For the past few months they’d been in Los Angeles, abandoning the ranch they’d bought in Texas, while Tessa made her annual film, this year a romantic comedy with Dustin Hoffman. Was it possible that Tessa suspected the humiliating extent to which he was held captive in a piercing grid of jealous anxiety, from the moment she left in the morning until she returned from the studio at night? He had always exercised all his will to keep it from her, Luke told himself, and there was no reason to believe he’d been unsuccessful.
As he trod a restless path from the window to the television set and back again, he examined his behavior with Tessa for the ten thousandth time and came to the invariable conclusion that during their marriage he had managed to keep the toxic fumes of his jealousy from escaping into the air of real life. But what if Tessa was even more sensitive than he believed she was? Could she know what he was feeling, no matter how he covered it up?
Christ almighty, he wanted all of her, he wanted to possess her entirely, every atom of her being. Every one of her smiles should be reserved for him, she should not be allowed to look into anyone else’s eyes. The thought of Tessa spending the day surrounded by her coworkers, meeting new people, perhaps becoming interested in them, somehow involved with them on a personal level, was just this side of intolerable. Didn’t she know that her voice, merely asking a question or making a request, was as romantic as a valentine?
Old friends were almost as much of a threat, old friends with whom she remembered a life that didn’t include him. It wasn’t merely obvious temptation that his ungovernable imagination invented and then gorged upon uncontrollably. He was jealous of every laugh she had with Roddy or Fiona, of every phone call from her agent. Yes, he was even jealous of her phone time with Aaron … who knew when Aaron might find a role she couldn’t resist accepting, a role that would cause her to break her self-imposed limit on work?
Yet he believed that he’d kept his hideous jealousy from her, a jealousy that revolted him as if it had been a running sore on his body. Luke reflected that he’d at least retained enough sanity to be sure—almost to be sure—that it was unjustified. He’d managed to hide his feelings while she made the film that had won her the Oscar the previous year, a brilliantly written movie called The Winter of Doctor Star, in which Tessa had been cast as an intern in cardiology who falls in love with a gravely ill patient played by Robert Redford. He’d concealed the wild insanity that overtook him whenever he thought of her kissing Redford. He didn’t give a shit how many technicians would be around them, how the director would be as much a part of the kiss as Redford’s lips, how it was all in a day’s work. No, fuck it, no! A kiss was a kiss and no one could kiss Tessa without wanting her. He’d lived through Redford, he’d live through Hoffman, he told himself, although the damn man had a devilish charm, a wicked humor, a special quality of nervy, wound-up sexuality that had nothing to do with his looks.
Since winning for Doctor Star, Tessa had refused dozens of scripts before deciding to work with Hoffman, in spite of the fact that Aaron Zucker, that persistent bastard, simply couldn’t resist phoning her wherever they found themselves in the world and pointing out that she was in the red-hot middle of her career and that it was madness not to work more often. Her agent never managed to accept her decision to make only one film a year, Luke thought in repressed fury, as he listened to Tessa’s account of her conversation. “He said, and I quote, ‘now is the time to sink my teeth into the whole fucking industry, chew it up, and swallow it for breakfast.’ I think poor Aaron should leave metaphor alone, don’t you, darling?”
“Well,” Luke remembered saying carefully, “from his point of view he probably thinks that there should be a statute of limitations on what you promised me when we got married.”
“Oh, he’s never been able to accept the fact that I was utterly serious about my decision,” Tessa said indulgently, and Luke had been happy to let the discussion drop.
Earlier today, he and Roddy had had time to chat while Tessa dressed and had her hair arranged. The man was no fool, Luke thought, although he certainly gave himself full marks for Tessa’s career.
