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ANGELA
A Novel
Maurice Rowdon




When her plane


When she was walking across the tarmac in the
sudden sweltering air she noticed how pale some of the
other London passengers were and felt thankful for her
tan.
Her five-day holiday on Crete had paid off. It
helped the Cleopatra look.
She looked round for her agent but saw no one.
Then when she was through the passport wicket wheeling
her trolley full of suitcases a pale bald-headed man in
a blue seersucker suit hurriedi up behind her and said,
"Hi Angela, nice trip? You are Angela Bourne?"
He took the trolley over and began steering her
through the car park.
The stationary cars sent out a
massive afternoon heat that took her breath away.
looked rushed off his feet and his quick grey eyes always
seemed to be searching the distance for some job that
had to be done, while he bit his lower lip.
She saw
with disappointment that he was approaching a VW and
not even a vintage one. She'd been dreaming of a black
chauffeur-driven Buick at the least- -and an agent at
least six foot tall who looked, apart from actually being,
the boss of a top Hollywood agency. Not some harrassed
assistant from the TV department as this creature clearly
was.
As they drove away she told herself not to be child-
ish.
After all she wasn't being asked to play the léad.
In fact she wasn't being asked to play anything at all.


Just to interview for a part. In the old days an
actress went to Hollywood for a screen test but now your
your agent circulated clips of your TV performances and
your actual physical arrival wasn't all that important.
It was a whole lot less glamorous and she'd be lucky if
they remembered to call her from her crumby hotel room
for
the first interview. Still, she was here, all
expenses paid and her London agent happy. And she
needed a rest.
In the back seat there were piles of ragged manu-
scripts and the ash tray was' so full of butts, most of
them coated with lipstick, they'd spilled all over the
gearshift.
She could see it all---the quick lays among
the scripts.
She was unaccountably nervous e
That is, she usually
knew why was nervous (and she was nervous most of the time).
It wasn't the interview.
She didn't really care if she
got the part or not.
'I'm a stage actress anyway,' she
always told herself.
Then she realised that the nel rvousness was excitement.
She meant to win! A11 through drama school and her first
acting parts she'd dreamed of crossing the Atlantic, and
recrossing it back to Europe with an international reput-
ation already made.
This offer had been sudden, unexpected, even for her
London agent.
But for God's sake she'd worked for it!
She put her work above everything---sex, food, socialising.
Her mother had taught her that. A French, methodical
mother.
It was hard sometimes, rising above the tempt-
ations (especially as men fell for her like skittles).
Of course that flattered and pleased her. It helped
the disappointed ego.
The agent kept glancing sideways at her. She was
wearing a black one-piece with a low neck, cut close to
the body.
It set off her tan and gave her large eyes.
She knew she was attractive-- -beautiful for some. Her
lips were full and red and firm, a nice small but fruity
mouth.
Her cheeks were a little plump and she decidedly


didn't like her nose, which she called (when with girl-
friends. only) 'my snout'.
The bones were awfully good
for photography and her neck was what anyone would call
long and - slender, though it had a tendency to bend like
a thick hose sometimes unless she made an.effort to keep
a straight back.
In her first dancing class she'd been
taught to maintain a straight line 'as near as dammit'
from the crown of her head to the base of her spine, and
this meant a neck as still as a stone column.
Her looks
bored her rather.
The eyes were a terrific hold on
people, and she encouraged the black sparkling look with
lashes and an Indian mascara that didn't harm the pupils.
Her heart always sank a bit when she got 'that look' from
men. And she was afraid she was getting it now, from
the agent at her side.
But she meant to get the part and kept up the
Cleopatra look, her chin high and the long neck at its
longest. Her hair was short and thick, its blackness
in (hoperully)strixing contrast with the whites of her
eyes. Of course it would be the low neck he was mos t
interested in.
Sometimes she thought she hated man.
one
And in her profession she had to expose herself somewha t.
At drama school they'd called her 'Cleo', and she did
her best to maintain that flashing exotic look but it
wasn't easy when she had feathers in her belly and felt
ugly and plain and boring underneath.
Her voice helped
a lot.
'Strong and unhesitating delivery', one speech-
class report had said.
In fact she reckoned she could
shout everybody else including men off the stage.
The directors liked her for her clear outlines--
a lithe figure, a crisp projection', self-assured walk.
You knew where you stood with her, artistically.
The agent was telling her his name-- -'Everard Hope'.
"You can take it easy till tomorrow Angela, So listen
why don't we have dinner together tonight, I'1l pick you
up around eight, OK?"
She knew the routine So well and murmured "Fine"
almost without realising.


As for the tightrope act of keeping him out of
her bed after dinner in such a way as not to blow their
professional relationship, she thought she could manage
it. She hated playing that game but whose fault was it,
the man's or the woman's?
He went on talking but suddenly she wasn't listening.
Her fingers were trembling violently and she couldn't take
her eyes off a man not three feet away in an open Bentley.
The traffic was waiting for the lights to change at
Slausen Avenue. She stared into his dark eyes and it
seemed he found it as hard as she did to shift his gaze.
And what a gaze that was!
It penetrated right through
her body, apart from the fact that he was the most beaut-
iful man she'd ever seen or even dreamed about.
She
didn't know if other women would agree, and of course
she didn't care, but his beauty seemed so, well, almost
terrible that she couldn't believe all the other women
in the traffic weren't devouring him with their eyes too.
And this trembling she had! It had started in a second,
she felt cold in her extremities.
She sat rigid, her
mouth slightly open, and as for the Celopatra look,
that had gone to pot.
She hoped the lights would never
change to green. She took in all his features-- -the
the smooth curve of the chin, the slim nose and the
cheeks so soft and yet firm in line she felt she wanted
to jump out of the car there and then and touch him with
the tips of her fingers---no, more than that, she felt
she had touched him, was touching him, and he could feel
it, his eyes seemed to say so.
Whole minutes seemed to pass and there they were
still staring at each other.
His black hair was slightly
ruffled in the breeze, thick round the ears. He wore a
white suit with casual elegance, sleeves turned up to
reveal an expensive blue shirt and a gold wrist cha in.
The shirt had tiny fleur de lys.
His eyes were almos t
too keen to be bearable and yet their fixity caused her
no distress at all, no embarrassment, she sort of aband-
oned herself to them, floated in them, as if they were in
some strange way her own eyes, familiar to her like her
own eyes


own eyes, or at least eyes she'd always known, perhaps
from long ago, in a cousin or uncle she might have been
in love with. Yes, he was familiar to her. And in
that moment she realised that if they didn't meet again
she was finished, ruined for life, as good as dead.
And she'd never believed in love at first sight.
It took her months to get really interested in a man.
She had to wait for him to get through the infatuation
phase, which was very suffocating and intolerable, and
to start not giving a damn about her, then she felt int-
erest stirring in herself. It was when a man cooled
off that her feelings really started and she saw his
attractions for the first time. She needed, above all,
to feel at home with a man, so that she could drop her
airs and the Cleo look and all the other things that
made her feel so tense and ugly inside.
And with this
man she was at home already!
In fact he was home, all
she wanted!
For a moment she'd forgotten where she was, in wha t
city, on what continent. He wasn't even her type! He
wasn't tall or blond. She preferred rather unkempt,
thinking sort of men. This dark smoothness wasn't at
all her style.
The lights changed.
There was a loud blast of
impatient horns behind them and the open Bentley sped
forward and was at once lost to sight.
She returned to full consciousness when she realised
that the battered VW she was in was driving up to the
pink stuccoed entrance of the Beverly Hills hotel instead
of a crummy place downtown. She couldn't believe it.
A porter lifted her bags out of the front boot and
Everard Hope offered her a limp hand without leaving the
driver's seat.
"He'11 show you to your room," he said.casually.
"I'll have to rush, see you at eight kid."
And he looked away at once.
She walked up the outdoor carpet to the doors.
Top star treatment! Or would they give her an attic room -


The porter led her along the carpet to the
entrance. Top star treatment! Or would they give
her an attic room three feet wide? She saw her bags
disappearing and a man from the reception desk nodded
to her and a page showed her to the lift.
It wasn't a room three feet wide. It was a two-
room suite with a bathroom she felt she could live in
round the clock.
And there were roses everywhere.
They burst out of vases on tables, on the floor, by
the bed, even in the bathroom.
The page left and
she slumped down in one of the armchairs, watching her
bags arrive. She didn't understand.
Her excitement
had become sheer bafflement.
There were the tea-coloured
roses she especially loved, and salmon reds, and creams
and sonyas.
But suddenly they and. the suite, even the
bat throom, were of no interest to her as she realised that
she'd lost the only man she could ever love.
Lost him
in the traffic!


It didn't take her much time over dinner that
evening to see that producers only flew you to Los
Angeles and booked youutwo-roomed suites if they predicted
a good return on their money.
In other words she was
here to work, not to feel nervous or fall in love at
first sight. As for Everard Hope's side glances at
her in the car, she knew now that he'd been appraising
her professionally.
For one thing, far from being an
assistant from the TV department, he was boss of the
whole agency.
Its title, the Vera Hopp Syndicate,
was obviously a derivative from his name, and she
wondered she hadn't realised it before. But then that
had been when those eyes had happened.
The series she'd been invited over to interview
for was a newbumper production of Guy de Maupassant's
Bel Ami, in six episodes. As they were being shot
in California, with a few location shots in Paris done
by a number two crew, without actors, the producers
had wanted as many people as possible on the set who
'felt' French.
This was Everard Hope told her the
minute they sat down. This was why she'd been offered
a part (as yet unspecified), because her Spotlight
photo said 'Fluent French' underneath and her mother
was French-born.
"You certainly won't get Madeleine," he told her.
"I'm hoping for Clotilde, it's not the star role but
it takes up a lot of footage. You're not perfect
casting even for that. I see her as plump and even a


bit dumpy, and you're certainly not that."
From his tone of voice it suddenly didn't sound too
good, and her heart did a well-known flutter of disappoint-
ment.
"This film is one small part of a big package," he
went on. "The producers are going to spend millions
on recreating Paris in the 1880s and to justify the
expenditure they want a whole load of stories from the
same period. Apart from Bel Ami they want two bel
epoque pictures, a series on Diaghilev and the Russian
Ballet's first appearance in Paris, and I think a series
on Dreyfuss. Now you can land yourself principal roles
in all those pictures because that's going to be their
policy---to keep the same names and faces as a kind of
trademark for the whole package.
What do you think of
that, bright-eyes? You'11 be in guaranteed work for
two years! With rising fees and steady publicity too!"
These were the kind of words she'd been waiting all
her life to hear.
Her disappointment died abruptly.
But she wasn't interested in what he was saying. She
was amazed at herself.
She'd come all this way to get
a decent part in one series and here was her agent open-
ing up vistas of at least two years work in major roles
that would probably be seen all over the world!
Yet
she didn't feel a spark of satisfaction.
She only wanted
to see that man again.
His image wouldn't leave her
mind. And she began to feel she'd come to Hollywood
not for films but him. And she'd lost him
A glimpse
and he was gone! Tears came to her eyes and she saw
Everard Hope staring at her with astonishment.
"You all right kid?" he asked her.
He no doubt thought she was overcome with emotion.
Not that, clearly he cared. He finished his glass of wine
wine and looked round the dining room apathetically.
There was little more to talk about.
Just like her, she thought, to loseaall the excite-
ment of living in the Beverley Hills Hotel and be ing
offered star roles just because she same someone in
another car!
That increased the tears and Hope was
really beginning to look impatient.


really beginning to look impatient.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"It must be jet-lag."
And those dozens of roses!
She hadn't even
thanked Hope forthem, and she didn't feel like doing
it. Those roses were like a mockery if you felt like
she did.
All through dinner she kept glancing round to see
if by some mad chance he would walk in. He might have
followed her, seen her entering the hotel.
Luckily
they were dining in the hotel to save her trouble.
And
presumably Everard Hope had calculated that the dinner
would go on the hotel bill, which would go to the produc-
ers.
After coffee they walked through the Polo Lounge
to the terrace for a last drink. He shuffled along at
her side, clearly bored at being with yet another crazy
actress.
Then, sitting in a corner, huddled together, she
Saw four men.
One of them was young and wore a white
suit.
The blue shirt had fleur de lys all over it.
She wanted to run to him.
She made a little cry,
laughed slightly to herself as Everard Hope shot her
a hard glance.
"You really OK?" he asked her.
"Yes! I'm fine, fine!"
She dared not look closer.
Her mouth was dry,
her heart seemed to have leapt into her throat and lungs,
beating so hard she thought she would faint.
Suddenly she was aware of Everard calling out to
the men "See you later!"
So they knew each other! Then she was saved!
The young man hardly looked up. She was aware of him
being older than she for the first time. He was perhaps
thirty-five or thirty-six, at least ten years more than
she.
She Saw him nod to Everard casually, and all of a
sudden they were staring into each other's eyes again,
and those first feelings swept back.
Those eyes were
as dark and steady as the night-sky, she thought.


Next day was busy.
Everard Hope introduced her
to the casting director, a woman of about forty ca led
Jill Rapinsky who wore enormous dark glasses and a pony
tail.
She was a bit frigid in manner but Angela took
to her just the same.
"Do you know Paris well?" Jill asked her.
As she'd only been to Paris once she said, "Well
it's sortfof in my blood."
As if this created a doubt in her mind Jill leaned
forward and said, "This is going to sound screwy but you've
read the book haven't you, I mean I'm sure you have but---?"
"Yes I have" (a sweet smile to remove any suggestion
that she might be offended, which she was).
"And do you think you really fit Clotilde? OK,"
she added with a sudden laugh, "you don't have to answer,
especially with your agent here!
But I'd like to say
this. I saw your TV clips but now I've seen you in the
flesh I don't know why I thought of you for Clotilde!
I've always seen Clotilde" (I bet she's only just read
the book herself, Angela thought) "as fantastically
pretty and sexy but not the dazzling Arabian nights type
like you!"
Everard Hope looked bored, as if to say he was there
to clinch deals and could do without the analysis.
course this was a deliberate front, Angela decided.
"Do you mean you don't want me in the film after all?"
"No of course not! As a matter of fact the minute
I saw your clips I put your name down and told my secretary
to give your London agent a buzz. I didn't even think
about it.
In fact I hardly looked at the clips---"
A slight smile passed across Everard Hope's face
and Angela couldn't understand this.
"You didn't feel to me like Clotilde," Jill went on,
"you didn't behave like her or look like her so I must
have been under a spell!"
"Yeah," Everard said, rising, "I do that to all the
casting agents, how else would I stay in business?"
He went off to another appointment and they stayed
talking.


But Jill didn't mention the film, or any films,
again.
It was the weather, did she have a good trip,
had she been to LA before, was she planning any theatre
work here etc.
Then, when they were leaving each other, out on
the sidewalk, Jill suddenly snapped, "See you at the
studios tomorrow at ten, OK?"
And she went off without a good bye. Angela
stared after her. Jill had long blonde hair down to
the middle of her back, very straight and clean, giving
a totally false picture at the back of what she was in
front.
Angela decided she didn't like her after all.
Everard drove her to the studios next day and
Jamie Somerson the male lead was waiting to meet her
in the canteen.
He was tall and blond and had it not
been for that man of the day before she would have fallen
for him there and then.
They shook hands and he got
her a coffee, with Everard sitting tapping his right foot
impatiently.
Why did he chaperone her if he didn't feel
like it? Jamie seemed a bit embarrassed because no one
knew for certain if she was going to, be in the film or
not.
She was to do a read-through of Clotilde with the
director that evening.
Everything depended on that,
Everard said grimly, looking away from her.
Then Jill came and pilotted her round among the rest
of the caste.
There'd been a read-through of the first
episode the day before, with another girl substituting for
Clotilde.
"And she really looked the part," Jill whispered to
her with a sort of conspiratorial smile she couldn't
understand. Why was everybody so peculiar?
Of course she'd heard funny things about Hollywood.
How they talked a language of their own etc.
She hung about the studios all day, with Everard
coming and going, and the other actors looking busy,
books in hand.
She felt irritated and out of it,
and wanted to cry again.
But among other actresees
you couldn't really cry, it was too ordinary, everyone
did it. Then in the late afternoon the director, a
man called Max Pennance, turned up and to her surprise


shook hands with her before anybody else.
Perhaps it
was because she was a foreigner.
Keeping her at his side he went to various of the
studios looking at the stages and talking to the costume
mistress. and constantly looking at his watch.
He was
quite a young man but already bald, with an auburn moust-
ache yellowed with nicotine. The best thing about him
was his eyes which suddenly came to life in a rather glum
creased face the moment he smiled.. When he'd finished -
his consultations he hurried her out to the car park and
they drove to La Mirada where there was, he said, a party
going on. They could read through in a bedroom upstairs.
It was a low-lying house at the end of a curling drive-
way, with wide airy rooms and a big gravel forecourt in
front where at least a dozen cars were parked. The
windows were open upstairs and down, behind gauze frames.
There seemed to be people in every room.
She followed him upstairs, past groups of gues ts
he didn't even nod to, though they most of them gave him
a respectful 'Good evening Max' or at least a glance.
She assumed from this that theywwere all actors.
He ushered her into a bedroom and locked the door.
Then he gave her the book and said sharply (why was every-
one so rude with her the moment business started?),
"Page thirty, first speech, Clotilde."
Between phonecalls and people tapping on the door
with messages for him, which théy had to relay through
the locked door, she got through the part without a hitch.
He sat there rubbing his eyes and making them bloodshot,
He had quite a tan, like most people here, and,nice lips,
but work (or coke, or horse?) had worked havoc on that
fàce.
"Did you know the lines already?" he asked her
after a pause of what seemed to her at least half an
hour.
"No, I've never seen the part before."
"Well well!" he said, looking at her with respect
for the first time. "I think we're in business. Have


you met Jamie?"
"I think you two ought to discuss your scenes
together---I encourage that kind of thing among actors.
What say he takes you to dinner tomorrow evening?"
"I'll tie his hands behind his back so you won't
get raped."
"Is that his habit?"
"Ever si ince he started getting lead roles, yes.
You see they think it's expected of them."
Then he dialled Jamie Somerson's agent and a date
was fixed for the following evening at Chasen's.
"We'11 be paying So eat as much as you like," Max
told her with a wink.
"What say we go downstairs and
pick at the buffet?"
Downstairs there was no music, just subdued talk.
Some guests were drinking tea or coffee.
Passing the kitchen, a Vast low-ceilinged room with
a long refectory table, she Saw three of the men who'd
been sitting with her man the evening before.
Or could
it be an illusion? She almost stumbled, keeping close
to Max.
But he wasn't there.
Her heart was beating
fast again, so much as almost to take her breath away.
Max piled a plate high with ham and salad for her,
then Wa lked away to talk to someone else. The last
thing she wanted to do was eat, so she put the plate
behind a pot of flowers and went back to the kitchen.
Yes, she was sure those were the men. But certainly
he wasn't there.
She wandered through the lounge again
and out to the gravel forecourt, wondering if she might
see his car.
Suppose he was in one of the upstairs
rooms? She was flushed and felt sweat under her arm-
pits.
The sun was just dying and a hot damp mist lingered
over the bushes of the garden. Close to the house was
the white open Bentley. She couldn't believe it! He
was here after all!


She walked up to it, stared at the burgundy-red
leather seats and the dark glasses he had obviously
thrown down on the gear-shift tray when leaving the car.
She wanted to pick them up, feel them. But on a second
look she realised they were a woman's.
Her heart did
an extra leap.
Suppose---? It was an eventuality she
hadn't thought of---his having another woman, perhaps
even a wife! And suppose his feelings for her weren't
the same as hers for him, just sexual interest? She was
in a panic all of a sudden.
She forced herself to go back in the house. Max
came across to her and said, "Sorry about that."
She went to the lo0 and looked all over the house
but he was nowhere.
The three men were still sitting
in the kitchen, one of them hugging a briefcase like a
baby, swaying to and fro as he talked, his eyes peering
at the table with layers of plump skin all round them.
They took no notice of other guests, lost in a thick
atmosphere of smoke and worry.
When she left with Max she saw a tall woman in a
bright yellow dress going towards the Bentley. Angela
couldn't tell how old or pretty she was. She didn't
even notice the colour of her hair. The woman got in
the Bentley, put on the dark glasses and started the
engine. As she reversed Angela turned her head away
abruptly So as not to be seen. So he was married!
Married!
That evening she had a meal brought to her rooms
on a tray and sat among the roses looking outside at the
dusk.
Before it was quite dark she strolled downstairs,
taking care to wear her skin-tight dress again, and looked
for him again.
She walked through the Polo Lounge and
on to the terrace.
But he was nowhere. A thick heat
mist now lay over the city and the swimming pool was full
of people.
Just as she got back to her room the phone rang and
she rushed to it.
It was Everard.
"You got the part," he said.
"Rehearsals start


next Monday but you'll have read-throughs before then.
You're dining with Jamie Somerson tomorrow?"
"That's right."
He rang off with a very offhand "Good night". It
was as if he knew she didn't give a damn about the film.
She lay down on the bed, her face on the pillows,
in a terrible mood of friendless isolation.
She began
thinking of the reps she'd played in, the affairs she'd
had, anything to suggest she belonged to someone.
She must have fallen asleep because the phone-beep
only a few inches from her ear sounded deafening.
She
jumped into a sitting position, thinking it was her
psychodelic alarm clock in London.
It stopped ringing just as her hand found the
receiver.
She slumped back and let herself sleep some
more. It was close on midnight when she woke again.
She undressed and sat in front of the dressing table
sleepily brushing her hair.
Then she creamed her face
and dried it with a towel she always carried on tour
just for that purpose.
The silence outside amazed her.
It must be due to the heavy mist. And the heat might
have sent people to bed earlier.
She didn't want to be
here.
She felt nausea in the area of the solar plexus
She tried to think of her motheraas a comfort but no image
would come. Again she S. lumped back on the bed and fell
at once into a dead sleep.
Next morning she had a long breakfast in bed and
fingered through the Bel Ami script, framing all her
speeches in red, which was her habit.
At about ten one of the hall-boys came up with a
note.
It was addressed simply to Ms Angela Bourne in
quite elegant handwriting, rather fastidious, controlled.
She thought it might be from Everard.
It said, 'I phoned you last night but you weren't in.
I'11 call again just before lunch and we might have a drink
together.
Dominic Latouche.'
Her first thought was, 'What an unreal name.
She
looked at it again and again.
Could it be him? She found


herself quite calm.
Or was it an actor whom she'd
forgotten, one of those who'd shaken hands with her on
her first visit to the studios and perhaps, in the boring
way actors have, fallen in love with her (for the duration
of the shooting)? She watched the note trembling slightly
in her hand.
She knew this was a great turning point in
her life, whether or not the note was from him. She felt
that such unexpected events as the ones she'd been through
in the last forty-eight hours didn't happen without some
momentous explanation.
She thought in a giddy surge of
happiness, 'My man has written me his first note!'
She dressed carefully, choosing another skin-tight
dress but this one in dashing primary colours that would
echo turquoise ear-rings. She had a special feeling for
turquoise, perhaps because they reminded her of the Nile
and Cleo stepping from her barge.
She put hardly any make-up on, apart from the eyes, 9
which really had to sparkle.
Just a dab of red on her
cheeks which no one could see, for a healthy glow. No
perfume either.
She ran her fingers through her hair
after brushing it, to give a careless effect.
If the
writer of the note turned out to be some mildewy actor
after all she would throw herself in the swimming pool
and not come up again.
She liked her hair. Like Cleo's it was 'black as
a night without stars'.
She was excited, kept knocking
things over on the dressing table like she did on a first
night.
But there was a certain coolness about her too.
She noticed she didn't make her usual last-minute search
for the right outfit.
No piles of dresses on the bed,
no shoes all over the floor to stumble over when she
rushed out of the room twenty minutes late.
At half-past twelve she sat down by the window
and waited.
Warm air drifted in through the air condit-
ioning. At twenty minutes past one she began to conclude
that the origin of the note was mildewy after all.
was like mildew to write such a note and then not turn up.
Then the phone rang. It was the hall porter.
"Mr Latouche is down here for you."


She went downstairs but he wasn't in the engrance
lobby.
She walked through to the bar but he wasn't
there either.
She began to feel less certain of herself,
and her heart beat faster, though not yet perilously.
She spotted him in the Polo Lounge and then her
heart really did seem to get outnof control.
Her legs
hardly carried her along. He was in the same corner as
before. A young couple was with him. Also Everard
Hope. This disappointed her.
Could he be connected
with Everard in work---and stared at her from his open
Bentley to confirm some casting hunch? But those eyes :
Always in the past she'd felt so much in charge in
her relations with men. They were So simple to guide
if you knew the trick of withdrawing from them the moment
they needed you most. She was well aware that she wasn't
really interested in men because one creature in the world
took up all her interest and that was herself, which meant
her career.
Only her closest friends knew how thoroughly
selfish she was, how utterly bored by wha tever didn't con-
cern herself.
Even as a girl of sixteen she'd run her
men with that ace up her sleeve.
But now, with those
eyes on her, steady and remorseless, not fluttering for
a moment but dwelling darkly on her and seeming to travel
along her bllod stream, in the most intimate areas where
perhaps no other man on earth had dreamed to go, she felt
so weak she couldn't utter a hullo when the young couple
were shaking her by the hand.
Everard whispered in her ear, "You made a hit with
Max Pennance, he'sthinking of you as the young Karsavina
in the Diaghilev series, can you do classical ballet?"
She couldn't make any sense out of what he said.
The dark eyes rose from the table. He was getting up!
Little avalanches of desire rushed through her, it was
unbearable, she wanted to throw her arms round him, she
wished with all her heart they were alone together for
this first meeting!
His hand was cool, even cold at the
fingertips.
He held her for a few moments without smiling,
just looking into her eyes as before.


"Oh---!" It was Everard, who wanted to introduce
them to each other.
"That's OK," Latouche said softly but quite sharply,
"we've met. We've known each other a long time."
So he felt the same! She wanted to sing it, he felt
the same!
Everard laughed a little breathlessly, taking it as
a joke,
His voice was exactly as she imagined it would be.
That too seemed to come from her childhood. She'd heard
it before---yes, when in love with a cousin or uncle, in
her first years! It suggested a male richness she'd never
found in a man, especially a man of her age. She hadn't
even looked for it, it was remote from the world.
They were all discussing the Dreyfuss series that was
to be made.
Why had she been asked? It was mostly a
finanical discussion, with Latouche leading it and making
the conclusions. So was he one of the producers? Or
an accountant, a film accountant? Suddenly she wondered
if the roses were from him.
But then she realised they
must have been put in her room long before they saw each
other in the traffic.
Of course he must have asked Everard
afterwards who was she was. While talking to the others
he continued to gaze across the table at her. She thought
perhaps his hands were trembling. Shehhoped so. She
noticed it when he raised a cigarette to his lips. She
began to feel surprisingly relaxed and protected, and
certainly the idea of being friendless was now far from her
mind.
When the drinks were finished and everyone was getting
up he came to her side and said out of earshot to the others,
"Can you make dinner tonight?
I'd like to take you to Ma
Maison."
She nodded at once and didn't see the queer look her
agent gave her (he wasn't out of earshot after all).
"I'1l be here around nine-thirty," Lat touche went on.
"I'm afraid it'1l have to be that late as I shall be down
in San Diego this afternoon."
When he and the young couple had gone Everard took her
to the terrace for another drink.


"I thought you were having dinner with Jamie
Somerson tonight?"
"Oh my God, so I am!"
"I'11 call Dominic and tell him you'11 take a
rain check on Ma Maison. By the way, what the hell
was he on about? Do you two really know each other?"
"Of course we don't!" she said with an attempt to
la ugh.
It gave her a chance to ask some questions.
"Is Mr Latouche an actor?"
"Well," said Everard with his pale sparing smile,
"not all the time but a hell of a lot of it."
She looked puzzled and he went on, "As a matter of
fact Mr Latouche is a money man. He made So much money
he retired at the age of thirty-six, last year."
"You don't like him?"
"Oh I like him. And you'd better like him
because he's half the money in the film you're in."
"That's his work, the film business?"
"Not exactly but he's moving in fast, it gives him
something to do."
And that was that.
Back in her room, gazing at the ceiling, she realised
she didn't care how he was seen by other people or even how
he wasiin himself.
If you loved someone you loved him
and that was that.
She felt so happy she sat gazing out
of the window with the lights out half the night.


For lunch she went downtown and ate sauerkraut
and sausages squeezed up at a marble bar in a deli with
people yelling orders all round her.
When she got back there was asecond note.
said, 'Pennance tells me you're dining with Jamie Somerson
tonight, you'd better cancel that. Dominic.
What arrogance, she was ready to say. But she agreed
with it.
She smiled as she read it and before she knew
what she was doing she pickéd up the phone and called
Everard.
He wasn't in but a secretary gave her Max
Pennance's number, or rather six numbers at which possibly
he might be found. She had no luck, especially as none
of the numbers was either his home or his office. So
she called the agency again and asked for Jill Rapinsky's
number. She then got through to Jill and said breathless-
ly, "I'm supposed to have dinner with Jamie tonight but
I can't make it and I don't know his number."
"I'11 talk to him, 1 Jill said simply.
"You mean you'll be seeing him anyway?"
"I said I'll talk to him," Jill said and put the
phone down without another word.
It didn't make her feel angry. She didn't care.
She took a hot and cold shower and lay on the settee all
afternoon in her dressing gown thinking what to put on
that evening.
She chose black, a divine two-piece, its
hip-clinging jacket cut very low, almost toe the navel,
a real shocker. She wore nothing round her neck, nor
a bra. She re jected ear-rings.
But she put a little


lipstick on. And again no perfume.
It was just turned eight when she ready. She had
an hour to kill.
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door.
Expecting a hall-boy with a message from Everard or perhaps
Jamie Somerson she called out without interest, "Who is it?"
The door opened and he was there.
Taller than she'd
thought, and even slimmer. He really was quite thin,
tense, alert, So concentrated.
Too much so. But it
excited her.
"I didn't go to San Diego." He looked round without
closing the door.
"Nice room they gave you.
Plenty of
roses."
"Please come in.
I'm ready."
He sat on the dressing table stool, still without
closing the door, as if to tell her that no rape scenes
were to be expected.
He tapped his foot, wanting the
preliminaries to be done with.
He was wearing a smart narrow-sleeved dark blue
suit with a white shirt open down to his solar plexus -
It was like an echo of her deep-cut jacket, a sign that
they belonged to each other in a mysterious way, she
thought.
"That's pretty cool," he told her with a smile,
meaning her jacket.
His shirt collar was high and braod-winged, folded
outside his lapels and making the darkness of his neck
and chest almost black in the shadows.
"Funny how we met," he went on.
His gaze dwelled on her.
"I mean in the traffic like that."
"I guessed you were an actress because you were with
Everard.
I called his office that afternoon and asked
one of the girls who the new arrival was. They're giving
you Clotilde?"
"Oh you can do better than that.


"Oh you can do better than that.
Much better."
It was her first visit to Ma Maison. Some people
call this the - rubber-neck restaurant' because you're
always turning round to see what star has come in.
Angela didn't turn round once. They dined in the patio.
A bottle of champage was a already on ice for them and
you could tell the waiters knew him and respected him by
the way they bustled round the table. He knew how to
get loyalty.
Perhaps because, despite the relentness in
his eyes, he had no side, no pretensions. You felt he
could easily have waited at table himself.
Once during
dinner he noticed that her napkin had fallen anddit only
needed the slightest glance from him to send a waiter
round to her to pick it up. A fresh one was laid in her
lap.
Really it was just what she hated in a restaurant,
being fussed round like that. Also it didn't go with
the raucous noise coming from the other tables. She
felt he'd sort of organised it, this formality, almost to
the point of rehearsing the waiters. And he was too well
dressed.
He was so carelessly elegant, so entirely with
it in every respect, he stood out a mile. The women at te
him up with their eyes. She could have killed him (
The gold wristband was just visible below
his gleaming shirt-cuff. And there was the glitter of
his wristwatch.
His jacket cuffs were turned back one
button, as on the previous day.
His hair was carefully
ruffled as before.
He must have gone to the hairdresser
to get it ruffled so expertly.
His tan was so natural
and unforced that it looked painted on. But every cell
in her body said yes to him. She wanted to hug. him.
She even started to like the vulgar wristband.
They
touched glasses several times.
"You told Everard we'd never me t,' 1 he said.
"Just after I told him we had."


"But we haven't met!"
"That's where you're wrong. Don't go telling people
we've never met before because we have! Do you know wha t
I mean or not?"
She shook her head and he gave her an understanding
pat on her hand.
After they went to his place two blocks down from the
Beverley Hills hotel.
Music was coming from a hi-fi when
they walked in, and lights were set low in every room.
The apartment was as tensely casual as he was. Music
followed them everywhere. At a guess, Haydn.
The floor
was expensively marbled in the jounge, with rugs and
capets flung everywhere to prevent a chill effect.
was all like his gold wrist-band, ostentatious without
being arrogant. And there was a feeling of safety and
warmth, but how the furnishings achieved that it was im-
possible to see. There were book-shelves in the lounge,
in fact a whole wall of them, but the books didn't look
read or even real.
And the armchairs had a way of re-
adjusting themselves after you sat in them so that they
looked as if they'd just come from the shop.
She wanted
to laugh at it all-- - -the canned music, the portuguese
marble with its subtle veins of red quarrelling with the
vermilion and purples of the carpets, the sunken bath in
the screamingly green bathroom. But it was like home for
her.
They drank brandy in the lounge, half lying in armchairs
armchairs. She began explaining why she preferred theatre
work to films.
He cut her short with "You needn't explain anything
about yourself. I know it already. That preference
for the stage was clearly marked in childhood---the way
you used to dress up, remember?"
She stared at himo
"Have you seen my French books? ?" he asked her, jumping
He had several hundred paper-bound French editions,
including most of the works of Guy de Maupassant.
Most
of them were uncut. As they stood looking at the shelves
she could feel him close to her, their sleeves touching.


"Do you read a lot of French?" she asked him.
"I don't read any French."
"Then what are you doing with all these books?"
He shrugged.
"Nostalgia. My parents are French
so I rejected it, you know how kids are, I mean the
language, I refused to learn it because they spoke it
at table. And now I regret that. So I do what any
millionaire does, buy the outside of what I can never
have inside."
"Is that why you work in films?"
"Partly.
I've acted all my life to make money,
so acting fascinates me."
"So your parents were French?" she murmured.
He turned and looked at her fully. "So you know
they're both dead?"
"No I didn't know."
"Yes you did. You did know."
He filled her glass a second time, and returned to
his place on the other side of the room. They were both
sleepy. Suddenly he got up and said, "You'd better have
an early night. You might have a call early tomorrow."
He walked her back to the hotel and kissed her hand.
He was right. A call from Everard around eight
o'clock woke her.
"Get your arse over to CBS Television City for a
read-through Angela."
She got angry. "Why does everybody speak to me
like that?"
"The schedule's been speeded up" was his answer.
"You'1l have to find yourself a taxi."
He too rang off without saying good bye.
Humbled by the call she drank her cof fee on the
terrace and again fingered through her speeches, saying
the words over to herself.
It was a superb day. The


trees were full of warm yellow light and blinding rays
darted up from the swimming pool.
Later she walked down Sunset Boulevard and then
Fairfax.
She was ten minutes late because she couldn't find
the right studio' but luckily everybody was still standing
around looking lost.
When Max Pennance came in he didn't
even say hullo.
They all went to a small sound studio
and sat round a table with a mike in the middle.
Jamie Somerson greeted her with his usual "Hi!"
The actress playing the lead, Sonya Steele, couldn't
have been nicer.
She'd played in London once with the
RSC and kept asking her questions about West End theatre
these days. As Angela was always playing in rep and
hardly went to a West End theatre she wasn't very inter-
esting in her replies. Sonya had a rather flatly pretty
face, smooth and noncommital, but the moment she smiled,
as with Max Pennance, the sun came out.
You could see
her intelligence then. It couldn't have been better for
the part of Madeleine.
The other actor present was a pale bearded man
who fitted the part of Madeleine's consumptive husband
so well hat Angela knew who he was without asking.
He was a bit offhand with her, concentrating on his book.
During the read-through the others startediacting a
bit instead of just mubling through the text in the usual
way of first read-throughs.
So Angela followed suit.
She played one of her scenes coquettishly and suddenly
Max Pennance slammed his script down on his knees.
"We'd better establish right away that Clotilde
isn'ta slut," he said. So he was deeply offended by
her having cancelled the dinner date with Jamie!
"She belongs to the upper middle class no less than
Madeleine and perhaps more so."
He didn't look at her while speaking.
At one o'clock he looked at his watch and said,
"OK, that's enough for today.
There's a call tomorrow,
same place, Same time."
Then he was gone.
She went straight up to Jamie.
"Listen I'm really sorry about last night," she


She went straight up to Jamie.
"Listen I'm really sorry about last night," she
said.
"It was just that-- 1
"You don't have to apologise Angela!" He laughed.
He put his arm round her shoulder and walked her to
the canteen. "Still, you missed a free meal at Chasen's.
So did I."
"Is that what Max was annoyed about underneath?"
"As a matter of fact he didn't mind you standing me
up at all, since he doesn't like me all that much. What
he didn't like was who you stood me up for!"
He clearly wanted to go on talking but Angela turned
away. The bearded actor joined them for coffee and
proved to be really nice. He talked quietly, biting
the hairs on his lower lip or sucking his pipe.
He told her, "You don't have to worry about Max
Pennance. On one film he told me to fuck off the set
and twenty minutes later he was saying where the hell's
Nick, why isn't he here?"
She hurried back to the hotel in case there was a
note for her.
But there was nothing.
And the phone WW
was silent all day. That evening she tried to work on
the script but it was no good. She kept thinking of
those eyes.
Everard hadn't phoned all day. This
worried her.
She went to bed early but couldn't sleep. She
tossed and turned, then at about two o'clock she fell
into a light troubled doze.
At three or so there was a phone call. It was from
the desk downstairs.
"It's Mr Latouche ma'am."
"Please send him up."
"Thank you ma'am."
She went through to the lounge and unlocked the
door, then left it ajar and returned' to her bed.
She
felt that this was how he wanted it.
A few minutes later she heard him say from the
lounge, "It's me."


