‘But what does he even do? Will I have seen him in anything?’
‘Not since the talkies.’
Wally Grendon’s acting career had ended under something of a cloud (Felix didn’t elaborate) but he had made a lot of good friends and the studio had kept him on as a set designer and he had a nice sideline in interior decor. His own Beverly Hills house had begun life as run-of-the-mill Spanish Colonial, said Felix, but Wally had transformed it into something altogether grander, adding a Greek Revival porch and a lot of Georgian sash windows. The only nod to the German School was a wall of plate glass leading out to the kidney-shaped swimming pool.
‘They say Manny Silverman’s having a new pool built over at his Malibu place,’ said Felix. ‘It’s gonna be shaped like his liver.’
The interior (which was changed at least once a year) currently favoured the Rococo. Lampshades were beaded, pelmets tasselled and the ceiling of the thirty-foot ‘salon’ was lavishly iced with fancy plaster mouldings.
‘Grendon’s potty about that stuff.’ Binky Frobisher had arrived and greeted Evelyn with a kiss on both cheeks. ‘Gets it made up by a chap who used to be a dentist. Wally rips a few feet of crenellated ogee or whatever it is out of some Irish castle and the chap makes moulds of it that he can run off by the yard. One day Wally will smile and his teeth will just be a row of egg-and-dart.’
Dentistry again.
‘Our host usually favours bright colours – as you can see from his taste in cravats – but he keeps the walls very plain so he can show off the Art. All for sale, of course,’ explained Binky. ‘He gets it all shipped in by his New York dealer friends. Very nice commission. I don’t think he owns a single canvas.’
The most prominent exhibit was a large naked woman executed in green and yellow oil paint hung opposite a gigantic white settee, custom-built to run the length of the room (and, not entirely coincidentally, the length of the beach-house set for Lady in Fear).
Binky handed Evelyn a glass of champagne with a lump of sugar in the bottom. She took a sip and turned reluctantly to the gigantic green buttocks. Even in galleries, nudes made Evelyn feel uneasy. People who would balk at a tight skirt or an indecently low neckline made a special case for nudes. Postcards were smut but nudes were Art. Mr Grendon’s naked lady had been painted from behind as though the artist were sneaking up on her. There was a dimpled cleft snaking down her plump back as if she could be thumbed in half like a breakfast roll.
On the other side of the fireplace hung a canvas showing a team of men digging the foundations of a skyscraper in the shadow of a tenement building festooned with drying laundry. Binky began doing that art-lover gavotte that people did: standing back to admire the composition, leaning in to puzzle at the signature through his eyeglass.
‘Wally won’t have any trouble selling that one. His faggot friends all love the Ashcan School – all those horny-handed sons of toil. They think it gives a room the he-man touch,’ Binky simpered conspiratorially. ‘Same thing with the nudes: fooling nobody.’
The Highland terrier draped over Wally Grendon’s arm had been dyed lilac to match his upholstery. His two white Persian cats, bookended on a radiator and keeping a weather eye on the salmon in aspic, had not.
‘Wally made the Pet Parlour people try the same stunt on those two one time.’ Ted Monroe had arrived, drink already magically in hand. ‘Not a mistake you make twice. They settled out of court, mercifully.’
‘Who, the pet people or the cats?’
Both Persians had pounced down from their perch and were engaged in testing a small Louis Quinze divan to destruction with their flexing claws, their muttered dialogue more growl than purr. Kowtow had liked to claw furniture (but only ever Silas’s chair).
Evelyn tweezed a shrimp tail from one of the lunch dishes and held it furtively at her side. A ball of white fur materialised instantly: pleased, but unsurprised. It claimed the treat then began polishing Evelyn’s shins optimistically.
‘How very civilised,’ said Ted Monroe. ‘You like animals, I take it?’
‘Only cats.’ She dropped another shrimp.
‘You got cats back home?’
‘I did have – one. He was called Kowtow.’
‘Was?’
And she found herself telling Ted Monroe about the little black cat that she had taken with her to the house in Woking. Her husband had never really warmed to him, and the day after war was declared he had smuggled Evelyn’s little friend down to the vet’s surgery, returning with the empty basket and a quarter of peppermint creams (Silas’s favourite). ‘I didn’t want to upset you, dearest, but it was for the best.’
