The Affair (29 page)

On her way back to the production office, Diana saw a car pull up and Elizabeth Taylor stepped out just beside Joe’s office. She was wearing huge dark glasses and a leopardskin-patterned coat and looked very small and fragile.

When she spotted Diana, she waved and called ‘Hi there!’ but didn’t come over to chat.

‘Hello,’ Diana called back, before Elizabeth turned and walked into Joe’s office. She had said Diana should stop in after Easter but obviously this wasn’t a good time.

‘Richard’s wife and children are here,’ Hilary told her. ‘He’s spending time with them at their villa. Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s parents have flown from LA to stay with her. I think everyone is trying to make the pair of them see sense and put an end to this crazy affair. There are too many people getting hurt.’ She looked sternly at Diana, and Diana blushed, wondering if this was also a comment on her own affair.

How was the outwardly stoic Sybil coping? Had she decided to put her foot down and make Richard behave responsibly? How was their handicapped daughter? And what about Elizabeth’s children and the newly adopted baby Maria? At least in Diana’s own situation there were only three people being hurt: Trevor, Ernesto and herself. The Burton–Taylor romance was much more complex.

Diana wondered if Elizabeth felt guilty about the harm she had caused. To everyone on set, she seemed to be the one doing the chasing. She was forever running to Richard’s dressing room and hovering on the sidelines while his scenes were shot. She had decided she wanted him and wouldn’t take no for an answer – at least, that was the perception in Cinecittà.

When Diana went to the bar to pick up a sandwich and a coffee, she eavesdropped on an animated conversation between a group of American camera crew and realised they were running a sweepstake. Would Richard leave Sybil for Elizabeth? The odds they were taking were three to one against.

Scott had been keeping the packet of cocaine he’d bought from Luigi on the dressing table in the room where he lodged, hoping to try it next time he got lucky and had a girl back to stay. However, he was startled one day when he returned home to find that the
padrona
had come in and tidied up and his paperfold was stacked neatly in a pile with some matchbooks. Had she been at all streetwise she would have recognised what it was and called the
carabinieri
. Perhaps he should throw it away rather than risk a criminal conviction in a foreign country? But it seemed like evidence of a sort, so he decided to take it to his office and hide it somewhere. That way, if anyone found it, he could blame it on his predecessor.

When his secretary went out for lunch, he searched the office for a secure hiding place. First he checked for loose floorboards that he could slide the packet underneath. That was what they did in the movies, wasn’t it? He couldn’t find any, though. He checked behind the filing cabinets for an odd surface that might form a little shelf but there was nothing. The walls were covered in wood panelling and he ran his fingers along it. He noticed that there was an odd piece of panelling by the window shutters that protruded a few inches, as if some part of the shutter mechanism folded into it. He closed then opened them but could see no reason for the panelling to be deeper there. He slipped his fingers underneath and pulled outwards, but it wouldn’t move. Then he tried pulling sideways, towards the window, and still it didn’t move. It was only when he pushed upwards that the panel slid, stiffly, and behind it he saw a cubbyhole about a foot tall and six inches wide. Inside there were several sheaves of paper, stacked neatly and separated by paper clips.

Scott pulled out the papers and glanced at the scrawled writing that covered them. Straight away he recognised Gregg’s shorthand, the system he had learned, which wasn’t used in Europe. That implied the writer of these papers was American. He sat on the edge of his desk and slowly read the top page, making out the name of a prominent government minister. The author said that on the 12th of January 1960 he had accepted a bribe of four million
lire
to draft a bill concerning some technicality to do with ships that collect cargo from Italian ports without coming into port themselves. Scott scanned the page but couldn’t make out who was alleged to have made the bribe in question. Behind it there was a customs document covered in tiny print. He flicked through more pages and on top of one sheaf of papers he made out the name Ghianciamina. It was something to do with a meeting with a government official.

Suddenly he became concerned that his secretary could return at any time. He thrust the sheaf of paper with the name Ghianciamina into his inside jacket pocket and stacked the rest back in the cubbyhole, along with the cocaine, before sliding the wood panel into place. It moved smoothly and Scott wondered who was responsible for the clever piece of carpentry. There was only one explanation he could think of: the dates on the papers were around 1960, so they must have been left by the previous Rome correspondent, Bradley Wyndham.

All afternoon, Scott sat at his desk, listening to the
click-click-ping
of his secretary’s typing across the room, and worrying about the documents in his pocket. He didn’t dare take them out to read them but imagined they must be incriminating; otherwise, why the special hiding place? What if he fell off his Vespa or got mugged and they were found in his pocket? He could be in serious trouble.

Suddenly it seemed imperative that he track down Bradley Wyndham and ask about his research. As soon as it was morning in the Midwest, he called his editor and asked if he could have a forwarding address for Bradley, saying he had found something of his in the office and would like to return it.

‘He never gave a forwarding address,’ the editor told him. ‘I was furious. He called on a Friday to say he was leaving, asked me to pay his last month’s salary into a Swiss bank account, and when I rang on the Monday he’d gone. We’ve never heard from him since. It was pretty unprofessional and if he’d asked for a reference I’d have given him his head on a platter.’

Scott’s stomach clenched. It sounded as though Bradley had upset someone in Rome and been forced to leave in a hurry. What other explanation could there be?

