As she wandered, she thought about Hannah. She hadn’t expected a woman with such a sweet face, soft curls, and motherly smile. She had, however, imagined someone firm and intimidating, and in this Hannah delivered in spades. I sure hope I didn’t seem weak, or silly. Or desperate.
Phoebe plodded through a display of dishes and silver. Beautiful things for beautiful lives. The sort of things she’d always wanted, for the sort of home she worked so hard for—now slipping further and further away. For all her talent, there was no certainty she would ever sell another script. Phoebe knew now how lucky she had been to start her career during the war, when so many male writers were off doing bigger things, and everyone was hungry for easy entertainment and good-enough writers willing to work cheap. Regular work, and guidance from Hank, made her better, and then she got better still. But if she wanted to sell something to Hannah, she was going to have to leap to the level she’d been striving for without passing Go one more time.
She followed signs to the medieval displays, realizing she had no idea what the medieval world even looked like. She’d visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a thousand times, but only wandered among the paintings. Phoebe liked looking into the eyes of the past. A vase wasn’t the same thing at all.
The further back into history she walked, the more she grasped how little she knew about a lot. All her reading, and sneaking into movies, it wasn’t the same as the sort of education she’d dreamed of before the war, before Mona went to Brookside. She read every newspaper Horatio sold at his little stand, and knew there were ways a bright, if poor, girl like herself might get into a women’s college like Barnard, just a train ride away uptown. She went there once, and admired the handsome brick buildings and green courtyards where young women in tweed skirts and cardigans talked and read and drank coffee. She knew she would be one of them.
Even when she left high school for the airfield, she was sure she would reach Barnard after the war. But then her parents died, and she sold that script. She had to keep working for Mona’s sake, and no longer minded. On a good day it was thrilling. Sketches written by her played on the radio throughout the war and on into the peace, and then television opened up a whole new vista, far larger than the walls surrounding Barnard. Anything she needed to know for work, she’d gotten from a quick trip to a library. Which was next on her list, but she still wanted to see this world. Feel it.
The displays of reliquaries and tapestries left her cold. The embroidery was exquisite, but she felt nothing of the intricacies of daily life in Robin Hood’s time. Or death, for that matter, when it wasn’t that of a saint or a stag.
“Is there someone here who can tell me about murder in the Middle Ages?” she asked at the information desk. The expressionless clerk ran a finger down a personnel list, rang a number, spoke to someone, and then turned to her in apology.
“I’m sorry, miss, there’s no one free today. Perhaps next week.”
Annoyed, Phoebe headed back to the pub for a supper Ernie had kindly kept warm. She asked him if he knew where she might find remnants of medieval London.
“Oh aye, now you ask, that’s a good question there, miss, and a shame you weren’t here before the war. But here, I think I know a few spots you might like.” He dug around for a pencil and wrote a short list on the back of the day’s menu. “Try the Tower first, miss, it’s a good ’un.”
As soon as she saw the Tower of London, she knew it wasn’t going to draw her into the world of Robin Hood. It was too big, too grand, too far removed from Nottingham and the outlaws. She went in anyway.
“Here to see the Crown Jewels, miss?” she was asked.
“No, I’m for anything about torture and execution, please.”
Phoebe studied the manacles and rack, disappointed to learn that these were only used in later centuries, when religious conflicts heated up. Things she’d never understood.
Another woman gazed at the rack in awe. Phoebe grinned at her. “Kind of nutty, isn’t it, the way people acted like being Catholic or Protestant at any given time was enough to get your bones busted?”
The woman gaped at her, appalled. “You Yanks really are ignorant, ain’t you?”
Phoebe decided she preferred the accents she couldn’t understand. She began counting the hours until she met more of the American exiles in London.
* * *
• • •
The Bonwit dress was undoubtedly too grand for a gathering of supposed subversives, but Phoebe didn’t care. If she had to go into this strange crowd alone, where people might think her in need of charity, she was damn well going to look her very best. She slipped her photos of Mona and Anne into her bag for company, then added the photo of that first check and snapped the bag shut.
There was a phone box by the Underground station. Phoebe glanced at her watch. It was just after lunch at Brookside. Would her first letter have arrived with the morning mail? Now there was more to tell, and Mona’s insistence that the other exiles were going to love her would help settle her nerves. Phoebe locked herself in the bright red box and picked up the receiver, then was caught short at the sight of two large buttons labeled “A” and “B.” She tentatively pressed button A and called, “Hello?” She pressed it again. “Hello? Hello?”
“Yes, hello, miss, how can we help?” came the irritated voice of an operator.
“Oh, sorry, hi,” Phoebe said. “I want to call New York, what’s the charge?”
“A London to New York call is three pounds for three minutes, miss.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“The telephone company does not make jokes, miss,” the operator informed her crisply. “Do you wish to proceed with the connection?”
Phoebe slammed down the phone. Three pounds! For three rotten minutes. First thing I’m doing when I get rich is buy shares in a phone company. She closed her eyes to summon Mona, who demanded to know what the heck there was to be so nervous about.
Plenty. She had to make a good impression. She had to make friends. She had to make everyone there, especially Hannah, crave her company and, more importantly, her talents.
