Evelyn disappeared into the bathroom while Felix carried on a shouted exchange, continuing to examine her wardrobe.
‘Got your dress for the Von Blick party?’
‘I thought the dark-red thing with the belt?’
Over Felix’s dead body. Felix pulled the white satin gown from the far end of the rail. Now there was a dress she should wear. Had the height for it. She looked at him, unconvinced, but he crossed his heart and hoped to die. On his mother’s grave, he said – not that she was actually in it yet but she had it all picked out.
‘Oh I am sorry. Is she not well?’
‘Hell, no! Strong as an ox. It just kind of comforts her? Suits her, anyway, to talk about it. We feel bad – my brother and me – and she feels good because we feel bad. Go figure.’
He sat on the end of the bed admiring the ancient patchwork quilt of sprigged calico and the pictures that Mr Hashimoto had hung on the freshly painted walls.
‘Wish I had a Degas in my boudoir. Even this quilt belongs in a museum.’
He wandered through the other rooms as she dressed.
‘A Benois in the spare bedroom? Seriously? When are you ever going to get to see it? We need to hang everything in here, Russian style.’ His hand mimed tiling a wall with canvases. ‘You could have your own private Frick Collection. You free next weekend? I’ll bring the hammer and nails; you mix the drinks.’
As she followed Felix’s directions to the police station, he began briefing her like Von Blick extracting a performance. She was Meredith’s girlfriend – girlfriend was better than sister. Evelyn asked if such a rigmarole was strictly necessary and he gave a short, unhappy laugh: it was necessary. The desk sergeant had been taken care of. All she had to do was tell the guy she’d come to collect poor darling Frankie (Fox had had the presence of mind to use an alias) and could the sergeant please be an angel and show them out the back way where Felix would be waiting with the car.
‘Ritz the guy a little,’ said Felix. ‘Then just breeze up to Fox and kiss him on the cheek and say “Oh-Frankie-darling-honestly”. Fox will take it from there. And don’t forget the kiss, the full personality.’
There was a man asleep on the bench beside the front desk of the police station. He had a crush hat pulled down over his eyes and an unlit cigarette between his lips, a black sand of stubble on his chin. On the floor beside him lay an open satchel containing a camera and a copy of that day’s Daily News. Evelyn looked from the sleeping man to the policeman on duty who winked and put a finger to his lips as she approached. There was a glass-fronted noticeboard behind him and she could see her reflection in it. She raised her chin and deepened her voice.
‘I believe you’re holding a Mr Morris? My car’s out the back.’
The policeman came out from behind the desk and led her along a battleship-grey corridor and down the stairs to the cells. There was a strong, unsuccessful smell of disinfectant.
‘They’ve been giving your boyfriend a hard time down there. Wait here.’ He was more amused than sorry. He unhooked a bunch of keys from his belt and opened the cell door. There was a short, very nerve-racking delay while Meredith remembered his alias and there were jeers and whistles from the other inmates as the cell door was locked behind him. Evelyn, right on cue, dashed forward and threw her arms around his neck, He didn’t smell of cologne any more.
‘Oh Frankie, honestly. There is such a thing as too much research, you know. Read a book next time.’
Meredith pulled back from her embrace. An indigo bruise ringed his right eye and his undressed hair fell forward in a foppish forelock.
‘I’m sorry, baby.’ His blue gaze never left her face and it was some moments before Evelyn realised that he focused on her left eye only, as an actor would in close-up, lending an unnatural intensity to his expression. ‘Don and Mary bet us we wouldn’t dare go there and you know I could never resist a dare …’
He still had his overcoat, his watch and his signet ring (the desk sergeant had taken care of those together with his Charvet tie and the laces from his correspondent shoes and a pint of whiskey) but every one of the horn buttons had been torn from his sports jacket.
The policeman ushered them out of the rear entrance where Felix was waiting.
‘Here he is, Ronnie darling. Safe and sound.’
