Hollywood (57 page)

The aged crone suddenly became a haughty English girl. “I cannot, don’t you know? leave my father the Duke of Quimsberry, now aboard his magnificent yacht moored not a stone’s throw from this moonlit gypsy camp in the Vienna Woods.” Chaplin became a Russian Cossack dancer. He leapt in the air. “Dance, little fool! Dance!” he roared. “My gypsy blood is aflame. You madden me! So if it’s a fuck you want, it’s a fuck you’ll get, Lady Sybilla.” Then, as Lady Sybilla, he cried, “I thought you were a gentleman! True, gypsy blood runs through you yet—” A gasp. “Runs through both of us now. Oh, may this night never end. But hark! What is that, coming toward us, through the Vienna Woods? Oh, God! It is the yacht of my father the Duke.” With that, Chaplin, before their eyes, turned into a very large, steam-powered yacht, making its way slowly through the Vienna Woods, just missing the odd tree in its stately progress.

“Charlie,” said Fairbanks, “has found his voice.”

Although Caroline had insisted that Blaise stay with her, he had moved into the brand-new Ambassador Hotel, midway between Hollywood and Los Angeles, where the
Herald
was located. The hotel itself was very large and modern and somewhat reminiscent of an armed camp, with private guards
and public policemen everywhere. Currently, Los Angeles was in the midst of what the press called a crime wave, partly the work of transients who had come to this new El Dorado only to find the best gold already panned, and partly the work of local criminals at war with one another over the various drug territories, none particularly lucrative since a card—or gramme—of cocaine cost two dollars. Morphine was expensive but less popular. In any case, when it came to serious crime, the police stayed aloof; either paid off or frightened off. But transients were dealt with brutally.

The Coconut Grove of the Ambassador resembled its name. Here, later in the evening, among false palm trees, popular singers would sing and a full orchestra would play, over and over again, “Look for the Silver Lining,” while those movie stars who did not have to work the next day would dance. Caroline had warned Blaise gravely that Saturday night at the Grove was the one place where Blaise and Frederika must be seen if they wanted to be accepted as forever young and fashionable.

Frederika sat comfortably beside a palm tree, while Blaise drank gin and coconut milk from a hairy coconut shell, all beneath the gelid gaze of plainclothes police and uniformed hotel guards. The Grove was half filled with serious diners; the orchestra played soothing dance music; a few couples danced.

“I see what she sees.” Frederika looked about her with a tourist’s fascination. “I only wish I’d seen more movies so that I’d know who everyone was.”

“It’s all a bit like—like Mardi Gras, isn’t it?” Blaise was not used to tropical or near-tropical societies. A day with the ownership of the
Herald
resembled what he’d always imagined it would be like to do business in Tahiti.

“That’s what makes it so—different. Caroline showed me her
Mary Queen of Scots
sets. Very authentic-looking, except for a tomato in the kitchen. I reminded her that North Europeans weren’t partial to tomatoes then. She was apologetic.”

Blaise was intrigued not by the anachronism but by the kitchen. “What would the Queen be doing in a kitchen?”

“Well, darling, it
is
Scotland. I suppose she cooks haggis for Bothwell.”

On the arm of her latest director and lover, William Desmond Taylor, Caroline made a slow, majestic entrance. At the door, photographers were allowed pictures; then they tactfully vanished.

“You’ve never looked more radiant.” Blaise needled Caroline.

“I know,” she said, giving her sister-in-law a kiss. “It is an inner light, actually. Either one has
it
, as Elinor Glyn would say, or one has not.”

Blaise found Taylor charming; very much the British gentleman as represented on the Broadway stage. He was tall, slender, and about Caroline’s age. Blaise wondered who on earth he really was. Caroline had told him so many of the original names and origins of the stars that he was suspicious of everyone, particularly Emma Traxler, the tragic fire-opal of Alsace-Lorraine, whose lady-mother had been drowned by Huns in her own moat. The spirit of Hearst now informed the Hollywood studios, and the result was beyond anything that the old yellow journalist ever dreamed of.

“When do you start shooting?” Blaise enjoyed using Hollywood jargon.

