‘That’ll be no loss,’ Alexander said. ‘I’m never going to learn how to direct at school. I’d learn far more returning with you to Hollywood. I might even be able to watch Rakoczi direct. I never got the chance while you were filming The Empress Matilda.’
A shadow darkened Valentina’s eyes. ‘I want to talk to you about Vidal Rakoczi, Alexander. I was seventeen when I first met him. I had just arrived in Hollywood.’
‘Where from, Maman?’ he asked, throwing an orange in the air and catching it.
‘From a convent on the outskirts of a small Californian town.’
‘A convent?’ Alexander’s eyes widened. ‘You weren’t thinking of becoming a nun or something were you?’
A smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. ‘No, Alexander. I was there because that was where my mother left me.’
Alexander digested this information in silence. His mother had never spoken to him of her childhood and he had never asked. He knew that her parents were not alive but it had never occurred to him to wonder when they had died. After a little while he said, ‘Do you mean that she didn’t die? That she simply left you?’
‘Yes,’ Valentina replied, her dark hair swinging against her neck as she walked. ‘She simply drove up to the convent, deposited me in the arms of a nun and disappeared from my life. I didn’t leave there until I was seventeen.’
They had somehow veered away from the subject of Vidal. She tried to steer it back. ‘The Reverend Mother had arranged that I should go as a maid to a lady living in San Diego. Instead, I hitched a lift north. If the truck that stopped for me had been going to San Francisco, my whole life would have been different. As it was, it was going to Hollywood. To Worldwide Studios.’
‘That’s fate, Maman,’ Alexander said, his olive-toned face intense.
‘Yes, Alexander,’ she said, briefly reaching out and touching his hair. ‘I think that it was.’
Faint strains of music came from the direction of Lafayette Square, immediately catching his attention.
‘Let’s go and listen,’ he pleaded. ‘School is going to be so quiet after New Orleans.’
‘You go,’ she said. ‘We’ll have dinner in the Vieux Carré tonight, and then talk some more.’
‘Okay.’ He flashed her a dazzling grin and then sauntered through the crowds towards the source of the music. She stood in the sunlight, watching him. A tall, loose-limbed boy, his hair a black tangle of curls, his walk confident. He was her son, her beloved son, and she hoped fervently that the truth about his parentage would not diminish her in his eyes. He disappeared in the crowd and she turned, walking back with unaccustomed tiredness to their hotel.
Later, relaxing in the fragrant heat of a deep bath, she thought how strange it was that, of all men, it should be his unknown, but natural father that Alexander had singled out to admire and to emulate. When the water began to cool she stepped out of the bath and towelled herself dry, slipping into a silk robe. She had been in the bath for over an hour, and there was still no sign of Alexander. She frowned and rang his room. There was no reply. The magic of the music had obviously made him oblivious of the time. She opened the doors of her closet and ran her fingers speculatively over her evening gowns. At last she selected a gown of deep raspberry chiffon with long, full sleeves and a tiny waist that exploded into a skirt so full and fragile that when worn it billowed softly around her. Alexander called it her antebellum dress and had said that the colour reminded him of his favourite ice-cream.
She laid it on the bed, realizing with a pang that in another few days this precious time of privacy would be over. She would once again be Valentina: star.
There was a knock at the door. She opened it and smiled at the hotel manager in his sober, pin-stripe suit.
‘Madam… I am awfully sorry… I do not know how to tell you…’
Her smile faded. His face was ravaged. Then she saw the policeman at his side; the huddle of maids at the far end of the corridor.
‘What is it? What has happened?’
‘Madam, please sit down.’ They were ushering her back into the room. Someone was pressing a drink into her hand. She thrust it away, choked by fear. ‘What is it? What has happened?’
‘It was a new building, Madam. The accident could not have been avoided. The beam of wood fell and…’
‘My son! Where is he? Where IS he?’
