My Life in Black and White (18 page)

I
wrapped my coat tightly around me and curled up in the corner of the back seat. The driver rolled the car slowly away from the curb. There wasn’t much to look at but for a few abandoned cars. The streets were clogged with people, their faces covered, fighting their way through the murkiness. It was a living nightmare, and I was glad to be safely tucked inside the cab.

“You’re a brave girl,” the cabbie said, peering at me through his rear-view mirror. “It’s not the best time to be out and about.”

“No,” I agreed. “Then why are you driving today? Isn’t most of London covered in soot?”

“Aye, it’s true. Doing my civic duty, that’s all. Saving damsels in distress.” He winked and I turned away to stare into the mist. That’s what Niall called me. Thinking of my hubris moments ago, I’d never felt less like a damsel. Why can’t a woman fight for good any way she sees fit? If that meant sometimes doing wrong in order to do right, then it was perfectly justified. After all, Niall had implied there might be evidence of some sort; photos were a possibility. I chose to believe there were. I could rewrite the truth to suit my needs. That’s what reporters like me did with a nugget, an innuendo, a whisper; we turned it into a full-blown story, fit to print. Once out there, it became true, for the most part, or at least long enough to place doubt.

Yet despite my momentary bravery, the encounter with Frederick had taken its toll and I was shaking when I got to the flat, from fear or the cold, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. There was little that I could do except sit around and wait for him to come to his senses. Trinity was getting ready to leave for her physical. Every movie production requires the major players to get a doctor certificate for insurance purposes.

“I hope I can get there in time,” she said anxiously.

“There’s a lone cabbie out stalking the streets looking for damsels in distress,” I said with a grim smile.

She was about to respond when the phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin. It had to be Frederick. She grabbed the receiver and put on a perky New Yawker accent like she was a switchboard operator wearing a headset and smoking a cigarette. “Mayberry residence … Aha … Clara Bishop? Sure, she’s here. Just a moment please.”

I snatched the receiver from her hand as she covered her mouth to hide her giggles. “This is Clara.” It wasn’t Frederick. It was Niall.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said and momentarily pictured him naked in my bed. But the lousy way he walked out on me made me indignant.

“You sound disappointed,” he said. “I’m across the street at The White Stallion. Can I come up?”

“Whatever for?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Fine, I’m here.” I rang off. “Niall is coming over.”

Trinity was practically out the door. “Don’t mind me, I’m making myself scarce. Toodle-oo.”

Niall was there in a flash. He went to kiss me, but I turned my head so that his lips planted one on my cheek.

“Say, it’s colder in here than it is on the North Sea. Well, have it your way,” he said with a shrug. “I just got a call from your friend Amber Ward.”

I rolled my eyes. “What did the dear girl want? A playmate?”

“I don’t know what’s got into you,” Niall said. “But you should know she got a part in that Frederick Marshall picture. And not just any part, he gave her the lead.”

“That’s old news,” I said and showed him Larry’s story.

“I thought you’d be knocked flat by this development,” he said and flopped on the sofa.

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable,” I said sarcastically.

“Don’t mind if I do. You want to know why she called me?”

“I’m on the edge of my seat.”

“She wants to give me the exclusive story on her rise to stardom. I get to follow her around, go to costume fittings, read-throughs and visit the set, all of it.” He paused and lit a cigarette, then another, and held it out for me. I took it. “I must have charmed her that day on set.”

“How wonderful,” I answered, watching the smoke rise in front of my eyes like a veil. “Though you should know she’s also chummy with Larry. Perhaps she’s playing you two against each other.”

“I’m not worried, put it that way.”

In truth, it would be very useful if I had to implement my plan. Niall’s articles would go far in making her a star, and I wouldn’t have to ask him to do it. He’d write them because the
Daily Buzz
wanted the exclusive story, and then when the time came, when Amber was the picture of the sweet, dedicated and talented actress, using a pseudonym, I would leak just enough information to set the media wolves on her. I’d sit back and watch them tear her apart piece by piece. Even Niall would have to follow the story of her destruction.

He drew long and hard on his cigarette. “And the funny part is Amber has you to thank for it.” The whirring machine of revenge stopped dead when he said it. “She said she only got to audition because she went with Dean to his interview. An interview she told me you arranged.”

