What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  “I’ve joined up, Mrs. Fernley. I’m sorry to leave you single-handed but I can’t take any more insults to my patriotism and my integrity.”

  “Who gave you these feathers?”

  “Mostly women patrons after a performance was over. The last straw came today on the bus to work when a woman handed me one for everybody to see just as she was about to alight, shouting out that any man prepared to let Zeppelins bomb London without fighting back deserved hanging.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what was happening? I’ve realised that something was wrong.”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to tell you of my humiliation.” She sighed deeply. He could not be leaving her at a worse time. “Are you going into the Army?”

  “Yes. They want me right away. I report this evening.”

  She left him to finish off such clerical work as he had in hand. When he was ready to leave he shook hands with everybody on the staff and came to her for the most important words of farewell. “It’s been a privilege to work for you, Mrs. Fernley. May I ask to be considered for my old job here again when this war is over?”

  “Yes, indeed. Good luck and a safe return.”

  When he had gone she went into her office and sat down to take stock of her situation. There was nothing to stop her running the cinema entirely on her own as she had wanted to do originally when she learned that Alan would be going to war, except that now she was pregnant and must have a deputy she could trust to leave in charge when the time came for her confinement. Fortunately there was someone of her own sex on the premises who had had office experience before taking over the pay-box. Moreover, she liked the idea of having a woman assistant, for it meant the two of them would be carrying on an enterprise normally shouldered by men. The war was bringing women to the fore, after centuries of domestic enslavement, to handle machinery, the wheels of transport, and administrative positions of authority previously supposed to be entirely beyond their ken. It was exciting to be part of that evolvement.

  The discovery that she was pregnant had made Lisa look to the future with renewed energy, and she was resolved not to let the war create a stalemate of the Fernley enterprise, particularly since its present role was of vital importance in giving people the relaxation they needed in these difficult times. Alan had had to shelve his expansion plans for the duration of hostilities, but there was no reason why she should not give the matter her attention.

  “Would you like to be my assistant manageress?” she asked Billy’s wife after explaining the work to her in detail.

  “Yes, I would.” Ethel Morris’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction in her round red-cheeked face that was framed by greying hair. “And I suggest that Miss Unwin, the usherette, take my place as cashier. She’s a good, honest young woman.”

  Not only did Ethel Morris prove to be as efficient in her new post as she had been in the pay-box, but having borne children herself she was considerate and helpful towards Lisa in her pregnancy. They worked well together.

  It was a source of disquiet to Lisa, among all else of concern, that in spite of having drawn close to Alan in a way that once she could never have believed possible, memories of Peter still slipped at unguarded moments into her heart and into her mind. It always happened whenever she read in the newspapers that yet another neutral Norwegian merchant ship had been sunk by German submarines, for any vessel carrying on normal trade in supplies to Britain had to run the gauntlet of enemy torpedoes. Then she would picture again the West Coast of the United States and wonder where Peter was now, knowing how this abuse of his old country’s shipping, and the loss of the seamen’s lives, would anger and distress him.

  Sometimes at night when frustrated yearnings assailed her, she would sigh with despair that it was Peter whom she thought about and not her husband. There were even occasions when he came into her dreams, and always they were of the beginning of their relationship in those far-off Toronto days. She could interpret the meaning as a subconscious desire to turn the clock back for a second chance, and she railed against herself for it. Vain regrets about the past were useless, and it was what she did with the present and the future that was vitally important. Her pregnancy was her all-consuming joy. As it advanced, so did her new plans that she was putting steadily into action.

  *

  The war swept on ferociously. In France one evening in early April, Alan returned mud-caked with his Sappers from tunnelling under No Man’s Land to lay mines before an attack and found some delayed mail awaiting him. He read in Lisa’s neat hand that she had been safely delivered of a daughter, Catherine, who was strong and healthy and quite beautiful. They were both doing well.

  His leave to England was long overdue. Twice it had been cancelled when an urgent need for highly skilled engineers had outweighed all else. It was almost a year since he had seen Lisa and then, when his allotted leave did come, the dates were put forward by two weeks and he knew the reason for that, too. A great battle was in the offing. He could not be spared when it started and was wanted back in time to take over special duties.

  He had no chance to let Lisa know he was arriving sooner than expected. Arriving at the cinema during an evening performance, he was greeted warmly by Billy, who shook his hand heartily.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Fernley. No, your wife isn’t here. She’s at the new place this evening.”

  “What new place?”

  Billy looked uncomfortable. “Didn’t you know, sir? She’s opened a second Fernley cinema. Not as posh as this one, but it’s comfortable and there’s a full house every night.”

  Lisa had finished playing the piano for the last performance of the evening at the new Fernley cinema when Alan arrived. She did not see him at first, for she was collecting up some posies of flowers that patrons had brought her from their gardens. People who attended a cinema regularly, particularly the women, often showed their appreciation of the pianist’s accomplishment with modest offerings. It had happened to her at Dekova’s Place and again at the first Fernley as it was happening here. As she turned with the flowers in her arms, she saw Alan standing in the aisle of the deserted auditorium.

