Rogan stared at him. ‘Do you mean he’s left us all high and dry while he goes home to fuck?’
Sutton shook his head in mock disapprobation. ‘Your coarseness astounds me, Tennant. Let us just say that though we find our director less than amenable, his spouse does not. Have you ever known her attend any function without him?’
‘No. But that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t like to, given the chance,’ Rogan said maliciously. ‘If she’s so damned devoted to him, why does she spend so much time in Europe?’
‘Culture, my dear boy. Culture,’ Sutton said, beaming genially. ‘Kariana Rakoczi is an Easterner and a well bred Easterner. Amazing though it may seem to you, Hollywood is not the intellectual capital of the world. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if a lady of her temperament finds it downright vulgar.’
‘Fucking at eleven o’clock in the morning ain’t exactly refined,’ Rogan said caustically, ‘especially when it means seventy or eighty people have to stand around twiddling their thumbs while she exercises her conjugal rights.’
There were sniggers from the listening cameramen and Valentina felt her cheeks burn.
‘Right now is when you stop twiddling your thumbs and get down to some work,’ Harris said cuttingly. ‘I want this morning’s scene gone over again until it’s perfect. When Mr Rakoczi returns he’ll expect us to be able to shoot it at one take.’
‘F’Christ’s sake, I know the bloody thing backwards. If Rakoczi can take off in the middle of the day, why can’t we?’
‘Because you’re an actor, not a director, and actors can be replaced, Tennant.’
‘Bullshit,’ Rogan said without sounding too convincing. ‘This movie would fall flat on its face without me.’
‘The way you’ve been acting this morning, it’s going to fall flat on its face with you,’ Harris said darkly. ‘Right, places everybody. Let’s try it again.’
‘Gee, that Kariana sure is a lucky lady,’ Leila Crane said to Valentina as they walked back on to the set. ‘Fancy having the hots and being able to summon a guy like Rakoczi just by picking up the phone.’
‘He’s crazy about her,’ Don Symons said. ‘When they’re together his eyes never leave her for a moment.’
‘I wish I could find a husband like that,’ Leila said feelingly. ‘I’ve had three so far and the bastards never kept their eyes off anything wearing a skirt.’
‘I heard the last one was partial to trousers as well,’ Rogan said with a grin.
Leila punched him on the shoulder and laughed. ‘Too right he was. From the tree of life I keep picking lemons. Maybe I’ll be luckier next time.’
‘Quiet!’ Harris yelled. ‘I want this scene one hundred per cent perfect before Mr Rakoczi returns. Take it from your entrance before Margaret and Henry, Tennant, and this time put some guts into it.’
Valentina sat stiffly on the throne alongside Sutton’s. Carefully her robes were adjusted and Don ordered a last minute lighting change. Vidal had worked eighteen hours a day on The Warrior Queen and nothing had distracted him. Yet today he had done the inconceivable. He had walked off the set in the middle of shooting and for no more important reason than his wife was feeling lonely and wanted to see him. Woodenly her mouth framed the words of her lines. She felt empty inside. Dead and cold and utterly alone.
‘The great lords are raising private armies, my liege,’ Rogan said, falling on one knee before Sutton. ‘The Nevilles, the Beauchamps, the Cliffords, all are preparing to rise against the throne.’ A short cloak hung jauntily from his shoulders. His blond hair hung glossily long over the high, stand-up collar of his doublet. He was an exceedingly handsome man and he loved her and wanted to marry her.
‘Then we must soothe them, my good Suffolk,’ Sutton said with saintly tolerance. ‘We must love them and forgive them their hot-headedness.’
At this point Rogan and Valentina were to look directly at each other, their shared despair and vexation at Henry’s lack of fighting spirit blatantly apparent. As their eyes met, Valentina was overcome with a surge of recklessness. Vidal did not love her and never would.
‘Yes,’ she said, as Harris yelled at them to play the scene from the beginning again. ‘I will marry you, Rogan.’
For a second Rogan stared at her disbelievingly and then let out a wild whoop of triumph and seized her around the waist, whirling her around in his arms.