“Is that what she told you?” I let out a fake laugh. I went to the kitchen and drowned my cigarette in a half-empty cup of coffee, hoping he wouldn’t press me further. He did.

“What are you up to, Clara?”

I wouldn’t look at him. “Oh, are you still here?”

“Listen,” he said and leapt off the sofa and grabbed me around the waist tight enough that I couldn’t wiggle out. “You asked me to help you once. Tell me what’s going on and I’ll help you now.”

I thought about the threat I made to Frederick. I thought of Alicia Steele on the other side of the world practising her lines. Of Marjorie, a little girl about to lose her mother. And I thought about Dean and Amber celebrating her role of a lifetime. But I also thought of how sick to death I was of being alone in all this mess, so I told him as much as he needed to know.

“My friend, the one who’s in trouble, she’s an actress and Frederick was supposed to cast her, not Amber. She’s in a bad way, Niall. Desperate and alone. If she doesn’t get this part, I’m not sure what she’ll do. Kill herself maybe.”

I expected him to react with concern, but he took his time mulling it over. “Kill herself because she didn’t get a part in a movie?” he repeated skeptically.

It wasn’t the reaction I wanted, and I told him as much. “It’s not just the movie. You see, my friend, she’s lost everything. Her husband walked out on her, her career is going nowhere, she feels she has nothing to live for. Now do you understand?” I pleaded.

He bit his lower lip. “Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself, Clara?”

I glared at him. “I’m not. Alicia Steele is her name. She’s an actress in Hollywood and she works in the wardrobe department at a film studio. In fact, she made this,” I said and gestured to my dress. He nodded, appropriately impressed.

“Where is she now?”

“She’s in California. But she’s doing a screen test tomorrow for Frederick. I’m convinced once he sees it he’ll fire Amber, and if not, he’ll fire her anyway because I’m going to make him. I told him I could get my hands on photos that implicate him in the murder of his wife.”

I stopped, my chest heaving. Niall stared at me, but when he spoke he was calm, deliberate. “What photographs? Is this something to do with Larry?”

“No,” I snapped. “I made them up. I blackmailed him with the idea there
are
photos. As a matter of fact, I got the idea from
you
.”

“Me?”

“You once insinuated there was more about the case than ever got published. At least, I took it that way.”

“I didn’t think you would take me seriously. I was just sounding off. There are no pictures. Never were any pictures,” he said and practically shook me.

“You mean you only tap phones?” I taunted him.

“Don’t try to be provocative, Clara, it doesn’t suit you. And it won’t work. I’m long past being tormented by my mistakes.”

I shoved him away. “Is that so? Are you saying Frederick is an innocent man?”

“The jury thought so. Listen, I just never got a good feeling from him. The day she died, the servants said they had a huge row over a role for her in his next movie. He didn’t want her to do it. Sure he could of killed her, but did he? Only he, his wife and God know for sure.”

“But a reporter of your stature has finely honed instincts, and you still sound like you suspect him.” I was getting more and more worked up. “That’s good enough for me. Good enough to put doubts in his mind of what I might have on him. Even if he didn’t do it, he
knows how manipulative reporters are with editing. We could reopen all those doubts.”

He grabbed me again by the elbow. “Look, Clara, you don’t know who you’re messing with. Frederick Marshall is a powerful man, and powerful men can be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be going with him to the country for a midnight swim,” I laughed, repeating Niall’s sarcastic comment to that effect. “Now, let me go!”

He dropped my elbow and pulled out another cigarette.

“There has to be another way to cheer up your friend,” he said calmly.

“Cheer up!” I repeated. “Cheering up is for a child who has dropped an ice cream cone. Alicia Steele doesn’t need cheering up. She needs to be saved.”

“Calm down, Clara. There has to be another way.”

I wasn’t calming down; if anything the hysteria was increasing. “There isn’t, Niall …” Then, despite myself, I leaned into his chest. After a moment, he reached up and stroked my hair. We stood that way for a few moments, and for the first time since this nightmare began, I felt reassured and safe and not alone—until there came more clicking sounds from my room.

“Do you hear that?” I asked him. But the clicking had stopped.

“I don’t hear a thing,” he said.

I pushed free of his arms and walked to the door of my room. “You didn’t hear the typing?”

He came and opened the door. The window was wide open and the curtains were billowing frantically. He shut it quickly and stopped at the typewriter.

“You writing an article?”

