If you didn’t know that there were two cottages on the grounds of the Grand Hotel, you would never find them on your own. Beyond the fragrant gardens, hidden in the tall pine hedges, was a high, locked wooden gate that opened onto a winding, secretive pebbled path flanked by even taller hedges of flowering shrubs and pine.
Annabel reached for the key in her pocket and opened the gate before locking it again behind her. She heard the cries of bossy birds nesting in the hedges, who flitted overhead in alarm at her presence and called out warnings to one another. A small frog hopped worriedly across the path ahead of her feet. Deep in the shade of the pines, a scops owl emitted its wistful call.
She followed the pebbled path, which branched into two forks, both walled by hedges. The right fork led to the larger cottage, whose gardens descended down to the sea.
It was called la Villa Sanctuaire. This, she knew, was where the actor, Jack Cabot, was staying and where she would report for duty in the afternoon. The villa was ringed by a white fence and climbing fuchsia-colored roses. There was a private pool and garden, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a tiny servant’s room off the kitchen, and a parking area behind the building.
The blue-tiled pool sparkled invitingly in the morning sun, but it lay still. The shutters were closed upon the villa windows, and nothing stirred.
“Maybe he’s sleeping. Well, Mr. Cabot has had a long journey,” Annabel told herself.
She turned down the left fork of the pebbled path, which was narrower and led to the Jasmine Cottage. It had a white gate with two stone urns on each side spilling over with flowering jasmine, their pale-yellow-and-white flowers trumpeting a mysterious scent. A tiny patio on the side was flanked by trellises covered with more jasmine and small pale-pink roses. The cottage had only one bedroom, a small kitchen, a study, a little parlor, and one full bath. No pool, and you had to walk farther down the path to get a look at the sea. So it was easy to see that successful actors were considered far more important than screenwriters.
But Annabel actually preferred this Jasmine Cottage, so endearingly tucked into its private clearing, sheltered cozily by pine hedges at the rear. It seemed like an enchanted hermit’s or lovers’ cottage that, in movies, inspired a sigh from the enthralled audience.
She reached the front door, and when she knocked, it swung open, since it had been left slightly ajar.
“Hello?” she called out tentatively. Maybe he’d gone to get some breakfast or take a swim. She felt uneasy about this idea of working for a “dipsomaniac,” as Sonny had so inelegantly put it. It was no joke to deal with an alcoholic.
She stood hesitantly in a quiet little parlor, which was really more of an anteroom, with an open archway to the adjoining study. Immediately she noticed that the typewriter, sent down here by Oncle JP, was sitting on a small typing table in a windowed alcove of the study, with a chair pulled up to it and a fresh sheaf of paper alongside it.
There was also a larger, more formal desk, heaped with a scattering of books and papers. Annabel remembered Sonny’s instructions about what the screenwriter wanted from her: He says he’ll lay it out for you on his desk. Look over his correspondence and his calendar, too.
A bit uncertainly, she advanced to the big desk to see if he’d left instructions for her.
The screenwriter had evidently been at work already, for there were piles of opened letters, stacked beside an opened ledger. Some letters were marked File: final; others were labeled Reply required.
The nearby ledger had scrupulous notations with amounts and dates of installment payments made for bills and loans, showing any balance still due. There was a loan from “Agent,” with interest, recently paid off. There were overdue hospital bills, from New York, California, and North Carolina. Someone had had to have an appendectomy. Someone else had a bad lung. Another bill was for a stay in a “rest” asylum.
“I hope he doesn’t expect me to do bookkeeping,” she said under her breath, for she’d had no experience of keeping ledgers.
Her gaze returned to the letters. Many bore the logos of well-known American magazines—Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Esquire—and one glance made it clear that these were what writers called “rejection slips,” citing reasons such as The ending could be difficult for us, our readers prefer happy endings, and This story, while good, lacks the warmth of the author’s best work, or simply I wish the character was more likable, and finally, It doesn’t have the incandescent quality we’d hoped for.
“Whew!” Annabel murmured. She knew the joke that every waiter in Hollywood was writing a screenplay and every screenwriter was writing a novel. This guy was clearly “moonlighting” from his script work by writing short stories—and he was getting kicked around, but judging from his meticulous records, he refused to give up.
