But Frederick wanted that soup. He needed it.
I’m stronger than Ben, he thought. Younger. I can take it from him.
No! What was happening to him? Could an empty belly really turn him into an animal?
A fragment of Latin came back to him. Deus impeditio esuritori nullus. No god is an impediment to a hungry man. I stopped myself this time, Frederick thought, but what will happen next time? When will the animal in me take over the man?
Ben got to his feet, setting aside the bucket. More than half of the soup remained. For a moment Frederick’s heart soared.
“Back in a spell,” was all Ben said, and he walked around the corner of the warehouse, carrying his spoon.
The second he was out of sight, Frederick snatched up the bucket. It smelled like heaven. He reached his hand in to scoop some out . . . and stopped.
Then he set the bucket down, the soup untouched, and started to stalk resolutely away from the camp.
“Where you off to, mister?” Ben called as he came back around the side of the warehouse. “Here, I washed off the spoon for you. Eat your share while it’s hot. That’s the worst of being a gentleman of the road, ain’t it? When I strike it rich, first thing I’ll do is buy another spoon.” He laughed, then doubled over into a cough. “Won’t that be livin’ high on the hog?” he gasped as soon as he caught his breath.
As he ate, Frederick knuckled away the tears. He didn’t want Ben to see and start calling him “youngster” again.
SEVEN
Lulu Kelly” Veronica all but shrieked as the big black car pulled away from the Ambassador, carrying Lucille to her first role. “Irish but not too, cute but not too, lady of the evening but not too. Short, snappy, memorable, will look great in every typeface known to man.” She pulled a compact out of her clutch and held up the mirror to Lucille’s face. “Lucille, I’d like you to meet Lulu Kelly, It Girl and latest thing.” Veronica’s forehead crumpled in a sympathetic frown, and she shook her head. “So much work to be done. And really, we shouldn’t leave it all for the studio makeup artists, no matter what David says. Lucky for you I carry an emergency kit with me at all times. Here, hold perfectly still.”
Lucille—Lulu now—watched, cross-eyed, as Veronica closed on her with a vampiric grin, pressing her head back firmly against the seat with one hand and advancing on her eyebrows with a pair of brass tweezers.
“Ouch!” Lulu gasped as the junior publicist plucked out the first hair with a brisk yank.
“Beauty is pain, darling,” Veronica said. “Which is why I opt for plainness.”
“You’re not—” Lulu began, but the brusque publicist cut her off.
“Okay, so I’m easy enough on the eyes,” Veronica admitted, “but I don’t make my money from my face and figure, so I’m not about to torture myself any more than is absolutely necessary to keep people from laughing and pointing when I walk down the street. I fluff my hair, invest in a decent skirt suit, and I pass muster. You, on the other hand, must look eighteen for the next thirty years, come hell or high water. You must submit to the treadmill, the knife, the monkey gland—whatever it takes. Poor you.”
Lulu thought Veronica looked like she meant it.
“Ouch!”
“A sacrifice on the altar of Hollywood,” Veronica said kindly. “Get used to it.”
Two dozen “ouches” later, Veronica proclaimed herself satisfied. “Let me darken them up a bit, or the studio might be tempted to wax them out and paint on black caterpillars.” She dusted on some fawn-colored powder. “Let’s see . . . What else can we do in another half mile?” She dug in her reticule and clutched something Lulu couldn’t see. Suddenly, she pointed out the far window. “Will you look at that—it’s Gary Cooper on that street corner!”
Lulu, starstruck, whipped her head around, and almost at the same instant felt a gentle tug and a metallic snip. When she turned back to Veronica, Lulu’s neck felt cool, her head . . . lighter.
Veronica cranked the window open and tossed two feet of silvery hair into the car’s slipstream, where it writhed for an instant like a flurry of snow before falling into the gutter.
