Movie Shoes (20 page)

Maurice was told not to move. Jane was to take a few steps toward David. In the first scene with the creatures only Ella was to be used. While Jane’s-Mr. Browne was explaining to Maurice what he wanted him to do and what he wanted him to feel, David whispered to Jane that it should be all right. Full of the milk Jane had given her, Ella had gone to sleep and most likely would not know that she had been in Maurice’s arms.

It was decided not to disturb Ella by rehearsing her. David pretended to give her to Maurice, and Maurice pretended to take her; but the real giving and taking waited till the cameras were rolling.

Jane had nothing to do in that scene except look interested; that was no trouble at all because she was. Her eyes on Ella, she watched David cross to Maurice and very softly put the lamb in his arms. Ella was either a light sleeper or not as fast asleep as David thought, for the second Maurice touched her she opened her eyes and on seeing him leaped out of his arms and out of the picture. Jane’s-Mr. Bowne said quietly, “Cut” they would start the scene again. They started it four times, but it was no use: Ella just would not be touched by Maurice. It was a new experience for Jane to see a scene being shot over and over again because somebody else was doing it wrong.

“I bet Maurice blames Ella,” she thought. “But I know just how Ella feels, and I don’t blame her at all.

Presently the lights were switched off, and Jane’s-Mr. Bowne and David had a long talk. At the end Mr. Phelps came up to Jane.

“David thinks the lamb’ll come to you. Mr. Browne’ll try it that way.”

Another rehearsal took place. As Jane heard David’s pipes, she was to drop her rake and go sit on the grass beside Colin while he said his line: “It’s Dickon Oh’ I hope the creatures will like me.”

That scene went badly. Maurice was furious that Jane was to hold Ella.

“Come on said Maurice,” Jane’s-Mr. Browne said. “You said those lines at the first take. Now all the life’s gone out of them.”

Maurice made an effort, and after a few tries, because he, really was a good actor; he got the lines fairly right, but never as well as he had the first time. The moment the lights were switched off he ran to his mother, his face scarlet with temper.

“Talk to Browne, Mommy. I’m the star of this picture. People will like to see me holding a Iamb. It will make a lovely still. I won’t have that Jane holding her. It’s my scene. Mine. Mine. Mine.”

Mrs. Tuesday went to Jane’s-Mr. Browne.

“Little Maurice is upset. He was so looking forward to cuddling the lamb; besides, it would have made a sweetly pretty still. I do hope you won’t disappoint him; he is such a highly strung little boy and so easily upset.”

Jane’s-Mr. Browne was used to Mrs. Tuesday. In every picture there was some place where she thought Maurice did not have enough to do and so might be upset. When he could, Mr. Browne gave in to her but not, of course if it spoiled his picture. This time he couldn’t give in because nobody could make Ella do what she didn’t want to do. He explained this to Mrs. Tuesday, but Mrs. Tuesday was not satisfied.

“I shall have a talk with Mr. Bettelheimer. My boy’s the most wonderful little boy Bee Bee studios have ever had under contract, and I won’t have him slighted.”

Jane’s-Mr. Browne told Mr. Phelps to call Jane and Maurice onto the set.

“I guess Mrs. Tuesday needn’t worry any,” he said. “My bet is Ella won’t go to Jane either. In that case we won’t have the lamb in the picture.”

Jane had said nothing since she had been told she was to hold Ella. The hairdresser fussed with her hair, and the makeup woman mopped her face with a tissue; but she never opened her mouth. She stood with her eyes shut, clasping her pipes. When Bee asked if anything was wrong, she only shook her head, and Bee supposed she was playing some game. But it was not a game. Jane was using her will. Over and over again she was repeating to herself, “If Ella comes to me, I’ve begun to learn magic. She’s got to come to me. She’s got to. She’s
got
to.”

There were no words in the first scene with Ella. As David came slowly toward her, Jane could hear her on beating. Ella was not asleep, and David was stroking her. David came nearer and nearer. The cameras were rolling, the lights blazing down on the garden. Then David was beside her. He knelt and gave her Ella. For a second it was uncertain whether Ella would stay. Then Jane, stroking her gently, whispered a line that was not in the script. “Stay with me, darling. Stay with me.”

Jane’s-Mr. Browne said, “Cut,” and mopped his forehead. Mr. Phelps grinned.

“If you make pictures for the next fifty years, you’ll never get anything more natural than that.” He broke off. “What’s happening?’

