“Aren’t you a brilliant wee bairn?” Beryl said an hour after they’d become acquainted. Hannah thought “bairn” sounded like “barn,” an odd thing to call a child. “I hear you’re a great hand with a bow and arrows,” Beryl pressed. “No sheriff’s men will storm our castle, eh? I may pelt them with stones, myself.”
“And boiling water!” Rhoda shouted, dragging Beryl to the window, where the enemy must be encroaching. “We’ll pour boiling water all over them!”
“Won’t we just!”
The battle became more grisly. The faster they talked, the less Hannah could follow the action. She bit her lip. It was one thing to feel foreign surrounded by her Scottish employees. It was quite another to suddenly, genuinely, not comprehend the language of her own child. Rhoda had been born in London, and it was right that her accent was British, but Hannah hadn’t realized the extent of the separation it would create between them. Rhoda was able to understand various accents, while Hannah, who had always prided herself on her ability, still had so many moments of being just a little behind. She was only forgiven, she was sure, because she was a woman of some small power and substance. Rage swelled up inside her. She despised being forgiven. It was too close to condescension.
The feeling subsided as quickly as it had risen. London was the only home Rhoda knew, and her assimilation proved Hannah had done everything right. Besides, it was Hannah’s home now, too, and possibly would be forever. She just had to keep on claiming it. She joined the fighters at the window, and the three of them laid waste to an entire invading army.
It was after four when Hannah and Rhoda headed home, and the afternoon was dark. But it was cool and pleasant, and they were happy to walk a little while.
“Mama, I have a very important question,” Rhoda said.
It was rare, this moment of seriousness. Something that only happened when they were alone. Less influenced by Beryl’s speed and force, Rhoda’s accent was pure central London, and Hannah had no trouble understanding her. Its little pipe, so lilting and earnest, reminded Hannah that she had made a whole separate person. A small miracle. Hannah had to catch her breath before she answered.
“Yes, Rhoda, ask me.”
“Am I going to be a television producer when I grow up?”
Hannah smiled down at the round face with the shortbread crumbs stubbornly clinging to the corners of her lips. It was both thrilling and awful to imagine her grown, with a clean face and a hairdo and suit, running an office. The idea of Rhoda and Julie growing up only made Hannah want to cuddle them more.
“You might be, if it’s what you want to do and you’re good at it,” Hannah told her. “Or perhaps you’ll do something completely different. You’d like that too.”
Rhoda nodded, thinking it over.
“Daddy says it’s important for a girl to be a good wife and mother.”
“Does he now?” Hannah kept her voice light. So Paul had found time to talk with his children when she wasn’t around. And say things she would never have believed came from him, if Rhoda hadn’t told her.
“But you’re a good wife and mother,” Rhoda puzzled, frowning. “And you’re also a television producer, so I don’t quite see what he means.”
Hannah fought the urge to sweep her daughter into her arms and smother her with kisses. Rhoda deserved a real answer.
“I think he means for you to not worry, that you can do whatever feels right,” Hannah assured her. “You do as you wish, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Rhoda nodded again, satisfied, and skipped along beside Hannah, singing a pitch-free version of “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor.”
It was quiet, and the air smelled fresh. Hannah looked at her daughter fondly, wishing Julie were here too. And Paul, even though she was disappointed in him. Maybe if he saw more of Rhoda’s buoyancy, he wouldn’t feel he needed to guide her into a box her mother eschewed. Hannah resolved to convince Paul to spend more time with all of them as a family. He owed them that.
As they turned the corner, Hannah saw the long shadow of a man behind them. She stopped suddenly, and the shadow did as well.
“What is it, Mama? Do you see a bat?” Rhoda was full of hope.
“Maybe. We ought to go to the zoo and learn all about bats, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes, please!” Rhoda was overjoyed. “They eat bugs,” she added, proud of her vast knowledge.