She hadn't put any lights. She could see him
dimly at the door of her bedroom. There wasn't a sound
from the rest of the hotel.
It was hot.
The earlier
breeze from the sea had. dropped.
He Sat on the edge of the bed and the moment he did
so she felt an extraordinary relief go through her body,
as if she'd never really relaxed before in her life.
"You OK?" he whispered.
He was wearing the white suit again with a blue or
perhaps black shirt.
She felt a wave of jealousy at
the thought that he might have been with other women that
evening but it disappeared at once.
"Give me your hand," he said.
She held out her right hand and they clasped each
other. She wondered if he would raise it to his lips
and kiss it. But instead he leaned down and kissed her
on the lips. That too was like the first kiss she'd
ever had.
His lips were hers, they belonged to her!
Their mouths sank into each ot er as if all their lives
they'd been yearning for nothing else, and no one else's
mouth would fit. She found her arms going round his neck
in the most natural and unpremeditated movement she'd
ever made. They began kissing urgently.
And everything
they did seemed ready for them, agreed beforehand, not
really conscious. He kissed her everywhere on the face,
and on her neck and shoulders.
When he gently pulled the
bedclothes aside and his body began pressing on hers it
didn't feel, as she expected it to do, a new experience
but one that had started ages ago, and all these years
she'd been waiting for him to come again, but of course
that was absurd, yet it felt like that, they'd found each
other again after a long and bitter separation:
And
how they'd suffered in order to find each other-- --how
many mistaken loves there'd been, unpleasing acts of
sex! She knew his tongue, yes---its taste and texture!
And because of this there was no shyness between them.
It was really like greeting each other, saying hullo with
a joy neither of them had known before. They whispered
things to each other that were hardly words, made delighted
crooning noises.
She was open to him as she'd never


been to any man. They made love this way for perhaps
three hours and in the end were both too tired to climax.
They slept in each other's arms for an hour, by which time
dawn was up. They gazed at each other in the dusky
light, kissing each other again, unable to believe it.
He was whispering something to her.
"You still
don't know who I am."
And suddenly they were making love again and climaxed
almost at once, simultaneously. It seemed that the shudder
of her orgasm would never end.
It made her cry out--
because she'd never had an orgasm before, only something
superficial produced by local excitement. They gasped,
made faint crying noises.
It was like entering a new
life, not So much an experience as a different existence.
He got up slowly andsdressed.
And before he kissed her good bye he said, "I'll set
your alarm for eight."
She was asleep at once and in her light dream she
thought the sea-breeze, which had started up again, was
somehow his good work.
When the alarm went she was alert, dazed with
happiness, not a bit tired.
There was still a smile on
her face from three hours before.
She almost danced down the Boulevard on the way to
the studios.
Then she remembered that the call was for
Universal Studios, not the CBS, and this meant getting to
the other side of Hollywood Freeway.
She found a taxi
just in time and rushed into the entrance lobby at a
minute to nine.
She still had to find the stage where
they were to meet.
She got there out of breath and as
luck would have it Max Pennance was already seated with
the cast. -
The chairs were arranged in a circle this
time. He was looking really grim.
She murmured "Sorry I'm late" and lowered her head
towards the book.
"Actually there's no great hurry," Max said to no
one in particular. "Shooting might be ;ostponed.
Yesterday the schedule was being hurried up, today the
mother-fuckers are talking about postponement."


The read-through went OK until they got to the
scene where Clotilde urges Georges Duroy to take her
to the - low' spots in Montmartre.
Really this Mont-
martre scene was her shopwindow.
When they were half way through it Pennance stopped
her. "Listen, I think I'm going to cut that scene.
It doesn't add anything to the story."
She looked up.
"So let's go on to where Georges snubs the whore
at the Folies Bergeres," he added.
"You're going to cut the whole scene' ?" she asked
him quietly.
"Well didn't you hear?"
"What, just like that? - It's my most important
scene e!"
"But it's not the most important scene for me
Angela, don't you see that?"
"Is this because I was late?"
"It's because I'm cutting the scene Angela, now do
you mind if we push on?"
Suddenly she was on her feet, her cheeks flushed and
a fierce glitter in her eyes. She was quivering all over,
half way to tears.
She'd never felt quite like this
before, beyond all control. A moment later she found
herself throwing her script across the room. Her right
hand just shot out and it went straight for Pennance,
hit his cup of coffee and sent it splashing all over his
shirt and trousers.
"I haven't even got a contract yet!" she screamed
and ran out of the studio.
Outside, she waited for someone to come after her.
But no one did. She was in another sound studio.
And she could hear their voices next door. Her anger
was quite gone. Max Pennance was saying with an easy
laugh, "She dines with Mr Hustler and doesn't have a
contract yet! Can you beat that?"
No, she wasn't going back. She'd left her bag
on the table but didn't care. She dried her eyes and
made up carefully.
Then she left the building---with
that name 'Mr Hustler' ringing in her ears.
She walked to Fairfax Boulevard, meaning to return


She walked to Fairfax Boulevard, meaning to return
to the hotel.
But letting off steam seemed to have
given her an appetite, So she began strolling down
towards Little Tokyo. There on First Street she found
a restaurant and took an early' lunch of tempura and three
cups of hot saki.
She was ravenous. The heat was
gathering and when she'd finished she weaved her way
through the crowd on Olvera Street, gazing at the
Mexican candles and handicraft.
The saki made her feel sleepy and she decided to
take a taxi back. The porter called her over.
There
was a message. *waiting on the Loggia, Dominic.'
She hurried out and found him sitting in front of a tall
fruit fizz sucking at the straw.
"I walked out of the read-through, " she said at once
like a child.
"He cut a whole scene of mine, it was
pure spite!"
He laughed and pulled her towards him. She felt
the gold wristband touch her hip.
"You having one of these?" he asked her, pulling
at his straw while he drew her on to his knee.
"Who's Mr Hustler?" she asked him.
"Max Pennance
said I'd been dining with Mr Hustler last night."
"That's me. As if you didn't know! And he's
damn right.
I am a hustler!
And he's going to know
just how much of a one I am too!
The son of a bitch!
By the word your agent wants a word with you."
"Can I have a black coffee?"
He called a waiter over while she sat down.
"How did you know I'd come back at this hour?"
she asked him.
"You left a note."
"Everard called me. He said you'd just walked
out of the read-through and would I cool you off. So
here am I urging you to fight even harder."
Later they went up to her room and forgot about
Everard Hope.


Later that evening, after a snack at Schwabs on
Sunset Strip, he took her to some night spots.
First
they tried the Roxy Theater but she wanted nostalgia
music so they went on to F. Scott's where Roy Fox
favourites were on the bill.
They sat at a corner
table with a candle between them.
She was in a daze.
Life had become much like a dress rehearsal, all excite-
ment, rush, nerves, alarm, with uncertainty everywhere,
about herself, her career. Sometimes when she looked
into his eyes she went giddy.
It wasn't really one
face she saw but endless faces each one of which had a
different exciting mystery for her, sp captivating and
yet SO impossible to capture that she wanted to whisper
a question athhim, 'Who are you? where did you come
from?' It was like seeing all the people she'd loved
as a child and somehow forgotten. And the more she got
to know him, with every hour that passed, he seemed
stranger to her rather than the reverse, his touch
became unbearably hypnotic.
He told her, "I'm going to give you a set of keys
to my apartment so you can come when you like."
She dug him playfully, "Suppose I find you with
another girl?"
"I'm never going to sleep with another girl as
long as I live," he said without the trace of a smile.
He drove her back to the hotel at about three in


the morning.
She lay in bed thinking about him.
He said so little, much less than any man she'd known.
But what he said seemed SO pondered, even when it was
quite unimportant.
She'd always insisted on talent in
her men-- -she loved brilliant talkers, flamboyant people,
personalities. He had the personality, that almost.
terrible magnetism.
And sometimes his closeness made
her shudder, not only with physical excitement but a
sort of foreboding she couldn't understand.
They knew
almost nothing about each other, hardly spoke really,
they'd slept together no more than twice, and yet they
were So close they needed no conversation, it was a
constant thrill just being together, every moment was
crammed with interest even when it was just ordering
a meal or looking in a shop window. And it would have
been the same if they hadn't touched each other.
How
could she explain such a thing to her friends---to her
mother? even to herself? Her old life seemed so remote.
And her new one a total unknown, a chasm stretching in
front of her that might be full of happiness and rich
events or else---
She didn't want to think about the
future.
But he did.
Perhaps because he seemed to see it
So clearly.
She thought about his remark, "I'm never
going to sleep with another girl." It had been so
flat, so final and decided, delivered in a quiet
monotone, his eyes slightly narrowed as he took a
cigarette and lit it at the candle.
Everything he said was definite like that. He'd
spoken as if they'd already decided to. remain together
for life, married or otherwise. And for her too it
seemed a foregone conclusion. Now how could that
happen? She couldn't bear the thought of touching
another man. Not just this, but she felt she'd never
been with a man before.
He was, literally, the only
man in her life. And perhaps she'd had a vague inkling


of that always, since a child. And So he'd been
right to say what he did.
His arrogance (because it
always felt like male arrogance at first) fitted the
truth.
The fact that he wasn't brilliant and that
nothing-he said was memorable or even, sometimes, intell-
igent, made no difference at all. She felt she was
learning at last what love was: values entered it hardly
at all.
The thought of being completely faithful to a man
had always filled her with nausea, and that sense of
suffocation.
'I've got to be free!' she'd always told
herself, and her mother had echoed this (having indoctr-
inated it since childhood)---"Angela must have her free-
dom and her men won't realise that!"
For the past three years she'd been running away
from affairs as fast as she provoked them (out of vanity).
In that time she'd become more and more attractive, she
could te 11 that from the reactions. And what made her
respond to men every time was that she wanted a relation-
ship, wanted to share her worries and pleasures with
someone, she really did.
But all this heavy love-stuff
men went in for after about a week brought on the nausea
and she had to run away just when they thought things
werfe going fine. And the awful thing was that she
seemed to make men think about marriage the moment she
touched them.
One man said that her breasts were 'a
wife's. - breasts, they belong to one man'.
Yes indeed!
She had a 'steady' right now, a young actor called
Louis.
She'd tolerated that because he was playing up
in Edinburgh and she in London. So they'd managed maybe
one weekend in two months together.
Yet she adored
him, had yearned for the fun of being with him and
talking theatre with him all through the night. He
wasn't old enough for her.
She knew she needed an
older man to ride over her moods and not compete with
her like somebody her own age. But Louis was OK.
A marvellous actor, good looking, considerate, tense
and thoughtful as she liked a man to be. But she'd


always let him know that she needed her full energies
for her career. What nonsense that was.. But with
him and all the other men it had been true. The real
truth had been that she couldn't handle love, she needed
the attention and company that went with it but the thing
itself made her shudder. It was like sharing a tiny
supply of airbwith someone in a fetid, shuttered, squalid
room!
That was where an older man came in. He didn't
need you SO badly.
In fact, herrideal was a man who
didn't need her at all. Was that what she felt about
Dominic? Was he so strong, so collected and sure of
himself that even though he loved her like no one else
on earth he could still do without her if he had to?
Was it the air of relentlessness she loved most?
A11 too often she'd opted for casual sex with some-
body nice rather than the love-stuff.
But nearly always
that had led to trouble too, as if she was destined to
provoke long-term affiliations. And then the only sex
she had really enjoyed had been when she'd been able
to abandon herself to someone. Abandon was essential
for her. Surrender, complete surrender, was what gave
her true orgasm.
And that had happened twice, both
times with older man already married. Neither had
suffocated her with' love-avowals. She'd always trl hought
her ideal affair would be with a celebrity, someone in a
position to desert her at any time, and under constant
temptation to doso, with the result that she had to work
hard to keep him.
And then she fell in love so slowly.
She needed to
go through so many experiences with a man before she even
gave him her attention, or felt safe enough with him to
reveal how utterly self-centred she was.
And all that was finished now. She'd fallen in love
in two seconds flat. As for love-avowals, she could hear
them from his lips a thousand times a day. No nausea,
no suffocation. She would share the ugliest, most fetid
room in the world with him. As for freedom and career
she felt she'd found both in him. She'd never been so
free in all her life and, whether it was connected with


him or not, her career was now rolling.
That evening he'd thrown her his apartment keys,
across the table. They slid to a halt just in front of
her hand.
She would never have taken that from another
man. As it was she slipped them into her bag without a
word.
She began to think, had her nausea been due to a
simple reaction of distaste towards any man but he?
Had she known him long ago in her cells, so that the
cells had reacted negatively towards the other men,
however attractive? For in truth she'd felt reserves
about all the men she'd known, including the two older
ones to whom she'd (so she'd thought) surrendered her-
self. Had she been destined long ago, even at birth,
to meet him and stay with him and sacrifice everything
for him? In less than two days her past had disappeared
down a black hole.
The young woman who had boarded a
Los Angeles bound plane had never arrived.
She didn't
know who she was any more!
Only, she was in ecstasy. She lay there in the
warmth, letting the dank night-air from the window invade
the air : conditioning, while she gazed at the ceiling
where blurred lights played and listened to the swish of
traffic on the highway.
A11 she felt, really, was him.
He was in the shadows : . of the room, in her sweet tiredness,
in the scent of the roses that drifted to her now and then.
Her body had received and kept the imprint of his touches.
They'd stayed like constant electricity, all over her.
She needed him So badly. How had she lived all these
years? Such starvation!
Such loneliness!
She was
relaxed now, for the first time in her life. She felt
so beautiful.
Her limbs were different. She was so
happy to be alive.
Everything was such a nice experience e-
even - losing her temper and throwing coffee over her
director. No headaches, no fatigue, no little shames
or worries haunting the mind. She tried to tell herself
that she'd only fallen in love like millions of others
but. it wasn't true: she'd come back to a man she'd


always known, and who'd been inside her ali her life.
It was like twins meeting for the first time very late.
That was what it felt like. She cried a little in the
darkness---with gratitude. And then she slept.
An hour later her phone rang. Itwas her London
agent, Barbara Gleeson.
"What's going on Angela?" she asked. "You walked
out of a readthrough?"
"I did, yes. He cut my best scene. It was pure
spite!"
"Everard's been phoning you all day, he thought you'd
flown back to England.
He says you're out half the night."
"That's ridiculous Barbara!"
"Well I hope you can ride this one, Angela because
you'11 never get another chance like it. I mean there
are years of work here---"
"I know but I can't work with a director who hates
my guts."
They left it at that.
Barbara Gleeson at once callèd Everard Hope despite
the hour (it was noon in London). He happened to be up,
wa tching a William Powell-Myrna Loy movie on an all-night
channel as his stomach was giving him trouble.
Barbara
urged him to heal the rift.
He didn't explain that the
rift was out of his hands, and not entirely of Angela's
or even Max Pennance's making.
Then he came out with it, "Listen Barbara she S having
it off with one of the producers."
"Oh Jesus Christ!"
"The bastard can lay his hands on more money than
two oil tycoons SO we're all shit scared to get rough
with her."
"Then why did Pennance cut the scene?"
"Because he's a dumb son of a bitch.
He'll be out
of work for the next millenium."


She was up early because she sensed it was going
to be a heavy day. Also she was bursting with energy
despite the few hours of sleep.
There was a bit of a fog between the trees while
the sun was gathering strength. She was ravenously
hungry and after a.cold shower ordered ham and eggs in
her room.
At eight there was a call from the desk saying
Everard Hope was downstairs and could he come up. She
said yes right away.
She let a second or two go by after his gentle
tap on the door.
She was sitting by the window in her
dressing gown, her breakfast on a coffee table at her
side, and she wasn't going to show him more than minimal
courtesy.
At least this was what she intended. But the moment
she saw him at the door she jumped up with "How are you
Everard? Come in and take a seat!
Would you like
some coffee?"
"Coffee'd be great," he said, sliding into a seat
with an. exhausted sigh.
"I heard from your agent int
the middle of the night."
She laughed and he smiled wanly. She noticed he
had a contract in his hand. She went over to the phone
and ordered a breakfast for him.
"I didn't think you'd do this to me Angela. I had
Pennance screaming down the line at me yesterday that you
hadn't been signed up yet and why the hell not.
The
contract's been sitting on my desk for two whole days,
signed and witnessed. So really and truly you were
signed up.
You don't think I'd let an hour go by
without clinching a deal once it was ready do you?"
He paused, looking round the room, obviously saying
less than he wanted to, and bei ing more polite than he
felt.
He gave her a straight look and went on, "I mean,
OK you can walk out of a rehearsal but don't for Christ
sake make your agent out to be a fraud!"
She laughed again and blew him a kiss (her own
confidence took her by surprise): "Darling I know you're


She laughed again and blew him a kiss (her own
confidence took her by surprise):
"Darling I know you're
the most important agent in Hollywood but I was just
blinding off! Nothing to do with you at all!"
"I accept the lie," he said. "The schedule's
been changed again on Bel Ami. We might not start
shooting for a couple of months."
"A couple of months?" She tried to look concerned
but inside she was bulbbling over with joy at the thought
of two months devoted to Dominic.
"Oh they'1l have you on a retainer, it's down there
in the contract."
"I wasn't thinking of that," she said naughtily.
"It's the producers.: decision," Everard said in his
flat way. "There are four producers and they come to
four different decisions every day."
"And what's the real reason?"
"Listen, I've fixed up for you and Max Pennance to
meet alone some place. He'11 be at Chasen's at one today.
Can you make it? He can explain things better than me."
"Is that your answer to my question?"
"But why can't you explain?"
"I'd rather he did, that's all."
"OK," she said, feeling a twinge of nervousness,
like a momentary return to the pre-Dominic world.
"Maybe all this is my fault Angela," Everard went
on. "I should have told you when Impicked you up at the
airport that the producers wanted to give you the star
treatment and this aroused a lot of resentment on the set.
I mean this is a television series, you're great but i
nobody knows your name and here you are with a suite
at the Beverley Hills and more roses than Callas ever
Silence soaked into the room.
"What are you trying to say?" she asked him, her
confidence gone, preparing for a shock.
"Didn't you
order these roses?"


"Me? I only supply flowers at funerals, baby.
My clients know that."
"So who was it?"
"The s'ame guy who booked you in at the Beverley
Hills Hotel!"
"And who was that?"
"Why Dominic Latouche of course! Didn't you
realise that? Oh come on Angela!"
"But he didn't know me! He didn't even know my
name before I arrived! He saw me in the car for the
first time, your car!"
"Angela, I hate to say this but at the same time
I don't want you to screw up the possibility of a great
areer.
Latouche saw the TV clips your agent sent over
months ago. And he wanted you over here at any price!"
She felt so cold her teeth almost chattered.
"Was that why Inwas offered the interview?" she
asked him.
"That's right."
"Because he took a fancy to me?"
"Put it any way you like Angela.
You see, the
director and the casting agent and the actors feel you've
been imposed on them.
And it just happens you're really
good, so they don't blame you too much, now they've seen
you. It'sa crazy situation!"
She jumped up to hide her tears.
She could hear
that first conversation with Jill Rapinsky, how funny it
had been, with Jill saying snide things and Everard
smiling.
Everard craned round to look at her.
"Are you crying?" he said.
"If you are don't.
Fight instead.
Here's what you do.
You stick at it.
Stick at the work and in the end they'11 crumble.
And
with Hollywood's newest whizz kid behind you they've
got to crumble anyway."
She couldn't stop the tears.
"I'm going to leave!
I'm going back to England!"
He got up, though breakfast hadn't arrived. He
didn't like what he called 'off-stage scenes'. At the
door


door he told her, "The contract's on the table baby.
As for the rest, you make up your own mind.
Either
fight or stand there crying."
Then he was gone.
The tears dried almost at once. At first she wanted
to smash something but then Everard's breakfast came
through the door. The waiter looked round curiously
for the other guest, knowing she was alone in the suite.
He noticed the tears and also beat a quick retreat.
Fuck men! she wanted to scream.
Then a great sadness took hold of her. She sank
down in the chair by the window and simply stared before
her. All those thoughts she'd had in the night!
And
the joy! The sense of his touch still being on her
body!
The touch was still there but the electricity
had turned into something harmful, an ache.
How could
he be so cheap? How could he lie to the only woman
he'd ever really loved?
Then the love wassallie! That
thouht was too much for her and she rushed to the bed
and putting her head in the pillows cried desperately,
almost howling, and it wasn't actress's crying this time.
She somehow got herself together for the lunch.
On the way to Chasen's she stopped to phone Dominic to
break it all off but he wasn't at home. She had some
idea that after a few hard words with him she would
leave for the airport.
But when what was she doing
going to Chasen's? She felt So confused.
She wanted
to go on crying but also fight.
But she didn't know
how she should fight, or what good could come of it if
the love with Dominic was ruined.
Really the only person
she wanted to fight was hé It. wasn't exactly anger
she felt. Deep down was a sense of horror at having
been mocked ---yes---in that most sensitive of places,
between the legs.
When was she going to learn? Again and again she'd
gone through ecstasies and hopes and then this let-down.
Max Pennance was already at the table and seemed
to see the situation at once.


"I still haven't got those coffee stains out,"
he said, opting for humour.
She didn't seem to hear him but just sat down.
"I hear you all resent me because Dominic Latouche
found my clips attractive."
"Oh, who says that?"
"What about answering my question? I mean I
thought I was being offered an interview because I was
an actress and then it turns out it was because somebody
thought I might be a good lay! I only heard this morn-
ing! I must be one of the simplest people alive!"
"That's not really why we're here Angela. Anyway,
I don't get the impression that Dominic failed to see
your acting abilities,leven on the clips. The fact is
we're all a bit scared of him not just because of the
money he can call up but the influence he can have on
people!"
"Oh I know about that!"
"A11 he has to do with the other producers is look
at them.
You know he's talking about shleving Bel
"I don't give a damn about the film anyway, I'm
going back to England, you get hurt there but not this
He decided not to speak for some time. Then he
said, "Are you prepared to listen to me or do you want
to go on about a side of Dominic Latouche I'm not inter-
ested. I mean you should talk to him about that."
"OK. Yes, I'1l listen."
"They won't find it all that easy to unwind a
series that's already being shot, I mean it'1l cost
almost as much as producing it.
But he's crazy enough
for anything.
There'11 be contracts to pay off, the
hire of the studio space, the advance publicity."
"But why does he want it shelved?"
"I thought you might know about that."
"No I don't. When we're in bed together we talk
about love."
"There's a story going around that he wanted the


Madeleine part for you. He threatened to stop the
film unless you got it but Jill Rapinsky and I refused
to budge. Then he heard I wanted to cut that scene of
yours 'and that clinched it, he cancelled the production."
"So you fucked it all up really, didn't you? Clever
man!" (She'd never talked to a person like that, much less
to a director!)
"Listen if you don't want to go through with this
lunch we can always leave."
"That's a bloody good idea because I've got nothing
to say to you except that you're a kiss of death!"
She grabbed her bag and walked out, realising as she
went that she was wearing an awful dress.
She'd picked
it up at a jumble sale and didn't know why she'd brough
it from England.
Presumably for an occasion like this.
When she got back to the hotel she started packing.
If only he'd ring her or suddenly appear! She kept
fighting back the tears. She called the desk for a
taxi and had her bags taken down.
She took a last look
at the roses. The porter kept.saying to her, "But Miss
Bourne does Mr Latouche know you're checking out?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
She wanted so
Mr Latouche so badly.
She wanted to feel his touch once
again, one last time. What did he matter how he tricked
her or lied to her? She didn't really care!
She only
wanted him.
Only that it seemed to pour doubt on their
love, on the sincerity of his avowals. All that about
never sleeping with another woman again! If you could
lie about one thing you could lie about another!
She felt in her bag for her travellers' cheques and
passport. And she told the taxi-driver, "Airport."
He took the coastal road and without knowing why
she did it, just as they came within sight of the'
airport, she put her hand in her bag and found Dominic's
keys. And her horror at having been defrauded turned
back to anger. She was going to have it out with him!
"Would you turn back please?" she said to the taxi
driver.
"I've forgotten something."


"You want to go back to the hotel lady?"
"No, I want to go to an apartment two blocks
away from it.
I'1l show you where it is."
He nodded blearily and with a racing of tyres took
took a tunnel under the highway and emerged in the
other lane, bound for the city again. It was extreme-
ly. hot and damp, the worst hour of the day.
She found the apartment and got the driver to help
her upstairs with the bags.
There wasn't a sound from
inside apart from the canned music so she assumed he
wasn't there.
She let herself and after the driver
had put the bags down in the hall tipped him generously.
He said, "Well lady it wasn't the airport but it'1l
do huh?"
And shaking his head and chuckling to himself he
walked off. She closed the door.
The canned music
was Vivaldi, played very sugary.. Yes, his bad taste--
how had she been able to stomach that? His vulgarity?
The way money glittered all round him!
There were signs that two people had taken a quick
breakfast in the kitchen.
The curtains in his bedroom
hadn't been drawn.
She stood there absorbing his a tmos-
phere painfully, feeling the old hypnosis.
Then she
walked through to the lounge and there he was fast asleep
in one of the armchairs, sprawled out with his shoes off
and his chin buried in his chest, his mouth slightly
open.
The thought uppermost in her mind, apart from
the relief, the helpless joy of seeing him again, was
that he'd breakfasted with another girl and probably
she was waiting in his bed the previous night!
She
wanted to kick him but also she wanted to throw herself
into his arms and cry for hours and be comforted.
She
stood gazing at him. There was something SO innocent
about him. But then everyone looked innocent in sleep.
It was funny, he still seemed to be gazing at something,
concentrating on it with a slight frown, even in sleep.
And the liné of his chin was so perfect.
His nose
how could that belong to a trickster? And the hands,
slender


slender and elongated, almost too fine for a man's.
She did kick him.
But very, slightly. As a matter
of fact it was just a touch of her right foot on his.
He woke very slowly, not moving. Nothing seemed to alarm
him.
He opened his eyes sleepily and saw her at once.
He smiled but still didn't move. All he did was make a
slight gesture with his right hand that she should come
closer. Of course she didn't go closer.
"You left the hotel?" he asked her.
It was a
drowsy whisper. He smacked his lips slightly.
"They
called me up. Said you'd booked out."
"Yes I booked out."
"Worried about something?"
"Oh yes, I'm worried."
"I'll get you some coffee."
He raised himself into a sitting position very
slowly and stretched out his arms, yawning.
She thought
it was never going to stop.
She wanted to scream at
him 'Get your arse off that chair!' but he was so sleepy,
it seemed cruel.
You can't attack a man when he's so
he 1pless.
He managed to get himself to his feet but apparently
he needed to stretch himself some more, and stood there
yawning hardly two feet from her.
Then he shuffled
out of the room in his socks.
He saw her bags in the hall.
"That's great," he said with another yawn. "I'got
your room ready."
"What do you mean?"
She followed behind him.
"I'm not staying here!"
"What you book out of your hotel for then?"
"I'm going home, that's what I'm going to do!"
He turned to look at her. They were just outside
the kitchen.
"Yes home! ! Where I can trust people!"
"You can't trust me?" he asked her quietly.
"Is this the result of lunch with that crumb


Max Pennance?"
"No it isn't!
It's a result of hearing the truth
from Everard Hope. My agent's was on to me in the
middle of the night!
You've ruined everything for mel !
You let me think the hotel suite and roses and star
treatment was genuine and it was all organised by you
and that's a dirty trick, it's the dirtiest trick a
human being ever played on me!"
"Oh: that," he murmured with a relieved smile.
He walked on into the kitchen looking for the coffee
pot.
"Sure I gave you star treatment. You're a
star!
You always have been!"
She was crying but not a sound was coming out.
The tears were just pouring down her face. He saw
this and went to her at once, pulling her into his
arms. And she let herself go. She put her head on
his shoulders and just cried her fill. He stood there,
silent, holding her without a word.
Through her tears she said, "You saw my clips and
you thought I was attractive and that's why you sent for
me! And I thought it was because of my acting!"
"I sent for you because I recognised you. I knew
who you were. So when they offered you Clotilde I
got mad. And-when he cut your scene I got madder and
cancelled the film. I know about your acting, Angela,
I know about it."
"You've got them all resenting me o Jill Rapinsky
was So snide and mean that first day."
"Jill Rapinsky's snide and mean all the time! She
was born that way."
She removed herself from his arms and sat down at
the table.
She hated herself for having been so weak.
"I'1l put your bags in your room," he said.
"No you won't!"
"I'm not having them stand out there in the hall
for Pauline to trip up on!"
Pauline!
She wanted to smash every cup in the
room. He went down the corridor and she could hear
him behind her shifting the bags.. He made two or
three journeys to a room quite close to the kitchen.


She felt like she'd been betrayed sexually and the man
was going through a lot of explanations which would have
her back in his bed in an hour.
How she hated that.
Hated that yellow-hearted surrender. She loved the
surrender she'd felt before, but not this kind. And
she wasn't going to stand for it.
Why, he'd got the
whole cast resenting her, and the top agent in Hollywood,
and the director. What worse could he do for her
career?
When he returned to the kitchen she said in a
controlled way, "You told me you rang Everard Hope's
office that first day after you'd seen me in his car
and one of the girls gave you my name. That was a
lie because you'd seen me on the clips and you knew who
I was, in fact it was you who organised my trip over and
I dare say Jill Rapinsky hated you for it when she had
about five other girls in mind for the part.
That's
the trouble when amateurs start dabbling in this pro-fes
fession, they make a fuck-up."
He was messing about at the stove fixing the coffee
and only seemed to be half listening.
"Well," he said at last.
"I did lie. That was
wrong of me. But I couldn't let you in to the whole
truth at that stage, could I? Not before our love was
cooked?"
"Well, I mean now you can never get away from me
whereas before you could have."
"Now where the hell's that coffee? Ah, Pauline!
She always puts it in the same wrong place!
He opened one of the cupboards and found it.
"Who's Pauline?"
"She's an old friend of mine.
You'll meet her."
"She slept here the night. Not in your room
though."
"In yours?"
"On the sofa."


He looked at her with a very open smile.
"I love
it when you're jealous. And with the other women there
was always one thing I couldn't stand and that was jeal-
ousy.
But I love the waybyour face sort of screws up
and you look beaten.
You've been beaten a lot huh?
Like me! But this isn't one of the old affairs!
And
you haven't woken up to that yet. Pauline might be able
to help that."
The 'screwed-up' look quickly reappeared on her
face and he laughed.
The doorbell rang. There were two men with their
arms full of roses, bunches and bunches of them.
"I've got the vases ready," Dominic told them,
leading them to the room near the kitchen.
He called out to her, "I didn't want your roses
to die in the hotel. They may as well die here!"
"It isn'tbonly the roses that are dying!" she said.
He laughed, he sounded really tickled.
And a tiny
flash of a: smile went across her face too.
What a silly
remark to make.
When the men had gone he said to her, "Like to go
and have a look?"
"I told you I'm not staying here."
"Because I gave you star treatment?"
"Because you've screwed me up professionally!"
"If I'd given you anything less than star treatment
I'd have hated my own guts, don't you see that?" he said.
"But I'm not a star!
It's very simple. Don't
you see that treating me like one creates a lot of
resentment and nobody can work with that? But you
wouldn't see because you're not a professional."
"Listen Angela, resentment's natural, it happens
wherever somebody's making a dynamic impression.
And
you made a dynamic impression on me, in the clips!
And soon you're going to make a dynamic impression on
them and they know it!
You're going to fight your
way to stardom and they're going to lick your hand
for it!"
"Oh don't talk crap!"


And' - she added, "The only impression I'm making is
as the producer's whore."
He shrugged.
"Is that how I make you feel?"
She knew she'd hurt him badly.
"No," she said.
"You just have to be patient Angela,' " he said very
quietly.
"You want everything the old way, climbing
from a good part to a better one and liking the director
and being liked in return but we're not having that any
more.
You're at the top right now. Do you want to
know something? You get to the top by a. lready feeling
there.
Nobody ever reached the top without feeling
he'd already arrived."
His tenacity, So unruffled and sure of itself,
calmed her. She leaned back in her chair. The anger
had gone. And she didn't even want to cry. She was--
she almost hated herself for it---happy.
There was someone at the door. The lock was being
turned. He didn't even look up.
"Sounds like Pauline," he murmured, spooning the
coffee into the filter.
There were high-heeled steps down the corridor
and a girlish "Hi!" which sent a peculiar excitement
through Angela.
"Is this Angela?" Then a laugh and a tall blonde
came into the kitchen.
In blue this time-- -she must
have been the woman in yellow who'd driven his car off
at La Mirada. She had a high forehead and wide-set,
rather eastern eyes.
When she smiled it sent tiny
creases everywhere in her face, putting twenty years
on her age. It was most odd. At once Angela knew
there was nothing sexual between her and Dominic.
Pauline was laden with food parcels.
She put them
down quickly on the table, smiling at her.
She had
a swift athletic way of moving about.
"Listen Pauline, can you come and handle the
coffee?" I mean
"Here!" At once she was across the room and it
seemed that the percolator was on the stove almos t
before she'd touched it.


"By the way," he said, "this is Angela Bourne."
"I gathered that!" she said with a laugh.
seen her often enough!"
Angela couldn't understand this right away.
But
of course she must have meant the clips. Perhaps she
was Dominic's assistant.
"And this is Pauline Stromheim," he said, turning
to Angela.
"She comes and makes the coffee."
"I also help Dominic with his past," Pauline said
with a smile.
"He's seen you in lots of trips. Long before he
saw you in the projection room."
"Maybe we'd better break it to her slowly,"
Dominic said with a trace of annoyance. "Just at
this moment she'd liked to set fire to my underpants."
"Well she comes here thinking that guys like
Everard Hope and Max Pennance and Jill Rapinsky who's
about the only male of the group recognise who she is
like I do!
She thought the hotel suite and the roses
came from them! I can imagine that!"
Pauline looked down at Angela with a quick look of
concern that sent creases into her face. "You know
Angela he has his own way of doing things."
"That's right," he said, "you tell her because at
this moment she's not trusting anything in trousers."
He laughed. "As a matter of fact she thought you were
my girlfriend and we had the night together!"
Pauline laughed too.
That's a real turn-
off!" She looked at Angela.
"I go for pimply college
types without any bread!" Dominic tried to grow pimples
but it didn't work."
Gradually the two of them restored her humour.
She sat fingering a tablemat thoughtfully.
Dominic sat down close to her and drew her face
round to look at him.
"You won't trust me? Take the risk.
You won't
regret it."


"I'll try," she said.
"And you'11 stay here?"
"But they'1l say I'm your mistress, that's going
to finish me professionally!"
She felt really in a tangle and looked at him as
one might a child who'd made a mess but had to be for-
given.
"Maybe it's up to us to make our relationship, not
"You're not working today?"
"How can I work if there's no film? You've
cancelled it! You've ruined eferything but I've agreed
to trust you and so I will but in my profession you don't
start the cameras rolling and hire studio space for six
months and order . the costumes and hire the actors and. then
decide you aren't going into production.
Not if you want
to stay in the business."
He looked across at Pauline.
"Like I always said,
she's got quite a business head."
"Even a fool could tell you what I've just told you!"
Angela said.
"The fact remains," he said, "I'm not allowing men
like Max Pennance to trim you down to their size. And
if it costs me a billion dollars that holds.
Unlike
Max Pennance I can make money on my head, any time, to
any amount. So I'm not worried. He's worried.
ought to be because I'll keep him out of this film and
every other film made in the USA if he doesn't watch out!"
"That sounds like a vendetta," Angela murmured.
"It is, in a way.
I'm having you at the top,
and noweher else!"


She longed to make love to him but he went out
with Pauline and left her He'd shown her to a large
quiet room fitted with latticed wall cupboards and
a dressing table edged in 'satin.
There was a wide
divan bed and thick floor-length curtains which with
the lace under-curtains diffused a pleasant restful
light. Here the portuguese marble of the floor had
a soothing effect, with thick white wool rugs here and
the e. She felt she'd furnished it herself, it was
quite unlike the rest of the flat. It was just the
kind of room she liked and she could feel her body
relaxing against the soft cushions flung all over the
bed.
Still she resented herself for having given way
to him. What career did she have?
Everard Hope
hadn't phoned, didn't, probably, know where she was.
The film had been dropped.
If her London agent dropped
her it would be a fine kettle of fish, with no one to
turn to even in London.
In a word, her career was now
entirely dependent on him. And perhaps he had wanted
to work it that way. She felt cheated, degraded, but
she'd promised to trust him and would at least go through
the appearance of doing so.
There were roses everywhere.
Some of the reds were fading.
But the tea-coloured ones,
her favourites, were as mellowly bright as ever. And
she felt So comfortable.
She slept for a time, exhausted
by the tension and the little sleep she'd had. She felt
So safe here.
And he was her man. She knew that now.
She was aware of deep gratitude inside.
But just the same


it wasn't good to feel this utter dependence.
That
couldn't do the greatest love any good. But she'd
promised to trust him.
If only he'd had more experience in the business.
But she feared he was using his mesmeric influence on
people to make a howling mess. You just didn't sacrifice
whole films, and the good will behind them, because your
girlfriend hadn't made the lead. He was no doubt a
wizard but to carry that one off he'd have to be God.
Before he left the flat with Pauline the phone had
kept ringing in the lounge.
Often he just disregarded
it. Or he let Pauline take it.
Whatever else he'd
done, he'd managed to make himself the centre of Hollywood
attention. And he seemed to enjoy it immensely. There
was a little glint in his eye.
She had her own phone by the bed, her own number.
She thought she might phone her mother, or her London
agent.
She ought to rouse herself.
But she didn't
feel like it. She dozed off again, woke and went to
the kitchen for more coffee, returned to bed. It felt
like the first real rest she'd had since her arrival.
Her bags were still unpacked. She wanted them to
stay like that as a kind of threat.to him, a hint that
she might leave at any moment.
He'd told her he'd be
back in time to take her to dinner.
She thrilled inside
at the thought that they would be at Chasen's or Ma
Maison that evening and not miles apart, he alone and
she on a plane. Thank God she'd felt those keys in her
bag!
The phone woke her at around six thirty.
It was
Dominic.
"You resting?"
"We're going to have dinner at Le St Germain, which
even I think expensive.
That's for starters. Then
you meet my fellow producers at Schwabs. And then maybe
we go and have a bop together, how about that?"
"You sound as if you still haven't, forgiven for
having pulled down a billion-dollar TV series."


