During my retreat it has been decided by the drama department that what the story lacks is a plane sequence and a chase set in one of the famous Polish opal mines.
“What?” I mutter, barely able to comprehend what is being suggested to me. “But this is the story of a thirteen-year-old girl in search of her father.” No matter, I am assured, the newly proposed sequence will dovetail into the story nicely. I am given a sheath of material which tells me (in halting English) all I need to know about the local mining industry and sent away to write the scenes. Back I go to my room, encased once again within four walls and my imagination.
I am cheered by news from Michel. He has found an independent company in Paris that has guaranteed the missing financing. Everything is back on track. I return to the opal sequence with optimism in my heart. Perhaps my heroine can find a stone or two! Why not?
By Friday, I am certain that if I do not get out of the hotel I will not be held responsible for my state of mind. I have had four hours’ sleep in as many days. I stagger down to reception, where the sight of so many people milling to and fro in a brightly lit, bustling area almost sends me into trauma. I leave a note for the producer, telling him that I have four scripts. They are ready to be read, and I don’t care what he says, I want to go out to dinner this evening, and will he and the designer please accompany me because I am starved of human contact and laughter!
Later that evening, along with the English director, who has flown in from London the day before, we stroll to the old town and order vodka and fresh fish and settle to our evening. They are priming me on all that has happened during my missing days, but I am so tired, so punch-drunk and, after one straight vodka, so slewed that I can barely take in the sequence of events. The mayor of Bialystok has telephoned to discuss the newly constructed windmill which he has spotted in one of the surrounding village fields. He is refusing to allow us to burn it. The designer is laughing as he recounts the conversation. Why? Is there a local fire risk? No, not all. He is so taken with it, with its unusual design—essential for the story—that he wants to buy it and keep it there as a tourist attraction! We laugh wildly and order more vodka, a blissful palliative to me this evening. The restaurant grows packed, candles are lit, accordionists in national costume are serenading us at our benched table, searingly sweet romantic tunes. We are talking and giggling hysterically because we are all tired and stressed. And so I chill out and heal. The money is back in place. The English director, a gentle, intelligent soul, is an excellent addition to our small team, and in one week, so long as my new scripts are accepted, I will return to the haven of Appassionata and write the remaining changes from there. My work, for the time being in Poland, will have been accomplished. The film will have reached the starting gate. Life is not so bad after all.
My thoughts drift to the garden, to the olive trees and dogs and how well I shall feel writing in my own precious space, my sanctum, surrounded by shelf after shelf of books and warm shafts of moted sunbeams. Of course, if the scripts are not accepted, the start of principal photography will be delayed, the budget will be at risk, jobs on the line… I choose not to dwell on such negatives tonight, or the incredible weight of responsibility I feel. Tomorrow—no, today; it is now Saturday—there is to be a mammoth script conference at the studios in the afternoon where my work will be discussed and, probably, dissected. What a baptism by fire for any young scriptwriter this is proving to be.
It is two A.M. when we enter the lobby of the hotel, and I find an urgent message waiting for me to call Michel.
Back in my room, dubious about calling at such a late hour, I pick up the phone. His voice is grave, and I know before he utters a word that what I am about to hear will not be good. “It’s your father,” he says.
“My… ?” The effect of the vodka, which left me sleepy, slurry and mellow, is whipped from me just as surely as though someone has slapped me with a cold metal object.
“You better ring England.” I crash the receiver down clumsily almost before he has finished speaking and telephone my mother. It takes a frustrating age before I can get another line out and then an age before she answers.
“We’ve just returned from the hospital.” I hear her breathlessness, caused by rushing to the phone, no doubt.
“The hospital?” I seem incapable of uttering anything other than parrotlike responses.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
My father has had a stroke. He is unconscious and paralyzed. He could live a day, he could go on for an indeterminate period. “If you came, he wouldn’t know you were here, and we know you have difficulties there. There’s no sense in risking everything you have been working for.”
“No.”
