Lace (68 page)

Nevertheless, Lili felt that she was repeating herself too frequently as she tried, haltingly, to give different answers to the same questions repeated over and over again by different mouths in
front of different microphones. She rarely left her hotel and ate her evening meal in her suite. Sometimes she switched on the television, but she was generally asleep before the program ended.

In spite of the luxury and care that surrounded her, by Monday of the fourth week she was red-eyed, depressed, exhausted and sneezing in the biting cold January wind of Chicago.

“Cheer up, you’re on your last week,” consoled Judy. The kid had been no trouble up to now. Quiet, almost limp in fact, although she came to life miraculously as soon as she
saw a camera. “You’ve done very well so far.
Everybody
is exhausted and disoriented after three weeks on the road. They’ve
all
said the same thing over and over.
Tell you what, if you really feel too ill to do it, I’ll cancel everything for the afternoon. The only really important spot is Soapy Finnegan this evening. After that we’ll tuck you
into bed and leave you alone with a couple of aspirin.”

Soapy Finnegan was a smiling, self-opinionated Irishman with a double ration of blarney and a treble quota of charm that was carefully beamed at his audience of respectable,
suburban matrons. Soapy knew their reaction to his every word, innuendo and gesture; he could almost see them all out there, feet up, coffee cup in hand, comfortably watching their good friend
Soapy, who shared their values and their viewpoint, who wanted the same sort of things that they wanted, a quiet life with no problems, who enjoyed the same simple family pleasures that they did.
They were not to know that Soapy Finnegan wore a girdle under his suit, had just had his second facelift and was obsessed by constipation remedies, especially enemas applied by young male
nurses.

Waiting to be cued by the floor manager, Lili willed herself not to sit down on the offered chair. If she sat down she’d never get up. She only had to do this one little show, then she
could collapse into bed and they’d get her a doctor. Her forehead was burning, her head throbbed and her ears felt muffled. Certainly, she couldn’t go on tomorrow.

Later she was to wish that she had not struggled on that evening, as Soapy Finnegan mercilessly slaughtered her on the altar of respectability. He had been charmingly solicitous to her in the
green room, so Lili was unprepared when he suddenly started to attack her, raised his voice in a loud, fast, judgmental monologue, hurled questions at her as if she were being cross-examined and
then answered them himself, not giving Lili time to speak. After a long tirade, he suddenly switched away from the camera and turned to the bewildered Lili.

“
How
exactly would you describe yourself?”

“Why, as an actress.”

“You wouldn’t describe yourself as a
woman
who
exposed
herself when hardly out of
school
to whichever
gentleman
was willing to
pay
for this
doubtful
pleasure
?” His voice became louder, faster. In the producer’s box Judy sprang to her feet. She could see what was coming. The self-righteous voice continued to accuse
Lili.
“Flaunting your body for a string of emeralds!”

Judy ran along the passage that led to the studio. Lili could never handle this alone.

But she could. Bewildered by the loud stream of accusations, trying to answer, groping for the English words, stuttering, Lili was at first afraid that she was going to burst into tears. But
she’d cried enough in private. So far she’d always managed to conceal her true feelings in public—that had been her only protection—and her secret pride. So why cry for this
bastard? Almost without thinking, she concealed her emotion with anger and action as she sprang to her feet and tore the emeralds from her ears. “They’re not my emeralds,” she
said in a low voice. “I’ve had enough of you and I’ve had enough of them. I
knew
they were unlucky. Emeralds are always unlucky!”

She tugged the bracelets from her wrists, then with both hands she yanked at the necklace, breaking the safety clasp and scratching the back of her neck. “
You
keep them,” she
cried, throwing the jewels into the plump lap of the astounded Soapy Finnegan. “
You
see what it feels like to be paraded like a circus animal.” Hardly knowing what she was doing,
knowing only that she had to escape, Lili ran from the cameras and past her bodyguards at the studio door and bumped into Judy, who was rushing down the passage in the opposite direction.

“Please, Lili, go back, we’ll go on together.
Please, please
.”

Lili pushed her away and glared at her.

“Lili, I’m on
your
side. You can’t afford to lose your temper.”

Lili continued to glare.