"If you do that you won't get away with it Dominic."
"See you later. We should make a move at around
eight."
She put the phone down and lay wondering how one men
man could wield So much influence.
Was it possible,
in view of the fact that he could wield it, that he might
after all get away with it? She realised how much she
admired him underneath-- --his courage and unswerving
decisiveness.
Compared with him every other man she'd
knownhad. been what he called a crumb.
But suppose it
was a sort of madness---in him the money madness, in her
the love madness? She trusted his strength, yes. But
she didn't trust the world to follow him.
She stretched out, feeling the wideness and softness
of the bed in its shaded corner, and the caressive
quality of -the silk cushions.
She kept thinking of his
face---the eyes that could become so sweet and vulnerable
at times, when you least expected it. And his pale,
firm cheeks-- --pale despite the tan, as if there was
a frail delicacy underneath.
Was that something in the
blood, from. the French past? Was that why they were So
close, because of the French background? She didn't like
it when he looked implacable.
She'd hated that vendetta
talk of his, when he'd attacked Max Pennance. After all,
Max was a man earning his living, and a damned good
director, as far as she could see.
She decided to phone Everard.
He was out of the
office but she realised in a flash, from the flurry of
activity at' the other end of the line, what an important
caller she'd become.
She was told he would contact her
within minutes if she cared to leave her number as they
understood she was no longer at the Beverley Hills Hotel?
She read the number off the phone to them. A few minutes
later a breathless Everard called her from Universal
Studios where (he told her at once) he'd just had coffee
with Jill Rapinsky.
Could Angela meet him in say half an hour? He had


urgent information to convey to her.
Good! she thought.
Dominic won't find me here at
six.
It'll prove (to myself as well) that I'm not his
slave and concubine.
They arranged to meet at Denny's coffee shop on
Vermont Avenue, which was sufficiently downtown for a
chance meeting with Dominic or Pauline to be out of the
question.
She jumped up, feeling a new energy. She
was mistress of her destiny after all!
She quickly got into an afternoon dress and without
making up grabbed her bag from the kitchen table and
dashed downstairs.
She found a taxi right away and
Everard was waiting outside for her looking wanner and
more worried than usual, his eyes narrowed and a slight
sweat on his upper lip.
She felt a spurt of happiness at being in streets
full of people again, and she greeted him like a long-
lost friend.
He took inside right away and they S queezed into
a table for two.
It was very crowded and he had to
shout to be heard.
"First of all the bad news," he said.
"Max
Pennance has been fired and that means the loss of two
years work for him. Sonya Steele his girlfriend is out
of the picture too, for being his girlfriend I suppose."
"But what's going on for God's sake?"
"Just between you and me and the whole of LA
Dominic Latouche'll never forgive Pennance for getting
a cup of coffee thrown over him!"
"So it's all my fault is it?" she said with
determination. "I think it was Max's fault for cutting
my scene!"
"You don't mind me putting the plain facts? Because
if it's Pennance and Sonya Steele today it could be you
tomorrow. Dominic's other name is the Killer by the
"I thought it was the hustler!" she said with a
lai ugh, surprised at her own unconcern about the new title.
"That's to people who don't really know him. To
every lawyer and accountant in town he's the Killer
for the simple reason that he is a Killer.
I mean, he
agrees himself.


for the simple reason that he is a killer.
I mean,
he agrees himself.
Once you get on the wrong side of
Dominic Latouche kid you may as well go throw yourself
off the Mount Wilson Observatory." He added sourly,
"But it's nice to see somebody laugh when his real
name's mentioned!"
"And what about the good news ?" (She could sound
so tough!)
"Well Jamie Somerson's last full-length film just
came out and it looks like he's an international star.
Which means you can't play around with him likeyyou
used to.
If a whole production is being wound down,
and I've never even heard of such a thing before, he'11
want to know why and the money people will support him."
"I can't imagine him doing a thing!"
"That's because you see him as an actor and I'm
telling you he's not that any more, he's a kind of
financial organisation.
His name means big money. "
"Now suppose he felt like reviving Bel Ami under
another producer, Angela, with you as his lead.
Wha t
would you feel about that? It's a question of divided
loyalties isn't it? And remember what I said about
offending the Killer."
The thought passed through her mind that she could
handle the killer very well. She felt awfully calm.
And as for the sense of total dependence she'd had
before, that was gone.
"I'd say yes. I like Jamie.
I think I could
work with him."
He gazed at her with a certain astonishment.
"Well," he said, "you certainly have balls. As a
matter of fact, it was Jill Rapinsky's idea.
Ask
Angela, she said, you'11 be surprised, that girl's got
balls. She ought to know. She's a specialist on
women.'
They walked outside. The sun was just going down. -
"OK, Angela," he said.
"I'll convey the news to
all concerned."


Just before he walked away he said, "Say, do you
know how high the Mount Wilson Observatory is?"
When she got back Dominic was taking a shower.
"Thought you'd left for the airport after all!"
he shouted from the bathroom.
She felt quite gay all of a sudden and laughed.
She pushed open the bathroom door. He was naked under
the shower, his hair thickly soaped and his eyes tight
closed.
She found herself wal lking over to him, still in
the sleeveless blouse and skirt she'd worn to Jenny's,
and putting her arms round him entered the steaming f1
flood of the shower. She began kissing him, pushing
her body close to his and laughing girlishly as the
water cascaded down through her hair and her clothes
began clinging to her and weighing on her, conducting
the water in a heavy stream that slapped loudly on the
tiles below. He caught hold of her and his soap came on
her face. He began pulling off her clothes, kissing
her all the time. The taste of their mouths mingled
with that of the water.
They were blind to each other
but this made it all the more exciting, struggling to
reach each other through the water. Her shoes were
off, her sodden clothes lay in a heap beneath them and
she was naked too.
Reaching behind him he turned the
taps off. He began towelling them both, while they
still kissed and fondled each other.
She knew now she
was equal to him. She couldn't explain this but they
were struggle together, whether for each other or against
each other didn't matter.
Their worst fights would. be
like love affairs.
She understood him suddenly.
She
knew why he did things the way he did.
It was nothing
to do with approval. Deep inside she'd got his number.
He half carried her to the bed in her room.
And
among the cushions they made love for two hours, their


hair soaking wet.
It was past nine when they got up
and by now their hair was dry.
They were monstrously late but of course their table
would still be waiting. Head waiters knew he was pre-.
pared to pay twice over when late.
Apparently, Angela
thought as she dressed, you didn't meddle with the Killer,
not if you were in the restaurant business.
Yet she
couldn't find the Killer in bed.
He made love with a
tenderness she'd never thought possible for a man. He
seemed to know what she wanted, where.
His highest
pleasure seemed to be giving her pleasure.
He really
got an unbearable thrill from her excitement.
She
concluded that the Killer was just an exterior, a form
of self-protection in a tough world.
"Wasn't that a bit childish of you to fire Max
Pennance and Sonya?" she asked him when they were driving
down the Freeway.
"You see sweetheart the minute he started weighing
in at you he lost my loyalty and that means my power to
work with him.
There's nothing I can do about it except
shrug and say that's how it is."
They finished dinner quickly (neither of them was
hungry) and got to Schwabs late.
The three fellow-
producers were waiting in a rather glum circle with some
girls who were probably, Angela guessed, models with one
foot in the film world. At least that was what they
looked like. Easy dates for anybody with both feet in
the film world. She wondered if that was the kind of
girl he had gone around with before.
Dominic nodded to everyone and certainly the girls
seemed to know him. The producers shook hands with her
as if they were all old friends---"Hi, Angela!", that sort
of thing.
One of them was very tall with short nut-coloured
hair that stood up in an awkward way and you could imagine
him trying to Brylcreem it down. His name was Greg
Merrytown. He had a gaunt face you might have expected
on a South Carolina farm. Barry Kurtz was small, dark
and prematurely bald with a pained, all-suffering look
in his big round eyes. Angela looked from one to the


other wondering how on earth they could be Dominic's
closest associates.
Saul Weinand, theb other one,
was the man she'd seen rocking his briefcase like a
baby at the La Mirada house.
He was big and paunchy
and also bald. He was the only one of the three who
approximated to the world's picture of a Hollywood
producer.
He seemed to sense her thoughts because he turned
to her and said breathily, because of his fatty heart,
"You know Angela I used to smoke cigars, it seemed to
be what people expected of a Hollywood producer but my
doctors gave me a scare, and would you believe business
went right down for me, it hasn't picked up since."
He made a wheezing laugh and winked at her.
Behind
his huge watery belly you could feél ruthlessness but not
of the same kind as Dominic's.
Saul Weinand went into
the kill slowly and deviously, while Dominic hid nothing.
That was Angela's hunch.
They drank coffee and then moved on, complete with
the girls, to F. Scott's where they ordered champagne.
It was a Sondheim night and as she'd seen the London
revue 'Side by Side with Sondheim' when still a drama
student she gave the music moreaattention than she did
the producers.
Dominic seemed to think this amusing,
especially as she didn't answer half the things addressed
to her.
But she was quick to overhear whatever he said,
and to follow him with her eyes if he got up and moved
about the room.
Whenever he was away from the table
she felt nervous and curiously unprotected, as if LA
would become a-dangerous city for her if she ever opted
to be alone. Yes, she must be gathering enemies un-
awares. Sometimes when he turned his intense look on
her she flinched away.
Saul Weinand leaned towards her heavily again and
said, "How are you coping with the hot weather Angela?"
"Oh I hardly notice it."
"Too busy huh?" he said with a leery smile.
"And then I never feel the heat much."


He nodded.
"You know, the Santa Ana winds
make it a very hot autumn sometimes."
At one point everybody separated---Dominic to the
phone and the girls to other friends.
She found herself
at the bar with the gaunt farmer-type called Greg. They
sat on tall stools and he talked looking straight ahead,
leaning on the bar, with a candour that took her by
surprise.
"You know something,' " he said, "Dom's put us in the
way of some very big money but he never follows a business
instinct.
He hasn't got one. He follows something
else, don't ask me what but I know one thing, it's got
nothing to'do with the market.
I think it's the stars
or some crazy system he's worked out that always pays
off. I think he's got the whole astrological thing .
worked. He'll drop a deal stone dead while everybody's
telling him it's a winner and by God he'll turn out to
be right.
Likeways he'1l take a up a deal that looks
a real dead fish, I mean stnking high to the sky, and
he'llbreathe life into it. That's why we're scared of
your man, Angela. Mind if I call him your man ?"
"Are you scared of him?" he asked her without removing
his eyes from the coloured back mirrors of't the bar.
"I don't mean scared like we're frightened but
scared to say no because he's always So damned right in
his hunches.
It's a kind of superstitious thing.
Now
you take this BelAmi property which Max Pennance was
going to direct, we listen to Dom explaining how he hates
Max's guts because of this and that but the real reason
he's pulling out is he can't smell success in it any more,
he can only smell stinking fish. I mean do you think
we're happy pulling out of a project which is half ways
in the can?" He leaned towards her sideways, still
without looking at her and added, "And the banks feel
the same. The guy has something uncanny about him.
Listen," he asked, nearly pushing Angela off her stool
with surprise, "is he uncanny between the sheets?"
She burst out laughing.
"No, are you?"


He was really tickled by this and laughed so
much she thought he'd choke.
"Has he got any other films in mind now he's can-
celled Bel Ami?" she askeddhim.
"In mind? He's already setting them up!
That man
never stands still.
Where is he now? Talking to one
of the girls---not on your Aunt May, he's on the teleahone e!"
In the morning canned music, a sickening soft-
percussion sentimentalisation of Bach, woke her at eight
and from zero-volume went discréetly up by stages to
normal.as the minutes went by. She looked round for
switches to turn the damned thng of f but there didn't
appear to be any.
They'd decided to sleep in the ir own rooms. They
knew they'd make love all night if they didn't." - JAlso
she had a feeling that they'were both doing things behind
the other's back, and So a sortof physical estrangement
had set in in the course of the evening. It wasn't a
ba d feeling.
It was even exciting, the thought that
they were being a little cool towards each other and
building up towards a lovely reconciliation.
She
wondered wha t it was like sleeping a whole night with him.
She knew they were saving that up for another time-- -that
visit to heaven.
She didn't want to.disturb him early, so she made
herself coff and sat at the kitchen sipping it dreamily.
She found some croissants Pauline had brought in the day
before and put them in the oven.
Half an hour passed and he still hadn't got up.
She tiptoed down the corridor and listened outside the
room but the canned music made it impossible to hear his
breathing.
They'd had two late nights and she decided
to leave him some more.
At about ten, just after she'd taken a shower,
Pauline let herself into the apartment, with more
parcels from the supermarket.


"Sleep well?"
"Yes, fine," Angela said.
"What's happened to
Dominic?"
"Oh he went to San Francisco.
Didn't he tell you
he was going? He probably thought he'd told you, he's
like that?"
Just at that moment a call came from Jill Rapinsky.
She spoke more like a business partner than a casting
agent to an actress.
"If you come in on the new Bel Ami film," she told
her, "I can promise you a lot of working while it's being
set up. Just in case you think you're going to loseo
out on it. I mean publicity work."
She spoke very loudly and Angela was glad Pauline
had gone lounge to put some flowers in a vase.
A few seconds after she'd put the receiver down
Everard called to say that Dominic's fellow producer
Saul Weinand ('the fat one', he said) had decided to
go it alone and it was he who was planning the new Bel
Ami independently of Dominic. As he said this Angela
felt a twinge of protective fear for Dominic.
Were
they ganging up against him? And what could she, such
a stranger in this city, do for him if they were?
"Now we've spoken to Jamie and he's very keen on
you playing Clotilde, as I told you.
It's all very
secret at the moment."
Angela said, "Listen, Everard, am I being used as
a sort of pawn in all this? I mean it sounds as if
Dominic is out of it, so why do they want me, as they
think of me as his mistress or worse?"
"Those are questions I can't asnwer, Angela.
A1l
I know is Jamie wants you and so does Saul Weinand."
"Who's.the director going to be?"
"Oh, Max Pennance."
"What? And he wants me in the film too?"
"Sure! We all do!"
She sat on the bed thinking afterwards.
It sounded
SO much like an ambush.
She wanted to confide in .
Pauline but was afraid to. Were they trying to take her
away from Dominic? But with what motive? Or were


anxious to use her as a kind of spy in his household,
or else a useful influence to bring him back in the fold,
which meant to bring his money back.
She was surprised
at the way her mind was working.
She'd never had thoughts
like these before, that is crisp business-like thoughts
that concerned someone else's welfare.
She realised how
she'd grown up in a matter of days.
Until she landed in
LA her whole life had been devoted to thoughts about how
to advance Angela. From childhood it had been like that.
And everyone round her, from her mother to her boyfriends,
had been for her means (of varying degrees of efficiency)
for her self-advancement. Really she'd never given her
mother a genuine concerned thought in her life. She
had never looked after her in sickness, only the perfunctory
things her mother had actually asked her to do.
Home
was a place where she could stock up with plentiful
delicious meals in the French style. A boyfriend who
could neither make her feel a gifted actress nor further
her career in any way had been unthinkable to her.
course none of this had been conscious, She'd thought of
herself as a decent hard-working girl whose mind was set
on her career, against which there couldn't possibly be
any moral arguments.
But what had she ever given anyone
really? She expected her friends to see herf first nights
and give her exhaustive: appraisals of her performance after-
wards but she was less enthusiastic about going to their
first nights, and when she did she hardly watched the stage,
as she was thinking about what she could do with such a
part, or even goingtthrough her lines in her current show,
mouthing the words silently.
These weren't comf ortable thoughts and she almost ran
back to the kitchen, where Pauline had made fresh coffee.
Angela's head was already spinning from the coffee she'd
drunk while waiting for Dominic.
Why hadn't he told her
he was going away? Did he know she was playing a sort
of double game? Her mind was in a whirl for a moment--
too much had happened in the last few days!
Pauline poured herself some coffee and sat down at
the table. In a peculiar way she seemed to be listening
to Angela's thoughts, and she kept giving her shrewd
glances.


glances.
"You've certainly settled down quickly, you're
like part of the apartment."
"Is that good or bad?" Angela asked her defensively.
Pauline laughed and at once those ancient creases
appeared all over her face. What a strange woman she
was! But she made Angela feel good.
You could trust
her.
"You've know Dominic for thousands of years so there's
every reason why you should settle down quickly when you
find him at last!"
"You mean we were together in past lives?" Angela
asked her.
"That's exactly what I do mean. By the way, you
may not have understood what Dominic said about me looking
after his past, or maybe I said it. I sort of do his
investigations into his previous lives, I regress him.
We found you ages ago, oh at least a year ago."
"How do you mean, found me ?"
"Well, you came up during the regressions, more and
more. Listen, I've had a lot of experience in this
game and I've archived the experiences of hundreds of
people, here and in San Francisco, San Diego and Santa
Barbara.and I've also worked in the state of Virginia.
And I can tell you Dominic's been associated with a soul
mat te for as many lives as he can remember, and we think
you are that soul mate. He began preparing for you
a year ago and when he saw your clips he called me over
and said let's go down to the studios I want to show
you something. And there you were on the screen. I
felt as sure as he did that you were it."
Ange la gazed at her with polite attention, trying
to unstick her mind from her previous thoughts.
What
on earth was. the woman talking about?
"You believe in reincarnation?" Pauline asked her.
"Oh yes. I mean," she added, "I'm convinced without
really believing in it.
What you're saying sounds so
far-fetched."
"I'1l say it's far-fetched!" Pauline said with


another laugh.
"Thousands of years far-fetched: You'd
be surprised!"
As if only now realising what Pauline was telling
her she asked, "Is that why Dominic put me in the Beverley;
Hills Hotel then, and gave me all those roses?"
"Well of course! He'd been waiting for you for at
least three lifetimes! Did you think it was because he
liked the look of your legs on the clips?"
Angela smiled, feeling an enormous relief. So he
was true after all! He wasn't a schemer, a killer!
"Listen Angela, would you like to do a far memory
session with me?"
"What does it involve?"
"It involves lying down for a couple of hours and
me regressing you into your past."
"I'd be terrified!"
"That's part of it. In fact I always say if you're
not afraid first time you haven't got the right energies
going for the most important trip your mind ever takes.
Do you object to feeling terror?"
"I'd like to avoid it, obviously."
"But if you're not afraid if remembering the past
in this life why should you be afraid of remembering it
in another?"
"Oh I am afriad!" Angela said.
:I hate remembering
the past!"
"But that's like re jecting yourself!
It means you
never come to terms with yourself."
"Well, that's right. I never do. I never have."
"And how do you expect your relationship with
Dominic to go well?" Pauline asked her.
"He knows you
from way back!
But do you know him?"
"Not really."
"So isn't that going to put you at a disadvantage?
Isn't that why misunderstood his putting you in a hotel
suite instead of a crummy downtown room, and the roses,
and the star treatment? He was very upset about that."
"He told you?"


"Oh!" Pauline said with a humourous gesture of
boredom. "He tells me everything!"
"I went to the airport.
I was going to go back to
England and just outside the airport I put my hand in
my bag and felt his keys, the keys to this apartment.
And that made me turn back."
"He didn't tell me that."
"Because he doesn't know."
"I'm glad they made you turn back."
"Oh, the powers!"
"Don't worry," Pauline said, "I won't do anything
against your will."
Angela was lying on a mattress on the floor with
earphones and and a body mike attached to her dress.
All over the room there were mattresses.
Wires trailed
from the mikes to an elaborate recording assembly with
several decks which stood at one end of the room on a
raised platform.
The other mattresses weren't occupied
and she wished they had been.
A11 this apparatus made
her feel nervous, it was like being in hospital. And
then she didn't really know Pauline. She might be a
total freak.
Angela was full of doubts all of a sudden,
even about Dominic.
She'd let Pauline persuade her
because she didn't want to appear a coward but now she
regretted it.
She feared that her mind mightbbe disturb-
ed in some way. Sometimes, in the past, she'd felt
vulnerable in that respect.
There'd been a case of
madness in the family, on her father's side. And some-
times, very rarely, she had felt her mind sort of slipping.
It was a most disagreeable experience. In fact she almost
got up from the mattress and told Pauline to forget it.
But at that moment Pauline spoke.
"OK, now you
have all the time in the world to relax.
I'm going to
ask you to breathe deeply, inhale to eight heartbeats
and exhale to ten, OK? And listen to the gap between
the 'inhale and the exhale, you can hear eternity there."


Eternity!
It was the last thing she felt like
having at this moment.
All the coffees she'd had didn't help. They made her
tremble slightly. And she was given to grembling anyway.
Sometimes she felt she wasn't a very courageous person.
She had a lot of sauce, momentary arrogance of the kind
that made it ;ossible for her to throw coffee at a
director, but it didn't last, and invariably ended either
in helpless tears or a sense of cowardly surrender.
How
many times she'd told a director or fellow actor that she
adored when she was secretly frightened of him and resent-
ful of him!
Pauline had driven her downtown to her Florence
Avenue apartment in Dominic's Bentley. The'flat was
quite a lot bigger than Dominic's Hollywood Hills place,
with empty marble floors and bare walls which she felt
he'd had a hand in designing.
There was this large
salon where the mattresses were which was entirely devoid
of furnituré except for sterile photographic collages on
the wall, preumably to depress the far memory victims
so much that regressing into a past life became a positive
pleasure.
"Now I'm going to retire behind all that machinery
you see up there," Pauline told her.
"And from now on
I'm going to talk to you through the earphones. And
you can answer me on your mike. You don't have to do
more than whisper.
In fact if you do you'11 blast my
ears off."
As she lay there waiting for Pauline to switch on
and settle herself at the recording console she thought
of Dominic and how, the previous evening after she'd
joined him fully clothed under the shower, they had
made love with such ecstasy that she thought she was
going to faint.
No, she could never sleep with another
man.
And that stirred a peculiar fear in her, so
deep and insidious that it seemed to permeate the
mattress under her. Where did that fear come from?
Certainly not from the fact that he'd spoiled her for


other men. It came from the power of their love-
making, greater than any hypnosis could be, so satis-
fying, like a thousand banquets devoted to one exquisite
dish after another, yet more than eating or drinking could
ever be, in fact so much more, than anything else in life
that it was like---death!
Sometimes during their love-
making she feared they might both expire. Of course she
didn't seriously think it would happen but the body felt
frail, almost tortured with excitement, and death seemed
to it a form of. necessary escape. Again and again they
murmured to each "What shall we do? what's going to
happen?", as if the love so exceeded all physical measure
that something---the will, the nervous system---had to
break. Yes, she almost feared making love to him again,
almost feared his return that evening from San Francisco,
yet yearned for it so much that a trembling started in
her and a special thrilling warmth started inside her
which she had never known with another man.
She fell asleep and at once started dreaming of a
young girl, perhaps seventeen, who wore a light frilled
dress that billowed out round her legs from a cool breeze
(but it was otherwise very hot).
Outside the window
was water, perhaps a river, because its reflection
shimmered on the ceiling.
But how could there be such
a breeze in' a room? The question puzzled her even in
the dream. The girl was now leaning out of the window,
yet it wasn't a window either.
It might be a' balcony
of some kind.
And then she heard steps on a wooden
staircase. Someone, or perhaps more than one person,
was coming up to see her. There was brilliant sunshine
and very little noise. The silence was delightful.
The girl was strikingly beautfiul with elongated eyes
that unlike her hair were very dark, almost a gypsy's.
Her nose was quite small and fine, the opposite of
Angela's own 'snout'.
The girl was aware of sails
far out---perhaps it was close to the ocean. The sails
gleamed in the sunlight, like huge gull-wings.
And'
she, the girl was high up. She could gaze down into
a narrow lane at the side of the house and hear men's
deep voices booming between the walls. And compared
with the sunlight it was very dark down there, very
cavernous.


deep voices booming between the walls. And compared
with the sunlight it was very dark down there, very
cavernous. She also thought she heard handcarts.
The girl was standing close to Angela but Angela wasn't
visible to her. She felt a lot of pleasure in being
close to the girl, and it relt like she had more interest
in her than she'd ever had in a human being.
She was
amazed at how selfless her interest in that girl was.
She watched every movement she made. And she had an
impression of blueness everywhere, in the sky andeven
below, a fact she couldn't understand even while she
stood there in the dream.
Then everything went Vague and she felt wonder-fu
fully rested, as if she might sleep a whole day. A
long time seemed to pass---that silence continued even
though the dream ended---and then she heard a whisper,
"What do you see Angela? Tell me what you see."
She started awake (her mother had so often tried
to get her to wakewwithout that fearful start but how
could you stop it?) and realised after a few seconds
that this whisper so close to her ear was Pauline's
voice in the earphones. She felt irritated. She
didn't answer but started to doze again. But again
Pauline's voice, "Angela."
Why didn't she let her rest? Then she remembered
why she was lying down.
"Won't you tell me what you saw?" Pauline asked her.
"Oh I fell asleep.
I was just dreaming, that's
"Didn't you hear any of my relaxation exercises?"
"Then tell me what you dreamed about."
"It was about a young girl. She was about seven-
"Can you tell me wha t she looked like and where
she was?"
As she told Pauline about that girl, and all the
impressions she had had, she thought she heard her gasp
once or twice. But at the end all Pauline said was,
in a matter-of-fact voice, "OK, that's great for a first
session. I don't think you sleep enough by the way.


in a matter-of-fact voice, "OK, that's great for a first
session. I don't think you sleep enough by the way.
You don't get enough alpha-sleep at nights."
"You're telling me, " Angela said with a yawn.
"You've got a lot of anxiety hidden away, a lot."
"I suppose so!"
"Angela, these far memory regressions can help you,
once we've got through the sleep problem."
"But I'm not a good hypnotic subject, I'm sure I'm
"We'1l see about that. I think you've done very
well.
You got a far memory in sleep because you would
have resisted the hypnotic influence. So they gave you
the memory in sleep."
"Was that a far memory?"
"Sure it was!"
"But what lifetime, when?"
"Well we can't establish that yet. We can only
piece things together slowly, through a lot of sessions.
You see you need to know about your past Angela, because
otherwise you're only half a person.
Why do you think
it is that Dominic's such a decisive person, and he gets
so much influence over other people.
He knows who he
is! He's gone way back and he can see where the other
lifetimes have been leading---like he did in your case."
"Were we happy in our other lives?"
"Well, it depends what you mean by happiness."
All this was being said over the mikes.
It was an
odd feeling and she didn't quite believe in it.
course this kind of thing went on all over California,
there were more freak movements and therapies than
anywhere else in the world.
But Pauline seemed a
serious enough person. And Dominic---hadn't he proved
himself? He wasn't a layabout after all. He'd carved
a path for himself such as few men achieved.
She
became impatient and wanted to get up.
It all seemed
suddenly morbid and fruitless to her, this. far memory
probing. She wanted to get out into the light and air.
"OK," Pauline whispered, "you can split if you


want to," as if she'd felt her impatience over the wire.
She felt strange for the rest of the day and waished
she hadn't gone to Pauline's.
Her face itched and she
took three showers. There were no more phonecalls and
she was restless for Dominic's return, just for human
company. She tried reading on her bed among the cushions
but the room no longer felt good. The canned music almost
drove her crazy and she went out for a long walk which she
didn't enjoy because of the damp heat and the stink of
automobile exhaust. She was dissatisfied with what she'd
agreed about the new Bel Ami. Of course it had put in
the enemy camp opposite her own lover! She remembered
what Everard had said about what the killer' might do.
A twinge of ridiculous fear went through her.
How could
you possibly be afraid of your own lover? But it felt
so uncanny without him (Greg Merrytown had called him
That was how the apartment felt. Sometimes
she had the impression that he was looking at her---from
an armchair or behind the mirror in the bathroom. He
hadn't phoned from San Francisco.
She tried to read the
Bel Ami script but that seemed a ridiculous thing to do.
No, she decidedly didn't like all this far memory
stuff.
All her life she'd nightmares and anything super-
natural of that sort seemed to provoke them.
Whole
nights she'd spent awake when on tour, nodding over cups
of coffee, out of fear that if she went to bed she'd have
a nightmare or die in her sleep or something.
She would
have hated to confess this to anyone but she slept with a
night-light still.
If she woke in total black-out she
screamed. Of course if she was in bed with someone she
didn't need it.
Here in the apartment she had left the
light on in the corridor and her bedroom door ajar.
When she was at home her mother kept two night lights
burning in her room in case one went out by accident.
The canned music cut out, presumably the end of the
day's cassettes. She didn't like the silence. She
walked from room to room, peeped into his bedroom.
The
bed was still unmade from this morning and his silk
pyjamas on the floor. She made the bed and replaced the
cover, folded his pyjamas and slipped them under the
pillow. Sheagain had the feeling of him watching her,


cover, folded them and slipped them under his pillow.
Suddenly she felt she'd become someone else.
Her hands
on the folded pyjamas weren't hers any more. Or rather,
they were hers but in her mind she was someone else
watching her own movements like a stranger.
She should
never have agreed to do that far memory thing!
Had it
unhinged something in her? She walked about the flat
restlessly, aware of this second personage and aching
for Dominic's return, if only to reassure her that
Pauline wasn't some sort of awful hypnotist who got people
in her'power. And he?. Wasn't he a hypnotist?
She went to the lounge and mixed herself a vodka and
orange. She got ice from the fridge. And she sat in
his favourite armchairs waiting. She must have fallen
asleep because the light of dawn woke in exactly the
same position as she'd sat down. She blinked awake,
thinking at first she was back in London and had fallen
asleep in her mother's sitting room as she often did when
she was exhausted from sleepless nights on tour, nights
spent talking and smoking. And even when she slept it
wasn't' very deep.
Pauline had said something about her
never getting the really deep sleep. Her mind was always
active, somewhere, somehow. And this other person who
now hovered about her was part of that ever active mind.
She heard the phone ringing in her room at the
other end of the corridor and dashed out of the lounge.
She got there just in time.
She wanted to cry "Oh
Dominic!" in the phone but it was Everard's sleepy
voice.
He told her that Jill Rapinsky had already found a
couple of commercials for her.
The first involved a
day's work, good money, with who did she think in the
male part, playing her boyfriend? None other than
Jamie Somerson, who was getting a record fee. It was
a car-ad and the call was for eight o'clock the next
morning.
Shooting would start in the afternoon, as she
would need at least a couple of hours with the' hairdresser.
"I'm sorry about the short notice," he said, "but
you've replaced somebody else---Sonya Steele as a ma tter
of fact. And for Christ sake don't tell me you feel
sorry for her!"
He rang off without


sorry for her!"
After telling her that he'd pick her up next
morning and take her to the studios himself he rang off
without a good bye. It seemed people didn't waste
charm here.
She felt uncomfortable about the offer
and returned to the lourge, where she saw her vodka and
orange untouched. She took a shower nervously.
she'd stolen a job from Sonya Steele, who was Max
Pennance's girlfriend---already she was making enemies!
She wanted to phone Everard back and say it was off but
something told her that this was her only way of getting
her freedom from Dominic, from the hypnotism! All her
old feelings about being in a trap whèrever a man was
concerned came back.
She put enough eau de cologne on
herself to drown a cat. And then the key turned in the
lock.
Dominic walked in. Her heart did a leap and
she ran to the door, her dressing gown flying behind her.
"What happened?"
He pulled her towards him and no more words were
exchanged.
He half carried her to her bed and all morn-
ing they lay there making love, and the outside world
not only didn't seem to exist, it had never, never been
there.
"You did a session with Pauline?" he whispered.
"Yes Dominic, I'm worried, it doesn't make me feel
good, I'm not a good subject!"
"Are you crazy? It's the best thing you did!
Listen, we're going to have an exciting day, I'm going
to play you a tape of one of my far memory sessions and
then you'll see where we stand!"
She didn't like his excitement---it narrowed his
eyes and put a strange glitter in them-- --but when he was
close to her, with his lips touching her face, when she
could smell him and feel his bare shoulders and the
soft curve of his stomach, all the things that seemed
to be familiar to her from long ago in her childhood,
she felt no further resistence.
"Why didn't you come back yesterday?" she asked him
impetuously.


He smiled and rubbed his nose on hers.
"I've got another girl there I was incarnated with
a couple of lives ago. In fact I've got a whole bunch
of girls right along the west coast who used to shack up
with me in past lives. Satisfied?"
She ran her finger a long his lips.
"Do you have hypnotic powers?" she asked him,
watching his lips as he replied.
"To have so many girls, you mean?"
"When you looked at me in the traffic that first
day it was like being hypnotised, I've led a completely
new life since then!"
"Isn't that love, not hypnotism?" he said with a
trace of reserve in his voice.
"How can I tell the difference? You could induce
love in me hypnotically."
"Now just stop trying to be cruel little girl and
let's go listen to that tape!"
He lifted her up from the bed but'she was too heavy
for him and he had to let her down again.
She fell back
on the bed with a laugh.
"You see," he said, "hypnotic millionaires aren't
muscle men. Would you like a muscle man?"
She drew him down to her aga: in and put her arms
round his neck.
"Why don't you say I love you, you never say it!"
she whispered. "Don't you feel it?" She was half
laughing, touching his ear with her lips.
"I'll tell you another time, but here's one of the
reasons." And he began kissing her again and baring
her shoulders. He drew the dressing gown right off
her and once more they were close together, naked.
It was mid-afternoon when they stopped making love.
He went to the kitchen and made coffee, then called
her. He had a tape machine set up on the table and
was just inserting a cassette.
"I want you to listen to this," he said when she
came in.
He switched on and his voice came over in a husky
whisper.
"Yes, we're in love," he was saying. "Madly.


whisper.
"Yes,"we're in love," he was saying. "Madly.
Impossibly.
But we aren't married.
I can tell that
much. We want to get married but it won't happen."
There he stopped.
He was making heaving S ounds,
gasping.
"Are you crying?" she asked him.
"Crying!" I'1l say!"
Then Pauline's voice came over: "What nationality
are you?"
"I think I'm French, " he continued, hardly audible.
"Yes I'm sure. I think I have a large estate near
Rouen. She's looking at me now but her eyes aren't
happy. She's done something terrible, I'm sure of it.
He caught his breath, almos t hissed.
"Can you tell me what it is she's done?" Pauline
asked him.
He paused a long time. Then : he answered her - :
question: J "No. It just blocks out every time."
"Can you say what her name is?"
It's Caterina.
Caterina Foss- He
stopped again.
"No I can't get the surname . Somet thing
like Foss."
"Then she isn't French?"
"Italian," he said.
"She's Italian.
And I keep
hearing violins.
The sound of violins. A whining and
screaming, not the beautiful sound you expect from violins."
"Where are you?"
"In Venice.
Yes, it's Venice."


7 D
"Well what do you think?" he asked her.
She shrugged deliberately.
"I don'tknow! I mean
I don't understand what you're seeing, I mean it's a
girl but it could be any girl, in the past or the future,
it doesn't have to be me in a past life."
"And why shouldn't it be you?"
She knew she was resisting the idea. At the same
time she wanted him to break down her resistance because
half of her was fascinated.
"You mean to say you don't know it's you I'm talking
about?" he asked her.
"Of course I don't know!" She turned her eyes away
and didn't even want to think about it.
"Then I'm going to have to prove it to you!"
"But what does it matter? We're here and now, not
two hundred years ago!"
Quickly he said, "How do you know it was two hundred
years ago?"
"I don't! Nor do you!"
He nodded. I thought you might have a hunch."
"Anyway it could all be a form of hypnosis. I mean
you sound hypnotised on that tape. I fell asleep as soon
as my head touched that pillow in Pauline's apartment,
I'm sure it wasn't a natural sleep."
"Oh," he said, removing the cassette from the
machine and putting it into its box.
"As to why you fell
asleep you'1l find out later. You don't believe in this
regression thing, do you? You don't even believe in re-
incarnation, not deep down."


"In a way I don't want to believe in it, I've got
too much going in this life to worry about previous ones!"
"So that's why you fell asleep.
You didn'tvwant to
see yourself in a.previous life but you did just the same,
in what you think was a dream!"
"That wasn't me!"
"It was a seventee-year-old girl, right? And I'm
saying that's the same girl I'm seeing! Your description
is the same. It's Caterina!"
"But what does it matter?"
He sat close to her and put his arms round her.
"Now
you'd better stop. saying that.
If we know what we did in
our previous life together maybe we shall be able to handle
this one better.
I mean we're already divided aren't we?
You playing in Saul Weinand's Bel Ami and doing a Jill
Rapinsky commercial. She owns the company that's going
to employ you by the way."
She looked at the table glumly. "Why does it have
to divide us? It's good work. And I don't see the sense
of pulling down films."
"Is that what I'm doing?"
"Well we're not making your Bel Ami are we?"
"We might be making something better, and you might
be getting a better vehicle than you could ever get from
Max Pennance. Still, you go your way. As I said to
Pauline the other day, you've got a lot of business neck
and I like that. That film won't be made by the way."
"What film?"
"The Bel Ami Saul Weinand's setting up. #
"How do you know?"
He just smiled at her and gave her a kiss.
"You
really think I don't know?"
"Are you going to use those hypnotic powers?" she
asked him, playing with his lips again, brushing her
finger along them and feeling a delightful electricity
go through her hand.
"Sure!" he said.
"And where does Pauline come in? Is she your
witch? Does she mix the brews and put needles into
little wax figures for you?"


"How did you guess?" he said with a laugh, drawing
her r on to her knee and baring her shoulders yet again.
They began kissing ardently and for the third time that
day returned to her bed, and emerged from heaven around
dinner time. He drove her down to Santa Monica and they
ate in a small Italian place,
"Do you really think we're divided?" she asked him.
"We were divided before so we'll go on doing the
same until we wake up to what we're doing."
"What do you mean---before?" (she knew perfectly
"When you were Caterina.
You know I didn't play
you the other tape. I screamed on that one. I realised
I was being murdered."
She smiled.
"Did I murder you?"
"I don't know," hessaid seriously, "but you certainly
weren't with me?"
"I was on the side of the murderers?"
"Something like that."
"And am I joining the enemy again by doing this
Saul Weinand film?"
"Could be."
It sounded as if they were quarrelling quietly but
it didn't feel like that. They strolled through the
streets contentedly afterwards, holding each other round
the waist, kissing each other from time to time.
"Why do they want me on their side---Jill Rapinsky
and Saul and Everard and Jamie Somerson?" she asked him.
"Well, they can't beat me in a straight fight but
they figure they might in a crooked one."
"What, they'd use me against you in some way?"
"No but they might figure to get you away from me
If you say killer often enough it might stick."
"Are you a killer?" she asked, hugging him.
"Yes," he said, "I think I am." He smiled at her
and she thought she saw him wink.
She put her head close
to his for a moment and caught the scent of his hair,
and felt unbearable excitement.
"And you won't say you love me?" she asked him.
"Isn't, that what all your serious lovers have told


"So you've got your own answer Caterina! Ours
isn't a short-term arrangement!"
"If my name was Caterina what was yours?"
"I don't know yet but I'm going to find out."
"Oh Dominic before I forget," she said as juke-
box music blasted from a games parlour on to the side-
walk, 1 could we have that nasty canned music switched
"Boy!" he said with a laugh.
"Are you a reincarn-
ation of that lady!"
Everard sat talking to her while her hair was being
done. She was to have two dresses, one aquamarine with
a V-neck folded over in heavy pleats and wide bat-wing
sleeves, the other a fun jacket and mini-skirt in a
lavish chequered design of primary colours. A tiny
pill-hat went with the latter.
She had the funny
feeling that Dominic would mock her if he, could see,
and even that he was mocking.her.
His eyes always
seemed' to go with her.
The director was an anxious-looking man with
rounded shoulders called Jonanthan Beane who kept coming
over to her and asking her if she felt OK. While her
hair was being lifted, combed out, curled here and there,
she heard Everard's droning voice but hardly attended
to it. What was he, a top Hollywood agent, doing
concentrating on one of his clients like this? He sure-
ly had big stars on his. . list.
Why, why had she become
important for these people?
He brought her coffee from time to time. Jamie
Somerson bent and kissed her on his way to the costume
department.
"Jamie's been offered three feature scripts already, . n
Everard told her.
"He says he isn't going to accept
one that doesn't have a lead part for you."


