The Lynmara Legacy

by Catherine Gaskin

  She drove towards Mike’s with an unusual sense of gaiety. As she recognized it, she shrugged and said to herself, ‘Why not?’ It surely was still an exciting event to go and buy the first new car of one’s life. Since she had bought the first used Ford from Mike’s, she had had two others. Both of them had been old, and both of them had stood their usage as well as anyone could ask of them. Whenever there had been difficulties, she had taken the car back to Mike’s, and they had managed to find a spare part, a replacement, and the car would go smoothly along until the next bit wore out. They had come to recognise her at Mike’s and they always said, ‘Could you just wait, Mrs Maynard, until the boss has a minute? He’d sure like to take care of it himself. Nobody in L.A.’s got the ear for an engine he has …’

  The years during which she had put so much mileage on the old Fords had not been easy ones, but their challenge had stimulated her. At the time Nicole had been settling into the house in Cambridge on the other side of the continent, Anna had been forced to take full charge of Frank Hayward’s business. She could still remember that frightening day when she had returned to the little office, after taking a client to see a house in Hollywood, to find Frank Hayward slumped face down on his desk, his uneven breathing hard and gasping. He had looked at her from the agony of a coronary attack, and had not been able to speak. She had dialled swiftly, and the ambulance came ten minutes later. He had survived that night while Anna sat with his wife in the waiting-room at the hospital, but he had never returned to the office. Every day Anna would telephone his wife, and then, when he was stronger, she spoke to Frank himself to give details of the day’s business, if there had been any. Every week she went to the Haywards’ house in Westwood and took the money ‒ what was left of it after the expenses of the business had been paid, and her own salary deducted. Frank Hayward insisted that she take commission on all sales. ‘Hell, Anne, if it weren’t for you, there’d be no business … When I’m better …’ But he never did get better, and one morning a weeping Mrs Hayward had telephoned the news that he was dead.

  Afterwards, when the funeral was over, Anna had gone to Mrs Hayward, offered a down-payment on the small building from which Frank had run his business, and offered a share in the proceeds of the business itself for the goodwill. This last, she knew, was not a sensible business gesture, but Frank Hayward had taught her much, and had been a base on which to build. Mrs Hayward surprised her by refusing. ‘I can’t take any money for the goodwill of the business, Mrs Maynard. Frank was right when he said there wouldn’t have been any business these last two years if you hadn’t carried it. You’ve earned whatever you can make of it. I’d be glad to have the building taken off my hands, though. Glad of the money, though Frank left a good insurance policy … He used to joke he was richer dead than alive.’ She had shrugged bleakly. ‘I’d rather have him alive.’ They settled the details swiftly between them. Mrs Hayward shook her head, wonderingly. ‘I don’t know how you’ll manage these payments. It’s a lot for a woman to take on by herself … Well, good luck.’

  Anna had kept Frank Hayward’s name on the door of the office because she judged that people preferred to do business with a man, hired a young girl to answer the telephone, and set out to do business for herself. Sometimes a month would pass without a single sale, and then there would be a small rush of them. She drove all over Los Angeles, watching for the sort of properties that clients asked for, persuading people that they might turn a profit by selling. She learned the macabre business of watching death notices, and getting in touch with the relatives to see if the house would now be for sale. She made herself known among the executives of the movie industry, watching for those who were taking big increases in salary, and finding a more expensive house for them before they knew they wanted it. Hers was the name very often mentioned by the same executives when a newcomer arrived from the East to take a position, and began to look about for somewhere to live. She concentrated with a single-mindedness which some people thought unattractive and unfeminine. But they did business with her because she seemed to know exactly what sort of property they required, and she didn’t waste their time by urging them to view what wasn’t right for them. She was at the office early in the morning, and she stayed after it closed. This was when she did her paper work, kept the account books, did the routine chores of the office. The regular office hours she kept free to be able to respond immediately to any enquiry, to show a client a property at a moment’s notice. She had long ago learned that in the real estate business any delay could be the death of a sale. She had developed a sixth sense about the moment when a client had come almost to regard the desired property as his, and the moment when the seller might be ready to lower the price just the amount that would close the deal. She kept the small wooden office building painted and trim, its interior immaculate, kept its window-boxes planted with ivy and geraniums. Its walls were lined with filing cabinets and very large-scale maps of Los Angeles. She could show a client exactly where the house she wanted him to view was located in relation to whatever else was important to him in the city; she knew the people at various banks who might be helpful with mortgage money; she even knew the names of reliable furniture-moving companies.

