“Everyone ought be relieved,” Sidney said, trying to cheer them. “A subtitled drama about farm workers—would have been reams of empty cinemas anyway.”
“We need to hit even harder,” Hannah said. “Use our success to go darker. I want a story about an innocent man tortured for a crime he didn’t commit, all orchestrated by the sheriff to consolidate some power.”
“The bairns will love that,” Sidney said with his barking laugh, rubbing his hands together. “Speaking of consolidating power, let’s be pressing on with getting a deal for another show.”
Another show. When no one ever expected her to have one, she would have another. An expanding empire. And a chance to give more work to blacklisted writers, cocking a snook at both HUAC and its Hollywood toadies. There was so much to do, so much to make happen, and never enough time. Yesterday, she’d spent her script-reading time editing Paul’s latest story for the New Yorker. He rewrote it all afternoon while she played Robin Hood with Rhoda and Julie in the garden. Gemma reported a call from Phoebe, which was odd, but Hannah was in the middle of being interrogated by the sheriff, and instructed she would come to the set to see Phoebe tomorrow. She never had enough time with her family, and this moment was too important to interrupt. Robin Hood was about to rescue her.
“It must have been horrible for the wives and children of the outlaws,” she mused, looking over the Robin Hood schedule. “So much time apart, never knowing if you’d be a family again.”
“’Tis ever the way,” Sidney said. “Men go off and women keep the home fires burning best they can.”
“Ever the way indeed,” Beryl snarled. “Men have the adventures and women the grief.”
“Marriage can be a great adventure,” Hannah said. “It’s a huge mistake in stories, thinking marriage is the end. Really, it can be just the beginning.”
“Aye, right.” Beryl rolled her eyes. “I reckon I’m the only person on earth who sees I Love Lucy as a tragedy of an energetic woman bored out of her mind and trying to have a bit of life in her life.”
“Talking of adventure,” Sidney said, “let’s do another one for telly. Build on what we’ve got. We can well afford it now.”
“If a Scotsman says so, it must be true,” Hannah teased. She was impressed Sidney wanted to do another expensive show. By television standards, The Adventures of Robin Hood was lavish, with a ten-thousand-pound budget per episode. Hannah secured the love of the camera crew by insisting it be shot like a film, using a 35-millimeter camera. The rest of the crew loved her for sparing no expense on the other details: the sets, props, costumes, and hairstyles had all been vetted, mulled, and designed with only slightly more care than a baker might apply to a birthday cake for the queen. The critics agreed it was one of the finest-looking shows on air.
“Another adventure it is,” Hannah agreed. “One that uses woodland.”
“Talking of adventure,” Beryl echoed Sidney, with a grim expression, “your lass Phoebe rang, saying she needs to speak to you rather immediately. And there’s this, sent last night.” She handed Hannah a telex from Dale Winston of CBS.
MISS WOLFSON. REALLY MUST MEET MCCLELLAN. OR ANY NY-BASED WRITERS? SOME SCRIPTS ORIGINATING FROM AMERICA? GENIUSES, ALL! DALE.
McClellan. That was Ring Lardner Jr. Not that it mattered. None of the writers could meet with anyone, ever.
“This is what we get for being such a roaring success,” Hannah grumbled. “Why can’t the top brass pretend writers don’t exist? They’d certainly like to pay them that way.”
“We have to put him off,” Sidney insisted.
“I know.”
“Or have a front pretend to be McClellan.”
“I’m not allowing any such meeting I don’t oversee,” Hannah barked.
“Hannah.” Sidney touched her hand. “We can’t let ourselves look suspicious.”
“Too late,” Hannah said. “We’re the most suspicious game in town.”
She glanced at the other message. Phoebe. Needing her immediately. That was suspicious too. Hannah took a long drag on a cigarette, shoved some shortbread in her bag, and grabbed her hat and coat.
* * *
• • •
There was, at least, nothing suspicious about Hannah arriving at the set shortly before lunch and watching a scene being filmed. Prince John was in Nottingham, giving the sheriff instructions.