"Has he gone mad or something?"
When she was ready for the make-up they had to
camouflage two enormous love bites on her neck.
She
suspected that Dominic had planted the previous day
deliberately.
You knew when you were making a mark.
Then she was called on the set.
There was to be a
brief angle-shot of her in close up in a gleaming European
car which was so small you could hardly get into it.
That was the message of the ad.
The small car was easy
on the gas and fitted neatly in overparked streets.
She and Jamie were whizz-kids in their respective
professions (rag-trade and architecture) and made it
clear by the way they behaved that they were turning
down the gas-thirsty hearse-type of automobile.that.
belonged to the past.
How she could hear Dominic
laughing!
While a scene with extras was being shot she and
Jamie played cards in his dressing room. There were
continual phonecalls for him and she noticed the subtle
effect stardom was having on his personality, hardening
the outside and weakening the inside. Usually she felt
very close to an actor she was playing opposite but it
wasn't happening with Jamie.
She realised that none of
this was giving her enjoyment and a feeling of nausea
towards Dominic's apartment and the expensive dinners
they had and that Beverley Hills Hotel suite and this
studio with the two gleaming cars and the bonhomie
dedicated to a thoroughly silly cause welled up in her.
She had to embrace Jamie and kiss him for one of
the scenes, the basis of a montage of shots, and several
takes had to be done because it didn't look convincing.
Jamie stared at her with a hurt expression and said,
"Why can't you really hold me for christsakes?" Every
cell in her body screamed out against it. In fact she
couldn't bear his touch and had to hide this as best she
could.
When the rushes were shown next day there was mist


on the film and some of the scenes had to be shot.
Once
more she went through the ordeal of embracing Jamie.
She could feel his blond moustache against her upper lip
and though she liked moustaches it sent an unpleasant
prickling sensation all through her body.
And he was
such a nice person. He was always round her offering
to bring her coffee or suggesting changes in her COS tume
or make-up which were surprisingly valid.
Jamie had
taken a course in advanced general physics at Harvard
but given up a few months before the end.
He told her
he'd always wanted to do a drama course but his dad was
a physicist and it hadn't seemed right.
Then he met
a girl who askèd him if he wanted to be his father or
himself and that had sort of opened his eyes. As a
matter of fact his dad had been delighted when he switched
to drama and said with a laugh that it was like opting
to be out of work all your life.
Well, that was how it
had been the first two years. He was now thirty-one.
And then he'd grown his moutstache and that had sort
of changed everything.
It made his face more compact
and the directors had begun to look at him with interest.
"I tried the stage," he said, "but I can't act."
They laughed.
She half listened to what he said,
as she did to everyone. She was becoming aware of her-
self, how deeply she regarded herself as the only serious-
ly alive person in the world. And her problems were
always the worst problems, no one had such problems.
Her happiness was beyond capture by the rest of the race.
And while Jamie talked to her shemallowed-her thoughts as
always to roam round, dwelling on Dominic, how she was
going to look for the next scene, how she should take a
certain line, whether she should have the hem of her
skirt higher for when she had to run towards Jamie,
how she was going to get through that difficult bit
of squeezing herself into a tiny car while keeping up
her eye language with Jamie and also looking elegant,
if she should go to the restaurant with Jamie and eat
a heavy lunch or just have some sandwiches in her dress-
ing room, hoping for a phonecall from Dominic.
the same time, such was her expertise in this matter,


her mind could collect what Jamie was telling her into
a thread and she could make the proper ejaculations of
interest when necessary.
She wasn't an actress for
nothing.
When she got home after the second day's work
she found Dominic and Pauline cooking a meal.
He was
in his shirtsleeves cleaning mushrooms. She felt tired
and irritable, having seen part of the spoiled rushes
and found her scenes ridiculous. She'd played in bad
rep often enough but this was going lower than that
because it was all covered with a sheen of fashion and
expense.
"I don't feel proud of myself," she told Dominic.
He smiled.
"You mean you're not proud to encourage
the sale of European cars on the Anerican market?"
"You'll have to get used to not feeling proud if
you work for Jill Rapinsky," Pauline said without look-
ing at her.
"It's up to me who I work for," Angela.
"Oh sure!" Pauline said, turning one of her oriental
smiles towards her.
"Anyway," Angela said to Dominic, "you didn't advise
me against it."
"Jill Rapinsky's got a good outfit there," he replied.
"She'11 make good moeny for you and get your face known."
"And what else?"
"Well I thought you were over here to make feature
films."
But you've just pulled down the film I was
supposed to play in!"
"You didn't trust me before so why should you now?"
"Oh what do you mean, before?" she said angrily,
throwing her bag down on a chair. "I suppose I'm going
to have that thrown in my face all the time! 'Before'!
You want to try living now!"
He said nothing to this but went to the fridge and
pulled out a bottle of Don Perignan.
With great care he
edged the cork out and it flew to the ceiling with the
minimum overflow of froth.
Pauline had a glass ready.
When he'd poured some champagne in she gave it to Angela.
"Here's to Jill Rapinsky!" Pauline said.


"Here's to Jill Rapinsky!" Pauline said.
"Oh fuck off!" Angela cried and threw the glass to
the floor. She dashed out of the kitchen to her room.
"And thank Christ you've turned that bloody canned
music off," she screamed towards the kitchen, "it was
driving me crazy! All you people are So artificial:
You don't seem to say real things and---oh Christ!"
She burst into tears.
She could hear Pauline clearing up the mess. Dominic
was standing in the doorway.
"Want some more champagne?"
She flung herself down on the bed.
"I've got to read through this bloody silly
dialogue for tomorrow morning So I want to! be left alone."
He sat on the bed at her side.
"Is this real anger
with me or do you just want to let off steam?"
"I just want to let off steam,". she said, drawing him
towards her.
She didn't want to kiss him.
She just
needed to feel his face against hers, and to lean on him,
refreshing her memory of him, so to speak, his scent,
his skin texture and the strong yet soft touch of his hair.
Pauline was there with another glass of champagne for
her.
"Here," she said, "take your medicine."
"Where are your glasses?" Angela asked.
Pauline got two more and they touched' glasses, with
Angela still lying there. Then they drank.
"I'm fed up with hearing about the past," Angela said
quietly.
"Past lives. You haven't said a word about
this new film you're setting up. Greg Merrtown told me
why you go to San Francisco, to the banks.
And he said
you were setting up another series for sure. But you don't
say a thing to me."
"It's just my way of working," he said. "I never like
to talk until everything has jelled.
It's just my way."
Pauline gave her a square-on look.
"Don't you think
that's a bit degrading to my profession, what you said
about past lives? I mean OK you're an actress, I don't


come over heavy about actresses and temperament and all
that, which I could."
"I'm sorry," Angela said.
"I'd rather you did a bit more far memory than be
sorry, Angela."
"It gives me nightmares!
It makes me scared!
And I've got enough worries at the moment!"
"You've got worries?" Pauline said.
"You've found
the greatest love of your life and you've still got
worries?
Jesus Christ!"
"I know, it's silly of me."
"And you find us artificial?" Dominic said a little
jokingly.
"Yes, I do.
Ever since I got here it's been
contracts and calls at this studio or that and cancell-
ations and limousines and expensive dinners and night
spots and the right Italian place down at Santa Monica
and nice white suits and oh, shit, how I hate it all,
I'd rather be back in a grimy London theatre on Equity
minimum!"
He kissed her very lightly on the cheek with the
edge of his lips and whispered in her ear, "You don't
like my white suit?"
She laughed.
"I only like you naked!"
"And tonight we're cooking you a cheap dinner," he
said.
"We got the smoked salmon and the vintage champ-
agne at a discount."
"You see," she said, turning his face towards her,
"you're still being artificial, making a joke of it."
He nodded.
"The kid's right," he said to Pauline.
"I'm So
fucking slick!
I can't stand it any more!"
"It's a form of self-defence," Angela said.
"You're dead right!
But against what?"
"A11 the other artificial people round you who're
doing the same thing."
The dinner was actually.Cy-caviar as a starter,
grilled tuna steaks and a delicious semi-freddo with a
layer of malscalpone.
Dominic said that the ice-cream
was 'custom built' for him by one of the biggest ice-
cream manufacturers in San Francisco.


cream manufacturers in San Francisco.
"Another slick achievement,' Angela said.
"But it's good?" he isaid with alight irritation.
"It tastes good?"
"Oh yes! But no better for what you said about
Her mood reduced the dinner table to. silence. He ' d
made such an effort, got special candles that didn't run,
and josticks. And afterwards he prepared real old-style
capuccini as Pauline apparently liked them, with a dash
of chocolate powder on top.and the milk really frothy.
"I've got to look at my part," Angela said and went
to her room.
After a time she felt tired and, having learned the
absurd lines, decided to go to bed. She closed her door
without a word and began undressing.
As so often in the past she had expressed strong
feelings without knowing before she opened her mouth that
she had them.
Where had that word artificial' come
from? But it expressed what she felt.
Even Jamie was
artificial.
He never seemed to get down to the real
subject. And with Dominic she felt it was only real
between them when they were in bed or completely alone.
And not saying much.
It was an odd feeling not to know
a man from Adam, and yet have him as one's lover, the
greatest love of her life as a matter of fact.
When she
smelt his warm alluring scent (it came from his hair,
his skin, perhaps only for her) and touched him with the
tips of her fingers and said things into his ear and
opened herself utterly to him she was with him as she'd
never been with a human being in her life, and then, well,
the word 'artficial' was ridiculous: But the rest of him
she knew nothing about and couldn't, apparently, get contact
with.
In that respect Pauline was closer to him than
she was. And yet it didn't matter.
It only meant that
they had to go on together blind, not knowing what life
was going to present them with next. He in San Francisco
among the bankers and she with his enemies on a commercial
set. And he could be a bad man for all she knew, he
could be the killer people said he was and it made no


difference. What difference could it make to the
scent of his hair, to the way his skin felt, to the
feel of his breath on the side of her face, to that
special thrilling way he had of entering her while at
the same time seeming to receive her.
And then, what man had really looked at her? Oh
they'd looked her in the eyeswwith varying degrees of
sympathy and interest and friendliness.
But what did
all that have to do with a woman?
Dominic really saw
every part of her body. He traced the intimate parts
not only with his hands but his eyes. Helooked. And
she realised, with him, that looking is like touching,
it produces thrill and expactancy.
And he looked in
her eyes. He gazed into them and she could see all
the things he was experiencing. A11 her life she'd
felt insufficiently awoken in the vaginal area. No
matter how often she made love she still felt the need
of further satisfactions because that part of her was
insufficiently caressed.
Or wrongly caressed.
this was what she now thought-: --only one man on earth
could do it properly.
Before, she'd thought it was a
matter of finding the right lover, that is one sufficient-
ly expert.
That was why she'd chosen men much older
than herself.
But still it hadn't worked.
It had been
better, but the lurking sense of not having been fully
satisfied had remained.. Of course it had nothing to do
with expertness.
It was a matter of whether he was your
only man on earth.
Then he knew,what to do as you knew
what to do.
You did it without thinking.
You had no
shame. That was another revelation! She didn't want
to hide any part of her body from him, she didn't care
about the defects she'd always been So conscious of
(legs slightly too muscular, a rather rounded back,
and that rubbery neck etc).
Every woman, she now
believed, carried around with her a list of her defects
which she concealed even in nakedness. And while she
was with the wrong man those defects would continue.
And when she was with the right one those defects would
disappear, they would become just, well, having a body!


The phone rang and it was Jamie. He wanted to
talk about the new Bel Ami. Sonya Steele was saying
that since Angela had stolen the commercial job from
her, would she now steal the lead in Bel Ami? He felt
she ought to meet Sonya, they ought to let their hair
down together because it seemed to him that at those
readthroughs they'd got on well together.
"I think it's a good idea too," Angela said.
"Anyway, I think you and I ought to talk and the
set's no place to do it.
What about having dinner with
me tomorrow evening? You cancelled the last one, and
this one is my personal invitiation, not Max's idea."
"OK Jamie," she said.
"Do I have to say right
"Yes you do," he replied.
"I'm star status now
and can't be messed about."
She laughed.
"A11 right.
Shall we leave straight
from the studios?"
"Sure! We'll go somewhere cheap and cosy, down-
town.
You must be real tired of the glossy places!"
That was clever of him, she thought.
She listened for Dominic and Pauline but there
wasn't.a sound.' She yawned and slipped into bed.
She wanted so much to sleep the night with him.
only he'd come to her bed now!
But he wouldn't. He
was proud. More than she was. She could easily go
to him, now, if it weren't for this heaviness coming
over her. She slept at once.
She must have been asleep an hour when she jumped
awake at the sound of screaming.
There wasn't a gleam
of light anywhere, since she'd overlooked to open her
door slightly before getting into bed, and she began
screaming too, strange high-pitched gasping sounds that
seemed to come from her body on their own.
Meanwhile
the other'screams, those of a man, continued, more long
drawn out, and remote, more aghast than panic-stricken.


Her half-sleeping mind simply couldn't grasp what was
going on, and what with the total blackness, and her
not knowing for certain where she was, her screams
augmented until she could hardly take breath.
Then
there were running steps along the corridor outside and
she suddenly knew where she was. Dominic burst into
the room, and light flooded it.
She was sitting up with
her hands held up to her throat, her eyes starting out
of her head.
"What the hell---?" He rushed to her.
They clung together and she stopped screaming but
the other screams continued.
"Dominic!
Dominic!"
He shouted out, "Pauline! Pauline!
Stop that
damned tape!
It's coming over the speakers!"
The screams suddenly cut out. Angela began crying,
mostly with relief.
Pauline came into the room.
"What was wrong?"
"The tape was coming over the speakers, I must
have got the switches mixed. Hell! She must be
terrified!"
Ange la was quivering all over.
"I'm sorry," she said, her teeth chattering, "I'm
terrified of the dark too."
Pauline got her some brandy and gradually she came
to her senses.
"What was that screaming?"
"It was one of. my far memory tapes. We were running
it to get my first description of Caterina."
"Oh!" She lay back exhausted.
"And I've got such
a heavy day tomorrow!"
"I guess those screams didn't sound artificial?"
Pauline said.:
"No, as a matter of fact they didn't."
"I mean, the man was screaming about you, OK in
a former life but it was still about you, I mean you


ca. 't just lie there and say who was it screaming and
then when you're told it's your own man, the greatest
love you've ever had, you say you've got a heavy day
tomorrow, Christ!"
Pauline was flushed, her cheeks were twitching
slightly and she was clearly not used to any kind of
outburst.
"Take it easy, kid," Dominic told her, putting his
hand on hers.
"No I'd just like to know from Angela if she thinks
those screams are phoney or unreal or artificial."
Angela looked at her for a time. Other people's
outbursts always made her feel incredibly calm, perhaps
because she realised they were terribly real whereas in
her case they were always, but always, half compounded
acting (and frequently it was more than half).
"Pauline," she said, "do you really like me?"
"Oh no, you're not giving me that shit! Here,
you're going to hear that tape!" Pauline shouted.
She jumped up from the bed and left the room.
On her way to the lounge she shouted back, "She'1l be
saying I'm jealous of her next!"
"What's going on?" Angela asked him.
He smiled and putting his cheek on hers whispered,
"Screams."
And this time she really heard them. Apart from
the fact that Pauline turned the volume to full, she was
wide awake now.
She felt Dominic start as he heard them.
sounded like a man forced to watch an appalling outrage
of some kind.
"What was it?" she asked him.
"What was it?"
"My own death!"
"But your death when?"
"The last time, the last time round!"
"Oh my God!"
And then came his shout- -"Caterina! Caterina!"
It went on and on. Angela jumped up.
She ran to the lounge. "Shut that bloody thing
off! Shut it off!"
Pauline was standing there, close to the recording


Pauline was standing there, close to the record
player.
Whether it was' because Angela could act fury
supremely well, or because she felt a little remorseful
about what she'd done, Pauline quietly flicked the switch.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, getting people
into this kind of situation," Angela told her.
crazy! Going back to past lives when you can't live in
this one properly! No wonder you've got pimply boyfriends!"
Dominic was behind them.
"OK, girls," he said. "We've had enough fun for one
night."
"And you let her do it!" Angela told him.
"You
woke me up with those horrible séreams---!"
"At least you know they're real,".he said.
She was shivering.
"You'd better get her a dressing gown," Pauline
said to Dominic.
Then she sat down, trembling slightly.
"Boy," she said, "do you have a voice."
Angela laughed.
"Mine was the biggest voice in my
year. My teacher said he'd never known such projection."
"Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight Pauline?"
Dominic asked when he came back.
"I think I'll sleep
with my lady."
So Angela got what she'd wanted earlier in the
evening. He closed the door of her room and all was
darkness. She didn't mind a bit.
She snuggled up to
him and it was the most delicious warmth she'd ever
felt, and when they whispered together it was like being
the first creaturesin the world, before any noise or
restlessness had started.
Oh she'd never felt such
safety!
As for the. terrors of darkness, these came, she
knew now, from solitude.
But in these moments of drows-
iness before sleep, his legs crooked in hers, his arm
round her waist and one hand on her breast, darkness was
a friend and balm, and seemed to enjoy exactly what they
enjoyed.
"Would you stop these reincarnation trips for me?"
she whispered.


"Do you think it's bad to scream?" heasked her.
"I mean what about the scream therapies? They're
supposed to do you good."
She could feel him smiling. Always that cool
smile! As if he knew the outcome of things!
"It's a kind of hypnosis, I think Pauline hypnot-
ises you."
"You try telling her that!"
"But perhaps she doesn't realise her powers."
"And maybe you don't realise yours."
The hand that wasn't on her breast went to her head
and in that instant she fell asleep.
Her last thought,
which she'd forgotten by the morning, was 'He's the one
with hypnotic powers.'
She and Jamie ended up in the same Japanese
restaurant on First Street where she'd eaten alone
after throwing her script at Max Pennance. She told
Jamie and he said with a laugh, "Good omen."
They sat in a corner. The light was very dim.
He kept filling her cup with hot saki and it felt good
after the strains of the day (and the night). They
had worked until about eight and everyone had been
edgy.
The producers had called Jill Rapinsky and told
her they didn't like the rushes they'd seen, and there
was talk about changing the director (especially after
he'd ask Jill what the hell his rushes were doing being
shown to a bunch of small-town crooks). Jill had
appeared on the set briefly and while saying a jolly "Hi!"
to Jamie almost cut Angela dead.
"You have to get used to that," Jamie told her.
"She's probably blaming you for the way things have
gone wrong."
"Blaming me?"
"People are very superstitious in this business and
anyone connected with the Killer is supposed to have. a
bit of the evil' eye."
"What are you talking about?"


"It's true! His assistant Pauline Stromheim isn't
allowed near any studios.
The cameras stop working right
"Oh I can believe that," Angela said.
"And you can't believe any wrong about him.' 18
She gave him a level look.
"Because he's my man."
"OK." He looked hurt but acted it away quickly.
"Sometimes I think that woman Pauline has a spell
on him," Angela said, aware that she shouldn't be saying
it but wanting any information about Pauline that might
be going.
"Could be. Actually she's a nice lady. Graduated
in Environmental Sciences but then she met Dominic and he
got her into past-life regression as a profession.
I mean,
she always had it as a hobby."
"What are environmental sciences."
"Well, like how fish and underwater life generally
react to sewage and agricultural run-off, that kind of
thing.
How many wild animals can we afford to kill?
She'd have been good at that, travelling, getting solar
energy and irrigation to African tribes. Sonyou think
she's spooky?
Well you know what some people are saying?
Her brief appearance at that house Max Pennance brought
you to for your first interview, you remember, the place
in La Mirada, they're saying that screwed the Bel Ami
film, put the kiss of death on it."
"Were you at that party?"
"I was. I saw you go out and look at the Killer's
"Listen if we're going to have a peaceful dinner
would you give up that expression otherwise I'm going."
"OK, Angela, I'm sorry, the fact is I'm in love with
you and not him."
She almost dropped her chopsticks.
"You're what?"
"I'm in love with you.
I fell in love with you
that first morning at the studios, when Everard introd-
uced us. So it's not my fault if I'hate your man's
guts, I mean I always have done like a lot of people in
the industry, but I just want you to know I'm not the
hating type, that's all."


the industry, but I just want you to know I'm not the
hating type, that's all."
"So you've been suffering in silence all this
"I opened my heart to Jill Rapinsky, that's all.
Whet ther she talked or not I don't know, but I've got
a funny feeling that I'm the reason why the first Bel
Ami was run down."
"You,mean Dominic knows?"
"That's what I do mean."
"You think he's that small?"
"No I don't think he's small Angela.
He just knows
his own mind that's all. And he follows it.
Whereas
others take fellow human beings into consideration."
"Do you think they really do? Here? It's a case
of push orbget pushed, and he pushes. So do you."
"I've never pushed in my life Angela. - A11 I did
was grow a moustache."
When ten o'clock came round she phoned Dominic's
place but he wasn't there. He'd told her at breakfast
that he might be late as he was spending the evening with
a money man from San Diego. She had the feeling that
somehow he wanted her to be free for Jamie, though she
didn't tell him a word about the dinner date.
When she got back to the table Jamie said, "You're
really in love huh?"
"Are you sure you're not just obsessed? How do
you know you're not being hypnotised, either by Pauline
or him?"
"Oh come on!" She laughed, remembering in that
instant how on that first day in the studios she had
thought how easy it would have been to fall in love with
Jamie Somerson had it not been for the man she'd seen
in the traffic the previous day. Suppose Dominic had
never appeared again? She would have died, led a half-
life!
"No," she said.
"I'm in charge of faculties, in So
far as anybody is when they're in love."


"But it isn't any ordinary love, is it?" he asked her,
blinking a bit as if the question cost him effort.
"What love is?"
"No answer my question."
"It's the greatest love I've ever known.
It's
what I've been yearning for all my life and I always
thought it was just daydreaming to' want things like
that, but I've got it. I'm sorry Jamie, you asked me
to answer the question."
"Yeah, I did." He looked really sick.
"One shouldn't answer questions like that,"
she said quietly.
"And suppose I still said it was all illusion and
you were going to wake up one day?"
"You can say anything you like!
Love's like that.
It looks unreal from the outside!"
"I want you to talk to Sonya, she used to be his
mistress."
"They lived together before she met Max Pennance."
She recovered from this, thinking, 'Well, what's
wrong with that, I had Louis.'
"I think he showed a lot of good taste," she made
herself say.
"But she can tell you a lot about him. He's been
in and out of psychiatric clinics for years Angela! ,
He nearly killed her once!"
"And you're afraid for me are you?" he said angrily.
"Well thanks very much I can look after myself and I
don't care what you people call him, you can say he's
a killer and a madman but I love him, I love him!"
"OK, Angela, I'm sorry, I realise that, but I
think ya're going to wake up one day, I hope so, then
you'll see I was right to say what I did."
"I've got to phone home again." She deliberately
said 'home'.
Dominic still wasn't there when she called.
Just
as if he was listening to their conversation. Always
she felt this, that he was present wherever she went.
And she loved this, the feeling of not being a lone,
isolated human any more.


And she loved this, the feeling of not being a lone,
isolated being any more.
But Jamie's information worked on her.
She sat
silent for a long time, smoking.
And he seemed to
know what he'd done, and respected her-silence.
How often she'd nearly ended in a psychiatric ward,
she told herself.
And there were actresses in England
who thought her a killer, in her way, willing to kill
for career.
"If Dominic was such a sick man mentally, how was
it he got all that money together?" she asked.
"As I said, he's single-minded. And he doesn't
care too much about people. And maybe he has hypnotic
powers. Maybe he has a bit of the black magic, the
evil eye! He gets what he wants. He got you all the
way from England! He Saw you on your clips and hes said
I want that girl here, and he got you here!" :.:
"You know tha at too, do you?"
"The whole industry knows it!" He added, "Also
he's a. bit old'for you." -
"Oh don't talk shit! A friend of mine's married
to a man twenty-four years older than she is and they're
divinely happy! Really Jamie!"
"What I mean is hestarts off with an advantage, he
knows how to hook you, being more experienced---"
"We'd better drop this, let's go."
As Dominic still wasn't home she let Jamie take her
to a disco in Santa Monica.
But she wouldn't dance.
She drank vodkas, too many of them.
She didn't know why
she didn't leave this young man with his depressing
suggestions. But. she sat on, afraid of being in the flat
alone (alone with the thought that he was mentally sick).
She phoned several times but he still wasn't back.
Finally at about half-past two she got up and said,
"It's curtains, don't you think?"
He drove her back in his battered mini and she only
let him shake hands with her.
"I'm sorry," he said.


"Sorry about what?"
"Being in love with you.' "
The flat was empty and she went to the lounge.
But a few minutes later she heard the key turn and he
came in. He had loosened his collar and was looking
a bit flushed with drink.
It was three o'clock.
"I took him to Butterfield's," he said.
"Did you
know it used to be a guest cottage on the Barrymore
estate?"
"I expect you know who I've been with."
"Why "should I?"
"You seem to know most t things - #
"So who was it?"
"Jamie Somerson."
"Oh!" He laughed.
"He hasn't got a hope.
And I bet he thinks I cancelled the film because I
don't like to think of his arms round you."
"Something like that," she said.
"Well," he said, putting his armsround her, "he's
only an actor, you mustn't judge him too harshly.
And
don't actors and actresses fall in love twice a month?"
"Do they?" she said, giving him a kiss.
"I fall in
love with you a thousand times a day!"
The next day's shooting was the toughest SO far.
Jill Rapinsky was on the set the whole time either bicker-
ing with the director or suggesting alterations in the
script. Dialogue was changed a dozen times.
"Now I know why most commercials have no talk,"
Jonathan Beane said.
It was the scene where Angela embraced Jamie tha t
interested Jill most. She insisted that it be reshot.
Angela really began to hate that woman, and Jill seemed
to enjoy it.
"Angela," she said, "you act as if you've never made
love in your life!"
She wanted her to kiss him properly, not in a standing
position either but lying down. Angela was to writhe
about. Why didn't they try to get some sexual enjoyment


position either but lying down. Angela was to writhe
about.
Why didn't thry to get some sexual,excitement
out of it, for Christ sake? Jill kept her huge shades
on and her long hair kept swishing about like a tiger's
tail.
Even Jamie thought she was going too far.
But
insistence wins in the end, at least in the film industry,
and the director finally agreed to having the two principals
virtually undress each other on a couch and then in the
car So that he could make a montage of the shots.
There
was an atmosphere of hate and hysteria. It was one in
which Jill thrived and which she invariably tried to
provoke when things looked like going wrong. That was
why she got the contracts.
On the couch Angela realised that Jamie had an
erection and wanted to cry out for Dominic. Why the
hell didn't he come and rescue her? How was it that he
pulled down Bel Ami but let this nonsense continue?
But there he was, smiling again, just behind her head!
"Listen, Angela," Jill said, rudely coming in front
of the director, "you're living with our current whizz-kid,
now you've got to:have some sex appeal, now where is it?"
It was amazing, she just had no answer for this
woman, no come-back at all. Jill wassso quick with
her rudeness, and the rudeness was So contemptible the
mind couldn't believe it.
Jamie put his hand under her blouse (she was in the
two-piece, her pill-hat was supposed to fall off as he
dragged her down) and found a bra.
"Listen," Jill said, "what's the wardrobe department
thinking of? We don't want bras in this scene, we want
the full works, frigid though they may be."
Off the bra came, and Angela was mute with aston-
ishment and anger.
He put his hand under her blouse
again and this time found her breast. It was amazing but
by an automatic biological reaction it swelled and her
nipple became hard. Something must have happened to her
face because Jill whipped round to the director"and
screamed, "Why aren't you rolling for Christ sake?"


Jamie was pressing hard on her and tried to kiss
her with his tongue but she resisted, her teeth clenched.
She felt his erection as he pulled himself over her and
here too she experienced a sudden involuntary reaction,
the warmth spreading inside her aga inst her will, making
her moist.
She tried to get outof it but Jamie was
strong.
There was a terrific row going on between Jill and
the director.
He was shouting, "Who the fuck's the director here?
And don't you realise you're standing in front of the
cameras?"
"Why aren't the fucking cameras rolling? Why aren't
they rolling?"
There was a touch of hysteria in Jill's voice which
Angela was aware of and which for some_reason: increased
her involuntary excitement. He was kissing her every-
where on the face and his hand had travelled to her other
breast so that he was now caressing her fully, pushing
with his whole body. And the warmth grew inside her
while she struggled and writhed under him. He forced
her legs open.
"What the hell do you want---a love scene or a rape
scene?" the director was screaming.
"Get them rolling!"
"OK start rolling!" The director called to the
actors, "Action!"
And in that moment, while Jamie became more and more
excited on top of her, and pulled up her blouse to show
her swollen breasts, kissing her neck and ears, she saw
with clarity, despite the confusion, what was happening.
All her life, since a child, she had had rape fantasies,
excited herself with them when masturbating.
There had
been a handfull of stock situations---in one a man took
her from behind when she was bending dowh to pick up
something, in another two men took it in turns to enter
her, in another a muscular scene-shifter took her in
the shadows of the wings while she was waiting for an
entrance in performance watched by at least a thousand
people.
And the more she struggled with Jamie the more
the excitement


excitement overwhelmed her. He had now gripped her
with his ha unches.
Suddenly she saw the sound boom
hovering over them and realised they were recording as
well. Sonshe began shquting, "Get off! Get off!
Jamie get off me you bastard! Get off!"
At once the director's voice came, "Cut!"
Jamie relaxed and slowly slid into a lying position,
breathing hard, sweat breaking through the make-up.
She pulled her blouse down and lay there too.
"Sorry," Jamie said quietly.
"Well," they could hear Jill Rapinsky saying in the
background, "there's something in the can."
"Enough to br ing a rape charge against your company,"
the director said.
"Oh come on Jonathan, what kind of talk is that?"
"But how can I use stuff like that?"
"If you can't use it baby throw it away!"
And she was off the set in a moment.
"That woman's a nutcase," the director said, sitting
in his canvas chair.
"Just wait till we see the rushes!"
Jamie got up and went to his dressing room without
looking at Angela.
The director came up to her and said,
"Sorry about that."
She didn't answer.
Later in her dressing room she
looked at herself in the mirror and was appalled to see
the excitement in her eyes. She didn't feel Dominic
smiling any more. He seemed dead.
Like crucified.
He was lying in other people's arms like Christ in those
deposition pictures.
One of these people was Pauline.
Yes, he did well to keep Pauline as his friend. She was
probably bettervfor him than a lover.
The girls. came in to take her make-up and costume
off but she yelled at them "Let me alone! A11 of you!"
They went abruptly.
She leaned back in her chair
and felt the moisture on her legs. And those fantasies
drifted vaguely into her mind and out again.
She wanted
a shower, or two showers. She wanted to be away from
Dominic for a week in order to get her body (his body)
back.


What a difference there was betweèn one man's
love and another's.
When she made love to Dominic she
felt pure and good and healthy afterwards, it seemed' - the
most t wonderful thing she could do, with no remorse or
darkness in it at all, nothing that had characterised
her other affairs.
Often, but often, she ha d let one
of those rape scenes run through her mind while she was
making love to someone so that the orgasm would be OK.
With Louis, towards whom she felt no physical affinity
whatsoever (oh he was good-looking and knew how to excite
her), this had become a habit, and the moment he began
kissing her these fantasies had taken over. He really
believed that her heavy breathing and sighs were his
work.
And afterwards, after the'climax, she had felt
bad. Not towards him.
If he was fooled by a lover
that was his look-out.
It showed how insensitive
he was. She felt bad about herself. Making: love
shouldn't be like that.
And all that had become prehistory with Dominic.
She'd really forgotten about it all. She wondered now
that she'd ever been able to take pleasure in such
things, and that absurd mental images had really had
the power to produce excitement be tween her legs!
How true wha t she'd 'said to him the previous night
had been-- --she really did fall in love with him a
thousand times a day all over again, as she saw a new
aspect of him or their love.
She jumped up and tore the door open: "I want a
shower!
I want a shower!"
One of the wardrobe girls came running, "There's
no shower, Miss. Bourne, there's a wash basin!"
Jonathan Beane appeared. "We don't have showers
honey, I'm sorry."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because that bitch Rapinsky does the hiring!
You have to wash wha tever it is in the piss-house!"
She went along to the lavatory and with toilet
paper swabbed the moisture away, the warmth.
She
felt so ashamed.
How could she face Dominic? She,
who had always found it easy, indeed enjoyable, to face
her lovers after an infidelity asked this!


her lovers after an infidelity asked this!
When she returned to her dressing room Jamie was
there.
He looked pale, contrite.
"Angela, I just had to do what I did', I can't explain
"I love him more, more---!" she hissed at him.
"And get out of my chair."
He moved away from her dressing table.
"I don't feel sorry about it, I enjoyed touching
you, I feel I know your body now, I was right to fall in
love with you---!"
"OK," she said quietly, "so what are you looking
like a beaten dog for?"
"Because I had to do it that way. And I screwed
up my chances with you."
"You never had a chance with me anyway," she said,
realising that this was cruel.
"I had an idea I wanted you to feel another man,
to rescue you from him, from the hypnotism!"
"Oh don't talk shit!"
"It's true what I'm saying."
"I didn't say it wasn't.
Shit can be true can't
"See you tomorrow," he said.on his way out.
"You'1l be lucky."
She called Dominic and was surprised to find him
home.
"I'm upset," she said. "Can younpick me up at
the studio?"
Be right 'over."
About twenty minutes later she heard him call out
'Hi Jonathan!", just t outside her door.
He strolled in,
dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
"What's the trouble?" he asked her.
"I don't want to work for these people any more."
"OK, show me the contract when we get home and I'1l
see what can be done."


