West of Sunset (11 page)

“This is nonsense.”

“You'll see, it's not.”

The answer came to him, glaringly obvious: Donegall. They'd been secretly married this whole time.

She took a seat at the dining room table, turning her back as if to give him privacy. He sat on the couch where he normally read and opened the cover.

There she was, younger, with duller, flatter hair, facing the camera with the humorless rigidity of the accused.

Beneath her picture was her name—or no, there must have been a mistake, one of those clerical errors that changes a family's destiny. Instead of Sheilah Graham, it read: Lily Sheil.

He looked to her for an explanation.

“What is this?”

“That's my name,” she said.

L
ike everyone in Hollywood, she wasn't who she claimed to be. Sheilah Graham was a stage name she'd assumed at sixteen, when she made her West End debut—not in O'Casey or Shaw but the Brompton Follies. She was a dancer, meaning a chorine, decorating variety shows and musicals in scanty costumes. She had the ingenue's usual ambitions, but when she tried out for speaking roles, she was told her accent was suited only for chambermaids and ladies of the evening.

She hadn't come from money, as he'd so hopefully thought. She'd grown up in the East End, the youngest of six children. Her father died when she was just a baby—that was true. Her mother was from Kiev, a washerwoman who couldn't read or write. She took ill when Lily was six and sent her to live at the Jewish orphanage where they shaved her head the first of the month and paddled her with a hairbrush when she stole moldy biscuits from the kitchen. She stayed there till she was fourteen, old enough to go out and earn money to support the family.

They lived in Stepney Green then, in an alley behind a brewery. There was no Alicia, no Aunt Mary, no stepfather. Her stepbrothers were her brothers, only one of whom remained, Henry, an army deserter who slept on the sofa and suffered from night terrors. She had to share the one bedroom with her mother, in the early stages of the stomach cancer that would kill her, and guiltily missed the dorm at the orphanage.

She'd been presented at court—that photograph was real—but later, after her transformation. Before taking to the stage, she'd been a seamstress, a waitress, an assembly line worker in an Addressograph factory, a maid at a seaside hotel in Brighton, and, lastly, a salesgirl at a milliner's, where she'd been discovered by another dancer who, for a finder's fee, introduced her to the man who would become her manager. To make the leap from dancer to player, she paid for elocution lessons as if she were training to be a governess.

It worked. She started getting bit parts—secretaries and party guests. Her looks had always garnered attention, often the wrong kind. Now they made casting directors envision possibilities. She already knew how to move.

Her big break came in a manor-house farce called
Upson Downs
, playing the innocent young piano teacher aroused by the power of music to seduce her pupil. The role was supposed to be risqué, involving a brief striptease to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 3. Each night when she took her bows she was surprised at the catcalls and bouquets. She'd shown more as a chorus girl.

She was singled out in reviews, her name in boldface. The papers ran flattering photos of her, attracting London's high-profile bachelors and not a few married men, among them a judge. Backstage, department store heirs and shipping magnates lined up to take her to the best restaurants, bearing roses and diamonds. Donegall wasn't the first nobleman she'd spurned. Every week brought a new proposal. Having scraped by her whole life, she enjoyed arriving in a Rolls-Royce and ordering the pheasant under glass. It was comical, her good fortune, unreal. She treated it like a dream that was bound to end, leaving her unchanged.

Despite their elevated stations, her suitors were not all gentlemen. Having matured early in a rough neighborhood, she had practice at discouraging advances, but several of her dates were shockingly ardent and then furious when she defended her honor. Once she was put out by the side of the road like a common tart. Another time she had to bite a lord who refused to let go of her breast.

Most, though, only wanted to be seen with her, her beauty an accessory to their vanity, and after
Upson Downs
closed and the papers chose the next fresh face, the rush subsided. She signed to do another racy part for more money, but at the last minute the backers pulled out and the show folded. Her next show was a flop. She'd been right about her fame being short-lived. She kept working, but instead of a queue of millionaires waiting backstage, some nights there was no one. It was then, after a poorly attended matinee, that she met Major John Gillam.

