What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  “You should have driven it yourself.”

  “I wanted to, but he wouldn’t allow me to learn. Not that I haven’t learnt more or less how to handle it simply by observation.”

  “Why haven’t you had it repaired?”

  “Nobody will give us credit anymore.”

  He walked around the automobile, keenly interested. Horses were his first love, but the day was coming when mechanisation would take over completely. He had seen increasing signs in the lumber camps. Although to date his horse trade had not suffered, simply because of the good name he had made for himself as an honest dealer, he had faced the fact that before long he would have to consider an alternative means of livelihood.

  “When does the bank intend to foreclose?” he asked.

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  He was taking a look at the engine which seemed to have escaped damage, and he raised his head to meet her eyes. “That’s the day I leave here.”

  She held herself completely still, tense and anxious, and she mouthed more than spoke her reply. “But you’re not going, are you?”

  There was some grease on his fingers from the engine and he reached for a piece of rag from a nearby bench to wipe them clean. As he did so, he stood straight-backed and regarded her steadily. “No, Astrid. I don’t believe I am.”

  Later, when everything was settled and the property and business were his, he mulled over the extraordinary change to his life’s plans that had come about in such a comparatively short while. He intended to make a success of his future, the surge of ambition taking over once again. Already he had ideas springing to mind how profits could be gained and innovations made. As for Astrid, he had realized almost from the start that in her he had found a woman with the forceful spirit and sexual magnetism to match his memories of Lisa. Perhaps with time she might even obliterate them. If she did, he would love her for it.

  *

  In London, Lisa’s antidote to memories was work. At first it had been both strange and familiar to be back in her own country. The streets had seemed too narrow and the buildings too close, giving her an almost claustrophobic sensation after the open spaces in which she had lived for such a long while. Nevertheless, the beauty of England had pulled at her heart, moving her to tears on the train from Southampton to London as she had viewed the clustered villages and the hills and woods of gentle watercolour hues, the gardens glowing with late summer flowers. Then she had experienced a full sense of homecoming.

  They were met at Waterloo Station by Alan’s only close relative, his cousin Sylvia, who welcomed Lisa like a sister. She gave parties to introduce them to many of her friends, not wanting Lisa to feel lonely, and after three weeks put her house at their disposal, as previously arranged, while she herself departed for India to rejoin her army-major husband there. Before leaving, she found a capable young nursemaid, Maudie Harris, to take charge of Harry when Lisa was otherwise engaged. Lisa liked the girl, as did Harry, which gave her an easy mind about giving most of her time and all her assistance to Alan, who had located a building suitable for conversion into a cinema not long after their arrival back in England.

  It was an old music hall that had waned in popularity and had been closed down for a number of years. After a surveyor had pronounced it sound in structure, Alan had consulted his bank and the necessary funds were forthcoming. While he dealt with the architects and builders and suppliers of cinematographic equipment, Lisa handled the paper work, met British film distributors and renters, visited studios to see the making of future offerings and selected colours and fabrics for the refurbishing of the building. One of the great points in its favour, as far as she and Alan were concerned, was the fact that it was located in an area that encompassed a complete cross-section of the community. He was as keen as she was that they should be able to offer good entertainment as much to those who could only afford a few pence as to people able to pay much higher prices. Factories and slum dwellings, good shops and middle-class homes, art galleries and museums and elegant residences were all to be found within a radius of the building. Although its location was several miles from the theatre world of the West End, Alan never doubted that the day would come when a larger, grander version of the first Fernley cinema would open there.

  “This is a stepping-stone,” he had said to Lisa on the day the purchase of the property was completed. “There will be several more before we can open in Leicester Square or thereabouts, but we’re on the way now.”

  She was pleased when he gave her a free choice in the naming of their cinema and decided it should be known as The Fernley. It was a good name with which to begin a whole chain of cinemas and made a refreshing change from all the Electric Palaces, Picture Palaces, Picturedromes, Theatres Elite and the innumerable Majesties and Empires. Set in illuminated bulbs above the glass-canopied steps of the entrance, the letters made an eye-catching spread across the arched facia that could be sighted from all directions in the traffic-congested streets. The patrons would pass under these lights through opened glass doors into a vestibule where the pay-box was situated, before passing on into the foyer. There was a wide staircase branched to the Grand Circle and the Balcony above it. This area was thickly carpeted and everywhere the walls were gilded and ornamented. Lisa had chosen the rose-tinted chandeliers with special care. The aim of cinema proprietors of any forethought and business acumen was to give patrons an exotic setting to waft them from the mundane into the fantasy world that awaited them.

  Sometimes, when Lisa watched Alan checking on the progress of the building’s conversion, she could tell by his absorbed expression that he had come into his own at last. He would have been a truly happy man if it were not for the fact that in their personal life things were not as they should be. Although to him she blamed her lack of response on tiredness or whatever reason seemed plausible at the time, her excuses were lame ones and at times she despaired of herself. It was natural that as a result tension between them was acute on occasions. Sometimes they quarrelled fiercely over a trifling matter that neither really cared about, simply as an outlet. More than once there was such burning anger in his eyes that she was reminded of the time long ago on Quadra Island when Harriet had vowed to find her a husband in Seattle. She longed for his sake to tear down the barrier that she had set against him, but the truth was that although she was reconciled to a life without Peter, she had not yet readjusted to her marriage bed. She felt nothing and wanted to feel nothing. Work had become her fulfilment.

