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On Sale: July 1, 2005
Hardcover
560 pages
ISBN: 0446576883
The big novel is back - and it's never been more seductive than this.
To the outside world, Siena McMahon has a fairy-tale life. Born into a great Hollywood dynasty - granddaughter of movie legend Duke McMahon, daughter of billionaire producer Pete McMahon - she is blessed with beauty, brains, and wealth... a proverbial princess.
Yet behind the wrought-iron gates of the sprawling McMahon mansion in Hancock Park, her life is far from idyllic. The McMahons are bound together not by love but by infighting and ambition. When a gold-digging English aristocrat, Caroline Berkeley, worms her way into their lives and their home, the family's potent mix of jealousy and wealth explodes.
Packed off to school in England, Siena starts making plans to leave the moment she arrives. She is determined to become a Hollywood star in her own right - just as her grandfather had said she would be. But at what price? And once back in L.A., the rejections, betrayals, and failures she'll face will only make her stronger and tougher than ever before. In the utterly dysfunctional landscape of her life - among friends, lovers, and family - she must find the people who will help her survive, help her become the person she was meant to be, help her be truly ADORED.
Set in the most glamorous cities of the world - L.A., London, Paris, and New York - Tilly Bagshawe's debut novel is like the real-world Hollywood it mirrors: deliciously escapist, wickedly sexy, and always irresistibly compelling.
Siena McMahon had it all: beauty, brains and enormous wealth. As the granddaughter of Duke McMahon, a Hollywood legend in the John Wayne mold, everything came very easily to her. Determined that their precious only child not go into the family business, her parents, Peter and Claire, pack Siena off to a boarding school in rural England. From the moment she arrives, Siena plans for the day when she can leave school and pursue an acting career. As soon as she graduates, she begins modeling, much to her protective parents' chagrin. Peter immediately disinherits her, and his wife meekly follows his lead. But Siena's hardly bothered; she's instantly a smash and it doesn't take long for Hollywood to come calling.
But first, one has to better understand the McMahon clan. It all started back in the summer of 1975, when Duke, then 30 years into his marriage to the shy, well-bred Minnie, moves his young mistress, Caroline, into the family home in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles. This hardly goes over well with his two adult children, Peter and his mousy sister, Laurie, and especially for long-suffering Minnie, who tries to keep a stiff upper lip in the hopes that her husband will tire of his gold-digging mistress as he has of all the others. But a year into the relationship, it's clear that Caroline has more of a toehold than poor Minnie anticipated when she gives birth to Hunter, Duke's illegitimate child --- an unspoken declaration from Caroline that she's not going anywhere without a fight. Hunter is raised alongside of Peter and Claire's young daughter Siena; they're almost like brother and sister, and the two find solace and support in each other. Theirs is a bond that cannot be severed, even when Hunter and his mother are finally forced to leave the family estate.
Granddaughter Siena inherits many of Old Duke's characteristics: an almost unbridled ambition and a libido that never can be fully satisfied. In her quest for fame and fortune, she will do anything to get to the top, no matter how many people she has to step over to get there.
In the tradition of Jackie Collins and Shirley Conran, ADORED is a juicy, ribald, racy gem of a Hollywood epic. Author Tilly Bagshawe deliberately veered away from the Bridget Jones-type heroine in favor of indulging the reader in a fun, escapist fantasy. And indulge she did. Furiously paced, it will keep you turning pages until you reach the thrilling conclusion. ADORED is poised to become a favorite beach read this summer.
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
Tilly Bagshawe went to Cambridge at the age of eighteen with her ten-month-old daughter in tow. At twenty-six, she was the youngest ever partner in one of the world's most prestigious headhunting firms. Now a freelance journalist, she is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, and other major British publications. Tilly lives in L.A. and London with her husband and daughter. This is her first novel.
July 8, 2005
In this interview Tilly Bagshawe explains her inspiration for the story behind her debut novel ADORED and how her own experiences have informed her writing, particularly as it relates to characters and setting. She also talks about the authors and books that have most influenced her, describes a typical writing day and what she does to unwind, and shares with readers the professional and personal goals she has set for herself.
Question: What inspired you to write ADORED?
Tilly Bagshawe: I guess I see this as two different questions: What inspired me to write a novel? And what inspired the story behind ADORED?
The first question is easier to answer. Having quit my headhunting job and deciding to start a new life doing something creative, my first step was to move into journalism. It was only after about six months of writing articles that I gained the confidence to think about doing something larger in scope.
My sister Louise is a successful novelist, who'd already published nine books by the time I came to thinking about writing ADORED. She really encouraged me to give it a try and gave me a lot of constructive criticism about my first (awful!) attempts to find my voice as a novelist. It was really thanks to her, and to my agent Tif Loehnis (who also happens to be one of my closest girlfriends from university days) that I took the plunge and committed to set aside a year to write a book.
As for the second question --- what inspired the story and characters --- that's a lot more complicated. Some aspects of the book had a very specific inspiration: my husband's unhappy childhood and loss of a parent at age ten, for example, inspired me to create a heroine with an unhappy childhood, who also lost a parent-figure (Duke) at that age.
My own daughter Sefi was eleven when I wrote ADORED, which helped me flesh out Siena's childhood years. Similarly, Batcombe and the Arkells' family life are amalgams of my own childhood experiences in rural England, which were very happy. (I actually have cousins with the surnames Arkell and Berkeley --- although I hasten to add none of the characters in the book are supposed to BE them!)
