Spirit

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Do you want to leave a message?’

  Laura hesitated for a moment, and then looked across at the broken orchids. ‘Yes, tell her that her sister called. Tell her that the Snow Queen’s paid me another visit.’

  ‘Do you want to repeat that?’

  Aunt Beverley came home in time for lunch and they ate shrimp and avocado salad in the courtyard. Aunt Beverley’s lipstick was smudged and she was wearing a silk polo-neck blouse in a particularly jarring mauve. She seemed irritable and distracted.

  ‘You saw Harrison?’ asked Laura, cautiously.

  ‘Yes. He’s being very nosy.’

  ‘That’s his job, isn’t it, being nosy?’

  ‘There’s nosy and nosy. Harrison makes Jimmy Durante look like Porky Pig.’

  ‘What’s he after?’

  Aunt Beverley put down her fork, lit a cigarette. ‘It’s all hearsay. He can’t prove anything.’ ‘What’s all hearsay?’

  ‘I’ve done some people some favours over the years, that’s all. Fixed it for people to meet. Fixed it for people to get hold of some difficult merchandise that they might have had a hankering for. He says I might have supplied some difficult merchandise to Vele Lopez.’ She defiantly blew out smoke. ‘It’s all lies, of course.’

  She didn’t seem to want to say any more, so Laura said, ‘Chester called by. He’s seen the camera tests and he says they’re terrific. He wants to take me out for dinner tonight, so that we can pow-wow.’

  For one fleeting instant, there was a look on Aunt Beverley’s face that almost approached remorse, but then she shrugged and turned away, ‘Make sure he takes you somewhere fancy. Last time he took me out, we ended up at the Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset.’

  Laura gave her a brief, dissolving smile. Then she said, ‘Aunt Beverley, do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘Ghosts? What do you mean, ghosts? Of course I believe in ghosts. Every time I look in the mirror, who do you think I see standing behind me, but every man I ever knew?’

  ‘I mean real ghosts, people who have actually come back from the dead.’

  Aunt Beverley crushed out her cigarette right in the middle of her shrimp. ‘That’s a funny question to ask. Are you serious?’

  Laura nodded. ‘Peggy’s still with us. Elizabeth’s seen her, too.’

  Aunt Beverley thought about that for a very long time without saying anything, her eyes searching Laura’s face. ‘Do you know what it is she wants?’ she asked, at last. ‘Ghosts usually want something, don’t they? Peace, or reassurance, or forgiveness. Mind you, Peggy couldn’t have had anything to forgive.’

  ‘She says she wants to protect us. The trouble is – ’

  Aunt Beverley raised a hand to silence her. ‘Don’t tell me what the trouble is. Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know about ghosts, not real ghosts. God knows, I have quite enough of my own. If she wants to protect you, fine, let her protect you. All of us could use some protecting, now and again.’

  But Laura persisted. ‘The trouble is, it’s not just her. There’s always something with her, something that freezes everything it touches. You remember your planter that broke? That was frozen. And today, when Chester had left – ’

  Her eyes filled with tears and she clamped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t realized until now how much Peggy’s apparition had distressed and frightened her. Aunt Beverley stood up and put her arm around her shoulders and said. ‘There, come on now. You’ve been under a strain, that’s all, what with David’s funeral and trying to get this part.’

  All the same, she remembered the pan of milk that she had set to boil, and which had frozen solid.

  She stayed where she was, stroking Laura’s shoulder, and for the first time in her life she began to feel that the past was catching up with her, as if every sin that she had ever committed had been painstakingly set to paper, and stacked away, leaving a crooked chalk initial on the wall to identify it. V for Velez, H for Herman, B for Bartok.

  Elizabeth left the conference room at 4:15, when it was still only 1:15 in Hollywood. She felt exhausted and angry. Almost every editorial suggestion she had made to Margo Rossi about Reds Under The Bed had been greeted by a single, supercilious raise of one eyebrow, followed by a sweeping and totally contradictory suggestion from Margo herself. Margo had dismantled Elizabeth’s attempts at editing the book so completely and so systematically that even George Kruszca, who was normally Margo’s Number One Yes-Man, had started to look disturbed.

