The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  She turned. She had forgotten he was so tall. Much more silver in his hair and mustache. He looked fine—grand.

  “We’ve come to take you home,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Wherever you decide is home.”

  She stepped closer to him. Even in the press of people and noise here, she was sure she scented Highland heather and fresh air. He extended his arms, and she threw herself into them, her cheek against the rough tweed of his jacket. He felt so strong, so good.

  She wanted to tell him that home was wherever he was, but she wasn’t sure how her ruination of these last years in America would sit with him. But she was sure that she couldn’t wait to see London, to recapture the grandeur and the grace of it all. For that much, at least, and mostly for these beloved people, she was home.

  Elinor was ecstatic. For the movie based on her novel Beyond the Rocks, two of her favorite players had been cast—Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson!

  After all, she was the one who had first noticed Valentino’s impact among bit players so she had coached and promoted him. Unlike others who called him Rudy—which did not enhance his Latin charisma at all—she always just called him Valentino. Like Clara Bow, he had “It,” only the male variety, which was much more dangerous. Elinor herself, whom he called Madame Glyn, or “My Madame,” was totally susceptible to his charms, despite the somewhat large gap in their ages. She knew not to play with fire anymore, but she didn’t mind being warmed by it.

  “No one dances the tango as well as you,” Valentino told her with one of those long, narrowed-eyed looks as they went back to their table in the nightclub to join Gloria and her companion. This was no mere lad, she reminded herself, but a twenty-seven-year-old man with much experience of all sorts. He just acted like a spoiled child sometimes, so she must be careful bringing him along for his role in the movie.

  “And you are the tango king,” she told him as he held her chair for her. The dancing had made them both warm. “We will make a place for your tango in as many of your movies as long as I have anything to do with it,” she promised. “But this is not all pleasure this evening, my dear. We need to discuss your big love scene with Gloria.”

  “This evening is pleasure to me,” he insisted and gave her another of his smoldering stares that so lit up the screen—and, she was sure, would help to make Beyond the Rocks a roaring success. But his screen chemistry, as they called it, had not bubbled over yet with Gloria, however excellent a sultry actress she could be—which is exactly what was wanted for this movie.

  That last look almost made Elinor swoon, but she heard Gloria sniff sharply, so she turned to her and said, “Let’s call it a night, as Mr. DeMille always says. We need to go over that one scene, so I hope your friend won’t mind heading home alone.”

  “I told him it was not all play and no work,” Gloria said and downed the rest of her martini. “Come along, and I’ll walk you out,” she told her companion. Gloria was between husbands, definitely her weakness for such a bright girl.

  Unfortunately, when they left the table, Valentino was recognized, and two women sashayed up for autographs and breathless wonder, just staring at him. It annoyed Elinor but amused her too. There might be only one Valentino, but he surely topped any so-called acolyte Lucile had always kept in swarms about her, including that Bobbie.

  But these women hanging on annoyed her even more. “Come on, then,” she repeated, standing. “I see Gloria coming back, and we’ll take her right out to the limousine.” She picked up Gloria’s little silk purse from the table and took Valentino’s arm to gently tug him away. They were running a tab on Mr. Hearst’s dime—actually, more than a dime—since this was his and Marion Davies’s table.

  In the limousine, Elinor sat them on the main seat and took the back-facing one. She called to the chauffeur, “Drive slowly, please, and close that sliding window behind me.” When he complied, she went on, “Now, you two, I am going to teach you what your director evidently cannot. Specifically how to be romantic in the European way, gently, but with leashed passion.”

  Strange, but right in the middle of this important moment, even with Valentino staring at her, she remembered how she had loved to sprawl half-clad on her tiger skins for inspiration. She’d brought the oldest one with her to Hollywood, but seldom was so foolish anymore. Would you like to sin with Elinor Glyn on a tiger skin? The words of that old, naughty doggerel darted through her mind. She had bought the first skin years ago in Venice, infuriating Clayton, but Milor had given her the other—one he had slain himself, even as he had slain her dreams.

