Araluen

by Judy Nunn

  Although Peter had helpfully spread the story all around London of Franklin’s duel, he secretly thought the man was a fool for having taken such a risk. And for a factory girl no less! A highborn lady perhaps, but … And now the chap was making serious inquiries as to one’s intentions toward a young actress.

  ‘She’s an actress, for goodness’ sake, Franklin,’ he said with a touch of exasperation. ‘And not a particularly good one at that. And I have the distinct feeling that she wants me to marry her before she’ll acquiesce, which makes her a gold-digger into the bargain.’ He signalled for the waiter to clear the table. ‘We play a ridiculous game,’ he continued. ‘I allow her to call the tune because of course one can’t force the issue. But one does get a little tired of her delusions of grandeur.’

  Distasteful as Franklin found Peter’s comments on Penelope, he was thrilled at the prospect that she was under no obligation. Peter’s scorn for her in no way affected Franklin’s view of the girl. After all, Peter came from such a blue-blooded line that little short of royalty impressed him. Franklin was convinced the man wouldn’t know good, true stock if he fell over it. Typical of the English, Franklin thought, their upper classes are far too inbred – it’s not healthy.

  Franklin admired Penelope even more for not succumbing to the Viscount’s charms. Peter Lynell was a man of extreme wealth and a dashing aristocrat into the bargain. Many a girl might have been tempted. But not Penelope. Franklin was convinced she was a virgin and, the more he thought about her, the more convinced he was that she should become his wife. He set out to court her.

  No matter how often Penelope told herself she wasn’t remotely interested in Franklin Ross from Sydney, Australia, it didn’t work. She’d never met anyone like him before and she was immensely attracted to him.

  His lack of guile was confusing. She realised that she could have told him the truth and it wouldn’t have made any difference – she wasn’t used to that. She didn’t tell him the truth, of course – Penny Green had lived a life of fantasy for so long that she’d lost sight of what the truth was. She painted her pictures as vividly as she always had and Franklin quite happily believed that Penelope Jane Greenway was an extremely successful actress in the theatre and that it was only a matter of time before she would embark upon a career in films and become a star.

  Franklin didn’t question any of Penelope’s tales about her past or her present because he had no need to. He wasn’t particularly interested in what she had to say – it was the way she said it. She was beautiful, young, strong and well bred. He didn’t care whether she was middle class or upper class; the stock was there, she would be a good breeder. Even her deep commitment to her career failed to concern him. She was a born mother, he could tell it. Once she had given birth, her priorities would change. Most women’s did and Penelope would be no different. And the strength and dedication she now poured into her career she would later pour into her family. She would be his total support and she would rule his dynasty alongside him with a strength to equal his own.

  In their own self-obsessed ways, Franklin and Penelope were falling in love, the only way that each of them knew how.

  It was a Sunday and Penelope had wanted to see the ocean, so Franklin had hired a chauffeured limousine to take them to Worthing for the day.

  For the past fortnight he’d been hiring transport rather than availing himself of Peter Lynell’s standing offer: ‘One of my vehicles and a driver is at your disposal any time, dear chap, feel free.’ It was a generous gesture, but Franklin was highly critical of Peter’s cavalier attitude towards Penelope.

  ‘Good God, man, you’re mad,’ he’d said when Franklin had tentatively mentioned his desire to court her. Then he’d shrugged and added, ‘Good luck’. Franklin had found his tone rather insulting.

  Worthing was a pretty coastal town with stone cottages in the back streets, grand holiday houses along the ocean front and an impressive stretch of promenade and pebbled beach.

  Franklin gave the driver a handsome tip, told him to amuse himself for two hours and instructed him to have a chilled bottle of champagne awaiting them on their return. Then he and Penny lunched at a little tea house overlooking the sea and Penny found herself actually admitting that Worthing reminded her of Brighton-Le-Sands.

  ‘I only ever think of Australia when I’m by the sea,’ she said, ‘and then I remember the beautiful blue bay and the little boats and I think of my childhood.’

  It was the most truthful admission Penny had made to anyone, including herself, in years.

