All That Glitters (37 page)

There was only this moment, this bit of time stolen from the outside world and those who made it painful for them, and they wanted to make the night something always to be remembered and cherished. If they were to part—and it seemed they were; no matter what had been said, each knew perfectly well that in the end Frances would prevail—they would strive to make it a memorable parting. Locked in embrace, they whispered the ancient litanies of passion, devotion, and love everlasting, knowing that before the night was out they would no longer be one, but two, two who through no fault of theirs would then be forced apart. However tightly they might cling together in the Paris night, sipping French champagne and breathing French air, in their hearts they knew they were bound to lose.

When at last their bodies parted, Frank poured them more champagne and they sat gazing out the window onto the Paris rooftops. A scene from
La Bohème,
only he was no starving tenor, he had all the money in the world; his walls were hung with Manet and Monet, Braque and Utrillo; a Rodin bronze crouched in the garden and guests rid their ashes in the Baccarat. He had sixteen wheels on four foreign cars plus spares and would never have to worry about his old age; everything he desired except the one thing he desired most in the world. A bitter pill, and he choked on it. He thought of that long list of women he had couched, women to whom he’d been friend or lover or both, but never lover like this, no, not like this.

The champagne was dry and tangy on his palate and he’d had sufficient to feel the least bit pissed, just a little smashed, and he held her more tightly. They were in robes now and she sat on his lap in the chair by the window—the way she’d refused to sit on Sam’s lap, “talking movie stardom.” She was trembling and she wound her arms more tightly about his neck. “What is it?” he whispered, lifting her hair away from her ear.

She’d begun to weep, something she rarely did. “I’m afraid,” she said, shivering.

“No, no, you don’t want to say that. You’re not afraid, because there’s nothing to be afraid of. This isn’t the end for us, we’re going to go on seeing each other, you know that.”

“Do I?”

“Sure you do. It’s going to work out. You’ll see. She can’t hold out forever. I know her. She’s acting this way because it’s part of her nature. She doesn’t want me, but right now she doesn’t want anyone else to have me, either.”

“She must hate me.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’d hate anyone who—look, she isn’t going to stick around over here much longer. She’s itching to get home, I can tell. She doesn’t like to be away from the house for this long—you know how she is about that goddamn house. And after she goes, you can come to London, or I’ll be coming here with Babe. And anyway, there’s your new part. I’m going to fix up that deal with Agyar.”

That was Frank, always “fixing deals,” with Agyar or someone else. His gold ring flashed in the candlelight, the ring Frances had given him at the altar, and on another finger another ring, another gift from her, rings to which she’d attached heavy chains. Murder was in his heart that night in Paris.

Then it was time to go. They’d already lingered on the Ile St.-Louis long past the hour when he should have been at his hotel: Frances would be calling. Then, as only bad luck would have it, they were noticed coming out of the elevator: friends he couldn’t slough off. Foolishness to have left together, but he couldn’t bear leaving her and wanted to drive her back to her hotel.

That unfortunate encounter didn’t get into the papers until after April’s trouble began, and by then it hardly mattered. But what happened next was far worse. By a piece of ill luck, before going back to London Frank had spoken with the notorious Ilya Agyar, the Hungarian producer who had arrived in Paris to set up a co-production deal with a French-Italian company. He’d heard all about this movie-actress friend of Frank’s, and he was showing a panting enthusiasm. Thinking this might be the best answer to her current problems, Frank asked Agyar to invite her to his office for an interview, with an eye to giving her the lead in his production.

What occurred made headlines, further adding to the shabby legend of Ilya Agyar, but doing nothing at all for April’s already tattered reputation. He invited her to take tea with him at the Ritz, and afterward the innocent April unwisely accepted his invitation to dinner at his apartment, where, presumably, Madame Agyar was to be on hand. April arrived suitably dressed (she thought) for such an occasion, hoping that she would leave with what she had come for, the plum part in a big movie. The ensuing scene proved the most banal in the world, the cliché of clichés. She and Agyar sat in the best room, champagne and a sturgeon pâté were offered, and the talk centered on the person of Frank Adonis, thus providing April with a lively and interesting raconteur as well as a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. But as time passed, it became more and more evident that there was no Madame Agyar poised to make her entrance (Ilya had this wife, an ex-opera diva, but one seldom if ever saw her anymore).

