Close up, p.15
Close-Up, page 15
Sometimes nowadays she had to steel herself to receive his predatory embraces. They were especially unwelcome at the end of a night of dancing and flirting with people of her own age. She leaned her head against the door of her apartment after closing it stealthily. By the emergency light on the landing she saw that it was three-fifteen in the morning. She heard the boy who’d brought her home accelerate, in spite of all her pleading, with enough noise to wake Stone and the whole block. She could still hear the car when it was on the far side of the Seine.
‘Marshall!’ she called anxiously. ‘Marshall, darling!’ Perhaps he hadn’t arrived, or perhaps he was hiding somewhere so that he could leap at her. She hated him to do that, especially since it always seemed to end up with them rolling on the floor with their legs entwined. ‘Marshall!’
When she switched on the light of the blue bedroom, where Stone had put his Hamlet posters and the huge baroque mirror, she found him asleep in bed.
‘Darling,’ he said, squinting his eyes. ‘Do turn out that terrible light.’ She put on the bedside light and sat down beside him. Stone said, ‘Where were you, darling? Sorry I didn’t wait up but I came from the airport and went straight to bed.’
‘We went to Lipp and there was a party. You’ve never seen such a divine little garret studio, in the third. Just like Gene Kelly’s place in An American in Paris, remember?’
‘No,’ said Stone.
Suzy stood up and whirled around to let the watered-silk dress catch the air. It was one of her ambitions to do this in a film. ‘Of course you do, you old bear! An American in Paris… cramped little place. Gene Kelly did a dance on the grand piano. A glorious film!’
‘What time is it?’
‘It had a view of Notre Dame, all cleaned up and floodlit. Oh, how wonderful to be back in Paris.’ She stopped twirling and sat on the bed.
‘Pass me my cigarettes and lighter.’
‘Marshall, darling. It’s so middle-aged to want a cigarette as soon as you wake up.’
Stone smiled.
‘Val’s going to the demonstration on Thursday. The students say they are going to burn down the Palais de Justice. I can’t think what to wear if I go.’
‘Your Vanessa Redgrave outfit.’
‘That’s middle-aged too, Marshall, that sarcasm.’
‘Perhaps it is.’ He didn’t care. He lit his cigarette, blew the smoke across the room and rested back on his pillow.
‘Paris is divine.’ She leaned over Stone and kissed him, taking his wrinkled face between her two hands and kissing it all over, as in Camille Garbo had kissed Robert Taylor.
When she released him, Stone smoothed his hair self-consciously. He hated the washed-out look he knew he had without darkening on his lashes, but to get up and apply some would seem foolish.
He buttoned the frogging of his silk pyjamas close up to his neck. Did Suzy still see him as the impoverished baron of Sables with Love, or the wounded fighter pilot of Vector One Eight as once she’d said she did. Or was it Edward Brummage, a middle-aged wealthy lecher, that she turned away from when his kisses became too affectionate.
From behind the bed-head she could see Stone and herself reflected in the glass of the framed poster. She crossed her hands over the brass rail and rested her chin upon her wrist. Stone began a long anecdote about a film producer being shown the adverts for his latest film. She’d heard it before but she made the appropriate reactions.
She’d learned a great deal about Stone during the three years she’d known him. The first year was one of disillusion. It had shocked her to see him switch on his charm when dealing with influential associates, and then snub lesser mortals. She had congratulated herself on her perception when the men around him failed to see how devious and insincere he could be. It was only recently that she’d discovered that Weinberger, and others close to Stone, knew him at least as well as she did and were fond of him in spite of his rudeness, cowardice and monumental ego.
She smiled. Stone smiled too as he came to the punchline ‘…he stared at the poster and said “Good God, Mayer! You know my name was to be as large or larger than that of anyone else in connexion with this picture, certainly larger than Tolstoy’s!”’
Suzy Delft laughed and moved away. ‘I’ll come and say goodnight, Marshall darling.’
‘Certainly larger than Tolstoy’s,’ said Stone, and reached for another cigarette.