What was happening was that Maurice was having a screaming fit. As the cameras stopped rolling, he threw himself on the ground and kicked and howled.

Because of Maurice’s hysterics, the other scenes with Ella and the creatures had to wait until the next day. Bee took Jane home in a taxi. Jane was so quiet Bee asked if anything was wrong. Jane looked at her, her eyes shining.

“Nothing. It’s been the most beautiful day of my whole life. I had all that time with David’s creatures, and none of them minded me. Ella lay in my arms, but I never thought I’d hold her in the picture.”

Bee had felt very awkward while Maurice had hysterics. She had kept out of Mrs. Tuesday’s way, but Mrs. Norstrum had shaken her head and said it was unlucky, that Mrs. Tuesday might go on being upset for days.

“I’m rather sorry about that, darling. It’s nearly the end of the picture, and we don’t want Mrs. Tuesday or Maurice getting upset.”

Jane
gave a pleased wriggle.

“I do. His screaming was the most beautiful part of the most beautiful day.”

What Happened in February

Peaseblossom had to hover about Rachel’s and Jane’s door to stop them from talking at night; but they often whispered all the same, and in the mornings there was unending chatter from the time they woke until breakfast. It was something new for the sisters to have so much to say to each other. Of course, doing quite different things all day made a difference, but it was not only that. Jane had been rather like a frostbitten rosebud, all tightly stuck together, and now, little by little, her petals were uncurling. There never seemed to be enough time to say everything. Rachel heard every detail of the crisis when Jane held Ella and Maurice had hysterics. She heard all about the grown-ups’ discouraged talk about Maurice’s hysterics, and John’s saying to Jane, “Don’t gloat, you little horror. If all I hear is true, Maurice had plenty to gloat over in the first two or three weeks they were making the picture.”

Rachel, though, was entirely on Jane’s side.

“Oh, I wish I’d been there! I’d love to have seen how Maurice looked.”

One Saturday night Jane heard something from Rachel that no one else knew. Rachel had a new ambition. At Manoff’s Saturday class the pupils had been shown steps from a new ballet Manoff was going to use in his repertoire. It was a ballet about birds. The corps de ballet had an entrance as birds; they did little pecking steps like rather scared birds hopping across a street. Somehow the class could not get what Manoff wanted but Rachel, in the back row, got it exactly, for at Manoff’s Saturdays she felt herself rather like a scared bird hopping across a street.

“I was just holding the attitude at the end, when, imagine, Monsieur Manoff said, ‘Little friend of Posy’s at the back, come here.’”

Jane despised humility. “Doesn’t he know your name yet?”

“Goodness, no, of course not. I couldn’t be lower than I am. Most of the pupils belong to his ballet, but the grandest people come as well. Dancers from all the film companies and even some people who have come from places like New York and Chicago for refresher courses. Apart from being a marvelous dancer himself, he’s the best teacher in the world.

“I bet you’re better than lots of them. What did he say when he called you?”

Rachel hung out of bed, leaning toward Jane and speaking in an awed whisper.

“He said, this little is better than any of you. Show them, my child, I had forgotten to curtsey when I came to him, but I remembered then and did a big one, saying, ‘Maître,’ the way we do; then I did the steps.”

“Well? What happened after that?” Jane wanted to know.

“Didn’t anyone clap or anything?”

Rachel was shocked. “At a Manoff’s Saturday? Of course not! Only it made me think of something. When Posy Fossil was younger than I am, she danced for Monsieur Manoff and he told her she was to come to his school at Szolva and he would make her into a beautiful artiste. Oh Jane suppose, just suppose, he was to say to me, ‘You will stay with me and I will make you into a beautiful artiste!’”

Jane sat up. “Stay here? All alone when we go home?”

“It would be awful, but I would if he asked me. Imagine being like Posy someday. You can’t think what it’s like when she dances. Even all those grand pupils stop talking if she dances alone. She’s got all the things: precision, elevation, and something extra. When she holds an attitude or moves from one step to another, it’s like butter melting in a saucepan; it’s all soft. I can’t explain.”

Jane lay down again. Though she would not have said so, she thought Rachel marvelous. On the few occasions when she had seen her dance, she had been very proud of her. Naturally Rachel did not know this, for Jane’s way of showing she felt proud of her was to be rude about her dancing.

“I don’t think butter looks nice melting. Would Dad let you stay?”

