101 Pieces of Me

by Veronica Bennett

  I laid the dress on the bed and used the bathroom, then I knocked on David’s door. “All yours!” I called.

  There was no answer for a few seconds, then I heard a muffled sound, which I took to be his acknowledgement of the empty bathroom. I went back into my room and closed the bathroom door, unbuttoning my blouse, my mind busy, wondering which shoes out of the two pairs I had brought I should put on for dinner. Would we be dancing? Should I wear the more comfortable pair?

  I took off my blouse and skirt, and pulled up my petticoat to take off my stockings. But as I took hold of the fastenings on my suspender-belt, there was a sudden noise, and a flash. And there, in that ordinary room in an old-fashioned hotel in a place that should have been called Creamton, my world ended.

  The flash dazzled me. Gasping, I put my hand up to shield my eyes. A man had flung open the door from the bathroom: a man in a dark overcoat and trilby hat, with a camera round his neck and a flash bulb in his hand. I drew breath to scream, but someone came up behind me and put their arm round my throat. A strong, masculine arm. I was dragged backwards towards the bed, pushed down and held there. Astoundingly, the man pinning my shoulders to the pillows was David.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, half-blinded by the curtain of hair that had fallen over my face during our struggle. “Call the manager! This man is a criminal! Call the police!”

  The man had a straggly moustache and looked unwashed. I was sure we had fallen victim to one of the “dubious types” David had warned me about, an obvious blackmailer. But David didn’t seem to care. He kicked my suitcase and the silver dress to the floor, his face grim, perspiration gleaming on his forehead. “Shut up!” he hissed. “He’s not a criminal, you little idiot!”

  “But—”

  I was silenced by his hand over my mouth. It was then I realized that he did not have his shirt on. His braces hung loose, and the top button of his trousers was undone. Real fear gripped me; my body seemed cold and unaccountably heavy. Again I tried to scream but produced only a sort of whimper. “If you make a sound,” David told me, “I’ll turn you out into the street, half naked or not.”

  He took his hand away from my mouth but grasped my face between both his hands and pressed his lips to mine. I heard the click-squawk of the camera, and there was a flash. “Got that one, sir,” said the man.

  Strain as I might, I could not move. David’s superior weight and strength held me where I was. He pulled down the straps of my petticoat. Another click-squawk, another flash. He grabbed me by the elbows and thrust my arms around his waist. Before I could retrieve them, there was another click, another squawk, another flash. I tried to sit up; again and again David pushed me down.

  “Got enough, I think, sir,” said the man, lowering the flash bulb.

  “Good,” said David. “Now get those developed straight away. I’ll be in touch.”

  The man disappeared into the corridor, shutting the door softly behind him. David swung his legs off the bed and began to button his trousers. “God, I need a drink.”

  I had been too shocked to cry, but now the tears came. “David, will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  He looked down on me, his face dark with some elemental force I could not recognize. Even his rage when he had attacked Aidan had not shown itself like this; this was a mask of triumph and loathing, like a man would turn on his defeated opponent after a bloody battle.

  “Get up and get dressed,” he commanded. “I don’t care where you go, just get out.”

  “David, I beg you, tell me … what have I done? Have I displeased you?” A sob came into my throat and almost choked me, but I blurted the question I had to ask. “Don’t you love me any more?”

  These words only increased his fury. “Shut up, you stupid little fool!” he commanded. Then he seemed to soften a little and between heavy breaths said, “Go away and read your contract. If you try to breach it I will sue you.”

  I was still sobbing. “But I don’t understand,” I protested weakly. “David, please tell me—”

  “For Christ’s sake! Do you think I’ve taken all this trouble for my own amusement?”

  “I do not know what to think.” My brain felt useless, stunned.

  “Well, I haven’t.” David’s voice was shot through with misery. “I’ve done it to get rid of that bloody woman.”

