The Gulliver Fortune

by Peter Corris

  "That's a lotta loot," Faraday said.

  "It's just for a couple of pictures. I hope they make them fast."

  "They will. Then we'll go to Paris on your money and get married again."

  "And you'll write?" Susannah said.

  "Yeah. What will you do? Remember that you can get a three-course dinner in Paris for about twenty cents. That half million's going to last a long time."

  "First, I'll learn French. Then I'll learn German."

  "Why?"

  "My mother's family was German. I want to go there and find them. Then I'll go to England and look up my father's people. Then I'll try to find my brothers."

  "You mean go to Australia? What language do they speak down there?"

  "English, stupid. Sort of slowly though and through their noses. You can hear it around towns. There's a couple of Australians in the movies. I can't imagine Carl talking like that but I suppose he does by now."

  "You realize your brothers might've been in the war, Suze? And . . ."

  "I know. Jack and Carl might have been, but not Edward or the baby. They'd have been too young."

  Faraday didn't tell her that he'd encountered sixteen-year-olds in the army and had heard of soldiers even younger. He watched his wife carefully as she spoke, but he saw no signs of obsession in her. If she wanted to trace her family that was fine by him, but he had another idea to plant. "There's something else we'll have to think about," he said.

  Susannah was stuffing clothes into a bag. "What?"

  "Having a family of our own."

  She dropped her bag and hugged Faraday. In her three-inch heels she was taller than he. "Of course we will. And grandchildren and everything. Well live to be a hundred and there won't be any orphans. I told you I wanted a happy ending."

  "Yeah. A hundred years old sounds about right. They'll probably have sound to go with pictures by then."

  "D'you think so?"

  "Why not? I hear they're working on it."

  Susannah shrugged. "Well, it won't worry me. I'll be finished with pictures in a few years. If they get sound it'll be all singing and dancing, won't it? I can dance but I can't sing. Can you sing, Lou?"

  Faraday burst into a few bars of 'Camptown Races'.

  "No," Susannah said. "Poor kids. Tone deaf on both sides."

  They drove back to Hollywood in the Ford and Packard. Faraday did not tell Susannah the news he'd heard of Mary from a friend he'd run into at the Crystal Hotel. The day after she burst in on Susannah and later left the note, Mary had gone to work at the jewellery store. She had become hysterical when dealing with her first customer, attacking the woman, smashing a glass display case and damaging some of the expensive items. She had cut herself on the glass and daubed blood over the customer, herself and those who attemped to restrain her. Laura had arranged for her to receive treatment in a private hospital.

  The Hollywood to which Susannah and Lou returned was humming with activity and optimism. Mary Pickford was making the second version of Tess of the Storm Country; de Mille was warming up for The Ten Commandments with Manslaughter; Griffith was shooting Orphans of the Storm on closed sets so he could extract the maximum emotion from his players. Photoplay was the most popular magazine in town and the days when 'movies' were excluded from hotels and clubs was a memory.

  "She's out of harm's way," Laura told Susannah coldly when she enquired about Mary. "Somewhere she won't have to look at your good luck every day."

  "What about your good luck?"

  Laura sniffed. "I work for every dollar."

  "You never said a truer word." Susannah left the mansion Laura had recently acquired in Beverly Hills. It was larger than Harkness's house, as Laura's income was now larger than his. Susannah had the feeling that Harkness might not hold his place much longer. She intended to stay on Alessandro Street, and Lou would continue sharing with three other scenarists in Venice. They were together, publicly by day and privately by night, as much as they could be. Welcome and Faraday were an 'item' for the gossipers, which did Lou's career no harm and some good for Susannah's.

  "At least they can't say you're a dyke," O'Connor said. "I give it that. And he's not a lush. I give him that."

  "Gee, thanks, Dan," Susannah said. "You can come to the wedding."

  O'Connor shuddered. "Don't even talk about it. How's the picture going?" Suzie Welcome was working on the next of the films O'Connor had contracted for her. It was a comedy called Short Skirts. "It's stupid," Susannah said. "The camera never goes above my waist."

  "You got nothing to worry about," O'Connor said, but he looked worried.

