Scandal in Babylon

by Barbara Hambly

  At the same moment Kitty squeaked, ‘Darlings!’ and floated towards the encampment of make-up tables and Pekinese with her ivory arms thrown wide. ‘Did Mama’s celestial cream-cakes miss her?’ The imperial harlot who in scene fifty-six would send a hundred innocent Christians to martyrdom in Rome’s arena fell to her knees and embraced her fluffy pets like a child. Chang Ming and Black Jasmine yanked on their leashes and threshed their plumed tails in ecstasy. Buttercreme, as usual, hid in her wicker carry-box, her invariable reaction to being taken to the studio or in fact anyplace at all. ‘Oh, my little sweetnesses …’

  ‘And where the hell is Darlene? We can shoot scene fifteen before the elephant gets here—’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Emma turned quietly to Zal. ‘Why do we need to dispose of the soothsayer? Without that foreshadowing …’

  ‘Mostly because Gully Ackroyd’s on a bender again,’ said Zal. ‘And Frank doesn’t want to replace him or reshoot. I’ll fill you in over coffee, if you’re up to an epic saga.’

  ‘It can’t be any worse than the Aeneid.’ Or for that matter, she reflected, Temptress of Babylon …

  Four months previously, while accompanying Kitty to a location shoot in the wilds of the California desert (and no advert she had ever seen had so much as hinted that nearly a quarter of California was a desert), Emma had been press-ganged into an emergency job of hastily rewriting a scenario (Royal Desire) based extremely loosely upon the Book of Esther. (‘Emma knows all about all that ancient stuff!’ Kitty had touted her proudly.) So effectively had she accounted for the unscheduled exchange of one leading man for another (‘You know how much reshoots cost?’ had roared Mr Pugh in dismay) that in addition to her original chores of brushing the dogs, balancing Kitty’s checking account, and locating stray earrings, she had been given scenarios to rewrite, should Dirk or Nick Thaxter (playing Nero to Kitty’s Babylonian Temptress) or Darlene Golden (the ethereal and perennially unclothed Christian heroine) feel their own acting talents were being unfairly scanted.

  At the moment – Foremost Productions’ regular scenarist being swamped with rush-jobs for three other projects – there was talk of Emma being given the entire scenario for Kitty’s next film: story, action, and dialog cards.

  The title of this opus was Hot Potato, so Emma was fairly certain that her scholarly father would turn over in his grave.

  ‘And for Chrissake,’ added Madge, ‘who let her in here? Bud!’ she roared, as the queenly form of gossip columnist Thelma Turnbit materialized from the shadows. ‘Ned! Somebody kick her out—!’

  As the journalist extended an arm to catch Dirk Silver by the elbow, Kitty rose with the fluid grace of a dancer and intercepted her, purring, ‘Thelma, darling!’ Her natural baby-coo transmuted seamlessly to the smoky purr of a man-eater who had, over the past four years, devoured the hearts of two dozen cinematic fools for breakfast. She slipped an arm through that of Mrs Turnbit, and turned her radiant smile upon the approaching guard and the prop man’s assistant. ‘We won’t be but a minute.’ Her gesture of thanks towards the director was a miniature miracle of gratitude and stubbornness, before she turned to her sister-in-law. ‘Emma, darling, might I trouble you to bring tea for myself and my friend here? The lights, you know,’ she sighed to Mrs Turnbit, and put the backs of her knuckles lightly to her brow. ‘One finds oneself in need of something …’

  ‘Something’, in Kitty’s case, usually meant ‘gin’, but nobody was about to say so in the presence of this representative of Screen Stories. Particularly not now, when the talk of Hollywood was a contest in print for ‘Who Is The Goddess of the Silver Screen?’ The weird blue-white glare of the lights snapped off once more. The huge rear doors of Stage One were thrown open, and Herr Volmort scuttled to overtake Marcus Maximus with powder-puff and tubes of Motion Picture Orange and lipstick of a shade judged to be both cinematic and manly.

  Madge looked on the point of protesting that they were three days behind and scene fifteen could be shot in just a jiffy, but Zal stepped across to the fuming director: ‘I think Pugh’ll want this one to pass, Madge. If Kitty gets voted Goddess of the Silver Screen – the Gal with “It” – it’ll mean killer box office for the picture.’

  Madge’s mouth closed. In addition to being the producer of Temptress of Babylon and part-owner of Foremost Productions, Frank Pugh was The Man – so far as he knew, anyway – in Kitty’s life.