Judy’s own temper flared up. “So why should people always be nice? You should have shut up and smiled, or looked
dignified,
for Chrissake, then you might have got some
audience sympathy. Now you’ve behaved like a stupid street brat, which is exactly how he described you.
And you called the emeralds unlucky! Twice!
That’ll be all over America
within hours.”

She beckoned to the hovering bodyguards. “Let’s get back to your dressing room, Lili. Christ, I can’t decide whether to phone the Jewelry Federation and apologise or quietly
slit my throat.”

Or yours, she thought, as she hurried Lili down the corridor, waving people away, still muttering. “I can’t
believe
you let him get to you so easily; it’s so goddamn
unprofessional,
Lili. Can you imagine Jane Fonda or Liza Minnelli behaving like this? Or any reputable actress? Oh, God, where can I get a jeweler at this hour to mend that necklace before
we leave tomorrow?”

“I leave now,” said Lili, in an offhand voice, as they entered her dressing room. “No more tour.”

“You
can’t
go off in midtour,” said Judy, aghast.

“Yes, yes, indeed, I
can.
Oh, I forgot these.” And she tugged the rings from her fingers, carefully placed them on the makeup counter, grabbed up her coat and walked out.

Back at the hotel, Lili threw a few clothes into a suitcase and put a call through to Serge. He wasn’t in his bungalow.

She telephoned him again when she reached O’Hare, but there was still no reply.

So, head throbbing, she sat and waited two hours for a plane to Los Angeles and peace.

Serge was astounded to see a bedraggled Lili appear in his room in the middle of the night. He sat up in bed. He was alone. They both noticed that. “What the hell’s
happening? You’re supposed to be on tour for another week.” He squinted sleepy eyes against the sudden light. “Where’s that PR woman? Stop crying, cherub, come to
papa.”

Lili flung herself into his arms. Serge terrified her, Serge depressed her, and Serge physically abused her, but nevertheless Lili basically felt safe with him.

“She’s st . . . st . . . still at Chicago. I telephoned you from the ho . . . ho . . . hotel, then I telephoned again when I re . . . re . . . reached the airport, they paged you but
y . . . y . . . you weren’t there so I wai . . . wai . . . waited at O’Hare and c . . . c . . . caught the next plane to L.A.” She burst into tears again.

“There, there, cherub, calm down. Whatever’s happened, Serge will fix it. There, there. There.” He stroked her hair until the sobs turned to sniffs, then he pulled her around
and kissed her. “Now tell Serge, cherub.”

There was a pause, then Lili said, “The first part was fine. The reception in New York was fine; they gave me a very easy time.” She paused again. “The woman from the agency
was nice and friendly. But we did so
many
shows a day and my English just wasn’t up to it.” She sneezed. “It’s such a relief to be talking French to you again. And to
talk without being guarded.” She coughed hard. “And always in English, you see, and very fast. Then I caught a virus, so the hotel doctor, in Michigan I think it was, gave me pills, but
they made me sleepy and stupid. My head felt like a big balloon stuffed with cotton.”

Lili grabbed another tissue as she started to sneeze again. “By yesterday evening I also had a throbbing headache, so I took some different pills; otherwise I swear I don’t think I
could have moved.”

She pulled her shoes off, then her clothes, dropping them in a heap by the side of the bed. “And after all that, this loathsome little swine said these revolting things to me in front of
thousands of people—what a filthy whore I was, a shocking example to the youth of America. . . .”

Serge thought even with her nose and eyes streaming, even when she had totally lost her cool, Lili naked was nevertheless one terrific sight. And much to his surprise, he’d missed her. It
was like finding that you missed a dog you were used to kicking.

“I felt as if I were being cross-examined in a murder case.”

“There, there, petal,” soothed Serge, one arm comfortingly around her.

Serge telephoned Judy in Chicago and sorrowfully explained that Lili had a fever, a temperature of 102 degrees and was under doctor’s orders not to be disturbed. He hoped she’d be
better in a couple of days. Maybe he shouldn’t have let her go on tour, poor kid. She’d had a hectic year, she was really too tired, and now she’d caught the flu.

But Lili didn’t recover after a couple of days. She had worked nonstop under pressure for months, she had been coaxed, wheedled and pushed beyond her powers of endurance by Serge. Two
weeks later, Lili still lay in bed, listless. She didn’t seem to hear Serge, she wept silent tears if anyone spoke to her, she didn’t want to eat or drink or read or watch television.
She just lay in bed, limp as a rag doll.

