The Brave

by Nicholas Evans

  "Thank you."

  "No, Cal," she said quietly. "Thank you."

  Frank Dawson arrived and they loaded the bags and drove to the airstrip, Cal following in his truck with Tommy. Herb was waiting, the Lodestar all ready to go. Cal helped them with the bags and everybody stood by the plane's steps and said goodbye. Cal shook hands with Ray and Tommy who seemed to have lost his voice.

  "See you when we get back," Cal said.

  Tommy nodded and stared at the ground. Diane kissed Cal on the cheek. She wished she could store the touch and smell of his skin.

  The plane took off to the east and as it banked and circled back toward the west they could see Cal below them walking to his truck. He looked up and stopped and stood there, waving his hat as they flew over. And Tommy at the window gazed down, silent and bereft.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  IT WAS the third week in August and hot and not a whisper of wind to stir the tall eucalyptus trees that grew below the terrace. Between them you could see downtown LA sweltering below a blanket of yellow brown haze. It had been like this ever since they came back from Arizona and even though the air up here in the hills was clearer, Tommy sometimes felt he was going to suffocate.

  In the evening the clouds would close in until you could count the seconds before the air exploded. The storms were fast and ferocious and Tommy would get out of bed and stand at the open doors looking out over the balcony and watch the lightning silhouette the trees and listen to the thunder rumbling and rolling down the canyons. The rain was so thick and heavy and sudden that the street at the end of the driveway would flood and soon be rushing like a river.

  It wasn't just the weather that made him feel listless. The fun he'd had in Arizona had taken the shine off everything there was to do in LA. He'd had one last, sad ride with Cal but now the ranch was being wound up. Most of the horses had already been sold and the ones that belonged to Cal—including Chester—had been trailered up to Montana. Cal had gone with them. He was coming back to clear his house of all his furniture and belongings. But by the end of October, he'd be gone for good. Tommy missed him so badly he sometimes wished they'd never met.

  On top of this, Diane and Ray barely spoke to each other anymore. All they ever did was shout. They generally didn't do it when Tommy was around, only after he'd gone to bed. The storms inside the house were sometimes worse than those outside. Screaming and shouting, doors being slammed, and one night just after they got back from Arizona, a terrifying crash of breaking glass. The next morning Tommy found Dolores on her knees, picking up the last few pieces of the big living room mirror. Diane said it had blown down in the storm but he knew this wasn't true.

  Twice now he had found her crying. The second time, only last week, Tommy had lain in bed listening to the two of them arguing at the dinner table out on the terrace. Then he heard the front door slam and Ray roaring off in the Cadillac. Tommy got out of bed and went to find her. She was lying on her bed sobbing. And when he asked her what was wrong she just said (as if he might not have noticed) that things between her and Ray weren't so good at the moment. This often happened, she said, when people married and were getting used to each other and at the same time working hard. Once they'd finished making The Forsaken, she said, everything would settle down and be back to normal.

  "Do you still love him?"

  Tommy hoped she would say no so that he could tell her at last about Leanne, but she just smiled and told him not to be silly and said of course she still loved him. She gave him a long hug and stroked his hair.

  "Everything's all right, sweetheart. Honestly. When the movie's finished we'll be happy again, I know we will. All of us. Maybe we can all go away somewhere. Somewhere lovely, by the seaside. Would you like that?"

  "I suppose. Couldn't just the two of us go?"

  "Tommy, you've got to stop feeling that way about Ray. He loves you. I can't tell you how upset he is that you don't talk or want to be around him anymore. Darling, why are you like that with him?"

  "I told you, he's not nice to you. I don't like him shouting at you."

  "Please try and be friendly. Please. Let's all be happy."

  "Okay."

  As if happiness could simply be switched on like a light. In fact, Tommy rarely saw Ray—or even much of Diane. They were at the studio all day long and Tommy just hung around the house on his own or watched TV or lay on his bed and read. When he got bored of doing all these things he would help Dolores in the kitchen or help Miguel clean the cars or mow the grass or scoop the leaves off the pool. Diane kept saying he should have a friend over to play but all his Carl Curtis friends were still away at camp or on vacation.