‘What the hell?’ Harris shouted exasperatedly. ‘I’m trying to achieve something here, Tennant, and you’re doing nothing but be bloody disruptive.’
‘And I’m going to continue to be disruptive,’ Rogan said, walking across to him, his arm firmly around Valentina’s waist. ‘I’m not going through that damn scene one more time. Instead, I’m going to send for some champagne and I’m going to celebrate my forthcoming nuptials.’
‘Your forthcoming what?’ Harris asked, wiping the back of his neck with a silk handkerchief.
‘Nuptials. That is, I believe, the correct lingo,’ Rogan said with a grin. ‘I’m getting hitched, wed, married.’
Harris stared at him. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I’ve never been more serious in my life. Allow me to introduce you to my future bride.’
With a flourish in keeping with his role as the Earl of Suffolk, he bowed low before Valentina.
There was a concerted intake of breath from both cast and crew. Harris felt himself pale. The last thing Gambetta would want was his future star turned into a hausfrau by Rogan Tennant.
‘Well, Harris, I’m waiting to be congratulated.’ There was a touch of steel in Rogan’s voice. He knew Harris didn’t like him, but the least he could do was to be damn well civil.
‘Does Mr Rakoczi know of your plans?’
Valentina stiffened imperceptibly and Rogan’s anger flared into the open.
‘No, he doesn’t! It’s none of his bloody business! Christ, you’d think that man was God the way you all defer to him! I’m surprised you go to the bathroom without asking his bloody permission.’
The muscles in Harris’s neck and shoulders tightened and his fists clenched.
‘I’ve just about had it with you, Tennant. Mr Rakoczi’s giving you the break of a lifetime and you do nothing but sneer at him whenever he’s out of earshot!’
Rogan let go of Valentina and stepped towards Harris threateningly. ‘I don’t need anyone to give me a break! Not Rakoczi, not de Mille, not anyone! I’m a star, Harris. The biggest star this studio has!’
‘Not in my eyes!’ Harris said savagely. ‘You’re a conceited, overbearing, arrogant piece of trash that this movie could well do without.’
Rogan’s fist shot straight and clean, hitting Harris full square on the jaw. He stumbled backwards, steadied himself and with a roar of rage lunged towards Rogan. Cameramen, grips, electricians rushed forward, grabbing hold of him, and restraining him as Rogan backed away, white-faced. Harris was built like a bull and his punch had only succeeded because it was unexpected. If Harris were let loose he would probably kill him. He would certainly mess up his face and Rogan was well aware that his face was his fortune.
‘Cool it,’ Don Symons said to Harris. ‘He isn’t worth it. We’ve months of work to do on this movie and we aren’t going to get it done if Tennant is in the Polyclinic with a broken jaw.’
Harris shrugged off the hands grasping his arms and shoulders. ‘Then for all our sakes he’d better keep his smart remarks to himself in future.’
Before Rogan could antagonize Harris any further, Sutton stepped forward and said jovially, ‘Let me be the first to congratulate you, Tennant. You’re a man to be envied.’ He took Valentina’s hand and kissed it. ‘And you, my dear, will make the most stunning bride that this town has seen.’
‘Congratulations,’ Leila Crane said, kissing Valentina warmly on both cheeks. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’
Don Symons grasped both her hands in his. ‘You’re certainly a dark horse,’ he said affectionately. ‘I hadn’t even heard a rumour of this.’
They were surrounded by well-wishers and even Harris pushed his way forward, pointedly ignoring Rogan but holding Valentina’s hand as he said, ‘I’m sorry about the scene with Rogan. I hope it didn’t spoil your big moment.’
Valentina managed a shaky smile. The violence that had so suddenly erupted had shaken her profoundly. ‘No, Harris. It wasn’t your fault. I guess Rogan is a little wound up. It isn’t every day that he gets engaged.’
Harris was tempted to point out that Tennant had had some previous experience, having been married three times, but quelled the urge. He liked Valentina. She was beautiful, talented and intelligent. Why she was marrying a schmuck like Tennant he couldn’t imagine.
‘Here comes the champagne!’ the continuity girl cried as a stage hand hoisted a crate of Piper Hiesdeck on to the set, shoulder high.
