by Rosie Thomas
‘Harriet,’ Caspar said wonderingly.
She smiled then, but without softness. ‘I’ve got to go back to London. First thing tomorrow morning.’
‘But you’ll stay for tonight?’
Caspar’s first thought was for his own concerns. She had known it would be, she had always accepted that. He had never claimed any interest in Peacocks.
‘Of course I will. But I must go,’ she repeated, ‘first thing tomorrow.’
Caspar levered himself out of his chair. ‘Come on then, baby. Let’s show them what we’ve got.’
When they stepped out of their limousine, in the line of limousines that chocked Hollywood on the evening of the Awards, and Harriet lifted her eyes from the tongue of carpet that ran all the way to the theatre entrance, all she could see was faces and camera lenses. The faces belonged to spectators, seemingly in their thousands, ranged on bleachers that rose in tiers on either side of the carpet walk. The noise they made was a muted roar, like the sea. The television crews and reporters and press photographers made a tighter, harder phalanx, much closer, pressing around the nominees as each one arrived. The lights dazzled Harriet, and the giant microphones seemed to crane forward into her face. Seeing it all, her first impulse was to duck back into the shelter of the car. Even in the days of Meizu Girl, she had never dreamt of exposure to such scrutiny.
But she didn’t duck. She stood up straight and shook out the tiers of ruffles at the back of her long red dress. She felt Caspar’s arm at her elbow and she turned to him. The expressionless camera eyes held them and relayed them to more invisible spectators, millions of them, across the world. Harriet was thinking of Robin, switching on some news bulletin that would cover the awards, waiting to see Caspar without her …
She gave Caspar a smile of perfect serenity, brighter than the lights that exploded around them.
‘Good luck,’ she whispered.
They walked arm in arm to the theatre entrance. A ragged, British-voiced cheer of support followed Caspar as he went.
Inside, for all the assembly of the hot and the bankable and the powerful, Harriet’s attention wandered. The preliminaries were long and tedious. Her thoughts focussed on London. As she smiled, with her head inclined just a fraction towards Caspar’s in case some audience reaction-shot should catch them, and transmit them across the hours to wherever Robin might be watching, Harriet was planning. Her first step must be to find out exactly what he intended to do. Her second, to put a stop to it. Before the meeting, it must be done before they came to the boardroom table.
Harriet applauded an award to a Polish animator. Even though she was here tonight, she reckoned, she would be in London with some forty hours to spare before 11 a.m. on March 31. That should be long enough. It would have to be long enough.
At last, Best Actor in a Supporting Role. She heard the words as from a great distance, but then the tiers of seats and the stars and directors and technicians came sharply into focus again. She leaned forward one inch in her seat, at the same time felt the infinitesimal stiffening beside her that was the only sign Caspar gave. They turned their faces to watch the brief clip of Caspar as the old spymaster in Open Secret. Harriet saw every frame suffused with a particular clarity, knowing it as well as if she had directed the picture herself, admiring every nuance of Caspar within it.
The Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The heavy pause and the corny business with the envelope. The recitation of a name, and the burst of delighted applause. A name, not Caspar’s.
Harriet looked at Caspar, stricken. At first sight, she thought he had suffered a stroke. One side of his face, from the eyelid to the corner of his mouth, drooped as if made of wax, melting. He stared straight ahead of him as Harriet touched his arm. She saw the falling corner of his mouth turn upwards as he made himself smile. He was applauding.
‘Clap,’ he commanded her.
Harriet beat her hands together until the palms stung.
It seemed incredible now, but she had never imagined what it would be like if he did not win. There was no escape. They were pinioned with their disappointment, among other disappointments.
It was a long time, but the end did come at last. Through a mist, Harriet watched Lord Olivier presenting the Best Picture award for Amadeus. Then they were retracing their steps, among the condolences, out into the blue evening.
Caspar said, ‘I need a fucking drink.’
‘Caspar—’ Harriet was going to say I’m sorry, you deserved to win it, all the other pointless clichés of consolation, but he cut her short.