  "What's the matter, Dan?"

  "There's this guy Hays, ever heard of him?"

  Susannah shook her head.

  "He's the three Ps in my book—a prick, a puritan and' a Protestant. He's going to clean up the screen, he says."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Six inches less leg. Don't worry, kid. It probably won't amount to anything."

  Susannah and Lou got together late that night in her bungalow. She'd got into the habit of wearing her black silk stockings home from the set, to Lou's great appreciation. After they'd made love she peeled off the stockings and told him about what O'Connor had said about Hays.

  Lou nodded. "He's going to take the sex out of it. Could be okay if the movies go serious for a while."

  "What if they just stay silly without the sex?"

  "Or if they start making more dog pictures. God! The westerns are bad enough." Faraday was writing a Tom Mix western for Fox Film Corporation and finding the work tedious.

  "I wish we could go to Paris tomorrow," Susannah said. "That's what you need."

  "Yeah." Lou ran one of the silk stockings through his fingers. He'd been working on his novel between times but found inspiration elusive. The book dealt with the lives of some Americans left behind in Europe after the war. Faraday himself had caught a boat home soon after being demobbed. He felt he needed to get back to the scenes he was writing about.

  "Maybe they'll cancel the other two pictures if Hays causes too much trouble. We've got enough money now. We could go."

  "Nah," Faraday said. "They'll put you in something with a dog. I saw them training some out on the lot the other day. They'll use the good ones and the others'll get shot."

  Susannah was disturbed by the bitterness of his tone. He wasn't quite the good ol' fun-loving Lou any more. He'd stopped throwing his fedora at doorknobs and hatstands. She wondered why.

  28

  "It seems just like the last picture I made, except that it's not funny," Susannah said to Jacobsen on one of their regular meetings. "How're we doing for money?"

  "Fine," Jacobsen said. "Your net worth's getting close to a million. 'Course it's mostly tied up in stocks and bonds, but you could lay your hands on it if you wanted to."

  "Enough to buy the studio off for the next picture?"

  Jacobsen looked horrified. He shook his head. "No. And they'd keep you in court for the rest of your life. If Short Skirts lays an egg they might talk about it. But . . . what's on your mind?"

  "I want to get away. Lou's not happy and . . ." Susannah broke off to light a cigarette. She put the match in the ashtray on Jacobsen's scarred desk and blew smoke at his slightly soiled walls. Jacobsen liked to give off an air of economy.

  "Since when did you smoke?"

  "Lately. I'm on edge. I'm thinking of going onto heroin like Barbara la Marr."

  "Work out the contract and take a break. It makes good sense all round. What's that mick O'Connor say?"

  "He says ask the kike his opinion."

  Jacobsen spread his hands in an exaggerated Semitic gesture. "What more can we say?"

  "It's all right for you. You don't have to do all those dumb things in front of the cameras. They've cut out the sex and the movies can't show people under sixty drinking any more. It's going to die, the whole thing."

  "Sound'll save it," Jacobsen said.

  "That's all I hear. What good'
s that to me? I can't sing."

  "Plus you gotta funny voice. Not really American. If sound comes in you'll have to be a serious actress."

  "Jesus," Susannah said, "I'd rather sell cars."

  "You want one? I gotta Dodge . . ."

  Susannah laughed. "Go on with your adding up. I want to retire rich."

  "Will do. Wanna hear something interesting? Your mother's made an offer for your house. Seems that area's going up. You did the right thing buying there."

  "She can't have it," Susannah said. "She's got enough houses."

  "She'll never have enough. Word is she's gotta few houses of the other kind. Know what I mean?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised. She probably does a shift herself."

  "Why're you so down on her?"

  Susannah stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. "I don't know. Where's she living now?"

  "Still at Beverly. I hear she's got a tennis court and two pools. Who needs two pools?"

  "Is Mary, my . . .sister there?"

  "I don't think so. Just tennis players and truck drivers and tango dancers."

