But—unquenchable courage? I found it strange that she admired such a trait, when she herself had long ago run away.
“Of course, one reason I treasure the picture,” she went on, “is because Gunnar Thoresen painted it.”
I stepped closer to study the scene more carefully. “It’s very good. I should think he could be a fine painter if he does work like this.”
“Gunnar paints for his own amusement,” she told me. “He lacks the drive and ambition to make a real artist. That’s what comes of being well adjusted. I’m thankful I never was.”
I caught her up quickly. “Tell me about that. This is what I want to know. What made you the way you were?”
She closed the door to the hall, then went to the chaise longue and lay back in it, waving me to a comfortable chair opposite.
“Were! Ah—that’s the operative word, isn’t it? I was, but I no longer am.”
“That depends on what you want to attach to those words,” I said. “You must have accepted the fact that you were no longer an actress when you chose to give up that life.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the sight of me. “You are going to ask me painful questions. Irene said you would. She said you’d distress and wound me—but perhaps that will be good for me. At least you’re here, and that’s what matters.”
She opened her eyes and stared at me across the room. In the full light from the windows I saw that her dark eyes were more sunken beneath the bone structure than they had once been, and it seemed to me that there was a strange shading in them of something uneasy. But what could there be in Laura Worth’s life now which would make her afraid and uneasy?
“Is it important to you that I’ve come here to open up the past?” I asked.
“It’s important that someone has come. Someone who cares about what I used to be. Someone who may be able to help me. Though perhaps that’s foolish. Perhaps there’s no help for me any longer.” She flung out her hands in a gesture of defeat, and let them drop.
She was dramatizing, I thought, playing a role for me, and I began to feel impatient. I still had to do Gunnar’s bidding—and I meant to. First, however, I hoped to get something more for the piece I might write, even if she could not bear the sight of me once I’d told her the truth of my identity. But so far she had answered no questions, she had drifted around them in some sort of emotional mist through which I could not find my way. My feeling persisted that she seemed almost frightened at times. Yesterday when I’d first seen her she had been a woman who had obviously despaired of living. But what there was for her to fear, I didn’t know—and it did not seem likely that she would tell me.
Perhaps it would help a little if I went about this like a proper interview, instead of merely trying to draw her out. I opened my handbag and reached into it for my notebook and pencil. My fingers touched the tissue-wrapped millefiori paperweight and closed about it. Should I dispense with the mockery of an interview and do at once what I had come to do? No—I pulled out the notebook and flipped it open. I would get something out of this meeting first. I would use her as a reporter before I confronted her as a daughter.
She was watching me. Her eyes noted the open pages, the poised pencil, and they were not without suspicion. “I have been treated very badly by the press. Why should I trust you?”
“You’re quite right,” I agreed. “Never trust a reporter. You’ve just told me you’re glad that I’m here, but if you won’t talk to me, I might as well go away. Perhaps I’ll write a story about a lady imprisoned in a house built upon the black rock of a Norwegian mountainside.”
“Imprisoned!” she echoed and there was a sudden dark note in her voice that made my flesh creep. I had to remind myself that she was an actress.
“Imprisoned with memories she fears and resents?” I suggested. “With a room full of things she probably keeps locked from sight most of the time because there is an old Pandora’s box she fears to open?”
“You look so young,” she said. “Young and eager and harmless. But there is a bite in you. I like that. I think you’d be afraid of very little. As I was not afraid when I was your age. The younger are foolishly brave. What questions do you want to ask me? Though we’ll not begin with Pandora’s box, if you please.”
“I’ll repeat the question I asked before. What gave you the drive to become an actress—a great actress? Can you find the answer in your past?”
