Bells of Avalon
Authors: Libbet Bradstreet
Bells of Avalon
By
Libbet Bradstreet
Cover Art By: Danielle Maait
Copyright 2015 © Libbet Bradstreet
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Dedication
To my partners-in-crime and co-editors: Clint, Liz, and Nicole—without whose support this book could not have been finished.
Chapter One
Los Angeles, California
1949
It was a simple dance step, but sometimes those were the hardest.
The very best dancers could make a mistake now and then
, she reminded herself. But she wasn’t a dancer—even though her father had sold her off as one. He’d overextended her talents as usual. She knew this, just as she knew that Mr. Pratt hated her. It wasn’t just disapproval, it was pure hate. He hated her. He hated when her taps fell an inch past their mark. Hated that the makeup girls had to come when her curls fell flat and her cheeks needed blushing. He hated when she and Danny were pulled away for tutoring just as his set-up was complete. He hated her merely for the fact that she was a child, and he’d proven himself a man who could do without them.
There was nothing remarkable about her. She wore white leggings, thick as an acetate disc. Her hair was blonde, and the studios were buying blondes in those days. Her body was adequately thin...so her costumes didn’t need to be cut down much. She was a pretty girl, but so were the thousands of others she’d been plucked from like the bluest-eyed of the litter. There was nothing remarkable about her, except for the thing that her blush couldn’t quite conceal. It was a barely-visible, silverfish quality inside. It had escaped Mr. Pratt, as it had most others…unless, of course, you had the right sort of eyes to see it.
The crew scrambled to reset the scene ruined by her bad dancing. Pratt squeezed his script into a tube of paper and slapped it against his thigh. She thought he was an ugly man. She thought he was mean—although he was kind enough to the pretty women who danced in the background; the women who never seemed to make mistakes.
The man next to her was not ugly. His elegant hand was rough on hers as he’d taken it over a dozen times that day. His body was a single line of strength, as straight as the pleat in his pants. His dark hair had a knack for staying every bit in place—as did the flat cap pinned firmly to his head. Katie stared at the bulk of his forearm as he reached for her once again. He pulled her to the mark as preparations for the next shot clicked into place around them. She felt the cool, rose-gold metal of his ring warm against her hand…and it was then that she let her mind go walking. She wouldn’t let it go for long, couldn’t in fact. She knew she must call it back when she heard any of the words that meant action. Most people thought they always said
action
, but it was very rare, in fact, that they did. They did say it sometimes, but not so much as
rolling
,
ready, go,
or
start
! It was the hard squeeze from his hand that awakened her. But this time, only a piece of her returned. Lately she’d found it harder and awaken.
From a faraway place, she thought this was the way he held hands with the women he took to the parties on Nestle Avenue. Her father’s
garden parties
, he’d called them. Her father told her she would like the house.
Nestle—like the chocolate, dearie
. But she hadn’t liked any of it. It was a drafty house, far too large and lined with marble cold as ice.
Most of the film colony had never heard of a garden party. Maybe it was a welcome change from the brassy jazz at Earl Keller, or their impersonal slabs of steak served with tart green peas. The film colony came to Nestle Avenue, at first, in answer to a joke. Katie Webb’s strange father puffed out in tops and tails like a confused barrister, begging anyone who was anyone to come.
Milton who? Oh yes, the father of the little girl in the Dickens picture—the pretty one in rags.
But no one has dinner parties anymore! And certainly not outside. Doesn’t that silly man know? A string band? Why, no one listens to string music anymore.
But some were seduced by his flattery and flair, finding his Englishness charming where it lacked sophistication.
Years ago he’d been like any other man waiting at the Watford Junction. He wore a cheap drape suit while making his weary way to a London haberdasher shop. Sometimes on the train he thought of the pipe dreams he’d had as a boy. There’d been so many back then, but not a single one turned to reality. A club foot kept him working with the women in the filling factory during the first war. After armistice, he’d conned his way into a go-fer job on the British radio. One time he’d been asked to fetch Sybil Thorndike’s opera jacket—another, he’d gone along to Mincing Lane to help record the tea auctions. But it wasn’t long after that that Milton Webb was fired. Some said because he’d lied about an education at St. Johns College.
