Edana

Some day they will write my life. Edana, they will say, had a little extra, a special quality to lift her out of the crowd. She rose, basked in reflected adulation, was loved, envied the glittering gift—until the dimming of the light.

There ends the tale. Who writes of the dark? The shadow passed and gone is no more seen. Yet they would cherish the dark could they see within; feed on it, eyes wide against gloom, lapping sensation. How they would relish the fall, could they see the depth of blackness that enfolds me now. A heavy clogging mist enshrouds its wearer in velvet night, perpetual and unrelenting. Its weight is stone, to make every motion a burden. I dare not think, nor feel. Let this blanket of dark be my shield. Pierce it, and it will shatter. Expose me, and I will break. No end but this.

Unlike you, poor fool, in the mirror there. Gaunt of cheek, pale of feature, dead of eye. Red of lip, incongruous as is the blue tint in your frizzing hair. A jutting halo of powdered grey is how it should have been, so say the portraits. But history records a lank, dank, smelling mat of clumps grown stale, locked away in your dungeon cell. You had no maid to tend you there. No Parlo Pallas—genius in design, ingenious in artistry—to crimp and poke into shape the wig ready for the merciless eye of the camera.

I envy you, Marie. You knew darkness. I see it in the trembling of your fingers as you raise them to your quivering lips. Ill-starred you were, but you knew an end. Poor wretch, driven from an idle, profligate existence to a wasteland of dread. Did you suffer dread in your bleak fortress room? Your darkness buried no dread of light. Your dark was peace.

‘Edana.’

‘I am ready.’

Did I speak? Have I a voice? I will never again be ready. My hands tremble. My mind is empty. Are there lines to remember?

‘What is the scene?’

‘You know the scene, dear.’

‘But I tell you I don’t.’

Sharp and piercing, reverberating through my skull. Close eyes, let me have my darkness. Press fingers, hard at my brow. Hold it in, don’t let out the night.

Wait, I was harsh. Can I mend it?

‘Amy?’

Her hand is warm. Amy, grasp my fingers tight. Solid, stolid Amy: my rock, even in the fathomless pit where I float, awaiting an end that will not come. Some things do not change.

The chair swivels. Is it impatience in the kind brown eyes, or concern? I owe you, Amy, but I cannot pay. Dear comforter, veteran of so many wars, you gave up your career for mine and followed me—New York, Ontario for the Bard, Hollywood. Could your ambition rest so easily in my shadow?

‘Now, dear—’

Now, dear: always your means of control. Pity me that its effect is ended. Time was I relied upon it, provoked it just to hear your admonishing tones. There was freedom then, to play at the hysteria living in me now, which I must damp down for fear of its eruption out of control. I tremble, fighting for breath. Afraid to release the dark lest the coiled enemy buried within me rises to escape. Leaving Edana but a shell, emptied, while the keening echoes on, wild and untamed, forever.

Amy, your temperamental star is gone. You are addressing a ghost. I see you, plump features and—careworn? Because of me, sad friend, as you try to reach me where I am—so out of reach.

‘You can do it, Edana. Come on, snap out of it. You’re a pro. You are going to get up off your behind and do the scene, like the staunch trooper you are.’

Meaningless words, Amy. You cannot see my darkness. Nor Ruby. The blindness spreads around me, for Ruby sees nothing of my black cloud. Or she would not have signed me up to play this role I cannot play.

My breath shortens. ‘The corset, Amy. It is too tight.’

How I suffer in your place, Marie, replica to the smallest detail. Except where Parlo Pallas chooses to part company with history. A little of the wry old Edana surfacing? Authenticity is all in the world of film these days, and Chad Radebaugh is all for authenticity—within the limits of Parlo Pallas. Edana must wear no gown, but a corset over her clean eighteenth century chemise, not bedraggled and grimed as it ought to be, not defiled, to spoil the grandeur of the vision in Parlo’s genius eye. For Parlo has devised a scarlet cloak to fling about Edana’s diminutive form as she stands, stiff, straight and alone, in the tumbril that will hale her to the guillotine.

My heart catches, my breath is gone.

‘Steady, dear.’

I clutch her warm hand. ‘Amy, is it the guillotine?’

‘That’s right, dear.’

Calm, reassuring, as if the word should hold no terrors for me. But it does, Amy. Blood on the velvet cloak. Don’t think, Edana.

‘Just three sequences: rolling in the tumbril, climbing out, mounting the scaffold. It’s a doddle, dear. All action, no lines.’

Good, for I remember no lines.

‘Chad is using the stand-in for the long shots. Then they will want you, Chad says.’