“It’s simple enough, Sheriff,” the prince hissed. “Spread the word that clemency will be offered to any outlaw who is willing to come forward and give the names of at least ten others. The man who names names will not only be spared, he will be given a reward for his loyalty to the Crown, his true English patriotism. Or rather, he will be given that reward in full when he also directs you to the whereabouts of said outlaws. You can keep that part quiet until they’ve been caught.”
“They move a great deal,” the sheriff complained. “And there are many who are happy to shield them.”
“That matters not,” the prince countered. “There is always one whose anxiety for the welfare of his family, and his good name, will step forward. We need Robin. He’s obviously too clever for you to capture, so instead sweeten the pot, and lure away one of his friends. You capture one, who gives up ten, you sully more names, you break the glamour of the rebellion.”
The director cut, and that was a wrap for lunch. Peter Proud descended on Hannah to gush about a new innovation in set design he was eager to try, and the other admiring men of the crew gathered to admire. They couldn’t say enough about her discernment, taste, genius, and their own delight in their work and the show. And she couldn’t help a twinge of guilt, because she could never get enough of this. That morning, she’d spanked Rhoda for breaking the lusterware lamp, then attempted to calm Paul after Julie projectile vomited onto his Harris Tweed blazer. Here she was an object of adoration—a brilliant, generous executive, somehow also made to feel like a desirable beauty, far above the hassles of a wife and mother, or a semicriminal hiring blacklisted writers and dodging Dale Winston’s demands to meet them. It was easy to forget all those worries, to forget why she was really here, to forget Phoebe’s phone calls.
The thought snapped her back to herself. Phoebe wasn’t someone to waste pennies on a social call. So Hannah smiled and small-talked her way through the circle of men she loved so much, edging toward the doors that led out into the main corridor. If Phoebe had any sense at all, she was tagging behind, waiting for the moment to catch up to her. By the time Hannah urged Peter Proud to go and get his lunch, she was at the rear door that led toward the wood. Phoebe stepped up to her, buttoning her coat. At first, Hannah thought she was fine. Then she saw the panic in Phoebe’s eyes. She opened the door and led them out into the woods.
“It’s not the best idea, but here,” Hannah said, handing Phoebe a cigarette.
“I’ve been through two packs today already,” Phoebe rasped. Hannah looked at her more closely. Her hair was working its way out of the fat ponytail, spiraling upward along with her voice. Her eyes were wide and anxious, and tinged with something like fury. She looked like a woman freshly blacklisted. She plunged her hand into her pocket and held out an envelope to Hannah with two tobacco-stained fingers, her lips curled as though she were handing over a freshly plucked bowel.
Hannah slipped the plain piece of paper from the envelope and read the typed message, her lips mashed together. She shoved letter and envelope into her breast pocket and stepped closer to Phoebe.
“Do you think it’s someone trying to scare you?” Hannah whispered.
“And doing a pretty damn good job of it,” Phoebe snapped, biting her nail.
“I meant someone with a personal gripe, not the FBI,” Hannah said.
“What sort of world is this, where that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Phoebe slumped down into the bracken and wrapped her arms around her knees.
Hannah exam
ined the envelope. The postage stamp was London, and there was no return address.
“Who besides the exiles know you were subpoenaed?”
“In London? No one. It’s not exactly an opening gambit.” Phoebe paused, thinking. “There was this fella I met, coming over on the ship. I told him. Or anyway, he guessed and I confirmed. I saved him from drowning, that’s the sort of encounter that leads to an exchange of confidences.”
“Does he know how to find you?”
“I don’t see how, but he seemed sort of important. The kind of man who can track people if he puts his mind to it.”
Hannah knew the sort of man Phoebe meant. The sort she’d always found amusing to track herself, back in her journalism days.
“We can at least find out if it’s him,” she promised.
“How do you figure?” Phoebe was skeptical.
“You don’t get where I’ve got without picking up a few tricks,” Hannah said. “Though you don’t have to wait for me. If you have the means, you should contact him yourself. Might throw him off guard.”
