“What can he do that hasn’t already been done to her years ago?”
“He can hurt her. I often think she’s still half in love with him. There’s never been anyone else. They wounded each other badly, and he’s not the same man she used to know. Any more than she’s the same woman he knew. If he chooses, he can humiliate her if she goes out on that stage with him. The very contrast between the two of them breaks my heart. I mean the way she’s aged, while he still looks marvelous, even though he’s older.”
“She can create enough of an illusion to get by on a stage,” I pointed out. “She can play the old Monica Arlen beautifully. We’ve both seen her do it.”
Linda shook her head. “The trouble is, she doesn’t really see herself. She never puts on glasses unless she’s reading. She decided long ago that putting distant things in focus wasn’t a good idea, so she sees a soft-focus image in her mirror. She can make that image up so that it really looks very good, and she’s kept her slender figure with regular swimming. But, Carol—she looks ancient beside him, and she may not realize this. I’m afraid of what will happen when she has to face the truth—as he might force her to face it.”
“If they both choose to go ahead, there isn’t much you can do to stop them, is there?”
“I’d like Saxon to stop the whole thing. I tried to sound him out a little this evening to find out how he really feels about her. He only turned cold and not very friendly. He wasn’t sympathetic when I told him about her wanting to visit El Mirador tomorrow. He called that a lot of romantic nonsense.”
“Perhaps it really is,” I said.
Linda jumped off the bed and took a nervous turn around the room. “Hasn’t she a right to that? She earned everything the world wanted to give her years ago. So hasn’t she a right to a little nostalgia now?”
“When does life ever play fair and allow us rights?”
She hardly heard me. “People are always complaining about the huge sums performers are paid. No one seems to consider that these big talents often earn for only a few years, while their work generates fortunes for others. So why shouldn’t they have their share of what the world is willing to pay? The complainers would jump at the chance, if they could.”
I agreed, but this discussion was leading nowhere. She had nothing more to tell me, so I said good night and returned to my room.
When I fell asleep I dreamed I was on a runaway horse tearing over desert sands toward a barrier of mountain rock that I was certain to smash into. I woke up just short of the crash and lay awake for far too long.
In the morning, a shower revived me, Monica came downstairs early, with Ralph in attendance. Apparently he was to accompany us to El Mirador, though this was something I didn’t relish. Keith would stay at Smoke Tree House with Helsa.
At least Monica wasn’t playing the Star this morning. She wore trim beige pants and a sweater to match, with a green scarf at her throat. She’d put on dark glasses and a straw hat that shielded her face. If it was still her fancy that strangers might recognize her, I could feel only sympathy and concern for the delusion.
It was a sympathy that had grown during my reading of her personal correspondence last night. In this short time, I’d learned more about Monica Arlen than I’d ever known before. If Saxon had once been a kind person, so had she. Her generosity to beginners in her field had been well known, and several young actresses, who were to become successful in their own right, owed much to her sponsorship. I wondered how many of them remembered. Apparently studio crews had adored her. She’d never put on airs, and she knew everyone by name and could ask about personal problems with genuine interest.
This time we took the old white Rolls-Royce, and I asked if I might sit in back beside Monica. Whether she was pleased with this attention, I couldn’t tell because of the dark glasses that hid her expressive eyes. Ralph was driving, and Linda sat beside him.
This morning, Monica seemed young in spirit—not playing a role, but touchingly eager for the first trip she’d made away from the house in a long time. Her state of excited anticipation made me apprehensive. She reminded me of a child who becomes stimulated to that height of nervous tension that always ends unhappily. Linda, too, was aware of this, and she spoke over her shoulder as we drove along Palm Canyon.
“Don’t expect too much, Monica,” she warned. “El Mirador won’t be the way you remember it.”
Monica paid no attention, and her excitement didn’t abate in the least. Suddenly, she leaned toward the car window. “There it is! El Mirador’s tower. Do you see it on ahead?”