  She shook her head to stop the memories and cleared her throat. “Now, our director, Sam Wood, is very nervous about the censors, you know. No kiss can run longer that ten feet of film. And they will be shooting two different, culminating kisses in the climactic scene with the more passionate one for the European market. The Americans have that—what do they call it?—Puritanical streak yet. Now, slowly, with feeling, with leashed passion. Of course, look into each other’s eyes. Gloria, concentrate. Valentino, emote. Now kiss at least for half a minute.”

  Surely, Elinor thought, Gloria could sense the electricity. If a woman in her fifties could, she could!

  Elinor knew she could do a better job of directing a movie than some of the men in Hollywood. She’d prove it right now. “Slower. Slower! First, kiss the palm of her hand, lingeringly, looking deep into her eyes. Gloria, look a bit stunned, a bit unsure, then change the expression to surprise and segue that to desire. Then come closer—pulled inevitably together. No kiss on the mouth yet, but you are breathing as one, becoming one in heart and mind—later in body. Everyone will feel it . . .”

  Elinor felt she would die of the heat in here, but was it just her? Not since that rat Curzon had she nearly fainted at someone’s feet. If Gloria didn’t feel that and act on that . . .

  When the two of them kissed tentatively, then powerfully, Elinor flopped back in her seat and fanned herself. Oh, to be young and stubborn, but hungry for life again. But as fake and phony as the movies and written romance could be, there was such a thing as living through others instead of for others. Did that and her continued quest for emotion and wealth, even power, make her unique? Or just more like Lucile than she ever wished to admit?

  Lucile happily agreed to stay with Esme at their country home for a few days before heading back into London to the Ritz while she looked for a small house, one maybe she could afford on the outskirts of the city. She’d heard Hampstead Heath had some places like that to let or purchase.

  Cosmo didn’t stay long that first night, but it was obvious that he was more at home here with her family than she was. Little Tiverton sat happily on his lap and played toy soldiers with him, and Anthony and Cosmo got on well.

  But Cosmo was back the next day, and Esme suggested just he and Lucile take a motorcar ride.

  “Town or country?” Cosmo asked her when she was seated beside him. They were still rather stiff with each other.

  “Since I am with you, the countryside. Esme tells me she seldom goes into London.”

  “Good girl, your Esme.”

  “I do mean to visit the London shop soon.”

  “Like Londoners, it’s much changed since you left,” he told her, starting the engine and pulling away. “Women worked hard during those tough war years. Fancy fripperies are not so common now.”

  “And styles are plainer. I know what you’re hinting at. I learned that the hard way in New York. Cosmo,” she went on, turning toward him on the leather seat, “I’m sorry I made a mess when I sold the U.S. and Paris stores. I just wanted desperately to get out from under them—everything but the design part, which is very different now. The styles are so—not Lucile anymore.”

  He frowned but kept his eyes on the road. The countryside was lovely, but she kept her eyes on him.

  “You always were a disaster with finances, lass.”

  She teared up that he had finally called her by that simple pet name again—lass
. “And you weren’t there to advise me,” she added.

  “Because you let me down, and I couldn’t bear that again.”

  “I never loved or trusted anyone the way I did you.”

  “Did, not still do or could again?”

  Her insides cartwheeled. “You know what I mean.”

  “I fear I don’t and haven’t for a long while. Look, Lucile, let’s not argue. Let’s just be together and remember the good times, not the bad. And see what we can salvage for the future.”

  She wanted to ask him if he meant a future together but she was afraid to make another wrong move, professionally or personally. She wanted to promise Cosmo that—if he wanted—she would like to visit Scotland again, but perhaps he had his own life there now, even another woman. She glimpsed for a moment how badly she had hurt him.

  “Yes,” she said and reached out to briefly lay a hand on his arm, “it is a lovely day, partly because I am, at last, again with you.”

