The Affair (5 page)

It was hotter than outside, like working in an oven. A huge sign in both English and Italian read ‘No Smoking’ and there was a picture of a cigarette with an emphatic slash through it. Underneath it there was a bucket of sand and a sign saying ‘Use in case of fire’ but she noticed that it was being used as an ashtray and had dozens of cigarette butts in it.

‘Are they filming?’ she asked someone, and straight away fingers came up to lips and there was a chorus of shushing. Someone called ‘
Silenzio!
’

‘Upstairs,’ her nearest neighbour whispered, pointing to a staircase, so Diana crept off the set and up the stairs, not sure where she was heading. A handwritten sign on the landing at the top said ‘Makeup, Dressing room 23’. There was a long corridor of closed doors, each carefully numbered. The only one open was number 23 and a bright light emanated from within. She glanced inside to see a pretty blonde girl doing her own makeup at a dressing-table mirror surrounded by dazzling lightbulbs. Some Italian women were sitting around chatting.

‘Hello. Are you an actress?’ Diana asked the blonde girl.

She gave a broad smile and answered in an English accent with a hint of Birmingham in it. ‘No, I do the makeup along with these ladies. I’m just fixing myself up while we wait.’

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Elizabeth Taylor’s not here yet so they can’t start filming. She’s always late.’

‘So they’re not actually filming downstairs?’ Diana was relieved. ‘I thought I’d spoiled a shot because I asked a question and everyone told me to shut up.’

‘They might have been doing fill-in shots. They’re shooting live sound on this picture so they need dead quiet when the cameras are rolling. You’re supposed to check whether the red light is on above the door before you go in. Don’t worry, though – you’d know all about it if you’d spoiled a take!’

‘Where is your accent from?’ Diana asked, trying to place it.

‘Leamington Spa. Near Warwick.’

‘You’re kidding! I was born in Leamington Spa and lived there till I was twelve!’ Diana grinned, delighted to meet someone from home. It made her realise how lonely she’d been feeling.

The girl’s name was Helen, she told Diana. They chatted about which part of town they came from and the schools they had attended. Diana asked how she came to be working on the film, and Helen said she had just graduated from a makeup course when she got the job at Pinewood and her school principal had negotiated a clause in her contract that meant they had to take her with them when the production moved to Rome. Most of the other makeup artists were Italian.

‘It’s a great place to work. I’ve met all the stars,’ she said excitedly. ‘Yesterday I was called down to assist Elizabeth Taylor’s makeup artist, and Elizabeth actually asked my name. Wasn’t that nice of her?’

‘What was she like?’

‘Oh my God, those eyes! I never believed it in the magazines when they said she has purple eyes but she really does: a kind of deep violet shade. It’s almost like you can’t breathe when you look directly at her. I asked her to sign my autograph book. Look!’

She showed Diana a book bound in pink fabric and opened it to a page with the signature ‘Elizabeth T’ followed by an ‘X’.

‘Lucky you,’ Diana said. ‘Who else’s have you got?’

‘Just crew really. I don’t like to ask actors as it doesn’t look professional. After all I’m here to do a job! Anyway, Rex Harrison is too scary to ask!’

Helen talked rapidly, full of awe at the surroundings she found herself in. She was probably in her early twenties, only a couple of years younger than Diana, but she had a childlike quality that was beguiling, and she was the first truly friendly person Diana had met there.

‘There’s no one about,’ Helen pointed out. ‘Shall we go and have a Coke? The bar’s not far.’

Diana agreed. She knew she should be trying to find someone who could tell her what her job entailed, but perhaps it would be useful to hear a bit more about the personalities on the set. Helen told the Italian women she’d be back in half an hour and they nodded and carried on talking amongst themselves.

The bar had some tables on a broad outdoor terrace and Helen sat down at one of them, Diana beside her. They attracted appreciative glances from some Italian workmen on a coffee break.
They’re interested in Helen
,
Diana thought.
Not me.