  He stopped Elizabeth in the panelled corridor. He was a big wide-shouldered man with heavy-rimmed glasses and startlingly black brushcut hair. ‘Hey . . . that was rough,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Margo doesn’t care for anything I do; and she doesn’t care for me personally; and she doesn’t mind who knows it.’

  They walked along the corridor. George said, ‘You have to understand that Margo clawed her way up from the bottom and she resents anybody else who looks as if they’re doing it, too. As far as she is concerned, nobody else claws their way up after her. Especially if they’re pretty.’

  ‘I thought you were a Margophile.’

  George gave her a lackadaisical grin. ‘I’m a George-o-phile, if you want to know the truth. I’ve worked at Keraghty for six years and believe me I know the value of keeping my mouth shut and my head nodding. Or shaking, depending on the question. I have a wife and a baby to keep. What’s more important? Telling Margo that she’s an 18-carat bitch, or putting strained vegetables in my baby’s lunchbowl?’

  They reached the elevators. George prodded the button for 7, they stood back, waiting. ‘Let me give you a word of advice,’ he told her. ‘You’re clever, you’re educated, you’re creative, you’re likeable. You can be careless, I’ve seen it, not only in your editing, but in the way you deal with people. But experience should sort that out, and experience is what you need. So don’t let Margo bug you. Take whatever she dishes out, and think to yourself that you’re working for one of the hottest publishing houses in the country, and the longer you’re here, the more valuable you’re going to be.’

  ‘You’re a man of steel, George,’ said Elizabeth, and grinned.

  Margo Rossi came stalking on sharp high-heeled shoes along the corridor towards them. She was a tall, svelte woman of thirty-two with dark swept-back hair and Italianate good looks. She had hooded eyes and a long thin nose and the tightest mouth that Elizabeth had ever seen.

  ‘Lizzie,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to see you’re not sulking.’

  ‘I’m a little disappointed, I admit. But I never sulk.’

  ‘Good,’ said Margo, baring her considerable teeth. ‘That’s the first lesson of corporate survival. Admit your mistakes and never whine about them.’

  ‘And bow a lot,’ George murmured, under his breath.

  The elevator arrived. Margo said, ‘You go ahead, George, I want to talk to Lizzie for a moment.’

  He hesitated for a second, then stepped into the elevator and stood with his arms by his sides staring warningly at Elizabeth as the doors closed.

  Margo said, sharply, ‘I understand that Johnson Ward is one of your family friends.’

  ‘Bronco, yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Bronco? I never heard him called that before. Is that what you called him when you were a child?’

  Elizabeth said, ‘I don’t know. He asked me to call him Bronco, so I did.’

  ‘I knew that living out West would be the finish of him,’ said Margo. ‘I suppose you’re aware that he was paid a twenty-thousand dollar advance for his latest novel, due for delivery the week before Christmas? I called him yesterday and after a great deal of evasion he admitted that he hadn’t written more than six or seven pages.’

  ‘I knew he was having difficulty with it. It’s his brother Billy.’

  Margo blinked, in that intimidating slow-motion way of hers, her eyelashes sweeping downward like raven’s wings. It was a blink that meant, am I hearing this correctly, or do you wis
h to change your mind before I open my eyes again?

  ‘Billy is dead, Lizzie. He’s been dead for a very long time.’

  ‘Yes, but Bronco’s been sort of haunted. By memories, I guess. He’s always written slowly, and now he’s finding it even harder.’

  Margo said, ‘The difficulty I have with this, Lizzie, is that we have twenty thousand dollars invested in this book and Mr Keraghter is very keen to know when we might be expecting some kind of return on our investment. I don’t need Bitter Fruit all over again, but I wouldn’t mind a couple of hundred pages of sour grapes.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to him?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Do I want you to talk to him? No, I do not want you to talk to him. The last person in the world I need to have talking to him is somebody who sat on his knee and called him Bronco.’

  ‘Margo, I don’t think you really understand. This Billy thing is serious.’

  ‘You’re telling me it’s serious? I have to account for commissioning one of the most costly novels of 1951, and all I have is six pages of novel and a twenty-page letter of excuses.’

