by Rosie Thomas
Harriet took a sip of her champagne, smiling to herself, forgetting Charlie’s warning. She had come a long way.
Los Angeles exploded around Harriet like a firework display.
From her first glimpse of the city over the wingtip of the 747, an ivory and silver inlay within the curve of the Pacific, she was enchanted.
She forgot her flight-weariness as she came in a boiling crowd out of the terminal at LAX and took her first taste of the overheated, tainted air. She saw the car that Caspar had sent for her, a long black limousine with opaque black windows, in a press of similar cars that waited for the success stories to descend from the air and take possession of them, and she felt a bite of adrenalin in her blood that she had never known before.
The car swallowed her up with her two suitcases, and the driver touched his grey peaked cap.
‘Are you ready, ma’am?’
‘I’m ready.’
The car swept through the gritty low-built jungle of fast-food outlets and hoardings that surrounded the airport and as they drove Harriet saw that the drivers of the Fords and Buicks and beat-up Volkswagens that streamed alongside turned to peer vainly in at the opaque glass, as if they might rub so close to some celebrity.
She read a sign, San Diego Freeway, and looked ahead to see a solid ribbon of metal and glass and rubber that stretched away, shimmering in the heat. The city traffic. She could sense, rather than hear, that the surrounding air vibrated with the sound waves of a thousand radio stations. Fingers drummed on the steering wheels and the glinting metal all around her, as far as she could see, in response to some insistent and inaudible beat.
Up ahead an electronic sign flashed. 18:27. 87°. 18:27. 87°. 18:28, over and over. It was hot out there, but Harriet was cool in her air-conditioned cocoon. Instead of leaning back against the cushions and closing her eyes she pressed forward in her seat, willing the limousine to carry her faster.
Santa Monica Boulevard. The traffic here moved more freely, but four lanes abreast, past a green and black glass ziggurat of skyscrapers, past a great cream-coloured edifice like a modern cathedral, and more hoardings and flashing signs and words and colours that demanded her attention more stridently than any landscape she had ever passed through. She gazed out at it all, her eyes ready to jump further and faster than the car could travel. Under her breath she repeated, ‘Santa Monica Boulevard’. A car with the licence plate ACTREZZ sprang forward, sunglasses and vermilion lips at the wheel, and whirled away in the opposite direction.
Harriet laughed out loud, hungry for and at the same time awed by the appearance of the fabled city in front of her.
Now the limousine turned out of the traffic. Harriet saw a wide, quiet street more like other streets that she had known, except this street was lined with a double guard of four lines of sixty-foot palm trees. The leaf-fronds that sprouted gracefully out of the smooth, ringed boles were so still in the heavy air that they might have been cast in metal. There were no hoardings here, no Big Boy Burger signs, no gas stations. There were only cars that swept silently under the palm sentinels, past mown grass plateaux. Beyond the grass like velvet Harriet could see houses, white and pink and cream houses behind banks of flowers. The windows stared impassively over the flowers, meeting her gaze.
Harriet leaned forward and tapped on the glass panel that separated her from the driver. The obedient panel slid away with a humming sound.
‘What’s this area called?’ Harriet asked.
‘This here? This is Beverly Hills, ma’am.’
Beverly Hills, of course it was.
‘This is your first visit to LA?’
‘Yes.’
The man shook his head. ‘Ain’t no place like it. Crazy City, this is. You staying here long?’
‘No.’
He nodded now. ‘That’s the best way. You come and see it, then away you go home again.’
Harriet laughed. ‘That sounds like a warning.’
As they drove on, deeper into Beverly Hills, even the houses disappeared. Now all that was visible was greenery, starred with bougainvillaea and hibiscus and orange blossom, and the exclusion zones of manicured grass. There were high gates here and there, and the occasional roof-top was visible over the ramparts of foliage. It came to Harriet that this was a huge, subtropical version of Little Shelley.
