Spirit

by Graham Masterton

  Chester leaned back in his chair, with his glass in his hand. ‘There’s no doubt about it, Beverley, this girl has screen potential. Maybe a great screen potential. She’s going to need some grooming, of course. Hair, make-up, that kind of thing. But, yes, I see the possibilities.’

  ‘What movie are you casting for?’ asked Laura.

  ‘The working title is Devil’s Elbow. It’s an automobile-racing drama. A handsome hero, a dastardly villain, a gorgeous moll. In fact, bushels of gorgeous molls.’

  ‘And what would I be, if you gave me a part? Gorgeous Moll number 386, there on the left?’

  ‘Laura!’ snapped Aunt Beverley.

  But Chester simply smiled. ‘Come on, Beverley, she has a right to ask. This is her career, after a while. You wouldn’t let some total stranger interfere with your life, would you, even if you were young and beautiful?’

  ‘Chester!’ snapped Aunt Beverley.

  Laura turned around and grinned at Chester and Chester winked back. TU tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, without taking his eyes off Laura. ‘Why doesn’t Laura play hookey tomorrow morning and come over to the Fox lot for a camera test? Yes? It would only take an hour, and who knows? It could be the start of something really big.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t really like to miss class.’

  ‘What are you studying?’ asked Chester.

  ‘English literature, drama and economics.’

  ‘Egghead, hunh?’

  ‘I want to be a screenwriter, as well as an actress. My father was a publisher, my mother was in musicals with Monty Woolley.’

  ‘Quite a heritage,’ said Chester. ‘Still, it’s up to you. You want to come over tomorrow morning, ask for me, and we’ll see what we can do. Maybe we can have lunch, too.’

  ‘Go on,’ Aunt Beverley urged her. ‘You can read Shakespeare any time.’

  ‘You’re studying Shakespeare?’ said Chester. ‘I hate Shakespeare. I always hated Shakespeare, all those prithees and by the roods, who talks like that? Shall I tell you who I admire? Tennessee Williams, that’s who I admire.’

  He stood up, and flung out his arm, and affected an extraordinary high-pitched voice. ‘I don’t want realism! I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell them the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that is sinful, let me be damned for it!’

  Laura laughed and clapped. ‘Blanche DuBois! Brilliant!’

  Chester sat down again, and lifted his glass of aquavit, and gave them a toast. ‘Here’s to American drama, stage or screen, the tormented people who write it, the harassed people who produce it, and the beautiful people who act in it!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Aunt Beverley; but not because she cared a hoot about drama, American, English or Icelandic. Aunt Beverley cared about only one thing: that Laura should like Chester, or at least not find him repulsive. Aunt Beverley hadn’t survived in Hollywood for thirty years by being scrupulously moral. Aunt Beverley had survived by fixing and arranging all the shady and tempting things that newly-wealthy men and women felt the urge to indulge in, and by being all things to all people. When she was young, she had been able to provide many of the forbidden pleasures that Hollywood luminaries wanted in person, and sometimes she still could. The silent movie actress Ida Marina had always called her La Linga Buena (The Beautiful Tongue). Jimmy Dean slyly called her Torquemada. Nobody knew exactly what Aunt Beverley had done for him, but they could guess.

  Chester said, ‘Let me tell you something, the American theatre is light-years ahead of the rest of the world, and I’m talking serious literature here. It’s real, it’s gutsy. Death Of A Salesman, The Glass Menagerie, brilliant. Now the American motion picture industry is going to do the same.’

  ‘This Devil’s Elbow movie you’re producing, is this serious literature too?’

  Chester was caught off-balance. He blinked at Laura, and then he said, ‘Not exactly. It’s real, it’s gutsy, but, yes, it does have quite a high commercial content. In other words, I want realism, yes, but I also want the accounts to be showing a profit, at the end of the day, so that I can make something really serious.’

  Laura looked at him gravely for a moment, and then burst into giggles. Aunt Beverley said, ‘Laura, for God’s sake! Have some manners!’

  ‘No, no,’ grinned Chester. ‘I like a girl with a sense of humour. I like that. More than anything else, I like a pretty girl with a sense of humour.’

  ‘You are a flatterer,’ said Laura, although she didn’t blush.

