Evelyn slid down on to the floor and plunged a hand into the wrestling kittens. The stripier of the two tabbies dug its tiny crampon claws into the silk of her dressing gown and began the wobbly climb to her shoulder and pushed its face against hers. She nudged back with the end of her nose and the little furry body slid back down to the warm pool of fur in her lap.
‘That one?’
Ted Monroe got up from his chair and reached for the chosen kitten. She could feel his fingers through the fabric of her kimono as he gently separated the tiger tabby from its brothers and let it stand on his outstretched hand for a moment before it began climbing his jacket.
‘Definitely this guy. Knows what he wants. I told the pet-store man I’d give them some milk – I wouldn’t mind a saucer of something myself.’
‘Oh, how rude of me. May I get you some coffee?’
‘You stay right there. I’ll get it.’
He returned with a tray bearing a large soup plate of milk, the bottle of vodka, a carton of orange juice and the remains of a box of crackers.
‘Breakfast of champions,’ he insisted.
He fed the kittens their milk before bundling the rejects back into their basket and closing the lid. He scrunched a scrap of paper from his pocket and lobbed it at Evelyn’s new friend.
‘You like animals, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Rindy McGee showed me the book you wrote for her – the one about the mink coat. Wouldn’t you rather be writing books?’
‘Everyone in that office would rather be writing books. Kay wrote a book, McAllister wrote a play, I’ve written a novel or two myself. Trouble is, we all quite like eating.’
The chosen kitten had tired of its paper ball and was heading for the wide-open spaces of the kitchen. Monroe scooped him up and set him back on the shoulder of his sports coat. The kitten peered down at Evelyn, inviting another furry nudge.
‘You got any mink, Mrs Murdoch?’
There was no escaping the kiss – the movies had taught her that much: ‘He takes her in his arms, bends her head back and kisses her hard on the mouth again and again, till she struggles for breath.’ But Evelyn was unprepared for her own response. Whenever she had watched screen kisses back in Woking she would feel her sister-in-law start to squirm in sympathy as the camera zoomed in on the stars’ parting lips, but Evelyn had never gained any vicarious pleasure from the clinches, never lost sight of the actress doing the kissing: her lovely Beverly Hills home; her pedigree Pomeranians; the director just out of shot calling for another take as he fed his leading lady the lover’s line while she looked adoringly into the mirror taped just to the right of the lens.
During their rapid courtship, Silas’s kisses had been rare – a peck on the cheek on meeting, a brisk hug and lip-kiss of farewell once they were engaged – but Evelyn had been more relieved than disappointed. Very occasionally a film (or the sight of another couple stealing an embrace in the darkness) would trigger a longer, bolder display of affection but never anything to trouble the censor.
He had taken her to see Wuthering Heights as soon as it came to Woking.
‘I hope he was a perfect gentleman, up there in the dress circle?’ Deborah had said (Deborah could be a little coarse at times). ‘His brother can get quite carried away …’
Evelyn had protested, as primly as she could, that Silas wasn’t the type to make a pest of himself but Deborah had only laughed. Still waters, said Deborah, those Murdoch boys. But even this sisterly hint hadn’t prepared her. Evelyn had told herself that that sort of thing didn’t interest him but of course it interested him, of course it did – as she realised when Silas turned the key in the lock of their honeymoon hotel room and, one by one, switched off the lights. Those new, married kisses had had the antiseptic tang of hydrogen peroxide and a faint smell of pink disinfectant that made her think of drilling and rinsing and tied her stomach in a stubborn knot. Ted Monroe smelled very faintly of cologne and his kiss tasted of vodka and oranges.
His face swam back into focus. She could feel him raising his wristwatch to eye level as he pulled out of the kiss. Was she free that evening?
‘I can’t. Mamie Silverman invited me to dinner.’
‘Too bad.’
