‘I don’t want to break up the party, Mr Silverman, but I’ve got Helga Hart at my table.’
Otto Von Blick’s little protégée, last seen making sheep’s eyes at the grand piano at the Kramer party, was sitting with Ted Monroe. Monroe was zooming in close and talking to her very earnestly and the silent girl was moving her head in a slow, graceful roll, as if rehearsing a screen test. She was very young and every inch of skin – face, neck, arms – had the milky lustre of a studio portrait. Monroe took hold of her slim white hand and his cufflinks, nubbly knots of yellow gold, flamed in the light as he raised it to his lips.
Evelyn sat up straighter and put her smile muscles into gear and stole a glance at herself in one of the mirrors lining the room. She looked quite presentable, she thought, the dress suited her: all ready to be looked at (but no one was looking). She had been almost sorry that Manny Silverman had sent the photographer away. It could have been one for the album: ‘Self and the Silvermans, Nito’s, Los Angeles, October 1940’. Another souvenir.
The tie-pin man leaned in confidentially.
‘Monroe says he’s going to get PZ to feature her. You ought to meet her. She’s very fresh.’
Helga Hart smiled as she rose to leave the table. Her dress was not particularly décolleté – Evelyn’s was cut lower – but as she walked to the powder room every necktie in the restaurant was suddenly crooked. She had a row of tiny satin buttons down her spine. If there was a zipper Evelyn couldn’t see it.
‘Very pretty,’ agreed Mamie. ‘I read about her in one of the columns. It said she only ever has wild flowers in her bungalow at the Marmont.’ Mamie plucked uneasily at the orchid pinned to her collar. ‘I thought that was kind of nice. We should maybe do that.’
This was more than enough to tip her husband over the brink.
‘Wild flowers, she wants? Are you crazy? How are the florists in this town supposed to make a living?’
Chapter 13
‘She’s filled the blasted swimming pool with gardenias again.’
An English actor (butlers a speciality) was stumbling through the glass doors to Cynthia Games’s drawing room, trumpeting his nose on his silk handkerchief. Behind him was Baines Frobisher.
‘She had snow shipped in from Lake Arrowhead to cover the croquet lawn last Christmas. I shan’t be staying long,’ said Binky, absent-mindedly filling his case from one of the bowls of cigarettes. ‘I don’t mind hanging on for a few stiffeners but I’m going to buzz off to Sedgwick’s fairly soonish and I shall need to time my afternoon extremely carefully. Sedgwick is expecting Dietrich at three and she will almost certainly sing. Furthermore, my spies tell me Sybil “Fascination” Harper is planning to put in an appearance here armed with the proofs of her latest column: “Whither Democracy?” perhaps or “Should Roosevelt serve a third term?” Talk about Scylla and Charybdis …’
Binky caught Evelyn’s eye and smiled almost apologetically at this flash of schoolboy erudition.
‘The shrivelled fruit of an expensive classical education. There was talk of the diplomatic corps but this pays better, sadly.’
He flicked a speck of ash from his cricket whites. Practically all of the guests were wearing white, their Sunday-morning uniform of golfing sweaters or tennis clothes. In England white was aprons, collars, gloves, handkerchiefs or a child’s socks. Not even brides wore much white any more. But here jackets, suits, coats, even cars were white.
The Games house was white inside and out. Its icing-sugar facade was a meticulous scale model of a French chateau but its interior was a mad mix of ancient and modern with Knole sofas upholstered in futurist prints and gas logs blazing in Adam chimney pieces. The inevitable set of silver picture frames showed Mrs Games shaking hands with Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart and Helen Keller. The ceiling of the room nearest the (normally) turquoise swimming pool had been painted the same shade of blue and was lent a watery twinkle by a pair of crystal chandeliers plus two Von Blick-style spotlights: one just above the fireplace, the other above Mrs Games’s favourite chair.
Her staff were arranging platters of roast beef and cheesecake around the centrepiece: a giant snow sculpture filled to the brim with caviar. Evelyn stared at the carved ice in disbelief.
‘Good heavens … Is that what I think it is?’
‘Yup.’ Felix Kay had drifted in from the garden. ‘The Brandenburg Gate. Some crazy mix-up with the ice people. They had to take off all the little flags. Cynthia’s mad as hell but I kinda like it, particularly as this must mean that the German legation’s Sunday lunch guests will be eating their caviar from a pint-sized model of Windsor Castle.’
