Deep and Silent Waters

When her agent told her that she had been nominated for an award at the Venice Film Festival Laura’s immediate response was, ‘You’re kidding? Me? I can’t believe it.’ Then she asked huskily, ‘Was Sebastian nominated too?’

‘Who knows? He’s not my client,’ Melanie said, irritated. ‘Forget him, for God’s sake, will you? You got a nomination for best supporting actress, that’s all that matters. It was the poster – that was what did it.’

‘It made me look like a hooker.’

‘It pulled the audiences in, dummy! Put bums on seats.’

Melanie’s expression said, What else matters? She had a strictly cash mind, and would never have allowed Laura to accept the role in Goodnight, World, and Goodbye, a low-budget film for which she’d earned just enough to keep body and soul together, if there had been any alternative. But Laura wasn’t being offered many parts. Her name had no pulling power, so Melanie shrugged and told her to take it just for the sake of the experience. Better to be in work than out of it.

‘Bread on the waters, darling,’ she said. ‘And it could be fun.’

It was the best fun Laura had ever had. She had learnt a lot from working in an ensemble cast of unknown names, a cheerful, friendly group with not a single star among them. None of them, cast or crew, had believed the film would make any money, let alone attract any awards, but they had all loved working on it and become great friends. Laura still saw them whenever she was in London.

When she first saw the posters she had been amazed to find that she dominated the foreground: sexily posed in black lace bra and panties, her legs looking even longer than they were in real life, her breasts like melons, her green eyes slanting and cat-like, hair a blaze of flame around a face they had made somehow sultry and sensual. Laura had been deeply embarrassed. She had had no training as an actress, and was always afraid of being exposed as a know-nothing fraud. Her professional insecurity was mirrored by her lack of self-confidence in every other direction, all of which sprang from being too tall; since she was a schoolgirl she had felt like a giraffe in a world of pygmies.

Melanie had been her agent since she was offered her first film; but they were friends, too. Laura needed someone to talk to, someone she could trust. She couldn’t confide in her showbiz crowd: they loved to gossip and would pass on anything she told them. She certainly couldn’t talk to anyone back home, her parents, her sister or her old friends. Not about Sebastian. They would have been so shocked. She couldn’t tell them about her pain and grief, the longing she could not suppress although she had tried to forget him, the shameful jealousy of his wife. Rachel Lear was a legendary star, a cinema icon, an ice-blonde with a body men dreamt about, while Laura was just a skinny little red-headed nobody.

Melanie, though, was a tough, sophisticated city dweller, used to the muddle and confusion of people’s lives. Nothing Laura had told her came as any surprise, nor had she been shocked. She had simply said, ‘Use your head, lovey, forget him and get on with your career,’ and Laura had been trying ever since to take that advice.

‘I won’t win this award, so I won’t bother to go,’ she said now.

Melanie knew what was on her mind. ‘Look, he’s out in the jungles of South America, shooting some weirdo film about a lost tribe. He’ll be so late finishing it he can’t possibly make it to Venice by August.’

‘He was nominated, though, wasn’t he? For Instant Death?’

Pulling a face, Melanie admitted, ‘Yeah, he got a best director nomination for that. Thought it was a pretty crappy film, myself, too arty-farty for me. And it didn’t do well at the box office – the public obviously agreed with me – but it has a cult following. So I’m told.’

‘I thought it was brilliant.’ Laura had seen it three times. She saw all his films, had got them all on video and had watched them so often she knew them frame by frame, every word, every look, every gesture. She always hoped they would help her to understand him. There was a darkness in them that reflected the dark centre of Sebastian’s mind, a sexual energy, a deeply sensual force.

‘Yeah, but you’re one of his fans, aren’t you, darling?’ Melanie said cynica

lly. Melanie detested anything that smacked of elitism. She called herself a socialist, but the truth was that she was one of life’s awkward squad, always out of step and spoiling for a fight. Luckily her prejudices happened to coincide with public taste, which made her a wonderful litmus paper for anyone trying to guess which way an audience might jump.

Laura reacted hotly. ‘Sebastian is one of the best directors in the world, Mel! He’s a genius.’

‘You mean he’s crazy, always goes over budget, is completely unreliable, spends money like water, won’t take advice. Is that what you call being a genius? He needs to do huge business at the box office to make up for all that.’

‘And he does!’

‘Huh!’ snorted Melanie.

‘With a lot of films he makes big money, Mel. He can always find somebody to bankroll him for his next film.’

When he chose, Sebastian had the charm of the devil. He could hypnotise hard-headed businessmen into believing every word he said, and he had the same effect on women, especially actresses, Laura thought bleakly. He got good performances out of them by focusing those dark eyes on them and making them his creatures. She had been mesmerised while she worked with him – they had been cocooned together in an intimacy so strong that she had thought she knew Sebastian better than anyone else in the world ever had. Only later did she begin to question that belief.

‘God knows how he does it.’ Melanie grimaced. ‘Whatever you say, I don’t believe Instant Death has a prayer. It’s up against films that have broken box-office records worldwide – and, anyway, he’s running so late on this South American film that the word is the backers might pull out before he shoots the last reel.’

‘That’s crazy! Why can’t they let him finish it first?’

‘Apparently they haven’t even seen any rushes yet. They keep demanding that Sebastian send over some of the stuff he’s shot but he ignores them. A couple of the stars have been taken ill – the food is terrible in those places – and they’re plagued by mosquitoes. Some of the crew have gone down with malaria.’ Melanie shuddered. ‘I hate places like that. Insects and dirt and bad food. Give me a city any time.’

Laura laughed. ‘Sebastian would agree with you, he hates working in remote places. Most of his films have been shot in cities – London, New York, San Francisco.’

A shiver ran down her spine as she remembered a recurring dream she had whenever she was strained. She could never recall how it began, but it always ended the same way. She was in a shadowy hotel room, impersonal, comfortable, characterless, and she and Sebastian were quarrelling, although she could never remember what about. Suddenly, his hands would shoot out towards her throat which made her back away, aware of an open window behind her, the familiar noises of a city street far below. Then he would give her a violent shove, and she would fall backwards, out of the window, down, down, through empty air, screaming. She always woke up before she hit the ground. For hours afterwards she would sit up in bed, shivering and icy cold.

It had never happened, of course, not to Laura. It had been his wife who had fallen out of a window. Why did she always dream it had happened to her?

Guilt, Laura thought bleakly, because she had been jealous of his wife. She had bought every newspaper that covered the inquest and read every word over and over again. Witnesses had talked of his wife under pressure on her most recent film, arriving late on set, losing her temper, turning nasty when she forgot her lines, or stumbling around so drunk that she kept banging into scenery. A post-mortem had shown that she had been drunk the day she died. She could easily have lost her balance and fallen out of the open window which had a waist-high sill – a dangerous window, the coroner said, and added that her husband should have kept her away from it. His criticisms were mild, though, because another witness had been present, Sebastian’s assistant, Valerie Hyde, who claimed that he had been nowhere near his wife when she fell. Rachel Lear had opened the window and leaned out too far.