Finally she spotted a stack of typed pages with handwritten changes on them, topped by a longhand note on a sheet of Grand Hotel stationery: Type today. Good for Collier’s.
“These must be my instructions,” she sighed, relieved. She estimated that this manuscript was just over thirty pages long. It wasn’t in script format, so it must be a treatment.
She carried it to the little typing area, sat down, put a sheet of clean paper into the typewriter, and glanced at the title of the manuscript, handwritten all in capital letters: THE WOMEN IN THE HOUSE. But then he’d crossed that out and put in a new one: TEMPERATURE. The author line said by John Darcy.
The handwriting wasn’t as bad as Sonny had made it sound; she’d seen worse. The writer was clearly an educated man, but there were occasional misspellings, as if he had been in a great hurry and couldn’t be bothered. She began to retype it with the changes.
She could not help becoming engrossed in the story, chuckling at certain satiric lines. It was about a scriptwriter with a fever, living in a bungalow on a movie star’s estate and wanting to rekindle his love affair with an actress. But he was also attracted to a new secretary. However, a medical lab had mixed up the scriptwriter’s electrocardiograph with that of another patient who had a fatal heart condition . . .
Annabel’s typing speed usually depended on whether the material bored her or not. Invoices, sales reports, and memos could be deadly slow going. But she was very fast when the material was good. And this one was fun. She typed away.
“Hey, what are you doing there?” came a sharp male voice.
A man stood in the doorway between the study and the bedroom. He was dressed in a rumpled bathrobe he’d thrown over a shirt and pants. He was slender, with golden-brown hair touched by some strands of grey. His hair was askew and his face looked bewildered, as if he’d perhaps dozed off and then just woke up.
He was holding a cigarette in one hand and a stub of a pencil in the other. He stared at her with alert, bright eyes that seemed not entirely blue, not entirely grey, and not entirely green. He looked to be in his early forties, but he was so pale that he seemed almost ghostlike. There was a slight sheen of perspiration across his face.
Annabel stammered, “I’m your typist. Mr. Sonny Stanten said to come here in the mornings.”
“Yeah, he told me,” the man said ruefully. “You’re here to make sure I produce pages for him. He doesn’t believe that writers are working unless he hears the clickety-clack of the typewriter keys. No use telling him I get all my best ideas in the bathtub.”
Then he saw that she’d started on the manuscript, and his eyes narrowed. “Oh!” he said with some alarm. “Did Sonny also ask you to spy on me, or are you playing house detective on your own?” he asked warily, drawing nearer to see which papers she was working on.
Annabel blushed, since Sonny had asked her to be a snoop, though she truly hadn’t meant to do so. She said defiantly, “I am not one of Sonny’s—employees. I work for the Grand Hotel. I’m supposed to type your correspondence and your rewrites. He said you said it would all be waiting for me on your desk.”
“Ah!” The man relaxed a little. “I said I would leave it all on your desk. Not mine,” he corrected. “My fault. I forgot to put the damned script there for you. C’mon.”
He returned to the bedroom. Annabel rose uncertainly and advanced only far enough to watch from the threshold. The man stooped to pick up pages of lined paper littered on the floor around the bed. He’d evidently had a pot of coffee sent in, for the pot, cup and saucer, spoon, sugar, and milk lay crowded on the nightstand.
But the wooden tray, with which the waiter would have carried it in, had been put on the bed and pressed into service as a lap desk, judging from what was on it: a pad of lined paper, an ashtray and cigarettes and matches, a scattering of stubby pencils, and a pencil sharpener. He’d moved a lamp closer to the bedside table, too. Clearly he’d been at work from the moment he got here—possibly even on the train ride over, too, judging from the many pages he’d produced. Strange that he was working in bed, like an invalid, instead of at a desk.
She observed that there was no sign of the drinker about him: no bottles, no smell of alcohol. He was sober and clear eyed, so perhaps he truly was “on the wagon.” He continued to search the bedroom until he finally found what he was looking for and waved it aloft; yes, a script, for its pages were fixed together with familiar-looking fasteners.
While she waited, Annabel could not help noticing that the man’s luggage was laid out on chairs in the bedroom, wide open, as if he hadn’t even fully unpacked yet, except for one battered suit and a rumpled raincoat hanging in the dressing room alcove, with a pair of polished shoes lined up neatly below. And there was a single hat perched on the shelf above.