“Tessa was inevitable,” Roddy had said, “I realized it the minute I saw her. Her personality and the public’s taste were going to march hand in hand, she was the girl they were going to adore even though they didn’t know it yet, and the smartest thing she’s done has been to limit her work and choose to play such widely differing roles. See, Luke, a Tessa Kent’ type has never developed, a Tessa Kent’ role has never been created. She has no imitators, she’s one of a kind. She was born with a physical presence no one else had ever possessed in the history of the screen, but it wasn’t that alone, it was never just about beauty, but about a unique personality. She’ll last, Luke, last as long as she wants to. Our girl rejects repetition and so she eludes rejection, even after almost eleven years at the top. She’s like Katharine Hepburn, a star who has no fade-out factor.”
“ ‘Fade-out’? She’s only twenty-six, for God’s sake,” Luke had objected in spite of himself, in spite of the fact that if she lost favor with the public and returned to a totally private existence with him, he’d ask nothing more of life.
“Luke, you’re not in the business, but remember that Tessa won her first Best Actress award when she was only twenty-two. I dote on that picture … Ivy League … I still think it’s my best. Tessa playing the little grad student, and big old Clint, you tell me who ever expected him to be so convincing as a happily married professor, helpless to do anything while she slowly invaded his life, terrorizing him, seeming to be perfectly normal while she was going quietly and murderously insane? I play that picture once a month at home and I’ve never tired of it. She was brilliant, Luke, brilliant, but you know that as well as I do. Any other actress might have been tempted to do another film in which she showed again how fascinatingly evil she can be, but not Tessa. All she thought about was flying off with you to your love nest in Èze as soon as she’d fulfilled her media commitments.”
“She adores the farmhouse,” Luke had responded stiffly.
“Shit, Luke, she adores you. Where other actresses put their ambition, their psychological needs for fame, pure narcissism, or any of the other motivations for what they insist on calling their ‘art,’ Tessa puts you. You’re one hell of a lucky guy, Luke, as I’m sure you know.”
“I don’t deserve her, Roddy,” he’d managed to grin.
“Amen! No one’s good enough for Tessa,” he’d agreed.
Luke sat down in front of the television, glancing at his watch and back to the screen. There was that quick audience shot, there was Roddy, sitting far up front with Maggie beside him in the seat that Tessa had wangled for her. Maggie, he mused, poor Maggie, she probably couldn’t see well over the head of the man in front of her, but no one had ever been as excited as she had been at this treat.
He didn’t know how Tessa had managed to get her school to let her off for the trip, but tomorrow they’d put her back on the plane to the East Coast, all one hundred sixty-five pounds of her, if not more. How could a girl almost thirteen years old so thoroughly embody absolutely everything that was meant by the “awkward age,” he wondered, and still come out of the same gene pool that had produced Tessa? Maggie wore braces, both upper and lower, and suffered from a constant plague of pimples. Her ridiculously abundant hair was either frizzy, curly, or limp, depending on the day; and, worst of all, she hadn’t stopped growing. She was taller every time he saw her, with breasts that already looked like those of a grown woman.
He tried not to look at her any more than he had to, Luke thought, because she was so wretchedly self-conscious, but he had to admit that when she was around, he was jealous of the time Tessa spent with her … her own sister! But when Maggie visited, there was just that much less time for him, that much less of Tessa’s undivided concentration. Could that be the reason Tessa usually managed to shoehorn Maggie’s visits into the short periods when he was making a lightning business trip t
o an uncomfortable place? No, Luke thought, shaking his head, there was no possibility that she could suspect that a sisterly relationship could cause him real suffering, because if she knew that unthinkable truth, she’d know everything else as well.
Tyler’s regular letter, reporting on Maggie, as he’d been instructed to do, always told him how satisfactory Maggie’s presence was in the family, but in the same letter he’d usually let something slip that made Luke doubt if the Maggie he saw could fit so easily into the outstandingly handsome group of Websters. His niece Allison was sixteen now, and, according to her proud father, she had turned into an out-and-out raving beauty, while Candice, who was about to finish her last year of school, was a vision of utter prettiness, less beautiful than Allison, but more approachable. Apparently coming-out parties weren’t the victim of the 1960s that he’d thought they were, since Tyler reported that Madison was engrossed in preparations for Candice’s debut.
