Out in the kitchen garden, the two brothers sat on the ancient lichened bench sipping their drinks and watching the heavy, blood-red sun beginning to set.
“Did it really go badly today? With Richard?” Max asked.
Richard was Henry’s farm manager, really just the chief farmhand, but with responsibility for the other four lads Henry employed.
Henry nodded. “Very. I’m going to have to lay off at least two of them before the end of the summer. If it weren’t for the subsidies, I doubt we’d be breaking even at all. I tell you, it’s bloody impossible to make a living off dairy these days. Unless you’re French, of course. Like your beautiful bride-to-be.”
“Oh, lay off it, would you,” said Max. “She’s hardly my type.”
Henry raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t know. She’s very attractive. It wasn’t so long ago I remember you saying the same thing to me about Siena. She wasn’t your type either. ‘A match made in hell,’ I believe you once said.”
“That was a long time ago, actually,” said Max, with more anger than he’d intended. Seeing his brother’s look of surprise, he relented. “Look, sorry. But d’you mind if we don’t talk about Siena?”
“Sure.” Henry could take a hint. He picked a sprig of mint out of his glass and began chewing it thoughtfully. “Let’s talk about your play. That’s about the only thing that’s going well in this family at the moment.”
Max, who was still thinking about Siena, didn’t immediately respond.
“It is still going well, isn’t it?” asked Henry.
“Oh yes,” said Max, brightening. “We’re going great guns. Angus, the guy who wrote it, had a great interview in The Sunday Times last week, which means even more exposure for Dark Hearts. Not that we need it. We’re sold out till September.”
“That’s wonderful, Max,” said Henry sincerely.
“As a matter of fact, I have a couple of producers from New York coming to see us in two weeks’ time,” Max went on. “It’s the first time I’ve actually owned a stake in any of the plays I’ve done, so it’s much more exciting for me.”
“Good man,” said Henry approvingly. “I’ve always said you should get some equity in your own work. What’s your percentage?”
“Sixty to Angus, forty to me. But I wouldn’t get carried away. Chances are they won’t go for it—it’s a bit bleak for your mainstream theater audience. Still, it’s quite something that they’ve agreed to come at all. I mean, this is Stratford we’re talking about, not the West End.”
“Well, here’s to you!” Henry clunked his Pimm’s glass against Max’s and drained what was left of its contents. “May Lady Luck smile on one of us, at least, for many moons to come.”
Their peace was shattered moments later by an overexcited Charlie.
“Dad! Uncle Max! Come quick,” he called out through the pantry window. “Sea Rescue’s gonna start in one minute.”
Max loved it that the kids were all such avid fans of Tiffany’s show. Charlie, in particular, had a hideous crush on her and was constantly at him to invite her, without Hunter if possible, to Manor Farm.
“Coming!” Henry shouted back deafeningly. “Up you get then, Uncle Max,” he joshed him. “It wouldn’t do to miss the bit before the music on Sea Rescue.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” said Max, following him inside. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Randall Stein looked down at the figures in front of him and frowned.
“Nine million?” he said incredulously to the voice on the phone. “You don’t think running nine million over budget was something I might, possibly, have been concerned about?”
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of antacid tablets, popping one into his mouth and chewing it grimly while the voice on the speakerphone struggled in vain to explain himself.
Randall was having a bad week.
Production costs on 1941, his much-hyped World War II epic in which Siena was starring opposite Jason Reed, Hollywood’s latest vaunted successor to Brad Pitt, were spiraling out of control.
The movie had been plagued by bad luck from the start. Freak storms had meant a five-week delay on all the filming on location in Japan at Christmas, which had cost an absolute fortune. Once they got back to Universal, where the bulk of the film was being made, a general strike by SAG, the powerful actors’ union, meant it was another month till they could make any progress, and even then Randall found himself embroiled in distracting lawsuits with more than one of his minor cast members over the terms of their pre-strike contracts.
