Movie Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  John thought for a bit.

  “Stop worrying. I’m sorry for the Bee Bee Film Company and Jane’s-Mr. Browne, but it was their idea and not ours that they should sign Jane on; if she’s no good, that’s their funeral. What we’ve got to worry about is Jane. I hoped this film was going to give her a chance to shine, but if it’s going to mean that after all the excitement she’s to be thrown off, she’s got to see the situation straight. She must understand that to us she’s our Jane and we don’t care a bit if she never acts the wretched Mary. Thank goodness tomorrow’s Sunday. I shall take her out and have a good talk with her.”

  Jane was surprised and pleased but a little suspicious when John said he was taking her for a drive. Everybody liked going for Sunday drives, and it was a bit queer that only she was going. It was particularly queer that the others did make a fuss. Jane did not know that John had seen Rachel and then Tim and asked them not to argue. Tim was quite willing. Some time ago Mr. Antonio had said, “There will come that Sunday when you don’t go with your papa, then you’ll come to us and eat ravioli,” and Mrs. Antoniou had nodded and smiled. “You play the hymns while I cook the food.” Tim had no idea what ravioli was, but he was sure he would like it. And this was the Sunday for it.

  Rachel was not so easy to handle. Aside from her three dancing lessonsa week, which she enjoyed, she was leading a routine schoolroom life, while Jane went lioning off day to the studio. If on top of that Jane was to have treats on Sunday, it really was too much.

  “But, Dad, why only Jane?”

  John did not like tale-telling, but he thought he could trust Rachel. “I think she’s bitten off more than she can chew at the studio, and I want to find out all about it.”

  “You mean, she mightn’t play Mary after all?”

  “Your mother thinks that could happen. “

  Rachel had an awful wrestle with her voice not to let it sound pleased. Inside, she could not help being pleased. Jane had been cocky and difficult, and in Rachel’s opinion, a snub like that was just what she needed.

  “Goodness!”

  John held her by the shoulders. “And if that happens, you’ve got to be nice. You and Tim were the lucky ones when talents were handed out. If Jane loses this part, she’s going to take hard.”

  “I’ll be as nice as I can, but she’s not been a bit nice to me since she had that contract.”

  John gave her a kiss. “I dare say you’ve put up with a lot, but we may find old Jane has been up against it ever since she went to the studio. Anyway, you say nothing about my taking her for this drive, and next week you and I will have a jaunt.”

  “Just us?” “

  “Just us. We’ll go out to lunch.”

  Sunday was a lovely day, with the sunshine at its most golden. John and Jane drove to Santa Barbara. It was lovely, built like a town in Spain, with white houses in beautiful gardens and bougainvillea tumbling over white walls. They ate gorgeous Mexican food called tortillas. When they were pleasantly full and contented, John drove the car out of Santa Barbara and parked it by the ocean. Then he suggested that they lie on the sand and that Jane tell him all about The Secret Garden.

  So at last Jane found herself able to pour out her misery.

  On the whole, she was quite fair, and she did tell the whole story: what she had hoped and how things had turned out and how in spite of everything, she still wanted to be Mary and would mind most dreadfully if the part were taken away from her.

  John lay on his back and smoked his pipe all the time she was talking. When she had quite finished, he sat up.

  “Then you haven’t seen David Doe since the shooting began?”

  “No. I don’t meet him while we’re doing interiors.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Sort of. Why?”

  “Because we’re going off to call on him. I expect he’s acted lots of times with people he didn’t like, and he’s probably got a way of dealing with the situation. Anyway, let’s ask; I feel I shall like David.”

  Jane got up, her face happy or the first time for weeks.

  “Could we! Could we really go and see him? Oh, Dad, what a marvelous idea! I believe he knows how to tame anything. I believe he’d even know how to tame that awful Maurice.”

  It was not difficult to find David’s home. The neighborhood children were playing around, and of course, they could point out where David lived. Mrs. Doe answered the door. She was more than thin, she was gaunt. Looking at her, you could tell that life had not been easy for the Does. She looked as if she had tried so hard, and worked such long hours, that she was like a spring wound so tight that it could not unwind. Mrs. Doe was evidently used to visitors. She took the arrival of John and Jane as a matter of course and asked them out to the porch.

