Seducing Ingrid Bergman (12 page)

We stroll up the avenues, walking in the cool darkness as the dawn comes, sending away taxi cabs as they slow down next to us.

We watch as the light rises, giving the world shadows. The grey shapes of the trees on the boulevards hold their breath for the heat of the day. And behind the buildings the sun comes up with its liquid edges. The sky folds itself into layers of red and pink and blue.

*   *   *

‘Sleep well?’ I ask.

‘Really well,’ Ingrid says, stretching.

‘What did you dream about?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘You’re blushing.’

‘I’m starting to remember.’

‘Did I feature in any?’

‘We both did.’

‘What did I do?’

‘What didn’t you?’

*   *   *

It’s only now that she discovers desire. Not the duty enjoined by the conjugal act, but the profound abandonment, the soft wet melting sensation of sexual love, with its heat and freedom, its wild crackling charge and head-clearing energy, the feeling that her body is being pulled inside out.

She is overpowered by longing. Capa has stirred the sensual depths in her so that she feels almost deranged. At times, she’s aware of the intensity of him looking, becomes conscious of the intimacy involved, and blushes. It’s as though, she considers, she’s been undone suddenly, as if she no longer belongs to herself. She finds the sensation unsettling and electrifying at the same time.

If only it were just that and not this other thing, she thinks. She feels inundated by an imprecise feeling that gathers shadows to itself, and to which she hesitates to attach the word love. The feeling grows scarily dense inside her. She reflects how he appeared out of nowhere, this man, this Capa. There he was, on her first night in Paris and then again when she came back from Berlin. And on the day of the Japanese surrender he lay down next to her and, as she turned her face towards his, he moved through her defences like a stone through a net and kissed her hard on the mouth – just like that.

And because he entered her life so unexpectedly, she was unable to prepare herself or erect her defences. Her guard was down, leaving her exposed.

Had she been aware of him from a distance, she might have been ready to parry his attacks, to fend him off. But there he was, suddenly. And now before she can gather her thoughts or get things in perspective, she finds herself smitten.

She never thought that this would happen. It never occurred to her that there’d be someone else. But here she is, seized by the need to love this man who is here, as real as the walls of her hotel room, the table in front of her, as actual as the air that surrounds her, and which she breathes.

She thinks of this as he lies asleep beside her, watching car headlights re-draw the angles of the room. At the same time, she feels a pull, as though a hook has lodged itself within her guts. And it’s not until his fingers twitch with the slightest pressure against her skin that she realizes they are still holding hands.

Following a warm dreamless sleep, she wakes, stretches her hands above her head, a ray of sparks under her arms, a single white sheet clinging silkily to her skin. She’s conscious of the sunlight and the sound of water running as the streets are cleaned outside.

‘I should go,’ Capa says.

She nods, her eyes liquid with sleepiness, her cheek creased from the pillow.

He dresses, pulling on his clothes, it seems to her, with the practised quickness of a soldier used to leaving a hotspot in a hurry. She reaches for her dressing gown.

‘What’s going to happen?’ she asks.

Impudently he tugs the belt that cinches her robe. ‘Come here.’

He embraces her for what seems like a long time. The scent of sleep is still on each of them.

She smoothes a crease in his shirt, straightens his collar, brushes some fluff from the shoulder of his jacket. But the thought claws at her and she looks up at him, large-eyed. ‘Don’t hurt me. I couldn’t stand it,’ she says.

There is, she realizes, a kind of concession involved in this, a sense of dependency established. But then, she reflects, he’s not the one who’s married, who has a child, and a career that hangs upon how the public judges her. The stakes are far less high for him. Everything that seemed so open and free and spontaneous before now seems reined-in and difficult. She feels sick in her stomach, and very much afraid.

He smiles, strokes her hair.

‘I mean it,’ she says. Contained in her voice is an element of warning.

He nods, opens the door.

She feels the draught against her ankles.

After he’s gone, she retreats inside, returns to bed. In pulling the covers up over her, she pulls herself tight shut like a purse.

