Reality and Dreams (12 page)

‘Tom
Richards is resting, I believe. You know he has to rest.’

‘I’m
Jeanne.’

‘Oh
yes, I recognised you. Would you like to see Mrs. Richards?’

‘No, I
saw her already.’

‘Just
take a seat, I’ll see what I can do, Jeanne.’ Claire finally appeared as Jeanne
knew she would. ‘Come in and sit down. Have a drink.’ They would go into a
smaller room with drinks on the side table and a newspaper falling to bits on
the floor.

‘You
know, Jeanne, we’re worried about Marigold. Tom has had a lot of troubles. That
last interview you gave wasn’t very nice. Why did you do that? What have we
done to you?’

‘I’ve
been used,’ said Jeanne.

‘We’re
all used,’ Claire said.

‘Oh,
really? Well, explain why I’m the key figure in the film and I don’t get star
billing.’

‘Because
you are not the star,’ said Claire. ‘Rose Woodstock is the star.’

‘I’m
the main character in the story and I hardly have three close-ups. I
am
the
story.’

‘That’s
an artistic problem,’ said Claire. ‘You have had the opportunity of talking to
Tom.’

‘No, I
haven’t.’

‘Well,
you know Tom had an accident. Didn’t you see the rushes ever?’

‘No, I
didn’t. The directors didn’t think I was worth asking.’

Claire
pointed out that Jeanne had a contract. She should take it to her agent, her
lawyer, if she thought she had a gripe. Claire pointed out everything except
the fact that Jeanne was actually cast to have the fleeting part of ‘Jeanne’ in
the film. A flash here and there and she was gone. It was difficult for Claire
to be so explicit. It sounded deprecating. How does one explain an act of art?
Rose Woodstock was the obvious dramatic draw, with her name, her looks and her
outstanding presence. Never once had Jeanne been made to portray a rival to
Rose. There was no story of female competition for the principal actor’s
affections. Jeanne was an idea. A hamburger girl, frequently with her back to
the camera, whose part in the story was by definition that of a nobody.

‘But I,’
insisted Jeanne, ‘am the one who’s going to inherit, to be a millionairess.’

Claire
thought the girl was mad. Her face was gaunt. Unlike the fairly pretty aspect
she had presented in the film her look now was slightly haunted. Claire suspected
she had been taking drugs. Jeanne had gone to Venice, to the Biennale film
festival, aimlessly drawing to herself what attention she could, but unable to
compete with Rose Woodstock or even to find a place at a café table with the
glamorous, white-toothed leading male actor who, in the film, had so well known
how to offer a present to a girl (Rose Woodstock), and who now, in Venice
absolutely failed to recognise Jeanne.

Claire
discerned that Jeanne urgently needed a psychiatrist’s help.

‘I was
to have inherited millions.’

‘Jeanne,
you are not the Jeanne in the movie.’

‘Oh,
no?’ said Jeanne. ‘Oh, no?’ This carried a threatening note. Claire thereupon
decided not to give her any money, as she had been thinking of doing.

‘You
signed a contract,’ Claire said rather harshly. ‘Presumably you had an agent
and you’ve been paid. Go and tell all this to your agent, Jeanne. We don’t want
you here.’

‘And,’
Jeanne went on, without moving, ‘I was deliberately photographed in half-profile
all the time, so I wouldn’t be recognised. The light always, always, blotted
me half out.’

‘Light,’
said Claire, ‘is a director’s problem if it’s in the open air. You have to
catch the same light from day to day to provide continuity. But anyway, you
were meant to be half blotted out. That was the film. You could consult a
lawyer if you aren’t satisfied. But it’s rather late. Why didn’t you protest at
the time?’

‘Because
I’m inexperienced. Because I didn’t realise what was going on. I was exploited.’

Claire,
not knowing if Tom had slept with the girl or not, maintained an air of kindly
coolness and of other miraculous and contradictory qualities such as she had
learnt to adopt in the course of her life with Tom: maternal extraneity,
professional amateurism, understanding and incomprehension, yes and no.

Escorting
Jeanne decisively to the door Claire said, ‘Have you a family?’

‘My
mother was with me in Venice. We saw Marigold.’

‘Really?
Where?’

‘In one
of those lanes. She was with a man.

‘Can
you describe him?’

‘Fairly
old. Like Tom. What sort of man can she expect? — Face like hers.’

‘You
should have reported this at the time,’ said Claire. ‘Interpol are looking for
Marigold.’

‘That’s
not my problem.’

‘You’re
right.’

By instinct Claire had
sworn off lovers until Marigold should be found. Like Tom, she felt that
Marigold was still alive somewhere. Cora rang her up. After the first possible ‘sighting’
which was at Montmartre, she and bright young Ivan had received only vague ‘signalisations’,
as Cora put it. In the meantime Ivan had set up an office in a small street
near the rue de Rivoli. He held that if you set up an office in Paris for a
project you were going about things the right way. An office, an
informative-type computer, a fax machine, two telephones (one unlisted, one
not). They were now in the way of receiving confidential information from any
source. Marigold’s face in many angles of photography had been planted with
taxi-drivers, barmen, students and teachers, at numerous universities,
especially those few where the students did not have to produce a school
leaving certificate to sign up for a course. Cora and Ivan meanwhile stayed in
a rented apartment on the Boulevard St. Germain. Cora wandered round the
boutiques and department stores. Ivan, to do him justice, went to his office
every day to check on the messages — many, but mostly futile — that arrived
from his array of informers. Claire paid, and was well-satisfied with Ivan’s
efforts. She was sure he had given professional thought to the problem. She
was sure he was very busy about it. But was Marigold still in Europe? She could
be anywhere, anywhere …

‘She is
in Europe,’ said Ivan decisively.