Then, having finally gotten some momentum behind the project in May, Siena and Jason had started giving him headaches. At first he’d been happy to discover that Siena couldn’t stand the sight of her new Adonis-like costar. But as the weeks wore on, the director had complained to him repeatedly about the intolerable strains on-set. Jason, as the bigger, more established star, had taken to lording it over Siena, goading her over everything from her inferior trailer to her relationship with Randall, strongly implying that she had won her part on the casting couch rather than on her own merits.
Siena, stung by this particular criticism because she knew it was true, and desperate to prove herself as a serious actress, met all of Jason’s taunts with an ever more hysterical torrent of rage. More than once she had stormed off the set screaming, refusing to come back to work until Reed agreed to apologize to her.
Which, of course, he never did.
“She’s a great little actress,” the director, Luke, had told Randall. “Perfect as Peggy. Always got her scenes down a hundred and ten percent. But I can’t direct her if she isn’t there.”
Back home, Randall had torn a strip off her.
“He started it,” protested Siena, after a particularly nasty torrent of abuse. “He’s the one you should be screaming at, not me.”
“I don’t give a fuck who started it, you dumb bitch.” Randall could be incredibly vindictive when it came to business, totally loveless toward her in his tone, his language, everything. Siena had grown used to it, but it still hurt. “Jason Reed is a star. No matter how bad it is, people are gonna come and watch this movie because of him. So he’s an asshole. So what? You’re a professional, Siena. Deal with it.”
“He keeps telling everyone I only got the part because I’m sleeping with you,” she said indignantly.
To her fury, Randall smiled. “He’s right,” he said, adding nastily, “and if you want to keep sleeping with me—and keep your part—you’d better get your act together. Now.”
Things on-set had improved slightly since then, but the tense atmosphere was still slowing things down.
And now some bozo of an accountant was calling him up to tell him that the problems with the strike had cost “around” nine million dollars, a figure they’d had since March but only apparently decided to share with Randall today.
“Listen, Bruce,” he said, making an effort to keep himself calm. “I’m not interested in estimates. If it is nine, and frankly I find that figure hard to believe, then I want to see that broken down and itemized down to the last fucking quarter. Is that clear?”
Bruce responded with a suitably groveling affirmative, and Randall hung up and leaned back in his chair, trying to breathe deeply and relax, like his therapist had told him to do.
It wasn’t really working. But he knew what would.
“Keith.” He pressed the little black button that connected him with his camp but ruthlessly efficient assistant next door.
“Yes, Mr. Stein?”
“Call Becca Williams for me, would you? Tell her I need a girl. Right away.”
The assistant didn’t miss a beat. He was used to such requests from his boss. In fact, the madam’s number was already programmed into his speed dial. “Do you want her to come to the office or the apartment?” he asked.
Randall looked at his watch. There was no time to drive over to the Century City apartment, where
he usually conducted these sorts of assignations.
Fuck it. He could screw her on the desk.
“Send her here,” he said. “And tell Becca she’d better be good, not like that last anorexic she sent me. I want blond, and tits like beach balls.”
“I’m on it,” said Keith, who had never been “on” a blonde who didn’t have chest hair and a dick in his life. “Leave it with me.”
Over on the set at Universal, Siena was sitting in her trailer gloomily playing a game of backgammon with her bodyguard, a 280-pound monster called Big Al.
Contrary to press reports, her trailer was actually rather a modest affair, consisting of two banquettes covered in a revolting seventies-style orange velour fabric that even Duke would have balked at; a noisy and uncomfortable foldaway bed; a minuscule bathroom, comprised of only a toilet and what Siena called her powerless shower, which dripped cold water with a sort of lethargic sneeze; and a little kitchenette where she and Al had just made themselves some Earl Grey tea, one of the few tastes she had acquired from her long years of exile in England.