"What contract?"
He smiled. "You didn't sign a contract?"
"Well, that's great. You can walk out whenever
you like.
And you don't get paid anyway."
"Why not?"
"Let's go, you're kind of stupefied at this moment.
When she got up she let him kiss her but averted
her lips.
At that moment Jamie walked in.
Dominic smiled at him: "Hi, Jamie.
Moustache
still paying off?"
"I guess so! See you Angela!" And he was gone
again at once.
On their way out, crossing cables and passing by
the cameras, Dominic was calling out "Hi!" and "Hullo
there!" with a big smile, and getting warm reactions.
She realised that camera crews liked him. That was
somehow important to her.
She saw Jamie getting into his mini in the parking
lot. 'The little rapist', she thought, but then disliked
herself for thinking this.
But how dare he of all people
call Dominic sick?
When they got to the apartment Pauline was there
and gave her a cheery hullo as if nothing had happened
be tween them.
Dominic murmured to Angela, "Go and lie
down honey while I handle this."
She threw herself down among the cushions and closed
her eyes. Really she wanted a shower but couldn't
rouse herself.
Dominic appeared in the doorway and
said, "On second thoughts you may as well hear everything
I say."
He sat on the edge of her bed and took up the phone.
"Everard around?" he asked when the call went
through.
She heard a female voice at the other end but
couldn't make out what was said.
"Tell him to call me right away," Dominic said
and put the phone back without another word.
He sat. gazing at her.
"They gave you a pretty
tough time huh?"


lo2
tough time huh?"
A few minutes later the phone rang.
"Hi, Everard. Was there no contract for this
commercial for Christ sake?"
She waited and then Dominic said, "Angela, yes.
She says she hasn't seen a contract." Then, "OK,,
Everard, keep smiling."
He put the phone down and began dialling another
number.
This time it was for Jill Rapinsky. She too was
unavailable and he said, "Tell her to call me right away."
Here the delay was longer.
"The dike's probably tied up with a woman in her
office, literally," he growled half to himself.
The call came and he said at once, "Everard tells
me you agreed on five thousand dollars for Angela on this
commercial.
That's chicken feed and I wouldn't even
give you a show of her under-pants for that price but
just the same get the money round to me by five this
afternoon."
And he slammed the phone down.
An hour later, when she was taking a shower, the
money arrived. A messenger brought a cheque in her
name with a covering compliments note from Jill Rapinsky.




lo4
It was a heavy still day with low mist and a hot
unhealthy sun lurking behind, sending an unusual glow
on to the roofs. A. procession of at least twenty
black limousines had travelled slowly to the cemetery
west of Sunset Strip and they were now entering the
tall gates where attendants were waiting.
The hearse
drew up at the crematorium chapel while the limousines
drew round unctiously and smoothly on to 'the ornate
parking lot where cement statuary looked vaguely uncom-
fortable on low columns and the grass was so trimmed
and sprinkler-refreshed that it looked artificial, even
ugly, menacing. The gravel cracked and slid under
the heavy tyres, and the purring of the engines, so
discreet, could ha rdly be heard. There were black-
suited attendants at the entrance of the chapel too,
waiting for the coffin, hats in hand and professionally
lugubrious expressions on their faces. A slight breeze
touched the bushes and awakened the dull mist a little.
From inside the chapel came the sound of music, a quartet
had been hired, and Mendelsohn was the chosen composer..
To one side of the chapel, on a grassy mound among fuchias
fuchias and dogwood, there vast wreaths, their ribboned
cards glowing white. And there were massive bunches
of lilies.
Some orchids figured there.
The rear
window of the hearse swung open automatically and the
six bearers, pads 'on their shoulders, walked slowly


round to place themselves under the coffin as it slid
on rollers towards them.
The attendants at the door
straightened and it seemed they were doing all they
could to show grieved concern, as much that is as was
consonant with total immobility.
Smoke was emerging
vertically from the crematorium chimney.
The flames
were ready.
She saw Greg Merrytown get out of the first limous-
ine, looking startled as if death had never occurred to
him as a possibility before, and wondering how he should
look---surprised, tortured or serene.
His hair was
still sticking up like it was at that night spot, and
a ton of Brylcreem wouldn't have helped. He had a
tight striped blue suit on which seemed worn out but
rarely worn, as if he saw a special mourning significance
in looking unattractive.
Barry Kurtz was soon at his
side, small and rotund.
He had a pained look anyway,
so that was OK. He looked round with startled eyes
as if one of the attendants was going to tell him there'd
been a mistake and he should be in the coffin, not the
man who was. He clearly didn't like funerals.
The
door attendants were trying to smile at the mourners,
a condolatory smile that stopped short of fun. In a
few moments the limousines were parked in perfect line,
side by side, and the mourners poured out silently,
waiting for the coffin to go in. It looked heavy and
the bearers swayed slightly.
For a second it looked
perilous.
The whole of the Bel Ami set was there (that is,
the Bel Ami that had been cancelled and the second Bel
Ami that, now, was just as dead). There were actors,
film crew, directors, cutters, wardrobe and make-up
assistants.
She saw Jamie Somerson. and tried to hide
but then realised that this was a foolish thing to do.
Jill Rapinsky got out of the limousine like a black I
cloth construction surmounted with a deathly white mask,
most of it covered with sun glasses. Everard Hope
looked entirely hopeless---it wasn't his scene and events
like death were horrifyingly unnegotiated, their clauses
without mention of percentages or retainers. He had
his hands


lo 6
his hands in his jacket pockets and his black shoes
looked enormous. The suit was yellow. An agent didn't
seemeto need dark clothes. He would have preferred to
come along. in his VW but the organisers of the funeral,
called Frontier Productions, put their foot down and said
either you came in one of the limousines or you stayed
at home. Everard should have been wearing black, see-
ing that this death had cost him half a million dollars.
He didn't greet anybody.
It was an agent's business to
be everywhere, he seemed to say, and to be expected every-
where, therefore not greeted.
The actors were most tly elegant, casually so, although
Jamie Somerson was in a sober double-breasted suit with
matching dee-brown shirt and tie, but was no doubt because
he was now star jevel. Perhaps Frontier Productions had
dressed him.
Sonya Steele was in a flowing white wool
dress, presumably because at funerals people wore black.
Max Pennance was at her side looking moral in a black
leather suit, as if he could have foreseen this all along.
A muscular grips, accustomed to pushing dolleys and no
questions asked, couldn't help looking jolly even in
black, and greeted everybody as he would in the studios.
Perhaps he couldn't believe it wasn't a funeral sequence
with a dummy coffin.
The bearded actor who'd been at
the first read-throughs of Bel Ami looked exactly as he
was meant to in the film, except tha t there was now no
film, with the result that he had the air of a man at
dinner who spent - a month preparing his speech and isn't
even asked to propose a toast. Everyone shuffled into
the chapel, Jill Rapinsky first.
Angela and Pauline walked with Dominic between
them.
They S tood in the next to last row, and the other
mourners either left that row empty on purpose or by
an accident that suited them emotionally.
Thatbis,
no one really looked' at Dominic, therefore Pauline and
Angela were disregarded too. Dominic wore a strictly
black.suit, very : elegant with turned-back cuffs and
narrow sleeves.
Pauline was in striped maroon two-
piece, while Angela had chosen her skin-tight dress with


the low-cut V-neck as the only black thing she had.
She toned the neck down with a black chiffon scarf,
and the striking waist with a black silk jacket.
She looked a dream but nobody was supposed to look at
her.
Frontier Productions had barred photographers.
She felt pinched and pale, and clung to Dominic, whose
look was one of placid unconcern. She prayed that
Jamie wasn't going to S] peak to her, especially in front
of Dominic, but she knew there would be a reception
afterwards at the Sheraton-Universal.
The lim usines had crawled all the way from La
Mirada causing traffic jams at the peak morning hour.
By a peculiar logic these jams had caused further jams
ahead so that the pace became even slower.
They could
have walked it faster.
Everybody was hungry, as always
at funerals.
She sat betweent Pauline and Dominic in
the limousine, with three other people opposite them,
studio executives who just nodded to Dominic in a
friendly it's-in-the-day's-business way and then said
nothing.
She wanted to talk to Dominic SO desperately
but of course they couldn't with everyone listéning in.
She wanted to cry not because it was a funeral but
because she was out of a job with no scripts to read and
nowhere to go.
Of course great things were being planned
for the future but being an actress she only believed the
future when it happened. If Dominic had been more sym-
pathetic towards her it wou, d have helped but he was
alwaysbout of the apartment or in San Diego or San Francisco
or dining with a money man or doing these FM sessions
(she : had finally realised that this meant Far Memory)
at Pauline's place in Florence Avenue. She'd si pent
hours alone in her room in the last fifteen days without
the phone ringing once. She had phoned her mother and
been told a lot of nonsense about how Beryl, a woman down
the road who read the Tarot cards and was always supposed
to be right, had spotted the fact that she was madly in
love but warned her of unspecified dangers. Also


lox
Angela had forgotten the time difference and woken
her mother up at four in the morning.
The five thousand dollar cheque from Jill Rapinsky
had made her feel independent but it hadn't lasted long.
Everard had called her the same day and said she needn't.
worry about his cut, he'd already taken it straight from
the Jill Rapinsky office.
"The funny thing is this," he had said.
"Dominic
nails a company down for payment on a contract that
doesn't exist but he's not honouring any of his obligations
on the Bel Ami contracts."
"Why don't you tell him?" she said, feeling stupid
at once.
"What," Everard said, almost spitting down the phone,
"an agent talk about money, never heard of it!"
And he slammed the phone down.
Jamie Somerson had called almost continuously.
Sometimes he spoke to Dominic, and a smile would spread
on Dominic's face. She hadn't told him a word about
what had happened in the studio to make her quit.
She'd
tried to but he always made it impossible. He seemed
to know that she had something important to say, and to
avoid it. They'd made love since that time but it had
been different on her side and he must have noticed.
She felt sort of soiled.
And she would go on feeling
like that until she'd talked to him.
She didn't get
excited like before. Oh she loved it just the same,
he belonged to her whatever the love was like, but God
didn't seem to be in the room any more. Sometimes she
thought she saw a look of gried on his face. But he
didn't say a word.
Saul Weinand had given a stupefying party on board
the docked Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor. No one knew
why he did, or why he chose a ship for it, and a British
one at that, not a French one, though of course a French
ship wasn't available. It seemed an odd way of announcing
a film that was to be shot on terra firma and about Paris.
Some said that it was because one of the stars was
British, but Angela thought this absurd (with a flutter
of pleasure).


Of course (so Dominic had said) Saul had got a
beneficial hiring deal from the Queen's proprietors.
But it stiil cost the best part of a quarter of a million
dollars.
You could justify it on the grounds of advance
publicity.
There were TV cameras everywhere, the trade
magazines ran excellent columns on it, and it gave the
press a chance to meet the new star Jamie Somerson.
The title Ambition was seen everywhere, on ribbons
strung across the dining salon, on banners and hats
and even the table-cloths. That was the new name for
the new Bel Ami.
Saul had walked round looking like David 0. Selznick
kissing the ladies on both cheeks, grabbing ma le hands a
and being photographed with Jamie.
"Only when he caught my eye," Dominic said, "did
he feel what he was, a man in a helluva big debt."
She and Dominic and Pauline had been in a light
mood that evening.
They'd driven down to Long Beach
Harbor in the Buick, Dominic's second car. Angela
chattered about her Thirties idol Jack Buchanan whom
she'd only seen on film, though she had all his records.
She told them that his ashes had been scattered from the
Queen Mary and that he'd made over fifty transatlantic
crossings to appear on Broadway or in films. She sang
them his career-hit 'And her mother came to tea'.
Pauline drove them towards Pier J. on the harbour
and they saw the huge ship before them, brilliant with
lights in the dusk as if about to slip anchor for another
return voyage to Southampton.
The party had started off with caivar and champagne
in the Queen Mary Playhouse, with a revue imported from
the Mayfair MusicaHall in Santa Monica.
The men were
all in tuxedos, the women in every kind of undress.
Angela wore the aquamarine gown from her commercial
(the Jill Rapinsky outfit had sent it round to her with
its compliments the day after the cheque). With some
pearls Dominic slipped round her neck just before they
left the apartment.
She hated that sort of thing and
almost threw them in his face.
She liked a gift to
be given to her straight out, not made into some sort
of sentimental occasion


given to her straight out, not made a pretext for some
kind of sentimental show. Like she heard once how a
husband somewhere or other (there must be thousands of
them) walked into the room on her birthday and just
handed her a bunch of keys.
"What are these for?" says the wife.
"You'11 find out if you take a look outside," he
says, glowing with hubris.
And she walks outside and finds a custom-built
Mercedes. Crap!
Suppose she didn't like the colour
or the make?
She told Dominic, "Never do that again. I don't
like having things hung on me as if I was a dummy. "
"Sorry lady," he said with an admiring smile. He
loved it when she was like that.
A11 round the pros arch in the Queen Mary Playhouse
there had been a tricolour ribbon with fleur de lys and
Ambition in scroll-print.
Straw boaters were handed
round for the men, cloche hats for the women, all with
Ambition on them.
What a crazy evening!
One ribbon featured the names of the stars--
Jamie Somerson and Angela Bourne.
"Well just look at that," Dominic said.
She
thought he was mocking her.
TV cameras and hand-held 'bashers' followed : her
everywhere, she was asked for comments on the coming
film (she hadn't signed a contract yet!) and she made
a few trite remarks which Saul's publicity department
had advised her on beforehand. Sonya Steele was nowhere
to be seen and some said she'd refused to play in the
film. Max Pennance was to direct just the same. After
all nobody expected him to stand by his girlfriend anyway.
Once the contracts were si igned shooting was to
start, probably in ten or fifteen days, at the Burbank
studios.
The stages were already hired, Saul had
bought a whole load of costumes off the previous Bel
Ami production company (that is to say from himself
and Dominic), and really the only difference between
the first Bel Ami ' and the second was that Dominic wasn't
one of the pr oducers.
Otherwise the participants were
the same.


the same. Even Sonya Steele would join the company
once she'd felt two days of unemployment.
There'd been nothing for Angela to do in that period.
No one knew if the material shot for Jill Rapinsky's
commercial would be used. She wondered that Jill hadn't
asked her for further work, since that was what Everard
had promised.
It was all a bit peculiar. And that
rape scene instead of a love scene---what was behind it?
Did Dominic know, and was that why he avoided talking
about it? She waited for the daily Everard call but
that stopped.
Meanwhile contracts were drawn up for
Ambition, hers included.
Dominic went through hers
with a toothcomb and called Everard to negotiate further
on certain clauses. Angela just couldn't understand
his sang froid about all this.
"Why don't you disapprove of me working for a
breakaway producer?"
"Because he isn't breakaway, I'm breakaway, and
secondly it's what you want."
"And the devil can hang me?"
"OK, Angela, everybody takes the rap for what he
wants!
Jesus Christ, .you don't want me to negotiate
your contracts and thank you for it!"
Anyway, there'd been a lot of talk about Ambition.
in the industry. People who had previously said that
'another costume film' would never make it on the big
screen were now beginning to wonder if this wasn't
another Gone with the Wind. Angela was expected to
do a Vivien Leigh.
It should all have been very exciting,
but somehow the excitement never got to the actors and
actresses.
Jamie had worked in another commercial and a hand-
hel ld light, living up to its nickname of handbasher,
had fallen within inches of his hand. Nobody had
known what it was doing there, or why the sparks
responsible had been carrying the thing round on a live
lead. Nothing was being shot at the time. And within
minutes the story was going round the set that it was
an 'occult happening'.
That had started a lot of talk
about Dominic.
And then Saul,Weinand died.
He'd been suffering


And then Saul Weinand died.
Recently he'd been
suffering from an extra-systolic heart flutter, and been
put under observation at the Cedars of Lebanon. He
felt giddy and depressed because they'd putnhim on a
ganglion-block drug to set the blood pressure to rights.
He'd been told to take it easy but' of course, with
Ambition about to be shot, and a stupendous bank loan
to justify, he couldn't think of that. He collapsed on
the stage at the Burbank Studios one afternoon and died
two days later.
The reception was on the second floor of the
Sheraton and there was enough boose to sink the Queen
Mary. The sideboards were draped in black crepe, and
there were drapes on the walls too.
The waiters were
in black.
"But who paid for all this?" she whispered to
Dominic.
He shrugged.
"I guess his company."
As at the chapel, they were a little apart from the
others, together with Pauline.
Not exactly ostracised
but no one made a point of greeting them. She i could
have killed Dominic when he suddenly appeared with Jamie,
his arm round his shoulder.
"It isn't the end of the world," he was saying.
"There'11 be other films where maybe you and Angela can
play together.
And why, you've got enough star pull
to insist on your female lead."
"That's right!" Jamie said, his chin buried in his
neck, hardly daring to look at her.
She was amazed!
She gave Dominic a hard look but he
was refusing to register. She even suspected he was
having a good time.
"What I don't understand," Jamie went on, "is why the
Ambition project had to die with Saul. I mean, Jesus,
all we have recently is films being set up and then pulled
down again!"
"The fact is the banks shut down on it once his
guarantees were in the hands of his family. I mean,


"The fact is the banks shut down on it once his'
guarantees were in the hands of his family. I mean,
with me out.of the project, there's no one they can
trust any more."
Jill Rapinsky was passing.
"Hi Jill," Dominic said affably.
She was amazed
at how he could handle people!
"Thanks for the cheque.
And it didn't even bounce!"
"Well," she mumbled, "you have to thank God for
small mercies."
It gave Jamie the chance to draw Angela aside,
and Dominic didn't stop this.
"Would you still work with me if the chance came
up?" Jamie asked her.
"Not the way I feel at the moment."
"I suppose you think that rape stuff was my fault?"
"Well you did it!
You were the one who did the
pushing, not Jill Rapinsky or the director!"
"Oh I don't mean they influenced, it just happened
and Jill did her usual thing of cashing in on accidents.
She's going to use that scene. She's convinced the
producers to use it. They're changing the whole theme
of the commercial."
"Are they allowed to do that?"
"Why sure!
We're there to act, not adjudicate!"
He touched her on the arm. She was horrified to
feel a reminder of what she'd been through in that scene--
a quickening of warmth inside her, a rush of sexual desire
that had nothing to do with her.
Had Dominic put them
together to teach her something about herself?
"Listen Angela, I've got to talk to you---I've got
Couldn't we have a coffee somewhere tomorrow?"
She turned away. She wanted to get rid of the
warmth.
"Call me up tomorrow!" she said.
She went straight to Dominic and stood by him,
so close that their S. leeves were touching.
It made her
feel better. Jill Rapinsky said a quiet "Hi" to her
but she didn't say a word.


Pauline was watching her.
Ever since the quarrel
they'd had her eyes had followed her everywhere. They
were drinking champagne.
Suddenly Angela felt. a touch
on her hip and started.
It was Sonya Steele.
"You look great!" Sonya told her.
"You too!"
This wasn't sincere on either side because white
billowy wool Wasn't right for Sonya or the occasion,
while Angela looked pale, with her. mouth drawn down
and too much eye make-up on.
But sincerity was behind
the compliments just the same, as they both knew. They
liked each other and wanted to have -this known.
Jill drifted off and Sonya smiled (diffidently,
Angela thought) at Dominic.
"Remember," " Dominic said, "how we used to have
Saul round?"
"Yes!" Sonya said with a daunted expression.
"Know something?" Dominic said to Angela.
found Saul in New York? He was a Broadway impresario
and didn't know the difference between one play and
another.
Ithought he was ideal for the film industry.
He was getting two hits a year and ten flops so_he was
always in debt.
The trouble was he followed his judge-
ment and he didn't have any. Now that's OK in the film
industry because it's all done by computer anyway.
mean you employ Jamie Somerson because he's now what we
call king of the play dates, he can pull people into the
cinemas the whole world over.
It means his agent can
ask almost any price for him at the moment, not a Marlo
Brando price 'but a big one just the same. Now that's
all down on the computer.
You don't have to exercise
judgement on whether Jamie's a good actor or not, you
just reckon out how much you can afford. Now Saul was
good at that. And he was good with the banks because
he's always been a rich man in his own right. Now with
me it's different where the banks are concerned. I never
hada cent before I was thirty.
I'm a whizz kid and the
banks distrust whizz kids, who can lose today what they
won yesterday.
So I have to use my charysma.
Once
the charysma goes the banks don't open their doors to


the charysma goes the banks don't open their doors to
me any more."
"Is there a chance of it going?" Sonya asked while
looking in another direction.
"Judge for yourself baby!"
She laughed. "I can't see any signs of it!"
And Angela realised in that moment that the girl
was still in love with him.
He'd never talked so much.
And about his work,
himself.
Was it Sonya who opened him up? Had she
herself failed to do this? A great sense of defeat
came over her, and she felt it was deserved, in view
of that horrible biological reaction to Jamie's touch
on her arm. Anybody would think he was a seducer,
a sex bomb, but it wasn't the case! So why had she
reacted that way? She felt a sudden pain in her womb,
a real pain, and wanted to be alone with Dominic, making
love to him, forgetting the outside world.
He seemed to realise this.
"Wanna go home' ?"
"If you're ready!"
"Come on!"
Before they left Sonya said, "I'd like to see you
Angela, how about lunch together?"
"I'1l book a table at the Chianti, it's in Melrose
Avenue. For one o'clock, how about that?"
"I'1l see you there!"
"That's bad," Dominic murmured to Pauline when they
were outside.
"Ex-lover has lunch with current lover."
Angela hugged his arm. "Do you think I'll be' dis-
loyal to you?"
"Not you.
But she might. And how!"
He and Pauline laughed.
All through the funeral and the reception she'd
forced herself not to think of all the glances he. was
getting, some surreptitious but others openly hostile.
And how blandly he'd taken it all. More than that,
he'd enjoyed it.
The Killer!


She knew that was going to be the theme of Jamie's
talk with her. When he called the following morning
she said simply, "See you in half an hour at Denny's",
then rang off without another word. She was learning
aggression as a way of life!
He turned up just as she was walking in the door -
They almost bumped into each other. He was wearing
slacks and a sweat shirt, and he must have been to the
beach the previous afternoon, after the funeral, when
the mist had cleared.
She caught a whiff of his eau
de cologne and was almost sick, she hated it so because
it reminded her of the rape scene. She chose a table
as close to other people as possible, where they would
both have to shout.
"OK," she said.
"What's it about?"
"Do you have to be so hard?"
"Sure I do! You're here to try and get me away fro
from the only man I've ever loved.
Wouldn't you be
"So why did you come ?"
"To find out what you think of him, what Hollywood
thinks.
It's important to me. I want people to love
him and admire him, that's natural, it may be foolish of
me but it's nat tural!"
"Listen just cool off Angie!"
"My mother's the only one who - alls me Angie and I
hate it."
He was getting into difficulties, biting his lip,
and she started feeling sorry for him. But she wasn't
going to let up.
"I'm seeing Sonya for lunch," she said, "so I shall
be getting'a double dose."
He began to look cool, and she judged that a sort
of quiet sadism was taking hold of him.
"You know," he said, "Everard Hope overlooked a
contract on that commercial job, I mean for you,
It's
the first time it's ever happened to him, one of his
clients walk on to the set without a contract! - Jill
couldn't believe it!"


"But he had a verbal understanding with her."
"So what are you saying?"
"Nothing. I just thought I'd tell you.
Another
thing, Jill Rapinsky's a pain in the crotch but I've
never heard of her screaming invective at a director
before, nor has anyone else. And Jonathan Beane's
at the top of his profession, there are just two other
commercial directors who rate higher than him.
How
about that?"
"But what are you saying?"
"I'm saying lots of things have been happening,
I mean unusual things, for the first time!"
"I'm in love with you Angela, so what did I do,
I tried to rape you!
OK, it wasn't real rape, I tried
to force it, I mean I was crazy in those moments, I
didn't know what was happening, I wasn't conscious of
anything on that set except you and wanting to get inside
inside you! It wouldn't have made any difference to
me if there'd been two thousand people watching!
Can
you see how crazy that was? Can you see how unusual,
a middle-class kid, well brought up, Harvard and all
that, filling the girl he loves with nausea without even
thinking about it?
Because that's what I did, didn't
She looked away.
"I can't tell you how unusual that was for me !
You know, I wait weeks for a girl to come round!
a Vergo and, Jesus, I'd hate to touch a. girl anywhere
if she didn't want it!
You see what I'm saying?"
"Yes," she said quietly, "I see wha t 'you're saying."
"I wonder if you do. Because a dark force got into
me that day. It had nothing to do with me."
This time she looked at him with interest.
had got into her too!
Her excitement had had nothing
to do with her---but nothing to do with him either,
for he had no physical attractions for her!


"And a light falls on my hand! # he went on.
"Did
you hear about that?"
"Almost, anyway. And the guy couldn't explain
why he was carrying the damn thing around, I mean the
set was being lit but no hand-stuff was being used, it's
obvious isn't it? And take the mist on those first
rushes for the Jill Rapinsky commercial, none of the
mess would have happened if those damned love scenes
had been OK! Now that photographer's one of' the
finest in.the industry, he says he just can't under-
stand it! Another thing that happened for the first
time! As a result of it the producers started getting
stroppy with Jill, she was using up too much time!
They started pushing her and she started pushing the
director-- --until nobody recognised themselves any more!"
"And this is all the Killer's work... à
"How did you guess? And in the end he killed,
didn't he? Hé killed Saul because he launched out
on his own, he killed the original Bel Ami project and
then he killed the second! And you're still with him?
Jesus Christ, don't you realise that man's power!
Everybody else does!"
She was looking down at the table, preparing a
reply, or rather trying to control the confusion of her
thoughts, which were rushing in too fast.
He'd already got up.
"Enjoy your coffee," he said, leaving his untouched.
And in a minute he was outside.
How they looked up to Dominic, she thought.
made her smile. A girl came and asked if she could
share her table.
She smiled and said, "You can have the coffee too
is you like, my friend left it, he got uptight and walked
"That was Jamie Somerson."
"That's right."


"I played with him once at the Showcase theatre
in San Francisco, bit parts, we were just out of college."
"You're a stage actress?"
"I'm playing at the Shubert in Century City, come
and see'us; it's a revival of The Twentieth Century,
did you ever see it, it's a musical?"
"Yes it was in London! I thought it was great!"
"Oh you're English!
They. rapped on pleasantly.
It seemed to her about
the first normal conversation she'd had since arriving.
But, she reflected as she hurried out to get to Melrose
Avenue in time to meet Sonya, why should she want the
normal? Al1 her life she'd yearned for miracles,
extraordinary events!
As soon as the antipasto and the wine were on the
table Sonya started in.
"You know Dominic and I were together once?"
"I think Jamie told me, yes."
"How do you find him these days?"
Angela sipped the wine and thought this was a
thoroughly stupid question.
So she didn't answer it.
"Are you still in love with him?" she asked insetad.
"Me?" It sounded too high-pitched to be cool.
"You know, Max and I may get married."
Angela shrugged.
"As a matter of fact Angela, I've never loved
another man.
I wonder if I ever will."
The remark made the restaurant look bleak and
menacing to Angela, though she was knew it was warm
and snug and nice. She had a horrible sensation in
her middle!
Did this great love happen to every
woman he met then? She knew it was absurd, outrageous
but doubts flooded into her mind. They hadn't made
love the day before after all. Again Dominic had
seemed to avoid a confrontation.
And she'd taken
a shower, two. To get rid of that awful moist feeling
after being touched by Jamie, the feeling that had
nothing to do with her!
They hadn't slept a whole
night together since that first time. And she had


no one to express her doubts to, no friend like the
girl she'd just met at Denny's and whose name she hadn't
even asked.
How her relation with Dominic isolated
her from people!
Of course!
He was too powerful for
most, too rich!
"He's a son of a bitch of course," Sonya was say-
ing.
"In what way?" She couldn't keep a tremulous
uncertainty out of her voice.
"I never got my way with Dominic even about what
I sprayed my body with!
Jewellery, clothes, the books
I read, the quality of the coffee I drank, the question
of the pill, the coil or the diaphragm, he decided the
whole damned lot! And it was great for a time. Then
I realised he was choosing everything for somebody else!
Whether she was imaginary or not I don't know but it
wasn't me. So I wanted out. Maybe it was you he had
in mind, before he'd even met you!
For instance, you
remember those pearls you were wearing for the Queen
Mary party?"
"Yes! But you weren't there!"
"Oh I was there but not speaking to anybody.
Well,
those pearls went on me first.
And they looked terrible
on me. In fact I thought he just didn't have the right
touch with a woman. But I suppose I was wrong. I
mean, take that dress you were wearing on the Queen
Mary---that was real nice!"
"But he didn't give me that!
It was from the
commercial I did with Jamie."
"I know." She laughed.
"I'm sorry kid! You
really didn't know that he had that dress specially
designed for you? The producers of that commercial
are like his twin brothers!
In fact he knew two days
before even Jill Rapinsky knew that you were going to
get the job!"
"That's what I always said when I was living with
Dominic. What? I said it every day!"


"So it wasn't really Jill Rapinsky who wanted me
in the commercial?"
"Sure she wanted you in it.
But only because the
producers did. And they wanted you in it because
Dominic did."
"Good God!"
"That was another of my expressions."
"Well," Angela said, "at least he didn't try the
dress on you first!"
"Oh he'd have been capable of it just the same.
For Dominic anything he does has the stamp of absolute
rightness, he's always been that way!"
"Is it true he went to a lot of shrinks at one
time ?" Angela asked her witha feeling of betrayal..
"Oh sure but partlyiit wasa hobby. He liked
to talk about himself.
He knew he was going some
place but didn't know exactly where yet.
That was
before he went into films. He was making a heap of
gold at the time as some kind of middleman, nobody
quite knew what he was up to except it was some kind
of wheeler-dealing.
He used to come on the set with
me and that was how he learned about films and met
everybody.
Of course the more gold he made the more
the boys tried to pull him into the production side.
He got the usual cranks and phonies round him and he
fell for some surrealist crap and lost fifty thousand
bucks on a film nobody troubled to pre-view let alone
distribute. It taught him a lot and he started treat-
ing films as a business. That way he was sincere at
least.
I mean he just looked ridiculous with all
those art people round him! How can a human dagger
look dreamy? Anyway the first films paid off, once
he'd learned who and what to be ruthless with."
"And he stopped going to the shrinks?"
"Oh that only happened when he met Pauline.
Really you know she was about the biggest thing tha t
ever happened to him?"
"They had an affair too?" she asked with alarm.


"Are you kidding? Pauline lusts for gawky
student types of forty or fifty.
You'd be amazed if
you saw them, which is why you'1l never see them!
She keeps them under lock and key. I think in some
lonely downtown basement and they don't even have her
phone number. She passes by now and then and throws
them down a bag of meat."
"So. why was she the biggest thing in his life?"
"Because everything changed after that. The
girls stopped. He used to have so many girls calling
him up they sort of annulled. each other. Idon't
think he took many of them to bed. He seemed to be
looking for someone all the time, that was the impress-
ion I got, and of course when we met I hoped it was me.
I believe he started developing his fantastic will
after he met Pauline.
It was really amazing. He'd
made a lot of bread already but now he started making
millions. That was all her work. She showed him
who he was, what he could do.
She sort of made him
daring. I think it was this reincarnation thing she
was into.
She was always crazy. Anyway, he really
set. her up, got her an apartment and fixed these far
memory sessions, organised the archives and all that."
"But didn't I hear that it was Dominic who got
her into it?"
"If you did it was wrong.
The minute he met her
things changed.
It seemed to put his life on the rails.
He knew where he was going. And now, by God, he seems
to know every number before it comes up!"
"No wonder," Sonya went on, "people think he killed
Saul Weinand and put a jinks on Ambition.
You know what
he said to me at the funeral, 'Saul's dying saved him
from the biggest flop and the biggest debt of his career'!
And I bet it would have been' a flop too, if Dominic says
"What do people call him the killer for?"
Sonya laughed.
"It's a way of saying they're
scared of him. And they're dead right.
It wouldn't


do to have Dominic Latouche as your enemy!"
"Jamie Somerson says he put à jinks on the
commercial we did together, and made that light fall
on him!"
"Jamie Somerson's a kid, do you know I think he
masturbates too much? You know, I think people are
scared of Dominic's immutable stare--- -
"The eyes!"
"That's right. I know a lot of guys who have
the same, you get it smoking dope, if you augment the
smoke with a pinch of coke and maybe a shot : of horse!
And our Dominic certainly did all of those things."
If Sonya had been bitchy it would have been better.
Butshe wasn't the type. And her tone wasn't bitchy.
And she was still in love with him. Angela walked home
slowly, getting lung-fulls of car exhaust.
If only she
could equate the Dominic she loved with what was said
about him! She wasn't really troubled by all this
'killer' talk. Nor the evil eye talk.
It was worse
than that.
The unhappy fact was that she believed it,
even though her mind, said it wasn't true. She realised
she was afraid of him, but that the fear was part of her
love. She'd never heard of that before!
Except perhaps
once, when an actor had told her that his father's death
had been the most terrible blow of his life.
"My God how I loved that man!" he said. "And how
he adored me, I couldn't do bad in his eyes!"
"So many fathers put the fear of God into their
children," she said, half-listening (and thinking of her
own father).
"What?" he said. "Fear's got nothing to do with
it. My father absolutely terrorised me!"
Of course it didn't mean to say she felt fear when
they were making love. Oh no!
The greatest safety
and --well, the first time in her life 'she'd been right
inside life, happily and without any reserves or shame
or wish for anything else!
But when she was away from
him especially then, she felt feathers in the tummy at


him, especially then, she felt feathers in her tummy
at the thought of what he might be doing, planning:
the fear was so vague, more an unease than anything
else. But it was always there, unless they were
actually. in bed together.
Even in the kitchen, with
him sitting by her or oppsoite her, it was lurking.
Perhaps it was his gaze, that undaunted, dark, still
look that almost never wavered. Of course he never
opened his heart to her. Nor she to him.
It didn't
seem necessary. In bed they cleared up all their
problems, shared their secrets in a dumb way she'd
nevel r experienced bef ore. It wasn't that. And
even if he'd opened his heart to her, told her about
his work and his (probably boring) conferences with his
money men in San Francisco or San Diego, it would have
made no difference to that vague premonitive trembling
she felt in her---yes, almost in her womb.
And that reminded her.
The pain in her womb.
After that rape scene. Was it fear?
Was her excite-
ment in the rape scene caused by the fear?
Was her
horror of even touching another male part of that fear?
Was she tied to Dominic in a way that might not, in the
end, make her happy, but which she would have to go
through with because the love was the whole of herself,
she had no other form or meaning and didn't want to
have any other form or meaning.
These thoughts weaved
in and out of her mind.
It was rather a dreamy day.
The sun was hazy behind the smog, the traffic deafening.
People looked tired, hostile, and she kept her eyes
down in case her habitual. frank stare ('You're more
Italian than French!' her mother had always said)
provoked an angry defensive look.
There was So much
violence around.
Sometimes she felt that cars were
actually driving faster when she crossed the road, to h
hit her. People were so sick. They needed so much
help. And they dared to call Dominic sick? Jamie
Somerson called him sick? Wasn't she in a way right
to feel fear? Because he was So strong!
Who was it
who'd said to her that Dominic knew every number before


it came up? And then there was her fear of losing him.
The sexual excitement she'd felt with Jamie on the set
had been part of that fear.
Deep inside she'd been
scared that Jamie's touches and kisses would become known
to Dominic and he would shut her out of his life from
that moment, offering no explanations, never mentioning
her again, always with that mute dark stare. She remem-
bered her father.
He never wanted to hear about her
troubles. It seemed to embarrass him. As soon as she
started talking about herself she looked away. But when
she did something wrong he didn't look away. He looked.
And the terrible reproof she saw in those eyes were more
than a thousand beatings.
In fact he never touched her
in anger.
Yet she loved him too. He was. living with
another woman in Pimlico and together they ran a laundry
business, picking up soiled sheets from hotels and deliv-
ering them clean.
It somehow suited her father enormously,
that work. Whenever she called on him he lavished little
gifts on her, wrote her out a cheque, urged her to stay
the night, hugged her and kissed her.
She knew he suffer-
ed from his own disapproval more than anybody.
But it
didn't stop her fearing him.
Even now she was taut with
tension in his company in case she provoked those dark
still eyes to turn on her like the mouth of a lethal
weapon. He was good-looking, terrifically debonair,
it was marvellous going out to dinner with him, he knew
just how to behave with a woman, and the waiters always
liked him. Thank God he didn't resemble Dominic physically
in any way, otherwise she would have accused herself of
falling in love with a father image!
When she got back she found Pauline in the apartment
cooking a meal. She looked girlish, her hair wild, her
hands covered in white flour.
"Like:salt cod?" she said.
"I think So---I'm not sue I've had it!" Angela said.
She stood in the kitchen watching Pauline, who was
dipping the cod lumps into flour and then laying them in
hot oil with wholé "garlic and strips of tomatoe.
The smell
smell was delicious.
There was no canned music on. The frying pan made
a gentle homely


There was no canned music on.
The frying made
a gentle bubbling noise, reminding her of times in the
kitchen at home when her mother was cooking.
They
would talk together and she would tell her mother all
her heart-aches, without offering to stir her hand to
anything. At drama school she'd lived on boiled eggs
because that was all she could think of to eat, except
spaghetti and that needed a sauce she didn't have time
to prepare even' if she'd known how to do it.
The
result was that she'd more or less permanent constipat-
ion at drama school.
Not that she'd connected this
with the eggs. 1 She'd thought it was just how she was
made.
"Can I help?" she asked lamely.
"No that's OK?" Pauline added, "Or were you
asking yourself that?"
"Probably!" She didn't get the sense of this
at once 'but when she did-she felt that Pauline had been
listening to her thoughts about those drama school days.
"Dominic's gone to Venice," Pauline.said.
She was suddenly pale.
The tips of her fingers
began to tremble and she felt she was going to fall
down.
"What's the matter?" Pauline asked her with a
quick glance. e
"I don't know."
She pulled one of the chairs towards her and sat
down.
"Gone to Venice!
And he didn't tell me a word!"
They hadn't slept the night together since that
first night.
There had always been some reason, either
she or he or bothhad to get up early the next morning
and they knew they'd make love all night if they could.
Or phonecalls were expected from San Diego, New York,
Florida, and he didn't want her disturbed; anyway,
his callers would be ringing the other number, in his
room. 1
Still, she could have slept in his room, she wouldn't
have minded the disturbance. Or they could have made
love all night and risked


love all night and risked feeling dead next day.
Had he felt her excitement over Jamie? Had he concluded
that theirs wasn't a great love after all, because how
could youbget excited by somebody else; es pecially a
person who had no attractions for you? She felt sick.
She had no one else in the world! After him there was
nothing!
She felt his eyes on her and in a moment of drows-
iness, leaning against the table, she got them mixed
up with her father's eyes in her mind. They were immobile
in the same way, mute with disapproval.
She couldn't
bear it!
Her heart. was beating so fast she could hardly
take breath.
Theybhadn't made love for at least two
days. Only once since Jamie had touched her and that
was the first time she ever recoiled from him, and he
must have felt that.
Of course they'd made love wildly
like always but it had been a little too wild, just a
shade contrived.
"Listen, Angela, you'd better learn how to control
your emotions."
Pauline was sitting at her side.
It sort of shocked me !"
"Dominic going to Venice?"
"Why should it do that?"
"Shit!" she cried, anger spurting like a flame
into her cheéks.
"We are lovers!"
Pauline laughed, laying a hand on hers. "I over-
looked that! Sorry!"
Angela half smiled and then began crying.
As the cod had to be looked at Pauline got up and
went to the stove.
"Boy," she said, "I wish I could cry like that.
It must give you a lot of relief."
"Yes it does, Angela said, rather as a girl might
put her tongue out.
"And wha t are you crying about?"
"Well I've lost Dominic haven't I?" she screamed at
the top; of her voice.
"Lost him? Are you crazy?"


the top of her voice.
"Lost him? Are you crazy?"
"He isn't here is he? He goes off to Venice
without saying a word to me, but he tells you! So
you've got him, I haven't!"
"But that's because I book him his plane seats
and run his affairs while he's away.
For instance I'm
frying salt cod for you because Dominic Latouche says
cook for her tonight, try salt cod on her, done the
Italian 'way, she probably doesn't know it."
Angela stared at her. Relief like soft purring
motion stole into her body and rested her face.
"But why does he do it?" she asked quietly.
"Because that's how he's made! He hates to tell
people what he's up to until it's all cooked and ready
to serve!"
"Do you know what he's up to?"
"Yes, partly, but only partly. And I wouldn't
tell you for all the turquoise in the world!" She
fingered Angela's ear-ring. "I see you've got my
craze too."
"Why wouldn't you tell me ?"
"First of all because you're a woman and wouldn't
be grateful.
And second I'd lose my job. And incid-
entally my apartment."
"Are you afraid of Dominic?"
"No, he's afraid of me. -
But I still don't want
to lose my aj partment."
"Sonya says you changed his life."
"I showed him who he was. He changed his life."
"Would you show me who I am?"
Pauline laughed and Angela was amazed
to see momentary- tears in her eyes.
"That is a
compliment! Sure I'1l show you who you are!"
She went to the frying pan again and Angela
thought she did this to hide her emotion.
Non-acting
people were SO funny, the way they handled their feel-
ings! Angela's eyes were already dry, her heart was
beating normally, she had a healthy flush in her cheeks


because he was still hers, hers!
Emotions, after all,
were things that came and went. Naturally, when what
her London agent Barbara Gleeson called Angela Bourne's
waterworks' were switched on it looked tragic.
But a
moment later the sun could be out again.
"I'm not going to tell you anything new," Pauline
said.
"You had that dream about the seventeen-year-old
girl.
You've already seen yourself."
Angela was silent, looking down.
"Oh that," she said.
"That's all I showed Dominic!"
"You mean his past lives?"
"One of them! If you've got one of them you've
got 'em all."
Whenthe meal was ready Angela thought she should
at:least -lay the table: : She went to get the knives and
forks.
"Stay where you are," Pauline said.
"Boss's orders."
"Do you always have to obey them?"
"My orders were to treat you like a guest, so that's
what I'm doing."
Angela shrugged and sat down again while Pauline got
the knives and forks.
"Seems a bit silly, childish to me," she said, looking
down again.
"What, doing things the new way?"
"What do you mean, the new way?" Angela asked her.
"You want the kind of lover you've always had---
all over you, borrowing a couple of bucks to get himself
a bottle of wine, inyyour bed even when you don't want
Angela laughed.
"You're talking about your lovers,
not mine!"
"It's true this is all new to me," Angela said.
"I just don't know how he's going to behave next-- #0
"And you always did know with the other men."
"More or less."
"So don't complain if he treats you like a lady


sometimes. It's his weakness."
The fried cod was delicious. Pauline served with
mashed potatoes sprinkled with grated nutmeg. And -
young carrots.
Dominic had given her instructions about
the wine. It was to be a Chablis.
"The trouble is he doesn't know a thing about wine,"
Pauline said.
"I mean, there are Chablis and Chablis.
This one is OK because I got the most expensive one."
They touched glasses.
It wasn't properly chilled.
"First of all," Pauline said, "you think you were
scared because you'd lost Dominic when you came in but
it isn't the truth.
That' seventeen-year-old girl was
scared, and about something else."
"You'll find out in time."
Pauline slept in his bedroom. Angela layoon
her bed among the cushions gazing at the ceiling.
She almost wanted the canned music, just to remind
herself of him. She'd gone to her room as soon as
dinner was finished because she needed to be alone.
She wanted to bask in that feeling that he was still
hers after all, that nothing had changed despite that
horrible episode with Jamie.
But the fear continued
to come just the same. It submerged her in waves as
she lay there, like a force from outside.
It even
made. her tremble ever so slightly.
Suppose he didn't
come back? Suppose---this was really absurd---he
didn't exist and the love had never happened and she'd
imagined it all? Suppose it was just another affair,
with its expected aftermath of coldness and recrimination?
She knew thebthoughts were provoked by the fear, that
the fear came first, like a ghost, stealing into the
room, challenging her. Always she'd been subject to
fits of panic which had no particular cause, or rather
a cause (such as an unpaid bill) too trivial to take


seriously.
She knew that the panic was a feature
of her nervous system, not in the circumstances round
her.
And it was the same now. Nothing was wrong in
her relation with-Dominic, she had Pauline's testimony
for this, but the fear undulated horribly through her
cells just the same, like millions of ghostly bacteria.
She watched her hand for a moment, saw the quivering
at the tips of the fingers, hardly perceptible but all
the more powerful for that. And that ache inside,
not quite in the womb, lower, but somehow including the
womb. She couldn't bear to be physically apart from
him, it made this ache which never left her, she was
only half alive.
She woke at three o'clock in the morning with the
light still on and the door slighly a jar. She was still
in the dress she wore for lunch with Sonya.
She leaned
forward to undo her bra.
Then she remembered the dream
she'd just had. It was about that seventeen-year-old
girl. At least, she seemed the same girl. Or was
this due to Pauline's proximity---in Dominic's room?
was she influencing her in some way? But the impression
remained.
It was that same girl with the blonde hair
and billowy dress, rat ther like the one Sonya was wearing
at Saul's funeral.
Or was it a sort of dream version
of Sonya? Again fear gripped her as she thought, 'Is
that why Dominic fell in lovewith Sonya, because he
thought she was me?' The previous day Sonya had told
her that he'd always treated her as if she was someone
else, and perhaps this someone else was "Angela, who had
not yet come into his life.
But why should this idea
cause her fear? After all, it meant that henloved only
her.
But the fingers continued to tremble.
It was
the memory of the dream. That girl was someone else,
in t > dream, but also her.
It felt like having been
become someone else, just for the dream.
The girl
was slimmer and a little taller than she was. She
had long hair andintensely dark elonga ated eyes which
the people round her said were the most beautiful eyes
in the world.
She had long delicate hands, much finer
than Angela's.
Angela found herself sort of looking
up to this girl,


than Angela's.
She was an amiable girl, placid, and it seemed to
Angela that she was much cuddied and cozzetted by her
brothers and sisters.
But she was also impulsive.
She did things on a sudden decision which alarmed her
family. Also this girl was pure in a way that Angela
wasn't. 'But then,' Angela found herself thinking,
'she lived in a much smaller and safer world than I do,
so there were fewer chances to risk your virtue.'
Then she remembered that the girl had black hair.
But the previous dream said she was blonde, and very
blonde.
You could feel' the sea in her hair, and how
the sun had bleached it.
But the fact remained.
She was black-haired.
There seemed no contradiction
here. But it puzzled the awake Angela.
Yawning and stretching, and a wave of fear came over
her again like a chill damp breeze from outside.
Yet
the dream excited no fear in her.
After all, it had
just been a glimpse of that girl, as she stood in a
room. The room had pictures on the wall, and heavy
curtains, but a glow came from outside, and you could
see the flashing of water in reflctions on the ceiling,
as if there were a river outside and a bright sun.
She was just standing in the room. Angela could feel
her now, she was almost here! Gooseflesh ran all over
her. She grabbed a blanket from the foot of the divan
and huddled inside it, clos ing her eyes.
The previous evening,"dur ing - the : dessert, Pauline
had said, out of theblue, "So Jamie Somerson didn't get:-e
what. he wanted.".
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you have lunch with him today?"
"No. I had lunch with Sinya Steele."
"Oh," Pauline said, flushing, "I thought you saw
Jamie."
"I did. We had coffee together."
"And doesn't he want to get you away from Dominic?"