‘Remind me to get you a screen test,’ hissed Felix as he shoehorned his friend into the front passenger seat before climbing into the back. Meredith finger-combed his hair into place via the rear-view mirror before awarding a smile to Evelyn and telling her what a darling she was. Even after all those martinis, even with the swollen eye, he had the same easy, manly charm. He was going to be having a few of the guys over next Sunday. Be swell if she could join them. Around five? Lucile Avenue, Felix had the address. He gave her stockinged knee a squeeze, a strange, joyless action like a screen kiss or one of Rindy McGee’s cover-girl smiles. Caress delivered, he reached into his jacket pocket. His whiskey bottle was already half empty and he all but drained it. He was asleep before they reached Silver Lake.
‘The studio are going to hate all this,’ said Felix, ‘even if they manage to hush it up. Poor Fox.’
The actor smiled in his sleep. A real smile this time.
*
Make-up had done a fairly good job on the bruising but Fox Meredith was still wearing dark glasses for his party the following Sunday. Galahad’s love scenes with Guinevere’s lady-in-waiting in Knights of Love had been written out together with most of his close-ups (they were working overtime in the cutting room). In the few days since his short stay in a police cell, his planned drinks party had turned into a wake for the untimely death of his screen career. The gossip-mongers, who had only just learned to find him fascinating, had been fed a new scenario, devised in haste by the Miracle publicity team, and as Evelyn arrived Galahad himself was reading aloud from one of the columns.
‘“Friends say that Meredith has been suffering from fatigue brought on by overwork and that the young star has vowed to return to the less demanding world of legitimate theatre.” Less demanding?’ scoffed Galahad. ‘Every stage actor I know gets by on bourbon and Benzedrine. Never mind: Dad will be thrilled. The Theer-tah. My agent’s got me an audition for The Lead Balloon next week. They had Leland Trent signed up but his number came up in the draft – not so much a draft as an ill wind …’ The actor sighed as he gazed out over his garden, which trickled down the hillside in a series of leafy terraces. The Hollywoodland sign could be glimpsed through the scrub oaks and to the west the sun was preparing for its nightly dip in the ocean.
‘It’s two degrees in New York,’ said Foxton. ‘With sleet.’
Baines Frobisher and Cedric Sedgwick, in rival boating blazers, were both admiring the view, glass in hand. They had scant sympathy for Meredith.
‘He should count himself lucky a career in legit is still an option. He could easily have ended up as an interior decorator, poaching clients from poor Wally there.’
‘You think?’ Binky Frobisher pulled a face. ‘I don’t think Wally would be losing much sleep.’
He waved a hand at the walls of the den which were decked with Polynesian dancing girls painted on black velvet.
‘Wally made him a present of them after he persuaded Joan Crawford to chuck them all out – damn near broke her heart,’ said Binky. ‘That one looks remarkably like my second wife but I think she’s my favourite.’ He pointed his cigarette at a bare-breasted Polynesian wearing a sort of floral muffler. ‘Looks like Sabu with tits.’
Zandor Kiss arrived (to Meredith’s evident surprise) and shook the young actor by the hand and wished him luck. He should break a leg, he said, Hollywood’s loss was Broadway’s gain. Kiss had spotted Evelyn on the other side of the room but made no attempt to speak to her. He was clearly finding her presence on the Miracle lot something of an embarrassment. He did not let it trouble him unduly (he had worse things on the payroll) but she was no longer invited to script meetings. A studio messenger had
delivered a copy of an old Kiss project with a note asking her to translate the marked scenes into German. Bermuda Love Triangle was about a woman who tries to rekindle her husband’s interest by making a play for her sailing instructor until the Atlantic weather takes a nasty turn. ‘The Krauts will love the guilt angle,’ wrote Kiss but added there was no hurry. Evelyn had done as he asked (her open German dictionary at her side in a desk drawer in case Miss McAllister spotted it) and thoroughly enjoyed the task but she knew full well that the Germans would never actually buy the film – they had long ceased trading with most of the big studios – so giving her the assignment was a bit like getting a navvy to dig holes and fill them in again. She still drove down to Beverly Hills every Wednesday to give Dorinda McGee her elocution lesson although it was increasingly doubtful that Rindy’s new, much-improved English accent would be needed in the fight against the Martians.