The car began to climb a winding road. Turning to look back where they had come from, Harriet saw the dense carpet of city below, stretching westwards to the ocean. The sun was setting, casting an orange-golden sheet over the silver water. The view was magnificent, but there was nobody out to enjoy it. Harriet realised that they had not passed a living soul while they had been climbing the canyon road. A moment later the long black car was negotiating a tight corner between banks of lush greenery. Harriet glimpsed a sign that read, ‘AREA PATROLLED BY PRIVATE ARMED GUARDS 24 HOURS A DAY’.
The car stopped.
She opened the door and stepped out. The heat descended immediately on her head. Harriet saw that she was in the garden of a long, low, white-walled house. The house was cut off from the outside world but there the similarity to Little Shelley ended. In this garden, instead of the familiar dripping English shrubs, there were cacti and mysterious succulents, tall white arum lilies and tangled ivies, carpets of pink and purple blossom offset by the narrow black points of cypress trees, and abundantly scented flowering orange trees in earthenware pots. The drowsy silence was only broken, from somewhere close at hand, by the barking and rattling of chained-up guard dogs. Harriet hesitated. The low white ranch house seemed to have no front door, and the windows she could see were all shuttered. Then there was a movement in the thick of the glossy green leaves. A second later a man in an olive-green overall backed towards her, a watering-hose spraying a rainbowed arc from one hand.
‘Excuse me, which way is the front door, please?’
The gardener turned and stared blankly at her. Harriet repeated her question and he beamed, showing pink and grey gums, but still offered no response. She concluded that he was either stone deaf, or spoke not a word of English. A burst of loud music and some shouts and laughter came from somewhere very near. Out of the corner of her eye Harriet saw that the limousine was sliding away, leaving her two suitcases standing on the gravel.
The beaming gardener pointed away round the side of the house, towards the music and laughter. ‘Si, si,’ he encouraged her.
Harriet walked slowly. She was hot in her London clothes. The leaves had swallowed up all sound again; she could barely hear the sound of her own footsteps. Hanging tendrils and stridently scented blooms brushed her face. She walked all the way around one long wing of the big house.
She turned two corners and emerged suddenly on the pool terrace.
The terrace faced south-west, over the vista, and it held the evening light. In the diamond-shaped pool the choppy water reflected strings of lights that laced the trees. There were swimmers in the water and a very fat man who floated like a pink inflatable. Around the pool were women sitting and standing and lying, all wearing tiny bathing suits, and high-heeled sandals. The girl nearest to Harriet wore a black costume with huge bites taken out of it, the remaining shreds of black latex spangled with rhinestones.
A butler moved between the nearly-naked bodies, offering vermilion drinks crammed with bits of fruit. Fully dressed, in his white jacket and bow tie, he appeared to be wearing fancy-dress.
Caspar was standing on the edge of the pool. He was holding a full glass. With his head on one side, he seemed to be listening either to the voices of the girls, or to the music that had started up again. For a confused instant Harriet couldn’t determine if it was incongruous or quite predictable that the tune should be the Tea for Two tango. Caspar straightened his head and saw her.
He didn’t walk very steadily, but a moment later he reached her side. He put his arms around her, as she had known he would. It seemed to Harriet that no one else paid even the slightest attention.
‘Baby. I�
�m so glad you’re here. I wasn’t expecting you yet.’
He was pleased to see her. He was Caspar as he always was, magnified beyond common proportions, and she instantly became just Harriet, not Meizu Girl or even Success Story. She was tired but he woke her up, making her warily alert, ready to be taken by surprise. She had missed him and she was happy to see him. She kissed him on the mouth, tasting whisky.
‘I’m glad to be here.’ The music trilled in her ears. Tea for two, and two for tea. Me for you, and you for me.
‘Caspar,’ she whispered. ‘What’s going on? Who are all these people?’
He answered, out of the side of his mouth in his own mogul-speak, ‘Ya gotta do it, babe. This is Hollywood.’
The complicity drew her to him. Harriet let her head drop on his shoulder, the moment of bewilderment forgotten. She found to her surprise that she was laughing.