  There were less opportunities now for the long drives to the desert. Saturday was a good day for people to view houses, and she held herself available. Sunday had to be used to catch up on reading ‒ the Wall Street Journal, the stock market reports. Her heart had ached over the advertisement, run for three months after Nicole’s twenty-first birthday, asking Anna Rainard to contact her. She had long ago decided that she would stay out of Nicole’s life, and the decision had been final. She no more wanted to become involved in the life of the Boston ruling families than she wanted to return to what she had found so humiliating among the English. She liked her life as it was, she liked her work, and her independence. She didn’t want to know what had happened between Nicole and David Ashleigh, or perhaps even more, she did not want to know what might have taken place between Nicole and John Manstone. The past was very much the past. Her daughter was a stranger, though a fascinating stranger. Anna wanted it left that way. She had achieved a kind of peace. She was almost forty-seven.

  Although she had maintained her silence, she had, to a large degree, satisfied her curiosity. A small clipping from a Boston paper had told her that Dr Lloyd Fenton was to address a conference of neurologists and neurosurgeons in Los Angeles. That had been in the fall of last year. The conference had been held at the Roosevelt Hotel. Anna had booked in there for two nights, giving an address in San Francisco. It hadn’t been difficult to slip into the ballroom where the lectures were held because it was assumed that no one but medical people would have the faintest interest in the rather obscure topics lectured on and discussed. She had seen her son-in-law, Lloyd Fenton, before she had seen Nicole. He was older than she had expected, perhaps ten years older than Nicole, but among the medical fraternity he was still a very young man. She thought his manner, as he had delivered his lecture, gave perfect recognition of his place in that world. Quiet, but confident, deferring to work done by predecessors even when he was disagreeing with their findings, or explaining advances on them. He was a striking-looking man, rather than handsome, with features so distinct that he stood out from the other men on the platform. Later, with the lecture over, she had watched the doctors stream out, and among the few women, she had seen Nicole. She stood at Lloyd’s side as he talked with a small group which had gathered about him, and Anna saw the same transformation of the face which had so impressed Charles Gowing. The young woman who stood there, her face upturned towards her husband’s as he talked, was a woman wholly and utterly possessed by the love that was plain for everyone to see. She had about her a bright, glowing quality which had never been present in the schoolgirl Anna remembered. From behind the dark glasses, which with the large-brimmed hat was Anna’s camouflage should Nicole chance to see her, she studied the scene until the room began to empty. She waited
in the lobby to see them walk through. They went in the direction of the swimming pool. Anna followed and found herself a table far enough away from them that she could not overhear their conversation, but equally its distance lent protection from a chance look from Nicole. But Nicole sat sideways to her, and most of her attention was given to the two small dark-haired boys who were already waiting there, in the charge of a nurse ‒ a nurse who had to be English if one could judge by the severity of the grey, white-collared dress she wore, the grey felt hat pulled firmly down on the severely dressed hair. Two other doctors had come to the lunch table with them, so there was no reason why Nicole’s attention should wander. Anna ordered herself a drink, and took a long time sipping it and looking over the menu at the small group, before ordering a hamburger and salad. She noticed Nicole had the same thing. Nicole’s attention seemed equally divided between helping the nurse with the children, and listening to what passed between the doctors. The younger child had to be held in Nicole’s lap, the older was just enough older to keep the nurse busy. They were healthy-looking, rather beautiful little boys, Anna thought. She was surprised to find that it was rather difficult to swallow the food against the lump which had so unexpectedly risen in her throat. She was also surprised to find that she had no desire to go over, to hold and kiss these children who were her grandchildren. She was just content that they were there, they existed, they were loved. Their very presence here was proof of that. They were not children who would be left behind with nurses and servants. Nicole, she thought, had developed a stronger maternal streak than she would ever have believed possible in that tight-faced schoolgirl who had made no friends. But noticing how Nicole seemed to follow every word and gesture of Lloyd’s, she decided that the father, in this case, would always come first. As Anna sat over her cooling coffee, the group finished lunch, the children were taken away by the nurse and Nicole, the baby asleep in Nicole’s arms; the three doctors drifted back to the conference rooms.

