“He’s edgy because he’s so anxious,” Guy explained. “This
is the biggest budget picture that Zimmer’s ever made. He merely wants your legs to have that smooth, shiny, twenties look. Let’s get you into the silk tights.”
Carefully, they eased three pairs of silk tights over Lili’s legs. Lili replaced her spangled chastity belt, the designer fixed the huge blue peacock tail behind her, and they looked in the mirror. Lili wailed. “My legs look like sausages!”
Guy nodded sorrowfully. “Mistinguett must have had legs like sticks, to get away with three pairs.”
Lili started down the staircase again.
“CUT!” yelled Zimmer. “Your legs look like
saucissons”
“You wanted Mistinguett’ sauthenticcostume,” Lili shouted back. The technicians let out a mass sigh of ennui as another break was called. Lili released her cumbersome feather tail and ran down to the footlights, her breasts bouncing under their crust of glass jewels. “Where are you, Guy?” She searched the darkness for the designer. “Quick, I’ve had an idea.” The footlights flung dramatic black shadows over Lili’s face and silken legs as she leaned over and peered into the dim stalls.
“Doesn’t she look like an early Toulouse Lautrec?” murmured Zimmer, who collected French music hall paintings, to his visitor.
“Yeah,” said Angelface Harris, “that dwarf painter.”
Angelface had dropped his well-brought-up English accent. He no longer spoke correctly and enunciated clearly. Like so many pop stars, he dropped his h’s and adopted a pseudo-working-class accent with a mid-Atlantic twang.
Angelface sat, unusually still and silent, as Lili pushed back her cloud of hair and called again for her costume designer. She was the most beautiful, amazing chick he’d ever laid eyes on. And she was the sexiest chick he’d ever seen, he thought, as he watched it all spill out of the spangles.
“Anyone screwing her?” Angelface asked suddenly.
He can’t wait to get in there, thought Zimmer, as he shrugged his shoulders. “No idea. You can’t meet her today. She’s not to be distracted.”
But Angelface had not felt lust; he had suddenly felt a burning desire to flatten whoever was screwing his daughter.
Twenty minutes later, plumes once more in place, Lili
again started down the staircase, her legs gleaming under a thick application of oil.
“Perfect,” said Zimmer as Lili reached the front of the stage, the microphone swung over her head and she began to sing.
“C’est Paris
…” Lili’s confident, throaty voice rang through the empty theater as the chandelier twirled and the thirty-six showgirls twitched their feather tails and stepped forward.
“She can
sing.”
Angelface sat up in surprise. “Her phrasing is great. She’s got a sort of harsh quality in her voice that chicks can’t usually get. It’s a strong voice and a sexy voice, but not a sweet voice.” Angelface hadn’t expected Lili to be able to sing. But he knew who she got her voice from.
“CUT!” Zimmer yelled. “Mike in shot.”
And so it went on. Unlike the rest of the cast, Lili was in almost every scene and, when shooting finished at nine o’clock that night, she was too exhausted to absorb further criticism and her left eye had started to squint slightly, as it always did when she was tired. Nevertheless, Zimmer appeared in her dressing room with a sheaf of notes. “About your singing, Lili.”
“I’m sorry I missed that top G,” she said quickly. “I lose my range when I’m tired.”
“All
your singing is wrong. Mistinguett, she had a voice like a cement mixer, you are singing too
well
. I want you to
rasp!”
Three months with the Met’s voice coach. Why did I bother? Lili snapped, “If you want me to sing like Louis Armstrong, why not dub my voice with a cement mixer?”
* * *
A month later they were shooting in the countryside and Lili no longer had to try to roughen her voice because it was hoarse with overuse. A scarf was wound around her neck to protect it against the damp air of the May evening as Lili strolled by herself through the field.
Her calf muscles ached and her battered joints protested as she climbed over a five-barrel gate.
Physically, Lili was exhausted, but mentally she was content. Halfway through the shooting, Mistinguett looked very promising, although Lili knew that you couldn’t consider a film successful until you saw the final print. A film could be spoiled in the editing, badly dubbed or lost in a film industry
vendetta, never to be screened. But the dailies were good and so was the atmosphere on set. There was a hopeful buzz about the whole production. Zimmer was no longer tense and had even grunted,
“Pas mal”
today. He was rapidly turning back into the charming, supportive colleague who had been the first person to treat Lili as a serious actress, and who could coax a better performance from her than any other director.
