Lace (53 page)

“Action!” said Serge again, impatiently.

Slowly Lili slipped off her white rabbit fur coat, then stepped naked into the foam. Carefully she soaped her breasts, running her fingers slowly over her slippery flesh. Then Teresa stepped
forward, wearing a man’s shirt unbuttoned to the waist. She leaned over the back of the bath and started to soap Lili’s body with long, sensuous strokes. “Right, Teresa, now sit
behind her on the edge of the bath, one leg on either side of her, more in the water Lili, now
splash
, I want Teresa’s shirt soaked, I want to see those nipples press against it. Now
slither in behind her, Teresa. Christ, there’s water all over the fucking floor. Now, you little darlings, I want the normal action, yeah, that’s nice, oh, very nice. For Christ’s
sake, Lili, look as if you’re enjoying it, you know we’ll just go on shooting until you do, that’s better, now move in very slowly, Ben, I want you sitting on the back of the
bath, legs in the water, cock standing at attention.”

Blue-black muscles shining, Ben appeared through the palms. “Get out of the bath, Teresa, I want you standing behind him. Now, Ben, lean over and grab Lili under the armpits, slowly,
slowly, you’re relishing the thoughts of what you’re about to do, now turn her around. I want a close-up of your hands running over her ass and in the crack. Lili, could you please show
a bit more interest. Let’s have some sinuous writhing or you’ll be fucking sorry. That’s nice,
very
nice. . . . Now, Lili, kneel down in the water as Ben stands up.
We’re tracking into this shot. Now purse those rosebud lips, Lili, and in it goes, smoothly. For Christ’s sake, you little bitch, try and look as if it’s your favourite flavour
lollipop, that’s better. Now slowly pull her up, Ben, settle your ass on the back of the bath and use that prick with imagination,
slower
, you black bastard.”

He shot the scene three times before Ben’s penis went on strike. It wasn’t as juicy as their usual stuff, but that was for a carefully calculated reason. Serge wanted the attention
focused on Lili, rather than the action. He didn’t want it too dirty, he wanted a
pretty
fuck. It was going exactly as he had hoped it would, like a routine whiskey or bath-salts
commercial, but with nothing left to the imagination or subliminal interpretation.

He knew he couldn’t shoot a proper film test, but he’d be willing to bet his new Mercedes this would get the big boys interested—especially after that call from Zimmer. He was
after bigger game than blue movies. He wanted to make Lili a star. Vadim had done it with Bardot, so Serge was doing his fucking best to get Lili discovered. He’d already arranged for her to
have a walk-on part in the Christopher Lee sci-fi that Trianon was shooting at Versailles; she’d only be an extra, a spaceship soldierette, but she’d get the feeling of a proper set,
ready for the big chance if it came.

Not if, he told himself,
when
.

Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Lili made her first legitimate appearance on celluloid under a green, greasy film of Leichner, with her hair hidden by a silver,
cardboard helmet.

The bus picked her up at five
A.M
. It was filled with sleepy, silent figures huddled in overcoats. They drove out of Paris, through Versailles and into the forest beyond;
the bus pulled off the road, jerked down a rutted track and stopped in a large clearing where several trucks and trailers were parked. The passengers climbed out of the bus and stumped off in
silence toward the nearest truck. As Lili hesitated on the steps of the bus, a thin young fellow in a white yachting cap said, “Better grab your coffee while you can.”

“Where does one find coffee?”

“This your first day? Come with me.” He dug his hands into the pockets of his navy pea jacket, and they walked through damp grass toward the truck. Just before they reached it, the
rear door flew open and a caterer started handing out coffee and croissants. “This should wake you up.” He handed her a paper cup. “For some unknown reason, the coffee’s
always good. You an extra? One of the spaceship crew? I’m one of the gypsies that see it crash into the clearing. Got any lines?”

“No.”

“I’ve got three. A
part!
My first, which is why I’m so cheerful.” He beamed. “Also, I like being awake when everyone’s half asleep and huddled around
the coffee truck, sun barely up, birds singing, nobody around.”

“I
hate
getting up early. Why did we have to get up so early when shooting doesn’t start until eight-thirty?”

