Since noon the Coast Guard had been posting storm warnings all up and down the line from San Diego to Point Mugu, and it looked as if Malibu was in for a heavy blow. Inside the house all was cozy and warm. Frank built a fire and carried in a good supply of wood to keep it going. He put on his old beat-up weekend clothes, his Black Watch shirt and turtleneck, his belted corduroy jacket, and later they went for a walk on the beach, where the surf was thundering onto the sand, sending up geysers of white foam.
The gathering storm exhilarated her, roused feelings that choked her with their intensity. People went by, and she felt odd, nervous. Everyone was out walking, it seemed, the world was out walking. She slipped her hand in his jacket pocket and they made it all the way up to Paradise Cove without saying much. A dog, a golden retriever, joined them and they threw a stick for him to chase. The wool of Frank’s turtleneck scratched her when she nuzzled him or they kissed, and the waves drew the sand in pockets from beneath their bare feet. “It’s like the end of the world,” she murmured, gazing out to where the overcast rolled forward across the surf, and the salt blow pricked her eyes. Everything looked gray and pewtery and the gulls flew as if on kite strings against the wind.
It was dark by the time they got back to the house, and they’d forgotten to turn on the lights. Suddenly she felt intimidated, afraid to go in. It wasn’t her house, she was an interloper. Another woman’s house, another woman’s husband—nothing was hers. Even someone else’s dog.
“Shoo! Shoo!” she told it, trembling. “Go home!”
Inside, Frank blew up a fire with an antique leather bellows studded with brass nail heads, a present from Frances, then put steaks on to broil; corn was steaming in a pot. She went around turning down the lights—she had the feeling people could see in, and this bothered her.
She was positive she wouldn’t be hungry, but she was. They had all of tonight and all the rest of tomorrow, then all of Sunday, too, till seven, when she’d promised Donna she’d be back. She wanted to talk—there were important things to talk about—but somehow they only joked, all of it casual. Afterward, when they had got rid of the dishes and were curled up by the fire, there was a bang on the door; they jumped up. Frank’s neighbor: the surf was getting high. Coast Guard lights flashing up and down the beach. A power boat was having trouble making it down to the marina. Just letting him know. When Frank followed him outside she sat huddled in the window seat under a red-and-black buffalo-plaid blanket. It made her think of horses, and that made her think of The Scarlet Roan, the film about the stallion in which she’d made such an impression, and that made her think of careers, and that made her think of all kinds of problems. Suddenly, faces appeared at the window to frighten her. Blessedly, one of them was Frank’s, but by the time the three men trooped in, she was hiding in the bathroom.
They didn’t stay long, and when they left Frank coaxed her out.
“Sweetheart, don’t—it’s all right. They’re friends, they won’t say anything.”
Outside, the rising wind screamed itself into a tearing tumult and the heavy waves kept crashing underneath the house. It will wash us away, she thought, as she heard the tide rattle the stones and pebbles. This was all there was, this fire, this room, and the two of them. They were “Outward Bound,” passengers on a fog-shrouded ship carrying them—whither? How sweet, how blessed it was. She was ready; tonight she would give everything. She loved him, and something told her she would never love another man. It was this one; this one or none at all. They were in love. Nothing like this, ever. All beings should love like this, this was what it was meant to be, what the gods intended from the beginning. This, only this. She’d give anything—anything to have it, keep it, guard it.
That night he carried her to bed and it was everything they’d hoped for, more, and they knew now it had to be, somehow had to be. Gone were thoughts of Frances. This was their bed, their sheets, their pillows. Hungry bodies ate and tasted, ate again, and still not enough. More, I want more; the dark lay all around and they reached and touched so close they could wrap themselves in each other’s skins. He had her hair across his lips, he could taste it; drew the strand away, spoke in her ear, his voice rumbling deep in his throat.
The angry sea roared and rushed about the under-porch pilings, jolting the house; the wind tore at the shingles. There was something ultra-theatrical about it, as if the storm had been engineered just for them. They slept a little, woke up, made love again in the gray early morning, slept some more. The oystery eye of dawn opened in the east; she could hear early-Saturday-morning traffic out on the road; the sky lightened bit by bit. She felt prescient. Something boded.
