No Greater Love (28 page)

“Can we come and see you sometime?” Teddy asked with adoring eyes. His brother was a big man to him, more important even than a movie star! And George reveled in their excitement over what he was doing. It wasn’t that he was that fascinated with the technical end of it, and being an assistant cameraman was only temporary, he assured them all, but one day he wanted to produce the films and run the studio, the way Sam Horowitz did, and he was sure he could do it. Sam had even promised him an office job within a year if he behaved himself and was serious about the business.

“I hope you work harder than you did at the newspaper,” Edwina reminded him, and he grinned.

“I promise, Sis. Harder than at Harvard too!” He was penitent about his sins, and he had found something he really loved. She was only sorry Phillip hadn’t lived to see what his brother had undertaken. But then again, if Phillip were alive, George would probably still have been cutting classes at Harvard.

The war had ended a few weeks earlier, and Edwina and he talked about it during his few days in San Francisco. It seemed cruel that their brother had died only a year before. All of it seemed so senseless. Ten million dead among all the Allied countries, and twenty million maimed. It was a staggering toll that was difficult to even conceive of. And talking about the war in Europe reminded her that she hadn’t heard from Aunt Liz in a long time, and she wanted to write to her, to tell her about George’s new life in Hollywood, and give her news of the other children. She had been desolate when
Edwina wrote to tell her of Phillip’s death the year before, but she had hardly written to them since. Edwina imagined that it was because it had been so difficult to get letters out of England.

She wrote to her after George went back to Los Angeles, and it was after Christmas before she got an answer. By then, George had come home again, to celebrate the holidays with them, and tell them more stories about the stars he’d seen. Edwina noticed several more mentions of Helen Horowitz during his brief stay with them, and she suspected that George was very taken with her. She wondered if she should go down and visit him there or let him enjoy his independence without intruding. In a way, he was half boy, half man. At nineteen, he considered himself the consummate sophisticate, and yet she knew that in his heart of hearts, he was still a child, and perhaps he always would be. It was what she loved about him the most. When he was home he played endlessly with the children. He brought the girls beautiful new dolls, and a new dress for each, and a handsome bicycle and a pair of stilts for Teddy. And for Edwina, he had brought a fabulous silver fox jacket. She couldn’t imagine wearing it, and yet she remembered her mother having one years before, and she felt glamorous and beautiful when she tried it on. And he had insisted that she wear it to the breakfast table on Christmas morning. He was always generous and kind, and endlessly silly, as he walked around the house on Teddy’s stilts, and went out to greet their neighbors on them from the garden.

And he had already left again when Edwina finally heard from her aunt’s solicitor in London. He had written her a very formal letter, and regretted to inform her that Lady Hickham had passed away in late October, but due to the “inconveniences” of the last days of the Great War, he had been unable to advise her sooner.
But he had been meaning to write to her anyway, as soon as things were sorted out, he said. As she undoubtedly knew, Lord Rupert had left his lands, and his estate, to the nephew who was the heir to his title. However, he had, quite understandably, left his personal fortune to his wife, and according to Lady Hickham’s last will and testament, she had left all of it to Edwina and her brothers and sisters. He quoted a sum that, as closely as he could figure it, was an approximation of what she had left them. And Edwina sat staring at the letter in amazement. It wasn’t an amount which would leave them rolling in tiaras and Rolls-Royces, but it was a very handsome sum, which would leave each of them secure, if they were careful with it, for most of their lifetime. For her, it was the answer to a prayer, because all of them were young enough to have jobs and careers one day, or for the girls to find husbands who would care for them at least, but Edwina knew she wouldn’t. For her it would mean being independent until the day she died, and never having to be dependent on her siblings. And she read the letter again with silent gratitude to the aunt she had scarcely known and barely liked in the course of her last visit. As a final gift to them, she had saved them. It was a far greater amount than what Edwina had derived from the sale of the newspaper and carefully split into five accounts, one for each of them, but once divided it wasn’t an enormous fortune. This was a great deal more.

“Good Lord,” she whispered to herself as she sat back in her chair in the dining room and folded the letter. It was a Saturday afternoon and Alexis had just wandered in and watched her read the letter from England.

“Is something wrong?” She was too used to tragedy and bad news, which too often came in telegrams or
letters, but Edwina smiled as she looked up at her and shook her head.