Tyler’s letters seemed to reassure Tessa, yet she always let Maggie know that if she wasn’t happy at the Websters’ she could go away to boarding school. Ever since that incident when she’d had to fly to the Elm School to defend Maggie against the little snobs there, Tessa had worried about Maggie’s school experience, but Maggie consistently refused to entertain the idea. “No,” she’d say, or write, “I don’t want to have to start out all over again at a strange school. I’m too shy, Tessa, and anyway I’ve finally made a few really good friends now and everybody else here knows I’m not a liar or a mystery without a family. Don’t worry about me.”
Well, he didn’t worry about her, Luke assured himself. He’d made the right decision back when Maggie might have been sent off to one of Tessa’s aunts, and he’d never regretted it. If she didn’t feel comfortable with the Websters, she’d never hinted at such feelings, although frankly something about Madison gave him the creeps.
Impatiently—it was not yet near the time he could expect to see Tessa—Luke flung himself back in his chair and closed his eyes and drifted into a reverie. Strange, how Tessa never truly stopped protesting at the jewels he gave her so often, never understood how entirely necessary it was for him. She still thought in terms of generosity and extravagance, not guessing at the deep, secret pleasure that compelled him to mark her as his property. Yes, he thought with voluptuous pleasure, every new jewel branded her once again as belonging exclusively to him, every gem she wore was a proof that Luke Blake, and only Luke Blake, of all the men in the world, had the right to possess her.
She had so many now. Jewels without end. Often there were nights when he’d whisper to her to take off all her clothes and lie down on their bed. She knew exactly what he wanted, lying there with her eyes tightly closed, her legs pressed together, her arms at her side, while he slowly covered her from her neck to her feet with the contents of her jewel cases. He’d make himself leave her breasts exposed, and the maddening dark triangle at the base of her belly. He’d watch her face as she struggled to remain perfectly passive, never knowing when he would finish laying the jewels, one by one, in a mosaic over her skin, forcing himself to take his time, to prolong the delight until it was painful for him.
The only way Tessa could be certain that he’d finally exhausted the contents of the cases was that moment when, probing as delicately as if his tongue were a feather, he’d flick at the tips of her pubic hair. Just the tips, the wispy, silken tips. Yes, that was the signal that the game had begun, and what a royal game it was. Tessa had to keep her eyes closed and remain motionless and mute, a goddess bound by chains of gems, a goddess who allowed him to make whatever use of her pleased him that night. He’d have been thinking about it all day, trying to decide if he wanted to make her come with only his mouth, stopping often, oh, so often, to feast on her expression, to watch her bite her lips to keep back the slightest sound, too proud to change her aloof expression, to utter the words that might urge him on. Or else he’d choose to torture her more intensely, using his lips and his teeth on her nipples, pausing as often as he could endure, until her breasts were engorged and her nipples stood straight up. Only then was he willing to insert his fingers into her body, teasing them in and dragging them out with such a hesitant, brushing, glancing, deliberately indirect touch that he missed her clitoris far more often than he found it. He would refuse to satisfy her, holding back until finally she was unable to endure the torment any longer and, sweeping all the jewels to the floor, she would grasp him and press him into her, wordlessly, savagely. On other nights he used no refinements, but used her directly, suddenly, brutally, with no warning, treating her as his prisoner, a prisoner whose own pleasure was unimportant, meaningless. But always, after he came, and he would come with deliberate quickness, so that she had no chance to become aroused, he would make it up to her with his hands and his mouth and his cock. He never, never let her go until she was satisfied.
Which way would he take her tonight, Luke asked himself, when she came home from the Oscars? Which way would make her forget most thoroughly that any other world existed except the one they inhabited together?
19
The day after her birthday in August 1985, Tessa stopped taking the Pill. Luke had said he’d be ready for fatherhood, or at least ready to contemplate it, by the time she was thirty, and thirty she was.
She decided not to tell him of her decision. Normally Tessa told Luke everything important, but she didn’t want making love to become a self-conscious act, with conception in the back of their minds. And, she admitted to herself, what if he were to suggest postponing having a baby for one more year, and then another?