  During this whole interchange, Doc Larousse and his electrical crew were breaking down the lights, and Ned Bergen’s myrmidons were moving crocodile-legged divans and portable gardens of potted fern out through the rear doors and into the garden set just beyond. When Emma had arrived with Kitty at six that morning, the prop chief had been in the midst of dressing the garden set, and now, through the doors, Emma could see pasteboard archways, potted palms, and a veritable army of semi-nude statues of heroes and gods in the clear California daylight.

  ‘Somebody tell Darlene to get her ass in here,’ shouted the director, pausing in the wake of the caravan. ‘Where’s the frikkin’ guards? And somebody round up those goddam slave-boys!’

  Zal joined Emma beside the trestle table at the other end of the barn-like ‘stage’, where the plebeian thermos bottles of the crew stood ranked. Given the fact that Kitty’s coffee thermos was liberally spiked with bootleg rum, Emma guessed that it was her own ration of tea that was being generously offered to the guest.

  ‘What is “It” anyway?’ she asked, as the cameraman poured some of his own coffee into one commissary cup and started examining the others in quest of two that were clean. ‘If Kitty is supposed to have it … I asked her and she defined it as “Oomph” …’

  ‘“It”’ – the cameraman held up a pedagogical forefinger – ‘is defined as the human characteristic that draws all others with magnetic force. At least that’s what Elinor Glyn says.’

  ‘Mrs Glyn the novelist?’ Emma had met her compatriot at the studio Christmas Party – like a film vamp herself in veils, jet beads, and feathers – and had enjoyed her views on cats, Prohibition, screen-writing, and American cooking.

  ‘That’s the one. She came up with it, you know, I forget in which book.’ His voice shifted into the breathy register of passion. ‘“With ‘It’ you win all men if you are a woman – and all women if you are a man …”’

  ‘And here I thought that was the definition of money.’ Their fingers touched on the cup’s fat porcelain handle and she smiled. ‘Pecuniate obediunt omnia, my father would say. “All things obey money”.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve been in Hollywood too long.’ Zal returned her smile. ‘What would Dad have said “It” was for a woman?’

  ‘Quod nominatur non potest … “That which is not to be named.” At least not in polite circles.’ She could almost hear him say it. Almost see the donnish twinkle in his eyes. And then, to cover the pinch of grief in her heart, she added, ‘Myself, I should say that “It” would signify a good lighting-man.’

  He laughed, found another clean cup, and sacrificed one of his store of clean spare handkerchiefs – he carried half a dozen for keeping his camera lenses spotless – to polishing it before he gave it to her. ‘And remind me to go through the garden out there and get these back before we shoot, would you? Every extra on the lot has been sitting out there all morning, and we can’t let the audience go around thinking the empress had a cup of joe while sitting on her throne.’

  ‘I’m sure half of them think it anyway,’ pointed out Emma. ‘Kitty certainly does. And my father would have said that it was no more than could be expected, of Hollywood.’

  ‘If that was your father’s only complaint about the picture, he wasn’t paying attention.’ Zal looked for a moment as if he was about to ask her something else – as if he guessed that there was something about that letter that troubled her – but turned instead and went to gather up his precious Bell and Howell on its spindly legs, to carry outside. Emma lost sight of him among a knot of Roman soldiers and a platoon of muscul
ar young Nubians recruited from the jazz clubs along Central Avenue, all clothed in gaudy loincloths and bearing long-handled, ostrich-plume fans.

  No more than could be expected of Hollywood. Her throat tightened again as she tidied cups, sugar, cream and her thermos onto a tray, exactly as her governess had shown her, back in a world as far distant from her, now, as the sunlit Roman garden visible beyond the great doors.

  At this moment in England it was damply cold and the first anemic baby leaves were barely dusting the April trees.

  Doc Larousse and his crew wore short-sleeved cotton shirts, and sweat glistened on their faces and arms. Floyd at the front gate had assured her that warm spells like this week’s happened every April: ‘It’ll be all gray and gloomy again in May.’

  No wonder people in Los Angeles all run about half-dressed.

  ‘I do not understand,’ Kitty was saying, her great brown eyes soulful as Emma bore her tray back to the encampment, ‘these women – these actresses – who put on one self before the cameras, and make themselves someone else, like that’ – she snapped her delicate fingers – ‘for other people they are with. I am as I always have been. I cannot help it.’

