What the Heart Keeps (45 page)

With
a cook, two housemaids, a kitchen maid, and a gardener, there was nothing for Lisa to do domestically. If it had not been for the campaign of fund-raising for the orphanage, to which she was able to rededicate herself with fervour as soon as Catherine started school again, she would have found the days immeasurably long. She had never been without work in her life before and idleness was totally unnatural to her. At least Alan managed to get home to Maple House several nights a week and always at weekends. Harry she saw less, for he led his own life and either stayed in town, which he did most of the time, having taken his own apartment, or brought a party of friends home for the weekend.

Then
the carpets were rolled back for dancing to the gramophone and there was tennis on the house’s two courts in summer, and expeditions to local football matches in winter, with chestnuts toasted by the fire afterwards. Noisy sports cars in primary colours were their sole means of transport. Harry had a different girlfriend every time, although there was a certain similarity about them, for each one smoked cigarettes in long holders, had nails painted red by the newly invented polish that had been introduced on the market, jingled with bangles and beads, and executed the Charleston with a vigour that invariably revealed the rolled tops of their pale silk stockings and a gleam of thigh.

Alan
continued to discuss the cinema business with Lisa as he had always done, but more and more her connection with it lapsed to become almost entirely social. As before, she went to film parties with him and gala nights and many other occasions. An event of supreme importance was the showing of the first talkie. She heard Al Jolson speak from the screen and gasped with everybody else, although in her case, knowing the cinema world as she did, it was more the portent than the wonder of it. Not long after that, talkies came thick and fast. Silent films were still shown but many of the most important feature movies were reissued with dubbed sound, and she heard the roar and thunder of the chariot race in
Ben
-
Hur
, which had been silent when it was first shown at the opening of one of the Fernley cinemas in the North.

It
was Lisa’s suggestion that Harry be given a trip to the United States as a twenty-first birthday present. “It’s time he saw the country where he was born and his mother before him. I know he has long wanted to visit California and see the studios there.”

“
I’d like that myself,” Alan commented. “Before we came back to England I had thought of our going to live in Los Angeles. Remember?”

She
remembered. With her mind and her heart she remembered many things. “When Risto invited us to visit I was sure we would take up that invitation before too long. It would still hold with Minnie. She would love to see us. We really must go one day. In the meantime, what about Harry’s coming-of-age gift?”

“
Yes, of course we’ll give him the trip. Minnie will arrange an entrée for him to the motion picture studios, I’m sure.”

Harry
’s trip to the States coincided with the Wall Street crash. The troubles and confusion of the land in which he had first drawn breath merely drew him closer to it, for he felt curiously at home from the moment he stepped ashore. He spent some time in and around New York before travelling on to California where Minnie had invited him to stay. He wrote home that her house in Beverly Hills was a marble palace with a huge swimming pool in which her monogram was inlaid with gold. As for Minnie, she was even more beautiful than her screen image had led him to expect. She had taken him round the studios where he had met Jean Harlow on the set of
Hell’s
Angels
and spent hours with technicians and cameramen at their work, which was of particular interest to him. He had been invited with Minnie to a party at Pickfair, where the glamorous gathering had consisted almost entirely of famous faces, and Minnie her-self entertained on a lavish scale. It was obvious to those at home that Harry had been made most welcome by her and that she was doing all she could to give him a memorable vacation.

Harry
was never to forget the time with her. She widened his experience considerably and rewardingly during the whole of his sojourn in California. Minnie herself, lonely in spite of her exotic surroundings, many acquaintances and public adulation, was deeply touched by this link with her youth and with Lisa, who had protected her throughout many of those traumatic years.

Lisa
continued to strive for the rebuilding of the orphanage. Mrs. Bradlaw, feeling her age at last, finally surrendered the post of principal, but then only because her successor, whose name was Mrs. Frampton, was a woman of her own calibre and of like mind. Lisa found in Mrs. Frampton a fighter as strong as Mrs. Bradlaw for the rights of children, and the three of them worked in complete harmony towards the goal of a new orphanage.

One
of Lisa’s major fund-raising events was a film charity evening at a Fernley cinema. Several well-known movie actors and actresses from British studios attended to help raise money. The occasion coincided with Catherine’s fifteenth birthday and she wore her first real evening dress. She had suffered no lasting facial scars from the accident and was growing into womanhood with a clear ivory skin, thick-lashed dark eyes, and fair hair that had deepened to a rich, golden shade. At the buffet supper after the performance, she talked without shyness to various people of her aim to join her father and brother in the cinema business as soon as she was sixteen and could leave school.

“
I’ll take a secretarial course to prepare myself for the office work. Eventually I hope to organise bookings and shoulder responsibilities as my mother did in the first Fernley cinemas.”

Listeners
glanced in surprise towards Lisa at this information. They had either never heard, or had forgotten, that once she had been a kingpin of the enterprise. Neither was it known generally that a recent reduction in the price of the cheaper seats throughout the circuit had been at her instigation. Times were bad for many people. There were hunger marches and much unemployment, and after seeing the depressed workless hanging about the streets in Leeds, which she visited frequently to consult Mrs. Bradlaw and others on the fund committee, as well as in other places, Lisa had faced Alan and Harry with her demand. Prices were to be accommodated in order that people out of work could spend a few hours in the warmth and comfort of a cinema, which would be lacking in their own homes, and forget their troubles for a while through the enjoyment offered on the screen. Just as she had once bent the rules for the benefit of slum children, she wanted consideration given to adults in similar distressed circumstances. The new ruling went through. It gave her great satisfaction for more reasons than one. It appeared she could still make her mark on the Fernley circuit when the need arose.