He looked at his secretary, a grey-haired spinster in her fifties who had also worked for Bradley. Might she know anything, he wondered.

She shook her head. ‘He didn’t even say goodbye. I came in to work on the Monday as usual and he didn’t appear. I never saw him again.’

Scott tapped his finger on the desk. ‘Can you think of any way I could get in touch with him?’

She thought for a moment, then flicked through a Rolodex card file on her desk until she came to ‘W’. ‘I’m sure I used to have his brother’s address. Bradley asked me to ship some Christmas presents to him and he wrote the address on a piece of paper so I filed it afterwards. Here it is. He’s in Ohio.’

Scott walked over to have a look. ‘You’ve got the phone number as well,’ he said, pleased.

‘Yes, they needed it for customs.’

‘I think I’ll give him a call later.’

He waited until his secretary had left for the evening, then he rang the operator and asked to be connected. When a man answered, Scott said, ‘I’m calling from Rome, trying to get in touch with Bradley Wyndham. I took over his job here.’

‘I don’t know anyone called Bradley Wyndham,’ the voice said. ‘You must have the wrong number.’ The line went dead abruptly.

Scott thought about this for a moment. Why the abrupt hang-up? If the person on the end of the line genuinely didn’t know anything, wouldn’t they have asked more questions to make sure it wasn’t a case of a misheard name? He rang back and as soon as the call connected, he said quickly: ‘Tell Bradley I’ve found his papers and I want to meet.’

The line went dead.

On the 8th of May, the procession scene was being filmed at Cinecittà. Seven thousand extras had to pretend they were watching dancing girls and snake-charmers coming through the Temple of Venus, for a scene that would precede the arrival of Cleopatra and her son on a sphinx. When Diana arrived at the studio, she could hear a sound like the buzzing of a gigantic beehive as the extras flocked into the back lot through a separate entrance and made their way to massive warehouses to be kitted out with costumes, hair and makeup. Some interlopers clustered in a timid group outside Elizabeth Taylor’s dressing-room suite, unaware that she wouldn’t be in that day. Her black eye still hadn’t faded.

Ernesto was sitting on Diana’s desk chatting to her when Hilary came into the production office, looking harassed.

‘The gate man hasn’t been doing a proper check on passes so loads of unauthorised people are getting in and it’s driving me crazy. The place is full of strangers gawping and getting in the way!’ She flopped down at her desk and pulled out a cigarette. Ernesto leapt across to light it for her.

‘Can we help?’ Diana asked.

‘Actually …’ Hilary inhaled hard and screwed her eyes against the smoke. ‘I don’t suppose you two could get into costume and mingle in the crowd, to watch out for anachronisms, like newspapers or wrist watches?’

Diana looked at Ernesto and he shrugged. ‘Why not? When the film comes out, maybe we will spot ourselves on the big screen.’

‘We haven’t been fitted for costumes, though,’ Diana said.

‘They’re bound to have some spares your size.’ Hilary glanced at them both. ‘Better hurry though. We start shooting at one.’

Diana giggled as they ran to the costume department. How funny that she was actually going to appear in the film she’d been working on for the last seven months and Ernesto had been involved in for over a year. Of course, she knew it was unlikely she would ever be able to pick herself out of the crowd in the finished picture, but she was tickled to think of the possibility.

There were loads of unclaimed costumes so she picked an authentic-looking tunic and an imitation pearl necklace, pulled them on, then went to the makeup area to join a queue. There was a strong scent of singed hair as tongs were used to create curls, which were considered more ‘Roman’ than straight hair. When it was Diana’s turn, one of the girls wiped her face with an orange cream, giving her a hasty tan. ‘The hair’s fine. You’ll do,’ she said, glancing in consternation at the queue stretching behind her.

She had arranged to meet Ernesto in the bar by the sound stages, and he was already standing there in a centurion’s short tunic and helmet. Strangely, it suited him. He had classic Roman bone structure with a sharp nose, and well-muscled legs, just as a centurion would have done.

He laughed when he saw her: ‘Your arms don’t match your face. It’s as if you’ve been bleached from the neck down.’

‘I’d better keep my arms out of shot in that case. Let’s go and see what we can do.’

Ernesto offered her a gulp of his beer but when she refused, he drained it and followed her to the back lot. Diana had heard stories of bottom pinching and men pressing themselves against scantily clad girls in the crowd at the rehearsals, but there was none of that in evidence. People stood with serious expressions, watching Joe Mankiewicz where he crouched on a platform in deep discussion with one of the cameramen.

Diana and Ernesto set to work, making their way through the crowd asking people to remove watches and jewellery. One girl was sporting a modern beehive hairstyle and Diana sent her back to get a wig. One o’clock came and went and no instructions were issued. The heat was sweltering and Diana could feel the heavy makeup starting to melt on her face. She wondered how Elizabeth could bear to wear her makeup and wigs for hours on end. What with the elaborate costumes and the stifling atmosphere of the sound stages, she must be very uncomfortable.

At last Joe spoke through a loudspeaker, announcing that filming was about to start. He wanted the extras to look amazed by the sights they were witnessing and remember that these were things they would never have seen before. Cues would be given on signs. That was the only acting required of them. Diana heard the familiar commands of ‘Quiet on set, going for a take, roll sound, roll camera … And action!’