Remembrance Day (27 page)

1927

Selma wondered if her ghost would haunt the cardboard frontier towns that she paced up and down each week. There were only so many ways to crisscross the background up and down with a pram, and then later up and down with a toddling child, whisked away when the bad men rode into town. Later still, when Shari grew pigtails, Zelma the extra paraded across the dusty track road holding her hand: child in a smocked overall and boots, and mother in her corseted dress that stank of other women’s sweat.

Small-budget films used the same extras as a background over and over again in the same costumes until she felt those clothes could take themselves for their own walk in the sun. Shari played the game too. When they were not being used, she sat reading books while Selma knitted, sewed, quilted and darned, anything to keep busy. It was hours of boredom for a few seconds’ exposure.

A good extra must blend into the background, look natural, do the business; chattering, browsing in windows as if all this make-believe was real life going on.

She was one of their regulars, prompt, reliable and now
an old hand. You could spot the new ambitious recruits who tried to steal a scene with a look into the camera when they should be turning away. There were the girls on the make, trying to catch the eye of the director for a better part next time. One or two managed their way into the credits but Selma and Shari were too conscientious to bother any director with uppity antics.

Sometimes Shari got work on her own. She was a pretty, amenable child and the money helped, especially in the lean times. Jamie made enough appearances on screen for Shari to recognise her daddy as he ripped into some Indian brave or fisted a baddie on the chin, riding off into the sunset in a black hot gang of robbers..

When Corrie Grunwald dropped dead in the studio from a heart attack, leaving Pearl a rich widow, she took herself off on a Caribbean cruise and suggested to Lisa that she bring the Barrs in to keep house for her in the staff flat.

Selma didn’t need any persuading to leave their humble place in the downtown district for the swish stucco residence in West Hollywood. She wasn’t too proud to be in service and the schools would be better for Shari.

The staff quarters were over the garage: a large living room and bathroom, two spacious bedrooms, perfect for the two of them, but Lisa insisted on giving them the run of the whole place, swimming pool and stable when Pearl was away.

Jamie came back, bringing friends who drank and partied and made a mess.

‘Why does Daddy not live with us all the time?’ Shari asked one day. ‘Doesn’t he like us very much?’

How could Selma explain his absence from her life?

‘Of course he does but he has to work when the studio
wants. He only goes away to bring us all nice things,’ Selma replied. That was a lie. Jamie never contributed one cent to Shari’s upkeep. Now and again he’d arrive home with a huge Indian doll or pretty bangles and earrings, to the delight of his daughter, who flung herself into his arms and begged him to see her drawings and school books, refusing to settle into bed until he’d read her a story.

They would take a picnic to the beach and look for all the world like a proper family. If only that were true. The last time he’d returned, they’d drunk too much wine and made love. He’d left her with more than kisses and a terrible burning itch in her groin that she had to make an appointment to see the studio doctor about. He’d examined her and asked some searching intimate questions, making her blush as this inquisition.

‘You’d better get your husband to call in and see me, the sooner the better,’ he said gruffly.

The treatments were expensive and painful and she felt dirty. When she plucked up courage to ask him what was wrong, the doc looked at his desk and shrugged. ‘You’d better ask your husband that. If he is your only partner he sure has some explaining to do,’ he sighed.

She never asked, she didn’t need to. Jamie had given her a dose of something nasty that he’d caught from some cheap starlet on the make, no doubt. She’d guessed he’d been unfaithful for years. She was just another port in a storm, a free billet between castings. It looked good on his studio résumé.
Big Jim Barr at home on the ranch with his lovely wife, Zelma, and their daughter, Sharland.
They had done one shoot on the lawns of Casa Pinto as if it were their home.

As long as things looked good on the surface, that was
all that mattered in movieland. Now she felt dirty and cheap. She was not one of his whores, she was his wife. He’d never come near her again until she knew he was clean.

Sometimes she looked up at the blue sky and endless sun, the white villas, the golden beach, the fancy cars in the driveways, and longed for some old-fashioned rain and snow, grey hills and thick coats and honest Yorkshire values.