  Despite Susannah's misgivings, Short Skirts displayed enough of Suzie Welcome's figure and zany sense of fun to be a success. She went into rehearsals for Let's Get Married almost straight away. She hated the script for its sentimentality and the message it preached—marriage equals happiness. Susannah had seen enough of the world in her twenty-five years to know it wasn't true. Mary was much on her mind as she went through the boring costume fittings and rehearsals. She wondered whether Mary would have enjoyed acting as much as she had expected to. She doubted it.

  "Where d'you think Mary is?" she asked Lou one morning when they were breakfasting together behind drawn blinds.

  "Don't know. I'll try to find out if you like, sweetheart."

  The cheerful note in his voice was a pleasant change for Susannah. She looked at him and saw that he was grinning with something of the old Faraday charm. "That would be good," she said. "I suspect Laura did dreadful things to her at various times. Ah, Lou, you seem . . ."

  "Happier? I am. I've quit on the novel."

  "Lou!"

  "But I've started another one. It's your story, baby. The Gulliver story. 'Course I'm going to have to make up a lot. Make you good-looking and so on, if I want sales."

  Susannah hugged him. "You make up whatever you like. Just be sure to give it a happy ending."

  Sure.

  "Oh, what about Paris?"

  "We'll still go. It's a cheap place to live and a good place to write. And I'll be taking my inspiration along with me. Doesn't really matter where I am."

  After breakfast they went back to bed.

  Susannah went to work on Let's Get Married, which changed its title to Let's Get Rich as the scenarist and director wrestled with some of the instructions coming from the Hays office. Hays had announced his intentions to the cigar-chewing picture moguls thus: "Above all is our duty to youth. We must have towards that sacred thing, the mind of a child, towards that clean and virgin thing—that unmarked slate—the same care about the impression made upon it, that the best teacher or the best clergyman, the most inspired teacher of youth, would have." If the moguls sniggered about virgins and about what they used to write on their own school slates, they didn't let Hays hear them. They jumped to do his bidding.

  Lou and Susannah sneaked away to a friend's beach house in Santa Barbara for a weekend in November towards the end of the shooting of the film, now entitled Many Happy Returns. They walked on the beach and made love in front of the open fire in the cabin. They wrapped the blankets around their shoulders and smoked and drank bootleg red wine.

  "They changed the guy in the picture to a widower yesterday," Susannah said.

  Lou stirred the fire with a stick. "Christ, why? I thought he was supposed to be a life-of-the-party type."

  "He was, but there's a double bed in his apartment. They can't reshoot the apartment scenes so he has to have been married. Single guys don't have double beds."

  "Some married guys don't have 'em," Lou said.

  Susannah leaned over and kissed him. "Not for much longer."

  "Yeah. Well the picture's just about finished and you'll be off the hook."

  "Not a moment too soon. How's the book going?"

  "Fine. Hey, what d'you mean, not a moment too soon?"

  "We got careless, baby. That night at your place, remember? When Bud and Charlie were out?"

  "What're you saying?"

  "I'm pregnant, Lou. Fairly well along. That bastard of an assistant director, West, made some comment about it the other day, 'Lay off the sweet rolls, honey' or something such. To hell with him. How d'you feel about it, Mr Faraday?"

  Lou reached over and took Susannah's glass and cigarette. He drank the wine and threw the cigarette on the fire. "It's terrific." He pulled her towards him and kissed her throat; his hands went down her breasts and she let the blanket fall away. She reached for him and stroked him while his hands moved over her body. She opened her legs and he entered her.

  "Hey," he whispered. "We don't have to . . ."

  "That's right. Come on, darling. Come on!"

  Afterwards, Lou poured her a small glass of wine and allowed her one drag on his cigarette. "You're going to have to be careful. No boozing, give up cigars, no bare back riding. Any more stunts in that piece of junk you're working on?"

  Susannah snuggled closer to him under the blankets. "No. I've just got to get married and throw a cake at the widower."

  "Jesus."

  "It'll be a turkey, Lou. Then we can forget all this and get on with our lives. Tell me about the novel."

  Faraday talked until Susannah fell asleep. He arranged some cushions, put more wood on the fire and left her wrapped in blankets. In the fireglow her skin looked smooth and soft; like a true Californian she never lost her tan. She had never looked more beautiful to Faraday, and he went oft" to his typewriter feeling himself to be the luckiest man in the world.

