Movie Shoes

  “Nothing. It’s been the most beautiful day of my whole life. I had all that time with David’s creatures, and none of them minded me. Ella lay in my arms, but I never thought I’d hold her in the picture.”

  Bee had felt very awkward while Maurice had hysterics. She had kept out of Mrs. Tuesday’s way, but Mrs. Norstrum had shaken her head and said it was unlucky, that Mrs. Tuesday might go on being upset for days.

  “I’m rather sorry about that, darling. It’s nearly the end of the picture, and we don’t want Mrs. Tuesday or Maurice getting upset.”

  Jane gave a pleased wriggle.

  “I do. His screaming was the most beautiful part of the most beautiful day.”

  24

  What Happened in February

  Peaseblossom had to hover about Rachel’s and Jane’s door to stop them from talking at night; but they often whispered all the same, and in the mornings there was unending chatter from the time they woke until breakfast. It was something new for the sisters to have so much to say to each other. Of course, doing quite different things all day made a difference, but it was not only that. Jane had been rather like a frostbitten rosebud, all tightly stuck together, and now, little by little, her petals were uncurling. There never seemed to be enough time to say everything. Rachel heard every detail of the crisis when Jane held Ella and Maurice had hysterics. She heard all about the grown-ups’ discouraged talk about Maurice’s hysterics, and John’s saying to Jane, “Don’t gloat, you little horror. If all I hear is true, Maurice had plenty to gloat over in the first two or three weeks they were making the picture.”

  Rachel, though, was entirely on Jane’s side.

  “Oh, I wish I’d been there! I’d love to have seen how Maurice looked.”

  One Saturday night Jane heard something from Rachel that no one else knew. Rachel had a new ambition. At Manoff’s Saturday class the pupils had been shown steps from a new ballet Manoff was going to use in his repertoire. It was a ballet about birds. The corps de ballet had an entrance as birds; they did little pecking steps like rather scared birds hopping across a street. Somehow the class could not get what Manoff wanted but Rachel, in the back row, got it exactly, for at Manoff’s Saturdays she felt herself rather like a scared bird hopping across a street.

  “I was just holding the attitude at the end, when, imagine, Monsieur Manoff said, ‘Little friend of Posy’s at the back, come here.’”

  Jane despised humility. “Doesn’t he know your name yet?”

  “Goodness, no, of course not. I couldn’t be lower than I am. Most of the pupils belong to his ballet, but the grandest people come as well. Dancers from all the film companies and even some people who have come from places like New York and Chicago for refresher courses. Apart from being a marvelous dancer himself, he’s the best teacher in the world.

  “I bet you’re better than lots of them. What did he say when he called you?”

  Rachel hung out of bed, leaning toward Jane and speaking in an awed whisper.

  “He said, this little is better than any of you. Show them, my child, I had forgotten to curtsey when I came to him, but I remembered then and did a big one, saying, ‘Maître,’ the way we do; then I did the steps.”

  “Well? What happened after that?” Jane wanted to know.

  “Didn’t anyone clap or anything?”

  Rachel was shocked. “At a Manoff’s Saturday? Of course not! Only it made me think of something. When Posy Fossil was younger than I am, she danced for Monsieur Manoff and he told her she was to come to his school at Szolva and he would make her into a beautiful artiste. Oh Jane suppose, just suppose, he was to say to me, ‘You will stay with me and I will make you into a beautiful artiste!’”

  Jane sat up. “Stay here? All alone when we go home?”

  “It would be awful, but I would if he asked me. Imagine being like Posy someday. You can’t think what it’s like when she dances. Even all those grand pupils stop talking if she dances alone. She’s got all the things: precision, elevation, and something extra. When she holds an attitude or moves from one step to another, it’s like butter melting in a saucepan; it’s all soft. I can’t explain.”

  Jane lay down again. Though she would not have said so, she thought Rachel marvelous. On the few occasions when she had seen her dance, she had been very proud of her. Naturally Rachel did not know this, for Jane’s way of showing she felt proud of her was to be rude about her dancing.

