“She’s still not well.”
“Don’t say that!” Blanche held her head and paced up and down. “I don’t want to hear it! She is not sick in bed and she’s walking about and breathing. That makes her fully able to show herself at the opening ceremony of the new Fernley. Her producer will murder me if I don’t get her there! The studios employ me, you know. I’ll be kicked out for incompetence and black-listed!”
“We’ll see how Minnie is when it comes to the time.”
“Let me talk to her!”
“That’s out of the question.”
“You’re holding her against her will!” Blanche shouted wildly. “I’ll secure a writ of habeas corpus!”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Good morning, Miss Stiller.”
Blanche Stiller had returned several times and each time the woman departed in a fury. Lisa always stood at the door to watch her drive off after once finding that she had gone prowling around the house to look in at the windows in the hope of finding Minnie on her own. And she was the last person Minnie wished to see at the present time.
“Keep her away, Lisa,” she had implored. “She can pressure me into doing whatever the studios demand in the way of publicity and I don’t want to face strangers yet.”
During their talks together Minnie had admitted that it was as Lisa, remembering Harriet, had suspected. She had suffered a miscarriage. Sarah Baker, Lisa’s doctor and friend, with whom Minnie had struck up a friendship, corroborated that many, women went through such periods of depression after a miscarriage, and she was keeping an eye on her. Lisa still felt that Minnie had not revealed everything. Perhaps whatever she was still keeping to herself was the very key that would bring her back to normality.
After a final discussion with Alan over the telephone, Lisa put it to Minnie that she was not expected to attend the premiere on their behalf. Minnie showed intense relief. It had obviously been hanging over her like a dark cloud.
“Are you sure Alan doesn’t mind?” she queried anxiously.
“He wants to see you well again as we all do. You’ve made such good progress that Sarah Baker agrees with me that it might undo all the good that has been done for your nerves if you return too soon to motion picture circles.”
“But you’ll go to the premiere, won’t you?” Minnie was insistent. “It’s the greatest moment in Alan’s career and you must be with him.”
“I hoped you’d say that. Sarah has offered to come and stay the night here, because with the party afterwards we won’t get back to Maple House until the following day.”
“I don’t need a doctor in attendance. The servants will look after me.”
“Sarah won’t be here in her capacity as a doctor, only as a friend, and she’ll be company for you.”
Minnie smiled appreciatively. “It’s kind of her. I’ll be glad for her to be with me.”
Lisa left for London in the afternoon of the great day, travelling by train. She would be driven back by Alan. Catherine awaited her at the apartment in a state of high excitement. She had laid Lisa’s new Fortuny evening gown on the bed in readiness. She herself would be wearing white satin with a halter neckline and completely bare back.
“Daddy wants us to get to the cinema early to avoid the crush,” she explained.
Lisa went to the hairdresser and returned in good time. Her gown was of finely pleated lilac silk with an attached waist-length overblouse that wafted against her figure as only a Fortuny garment could, feather-light and gleaming over breasts and hips by the skill of marvellous cutting and construction. With diamond earrings and a corsage of orchids Alan had ordered for her, she swung on her cape of creamy fox fur and looked, according to her daughter, more fabulous than any film star. Smiling, she held out her hand to Catherine.
“Let’s go then! Tonight’s the night!”
As they set off in a taxi for the West End, a fast car was speeding towards London from Maple House. When Sarah Baker left her own car in the drive and was admitted by a maid, she was astonished to hear that Minnie had gone to the premiere after all.
“But I thought it had been decided that she wouldn’t go!”
“I think the plans were changed at the last minute,” the maid replied. “An American lady came to collect Miss Shaw and take her straight to the cinema.”
“How very odd. Was no message left for me?”
“No, Doctor.”