She hurried down the steps to find the train that would take her to the LeGrand house in the neighborhood of Islington.
* * *
• • •
She alighted at Angel and checked her directions. Having mastered the winding streets of Greenwich Village, Phoebe took to London with a confidence that quickly wilted when she discovered you could walk down Newcomen Street searching for an address and find the street name had changed to Snowsfields and you were no closer to your destination. She found Elia without too much trouble, though, and knocked smartly on the door of number eleven at five minutes past seven. A man in rolled-up shirtsleeves with a napkin tucked in his neckband flung open the door.
“Well, what is it?”
“I’m here for the party,” Phoebe said stoutly, her back ramrod straight. “Hannah Wolfson sent me.”
“Who?” His voice scaled upward as his face closed inward.
“This is number eleven Elia, isn’t it?” Phoebe asked. The man slammed the door shut. “I didn’t want to spend more time with you anyway,” she told the door.
Phoebe headed back to the station and tucked herself in the corner of an adjacent pub to study her map and Beryl’s scrawled directions. She ignored her thumping heart. There was no phone number. No one to call for help. If she couldn’t find this house, she would have to go back home in abject failure.
She approached the publican. “’Scuse me, can you help? I’m trying to find this address.” She showed him the papers.
The man raised an eyebrow and laid a finger on the map. “Did you maybe go to Elia Mews, miss, when you were meant to go to Elia Street?”
“Oh,” said Phoebe, staring at the name above the neatly pared fingernail. Beryl’s writing was hard to read—possibly on
purpose—but Phoebe should have at least noticed. Her ears were hot with mortification. “Oh, that must be it. Thanks,” she said.
“Anything to drink?” he asked pointedly.
“Hm? Oh, no, I’ve got to get to this soiree,” she said. “But thanks a lot, really.”
She hurried out, pretty sure she heard him muttering about stupid and tightfisted Americans.
A few minutes later, she was at Eleven Elia Street, and a woman with a beehive hairdo and a wide, friendly smile opened the door.
“Hello there, you must be the new one. You’re not alone, are you?”
Phoebe looked around herself. “I guess I must be,” she said.
The woman laughed. “Hubby doesn’t like going out, does he? Mine can be a bit of an old bear himself, but I can’t blame him, he loves to just work, work, work.”
“I’m not married,” Phoebe said, ignoring the sinking feeling in her stomach. “It’s just me.”
“Oh!” The woman looked startled and studied Phoebe more closely. “Oh, maybe Hannah said . . . Well, anyway, do come on in! I’m Joan, by the way, Joan Morrison. It’s not my house, I was just near the door. You’re Fifi, is it?”
“Phoebe,” Phoebe corrected her, thinking that Fifi could only be the name of a tiny spoiled dog, and why would anyone think her parents that cruel?
“Oh, of course, what was I thinking?” Joan laughed, seizing Phoebe’s elbow and propelling her into a living room gray with cigarette smoke. Joan rattled off names, pointing at each man in the circle of men who saw no one but each other and then singling out a wife in the cluster of women across the room. Phoebe sighed. Being the only woman without a partner was nothing new, but she’d hoped that a gathering of blacklistees abroad would be more like a Greenwich Village party, loud and boisterous and freewheeling. This looked more like the parties of television professionals Hank occasionally invited her to, where her status as an unmarried “gal writer” garnered mostly blank stares.
“So you’re a gal writer?” the man Joan dotingly introduced as her husband Charlie said. “Huh. And you’re all on your own? That seems a heckuva shame.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I like traveling light,” Phoebe said.
His face puckered in confusion. “Oh,” he said at last. “That’s a joke?”
“The sort that’ll keep me practicing a long time before I’m booked at Carnegie Hall,” Phoebe said.
Several men heard this and laughed. Phoebe went to work introducing herself, but Joan soon steered her to the circle of women. Hannah greeted her politely and gestured to the serious-faced woman next to her.
“Meet Mrs. LeGrand, our hostess. I think I saw you speak to her husband, William LeGrand? You’ve heard of him, of course. Our Shirley herself is a composer and a biographer, and was field secretary for the NAACP.”
“That’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” Joan broke in.
“Yes, of course I know that,” Phoebe said, hoping she didn’t sound impatient as she shook Shirley’s hand. Shirley was regal, her coffee-colored skin glistening, and she had the sort of effortless elegance Phoebe always aimed to create.
“I’m glad the organization still has name recognition,” Shirley said. “Nearly all the officers were fingered by HUAC. We at the NAACP are the original blacklist.”
Phoebe smiled, though Shirley’s bone-dry delivery made it hard to be sure it was a joke.
“Of course, HUAC wasn’t exactly incorrect,” Shirley went on. “Will and I are proud party members. The Communists are the only party who think a societal racial divide is a ridiculous thing. We were keen to stay and fight, but there comes a point where reality must be faced. It’s one thing to be silenced in prison, quite another to be silenced six feet under.”
Phoebe hardly knew what to say. She felt frivolous. Shirley patted her arm.
“Those in power have never liked Negroes having a mouth. They would hate and fear the NAACP irrespective of the odd Communist.”