“April Fool’s Day,” said Taylor, smiling at Caroline. “We’ve got the right script at last. From Edward Knoblock.”

Blaise nodded; apparently, he was supposed to know the name.

“He wrote
Kismet
, that play which ran for years,” said Caroline. “He’s from New York but lives in London. He was one of the writers Mr. Lasky imported, along with Maeterlinck and Maugham and Elinor Glyn and all the others. He’s staying with William, and working on the script.”

Could this, Blaise wondered, be his sister, Caroline? The friend of Henry Adams and Henry James, now praising the author of
Kismet?
Or, perhaps, more to the practical point, was this simply Caroline’s
Doppelgänger
, Emma, an aging actress trying to survive in a fast, furious, unsentimental world? Frederika was positive that Caroline’s face had been tightened by surgery. Blaise thought not; on the other hand, she did look disturbingly perfect in a style that was not altogether human.

Taylor asked Frederika to dance, and half-brother and half-sister were able to talk. “The
Herald
,” Caroline began.

“Too expensive …”

“I’m told Hearst has already got it …”

“Through Barham? Probably. It was too late …”

“My fault. I should’ve made a move last year, but …”

They spoke in their own rapid private language; no ellipsis ever needed filling. Then he asked, “What’s happened to Tim?”

“Nothing. He’s still living at the Garden Court. Since you’re obviously curious, we’ve locked the door between our rooms.”

“I see.”

“Why should you?” Caroline watched Taylor and Frederika waltz decorously at the center of the dance floor. “Anyway, it’s all very friendly. We still work together, in a business way. He’s found someone younger.”

“And you’ve found someone older. He
seems
all right.” Blaise was still
brooding upon the saga of Taylor and the two stars and the one mother. “He must be very popular.”

“Too much so.” Caroline was now her old candid self. “He is trying to get Mabel Normand to stop taking cocaine, and he is trying to keep Mary Miles Minter from killing herself for love.”

“Of him?”

“So it would seem.”

“Where do you fit in?”

“A woman of a certain age, warm, compassionate—wise, too, as only such a woman can be. One who has known heartbreak …”

“Is this you or Emma Traxler?”

Caroline laughed. “A bit of both. Don’t worry. I can keep the two apart. Anyway, after
Mary
, Emma will retire from the silver screen …”

“Home to Alsace-Lorraine?”

“No. Santa Monica. I want to go on producing movies.”

“With William Desmond Taylor?”

The director and Frederika came back to the table. Frederika was delighted. “Gloria Swanson is over there, with what looks like a genuine Latin lover type.”

“They all come here,” said Caroline, her eyes on Taylor as he took an envelope from his pocket and poured its contents into a glass of water.

“Cocaine?” Blaise was blithe.

Caroline glared at him. Taylor laughed. “No. For my ulcer. Occupational hazard. Once the shooting’s over, I want to get as far away from here as possible.”

“Summer in Europe,” said Caroline.

“Take him to Saint-Cloud.” Frederika was cozy.

“I must stay here.” Caroline drank real tea from a real teacup.

“Eddy—that’s Edward Knoblock—he’s let me his London townhouse, and I’m leaving him my place here in town. We met once before.” Taylor turned to Blaise. “Years ago. You were very young. So was I, of course. The English Antique Shop, 246 Fifth Avenue. Remember? I was the manager. Caroline came in, too. But not with you.”

“I thought you were an actor.”

“I was. But actors have to live. You were with a Frenchwoman …”

“Anne de Bieville,” murmured Caroline.

“You do have a memory,” said Blaise, who had none, at least of Taylor. He also found it disturbing that Taylor should have remembered him after
all these years. But then if one had led other lives, it was probably best to confess them before one was found out. Taylor seemed authentic, despite a large diamond ring not usually found on a gentleman’s hand. But then this was Hollywood, as Taylor again demonstrated when he produced, at Frederika’s request, a platinum cigarette-case containing black cigarettes with gold tips.

