Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Patience be damned,’ Vidal snapped. ‘Where is she? That’s what I want to know! Where the devil is she?’

  ‘Try telephoning Kennaway. He’ll know.’

  Neither man spoke as Vidal’s secretary waited to be connected to Stan Kennaway’s New York number. Beneath his outward calm, Theodore was deeply disturbed. It made no sense for Valentina not to have cabled or telephoned. Though it had been years since they had last met, he would have staked his life on her rushing to Vidal’s side the instant she had heard the news. He knew by bitter experience that when it came to personal relationships and her career, Valentina put personal relationships first. And Vidal had told him that they were going to marry. Nothing and no one was going to stand in his way.

  Theodore had remained silent. Their friendship had suffered badly in the acrimonious aftermath of Valentina’s departure from Hollywood. Only in the last year had it been renewed and he had no desire to place it in jeopardy again by reminding Vidal that Valentina had left him once before with no word of warning.

  After what seemed an eternity, Stan’s voice could be heard clearly. ‘Vidal! Thank God you’re all right! We’ve been out of our minds with worry. The papers said…’

  ‘Where is Valentina?’ Vidal snapped, cutting Stan short abruptly.

  There was a moment’s awkward silence and then Stan said, ‘At Amagansett. Denton thought she would have more privacy there.’

  ‘I don’t understand you. Where at Amagansett?’

  ‘At Denton’s place. He has a big house there.’

  Vidal’s brows flew together and his face whitened. ‘What the hell is happening, Stan? She hasn’t telephoned. Hasn’t cabled.’

  ‘I guess she tried and couldn’t get through,’ Stan said helplessly.

  ‘A cable would hardly have gone astray and I’ve given orders that every call from New York is to be put through to me immediately.’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand it, Vidal. She isn’t talking to anyone and…’

  ‘Give me her Amagansett number,’ Vidal said tersely, and then waited, his eyes dark with a pain that had nothing to do with his savagely burned hands, as his secretary tried to connect him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Rakoczi. The number is unobtainable. The operator says that it has been disconnected. There must have been a storm or something.’

  ‘That damned sonofabitch!’ Vidal flared, swinging his legs from the bed to the floor. ‘Brook-Taylor would expire without a telephone at his fingertips! If that line has been disconnected, it’s been done on purpose! Get me some pants and a shirt, Theo, I’m flying out there right now.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ an authoritative voice said as Doctor Jenson entered the room.

  The look Vidal gave him would have annihilated a lesser man. ‘I’m going to New York,’ he said curtly. ‘Today.’

  Doctor Jenson regarded him coldly from the foot of the bed. ‘Mr Rakoczi, you are going nowhere. The wounds on your hands are still losing fluid. That fluid is blood plasma and you are just about to receive a further plasma transfusion to replace it.’ As he spoke he moved towards Vidal, inserting a tube into Vidal’s arm. Vidal swore. Doctor Jenson ignored him.

  ‘Get this bloody tube out of me! You can give me all the transfusions you want when I get back. Twenty-four hours is all I need. Just twenty-four hours!’

  ‘If you leave this room now, the sinews and tendons in your hands will never heal. Your hands will be useless and the damage will have been self-inflicted.’

  ‘For God’s sake, listen to him, Vidal,’ Theodore said imploringly. ‘Send another cable. Telephone the theatre. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for Valentina’s silence. Just wait a few more days. You can’t fly east. Not like this.’ He indicated the tubes entering Vidal’s arm. The saline drip. The darkly flowing blood. The helplessly inert gauze-swathed hands.

  Their eyes met and held and then, at last, Vidal fell back against his pillows. Theodore was right. He was trapped in his sterile white room, Amagansett as far away from him as the moon.

  During the next few days cable after cable was sent. Telephone call after telephone call was made. Valentina could not be contacted at Amagansett. Could not even be contacted at the theatre. They were the longest, loneliest days of Vidal’s life.

  At last he could stand it no longer. ‘I’m going tomorrow,’ he said as Theodore entered his room. ‘Hire me a doctor and two nurses and tell Chai I want him to accompany me as well.’