‘Chin up,’ he had said when he found her in tears beside the basket. ‘You can stroke me instead.’ Quite racy for him.
‘My husband said it was more humane but that wasn’t how it felt to me, I’m afraid.’
A breeze blew in from across the terrace and she shivered at the memory.
‘Cold?’ Ted Monroe’s warm hand cupped her elbow and he edged her in the direction of the fireplace. She looked up into his face, feeling the transforming beams of a high key light above her head.
‘I have to get back to work,’ he began, still holding her arm. ‘PZ wants treatments for all that cowboy and countess stuff – but I’m glad I found you here; I wanted to apologise about the meeting the other day? I was just so mad at Kiss. If you’re going to make War of the Worlds then make War of the goddamn Worlds not Rin Tin Tin and the Men from Mars. I hope you’ll forgive me. You must let me make it up to you. Are you doing anything for lunch Saturday?’
She shook her head then felt herself raising her chin and looking at his earlobe like she couldn’t live without it. There were a lot of laughter lines around his eyes. She held her breath waiting for a more specific invitation but instead he merely looked at his watch. ‘Jesus, I really gotta go. Want me to introduce you to anyone?’
She followed his gaze as he looked hopefully around him and, to her surprise, saw that there were a number of familiar faces among the latecomers: Raymond Games admiring his reflection in a speckly old looking glass; Myra Manning giggling in a corner with Foxton Meredith; Connie McAllister (sticking to a strict no-solids regime) and Ida and Wanda Van Clark who were admiring one of the couches with a very thin, very suntanned woman in buttercup yellow. Mrs Van Clark was vastly relieved to spot someone she knew and made a beeline for Evelyn the instant Ted Monroe left her side.
‘It’s Evelyn, isn’t it?’ she gushed. ‘I hardly recognised you in your California wardrobe. We met on the Chief? This is my sister, Carmen. Evelyn Murdoch: Carmen Stone – Mrs Ronald Stone III,’ Mrs Van Clark explained, clearly proud that there should have been so many. ‘Wally’s fixing up their house in Palm Beach.’
Mrs Stone was examining the bullion fringing on an onion-dome lampshade.
‘Ronald wanted French provincial but Wally says that’s so vieux jeux so we’re going to have something more moderne. And some of those.’ She pointed at the obstacle course of small chairs dotted about the room.
Wally Grendon had pioneered the ‘hostess chair’, an armless, wingless, button-backed arrangement whose seat was barely a foot from the floor. It was designed for women to sink into, their skirts billowing about them, their embonpoint on display, their faces angled adoringly in the direction of whoever they were speaking to. He had plenty in stock and had arranged them in chatty groups like deserted deckchairs when the park was closing. Low chairs meant low tables and there were many of these, each supplied with an ashtray and a silver-mounted conch shell filled with Turkish cigarettes – cork-tipped and regular – all elaborately monogrammed.
‘Cunning, aren’t they?’ said Mrs Van Clark’s sister, lighting one. ‘Wally has them made to order in London. I went there once. Crazy little arcade place. Two old dames up in a garret rolling tobacco. Ronnie and I were staying at the –’
Mrs Ronald broke off mid-swank as Otto Von Blick exploded on to the scene.
‘Wally baby!’
He threw his arms wide and zigzagged his way through the furniture, smile on full power. ‘They showed me the work you did on that Sun King schlock! You’re a genius! He looks a foot taller!’
Von Blick folded his host in a bear hug, peeling one arm away to gesture theatrically to the room.
‘Louis the Fourteenth would have luffed this guy – and he could have saved him a fortune.’
Von Blick’s arm snared a drink from a passing tray and he downed it in one Cossack gulp before making a rapid circuit of the room, pausing to kiss cheeks and punch biceps, his clutch of stock phrases as limited as his protégée’s: call me Monday, never seen you look better. It was only a flying visit, he explained, as he was off to another party – ‘Dietrich’s cooking lunch for twenty – stuffed cabbage and Dobos Torte: how can I resist?’ He spotted Evelyn on his way to the door.
‘So, how did my English lady enjoy my love scene?’
‘Nothing nicer, darling.’
