The air had become hotter and heavier in the blazing sun by the time that Annabel hurried down the zigzagging stone staircase that led to the pool and the sea cove.
The magnificent Olympic-size pool was the pride of the Grand Hotel. It was built into a rocky ledge overlooking the brilliant Mediterranean, and on another ledge below, there were white tents that served as private cabanas. There a narrow flight of stone stairs led to the coastal path and a small swimming cove, where the sea lapped invitingly and one could swim in the company of tiny bright orange-and-blue fish that darted in and out as the waves carried them back and forth. Beyond the cove, the wider sea was dotted with the white sails of yachts gliding slowly and majestically, adding to the billowy, meditative atmosphere.
Most guests lounged by the big pool, called la Piscine des Sirènes, which was made with exquisite violet-blue tiles and sparkled in the sunlight. It was constantly replenished with seawater that came via underground tanks that filtered it. There was a high diving board and a lower one. In the center of the pool, at the very bottom, was a lovely mosaic image of a mermaid or sirène, the logo for this beach “club” area.
Annabel loved this spot; a person could just spend the whole day here quietly watching the sun—it would rise softly to your left and then traipse giddily across the blue sea until finally it set on your right in a blaze of tangerine-colored glory.
But today, the scene here was wildly, frantically busy. As she donned an apron to help serve the new guests, Annabel immediately saw that while a few people were in the pool cavorting like children, showing off on diving boards, or gleefully dunking one another, many of the Hollywood people, camped out in the luxurious poolside sunbeds, appeared to be conducting meetings and behaving as if they were still in Los Angeles, impervious to the new scenery and the natural serenity of this place. And all of these newcomers wore enormous dark sunglasses. The regular guests who summered every year on the Riviera found the Hollywood crowd amusing. But the polite French staff had their hands full.
Yves, the pool director, muscular and suntanned from working outdoors, and wearing a white uniform, trotted about supervising the young lifeguards and poolside staff.
He nodded gratefully to Annabel, saying, “You are a lifesaver! A lot of these movie people don’t speak French; they make hand gestures at the waiters or point at the coffee or champagne they want. They will be happy to hear you speak English!”
Carefully balancing her tray, Annabel approached a tall, lean, handsome man who appeared to be in his late thirties, ensconced in a corner chair next to a shorter, bald man. They ordered coffee, and when she set each cup down on the small table between the two men, she couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.
The tall, handsome one said in an aggrieved but laconic way, “Look, you’re my agent and you’re the one who said I should be more careful about the projects I take.”
The bald man was perspiring, even in the shade of the parasol. “But for Chrissake, if Selznick ever again tells you he’s bought the rights to a bestseller and wants you for the lead, you should tell me about it before you say no.”
“Aw, I never read the tomfool book! He said it was about a Civil War rogue in Atlanta who makes ladies swoon—all I could think was, can you imagine me playing a lover boy from the South? Mister, my fans would laugh themselves silly and choke on their popcorn.”
“Okay, then! You dodged a bullet,” the bald man said unconvincingly.
“Oh, sure! Now all the gossips are saying Gary Cooper thought he was too good to play Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.”
Annabel gasped at the star’s name, realizing why she’d been mesmerized by the unusual cadence of the actor’s voice. He heard her and looked up sharply; then he grinned and said conspiratorially, “Keep it on the QT, huh, baby?”
She nodded shyly, feeling as if she’d just had some magic stardust sprinkled into her life. As she turned away, she heard the agent say, “Was I supposed to tip that girl for the drinks? This could really add up around here.”
Annabel selected an iced tea from her tray to serve to a tiny, heavily perfumed blond woman who had a sunbed on the other side of Gary Cooper.
The lady had risen momentarily to rummage through her big beach bag for a sheaf of papers, and then she sat down again. She looked to be in her mid-forties and was barely five feet tall. She had a highly sexualized aura, with pert lips, round pillowy cheeks and bosom, and a bit of a belly, making her look like a child’s favorite soft doll.
She’d been shamelessly eavesdropping from under her floppy wide-brimmed cloth flowered hat. Now she pushed her sunglasses down her pert nose and leaned over to eye Mr. Cooper as she said, “Honey, join the club! I lost the role of the whorehouse madam in that blasted Big Wind of a picture, just because I wanted to rewrite the script a little. I always work on my own scripts. I would have been a divine Belle Watling!”
