A Woman of Integrity Read online

  ‘Oh dear, tell me what happened.’

  Laura related the conversation with Edy. Contrary to common wisdom, the telling didn’t make her feel better. ‘I suppose I’ve seen this coming. I was getting fewer scripts, smaller parts. The last thing I did was that Disney crab thing. All voice and no face. All the really juicy parts for actresses of my vintage are being aged-down for the youngsters. Soon, you’ll have a teenager playing Lady Macbeth. Or a thirty-year-old playing Hamlet’s mother. So basically, I’ve been fired.’

  ‘There are lots of other agents out there.’

  ‘Edy was one of the best. To be dropped by her is to be scarred for life.’

  ‘Someone with your profile will always be in demand.’

  ‘Not at my age.’ Laura leaned back in her chair to allow the waiter to place her coffee. The cream had been patterned with a smiley face which she immediately obliterated with her spoon. She handed Victoria a sheet of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Just read it.’

  ‘It’s a list.’

  ‘From the top. Out loud.’

  ‘Geena Davis.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Holly Hunter, Elisabeth Shue, Mary McDonell. Debra Winger. I once worked on a movie with her.’ Victoria had been a set designer before she had turned her skills to creating feng shui inspired interiors for the homes of the wealthy. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘All Oscar contenders in the 1990s.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Laura snatched back the paper. ‘Well, actually some of them are doing TV. Quite successfully. But all these beautiful women in their fifties. No longer movie stars.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with doing TV these days.’

  ‘It always feels like a step down for me.’

  ‘What about your nanny in The Bentleys? That was a huge success.’

  ‘I was just dropping in. A cameo. Full-time TV for me would be like… it would be like menopause.’

  ‘At least it wouldn’t be a money pause.’

  Laura sipped on her coffee, waited until Victoria had finished chuckling away at her own joke before she said: ‘Being a film actress is what defines me. Without that, life has no meaning.’

  ‘Oh, stop being so bloody dramatic.’

  Before Laura could reply, she was distracted by a young Japanese woman who had approached their table with a deep bow.

  ‘Excuse me, I am so sorry to interrupt. But can I ask you… please?’

  Laura looked down to see an autograph book and pen thrust in front of her. Not an envelope or a napkin, but an actual autograph book.

  ‘Who shall I make it out to?’ The young woman held her head away from her so she could only see a dark curtain of hair.

  ‘Tomoko,’ came the hidden voice.

  Laura signed the book with a flourish. On the opposite page, she noted the other signature. Jude Law.

  ‘See,’ Victoria said, once Tomoko had left them. ‘Still in demand. Even by a young, global audience.’

  ‘Smugness doesn’t suit you. Now what was I saying?’

  ‘You were telling me about the meaningless of your existence.’

  ‘I’m serious. Look at you. You’ve produced two adorable children. At the very least, when you look back on your life, you can say you fulfilled your biological function.’

  ‘I do believe I’ve done more than that.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Our whole existence as human beings is defined around procreation. You have contributed to the continuation of the human race. Even if you end up failing at everything else, at least Tom and Pru give your life meaning.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether you are complimenting me or criticising me.’

  ‘I’m just stating a fact.’

  ‘Where does that leave you then?’

  ‘I, Laura Scott, having chosen not to have children, am therefore obliged to provide meaning for my life in other ways. My unused womb must not indicate an unfulfilled life. I have to prove to both myself and to the rest of the world that my sacrifice was worth it. Now my means of doing that have been taken away from me. Forever.’

  ‘I think you’re being a little too dramatic here…’

  ‘…and when Tom and Pru grow up they will be there to look after you in your old age. While I will be left alone and penniless to survive on the generosity of the Actors’ Benevolent fund.’

  Victoria leaned forward with that earnest gaze of hers. Laura always thought that Victoria had old eyes. Wise, ancient eyes that could be traced back centuries, eyes that had somehow been passed down through the sages to this interior designer now living in Notting Hill. Or they could just be stoned eyes, for Victoria still liked the occasional joint, especially on a sunny afternoon with her children off doing whatever teenagers did these days. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ Victoria said, patting her hand. ‘Let’s order a bottle of wine.’

