Liberty Silk (21 page)

‘Did you hear me, Lochlan?’

‘I heard you.’

She allowed him a moment to process the news, then turned to him with a tentative smile. ‘I know it’s happened sooner than we’d planned, but—’

‘Get rid of it,’ he said.

‘Get
rid
of it?’

‘I don’t have room for another baby in my life. Judy’s expecting again.’

‘
Judy?
How—’

‘You’re going to have to see a doctor.’

‘I know, but not for a few months yet. I can—’

‘Not that kind of doctor, you dumb broad. Use your loaf.’

‘
Lisa! Over here!
’

Turning automatically, she waited for the flash. Then: ‘You’re asking me to have an abortion?’

‘I’m not asking you, Lisa. I’m telling you. Because if you don’t, your career is over. Check the morals clause in your contract.’

‘My career? I don’t care about that! It’s you I care about – you and our baby.’

‘Who says it’s our baby?’

‘Of course it’s ours!’

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘Miss La Touche? Mr Kinnear? Can you turn and look out to sea?’ A snapper from
Silver Screen
was eyeballing them through his aperture. ‘Ahoy there!’

‘Ahoy there!’ she echoed, pointing towards the horizon.

‘There’s nothing to prove it’s mine,’ resumed Lochlan, following the direction of her gaze and speaking through pearly white teeth, like a ventriloquist. For the first time, Lisa noticed that the canines were prominent, lending him the appearance of Bela Lugosi in the Dracula film.

‘Whose could it be? You’re the only—’

‘Come on, sweetheart. We all play charades in this town. Don’t tell me you haven’t spent time in Ziggy’s office down on all fours?’

‘That’s disgusting!’

‘And a little bird tells me you’ve been seen out and about with Howard Hughes.’

‘
Ahoy there
, again!’

‘Ahoy there!’ they carolled.

‘I’ve heard he prefers oral,’ resumed Lochlan, sending the photographer a jaunty salute. ‘But I’m sure he wasn’t averse to giving your hot little hole a poke from time to time.’

Lisa couldn’t believe the filth that was pouring from the mouth of the man she loved. Who was this person? This wasn’t the man who had wooed and worshipped her, who had described his love for her as a bolt from the blue, the man whose kisses she had returned with such abandon.

‘Say cheese again, Miss La Touche,’ exhorted a grinning hyena. ‘We love cheese!’

‘Toss your hair!’ urged
Motion Picture
magazine.

‘Laugh!’ commanded
Screen Book
.

‘So, you don’t love me?’ Lisa’s voice was so faint she could barely hear herself.

‘Sweetheart,’ Lochlan told her, ‘this is the most cynical city in the world. It’s all charade. No-one – but
no-one
– means what they say in LA. You’ve lived here long enough to know that.’

‘Miss La Touche? One on your own, please.’

Lisa moved a little to her left, to oblige. Lochlan was right: she had lived here long enough to know that ‘Hollywood’s Happiest Husband’ was a lying cheat – as he smilingly reminded her when she rejoined him for more photographs.

‘Tomorrow the great cinema-going public will be overwhelmed with joy when they open the
Los Angeles Examiner
and find out that my beloved wife is expecting our second child. In their eyes, Lisa, I am a happily married man.’

‘So our baby means nothing to you?’

‘Your baby, Lisa, your problem. I will deny to hell and back that it’s anything to do with me, and the powers that be will support me, while
you
will be denounced as a strumpet gold-digger, the whore of Babylon. The Hays Office and the studio executives will see to it that you’re stripped naked and dragged kicking and screaming through every fanzine on the planet. If that’s what you want, go ahead and commit professional suicide. If not, then I suggest you go talk to Lana.’

‘Lochlan, you can’t mean this.’

‘I have never been more serious in my life. As I said, talk to Lana. She can tell you which backstreet quack will oblige.’ Abruptly, he disengaged. ‘OK, folks,’ he said, flashing his famous smile, ‘it’s time for me to rejoin my lady wife. And allow me to share a secret with you. Judy and I will be hearing the patter of tiny feet again in the not-too-distant future.’

A collective intake of breath met this pronouncement, and pencils scribbled faster in notebooks.

Lochlan winked. ‘I’m saying nothing else. Just pick up a copy of the
Examiner
tomorrow, and you can read all about it. Louella has the exclusive.’

The second-stringer shot him a resentful look, clearly miffed that she hadn’t got the scoop.