  They walked all the way along the promenade, passing other couples, old and young. Passing families and tourists and locals. Worthing promenade on a Sunday was a popular spot. And then the houses thinned out and there were no more people and Franklin kissed her.

  He’d kissed her before. Several times, when he was saying goodnight. But his tongue never explored her mouth and his hand never sought her breast, even though she would have allowed it. Franklin always exercised control and Penny was grateful for that. This time was different though. This time she wanted him to demand a little more.

  And Franklin certainly wanted more. Much more. He ached for her. But he kept his distance so that she wouldn’t feel his erection, his hands avoided the swell of her breasts and, as he felt her mouth start to respond hungrily to his kiss, he broke the embrace.

  ‘Will you marry me, Penelope?’ he asked.

  Penny looked back at him, somewhat shaken. She wasn’t shaken by the actual proposal; she’d been more or less expecting that. She was shaken by her response to the kiss. It was the first time she’d wanted a kiss to continue. It was the first time a kiss hadn’t been simply the return of a favour, or a promise of things to come in order to maintain the status quo. And it was the first time she hadn’t been the one to stop the embrace. She was confused and off-balance and not at all sure that she liked someone else calling the tune.

  ‘Oh,’ she murmured, pretending to be taken aback by the proposal and buying time. She looked out at a ship on the far distant horizon. ‘I don’t know what to say, Franklin.’ When she felt she had regained her composure, she turned. ‘Shall we go back to the car?’ she suggested gently.

  Neither of them spoke during the long walk back along the promenade. The driver was waiting for them and Franklin instructed him to open the bottle of champagne.

  ‘Well?’ he asked finally, returning the bottle to its bucket and handing Penelope a glass. ‘Will you marry me?’ He leaned back and watched her as the car started slowly wending its way through the streets of Worthing.

  Having now fully regained her composure Penelope was in no quandary as to her answer. ‘You would want me to return to Australia, wouldn’t you, Franklin?’

  ‘Naturally. That’s where my home is. My work. My properties.’

  ‘Then it’s impossible, I’m afraid.’ She smiled sadly. ‘My career, you see. I couldn’t give up my career.’

  The reply didn’t altogether surprise Franklin and he was not discouraged by it. ‘I’m willing to wait,’ he said.

  But Penelope shook her head. ‘There will never be a career for me in Australia,’ she answered. ‘It’s not a matter of time.’

  Inwardly, Franklin disagreed with her. She was very young and he was sure that the desire to have her own home, to be a mother, would eventually win out. Besides, he’d felt that moment of hunger in her as her mouth sought his and he knew, if he kept his distance, it would only be a matter of time before she would want him as much as he wanted her. All he had to do was speed up the process – he didn’t want to wait too long. It suddenly occurred to him.

  ‘If I could advance your career,’ he asked, ‘would you marry me?’

  Penelope looked at him closely. Was he serious? Yes, he was. She took her time answering. ‘You know how extremely fond I am of you, Franklin,’ she said, ‘and you know how important my career is to me. If it were at all possible to combine the two … ‘ She smiled charmingly and Franklin thought s
he had never looked more beautiful. ‘ … it’s greedy of me, isn’t it … but, if I could do that, then yes, I would marry you.’

  ‘So be it.’ Franklin toasted her and downed his champagne in one draught.

  As soon as Franklin got back to London, he sent a telegraphic cable to the United States. Then he cancelled his passage to Australia and waited for Samuel Crockett’s reply.

  The following afternoon he was on Penelope’s front doorstep. ‘How soon can you leave for America?’ he asked.

  ‘America?’

  ‘Well, you want to be in movies, don’t you?’ And he handed her Sam’s return wire. Expect you both as house guests as soon as possible STOP Of course there will be a movie role for your fiancee STOP Eagerly await details of your arrival STOP Samuel David Crockett, Minotaur Movies, Hollywood.

  Wide-eyed, Penelope looked from the telegraphic cable to Franklin.

  ‘May I presume we are now officially engaged?’ he asked.