  “I don’t think butter looks nice melting. Would Dad let you stay?”

  “I think so. You know how he feels about our working at our own things.”

  “If the Bee Bee studios wanted to put me under contract, Dad wouldn’t let them. He told me that when I got the part of Mary.”

  “That’s because it’s not your thing. Besides, you couldn’t stay here alone. If Monsieur Manoff let me join his company, I think I could live in the same places as Posy. Either Nana or Aunt Sylvia travels with her. Imagine the glory of living with Posy!”

  Peaseblossom opened the door. Both Rachel and Jane shut their eyes. Peaseblossom stopped for a moment, then shut the door. Rachel and Jane raised their heads from their pillows and listened until they heard her go downstairs.

  “What I was going to say,” Rachel whispered, “is that you wouldn’t want to go on in films even if they wanted you, would you?”

  Jane could not let that pass. She did not want to act in pictures for the rest of her life, but she did very much want the company to want her to. So she said, “I wouldn’t mind if David and allthe animals and birds were m the picture.”

  “Even then you wouldn’t. You’d be bored. You’d want Chewing-gum. It’s different for me. My dancing isn’t something that’s happened in California; it’s been always.”

  Jane did not answer that because she was asleep.

  It was a few days after this talk that John had his bit of good news He had been working on a book ever since the first day he arrived at Aunt Cora’s, but he had taken time off to write a short story. He sent it to the Saturday Evening Post, and when the news came that the magazine had bought it, he was like somebody who finds the first primrose after a hard winter.

  “This deserves something special,” John announced. “What going away for a weekend of sight-seeing? We could combine it with your birthday Tim.”

  Tim bounced with excitement. “Death Valley? You did promise Death Valley.”

  Rachel turned pink.

  “I can’t. I can’t go. I can’t miss a Manoff’s Saturday.”

  John looked less cheerful. “Not even for once? Just as a celebration? I know old Jane can’t come, but I had hoped to have you.”

  Rachel hated to seem mean about it, but there was so little time left. If Monsieur Manoff was to take her as a pupil, she must not miss a moment of his classes. She came to John and rubbed her cheek on his arm.

  “I’m sorry, Dad, but I can’t.”

  John raised her chin.

  “All right, puss. If you can’t, you can’t. It’ll be just be Peaseblossom, Tim, and myself. Unless you’d like to come, Cora.”

  Aunt Cora turned quite pale at the thought.

  “Death Valley! No, thank you. Besides, even if there weren’t Tim’s party to fix, I’d be so nervous something was going wrong I’d be as fidgety as a coot the whole trip.”

  John had not expected or, to be quite honest, wanted Aunt Cora to say she would go, and his mind had skipped ahead of her answer.

  “I wish you could come, Bee. It’ll be no fun going without you.”

  Peaseblossom, trying not to look like a martyr, said, “You shall go, Bee. I’ll take charge of Jane at the studio. I shall enjoy it. “

  Though nobody had ever guessed it, Aunt Cora was longing for a day at the studio. Already several of her friends had asked if she had been up to see her niece working at the studio. So now she said, trying to make it sound as though she were being noble, “There’s no need for anybody to miss the trip. I’ll take Jane to the studio.”

&n
bsp; At first it was planned that Bee should take Aunt Cora with her to the studio on the day before she left for Death Valley, but then John had a better idea. He said they all had been saying they wanted to see Jane at work; what about Bee’s getting permission for the whole family to go up on Friday afternoon?

  The family and Aunt Cora arrived early for the afternoon’s shooting. Jane’s-Mr. Browne was there. He told Mr. Phelps to take Rachel and Tim around and show them the lights, sound apparatus, and cameras while he himself escorted Aunt Cora and John around the painted garden.

  It was now April in the garden. In a Technicolor film there are always brighter skies and more flowers than there would be in real life John stood at the top of the steps and let out a low whistle.

  “My word! ‘Oh to be in England, not that April’s there,’ in glorious Technicolor

  Aunt Cora was not good at quotations and had come to look not at gardens but at film stars. She smiled politely at the garden.

