The Perfect Retreat

CHAPTER EIGHT




Willow was nervous. It had been too long since she had spoken to anyone about a film role, and now she had to meet with the director and have a ‘chat’. After her Oscar she could have chosen anyone she wanted to work with, but that didn’t last. Nothing lasts, she thought, thinking of Kerr.

Sitting in her suite at the Dorchester, she decided that if she landed this part then today would be a good day. She had bought clothes specially for the meeting, with Lucy’s approval. Funny how such a dowdy girl could have such good ideas about fashion, she had thought as Lucy had assessed the choices laid out on the bed.

‘Yes to the Yves Saint Laurent. No to the jeans and Chloé top,’ said Lucy knowingly.

‘But the top is so pretty,’ said Willow, touching the delicate lace.

‘I don’t think Harold Gaumont has ever worn jeans in his life, nor have I ever seen any of his actors wear jeans in his films,’ said Lucy, raising her eyebrows at Willow. ‘The dress is perfect,’ she said, holding up a finely pleated silk chiffon number with a print of autumnal flowers on it. ‘Wear it with those shoes you have on now,’ she said, pointing to her soft suede brown kitten heels, ‘and pull your hair up in a messy bun.’

‘Well, it would help if I knew what the film was about. Simon had no idea. He’s very mysterious, this Harold,’ said Willow.

‘You have to assume that with Kate Winslet being cast before it will be a period piece of some sort. I can’t see her in jeans,’ laughed Lucy.

After meeting with that awful Eliza woman, the best thing Willow could have done was to ring back and convince Lucy to leave to work solely for her. They had spent the afternoon drinking tea in Willow’s suite and exchanging stories.

Willow had admitted to Lucy that she was indeed broke and would need to get to work as soon as possible. Lucy hadn’t been surprised; she knew so many of her clients’ secrets that they filled her dreams at night.

‘So you have no money, only assets?’ Lucy had asked.

‘Do shoes count as assets?’ asked Willow, almost seriously.

Lucy’s laugh had given Willow her answer. ‘Don’t worry too much. As long as you have a roof over your head you’ll be OK. I’ll have you earning in no time.’

‘Jesus, you sound like a pimp.’

Taking the Yves Saint Laurent dress from Lucy, Willow’s mind turned to the terrible story she had just been telling her about Eliza. It was meant to be funny but had ended up making Lucy sad she had put up with her for as long as she did. ‘How did you stand working for her for so long?’ Willow had asked.

‘I didn’t really have a choice. I have a flat with a mortgage and there isn’t a lot of work out there for people in my industry. The first thing companies do is slash marketing and PR budgets when times are hard.’

Willow felt the weight of Lucy’s mortgage as if it were her own. ‘Well, you better get me to work soon so I can help you pay for your flat,’ she had said, half joking, half seriously.

‘Oh don’t worry, I will. I already have many, many ideas – but first we need to get you ready for your audition.’

‘Oh it’s not an audition, it’s a “chat”,’ laughed Willow.

‘It’s an audition,’ said Lucy firmly.

Lucy was astute, but she deliberately underplayed herself; it made the clients feel better about themselves, she thought. She took an academic approach to her work: learn, offer advice when asked, and dress to underwhelm. That way when brilliance came out of her mouth, people would always be surprised. The biggest perk of being dowdy was that people told you their secrets more readily when faced with lace-up shoes rather than stilettos.

‘Now I’ll head off home and get started on your re-entry into the world of bullshit. You ring me straight after, OK?’ Lucy had said, as she gathered up her plain black bag and coat.

Willow laughed. There was something about Lucy that was so practical and sensible; she reminded her of someone. She thought about it. Yes – she reminded her of Kitty, only smarter. What was it about the two English girls that made them so likeable? Although Willow had been in England for years, she had yet to make close girlfriends with anyone. Most women were either jealous or in awe of Willow, and her homeschooling experience hadn’t helped her socially. She didn’t know how to make friends, but she decided as she gossiped with Lucy and talked about everything from fashion to interior design that this felt good. Sometimes she and Kitty talked, but Kitty seemed afraid of her and they didn’t have anything in common besides the children.

Lucy was not as she seemed, Willow had learned. She knew everything about fashion, parties, and people, and how the machinations of reputation worked, yet she refused to be a personal part of it. ‘I know my side of the room,’ she had said to Willow. ‘Besides, as my uncle used to say, you should never shit where you eat.’