She could still hear him chuckling as she locked the door of her silk-lined dressing-room.
She undressed slowly, looking at the glossy stills of Garbo that she had pinned around the mirrors. She’d studied old Garbo films so that she could imitate the arms-akimbo stance, the open-mouthed laugh and Garbo’s tilted-head smile. The more she did them all the more she looked like Vanessa Redgrave.
She put on her silk pyjamas and a cashmere dressing-gown and approved of the decorous reflection she saw. Only then did she return to Stone.
‘There’s some champers in the ice-box, darling.’
She smiled. She was too inebriated for it to be the dreamy ecstasy she intended.
‘No, stay there, I’ll get it,’ he said.
Suzy kicked off her slippers, tucked her feet under her and leaned back against the brass bed-end. She had had more than enough to drink, but she made the appropriate ooos and ahhs when he brought it, and pretended with him that opening the bottle was a difficult and dangerous masculine task.
Stone got into bed and pulled the bedclothes over himself before pouring the champagne. She noticed that he’d hurriedly darkened his lashes and she was pleased that he still wanted to look his best for her.
Stone said, ‘Twin Beeches is looking wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘Glorious, Marshall.’
‘Did you see the kitchen garden? Mrs Pimm never has to buy vegetables you know.’
‘You told me. The salad was delicious.’
‘What I was thinking, darling… Looking at the new horseboxes and now the stable has that big storage area… well, it could be a wonderful riding school.’
‘What a gorgeous idea, darling.’
‘And I was wondering if you would like to have it.’
‘Have it?’ She moistened her lips.
‘Yes. Own it and run it as a full-time business.’
She laughed keeping her lips parted and tossing her head back. ‘That would be wonderful, Marshall darling, but I’d have to have a manager and someone who knew about riding instruction, I mean… I have my career.’
‘I don’t know, Suzy.’
‘Oh my God, Marshall. I thought we’d disposed of all that.’ They were both silent, and when she continued her voice was soft and confidential but very very firm. ‘I’m in the movies now, and I want to go on with my career. We’ve been all through that and I thought we weren’t going to go into it again.’
‘If you knew… Suzy…’
‘If you knew Suzy, like I know Suzy’, she sang raucously, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh, what a girl…’
‘It wouldn’t hurt to listen to a word of advice. You don’t know everything yet.’
‘You kill me, Marshall. D’you know, when you do that heavy father schtik, you kill me.’
‘I never have treated you like a child, Suzy.’
‘Well, it’s too late now, Father dear. I lived without you until I was grown up… you know?’
Stone smiled. ‘You have so much energy, you’re so vital.’
‘Stop stroking my leg, Marshall.’
‘You’ve got a phobia.’
‘About incest? Damn right I have. How could I help it with a father like you pawing me. Stop it, Marshall, please!’
Stone’s face twitched. He smiled professionally, trying to make her smile too. She leaned forward, took his hand in both of hers and kissed his fingers.
Suzy Delft knew Marshall Stone far better than he suspected. She knew the sort of anxieties that had driven him to pursue her to Paris, and she knew how competitive he felt about her young friends. She understood all those things, but that did not make them easier to endure. She sat well back on the bed and closed her eyes.
‘When I did my Hamlet…’ said Stone as he poured more drink.
She puffed herself up and said, ‘When I did my Hamlet, when I did my Hamlet,’ in a shrill, little-boy voice that would mock a pompous adult.
Stone smiled tolerantly.
‘You mustn’t be stuffy, Marshall darling. Tell me about your Hamlet.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No! You must, darling. Tell me.’
‘Never mind.’
‘I want to hear.’
Stone was a little mollified. ‘Well, when I did my Hamlet, I had those great reviews. Hardly a bad one, in fact. I was the top of the heap, Suzy. I had all manner of offers. I could have written my own ticket. I had ideas… you can’t imagine.’
‘You are such a romantic, Marshall.’
