I dreamt of her every night. That crunch of the banana-yellow van striking her body was in my thoughts every moment of the day. I hated myself, I still hated her too, but I realised – horribly – just how much I loved her.
This was a woman who wanted to shoot me, who happily left me for dead on the concrete floor of Motspur Studio. She killed two men and then threw me away as if I were nothing. As far as I could tell, she had no real guilt for what she did to them or wanted to do to me, yet I was racked with self-loathing for what I did to her.
The rest of that summer was quiet. I did manage to find a late place on a teacher training course in Cardiff to appease my mum, but nothing else. I didn’t do any bar work, I didn’t sign on, I just drifted.
And I stayed in my brooding haze right until the slightly chilly August Bank Holiday Monday, when I saw the familiar silver-grey Rolls-Royce parked about a hundred and fifty yards from my mum’s front door.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
August 25th, 1980
Romesh stepped hulking out of the Rolls as I approached, his face sphinx-like, as if he’d never even seen me before.
Without fear I walked straight up to the man who had hospitalised me, then ignored him. I opened the back door and, without invitation, slid myself onto the back seat next to Grayson Gilbert.
The director’s face peered up with a welcoming cheerfulness which wasn’t surprised at all. There was even a gasp of delight, his mouth forming a perfect O. That morning, in his rich, velvet, purple suit, he might have fitted in well at one of London’s more avant-garde clubs, but he was totally out of place in Wickstanley. No wonder he stayed in the car.
I slammed the door behind me, probably as carelessly as anyone had ever treated that Rolls, but it didn’t seem to disturb him a jot.
“Mr Mallory,” he said, his smile almost paternal. “So pleased to see you again. Tell me, did our friends in blue treat you more gently this time?”
“I survived. You?”
He shrugged. “It was of course horrendous for me to learn that I’d been sharing my house – my very home – with a murderess. Just shocking.” He stared away distantly, ostensibly to the front seat and the back of Romesh’s head, but clearly much further. “Sharing my house and sharing my life, but not sharing my bed. I want you to understand that I’m not a rival in that sense, Mr Mallory. I have rather particular tastes, and Diana – the Lord bless her – knew and understood that.”
“Diana told me that you were trying to control her.”
“Did she?” he tutted. “We were strangers to each other’s lives for such a long time, and, dealing with her every day, I really began to understand why.”
His eyes still forward, he leant his chin on his cane, which I realised I’d never actually seen him walk with. It was just a prop, there to make the scenes he played out in the back of his chauffeur-driven car more visually interesting.
The silence hung between us, jagged and unpleasant.
“What is it you want, Gilbert?”
A grin rose and cracked fresh wrinkles into his cheeks. “Have you seen the reviews for The Brighton Player? They really are extraordinarily good. I don’t remember the last time I had a film so lauded. Naturally, there’s a lot of attention because of all the tawdriness which accompanied the production, but still these are the best notices I’ve had in years, Mr Mallory. Years!”
“I’ve seen them.” My teeth were gritted.
“Of course, dearest Diana is signalled out for particular praise. I think though, that given all the press attention, the critics are reading things into her performance that are not necessarily there. But that’s fine. Believe me, there’s going to be an awful lot of attention on Diana and her life from now on. It’s no exaggeration to say that she’s going to be a Monroe, a Dean!”
“What do you want, Gilbert?” I asked again.
“What I want, my dear boy –” his eyes turned to me and twinkled “– is to hire you.”
I spluttered. “What?”
“I’ve put my original plans far back on the burner. My next film, the only film I can possibly make right now, will be the life story of the divine Miss Diana Christmas. Whether it will bear her name, I don’t know. The rights to her estate have gone to a sister in Margate, of all the depressing places. We’re negotiating for the necessary permissions, but disguised or otherwise, it will be her story.”
“You’re joking?”
“Never more serious, Mr Mallory. As a director of commercial films, you have to go where the money is. That has always been so and will always be so. But I want to make a great film to honour her memory and obliterate the lewd innuendo which currently surrounds her name. Are you in?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you want me to do?”
“Well, write it of course. Or, if it turns out you’re a lousy screenwriter, be a consultant. Either way there will be a salary.” He grinned in his ever-so-charming, ever-so-deadly way. “You were there, you knew her, you must have gone some distance towards understanding her.”
“I don’t think I really did,” I told him.
“No, me neither,” he said, with a hint of sadness. “But maybe we can help each other to understand her better.”
“She told me you knew her all too well.”
His eyebrows rose. “Did she? I’ll wager she didn’t like that. Diana had the ability to make other people see what they wanted to see. I suppose I have that ability as well. But what gave me the one up on Diana was that I could recognise the trait in other people – see through them, as it were – while I don’t think she ever could.”