“I never get that. Aren’t there more important things to hate?” Phoebe asked. “Like starving children, or unrepentant Nazis, or the last peanut in the bag being rotten?” The words burst from her before she could think. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry, that sounded so . . . I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
Shirley didn’t smile, but her eyes had a small gleam. “That’s the sort of joke that makes you sound like a party member yourself, ma chère.”
“You don’t have to say what got you blacklisted,” Joan piped in suddenly. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”
“Someone named my name,” Phoebe said. “Isn’t that how it goes?” She paused. “I don’t know who, though.”
“Ah, yes,” Shirley said. “A not-uncommon predicament. Oscar Wilde was wrong—there are times when it’s far better to not be talked about.” The women exchanged grim smiles. “Well,” Shirley said brightly. “A brief bit of housekeeping. If you require financial aid, we can help. If you’re in good stead, please donate to the pool. We’ve formed a collective—”
“You formed it,” Hannah said, nudging her. “We heartily agreed and wish we’d thought of it first.”
Shirley’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “So,” she went on. “We put what we can in the pot, which gets meted out to whomever needs it. No one’s going hungry on my watch.”
“‘Share and share alike,’” Hannah said. Shirley and Joan chuckled, and Hannah explained the joke to Phoebe. “During one of the HUAC dog and pony shows, Ginger Rogers’s mother, of all people, decided she wanted her chance to come scream about Communism. Turns out she felt her baby was hard done by, because in Tender Comrade, old Ginger had the line ‘Share and share alike. That’s democracy.’ The committee swallowed that like cream, especially ’cause it was a Dalton Trumbo script and he was one of their top Red devils.”
Phoebe was dumbfounded. “That’s the sort of writing that’s supposed to trick Americans into picking up hammers and sickles?”
“Thank goodness HUAC exists to save us all,” Hannah said.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” Phoebe insisted, ignoring the chorus of snickers. “Isn’t democracy about people working together, the common good, that sort of thing?”
“That rather depends,” Shirley said. “For my friends and family, democracy has meant white people extolling the glories of America while we pay taxes but are given strife for trying to vote, all while hoping today isn’t the day we’re lynched for crossing the road at the wrong corner. England’s not perfect, but no one follows me through shops like I’m a thief, and I can sit wherever I please at the movies, so Will and I aren’t overly minding life in exile.”
Joan broke the silence that followed. “Anyway, are you all right for money?”
“Huh?” Phoebe snapped back to attention, guiltily relieved at the excuse to stop shuddering over lynchings. “Oh, yes, thanks.”
“And where are you living, exactly?” Hannah asked.
“Oh. I’m in a room above a pub for now, but—”
“Well, how about that!” cried Joan. “The fellow across from us just moved out. We’re in Soho. It’s, well, it’s affordable. Lively, lots of artists. Come over tomorrow at ten, the landlady will be there. I can get you the place, piece of cake!”
“Affordable,” “lively,” and “artists” were the sort of words that described Greenwich Village, perhaps euphemistically. Joan didn’t look like the type who would choose to live in such an area, but Phoebe knew some of the blacklist’s victims fell harder than others. She acidly congratulated herself on having been poor to start. It was an easier readjustment. Joan was a bit overwhelming, but she was also friendly. It would be nice, living near someone who understood her situation and could help her navigate this new terrain. Phoebe glanced at Hannah, now deep in conversation with Shirley and another woman, and wondered if Hannah had already known of the vacancy in Joan’s
building. She wouldn’t be surprised.
Joan accompanied her to the buffet. “No run on the vittles tonight. Charlie packed my boys off to the movies,” she said. She smiled and scanned the room. “What a shame there’s no one single for you!”
“Ah well, maybe the next round of blacklisting will bring some more options,” Phoebe said. Joan tittered, then rattled on about her children and living in London, not seeming to notice that Phoebe was watching Hannah loop her arm through her husband’s and join his conversation. Extraordinary to think she was married, with children no less, and yet had such a career. Phoebe was pleased for her but had no illusions of such an arrangement for herself. She didn’t mind. Even Mona never understood that. Only Anne agreed there was safety in singledom, if one wanted to be sure of a career. Anne. I wonder what she’s doing right now.
Hannah approached and handed her a fresh drink.
“Welcome to the club. I hope you’ll make the best of it.”
She seemed to mean it. Phoebe took the drink.
“Thanks,” she said, meaning it in turn. “I intend to.”
* * *
• • •
Joan’s directions were so precise, Phoebe couldn’t have missed Meard Street if she walked blindfolded. The “affordability” of Soho announced itself as soon as she turned the corner past the snug bookshops of Charing Cross Road. But if the streets were scruffy and dirty, they also buzzed with an energy that immediately put Phoebe at home. The characters outside the French Café looked like the same artists, writers, musicians, and probable criminals outside Floyd and Leo’s place. As she walked, she smelled pizza, Chinese food, coffee. There were posters for shows and concerts. Then, as she neared number seven, the pure clear sounds of a saxophone sang out from a top floor somewhere and wafted around her head, pulling her lips into a dreamy smile.
Red Letter Days Page 12
