seven miles from home and had been travelling in the wrong direction for the last three.

  He brought Gypsy back the next day in a horsebox, and stayed to lunch. While he made sheep’s eyes at an oblivious Serena, the older woman weighed up and heartily approved what she saw—a good-looking, solid young man in his twenties. It was a conspiracy without Serena’s inclusion, and by the time John had been to dinner twice in the following week and she realised the nature of his interest, no subtle passivity could deflect it. It wasn’t that John Saxon was arrogant or sure of his own attraction; he just didn’t pick up the ‘thanks, but no, thanks’ signals which Serena was sending. He was to be forgiven that, Serena decided, for he was getting quite blatant encouragement from Nancy. And in the end it was to please Nancy that she went riding with him and from there progressed to more formal dates.

  John was easy and uncomplicated and Serena liked him for it, but the strongest part of his attraction lay in the fact that he regarded her as the same. He had left unchallenged her vague explanation of childhood illnesses which prevented her from socialising much in the district, and unquestioningly accepted the quiet, pleasant girl she presented to him.

  Unconsciously she used him as a yardstick of her normality, and within three months of their meeting, and after introductions to his large circle of friends, the personality she had adopted was second nature, and anything less wholesome was expressed through her painting.

  But while John Saxon very quickly came to look for some token of commitment, Serena was content to drift slowly. They graduated from casual embraces to kissing, but she had found that a disappointing experience. His mouth moving on hers was nice enough, but the earth didn’t move and the stars were light years away when she shut her eyes.

  Very much still a student of life, Serena returned to her ideas on sex—Adam Carmichael’s novels. The love scenes, well written and convincing, had given her some conception of passion and primitive emotions, but rereading them, Serena concluded that either fiction was more exciting or there was something wrong with her own reactions, for John, tall, blond and very good-looking, was surely a perfect model for the romantic hero. The latter was unpalatable. With a dismissive, ‘Fraud!’ she replaced the book on the library shelf, and from then on conditioned herself to expect less of her physical response to John. Conversely, it moved their relationship forward.

  Christmas and New Year were over. Adam, who was just beginning to surface from a blur of nightclubs, parties and heavy drinking, was in the kitchen to fetch his regular breakfast.

  ‘Gracias, Juanita,’ he said, accepting the Mexican cook’s liquid remedy for a hangover and her motherly disapproving clucking with a smile. Then going to the study, he made the foul-tasting concoction tolerable with a shot of Bourbon.

  The study had become a genuine sanctuary, for Julia hadn’t entered it since the night he had hit her. He still felt bad about it, even if the end result was good. He relaxed back on the swivel chair, shut his eyes and waited until the tomato and prairie oyster had effected their temporary cure.

  The desk was a litter area of notes, unfinished manuscript and weeks-old mail. The notes went straight into the bin where they belonged and after a cursory glance the manuscript followed; it was supposed to be finished by the beginning of February, just a week away, but Adam didn’t believe the studio expected it. He went through the bills and got cramp from writing cheques for Julia’s extravagances. They had increased lately, and he suspected he was being made to pay for his physical assault. So be it. Even at her rate of spending, she would take years to get through his capital, and he doubted she would be around that long. Julia liked money, but she also needed male attention and admiration.

  Eventually the pile dwindled until the square flat parcel was once more exposed to the light of day. Buried for weeks under a growing mountain of paper, yet he hadn’t forgotten it. It had arrived with his mother’s present of gold cufflinks and an accompanying letter, liberally punctuated with Serenas. He knew what it contained—the girl’s duty offering. He recalled his mother’s explanation.

  ‘The dear girl is so modest she had to be pressed into sending two of her sketches. Much more interesting than my present for the man who has everything! I think the poor child’s nervous because she knows from the paintings you sent up from London that you take a great interest in art yourself, but I’m sure you’ll like them.’

  Sometimes Adam found his mother’s rosy outlook on life to be downright exasperating. Her dear girl’s reluctance didn’t stem from modesty or nervousness. Serena Templeton had hated him on sight, for reasons best known to herself, but neither of their brief encounters had given her cause to revise her opinion.

  The childish scrawl on the label didn’t promise much for the standard of the contents. He would have liked to throw it in the bin, but couldn’t. He suspected both he and the girl were in the same predicament—natural inclination versus the desire not to hurt his mother’s tender feelings.

  How right he had been, was Adam’s first thought after he carefully unwrapped the parcel, the paper inside protected by stiff cardboard backing. Every laugh line and age wrinkle was there, the soft, indulgent eyes and the half-smile that always shaped Nancy Carmichael’s mouth. Drawn with love, and capturing his mother’s grace and goodness with just pencil lead and blank paper. And how wrong, in another respect, for the girl was an artist.

  The good feeling created by his mother’s portrait caught Adam unprepared for the second sketch.

