With Alex there to introduce her to everybody and to ensure she understood what was expected of her, Christabel’s early days at the film studio went quite smoothly.
At first she had difficulty in adjusting to the American idiom, and their different way of thinking. They were all so articulate, so detailed with their descriptions, and so voluble. They regarded her as overly reticent and far too restrained and controlled.
When Alex asked her to check over some publicity copy for the film he wanted to promote, everyone, except Alex, was highly critical of the changes she made. They thought her writing was far too clinical and that it was lacking in fervour. Her words, or so the advertising panel claimed, were devoid of passion.
‘Christabel, it may be in perfect English but it has no selling power,’ the Director of Promotions told her.
Devastated, she turned to Alex for an explanation, but he only shrugged aside the criticisms that had been levied at her work.
‘Take no notice; they would criticise you no matter what you wrote,’ he said dismissively. ‘We made a great team once, Chrissy,’ he added, ‘so perhaps we will do so again, you’ll see!’
‘I think you’ve got it all wrong, Alex. The people in the Promotions department don’t like the way I’ve handled the copy and I know they want me out. They criticise my words, and my approach – everything I write or do, in fact. They say—’
He waved his hand, silencing her and dismissing her words in one gesture. ‘I’ve already told you it’s of no account.’
‘How can you say that? If I can’t hold down this job, then I have no alternative but to go back to Liverpool.’
‘No, no, no! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Think of being my PA as the bottom rung! From now on you are going to move so high up the ladder that people will be writing eulogies about you instead of you struggling to write words of praise about them.’
Christabel looked completely bewildered. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Alex?’
‘You. You are going to be the biggest discovery of the decade. In fact, you are going to be the star in my next film.’
‘You really are crazy, Alex. I can’t act. I don’t even like having my photograph taken.’
‘You have the sort of perfect cut-glass English accent that all Americans envy and admire,’ he told her. ‘You also have the cool, sophisticated manner that the camera loves.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘I’m planning for you to play the leading lady in my next picture!’
‘Leading lady, at my age? You simply aren’t making sense, Alex. It’s a preposterous idea!! Why don’t you spend your energy on promoting Marlene’s career as a film star? Lilian is longing to see her name up in lights.’
‘Mmm?’ He frowned dismissively. ‘Time enough for that.’ He placed a hand under Christabel’s chin and, turning her face sideways, studied her profile critically. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure the make-up department will be able to work wonders,’ he assured her. ‘They’ll be able to transform you so that you can look any age from sweet sixteen upwards,’ he teased.
Christabel looked sceptical. ‘Why should you want them to do that when there are so many beautiful women already available here in Hollywood and many of them are already established as accomplished actresses?’
‘I repeat, you have the English elegance, the clear voice and faultless accent, as well as the cool bearing. What is more, it is all without any visible effort because it is the way you have been brought up; it all comes quite naturally to you.’
‘That is something that anyone can achieve with the right training if they have acting ability.’
Alex shook his head. ‘Believe me, no matter how hard they try, the results always look contrived.’
Christabel smiled thinly. What Alex was telling her was music to her ears, balm to her jaded feelings, but she remained dubious. ‘Why have you decided to try and make me a star? Why not Lilian? She’s as English as I am.’
Alex laughed uproariously. ‘She may be, but she’s hardly leading-lady material.’
‘And I am?’
‘You have elegance, presence, bearing, the ability to assimilate instructions and accept constructive criticism. Christabel, if you put yourself in my hands, I’ll make sure you reach the top. I’ll make a star of you. Your name will be up in lights outside every cinema in England as well as here in America.’
Her thoughts were in complete turmoil. Outwardly she appeared to remain perfectly calm, but her nerves were zinging. She studied Alex speculatively. He was still attractive and still had the ability to make her pulse quicken.
‘Don’t take too long to make your mind up, the opportunity won’t last for ever.’
She’d been down that path once before, she reminded herself, and her nerves had been stripped raw when he had deserted her for her sister. For that reason, she told herself firmly, this must be a business arrangement and nothing more.
In her heart she was doubtful if that was going to be possible, even if he did agree with her on that point. Alex was so charismatic! There was an animal magnetism about him which she automatically responded to no matter how hard she tried to avoid doing so. If they were working together, then would their constant closeness cause problems?
She didn’t need to take time to think, she told herself sternly. For Lilian’s sake she couldn’t risk anything happening between them.
Even so, she found it took a tremendous effort to shake her head, signifying that she was not prepared to go along with his proposition.
Chapter Eighteen
That evening when Christabel broke the news to Lilian and Marlene that she had decided to return to England, they both pleaded with her to stay on in Hollywood.
‘I thought you were happy living here and working for Alex,’ Lilian said in surprise.
‘It’s been a wonderful experience and I’ve most certainly enjoyed staying with you, Lilian.’
