Beyond the gravelled avenues rose the newly built tomb of a silent movie actor who had died the previous year. The sepulchre, flanked by flaming maples and lapped by an emerald lawn, was presidential in scale. It was the kind of thing that one would expect to see as a centrepiece but the massive white slab had been shunted up against the perimeter wall of the cemetery (all the good plots having been sold in perpetuity to old California families). Manny Silverman, with his mania for real estate, had had greater foresight, acquiring a prime plot next to something called The Lake of Memories.
It was a highly respectable turnout but anyone who still had films to make was making a film (‘business is business’) and a few names were conspicuous by their absence. Otto Von Blick sent five hundred white roses, Helga Hart had sent a posy of wild flowers, the Raymond Gameses sent their empty limousine to join the cortège and Baines Frobisher merely sent a wreath and regrets. The dead man’s son-in-law missed nothing.
‘Ungrateful limey bums,’ said PZ, making another mental note on his drop-dead list. ‘They owed their lousy careers to Manny.’
It had said in that morning’s Los Angeles Times that there would be twenty-two pallbearers. Evelyn had a mental image of twenty-two morning-coated mourners crammed under the coffin like a caterpillar with forty-four spongebag trouser legs but it turned out that the title was purely honorary and the actual lifting of the lead-lined flame-mahogany casket was undertaken by six professionals. Did they get much film work? she wondered.
The order of service in the chapel of rest began with Cedric Sedgwick who brought his round tones to Isaiah 35 (‘then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing’), followed by the dead man’s favourite hymns: the first four (Christ-free) verses of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and the whole of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.
A veteran of Silverman’s earliest two-reelers stood at the back of the chapel with a dark raincoat over the ruffled red frock of a Wild West saloon keeper and full Technicolor make-up (the charcoal-coloured hollows in her cheeks were especially startling). A studio driver was waiting in the yew avenue by the Garden of Eternal Love ready to whisk her round the block and back on to the lot where she was filming the preliminary scenes of Duchess in the Dirt. She slipped away the moment the rabbi had finished the Kaddish.
‘What a trouper,’ smiled Mamie. ‘Manny would have loved that.’
The widow kissed Evelyn on both cheeks.
‘You’ll come back to the house, won’t you, Evelyn? Sure you will. Our guest. Our friend.’
Paula and her sister had persuaded their stepmother to open up the Bel Air house for the funeral and so the jet necklace of rented black limousines slowed the Wilshire Boulevard traffic to a crawl. When they arrived Evelyn saw that Mr Hashimoto had hung a hatchment of white chrysanthemums around the front door and had painstakingly raked interlocking MS monograms into the gravel driveway: three hours’ work heedlessly obliterated by the parking cars. A small butter-coloured horse box had been left alongside the Japanese bridge.
The house door was opened by an unseen hand and Mamie led the way into the doomy brown hallway and on into the doomy brown drawing room – as though the whole interior had been steeped in finest Ceylon. Mamie’s lacquered claw gripped Evelyn’s arm.
‘The bitch is here! You see her? In her Lilly Daché hat and her sables Manny paid for. In this heat! Seventy-six degrees in November! And will you look at that veil?’
The first Mrs Silverman was swathed in black silk georgette that ran all the way to the hemline of her gown.
‘Like she’s the widow. I kind of thought we’d be too quick for her – he only died Sunday – but she got a seat on the Mercury. Landed at Glendale this morning.’
Mamie, tired and old after a week of watching by her husband’s sudden sickbed, was at once offended and piqued by her predecessor’s glamorous ensemble. She fiddled with the collar of her own dress so that her diamond necklace could be seen.
‘Emily Post says jewellery isn’t good taste with deep mourning but maybe Emily Post doesn’t have a sixty-carat diamond rivière.’
She had raised her voice and one of the hired waiters glided across the room and paused at a side table nearby and began neatly restacking piles of neatly stacked plates.
‘We could have had the open casket here in the room,’ said Mamie, ‘but the director guy opened it and I took a look and then we had it all sealed up again.’
She was on the verge of tears and sent the waiter for a glass of water as she rummaged in her black silk handbag.
