After the holidays, sometime around late January (the month Matisse described as possessing a “rich and silvered light essential to the spirit of the artist”), when every last straggly olive has been culled from the trees, pruning will begin. Alas, Michel and I cannot stay for it. Quashia, who took the train to Marseille a few days ago, bound for the boat which, by now, will have transported him home to the town of Constantin in northern Algeria—where he is spending the remainder of the season of Ramadan with his wife, seven sons, one daughter and sixteen grandchildren—will return to look after No Name and caretake for us. Vanessa and Jerôme have agreed to stay on a day or two to await his return. She is taking Whisky with her when she leaves. Michel and I have work to do. For this year, our very first as olive farmers, our contribution is sadly at an end. Alas, we will even be absent from the celebrations of the fête des oliviers held on the last Saturday in January, in the streets of many of the inland Provençal villages. Strangers and natives alike are all invited to tastings from the various mills and single-estate oils or simply to celebrate. The one near to us is to be held in the streets of the village of Vallauris, and we understand from René that our own mill is represented. As is their tradition, Christophe and his three sons will deck themselves out in local Provençal costumes and offer dégustations of the various oils they have produced. They even display a small working model of the mill, which actually presses olives! We are sorry to miss what promises to be a socially fascinating event, but work calls, and Quashia and René are more than equipped to attack the rigorous buiness of pruning the trees.
As for Michel and me, we are returning to our separate lives of London and Paris, back to our bachelor-style existences, meeting when and where we can, grabbing a day or a weekend here or there, burying ourselves and our desire for each other in professional energies. Returning to our real lives—but can that other, the cut and thrust of the metropolis, still be thought of as real life? It is confusing. I have often heard friends who hailed from various far-flung corners of the globe and ended up in London complain that they don’t know where they belong. I am beginning to understand that displacement, although I have been a traveler all my adult life. But now I have put down roots. My heart is in France. Here I wake in the mornings, thinking: I am where I want to be. Here I swim, garden, spend hours at the outdoor markets shopping for vegetables and fresh fish, natter with the local stallholders about the quality of this or that homegrown produce, marvel over the range and choice on display and then bury myself away in my studio, writing stories.
My work and history remain in England. Back there I stare out of rehearsal-room windows, dreaming of what? Shrubs and herbs, the possibility of rearing goats and vines, the man I love so passionately. At the end of the day, I race to the local store, grab some prewashed salads, negotiating a cart around row upon row of shelves and neon lighting, then gratefully close the door of my little flat, which these days feels as impermanent as a hotel, shutting out the fractious bustle of city life. I prepare a solitary meal, unless I have managed to catch up with a frantically busy friend or two not seen for months, and when I set off again for work, some kind lady plasters my face in makeup while I fret about my figure and ever-increasing wrinkles and the problems of an actress who is fast saying au revoir to forty.
I am more than fortunate to have both the gregarious life of an actress and the solitary days of a writer, but from time to time, it is confusing and sometimes unsettling. And there is no doubt that, because I am in England less and less, the circles and worlds I have inhabited are slowly plugging up the spaces which I had staked out as mine. Friends call less regularly, unless they happen to be passing through the south of France and decide to drop by for a few days. My agent calls less frequently—actresses who are on the spot are offered the roles I might have played had I been there. Sometimes I feel people think I have emigrated to the moon!
When I mention my dilemma to Michel, he says, “I don’t know why you feel you have to choose. Why can’t you encompass the whole? A woman who has a multilayered existence.” And perhaps it really is that simple. It’s I who complicates it!
IT IS VALENTINE’S DAY. Michel is attending a television festival in Monte Carlo, which means that he can spend a week at the farm. I am on location in Wales and cannot get away. I send a dozen red roses and receive a dozen from him. And then the telephone rings in my hotel room. I catch the background bustle of festival activity, the chink of apéritif glasses issuing from the hotel bar, and I hear excitement in Michel’s voice. I miss him so badly it hurts.