  His first reaction—jolted out of him—was that it had to be by a different artist. Not the dear girl of his mother’s letters but a kicking, biting Serena.

  Ostensibly it was the meet of a foxhunt, done in water-colours. He had seen hundreds of paintings of similar settings with the usual hounds, horses and riders against a background of farm buildings—but the similarity was superficial. This was no glorification of the hunt, for every face was transformed with an ugly snarl of teeth, wildly disproportionate to the other features. Her people were baying for the blood of the fox—a clever satire that disturbed as it was meant to. But it was more than that—it was a passionate explosion of bad feeling towards the sportsmen and women.

  Adam placed the two pictures next to each other. How in God’s name did his mother not see that her shy, pleasant girl was only one half of a true image, that her bright child w
as hiding a much darker soul? But then his mother had a tendency to accept people at face value—if the painting didn’t fit her conception of the artist, then she obviously didn’t understand the art, for the girl was everything she could have wished her to be, fulfilling the early promises of the lively child she had first met. Discount the intervening years.

  So what could he do, six thousand miles away? Dear Mother, I am picking up some powerfully bad vibrations from your protégée’s handiwork. Dear Mother, your little princess is an illusion created for your benefit by one hell of a clever artist. Either would be very effective in alarming her, but he doubted if the alarm would be directed at Serena. He had his answer—he could do nothing.

  He emerged from the study to find an uproar of professional caterers, preparing for one of Julia’s increasingly popular parties, and he escaped to make one of his rare appearances at the film studio. He kept up the connection to give his life some semblance of direction.

  The day went from bad to worse. By pure coincidence he found himself present for the pre-release showing of the film of the last script he had turned in months ago. Halfway through the screening he got up and left, making for the nearest bar.

  He drank his first Bourbon in one swallow, and ordered a refill. Sensing someone at his side who was ready to strike up a conversation, he stared straight in front of him. By now he was used to the American habit of talking to total strangers in public bars; America was full of lonely people.

  ‘You’re Adam Carmichael, aren’t you?’

  Normally he might have responded; but now he took up his drink and moved to a booth in the back of the darkened drinking hall. The stranger followed him, and Adam wondered at the man’s persistence in the face of his pointed rudeness.

  ‘Should I know you?’ Adam demanded tersely.

  ‘We have met.’

  Adam gave the thin intelligent face a short appraisal before saying, ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ The man smiled. ‘You were quietly, reservedly but decidedly drunk at the time.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it, Mr...?’

  ‘Stacy, Peter Stacy.’

  ‘Weren’t you...?’ Adam stopped himself from being brutally tactless.

  ‘Yes, I used to be Peter Stacy, the writer—about a hundred years ago.’

  ‘You had talent,’ Adam remarked offhandedly.

  ‘Always nice to meet a favourable critic,’ the American laughed self-mockingly.

  ‘Look, Mr Stacy, I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you so interested in talking to me?’ Adam wanted to be alone. ‘I assume you’re not starting a society for has-been authors.’

  The American did not seem perturbed by the dry sarcasm, as he signalled a waiter for a repeat of his order, before replying musingly, ‘Is that how you see yourself?’

  ‘Skip it!’

  ‘Actually I was at the preview,’ Peter Stacy pursued. ‘Bad, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Chronic was the word I would have used,’ Adam muttered sourly. The stranger was nothing, if not honest, but Adam didn’t want to go into any deep analysis of the film.

  ‘I was watching your face, Carmichael,’ Peter Stacy continued, reverting to seriousness, ‘and I thought it only fair to tell you that you didn’t write that screenplay.’

  ‘I admit I didn’t stay for the credits, but I seem to vaguely recognise the plot.’ Adam’s sardonicism was heavy, but seemed only to encourage his fellow drinker’s need to talk.

  ‘Vague would be the operative word. I suspect you were bombed out of your mind for three-quarters of the time,’ the American writer commented wryly, and ignoring Adam’s steady gaze that clearly told him to mind his own business, went on to explain, ‘I read the original script.’

  ‘You have my sympathy.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Carmichael,’ Peter Stacy countered, picking up on the self-disgust in Adam’s tone. ‘In places it touched some quite enviable literary heights before wandering off into total obscurity.’

  ‘What I saw seemed perfectly straightforward,’ Adam took another swallow of his drink, and added bitterly, ‘Run-of-the-mill, basic, trite garbage.’

  ‘The revised version, as per the Hamlisch tradition of commercialism for commercialism’s sake,’ Peter Stacy returned with his own brand of cynicism.

  At last Adam realised the man’s involvement. He was a script consultant, or less politely put, a hack. Adam recalled his brutal assessment of the film and tried to backtrack, but Peter Stacy cut in with, ‘Don’t insult me. I used to be a writer too, remember. And you did a pretty similar job on your second script, although I suspect you were amusing yourself at the time.’