  Chapter Four

  The Hepburn Archives

  Extract from an unpublished memoir

  As the months, then years, went by after my appearance as Pocahontas, my ambition to become an actress did not wane. My parents never took my aspiration very seriously although my father was perhaps the more receptive of the two. He had trained as a mechanical engineer, such an underrated profession, I believe. As a society we laud those who can create beautiful things with words and colour and voice but tend to ignore those who design and build exquisitely intricate machines that impact greatly on the way we live our lives. Electric generators, heat exchangers, gas turbines, refrigerators and, of course, the internal combustion engine. He eventually became fascinated with the fledgling discipline of aeronautics which in turn led him to become one of the first human beings on this entire planet to learn to fly, earning an Aviator’s Certificate from the Royal Aero Club in March 1914. When the Great War broke out four months later, he was immediately commissioned as a lieutenant into No. 5 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps.

  It is hard to imagine Papa as a fighter pilot, as a violent assailant of the skies, for I remember him as a gentle man who always had his nose in a book. Mostly engineering manuals but he loved literature and philosophy as well. It was almost as if his career in the Royal Flying Corps was some kind of secret identity he changed into when my mother and I weren’t looking.

  I am grateful to my father for imbuing me with his sense of curiosity, the willingness to try new things, to be open to a different way of seeing the world. It was that sense of curiosity that led him to investigate Eastern religions and philosophies, an interest that irked my devout Church of England mother who often called him a heathen when, instead of attending church on Sundays, he would prefer to go for a walk across the South Downs.

  ‘I’m not a heathen,’ I remember my father protesting. ‘I am merely an agnostic.’

  ‘What’s an agnostic?’ I asked.

  My father bent down to my level bringing with him from on high the smell of pipe tobacco and citrus shaving soap. ‘It means I only believe in that which is known.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t believe in God?’

  ‘That’s a very good question,’ he said, with a smile and a quick glance to my mother. ‘And the answer is that if God makes Himself known to me, then I will believe in Him.’

  ‘So what do you believe in now, Papa?’

  ‘I believe in universal truths. Universal truths that can be known and experienced.’

  ‘What’s a universal truth?’

  ‘One day, I will take you up in an airplane and show you.’

  I often wondered what attracted my mother to my father for she possessed hardly any curiosity at all. She rarely wandered from our village, content with a life that centred on her tiny family, her church and her garden. She had little more ambition for me than she did for herself. She taught me deportment and etiquette, how to bake, to make jam and to sew. To this day, whenever I pick up a needle, I can picture her win
ding thread around a loose button, biting off the extra length with her teeth and pronouncing the word ‘There’ to her completed task as if this was all that was needed in life to bring her satisfaction. While Papa was off flying missions over France, she contributed to the war effort by helping with the milking on a neighbouring dairy farm.

  It was my Aunt Ginny who was more sympathetic to my cause. The two sisters could not have been more different. My Aunt Ginny was nine years younger for a start, poised in age exactly between myself and my mother. She was wealthier than my mother too, having married my Uncle Richard with his substantial farmhouse and its many hundreds of acres in East Sussex. While my mother possessed a straight back, tilted-chin aloofness and pinned up tresses, Aunt Ginny was all openness, wide-mouthed smiles and the first person I knew to have her hair cut in a bob. She drank gin and even smoked the occasional cigarette, none of which my mother did.

  When I became old enough to be militarily useful, it was my Aunt Ginny who suggested I join a small theatre company up in London providing entertainment for the wounded men returned from the battlefields of northern Europe. My father was never home to care about what I did and my mother was too worn down by the war to protest. And so it was that Aunt Ginny arranged for me to stay in digs run by a Mrs Ridley just south of Tower Bridge while our troupe toured the military hospitals under the London Command District.

