The Dud Avocado (26 page)

Those were the most words I’d ever heard Bax say at a time. Practically a speech. I’d been studying him fiercely, trying to figure out just what it was about him they wanted so much. I mean Larry’s handsome, too, with his carroty hair and full, sensuous mouth. At least I think so. And much more exciting-looking, flashing and quicksilver and expressive. And Bax—as he himself said—looks just like everybody else. I finally saw what they meant, though. There is in Bax all the sturdy ruggedness, the woodsy woodenness and strict regularity of feature of a certain type of Hollywood Hero.

I was thoroughly disillusioned. It was a rude awakening on two counts. First to discover that all of Stefan’s joviality had really been designed to get a hold of Bax, and secondly to face the fact that I’d lived twenty-one years without being discovered once. It was obviously the sort of thing that started happening to you young. I mean if I hadn’t been discovered up till then, how would I ever be?

We sat around the table for a while, in silence.

“Will I do what?” I said to Larry suddenly.

He looked at me blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“I heard the Casting Director say something to you about, ‘Well, if she wants to do it.’ Do what? Sweep floors I suppose,” I snorted.

“Not quite as bad as that, Gorce.” He patted my hand. “I gave him this big build-up about you, see, and there are a couple of
small parts going, small but
good
, I understand, and the Casting Director says there might be a possibility that they’ll use you for one of them, I mean if you want to do it. Don’t worry about the money, I’ll squeeze them plenty for it.”

“Stick with Larry and you’ll be wearing diamonds,” I said glumly to Bax.

“Cheer up, Gorce. Behave yourself and I’ll tell you something nice. You know who the key figure is around here? It’s that little guy the Bullfighter, who by the way is one of the top bullfighters today. He’s got his own money in this deal and he’s going to have plenty to say about what’s what. You made a great hit with him, Gorce. He wants us to have dinner with him Monday night. He’s leaving now. He’s got a fight in San Sebastian on Sunday, but when he gets back he wants us to have dinner with him. What do you think of that?” He let it sink in for a minute, and then said, “Play your cards right
there
and you can probably have any part you want. Stick with
him
kid, he’s the one with the diamonds.”

This didn’t go over too well with Bax, but it did cheer me up considerably. I mean, gosh, a
real
bullfighter! In fact I got so excited about the whole idea I practically had them talked into driving down to San Sebastian to see the fight, except that Bax pointed out that it’s in Spain and
I don’t have a passport.

That settles it; pact or no pact I’m writing to Uncle Roger for help as soon as I finish this entry. No more horsing around.

We sat at the café until lunch time. A couple, two English people, sat down at the table next to ours just in time to see the Bullfighter and all his pals get into a shiny lavender Cadillac and drive off in a blaze of flashing chrome. The woman, a large Junoesque creature with a sensationally unhappy expression on her face, had slapped on an enormous pair of sunglasses as he came out and had been studying him intently. Suddenly she turned to her companion. “Well, there’s another dream gone down the drain—he must be every bit as high as my waist,” she announced sullenly. “He really looks such a boring little man, doesn’t he, so utterly clueless in those revolting American clothes, I can’t
think
why we’re going to do this picture. Basil wants us all to go down to San Sebasitian to watch him on Sunday but I don’t think I’ll bother. This morning’s plane journey has finished me off nicely, thank you very much. The man next to me never stopped yammering. I suppose it simply doesn’t occur to some people that one
might
be trying to recover from the night before.” She took a large gulp of her drink. “I’d quite like to see the bullfight though, wouldn’t you? I do adore cruelty. Everybody back home’s too dreary, going on and on about the horses. Papa’s forbidden me across the threshold if I go to one. Can you believe it? That’s an added incentive.” She finished her drink. “I hope at least that I get a chance to hear some decent Spanish spoken. Everyone I meet in London seems to be talking the most disgusting Catalan; it’s quite hopeless. Not that I place much faith in what our brave little torero is going to sound like. He’s probably Andalusian, or worse still Basque. Wouldn’t that be the end? Just my eternal rotten luck! Oh do look, here comes the reconnaissance party.”