  Chester’s grin became more secretive, more calculating. ‘Yes,’ was all he said, but his tone of voice said very much more.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Laura, airily. ‘I guess it’s only revision tomorrow. Othello. “She gave me for my pains a world of sighs, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange, ’twas pitiful, ’twas wond’rous pitiful.” ’

  ‘There – what was I saying?’ Chester interrupted. ‘Who says “ ’twas”? Who goes around saying “ ’twas”?’

  Laura giggled again. Aunt Beverley could see that she quite enjoyed Chester’s bluster. It gave her a sense of power. ‘This could be quite a break for you, sugarpie,’ she said, with smoke pouring out of her nostrils like twin volcanoes.

  Laura threw a nut up into the air and caught it in her mouth. ‘AH right, then,’ she said. ‘What time do you want me tomorrow?’

  At three o’clock in the morning, she was woken up by the sound of whispering. Her bedroom was on the right-hand side of the courtyard, underneath the clay-shingled verandah. She was used to the night breeze rustling through the bougainvillea, and rattling the yuccas, but this whispering was different. This was a young girl’s voice – low, earnest and intense.

  Laura sat up in bed and listened. The night was unusually cool, even for October, and she shivered. The breeze made her shutter-catches tap, and tap, and tap again, as if somebody were surreptitiously trying to open them. She strained her ears, and she could still distinctly hear the whispering, but it was too soft and too far away for her to be able to make out any words.

  She eased herself out of bed. All she was wearing was a large white Hathaway shirt which she had begged from Petey Fairbrother. She padded over to the window and adjusted the slats of her shutters so that she could see outside. The courtyard glistened in cloud-reflected moonlight, but there was nobody there. Aunt Beverley’s chair was tilted back against the wall, just as she had left it. The fringes of the sunshade ruffled and danced. The bowl of nuts was empty, with fragments of shell all around it: as soon as they had gone inside, the quail had fluttered down to finish them off.

  Still the whispering went on. It sounded worried, somehow – almost hysterical. Laura tried listening again, but there was too much background noise. There wasn’t much traffic passing through Hollywood at this time of night, but the occasional swish of a distant automobile was almost enough to drown out the whispering altogether.

  Laura unfastened one of the door-catches, and swung the door open. It was then that she saw a young girl standing on the opposite side of the courtyard, white as death, with dark-smudged eyes. She bit her knuckle in fright, and stood staring at the little girl, unable to speak, unable to move, but trembling from head to foot as if she were being electrocuted.

  Elizabeth had mentioned seeing ‘a kind of a ghost of a little girl’ in several of her letters – ‘a ghost that doesn’t look at all like Peggy, but must be Peggy.’ Laura, however, had seen nothing of the Peggy-girl since she had first arrived in California-only that vague apparition behind the net curtains, the apparition that had frozen Mr Bunzum. She had begun to think that she must have been dreaming, and that Elizabeth was making up stories, as usual. When she was younger, it had been horses; now she was older, it was ghosts. Yet here she was, the Peggy-girl, as white as Elizabeth had described her, beautiful, sad and chilling to look at. And she was whispering, over and over again, the same anxious litany.

  ‘Oh
! I have left my boots behind! Oh! I have left my gloves behind!’

  Laura slowly lowered her fist from her mouth. She had bitten four teeth-marks deep into her knuckle. She took an awkward, shuffling step forward, then another. She felt the cold smoothness of the glazed tiles beneath her bare feet. ‘ – boots behind – ’ whispered the little girl. ‘ – gloves behind – ’

  ‘What do you – ?’ Laura began, but half-choked on her own saliva. ‘What do you want?’

  The little girl stared at her with such a dreadful face that Laura could hardly bring herself to step any nearer. It was a face that understood the meaning of death; a face that had lived in Purgatory. It was white with misery; white with horror; white on white on white like layer upon layer of chalk and whitewash.

  As Laura went closer, she felt a sparkly coldness in the air, and the breeze started to feel as if it were blowing off a field of snow. ‘Peggy?’ asked Laura. ‘Peggy, is that you? If it is, please tell me. I’m frightened.’

  ‘Oh! I have left my –’

  ‘Peggy, what do you want? What are you doing here? Can’t you rest?’

  ‘ – gloves behind – ’

  Laura took one more step forward and the Peggy-girl wasn’t there any more. She had simply vanished, disassembled, as if she had never been there. But Laura could still hear her whispering, and still feel that sharp-sided coldness in the wind.