  She sighed deeply, and cast down her gaze, as if she had never in her life danced the Charleston on a tabletop at the Coconut Grove or dared Doug Fairbanks to demonstrate how one carried a helpless maiden while swinging on a chandelier.

  ‘I see that you, too, are a woman who feels deeply and wholly,’ she went on, and laid that slim hand lightly on Mrs Turnbit’s mustard-yellow tweed sleeve. ‘Someone without pretense; who writes from her heart. Thank you, dearest,’ she added, as Emma set down the tray. Though she retained her throbbing ‘Camille’ voice, the warmth of her smile was genuine. Emma shook her head a little as she retreated to the trestle tables once more. Fifty percent of everything her husband’s beautiful sister said and did was about as genuine as the Empress Valerna’s jewelry – but the other fifty percent was pure gold.

  Even her father would eventually have approved of Kitty.

  ‘Somebody tell Darlene if her butt isn’t out here in five minutes—’ yelled Madge back through the doors …

  ‘So many people’ – now Thelma Turnbit was confiding in Kitty – ‘only see what I do in terms of … oh, of sensationalism, of vulgarity. But it’s not, you know.’

  ‘Oh, of course not!’ Kitty looked shocked at the very idea. Gratified, the columnist smiled and turned her attention to the sugaring of her tea …

  Emma saw Kitty, in that moment of her guest’s distracted attention, throw a calculating glance at the clock by the doors of the stage.

  Oh, dear …

  There was only one circumstance that ever made Kitty conscious of what time it was.

  Oh, NOT that good-looking stuntman from Famous Players again!

  Timing her response perfectly as Mrs Turnbit looked back at her, Kitty went on, ‘Myself, I see what you do as a service. A great sacrifice of time and heart and energy …’

  ‘Fer Chrissake who the fuck does Madge think she is?’ Darlene Golden strode into the shooting-stage, fragile, fair-haired, and ethereal in her humble (and extremely revealing) slave-girl rags. ‘I’m not some friggin’ extra, you know. I’m …’

  She froze beside the trestle tables in the act of removing her stylish lizard-skin pumps when she saw Thelma Turnbit. Then she smiled dazzlingly, stuck her chewing gum on the door frame beside her, and crossed toward Kitty’s little encampment, hands held out and radiating all the ‘It’ she could muster.

  She was just opening her mouth to cry an effusive greeting when Kitty got gracefully to her feet and called out through the great doors, ‘Madge, darling, Darlene’s here!’

  ‘Then get her the fuck out here this frikkin’ minute!’

  If looks could maim, Kitty’s body would have been in pieces on the stage floor.

  ‘Darling …’ Kitty clasped Mrs Turnbit’s hand in hers. ‘It’s been such a privilege – and such a pleasure. But now Miss Golden is here at last we cannot make all those good people wait on us. Please do finish your tea. Emma will look after you, won’t you, darling? Is there anything else you need? We’re all just terribly behind schedule … Do please forgive us …’

  Without a backward glance, Kitty walked toward the rear doors, where Mary Blanque, the wardrobe mistress, awaited her with a cloak wrought of peacock feathers. Darlene – who like Kitty was in the running for Screen Stories’ Goddess award – followed perforce, fulminating, behind.

  And just as Kitty passed through the door, Emma saw her glance again at the stage clock.

  Oh, drat it, it IS that stuntman! Waiting for her someplace …

  ‘Can I get you anything else, Mrs Turnbit?’

  Or maybe that blond-haired extra from Laemmle Studios …

  Completely aside from common courtesy, Emma was aware – having been coached by Publicity Chief Conrad Fishbein – that gossip columnists would be almost as eager to have a word with her as with her employer. This would provide an admirable opportunity to pass along a few studio-generated ‘confidences’ about Kitty’s life and loves, Kitty’s actual past being best left in discreet shadow.

  That, too, she knew, was part of her job. Her husband’s glamorous sister had rescued her from the dreary horrors of the Pendergast household at least in part to be a respectable female companion, to keep the fan magazines from saying that Kitty was a tart.

  Which of course she is …

  Like half the other actresses in pictures …

  She tried to recall whether Mr Pugh was on the lot that day.

  Sure enough, the journalist invited her to share another cup of tea, and bent to ruffle Chang Ming’s red-gold fur. ‘And who are these adorable little creatures?’