"Well, I'm saying he didn't succeed. Or rather
Jill Rapinsky didn't succeed."
"What's she got to do with it?"
"Hell, she was screaming at the cameras to start
rolling, she wanted rape and she got it!"
"But why?"
"Because she wants to take away from Dominic the
most precious thing he's ever had, you." E
"But how would letting Jamie rape me help that?"
"She wanted you to respond. Some people say you
did respond."
"No! I was horrified! A11 I wanted to do was
take a shower and never see that man again!"
Pauline said, "I'm one of the people who say you
responded."
"You weren't there!"
"I saw the excitement in your face afterwards!"
"Listen," Angela said, raising her voice, "what is
this, some sort of inquisition?"
"If you like. That's why Dominic said I'm off to
Venice, and I want you to give her the works while I'm
away.
That's what I'm doing."
By now Angela's mouth was dry.
"You can't see inside me," she said quietly.
"You don't sound too sure."
"So what if I did feel excitement, it was just
an animal thing, I hated it, I got a terrific pain in
my womb afterwards, I yearned and ached for Dominic----:
Now will you just stop making this fucking insinuations
She jumped up and jumped forward to grab, Pauline's
hair.
But Pauline was quicker than she was. In a
moment she was on the other side of the room, leaning
rigidly against the sink, flushed, her eyes glistening.
"Why do women always go for the hair?" she asked,
her voice quivering with distress.
"Just keép your fucking nose out of my bus iness,
that's all," Angela said, sitting down again.
"You still want me to show you who you are?"


"Oh!" Angela said sarcastically.
"Is this part
of it?"
"You're showing me who you are," Angela said under
her breath.
"So why do you think you felt excitement when Jamie
got on-top of you? Damn it, you don't even find him
attractive!"
Angela couldn't believe her ears.
She gasped,
stared at her.
"I tell you," Pauline went on, "we know everything!
It isn't difficult!
You just have to know the trick!"
"Was it noticeable then, in. the studio-- -that I
was getting excited?"
"I wasn't there. I didn't get my information from
there either. I got it from you."
"From my face?"
"How could I get the fact that you aren't attracted
to Jamie from your face? I know your history, your
background!
And I can find out what you feel in any
situation."
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
Pauline returned to the table and finished her
mousse. Angela did the same. It was too delicious
to miss---an orange mousse Pauline had made at home the
previous day.
She'd gone to bed soon after, thanking Pauline for
the meal in as handsome a way as she could.
In her' room she shut the conversation out of her
mind So that she could think of him, and the fact that
he was still hers.
But now it returned to her with
the fear that had made her grab the blanket and curl
up inside it like a baby.


They had coffee together in the morning. Ange la
hadn't slept since waking at three. It was,a heavy
day full of ground mist and the traffic noises outside
were muffled like in snow. Pauline busied herself
doing the toast.
"Take cereal?" she asked.
"No thanks."
Pauline made her feel a stranger here.
She yawned,
felt forlorn.
"You look as if you didn't sleep."
"I woke about three."
"Did I upset you last night?"
"Not specially."
"Really?" Pauline said.
"I meant to."
Angela disregarded this one. To make conversation
she said, "Do you know what Jamie Somerson told me? He
said he jumped on me in that scene because he was under
a dark force. It wasn't his responsibility.
What an
alibi!"
"It's the truth.
Jamie's about the only intelligent
individual in that outfit."
"What makes you say that?"
"He talks the truth."
"He says Dominic's a. killer."
"So he is!"
"Dominic's a killer. I ought to know!"
"Jamie says he put some kind of evil eye on Saul
and killed him."
"So he did!"
Angela laughed.
"You must be mad!"
"I'm not mad. You maj Y as well know who you're in
love with."
"So he killed Saul We inand."
"That's right. And he had a motive.
Saul
defected didn't he? And Dominic La touche doesn't like
Fear was starting again, little feathers inside.
"And he made a handbasher fall on Jamie."


S G
"Most likely." Pauline was starting at her hard,
her lips pursed.
"You can't mean it!"
"Oh I can mean it!
I've been watching it in action
for quite a few years!
I've warned Dominic not to use
his powers, I taught him those powers but he's too weak
to handle them properly."
"Weak?" He's the strongest man I've met!"
"Strong men don't use supernatural powers badly."
"So you taught him supernatural powers?"
"Yes I did," Pauline said, leaning forward so that
her face almost touched Angela's.
"Have some more coffee."
"Thanks I will."
While Pauline was pouring it she
said, "He says Dominic put a jinks on that commercial.
Jill Rapinsky never screamed at a top director before."
"Dead right."
"Sonya says it's all rubbish, Jamie masturbates too
much, she says."
"Sonya wants you to go into this love affair with
your eyes closed, she wants you to be eaten alive!"
"But you told me last night that Jill Rapinsky
wants- #
"I didn't say she wants Dominic to eat you alive.
I said she wants you out of his clutches. She happens
to think you've got a great potential as an actress.
Sonya's just crazy, she's in love with him and wants
him to kill you like he killed Saul."
The stillness was awful.
"And so Jamie's right that he was in the power of
some dark force when he was trying to rape me , and the
force was Dominic?"
"Precisely so, Angela, and your eyeballs'll pop out
of your head if you don't watch out."
"And you're Dominic's friend?" she asked, trying to
control the trembling.
"His best. By the way, why don't you put all this
to him? He'll agree with every word!"
"That he made an actor try to rape me ? Why would
he want to do that?"


"Do you know, I've been trying to figuré that out
for days and I just haven't got an answer."
"Maybe it's just not true."
"Angela, if I were you,I'd go on the assumption
that it is true."
"You're not just trying to frighten me?"
"I'm succeeding huh? No honey I don't like to see
you frightened.
I'm just telling you the truth because
in the end it's you who've got to save him.
"Oh Pauline, is it true he went to a lot of shrinks
and had to have mental. care?"
"Sometimes his eyes---!"
"We're all a little mad, Angela.
What about all
the shrinks Jamie and Sonya and Everard and Jill and Max
Pennance have been to? And as to why they all end up in
LA, don't ask me!"
"Have you been to shrinks ?"
"I used to be one."
"But Jamie said you did some kind of ecology course."
"Oh I wasn't a professional shrink. I had my own
therapy. As it worked I got a lot of clients. And one
of them was Dominic."
"Was the therapy something to dowith reincarnation?"
"No, it was a side-line at that time. I used to go
straight into the lies. If you tear down the lies a
person's telling himself you've got virgin soil to work
"What are my lies?"
"Oh that you're an actress and your career comes
first and that kind of junk."
"But I am an actress!"
"You're a bei ing!
You haven't realised that yet!
You're so busy with the personality junk you don't even.
know you're alive. That's why you're about the most
selfish person I've ever met!"
"Is that what Dominc thinks too?"


"I guess so. He's pretty realistic."
"The number of times you've said what this morning!"
"Is there a cure?"
"Sure. Love's the cure."
"But I've never loved a man so much in all my life!"
"OK!" Pauline said with a laugh.
"So you've got
your cure!"
She felt humbled and went to her room to dress.
She found herself wanting a phonecall from Everard, even
Jamie Somerson. Why? Perhaps to get in contact with
the real world again. Or was it just to bolster up her
pride?
Pauline passed her room and said, "I was thinking
about last night.
You've got quite a tongue on you when
you get stirred huh?"
"I, don't know where it comes from, my mother's so
genteel you wouldn't believe it."
"I know where it comes from. It's that impulsive
girl who was always scandalising her family with her
rash actions!
That blonde whose hair was really black!"
Angela turned pale. She stared at the door with
open mouth.
For Pauline had gone.


It suddenly struck her.
The name of that young
girl was Caterina.
She was sure of it.
It was funny
in dreams how you could be so certain of things even
when they weren't presented to you clearly. Nobody in
the dream had said her name . Of course you could say
that she'd been influenced by what Dominic and Pauline
had said.
And by Dominic's scream on that tape. She
didn't, on the other hand, want the name to be Caterina.
She didn't believe in all that reincarnation nonsense!
Secretly she believed thatwwhat happened in a far memory
session was that you saw telepathically into other people's
lives, even way back in history. But those lives weren't
necessarily your own. So she wasn't on Pauline's side.
She didn't want to admit to a living soul that the name
was Caterina but it was. She knew it was. She wanted
to cry. She was frightened.
Her life had become a
turbulent dream.
Things had seemed so cosy and safe
in London!
The flat was empty again and the phone didn't ring.
Pauline had just disappeared- -immediately after making
that remark about the blonde girl being black-haired.
Her mind was being pried into!
And Dominic---could he
see into her as well? Was she being maneouvred like a
puppet? Was even her love for him something other people
had premeditated and arranged? And he didn'tbphone.
As if that too was part of a manoeuvre.
She couldn't
settle to anything. Again she had no script to pore
over. Two films dead before they were born! What could
be more dreamy than that?


J40
She knew lots about Catérina. She was horrified
-by this.
Yes, Caterina had brothers and sisters.
One of her brothers in particular had guarded her
jealously against other males.
She didn't know ehen,
what country. She still felt the stab of his jealousy.
'Stilli!
Why 'still'? That. jealousy was like a memory
in her own life.
Her father, Caterina's father, had
been an important man. Everybody had looked up to him.
Her brother S had feared him called him 'sir'. Except
that it hadn't been 'sir'.
Another language. Something
like 'sir'.
She almost got it. Her tongue did a
funnysslight movement as she tried to get it. She
remembered telling her sisters that a man would visit
her one day and he would. be the love.of her life.
There-
fore she wasn't interested in other men. She'd been
good at seeing the future.
Her father had sometimes
asked her about the future, in a joking, patronising
sort of way, He had frequently acted on her advice.
Perhaps he'd been a politician of some kind. Up till
the age of seventeen Caterina had had a good life.
Such safety and quietness and intimacy as you couldn't
imagine in the twentieth century. So it hadn't been
the twentieth century? She wondered. Tried to remem-
ber. She remembered the sound of those carts on the
cobbles far below the balcony she was standing at, in
that first dream. But the sound. of carts wasn't
much to go by.
She paced around the flat all afternoon. Once
she stopped, horror on her face. Suppose she was
be ing hypnotised like Jamie said? After all, he'd
been right about the other things, according to Pauline!
Suppose she was in Dominic's mental grip? Suppose
these thoughts about Caterina, the dreams, were being
induced in her by Pauline? She broke out in a sweat.
Her thoughts drifted back to Caterina and this
ironically made her feel calm again.
She-had the
feeling that Caterina had attended a convent as a young
girl:
But she couldn't be sure. The sight and touch
of nun's habits seemed familiar to her.
Then asstrange


emotion swept through her, almost making her laugh.
She was proud of having been Caterina, or rather of hav
having Caterina inside her!
She wanted to know more
and more about her because in a quaint way it made her
feel important, it gave her a sense of power she couldn't
define.
She went to the lounge, wanting to look down into
the street.
The wide window let in agreat deal of
light, the flat being on the top floor. It was divided
into three casements. She went to the one nearest the
bookshelves, to open it. But the frame had no handles
whatsoever.
There was nowhere you could open it. If
you tried to look into the street below your head touched
the glass and all you could see was the top end of the
shops, no people, cars. And you couldn't hear a sound.
A slight hum perhaps. She went right along the window
to see if there were handles but there were none.
How
could he live like that, closed in? Was he afraid of
something? Was it true what Pauline said, that he
wasn't strong after all?
She walked to the front door, picking up her bag
on the way. A stroll might do her good. She might
even grab a coffee at Denny's.
Perhaps that nice girl
would be there, or someone else she could talk to and
make a friend of.
The door wouldn't open
She pulled and pulled.
They'd locked her in! She had a moment of hot panic,
pulling and pulling at the door, shout ing something
inchoate, a cry that seemed to belong to someone else.
She ran to her phone but who except Pauline could let
her out-- --and she didn't know Pauline's number!
She was just leaving her room again to re turn to
the front door, half whimpering to her self (the poss-
ibility that she might have one of those panic fits that
had wracked her student days frightened her), when the
phone rang.
She rushed back to it, swept it off its
cradle.
"Miss 'me?" The voice was soft, So close to her!
"Dominic!"
"Anything wrong?"


"That's why I phoned."
"I wanted to find out what was wrong, now spill
it Angela!"
"It's the front door, I've been locked in and I
get these panics, oh Dominic I wish you were here, why
did you run away like that and not tell me anything-- -
She was crying.
"Wait a minute," he said with a chuckle, "that was
a whole mouthful.
Which wrong do you want me to attend
to first?"
She was gasping through her tears---"What?"
"Have you got your keys?"
"My what?"
"Your keys Angela!
Pull yourself together !"
"They're in my bag I think," she whispered.
"Well just you get them out of your bag and go to
the door and put the big key in the mortice lock and
turn it, turn it three times, that's the lock about
waist height. And don't hang up."
"Could you tell it to me again?"
He did, and she went to the door.
The key turned
easily, and she pulled the door open and closed it aga in.
When she got back to the phone he said, "Pauline
probably locked you in last night. She's probably
jealous of you taking up So much of my time and wanted
to find you dead this morning. Died of panic at four
in the morning, not a mark on her body, how about that?"
"It's all very well for you to laugh but I was
scared---and you going away like that!"
"Know where I am?"
"Wrong again. A place called Padova.
It has a
university full of terrorists."
"Oh Dominic come back soon!"
"I'1l call you again tonight, OK?"
"And just you lock Pauline in next time. Maybe she'1l
She lay on her bed afterwards, listening to his voice


She lay on her bed afterwards, listening to his
voice again in the silence. Why did she frighten
herself like this? Why couldn't she realise he was
hers and settle down and.have a good time? She had
money after all, she knew some pretty important people
and what was there to stop her from calling Everard
or asking Jill Rapinsky out to lunch? But. she recoiled
from these things. She wanted to stay lying on her
bed until he walked in the room.
Pauline called her.
"You OK? I hear I locked you in last night,
sorry."
"That's all right."
"Hear the news?"
"What news?"
"Jamie Somerson committed suicide."
Of course she didn't believe it. She held the
phone in her hand so long her fingers seemed to get fixed.
She thought she heard Pauline say that nobody knew yet
how he'd done it but he was dead OK. Angela knew, she
positively knew he had no suicidal tendencies and that
Pauline was really and truly trying to persecute her
now, with Dominic's help.
Were they a couple of witches?
She couldn't bear the thought of going to her room, as
dusk approached. Who could she call up? The first
person she wanted to call was Jamie.
Yes! She tried
the number but there was no reply.
Then she tried
again and a sharp female voice said, "Jamie's away for
a time, please contact his agent." It was obvious she
swouldn't have said this if he was dead.
What news
could an agent give about a dead actor? Her trmebling
increased. Oh if only Dominic would come back!
She
didn't mind him being a killer as long as he was close
to her and she could feel his breathing on her cheek.
Why did they want to 'work' on her, Dominic and
Pauline? Was it part of the process of showing her
who she was? The horror of it, if he had killed Jamie!
When it was dark (she put on every light in the
place


When it was dark (she put every light in the
place on) she called Pauline.
She wanted to show her
that she wouldn't be persecuted.
"Hi Pauline!" she said lightly.
"Listen, I tried
these windows in the lounge today and they just don't
open! Is there a switch or something?"
"No. They're designed not to open. You've got
the air conditioning, for any temperature you want."
"You can't open them at all?"
"First of all they're double glazed, which is why
you don't get fumes or noise.
And secondly he's scared
shit of throwing himself out if they did open . "
"Dominic doesn't like heights, they ma ke him want
to get down to ground level right away, on the giant
wheel in the fun park he has to cling to the rails.to
stop himself jumping off."
"I get giddy like that too," Angela said softly.
"Oh it's not just giddiness. He :really wants to
throw himself off."
She wanted to put the phone down.
This woman
was filling her with horror!
"That's how Jamie did it," Pauline went on.
"Did you get the news? He threw himself out of the
window. He's got a place two blocks down from me and
right high up, a penthouse. He landed in a parking
"I think you're horrible," Angela whispered and put
the phone down.
Then she picked it up again and left
it off the cradle in case Pauline tried to.call her
back.
Once more she tried Jamie's number and once more
the sharp woman referred her to his agent.
She wandered down to the street.
The noise was
deafening after so long in the flat. There were masses
of people S on-the sidewalk and the neon adverts were
flashing overhead. It was about eight.
She saw a
headline YOUNG STAR DIVES TO DEATH. She hurried on.
So he had done it, Dominic had done it!
She burst
into tears, her mouth puckering up in her effort to
hide it from the passers by.


What was he doing in Venice? Something about
that city frightened her.
She'd been there only once
and it had rained all the time. Yet she loved it too.
It was difficult to describe, that mixture of emotions.
He hadn't even told her about the weather.
She felt
the first anger against him.
Why couldn't he stop
playing at mystery like a child?
But killing Jamie
wasn't the work of a child!
Would he kill her in the
same way? Was he doing it now? Was she dying all the
time, of fright and unhappiness?
Pauline had said
that this was what Sonya hoped!
Perhaps Sonya knew
him better than anyone, having been his lover and got
out of it alive! She. hated these thoughts as they
sped through her head but couldn't stop them.
She thought of Venice in the rain again. She' -
gone there with Louis, he'd been production assistant
on some TV thing, that was when he'd been in stage
management, before he became an actor.
His job had
been to contact a fixer' who booked the crew into
hotels, hired generators and barges for the shooting etc.
She'd spent, her time wandering through the narrow lanes,
listening to voices booming between the walls from her
hotel room. The boom of voices from below!
It remind-
ed her of something.
She'd heard it from the balcony
where Caterinahad stood, in that first dream.
Yes!
And the sense of blue sky all round, and water reflected
on the ceiling in the second dream, and-- --but of course!--
it was Venice!
Caterina came from Venice!
That was
why she'd seen white sails far out! And he was in Venice
now! She felt such turbulence inside she thought she'd
go mad if she didn't find company, talk to someone.
She hailed a taxi and asked for Denny's.
There she sat squeezed between two other people,
she deliberately chose a crowded table, with just one
place left.
"Mind if I share your table?" she asked.
They looked up, surprised.
There were plenty of
other tables going.
"That's fine," said one of the young men, with a
slight smile at the girl with him. They took her for
a nutcase, no doubt.


a nutcase, no doubt.
They talked SO fast she couldn'tbunderstand a
word they weressaying.
She ordered ham and eggs but
wondered how she was going to eat it. Actually when
it came she ate ra venously and then ordered an apple
strudel.
Some more coffee was being poured into her cup
when she remembered Dominic's husky voice on that far
memory tape he'd played for her. He had mentioned
Caterina.
But that wasn't the only thing.
When
Pauline asked him where he was he said 'Venice'. And
her Caterina was in-Venice too.
Was that what had
taken him to Venice now? Was that the reason for his
being mysterious about the journey?
What t were he and
Pauline cooking for her? Were they actually programming
the thoughts in her head?
She left the coffee undrunk and edged out of her
seat.
One of the young men said something to her but
she didn't answer.
When she got back the phone was ringing in her room.
She slammed the front door and rushed to get it.
was Sonya Steele.
"Hear about Jamie?"
"Yes---I didn't believe it---Pauline told me---!"
"He left a note for you. I was at his place and '
the police said they'd be getting in touch with you.
I'd have gotten hold of the note and brought it round
to you but they wouldn't let me, they probably want
to know what's in it. I gave them your address, hope
that's OK? It just said Angela on the envelope. There
couldn't have been two Angelas in his life."
"Why did he do it Sonya?"
"Maybe the note'll explain." And she rang off.
Angela locked the front door and put the cha in
across. If the police came she wouldn't answer.
She went to the lounge and put the television on very
loud.
For nearly two hours she sat there, most of
it watching Gone with the Wind. She wept at some of
the Vivien Leigh scenes, not because of Vivien Le igh
but because


she might have made a performance like that if the
second Bel Ami had come off. And now the star who
said he 'wanted to play with her at all costs was dead!
She was so tired she could hardly drag herself across
to the television to switch it off. She sank back into
Dominic's armchair and was asleep at once, muffled from
the noise and fumes outside by that double thickness of
glass.
At about four in the morning she woke to hear the
key turn in the lock.
It was Dominic!
"Angela!" he said, and she heard his footsteps
coming towards the lounge. She was surprised to find
her heart beating fast.with fear, not excitement.
"Dominic!" she called out.
"Dominic!"
She wanted him to come and lift her up from the
chair as he sometimes did and carry her to bed. At the
same time she couldn't open her eyes.
"Dominic..." she whispered.
There was silence. No more footsteps. She
screamed.
She heard the scream die away, still unable
to open her eyes.
Minutes passed. Not a sound more came. She
called out again,"Dominic!", but there was no reply.
Perhaps he'd gone to his bedroom and fallen asleep,
assuming her to be in her own room and not wanting to
disturb her. Oh Dominic, she thought, even near me,
a few yards away, you still aren't in my arms. And with
that she fell asleep again.
It was long after dawn when she woke and she was
surprised that the light from the window hadn't roused
her. Her first thought was to go along to his room
and peep inside.
He'd be suffereing from jet-lag--
of course that was why he hadn't come to her---so she
wouldn't disturb him. He crept along the corridor.
His door was slightly ajar. She looked inside and the
bed-cover was there as before, undisturbed. No one
was in the room. She stood there, her mouth half open
as if to talk to him-- -remonstrate with him for not
being there after all! So it hadn't been him! She
walked to the front door.
Of course, she'd put the


chain across the evening before.
She detached it
and tried the lock. No one had come in. She was
stunned. She couldn't go on living here!
She was on her way to the kitchen when a bell rang.
At first she thought it was the phone and ran to her
room but then she realised it was the front door. She
went there on tiptoe and looked.through the peephole.
It was a young thick-set man with a moustache. He had
pleasanteye's and she didn't hesitate to open up.
"Hi," he said.
"Mind if I step inside for a
minute?"
He held out an identity card with his photo on it.
The police.
"Why sure, come in."
She took him to the lounge.
"Like some coffee?" she asked him.
"No thanks. Listen, you knew Jamie Somerson?"
"Yes, I worked with him."
"Did he ever talk about suicide?"
"Not to me."
"He left a note for you."
"Yes a friend told me, Sonya Steele."
He nodded.
"Would you mind very much if I knew
what was in that note? We've got this check to do, I
mean it's routine, we're pretty sure nobodybthrew him
He handed her the envelope and she opened it coolly.
"What does it say?" he said.
"You can read it yourself.
You can have it."
It was a simple note.
'Dear Angela, forgive me
ta lking like I did. Could I call round while Dom's
away? Love J.'
"How did he talk?" the young man asked.
"It was in Denny's, the coffee house. He talked a
lot of stuff about how I should leave the man I'm with."
"He : was in l'ove with you?"
"He said so, yes."
"And where's Mr Latouche?"
"In Venice."


He nodded, with a smile.
"I asked that because even his best friends don't
know where he is sometimes."
"You know him?"
He got up.
"Dom and I were at school together
mam. We always had a joke, one of us was going to
become a cop and the other a crook and we didn't know
which.
He walked to the door.
"Oh," he said, turning.
"Here's the letter.
We won't need it. Jamie tried hard but didn't make it
Everard's office was the opposite of what she
expected-- rooms screened off from each other with six
foot partitions through which you could hear everything
and girls rushing about from one to the other.
There
was no reception, just an untended switchboard which
was flashing like mad, but one of the passing girls
saw her and with a nod and a smile disappeared into
Everard's cubicle.
He emerged in shirtsleeves, with
half-moon glasses on.
"Hi Angela, come along in. Like a coffee?"
"No thanks."
"Tough about Jamie."
She sat down in front of his desk, which was
hardly visible for scripts and thumbed books.
"Know why he did it?" Everard sat as he too sat
down.
"He'd have been great in this series."
"What series?"
"The Diaghilev series.
Didn't Dominic tell you?
That's why he's in Venice."


She mus t have looked hurt because he added, "Oh,
he just likes mystery, that's all!"
"Am I in it?"
"You're playing Karsavina, the young dancer.
.One of Diaghilev's favourites. He took all his
favourites to Venice, you, Pavlova, Nijinsky.
Know
something? Nijinsky dans' d the first steps of L'apres
Midi d'un Faune in St Mark's Square. He jumped up from
the cafe table and did the steps in front of Diaghilev
and Diaghilev said it was great. Dominic told me."
"So he's researching all this himself?"
"Well not exactly. He's fixing up the production.
The financial side's OK.
Diaghilev was probably fonder
of you than any of his female dancers.
I mean, OK, he
liked Nijinsky but part of that was wanting to get into
his pants.
With you he was a real friend, you were
about the only one he really opened his heart to, among
his dancers.
What I'm trying to say in halting agent's
language is that. this is a hell of a part, the star part
apart from Diaghilev who's going to be a real heavy, we
don't know who yet but he might be British, a real heavy.
You see, Angela, Diaghilev loved Venice.
People said
he looked ten years younger the minite he got there.
He really uncoiled in Venice, every year. And he died
there.
Know what? Some witch predicted--: -this was
in Russia before he started the Ballet Russe-- -that he'd
die on water, and he died n the Venetian Lido, did you
ever see that Visconti film Death in Venice, well that
hotel was where Diaghilev died, can you beat that?
Dominic told me all this on the phone. So he's building
up Venice big in the film. Sort of beginning and end.
The rest is Paris round the turn of the century, when
he made his first hits with the Ballet Russe.
Imagine
it, Bakst, Picasso, Ravel, you name the artist and
Diaghilev had him! There never was a greater impresario
in the history of theatre Angela, that's why this is
a role for you and the film for you, so maybe destiny
had a role in pulling down those two Bel Ami films.
Know somet thing, Dominic has a nose!
The money men are
clinging to his shirt tails now that Saul's dead. They
say Lat touche can do no wrong, the Bel Ami series would


say Latouche can do no wrong, the Bel Ami series would
have a pain in the crotch, and Jamie would have committ-
ed suicide in the middle of shooting anyway, people
reckon that being on the set with you all day would
have driven himi crazy.
Know something, that kid used
to call me up a dozen times a day asking where was
Angela, couldn't I find a film where you could work
together!"
"Was Dominic going to have him in this series?"
"Oh sure!" He looked doubtful.
"Why, don't
you think he was?"
"I don't know."
"Anyway the contracts are all here, shooting starts
about the middle of next month, and you see Angela, what
makes it ail so neat is that the Bel Ami sets can be 1
used, the costumes and all that, so nothing's been lost,
Greg Merrytown and Barry Kurtz are wild with excitement,
they say it was worth staying close to Dominic.
Well,
it certainly looks unlucky to go the other way doesn't
"Oh," he said before they parted, "Jill sends her
love and wants you to know that she thinks you as
Karsavina is genius casting. And, before I forget,
there's a lot of money! I mean, you're getting a fee
like you was queen of the play dates alrady!"
That was why he was So excited.
He saw her to
the door, hugged her briefly and said, "Promise me
something?"
"Don't look down on me when you're up ther re!"
"Up where?"
"At the top of the bills of carse!"
She walked away with her hands deep in her pockets,
head down. A fat lot there was. to celebrate!
She
hadn't yet really woken up to Jamie's death.
The sky
looked bleak, with rosy sun gleaming through thick
smog. She didn't know where she was walking.
Jamie
had tried to warn her but she'd been deaf! Really she
was the one who'd killed him!
Without her he wouldn't


15z
have incurred Dominic's wrath! She remembered Jamie's
desperate kisses, and his hands on her breasts, and for
a hateful moment she felt regret that she hadn't respond-
ed to him completely.
She knew that was just reaction
but oh, what a great love she'd felt before and now it
was all ruins, mangled in a lot of talk about yet another
series.
She looked up and crossing the road ahead there was
a funeral.
One black car followed another, very slowly.
Was it Jamie's?
She almost asked italoud. Then she
randdown a side street and went into the most crowded
coffee shop she could find.
He phoned again, late that night. She'd been
wal 1kinground the flat unable to sleep, afraid of hearing
the key turn in the lock agai in when nobody was there-
andof seeing.Jamie---once she thought she sal W him gazing
at her like her father usedcto gaze at her, seemingly
from far away, reflectively, reproving.
"I wanted you so bad lastnight," he said. "In
fact I came to see you, did you fel me around?"
"Oh Dominic it frightened me out of my wits, I
heard you come in the door and I said Dominic and you
said my name but then I didn't hear any more, I was
terrified!"
"If you hadn't been terrified I would have come
in further, don't you see that? It was your fear that
stopped me. We could have made love, anything, so why
do you fear these things Angela?"
"Because I do, I a lways have done!"
"You'vegot death all round you baby, that's why,
you don't understand you're eternal, you take on human
form from time to time but you yourself go -on for ever.
You can't stand funerals huh?"
"Has Jamie been buried yet?"
"Oh Dominic don't!
I can't stand hearing it
mentioned!"


"Will you let me come to you tonight?"
"Oh Dominic please don't! I screamed last night!"
"But what the hell are you made of, Angela? You
think it's flesh? And what made your flesh? It's
spirit, but you're afraid of spirit, and yet you're
made of spirit, can't you damned well think it out?"
"I don't understand what you're saying," she said.
"OK. So I'll give you spund sleep tonight, a whole
ten hours of it. And when you wake up tomorrow morning
remember I promised you this and gave it to you."
She was quivering. "I wish we could be ordinary
people for a bit, I don'tb understand all these things!"
"Ordinary? You mean deathly!"
It was lovely hearing his voice, and the sound of
his breath, slight, on the mouthpiece. It tired her
out.
She couldn't think any more and felt an exhaustion
she'd never experienced before. She went to her room
and undressed quickly, thenslipped into bed,'after leaving
the door ajar and the hall light on. She slept right
through till ten in the morning.
And when she got up
she'd forgotten his promise, and its fulfilment.
She
hurried into the kitchen to make coffee.
She'd just ground the beans when the phone rang.
It was her"London agent.
"It's eight in the evening," Barbara said, "I
thought I wouldn't disturb you too early.
Listen, the
producer of that Diaghilev series was in my office today."
"Dominic? He's in London?"
"Mr Dominic Latouche. Is he a friend of yours?"
(as if she didn't know).
"I'm living in his apartment as a matter of fact,"
Angela said flatly.
"Well," Barbara replied with a chuckle, "what could
be more friends than that? Anyway, he wants you to play
Eliza Doolittle in a revival of Pygmalion."
"A stage revival, naturally. He wants to open it


in San Francisco and then do a tour of the States and
presumably end on Broadway.
He saidieverybody's seen
My Fair Lady but now we need a revival of the original
play. He said that Shaw wrote a naked scene in the
original play which everybody misses out.
That was
news for me but I checked it out and it's true. It's
that
Eliza's bathroom scene, her first bath.
He saysnyou
naked on the stage, if only for a couple of seconds,
would hit people between the eyeballs (I quote him) and
he could already see the headlines on the entertainments
page of the big circulation dailies, A BATH? NOT BLOODY
LIKELY!
It's something to think a bout, Angela.
think he's crazy but a hell of a nice guy, and those eyes,
wow! I admire your taste.
He wants me to fix him
up with an all-British cast, that's why he came to me -
I said, what about Equity? They'1l never allow you
to tour the States with an all-British cast. 'Really?'
he said. Anyway I thought.I'd warn you. By the way
Angela, is it true what t Everard tells me that they call
him the killer?"
"Yes it is," Angela said.


"What's all this rubbish about me playing on the
stage naked?" she said, clinging to his arm as they
walked against the wind.:
He'd bought a stetson in London, and a long dark blue
autumn coat which made him look debonair and important.
His face was smooth, serene. SHe wanted to hug and kiss
him and kept making little dancing steps.
"What's that?" he said.
"What are you talking
about?"
The wind cut across the airport from the sea,
sweeping the words out of their mouths.
"What you said to Barbara Gleeson, me playing
Eliza Doolittle and being naked!"
"I wouldn't have you naked ina play or film or
anything!" he shouted.
"Not for a million dollars!
So wha t are you talking about?"
"It's what you said to Barbara Gleeson! !"
"Who the hell's she?"
"My, London agent!"
Yes I get it! I only called on her to see
what she was like, to get a whole picture of you.
And
I had to say something.
So I said that."
"You made it all up?"
"Sure I made it all up!"
"But she's started casting the play for you!"
"She's casting Pygmalion for you!"


"Oh I'11 give her a cut off Diaghilev 'or something."
Pauline was waiting in the parking lot with the Buick,
his second car (they'd driven to the Queen Mary party in
"So what did you bink of Barbara?" she asked him when
they were on their way.
"She's OK. She'1l never get you anything big though."
He and Pauline had just nodded to each other, not even
pecked each other's cheeks. He murmured something to her
about "San Diego OK?" and she nodded mutely.
They had a
language all their own. Angela still clung to him in the
car. She could feel he was proud of this. He kept turn-
ing to her and laying his right cheek on her lips.
She
could smell his hair, his skin, and she kept stroking the
back of his hand.
"I paid Angela a visit the other night," he told
Pauline, "and it scared the shit out of her."
"I think you'd scare the shit out of me too," Pauline
said. "One day you'11 take your visits too far and find
a crazy lunatic when you get back home."
"Jamie been buried yet?" he asked.
"Yesterday," Pauline said.
"Many people there?"
"Like at Saul's funeral.
In fact it could have been
the same one. Maybe it was organised by the same product-
ion outfit."
"It was," Dominic said.
"What, you handled the two funerals?"
"That's right!"
"My oh my!" Paulinessaid.
"Did you learn some
tricks in the nuthouse!"
"But how do you mean, you organised them?" Angela
said.
"How could you?"
"Well, Saul's company was partly my company too.
We had an outfit called Frontier Productions, so I charged
funeral expenses totthe company. And I did the same for
Jamie as a kind of tribute. And also because. he was to
star in Saul's'film. It seemed kind of right."
"Just look at your man's face," Pauline said without
turning round.
"You'1l see it's perfectly serious.'