How did
he know?

He wasn’t
saying. He just knew.

‘I don’t
so much want to know where she is,’ Claire told Cora. ‘I only want to know if
she’s alive.’

‘Or
dead,’ said Cora.

Claire
hadn’t liked to actually give voice to the alternative.

She
suspected that Tom, too, had given up lovers. There seemed to be no women in
his present life, but Claire didn’t attach weight to that aspect of Tom’s
character. It was an extraordinary marriage, and Claire only reflected briefly
on what Marigold had once visited her to say: ‘Why don’t you and Pa separate?
Why don’t you get divorced like other couples in your state?’

Well,
thanks, Marigold. We are closer now than we ever were, Claire mused.

She had
gone to the film festival at Venice with Tom.

The
reporters asked Tom about Marigold: ‘Your daughter. Her disappearance. What
were your relations with Marigold? Not too good I gather.’

‘That
she’s my daughter is one fact,’ Tom replied to one of these enquiries. ‘My
relations with her are another. What I’m looking for is my daughter. You can
keep your nose out of my relations.’

And
Claire told them, ‘We’re doing everything in our power to trace the whereabouts
of Marigold. She is free to go where she likes. But her disappearance is
worrying.’

Tom’s
film,
Unfinished Business,
was a decided success.

‘But,’
Tom told Dave, ‘I didn’t feel the usual warmth, the camaraderie. You would
think the film people would come up to me and ask about Marigold, wouldn’t you?
Well, at least I must admit, Zeffirelli rang me up. “Tom,” he said, “I read
about Marigold. Don’t give up. Keep your courage. She must be somewhere. If
there’s anything I can do …” You see,’ said Tom, ‘that’s what I call a
friend. Franco Zeffirelli is human and he feels for people. But the British,
the Americans — they’re so suspicious. Do they really think I’ve murdered
Marigold, had her done away with? Is that what they do to their own daughters?’

‘It’s
put in their minds by the newspapers. The diarists drop hints, as you can see.’

‘But
why?’

‘It
seems to me,’ Dave said, ‘that the tone is set by Marigold herself.’

‘She’s
in touch with journalists, you mean?’

‘That I
don’t know. But she could set the tone in a number of ways, Tom. Word of mouth
is the strongest method I know, always has been.’

‘Then
you think my daughter’s still alive.’

‘Alive,’
said Dave, ‘and kicking.’

‘Why
should she want to foul-mouth me?’ Tom said. ‘She doesn’t like you.’ Dave
stated this so much as a matter of fact that Tom wondered if he had some
certain source of knowledge.

‘Dave,’
he said, ‘if you suspect anything. If you could tell me where she is, or even
give an indication…’

But Dave
shook his head.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Let us go then, you and
I,
…

‘You
should write your memoirs.’

‘I
know,’ Tom said. ‘But you wouldn’t believe how many chances of recording my
memories I missed. So many conversations. All forgotten, and so many have died.
John Braine knew a good deal about films, he had a whole lot to say, especially
about films adapted from books. But I can’t remember a single word of it, not
one point that he raised. All I recall of John Braine is that he advised me to
drink Earl Grey tea. Filthy stuff, to my taste. Then there was Mary McCarthy.
She spoke voluminously but I don’t remember a thing, didn’t take a note. What I
remember was how formal and conventional she was. At a cocktail party she
always wore a correct dress, sometimes black, sometimes red, very smart, with a
diamond brooch and white kid gloves. Always the white kid gloves which she held
with her handbag. But who cares about details like those?’

‘I
care,’ said Dave.

‘Do you
really! Do you honestly? — Why?’

‘It
tells you something about the person, details like Earl Grey tea and white kid
gloves.’

‘You’re
right,’ Tom said. ‘You’re absolutely right. But I wouldn’t have expected you to
feel that way. In fact I think they wanted to create a memory of themselves —
Earl Grey tea and white kid gloves.’

Two
days after this, while Dave was alone in his taxi after dropping a fare at
Holborn, a car drew up beside him at a traffic light. Dave glanced as he
waited, at his neighbour, a young man with a nobody-special look and sun-glasses
accompanied by a long-haired mousey girl, in a B.M.W. As he glanced back at the
traffic light, now changing, he was aware of an arm coming out of the window of
the B.M.W. and after that he was aware of little else — some hooting behind him
urging his taxi to move — until he came to full consciousness in hospital.
Dave had lost a small fragment of his skull, his chin was cut with glass from
the broken window, he suffered from shock and concussion, but otherwise was
sound. He was told his life had been saved by a fraction of an inch.

He
could only vaguely describe the hit-man and the girl companion to the police.
The car, he knew, was black and shiny, a three-year-old model.

Had he
any enemies, debts? No, he hadn’t. They searched his house from top to bottom,
much to his wife’s indignation: ‘We’re the victim and they treat us like the
criminal.’ The police found no drugs, no evidence of handling drugs, — they
found nothing.

After
Dave was discharged with his head still in bandages an inspector of police in
plain clothes came to see him. The man took off his glasses, breathed on them
one lens after the other, cleaned them with his handkerchief and put them on
again.

‘You
are quite a friend of Tom Richards, aren’t you?’ said the policeman.