‘Where the hell did you get that?’ Don asked, taking out a bottle and marvelling at the vintage.
‘A good stage hand knows where to get anything at a moment’s notice.’
‘Can you get me an accommodating little redhead with rather spectacular feminine equipment for four-thirty this afternoon?’ Sutton asked wistfully.
‘Nothing easier,’ the stagehand said with a grin, and uncorked a bottle, spraying champagne over a laughing Rogan and Valentina as Sutton sighed in delicious anticipation.
‘Come on, Harris, loosen up and enjoy the party. There’s no way any more work is going to get done until Mr Rakoczi returns,’ Leila said, offering Harris a glass of champagne.
He took it with a grimace. ‘Has it occurred to you that Mr Rakoczi might be less than pleased with the news that Tennant and Valentina are getting hitched?’
‘You’re wrong. There’s nothing going on there. I thought so too for a time, but their relationship is strictly for the cameras.’
‘I never thought otherwise,’ Harris said drily. ‘But if she marries Tennant he’ll start influencing her. Telling her what parts she should be angling for and which she should be turning down. And she’s Mr Rakoczi’s protegé.’ He sipped his champagne thoughtfully. ‘I’ve got a gut feeling about this one, Leila. Mr Rakoczi isn’t going to like it one little bit.’
Vidal strode into his home, the familiar feeling of dread knotting deep inside his stomach. Kariana had been crying on the telephone, her words barely intelligible. Hazel had gone downtown to visit her dentist. The faucets in her bathroom had begun to leak and Chai had driven to Beverly Hills to buy new ones. She was alone and she was afraid.
‘Vidal! Is that you? Oh, thank goodness you’re here!’ She ran towards him, her face distraught. ‘Why has everyone left me? They know I hate being on my own. It’s not fair…’ She burst into tears as he put his arm around her and led her gently into the lounge.
‘Hazel had a raging toothache, Kariana. She had to go to the dentist. She won’t be long. Only an hour or so.’
Kariana sat tensely on the sofa and began fraying her lace-edged handkerchief with sharp, convulsive movements. He knew the signs and he steeled himself for the coming onslaught. She was entering one of the cataclysmic moods that came over her like a devil of possession and turned her within minutes into a total stranger.
‘She planned to go out. I know she did. She doesn’t like me any more, Vidal. She loosened the faucets on purpose so that I would get upset.’
‘Hazel adores you,’ he said, striving to keep his voice patient. ‘Let me fix you a coffee. By the time you’ve drunk it Hazel will be back.’
‘And then you’ll leave me.’ Kariana’s voice rose hysterically. ‘You don’t care about me either!’
‘That’s not true, Kariana,’ he said truthfully, ‘I care about you very much and I hate to see you distressing yourself this way. Why don’t you lie down for a while? Have a sleep.’
He put his arm around her shoulders and she sprang to her feet, knocking him away, her pretty face feral.
‘You make me sick! Always crawling round me because of my money! Stealing thousands of dollars from me! Stealing my ideas to make your movies!’
Vidal felt despair rise in him like a tide. It was a well-worn theme. Kariana did not inherit her vast share of her grandfather’s millions until she was thirty. He had never borrowed against her expectations and was uncaring of them. Her accusation that he stole her ideas baffled him. She had never shown the least desire for creativity and studio talk bored her. If he talked about his work she drifted away, turning on the record player, filling the house with the strains of Mozart and Chopin.
He wondered if music would soothe her now and slipped a recording of Rossini’s La Scala di Seta from its sleeve and put it on the turntable.
‘Turn that bloody music off,’ she shouted. ‘I can’t bear it! All I can hear is noise! Noise! Noise!’ She pressed her hands to her ears, twisting her head convulsively from side to side as if the music was inescapable.
The music ceased and Vidal walked into the kitchen and turned on the percolater. There had been a time when he had believed such scenes could be halted simply by treating her as a disturbed child and taking her in his arms and soothing her. His attempts had ended in failure. Her distress could not be alleviated so easily.
He took down a bottle from a high shelf and shook three tranquillizers out on to the palm of his hand. Then he crushed them to a powder with the back of a spoon. When the coffee was ready, he poured a cup for himself, leaving it black, and then poured a cup for Kariana, adding cream and sugar and the crushed tranquillizers.
