Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

by Margaret Pemberton

  A slight frown furrowed Vidal’s brow. ‘That could be a long time, liba.’

  ‘Then we will have to wait,’ she said quietly. ‘We have waited a long time already, Vidal. Now we must wait a little longer.’

  Two weeks later Alexander was discharged from hospital, ecstatic at the news that he would not be returning immediately to school and that Vidal was to direct his mother in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes.

  Valentina watched him as he stood at Vidal’s side during rehearsals. The last test result had arrived and he was fit and well. There was no cause for any further delay.

  ‘It’s going to be good,’ Sutton Hyde, who was playing the part of her husband, said sitting by her side, a paper cup of coffee in his hand. ‘I’ve always liked opening a play in San Francisco. It bodes well. San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and then – New York, here we come!’

  He beamed at her beatifically and she squeezed his hand. The weeks they had spent in San Francisco had been the happiest of her life. Alexander had spent each and every day in rehearsal with her. His relationship with Vidal had blossomed and deepened. Yet now that the time had come to tell him the truth she felt a frisson of fear.

  ‘Would you mind if Vidal didn’t dine with us tonight, Alexander?’ she said as Vidal summoned Sutton forward. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said easily, engrossed in a sheaf of photographs that had been taken during rehearsals. He paused at one of Vidal and himself, his lips pursing, his eyes suddenly troubled.

  His hotel room was next to hers and Valentina had arranged that dinner would be sent up to them and that they would eat it on the small patio that led from her room. They usually ate in a threesome with Vidal and Alexander passionately discussing hers and everybody else’s parts. It seemed suddenly quiet with only the two of them. She picked listlessly at her chicken salad and then moved her plate away. ‘I want to talk to you, Alexander. About Vidal.’

  He looked up at her, his eyes oddly bright. She took hold of his hand. ‘We’re going to get married,’ she said gently.

  ‘That’s fantastic!’ His voice held no doubt or hesitation.

  ‘I’m glad that you’re pleased,’ she said, wanting to hug him tight. ‘I wanted to marry him very much once before, Alexander. Shortly before I married Paulos.’

  He was very still. ‘Why didn’t you?’

  She said carefully, ‘Vidal was already married and I thought it best that I leave him, and Hollywood.’

  ‘Because you were having a baby?’ he said, his eyes holding her steadily.

  Her heart began to slam violently against her chest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because I was having a baby, Alexander.’

  He removed his hand from hers and stood up unsteadily, his face pale. ‘I was the baby, wasn’t I? Old Jemmy who sells newspapers outside the theatre always refers to Vidal as my Pa. I didn’t pay it any attention at first. But then this afternoon when I was looking through the photographs I suddenly knew.’ He looked very bewildered and near to tears.

  She pushed her chair away from the table and walked round to him, vividly remembering the child who had flung herself against the convent’s iron gates and sobbed and sobbed for the mother who had left her.

  ‘Vidal never knew about you, Alexander. He didn’t know until Paulos was dead and we returned to America and he saw you for the first time. He wanted me to tell you. That was why I took you with me to New Orleans. I intended telling you there, but then you had your accident and afterwards the doctors said that you hadn’t to be distressed.’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ he said, turning round to her passionately. ‘Why did you marry Pappa? Did he know? Did you tell him?’

  ‘Pappa knew that I was having a baby. He loved me and he wanted to protect me. He loved you too, Alexander. He loved you just as much as if you had been his own son and he always thought of you as his son. Paulos was very special, Alexander. I loved him very much.’

  The colour had begun to ebb back into his face. ‘You should have told me when I came out of hospital. I would have understood.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you, Alexander, but the doctors said that you were to be kept quiet until all the tests had been proved negative.’

  He said, a trifle defiantly, ‘I’ve always been proud that Paulos Khairetis was my father and I will always be proud that my surname is Khairetis. I won’t change it.’

  ‘No one wants you to, darling,’ she said, her hand tightening on his.

  He looked at her, his face oddly mature. ‘I don’t mind, Maman. Not now that I know.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘At least I understand now why I’m not musical!’