“No,” I said and cautiously moved to the desk. “A screenplay. I’m co-writing a screenplay.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a film noir,” I said. “Lust, betrayal, the usual.”

I forced a smile, then I saw it. On the floor below the typewriter was a small grey lifeless piece of fur. It was a dead mouse. I screamed like a schoolgirl.

Niall calmly took a handkerchief from his pocket and picked it up by its tail.

“Maybe this was your mystery typist,” he said and took it away. Wait until Trinity found out. To think, after my inventing a mouse, there really was one.

When he came back, he found me still staring at the floor where the mouse had been.

“I feel sad that it died. Poor thing,” I said. “And in my room.”

“With this smog, I’m not surprised. People are dying too. The hospitals are full of respiratory cases.”

“Are you working on a story about it after all?”

“I am. I don’t care if they publish it or not, but I’m going to write about it. The government has let coal burn like there’s no tomorrow, until now there may be no tomorrow. It’s corrupt and it must stop, or I’m afraid we’ll have many more days like this.”

I thought for a moment. “You know, if you can’t sell it here, I might be able to get someone in New York or LA to buy it. If it is an in-depth environmental report, and you get officials on the record.” I felt like a broken record, promising more than perhaps I could deliver to Larry and now Niall. With all this time-travel nonsense, I wasn’t even sure who, if anyone, I would know in the media circus of 1952.

He smiled boyishly, like I’d given him a new baseball mitt and the afternoon off school. “You’d do that?”

“Sure, why not? You’re one of the few who haven’t betrayed me.”

A
half-hour later we were back lying naked in each other’s arms, crammed tight into my tiny twin bed. I felt less guilty about the second time. Maybe because I felt more in control of fate, or I was getting used to succumbing to desire, or it could have been that I liked Niall more than was good for me. He was one giant step away from Dean and that couldn’t be bad.

“I might fall asleep,” Niall yawned. I could see why. The smog turned day into night, and surrounded by such gloomy darkness, bed seemed the only reasonable place to be. I was about to tell him so when I heard Trinity run into the flat like she was being chased.

“Clara!” she yelled. I leapt out of bed and grabbed a robe, but I wasn’t fast enough. She whipped open my door and saw us there, the robe clutched in front of my naked body, Niall’s bare chest on full display, his modesty protected by the sheet. He folded his arms behind his head and grinned.

“Hello, Trinity,” he said.

“Hello to you too,” she answered; whatever she had on her mind seemed momentarily forgotten. “I’m sorry for blasting in like this. I wasn’t expecting …”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry. Give us a second and we’ll be right out.”

She turned away, and I noticed she held a file folder in her hand.

Dressed now, Niall and I walked into the living room, where Trinity was pouring three shots of Scotch.

“We’ll all need a drink,” she said and gestured to Niall. “At least the ladies will, but I poured one for you anyway.”

“Good God, what happened?” I exclaimed. “Are you all right?” Given she’d just returned from her physical exam, I thought the worst.

Her eyes looked to the file folder on the counter, the one I’d seen in her hand a moment ago. She thrust it at me. I opened it cautiously. My first instinct was that Trinity was dying of some awful mid-twentieth-century disease, but as I scanned the report, my throat constricted. I tried to swallow, but there was no saliva in my mouth, just a dry sensation as though the life had been sucked out of me.

“Amber is pregnant,” I announced, not making eye contact with either of them.

“How did you get her medical chart?” demanded Niall, always the reporter.

“The entire cast went to the same doctor,” Trinity said, then went on to explain how she had been left alone in the exam room and got bored waiting so she nosed around and caught sight of a pile of folders. She snuck a peek and saw that they were for all members of the cast. She poked through them and then she found Amber’s file. She couldn’t help but look more closely—after all, it was Amber—and there it was: pregnant. She didn’t wait for her exam but stuffed the folder into her purse and got dressed, telling the nurse she’d forgotten an urgent meeting and would return tomorrow. Then she hoofed it home.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said, still in shock.

“That makes two of us,” Trinity agreed. “Better drink this.” She handed me the Scotch and I shot it down in one gulp. She poured me another. “I’m so sorry, Clara. I know how much you wanted Dean’s baby. How long you tried.”

“There’s no turning back the clock,” I said, knowing the irony was lost on them. “He will marry her now.”

“You don’t know that,” Trinity said.

