Mr. Branch hesitated for several seconds, during which anticipation built to a boil within Letty. But when he addressed her, it was solicitously. “My child, would you do us the honor?” He extended his hand in her direction, and she stepped toward him, allowing him to kiss her hand. “Would you perform for us?”
“I’ll try,” she whispered.
“Fantastic!” Mr. Branch let go of her and clapped. Then he began shouting commands. “Change of plan!” he cried. “I need the makeup girls to do up Miss Larkspur as Marie. Lighting—this is an afternoon scene, so you’ll have to…”
There was more, but Letty was hardly listening. She was being ushered toward the dressing rooms by a woman in a formless black dress and a severe bun who didn’t appear to share in Letty’s delight over her miraculous break. Everybody was moving again, more frantically this time. She glanced back once and saw that the only person not hustling was Valentine. He was gazing at her, and there was such a mix of pride and adoration in his face that she almost couldn’t stand being led away from him.
Was this all a little too perfect, or was it exactly what life had planned for her? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure she cared. All she could think was that she was going to say those beautiful lines for the camera. She was going to audition for Lucien Branch, with Valentine O’Dell at her side.
“I was a broken man when the war ended.” Valentine turned his profile to the camera, and a ripple of feeling passed over his features. “I thought my life was over, and wished I had died in that ditch along with my men…”
“But you have done so much for our village.” Letty stepped toward him and lifted her chin in his direction. She was wearing a wig with a long heavy braid that rested on her shoulder and hung down over her chest. The dozens of lights pointing at her from every direction were hot on her skin, and the makeup was thick on her face. But she scarcely felt any of that. Mostly she felt the emotion between Marie and the Lieutenant. Her lips trembled with it. “Much more than we will ever do for you.”
“I am gratified to see the village coming back to life, after so much death and dying…” Valentine’s gaze focused suddenly on her. “But you cannot think I did it for them.” He gripped her shoulders with both hands. “Everything I have done, I have done for you, Marie…”
“I don’t believe it,” Letty protested as she gazed up at him in adoration. “I don’t believe you weren’t thinking of all of us when you—”
She broke off and they stared at each other for a few seconds. Then the kiss came, bending her backward like a strong gale. It went on and on, until Letty was weak with it. This was a lengthier kiss than the one they had rehearsed that night in the kitchen, and she supposed it was for Mr. Branch, to show him Letty wasn’t just a kid and could do the really passionate stuff. But she knew that some part of it was Valentine, wanting to kiss her again. When he drew back, his eyes were misted over.
“Do you think you could ever love a man like me?”
It wasn’t in the script, but Letty knew how to answer. “Yes. Oh, yes. I love you as I could never love any other man.”
“More even than you loved your husband?”
“Don’t ask me about him.” Letty threw herself against Valentine’s chest and closed her eyes. “Let’s never talk about the past. Let’s only look to the future.”
They held still like that, a tableau for the camera, Letty with her eyes shut softly and Valentine holding her. Then Mr. Branch yelled “Cut,” and she waited for him to release her. The stage lights were hot against her back as she lingered in the embrace a few more seconds. Somebody coughed, and she remembered that she was Letty, not Marie, and she stepped away from Valentine.
“Incredible! Unbelievable! Amazing!”
When she came off the set, her eyes had to adjust, and she squinted at Mr. Branch as he came forward. “It was magical, my dear little darling. Magical! Did you feel the magic?”
“Yes,” Letty whispered as she was ushered back into the unilluminated world of snaking black cords and huge, mysterious gadgets.
“Ha, ha! Look at you, my boy. You are drained by what you have given.”
Letty glanced back at Valentine and saw him smile in rueful acknowledgment.
Mr. Branch was moving about in circles, his pudgy hands fluttering just above his head. “I have had a vision. A vision of the picture I always wanted to make. You two understand, you share my vision, I know you do. You were living it there! We hardly needed words—you have intuited everything I wanted from your performances. I can see the whole work of art. I have had a glimpse of the divine. It is all at my fingertips.”