‘Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of your evening.’ With that Lochlan strolled off, pausing here and there to sign an autograph.

The spotlight no longer on her, Lisa stumbled down the steps that led to the gardens. Feeling her heels becoming mired in the sprinkler-soaked lawn, she tugged them off and veered towards the car park where her car was waiting. She was about to call out to the chauffeur who was sharing a smoke with a fellow driver, when she ran slap bang into Myra.

‘Where do think you’re going?’ demanded Myra.

‘I’m not well. I have to get home.’

Myra grabbed her wrist. ‘You’re not going anywhere, sweetie. This is a unique publicity opportunity, and you’re going to grab it with both hands.’

‘But I’m unwell – really unwell. I can’t face any more press tonight.’ Lisa realized that tears were streaming down her face.

‘If you had tertiary syphilis it would cut no dice,’ Myra told her crisply. ‘You’re a professional now, sweetie, not some spoilt princess. So get your royal British ass into the bathroom, wipe that mud off your heels, and do something with your face. The portrait’s being unveiled in five.’

The next morning Lisa awoke, and wished that she hadn’t. She wanted to sleep for ever; she craved oblivion. How could she have been so naïve, so
stupid
? How many people knew about her affair with Lochlan, and had been laughing up their sleeves at her all the time? How many of his friends had he boasted to about his conquest, in the changing room of the golf club or over a card game? What kind of unsavoury detail might he have gone into?

Lisa felt sick, and it wasn’t just down to her condition. She was sick with herself. Her ‘stolen moments’ with Lochlan now appeared to her as the shabbiest, most tawdry of her life. Oh, God! They’d made love in an alleyway once, and once in a public lavatory, and twice in a motel room where she knew the sheets hadn’t been changed, and many, many times on the rear seat of his car. Except it hadn’t been ‘making love’, Lisa knew now. Lochlan had been fucking her, and she’d allowed herself to be fucked.

She lay a while, curled with her arms wrapped round her tummy, postponing what she knew she had to do. Then, reaching for the phone, she dialled Lana Turner’s private number.

The story about a seventeen-year-old Lana being discovered in Schwab’s Soda Fountain sipping chocolate malted through a straw was – as Louella had told Lisa – a myth concocted by MGM. In truth, the original ‘Sweater Girl’ had been just fifteen-going-on-sixteen; she’d been discovered in the Top Hat Soda Shop across the road from Hollywood High, and she had been drinking a Coca-Cola because she couldn’t afford malted. Now Lana, at the age of twenty-two, was all grown up. She’d featured in half a dozen movies, been affianced to one man and married to another, and – as Lisa had inferred from Lochlan last night – had undergone that most terrifying test of endurance, now routine in Hollywood: an abortion.

Lisa had met her twice. The first time Lana had remained aloof and suspicious, clearly perceiving Lisa as a rival. But once it was established that Lisa was to be marketed as an archetypal English Rose and posed no threat, Lana’s attitude changed. She had publicly embraced Ziggy’s new star, and had even confided in the Powder Room at the Brown Derby (after several Manhattans) that her marriage to bandleader
du jour
Artie Shaw had been a complete mess. Lisa wondered if Artie had been responsible for the pregnancy that had been terminated.

As the phone rang, Lisa found herself desperately wondering what she might say. She could hardly mention the ‘A’ word; abortion was, after all, a criminal act. She wished she could spool back time like a cinema reel and go home to London and her grandparents, and her stalwart, Richard. She wished it were Dorothy on the other end of the phone line, not—

‘Lana speaking,’ Lana’s husky voice drifted over the receiver.

‘Hi there, Lana! It’s Lisa, Lisa La Touche.’ Lisa spoke with a confidence she did not feel. ‘You told me to get in touch if I needed help and, well . . . May I buy you lunch?’

‘I don’t eat lunch, Lisa. That’s how I keep my figure. But I’m happy to talk to you now.’

Lisa’s fake confidence evaporated. ‘This is difficult, Lana . . . I’m so sorry; I have a problem.’

‘This is Hollywood, sweetheart; we all have problems. I’m kept real busy with my own and Mr Mayer requires the pleasure of my company in thirty minutes, so if you want me to help you, you’d better come straight out with it.’

‘I’m pregnant.’

Lana gave a small, world-weary sigh, but evinced not the slightest shock. ‘Who’s the father?’

‘Lochlan Kinnear.’

‘I might have guessed it.’

‘It was
that
obvious?’