“God, I’m bored, aren’t you?” She pushed her pieces around the board in a desultory manner.
“Not really.” Al smiled. “I’m used to it. You need a lot of patience in my job.”
That was the best thing about Al, thought Siena. He was such a cup-half-full kind of guy.
She’d been resistant initially to the idea of having a bodyguard, but Randall had insisted after she started getting a string of obscene letters, some of them threatening, from an anonymous crazed admirer. Besides, stalkers aside, her fame had grown to such a huge extent in the past six months that she could no longer move around in L.A. as a free agent without being at best pestered and at worst mobbed by fans and paparazzi.
Cut off from her friends and what was left of her family by Randall, unable even to take a stroll along the beach on her own, Siena had discovered that her newfound fame and status could be deeply isolating. There were often days when Al seemed like the only friendly face she saw, and the only person she could really talk to.
She still had Randall, of course. But lately the relationship had been under a lot of strain. She was on the set all day, and he liked to work holed up in his office until very late at night and typically through most of the weekend as well. In the few snatched hours they did spend together, they argued too much, about everything from the film, to his hours, to Siena’s dress sense. He was incredibly controlling and liked to have the final say in every aspect of her life, right down to the color and size of her T-shirts.
At first Siena had fought him. She remembered Jamie Silfen’s advice on the night of the party, and made valiant efforts to preserve her own identity in the face of Randall’s formidable will. But her increasing loneliness soon forced her into a state of almost total dependence on him that robbed her of any ability to resist.
It dawned on her that if Randall threw her out, she would lose everything—her career, her fame, her new super-wealthy status, not to mention her home. And despite his constant casual cruelty, she was also afraid of losing Randall himself. He might be a bastard, but he was all she had. Without her even noticing, he had gradually become the key to her whole world. Siena felt her confidence and self-esteem plummeting as she was forced to give in to him again and again and again.
The only area where the relationship still flourished was in bed. Randall’s desire for her sexually was unabated—if anything, it had grown with the shift in the balance of power between them in his direction. He wanted to fuck her every single night and not infrequently, during the days as well. Last week he had even turned up on-set at lunchtime and insisted on taking her back to her trailer for sex.
“Darling, please,” she remonstrated with him. “It looks so unprofessional for both of us. You know how these things shake up and down. The whole crew will know what’s going on.”
“I know,” said Randall, pushing down her top to reveal a lacy, forties-style bra. “That’s what I like about it.”
He left forty-five minutes later looking, as Duke would have said, happier than a pig in shit. Jason, of course, never let Siena hear the end of it.
Today, she and Al were waiting for the director to finish a fight scene between Jason and a young English actor who played his copilot and love rival. It was taking forever, and Siena was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on their backgammon game.
“D’you wanna play something else?” said Al, after her third illegal move in a row. Something was obviously bothering her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, dragging her attention back to the board. “I’m not really on the ball this afternoon, am I?”
“It don’t matter,” said Al kindly, clearing away the pieces with his giant bear paws. “We could watch TV if you like?”
Siena picked up the remote control and flipped it on. Unfortunately, the daytime TV schedules consisted of wall-to-wall soaps, and the very first thing she saw was Hunter’s face, looking faintly orange and over-made-up against a cringe-worthy fake background of plywood furniture and wobbly plastic plants. She switched it off instantly.
“Hey,” said Al. “That’s reruns of Counselor. The first season, that was the best one. Can’t we watch that?”
“I’d rather not,” said Siena. She was biting her lower lip and staring resolutely out the window, evidently quite upset.
“Hey.” Al put a kindly arm around her. He was very fond of Siena and thought Randall Stein was a jerk. “What’s wrong?”
She started to cry. “Oh, Al, it’s nothing, I’m just being silly.”
The big man was not convinced. “No, you’re not. Come on, spit it out, girl, what’s upset you?”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “It’s me,” she said. “I’ve upset myself. I’ve behaved very badly toward someone I love more than anything. Hunter, my uncle . . .”