What next took place became a matter of major conjecture. April’s apprehension turned to fear as Agyar made his pass, gross as his own gross character; her screams were sufficiently loud to bring other tenants to the apartment, plus the concierge, pounding on the Third Empire doors, threatening the Hungarian with the constabulary, but when the door was opened and his guest escaped with her virtue intact and a torn dress, such was her peculiar behavior that the gendarmes were indeed summoned.

There emerged a tale difficult to judge for truth, for while the guest claimed she had been forcibly attacked, the host confided to the police that the young mademoiselle was a bit off her head and ought to be placed under observation. She—
he
claimed—had forced her way into his apartment in the hope of gaining the lead role in a production of his (he made sure to mention its name several times over), and, having been told by him that she wasn’t right for the part, she had begun to tear off her clothes and had attempted to lure him by exposing various parts of her anatomy, along with making suggestions that they investigate the bed, a generous offer,
bien sûr
, but one which Monsieur had declined, since everyone in the world knew that he was the happiest of married men, also
bien sûr.

This horrible business was bound to have its effect on April. Not only did the story find its way into the Paris papers, but it made its way in turn to Rome, to London, and certainly to Hollywood, where both Hedda and Louella pounced on it. Frank was still in London, and because he was engaged in the tricky business of presenting Babe Austrian to the British upper crust, there wasn’t much he could do other than see that April had the necessary attention. Since it was attention not to her physical state but to her frayed mental condition that was needed, it fell to one Dr. Rand to see to her welfare. And since Dr. Rand, an eminent specialist in mental disorders, ran a fashionable clinic in the
ban-lieues
of Paris, at Passy, it was there that April was put to bed under the care of round-the-clock nurses, the doctor being instructed to report daily to Frank in London.

At Passy, in comfortable quarters overlooking a private garden, April Rains, née Anna Thorwald of Westwood Village in Los Angeles, sat reading old
Reader’s Digest
’s in their original English, interesting herself in the How to Improve Your Vocabulary and The Most Interesting Character I Ever Met departments.

Meanwhile, Bud took up residence at a country inn some two kilometers away from the Rand Clinique de Très Bonne Santé, as the place was designated. Every day he would ride a rented bicycle there, and spend hours hoping to be allowed to visit with her. Meanwhile, he sat among the birch trunks studying French from a paperback Hugo’s grammar he’d picked up at the Gare du Nord. He learned reflexive verbs and the list of sixteen adjectives that preceded the noun, while the leaves fell faster around his little chair. His French improved; April did not.

It was a real dyed-in-the-wool mess; you couldn’t have found a worse one. Jenny and I bled for her, for him, for both of them. By then Babe had closed at the Café de Paris in London and crossed the Channel. We came, too, Frank’s guests. The Adanos took a suite at the Crillon, Jen and I stayed with friends, and Frank got us a car and driver; we drove out to Passy and tried to reassure April, Bud too, and carried somewhat edited versions of her present state back to Frank.

She was determined he wasn’t to know about the baby, and of course we bowed to her wishes; we would have agreed to anything short of murder to bring her some measure of peace. Anyway, the doctor recommended that she be indulged, and it wasn’t difficult to do so, we felt so damned sorry for her. Anyone would have. They were keeping her well iced, like a Friday mackerel.

By now Frank was no longer in Paris, for Babe Austrian had suffered her fall and was recuperating at a Swiss clinic where Frank had gone to shore her up. Finally he was able to come. “Have I done this?” he asked himself when he saw her. “Is this what our love has brought her to?” On a scale of ten, Passy was about a two; worse was to come. For now they chose to enact, each of them, a role: “I’m all right, you’re all right, we’re all right.” This thing here, this business of Passy, was merely a little hitch, a rest, if you liked, a chance to catch the breath. The Summer of the Purple Grape had got a bit out of hand, but now all was calm again, or soon would be. The doctor said she was coming along just fine, she could go home any time; what they both needed was to get back to Sunny Cal, and pick up the thread of things at home. They played the old saws: Frances was bound to come round, later if not sooner, Frank was sure of it. Next year—surely by next year—everything would be straightened out. He’d have his freedom, they’d announce their wedding plans, they’d even go back to Italy, to Civitavecchia; Dodi Ingrisi would give them a wedding—a wedding of weddings!

