What the Heart Keeps (38 page)

All
that remained was for Alan to take on two projectionists, both with diplomas issued by the British Bioscope Company to endorse that they were fully qualified electrical bioscope operators, and a fireman, whose duty was to keep the fire buckets filled, check that the emergency exits were always ready to open, and generally keep an eye on the safety of the property. According to a new law, film was no longer allowed to drop down freely into a container from the projector to be rewound after the programme, but had to pass from one closed canister into another. Alan had these fitted to his projectors, which were run by belts attached to a small engine, which eliminated the hand cranking that had previously been necessary.

The
days before the opening of The Fernley were dwindling down on the morning Lisa arrived with a letter, coming at a run through the vestibule into the foyer in search of Alan, who had gone earlier to the premises. She found him in his office.

“
I’ve heard from Minnie!” she exclaimed excitedly to him. “She took your cousin Sylvia’s address with her after all, hoping that her letters would be forwarded on to us even if we were no longer staying there. She and Risto are married and they’re both working for one of the film companies in Los Angeles.”

“
Acting?” Alan asked with interest.

“
Yes. Isn’t it wonderful news.” She perched on the edge of his desk to read it to him, her sheath skirt having the fashionable tango split in the front that showed her silk-stockinged legs halfway to her knees.

It
was the happiest letter that Minnie had ever written. Upon their arrival in Los Angeles they had gone, more by luck than judgement, to an old barn that had been taken over as a studio only that day by a motion-picture company newly arrived from New York. Goods and equipment were still being unloaded. Such was the rivalry between companies that no time could be wasted and the cameras had already been set up outside and filming was about to start. Minnie and Risto and some other hopeful applicants were signed on at once; they were handed costumes from a wardrobe trunk and their first day’s work began. In a restaurant scene, supposedly set in a Paris cellar, the two of them were diners and had to toast each other with wineglasses while gripping the check cloth under the table to prevent its flapping about in the breeze and giving away the fact that it was all being filmed in the Californian sunshine. Since then they had played a variety of crowd parts, for one-reel movies were made in a week.

Now
there was a sudden move towards the longer feature film, and Risto was to be a gladiator, and she a slave-girl, in a four-reeler that was going into production. Minnie felt the tenure of their steady work was due in part to their having been at the studio from the first day, for most people, from cameramen to directors, appeared to think they had come with the company in the exodus from New York and treated them now as experienced players. Whatever the reason, she and Risto in very minor roles as characters of Ancient Rome were, nevertheless, to have their own farewell scene in the new movie. They would be in the background, echoing on another plane the more dramatic parting between the leading actor and actress, but their acting ability was being called upon and they intended to do their best. She added that for professional purposes she was being known as Minnie Shaw, explaining that as she and Lisa had always been taken for sisters it had been a natural choice to take her dearest friend’s maiden name. She closed the letter with loving greetings and implored forgiveness for any upset she had caused by running away with her darling Risto, but it had been the only solution to not being separated forever.

“
Good luck to them,” Alan said sincerely. “It seems as if we’ll be seeing them on our screen here before long.”

“
Maybe one day they’ll appear on lobby cards like these on the desk.” Lisa leaned her weight on one hand to peer over at the sepia-tinted images of scenes from the opening night’s film, which had been sent with other advertising material from the distributor. These cards were set up on decorative easels in the vestibule to give patrons a foretaste of the pleasures to come and tempt the hesitant into buying a ticket. She helped Alan make a selection before taking a seat at her own desk to deal with some business correspondence awaiting her attention.

Before
the day ended, she wrote a long reply to Minnie’s letter and enclosed a photograph of Harry that had been taken on his fourth birthday. She had previously sent one to Agnes Twidle. By a strange coincidence, Agnes herself had survived a forest fire at Granite Bay about the same time as Lisa had escaped. Agnes also had taken to a row-boat and was on her own throughout the ordeal, for Henry had been away at the time. Miraculously their house and orchard had escaped completely, although the flames had passed close by.

All
this news was included in the letter to Minnie as well as everything of interest about the new cinema. As Lisa sealed the envelope she glanced across at the 1912 calendar on the office desk and noted that only ten days remained before the March date of the opening night. For the first time she realised that it was in its way an anniversary, for it was exactly nine years since she had run away from the orphanage in a vain attempt to avoid being shipped to Canada, a doomed escapade that had changed the whole course of her life.

The
Fernley’s opening night arrived. Queues began to form long before the programme was due to begin. Tremendous interest had been aroused through publicity in the local press about the three-reel feature film, which was
A
Tale
of
Two
Cities
and would run for the amazing length of three quarters of an hour. It was to have a supporting programme of a two-reel cowboy movie and three one-reel comedies; a gazette of topical news, which included the visit of the King and Queen to the Earls Court Exhibition; and a screen magazine reel of forthcoming attractions.

Alan,
as manager and proprietor, was in white tie and tails, and Lisa, who was to play the piano alone in the orchestra pit, had a new evening dress to wear. It was a silver-beaded tunic of pink chiffon over white, combining the softly draped bosom with the straight and slender silhouette. A final touch was a silk rose tucked into the coils of her hair at the back of her neck.

“
You look beautiful,” Alan said to her in the last moments of waiting before the doors were opened to the public.

Her
smile twinkled at him. “You look handsome yourself, Mr. Fernley.”

He
chuckled, putting his arms about her. “Then kiss me, Mrs. Fernley.”

She
rested her hands against his shoulders and Looked at him with a fond seriousness. “Good luck with the Fernley Cinema, Alan. May it bring you all the success you deserve.”

