Countess Dracula (10 page)

‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ she had suggested to Henry, whispering into his ear as they danced. ‘Let’s just vanish and leave them all with nothing to look at.’

He had smiled, nodded and then, on the key change, swung her from the floor and out through the backstage.

They left the atmosphere of smoke and music that sizzled in the air like caramelised sugar. In the open air a cool breeze was coming in from the coast and Elizabeth felt clean and new as she ran with Henry down the street.

They grabbed a taxi, jumping into the back, laughing at the perfection of their escape.

‘Where to now?’ he asked.

‘Your place,’ she said, ‘not mine. I’m tired of dancing in company.’

He nodded and told the driver to head to the Hollywood Hotel.

She couldn’t have been more pleased. Of course that was where he was staying, was there anywhere more perfect? Anywhere more entrenched in the bedrock of this place?

It had seen better years, certainly. It had been built as the new century was born, opening its doors in 1902 and looking out over what would one day become Hollywood Boulevard. Since then it had been a hive of glitterati, everyone from Carl Laemmle to Rudolph Valentino having stayed under its roof.

When she had first arrived in Hollywood, Elizabeth had spent some time there, regularly attending the dances, smiling at the great and good who surrounded her, making her mark, turning heads. Entering now, she did her best to be invisible, something she was sure she had never done before.

They ran up the stairs to Henry’s room, managing to avoid all but the briefest glances from the staff (who knew their job well enough to turn a blind eye). Once inside, Elizabeth relaxed and stopped trying to hide herself. In fact she did the opposite, showing Henry everything he had a wish to see. Once they had feasted on each other enough, they lay back on the bed and talked.

‘You’re married?’ he asked.

This confused her for a moment because she was so used to people knowing who she was. ‘Yes, for business reasons.’

‘There are business reasons for marriage?’

‘You haven’t been in the business long, have you?’

‘I’m not really in it at all yet. I just met a guy who seems to think I have a chance of doing well here. To be honest, I’ve never been that into movies.’

‘You met a guy …?’

‘Yeah, I know how it sounds but he seems on the level. He’s paying for me to stay here, shipping me around the studios, getting me meetings.’

‘Watch your back. I give it a week before someone’s put a knife in it.’

‘I’m capable of looking after myself. What about you? You’re an actress?’

Coming from anyone else Elizabeth would have taken this as an insult. Even then, happy for the first time in years, she had to bite back the urge to slap him.

‘Yes,’ she replied, as evenly as she could, ‘I’m an actress.’

‘Sorry.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t feel insulted that I don’t recognise you. Like I said, I don’t know jack about movies. I’ve been crushing egos all night long with my ignorance.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said and surprised herself by almost meaning it: sincerity was an unusual experience. ‘It’s good to get outside all that once in a while.’

‘Yeah, I guess it must be hard. Everyone knowing everything about you.’

‘It’s not that. Nobody knows a thing – it’s all stories, on the screen and off it. It’s the expectation, the awareness, the fact that you can’t surprise anybody any more. You become part of the establishment.’

‘You can’t have been working long.’

‘Longer than you think, and that’s the problem. I realised tonight how wonderful it is at the beginning, when you’re climbing, when nobody quite knows what to expect from you. Enjoy it while it lasts, the plateau is boring.’

‘You seem confident that I’ll make it, then?’

‘Oh, of course you’ll make it. Hollywood will always love pretty.’

Nayland stumbled out into fresh air a few hours later, the ever-reliable Val on his arm.

‘Where did your wife go?’ she wanted to know. She wasn’t the only one, but she was the only one dumb enough to ask.

‘Who knows?’ he said, shuffling towards the car. ‘And who cares?’

‘I get it,’ she said, with a dope-hazy smile. ‘You have that kind of marriage.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he admitted, letting her into the passenger seat and working his way around to the driver’s side.

‘I think it’s healthy,’ she said once they were on their way.

‘Healthy?’

‘Well, people don’t stay together in this town,’ Val explained. ‘I see it all the time, husbands and wives rolling up on Marie’s doorstep because they can’t bear staying at home. At least you two give each other the freedom to do what you like. It’ll make you stronger.’

