Valentina’s eyes sparkled wickedly. ‘Screen goddesses don’t need surnames, Miss Parsons.’
‘Indeed they don’t,’ Louella Parsons said, lights dancing in her eyes. She would forego her lunch interview and get the present conversation, suitably embellished, down on paper as fast as possible. ‘Goodbye Valentina. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of you in the future.’
She blew Rogan a kiss, aware that Worldwide’s leading male star was seething at being ignored, and hurried off.
‘Bitch,’ Rogan Tennant hissed when she was safely out of earshot.
‘I should have thought after the last little piece she did on you, you would be grateful that her interest was centred elsewhere,’ Vidal said wryly.
Rogan shrugged and, conscious of Valentina’s presence, forced a laugh. ‘She’s the least of my worries,’ he lied, aware, as every other movie star was aware, of the importance of appearing regularly in Louella’s column.
‘I thought she was nice,’ Valentina said, wondering who the people in the other booths were and why they were so interested in their table.
‘You’ll learn,’ Rogan said darkly, replenishing his champagne glass.
When the meal was finished they left Rogan nursing a large brandy and exited amidst curious stares.
‘Would you like to read the complete plays I took the extracts from?’ Vidal asked as they seated themselves in the rear of the Rolls and the brown painted cement bowler with the reddish trim was left behind.
‘Oh yes!’ Her eyes shone.
‘I’ll drop them off to you. And some other books as well. Have you read Dickens? Jane Austen? Tolstoy?’
She shook her head and lights danced in her hair.
‘Then you should. Margaret was a great lover as well as a great fighter. You should read about the great lovers of history. Abelard and Heloise; Rochester and Jane Eyre; Emma and Mr Knightly; Anna and Count Vronsky. And you should extend your reading: give Proust a try. Flaubert. Henry James…’
They were at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
‘I’d love to. Thank you for the lunch and for the offer of the books.’ She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him. ‘Goodbye, Mr Rakoczi.’
Something hot flickered at the back of his eyes. ‘Off the set the name is Vidal.’
She clenched her hands imperceptibly and said, ‘Yes, Mr Rakoczi… Vidal.’
The chauffeur was standing to attention, the door open wide. ‘Goodbye,’ she said again, and then walked swiftly into the hotel.
His sense of loss was acute. The day had lost its sparkle. He swore viciously to himself in Hungarian as the Rolls moved away from the hotel’s entrance. For two years he had not let anyone come close to him. He had lived joylessly and despairingly, putting all his passion into his work. Now, the thing that he had always feared was beginning to take on reality. He was beginning to feel again, to respond to another human being. To enthuse with them, laugh with them. His eyes darkened. Not them. Her. Valentina. And in less than a month Kariana would be home.
Chapter Eight
He worked twenty hours out of twenty-four for the next two weeks and then could stand it no longer. Grim-visaged, he dispensed with his Rolls Royce Phantom III and drove his Duesenberg at breakneck speed to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
She was there as he had known she would be. He had told her to stay at the hotel and to study her script until she was word perfect. He had rung reception every day. The lady occupying bungalow eight was eating well, working hard, and playing the occasional game of tennis.
‘Who,’ Vidal had stormed, ‘did she play tennis with?’
‘With the resident tennis coach,’ the desk clerk had replied composedly.
‘And the pool?’ Vidal’s doubts had been raised.
He was assured that Valentina did not join the laughing groups around the poolside, though she was in the habit of taking a late-night swim if the pool was deserted.
Jealousy tormented him. Even when he was working he found his thoughts straying back to her.
When he entered the bungalow with the pass key the desk clerk had circumspectly given him, she did not at first hear him.
Words and memory came easily to her. She had already mastered the bulk of the script, though many of the technical directions still remained a mystery. As relaxation she had turned once again to the Shakespearian extracts Vidal had prefaced the script with. The old English words were no longer difficult to her. She loved their ancient sound; their poetry.