She shrugged and began to recite clipped phrases. “My father died when I was in my teens. My mother and I had no money. We were living in the Middle West—Minneapolis. I’d always had a flair for performing. I’d taken dancing lessons and often had the lead in school plays because I was pretty. My mother dreamed of the movies, while I thought I would like the stage. We went to Hollywood. She worked in a department store and enrolled me in an actors’ school. My father used to say, ‘Whatever you are doing, Laura, be the best.’ Not, ‘do it well,’ but ‘be the best.’ I’d loved him very much and I was still trying to please him … but Miss Thomas, you’re not writing.”
My pencil had not moved because the thought had come to me that these were my grandparents she was talking about. That I was here now because they had lived—these people I had never heard about before.
“I don’t need to write all the time. These are things I’ll remember,” I assured her.
“The rest is not spectacular. My mother fought for opportunities for me. She denied herself constantly. I wish I could have loved her the way I loved my father. He had been everything to me, but I could never feel close to my mother.”
I bit at the eraser on the end of the pencil. Had life come full circle for her? Now that she had a daughter, who in turn had loved her father …
She regarded me questioningly. “You look strange. Am I shocking you so soon? I must tell you the truth, you know. That’s all that matters now, though it was something I used to hide in the old days because I was ashamed not to love my mother.”
“The truth is what I want,” I said.
“Good. As I say, the beginning was not spectacular. I was noticed. I was given a screen test. It was not very good, but apparently I had something which came across in front of a camera. When you have it you can be above average—if you work. Providing, of course, that you want to enough. By that time I wanted to enormously. I was still trying to show my father that I could be at the top of whatever ladder I tried to climb. The small parts came. I was not bad. They were watching me. My option was picked up and I was given a contract with what looked to Mother and me like a princely salary.”
She paused, shaking her head in dissatisfaction.
“I’m giving you nothing. I’m giving you a summary of facts. Facts you probably know. But I can’t talk about that time with any great enthusiasm. Mostly it was drudgery. I had no dates. I went to no parties. There was only time for work. I knew only the people in the studio with me. And my teachers. I was studying voice. Talking pictures had come in and I had to learn to speak properly. My voice was naturally good.”
Yes—her voice was naturally good. I listened to the timbre she had not lost. It was a voice which could play the whole scale, yet its natural tones were faintly smoky.
“Distant Thunder was your first starring vehicle, wasn’t it?” I prompted.
She brightened a little. “Yes. That was the start, really. The critics were very kind. I received a raise and the chance for better roles. But of course I had no opportunity to choose my pictures then, and after that many of them were mediocre. Yet I was gaining a name, a certain popularity. My pictures were good box office. I was being turned into a star. The public, it seemed, liked mediocrity.”
“Until you met Victor Hollins?” I said.
She went on as though I had not spoken. “My leading men were the best of that day. Some of them became stars in their own right. Some of them I was in love with. That happened quite often, you know. Actors sometimes begin to believe they are the characters portrayed, and they fall in
love with each other’s roles. There’s usually a rude awakening when the traits they admire evaporate.”
“But you never married at that time? You always stepped aside?” I was drawing close now—close to the quick.
She was silent for a moment. Her eyes were closed again and thick, dark lashes lay upon her cheeks. For some reason, with her eyes closed, she seemed younger, more vulnerable. Perhaps because hers were eyes filled with memory and knowledge.
“You’ve chosen a good phrase,” she said. “Yes—I always stepped aside in time. I was married to my work. It was all I really wanted, and it wouldn’t have been fair to a husband to present him with a wife like that.”
So she had excused herself, I thought. Made herself believe that she did any man who loved her a favor by not marrying him. Perhaps that had been true. I made the motion of writing something on my empty pages. She would have to return to the name she had circled away from if I gave her time. I would wait.
“Maggie Thornton was the best role I ever played!” She opened her eyes and there was pain in them, as well as knowledge. No wonder she seemed younger when she shut that look away. “I deserved my Oscar. The role deserved it, and I deserved to win because of what I brought to the role. Victor Hollins was a fine writer. The best. We worked together superbly. He wrote the script for me. He strengthened the role for me. The picture was better than the book. Have you read Victor Hollins?”