  The memory of Marjorie Cunningham’s cap of golden hair flashed through my head. I gasped for breath. “What woman? Do you mean Mar—”

  He ignored me. “Of course, the court case will provide free publicity for the picture too, and keep those damned sharks off my back.”

  “What court case?” I was wailing now. “David, please…”

  “The divorce case, you fool!”

  I gasped, silenced by bewilderment. I had never felt my ignorance so keenly. Whose divorce case did he mean?

  “Don’t sit there gaping like a fish,” said David. “Here.” His jacket lay on a chair. He searched the pockets, his fingers trembling so much that his wallet got stuck as he tried to pull it out, and in his irritation he tore the pocket flap. He tossed a five pound note onto the bed beside me. “Now, get out of my sight, and don’t come near me again until your contract says you have to.”

  Even now, it is painful to write about the events of that evening. My heart, still full of the torment David Penn inflicted upon it, will not settle. The words live on the page, pulling me back down into that darkness, as unwelcome memories always do. I wish, despite all that has happened since, that I had never agreed to go to Brighton with him. I wish I had been more suspicious of his too-ready acceptance of my insistence upon separate rooms.

  I had been more innocent even than he knew. I had believed, with a naiveté beyond comprehension, that a man would take a woman away for the weekend and be content to meet her each morning in the dining room for breakfast and say good night outside her bedroom door. It still makes me blush to imagine what the hotel clerk must have thought when we registered as an unmarried couple and took separate rooms, albeit with a shared bathroom in between. That we were cousins? Or perhaps colleagues on official business? Or that Miss Williams must be an imbecile? David had called me a “little idiot”, and he was right.

  I sat on the bed for a long time, my tears drying on my cheeks. I wiped my eyes and looked at my fingertips; they were smeared with mascara. My actress’s eyes must be a sorry sight. But I could not bear to get up and inspect them in the mirror. I did not want to look at myself. I felt too numb to do anything.

  I still did not truly understand why David had done what he had done, but it was clear that I was now mixed up in the sort of affair that was discussed in Haverth only in whispers and never in mixed company or in front of children. There would be two versions of what had occurred in this room tonight – David’s and mine – and no one would believe my version. It would be the word of a … what did people call it? … a floozy, against that of a rich, respected film director. A floozy was an ignorant girl who went with men in order to get nice things – oh God, the bracelet! The dress! The dinners at the Ritz and the Café Royal! And in many people’s minds, as Florence had reminded me, an actress was little better than a prostitute.

  I went on sitting there, my dismay increasing. How I wished I had taken more notice of my contract! By agreeing to its terms, whatever they were, I had taken a step into the hidden undertow of a world neither I nor my family understood. But there was no retreating now. I could not face my parents and Frank, and especially Mary and Florence. I could never go back to Haverth and be Sarah Freebody again. And how could I face Jeanette and Maria and Dennis, and all the other film people who knew David and whom I had trusted as I had trusted him? I could not go back to the Thamesbank Hotel and be Clara Hope either.

  So where could I go?

  My wristwatch said seven minutes to eight. Wherever I decided to go, I had to set off soon or it would be too late to get a train. My head heavy with crying and confusion, I hauled myself to my feet. Sl
owly, without looking at my half-dressed state in any of the mirrors in the room, I took a clean blouse and a pair of stockings from my case and put them on.

  Once I was wearing my skirt and jacket again, I took up my hairbrush and sat down at the dressing-table. In my reflection I looked bony and black-eyed, like a small animal chased to the point of exhaustion, waiting for the hounds to gather for the kill. I began to brush my hair, moulding the waves round my fingers, musing on the fact that I was not a beautiful actress at all. I was the unfortunate victim – quite possibly deservedly so – of a confidence trick, and I certainly looked the part. Dejected, years older than my age, wondering if I could ever again believe what anyone said.

