Chapter 17: Louise - The Golden Hours

Louise went into work one morning, smart in her suit, hair up, pearl studs, silkier shirt in her bag as she was having drinks with a producer later (a woman producer! From America), and found one of her actresses, Anne Palamountain, dark, lanky, beautiful, in tears in her office.

‘Imogen let me in, I hope you don’t mind,’ Anne said. ‘I’m so sorry for crying. I was going to be awfully grown-up.’

‘About what, darling?’ Louise asked, though she had a good idea. It just depended where on the merry-go-round poor Anne was.

‘I’m so sorry, Louise, and I do feel just awful,’ Anne said, unslept, red-eyed, shaky.

Louise stuck her head back out the door to the landing that served as reception, and said, ‘Imogen, pot of tea, please, and biscuits if there are any.’

‘Bourbons or Garibaldi?’ said Imogen, drowsy-looking but sharp as a tack when it came to it.

‘God, who bought Garibaldi?’ Louise said. ‘Squashed flies!’ and turned back to Anne, closing the door. Anne was good at her work but her skin was too thin for this business. Body too actually – Louise always felt a sturdy figure denoted a sturdy approach. Though it was no help here. The business liked girls thinner and thinner.

Anne smeared her mascara cautiously around her eyes with a handkerchief, and then lit a cigarette. The ritual of lighting, the sophisticated waving around of her narrow hand, gave her something to hold on to, and she became calmer. ‘It was so good of you to put me up for the Morning Delight advert,’ she said. ‘I so appreciate it and I was so happy but I can’t do it! I just can’t!’

‘Why not, sweetheart?’ Louise said.

‘I know it’s terribly ungrateful and a hundred girls would be delighted with the opportunity and I do need the money, but –’

Louise waited.

Imogen knocked, peered round, and brought in the tea tray. ‘Could you bring me the Morning Delight file?’ Louise said, and Imogen withdrew.

Anne took a deep breath. ‘When I was in New York last year,’ she said, ‘there was someone.’

Louise leaned back. Here we go.

‘And he’s here. I just got the call sheet last night. He’s directing it! I didn’t know! And I just can’t . . . The thing is, he rang me up a few days ago – I don’t want to hear from him at all. I assumed he was in the US! And he keeps ringing up.’

‘Well,’ said Louise carefully.

‘Oh, I didn’t sleep with him,’ Anne said. ‘I mean, I probably would’ve. But he didn’t even seem to want to. I don’t know what he wanted . . . and he rang again twice last night . . . My flatmate told him to bog off! And I don’t even know if he knows I’m cast! I mean, he must . . .’

Another knock on the door.

‘What is it, Imogen?’

‘Could I have a word, Miss Cazalet?’

Louise stepped into the reception. ‘What?’ she asked, closing the door behind her.

‘Miss Palamountain is meant to be at Pinewood today,’ she said.

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said Louise, and twisted back into the office. ‘Anne! Why aren’t you at Pinewood?’

‘Look at me,’ said Anne, raising her lashes piteously. She did look dreadful.

Louise called out, ‘Imogen! Could you ring Juliet and tell her to get out to Pinewood immediately? I know she’s free. Send a car. Tell her to tell Sandy I’ll explain everything. Tell her to go straight to hair and make-up, say she’s expected, Miss Palamountain’s cover.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Sandy Entwhistle, please. Yes . . . No . . . Oh, hi, Nigel – it’s Louise Cazalet, about Miss Palamountain . . . Can’t make it . . . Emergency . . . No, a real one . . . Yes. I’m sending Miss Cazalet . . . No, not me, haha, Miss Juliet Cazalet. And tell Irene as well? Huge apologies, unavoidable. I’ll explain everything. I owe you one. Yes, yes, thank you so much.’

‘It should be all right,’ she said to Anne. ‘I hope. Anyway. So what happened?’

‘He’s just impossible. He was all over me – but he never touched me. I always had to be there but he didn’t seem to think there was anything between us. He bossed me around madly. I know it doesn’t sound much . . . He made me stay the night at his apartment – he hid my handbag and called me a bitch for wanting to leave, said I couldn’t care for him at all, but it wasn’t sex. Then he locked me in, and went out! In the middle of the night! When he came back in the morning, he brought coffees and doughnuts as if nothing had happened, said he’d just wanted a walk. I thought he was – oh, I don’t know, troubled, or something. I thought I was in love with him. I can’t work with him! I mean, on the one hand I am concerned for him but he’s not good for me and I have to keep him at arm’s length, I really do, but he just doesn’t listen – or, at least, he seems as if he’s listening, but he doesn’t hear . . . You must see . . .’