As if to demonstrate, he took two handfuls of air and drew them into his chest. Letty was watching breathlessly and holding on to her long braid as though that might steady her. She knew she had been good, but the approval of Mr. Lucien Branch was so beyond anything that she had ever hoped for that her legs trembled.
“I can’t allow this vision to vanish. We can do the scenes between the Lieutenant and Marie in a few days and finish the rest afterward. Only I don’t want to stop. I must keep that glimpse in my sights. Are you with me?”
“Of course,” Valentine said, flashing that rakish smile he had used so often on screen.
“And you, my exquisite child?”
“Yes,” Letty whispered. Then, to her regret, she heard herself say: “But what about Sophia?”
“What about art?” Mr. Branch exclaimed. In a more subdued voice he added: “Perhaps she can play your mother. Would that satisfy you?”
Letty thought for a minute about how if Sophia were here and not traipsing around with Jack Montrose, there would have been no question of the part going to Letty, and none of this would have happened. So she nodded, and felt how her luck had changed forever.
In Valentine’s dressing room, he threw himself down on the couch, crossed his ankles against the armrest, and opened his arms wide, beckoning her into his embrace. She slipped the wig off her head and tiptoed toward him, hovering uncertainly. Did he mean for her to perch beside him on the edge of the couch, or sit next to him on the ground? But then he drew her in, so that she was lying on top of him, her legs against his legs and her chest against his chest and her nose almost brushing his nose. They had kissed, and they had talked into the night, and they had shared plates of spaghetti with red sauce, but they’d never been in so terribly familiar a position as this. Yet it felt natural, after what they had been through in that scene. Performers and artists did things differently; she saw that now. They were affectionate and free, and they didn’t obey the rigid rules of places like Union.
“Letty,” he said softly, letting his index finger draw the line of her chin. “You know those words I said in that scene, the ones that weren’t in the script?”
“You mean: ‘Could you ever love a man like me?’ That bit?”
Valentine put his arms around her middle, hugging her to him. “I really meant them.”
“You did?” Her body felt weak, like it might disintegrate into tiny motes and blow away on the wind.
“It’s all a sham between me and Sophia; you can see that, can’t you? We haven’t understood each other for a long time, and everybody knows about her and Jack Montrose.”
Letty averted her eyes in shame. She had protected Sophia, because she thought Sophia could teach her how to be a star. “I know,” she began haltingly. “That night at his party, I saw them…”
“Hush.” Valentine kissed each of her temples. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t love her anymore. How could I, when all she cares about is fame? When she would do anything for it? And with that great greasy ape, Jack Montrose…”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No…no. Don’t be. I’ve despaired of meeting a woman who could understand me, who could understand what I do. Now I have. That is all that matters.”
“You don’t mean…me?”
Valentine’s hands slid up her back, holding the back of her head as he brought his lips to hers. An
y resistance she had felt before, any lingering guilt over Sophia, any offended sense of decorum evaporated. Living with the O’Dells had at first seemed extraordinary. Almost too lucky. But now, when she was being handed so much more—cradled in the arms of the dreamiest man she’d ever known, about to star in a real motion picture—nothing felt wrong. All the pieces fit together so neatly; she could see the scheme of the whole puzzle. Valentine had been here waiting for her all this time, and his image on screen had been some cosmic message, beamed to her in that faraway town. They were two halves of the same soul, after all—a more perfect team than O’Dell and Ray had ever been.
“Yes, I could love you,” she said, and let him kiss her again.
20
“YOU’VE BEEN NEGLECTING ME, DARLING, AND WHEN it’s raining, too.” Despite her age, Virginia Donal de Gruyter Marsh put on a pouting face as her daughter approached from the far side of Marsh Hall’s airy sitting room. The lady of the house was dressed impeccably in white chiffon dotted with small green circles, and her dark hair was pinned away from her face, but she slouched against the sofa as if she hadn’t changed out of pajamas in several days. The frown remained even after Astrid kissed her mother hello and sat down next to her on the ivory cushion. “Summer rain,” the older woman muttered, as of some pestilence for which there was no cure.
