No Greater Love (31 page)

“You’re damn right I’ve never said that to you! Do you think I want you hanging around people like him? Don’t be ridiculous! And look at you, you’re a baby!
You don’t belong down here, or in pictures, at your age!”

“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me!” she wailed, as George almost dragged her into the living room of their suite and she collapsed sobbing into a chair as Edwina watched them.

“May I interrupt to ask why you didn’t ask my permission to go out with him, or even introduce us?” That had occurred to her from the first, and it worried her now. Ever since she was a child, Alexis had been going off on her own, and eleven years before it had almost cost her her life on the
Titanic.

“Because …” Alexis sobbed even more vehemently, clutching her handkerchief, and drenching Edwina’s dress, which she had “borrowed” for her tryst. “I knew you wouldn’t let me.”

“That’s sensible of you, Alexis. May I ask how old the gentleman is?” Edwina was clearly disapproving.

“He’s thirty-five,” Alexis answered primly, and her brother shouted in derision.

“My eye! He’s fifty if he’s a day! My God, where have you been all your life!” George interrupted, but Edwina knew that wasn’t fair, she was a child from a sleepy town compared to this hotbed of glamour and illicit behavior in the South Land. She couldn’t be expected to identify roués and cads at a mere glance like her older brother who worked and lived here. “Do you have any idea what someone like that will do with you?” Alexis shook her head, crying harder, and he turned to Edwina in exasperation. “I’ll let you explain that to her.” And then he turned back to his younger sister. “And you’ll be damn lucky if I don’t send you home before your birthday.”

They had agreed to celebrate it in Los Angeles over her Easter holiday, but the rest of the week proved to be more than a little strained. Alexis was in obvious disgrace and Edwina had had several serious talks with
her. The trouble was that she was a beautiful girl and she was far too visible to the men in Hollywood. Even here, everywhere they went, people stared at her, particularly men. She overshadowed everyone around her, even her sisters. And to complicate matters further, two days after her evening with Malcolm Stone, a scout approached her in the hotel lobby and asked if she would like to make a movie for Fox Productions. Edwina gently declined for her, and Alexis flew to their room in fresh gales of tears, accusing Edwina of trying to ruin her life forever. She took to her bed and that night George asked Edwina what was wrong with her, she had never been this way before, but he also hadn’t lived at home for the past four years. And Alexis had never been the easiest child, and she wasn’t now either. Although she was shy, and somewhat unaware of her dazzling looks, she was dying for a career in the movies.

“It’s a difficult age,” Edwina said to George calmly when they were alone. “And she’s a beautiful girl. That’s confusing sometimes. People offer her all kinds of treats, and we say she can’t have them. Men run after her, and we say she can’t go. In her eyes, it’s not much fun, and we’re all the villains. Or at least, I am.”

“Thank God.” He had never realized how hard it had been for Edwina. Bringing up children was not as easy as he had sometimes thought. “What are we going to do with her now?” He acted as though she had committed a crime in Los Angeles, and Edwina laughed.

“I’m going to take her home, and hope that she settles down. And pray that she finds a husband before she’s much older, and then he can worry about how pretty she is.” She laughed, and he shook his head in bewildered amusement.

“I hope I never have daughters.”

“I hope you have twelve,” she laughed. “Speaking of which,” she said, looking at him pointedly, feeling like a
much older sister again, ‘“what have you done about Helen? Why aren’t you in Palm Springs?”

“I called and now they’re visiting friends in San Diego. I left a message at the hotel, but I’m going to wait till they get back. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see Sam, by the way.” Edwina had met him once, three years before, and she had liked him. He was an impressive man, with intelligent eyes and the face of a wise man, and everything about him, from his great height, to his powerful handshake, exuded power.

“I’ll see him next time. But listen, you,” she said, looking at him severely, “don’t mess up your life. You remember what I said, and do the right stuff. You got that?” She grinned at him then, but they both knew she meant it.

