Legacy of Secrets (36 page)

Ned nodded miserably. He went back to his dressing room and sat hunched in front of the mirror, thinking of the fool he was about to make of himself in front of New York’s most glittering celebrities and Broadway’s harshest critics. He was finished, he just knew it.

The call boy yelled “five minutes” and he went to stand
in the wings. The very first lines were his and for the life of him he couldn’t remember them. He smoothed back his pomaded blond hair and straightened his jacket. The curtain rose to a polite ripple of applause and somehow he managed to stride out onto the stage. He stared into the glaring footlights, sweating with their heat and his own panic, his mind a total blank. From somewhere he heard his own voice saying, “Well, where is everybody? I thought we were supposed to meet at three …” and suddenly he didn’t have to try to remember his lines, they were just there. All the exits and entrances, the directions up stage and down, were second nature.

There was a burst of enthusiastic applause as the star, Marion Javits, appeared, and then another for Maxwell Dunlap and suddenly everything was going with the kind of swing that meant a good troupe of actors was working well together.

The audience laughed at Ned’s lines when they should have and he stared gratefully into the auditorium, waiting for the laughter to die down before continuing. Then the first act was over and the applause came again. Solid, reassuring applause.

The stars disappeared to their dressing rooms and so did he. Harry was waiting for him. “It’s going good, old son,” he said enthusiastically. “They’re laughing as though they’ve been cued for it. And they’re sitting up and taking notice of you, Ned.”

He played the second act like a man in a dream and when the final curtain came down the applause echoed around the theater. Marion Javits shrugged elegantly. “Those are the free tickets you can hear. The balcony’s where the truth is.
And
tomorrow night, when the paying customers come.”

She took her bows alone and so did Maxwell. Then they took several together. Then they beckoned Ned onstage and Harry gave him an encouraging little shove. Ned bowed, listening to the special swell of applause that was
his alone. Lifting his eyes he beamed gratefully at the invisible people who liked him.

After the curtain calls came the first-night party at Del-monico’s and this time when he walked in the waiters smiled respectfully and said, “Congratulations, Mr. Sheridan, sir. The word’s already out the play’s a success.” Jacob was waving his cigar and looking important as only he knew how, and Sasha, in a daunting black dress that exposed a lot of bosom, gave him a big wet kiss and whispered breathily in his ear, “You were magnificent. But then I always knew you could be.”

Innumerable beautiful women kissed his cheek, and important men of the theater whose names he had only heard mentioned with awe before tonight looked approvingly at him as they congratulated him on his performance.

“It wasn’t a performance,” he told Harry, bewildered. “I
was
Marcus Jared onstage tonight.”

Harry knew exactly what he meant, but he thought regretfully that in his thirty years as an actor he had never once felt that way onstage. He knew Ned had a special talent and he knew he deserved the best and he wasn’t about to let him be ruined by de Lowry.

He cornered Jacob by the bar and signaled a waiter to give him another drink. “More champagne, Jacob?” he asked with a masked smile.

De Lowry glanced suspiciously at him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I didn’t think you would have the nerve after walking out on me the way you did.”

“Speaking of contracts,” Harry said, crowding closer. He leaned one arm against the wall, trapping Jacob between the bar and himself. “Ned tells me that he has not signed a contract with you.”

“Oh, but he will. I have it right here for him to sign tonight. It’s a simple little thing, a mere formality.”

He patted his, pocket with the document and Harry held up his hand. “Don’t bother to show me,” he said coolly. “Ned understands how you tried to fleece him. He’s more of a gent than I am, so he’s agreed to keep his bargain and
pay you fifty percent of his salary for the run of the play. After that you’re through.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Jacob blustered. “Of course he’ll sign. I got the boy the job, didn’t I?”

Leaning closer, Harry grabbed him by the lapel. “Sure you did, Jacob. And then you told him it would cost him half his money. Not ten or fifteen or even twenty-five percent. You were
greedy,
Jacob.”

Sticking his face closer he whispered menacingly, “You’re nothing but a cheap old thief and you know it. I’ll bet that ‘simple little contract’ in your pocket ready for Ned to sign ties him up neatly for the rest of his life at fifty or even sixty percent to Mr. J. de Lowry.” He grinned; he could see from Jacob’s blustering purple face he was right.

“Forget it, Jacob,” he said, letting go of him. “You’ve fleeced too many actors for too long. Stay away from Ned or I’ll see you in jail for a thousand-and-one little frauds the length and breadth of the country. I’ll wire you your fifty percent every Monday for the run of the play. Don’t bother to acknowledge receipt, and ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you.’” With a final menacing glance he sauntered off to rescue Ned from the gaggle of young women surrounding him.

The early editions of the morning papers were carried in by a jubilant Dillingham. “They liked it,” he yelled into the sudden nervous silence, and a cheer went up.

Amusing,
the critics said, and,
Delightful, if slight The acting speaks louder than the words,
said another.
Especially the new face on Broadway, Ned Sheridan, as good-looking as he is capable of pulling your heartstrings, a fact that most of the women in the audience were quick to notice. This does not mean that Mr. Sheridan is not a fine actor. Indeed he is. His command of his small role made him stand out on a stage of fine players. His is a career to be watched.

Harry hugged him and so did Mr. Dillingham. Marion Javits kissed him sulkily—his notices were longer and better than hers—but her costar Maxwell was more generous. “It was a damned fine performance,” he said. “Make the
most of it because you can take my word for it, the play won’t last more than a month.”

He was almost right. The play did close after a month, but Dillingham sent it out on the road and this time Ned had his name in equal billing with two stars. He wrote to Lily from whatever town he happened to be in that week but he knew he could not expect a reply on the road, and the ring stayed in his pocket until the summer’s heat closed the theaters at the end of June and he was able to go home again.