“All motion picture people get up early;
everyone
has to be
ready
for eight-thirty and, believe it or not, it can take three hours to get them all ready.”

“You don’t sound French.”

“I’m not. My mother was from Los Angeles, but both my parents were killed in a car crash when I was five. I was brought up by my French grandmother. I’m called Simon
Pont.”

“I’m Lili, and I lost my parents when I was seven.”

“Tough, ain’t it? Lili what?”

“Lili nothing. Just Lili.” She didn’t explain that after having four family names by the time she was barely seven, she had decided that in the future she would just call
herself “Lili.”

“But where are the stars? Where are Christopher Lee and Mademoiselle Collins?” Lili asked hopefully, as she chewed the last ragged end of her croissant and they moved over to look at
the call sheet.

“The stars stay in their trailers, which are
sacred.
Positively no entry allowed, nobody ever goes into a trailer if he isn’t supposed to. There are trailers for the director,
wardrobe, makeup and the stars, and everyone else has to manage without one as best they can.”

“Where’s the director?”

“Staying in his trailer until we’re ready to go. The writer, the set designer and the press agent won’t turn up until around eight-thirty, lucky bastards.”

“Now I know everything I need to know about a movie set.”

“Everything except where the makeup truck is, which is where you should be at this moment. Look, there’s your name on the call sheet—‘Makeup six-thirty.’
You’d better run; I tell you, makeup can be
bitches.
You don’t want little piggy eyes with bags beneath them, do you?”

She saw Simon again at lunch break, when he fetched their sandwiches from the trailer. He spread his jacket on the grass and together they sat on it. He bit into the crusty
roll with teeth that were unusually small, white and far apart, like a child’s teeth. “Look at that idiot driving a Mercedes down the track at that speed.”

“It’s Serge, my manager—the man I live with.”

“Oh, well, I’ll be off then.” He didn’t seem surprised or disappointed.

The following month saw publication of the tire calendar. The calendar itself was an annual event, always expensively produced by a famous photographer and a prominent art
director: the editions were collected like antiquarian books. The 1964 calendar, which starred Lili, was an overnight sensation. Every art editor and designer had to have one, every truck driver
leered at Lili, every schoolboy lusted after her, and many of their fathers did as well. Within two weeks the calendar was sold out, and copies changed hands at eight times the list price. The
print order for the second printing was a quarter of a million, and it disappeared as fast as the first one.

Almost overnight Lili was not only famous, but notorious. She couldn’t move in Paris without being recognised.

Lili found one of the advantages of having such a low sense of self-esteem was that it wasn’t difficult to ignore her growing public image as a tough, sexy, knowing little slut.

Serge taught her to tell journalists, in a whisper, that she was an orphan; orphans had good publicity value, he said. They were sad and appealing. Lili was to stop this crazy-sounding nonsense
about her mysterious “Mama”, because it confused his pitch and, anyway, he didn’t want a hundred crazy bag ladies turning up claiming to be Lili’s mother and trying to grab
half her income.

Most of Lili’s early pictures were resold, and her blue movies changed hands at a price that made Serge’s income almost an embarrassment. He huddled with lawyers and accountants,
discussing the tax advantages of Andorra, Jersey or Monaco; of being offshore in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas; of starting a company in Panama or Mexico; of having money paid to Dutch lawyers
to lodge in numbered Swiss accounts, or Swiss lawyers in a group-participation company that fronted for big movie stars.

The pros, cons and percentages of these schemes were never discussed with Lili, because she owned none of the properties. She was under contract to Sergio Productions, so Serge owned her. All
that Lili got were the sly looks, the leers and the gossip. She couldn’t cope with any of it, so she greeted everyone with a suspicious stare.

What else could she do?