Gary Cooper grinned and said, “Is that so, Mae? Then welcome to the Anti–Gone with the Wind Society.” He held up his cup as if to toast her.
With her free hand, the sassy Mae West raised her glass to salute him, gave him a wink with the longest false eyelashes that Annabel had ever seen, and then declared peevishly, “So now they’re calling me ‘box office poison.’ But I’ve got another little rabbit I can pull out of my hat!” She waved the script she’d been making notes on, flopping its pages airily. “Naturally I had to write most of it. It’s called My Little Chickadee.”
“Farm story?” Gary Cooper asked.
She shook her head. “Western. With W. C. Fields! He keeps trying to rewrite our scenes. I can’t abide that fat little drunk! Oh well, here’s to the Box Office Poison Club.”
Mr. Cooper laughed, then turned his attention back to his agent.
Miss West glanced up at a glamorously suntanned female who was settling into the sunbed on the other side of her. As the stunning newcomer took her seat, she said in a German-accented voice, “Did I hear you say ‘box office poison’? They called me that, too!”
This woman was in her mid-thirties, slender, golden haired, and so deeply suntanned that she seemed like a bronzed statue—behind sunglasses with round, shocking pink frames. Annabel waited politely to see if she wanted to order something.
Miss West leaned forward and said, “Well, if it isn’t my old pal from Paramount! My, what a gorgeous suntan! What’s your secret, honey?”
The slender lady slipped a hand into her straw tote bag and pulled out a small dark vial with a handwritten label on it. “It’s my own special recipe for suntan oil. Want to try it?”
“What’s in it?” Mae West asked, accepting the vial and sniffing it.
“Olive oil, iodine, and red-wine vinegar,” the German actress said, in the tone of a hausfrau proud of her recipe.
“If it’s good enough for Marlene Dietrich, it’s good enough for me,” Miss West said stoutly, but she didn’t use any before she handed it back.
“Gary, darling!” Marlene said rapturously, and she blew a kiss at Gary Cooper.
Although deeply immersed in a quieter chat with his agent, Mr. Cooper looked up briefly to smile and say appreciatively, “Lookin’ good, Marlene!” and Annabel recalled steamy, sexy screen chemistry between these two stars in movies called Morocco and Desire.
“Iced coffee, darling,” Miss Dietrich said to Annabel.
Mae West said mischievously, “What’s your beau drinking, Marlene?” as she gazed at a gentleman heading toward them; he’d apparently arrived at the pool with Miss Dietrich but paused numerous times to shake hands with people along the way. He seemed at least ten years older than she was; he had a high forehead, a receding hairline, and wire-rimmed spectacles.
As he drew closer, Annabel recognized him as the American ambassador to England, Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of the family whom she’d seen just this morning on the breakfast terrace chatting with the tennis player.
While he was still out of earshot, Mae West murmured, “Hmm, don’t know how you do it, honey, juggling your days with him”—she nodded toward Mr. Kennedy—“and your nights with the divine Erich Maria Remarque. Yet you don’t look the least bit exhausted!”
Marlene looked momentarily startled, then said casually, “Oh, I take my vitamins.”
Mr. Kennedy had reached them now and settled into the other chair next to Marlene. He gave Annabel a quick glance and said, “Coffee.”
Annabel went to get their order, but she couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy for Kennedy’s wife, Rose, who apparently chose to focus her attention on her children, ignoring her husband’s notorious flirtations with glamorous Hollywood actresses.
When Annabel returned with their drinks, Miss Dietrich was saying to Mr. Kennedy in her low, sexy voice, “Papa Joe, I’m worried about this ridiculous movie that they want me to do. What a strange title, Destry Rides Again. Does anyone really think I should play a dancing girl in an American western?”
“Absolutely,” Mr. Kennedy said firmly. “I just got off that transatlantic call I made to check it out for you. They’ve got a good script, and a great song for you to sing. And the hero will be played by a very up-and-coming young man called Jimmy Stewart.”
“That tall beanpole with a baby face?” Miss Dietrich said skeptically.
