Beautiful Ruins (20 page)

And she did it. Lydia took a deep breath. “It’s no one, Dee,” she said, and she hung up the phone.

11

Dee of Troy

April 1962

Rome and Porto Vergogna, Italy

R
ichard Burton was the worst driver Pasquale had ever seen. He squinted in the direction of the road with one eye and held the wheel lightly between two fingers, elbow cocked. With the other hand he pinched a cigarette out the open window, a cigarette he seemed to have no interest in smoking. From the passenger seat, Pasquale stared at the burning stick in the man’s hand, wondering if he should reach over and grab it before the ash got to Richard Burton’s fingers. The Alfa’s tires chirped and squealed as he cornered his way out of the Roman Centro, some pedestrians yelling and waving their fists as he forced them back onto curbs. “Sorry,” he said, or “So sorry,” or “Bugger off.”

Pasquale hadn’t known that Richard Burton was Richard Burton until the woman from the Spanish Steps introduced them. “Pasquale Tursi. This is Richard Burton.” Moments before, she had led him away from the steps, still clutching the envelope from Michael Deane, down a couple of streets, up a staircase, through a restaurant and out the back door, until, finally, they’d come across this man in sunglasses, worsted slacks, a sports coat over a sweater and red scarf, leaning against the light blue Alfa in a narrow alley where there were no other cars. Richard Burton had removed his sunglasses and given a wry smile. He was about Pasquale’s height, with thick sideburns, tousled brown hair, and a cleft chin. He had the sharpest features Pasquale had ever seen, as if his face had been sculpted in separate pieces and then assembled on-site. He had faint pockmarks on his cheeks and a pair of unblinking, wide-set blue eyes. Most of all, he had the biggest head Pasquale had ever encountered. He’d never seen Richard Burton’s movies and knew his name only from the two women on the train the day before, but one look and there could be no doubt: this man was a cinema star.

At the woman’s urging, Pasquale explained the whole thing in halting English: Dee Moray coming to his village, waiting there for a mysterious man who didn’t come; the doctor’s visit and Pasquale’s trip to Rome, his mistakenly being sent off with the extras, waiting for Michael Deane and then the bracing meeting with the man, which began with him punching Deane in the chest, quickly led to Deane admitting that Dee was in fact pregnant and not dying, and ended with the envelope of cash that Deane offered as a payoff, an envelope Pasquale still held in his hand.

“God,” Richard Burton finally said, “what a heartless mercenary Deane is. I guess they’re getting serious about finishing this bloody picture, sending this shit to handle the budgets and the gossip and the rot. Well, he’s bollixed it all up. The poor girl. Listen, Pat,” and he put a hand on Pasquale’s arm, “take me to her, will you, old sport, so I can at least display a whiff of chivalry amid this fuck-all mess?”

“Oh.” Pasquale had finally caught up with things, and found himself a bit deflated that this man was his competition and not the sniveling Michael Deane. “Then . . . is your baby.”

Richard Burton had barely flinched. “It would appear to be the case, yes.” And twenty minutes later, here they were, in Richard Burton’s Alfa Romeo, barreling through the outskirts of Rome toward the
autostrada
and, eventually, Dee Moray.

“Brilliant to be out driving again.” Richard Burton’s hair was rustled by the wind and he spoke above the road noise. The sun glinted off his dark glasses. “I tell you, Pat, I envy the punch you landed on Deane. He’s a bloody first-flight ten-year-old cocksuck, that one. I’ll likely aim a bit higher when it’s my go.”

The burning cigarette reached Richard Burton’s fingers and he flicked it over the side of his door as if it were a bee that had stung him. “I trust you know I had nothing to do with sending that girl away. And I certainly didn’t know she was with child—not that I’m thrilled with that part. You know how these on-set things are.” He shrugged and looked out the side window. “But I like Dee. She’s . . .” He looked for the word and couldn’t find it. “I’ve missed her.” He brought his hand to his mouth and seemed surprised there was no cigarette in it. “Dee and I had a bit of history, and we became friends again when Liz’s husband was in town. Then Fox loaned me out to do some bloody stock-work on
The Longest Day
—likely to get rid of me awhile. I was in France when Dee got sick. I talked to her by phone and she said she’d gone to see Dr. Crane . . . that they’d diagnosed her with cancer. She was going to Switzerland for treatment, but we decided to meet once on the coast. I said I’d finish my work on
The Longest Day
and meet her in Portovenere, and I entrusted this blood-blister Deane to set it up. The blighter’s a master at insinuating himself. He said she’d taken a bad turn and gone on to Bern for treatment. That she would call me when she returned. What could I do?”