For a long time, she lies unsleeping. She grows aware of a shadow that takes up no space yet has a weight that drags alongside her.

She has felt like this before.

As a girl she used to imagine her mother coming up behind her at night, putting her arms around her and whispering into her ear, and when she turned round to look, there was her mother just as she appeared in photographs. She’d be squeezed tight, kissed and feel reassured, only a few seconds later for her to wake up, sobbing, clutching the pillow, the bedroom empty, her mother gone.

She thinks of Pia. No matter what else happens, she considers, no matter what shame, suffering or humiliation she endures, she knows one thing: she cannot give up her daughter; she cannot give up Pia. She can’t do that, and she won’t do that. But she can’t think that far ahead.

*   *   *

Some cards arrive late for Ingrid’s birthday, including one from her husband and another, home-made, from her daughter. They each say they miss her, that they love her very much. They both ask her to come home soon. Petter finishes with a single kiss. Pia includes a row of wobbly Xs in crayon after her name.

She also receives an envelope full of clippings from the studio – reviews of
Spellbound
and
The Bells of St Mary’s
. The flattering passages are helpfully underlined in blue pencil.

It’s odd to think of Ingrid leading this other life with a husband in Hollywood. For a moment I think of it as a secret existence, some kind of shadow life or mirror world, unreal in a way. Then I remember that the secret life is the one she shares with me.

She emerges from the bathroom in a white bathrobe, her head at an angle, rubbing her hair with a towel. She catches me glancing at her cards, which sit on top of a pile of letters, franked with US stamps.

‘Is he a jealous man?’

The delay in her response contains a hint of disapproval that I might have been looking at her mail. ‘Yes, very,’ she says. Her voice seems deeper after the shower. Her gown is tied with a large floppy knot.

‘How can he stand you being away?’

‘He can’t.’

‘Then why does he allow it?’

Gathering her hair in a thick twist, she wrings a bit of wet from the back. ‘I get paid a lot of money.’

‘He’s not stupid.’

‘You don’t think?’ She begins hunting for underclothes in a bottom drawer. She doesn’t bend at the knees, just stretches effortlessly, retrieves what she wants. ‘He doesn’t like my leading men.’

‘That I can understand.’

‘He accuses me of having affairs.’

‘And do you?’

She closes the drawer firmly and stands up straight as if to defend her honour. ‘That would be unprofessional.’

‘Poor guy.’

‘He nags me. He doesn’t like me eating.’

‘He wants you to starve?’

With an efficient snap, she pulls on her underwear beneath her dressing gown. She continues in a sing-song voice, ‘He doesn’t like me slouching and tells me to stand up straight. He complains about the way I project my voice. He doesn’t like it when I laugh – he says it isn’t ladylike.’ She loosens the belt of her robe, which falls to the floor, releasing her breasts like fruit, sumptuous, glossy. Her normal voice resumes. ‘And the annoying thing is, he’s almost certainly right, so I don’t stop him. He’s a good teacher. It’s what I need. It’s good for me, probably.’

She adjusts her bra, rolls her stockings over her legs. Tan-coloured, they swarm with dabs of shadow. Beneath the clinging skin of material I glimpse a bit of cracked red nail varnish on one of her small toes. It strikes me as exquisite. ‘If it were me,’ I say, ‘I’d also want you all to myself.’

She wriggles into her dress, presents the back for me to zip. ‘He never wanted me to be a star. Thought it would turn my head.’

‘I thought you said he liked the money.’

‘He does, but he hates the films.’

‘He doesn’t like you in them?’

‘
Not bad
, is about the best I ever get. There’s always some niggly little criticism. He tells me not to be complacent, but it can be hard sometimes.’ She sits down and applies her lipstick in the mirror, her lips stretched wide as in a grimace. ‘He thinks they’re out to exploit me.’

‘What if it’s true?’

‘Do I seem like a pushover to you?’ She dabs her lips with a handkerchief, leaving the crinkly imprint of a kiss on the linen. ‘I use them as much as they use me.’ She smacks her lips, glances at me in the mirror. ‘More, maybe.’