Willow had laughed and laughed. ‘Good point.’

‘Right, now I know a bit about this director. He’s a bit mad,’ said Lucy.

‘I had heard that. In what way, do you think?’ asked Willow.

‘Well, he’s a visionary. Only makes a film every few years, when the creative urge strikes him. Always epic and huge. Total creative control freak,’ Lucy had said.

‘I must admit I’ve only seen one of his works; the one about the geisha. It looked amazing,’ said Willow, remembering the lush art direction but not much about the story.

‘Yes, I saw that too. No idea what the hell was going on, but I loved the costumes,’ Lucy had agreed.

And now Willow sat waiting for the legendary director to come to her suite for their ‘chat’.

She had offered to meet him but he was averse to the public in general, Simon had told her. Instead he was driven from place to place in a black Bentley with darkened windows. Reclusive, brilliant and married four times without any children, he was a fascinating and influential director whom the critics adored and the general public treated as an artist.

The doorbell to Willow’s suite rang. She wiped her clammy hands on the cream sofa, flipped her hair and answered the door with a smile.

‘Hello,’ she said.

A small man of about sixty, maybe older, stood on the other side of the door, wearing a silk smoking jacket, velvet slippers and a large pair of dark sunglasses. ‘Willow,’ he said in a transatlantic accent. ‘Harold Gaumont.’ He gave the briefest flicker of a smile and Willow threw her most charming one back.

‘Please come in.’ She stepped back to let Harold through into the living room. ‘I was about to order afternoon tea. Is that OK?’ she asked.

‘Can I ask you something before I make my decision about the tea?’

‘Of course,’ she said casually but racked with nerves.

Willow stood in the centre of the room waiting for the question, aware of his reputation for odd requests during auditions. She had once heard that he had put an actor through a secret audition: he had hired actors to push the man to breaking point while waiting in line at a railway station, all the while secretly filming him.

‘Can you please speak in a British accent while I visit with you?’ asked Harold.

‘Any particular region?’ asked Willow, more confidently than she felt. Please don’t ask me to do a Welsh accent, she thought desperately.

‘Think well bred, country house. Yes to the tea,’ he said.

Willow thought for a moment and Kitty jumped into her head. Channel Kitty, she thought, and she walked over to the phone, dialled the number for room service and gave the order for tea in a perfect English accent.

Harold sat down, smiled, took off his glasses and laid them on the table between them. ‘Excellent start, Willow. Now why do you want to be in my film?’ he asked, and sat back in his chair, resting the tips of his fingers together and placing them in front of his face.

Willow looked at him closely. He was quite handsome without the glasses, sort of like David Niven crossed with Willy Wonka, she thought.

‘Well, I would love to be in one of your films. Your work is legendary,’ answered Willow honestly, in an accent that could have cut glass.

‘Naturally,’ he said, with no arrogance at all. ‘But why do you want to be in my film personally? You haven’t worked in what? Five or six years? You won an Oscar for a film that really wasn’t worth an Oscar nomination. You must have been surprised when you won?’ he said, not unkindly.

Willow paused for a moment.

‘I was surprised to win,’ Willow said, still speaking in a perfect accent. She looked down at the table and straightened his sunglasses. ‘Honestly? I need the work. I need it more than you will ever understand. I want to work, I need to work, and I want to do something that I can actually be proud of, not like that silly film I won the Oscar for.’ As she spoke her eyes filled with tears and she realised it was all true. She was unworthy of the Oscar and she did want to work. She had three children and a f*ckwit of a husband. It was time to get real, even in a faux English accent.

Harold lowered his hands and rubbed them together. ‘Good answer. Now where’s my tea that you promised me?’

Just as he spoke the doorbell rang again and Willow let the waiter in with their afternoon tea. ‘Thank you. I’ll take it from here,’ said Willow to the waiter, still in her accent.

The waiter recognised Willow. He tried not to roll his eyes. Those bloody Americans who spent a few years here and then ended up speaking like the Princess of Wales, he thought as he left her suite.

Willow set up the tea in front of her and Harold. ‘Shall I be mother?’ she asked as she turned the teapot.

‘Yes please,’ he said. Willow poured the tea and set the tiny sandwiches and cakes out in front of them both.

‘Milk? Sugar?’ she asked.

‘Both please,’ he answered, as he watched her carefully pour the tea into the fine china cups.

‘Are you married, Willow?’

