Death’s Old Sweet Song

by Jonathan Stagge

  Tansy said: “Hello, Spray. You remember me, don’t you?”

  The girl squirmed awkwardly and said: “You’re Tansy Hoppner.”

  “This is my husband, Dr. Lockwood, and this is Dr. Westlake.” Tansy turned to us. “This is Spray Milliken, Lucy’s daughter.”

  Like everyone else in this community, Spray Milliken was something of a celebrity. This was largely due to Lucy, who for years had been the Stage’s All-American Mother. She had divorced her drunken first husband soon after the child was born, and from then on hardly a photograph had been taken of her without Spray in it somewhere: Spray first as a baby, then as a tot, then as a stripling. At the age of ten she had even co-starred with her mother in one of Lucy’s infrequent Hollywood excursions. The relationship between them was known to be as beautiful as Whistler’s should have been with his mother.

  Tansy said: “We’ve been invited to tea. I suppose we’ll find your mother up at the house, won’t we?”

  “Yes. She’s up there, messing around.”

  “And your grandfather?”

  “Daddykins?” Spray laughed a sudden sharp laugh. “You kidding? Of course he’s there.”

  She gave me a keen glance and then, tossing her Alice in Wonderland hair, twisted around and ran away from us into the surf.

  The house, a much more modest affair than either Tansy’s or Daphne’s, was visible behind a drooping row of evergreens. As we started toward it we came upon a blond young man lying on his stomach under a shade tree. He wore old denim pants and was stripped to the waist. He looked up at us and grinned. We introduced ourselves and he got up. He was muscular as a boxer, with an attractive, good-natured face. He was very blond, with wheat-yellow eyebrows and lashes. He was watching Tansy.

  “So you’re Tansy Lockwood. I’m Morgan Lane.” He threw out his hands in a gesture of self-mockery. “Unknown character—Lucy Milliken’s husband.”

  Tansy’s hair was as light as his. In spite of his male chunkiness, they might have been brother and sister. They looked about the same age too. It occurred to me that Lucy Milliken’s new husband must be as much younger than she as Tansy was younger than Don.

  Tansy said: “Is Lucy up at the house?”

  “Sure.” He swatted at a fly which had settled on his bare shoulder. “She and old Mr. Milliken are fussing with the engineers for the broadcast.”

  “Broadcast?” queried Don.

  Morgan Lane gave him a glance which was meant to be amused but which had in it a sediment of bitterness. “Aren’t you the great radio-active public? Don’t you know Thursdays at five-thirty Mookow Milk presents The Happy Family? Organ music. Walter Milliken, Father of America’s Most Beloved Actress, brings you spontaneous, completely unrehearsed real-life glimpses into America’s Happiest Family. More organ music. Featuring Lucy Milliken—and Spray?” He added: “It’s quite a thing. Lucy’s usually got some celebrity staying here and she throws them all on the air. But today’s special. She’s snagged Daphne Winters.”

  Even I knew vaguely of the program now that it was mentioned. My daughter sometimes listened to it, enraptured by its sugary glorification of domestic bliss. And even I, untheatrical and un-Bittern’s Bay as I was, realized the explosive implications of what Lucy Milliken’s husband was saying. It had been brazen enough of Lucy to have invaded territory sacred to Daphne Winters. It was much worse that she should be tricking her to appear on a radio program.

  Tansy gasped: “You don’t mean Lucy’s going to put her tea with Daphne on the air!”

  At that moment great clatterings came from the house and three men in shirt sleeves, carrying sound equipment and wires, lumbered onto the small terrace which faced the sea. After them moved a thin, elderly man in shirt sleeves with a panama hat on the back of his head.

  “That’s Mr. Milliken.” Tansy slipped her arm through mine. “Come and meet him, Hugh. He’s just as famous as everyone else. The program made him. Daddykins. That’s what Spray’s supposed to have called him when she was a baby, and it’s his official name now. Daddykins—America’s Most Beloved Grandfather.”

  We moved to the terrace, where Daddykins, in a shrill, whiny voice, was bleating at the sound engineers. When he saw us his entire personality changed. He beamed, stooped his shoulders in a kind of spaniel ecstasy of pleasure, and, sweeping off the panama, almost ran to us and took both of Tansy’s hands.