He slept late. She tidied up, bathed, dressed, was reading an old National Geographic about the Eskimos in Baffin Island when she happened to glance up and was startled to see a man standing outside on the porch, peering in at her. He wore boots and a slicker and a sou’wester, and he watched her intently. Then he clumped across the deck and out of sight. Fisherman? Irate neighbor? What business had he around there? The same bedraggled retriever came back, scratched to get in. She ignored the animal, then tossed it the T-bone from last night. He trotted off with it between sandy jaws. Once he stopped, looked back, went on. The sea had quieted now.
Frank woke up; she cooked breakfast. They had curried eggs and popovers and Bloody Bulls with celery stalks to swizzle. He told her her coffee was the best. She told him about the man on the porch; he wasn’t overly concerned—maybe the guy was checking for damage. They lazed around all morning; then when she started lunch he said he wanted to go next door.
She thought of Frances as she looked through the kitchen drawers, saw her as a tallish, darkish, forbidding statue, bronzy and cold to the touch, intractable, implacable, remorseless. “He’s mine,” she heard her say, “I found him first, you can’t have him.” She looked at all the photographs on the hall chest, autographed to Frank and Frances. Belinda, Babe, Maude and Crispin Antrim—how much a “couple” they seemed, how well suited to each other, how they “shared” the space in the picture. She felt as if she were prying among secret things, fingers poking into private little corners. A life, but another’s. Hers was on Tennessee Avenue with Donna, not in Malibu.
Frank wasn’t gone long. There was a lot of damage along the beachfront, he reported; several houses had flooded, one had washed away. He was lucky; his house was well built. The storm had washed a sea beast onto the strand, a small whale. Weak, dying, nothing to be done for it; the Park Service was making arrangements to tow it away. April didn’t go out to view it, didn’t even go onto the deck. She felt time pressing at her, heard its hoofs thundering amid the crash of the waves.
He explained that the neighbors wanted them to come over later for cocktails. The thought frightened her, but she said all right and when the time came she put on slacks, a cashmere sweater, and a jacket and they went. It was the local beach crowd, eight of them. All perfectly cool, no one thought—no, no one said—a thing. No Frances. Frances didn’t exist here.
Actually she liked them, the beach crowd. Warm, friendly, interested, admiring of Frank. “Isn’t he the best guy!” exclaimed the one called Barb. “Some girls have all the luck, no kidding.” April had the grace to blush. She heard the others talking in the kitchen about divorce and Frances’s name was being bandied. But they were nice to her; they made it clear that all they wanted was Frank’s happiness.
The two of them were sent home with a pitcher of martinis and plastic throwaway cups. Carrying these, they climbed out onto Seal Rocks, where the sea, calmer now, lay before them, pitted with brazen gold and throwing glittering flecks of light onto their faces. They sipped their drinks and gazed out to sea, saying little, nothing, volumes.
The waves had greedily eaten away at the beach, cutting away a four-foot shelf that the neighbors’ kids were gleefully leaping from into the foam as it rolled onto the strand. The air was filled with spindrift, which settled on their faces; the whole world seemed painted in sunset hue
s all the way up to Point Dune, whose jutting headland cut off the further view. “Look, how pretty they are,” April said, pointing up the beach. Slowly approaching them were two riders on horseback; at the angle they resembled centaurs.
“Come again?”
“Centaurs,” she repeated.
He laughed. “I thought you said ‘senators.’ I know—centaurs. Who were they?”
“A mythological race of man-horse creatures who lived in Thessaly.”
“Sicily? Cecily? Sassily?”
“Thessaly. They were killed by the Lapithae and driven out of Greece forever.”
“Poor senators. Impeached. Where did they end up?”
“There.” She pointed down the beach. “They came to Sunny California.”
“With the rest of the cast-me-offs and nutburgers.”
The horses had stopped, their riders side by side gazing outward to the horizon, figures unreal and merely imagined, mythic beasts in the coppery sea. She stirred in his arms and he heard her voice in his ear.