  It was a pitiful task really, witnessing the desperate and the dying on a daily basis, trying hard to buoy up my own spirits so as to bring a bit of pleasure to those poor souls. We put on short plays mainly, interspersed with a song or a comic turn. Our cast consisted mostly of women with a couple of young men drafted in after they too had been wounded and were unable to return to the Front. Billy Morrison was one of them, his knee shattered by a bullet over in the trenches, giving him a serious limp that actually added great dramatic effect to the parts he played.

  There weren’t so many young men to choose from in those days. Billy wasn’t particularly good-looking. Neither did he sparkle with intelligence, talent or wit, I guess I just felt sorry for him. I sneaked him into the room I shared with two of the other girls, it was late afternoon between performances, it was raining I remember that, and Billy had brought with him a couple of bottles of stout. We started kissing and I didn’t think I would be going that far with him but the beer must have gone straight to my head. I remember thinking that I just wanted this to be over with, to pass through the threshold of pain, to know what it was like to be a woman. I had only heard sketchy information from the other girls in our troupe, my mother had told me nothing, it was amazing really to think how little we knew about sex back then. I certainly didn’t know anything about contraception, I am just grateful now that Billy had the sense to pull out when he did. After it was over, Billy was having a cigarette while I was sitting there with this ache between my legs, utterly mortified to see all the blood and spilled semen staining Mrs Ridley’s sheets. What with all that evidence of sex, tobacco and alcohol in the room, I nearly jumped out of my skin when there was a loud knocking at the door from Mrs Ridley, calling out to me by name. Billy scampered underneath the bed with the beer bottles, I pushed up the window and sorted the sheets in a matter of seconds, half-opened the door in a pretence of being woken from fevered sleep. Mrs Ridley said nothing as she passed me through the pale yellow envelope. The Post Office telegram read:

  Father killed in action. Please come home. Mama.

  Chapter Five

  An Honest Appraisal

  The telephone was ringing. Laura’s actual telephone. Her landline that connected her to millions of other myriad souls on this planet through physical wires and cables. That was a concept she could understand. Rather than her mobile and all those invisible radio waves passing through the air and solid objects and everything else. Except the water in the pond in her garden. She glanced at the bedside clock. 5.53 PM. She had been out for the count for almost an hour. Not surprising given the two large glasses of wine she had consumed in Primrose Hill. She was still fully dressed, hadn’t even taken off her shoes. She stretched out her hand, fumbled over her bottles of pills, her house keys, her sunglasses until she could gather up the receiver, bring it to her ear.

  ‘Yes?’

  Victoria’s voice. ‘Just checking.’

  ‘Checking? That I’m alive?’

  ‘That you’re still going to Caroline’s. Or should I say Lady Caroline these days.’

  ‘Yes, yes, the dinner party.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I just fell asleep, that’s all. Wine in the afternoon. Not good for me.’

  ‘Is that “wine” with or without an “h”?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Are you still going?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘It’s important to get on with your life.’

  ‘You said that after Jack and I went our separate ways. And nothing’s happened since.’

  ‘My orders to you are: Go to the party. Have a few drinks. Forget about your agent.’

  ‘My ex-agent.’

  ‘You never know who you’ll meet.’

  ‘I’m going to have a bath.’

  ‘I’ll call back in an hour.’ Victoria clicked off.

  As she replaced the receiver, she noticed the message sign flashing. She pressed down on the button.

  ‘Hey, Laura. How are ya?’ Edy again, this time full of forced cheerfulness. ‘I tried you on your cell but no answer. I hope you’re not ignoring me. Perhaps I was a bit too harsh earlier. I just wanted to say that despite our formal… how can I put it?… our formal disengagement, I’ll still be looking out for you. If the perfect part for Laura Scott lands on my desk, fuck Meryl and all your fancy shmanzy dames, I’ll give you a call. And next time you’re in the Big Apple, let’s do lunch. Yeah, let’s do that. I mean it… not just saying it. Love ya.’