“It doesn’t seem to keep Billie in,” Astrid replied as she arranged the skirt of her coral-colored tank dress over her crossed legs and cast her gaze through the large glass windows. Her stepsister was out on the grounds, practicing archery despite the intermittent downpours of the last few days. The skin of Billie’s bare arms appeared damp, it was true, and her instructor had removed his shirt. But she was concentrating furiously on her stance, and her arrows seemed to be hitting their mark with fair accuracy.
Virginia’s head lolled toward Astrid. “But my dear, Billie is not like you or me.”
“No.” Astrid exhaled in faint amusement. “I can’t argue with you there.”
“So tell me everything. Who is going around with whom, and who is giving the best parties, and who is hosting flops. About the liquor biz, and how much money your husband is making, and all of that.”
“Ohhhh…” Astrid’s hand waved gracefully so that her collection of tennis bracelets clinked lightly against each other. “It’s all the same faces, Mother, you know how it is. But Charlie—well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Despite her facade of careless indifference, Astrid must have conveyed something of the confusion that she had discovered married life to be, because her mother sat up straight, and the light of calculating intelligence returned to her eyes. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Trouble in paradise.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Astrid replied quickly. “Only—I thought since you are so much older and more experienced than I am, you might be able to give me some advice.”
Ignoring the insult, Virginia patted her daughter’s knee. “Of course, my darling. But go make your old mummy a bourbon and soda first, won’t you?”
As Astrid slid across the room to the well-stocked bar, she thought how strange it was that a few months ago she had wanted nothing more than to be out of her mother and stepfather’s house, with its constant fighting and ever-changing rules of propriety. But now her mother’s decadence seemed amusing, like an occasional irritant one could nonetheless depend upon. The well-kept rooms of the Tudor-style house smelled of hyacinths, and as she mixed the drink (nice and strong, the way her mother liked it) she realized that Dogwood was badly in need of a cleaning woman to dust and mop and do probably a dozen other tasks she never thought about.
“Now, my dear,” her mother said, as Astrid handed the drink over. “All men cheat; you cannot go to pieces over a little infidelity.”
“It’s not that,” Astrid said with a sigh. In fact, this assertion did make her think of the time, before they were engaged, when she’d found Charlie in bed with Gracie Northrup, a rather full-faced girl a few classes ahead of her at Miss Porter’s. The memory made her heart sore. “Everything is peachy, really it is. We’re rich and we throw wonderful little parties and everyone wants to be just like us. Only, every now and then, forever sounds like an awfully long time, do you know what I mean?”
“Do I,” Virginia replied, rolling her eyes and sipping loudly from her highball. “I can’t tell you, sometimes I wake up in the morning and see Harrison there snoring into his pillow and I think—”
“Mother,” Astrid interrupted delicately. “Really, I thought you and Harrison were getting along so well.”
“Splendidly!” Virginia slurped again, muffling her tone with the sound of clinking ice cubes, so that Astrid wasn’t sure whether she was being sarcastic or not. “You know, Narcissa Phipps told me she saw you at the Yacht Club. The night of that big storm, when all the trees got uprooted. She said you two were making a real spectacle.”
“Who cares what that old bore says. I know you don’t.”
“Darling! Of course I don’t. Only…people do talk, you know. And once a girl has made herself very obvious, there is no going back. Now, you ought to do whatever you like and have as much fun as you possibly can. Lord knows that doesn’t last. But women like us…we always have at least one practice marriage early on. Maybe two or three.” Virginia sighed and cupped her daughter’s chin. “My dear, I have no idea what is happening between you and Charlie. Perhaps it is some quarrel that will seem absurd to you in a week or two. But you must not forget that if it does fall apart, well, a youthful divorce is nothing a few seasons in Europe and a new wardrobe won’t fix. You’d come out of that one fine. So long as you are not too far gone, that is.”