But many of the characters and events in the book were not inspired by my own life in such a direct way. Sometimes a character just comes to you --- pops into your head, almost --- and ignites your imagination. Duke falls into this category, as does Caroline Berkeley. In my original synopsis, I had no intention of 'redeeming' Caroline as a character, or giving her a new life and happy second marriage with Christopher. But as the book progressed she seemed to take on a life of her own and I found I was too interested in her to drop her. At first I wanted readers to hate Caroline. And yet there was a side to her --- a strength of character, a gutsiness --- for which I myself was developing a sneaking admiration. So I had to change the plot to accommodate that.
In other words, ADORED, like most books I imagine, was born out of a combination of imagination and experience. But the story also grew and changed enormously in the writing.
Q: Where were you born and raised?
TB: I was born in London, in Lambeth, but my family moved to Sussex when I was four so I am definitely a country girl at heart. As well as Sussex, which I love and where I still try to spend as much time as I can, I spent some of the happiest summers of my childhood in the Cotswolds, staying at my Grandmother's house in Burford.
Q: Tell us about your family.
TB: I have two sisters and a brother, and am very close to all of them. We still speak every day, although we live all over the world now. My elder sister Louise is a successful novelist, and my brother James is a TV writer --- everything from comedy to historical documentaries to game shows. Alice, our younger sister, is only sixteen, so there's still plenty of time.
Q: Did you enjoy school? What is your most vivid memory of your school years?
TB: All in all I did enjoy school, although the years between eleven and fourteen were not a lot of fun. I was at a Catholic girls' school in Tunbridge Wells at the time and very gawky and skinny with braces on my teeth. Girls can be extremely mean and bitchy at that age, especially if you are terminally uncool, as I was, and looked like a boy.
I moved schools in fourth year, to another ex-convent girls school where I boarded, and life got a lot better after that. I blossomed a bit physically and made some good friends, and also fell in love for the first time. I was quite naughty in my mid-teens and was suspended from school a number of times before finally being expelled in my last term when I became pregnant with my daughter.
Probably my most vivid memory of school is being helped into a classroom through the window by my English teacher when I was five months pregnant. The school had banned me from attending revision lessons before my A-levels, but all my teachers tried to sneak me in anyway and give me as much help as they could. I got straight A's in the end for my A-levels and got into Cambridge, despite the trauma of the pregnancy and expulsion. So I owe those teachers an awful lot.
Q: Have you had any formal training in creative writing? If so, where and what? Did you find it useful?
TB: I have a degree in English Literature and History from Cambridge (2:1, St John's College, automatic MA three years later), but was never taught creative writing as such. Having said that, my mother, who was also the headmistress of my primary school, taught me and my sister and brother the rudiments of creative composition (making sure your stories are interesting and have a beginning, middle and an end) when we were very young children. She always encouraged us to read and to write. Mum is an incredible teacher and was very influential on all of us, educationally and creatively. I think the lessons you learn before the age of nine or ten are probably the most fundamental ones, that stay with you the longest and influence the way you think and write as an adult the most profoundly.
Q: Did you always want to be an author? If not, what did you originally want to be and when and why did you change your mind?
TB: God no! I wanted to be an Olympic skier when I was a kid. Later, as a teenager, I was hugely into drama and wanted to act professionally. I had lead roles in most school productions, playing everything from Lady Bracknell to Oliver Twist to Macbeth. (All girls schools you see, so male parts were up for grabs as well.) I would have liked to have done more drama at Cambridge, but by then I had a ten month old baby to bring up on my own as well as studying for my degree, and there just wasn't time for anything else. I still think I might like to take up acting again one day though.
The writing came about almost accidentally, in my late twenties. I had given up a very high powered, high stress career in the City and taken a year out to be with my daughter and relax. After about nine months I was going faintly stir crazy living down in the country baking cakes and decided I needed to do something creative, that would hopefully earn me a bit of money as well. I wrote a couple of articles, just funny, light weight, lifestyle-y pieces and sent them off to a bunch of newspapers. Amazingly, The Sunday Times ended up buying them straight away, and soon I was writing regularly for them, eventually branching out into The Daily Mail and The Evening Standard too as a freelancer.
After a while my sister suggested that I should try to write a novel. I thought it would be fun to have a go but didn't really knuckle down to it until my agent and good friend from Cambridge, Tiff Loehnis, pushed me to write a detailed synopsis and submit it. After that, the idea for ADORED took shape pretty quickly. I was excited about it and gave up writing journalism almost completely for eight months while I finished the book.
One note: When I was ten I wrote and illustrated a children's book about a character called Monty Muckworm, an imaginary worm who wore a monocle that my sister and I used to blame whenever our room got in a mess! The book was called MONTY MUCK -- A WORM OF PLUCK. My mother probably still has it somewhere.
Q: Who were your role models? Which writers have influenced you the most? Which person do you most admire?
TB: Role models? In terms of my writing, I have to say that Jilly Cooper is without a doubt the author who I have most enjoyed reading and I'm sure that her books have influenced me although I couldn't pinpoint in what ways exactly. I must have read RIVALS ten times. Whenever things go spectacularly wrong in my life or I am depressed, I find I can pick up RIVALS or RIDERS and lose myself in those worlds again instantly. I read books to escape --- they're so much better and cheaper than therapy! I certainly hope that my books will also help people to escape, to leave behind their problems and open the door into a new, exciting, all consuming world.
Aside from Jilly Cooper, I have always loved Victorian novels. I read pretty much all of Dickens when I was eleven and twelve and moved onto the Brontes and George Eliot in my teens. I like the big, sweeping landscapes of Victorian novels, and I like the notion of 'moral' books. I'm not averse to a bit of Gothic melodrama either, with characters being punished or maimed or burned! Seriously though, I do like authors to have a moral vision of some kind, to get off the fence. OLIVER TWIST profoundly affected me. The scene where Fagin is awaiting his hanging, terrified in his cell, which I first read aged twelve, made me a life-long opponent of the death penalty.