“Sure, sure. They say he’s really got ‘it’ and he’ll go far.” He lowered his voice to add, “The studio expects him to be the next Gary Cooper!”
“Aw, go on, do it, honey!” Mae West, with the ears of a cat, broke in enthusiastically. “At the very least, if you play an all-American saloon gal in an all-American western, it’ll really upset the Nazis, and I’ll bet Herr Hitler himself will get his knickers in a twist.”
“Good!” Miss Dietrich said with feeling. “Then I’ll do it!”
But suddenly everyone stopped chattering, as a strapping young man climbed up to the high diving board. Annabel recognized the tennis player she’d just seen this morning, Hans von Erhardt, looking like the epitome of robust youth, health, and vigor, with his sleek tanned skin, his well-toned body, and his butter-colored hair gleaming in the sunlight.
“A definite Apollo,” Mae West cooed, watching for his dive.
He raised his arms, bounced lightly, rose up, and for a moment seemed to float halfway between the sea and sky as he neatly folded and unfolded in a perfect dive, slicing cleanly through the dappled pool waters, surfacing to a burst of tremendous applause.
There was a collective sigh from the other side of the pool, where several German, Austrian, and American families had assembled in a shady section near the shallower end. One plump lady was hanging her family’s wet beach towels on the beautiful stone railings in her section, unaware of the horrified looks of the French guests who would never be so gauche as to create a laundry line to obscure the beauty and symmetry of their surroundings.
But the plump lady, still holding a towel, suddenly stopped, utterly transfixed with admiration for the blond diver; then she said something quite loudly to her friend in German.
“What’d that fat lady just say?” Kennedy asked his companion.
Marlene Dietrich snorted. “She called that lovely young man ‘Nietzsche’s blond beast,’ you know—the great Teutonic aristocratic hero, filled with the ruthless vitality of the victorious life force.” Her tone was sarcastic and ominous.
There was a chilly silence, even in the heat of the August sun. Then Mae West broke the tension by tossing her head and saying jokingly, “Well, if I have to choose between two evils, I always pick the one I’ve never tried before.”
* * *
Precisely at twelve thirty every day, lunch was served both on the hotel terrace and at the poolside restaurant, where guests moved to grab the best dining tables beneath big white awnings that flapped gently in the breeze like the sails of a yacht.
Annabel was glad to see the waitresses who arrived to replace her, and she went up to the hotel kitchen to have a quick lunch. There she learned that the neighborhood lady who usually tended to Oncle JP’s granddaughter had broken a tooth and gone to see a dentist today, so she’d dropped off Delphine at the hotel. This was why Oncle JP had asked Annabel to look in on the girl.
“Bonjour, Annabel, ça va?” Delphine exclaimed. She was eight years old, capable of waiting patiently for her grandfather in his office after her lunch, playing with a coloring book. Her previous bout of polio made it hard for her to walk; she had to laboriously drag her right leg. So on busy days like this she was usually just parked in a wheelchair in a corner.
“It’s a wild day, lots of new guests,” Annabel answered. Her heart ached for the girl, who was very pretty: Her pale skin was as fine and creamy as a china doll, her eyes wide and dark, and she had a little button nose. Her hair was a soft brown that naturally fell in such pretty curls that it fascinated people who passed by.
But Delphine had the sorrowful aura of a child who had been forced to spend most of her time in solitude, away from the more raucous play of the other children. When Annabel had first arrived in France and bent down to kiss her cousin, little Delphine gave her such a big, childlike hug that Annabel instantly loved her and soon became a kind of tutor to the girl, wheeling her around and teaching her the English words for the things she pointed to.
“Can we go see the fountain?” Delphine asked eagerly.
Annabel hesitated. The fountain was in a section meant for the guests to enjoy, not the staff. But most people, distracted by the pool, tennis, and croquet, seldom noticed that quiet corner. At this hour it was probably empty. Delphine liked to see the exotic fish there.
“Sure.” Annabel pushed the chair in that direction, and at Delphine’s urging, Annabel softly sang a little French children’s song that her own father had taught her. Inside the garden they felt a change in the air because of cool water droplets carried on a breeze from the fountain’s meditative splashing arcs.