“Did you feel sorry for her, Gilbert?”
“Sometimes, I confess. Sometimes.”
“Is that why you let her get away with murder?”
He chuckled, and leant forward again on his cane. “I probably let her get away with murder for much the same reasons you did. Or are you deliberately forgetting the unlamented Carlisle Collins? Just because a man brings himself to the edge of death, does that mean he deserves to be pushed over? Just because he no doubt lived up to every nasty image Diana painted of him, did he therefore deserve to die? My conscience isn’t clean, Mr Mallory, but neither is yours.”
My hand reached in preparation for the door handle. “Gilbert, you had me beaten to a pulp.”
“For which I am inordinately sorry. Romesh feels dreadful too.”
In the front seat, Romesh raised his hand in a backwards wave that, if it was an apology, was the most dismissive and casual apology I’d ever seen.
“But at least Diana didn’t kill you that night, did she? Come now, despite everything, you cared for her. In those snatched few days you had with her, you grew to love her in the way only a young man can. I cared for her too. In my own way I even loved her. We have that in common, and that’s why I want you, Mr Mallory. I don’t want to hand script duties to some old hack who’s been around the Grub Street block three dozen times. No, I want someone who knew her, who can do justice to the vibrancy of her personality, who cares about her memory and how she appears on screen.”
My mouth opened and closed again. Stunned, I had no idea what to say. Perhaps Gilbert took encouragement from the way my fingers slipped from the handle.
“You can stay here, in this no doubt pleasantly stultifying village, and do whatever it is you’re currently doing. Or, you can take a chance with me and build a monument to that marvellous, unforgettable woman out of celluloid. What do you say?”
“I–I–I don’t know.”
He smiled at me. “Well, think about it, Mr Mallory. We have a little time, although obviously this train won’t wait at the station forever. You know where I live, don’t you?” He winked. “When you’ve come to your decision, get in touch with me.”
My head spun, as if I was trapped in that amusement arcade with the dark flashing lights and screaming whistles again.
A distant echo of: “You’ve won. You’ve won. You’ve won.”
Gilbert nodded and tu
rned away with a certain practised finality. Our interview today was clearly at an end. My fingers reached for the door handle again, and this time I did open it. I stepped out onto the quiet village road that already seemed like a million miles from Grayson Gilbert and Romesh and the world they inhabited.
This time I closed the door with care, and the Rolls glided silently away from me. I stood and watched it turn the next corner and disappear from view.
Rooted to the spot, I thought of Diana Christmas. Beautiful, charming, vivacious, sexy, capricious, murderous, deadly, insane, wondrous Diana Christmas. I remembered her smooth naked body in my arms, her million-pound smile, and the way she kissed me so deeply. I thought of the gun in her hand, the corpse at her feet.
Nobody in my life had ever meant as much to me as Diana Christmas. Nobody had ever broken me so badly.
I stood there on that slightly chilly Bank Holiday Monday morning and wondered just how I was going to remember her.
A note from the author
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading ‘Diana Christmas’. It’s a novel I’m really proud of and one which seemed to burst fully formed from my mind to the page – bringing together my love of noir thrillers, Hollywood biographies, Billy Wilder’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and living in London. Wrapping them altogether in one glitzy, yet dangerous, little package.
This will be the first of my ‘Silver Screen Noir’ series. There’ll be some characters shared across them, but each will be its own stand-alone entity. All set in the same world and milieu, but with a different actress as the lead of each.
The next, ‘Eden St. Michel’, will be out this summer.
If you’d like to know more, please do sign up to my readers’ group and I will keep you informed of the release date and what I’m aiming for with this new novel. By signing up, you’ll also get a free copy of my short story collection, ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’.
One final thing: if you enjoyed this novel, could you please take the time to leave a short review of it on Amazon?
Reviews are the lifeblood of an indie author. They make the difference between scrabbling along and actually making a living out of our writing. So, if you’re able to find the time to leave your thoughts on ‘Diana Christmas’, then I would be tremendously grateful.
Kind regards,
FRJ.
Coming Soon…
The second book in the Screen Siren Noir series:
Eden St. Michel
Something Went Wrong
& Other Strange Tales
Available for free now!
Just click this link
About the author
F.R. Jameson was born in Wales, but now lives with his wife and daughter in London. He writes thrillers; sometimes of the supernatural variety, and sometimes historical, set around the British film industry.
A collection of short stories, ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available here.
Once a week, on his blog (https://frjameson.com/), he puts up his writing diary, so all can see what he’s accomplished in the last week. His blog is also a good place to find his book reviews, film reviews as well as shorter pieces of fiction.
You can also find him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest: @frjameson.
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