I think I was also influenced, perversely, by the very left wing literary criticism I was taught at Cambridge --- Jacques Derrida and all that 'death of the author' bollocks. What a load of crap! I have always seen books as a form of timeless communication from one human being (the writer) to another, allowing someone's personal words and thoughts and imagination to live on through the ages. It's incredible and wonderful to me that as a young girl living more than a century later, I could read what Dickens wrote and still be moved by his vision and his compassion. Similarly, if Jilly Cooper hadn't created the divine Rupert Campbell Black, I would never have been able to escape into that wonderful fantasy world. That was her personal creation, an imaginative gift to me as her reader, and if I ever meet her, I'll thank her for it.
So to me, writing is very personal and very human --- I think the author is still and will always be very much alive.
Q: What jobs did you have before you started writing?
TB: I worked as a headhunter for six years, specialising in investment banking in London and Los Angeles. I enjoyed that career for a long time, but by the end I had become very exhausted and I think emotionally burned out. I was the youngest ever person to make partner (at twenty-seven) in the number one global headhunting firm (Heidrick & Struggles) and was the firm's biggest revenue producer in Europe before I moved to Los Angeles. So there was immense pressure on me to perform, and I had to deal with a lot of envy and resentment. It could be quite tough.
Working in the City was fantastic in many ways. You earn a fortune, and there's a certain camaraderie in that high pressure, high energy lifestyle that I enjoyed, although it is still a very male oriented and sexist world. I made good friends there and it gave me financial security, so I can't regret it. But I am certainly very happy to be writing now. I think I am less rabidly ambitious in my thirties than I was in my twenties and other things --- creative expression, having time to spend with my family, not dying of a stress-related stomach ulcer --- have become more important to me as I've gotten older.
Q: What was your goal then? What is your ambition now that you have achieved success as a writer? What is the next challenge for you personally?
TB: I suppose my goal when I first started writing journalism was just to be published --- and that hasn't changed really! Obviously you hope that the stuff you write is funny and thought provoking and interesting. With my novel, I guess my aims grew to the extent that you are hoping to create characters and a world and a story that people will love and identify with, something that can transport them out of grim reality into a satisfying fantasy world. I want people to lose themselves in my book. The more people, the better.
As for the next challenge, I suppose you always hope that your next book will be better than your last. I am not trying to become the next Shakespeare and have no pretensions to literary greatness, or even literary credibility. I want to write the sort of fun, sexy, escapist books that I love reading myself, books that have made me happy when nothing else could. If people enjoy reading my books, I'll consider my goals completely fulfilled. On a personal level, the next goal is probably to badger my poor husband into submission and have lots more children!
Q: What personal experiences do you feel have informed your writing? Do you have a connection with or fondness for particular characters or locations?
TB: I think all of your personal experiences inform your writing in some way, because they make up who you are and who you are will determine how you write. Specifically, with regard to ADORED, I drew a lot on my own experience of living in Hollywood and particularly the uglier, painful side of life there that I saw. I still live in LA for six months of the year and even after four years here I'm still struck by the contrast between the natural beauty of the place (the sunshine, the ocean, the canyons), and the inner ugliness of so many of the people, particularly in West Hollywood.
I love England so much. The more I travel, the more convinced I am that it is the best, most beautiful country in the world. But America has also played a big part in my life. My husband is American, although he has lived much of his adult life in London, and in a way I think we both have a love/hate relationship with American culture that probably comes through in the book. On the one hand I greatly admire American drive and dynamism and honesty. I probably also have a rather romantic, nostalgic view of American history: Nantucket, for example, is a magical place that I have always been drawn to write about. I use it in ADORED as the setting for my heroine's healing and redemption.
On the other hand, LA is a town that I associate with unhappiness, emptiness and the dark side of American life. Materialism, lust for fame and disappointment are all big themes in the book.
Clearly my childhood in the Cotswolds was also an influence. Batcombe is an amalgam of the English villages of my childhood, places I associate with family, security and joy.
Other things that have influenced me: I'm very interested in the relationship between parents and children and in how different people are shaped by their different childhoods. My own upbringing was idyllically happy, and I grew up assuming that everyone had a loving supporting family like mine. The older you get, the more you realise that this isn't true, and the more you come to appreciate how lucky you are. My husband had a very unhappy childhood, and experienced death, grief and abandonment very young. His mom died when he was ten, and that one event shaped the whole of the rest of his life and adult personality. So I have become very interested in that and in children struggling to fulfil their parents' expectations of them.
Q: What inspires you?
TB: My parents' marriage. People who have a strong, real religious faith. My daughter, Sefi. She inspires me in every way. I am immensely proud of her and I hope that she is also proud of me. My husband also inspires me, because he's had to overcome so much in his life to find the happiness and peace that comes so easily to people like me.
But I'm also inspired by lots of little things. My dogs inspire me, because they're so loyal and devoted and they're both such optimists. Beautiful scenery inspires me, and I'm lucky to be surrounded by it in both England and California.
This is a tough question --- the list is too long! I can truthfully say that I am amazed and inspired by at least one new thing every single day. My life is incredibly, incredibly blessed.
Q: How do you write each book? i.e. do you block out the narrative first, take each page at a time, create the central character, build a cast of characters, etc? Any anecdotes about the research or writing of your books?
TB: Research? Que??
No, seriously, I am quite methodical in the way I approach my writing. I always start with characters, with the main characters. I give them each a certain personality, a set of traits and motivations, then I see what they do. The plot naturally grows from the characters.