  On the porch Mr. Doe was reading the paper, and Gardner, the older boy a book. David was repairing a rabbit hutch. Mrs. Doe had evidently been mending, because her mending basket, piled high with Mr. Doe’s and the boy’s clothes, was beside a rocking chair. John apologized to Mr. Doe for disturbing him on a Sunday afternoon, but Mr. Doe said he was not disturbing him at all. He threw down his paper. At once a little breeze caught it and blew the sheets across the backyard. Jane and the two boys rushed after the sheets to pick them up. While Jane was picking the paper up, John got a chance to tell the Does why he and Jane had come. It was easier when Jane was no listening because he could say bluntly that he believed she was no earthly good but that she still wanted to play the part and thought she could do it if only she could get over not liking Maurice Tuesday. Because Jane was not there, Mr. Doe, in his gentle, drawling voice, told John that he knew things were going badly, that they had been warned the picture might not be made after all.

  Jane came back to the porch, her arms full of papers, and said, “We’re not allowed to criticize things in America because we’re visitors, but I must say I do wonder why Americans need so much Sunday paper. In our house Aunt Cora takes two, and Bella, her cook, takes another, and by Sunday evening everything’s simply covered with paper.”

  Mrs. Doe looked at Jane with a soft expression on her queer, hard face. She knew from Jane’s voice that what she wanted to say was “It’s an idiotic waste printing all that.” Mrs. Doe had all her life been a person who had wanted to say that, certain ways of doing things were idiotic. She had been too busy since she married Mr. Doe to say anything much, but she still felt that way. She liked the look of Jane and even the rather truculent Jane-ish way in which she spoke. She took the papers from her, folded them, and laid them down. She said to Mr. Doe, “Pa, Jane’ll come in the kitchen and help me fix something to eat. You and the boys stay right where you are.”

  Mrs. Doe had a lovely kitchen, full of little canisters painted bright scarlet. While she was frosting a cake, fixing milk shakes, and making coffee, she talked. At first Jane thought she was making just ordinary conversation. She told Jane about herself. How she had always planned to do things. Always wanted to start something and go places, but she never had. Then her elder boy, Gardner, turned out the spitting image of her. He wanted to do things and go places, and that was hard for he needed expensive books and instruments. Then David got into the movies, which they had a little more money and someone nearby had the instruments and books Gardner needed, and now he was all set to go to college when the time came. She turned to Jane to be sure she listening, and that was when Jane felt that there was a purpose behind this story. “Has David told you about his chipmunk?” Mrs. Doe asked.

  “The one he was playing his pipe to when the men from the Bee Bee film unit first found him?”

  Mrs. Doe nodded. Nippie, David called him. And Nippie- though Jane mustn’t tell David she had said so- was just about the meanest chipmunk in the world. He always good with David, but when David wasn’t there, he stole things, upset things and just to be annoying. Mrs. Doe could see he hated her and wanted to anger her. Of course, because he was David’s pet, she never touched him, never complained about him.
And at last she found out how to fix him.

  Jane sprawled across the kitchen table. David’s chipmunk and Maurice were by then the same person.

  “How did you?”

  The coffee was boiling. Mrs. Doe poured it into a coffeepot. She smiledas she remembered Nippie. She said there was nothing that kind of no-good, stuck-up chipmunk hated more than not being noticed.It had occurred to her one day that if she acted as if he weren’t there, maybe he would find it wasn’t such fun trying to upset her. It worked wonderfully, she said.Nippie couldn’t understand at first. There he was, like a child trying to attract attention, but no notice was taken of him. When he was bigger and David took him out to the woods, he was a different chipmunk. “Why right to the day he died,” Mrs. Doe went on, “which was just before David came to Hollywood, he never came near the house without looking in at me. Real neighborly, he was.”

  Jane sprawled even farther across the table. Mrs. Doe moved about so fast that she wanted, if necessary, to be able to catch hold of her and hold her attention.

  “Do you know Maurice Tuesday?”

  Mrs. Doe was at the refrigerator, pouring cream into a jug. “David never says much, but he’s spoken of him.”