  Then, two days ago, when Tommy was so bored and miserable he thought he might go crazy, Wally Freeman's mother had called to say Wally was back from camp. Tommy asked Diane if they could have a sleepover and it was all arranged.

  Wally had arrived yesterday afternoon and the two of them hadn't stopped laughing and talking ever since. He'd slept in the spare bed in Tommy's room, though slept maybe wasn't the right word because they'd talked until two in the morning. Tommy told him all about Arizona and Wally had him in fits with accounts of the mischief he'd made in Oregon, putting frogs in people's beds and stranding the meanest member of staff on an island in a lake where there were known to be bears.

  This morning Tommy had been woken by the sound of shouting down in the hallway. It was Dolores yelling at somebody to go away and not come back. Wally slept through it but Tommy got out of bed and when he opened the door of his room he saw Diane in a bathrobe, just out of the shower and plainly as curious as he was. She called down into the hallway and asked Dolores who she'd been shouting at. Dolores answered in her usual unfriendly voice that it was just some kid, a beggar.

  Diane and Tommy walked across the landing to the tall window that looked out onto the driveway and saw a teenage girl slouching away toward the gate. She had a frizzy blond ponytail and was wearing a yellow dress that was too big for her and needed a wash. She seemed to sense them staring at her because she turned and briefly glowered back at the house. Her face was pinched and angry and wounded. Diane shrugged and they went back into her room and Tommy sat on the bed and told her all about Wally's adventures at camp while she dried her hair and got dressed.

  Shortly after that she left for work and Tommy woke Wally and they had breakfast and went for a swim. They spent the rest of the morning playing Indians, stalking and ambushing each other in the garden. Wally wanted to shoot birds again with the BB gun but Tommy said he didn't do that anymore and that it was wrong to kill any creature unless you needed it for food. Wally said this was a load of horsefeathers.

  They went for another swim and dived for nickels then sat on the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in the water and debating which of the Three M's—Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren—had the best tits. Wally said that when school started again he was definitely going to get a kiss from Wendy Carter and Tommy said she'd probably rather kiss a dog's bottom and this led to a bout of wrestling and ducking and splashing which got so out of hand that Dolores came running from the house and told them to stop.

  On Wally's last visit, Ray had proudly shown off his collection of guns and while they were changing out of their swimming things, Wally asked if he could see them again. Tommy said they were all locked away in the basement and that Ray had the only key.

  "There is one he doesn't lock up though."

  "There is?"

  "I'm not supposed to know. Want to see it?"

  "Do bears shit in the woods?"

  Tommy led him back into the house and checked that Dolores was busy in the kitchen so she wouldn't be likely to catch them. Then he led Wally up the stairs and they tiptoed like a pair of thieves across the landing and into Diane's bedroom and over to the nightstand on Ray's side of the bed.

  "Promise you won't tell anyone."

  "I promise."

  "Because he'd be mad as a rattlesnake if
he knew I'd shown you."

  "I told you, I promise."

  "Cross your heart and hope to die."

  "Jeez, Tommy. Okay, cross my heart and hope to die."

  Tommy opened the drawer and they stood side by side staring down at the revolver. It had a dull and mysterious gleam.

  "Wow," Wally said. "A Smith and Wesson."

  "It's a thirty-eight. Like Sergeant Friday's in Dragnet."

  Wally reached out but Tommy told him not to touch it.

  "Why not? Who'll know?"

  "It's loaded."

  "So what? It's okay. Don't be such a wimp."

  He picked it up and held it carefully in both hands.

  "Wow. It's a beauty."

  "Just be careful."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  He closed his right hand around the grips and pointed it at Tommy.

  "Okay, mister, stick 'em up."

  "Wally! Don't do that! It's loaded, you idiot!"