‘Then why are you leaving?’
‘Suddenly, for some reason, I feel homesick,’ Christabel explained. ‘You know how it is, you said yourself that sometimes you feel you’d like to go back to England.’
‘I want you to stay so that you can see me become a film star,’ Marlene sobbed, flinging her arms round Christabel’s neck and hugging her tightly.
‘I will still be able to go and see the film you are in at the cinema in Liverpool,’ Christabel pointed out.
‘Will you?’ Marlene’s tears stopped immediately and she gave a beaming smile. ‘You promise?’
‘I promise, and I’ll take Kay to see it as well so that she knows you have become a film star.’
‘I didn’t know they had cinemas over there, Aunt Chrissy.’
‘Yes, they have several, and I will make sure I see your film,’ Christabel assured her.
‘The reason I didn’t know was because I can’t remember ever being there.’ Marlene pouted.
‘You have been there, but of course you were just a baby, so that is why you can’t remember. Perhaps one day your mummy and daddy will bring you again on a visit,’ Christabel told her.
She looked questioningly at Lilian as she spoke but Lilian shrugged her shoulders noncommittally.
Alex made no comment at all about her leaving and, much to her annoyance, Christabel found she had to ask him for the wages that were due to her.
‘By rights you should forfeit your wages because you haven’t worked out your notice,’ he told her.
‘I understand, but I would like to leave immediately.’
‘The decision is yours, of course,’ he said curtly.
‘I need my wages, otherwise I haven’t enough money to pay my fare back to England.’
‘You could always work your passage, I imagine.’
Christabel frowned. ‘Are you deliberately trying to make things awkward for me?’ she flared.
‘I thought it might help you to see sense and to realise you could do very well for yourself here in Hollywood, if you were prepared to take my advice.’
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br /> ‘I’ve already made my mind up, Alex, and I’ve decided that I am returning to Liverpool and I want to do so as soon as possible,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘Ah well,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘in that case, I’d better help you, I suppose. Here you are, then.’ He opened his wallet and drew out a wad of notes and handed them to her.
‘What’s all this? It’s far more than what is due to me.’
‘The wages that are due to you certainly won’t pay for your passage back to England,’ he told her cryptically.
Christabel felt uneasy. She knew he was right but at the same time she didn’t want to accept his money because she felt it placed her under an obligation to him. She had been intending to ask Lilian if she could loan her some money without Alex knowing.
‘Go on, take it,’ Alex thrust the bundle of notes into her hand, ‘call it a loan, if that makes you feel any better,’ he added as he turned on his heel and walked away before she could say anything.
Three days later, Christabel was on her way back to Liverpool. Lilian and Marlene came to wave her off, both of them saying tearfully how much they were going to miss her.
‘Mind you write and let us know you’ve arrived safely, and from now on keep in touch,’ Lilian told her.
‘Don’t forget to go and see my film, Aunty Chrissy,’ Marlene called after her as she went up the gangway.
It was a bleak, cold crossing and Christabel spent a great deal of time in her small cabin mulling over her situation and wondering what to do when they eventually docked in Liverpool.
Although the money Alex had loaned her had paid for her passage, there was not very much left over to cover any extras, so she tried to be very frugal during the journey.
It also meant that once she reached her destination she would be virtually penniless. She knew her parents’ home had been sold after her mother died, so she had nowhere to go unless she went straight to Lewis and Violet’s and asked them if she could stay with them for a while.
It was a cold and grey late-November day when they docked in Liverpool and Christabel felt chilled to the bone after the warm sunshine of Hollywood. She had no idea what her next move should be. For several minutes she stood on the quayside trying to make up her mind whether to try and find a room or go straight to Lewis’s.
Common sense prevailed; she didn’t think it was fair to descend on them without some prior warning. She was longing to see them, especially Kay, but now that she was back in Liverpool she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to do so right away.
They hadn’t been in touch all the time she’d been in Hollywood. In fact, as far as she knew they probably thought she was still in Argentina unless Lilian had written to Lewis and told him that she was staying with them.
Now that she was back in familiar surroundings she was determined to stand on her own feet and make a life for herself and she wanted to do that before she went to see Lewis and Violet.
If she could manage to find herself a job, she’d have enough money to rent a small flat or some comfortable lodgings. That way she would be able to retain her independence and not have to rely on help from anyone.
The plan seemed sound but when she came to put it into practice she immediately met with difficulties. She had so little money she knew she could only stay in a hotel for a night or two at the very most and then she must look for cheap lodgings until she found a job and could afford something better.
Locating the sort of accommodation she wanted in a fairly respectable area proved impossible. The room she eventually rented in Dalrymple Street was not even as good as the one she’d had in Maggie Nelson’s house when she’d been waiting for her baby to be born. It was small and squalid, the paper was peeling off the walls and there was an overwhelming smell of damp and decay.
