Authors: Gore Vidal
“How did you know to plan a party for today?”
“For today? Well, it was the only free day. There’s so much going on out here. Then, of course, the negotiations took forever. Was it on? Was it off?”
“I thought the surrender was handled very briskly.”
“Briskly? Negotiations dragged on and on. Why, February was to have been the start date and here we are in May.”
Caroline realized that Elsie was deaf. “Well, it’s over, anyway.”
“Indeed it is. Cary signed his contract last week and Cole’s delighted, of course. Some Hungarian will direct. But then some Hungarian always does nowadays.”
Caroline wondered if she were going mad. Who was Cary, who was Cole? What she had thought would be a party for the Allied victory in Europe seemed to be some sort of movie party.
“Caroline Sanford! This is a joy!” It was Sir Charles. He was dressed like a stage Englishman with a gray waistcoat and a chain about his neck to which, Caroline feared, a monocle had been attached.
“Charles dear, we’re having a private chat.”
“Sorry to barge in. But the war’s over in Europe. Thought you’d like to know.”
“Caroline!” Elsie looked stricken. “Is
that
what you were talking about?”
Caroline nodded.
“But why did no one tell me?”
“But I just did.” Charles was reasonable. “You were so busy with the party all morning, I didn’t get a chance to break the news.”
“Oh, dear.” Elsie was like some great general arrived, all flags flying, to the wrong battle.
“You will simply turn this into a V-E celebration,” was Caroline’s contribution.
“V-D?” Elsie looked faint.
“No, dear.” Charles was soothing. “V-E. For victory in Europe. V-E is what they call it. V-J is next, I suppose.”
“That may be.” Elsie was now rallying. “But everyone is coming because Cary Grant finally signed his contract to play Cole Porter in Jack Warner’s movie
Night and Day
, the story of dear Cole’s life, such a powerful story, and now this has to happen.”
“Dear Elsie, you can have three guests of honor—Cole and Cary and Ike.”
“Ike who?”
“Nickname, dear. Of General Eisenhower.” Charles enjoyed being the Answer Man.
“Surely, General Eisenhower’s not in Beverly Hills today?” Elsie was starting to panic.
“No,” said Caroline, enjoying herself. “But
pretend
he’s at your party, in spirit, and that the war is over after only forty months. I made a bet with someone on how long it would take to win. But I can’t remember who it was.”
A butler drew Charles into a corner. The sound from the street of car doors opening and slamming announced the arrival of guests.
“Why didn’t you marry Harry Hopkins?” This was the old Elsie at last.
“He needed a nurse, not a wife, and I’m no good at that.”
“Hire a nurse. We were so pleased by all those stories about you and him. To live at the center of history.” Quite lost was the hostess of the
Night and Day
launch party. “You must have felt like our dear old Henry Adams, living across the street from the White House.”
“Only he hated his President Roosevelt and I quite liked my President Roosevelt. Now gone.”
“They do go, don’t they? What’s to become of Eleanor?”
“She has the cottage at Hyde Park, a place in New York …”
“With two lady friends of mine.” For a moment, Elsie let slip the Sapphic mask of
omertà;
thus giving Caroline inordinate pleasure. “But she will want to keep busy.”
“I think President Truman … how odd to call him, anybody
else
, that … is going to make her something at the United Nations.”
The front door was now being opened. Elsie leapt to her feet as befitted one who stood on her head half an hour a day.
“Is it true,” she spoke quickly, “that his old girlfriend, Lucy Rutherford, was with him when he died?”
“Yes. That is why Eleanor was playing Medea at the grave.”
“Well, adultery is apt to take the edge off one’s grief. Here come the guests. Even so, I’m surprised that Eleanor would have been jealous after so many years.” Elsie moved across the room to greet Ann Warner, queen of that Sapphic Hollywood which so sternly governed the film “industry,” the word their complaisant husbands used when referring to the chaos of moviemaking.
“She was very jealous,” Caroline said to Elsie’s back, “unto the very end, I should think.”
Caroline was greeted by elderly strangers who turned out to be old friends and acquaintances from her days as Emma Traxler. Facial surgery was boldly presented as if for her approval; generally, it looked as if someone had stapled onto an old friend someone else’s young face; happily, voices still provoked memories. By and large, men had lost their inhibition about what was now universally known as face-lifting even though Richard Barthelmess, an early victim of a bad surgeon’s knife, had eyelids that could not properly close, the lower lids seemingly glued to his cheekbones while glazed eyes constantly filled up with tears. Caroline greeted him fondly as well as his wife, Jessica, if that was her name.