Chad says. No long shots for Edana. He will not have his Oscar-seeking picture ruined for me. Eat your heart out, Joseph Losey; move over, David Lean; Chad Radebaugh is coming. Costume drama is in season, like the man Thomas More, the lion Henry in the winter of his years, and the ill-fated Anne. She ended her thousand days much as you did, Marie Antoinette. For you, the greatest coup: Edana Beaudine, authentically old, authentically dragged from the shining firmament, down to a foggy ditch of degradation and despair. There will be no long shots for Edana.

Because Chad Radebaugh can see, with his director’s vision. He may not know how I wake sobbing in the night, and cannot remember why. He may not see the scraps of floating debris that petition the fringes of my memory—snatches, hazy and fearful, of something I have never seen. They would not show me the photographs. They would not have me mourn; it was not my right, there in the place where justice is visited upon the guilty. They had justice—and left revenge for me. Chad knows none of it, but he reads the darkness, in my eyes. The actors read ego. Charles would have understood.

Ah, God, the arrow’s tip. Don’t think, Edana. Not that thought, that name.

Wait. Look—in the mirror, Edana. Is it make-up, or are those my hollowed cheeks? My shadows, painting blue deeps to emphasise about my hooded eyes the lacklustre shade within? Shade, where once was brightness, dulled now, faded like the fading star I am. Will they write me beautiful? They did once. No longer. For all her talent, Edana is old. Sweep away ten years, Ruby, as you ever did. But they will know, when the camera displays these charmless charms of mine. Fifty stares me in the face, and the face stares back, defiant with the stamp of time, the ugly old bitch.

Am I laughing? I can hear him say it. We were young then, comparatively. ‘Ugly old bitch,’ he says. ‘Ugly old sod,’ I return. Then we laugh, and kiss and roll around the bed, giggling as we begin all over again.

Don’t give up the smile, red lips. So rare a smile. What, tears? You cannot afford tears. Too many years, too much water under the bridge. And he is dead, or as good as. I may not weep for him; I have no right. But, does he know? Please God they spared him in his troubled last days. Or has he already gone? They would not tell me, of all people. I think I would know, feel it, if he had gone. Not gone, but going, his end a blessing, poor aching love, if they spared him. Someone is writing his life; that I remember.

A knocking at the door, at my ribs as my heart jumps.

‘They are ready for Miss Beaudine.’

But Miss Beaudine is not ready for them.

‘Come on, dear. It’s time.’

My breath is short. Where is my dark? You lift me, Amy, but my legs are weak.

‘That’s right, dear. Stand straight. You can do it.’

I can die, too, Amy, a thousand times.

‘Nerves is all. Like a first night. You’ll be all right once you’ve started.’

The door is open; there is no escape. Ruby waiting outside, her frown heavy. Chad, too. They look at me, exchange a knowing glance. Am I deaf, Chad, that you whisper your fears behind me as Parlo comes hurrying up, acolytes at his heels bearing the cloak, to check I have not spoiled his creation?

‘Think she is going to make it?’ Tense and worried.

‘She will hold up.’ Ruby authoritative. Her usual way; it goes with the mannish suit. ‘Don’t worry, she will make it.’

Surer than I, Ruby, as I stand here, bereft of Amy’s strong arm, waiting while little Parlo clucks and tuts his way about my costume; tugging here, poking there, his eyes on a level with mine as he examines the mess of my face.

‘She looks awful.’ Amy’s hushed whisper. ‘Can’t Make-up do anything?’

‘She’s supposed to look awful.’ Ruby hissing her down.

‘Yes.’ I turn; startle them into silence. ‘Like a dog’s dinner, like death.’

Forbidden word. Don’t think, Edana.

Chad’s arm about my shoulders. ‘The make-up is fantastic, Edana. The camera will love it.’

‘The way it loves you.’ Bracing from Ruby.

‘We all love you.’ Amy, faithful by my side, hoping to breathe courage into my ear along with her pledged heart.

They walk me, crowding round, towards the set, but I can hear the uncertainties under the halo of encouragement.

‘That’s it, dear, you’ll be fine.’

‘Magnificent is how you look.’

‘You’ll make it, Edana.’

‘Attagirl.’

Deluded fools. Can words bear me up? Your fears prick into my darkness. Long habit is there to see me through. I will not think, or feel. No need, for Chad’s camera will seize the buried deeps, in its unmerciful glare. Truth, in Technicolor close-up on the big screen, where they focus on my eyes. They will see the darkness, believe it is my art. A great actress, Edana. Here is a gold statuette to prop up your door.

Who will guess it is my truth? Edana living the part, being Marie Antoinette? A fresh Method, they say, as if we had not done it all our working lives. We carry the role with us, spilling into our own lives, falling for our co-stars, hating our children.

Don’t think, Edana. I have no breath. My heart jumps wildly. And there is Marie’s carriage—my carriage.

