Cheat and Charmer (32 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Frank
Felicity promised to give Veevi the message but told Dinah not to get
her hopes up. “I don’t think it’s a question of politics, darling. Just heartbreak.”
Later that night, Jake patted a space beside him on the bed. As Dinah obediently got in next to him, she told him to ask Gladys to make a plane reservation for her. “I’m going to Paris to get Veevi.”
“Oh no you aren’t,” he said.
“Oh yes I am. I’ve got to make sure she’s all right.”
“That’s exactly what you don’t have to do, Dinah. You haven’t heard from her—she’s effectively said ‘fuck you’ to both of us. As far as I’m concerned, she’s on her own. Let’s turn off the lights and make a baby. Don’t make Veevi the baby. If you do, it’ll never end.”
“Okay, Jake, okay. But I’ll come to England with you and I’ll go see her.”
Jake was superstitious about his projects and rarely discussed them with friends until principal photography had started. What he hadn’t shared with Hunt Crandell was that it looked as if his new picture would soon be set. He had a commitment from Wynn Tooling, the English movie star, and was revising the script, putting in business geared specifically to Tooling’s genius for physical comedy. All the second-unit material—exteriors, the car chase—would be shot in and around London. He didn’t want the responsibility of having Dinah with him during the days. And he had high hopes for extracurricular fun at night. Most of all, he didn’t want Dinah to get tangled up in Veevi’s life.
“Wait a little while, honey, and let’s see how things shape up,” he counseled her. “They usually take care of themselves.”
“She’s in trouble, Jake. And alone.”
“Veevi has more friends than anyone we know. And don’t forget—she stopped speaking to you. What makes you so sure she’ll want to see you?”
He turned on the radio and started listening to the baseball game, and Dinah turned out the lights and got into her own bed. The smooth, ironed sheets enveloped her, but she felt small and cold.
J
ake pulled the sheet of engraved stationery out of the hotel typewriter on which he had been contentedly hunting and punching, set it down on the night table beside the bed, and stepped out onto the balcony overlooking Hyde Park. He sucked on his Monte Cristo, gazing momentarily at its emerald green sunspots and feeling the prickles of sweat break out on his scalp as the rich, spicy smoke invaded his senses. He had been feeling wonderful ever since arriving in London. He was happy with everything: the red double-decker buses slowly lumbering up Park Lane, the towering green trees retreating into dusky shadow in the park, the exteriors and the chase he had been shooting for the past two weeks. One day, he told himself, he was going to shoot a scene from just this angle. The POV shot would be right from this balcony. The heavies would be chasing the hero up Park Lane, in and out of buses, and he’d work in the park and the trees and the vista up to Marble Arch and put in the tobacco-stained old fellow from the news kiosk on the corner—the one who’d made him laugh out loud the other day: “Me muvver started me on the tit. De-licious. An’ it’s only Guinness what gives me the same de-loit.”
Sighing with an unquenchable desire for more—for more of
everything
—he chewed the cigar and gazed out over the park, savoring the sounds of a big city—like the Chicago he had known as a kid. Los Angeles was nowheresville compared to London. He had craved the roar of ceaseless activity, the smell of wet raincoats, the stink of buses. He wanted to get the kids out of L.A. and into a place with museums and theaters—not to mention gambling clubs for himself. He would start with a town house, in one of the big squares. Then good “public” schools for the kids, a country
house, and flats in Paris and New York. He wanted to be free of studios and to go wherever he liked. He wanted to make pictures cheaply and live out in the world, not in L.A., which was nothing but a company town. Come to think of it, why stop at Paris and New York? He wanted a place in Cap Ferrat or Biarritz, and another in Klosters. And what about Italy? He’d love a little place in Italy. He puffed and yearned and puffed and yearned, relishing what he had and what he didn’t have and what he wanted and what he was free to want, and all of it made him wild to work and convinced him that he could make it all happen.