But he didn’t suggest another date and with a parting chuck under the chin (for the kitten) he was back off down the hill to his golf game. Evelyn watched him drive away then made herself some fresh tea and sat on the front porch where the urns now overflowed with flowers. Mr Hashimoto was putting a second coat of white paint on the fence beside the empty swimming pool. The warm autumn air was so still that she could hear the crackling lick of the brush against the wood. She closed her eyes but her reverie was interrupted by the kitten pouncing on to her lap.
Mr Hashimoto had taken an immediate shine to the animal and knelt down to pet it with a gentle, paint-spattered hand.
‘He got a name?’
As she leaned in to kiss the kitten’s head the sweet scent of the newly potted tobacco plants rose up like a gas and transported her back to her mother’s handkerchiefs.
‘Happy. His name is Happy.’
The door was opened by a young blonde woman in her mid-twenties wearing riding clothes who introduced herself as Paula Silverman. The mystery clock on the hall table behind her was just striking seven.
‘I won’t tell my stepmother you’re here. She hates it when guests arrive early.’
The chilly manner was enough to make an Englishwoman homesick. Evelyn followed the trim tweed back across the chessboard floor of the hall and down a couple of steps into a large, glass-sided sitting room.
‘So, you’re the one Zandor feels so guilty about. Cocktail?’ Paula Silverman pressed an electric bell then collapsed into the corner of a sofa, arms folded, finger tickling absently at a patch of suede on the elbow of her hacking jacket which hugged her skinny curves like the rind on a fruit – if only fruit had come in pepper-and-salt tweed …
One couldn’t beat English tailoring, could one? said Paula. Did Evelyn know that the exact same firm who made her jacket had made the suit Mata Hari wore for the firing squad? Said so in the brochure anyhow. Her stepmother always said it was crazy to spend that kind of money on something and then wear it when you were sitting on some sweaty old horse but that was a tad rich coming from Mamie who had all her underwear hand-made by a bunch of nuns in Pennsylvania.
Mamie wasn’t getting ready per se, the girl explained, stirring her cocktail, Mamie was trying on the dress she’d ordered for the Von Blick party. It was going to be white tie. Evelyn smothered a smile at the candle-snuffing emphasis of her diction.
‘Black tie used to be good enough until the big Selznick wedding about ten years ago. All the men had tails made and now it’s day rig-err.’ Evelyn sensed that the hick pronunciation was deliberate (‘finished in France’).
The girl looked at the diminutive gold dial on her right wrist, drained her glass and rose to her feet.
‘Want to see the house?’
Evelyn followed her through sliding doors that led down to the dining room.
‘Dad’s been here a whole three years which is some kind of record. Most of the furniture is from the old Griffith Park place we lived in when we were little. Mother picked it out.’
Paula Silverman sighed sadly as she said this and if Evelyn hadn’t known better she’d have assumed her mother was dead (rather than living on Park Avenue).
The tulipwood dining table was ten feet long.
‘This is as small as it gets. Mother and Dad used to love giving dinner parties but Mamie hates entertaining at home so we hardly ever use it now.’
There was a butler’s pantry between dining room and kitchen where a cupboard had been built to house the eight extra leaves of the dining table and where long rollers stored yard upon yard of heavy Irish linen tablecloths and napkins, all ready-ironed and starched for the Silvermans’ non-existent soirées.
A Renoir – small girl with small dog – filled the wall behind the host’s chair
and gave the hostess something pretty to look at while behind her hung an immense canvas depicting a bare-knuckle boxing match.
Mamie Silverman apologised her way into the room, bracelets rattling. She was wearing an embroidered-silk Chinese coat with matching pyjama trousers and a ten-dollar corsage. She pecked the air next to Evelyn’s ear, holding her hand up to shut off her view of the boxing picture.
‘How’s a person supposed to eat with that staring back at them? They look like raw meat. I don’t know how Manny could stand it. No wonder he likes his food on a tray.’