“Portovenere?” Pasquale asked. Then she
had
come to his village by mistake. Or because of Michael Deane’s deception.

“It’s this goddamn movie.” Richard Burton shook his head. “It’s Satan’s asshole, this bloody film. Flashbulbs everywhere . . . priests with cameras in their cassocks . . . leech fixers coming from the States to keep the girls and booze away . . . gossip columns jumping every time we have a bloody cocktail. I should’ve walked off months ago. It’s insanity. And do you know why it’s gone over this way? Do you? Because of her.”

“Dee Moray?”

“What?” Richard Burton looked over as if Pasquale hadn’t been listening. “Dee? No. No, because of Liz. It’s like having a bloody typhoon in your flat. And I didn’t come looking for this. Any of it. I was perfectly happy doing
Camelot
. Not that I could get a bloody handshake from Julie Andrews—though, trust me, I was not lacking for female companionship. No, I was done with the bloody moron cinema. Back to the stage for me, regain my promise, the art—all that rot. Then my agent calls, says Fox will buy me out of
Camelot
and pay me four times my price if I’ll roll around Liz Taylor in a robe. Four times! And I didn’t jump right away, either. Said I’d think about it. Show me the mortal man who has to think about
that
. But I did. And do you know what I was thinking?”

Pasquale could only shrug. It was like standing in a windstorm, listening to this man.

“I was thinking about Larry.” Richard Burton looked at Pasquale. “Olivier, lecturing me in that buggering-uncle voice of his.” Richard Burton stuck out his lower lip and assumed a nasal voice: “ ‘Dick, you will, of course, eventually have to make up your mind whether you wish to be a
household word
or an
ac-TOR
.’ ” He laughed. “Rotten old sotter. Last night of
Camelot
, I raised my glass in a toast to Larry and his bloody stage. Said I’d take the money, thank you, and within a week I’d drive that raven-haired Liz Taylor to her knees . . . or, rather, to mine.” He laughed again at the memory. “Olivier . . . Christ. In the end, really what does it matter, whether some Welsh coal miner’s son acts on the stage or the screen? Our names are writ in water anyway, as Keats said, so what’s it bloody matter? Old sots like Olivier and Gielgud can have their code and shove it up each other’s arses,
bugger off, boys, and on with the parade
, right?” Richard Burton glanced over his shoulder, his hair mixed and blended by the wind through the open convertible. “So I’m off to Rome, where I meet Liz, and let me tell you, Pat, I’ve never seen a woman like this. I mean, I’ve had a few in my day, but this one? Christ. Do you know what I said first time I met her?” He didn’t wait for Pasquale to answer. “I said, ‘Don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this . . . but you’re not a bad-looking girl.’ ”

He smiled. “And when those eyes settle on you? God, the world stops spinning . . . I knew she was married, and more to the point, she’s a bloody soul-eater, but I’m not made of steel either. Of course, any right blighter would choose being a great actor over being a household word if the stacks were the same, but that’s not really the choice, is it? Because they pile that fuck-all money on the scale, too, and God, man, they put on those tits and that waist . . . and Christ, those eyes—and the thing begins to tip, old sport, till the scale goes right over. No, no, we are definitely writ in water. Or cognac—if we’ve any luck at all.”

He winked and swerved and Pasquale put his hand on the dashboard. “Now, there’s an idea. Cognac? Keep an eye out, eh, sport?” He took a deep breath and returned to his story. “Of course, the newspapers get hold of Liz and me and her husband comes to town and I sulked a bit, spent four days pissed, and somewhere in there, sotted and sorry, I went back to Dee again for comfort. Every two weeks, I’d find myself knocking on her door.” He shook his head. “She’s clear, that one—smart. It’s a burden for an attractive woman to be so smart, to see through the curtain. She’d agree with Larry, I’m sure, that I’m wasting my talent making rubbish like this film. And I knew Dee was guns for me. I probably shouldn’t have pursued her, but . . . who are we but who we are, am I right?” He patted his chest with his left hand. “You wouldn’t happen to have another fag?”