“Do you need some help unpacking? I can call a valet,” she asked, politely and automatically. All guests were offered this service.
He shook his head ruefully. “Fortunately,” he said in a wry tone, “I travel light.”
He handed her the script. He’d made penciled revisions on these typed pages, too. Sometimes he’d crossed out a whole page and stuck a handwritten one over it.
“I hope you can read my scribbling. If you can’t, just make up a good line. This movie will never get made, no matter what I or anyone else do to it. I always feel sorry for the guy whose script I’m rewriting, but this one’s impossible. It’s got a role for a female swimmer who sings. Never met one who could do both. But Sonny’s got her under contract.”
He was frank and friendly, with a smile that made his whole face glow with life. Yet he had a delicate quality; there were shadows under his eyes, and that sheen on his pale skin, and an occasional cough that followed a spell of talking. His clothes looked slightly too big for him, especially around the neck and shoulders—perhaps indicating a man who’d been ill. That could explain why he was working in bed. She remembered those medical bills she’d just seen.
“I recently finished up an assignment for MGM—Madame Curie for Greta Garbo,” he said, as if to assure her that he’d had better projects. “But in the end they shelved the whole thing. ‘Too much science, not enough romance.’ Then Alfred Hitchcock wanted me to adapt Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca. But I was in the hospital with a lung cavity at the time.”
She glanced up quickly. So he had been seriously ill, and quite recently.
He looked at her more keenly, his face alight with curiosity. “I suppose I should interview you before we officially commit to working together, right?” he said with a teasing grin, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray and following her back into the study. “Say, what’s your name?”
She told him, and he repeated rather indifferently, “Annabel. That’s my sister’s name. I tried to make her into a successful femme fatale, but some women just aren’t meant to be vamps. You sound American.”
“I am,” she answered.
“You go to school?”
She hesitated. “I did,” she hedged.
“Where?”
“Vassar.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, more interested now. “My daughter goes there. I worry that she’ll just get swept up in the parties and neglect her studies. When did you graduate?”
“I—my father died, so—I had to leave early,” she said, awaiting the dismissive response most people gave her for this failure.
“Oh, too bad. Well, I quit college early, too,” he said conspiratorially. “Princeton. Just as well. Some of those Ivy League professors were born just to bore students to death and kill all your desire to learn. What did you study?”
“Poetry,” Annabel confessed.
“Really? Do you write poetry? I did, too!” He stared at her with a strange fascination, as if he’d just found out that they had the same astrological sign. She suddenly suspected that this screenwriter was deliberately trying to “draw her out.”
“Who are your favorite poets and authors?” he asked in a teacherly tone, sitting down on the arm of a sofa.
“Emily Dickinson,” she said; then, wanting to get this inquiry over with as quickly as possible, she added, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Robert Browning. Keats. Longfellow. T. S. Eliot.” She hoped that would satisfy him. You weren’t really supposed to chat with the guests beyond certain polite formalities.
He told her a few scholarly anecdotes about each poet’s life, then gestured at the papers on his desk and said ruefully, “I wanted to be a poet, but here I am writing for Hollywood and the slick magazines! All they want from me are cute stories about spirited young girls. I think it’s creepy for men my age to do that. Read any good novels about girls lately?”
“Well, I used to read Louisa May Alcott when I was younger.”
He surprised her by saying, “Me too. Read that over and over as a kid. Who else? And please don’t say Jane Austen. College girls always say Jane Austen.”
“Actually, I liked Charlotte Brontë better,” she admitted. “Villette made me cry.”
“Good! How about a more contemporary author?”
“Well—I loved The Great Gatsby,” she ventured shyly.
He looked surprised. “Really? Most girls never read it. That wasn’t exactly women’s fiction. And women, I’m told, are the ones who ‘make’ a book a bestseller. Or not.”
Annabel was hovering over the little typing table, waiting a bit uncertainly.
“Let’s make a schedule,” he said enthusiastically. “I’m good at lists and schedules. I compose in longhand. Every night, I’ll leave the day’s assignment on your desk. Then you come in just as you did today, and when you leave, drop it on my desk. I’ll go over it once more and make any final changes to be retyped the next day. How’s that sound?”