  As the conversion of the building neared completion, Lisa appointed the female staff. With so much unemployment everywhere, women came from far afield to apply for vacancies, forming such a long queue outside the cinema in the bitter February weather that some passers-by thought the place had already opened and a performance was due to commence. Lisa interviewed each applicant and regretted she did not have more work to offer, but Alan was too heavily committed to the bank to allow more than the minimum amount of staff for the time being. Her choice of a cashier for the pay-box proved to be particularly fortuitous. The woman, Ethel Morris, was married to a retired boxer, Billy, who had similarly applied to Alan to be commissionaire and, whenever it should prove necessary, the chucker-out. After Lisa and Alan had talked together, they offered the couple the chance to be caretakers in the living accommodation incorporated into the property. The additional position was accepted without hesitation.

  All that remained was for Alan to take on two projectionists, both with diplomas issued by the British Bioscope Company to endorse that they were fully qualified electrical bioscope operators, and a fireman, whose duty was to keep the fire buckets filled, check that the emergency exits were always ready to open, and generally keep an eye on the safety of the property. According to a new law, film was no longer allowed to drop down freely into a container from the projector to be rewound after the programme, but had to pass from one closed canister into another. Alan had these fitted to his projectors, which were run by belts attached to
a small engine, which eliminated the hand cranking that had previously been necessary.

  The days before the opening of The Fernley were dwindling down on the morning Lisa arrived with a letter, coming at a run through the vestibule into the foyer in search of Alan, who had gone earlier to the premises. She found him in his office.

  “I’ve heard from Minnie!” she exclaimed excitedly to him. “She took your cousin Sylvia’s address with her after all, hoping that her letters would be forwarded on to us even if we were no longer staying there. She and Risto are married and they’re both working for one of the film companies in Los Angeles.”

  “Acting?” Alan asked with interest.

  “Yes. Isn’t it wonderful news.” She perched on the edge of his desk to read it to him, her sheath skirt having the fashionable tango split in the front that showed her silk-stockinged legs halfway to her knees.

  It was the happiest letter that Minnie had ever written. Upon their arrival in Los Angeles they had gone, more by luck than judgement, to an old barn that had been taken over as a studio only that day by a motion-picture company newly arrived from New York. Goods and equipment were still being unloaded. Such was the rivalry between companies that no time could be wasted and the cameras had already been set up outside and filming was about to start. Minnie and Risto and some other hopeful applicants were signed on at once; they were handed costumes from a wardrobe trunk and their first day’s work began. In a restaurant scene, supposedly set in a Paris cellar, the two of them were diners and had to toast each other with wineglasses while gripping the check cloth under the table to prevent its flapping about in the breeze and giving away the fact that it was all being filmed in the Californian sunshine. Since then they had played a variety of crowd parts, for one-reel movies were made in a week.

  Now there was a sudden move towards the longer feature film, and Risto was to be a gladiator, and she a slave-girl, in a four-reeler that was going into production. Minnie felt the tenure of their steady work was due in part to their having been at the studio from the first day, for most people, from cameramen to directors, appeared to think they had come with the company in the exodus from New York and treated them now as experienced players. Whatever the reason, she and Risto in very minor roles as characters of Ancient Rome were, nevertheless, to have their own farewell scene in the new movie. They would be in the background, echoing on another plane the more dramatic parting between the leading actor and actress, but their acting ability was being called upon and they intended to do their best. She added that for professional purposes she was being known as Minnie Shaw, explaining that as she and Lisa had always been taken for sisters it had been a natural choice to take her dearest friend’s maiden name. She closed the letter with loving greetings and implored forgiveness for any upset she had caused by running away with her darling Risto, but it had been the only solution to not being separated forever.

  “Good luck to them,” Alan said sincerely. “It seems as if we’ll be seeing them on our screen here before long.”

  “Maybe one day they’ll appear on lobby cards like these on the desk.” Lisa leaned her weight on one hand to peer over at the sepia-tinted images of scenes from the opening night’s film, which had been sent with other advertising material from the distributor. These cards were set up on decorative easels in the vestibule to give patrons a foretaste of the pleasures to come and tempt the hesitant into buying a ticket. She helped Alan make a selection before taking a seat at her own desk to deal with some business correspondence awaiting her attention.

  Before the day ended, she wrote a long reply to Minnie’s letter and enclosed a photograph of Harry that had been taken on his fourth birthday. She had previously sent one to Agnes Twidle. By a strange coincidence, Agnes herself had survived a forest fire at Granite Bay about the same time as Lisa had escaped. Agnes also had taken to a row-boat and was on her own throughout the ordeal, for Henry had been away at the time. Miraculously their house and orchard had escaped completely, although the flames had passed close by.