‘In the hospital, Madam. He is unconscious and…’
Valentina pushed him aside. He was alive. He was hurt, but he was not dead. He was alive and these fools were keeping her from him.
‘Out of my room while I dress! Is there a car?’
‘Yes Mada…’
She didn’t wait for them all to exit. She tore off her robe and scrambled into her discarded street clothes. ‘Please God, let him be safe,’ she prayed aloud as she ran down the corridor, still buttoning up the buttons on her blouse. ‘Please God, let him be all right. Please. Please!’
A small group of photographers were already at the door of the hospital as she hurtled from the car and up the stone steps.
‘It was a glancing blow, Madam. Another fraction and he would have been killed outright,’ the doctor who hurried to greet her said.
‘Let me see him! Just let me see him!’
There was another doctor at her elbow and yet another hurrying ahead to open door after door.
‘Please God. Please. Please!’ The words reverberated through her head. The last door was open and she halted. It was a very small room, and the tall, handsome son she had said goodbye to only hours ago, looked very small, very young. His head was heavily bandaged. His eyes were closed, his face still. For one horrendous moment she thought that he was dead and then she heard the doctor saying, ‘He should recover consciousness at any time. If you would like to sit with him?’
‘Yes.’ Slowly she crossed to the chair at the side of Alexander’s bed and sat down. Her hand reached out and held his. He was alive. Everything was going to be all right. She raised her head, her eyes huge in the pale ivory of her face.
‘How did it happen?’
The doctor sat a few feet away from her, tiny lines of tension around his mouth.
‘He was walking along the street and a beam of wood that was being hoisted to the first floor of a new building fell. Luckily, it did not fall on your son with its full impact. If it had…’ He spread his hands expressively. ‘Nevertheless, it gave him a glancing blow and the cut on the scalp is severe.’
‘And he’ll be all right?’ Her eyes were pleading.
‘Don’t worry. It is a common injury. He will regain consciousness soon.’
She remained for the rest of the afternoon at Alexander’s bedside and only the warmth of his hand in hers assured her that he was alive. The long eyelashes on the suddenly childlike cheeks never flickered.
‘I am sorry, but it is late,’ the doctor said at last. ‘By the time you return tomorrow…’
‘I’m not leaving.’ The steel beneath the femininity that so many others had encountered was focused on the doctor.
‘But, madam, we have tests to carry out. He should have regained consciousness and, as he has not, we must make further investigations.’
‘And I will stay. There must be a room for me somewhere, even if it is only a linen room. If there is not, I shall sleep on the chair in the corner. I am not leaving until my son regains consciousness.’ Her eyes flashed dangerously and the doctor accepted defeat.
‘There is a small storage room a few yards further down the corridor. It has no window or facilities but I will see that a bed is made up for you in there.’
‘Thank you.’
The doctor returned his attention to Alexander, the lines of tension around his mouth deepening. The longer the boy remained comotose, the less chance there was that his recovery would be uncomplicated. He lifted first one of Alexander’s eyelids and then the other, flashing a thin pencil of light on to each pupil. Neither pupil dilated.
‘I want reflex t
ests taken every half hour during the night,’ he said in a low voice to the head nurse, ‘and if there is any change I want you to call me.’
Not until the hospital was quiet and only the nightlights burned could the nurse at Alexander’s side persuade Valentina to rest. She did so reluctantly. She wanted to be there when he regained consciousness. She lay on the narrow bed in the darkened storeroom, listening as the head nurse entered Alexander’s room every half hour to carry out the reflex tests the doctor had asked for. Waiting to be roused and told that the crisis had passed; that Alexander was conscious and asking for her. When she awoke the next morning no one had summoned her.
She had slept in her underslip. Hastily she dressed and hurried into Alexander’s room. A nurse was at his side. He was as still, as deathly pale, as before.
‘Oh God,’ she said shakily and sat down once more at his side. It was a long, lonely vigil. The doctor entered the room with a colleague and both of them examined Alexander and then stood quietly conferring together, their faces grave.