The shadow had gone but footsteps continued all the way to Chelsea. Hannah thought of all the monsters she adored as a horror-loving adolescent, monsters she now wished were real. The Mummy, the Golem, Dracula. Instead, here she was stuck with the Invisible Man. Because there was no way around the truth. They were being followed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
* * *
“And you’re sure?” Shirley asked.
“Of course I’m not sure, who’s sure of anything?” Hannah lit a second cigarette from the one she’d just finished. “I’m not even sure I should be on the phone.” She’d said nothing to Paul, pretended everything was normal, and waited until this quiet moment in her office to call Shirley.
“The British may feel they owe the Americans for finally helping win the war, but they wouldn’t hold with bugging the phones of a production company,” Shirley said. “Not unless they thought you were colluding with the French.”
Hannah snorted.
“Anyway,” Shirley went on, her mellow voice more honeyed than usual, “if our fellow Americans are going to waste taxpayer dollars having men follow us around in London, the joke is on them. What can they possibly deduce? That your office is in Cadogan Square and your home is in Chelsea. Whatever else I might think of the FBI, I like to assume they’d have already figured out that much without a great deal of effort.”
“So you do think it was someone from the FBI?” Hannah said.
Shirley was silent. Hannah heard the click of a cigarette lighter.
“Hedda Hopper came to your set. That means someone tipped her off. You don’t exactly know who, do you?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess.”
“No indeed, and the likelihood is you never will. In the meanwhile, I’d hardly put it past that Hopper creature to spend some of her own ill-gotten fortune and hire someone to upset you as punishment for the set treating her so disrespectfully. Ludicrous and spiteful, yes, but is it implausible?”
Hannah’s eyes traveled over the American newspapers on her side table. There was some mention of Communists, Communism, or hearings on every front page. Buried in the bottom corner, perhaps, but there. It remained red-hot news.
“I’d put nothing past that woman,” Hannah said.
“Well, precisely.”
Though it didn’t explain Phoebe’s harassment. But what point was there, really, in trying to make sense of so much absurdity?
“I don’t even mind them trying to make me squirm,” Hannah said. “I’ve always done my best work when someone’s trying to give me grief. But tailing me when I’m with Rhoda, that’s a different matter. That’s a killing offense.”
“Keep your head,” Shirley advised. “They want a reason to escalate. Don’t give them one.”
“No. Though they say a woman’s provocation knows no bounds.” Hannah sighed. “What are the odds we’re in for it now just having had this conversation?”
“Oh, strife,” said Shirley, this time sounding impish. “We may have to flee our country to retain our freedom.”
The conversation wasn’t exactly comforting, but Hannah had too much work to do to wallow. She slipped off her shoes under her desk and turned to a list of production requirements for upcoming episodes.
A sharp knock and Beryl stuck her head around the door.
“Pardon, boss, but there’s a bloke to see you, says you’re one of his comrades. Aye, that’s the word he used.” She paused. “He looks like what we’d c
all a keelie.”
“Explain,” Hannah said.
Beryl shrugged. “A bit of a rough. Though too old for it, really. Says he’s called Charlie Morrison.”
It was tempting to ask Beryl to send him away. She was busy, and it was just like Charlie to think he could drop in without calling. But she thought of Joan, and allowed Beryl to let him in. She shoved her feet back in her shoes.
“Hiya, Hannah, sorry to barge in,” Charlie said. He had undergone extensive ministrations—Joan must have had him steam cleaned—but Hannah promptly understood the meaning of “keelie.” There was an inherent roughness, even in his shaven face, that was stronger since she’d last seen him. Something in him had never escaped the tenements of Brooklyn, and anxiety enhanced it. Hannah greeted him more warmly than she’d intended and offered him coffee.
“Last few times I’ve seen you, we haven’t had much chance to talk.” Charlie smiled uneasily. “How about that new guy, huh, from DC, the fairy who used to work for Social Security?”