Tour suspended, the three women returned to the sitting room where Paula mixed a fresh batch of highballs and handed a glass to her stepmother who sat down on one of the couches with her back to the setting sun and stabbed at her drink with a swizzle stick. Thick make-up honeyed over the pale cheeks and the lips had been redrawn on more generous lines in a lipstick the colour of Rindy McGee’s party dress. Her face was strangely unwrinkled but the effect was not youthful, more as if the skin had been steam-ironed and stored on a special roller. Her neck knife-pleated as she turned to her stepdaughter.
‘You joining us for dinner, Paula?’
‘I have a date.’
‘But we’re going to Nito’s … You know you always love dancing there and your father would be so pleased …’
‘I have a date.’
Defeated, she turned to Evelyn. Had Paula been looking after her? And how was the cottage? Evelyn’s diplomatic murmurs were too soft for her to hear. The room was too big to have a tête-à-tête, complained Mamie, moving to the seat beside her, way too big. A person couldn’t get cosy in a room this big.
‘So move,’ snapped her stepdaughter. ‘The city’s full of houses. Find one you like and move. Or build something.’ Paula turned exasperatedly to Evelyn. ‘We have this routine every time we have a guest.’
‘Manny still hasn’t found an architect he can get along with,’ explained Mamie. ‘We bought a couple of acres up beyond Topanga beach and we were going to get Günther Fink – the guy who designs all the glass houses? – to make us somewhere nice to hang all the pictures and then oh-my-God we finally meet the guy and he wants us to take an exam.’
Mamie struggled free of the sofa cushions and retrieved a large folder from a sideboard drawer.
‘Do we sleep together? Do we like windows open or closed? How many people for dinner? – can you believe this? – then he wants to know how many paintings we got and then says that’s too darn many and they’re going to wreck the clean lines of the walls and why don’t we sell some? I thought Manny was going to wreck the clean lines of his face when he heard that. There are a lot of bad words in Yiddish you should excuse me and Manny knows every goddamned one of them and now Mr Fink knows them too.
‘So anyway, he gives us all these questions and he says, “No consultation please.” We’re not supposed to tell each other what we like – as if I didn’t know already after eight years. I filled in Manny’s for him.’ She squinted down at the typescript. ‘“When you have a dinner party do you wash the dishes right away?” Imagine. I haven’t washed a dish since I was seventeen years old. One time we hired a new maid and she couldn’t start right away so for three days we lived on scrambled eggs and Manny made me trash every plate. Bad enough his wife should have to cook, he said –’ Her eyes grew teary and bright as she remembered. ‘Then the guy asks how many shoes I got, how many hats, how many sweaters. What is he, some kind of communist? How the hell do I know how many sweaters? Finally he comes up with a plan.’
Mamie was unfolding a large piece of flimsy paper, like a dress pattern with staircases, as Manny Silverman, faultlessly dressed in a dark-blue dinner jacket, ambled over to the sideboard and kissed his wife’s cheek.
‘I told him if I wanted a submarine, I’d buy a goddamned submarine. Then he asks why I need a porcelain collection: “Nothing impractical can be beautiful,” he says. I guess he never met my first wife.’
His daughter winced with annoyance and flounced across to the drinks table.
‘So, Paula, you honouring us with your presence this evening?’
‘I have a date,’ repeated Paula who had her back to the room and so didn’t see her father mouthing the four words as she spoke them.
Mamie patted her husband’s sleeve. The gesture was presumably intended to be calming but after nearly ten years of marriage she should perhaps have known that it would have the opposite effect.
‘Talking of the first Mrs Silverman,’ barked her husband, ‘she rang the office today saying she’s getting married again – nice of you and your sister to tell me, Paula. Crazy bitch. I’ve been paying her a grand a week plus rent and now the meshugenah broad says she’s getting married, some shvontz in real estate by the name of Stadtler, and the poor schmuck – only he’s a rich schmuck – now writes to me about taking over the lease on the apartment and the wedding’s Thursday.’
Despite being nearly $100,000 dollars a year better off, Mr Silverman was oddly depressed by his ex-wife’s change of status. While he had her on the payroll she was still notionally under his control. Letting off a blast of steam seemed to calm him but Mamie immediately rekindled his irritation by asking if he had remembered to make their dinner reservation, causing him to bark that the day he needed to book a table in this town he’d shoot himself.