Stefan and the Casting Director, who turned out to be the Basil of her tirade, Basil Plinn-Jones, were coming toward the café. So then we were all introduced. Her name is Angela and she was described as the Plinn-Jones’ Girl Friday. And the man, the one on the listening end, was the Assistant Director, Robin something.

“I thought you might be Americans,” she said when we joined tables. “I do hope you didn’t mind my remark about his suit, but he looked too ridiculous, didn’t he?” She turned frankly to Bax. “It would be quite another story on you,” she stated baldly, her eyes measuring him for size.

We all had lunch together; a rather uncomfortable lunch. I was getting a slight déjà vu about it all. It seemed to me you could plunk them all down in the middle of the Contessa’s crowd and not miss one.

I didn’t think anyone was enjoying himself much, but when we started to leave Stefan asked us to have supper with them tonight at a restaurant in Ascain which is on top of one of the mountains, and Larry, curse him, said yes.

I suppose he knows what he’s doing.

Must stop now and get that letter off to Uncle Roger.

May 24
Friday

Last night was one of
those
evenings. I wouldn’t know what to call it. Eventful in an uneventful way. Boring; but interesting. Nothing much happening on the surface and everybody seething and stewing underneath—changing character all over the place.

We are caught in the middle of some mysterious psychological shuffle now, our loyalties shifting and sliding back and forth like ships in a storm.

First of all there was Bax’s revolt. He never does much talking, most of the time he’s just listening, but yesterday all the way back to our villa and for the rest of the afternoon there was a different quality to his silence: he was
thinking
. And when the time came for us to start out for Ascain he turned up in a dirty old sweat-shirt and announced calmly that he wasn’t going with us. He said he thought he had made it clear that he didn’t want to be in the movie and he didn’t like the people, so what was the point anyway?

So then Larry hit the ceiling and said he
had
to come along, that he’d spoil everything if he didn’t.

At this point Missy went over to Bax’s side. She told Larry to stop bullying him and leave the poor boy alone. She said why should he come if he didn’t want to? She said she didn’t much want to come either, they all sounded terrible. She said what difference did it make if Bax came or not, as long as he wasn’t going to be in the old movie anyway.

Larry said desperately, “Help me, Gorce, make him see the light.” And I said what could
I
do, and Larry said didn’t I see that Bax was our strongest link, our only selling point, and Missy wanted to know what Larry was getting so excited about; he certainly wasn’t going to take 10 per cent of our salaries, was he? And Larry looked at her as if she were a worm and asked if it ever occurred to her that he might want to direct a film sometime and that being around these people would enable him to learn something about how it all works.

I couldn’t help noticing how quickly Larry’s inner-peace-down-to-the-beach-and-take-it-easy philosophy was wearing off,
but that’s Larry all over. He’s just like me. His curiosity gets the best of him every time.

Then he spoke to Bax very seriously and said that he wouldn’t ask him to do anything he didn’t want to do, but didn’t Bax understand that they had their eye on him and him alone and that if he dropped out so early, it could easily mess up our chances. “And I mean Sally Jay’s chances,” he added.

“Oh hush all this fuss! Sally Jay doesn’t care whether she’s in the stupid old film or not, do you?” Missy was getting indignant.

“Yes I do,” I said. Suddenly I knew I did. I really did, even if it meant just a small part. Suddenly I knew I couldn’t get through the summer just sitting there watching Missy and Larry together. Or lazing around not learning anything, not accomplishing anything, not seeing anything new.

I went over to the armchair where Bax was sitting and knelt at his feet and said, “Please come along tonight. For my sake.” And Larry, right behind me, said, “Just play along with them for a little while, won’t you? It can’t hurt you and it can hurt us. Even if you pass the test, who says you’ve got to take the part? And what if you do take the part? Experience is experience, and it’s everything in life, boy. What else have you got to do this summer?”

So Bax finally gave in. He said, “O.K. I’ll go, I’m sorry to be like this, it’s only …” but he didn’t finish the sentence. He smiled wistfully at me and got up and we all went down to the car.

On the way out I took his hand. “What’s the matter?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just feel I’m getting deeper and deeper in.”

So we arrived in Ascain a rather divided group.