  Ten days later, they sailed for America on the Queen Mary. Franklin had booked separate cabins but Penelope was wearing an extremely expensive diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand.

  ‘I expect to be the first person on the invitation list,’ Peter Lynell said as they were about to board, and he shook Franklin’s hand warmly. ‘Just as soon as you set the date.’ Peter had changed his attitude towards Penelope and whatever rift had crept into his friendship with Franklin was now well and truly healed.

  ‘I’m deeply grateful to you, Peter. For everything.’ Franklin meant it. His business in London had gone exceedingly well and he considered Peter Lynell directly responsible for his success. Through Peter he had acquired valuable contacts in the Home Office and had already secured an army contract for the supply of a range of leathergoods.

  Samuel Crockett lived in Bel-Air and his house was exactly as Franklin had envisaged. It was huge and opulent – ostentatious perhaps, but not in bad taste. In fact the furnishings and decorations were of the highest quality. It was a mansion, and testimony to Samuel Crockett’s wealth, complete with kidney-shaped swimming pool, outdoor tennis courts, billiards room, and private movie theatre.

  Sam himself was as big and as loud and as effusive as ever – and just as arrogant. But not with Franklin. Franklin Ross was the one man who had earned Sam’s respect, the one man to whom he owed his life – and big Sam Crockett wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  Together with his wife, Lucy-Mae, Sam was a generous host and the two of them made Franklin and Penelope feel immediately welcome.

  ‘I’ve heard all about you, Mr Ross. Now you don’t mind if I call you Franklin, do you?’ Lucy-Mae dragged his face down to hers, kissing him on both cheeks and, before Franklin could answer, she took Penelope’s hands in her own and stood back in open admiration. ‘Why, Penelope, you’re pretty as a picture, I swear. Welcome to you both.’ More kisses on Penelope’s cheeks, then came introductions to Davy Junior.

  Sam hoisted the child up with one hand, holding him aloft like a sack of potatoes, and the two-year-old squealed with delight. He was a solid, beefy infant who held every promise of growing into a replica of his father.

  Lucy-Mae wasn’t beefy. Despite the fact that she was nearly seven months pregnant, she was tiny and birdlike, pretty in a slightly beaky way, with eyes that darted about, not missing a thing. But Lucy-Mae wasn’t fragile. She wore gold bracelets that jangled when she moved and she was extremely confident and assured of her place in the scheme of things. She was Sam Crockett’s wife, mother to his son and heir, and just about to give birth to his second child. Furthermore, she ran his home and household staff with the precision of a sergeant major and entertained his guests with true Southern hospitality and style. It never occurred to Lucy-Mae that her existence was in any way subservient and she would have been appalled if anyone had suggested it.

  Penelope obviously passed muster with Sam, and for a brief moment Franklin couldn’t help but compare the respect he afforded her with his insulting treatment of Millie. But it was only a fleeting thought – Millie Tingwell was rarely on Franklin’s mind. He had no regrets about his actions and no desire to discover the sex of the child she must have given birth to since his departure from Australia. The rare thoughts he had of her were purely carnal and a result of his state of celibacy.

  Although Sam was indeed aware that Penelope was a good middle-class girl, the respect he afforded her was actually part and parcel of the respect he afforded Franklin. Over the ensuing weeks, however, he recognised Penelope’s strength and decided that if the girl could rid herself of her silly career fixation, she would make a fine wife for Franklin.

  Several days after their arrival, Sam took them on a guided tour of the elite areas, pointing out the homes of the Hollywood stars. Most of them were mansions nearly as grand as Sam’s and Franklin realised that to live like this was de rigeur in the upper echelons of Tinsel Town. He also realised that he vastly preferred the elegance of The Colony House.

  ‘HOLLYWOODLAND – you see that?’ Sam had instructed the driver to take them to Mount Lee and now he pointed to the massive letters which successfully destroyed the beauty of the virgin hillside. ‘Just about sums up this town,’ he said. ‘They all come here like it’s some special fairyland that’s going to make their dreams come true.’