Tessa understood Luke Blake’s nature far better than he realized. Yes, he was as intensely, jealously possessive of her as any man could be, and she gloried in his possessiveness. Yes, he was thoroughly, hopelessly selfish about how she spent every second of her time when she wasn’t actually working on a movie, and she gloried in his selfishness. Yes, he wanted all of her attention when he wasn’t working, and she gave herself to him gladly in an undivided way. She had no time and no need to cultivate friendships with other women; her only adult relationships outside of Luke were with people connected to her career.
Tessa knew that in the deepest sense she conspired to join Luke in their tight, exclusive relationship, one that some, perhaps most, women might find stifling. But to her it was essential, for with Luke she continued to live in the heart of that sense of safety she was still consciously aware of needing every day of her life, an emotional safety that no amount of her own success could ever guarantee. She’d never been able to take her safety for granted, she’d never forgotten the years before he’d come into her life and transformed it with just the touch of his hand.
But now she wanted a baby. Desperately. She’d waited without showing her impatience, she’d kept her part of the bargain—well, perhaps it hadn’t been a bargain but just a statement Luke had made—but now was her time to get what she wanted. No, what she needed.
Seven months passed and Tessa still hadn’t conceived. She began to grow concerned that the problem might lie with Luke. God knows, she had living proof that she could get pregnant. Perhaps Luke’s childlessness at forty-five, when she’d met him, hadn’t been through faultless contraception but because he couldn’t father a child. Nevertheless she bided her time. She wasn’t fourteen now, and everyone knew that it was more difficult to get pregnant when you were older, and, of course, in one of nature’s little ironies, always more difficult to get pregnant when you wanted to than when you didn’t.
In April 1986, Tessa missed her period. Still she said nothing to Luke, waiting to be sure. Every day she expected to experience the morning sickness she remembered, the horrible bouts of vomiting that had finally alerted her mother to her pregnancy. Had they started in the first month or the second? She couldn’t recall such details now; so much of that entire period of her life had almost completely vanished from her mind, leaving only a merciful blankness that demanded that she not probe too deeply.
To Tessa’s relief, Luke’s business travel had slackened somewhat in recent years, as he found more and more good men to work for him in different parts of the world. That spring they were able to spend a long, quiet time at Èze, a time she contrived to make as inactive as possible, pleading fatigue after the completion of her latest film. For the next three weeks she cocooned herself as much as possible, ambling up the road to the village from time to time but otherwise sitting contentedly on the terrace outside of the farmhouse. She spent hours reading or merely daydreaming, as she gazed at the signs of new leaves on the grapevines, watched the circles of lavender grow taller by the day, listened to the gentle wind in the cypress and olive trees, and basked like a cat in the sun of the Midi.
All of France, Tessa knew from the newspapers, was in its usual state of turmoil, but in the countryside of Èze the peace was total, unless you deliberately went into a café in the village and listened to the retired residents grumble ritually over their card games. Yet even that grumbling fell into a predictable rhythm, Tessa thought, reveling in this respite from their world of travel, acquisition, and moviemaking, the familiar routines of her life with Luke about which the only predictable element was that they were ever-changing.
How would they live when they had a baby? Tessa wondered. She found it impossible to decide, with all the world open to them. All she was certain of was that their existence would be very different from the life they had led up till now. She would give up work for years, if not forever. Luke would simply have to travel much, much less. They would stop their nomadic existence and finally establish a true home somewhere—perhaps the Texas ranch, perhaps Melbourne, perhaps the villa from which they sailed at Cap-Ferrat, perhaps someplace entirely different. They might even buy a house in California, where they’d always stayed at a hotel during her bouts of filmmaking. Why not Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places on earth? But did it have good schools? Ah, all she really knew was that they would settle down, she promised herself, or it wouldn’t be fair to the baby. And, of course, she thought as she drifted off into a nap, of course the baby would be born in the United States …
The Jewels of Tessa Kent Page 20