  Elizabeth looked down at the floor. ‘Actually, you don’t.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t what, dear?’

  ‘Actually you have only two-and-a-half lines of novel and a twenty-page letter of excuses. The lines are: “Pearson sat in the middle of a day with no shadow. He had women on his mind. Women and liquor, but mostly women.” ’

  Margo stared at Elizabeth and her mouth squeezed tighter and tighter. ‘That’s it? That’s all he’s written? And you knew?’

  ‘You’re his editor.’

  ‘You’re incredible! Jesus, you’re incredible! I should sack you on the spot.’

  Elizabeth turned her face aside. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be arrogant. He’s a friend of the family, that’s all, and I suppose that makes me more tolerant of him.’

  Margo visibly quivered. Then she said, in deliberately clear and measured tones, as if she were speaking to a halfwit, ‘Johnson Ward obviously needs help with his novel. I am his editor. I am going to take two weeks away and fly to Arizona to help him get his nose to the grindstone. If he fails to get his brain back together again, I shall make it my business to come back to New York with twenty thousand dollars of Mr Keraghter’s money.’

  She took a deep breath, and then she said, ‘While I am away, you will take over some of George’s editorial duties, and you will also edit Mary Harper Randolph’s new book, to the best of your ability. Although I was critical of the work you did on Reds Under The Bed, it did show promise, Lizzie, and some of your suggestions were almost usable.’

  Elizabeth bit her lip. Her mind kept trying to frame the next sentence. With all due respect, Johnson Ward needs somebody who believes him when he talks about Billy. With all due respect, Johnson Ward needs companionship and relaxation, not another Vita on his back. With all due respect, you have as much appreciation of the lazy, scandalous, vain, arrogant and heartbreaking world of Johnson Ward as you have about playing the slide trombone.

  With all due respect, you’re a bitch.

  She said none of these things. Instead, she said, ‘Yes, all right,’ and pressed the button for the elevator.

  ‘I’m relying on you, Lizzie,’ said Margo, in a steelspring, uptilting voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, and waited with her head bowed for the elevator to arrive.

  Chester angled his Cadillac into the steeply downsloping driveway of his house on Summit Ridge Drive, and pulled up under the Spanish-style lantern which stood outside the front steps. It was a chilly night, but brilliantly clear, and when Chester opened the door for her and she climbed out of the car, Laura could see the lights of Los Angeles sparkling all the way to the airport. She was wearing a tight white satin dress that Aunt Beverley had brought her for one of Sidney Skolsky’s parties. It left her shoulders bare, and so Aunt Beverley had lent her a mink wrap. Aunt Beverley said that someody seriously disreputable had given it to her, but she couldn’t remember whether it was Gaetano Lucchese or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  ‘Come inside,’ said Chester. ‘There’s somebody I want you to meet.’

  Laura almost lost her balance on the slope, and tip-tap-tip-tapped all the way down to the bushes at the bottom. ‘Your house isn’t straight!’ she giggled. ‘It’s all leaning over!’.

  Chester laughed and rescued her from the shrubbery. ‘I like to live on a hill,’ he told her, putting his arm around her and steering her back up to the steps. ‘I like to look down on people, from up above. And that’s what you’re going to be doing, only from higher up.’

  Laura managed to focus on his face by screwing up her left eye tight and peering with her right. ‘How high up?’ she wanted to know.

  Chester pointed directly to the night sky. ‘All the way up. You’re a star.’

  He helped her into the house, and across the marble floor of the hallway into his living-room. It was cream-painted, cream-carpeted, with huge cream leather couches. The walls were hung with oil-paintings of huge-breasted nudes, so vast that they looked as if they had been painted to be viewed from at least a half-mile away.

  The south-facing wall was all glass, and gave out onto a balcony, from which they could see the whole of Los Angeles stretched out beneath them.

  ‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ said Chester.

  Laura looked around. ‘You’re right, it is pretty humble, isn’t it?’ she slurred. ‘Come to that, you’re looking pretty frowsy yourself.’

  ‘Groucho Marx!’ said Chester. ‘You have a talent for comedy, too!’

  Laura collapsed into one of the sofas and let the mink wrap slide off her shoulders. ‘I have a talent for everything,’ she said.