A square bell tower, open on four sides and crowned with a pointed roof, rose above the low white building—a steep roof decorated with whimsical scallops of yellow and blue.
A strange anticipation began to rise in me. A different anticipation from Monica’s. She was returning to the past, while I had a strong feeling that something significant was to happen in the present. Whether good or bad, I didn’t know.
When we’d turned onto Indian Avenue and parked, Ralph went to fetch the keys from the hospital down the hill. We waited before the main entrance, where a huge mat still lay. On faded maroon were white letters that read: EL MIRADOR HOTEL, and I thought of all those vanished stars who had crossed this threshold when Monica Arlen was young.
“Do open the door, Ralph!” Monica cried as he reached us, and slipped her hand through the crook of my arm. I sensed by her touch that something a little fearful had begun to lace through her excitement. She was suddenly afraid of going back.
Ralph unlocked the big doors, and I heard Monica’s breath catch in a long, soft sigh.
Where once western chandeliers had shed their brilliance over stunningly beautiful women and handsome men, the same copper wheels now lay twisted upon the floor among an assortment of hospital fixtures—come to an inglorious end.
Ralph touched one rim with his toe. “Junk,” he said.
Monica didn’t hear him because she was far away in another time. “I remember the thirties—before the war. John and Lionel Barrymore used to come here then. And Constance and Joan Bennett. Spencer Tracy came, and Charlie Farrell, before he founded the Racquet Club here in Palm Springs. Janet Gaynor, of course. They both live here now Olivia de Havilland came, Paulette Goddard—and so many others. I could go on and on. Now it’s all gone, and those of us who are left are so terribly old.”
I tried to draw her away from sadness. “Tell us about filming the scenes from Mirage that were made here.”
Linda moved to take her arm, but Monica shrugged us both aside. She crossed the floor, seeing none of the clutter, her eyes aglow with memories.
“It was after the war when we came here to make those scenes. We cleared out the hospital things and tried to restore it to the way it used to look. Though first we filmed the last scenes, when the place was filled with wounded soldiers. Oh dear—I’m going to cry. Come through to the terrace, Carol. I want to show you the gardens.”
Linda spoke quickly. “They’re gone now, dear.”
Monica paid no attention, and when Ralph opened the rear doors for her, she went through to a terrace whose wide steps led down to a sloping lawn. The lawns had been well kept, though the luxury of what had once been gardens was gone.
“Nothing’s left!” Monica cried. “There were bungalows over that way, and a swimming pool. Tennis courts. And a wildflower garden. Everyone came!”
She whirled about, looking up at the gallery a story above. A flight of white steps at the far side led up to where the gallery curved around to run past upstairs rooms.
“Come!” Monica commanded, and to my surprise she ran up the steps with one light hand on the rail, moving like a girl in her eagerness.
“I’ll stay down here,” Ralph said, taking out the inevitable cigarette. He stared morosely into a pit of crumbled earth, where there must once have been a planting, or even a fountain.
By the time I’d climbed to the upper gallery, Monica was running past the rooms, peeri
ng in one window after another. The bedrooms were empty now, but she must be refurnishing them in her imagination—remembering.
“In the script we occupied adjoining rooms, Saxon and I. That room and this room! Only of course we didn’t stay in our own rooms!”
Her mouth had a mischievous lift again, and I wondered whether she was talking about the film or the reality.
I drew the camera from my shoulder bag and snapped pictures here and there, even catching one of Monica, when she wasn’t looking. It was only a distance shot as she peered through a window, so I didn’t think she’d mind.
After a moment she came back to the rail and looked out across empty grass. “Over there is where the bungalow stood, where we stayed one night. How well I remember. The moon was shining on the black mountain that’s always so close, and El Mirador’s lights were soft. Everything was almost the way it used to be.”