What Felix didn’t know about Cynthia Games wasn’t worth knowing. Cynthia Sloan (as was) had met her husband in repertory back in England where she played Gertrude to his Claudius but (as she often complained) experience counted for nothing over here and, rather than submit to character casting, she had settled for the role of helpmeet, spending her time (and Raymond’s money) on a series of lavish entertainments – ‘My cosy corner of a foreign field’ (or so she told the gossip columns) – where writers, artists and visiting dignitaries could hold court while her husband beat them at croquet (snow permitting).
Their hostess cruised past as Felix went to find Foxton Meredith. Mrs Games, like a chatelaine at the village garden party, usually made a point of exchanging words with even the humblest guest at her husband’s Sunday free-for-alls (one simply never knew) and one always needed a few civilians to dress the set but there were limits. She gave Evelyn a quick once-over, like PZ gauging a costume design, and immediately homed in on her.
‘And you are?’
‘Evelyn Murdoch? I work with Zandor Kiss. Such a lovely party. Your husband was kind enough to invite me …’
‘Was he? I wonder why?’
Cynthia strode away without ceremony, finally tracking down her husband who was selecting a gardenia buttonhole from the swimming pool.
‘Raymond!’ The same low, urgent and ultra-audible stage whisper that had characterised her Lady Macbeth (‘A role she was born to play’ – Birmingham Evening Post). ‘Raymond, where is everybody? There’s nobody but nobodies, darling. Nobodies and queers.’
Raymond Games looked in through the window and shrugged.
‘Kippers with Cedric? But he’s got Dietrich coming, don’t forget. Hold your nerve, old girl. They’ll all make their excuses once she gets out her gramophone records. And Ted Monroe just arrived; he’s not nobody. You should humour him. I saw him beat PZ at golf yesterday. Only a brave man ever does that. Very sure of himself.’
Mrs Games didn’t need telling twice and gave the new arrival the smile she had been saving.
‘Ted darling! Let me get you a drink. I’m sure you know everybody.’
‘I know Mrs Murdoch here.’ He kissed Evelyn’s cheek. ‘How’s kitty?’
‘The gardener said he’d mind him.’ How’s Miss Hart? she wanted to say but they were joined by Miss McAllister, fresh from a breakfast party which left her several drinks ahead of the game, and Monroe escaped to the bar.
‘So how do you know the lovely Cynthia?’
‘I don’t,’ said Evelyn. ‘Ghastly woman.’
‘Ain’t that the truth. You aren’t the fool you look.’
Chummy all of a sudden, Miss McAllister helped herself to a highball and linked her arm through Evelyn’s with a tinkling laugh. Like an unsuccessful audition for a girl having a good time.
‘I see young Meredith over there is going through his repertoire.’
Sir Galahad was standing behind the piano, half-draped in Cynthia Games’s green velvet curtains, giving Magda Malo’s ‘Lancylot’ speech in a breathy falsetto, while Felix picked out ‘Hearts and Flowers’. Ted Monroe looked across at them both from the bar for a moment then downed his whiskey and announced that he needed to bathe. He strode out on to the terrace, stripping off jacket, shirt and flannels as he went, revealing a cartoonishly athletic torso.
‘Mr Monroe w
ill be wanting a bathrobe, Griffiths,’ murmured Mrs Games as her guest dived into the gardenias. She seemed almost pleased at this test of her nerve, of her hospitality (she had read somewhere that the perfect hostess remains unflappable in the face of all provocations).
‘I sometimes wonder why Ted bothers coming to these snorefests,’ Miss McAllister was saying. ‘But it’s all material, I suppose. Not that this is his kind of milieu. Have you tried either of his novels? Daisy Don’t Dance? Tell the Dog? The American Mercury called him “the recording angel of Nowheresville”’ (funny the way they memorised one another’s press cuttings) ‘and the Christian Science Monitor said, “T.V. Monroe’s depiction of this urban cesspit left the reviewer needing a hot bath and clean linen.” Felix agrees with the Christian Scientists, naturally. Felix says Ted’s stories are ersatz –’ an anxious squint at Evelyn ‘– that’s German for lousy,’ she said, helpfully, ‘but then he should hear what Ted says about The 29th Bather …’
Felix Kay’s so far unoptioned novel had been published under the name of Webster Tembo, said Miss McAllister. The bathers of the title were a Walt Whitman allusion. This fact was lost on the wider reading public but hadn’t escaped the reviewers who had shown no mercy.