She was reading aloud a long scene between Margaret and the Earl of Suffolk. In answer to the Earl’s imperious query as to her identity she lifted her head and spoke proudly; ‘“Margaret my name, and daughter to a king. The King of Naples – whose’er thou art.”‘
‘“An earl I am,”’ the rich timbre of Vidal’s voice declared as he stepped into the room, ‘“and Suffolk am I called. Be not offended, nature’s miracle, Thou art allotted to be ta’en by me…”’
She could scarcely breathe. It seemed as if there were only the two of them in the whole world. This was the point where Margaret turned swiftly from Suffolk, intrigued yet feigning contempt for him. She spun on her heel and he noted the swell of her breasts beneath the loose fitting robe and the curve of her hips as the material swirled around her legs.
‘“Fain would I woo her, yet I dare not speak,”’ he continued, his voice throbbing. The words were not only those of the earl’s for Margaret, but those of himself for Valentina.
She faced him again and this time there were only inches between them.
‘“Say, Earl of Suffolk,”’ she said, her lips parched, ‘“if thy name be so. What ransom must I pay before I pass?”’ Her voice faltered. ‘“For I perceive I am thy prisoner.”’
She could smell his skin. If she stretched out her fingers she would be able to feel his heart beating.
He gazed down at her and then slowly unloosened the ribbon holding her hair, spilling it free in a dark cloud around her shoulders. She was a virgin. He had known it instinctively the night they had walked on the beach and been vaguely surprised by it. She had been living with Kelly and Kelly’s reputation was that of a healthy heartbreaker. Until he had met Valentina.
Where and when had that been? He suddenly wanted to know with desperate urgency. He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to know what gave her smiles their intriguing quality of underlying sadness. He wanted to know what had forged the steel beneath her fragility. He wanted her. Not for The Warrior Queen. Not for any other movie he might make. But for himself.
He was on the brink of an abyss and he knew it. The tiny pulse beats of time stretched out between them, and then he turned away from her so suddenly that she nearly fell.
‘You read Shakespeare well,’ he said, his mouth tight, his brows pulled together, furrowing the lines of his forehead as he strode towards the books he had brought with him. ‘Here is the complete play that you were reading from.’ He tossed a slim leather bound volume on to the nearest table. ‘And here are the works of Jane Austen.’ He carried an armful of books through into the bedroom and scattered them in a heap on the white, lace counterpane. ‘There’s Tolstoy as I promised. And Flaubert. And that frightening English troika of talent, Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brönte. Not forgetting your own Henry James by way of patriotism.’ He talked rapidly, avoiding her eyes. ‘There’s Proust as well, and Turgenev.’
‘I shall never be able to read all those,’ she said, moving and talking with difficulty.
‘Then read what interests you.’ To his fevered gaze the virginal white draped bed seemed to dominate the room.
‘Which would you suggest?’
His hair curled low in the nape of his neck, coal-black, springy and unruly. His shoulders were tense, the muscles taut beneath the exquisite cut of his lightweight jacket.
‘You could start with Heloise and Abelard.’ It seemed apt: he was beginning to feel more like the castrated Abelard with every passing day. ‘I’ll help you. You can�
�t enter Hollywood society without a rudimentary education.’
He knew it was a lie. If a knowledge of the classics was essential for Hollywood society then it would expire overnight.
‘Thank you.’
The hard line of his mouth softened slightly. He selected a book and sat down cross-legged on the floor. ‘Abelard and Heloise,’ he said drily. ‘Lovers worthy of a Hollywood epic.’
She sat down some distance from him as he began to read, her back resting against the wall as the beauty of the words and his voice flowed over her. She was his protegée and she had to be whatever he wanted her to be. And what he wanted her to be was a star.
‘Rumour has it that you’re thrashing the hell out of the Beverly Hills’tennis coach? Mind if I come over and give you a game and see if it’s true?’ It was Rogan Tennant.
He had waited impatiently to see Valentina at the incestuous round of Hollywood parties in vain. Half a dozen times he had picked up the telephone and put it down again. No-one knew a thing about her, except that she was Vidal Rakoczi’s discovery. And like Rakoczi, she wasn’t partying. That could mean one of two things. That she was shy and reserved, or that her time was being spent with Rakoczi.
