Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

by Margaret Pemberton

  He sat down on a pleasingly comfortable, deep-armed sofa and said, ‘I want you back at Worldwide.’

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘I can work for any studio in town, Theo. Why, after all that has happened between us, should I ever again work for you?’

  Her dress was if ivory silk, moulded gently at the waist and over her hips and falling into a delicious swirl around her knees. Her only jewellery, a rope of pearls.

  ‘Because we understand each other, Valentina. Because we’ve made great pictures in the past and can make even greater ones in the future.’

  She shook her head and her hair fell softly forward at her cheekbones in deep waves. ‘No, Theo. I’m never going to be bound to a studio again. I shall do the movies that I want to do, and I shall never again allow myself to be put under contract for years at a time.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to be,’ Theo said, leaning towards her, his hands elapsed. ‘We’ll do it your way. One movie at a time.’

  ‘And what if we disagree about the subject matter?’

  ‘We won’t. You’ll have the final say in everything.’

  There was an unmistakeable gleam of amusement in her eyes. ‘Theo, you’re impossible. What you are suggesting is unheard of and you know it. No writer, no star, no director, has a final say. The most important directors in town are often replaced in mid-picture. Even worse, they often have their finished work taken out of their hands to be completely re-cut and re-shaped by the front office.’

  ‘I know,’ Theo agreed equably. ‘And the front office does so on my orders. I have a responsibility to the banks, to stockholders. Picture-making is a business. A picture that does badly at the box office, no matter how creatively made, is a poor picture. Box office returns are the name of the game. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Yes, and I want no part of it,’ she said emphatically. ‘I want to make good pictures. Creative pictures, and pictures that make people think and feel.’

  ‘You will,’ Theo said with maddening complacency. ‘With me. The war has changed people, Valentina. There’s a new spirit abroad. The public are becoming more discerning. They want more than the froth that we have been giving them. I’m willing to take a chance, but I’m only willing to take it with you. I’m prepared to be as daring and as innovative as you like. Now, what do you say?’

  It was ridiculous. She had vowed never to set foot on a Worldwide set again. Yet Worldwide was her spiritual home, and Theo was offering her everything that she most desired.

  Her smile deepened, effortlessly, unknowingly sensual. Theo felt a rise of pleasure in his loins. He had thought it impossible to forgive her for the agony she had caused Vidal, and yet already the memory was dimming. It was unthinkable that the woman before him should have behaved in such a callous fashion. Perhaps the whole, awful horror of those days of waiting had been nothing but the fevered longings of Vidal’s own imagination.

  He said carefully, ‘The war has brought a lot of talent to Hollywood. Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Graham Greene, Christopher Isherwood. We’ve got some of the best writers ever assembled in one place at the same time. But we don’t have the best director.’

  Her smile faded, her face suddenly still.

  ‘All your former movies for me were directed by Vidal. Until he returns from Europe you will have to work with other directors.’

  Her long, beautifully shaped hands tightened imperceptibly in her lap, ‘It is impossible for me to work with Vidal again,’ she said, and he was shocked at the sudden flash of suffering in her eyes.

  He rose to his feet, shaken, and mixed himself a drink. Whatever had happened between Valentina and Vidal had brought neither one of them happiness.

  ‘I have some scripts I’d like you to look through,’ he said, turning once more towards her. They settled on a Christopher Isherwood script and Theo promised that he would pull out all the stops and get filming under way as soon as possible.

  Leila, married to a prospering Rory, moved into a ranch-style house just off the intersection of Mulholland and Cold water Canyon. Valentina began to entertain; to give parties as well as to go to them. She had her work. She had her friends. She had her son, and when the war ended she had the joy of hearing again from Evangelina and learning that all of the Khairetis family were safe.

  ‘These last few months have been quite something, haven’t they?’ Leila said to her, sprawling over one of Valentina’s white-upholstered sofas, a Bloody Mary in her hand with a tiny rose petal floating on its surface. ‘David Niven’s back. Clark Gable’s back. Jimmie Stewart’s back.’