  Jane knew from Mrs. Doe’s voice that whatever David had said was not very complimentary, and she was glad. She was certain nobody as nice as David could like Maurice; still, it was satisfying to be sure.

  “But David’s chipmunk couldn’t speak,” Jane pointed out. “You had only to watch him. I have to listen to that awful Maurice, saying things just so that I’ll do Mary all wrong.”

  “What’s words? Sounds as though he’s acting mighty like David’s chipmunk.”

  Jane began to have an idea. Her eyes shone. “What’s a chipmunk like?”

  “Like a little squirrel.”

  Jane’s eyes shone more than ever.

  “Maurice is a chipmunk. Just a mean, no-good, stuck-up chipmunk. I’ll watch him just the way you watched Nippie, hut chipmunks can’t talk, so if he says things, I just shan’t hear him. I’ll make a face as though I were thinking of other things. He’ll be so cross.”

  “Madder than a hornet.” Mrs. Doe picked up the tray.

  “Come on.”

  Jane was just following her when she thought of something. “How did you look at the chipmunk? Like this?” She put on a scornful, proud expression.

  “No. I smiled. Just kept on smiling. Acting as if nobody could feel happier.”

  “I can’t do that when I’m with Maurice. Nobody could.”

  Mrs. Doe ledthe way back to the porch. “I was glad I had. If you stop and think, it was that chipmunk that took us out here, and that same chipmunk willsee Gardner through college.”

  Driving home, so full of strawberry shortcake and strawberry milk shakes that she could hardly bend, Jane told John allabout David’s chipmunk and how Maurice was a chipmunk.

  “I’m beginning to see him. I’ve never seen a chipmunk, but this chipmunk has fair hair and blue eyes. He skips about, and I don’t pay any attention. I just smile and look pleased, and when he speaks, it’s just as if he never had, for chipmunks can’t.”

  John had been talking to David and Mr. Doe while Jane was in the kitchen, and he’d heard that Jane’s refusal to do anything but scowlat Maurice was part of the trouble.

  “I’m glad you’ll smile. It’s nothing to do with me; I don’t care if you are Mary or not. But if you want to be, you’ve got to look as though you

  Jane consideredthat. “So I will. Chipmunks are sort of squirrels. Nobody could help liking a squirrel. I believe Mrs. Doe almost couldn’t help liking Nippie. Anyway, she glad now about him because David’s brother, Gardner, is going through college, and in a way Nippie helped, being there when the Bee Bee film unit came.”

  “And you’re going to be glad of Maurice, because you’ll be Mary because of him?”

  Jane stuck her chin in the air. “I’m never going to be glad of Maurice, but I’m going to be glad I tamed him. Because I shall; you’ll see.”

  20

  The Crisis

  John did not tell Bee exactly what Mrs. Doe had told Jane, partly because Maurice was Jane’s problem, and if she wanted Bee to know how she was handling it, she herself would tell her. Mostly, though, John kept quiet about it because if Jane’s plan for taming Maurice was a failure-and John was very much afraid it would be-it was going to be difficult for Bee if people complained that Jane was behaving queerly and Bee knew the reason for the queerness. She could hardly say, “It’s because Jane thinks Maurice is a fair-furred, blue-eyed, mean, no-good, stuck-up chipmunk,” but her face might show that she knew the reason, and that would be awkward. So John just said that Jane had a new way of tackling the problem, and Bee, who felt more embarrassed every day because of the whisperings at the studio, said she was thankful to hear it, and she did hope it would settle things quickly one way or the other.

  Jane’s-Mr. Browne had spent an awful Sunday. Till late on Saturday night he had sat hunched up in a velvet armchair in the studio movie theater, watching the film that had been made so far run through. During the first part he kept muttering, “It’s good. It’s right.” From then onward he ran his fingers through his hair till it stood on end, and as sequence followed sequence, he groaned, first to himself but finally out loud.

  On Sunday he spoke to nobody. He went for a long drive up into the mountains with just Hyde Park for company thought and. thought and could not make up his mind. He came home just as the sun was setting. He sat on his and looked at the telephone. Should he call up Bettelheimer? Should he say, “Let’s call the picture off?” Should he? He looked questioningly at Hyde Park.

