Sylvia Sinclair
The Star
I sit in a sled wrapped in my furs and a generous cloud of Shalimar, with Herbie beside me, rushing down a track through the fir trees with the snow landing frozen kisses on my cheeks. No, I didn’t get murdered in the woods last night … and I just had to get out of the hotel again this morning!
The horse pulling the sled is white as the snow itself, very picturesque, with a lovely silvery mane (about the same colour I ask my hairstylist Bobby for) and steam huffing in big clouds from his pink nostrils.
I guess for the full movie version I just need Jimmy Stewart sitting beside me, not Herb.
We’ve been out for a good hour, so it’s a good job I chose my thickest mink.
It’s a little addictive: the speed, the cold on my cheeks.
The thrill of it reminds me of the bottom of the second martini, when everything seems to sharpen just before it all starts to blur.
Sitting here in my fur-lined chariot I feel like an ancient queen.
Or perhaps Garbo in Anna Karenina (Vivien Leigh just didn’t do it for me, poor doll).
Either way it’s a nice change after sitting in my room – and especially after the phone call I had with my agent before I set out.
‘So, this guy?’ I asked, picturing him sitting there in sunny Palm Springs on the other end of the phone, ‘this … Brando you said his name was? How old is he?’
My agent coughed. ‘Twenty-six.’
‘And they want me to play his mother? They do realise I’d have been ten years old when I had him? That don’t seem a little wrong to you?’
‘I’m afraid that’s Tinsel Town for you. Don’t sweat it a bit. You’ll do a number on them. Besides, I’ve got them to agree to a great fee!’
He named it, like it was something to be celebrated. Less than half what I used to go for.
I wanted to say to him: Screw you and the horse you rode in on.
Oh yeah, and you’re fired. But of course I couldn’t.
So I said, ‘Fine. I’ll do it, so long as they don’t age me up like some frumped-up old matron.
I want to be the kind of mama that really fires up the old Oedipal complex, you hear me? ’
Speaking of old matrons, I pass those two old English dears in a sleigh and give them a little wave, while holding tight to Herbie’s collar with the other hand so he can’t leap out and terrorise them.
They look rather sweet all cosied up together in the back of the sled and chattering away together the way gossipy old broads do.
We round a bend and the hotel comes into view. We’re nearly back there, in fact, when all the birds take flight from their branches and the horse rears up, hooves flailing at the air, as the most godawful scream comes tearing out of the place.