  She gasped involuntarily, clutching the blossoms closer to her. This was not what she had intended. Not wanting to cause him any unnecessary anxiety while at the Front, she had decided to break the news to him upon his return on leave and let him see for himself how everything was working out. That he should have discovered her harmless deception for himself boded ill. It could bring about a rift in what was so newly healed.

  “This is quite a surprise.” His gaunt, tired face gave no indication of how angry he might be and his wearied voice was expressionless. “For both of us.”

  “I agree.” It was not in her nature to make excuses for what she had done.

  “How did you manage financially to get this place going?” He gazed around from where he stood. It had been a large meeting hall as far as he could judge. Plush seats had replaced the original seating and this costly outlay had been offset by Lisa’s inexpensive and imaginative decor of coral-painted walls shading upwards to a midnight blue ceiling studded with appliquéd silver stars. She had put the right emphasis on comfort and created atmosphere on a shoe-string. He could make a guess that she had equipped the projection-room with the spare projectors made by him and that had been kept in The Fernley, store-rooms. She was practical and economical, and he had every confidence that she had thought out this expansion of the business most carefully. From outside the building he had approved the busy location and noted from the posters and the lobby cards that she was booking Chaplin of the comedies and William S. Hart of the Westerns and Pearl White of the serials, all guaranteed to draw the public. Lisa knew what she was doing. It was a consoling thought that whatever happened to him, she would have the strength and stamina to carry on with life and bring up his children in the way he would have wished. She returned his gaze as she gave him an answer to his query.

  “The first Fernley enterprise was well abl
e to share some of its profits,” she explained tensely. “The bank-manager loaned me the rest. I convinced him that this area was in dire need of a cinema and I was the one to run it.”

  “What about a licence?”

  “I talked the local council into giving me one in my own name.”

  Amusement began to twinkle in his eyes. “There can’t be many women granted that privilege.”

  “I believe there’s less than half a dozen in the whole country. You and I are really partners now.”

  He came and took her by the shoulders. “We always were as far as I was concerned.”

  She uttered a cry of relief, dropping the flowers to throw her arms about his neck and gave back his kiss rapturously. When they reached home, she led him into the nursery and picked up their fair-haired daughter to place her in his arms. Catherine awakened and looked at him with eyes that matched his own.

  As it happened, the reels of a new Douglas Fairbanks movie were being run through next morning before the first showing at a matinee the following day, and Minnie had a big part in it. Lisa and Alan watched it alone together in the auditorium. Minnie had developed a piquant beauty that enhanced her considerable acting ability. It was obvious she had been well directed and her talent fostered by those who had recognised the potential in her. More than that, she seemed to have the kind of face the camera loved, for it dwelt lingeringly on her every change of expression as she went through the whole gamut of emotions from joy to heartbreak. At times her lustrous, expressive eyes seemed to fill the screen. Lisa, forgetting momentarily that this actress wringing the heart-strings was once the waif she had mothered when she herself had been only a girl, blinked away some tears as the movie ended.

  “She’s superb,” Alan pronounced.

  “The press call her another Mary Pickford. It’s wonderful for her, isn’t it? By her letters, she’s quite unchanged by her growing success.”

  “I’d thank Risto for that. From what I remember of him, I’d say he was keeping her feet firmly on the ground.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I know I had no doubts about his looking after her when they eloped. The insecurity she had suffered in her childhood had left its scars. He was the anchor that she needed.”

  After the showing they left for the house in the country, taking the children with them. Harry had adapted better than expected to the arrival of a sister, which made everything easier for Lisa. The time at Maple House passed by much as before in quiet, contented days with no mention of the war, and newspapers kept temporarily away. When the moment came for parting, it had never been harder for Alan to leave Lisa, for he knew what lay ahead on his return to France.

  A week later, on the first of July, he was in the great attack on the Somme. Later he received the Military Cross for his extreme bravery in action, but was never to speak of what he had done, for to him it had simply been his duty as he saw it. He was slightly wounded in the process, but was patched up at a field dressing station and was not considered a serious enough case to be included in the list of over 57,000 British casualties, including 20,000 dead, incurred in that single day. The slaughter he witnessed at the Somme left a mark deeper than anything else he had been through previously. He was grave in demeanour and greatly changed when he went on leave eight months later. He wept over the beauty of his wife’s body as if he had never seen her naked before, and in her arms found succour and release from nightmares.

  When the United States entered the war, there was cheering in the streets of London. Lisa found a Stars and Stripes flag that she had brought back from Seattle with her, and she hung it from the window of the apartment. Her thoughts went, as they did so often, to Peter’s possible whereabouts in that vast land, and to Minnie, who was now playing leading roles in her own right. Her lovely, elfin face gazed glamorously from the lobby cards and her name was now more familiar to movie-goers than ever before. She did not write as frequently these days as she had done, being in great demand in the life she led, but her letters showed that she was still the same at heart.