He laughed. A magic, musical sound which brought Wally Grendon across the room to refill Evelyn’s glass. Raymond Games, who had his hat on ready to leave, took it off again.
As Evelyn walked Von Blick to the terrace doors they passed the piano where Foxton Meredith was picking out ‘The Wedding of the Painted Doll’. His wardrobe was as natty as ever but he was looking very much the worse for wear.
‘I see Mr Meredith is on the daiquiri diet,’ chuckled the director to Evelyn. ‘He should have stayed home and slept it off. Beauty is a commodity; a young actor needs to keep his stock high.’
A farewell kiss on both cheeks.
As he drove away, Raymond Games took his place by her side.
‘It’s Evelyn Murdoch, isn’t it? We met at Sedgwick’s? You’re looking maaaahvellous.’ He spoke at dictation speed and his vowels were round and resonant, like the little diagrams in Rindy’s elocution book come to life. ‘California obviously agrees with you.’
He took her hand and kissed it. He thought that he might be falling in love with her, he said. It was one of his best and most effective lines, particularly potent when bestowed on typists and telephonists and make-up girls and on mousy Englishwomen of a certain age. Oh Mr Games, you shouldn’t say such things said their frightened, grateful little eyes. He lunged into Evelyn’s neck and inhaled noisily.
‘Ravishing scent.’ (She wasn’t wearing any.) ‘Like being back in Sussex.’
There were traces of make-up around the roots of his eyelashes and a stringy little bogey of glue at his temple where the edge of his wafer-thin bespoke hairpiece met the skin of his forehead. He gave up the flirtation and got down to business.
‘Cynthia and I are having a few friends over next Sunday. I’ll see that your name’s put on the list – not everyone here has been asked so keep it sous le chapeau … Under your hat,’ he translated patiently (one never knew who was and who wasn’t comme il faut in this madhouse).
‘Naturellement,’ said Evelyn.
‘I do hope you can join us. Lots of chums. Any friend of Otto’s …’
He drifted off, clearly perplexed by his failure to fascinate, and Evelyn took a corner seat on the low divan under the window. The darkening day was still mild and all of the terrace doors and windows had been thrown open, the better to view the western sky where a trio of baby bluebirds were bouncing on a palm frond against the ultramarine and orange sunset like a scene from a butterfly-wing brooch.
A few of the remaining guests had taken their cocktails to the twilit tables around the swimming pool and there was an earthy whiff of pine and sagebrush wafting in through the window. And vanilla. And lavender. Joseph ‘call me Joe’ Weiss was at the table immediately outside. Krauts at six o’clock.
It was several minutes before Evelyn even realised that Weiss and his friend were speaking German. German-German with unmistakable traces of a lilting Bavarian accent. She could see a face and the back of a blond head reflected in the glass of the open window which meant that she too was potentially visible. She sank deeper into the cushions.
Weiss had begun telling a dirty story.
‘And the gypsy scum to her brother says, “You do it better than Daddy,” and he replies, “That’s just what Mother says always.”’
His companion laughed at the joke – a hearty, attractive laugh – then reminded him to speak English. German would attract attention and, besides, in this land of migrants and half-breeds, there was always the danger of being understood.
‘About the other business: it will be better if we leave the senator to his own devices. He works for us. He just doesn’t know that he does.’
‘The senator is a businessman and all businessmen are isolationists,’ murmured Weiss, in his accentless English. ‘Look at Hollywood: run by a pack of Jews but they also are businessmen. They have their foreign markets to consider. German distribution may be lost to them but we weren’t the only players: there was a movie about a Spanish whore; Spain complained; Paramount burned the negative. Businessmen, Klaus. We can speak their language. Isolationism is a better friend to us than the Bund playing soldiers with their little storm troopers. That only makes trouble, creates ill-feeling. You will see that I am right.’
Night had fallen and the butler put a dance record on the gramophone and threw the switches that floodlit the garden and pool. The two murmuring men got up from their table and sauntered back inside. Joseph Weiss surveyed the room as he entered and immediately spotted Evelyn.
‘Mrs Murdoch! We meet again.’ He bowed and held out that soft, hot hand. ‘Allow me to introduce another of my colleagues: Evelyn Murdoch; Klaus Huber. Mrs Murdoch is over here on an assignment with Miracle Studios.’