Finally, he glanced at his watch and went inside. Unbelting his bathrobe, he lay down on the wide bed in his T-shirt and shorts and, by the light of a yellow silk lamp with fringe and gilded tassels that he knew Dinah would find hilarious, reached for the letter he had just finished writing.
Honey
, it began,
Today we finished another marvelous week of exteriors out at Marlow (incredibly lovely, near an equally lovely spot on the Thames called, believe it or not, Maidenhead—I forgot to ask whose). We’re about two-thirds done on the chase, the trick car has—knock on wood—been behaving well, and the English weather, which is, as you know, the dreariest in the world, has favored us with fairly constant sunshine and no rain. I love working here and I love being here. The crew call me “Guv,” and as long as they get their tea breaks exactly on schedule (which they call “shed-ule”), they couldn’t be sweeter or more helpful. Wynn Tooling is a darling—a consummate professional, always ready, genuinely nice. Thinking I might be lonely, he and his wife, Diana, invited me out to their house last Sunday afternoon. She’s the daughter of Constance Fletcher—remember her? Since “retiring from the stage,” she has established herself in regal comfort not a mile from the Toolings in Henley, which happens to be right next to Maidenhead. I had the Rolls—finally a car long enough for me to stretch out my legs in—and the chauffeur from Elstree (very nice for a little Jewish kid from Hyde Park—Hyde Park, Chicago that is), and I invited Felicity along. She’s in town for a few days’ shopping at Harrods before they leave for Kenya. Except for missing you terribly, and both of us wanting to show you a thousand things, we had a great afternoon, ending up at a neighbor of the Toolings’ Wynn would only identify as Lady Peel. Well, Felicity was nervous and so was I. Being here is one thing.
Meeting the quality another. Felicity kept giving me strained looks, and I began to wonder whether men are supposed to curtsy
.
Expecting a shelf-bosomed dowager with pearls and a lorgnette, I was dumbfounded when the diminutive creature announced to us by the butler turned out to be none other than Bea Lillie, very elegant, thoroughly crocked, and utterly adorable in her big house on the Thames. And she most certainly
is
Lady Peel, by virtue of her marriage to a descendant of the fellow who came up with that capital invention the London police, or “bobbies.”
Tea was served, but nobody drank it. Instead, there were rivers of gin. Then Wynn said, “Darling, do be a love and show Jake the Queen and the Crapper.” Whereupon Bea Lillie suddenly became, right before our eyes, none other than Queen Victoria on the occasion of Her Majesty’s introduction to the first modern water closet at Buckingham Palace. On her head she placed a little white lace handkerchief. Then she folded her arms tightly across her chest and somehow managed to both puff out her cheeks and pinch in her mouth, and bang, there she was, the aged queen herself, approaching and inspecting, with high royal skepticism, the first royal loo. She raised her imaginary but voluminous skirts and gently and suspiciously lowered her royal behind onto the royal can. The look on her face as she passed what can only be called royal water, the human bliss of it—checked by monarchical noblesse, as if it would be a betrayal of her subjects to enjoy the moment too voluptuously—made me ache for a camera. Moments later she stands, suspiciously inspects the bowl, tentatively reaches out, and then, in a wild burst of royal courage, as if she were taking upon herself the fate of the empire, pulls, or rather yanks, the chain—suddenly starting at the noise and jumping back, then leaning forward and peering downward with amazement as the royal effluvia are hydraulically propelled through the labyrinthine pipes of the palace plumbing out into London’s sewers, whence they make their democratic way to the ever-flowing Thames. Christ, honey, I wish you’d been there. You know Felicity’s laugh. Well, you could hear it all the way to Windsor Castle
.
