Suspicious Circumstances (3 page)

I tried to visualize Ronnie being shattered about having escaped from this renovated married bliss which Mother had thrust upon him.

‘Are you sure he’s shattered?’ I snapped.

‘Of course he’s shattered,’ snapped Mother. ‘For better or worse, Norma was his wife for over ten years. I won’t have you being so cynical. It’s
dégôutant.
’

There were, of course, just as many ‘boring’ thoughts to be thought as ever, but I was exhausted by all my anguished anxieties on the plane and the bed was very soft. I rolled on to my back and felt voluptuous. I loved Mother’s beds. I loved being with Mother, too. I’d almost forgotten how soothing it was to be bullied and scolded again.

‘Mother.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘What happen, Nickie?’

‘Norma, of course.’

‘Happen?’ echoed Mother with a slight change of voice. ‘How does it happen that you fall down the stairs? You fall down the stairs.’

‘Was Ronnie there?’

‘Where else would he have been?’

‘Did he see her plunge?’

‘Of course he didn’t. He was way off, down by the pool. Way, way off.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’d eaten at the pool house. That’s why.’

‘Then what was Norma doing in the house itself?’

‘She went back to get something. She’d been going back to get something every twenty minutes. A book, her glasses, a coat. Ronnie says what she was really going back for was gin.’

‘Why didn’t she have some with her?’

‘Because Ronnie had made her swear to be good so she wouldn’t bulge in the movie. But you know how it is with the drink habit.’ Mother looked temperate. ‘She just kept going back getting more and more bulgy and the last time she was gone so long that Ronnie went to investigate. And there she was. The gin bottle must have been hidden in her bedroom. She’d stumbled coming down the stairs and — hoopla.’

Since my father had been an aerialist and Mother as a destitute widow had started her own career assisting Uncle Hans in a vaudeville yodeling act, ‘hoopla’, I suppose, was a legitimate occupational word for her. It didn’t seem to strike quite the right note for Norma’s tragic plunge, though. It was a bit too airy. I never trusted Mother when she was airy.

‘So that’s how it happened?’ I said.

‘That’s how it happened.’

‘There wasn’t anyone else there at the time?’

‘Really, darling, all these questions. How morbid you are like a ghoul.’

‘I mean, at least the servants were there?’

‘It was the servants’ night to be off.’ Mother rolled around on to her elbows so that she was gazing down at me, giving me the full eagle-eye treatment. Then she looked deeply shocked. ‘Nickie, you’re not suggesting they’d think Ronnie did something?’

‘Well,’ I said.

‘Monstrous child, what a terrible mind. Where could you have got it from?’ For a moment she went on being thunderous. Then she forgave me. ‘My poor Nickie, you’ve been worrying. How pathetic. All the time on that plane — terrible, worrying thoughts. Of course the police investigated everything. Dozens of them, the very best ones. And of course they decided it was an accident. There! Does that satisfy you?’

It did. And it was a lovely feeling, being satisfied. There it was — an accident. The police said so.

‘Dear Mother,’ I said.

‘Darling Nickie.’

She patted my cheek and got up from the bed, crossing to the dressing-table. Mother’s dressing-tables were like her pink walls. They were always the same — about a mile long with a mile of mirror above them and with several tons of cosmetics which she scarcely ever touched unless she was really fixing herself up for something epoch-making. She had picked up a brush from the inevitable cluster of photographs which went everywhere with her. Countless celebrities had given her likenesses signed with enthusiastic messages, but the only ones she kept out were pictures of the Inner Circle, a picture of me as a baby in Warsaw or Oslo or Barcelona, wherever I was born, a picture of Pam, a picture of Uncle Hans, a picture of Gino, and a picture of my father.

She started brushing her hair.

‘Heavens above, it’s ten-thirty already and I swore to Ronnie I would be there by ten.’

I lay on the bed, watching her contentedly, thinking how nice it was, after all, to be home and that everything was fine because, once I caught Mother at a strategic moment, I was sure I’d be able to wangle a trip back to Paris and Monique. Then a thought came which, even then, might have been considered faintly uncomfortable.

‘Mother, who’s going to play the part?’

‘What, darling?’ She turned from the mirror. Her face which could register everything was also wonderful at registering nothing. Now she had on her ‘nothing’ face. ‘What did you say, Nickie? I didn’t hear.’

‘I said — who’s going to play Ninon de Lenclos now?’