  “Very pretty. I shall go and find Bee. She wants to introduce me to everybody.”

  Left alone, John and Jane’s Mr. Browne walked down the steps into the garden. John said, “Had a bad time with Jane, didn’t you?”

  “Terrible. I guess those days when. I had to get her to look pleasant were about the worst I’ll, ever live through.”

  “Well it’s nearly over.”

  “You’ll be surprised when you see her on the screen. They’ve been working hard in the cutting room because if we need a retake it’ll have to be done before you leave next month. I’m glad you’re taking Jane home. I’ll bet when the big shots see the final version of this, they’ll want Jane under contract. What a fate! She’d play bad-tempered girls for the next four or five years, and some poor devil would have to direct her, but not me. No, sir, not twice!”

  John grinned.

  “You needn’t lose any sleep over her. She’ll be on the Mauretania next month. Mind you if I thought she would like it, and she had an offer, I’d arrange somehow for her stay. But she’d hate it, bless her. So would I. We’ve had a glorious time here, I’m not planning to leave one of my children behind as a souvenir of our visit.”

  Rachel and Tim had a very interesting afternoon. Everybody made a fuss over them. Rachel was extraordinarily pretty, and Tim nice-looking and had very good manners.

  One of the electricians said, “I’ll bet those two little birds came out of a different hatching from the one that gave us Jane.”

  And that, in different words, was what everybody was saying. Luckily it was a day when Mickey was in the picture, so Jane was in a very good mood and never noticed that people were talking about Rachel and Tim. Also, she was having a sniff of the grandeur she had always wanted. Rachel, Aunt Cora, and Peaseblossom were very impressed by her dressing room and by the way the hairdresser and makeup woman attended to her.

  “Isn’t Jane important?” Rachel whispered to Bee.

  Bee was by now used to the studio.

  “Not really. It looks grand, but it happens to them all.”

  During the afternoon a camera man took several stills of them all, some with Jane and some alone.

  “May as well have some good pictures of all the family.” Jane’s-Mr. Browne said to John.

  Very early the next morning the family in great excitement set off for Death Valley, though it was miserable leaving Rachel and Jane behind. John had decided with Bee not to tell Jane where they were spending the night because it would be just what she would most enjoy. They were planning to spend Saturday and Sunday nights in Yosemite National Park; that would give them all Sunday to see the park, particularly the bears that lived there.

  “Poor Jane,” Tim said. “She would have taken her pipes and played them to the bears.”

  Bee laughed. “That’s the first thing which has consoled me for leaving Jane behind. If the noise I’ve heard coming out of her pipes is what she would play to bears, I think they’d eat the lot of us.”

  Jane had behaved very well. She came down to the front door with Rachel in her dressing gown to wave good-bye to the family, and though she hated seeing them go off without her, she did not look a bit black-doggish.

  “Splendid of Jane,” Peaseblossom said to John. “She’s more disciplined than one would think.”

  “Whatever else may be held against old Jane,” John answered, “I never knew her to go back on anything. We warned her that if she played Mary, she would miss seeing all the lovely things Rachel and Tim would see, and she has. This is the first long trip; but there’s hardly been a day when I haven’t taken the other two and shown them some new beauty, and all she’s seen is a film studio.”

  It was a lovely trip. Death Valley was desert, glittering sand, barren rocks, and dismal beyond all belief. Yosemite was all that anyone could want: Indian caves, an enormous tree supposed to be nearly four thousand years old, and a fallen down tree which was so big that a row of cars had been photographed on top of it; there were waterfalls and, a long way off, the bears. It was real winter in Yosemite, as it had been most of the drive up the mountains to get there, and everything was covered with snow. This, from Tim’s point of view, was one of the best things about it. When they left to return to Santa Monica early on Monday morning, Peaseblossom said, “What an experience! What scenery! You’ll never forget it, will you, Tim?”

  “Never. When I tell Mr. Brown I met bears walking loose in the snow just as if they were dogs, he’ll never believe me.”