“Oh, yeah.” Al nodded understandingly. “Mike Palumbo.”
“Exactly.” Siena sniffed. “I really treated him badly, Al. I did.” The big man looked disbelieving. “I can’t bear to watch him on that stupid show. It just reminds me, you know? And I miss him. I miss him so much.”
Al, always prepared for such an emergency after long years of working with overemotional actresses, handed his charge a clean white handkerchief. “It’s never too late,” he said while Siena blew her nose noisily. “If you miss him and you think you were wrong, why don’t you call him and apologize? These things are usually fixable.”
She put down the handkerchief and took his hand. How she wished, with all her heart, that she lived in a world as simple and morally straightforward as his.
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” she sighed. “I know it should be, but it isn’t. Sometimes . . .” She broke off, unsure what she was trying to say. “Sometimes it is too late. It just is.”
They were interrupted by a knock on the trailer door. Al lumbered over to answer it and P.J., one of the runners, stuck his head around the corner. “They’re ready for you, Miss McMahon,” he announced breathlessly.
“Thanks,” said Siena. “Would you tell Luke I need to go back into makeup quickly? Just give me five.”
And leaving Big Al standing there, she was out the door without another word, dashing across the set toward the makeup trailer and a belated start to her day’s work.
Around eight o’clock that evening, she and Randall were in the back of an anonymous-looking, blacked-out limo being driven to an AIDS charity dinner in Beverly Hills.
Siena looked ravishing in a fire-engine-red Versace trouser suit. Randall, by contrast, looked grumpy and exhausted in a dark suit and tie. His heartburn had been acting up all day, and every few minutes he put his hand to his chest and groaned as they inched their way along Wilshire.
“Can you believe that schmuck Bruce?” he asked Siena for the hundredth time. “How can you just forget to tell someone he’s down nine million dollars? What does he think, I’m so loaded that nine million fucking dollars doe
sn’t even matter to me?”
Siena imagined that was exactly what the accountant would have thought, but didn’t say so. “I know, darling,” she said, idly stroking his thigh. “It must be infuriating.”
“Hmmm,” Randall grunted, moving her hand upward so she could feel his emergent erection through his pants. The man was a freak of nature—he seemed to have an almost permanent hard-on, at least when Siena was around. “You look beautiful tonight.”
The compliment was so unexpected, she almost choked. “Thank you,” she said once she’d recovered from the shock, even risking a small smile. “I’m glad you like it.”
Randall was, in fact, annoyed with himself for having slept with that hooker at lunchtime. It wasn’t that he felt guilty—he couldn’t remember the last time his conscience had been troubled by that particular emotion—but looking at Siena this evening, he was struck again by how truly stunning she was. What was he doing crawling around in the gutter with call girls when he had this kind of welcome waiting for him at home?
“I know I’ve been tough on you lately,” he went on, to Siena’s ill-concealed amazement. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But this is a tough business, you know? You need to learn that if you’re going to survive.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I understand.”
Beneath her calm exterior she felt so relieved, she was almost euphoric. In the last few days she’d been starting to panic that Randall was losing interest in her. Sex was still constant, but otherwise he seemed to be in a permanently bad mood, veering from the bad-tempered to the totally withdrawn and back again. This sudden show of compassion for her feelings was as wonderful as it was surprising, and she knew better than to question him about what might have caused it.
They arrived at the fund-raiser at the Beverly Hills Hotel in unusually good spirits. The last vestiges of a spectacular L.A. sunset, a psychedelic melting pot of red, orange, purple, blue, and pink, were sinking into the horizon, throwing the famously kitsch pink walls of the hotel and its straight rows of palm trees into dark silhouettes. It looked so breathtaking, even Randall was momentarily entranced; not that he was allowed the luxury of time to admire the view. Both he and Siena were mobbed by photographers the moment they set foot out of the car.