“The English are in!” he says. For a moment I am confused. And then it dawns on me. My thirteen-part series will need several partners, but, given that it is the story of a thirteen-year-old English girl, it would be almost impossible to film without an English network on board. Monte Carlo was to be Michel’s first attempt to finance the production. I am staggered.
“Any chance that you could fly down here for a couple of days and meet up with him?”
Well, I am not filming on the weekend. I could drive to London and take the plane… yes!
Saturday lunch at Appassionata is the date. The English television executive, always delighted to have an excuse to linger in the south of France an extra day or two, to wriggle out of the mind-grinding business of buying and flogging programs, is more than happy to lunch with us at our home.
February is traditionally a wet month on the Côte d’Azur. Just in case, I prepare lunch at the table inside. From the dining room, through tall French windows which command a view over the front terraces across to the sea and distant horizon, I gaze down upon the splendidly pruned olive trees. They are a magnificent spectacle. With their height lopped and their remaining branches hanging low and wide, tumbling almost to ground level, they remind me of whirling dervishes.
One of the great joys of Appassionata is its ability to surprise; the ever-evolving, complex shift and balance of the surrounding nature. Determined by time of day, season and the weather, the hills, mountains, forests and the sweep of the watery bay transform themselves. We live in a world of kaleidoscopic colors, softening or deepening shades and an array of perfumes, tantalizingly sweet, fragrant, musky or dusky. In this month, when the sun is busy elsewhere and the dove-gray skies lower and clouds bank up thickly above us, the deciduous trees are naked skeletons tightly withholding any promise of spring—save for the almond which, though leafless, has already begun to burst with the palest of pastel pink blossoms. Beyond our farm, the distant mountains appear as dense, stubby shadows while the sea, an ominous battleship gray, is lifted to poetry by slender rays of nacreous silver.
This is an altogether unencountered tapestry. These nuances of shadow and light are steelier than in the brighter, warmer seasons. But February justly claims its own stark beauty, and it is always wonderful to be home again.
My sole concern is No Name, who is angry with me and will not draw close. She glowers at me from various corners of the room or peers in through windows from the terraces, refusing to approach. Whether her anger is born of grieving for her puppies or my absence, I cannot tell, but nothing I do consoles or appeases her. And what is worse, while her reproach of me is unrelenting, with Michel she is playful and tender.
I hear the smoky cough of Michel’s old powder-blue Mercedes. He is returning from the train station in Cannes, where he has collected Harold. I have met Harold before. In fact, I have worked with him, as an actress. He is a well-meaning Brit who has spent his entire career in the poorly paid service of children’s and adolescent drama. (Why it is that networks feel obliged to cut the cloth so tightly when it comes to creating programs for the young, I have never quite understood.) I hurry out onto the terrace to greet them. Harold calls out, “Yooey!” I smile at the sight of him: even in this season, he has arrived dressed in a crumpled off-white linen suit and Panama, with his Times clutched tightly in the crook of his arm. I find his appearance touching, so wonderfully British. He looks as though he has ambled out of the pages of a Somerset Maugham short story.
He has read my scripts and likes them very much. We talk of the filming as though we might be commencing the following day. I am thrilled by his enthusiasm, and he is delighted with lunch and the wines on offer. As far as he is concerned, we can begin picking the key members of the production team and start the joyful process of location hunting. The development budget he offers is generous. It is sufficient to take us into preproduction. This leaves Michel with ample time to slot the remaining financial partners into place. Business matters are concluded satisfactorily. As a natural accompaniment to the cheese, glazed apple tart and dessert wine, Harold’s conversation grows more frivolous, turns to gossip within the British television industry. He revels in his topic, attacking it and the brie de Meaux with a lusty appetite.
As afternoon pitches toward deepening dusk, Harold is transported back down the drive. Disappearing out of view, head poking out of the car window, he gazes back up at me on the upper terrace, waving his Panama in the air like a man setting sail for the ends of the earth.