‘A bargain’s a bargain.’
It was only then that she remembered their pact about his drinking.
‘I know you need a drink,’ she answered, ‘I’ll have one with you.’ Her London flight was scheduled to depart at 9.40 a.m. Check-in 8.15. Time to drink with Caspar, to pack her suitcases, perhaps even to sleep a little. Their car materialised out of the polished grid of cars.
‘Right,’ Caspar said grimly. ‘Let’s party.’
They were going to the night’s best party. Not the official bash, but the annual celebration hosted by a super-agent, one of the legendary powerful.
As soon as they arrived, into the throng of women who cooed and men with warm handshakes, Harriet knew that Caspar was heading for a bad drunk. Everything about him, even the way he held his body, as if it hurt him a little, reminded her of the New Year’s party at the Landwiths’.
The party swallowed him up. The momentum of it never allowed his glass to empty.
Harriet prowled the outskirts. She was remembering Linda’s words beside the carousel on Santa Monica pier and the finger of premonition. It was true that she did not belong here. She would have to hurry on home.
Once, from across the room, she smiled her assurance at Caspar. He was talking and laughing, giving the impression that he was enjoying himself. She did not want him to feel the necessity of concern for her, not tonight. But she felt the way that the people, and the occasion, and the tide of drink held them apart. The irony of it, that she had planned for their intimacy after the awards and – laughably as she saw it now – for Caspar’s salvation from the bottle, touched her and made her heavy and sad. Something was ending, not with a bang but with the hollow echo of defeat.
At midnight, Harriet detached herself from her seventh conversation with the seventh stranger and went in search of Caspar. She found him at a table in an inner room. He was sweating and his face was marked with lines. Harriet didn’t recognise any of his companions.
She said gently, ‘Caspar, can we go home soon?’
He looked up at her. His blue eyes were dimmer offscreen and they were glazed as they had been that first day. She was not sure if he knew who she was.
‘Go?’ Caspar said. ‘Like hell. It’s still early.’
‘May I go, then?’
He spread his hands in puzzlement. ‘Why not?’ Then he collected himself. As she had discovered at Little Shelley, he could exert charm even in advanced drunkenness. ‘Harriet. Dear anxious Harriet. Take the car. Tell the driver, just take the car.’
‘How will you get home?’
He grinned at her, his eyes sliding again. ‘Somehow. It’s my town. Or I’ll just stay here.’
She was going to say, But in the morning I have to go …
She stopped herself. She bent quickly instead, put her hands to turn up his face and kissed him on each cheek. There were whitish deposits at the corners of his mouth and his breath was loaded with whisky.
‘Good-night,’ she smiled at him.
The limousine swept Harriet back to the ranch house, along the twinkling avenues lined with palm trees under the warm velvet sky, on her last night in Hollywood. Vernon opened the door to her. The house was dark and very quiet. Harriet packed her belongings and laid the red dress on top. The silence was oppressive, no longer remotely luxurious.
She hesitated by the telephone, then picked it up and dialled the number of Charlie Thimbell’s newsp
aper office. To her surprise he answered. She had half-imagined that he would be out, or at lunch.
‘Harriet? You’re back?’
‘Not quite. Charlie, what did you mean when you called me before I left? A tip-off, you said. A tip-off from who, meaning what?’
‘You asked which I’d put first, you or a good story.’
‘Put me first. Tell me what you heard.’
‘I had lunch with a PR.’
Harriet listened intently. One publicist had told Charlie Thimbell over a bibulous lunch that a fund manager at Associated Assurance had been invited to use his organisation’s shareholding in Peacocks in support of a management restructuring. The fund manager had refused, claiming that Harriet Peacock was heading up the company through a satisfactory growth curve.
‘Who was doing the inviting, Charlie?’
‘I didn’t hear tell. Doesn’t take much guesswork, though, does it?’