Hannah sighed inwardly. Charlie was a card-carrying Communist who would have sworn up, down, and sideways that he believed in the equality of all men. Yet here he was, insulting a new exile escaping a government purge.
“The sweeps continue,” Hannah said. “That lawyer working for Hoover, Roy Cohn, has some bee in his bonnet about homosexuality. They’ll clear out a good bit of the federal government if they keep this up.”
“Seems so, yeah. So the thing was, it got me thinking, and I landed on a story for Robin Hood. I figured, what the hell, I should write it and the worst you’ll say is no, right? But I’m hoping you’ll say yes.” He pulled a folded script from his jacket.
Hannah took the script. She would read it, of course. She knew that for him, this was the lowest he could go—casting his retrimmed hat in the ring for television, the mule created when film, radio, and theater came together in an unnatural act. Not only television, but a show created and run by a woman. Who had already bought a script from his neighbor, who herself had the gall to be younger, single, and female. Hannah wondered which of these was Phoebe’s greatest sin.
“I wanted to dig into Robin’s feelings about living in exile,” Charlie said enthusiastically. “It’s the classic fall from grace, and his fight back to where he belongs.”
“Is it?” Hannah asked. She knew Charlie’s youngest son watched the show, and wondered how many episodes Charlie had seen.
“The age-old story, huh?” he continued. “A man trying to reclaim his honor. It’s the stuff of all the Great American Novels.”
“You should certainly try writing the next one of those,” Hannah encouraged him. None, she decided. Possibly he’d asked Alvie to summarize.
“Funny you say, I’ve been writing a book too,” he confided. “It’s a doozy, though finding a publisher with the balls to take it on won’t be easy. But once that’s done, it’ll make a million, and then the film version will knock it out of the park.”
“I look forward to it,” Hannah said. “Meantime, I look forward to reading this. I’ll get back to you by the end of the week.”
Charlie nodded nervously. “Sure. Great. Thanks a million, Hannah, really.”
After he left, Hannah lit a cigarette and skimmed the first few pages of the script. They confirmed what she’d suspected—that he hadn’t bothered to watch a full episode of the show. He had no sense of the characters or their voices, let alone their hopes and actions. The script was one of Charlie’s Westerns about a tough guy battling an enemy, but with bows and arrows rather than guns. It might be a tidy B movie, but it wasn’t an episode of Robin Hood.
She waited three days before sending Charlie a warm note, thanking him and asking if she could send the sample to some other producers she knew. Maybe it would raise his hopes. She sent a separate note to Joan, enclosing ten pounds. A gift, she said, to give the boys a surprise. She couldn’t think of any way to suggest it was best not to let Charlie know about it, and hoped Joan would make the connection on her own. However she spent it, there was some truth to the note. It wasn’t their children’s fault that they were caught up in all this turmoil. There was nothing any of them wouldn’t do to try to make things easier for their children.
* * *
• • •
Phoebe’s fingers, red and swollen from exertion, galloped mercilessly over the typewriter. Her body was in her tiny flat, a cigarette dangling from her lips, knitting needles stuck in her uncombed hair. Her mind was deep in Sherwood Forest, where a newlywed peasant named Alisoun wept to Maid Marian, hoping this important woman might save her from a terrible fate. Alisoun’s husband was one of the outlaws and she pined for him, but they could only exchange secret messages left in a tree. Not notes, because neither of them could write. Instead, they had to draw their desires on leaves.
But before all the adolescent boys who worshipped the show were moved to vomit, enter Alisoun’s neighbors, a couple who coveted her garden, her chickens, her cow. Her escapades into the woods must mean she was in collusion with the outlaws, aiding and abetting. And if abetting, why not also a-bedding? She must be committing adultery, no doubt giving succor to Robin Hood himself, committing all the crimes meriting imprisonment and torture, and so the property made forfeit and up for grabs. Pesky details like evidence were easily dismissed, but Alisoun must destroy the leaves—real proof of communicating with an outlaw. And yet, they were all she had of her husband, so would Marian hide them? Though the real problem was clearing Alisoun’s good name and keeping her small property safe.