Later, alone by the fireside, Michel and I discuss two essential matters: the first is my distress about No Name. Was it thoughtless to have given all the puppies away? Should we have kept one for her? Whisky was her companion for many months, and now she is lonely and bereaved and I feel wretched about it. The second is that as soon as my work in Wales has been completed, Michel will employ a production manager—he has the ideal man in mind—and with luck, by summer, we will be in production on my first entire series as screenwriter.
MIRACULOUSLY—ANYONE operating in the world of film finance will know that these affairs are usually tortuous—the money falls into place with ease. By April, everyone has committed the sums Michel has requested of them. We have a major French network, our Englishman abroad, Polish national television and a prestigious German company. I am both excited and overwhelmed. My summer is to be be spent traveling with the producer and designer to the various countries, meeting with the networks, listening to their requirements and making any requested script adjustments. Then later, toward autumn, once principal photography is underway, I will be employed to play the role of the mother in the series. I have structured the scripts so that most of her scenes take place on the Île Ste. Marguerite. I will be able to work from home. The future looks rosy.
Michel bases the production office in Paris. Early in May, we find a very pretty girl to play the main role. During those same weeks, many of the other major players are also contracted. Three weeks from now, carpenters will start building sets in London; from there the crew moves on to Paris. I am finding this early process of filmmaking very exciting. There is much to be said for being on the other side of the camera.
I, with the producer and designer, am bound for Warsaw, Kraców and Gdansk and then on to Bialystok, close to the Russian border. We are in need of a Polish propertymaster and master carpenter. There are props to be built, most importantly a huge wooden windmill to be constructed in a remote field in the countryside outside Bialystok, which, during the course of the film, will be set alight and burned. In Paris and London, a team of design assistants, propertymakers, set dressers and costumers have already been brought onto the payroll and are out shopping, sewing, constructing, measuring and painting.
My plane is flying out from Paris the following morning. I am in my element and happy as a lark, but during our last supper together for a few weeks to come, Michel mentions to me that “there is one small concern clouding the horizon. The English money hasn’t arrived. Well, yes, the early development funds have, but nothing since.” According to the contracts, which as far as I can comprehend are built like a pack of cards, the English money was scheduled to be the first to arrive, followed by the French who are due to come in at a slightly later stage, followed by the Poles and so on and so forth right through to postproduction.
In my naïveté and perhaps blind excitement, I don’t pick up on the gravity of the situation. Harold and Michel have shot numerous television film series together, one or two of which have picked up awards, and the station he represents in England is solid and wealthy. Whatever the delay, it can be nothing more than a minor bank hiccup, surely? Then I learn that the contract has not been returned. This has never been a concern before. On at least two of the programs they have shot together, the contracts arrived only after the films were delivered. Well, then? But in each of those cases, though the contracts were delayed, the money was not.
I place my fork back onto my plate. I fear I am beginning to get the gist of this. “Are you worried?” I ask, attempting desperately to keep the jitters out of my voice.
“Well… no, not really.”
I recognize that bluff, that smoothing-over, mellifluous tone that Michel has fine-tuned over the years. One emotion a producer can simply never convey is panic. Rather like the captain of a torpedoed ship, he cannot fall to pieces and bellow with fear. I am staring across the table in shocked silence.
“Give me the worst scenario,” I say, barely audibly.
This rattles him, which is certainly not what I had intended to do. “Why do you have to look for the worst in everything?” he snaps.
“No, don’t!” My hand has leaped the distance and is attempting to meet his, but he withdraws, rises from the table and goes in search of a corkscrew. I rest where I am, listening to the opening and closing of drawers beyond the room, silently calculating how many members of the team in how many countries across Europe have already been contracted. And what of those already on salary? If the English funds are not covering all their fees… who is?
“That early development budget must have run out…” My palate is dry. My words stick in my throat. I cannot complete the sentence because Michel has returned to the table and, while opening our dinner wine, is looking at me in a way I have never seen before.