‘Not much,’ Harriet considered. It was City gossip; a thousand similar titbits circulated every day, and some of them were given enough credence to affect share prices. Peacocks’ price was steady, she had not been over-confident to dismiss Charlie’s warning before she left. Only today’s summons made sense of speculation. Robin must indeed have been summoning support.
For what battle?
‘Charlie, will you do me a favour? Ask around some more? Without frightening the horses?’
‘Yeah. I’ll make some calls. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing’s happened. I’m just suspicious.’
‘When are you back?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘Did he win?’
‘No.’
‘Damn. He deserved to.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow, Charlie. Thanks.’
Charlie sat back in his chair. Something had happened, however Harriet chose to deny it. He took out the anonymous notebook in which he kept the telephone numbers that were not stored in his secretary’s Rolodex. Before he dialled the first, he checked Peacocks’ price. They were down a shade, at two-twenty. Charlie’s nose continued to scent a good story, but he knew that whatever was afoot was far from good for Harriet. She was doing right to get herself back to London at top speed.
Harriet walked through the silent house, picking up a magazine and putting it down again, wandering out to breathe the night scents beside the pool and then turning her back on the seductive dark. Vernon had retired to his own cottage beyond the garden.
The time passed very slowly as Harriet waited and listened. But she never even heard the sound of a single car to lift her hopes. The silence seemed absolute.
At a few minutes after 2 a.m. she knew that she would have to go to bed and try to sleep a little before her flight. It appeared that Caspar was not going to come home, at least not to spend this last night with her. It was the last night, Harriet knew that.
She undressed, her head and hands heavy, and went to bed.
It seemed that she had been asleep only for a matter of minutes before the telephone woke her. She groped for it, the shreds of a dream still caught together by its ringing. Her first thought was that it must be London; Charlie, perhaps, or even Robin, to explain away a mistake.
And so it took even longer for Harriet to distinguish what the thick Angeleno voice at the other end of the line was trying to tell her. She blinked at the clock-face and saw that it was 5.15 a.m.
‘I think you must have the wrong number.’ But even as she spoke Harriet realised that it was not the wrong number, it was the right number, and the emergency room of whatever hospital it was in Sherman Oaks was trying to tell her that Mr Jensen had been brought in following an automobile accident on Mulholland Drive.
Drowsiness fell away, to be replaced by fear.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. Where is he? Is he hurt?’
Mulholland Drive, under the Santa Monica Mountains with wide views across the San Fernando Valley, Harriet had driven it in her city explorations; what was Caspar doing there?
The voice repeated the address of the hospital, Harriet managed to scribble it down.
‘The police do this, miss. Only seeing it was Mr Jensen …’
‘Thank you, thank you. Please tell me, how bad is it?’
‘He’s hurt, but conscious.’
‘I’ll come at once.’
For a moment, Harriet had no idea what to do. She was alone in a dark house, clutching the address of a hospital she had no idea how to reach. On Caspar’s side of the bed the covers still lay undisturbed. She hesitated for only a second. Then she pulled on the clothes she had laid out for flying home and ran out of the house. The space in the driveway where the white sedan was usually parked was empty. She remembered that Vernon garaged it when it was not in use, she had not the first idea where. Harriet ducked her head and ran, across the garden and through a wall of thick, snaky greenery to the butler’s cottage. Her hammerings on the door produced no response, so she ran around the little house and rapped on the windows. At last a light flicked on behind the closed shutters. Harriet ran back to the front door and as soon as it opened she stumbled into the little hallway, almost too breathless to gasp out her message. The cottage was tiny. Over Vernon’s shoulder she saw a few feet into his bedroom. A Chinese boy was sitting up in the bed, unwinkingly staring at her.
Harriet turned, putting her hand imploringly on Vernon’s arm. ‘I’m sorry. Caspar’s had a car accident. He’s in a hospital, I need the car, hurry Vernon.’
The butler reacted with impressive speed. A moment later Harriet found herself bundled into a dim garage behind the cottage. The car engine fired, and they swung out of the garage and down the driveway.
‘Where is it?’ Vernon asked as they shot through the gates. Harriet looked at the scrap of paper in her hand.