  She began to laugh, hugging him tight. It was going to be all right. He knew and he didn’t think any less of her. He was her son and he still loved her, would always love her. As she would love him.

  Vidal had remained in the theatre. She stepped into the quiet auditorium and walked down to the stage where he was studying the set for act two.

  ‘I’ve told him,’ she said quietly.

  He spun round to face her, his expression one of overpowering relief. She slid her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest. ‘He had already guessed, Vidal. He was bewildered and he was angry. At first.’

  ‘Ertem!’ Vidal said, his eyes darkening in dismay. ‘Should I go to him? Talk to him?’

  She shook her head. ‘There will be plenty of time for you to talk to him later, Vidal. For the moment I think that he needs to be on his own for a little while.’

  His arms tightened around her. ‘Did you tell him that we were going to be married?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled up at him. ‘He was pleased, Vidal.’

  His voice was rough with tenderness. ‘And you don’t want to wait any longer?’

  ‘Not another day.’

  His teeth flashed in a sudden down-slanting smile that rendered her breathless. ‘Then we will get married as soon as possible. A week today.’

  ‘A week today is opening night.’

  ‘A week tomorrow then,’ he said easily.

  Her eyes were overly bright. ‘A week tomorrow it is St Joseph’s day.’

  ‘And is St Joseph’s day special?’ he asked, outlining the pure curve of her cheek and jaw with a fingertip.

  ‘Very special. When I was a little girl, St Joseph’s day was a day filled with hope. It was the day when I knew that anything was possible. It was the day the swallows returned to San Juan Capistrano.’

  ‘Is that where you lived?’ he asked curiously.

  She nodded, remembering with unexpected clarity the white, imprisoning walls of the convent; the lingering odour of carbolic soap; the heavy swish of the nuns’habits on the tiled floors; and the overpowering longing to be free.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said gently.

  She leaned against him and in the stillness of the empty theatre she told him all about her childhood. Of the mother who had left her. Of the nuns who had cared for her. And of the swallows who, year after year, had filled her heart with hope.

  ‘I wish that you had told me before, little one,’ he said when she had finished, his heart aching as he thought of her loneliness: her lovelessness.

  ‘There was no need, Vidal,’ she said softly. ‘It was all a long, long time ago,’ and she pressed her mouth against his, closing the door on the past, happy in the certainty of the future.

  The next morning he gave her a pre-wedding present from Van Cleef and Arpel. A gold swallow on a fine chain, so delicate that it looked as if it were in mid-flight.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered as he fastened it around her neck. ‘The most beautiful thing that I’ve ever been given.’

  She didn’t take it off, not even for dress rehearsals. She slipped it beneath the high neck of the emerald-green morning gown that she wore as Regina Giddens. The part fascinated her. The ice-cold, avaricious Regina was as strong and compelling as the part of Hedda had been.

  Regina’s two unscrupulous brothers have promised to make
her rich if she can convince her husband to put a large amount of money into a partnership with a Chicago businessman to build a cotton mill in their home town. Her ailing husband, Horace, refuses to go along with the scheme and Regina’s vitriolic verbal attack on him triggers off a massive heart attack. Grasping for his life-saving medicine, he accidentally knocks it off the table and begs Regina to help him. She sits silently watching him in his death throes, her refusal to help an act of murder. She revenges herself on her brothers and at, the end of the play, having vanquished them and killed her husband, she wearily mounts the stairs to her bedroom. A moment before the final curtain, her daughter calls after her, ‘Are you afraid, Mama?’

  ‘You were wonderful, Teccik!’ Vidal would say as they finished a scene. ‘But then, on second thoughts, Ketlem,’ he would add teasingly, ‘you were very bad.’

  They worked together as they had always worked. In utter harmony and with total commitment.

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ Leila had said when she had seen the first rehearsal. ‘Even more powerful than Hedda.’

  ‘I must have been mad agreeing to get married the day after opening night,’ Valentina said as her dresser unhooked her gown. ‘I still haven’t found a dress that is suitable. They’re either too virginal or they don’t feel like a wedding gown at all.’