I also note down anecdotes, conversations and observations from daily life --- little verbal sketches of odd, quirky people or events --- and use these to fill out the story and create secondary characters later on.
Once I have a clear picture of my characters and a rough idea of a possible plot or plots, I write a synopsis. Then I write a book that bears very little resemblance to it and send it off! Joking aside, I do believe that good, strong characters have a way of taking things into their own hands. I try to have some structure, chapter plans and so on, as a basis when I start work. But if good tangents present themselves, I'll usually follow them. That's what makes writing fun.
Q: What is a typical writing day?
TB: I write best in the morning. I do everything best in the morning in fact, by three o'clock my brain is jelly. So I try to get up early and write until lunchtime, solidly (bar a few tea breaks), and then in the afternoon I'll edit or do any other, non-creative work (web research, book research, whatever.) I am quite disciplined when I write, in that I have a daily word-count quota and I stick to it. They might be shitty words, but I make sure I write them. You can always play around with things later. And I never do a stroke of work on weekends. Never, ever, ever.
Q: What do you do when you are not writing? How do you relax? What are your hobbies?
TB: I'm awful actually, I have no worthy hobbies at all. I hardly ever go to the theatre or galleries and I'm shockingly badly read as well I'm ashamed to say. To relax I hang out with my daughter or my girlfriends. I walk my dogs in the woods. I like shopping for clothes with my husband (he's a bit metrosexual when it comes to fashion) or going on road trips with him, exploring new places. My husband makes life an adventure --- that's one of the main things I love about him.
In LA I take surf lessons with my daughter, go skiing and riding, and I like hiking or riding bikes at the beach. But I'm also happy just to chill with my vanilla latte and hang out. I live in Café Nero when I'm in London. In England I watch a lot of TV --- never in America for some reason --- and I read all the newspapers and magazines. You can't get good news in LA, I miss it.
I'm a creature of habit --- church on Sundays, kick boxing three times a week, radio four at breakfast, never miss "EastEnders." But I'm also tragically low brow and uncultured. I like schmaltzy Hollywood movies, anything with Steve Martin in it, and I read all the celeb gossip magazines religiously, especially Heat! I also have to confess to liking country music and driving too fast.
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CHAPTER ONE
HANCOCK PARK, LOS ANGELES, 1975
"Forty-eight, forty-nine . . . fifty! Nice job, Duke, you're looking great."
Duke McMahon lay back on his workout mat and looked up at his trainer. Jesus Christ, these young guys all looked like shit. Sideburns like a pair of hairy runways, a brown velour jogging suit, and more gold jewelry than the fucking Mafia. No wonder so much Hollywood pussy was out there looking for an older man.
Still, Mikey was right about one thing. Duke was looking great. He sat up and took a satisfied look at his reflection in one of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that plastered the room. At sixty-four, he still had the body of a man twenty years younger, and he didn't owe one inch of it to surgery. He hated working out with a passion, especially the goddamn sit-ups, but was infinitely vain. In his six years with Duke, Mikey had never known him to cancel a single session.
"You still need to do some more work on your abs, you know," Mikey chided as he watched the old man untie his sneakers and head toward the shower.
"Yeah, and you still need to do some more work on your fucking wardrobe, man. Not to mention your hair." Duke held up his hands in mock exasperation. "I'm telling you, buddy, you look like Cher with a three-day shadow. Get a fucking haircut!"
Mikey laughed and turned down the blare of Mick Jagger on the record player. Duke loved his Stones.
It was a long time since the trainer had seen him in such a chipper mood. Evidently the new girlfriend was working wonders. He knew he shouldn't really like Duke, but he couldn't help it. Sure, the old man was a bastard. An addictive womanizer, he treated his poor wife, Minnie, like dirt and was so right-wing --- anti-gay, anti-women, anti-blacks, anti-taxes --- it was totally outrageous. But he also had this incredible energy, a lust for life that seemed to draw people to him. Mikey had a lot of wealthy, famous clients --- although none quite as wealthy or famous as Duke McMahon --- and none of them could touch him for raw charisma.
Emerging dripping and naked from the shower, Duke strode over to the window and looked out at the California sunshine. He'd had the gym built on the first floor of his sprawling hacienda in Hancock Park, a pale pink Spanish architectural masterpiece known to the busloads of tourists who hung around outside the gates simply as the McMahon estate. Although the estate itself had been built in the twenties, when Hancock Park was first starting to become popular with the swelling ranks of movie actors and musicians who had moved west to find fame and fortune, the interior was a bizarre mélange of modern and traditional styles.
Minnie, Duke's long-suffering wife, had impeccable if rather conservative taste, and many of the public rooms reflected her refined and understated influence. In striking contrast, Duke's unashamed vulgarity and love affair with all things modern had led to some gruesome decor decisions, of which the gym was only one: The state-of-the-art music center, complete with eight-track tape deck and stereo speakers, was housed in an immense velvet-lined teak cabinet. A central workout square of polished wood was surrounded by a sea of cream shag carpeting, fitted wall to wall beneath the ubiquitous mirrors, and a disco ball hung in pride of place from the vaulted ceiling.
"For the love of God, Duke, would you put some clothes on?" Seamus, Duke's oldest childhood friend and now his right-hand man --- a sort of hybrid manservant, PA, and business manager --- had stuck his flushed, permanently jovial face around the door, giving a brief nod of acknowledgment to the trainer. "You have a meeting at eleven, you know? I know the dress code is casual in Hollywood, but I'm sure John McGuire would appreciate a pair of underpants at least."