“Yes, ma’am. You’d better tell your sister that too.” But after a day of crying about her blighted movie career, Alexis calmed down enough to enjoy her birthday. They had one day in Los Angeles left, and Edwina wanted to take the two youngest children on the set of George’s latest movie. He was busy in the production office, but the children were able to meet Lillian Gish, which was the high point of their visit. And seeing him in his working environment allowed Edwina to ask him a question she’d been wondering about since the scout from Fox Productions approached Alexis.

“Would you ever let her do a picture for you?”

He thought about it for a minute and sat back in his chair with a long sigh. “I don’t know. I never thought about it before. Why? Are you her agent?”

Edwina laughed as he teased her. “No, I just wondered. She seems to have the same fascination with all this that you did.” It was true, and she was certainly pretty enough to be a star. She was just a little young, but maybe one day … it would have cheered Alexis to know that.

“I don’t know, Edwina. Maybe. But I see so much go on here. Would you really want her in the midst of all this?” He didn’t. He wouldn’t even have wanted it for his own children, if he had any. Just as Sam didn’t want it for Helen. And as a result, George thought, she was a nicer person.

“Helen seems to have survived it,” she pointed out, and he nodded.

“That’s true. But she’s different. And she’s not in the front lines. Her father would lock her up before he’d let her appear in a movie.” Edwina had often wondered why she wasn’t, but that explained it.

“It was just a thought. Never mind.”

“Where is Alexis?”

“Resting at the hotel. She didn’t feel well.”

“Are you sure?” He was suspicious of everything now, and all the men he saw looked like rapists, hellbent on attacking his sister. Edwina teased him about it as she went back to the set to pick up the others.

George took them all out to lunch afterward, and he dropped them off at the hotel and went back to his office. But when they went back to the rooms, Alexis wasn’t there, and Edwina sent Teddy to the pool to find her.

“She’s not there. Maybe she went for a walk somewhere.” He went back outside to see if he could see Tom Mix in the lobby again, and Fannie started to pack, to help Edwina. But by dinnertime, Alexis still hadn’t reappeared, and Edwina was beginning to panic. She wondered suddenly if George had been right to be suspicious, even though she hated to think that way about her younger sister. But Alexis had always been different from the rest of them … shy … distant … removed … afraid of everything as a small child, although she was better now. But she had always clung to the adults in her life, and she did now. She was desperately
attached to Edwina, and to George, and in some ways Edwina had always felt that she had never recovered from Phillip’s death, even more than that of their parents. She seemed to have an almost unnatural need to attach herself to her friends’ fathers and uncles and older brothers, not in a sexual way, at least not in her mind, but it was as though she were eternally searching for a big brother like Phillip, or a daddy.

Edwina called George finally, at eight o’clock. He had had plans for that night, and he was going to take them to the station in the morning. And with fear in her voice, she explained to George that Alexis was missing. She was glad that he had not yet gone out, and he arrived at the hotel in evening clothes to discuss the situation with Edwina.

“Have you seen her with anyone?” Edwina said she hadn’t. “Could she be with Malcolm Stone again? Do you think she could be that stupid?”

“Not stupid,” Edwina explained, fighting back tears, “young.”

“Don’t tell me about young. I was young too.” He still was, Edwina thought, smiling, although at nearly twenty-four he didn’t think so. “I didn’t disappear every two minutes and chase around with fifty-year-old deadbeats.”

“Never mind that, what are we going to do, George? What if something’s happened?” But somehow, he didn’t think she’d been kidnapped or hurt, unlike Edwina, who was convinced of it and wanted him to call the police. But he hesitated to do that.

“If she’s not hurt, and she’s with Stone again, or someone like him, the press is going to get hold of it, and make a big stink, and you don’t want that either.” Instead he walked around the hotel, handing out big tips and asking questions, and in twenty minutes he had their answer. And he was fuming. She had gone to
Rosarita Beach, with Malcolm Stone. He had borrowed a car, and left with a beautiful, very young blond girl, and taken her to the famous hotel where everyone went to drink and gamble and have illicit affairs, just across the Mexican border.

“Oh, my God …” Edwina burst into tears, and ordered the children into the other room. She didn’t want them to hear it. “George, what are we going to do?”