  Theodore sat down heavily by the side of Vidal’s bed. ‘Before you make any further arrangements, I think you should read this.’ He spread the Los Angeles Times open on the bed.

  Vidal took one look at Theodore’s face and his blood froze. Then slowly, fearfully, he dropped his eyes to the stark black headlines. The photograph showed Denton Brook-Taylor holding Valentina’s fur-clad arm protectively as she walked from his Rolls to the theatre. The caption proclaimed, ‘Valentina and producer to wed!’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, his face ashen. ‘Theo, get me the phone.’

  For once Theo did not argue with him. He wheeled the portable telephone to Vidal’s bed. Vidal rasped Valentina’s Amagansett number at him and Theo dialled, holding the receiver to Vidal’s ear as his bandaged hands lay impotently on the white sheets.

  For the first time ever there was a reply. Vidal sucked in his breath and then said tersely.

  ‘Valentina please. Vidal Rakoczi speaking.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Rakoczi,’ said a disinterested female voice in clipped tones. ‘No calls are being accepted from you.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  Theo flinched at the rage in his voice.

  ‘This is Vidal Rakoczi speaking! I demand to be connected to Valentina immediately!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Rakoczi,’ the bland voice repeated. ‘Instructions have been given that your calls are not to be received.’

  ‘Whose instructions?’ Vidal thundered, a pulse at his temple pounding, his eyes blazing.

  ‘Valentina’s,’ the voice said, and severed the connection.

  ‘Nem,’ he said, his breathing harsh. ‘Nem. Nem! NEM!’

  The days following were a miasma of pain. It was as if, until then, he had been unaware of his injuries. Now he was all too conscious of them. There was surgery to undergo. There was the dreadful wait to see if the nerves in his hand had been destroyed. If he would ever regain full use of his fingers. There was the eternal screaming question. Why? For God’s sake, why?

  Had she been afraid that the fire had disfigured him so terribly that she would no longer be able to stand the sight of him? If so, her fears were unwarranted. Only his hands were scarred. He looked down at them. They were not a pretty sight, but he would have thought it would have needed far more to send her racing into the arms of the nearest man. Had the woman he had believed himself in love with all these years been nothing but a creature of his own imagination? Was she really as shallow, as uncaring, as her actions declared her to be? The bitterness of the past was nothing to that he now felt. He wondered how it was possible to both love and hate one woman so intensely.

  Kariana continued to improve. She would never regain full physical health. For many months a wheelchair and round-the-clock nursing attendance would be necessary. Vidal listened to Doctor Jenson in silence and forbore to tell him that round-the-clock nursing had been necessary, for different reasons, for the past five years. Since the fire Kariana had been calm. Despite her suffering, no one at the hospital had been given any cause to query her mental health and Vidal had remained silent. Even if they knew, they could do nothing. The disease that afflicted Kariana’s mind would continue as it had always done. There would be a constant cyclical to-and-fro between the depths of depression and wild, uncontrollable mania, and in between there would be, as now, periods of apparent normality.

  Villada was no longer habitable and when he was discharged from hospital he moved into a new house in Bel-Air on Moraga Drive. It was built on one level an
d would be easy for Kariana to negotiate in her wheelchair. The ceilings were beamed in rich oak, the floors were of polished cedar wood, and he furnished it with deep, comfortable sofas and set about replacing his library.

  Every book he purchased reminded him of her. He remembered the soft pink of the carpet in the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, the honey-gold of the sunlight as it streamed into her room and he sat cross-legged on the floor reading, opening up a whole new world for her.

  Theodore, in a moment of unaccustomed interest in the classics, suggested that the tortured love story of Abelard and Heloise would make a sure fire winner at the box office and had been stunned at Vidal’s vehement rejection of the suggestion. Their meal had come to an abrupt halt; Vidal had thrown his napkin on the table and stalked from the restaurant. The subject had never been raised again. For Vidal, Abelard and Heloise was inextricably combined with the innocent happiness of his first early memories of Valentina.

