The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [82]
So with the money from The Swarm and the proceeds from the Mill House we finally made the big move in autumn 1979. We had a wonderful welcome from our friends when we arrived in LA. We spent the first week moving into our lovely new home and sorting out furniture and so on. The only thing missing – unusual for Beverly Hills – was a phone, but I managed to persuade the phone company to come out on a Saturday morning and install it for us and so we were all set. That evening the composer Leslie Bricusse and his wife Evie, close friends of ours from London way back, gave us a party and it was great to see everyone we knew there. Shakira – who loves Hollywood and thrives there – was on great form, but about halfway through the evening her leather belt suddenly snapped. She’s always been very slim and so there were lots of jokes about how much she might have eaten and whether there was a baby on the way, but we thought nothing of it and eventually went home, exhausted but happy at the beginning of our new life.
In the middle of the night I was woken by a fist crashing into my nose. Shakira had turned over and hit me in her sleep. ‘Hey!’ I protested, and rolled over, but just as I did so, she hit me again, this time on the ear. She’d never done this before, but I tucked her hand back under the cover and turned over once more. This time she hit me in the mouth. I sat up and put the light on – and froze in horror. Shakira’s face was a terrible grey colour, her eyes had rolled up into her head and she was on the verge of passing out. She had been trying to get me to wake up before she lost consciousness. With my heart beating wildly I grabbed the phone – thank God I had insisted on getting it put in – and dialled 911.
I desperately felt for a pulse – and couldn’t find one, although her eyes flickered for just a moment. My Shakira was cold, almost dead cold, and I held her in my arms, trying to warm her, while Joan, my secretary, gathered some things together to take to the hospital. At last the paramedics arrived and – in consultation with a doctor at the UCLA hospital – within minutes had rigged up the life-support system that would keep her alive while she was taken to the emergency room. She had a burst appendix, which is incredibly dangerous.
As soon as we got there, Shakira was wheeled into the operating theatre and – this being America – I was pointed in the direction of the cashier. ‘That will be five thousand dollars, please,’ he said. Five thousand dollars? It was seven o’clock on a Sunday morning – where was I supposed to find that sort of money? Not for the first time it made me grateful for the NHS. ‘No money – no operation,’ said the cashier. Just as I was about to become completely apoplectic with rage and worry, he suddenly asked, ‘Aren’t you an actor?’ I had reached boiling point. Did he want my autograph while my wife was dying? Luckily for him he went on, ‘If you’re a member of the Screen Actors Guild, you’ll be covered.’ I was; we were. I signed the form in a shaking hand and went back out to the waiting room. As I paced up and down, a man on a gurney beckoned me over. He had an oxygen mask over his face and was struggling to breathe. He seemed to be trying to say something. As I leant close, he took a couple of extra gulps, let the mask fall and gasped, ‘I loved you in The Man Who Would Be King!’ and then collapsed. I grabbed the mask and shoved it back over his mouth; no fan of mine deserved to die!
At last the doctors came out of the operating theatre to tell me that Shakira was out of danger. Although I felt enormous relief, I couldn’t help thinking about all the ‘what ifs’. What if we hadn’t got the phone installed in time? What if the ambulance hadn’t been able to find the house? What if I hadn’t woken up? What if we’d still been in England where the ambulance men were on strike? What if I’d never joined the Screen Actors Guild and was uninsured? These questions rolled round and round in my mind over the