Brilliance (38 page)

A
lthough Daniel’s major interest continued to be movie making as it always would be, he kept a lookout for the right location for a larger animated picture house and found the site after three years. His success with his original venture had attracted investors and the new edifice was to be built grandly on the site of an old factory in the heart of London. Other entrepreneurs were beginning to follow his example and all over the country various buildings were being adapted as permanent picture houses, although few were purpose-built as his would be and most had other uses when movies were not being shown.

There were almost always minor hold-ups at most performances. Frequently a film would break, often more than once on a reel, even on the best of projectors such as those that Daniel and others of his standard used. It was generally accepted as a normal happening and it was fortunate that most audiences were remarkably good-tempered about it. It was only if the delay in mending the film extended beyond a few minutes that those in the cheaper seats began to stamp their feet and whistle their impatience until eventually everybody else joined in too.

Lisette was present at one exceptionally long delay that was not caused by a breaking film. She was with Daniel, who was checking up that the individual musical scores he was sending out to accompany his epic movies were being played as under contract. These days there was always a pianist to underline with music all that was happening on the screen and it was a skilful task, but on this occasion the woman pianist had been taken ill at the last minute and the relief pianist could not be contacted.

As the audience began to show noisy impatience while they waited in vain for the programme to start, Lisette did not hesitate, but went swiftly to take the pianist’s empty chair. A satisfied sigh swept over the auditorium. She began to play and the screen leapt into life. It was just as if she were playing again for audiences at the magic lantern shows, except that this time she had to keep glancing up at the screen, ensuring that she was keeping pace with the action and that the music was appropriate. Thunderous music for drama, romantic tunes for love, and gentle pieces that brought women in the audience to tears when tragedy struck. Yet the performance was not trouble free, being interrupted twice by breaks in one of the motion pictures, but she played on even though the stamping, whistling and shouting drowned her music. So she started to sing a popular song of the day, thumping away on the piano keys. Immediately the riotous noise faded away as everybody listened for a few moments in surprise and then joined in. After a second song the whole audience applauded her and the return of the screen action at the same time.

‘It was a good idea of yours to grab attention by singing,’ Daniel said reflectively, as they drove home after the performance. ‘It might suit the action in some scenes to have a tenor or a soprano standing at the side of the screen and singing an accompanying song.’

‘Yes, that could be interesting. I started to sing because I began to be afraid that the vibration caused by the stamping would bring down plaster from the ceiling!’

‘It was a sensible move, because the audience was getting irate and you immediately soothed them.’ He grinned. ‘Yet even without your lovely voice nobody would have walked out. Any motion picture audience would stamp all night rather than not know how the film ended.’

She gave him an amused glance. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s as if the screen casts is brilliance like a magic spell over them.’

‘If any of those in the auditorium had guessed your identity you would have been autographing those picture postcards of yourself for them throughout the breakdown.’

He was particularly pleased that recently her photograph had begun taking its place among the picture postcards that were eagerly collected of the lovely Gaiety Girls, their title taken from the theatre where they appeared in musical shows of the highest standards. Lisette was among several stage and screen actresses being included for their beauty, and Daniel saw it as more welcome publicity.

It was while plans for his new building were still being discussed with the architect that Lisette began to feel unwell, suffering inexplicable attacks of dizziness and nausea. She said nothing to Daniel, for he was presently so busy that he was in and out of the house at all hours and she did not want him to be distracted from his project by concern about her. Then gradually it occurred to her that she could be pregnant, for there were other signs that supported this possibility. She was thirty-seven and nature was relenting at last and giving her one more chance to bear a child.

She felt almost delirious with happiness, but decided not to say anything to Daniel, who in any case was away again, until a doctor had confirmed her pregnancy. This time she was not plagued by her old fears of the past that she could never love another baby as she had loved Marie-Louise. That nightmare was completely gone and she had total peace of mind. She seemed to be going around with a permanent smile on her face, her heart ready to welcome and love that baby within her. She began looking at infant clothes in shop windows and studying perambulators in the stores.

Then, not long before Daniel was due to arrive home again, she went to see Dr Sarah Pomfret, a young, newly qualified woman doctor, whom Lisette had met socially and liked very much. Dr Pomfret had recently set up her own practice in the neighbourhood, but was failing to get male patients, some men even leaving the waiting room when finding out that it was not a man they were to see. Lisette believed the reason was that men saw female doctors as being on a par with the suffragettes in failing to be traditionally subservient to the male sex.

Dr Pomfret gave Lisette a thorough examination before returning to her desk where she wrote up her notes while her patient dressed herself again. As Lisette resumed her seat in front of the desk, her face radiant with expectation, she was surprised that Dr Pomfret did not return her smile. Instead the woman shook her head.

‘You are in the best of health, Mrs Shaw. However, I’m very sorry to have to disappoint you, but you are not pregnant.’

Lisette stared at her in disbelief. ‘But all the signs—?’

‘Although you are only in your thirties it is not unusual for the change of life to begin at your age.’

Lisette left the surgery in a daze of total disappointment and almost in disbelief that fate should have delivered yet another blow to hopes she had cherished. It seemed to her that she had plunged from the pinnacle of happiness into an abyss of despair and as the days went by the began to be more and more depressed. Such dark moods overwhelmed her that she felt totally lost and afraid.

Daniel was sympathetic when she told him of her disappointment on his return home and he was deeply concerned to find her so prone to tears and showing no interest in anything. He waited a while before broaching the subject of her next role, hoping to stimulate her interest, but she shook her head.

‘I’m not ready to think about acting again yet!’ she said, bursting into tears.

