CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
1975-76

Meanwhile, on many jaunts to Los Angeles to find distribution, Paul had been in the habit of visiting Geneviève in Malibu to see his son, now six years old. The couple had been granted a divorce decree nisi on June 10th, 1975, but continued to be friends, of a sort.

At the end of August 1975, Geneviève was carrying on with Cary, a handsome, well-built young surfer of nineteen. He was now off to study in Italy so his best friend Trey was giving him a going-away party. “You gotta come, Dad,” a precocious Matthew said, “lotsa chicks there for you.”

With the hot sun shining as it always does in Malibu, Matthew took his daddy by the hand and led him down the beach and up onto a bulkhead. Paul stared. The patio was filled with beautiful teens, lusty young surfers mingling with girls in bikinis. What delight!

Paul, at forty-five, was ignored, so he threaded through into the house. Such a comfortable home! Attracted by aromas, he headed for the kitchen and saw, stirring a huge pot of spaghetti, a small, athletic woman, Trey’s mother, Joan, A former model and surfer with short auburn hair and big brown eyes full of wisdom, she easily matched any beauty in her patio.

Well trained in giving parties, Paul pitched in to help. “Where is your husband this fine day? Shouldn’t he be doing this, too?”

Joan hesitated. “He died in an accident on the highway six years ago.”

“Oh, how awful!”

“I’ve been working in my darkroom all summer...” — why Paul had not seen her on his beach walks. “But Trey persuaded me to get out and give Cary a party.”

“You’re a photographer?”

She nodded. “I’m helping our local newspaper, the Surfside News. Meeting deadlines helps me learn more about photography. But what are you doing here?”

“Right now, just trying to get another film on. I used to be a poet at Oxford, but got sidetracked into doing a bit of directing on television, and then sidetracked even more by making motion pictures. I’m Matthew’s daddy.”

“And who is Matthew?”

“That little six-year-old out in the patio. His mother... well, she is... with the surfer you’re giving this party for.”

Joan looked at him with understanding eyes. “Your ex-wife? Carrying on with Trey’s friend Cary?”

Paul nodded. “A lot of fun...”

She gave the hint of a smile. So she did grasp his torment. “And what about your wife? Doesn’t she mind?”

“I don’t have a wife. Or even a girlfriend.” He decided to milk it a bit. “You see, I’m a failed filmmaker, a failed writer, and a failed producer.”

“All three?” She grinned. “Good for you.”

Paul stayed in Los Angeles with his friend Douglas Campbell until after Labour Day. So once again, Matthew took him to the annual children’s party Joan was organizing on the beach. By the bonfires blazing in front of her house, children were feasting on hamburgers, hot dogs, and spicy Mexican food. Paul came to sit with his son. A little later Joan joined them.

“Don’t tell me you did all this?”

“Oh no.” She gestured to her teahouse full of mothers and housekeepers. “But I usually organize this Labour Day party. Ever since my kids were little.”

“Cary’s friend Trey, is he your eldest?”

“Yes. Tracy over there...”

“That pretty girl?”

“She’s eighteen and starting university next month. Then comes Timmy, the blond surfer, such a young devil, and that one with dark hair, he’s Chris, sort of a genius, I think, at thirteen.”

“Four children? Raising them all by yourself? Amazing! Geneviève split with my son when he was about two. Our divorce came through last July. But I still visit him here, of course.”

Joan nodded, her eyes reflecting her concern. She knew how much it probably hurt. “I send the boys to boarding school. With all the drugs in Malibu, raising kids can often be a nightmare.”

They spent the evening chatting over the bonfires. Then he walked slowly back to his bedroom at Geneviève’s with its thin walls next to the master bedroom, where his ex-wife was giving a rather boisterous farewell to her surfer.

***

In his usual frantic fashion, Paul rushed off to Europe again, stitching together co-productions, losing them, finding actors, losing them too, and finally returned to Los Angeles to see Matt and possibly put together what he thought might be the final financing. Sam Arkov, who ran the famous AIP, purveyor of B movies, had a wife from Winnipeg, and was interested. Also a sleazy lawyer from Cleveland. So doors were opening.

On Hallowe’en in the Colony, Paul took his son trick-or-treating. When they got to Joan’s, she answered the door. Paul looked in and frowned. “Where is everybody?”