  That night Anna sat in the lobby, a newspaper as her shield, until Nicole and Lloyd emerged from the elevator. They were dressed for the formal dinner of the conference. Unexpectedly, Anna felt a sudden, enormous pride in them, both of them. She had no more than that one glimpse, but it satisfied her deeply. That decision taken long ago on the Staten Island ferry was vindicated. She had not allowed the sense of hurt or anger against that dying man in Yorkshire to stand in the way of the development of this young woman. She wanted no more reward than what she witnessed at that moment, and she wanted no thanks.

  The next morning she left the hotel early. She didn’t know how much longer the Fentons were staying, but she would not risk Nicole’s discovery of her. Even in Los Angeles one could not spend a week sitting around a hotel in dark glasses and a face-shielding hat. The deep joyous barking of Mike and the grin from the Japanese gardener welcomed her back to the house in Laurel Canyon. She surveyed her little world with a sense of fulfilment and pleasure. There was no need to wonder any more about Nicole. Now she knew. She could concentrate on what was at hand. It didn’t occur to her, even after seeing the closeness between Nicole and Lloyd, to feel a sense of loneliness for herself. Long ago she had learned the peculiar strength of self-sufficiency; loneliness was a useless luxury she could never afford to indulge. After that one sight of Nicole and her grandchildren, she had settled back into her life of work and application to the things that interested her, and she had been conscious of missing nothing.

  Apart from the successes which came her way in the selling of houses, she had tasted one major success, and the pleasure of it, and the profit from it, added to her sense of excitement in going this evening to pick up the first new car of her life. One of the early purchases she had made soon after coming to Los Angeles had been a parcel of fifteen acres out at Culver City. She had done this after careful study of the area, noting the railway line that ran there, and after she had had her first tour of the Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in downtown Hollywood. Films were what had put Los Angeles on the map; they poured out of the major studios and still were not enough to satisfy the hunger of the huge audience around the world, the people demanding this new medium of escape from the drabness of the depression years. Anna had noted the big sound stages of the studios, and had then realized that the real shooting of the endless Westerns the public craved was actually done on location, out on the arid hills that thrust through the sprawl of the city. From dealing so often with executives from the film companies, she heard bits of gossip, heard it from the people in the real estate business itself. When she bought the fifteen acres at Culver City, she did it with no sure knowledge that it would ever pay off, but it had been so cheap that she knew, in time, it would yield some return. It had been what the people of California called ‘bean fields’, acreage worked by the industrious Japanese. Soon after she bought, MGM began to construct permanent stage settings on what they called their ‘back-lot’. For a long time no one had needed her bean fields except the Japanese who worked the adjoining land, and who rented it from her for a small payment. Then MGM had wanted to expand as the volume of movies became greater. It hadn’t been too difficult to persuade the Japanese to move their gardens a few miles farther away, but Mrs Anne Maynard was not a Japanese, and she wouldn’t budge. She felt the pressure once or twice when the banks, prodded by the film-makers, had tried to foreclose the mortgage they held on one of her other properties, but it had always been possible, in one way or another, to increase a mortgage with another bank, and raise the money to buy her way out. Finally, with a shrug, the film men had offered her twenty thousand dollars. She had accepted it without revealing either her sense of relief or excitement. It had been touch and go, and several times her nerve had almost broken as she realized how thinly spread was her small reserve of capital. No one could go on juggling mortgages for ever. But she had held out, and won, and her sense of triumph was something she could almost not contain. To her this money had a kind of sweetness that she had never associated with the money which had come from the will of the Yorkshire mill-owner. This was her own, earned by her own forethought, patience and willingness to take a risk. The money itself, she realized then, was not very important to her; its importance lay in the fact that it provided her with more capital with which to take more risks. The seed of the long-term gambler had been growing in Anna almost without her being aware of it. Money was something to be used, not hoarded. Because she read the newspapers carefully, because she sensed what would happen in Europe, and through the world, when a maniacal Hitler could no longer be restrained, because she believed that, despite the policy of isolationism which America officially espoused, she would eventually have to go to war, Anna began to invest some of the newly won money in small properties close to the great Naval Base at San Diego down the coast from Los Angeles. They were cheap little wooden houses, some were stores; the rents they yielded were small. But if the Naval Base was suddenly forced to operate at full capacity, the industries it required to service it, the people who would find themselves needing to live near it, would send the value of her purchases sky-rocketing. It did not shock Anna that she was gambling on the fact that war would come. There was a kind of fatalism she faintly realized as being a Russian trait which told her that war would come, no matter what was said in the Senate of the United States. The last war had never really been finished.