“The French network advanced several hundred thousand francs,” he replies, pouring the glasses.
“So there’s no real problem, then?” I hear the plea in my question, the need to know that everything is right with the world. It is quite pathetic.
“No, probably not. I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he mutters, and the subject is closed.
I lie awake while Michel sleeps. I am the perennial insomniac, and our evening together has given me plenty to toss and turn over.
The following day, we say our good-byes. I promise to call from Warsaw. He promises to keep me abreast of what is happening. It is a muddled, unsatisfactory parting and I hate to go like this.
“Everything will be fine,” he assures. I nod and set off for Charles de Gaulle Airport, leaving him on the telephone.
WARSAW IS EXTRAORDINARY. Poland is a heady mix of reformation, modernization and long-lost chivalry. Every color shrieks like a drunken song in streets which have known only the grayness and deprivation of communism for so many years. I am fascinated and attracted and, occasionally, repelled by the weight of recent history here. Blocks of ugly buildings lean in over me as though they will squeeze my presence right off the streets, and I want to run for my life. And then I stroll to the old town, entirely rebuilt after its wartime bombings, and sit in a quaint café and listen to the accordion players and the bell-like chatter of waitresses, plump and girlish and innocent whatever their ages, pleasing and polite, and I am seduced. I love the fact that we are here to film and create and fuse with these people who see the world through eyes that are so different than mine. Artists who have known mental and creative imprisonment. I know I can add this vision to my story.
Poland is a country emerging. My tale is of a girl emerging from the pain caused by the breakup of her parents’ marriage.
The work process is going well; both teams are enjoying each other’s contribution. The only drawback is that everything takes twice as long as I would have expected because we are being translated. Our interpeter, not always accurate, I fear, sits between us or trots alongside as we hurry from meeting to meeting, location to location, and repeats in Polish all that we have said and vice versa. Dear Gruzna, whose shiny plump face seems buried beneath layers of bright blue eyeshadow and thick black mascara, has been assigned to us by the local production company. She is a rather lazy girl who has no truck with our Western ways and longs to return to the security of the old regime, where she knew that at half past four she could go home, her work for the day done. All day long, she jabbers empty-headedly of romance and tells us how she and her husband are starving and surviving on love alone, but her heavily painted eyes light up like a magpie’s when she sees currency or jewelry, and she sidles close, hoping for a gift. She, like everything here, is a curious paradox.
One evening, after traveling eleven hours in a van without suspension on country roads that seem never to have been completed, so rutted are they with deep potholes, I stagger exhaustedly to the hotel reception desk to collect my key. The porter hands me a message, left early that morning, asking me to call Michel. Frustratingly, but not unusually, it takes me a while to get an international line out of Poland. I know instantly by the tone of his voice that all is not well, so the words—the English have withdrawn—only partially stuns me. I have no idea what to say. “Why?” is all I can think of.
“Restructuring within the network. It looks as though Harold might be given early retirement.”
“Poor Harold,” I bleat, unable to contemplate where it leaves us.
Michel is used to the roller coaster of film production crises. Unless an actor has invested his own money in a film, he is rarely, if ever, burdened with such problems. Actors are cushioned, cosseted, so this is a completely new and rather scary scenario for me, but I remind myself silently that I am sitting on the other side of the fence now. I have to take the blows with the rest of the team. “What now?” I ask eventually.
My question is returned by a silence broken only by the crackling on a very inadequate and antiquated telephone line. Eventually he says, “I’ve spoken to the French and German networks today. Both are willing to up their investment and make first payments earlier than originally scheduled. It doesn’t cover the shortfall, but it will pay the production salaries and keep us going for the time being. I’m flying into Warsaw tomorrow and I’ll meet with Agnes midafternoon.”