Louise listened, and heard. Well, all right! This is something new. It’s usually so predictable.

Imogen knocked again, and brought the file in.

‘So who is he?’ Louise was asking, just as the file fell open on the cast and crew list.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Anne was saying. ‘He’s English and, I mean, I don’t think Cazalet is a common name, is it?’

‘He’s my cousin,’ Louise said. ‘I didn’t know he was here. I’ll speak to him. You go home – have a bath. Take the phone off the hook,’ she said. How often she had advised that simple move.

Since leaving Joseph, Louise had turned down eleven men who wanted her to be their mistress. Nine of them were friends of Joseph’s. It was almost as if they’d always liked the look of her and had been waiting for the vacancy to open. She’d been tempted to write to Joseph saying please tell your friends I’m not available. Or to put a notice in The Times personal column: Miss Louise Cazalet politely requests the married men of London to stop propositioning her.

In talking herself out of Joseph, she seemed to have talked herself out of love itself. It was as if sealing her heart against him had sealed it against everyone. The dreams and magnificences of ‘being in love’ shredded and shrank away from her. Now she was able to see the declarations and offers for what they were: potential deals. And frankly the maisonette in St John’s Wood, the clothes allowances, the two weeks in Paris to see how we get along, the ‘three years in Los Angeles as my official mistress while I am chargé d’affaires, paid for by the Hungarian government’ were all attractive in their ways. The mistress at forty was a different creature: businesslike. But Louise found herself laughing at it. I only want love, she thought. Love: mutual, shared, true, honest, faithful, simple, real everyday love. That’s all I want. She couldn’t and wouldn’t let or make herself fall in love with a married man ever again. She said to herself, I will learn from it.

On her birthday a crate of brandy had appeared. No note: he’d respected her on that at least. She’d begun to rather enjoy the feeling of power engendered by sending things back, but this she kept.

When Louise returned from lunch, Neville was in reception.

‘You wanted to see me, miss?’ he said, jumping to his feet and giving her a big hug before she could even put down her handbag. He thrust a massive bunch of out-of-season mimosa at her. ‘Smell it. No, smell it properly. Isn’t it a miracle? It smells of rain! I got it in Berwick Street, I’d forgotten how wonderful London markets can be. Well, you’re looking splendid. What are you, forty? I shall have to rearrange my parameters if forty-year-olds are going to look this good.’

She extricated herself, put down her bag, slipped off her raincoat and handed it to Imogen. ‘Imogen, this is my cousin Neville Cazalet,’ she said. ‘Neville, Imogen. My secretary.’ (Imogen was in fact everybody’s secretary; they were all allowed to claim her as their own if and when personal dignity and professional status would benefit.)

Neville looked almost exactly the same. Skinny, vulnerable, cool, black jeans, white shirt, tufty hair. His plimsolls were slightly cleaner than they used to be. Most men still dressing like this past twenty-five look ridiculous, but Neville, as so often, she thought, got away with it.

‘Hello, darling,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear. His accent now was his original English public school made slightly rocky by streaks of American.

‘Put these in water would you?’ she said to Imogen, passing the mimosa to her. ‘And no tea, this won’t take long. Come along, Neville,’ and she ushered him into her office.

‘Gosh, you’re good at strict, aren’t you?’ he said, throwing himself into the guest chair. ‘Who’d have thought it!’

‘Lovely to see you, Neville,’ she said. ‘Are you here for long? Seeing family at all? Where are you staying?’

‘The agency have got me a hotel for the duration of the shoot,’ he said. ‘After that I’ll stay with people, I suppose. With you!’

‘Absolutely not,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on,’ he started saying.

‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘I gather you got my message. Thank you for coming in. It is lovely to see you, of course, but before we engage in cousinly pleasantries I do need to talk to you. You probably know about what.’

‘Not the slightest idea,’ he said affably.

‘I had a client in this morning,’ Louise said, ‘a young woman, who is unable to take up a job because she cannot work with you. She missed another job today, because she was so upset at your behaviour, which she described to me in unfortunate detail. She says you are pursuing her again, having upset her very much in New York. You probably know who I’m talking about.’