  “What’ll I do? Give it a few more days? Give your tail a wag if the answer’s yes.” Hyde Park got up. He went to his bowl and had a long drink of water. Jane’s-Mr. Browne smiled for the first time that day. Then, he, too, got up. “Have a drink? Maybe you’re right at that.” He got a Coca-Cola, brought it back to his chair, and sat down. As he sat down, Hyde Park thumped his tail on the floor three times.

  At first nobody at the Bee Bee studios believed in what seemed. There was no one to give a hint Improved times. Jane was no better in school. Miss Barnabas was patient and. long-suffering, but there was beginning to be a weary note in her voice when she said the name Jane Winter. Miss Steiman was conscientious and did her duty by Jane’s inflections, but she told everybody it would be a weight off her mind the moment she heard that shooting had been stopped on The Secret Garden.

  The only people who did notice that Jane seemed different were the woman from Mrs. Gates’s wardrobe department and the hairdresser. On the Monday following her visit at the Does’ Jane was full of her thoughts. Her eyes shone as she lether mmd wrap Maurice in fair fur and give him a tail. She was so busy doing this that she never noticed she was being dressed in her frilled pants and petticoat, nor was she conscious of the frock being put over her head. She didn’t mind the hairdresser and her curling irons. When Mr. Phelps came for her, the hairdresser looked at the dresser as much as to say, “What’s cooking?”

  The scene was the one where Mrs. Medlock brings the bad doctor cousin in to Colin and they find him and Mary laughing together, having just found out that they must be cousins. This was the moment when Jane had to be gay and show that she really liked Maurice.

  Jane’s-Mr. Browne told Jane exactly what he wanted. He had not the faintest hope of getting what he wanted in spite of Hyde Park’s faith in her, but there was nothing about the way he spoke to show what his inner feelings were.

  The scene started with Colin in bed and Mary sitting by his bed looking at him in a very interested way. Maurice had to say, “Why do you look at me like that? What are you thinking about?”

  In the picture Mary was supposed to be thinking how odd he was. Just like a boy raja she had once met in India. What Jane was thinking was “How queer. I’m not pretending anymore. He is a fair-furred, stuck-up chipmunk.”

  Movies are made with
a long shot, a two-shot, and a close-up of each person, each taken separately with rearranging of lights, cameras, sound, and so on. After the first shot Maurice said, “Take that silly look off your silly face. They’ve stopped shooting, and anyway, nobody cares how you look. They ‘re going to give up this picture. You’re no good.”

  “Nibble, nibble at his nut ... if it’s nuts chipmunks eat,” thought Jane. “I don’t hear anything ... nothing at all. Aren’t chipmunks interesting!”

  When the photographers took the next shot, a sort of stunned breathlessness came over everybody. Mr. Browne looked at Mr. Phelps. Mr. Phelps looked at Mr. Browne’s secretary. The camera crew made faces at one another. The lighting men nearly dropped off the catwalks. The ground electricians made silent, whistling sounds, and all the people standing about nudged each other. Two shots had been taken and neither needed taking again. In both Jane’s expression had been exactly right.

  Jane’s-Mr. Browne shook his head. His guess was that it was a bit of luck and that trouble would start again when had to speak. But it didn’t. Maurice could not think what happened. He whispered every annoying thing he could think of, but it had no effect on Jane. Whether they were shooting or not, she went on staring at him with an amused, interested face and said nothing at all.

  Jane’s lines, carefully rehearsed by Miss Steiman, were “I am thinking two things. The first one is that you’re like a raja ... they speak the way you do. The other is how different you are from Dickon.”

  Jane enjoyed herself. She had never seen a raja, so it easy to say it and mean a chipmunk, which she had seen either. As for his being different from Dickon, certainly was true! Dickon, who was David. Jane’s eyes shone, and her lines came out not just as Miss Steiman coached her to say them, but exactly right.

  When the day’s work was over and Jane and Bee had left the studio, someone called out, “A miracle. A doggone miracle!”

  Jane’s-Mr. Browne, who looked as though he had just got over having bad influenza, said to his secretary, “Make not for me. Order a can of liver for Hyde Park. That dog’s sure got sense.”