‘What is it?’ What is happening?’ she asked, the beautifully etched face pale, the dark eyes shadowed with fear and wearines.
‘We think that perhaps the blow has caused a haematoma,’ the doctor said gently. ‘We are going to prepare Alexander for surgery and operate to release the pressure.’
She sat outside in the corridor on a tiny chair. She had no one in New Orleans to offer her the comfort of friendship. Leila was far away in Los Angeles and Sutton was in London. She was as alone and lonely as she had been when a child.
The doors opened and two hospital porters wheeled the trolley carrying Alexander out of the room into the corridor. She rose instinctively to reach out and touch him, but a nurse gently restrained her. The trolley and its attendants disappeared through swinging doors on their way to the operating theatre. She sat down slowly and began the long wait.
It was three hours before the trolley and its small cargo returned. She was not allowed into the room with him. As the doctor steered her away, she caught a glimpse of something black and shiny protruding from Alexander’s mouth.
‘Why does he have that tube in his mouth?’ she asked fearfully.
‘The tube is to keep the trachea open. It will not be necessary for long.’
‘And the operation was a success?’
‘The operation went exactly as planned. The pressure on the brain has now been relieved and when the effect of the anaesthetic wears off we can expect to see an improvement in his condition. There is nothing we can do now but wait.’
Never before had Valentina appreciated the agony that could attain the simple act of waiting. She remained on the uncomfortable chair in the corridor, her eyes on the clock opposite her. At last the head nurse emerged from Alexander’s room and said quietly, ‘You may go in and see him now, but only for a moment. There will be no change in his condition until the morning. It would be best if you tried to get some rest.’
She stood by the edge of the bed. The ugly monstrosity had been taken from his mouth. He was lying on his side and a nurse was sitting in the chair that she had occupied earlier herself. She could not remember ever seeing him so still and so silent. Even in sleep, Alexander had always been vital, his cheeks bronzed by the sun, his dark curls tousled. There was no sign of his hair now. She presumed that they had shaved it off. His head was swathed in white bandages and a frightening looking tube snaked from beneath the sheets into a bottle on the floor. She touched his hand lightly, then turned and left him to the nurses. There was nothing she could do for him; only continue to wait.
The next day she was allowed to sit beside him and to hold his hand. She no longer asked questions as a succession of doctors came in to examine him, their faces grave. At midday on the fourth day after the accident the nurse checking Alexander’s pulse stiffened and then whirled from the room. Within seconds there were doctors at the bedside and she was hurried away.
‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’ she cried imploringly, but the doors closed on her and she was left to sink with a strangled sob on to the all-too-familiar chair in the linoleum-lined corridor.
The surgeon who had operated on Alexander was the first to speak to her.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Mrs Khairetis, but your son’s condition has deteriorated. I think it would be best if his father were informed.’
Valentina stared at him blankly. The surgeon was accustomed to the effects of shock. ‘Your husband,’ he said gently. ‘I think he should be contacted.’
She shook her head dazedly. ‘My husband is dead.’
The surgeon remembered. Her husband had been the pianist Paulos Khairetis who had drowned. She had already been struck by tragedy and was about to be struck again.
‘Then I think it would be best if you could be joined by a member of your family,’ he said compassionately.
Valentina’s eyes were huge and dark as she looked up at him. ‘Are you telling me that my son is going to die?’
The surgeon shook his head. ‘No. There is always hope. But if he has other close kin, they should be informed that his condition is grave.’
‘No,’ Valentina said, seeming to shrink visibly inside the crumpled linen of the pale blue suit that she had arrived in. ‘There is no one.’
‘I see.’ The surgeon held out his hand and helped her to her feet. ‘You may go in now and sit with him.’
He opened the door for her and she paused for a moment on the threshold, gazing across at the small, still figure in the bed.
‘Mr Vidal Rakoczi,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Would you please contact Mr Vidal Rakoczi,’ and then she crossed to the bed, took Alexander’s hand in hers and began to weep.