“Everybody? I’m alone.” She paused. “Disappointed?”

“Of course not. But I’ve only ever seen you in a crowd.”

Joan deposited some candy in Matthew’s little sack, and went to close the door.

“Wait a minute! Er... would it be all right if I came back after Matthew’s in bed? Just for a quick drink?”

After a pause she said, “I suppose so,” and shut the door.

Later, Paul walked from #97 down to Joan’s at #54, and was invited in. They sat in comfy chairs on opposite sides of the fireplace. Joan had poured herself more white wine and made Paul a stiff gin and tonic.

Paul told Joan how his two friends, Michel Brault and Robin Spry, had won some Canadian Film Awards three weeks before with Les Ordres, and The October Crisis, both about the War Measures Act. He told his own story of the trade commissioner’s kidnapping on Redpath Crescent.

“What film are you trying to get made?”

He thought for a moment, and began to tell her. And then an idea grew in his mind.

***

Christmas approached, but now Paul dreaded the season. Dutifully, he flew from Montreal to Los Angeles to be with Matthew. He ate Geneviève’s celebration dinner with their son on Christmas Eve, a French Canadian tradition. So Christmas day, Paul was free to spend with Joan and her family. All autumn he had longed to see her. In Paris when searching for finance, he would hold on to any five-franc piece and at the one public telephone on the Champs Elysées that allowed long distance, he’d talk to her for three precious minutes. These calls sustained him while he hustled here and there, arranging meetings, giving out scripts, all in abject frenzy.

A family Christmas with Joan and her children was a delight he had not experienced for a long time. But that night he had to fly to New York, where he would pick up the Royal Air Maroc flight to Marrakesh and meet Glenn, who had spent the autumn in Morocco searching for and preparing locations. As Joan drove Paul to the airport, he got up the courage to ask her, “With everything coming together, I’m going to make a recce trip with my production manager and designer in March to survey locations. It would be great to have a photographer along. Would you like to fly over?”

Joan hesitated.

“I’ll send you the ticket,” he said hurriedly. “It would cost you nothing. Only two or three weeks,” he went on. “Have you ever been to Morocco? You’d love it. I sure do.”

Joan took time to respond. “No, it’s too complicated. I have four children...”

“I knew you wouldn’t answer right away, but could you at least think about it?”

“Of course. But I doubt if I’ll manage it.”

Such a slim possibility but it sustained Paul through the next month, until he heard that, yes, she would come!

That winter Paul had gotten an advance grant from the CFDC. In March, his new assistant, Stewart Harding, arranged tickets: Ann Pritchard flew in from Paris where she had been staying with Donald and Francine Sutherland; Peter Samuelson, a nephew of the 7Up cameraman and now a production manager, arrived from London, and Moshe Safdie, wildly busy, had nonetheless agreed to come and help Glenn design the stone-age monument, the Mahal Sokhour, to be built on some Atlas peak.

The little Marrakesh airport was thronged with Moroccans as Paul waited for Joan’s flight from New York. Ten minutes before the flight arrived, didn’t the generators fail? The whole airport was plunged into darkness.

Paul’s anticipation had built all through the winter and had now reached fever pitch. But the Immigration officials would allow no one through — without a light, they could not look into carry-on baggage. Paul was beside himself.

Suddenly, he saw a flashlight. The official motioned the person forward. Paul stared. Joan! The only one with a flashlight in her purse.

Paul cried out, “Joan. I’m here. Come right through!”

But the Immigration Official asked her in halting English to use her flashlight until everyone cleared.

Joan could never put herself first. She had to help. So she held her flashlight while every one of the forty passengers had their cases examined. Paul had to wait. Please God, Paul prayed, don’t let the flashlight go out before she gets through.

Happily, it did not, and Joan came forward into his arms. They hugged, and dashed off to meet the others for a glorious never to be forgotten evening.

***

At Oukaimeden, a new ski resort, the highest point in the Atlas that could be reached from Marrakech, they surveyed surrounding peaks with Moshe and picked one that had a flat area. Then Moshe flew off to design buildings in Iran, as well as in Jerusalem, Frobisher Bay, all over.