A slow grin spread over Phoebe’s face.
“I was looking for a reason to be in touch with him. This could make it a lot more interesting.”
Hannah couldn’t resist tucking Phoebe’s hair back into place.
“Well, exactly. If nothing else, you’ll get yourself a story.”
“Or a whole lot more trouble,” Phoebe pointed out.
Hannah looked hard into Phoebe’s eyes. “They can keep trying to hurt the show all they want, but they can’t hurt you any further, not here. So don’t let them think they’re getting the best of you.”
She wondered later, though, if she’d spoken the truth. Who was to say they couldn’t keep finding new ways to hurt you?
* * *
• • •
Nigel Elliott was an easy man to trace, even without Hannah’s long experience.
“He’s involved in diplomacy, though he doesn’t need to work,” she told Shirley and Will, who had come over for drinks and discussion. “He’s an actual baronet, with a ‘sir’ before his name and everything.”
“But you say he didn’t tell Phoebe that?” Shirley asked.
“I suppose if someone’s just saved your life, you’re inclined to dispense with such formalities,” Hannah said.
“Oh, come on!” Paul laughed. “You don’t really believe that story?”
“Why would Phoebe lie?” Hannah was baffled. Paul usually loved such tales.
“My dear, you’ve been working in fiction too long,” he said, shaking his head.
“Not at all,” Will said. “I, for one, am more than inclined to believe a sturdy young woman like Phoebe could rescue a drunk about to topple off a ship.”
“You have a point,” Paul said with a smile. “These so-called aristocrats are so soft, even a girl could save one. Especially if she hoped there’d be marriage in it.”
Hannah forced a smile, because of course Paul was joking, but it bothered her that he would agree with Will after dismissing her and Phoebe. Perhaps he wanted to look deferential—the good white man who recognized the intellectual and professional superiority that Will LeGrand wore so lightly on his shoulders.
Could he be jealous? Will was a famous exile, Shirley targeted, and Hannah essentially operating an illegal writing ring to keep people working. Paul was barely less innocent than Rhoda, granted leniency to stay up past her bedtime to listen, building a model plane meant for much older children to make. Julie was privileged to drowse in Shirley’s lap. Hannah wondered what the girls were absorbing from this conversation. That Phoebe was fearless and Hannah an able producer, that’s what she hoped was being heard.
How come Paul doesn’t want to hold Julie? I got his blazer clean.
She sipped her drink and grinned, ready to drop a bomb. “The real fun is Sir Nigel’s diplomacy work might be just a cover. From what I gather, he seems to be connected with MI5 in some way,” Hannah said, pleased to see her guests’ surprise.
“I know you’re good,” Shirley said, her face disbelieving. “But how can you possibly have discovered that?”
Hannah shrugged. “Well, I could be wrong. But I put a few things together and made a guess. Now we’ll just have to hope that if I’m right, he’s on our side.”
“Should Phoebe meet with him?” Shirley was dubious. “MI5 may not be the FBI, but they aren’t exactly pro-Communist.”
“She wants to see him, to let him know she’s not scared,” Hannah said admiringly. “I think he’s all right, though. He gives a lot of money to radical theater groups. Not that he uses his own name.” She topped up her drink. “Hard to believe the FBI would make such an effort to come to London, and for Phoebe of all people. What about you?” she asked the LeGrands. “Have you gotten harassed here?”
“Not here,” Will said. “But my agent keeps me apprised of the mail his office receives. People are quite happy to put pen to paper and let me know they think I’m a dirty Red as well as a dirty . . . Well, I don’t think it’s what Stendhal meant by The Red and the Black, do you?”
“In our NAACP office, we got nasty letters by the truckload,” Shirley said, sounding almost nostalgic as she rocked Julie. “On Fridays, we liked to have a contest for which was the most offensive. Also the most illiterate.”
“Ha! My lady journo pals and I used to do the same thing!” Hannah cried. “Of course, we were just happy to have our work given attention.”