  ‘Vidal isn’t back,’ Valentina said, her voice tight, as it always was whenever his name was mentioned.

  ‘That’s just where you’re wrong,’ Leila said, wondering how Valentina would take the news. ‘He arrived home late last week. He’s been keeping a low profile so it only became public knowledge today. The gossip is that he’s going to direct Rogan in The Last Tsar for MGM.’

  The relief was total. She began to shake, overcome with the ridiculous desire to laugh and cry at the same time.

  ‘Forgo the wine and have a Bloody Mary,’ Leila suggested, seeing the effect that her news had had. She swung her legs off the arms of the sofa and rose to her feet. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll mix it.’

  Valentina clenched her fists hard, struggling for control. It was over. He was safe. Goddamn him. Her fears had been unfounded. He wasn’t lying dead on some remote Greek mountain side. He was alive and he was back in Hollywood.

  ‘Do the gossips say whether Kariana has returned as well?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘No. No one seems to have had any news of her since Vidal left for Europe and she returned East. I expect that now he is home she will be coming out to join him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Valentina said, her voice suddenly hard, ‘I expect she will.’

  Leila regarded her with concern. It was hard to say whether Valentina still loved Vidal or whether she hated him. Whatever her emotion, it was one that consumed her and the meeting between them would be traumatic. It would also be unavoidable. In the close-knit society of Hollywood, everyone met everyone else eventually.

  For two miraculous weeks, by dint of obtaining the guest lists prior to any party or event that Valentina was invited to, Leila, with the aid of Valentina’s secretary, managed to avoid the inevitable confrontation. When it finally took place, it was, ironically, at a party given by Theodore Gambetta.

  ‘No Vidal Rakoczi?’ Leila had asked Valentina’s secretary when the invitation had arrived.

  ‘No, he must be out of town.’

  ‘Good,’ Leila said fervently, ‘let’s hope he stays out of town!’

  Theodore’s parties were always on the grand scale. Anyone of any consequence at all had been invited and Leila and Rory accompanied Valentina in her chauffeur driven limousine.

  ‘Am I seeing a mirage?’ Leila asked as they descended from the car into the balmy night air, ‘or is the band walking on water?’

  ‘Not even Theo can accomplish that for dramatic effect.’ Valentina said dryly. ‘They’re on a floating island in the middle of the swimming pool.’

  ‘Thank God, I was beginning to think that Theo’s power was ultimate.’

  Laughing, they strolled up the vast porticoed steps and as they entered the house heads turned and conversation faltered. Alone, in a room where sequins, crystals and gold lamé glittered, Valentina wore a dress of stark black. High at the throat, it plunged waist deep at the back, needing no other decoration but her flawless skin and hip-swaying grace.

  ‘No one can move in a backless dress like Valentina,’ Sutton Hyde said reverently, as she crossed the room to Theo, demonstrating the truth of his statement superbly.

  Theo kissed her warmly, disguising his surprise at her acceptance of the invitation when it was obvious that Vidal would be present,

  ‘Oh dear, there’s Clark Gable with another Carole Lombard look-alike,’ Leila w
hispered to Rory. ‘When will he get over her death, poor lamb? And La Swanson eyeing Valentina as if she were poison…’

  Rory regarded the famous around him with indifference. There were very few people in the room that he knew, or cared to know. Catching sight of Sutton Hyde he crossed the room towards him, grateful that there was one person at least with whom he could have an intelligent conversation.

  ‘There’s a hundred people waiting to say hello to you,’ Theo said to Valentina. ‘Errol Flynn says he’s going to abduct you unless you come quietly. I wonder if he feels a heel about not going to fight when so many of my guests spent such a bloody time in Europe?’

  If he did, he showed no sign of it. He was as ebullient as ever. ‘Look, sport,’ he said when he had kissed her and she had carefully removed his hand from a place it had no right to be, ‘don’t you think this chastity lark has gone on long enough? You’re an insult to my reputation.’