  "Okay, okay. Don't pee your pants. Anyhow, the safety's on, moron."

  "Put it back. Now!"

  Wally sighed but did as he was told.

  "Aha! What have we here?"

  He picked up the plastic bag that Ray always kept there too.

  "It's just tobacco or tea or something."

  "Tea? It's pot, you dodo."

  "What?"

  "It's a drug. You smoke it. You know Scotty Lewis in sixth grade? His big brother smokes it all the time. It makes your eyes go all pink and funny. Man, your dad could go to jail for having this stuff."

  "He's not my dad. Wally, just put it back, will you!"

  "Okay, keep your hair on."

  Hollywood was a place of many illusions and one of these was to do with friendship. Diane had first been alerted to this shortly after she arrived the previous year by Paramount's legendary costume designer Edith Head. She was a woman of startling looks: a helmet of dyed black hair and enormous glasses with round dark blue lenses that she apparently wore to help her know how a costume would look when filmed in black and white. At the age of sixty-four she had seven Oscars to her name and had dressed nearly all the great leading ladies of the century, from Marlene Dietrich and Mae West to Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly. For some reason she had taken an immediate shine to Diane.

  "There's not a town in the world where you can make or lose friends faster," she said.

  Diane was standing before her in the red satin ball gown, one of several gorgeous Edith Head creations she never got to wear for the aborted Gary Cooper movie.

  "What you have to remember is that in Hollywood everything is about business. Including friendship. It's best not to confuse the two."

  At the time, Diane hadn't quite understood what she meant by this. But now she did. During the year she'd lived here, she'd met plenty of women she liked well enough and was happy to think of as friends. They were all, in one way or another, involved in the movie business or had husbands or boyfriends who were. They would call each other, meet for coffee or lunch, come with their partners for cocktails or dinner. But there wasn't one among them in whom Diane felt able confide or with whom she could talk candidly about Ray and the problems they were having. It was only in October when her old friends Molly and Helen came to visit that she realized how much she missed their long midnight talks, huddled in their dressing gowns around the gas fire on those freezing London nights.

  They were on a two-week trip to California and, because they were trying to cram in as much as possible, could only stay a couple of days. Diane drove them around and showed them the sights, just as Ray had done for her and Tommy a year earlier. They bombarded her with questions about her work and about the people she'd met and Diane did a fine impression of being happy and enthusiastic.

  The following day was a Saturday and Tommy persuaded them they couldn't go home without seeing Disneyland. He'd already been there three times but couldn't get enough of it. Ray said he couldn't come, so the four of them drove down to Anaheim and screamed and laughed so much on the rides that by the time they got home they were all aching.

  At dinner, Ray was charming and attentive, regaling Helen and Molly with funny, if self-serving, stories about the movie business that Diane had heard a dozen times. She watched her friends getting steadily starstruck. He left the table early, saying he had to go into town to see someone and that he was sure the three of them had a lot of girl talk to catch up on. He was scarcely out of earshot when Molly whispered loudly what a dreamboat he was. She leaned back in her chair and looked around at the pool and the house and the fairy lights glinting in the tree above and she sighed and shook her head.

  "Just look at all this. It's simply heaven. You're so lucky, Diane."

  "I know."

  She smiled and lit another cigarette. And Helen, always the shrewder of the two, must have sensed some wistful reservation.

  "But?" she said.

  "But nothing."

  "Come on, Di. I know you too well."

  And little by little they coaxed it out of her.

  At first Diane made it sound as if her misgivings were to do with Hollywood, how superficial and insincere life here could sometimes be; how, perhaps, it wasn't the best place in the world to bring up a child. She said they, of all people, knew how passionate she'd always been about her work but that, somehow, since taking over responsibility for Tommy, her heart didn't seem to be in it anymore.