  Lisa was leaving the apartment one morning to go to the other cinema when she opened the street door to see a telegraph boy getting off his bicycle at the kerb. He came towards her with a yellow War Office telegram in his hand.

  “Mrs. Fernley?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” she replied huskily, her heart giving a great thump of fear. She took the telegram from him and drew back inside, her hands trembling so much that she could hardly open it. With regret the War Office informed her that her husband had been severely wounded in action.

  Her V.A.D. uniform entitled her to be present at Waterloo Station when he was brought back to London after spending some time in a French hospital. A bullet had entered his right shoulder-blade, brushed past the spine, and broken some ribs before coming to rest between the heart and the base of the right lung. The operation had been successful, but paralysis of the legs was a result of spinal involvement. The hope was that it was a temporary condition that would right itself with time. As the stretcher cases were borne from the train, Lisa moved among them, giving cigarettes and lighting them for those able to celebrate a return home with a smoke, and all the time her eyes searched for Alan. He saw her from his stretcher before she saw him and called out to her. She rushed across to bend her head and kiss him. “You’re home!”

  “How are the children? How are you?”

  Holding his hand, she walked alongside the stretcher answering his questions. He gave her no chance to ask him how he might be, and she respected his wishes not to be reminded verbally at this moment of reunion about his weakened state. She went with him to the ambulance, but had to leave him there, for he was being taken to a military hospital in Cambridge.

  The following Sunday she drove there with the children. Alan was pushed in a wheelchair by a nurse out into the sunny grounds where Lisa awaited him with Harry and Catherine. At first his daughter was shy, having no recollection of this stranger with the rug over his knees, but gradually he won her over and she sat happily with him. Lisa showed him a newspaper cutting that Minnie had sent her.

  “Look,” she said. “There’s Minnie setting off on a nationwide tour to promote Liberty Bonds with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. She writes that Risto will miss her because they’ve never been apart for more than a few days at any time. We have one of her films showing at both cinemas at the moment. It’s called The Lost Heart.”

  “Is she good in it?”

  “Better than ever, I think.”

  *

  In a New York hotel suite, Minnie had dashed to the dressing-table mirror and was dabbing her nose with a powder puff. “Quick!” she called to her maid. “Get my new white satin negligee! The one with the swansdown trimming.”

  There had been a telephone call from the lobby desk to say that her husband had arrived and was on his way up. She had not seen Risto since the Liberty Bond tour had started weeks ago, and when he had let her know he would meet her in New York, she had been too excited to sleep. She adored him more than ever for taking the long journey all the way from California to be with her for a short vacation. They would make love as soon as he came through the door and afterwards they would go out on the town to celebrate. Then they would come back to the suite and make love, and make love, and make love all over again. She sighed in delicious anticipation, giving a touch of expensive French scent to her cleavage and behind her ears.

  As the negligee was held out for her, she slipped her arms into it, drawing it forward over her shoulders and her pretty lace-trimmed silk underwear. Then she hastened to the full-length cheval-glass to regard her reflection anxiously. Did she look her best? Six years of marriage had not dimmed in the least her passion for Risto, or his for her, their faithfulness to each other unsullied and unassailed. She often pitied the men who pursued her, their hopes doomed from the start.

  “Is there anything more, ma’am?” her maid asked her.

  She shook her head. “After y
ou’ve let my husband in you may go.” It would be fun to make a grand entrance from the bedroom with her swansdown and satin trailing about her. Knowing Risto, he would probably throw himself back from his feet in one of those comedy falls in exaggerated appreciation or enact something equally crazy. There was always laughter with Risto. Laughter and love. Mostly love.

  The doorbell rang. The maid went from the bedroom to answer it, organdie apron strings drifting, her feet making no sound on the deep pile of the carpet. At highly charged moments, Minnie sometimes felt quite detached from her surroundings, able to marvel that she, an abandoned waif from a Leeds orphanage, should have come to such luxury and success along a previously unseen path. And she knew she was only on the first rungs of the ladder of fame. One day she would reach the very top.

  There was Risto’s voice! Her heart was beating wildly. A word or two from the maid and then the door of the suite closed. They were on their own. She swept through the bedroom doorway uttering a verbal fanfare.

  “Tra-la-la!” Then her voice failed her and trailed away to an agonised whimper at the sight of him standing there in army uniform, his expression serious. “Oh, dear God! What have you done?”

  “Minnie, honey. I didn’t know how to tell you. To let you know I was in training camp would have ruined the tour for you.”

  She had slumped back against the door jamb as if her legs were losing the strength to support her. “They’ve cut your hair,” she said dully as if that were all she could absorb for the moment.

  He tossed his hat on to a chair and somewhat self-consciously he ran a hand over the short crop. “That’s the style the Army favours.”

  “I hate it.” Her voice took on power and she straightened up, clenching her fists. “I hate that uniform! I hate you!”