The first night she was there she’d been eaten alive by fleas and the small red blisters that appeared on her arms and neck were visible for days afterwards.
At night when she was in bed, after she’d blown out the candle, the cockroaches came out but if she lighted the candle again they always scuttled away behind the cracks and torn wall-paper before she had a chance to catch them.
Finding a job of any kind proved to be equally daunting. There was so much unemployment in Liverpool and she had no special training or skills to offer aside from her nursing.
As the days became weeks what little money she’d had left over after paying her passage home had almost gone and she still hadn’t found any work even though she had exhausted every avenue she could think of – except begging.
She knew she no longer looked smart and because of this she felt miserable. Her hair needed attention and her clothes needed washing but apart from managing to rinse out her underwear and drape it over the back of a chair to dry there was no way she could wash and iron anything else. Money was so short that she couldn’t afford to take her clothes into a laundry.
As her living standards dropped so did her hopes of finding a job. In the beginning she’d applied for office work and then at some of the high-class dress shops as a sales assistant. The story was always the same: they were laying off staff, not hiring them.
In the end she capitulated and applied for work at one of the Liverpool hospitals although she’d been determined never to do nursing again. The woman she spoke to looked at her in disbelief when she said she’d trained and was fully experienced.
‘Really?’ she said sceptically. ‘So where was that and why did you leave?’
When Christabel told her that the hospital where she’d trained had been the military one at Hilbury and that it had closed at the end of the war, the woman lost interest.
‘That’s so long ago that you would probably need retraining as there have been so many medical advances and new ways of doing things since then,’ she stated.
‘Surely you must have some vacancies for nursing staff,’ Christabel insisted.
‘No,’ the woman shook her head looking Christabel up and down in a disparaging way, ‘we don’t even want any ward maids or cleaners,’ she said dismissively.
It had been the last straw. Christabel felt utterly depressed as she came away. She wondered what on earth she was going to do. She couldn’t bring herself to stand in one of the queues outside the many soup kitchens that had been set up in some of the warehouses in the docks area for the unemployed, even though the smell as she walked by was tantalising.
For almost a week she managed to exist on tea and toast for breakfast, a cup of hot broth made from an Oxo cube at midday, and whatever she could find for the rest of the day. Her hunger was magnified because of the cooking smells that permeated from other rooms in the house. It made the life she’d known in Wilcock Court when Maggie Nelson had provided her with such appetising meals every day seem like heaven by comparison.
Memories of those days and the sad outcome dominated her thoughts and more and more she felt herself longing to see Lewis’s little girl again. Kay would be ten now and she wondered if she had changed very much since she’d last seen her.
Once or twice she walked down the road where they lived hoping to catch a glimpse of Kay but she never did. The house looked so different from how she remembered it that she wondered if they were still living there.
One afternoon, shortly before Christmas, she plucked up the courage to knock on the door. The woman who answered was a complete stranger and she was too smartly dressed to be a servant.
Christabel asked if Mrs Violet Montgomery was at home and the woman shook her head. ‘I can’t help you,’ she said and made to shut the door.
When Christabel put out a hand to stop her doing so the woman added firmly, ‘I don’t know who you are, but they don’t live here any more.’
‘Mr Montgomery is my brother, can you not tell me where they are living now?’
The stranger stared at her for a moment then said, ‘Somewhere over in Wallasey, but I’ve forgotten the address. Rolleston something, I think it was.’
‘Do
you mean Rolleston Drive?’
‘Yes, it’s something like that,’ the woman said dismissively and began to close the door again before Christabel could ask for any further information.
Back in her shabby little room, listening to the noise of a heated row that was going on above her, she felt utterly despondent and knew she could stand living there no longer.
She’d had no success in finding a job and when Saturday came and she realised after counting out the few coins in her purse and finding that she didn’t even have enough for a loaf of bread, let alone to pay the rent on her room, she resolved that, regrettably, the time had come to swallow her pride and to go and ask Lewis if he would help her.
She counted out the coins again and hoped that there was enough to pay the boat fare across to Wallasey. She would probably have to walk once she got to Seacombe, because she didn’t think there would be enough left over for the bus fare from there to Rolleston Drive.
Chapter Nineteen
Christabel stayed in her room all Saturday morning packing up her belongings and hoping that the landlady wouldn’t come knocking for her rent until midday. Her plan was to be out before then.
She wanted to leave going across to Wallasey until the afternoon, hoping that that would be the most opportune time to find them all at home, although since it was the last weekend before Christmas there was always the possibility that they would be out shopping.
She had no idea what number in Rolleston Drive they were living at, so, although she was footsore having had to walk all the way from Seacombe Ferry, she walked the full length of the tree-lined street, studying all the houses, and wondering if she would be able to recognise which one now belonged to Lewis.
Whispers of Love Page 15