Contango (Ill Wind) (13 page)

Never, it might be, for two and a quarter millenniums, since the days of
Pericles and Plato, had there been such efflorescence of form and colour.
Less than a thousand persons, men and women, but hardly any children, were
clustered around the blue-green pool. Most were in brilliant-hued
swimming-suits; some of the girls wore coloured frocks and wide-brimmed hats;
a few of the men were robed in silk gowns of exotic design; but all, when the
screen-star stepped into view, seemed to hold, for that extra moment, a
position they had reached in some magical and impromptu ballet. There was a
burst of cheering. Two men in immaculate cream flannels made some little
purring speech that was lost in the general chatter; the saxophones blared;
Sylvia was led to a basket-chair on the marble dais. She smiled—her
well-advertised, million-dollar smile. An enormous pink and blue umbrella,
like the roof of a pagoda, was hoisted over her; she threw out more
individual smiles here and there, as she caught sight of friends; she laughed
and gossiped to her neighbours on either side, while the programme was
volleyed out by massed microphones. Swimming, trick-diving, water-polo,
etc
….

Throughout the long slow-dying afternoon it continued, a golden pantomime
reigned over by the sun. It was the sun that gave prismatic harmony to the
crudely mingled colours; its strong slanting blaze filled the air, absorbed
the rhythms of the jazz band into a single pattern of sight and sound;
kindled the splashes made by the divers till the air was full of trembling
rainbows. One had the feeling that the sun, as on ancient Attic hills, was
ripening its children as they lay there, half naked under its rays.

Perhaps, indeed, even Ancient Greece could not have shown such profusion
of physical beauty. That group of living humanity might have been a
eugenist’s dream of what all mankind could achieve, were it to allow
itself to be bred for half a dozen centuries as rigidly as horseflesh. The
women with their laughing oval faces and gleaming teeth, the men of massive
thigh and torso, the young girls with their bud-like breasts and exquisite
apricot legs—had there ever in all history been such a triumphant
assembling of the body? For the world had been ransacked for these people;
or, rather, they had drained into this paradise by every trickle of human
migration. Tall blondes from Sweden and Finland, brunettes from Spain and the
Argentine, dago litheness and Siegfried magnificence—all were merged
here by the common desire to capitalise their excellences into earnings. They
stared at one another with frankly physical appraisement, displaying their
own personal charms as shamelessly as an applewoman displays ripe apples.
Even the water-contests were valued less for their own sake than as an excuse
for physical exhibitionism; it was the ritual of gaily-coloured silks,
scented ointments, and sprawling sun-baskings that mattered most. Certainly
none of the various diving competitions and polo-matches stirred as much
excitement as the item that came last of all—the fin fleur of this
Henry Ford Hellenism—a beauty show for men.

Sylvia Seydel was cast for the role of adjudicator in this culminating
affair. The competitors, most of them fresh from their water-games, paraded
before her, smiling with that touch of harlotry that is in all athletic
prowess; sun-bronzed and superb, they posed like kings—kings under a
matriarchy. Not all were film-actors, by any means; some were camera-men,
servants, job-seekers, nondescript vivandieres in Hollywood’s
international army. In this inverted world it was the man, as often as the
woman, whose looks could break down social barriers and unlock the doors to
innumerable pleasaunces; and that he knew this was in every posturing, from
the stiff games-master slouch of the public-school Britisher to the strutting
pertness of the Italian chauffeur.

Sylvia, three times married and twice divorced, would have been
sufficiently equipped for the task in any case; but after ten years of film-
work, five of which had been a rough-and-tumble fight for any job that came
along, she was something of an expert; she knew a man’s points as a
trainer knows those of racehorses. She had, moreover, the skilled camera eye;
she saw that this face, though handsome enough, would photograph badly from a
side-position, or that those well-muscled flanks, though finely virile, were
too short for elegance in evening clothes. She scrutinised with dispassionate
intentness—the whole thing was only a sort of “rag,” no
doubt, but she did not see why, since she had to pick a winner, her choice
should not be justifiable. But when two-thirds of the procession had passed,
there came a competitor who left her in no remaining doubt at all; whatever
else the rest might show, he was her man.