  It was good to soak. She bathed in the Japanese way. She had a shower first, then when she was cleaned off, still warm and wet, she lay down in the tub, let the water fill and flow over her. No sense in lying in one’s own filth. What was the point of that?

  She stretched out one leg, let her toes play with the water spout. She had loved Japan. And Japan had loved her. Of course, the whole experience had been filtered through love-struck eyes. For that was where she had met Jack. One glorious month together there while they were filming the Tokyo scenes. And that month happened to be April too when the cherry trees were in full blossom, the flowers tinting their affair with a glorious soft-focus pink glow. Sipping sake in tiny late-night jazz bars in Shinjuku, a dawn visit to the fish market then sushi for breakfast, a rickety train ride through Kamakura to see the Big Buddha. Falling in love with your co-star. It was so hackneyed, so trite, such a Hollywood cliché. Yet, it made perfect sense really. In love on the screen, so why not in love in real life? Method acting is what Jack laughingly called their relationship. The movie had bombed at the box office. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps he had been acting all along.

  She sank deeper into the water, held her breath, pinched her nose, slid right down so that her face was covered. This was what it must feel like to be in the womb. Breathless, warm, liquid and silent. What a gift that would be, the ability to start one’s life over again. She eased herself back to the surface again, sucked in air. She thought of her earlier conversation with Victoria. She knew she hadn’t been entirely honest. Acting didn’t just give her life meaning. It gave her one other heady ingredient. Fame. Fame fed her ego. She loved that. To be treated kindly and with respect. To be noticed. She didn’t want that to fade away. To go back to the end of the queue, for the invitations to dry up, to be ignored, to be like everyone else. Victoria would never understand that. For Victoria didn’t need fame. Victoria didn’t crave the kindness, adulation and respect of others. Victoria with her happy childhood could never truly appreciate the value of fame. The compensation it provided fo
r a lack of parental love.

  She rose from the bath, dried herself off, wrapped herself in her Japanese robe (a present from Jack), sat down in front of the dressing table. She set up the three mirrors. She was so used to playing other parts, it was easy to forget who she really was. She closed her eyes, thought to herself – I am going to have an honest appraisal of myself – opened them again, stared at the facing mirror, then glanced to each of her profiles. Her hair was still thick, dyed to its original dark colour. Brown eyes, slightly too large, smudges of tiredness underneath, lines of age and experience at the corners. Nothing exceptional there. Her main disappointment was that she lacked strong cheekbones, there was always a certain puppy-fat roundness to her jawline, her mouth not as generous as she would have liked. More Judi Dench, less Helen Mirren. She could still put on that look though, she did it now, the dipping of her gaze, a slightly sardonic smile that somehow captured the audience’s attention, men and women alike. A sexual knowingness was how it had been described early on and she had perfected it. That look, that coquettishness, coupled with the softness of her features meant she had never been able to play the strong female roles but there was a charming authenticity about her. She should have been born French or a couple of decades earlier. She would have been ideal for Breathless, Blow Up, Billy Liar or one of Alfie’s girlfriends. Perhaps even a Bond girl.

  The phone started to ring again. Right on time. There was no way she was going to answer it. ‘Yes, yes, Victoria,’ she shouted as her outgoing message clicked on. ‘I am going to Caroline’s bloody party.’

  Chapter Six

  The Hepburn Archives

  Extract from an unpublished memoir

  My father, Captain Frank Hepburn, was killed on 1st July 1918, his plane shot down somewhere near Lens in France. One year previously he had been awarded the DSO for distinguished conduct under enemy fire during an aerial engagement over Arras. He was one of the oldest fighter pilots in the Royal Flying Corps with fifteen claimed victories. If he could have stayed out of trouble for just four more months, the war would have ended, and my father could have come home. Instead, his body was never recovered and only his name is commemorated on a memorial wall in the Faubourg-d’Amiens cemetery in Arras in northern France. I once visited the site when I was a middle-aged woman, touched my fingers to his name among the almost 35,000 other names inscribed there. The sense of the ghosts of wasted lives emanating from that place was overwhelming.