The whole evening was like that. Everyone at cross-purposes. It never really got off the ground. There were great spaces when the whole thing seemed like an awful waste of time. Stefan was worried and distrait. The special kind of fishing vessel which the Italian Art Director had gone to such trouble to find had loosed its moorings and gone drifting out with the tide, probably lost forever. Even the sight of Missy didn’t perk him up, and his squeezings and pinchings were half-hearted to the point of absent-
mindedness. The English themselves were divided in spirit. Plinn-Jones was a conscientious host but stiffly aloof and ill at ease and over-conscious of his position. Robin, the Assistant Director, young, ruddy and blue-blazered, with darting black eyes and a fixed avid grin, was drinking heavily and roaring to go in all directions. And Angela—well, Angela was just Angela, and I ain’t never seen the likes. Whoever called the English reticent must have had his ears full of golf balls. Our Girl Friday’s duties included, as we learned from her own mouth not ten minutes after we dined, being part-time mistress of Plinn-Jones. Only she doesn’t think much of him, she told Bax and me with an enormous sniff. She doesn’t think much of any men. In fact she hates them all. And after hearing the story of Angela’s love life I think I see why.

Apparently just as she had decided that her ex-husband—after such various pranks as trying to push her off a mountain slope skiing, taking potshots at her grouse shooting, and just plain holding her under water—didn’t much
care
for her, he went and stole the family silver, which subsequently reappeared at the next dinner party she attended, where, to further humiliate her, he had dressed up as a waiter. As she put it, the time had come to give
him
the push. However, getting rid of him proved another matter.

How this was accomplished we never learned, because suddenly Robin, the Assistant Director, who up till then had been assuring Larry earnestly that there was no point whatever in asking him about his job since he hadn’t the faintest idea what it was about (no gentleman ever did), decided to set us all straight about himself. First he made sure we got his name right. “It’s Halkens not Heakins. Good God, Heakins is
Irish
. I’m Norse. I could hardly be mistaken for an Irishman with this nose, could I?” he said, grinning eagerly and inviting us to study the old Norse beak, which was long and thin and pointed downward.

Then we heard all about Daddy (grand old character) and how he used to terrify all the children as they sat around the huge table in the Dining Hall, while he bellowed at them to recite the capitals of the European countries.

Then we got again how bad he was at his job (in the old days, as his father always said, one didn’t have to be
doing
things all the time, it was enough to be a gentleman).

Then we got his deep sentimental attachment to the Ballet. “Give me Swan Lake, Swan Lake,
Swan Lake
every time!”

Then we got his outdoor prowess. “I walk
everywhere
”

And then we got his school tie.

That was my fault. I was staring at him, fascinated, thinking what a curious set of credentials to present and wondering if he wasn’t just drunk, when my eyes happened to light on the weird knotted mass around his neck. It was the smallest tie I’d ever seen on a grown man, about two inches long: a miniature tie, perfectly formed. It might have been his youngest brother’s, except that it was black with age. Under the soup stains I could just make out a striped pattern of some badly matched colors. It looked like a trophy, so I asked him about it. It was his old school tie, he said, smirking modestly. Stonehenge, I think he said. The smiling modesty changed to smiling impatience when we didn’t react.

He was becoming truculent under that smile. If you happened to mention that you didn’t think the beach at Ciboure looked very good for bathing, he would say, “Oh you Americans. You’re spoiled, that’s the trouble with you. Try bathing
anywhere
on my salary!”

Then he would say, “You’re children, that’s what you are,
children
, with your ridiculous idealism! And you’re supposed to be running the world now. Well, the best of luck to you, that’s all I can say.”

It wasn’t, though.

A moment later he leaned toward me with that same grin that was beginning to make him look insane and said, “Begging your pardon and no offense meant I’m sure, but admit now,
admit
you don’t know how to begin organizing a World Federation!”

By now I’d had enough of this jolly old Viking. “Maybe not,” I said, rising, “but I know how to end a conversation.” And I went to the john.

A hoot of laughter followed me, and when I returned, there was Angela, still in stitches, carefully explaining to each and everyone just what
he
had said to me, and what
I
had said to him, hugely enjoying Robin’s discomfiture. “Well done. Oh, masterly,” she crowed at me. “It’s made my evening.”