  “My dear child, how very, very nice! Lucy’s thrilled. I’m thrilled. Oh, my dear child!”

  He was thin, almost emaciated, with a lot of silver hair and a certain ministerial handsomeness. He cooed over Don and me too while Morgan Lane watched sardonically.

  “Lucy’s in the kitchen baking a cake. You can’t keep that girl out of the kitchen.” Daddykins was still holding Tansy’s hands and added in a confidential whisper: “My dear, we’re planning something I do hope you’ll find amusing. My foolish little radio program. Probably you’re all too sophisticated to have heard of it, but America’s quite taken it to its heart. So reassuring for them to find out that the home life of someone as special as Lucy is just as simple and wholesome as their own. You won’t mind, will you, if we let the People share just a few moments of our tea party?” He laughed. “A few unrehearsed, completely spontaneous moments?”

  The sound engineers, with cigarettes drooping from their mouths, were moving in and out of the tables set for tea, preparing for the spontaneous moments. Tansy glanced at Don and then at me.

  “We don’t mind, but what about Daphne?”

  “Ah!” Daddykins lifted a long finger archly. “You naughty girl, you’ve discovered our little secret. Daphne Winters is coming. Isn’t that splendid?”

  “You don’t think she’ll tear out all the wires?”

  Mr. Milliken looked pained. “My dear child, I know Daphne Winters well. Such a gracious lady! So real! And such a friendship with Lucy!” He clasped his hands and looked upwards. “To me there’s something beautiful about that. That’s what I want to bring to the People. America’s two greatest actresses. They might feel jealous, bitter. There might be a rivalry there. But none of that. Just two charming, lovely ladies having tea together.”

  Before my arrival at Bittern’s Bay, I would hardly have believed in Mr. Milliken; he would have appeared like someone deliberately caricaturing himself. But a few days around celebrities had taught me that many of them, having won fame by exploiting a few lucky mannerisms, were apt to become frozen into the form by which their public knew them. Daddykins, preposterous though he was, seemed now to fit quite naturally into the pattern.

  As we began to step over wires toward the chairs around the tea tables, a small woman in a cotton frock and an apron came out of the house carrying a cake. She put it down on a table and stood back from it, studying it. Her entrance had been so unobtrusive that I imagined she was a servant. But the moment Daddykins saw her he sprang to her, saying:

  “Dearest, what a pretty cake!”

  And she, swinging around, smiled up at him with charming shyness and said: “Oh, Father, it’s just an old nothing.”

  Lucy Milliken wiped her hands on her apron and, looping her arm through her father’s, came toward us.

  “Hello, everyone. I’m awfully glad you could come.”

  She gave us each in turn a straight look and a firm handshake.

  Lucy Milliken had won her first immense stage success playing the brave, honest, loyal American girl, and although her extraordinary technical skill and her flair for pathos had followed it with many equally successful productions on the stage, screen, and radio, it was still the brave, honest, loyal American quality with which she was associated.

  When she smiled at me I felt I was her oldest friend. All my chivalry blossomed. I wanted to join Daddykins in praise of her cake. I wanted to ask her whether she was sure she shouldn’t rest awhile with a rug tucked around her legs.

  Disengaging herself from her father, she went to her husband and patted his bare midriff. “Morgan, be a dear, and run down
to the beach for Spray.” As he hurried off she bathed us all in her warm smile. “You don’t mind the broadcast, do you? It’s Father’s new toy. It means so much to him.”

  She said that so sweetly, so confidentially, that it seemed perfectly natural that we should all want to indulge her father’s little whim. It would have been irreverent to think of the enormous sum which her sponsors certainly paid her for the program.

  But, irreverently, the thought did pass through my mind, and already my first impression of her became tarnished. I watched while she carried her cake to a central table set with bright china and a microphone in front of each of the four chairs. She might have been any pretty, be-aproned American wife in an advertisement preparing a meal for her commuting husband. But the whole picture was false because she wasn’t any pretty American wife; she was Lucy Milliken putting a cake down on a table riddled with microphones, while sound engineers arranged wires which were to project her into every tenth American home.