  All this news was included in the letter to Minnie as well as everything of interest about the new cinema. As Lisa sealed the envelope she glanced across at the 1912 calendar on the office desk and noted that only ten days remained before the March date of the opening night. For the first time she realised that it was in its way an anniversary, for it was exactly nine years since she had run away from the orphanage in a vain attempt to avoid being shipped to Canada, a doomed escapade that had changed the whole course of her life.

  The Fernley’s opening night arrived. Queues began to form long before the programme was due to begin. Tremendous interest had been aroused through publicity in the local press about the three-reel feature film, which was A Tale of Two Cities and would run for the amazing length of three quarters of an hour. It was to have a supporting programme of a two-reel cowboy movie and three one-reel comedies; a gazette of topical news, which included the visit of the King and Queen to the Earls Court Exhibition; and a screen magazine reel of forthcoming attractions.

  Alan, as manager and proprietor, was in white tie and tails, and Lisa, who was to play the piano alone in the orchestra pit, had a new evening dress to wear. It was a silver-beaded tunic of pink chiffon over white, combining the softly draped bosom with the straight and slender silhouette. A final touch was a silk rose tucked into the coils of her hair at the back of her neck.

  “You look beautiful,” Alan said to her in the last moments of waiting before the doors were opened to the public.

  Her smile twinkled at him. “You look handsome yourself, Mr. Fernley.”

  He chuckled, putting his arms about her. “Then kiss me, Mrs. Fernley.”

  She rested her hands against his shoulders and Looked at him with a fond seriousness. “Good luck with the Fernley Cinema, Alan. May it bring you all the success you deserve.”

  “It’s our venture, darling. Not mine alone. None of it would mean anything to me without you.” His embrace tightened about her and they kissed.

  As they drew apart, he turned to signal with a nod to Billy to open the doors. Billy, smartly uniformed in dark blue with brass buttons in his role as commissionaire, his Boer War ribbons on his chest, saluted and went forward with long strides to release the bolts. Lisa sped away to take her seat at the piano below the screen, a green-shaded light giving her a spot of illumination for the sheet music. There was a special score for the feature film, since some of the bigger movie-makers were now selecting their own accompanying music which was delivered with the reels.

  From beyond the doors into the auditorium there came a rumble of hurrying feet. She struck up a medley of popular tunes as the first patrons streamed in to take their seats. There were exclamations at the plush-covered seats and the concealed lighting that gave a glow to the plaster ornamentation of flower-garlands. Unlike most cinemas, the cheap seats at the front were not plain wooden benches but leather-covered editions of those in the rest of the rows. The appreciative remarks reached Lisa clearly where she sat a few feet from the poorer patrons.

  Then the curtain across the screen within its proscenium arch parted. A projected slide showed the kindly bearded face of King George V, and Lisa played the national anthem, which befitted the importance of the occasion. Everybody sang as they stood in the rows and as the last notes died away seats were resumed. A more utilitarian slide requested that ladies remove their hats to facilitate the view of others. When the rustling of hands sliding out hat-pins and removing fashionably large headgear had subdued, the programme commenced.

  As Lisa played she felt she could easily have been back at Mae Remotti’s hotel in Dekova’s Place, for the reactions of the audience to the movies on the screen were exactly the same. They laughed uproariously at the comedies, cheered the cowboys and growled or hissed at the villains. When a film jammed in the projector’s gate and broke during a comedy reel, their groans in unison were followed not long after by a stamping of feet from the stalls to the Grand Circle and the B
alcony as patience became stretched at the time the projectionists were taking to repair it. A cheer greeted the flickering return of the first frames to the screen, and after that there were no more hitches. Women brought handkerchiefs out of their purses and wiped their eyes, some stifling sobs, when Sydney Carton mounted the steps of the guillotine in the final scene of A Tale of Two Cities. Lisa played the last dramatic chords and the performance was over. Just as in Mae Remotti’s, a few patrons took time to come to Lisa and say how much they had enjoyed her accompaniment.

  “It was real nice,” one woman said, still wiping red eyes, her wide smile showing how much she had enjoyed the programme.

  “Thank you. I hope you’ll all come again.”

  They declared in turn that they would and bade her good night. Lisa stacked her music together and put it ready for the matinee the next day. From now on there would be non-stop performances from six o’clock nightly for six days of the week and the same number of matinees.

  Alan took her out to a champagne supper before they went home. Both were convinced that they had a sure-fire winner in The Fernley and it was cause for a special celebration.

  By the end of the year the financial returns had exceeded their most hopeful expectations. They hired a three-piece orchestra for the evening performance, and Lisa continued to play at the matinees. With a complete change of programme in the middle of the week, many patrons came twice in order not to miss anything. Some women came three times to one movie if the hero caught their fancy. Friday and Saturday nights were occasions for family outings when a husband brought his wife and all their offspring. With cinema fever getting a grip on the whole country, as it was elsewhere in the world, many, a man was being drawn away from his favourite pub, and the womenfolk were thankful for it.

  The movie in which Minnie and Risto had their farewell scene reached the screen of The Fernley early in 1913. Both Lisa and Alan thought they did well. Although she did not write often, Minnie did keep them informed of her own and Risto’s progress. They were continuing to get small parts that were only a degree ahead of crowd parts, but everything was promising.