Steady, Edana. It is no tumbril, merely make-believe. The extras loll, chatting as they wait. Pretence, it is all pretence. Costumes, wigs over short twentieth century hair. Fake forks and bludgeons fashioned of light stuff to be hefted aloft as they lounge at ease.

I am a pro again. Hands help me with the climb. I will not look upon the faces below, turning to see the star emerge into the limelight. I will gaze upward and away, for I have only to stand here, my hands outstretched to either bar, while Parlo and his minions fuss with the precious cloak of scarlet velvet.

‘It must fall across her breast, so, and the lacing of the corset is just seen. Good. Do not move, Edana.’

How can I move? My feet anchored to the wooden boards. How can I move? My fingers cling to the bars. Why did I raise my eyes from the crowd? My breath is gone.

There it stands, high, stark silhouette against the false brightness of the studio sky. Two narrow poles of wood, between them a slanting blade, waiting to fall. To spurt red blood. To kill.

Don’t think, Marie. No, not Marie. I am Edana. Where is my dark?

Familiar orders somewhere in the distant reach of reality.

‘Camera?’

‘Rolling.’

‘Mark it.’

The snap of the clapperboard—Take One.

‘Action.’

The tumbril moves beneath me. I hear a murmur from the crowd, menacing, ugly. I have no breath. I am not ready. I must beg—for time.

Time…too much time. Slow across my cloud of velvet night. Too thinly spread. Clogged brain. Don’t think.

Listen.

Angry shouting in my ears, scarlet faces in my mind. Contorting, spurting bloodied flesh around my eyes. And pain. Bursting my chest apart, thrashing in my head.

My shield is broken. Thought flying…flying. Will not stop. Lost, I am lost. The enemy is loose. Vibrating into my throat. Echoes…dying on the air.

Time Present

The chauffeur’s eyes strayed again to the reflection in the mirror. She was silent, his passenger, but not composed. It was usual for those who travelled in the sleek limousine to display signs of nervous tension. They nearly all did so, hunching inward with their troubled thoughts, eyes flicking unseeingly over the meadowlands of rural France and passing listlessly across the charm of shuttered lazy villages.

This one saw nothing. Her eyes were closed, her head dipped. Under the autumn curtain of her hair one restless finger played a rhythmic circle in the centre of her brow, the splayed hand shadowing one eye. The pose, the gesture, the concentrated effort of the motion drew from even the chauffeur’s hardened senses a brief tug of compassion. They all suffered, but this one had an air of shattered strength.

She was unconscious of the motion of her finger, of the chauffeur’s sly appraisal. Or of anything, save the drowsy murmur of the engine, suggestive in the background of her rambling mind.

If one could but sleep, and wake again to find a miraculous wand had changed it all. But sleep threatened the nightmare, and with it, dawn’s painful rising to renewed confusion.

Her eyelids parted in protest, her hand dropped to her lap and her gaze came up. Her glance fell on the chauffeur’s greying head, capped in discreet navy with the customary peak at its front. Immediately the world came in again. Intrusive world, with its meddlesome insistence on reality.

It felt unreal, had done from the instant Fliss stepped into the busy airport arrivals hall to be accosted by this uniformed individual who had addressed her with a quaint little bow.

‘Mademoiselle Gregory?’

Uncanny. How did he know? ‘Are you from the chateau?’

‘Le Chateau de Paix, oui. Claude Meurisse, mademoiselle, at your service.’

As he took charge of her suitcase with practised efficiency and led the way to the car park, Fliss had realised he must have recognised her, although casual passers-by thankfully had not. Guthrie had said they would not. The man in the street, he averred, was ‘notoriously’ self-absorbed.

‘Aren’t we all?’ Her tone had been dry.

‘My darling, you’re an actress. Actors are notoriously ego-ridden; it goes with the territory. And you come from a hereditary theatrical line. What else can you expect?’

‘Peace of mind?’

Guthrie had put an avuncular arm about her. ‘You’ll have it, I promise you. Let these people help. They’re good. I wouldn’t send you otherwise.’

Could she have it? Here in the Charente Maritime where peace was promised in the very name of the Chateau de Paix, beckoning her reluctant soul to lay down its burdens.

The car was slowing. For the first time, Fliss looked from the window with a slight stirring of interest as the vehicle turned, passing between high and open wrought-iron double gates. A small lodge was set a little back from the drive. A figure in one window raised a hand in salute, which was answered by Meurisse at the wheel. Then the limousine speeded up again, passing along a graceful avenue of poplars fronting lawns and a distant thatch of forest on one side, a row of scattered buildings on the other, behind a belt of flowering cherry.