  Then, with Helen's canny questioning, she started to talk about how things were with Ray. At first she couched it all in the past, made it sound as if things were better now. And, in a way, this was true. The lowest patch had been the weeks after they came back from Arizona and were shooting the studio scenes. Ray had behaved like a spoiled child and at times much worse. That Terry Redfield and Herb Kanter had managed to put up with his tantrums was a minor miracle. And at home there was no restraint at all. The drunken ranting rages, the storming out of the house, the constant jealous sniping at her for being frigid or for some affair he fatuously imagined she was having. Diane spared her friends—or perhaps herself—the worst. Such as the night he threw a glass at her and shattered the living room mirror or the dark and vengeful way he now made love to her on those rare occasions when either from pity or guilt she acquiesced. She told them enough however to shake the stardust from their eyes. Told them how mean he could be, how he'd disappear and come back in the early hours, drunk or stoned or both.

  "Has he actually hit you?" Helen said.

  "God, no," Diane said.

  It was technically true, but only just.

  "He's just sometimes, you know, a little... rough."

  It was a subject with which Molly seemed uncomfortable for she swiftly broadened it.

  "Mummy says the first year of marriage is always the worst. After marrying Daddy she cried for a whole year. Sobbed her poor little heart out every morning after he left for the office. But she says you just get used to it."

  "What a frightfully depressing idea," Helen said.

  "No, but listen. It was the same for me when they sent me off to boarding school. I cried every night. For months. Then, after that, it was fine. Somehow you do just... get used to it."

  "Well, I'm sure those poor people in the war got used to being shut up in concentration camps, but it doesn't make it right."

  "Helen, honestly, you always twist everything I say. All I mean is that marriage isn't easy. You've got to work at it."

  "The thing is, I so want it to work," Diane said. "For Tommy's sake more than anyone's. That's partly why I married Ray in the first place, to give Tommy a father, a proper family."

  On that front too things had become a little better. At least the two of them were talking again, though sometimes when Ray snapped at her or was in one of his moods, she noticed the way Tommy glowered at him.

  She must have let the sadness show more than she meant to for a moment because Molly and Helen got up and pulled chairs close on either side of her and put their arms around her.

  "It'll be al
l right, Di," Molly said. "You wait, when the film comes out and everyone's saying how wonderful you both are, he won't be so anxious and edgy and it'll all be fine. We're so proud of you!"

  "Of course we are," Helen said. "But don't ever let him hit you. If he does, you go, all right?"

  "Oh, Helen, really—"

  "Promise me."

  "I promise."

  She hugged them close.

  "I miss you."

  "We miss you too."

  The campaign Herb Kanter and the Paramount publicity people had devised for The Forsaken was almost as arduous as making the picture itself. The release was scheduled for the end of February, with premieres planned for Hollywood and New York City. And Herb was determined to fill every available moment until then making sure the whole world got to know about the studio's sensational new star Diane Reed.

  The day after she put Molly and Helen on the train to San Francisco, Diane began a marathon routine of interviews and photo shoots. These generally took place at the studio or in a suite Herb rented for the purpose at the Beverly Hills Hotel. For journalists from the more influential newspapers or magazines, a lunch would be arranged at the Brown Derby or the Bistro. The subject that cropped up more than any other was Diane's on-screen, off-screen relationship with Ray Montane. The questions became relentlessly familiar.

  So how did you two meet? Was it love at first sight? What was it like doing the love scenes together?

  But she was a skilled performer and always answered as if for the first time. She would flatter the journalists' perspicacity, give that sweet, self-deprecating smile or that little frown while she paused in fake reflection. Modest, professional, sometimes, if appropriate, even a little coquettish, she liked to leave the impression that their incisive skills had coaxed far more from her than she'd intended.

  Much more difficult were the interviews she and Ray did together. They would sit side by side on the couch and pretend to all the world that life was bliss and their love undying. Sometimes, in the middle of an interview, Ray—so sweet and caring and gentle that it made her want to gag—would take her hand or put his arm around her or lean in and kiss her on the cheek. And the moment the journalist and the publicist had left the room and it was just the two of them, he would erupt.