Annabel stopped the chair, and Delphine did what she always did here, out of view of the rest of the world: she used the rim of the fountain to help hoist herself to a standing position, and then, leaning carefully on it, she took the difficult, halting steps that she was capable of, moving around the circular fountain while still holding the rim.
“See? I’m doing it!” Delphine said excitedly as she struggled to the spot on the fountain where the stone frog was poised, spouting water out of his mouth. Delphine giggled with delight as she held out her hand to catch the cool stream from the frog’s mouth.
“I should take you swimming someday!” Annabel said softly. “We’ll go down to the cove early in the morning, when nobody else is around to get in our way.”
“Then I can swim with pretty little fish like these?” Delphine said enthusiastically, and leaned forward to murmur her greetings to the pretty decorative fish that darted in the fountain’s waters and came close to her hand, as if they were listening to her friendly tone.
But Annabel heard other voices approaching, and she said, “Delphine, we must go.”
The little girl sighed, then obediently used the fountain’s edge to turn herself in Annabel’s direction so that she could go back to her wheelchair. But as she determinedly hobbled around the fountain, a group of guests emerged at the far end of the path.
Annabel recognized Hans the tennis player and his unpleasant-looking coach. They were walking with a film executive called Herr Volney who’d come here only a few days ago and whom she remembered because of his bushy blond eyebrows and his rather elaborate nautical outfit, replete with gold-trimmed navy blazer, white flannels, and a captain’s cap; for he owned a large three-masted schooner with an imposing dark-green hull. Herr Volney had caused quite a stir with the regular poolside crowd when his yacht first sailed into view and anchored out in the sea, in full showy position, while a member of his crew rowed him ashore so that he could lunch with one of the hotel’s guests. Apparently he’d been invited back today.
Now these three men were deeply engrossed in a conversation in German that had clearly turned into an argument, and the coach appeared worried and glum. Hans, looking particularly angry, turned abruptly away from the others, stalking defiantly ahead.
He was still scowling, but his expression changed quickly when he saw Annabel and Delphine, and he smiled gently. But as the other men caught up with Hans, they abruptly stopped talking and they stared, first to give Annabel a curt nod, then to observe Delphine.
A surly frown crossed Herr Volney’s face; he was finishing a cigar, and he tossed the butt of it into the fountain, in the very spot where the little girl was, at the fountain’s edge.
Delphine, still concentrating on laboriously dragging her leg, was startled by the nearby splash, and she looked up, frightened by the man’s malicious intent. Her lower lip trembled. She was now close enough to Annabel that she could reach for her outstretched hand.
As the men walked on, Herr Volney said scornfully, “Schwache Kreatur!”
The force of this harsh, hostile utterance made Delphine jump involuntarily and then stumble self-consciously into her wheelchair’s seat. Herr Volney guffawed as if vindicated.
But Hans gallantly paused to take Delphine’s hand and briefly bow over it, saying in all sincerity, “Bonjour, petite princesse.” Then he reached into the fountain to fish out Herr Volney’s cigar butt and toss it away under the shrubs before walking off in the opposite direction of the other men.
As Annabel wheeled her cousin back to the hotel, Delphine whispered fearfully, “What did that nasty man say about me?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Annabel lied. Unfortunately she’d heard this expression before and knew that it meant feeble creature. Some people in Europe and even in America espoused a so-called medical theory known as eugenics, which essentially advocated the extinction of any human being who was less than perfect.
Annabel suddenly thought of the Hollywood diets that she’d discussed with Oncle JP. Where did the modern quest for perfection end? How could you condemn a person for the things about themselves that they couldn’t possibly change: their handicaps, their race?
She felt a fierce, protective instinct sweep over her. “Some hotel guests are just cranky, Delphine, even here in a paradise like this!”
“It’s these bad times that makes people cross, isn’t it?” Delphine quavered. “That’s what the lady next door who looks after me told Grandpapa.”
“Never mind. Maybe tomorrow we’ll go for our swim,” Annabel promised, hoping to distract her.
Delphine smiled brightly, making an effort to be brave, as Annabel steered her back to the hotel, where the girl would wait in Oncle JP’s office, quietly returning to her coloring book until it was time to go home.
Annabel wished she could stay a bit longer, but she was due to go and meet the actor, Jack Cabot. So she kissed the little girl and then hurried off to her next assignment.