All through the night she refused to leave his side, willing him to open his eyes, to smile, to speak to her. As the first faint rays of dawn seeped through the blinds she began to talk to him as if he were conscious, reminding him of the happy days on Crete; of how they had walked in the mountainous foothills picking wild flowers. Of the music Paulos had played; of the sun and the sand.
She pressed his hand against her cheek, recalling London and how they had walked along the banks of the Thames and he had worn an English muffler against the cold.
No one deterred her. The act of talking to her child seemed to comfort her. She spoke of everything they had done together. Of all the people they had loved: Paulos and Leila and Sutton. Of how, but for the simple act of turning north on the highway, and not south, she would have become a maid there. Of New Orleans.
‘You can stay, darling,’ she whispered, a sob in her throat. ‘I won’t send you back to school. Just open your eyes and smile at me please. Please.’
There had been no response. The door opened quietly and Vidal’s shadow fell across the bed. She raised her eyes to his.
‘Help me not to let him die,’ she said desperately. ‘Help me, Vidal!’
For a long moment he stood gazing down at the still, pale features of his son. The son he had never known. With bitter anguish he thought of the time that had been wasted; time that could never be recaptured. The harsh planes of his face hardened. There would be no more wasted time. No more separation. He put his hand on her shoulder and as he did so the long, lonely years fell away as though they had never been.
‘He will not die,’ he said gently, his smoke-dark voice full of utter certainty. ‘Trust me, my love.’
She covered her hand with his, her eyes shining with tears. He was never wrong. It was impossible that he should be wrong now.
‘Vidal is here,’ she said to the small, comotose figure, ‘He wants to talk to you about movies, darling. About riverboats and gamblers.’ The long, lustrous eyelashes never stirred. All through the long night they sat in silent vigil by the side of his bed, disturbed only by the nurse as she checked Alexander’s respiration and reflexes, and by the doctor as he entered the room every hour to repeat the examination. The night sky dulled, presaging dawn.
‘I never told him about you, V
idal,’ she said breaking the silence, her voice thick with suppressed tears. ‘I kept going to and going to. We went on a paddle steamer and he said that he would have liked to have been a riverboat gambler. I teased him and said it was because he wanted to emulate Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, but he said that it wasn’t Gable he wanted to emulate. It was you.’ Her voice trembled and a tear ran down her cheek. ‘He wanted to be a director like you.’
‘He will be a director, Valentina. He will be everything that he dreams of being.’
His voice held no room for doubt. His eyes held hers, his strength filling her. She felt suddenly calm. She was not going to lose Alexander; Vidal would not allow her to.
The doctor walked quietly to the bed and carried out his examination of Alexander’s reflexes. When he had finished, he turned to her and said gently, ‘There is no sign of any change, Mrs Khairetis. You must go back to your hotel and rest.’
She shook her head and the doctor sighed. Coma cases could live for weeks, for months. There would have to come a moment when she finally accepted defeat. He raised his eyebrows slightly in Vidal’s direction.
‘Could I have a word with you, Mr Rakoczi?’
Reluctantly Vidal left his son’s bedside and walked with the doctor towards the door.
Valentina took hold of Alexander’s limp hand and pressed it against her cheek.
‘Please, Alexander. Please come back to me, darling,’ she whispered pleadingly.
The sky was streaked with pearl. In the far distance the bell of a riverboat rang mournfully. Almost imperceptibly the hand held in hers stirred.
Her heart began to race and the blood slammed in her ears.
‘Alexander!’ she said urgently, leaning towards him. ‘Alexander, can you hear me?’
The moment seemed to stretch out into infinity and then his hand moved again. ‘Maman, is that you? I’m thirsty, Maman.’
‘Alexander!’ Her voice broke on a sob. The dark, girlish eyelashes trembled and opened and he was looking at her as if heavily drugged, his expression dazed and uncomprehending.
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 37