He was very young, and offered no impressively masculine display of sinew;
his arms and legs suggested Pan-like grace rather than strength; and his
glance, as she appraised him, had in it a touch of mockery. She had not
noticed him in any of the water-games, but he wore a cerise-coloured
swimming-suit that contrasted quaintly with his brown limbs. His eyes were
almost violet in their depths, and his lips and straight nose might have been
copied from the Greek statues that adorned the garden temple. She guessed him
to be Spanish or Italian, and she was surprised when, as she placed the
chaplet of laurel on his head amidst thunderous applause, he made her a
pretty little speech in English that had a rather English accent. Who was he?
she wondered idly; but she did not trouble to enquire. She was a busy woman;
she met so many men whose names and identities were of no consequence to her;
she was more than a little worried, too, about other matters. Indeed, during
most of that blazing afternoon at the water-party, she had been turning over
in mind the problem of whether to accept her broker’s advice and sell
for twenty-three dollars the Montgomery Ward stock that she had bought
originally for a hundred and thirty-seven.

But the next morning she found out who he was, for on the front page of
the newspaper she read, in huge block-letter headlines: “Lois
Palmer’s Secretary Judged Handsomest Man. Laurels for Roumanian Prince.
Sylvia Seydel’s Choice at Santa Katerina.”

Sylvia was furious. The Palmer woman was, of course, only one of a hundred
professional rivals, but her age and the rapidity of her recent rise to fame
had made her, to Sylvia, a symbol of all the vaguely menacing future. Lois
was twenty-two; her contract with Vox’s had already been renewed at
some fantastically increased figure; her fan-mail was reckoned to be bounding
up by hundreds a week. It was exasperating to Sylvia to think that her own
unwitting action should have presented Lois with free publicity in every
newspaper in America. Two years ago, Sylvia could have laughed at such a
thing, could even have congratulated the scorer of such an amusing point. But
the Sylvia of 1931 was less inclined to laugh. Her world had changed; she
could feel it, without altogether understanding how or why. It was as if she
were on a throne that might topple at any moment; and her arrogance before
the big film-magnates became more and more consciously an effort as each time
she wondered if they might suddenly decide to call her bluff. That last
picture, “Her Husband’s Wife,” had done well enough, yet
somehow not quite as well as had been hoped, and for the moment she was not
engaged on any picture at all, though there was talk of another. Moreover,
her high-figure contract expired six weeks hence.

She called up her publicity agent immediately after breakfast. He was a
shrewd little Scotsman with bright ideas that were never above
anybody’s head. “Yes, she’s put it over you all
right,” he sang out quite cheerfully over the wire from Los Angeles.
“But of course she couldn’t have counted on you picking out the
fellow. All she did was to seize the chance that you gave her
yourself—you can’t blame her.”

“I’m not blaming her,” Sylvia retorted, “but that
doesn’t mend matters. Look here, I want you to find out about this
Roumanian prince—find out all you can about him, will you?”

He said he would.

A fortnight later Sylvia was taking tea in her private suite on the tenth
floor of the Santa Katerina clubhouse. She owned a fabulous palace at
Beverley Hills, but she usually preferred Santa Katerina when she was not
working on a picture. It was another of those flaming days of the Californian
June, and through the open windows across the balcony rail the Pacific shone
a deep turquoise blue. She had just signed over a hundred postcard
photographs that were to be sent off by her secretary to admirers all over
the world, when her maid entered with a card on which was inscribed
“Prince Nicholas Petcheni,” with an address in Los Angeles.
“Yes, I’ll see him,” she said.

He entered, and watching him from her chair, she observed that his walk
and clothes were fittingly exquisite. She did not trouble, then, to study his
face, for she had already done that; but when he stooped to touch her fingers
with his lips she noticed his dark, slightly curling hair and the absolute
symmetry of his head. “This is indeed a charming sequel to our last
meeting, Miss Seydel,” he began, smiling.

Yes, she thought, he was damned good-looking enough for anything; almost
absurd, really, the way everything was RIGHT about him…. “Do sit
down, won’t you?” she said. “You’ll take
tea?”

He thanked her, and during the course of that dainty little ceremony he
talked of the weather, of how much he liked America, of his interest in the
film-industry, and his desire to study it at close quarters by actually
working at Hollywood, and of his admiration for Santa Katerina above all
other places. With a quick-witted tact which Sylvia could not help but
admire, he did not mention the name of his employer. His chatter was amusing,
and he knew English so perfectly that it was natural for her to compliment
him on it. “But then, I have been in England a good deal,” he
answered.

“Yet you still have your home in Roumania?”

“Oh, yes.” He sighed slightly. “Things are not what they
were, though. The—the—crise mondiale—what do you call
it?—the world-crisis?—has hit my country very hard. My family
have lost much money. We of the younger generation must look to the future,
not to the past. That is why I have come here, where everything points so
surely ahead.”