“Sorry, dear. It’s just that some girls take it so hard they start to cry in the hairdresser’s chair. Not a good first impression, and makes eye bags that even an army of cucumbers can’t cure. Tresses are terribly unchic. Most of the time they’ll want you in a bob, and if they need long hair for a period number, you’ll have a wig—for which, believe me, you’ll want short hair.”
Lulu’s hand reached up to feel the place where her long silky hair most emphatically wasn’t, and felt her eyes get hot.
“No!” Veronica told her sharply. “You will not cry.” Then, to Lulu’s shock, she pinched her, hard, on the thigh. “Sorry. A new pain to make you forget about the old one for a while. You’ll learn to do it to yourself before long. Just keep it where the camera can’t see—bite your tongue or dig your nails into your palms.” She cocked her head and sighed. “Lulu—Lucille—are you sure this is what you want to do? It’s a wonderful life, for some actresses, but a terrible life for all actresses. You could just go home. . . .”
“I can’t,” Lulu said after a long silence. “The price I paid to get here was too high.”
“Oh, well, I could always loan you a few bucks.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“Right,” Veronica said sadly. “It never is.”
Lulu’s first gig was a blur of boredom and terror. She could barely take in the mountain of paperwork she’d just signed, and now she was surrounded by people and bustle and lights that swiveled around to periodically blind her. “We’ll have to do something about your accent—which admittedly isn’t as bad as some. Don’t talk if you can help it,” Veronica whispered to her as she sat her down in an obscure corner of the beehive-active studio. “Elocution lessons can start tomorrow, but for now, don’t say anything except whatever lines they give you. They’ll assume you’re just trying out different accents and coach you until you find the right one. I wonder what you’ll be playing. I see top hats—that could be anything from a contemporary opera scene to a Victorian street scene. Oh, there’s another client of mine. Back in a jiffy.”
Left alone in her corner, Lulu watched a slim, hatchet-faced older woman declaim about her erring niece as a giant camera hovered like a glaring watchful insect close to her head and a trio of overhead lights illuminated and shadowed the crags of her face. Not everyone has to look eighteen forever, Lulu thought. The crew took a break so an assistant could dab off the character actress’s sheen of sweat. Then they did the same lines again, eight or ten times. It was not nearly as glamorous as Lulu had imagined.
At last the director decided the actress had performed her few lines acceptably, and the scene changed. Crew members rolled in brick walls on wheels, a fog machine began to gasp out heavy mist that hovered at ankle level, and the male lead emerged from some secret luxurious Xanadu, impeccably dressed, obviously made-up . . . and with the imprint of scarlet lips on the side of his throat.
“Extras to their places!” someone called, and a slew of picturesque poor shambled onto the scene. There was a rather dapper shoeshine boy in knickers, a beggar in artfully torn rags, two pretty women dressed in black, warming hands in fingerless gloves at a chestnut vendor’s cart.
“Where’s the flower seller?”
Lulu looked around with everyone else. No one appeared.
“Clock’s ticking! Find her, or find someone else.”
Just then Veronica dashed up. “That’s you, darling! Hurry!” She hauled Lulu to her feet and escorted her to the incongruous street scene. “Here she is. I only just found out what her part is, and they told me she’d be shooting much later in the day. Isn’t she perfect?”
The director looked her up and down quickly. The lead actor looked her up and down too—much more slowly.
“They put her in a ratty enough dress,” the director said, squinting at the cotton frock Lulu had brought f
rom home, hand-washed and lovingly mended, if admittedly faded and ragged. “But I don’t think it’s Victorian.” He considered a moment. “What the hell—the audience won’t know the difference. Get her some flowers and a little dewy shine on her cheeks and eyelids.” He finally made eye contact with Lulu. “Do you have your lines?” She shook her head, and he gave a huge sigh. “Just go like this.” He clasped an imaginary posy, batted his eyelashes, and said in the worst cockney imaginable, “ ‘Oi beg yer pardon, sir, but oi’ve got loverly violets fer the missus. Can ye spare a ha’penny, kind sir?’ Like that, with big eyes like an angel about to fall. Got it? And . . . action!”