Agnes is the head of Drama here. One of the other discoveries that has surprised and pleased me about Poland is the power given to women here. I am thrilled to know that Michel is coming, but I am very troubled by the reason for his trip. We say good night and he sounds as tired as a thousand-year-old man. I cannot sleep.
OVER A DRINK IN THE darkly lit bar, I hear from Michel and our producer that the meeting with the Polish network has gone smoothly. They are still very keen and are offering to double their commitment to the project. I, in my naïveté, am thrilled, believing this to mean that we have jumped this tricky hurdle and are out of trouble. Michel gently explains that because the Poles are not rich and are operating in a currency which has no buying power on the international market, they are offering “their extra commitment to us in below-the-line costs.”
I stare blankly.
“It means to say the Poles will make extra services available to us here in Poland. Hotels, crew, facilities…”
The three men sitting with me around the table read the confused look on my face. I have never been confronted by this problem before, but I am not so blind that I cannot discern from the lack of overabounding joy at the table that the matter is not fully resolved. I attempt a lighter approach. “Such matters never concern actresses. We learn our lines, climb into our frocks and are driven to the set…” I look from one to the other. “Help me,” I add.
“We will shoot a greater chunk of the story here, more than we had originally envisaged. This means that we, or rather you,” says the producer, “will have to relocate certain episodes.”
“Relocate?” I repeat stupidly.
“The story will not begin in London. It will begin in Paris, and then, instead of two episodes in Poland, we will have four set here.”
I silently take this in. “But it’s not possible…”
“It has to be, or—”
“Fine,” I mumble, having absolutely no idea how I will achieve this unexpected order.
Later, alone with Michel in my hotel room, I learn that there is still a shortfall of over half a million pounds. He is returning to Paris at first light to begin the process of finding another source of finance to cover it.
“Wouldn’t it be better to cancel the series?” I ask. No. We are already committed to such an extent and to so many contracts still to be paid that, ironically, it is cheaper and less risky to keep going.
“I see,” I mutter, but I don’t.
Michel leaves, and I am driven to the studios to meet with Agnes and a script editor before being put to work. Apparently, there is a considerable amount of Polish history that I must learn and include in the storyline. I dare not ask what Polish history has to do with our rites-of-passage tale. I am at the point where I think the best course of action is to just do as I am told.
We are ten days away from principal photography, and I am five scripts short of my thirteen. The thirteen which it took me the best part of a year to write and polish. If I cannot produce four acceptable Polish scripts, we will have no film, and then what? I do not allow myself to dwell on it.
I am put to work. Everything I need is installed in my hotel room. Food is brought in at intervals, as well as limitless supplies of dark, stewed coffee. Squires of paper arrive to feed a monstrous printer which barely succeeds the original printing press. In Paris, it would sell in a fashionable Marais boutique, a techno-antique converted into some natty home device, but here it is dumped on the floor because there is no shelf or tabletop in the room spacious enough to contain it. Cables festoon the room. Every time I stand up from my work, I trip over them or the printer.
For forty-eight hours, I work without sleep, feeling guilty if I pause to brush my teeth, and emerge at dawn on the third day having produced two newly rewritten scripts. I am gibbering with exhaustion, and to remind myself of what is wonderful in life, I pick up the phone and call Quashia. Extraordinarily, I get through without a problem. The chuckle in his voice, his lighthearted good humor, warm and relax me.
“How are you?” he hollers. Quashia still seems to believe that talking long-distance on the phone involves a great deal of shouting. But it’s part of who he is, and I am deeply glad to be in touch. It all seems a lifetime away.
“Terrific,” I lie. “How is No Name?”
All is well back at the farm, and I am buoyed by the news. No Name is in good form and has adopted Ella, the small golden retriever puppy we bought for her, who is now four months old. I close my eyes and picture them prancing across the terraces in the bright sunlight. I try to draw energy from the tranquility there. Whoopee birds flitting to and fro in the garden, the two white doves who have appeared since Christmas and fly in and out daily, cooing and nuzzling on the phone line by our bedroom terrace, buzzards wheeling high in the deep blue sky. All is right with the world back there, and I am so profoundly grateful for it.