S
HORTLY AFTER
P
AGAN
’
S
third wedding anniversary, on a warm spring day
in 1965, Kate and Pagan were playing a nursery card game in the garden. “Buster doesn’t like being in London much,” said Pagan, as she shuffled the cards. “Still misses
Cornwall, poor darling. So do I, come to that.” They started to play. “Did I tell you that Christopher got tough with Mama? They both sat in the library talking in quiet, polite, nasty
voices—
snap!
Blast, you’re fast—and the upshot was that we all trooped along to the solicitor in St. Austell—
snap!
Blast you—Christopher said he should
never have allowed my guardian to lease my property to herself, although I don’t suppose for one minute that was how she put it to the poor old bugger. He seemed to think that she was running
the place on my behalf and he didn’t even know about—
snap!
—oh you know, her will. She’d had that drawn up by some smart crook in London—blast, too fast for
me!—So for ten pounds, I purchased an option to—
snap!
Oh, you cow—purchase Ma’s shares in the health farm at par upon her death, and for another ten
pounds—
snap!
Bugger!—I purchased an option to purchase Selma’s shares in the health farm at current valuation upon her death. Missed again, dammit. Get that? What it means
is that Selma—
snap! Thank
you!—can’t get her claws on Trelawney if Mama kicks the bucket, and that I get it all back in
—snap
!—the end if I outlive them,
plus the health farm.”

“That’s nice—
snap!
” shrieked Kate. “Thanks, a splendid pile of hearts and diamonds.”

“Oh, you cow, you’ve won!” said Pagan. “Well, I hope it’s put you in a good temper because I want you to help me in a delicate matter.”

“What is it this time?” Kate asked.

“I’ve worked out two things,” Pagan explained, “for both of which I need your aid. Firstly, I love Christopher more than drink, and secondly I love him so much that I
couldn’t bear it if he were to die. And you know that he might at any minute, and I’d be left with nothing of him. There would be nothing left of Christopher. So I want his child. Even
if it kills him, I want his child.”

“Can’t you get . . . er . . . artificial insemination?”

“Certainly not! I can’t bear the idea of anything unnatural. I want our child to be conceived as an act of love, even if it’s the last one we share.”

Kate was awed by the ruthlessness of Pagan’s reasoning. “In spite of what the doctor said?”

“In spite of what the doctor said, darling. So I want you to help me to seduce Christopher, because I know he’ll never agree.” Kate was speechless with astonishment.
“What I want you to do is the opposite of birth control. I want you to help me work out the dangerous time—my
un
safe period. Then I want you to double-check with me, because my
arithmetic is abysmal and I know I’m only going to get one chance.”

“Suppose one chance isn’t enough?”

“It was before, remember? Only once in Switzerland was enough to produce that darling little thing.”

“Let’s not talk about it or I’ll start crying.” They both sighed.

“I’ve been to the family planning clinic,” Pagan continued. “I’ve got a chart and a special thermometer and I’m going to take my temperature every morning,
but I want
you
to keep the chart so that Christopher doesn’t accidentally find it: I’d be sure to leave the damn thing on the mantelpiece one morning. When my temperature dips
slightly that means it’s just before ovulation. After ovulation it rises several tenths of a degree and then stays there until I get the curse. So when my temperature goes down is the time
for
action!
The clinic people said that I’d better check my pattern for a couple of months before settling down to strenuous nightlife.”

Though Kate was scandalized by the idea, Pagan eventually talked her into it. Each morning after Christopher had gone to the lab Pagan telephoned her temperature to Kate. For the first two
months there didn’t seem to be any difference, but on the third month there was no doubt—the temperature dipped.

On the propitious day of the fourth month, when the moon was in the correct quarter and the thermometer had definitely wobbled, Pagan, calculating and steady as a tiger, set about seducing her
lawfully wedded husband.

The next morning she reported to Kate. “Darling, I rushed out to Fortnum’s and bought some smoked salmon, a game pie, some country blackberries. I’d turned up the heating and
when he got home I was sitting in that pink, gauze Arab shift with nothing on underneath. I’d already opened a bottle of Haut Brion ‘59, and as soon as he sat down I handed him a huge
mint julep. Neat bourbon with chopped mint, crushed in melted sugar. Oh, it smelled divine! ‘Do you think it’s strong enough?’ I asked him. ‘Because you know I can’t
tell.’ Darling, it was six eggcupsful of neat bourbon, but you don’t notice because of the minty sugar. The rest was easy. Mind you, it was too quick to be fun and I can’t
tell
you how livid he was afterward, except, of course, he dared not get too angry in case his blood pressure went up.”