‘“As padded as a débutante’s brassiere with literary language and soul-searching dialogues,”’ recited Connie, not without glee. ‘Lucky thing he had an alias. PZ hates a loser. Smart guy just the same. Real smart. I saw Felix knock out a sonnet in three and a half minutes once. Kiss gave him the subject: “A memo from PZ in the style of Hiawatha” – not even Ted could match that. I guess Ted’s more a rewrite man. You know he was married, don’t you?’
‘Felix?’
Smoke shot from Miss McAllister’s nose in a short snort of laughter.
‘Hell, no: Ted. You wouldn’t think it, would you? Only lasted a year. Bet she’s sorry now. And she got married again first chance she got so no alimony and he got himself a big blue coupé and a cute little gingerbread house in West Hollywood. I only know about the wife because he got tight one night and cried on my shoulder. He does that. All part of the technique. He ever ask you to dance?’ Miss McAllister put a hand to her chest and swayed on her heels a little drunkenly. ‘He’s a wonderful dancer but that’s part of the technique too. I kind of prefer dancing with Felix,’ she laughed. ‘Close, but no cigar.’
‘And Mr Kay hasn’t been married?’
Miss McAllister gave Evelyn what Deborah would have called an old-fashioned look.
‘No chance. But he ought to. And he’s a terrific little cook, did you know that?’
Felix Kay and Galahad were now side by side on the piano stool singing ‘Over the Rainbow’, batting the lyric back and forth between them, taking a syllable each, scarcely missing a beat: ‘if hap-py litt-le blue-birds fly be-yond the rain-bow’ and instinctively joining each other for the last line. Why, oh why, can’t I?
Mrs Games’s guest of honour, Sybil Harper, had arrived. She immediately set up shop in the den and began chain-smoking Camel cigarettes with a sort of time-and-motion urgency.
‘You simply must hear my latest column. I’ve headlined it “Splendid Isolation”. It’s tremendous – the best I’ve ever done. I shall declaim it to you all in a moment but first I need a steak sandwich! It has to be broiled over charcoal and the mustard must be French. And you must-must-must butter the bread and then and only then cut the slice from the loaf.’
‘Makes a change from how to mix cocktails, I suppose,’ muttered Binky Frobisher, beating a hasty retreat. ‘Do you know she gets $2,500 a speech? Money for old rope.’
‘Sybil’s remarkable,’ murmured Cynthia Games, apologetically, as she moved safely out of earshot and backed into a very damp Ted Monroe.
‘Teddy darling!’
She squeezed his biceps and he said something that made her look across to where Evelyn was sitting and Evelyn caught the words ‘Very cosy with Kiss and Von Blick’. Monroe went upstairs to dry off and Mrs Games wasted no time, speaking as if their previous conversation had not taken place.
‘Ted tells me you’re a great friend of Zandor’s? It’s Evelyn, isn’t it? From London?’
Mrs Games pulled a special gosh-it-must-have-been-ghastly face and reverse-curtsied on to the couch beside her. Evelyn must be relieved to be missing the blitzkrieg although poor dear Zandor did tend to bore on about it every five minutes. Mrs Games did so worry about Zandor. She and Raymond did their bit for Bundles for Britain and many of their best friends were … continental but she did so wish they could let go of the Old Country and stop all that armchair sniping and warmongering. Mrs Games had been rather alarmed by the national draft the previous week but had implicit faith in the President’s assurances that ‘mobilisation is an act of peace’ and didn’t doubt him for a moment when he promised that their boys wouldn’t be sent into any more ‘foreign entanglements’. America was in no mood for it, said Mrs Games.
‘And one can quite see why, especially after last time – all that Belgian-babies-on-bayonets nonsense. To hear the other Brits talk you would think that the United States was still one of the colonies, a big pool of eager reservists to be called upon as and when required. As if everyone here came over on the Mayflower. Never mind all the Germans and Italians and all the other little hyphenated people. And who cares about a bunch of Jews anyway?’ Did she even notice herself lowering her voice? Evelyn wondered.
