Araluen

by Judy Nunn

  ‘What do you think, Emma?’ Derek had now taken to asking. And, invariably, Emma would find a diplomatic way to agree with his views without undermining those of Marcel. It appeared she had Marcel around her little finger, which certainly made Derek’s life a lot easier.

  Marcel Gireaux was in love with Emma. He was convinced of it. And it wasn’t ‘la folie du filmage’. If it were merely movie madness he wouldn’t have been so drawn to her in Paris, would he?

  He recalled their first meeting, when they’d sat and eaten croissants in the Rue Lafayette and she’d spoken about herself with such candour. He recalled her simple statement, ‘I enjoy going to the theatre alone’. And then, that night, backstage, ‘You were magnificent,’ she’d said. And she’d meant it. Yes, Marcel thought, she had beguiled him then and she was beguiling him now.

  He tried to be near her, alone with her, as often as he could. But she was invariably with Stanley or Derek. It was frustrating.

  ‘Would you care to have a drink with me after filming today, Emma?’ he would ask. ‘Yes, I’d love to,’ she’d answer, ‘but shall we make it my place? Stanley’s coming over.’ Or, ‘Yes, I’d love to drop in for a drink, Marcel – do you mind if Derek comes too? We have a bit of production business to discuss; I promise it won’t take long.’ Marcel didn’t know what to make of it. Her answers were so ingenuous.

  But they weren’t ingenuous at all. Emma was fully aware that Marcel was attracted to her and that he wanted to be alone with her. She found it most disconcerting. Surely he didn’t want to sleep with her? He was known to be a loyal, happily married man with children. She couldn’t believe that he wanted to seduce her, and she didn’t want her deep admiration for him to become tarnished. But there was another reason she was disconcerted, another reason she sought not to be alone with him. He was one of the most attractive men she had ever met.

  There were only three more weeks to go in Fiji. Then it was back to New York and the city locations. Marcel watched Emma, deep in conversation with Stanley and a couple of others. He watched as Derek came up to them. And he watched as Derek quietly said goodnight and left. Alone.

  Emma remained chatting for a while with Stanley. Marcel knew it wouldn’t be long before she too left the party. Things were hotting up. The music was loud, the atmosphere was raucous and soon the crowd, exhausted with dance and drink, would gather around for the singalong. That was Marcel’s favourite part of the evening. He would invariably lead the troops with his fine baritone voice. Not tonight, he decided, hoping that Stanley wouldn’t leave with Emma.

  Stanley usually stayed. He played guitar and he enjoyed the singalongs. There were two other guitar players and several excellent singers amongst the crew, and Stanley found that the harmony of voices and instruments and the vivid sunrise over the horizon was an excellent way to round off the night.

  Marcel watched as one of the crew members started strumming his guitar in a corner. Several others gathered around him. And then he noticed Emma leave. Quietly he slipped out the rear door of the recreation hut.

  She bumped into him accidentally. Or so it appeared.

  ‘Marcel,’ she said, surprised. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going home? You’re usually one of the stayers.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ he answered. ‘Tonight I have decided that we must talk. Tonight I will not let you escape me.’

  ‘I’m very tired, Marcel.’ Emma’s disappointment lent a brusqueness to her tone and she knew it. If she was being rude, then that was just too bad. She’d been right. He was brazenly trying to seduce her while posing as the blissfully happy family man and she didn’t approve of his double standards.

  She turned to go, but he stood in front of her with one hand upon her arm – not forcefully, but firmly. ‘Why do you avoid me, Emma? What is it you think I want of you?’

  Emma was in a state of confusion. She was conscious of their closeness. The touch of his hand upon her bare skin was confronting. And she was at an utter loss as to what she was expected to say. How did you tell a man that you thought he was trying to seduce you?

  He said it for her. ‘You think I wish to make love to you?’ Her silence spoke for itself. ‘Of course I do. The man who wouldn’t wish to make love to you would have to be a fool.’ He took his hand from her arm but remained standing in front of her, blocking her way on the narrow path. ‘But that is not what I want from you, that is not what I am after. I wish to be your friend. I wish us to talk. Is that so bad?’