Duke looked over his shoulder at his old pal and grinned. They were almost exact contemporaries, but Seamus looked nearly old enough to be his father. His hairline had receded so far that he appeared completely bald from the front, and a lifelong penchant for "the odd dram," as he put it, had contributed to both his florid complexion and his spreading waistline. In anyone else Duke would have been scathing of such a lack of self-control, but he'd always considered Seamus a special case. Having battled his way through the vipers' nest of scheming agents and unscrupulous studios in Hollywood, Duke knew just how rare loyalty and genuine friendship were. Seamus was a gem.
"Go fuck yourself, wouldya?" he replied good-naturedly, scratching his balls for added effect. "I'm trying to enjoy the view here."
And quite a view it was. Immaculately manicured lawns rolled down the hill away from the house as far as the eye could see. An Olympic-size pool flashed and shimmered in the morning sunshine, surrounded by a haphazard collection of orange and lemon trees, all groaning with fruit. Tiny hummingbirds, their brilliant streaks of color clashing with the unbroken blue of the sky, flitted from flower to flower, enjoying the sunshine. It was hard to imagine that such a Garden of Eden could be completely man-made; that without ceaseless irrigation, planting, and tending, the whole of Hancock Park would have been nothing more than a lifeless desert. But then that was precisely what Duke loved about L.A. It was a place where you could turn a patch of dirt into paradise, if you worked hard and wanted it badly enough.
Any one of the legions of Mexican gardeners and handymen on the lawns below could have glanced up and seen the master of the house stark naked, surveying his kingdom from the window, as they had on so many mornings before. Duke didn't care. It was his house. He had worked for every square inch of it, and he could shit on the fucking floor if he wanted to. Besides, he liked being naked in front of the staff, because it drove Minnie insane with embarrassment. Humiliating his wife was one of Duke's greatest and most enduring pleasures.
"Eleven o'clock." Seamus raised a reprimanding finger in the general direction of Duke's naked rear view before scurrying off to prepare the paperwork for the day's meetings.
"Look at that, man." Duke made a sweeping gesture through the window for Mikey's benefit, once Seamus had gone. "What a terrific day!"
"We're in California, Duke. Every day's a beautiful day." The trainer zipped up his sports bag and leaned back against the mirrored wall. He wasn't in any rush to leave. His next client was a hopelessly overweight Beverly Hills widow who couldn't seem to get enough of his brown velour jogging suit and shoulder-length hair. Chewing the fat with Duke was a whole lot more fun. "So what's put you in such a great mood all of a sudden? This wouldn't have anything to do with . . . is it Catherine? What's her name, your new girlfriend?"
"Mistress, my new mistress." Duke grinned. "I'm a hell of a lot too old for a 'girlfriend.'" To Mikey's relief, he pulled on a pair of white linen golfing trousers and sat down on a bench, warming to his theme. "A girlfriend is someone you hold hands with, maybe go to the pictures. One day, if you find you really like her, then maybe you marry her and she becomes your wife. That's a girlfriend. Now, a mistress --- a mistress is something totally different." He paused for dramatic effect, a slow smile spreading across his predatory hawklike features. "A mistress is basically pussy that you own."
"Jesus Christ!" Mikey exploded into laughter, genuinely shocked. "You can't say things like that! Nobody owns nobody else, Duke."
"Ah, kid." Duke shook his head. "How little you know."
Standing up to admire his chosen outfit --- white pants, white patent-leather shoes, and a tight chocolate-brown turtleneck that was far too warm for the California climate but that accentuated his chest and biceps --- he put an affectionate, paternal arm around his trainer. How come he could never talk like this to his own son, Pete? The boy was always so fucking uptight, a stuck-up little prig like his mother. Duke used to say that Pete Jr. was a replica of Minnie, only with balls --- but these days he wasn't too sure whether his son even had that distinction.
"Anyway, in answer to your question, yes, my mood probably does owe just a little something to Caroline."
"Sorry, yeah, Caroline, you told me."
Duke was beaming like a drunk in a liquor store. This must be quite some girl. As if reading his mind, the old man continued. "Not only is she a world-class fuck" --- Duke noticed Mikey fighting to stifle a blush --- "seriously, man, you should see her, she is the sluttiest little whore but she speaks like the fucking queen. If you haven't screwed an English girl, I'm telling you, you gotta try it."
"I'll bear that in mind," said Mikey. "Thanks."
"But the best part is," Duke looked at him triumphantly, "she's agreed to move in with me. Permanently. As of today."
Had Mikey missed something here? "What do you mean she's moving in with you?" He knew it was rude to piss on Duke's picnic when he was so patently over the moon. But how could Caroline possibly be moving in? "What about Minnie? Did you guys, like, separate or get a divorce or something? How come I never heard about this?"
"Nope." Duke cracked his knuckles and smiled broadly. He was evidently lapping up the younger man's discomfiture. "No separation, no divorce. I just told her. This is my house, and I want Caroline to live here. Minnie'll do what she's told if she wants to remain a part of this family."
Mikey winced. Duke's brutality never ceased to shock him, especially where poor Mrs. McMahon was concerned. He couldn't understand why on earth she tolerated it. Still, even by Duke's standards, this was a bit extreme, moving the girlfriend into the estate right under her nose. He imagined Peter wasn't going to be too pleased either.
"We're having a welcome dinner tonight at eight," continued Duke, unfazed. "It's just family: Caroline and me, Laurie, Pete and his wife . . . and my wife, of course," he sneered sadistically. "But you're more than welcome to join us if you'd like. I'll have Minnie set an extra place."
Jesus Christ, so Minnie was expected to play hostess at this charade? Suddenly Mikey felt awkward, guilty. He didn't want to be a party to any of this. "I can't," he said, blushing. "I'm really sorry, but I can't."