Felix made a late entrance in a familiar-looking blazer of palest fawn slubbed silk, gleaming white flannels and shoes of blue buckskin. There was a glint of monogrammed gold as he reached for his cocktail (F for Felix; F for Foxton).
‘How do you like the new shirt?’ He shot his cuffs. ‘Crêpe de Chine. Fox is bequeathing me his West Coast wardrobe. We’re the exact same size – he just smells taller. Wait till you see me in the yellow silk suit. He won’t need it in New York. This jacket would get you arrested on 42nd Street, or anywhere else pretty much. Except here. Why are you laughing?’
‘Nothing really,’ said Evelyn with a sad smile. ‘It just occurred to me yesterday that Silas, my husband – my late husband, didn’t have any coloured clothes. Even his pyjamas were grey. I bought him some orange ones for his birthday and I had to take them back.’
Evelyn thought again of the peculiar postscript to Deborah’s last letter: ‘the report we got was very vague’. What report? She had promised to explain in her next letter but that was nearly a fortnight ago.
She stroked the crêpe de Chine collar of Felix’s shirt.
‘My French mistress had a canary that colour.’
Felix changed the grip on his cigarette and waggled it in Marx Brothers mode. ‘And my French mistress …’
He hugged hold of her arm and walked her towards the verandah.
‘Nice place, isn’t it? Fox’s lease is paid up till the summer so I’m going to move in and take care of it for him. I don’t think I can face another winter where I am; I’d run out of buckets.’
He tightened his hold on her arm and lowered his voice.
‘I’m sorry we had to drag you into all that nonsense the other morning. I did think of calling McAllister but Connie is too fond of a good story. Hell, she’d probably put it in her next play –’ a catty chuckle ‘– then nobody would ever hear about it. Poor Fox. But at least this way he’s still got some kind of career, I guess. What am I saying? He can have a great career in legit. The crazy thing is that when you live in this place you forget there’s a world outside and you start thinking that not making it here, leaving LA, would be the end of the world. And it isn’t, is it?’
Evelyn leaned against the rail and looked out through the vines. Two tall, fashionably thin palm trees in the foreground were nodding together confidingly, as if admiring the blazing sunset beyond. A champagne cork popped in the room behind them.
‘Isn’t what?’
‘The end of the world.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Chapter 14
There was no sign of Felix in the Writers’ Block the following morning and no sign at all of Ted Monroe whose bookcase had been emptied and whose corner desk was now occupied by a comically slender young man in Prince of Wales checks and very thick spectacles struggling with the crossword in an old copy of the London Times. He looked up as Evelyn and Miss McAllister arrived, greeted them without getting out of his chair and wondered whether a spot of tea might be in order? Without a word, both women renewed their mutual non-aggression pact by turning on their heels and heading for the commissary.
‘Is he for real? I think he’s hot favourite for Man You Would Most Like to Dunk in a Sewer. Kiss did mention something about hiring some English guy – Hubert something? Or maybe Desmond something? – but that was months ago. He wrote Crimson Lake or Burnt Sienna, some name like that. It was a big hit with the longhairs, less so with the regular people, but Kiss said something about getting him to work up a treatment of Tom Jones. No one’s holding their breath.’
Miss McAllister spooned more sugar into her cup.
‘Did you hear Fox Meredith got arrested? He was in some dive on Sunset after the Games party and there was a homo raid and he ended up in the caboose so now it’s back to Broadway for Mr Meredith. Publicity have been working overtime trying to get a lid on it but luckily for him it happened the same night Douglas Fairbanks Jr was seen descending the fire escape of the Marmont in white tie and tails at four in the morning. At least, they think it was Douglas Fairbanks. Might have been Dietrich in drag, I suppose … but it kept the gossip columns busy. Meredith could have been on the lam with the crew of the Catalina ferry for all they cared. Somebody was sent down to the station to square the desk sergeant and no charges were brought but he’s a lucky guy all the same. They could have invoked the morality clause in his contract but he’s still getting six months’ severance and back on Broadway next month like it never happened. If you saw a play that phoney you’d blow raspberries. Poor Fox. He was engaged for a while, believe it or not: Hildy Hammer – they both had bit parts in Young Elizabeth. He should have married her. Makes life a lot easier.’
