“I did as the executives at CBS asked, but I’m not going to breach confidentiality without proper cause,” Hannah said, folding her arms. “I also think the British government and press would be most interested to learn that such an act was asked of me under these circumstances.”
He gave her a long, sardonic look. “Play it your way, sweetheart, but no one would say this show has Reds on staff if it wasn’t true.”
“People often say all sorts of things, and don’t make too much effort to determine whether or not any of it is true,” Hannah said.
He smirked and put on his hat, tilting it in a raffish gesture she guessed he’d learned from Humphrey Bogart.
“Ballsy, ain’t you? I bet you can be a lot of fun when you let your hair down.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” she said brightly, grinning.
He laughed good-naturedly. It was like playing a game of being friends.
“Just between us, sweetheart, I’d make sure your house is clean. Find some little English honey to be a script girl. Bet your crew would like that too.”
“I appreciate that, thanks.”
He showed himself out, raising his hat to Beryl as he left. Hannah turned from Beryl’s questions and lit a cigarette. Dale had said everything was fine and as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed, and heck, even Lucille Ball had apparently been a Communist at one point and he’d like to see anyone try to push I Love Lucy off the air. The feds, Dale had suggested, were free to go shove it.
“I don’t suppose you might tell a person what the devil’s going on here?” Sidney demanded.
“My countrymen can’t seem to resist trying to frighten me,” Hannah told him ruefully. “They can’t bear someone they don’t like being productive. So much for the puritan work ethic.”
“Miss Wolfson,” Beryl said, her voice shaking. “You know I’ve nocht but total support for you, and I’ve never asked, but are any of the writers not blacklisted?”
“Would it matter, when one is all it takes to hurt us?”
Beryl stared at Hannah and Sidney a long moment.
“It’s all of them, isn’t it? Every last one. I suppose I’ve always known.”
“Well, of course you did. Everyone does. We’re the biggest open secret in the whole damn industry. There’s a coterie that admires us for it.”
Beryl snorted. “Oh, admire, aye, but do they do anything like the same? They do not.”
“It’s not easy,” Hannah said, with feeling.
“Oh no?” Beryl went on acidly. “You carry on quite easily, jeopardizing our whole company by continuing to hire these Americans.”
Hannah reeled. She was used to Beryl’s sharpness. She had never experienced it quite so directly, and at the expense of Beryl’s even stronger loyalty.
“Beryl, that’s hardly—” Sidney began.
“Nae, I willna hear it!” she snapped. “How can you be sure this man cannae stop the program airing in America? And if he does, then what happens to the message of it all?”
“He wants that power, but he doesn’t have it,” Hannah replied. “They’ve got their guesses, let them guess. They can blacklist someone because someone else points a finger, but they can’t shut down a show without proof of what they’d call a crime. And we’re not going to give them any. Are we?”
Beryl gave her a mulish, mutinous look that chilled Hannah’s heart. She knew Beryl wasn’t the sort to squeal. She was, however, the sort to decide she’d had enough and move on to less treacherous pastures. No one could blame her, but Hannah knew she couldn’t let Beryl go, not yet.
She looked at the staff she considered friends. “Sidney, you always knew what we might be up against. Beryl, you knew the day I said not to accept registered letters. Because they might be a subpoena. I wasn’t sure what they could do to us from here, and never wanted to find out. You both are the best I could ever hope for, but if you’ve got cold feet, I won’t stop you from letting them walk you on out. I’ll be sorry as hell, but I won’t stop what I’m doing till they make me, or till the blacklist is dead.”
Beryl and Sidney exchanged looks. Something seemed decided between them, and Sidney held up a large folder.
“We’ll never have more opportunity for hiring hungry writers if we don’t get The Adventures of Sir Lancelot on the air.”
So it was back to work. Hannah hoped this particular storm really had blown over. She couldn’t bear to worry about any more of the people in her world. Bad enough it was time to remove Phoebe as script supervisor. Quickly. She hated it, it felt weak, like giving in. But she’d said all along the job was only temporary. If there was one thing Hannah was certain of, it was that Phoebe would be fine.
* * *
• • •
The telegram came as Phoebe was combing her hair. It said only:
DON’T GO IN TODAY = TALK LATER +
The last thing Phoebe was prepared to do was wait. She stormed into the Sapphire offices half an hour later, her hair still mostly uncombed.
“Oi, you canna barge in like ye have any right here,” Beryl snapped, looming in front of Phoebe. “Who d’you think you are?”
Phoebe hesitated, remembering that she had to maintain professionalism. Besides, Beryl had at least six inches and fifteen pounds on her.
“She told me not to go in today. I want to know why.”
“Because we found a local girl with a lot of previous experience who needs the work. Miss Wolfson can explain the whole of it to you,” Beryl said in a clipped tone. Then she leaned in and whispered, “You ought to be grateful, in fact.”
Before Phoebe could ask anything more, Hannah opened her door. She was wearing her coat and hat and looked sorrowful.
“I was coming to get you, as it happens,” she said in a leaden voice.
“Miss Wolfson, you’re nae leaving?” Beryl was stunned. “The meeting—”
Hannah shook her head. “Gemma just called. Come along, Phoebe.”