The orchestra was now playing. “Blue Moon,” a new song that Blaise liked to sing when absolutely alone. He was beginning to see how one could succumb to the Tahitian charm of Southern California. The only mystery was how to get work done in so languorous a setting; yet the Hollywood people were never at rest if they could help it. A star could make a dozen feature-length movies in a year and still have time for a divorce and a remarriage. Of course, everyone was very young, except Caroline and Taylor.

While Taylor pointed out the stars to Frederika, Blaise came to the point. “Would you sell me your share—in the paper?”

Caroline looked at him for a long moment, looking, perhaps, for the silver lining. “Why—now?”

“Why—any time? You’ve lost all interest in it, and Washington, and politics …”

“Have I?” The famous—even to her half-brother—eyes opened very wide. They were luminous, and rather bloodshot. “Did I go to sleep out here for a hundred years and now it’s time to wake up, and no one’s left?”

“Well,
I’m
here. It may have seemed like a hundred years to you, but …”

“No. It’s gone very fast.” Caroline was suddenly serious. “Do I want to sell? I don’t know. Do I want to stay here? That depends.”

“On the next hundred years?”

Caroline nodded. “Marriage has been discussed,” she said under the music.

“Then you will have to stay here. I can’t see him … uh, happy in Washington.”

“
Only
discussed.” Caroline was vague. “I don’t know. Let’s see what happens to
Mary
. Those Elizabethan ruffs are a godsend for aging necks.”

A dark Latin lover stopped at their table: it was the Spanish-born star Tony Moreno. There was much flashing of eyes and teeth during the introductions; then Moreno said to Taylor, “Can I see you a moment?” Taylor excused himself, and the two men left the nightclub.

“How handsome,” said Frederika, drawing out her syllables, “everyone is.”

“That’s because we don’t allow senators in public places.” Caroline was
now looking toward the lobby, where, past two uniformed security men, Moreno and Taylor were talking intently. Blaise was beginning to get the range; and he was more intrigued than not by all the possibilities for disaster that Caroline was so compulsively arranging for herself. Suddenly, the two men in the lobby were no longer visible.

At that moment, a tall, elegant, overpainted woman paused at their table, with an escort half her age. “Dear Emma,” she said. The accent was deep Southern.

“Charlotte Shelby.” Caroline introduced the lady to Blaise and Frederika. The escort was ignored. Blaise rather liked the way that manners had been pared down to their essentials.

“You must come, Mr. and Mrs. Sanford, to pay us a call at the Casa de Margarita, our private mansion on New Hampshire Avenue, that’s when we’re not really back home on Mummy’s plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana.”

“I should love to, of course.” Frederika exuded her own District of Columbia Southern charm.

“Tell William hello and that little Mary is better.” Like Chaplin’s yacht in the Vienna Woods, Mrs. Shelby sailed on, escort in tow.

“What was
that?
” asked Frederika.

“An ex-actress named Charlotte Shelby,” Caroline began.

“Best known as the mother of Mary Miles Minter,” Blaise concluded, complacently.

“How do
you
know that?” Caroline was startled.

“I always read
Photoplay
magazine. You know, at the barber’s …”

“You do get around,” said Caroline neutrally. Then Taylor returned without Moreno. Caroline whispered something to him, and he waved to Charlotte Shelby across the dance floor and she, graciously, inclined her head. Blaise noticed that despite heavy make-up, the lady’s lips were thin and the mouth, compressed into a smile, was grim. Was she jealous of Caroline? Or relieved that Taylor was no longer enamored of the fabled child?

“… letters,” said Taylor. Then he led Caroline onto the dance floor.

“Well,” said Frederika.

“Well,” said Blaise.

“Do you think Mr. Taylor was being given drugs by the Latin lover?”

“Frederika! You have gone Hollywood, as they like to say out here.” But Blaise suspected that that might have been a part of a more complex transaction. He was also beginning to wonder whether or not Caroline might herself
have got involved in drugs. Certainly, she was not at all the self that he had once known, but then, admittedly, they had never known each other well. Half-consanguinity was, perhaps, in itself, the equal to none. “Letters,” Taylor had said. Whose letters? Blaise wondered.