Swallows cruised against the iridescent pink of the evening sky as Lili sauntered into a muddy lane. On either side of the road, rainwater chuckled down the ditches, bluebells gleamed in the hedgebanks and raindrops dripped softly from fern fronds. England was very pretty, when it stopped raining, Lili thought, as she paused in the middle of the lane to re-tie her headscarf. Listening to the faint call of the swallows, Lili was hardly aware of a thin, insectlike whine in the distance, until suddenly the whine became a roar and a black shape leaped from the corner in front of her, mud and water spewing from under its wheels. Lili shrieked as she threw herself against the hedgebank.
The car howled past her, then screeched to a halt, further up the lane. A man in dirty mechanic’s overalls flung himself out of the car and raced back toward Lili, calling, “Are you okay?”
“Of course not!” yelled Lili angrily, as the man reached her. This reckless fool could have killed her.
“I’m most awfully sorry.” He helped her to stand upright. She winced with pain and started to pull the brambles from her hair, as he continued, “I never expected anyone on this road, because it’s private. And this part of the country is always deserted in May—even in the holiday season it’s only used by ramblers. Are you on holiday?”
“No, I’m working and I can’t afford a broken leg. Why don’t you look where you’re going?” Lili took a few steps and winced again as pain shot through her left knee. She took another step, felt sick with pain and staggered. The man in dirty overalls steadied her arm. “I’d better give you a lift back,” he offered.
“No, thanks, I can manage.” Lili set off, limping, down the road, hoping that this idiot hadn’t blown the film for her.
He caught up with her, running his fingers through his
sandy hair, streaking more grease on his already dirty face. “I’m so very sorry. I promise you, I’m a safe driver. I was just seeing how fast I could corner her, because she still needs a couple of adjustments to the gears.”
He’d be quite good-looking if he washed, Lili thought, in spite of her pain. In fact, he might be
very
good-looking if he cleaned the grease and mud off his face.
“Please let me drive you home—it’s the least I can do.” Nice gray eyes, long straight fair lashes, big freckled nose … Lili agreed. The low cockpit of the beetle-black car was little more than a shell of raw metal with taped wires in different directions across the interior.
He drove very fast. “Doesn’t this car do less than 70 mph?” Why had she agreed to be driven by this lunatic? Omnium’s insurers would probably cancel on the spot, if they could see her.
“She’s not very good in the lower gears yet,” the gawky, good-looking Englishman apologized. “This is the prototype. We’re still working on it, and I shouldn’t have taken it out of the garage. Would you mind not mentioning to anyone that you’ve seen it?”
As the car stopped in front of Lili’s hotel (a famous eighteenth-century coaching inn), her driver asked, “How long are you staying at the Rose and Crown?”
“Another four weeks. I’ve got a part in the film they’re shooting at the manor house. What’s your name?”
“Gregg Templeton. What’s yours?”
“Um … Elizabeth Jordan.”
He made no move to help her out, and Lili made no move to open the door. It was that awkward moment when two people, who have only just met, are both reluctant to make the first move and invite rejection. Eventually, Gregg offered, “So shall I see you again, Elizabeth?”
“It’s difficult, we never get any time off,” she said truthfully. “Why not give me your number and I’ll phone you when I’m next free. What garage do you work for, Gregg?”
“Eagle Motors in Whitechurch. I’ll give you the workshop number.” He scribbled it on the back of an envelope, then helped her out of the car. She winced again. “You need a shoehorn to get out of that thing.”
“Please forget you ever saw me in it.”
“Okay, your boss will never know.”
Gregg looked faintly surprised, then grinned.
* * *
On Sunday afternoon, Gregg collected Lili in a beat-up Jaguar XK 150 drop-head coupe, which was as grubby as if chickens were kept in the back. After another fast drive, they swept over the brow of a hill and saw Lyme Regis lying below them, the distant cliffs glowing gold and white, the pretty circular harbor cluttered with fishing boats.
“Can we go out to sea?” Lili pointed to the small fleet of clinker-built craft at one end of the ancient, stone harbor wall.
“Why not? We’ll take a motor boat.”