‘Mrs Post says excessive displays of grief are vulgar so Paula gave me some of those little pills she takes. I don’t want to make a scene.’ She took hold of Evelyn’s left hand and began jiggling at her wedding ring. ‘I guess it must have been worse for you, losing yours so young. If it hadn’t been for that war you would have had him around for another fifty years.’
‘Yes,’ said Evelyn.
Mamie’s glass of water hadn’t materialised but a different waiter passed by with a tray of drinks and caviar toasts (even the canapés were in mourning).
‘“Refreshments are never offered,” Emily Post says; I looked it up: mean, East Coast bitch.’
From the far side of the room the voice of the first Mrs Silverman cut through the mournful mumblings like a dropped glass.
‘Cocktails? Such bad taste.’
Mamie’s sharp ears missed nothing. She turned to the nearest man.
‘Get another martini for Mrs Silverman – Mrs Stadtler, I should say – and put a black olive in it.’
Mamie looked around her at the Stygian wood panelling.
‘It’s a good house for a funeral but how she ever persuaded Manny and those poor children to live here will always be a mystery to me.’ She gave Evelyn’s arm another squeeze. ‘I want you to know you can stay in the pool house as long as you want. I’m not going to sell anything but I might not stay in Malibu. Maybe New York would be big enough …’ A faint look of self-reproach at her ability to conceive of a future without her husband. She straightened her shoulders. ‘I guess I ought to go talk to some people.’
Most of the grim gathering was composed of very old people in very young clothes: somebodies-turned-nobodies. You knew before speaking a word to them that when you confessed that no, you hadn’t actually heard of Orchids in the Dust or Shanghai Caprice or Incontinence or whatever had made their name, you would be chiselling another chunk off their crumbling self-regard, ruining their day, their week.
Zandor Kiss was on the far side of the room talking to Ted Monroe. Monroe was turning to leave and the producer made a bid to follow him without catching Evelyn’s eye but she was too quick for him.
‘Mrs Murdoch!’
Kiss-kisses on both cheeks.
‘Very sad occasion but you look like a million dollars.’
‘Half a million, Mr Von Blick says.’
The forgetful waiter who had been offering round the cheese puffs began restacking glasses on a tray. Evelyn could see him reflected in the looking glass above the gas-log fire as he stopped and scribbled something on his cuff.
Kiss’s voice sank to a murmur. ‘You did a nice job on that Bermuda translation’ (a sudden tinkle of glasses as the waiter’s tray gave a violent lurch). ‘Very nice job and I got your notes about the Martian thing but to be perfectly honest –’ and Kiss paused as if this were a rare occurrence ‘– from what Monroe said just now it doesn’t look like the Wells project is going ahead any time soon. Not until after I go to Washington. I should never have brought you here. You should be back home fighting the good fight somewhere.’
‘Isn’t this a good fight?’
Kiss sighed, tired suddenly.
‘Maybe, maybe. We’ll see what those farkuk in Washington have to say for themselves.’
Evelyn moved closer and began speaking still more softly.
‘Mr Kiss, I know you have a lot on your mind but I was wondering if you could help me with some
thing? We thought that my husband was killed last Christmas but my family has had a telegram and it’s possible there’s been a mistake … Is there any chance that I might go back to London?’
‘Back to London? Are you crazy? Do you know how many bombs fell last week?’ He had turned to face her but his feet were angled for escape. ‘That’s great news about your husband, great news, mazel tov, but he wouldn’t want you to go back there right now, the way things are. It’ll be tough for you both but the war will end soon and then you’ll have a happy reunion.’
He had the big finish all planned.
‘But my job doesn’t even exist. Mr Peyton is obviously busy elsewhere and there’s nothing for me to do here.’
‘Nonsense. Della’s sending you another script to look over. Take all the time you need. Call me.’
He almost collided with Paula Silverman in his dash for the exit.
Paula looked very stylish in black, very swan-yay. Evelyn smiled a greeting and was surprised by yet another kiss on the cheek. The girl’s lovely face turned, dead pan, to the scene playing out on the other side of the drawing room where the first Mrs Silverman was holding court with a trio of ancient actors all dressed in striped trousers, waistcoats and white slips: Wardrobe’s idea of a family solicitor.