"I told them not to send you an invitation to
Jamie's," he said to Angela, touching her lips with
his cheek again.
"Aren't you a little bit sorry about his death?"
Angela asked him.
"As sorry as you are. And it was his choice.
He threw himself out, not me."
"Angela's thinking about what people say, that
you did throw him out!" Pauline said.
"Oh that." He smiled.
"At the time of his
death I think I was in a gondola with a money-man from
Milan.
He thought I was crazy to hire a gondolier to
plough his way across a choppy lagoon in freezing weather
but it's good to give the impression you're crazy,
people credit you with special powers, provided you're
rich already of course."
Pauline didn't say another word the whole journey.
Back in the apartment, when they were all in the
kitchen together, Angela asked him, "Why did Jamie do
He turned to Pauline.
"Didn't Jason Crow explain
that one?": Then tomAngela, "That's the guy: who came
here to see the letter Jamie wrote you, the cop. We
used to call him the crowbar at school because he had
such powerful biceps. He talked to Pauline after he'd
seen you, he said Jamie threw himself out of the window
because he was crazy about you."
"Oh Jesus!" Pauline cried.
"Come off it man will
"Just quit the subject!
Don't you see you're
killing this poor kid?"
He bit his lip.
"OK. Yeah.
I'm sorry."
"It's not my fault he fell in love with me,'
Angela said in a hush.
"Oh he doesn't really care about that," Pauline
said. "He's not blaming you. It'11 také-you some time
to understand Dom's wavelength."
"That's true," he said.
He drew Angela on to his knee and kissed her.


He drew Angela on to his knee and held her mouth
in his fingers, then kissed it.
"I-guess I go too fast.
I love you, I love you---"
He pulled her head on to his shoulder and held her
tight. She began crying.
"Angela Bourne's waterworks," he murmured.
"Good God!" Angela said through her tears, lifting
her head.
"Did you get that chatty with Barbara Glee-
They slept togethervthat night in her room. A11
night she had her arms round him.
They didn't make
love, he was'dead tired from the journey. They were
whispering to each other when he suddenly fell asleep.
"Dominic," she said, "when Jamie and I did that
scene together and Jill Rapinsky kept shouting. at him
to get right on top of meI felt desire, it wasn't really
me, it was something that happened in my body but I
felt so bad about it afterwards, I felt I'd been disloyal
to you and wanted to talk to you but you never gave me
a chance! I hated be ing touched by another man
Dominic!
He touched my breasts---:
"Listen, he's dead!" he whispered back in a
hissing way.
"I know but I've still.got it in my mind, it's like
still in my body and I think I took about three showers
that day to get rid'of the feeling!"
He said nothing to this, just lay there.
Then he made a 'little chuckle.
"I never thought of
that before," he said, 'rape---Rapinsky---!
"Don't make a joke of it please."
"Don't you'see,' " he said, "it's the killer's way
of being sad?"
And he was suddenly asleep.
She lay awake until
two or three listening to his even breathing, touching
his hair with her lips, sometimes stroking his cheeks,
be ing close to him, feeling the warmth in her legs and
breasts.


He didn't wake up until after eleven the next
morning. She heard Pauline moving about outside,
and she could smell the coffee. But still she lay
there with him, wide awake, her arms round him. At
a few. minutes past e leven the canned music began drift-
ing discreetly through the rooms . She could have killed
Pauline for that but noddoubt they were his orders.
"Angry?" he said, kissing her on the lips.
""Why can't you use an alarm clock instead of that
awful music?"
"It reminds me of home. Listen to it, it's Vivaldi,
the Venetian composer."
"But it's all sugared up!"
"Jesus Christ, do you expect me to take it neat?
Don't you put sugar in your coffee?"
She leaned on top of him, drew her body right over
him and said, "Why are you always pulling my leg?"
"To find out who you are."
"I thought you knew already."
"I've got a few clues. But you block me all the
time with your. fear."
"We could be together even when we're apart because
wha t we've got together doesn't depend on the body but
you won't see it that way. You don't even know what
I'm talking about do you?"
"You're talking about the spirit."
"Oh shit!" he said.
"I knew you'd bring up that
word! It went out with A1 Capone!"
She laughed and they kissed.
He pulled her over
him, her breasts, her stomach, kissing her. She realised
he'd made her clean. She didn't feel tainted any more!
The old excitement was back!
It was a certain softness
she couldn't describe, her vagina---her whole middle--
melted.in a way that was almost beyond feeling, made
her float.
They took a shower together, played about.
Pauline
kept calling out from the kitchen "Coffee time playma ates!".
Suddenly he caught hold of her as the water streamed
down on their heads and said "You look just like Caterina!"
She pulled herself out of the warm water and grabbed


She pulled herself at way from him and grabbed a
towel.
"Dominic why can't we just get on with our work,
there's so much to do on this film, why do we have to
dig up past lives?"
He pulled himself out too, blinded by the water.
"Gimme a towel!"
She threw one in his face.
"Answer my question!" she said.
"That's what I mean," he said, "you don't want to
know who you are!"
"But I'm me now!"
"That's wha t you think, it's what most people think,
but it ain't right!"
When they were in the kitchen sitting in front of
hot waffles and coffee he told Pauline, "I don't.want
any phonecalls for an hour."
"I'd better say this in front of Angela though she
won't like it. I found out a whole load of stuff from
this guy in Padova. Remember I told you I was a French-
man? With a big property in Rouen? And I was in
Venice? The question is what was I doing in Venice?
Now this guy in Padova specialises in Venetian history.
Maybe you were a diplomat, he said, giving me a funny'
look because he doesn't get paid for reincarnational
enquiries every day of the week, in fact he doesn't get
paid like I paid him for anything! I said no, I didn't
feel I was avdiplomat. Maybe more like a soldier, an
officer.
He said OK but it was very rare that a foreigner
could live in Venice without some official position,
the Venetians didn't like foreigners, not living amongst
them leastways, and they kept a sharp eyeon them, they
had agent ts everywhere, I mean the government did. They
didn't even allow foreigners into people's private homes,
there was a law against you, a Venetian could go to prison
for entertaining a foreigner in hi's home, that was an
ancient Venetian tradition, this professor told me. So
how could you be a Frenchman living there, especially
a soldier, they couldn't stand soldiers, being a mercantile
people, and foreign soldiers


a soldier, they couldn't stand Italian soldiers let
alone foreign ones, being a strictly mercantile people.
They would have had a foreign soldier out of the city
(or in it for eternity) inside a day."
"But you definitely were in Venice," Pauline said,
"I know it."
"Right!" Dominic said.
"Well all of a sudden he
stops and says hey wait a minute, just like a character
in a film.
You could have been in Venice at the time
of the Spanish Plot in 1618. What was that, I ask.
We don't know exactly, he says, because Venetian internal
security was always so tight even: the historian can't
get to the bottom of certain events. A1l we know is
that in the course of two or three nights five hundred
men were murdered. They were strangled, thrown into
the canals. No one saw a thing except the corpses
floating. Most of those men were foreign soldiers.
Mostly Dutch.
But there were French as well. And I
reckon, this professor said, that you might have been
a French officer brought into the city to organise
those foreign troops."
"But I thought he said Venetians didn't like
troops of any kind?" Pauline asked.
"He did.
But foreign troops were definitely
allowed in the city. And some people call this Spanish
plot a French plot. They say that the Venetian govern-
ment wanted to overthrow Spanish rule in Naples, and
invited some French officers to get a small army together
for that purpose.
Then the Spanish got wind of it and,
because you never argued with a Spaniard at that time,
the Venetian government panicked and decided to get rid
of the whole army, just like that.
Hence the floating
corpses.
The tthe government put it about that the
dead foreigners were Spaniards who'd been plotting to
overthrow the Venetian republic, so crowds went to
the Spanish embassy and tried to sack it. And this
was the alibi largely accepted by - the historians."
"So you could have been one of the officers who
ended in a canal?"
"I don't think so. I think I was murdered


privately---by Caterina's family or even by Caterina
herself."
"Oh great!" Angela said. "So I'm a killer too.
No wonder we're in love!"
The other two laughed.
"I told him her name," Dominic, said, "something
like Foss, Caterina Foss, and he said it could have
been Foscari, that was a famous Venetian name, and one
very much in top political circles at the time. It
was possible, he said, that I'd had an affair with this
Caterina and her family had found out about it. An
affair with a foreigner was unthinkable for a Venetian,
the family's honour would have been stained for gener-
ations, so maybe I was done away with quietly.
And
it feels like that," he added, gazing at the table.
"It never felt like I was suddenly grabbed and hustled
towards a canal after dark, or leapt on. - It was a
considered business, a betrayal.
I can't help feel-
ing you betrayed me."
"Really?" Angela said. She wanted to make a joke
of it but his eyes said no. And she remembered Jamie,
feeling that warmth inside when he touched her breasts,
and the sense of betrayal. She flushed.
"Now what I'd like you to do Pauline is to get your
assaalong to the UCLA library and find out all you can
about the Spanish Plot, and now we've located the place
and the century I guess we should have another FM
session, just to see if I can't get my name, and maybe
one of two other names. What do you say?"
"Would you like to come along Angela?
Listen,
it's the only way of getting over your fear!
I'm going
right ahead with this because I found you this way,
I looked out for you for two whole years and then I
spotted you on that clip Barbara Gleeson sent across.
We've got to find out what we did to each other in the
last life so we don't do it to each other again, do you
get that? There are things I'm scared of---"
"Like what?" Angela asked him.


"Well, Jesus, people call me the killer and Jamie
died and Saul died and people say I put the evil eye on
'em and---!" He sighed and sat back in his chair, his
eyes closed.
"Younknow,. I can't say they're wrong.
I can't say I didn't do it."
She was astonished at how quickly he went under.
There was the close smell of people who had been there
that afternoon, sweat and perfume, a class of forty.
Pauline put Angela in a chair behind the recodring
console while he lay on a mattress in a far corner.
She handed her a pair of earphones.
Within a few
minutes of Pauline's first instructions ("OK, I'm going
to ask you to breathe deeply, inhale to eight heartbeats,
exhale to ten and listen to the gap between inhalation
and exhalation, you can hear eternity there") he appear-
ed unconscious. All Angela could hear over the earphones
was his deep breathing.
It went on for ten or twenty minutes this way,
with Pauline saying nothing over the microphone. Then
he made 'a slight convulsive movement. A sort of shiver.
Pauline whispered, "Anything coming?"
He had the same croaky voice as on that tape. "I
nearly heard my own name. Dammit!
And Caterina's around.
I can feel her, not see her.
She's very concerned, veryintent on me getting the right
names. She wants all this cleared up. They died
together!"
"Who did?"
"We did. We died toge ther, Caterina and I."
"I don't know. But maybe it wasn't really together,
what I mean is our bodies were together in the end, I
can't tell how."
"Do you see other names?"
"I still get Foss for Caterina, maybe Foscari
is right. No it isn't right but it's near it."
"I got another name just then. I could see him,


"I got another name just then. I don't know who
he is. But he's connected.
With Caterina's family
maybe. He isn't Venetian. He may be English.
It's
something like Henry Wad, Watt maybe, Henry Watt."
"Is he in an embassy? Or maybe he's French?"
"No he doesn't talk my language. He's quite
important. He might be in anembassy, yes. He talks
to politicians, he could even be ambassador.
It's a
lovely day. Caterina's in some sort of disgrace.
This is before they find out about our love."
"Who finds out?"
"Her family. But the family's been in disgrace
bef ore. Also because of a foreigner, maybe a love
affair with a foreigner, it seems to weigh on Caterina,
she sort of does the same thing, brings about the same
disgrace out of love for that other person in the family
who fell in love with a foreigner, hey am I rambling?"
"You're doing fine."
"That's all I've got.
I'd like to sleep. There's
a wonderful sunshine here.
You don't get air like this
nowadays."
Afterwards she asked him what it felt like to be
underhhypnosis and he said, "Well you're on two levels,
you're back there and you're here."
"But how do you know you're not imagining it?"
"Because you're just wa tching.
You're not doing
anything.
And you'1l see, those facts I gave you today
are history!
Not even I can. lie: down and imagine
history!"
At home again she wondered if he'd been spoofing
it, lying there on the mattress. This thought made
her pause. Wasn't it just the kind of thought that
divided her from Dominic?
Wasn't that what she'd
always said about her mother's friend Beryl, with her
cards?
But Beryl had always been right, nearly always.
She remembered what her mother had told her over the
phone, "Beware of unspecified dangers."
"Know something?" Dominic said to her at dinner
that evening.
"You're getting interested in other
people.
You're starting to think about them."


She looked over his head into the distance. "And
before I just thought about myself?"
"That's right."
"How do you fall in love with somebody else if
you're always thinking about yourself?" she asked him.
"You fall in love with an aspect of yourself.
You recognised that French officer sitting in an open
Bentley about four hundred and sixty years after you
last saw him. Or rather, Caterina saw him. It had
nothing to do with us as we are now. We didn't know
what had hit us, right? We hadn't got to know each
other, we hadn't even met. We just looked at each
other in the traffic, wham!"
They ate cheap at Joe Allen's, then went on to
F. Scott's and ended up listening to coutry music at
the Palomino on Lankershim Boulevard.
"When you said today about Jamie and Saul, you
couldn't really believe you killed them!"
"Well how could you? Just thinking about them?"
"But how?"
"Thoughts kill Angela!
Just sit and think about
your own death day in and day out and you'll be dead
soon enough."
"But somebody else?"
"Maybe I've got very powerful thoughts."
"You actually sit and wish them dead Dominic?"
"Of course I don't!" He flushed with annoyance,
agglow under the smooth olive skin.
"It happens if I
know they've done something bad to me. Not even bad--
just sort of against me ! And I just have to think of
that and well this kind of thing tends to har ppen.
have to be careful how I think.
It started happening
when I became more than Dominic La touche, know what I
mean? OK, you'1l say you don't know even if you do.
What I mean is when I saw my past lives I got a new
kind of power in this one, I could see round corners,
round death.
It made me think of death as not such
a big deal as I used to."
"You aren't afraid of death?"


"Death doesn't scare you?"
"I'don't know. I'11 tell you what I think.
I'd go very cool. Not a year before or a month
before but right then. So the answer is sure I'm
shit scared of the idea but once it comes I'11 be
organised."
"Will you ever think thatI've done something
bad and kill me with your thoughts?"
He laughed.
"Why, got something on your mind?"
But a moment later his face went very dark. Next
day he got Pauline to drive him out to the crematorium
off Sunset Strip where both Saul and Jamie had their
names in the book.
He left some flowers in the chapel.
Then he passed by St Patrick's, a catholic church down
from Pauline's place, and lit a couple of candles there,
the biggest he could buy. Pauline told her he prayed
and looked for a priest to confess but there was nobody
about.
"I didn't know you were a catholic," Angela said
in bed that: night.
"I'm not," he said. "I just use their facilities."
She didn't say a word abouther second Caterina
dream.
She felt she didn't want to encourage' them.
But was this the real reason? She didn't want anyone
to know about Caterina.
It was a secret, perhaps a
lovely one. She felt Caterina was in all her dreams
now, somewhere. Not tha t she believed in what Pauline
and Dominic were doing.
Caterina was different.
She
was a de: lightful creature who somehow belonged to her.
But how was it Pauline and Dominic knew about her too?
He came to her bed every night now. She knew
those deaths were on his mind. She always fell asleep
after he did, enjoying the sound:of his breath and the
warmth radiating from his cheeks, and the serenity with
which he slept, utterly still, as if thinking something
out with his eyes closed. And he woke like a child,
his eyes opened S lowly and he gazed round innocently.
What an unfathomable creature he was. She hugged him
in sleep and kissed him but he didn't wake up. Some-


times she talked to him.
One night she remembered that
he'd said 'I love you'.
Funny that it should have gone
out of her mind. It made her laugh with pleasure, she
stroked his bare shoulder and kissed his eyebrows, put?
her lips on his for a time, not kissing him but just
feeling them there as his warm breath touched her evenly.
No, she didn't just think about herself any more!
Her
career? It seemed that he gave it more thought than she
did! And sometimes she provoked him to wake in the
middle of the night and make love to her.
She would
press against him and let her warmth sink into him,
all the time pressing her lips to his face, letting her
breath mingle with his. And he would wake slowly and
still in half-sleep run his hand down her back and then
over her breasts, and begin kissing her neck.
Once, just after he'd fallen asleep, the horrible
thought occurred to her that he'd killed Jamie for her
and she was proud of him.
Even Saul he'd killed for
her!
It was a night-thought, half dreamed, but it
lingered the next day like a sour taste and she wonder-
ed what was happening to her. She tried ringing her
mother to get back a feeling of normality but she wasn't
in. Sometimes she went to the coast for a few days
with a friend---it was unclear whether male or female.
Angela pulled her leg about it and Nicole always
blushed. She oft ten told Angela that she felt a child
with her. She loved to go to her first nights--
"It's like seeing all my family come out on the stage,
your face goes through a hundred expressions I can
recognise from my childhood."
She announced in the kitchen one morning that she
wanted to grow her hair long. A picture of Caterina
flashed through her mind-- --and thebglance Dominic gave
her suggested that he knew this. She turned away.
She'd love hair like Caterina---black but bleached
in the sun!
"Know. what I found out in Venice?" he said. "Did
you ever see those wooden balconies up on the rooftops?
They're all over Venice.
The women used to sit up
there in the sun to bleach their hair. That's right!
The altana, they called it, the place where they took


"The altana, they call it. They used to wear
straw hats with wide brims, only they'd cut the top
of the hat out and pull their hair through So that
it fell round the brim, get it? I was at some guy's
house and he took me up there and we had lunch under
a sun umbrella and he told me about it."
Altana, she could hear the word---hear her brothers
and sisters running up the wooden stairs behind her :
while she combed her hair over the straw brim and
saw white sails far out on the lagoon.
"Your face is different," he said.
"You're standing there looking so beautiful---!"
For a moment she thought he meant on the altana.
She had to force her hands not to go through combing
motions! And she could smell the sea. Feel that
warm air. As Dominic had said, you don't get air like
that nowadays.
The phone rang and he left the kitchen. Again she
thought, 'What's happening to me?'
Pauline could only find the books she wanted at
Berkeley, San Franscisco, so she'd flown there.
This
was her calling.
"I've tracked down your Henry Watt," she told him.
"I went into deep concentration and I saw it was something
like Wott and I found this Sir Henry Wotton who was the
English ambassador in Venice at the time of the Spanish
Plot. I don't know why he comes into your picture
but I'm trying to find out now."
"Be careful of those gurus up there," Dominic said,
"especially the ones with pimples!"
Afterwards he said to Angela, "You see? I nearly
got tha t name right. And she'1l get some important
information through that guy. Maybe you were his
illegitimate daughter!" he added with a laugh.
She loved to see him laugh. It was more a rippling
chuckle he made, never a coughing outburst.
It made her
feel


chucklé he made, never a coughing outburst.
melted .all the tension in her.
It was true wha t Pauline had told her, there was
some weakness in him.
More, a fragility.
She loved
this.
When she lay awake with him in her arms she
Wasaaware of this and it made her feel so close to him.
She sometimes touched his nose lightly with the tip of
her finger, to feel how fine it was, and she put her
finger under his nostrils to feel the softness of his
breath.
Or she ran it against the bristle on his chin,
to feel the contrast with his soft firm skin."
She could see the fragility in his eyes. sometimes
too. A quick vulnerable glance could reveal it. And
she discovered why his gaze could be frightening.
His
eyes were dark, hooded, immobile when he concentrated
on something, and that was because he was looking from
somewhere far awar, beyond life, maybe from one of his
other lives. He never seemed quite here and now. Yet
he did too. But this person he really was---the person
behind---was looking all the time, observing human actions
with interest and dispassion.
It was.this dispassion
that unnerved people.
In bed on the night of Pauline's phonecall he said
to her, "Know what people call you on the set---Killer
"They say I've found my match. They say you got'
Jamie Somerson to fall in love with you, you fattened
him for my kill."
She sat up in bed.
"But people are crazy!"
"People don't know who they are Angela," he
murmured. "So how can they know others?"
"And you take it like that! Why don't you tell
"Tell'em you're not a killer? And do you think
they come up to me and say how's Killer Two?"
"Killer Two!"
"Are you blaming me for what these bums say?" (she'd
moved away from him) .


"Yes in a way."
"It's OK for me to be called the killer but not
"Yes because you've developed all these powers but
I haven't, I haven't_done a thing except come here and
fall in love!"
"But you fell in love with the killer just the
same," he said with his rippling chuckle.
"And what. set are you talking about? There's no
set for the Ballet Russe series because you haven't
started shooting yet. Or have you? I wouldn't put it
past you!"
"It was one of Jill's commercials, I move. around,
I keep my ears to the ground."
"And I suppose you've got money in it."
"In what?"
"In the commercial."
"Sure. You don't think Jill Rap pinsky eats out
of my hand for nothing do you? She said to me once
'Sure I love you Dom, I mean I don't wanna die'!"
"Yes it's all a joke to you isn't it?' I suppose
Jamie's death is à joke too!"
"Now come on," he said, pulling her down towards
him.
"Take it easy."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"But Killer Two---!
That's awful!"
He said nothing to this.
After a time -she said, "And does Everard talk about
me like that? And the girls in his officel.
"Probably." He yawned.
"You just don't care what people think about you
do you?" she said.
"Do you care what I think about you?"
"Why not?"
"I care what you are. Not what you think.
Did you
you ever hear about that French philosopher who said
'I think therefore I am'? That's wrong.
What I say
is 'I am therefore


is 'I am therefore I don't give a shit what I think'.
As for what other people think---!"
She lay thinking just the same. Killer Two!
"People are horrible!" she said.
"No they're not."
She couldn't get over it. Her face was hot, she
had a bad taste in her mouth.
And she'd never be able
to work on the Ballet Russe set, knowing what they were
all saying!
And it made her feel implicated in poor
Jamie's death. She couldn't get it out of her mind
that she had killed him. She remembered that look the
cop had given her when he said "So Jamie didn't make it
huh?" It was like saying she was a whore! Just because
she was living with a rich man! Dominic was to blame
for all this!
He had this power mania and of course
it trickled off on to his associates.
Jamie had almost
called Pauline a witch, she'd put a hyponotic spell on
Dominic or something.
What rubbish!
She began cooling off. She could feel his warmth
spreading through her, and his neck was So soft on her
arm. She touched his cheek with hers.
That fragility!
How horrible she was to blame him in her heart.
She
kissed him lightly, ran her lips delicately over his
eyebrows---she loved to do that.
"What do I do not to care like you?" she whispered.
But he was asleep.
She nudged him roughly.
"How do I get like you, not caring what people say?"
"Make a billion dollars," he said.


She found herself waiting for Pauline's return
with excitement.
Suppose she'd found things out about
Caterina which had happened in the two dreams? But
what had happened in the dreams? Really nothing. At
the same time she felt she knew all about Caterina,
just from seeing her standing there.
Shehad an odd
sense that she wasn't yet conscious of how much she
knew about Caterina. And her love for the French
officer? She was aware of a dim but somehow awful
excitement, it was So deep down she couldn't recapture
it a moment after it disappeared. It had something
to do with that officer.
And-- --yes---there was some-
thing like the involuntary excitement she'd feltnwith
Jamie in the studio. A warmth ins ide, a flood of
warmth, thatvwas somehow illicit.
"Well here's how," Pauline said, her notes on the
kitchen table in front of her. "There was a Comte de
Ligeaux who got involved with the Venetian republic and
who certainly died there.in 1618.
Does that sound like
the name you had?"
"Yes it does," Dominic said, his head down, utterly
concentrated.
"His whole name was Alphonse de Ligeaux. How do
you like it?"
"OK. It sort of fits."
"Now we know he had a big estate and a chateau near
Rouen, which is one more clue in your favour. He was
related to the powerful de Guise family and involved in
a lot of unofficial diplomacy.
You know what I mean,


these big families governed their countries from their
private homes and bot the king and the church had to
reckon with them." She looked up.
"I can just imagine
you in that role."
"He was a prominent figure at court, naturally. One
day a Venetian came to him with a proposition. The
republic, unofficially of course, would like to invite
him to Venice for a time, perhaps a year.
His job
would be to build up a small army of mostly Dutch
soldiers with the objective of removing Spanish rule
from Naples. Now be: ing a de Guise you had no love
of the Spanish.
There'd been a terrific feud bet tween
Philip of Spain and the de Guise family in the previous
century, and now that Philip was dead and the Spanish
empire sort of crumbling it seemed to you a good opport-
unity to do a grab.
The viceroy of Naples at that
time, the Duke of Osuna, was a friend of yours and in
fact you'd already got wind of the plot through secret
envoys of his.
The duke was all for it.
With the
help of the unofficial Venetian army he would remove
the Spaniards around him and become a Venetian or French
satellite. The plot was financed partly by him and
partly by Venice."
"So I went to Venice?"
"You did. You lived there for over a year.
And then I guess you got murdered together with all the
other foreign soldiers."
"Is that all?"
"For the momen t. I've got a photostat of Sir
Henry Wotten's papers and I'm ploughing through them
at home. They may come up with something."
"Andwhat about Caterina? Any clues on her name?"
"Well if it was Foscari it didn't figure in the
Spanish Plot."
"Listen,"'he said, "get on the line to this guy
in Padova, you'11 find his name on my pad, Toni Morelli
is his name, now ask him to dig into the Foscari archives
and see if they had a daughter named Caterina around


that period.
Or any similar name. Got it?"
Her name wasn't Foscari, Angela knew that. It
was very like it but not Foscari. She almost formed
the name with her tongue.
And she enjoyed the fact
that the other two didn't knowit.
She felt a sort of
glee about that.
Did Caterina have a strong sense
of mischief.
She could almost feel her laughing
ins ide.
Next day Pauline phoned before breakfast.
"I think I've found a lead, I'll be right over."
She was with them by the time breakfast was ready.
"There must be a reason why you remember that
Wotten name. Now I've found a whole lot in his papers
about a man called Foscarini.
Could that be Caterina's
name ?"
Yes! Caterina al lmost shouted.
Yes!
That was her
name. She remembered her father, his voice and the
smile that won him So many women. She said nothing,
held herself still in her chair.
"Antonio Foscarini died durng the night of April
He was strangled in the ducal prison."
Why? She-felt the alarm deep inside.
What had
happened? Why didn't she know?
"But he had nothing to do with the Spanish Plot,"
Pauline went on. "He had an affair with an Englishwoman
called Lady Arundel, or so it was said.
Theybhad houses
near each other in Dolo.
Now thenpolitical security
in Venice was so hot you hardly dared look at a foreigner
in the street.
There were government spies everywhere.
And S ometimes theydid a frame-up, either for bribes or
to get noticed. A spy saw Antonio go into Lady Arundel's
house several times and denounced him.
Venice was very
touchy at the time. There was a tense and suspicious
atmosphere, probably because of the Spanish Plot four
years béfore.
Antonio was arrested and thrown into
the ducal gaol and as usual where noblemen were suspect-
ed of having betrayed the republic they were garrotted,
that is strangled with ca tgut.
He was accused of plott-
ing the overthrow of the republic with the English."
"What's the connectionwwith me' ?" Dominic asked.
"I think he may have been


"What's the connection with the rest of the story?"
Dominic asked.
"I think he may have been Caterina's father.
It's
just a hunch, based on the fact that you remembered the
name Henry Wotten.
Now after Antonio's death Lady
Arundel went to Henry Wotten and said she wanted to see
the doge to clear Antonio's name. She'd had an affair
with him but there was nothing political in it. He
tried to discourage her because the charge against
Foscarini had been high treason and the Venetians didn't
mess around on that subject, shecould get herself quietly
removed.
But she went to the doge just the same. She
told him what she'd done the English ambassador.
And
she demanded (she was quite a toughy) that the senate
officially proclaim her innocent of any political
motives in see. ing Foscarini. And the senate did just
that. A year later the apy who denounced Antonio
confessed that. his evidence had been false, and he
was arrested and executed. Antonio's name was cleared
posthumously and he was reburied with full honours at
the Frari, which is one of the top churches in the city."
"So what do you think?" Dominic said, turning to
Angela suddenly with something fierce in his voice.
"Are you Foscarini's daughter?"
"How do I know?"
"You know dammit, you know!"
She just looked at him. She wanted to say some-
thing, a lie., But she couldn't.
"Do you know?" Pauline asked her.
All she did was look at Pauline across the table,
her eyes rather haughty and her lips pursed.
Dominic
was watching her. That lookmwasn't really hers and
she knew it. She'd never looked at anyone like that
before but she felt a terrific certainty, a dignity
she refused to be approached.
Pauline blinked, looked
down. And neither of them went on with the sub ject.
"So," Dominic said.
"Get on the phone to that
Morelli again and tell him what you know."
When she'd left the kitchen Dominic touched her
arm and muttered, "Having an affairs with foreigners


When Pauline had left the kitchen he touched her
arm and muttered, "Having affairs with foreigners ran
in the family huh?"
She laughed.
She couldn't help it.
The evening she phoned her mother again.
Dominic
had gone out for a business meeting with Merrytown and
Barry Kurtz.
She was amazed how far away her mother
seemed.
She gazed before her, listening to her mother's
voice, trying to feel contact but finding none.
"I saw your father yesterday, he sends his love."
"Oh will you give him mine?"
"And what about the love life Angela?"
Her first thought was 'How dare people enquire about
my love life which is only for Dominic and me' o
Then
she realised what an unusual question it was for her
mother.
"Why do you ask?"
"Well I think something's hap ppene ed to you. You
sound different. I feel you're different."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Shouldn't you be able to answer that question?"
her mother said.
"Oh I know the answer but I wondered if you do."
"Angela, what is the matter with you? Why don't
you say you're madly in love and that's that?"
"But that's not what you wanted to know! You said
I was different and I wanted to know how!"
"Oh for God's sake Angela, it was only something
that came into my mind! You sound very wrought-up."
"You've been saying that since I was sixteen, and
if it's true it doesn't make things better."
They wère on - the phone nearly thirty minutes.
was an expensive way of saying nothing.
Also she'd
got her mother at eight o'clock in the morning before
her first cup of tea which was always a bad time.
But where did that feeling of assaulted d gnity
come from? She'd felt it when Dominic asked her if
she knew she was Foscarini's da ughter and she felt it
when her mother put an intimate question to her.
Her
feeling was 'How dare these people impose themselves
on my privacy!'


on my privacy!'
She went to her room and opened one of the wardrobe
doors where there was a full-length mirror.
She looked
at herself.
She was different.
She swore she was
taller.
She remembered Dominic looking at her a few
days before and saying something like why are you
standing there looking so beautiful. She'd never looked
beautiful like this before. The dignity was there in
her body.
Of course she'd had so much love and that
smooths out the rough lines and, well, does a kind of
divine therapy on the body.
The absurd thought crossed
her mind that she'd had two men's loves, or rather one
man's twice over. She'd had all the ecstasy of his
love when she'd been Caterina, and now it was repeated,
perfected, finalised!
What was she doing with such thoughts?
She
couldn't even say she believed in reincarnation.
Perhaps
she was just going along with Dominic and Pauline,
swept up by their absolute belief.
And he did so want
her to believe. Their love seemed to depend on it for
him. And a woman does oblige a man in this way, she
knew that.
But really it didn't matter about all that.
wasn't only that she was taller.
Her hair had subtly
changed.
Or was she imagining that? Were her dreams
about Caterina influencing her? Her hair was finer.
Her eyes had a steadiness she'd never seen in them
before. And a certain haughtiness. And mischief.
A lot of humour.
Wildness too. They didn't have that
'Bourne sparkle' as Louis had once called it any more.
She wasn't Cleo. She wasn't flirtatious.
She'd always
told her sisters that only one man interested her and
that was the man who would come to her one day, a
foreigner. This thought made her giddy.
In this life
she had no brothers and sisters and yet she could feel
them!
Then surely Dominic and Pauline must be right?
How could you imagine such these things? How could
you imagine a girl like Caterinawhom she could describe


in detail?
For instance she wore clogs, colourful
ones at least ten inches high.
Now how did she know
that? And how was it possible? Whoever heard of
clogs that high. But it was true.
And was she slimmer?
Was it a more perfect line?
She knew she was going to have to take classical dancing
lessons for this Karsavina part, and be at the bar for
hours every day. Dominic had said So.
Everard had
fixed up. with the dance school.
And here she was already
prepared for it.
She was sure Caterina had danced,
taken lessons at home. Of course very different dances
but agile, requiring slimness. Oh those white sails
out on the lagoon---she suddenly remembered them!
The man at Padova university called'at midnight.
Dominic had told him to call at any time of the day or
night, and had given him Angela's number as well as
Pauline's.
He had traced Caterina.
She was Antonio Foscarini's
daughter.
She had died at sea in 1618, he didn't yet
know how.




You either hate Venice or love on your first
visit.
It is difficult to have any emotion in
between.
On her first visit Angela had found it damp,
smelly and slippery. At low tide the canals became
filthy ditches, with a fearful stink, at high they
were lugubriously oily and dark.
Fog descended on
the roofs early in the evening, stinking of the chemical
works at Marghera.
The continual footsteps in the
narrow calle outside her hotel window had depressed
her. And voices had boomed between the walls all
night.
But on the way to the airport to return to London
she'd felt such a regret that she'd started to cry.
Of course Louis had said something silly about "Oh
don't cry darling."
She loved crying.
He'd put
his arms round her shoulder and she'd actually felt
comforted! What a silly goose she'd been, a slip of
a girl. She'd let him persuade her that the tears were
an emotional reaction to something or other (they were
having some sort of row at the time, they always were).
Now she knew what the tears had been for. She
hadn't wanted to leave her city.
The city of her birth.
She recognisedssome of the crew at the airport.
There was the rosy-cheeked grips she'd seen at Saul's
funeral and he was' smiling cordially to everyone just


as he'd done at the funeral.
He had a small whipcord
hat on which gave him a jolly appearance. A few of
them nodded to her. She recongised other faces from
the commercial she'd done with Jamie.
Thankfully no
one came up and talked to her.
She was quickly out of
cus toms into the taxi launch that had beén ordered for
her.
:uckily the crew couldn't see the taxi launches
from inside the customs shed and she could slip away
unseen.
She didn't want to start envious talk about
how she got preferential treatment as the producer's
mistress.
These things worried her. She was an
actress and liked to get with everybody---the backstage
staff, the tech cal people. A joke with them when you
were feeling scared could save you attthe right time.
She didn't like this star feeling.
Principally because
she wasn't a star. She ha dn't set foot on a stage
since that commercial, a good two months back.
She'd
been working ha rd but all the work in the world couldn't
substitute for relating to an audience or a camera.
She'd picked up that word 'relating' in LA.
Everyone
was trying to relate. At the moment she was trying to
relate to nothing.
The launch edged out of its little
harbour and then, gathering speed between the wood
stanchions that marked the navigable waters, put its
nose gently up. It was a nice feeling.
She kept
putting her hand to her face nervously to touch her skin.
The departure had been dreadful.
She hadn't slept
all night because of leaving next day. Anyway they'd
made love all the time. She'd cried a lot.
Asked him
why she had to leave alone. He just smiled and said
"Oh don't be a baby." Of course he'd taken hervto the
airport but that had been worse really.
He'd almost
ha d to push into the passport wicket.
It was awful
to depend on someone like this but she felt she didn't
exist any more. She hadn't eaten on the plane.
Thankfully she'd travelled first class so no one tried
to chat her up. They offered her champagne but she
shook her head. She had the earphones on nearly all
the time, listening to a sort of classical Venetian
pot pourri.
There were panic momen ts when she felt
inclined to rush to one of the hostesses


inclined to rush to one of the hostesses and shirek
"Let me off!".
He'd decided to make a feature film, not a television
series, because it would make a better showcase for her.
This had meant telescoping the action to, more or less,
the relationship between Diaghilev and Karsavina.
couldn't be a love relationship because Diaghilev was
queer and in love with Nijinsky anyway. So the writers
had a hard time of it.
Because there had to be some
love somewhere.
Having been a discreet woman, the real
Karsavina hadn't talked about her love affairs So little
was known. But Dominic insisted.
And S omehow a script
had been together which leaned heavily on Karsavina's
determination to getto the top, supported by Diaghilev's
determination to get her to the top. There were scenes
at the Milan dancing school where the famous Cechetti
taught.
He had a stick which he used on the dancer's
legs, sometimes painfully." Diaghilev once go So furious
in Cecchetti's studio that he ba ed his walking stick
on the floor and rats.ran out of the wainscoting in tero
terror.
There was to be a shot of the rats.
It was
a ghastly script, a real pain in the arse, and some of
the lines you couldn't even say,aloud.
"A bad script is just what you need for a successful
film," Dominic said.
"It means the director and the
actors and the writers get round and throw something
together at the last minute.
I've seen it happens."
"The improvistion school," Angela said sourly.
"You don't think itworks?"
"It doesn't work for me. I like to learn my lines
and say them."
"You'11 change your mind."
That was very unnerving too, the thought of working
on a day to day basis, with no one knowing exactly where
they were going. It was OK if you had a great director
who did all his real work in the cutting room anyway but
So far no director had agreed to work on this thing and
she suspected that the big ones would stay away.
The
fact was that directors didn't like Dominic.
Everyone
else did. But his cavalier treatment of Max Pennance
had lost him


had lost him a whole lot of points. Also Max hadn't
suffered.
He was working in South America on a new
series.
Sonya Steele was down there with him and had
picked up a plum part.
Her relation with Sonya had
shrivelled up, especially after Sonya had more or less
put the phone down on her over Jamie. She tried to
apologise afterwards but there seemed no good reason
why they should have a friendship.
They were now in
seprate camps. e
Sonya knew she was Dominic's woman,
the one he'd al lways waited for, and so she was concen-
trating .on Max for the moment.
He was telling all his
friends how marvellous it was, they were really tuned
together now. And Angela knew she ha ted Max's guts.
It was Sonya who had told her, during one of the Bel
Ami read-throughs when there was a discussion as to
whether the hero Georges Duroy ever really loved a
woman, "Oh you can love for ambition."
"What do you mean?" Angela had asked her.
"Well I mean, shit, you know what actresses will
do to get parts! I'm saying it can be real love some-
times, they see the man they're screwing as the way in
to a big part and it makes him beautiful!"
Sonya must have been making a sly indirect reference
to her in that conversation.
She hadn't realised it at
the time. She felt depressed.
He'd wanted to call the film Ambition. The writers
had refused.
What awful ideas he had sometimes.
It was a mellow sunny day with a light mist, one
of those winter days that suddenly depart from order.
The steersman had taken off his leather jacket. She
realised she didn't know if he was young or old, attract-
ive or otherwise, she hadn't given him a glance. She
saw Venice in the distance-- -she stopped herself relating
even to this, and looked away. All her thoughts said
was 'Dominic, Dominic'.
Andthat pain in the womb had
started again, she knew it was hunger for him, so soon
after their separation!
She wondered if she would have
a child by him, if she wanted one. She had a funny
feeling that she already did have a child of his, it was
with them all the time but not physical. Sometimes
she saw this child in his face.


with them all the time but not physical.
She longed for the warmth when he was lying beside
her. It seemed she'd been cold since leaving LA.
Cold deep inside.
She longed to feel his lips, the
way they felt when. he talked very close to her, touching
her cheek.
She was the only member of the cast to travel ahead
of the main company.
She guessed that themen she'd seen
in the customs were a number two crew for shooting the
location scenes where no actors were needed.
Dominic had insisted that she must join the ballet
class at the Fenice as soon as possible, she had to get
the feel of working among dancers.
The ballet master
was a Russian, he said, and an excellent man. No one
in LA to.come up to him. She knew it was partly just
an excuse. He wanted her in Venice alone because of
that Caterina business. Yes, he wanted Caterina to
dominate her life!
Venice was drawing nearer, they
were just passing San Michele and she deliberately kept
her head. down, she didn't want to be intoxicated!
She
was here to be an actress, to make an international
reputation, not to---oh, but how lovely the water
looked when they slowed up to enter the canal that cut
through the city, past the Arsenale, to reach the Grand
Cana on the other side...
And that calm, a certain
quiet which always had noise in it-- --children playing,
dogs, gondoliers with their cry of 'Oi!', barges---but
tranquil just the same.
At the Riva degli Schiavoni she had to look up.
They were approaching the square, the two columns
representing the lion of St Mark's and St Theodore!
And . the minarets behind!
The pillars round the
square, a glimpse of Maurizio at his clock tower ready
to beat the hour!
Oh she had to see all this!
In a moment they were pulling in at the side of
the Gritti palace where Dominic had booked them what
the Italians call a residenz, with bathroom and kitchen
and sitting room. He'd told her it overlooked the
Grand Canal, having chosen it himself.