“One by one in the moonlight there
Neighing far off on the haunted air
The unicorns come down to the sea.”
She trailed off.
“Pretty. Whose?” he asked.
“Conrad Aiken.”
“My Aiken back? I know him well.”
“Joker. Fool. Madman. Aiken’s poem. Called ‘Evening Song.’”
“Nice. Pretty pretty.” He crooned in her ear, nuzzled her cheek. Gin and love were at work together; love instead of dry vermouth. Ah, sweet sweetness. He wished for no more than this. This was happiness, only this. The hell with 430 North Rodeo. The hell with movies and studios and Sam Ueberroth. This was heaven in the here and now. His arm circling her back, her blowing hair tickling his nose, her smell, touch, sound—her all. From his heart came the longing shout for freedom—Let me go, damn it! Slip my bonds, crack my fetters, release me—and the pale face of Frances, his wedded wife, swam to him from out of the gathering fog, spoiling the moment. Frances the lumberman’s daughter. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. God. April made a tiny murmur and stirred in his arms.
He apologized, hadn’t realized he was squeezing so hard. “Some more, please,” he said in a husky voice. “More lines.”
She thought a moment, then recited,
“It is evening, Senlin says, and in the evening,
By a silent shore, by a far distant sea,
White unicorns come gravely down to the water.
In the lilac dusk they come, they are white and stately,
… One by one they come and drink their fill;
And daisies burn like stars on the darkened hill.”
He liked it; pretty images. “What’s it called?”
“Senlin,” she told him.
“Senlin who?”
“Just ‘Senlin.’”
He got up, brushed his trousers, and held out his hand. “Let’s go back, want to? Play doctor?”
She laughed that laugh and sat up, touched his cheek, murmured something he failed to catch, words lost to the wind. It was no longer Malibu but the Cornish coast. He was Tristan; she, Isolde; Francis King, Mark; and their love was the love of the ages. At twenty-five, April Rains was legendary. He kissed her. They clung together, lost out on the Cornish rocks in the rolling fog. Horses and riders had gone. Darkness was theirs. No one to see, no one to care. “I love you. Darling, I love you. Love me. Please love me.”
“Yes. Yes, darling, I love you, too.”
Words, merely, but a comfort to say them. How long since he’d said them to any woman? Common everyday movie words, but so great a comfort. The most important words.
They went in, lovers, not married, into Frances’s house, his and hers, not his and hers. Inside the still room the fire was there and the shadows, safe, enveloping, blessed dark, and where they lay and how, that was love’s old story. People should be happy? Yes, happy, men and women making babies by the firelight.
At the thought she pulled suddenly away.
“What?” he asked, drowsy with the gin.
“Nothing…” Her Mona Lisa smile in the firelight.
To have his baby! Terrifying, wondrous thought—to bear her young for him, fruit of his loins. What Fran could never do, give him babies, little bambini in diapers, rompers. Toddlers all over the place. How pleased and happy Maxine would be.
Then, finally, disaster. They were asleep and a hot coal must have jumped onto the flokati rug. The neighbors saw billowing smoke, called the fire department; strangers came dashing into the house from everywhere, “to the rescue,” and the lovers were caught—not even “doing anything,” but in flagrante was in flagrante, even in the Malibu Colony. The dead whale was one story; a better one was the fire.
“Conflagration… house of Frank Adonis… present on the scene was Frankie… with a business associate.” Hedda was on the phone posthaste, going racka-racka-racka. The power of the press, the printed word. It went from the Hat to the Fat One and pretty soon everybody was playing guessing games. Who was the lady at the house of Frances Deering Adano when it caught fire and burned on the Sunday of the Big Storm?
The real reason Frank had been able to spend a whole weekend alone with April was that Frances had gone to Seattle to visit her father in the hospital. A mild stroke had him bedded and she wanted to be at his side in the emergency. Also she wanted to discuss her current domestic situation with her mother, a conversation that may be easily imagined.