  Emma was starting to feel a little foolish. Perhaps she had been overdramatic. It was just that the man was so damned attractive and so damned French and such a glamorous movie star and he made her feel so … Australian, so … ordinary … Suddenly, she was angry with herself. Very angry. What the hell was wrong with being Australian and ordinary?

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcel,’ she said and boldly took his arm. ‘Of course we can be friends. Now, come on, you can walk me home.’

  Marcel was a little surprised, but he met her brisk pace as they started walking the several hundred yards towards her cabin. He was further surprised when, at the front door, she invited him in for a drink. He had anticipated asking her to his cabin; he was unaccustomed to women taking the lead. ‘Thank you, I would like that,’ he agreed.

  When Emma had poured him a scotch, she sat back in the little hardbacked chair beside the desk and gestured to the sofa. ‘Have a seat, please.’ Marcel sat, wishing she would join him on the sofa. ‘I’m sorry I insulted you by presuming you wished to seduce me, Marcel. I would like to be your friend, I truly would, I am a great admirer of you and your work.’ She sipped her scotch. ‘Tell me about your family.’

  Marcel looked at her for a second or so before he laughed. She wasn’t ridiculing him, she meant it. What an extraordinary young woman she was. He would have preferred to tell her how deeply he loved her, he would have preferred to touch her skin and kiss her lips and hear her moan. But he hadn’t been lying when he’d said that seduction was not what he wanted from her, not what he was after. Marcel never seduced a woman who didn’t desperately want him back. Her desire -indeed, her adulation – was his aphrodisiac.

  Now, as he looked at Emma, he wanted her to like him. He wanted her to smile for him. He wanted her to be his friend. There would be time for her to know that he loved her.

  ‘My family,’ he said, ‘you wish to know of my family?’ And he told her. He spoke glowingly of his beautiful and accomplished wife, Annette. ‘I doubt whether I would ever have graduated from university if it had not been for Annette,’ he said. And he boasted of his children, the proud boast of a genuinely loving father. It was difficult not to warm to him, Emma thought as she got up to pour them another drink.

  ‘Look, Emma, come and look.’ When she turned with the drinks in her hand, he was standing beside the open door admiring the first dawn light to streak the sky. She joined him. ‘Only three weeks to go,’ he said with a touch of sadness. ‘I shall never forget these dawns.’

  ‘Me either,’ she agreed as she handed him the drink.

  He wanted to add, ‘And I shall never forget you.’ He longed to take her in his arms and kiss her. But he didn’t. ‘Tell me about your fiance,’ he said, his tone was very gentle. ‘He died four years ago?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emma answered.

  ‘And there has been no one since?’

  She shook her head, not quite trusting herself to speak. She knew the conversation was taking a dangerous turn. She knew she should turn brittle, change the subject, tell him it was time to go, but for some strange reason she wanted to cry. She was probably a bit drunk, she supposed, although she certainly didn’t feel it.

  ‘You loved him?’ Marcel asked and she wished his voice wasn’t quite so warm and attractive and concerned.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Well, I thought I did at the time. I was very young.’ She blinked hard, willing away the threat of tears. It was just the dawn light and the colour of the palm trees and the ocean and the sand, she told herself.


  He took her glass from her and she remained staring out across the sea. She supposed she knew what was coming next. Had she been fooling herself? Was this what she’d been hoping for all along? She didn’t know any more. His arms were suddenly around her and she didn’t know. ‘I am very much in love with you, Emma,’ he said. And she didn’t care. She knew she didn’t love him but she knew she wanted him and as his arms encircled her and his mouth found hers, her body screamed to be touched. For four long years she’d denied her sexuality and now she ached with desire. She ached to be kissed and caressed and to feel their bodies become one. She opened her mouth and returned his kiss as hungrily as he gave it.

  After Marcel had gently stroked her cheek and told her once again that he loved her, Emma watched him quietly slip out the back door to make his way, unobserved, through the palm trees and ferns to his own cabin higher up the hill.