The younger set were ridiculously young; or so they appeared to Caroline, whose youthful myopia, guaranteed to become farsighted with age, had, in her case, got worse. Rather than wear glasses, she used a lorgnette to get a quick look at those about her; then, if they approached her, she shut it with what she took to be a wry smile intended to mean: why on earth am I holding this?
Fortunately, Cary Grant looked like himself. He also looked to be in a bad temper. “Back in Bristol, where I was born, every time you came on the screen the pianist, those were silent days, of course …”
“Of course, I found my voice too late.”
“Oh, you certainly didn’t need to speak with that painist in your corner. He had a crush on you. Every time you appeared on screen, he’d play the
Hungarian Rhapsody
.”
“Even during the love scenes?”
“Particularly during the love scenes. It was splendid. Of course I was only thirteen.”
He need not, Caroline thought, have given his age so assertively. “I was an old twenty-five.”
Grant flushed. “I do put my foot in it, don’t I. Is Cole here?”
“I haven’t seen him. How are you going to play him?”
“With my hand over my face. I’ve got a scene where I play Cole as a twenty-year-old boy at Yale. And here I am forty-two. I must also sing. But I can’t sing. And then, there’s the wardrobe. I’ve just had one fitting.”
“As a college boy? Argyle socks?”
“No. As the king of musical comedy. Mirror of fashion and all that.” Grant’s face was a mask of pain. Then, slowly, for dramatic effect, in a voice more suitable for Richard III than Cole Porter, he whispered, “The cuffs of my shirtsleeves go
a quarter of an inch
beyond the sleeve. I thought I’d have a stroke. Only a cad would show that much cuff. No gentleman ever exposes more than
one eighth
of an inch of cuff. Maximum.”
“Use it!” Caroline was getting into the spirit of wardrobe: the dressing-up part of movies that had always so appealed to her. “Play him as a cad!”
“Cole? Poor dear Cole, a cad? Oh, I couldn’t.” But Grant was smiling mischievously. “Of course,
I’m
a cad …”
“Never.”
“I was an acrobat when I started out at thirteen …”
“Inspired by the
Hungarian Rhapsody
in Bristol …”
“How did you guess?”
“I’m sure you will have great love scenes, to the melodic
drip drip of the clock
or whatever it is.”
The mischievous face became somber. “The script is deeply boring. Nothing happens except a horse falls on him and he breaks his legs. After that, he spends a lot of time in hospitals. Cheery stuff.”
There was a murmur of excitement at the door as the crippled Cole Porter hobbled in. He was small, elflike, with a sweet cold smile and large spaniel eyes.
“Is Lynda with him?” asked Caroline. She quite liked the edgy lady that Cole had married in order to present to the world a somewhat sequined façade of everyday marriage.
“No.” Grant sighed. “I must say hello to my fellow guest of honor.”
“Who directs?”
“Mike Curtiz.” Grant’s eyebrows moved, briefly, upwards. Curtiz, Caroline knew from experience, was a bad director who, occasionally, inexplicably, made a good film; he was only slightly handicapped by the fact that English was not a language that he ever intended to master.
“A Hungarian!” Caroline was cheerful. “Then you’ll think of me while anything goes.”
A blond pretty woman put down what looked to be a glass of gin and embraced Caroline. “The Chief’s in the sunroom. He’s longing to see you. So am I. Come stay at the beach house before we sell it, which is any second now. He’s finally got most of his money back. But even so, it’s too much to keep up—all those servants.”
Then Marion Davies led Caroline to a bright room with a view of a rose garden. The gray-haired, gray-faced, gray-suited Hearst greeted her affectionately. “Never guessed you’d be here.” He gave his nervous giggle.
“Aren’t you glad now I got you to get out of the house?” Marion retied his tie.
“No,” said Hearst. “I’m going to miss the beach.”
“I’ve found us a nice place in Beverly Hills. Only I keep forgetting where it is. It’s either on North Beverly Drive or up Coldwater Canyon. Anyway, the driver always knows.” She was gone.
Caroline sat beside the now truly ancient Hearst. Other guests looked into the room; then quickly withdrew, as if he were somehow otherworldly like history itself come to call on V-E Day.
“Well, it’s about over. Japan’s trying to surrender, I hear, but Truman’s dragging his feet. Why?”
“I am no longer at court,” said Caroline.