He was decades older than her, a dashing war hero injured at Gallipoli, tall and dark with a pencil mustache and a slight limp. Unlike her other suitors, he didn't insist that she quit. She skipped their courtship, mentioning only that he was funny and gentle, arriving too soon, as Scott dreaded, at their marriage.

Gillam came from military royalty, a line of generals going back to the first graduating class at Sandhurst. His injuries ended his career, leaving him dependent on morphine and the family fortune, both of which warped and unmanned him. In the world of business he was defenseless, always chasing the bold stroke. His few conjugal ventures with her failed as well, their marriage a union in name only. At the same time he was presenting her at court as the model of English womanhood, he was encouraging her to see other men, an edict she resisted on principle, but she was eighteen and life in the theater was ripe. Looking back, she could see they had used each other badly.

She related all this in bed, in the dark, her head on his chest, alternately repentant and incredulous, as if she couldn't believe this Dickensian past was hers. She'd never told anyone her story before. It was one reason she'd called things off with Donegall, the fear she'd be found out. Scott lay pinioned beneath her, absorbing the onslaught of new information, weighing it for truth. He felt at once betrayed and vindicated. He knew she'd been hiding something. Now he knew the reason. It made sense, keeping her secrets from the rest of the world, but why did she have to protect them from him?

“You must think I'm an awful person.”

“Not at all.”

He said he understood. As a child he'd learned the need to conceal the family's true situation. Her striving reminded him of his Saturday mornings at Miss Van Arnum's and the sting of his classmates at Newman knowing he was on scholarship. She might have been describing his life. He remembered that first heady success, when the whole world wanted him, except, dreamy egotist he'd been, he'd thought it would last forever. He told her he didn't care that she'd been married, which was only partially true. The past was the past, there was nothing to be done about it. She was teary, relieved. All weekend they clung to each other as if they'd survived a sudden wrenching tragedy, staying in and making confused, desperate love, confiding smaller, less damning deceptions they could laugh at. It was only when he left her for work on Monday that he felt bereft, as if this were the end of them.

It was cloudy, and his office, like the entire building, was cold. Again, for no good reason, he reworked Paramore's dialogue, getting up from his desk and pacing, standing at the window and rubbing the back of his neck, searching the yards and porches for Mr. Ito. The streetlamps were hung with silver bells and gold stars made of wire and tinsel, and as he tried to picture the boulevard and red-car tracks smoothed over by snow as they would be in St. Paul, what came to him instead was the image of the teenaged Sheilah onstage, bare-shouldered and spotlit, the audience watching from the dark all men. He banished it, scowling, and shoved the armchair against the vent.

A blind woman with a long white cane was navigating the entrance of the drugstore when, behind him, the doorknob rattled. Wisely he'd locked it.

“Open up.”

It was Mank. He'd never descended from the fourth floor to visit him before, and Scott figured it was bad news.

Mank shut the door, frowning as if unhappy to be kept waiting. He had Ernest's thick build, and the same bluff certainty, only more animated. With his chomped-on stogie and scuffed brogans, he resembled the owner of a traveling circus.

“Tracy's out—busted his appendix. He's fine, just laid up for a while. I got Mayer to give us Franchot Tone. I know, he's not perfect, but he's as close as we're going to get. We've got two weeks to rewrite it for him.”

Two weeks meant four, meaning Scott wouldn't be going East for Christmas—another promise broken. And Tracy was the draw. Without him they had no box office, a fact
Variety
would trumpet from their front page.

“We're lucky,” Mank said. “It could have happened in the middle of shooting.”

“That's true.”

“The good news is we like your work. I already told Eddie, but I wanted to tell you in person, we're picking you up for next year.”

“That is good news. Thank you.” Scott shook hands with him to seal the deal and saw him out.

He was surprised they'd decided to keep him, and grateful, after how little he'd accomplished these last six months. He'd have to write Zelda and Scottie and tell them he wasn't coming, but that would have to wait. First he needed to call Sheilah. If not an outright sign, the renewal was something to celebrate, reassuring, he hoped, for both of them.

She wasn't home, which meant nothing. She wasn't at her office either, and he set the phone down and slouched in his chair, the good news cooling, draining away. How easily she'd fooled him, and how long. He wasn't so different from Donegall. She'd never intended to tell him the truth. She was only with him because he was married and there was no chance of him asking her to change her life, when all along he'd felt terrible for not being able to make that exact promise.