  The day that Kariana came home from the hospital, Vidal braced himself for a return of the burden that could no longer be shared by Hazel. He had engaged two nurses, Irish girls, brisk and cheerful, but he had not had the emotional strength to explain to them that his wife suffered from a mental as well as a physical disability. The time would come soon enough. Until it did, he had no desire to think of it.

  Kariana was not confined to her wheelchair and when she entered the house she leaned heavily on his arm as he showed her the various rooms.

  ‘It’s a lovely house, Vidal,’ she said in the soft whispery voice that turned harsh and shrill whenever she was ill. ‘And we’ll be alone together here, won’t we? There won’t be anyone else. There won’t be Hazel?’

  ‘No,’ Vidal said gently. ‘There won’t be Hazel.’ He had told her of Hazel’s death himself. She had taken it silently, lying small and pitiful in her hospital bed. It had been one of the hardest things that he had ever had to do.

  He led her out on to the balcony and she sat down, her face in her hands. ‘I’m glad,’ she said, and she began to smile.

  At first he thought that he had misheard her, and then she turned to him, her smile deepening. ‘She thought she was so clever, Vidal, but you see, I was the clever one. I knew what it was that she wanted. Why she always prevented me from seeing you, telling you whenever you telephoned that there was no need for you to come home, that she was with me. I knew, and I knew that she would never win. I knew that I would die before I would let her win.’ She held out her arms towards him. ‘And I did, didn’t I? Nearly die. For you.’

  Her eyes were dream-like, only the tiniest pin-prick of a pupil discernible. He didn’t move. The moment seemed to spin out for ever. He didn’t want to speak; didn’t want to ask the question that he must ask. The police and the fire department had been united in their view that the fire had started in Kariana’s bedroom. He had been unable to offer them an explanation. Its cause was a mystery and had remained so. Cold, so intense that it caught at his breath, seeped through him as he stood in the blazing sunshine facing his wife.

  ‘Did you know that Hazel would die?’ he asked, the words so forcedly casual that he thought they would choke in his throat.

  ‘I knew that it would frighten her. That it would teach her a lesson.’ Her eyes clouded over, their colouring unclear. ‘I only wanted a little fire. I didn’t expect…didn’t expect…’ She shuddered and wrapped her hands around her arms.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, and knew that it was the last question that he would ever ask her. That after she had answered he would walk from the house and never willingly set eyes on her again.

  Again there was the smile, feline and knowing. ‘Because you were going to marry her. You were going to leave me, a Dansart, and marry her. Now you can’t, Vidal. You know now that you can never marry anyone else. You are married to me and you always will be.’ She leaned back, her face towards the sun, her eyes closed.

  ‘I was never going to marry Hazel.’ His voice was totally without expression. He could not, dare not, give vent to the horror and revulsion consuming him. ‘I was going to marry Valentina. Hazel Renko loved you. She died trying to save you. And you murdered her.’

  Kariana drew a lace-edged handerchief lightly from one hand and into the other. ‘Ask the maid to serve me with some iced tea, Vidal. It is so hot. So very hot.’

  Her eyes were still closed, a small smile still on her lips. He wondered if she had heard him and knew that he would never know. For a long, last moment he looked at her and then turned on his heel and walked back into the room.

  ‘An iced tea for Mrs Rakoczi,’ he said to Chai and then went into his study and picked up the telephone.

  Ever since his honeymoon he had lived with the knowledge of her illness. He had pitied her and cared for her and he could do so no longer. She was a danger not only to herself but also to those who cared for her. He dialled Doctor Grossman’s number and prayed to God that the doctor was in New York and not in Switzerland.

  ‘Just one moment, Mr Rakoczi, and I will put you through to Doctor Grossman,’ said the familiar voice of Dr Grossman’s receptionist.

  ‘What is it, Vidal?’ Doctor Grossman asked. ‘Has Kariana had another serious relapse?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said tersely. ‘There’s no longer any question of caring for her at home. I want her to come to you immediately.’

  ‘But why? I thought you said that after the fire she seemed calmer. As I have said before, some cases such as Kariana’s can cure themselves spontaneously and…’

  ‘Kariana started the fire deliberately. She knows that Hazel Renko died in it and she’s showing not the slightest sign of remorse. She is beyond my control and I cannot assume the responsibility for the safety of the household staff caring for her.’