Hearst’s smile was wintry. “Changing of the guard. Yes. How is Hopkins?”
“Not well. He was in bed most of the time during Yalta. Then, when they finally came home, the President died.”
“How much did he give away at Yalta?” Hearst’s pale eagle eyes blazed out of the dead gray face.
“Surely,” said Caroline in a voice that she could not prevent from trembling with anger, “you don’t believe what you read in your papers?”
Hearst shrugged. “I don’t believe the sob sisters, no, but …”
“They argued over Poland. One of the last letters the President was working on was a complaint about Stalin’s high-handed way with the Polish government in exile …”
“So what about Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia? FDR left them in Russian hands without a peep.”
“You sound,” said Caroline, her sudden flash of unexpected partisanship under control, “like Mrs. Roosevelt.”
“That’s a definite first.” Hearst was good-natured.
“She told me that after Franklin came back from Yalta, one of the first things she asked him was what about those three countries and he said, ‘The only way they can be freed would be if we were to go to war with Russia. You might want such a war—I might—but the American people are fed up with Europe. We must get used to the fact that wherever the Red Army is is Russian and a thousand Yaltas can’t change that fact.’ Eleanor said she found her husband’s argument unanswerable.”
“Do the Russians really want Germany to hand over ten billion dollars?”
“Yes. They suffered the most from Hitler. They also got to Berlin first.”
“I wonder why we let that happen. I must find out,” he added ominously. Then he said, in the same high urgent voice, preceded by a nervous chuckle, “You should have married Harry Hopkins.”
“I never suspected that you, of all people, would think so highly of matrimony.” Hearst’s gray face became ever so slightly pink. Caroline found it touching that it still worried him that he was living in sin with Marion Davies, a devout Catholic. “Anyway, Harry found Miss Right, one Louise Macy. She moved into the White House three years ago. I was delighted for Harry. Less so for myself. When I told her that my role in his life had been simply that of caretaker, she looked rather angry
and confused, a common condition with her, I should think. Anyway, she’ll be a good stepmother. They think he has cirrhosis of the liver.”
“Did he drink all that much?”
“No. ‘To have the consequences without the vice is unfair,’ he says. Mr. Truman is sending him to Moscow soon. I wish he wouldn’t go but I no longer see him. He is too ill to see much of anyone.”
“Like FDR, in the last years.”
“Don’t exaggerate. I must fly.”
At the front door, Caroline stepped straight into a tall Air Force major. In her most convincing American voice, inspired by the nearness of what resembled and probably was Ginger Rogers chewing gum, she said, “Long time no see,” to Timothy X. Farrell.
Peter’s brother-in-law, Clay Overbury, sat in Blaise’s study at Laurel House. He wore ribbon after ribbon on his chest over the heart where Peter had nothing at all on his uniform except one ribbon for “Good Conduct” and another that confessed to service exclusively in the United States.
Blaise sat at his desk, piles of clippings in front of him; he was a proud, even ecstatic father of a son who was not the well-conducted Peter but the hero Clay. All in all, Peter was delighted for them. Blaise was always a somewhat implausible father for him but a dream come true for Clay.
“You signed the commitment papers?”
Clay nodded. “Wasn’t easy.” He blinked his blue eyes, to denote strong emotion.
“Best thing, all around. Burden tells me things are going well back home in the district.”
“So I hear. Should I go see Enid?”
Blaise shook his head. “The doctors say no. Not now. Not yet.”
The eyes of all three men were now on the portrait of Aaron Burr over the fireplace. In the middle of the left eye there was a small round hole where Enid, aiming unsteadily at her father with a pistol, had managed to do what Alexander Hamilton had failed to do so many years ago at Weehawken, New Jersey—shoot Burr, if only in effigy, dead. Peter, who preferred his sister, when sober, to the rest of the family, had not been present. If he had … Anyway, this was, as Blaise had said, “the last straw.” Now he and Clay could put Enid away; lock the door to the sanitarium and throw away the key. Then, unencumbered, Clay would be elected to the House of Representatives in the fall and so continue a rise that now seemed to many to be inevitable. Thanks entirely to Harold Griffiths, he was a national figure, “the Hero of Lingayen Gulf Airfield” in the Philippines, where he had gone into a burning hangar and saved a wounded marine from the flames and then, practically single-handed, captured the airfield, all witnessed by Harold Griffiths, for whom Clay was like a figure out of legend, “like a knight in a tapestry of jungle green.”