‘The rumours are wrong,’ she said, amused.
‘Then can I come round and find out for myself?’
She hesitated, but only fractionally. Rogan Tennant was to be her co-star. Vidal would want her to be on good terms with him and it would be interesting to see what he thought of the way Vidal had envisaged Margaret and Suffolk.
‘Yes, please do. The desk clerk will know where to find me.’
If Rogan had hoped it was in her bungalow he was disappointed. She was on the courts, playing an energetic game against the hotel coach, her dark hair tied back from her face with a scarlet headband, her provocatively short white tennis dress revealing perfectly shaped legs. She broke off when she saw him and waved.
‘Hi. Do you want to play straight away or have a drink first?’
‘I’ll have a drink,’ Rogan said, aware that for the first time in his life he had been taken at his word.
‘A Margarita,’ he said to the waiter who approached them as they sat down at a table beneath a gaily striped awning.
He looked questioningly across at Valentina.
‘A lemonade, please,’ she said disarmingly. ‘It’s really hot out there, Rogan. I’m glad you didn’t want to play straight away.’
‘That’s all right,’ Rogan said magnanimously. ‘Do you know that these are the finest courts in Hollywood?’
‘They’re certainly a lot different from where I used to play,’ Valentina said, a faint trace of wistfulness in her voice.
‘And where was that?’ Like everyone else in town, Rogan was genuinely interested in learning something, anything, about her.
‘Oh, nowhere.’ She dismissed the past and asked with genuine interest, ‘How are you getting along with your script?’
‘With tedium,’ Rogan said with a laugh. He had a facile memory and scripts presented no problem to him. But he never found them interesting. The only printed words that ever held him in thrall were those on his contract.
Valentina stared at him, slightly shocked. She lived and breathed The Warrior Queen and it had not occurred to her that her co-star would feel differently.
Rogan’s sleek blond hair gleamed in the sun as he said casually, ‘Have you seen much of Rakoczi lately? Word has it that he’s been working twenty hours a day getting this damned movie set up.’
‘No, not much.’ If Vidal was working so hard, he would not want it known that he had to spend two hours a day educating his future star.
Those hours were the highlight of her day. He came every evening between seven and nine. His greeting was always cursory, sometimes he hardly glanced at her. As on the first day Vidal sat cross-legged in the centre of the floor; she, at the far side of the room, curled up on the candy-pink carpet, her back resting against the wall.
On completion of Heloise and Abelard, he had told her that the book was hers to keep and she treasured it more than all the jewelled dresses and furs in her wardrobe. From Heloise and Abelard, they had moved on to Madame Bovary and were now deep into the tortured world of Anna Karenina.
Rogan’s words made her realize how hard Vidal drove himself. The Warrior Queen was everything to him. After years spent planning it he was now feverishly impatient to start filming. Yet he spared time for her.
A shadow fell across her eyes and Rogan noted it perceptively. There had been no hidden smile in her eyes when he had mentioned Rakoczi’s name. No heightening of colour in her cheeks.
‘That man can be the very devil to work for, though it helps if you’re on close terms with him. You probably don’t see the fiendish side of him quite as often as we do.’
‘Me? Why not?’ Her puzzlement was genuine. He noticed with a sudden surge of heat to his loins that her amazing coloured eyes were double lashed. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he understood full well why Gambetta had been prepared to take such a gamble with her. She would make Worldwide a fortune.
He shrugged and smiled. ‘You two are a going concern, aren’t you?’
She stared at him, a frown marring her forehead and Rogan knew that not only did she not understand what he meant, but that the answer was no.
He signalled for the waiter, feeling buoyant. ‘Another Margarita, and another lemonade with ice, please,’ he said, and then turned once more to Valentina.
‘Sorry. A Hollywood expression. I just thought that if you were friends from way back, Torquemada might be easier with you than he is with his other leading ladies.’
‘Torquemada? Is that your nickname for Mr Rakoczi?’
‘Mine, and everyone else who works for him.’ Rogan flashed her a smile that set feminine hearts quivering from Arizona to Maine.