Suddenly Phoebe knew.
* * *
• • •
Hannah gave the cabdriver an extra shilling, and he got them to Chelsea in record time, where Phoebe ran straight to the phone. Gemma held out the receiver.
“I saw you a-getting out of the taxi, the operator is connecting you.”
“Brookside,” the receptionist answered.
“It’s Phoebe Adler,” she said.
“Of course,” the receptionist said, her tone suddenly breathy as she clicked away, arranging the connection to the room that had been set up just for this.
“Hey, girl wonder,” came Mona’s voice. A shadow of Mona’s voice, sounding farther away than ever. An oxygen tent, Phoebe realized. “Would you believe it’s pneumonia? Heck, it’s not even cold here. I think they ought to give you a refund.” Phoebe could hear how every word was an effort. And she was still Mona. Tears streamed down Phoebe’s face. She should be there, holding her sister’s hand. Mona should not be surrounded by strangers, with only a black Bakelite phone to represent her family.
“It’s monstrously unfair,” Mona wheezed. “All this time without any immune system to speak of, I should be taken out by something much more glamorous. Do me a favor, bribe them to put something better on the death certificate, will you?”
“Mona, I’m so sorry,” Phoebe said in a squeak.
“Me too,” Mona said. “But it’s all right. We didn’t do too badly. I love you a lot, little sister. You’ve been the best part of my life.”
Phoebe was crying too hard to answer.
“You keep making a spectacle of yourself, okay? Otherwise I’ll find a way to punish you.”
“You would too.”
“Of course.” The words were getting softer, with more wheezes between them. Phoebe could hear low voices in the background, rustling.
“I love you!” sh
e shouted, desperate for Mona to hear that before she stopped hearing anything else. “Mona, I love you!”
She could hear some vague mumbling, but nothing coherent.
“Mona? Mona?”
After a moment, another woman’s voice answered. Nurse Brewster.
“I think she said, ‘I’m not deaf,’ Miss Adler.”
Of course she did.
“We’ve given her morphine,” Nurse Brewster continued. “She’s in no pain.”
“Put the phone by her, let me say something else,” Phoebe ordered.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Adler, but she’s not conscious anymore.”
“She’ll still know I’m there. Hell, at least let me hear her breathing!”
“Here’s the doctor to speak to you, Miss Adler,” the nurse said sadly.
Phoebe shook her head, choking on sobs. Hannah took the phone and Phoebe vaguely heard some words, but her head was pounding and she thought she was going to be sick. She pressed her forehead to the cold marble table.
“Phoebe?” Hannah whispered. “It’s a morphine-induced coma. The doctor thinks it’ll be over within a few hours at the most. He’ll call back himself when she’s gone, he’s promised.”
Phoebe looked at the receiver, lying in the cradle, and scowled at Hannah.
“I wanted to at least hear her breathing till then.”
Hannah’s eyes filled. Somewhere in her muddled mind, Phoebe remembered that Hannah was in the midst of a divorce, that things might be uncertain, that she might not feel comfortable spending a pound a minute for what could be hours of silence. Phoebe wanted to spend the money herself, not that she had it, though she knew Mona would call it a waste and it would be the first thing she’d come back from the dead to punish her for.
Dead. Nearly all Phoebe’s life, Mona was supposed to be dead any day now. It didn’t make any sense that the day should be today.
“I never even got to tell her I slept with Reg,” she whispered, and started crying again.
The phone rang, and Phoebe snatched it up, forgetting it wasn’t hers. She heard the receptionist say, “Brookside.”
“Mona!” Phoebe cried. That made sense. If anyone could figure out how to die and come back, it would be Mona.
Her own voice saying, “It’s Phoebe Adler,” sounded so little like what she thought she sounded like, she thought it must be Mona, making one of her weirder jokes.
“Mona?” she called through the endless clicking.
“Hey, girl wonder.” A shower of ice encased Phoebe’s body. The recording went on. “Would you believe it’s pneumonia? Heck, it’s not even cold here . . .”
“Give her back!” Phoebe screamed into the phone, over Mona’s voice. “Give her back, give me back my sister!”
“It’s monstrously unfair,” Mona wheezed.
“Give me back my sister!” She hardly noticed Hannah, wide-eyed and pale, attempting to wrestle the phone from her. “At least give me something!”
“. . . much more glamorous.”
Hannah wrenched the phone away and slammed it down. She and Phoebe stared at each other in horror.
“How the hell are they tapping my phone? Unless they’ve gotten MI5 involved, it’s illegal. I’ll slaughter them.” Hannah was red with fury.
“I want them to give me my sister,” Phoebe wept.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Hannah hugged her a long time. “I suppose at least it’s lucky you weren’t at the set when we got the call.”
Phoebe had forgotten why she’d come to Sapphire that morning in the first place. “Why am I off Robin Hood?”