During my retreat it has been decided by the drama department that what the story lacks is a plane sequence and a chase set in one of the famous Polish opal mines.
“What?” I mutter, barely able to comprehend what is being suggested to me. “But this is the story of a thirteen-year-old girl in search of her father.” No matter, I am assured, the newly proposed sequence will dovetail into the story nicely. I am given a sheath of material which tells me (in halting English) all I need to know about the local mining industry and sent away to write the scenes. Back I go to my room, encased once again within four walls and my imagination.
I am cheered by news from Michel. He has found an independent company in Paris that has guaranteed the missing financing. Everything is back on track. I return to the opal sequence with optimism in my heart. Perhaps my heroine can find a stone or two! Why not?
By Friday, I am certain that if I do not get out of the hotel I will not be held responsible for my state of mind. I have had four hours’ sleep in as many days. I stagger down to reception, where the sight of so many people milling to and fro in a brightly lit, bustling area almost sends me into trauma. I leave a note for the producer, telling him that I have four scripts. They are ready to be read, and I don’t care what he says, I want to go out to dinner this evening, and will he and the designer please accompany me because I am starved of human contact and laughter!
Later that evening, along with the English director, who has flown in from London the day before, we stroll to the old town and order vodka and fresh fish and settle to our evening. They are priming me on all that has happened during my missing days, but I am so tired, so punch-drunk and, after one straight vodka, so slewed that I can barely take in the sequence of events. The mayor of Bialystok has telephoned to discuss the newly constructed windmill which he has spotted in one of the surrounding village fields. He is refusing to allow us to burn it. The designer is laughing as he recounts the conversation. Why? Is there a local fire risk? No, not all. He is so taken with it, with its unusual design—essential for the story—that he wants to buy it and keep it there as a tourist attraction! We laugh wildly and order more vodka, a blissful palliative to me this evening. The restaurant grows packed, candles are lit, accordionists in national costume are serenading us at our benched table, searingly sweet romantic tunes. We are talking and giggling hysterically because we are all tired and stressed. And so I chill out and heal. The money is back in place. The English director, a gentle, intelligent soul, is an excellent addition to our small team, and in one week, so long as my new scripts are accepted, I will return to the haven of Appassionata and write the remaining changes from there. My work, for the time being in Poland, will have been accomplished. The film will have reached the starting gate. Life is not so bad after all.
My thoughts drift to the garden, to the olive trees and dogs and how well I shall feel writing in my own precious space, my sanctum, surrounded by shelf after shelf of books and warm shafts of moted sunbeams. Of course, if the scripts are not accepted, the start of principal photography will be delayed, the budget will be at risk, jobs on the line… I choose not to dwell on such negatives tonight, or the incredible weight of responsibility I feel. Tomorrow—no, today; it is now Saturday—there is to be a mammoth script conference at the studios in the afternoon where my work will be discussed and, probably, dissected. What a baptism by fire for any young scriptwriter this is proving to be.
It is two A.M. when we enter the lobby of the hotel, and I find an urgent message waiting for me to call Michel.
Back in my room, dubious about calling at such a late hour, I pick up the phone. His voice is grave, and I know before he utters a word that what I am about to hear will not be good. “It’s your father,” he says.
“My… ?” The effect of the vodka, which left me sleepy, slurry and mellow, is whipped from me just as surely as though someone has slapped me with a cold metal object.
“You better ring England.” I crash the receiver down clumsily almost before he has finished speaking and telephone my mother. It takes a frustrating age before I can get another line out and then an age before she answers.
“We’ve just returned from the hospital.” I hear her breathlessness, caused by rushing to the phone, no doubt.
“The hospital?” I seem incapable of uttering anything other than parrotlike responses.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
My father has had a stroke. He is unconscious and paralyzed. He could live a day, he could go on for an indeterminate period. “If you came, he wouldn’t know you were here, and we know you have difficulties there. There’s no sense in risking everything you have been working for.”