“I think so. You know how he feels about our working at our own things.”

“If the Bee Bee studios wanted to put me under contract, Dad wouldn’t let them. He told me that when I got the part of Mary.”

“That’s because it’s not your thing. Besides, you couldn’t stay here alone. If Monsieur Manoff let me join his company, I think I could live in the same places as Posy. Either Nana or Aunt Sylvia travels with her. Imagine the glory of living with Posy!”

Peaseblossom opened the door. Both Rachel and Jane shut their eyes. Peaseblossom stopped for a moment, then shut the door. Rachel and Jane raised their heads from their pillows and listened until they heard her go downstairs.

“What I was going to say,” Rachel whispered, “is that you wouldn’t want to go on in films even if they wanted you, would you?”

Jane could not let that pass. She did not want to act in pictures for the rest of her life, but she did very much want the company to want her to. So she said, “I wouldn’t mind if David and
all
the animals and birds were m the picture.”

“Even then you wouldn’t. You’d be bored. You’d want Chewing-gum. It’s different for me. My dancing isn’t something that’s happened in California; it’s been always.”

Jane did not answer that because she was asleep.

It was a few days after this talk that John had his bit of good news He had been working on a book ever since the first day he arrived at Aunt Cora’s, but he had taken time off to write a short story. He sent it to the
Saturday Evening
Post,
and when the news came that the magazine had bought it, he was like somebody who finds the first primrose after a hard winter.

“This deserves something special,” John announced. “What going away for a weekend of sight-seeing? We could combine it with your birthday Tim.”

Tim bounced with excitement. “Death Valley? You did promise Death Valley.”

Rachel turned pink.

“I can’t. I can’t go. I can’t miss a Manoff’s Saturday.”

John looked less cheerful. “Not even for once? Just as a celebration? I know old Jane can’t come, but I had hoped to
have you.”

Rachel hated to seem mean about it, but there was so little
time left. If Monsieur Manoff was to take her as a pupil, she must not miss a moment of his classes. She came to John and rubbed her cheek on his arm.

“I’m sorry, Dad, but I can’t.”

John raised her chin.

“All right, puss. If you can’t, you can’t. It’ll be just be Peaseblossom, Tim, and myself. Unless you’d like to come, Cora.”

Aunt Cora turned quite pale at the thought.

“Death Valley! No, thank you. Besides, even if there weren’t Tim’s party to fix, I’d be so nervous something was going wrong I’d be as fidgety as a coot the whole trip.”

John had not expected or, to be quite honest, wanted Aunt Cora to say she would go, and his mind had skipped ahead of her answer.

“I wish you could come, Bee. It’ll be no fun going without you.”

Peaseblossom, trying not to look like a martyr, said, “You shall go, Bee. I’ll take charge of Jane at the studio. I shall enjoy it. “

Though nobody had ever guessed it, Aunt Cora was longing for a day at the studio. Already several of her friends had asked if she had been up to see her niece working at the studio. So now she said, trying to make it sound as though she were being noble, “There’s no need for anybody to miss the trip. I’ll take Jane to the studio.”

At first it was planned that Bee should take Aunt Cora with her to the studio on the day before she left for Death Valley, but then John had a better idea. He said they all had been saying they wanted to see Jane at work; what about Bee’s getting permission for the whole family to go up on Friday afternoon?

The family and Aunt Cora arrived early for the afternoon’s shooting. Jane’s-Mr. Browne was there. He told Mr. Phelps to take Rachel and Tim around and show them the lights, sound apparatus, and cameras while he himself escorted Aunt Cora and John around the painted garden.

It was now April in the garden. In a Technicolor film there are always brighter skies and more flowers than there would be in real life John stood at the top of the steps and let out a low whistle.

“My word! ‘Oh to be in England, not that April’s there,’ in glorious Technicolor

Aunt Cora was not good at quotations and had come to look not at gardens but at film stars. She smiled politely at the garden.

“Very pretty. I shall go and find Bee. She wants to introduce me to everybody.”

Left alone, John and Jane’s Mr. Browne walked down the steps into the garden. John said, “Had a bad time with Jane, didn’t you?”

“Terrible. I guess those days when. I had to get her to look pleasant were about the worst I’ll, ever live through.”

“Well it’s nearly over.”