“No … and yes … Aunt Liz has died,” she said solemnly, “but she’s left us all a very generous gift, which you’ll be very happy to have one day, Lexie.” She was going to speak to her banker about the safest ways to invest it, for herself, and the children….

Alexis seemed unimpressed by the bequest as she looked seriously at Edwina. “What did she die of?”

“I don’t know.” Edwina opened the letter again, feeling guilty that she wasn’t more upset by the loss of her mother’s only sister. But she had always been so nervous and unhappy, and her last visit to them hadn’t been all that pleasant. “It doesn’t say here.”

But it might have been the Spanish influenza. It had already killed so many that year, in Europe, and the States. It was a dreadful epidemic. She tried to figure out how old Liz had been then, calculating rapidly that she would have been fifty-one, as their mother would have been forty-eight that year. It was odd, too, that she had survived Rupert by so little. “It was nice of her to think of us, Alexis, wasn’t it?” Edwina smiled as Alexis nodded.

“Are we rich now?” Alexis looked intrigued as she sat down next to her, and Edwina smiled as she shook her head, but she herself certainly felt greatly relieved by the money Liz had left them. “Can we move to Hollywood with George now?”

Edwina smiled nervously at the idea. “I’m not sure he’d be too thrilled by that. But we can certainly paint the house … and hire a cook and a gardener….” Mrs. Barnes had retired the summer before, and except for cleaning help, Edwina had been doing it all herself to spare their funds now that they’d sold the paper.

But the idea of moving to Hollywood was not one that appealed to Edwina. She was happy where she was,
and at almost thirteen Alexis was hard enough to keep track of in sleepy San Francisco. Men followed her everywhere, and she was beginning to respond flirtatiously to their advances. It was already a source of great concern to Edwina.

“I’d rather go to Hollywood,” Alexis announced matter-of-factly, with her wild blond mane framing her face and cascading over her shoulders. She still had the kind of looks that stopped people on the street, and wherever they went people stared at her, whereas Fannie had Edwina’s quieter but perfectly etched features. It was odd to think about sometimes. Both of her parents had been handsome, but neither of them had had the shocking beauty of Alexis. And Phillip had been a good-looking boy. Teddy had some of that star-blessed quality to him, and George had rugged good looks like their father.

But the thought of taking Alexis to Hollywood filled Edwina with dread. It was exactly where she would most not have wanted to take her. All she needed were matinee idols trailing after her, thinking that she was twenty.

But when George called a few days later and she gave him the news about Liz, he suggested they come down to celebrate, and then he sounded suddenly apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Win … is that tactless of me? Should I be feeling sad or something?” He was so ingenuous that she laughed at him, she always loved the openness he had about his feelings. When he was happy, he laughed, and made others laugh with him, and when he was sad, he cried. It was as simple as that. And the truth was that none of them had ever been close to Aunt Liz and Uncle Rupert.

“I feel the same way,” Edwina confessed. “I know I should be sad, and I guess in a little part of me, I am because she used to be close to Mama. But I’m excited about the money. It sure makes a difference knowing I won’t have to be sitting on a corner with a tin cup in my
old age.” She grinned and looked like a kid again as the children pretended not to listen.

“I’d never let you do that anyway.” He laughed. “Not unless you cut me in on a share of it. Hell, who taught you everything you know?”

“Not you, you brat! Cut you in on a share, my eye!” But they were both laughing and happy. He invited them to come down again, and as a lark, she agreed to come down during the children’s Easter vacation.

And when she hung up the phone, Teddy looked at her, much impressed, and asked if she was really going to sit on a corner with a tin cup, and she laughed out loud.

“No, I’m not, you little eavesdropper! I was just teasing George.”

But Alexis had picked up something much more interesting in the conversation, and she was beaming at her older sister. “Are we going to Hollywood to visit George?” She stood there looking like a vision in a dream, and Edwina wondered again if she was making a mistake taking her there, but they were all so excited, and after all, they were only children. It didn’t matter that Alexis looked twice her age, and men chased after her constantly. Edwina would be there to protect her.

“Maybe. If you behave yourselves. I told George we might go for Easter.” In unison, they let out a scream and jumped up and down, while Edwina laughed with them. They were good children, and she had no regrets about her life. Everything really seemed very simple.