‘There are few surprises in Hollywood, darling. And Lochlan has done this before.’

If she’d had a glass in her hand, Lisa would have dashed it against the wall. ‘Oh! Oh, God how I hate him!’

‘You and half a dozen others.’

‘I’ve been so stupid – so naïve!’

‘We were all naïve once, Lisa, but you grow up fast here.’

In the background, Lisa heard a voice calling. There was a muffled response as Lana put her hand over the receiver, then resumed the conversation in brisker tones. ‘OK. Let’s cut to the chase. You know Lochlan won’t leave his wife. That means you have two choices. Get Ziggy to sort you out with a lavender marriage—’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A lavender marriage. Haven’t you heard the expression before?’

‘No.’

‘Ziggy will get his hands on a faggot for you: a man you can marry without sex being part of the deal. That means you’ve a bona fide father for the baby and you can play-act at being happy families.’

‘I couldn’t do that!’

‘Which brings us to option number two. I can give you an address, a private house downtown. It ain’t the Ritz, but if you won’t consider an arranged set-up it’s the only option available to you – unless you want to end up on the streets. Do you have a pen and paper handy?’

‘Yes.’

Lana dictated an address; it was in an insalubrious area downtown.

‘Do you know what the . . . procedure involves?’ asked Lisa.

‘Yeah.’ Over the phone line, Lisa heard a sound as of fingernails drumming a tattoo on a hard surface. ‘I have . . . a friend who had it done. You’ll have a fluid injected into your cervix and be told to rest for an hour. Then you’re advised to go home and drink gallons of coffee until you pass the foetus.’

‘Is it painful?’

‘Is it painful.
Is
it painful.’ A brusque inhalation told Lisa that Lana had lit up a cigarette. ‘Do you suffer from period cramps?’ she asked.

‘Sometimes.’

‘OK. Imagine your worst period ever and multiply it by ten – by a hundred. In my – in my friend’s case, she thought she was going to die. She went through excruciating pain for twenty-four hours before calling the quack for help. Without anaesthetic, without so much as an aspirin, he scraped her out. She had to stifle the screams with a washcloth. There was blood everywhere. My friend felt as if her insides were being ripped out before she went unconscious. It took her a long time to recover, even though she was young and strong. As young and strong as I am.’ Lisa heard Lana take another long draw of her cigarette. ‘As young and strong as I am,’ she repeated, and Lisa knew that of course there was no ‘friend’, that this story was Lana’s own.

‘I don’t have much choice, then,’ she said.

‘We none of us do. It’s a man’s world. Not even Louella and Hedda could stand up to the might of bastards like Louis B. Mayer.’

‘Lana! Your car’s here!’

The voice in the background was over-enunciated and louder than necessary: clearly a cue for Lana to end the conversation.

‘Coming,’ she called.

‘Thank you so much for your help, Lana,’ said Lisa.

‘You’re welcome. Whatever you decide to do, I hope it works out for you.’

Lisa put the phone down and looked at the contact details she had scribbled down. Then she folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into the address book she had brought with her from home, a book patterned with forget-me-nots that contained the names of dozens of people from the past, people she knew she would never see again.

She started to turn the pages. Rajendra, her Indian schoolfriend, had drawn hearts around her name, and one of the Kylemore girls had done that thing of adding ‘Connemara, Galway, Ireland, Europe, The World, The Universe’. Some of the names she’d filed meant nothing to her, and some were brand new entries: her make-up man, her dermatologist, the secretary of her fan club. And there, under ‘R’, was, in a nondescript, roundish hand, the name of her cousin Róisín from Ireland, who was married now to a D’Arcy, or a de Courcy maybe – one of the more common Connemara names, Lisa couldn’t remember which.

Róisín! Lisa hadn’t thought of her cousin in years. She remembered a ruddy-cheeked, laughing girl with a pronounced Irish accent; she remembered the family mimicking her own posh voice; she remembered playing ‘Mammies’, she and Róisín, with a rag dolly and a knitted thing that could have been either a cat or a bear. Because Róisín was the older cousin, she’d always bagged the dolly, and Lisa had had to make do with the knitted thing; but when the babbies were swaddled in bits of flannel it didn’t make any difference. They were burped and given medicine and put to bed without supper, which gave the mammies more time to make mud pies and shoo away the hens.

Lisa shut the address book and turned her attention to her mail. She wanted something to distract her from the image of the knitted thing that had been her baby: she was scared she might dream about it tonight.