Suspicious Circumstances (19 page)

‘Oh, Ronnie dear, I feel dreadful. I started the whole thing. It’s all been my fault. Of course I ought to do it, but I’m afraid it’s too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘A phone call — only five minutes ago. I took it when I was talking to Cleonie. They want us for three weeks at the Summer Casino in Cannes starting right after we finish here. I accepted.’

Wonderful Mother, she’d got out of it gracefully. I might have known.

‘But, Anny, dear.’ Ronnie put his hands on her arms. ‘That’s only another three weeks. I can hold everything for three more weeks. Anny, please ...’

While I quivered, Mother just stood there. Then, without any warning, she threw herself against his chest with a little sob.

‘Oh, Ronnie, it’s no use.’

‘But, Anny, darling ...’

‘Go. Please, Ronnie dear, go. I can’t do your movie. I can’t do any movie with you ever. I mustn’t see you. I ...’

Her arms went up to his neck then and she was kissing him with abandonment on the mouth.

‘Ronnie, don’t you understand? I love you. I want to be your wife. But it’s hopeless. I can never, never be. And to have to work with you — to see you every day... Ronnie, dearest, go … please … go this minute.’

She was dragging him to the door, clinging piteously to him, but dragging all the same. I just stood in the living-room. In a few moments she was back. She dropped down into a chair.

‘Thank God you turned him down,’ I said. ‘The moment they announced you as Ninon, Inspector Robinson would be plunging on the war-path again. You were absolutely right.’

‘Right!’ Mother put a hand up to cover her eyes. ‘Right, right, right! Who cares about right? I love him. Don’t you realize that? Dreadful, cynical child, I love him.’

It was sincere, wasn’t it? Surely, it ...
Nickie, for pity’s sake, don’t start all that again!

As shame swept through me, I said, ‘Poor Mother. And you can’t ever marry him because of your bigamous husband? Is that it?’

She just sat with the hand over her eyes.

‘But, Mother, isn’t there some way to get a divorce? You can fix everything. Can’t you try to fix….?’

Suddenly the hand dropped from the eyes and I got the full gimlet stare.

‘Really, darling, all this dawdling. Do you know what time it is? The whole act has to be run through — the whole act. We can’t afford to get sloppy. Get Pam, get Gino, get Uncle Hans ...’

I started for the door, then she said, ‘Nickie.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ I turned.

She was looking lovely and musing again. ‘It will be rather fun at Cannes, won’t it?’

‘So the engagement at the Casino is on the level?’

‘Of course it is. Really, what a terrible, suspicious child. The Summer Casino. The height of the season. Elsa, Cole, Ali, David, Wally — all my old, old friends. And, do you know, dear, they guaranteed on the phone that Grace would be there for the opening.’

‘Grace?’ I said. ‘Who’s Grace?’

‘Her Serene Highness,’ said Mother, looking very European, ‘the Princess of Monaco.’

There were moments, I suppose, during the rest of the Vegas engagement, when an occasional butterfly fluttered, but it didn’t happen very often. That, of course, was due to Delight, because Delight was always there and Delight was the most wonderful girl in the world and if every now and then I thought about that ominous passage:
Ask Roger Renard. He was actually, there when she did it
, well, there was always Delight. Day flowed after day, and Mother was back deciding Delight was ‘divine’ again. I even started thinking about how many dozens of brilliant people had married when they were only nineteen and one evening I almost said to Mother, ‘How would you like to be a grandmother like Dietrich?', but I didn’t quite dare.

There was plenty of time, anyway, I thought, and, as I thought it, suddenly there wasn’t any more Las Vegas time at all. The Tamberlaine wound up in a blaze of glory. Steve’s private plane flew us back to L.A. and a T.W.A. public plane flew us to New York and on across the Atlantic to Nice, and one world was entirely gone, supplanted by the brand-new frivolous life of Cannes in a huge suite at the Hotel Suarez.

Her Serene Highness did show up for the opening and the opening, of course, was a Historic Event with every kind of French dignitary reciting long French poems saying how Mother was
‘inoubliable, ravissante, la reine des sirenes’
, etc. Mother was delighted about the poems and about Her Serene Highness. She was even more delighted by the presence of her old, dear friends and every day, before being a Professional Triumph By Night, she was whirled off by All and Elsa and Cole and David and Wally to become a Social Triumph By Day.