‘I was,’ she said. ‘Now separated.’

‘Ah; very modern thing, divorce. I’ve done it many times. You get used to it,’ he said.

‘I suppose I will. I have to,’ she said.

‘Yes, nothing to do but to get on with it, I’ve found.’

‘I’m trying,’ she said, and smiled as she handed him a small plate.

‘You’re from New York originally?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she answered, unsure whether he wanted her to continue with her English accent.

‘And how have you found England?’ he asked.

‘It’s very much to my liking.’ She decided to stay with the accent. ‘I even like the weather.’

‘Well then, you must have an English soul.’ He laughed. ‘Will you stay here in England, once you’re divorced?’

Willow realised she hadn’t thought about geography. Moving to Middlemist was the only plan she had made, and she knew she couldn’t stay there forever.

‘I don’t know, to be honest with you. Perhaps. There’s not much in the US for me now. My parents work in New York but my children like it here; it’s all they know.’

Willow was still speaking in her English accent, but she was speaking from the heart. Harold watched her closely.

‘It must be hard to be the responsible one now. To have to make all the decisions.’

Willow felt her eyes filling with tears and looked down at her lap, trying to focus on the flowers on her dress as they became increasingly blurred. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled.

‘And to have to plan ahead while their father gallivants across the world,’ he said, pushing her, ‘worrying about their futures and the gossip – what will happen to you, will you ever be happy again?’ Harold spoke in low tones; it seemed like he was hypnotising her.

Willow saw a tear drop onto one of the flowers on her dress, and her throat felt as though it was closing over. She had refused to cry when Kerr had left her when she was pregnant with Jinty; when she had laboured with only Kitty at her side; when she had held her darling daughter for the first time. She hadn’t shed a tear when she saw the photos of Kerr on the yacht with another woman’s nipple in his mouth and that woman’s sister with her hands down his shorts. She hadn’t wept when she had learned about her precarious financial position, or when she had moved into Kitty’s ramshackle family home; but now, in this suite, which she couldn’t pay for and which she would be allowing herself to be photographed in front of for the next few days like a fame whore, she felt the tears come. Not now, she screamed inside as she felt them flow, not in the goddamn audition! Lucy was right: it was an audition. And she was failing miserably.

Harold sat still, watching her shaking shoulders, and she looked up at him, her carefully applied makeup running down her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t be sorry. It’s still hard to be a woman, no matter what that Oprah woman says,’ he said.

‘It’s so hard – and I’ve made so many mistakes,’ she cried.

‘Well that’s what helps us learn. Mistakes are lovely actually. I’ve made so many, and from them I pushed myself to be better. You must do the same, my dear.’ He picked up his cup and sipped elegantly from it.

‘I want to,’ she said sadly.

‘You will. Now dry your eyes and I will tell you about the part, if you want it,’ he said brusquely.

Willow looked at him surprised. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly.’

Willow went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eye makeup was everywhere and she had a red nose from crying. Her lipstick was coming off and she thought she looked a fright. Cleaning herself up, she walked back out to Harold.

‘Was that an audition?’ she asked as she stood by her chair.

‘No, my dear. You had the part before I rang the doorbell. Anyone who stays at the Dorchester has my vote. I don’t like those modern hotels with their glass edges and ugly sculptures. You showed class by being here.’

Willow pushed back a hysterical urge to laugh and sat down again.

Harold sat forward. ‘The film is a period piece set in Victorian England about a woman who wants to speak to her dead husband. She is so overwhelmed with grief that she starts to dabble in black magic and starts an occult group at her home. She has an affair with a younger man who joins the group, whom she is convinced is her husband returned, and the audience thinks so also. But then we find out he is actually trying to marry her and send her mad so he can have her committed and take her wonderful home.’

Willow listened. ‘It sounds amazing.’

‘Yes, it will be,’ said Harold, certain in his own genius. ‘If I can find a house.’

‘You don’t have a location?’ asked Willow, her heart sinking. Finding a location could take months, and she needed to start work as soon as possible.

‘Well everything seems to be done up nowadays. They’re all bloody B&Bs and awful hotels. There are very few original homes left that haven’t had the National Trust attack them yet,’ he said, turning his nose up in distaste.

Middlemist House popped into Willow’s head, and before she knew what she was doing she spoke. ‘I know a house I think would be perfect.’

‘Really?’ asked Harold, leaning forward. ‘Tell me more.’