‘But I suppose he has next month’s election to think of. Raymond and I go to Hyde Park fairly orphan’ (there was a signed photograph on the piano to prove it – did Roosevelt do nothing but fish?) ‘and when we were last there I met the most fascinating naval man who insisted that Germany was no threat to Ameddica and that we should be looking East – the Yellow Peril and so forth. God knows they’ve sent the advance guard … Los Angeles is swarming with them. They’re all very well in the garden but I won’t have one in the house. Worse than the Irish.’
Her face froze. Oh Lord, Evelyn wasn’t Irish, was she? Or Jewish? Catholic? Ah yes. She gave an approving smile. Methodists had the right idea, them and the Peace Pledge people. She handled the words with care, like Rindy McGee reciting a tongue-twister.
Mrs Games, bored suddenly by the sound of her own RADA-rounded vowels, collared Felix Kay as he passed.
‘I mustn’t monopolise you, Evelyn dear. Have you met this marvellous man?’
She had obviously forgotten his name. Evelyn smiled at Felix, winking the other eye as he made his bow.
‘Why, how do you do? Aren’t you the famous Mrs Murdoch everyone’s so scared of?’
Evelyn solemnly shook hands.
‘And you’re Felix Kay, aren’t you? The Felix Kay? The man who rescued Gone With the Wind?’
Cynthia Games’s getaway stalled for a microsecond and she gave a slight frown at the possibility that this scruffy young Jew might be more important than she had realised. The sports coat had seen better days but that meant nothing to a writer – au contraire. They probably bought them that way, or sat at home on quiet evenings picking at threads with a buttonhook … But, then again, her glass was empty … She made a beeline for a tray of fresh drinks, pink floral tea gown trailing in her wake.
‘You got more than the stock two minutes with the lovely Cynthia,’ said Felix once she was safely back in the den. ‘How was it?’
‘Ameddica First seemed the general thrust.’
‘Cynthia first, I suspect, if it came to the crunch. But you’re right: she and Raymond are very pro the status quo, as you might say.’ He cocked an ear to the invisible wife. ‘You mustn’t say that, Bernice. Cynthia’s a very generous woman: give you anything: smallpox; syphilis …’
Foxton Meredith had the sustain pedal down on the baby grand and was singing the refrain of ‘After the Ball’ to Myra Manning who was now sitting beside him on the stool.
‘Oh dear. The fifth martini. Excuse me, won’t you? I don’t think Myra’s going to like Fox’s version of this song.’
T
he Martians wanted a double room with bath with a view of the Surrey Downs. A green, claw-like hand was banging at the bell at the hotel reception then began tapping impatiently on the mahogany veneer of the desk with its talons.
‘Mrs Murdoch! Evelyn!’
The kitten was nestling against the nape of her neck and she had a job to switch the light on without disturbing it. The pale face of Felix Kay was pressed against her bedroom window. A taxi had left him by the main gate and his jacket was dark with rain.
Evelyn showed him into the kitchen and automatically lit the gas for tea but he was already at the breakfast bar uncorking the vodka bottle. He took a swig from his glass then placed an elbow on the counter and gave her a rumpled smile.
‘Fine time to come calling. I’m really sorry to wake you but I’m in a bit of a jam …’
Or rather Foxton Meredith was. The young actor had done the round of Sunday parties before heading off with Wally Grendon and a few other like-minded souls to a club that Grendon knew down on Sunset.
‘The dumb klutz went and got himself arrested. The studio’s head of publicity is out of town but his second-in-command is supposed to be arranging something. They were sending Magda Malo on a mercy dash to the bedside of some kid with leukaemia which ought to keep the tabloids out of our hair for a few hours, and the police say they won’t press charges, but we still need to cover all the bases just in case they’ve got a photographer hanging around the station.’ Felix lit a cigarette. ‘I was wondering if you could drive me over there and fish him out? It would look better if you did it.’
‘I suppose so …’
She was about to wriggle out of her nightgown and into some slacks and a pullover when she realised that Felix had followed her into the bedroom and begun rifling through the hangers in the walk-in closet, before settling on one of Miss Cavendish’s smarter cocktail frocks.
‘We need to play it like you were at the club with him. You’re going to be the girlfriend – or maybe the long-suffering sister. Put that comb thing in your hair, wear plenty of lipstick and lose the wedding ring.’
Happy Little Bluebirds Page 20