Annabel smiled. There was something touching about him; he seemed a bit lonely and yet rather formal in an old-fashioned, gallant sort of way.
“Fine,” she said. “But I must be done by noon each day. I am working for someone else in the afternoons.”
“Who?” he asked, alert. “Another screenwriter?”
“No, an actor.”
“Which one?”
“Jack Cabot.”
“Ah!” he said. “Jack is destined to be a big star—if he can just get Sonny out of his way.”
There it was again: that odd bit of tension around the name of Jack Cabot. Annabel could not help saying, “Sonny seems bothered by Mr. Cabot; why is that?”
The screenwriter nodded. “You figured that out already? Well, some men are just born to annoy each other. Sonny never really knew what to do with Jack Cabot. They put him in westerns, but he was too debonair for that. They put him in romantic comedies, but he’s not wacky enough. Then they tried him out in gangster pictures. Those weren’t bad, but now Jack knows he can do real drama.”
“Yes,” Annabel ventured. “Mr. Cabot’s performances are so—intelligent, so passionate.”
“Yeah, well, Sonny likes the sex appeal but hates the intelligence. He just wants another contract player to move around on his checkerboard with whatever leading lady du jour.”
“But he’s as good as Cary Grant and Clark Gable,” Annabel said stoutly.
“Great! We want lots of women to think as you do. Because Jack and Téa Marlo just made a new movie based on one of my scripts. It’s called Love Isn’t Easy.”
Annabel nodded, recalling the studio men’s discussion.
The screenwriter’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Sonny mentioned it. Sounds like fun,” she said diplomatically.
“Well,” he sighed, “we rewrote the hell out of it, and they changed the whole ending. But maybe this time I’ll get a screen credit—and better pay! They’re going to show our movie at a party at this hotel. I’ve seen some of the rushes. Jack looks terrific; so does the girl.”
“I can’t wait to see him—I mean, in the movie,” Annabel said, feeling embarrassed that she had just revealed a desire she herself hadn’t been fully aware of until now.
“I suppose you’ll fall in love with him, and that will be the end of my secretary,” he said, as if he were already imagining the plot of a movie. “Well, don’t elope with that guy till the Cannes Film Festival’s over! That’s how long my contract is. Depending on how fast you type, I bet we can get a lot done.” His face was radiant with visions of great success.
But this burst of enthusiasm must have used up some of his strength, because he swayed slightly now. He sighed. “What do people do around this hotel for exercise?” he asked. “I’m supposed to ‘build up my strength’ while I’m here. Is there a tennis court?”
“Yes. Also, there is croquet. And a big, lovely swimming pool,” she said, reverting to a more formal, hotel-hospitality mode. “And of course you can swim in the sea, although this time of year you must look out for the méduse. Jellyfish,” she translated at his blank look.
It occurred to her that he looked too feverish for any of these vigorous activities.
He was watching her face alertly and now asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Just—just that it gets very hot at midday, and it’s better to swim or play in the early morning or late afternoon,” she offered lamely.
“You’re a terrible liar. Best not to attempt it,” he advised. “Lying doesn’t come naturally to you, so it shows. You’ve got an open, honest face; that’s why it’s easy to talk to you.”
Other people had told her this at the secretarial agency; it caused them to confide in her in a way they wouldn’t with others. Even strangers on the train, and on the boat ride to Europe, had told her their life stories. It made her feel naive sometimes; as if she were a girl who could pose no danger or threat to anybody.
She took her seat at the typewriter, then hesitated.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She was holding the screenplay but gazing at the page in the typewriter. “Should I finish the changes on this story first? I started them because I thought that note was for me.”
He regarded her appraisingly again. “Sure—if you don’t tell Sonny, and you don’t mind doing a little moonlighting? I can’t pay much for it, just a bit extra. But I’d sure like to get this short story out in the mail pouch today. The screenplay rewrites can wait until tomorrow.”
“Certainly,” she said. “I can do this quickly.”
“Okay, Annabel. When you’re done, just let yourself out,” he said over his shoulder as he retreated to his bedroom to work. “À bientôt.”
Annabel smiled. “You speak French?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. But I’ve been to the French Riviera before. In happier times.”