‘What the hell do you know?’ Nayland replied. ‘There’s nothing healthy about our damn marriage.’

‘Sorry.’ She was well-trained enough to seem genuinely contrite. ‘I was just trying to be nice.’

Nayland certainly wasn’t used to that sort of behaviour – he had been so starved of politeness that now it irritated him. It was as false as everything else.

‘Just be quiet,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘That’s fine, honey,’ she said. ‘I’m here to do whatever you want.’

At that moment all he wanted to do was drive. He worked his way around the streets, aimless and frustrated, taking out his anger between stop signs as he revved the engine and forced the car to move faster and faster along the almost empty streets. He could tell that Val was getting nervous next to him: no doubt she’d seen her fair share of violent clients and was wondering if she’d found another. He liked that, deciding that sometimes the only pleasure left for a man who suffers cruelty is to visit it on others. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she dug her nails into the car upholstery, terrified that he was going to lose control and send them crashing into something.

‘I know you’re angry,’ she said eventually, putting her hand on his leg, ‘but sooner or later you’re either going to kill us both or have the cops chasing us.’

It was the latter thought that brought Nayland to his senses. If the police pulled him over and checked his trunk they would be asking about a lot more than reckless driving. Reluctantly he slowed his speed, clenching the steering wheel all the tighter as he headed out of the city.

‘Where are we going?’ Val asked him as they left the city behind, driving up into the hills and dark skies uncluttered by neon and street lights.

‘I just need to breathe,’ Nayland said, cutting onto Mulholland and out towards the parkland and the canyons.

‘We all need that, baby,’ she agreed, ‘to rise up out of the city and taste what the world was like before we broke it.’

‘You’re pretty philosophical for a hooker.’

‘Perfect job for it. We spend most of our time on our backs thinking about something else.’

He’d asked for that. She stroked his thigh nonetheless, realising she shouldn’t upset her client any more than he already was. ‘Not that I’d be like that with you.’

‘Yeah, you would,’ he said, ‘and me with you. We’d both be thinking of other bodies, other souls.’

Val had more sense than to ask Nayland who he would be thinking about. She just carried on stroking his leg as he drove through the trees, lifting them up and up above the city.

‘What do you take?’ he asked her after a few minutes of silence.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve been hopped up all night.’

‘It helps sometimes.’

‘I’m sure. What is it?’

Val opened her purse, pulling out a small leather case containing a hypodermic syringe. ‘Heroin. Everyone injects it these days, it’s not a problem. Want to try it?’

‘No.’ Nayland hadn’t been asking just out of curiosity. ‘But I don’t mind if you do.’ He held out his hand. ‘But not just yet. I want you clear-headed for a little longer.’

She fixed him with a lopsided smile. It had all the charm of a makeshift banner erected outside a building site. ‘The night is young, huh?’

‘Younger than me.’

He hadn’t been fishing for compliments and she sensed as much, deciding that he didn’t expect or want a reply.

Nayland pulled off the road, parking in a perfect vantage point above the lights and coursing veins of the city’s highways.

‘Time to breathe?’ Val asked.

He nodded and got out, moving to look at the view. He glanced down, pleased to note how the land fell away beneath them and rolled down through bushes and vines into a valley inhabited only by wildlife and trees. Perfect.

‘One day I think I’d like to move out up here,’ said Val, looking over his shoulder. ‘I’m a country girl at heart. I like wide-open spaces. I like to see the stars.’

A more arrogant actor might have told her she was looking at one right now but Nayland stayed silent. He just led her back to the car and took off that damned red dress he had made her wear.

Looking at her laid back on the warm bonnet of the car, a piece of lean barbecue on the skillet, he luxuriated in how different she was from Elizabeth. Where his wife was curved, Val was slender, a quiet body as opposed to the loudspeaker yell of voluptuousness that Hollywood had fallen in love with.

She reached out to Nayland, a reasonable pretence of lust to which he had the good grace to respond. Stripping off and savouring the feel of the breeze on a body he had no cause to be shy about in such undemanding company.

He made love to her, a change from the physical combat of sex with Elizabeth, and did his best to put himself in the moment, to get out of his head and take the time to be with this woman, on this hill, on this night. He was not so self-deluded as to imagine she might do the same.