  It was familiar repartèe. Errol had long since given up any hope of adding her to his list of conquests. In a bizarre way he preferred it the way he was. He wasn’t a man who made friends with women. They were for using and discarding, not for befriending. Valentina was a rare exception. She kissed him indulgently and moved away from him towards Rory and Sutton.

  ‘Have one of Theo’s atrocious new cocktails,’ Sutton said, handing her a glass as Rogan Tennant joined them. ‘God alone knows what the alcoholic content must be. Even Flynn’s looking glassy-eyed!’

  She took the proffered drink, looking up and beyond him. As she did so her smile froze and the blood left her face.

  He was at the doorway, his stance negligent, his hands in his pockets. It had been six years since she had last seen him. Six long, lonely years in which there had been not one day when he had not occupied her thoughts. The war had changed him, but it had not ravaged him. He was leaner, his body harder, if that were possible, than it had been before. He raised his eyes, looking carelessly across the room, and she felt faint; her hurt as raw and fresh as the day when she had first known he would not be returning for her.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ Leila whispered unnecessarily, ‘it’s Vidal.’

  ‘With my ex-wife,’ Rogan added bitterly.

  For the first time Valentina became aware of the immaculately red lacquered nails clinging to Vidal’s arm, the slender crystal and beaded figure at his side.

  He began to stroll through the throng and her throat tightened. He moved with the deceptive ease and suppleness of a man who was always wary. A man capable of killing unhesitatingly if the need arose. The years with the Andartes had left their mark.

  In another moment, he would see her. There would be no more delaying the moment she had both dreaded and craved for so long.

  His hair was as dark and as lustrous as ever, curling thickly into the nape of his neck like a ram’s fleece. There was no hint of grey, only the startling flash of silver falling low across the black bars of his brows. The incisive lines running from nose to mouth had deepened and there was a disturbing, almost merciless quality about the set of his mouth. Alone, in all the room, he was spared the effusive kisses, the hearty back-slappings that were the obligatory Hollywood greetings. Only a brave man or a fool would have proffered undue familiarity to Vidal Rakoczi.

  Romana had seen Rogan and was blowing a kiss provocatively in his direction, pointing their tiny group out to Vidal. Valentina tried to move, to avert her gaze, and failed. He had seen her. She saw him suck in his breath; saw the skin tighten like parchment across his cheekbones and then, in stunned incredulity, saw the bitter, burning hate.

  She swayed and Sutton grasped her elbow. She could no longer hear the noise in the room, the laughter and the chatter. Vidal began to move towards them. There was no escape. He was so near that she could smell the clean starched linen of his evening shirt; the familiar aroma of his cologne. She drew in a deep, steadying breath and lifted her head high.

  ‘It’s nice to see you back, Vidal,’ Leila said stiffly as Sutton and Rory maintained an uneasy silence and Rogan glared at Romana.

  His mouth quirked in a humourless smile. ‘You surprise me, Leila. I would hardly have thought my absence would have given you cause for concern.’

  At the mockery in his voice Leila flushed and then, slowly, his gaze slid away from her and rested on Valentina. The moment seemed to stretch into infinity, and then, with careless insolence, he said, ‘I’m told that you discarded Mr Denton Brook-Taylor with practised ease. Have you another would-be husband hovering on the horizon?’

  Leila gasped and Rory sucked in his breath. Valentina raised her head a fraction higher, the long, lovely line of her throat flawless. This was the man who had promised to always love her. The man who had promised to marry her and be a father to their child. Who had abandoned her and had abandoned Alexander to stay with his badly injured wife. A man who, on his return to Hollywood, had chosen to forget his wife’s existence and had escorted Romana de Santa to one of the most public events on the Hollywood calendar.

  ‘If I had,’ she said, each syllable dripping ice, ‘you would be the very last person to know, Mr Rakoczi.’

  For a horrified moment Leila thought that he was going to strike her and then he shrugged his shoulders and said with careless indifference, ‘And to care,’ and he turned on his heel, striding quickly from the room, Romana hurrying in his wake.

  ‘What devil is riding him?’ Rory O’Connor asked in bewilderment.