  She lay staring at the low wooden ceiling but not seeing it, aware of the gentle hum of the fan in the corner and the movement of the air it created, as the artificial breeze caressed her naked body. She tried to feel guilty, but she couldn’t. Not just yet. She rolled over and let the fan caress her buttocks and back. She felt too sated, too content, to suffer guilt just yet. Marcel was a wonderful lover – she’d never experienced such a lack of inhibition in herself.

  She recalled how she’d moaned as his mouth moved gently down from her breasts, to her belly, to her mound. How she’d parted her legs and watched as his head nuzzled between her thighs and how she’d tensed and held her breath as she felt his tongue, gentle at first, then persistent, then defiant, demanding her to lose control. And she had. On and on, the waves of pleasure had engulfed her. And just when she thought she could take no more, he entered her and the exquisite process started all over again until Marcel himself could take no more and they quivered on the brink together. Emma recalled her own cries of ecstasy mingling with his as she clung fiercely to him.

  Had that really been her? she wondered as she listened to the hum of the fan. Her lovemaking with Malcolm O’Brien had never been so prolonged, so abandoned. Had she been starved for sex, or was it simply the fact that Marcel Gireaux was a superb lover?

  The truth was, Marcel was only as good a lover as his partner wanted him to be. When a woman wholeheartedly gave herself to him, the exercise of his control was the greatest source of delight to Marcel. He had sensed it was the first time Emma had given herself so completely and her response had been inspiring. He had revelled in her sexuality as much as she had in his.

  Marcel lay on the bunk in his cabin staring up at his own wooden ceiling and feeling the breeze from his own corner fan. He could think of nothing but Emma. The feel of her, the smell of her. He thought not only of her sexuality but of her voice, her laugh, her refreshing honesty. His love for her consumed him. And she loved him back, he knew she did.

  So certain was he of their mutual love that he was puzzled by her reaction to him later that evening during the Sunday dinner in the recreation hut. He realised that they must keep their affair secret – it was the tasteful and considerate thing to do. But there were ways to flash hidden messages of love and lust, and Emma was doing none of these.

  He looked at her across the table as she accepted the glass of mineral water Derek poured for her before resuming her conversation with Stanley.

  Sunday evening mealtimes were always a laid-back affair. Many were nursing hangovers and everyone went to bed early in preparation for the first of the week’s dawn shoots.

  Apart from her normal friendly greeting Emma had paid him virtually no attention during the meal. He understood, of course, but …

  ‘You don’t need to play it quite so cool,’ he smiled.

  He had once again bumped into her ‘accidentally’ as she left the recreation hut, and he started walking with her to her cabin.

  Emma said nothing until they reached the front door.

  ‘May I come in?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Marcel, you may not,’ she answered. Not rudely, not even curtly, she hoped, but definitely. She didn’t want any arguments.

  Emma’s lack of guilt had not lasted long. As the day had progressed, she’d thought of Marcel’s wife and children and of the facade he presented to the world. Did he do this often? she wondered. No matter whether he did or not, she told herself, it was up to her to end it. Now. Now, while there was nothing more between them than an indulgent night of lust on a South Pacific island during a film shoot. Just a night of fantasy, that’s all it had been, she told herself. And that was all it must remain. Marcel was an attractive and desirable man and a liaison between them was far too dangerous to contemplate. Not only dangerous in the hurt it could bring to his wife and family, but …

  Exactly, she thought, don’t kid yourself that you’re being totally noble, Emma – face it, it’s been a long time and you’re vulnerable. Particularly to a world-famous sex symbol and movie idol.

  That was when she was jolted back to reality. That was when, in an instant, her resolve was strengthened. She was the producer, for God’s sake! What the hell did she think she was up to, screwing the star? It was grubby and tacky and, although many did it, she wasn’t that sort of producer and she knew she’d feel utterly humiliated if word got out and the crew thought that she was.

  ‘You may not come in,’ she repeated firmly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Marcel was staring at her, dumbfounded. ‘But I love you,’ he said. ‘You love me.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ she replied and now there was a curt edge to her tone. She needed to get rid of him as quickly as possible – her body was starting to respond to the nearness of him. ‘And you don’t love me.’