“No.”
We say good night and I promise to call again in the morning. I walk to the window, tripping over the cursed printer on my way, dragging a carver chair with me, which I place facing the leafy deserted square beyond the hotel. There I sit for the entire night. Exhausted, spent as I am, I cannot go to bed, would not sleep. I think of my father and try to comprehend the reality of what has happened to him way across the waters in a land of Englishness so alien to this place, with its remnants of gray communism, its fast-growing mafia, its distant grim echoes of concentration camps and its desperate hungry hand reaching out to a new world where pop music is not banned, kids smoke dope and, supposedly, salvation lies. My story is of a thirteen-year-old in search of her musician father, and in the Polish episodes, she finds him and loses him again. The streets beyond the window are deadly quiet. My own father, dying in a hospital bed in a place my mind refuses to conjure, is a musician and has been the inspiration for the central theme of my story. It was to have been a spiritual present to him; a gift of my work. I had been looking forward to talking to him about it, to taking him to the islands, to the fortress where the resolution of the story is to take place. I close my aching eyes and picture him at Appassionata, sleeping in the sun with No Name at his side, loyal companions, his sunburned, sleeping body covered in puppies.
At first light, I make my way to the dining room. There is not a soul in sight. When the waiter comes by, I order coffee and stare at the phenomenal buffet on offer, which includes mountains of caviar and every marinated herring you could dream of, all so at odds with the miserable poverty and deprivation I have witnessed everywhere in this land. I stare at it blindly and then, in my mind’s ear, I hear a voice. Indisputably. It is my father’s. Carol, Carol, darling, it’s Daddy. And I know that whatever the weight of responsibility here, no matter how many actors’ and technicians’ jobs are at risk, no matter if the Poles hate every word I have written and call this huge production machine to a halt, I must go. If only for a day. Today is Saturday. I could take the weekend and be back to face the music on Monday morning.
At reception, I learn that access in and out of Poland is not the simple affair I had thoughtlessly anticipated. There is one flight to London later this afternoon and another back tomorrow evening. They are fully booked. In fact, there is not a flight with a single seat available in any class for the next five days. What if I went through Paris? Or Amsterdam? Or Frankfurt? In my vulnerable, barely coherent exhaustion, I blurt out my dilemma, unbosoming myself to the desk clerk. He is kindly and sympathetic and promises to look into the matter and get back to me. I return to the dining room and drink several more black coffees before calling the producer’s room.
“Of course, you must go,” he tells me when I disturb him at eight-thirty. “I will drive you to the airport.”
By whatever miracles make these matters possible, flights are found, and I am booked to London via Berlin. There is no time to waste. The producer has read the scripts overnight and seems relatively happy with them. He envisages few, if any, problems. We grab a hurried bite, or rather he does while talking through various scenes. He intends to attend the pre-arranged weekend script meetings on my behalf and take notes; upon my return, he and I will collaborate on whatever has been requested by the television network, and I will deliver the corrected scripts to the network by Monday morning. I merely nod my agreement to this insane schedule. I cannot think beyond what awaits me in England. I have moved into a different pace, another zone.
STANDING IN THE CENTER of my hotel room on Sunday evening, I survey my temporary habitat. Nothing has changed except the bed, which has been made during my thirty-six-hour absence, and my papers, which were strewn everywhere and have been tidied into bundles. I stare at nothing in particular except its orderliness. I have a meeting in the bar in fifteen minutes with director, designer and producer who have passed practically the entire weekend at the studio. I have begged the time to wash and to phone my mother. I slept, or rather didn’t at the hospital at my father’s side. Now I have just replaced the receiver, having learned from her that my father died two hours earlier. I would have been flying somewhere between Berlin to Warsaw. I gather up my scripts and head for the elevator. In the bar, my three colleagues await me with a tall glass of champagne which costs the earth here.