She lifts the hair at the nape of her neck, and with a deft expert gesture fastens a thin gold necklace at the back. Finally she touches some perfume under her ears.

‘What does he want, then?’

‘For me to sit there looking pretty.’

‘It’s something you do very well.’

She flashes me a sardonic look.

I’m conscious of her profile reflected in the glass. It adds to the impression of a second, shadow life.

‘You know, he didn’t even want photographers at our wedding.’ She has trouble meeting my eyes.

‘Are you afraid of him?’

She stands up, smoothes her dress, gives an instinctive flick to her hair on either side. I watch as she shifts her weight from one leg to the other and tilts her head heartbreakingly the other way.

*   *   *

Benedict Canyon

Los Angeles

Dear Ingrid

I trust this letter finds you well. It must be amazing to be in Paris at this time. I wish I could be there with you, seeing it all happen and witnessing it first-hand.

Pia, of course, misses you terribly. She can’t understand how you can be so far away and gone for so long, although I keep trying to explain it.

She’s very funny. She’s discovered this terrific need to finish things and hates being interrupted. There’s no stopping her if she’s in the middle of doing a puzzle or trying to complete a drawing. I think she’s going to be stubborn and determined, just like her mother.

I enclose a recent photograph of her.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t me who did that to her teeth. She’s lost two on either side and the fairy has been busy putting nickels under her pillow.

Work at the hospital is hectic, with ships and planes coming back from Japan, and the men with injuries you wouldn’t believe and that I hope you never have to see. Not just mangled limbs either, but more invisible damage – cases of severe psychological trauma, so that many of the boys have trembling fits, drink heavily, and have trouble sustaining any relationships. This is not so easy to heal.

What you’re doing is excellent, I know, supporting the troops; we’re both very proud of you, and it’s good for your career, but the tour must be over by now and we’d love you to come home and help us get back into a routine. The house is quiet and empty without you and we look forward to you restoring order to our lives.

We’re keeping the cuttings. Did the script arrive?

Selznick is going crazy and Hitchcock keeps asking after you, as do the people at RKO. I think Hitch is scared you won’t come back. But I told him that you’d never let him down.

Anyway, take care my love and we’ll see you very soon.

Pia sends many kisses.

Yours, ever

Petter

x

8

This warm September evening, a power cut darkens the capital. A fat tomato-red sunset fills the sky. Dusk falls and, when the electricity comes back on, the streetlights lift the city into brilliance. Traffic streams down the avenues. Music springs from the cafés. And just now I feel a surge within myself, an inflationary sensation. My life seems abruptly full.

In this mood, I want to say yes to everything. I open doors for people, perform a thousand small courtesies, greet everyone with a smile. The generosity of spirit extends to everything around me, so that I surrender my place in a queue for cigarettes, drop coins into a begging bowl. The feeling of largesse fills me like a gas – part of a larger gratitude that widens to include the scent of coffee, the leaves on the trees, the sun in the sky.

Amid the several million or so souls that inhabit this city, what a happy accident it is, I consider, what an obliterating coincidence that we have found each other. What have I done to deserve this, to be so singled-out?

I imagine I see her everywhere: obliquely in shop windows, coming up the stairs of the Métro, through the windshields of passing cars. It’s as if I’m surrounded by these versions of her. Traces of her seem to exist all over the city, fragments jumping out at me as if from a splintered mirror.

If asked why I love her, until recently I would have been struck dumb. She’s stubbornly herself, utterly mysterious, impervious to words. What could I say? I love the way she writes me notes with a single question, the way she holds her coffee up with both hands, the way she has of pushing the hair from her eyes with her fingers. The mere fact of her being alive is enough to make me happy.

I’ve seen her almost every day for almost a month now. Every minute, every hour away from her seems wasted. That poise, her voice – that accent, its foreignness. I’m completely under her spell.

It’s wonderful to drink too much wine, to smoke too many cigarettes and to wake up with her in the mornings, to feel the weight of her next to me.

It’s hard not to feel that, somehow, this is all too good to be true.