  I took off the make-up round my eyes and did not renew it. But I decided to put on lipstick, as my lost alter ego, Sarah Freebody, had always done. Suddenly, I wondered what had happened to that stick of lipstick from the chemists in Aberaeron, the first and only one Sarah had ever bought. Was it still in my make-up bag? I had an overwhelming desire to find it.

  The bag, a quilted satin one I had bought in Selfridges the same day as my fur, lay in a corner of my case. I rifled it desperately, hoping for a sight of that familiar brass tube. It was not there. I tipped the contents of the bag out onto the dressing table. Compacts, bottles, boxes and jars clattered on its glass surface. My old lipstick wasn’t there, but my eye caught a crumpled piece of paper with something written on it. Puzzled, I picked it up. 23, Raleigh Court, Bayswater, London W2.

  I read it twice, and realization dawned. This scrap of paper had been in my make-up bag since that day when I lay in my dressing room, suffering from my first hangover. Without doubt, the address belonged to the person who had written it: my erstwhile leading man, Aidan Tobias.

  I stared at the cigarette paper. It was such a small thing, so thin it was almost transparent, and the ink Aidan had written the words in was smudged and discoloured from its long sojourn among my cosmetics. But it was a miracle that it was there at all. Why had I not thrown it away as soon as Aidan had left the room that day? Contemptuous of him as I was, what had made me keep the paper? And what had he said as he had written on it? I closed my eyes and searched my memory. He had wanted me to take care. “Do not disregard yourself,” he had said, with a sadness I had not understood.

  I opened my eyes. Aidan had said something else that day. He had told me not to disregard “some people” who cared about me, which I had assumed meant himself. Knowing he was jealous of my affair with David, I had dismissed his words. But now I remembered them clearly. “They will be there if you ever need their help.”

  Aidan was the very last person on earth I wanted to see. Normally I would have run as far away as possible from his voice saying, “I told you so”. But things were not normal. With one stroke my journey away from Sarah Freebody towards a wise and sophisticated Clara Hope, capable of enchanting both David Penn and the cinema audience, had been derailed. I could not go in either direction, but I could not stay where I was either. However wary events had made me, I would have to take Aidan at his word. At least for now.

  I put the paper in my jacket pocket, crammed my hat on my head, touched my lips with lipstick, packed my case, picked it up along with my handbag and fur, put the key on the bedside table and left the room. I did all this as quickly as I could in order to stop myself thinking. I had to get out of the Royal Albion, and, for good or for ill, Aidan had offered me an escape route.

  In the corridor, I pushed the door to the stairwell and listened. The only sounds came from the dining room, where dinner was in full swing. I felt I would rather die than pass by the reception desk, with the clerks smirking and whispering. As quietly as I could, struggling a little with my case, I went down the stairs. At ground level there was a door bearing a notice saying Fire exit only. Please keep locked. My heart sank, but when I tried it I found it had the kind of lock you could open from the inside, but not the outside, without a key. Limp with relief, I twisted the latch, slipped through the door, pulled it behind me and stepped into the darkness.

  Victoria Station was as busy as usual. By the time the Brighton train arrived there the clock on the station forecourt said twenty to eleven. The ticket collector asked me if he should summon a porter, but I refused, embarrassingly aware that the five pounds David had given me might be the last money I acquired for a long time. So I carried my own case to the taxi rank.

  The night was cold, with that smoky edge London air always seems to have. Crowds of men and women, bundled in fur collars and gloves, their breath misting, flowed in and out of the station entrance. Ahead of me in the taxi queue, a couple no older than myself stood close to each other, her arm through his, their faces pink with expectation. Where were they going? Where had they come from? Why were they so happy? I tried not to look at them. The sight of all these people doing whatever they were doing on a normal Saturday night, laughing and talking and being with each other, deepened my already bitterly low mood. I dug my feet into the pavement and my hands into my sleeves and wished to die.

  “Where to, miss?”

  The young couple had gone off in their taxi, and the next one had drawn up. “Oh … Raleigh Court, Bayswater, please. Number 23.”