For all his charm, Duke obviously had a huge hole right where any sense of morality or basic human compassion should be. And when you looked right into that hole, it was black. Frankly, it scared the shit out of Mikey.
Sensing the old man's disappointment, he shrugged apologetically, attempting to lighten the atmosphere. "Dinner with my girlfriend, you know?"
"Sure. Of course," said Duke with a mirthless smile that reminded Mikey of the wolf grinning at Little Red Riding Hood. All of a sudden the room seemed to become terribly cold. "It's not a problem, kid, really," said Duke, heading for the door. "I understand."
Sitting at her dressing table in the east wing of the house, Minnie fastened the clasp of her pearls with a steady hand. The sweet scent of the cyclamen creepers that grew around her dressing-room window never failed to relax her. She took a deep, calming gulp of the warm morning air and sighed.
Minnie adored her dressing room, her small, private sanctuary filled with the beloved and familiar reminders of a former life: Her father's antique English writing table now served as her bureau, and the richly faded Persian rug on the floor had once been the nursery rug back home in Connecticut, on which she and her brother, Austin, had crawled and squabbled and built elaborate cities out of blocks. Lavish vases of flowers covered every available surface, and a slightly battered but charming old bookcase beside the door was filled with books, not only collected but read by generations of Millers. Some had belonged to her great-great-grandfather and Minnie loved simply to hold them, stroking the spines and thinking of all of her ancestors who had held them and read them before her.
Thirty years in Los Angeles had done nothing to diminish her homesickness for the East Coast. But through her flair for interior design --- Minnie had that rare ability to turn a house into a home without diminishing its elegance, with a style that combined traditional conservatism with real warmth --- she had created a miniature East Coast oasis inside the estate, which had become a huge comfort to her in her frequent times of trouble.
Having arranged her pearls carefully in the mirror, she picked up the silver-backed clothes brush on the dresser and swept a few stubborn strands of lint from her skirt. Today would be a difficult day. But as her mother had always taught her, a lady never loses her composure, no matter how trying the circumstance. Whatever it took, she must maintain her dignity, draw it like a shield around her in the face of this . . . this . . . unfortunate event.
Ten years younger than Duke, at fifty-four Minnie had embraced middle age as enthusiastically as her husband had fought to keep it at bay. She looked like his mother. That is to say, she dressed like his mother. Or like his mother would have dressed had she come from an old-money Greenwich family like Minnie's (rather than an impoverished New York Irish tribe of manual laborers and petty thieves). Her daily uniform had barely altered since she and Duke first married over thirty years ago. A khaki linen skirt to the knee, crisp white shirt with jauntily upturned collar, tan panty hose (no matter how stiflingly hot the weather, a lady never went bare-legged), slightly heeled round-toed pumps, and, of course, her grandmother's pearls.
Thanks to a rigorous, no-nonsense daily beauty routine consisting of soap, water, and a good dollop of cold cream at night, her handsome patrician face was not excessively lined. The years of suffering she had endured through the latter stages of her marriage to Duke had etched themselves only faintly around the eyes, where other, happier women had laughter lines.
Still, Minnie reminded herself grimly, she had a lot to be thankful for. Life as the wife of the world's most famous movie star had brought a lot of material comforts, which had certainly dulled the pain of some of her other marital disappointments. And of course, she had her children. Sweet, reliable Laurie, and her beloved son, Pete, still lived on the Hancock Park estate, and along with Pete's young wife, Claire, they provided a daily buffer of emotional support against Duke's increasingly open hatred of her.
Her husband might be insisting on moving his cheap little tart into their home. But, by God, if he thought he was going to drive her out with his vindictive little games, her or the children, he had another think coming.
"Mother? Oh, Mother, there you are."
Laurie's forlorn face peered around the doorway. At twenty-eight, Duke and Minnie's younger child had already adopted the appearance of a confirmed spinster. Her full gypsy skirt and loose shapeless Moroccan blouse did nothing to conceal the rolls of fat acquired through decades of comfort eating. With her greasy brown hair scraped back into a severe ponytail and her face bare of makeup, it was almost impossible to believe this timid, trembling mouse of a girl could be the natural child of such fine-featured parents. This morning her appearance was further hampered by a bright red shiny nose and eyes dreadfully swollen from crying.
"Well, of course I'm here," said Minnie, her voice bright and businesslike. "Where else would I be? We have an awful lot to do today for the dinner, and I'm going to need your help, Laurie-Loo, with the flowers."
For the last week, Caroline's arrival had been referred to simply as "the dinner." No one could bring themselves to utter her name.
"Oh, Mother!" Laurie's swollen, twitching face finally gave way, and she crumpled into full-throated, childish sobs. "How can you be so calm about it? I mean, how could Daddy do this to you, to all of us?"
"For the good Lord's sake, Laurie, pull yourself together," said Minnie. If there was one thing she would not tolerate, it was giving in to one's emotions. It really was disgracefully undignified. "It's a difficult time for all of us, but we have nothing to be ashamed of, and certainly no reason to cry."
She handed her daughter a white monogrammed handkerchief and patted the chair beside her. The rosewood creaked as Laurie eased her sniveling bulk into it. Minnie wished her daughter would show just a bit more self-discipline when it came to food, but she smiled at her kindly and tried not to show it. "Really, darling, you mustn't cry." She patted Laurie's head ineffectually, as if she were an obedient dog. "Believe me, your father will tire of this young woman soon enough. Just as he has with all the others."
"I hope so, Mother." Laurie sniffed. "I really do. But he's never moved any of the others in with us before, has he?" It was a good point. "I mean, for God's sake, this girl is only twenty-nine. That's even younger than Petey."