Sarah Baker returned to her car with the overnight case she would no longer need. She was puzzled but unperturbed except as to how Minnie would react to the sudden excitement after the peaceful days at Maple House. That worried her. It was not the first time Minnie had put her career before her health. As a doctor, Sarah had heard a little more in confidence than had `been divulged to Lisa. Still concerned, she made a snap decision when she reached the gates of the house and, instead of turning the car into a homewards direction, she swung southwards to reach the London road.
Coloured searchlights fanned the London sky from the roof of the new Fernley cinema. The frontage blazed with Minnie’s name and the title of the film. Enormous crowds had gathered outside to see the stars arrive and in the hope that Minnie Shaw might appear. The press had played up the will she? — won’t she? angle at Blanche Stiller’s instigation. The polished limousines drew up one after another outside the red-carpeted entrance to allow the famous and other less well-known personages of the film world to alight. The foyer thronged with men in white tie and tails, the women in exquisite clothes and jewels, Schiaparelli’s shocking pink much in evidence with those who followed closely the dictates of Paris. Lisa stood out in her Fortuny gown at Alan’s side. Rita Davis was stunning in black velvet.
It took a long time to get everybody out of the foyer and into the auditorium. There were always the publicity-seekers lingering to have a few more photographs taken by the press cameras there. Harry, at his most charming, managed at last to usher the last of these up the gilded staircase to the Grand Circle when the attendants’ attempts had been repeatedly ignored.
Lisa and Catherine sat with the British film stars and other important people in the flower-bedecked front row of the Grand Circle. The organ descended with its last melodious chords, vanishing from sight as the lights lowered throughout the auditorium. The buzz of chatter subsided as the looped silk curtains parted and the screen music announced spectacularly that Love’s Glory had begun.
It had been tipped as a smash hit, and before the movie of love, loyalty, and desertion was half-way through, the whole audience realised that Minnie was destined to be nominated for every award available for her performance. It was in the last few minutes before its close when an attendant delivered a verbal message from Alan to Lisa who was sitting on an aisle seat, for he had wanted her to join him quickly at the movie’s end.
“Mr. Fernley wants you to go to the foyer now. It’s urgent.”
Lisa slipped from her seat and went out of the auditorium. Hurrying down the stairway she was astonished and concerned to see Sarah talking anxiously with Alan and Harry. All three turned as she approached.
“Have you seen Minnie?” Alan asked at once. “Sarah says she’s here. It sounds as if Blanche fetched her away after you had left.”
“Then there is only one place she’ll be at this moment,” Lisa exclaimed. “Blanche will push her onto the stage when the movie ends!”
As they ran along the maze of barren concrete passageways leading to the rear of the auditorium, they met Rita Davis running towards them, her expression jubilant. “Minnie Shaw is here, Alan!” she cried, any pretence at formality forgotten in her excitement. “I was coming to tell you. I’ve just guided her and her studio representative to the stage steps!”
Nobody answered her. She drew back against the wall in bewilderment as, with grim expressions, they rushed past, and then followed after them. From the auditorium a thunderclap of applause greeted the film’s end, and it swelled into a standing ovation. Alan, in the lead, burst through the door into the anteroom
from which wooden steps rose to the stage. Blanche was half-way up the flight and she swung around in triumph.
“Too late! She’s on!”
Her voice was almost drowned by a roar of approbation within the auditorium. Lisa darted up the steps to reach the side of the stage where she was hidden from the view of the audience by velvet curtains hanging from the proscenium arch. Alan and Harry joined her. Minnie had gone a third of the distance across the wide stage and had come to a standstill. She was a vision in a silver lame gown that hugged her slender body and burst into spangled tulle from her hips, her only jewellery a pair of sparkling pendant earrings. Her back being towards those in the wings and her head too slightly turned for them to see more than the curve of her cheek, her expression was hidden from them, but the rigidity with which she stood filled Lisa with alarm.