Shari would never know another life than this if she didn’t make it happen, but how could she change their lives without a steady income? She wanted more for her daughter than tinsel-town glitter.

Selma smiled, knowing now how her mother must have felt when they let her go to Bradford. She’d wanted more for her daughter too, and look where it had landed them both—an ocean apart, a world apart. Perhaps it was time to go home and leave all this behind. Then she thought of Lisa and the horses and the sunshine. Perhaps not.

‘We must make preparations for the Eclipse event,’ the chairman of the parish council ordered. ‘The Dales are expecting an influx of cars and visitors. There’s money to be made from car parking and catering. The District has laid down rules that all chimney fires be extinguished overnight to clear the smoke out of the sky in time for the total eclipse moment.

On and on he went about finicky details. The 29 June was going to be the day when the great and good of the country would travel north to observe this momentous event. Sharland’s top playing field was considered to be one of the best viewing platforms. Hester yawned.

‘We need volunteers to host dignitaries from London and we wondered if you, Lady Hester, might oblige as you
did so generously in the war, opening your house and garden to guests.’

I will do no such thing, she mused, but sat silently through the awkward pause.

‘Of course we know it is an intrusion on your privacy, ma’am, but we have so often yielded to your wishes in the past. If I could prevail on you for some reciprocity…’

The devil, he’d got the measure of her. Tit for tat, in other words. Hester drew in a sharp breath and launched forth. ‘I shall have to consult my housekeeper,’ she said.

‘Essie Bartley won’t mind, I’m sure.’ The man had the brass cheek to smile in triumph.

‘Be that as it may, she deserves the respect of being asked, don’t you think?’

That should shut them up, thinking they could wheedle their way into her home. She didn’t want strangers in her domain even for one night but she had to set an example, she supposed.

Essie hadn’t been well. She’d slowed down, and sometimes she clutched her stomach as if in pain.

‘What’s the matter?’ Hester asked.

‘Just a bit of trapped wind…too many pickled onions last night. They do repeat so.’

‘You must let Dr Mac have a look at you if it doesn’t clear up.’ Mackenzie of Mill House was still going strong, though ever since their quarrel Hester herself saw Dr Pickles, who always treated her with respect and deference.

‘No…peppermint lozenges and a cup of fennel tea will sort it out, thank you.’

Hester knew better than to fuss over her but Essie had lost weight and her cheeks were pinched. Was it fair to burden her with extra work?

Essie had her own ideas when the request was relayed. ‘It’ll be grand to open up the house and put a few more living souls in all these rooms. Maggie and me will manage. We can ask in the village for more help. It’s going to be quite a do. It said in the
Gazette
that the Prince of Wales may be coming…we’ll never see the like again in our lifetime. Wait till I tell Selma all the news…’

Back and forth over the Atlantic those letters went, full of Shari’s doings in school and Big Jim’s starring role in
The Westward Run.

Don’t blink or you’ll miss us in the trading post scene. I’m the one choosing fabric and Shari is skipping outside, the one with pigtails, but it may end up on the cutting-room floor…days of work for nothing but an honest wage.

Essie searched the papers until she found a showing in Keighley so they trekked over there by train to see the film.

Hester had never seen anything so vulgar and garish, and there was no trading post scene. Big Jim hogged the film like a hairy gorilla, making them both want to laugh.

‘He’s not exactly your Rudi Valentino, is he, and all that make-up on his face. I’ll be glad when the talking pictures come in. Voices will make films more exciting, don’t you think?’ said Essie.

Hester had no opinion one way or another. If she never saw another Wild West shoot-out again it would be no sacrifice, but Essie loved taking herself off for a treat on her night off.

The house endured another of Essie’s bottomings out, when Hester was required to put away all her precious bits
of porcelain and silver into boxes for safekeeping in the locked cellar.

‘You can’t be too careful these days,’ Essie insisted. ‘You have such beautiful china and glass, I wouldn’t like to see stuff disappear.’