‘Moor Park Hospital, Sherman Oaks.’
‘Not so very far.’
‘Do you know the way?’
‘I’ll find it.’
Harriet almost wept with gratitude, imagining how it would have been if she had had to drive herself.
The night’s silence was gone. There were cars and trucks on the road with the approach of daylight.
‘What can he have been doing over on Mulholland Drive?’ Harriet was talking more to herself than to Vernon, but he answered without looking at her, ‘Party night.’
The hospital was a slab of concrete and glass set in a small, green park. They left the car and found their way through automatic doors to the accident and emergency room. ‘Mr Jensen?’ Harriet asked at a desk.
An orderly indicated that they were to wait. There was a row of green chairs set against a wall behind them. They sat down obediently and waited. The hands of the clock above the orderly’s head reached 6.25 a.m. Harriet knew that she would not, could not reach the airport in time for her flight. Knots of anxiety for herself as well as for Caspar began to harden in her stomach. Anxiety made her voice brusque when she strode back to the desk and demanded to see Caspar, or a doctor, or someone who could give her some proper information.
‘The police are with him right now,’ Harriet was told.
‘The police?’
‘Sure. There’s been an accident.’
New knots tightened within her. She felt foreign, incapacitated. At last a doctor came to find them. He wore a short blue coat, he looked young and tired, like any hospital intern. He looked doubtfully at her.
‘Are you Mrs Jensen?’
‘No. I’m a friend. And this is a member of Mr Jensen’s staff. How is he?’
‘He’ll be OK. He was quite lucky.’ The doctor’s expression did not seem to match the news he gave them.
‘So can we see …?’
‘I’m afraid, I’m sorry to have to say, his passenger is dead. She was dead on arrival.’
Harriet stared at him. ‘His passenger? That can’t be right. He wasn’t driving, he didn’t even have a car, I drove here in his car less than an hour ago.’
‘The car was
registered in Miss Getz’s name, but Mr Jensen was driving it. Did you know her?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘No, it can’t be right. He couldn’t have been driving.’
But she was remembering the day they went to the Waterside, when they drove away and left the sneak photographer and the regatta gaiety of the Thames behind them. Can you drive? Caspar had asked, and she had answered, I couldn’t. Then you will have to let me, Caspar had said. Had he said the same to Miss Getz, whoever she was, who had died in her car on Mulholland Drive?
‘The police will give you the details,’ the doctor said. He was awkward; Harriet could see that he wanted to get away from her denials and go back to his work. She nodded, feeling a weight of weariness descend on her.
Caspar was in a room only a few yards from where they had been waiting. The police were still with him, preparing to leave having presumably taken whatever statement they required. They were a man and a woman, flat faced, who stared incuriously at Harriet and Vernon.
Harriet did not want to ask them anything. She stood back against the wall until they manoeuvred past her to the door. When they had gone, and the door was closed, she went to the bed and looked down at Caspar. A black-edged gash and a fresh bruise distorted one side of his face. He must have vomited, for a crust of it stiffened the hair at his temple. Harriet closed her eyes and opened them again. She was thinking of Linda.
Behind her shoulder, Vernon said, ‘I’ll be outside, Mr Jensen.’ Harriet could see that Caspar was still drunk. She sat down and touched his wrist with her fingers. He looked at her and moved his head on the pillow. The movement hurt him.
‘How does it feel?’ Harriet asked gently.
He attempted a shrug. ‘I bounced, more or less. Drunks do. The doctor said so. If I’d been sober, I’d probably be dead.’ His eyelids dropped, but then he forced them open again. Harriet could only guess at the sight behind them, that he would not contemplate. ‘The girl is dead. Did they tell you that?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I was driving the car. So the police tell me. I don’t remember that part. Only afterwards.’
Harriet said nothing, because she couldn’t think of anything. She was seeing Linda, riding the carousel on the pier, and somehow the image became fused with Miss Getz, once a little girl with ribbons in her hair, waving from her carved and gilded horse.