When they’d finished he lay next to her while they smoked cigarettes and looked up at the stars she was so enamoured of. He realised he could no longer remember the names of any of them.

‘Now you can take your drug,’ he said. ‘Float away to wherever it is that you go and I’ll drive you home.’

He was slightly saddened at the speed with which she slid off the bonnet, eager for her fix.

Val picked up the red dress but he shook his head. ‘You don’t have to wear that any more. Put your own dress back on.’

She shrugged, reached into the passenger seat for her purse and then climbed into the back seat. Nayland smoked another cigarette, listening out for the sounds of her cooking up, the smell of toasting opiate filtering out of the window. He gave it another couple of minutes, then walked around to the back door and looked through the window. Val was lying there, eyes closed, drifting away to the only truly open space that she could find these days. Satisfied that she was out of it and no threat as a reliable witness, he opened the trunk, picked up Georgina and quickly threw her off the edge of the ravine. She tumbled away into darkness but he heard her continue to roll, snapping branches and crunching undergrowth for a good few seconds after he lost sight of her.

Nayland closed the trunk, got dressed and sat on the fender for a few more minutes to smoke yet another cigarette. He was in no rush to go home. He was in no rush to return to a life that offered nothing. How wonderful would it be just to keep driving? Val could stick around; they could drive down the coast, find somewhere quiet to kick back and just be.

He sighed. It sounded like the plot of a movie and that was one thing his life would never be. Nobody would film such a shambolic descent into self-pity.

He threw his cigarette stub into the canyon after the body of the maid and his last real chance of making good on a thoroughly wasted life.

Elizabeth woke up with her skin burning.

The awareness crept into her consciousness swiftly so that by the time her eyes were open she was gritting her teeth with the pain.

Next to her, Henry was snoring loudly so she rolled out of bed as carefully as she could and ran into the bathroom. What she saw in the mirror nearly forced a scream out of her despite her attempts to stay quiet. Her youthful looks were gone, replaced with a face even older than she had possessed before. Only by a few years, perhaps: the odd extra line here and there, an extra puffiness beneath the eyes.

Slowly the pain on her skin faded away, leaving one that reached altogether deeper.

She got dressed and ran, terrified and dejected, for home.

SECOND REEL: THE BRIGHTEST STAR

NEWSPAPER HEADLINES SPIN TOWARDS THE SCREEN, THE FAST SPIRALS HALTING AS THEY PRESENT THEMSELVES ON A DIAGONAL. THERE IS A FANFARE OF THE BRASS SECTION:

‘THE QUEEN OF HOLLYWOOD RETURNS’ shouts one.

‘BEAUTY AT THE BALLROOM’ cries another.

‘GLITZ AND GLAMOUR AT GABRIZZI’S’ announces a third.

PHOTOS COME THICK AND FAST TO ACCOMPANY THE HEADLINES. IN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM ELIZABETH CAN BE SEEN TO SPARKLE EVEN THROUGH THE GRAINY NEWSPRINT. SHE IS BACK AND THE WORLD HAS NOTICED.

HENRY WOKE TO
second-hand sunshine glinting off the mirror at the foot of his bed and shining right in his face. With a growl he got out of bed and yanked the curtain half closed to cut off the beam. Then he noticed he was alone.

‘Stood up?’ he mumbled.

He wouldn’t normally have minded. After all, it had been no more than a bit of fun following a night of drinking and dancing – hadn’t he sneaked away with the dawn after a few of those in his time? Still, he had liked Elizabeth, and for more than just her beauty. There had been a sadness to her, an old wisdom that had made her seem both weary and yet determined. In a world where the beauty he was introduced to gave clear signs of there being nothing beneath the surface it had made a refreshing change. He had been determined to dig a little, see what he might find.

The phone rang.

‘Henry, my boy!’ shouted his manager, as if he was stumbling upon his protégé in a crowded room rather than calling him direct on the phone. ‘I hear you were painting the town red last night?’

‘I went out,’ Henry admitted. ‘That OK?’

‘Hell, yes! We want people talking about you. Go out, dance the night away and end up in bed with the most beautiful woman you can find. If she’s famous all the better.’