"I can do the math, sweetheart," Minnie sighed. Squaring her bony shoulders into a stance of unshakable determination, she squeezed Laurie's hand firmly. "Try not to worry," she said. "It's going to be up to all of us, you, me, and Peter, to make sure this young woman does go the way of all the rest of them. But I can promise you one thing, darling. I am your father's wife and the mistress of this household. And nothing, Laurie --- absolutely nothing --- is going to change that."
Not for the first time, Laurie marveled at her mother. Pete always insisted that a willingness to accept a lifetime of abuse from Duke was more of a weakness than a strength, but Laurie was in awe of Minnie's unshakable calm in the face of just about any storm. She thought of her mother as some sort of tragic heroine, her unbreakable spirit emerging triumphant through all the batterings that fate and life could throw at her. If only she, Laurie, had inherited some of that spirit, that strength, then perhaps her own life wouldn't be such an unholy mess.
"So," Minnie smiled bravely, anxious to end this emotional interview with her daughter, "why don't we start sorting out those flowers for tonight? We want everything to look perfect for Daddy, don't we?"
To everyone who knew them, Duke and Minnie McMahon's marriage was a perpetual mystery.
When they'd first met, back in the late thirties, Minnie was the shy and incredibly beautiful teenage daughter of Pete Miller, the last in a long line of wealthy Connecticut landowners, and his wife, Marilyn, a respected society hostess. Duke, who'd been brought by a casual girlfriend to one of Marilyn Miller's charity events, was a recognized young actor, still somewhere between up-and-coming and a major studio star, and already had something of a reputation as a gambler and a womanizer who liked to party hard.
His attraction to the young Minnie Miller was instant and uncomplicated. Standing in the corner of the room, hiding awkwardly in the shadows behind her nerdy elder brother, Austin, she seemed to represent everything that had been denied him in his own early life: beauty, fragility, innocence, wealth, and breeding. She looked untouched and untouchable, exactly the sort of virgin Protestant princess whom polite society considered completely out of bounds for a dissolute Irish Catholic boy such as himself.
He had asked her to dance that night, much to his companion's chagrin, and Minnie had declined, blushing furiously and insisting she didn't know how to, clinging on to her brother's hand for dear life. Duke was charmed. He didn't know that such naive girls still existed within a hundred-mile radius of Manhattan. Certainly, he had never met one before. He decided there and then that he had to have Minnie Miller, and for the next nine months he set about the arduous task of seducing her.
For Minnie's part, she had worshipped Duke from the moment she laid eyes on him. Not only was he breathtakingly good-looking, with his hair the same shiny blue-black as a raven's, his firm, jutting jaw, and his wonderful, deep, lyrical voice with its lingering hint of Irish brogue. But there was also something dangerous about him, something adult, masculine, and forbidden that set him apart from all of her brother's preppy Harvard classmates, or the boys she was introduced to at her mother's carefully chaperoned society dances.
Both the strength and nature of her feelings for him frightened the young Minnie. For her to be courted openly by Duke, a Catholic with no good family and what her mother referred to with shuddering disdain as "a reputation," was quite inconceivable. On the other hand a secret romance was, in Minnie's eyes, a step of such seriousness and gravity that for months she could barely sleep for thinking about it, tortured in equal part by her passionate love and desire for Duke, and by her desperate all-consuming guilt.
Eventually, as is always the way, love and passion beat guilt hands down. She was still only eighteen when Duke took her virginity, in one of the old boathouses by the lake at her parents' summer house in Maine. For Duke, who was used to the more practiced efforts of worldly Hollywood girls, the sex was, technically speaking, dreadful. She had lain rigid and shaking beneath him, her eyes wide open with terror, like a rabbit about to be shot. Afterward she had sobbed and sobbed in his arms until his shirt was soaked through.
But his sense of triumph and elation, not just of breaking down her defenses sexually, but of winning the heart of something so rare and perfect and precious, more than outweighed the disappointment of the event itself. There was something about Minnie that made him want to be a better man, the man she deserved. No one was more surprised than Duke to discover that he had, for the first time in his life, fallen in love.
They were married three months later in a little Catholic church off Broadway. An ashen-faced Pete Miller had led his daughter down the aisle. For Minnie to be marrying a scoundrel like McMahon was bad enough, but a Catholic wedding! His poor father and grandfather would both be turning in their graves.
For Duke, the day was one of unadulterated elation, and he couldn't understand it when, driving his new wife home from their rather subdued reception at the Millers' Manhattan town house, she had burst into tears.
"What on earth's the matter?" he'd asked her, handing her his handkerchief with a look of bewilderment and dismay. "Don't tell me you're regretting it already?"
"Oh Duke, no," she insisted between sobs, "of course I'm not. It's not that. It's just that tomorrow we're going to be leaving for California. I've never been away from Mommy and Daddy before, not for more than a week anyway, and I'm gonna miss them so much. Oh, and Austin!"
At the thought of her brother, she began wailing again. Duke fought down his feelings of annoyance. What the hell did she see in that chinless, judgmental, preppy little son of a bitch anyway?
"Come on now," he said, reaching over and patting her thigh sympathetically. "It's not like I'm taking you to Europe or something. Your parents can come visit. I bet you we see them all the time."
Minnie shook her head sadly. "I'm not so sure," she said. "You know how much they disapproved of us getting married. What if they never forgive me?"
"Sure they will," said Duke. Although privately he wished his wife didn't already think of their marriage as some sort of sin to be forgiven.