We stood at the rail on either side of her, Linda listening and as rapt as Monica. The fantasy had never really stopped for Linda, even though there were moments when she recognized it for what it was. Both of us were so intent on watching her, that we didn’t notice what was happening below. Not until Monica stepped back from the rail in alarm, covering her mouth with her hand. I looked down and saw Saxon Scott climbing the steeply sloped bank of grass. He looked stunningly handsome, his white hair styled longer than in his film days, his face fuller, more mature, yet still unlined. In contrast, Monica looked like nothing at all. A woman whose clothes were out of style, whose face was old in the morning light.
She turned angrily to Linda. “You told him I’d be here! You arranged this!”
Linda put an arm about her shoulders. “No—I didn’t arrange anything. If I mentioned our coming here, I didn’t dream Saxon would show up too.”
Monica turned her back on the man who climbed toward the terrace, and I knew that Linda had been wrong. Monica knew very well how she would look in his eyes. There was no place for her to run, nowhere to hide. All the doors of this upper gallery were locked and there was no way down except by the outside stairs.
Saxon had seen us. He climbed the steps to the terrace and stood looking up, while Ralph watched him speculatively.
“Good morning,” Saxon greeted us.
For a moment longer, Monica stood with her back to him. Then she moved from the support of Linda’s arm and stepped to the rail. “Why did you come here?” Her voice sounded harsh, and I sensed her terrible despair. How awful this moment must be for her, when Saxon remembered her only as beautiful and young.
He answered with quiet courtesy. “I wanted to see you. I’ve wanted to talk with you, and you’ve always refused me. So I chose this way. Don’t blame Linda. She had no idea I meant to come.”
“We haven’t any need to talk—not ever again!”
“Let’s not play Romeo and Juliet,” he said, teasing almost gently. “We’re neither of us young anymore, and we needn’t hide from each other. Will you come down, or shall I come up?”
Ralph edged closer to him. “You want him to go away?” he asked Monica.
“I’ll come down.” Monica made her decision, and went toward the stairs, disdaining Linda’s arm. Now that her earlier excitement had drained away, Saxon had all the advantage. She couldn’t play her old role under these circumstances of wrong clothes and brilliant sunlight. Only her dark glasses and her brimmed hat offered hiding. I glanced at Linda and knew by her own look of despair that neither of us could help Monica now.
As she reached the bottom step, Saxon came toward her, holding out both hands in a gesture that was purely Saxon Scott. Monica hesitated, reluctance showing in every inch of her body. Then she put her thin, veined hands into his strong ones. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, skillfully avoiding glasses and hat brim—an actor’s practiced gesture. At once she snatched her hands away and stepped back from him.
“Don’t make fun of me! I’m old, but not foolish. I know what the years have done to me. You’ve been luckier.”
She wasn’t acting now, but I sensed that he was. For whatever purpose he’d come, I found myself angrily suspicious of his motives. He meant to hurt her, and there was no way to stop him.
Since there were no chairs on the terrace, as there must once have been, he led her to the wide steps and lowered her gently onto the top one, sitting down beside her. Linda drew Ralph aside, and we moved back to the lounge doors, though not out of hearing, lest she need us.
Saxon must have been shocked by her appearance, yet I was stunned to see him reach out and remove the sunglasses. With another gesture, equally, merciless, he lifted off her hat, so that her hair looked dingy under bright sunlight. She sat beside him with all her defenses gone, and her shoulders rounded as though against repeated blows. I hated him in that moment, and I know Linda did too. Yet Monica could still summon her own hard-won dignity, and now that she had been stripped of any defense, she looked straight at him.
“What do you want of me?”
He picked up the hand that had worn the emerald ring and examined it as though it had been the most beautiful hand in the world.
“I want you to join me onstage at the Annenberg on the night when they show Mirage. Linda told me how marvelous you can be as the Monica Arlen everyone remembers. It’s time we made this gesture before we’re both in wheelchairs. Let’s do it and give the world one last thrill!”
She drew her hand away, shivering. “No—no! I thought I might do it, but I can’t.”