  ‘Champagne?’ asked Chester, walking over to the cream-lacquered liquor cabinet.

  ‘More champagne?’ screamed Laura, and started giggling again.

  ‘Come on,’ Chester urged her, taking three tall flutes out of the cabinet, and a chilled bottle of Perrier-Jouët. ‘This is a celebration. This is a night for champagne!’

  ‘All right, then,’ Laura declared, far too loudly. ‘More champagne!’

  She felt wonderful. She felt as if she were floating. Chester had picked her up promptly at seven o’clock and driven her to the Players on Sunset Boulevard. The Players was a gourmet restaurant on a second-floor verandah, owned by Preston Sturges, the director. All his Oscar-winning friends liked to gather there: not only for their own company, but for the matchless food, especially the rare beef and the Caesar salads. Laura had eaten lobster, and drunk champagne, and drunk more champagne.

  All evening, Chester’s face had smiled at her over the candlelit tabletop like the waxing moon, and assured her she was a star. ‘When I said shortlist, I was just trying to be cautious, you know what I mean, in case you were disappointed. But look at you now! Shortlist, schmortlist. The camera loves you, I love you. The public’s going to love you.’

  Now she lay back on the sofa and everything swam around her and she knew that she was going to be famous. Ohhhh, Chester . . .’ she said, ‘Kiss me!’

  But Chester simply smiled and shook his head. ‘Come on, Laura, you’re a beautiful girl. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve seen in Hollywood in years. But I can’t kiss you. This is a professional relationship – director, star. How many people in Hollywood fall victim to scandal? How many actors and actresses jump into the sack with everybody they meet, practically? Far too many, that’s my opinion!’ He sat down beside her and clinked glasses. ‘They’re at it like rabbits, for God’s sake.’

  Laura frowned at him. ‘Mr Bunzum,’ she said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Mr Bunzum . . . he was a rabbit. Do you know what happened to him?’

  Chester stared at her suspiciously. ‘No,’ she said, thickly, his throat filled with phlegm.

  Laura sat up and pressed her nose flat against his, so that they were staring into each other’s eyes at point-blank range. ‘Mr
Bunzum was frozen to death. Frozen so solid that his arms fell off. Frozen so solid that his legs fell off.’

  She leaned away from him, so far back that he thought she was going to topple off the sofa. ‘Frozen so solid that his peter fell off!’

  She whacked the sofa and threw back her head and laughed and laughed. Chester pretended to laugh but he wasn’t laughing at all: he was too tense. All the same, watching her, he thought that she was perfect. Beautiful, perfect, her hair golden, her skin shining, her small breasts swelling the white satin dress.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody I want you to meet. Somebody important.’

  Laura squeezed the tip of her nose between finger and thumb to stop herself laughing. She let out a terrible snort, and laughed even more, but eventually she managed to calm herself down. ‘Somebody important? Somebody how important? More important than you? More important than me?’

  ‘Just . . . somebody very important. His name’s Raymond. You’ll like him a lot. He’s been thinking of putting some finance into Devil’s Elbow . . . quite a fair amount of finance . . . in which case – well, we can afford to have you play a starring role. Not exactly lead starring role, Shelly Summers has been cast for that, we have to have some established box-office names, after all. But “also starring”, and that’s a whole lot better than “forty-seventh floozie on the left” now isn’t it?’

  Laura stared at him wide-eyed. ‘I’m going to be “also starring?” Really?’

  Chester swept his hand across an imaginary movie screen. ‘Devil’s Elbow, starring Michael Grant and Shelly Summers, also starring Laura Buchanan, Mitch Forbes and Zachary Moskowitz.’

  ‘You’re kidding mee!’ she squealed.

  ‘I’m not kidding, I promise. But be nice to Raymond, okay? Raymond is the money man . . . if Raymond gets upset, we don’t get the extra finance. Then it’s bye-bye “also starring”.’ Chester tried to look tragic, without much success. ‘Not only that, it could be bye-bye Devil’s Elbow altogether.’

  Laura sat up and frowned at him. ‘Okay, Chester. This is my solemn-num oath. I shall be nice to Raymond.’