Scandal in Babylon

by Barbara Hambly

  Emma sank hers to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Everyone in Hollywood wants to know that.’

  She took them by the hand – this respectable British couple, daughter and son of Victoria’s empire, as her own parents had been – and led them across to the doors.

  Madge yelled, ‘Cut! Elmore, what the hell was that? You defeat frikkin’ Marcus Maximus in hand-to-hand combat and then you go trip on your own frikkin’ chains?’

  Fuming (and panting) Darlene descended the stairs yet again …

  Herr Volmort bustled over to her to dust powder and touch up paint; Zal crossed to the door, shaking his head. Kitty descended behind Darlene, looking as innocent as if she hadn’t just made her rival run up a very long flight of stairs seven times and clearly planned to do it at least eight more.

  ‘Mr Zal Rokatansky,’ said Emma, ‘Miss Camille de la Rose – these are my dear Aunt Estelle and Uncle David. They’re on their way through to New York, to take the Ravenna back home to Britain next week. They most kindly stopped here to visit with me on their way.’

  There was a momentary shocked pause, as Aunt Estelle and Uncle David stared at her. It came to Emma that neither her aunt nor her uncle had remotely contemplated even the possibility that she would not fall, sobbing with gratitude, into their arms and then run home to pack her bag.

  That she would not choose to leave.

  Zal’s eyes touched hers, and she saw his shoulders relax. If he could have found an appropriate way to do so he’d have taken her hand. But behind the thick glass of his spectacle-lenses, his glance said everything. Then he turned to ask Uncle David something about India, true and genuine in a way that made up for every ersatz screen kiss and false-fronted set. Kitty cried, in her sweet little-girl voice, ‘Oh, darling, you can’t let your Aunt and Uncle take a cab to the station! Tomorrow you take the Packard and drive them.’

  And Emma said, ‘Of course. Thank you.’

  As Kitty turned back to Herr Volmort and his powders, and Madge summoned Zal for a conference about the lights, Aunt Estelle drew Emma aside. ‘Dearest,’ she said – and she sounded both disapproving and dismayed, ‘surely you’ll be coming with us! We’ve already wired the American Line asking for accommodations for five on the voyage.’

  It took Emma a moment to realize that each of them had a body-servant, probably Indian, who would form the nucleus of the Oxford household.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She almost laughed with the sudden clarity of her relief, but knew they wouldn’t understand. ‘There was no way I could get in touch with you …’

  Appalled, Aunt Estelle turned to survey Kitty, in her elaborate shreds of jewels and gauze, her Pekinese pattering eagerly around her sandaled feet. Looked past her at the arena, where prop men smoked in their shirt-sleeves as they raked sand and shifted historically inaccurate statues, and the Nubians of the empress’s retinue – glistening with cocoa butter – clustered around the casting ads in the back of Variety (which also – prominently – bore Camille de la Rose’s name).

  ‘You can’t actually say that you prefer living in this place!’ She gazed round-eyed as the glittering Goddess of the Silver Screen, the temptress of Babylon, accepted a cigarette from Frank, and let him escort her to the make-up table, past the fulminating Darlene, her Pekinese trailing behind.

  Her aunt didn’t, Emma observed, even seem to notice Zal, or the way Zal’s eyes touched her own as he returned to his camera.

  Jim standing in the deepening twilight of Holywell Street, bidding her go on ahead of him. Miles smiling at her as she climbed the steps of The Myrtles once again.

  But Jim was gone. Miles was gone.

  The road will make you rich.

  And there were other things ahead.

  Gently, she said, ‘Thank you – more than I can ever say – for your offer to take me back. To let me make a home with you. I’ll never forget that kindness.’ She took her aunt’s hands.

  The scent of her mother’s perfume.

  ‘But I will stay. I have … my life here, now.’

  Uncle David was peering out into the arena, as Zal checked the light meters, and Darlene, at the bottom of the endless marble stair yet again, tried to look as if she didn’t know exactly what Kitty was up to. ‘Deuced interesting! What are they doing now?’

  Emma hugged her aunt again. ‘And I will drive you down to the train station tomorrow – Miss de la Rose has the most shockingly enormous car. Where are you staying, darling? I can take you there now, and come back for you this evening, to take you out to dinner – did you just arrive?’

  ‘Last night.’ Aunt Estelle looked around with distaste as Ned the Lesser, in his undershirt and with a cigarette dangling from his lip, brushed past her with a papier-mâché bronze clock for the Hot Potato set.

  And very quietly, as his wife’s attention was diverted, Uncle David asked, ‘You’re sure, my dear?’

  Emma smiled. ‘I’m sure.’ She had never felt more sure of anything in her life.

  Estelle sighed, and shook her head. ‘What your mother would say I can’t think!’

  Emma didn’t reply, as she led them toward the outer doors of the stage. But in her heart she knew exactly what her mother would say.

  And what her father would say.

  And Jim.

  Whatever makes you happy.

  The bravura strains of Tchaikovsky swelled from the set behind her, and she stepped out into the mild California sunshine.