A tap on my forearm. Little Vince (as his grandparents called him, to my horror) offering me a tongue-and-cress sandwich to the loud applause of the other adults. His eyes were wide with alarm. Why did the boy fear me? Cruelly, I said no, thank you. He burst into tears, dropped the sandwich in the sand and fled to his mother’s wide lap.
“Johnny, really.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“Oh, but still …”
“God Almighty! I can’t stuff myself just for his sake!”
I stood up and angrily threw off my robe. I strode down to the water and dived in. Cool shock, a silent glide, a sudden calm. I hated myself.
I will not bore you with the actual details of the filming of Julie. Suffice it to say I knew from very early on it was going well. Karl-Heinz was superb. We whitened his face and hollowed his cheeks and eye sockets to enhance his wracked, soul-tormented personality. The particular frisson in the film was the two types of delicious anticipation that operated in it. The first was before Julie and Saint-Preux’s love was consummated. Then, second, there was more suspense over whether their sense of honor would allow their virtue to survive. It was given an added twist by Doon’s loveliness and irresistible erotic allure. Her manner on screen was one of innocent carnal license, which, in the second half when she was trying to be faithful to Wolmar, toyed with one’s sense of frustration in the most agonizing way. The two lovers desperately wanted each other. All that was physically keeping them apart was the abstract airy strictures of morality. Once old Baron Wolmar left them they had everything — place, occasion, inclination — but some higher code kept them at arm’s length.
There was one scene towards the end of the film that, when we saw the rushes, had us all on the edge of our seats baying obscene encouragement at Karl-Heinz.
It is late one evening. An albescent moon shines on Baron Wolmar’s château. On the terrace Saint-Preux wrestles with his conscience as he smokes a cigarette (remember, it has all been updated). Moths flutter round the lights (thank you, Georg). Then, further up the long terrace, Julie steps out through the French windows of her boudoir. She is wearing a luxuriant flimsy negligee, which billows occasionally in the night breezes. She advances towards Saint-Preux, their eyes fast upon one another. She stops eighteen inches from him. Caption: I love this time of the evening. May I have a cigarette? With one movement Saint-Preux slides his silver cigarette case from his pocket. Close-up of Julie’s fingers as she selects one — her lacquered nails on the slim white cylinder. Saint-Preux — cigarette in mouth — goes for his lighter in another pocket, but a slight hesitation on Julie’s part halts him. She puts the cigarette in her mouth (close-up: those wide dark lips, that white, white paper). She sways towards him. Tip of cigarette meets tip of cigarette. Ignition, burn, smoke wreaths. They move apart gazing at each other. They draw on their cigarettes, exhale. Smoke, backlit by the moon, coils and swoops thickly about them.…
This scene has been much copied, at times blatantly, at times indirectly. It was the first use in a film, I believe, of the cigarette as an erotic symbol. The scene was mightily effective and so powerful that it was almost cut by the censor. Aram reported this dull bureaucrat’s comments to me: “He says they are fornicating on screen.” Our dumb literalness—“But they’re only smoking. They’re not even touching!”—won the day. Not a frame was removed.
Naturally, Doon was a triumph in the film also. Not that she required any elevation from the stellar heights she already occupied. Her last day of filming occurred two weeks before the end of the shoot. It was her deathbed scene, where she declares she has been in love with Saint-Preux all along. Our final two weeks were to be occupied with Saint-Preux in Paris gamely resisting its temptations, sustained by Julie’s faith.
I had champagne and flowers sent to Doon’s dressing room. Aram Lodokian had arranged a formal farewell party for later that evening. I felt calm. We had worked well together and there had been no disagreements. She could see I knew what I was doing (even if you do not know what you are doing, the crucial talent required by a director, as far as actors are concerned, is to give the unchallengeable impression that you do) and, importantly, there had been no hint of intimacy between us. Certainly not from her, and I had been prudent not to let my own desires be revealed again. It seemed to me that I was finally exerting some control over myself. Even when Mavrocordato visited the set a few times. Although, through my green eyes, it looked as if they were getting on uncommonly well for a divorced couple. So why did I go to her room alone? I wanted to say good-bye and I wanted, personally and privately, to set a seal on our relationship. Friendship with a tantalizing hint of what might have been. Or so I told myself.
Doon had not changed from her deathbed nightdress, a strappy satin thing with a low back. She had a long housecoat tied loosely over it. In an anteroom her dresser was ironing. Doon poured me a glass of champagne and we idly exchanged compliments about the film.
“Did you see Alex on your way in?”
“Alex who?” I always did this.
“God, Jamie! Mavrocordato. He’s supposed to be picking me up.”
“No. No sign.”
The dresser — a small, cross-looking woman — came out of the anteroom holding a short black jacket with diamanté buttons.
“Fixed it?” Doon asked.
“You better try it on.”
Doon slipped off the housecoat and put the jacket on.
“It’s fine. Thanks, Dora, you can go.”
Dora left. Doon checked the fit of the jacket, flexing, reaching, stretching, then she took it off and flung it over the arm of her chair. A wayward sleeve knocked her near-empty glass to the ground, shattering it.
“Shit!” she said. She knelt down to pick up the pieces.
Seeing Doon’s slim tall body, one might have thought her small-breasted. Not so. She had wide flat breasts, small-nippled, with almost no sag to them. A gentle convexity covering a largish area, like the lid of a soup tureen. I saw them now as she knelt on the ground before me, the drooping front of her nightdress affording me an unobstructed view.