“I must get to the steps on the other side where she can see me.” Lisa grabbed up her skirt to facilitate her swift descent of the steps. She charged through another door into a passage that was parallel with the back of the screen. When she reached the far side and was again at stage level, she could see that Minnie was scanning the audience with an extraordinary searching look that was blended of shock and disbelief. To the audience it merely emphasised a modest incredulity that her movie should have been such a success. The ovation increased in volume as she gave them an almost childish wave. Her lips moved. By a trick of acoustics against the screen, Lisa could hear what those in the auditorium could not. It came on the high trembling note that presages hysteria.
“Where are you, Ma? The ship’s goin’, Ma! Don’t let ‘em take me away!”
“Minnie! I’m here!” Lisa’s voice reached the stage by the same echoing vibration.
Minnie’s head jerked about like that of a puppet. At the sight of Lisa standing with her arms outstretched to her, her expression broke after a few suspenseful seconds into joyful recognition and tears. The audience, imagining she was welcoming the arrival of some esteemed representative from her studios, which would have been customary, brought forth a renewed wave of applause. Lisa swept forward to embrace Minnie and hold her violently shaking frame in support.
“It’s all right now, Minnie,” she said through a wide smile to sustain the audience’s belief that this was all arranged. “We’re together as we always were.-
Alan, coming swiftly from the opposite side at a signal glance from Lisa, took up Minnie’s trembling hand and kissed it as if solely in gallant homage for her remarkable performance on the screen. Comparatively few in the auditorium had known Lisa’s identity, but everybody recognised Alan Fernley as the entrepreneur whose magnificent cinema had opened with what was undoubtedly the motion picture of the year, and the clapping continued unabated. Minnie stood there between her two friends, each of them holding one of her hands hard and reassuringly, and she dipped her head at last into a stage bow to acknowledge the applause.
It was enough. Harry released the silken curtains by an emergency switch and brought them rippling down to hide her from the audience’s sight. He was just in time. Alan caught Minnie as she collapsed and Sarah came running to give whatever medical aid was necessary.
In the ensuing minutes after Minnie had been carried down the steps to the anteroom, Rita seized the first chance she could to have a word with Alan. “What did I do wrong?” she asked anxiously.
He smiled at her. “Nothing, as it happened.”
“That’s a relief. I was worried.” She returned his smile thankfully. The brief exchange did not go unnoticed by Lisa.
During the quiet weeks that followed at Maple House, Minnie made a full recovery. A few days after the premiere she had told Lisa of the abortion she had had. Lisa was less surprised by the information than might have been expected, having long since drawn her own conclusions.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I know your opinion on the subject. You could never condone what I have done.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I’d never wanted a child by any man other than Risto. It was the first time I was careless enough to allow myself to become pregnant and I feared for my career and my reputation. Moviegoers are narrow-minded about the morals of people like me. We can’t make mistakes. We have to live up to the images that the studios have created, at least in our public if not in our private lives. So I went ahead with the abortion.”
“And you have regretted it ever since.”
Minnie’s desolate expression was an endorsement in itself. “I never realised the psychological effect it would have on me. It’s not just guilt, but the realisation that I threw away my chance to have someone of my own to love again.”
“My poor Minnie.” Lisa regarded her compassionately. “I always wanted more children. After Catherine was born I was sure there would be others. Now there never will be.”
“Women still have children at your age.” It strengthened Minnie to take on the role of comforter.
“It’s not that. I think my marriage is almost over.” “I don’t believe it!”
“There’s another woman.”
“Are you sure?”
Lisa sighed on a nod. “Perhaps it’s poetic justice if we think back to a forest fire.”
“No! That’s not the attitude to take. You gave up everything for Alan.”
“That’s not strictly true. Alan and I have had a rich and rewarding relationship. I can only suppose he has always felt there has been more love on his side than there ever was on mine. Maybe Rita Davis can offer a perfect balance.”
Contrary to Lisa’s expectations, Alan came to Maple House for most weekends during the time that Minnie took to make her recovery. With the new Fernley cinema launched to success, he obviously felt able to allow himself some leisure time. There were absences, which Lisa marked to herself with pain, but as the weather grew warmer and the days longer he sometimes drove home to stay overnight during the week as he used to do. Lisa might have felt more hopeful if Catherine had not renewed a campaign of pressure to get her to return to the London apartment.