  With these decisions taken, she permitted herself to relax a little. She had a coat of paint put on the little house in Laurel Canyon, and she went to confer with Mike about ordering a new Ford car, for the first time, a new Ford. She had gone to Mike, and he had treated her order with the respect he would have given to the most expensive model that Detroit turned out. When asked about her choice of colour, she had automatically said ‘black’, and Mike’s nose had wrinkled slightly in disapproval. ‘Mrs Maynard, aren’t you tired of all those black cars you’ve had? ‒ After all, they’re only old painted-over jobs. Now with the new one, you can have almost any colour y
ou want. For a lady like you I see a … a …’ He had hesitated, closing his eyes as if he were seeing some sort of vision. ‘For a lady like you I see a blue ‒ their sapphire colour, with dark-blue upholstery.’ He had opened his eyes and smiled at her. ‘It costs just the same as black and besides … it looks like you. Red’s too flashy. That yellow-coloured one, that’s for kids. And the white one’s for movie people. Yes, the sapphire is the one for you. I think I know a dealer over in Santa Monica who might have one in that colour. I could have it brought over tomorrow. If you don’t like it … well, we could always find you something different. It might have a few extras on it, but nothing that would run you into any big money. You don’t want an expensive car, do you, Mrs Maynard? No ‒ I wouldn’t have thought so. Just something nice and easy to drive around in that won’t start to rattle after ten thousand miles …’ While he talked he had been dialling a number, and then he spoke rapidly. He nodded to her across the phone. ‘Have it for you tomorrow, Mrs Maynard. Can you leave it till late in the afternoon? I’ll drive it back myself. I don’t want to trust one of the kids with a new car …’

  ‘You make it sound like…’ She couldn’t think of a car grand enough for the concern he was showing.

  ‘Like a Rolls-Royce or a Daimler?’ he said. ‘When a person buys a new car, it is a Rolls.’ Then he shook his head. ‘But I don’t give a damn about Rolls, or any of that sort of thing. America’s being built on Fords, and I’m going all the way with them. America lives on wheels, Mrs Maynard, and I aim to sell quite a few of them …’

  The sapphire-blue Ford was waiting outside the showroom. The location as well as the size of MIKE’S NEW AND USED CARS had altered since the first time she had gone there. It had moved several blocks farther along Wilshire to a lot about twice the size of the first one. The showroom was large and plate-glassed, and its shining floor reflected the polish on the new cars. There was a new workshop for repairs, the two salesmen wore neat jackets and ties, the two mechanics wore navy overalls with ‘MIKE’S’ in scarlet across their backs. Only the boss seemed unchanged. Anna wondered if he ever bought a new pair of overalls. With a kind of pride that Anna would have thought belonged to a younger man, he displayed the new car to her. ‘You have to road-test it, Mrs Maynard. Can I come along?’ He had carefully draped a cloth over the passenger seat so that his overalls would not soil the new upholstery, and had held open the door to the driver’s seat for her. ‘She’s still a bit stiff in the gears, but if you break her in real nice and gently, she’ll work like a good horse for you. Cars are a bit like horses … Feed them, treat them well, they’ll give it all back to you in service …’ He had talked more as they drove, mixing his metaphors between cars and horses in a crazy fashion, obviously loving both of them. She wanted to ask him when he had come to know horses, but she was too busy concentrating on sliding in the gears with a smoothness that would win his approval. He suddenly stopped talking and sat silent for a time. Then he spoke. ‘You’re a real sweet driver, you know that, Mrs Maynard? Aren’t too many women drive like you do. Not too many men either, come to think of it. Everyone seems to go for snatching and grabbing at the gears, and jamming on the brakes. Americans have a word I thought was kinda funny when I first came here, until I understood what they meant by it. You’re a class driver, Mrs Maynard. Yes, ma’am … a class driver. Well, I guess you’ve got the feel of her now. Do you still want to buy her?’