‘Mother oughtn’t to have come but I suppose she couldn’t resist the Donna Lucia act. Poor Mamie. I thought Mother had more savoir faire, more chain, as old Grandma Silverman used to say. But then again maybe not – she picked out this house after all.’ Paula gestured around her at the treacle-brown walls. ‘Hideous, isn’t it? We lived here till they got divorced when I was seventeen. Dad couldn’t get out of here fast enough.’
She scowled up at the coffered cedar ceiling.
‘It’s not a bad place for a funeral as it turns out, but can you imagine trying to throw a real party in a house like this? Making an entrance down that poky old staircase? Celeste and I always had all our big birthdays at the Marmont. And you know the really funny part? Mother’s New York apartment is the exact opposite: ivory silk drapes; milk-white carpets; soft lights; big windows and she took all the best pictures: a Dufy; a Matisse; a Picasso. You couldn’t hang them here – not if you wanted to look at them, anyway. People say it’s very English. It’s certainly dark enough. Sissy and I stayed with a friend of Mother’s in England one time. Lovely old place … Sussex? Wessex? There was a fifteen-watt bulb in the bedroom. Fif-teen watts! Celeste – you haven’t met Celeste, have you? – went right down to the village store and got another one.’ Paula sighed and gestured around her. ‘I guess it probably reminds you of home.’
A mouse darted out from behind the wainscoting, grabbed a fallen olive (black) and then whizzed back to its own panelled dining room.
‘Yes. Yes I suppose it does.’
Except Woking wasn’t home any more, Bel Air was. She thought of her bedroom down the hill in the bungalow, of the rose trees on the terrace, the picture windows, the Degas in her boudoir, Happy in the crook of her knees; thought of Mr Fenn and Mr Kiss insisting that an Atlantic crossing was out of the question until the opposing powers saw fit to arrange her happy ending.
Felix Kay had missed the funeral but had turned up at the house in time to shake the right hands.
‘I’m up to my neck in the rewrites for Duchess in the Dirt. Are you OK? How’s the garden? Have you been crying? You’ve been crying. Funerals get you that way?’
‘I had a letter from home.’
‘Bad news?’
What could one say? Yes, actually, the worst news in the world: there’s a strong chance that the man I married is still alive and if he is I will have to leave Miracle, leave Hollywood, leave you, leave Ted Monroe, leave Happy, leave poor, cross Miss McAllister, and go back to life with a man whose idea of a romantic gesture was to spit on his hand first.
‘Bad news?’ she repeated, dazedly. ‘Yes. No. Yes.’
Paula Silverman had slipped upstairs and swapped her black dress for her riding clothes.
‘You will think me heartless but Columbine needs the exercise – as do I.’
‘You should eat something.’
‘You sound like my stepmother but you’re right: I should eat something.’
She summoned one of the waiters and asked him to fix her a sandwich, any sandwich – anything but turkey, she said, because turkey would make her think of Dad and then she wouldn’t be able to eat. So a ham sandwich. Or cheese. Cheese would be just fine. Any kind of cheese.
‘Do you know the only time he ever let me and Sissy eat with them – at home anyways – was Christmas and Thanksgiving. And he always made me eat with the wrong hand. And he made us eat stuffing and cranberries and we used to be sick after.’
The girlish confidence was at once pitiful and pitiless.
‘When he and Mother went on trips he used to arrange for the studio to make movies of us to send out to her in New York or Paris or Cairo or wherever they were so she wouldn’t miss us so much, so they could stay away longer. Mother always said the movies made her miss us even more. She still didn’t come home, though.
‘He wanted to give us both a screen test for a sixteenth birthday present. Mother thought not.’ Paula jerked her head in the direction of a Chinese vase on the mantelpiece ‘That used to be one of a pair.’
She put a thumb under the diamond brooch on the collar of her jacket and tilted the stones to the light. It was shaped like a Greek alpha.
‘He couldn’t make my graduation.’
She gave Evelyn a goodbye kiss.