  ‘Why do you do it?’ Adam’s interest was aroused; on another day he might have liked the man.

  ‘Not for laughs, anyway. About the time I stopped finding anything I wanted to write about, I developed a hobby similar to your own.’ Peter Stacy’s bloodshot eyes rested momentarily on his neat gin. ‘Sound like a familiar road?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You British are damned reserved.’ There was no insult in the remark.

  ‘Is there some point to this discussion, or have we passed it?’ Adam felt the man was holding a mirror up in front of him, and he didn’t like the reflection he saw.

  ‘Perhaps you’re made of sterner stuff than me, Mr Carmichael. I sincerely hope so.’ The older man, having said his piece, got to his feet, and said with a wry smile, ‘But I suggest you give any more previews a miss.’

  ‘I may just take your advice, Mr Stacy.’

  Despite the tone of the conversation, the parting handshake was firm. Adam understood the man’s motive and there was a thread of decency in it, absent from the rest of his experience of Hollywood, where people used and abused each other with seldom a second thought. Perhaps he had done his own fair share of abuse, even if most of it had been directed at himself.

  He ordered another Bourbon after Peter Stacy had departed, left it unfinished and headed for the coast road. Corny but true, the sound and sight of an ocean washing on to a deserted beach did have a cleansing effect. A cold January wind whipped through his clothes and cleared his head. He walked a few miles of sand, an incongruous figure in a smart lounge suit, stained and then soaked by the spray of the incoming tide. He stayed for the sunset over the Pacific, the only memorable spectacle in the year and a half of his life he had just wasted.

  When he finally took himself home, the house was crowded and noisy with Julia’s party. Stopping halfway up the stairs, Adam turned to view the scene with the detached eye of a man looking at another species conducting a meaningless ritual. In one corner he could see Julia fully engrossed with Melvin Hamlisch, confirming his suspicion that she had set her sights on a more secure lover than a drunk with a rapidly diminishing interest in just about everything.

  He wished her well—he had been no prize—and said aloud and to himself, ‘I think it’s about time I went home.’ The thought had been there since the morning, but he wasn’t ready to admit what had put it there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Adam! It’s so marvellous to hear your voice!’ Nancy’s delight was genuine and warming.

  ‘And you too, Mother. How are you?’

  ‘As fit as an old woman like myself has a right to be,’ she replied with a tinkling laugh. ‘And you and Julia?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mother,’ he replied, avoiding the enquiry over Julia. Despite retaining the morals of a different era, his mother had adjusted and come to accept that her son was living with a woman with no intention of marriage.

  ‘I was getting worried... it’s been a while...’ she trailed off, knowing of old that Adam disliked her worrying about him.

  It was therefore surprising when he said, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t written lately, but you know how it is.’

  She didn’t know how it was, for the few short notes he had written had been devoid of anything remotely resembling the truth, but believing him engrossed in the f
ilm world, she replied pleasantly, ‘Yes, I understand, dear, how busy you must be. I’m glad you telephoned—I have some exciting news that I’m bursting to tell someone! I’ve been sworn to secrecy, but as you’re six thousand miles away....’

  Adam used this opening and his mother’s pause for breath to say, ‘Actually, I’m not.’

  ‘Not what, dear?’

  ‘Six thousand miles away. I’m in London.’ He delivered this information clumsily. ‘Mother, you haven’t fainted on me?’

  ‘Adam, what’s wrong?’ Nancy’s voice rose with nervous alarm. ‘You sound strange.’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter, mother,’ he replied firmly. ‘I’ve just returned to England, that’s all. America palled.’

  ‘I thought Julia loved it.’ Nancy Carmichael was struggling to take in the fact her son was home; his occasional letters had not suggested any discontent—quite the opposite.

  ‘She did... does,’ he amended. In the end the parting had not been bitter. Adam had been polite and allowed Julia to pretend that she was leaving him for her rich producer who believed ‘English’ and ‘class’ were synonymous and was going to make her wife number four. Reluctant to fill the pregnant silence with drawn-out explanations over the telephone, he continued, ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. Now what’s this exciting news of yours?’

  ‘It’ll keep,’ Nancy murmured distractedly, then pressed, ‘When should we expect you, Adam?’

  It was Adam’s turn to fade off the line while he summoned up an impersonality for his enquiry of, ‘What about the girl?’ After all this time he should have been indifferent; he wasn’t.

  ‘Serena—she’ll be delighted to meet you at last. I’ve told her all about you,’ Nancy replied brightly.

  ‘We have met before, Mother,’ Adam pointed out dryly.

  ‘Oh, she’s forgotten that... that unfortunate misunderstanding,’ Nancy airily dismissed his unspoken concern. ‘Now when should we kill the fatted calf?’