‘I don’t like coming here on my own,’ Helen lowered her voice. ‘It makes me self-conscious when they stare like that.’

They ordered two Cokes, and Diana explained how she came to be working on the film.

‘Gosh, you’re an intellectual. That’s so groovy! Don’t worry about not knowing what you’re supposed to be doing. I don’t think anyone does. We’re all just muddling through, but we’re getting paid to live in an amazing city and work with lots of famous people. It can’t be bad, can it? Hey, a crowd of us are going out for a pizza tonight. Do you want to come?’

Diana agreed straight away. She would rather do that than go for dinner with Ernesto, which had all the potential to be compromising.

‘Amazing! Give me the address of your
pensione
and I’ll pick you up in a taxi about eight o’clock.’ Suddenly she nudged Diana and nodded towards a man walking down the avenue holding a small dog.

‘Who’s that?’ Diana whispered.

‘Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor’s husband. The one she stole from Debbie Reynolds. He’s handsome, isn’t he?’

He was indeed, Diana thought, except for rather pitted skin where he must have suffered from acne in his teens. He was quite short as well. All the men seemed short. ‘Is he working on the film?’ she asked.

‘He’s got some job title or other but basically he runs around fetching drinks for Elizabeth and clearing up after the dogs.’ Helen rolled her eyes.

Diana watched as he turned the corner and wondered what it must feel like to be married to the woman everyone said was the most beautiful in the world. You’d need to be quite a confident person. She’d heard Eddie Fisher was a singer but wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard any of his songs.

Helen began to sing: ‘Cindy, oh Cindy …’ She had a sweet voice. ‘You must remember that one? It was quite a hit a couple of years ago.’

Diana shook her head. She wasn’t up to date with popular music: Trevor liked classical so that tended to be what they listened to. She felt so out of touch. She was only twenty-five but she might as well be forty because her life had become so middle-aged.

After they finished their drinks, they walked back to sound stage 5 and Helen scurried upstairs to the makeup room, while Diana walked back into the hangar-like set. The door was open and the red light was off. Round a corner she could see a huge cauldron made out of papier-mâché and surrounded by goblets and bronze statuettes of jackal-headed Anubis figures. She smiled, recognising the image they had used for reference, one that was now largely believed by historians to be a third-century fake. She took out her pad and began to scribble notes.

A young assistant was measuring the distance between the altar and the lens of the camera, which she saw was mounted on tracks. Some young women appeared in ancient Egyptian costume and she guessed they must be handmaidens. The costumes weren’t too bad, actually – someone had done their homework – but the hair and makeup were totally Hollywood.

There was a call of ‘Quiet on the set’ and people began to move towards the exit.

‘Are you supposed to be here?’ an American woman with a clipboard asked Diana.

‘I’m a researcher. I don’t know,’ Diana said.

‘Technical crew and actors only,’ she ordered, pointing to the door, so Diana obeyed.

She wandered around for a while then decided to go for an early lunch and made her way to the commissary, following the little map Hilary had given her. It was already busy in there but she slipped into an unoccupied table in a corner. The waiter brought her a menu.

There was pasta to start –
fettuccine al ragù
or
agnolotti in brodo
– and the main courses were chicken
cacciatore
(the day’s special) or
blanquette de veau
with peas, buttered baby carrots and creamed potatoes. The sweet was simple – a choice of ice cream or fresh fruit salad. It looked lovely, but much more than she normally ate at lunchtime.

‘Do you have any sandwiches?’ she asked the waiter when he came to take her order.

He took the menu from her without smiling. ‘The bar serves sandwiches. We are a restaurant.’

She thanked him, got up and made her way out into the sunshine again. The bar where she had shared a Coke with Candy earlier was now packed with a lively, chattering crowd. Diana chose a couple of egg and tomato sandwiches, which she took to a shelf at one side.