After he ambled away from his dreams, he met a pretty Irish girl, come to England to seek domestic labor. They married and she bore his London Irish children. He sold straw boater hats and life was well enough, as he’d expected it would be. But Milton Webb hadn’t expected his wife to die, nor had he expected the second war that followed her death. He’d not expected it, even though everyone around him had. He’d not expected the ration books or the dreary victory gardens plotted between brick tenement houses. He’d not expected the blackouts or the stark lack of fish, milk, and butter. He’d not expected the bombs to crumble the buildings he’d once thought god-like in his youth. This time at war’s end he had two daughters, the oldest near grown—the younger little more than a toddling babe. His dead wife’s mother had said Sarah was too old for a child in her
be-doin
’ Irish lilt.
He ignored this as he ignored the lion’s share of her homespun sayings.
But sometimes, when he watched his infant girl crawl and pull her body up by the back of a bow chair, the memory of the old woman’s warnings washed over him like cold sea water. He saw the girl’s chubby new hands grope for support over the varnished seat and fall again and again. When she did, he thought the little blonde thing was indeed what had sent his wife to her grave.
She came to walk months earlier than his first, and she was pretty in the way of her mother’s family. She grew into a sweet child, helpful in the ways her sister had never been. There should have been some joy in this, but there was little left in the aging man who’d been left to care for her. When the trains were restored, Milton Webb stood in his cheap drape suit, hand in hand with a blonde girl at the Watford Junction. His eldest was a strange child who’d took a whim to marry the first boy who’d asked. She was expecting her own child and little help to him. His mother had died the previous spring and Sarah’s mother was frail. There was nothing to do but to take her along to the shop in London. That was how it all happened.
It was so darling when his pretty girl started modeling pork pie hats and canes in the window. An impromptu draw to the storefront—he’d not expected that. He’d not expected the well-dressed man to pluck her out while she idled and curtsied in the window—a man with just the right sort of eyes to see the silverfish fortune in her face.
“What’s your name, love?” he asked the little girl when she emerged from the curtains. She was bashful as any child in the air of a stranger, but she had told him.
“Oh,
dear
. Whoever left you with such an unfortunate name?”
She shrugged playfully at this, not understanding the full meaning but finding it rather funny.
“Her mother did,” it was her father’s voice now, soft and behind her shoulder. But the well-dressed man took no notice of Milton Webb. His eyes were fixed on the sunny, blonde child.
“Well, we’ll have to remedy that—won’t we my dear girl?” he said with a smile. The well-dressed man sent a telegram the following day. The day after that, a car arrived to the storefront and took Milton and his daughter to a complex of brick buildings in Highbury. A tour on the grounds revealed a series of studio lots, houses, and converted churches. Milton Webb stood behind his daughter, his heavy hands resting on her small shoulders while the office girl typed a contract for them in the next room. The words spelling out his daughter’s new name were still moist when he signed his own name on the line.
At Highbury she was roused early from sleep. She ate toast and beans with the other charm school girls. A curt woman circled overhead, sharply noting their use of napkins and utensils. There were remedial diction classes—hours repeating the same nursery pattern until the Hertfordshire accent was broken from her little voice. Movement classes taught her not to blink, how to stand, how to drift through a room for the camera. She got ten pounds a week to travel the length of England, handling bouquets and opening bazaars. She made appearances at the Children Club’s Cinema and did bit parts in a dozen pictures. But it wasn’t until J. Arthur Rank loaned her to Elstree studios that they got the call from America. Milton Webb gathered up the child he’d once thought a burden and set sail across the North Atlantic. That was how it happened: how the man in the cheap drape suit rose from haberdasher to the master of a rented mansion on Nestle Avenue.