We say good night and I promise to call again in the morning. I walk to the window, tripping over the cursed printer on my way, dragging a carver chair with me, which I place facing the leafy deserted square beyond the hotel. There I sit for the entire night. Exhausted, spent as I am, I cannot go to bed, would not sleep. I think of my father and try to comprehend the reality of what has happened to him way across the waters in a land of Englishness so alien to this place, with its remnants of gray communism, its fast-growing mafia, its distant grim echoes of concentration camps and its desperate hungry hand reaching out to a new world where pop music is not banned, kids smoke dope and, supposedly, salvation lies. My story is of a thirteen-year-old in search of her musician father, and in the Polish episodes, she finds him and loses him again. The streets beyond the window are deadly quiet. My own father, dying in a hospital bed in a place my mind refuses to conjure, is a musician and has been the inspiration for the central theme of my story. It was to have been a spiritual present to him; a gift of my work. I had been looking forward to talking to him about it, to taking him to the islands, to the fortress where the resolution of the story is to take place. I close my aching eyes and picture him at Appassionata, sleeping in the sun with No Name at his side, loyal companions, his sunburned, sleeping body covered in puppies.
At first light, I make my way to the dining room. There is not a soul in sight. When the waiter comes by, I order coffee and stare at the phenomenal buffet on offer, which includes mountains of caviar and every marinated herring you could dream of, all so at odds with the miserable poverty and deprivation I have witnessed everywhere in this land. I stare at it blindly and then, in my mind’s ear, I hear a voice. Indisputably. It is my father’s. Carol, Carol, darling, it’s Daddy. And I know that whatever the weight of responsibility here, no matter how many actors’ and technicians’ jobs are at risk, no matter if the Poles hate every word I have written and call this huge production machine to a halt, I must go. If only for a day. Today is Saturday. I could take the weekend and be back to face the music on Monday morning.
At reception, I learn that access in and out of Poland is not the simple affair I had thoughtlessly anticipated. There is one flight to London later this afternoon and another back tomorrow evening. They are fully booked. In fact, there is not a flight with a single seat available in any class for the next five days. What if I went through Paris? Or Amsterdam? Or Frankfurt? In my vulnerable, barely coherent exhaustion, I blurt out my dilemma, unbosoming myself to the desk clerk. He is kindly and sympathetic and promises to look into the matter and get back to me. I return to the dining room and drink several more black coffees before calling the producer’s room.
“Of course, you must go,” he tells me when I disturb him at eight-thirty. “I will drive you to the airport.”
By whatever miracles make these matters possible, flights are found, and I am booked to London via Berlin. There is no time to waste. The producer has read the scripts overnight and seems relatively happy with them. He envisages few, if any, problems. We grab a hurried bite, or rather he does while talking through various scenes. He intends to attend the pre-arranged weekend script meetings on my behalf and take notes; upon my return, he and I will collaborate on whatever has been requested by the television networ
k, and I will deliver the corrected scripts to the network by Monday morning. I merely nod my agreement to this insane schedule. I cannot think beyond what awaits me in England. I have moved into a different pace, another zone.
STANDING IN THE CENTER of my hotel room on Sunday evening, I survey my temporary habitat. Nothing has changed except the bed, which has been made during my thirty-six-hour absence, and my papers, which were strewn everywhere and have been tidied into bundles. I stare at nothing in particular except its orderliness. I have a meeting in the bar in fifteen minutes with director, designer and producer who have passed practically the entire weekend at the studio. I have begged the time to wash and to phone my mother. I slept, or rather didn’t at the hospital at my father’s side. Now I have just replaced the receiver, having learned from her that my father died two hours earlier. I would have been flying somewhere between Berlin to Warsaw. I gather up my scripts and head for the elevator. In the bar, my three colleagues await me with a tall glass of champagne which costs the earth here.
“Ready to go back to work?”
