‘You’re damn right I’m scared,’ she hissed. ‘We were everything to each other, Daisy and I. Everything. We’ve looked after each other since we were kids. We didn’t even have to talk to know what the other was thinking, that’s how close we were, Lewis. I knew she didn’t want to marry Anthony. I knew she was scared she’d be hurt. But the war is a great lever for guilt. And once she’s committed to something, Daisy doesn’t do things by halves. She loved him and he made her happy and I wasn’t jealous, in case that’s what you were thinking. I was happy for her. So when it all fell apart—I could see, Lewis. I could see inside her, what it was doing, and she knew I could see, she knew that her pain was mine. That’s how close we were. That’s how painful it was. Too painful for us to stand. So, yes, you’re darn tooting I’m scared.’
In the war, one of the things that terrified me most was the way things unravelled. A guy starts out as walking wounded, and you think all that’s wrong with him is shock. He can’t hear you because of the blast. That blank look on his face, it’s because he’s disoriented. So you make him wait, because you’ve got other cases, cases where it’s obvious what’s wrong because things that should be inside are outside. And this guy, he’s not bleeding. Then he starts that shaking you can’t stop, and you realise there might be more. And then there is blood, he’s coughing it up. And then this guy, he’s dead. Just like that. And you could have done something, but you didn’t, and you didn’t because you were distracted, and then it was too late.
Unravelling. You see what I mean? Well, that’s what happened that day at Musso and Frank’s. I thought I was lining up a nice surprise. Then I realised it might not be such a good idea, but I couldn’t let it go. Then I realised that all the stuff Poppy told me that first night about her sister wasn’t in the past at all. And then I realised that regardless of what we’d agreed and regardless of what she’d told me, I still wanted more than she wanted to give, but before I could say that, she was standing up and the waiter was hovering in the background and looking at our steaks. Poppy was crying. I’d never see her cry real tears and I was pretty certain they were real tears, and instead of doing—I don’t know what I could have done, but I didn’t do it. Instead, I said the most inane thing I could think of. ‘There’s no need to be scared,’ I said. ‘The war’s over.’
‘It’s not the only thing that’s over,’ she said, pushing the table back so violently that it scraped along the wooden floor, making a shrieking noise that turned every head that wasn’t already looking our way.
I threw a bundle of bills down on the table and followed her out of the restaurant onto Hollywood Boulevard. As I grabbed her arm, she turned towards me, her face white, but whatever she was going to say was lost. There was a flash, that smell as the light went off, and there we were, caught on-camera, exposed and raw in the middle of a break-up for all the world to see.
Poppy
They took another picture as I wrenched my hand free. I forgot we came in his car. I thought about running. In London, that’s what I’d have done, but here in Hollywood people don’t walk on the pavements—sidewalks. So I sat in the car, determined not to speak, incapable of speaking at first. Lewis drove me home, silent, his knuckles tight on the wheel. I thought he was angry. I was too caught up in what I was feeling to see anything else.
By the time he pulled into my driveway, I had myself under a little bit of control. Lewis being Lewis, I knew he couldn’t let it go without an explanation, and so I was steeling myself to give him one as I led the way out to the pool.
‘I don’t understand why it has to be over,’ he said.
‘You know perfectly well why. You’re asking something from me that I’m simply not prepared to give,’ I said to him. Even though I’d actually already given it, had already fallen for him. But I thought as long as he didn’t know, I could go back, you see, to where I’d been before. I thought I’d learned a tough lesson from Daisy. I didn’t realise then, in the heat of all that emotion, that I hadn’t learned anything at all. I still thought I could go back. I clung to that thought as though it was a life raft.
‘We can forget this. We can carry on as we were.’
I did notice a hint of desperation in his voice then, and that surprised me. Then I realised he was thinking about his movies and his Broadway show. Which was more than I’d been thinking of. ‘I never break a contract,’ I said, ‘and I won’t start now. This was always a business arrangement. Just because you and I no longer want to play hootchy-kootchy…’
‘You don’t want to.’
