Melting the Snow on Hester Street. Daisy Waugh

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СКАЧАТЬ found one splashing about in her swimming pool. It came with the territory … There were always stories of stray fans slipping through the stars’ careful barricades, and it wasn’t the first time it had happened to Eleanor, either. Perhaps, Eleanor considered, if the wretched girl had been anywhere else, holding anything else, on any night but this one, it would have felt less threatening: simply an amusing story to tell. But Eleanor found her right there in the bedroom – standing, guilty as a thief, at the same dressing table she’d left Max at only half an hour earlier. In the girl’s hand was a heavy gold photograph frame; and in her eyes – Eleanor shuddered – dark pools of emotion and fear: all the madness of a fan obsessed. Eleanor had never seen it so close, and it frightened her. She had shouted for help, and within moments, Joseph the houseman had been there, standing beside her, and then, just a little later, Max had come, too. The wretched girl, sobbing uncontrollably, clutching Eleanor’s precious gold photograph frame until it was taken from her hand, had been escorted safely from the property.

      It was nothing. A hazard of the job. Poor girl … Max had brushed it off; told Eleanor not to fuss. She should take comfort, he teased, considering some of the notices for her last picture, that there were still fans out there who cared enough to bother. And he was right of course. These things happened.

      In the meantime here she sat, the Queen of her own fairy tale. She should try to enjoy it. The evening’s guests were seated at the long banquet table before her, deep in noisy conversation, and from what she could tell, they were happy to be there. The freshly boiled lobster had been eaten and carried away, and so, by now, had all remnants of the perfectly judged, entirely exquisite Beecham Supper Party feast … She could hear the sound of the jazz band filtering delightfully through the open windows. Soon, after coffee, and more drinking, she would slip quietly inside and ask them to snazz up the tempo, and there would be dancing. Everything was just as it was supposed to be. Everything was Lovely.

      Eleanor had decided, finally, to put Marion in place of honour, beside clever, gently spoken Irving Thalberg, whom Marion knew well. She had placed herself on Irving’s other side. Not because she liked him (although it happened that she did), but because, as chief executive producer at MGM, the largest and most profitable studio in Hollywood, he was the most powerful man at the table, if not the industry. And since her seven-year contract with the almost as large, but not quite so magnificent, Lionsfiel Pictures was shortly up for renewal, it seemed like a good time to foster relationships with the alternatives.

      On her right side she put Douglas Fairbanks, who was tiresome in all sorts of ways, but a big star – and he would have been offended if she hadn’t. Max, far away at the other end of the table, had Gloria Swanson on his right side, for the same reason.

      But he must have switched round the name cards on his left, because where Irving’s wife, Norma, was meant to be sitting, there sat none other than Blanche Williams, chief feature writer for Photoplay magazine.

      Eleanor knew, because Butch Menken had told her; and Butch knew because … Butch made it his business to know everything. Also because he knew a German actress who lived in the same block, and the German actress had spotted Max going in and out of Blanche Williams’s apartment on numerous occasions. So Eleanor knew. Or she almost knew. And she had known (or almost known) for a couple of years now.

      Did Max know she knew? Did he even care? She could never be sure, not about anything, any more, let alone who knew what about anyone else … Christ.

      She could leave him, of course. And maybe one day she would. But not today … Eleanor needed to think of something else.

      She wondered if Irving Thalberg was aware that her deal with Lionsfiel was up for renewal. Probably not. Should she tell him? Or would it be just too awkward? And if he already knew, would he perhaps suggest she came across to MGM?

      Of course he wouldn’t.

      Why would he do that? Why would he do that? Perhaps she should boast to him about the fan she’d only just encountered in her own bedroom? He might be impressed. He might even think – Eleanor pinched herself. She was drunk. Any minute now, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to burst into tears.

      A passing waiter refilled her glass. She swallowed it back without tasting it, fixed a blank smile to her beautiful, full lips, and allowed her gaze to travel down the table. Stars, stars – and more stars … Buster Keaton and Natalie Talmadge … Gary Cooper from just next door, John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil DeMille … and Mary Pickford, of course, sitting beside her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, because tiresome Douglas would never have it any other way … And sprinkled between the stars were the others: the studio executives, the producers, the writers; all the big cheeses who helped to make Hollywood the money factory it had now become. Yes, Eleanor reassured herself once again, it was a good crowd. She and Max could certainly pull them in …

      Everything was just fine.

      … Were the flags hanging too low, so close to the candlelight …?

      Concentrate.

      Max was – was he? – was he running a finger along Blanche Williams’s cheek? He should stop it! She should put a stop—

      Concentrate.

      Dougie Fairbanks was talking to her. He was saying something as if it were quite fascinating … Someone’s chauffeur had made a killing on the stock market … She hardly needed to listen. These days, everyone knew someone who knew a chauffeur who’d made a killing. In fact conversation around Eleanor’s star-studded banqueting table wasn’t much different from conversation at a million dining tables across America that night. There was only one thing anyone ever seemed to want to talk about any more: who’d made how much on what stock and at what margin … the increase in values of Bethlehem Steel versus General Motors, National Waterworks versus United Founders … The stock market was everyone’s obsession.

      Added to which, it happened that the day of the Beecham Supper Party, 17 October 1929, had been a reassuringly good day on Wall Street: an excellent day, after a disconcertingly bad one, at the end of a record-breaking summer. There had been a couple of serious wobbles at the beginning of the month, ‘just to keep things exciting’, Max and his friends confidently agreed, but that morning, newspapers had been filled with the comforting forecasts of the experts:

      ‘Stock prices,’ declared Professor Fisher of the University of Yale, ‘look as if they have reached a permanently high plateau.’ His respected voice was just one of a chorus of bullish experts, academics, business moguls and financiers, and the markets had taken comfort. Up, up and up went the stock prices again, back on their apparently relentless rise. It meant that anyone who’d put in a call to their brokers before sitting down to dinner – and that included most of Eleanor’s guests and Eleanor’s husband, too – would be wanting to chew over their successes this evening.

      But not Eleanor. On this particular night, 17 October, with fifty-one guests to worry about, and a dipping arc light, and Marion Davies, and the flags, and bloody Max, kissing her so tenderly one minute that her heart swelled with hope, and talking so animatedly with Blanche Williams the next, Eleanor was finding the usual subject less than compelling.

      ‘Well that’s just too fantastic, Dougie,’ she said blandly. ‘He must be one happy chauffeur.’

      ‘Isn’t it terrific!’ Douglas Fairbanks shouted. Because Douglas always shouted. Because he hated not to be the centre of attention. ‘And isn’t that such a terrific feeling!’ He turned to the rest of the table: ‘Doesn’t everyone think? Don’t you think so, Von Stroheim? Isn’t it great to know we live in a country where your average Joe can turn himself into a millionaire just by … knowing how to do it? СКАЧАТЬ