‘Right after I shoot you, sweetheart.’
Sometimes not even a table reservation was enough to guarantee dinner at Nito’s. The cocktail counter was buzzing with fretful men in black tie demanding that their bookings be honoured but Manny Silverman’s ability to march in and pull rank did not seem to provoke them and they watched him jump the queue with an endearing mix of envy and determination: one day …
Blue leather booths ringed the room beyond the tiny dance floor, and the other diners – bald men and beautiful girls – turned to greet the great man and shake his hand as he set a course for his usual corner table. The napkins were crimped into water lilies and there was a centrepiece of fat yellow chrysanthemums alongside a massive black china ashtray that screamed ‘Nito’s’ in bold white capitals (no sense employing a house photographer if the restaurant couldn’t be identified). The picture-snatcher was lurking nearby but melted into the background after Mr Silverman beckoned him over and tucked a treasury note behind his display handkerchief.
Manny Silverman held his menu at arm’s length. An English actor a few tables away was studying the bill of fare through a monocle and he watched him almost enviously. You looked like a nebbish (Mrs Murdoch should excuse him) but it wasn’t as dumb as it looked. At least you’d see what you were getting. Maybe he should get eyeglasses?
Mamie shook her head. He mustn’t get glasses. Glasses were for old men. In any case what did he want with a menu? He always had the steak. Every time the same steak.
Manny Silverman spat back that he always had a goddamned steak because there would always be a goddamned steak on the menu. Didn’t mean that was what he wanted. If he had glasses he could have something else. He glared at the list of entrées. Tournedos? He could have tournedos, maybe? His wife gave a spiteful shriek of laughter. He was an ignorant know-nothing. Tournedos was steak. He had it all the time. The maître d’s always brought him tournedos because it was probably four times the price of the regular sirloin. Probably? He liked the probably. He gestured towards his wife with his thumb: Never cooked a meal in her life. Never even seen a menu with a price on it. Probably, she says.
‘You mustn’t mind Manny,’ murmured Mamie indulgently. ‘He bores easy.’
‘What’s the matter, Mamie? You starving to death?’
Their shouty squabble inevitably drew attention but the other diners were more gratified than irritated: this was why everyone came to Nito’s – you got a better class of fight. Evelyn would infinitely rather have been back in Bel Air with a Swiss cheese sandwich. The argument might not even have started if she hadn’t been there. They probably dined in peace at home, like trees fall
ing silently in forests.
‘So, Mrs Murdoch, how you finding it, living rent-free in Bel Air?’
His wife exclaimed at his rudeness and assured Evelyn that she was very, very welcome but Mr Silverman was spoiling for a fight (maybe the boxing match in his dining room was simply a reminder to calm down?).
‘We never had anyone stay in the pool house before but I owe Kiss a couple of favours.’
He looked Evelyn up and down and appeared mildly mollified by the diamond brooch and by Miss Cavendish’s choice of gown but was obviously wondering why this no-account broad should be sharing his table and began firing off a string of questions. Was there a Mr Murdoch? What kind of dentist? How did he die? Did he have life insurance? – Evelyn thought with a sudden pang of panic of Deborah’s abortive journey to Lombard Street and her mysterious postscript. Mr Silverman’s questioning grew more aggressive. What was she doing stateside anyhow? Shouldn’t she be rolling bandages or stiffening upper lips back home somewhere? Was she anything to do with the English guy Kiss was showing around? Patton? Peyton, that was it.
Great guy (in Mr Silverman’s opinion). Had some stuck-up English dame who used to latch on to him at weekends but a real party hound just the same. Still owed him two hundred bucks but he told some very funny stories. Did Mrs Murdoch know any funny stories? And how come she was such a big pal of Zandor’s? It wasn’t a question that Evelyn could answer truthfully but she was spared by the arrival of a smiling man with a diamond tie-pin.
Happy Little Bluebirds Page 19