“You’ll be surprised when you see her on the screen. They’ve been working hard in
the cutting room because if we need a retake it’ll have to be done before you leave next month.
I’m glad you’re taking Jane home. I’ll bet when the big shots see the final version of this, they’ll want Jane under contract. What a fate! She’d play bad-tempered girls for the next four or five years, and some poor devil would have to direct her, but not me. No, sir, not twice!”

John grinned.

“You needn’t lose any sleep over her. She’ll be on the
Mauretania
next month. Mind you if I thought she would like it, and she had an offer, I’d arrange somehow for her stay. But she’d hate it, bless her. So would I. We’ve had a glorious time here, I’m not planning to leave one of my children behind as a souvenir of our visit.”

Rachel and Tim had a very interesting afternoon. Everybody made a fuss over them. Rachel was extraordinarily pretty, and Tim nice-looking and had very good manners.

One of the electricians said, “I’ll bet those two little birds came out of a different hatching from the one that gave us Jane.”

And that, in different words, was what everybody was saying. Luckily it was a day when Mickey was in the picture, so Jane was in a very good mood and never noticed that people were talking about Rachel and Tim. Also, she was having a sniff of the grandeur she had always wanted. Rachel,
Aunt Cora, and Peaseblossom were very impressed by her dressing room and by the way the hairdresser and makeup woman attended to her.

“Isn’t Jane important?” Rachel whispered to Bee.

Bee was by now used to the studio.

“Not really. It looks grand, but it happens to them all.”

During the afternoon a camera man took several stills of them all, some with Jane and some alone.

“May as well have some good pictures of all the family.” Jane’s-Mr. Browne said to John.

Very early the next morning the family in great excitement set off for Death Valley, though it was miserable leaving Rachel and Jane behind. John had decided with Bee not to tell Jane where they were spending the night because it would be just what she would most enjoy. They were planning to spend Saturday and Sunday nights in Yosemite National Park; that would give them all Sunday to see the park, particularly the bears that lived there.

“Poor Jane,” Tim said. “She would have taken her pipes and played them to the bears.”

Bee laughed. “That’s the first thing which has consoled me for leaving Jane behind. If the noise I’ve heard coming out of her pipes is what she would play to bears, I
think they’d eat the lot of us.”

Jane had behaved very well. She came down to the front door with Rachel in her dressing gown to wave good-bye to the family, and though she hated seeing them go off without her, she did not look a bit black-doggish.

“Splendid of Jane,” Peaseblossom said to John. “She’s more disciplined than one would think.”

“Whatever else may be held against old Jane,” John answered, “I never knew her to go back on anything. We warned her that if she played Mary, she would miss seeing all the lovely things Rachel and Tim would see, and she has. This is the first long trip; but there’s hardly been a day when I haven’t taken the other two and shown them some new beauty, and all she’s seen is a film studio.”

It was a lovely trip. Death Valley was desert, glittering sand, barren rocks, and dismal beyond all belief. Yosemite was all that anyone could want: Indian caves, an enormous tree supposed to be nearly four thousand years old, and a fallen down tree which was so big that a row of cars had been photographed on top of it; there were waterfalls and, a long way off, the bears. It was real winter in Yosemite, as it had been most of the drive up the mountains to get there, and everything was covered with snow. This, from Tim’s point of view, was one of the best things about it. When they left to return to Santa Monica early on Monday morning, Peaseblossom said, “What an experience! What scenery! You’ll never forget it, will you, Tim?”

“Never. When I tell Mr. Brown I met bears walking loose in the snow just as if they were dogs, he’ll never believe me.”

Aunt Cora found her two days at the studio thrilling, and she did something Bee had never done: She made friends with Mrs. Tuesday. Aunt Cora liked celebrities, and because Maurice was well known in pictures, she thought he must be interesting and sweet, and she did not care how much Mrs. Tuesday talked about him.

The Saturday shooting passed off easily for Jane. It was a day when David and Mickey were in the scenes, and she was always happy on those days. Monday, however, was a different story. It began by Jane’s being rubbed the wrong way. She had thought they were going to shoot some scenes with Ben Weatherstaff, but the actor playing him had a cold, so instead Jane’s-Mr. Browne decided to take the last of the interiors. Jane hated interiors because they were always with Maurice and never with David, and she looked as disobliging as she felt. After lunch David walked into the studio. He had been feeding his creatures and had looked in to give Jane a lesson on the pipes. At once all Jane’s bad temper vanished. She forgot she had ever been cross. Then a hand was laid on her shoulder. There was the teacher from Miss Barnabas’s school.