At first, when Hazel had suggested to him this way of ensuring Kariana took medication when she needed it, he had rebelled, finding the idea repellant. Time had taught him that it was in Kariana’s best interest.
There were occasions when she would take tranquillizers when under stress, but they were few and far between.
He walked back into the room and set the coffes cups down on the table.
‘Sit down, Kariana, and try to relax,’ he said gently.
She swung on her heel and her eyes flashed. ‘Sit down, Kariana; be good, Kariana,’ she mimicked, pacing to and fro on the ankle-deep carpet. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone? You’re always watching me. Spying on me!’
Vidal sighed. It would be useless to point out that he was with her because she had pleaded with him to be so. That he had done the unforgiveable on her account, as he had so many times in the past. He had left the set in the middle of shooting a scene. In his absence cast and crew would grow edgy and nervous. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly midday. There was no sign of the tears that would lead Kariana to exhaustion and sleep. It was going to be a long, drawn-out harangue. Soon the obscenities would start. Then the violence. Neither he nor Hazel would be able to leave the house in case she foiled one of them and gained access to the Rolls or the Duesenberg.
‘I’m here because I care about you, Kariana,’ he said wearily. ‘If you’d only go to bed and lie down, you would feel so much better…’
‘I’m not ill! Why should I go to bed?’ The handkerchief disintegrated and she began to claw feverishly at her arms, drawing long, scarlet weals. ‘Why should I do anything that you say? You’re a Polack, a wop and a Jew and I hate you! You’re unclean!’
She began to laugh hysterically and Vidal looked away from her. There was nothing he could now do or say that would halt the tirade. It would have to run its course and he would have to endure it.
Kariana raised her hand to the edge of the marble mantlepiece and with a triumphant sweep sent his collection of rare ivory and jade figurines crashing to the floor.
With supreme self-control he turned his back on her and poured himself a large, neat vodka. Doctor Grossman had told him that the worst thing he could do was to seize her, to shake her or to slap her. Steeling every nerve and muscle in his body, he swallowed the vodka and ignored the wreckage scattered on the carpet.
‘Bastard!’ Kariana screamed, hurling herself at him, her nails gouging at his face. ‘Bastard! Bastard! BASTARD!’
‘There
was no way I could keep the cast working,’ Harris
apologetically as Vidal walked on to the set at dusk, his
said
face
haggard. ‘I did my best. We went through the scene once and I think Don has perfected the lighting.’
Vidal looked round the set briefly. Kariana was in bed asleep, spent and exhausted, Hazel by her side. Tomorrow she would have no memory of her vicious words or the wanton damage she had caused.
He turned on his heel, saying to Harris, ‘I want to go over the schedules. It looks as if we have problems with the St Albans battlefield set.’
Harris nodded, hurrying to keep pace with him. As they stepped out of the studio he noticed the scratch marks on Vidal’s face. He opened his mouth to remark on them and then thought better of it. Mr Rakoczi’s personal life was his own affair.
‘The surrounding countryside just isn’t green enough,’ Vidal was saying as he laid out the plans for the St Albans set on his desk. ‘It’s England. I want woods in the background. Meadows.’
‘There’s a few thousand bucks worth of turf been laid…’
‘And that’s exactly what it looks like,’ Vidal said sharply. ‘The usual effects aren’t going to turn a tract of the San Fernando valley into the green tranquillity of England. I want poetic countryside raped by the hooves of a thousand horses.’
‘It’s always been done before,’ Harris pointed out doubtfully. ‘We have the best special effects man in town.’
‘Call him. I want him in here tonight. Unless he can give me what I want, I’m going to shift the whole unit to New England.’
At the thought of organizing and preparing for a movie location on the East coast Harris paled. It wasn’t possible. There would be hundreds of people to be fed and housed. Everything would have to be transported East. Costumes, props, horses, dressing rooms. The very thought made him feel faint.
‘I’ll call him now,’ he said weakly to Vidal. ‘And I’ll call my wife and tell her I’ll be late home.’
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 16