  ‘Peggy, are you there?’ she called her. ‘Peggy, where have you gone?’

  She took one step back, and the Peggy-girl reappeared, as if the moonlight had altered its shape, like Japanese paper-folding. Laura felt a shiver of bewilderment. She stepped forward again, and the Peggy-girl vanished again; she stepped back, and she reappeared.

  It was only then that she realized what she was actually seeing. There was no Peggy-girl standing in the courtyard, either real or ghostly. Her outline was formed by the shadow of the overhanging bougainvillea, falling on the whitewashed wall. Her eyes were two dark smudges of soot, where oil lamps had been hung on the wall during a summer cookout. Her dress and her legs were nothing more than the spiky leaves of a fan-palm in a terracotta pot.

  One step back, though, Laura could see her as clearly as if she were actually standing there, with her arms by her sides and that terrible expression on her face. And she could still hear her whispering.

  She stepped forward, with one hand held out in front of her. She felt nothing, except the chilly breeze. She took another step, and then another, even when the Peggy-girl was no longer visible.

  ‘Are you there?’ she breathed. ‘Are you really there?’

  ‘ – boots behind – ‘

  She reached further and further, until she was almost touching the wall. The cold was almost unbearable. Her breath was vaporizing and frost was forming underneath her nostrils.

  ‘Peggy!’ she begged. ‘Show me where you are!’

  At that instant, the terracotta pot cracked sharply and the two halves fell apart, see-sawing on the tiles. The fan-palm fell sideways, and shattered on the ground as if it were made of emerald-green glass. Laura stepped back in shock – one step, then another. Her lower lip was juddering with cold and her toes were so cold that she could hardly feel them.

  Aunt Beverley appeared, wearing a hairnet and men’s pyjamas and carrying a heavy-duty flashlight.

  ‘What the hell’s going on? I thought you were burglars.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Beverley. I woke up. I thought I heard something. I – ’

  ‘Oh, my planter!’ said Aunt Beverley, in exaggerated distress. ‘You’ve broken my beautiful, beautiful planter.’

  ‘I didn’t touch it, Aunt Beverley, it broke by itself. It just snapped in half.’

  ‘Planters don’t just break by themselves. Oh, look at it! Nick Ray bought that for me, in Tijuana!’

  Laura was shivering. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Beverley. It was an accident, really. I’ll b-buy you another one.’

  Aunt Beverley shone the flashlight in her eyes. ‘Why, look at you! You’re freezing! Get back into bed, I’ll warm up some milk!’

  She put her arm round Laura and led her back to bed. ‘I don’t know why you’re so cold,” she said. ‘I hope you’re not sickening for something.’

  ‘I’m fine, I’ll be fine, so soon as I get myself warm.’

  Laura climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over herself and lay curled-up and quaking with cold. Aunt Beverley switched on the bedside lamp and sat beside her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked. ‘It wouldn’t do to miss that camera test tomorrow. Or today, 1 should say.’

  ‘I’m sure. I’m sure. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’

  She clutched herself and kept on shivering, and thought of the Peggy-girl standing in the courtyard, as real as anything she had ever seen, yet not there at all. An illusion, a mirage, a combination of plant and wall and shadow. Not even a ghost, but an absence of ghost.

  Aunt Beverley stroked her shoulder. The stroking was light, monotonous, but strangely reassuring. ‘Are you feeling warmer, sugarpie?’ she said. ‘I’ll heat that milk for you now. What did you think you heard? I don’t think anybody can climb into the back of the house, to tell you the truth. The walls are too high and there’s all of those thorn bushes and prickly pear.’

  ‘I thought I heard somebody whispering, that’s all. It must have been the wind.’

  Aunt Beverley stroked her shoulder a little more and then stopped stroking. ‘You’re tense. You’re worried about something. What is it?’

  Laura said nothing but stared through the triangular space between her pillow and the blanket. All she could see was the side of her bleached-oak nightstand, with its whorls and its knots. She was sure that two of the darker knots were eyes; and that the grainy whorls around it formed the shape of a face. A little girl’s face, a Peggy-girl. A girl who was watching her, whatever she did, wherever she went. Protective, but scary.