  Aunt Cora found her two days at the studio thrilling, and she did something Bee had never done: She made friends with Mrs. Tuesday. Aunt Cora liked celebrities, and because Maurice was well known in pictures, she thought he must be interesting and sweet, and she did not care how much Mrs. Tuesday talked about him.

  The Saturday shooting passed off easily for Jane. It was a day when David and Mickey were in the scenes, and she was always happy on those days. Monday, however, was a different story. It began by Jane’s being rubbed the wrong way. She had thought they were going to shoot some scenes with Ben Weatherstaff, but the actor playing him had a cold, so instead Jane’s-Mr. Browne decided to take the last of the interiors. Jane hated interiors because they were always with Maurice and never with David, and she looked as disobliging as she felt. After lunch David walked into the studio. He had been feeding his creatures and had looked in to give Jane a lesson on the pipes. At once all Jane’s bad temper vanished. She forgot she had ever been cross. Then a hand was laid on her shoulder. There was the teacher from Miss Barnabas’s school.

  “Come, Jane. We can make a start on that arithmetic you missed this morning.”

  Arithmetic! It had never been Jane’s favorite subject, but arithmetic instead of playing the pipes with David! It was too much. She forgot David was listening. There was no Bee to say the soothing thing, only Aunt Cora talking hard to Mrs. Tuesday. All the very worst rose up in Jane. She stamped.

  “I won’t do arithmetic. Go away and leave me alone.” The teacher looked sad, for she had thought Jane was improving, yet here she was, even worse than when she had first come to work in the studio.

  “Jane!” the teacher reproved her. “That’s not at all a nice way to talk. Come at once. “

  Jane’s eyebrows almost met, she was scowling so. She spoke in what was nearly a shout. “I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!”

  Aunt Cora jumped. “My! Jane! Whatever did I hear you say! We need some ice water to wash out that mouth.”

  Mrs. Tuesday was glad to see Jane behaving badly because although she had stood up for Maurice on the day he screamed and said he was highly strung, she had really been a bit ashamed for him. Now she made a remark not likely to soothe.” Now why choose today to act this way? Upsetting your poor aunt. “

  Poor aunt! That was more than Jane could bear.

  “She’s not a poor aunt; she’s a rich aunt. She’s got everything, and all she does is just lie in bed while people who are staying with her clean her house.”

  Jane’s raised voice
caught Mr. Phelps’s ear. He hurried over in time to hear the last remark.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  Jane was shaking with temper. “I won’t do arithmetic.” Mr. Phelps turned to the teacher. “I’ll bring her right over.” Then he looked at Jane; his voice was frighteningly severe. “Come over here.” He drew her out of earshot of Mrs. Tuesday and Aunt Cora. “Did I say that I wouldn’t know you for the child who started in this picture? Did I say that maybe folks were wrong in thinking there wasn’t a pin to put between you and Maurice when it came to conceit and contrariness?”

  Jane was furious with herself. Why had she lost her temper? She had been exactly like Maurice. She scratched the floor with one toe.

  “She talked about arithmetic just as David and I were going to play the pipes.”

  “And why shouldn’t she? She’s doing what she has to do, and you know it. It’s no pleasure to her to teach a puffed-up child arithmetic or anything else.”

  “I’ll go now.”

  Mr. Phelps looked less severe. “And don’t go lo king that. You’ve a face that would sour an apple. Smile at the teacher, and tell her how ashamed you are.”

  Jane was turning to go. Then she stopped to look at Mr. Phelps. She lowered her voice to a whisper, for what she had to say was very private. “Would you ask David if he could wait for half an hour?”

  “Will you apologize nicely?”

  Jane nodded.

  “Get along then.”

  Mr. Phelps did ask David to wait. As soon as Jane had done her lessons and was dressed for the next shot, she went off to look for him, terrified as to what he was thinking of her. She was half afraid that he would have refused to stay. She tried to think of something that would explain her bad behavior, but she couldn’t because there was no explanation. She need not have bothered. David said in his slow voice just as if there had been, no interruption, “Play those four notes which call Mickey.”