Hannah guided Phoebe to the sofa and poured them brandies. “Your pal, the man with the green hat, he knew you were working there. He knows you’re a writer, he at least guesses I hire blacklisted writers, and he’s desperate not to leave London without a juicy souvenir. We can’t feed the fire. If you need more work—”
“I don’t though, do I?” Phoebe’s voice was flat and hollow. “I don’t have anyone to support anymore, except myself.” She gulped her brandy. It was warming. After another sip, she could almost breathe. “He can’t really hurt us, can he?”
“Not if he knows what’s good for him,” Hannah snarled. “I’m not one to go down too easily.”
* * *
• • •
Hannah offered to make up the guest bed, but Phoebe said she would go home.
“I just want to be alone. Thank you. Thank you for letting me say goodbye to my sister.”
Hannah hugged her again, and Phoebe rested her head on her shoulder. Mona used to hug her just like this. It was hard to believe she never would again.
She walked home. No more phone calls. No more letters. No more Mona. And she hadn’t been there.
What if I’d just answered that damn subpoena? What would they have asked me, about the union? Heck, they had all our names anyway, so what would have been the difference? I’d have answered, looked like a squealer, and they’d have let me go.
Maybe. She wondered idly if it was in fact Dolores Goldstein, wherever she was, who’d been caught somewhere and given them all up. It didn’t matter, and that was the devil of it. As much as she’d have wanted to be there with Mona when she finally left the world, it didn’t matter. This was where she was, and this was the life she was living.
Without really thinking about it, she ended up at Reg’s door.
“Mona died,” she said.
“Oh, darling,” he said, taking her into his arms. They just stood there in his doorway, holding each other.
“I’m glad she’s not in pain anymore, I am, and I’m glad she’s out of that damn place.” Phoebe wept. “But she should have gotten to live. Really live.”
“I know,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “I would have loved to meet her.” He kissed Phoebe’s brow. “She’s still in you. She always will be.”
“She’d compare herself to a tapeworm,” Phoebe said.
Reg smiled. “Naturally. But you’d try and beat her to it, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d lose.”
“You’re not alone, Phoebe,” he said, taking her hands and kissing them. “I promise. You’re not alone.”
She didn’t want to be. She nudged him inside and closed the door behind them.
* * *
• • •
Reg got up early to run to the huckster’s for groceries so he could make her what he called “a proper northern breakfast.” He insisted it had great curing powers. Phoebe stared as he filled her plate with eggs, bacon, sausage, crisp potatoes, beans, fried mushrooms, and tomatoes. He toasted half a loaf of bread and poured her a cup of tea so strong, she suspected she wouldn’t blink the rest of the day.
“Stay here,” he urged. “I have to go and teach, but stay, read, listen to records, do whatever you like.”
“I want to write,” she said.
“I’ve got any amount of paper and a typewriter,” he said. “A good one.”
Phoebe finished a third cup of tea.
“I want my typewriter. And a change of clothes. Don’t offer me yours,” she warned. “I’d be afraid they’d fit.”
He smiled and took her hand. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“Yes, please.”
She went home, munching on a piece of the toast he’d insisted she take with her. It was Friday, the last day of filming her script. She wondered if any of the crew missed her. Or would remember her by next week.
The building was quiet—everyone was at work or school. She still missed the music from Joan’s flat.
I should get a radio, she thought, opening her door.
“Well, there you are, Miss Adler,” the man greeted her. “Apparently also known as Miss Morrow.”
Phoebe couldn’t speak. Couldn’t scream. Could hardly think. She knew him at once,
even with the green hat sitting on her coffee table rather than his head. He had all her finished work stacked beside him and was reading a copy she’d kept of the script that was wrapping in a few hours. The one that still bore the title page with her own name on it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
* * *
“It’s the nuttiest thing,” the man said in his pleasant voice. “Hannah Wolfson swears there are no Reds writing for Robin Hood. I wonder what she meant by that.”
“She didn’t know,” Phoebe said quickly. “I put my name on my copy for me, but I changed it and mailed it in to her as a blind submission. I’d been reading the scripts so long, I knew how the show went. I just wanted to be a writer again.”
“Aw, that sort of gets me,” he said, tapping his chest. “Gotta love a gal’s sob story, and you’re not a bad looker if you lost the glasses and dressed like a woman. Hell of a picture, I’d say: the little lady who wanted to make something of herself.”
Phoebe said nothing as he nattered on. She kept her face as still as she could while her brain whirred and spun. She was a fast runner, but didn’t trust herself to be fast enough to keep ahead of him and get a bus or cab to get to Hannah—especially not with that giant breakfast inside her—and anyway, running would just add more fat to the fire. Even if Freddie came home for lunch, he would only come upstairs if there was mail. He couldn’t get to Hannah, but he could try to find Reg.
“This is illegal,” she said in sudden realization. “You don’t have jurisdiction here, you’ve broken into my flat illegally. Even at home you’re not supposed to be seen snooping.” Was that true? She couldn’t remember. This all felt too much like a bad dream. She looked down to check she was wearing clothes.
“Oh, honey, don’t get worked up,” he scolded her. “I’ve got a warrant.” He waved a piece of paper at her. She snatched it and read it through, shaking her head.
“This can’t be right,” she insisted. “You’re not with the British police. I don’t even know you’re really with the FBI.” Though she did.
Red Letter Days Page 32