  ‘A devil that will eventually destroy him,’ Sutton said, his aristocratic face pale. ‘Commandeer some more drinks, dear boy, will you? Brandy, I think, would be most suitable. Extremely large ones.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Valentina remembered little of the remainder of the party. She left early, stiff and unspeaking, locked into an inner world that not even Leila could penetrate. The promise he had made to her six years ago on the sunlit streets of New York was as vivid as if it had been made only yesterday. His breaking of it had almost destroyed her, but she had understood. His duty had been to Kariana. It had been comfort of a kind. His arrival at Theo’s with Romana on his arm meant that there could be comfort no longer. He had not married her; not because of Kariana, but because he had not chosen to.

  Her hands clenched on her lap, the knuckles showing white. He had hurt her for the last time. From now on, life for Valentina, the enigmatic star of Hollywood, was going to be very different. She smiled grimly to herself in the dim interior of the limousine. Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper would have so much to write about in the coming weeks that their pens would run dry.

  ‘Would you like me to come in with you?’ Leila asked tentatively as they glided to a halt outside Valentina’s hilltop home.

  ‘No, I’m fine, Leila. Goodnight.’

  Her chauffeur opened the rear door and she stepped out on to smoothly raked gravel, not even turning to wave as the limousine slid away in the direction of Leila and Rory’s Mulholland Drive home.

  Her maid brought her a nightcap of cocoa and wished her a respectful goodnight. Valentina slipped off her evening pumps and kicked them carelessly across the room. Then she picked up the mug of milky cocoa and poured it down the kitchen sink. Back in the drawing-room she surveyed the well-stocked bar and removed a bottle at random. It was bourbon. She grimaced at the taste and swallowed. In a little while she no longer noticed the taste.

  ‘Vidal!’ Wait. Please wait!’ Romana cried, teetering after him in suicidally high heels.

  ‘Vidal!’ she wailed as he slammed shut the door of his limousine, revving the engine savagely. By the time she reached the bottom of the porticoed steps, the limousine was speeding down the drive, its tail lights flashing as it swept round the corner of the drive disappearing from view.

  He took the coast road. The road he had taken so many years ago when he and Valentina had left Lilli Rainer’s party together. Theo had warned him that she would be there. Yet even after all this time he had not been prepared for the physical impact she would have on hi
m. Looking at her across the crowded room, it had been as if a fist had been thrust hard into his belly. Nothing about her had changed. She didn’t merely glitter, she shone. Her smoke-dark hair had been coiled softly into the nape of her neck and knotted with stunning simplicity. Her pale, ivory skin had gleamed and he had felt an urge to reach out and touch her.

  He looked down at his maimed hands on the wheel and his mouth crooked in a mirthless smile. It was to avoid such obscenities that she had severed all contact with him. Had she imagined that his face, too, would have been similarly scarred? If so, her fears had been groundless. Only his hands bore the marks of the fire and he had long ago come to terms with their disfigurement. He had regained full use of them. And, somewhat to his astonishment, he had yet to find a woman who was repelled by them. He swerved to a halt and stared out over the dunes and the silk-black motion of the sea. Why, in God’s name, was he still tied to her? He swore softly to himself as a bank of cloud scurried across the face of the moon. He had made love to so many women that he had lost count, and yet he still hadn’t met one that could drive her from his heart. The abrasive lines of his face hardened. He would find her. He would be damned to hell and all eternity before he would continue loving a woman who had betrayed him not just once, but twice.

  ‘Darling, why so many different escorts all of a sudden?’ Leila asked, reclining on a sun-lounger at the side of Valentina’s pool.

  Valentina dipped a toe experimentally into the azure depths and shrugged. ‘Why not?’ she asked, and executed a perfect dive into the sun-dappled water.

  Leila watched her surface and swim with clean movements to the far side of the Olympic-sized pool. The Valentina she had known no longer seemed to exist. Whenever the conversation grew too personal, she retreated behind a dismissive smile and a careless shrug of her shoulders. The only time the facade slipped and the amethyst-grey eyes warmed with genuine emotion was when she was with Alexander.