“I’ve read everything he ever wrote,” I said quietly. “I do not think the picture was better than the book.”
“You’ve read him? That’s strange, considering that he’s no longer popular with the present generation. I understand that he has been forgotten in America.”
“That isn’t entirely true. Maggie Thornton is still recommended reading in colleges. And The Whisperer has become something of a classic in its genre.”
“Because of the picture,” Laura said. “That was a case where the picture made the book.”
This time I agreed. “Because of your playing of the role of Helen Bradley. You should have had the Oscar that year as well. Why didn’t you get it?”
“You know so much, Miss Thomas—I think you know the answer to that as well.”
“The scandal injured you?” My words were blunt and I watched for her reaction.
Dark lashes lowered again, so that I could not read what lay behind them.
“Of course that would have been temporary,” I went on. “You could have returned if you had waited a while longer. Your public loved you enough. Why did you run away?”
“No!” The word came explosively. She repeated it. “No! I’ve told you I won’t open Pandora’s box!” She flung herself up from the chaise longue and strode to the balcony door, moving like a queen—in command like a queen.
She frightened me a little. I wanted more from her. I wanted to probe as deeply as I dared—and not only because of what I meant to write. For the first time I was beginning to feel a kinship—though not of love. There was no affection for her in what I felt, but there was a certain grudging admiration. And the feeling that I had sprung from this woman’s bone and blood and sinew—that there was more of her in me than I’d ever wanted to acknowledge. Now I wanted, not to acknowledge, but to know. To know all I could learn about Laura Worth. Yet I had pressed very nearly as far as I could go—without going that last step farther.
When she held her head like that, with the chin bravely tilted, she could look far taller than she was. Critics had spoken of her “authority.” I could see what they meant. Even in a room, playing to an audience of one—a resentful and critical one—she had authority. She stepped onto the balcony, standing with her back to me, her hands resting on the wooden rail, looking out upon the city, and she commanded my attention. It was a moment of drama, and I think she relished it. Perhaps she had not played Laura Worth, the actress, for a very long time.
I applauded softly, rather maliciously.
The sound shocked her, swung her around, and she came back into the room. I supposed one had to walk like that as an actress—with all that grace and assurance. She came straight to my chair and stood before me.
“You’ve done your homework well. You’ve read Victor Hollins’s books. You’ve seen my pictures. Do you give as much research as this to every actress you interview?”
I smiled at her. “No, I don’t. Only to you.” The moment had come. I could carry this on no longer. I reached into the handbag I had dropped beside my chair and brought out the tissue-wrapped paperweight. “I have something for you,” I said, and stood up to hand it to her.
She raised her hand, not turning it palm up at once, and I noted the speckling of brown on the back, the raised veins. Age could be denied and disguised in almost every way except in the hands. Laura Worth’s hands seemed older than her fifty-eight years. Then she took the small package from me.
The tissue came away readily and she held the glass weight up to the light. Tiny, bright flowers glowed in slanting sunlight from the balcony doors and her look was caught by them, transfixed.
“Where did you get this?” she asked. The authority was gone from her voice. It was thin and wavering.
“Victor Hollins sent it to you. When he died he left a letter asking me to bring it to you. He was my father. My name isn’t Mary Thomas. It’s Leigh Hollins.”
I thought for a moment that she was going to faint. Her pallor was alarming. But when I would have reached out to support her, she moved past me to the chaise longue and sat down. This time she did not lie back and close her eyes. She stared at me with an unwavering gaze and moved the paperweight hypnotically from one hand to the other, back and forth, over and over again.
“You look nothing like me,” she said at last. “Nor do you look like Victor.” She spoke quietly, without emotion. The moment of weakness was gone, and color had returned to her cheeks.
Whatever I had expected from her, it was not this—that we should discuss my appearance.