Sometimes I had to go and be a Social Triumph too but mostly I was let off and then Delight and I would put on our bikiniest bikinis and lounge all day on the
plage
, getting tanned by the Mediterranean sun or at least getting tanned in those places which weren’t clamped against each other in the old French public smooch, because I introduced the smooch to Delight and it was something she got very fond of. Ronnie was bombarding Mother with daily cables and every now and then I had a twinge of panic that maybe she would give in and play Ninon after all, but that was settled in our last Cannes week because a cable came from the Palladium in London, wanting us for an indefinite stay, and in the same mail was an enormously imposing thing like a scroll, telling Mother that she had been chosen to be presented to the Queen of England at a Command Performance of some English movie. The Royal Summons was scheduled for about a week before the Palladium Opening and, by the wildest luck, coincided with Mother’s birthday. The combination was much too much for Mother. Instantly she cabled her acceptance to the Palladium and almost curtseyed when she replied to the Queen’s scroll.

Delight and I were with her when this happened and, in a flash of inspiration, I realized this was the moment of all moments for announcing the Grandmother bit.

‘Mother,’ I said, ‘Delight and I want to get married.’

I’d had tiny qualms because I always had qualms with Mother, but I saw right away that there was no need for them. The ‘Queen And I’ smile merely changed into a ‘Bless You Dear Children’ smile. We were both clutched and warmly kissed.

‘Darlings, I’m sure it’s a divine idea. Absolutely divine. A little young, of course. Oh, Delight dear, I’ve just been thinking. About the English. You know how they are, poor dears, rather dowdy but so appreciative of glamour. I feel perhaps I should have two dresses for London, a change in the middle. An English dress, perhaps. Dear John Cavanagh, so talented. So Delight dear, since you’ve worked so hard, been so loyal to the act — how about a little solo spot while I’m changing? A dance and a song? A French song maybe? That’s always so cute in London — a lovely zippy American girl singing a sweet little French song. Darling, do you think you could work up…?’

‘Oh, Anny!’ Delight was frenzied with joy.

‘It’ll mean work, dear. Lots of work. A Trenet song, I think. The English love that bouncy rhythm. And dear Charles happens to be here. Of course, we’ve only four more days. But I know dear Charles would adore to rehearse with you and there’ll be over a week in London before we open. So, if you work, work, work ...’

So there it was. I don’t quite know how it happened, but the marriage got rather sidetracked in the hysteria about Delight’s career and from then on she went off every morning to work, work, work with Trenet. Mother was plunging around in Social Triumphs. Gino had found a half-brother and was off all the time being Italian. Poor Uncle Hans, although he was courageously ‘old-pro-ish’ and doing the show every night, had something wrong with his stomach and spent all the daytime in bed. I didn’t feel like being around with Pam. So I was on my own.

I went on going to the
plage
, of course, because that’s really all there is to do in Cannes unless you want to go around chic
bistros
being chic. And, oddly enough, not on the first day or on the second, but on the third day of being without Delight, I started realizing how attractive the French girls were. I was, in fact, rather appalled by the things which thinking how attractive they were did to me. I didn’t actually pick one up, of course. I had enough moral fiber for that. But then, on the fourth and last morning, while I was strolling, minding my own business, through the beach umbrellas and the deck-chairs filled with older ladies whose swimming-suits were covered with jewels, I saw a girl lying by herself on the sand.

I just looked at her. I mean, I just happened to glance in her direction. Then — it was the most extraordinary sensation — she turned her head in my direction and it was Monique.

For one moment of great embarrassment, I thought, Oh, my God, and I haven’t written to her for weeks. What on earth am I going to say? Then she was smiling a dazzling smile at me and I remembered that French girls weren’t like American girls. They took things in their stride.

‘Nickie … Nickie, chéri…’

In a
trice
, as Sylvia would have put it, I’d flung myself down on the sand beside her and, before my mind stopped whirling, we were gab-gab-gabbing at each other. Then it was as if we’d never been separated. Somehow my arms were around her, we were both murmuring little sweet nothings, and then we were slipping into the heaviest smooch in French history.

The Mediterranean sun was blazing down. At least I guess it was. The Mediterranean sky was blue above. At least I guess it was.

‘Chéri.’