The first year of the marriage was a happy one. Duke had bought them a large house in North Hollywood, back when L.A. property was still dirt cheap, and Minnie delighted in decorating it and playing house while her new husband was on-set. His career was going from strength to strength, and in 1941 he landed his first leading role, in a farcical comedy called Checkmate. The rift with her family remained strong, and she saw her parents only once in that first year, spending an agonizingly awkward long weekend with them at the newly developed resort of Palm Springs. But life with Duke was so blissful, and Minnie was so caught up with establishing herself as a hostess among his new and exciting Hollywood crowd, that she found herself feeling less and less homesick, and less and less guilty, by the day.
Then came the war. And as for so many young couples, overnight it seemed, everything changed.
Duke was sent to Asia, where he was to spend the next three and a half years. He was, as he liked to tell people later, one of the lucky ones. He came home. But the home, and the woman he came home to, had changed out of all recognition.
For the first six months after he was conscripted, Minnie remained in Hollywood, trying to make a life for herself among the other army wives there. But loneliness soon overcame her and, encouraged by her mother and brother, she decided to return home to Connecticut. She missed Duke terribly and wrote to him religiously twice a week. But she also found herself naturally slipping back into the old rhythms of life at home. Soon she was going riding with her father and out to lunches in Manhattan with her mother, just like the old days, and her married life back in California began to feel more and more like a distant dream.
Duke would come home on leave and stay with the Millers. His father-in-law was civil --- now that he had seen active service, Duke had apparently become a smidgen more acceptable in the old man's eyes --- but still always treated him with a patronizing sense of social superiority that Duke bitterly resented.
When he complained to Minnie about it, she dismissed his concern. He was imagining slights and insults where there were none.
Duke wanted her to move back to L.A., but the mere suggestion made her almost hysterical.
"What's the point of me being there when you're away?" she asked. "I'm isolated and I'm lonely, whereas here I have friends and family to support me. Things are so much better now with Mom and Dad. Please, please don't ruin it all again."
He couldn't really argue with her. Still, he returned to the front with a gnawing sense that he was somehow losing her. That she was no longer completely on his side.
After the war, they did move back home, and for a while life got back to something approaching normal. Duke went back to work at the studio, and Minnie almost immediately fell pregnant with Peter. The cracks, however, did not take long to start appearing.
Minnie's parents' snobbery and East Coast prejudices seemed to have oozed into her personality in the last three years by osmosis. Whereas before she had been quite happy to have friends over for an impromptu kitchen supper in the evenings, she now insisted on full silver-service dinners every time they entertained, which Duke found pretentious and unnecessary. Worse, she began to show signs of embarrassment at his own social behavior, reprimanding him in public for excessive drinking, and even on one occasion correcting his grammar in front of the whole crew on-set.
"It's 'I should have,' darling, not 'I should of,'" she'd piped up brightly, overhearing him rehearsing some lines.
Duke was furious.
"Yeah? Well, maybe you should have stayed at home and minded your own fuckin' business, Min," he snapped.
The worst of it was that Minnie herself couldn't perceive any of the changes Duke accused her of. In her own mind, she was the same as she had always been, and she still loved her husband desperately.
"Of course I'm on your side, darling," she'd protest tearfully. "I love you so much, Duke. You must know that."
But increasingly, he wasn't sure if he did know it. With her love and approval, he truly believed he could be a good man, a good husband and father. Without it, there was nothing to stop him from going back to his old ways.
He began an affair with one of his costars. It spluttered on for a few months, after which, miserable and guilty, he came home one night and confessed to a distraught Minnie.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I didn't know what to do. I feel like I'm not good enough for you anymore."
"Oh, Duke, that's nonsense! How can you say that?" she cried.
Even in her despair, she seemed to be dismissing him.
"Well why won't you sleep with me then? For Christ's sake, Minnie, it's been months and every time I come near you you push me away! You make me feel like some sort of fucking disease."
"I've told you!" she shouted at him. "It's because of the baby. I'm just scared, Duke, I want our baby so much, I don't want anything to go wrong."
"And nothing will," he said, pulling her to him and holding on to her tightly. What the hell was he doing, cheating on her? God knew he loved her, so much it scared the wits out of him.
That night they had made love, but it was a disaster. Duke, desperate for her love and forgiveness, had tried everything he knew to please her. But she was so terrified of losing the baby, she remained rigid with tension throughout, suffering his attentions as a mother must tolerate the needy suckling of her child. The woman who had once filled him with such confidence and made him feel like such a strong, powerful man now made him feel useless, rejected, and alone.
Things went from bad to worse. The baby was born, and instantly little Peter became the center of his mother's world, leaving Duke feeling even more excluded. He began another affair, then another, each time hoping to shock Minnie into realizing that he needed her.
She loved him, and was deeply hurt by his infidelities. But as the affairs became more and more frequent, she eventually stopped believing that she had any power to stop them. Duke was rapidly becoming a huge star, with some of the world's most beautiful women throwing themselves at his feet. Obviously, Minnie thought, he no longer loved her. She learned to take comfort and joy in her children instead of her marriage, and she cloaked herself defensively in the stoic, reserved conservatism of her upbringing. Slowly but surely, she and Duke grew ever further and more irreparably apart.
And yet, to the surprise of all who knew them, they never did divorce. In fact, they never even discussed the possibility. Some said it was Duke's almost superstitiously strong Catholicism that held the marriage together. Others saw Minnie as a masochist who would put up with just about anything for her children's sake and to avoid a society scandal.
The truth, in fact, was much simpler. Somewhere, buried very deep in both their hearts, beneath the hatred, the bitterness, and all the many betrayals --- a tiny fragment of love survived.
Copyright © 2005 by Tilly Bagshawe
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