‘…doesn’t mean I’ll be anything other than professional,’ I continued, cutting him off. I was playing the lady of the manor, stopping short of looking down my nose. Pathetic, but it was all I could come up with. I had to get rid of him. ‘I expect you’ll find a way for us to work together that doesn’t entail too much contact.’ Even as I said it I felt sick. I couldn’t begin to imagine how I’d cope, seeing him without wanting, longing.… No, I wasn’t going down that road, especially not with him standing there looking as if he might actually be hurt and he might actually care. Lewis didn’t do caring. ‘At least we’re spared making some story up for the press,’ I said, and I managed to keep my lady-of-the-manor voice. ‘It will be all over the papers tomorrow.’
‘So that’s it,’ he said.
There was hurt in his eyes. Pride, I told myself. ‘That’s it,’ I said.
‘You’re not even prepared to—to negotiate?’
‘On what?’ I sounded bitter now, but you see, I was only just beginning to realise what I was wilfully destroying. I was so tempted just to back down, but if I did—no. Every day what I felt would get stronger and stronger. What I felt now was nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what I could feel if I let myself, and there was absolutely no way that I was going to let myself, because how can you possibly love a man who refuses to love you back? So it’s best to strangle what you’re feeling at birth. Of course, I didn’t realise you couldn’t do that.
‘Negotiate on what?’ I demanded again, because he hadn’t said a thing. ‘What is there to negotiate, Lewis?’ I glared at him, God help me, hoping that maybe there was something after all. If he’d just give me a sign that he cared a little bit for me, and then I realised what I was thinking, and I got so mad at myself, and still he didn’t say a thing, only he kept looking at me, so hurt, though why I had no idea, and that made me even more angry. ‘Nothing,’ I said to him. ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t even know why you think there could be. We’re the same, you and I. We’re both too damn scared to let anyone in, and we’d rather be lonely than hurt, and that’s what they call the bottom line. The thing is, Lewis, I know why I’m the way I am. I wonder, though, what’s your excuse?’
Chapter Six
Lewis
Screwed-up. Poppy was screwed-up. I was screwed-up. We were both screwed-up. I was so mad, that was all I could think about for the rest of the day. I wished I drank strong liquor. Instead, I went into my office and locked the door and stayed there until everyone else had left the lot. Boy, was I mad. Too mad to even begin to untangle the mess of who had said what and what it all meant. It was all wrapped up in a great big solid knot of accusations and half-truths and downright lies.
My instincts were to go to the contracts, because work was what mattered, wasn’t it? Forget what can’t be fixed, just work with what you have. When something was broken—but when something was broken, it was usually because I’d broken it. Never, not since the war, had I let anyone or anything get in the way of my determination to get to the top, to do things my way. And never, ever had I allowed myself to feel as though the world was tilting, tipping, going into a black hole and taking me with it.
See, there’s a reason I never think of the war—and that’s the reason. But suddenly I couldn’t help thinking, and I truly wished I drank then. I don’t mean recreationally. I mean like Fitzgerald does. Didn’t I tell you I understood him? It was Poppy’s fault. What’s your e
xcuse? I sat at my big mahogany desk looking out blankly over my big carpeted office and blaming her for bringing it all back.
It was easy not to think of it here. It wasn’t like England. In England I’d bet there was no avoiding it. Too many men fought. It’s too small a place. Here it’s easy to forget. So few of us, such a big country for us to get lost in. It was Europe’s war, not ours. We came in at the end and won it for them, and now we were happy to let them get on with it.
But I was there, too. Poppy doesn’t know that. Hardly anyone does. I pretend I don’t know it myself. Mostly, I believe it. It all came back that night as I sat in my office. Not in dreams, the way it did for years after, but like a moving picture, with sound. Like one of the pictures I’m trying to make. All the men I saw. All the suffering. The blood and the guts. I’d been prep boy, thinking he was going to Europe to get worldly-wise, thinking he was playing a part in history. I never went back to Harvard. I’d cut that part out of my history. Like an abscess, like poison, something alien, foreign, thinking all those years that was what made me whole.