‘Welcome to LA. Would you care to tango?’
Me for you, and you for me …
He was a good dancer. His hand splayed at the small of her back, holding her against him. His other hand linked with hers and their cheeks touched. Harriet was stiff at first, but gradually she relaxed into the rhythm of the absurd dance. She found herself smiling, her eyes closed as she listened to Caspar humming. He felt solid and warm, and she liked the way that he held her.
The music changed to a waltz. The Blue Danube, even. Harriet drifted, dreamily submissive. Caspar murmured affectionately, his breath warming her ear. It was a good welcome, she thought. A good prelude.
They danced until Harriet remembered that she had been on an aeroplane for twelve hours, that her body was telling her it was seven in the morning after a sleepless night and a busy day. She stood still and let her hands drop to her sides. Caspar studied her with concern.
‘You’re tired. You want to shower, and sleep. Am I right?’
Harriet nodded her gratitude.
‘Of course you do. But Harriet, this is Hollywood. This is Academy Awards week. Before you sleep, you party. Come and meet the boys and girls.’
And so Harriet followed him obediently, shaking hands as she was introduced, trying to memorise the differences between the identical wide, perfect smiles that greeted her. The fat man was an agent, and the good-looking girls with their dauntingly worked-out bodies were actresses and editors and assistants. There were dark-haired men, too, who Harriet had not noticed at first. The men were writers and lawyers and accountants.
‘I’m a businesswoman,’ Harriet answered the questions. ‘An entrepreneur. No, nothing to do with movies.’ The people were friendly, but she knew that they recognised at once that she was an outsider. It was odd to feel dismissed, however cordially, when she had grown used to recognition.
Vernon the butler was British.
‘Good evening, madam,’ he said, as if they were all in Belgravia. ‘Would you care for a tequila sunrise?’ The difference was that he winked at her when she took her glass off his tray.
Harriet drank her drink. She sat down and talked to a girl in a pink bathing suit who admired her Jasper Conran jacket. ‘But aren’t you kinda hot?’ the girl asked kindly.
‘Stifled,’ Harriet said. ‘My luggage is still sitting outside the front door, I should think.’
The friendly girl pointed to the pool house. ‘There are all kinds of things hanging up in there. Goes with the house, I guess.’
Caspar was moving around between his guests. His voice was clearly audible, sonorously counterpointing the rest. Harriet watched him for a moment and then took the girl’s advice. She took off her clothes in the pool house and emerged, self-consciously white-limbed amongst the tanned bodies, in a scrap of iridescent latex.
Harriet sat down at the edge of the pool, dangling her legs in the velvety water. It was almost dark, and tiny lights in the trees shone like glow-worms. Los Angeles spread in front of her, a grid of lights that stretched all the way to the ocean. London seemed much further than half a world away.
Caspar was dancing with someone else. He smiled at Harriet over her shoulder. Harriet understood that this was another of Caspar’s worlds. When the party was over, whenever that might be, it would be their own time. She felt perfectly at home now. The tequila, two or three tequilas even, had gone to her head.
She stood up and stretched out her arms.
‘I’m going to swim,’ she announced, to no one in particular.
She arched her back and dived. She sliced through the water until her fingers met the bottom of the pool. Then she turned, slid upwards and bubbles like champagne fizzed around her head. When she broke out into the scented darkness again she rolled on to her back and floated. Her hair fanned out like weed. She was unassailable within the skin of water. Her impressions of the day and night unrolled behind her closed eyelids like hallucinations.
Sixteen
Afterwards, when everything that was going to happen was over and she had time to recollect – there would be no shortage of time – Harriet still liked to remember the first days of her visit to Hollywood.