  He again indicated the sign. ‘That there’s become quite a favourite suicide spot ever since a kid who couldn’t make it threw herself off the “D” a few years back. A whole heap of them have done it since. They just can’t get it through their skulls that movies aren’t magic, movies are money.’

  ‘Which “D”?’ Penny asked.

  ‘Pardon?’ Sam looked at her blankly.

  ‘Which “D” did she jump off?’

  ‘The one at the end, I do believe.’

  Sam was true to his word and, less than a fortnight after they arrived, Penelope Jane Greenway was tested at the Minotaur studios.

  The test was a formality only, the studio executives having been instructed that Penelope was to be cast regardless of the outcome. They gave their customary sigh of resignation at the waste of time and prepared to shove her somewhere in the background of Minotaur’s latest low-budget B-grade.

  But the test was surprisingly successful. It revealed that Penelope Jane Greenway’s beauty and charm did not escape the camera lens and, as with the several stage productions in which she’d performed, an absence of talent did not necessarily put her out of the running.

  ‘She could well play the third blonde in the Thelma Todd movie,’ the director said to the producer. ‘She’s the same build as Thelma – stick a blonde wig on her and she’d be perfect.’

  True Blonde was a vehicle Minotaur had purchased hoping to attract Jean Harlow. They hadn’t, but, after lengthy negotiations, they’d managed to entice Thelma Todd away from the Hal Roach farce she’d been about to accept, and they were due to go into production in three months’ time. As True Blonde was a comedy about mistaken identity, the next step was to find three blondes who could easily be mistaken for Thelma. They’d found two and Penelope appeared to be an ideal number three.

  ‘It’s a nice cameo role, number three,’ the producer said with a touch of uncertainty. ‘We wouldn’t want her to fuck it up. Let’s shove her in the party scene of Harlequin Horror and see how she goes.’

  Two weeks later, Penelope was engaged to play a ‘guest’ in the final scene of a low-budget horror film which the studio was just completing. Along with twenty other people in harlequin costumes she was required to witness a particularly horrific murder.

  The movie was being shot in a grubby old tin shed in the backlot behind the modern studios. The tin shed, fondly referred to as ‘The Sweatbox’, had been the original studio in which a string of successful silent films had been made in the twenties. When the talkies arrived and many studios found themselves on the brink of extinction, it was Sam Crockett who stepped in and saved Minotaur and the old tin shed. He bought the company for a song and, alth
ough he didn’t know much about movies, he appointed people who did. Minotaur blossomed, a whole new studio complex was built and it was only the old tin shed itself which was threatened with extinction. However, a band of die-hards who had survived the transition from silent movies to sound appealed to Sam’s sentimentality and now the old studio remained as a symbol of a bygone era. But Sam demanded that it earn its keep, so he set up a sound stage there. All year round, Minotaur’s cheapies were churned out of the old tin shed.

  During summer, every single cast and crew member who worked in The Sweatbox dropped at least half a stone, and a new term was born into a profession which thrived on in-house slang. When actors were out of work they were ‘resting’ and when they were filming a low-budget movie for Minotaur they were ‘dieting’. To the many actors and crew who spent their entire lives ‘dieting’, the term became one of endearment. Why sneer? There was quite a lucrative living to be made out of ‘dieting’.

  The party scene of Harlequin Horror was a garden setting and the day’s shoot included a number of fetching shots of Penelope. Penelope peering from behind an imitation Trevi Fountain. Penelope leaning up against a palm tree. There was even a close-up of Penelope looking attractively horrified as a severed jugular gushed forth copious quantities of blood.

  The close-up was the true test. The director, aware that the censorship laws wouldn’t allow him to have the screen awash with blood, needed to cut away from the slit throat to the reactions of the onlookers.

  ‘You must reflect the horror of what you see,’ he instructed Penelope when it was her turn and, while the make-up artist prepared her face for the close-up, he described in ghastly graphic detail what would happen when a person’s jugular vein was severed.

  To inspire her to greater heights, he repeated the description during the shooting of the close-up, but Penelope found it difficult to equate his grisly details with the semidecapitated wax dummy lying on the fake grass beside the fake fountain under the fake palm tree.