That night I realised I’d cut a piece of myself out, and I set about putting it back, because that night I realised what was right there under my nose, and had been from the moment I saw her in Bunty’s. Poppy was under my skin, and I wanted to keep her there.
Poppy
He left town. I didn’t see him for nearly a week. I got through the days because that’s what I’d always done. I thought, the more days I get through, the less painful it will become. Wrong, Poppy. The more days I got through, the more I realised what I had lost. If only I hadn’t let it happen—but it was too late. I’d fallen in love with Lewis Cartsdyke, and it was the kind of love you just know isn’t going to go away. I don’t know how I knew that, since I’d never been in love before, but I did.
I never read the press so I don’t know what they said, except that it was over, and I knew that because my agent called. After he’d called Lewis, mind you, who had reassured him that the deal was still on.
I’m not the crying type. I worked at my singing. I took classes. I spent a lot of time working on very complicated recipes in my kitchen, which I gave to my maid to take home. It never occurred to me that I could do anything but endure. I’m used to enduring, and putting on a front—I’ve made a career of it. Playing a part was second nature to me. It wasn’t so hard to keep playing it and playing it. Except at night. So I didn’t sleep much.
* * *
I’d been trying my hand at baking bread. I liked the kneading. I’d just put the dough on the window ledge to prove for the second time when Lewis appeared at my kitchen door. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.
Ominous. I didn’t think my heart could sink any lower, but it did. I managed a smile. Sort of a smile. ‘You want to cancel,’ I said.
‘It’s not about work. Can I come in?’
‘I’ll come out. It’s too hot in here with the oven on.’
I sat on my wicker sofa. He sat opposite. Not beside me, the way he used to do. He looked tired. ‘You’ve been working too hard,’ I said inanely.
‘It’s not about work,’ he said again, and I thought, shut up, Poppy, but I didn’t. I offered him a drink. He said no. I asked him if he was hungry. No again. He didn’t just look tired, he looked worn-out. Older. That frightened me. Not work, which could only mean—what?
‘I was in France,’ he said.
I put down the glass of orange juice I’d been fiddling with. ‘Last week?’ I asked stupidly.
He shook his head. ‘The war. I was an ambulance driver.’
I didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask. It never occurred to me, because you didn’t in England, because everyone had been, and here in Hollywood I hadn’t met a single person who had. And in turn, no one ever asked me if I’d lost someone, because why should they? ‘You never said. Why didn’t you tell me?’
He shrugged, then he shook his head. ‘I thought I’d put it behind me. I thought…’ He paused. Swallowed. Rubbed his eyes. ‘I thought if it was going to mean something, then I had to forget it.’
Which made sense. Which was what I had done. Thought I’d done? ‘What’s changed?’ I asked, pulling myself back from that question.
‘You, I guess. No, not just you. Me. You’ve changed me. Poppy, I—look, I know this is probably too late but I—no, goddammit, it’s not too late. I won’t let it be too late. That’s why I’m here.’
He jumped to his feet and began to pace back and forwards the length of my little pool. He was frowning, a deep frown. And muttering to himself. And then he came back and sat down beside me. The closest he’d been to me since that day in the restaurant. I ached to touch him. I had no idea whether he wanted me to or not, so I just sat there, waiting.
And then he told me. About the war. His war. And the months afterwards. Terrible things. Horrible things. Not new, but told in a new way. I took his hand. His fingers gripped so tight. ‘But I made it,’ he said to me. ‘I was one of the lucky ones. That’s what I kept saying, over and over, that I was lucky. That I had to do something with that. And I thought I had. Okay, I haven’t invented a new medicine or played a hand in getting votes for women, but movies and plays, you have to get good things out of the war, too, don’t you? Not that the movies came out of the war, but…’
‘People need fun, don’t they?’ I said, thinking of all the revues that played in the West End at home, all the theatres that Daisy wouldn’t sing in.
‘Exactly. So that’s what I thought, see, that I hadn’t wasted it. That I’d helped get some good out of it, but then…’ He picked up a cushion, turned it over in his hand, put it back down. ‘Then you asked me, what’s your excuse.’