But Frances’s absence was not prolonged, and it was some time before Frank was able to spend another such interval in April’s company. It happened the following spring; by then Frances was occupying the Bristol house alone and Frank was temporarily in rooms at his club. It being Maxine’s birthday, he ran down to San Bernardino to surprise her, and with him came April, whom he introduced to his mother as his client, adding nothing more. But Maxine Fargo was smarter than that. She wanted to hear all about April, knowing perfectly well that there were things her son wasn’t telling her. It made her sad to think that her Franco was doing things he shouldn’t, and with a girl not yet half his age, beautiful though she was. In her own Maxi-way she went straight to the heart of things. She took April to see her garden, and while they walked among the rows of butter lettuce and tomato plants she interrogated her, in a kind, pleasant way, but her intentions were clear. She wanted to know if this willowy college blonde was a home-wrecker, someone who was bad for her Franco, someone who would bring him pain and misery. But by the time they got to the Swiss chard, Maxine was convinced that April was an angel from on high. Her mother’s heart told her that this was the one who could erase that look from her Frankie’s eyes, that empty look that frightened her and made her ill.
As things fell out, Maxine saw April only once again. This was on the eve of April’s departure for Italy that summer, during which time, by a perfectly natural arrangement, she would see Maxine’s son, also summering on the Boot.
This European venture came about as follows:
One afternoon as Frank came in from the track, he bumped into Kit Carson in the agency parking lot and invited him up to the office where he’d once been an office boy. As they stepped into the elevator another passenger entered behind them. This was Tonio Gatti, the assistant to a large-scale Italian producer, the famous Alessandro Cannis (Cave Cannis, as he was known along the Via Veneto). Top dog among the producer’s underlings, Gatti, a good-looking, amiable Latin with an atrocious accent, was in Los Angeles scouting American talent to fill several roles in the gargantuan epic now in pre-production in Rome, The Trojan Horse.
“Thees ees-a quite amusing, amico mio,” Tonio greeted Frank, “but I was just-a now on my way to see you. And, tell me, who ’ave we ’ere? An actor, no doubt.” He took in Kit’s six-foot-three frame, ending with the blonde hair and green eyes. Frank introduced the two and the upshot was that within days Kit was signed to play Hector in the Trojan epic and was packing to fly off to Rome.
Soo
n after, Frank arranged for Tonio to meet another of his young, attractive clients, April Rains, who instantly captivated the Italian. Though married, Tonio was something of a Lothario, and almost before she knew it, April likewise found herself preparing for an extended junket to sunny Italy. Cannis was borrowing her from Metro, at three times her normal salary.
April and Kit flew together to New York, where they performed the usual studio publicity chores, and when they were done they went on to Rome. Then, after a discreet lapse, Frank himself followed, ostensibly to Britain, to pave the way for yet another client, Babe Austrian, soon to make her debut at a London nitery. Naturally he would drop down to Rome to check on the progress of the Horse. A trip with pleasant prospects all around, inasmuch as he was to travel unhampered by Frances, who was in the throes of redecorating the Bristol house (yet again); besides which, her father hadn’t fully recovered from his stroke.
That year, Rome was a beehive, and it seemed as if everyone was in town, including Jenny and me. I’d wrapped my picture in North Africa a few weeks earlier, and Frank wanted me in Rome to see if he could squeeze me into The Trojan Horse as well. In any case, he’d already had a firm offer for me to start another picture in Europe, so one way or the other I was career-carefree and on hand for the duration.
This was the great time of Italian picturemaking. Rome was Hollywood-on-the-Tiber, and every last foot of production space was leased to filmmakers, foreign and otherwise. These were the glorious days falling on the heels of Fox’s Cleopatra, the days of the Burton-Taylor-Fisher debacle and the field day the press had enjoyed, ringing their chimes on that triangle. Now la prezza di Roma was hungrily searching for another tasty pudding to dish up. On the Via Veneto the faces sitting in the cafés drinking espressos were just like all the faces at Pupi’s on the Sunset Strip drinking café espressos. You saw everyone you’d left at home, stars as well as nobodies. Many had come trying to wangle a job; they were all beating a path to Tonio Gatti’s door; Tonio, it seemed, had invented the better mousetrap.