Not Without You (31 page)

‘You miss him, it’s too bad,’ she said tenderly. ‘Ah, dear.’ She reached out a hand. ‘You poor girl.’

Tears came to my eyes; inside my head, the old voices started, jabbing at me, telling me how rotten I was. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I do miss him.’

I spent the day at home. I unpacked, I read a little of my book, I watched the television, but I couldn’t find anything I liked, anything to latch onto. Mostly, I sat in the sitting room, looking out towards the west of the city, over the hills. A psalm Rose and I had been taught to sing at school kept coming into my head.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help
. It was hot, humid, and there was no wind. I felt terribly alone, though Victoria sang all day in the kitchen. June telephoned, wanting to know if we cared to join her for dinner, her voice lightening noticeably when I said Gilbert was away. We spoke fondly for a while about the wonderful time we’d had up in Big Sur, and I wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be fun to meet up with her.

‘No point in moping around after Gilbert, dearest,’ June said. ‘Come out with me. I’m trying to get hold of Conrad. We’ll wow the town, show them all we’re back. It’ll be a riot, darling.’

But I said no, though I missed June and especially Conrad, his funny jokes, his witty repartee, his shy, kind heart, already. I simply felt I couldn’t leave the house and live a lie when I hadn’t told Gilbert, when Don hadn’t arrived yet.
But Gilbert won’t come until at least Monday, you know he won’t. There’s no way he’ll be here tonight.
No matter how many times I told myself this, I couldn’t bear to leave the house, just in case.

I was a prey to my own fears, when in Big Sur everything had seemed so simple, so wonderful. Gilbert, what would he do? Where would he go? What would people say?

It was an interminable day, but I almost welcomed it. I felt as though I should have to live through this, to have the happiness I thought was almost with me.

And then it was Sunday.

‘Where are you, Eve?’

It was mid-morning, and I’d been reading in bed. At the sound of his voice, I jumped up immediately.

‘Eve?’

‘Here, dear. I’m here,’ I said, standing up by the bed, as if I’d been doing something illicit.

Gilbert came striding into the room. He looked around, as if he thought someone were here. ‘Ah,’ he said. He nodded, looking me up and down.

‘You seem well,’ he said. ‘Had a good time, then?’

There was something about his tone I couldn’t quite make out. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hard work, but it’s a wonderful place.’

Gilbert glanced at himself in the mirror. I saw the twitch of his mouth, the bristle of his neat moustache. ‘Hm. Sounds like it.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked him.

‘Just – oh. From what you’ve said. Your letters.’ He turned towards me. ‘I’ve missed you, my dear.’

He came around to my side of the bed, gripped my shoulders, and kissed me, hard. ‘Mm,’ he said, with a grunt. ‘You seem different, somehow. Why are you different?’ He slid his hands down my back and clutched my bottom, grasping it painfully, so that he drew me against him. I pulled away.

‘I’m not different,’ I said. I scratched my cheek and coughed, as a diversion, backing away from him towards the dressing table and pouring myself some water. ‘I’m the same. You look wonderful. The desert air obviously suits you, darling.’

It was true, he did. He was leaner, more agile, virile. He seemed younger, somehow. How funny, that our being apart should be so obviously good for us both.

‘It’s a living. A bloody ridiculous one, but it’s good to tell a story people damn well ought to know about,’ Gilbert said. ‘So, you were back on Friday?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be here the whole weekend.’

‘Mm, well, I couldn’t in the end. Something came up.’

He turned towards the mirror and adjusted his collar; he was in a denim shirt, it didn’t need adjusting.

As I watched him, I realised he knew. I didn’t know if he knew it was Don, but he knew something was up. There was something about him that I hadn’t seen before. A confidence, an ease. He had always been handsome, agile, strong – but before it had been defensive, as if he had something to prove. Now he moved like a warrior, someone who knew how to get his own way.

Suddenly I was scared of him.

‘Come here,’ he said softly. ‘Come here and give me a proper welcome back. You’re my wife, aren’t you?’