I nod and decide to hold off my news until we have worked through the scripts. It is four in the morning when our powwow breaks up and we head toward the elevators. I am clutching my papers tight against my chest. Bleak emotions are churning up my guts. Questions unable to be answered hang in my mind like smoke trails. One phone call and life has taken on an entirely different perspective. The men are talking among themselves. Small talk, the banter that is born of exhaustion. As we exit the elevator, the producer and I say good night to the others, whose rooms are elsewhere. He accompanies me, knowing.
“It’s curious. When you rang my room on Saturday morning, I was lying awake thinking about my own father. He’s not well. I was wondering what I’d do if I got that call. You were luckier. Mine’s in Australia.”
I drop my eyes and stare at the carpet. Luckier?
“Have you told Michel?”
I shake my head. “Not yet,” I murmur. “The funeral’s next Monday. I’m going,” I snap, too sharply.
“Of course. In any case, you should be out of here by then. You’ve done well. Against all bloody odds. Thanks for it.” He leans in and gives me an awkward hug.
THE DAYS BANK UP, each one like the last. We attend meeting after meeting. While the others talk and debate, the producer fighting in my corner with a ferocious loyalty to the story we had set out to tell and which now seems to be disappearing behind action sequences that bare no relationship to anything as far as I can see, I close down. I stare at the blank, faded white walls or the conference table around which we sit. None of this seems relevant, and yet I know that it is. So many livelihoods at stake. And a story dedicated to the father I have just lost. As we approach the end of the week, I learn that there are no flights. Not at any price. I will walk if I have to, I tell no one in particular and set about trying to rent a car. I shall drive to London or drive across the frontier and pick up a plane in Germany. I am going, I repeat angrily. These dark days have crept up without warning. No pointers to alert me that they were approaching; I was not prepared for this. I am hurting with life and ready to lash out.
Miraculously, yet again, flights are found. But this time the route is more circuitous. Warsaw to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Nice and then Nice to London. This extraordinary tour includes an overnight in Nice which means, incredibly, that I can go home. I am grateful, profoundly grateful, for the opportunity to touch base.
I phone Quashia to alert him of my imminent arrival and learn that No Name has gone missing. In between script sessions, budget and design meetings, I begin to ring all the refuge centers in the south of France. No one has found her. I am beside myself with concern. I call the police and the fire brigade. They also respond with negatives. I telephone the vet. What shall I do? He has a record there of the numbered reference he tattooed in her ear when I first found her. He will call the central office and alert them. He reminds me that when I gave him the signed photo he had requested, I also gave him a photograph Michel had taken of No Name running in the garden. He offers to have photocopies made and distribute them in our local shops and put one up in his surgery. My heart is troubled as well as numb, but I am thankful for his support. “I’ll see you when I arrive,” I mumble and replace the phone.
A BLANKET OF HEAT greets my weary arrival. Here at home, it is a blazing, glorious summer. It had been warm in Warsaw as well, but because I had been incarcerated in meetings and cold with grieving, I had not noticed. The tropicality of the Côte d’Azur takes me by surprise. For the first time ever, I feel a stranger to the plumes of palm fronds while the gloss and bustle of Riviera life rather turns my stomach after the poverty of Poland, but as I climb up into the winding twilit hills, breathe in the fragrance of scarlet and pink oleandar and the sky-blue plumbago, my heart begins to settle. By the time I have reached the land of olive groves, our own in particular, a great weight seems to lift from me and a peace descends, albeit a lamenting peace.