But she didn’t want to hear it, none of it. And she said she didn’t want to go home, though not
why
she didn’t want to go home. It was the baby again. If she was going to have it, it must be here in Europe, some out-of-the-way place, no prying eyes. The doctor would see to it; she’d already talked to him.

Frank didn’t understand. How could he? It was eating at him, everything, tearing him apart. Big strong Frankie wasn’t feeling so big and strong these days. She began to weep; he put his arms around her and held her. Crushed her against his chest, saying over and over, “Love me love me love me,” with that desperation in his voice he couldn’t overcome.

Later they walked in the little park with the white birches, the gravel crunching underfoot, walking not like lovers now, but more like father/daughter—should she drop out of Bennington in her sixth semester to go live on the Left Bank and paint landscapes of Notre Dame?—or brother/sister—Look, Mother needs this operation; how are you fixed for cash? They formed a melancholy picture in their dark clothes, seated knees together on the little iron chairs—he’d spread his handkerchief for her—among the peeling trunks of white birch and their gold leaves that fell around them like money, eight kilometers south of Paris, where you got squab for dinner even if you
were
mentally disturbed.

They still talked of love, but such a different kind of love from that of the Summer of the Purple Grape. Now love was heartbreak and anguish, but not—not yet—regret. Regret was to come, in the Winter of the Discontent. Now was the Autumn of the Gold, and what they learned together in their explorations of their present situation was that Passy was a dead end.

The truth was, as he later confessed to me, Frank was feeling the worst fear of his life, the deepest terror. This was when he related to me the agony of indecision and despair he was in, though he fought to keep her from seeing the widening chinks in his armor. The thought that he’d hurt her, the last person in the world he would ever hurt, made him tremble with self-loathing and fury.

What have I done, what have I done? Over and over,
mea culpa
,
mea culpa.
And its corollary, What shall I do now? Their talk was awkward and fumbling, they were the halt and the blind, groping amid the white birches, lending helping hands that were little help.

Another parting tore at them; the pain was excruciating—she masking it with a mustered dignity and no more tears, for she knew how it upset him, her crying, he making rash promises. In the end he left, back to Paris on a wet road, a near-accident as his Peugeot skidded onto the narrow, leaf-strewn shoulder, and the violet-blue air seemed haunted in a world of steamy damp and fog and leafless trees. He thought of the white unicorns that came down to the sea at Malibu, “neighing far off on the haunted air….”

For Frank it was Chicken Little time, the sky was definitely falling. He had to get back to his office in Los Angeles, it couldn’t be avoided. Meanwhile, help was on the way: Donna Curry was coming. Jenny and I stayed as close to April as we could until my picture got its shooting date and I was off for the steppes of Yugoslavia. April seemed in reasonably stable condition and Dr. Rand had high hopes of a complete recovery if she would just steer clear of Frank, who was now being labeled in her medical reports a “deleterious influence.” And since by now he was some seven thousand miles away, the horizon seemed clear.

Then, surprise: at the beginning of the month who should turn up at Zagreb but April and her mother, and I could tell that Donna was deeply worried about April. Shocked to find out her daughter had been in the clinic, she let me know how disappointed she was in me for not having said anything.

“I guess we should have told you,” I apologized, “but April made me absolutely promise we wouldn’t. She didn’t want you to know.”

“Oh, Charlie—Charlie,” she said in such a sad way my heart went out to her, “how have things come to this? And is it going to happen again?”

Downplaying things as best I could, I repeated what Rand had said—April would be all right if she stayed away from Frank.

Donna rejected it all. “Does anyone actually think she’ll keep away from Frank? It’s a mess, and, much as I hate to say it—well, let’s just say I don’t think it can end happily for either of them. Charlie, I wish they’d never met. I wish he’d never put her in pictures.”