The place always came back to her as an assault on all her senses. If she had thought about it en route, in her armchair five miles above Greenland, she might have predicted the scents of lilies and orange blossom, and the ripple of water on her sunburned skin. Her imagination might even have begun to grope towards the food, elaborate achievements of perfect simplicity set in front of her at Spago, or the Ivy or the Bistro Gardens, or in the pale, muted, absolute luxury of the dining room at the Bel Air Hotel. But she would never have dreamt of the silence, broken only by birdsong, that enveloped Caspar’s borrowed ranch house off Loma Vista Drive and which struck her, in the middle of this vast city, as far more luxurious than any of the effects achieved by the interior decorators of Hollywood. And then, when the silence was broken, she remembered the talk. Hollywood talk seemed to be conducted at a faster pace and with a different level of artistry from what she was used to in London. It was not that the subjects of conversation were profound or widely varied; rather that talk was conducted according to different rules. There was no reminiscence here, nor even any reference to defining principles like art, or history, or human experience. All was concerned with the future, and even the present was of interest only in as far as it affected what was about to happen.
The collective enthusiasm, flowing as dangerously as lava, released Harriet’s juices in response. She felt excited, charged by the proximity of so much wealth and power and energy. She loved the way that the answer to every question, any question, seemed to be yes. She had never been anywhere else where so much seemed possible, and then she smiled at her own misuse of the idea. Not possible. Not even probable, but sure-fire. After business in London, after cautious appraisal and sage head-shaking, to discover Hollywood was to seem to discover liberation.
Harriet gave up trying to promote Meizu and Peacocks. They were not movies. At one party, seduced by food and music and novelty, Harriet told Simon’s story to a young man as they sat together beside the sapphire oval of an illuminated pool.
‘It’s a great story,’ the young man said. ‘Are you working something up? Who have you been talking to?’
Harriet let her head fall back against the cushions of her seat. Above her the fronds of bamboos made a net against the navy-blue sky.
‘It’s not a story,’ she answered. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ he told her, intending encouragement.
Harriet learned quickly, as she always did. By watching and listening, she began to understand some of the nuances that governed this startling society. The creative talk, for all its artistry, cost nothing.
‘Bullshit’s alw ays been buckshee,’ Caspar remarked.
As Caspar’s companion, Harriet was both highly visible and effectively transparent. She was looked at a great deal but hardly noticed, and she accepted her temporary role in this perpetual pageant with good humour. She only wished, in the few reflective moments there was time for, that Caspa
r himself might see her more clearly. He escorted her to the parties and took her to bed afterwards, but she was never quite certain what position she occupied in his field of vision. He was drinking heavily, but he was doing everything else with comparable enthusiasm. He talked unstoppably, told stories and generated festivity wherever he went. He was wonderful company in that week, for Harriet and for everyone else who came into his orbit. Watching him at the parties, resisting her need to jump up and stand close to him to block out his sight of everything else, Harriet told herself that she must allow him this time.
Afterwards, after the Awards ceremony, she might claim him for herself.
For now, she would have to be happy with seeing him at the expansive peak of his enjoyment. It made her proud, as she grew more familiar with the inverted laws, to recognise the height of his wave.
They did not spend much time alone together. On the few occasions when they were at the ranch house without any of Caspar’s retinue, he seemed to prefer to spend his time reading or sleeping by the diamond pool. He read a great deal, consuming novels and history with the same appetite he applied to everything else. Harriet did not stand in front of him and demand, ‘Look at me,’ although sometimes she wanted to. Nor did she ask him why he had wanted her to be with him at the Awards, although it came into her mind more than once. Instead she left him to relax with his books, took the spongy white sedan that belonged to the house, and went to explore Los Angeles.
She had been least prepared for the beauty of it. The loveliness was obvious in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, and in the smaller avenues of West Hollywood where the miniature castles and mansions were matched in exoticism by the strange vegetation that sprang and twisted everywhere. But Harriet also found that she was drawn to the urban wastelands where acres of low shacks stretched behind gas stations and fast food hoardings, and where the sun leached colours from lurid advertisements and left a smoky, monotone landscape. Harriet cruised through it, in the air-conditioned cell of the white car, watching the city as it unfolded. Currents of excitement coursed in her blood.