Sylvia was by no means certain that everything in her own life was
pointing surely ahead, but she nodded. “I suppose your family is a very
old one?” she remarked.

“Not so old as some in my country, though my ancestors were ruling
their provinces when America was still undiscovered. But what does all that
matter now?” He shrugged his shoulders expressively. “In America
it is of to-morrow that one thinks, not of yesterday. And, for myself, I must
say that I prefer the attitude. It is more hopeful, more
democratic.”

“All the same, as a prince, you must have been rather surprised to
receive an invitation from a mere commoner like myself to call and see her?
Didn’t you think that was a little TOO democratic?”

He smiled pleasantly. “Not at all. I was surprised, it is true, but
I was also delighted. What prince would not be honoured by a command from a
queen?”

“You turn your compliments very prettily, but I think it’s
time to put an end to the farce. I’ve caused enquiries to be made about
you, and I known perfectly well that you aren’t a prince at all. Your
name is Palescu, and you were in Paris last year trying to sell an invention.
We aren’t all such fools over here as you seem to think, monsieur, or
mein Herr, or whatever it ought to be.”

He suddenly laughed, and she felt a pang of almost fearful admiration when
she noticed that he showed not a trace of embarrassment. Indeed, his
attitude, if anything, was even easier when he replied: “I perceive, at
least, that you are not a fool, Miss Seydel. But, since you wish to call me
by my real name, shall I not return the compliment and call you Mrs.
Schmidt?”

“You’ll perhaps be in time to do so if you hurry,” she
retorted. “I’m expecting my divorce at any moment.”

He laughed again. “I think you are really a very clever
woman.”

“Cleverer than Lois Palmer, I suppose you mean?”

“Yes,” he replied, with meaning in his eyes. “Yes, far
cleverer.”

“Then what if I tell her the truth? What if I tell
everybody?”

“Nothing, except that I shall laugh. I don’t mind. It’s
all been pretty good fun.”

“Look here,” she said, intently. “I work it out like
this. If I give you away, the laugh is against Lois, for being taken in, and
against you, for being found out. But if you were to leave her employment and
come to me, the laugh would only be against her.”

“And you want the laugh to be against her, Miss Seydel?”

“I shouldn’t object.”

“Then will you pay me two hundred dollars a week? Miss Palmer gives
me one-seventy-five.”

“No, I can’t afford nearly so much. Besides, as a bogus
article, you aren’t worth it. Come to me for a hundred and twenty, or
be exposed. Those are my terms.”

“A hard bargain.”

“Yes, I’m a hard bargainer. As a matter of fact, I don’t
know that I’m not being too generous. What can you do,
anyway?”

“Anything you wish. Sing, dance, play the piano, entertain your
friends, invent publicity for you, answer your letters, create an impression
on people who matter; also, I can swim, drive a car, fly an aeroplane, play
most games tolerably well—”

“Only tolerably? That’s disappointing of you, surely?
Nevertheless, I’m willing to take you on at the figure I said. And if
you’ve any sort of contract with Miss Palmer, see my lawyer and
he’ll get you out of it. Can you move over at once?”

Within a few days the newspapers were featuring the story of the princely
Apollo’s change of employment. Their reporters interviewed him; he gave
them drinks, an amusing half-hour, and— what was most of
all—perfectly good copy which they did not need to embellish for
themselves. His most quoted remark was that at last, in his new job, he had
made contact with all that was most promising in the art of the cinema, and
Miss Seydel was naturally pleased. Not only was the publicity good, but
Nicky, as she called him, proved an immediate success in many other ways. At
her parties his immaculate clothes and accent, as well as his extraordinary
facility in saying things that were considered clever (sometimes they really
were clever), made her, she felt, the envy of every other actress in the
film- world. He was such a brilliant improviser on any given theme, and quite
the most consummate liar she had ever met. He had to lie, doubtless, to
sustain his reputation as a person of rank and pedigree; but his technique in
doing so was a little awe-inspiring as well as unnecessary at times; he
invented, for instance, a whole family for himself— father, mother,
brothers, uncles, all of them fantastically titled; and the strange thing was
that even Sylvia, who knew them to be spoof, found herself accepting them at
least as readily as the characters in some rather well-written novel. Once,
in the midst of a very amusing family saga with which he was enthralling her
guests, she interjected suddenly: “Of course, Nicky, I don’t
really believe you’re a prince at all. You’re much too good a
talker.” Which everyone seemed to think a very daring sally.