A crowd of men came in, all of them handsome and bronzed like the ones in Lucky Strike adverts. They found chairs and dragged them together round a table and Diana noticed how muscular they were, like athletes. One of them took a chair from right beside her but didn’t even glance her way, and no one spoke to her.

As soon as she had finished eating, she left the bar, planning to have a long walk round the studio and get her bearings. She peered into carpentry workshops, plasterers’ studios full of statues, prop stores and vast warehouses with rail upon rail of costumes. Towards the rear of Cinecittà she could see rolling fields and she headed in that direction, thinking she could work her way back.

Suddenly, she noticed two men standing very close together in the shadows behind an abandoned set. They hadn’t seen Diana and she gasped as she realised they were kissing. Shocked and embarrassed, she ducked out of sight and tiptoed away, only stopping for breath when she was sure they couldn’t see her. Of course, she had assumed there would be homosexual men involved in the making of a film because she’d heard they tended to be creative types, but she hadn’t expected them to be so open about it. It was illegal for them to have sexual relations in England and she assumed the law would be the same in a fiercely Catholic country like Italy. She was in a different world now and would have to get used to a lot of things she hadn’t seen before. This was what she had wanted after all – a new experience.

The outdoor sets were constructed on the studio’s back lot, and as soon as she got close she saw the replica of the Forum, which was if anything bigger than the one she had criticised in Pinewood. Walter hadn’t listened to her at all. She took out her notebook and made copious notes on all the parts of buildings and frontages she could see, stepping over piles of building materials. She’d noticed a typewriter back in the production office and, when she finished, she decided to go and type up her notes.

She walked back around the other side of the lot. As she approached the offices, a small dog suddenly darted out of a building and across the lawn. A door opened just ten yards away and a figure in a bathrobe and a hairnet peered out. It was unmistakably Elizabeth Taylor.

‘Here, baby,’ she called in a husky but surprisingly high, childlike voice.

Diana was mesmerised. Miss Taylor was the most famous woman in the world at that time, after her near-death experience earlier in the year. She was more famous than Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford and Ava Gardner all put together – and there she was in a bathrobe and hairnet.

She glanced at Diana briefly, then retreated back into the building. Consulting her map, Diana saw that it was labelled ‘Star’s dressing-room suite’.

Seconds later the door opened again, and Eddie Fisher hurried out holding a dog’s lead and whistling for the dog. Diana pointed to show him the direction it had disappeared in, and he grinned and called ‘Thanks, honey!’

At school Diana had been an outsider, the bookish one with only a few equally serious friends, but now, for the first time in her life, she felt as if she was part of a charmed inner circle.

At ten past eight that evening, a taxi beeped its horn in the street outside Diana’s pensione and she rushed down the stairs. Helen was waving out of the back window. There was an Italian man sitting in the front and at first Diana assumed he was a friend of the driver’s, but he turned round and spoke to Helen in English, telling her that he was going to Trastevere and they could drop him off at the next corner.

‘Who’s that?’ Diana asked, after he’d got out and said goodnight.

‘Just Luigi,’ Helen said, without any further explanation. Diana assumed he worked on the film.

‘We’re going to Via Veneto, where all the stars hang out. Have you heard of it?’ Helen asked. ‘You must have seen it in
La Dolce Vita
?’

Diana had to admit she hadn’t seen the film, which had come out the previous year, but she knew that the star, Anita Ekberg, famously danced in the Trevi Fountain. All the papers had shown her picture, buxom and blonde, with her strapless dress looking imminently likely to fall off.

‘Here we are,’ Helen announced, as the taxi pulled in to the kerb near the foot of an avenue curving up a hill. It was lined with bars and restaurants with outdoor tables, all of them thronged with customers.

Diana noticed a group of young men standing beside motor scooters, holding cameras and chatting amongst themselves. Suddenly someone shouted from further up the hill, and they all set off, running on foot like a pack of dogs.