I nodded. “Oh, I do. He married me when I was pregnant, only because I was pregnant. He’ll do the same. He’ll want to do the so-called right thing.”

I wanted to cry. If any occasion called for tears, surely it was this, but none came. The thought of
that woman
carrying my husband’s child was too much. I’d longed to have Dean’s baby, mourned the one that was almost mine, and now this.

Niall cleared his throat like he had an important announcement to make, and when he spoke, he was all business.

“This may prove to be in your favour,” he said and grinned in that slightly wicked way he had. “Frederick won’t make a movie with a pregnant woman.”

Slowly, the same wicked smile unfurled across my face. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. My blackmail was unnecessary. A pregnant leading lady wouldn’t do. He would have to fire her now if he wanted to keep on schedule.

“She can do the film, you know. They can hide her stomach with costumes,” Trinity said as though what she said helped.

I shook my head. “Frederick won’t want a pregnant ingénue. He wouldn’t stand for it. It’s not like she’s a big star already and they’ll wait another year for her. He’d have to recast.” And recast with Alicia Steele, I thought gleefully, relieved that at last my plan was taking hold. “I wonder if he knows she’s pregnant.”

“The medical report is supposed to be confidential,” Trinity added.

“The doctor would have to tell the production company,” Niall pointed out. “Anything that could affect the film being made on time and on budget would be disclosed.”

He was right. And given it was 1952 and women’s rights weren’t up
to snuff yet, there would be no penalty for firing a woman because she was pregnant. Niall checked his watch.

“I’ve got to go,” he said and grabbed his coat, kissing me softly on the forehead. “Be good.”

“I won’t make any promises I can’t keep,” I said and watched him walk out the door.

“So I take it you’re over Dean?” Trinity said and pointed to the door. “Niall Adamson is your new lover?”

“Lover?” I repeated. “I like the sound of that. Yes, I suppose he is. As for Dean, what choice do I have? He’s going to be a father to another woman’s child.”

There was a knock at the door. To our surprise, it was Saffron.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Trinity said. “Do come in.”

She barely smiled.

“Have a seat,” I offered. She sat down demurely with her legs folded and her handbag on her lap.

“What brings you by, Saffron?” I asked. “We run up a tab at The White Stallion?”

She shook her head. “I was on my way home and wanted to know if you’ve heard from Larry.”

I raised an eyebrow, recalling the altercation in the doorway and how he’d threatened me, but when I spoke my tone was polite. “Not a peep. Why?”

“He’s not returned my calls. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind.”

“That could be why he’s not calling back,” Trinity pointed out.

“I asked his mum, my auntie, and she said he was supposed to come home last night but she hasn’t heard from him.”

“He lives with his mother?” I asked. She nodded. Oh brother.

“Maybe he got lost in the fog.”

She dropped it then and asked Trinity more details about the
film, and I let my mind drift away. Perhaps Larry was doing another photo-op with Amber. That is, assuming Frederick hadn’t found out about her pregnancy yet. I wished I could see his face when he found out. I crossed to the window and saw a tough-looking kid dressed head to toe in the Teddy Boy uniform standing below. I wouldn’t have thought much about it until Niall showed up and the two began to argue.

“Guys, come take a look,” I said, and Trinity and Saffron came and peered at the scene unfolding on the sidewalk.

“What are they saying?” I asked.

The window was open just a crack, but we didn’t dare make it wider in case they heard us. A few words wafted up to us.

“I will tell her if you don’t!” the teenager said angrily.

“Sam, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Niall snapped.

I didn’t like how quiet Saffron was.

“Saffron, do you know who that boy is?”

“Don’t you?” she asked, surprised.

“No, I don’t,” I said, feeling suspicious all of a sudden.

“I thought you knew,” she said as though reading my mind. “I tried to tell you, but you said you knew about him.”

“What are you saying?”

“That’s his son. Niall is married.”

I felt the floor sway beneath me. How had I become a mistress? Why had he lied? Not that I ever asked him if he was married. I hadn’t. But he knew what I’d gone through with Dean. Were there no decent men left in the world? I knew Trinity and Saffron were watching me, waiting for me to speak, scream or otherwise react. But I just stood staring out the window and wondering what type of wife she was—the type to turn a blind eye, or was she biding her time, waiting
for proof or the courage to confront him. Or perhaps she was a wife like me, someone who never saw it coming, but believed that because she loved him he must love her.