She heard from her aunt’s solicitor two more times, and he inquired if there was any possibility she’d like to come to Havermoor herself to settle things and see it for a last time before it passed into Lord Rupert’s nephew’s hands, but Edwina wrote back to tell him there was absolutely no possibility of her coming to England. She did not explain why. But Edwina had absolutely
no intention of ever getting on a ship again. Nothing on this earth could have induced her to go over. She sent a polite letter to him explaining that due to her obligations to her family, she was unable to go to England at this time, which he in turn assured her presented no problem whatsoever. The very thought of going over there made her shudder.

They marked the anniversary of their parents’ death, as they always did, with a quiet church service, and their own private memories of them. But George didn’t come home for it that year. It had been seven years since they’d died, and he couldn’t get the time off from the movie he was currently making. He sent Alexis a birthday gift, a new dress with a matching coat. They always celebrated her birthday on the first of April now, because celebrating it on the day the
Titanic
had gone down was just too painful.

She turned thirteen that year, and Edwina bought her a new grown-up dress for their trip to Hollywood, and Alexis was justifiably proud of it. They had bought it at I. Magnin, and it was sky-blue taffeta with a delicate collar and a matching jacket, and when Edwina saw her in it she almost cried at the sheer beauty of her. Alexis stood there, smiling at her, with her silky blond hair piled up on her head, and she looked just like an angel.

They were all beside themselves as they boarded the train to Los Angeles a few days after that. “Hollywood, here we come!” Teddy shouted excitedly as they pulled slowly out of the San Francisco station.

THEIR VISIT TO GEORGE IN HOLLYWOOD WAS BEYOND EVEN
Alexis’s wildest expectations. He picked them up at the station in a borrowed Cadillac, and drove them to the seven-year-old Beverly Hills Hotel, a palace of luxury perched on a hilltop. He assured them that all the movie people stayed there, and that at any moment they might run into Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, or even Gloria Swanson. They even saw Charlie Chaplin arrive, being driven by his Japanese chauffeur. Fannie and Alexis were staring everywhere, and Teddy was so excited about the cars people drove that he almost got run over several times, and Edwina was constantly grabbing him and telling him to pay attention.

“But look, Edwina! It’s a Stutz Bearcat!” On the first day, they saw two of those, four Rolls-Royces, a Mercer Raceabout, a Kissel, and a Pierce-Arrow. It was almost more than Teddy could stand, but the clothes were what fascinated the girls, and even Edwina. She had bought
herself a few new clothes when she’d gone shopping with Alexis, and she had brought the silver fox jacket that had been a Christmas gift from George, but she felt like her own grandmother now in the clothes she had brought from San Francisco. Everyone was wearing long, tight slinky dresses, and showing quite a bit more leg than Edwina was used to exposing. But there was something wonderfully exciting about being here. She let George talk her into buying several hats, and when they went to dinner one night at the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, she insisted that her brother teach her the foxtrot.

“Come on … that’s it … good God, my foot …” he teased, and he guided and they laughed, and she hadn’t had so much fun in such a long time that she couldn’t even remember when, and for just a fraction of a moment, she felt a chord of memory rip through her.

In some ways, George was so much like their father, and she remembered his teaching her to dance when she was a little girl, and George was only a baby. But she wouldn’t let herself think about it now. They were having too much fun, and now she understood why George was so happy here. This was a world of excited, young happy people, bringing pleasure to the entire world with their wonderful movies. And the people who were involved in making them were young and alive and fun, and it seemed as though everybody down here was involved in making movies. She heard people talking about Louis B. Mayer, D. W. Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn, and Jesse Lasky. They were all making the kind of pictures that George was learning about with Samuel Horowitz. And Edwina was fascinated by all of it. But the children were even more excited when George took them to the latest Mack Sennett comedy and Charlie Chaplin movie. They thought they had never had so
much fun. He took them to Nat Goodwin’s café for lunch in Ocean Park, and with Edwina’s permission he even took them to the forbidden Three O’Clock Ballroom in Venice, and Danceland in Culver City. And when they drove back to town, he took them all to the Alexandria Hotel at Spring and Eighth to see the stars dining there. And they were lucky that night, Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish were there, and Douglas Fairbanks with Mary Pickford. It was rumored that their romance was serious, and Edwina just beamed as she watched them. It was even better than going to the movies.