“Here’s to our work getting attention,” Will said, raising his glass again.
Hannah drank to that. At the office, she pinned copies of Robin Hood’s best reviews on all her noticeboards. When Sidney saw them, he bellowed: “Ye nae wan anyone t’ think your eggs are double-yoakit!” It took some while for him to cop to a translation—that people might think her boastful. Hannah saw no real harm in being pleased with her accomplishments, though. And anyway, the reviews were a spur, more than a laurel, reminding her she could never relax, that the show’s quality must always be at this level. Hannah liked pressure. It kept her sharp.
“Of course, if you keep getting attention, you might hear from the FBI in some way as well,” Shirley warned. “Has anyone else heard anything?”
“If they have, they’ve kept it quiet, and name me one of our group who’d keep something like that quiet,” Hannah said. Since there were no names, she went on. “I suppose someone looks at Phoebe and thinks she’s a woman alone, vulnerable, she might be easy to break. HUAC gives the red-carpet treatment to any bird who decides to sing.”
“If they have names to name,” Shirley pointed out. “Best to stay where we’re safe.”
“Safe so far,” Will warned. “And Britain could refuse to renew our residency. Only a fool lets himself get too comfortable.”
“Strife,” Shirley said. “Though there is Canada. Or France. Or Africa.” She glanced at her husband, who nodded, and she explained, “We’ve been talking about going to Ghana, perhaps taking a page out of the book of Hannah Wolfson and helping launch their television industry. You’re an inspiration to us all, ma chère.”
Hannah smiled, but her heart lurched. She hated to think of Shirley leaving. London had become home. The Americans had formed a community. She’d already lost one of those. She didn’t want to lose another.
She pulled a sleepy Rhoda onto her lap.
“I suppose we’ll just have to keep our guard up. We’ve gotten along this far. The odd threat can’t stop us.”
She took Paul’s hand and he squeezed her fingers. There was this, at least. Paul, the children, their home, their work. She had never been a superstitious woman, but she gave the polished wood end table a light knock anyway.
Just in case.
* * *
• • •
Phoebe sent Nigel a typed note. She wavered a long time before deciding to sig
n her name, hoping it couldn’t be used for handwriting analysis.
I wonder how much more paranoid I’ll become before any of this is over?
She also wondered if it would ever be over. Hoover and the FBI and HUAC all believed this was permanent. The new order. Everyone in America was to be tracked, or at least think they were. That would keep them toeing the line.
Phoebe propped her chin on her fists and looked out at the rooftops over Soho. She tried not to remember her window over Perry Street, where she could watch the Village go by. Anne had sent a drawing of Floyd and Leo’s, where a sign was posted for submissions to the Christmas Eve Cabaret. Phoebe heaved a long, shuddery sigh. This was the year she had planned to audition her ability to guess how people had gotten their facial scars.
It was the day of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, she realized. It was an event she’d rolled her eyes at since she was thirteen, and she was now bereft to think it was happening when she wasn’t in New York. On the first of December, Greenwich Village lit up like a kaleidoscope, with all the shopkeepers stringing colored lights in their windows, often hanging tinsel and garlands too. The Italian market on Bleecker Street attempted to outdo all the department store windows on Fifth Avenue, with a little toy train going around and around, carrying cheeses and sausages in its cars. And now here it was, nearly December, and there would be no tree in Rockefeller Center, no ice skating, no carts selling chestnuts, no Radio City Christmas Spectacular, no department store windows, no cabaret, and no Chinese food and a double feature on Christmas Day.
Phoebe glared at her typewriter. She couldn’t sit and write, not when she felt like running wild in the streets. She tore a page out of her notebook, scribbled So let’s finally have that coffee why don’t we? and went out to find Freddie. Within five minutes, he returned from Reg’s flat on Bourchier Street with a note (and, Phoebe suspected, another penny in his pocket) suggesting they meet that afternoon. Another penny sent Freddie away to agree, and Phoebe went to tackle her hair.
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