Marian would succeed, of course, but even the most hardened boys would chew off half their nails waiting to see what would happen. They’d never guess Marian’s real motivation—her own long love for Robin, which might only ever be that damn courtly love. Phoebe thought “courtly love” read like a prude’s imagining of medieval life—full of tourneys and roses and tapestries and scrubbed clean of plague and wars and bloody deaths in childbirth. Courtly love, reserved for unrequited longing in the upper classes, saw flirtations dragged out for years, with nothing but dropped handkerchiefs and exchanged roses to keep the flames going. A story worth a thousand eye rolls. Then again, it could be far more erotic to pine for a single embrace than to deal with someone day in and day out, and ask them if, just once, they could manage to drop their dirty socks in the hamper rather than leave them on the floor.
There was a sharp rap at the door, and Phoebe cursed. She couldn’t pretend not to be home, not when she’d been typing so hard. She stubbed out the last of the cigarette and went to open the door.
Reg leaned against the jamb, holding a white rose. “I am devastated to interrupt the flow of genius, but if our date is to be postponed in the wake of creation, I imagine I must still be required to provide sustenance.”
“But you’re so early,” she said. Since New Year’s, their outings were in the evenings, rather than the afternoons, giving her an uninterrupted day to work. Nothing was quite enough. Not enough time with Reg, not enough time earning more for Mona.
“It’s past seven,” Reg informed her. “I’ve been waiting outside, having quite the chat with Freddie till he was called in for supper. Then I thought I’d best risk breaching the battlements.”
Phoebe glanced at her watch, then at the window, which had turned dark without her realizing. A small portion of her was still both Alisoun and Marian, attempting to navigate a world so very stacked against them. She ran a hand through her hair and found the knitting needles, attached to a half-finished scarf dangling around her neck. She became aware that she had no makeup on, hadn’t even washed her face, and was wearing the cardigan with moth holes, covered in crumbs from breakfast—whenever that was.
“I suppose you’ll have to come in, because there’s no way I’m going out,” she said, standing aside to admit him for the first time. She watched him look around with interest.
“It’s exactly t
he home a writer should have,” he pronounced.
“Smoky, poky, and dark,” Phoebe said in agreement.
“Not at all,” Reg said, taking her hand. “It radiates energy.”
“I have to stay warm somehow.” She put the knitting needles and scarf back in the basket and tried to comb her hair with her fingers. “I wish you could have seen my place in the Village. That was a beautiful home. Here, look.” She pointed to the photos and drawings on the wall. “All done by Anne, my best friend. That’s her there.”
“It does look lovely,” he agreed. “But I’m happy you’re here, circumstances notwithstanding.” He put his arms around her, and she leaned her head on his chest. There’d been no word from Anne for nearly two weeks, which meant she was so deep inside a series of paintings, she’d forgotten time. Phoebe heaved a sigh.
“And that’s your sister.” Reg smiled, pointing to Phoebe’s favorite photo of Mona, the one with Groucho Marx paper eyebrows taped to her face. “She looks just like you.”
“Except that she’s pale and blond and slim,” Phoebe said.
“Details,” Reg said with a wave of his hand. “She has the exact same sparkle in her eyes as you do. There’s no mistaking it.”
Phoebe’s heart tangoed around her chest. She wished she could introduce Reg to Mona, not just tell them both stories about each other. Her fingers twined through his and she tugged at him, but was suddenly aware of how alone they were, how it could be possible to stay here for a long, long time. She backed away and nodded to the rose.
“It’s funny you bring that by. I was just thinking about roses in medieval life. Why did you get a white one?”
“I told you, my people are from York,” he explained. “Red roses are still associated with the House of Lancaster.”
“Wasn’t the War of the Roses five hundred years ago? I think you can move on.”
Red Letter Days Page 25