  ‘Do the police know?’

  ‘No. There is no reason for them to know. It would only mean a public declaration of Kariana’s insanity. Nothing can alter what has already happened.’

  ‘I agree. You have done everything for her that you can, my friend. You can do nothing more. I do not think it wise that you should escort her here yourself. Your emotions are too involved. I will see to it that a doctor understanding her sickness and two trained nurses accompany her. They will be with you later today.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vidal said, replacing the receiver. He could not have escorted Kariana anywhere. He could no longer stay beneath the same roof with her. The last, lingering shred of affection had been destroyed. He went upstairs and packed the new clothes that had been awaiting her arrival.

  The telephone rang and he answered it swiftly. It was Theo. ‘Have you heard the news? Hitler has invaded Poland and England has declared war! Two of my leading men are Britons and the bastards say they’re returning home to fight. It’s going to cost me thousands to replace them. Vidal, are you there? Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Theo,’ Vidal said, holding the telephone receiver in one hand and closing Kariana’s suitcase with the other.

  ‘What am I going to do, f’Christ’s sake? How can I finish Dark Quintet without a leading man?’

  ‘Or without a director,’ Vidal said, swinging Kariana’s case from the bed to the floor.

  ‘What do you mean, without a director. You’re the Goddamned director!’

  ‘Yes, and I am also a European. If there is a war in Europe then it is my war as well, Theo. I am sure the British will find a use for me.’

  ‘Vidal!’ Theodore thundered, but it was too late. Vidal had already replaced the telephone receiver and by the time Theodore stormed round to the house in his car, it was to find Kariana Rakoczi inexplicably absent and Vidal packing his bags.

  ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ he yelled, panting for breath after his rush through the house.

  ‘London,’ Vidal replied, tossing his passport into the zipped pocket of his bag. ‘After these last few months, the battlefields of Europe should be a picnic.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Valentina received the
news that Vidal had left for Europe in silence. She could not talk about what had happened, not even to Leila. The hurt was too deep, a raw wound that nothing could heal. Denton’s proposal of marriage was repeated, and repeated again. At her third refusal his attitude towards her changed. He no longer made requests of her: he demanded. She tried to be patient. To convince herself that he had only her welfare at heart, but when she discovered that he was vetting schools with the intention that she should send Alexander away to be educated her temper broke.

  ‘It’s a ridiculous suggestion, Denton! Alexander is only five! He needs me.’

  Denton’s mouth tightened. All her love, all her affection was centred on her child. It was no longer Rakoczi who stood between him and his goal. It was Alexander.

  ‘All mothers feel the same,’ he said smoothly. ‘What I am suggesting is for the best, Valentina. Alexander needs the benefit of the best education possible. I’ve vetted the schools very carefully and…’

  ‘No!’ Her eyes flashed. ‘My son’s education has nothing whatever to do with you, Denton! He is my responsibility and my responsibility alone!’

  ‘Nothing is your responsibility alone, Valentina. I thought I made that clear to you when I took over your financial affairs.’

  ‘My financial affairs are not my personal affairs, Denton. Leila tells me she can’t get calls put through to me. Stan says that you told him I would not be interested in another Broadway play when Hedda closes. How dare you tell him such a thing? We’ve never even discussed it, and, for your information, I would be very interested in doing another play with Stan.’

  ‘Broadway is prestigious but it is movies that make the money,’ Denton said coldly. ‘As soon as the play closes we have to go ahead with the plans we made long ago. That is one of the reasons why it is imperative that Alexander is settled at school. His constant presence is distracting.’

  ‘Not to me, it isn’t!’ she flared. ‘You’re talking about my son, Denton!’ There was not even a glimmer of understanding in the chill, grey eyes. Her rage ebbed. She felt oddly deflated. Amagansett’s walls were stifling her. Denton wanted more from her than she could possibly give. She pushed her hair away from her face. ‘I’ve been here too long, Denton. I’m going to move in with Leila until the play closes.’