An hour before the garden parties began, Katie’s nanny swaddled her in pajamas, (it didn’t matter her name; there were various over the years) and she was carted off to the Historic Hotel. She ate dinner from a room service cart, her hair in curlers for the next day’s work. When she turned thirteen, her father began to let her stay in her own room while the parties strummed below. Just so long as she didn’t descend the staircase—no matter what she heard below. That had stopped her for awhile, but not for long. She started to spy because she was curious. She continued to spy because she knew he would be there.
She saw him through the cold, white banisters along the left staircase reaching out from the foyer. He came to the parties with different women, all uniformly beautiful and blonde. Just like the women who danced in the background, she supposed. She hadn’t meant to disobey her father, but she liked to watch him. She liked the way he moved and laughed. He spoke with his fingers in the air, a ring of rose-colored gold on his left hand. She’d never seen a man with hair so dark and perfect.
And then he’d caught her staring.
He turned—just a bit—on the tail of a laugh made for extravagant parties. His eyes met hers, stopped for a moment, then tilted his head—no longer laughing but smiling widely. Expecting the worst, her hand tightened around the banister’s rail. Still smiling, he looked at her in the strangest way—a look that sent her to a place in which she had no business. He winked and offered her the most inescapable of waves—as though he’d waved that way a million times before. He father approached him. She sucked in a breath and fled to her room. Back in bed, she pulled the covers over her head. Under the tufts of swollen fabric, she played the look of his smile over and over again.
Now, his ring was hot against her hand as Pratt bellowed his starting words.
Rolling!
Her cue in the music played out, and Katie called back what she could of her mind. For the first time that day, she danced perfectly. The Dancer’s strong hands eclipsed her waist as he flung her into the air. She saw a flash from the peach-colored lights above as she twirled in the air. She landed in the crook of his arm. She held the pose, forcing her eyes to remain fixed until Pratt called to cut. The Dancer’s arms kept stubbornly around her until she struggled and freed herself.
She went to Danny. They met eyes when he glanced up from his comic book. She looked down at her tap shoes.
“Why are they letting you dance
now
?” he asked. When she didn’t answer he asked again. His words came from a remote place, muted almost completely by the flushed ringing in her ears. She answered, but it wasn’t the real reason. She couldn’t tell anyone the real reason. Daniel shrugged, rolled his eyes, and sunk back into his canvas chair. She watched as the Dancer laughed with Pratt, whirling his hands around in a way she’d once thought elegant.
“Why haven’t you been in class all week?” Daniel’s voice again, more insistent now.
“I can’t, I have lessons.”
“What do you mean? I thought they were bringing Vasillisa in to dance for you.”
“I’m making it up—at the end of my dancing lessons.”
“What do you mean? How come you get out of school?” he whined, but it was too late to answer. The Dancer was walking toward her. She stepped back and looked a last time at Danny. For a moment, she saw some faint flicker of awareness in his face. For a moment, she thought he caught the meaning of her unvoiced message. But whatever Danny might have noticed faded quickly in the presence of an adult. Danny looked up as the Dancer’s long shadow fell over his face then went back to his comic book.
“C’mon, dear, we need to get back to work.”
The Dancer held his hand out to her. She took it and felt his ring against her fingers. Just before the gold warmed to her skin, she felt something snap deep beneath her eyes. That was when she sent her mind walking farther that it had ever gone. She didn’t call it back, couldn’t call it back for any of the words that meant
go…
or for the feel of the rose-colored ring, or the shock of cold bathroom tile against her back. During the departure of her mind, she saw wishful visions of swing sets, branches, and birds passing like darts through a sky made of blue bathroom tile. There was the image of a house, much grander than even the one on Nestle Avenue. Somewhere was the certainty that it belonged to him, as did the expensive, low-slung green car. Some part of her knew that she’d ridden inside that car, seen the white rounded interior, the dark leather seats and pretty chrome along the dashboard. Apart from that, there was only the void of two weeks passing—maybe three. She hadn’t taken to counting yet.