The anonymous helsman lifted her bags on to the
fondamenta and then of fered her a hand up the slippery
steps. She hadn't to worry about bills, Dominic had
told her.
Everything either had been or would be paid.
The contract she'd signed at Everard Hope's office
stipulated a large advance before shooting began, about
ten times what she'd earned in a year in London.
was exaggerated, the actress in her was embarrassedto
sign that document with Everard and two secretaries
watching, she hadn't earned it with hard work, she'd
felt cheap under their eyes, a producer's bit.
They took her straight up to the apartment---no
formalities at the reception desk. She was so used to
Dominic's way of smoothing everything for her---would she
be able to live otherwise? Hall porter, bank clerk,
the American Express---they'd already had their instruct-
ions.
How could they call a man a killer whose life
was so devotedi - to invisible service? He did the same
for Pauline, had done (no doubt) the same for Sonya.
Once she'dfound him booking a plane flight for Greg
Merrytown, plus a hotel room, a light cold supper and
a bottle of whisky. Dominic just didn't believe in
other people doing things for themselves, not while they
were connected with him. And he didn't do it to incite
a sense of obligation.
Most of the time you didn't
know he'd done it.
She smelled the roses almost before the porter
had opened her door. There they were in every part of
the sitting room, almost the same colours as those he'd
chosen in LA! In the bedroom too, on the floor in
great vases, on either side of the bed, and. with that
touch of flamboyance-- --the excess that consoles---that
the Italians go in for.
"My God!" she- said, and despite her VOW not to take
pleasure in anything until she was in his arms again she
smiled.
The porter nodded, half with resignation at the
frightful waste of' money, said the same in broken English.
After he'd gone she felt she ought to have tipped him,
since tips can't be pre-paid, but thenssomething of
Dominic's sang froid towards people came into her.


Dominic's sang-froid towards people came into her
and she began attending to her bags. She opened the
windows on to the Grand Canal.
Two vaporini were
passing each other with that delightful bubbly sound
of their engines. It wasn't the season for gondolas
but the misty sun had brought:out a handfull.
She could
could see as far as Santa Maria della Salute on the
other side of the water, and in the other direction the
wooden bridge of the Accademia. She realised she
knew Venice quite well, from all those solitary walks
she'd taken while Louis was at work. How, if this
Caterina business was true, had she felt no inkling of
it on that first visit?
The scent of the hothouse roses was overwhelming.
A little sickening too.
He loved that sugary element.
It seemed to be what he meant by culture.
She had to report her arrival to the Russian dancing
ballet master.
It was lunchtime, So he'd probably be
at home. Dominic had given her the Fenice number and
his private one. She asked reception for the number
and almost at once she got him---delighted, yes he
knew who she was, he was expecting her to call that
moment, what about dining together that evening and
joining the class next day at ten o'clock or was she
too tired?
He spoke English perfectly, had worked at the Met,
and gave her a warm professional feeling.
"I'd rather stay in this evening," she said.
"But I'd love to come tomorrow morning."
She'd been working at the bar in LA for two whole
months, at an excellent dancing school.
Her teacher
had been Russian there too but she didn't tell Dominic
this. She'd become even slimmer. Her back had become
strikingly erect, and her hips had changed their line.
Her teacher had told her that she'd even begun to walk
like a dancer, feet slightly splayed out, thesteps
long. All this gave her an agile, alert look she
'hand't had before.


She could do that part marvellously.
She knew.
it. But with a bad script? And maybe a director who
didn't know what he was doing? And the subject of the
film twisted so as to give her the maximum number of
close-ups, shop-window scenes etc? And was Diaghilev
going to be? No names had yet come up. A 'heavy',
Everard had said, but were the heavies refusing to
participate in this disaster? Or were the money-people
right, this was going to be a winner?
There'd been
one or two good ballet movies before.
Maybe the
script didn't matter.
Every time she thought about
Karsavina she thought about Caterina.
In fact, talk-
ing about the part one day to Dominic she'd said 'Caterina'
'Caterina' by mistake and he'd laughed. It was a fact,
she couldn't even read about Karsavina without at once
drifting off into daydreams about that girl four ce
centuries ago, the daydreams Dominic called memories.
Also she felt that Caterina was the more real of the
two.
She could see her better.
The Karsavina part
just wouldn't come, yet she knew she was right for it.
Perhaps it was the script.
She tried to rest but couldn't.
Then she felt
hungry.
Dominic had said to order everything she
wanted from the hotel restaurant, have it sent up.
But she wanted to eat out, find one of those little
places where she and Louis had eaten.
It was late,
gone half-past two, but she might be lucky.
She
put on a light wood-green overcoat, with no hat but
a scarf at her neck which she could put round her head
if it got chilly. She remembered a place like a
baronial hall with a massive fireplace. Louis' film
crew had eaten there.
She wa lked towards St Mark's,
along the Calle Larga XX11 Marzo.
She found a tiny
hotel entrance and thought it might be there.
She
went in. No one was about.
Then she found a door
that looked familiar.
She pushed it and at the end
of the corridor she saw the hall. . Most of the tables
were empty and the waiters were clearinguup.
She
walked in just the same and one of the younger waiters
almost ran up to her and said "Uno?" She nodded and
he put at a table for two near the log fire, just the


is8
he put her at a table for two near the log fire, just
the place she wanted.
She didn't look up once, even when ordering her
meal. She didn't want to see people, look in their
eyes. She gazed into the fire, calculating the time
in LA, about ten hours back. He would be in bed now.
He could be lying in her arms, his warmth filling her
middle. Sometimes he fell asleep in the middle of a
sentence. She loved this. Until she met Dominic it
had been she who had always fallen asleep first, with a
man. The man had had his arms round her, felt her
breath on his"cheek, kissed her eyebrows. Dominic
was right. She'd woken up to theexistence of other
people, through him.
Was that what growing up meant?
The sun wasaalready dying, going down in the mist,
but it wasn't depressing.
The light became intimate,
glowing. She looked forward to the darkness So that
she could walk.round Venice as she'd done on that other
visit, gazing at the shop windows, dropping into a bar
for coffee, tasting those delicious little budini that
the Venetians cooked.
She knew a cake-shop in the
Calle delle Spezie where she could get them.
It was
so nice in Italy because at dusk the shops were opening,
not closing.
She'ate little, a fish called San Pietro, with some
slices of white polenta.
The waiter put a jug of sparkling
prosecco on her table without asking, and she began
drinking. It was what she needed after the journey.
It brought out a delicious tirednes in her, but not
so much that she wanted to sleep.
From the restaurant she wa lked to a cafe she knew
on the spacious Camp Santo Stefano and took a coffee
standing up. A11 these things she did mechanically.
And no one made a fuss of her.
She'd noticed it in the
restaurant. They hadn't treated her like a tourist.
She knew that most Italians put up a front with foreign-
ers, perhaps to avoid live contact.
But the waiters
had gone about the business of clearingtthe other tables


with hardly a glance in her direction.
Of course she
did look Italian.
But she knew it wasn't this. It
was the fact that she felt one of them, part of the
family.
She knew that this was why Italians put up
a front, because you were outside the family.
With
one of the family they of fered no defences.: Dominic
would say it was Caterina who felt at home. Certainly
she felt she'd be able to speak the language just like
that if she tried.
When she'd done the student tour
of Italy, hitching rides, people had said how good her
accent was.
It was the same when she got a coffee.
Louis had
taught her how to ask for a caffe macchiato, which was
an espresso with a dash of frothy milk. When she asked
for it now the barman simply nodded and went on talking
to another man. None of the foreigner unction.
She strolled across the square.
The mist seemed
to protect the city, keeping the warmth of the day.
She walked across the Accademia bridge, leaning on the
rail to watch the boats underneath, their lights flash-
ing merrily on the water. She looked towards the mouth
of the Grand Canal and again had that joyful feeling
of the morning, when she'd passed the two columns in
the taxi.
It reached into her throat and she didn't
know whether to laugh or cry.
She needed to do her exercises and then go to bed.
It was almost six and he'd just be getting up, padding
along to the kitchen in his Sandals, tying the cord of
his silk dresshg gown.
The canned music would have
woken him. She'd convinced him to get less sugary
cassettes and he'd agreed.
You couldn't afford to miss a day at the bar as
a dancer. Already she was getting a stiff feeling.
The moment she got back she threw off her shoes and
put on a track suit. She used thedressing table as
her bar.


She went to bed early after removing the roses
from her bedroom.
She fell into a deep sleep and woke
suddenly about three in the morning, wide awake, fresh.
There wasn't a sound on the Grand Canal. She. knew where
she was the moment she awoke. The mist had turned to
fog in the evening but now it had lifted and she thought
she saw stars in the sky.
The phone rang.
A sleepy Italian voice said "From Los Angeles."
Then there was his voice, slightly husky, as she
remember red it on those far memory tapes.
"Just got in, thought I'd cali you."
"Oh Dominic!"
"Trip OK?"
"What's the apartment like?"
"Full of roses!"
"Plenty of tea-coloured ones? If not, a Venetian
dies tomorrow."
"Lots, and yellow, aren't they called sonyas?" She
yawned.
"Where are you?"
"Home. Looks like we'1l be ready to move soon. "
"I hope so!"
"It's bad isn't it? bei ing half a person?"
They said nothing for a little.
"And how's Venice?" he asked.
"I wa lked round yesterday evening, I remembered it
much better than I thought I would."
"From the last visit?"
"You mean the one four hundred years ago?"
"If you like!"
"If I like, that's how it is!"
"But why do you want to make me Caterina all the
time?" She asked it mildly, sleepily. "I'm not
Caterina!"
"Of course you're not.
But you're not Angela
either."
"What does that mean?"


"You're the one who became Angela, like you became
Caterina."
She thought about this. Minutes seemed to pass.
The Grand Canal was so quiet. And she was sure those
were stars.
She saw what he meant.
Oné never died.
That was what he meant.
"There'sna hell of a smog here."
"Are you lying on your bed?"
"No, in your room. I thought you'd let me know if
you were awake or not if I came to your room and you
"I woke up just before."
"Did you call the Fenice?"
"Yes. I've got my first class tomor crow. I did
some exercises, you've no idea how stiff you get after
a day! And sitting all those hours on the plane. I
didn't eat or drink a thing the whole journey."
"Why not?"
"I didn't feel like it. Not without you."
"But Caterina had a good appetite- - -"
"Yes! - I had a good lunch at a place I remembei red
from a year ago when I was here with Louis."
He chuckled.
"A year ago! Getting your dates
right huh?"
"Dominic, what about the script?"
"Oh that's OK. I'11 be sending you the rewrites."
"But there are So many rewrites Dominic!"
"That's right.
One of the writers got fresh with
me yesterday and said did I never hear about that Balzac
story where a painter works on his canvas so much tha t
it ends up a mass of black paint? I thought that was
cute." He paused.
"He said did you hear about this
story, he must have kind of known I don't read!"
"I don't think you can read," she said.with a sudden
mischievous ;augh.
They were suddenly relaxed.
"I love you," he said.
"Once I thought you were never going to say that


to me."
"Who said it first?"
"I don't remembere. Do you?"
"Yes. It was me. After you wanted me to.
heard you wanting me to so I said it."
She slept again as 'soon as she put the phone down.
Just before sleeping she felt a stillness she'd never
known before.
And a bodily contentment she thought was
impossible without Dominic. at her side. And she heard
him talking to her. She couldn't make out what it was
but he was in the room, then she was asleep.
She woke at seven when the boats were on the move
again, with that hollow liquid sound, and again today
there was sunlight, hard and bright.
She took a shower
and moved all the roses back into the bedroom. Was
it a lways the man who said I love you first, she wondered.
She put on a burgundy two-piece, woollen, and fur-lined
boots because she remembered how cold the Venetian pave-
ments were. After all, a city floating in the sea!
The smell of the roses reminded her of her suite
at the Beverley Hills hotel, and those first days, when
life changed so much tha tsomet: imes she felt her body was
the only remnant, connecting link, from the old ife.
She wondered what it would be like to see Louis, her
mother.
Her father was the only one she could imagine
talking to, perhaps because of that detached way of his,
and those eyes which like Dominic's seemed to be gazing
from the greatdistance.
But her mother when shelooked
at things peered at them closely, judging them. good or
bad, black or white.
As for Louis, he never looked at
anything.
But then neither had she.
She walked to the window
overlooking a little square and watched people passing.
She looked up and saw those wooden balcones Dominic had
told her about, where the women bleached thei ir hair in
the sun, pulling the hair over the brim of a straw hat
which had the crown cut out.
She could almost feel her
arms moving in the' combing motion, with the sun pouring
down!
Was that suggestion? Almost every"roof had p
one of these wooden structures among the tiles. It


The sky was clear, spacious, a wintry blue with a
few misty strands of white cloud very high up.
Behind
everything she could hear the cheerful throb of the
boats from the Grand Canal.
She put some earrings on
but no hat, just a silk scarf tied at her neck, as 'on
the previous day. There were nearly two burs to fill
before her class began. She wa 1ked to the square,
then to the Campo San Luca, where she remembered having
one of the bestcoffees of her life.
The cakes there
were good too. It seemed that half of Venice had the
same idea because she could hardly get to the cash desk.
She ordered a coffee and an apple strudel, which the
woman handed to her in a paper napkin, with a nice smile.
This morning she took a capuccio.
That was. another
thing Louis had taught.her. Only take a capuccio in a
place where the coffee is first-class, otherwise they
use old or weak coffee while you're not looking, and
drown it in the hot milk. Shedidn't know if it was
true. She watched the barman carefully as he drew
down the lever and the black drips fell into the cups.
She saw him heat the milk at the steamer, then he poured
the frothy milk in and with a floating motion brought
the cup to the bar, laying it down before her with a
quiet "Capuccino", before serving someone else. Just
as she was about to put it to her lips he came along
with achocolate sprinkler and shook some into her cup,
a quick afterthought which she took to be for her alone,
since she didn't see him do it for any of the other people
who were taking capuccinos. How observant she'd become! !
Her eyes went all round theplace, taking in faces. That
was the wonderful thing in Italy, you couldstare to
your heart's content.
In the old days she would have
been semi-conscious, her thoughts far away in a script
or the possibility of a part in a new play or a tiff
she'd had during rehearsal.
Even the coffee would have
been drunk without consciousness.
Whereas this one
she relished, evey sip, taking bites of strudel in
between. Where had her body been all those years?
In another life!
She looked back on that life now
with wonderment.
How on earth had she managed to get


through it without---yes--suicide.
There seemed
nothing in it which had been enjoyable.
No love, not
even sex really. A few efficient orgasms. A lot of
jumping about on a bed, and sighing, and, worst of all,
a hell of a lot of feigning. She swore that Louis
feigned the whole act with her. He was really
masturbating.
She'd tried to commit suicide once. She hardly
knew a girl who hadn't.
Her mother had found her and
they'd rushed her to hospital.
Of course if she'd
really wanted to kill herself she wouldn't have tried
in her mother's place. She got a lot of attention,
which was supposedly what she was after.
Not entirely
though. That life hadn't been worth living.
That
is, she hadn't been alive anyway. Her body had, just!
But where had she been?
The Russian ballet master wasn't there. He'd
sent a substitute to take the class, a woman with hair
drawn back cruelly tight over her head.
She had large
round eyes and a long neck, and had clearly been a
ballerina in her day. She shook hands with Angela, said
she knew about her, and Angela took her place at the
bar with the other girls. She was astonished at the
exertion, now that she was among professionals.
Sweat poured out of her.
Every moment she thought she
couldn't make another move. At the end she was quiver-
ing with hunger and rushed down to the Fenice bar to
grab a plate of pasta.
She feltlight, almost happy.
The clothes she'd put on felt too elegant and she went
back to the hotel and changed into jeans.
It was still early and she took a boat to Torcell +
where she'd once been with Louis.
She wanted to lunch -
late at Cipriani's.
There was an exhilarating light '
all round from : the lagoon, boring into every corner of
the tiny is land while it slept in the water.
She
walked around for an hour, went to the church.
The
silence was amazing.
The water was still like glass.
There was a contentment in her she'd never felt before


but it came from inside her just the same, she'd known
it before somehow, somewhere. Perhaps Dominic was right!
She seemed to know the la goon, be familiar with that slight
warm breeze that interrupted the cold for a moment and went
away again. And the smell of the water. Had Caterina
been here?
There were only a few people in the restaurant,
tourists like herself.
She listend to the children
playing outside. She chose a corner table and.sat sipping
wine and cracking crostini while the omele te she'd ordered
was being cooked. The waiters treated her with a. sooth-
ing mixture of familiarity and respect.
She had that
feeling again---of being one of them. They accepted her.
For a few giddy seconds she felt she could understand
wha t they were saying to her, in the rather singsong
Venetian pronunciation.
The vague warmth from the wintry
sun, the silent lagoon, the murmur of voices from the
kitchen---was it her world, much more than it was the
world of the waiters? After all, if she rea. y had
been Caterina she had built all this generations ago,
these waiters were the decadent end-result of work that
her father and brot ers had done!
Now Venice was flooded
every year, the buildings were falling to pieces, the
canals were open sewers.
But in her day it had been a
sweet clean city where everything shone, wonderful
colours-- -she could remember the sharpness and vividness
of everything:
She tookma boat back when the sun started going down
andit became chilly. In the hotel again she thought
her 'memories' as Caterina were ridiculous. You could
so easily imagine that kind of thing.
But how was it
she knew Caterina had brothers, and that she. could see
the Venice of that time So vividly? Well, her imagination
was supplying it. Or were Dominic and Pauline filling
her mind with these ideas from a distance? Walking the
narrow calli that evening, she felt she knew what Dominic
meant when he said she wasn't Angela.
She felt she'd
always existed. And she didn't feel she was going to
die.
She sort of floated through the calli. And when
she went to bed she felt close to Dominic as if he was
there too. That had never happened before. It was


nice to feel you were never going to die. And that
spaces didn't count for you.
Ye's, she understood wha t
he meant when he said you could be together with thousands
of miles between you. She could feel his touch on her
arm, the way his slight breath touched her face. And,
unbelievably, it was his warmth that spread through the
bed, not just hers. In a moment she was warm all
through.
It was another clear night, and she could see
stars. The Grand Canal had fallen silent, and she was
aware of a delicious tiredness. + It was good not to have
anxieties-- -would he arrive, did he still love her, would
they always be together? She realised that these thoughts
haunted her all the time, and that underneath she had a
terror of being abandoned as her motherv had (many times)
been abandoned by her man. The more you loved a man,
the greater the terror was. Was that why she'd run
away So often from what promised to be a serious relation-
ship?
Then why hadn't she run away from Dominic? What
had made her stomach the terror and cling to him for dear
life? Oh how she loved him! And in a way it didn't
matter if he did abandon her, the love wouldn't change,
it couldn't be stolen from inside her. But he couldn't
abandon her, any more than she could him. They had the
same cells.
Yes, these cells reacted in the same way
all the time. If he felt hurt, she did too.
They were
like two delicate machines together.
And she could feel
him now, thinking about her, perhaps talking about her
with Pauline.
It would be about lunchtime there. He
would come to her soon. He would phone her-- --perhaps
tomorrow-- -to tell her he was on his way. She felt this
warm certainty. And she would make the film. She would
let him talk about Caterina and she would even agree to
having been Caterina, but what counted was the life they
had together now. All of a sudden she saw how well she
could do as Karsavina, the part had-started to grow in
her. She was a ballerina, she was dancingt


He did. phone the next day. And he did say he
was on his way. But he phoned late in the evening to
say the plans had been cancelled.
There was a money
problem and he would have to go to San Diego, and his
lawyer in San Francisco was coming over to see him.
The second call came through at about two in the morning,
and she spent a sleepless night. A thought terrorised
her for a couple of hours---'I shall never see him again!'.
Then she calmed down. A quietness and peace stole over
the room, and she heard the first vaporini of the day
'crossing the Grand Canal to the Accademia.
It wasn't
yet light.
She got up and began pacing the room in
her dressing gown, without the lights on. It occurred
to her that just as Dominic influenced events with his
thoughts, she might do the same: It was a great discovery.
Perhaps she had a similar power! She directed her
concentration to him, calculating the time in LA.
would be about six in the evening.
She urged him, to
come to Venice whatever the problems. She urged Pauline
to help her in this.
She put the idea into his head-- :
come, at once! She felt her will going out over the
canal into the sky and then far beyond, to meet him.
She spent the next day in the apartment, ordering
food from downstairs.
And she went on. concentrating.
Sometimes it seemed to her that she was saving their
relationShip.
He had to be with her as soon as possible,


she didn't know why. At about two in the afternoon
the phone rang.
It was an Englishman called Horsley
Turner.. She thought she'd heard his name before, seen
his photo in Spotlight maybe. He had a deep throaty
voice and called her Angela.
"Are you about tomorrow?" he asked.
"I'm to play
Diaghilev in this film."
"Oh yes!
Let's meet!" Her heart was beating fast
because he must have met Dominic, he must have been in
LA recently.
They arranged that he should come to the hotel at
noon the following day and they would have lunch together.
Hardly had she put the phone down when Dominic came
through.
"Have you talked to that actor?"
"Yes, just this minute! How do you always know
things?"
"Well, I told him ring Angela right away, and then
I called when I thought you'd finished. Why, you trying
to make me out a witch?"
"You are a witch," she said softly.
"Or Pauline
She could hear him breathing at the other end.
A trembling desire started in her. She couldn't wait
for him any longer!
As if to answer her on this point he said, "It looks
like we've gotta goion making love over the ether because
I'l1 need a week in San Diego maybe."
"Oh Dominic!"
So much for her powers as a witch!
Next day she dressed simply in her woollen burgundy
two-piece, with'no jewellery.
She'd bought the pearls
Dominic had given her but was afraid to wear them in case
they looked ostentatious. Suddenly she took off her
two-piece and returned to the jeans and blouse of the
day before, with a nice pair of boots.
It made her
look a bit tarty but Horsley Turner sounded queer anyway.
She would have hated another man to look at her with
desire but somehow she wanted to provoke Dominic to come


to her quickly and the jeans and tight blouse were a
challenge. What absurd ideas were getting into her
head these days!
Horsley Turner was tall, in fact immense, with a
haughty dark face and a way of lifting his head when he
ta lked to you SO that he was literally looking down his
nose. Yet he had a quiet voice, fastidious hands, and
was such a hand at paternal courtesy that she felt half
her age. There was something - ruel in him.
Perhaps
it was the eyes, the way they settled on you darkly and
rather contemptuously for a moment, while he said some-
thing that sounded witty.
He had built his personality
on someone and suddenly she tumbled to it, it was Oscar
Wilde.
How clever Dominic was! It seemed perfect
casting!
They were hardly through the pasta when he said,
"I was with this johnny Latouche a couple of days ago.
Know him?"
"Yes. I live with him."
"Really?" He looked up slowly.
Then he laughed,
with that upward tilt of the head, which might have come
from uncertainty.
"Well, you have buttered your bread
"I didn't mean it like that. I fell in love."
"Better still if it's natural!"
"What do you mean, it's better to have a producer
between your legs if possible?"
He blinked very quickly and looked into her angry
eyes.
"I've of fended you."
"How did you guess?"
"I didn't intend to. I simply think it's fortunate
that's all, I mean from an actor's point of view. I wish
I had a producer in my bed!"
Yes, he was cruel, and that was why Dominic had
chosen him.
She thought he was pr obably a very good actor.
Apart
from a certain magnetism there was' an air of the unexpected,
you hung on his words, and this wa's just what you wanted
for an audience.
Nothing he said sounded ordinary, even
when it was.


He let a name drop about a recent television series
and she remembered he'd made his fame in a relatively
minor role.
"As you know Latouche," he went on unrelentlessly,
"perhaps you can relieve an anxiety of mine.
There isn't
a chance I suppose that he'1l be our director is there?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"Because so far we haven't got a director.
First
I was told that nobody wants to work with him, then they
were saying he had two top directors lined up but neither
was available."
"I just don't know.
But why on earth should Dominic
want to direct, I mean he's néver done anything like it
before!"
"Exactly," he said, looking down.
"You didn't answer my question.
Why should he want
to direct?"
"Well, he's quite a megalomaniac isn't he?"
"So are you, I should think."
"How right you are," he said, leaning forward and
squeezing her hand with a chuckle. "We always recognise
each other."
"If you really want to know, € she said, "Dominic's
quite capablé of taking over the direction."
"That was just what I was afraid of."
"I said he was capable of it, not that he would."
"Yes I noticed the difference.
It doesn't make.
me feel much better. I mean, at this stage in my career
I'm not happy at the thought that a bad director could
screw my chances from the outset."
She sensed something behind this.
"What's really
on your mind?" she asked him.
"What went on in LA?"
"Let's go the lounge and have' a drink and I'1l tell
you everything."
Once they were there he didn't have all that much to
say. He ordered himself a Courvoisier and poured it into
his coffee.
"Latouche saw a clip of mineaand'sent for me. I was
in London, I'd just started rehearsing a new play, and he -
pulled me out of it, paid a lot of money to the management,
they say.


bought me out of my contract, for a lot of money, I heard.
When I got to LA he had about five other Diaghilevs, all
looking more or less like me. How he picked them up
from every part of the world I don't know.
He had a
woman there with long blonde hair and dark glasses."
"That's Jill Rapinsky, she's a casting agent."
"They were having rows all the time. There was no
script for us to look at. There was no director to
audition us. He did it all. And I must say he seemed
to know what he was doing. I was the only man there
capable of playing Diaghilev and he knew it. He didn't
even audition the others. He more or less walked in
and pointed to me and said 'It's him'. This blonde
woman looked angry, she wanted to go through a regular
audition but I got the impression that one didn't contrad-
ict Mr Latouche."
"I do, frequently."
"Then why did you let him send you here?"
She made a little gasp.
"What's that got to do with
"Everybody sa id you're the only person with any control
over him. He eats out of your hand. Everard Hope-- -you
know Everard Hope?"
"Yes, he's my agent."
"He says he's never seen the killer subdued by man or
beast until you came along."
"Oh," she said, "that sounds so corny. We're in love,
obviously we influence each other.
But why shouldn't he
send me here? I had my dancing lessons at the Fenice."
"The point is this. Why don't you tell him over
the phone to get a director? Apparently only you could
do that."
"You want to use me?"
"Yes. So does everyone else on the film."
"But it only means you don't trust him," she said.
"And.: in the end you will trust him."
"I hope so," Turner said with a sigh.
The conversation made her feel both excited and
nel rvous. It was wonderful to hear that she had inf luence
over Dominic---that he was really hers---yes, she had
to ha ve some confirmation of it from the outside world!


But why had he sent her away? Her earlier feeling of
certainty was gone. She needed to talk to him, touch him.
She hurried back to her apartment and lay in bed for the
rest of the day as the noises outside got less and less,
and once more the liquid sound of the vaporini ceased.
Next day she strolled along the Riva degli Schiavoni
and watched the car-ferry speeding towards the Lido.
The painters of Venetian scenes had packed up shop, their
easles were gone. There were no photographers, no
pigeon-food vendors.
She walked between the tall
columns on the Molo, gazing at the numberless gondolas
bobbing up and down in the water on their mooring poles.
Something made her look up at the columns.
On one
there was a haloed figure with a lance in one hand and
a shield in the other.
The column oppsite had the lion
of St Mark. A shudder sent her away. Why was that?
She felt threatened.
The film wouldn't ha ppen, she now
felt.
She began hating Horsley Turner.
He called her up
once or twice but she said she didn't feel well.
She
felt he'd brought something bad to Venice, to the film.
Why had Dominic chosen him? She didn't like the way he
said almost nothing but left you with a feeling of unease.
She wa lked in the deserted:Giardinetti with its neat
gravel paths.
It was too cold to sit at one of the
benches.
One day she lunch upstairs in Harry's Bar and
got into the habit of taking an aperitif there.
No one
tried to chat her up.
Then there was a midnight call from Dominic.
"To hell," he said, "I'm coming over.
The money
problem can look after itself."
His plane was due to leave in a couple of hours.
She couldn't believe it!
She rushed about tha apartment
afterwards'clearing out the roses that had faded, changing
the water. Then she decided to get rid of them all, and
went to a florist near the Accademia bridge and ordered
nearly a hundred dollars' worth of different flowers.
Her heart thumped away, she-felt desire stirring in her,
making her tremble slightly. Her excitement was so great


that she couldn't imagine actually meeting him, she
would faint or something. She wasn't go to the airport
but wait in the apartment. He would be in around noon.
She paced up and down, changed her dress several times.
The day was rather dark, the clouds low over the roofs,
the water high.
Horsley Turner called to ask her when
Dominic would be in, and re luctantly she told.him..
"I've heard the banks are pulling out," he said.
"It depends who told you."
"Your agent."
She at once phoned Everard.
He wasn't in the
office but one of his girls promised that he would ring
her back. He didn't.
It was eleven o'clock.
She
was trembling, feeling nausea from nerves.
Her witchcraft' had worked. A little delayed.
Would-he be proud of her when she told him how she'd done
it? Or should she say nothing? All of a sudden she
saw Jamie Somerson in her mind and almost burst into tears.
He looked so innocent with his fresh moustache. He'd
made the mistake of falling in love with her! She wondered
what his mother was like, whether it was that rather sharp
woman who had answered the phone. She thought of her
grief.
Witchcraft, yes!
As she waited she realised what a selfish person
she was. She'd hardly noticed Jamie's death until then,
not really.
It had distressed her, but more because of
Dominic's doubtful role, and his reputation (hers too--
Killer Number Two).
There was a knock on the door. She rushed to it,
pulled it open.
Pauline was standing there in a camelhair
overcoat looking pale and exhausted.
"Pauline!"
"I'm supposed to have a room in this place but they
don't know where!"
"Come in! Oh Pauline. it seems like a hundred
She hugged her and kissed her on her cheeks.
"You look great," Pauline told her.
"You really
Maybe you should be away from that man more often.
He looks a wreck."
"Where is he?"


"He went to Padova to see this professor guy."
"To Padova?"
Pauline burst out laughing.
"Don't worry, he'1l
he here this evening, he's been sick for you, how's that?"
"OK," she said quietly.. She could just as well have
kept her jeans on.
"For Christsakes get me a whisky," Pauline said.
Angela went to the phone. "I'll order up a bottle
and some ice."
"No need.
Dom says there's a sideboard full of
boose."
She hadn't even looked. She pulled open one of the
doors and there the bottles were, with a dozen or so
glasses of every type.
Pouring the whisky she asked, "Is it true the banks
are pulling out?"
"One of the money-men got ne rvous, that's all.
Who told you?"
"That actor, Horsley Turner."
"And who told him?"
"Everard I think."
"Well, Everard's as - much against this film as I am."
"Why? I mean why are you aga. inst it?"
"The omens aren't too good. I've told Dom that but
he won't listen. Also I think this Venice trip's unnec-
essary, it's eating up half the production costs and a
number two crew could have handled it all."
"But he wants shots of us in the square and the Fenice
and on the Lido at that hotel."
"That's what he tells me too."
Without another word Pauline fell asleep in her
chair.
Angela covered her with a blanket. Then she
put her overcoat on and went downstairs.
She felt
imprisoned by Venice, by SO much water, and walked to
the squa. re to give herself the feeling that she was in
a land-1olocked city.
Then she went to the Campo San Luca
for a cup of coffee. It wasddark when she got back and
Pauline had left.
She still felt nervous, threatened.
The lights of the vaporini on the water looked sad.
She'd put a pocket record-player and put a cassette on
but the momen: t


but the moment the music started she switched off.
She lay down on the bed. The phone rang---she must have
fallen asleep and fumbled for the receiver.
It was now
pit
Dominic was at the other end.
"It's amazing,"
he said.
"The whole story's pieced together:
Wait
till you hear it!"
"Where are you?"
"I'm in Padova.
I'm on my way soon . €
"But what's the time?"
"About two."
"In the morning?"
"Well, not in the afternoon honey!"
"But where's Pauline?"
"Didn't she arrive?"
"She came here this afternoon and then disappeared."
"Oh she'1l be in touch, she's kind of tired."
"Dominic, we've been away from each other all this
time and you don't come straight to see me!"
He chuckled.
"Wait till you hear the story and you'll
see why."
"What story?" (though she knew).
"About the Comte de Ligeaux and Caterina Foscarini,
how they fell in love.
Isn't it amazing? I knew I was
that guy, I knew we'd been connected and herevit all is,
in black and white, history!"
"I'1l be right over, I'm getting a taxi."
She was excited just the same. She jumped out of
bed in the darkness almost singing, and changed into
pyjamas. He was coming! Mad or not he was on his way!
She lay in the dark daydreaming about him.
about four in the morning Pauline called up.
"Can I come and talk to you? I'm on the same
corridor, I can't sleep."
"Nor can I!
Come right over!"
She appeared in her dressing gown and sat on
Angela's bed


Angela's bed.
She switched the bebside lamp off and they
they sat in the darkness.
"You know there's no director yet?"
"Yes," Angela said.
"They won't work for him. The bad ones will.
What's the sense of coming out here with two crews and
no directors for God's sake?"
"What about the script? Is there one?"
"There's enough script for three films but no one
to say what's good or bad in it. He talks all the time
about the Karsavina scenes.
I've never seen him like
this before. Jesus, he couldn't have made a dime this
way! Maybe that's why the San Diego money man pulled
out, he lost his confidence, he said Killer Number Two's
taken over your life and we want a film about Diaghilev,
not your latest lay!"
"Pauline!"
"That's wha t everybody's saying and you'd better
"Does Dominic know too?"
"Sure he knows!
But he measures talk by the money
behind it, and the San Diego man's got less bread than he
Angela lay very still.
She felt desperately cold.
She made the youthful discovery that people can be unjust,
and it was a shock. And he'd brought this on her!
"Listen,AAngela, I ought to tell you about Jamie
Somerson too."
"What about him?"
"I didn't want to worry you with this in LA. He
used to come to me a lot.
You know he thought I had some
kind of a hold on Dominic.
Maybe I did but I lost it.
He had a whole backgr round of attempted suicide, Jamie.
I knew about that. He was terrified of one day doing
what he actually did, jumping out of a window.
Previous
times he took overdoses, which didn't seem to frighten
him too much, but the idea of falling to death hotrified..
him.
You know suicide people are pretty funny. They
think they can do away with their body and go on living,
it's some sort of feeling like that. In a way they're
right, because what they're doing is flinging themselves


into another incarnation.
Of course they have the 1
same problem in the next incarnation, it doesn't change
just through changing your body.
You tried once huh?"
"But it wasn't too serious."
"That was it was with Jamie the previous times.
But he had this image of throwing himself out of a
window one day and of course you don't come back from th
that, nobody can rescue you. And he didn't want to be
tempted to that.
So he was very sensitive to the idea
that somebody might be putting a kind of spell on him.
That's why he came to me. He said he knew Dom was
driving him to do that."
"Did you tell Dominic at the time?"
"Oh sure. He said he knew anyway, he knew about
Jamie's fears. God knows hoe he knew because I never
left any of the tapes lying around.
They were tapes
of Jamie's far memory experiences, I persuaded him to
do some regressions with me. And a whole lot came out.
About you too."
"About me?"
"You know he really did fall in love with you.
He said if Dominic hadn't beeniin the way you would have
been lovers.
Is that true?"
Angela thought about this.
"He didn't really regress. He didn't believe in
it So he had this block all the time. I couldn't even
get him under.
But, as I say, a whole lot came out.
He said you were the biggest loveof his life, he knew
every pore of your skin.
And he'd failed once before,
in a previous lifetime, with you. Somebody else had
got in the way then too, and he thought it was always
Dominic.
In a lot of lifetimes, maybe in all of them,
there'd been Dominic like a heavy shadow over
everything
he did. And when he met Dominic in the studios, that
was around a year ago, he -knew who he was, he felt it,
though he didn't believe in reincarnation at all. He
just recognised him and a cold feeling went down his
spine, he could hardly take breath. He knew Dom was
going to drive him to do the thing that horrified him.