‘Why?’ she asked curiously. ‘Is it Hungarian? What does it mean?’
Rogan laughed. ‘Tomas de Torquemada was a Spanish Dominican monk: very active in the Spanish Inquisition which was hard to beat for torture and cruelty.’
She quirked an eyebrow. It was her first intimation that Rogan did not like Vidal. ‘Have you known Mr Rakoczi a long time?’ she asked, swirling the ice cubes around in her drink.
‘I’ve done more movies for him than anyone else,’ he replied, with studied carelessness.
She hesitated a moment and then asked, ‘Do you know Mrs Rakoczi as well?’
‘Kariana Rakoczi is one of the loveliest ladies in Hollywood,’ Rogan said easily, as if he were on intimate terms with her. For a second he pondered on the enigma that she presented. Her public appearances were rare and when she did attend a Hollywood function, there was a tenseness about Vidal that was almost akin to fear. Rogan grinned to himself. It was impossible to imagine Vidal Rakoczi afraid. He must be jealous. He had married a woman in a class way beyond him and he was determined not to lose her.
There were fingers of ice around Valentina’s heart. ‘Would you like to play now?’ she asked, indicating a vacant court.
‘No,’ he said disarmingly, ‘I want to sit here and look at you. How does Rakoczi keep Lucrezia Borgia and Lady Macbeth at bay. It can’t be easy.’
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘I know who you mean by Lucrezia Borgia, but who is Lady Macbeth?’
‘Her new rival, Hedda Hopper. You can bet your sweet life they’ve been hounding the hotel desk night and day. You’re news, Valentina. You appear from nowhere and suddenly you’re the hottest property in town. Rakoczi wants you for a movie it’s rumoured is going to be the biggest thing he’s ever done. Gambetta signs you on at a fabulous sum, and no one has seen you on the screen yet.’
‘Mr Gambetta has.’
‘He must have, and you must have been pretty impressive. Gambetta doesn’t throw his money around and he only bets on certainties. We should be celebrating. Let’s call a halt to those lemonades and have a real drink. Champagne, isn’t it?’ He
ordered a bottle of Piper Hiesdeck. ‘We’re the envy of the whole town, Valentina. Every Rakoczi movie is news but this one is bigger than all the others put together. And we’re the stars. Hell! We didn’t even have to fight for the parts!’
‘Mr Rakoczi wanted you right from the beginning,’ Valentina said as the champagne cork exploded skywards.
‘That’ll be because of The Black Knights,’ Rogan said confidently. ‘That film has grossed more at the box office this year than any other Worldwide production.’
Valentina did not tell Rogan what Vidal’s private opinion of The Black Knights was. Instead she said, her eyes sparkling mischievously, ‘Mr Rakoczi said you carried the movie on sheer sexual exuberance.’
‘Rakoczi said that?’ Rogan visibly preened. It made a nice change from the things he had called him during the film’s shooting.
‘Say, do you spend all your time here? You should get out and about more. What about dining with me at Ciro’s this evening? It’s the kind of place you should be seen at, and it’s fun.’
She shook her head. ‘Mr Rakoczi doesn’t like me leaving the hotel.’
Rogan’s savoir faire momentarily deserted him. ‘You mean he’s keeping you a prisoner here?’
Her smile widened. ‘No. It’s just that he wants me word perfect by the time shooting starts and so I spend most of my time going over my lines.’
‘Hell. He’s beginning to bully you already!’ Rogan said indignantly. ‘The man’s a sadist and it’s about time someone told him so!’
‘Then why don’t you, Tennant?’ Vidal’s voice sliced through the still afternoon air like a whip.
Rogan spun round in his chair, his face draining of blood. Vidal was a mere three feet away.
‘I’m waiting, Tennant.’
Rogan felt sick. ‘I was just warning Valentina, in the friendliest way, that your attitude could often be mistaken for bullying and that someone should tell you so.’
Vidal’s face was taut with anger. ‘You don’t tell me anything, Tennant. Is that understood? And I don’t want to see you here again. Now leave.’
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 10