‘I admit it. An actor must be… Did you hear on the news today, that fellow in the bank robbery?… when I hear of people like that, my sympathies are with them. I want to say, come here, come here, old lad, I’ll hide you. I never side with authority.’
‘Marshall, you are such a creep at times.’
‘Very well then –’
‘Now don’t lose your cool, darling. Someone has to tell you. You’ve got such sycophants around you. But really, to talk about being against authority… You love authority, you… the man of property! My God, you own more houses, more cars and more people than anyone.’
‘I have all those things but I don’t need them.’
‘You think it’s young to say you side with the outlaw. But it’s not young, darling; it’s juvenile. I believe in property. I want policemen to guard me and if I found that fellow who did the bank job I’d turn him in before he could say please.’
‘What I’m trying to say is… Well, the Hamlet business soured me. Soured me more than I realized at the time.’
She’d heard his Hamlet story before. ‘You take it too seriously, darling. Personally I wouldn’t have believed a word that Leo Koolman said.’
I never explain to the actors the characters they are playing. I want them to be passive.
Michelangelo Antonioni
Garrick, Sheridan, and, some say, Oliver Goldsmith, had known the cramped little dressing-rooms of the Old Royalty Theatre. That Wilde and Barrie and the young Shaw had suffered its draughts and echoes was a matter of record. In 1929 two of the dressing-rooms had been extended at the cost of a small piece of gallery, so that the people who came to visit Marshall Stone backstage after the final curtain of his Hamlet could be packed in until there were sometimes twenty or more, toasting him in his own champagne, reading the telegrams that surrounded his mirror and smelling the flowers that never ceased to arrive.
The doorkeeper was accustomed to the fact that Stone was the last to leave. Often it was one o’clock in the morning before he heard the star’s whispered goodnight, the bang of the stage door and the purr of his Rolls. The night that Leo Koolman, the famous film man, went backstage with flowers, champagne and a dense cloud of cigar smoke was obviously going to set new records for his final round before locking up.
The performance that Koolman saw was unusually good. The audience had been quick and responsive, and Stone had found an edge to his performance that he’d not yet learned how to create at will. Koolman was impressed and he and his assistant Sanchez remained long after all the other well-wishers had gone. Stone could see the puzzled look in his eyes as he tried to reconcile the puny actor with the towering Dane who’d dominated a stage glittering with talent.
Stone was attracted by this same paradox. The bejewelled costume drenched in sweat, the half-eaten hamburger alongside the champagne bucket, the speeches of Shakespeare and the obscenities of the cast. That a performance came out of such chaos was the magic of the stage. He looked at his reflection and saw the noble face of Hamlet surmounting a grease paint-smeared undervest.
Koolman said, ‘The new script for young Franco’s film is just great, Marshall, I brought you a copy.’ He found a space for it among the spotlight pencils, sticks, stumps and brushes.
Stone leaned close to the mirror and pulled his eyebrows off. It hurt less when done with one fast snatch, but Stone did it very slowly.
‘The gunfighter’s part is down to ten days… star billing and five per cent of the action.’
Koolman waited but Stone was busy with his eyelashes, taking the excess mascara off them with a tiny brush that he had to wipe on a paper handkerchief.
‘And the money stays the same.’
Stone turned enough to see Leo in the mirror. ‘I’ve told you fifty times, Leo. I’m not renewing the contract. This Hamlet will run six months. After that I’ll do something else in the theatre. Something very modern.’
‘Ten days, Marshall. We’ll fly you in and out again …maybe eight days if we reschedule through the weekends.’ Koolman drew back his lips in a grimace, an atavistic smile needed only rarely for such placation. Stone was shocked to see how the work of running the studio had changed Koolman. The bouncy man that Stone had first known was now withered and hardened, like a rubber ball left too long upon a warm stove. A chance virus infection made his voice harsh and croaky and his eyes as watery as an old man’s. The heavy tweed overcoat, of a weight unknown in California, came high on his shoulders so that his hunched figure seemed to have no neck.
Stone smiled and shook his head slowly.
