Spirit (28 page)

Elizabeth was still staring out of the window when Lenny knocked softly on the door.

‘Are you okay?' he asked her. ‘How's the old man?'

‘I don't think either of us are very well,' she replied, without turning around.

‘I'm sorry.' He came up to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. She reached up and patted it.

‘Do you believe that it's possible for imaginary people to come to life?' she asked him.

‘When you say “imaginary people” . . . ?'

‘I mean characters out of stories.'

Lenny shrugged. ‘I don't see how that could be.'

‘Father seems to believe it. He thinks that the little Peggy-girl is Gerda out of
The Snow Queen
. He seems to think that dead people can come alive again, as characters out of books.'

‘Oh, come on now, Lizzie, he's rambling. He was always interested in ghosts and haunted houses and witch trials, wasn't he? He's rambling; it's gone to his head.'

‘I guess so. But what about the snowstorm? What about the photograph album? What about the Reverend Bracewaite and poor Dan Philips?'

‘Maybe that newspaper reporter was right. Maybe you have some sort of unusual talent for attracting blizzards.'

‘Oh, that was nonsense! And besides, I wasn't there when the Reverend Bracewaite was frozen.'

Lenny pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I don't know, Lizzie, I've been turning it over and over in my mind, trying to explain it. I think there is something here, but I think it's more than likely to be Peggy's aura. Do you know what I mean? Because Peggy was so young and so lively, she left something of herself in the house, and that's what you and I have been experiencing. You're her sister, so you're much more sensitive to it than I am. You may even be acting like a receiver . . . you know, sort of a human television, picking up the thoughts and the feelings that Peggy left behind. Maybe I'm a little bit sensitive, too. Look at what happened to me on Guadalcanal.'

Elizabeth turned to look at him. He shrugged again and pulled a face. ‘I read about it in
Reader's Digest
, Loved Ones Who Speak From Beyond.'

‘Well . . . maybe you're right,' said Elizabeth. ‘It certainly seems to make more sense than storybook characters coming to life.'

They were still standing silently together when Elizabeth's father let out a thick rattling sound. Elizabeth immediately crossed to the bed and leaned over him. He didn't seem to be breathing, and she couldn't feel a pulse.

‘Call Nurse Edna!' she said. ‘Quick, Lenny – call Nurse Edna!'

She turned back to her father and held his hand between hers. She knew already that there was nothing that she could do, that he was dead.

‘Oh, father,' she whispered. ‘I love you so much. Don't forget me, wherever you're going. And please tell Peggy that she can rest now; that everything's fine.'

A huge wave of grief overwhelmed her, and she sat down on
the bed with tears running freely down her cheeks, rubbing her father's hands, over and over, as if she could warm them.

 

 

Laura climbed out of Petey Fairbrother's bright yellow Jeepster and slammed the door. ‘Bysie-bye, Petey – thanks for the ride!'

Petey grinned at her, one eye squinched up against the sun. ‘How about later? Some of the gang are going over to Dolores's Drive-In for hamburgers and shakes.'

‘I don't know. It depends. Aunt Beverley has guests tonight. I think she wants me to stick around and socialize.'

‘Laura, you know that I can't live without you!'

‘How come? You managed it before you met me.'

‘Sure, but I forgot.'

She leaned over the side of the car and kissed him on the nose. ‘You keep on breathing, you eat three times a day, you don't forget to drink your orange juice, and you don't forget to fall asleep at night.'

‘That's living?'

She kissed him again. ‘That's better than being dead.'

She walked up the concrete path. She was one of the dishiest girls in college. With her curly blonde hair and her broderie anglaise blouse and her pink-and-green striped dirndl skirt she was the epitome of teen chic. On her first day at college, the seniors had collectively voted her Miss Heavy Breathing 1951. She had been dated every weekend – although Petey Fair-brother had always been her favourite. Apart from being very tall and athletic, with a sun-bleached crewcut as flat as the deck of the USS
Missouri
, his father was Jack Fairbrother the movie director, and he had been able to take Laura on the sets of six or seven new movies.

