Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [120]
--The failure of a wire-fence company, the failure, rather less emphatic and final, of one's father's mind, what were these things in the face of God or destiny? Captain Constable's besetting illusion was that he'd been cashiered from the army; and everything started up to this imagined disgrace. He set out on his way back yet once more to Hawaii, the dementia that arrested him in Los Angeles however, where he discovered he was penniless, being strictly alcoholic in character.
Yvonne glanced again at the Consul who was sitting meditative with pursed lips apparently intent on the arena. How little he knew of this period, of her life, of that terror, the terror, terror that still could wake her in the night from that recurrent nightmare of things collapsing; the terror that was like that she had been supposed to portray in the white-slave-traffic film, the hand clutching her shoulder through the dark doorway; or the real terror she'd felt when she actually had been caught in a ravine with two hundred stampeding horses; no, like Captain Constable himself, Geoffrey had been almost bored, perhaps ashamed, by all this: that she had, starting when she was only thirteen, supported her father for five years as an actress in "serials" and "westerns'; Geoffrey might have nightmares, like her father in this too, be the only person in the world who ever had such nightmares, but that she should have them... Nor did Geoffrey know much more of the false real excitement, or the false flat bright enchantment of the studios, or the childish adult pride, as harsh as it was pathetic, and justifiable, in having, somehow, at that age, earned a living.
Beside the Consul Hugh took out a cigarette, tapped it on his thumbnail, noted it was the last in the package, and placed it between his lips. He put his feet up on the back of the seat beneath him and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, frowning down into the arena. Then, fidgeting still, he struck a match, drawing his thumbnail across it with a crackle like a small cap-pistol, and held it to the cigarette, cupping his quite beautiful hands, his head bent... Hugh was coming towards her this morning, in the garden, through the sunlight. With his rolling swagger, his Stetson hat on the back of his head, his holster, his pistol, his bandolier, his tight trousers tucked inside the elaborately stitched and decorated boots, she'd thought, just for an instant, that he was--actually!--Bill Hodson, the cowboy star, whose leading lady she'd been in three pictures when she was fifteen. Christ, how absurd! How marvellously absurd! The Hawaiian Islands gave us this real outdoor girl who is fond of swimming, golf, dancing, and is also an expert horsewoman! She... Hugh hadn't said one word this morning about how well she rode, though he'd afforded her not a little secret amusement by explaining that her horse--miraculously--didn't want to drink. Such areas there are in one another we leave, perhaps for ever, unexplored!--She'd never told him a word about her movie career, no, not even that day in Robinson... But it was a pity Hugh himself hadn't been old enough to interview her, if not the first time, that second awful time after Uncle Macintyre sent her to college, and after her first marriage, and the death of her child, when she had gone back once more to Hollywood. Yvonne the Terrible! Look out, you sarong sirens and glamour girls, Yvonne Constable, the "Boomp Girl," is back in Hollywood! Yes, Yvonne is back, determined to conquer Hollywood for the second time. But she's twenty-four now, and the "Boomp Girl" has become a poised exciting woman who wears diamonds and white orchids and ermine--and a woman who has known the meaning of love and tragedy, who has lived a lifetime since she left Hollywood a few short years ago. I found her the other day at her beach home, a honey-tanned Venus just emerging from the surf. As we talked she gazed out over the water with her slumbrous dark eyes and the Pacific breezes played with her thick dark hair. Gazing at her for a moment it was hard to associate the Yvonne Constable of today with the rough-riding serial queen of yesteryear, but the torso's still terrific, and the energy is still absolutely unparalleled! The Honolulu Hellion, who at twelve was a war-whooping tomboy, crazy about baseball, disobeying everyone but her adored Dad, who she called "The Boss-Boss," became at fourteen a child actress, and at fifteen, leading lady to Bill Hodson. And she was a powerhouse even then. Tall for her age, she had a lithe strength that came from a childhood of swimming and surfboarding in the Hawaiian breakers. Yes, though you may not think it now, Yvonne has been submerged in burning lakes, suspended over precipices, ridden horses down ravines, and she's an expert at "double pick-offs." Yvonne laughs merrily today when she remembers the frightened determined girl who declared she could ride very well indeed, and then, the picture in progress, the company on location, tried to mount her horse from the wrong side! A year later she could do a "flying mount" without turning a hair. "But about that time I was rescued from Hollywood," as she smilingly puts it, "and very unwillingly too, by my Uncle Macintyre, who literally swooped down, after my father died, and sailed me back to Honolulu!" But when you've been a "Boomp Girl" and are well on your way to being an "Oomph Girl!" at eighteen, and when you've just lost your beloved "Boss-Boss," it's hard to settle down in a strict loveless atmosphere. "Uncle Macintyre," Yvonne admits, "never conceded a jot or tittle to the tropics. Oh, the mutton broth and oatmeal and hot tea!" But Uncle Macintyre knew his duty and, after Yvonne had studied with a tutor, he sent her to the University of Hawaii. There--perhaps, she says, "because the word 'star' had undergone some mysterious transformation in my mind"--she took a course in astronomy! Trying to forget the ache in her heart and its emptiness, she forced an interest in her studies and even dreamed briefly of becoming the "Madame Curie" of astronomy! And there too, before long, she met the millionaire playboy, Cliff Wright. He came into Yvonne's life at a moment when she was discouraged in her University work, restless under Uncle Macintyre's strict regime, lonely, and longing for love and companionship. And Cliff was young and gay, his rating as an eligible bachelor was absolutely blue ribbon. It's easy to see how he was able to persuade her, beneath the Hawaiian moon, that she loved him, and that she should leave college and marry him. ('Don't tell me for Christ sake about this Cliff," the Consul wrote in one of his rare early letters, "I can see him and I hate the bastard already: short-sighted and promiscuous, six foot three of gristle and bristle and pathos, of deep-voiced charm and casuistry." The Consul had seen him with some astuteness as a matter of fact--poor Cliff!--one seldom thought of him now and one tried not to think of the self-righteous girl whose pride had been outraged by his infidelities--"businesslike, inept and unintelligent, strong and infantile, like most American men, quick to wield chairs in a fight, vain, and who, at thirty still ten, turns the act of love into a kind of dysentery...") Yvonne has already been a victim of "bad Press" about her marriage and in the inevitable divorce that followed, what she said was misconstrued, and when she didn't say anything, her silence was misinterpreted. And it wasn't only the Press who misunderstood: "Uncle Macintyre," she says ruefully, "simply washed his hands of me." (Poor Uncle Macintyre. It was fantastic, it was almost funny--it was screamingly funny, in a way, as one related it to one's friends. She was a Constable through and through, and no child of her mother's people! Let her go the way of the Constables! God knows how many of them had been caught up in, or invited, the same kind of meaningless tragedy, or half-tragedy, as herself and her father. They rotted in asylums in Ohio or dozed in dilapidated drawing-rooms in Long Island with chickens pecking among the family silver and broken teapots that would be found to contain diamond necklaces. The Constables, a mistake on the part of nature, were dying out. In fact, nature meant to wipe them out, having no further use for what was not self-evolving. The secret of their meaning, if any, had been lost.) So Yvonne left Hawaii with her head high and a smile on her lips, even if her heart was more achingly empty than ever before. And now she's back in Hollywood and people who know her best say she has no time in her life now for love, she things of nothing but her work. And at the studio they're saying the tests she's been making recently are nothing short of sensational. The "Boomp Girl" has become Hollywood's greatest dramatic actress! So Yvonne Constable, at twenty-four, is well on the way for the second time to becoming a star.