For a moment Astrid forgot that she was playing the sophisticated and careless married lady, and her voice became low and childlike. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course! Look at your mother. I know life seems dark at times, and a girl can feel awfully trapped. But something always comes up.” Virginia winked over the rim of her highball. “You’ll see.”
Astrid’s instinct was to throw her arms around her mother and kiss her on the cheek like a child, and she was saved from this only by the opening of the door onto the main hallway.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Both women turned to see Victor, slim in his denim shirt and pants, standing all the way across the room on the edge of the Persian carpet. At the Greys’, Victor never looked out of place—there were always rough men dressed in work clothes there. But at Marsh Hall, where people did not enter social rooms without the assistance of the butler and where the art was old but the furniture was replaced every year by an interior decorator, he was like someone from another world.
“That’s all right.” Virginia’s tone waxed seductive. “How can I help you?”
“I just wanted to tell Mrs. Grey that Jones called. He said that—well, that we should go back to Dogwood as soon as possible.”
“All right.” Astrid’s shoulders sank away from her neck with a disappointed sigh that was only half disingenuous, and when she stood to go she bent immediately to kiss her mother good-bye. “Thank you, Mummy, I’ll come back soon,” she said.
“He looks good enough to eat,” her mother whispered in her ear.
When Astrid drew away, she knew her mother was right. It was a long walk across the Marsh Hall parlor, and the closer she got to Victor, the more delighted she was to find him standing there looking good enough to eat, just as her mother said. Virginia’s advice had made her feel bold, and she let her hips rock as she traveled between tall marble lamps and soft sitting areas. Why had she wanted so badly to prove that she was nothing like her mother? Suddenly it seemed rather lovely for a girl to be a little fickle and change her mind now and then, if the result is more happiness.
At the threshold she didn’t say anything, but a dimple was obvious on one side of her face, and she gave Victor an audacious wink as she passed into the hallway. “Don’t forget: I turn eighteen Friday!” she called back to
her mother, before leaving the house.
The world as viewed from the backseat of a Daimler, chauffeured by a slim, pretty-eyed boy who happened to know how to kiss, was incredibly full. Astrid didn’t have to look at Victor to feel the wild electrical charge between them. Victor, my paramour, she thought to herself. Victor, my lover. Even in her thoughts the sentences made her lips curl and her spine shiver with delight.
When the car rolled to a stop, she lifted her drowsy lids and leaned forward and put her hand on the back of the driver’s seat. “Victor, you know I love you, don’t you?”
That was when she saw the tension in his neck. His head went to the left, the beginning of a shake, and their eyes met in the rearview mirror. But he didn’t shake his head. He winced, and she realized she had made a mistake. During the drive, while she had been lounging in the backseat of the car, he had not, contrary to all her fantasizing, been sharing her sense of elation. Before she could ask him what his worry was about, she noticed something else—they were not in Dogwood but parked on Main Street, in front of a square brick building with the words POLICE DEPARTMENT OF WHITE COVE carved in the lintel.
“I love you, too,” he said.
“Victor, what are we doing here?” she started to say.
But before he could answer, she knew. Jones and Charlie had emerged from the brick building and were getting into the car. The intimacy of the Daimler in the previous moment—the four walls containing her and Victor and everything lovely in the whole universe—was like a distant memory. As soon as Charlie slammed the door behind him, she felt the world close in on her as surely as she had felt it open when she floated across the vast parlor of Marsh Hall toward Victor. Her husband didn’t look at her—his eyes were smaller than she remembered them, and they burned above a tightly constricted mouth. Once Jones was situated in the front passenger seat, he gave the order that they should drive.
The Lucky Ones (Bright Young Things 3) Page 19