‘None the wiser,’ he said. ‘I’m not pursuing anybody. One, I don’t need to. Two, it’s not my style. Three, I’m just not, anyway. So I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is it lunchtime yet? Are you free?’

‘It’s past three o’clock; I’ve had lunch. All right. I don’t know what went on, I wasn’t there, so I’m just going to ask you, please, as a personal favour, to stop trying to contact her.’

‘Who?’

‘My client Anne Palamountain . . .’

‘Oh, Annie?’ he sounded surprised. ‘My old pal pally Palamountain. You’re banning me from Annie? Oh dear. I don’t think she’ll like that.’

‘She came to me in tears requesting it, Neville.’

‘Yes, quite an emotional girl, dear Annie,’ he mused. ‘I wasn’t certain I wanted to see her, but now you remind me, I really should look her up. She’s so relaxing –’

‘Neville.’

‘I’ll pop by one of these evenings. Oh, wait – she’s not working today, did you say? I might go now!’

‘Neville.’

‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment, Louise? I mean, in the English sense; going out with. Not the New York, where it means are you under a psychiatrist. Such a funny picture. I mean, I’m sure most psychiatrists have absolutely filthy minds. They’d have to, wouldn’t they? But they’re a bloody unattractive lot. All those beards . . .’

Louise’s mind moved swiftly to block images of the last time she’d seen a psychiatrist, and how that had ended: a little old man chasing her round his office declaring his love for her. She’d been twenty-two.

‘No?’ Neville was saying. ‘Didn’t think so. Let’s have supper one night. See a movie. Though I’ve probably already seen everything that’s on over here.’ He stood up and stretched, his shirt coming untucked from the waistband of his jeans.

She stood too; pushed her chair back, pulled the subject back round. ‘Neville,’ she said, ‘don’t you dare.’

His grin was exactly the one he’d had as a boy. ‘Ooh, miss!’ he said. ‘You’re wasted on this agenting lark, Louise. There’s men who’d pay you good money to talk to them like that.’

‘It’ll backfire,’ she said, but he was swinging out of the room, blowing a kiss to Imogen, heading down the stairs three at a time.

Well, thanks for that, Neville. I’d be more use as a dominatrix than as an agent. How kind of you.

But Louise had been watching people operate for a while now. Years ago her father hadn’t listened to Joseph, and if he had, the business would probably have been saved. Now she was making it on her own, she had plenty of tricks up her sleeve, learned from her colleagues, her clients, her contacts, all applicable to the real world. She no longer took other people’s judgement of her to be true.

There’s so much more space in my life, in my mind, she thought, now Joseph isn’t occupying it. And what a bloody miracle that is!

She rang Anne, who answered on the first ring.

‘I told you to take the phone off the hook,’ she said.

‘I thought you might be my sister,’ Anne said.

‘If you want me to pull you from the Morning Delight job,’ Louise said, ‘you will need to actually take your phone off the hook, and promise me you won’t answer the door today. I’ve spoken to Neville and I’m afraid he’s being particularly immature.’

‘Oh,’ said Anne faintly. Louise wondered about her scruffy, rude, selfish, opinionated cousin’s romantic allure. She could see it; not feel it, of course, but she could see it. All that bad-boy nonsense. But if he wasn’t sex-mad like most men, what was it about? Power? Fear? Motherlessness? She flinched a moment, and called Imogen. And where was Terence? He hadn’t been in all morning.

Louise decided that she would take Neville out herself. Re-establish some hierarchy, some cousinly discipline, a bit of responsibility. Charm him if she had to. Goodness, men were exhausting. The guiles women are brought up to use would not work for her for ever, she knew, though she was stepped in so far, like Macbeth in blood, she could probably never lose them completely even if she wanted to. But she was canny at adapting them. No mutton dressed as lamb here. She was, as she’d often been told, a class act. And, she had learnt the wiles of men. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. She had other clients, more important ones, working with the ad agency that held the Morning Delight account. She was not without influence, or people who owed her favours, or were fond of her, or still hoped they might get her into bed one day. She had learnt. Way beyond the firm foundation Miss Milliment had taught . . . She had learnt.

She stared out of the window for a while, at the treetops of Golden Square, then rang Neville at his hotel.