“You will,” he said. “Because I want you to.”
Linda moved beside me. She’d heard the note in his voice—as though underneath the gentleness and courtesy he threatened in some subtle way—and in an instant she was across the terrace, dropping down beside Monica.
“I know you could do it, dear, but now I don’t think you should,” she said urgently. “Saxon, I won’t let you hurt her. I won’t have that!”
“Why on earth should I want to hurt her? We both remember the quarrels, the bad times. But that was long ago. I remember the other times as well. Have you forgotten them?” He spoke only to Monica. “Do you remember the bungalow down there—before everything changed?”
She looked at him intently. “I remember, but I didn’t think you’d want to.”
“Of course I remember. I remember how beautiful you were, how enormously gifted and brilliant. All that doesn’t die, you know. Don’t be afraid of what you see in a mirror now. Remember—I’m older than you are.”
She couldn’t accept his words as anything but mockery, and she rose from the low step—rose easily by sheer power of will.
He stood up beside her quietly. “When I met Carol in the museum the other day, she was wearing the emerald ring. I’m glad you gave it to her.”
I remembered guiltily that I no longer wore it, and hoped they wouldn’t notice. I still felt dreadful about the loss of the ring.
Monica said nothing. I had the feeling that she was simply holding on now, enduring and hoping for this ordeal to end.
“This is enough!” Linda cried. “I’m taking you home, darling. I think you’ve been horrible, Saxon. She doesn’t need any more of this. Help her to the car, Ralph.”
Saxon, however, was not ready to let her go. As she turned away he put one hand on Monica’s arm. “I want to see you on the stage of the theater that night,” he said. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”
She flung up her head with the old Monica look, suddenly challenging. “How can you dare risk it?” she cried, and then pulled away from him as Linda and Ralph helped her through the lounge and out to the car.
For an instant Saxon had looked startled, but when I would have followed them, he stopped me. “You really are going ahead with a book? The Monica Arlen story?”
“Of course,” I said.
“And you want to talk to me? So why not now? Let me drive you to my house, and you can ask anything you want. Almost anything. Perhaps it will help you to see some of the things I’ve kept from those Hollyw
ood days.”
Even though I disliked him intensely at that moment, I still needed the interview. The opportunity was now, and I would be on my guard against him if he tried to say unkind things about Monica. After what had just happened, I was thoroughly on her side.
While I had the chance, I flung down a challenge of my own. “Tell me one thing right now. Monica has hinted that Peggy Smith might have died here at El Mirador. If that’s true, where did it happen? And where do you come in?” A little while ago I never could have spoken so bluntly to Saxon Scott—nor have wanted to.
For once, I’d surprised him, and the role he’d been playing fell away. He too could put on a mask, but when it was dropped he looked an older, harder man.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he told me curtly. “She was found out in the desert.”
He was lying, of course, and I made one more attempt. “I know that’s where she was found. I saw the place yesterday. But Monica says it happened here.”
“Then you’d better ask her. Do you want to interview me or not? There’s just one taboo. I won’t discuss Peggy Smith.”
“All right,” I said coolly. “I’ll accept your taboo. I’d like to see whatever you’ve collected. Wait a moment, while I tell them where I’m going.”
When I reached the Rolls, Monica was already in the back seat, weeping silently, while Linda tried to offer comfort. Ralph watched my approach with his usual insolence, and I ignored him to lean in the window beside Monica.
“Mr. Scott has invited me to see his memorabilia, and I’m going. I do need to interview him. You understand, don’t you, Aunt Monica?”
She ignored me completely, and I turned to Linda. “I want to go with Mr. Scott. Please check on Keith for me and tell him I’ll be back soon.”
“All right—go if you have to. I’ll tell Keith. But when Saxon brings you back, don’t let him onto our road. Phone me from the gate and I’ll come down for you. Don’t trust him, Carol. I don’t anymore.”
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