“
It’s our venture, darling. Not mine alone. None of it would mean anything to me without you.” His embrace tightened about her and they kissed.

As
they drew apart, he turned to signal with a nod to Billy to open the doors. Billy, smartly uniformed in dark blue with brass buttons in his role as commissionaire, his Boer War ribbons on his chest, saluted and went forward with long strides to release the bolts. Lisa sped away to take her seat at the piano below the screen, a green-shaded light giving her a spot of illumination for the sheet music. There was a special score for the feature film, since some of the bigger movie-makers were now selecting their own accompanying music which was delivered with the reels.

From
beyond the doors into the auditorium there came a rumble of hurrying feet. She struck up a medley of popular tunes as the first patrons streamed in to take their seats. There were exclamations at the plush-covered seats and the concealed lighting that gave a glow to the plaster ornamentation of flower-garlands. Unlike most cinemas, the cheap seats at the front were not plain wooden benches but leather-covered editions of those in the rest of the rows. The appreciative remarks reached Lisa clearly where she sat a few feet from the poorer patrons.

Then
the curtain across the screen within its proscenium arch parted. A projected slide showed the kindly bearded face of King George V, and Lisa played the national anthem, which befitted the importance of the occasion. Everybody sang as they stood in the rows and as the last notes died away seats were resumed. A more utilitarian slide requested that ladies remove their hats to facilitate the view of others. When the rustling of hands sliding out hat-pins and removing fashionably large headgear had subdued, the programme commenced.

As
Lisa played she felt she could easily have been back at Mae Remotti’s hotel in Dekova’s Place, for the reactions of the audience to the movies on the screen were exactly the same. They laughed uproariously at the comedies, cheered the cowboys and growled or hissed at the villains. When a film jammed in the projector’s gate and broke during a comedy reel, their groans in unison were followed not long after by a stamping of feet from the stalls to the Grand Circle and the Balcony as patience became stretched at the time the projectionists were taking to repair it. A cheer greeted the flickering return of the first frames to the screen, and after that there were no more hitches. Women brought handkerchiefs out of their purses and wiped their eyes, some stifling sobs, when Sydney Carton mounted the steps of the guillotine in the final scene of A
Tale
of
Two
Cities
. Lisa played the last dramatic chords and the performance was over. Just as in Mae Remotti’s, a few patrons took time to come to Lisa and say how much they had enjoyed her accompaniment.

“
It was real nice,” one woman said, still wiping red eyes, her wide smile showing how much she had enjoyed the programme.

“
Thank you. I hope you’ll all come again.”

They
declared in turn that they would and bade her good night. Lisa stacked her music together and put it ready for the matinee the next day. From now on there would be non-stop performances from six o’clock nightly for six days of the week and the same number of matinees.

Alan
took her out to a champagne supper before they went home. Both were convinced that they had a sure-fire winner in The Fernley and it was cause for a special celebration.

By
the end of the year the financial returns had exceeded their most hopeful expectations. They hired a three-piece orchestra for the evening performance, and Lisa continued to play at the matinees. With a complete change of programme in the middle of the week, many patrons came twice in order not to miss anything. Some women came three times to one movie if the hero caught their fancy. Friday and Saturday nights were occasions for family outings when a husband brought his wife and all their offspring. With cinema fever getting a grip on the whole country, as it was elsewhere in the world, many, a man was being drawn away from his favourite pub, and the womenfolk were thankful for it.

The
movie in which Minnie and Risto had their farewell scene reached the screen of The Fernley early in 1913. Both Lisa and Alan thought they did well. Although she did not write often, Minnie did keep them informed of her own and Risto’s progress. They were continuing to get small parts that were only a degree ahead of crowd parts, but everything was promising.

Not
long after this film was shown, Alan managed to acquire a property adjoining the cinema building. It was incorporated into the main structure, providing them with a large apartment on the upper floor, which meant they could leave Sylvia’s home and have a place of their own at last. At ground level they opened a cinema café that served afternoon teas and light suppers which soon proved to be an additional and highly profitable attraction. It was Lisa’s ideas that tea dances be introduced and the evening orchestra further engaged for this afternoon diversion. Once again it was a move of great success and the dancing space was filled every afternoon with those enjoying the tango, the fox-trot, the one-step and the two-step as well as a variety of other popular dances from the Bunny Hug to the Turkey Trot.

The
Fernley had been opened eighteen months when an incident occurred that caused Lisa some upset. Billy had found two barefoot slum children hiding in the balcony while he was checking that no property had been left behind after an evening’s performance. They had waited outside and slipped in when patrons were leaving, their intention being to conceal themselves there to see the programme free of charge when the cinema opened next day. He had turned them out unceremoniously and was taken aback next day when Lisa, upon hearing his report, angrily demanded to know why he had not taken their names and addresses.

“
I didn’t think you’d want to put the police on to them, ma’am,” he said with a frown.

She
shook her head vigorously. “Of course not. I would have wanted you to make sure that they had a home to go to, and that they were not just being turned back into the streets. You should have telephoned me, Billy. I’d have come at once. Please remember that if anything similar should occur again.”

As the days went by she could not dismiss those unknown children from her mind. Then an idea came to her which she thought out in every detail before voicing the proposition to Alan.

“
I’d like to put on a Saturday-morning movie show especially for children, pricing the stall at a half-penny and a penny while retaining normal prices for children accompanied by adults in the Grand Circle and Balcony. Well? Do you have any objection?”