No Greater Love (27 page)

She forced him to go to monthly meetings with her for several months, but then she discovered that he was out every afternoon, and careful investigation told her that he was sneaking out to go to the movies.

“For God’s sake, George, be serious. This business is going to be yours one day,” she scolded in June, and he apologized, but the following month it was the same thing, and she had to threaten to cancel his salary if he didn’t stick around and earn it.

“Edwina, I can’t help it. It’s not me. And everybody bows and scrapes, and calls me Mr. Winfield, and I don’t know anything about all this. I keep looking over my shoulder, thinking they must mean Papa.”

“So, learn it, dammit. I would, in your shoes!” She was furious with him, but he was tired of being pushed, and he said so.

“Why the hell don’t you run the paper yourself, then? You run everything else, the house, the children, you’d run me if you could, just the way you used to run Phillip!” She had slapped him then, and he was aghast at what he’d said. He had apologized profusely but he had cut her to the quick and he knew it. “Edwina, I’m sorry … I didn’t know what I was saying….”

“Is that what you think of me, George? You think I run everything? Is that what it looks like to you?” There had been tears running down her face by then. “Well, just exactly what did you think I should do when Mama and Papa died? Give up? Let all of you run wild? Who did you think was going to keep it all together for us?
Aunt Liz? Uncle Rupert? You, maybe while you were busy putting frogs in everyone’s bed? Who else was there, for heaven’s sake? Papa was gone, he had no choice.” She was sobbing by then and something she had held back for years was about to escape her. “And Mama chose to go with him … they wouldn’t let him or Phillip in the boats because they were men … you were the last little boy to get in a lifeboat that night because the officer in charge wouldn’t let boys or men on … so Papa had to stay … but Mama
wanted
to stay with him. Phillip said she wouldn’t get in the last lifeboat that left. She
wanted
to die with Papa.” It was something that had torn at her for five years. Why had Kate wanted to die with their father? “So who was left, George? Who was there? There was me … and you, and you were only twelve years old … and Phillip, and he was only sixteen … that left me. And if you don’t like the way I’ve done it, then I’m sorry.” She turned away from him then, with tears running down her cheeks in the room that had once been her father’s office.

“I’m sorry, Win … ” He was horrified at what he’d done. “I love you … and you’ve been wonderful … I was just upset because this isn’t me … I can’t help it. I’m sorry … I’m not Papa … or Phillip … or you … I’m me … and this isn’t.” There were tears in his eyes now too, because he felt he’d failed her. “I just can’t be like them. Harvard doesn’t mean anything to me, Win. And I don’t understand anything about this paper. I’m not sure I ever will …” He started to cry, and turned back to look at her. “I’m so sorry.”

“What do you want then?” she asked gently. She loved him as he was, and she had to respect him for what he was, and what he wasn’t.

“I want what I’ve always wanted, Win. I want to go to Hollywood and make movies.” He was not yet nineteen
and the thought of his going to Hollywood to make films seemed ridiculous to Edwina.

“How would you do that?”

His eyes lit up and danced at the question. “I have a friend from school whose uncle runs a studio, and he said that if I ever wanted to, I should call him.”

“George,” she said with a sigh, “those are pipe dreams.”

“How do you know? How do you know I wouldn’t turn out to be a brilliant producer?” They both laughed through their tears and a part of her wanted to indulge him, but a more serious side of her told her she was crazy. “Edwina.” He looked at her pleadingly. “Will you let me try?”

“And if I say no?” She looked at him soberly, but the disappointment on his face touched her deeply.

“Then I’ll stay here and behave. But I promise, if you let me go, I’ll come home and check on you every weekend.”

She laughed at the thought. “What would I do with the women you’d drag along behind you?”

“We’ll leave them in the garden.” He grinned. “Well, will you let me try it?”

“I might,” she said slowly, and then looked at him sadly. “And then what do I do with Papa’s paper?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at her honestly. “I don’t think I could ever run it.” It had been a headache to her for a long time, and one day soon, with no one strong enough to run it, it was either going to die quietly, or start costing them a great deal of money.