“Ready to go back to work?”
I nod and decide to hold off my news until we have worked through the scripts. It is four in the morning when our powwow breaks up and we head toward the elevators. I am clutching my papers tight against my chest. Bleak emotions are churning up my guts. Questions unable to be answered hang in my mind like smoke trails. One phone call and life has taken on an entirely different perspective. The men are talking among themselves. Small talk, the banter that is born of exhaustion. As we exit the elevator, the producer and I say good night to the others, whose rooms are elsewhere. He accompanies me, knowing.
“It’s curious. When you rang my room on Saturday morning, I was lying awake thinking about my own father. He’s not well. I was wondering what I’d do if I got that call. You were luckier. Mine’s in Australia.”
I drop my eyes and stare at the carpet. Luckier?
“Have you told Michel?”
I shake my head. “Not yet,” I murmur. “The funeral’s next Monday. I’m going,” I snap, too sharply.
“Of course. In any case, you should be out of here by then. You’ve done well. Against all bloody odds. Thanks for it.” He leans in and gives me an awkward hug.
THE DAYS BANK UP, each one like the last. We attend meeting after meeting. While the others talk and debate, the producer fighting in my corner with a ferocious loyalty to the story we had set out to tell and which now seems to be disappearing behind action sequences that bare no relationship to anything as far as I can see, I close down. I stare at the blank, faded white walls or the conference table around which we sit. None of this seems relevant, and yet I know that it is. So many livelihoods at stake. And a story dedicated to the father I have just lost. As we approach the end of the week, I learn that there are no flights. Not at any price. I will walk if I have to, I tell no one in particular and set about trying to rent a car. I shall drive to London or drive across the frontier and pick up a plane in Germany. I am going, I repeat angrily. These dark days have crept up without warning. No pointers to alert me that they were approaching; I was not prepared for this. I am hurting with life and ready to lash out.
Miraculously, yet again, flights are found. But this time the route is more circuitous. Warsaw to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Nice and then Nice to London. This extraordinary tour includes an overnight in Nice which means, incredibly, that I can go home. I am grateful, profoundly grateful, for the opportunity to touch base.
I phone Quashia to alert him of my imminent arrival and learn that No Name has gone missing. In between script sessions, budget and design meetings, I begin to ring all the refuge centers in the south of France. No one has found her. I am beside myself with concern. I call the police and the fire brigade. They also respond with negatives. I telephone the vet. What shall I do? He has a record there of the numbered reference he tattooed in her ear when I first found her. He will call the central office and alert them. He reminds me that when I gave him the signed photo he had requested, I also gave him a photograph Michel had taken of No Name running in the garden. He offers to have photocopies made and distribute them in our local shops and put one up in his surgery. My heart is troubled as well as numb, but I am thankful for his support. “I’ll see you when I arrive,” I mumble and replace the phone.
A BLANKET OF HEAT greets my weary arrival. Here at home, it is a blazing, glorious summer. It had been warm in Warsaw as well, but because I had been incarcerated in meetings and cold with grieving, I had not noticed. The tropicality of the Côte d’Azur takes me by surprise. For the first time ever, I feel a stranger to the plumes of palm fronds while the gloss and bustle of Riviera life rather turns my stomach after the poverty of Poland, but as I climb up into the winding twilit hills, breathe in the fragrance of scarlet and pink oleandar and the sky-blue plumbago, my heart begins to settle. By the time I have reached the land of olive groves, our own in particular, a great weight seems to lift from me and a peace descends, albeit a lamenting peace.
Upon arrival, I find a fax from the producer saying all four scripts have been accepted. The network is delighted with them. Once I have shared with my family our farewell to my father, I can return to Appassionata and begin to write the new first script, now to be set in Paris, from the serenity of my own stone-walled space. Any last-minute changes requested by the Poles can be achieved by fax. Principal photography has been given the green light. The task has been accomplished.