  She continued quickly before he could interrupt. ‘I’m happy to remain your friend – I’d like to remain your friend, Marcel – but that’s all there is between us, you have to understand that.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer but stepped inside the cabin and closed the door behind her, leaning against it waiting to hear his departing footsteps. It was several minutes before she did and, when he finally started up the path towards his own cabin, she breathed a sigh of relief. Or was it a sigh of regret? she wondered momentarily.

  Whatever – that was it. But she didn’t sleep well that night as she remembered how his hands had caressed her body, and the way his tongue had driven her wild.

  For the remaining weeks of the shoot, Marcel didn’t appear to be himself. Everyone commented on it. He was moody and irritable, not at all the amenable, easy-going actor to whom they’d grown accustomed. He was behaving more like the star they’d expected in the first place. Oh well, it had been a long shoot and, despite the beauty of the location, everyone was beginning to miss home and family. It was to be expected, they supposed.

  Marcel was in torment. He tried many times to talk privately with Emma but she always avoided him and, on the odd occasion when he did manage to find her alone, the answer was always the same: ‘Leave it, Marcel. It’s over.’ He was teased beyond endurance. This had not happened to him before. Was she playing games with him?

  He had never forced himself upon a woman and he had no intention of starting now, but on the last night of the shoot when the party was at its height, he left early and waited for Emma outside her front door.

  He was sitting on the verandah, swinging his legs in the moonlight, when she walked up the path. The sound of the revellers was still loud in the night. It was close and humid, a tropical storm was threatening and the very air hung heavily upon her skin.

  She knew the moment she saw him that she was going to weaken. She’d been so strong. Oh shit, she thought, don’t do this to me, it’s not fair. But it was the last night on the island and she knew she couldn’t resist him.

  Send him away, one part of her brain said, he’ll go if you ask him.

  Then the memories of their lovemaking flooded her mind and her body made the decision for her.

  What the hell, she thought. This was their last night on
a desert island together, a woman could only hold out so long, for God’s sake.

  ‘Emma, I had to see you. I – ’

  She threw caution to the wind. ‘Come in, Marcel.’ She opened the door, took him by the hand and, to his astonishment, all but dragged him inside the hut. He’d been prepared to get down on his bended knees, to beg her to let him love her. But before she’d even closed the door, she was kissing him and touching him and pulling off his clothes.

  Emma abandoned herself completely. The very elements were on her side, she thought. The storm broke over the island and the wind lashed and the palm trees clashed and the ocean swept itself into a frenzy. And, all through the fury, sweat mingling and skin sliding wet against skin, Emma gave herself up to her pleasure.

  When they returned to Viti Levu the next day, the air washed clean by the overnight storm, Marcel was in high spirits. He even told Derek that he was looking forward to working in New York. Marcel loathed New York, he always had. But Emma was going to be there. She loved him, he was sure of it – just as he loved her.

  Everyone was pleased that Marcel’s enthusiasm had returned. His ill-humour had infected the entire company but, in true good-natured style, they forgave him. He’d become bored with the island, that was all. After several months they all had; it was perfectly understandable.

  Emma was aware of the reason for Marcel’s buoyancy and her guilt returned tenfold. She cursed herself for her weakness. She didn’t love him, she knew it. And, despite his protestations, she was convinced that he didn’t love her. What was it he’d said to her? ‘This is not la folie du filmage, Emma. I love you. I love you deeply.’

  ‘Movie madness’ – what a perfect term, she thought. And she tried to put her guilt behind her. New York would sort everything out, she told herself. Michael would be there and he was a hard taskmaster.

  Ahead of them lay the final three-week shoot culminating in the scenes of the motorcade through the streets of the city. The orchestration of the motorcade would be the most intricate and difficult sequence of the entire film – the whole of New York celebrating the triumph of the ‘Earth Man’ and the redemption of the planet. Yes, it would be a busy time, Emma told herself. There would certainly be no place for movie madness.