Anyway, the point is that it’s only over here that we can meet people like that. I would love to write something for Bea Lillie, and I think I have a knack for English stage comedy. It isn’t so far from Vaudeville shtick, and can be very broad and very, very funny. And think how close London is to the rest of Europe! I could make pictures in a dozen different
places over here. I’m finally going to Paris first thing tomorrow morning, taking the seven o’clock plane from Heathrow with Felicity and staying at the Raphael. According to her, it’s much classier and quieter than the George V. Now, about your letter. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten it, and if I can somehow find a way to see Veevi, and if she’ll condescend to talk to me, I’ll give it to her. I promise, though as you know, I still think you’re making a big mistake. By the way, Felicity seems much less worried about her than she was in L.A., though she thinks V.’s apparent equanimity is based on her tenacious but totally mistaken assumption that if she just waits it out long enough Mike will come back—something Felicity says ain’t gonna happen. I’m telling you all this very reluctantly, because I know it will only make that albatross of an already overdeveloped sense of guilt toward your sister hang more heavily around your pretty little neck. Please, darling, I’m begging you, don’t drive yourself crazy over this. I will honestly try to deliver your letter by hand as you’ve asked, but I’m not going to force myself on her. As I wrote you the other night, she never called me back when I called her two weeks ago and there’s only so much I can do or, frankly, am willing to do
.
God, I love this town, and I know you would, too. I can’t tell you how being over here makes me want to get the hell out of Hollywood for good, and move here, the sooner the better. I wake up here and think, Why on earth would anybody want to live in L.A.? Why be chained to that goddamn industry? I’ve never felt so at home anywhere as I do here. Think of it, honey: the Dorch is just around the corner from where Disraeli lived. In America I’m a Jew; over here I’m a Yank who knows how to make the English laugh. It’s romantic and silly of me, I suppose, but I love walking here and feeling surrounded by history. If I could just show it to you, I know you’d understand. As usual, whenever I’m away from you I feel only half alive. I wish you were here right now so we could go beddy-bye and then spend the day looking for a smashy house for the four (or more) of us. And about that “more”: anything to report?
So let’s start talking this over as soon as I get home. Let’s sell the house. If Gussie’s willing to come, let’s bring her with us. I want the kids to go to good English schools and get a real education. I want to live in a town where people talk about something besides the movies. I want to walk in the parks. I want to start over and write plays, and I’ve
got some novels up my sleeve. Just being away makes me realize that every day I’m in L.A. I walk around with a slight depression. Over here it’s gone and I feel like a new man
.
Darling, I love you and miss your sweet brown eyes and your great long legs. I miss your laugh and your stutter. Just promise me, honey, that wherever we live, whatever we do, we’re doing it as one person, one body, forever
.
Kiss the kids for me, and don’t forget our nightly date: when it’s ten o’clock here it’s two there, and, baby, I’ve been thinking of you at exactly that time and hope you’ve been thinking of me. When the picture is done let’s go someplace great together, just you and me, and get back to work on supplying the world with another little Lasker
.
All my love
,
When he finished rereading the letter, he found his gold ballpoint pen and signed his initial
—J
. He could just imagine Dinah reading it in her bathrobe at the breakfast table, and felt a little teary. If he did say so himself, he wrote a damn good love letter, and his chest expanded with the pleasure and reassurance he knew she would feel upon reading it. He wasn’t so good at hugging and kissing, didn’t like to hold hands or put his arm around her, but he knew how to lay down the words.
He glanced at his watch: time to shave and shower for the evening. He hastily folded the letter and put it in an envelope and began to whistle “I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter.” But the tune trailed off; he felt overcome by the desire to take a little nap. He called the hotel operator and instructed her to ring him in exactly twenty minutes. Then he lay down on the large bed and drew the bedspread up to the hollow just under his nose. Luxuriously, he abandoned himself to thoughts of Felicity’s legs. Long and tanned, crossed, and sheathed in nylon stockings in the backseat of the Rolls earlier in the week, when she had driven out with him to watch him shoot, those legs had held out delightful promise. As he grew hard he thought, I really ought to just take this nap, and besides, what if she says yes? Then I’ve gone and shot it all and can’t get it up later. But then he thought sternly yet comfortingly, Nonsense, this is pure nonsense. Since when haven’t I been able to do it at least twice in one night? Reaching for himself, he added, Besides, there’s nothing that relaxes me better or faster and does a better job of putting me to sleep.