All day he was prey to venomous thoughts, calling and calling until he was afraid something had happened. On his way home he drove by her place. Her car was gone, the drapes pulled. He thought, with the wild illogic of romantic comedies, that maybe she was waiting for him at his place, and raced home to an empty villa.

Obviously she was off doing her job, but the knowledge didn't appease him. She would be on some fledging Lothario's arm, posing for the shutterbugs like they were a couple while he sat home alone. Monday was a quiet night at the Garden, everyone recovering from the weekend. Bogie and Mayo were on location, so he ordered in from Schwab's and tried to distract himself with yesterday's paper, willing the phone at his elbow to ring, ready to pretend he was glad to hear her voice.

When it did, at half-past ten, it startled him. He waited three more rings to pick up, as if he were busy.

She apologized. She'd wanted to call him earlier, but at the last minute she'd been offered the chance to do the interview she'd had to cancel, and naturally she'd taken it, except she had to drive all the way up to San Simeon.

It took a second to register, and then didn't seem real. She'd stood up Marion Davies for him.

“Why didn't you tell me that on Friday? I would have understood.”

“I wasn't allowed. It's all hush-hush until it runs. Anyway, it went long, and then they invited me to stay for dinner, and I couldn't honestly say no, could I? Marion's lovely but she does go on. It was very strange being there, with the servants hovering about. I felt like I was in Dracula's castle. You know she calls him the Chief—he thinks it's funny—but they were very nice, and the piece is going to be very good.”

“I'll bet.” He'd wanted to be hard and distant, but couldn't resist her excitement. He could picture it: little Lily Shiel sitting down to dinner with William Randolph Hearst. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. How was your day?”

“Metro renewed my contract, so you're stuck with me.”

“That's wonderful. We'll have to go out and celebrate. I can't tomorrow, but Wednesday, definitely.”

“What's tomorrow?”

“There's a big museum benefit at the Egyptian.”

“I like the museum.”

“I'm sorry, I wish I could take you.”

“Who's your date?”

“Leslie Howard.”

“I guess that's all right.”

He told her about Tracy.

“I heard.”

“It really is a small town.”

“A small town full of busybodies.”

“And you're the busiest.”

“I try. Wednesday then.”

“Wednesday,” he said, and let her go.

After the weekend's hysterics, it nagged at him that they'd spoken so casually, as if nothing had changed. She was a completely different person, one she'd trusted him to meet only after he'd fallen for her outward image. Perhaps that was always true. It had been with Zelda, though in her case he'd fooled himself. Why was he drawn to complicated women, or were all women—all people, finally—complicated? He didn't think he was, particularly. He'd done everything he could to simplify his life, winnowing the confusion down to a room, a desk, a lamp. Pencil and paper.

After fretting for months over whether or not I will earn a blessed credit,
he wrote,
Metro has decided I'm good enough to keep even without one. I'm glad for the vote of confidence and the opportunity to continue digging us out of debt, but it means I have to postpone our Christmas plans till mid-January at the earliest. We just replaced Spencer Tracy, whose appendix didn't like the script. I'm most sorry for Scottie, who I'd wanted to take to see the windows at Gimbel's and Macy's for old times' sake, and maybe stop in at the Plaza and see the tree. The Obers will be happy to have her, but I remember staying over in the dorms at Newman one Thanksgiving, and it's not a proper holiday. We'll have to do something special for her at Easter. If your mother isn't able to take you home for Christmas, maybe we can make a side trip to Montgomery next month. Dr. Carroll agrees that you should be visiting there regularly if that's where you ultimately want to be.

When he was finished it was nearly midnight. He took his keys and walked by the quiet pool and down the drive of the main house and across Sunset to the mailbox outside of Schwab's, opening the weighted lid, then letting it clang shut. While everything he'd said was true, he felt duplicitous and cowardly, and coming back he searched the darkened windows for the accusing specter of Alla. There was nothing, just the stars, the palms, the black hedges flanking the paths. His footsteps echoed as if someone were following him, and when he reached his villa he locked the door.