I hate the word ‘wife’, I always have done. I did before, I think, but as I submitted to him in the bedroom, I couldn’t think how to act with him. I’d forgotten what it was like to tolerate someone’s hold over you, to lie and be dutiful. Gilbert was different, yes, and I wondered who had been keeping him company in the desert.

His chest was brown, the hairs bleached blond with the sun.

‘Come on, my dear.’ First he pulled my loose silk pants down. ‘You could at least pretend you’ve missed me.’

‘I have—’

He tugged my pyjama top over my head, hurriedly, silencing me, and pulling my hair over my ears. The static sent sparks cracking off my head. He laughed. I felt like a schoolboy, or a village idiot, standing in front of him with my trousers about my ankles, head bowed, naked. He undid his trousers, slid his belt out of its loops, pushed me onto the bed so I sat facing him, my legs dangling off the side; then he hoisted me against him, then pushed me back so he was standing between my thighs, thrusting inside me as I lay looking up at him, not sure how to react, how he wanted it, what would make this moment pass. And I locked myself out of my mind again, for the first time in weeks. It should have saddened me, how easy it was to bring it back, the blank feeling of something else. I looked into his eyes and saw nothing there, so I thought about Rose, about the funny-shaped stones in the old monastery where we used to play, about how one day, I would show them to Don if I ever went back there.

Gilbert was looking down at my breasts, then up at the wall, as he rocked backwards and forwards. He didn’t look at my face. I realised he didn’t care it was me. He was thinking about something else.

What could I say? And what could I do? He finished, heaving into me with a strangling, grunting end. Then he buttoned his trousers, and patted my knee in what I thought was a show of affection.

‘I say. Move it,’ he said.

I looked down. My leg was clamped against the bed frame, trapping his belt. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

He left then, leaving me lying on the end of the bed. I looked out, up towards the hills, as the midday sun rose higher in the sky.

So then it became rather like a farce, for the next twenty-four hours. I didn’t know that it would end, or how, of course. And I came to realise, when I thought about it, that Gilbert had misplayed his hand. He couldn’t admit that he knew I was leaving him, he wasn’t that kind of man. It would be weak. He wanted me to tell him. But he didn’t want me to tell him, either. He couldn’t be seen to be the kind of man whose wife left him for someone else, not after this, not when – as he told me in detail that evening – Refford and the studio were praising his performance to the sky, and
Life
had covered his ‘big screen comeback’ in a special on-set feature, and when only a few weeks into the shoot people were already – raised eyebrow – talking about what would happen come Oscar time.

Yet by pushing me into this corner he made himself complicit in what I was withholding from him. As the day wore on into evening, as we dressed for dinner and sat at opposite ends of the lovely long table shipped over from Heal’s in London especially for us, as Victoria served the chicken salad and roast lamb and fruit salad she’d made for Mr Travers’s return, it felt more and more as though we were in a film. As though what was reality and what was fantasy were changing places. At times I couldn’t remember what was true and what wasn’t. Was Don and Big Sur all a dream? Had he lied to me? Had I misunderstood him, when he kissed me at the door and whispered, ‘I love you, Rose’?

I knew I hadn’t. If it wasn’t a dream, where was he?

After dinner, I said I had a headache. ‘It must be the heat,’ Gilbert said. ‘Very humid. A storm’s coming, tonight, tomorrow.’ I shot a look at him, suspiciously, but he was all solicitude, very caring, calling Victoria to bring lavender water to bathe my temples, as though I were a Victorian heroine. I said I would go to bed and have an early night.

‘I might step out to Ciro’s,’ he said. ‘If that’s all right with you, my dear. I won’t disturb you when I come back. Promise.’ He blew me a kiss.

‘Thank you, dear,’ I said. My head did ache. My body ached, blood seemed to be thudding in my ears, like the sound of waves on the shore. I was desperate for rest but unable to sleep. Yet I went to bed, and locked the door, though I knew he wouldn’t come in now. He’d had me to show his strength, not because he wanted me, and I lay looking out towards the window, waiting for a sign. I knew something was coming. I prayed it was Don.

the facts and the names

I DIDN’T HAVE long to wait.