Mother still held the silver brush against her hair. For a moment she went on registering nothing, then serenely she gestured with the brush to the script lying next to me on the bed. I picked it up. I read:

PROPERTY OF RONALD LIGHT PRODUCTIONS

ETERNALLY FEMALE

A MOVIE SCRIPT BASED ON THE LIFE OF
NINON DE LENCLOS

I looked at it, feeling quite peculiar again. Mother came to me and sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘It’s rather a nuisance, darling, but I simply have to do it. Not just for Ronnie, but for poor Norma. She would have wanted it that way, I know. That’s what I said to Ronnie when he begged me, literally begged me with tears in his eyes to save the production. Norma would have wanted it, I said.’

I knew, of course, that Mother had incredible gall and the hide of a tyrannosaurus. If she hadn’t had both, she’d never have become the Great Anny Rood. But even for Mother, this seemed a little much. My expression must have been as peculiar as my feeling, for she gave me a very sharp look.

‘Well, what is it now, foolish boy?’

‘What are they going to say?’ I managed.

‘Who? Who? Who say what?’

‘The columnists. Hollywood. Everyone. Norma plunging to death. Ronnie potty about you. You grabbing off the fattest part since the
Ten Commandments
before Norma’s even cold in her grave.’

‘Grab!’ Mother brought the brush down on my hand with a stinging slap. ‘Haven’t you listened to a word? Ronnie begged me, I said; he beseeched me, and when I finally consented, it was only for Norma’s sake — as a tribute to Norma.’

‘I see,’ I said.

Mother clutched my shoulders and shook me once very fiercely. ‘You Nickie. Are you so young, so callow that you cannot appreciate a tribute?’ She forgot me then and started looking beautiful and dreamy. ‘This picture is not going to be just another picture and I am not going to be just another actress playing a part. The whole thing will be a monument to the memory of a very dear friend.’

I gulped.

‘Already I have made Ronnie understand I will sign the contract on no other terms. First will come the titles - Ronald Light Presents Anny Rood and Brad Yates in
Eternally Female
— The music will soar up; then suddenly silence — dead silence — and my voice, very soft, will say,
Eternally Female
, the story of a great lady of France dedicated in all reverence to the memory of a very great Lady of Hollywood — the late Miss Norma Delanay.’ She paused a moment, looking deeply moved; then a seraphic smile lit up her face. ‘There, Nickie, isn’t that the only way to do it?’

‘It’s lovely,’ I croaked, thinking again with awe : No one but the Old Girl could have thought of that. It’s terrible, but she’ll be able to brazen it out that way. Dear Mother.

She was being brisk now, doing a lot of emphasizing of points with the brush. ‘And then, of course, there’ll be other tributes. I will give interviews. I will write articles for the fan magazines. Anny Rood and Norma Delanay, A True Hollywood Friendship. It’s the least I can do, for, after all, haven’t I known poor Norma forever? Don’t you remember, years before I came here, when we were both absolutely unknown and she was being a nude in the Folies Bergère, married to Roger Renard, that pathetic little French camera-man with the beret basque? Don’t you remember how we used to dream our dreams, sitting together in countless little Montmartre cafés? Don’t you… No, of course you don’t, you poor child. You were a mere baby at the time. Even so, there it was. Anny Rood — Norma Delanay. How long ago it seems.’

She was lost then in a mawkish and I’m sure hideously distorted reverie of her girlish intimacies with Norma. Gone was the latter-day reality of the slobbish ex-sweater girl with the swollen face who had made everyone miserable and plunged down the stairs after too many nips at the hidden gin bottle. Mother could do that. She was her own most credulous public. That’s why she would be able to get away with it. Even Lettie Leroy was going to be racked with sobs before Mother was through with her.

Slowly, like those ladies in picture-frames who come to life in Mother’s sort of vaudeville, she stirred. Then she was with me again. She gave a little rueful laugh.

‘Heavens above, here I am chattering with you while poor Ronnie…’

She ran back to the mirror and started brushing her hair again, a dynamo once more.

‘Where’s Gino? Oh dear, everyone’s late today. Yell for him, Nickie, darling. Go to the head of the stairs and bawl.’

I started to scramble off the bed but at that moment Gino, looking dazzlingly dark and handsome in a fancy new chauffeur’s uniform, showed up at the door. He didn’t see me, he just saw Mother at the mirror. He grinned at her.

‘Ah, que bella signorina! Step on it, Anny, kid. It’s almost eleven.’