He bought up all the lilies in every florist on Broadway and hurried downtown to catch the Fall River Line boat. He prowled the decks half the night, unable to sleep for thinking of her. He disembarked at Fall River and prowled the hot windy platform of the railroad station until the train took him to Myricks, and then he prowled that station restlessly until another train took him to New Bedford-When he finally boarded the paddle-wheel ferry for Nantucket he was numb with weariness and the bouquet of lilies was wilting badly, but when they passed the Cross Rip lightship he knew he was almost home.

He breathed in the cool, salty sea air, and the world of the theater and the weariness and strain of the past months seemed to drop away behind him. He felt like a new man as he hurried from the wharf up Main Street to find Lily at last.

His mothers and sisters ran to the door to greet him, stopping when they saw the significant lilies clutched in his arms. A baby wailed in the background and he stared uneasily at their somber faces. Fearing the worst, his heart skidded to his boots. “Lily’s dead,” he said, looking from one to the other.

“No, son. Oh, no, she’s not dead,” his mother said. “But she’s gone, Ned. She ran away after the boy was born. She asked us to look after him. And we shall never see her again, you can be sure of that.”

Ned threw his bouquet to the floor. He paced into the
kitchen and stared at the squalling red-faced infant in the straw basket. After a while he said soothingly, “Don’t you worry, son. We’ll find her. I promise you. And when we do, this time we shall never let her go.”

B
RIGID WAS KEEPING AN EAGLE EYE
on me but I’m feeling better today despite the late night. When I was small Mammie said I used up all my week’s energy in one go and then I would wilt like a dying flower and she would have to put me to bed for an entire day to recover. You should try it sometimes. A long lazy day, away from the telephone and the television and the newspapers, just dozing and reading and nibbling on a little something, chocolate or cold chicken or bread fresh from the oven spread with sweet butter. Even good hot porridge does the trick, though maybe you’ll need Brigid to fix it for you. I can tell you, my dears, that a lazy day in bed pampering yourself does as much good as a week at one of those expensive new health spas.

I went once with my friend, Molly Arundel. It was
ghastly.
First of all, it was all women. Then they starved us and made us eat lettuce leaves and what they called consommé, but I told Molly it was chicken-crap watered down. They trapped us in mud baths and sweating machines so we couldn’t cause any trouble and sneak off to the village pub for a “G and T” and a ham sandwich and to check out the men. And those brawny Swedes pummeled us unmercifully on the massage tables.

“Maudie and Molly, the Terrible Twins,” they called us,
because we caused so much trouble, always complaining and always sneaking out of the grounds in our bathrobes. Did you know they take your clothes away from you, just the way they do in prison? And I can tell you it’s a dead giveaway when you show up at the local pub in your powder-blue terry-cloth robe.

I miss old Molly. She was my special chum, you know. We were girls together and at a dozen different schools together because neither of us was what Mammie called “stickers,” meaning we never stuck to anything for more than a few weeks at a time. That included men, of, course, especially in Molly’s case. It was a man who killed her, you know.

Now, unlike me, Molly had been a beauty in her day, dark-haired and green-eyed and slinkily glamorous. She rode like a man, smoked like a chimney, and cursed like a trooper, and yet she was the most feminine woman I have ever met. Apart from Mammie, that is, because Mammie with her funny gamine little face was eternally feminine.

Anyway, Molly had been married three times and widowed three times and she had also enjoyed what she called “playing the field,” so even though she was getting on in years when she met this fellow, and despite a fondness for gin and tonic and black olives, she was in good shape and she was still lovely. She had a silver streak in her dark hair at each temple. “Just to let the men know I’m not as young as I look,” she told me. And she’d had a good face-lift and her boobs done, too, because she was living in Palm Beach then, and you know the way things are there.

And that’s where she met him. Palm Beach. At one of those charity balls they seem to have every night so they have somewhere to wear those wonderful couture dresses they all seem to be able to afford. Of course, Molly had as much as anybody, maybe more. Her father was in steel and he did better than my mammie at it, I can tell you. Mammie lost all her money in German steel in the war, if you remember, whereas Molly’s father simply coined it in armaments. Armored tanks to be precise, though he went
on to bigger and better and more modern things, so old Molly had enough to do whatever she liked. And she liked to play.

But I’m digressing again. She was sixty-fivish and he was thirty years old, blond and handsome, a man straight out of a Ralph Lauren ad. Slicked-back hair, strong jaw, lean body, and a pair of horn-rimmed specs to give him an “intellectual” look. Truth is, without ’em he looked a bit vapid and I often used to wonder whether he kept them on during … well, you know. I never did ask Molly because she might have thought I was making fun of him, and she was crazy about him. I could see that. Anyone with half an eye could. He moved in with her and she bought him all the smart clothes he wanted until he looked as though he had stepped from the pages of a glossy catalog. He accompanied her everywhere, to all the lunches and the dinners, and the dances.

She telephoned me here at Ardnavarna and said, “Maudie, you simply have to meet him. He’s so wonderful.”

So I flew out there and went to stay with them in her villa by the sea. It was one of those gorgeous American houses, modern with a bit of Mediterranean and a touch of the tropical, with jewel-colored pools set in astonishingly green lawns and tropical lanais and that awful air-conditioning. “For God’s sake, turn it off, Molly,” I used to say, even though the temperature was eighty-five outside. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of honest sweat. It’s good for the pores.”

Anyhow, as far as I could see, she and this fellow spent most of their time in bed. In between the parties and the dinners, that is. I saw very little of them privately. I asked her how I was supposed to judge him when I hardly saw him. “You’re not here to judge, darling Maudie,” she said, astonished. “You are here to
admire.”