‘Something’s fallen through,’ she lied. ‘I can meet you tonight.’ He began suggesting a place, but she spoke over him, saying, ‘Seven thirty at La Poubelle, Lexington Street, see you there,’ and hung up. La Poubelle was her second-tier show-off restaurant: cool enough to impress, not grand enough to suggest she wanted to curry favour, run by a team who had known her for years and were devoted to her. She would quietly make it clear to Neville that she was not going to be playing his games; that London was a small town and she had many friends; that he was a newcomer who presumably wanted to be employed again. Point out to him how out of touch he was with English manners. Perhaps he’d just go back to America. God, she was fed up with these men who would not just let women get on with their job.

‘But you see,’ said Neville, three hours later, ‘it is a woman’s job, particularly in advertising, to be attractive. If she doesn’t attract the crew, the director, whoever, then she’s not going to attract the viewer, is she?’

‘Are men the major purchasers of Morning Delight?’ Louise asked.

‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘You know women want to look like the women who attract men. Want to identify with that. That’s the whole point. Men have the money, women spend the money for them, women have to be pretty to get a man with money for them to spend.’

‘Rather an old-fashioned view, Neville,’ she said.

‘What, career girls? That only works till you get married. If you keep it going too long, you’re just a spinster and nobody cares what you look like and you have no money anyway, so from the advertising point of view you don’t matter.’

‘And yet here am I, taking you out, about to pay for your dinner, and quite possibly lose you this job.’

‘What, because of Annie? Don’t be silly, Louise –’

‘Neville. Getting and losing people jobs is my job. I’m good at it. Don’t you be silly, eh?’

‘You can’t be serious,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t do it!’

‘Ask your producer!’ she said sweetly. ‘Directors are ten a penny. Would-be hot new young directors trying to make the leap from photography are even cheaper. Everybody is ten a penny nowadays. I’m taking Anne off the job, at her request. I’ll let you keep yours if you swear and keep your word – no crossing your fingers under the table, Neville, you’re not ten – that you will leave Anne alone. Not contact her. At all.’

‘And if I don’t agree?’

‘I’ll make your life here a misery,’ she said.

‘But what’s in it for me?’

‘Me not making your life a misery is in it for you,’ she said.

He stared at her, touching the tip of his tongue to his upper lip, thinking. Then he laughed, and said, ‘Okey dokey.’ He reached for his wallet, saying, ‘Let me get this, and we’ll go and dance.’

‘You can try,’ she said, but when Neville asked the waiter for the bill he brought it to Louise, and when he tried to take it from her the waiter took it back off him, and returned it to her. Without batting an eyelid.

‘I’m not dancing tonight, thank you,’ she said, outside on the pavement. ‘Can I drop you at your hotel?’

‘Spoilsport,’ he said, looking round. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you one way or another. So where should I go, to find people to torment?’

She directed him to a club she never went to, one of Terence’s, in a basement down by the river at Charing Cross. It was mostly visited by young guardsmen and their older boyfriends. She didn’t think Neville was queer, but he might be. Sometimes that was behind men being odd with women. Queer but they didn’t know, or couldn’t admit it.

‘Have you seen Clary yet?’ she asked as they briefly embraced. ‘Are you seeing any family, or is your visit too short?’

‘Oh no, I’m staying,’ he said. ‘New York’s too snobby for me really. So many old ladies it’s exhausting. You can hardly move for old babes with fortunes to squander. Oh, by the way, did I tell you I’ve been seeing Sebastian?’

She reeled.

He didn’t seem to notice.

‘He’s such a great guy,’ Neville went on, ‘but I don’t need to tell you that. I was asked to photograph Michael and Rowena for a magazine – well, all right I was doing the society column for New York Magazine – anyway, there they were, so Rowena invited me to dinner up on Park Avenue. Nice people, good people,’ he went on.

Louise’s sangfroid and courage fled like crabs on a beach. Back to the shadows with them. Her knees weak, her backbone folding in. She never heard his name. No contact. Michael and Rowena had thought it best that way. And who was she to dispute it? The last she’d heard from them was when they wanted her to sign something which would allow him to take up US citizenship. He was twenty now, and love was lost between them. Sixteen years since she’d even seen him, not a day that she didn’t think of him, try to dismiss the thought of him, pull it back close into her heart, bury herself in it, bury it in herself. Her beautiful boy, lost to her.