She said her lines, the leading man patted her on the head and gave her a golden sovereign, and her job was done in one take.
“That’s a great story to tell,” Veronica said as she collected her charge. “I know it’s just because the director is out of time, and your scene will probably end up on the cutting-room floor anyway, but still, one take on your very first scene—impressive.”
“That was acting?” Lulu asked.
“Yup, that’s all there is to it. Follow directions and look pretty. Well, maybe there is more to it, but that’s enough for now. The last thing a new girl needs is thespian pretensions. The theater this is not. Now, off to Starlet University.”
Lulu felt like she was floating after the success of her first performance. She had no idea whether she’d actually done well, but everyone seemed pleased with her, and that was enough to have her on cloud nine.
Veronica must have forgotten that Lulu’s “costume” was actually the shabby frock she’d arrived in, her humble best. She hustled her down a hallway labeled WARDROBE and handed her over to the care of one of the wardrobe mistresses, who proceeded to strip off Lulu’s clothes. Despite Lulu’s protests, she even tugged off her shabby cotton drawers.
“Tch,” the woman said through a mouthful of pins. “They didn’t have to make you so authentically poor. The audience won’t see your undergarments. Directors!” she spat in derision, and tossed Lulu’s drawers in the trash. “Where are your own clothes, miss?” she asked.
Before Lulu could answer, Veronica came in with a pale lavender silk chemise and a smart lemon-colored skirt suit with oversized onyx buttons down both the jacket and the skirt. “Some assistant moved your things to another room.” She rolled her eyes to the wardrobe mistress as if assistants were the bane of both of their existences.
“But, Veronica, I . . . ,” Lulu began.
“I know, you don’t want to wear something so crumpled. But it will never happen again, I’m sure.” She raised her eyebrows at the wardrobe mistress, who nodded emphatically. Some assistant was about to get severely chewed out. “Hurry up. We have an appointment with Mrs. Wilberforce in twenty minutes.”
This seemed to impress the wardrobe mistress, and she hurried Lulu into her new suit. Veronica handed over a pair of black pumps. They fit loosely on Lulu’s feet, and she had to shuffle as her publicist took her arm and led her out the door before her honesty could quite make it out of her mouth.
As soon as they exited the studio, Lulu blurted out, “But these aren’t my clothes!”
“Oh, girls borrow from wardrobe all the time. As long as you don’t hit up cold storage for the furs, or try to smuggle jewelry, no one minds too much. We’ll return it all once you’ve had a chance to go shopping. Once we’ve had a chance, I mean. No offense, but I don’t think I’ll trust you alone in a boutique with a wad of bills. You’re wiggling like you never had silk against your skin before.”
“I haven’t,” Lulu admitted. “At least, not against that part of my body.” She told Veronica how her mother ran a small-scale laundry for garments as fine as the lavender confection she was wearing now.
“You have come a long way,” Veronica said with a whistle. “I wonder . . . No, people never like the truth out here, no matter how admirable it is. Do me a favor, and until we concoct your story, don’t tell anyone about your mother’s laundry, or anything about where you come from. Be silent and mysterious.”
Lulu thought she could be silent. She didn’t have nearly as much confidence in her ability to be mysterious.
One of the Lux cars drove them to a Spanish-style house with brick-colored tile and purple and pink bougainvillea crawling over the walls. A crisply dressed maid opened the door. “Mrs. Wilberforce is expecting you,” she said with a curtsy and no smile.
“Go on,” Veronica said. “I’ll be back in two hours to take you to lunch and do some shopping. Then tonight you’ll have your first acting class. Have fun!”
There was something in the way she said those last words that made Lulu suspicious. But when the maid led her through the house to an elegantly appointed parlor, she found only a comfortable-looking elderly woman in a floral silk dress cut to show off an ample bosom and slender ankles but disguise a rather too-full midsection. In one hand she held a pair of gold wire spectacles on top of a long, jewel-encrusted handle. She placed this to her eyes and examined Lulu casually.