  CHAPTER Thirty-Five

  Elinor, darling, of course you would be here,” actress Pola Negri greeted her and pressed her cheek against Elinor’s, one side and then the other through their stiff, netted veils as they emerged from their chauffered motorcars. Elinor hoped the veils and hats might help the stars hide from the screaming crowds along the street. It was blazing hot in the sun—blazing hot in her grief.

  Not only was Valentino dead, but his fans were tearing their hair and clothing and shrieking despite their proximity to the Beverly Hills Church of the Good Shepherd where the memorial service was to be held today, August 30, 1926. Clara Bow, across the way, waved and blew her a kiss, and the crowd screamed again as if that were for them. But most of the hysteria was for Valentino.

  Elinor was glad the police were holding back the crowd from rushing the arriving guests. Shameful to mourn like that, for it said, Look at me, me, me! But then how appropriate for Hollywood, however great the tragedy of Valentino’s loss from appendicitis and peritonitis at age thirty-one. He’d died in New York City, and his funeral there, she’d heard, had been chaos, so she should have expected it here, too. The thing was, in her heart, she could have joined that mob, crying, wailing, falling to the ground near the heaps of dying flowers and scribbled love notes.

  Because, bad enough to lose Valentino, but Curzon had died last year, and she’d smothered her grief when she’d received Lucile’s letter about his sad end. Curzon and his second wife, Grace, had been estranged for several years and hated living together. Grace had not given him the heir he’d so desired. He had lost his life’s goal to become prime minister when Stanley Baldwin was elected instead.

  Ironically, Elinor thought as she gripped the iron railing and headed up the stone stairs of the church, Curzon had been sequestered at Montacute where he’d stashed her away until she learned the devastating news of his engagement to Grace. So he hadn’t been aware of the political machinations in Parliament until too late. He had died what they called “land poor,” and all that would have been rich revenge, except she still missed and mourned him. And forgave him at last.

  And now Valentino was gone too.

  “Chin up, Elinor,” Jesse Lasky whispered just inside the vestibule and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know many claim to have discovered Rudy in the mix of hopefuls, but you truly made him shine, him and our Clara Bow ‘It Girl,’ eh? What a loss! He could have made himself and everyone even more of a fortune.”

  Elinor almost agreed, but that sounded so crass—and what would she have been agreeing with? That she had more or less discovered Valentino and helped to shape him—or that he was worth only money to her and everyone else here? It wasn’t true in her case, for she had cared for him deeply.

  As Lasky melded into the crowd of mourners, Charlie Chaplin appeared as if he’d been watching for her and held out the crook of his arm to escort her into the sanctuary. At least he looked truly grieved.

  “Hello, fellow Brit,” he said and squeezed her arm against his ribs. “Funny how funerals make us think about past losses, eh?”

  “You are hardly the ‘little tramp’ of movie fame, but a serious, astute thinker. I see you read minds.”

  “Remembering your husband’s death today?”

  “It was my father who died young,” she admitted, though she hadn’t realized she would share that until she blurted it out. He escorted her up the aisle as if this were a wedding. “And Mother always used to tell Lucile and me how dashing he was, how strong and handsome and clever. We never knew him,” she said with a sigh. “But even when she wed again of necessity, our departed, fabulous father was somehow always hovering in her heart—in the room.”

  “So maybe Valentino was like a long-lost, dashing, strong and handsome, and greatly missed young father to you and not a younger boyfriend or a son.”

  She turned sharply to look at him, but he hadn’t meant it as a dig or joke. And had he been right? Those young, handsome men over the years, some Clayton sent away, some she did—was she looking for her lost father, not a lover? And Lucile had adored those so-called acolytes she had mentored and had suffered bitterly over the loss of that singer, Bobbie. Yet as bright as they both were, neither of them had ever thought of this, and of such were lives and longing made.

  Elinor could hear what the two men behind her were saying once she was seated and Chaplin settled down. He looked not mischievous, but almost wise and benign, like some modern-day Buddha as the pipe organ began to play sonorous and sweeping music. The congregation stood as the priests and altar boys entered with the casket rolled down the aisle amid the scent of smoky incense from the censers swinging on their chains.

