Eric Williamson was small and intense, like a vibrating crystal at the table. He had grey hair and a taut, tanned face. He did not look like the kind of man who would wear a baseball cap and sit in a director’s chair. He looked more like a philosopher in a fitness instructor’s body. He did not seem interested in talking to her.
‘You think they’re all boneheads, don’t you?’ Matt whispered.
Elise felt exposed. ‘No,’ she said defensively. ‘I don’t.’
‘I did too, at first. When I arrived. But actually, you have to be clever to survive here,’ he said. ‘I’ve met more bright men and women here than any other place on earth. And I’ve been to a lot of places on earth. Sure, some of them are as thick as shit,’ he went on, grinning. ‘But you’ve got to have ideas, enthusiasm, tenacity like you would not believe.’
‘You’ve also gotta make sure you don’t drink the Kool-Aid,’ Barbara interrupted, emerging suddenly from behind them, putting her hand on the back of Matt’s chair. Elise felt herself go rigid with the proximity. ‘You know, go travelling up your own ass?’ Barbara went on. Her cigarette was balanced between two fingers and the smoke was curling into Matt’s hair.
Matt turned his face up to her, acting relaxed. ‘I’ll remember that,’ he said.
‘I just wanted to get that clear,’ Barbara said. ‘Felt I should.’
‘Don’t you think Elise should do a screen test?’ Matt said, turning back to address the table.
‘Me?’ said Elise.
‘With your face,’ he said.
‘Just with my face?’ she said, and everybody laughed. Barbara moved on, back to her own seat. ‘I’m not an actress,’ said Elise.
‘You just have to be a good liar,’ said Matt.
‘Hey!’ said Barbara, but she was smiling.
‘I’d say the writers have to be good liars, and the actors are the ones who have to be truthful,’ said Connie.
Shara sucked on a slice of lemon and bobbed it back into her vodka tonic.
‘You’re a good liar, then, Con?’ said Elise.
Connie looked at her. ‘Most of the time. I’m also good at the truth.’
‘Would you call London home, Elise?’ said Shara. The softly lit courtyard lent itself to her cream shoulder pads and the amber necklace on her tanned décolletage. The insistent way Shara uttered the word home, and the talk of Connie being a good liar, made Elise uncomfortable.
‘I run away a lot,’ she said.
Matt laughed, and Elise thought she saw a flicker of disappointment in Shara’s eyes. Elise wasn’t sure Shara would understand her lifelong experience of constant moving, nor absent parents, nor the perverse comfort of pitying yourself for not yet arriving where you’re supposed to be. ‘I mean, I used to run away. Before Connie,’ she said.
*
The setting of Heartlands had been moved to America. London had become New York and the English countryside was now the Catskill Mountains. The exterior shots – Beatrice’s village, its surrounding woods, her daughter Gaby’s walk-up in Greenwich Village – were to be filmed in situ. All interior shots were to be filmed on the Silvercrest lot. Thus Connie’s novel was to be anatomized, broken apart over the stretch of a huge continent, to be put back together at the end in a coherent whole.
‘Does it matter to you, Connie?’ said Barbara. ‘That it’s American now?’
Connie considered this. ‘I’ll rub my cheque into the wound,’ she said, and everyone laughed.
‘So are you two ladies gonna hang around for the whole shoot?’ said Bill Gazzara. ‘You’d be more than welcome.’
Connie’s expression was unreadable to Elise – a first – and she did not like it.
‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Connie. ‘We don’t want to get in the way.’
*
Barbara was a good actress that night. She was no fool. Elise supposed Matt was right: you wouldn’t last long in LA if you were. She must have known what her presence would do for this film. It was part of Barbara’s mythology that she’d had four husbands so far – the truth was, she was as famous for her marriages as her acting. She was often quoted as saying, I love men, I just couldn’t eat a whole one – but no one knew if she’d really said it. Elise watched how delicately she ate her prawn cocktail. Like Shara, she had a vodka tonic bubbling before her: Elise hadn’t seen any of this arrive; she felt blind to detail, yet paranoiacally aware of everything larger. A waiter poured her a white wine, and she watched the cold liquid form a film of condensation on the glass, wishing someone would give her some food. Barbara, Connie and Eric were now talking about Wax Heart and the book’s theme of how one can be reborn without having to die.
‘I believe in that kind of reincarnation,’ said Barbara. ‘Except we don’t even need to be reborn to make the same mistakes again and again. There’s something in us that just goes on repeat.’
‘When it comes to me and tequila I’d be inclined to agree,’ said Bill.
‘It’s about where the coin falls,’ said Eric. ‘You gotta get lucky.’
‘The bit by the coffin, Constance. When Bea says to Gaby she’s a disappointment? Jesus Christ,’ said Barbara.
‘Oh, call me Connie, please.’
Bill cackled. ‘It’s amazing. But why doesn’t she just say something back?’
‘Bea’s just more interesting than her daughter,’ said Shara. ‘Gaby – that woman! Oh, I could not bear her.’
‘She’s just a girl,’ said Matt. ‘Cut her some slack.’
‘Me and Eric have worked together four times,’ said Barbara, raising her glass in Eric’s direction. ‘We know each other. I know you, Eric. This is gonna be exciting. It’s gonna be such a great movie. Though it’s a shame you couldn’t get Derek Yelland to shoot it for you.’
‘Barb, he’s eighty-four,’ said Eric. ‘He had a stroke last year. Give the guy a break.’
‘Derek wouldn’t have done it anyway,’ said Bill. ‘I offered him Glory Days, but his wife wouldn’t let him work again. She won’t even let him off his ranch. I think he’s in a bridle.’
‘It’s likely,’ said Eric. ‘But this wasn’t right for him, anyway. I love the guy, but when was the last time Derek did a picture with intimate scenes like this material requires? Everyone’s either grunting or kicking the shit out of each other.’
‘I don’t go to the cinema very often,’ said Connie.
Barbara winced theatrically on her behalf, covering her eyes with her hands. ‘Is this an attack?’ she said, but she put one hand to her temple and pointed her other hand ridiculously at Connie, so everyone knew it was a joke. ‘You sounded so English!’
‘English people don’t make movies,’ said Connie. ‘We prefer to tell stories by a spitting fire as sheets of rain travel over bogs.’
‘That’s probably a good thing,’ Barbara said. ‘So many movies are just a crock of shit.’
‘What I was looking for,’ said Bill, trying to draw the attention back to himself, ‘and what I got, is someone who can tell a story, who actors like, but who has a sense of the epic beyond the individuals moving in the drama. Someone with a wild vision, but who knows how that translates to a housewife in Ohio or a nurse in Detroit or a business guy in London.’ He pressed his hand to the tablecloth as if it was an altar. ‘We needed someone with a heart. But instead, we got Eric!’ Everyone laughed. ‘Kidding, buddy. What an absolute coup you are, to be doing this. Everyone at Silvercrest is so delighted.’