  The driver hopped out, put my bag in the luggage compartment and hopped back in again, whistling. I thought how uncomplicated being a taxi driver must be, and for a moment I actually envied him. But when the cab swung into the traffic, my envy disappeared. I realized I had never been in a London taxi alone at night before. David had always been there to chain my attention, so I had never been aware of the swarm of motor cars and horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, motor bicycles, double-decker omnibuses and hackney cabs swirling along the streets. It all looked so higgledy-piggledy, and there were so many lights and conflicting noises, I wondered how the driver could work out what to do and where to go without injuring himself or me. Rounding Hyde Park Corner, I was thrown sideways even though I was holding tightly to the strap above the taxi door.

  I am alone, I said to myself. I am grown up. For the first time in my life there is no one to do anything for me; there is only me.

  As the taxi slowed down, the driver looked from side to side of a narrow street, searching for number 23. I began to panic slightly. Supposing Aidan was away, or not in, or refused to answer the door?

  I leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Excuse me … could you please wait? The person I am visiting may not be there.”

  “Very good, miss.”

  In order to deposit my case at Aidan’s door, the driver had to come into the light that shone above it, and I saw for the first time that he was young. I started to envy him again. Much later tonight he would count his takings and go home to his mother or his wife. Tomorrow he would go out, perhaps to a football match. And tomorrow night, if anyone cared to look, they would find him as usual outside Victoria Station, ready for drunks, complainers, arguers… How lucky he was in his ordinariness! As I thanked him I noticed he was quite good-looking. I wondered bleakly if he would ever appear on a newsreel and be “spotted” for the films.

  When I rang the doorbell, footsteps sounded inside the building. The taxi driver tipped his cap. “That’ll be one-and-ninepence, miss.”

  I gave him two shillings. “Keep the change,” I told him, as I had heard David do. He touched his cap again before he returned to the waiting cab. And at the same moment the door of number 23 opened.

  “Good grief!” Aidan stood there with one hand on the door latch and the other in his pocket, his eyebrows in his hair. “Clara?”

  “Good evening, Aidan. May I come in?”

  In the train I had rehearsed the speech I would make to him. But now it sounded prim and spinsterish, as if I were an aunt addressing him in an I’m-determined-to-educate-you tone.

  He gave one of his exaggerated stage bows. “By all means, madam.” He caught sight of my suitcase. “And you’ve come to stay! How positively de-licious!”

  The spinster aunt vanished. “Sh
ut up, Aidan, and help me with this, will you? I’ve had a long day and I’m exhausted.”

  Grinning, he picked up the case. “Well, at the risk of offending madam, I must say you look it.” With his other hand, he pulled me into a small vestibule, from which rose a flight of polished wooden stairs. “This way.”

  I went up first. As the front door crashed closed behind me, something like the fear I had felt in the hotel room overwhelmed me. We were only halfway up, but my legs failed. I stopped and turned helplessly to Aidan, whose bemused expression immediately changed. “Clara, whatever has happened? You look …” – his eyes roamed my face – “has someone hurt you?”

  He was a blur. I do not know if it was tears or faintness that dissolved my image of him, but I could no longer support myself. I had escaped from the hotel, found Brighton Station, caught the right train, taken a taxi and arrived at 23 Raleigh Court, fired by determination not to allow David’s betrayal to defeat me and by my habit of imagining I was someone else, in this case a taxi driver. But now that I had caught hold of a lifebelt – Aidan was at least familiar, and he was here – I suddenly found myself nearer than ever to drowning.

  Aidan caught me around my shoulders and lowered me to a stair, where he sat beside me while I wept. The weeping became howling, and still he sat there calmly, comforting me with soft murmurs as one would a child, tolerating my shoulder-shaking sobs and dripping nose. When the flood lessened, he took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped my face while I hiccupped and sniffed. “Oh, dear …” I blurted apologetically, “what must I look like?”