Google her again – “Eve Noel where is she now”, “Eve Noel disappearance”, “Eve Noel living in England” – but I get the same results I always do whenever I cunningly use my wiles to track her down, i.e. Google her. The same old stuff. A review of the biography, which in itself doesn’t have any answers, it’s really just a retelling of what we know anyway, but even so it’s a good story. The only actual hard facts it has are that all her residuals and any monies from films are paid into a bank account by her agents in London, and they have no contact details for her, or none that they’ll say. An article in the Sunday Telegraph last year about her films, which tails off at the end and asserts, kind of limply, ‘She now lives anonymously out of the spotlight’ – yeah, thanks, crappy journalist, good one. An advertisement for a British Film Institute retrospective which says, ‘It is a mystery that Eve Noel’s whereabouts are not a greater mystery. One of the UK’s most successful and talented post-war stars, she must surely know some of the esteem in which she is now held. Yet she chooses, for whatever reasons, to remain out of the public eye. A salutary lesson for many of today’s young actresses.’ The rest of the results are stupid blog references or DVDs on eBay or people talking in discussion threads about her. The Internet is useless when you actually need to find something important. Perhaps she’s dead? Her husband’s dead, but she must have had some family? Well, maybe I should actually do some proper research. Like, call her agency and get them to give me her address. I bet they have it. I email Tina.
Can you track down Eve Noel’s British agents and say I’m interested in talking to her?
Won’t work but can do no harm, I reason, and I go back to my pile, flicking through to find something I might vaguely like. I’m relieved when I get to the bottom and see My Second-Best Bed, the Shakespeare script which I’d sort of been subconsciously hoping would be something special. As I start to read it I’m practically crossing my fingers.
And it’s no good which somehow makes me angrier than ever, because out of all of these scripts this one could be great. The girl working at Anne Hathaway’s house is OK, actually quite cool. She’s a nice character, a bit chippy, funny. Even the bits in the past aren’t too wacky, to start with – she hits her head on a low beam and passes out, and when she wakes up she’s the younger Anne Hathaway meeting Shakespeare and it almost works because you don’t know if it’s a dream or not. But then she and Shakespeare and Elizabeth I – yes, she suddenly turns up – go on a treasure hunt to find this key to take her back to the modern day, and it turns into a weirdly crappy sort of trawl through history. All these historical figures keep appearing, like Jane Austen and Lord Nelson and the ones they didn’t use in Bill & Ted, and it’s ridiculous. In the end you sort of wonder if it’s a piss-take.
It annoys me, because like I say it could be really good. Some of the scenes have a special sharp, cool charm, and I want to keep reading, no matter how ridiculous it gets. It’d be easy to whip into shape – if I had my own production company or some people on my side I’d get them to work with the girl who wrote it. But I don’t and I can’t take it back to Artie; it needs to be straight out of the ballpark good, this one.
Idly I look at the title page, wondering if there’s an email address for the writer or her agent.
My Second-Best Bed
Tammy Gutenberg
I sit up straight. I know Tammy. Maybe it’s because seeing Sara and thinking about those Venice Beach days is fresh in my head but it comes to me right away this time. She used to hang out at Jimmy Samba’s; she got a job at Castle Rock, I think, and moved on from that scene before I did. She was half English: her mother was from Bristol and she knew some of the places I knew. It’s a sign, I’m sure it is. Well. I type her an email, which I send to Tina to pass on, asking if we can have coffee some time to talk about it. I don’t know what good it’ll do but it’s a start. I’ve done something, at least.
My neck hurts, my shoulders are stiff. I look up to see it’s nearly seven. There’s a framed photo of Bette Davis in All About Eve I’ve had hung on the wall next to the clock. No one ever sent Bette Davis a script called From Russia with Lust. I think for a moment. Fatigue, adrenalin and excitement mingle in my stomach, making my blood pump faster round my body. I pick up the phone and dial a number I’m ashamed to say I’ve learned by heart.
A deep, gruff voice answers, smoky with promise. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, George – it’s me.’
‘You? Hey, you. How are you?’
‘I’m good.’ I wriggle in my chair, pleased. Last week when I rang him he thought I was his sister. She’s fifty-five and lives in Wisconsin; I remember everything about him.
‘What you up to, honey?’
‘Oh.’ I don’t know what to say. ‘Just hanging out. Had the meeting with Artie.’
‘Good, good,’ George says. ‘He tell you how good you’re gonna be in The Bachelorette Party? How hot you are? How tight your smooth little buns are, honey? Did he tell you that?’
I laugh. ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Well, he’s a fucking idiot,’ George says. ‘Tell him I’m taking that deal away from him and going to Paramount. What else?’
‘Artie gave me a load of scripts for my next project, and they’re kind of crap. I don’t know, I want to—’
‘Show ’em to me,’ George interrupts smoothly. ‘He should know what to put in front of you. He shouldn’t be wasting your time with stupid art-house shit and sci-fi. He doing that to you?’
‘No, the other way round,’ I say. ‘It’s … Oh, never mind.’
‘We’ll get it sorted out.’ There’s a noise in the background, voices, an echoing sound, maybe splashing from a pool. George’s voice gets closer to the phone. ‘Listen, now’s not a great time, sweetie. Listen to me. I have to fuck you today, honey, otherwise I’ll lose my mind. Come over, later.’
I’m knackered, I realise. ‘Well …’
He lowers his voice even further. ‘I want to show you something, Sophie babe.’
‘Really?’
‘What we shot last night. I want you to see it. I want you to see how hot you are. There’s one shot I got of you – mm.’ His soft, low voice rasps gently into the phone. I press myself against the leather chair, mad for him. ‘Can you bring some different clothes? You got any babydoll nighties, that kinda thing?’
‘Honey, what I’ve got’ll blow your mind,’ I say softly into the phone. I can hear him breathing. ‘I’ll come by this evening?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Around eleven, eleven-thirty? I have to have dinner before with some friends.’
‘Oh – OK,’ I say.
He says slowly, deliberately, ‘Will you be ready for me?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘Yes … I will.’
He puts the phone down. I uncurl myself from the chair and stand up. I realise I’m flushed, and my heart is pounding. I’ve never been with anyone like George before. He is like a drug. It’s a cliché but it’s true. He’s so powerful; it oozes out of him, and he knows it. He’s not a