  Over coffee the next morning Lou winked at her. "Any cravings yet?"

  "Just for more of what we had last night."

  "Don't let Will Hays hear you say that. Hey, I forgot. I found out where Mary is. She's here in Santa Barbara, in some Kind of clinic. D'you want to go see her?"

  Mary crouched in the small room as if she was trying to hide. The room was almost a cell. The wide blue Pacific was outside, and a clear Californian sky, but the small window was set too high for Mary to see the view. The glass was thick, reinforced with wire, almost opaque. Only a thin, pale light penetrated.

  "Mary, it's Suzie."

  Mary turned dull eyes on her. She pushed back some dirty, dry blonde hair and licked her lips. "What?"

  "It's me, Suzie. Mary, what are they doing to you here?"

  "Careful, Miss Welcome, you don't want to excite her." The supervisor of the clinic in Santa Barbara was a heavily built man with a dark moustache. Like the clinic itself, at a distance he looked solid and reliable. Up close both man and institution were seedy and rundown. Susannah had been appalled at the grime and smell. Only her well known name got her past the door.

  "Excite her?" Susannah said. "She looks as if she gets beaten every day."

  Mary cowered back at Susannah's raised voice.

  "Nothing like that, miss, they all get the best treatment here."

  "She's drugged," Lou said quietly. "Up to the eyes."

  "She's violent." The supervisor tidied some clothes that hung limply over a chair. Mary retreated from him to the back wall.

  "She's terrified." Susannah pointed at two heavy leather straps that dangled from the sides of the bed. "What're they, for God's sake?"

  The supervisor coughed. "She has to be restrained sometimes."

  "Christ," Lou said.

  "Don't swear, sir, please. It upsets them."

  Susannah shook her fist at him. "You bloody bastard. You should be in gaol. You bastard."

  Mary stopped scratching at her hair. "Fuck," she sai
d. "Bastard, fuck, fuck, fuck." Her voice was a harsh crackle.

  "You see? Quietly now, Mary." The supervisor took a step towards the woman, who was drooling slightly and rolling her eyes.

  "Don't touch her!" Susannah yelled.

  Mary rushed forward with her hands raised, the fingers clawlike. She raked at Susannah's face but Lou's upthrust arm blocked her. The supervisor grabbed Mary in a bear hug, forced her to the bed, held her and tied her down. "Watch her, watch she doesn't swallow her tongue." The fat man gasped for breath as he levered himself off the bed. "I'll get the doc to give her a shot. You shouldn't have come here, Miss Welcome. You upset her." He left the room, still panting.

  Mary writhed on the bed; her eyes were wide and staring and spittle foamed in the corners of her mouth. Susannah watched her although she wanted to run from the room. Suddenly Mary fell quiet; she stopped struggling and her features, still pretty but altered by pain and distress, became composed.

  "Mary," Susannah said. "Oh, Mary."

  "Suzie?" Mary whispered. "Is that you?"

  "Yes, it's me. Mary, what's happened to you?"

  "I must look awful."

  "What?"

  "My hair's a mess and I'm all dirty. I need a bath, Suzie. I'll have a bath and put a nice dress on, and we can have tea. Who's the gentleman?"

  "This is Lou, my husband." It was the first time Susannah had introduced Lou in this way, but the words came naturally to her. Mary tried to smile, but her face muscles seemed to have lost the ability. A grimace was all she managed.

  "Pleased to meet you." The words came out coquettishly. Lou made a half bow and tried not to stare at the evidence of a young life ruined. "You look different, Suze. What have you been doing?"

  "Oh, this and that. Well take you out of here, Mary, to somewhere you can get better."

  Terror showed in Mary's eyes. "No, no. I like it here. I love it here!"

  "You can't."

  "I do! I do! Go away!"

  "I must ask you not to disturb my patient." A white-coated man entered the room. He shouldered Lou aside and went to the bed. Mary's arms strained against the straps as if she wanted to embrace him. Susannah moved forward, but Lou pulled at her arm.