‘Chérie.’

‘Nickie.’

‘Monique.’

That’s when I felt a sharp rap on my naked shoulder. I sprang up guiltily, but my guiltiness wasn’t half guilty enough because the person standing there, glaring down at us from eyes of undiluted fury, was Delight.

All sorts of things had happened to my hair. I started trying to push it back into place.

‘Hi, Delight. Hi ...’

‘Anny sent me.’ Delight’s voice was the iciest voice since that maiden who was turned into snow in Hans Andersen. ‘She happens to want you at the hotel. But, judging from what I see…’

‘Delight,’ I said again.

But the fury in her face had got mixed up with tears and trembling lips and all the most hideously humiliating expressions and, before I could say anything, she had spun around and was running blindly off through the umbrellas and the canasta players and the women with jewels on their swimming-suits.

I turned, appalled, back to Monique. She was just lying there, her hair a wonderful sun-bleached taffy color, her nearly naked body as cute, as sexy, as inspirational as ... How could I have forgotten all that? And, on top of it all, instead of doing a Delight, she was grinning. It was a broad, warm, vastly amused grin.

‘Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, no? So that is Delight — the so famous Delight. American girls — are they not strange? What then do they think men to be — good little boys always to be kept tied to the string of the apron?’

‘But, Monique, how — how do you know about Delight?’

She lifted one pink-brown arm for my hand. She drew me down again, down dangerously close to her where, inevitably, all the sensations started happening again. She started stroking my hair.

‘My poor Nickie, do you let her then bully you — now when you are still free?’

‘But, Monique.’ The feeling of her fingers on my hair was like Samson and Delilah. ‘But, Monique, how do you know her name’s Delight?’

Monique’s hand caressed down my cheek to my chin and brought my mouth against hers. Then, very gently, she pushed it away.

‘Ah, mon pauvre petit chou, you think I am here by the coincidence? How naive then you are. Do you not know you have the cleverest, the most wonderful mother in the world? She is not an American Mom. No, not the great Anny Rood. Did it not occur to you that your wonderful Mother might call to Paris? “Monique dear, you do not know me but I am Nickie’s mother. Poor Nickie, it is lamentable. There is some terrible scheming girl who wishes to make him her husband so that she can become the daughter-in-law of the so rich, so celebrated Anny Rood. Monique, chérie, today I send you by the cable money for a plane ticket to Cannes.” “Enchantée, Madame,” I say, “but unhappily there must be a delay, not today not tomorrow, but certainly the next day ...” ’

That was all I needed. Monique was a dream. Of course she was. Every base element in me admitted it, longed to stay there with her thigh against mine and her finger gently caressing my neck. But that was only my base elements. All my noble elements came out as rage against Mother.

The scheming, double-faced monster. Cooing about the marriage (‘Absolutely divine'), purring at Delight, giving her a special spot in the show so she’d have to work, work, work with Trenet and then calling Monique as a terrible temptress, cynically taking it for granted that the moment I saw her again I’d betray everything that was precious and fine. Delight! Poor, slandered, tricked, suffering Delight. I’d make up to her for this if it took me the rest of my life.

I started to get up. Monique’s lips slipped shiveringly on to mine. I wrenched myself free and jumped to my feet.

‘Nickie,’ she cried. ‘My poor Nickie, what are you doing? What is this foolishness? What…?’

I heard the voice trailing after me, cute, sexy, inspirational, the voice of the Siren, but I didn’t stop. I went on running until I got to the hotel. I rushed into Delight’s room without knocking.

It was disaster at first, sobs, tears, recriminations, but in the end it was all right.

‘Delight, dearest Delight, I can’t imagine how it happened, but it’ll never happen again. I swear it.’

‘Oh, Nickie, I’m sorry, too. I — I got so hickish, so San Bernadino.’

‘It’s all Mother. Plotting, scheming. To hell with Mother. We’ll get married anyway. When we get to London. You must be able to get married in London.’

‘But, Nickie dear, you’re under age.’

‘Then I’ll fake my age. I’ll ...’

‘No, no, Nickie, don’t be silly. You’d never be happy breaking with your mother. You know that. Nor would I really. I’d feel such a heel. We’ve got to convince her. That’s all. Somehow or other we’ve got to convince her she’s wrong about me being a grabby little girl from the gutter.’