  Suddenly her Lovely Warmth failed to register any more.

  A fifth mike had been installed a little to the side of the central table on a desk which was covered with papers. This, presumably, was Daddykin’s podium. Lucy Milliken stood for a moment frowning girlishly at the place cards which stood in front of the chairs at the central table. The two I could read from where I was standing said: Daphne Winters and Tansy Lockwood. Since I knew that Lucy herself and Spray had to be on the program, it was obvious that she had selected the two celebrities for her audience. The rest of us would be piled at the other table which stood at some distance from the microphones in patent obscurity.

  Lucy leaned over the table to pat at the central bouquet of white roses. Tansy, who was standing next to me, whispered:

  “Isn’t she wonderful too? You’d think she’d fixed the whole thing herself. As a matter of fact, there are three maids and a cook. Probably she has them locked up in the attic until after the program.”

  In a few minutes Morgan Lane and Spray came up from the beach. Lucy hurried from the table and, sliding her arm around the girl’s waist, murmured: “Spray dearest, I want you to meet all these nice people.”

  Spray twisted to get out of the enchanting Mother-Daughter embrace. “I’ve met them, Mother.”

  One of the sound engineers was murmuring: “One, two, three, four, five,” into Daddykins’ mike, presumably testing it. Another had installed a loud-speaker close to a yellow glider. A smooth man in a pin-striped blue suit had appeared from the house and was being ignored. The wires across the paved floor of the terrace made walking hazardous. We all huddled in a self-conscious group.

  Lucy’s arm was still around her daughter when an unobtrusive maid appeared from the french windows and announced:

  “Miss Winters and party, Miss Milliken.”

  “Oh, ask them to come out.”

  The maid disappeared, and soon Gretchen and Sybil, both of them dirndled, emerged on the terrace. After a short pause Evelyn Evans appeared.

  There was a longer short pause. Then, as to an inaudible fanfare of trumpets, The Divine Daphne herself stepped across the threshold.

  Chapter 3

  I had imagined vaguely that she would have dressed herself to the hilt to meet her arch-antagonist, but I was wrong. She was just as simply clad as she had been at lunch. Only this time the dress was gray and not white. With her three handmaidens grouped around her, she paused on the threshold, blinking her great eyes like a beautiful and rather baffled owl.

  Lucy Milliken, still tethered to Spray as to a Siamese twin, moved toward her, deftly avoiding the wires. Daphne’s majesty did not dwarf her, for, in spite of her girlish slenderness, Lucy too had some of that larger-than-life quality which makes a star.

  “Hello, Evelyn, hello, everyone.”

  She reached the group and held out her left hand, which was unoccupied by her daughter.

  “Hello, Daphne.”

  The divine Daphne peered at the hand and then at Lucy and then at Spray. “Now which of you is Lucy? It’s hard to tell. You both look so grown-up.”

  Spray, who was watching Daphne with uncritical admiration, suddenly giggled.

  “I’m Spray.”

  The Divine Daphne, ignoring Lucy, enfolded the girl’s hand in both of hers. “My dear, I’m sure you could play all your mother’s roles and no one would know the difference.”

  She dropped Spray’s hand, put her white pocketbook down on a window sill, and took a step toward the tea table, only to stop dead in her tracks. “Oh dear, there seem to be wires everywhere.”

  Evelyn, whose pince-nezed eyes had been taking in the whole scene, snapped: “What’s been happening, Lucy? Have you just had a broadcast?”

  Daddykins scurried forward, rubbing his hands together. Lucy, faintly flushed, disengaged herself from her daughter and caught her father’s arm.

  “You know my father, don’t you, Daphne, Evelyn? He has the little program. He just talks, introduces our friends. It all takes scarcely no time and it means so much to him. I was sure you wouldn’t mind.”

  There was a galvanized hush. Tansy, standing with Morgan Lane, gave me a quick Here-It-Comes look. Evelyn opened her mouth and kept it open for an outraged second. Then she blurted:

  “You invited Daphne to tea. You don’t mean you’re expecting her to go on the air?”

