1

      Santa Monica, 17 October 1929

      ‘What did he say, Charlie? Did he say it was gonna be just f-fine? Did he say it was OK?’

      She was sitting at her dressing table, watching Charlie’s approach with anxious eyes, blue as the sapphires round her throat. But Charlie didn’t reply at once. He was thinking how graceful it was, the line of her neck: the nape, did they call it? He was sauntering towards her, across perhaps the most opulent bedroom in America. The sound of softly lapping waves filtered through the open windows and, beyond them, a long white beach gleamed in the early evening moonlight. Not bad, Charlie thought, as he often did. Not bad for a workhouse boy. And a chorus girl not so young as she pretended.

      Beneath the sweet smells of her innumerable lotions, and the particular perfume, flown in from the fragrant hills of Tuscany, there was still a faint whiff of newness to the room: new fabrics and paints; new draperies and furniture … Marion’s beachside house (if you could call it a house) was only recently completed. One hundred and eighteen rooms in all, her lover had built for her. Thirty-five bedrooms, fifty-five bathrooms, a brace of swimming pools, a private movie theatre … everything, really, a woman’s heart could desire, so her lover believed. Wanted to believe.

      And somehow Marion pulled it off: transformed this preposterous white elephant, into – not a home, exactly, but a place of merriment and warmth. A place where, despite the marble and the gold and the high ceilings and important stairways curling this direction and that, people could have a good time. They could feel relaxed. Charlie Chaplin felt very relaxed. At Marion Davies’s beachside palace. More relaxed, perhaps, than Marion’s long-time lover would have preferred.

      But what can you do?

      Charlie came to a stop just behind her, and then, absently, he dropped a warm kiss on that part of her – the nape? – which had been so distracting him, and breathed in the familiar perfume.

      ‘I didn’t ask,’ he replied at last.

      ‘You didn’t ask? Charlie! Why ever not?’

      He kissed her again: inhaled the smell of her skin. ‘You really are … very lovely,’ he murmured.

      ‘Why didn’t you ask him, Charlie? I thought you were going to do that. Because I’m all ch-changed now, and ready to l-l-leave. You can see for yourself! I thought you were going to ask him!’

      ‘Well I didn’t ask, I informed. I told him that I would be bringing you along.’

      ‘No!’

      ‘In fact – now I think about it, I didn’t even do that … I informed whoever it was picked up the telephone. The maid, I guess—’

      ‘Oh God. Charlie!’

      ‘Sweetheart – it’s a small party. Max and Eleanor Beecham are splendid people … Smart people. You know them well enough. What do you think they’re going to say? The biggest movie star in history wants to come to their party, bringing with him the reigning Queen of Hollywood—’

      ‘It’s not funny …’

      ‘… The finest hostess, the most beautiful and talented actress—’

      ‘I’m not laughing, Charlie. Because you’re not being funny. Why’s everything got to be a joke with you?’

      ‘And a movie star, too – in her own right …’

      ‘Ha! If you don’t count it’s WR who pays for the movies.’

      ‘And – without wishing to put too fine a point on it – the beloved mistress of the most powerful man in the most powerful nation … in the world …’

      ‘Oh