  Yet she heard from behind her, “His sex appeal would have taken him to the top of the money heap. Women around the world would have paid anything to see him—and then fantasized he was their sheik in their tent ready to ravish them.”

  “No kidding. Money talks. He’s to be interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, I heard, and they could probably sell tickets to have a glimpse of the crypt.”

  She turned to glare at the two men, who ignored her. She was struck again by the fact people here were thinking of Valentino in terms of money, not a young life gone. Had she, too, become greedy and crass? She’d noticed the attitude of avarice and self-importance among movie people before, but had she been part of that? She’d heard others call it the Hollywood curse or the Hollywood disease, and was she feeling so sick to her stomach because she’d really caught that—was like that?

  The so-called religion of New Thought had ensnared her for a while with its “golden thoughts” and its worship of wealth, success, fame, even youth. But what good had any of that done Valentino? At least he was being buried as a Catholic, a believer in the Good Shepherd who cared for his flock whether they were rich or poor. That had mattered to her during the Great War, but she’d lost that all in Hollywood.

  On the right-hand side of the church, she saw a lovely stained-glass window of the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus with a lamb on his shoulders. Sunlight streamed through it to cast a kaleidoscope of colors onto Valentino’s flower-covered coffin on its catafalque.

  She jolted when the presiding priest intoned, “The Lord be with you.” But only a few in the congregation knew to reply, “and also with you.”

  Lucile admitted to herself she had never felt so anxious over being alone with a man, well, not since she was young and went to her first dance on just Jersey the year she came out. She and Cosmo were here in Scotland at his Maryculter estate, alone but for his staff. He’d been courting her during the time since she had returned to London—or had she been courting him? Dinners out, motorcar rides, his help with her finances in the shop just like old times.

  Despite a kiss or a hug here and there, Cosmo had been protective but entirely proper. Was he waiting for her to make the first move? Perhaps he was working up to telling her this was the way it would be—only friends? She supposed she deserved that. Despite the fact he was the on
e who had left her, she was really the one who had deserted him.

  The Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon Shop had surely seen better times, for few women were buying fancy frocks after the war with a looming recession and international tensions. In a way, she thought, as she looked at herself in the pier glass in her bedroom adjacent to Cosmo’s, she hoped her floor-length Scottish skirt and frilled lace blouse she planned to surprise him with tonight would further send a message to him that she wanted back permanently in his life—and as his wife.

  The wooing of each other would make a good plot for a movie script or novel for Elinor. She’d never dared to offer ideas before, but her thoroughly modern sister was coming to England for a visit next week. How they used to fret and fume back and forth about “Nellie” always having her nose in a book while “Lucy” was more adventurous. She recalled one huge argument they had on Jersey when Elinor acted completely scandalized because she saw her reading the end of a book first to decide if she wanted to read it at all.

  “You are ruining everything!” Nellie had shouted. “It’s the journey that matters—the getting there, what happens along the way. How can you be so foolish—so insecure?”

  “Me, insecure? You’re the one hiding from real life, just you and pages and printed words! How can you waste your time on a story that may end unhappily!” Lucy had shouted back and thrown the book at her. They hadn’t spoken until Mother forced them to make up. Had they ever really made up? She still longed for happy endings, however rough the journey, despite the glorious, bright times.

  Lucile jolted back to reality when a knock sounded on the door that linked the two bedrooms. Cosmo had told her it was locked, as it had never been years ago, and the key was on her side. Had he meant something suggestive by that? Perhaps that it was her decision to join him? When he’d escorted her here after dinner last night on the day of their arrival, he’d left her at the hall door with a simple kiss on her cheek, and she was astounded how sad that had made her. But, if they were to be man and wife again, shouldn’t he make the first move? He’d agreed she would keep her newly purchased house in Hampstead Heath so that she could afford to be near the shop most of the time, but she’d vowed to visit Scotland more than she ever had, and he’d simply nodded. At least he’d kept the way she redecorated Maryculter upstairs and down years ago.