“I look like myself,” I said. “For which I’m thankful.”
Her gaze swept me up and down and I felt suddenly awkward standing before her, being measured—and apparently found wanting.
“Why didn’t you tell me at once?” she asked.
“I told Dr. Fletcher who I was when I saw him yesterday,” I said. “He wouldn’t let me see you. He wouldn’t have you disturbed by my sudden appearance. So I had to find some other way of meeting you. My father left me a letter for Gunnar Thoresen, and I went to him. He talked to Miss Varos, and our meeting yesterday was arranged. They thought it best not to tell you my identity at once. Gunnar felt it would be good for you to meet someone who was interested in your film career. If you knew who I was, you might refuse to see me.”
“He’s taken a good deal upon himself—that young man! I’ll have to talk to him.”
“He knows my interest in writing this piece is genuine,” I said. “He warned me that I’d have to tell you the truth as soon as possible. But I haven’t played entirely fair.”
“How old are you?”
I blinked in surprise. “Twenty-three.”
She pouted her lips in a slight grimace. “Your birthday is not a date I’ve wanted to remember. You make me feel very old.”
I could feel myself stiffening with old hurt and anger. No, she wouldn’t have remembered my birthday. Strange that I should know hers so well.
“Of course I won’t stay,” I assured her stiffly. “You can forget me as soon as I’ve gone. There’s no need for you to do anything about me now. Everything you’ve done was done in the past. It doesn’t matter any more.”
Angry as I was, I was not saying the things I had come to say. Disappointingly, I knew there would be no use in saying them. Any accusations or reproaches would be shed without pain by the woman before me. She might remember Victor with feeling. Her pallor on seeing the paperweight had told me that. But I meant no more to her as his daughter—and hers—than I ever had.
“If you’re my daughter, you
’re not a coward,” she said.
Again I was surprised. What she meant I didn’t know, but I answered indignantly.
“I don’t see that it has anything to do with you—but I don’t think I’m a coward. You’re the one who has run away. You’ve run away at least three times that I know of. When you wouldn’t marry my father. When you let me go. And when you gave up your career.”
For a moment or two she looked at me almost sleepily. It was a look I had seen on the screen, and it was a warning. The smoky voice was almost a caress, though her words mocked me.
“What a foolish young thing you are! As it happens, in all three cases I took the action which most called for courage. But that’s no business of yours. So you think you’re not a coward?”
“I don’t believe I am.” I knew I sounded grim.
“Then why are you talking about not staying here? You came for an interview, didn’t you? Why not see it through? Are you afraid of me, now that I know who you are?”
I gaped at her. “You mean—that you’ll still talk to me?”
“Why ever not? To be interviewed by my own daughter—it sounds like a scene from one of Victor’s books! Except that there was sentiment in Victor—and there is none in me. When I’m playing a role I can feel passionately, but in real life I’ve long ago lost any talent for emotion. So if you expect a sentimental reunion, I will disappoint you.”
“I’m not sentimental either,” I told her, and heard the quiver in my voice. She was getting past my guard and angering me far more than I was getting past hers. “If you’ll let me stay and interview you, then that’s what I’ll do,” I said flatly.
She reached out and set the paperweight carefully on a coffee table. Then she held out her hand to me, still mocking. “It’s settled, then. A bargain. Nothing is changed. I’m still Laura Worth, and you are a young woman who wants to write about me. Anything else can be forgotten.”
As I took her hand reluctantly, I remembered the words Gunnar Thoresen had spoken to me. “Be gentle with her,” he’d said. As if she needed gentleness! With her cool, firm clasp of my hand, I was committed to staying in spite of the anger that flared up in me. Now I had to be an actress too. More than ever I owed her a debt that I wanted to pay—a debt of resentment and hurt for old wrongs, for callousness and cruelty. For indifference. I wanted to hurt her as she had hurt others.
Listen for the Whisperer Page 8