‘And what’s happened to Mr Monroe?’
‘Theodore finally got kicked upstairs. He’s got an office on PZ’s corridor, they doubled his salary and he’ll never write another line worth a damn: the sable-lined, solid-gold coffin.’
Back in the office, Desmond Colley had taken off his suit jacket and was puzzling over an empty coffee percolator. Felix was still not at his desk.
‘Is he not well?’
‘Didn’t you hear? His mother died so he’s flown back east, caught the clipper this morning,’ explained Connie. ‘Funny him having a mother. He always talked about her but I thought he made her up like that invisible wife of his.’
*
Evelyn spent election night with Connie McAllister in a bar near the studio listening to the radio broadcast. As the result emerged, Miss McAllister ordered more daiquiris and an old German man at the counter began to cry and was then asked to leave when he started throwing peanuts at the wireless.
The following Saturday, on the morning of the Von Blick party, Felix rang to offer her a lift.
‘And wear the white gown – or no ride.’
That evening, she sat at her dressing table, trying to make her face look a fraction more like her studio portrait. Pinned to the edge of the looking glass was a sheet of paper she had found on the floor of Stage Six. Written on it, in Von Blick’s spidery German script, were the words ‘Keep alive! No passivity in scenes!’ The tyre-like tread of a technician’s rubber sole was stamped across the paper. She put some more powder on her nose and looked at the effect, unconvinced. What would Jesus do? Jesus poked doubtfully at Alphonse’s comb and risked another spot of lipstick.
She looked sensational, according to Felix. Felix looked sensational too – a new, improved, Technicolor Felix, bronzed by Foxton’s sun-ray apparatus and taller somehow in Foxton’s $100 tailcoat. He mixed two highballs and smiled.
‘L’chaim!’
The suntan made his teeth look whiter and she noticed for the first time that the front ones were too perfect to be real. Silas could always tell when an actor’s teeth were capped.
‘You seem on good form …’ She realised too late that it sounded like a reproach. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother.’
A furrow in the tanned forehead but he batted the thought away, keeping it light.
‘I’ve been feeling a lot better, a lot better. Fox left a pack of his pep pills in the bathroom cl
oset. They really help you concentrate – PZ practically lives on them, you can see why he gets so much done. I worked from home today. Got up at seven, I rewrote five scenes before lunch and this afternoon I finished the treatment of the story I sold them: Foreign Entanglement. It was published in one of the monthlies over a year ago and now all of a sudden my New York agent has PZ’s office on the phone wanting to know where they can get hold of me.’
The original magazine story had been about a young pianist who helped a beautiful woman escape from an unnamed country overrun with jackbooted Esperanto speakers. The pair hide in a deserted mountain hotel, he serenades her (‘Stardust’ in A flat) and she frets about her family under the yoke back in Freedonia and they fall asleep in each other’s arms while a Felix Bressart type (maybe even the real thing if MGM would release him) flaps around mixing glühwein and frying potatoes and talking about the evil new regime. Our hero wakes to find her gone, dashes to the railway station just in time for a parting embrace. Cue smoke, cue ‘Stardust’.
PZ had skim-read a one-page precis of the original and immediately decided that the hero should be a member of a university ice-hockey squad who misses the team bus and wakes up with a three-day hangover in a Transylvanian beer cellar.
‘Ty Hooper is in the frame for the lead, so they’d have to dub the vocals for “Stardust” … I actually wrote it with Fox in mind but I guess you can’t have everything. As a writer, I weep for my precious story but that cheque from Miracle sure buys a lot of handkerchiefs …’
The kitten had jumped on to Felix’s lap the instant he sat down and he had been tickling absently behind its ears but his technique wasn’t to Happy’s taste. He gave a sulky little miaow as he clambered down and headed off in search of fish, tail in the air. Felix laughed and lit a cigarette.
‘Kiss been keeping you busy?’
‘Up to a point.’
Happy Little Bluebirds Page 21