Upon arrival, I find a fax from the producer saying all four scripts have been accepted. The network is delighted with them. Once I have shared with my family our farewell to my father, I can return to Appassionata and begin to write the new first script, now to be set in Paris, from the serenity of my own stone-walled space. Any last-minute changes requested by the Poles can be achieved by fax. Principal photography has been given the green light. The task has been accomplished.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LOSS
Soon the weather will begin to break. Already, the crush of holidaymakers with children have packed up and left, and with them has gone that distinctly pungent tang of suntan lotion which has dominated the Riviera coastline for the past two months. Michel and I are lunching on the beach. Early autumnal winds, driving off that heavy summer lethargy and previewing the shift of season, have blown in, bringing with them fragrant whiffs of late-summer flowers. Light gusts lift and settle the paper napkins on the table in front of us. Dragging a stray wisp of hair from off my face, I glance about me. On the shore, at water’s edge, two wiry setters are barking incessantly at a retired couple in matching swimming caps splashing lazily on their backs in the warm sea. Cries of distant voices drift toward us on the welcome breeze. Closer by, well-fed bronzed bodies—Nords, Dutch, Germans, Brits—chatter and prattle, ordering drinks, lighting cigarettes, oiling one another, while tame waves spume and curl just a few yards from our feet. We have barely seen each other for weeks. Our eyes shaded by Raybans; we gaze across the table but do not smile. Michel looks shot to hell, in need of a haircut and a break, while I am shell-shocked by the news he has just imparted. Behind me, the steady thwack-thwack of ball hitting bat acts like a salty metronome. Time to make a decision.
“What are we going to do?” I ask eventually.
An entire film crew is on its way. Shooting will finish in Hamburg in a week, which means that the full caravan of actors, makeup and costume, camera, lights, electrics is about to converge on this resort by road and air. In the meantime, the advance team of designers, carpenters, buyers, et cetera, has already been installed in a small hotel three streets back from the main coastal drag. The film material in the can—the rushes—has been well received by all the various international networks involved, and the young girl playing the leading role has been described as “magic” onscreen. We should be delighted. And so we were, I thought in a worn-out sort of way, until this morning.
In short, the French company who stepped in to cover the deficit incurred by the loss of the British network has gone bankrupt. They are not alone. During these past few months in Paris, somewhere in the region of twenty independent production companies have gone to the wall, and we are likely to join them if we cannot find a solution to this crisis. Michel learned this news three days ago. He said nothing to me but went immediately to his bankers in Paris, who have, after much wrangling, telephoned this morning to say that they agree to advance the monies and keep the production running—which right now means
to get a host of salaries paid before the middle of next week—on one condition.
“And that is?” I ask as a plate of freshly grilled sizzling sardines seasoned with curls of fresh parsley is set in front of me and the waitress, a pretty, darkly tanned, middle-aged blonde in shorts, refills my glass of rosé.
“That we give them the farm as a guarantee.”
“Give them Appassionata? No!”
Sleek heads at nearby tables turn at the sound of my raised voice. I sigh. We are both exhausted.
Since collecting Michel from the airport, while driving along the busy stretch of coast road, negotiating corkscrew curves in the old fortressed port of Antibes, swinging by the palm-fringed, art deco villas along the cap, I have chattered without pause about various horticultural difficulties I have been experiencing, as well as my preparations for the arrival of the girls, who are flying in later today. This was to have been our first home-based family weekend in months. I was excited. Having completed the rewrites on my scripts weeks ago, I have spent my late-August days immersed in affairs of the garden and wanted to share my news.
“Cicadelles. They are small white flies, smaller than moths. They’re everywhere and lethal. According to René, there’s a local epidemic. They’ve laid their eggs on our orange trees. The underside of the foliage has been invaded, robbing the leaves of their color; all viridescence sucked out. I treated them twice. Quashia has, too, but it’s made no difference. They just fly off and settle somewhere else. Watching them move is like seeing a soft pale gray blanket fluttering across the terraces. Now they are on the roses and the bougainvillea. When you touch the plants, they are all sticky. I was scared they’d attack the olive trees, but they haven’t gone near them. And just when I was beginning to feel safe about that, I discovered paon—you remember René showed us when we went to visit that farm near Castellane? Remember he told us to watch out for it—leaves turning yellow, round brown spots? Well, I have found the fungus on nine of our olive trees. You’re very quiet, Michel. I’m talking too much. I’m so pleased to see you. Are you all right?” And that was when he broached the subject. By then we had parked my little car and were crossing the street, heading beachward for this café.
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