After an hour ker-chugging over sparkling water, they walked back to the town and, in a bow-windowed Regency tearoom, ate fresh-baked scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream. When Gregg passed his cup to Lili for a refill, he noticed her noticing his grimy fingernails. “My mother’s always complaining,” he grinned. “Drink up, time to take you home.”
And to Lili’s disappointment, he drove her back to her hotel, then waved a cheery good-bye without making another date.
* * *
Lili gazed around the cream, oval reception room at the London Ritz. Elegant women drifted across the pink carpet, greeting each other among the small tables and large palm trees. Behind them, a fountain trickled over a naked golden giantess with a strangely prim expression.
“I’m almost enjoying my Merry Widow act, now that I’ve started the good works part.” Pagan’s cheerfulness was brittle, Lili thought, as the Englishwoman rattled on. “Organizing your Gala keeps me busy and stops me brooding. We can have Drury Lane Theater on the last Sunday in July, if that suits you, Lili?”
“I’ll have to check with Stash, my agent. He’s coordinating with the choreographer, who’s directing the show, and they’ll check the date with the singers, the dancers and the musicians.” Lili poured out more tea; this weird British custom was habit-forming. “Remember, Pagan, that we split up at the end of filming
The Best Legs in the Business
, and it’s a
complicated job to get everyone together again, just for a one-night live show for charity.”
“I’ve got a terrific committee together to organize the evening,” Pagan enthused, thinking that Lili looked preoccupied. Again Pagan felt that pain in her chest. The doctor had said that it was merely another manifestation of grief; he had reassured Pagan that her depression, memory loss, and strange behavior were not unusual after a bereavement. He’d also hinted at another delicate matter and asked her if she’d been, as he phrased it, “missing her husband at night.”
“If you can’t sleep,” he suggested tactfully, “tune your radio to the BBC World Service.”
He thinks nice women don’t wank, Pagan had thought. But the following night at 3
A.M
., she had remembered his advice, twiddled the radio dial, found some pleasant Mozart, then settled back and let black night wash velvet over her. Suddenly, a cheery, dynamic voice had urged her to buy tickets for a rock concert in Croydon. Crossly, Pagan had twiddled the dial, got what sounded like some soothing Sibelius, and recomposed herself just in time to hear the news in Dutch. As dawn blocked in the shape of her bedroom windows, feeling depressed and unsexy but wanting to sleep, Pagan had reached for Sheila Kitzinger’s book on female sexuality, which fell open at the masturbation chapter.
In the Ritz tearoom, Lili fidgeted in her gilt chair. “What am I going to do about it?”
Pagan bunked. “But we’ve already decided what you’re going to do for the Gala—a show based on some of the numbers in your Mistinguett film.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” Lili waved aside the Gala with one hand. “I mean, what am I going to do about Gregg? Do you think I shouldn’t have noticed his filthy hands? Do you think I embarrassed him? Do you think I came on too strong, Pagan? Do you think that tomorrow is too soon to telephone him?”
“Lili, you can’t start an affair with some village mechanic, just because he’s the only man you’ve met in the last five years who isn’t dying to make love to you.” Pagan sipped her Earl Grey. “Don’t you think that perhaps you want this man so much, simply because he doesn’t want you?”
“I’m not sure what to think.” Lili sounded wistful. “Except that Gregg behaves as if I’m normal.”
Pagan raised her mahogany eyebrows. “Were you wearing that kit when you met him?” If so, Pagan couldn’t imagine any man
not
wanting Lili, who was swathed in layers of pink-and-white knitting. All Lili’s clothes seemed to be made in Paris by Japanese men, who had never heard of skirts, blouses, or frocks.
“No, I wasn’t wearing this.” Lili was defensive. “I was walking through the mud in an old raincoat without any makeup and with a scarf around my hair.… Pagan,
how
can I see him again?”
“You have his number—telephone him.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that! I don’t want to look too…”
If you don’t care about someone, Pagan thought, it is perfectly easy to pick up the phone and dial his number; but if you care, then all you can do is sit and watch the telephone and silently
will
it to ring.
“If he’s a mechanic, why don’t you get yourself the sort of car that demands attention?” Pagan suggested.
“You mean something like a Porsche?”
“No, not at all like a Porsche.”