‘But our guests will be people of class,’ Hester said.

‘Top drawer or not, I don’t trust some to help themselves to trinkets. No point in putting temptation in their way, now is there?’

Essie cared about the house as if it were her own. She owned nothing but memories and letters, but polished and cleaned, beat rugs on the washing line as if they were schoolboys in need of punishment. She laid out each bedroom, airing the rooms in turn.

One afternoon Hester found her in Guy’s old room sitting on the bed. ‘I’d like to ask you something.’

‘Fire away,’ Hester said, not expecting what came next.

‘I think it’s time Master Guy was laid to rest, and Angus too. Don’t you think after all these years it’s time to let go of these lifeless things and give them to a good home where they can be used and come back to life again?’

Hester stepped back at the honesty of her appeal and the firm glint in her eyes.‘But they’re all I have to remind me…’

‘Yes, milady, I know, but it’s a damn sight more than I will ever have of my boys. They are just things. What you have in your heart can never be taken away…your memories of good times. You have photograph albums, your letters. Better to shift them now and make use of the rooms? I’m sure it’ll do you good.’

‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ Hester snapped, cornered by the suddenness of the onslaught.

‘That’s unworthy of you. I’m your friend as well as your
servant, I hope. A friend tells the truth, even if it hurts. I just thought this was a good time. I’ll allus be grateful you brought me out of the cottage to a new place when I was in need of support. How can I repay you but by being honest back? You have mourned so long as if it was all your doing…Don’t you think I don’t know that your son wasn’t there for my son when he was in need of him? Don’t you think I know you feel badly for that? But you have made up a hundred times for that omission, giving me a measure of peace and comfort within these walls.’

Hester was winded, flopping down on the bed, trying not to cry. ‘How do you live with your pain?’ she asked. ‘What was done to your son—how do you live with it?’

Essie looked her in the eye and shrugged. ‘One day at a time…just for this day, I ask for courage to see it through without feeling bitter. I try to recall the happier days: the chara trips, Sunday school concerts, picnics. If I dwell on the other…it would have killed me long ago.’

‘You make me feel foolish and ashamed. I still have a boy somewhere in the world who hates me.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because in my possessive love I did a wrong thing and I can’t forgive myself for it,’ she wept.

‘It will come right, just as I know it will come right for my boy. He was no coward. I’m going to show you a letter no living soul has seen but me, not even Asa. It would have broken him.’

Hester watched Essie climb the stairs slowly and pause at the turn to catch her breath. She returned with a letter, much worn with rereading, and pushed it into her hand.

Pulling her glasses from her reticule, Hester read each sentence, hardly breathing until she came to the end. ‘Oh,
my dear! What a wrong was done. This has to be brought to light…such injustice.’ Then she recalled Martha Holbeck’s words all those years ago. Now I understand what she was talking about, she sighed. Hers was the task of standing up for the Bartley family but first she must repay this trust.

‘I’ll see if I can find some wicker baskets. Will you make a start in the wardrobe while I clear out these drawers? Perhaps the orphanage could make use of these old toys under the bed. Then we can start on the other room tomorrow.’

Essie smiled and nodded. ‘A wise decision.’

Lisa took them both to the great Egyptian palace cinema downtown to see The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson. The musical items were sensational and Selma knew the talkies were here to stay.

Over the past years she’d helped out in prop and costume stores, watching her favourite stars parading onto set. The huge sets held no fear for her now. It was a job like any other and there were always castings to queue for. She was never going to be plucked from obscurity like some of the prettier girls. Her face was too strong and angular, her legs too short and her bust on the flat side, nor did she have that particular allure that the old stars like Vilma Banky and Louise Brooks held.

It was as if they came alive on celluloid, took on a mysterious identity unlike ordinary mortals, which made you believe everything they did on screen. Now even they were cursing the advent of sound, for some of them had squeaky voices with thick accents and some of the men fared even worse. The game had shifted to men with deep husky voices
that hinted of seduction, and Big Jim’s Glaswegian accent was hard to understand.