‘Assignment.’ An odd word to use.
It was the same man who had been lunching with Weiss in Chicago (minus the Bavarian bow tie). The older German shook hands as Evelyn rose from the divan and she saw him give a sharp look through the open window to his previous seat by the pool. How long had she been in Hollywood? Where was she staying? What movies was she working on? How long had she known Grendon? It was more like a grilling from a border guard than normal party prattle.
‘Do you rumba, Mrs Murdoch?’
Well, yes, she did (after a fashion), thanks to two fractious hours with the snake-hipped Mr Morales, an effete Latin American who had amused himself by smiling abuse at her in gutter Spanish. ‘Brava!’ he had smarmed after her first attempt. ‘It’s like trying to fuck a dead sow.’ She wondered what he would say about Klaus Huber’s dancing.
‘So, a place in Bel Air? Very nice too.’ Like his friend, Huber prided himself on his idiomatic English although he scorned to mask his accent. ‘A very decent billet, so important to have a funk hole. I heard you’re very thick with Zandor Kiss.’ Heard? Heard from whom? ‘Tell me, what ekk-saktly is Herr Kiss’s nationality these days?’
An innocent question – until a German asked it.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Perhaps Mr Kiss enjoys dual nationality? The German Reich is actually very keen on dual nationality …’
Joseph Weiss made a move to cut in on their dance with a hand on his colleague’s arm but the older man ignored the warning touch. After a whole day of cocktails, discretion was beyond him.
‘Herr Kiss could propaply pick and choose, no? House in La Joya, hotel suite in New York, a flat in Eaton Square and, once upon a time anyway, a bel étage apartment on the Quai Voltaire …’
‘Yes, but you were talking of nationality, Herr Huber, not a property portfolio?’
‘A Jew is a citizen of anywhere and nowhere. He has no nationality and therefore no loyalty.’
Evelyn could feel her party smile slipping from her grasp and he immediately spotted the loss of facial control.
‘Aha.’ The watchful German flared a nostril, curled a lip. Conrad Veidt could not have done it more witheringly. ‘Another bleeding heart. Another liberal conscience. And yet here you are, Mrs Murdoch, safe from blitzkrieg in sunny California. “Land of the Free”, the song says,
but this is not a liberal country, Mrs Murdoch. They have a delightful country club here in Los Angeles – I have the honour to be a guest member – but half the people in this room would not be welcome there. And the only black and yellow faces in this shining city are parking cars or mowing lawns or wearing tap shoes. I say again: this is not a liberal country to throw stones from, Mrs Murdoch. And England? You have a lot of Jewish friends in Woking, Mrs Murdoch?’
Joseph Weiss finally succeeded in pulling his colleague away. Some guys he had to meet.
It was only as the two men retreated to the bar that it occurred to Evelyn that she had not told either man where her family lived.
Chapter 11
The Martians had all disembarked from the Mouzinho at Pier 94 and were filling in their Alien Registration forms (‘I came in by: space ship’; ‘I expect to remain in the United States: permanently’) and promptly set about getting jobs as Los Angeles gardeners, combing the gravel driveways with the legs of their diabolical machines.
Evelyn woke in a cold sweat and her brain immediately began playing back the rushes of the previous night’s conversation. How did the two Germans know about her ‘assignment’? And now that they had found out about it how much longer before New York pulled the plug and air-freighted her back across the Atlantic like a box of lemons to cold, grey, Jewless Woking and her rickety old desk in High Holborn? Might she have jeopardised the entire New York operation? Would everyone – Lady Genista, the whole bally lot of them – be deemed persona non grata and sent home to Blighty thanks to her bungling amateurism?
Three thirty. It must be nearly dawn on the East coast by now. What time would someone like Lady toffee-nosed Genista roll into work on a Monday morning? Did she even work Mondays? Probably spent her weekends at Long Island house parties playing tennis and drinking cocktails and taking Pomeranians for walks in tight sweaters.
Evelyn finally fell back to sleep and dreamed that Silas had been employed as a dental consultant on War of the Worlds and was given his own laboratory where he was fitting all the Martians with little pointy green dentures.
Happy Little Bluebirds Page 16