‘I’m sorry. God, Lewis, I am so sorry. I had no idea—’
‘No, you didn’t, because I made sure you didn’t.’ He tried to smile, but his mouth wavered. ‘I didn’t tell you, not just because I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to know. And then you asked me and I sat in my office all night thinking about it.’
‘Lewis. Oh, Lewis, I didn’t mean to upset you. If I had just—but I was so hurt, and…’
‘Yeah, I know that now, too.’ This time his smile was a bit more successful. His fingers curled round mine. ‘Took me awhile to get there, but I did in the end, and I can’t tell you how relieved I was.’
‘Relieved? That I was hurt?’
‘Not that you were hurt, but that you cared. Because I do, too, Poppy. That’s what I came here to tell you. I’m in love with you.’
My mind was still trying to take in all the other things he’d told me. I was running to catch up. I didn’t notice what he’d said at first. And then my brain just stopped.
Lewis
I said it, and she blanked me. Then I realised she was most likely shocked. ‘Poppy, I’m in love with you.’ She stared. I hadn’t meant to blurt it out. No wonder she stared. I guess it had been in my head for so many days now, I was used to it. I guess it was a shock. Then I started to worry that it was a bad shock. ‘What I’ve been trying to explain—’
‘You’re in love with me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But you said—you don’t believe in that, Lewis.’
‘Didn’t. Wouldn’t. What I’ve been trying to say is…’ I stopped again. What the hell was I trying to say? I was so tempted just to kiss her, but we’d done that, and she’d just think I wanted her, which I did, but I didn’t just want that. ‘What’s kept me going all these years since the war is thinking that I was making something positive out of it. What I didn’t know until you forced my eyes open, until I thought I might lose you, is that I was letting it make a coward of me. Scared. I was damned scared, every bit as scared as you, though I couldn’t have said exactly why, the way you can. I couldn’t have given you one single reason. I still can’t, but I can try.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I want to.’ And I did, but it was like herding cats, trying to make sense of all
those feelings. ‘It was the dying for no reason. It was the way death is so unfair. You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or you don’t shoot fast enough. Or the ambulance you’re in hits a pothole and your wound opens and the driver is too worried about getting the stupid wreck of a thing to the hospital so he can go back for more to check on what’s happening. I’d open those doors and sometimes they’d all be dead. It was the knowing it wasn’t my fault but not believing it, thinking I could have done something, anything. It was all so random, nothing to do with right and wrong. That was the thing more than anything. The good guys suffered just as much as the bad. In the end, I wasn’t so sure there even were bad guys.’
‘Not like in the movies,’ she said.
‘No, but that’s not why I make them, before you ask,’ I said, though to be honest, I hadn’t thought about that before, and I wondered if it was true.
‘I know that. You’re not that uncomplicated.’ She kissed my hand then, a strange, comforting kind of kiss like she’d never given me before. Like I wouldn’t have wanted before. It worked. ‘Have I made any sense at all?’
‘For someone who’s only just started to try, a lot,’ she said. ‘I’ve had five years of trying and I’m only just—I think it might take awhile, Lewis.’
‘I think it might. What I’m wondering is—what I was wanting to ask you was…’ I swore under my breath. I hadn’t thought this part through. I hadn’t planned on doing any more than getting this far. I certainly hadn’t planned on baring my soul, but I knew I had to try. ‘I don’t want the war to have made a coward of me. I am scared, Poppy. I’m still scared. What if it turns out that all those years of cutting myself off mean I can’t do any different?’
‘I could say the same.’
‘You could.’ I looked at her then, trying not to hope, not yet, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Does that mean you’ll try?’
‘Does that mean you will?’
Such a typically Poppy answer that it made me laugh. ‘What on earth do you think I’ve been trying to say to you? I want to try. I want to try real hard. We’re survivors, you and I. If anyone can make it, we can. So I’m willing to take a chance, and I’m asking you to take one, too.’
The Awakening of Poppy Edwards Page 5