He went at once to put his arm around her. ‘You don’t have to do anything that you’re not ready to do.’

He was extremely worried about her. The pills that Dr Pomfret had prescribed to lift her depression were having no effect and there was such a sad look in her eyes. He believed that Lisette was mourning all over again the babies she had lost through adoption and that ill-fated miscarriage, but she showed no desire to confide in him as in the past.

Then, quite unexpectedly one day at breakfast when he was glancing through his mail, Lisette made an announcement. ‘I have to get away, Daniel. I’m going home to Lyon. I need to be there as never before.’

Startled by the coldly determined note in her voice, he looked across the table at her with a concerned frown.

‘I have thought that a change of air and surroundings would be good for you,’ he said, ‘but you’ve shown no interest whenever I’ve broached the subject. Now that you feel ready for change I’ll come with you. Allow me a day or two to make some arrangements.’

She looked at him almost as if she did not know him. ‘No, Daniel. You are far too busy. You have to be here to see that all is well with the building of the motion picture house and you’re just starting that new epic. You can always join me later when it is easier to get away.’

He allowed himself to be persuaded, for it could not have been a more difficult time for him to be absent from all he had in hand. ‘Yes, it will be best if I join you at the first possible moment. In the meantime three or four weeks in Lyon should help you to feel well again.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I may stay longer. All I know at the present time is that I need to go back to my roots.’

When the day came of sending luggage ahead of her departure, Daniel stared in dismay when he saw three large trunks and the other baggage that had been put in the hall ready for transport.

‘You look as if you’re moving out,’ he said half-jokingly, but with a ring of concern behind his words.

‘I told you that I don’t know yet how long I’ll be staying,’ she said vaguely.

He thought to himself that he would soon fetch her if she were too long away.

With the April sun streaming down through the opaque glass of Victoria Station he embraced her tightly, giving her a lover’s kiss. Yet she did not respond, as if her thoughts were already centred on her beloved house in Lyon. Neither did she wave to him as the train left the station, although he stayed where he was until she was gone. It was as if she had put him out of her life as soon as he was out of her sight and he was deeply anxious about her as he returned to where he had parked his motorcar.

The morning after Lisette arrived in Lyon she went into the garden with a box of seedlings from her greenhouse in London, having long thought that she would like some flowering plants from her English home to be planted in her French garden. She had also brought some lupin seeds, which she had collected the previous autumn, having always liked lupins for their abundant colour in shades of pink to deepest blues and purples, although her English gardener had resented their presence. She believed it was because they grew mostly in the gardens of humble country cottages in England and that gave them a lowly status in the eyes of expert gardeners interested in more exotic blooms.

As a child here at Bellecour she had had a little patch of the garden for her own and under her grandmother’s guidance she had grown pansies and other small flowers as if it were a doll’s garden for her toys. After fetching a trowel and a watering can as well as a small mat to kneel on she chose a sunny spot for the seedlings and afterwards the lupin seeds were duly planted in anticipation of a fine show the following year. Without acknowledging it to herself, she was convinced she would still be in Lyon to see the first shoots of the lupins and all else she had brought come into flower.

With her task done she noticed a cluster of little weeds that had come up since the Lyonnaise gardener’s last visit. She promptly cleared them out before getting up from her knees and inspecting the other flowerbeds to check that there were no more.

She was far from ignorant about gardening in general, always having had discussions with her London gardener as she did with his counterpart here in France, but with her writing and her acting she had never had time to do any gardening herself. But now circumstances were different.

When the gardener made his next visit he was far from pleased to hear that lupins had invaded his domain, especially in places he had intended for something else.

‘If they take well in this soil lupins can spread everywhere, madame,’ he complained bitterly. ‘It will be the devil’s own task to keep them down.’

‘Well, we can judge what is best to be done when they flower next year,’ she said calmly.

After that she went daily into the garden to carry out some small task or another. When April and May gave way to June she went daily to deadhead the overblown roses from the bushes that had added their beauty to the garden. With a watering can she made sure in the evenings that the beds were well dampened after a hot dry day and she took delight in forestalling the gardener by keeping the beds free of weeds. He grumbled to the household staff that she was only leaving him the lawn to mow.

Her gardening had proved to be therapeutic in every way, for she always forgot everything as she dug and planted and watered and trimmed. A kind of euphoria had settled upon her as if her mind had shut out all else she had ever known. After a while she began visiting and entertaining, but only close friends of long standing. Madame Lumière was relieved to see that Lisette was losing the dreadful haunted look that she had had for several weeks after her arrival in Lyon.

Yet not once did Lisette settle to writing a new plot or script and the only time she sat at her bureau was once a week to write what she thought of as a duty letter to Daniel. He had long since stopped asking her when she would be returning home, for she never gave him an answer, except to say that it would be useless for him to come intending to fetch her, because she was not nearly ready to leave yet.

Her great concern at the present time was for France and she read the newspapers avidly. Talk of war was growing all the time. The Kaiser had reached the status of a giant ogre threatening Europe, for it was no secret that his army had grown to be thousands strong. In Lyon as elsewhere in France and other parts of Europe reserves were being called up and Lisette would pause in the street to watch them march by. How young most of them were!

Yet still she felt no desire to return to England. It was as if having gone back to her roots they had struck again so deeply that this time it was impossible for her to wrench herself away. She knew that Daniel would have been disappointed that she had not returned to England for the grand opening of his motion picture house, but she was sure all had gone well. It was then that she admitted to herself that her old home had become a refuge that she never wanted to leave. Another month slipped by and Daniel’s letters no longer came.