  Aunt Beverley said. ‘When you say you heard whispering . . . did you hear what it was they were saying?’

  Laura didn’t answer for a very long time; but Aunt Beverley stayed where she was, patiently waiting, and it was then that Laura first began to understand that her Aunt wasn’t just a mannish, chain-smoking, hard-drinking Hollywood procuress; she was also a woman of considerable acumen and sympathy; a woman who was sensitive to every kind of human weakness.

  ‘I thought it was Peggy,’ said Laura at last; and a tear slid out of her eye and dripped across the bridge of her nose. ‘I thought she was trying to tell me that she had left her boots behind, and left her gloves behind.’

  An even longer pause. Then Aunt Beverley said, ‘Why should she tell you that?’

  ‘Gerda says it, in The Snow Queen. She visits the Finland woman, and it’s so hot in the Finland woman’s house that she takes off her boots and her gloves, and leaves them behind, by accident.’

  ‘Peggy used to like that story?’

  ‘She loved it. But she always got worried when Gerda left her boots and her gloves behind.’

  ‘And that’s what she was whispering to you, outside?’

  Laura nodded.

  Aunt Beverley stroked her shoulder for a while. Then she got up off the bed and went through to the kitchen. She filled a saucepan with milk, and put it on the hob to warm, and walked into the sitting-room to find her cigarettes. She had grown to think of Laura as her own daughter, almost. She knew that Laura was happy here, in Hollywood. It suited Laura’s extravert personality, and her need to feel wanted, and important. Laura had always suffered from middle-child-itis: with a talented and serious-minded older sister and a younger sister who had always captivated everybody who saw her. Ever since Peggy was born, Laura had been unshakeably convinced that she was hard done by – that Elizabeth and Peggy were better respected, better treated and better loved. That was why she had sought the attentions of men, no matter who they were, no matter what they wanted her to do.

  Aunt Beverley was one of five and knew what sibling jealous
y was all about. She had done everything she could to restore Laura’s pride in herself. Aunt Beverley’s own father had abused her, and she knew how important it was to have pride. One night, when she was twelve years old, her father had crept naked into her room at night, sat astride her pillow, and forced his whole erection down her throat, right down to his crunchy pubic hair. After that, it had taken Aunt Beverley years of self-bullying and semi-suicidal behaviour to regain her self-esteem. She had started chain-smoking only to fumigate her mouth. If she closed her eyes and thought about it, she could taste her father, even today.

  She could only touch men if they asked her to punish them; and then she gladly did.

  She lit a cigarette and smoked a quarter of it before she crushed it out. As she did so, she thought she heard somebody in the kitchen. ‘Laura?’ she called. ‘You shouldn’t be out of bed. Get yourself warm, for goodness’ sake.’

  She walked towards the kitchen door. A fleeting white reflection crossed the hallway; but it was only a reflection. ‘Laura?’ said Aunt Beverley. ‘Is that you, Laura?’

  The kitchen was deserted. Only the green-topped Formica table, with its neatly-arranged salt-and-pepper pots, its A-l bottle, and its pear-shaped vase of freesias. Only the electric clock, chirring quietly on the wall. Only the gas flaring under the milk.

  She frowned. She had a sense that somebody had been here, she didn’t know why. She switched off the gas, and carried the milkpan over to the table. She tilted it to pour the milk into the mugs, but the surface of the milk tilted, too, and it wouldn’t come out. The pan was blazing hot. The milk should almost have boiled by now. But when she prodded the surface with her finger, she realized why it wouldn’t pour out.

  The milk was frozen solid, its surface sparkling with ice-crystals.

  Aunt Beverley returned the pan to the hob and stood staring at it. The milk was frozen. She had poured it out of the bottle into the pan and lit the gas underneath it, and it was frozen.

  She sat down at the kitchen table, took out another cigarette and smoked it until it nearly burned her lips. Afterwards, she went through to Laura’s bedroom to tell her about the milk, but Laura was fast asleep, her blankets thrown aside, her Hathaway shirt ridden up so that her bottom was bare. Aunt Beverley stood and looked at her and thought that she was beautiful. She never would have dreamed of touching her, ever. Laura was family; Laura was practically hers. But she loved her, all the same; and she wondered what it was that had disturbed her tonight, because it was chilly and unfamiliar, and it had made its presence felt in every room.