Ten years before, Mother, on one of her 'Discovering These Our Great United States’ rambles, got a flat under a giant redwood in Yellowstone Park and a Forest Ranger fixed it for her. Incredibly, the Forest Ranger turned out to be Gino, the youngest member of my father’s aerialist team, who had been stranded in the States when a circus folded in Seattle. Mother had fallen on his neck in an orgy of sentiment and nostalgia, and the instant she discovered he didn’t like being a Forest Ranger very much, she got him to resign right there and then and drove him straight home with her, where he’d been ever since.

I don’t know what you’d call his function. He certainly wasn’t just chauffeur and bodyguard, for Mother took him everywhere with the rest of us, even to the chicest parties. People who didn’t know Mother were apt to be ‘sophisticated’ about his position in the household, but that was only people who didn’t know Mother.

Gino, I guess, like Uncle Hans and Pam and me, was just another object on which Mother could lavish her overwhelming but unswerving devotion.

Mother, seeing him in the mirror, spun around.

‘You,’ she said. ‘You’re hours late. I could kill you.’

‘Okay, Ninon de Lenclos.’ Gino noticed me then and his white grin broadened. ‘Hi, kid. Look who’s home. Those Paris babes been taking care of you?’

‘There was some little girl,’ said Mother. ‘I know it. Poor darling Nickie, he’s quite bereft. Nineteen, really! What an age! Gino, dear, my coat, the chinchilla… Nickie, the script. I’ve got all sorts of very important ideas for changes. If we’re going to make something of this movie, Ronnie’s got to get down to work. It’ll be good for him anyway. It’s fatal to mope. Quite fatal.’

Chattering, fussing, Mother rushed herself and us around, getting ready. Soon all three of us were going down the stairs, arm in arm. Mother was being executive about the funeral.

‘You, Gino, do not wear your uniform. To be a chauffeur is absurd. You were a friend. Pam’s off buying something for herself and a black suit for Nickie. Just at the last minute, I remembered, Nickie dear. The black suit you got when Mr Silberman died at Warner Brothers had pleats in the pants, didn’t it? Pleats are terrible — démodé.’

‘What about you?’ I said.

‘Me?’ Mother shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Some little simple thing. I will find something.’

That meant she had been making some unfortunate chic dress-maker’s life hell for the last two days.

We’d reached the hall by then. Delight Schmidt, still holding the telephone, was back sitting by the goldfish. Mother ran to her and embraced her.

‘Good morning, dear. Has anyone called?’

‘Oh, no. No one,’ said Delight Schmidt. ‘Just people — if reporters are people.’

Mother beckoned me over. ‘Delight, this is my precious Nickie. Nickie dear, you’ll adore Delight. She’s a divine girl. I found her at MGM in the property department, putting sequins on the behinds of horses. Now She’s come to live with us. She’s heaven. So amusing. Not a bit like that boring Bernice.’

My heart sank. So this wasn’t just another secretary’s secretary from the Agency. This terrible know-it-all redhead was one of Mother’s crushes. Mother was okay on men, but with the exception of Pam, quite disastrous on females.

Mother was nuzzling her arm around the redhead’s waist. ‘You see, Nickie? You see how divine she is?’ She patted Delight’s arm. ‘Darling, you must be particularly sweet to poor Nickie. He’s feeling the teensiest bit blue. Some tiny little escapade in Paris.’

‘Mother!’ I broke in, seething with indignation and embarrassment.

But Mother merely drew the two of us even closer together with an awful knowing look.

‘Darling children, I’ve simply got to dash to poor Ronnie, but you two young things amuse yourselves. Play tennis or something. It’s absurd for secretaries to be working all the time.’

She looped her arm in mine and dragged me out with her on to the porticoed front steps. Gino was already in the Mercedes. It was borrowed too. People with cars felt about Mother the way people with houses did. It belonged to an actor who was working in London.

‘It'’ bliss having you home- sheer bliss.’ Mother kissed me tenderly. ‘Darling, you don't really want to go back to Paris, do you?’

‘But, Mother…’

‘Now, darling, I know it seems like the end of the world, but you’ll be surprised how differently you’ll feel in a minute. We’ll find something wonderful and amusing for you to do here. That lovely Dancing and Fencing Academy again, perhaps. Meanwhile, be a dear sweet boy and go and play with Delight. Such a sad life. An orphan. So brave.’