“I suppose I should sell it. Phillip was the one who really wanted to try his hand at this.” And God only knew what Teddy would do one day, he was only eight years old, and she couldn’t hold on to it forever.

George looked at her with regret. “I’m not Phillip, Win.”

“I know.” She smiled. “But I love you just as you are.”

“Does that mean …” He didn’t dare ask, but she laughed as she nodded and put her arms around his neck and hugged him.

“Yes, you wretch, go … desert me.” She was teasing him. He had come home to her when she needed him, seven months before when Phillip died, but she knew he would never be happy languishing at their father’s paper. And who knew? Maybe one day he’d be good at making movies. “Who is this man, by the way, your friend’s uncle? Is he any good? Is he respectable?”

“The best.” He told her a name she’d never heard of, and they walked out of her father’s office hand in hand. She still had a lot to think about, a lot to decide, but George’s fate was sealed. He was off to Hollywood. And it sounded more than a little mad to Edwina.

GEORGE LEFT FOR HOLLYWOOD IN JULY, RIGHT AFTER THEIR
annual trip to Lake Tahoe. They still went to the same camp they had gone to for years, borrowed from old friends of their parents’, and Edwina and the children still loved it. It was a place to relax, and go for long walks, and swim, and George was still the master at catching crayfish. And this year, it was especially nice for them to be together, before he left on his Hollywood adventure.

They talked about Phillip a lot when they were there, and Edwina spent a lot of time trying to decide what she was going to do with the paper. She had already made her mind up to sell it, but the question was when.

And when they went back to San Francisco, she asked Ben to offer it to the de Youngs, two days after George had left for Los Angeles. The house still seemed to be in an uproar after he left, and his friends were still calling night and day. It was difficult to think of him having a
serious career anywhere, but maybe Hollywood was the place for him if the stories one read were true, which Edwina doubted. There were always tales of mad movie stars draped in white fox, driving fabulous cars, and going to wild parties. He still seemed a little young for all that, but she trusted him, and she had decided that it was better for him to get it out of his system, and either make a success of it or forget it forever.

“Do you suppose I should wait before I sell the paper, Ben? What if he changes his mind and the paper’s gone by then?” She was worried about it, but the truth was that the paper had been sliding downhill badly recently, along with its profits. It just couldn’t survive anymore without her father, and George was far too young and too uninterested to take over.

“It won’t last long enough for him to grow into it.” Ben was always honest with her, although he was sad to see her sell it. But there was just no point in keeping it anymore. Her father was gone, as was her brother Phillip, who might actually have done good things with it, and George had already demonstrated his lack of interest.

The de Youngs turned them down summarily, but in a matter of a month, they got an offer from a publishing group in Sacramento. They had been looking for a San Francisco paper to buy for quite some time, and the
Telegraph Sun
fit the bill perfectly. They made Edwina a decent offer, and Ben suggested that she take it.

“Let me think about it.” She hesitated, and he told her not to drag her feet, or the people in Sacramento might change their minds. The money they offered her was not fabulous, but it would allow her to live on it for the next fifteen or twenty years, and educate her remaining brother and sisters. “And then?” she asked Ben quietly. “What happens after that?” In twenty years, she was going to be forty-seven years old, with no husband,
no skills, and no family to take care of her, unless George or one of the others decided to support her. It was hardly an idea that appealed to her, and she had to think about that now. But on the other hand, keeping the paper wasn’t a solution either.

It made Ben feel sorry for her, but he would never have said as much to her. “You have time over the next several years to make some investments, to save money. There are a lot of things you could do, with time to think about it.” And things that she could have done too, like marry him or anyone else. But at twenty-seven, marriage no longer seemed likely. She was far past the marrying age by then. Women just didn’t suddenly get married at twenty-seven. And she no longer thought about it at all. She had done what she had to do, and that was that. She had no regrets. And it was only for the merest moment when George left that she looked into his face and saw the sheer excitement there, and felt as though life had somehow passed her by. But it was crazy to feel that, she knew. And she had gone home from the station with Fannie and Alexis and Teddy, and gotten busy with them on a project they were making in the garden.

