The City of Fading Light by Jon Cleary

Author:Jon Cleary [Cleary, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781620648179
Google: IBUBlh3oVkoC
Amazon: B00DLC34VG
Barnesnoble: B00DLC34VG
Goodreads: 3313382
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2013-05-19T23:00:00+00:00

8

I

“I LOVE you,” said Ludwig, “but you must go, for your own safety. My subjects are forcing me to abdicate.”

“I’ll stay,” said Lola. “They love you—they know you were right in all you’ve done. It is the foreigners with all their propaganda—”

“Cut!” called Karl Braun, and Willy Heffer and Cathleen fell out of their embrace with mutual relief. “That was terrible, darlings. You sounded like a couple of bureaucrats making love after office hours.”

“I think this script was written by a couple of bureaucrats,” said Cathleen. “Or was it five or six?”

Two of the writers were on the set and they slunk away, knowing they had no defence; writers were always blamed for all the shortcomings on a film, they told each other. Braun called for the lunch break and Cathleen headed for her dressing-room. She knew the morning’s poor takes were not entirely the writers’ fault, though the script was ludicrous; she had not been concentrating, had done nothing to lift the lines out of their banality. Willy Heffer, for reasons of his own, had given up the battle and was just working out his time, ready, like King Ludwig, to abdicate.

As she went down the corridor to her dressing-room she passed Melissa’s room. The door was half-open and she saw Melissa sitting in front of her mirror, staring at herself in the unlit glass. No lights were on and the only illumination came through the window set high in one wall. Cathleen knocked lightly and pushed open the door.

“Something wrong?”

Melissa looked at her in the mirror and then Cathleen saw the tears on the English girl’s cheeks. “Tomorrow is my last day, some re-takes. Then I’m going home.”

“It may be the best place to be. You want to have lunch with me?”

Melissa dried her eyes, stood up, came and kissed Cathleen on the cheek. It was the first time she had ever done it; they had never exchanged the usual actresses’ hypocritical pecks. But she did it naturally now and Cathleen knew it said more than she put into words. She took Melissa’s hand and squeezed it.

“How does Helmut feel about you going home?”

Melissa just shook her head, her eyes filling with tears again, and Cathleen knew she had said the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Still holding the other girl’s hand, she led her along the corridor to her own dressing-room. She slipped out of her costume, gave it to her dresser to take away for pressing, put on a robe and sat down opposite Melissa.

“Do you want a big lunch?”

Without thinking Melissa said, “Cathleen, I’m pregnant!”

“Then you want a big lunch.” She picked up the phone, ordered two big lunches from the commissary, then sat back. “I’m not pregnant, I just feel empty today. So . . .” She looked sympathetically at Melissa. “Does Helmut know? Is it his? Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Melissa had regained her composure. “He knows. It’s—sort of floored him.”

“Did it floor you?”

“No. I’m—I’m sort of glad, in a way.”

“Is he going to marry you?”

“I don’t know.

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