  Lucy Milliken’s face was distinctly flushed now, but there was also a new kind of implacable determination. “I was sure Daphne wouldn’t mind.” She turned a factitious version of her honest smile on Daphne. “Charlie and Oona were on last week. Dear Noel had a lovely time with it too. So did Lynn and Alfred.”

  The Divine Daphne had bent her head as if Lucy’s voice had been the whine of a gnat or something that had to be listened for with concentration. Now she beckoned Gretchen and Sybil. When they ran up she entwined an arm around each of their waists. If this was deliberately a travesty of Lucy’s Radiant Motherhood, there was no hint of it on her face.

  “Have you ever talked on the air, Sybil?”

  “No, Miss Winters.”

  “And you, Gretchen?”

  The pretty redheaded Austrian said: “No, Miss Winters. Never.”

  “Then it will be good practice for both of you.” Daphne beamed at Lucy Milliken. “We shall be delighted. It is a medium with which the girls should accustom themselves.”

  She edged past Lucy and, blind to the place cards, settled herself and the two Symphonies in the key positions at the central table, thus leaving only one microphone vacant for Lucy and Spray.

  Sybil had the eager hound-dog expression of a young actress unexpectedly confronted with Her Big Chance. But Gretchen, possibly embarrassed by Daphne’s shameless ruse to take over Daddykins’ broadcast, said:

  “I have a terrible headache, Miss Winters. Perhaps it ees better that I leave, yes?”

  Don, who was standing near by, said: “A headache, Gretchen? Like me to fix you something?”

  “Nonsense, child,” interrupted Daphne firmly. “An actress puts her art before her aches. Run over and get my bag. I’ll give you something for your head.”

  Gretchen reluctantly rose and, picking up the white pocketbook from the window sill, brought it back. Daphne fumbled in it, took out her vial, as she had at lunch time, and tilted two capsules into Gretchen’s palm. Daphne poured water from a pitcher. Gretchen took the water and swallowed the capsules. Daphne smiled her approval.

  “Now, girls.” She dropped the vial back into the pocketbook and put the bag down next to her microphone. “The basic principle of broadcasting is control of the pitch of the voice. Not too loud, not too soft. Now note how I address my machine.”

  Her voice, exquisite in pitch and everything else, rippled on. It was obvious that if Lucy wanted to prevent the broadcast from being completely monopolized by Daphne as a testing ground for her raw talent, she would have to do something now. But The Divine Daphne’s lightning tactics seemed to have been too much for her. She hesitated and lost, for the smoot
h man in the blue suit raised his hand and said:

  “On the air in three minutes. Please be seated, everyone.”

  Daddykins glanced at the wrongly occupied table, glanced at Lucy, shrugged unhappily, and scurried to his podium. The rest of us drifted off to the nonentities table, leaving Lucy alone with Daphne and the Symphonies. Lucy looked around her rather wildly and then took the remaining seat at the main table. On his podium Daddykins was making feverish corrections in his script with a pencil. He beckoned to the announcer and whispered.

  Two maids appeared with jugs of iced tea and plates of sandwiches. They circulated through the tables. Spray, who had seated herself next to me, wore an expression of unholy glee.

  As she grabbed a sandwich she said: “Isn’t Miss Winters wonderful?”

  “Wonderful,” I agreed.

  “She’ll wipe the floor with Mother. You just see. And she’s wangled those two girls onto the program and let me out.”

  “You don’t like the broadcast?”

  “Like it?” She shot me a scornful glance. “Just wait till you hear it.”

  The man in the blue suit was studying his watch. He raised his hand again for silence. Syrupy organ music, moaning “Home, Sweet Home,” trailed from the loud-speaker. The announcer moved to Daddykins’ podium and pulled the microphone toward him. The sound engineers had disappeared into the house. “Home, Sweet Home” sunk to a melancholy sigh. The man in the blue suit smiled a fixed smile at nothing and purred into the microphone:

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of America. Mookow Milk takes pride in presenting The Happy Family.” The organ swelled and sank. “Walter Milliken, Father of America’s Most Beloved Actress, brings you spontaneous, completely unrehearsed real-life glimpses into America’s Happiest Family, featuring Lucy Milliken—and Spray.”