Paul crammed all five of them into a Renault Cinq, the smallest (and cheapest) of cars, and they climbed the twisting road into the High Atlas, crossed the Tizi n’Tichka Pass, and turned left down a rutted track to Telouet, the empty decaying palace of the Glaoui, perfect for Glenn to work his magic and for Anne to design the furnishings. This renowned and evil Pascha of the Atlas, immortalized in Gavin Lambert’s Lords of the Atlas, had (viciously) ruled the High Atlas and all the South. They went south to Ourzazate, an impoverished desert village with one wide main street, where Peter decided to set the base of Solstice operations.

From there they drove up the Dadès Gorge along a dry river bed with now its shallow stream running, so Peter Samuelson had to roll up his trousers and slosh ahead of the car to check for submerged boulders. They then snaked off it up a winding roadway for which Paul had written a frightening car chase.

At the top as the sun set, they turned back. But Glenn exclaimed, “What’s that?”

Paul got out his binoculars. “A wall of water!” Two or three feet high, it would smash any car to smithereens. Down it came, plunging along the narrow gorge.

They jumped into the car and raced down, Anne crying, “It’s coming, it’s coming!”

Indeed, it was coming! Once it struck their little car, they’d be drowned, crushed, killed. Gunning the motor, headlights blazing, Glenn raced ahead of the water. But the flood kept coming. The car, unable to go fast over the rock-strewn riverbed, lost ground. With the women looking anxiously out the back window, Paul offered encouragement. “Don’t worry, we’ll make it!”

They charged on, the torrent coming ever closer.

“What an expedition!” Paul exulted. “Don’t you love it! Excitement, excitement!”

The other four, especially Glenn gripping the steering wheel with whitened fingers, were not quite so enthralled...

The wall of water came closer and closer.

“Hurry, hurry!” Anne screamed.

“I’m trying I’m trying,” Glenn gasped.

“He’s doing fine!” Paul encouraged.

Suddenly the headlights caught a track sweeping up the bank. Glenn swerved and tore up just in time! The roaring flood swept past. The car stopped. Shivering and shaking, they got out to watch the boulders rumble past.

“No one warned us!” Glenn complained.

“How could they know?” Paul countered.

“I could do without this excitement,” a white-faced Peter Samuelson said.

***

On the flight back to New York, Paul sat beside Joan. At last he had found what his heart had been seeking for almost half a century. But how to make it work? He screwed up his courage. “Joan, when we get to New York, why not, instead of catching that flight to Los Angeles, fly with me up to Montreal? I can show you where I live.”

“Oh no, I could never do that; my children are expecting me. Thanks all the same.”

“But at the airport, can’t you at least call Bonnie?” Cary O’Neal’s sister, only a couple of years older than the children, had been baby-sitting. After landing, Joan did call from a pay phone. Paul stood close by, watching anxiously.

“Bonnie! How’s it all going?” She listened. “Oh really? Well, Paul has invited me to see his house in Montreal. I know the kids want me back right away. So I don’t think I should go.”

She listened and her eyes widened. “What?”

She turned. “She’ll ask them. They seem to be having fun.”

They both waited, Paul on tenterhooks. And then the answer came.

Joan turned to Paul. “They want me to stay away as long as possible…” She shook her head and smiled as if to say, “Wouldn’t you know!”

***

As they taxied up Redpath Crescent, Paul could see Joan was impressed by this location. They entered the house with its ample garden. Joan checked the kitchen that Moshe had redesigned with a brick fireplace to warm them when they had breakfast together. The lush dining room was centred by a fine oak Elizabethan table, which Paul had bought from the old Van Horne mansion. They went up the curved staircase with its white plastered arches into a cosy den and then out into the sunroom with all the plants. Then up to the master bedroom with its stunning view over Montreal. Oh yes, a comfortable place, in spite of its five floors.

They spent a week together, Paul showing her his Montreal haunts and walking with her up the mountain road. Glenn was relieved to see his friend relaxed and seemingly happy.

When the time came for Joan to go, on the way to the airport, Paul popped the question he’d been dying to ask ever since Marrakesh. “Joan, what would you think about us... well... marrying? I mean, at the end of the summer?”

Joan took some time thinking it over, but later, the answer turned out to be yes. And so, on September 11, 1976, in the teahouse of Joan’s patio, Paul and Joan were joined in holy matrimony.