“I can’t return all the time Minnie needs to stay at Maple House,” Lisa pointed out.
“Well, when is she going back to the States? I love her, as we all do, but she’s disrupted your life long enough.”
Lisa uttered a soft, affectionate laugh. “Minnie has always disrupted my life whenever she and I have been together.”
Catherine showed no sign of amusement, her face remaining deeply serious. “It’s time to put yourself first for once. Bring Minnie with you to the apartment if you must, but come soon.”
“Sarah Baker wants Minnie to have a holiday before there’s a move like that and she seems to think I need one, too. A cruise has been recommended.”
“Oh? Where? The Mediterranean?”
“No. Minnie would be recognised on a big cruise ship and she’d get no peace from autograph seekers and the rest. She and I are going to take a voyage by local steamer up the coast of Norway to see the fjords and the midnight sun.”
It had been Sarah’s suggestion. She had done the round trip herself the previous summer from Bergen to the North Cape and declared it to have been a holiday beyond compare. Mostly the steamers on the route went about their own business. Mail and cargo were collected and delivered en route at main ports of call as well as at many tiny villages hidden away amid scenic splendour, and all the way local people embarked and disembarked as those in other lands might use a bus service. As a concession to passengers wishing to make a vacation of what was an everyday voyage to other people, there were a few simple and spotless cabins for their accommodation.
Minnie had seized on the proposal enthusiastically. “That’s a swell idea, Sarah! Lisa and I can laze on deck in the sun and sight-see when we wish. My movies are shown in Norway, but I doubt if anybody will know or care who I am in the daily bustle on a steamer.” Then she shot a glance at Lisa that was blended of sympathy and encouragement. “Surely you would like to see Norway? We both
knew someone who emigrated from there to the States a long time ago.”
“I think I should like that.” Lisa was smarting that day from Alan’s cancellation by telephone of his coming home at the weekend, and suddenly she felt there would be balm to all the hurt in seeing something of the Scandinavian country that Peter had left behind. She remembered the name of the town nearest to his family farm. It was Molde. When she looked at the brochure of the route that Sarah had brought to the house, she saw that Molde was one of the ports of call. “Yes, we’ll go to Norway, Minnie. I’ll arrange bookings right away.”
They travelled by train to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and took ship there to cross the North Sea. In the morning they awoke to see the rocky coastline of Norway sliding past the portholes. Later that day they sailed up the Bergen fjord while seagulls wheeled overhead and the ancient maritime city lay against the slopes of seven mountains, its buildings soft-hued with roofs and spires of russet, grey, and copper-green. This was the home of the composer Edvard Grieg. This was the theatrical centre known to Ibsen. This was the harbour from which Peter Hagen and thousands of emigrants like him had sailed over many decades for the New World. Lisa, standing with Minnie in readiness to go ashore, felt herself picking up threads of love with Peter from the past as if the years between had never been.
They spent two days in Bergen visiting the old churches and the mediaeval houses on the Hanseatic quay, having a guided tour of Grieg’s green and white wooden house in the picturesque setting of Troldhaugen, and taking the funicular railway to a mountain look-out to admire the spectacular view. By chance one of Minnie’s movies was being shown at the largest cinema, and although now and again a head would turn as somebody gave her a second glance, she was not pestered once by any invasion of her privacy. She and Lisa openly ate prawns from a paper cone in the fish market without fear of photographers flashing cameras. They also bought cartons of ripe cherries sold by farm children who had come into town, enjoyed exotic brandy-cured smoked salmon at the Grand Hotel, and indulged in slices of delicious cream cake almost every time they sat down at an open air café table to drink a cup of coffee and rest their wearied feet from all the walking their sightseeing had involved. They were both having a marvellous time and the holiday had barely begun.
What the Heart Keeps Page 39