  ‘Wear your antebellum gown,’ Alexander said to her, perching on the corner of her dressing-table. ‘All raspberry flounces and exotic ruffles. It will be like no other wedding gown ever!’

  She had laughed at him, but after another two days of fruitless, frantic shopping she had contemplated the antebellum gown with a new eye. The vivid raspberry was a perfect foil for her pale skin and dark hair and it was Alexander’s favourite dress. She would carry a bouquet of white freesias and stephanotis. It would look sensational.

  As she sat in her dressing-room on opening night she didn’t know whether her nerves were for the performance ahead of her or for her wedding next day. Theo was driving up from Los Angeles to give her away. Leila was going to be her bridesmaid. Alexander was jubilant at the prospect of being his father’s best man. Her fingers closed over the golden swallow on its delicate chain. She had waited so long and now the waiting was almost over. Only another few hours and she would be Vidal’s wife.

  ‘The streets outside the theatre are feet deep with clamouring fans,’ Leila said as she helped Valentina’s dresser shovel an armload of congratulatory telegrams to one side.

  The first call came over the loudspeaker. ‘Half-hour please, half-hour.’

  Her hand trembled as she put the finishing touches to her make-up. She had worked at the part of Regina night and day. She had been calm when they had begun to hang the set ready for the technical rehearsals. Only now did she experience pure terror. If she failed tonight it would not be only her career that would lie in ruins, it would be Vidal’s too. Her triumph as Hedda would be regarded as a fluke. Vidal would be scorned as a movie director who should have stuck to movies.

  Her chin tilted defiantly as she stared at herself in the glass. She would not fail. Tonight, as Regina Giddens, she was going to give the performance of her life. For herself; for Vidal; for Alexander.

  Vidal stepped into the dressing-room, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. ‘It’s like a Broadway first night out there. Brooks Atkinson from the New York Times is leading the east coast contingent. There’s a London theatre critic trying to look as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to have Louella Parsons on one side of him and Hedda Hopper the other.’

  ‘Is Theo out there?’

  ‘The whole of Hollywood is out there,’ Vidal said drily, kissing the nape of her neck. ‘I doubt if San Francisco has seen anything like it before.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ the stage manager’s voice said over the loudspeaker. ‘Fifteen minutes, please.’

  Valentina’s dresser fastened the last button on her dress.

  ‘Do you want a drink, sweetie?’ Leila asked, her hand trembling violently as she tried to carry her own glass of vodka from the dressing-table to her lips.

  ‘No,’ Valentina said calmly. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Five minutes – five minutes,’ the voice said relentlessly.

  His arms surrounded her. He could feel the beat of her heart fast and light against his chest.

  He kissed her forehead. ‘Let’s go,’ he said softly, and led the way towards the wings.

  Valentina squeezed his hand, took a deep, steadying breath and forced her whole being into the thoughts and feelings and mannerisms of Regina Giddens.

  ‘Places, please – places, please,’ the stage manager said quietly. There was utter silence. Then the curtain rose on the two negro servants in the first scene.

  The tension of the audience as it waited for Valentina’s entrance was palpable. A bead of sweat broke out on Vidal’s brow. He looked at her anxiously. She was perfectly calm, perfectly composed and she was no longer Valentina. She was Regina.

  Her cue came up. She left his side and stepped on stage and a ripple of excitement ran round the auditorium.

  “‘Mr Marshall, I think you’re trying to console me,’” she said, her voice sending vibrations down a hundred spines. ‘“Chicago may be the noisiest, dirtiest city in the world but I should still prefer it to the sound of our horses and the smell of our azaleas. I should like crowds of people, and theatres, and lovely women.’” She paused evocatively. “‘Very lovely women, Mr Marshall.”’

  Vidal let his breath out slowly. She was in total command. She was fire and light and he could feel the sexual arousal of the audience at the mere tone of her voice. She had a way of concentrating power into her eyes that he had never before seen on stage. They were huge and brilliant. Stormy as a petrel’s. She was compelling, mesmerizing, magical.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Rakoczi,’ a call-boy whispered nervously, ‘There’s a lady to see you.’