Pasquale pulled out a cigarette and lit it for him. Richard Burton took a long drag and the smoke curled from his nose. “This Crane, the man who diagnosed Dee—Liz’s pill-pusher, man rattles when he walks. He and Deane cooked up this cancer rubbish to get Dee out of town.” He shook his head. “Goddamn it, what kind of hopeless bastard tells a girl with morning sickness that she’s dying of cancer? They’ll do anything, these people.”

He braked suddenly and the tires seemed to jump, like a scared animal, and the car careened off the road and screeched to a stop at a market on the outskirts of Rome. “You as thirsty as I am, sport?”

“I am hungry,” Pasquale said. “I have not eaten.”

“Right. Excellent. And you wouldn’t have any money, would you? I was so bollixed up when we left, I’m afraid I’m a bit underfunded.”

Pasquale opened the envelope and handed him a thousand-lira note. Richard Burton took the money and ran into the market.

He returned a few minutes later with two open bottles of red wine, gave one to Pasquale and settled the other between his legs. “What goddamn kind of place hasn’t got a bottle of cognac in it? Are we to write our names in grape piss then? Ah well, in a pinch, I suppose.” He took a long pull of the wine and noticed Pasquale watching him. “My father was a twelve-pint-a-day man. Being Welsh, I’ve got to keep it in control, so I only drink when I’m working.” He winked. “Which is why I’m
always
bloody working.”

F
our hours later, the man responsible for impregnating Dee Moray had drunk all but a few tugs of both bottles of wine and had stopped for a third. Pasquale couldn’t believe how much wine the man could handle. Richard Burton parked the Alfa Romeo near the port in La Spezia, and Pasquale asked around in a harbor bar until a fisherman agreed to take them up the coast to Porto Vergogna for two thousand lire. The fisherman walked ten meters ahead of them down to his boat.

“I was born in a tiny village myself,” Richard Burton told Pasquale as they settled onto the wooden bench in the stern of the fisherman’s dank, ten-meter boat. It was a cold, dark evening and Richard Burton turned up the collar of his jacket against the sharp sea breeze. The boat’s captain stood three steps above them, the wheel in his hand as he rode a cross-chop out of the harbor, the froth rising up to the bow, rolling over, and then settling back, the salty air making Pasquale even hungrier.

The captain ignored them. His ears glowed a cold red in the brisk air.

Richard Burton leaned back and sighed. “The stain I’m from is called Pontrhydyfen. Sits in a little glen between two green mountains and is cut by a little river clear as vodka. Little Welsh mining town. And what do you think our river was called?”

Pasquale had no idea what he was talking about.

“Think about it. It’ll make perfect sense.”

Pasquale shrugged.

“Avon.” He waited for Pasquale to react. “Fancy bit of irony, no?”

Pasquale said that it was.

“Right . . . okay then, did someone mention vodka? Right, I did.” Richard Burton sighed wearily. Then he called up to the boat’s pilot, “Are we truly to have nothing to drink on board? Really? Captain!” The man ignored him. “He’s risking outright mutiny, don’t you think, Pat?” Then Burton leaned back again, resettled his collar against the cool air, and resumed telling Pasquale about the village where he grew up. “There were thirteen of us little Jenkinses, tit-suckers every last one, till the git after me. I was two when my poor ma finally gave out, sucked dry. We drained the poor woman like deflating a balloon. I got the last of it. My sister Cecilia raised me after that. The old blighter Jenkins was no help. Fifty already when I was born, drunk the minute the sun came up, I barely knew him—his name the only thing he ever gave me. Burton I got from an acting teacher, though I tell people it’s for Michael Burton.
Anatomy of Melancholy
? No? Right. Sorry.” He ran a hand over his own chest. “No, this is all a thing I invented, this . . .
Burton
. Dickie Jenkins is a petty little tit-pincher, but this Richard Burton chap . . . he bloody well soars.”