“Two hours,” she proclaimed, “will not be nearly enough.”
Then the torture began.
It began innocently enough. “Stand up straight,” Mrs. Wilberforce said in a voice of quiet authority.
Lulu did. Or at least, she thought she did.
“It resembles nothing more than a jellyfish. Has it no spine? Again!”
Lulu took a deep breath and did her best to elongate herself. “Now it looks like a constipated cobra. The cords in its neck are bulging. Relax. Again!”
She relaxed too much, and the whip came out.
It was a riding crop, about two and a half feet long. Without warning, Mrs. Wilberforce snatched it from a vase full of peacock feathers and with a smart flick of her wrist slapped Lulu on the hip. Lulu shrieked and jumped away.
“It will not flinch,” Mrs. Wilberforce said sternly. “It will do as it is told if it wants to be a lady. Stand up straight!”
Lulu tried, and failed, for half an hour, being compared to various invertebrates and receiving a good many taps with the riding crop, which, while they might not actually hurt, stung her pride nonetheless.
Eventually, though Mrs. Wilberforce still wasn’t satisfied, Lulu was allowed to walk instead of simply stand. “It will glide,” the old woman said. “It will not wiggle its hips like a common trollop. It may be a trollop, but when I am finished, it will at least be an uncommon one.”
Mrs. Wilberforce put a book on Lulu’s head. Lulu was familiar with this posture-perfecting technique. She had once seen Mrs. Fahntille strut across her bedroom wearing a volume of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and nothing else.
But then Mrs. Wilberforce added another book, and another—all large, heavy volumes—until Lulu thought her neck would snap.
“I can’t walk with these on my head,” she said, the first words of protest she’d dared to utter. “I can hardly stand with them on!”
Mrs. Wilberforce glared at her. “It will stand, and it will walk. Again!”
Lulu took a tentative step. The books slid off and landed in a heap on the floor. Mrs. Wilberforce grabbed Lulu’s hand and slapped her across the palm with the riding crop.
Lulu gasped, and tears came to her eyes. No one had ever hurt her before. Not on purpose, anyway. “I’m trying my best,” she moaned, rubbing the red mark on her palm.
“Its best, it says? Does it know that there are thousands of young women arriving in this town every month? One of them will be a star. Nine hundred and ninety-nine of them will go home or end up in the gutter. Its best is not nearly good enough. It must aspire to my best if it wants to survive.”
Mrs. Wilberforce used the supple end of the crop to lift up Lulu’s desolate chin. “Did you think being a star would be easy?” she asked, her voice softening. “No great thing can be accomplished without hard work.”
Why am I putting up with this? Lulu asked herself. I don’t have to tolerate this kind of treatment. I can leave anytime.
Mrs. Wilberforce cleared her throat and slapped the crop against her own thigh. Her momentary softness was gone. She placed a single book on Lulu’s head. “Now! Head up, back straight, chest out . . . No, not so much. It is not a pouter pigeon. And . . . walk!”
With fifteen minutes left, Lulu managed to keep three books on her head. Mrs. Wilberforce still said she walked like an adolescent giraffe, but at last the maid announced that Veronica had come to collect her.
“Good-bye, my dear,” Mrs. Wilberforce said at the end, all pleasantness now. “I look forward to seeing you again on Wednesday. I have recommended you attend three times per week. Next time we will learn how to smile.”
Lulu managed a pained grimace. Mrs. Wilberforce closed her eyes briefly. “So much work to do . . .”
When Veronica met her at the door, Lulu gave her an accusatory look.
“I know. I know,” Veronica said with an apologetic shrug. “I could have warned you. But in this business, it’s better to have some things sprung on you. Otherwise you might run away screaming.”
EIGHT
From that moment of openhearted generosity that both broke and mended Frederick’s heart, he and Ben were friends and brothers of the road. They cast their lot together as they traveled, share and share alike. “Through the fat times and the lean,” Ben said as he spit on his hand and offered it to Frederick to shake to seal the deal.
Girl About Town Page 5