  ‘Nem Fontos. Not now!’ Vidal hissed furiously.

  ‘Sorry sir, but she insists.’ The call-boy’s face was troubled. ‘She says that she’s your wife, sir.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Vidal spun round. ‘She said what?’ he rasped.

  ‘That she was your wife, sir.’

  Vidal pushed past him, ignoring the startled looks of the others in the wings and racing down the narrow stairs to where Kariana waited for him.

  Her blonde hair dipped and curled fluffily around her heart-shaped face. She was wearing a pretty evening dress of rose-silk and a gardenia was pinned to the pastel-mink coat that hung around her shoulders.

  She smiled at him disorientatedly. ‘Hello, Vidal.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief. She was calm. Her voice low and whispery.

  ‘Hello Kariana,’ he said, taking her hands in his. ‘Is Doctor Grossman with you?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Her eyes were vague and uncomprehending.

  ‘Who brought you to the theatre?’ Vidal asked, his relief brief.

  ‘I don’t know. No one. The New York Times said that Valentina was opening in The Little Foxes in San Francisco and so I knew that you would be directing…’ Her voice faded away. She looked like a small child who was lost and did not understand why.

  She smiled uncertainly. ‘I just thought that I would come and see you. It’s been such a long time, Vidal.’

  He took her arm, wondering if Valentina’s dressing room would be the best place to take her.

  The confusion in her eyes cleared at his touch. ‘That’s why I had to see you. I need your advice, Vidal. Doctor Grossman is in love with me. He wants to marry me.’

  Vidal began to lead her along the corridor towards Valentina’s dressing room. ‘I have to go back to the performance, Kariana. We’ll talk about it later.’

  She pulled away from his, her eyes clouding over, the sweetness disappearing. ‘We have to talk about it now!’ she insisted, her voice rising hysterically. ‘It’s important!’

  Vidal flinched. An octave higher and her voice would reach th
e stage. ‘Wait in Valentina’s dressing room until the interval,’ he said soothingly. ‘We’ll talk then.’

  ‘No! I won’t wait!’ She lashed out at him, a nail scoring his cheek, drawing blood. ‘I want to talk to you now!’

  An electrician eyed them curiously. ‘Anything wrong, Mr Rakoczi?’

  ‘No,’ Vidal said abruptly. ‘Nothing.’ He had to get her out of the theatre and quickly. She was beginning to sob, to descend into the pit of despair that presaged mania.

  Hurriedly he propelled her towards the stage door, his jaw clenched. It was obvious that she was sick and it was beyond his imagination why Grossman had allowed her to make the visit alone.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked as they stepped out on to the sidewalk.

  ‘Somewhere quiet where we can talk,’ he said tersely, opening the door of his limousine. He had to calm her down; find somewhere safe to leave her. Valentina was on stage nearly to the end of act one. There was nearly an hour before she would be aware of his absence.

  ‘Now, Kariana,’ he said, his patience on a very tight rein as he surged away from the kerb and sped down Geary Street. ‘What is it that you want to ask me?’

  ‘Why, whether I should marry him or not?’ she answered, round-eyed, her flare of rage forgotten.

  Vidal drew in a ragged breath. One wrong word and she would be a screaming dervish again.

  ‘Do you want to marry him?’ he asked, forcing his voice to be easy and casual. Forcing his mind away from the time. Away from the theatre.

  ‘He’s kind,’ she said simply, ‘but he doesn’t know … He doesn’t know about…’ She began to tremble violently.

  Vidal headed out of the city towards the house that Stan Kennaway had rented. He could think of nowhere else to take her.

  ‘About what, Kariana?’ he asked gently. Her eyes were on his hands. On the maimed, dead-looking flesh. He shot her a quick glance and understood. He swore inwardly, taking a corner at high speed. Damn Grossman. He could have spared him this. He could have told her that he knew the truth about what had happened the night of the fire.