She wouldn’t have known what to do in Hollywood anyway, with all the movie stars and people he wrote to them about now. He made them roar with laughter with tales of women trailing rhinestones and furs, with wolfhounds running behind them, one of whom had lifted his leg on a starlet’s pet snake, causing a near riot on the first set he’d been invited on. He was already having a good time, and he was knee-deep in the movie world within days of his arrival. His friend’s uncle had actually come through, as promised, and had given him a job as an assistant cameraman, learning the trade from the ground up. And in two weeks he was going to be working on his first movie.

“Will he be a movie star one day?” Fannie had wanted to know shortly after he left. She was ten years old, and it all seemed fascinating to her. But it was even more so to Alexis, who, at twelve, was already a beauty. She had grown up to be even more beautiful than she’d been as a child, and her wistful reticence made her look almost sultry. It frightened Edwina sometimes to see how remarkable the child was, and how people stared when she took her out, and it still seemed to frighten Alexis. She had never really fully recovered from her parents’ death. And the blow of Phillip’s being killed as well had made her seem even more remote. And yet, with Edwina, she was always outspoken and intelligent and assured, but the moment there were strangers around her, she still panicked. And she had had an almost eerie attachment to George before he left. She followed him everywhere, and she sat on the stairs sometimes for hours at night, waiting for him to come back from parties. Ever since Phillip had died, she had clung to George, as in the distant past, she had clung to her parents.

She was anxious to know if they would go to Hollywood to visit him, and Edwina promised her they would, although he had promised to come up and visit them for Thanksgiving.

It was shortly before that when the paper finally sold, to the Sacramento people who’d wanted it. And dragging her feet had succeeded in bringing Edwina more money. It was a decent sum, but it was not a fabulous amount, and she knew that now she’d have to be even more careful. There would be no new clothes, new cars, no expensive trips anywhere, none of it things she would miss in any case. All she needed was enough to bring up the children. But it was emotional for her anyway, when the newspaper sold. And she went down on the last day before the sale, to sign the papers in her father’s old
office. It was occupied now by the managing editor he had left in his place. But in everyone’s mind it was still Bert Winfield’s office. And there was a picture of her on the wall as a child, standing next to her mother. She took it down, and looked at it. The rest of his things had been packed long since, and now she put this last photograph away, wrapped up carefully, and she sat down and signed the final papers.

“I guess that’s it.” She looked up at Ben. He had come in specially to watch her sign them, and complete the transaction, as her attorney.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Edwina.” He looked at her and smiled sadly. He would have liked to see Phillip running it, but then again, so would Edwina.

And then as he walked out, “How’s George?”

She laughed before she answered, remembering the absurdities of his last letter. “I don’t think he’s ever been happier. It all sounds a little mad to me. But he loves it.”

“I’m glad. This wasn’t for him.” He didn’t say it, but in his opinion George would have destroyed the paper.

They stood outside the paper for a long time, and she knew she would see him about other matters she consulted him on, but he walked her slowly to her car and helped her in with a feeling of nostalgia. “Thank you for everything.” She said it softly. He nodded, and she started the car, and drove slowly home, feeling sad. She had just given up the paper her father had so deeply loved. But with him gone … and Phillip gone … it was finally the end of an era.

GEORGE CAME HOME FOR THANKSGIVING AS PROMISED, FULL
of wild tales and crazy stories of even crazier people. He had met the Warner brothers by then, and seen Norma and Constance Talmadge at a party, and he regaled the children with tales of Tom Mix and Charlie Chaplin. It was not that he knew any of them well, but Hollywood was so open, so alive, so exciting, and the film industry so new, it was open to everyone, he claimed, and he loved it. It was exactly what he had wanted.

His friend’s uncle, Sam Horowitz, sounded like a character as well, and according to George, he was a shrewd businessman and knew everyone in town. He had started the most important studio in Hollywood four years before, and he was going to own the whole town one day, because he was so smart about what he did, and everybody seemed to like him. George described him as a big man, in stature as well as importance, and the fact that he had a very pretty daughter
wasn’t entirely lost on Edwina. According to George, she was an only child, who’d lost her mother as a little girl in a train disaster in the East, and she had grown up alone with her adoring father. He seemed to know a lot about the girl, but Edwina refrained from making comments as he told them one amusing story after another.