In
the summer of 1932 Catherine obtained her school certificate and left the school she had attended since recovery from her accident to go to a secretarial establishment. It was a two-year course. She completed it at a time when her father was moving into the greatest venture of his life. Lisa had been the first to hear the special news that he had to tell.

“
I’ve put in a bid for a prestigious site in the West End. We have Fernley cinemas all over the country and a great number in London itself, but I’ve been waiting for exactly the right location where we can stand side by side with our rivals in Leicester Square. This is to be the Fernley cinema that will surpass all others elsewhere!”

“
I’m so glad,” she exclaimed happily, linking her hands behind his neck and kissing him. “It’s been a dream of yours for a long time. Now it is to come true!”

It
pleased her to see the enthusiastic support that he received from Harry, who flung himself into the enterprise to the exclusion of all else, except perhaps some time with his current girlfriend, whoever she happened to be. For months he and Alan had consultations with bankers and investors, architects, contractors, designers, artists and electricians. Even when they were away from the business premises, they continued to talk on the same topics with each other.

Lisa
watched from the sidelines. The days when she had selected colours and fabrics for decor and furnishings had long since gone. As the project advanced, Alan spent more and more time in London, sometimes working over the weekends with Harry. When she did arrange a dinner or cocktail party, Alan invariably telephoned to ask her to make his excuses, as he could not get away, and there had not been a house party since before the project started. Also, Harry’s friends were less frenetic than they had been previously, most of them having settled down to marriage. After his visit to the States, it had been noticeable to Lisa that his girlfriends became in her opinion far more suitable as prospective daughters-in-law than previously, but as yet he had not singled out one in particular. Catherine, upon the completion of her course, moved into the London apartment with her father, and Maple House became quieter than ever before.

Fortunately
Lisa had much to keep her busy, for her fund-raising campaign for the orphanage finally came to fruition. An elderly neighbour, who had attended all the local functions she had held to raise money, died and left a handsome bequest in her will to the charity. Without delay, they were able to construct a large and well-built mansion in beautiful grounds where the children could live in family groups with a house-mother, a principle laid down by Dr. Barnado, who had always been Mrs. Bradlaw’s guiding light. Lisa was invited to perform the opening ceremony. Since it had become her policy to invest in good clothes, she wore a Schiaparelli coat of blue wool against the cold weather, its length mid-calf, its buttons a hallmark of the designer in the shape of circus horses, which she thought would be as amusing to the children as the fashion world claimed them to be unto itself. With the principal and staff grouped with the local dignitaries beside Mrs. Bradlaw, who in her eighties was still as upright and determined as she had always been, and the children gathered in a big semicircle, Lisa put the key in the entrance door to unlock it. It swung wide to cheers and applause. She turned to receive a bouquet of pink carnations from one of the younger orphans, who wore a cheerful red plaid outfit. No more institutional grey or threadbare castoffs, but bright serviceable clothes that would enable them to blend into school life and social activities without being set apart from others by their attire. Lisa held out her hand to Mrs. Bradlaw, who had also received a bouquet.

“
You shall be the first to enter, Mrs. Bradlaw.”

“
No, my dear. You represent every one of the children who never knew the benefits with which this generation is to be blessed. It is right and proper that the privilege should be yours.”

So
Lisa stepped first over the threshold and took with her memories of Amy and Minnie and Rosie and Teresa and many more, seeing them as clearly in her mind’s eye as if she were fourteen again.

Upon
her return to Maple House, Lisa cleared up some correspondence during the next few days. Then she packed a suitcase and drove to London, deciding to stay a week or two in the apartment in order to do some shopping and see the progress that had been made on the new Fernley cinema. She also wanted to be with Alan. She felt she had neglected him during the past hectic months. Previously they had always been in close contact over everything, even though in the business she had become a background figure, and recently they had virtually seemed strangers to each other, each being involved in their individual projects that had kept them apart more than ever. It was almost as if Alan and Harry and Catherine had drawn away from her into their own dedicated little group and she had been left outside and practically forgotten. Yet this feeling was dispelled by Catherine’s warm welcome when she arrived. Alan was not at home.

They
exchanged news while Lisa unpacked her suitcase, as Catherine folded garments away and hung up dresses. Then they returned to the spacious drawing-room and sat on the window-seat with a view of the park. This apartment was far larger by many rooms than the one adjacent to the first Fernley cinema, and was luxuriously appointed. Its Art Deco style and furniture provided a rich and exciting geometric setting in sharp contrast to the mellow atmosphere of Maple House.

“
It’s ages since you last came to London, Mother. The new cinema is almost finished now. Another few weeks and it will be ready for its grand opening.”

“
I’m looking forward to seeing it. There’s been no chance before now. I’ve spent most of the past months travelling to Leeds and back. Now my time is my own again.”

“
We’ve missed you. Why don’t you move here and be with us? You could keep Maple House for weekends and holidays as you used to before I had that accident.”

Lisa
shook her head, smiling. “I’m happiest in the countryside these days. It’s fun to come to London of a while, but the city is not for me anymore. I’m hoping that when the new cinema is launched, your father and I can pick up our lives together again.”

“
Maybe you shouldn’t wait until then.”

Lisa
shot a direct look at her, alerted by a faint note of unhappiness in her daughter’s voice. “Why do you say that?”

Catherine
avoided her eyes, seemingly engrossed in tracing with a fingertip the sunray pattern on the cushion of the window-seat. “Although Daddy is busy, I can tell he’s lonely without you.”