  While the sweet strains of ‘Swan Lake’ announced the commencement of scene fifteen (hard upon Madge’s bellowed ‘Camera … Action!’) Emma made Mrs Turnbit known to Chang Ming and the tiny, five-and-a-half-pound Black Jasmine. (‘Yes, he had eye damage as a puppy, poor little chap. It’s fairly common, with Pekinese … But Miss de la Rose fell in love with him at first sight and he with her, and of course she doesn’t care a button that he’s half blind …’) That kindness to the minute dog had been, in fact, Emma’s first intimation that there was more to her sister-in-law than gin, cigarettes, and exhausted regiments of discarded lovers.

  As usual, shy, flaxen Buttercreme refused to come out of her wicker carry-box (‘I have no idea what she’s doing in Hollywood,’ sighed Emma. ‘She doesn’t approve of the place at all.’).

  And, ‘Oh, yes, those are real diamonds on their collars. Miss de la Rose is so very generous to those she loves.

  ‘She won’t admit it, of course,’ she added, shaking Mrs Turnbit’s hand at the outer door of the vast, barn-like stage, ‘but I know she reads your columns faithfully. And, of course, I don’t think I have any need to tell you, that though Miss de la Rose is … is the most genuine person I know’ – no harm laying it on with a trowel – ‘I assure you, she doesn’t break hearts and send men to their doom in real life.’

  The columnist twinkled. ‘I never thought it, Miss—’

  ‘Mrs,’ returned Emma with a smile. ‘Mrs Blackstone, though please do call me Emma.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the sister-in-law.’ The older woman nodded, clearly recognizing the name from the studio releases. She may in fact, Emma reflected, have written a little piece herself, on Camille de la Rose’s goodness in taking in her indigent – and highly respectable – English relative. ‘But on the subject of breaking hearts, my dear, could you let me know – well, let my readers know, you understand – if there’s any truth to those rumors about Miss de la Rose and that oil millionaire, Ambrose Crain?’

  She leaned close in a cloying aura of lilac perfume. Not a pretty woman, and those virulent tweeds and purple hat did nothing for her complexion, but there was warm and genuine interest in her small hazel eyes. ‘That little piece I saw in Photo Play a few months ago …’

 
; ‘Completely untrue!’ Emma made herself chuckle as she said it. The last thing Kitty – or anyone – needed was Frank Pugh going into a fit of jealousy. ‘Isn’t it amazing how one can’t have a cup of coffee with a friend in Hollywood without the press trying to marry one off?’

  She hoped her rueful twinkle looked more real than it felt. ‘I can’t imagine where that columnist picked up that rumor. Mr Crain was a friend of Miss de la Rose’s family. Now that he’s spending more time on the West Coast – he owns several thousand acres between here and Long Beach, you know – he likes to “treat” her, as he calls it, to an occasional dinner out, as he used to do when she was a little girl. He’s been separated from his wife for many years, and I think, frankly, that the poor old man’s just lonely.’

  Mr Fishbein could certainly have come up with a better tale than that, Emma reflected. And it wasn’t bad for the spur of the moment. But Ambrose Crain was one of the myriad of subjects on which it was probably better that the publicity chief – and Frank Pugh – remain ignorant.

  Ambrose Crain, and whoever it was for whose sake Kitty was suddenly and unaccountably preoccupied with the clock …

  She shook hands with the visitor (‘I can find my own way to the gate, thank you, Mrs Blackstone …’) but her mind was already occupied with the gap of time between scene fifteen (which involved only two shots that she knew about) and the extensive sequence (scenes eight through twelve) wherein the Empress Valerna arrived in Rome – riding an elephant (did she ride it all the way from Babylon?), with dancing-boys in tow. Setting up for the scenes, and walking through the half-dozen shots of which each consisted (not to speak of close-ups), would easily fill the remainder of the afternoon and much of the night, and it would be best, she thought, if Kitty were under her eye. Just to be on the safe side …

  Through the great doors she saw that the elephant – whose name was Socrates – had already arrived in the garden. While she had been sorting out the inconsistencies in the original scenario – and dealing with the fact that sometimes individual shots were identified as scenes, which completely dislocated the numbering system – Zal had helpfully provided Emma with a list of which animals were available in Hollywood through which trainers. Properties Chief Ned Bergen had suggested a chariot drawn by zebras, but rumor had it that DeMille was going to use that in a forthcoming film, and Frank Pugh didn’t want to be accused of copying the better-known producer.