The very next morning I came into the breakfast room to find the
Los Angeles Times
and the
Examiner
waiting there as usual, but there was also
a new issue of
Confidential
, the lowest rag of them all, lying on top of them.

And I stared, and then laughed.

Confidential: tells the facts and names the names!

HOLLYWOOD’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

TOO MANY STARS
SCREENWRITER ARRESTED
FOR PUBLIC DISORDER

‘DIRTY DON’ STOLE DIRECTOR’S CAR; FAVOURITE
SONG SHOULD BE
‘MAD ABOUT THE BOY’

Apparently, they said, Don had stolen a well-known director’s car, driven to a local beauty spot outside of LA, near Malibu, and attempted to pick up a young man. The young man, who had been there with his girlfriend, had rung the police, ‘in disgust’, given them the licence-plate of the car, and they’d tracked him down.

My eyes flicked over the page, again and again, but no matter how often I read it, the words stayed the same.

Victoria came in with a pot of coffee. ‘Morning, Miss Eve,’ she said. ‘Mr Travers went out early today.’ She jabbed a finger at the magazine. ‘Someone delivered that for you this morning. He said to make sure you saw it. He’ll be back later. He said to tell you there’s a dinner at Harry DiMarco’s tonight and the boys are all taking their wives, and for you to be ready at six.’ She added, ‘If that suits you.’

I nodded, my head still bent over the magazine to hide my face from her. ‘Yes, Victoria. Thank you.’

‘You all right, Miss Eve?’ Victoria said.

‘I’m not all right, no,’ I said. She stared at me. ‘Go away, please. I need to think. I can’t think,’ I said, and I could hear a wild, strange strain in my voice.

I started to forget things around then. Everything started to mix together in my mind. I never heard from Jerry again. Or Conrad. They had both disappeared off the face of the earth, though I tried to reach them many times. I went to both their houses, I drove myself, I am sure. But neither of them was in. And neither of them returned my calls. No one else could help me. No one cared about Don. He was only a writer, after all, a writer with a drinking problem.

Moss Fisher was everywhere in those days. Every time I went to the studio he was there, watching me. When I rang Mr Baxter, the studio head, one afternoon from my dressing room, wanting to know where Jerry was, it was Moss who answered, as if the line in my bungalow was connected directly to his phone.

‘He’s resting before his next picture. We need to make sure he’s looked after, Miss Noel.’

I’d been silent, taking in the implicit message of what he was choosing to tell me.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I’d asked him. ‘You know it wasn’t Don.’

‘Don who?’ Moss gave a tiny inhalation. ‘Don Matthews? Oh, right. The fag they just arrested who used poor Jerry’s car to go off and get himself into a whole heap of trouble? Jerry has an alibi, Miss Noel, you know he does. He was in Chasen’s that night. A hundred witnesses.’

‘It must have been someone else, then—’ I began, but he interrupted.

‘Listen, my dear girl. We really must stop ourselves jumping to conclusions. I, more than anyone, want to see Don cleared. Of course. Until then, we have to hope justice prevails.’ And the phone went dead.

They even took his name off the credits of his latest film.
A Girl Named Rose
was released at the box office just over six months later and though the increasingly remote from reality and desperate studio was out of love with it themselves, the film became the biggest hit of 1960. The very same day it was released, Don was sent to prison. Two years, in the LA County Jail. For moral turpitude, attempted sodomy and intercourse with a minor.

I wrote to him at his home address, offering to help. I didn’t know who’d be reading his letters so I wrote in several different guises, but he never replied. I feigned illness on the set of my new picture one day, and slipped away to the County Jail when I knew it was visiting time. He wouldn’t see me. Finally, on the day he was sentenced, I drove to the LA Superior Court on Hollywood Boulevard, waited in my car around the corner from the courthouse. I just wanted to see him, one more time.