A turn brought the chateau into sight, jolting Fliss out of her abstraction. The place was straight out of Disney.

A fairyland silhouette against the sky, huge and golden, aglow in the early evening remnant rays of sunlight. Rooftop tiles agleam on a myriad jumbled shapes and heights, skinny crenellated towers poking forth with promise of hidden eyries for princesses to keep tryst with destiny. A place of secrets and mystery, spur to imagination in minds uneven with the battle of life. A place of dreams. Or nightmare.

Fliss shivered within the black jacket, its leather grown cold. She fought down the now familiar billow of panic. Don’t think about the nightmare, Guthrie had said. How could she not think of it? It was why she was here.

Only here was not the sort of place where people came to have their brains picked apart. Expensive brains. Lesser mortals had to make do with the local health service. But Fliss was no longer a lesser mortal. The Aunts would pounce on that one.

‘Lesser mortal? Rubbish. You were never that.’

She could hear Aunt Jess saying it. And Imogen?

‘Darling, how could you be? You are a Gregory.’

As if it were the be-all and end-all of everything. Being a Gregory had not saved her from this. How could it? Trouble ran in the family. Was it as inevitable as her success had been, as Aunt Imo claimed? A fragile success if she did not come out of here changed. One great film did not a career make, Guthrie said.

The limousine rolled to a halt, stifling the tumbling thoughts. She remained as she was for a moment, wishing she had not come.

She could refuse to get out of the car. She could ask this polite middle-aged man to drive her straight back to the airport. What would Guthrie say? Did he have to know? What if she did not go back to England? She could fly to Paris instead. Or Venice. Not Venice. She had been to Venice with Neville. Her chest froze up on the mental utterance of his name.

The car door opened at her side. Control fled.

Fliss flung away, pushing across the leathered seat. She opened the other door and swung it wide, throwing herself out. A few rapid steps brought her feet over an unevenness in the ground and she all but tripped. She looked down to find the gravel drive edging grass. Her breath caught, and steadied. What had come over her? Her gaze moved from the comfortable trainers encasing her feet below the black slim fitting jeans, and rose to look out over extensive grounds.

A vast lawn flanked the drive, dotted with pockets of leafy trees. Splodges of clumped hues picked out informal bedding, where early blossoming perennials were opening to the sun. A pathway ran through the centre, dividing at a circular fountain into tributaries leading to hedged or walled enclosures. And beyond, a broad avenue led off into the distance, stone figures set down either side. The predominance of greens and gold was interrupted where herbaceous borders coloured the edges of the paths.

The momentary panic began to die away. Chateau de Paix. There was an insidious sensation of peace. And loneliness, for the place appeared deserted.

‘Mademoiselle?’

Fliss turned at the chauffeur’s voice. He was waiting before two great arched entrance doors standing open to the drive, her suitcase at his side, her flight bag, forgotten in the vehicle, hanging from his hand. Behind him, she glimpsed an impression of cool elegance within, but no one stirred there.

The sense of isolation apt to overtake her these days crept back. Quiet hung on the air like a cloak of calm. Dappling sunlight peeping through clouds in the dimming sky played over the pillared frontage of the chateau. A scent of almonds reached her nostrils, and Fliss found small white flowers on clematis creeping up the walls. Her eyes rose, followed the tendrils of the plant, moving up the gothic façade to arched windows and decorative mouldings like icing on a cake. High above the columned portico were two narrow towers. Did winged creatures and trailing stars stream out of them into the night?

The faint amusement spilled warmth into her chest, and her glance made a sweep across the chateau’s front, dropping a little, flickering across a staring face.

Awareness struck at her. Her eyes flew back, and found it. A motionless figure on the floor above, and an unnerving fixed gaze. A female face, not young, surrounded by a halo of fair hair. It had a charismatic aura, an evocation of—Fliss struggled with identification—yes, of dread. As if there was no light here, no end to the dark tunnel that had brought her. No end but doom.

Time Past

He was late. She had tried to be calm, God knew. Had tried to believe it meant nothing. But nausea churned in her stomach, fear ebbed and flowed in her breast. Fear, for there was reason to fear.

Adelaide’s hands clenched on the pretty chintz of her full petticoats, and the view beyond the window-pane blurred in her vision. Where was he? Why did he not come?

She had donned the new gown, a floral pattern she knew he would like, its décolletage lower than was discreet, her stays tightened to lift the enticement of her bosom higher for his delectation. The thought sent secret slivers of warmth into the caverns of her womb—warmth of memory that increased the fear.

God in heaven, where was he?

Sensations chased through her breast like random fires messaging one to another some dreadful tale of woe that grew in the telling.

She stared from the window. She stared and stared, and hoped and prayed and feared, the presage of doom rising in her bosom.

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