‘So I guess I’m not sorry …’
Funnily enough, it was that thought that made Paula Silverman start to cry. ‘I’m not sorry,’ she repeated in a horrified whisper. ‘He died and I’m not even sorry. Can you imagine that?’
‘I think so.’
Chapter 17
It was growing dark by the time the last mourners had left – Mamie Silverman was beginning to think that Emily Post might have had a point. Evelyn helped the widow into her car and made her way back to the pool house across the Japanese bridge.
There was a glimmer of light at the far end of the path and the low, growling hum of machinery. She thought again of Martians at work. As she turned the corner by the yew hedge she saw something turquoise twinkling in the starlight through the screen of bamboo. The swimming pool had been filled and its underwater lights switched on. Steam was rising from the heated water. On the terrace beside it, ringed by a dozen rose bushes, Ted Monroe was stretched out on a steamer chair, popping macadamia nuts, Happy curled up on his chest.
‘You took your time.’ He passed her a fistful of kitten and got up from the chair to mix her a drink and light her a cigarette. Happy nuzzled against her cheek; his fur had the earthy, roguish smell of Cuban cigar.
‘Your latchkey was under the mat. Have a nut. I found them in your kitchen – all the way from Hawaii: 2,500 miles – can you beat that?’ He leaned down and blew a soft raspberry on the kitten’s neck. ‘We missed you. Your little Jap has been working overtime, he was only just finishing when I drove up. Can the English swim?’
The pool was the temperature of Woking bathwater and they floated up and down watched by a very wary kitten until Ted climbed out and reached down to pull her from the deep end then folded her in a towel and carried her bodily to the bedroom.
She was woken by Happy dancing on her chest to demand his breakfast. She opened a can then went out to the pool to clear the table. Her wedding band and engagement ring were nestling among the nutshells and she zipped them into the pocket of her handbag.
When she returned to the bedroom with a pot of coffee Ted Monroe was lying diagonally across the quilt, the muscles on his torso like the underside of a crab (‘God has entrusted us with our bodies, those exquisitely wrought machines’).
‘You look very lovely this morning, Mrs Murdoch.’
Speaking her name seemed to jog his memory and he went out to the sitting room and pulled a studio document wallet from his
briefcase.
‘Della asked me to deliver this when I told her I was going to the funeral. You made me forget all about it.’
A magical hour later, after Ted had driven away, she sat down to read her post: a note from Kiss asking her to get to work translating Puppy of the Baskervilles into Spanish and a letter from Deborah with a Scottish postmark dated six days earlier. Deborah hadn’t let the grass grow under her feet.
A man on the train said that Edinburgh was the Athens of the north, in which case God help the Greeks. What a dump. Dark, dirty buildings and I’ve yet to meet anyone with all ten front teeth. And as for the food? I know we used to joke about the school cabbage but it would make a nice change, I must say, to be offered a vegetable that had grown above ground.
Is it Silas, you ask? I wish I could give you a straight answer but to be perfectly honest it was very hard to tell and the beard is no help (they did try shaving him but said the screams distressed the other patients). It was all very difficult. He certainly seemed very pleased to see me but the matron says ‘Patient D’ is always like that (he’s not the first case of amnesia they’ve had to deal with, obviously). He talks in a sort of music-hall Scots accent which was why they had him sent to Edinburgh in the first place before they’d got round to tracing you from the inscription in the Bible. He sounded pretty Harry Lauder to me and he must have sounded Scotch to the doctor from the hospital ship but of course now he’s here the actual Scots all deny that any Scot ever actually spook leek thot but apparently the mind plays funny tricks when you’ve had shrapnel in it. The matron told me that she remembered a chap (I think this must have been the last war or possibly the Crimea or just conceivably Bannockburn), anyway a chap who had a bang on the head or gas or something who began speaking with a broad, bog-Irish brogue despite being born and bred in High Wycombe, so things could be a lot worse all things considered.
Matron did wonder where you were in all this. Which was a mite awkward, but I said Work of National Importance which worked like a charm. Is that even true? What do you do all day? You never send more than a postcard – careless talk, I suppose.
Happy Little Bluebirds Page 24