Читать книгу Mirror, Mirror - Paula Byrne - Страница 21

Madou stares into me as she scrubs her hands over and over again with Roger & Gallet sandalwood soap. It is time to teach that bastard a lesson. Ever since she returned from Europe, at his behest, he has been beastly.

Jealousy … such an ugly emotion, so demeaning, so low-class. He has become boring, joyless, with his cow-like eyes full of recrimination and self-pity. But there will be no undignified scenes. Better to behave admirably in the face of his ungovernable rage.

She knows this is their swan song. She’s said it before, and gone crawling back to him, but this time, he’s gone too far. She is contracted for one more picture, and then she is free. This movie will be her favourite because she has never looked more ravishing. It will be the only picture of which she will ever own a print, but sitting here, in the thick of it, all she feels is the pain, the humiliation.

Regrettably, she is, once again, playing a whore. Why? Because that’s what he truly thinks of her. It’s time for more finger-wagging.

‘So you’ve come back for more, my dear? Glutton for punishment or Jacobean revenge tragedy? That type of man never changes.’

She takes a cigarette out of the case on her dressing table and lights it.

‘Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him, they do not like him. I’ve never tried to change Mo. He is what he is. I accept him the way he is.’

‘You’re in for a bitter time.’

‘Then I shall summon up my courage and face it properly.’

‘You need to develop as an actress. Every picture you appear in is exactly the same; frivolous, superficial, and without the slightest intellectual significance. Don’t you want to go down in posterity as a great actress?’

‘I don’t give a damn about posterity. Why should I care what people think about me when I’m as dead as a doornail?’

‘You might feel differently when you’re older, and wiser. Well, you have been warned. Better stop shilly-shallying and get to it. You’re needed in the Canvas room.’

The setting of the new picture is Seville. There is lace everywhere; scalloped lace, Chantilly lace, antique lace in every colour imaginable. Mo loves lace because he can put his light behind it, creating patterns and shadows that enhance his star’s beauty. In the Canvas room, they unfurl flags of silks and muslin. The Child hovers, as ever, her eyes watchful.

‘Kater, sweetheart, we must have Spanish combs. Tortoiseshell and ivory. And those silk carnations we found in Paris with Papi. I knew we would need them one day. Fetch Travis. And Nellie.’

Nellie crafts a braided wig that looks similar to Madou’s blonde, wispy hair, and then sews the wig onto the large comb. Madou’s hair is dragged so tightly back from her forehead it makes her scalp bleed. She loves the effect it has on her skin; a natural facelift. She never complains about the pain.

And nor does she demur when Mo explains his insane idea about his close-up opening shot. His plan is to fire an air gun into a mass of party balloons. When all of the balloons have exploded, the camera will reveal her perfect face. He tells her it is important not to flinch, not to blink. Not to show fear.

‘Excuse me, Mo. I’m not sure I understand you. You are intending to explode balloons in my face? Who is shooting the gun?’

‘I am, my darling, I would not trust anyone else. But you must not show any reaction. Not a flicker of an eyelash.’

‘Then we will need to change the top of the dress, so it’s lower. And we must have a very high comb, with a veil. And if you shoot me in the eye, we will need an eye patch.’

The Child looks on anxiously. She fiddles with her doll. She’s far too quiet for a child. Easy to forget that she’s around, except that I see everything. I also observe that Nellie has made a tiny doll comb and veil. Travis has created a ruffled Spanish doll dress, red with black silk spots. The Child forces the comb up into the hair of the doll, pushing the hair back from the face. The doll is exquisite; arms and neck made of the finest wax, dimples where dimples should be, eyelashes that look real. Ears like delicate pink shells. There she is; a perfect mini Madou.

Mo turns to his star.

‘Joan. They have decided not to renew my contract. It’s better this way. I can do no more for you.’

She pretends to be angry. She tells him that it’s his own fault. He replays the same theme, over and over again, the man who suffers for his passion, who throws himself away on a vulgar guttersnipe who tortures him for her pleasure. She’s sick of it. Why does she always have to play a cold-blooded whore?

He glares at her. ‘Why do you think?’

In this picture he reveals his torture about their relationship: ‘That woman has ice, where others have a heart.’ He has her speaking a contemptible line to her lover: ‘If you really loved me, you’d kill yourself.’

He tries to take it out on her with his art, but he is a fool. She doesn’t care. Anyone could see that. He could never pull her strings. She is the girl tossing him into the air. One evening after a day’s filming, she loses her cool and screams at him: ‘You made me in your image. Now deal with me.’

But she suffers, too. One evening, she returns to her dressing room, exhausted. Her head aches. Nellie has made little braids of Madou’s hair and wires a large comb to her head. A heavy mantilla is attached to the comb. Madou sits at her dressing table and Nellie takes out her wire cutters, snips the bands and releases the comb. Madou falls forward, exhausted from pain, and rests her arms and head on the table. When she comes up, tears are coursing down her face.

The film is a box-office disaster, but I have a feeling that one day, probably after Mo’s death, the critics will reassess their verdict and pronounce it a masterpiece. While the rest of Hollywood is producing screwball comedies, he is the one exploring the agony of love.

I can imagine the scene. She will be an old diva. They will ask her if the film was a metaphor for his hopeless love and disillusion. She will laugh: ‘We were just making a picture. It was our last collaboration. They say it was all about Mr von Goldberg and me. Such affectation. Nebbish. But I was most beautiful in that film. It was all down to Mo, of course.’

That appalling little lace-maker is finally out of her professional life, but there is one final, ugly scene that I am forced to witness. Although he will no longer work with her, he hasn’t yet learned how not to be in her bed. But he won’t stand for it, when she flaunts her love affairs in his face. Now, he will leave.

Mo kisses her softly on the back of the neck, and takes a last glance at her reflection in me. He is wearing a degraded brown hat, and absurd Turkish boots.

She isn’t going to let him leave without a fight.

‘So, you are again throwing me to the wolves? You bring me to this dreadful country and you throw me away, like a piece of rotting fruit. I gave you everything.’

‘Yes. I have never denied that you have been a sublime inspiration.’

‘Then why are you deserting me?’

‘If you don’t know the answer to that question, there’s no use my trying to explain.’

‘Mo, that’s a woman’s line.’

‘Perhaps our roles have reversed?’

‘Don’t be clever. If you want to leave, then leave.’

‘It is better this way. For us both. We have gone as far as we can together. Now I have to save myself.’

‘So you are going?’

‘Yes, my love.’

And he leaves. Just. Like. That.

She gazes into me for a long, long time. There have been endings before, fights, and reconciliations. But this one is different. I do my best to give comfort. She expects it of me. She has no one else to turn to.

‘Darling Joan, in moments of private chaos, it is better to be alone. Loving advice merely increases the misery. But I will never let you down, and I will always speak the truth: Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?

She finally speaks: ‘Yes, I do.’

She snaps on Mo’s resplendent bracelet of diamonds and sapphires and she sweeps out of the dressing room.