“We’d better transfer her to a private clinic,” the doctor said. “She’s suffering from what you could call exhaustion or a clinical depression—that’s
how this condition is generally described when the sufferer is a celebrity. But I’m afraid she’s heading for a serious nervous breakdown.”

There was a pause.

Serge looked worried.

“When will she be able to work again?” he asked.

C
AP
C
AMERAT IS
a rocky headland on the French Riviera, half an hour’s drive from St. Tropez.
A white lighthouse on the tip of the cliff warns ships to keep their distance. Beyond it, clinging tenaciously to the steep mountainside, is a newly built cluster of villas constructed of naked
brick, exposed concrete and unadorned wood. These dwellings are furnished in what the French call “contemporary” style, with conical wickerwork chairs that look incapable of supporting
a round human bottom, tables inset with handmade ceramic tiles and messy splashes of violent colour.

In the spring of 1970, Serge borrowed one of these villas from a bachelor friend so that Lili could recuperate in the warm air of the Mediterranean. He was glad to have her off his hands for a
month. She seemed to have no energy, no stamina, and dissolved into tears whenever he suggested a little work.

Since her breakdown, the twenty-year-old Lili had lost her self-confidence and nerve. At the age of twenty, she was now frightened of being with strangers and terrified of being alone. Serge
found her easier to manipulate when she was obedient and listless, but he also knew that she had lost the strange vitality she used to possess when facing the camera.

For the moment, Lili’s magic had gone. The face was the same, the body the same, but she had no life in her. Lili had had little to do with normal people; her sort of success inevitably
attracted gapers, con men and sexual exploiters. Women were always on their guard against Lili; they mistrusted her, and they were jealous of her because of the mesmeric effect she had on men. So
she had no close girlfriends to coax her back to vitality. Serge had tried everything. He soothed the little bitch, flattered her, fucked her silly, frightened her, even roughed her up a couple of
times. Two films had been cancelled—it was bloody lucky he was covered by the medical clause—and he’d lost a lucrative poster contract. She hadn’t earned a penny for him in
the last six months, and she was costing him a fortune in medical fees.

The doctor had recommended plenty of sun and a quiet life—no parties, no late nights, and even . . . no Serge. So he had hired a nurse to look after her. Someone he could trust. Serge
promised himself he’d be on the first plane to Nice if there was the slightest sign of another man sniffing about. He’d given the nurse an immense bonus for keeping Lili under constant
surveillance, and just to make sure of AC as well as DC, he’d picked the ugliest bitch on the nursing agency’s books.

Lili sensed that she was being spied on, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to be left alone. Nevertheless, she cheered up as soon as she and the nurse were driven beyond the palm trees
of Nice airport under the Mediterranean sun.

From inside the house, the view of the sea was almost obscured by a mass of green vegetation that hung over the glass doors from the roof above: the light that filtered through was dim and
green. But outside on the patio in the brilliant, Provencal sunlight, standing in a writhing, dark green jungle dotted with tenacious pink geraniums and watching little white yachts slowly move
over the dark blue sea under a pale blue sky, Lili stretched her arms up to the sun. At last she felt alone, unpressured and at peace.

Few of the neighbouring villas were occupied so early in the year, so Lili was able to wander about the village unrecognised. Every morning she sunbathed naked on her private beach, although the
water was still too cold for swimming.

One morning, just as she was about to climb back up the winding, rock path to the house for lunch, she felt a shadow fall across her body. Opening her eyes, she was alarmed to see a black,
rubber-clad figure leaning over her.

“Lili! I thought I recognised you!” said Zimmer, who had been spearfishing in the bay.

Lili was delighted to see him, and Zimmer was obviously just as pleased to see her. “I’m staying in the next bay; I shut myself up for a month to write a screenplay. You’re the
first woman I’ve seen for weeks. I leave on Monday, which means I’m not going to see much of you because I’ve promised to lunch with the Fouriers tomorrow.” He looked at
her. He’d heard she was ill and had had to cancel a couple of things, but she seemed fine now. “Their parties are always terrific. Why don’t you come with me?”