“What are we going to do?” he blazed. It was eight-thirty by then, and it would take him two and a half hours to get there, driving as fast as he could. It would be eleven o’clock by then, and with luck it wouldn’t be too late … maybe. “We are going to drive to Mexico, that’s what we’re going to do. We are going to get her. And then I’m going to kill him.” But fortunately she knew her brother better than that. At his orders, she grabbed a coat, and ran out the door after him a moment later, calling over her shoulder to Fannie and Teddy
not
to leave the room, no matter what, and they would be back very late.

Edwina flew through the lobby behind George, and he wasted no time flooring the car and heading south. And it was twenty to eleven when they got there. The hotel was a rambling affair on the beach, and there were expensive American cars parked all around it. People came down from Los Angeles all the time to get drunk and wild and more than a little crazy.

They walked into the hotel and George fully expected to have to pull every bedroom door off its hinges to find her, but they were still sitting at the bar, which was lucky. Malcolm Stone was gambling and very drunk, and Alexis was a little drunk and very nervous. And she almost fainted when she saw George and Edwina. George crossed the bar to where they were, in two strides, grabbed her by the arm, and literally yanked her off the barstool.

“Oh … I …” She couldn’t even speak, it happened so fast, and Malcolm Stone looked up with bland amusement.

“We meet again,” he said coolly with a Hollywood smile, but George wasn’t smiling at him.

“Apparently you didn’t understand me the first time. Alexis is seventeen years old, and if you come near her again I’m going to have you run out of town and then put in jail. You can kiss your movie career good-bye right now if you come near her again. Now, are we clear this time? Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly. My apologies. I must have misunderstood the last time.”

“Fine,” George said, dropping his tailcoat on a chair, and aiming one punch at Stone’s midriff, and the next at his chin before stepping back again. “See that you don’t misunderstand me this time.” And as Malcolm Stone knelt dazed on the floor as people stared at him in amazement, George picked up his coat, grabbed Alexis by the arm, and walked back out of the bar with Edwina behind him.

THE DRIVE BACK TO LOS
ANGELES WAS PAINFUL FOR ALL, BUT
particularly so for Alexis. She cried copiously all the way, not because she was afraid of the punishment they would mete out, but mostly because she’d been frightened and embarrassed. But the humiliation they had caused was not quite as unnerving as the realization had been that Malcolm wasn’t planning to take her home that night. She had just figured that out when George appeared in the bar, like a knight in shining armor. It had come a little close for her this time, and even though she liked Malcolm, and he treated her like a little girl, “his little baby” he kept calling her, and it made her feel all warm and happy inside, it was a relief to be going home to the safety of her life with Edwina.

“You are never coming down here again,” George told her in no uncertain terms when they got back to the hotel, in addition to a barrage of reproaches he had pelted her with on the drive north from the Mexican
border. “You are unmanageable and you can’t be trusted. And if I were Edwina, I would lock you up in a convent. You’re just lucky you don’t live with me. That’s all I have to say!” But he was still spluttering when she went to bed, and he poured himself a drink with Edwina. “Christ, doesn’t she realize what that guy would have done? That’s all we’d need, his little brat running around nine months from now.” He took a sip of the drink and collapsed on the couch as Edwina stared at him in disapproval.

“George!”

“Well, what do you think would have happened to her? Can’t she figure that out?”

“I think she has now.” Alexis had explained it to her while she undressed and Edwina tucked her into bed like a sad, naughty child. It was difficult for Alexis, she was a woman, and yet still a baby. And Edwina suspected she always would be. The shocks in her life had taken their toll, and she needed more than anyone had to give. What she really needed was what she could never have. She needed a mommy and a daddy, and since she was six years old, she had never had them. And there had been the terrible night when she had thought she’d lost everyone, when they’d thrown her into the lifeboat with her doll, just moments before the ship sank.

“He told her he was going to bring her home tonight,” Edwina explained to George as he sipped his whiskey. It had been a long drive and a long night and his hand hurt from where he had hit Malcolm Stone. Edwina did not mention how impressed she had been by her brother’s stellar performance. “And she’d only just figured out that he’d lied to her when we turned up, like heroes in a movie.”