Laura went up the two concrete steps to the front door and opened it. Inside, she could hear Aunt Beverley talking loudly, and smell cigar-smoke. She dropped her bag in the hallway and peered at herself in the mirror. She thought she was putting on weight. The strawberry malteds were beginning to take their toll. She blew out her cheeks so that she looked even fatter. God, what a podge. She placed her hand on her heart and swore to God that she would cut out milkshakes for ever, or at least a week.

They had moved twice since Laura had first come to California. After two landslips, the house overlooking Santa Monica Bay had needed shoring-up with reinforced-concrete foundations, and a whole new deck. Aunt Beverley had decided to cut her losses, ‘screw the view', and bought a house in Westwood. But only seven months later, when they were barely unpacked from the first move, a friend had sold her his two-bedroom bungalow on Franklin Avenue, within spitting distance of Hollywood Boulevard. It was much smaller than the Santa Monica house, and less secluded than the West-wood house, but it had large, airy, whitewashed rooms, and a cramped courtyard tiled in aquamarine and yellow ochre, and a riot of flowers and tropical plants. Laura missed the ocean, but she liked the location better, because most of her friends lived much closer, and she could hang out at Schwab's and the Hamburger Hamlet where all the movie hopefuls congregated.

Laura found Aunt Beverley sitting outside in the greenish glow of her fringed sunshade, wearing a fuchsia romper suit and a crimson headscarf and sunglasses. She was drinking aquavit and pineapple juice, and smoking a cigarette. Opposite her, smoking a cigar, sat a leonine grey-haired man in a custard sports coat and white yachting slacks. He was handsome, in an ancient kind of way, like a stone head of Alexander the Great.

‘Oh, Laura, you're back,' Aunt Beverley enthused. ‘Chester, this is Laura. Laura, this is Chester Fell.'

‘Oh, hi,' smiled Laura, holding out her hand. ‘I've heard of you.'

Chester gave her a deep, warm, self-satisfied smile. ‘Good to know that I'm not a nonentity,' he replied.

‘Chester's casting for his new picture,' said Aunt Beverley. ‘He's been looking for
fresh new talent.
'

‘I see,' said Laura. She sat on one of the gaudy sun-chairs, spreading out her skirt. She picked up a handful of salted almonds from the dish on the table, and began to nibble them in a picky, affected way, keeping her eyelashes lowered. She knew that Chester was looking at her, and sizing her up, and she liked the power of ignoring him. A California quail fluttered down and perched on the trellis, and watched her eating.

Chester glanced up at it, and said, ‘You like an audience, don't you?' His voice was deep and rumbly, like distant thunder.

Laura said, ‘I like to act.'

‘I saw you in
Shanghai Ritz
, playing the cocktail waitress.'

‘Yes,' smiled Laura, still without looking at him. ‘I had two lines in that. “Sir wants an olive?” and “Don't you dare touch me.” '

‘I remember,' said Chester. ‘You were excellent. Fresh and innocent, without being clumsy.'

‘That's not what the reviews said about me,' Laura remarked.

‘What
did
the reviews say about you?'

‘They didn't say anything. I was never mentioned.'

Chester laughed. A humourless ha-ha-ha. He brushed cigar ash off his slacks, and then he looked at Laura very seriously. ‘You have the right kind of face for the movies, did you know that? The cameras go for exaggerated eyes, short straight
noses, distinctive jaws. You ought to see most of our so-called stars when they come off set. They're the weirdest-looking bunch of people you ever saw in your life. But put them in front of a camera, and – they're magic'

‘You're not saying
I
look weird, are you?' asked Laura. She was conscious of Aunt Beverley making her ‘shush, don't make a fuss' face, but she was sure that Chester wouldn't be upset. Men were never upset with her, except when she refused to kiss them or go to bed with them or see them tomorrow. She was always in control, and she never forgot it.

‘Of course you don't look weird,' Chester flustered. ‘All you look is pretty and young and fresh as a daisy.'

‘She's such a darn tease,' said Aunt Beverley, through clenched teeth. She clenched her teeth so often that it was amazing that she hadn't bitten her way through hundreds of cigarette holders, instead of two or three.

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.