Koolman looked around at the sooty window, uncleaned for generations, and the paraffin stove that caused the cream walls to dribble with condensation. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and hissed his displeasure and dismay. ‘Are you crazy, Marshall?’
‘This is acting, Leo. Those charades for cameramen that you supervise out there in the sun… that stuff has nothing to do with acting.’ Stone began to unpin his hair; it was fixed skull-close to fit under his wig.
‘This one needs you, Marshall.’
It wasn’t Koolman, or KI, that needed him, it was the picture, as though his name had come up on a computer. Stone said, ‘It’s always just one more, Leo. You know that as well as I do. How many of the big names were only to do one movie?’
‘Don’t talk like this, Marshall. You’ve done some great movies for me. Last Vaquero is still being talked about… still being screened right here in your town.’
‘Look, Leo, when I was in rehearsals just four weeks ago, I was the Last Vaquero – a rich Hollywood ham trying to tackle Shakespeare! This week…’ Stone shook his head to indicate surprise still latent. ‘Well, I did it… now I’m Hamlet, an actor who can also be seen in some Hollywood oaters if you’re so inclined, when you can’t get tickets for the show. Things have changed, Leo.’
‘Marshall, I’m asking you as a favour.’
‘And I’m saying no, Leo, can’t you understand plain English: NO.’
‘If that’s the way you want it,’ Leo turned away, but Phil Sanchez didn’t move.
‘Punk,’ said Sanchez. ‘Cheap, no-good little punk. I remember you on your bended knee to Mr Koolman…’ his small pink mouth opened twice, trying to find better words to express his contempt. He failed. ‘Punk! Cheap punk!’
Stone turned to Sanchez. That Koolman commanded such loyalty was no surprise, but that it should be evoked from meek little Sanchez was amazing.
Koolman said, ‘I’m leaving.’ They were all at the end of a long day of hard work. Koolman knew he would do better to continue the discussion some other time. ‘Phil, I’m leaving.’
Stone smiled at the angry Sanchez and spoke to Koolman at the same time. ‘Close the door after you, Leo. There’s a draught from the stair-well.’
Stone had left his hand extended in a languid gesture of dismissal and Sanchez grabbed at his finger and twisted it so that Stone must either cower or break it. Stone cowered. Sanchez released the finger and wiped the flat of his hand down his jacket as if to be rid of the contamination. Stone nursed his pain and tried to decide whether Sanchez had done it with the skill of a judo expert or the lucky wrath of a man unused to violence.
‘Leave him,’ said Koolman. He said it over his shoulder, scarcely murmuring the words.
‘I won’t leave him.’ Sanchez stepped closer to where Stone was seated at the mirror. ‘Punk!’
The intense hatred that depleted Sanchez’s vocabulary communicated itself to Stone, and it frightened him, and puzzled him too. ‘I worked my contract, Phil. We had a deal and I kept to it. Where’s the beef?’
‘The contract! Is that all there was? Mr Koolman picked you out of the gutter and gave you the Cinderella treatment… and you talk to him about contracts…’
‘What do you want… four pints of blood?’ Stone offered his bare arm.
‘Mr Koolman has to do this movie.’ Sanchez said it as if there was a more complex idea buried under its simplicity, as a man might say E = MC2.
‘Why?’
‘He’s got to. Don’t ask.’
‘Why?’ Stone’s voice was higher and more exasperated.
Koolman said, ‘Leave it, Phil.’
Sanchez did not hear. ‘Because if you are not in this picture for Franco, suddenly things are going to happen. Grips will fall off ladders, some star will fall under an auto. We’ll have a walkout and I’ll spend three or four weeks with union guys who speak hoopla.’
Stone stared up at the reflection of Sanchez, trying to put it all together. ‘These things happen,’ said Sanchez. ‘You don’t know… you guys just know the bright lights and the double-page spreads.’
Stone waved down Sanchez’s words and said to Koolman, ‘What are we talking about, Leo? Are we talking about protection… about a crime syndicate?’
