Gillyflower Read online

  I was suddenly very tired, but as I started preparing for bed I had a brilliant idea: I would send the drawing to Hugh Sheenan with a short thank-you letter. It was the perfect gift. I did not hope for a reply (in fact I really didn’t even want one), but I thought perhaps it was an offering unusual enough to get past his secretary and into his own hands. I loved the idea that he might look at it with pleasure, or even that he might touch it before setting it forever aside or giving it to someone to dispose of. (If I thought that Hugh might actually see the picture, I wouldn’t even care that it might be destroyed.)

  That night as I drifted happily off to sleep, I composed a letter to Hugh in my mind. I would keep it simple. For once, I wouldn’t worry about the awkwardness of my prose. The drawing would speak for me.

  Dear Mr. Sheenan:

  I will be brief, since I imagine you receive oceans of mail. I was fortunate enough to be present at the matinee performance of The Lion’s Share one Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, and I had to write to thank you. I have followed your career for many years, and as soon as I heard about the play I made plans to drive down from Boston to see you. I cannot tell you how wonderful that afternoon was for me; you, and all the members of the cast, were marvelous, and filled my heart with joy.

  I wanted to give you something in return, but could think of nothing appropriate until one day I completed the enclosed drawing. Acting is what you do superbly; drawing is what I do best, so in some small way I hope you will accept my offering as a fair exchange. Perhaps it will bring you at least a moment of pleasure.

  With all best wishes for your continued health and success, and with deepest gratitude, I remain,

  Yours truly,

  Nora Forrest

  I wrote it on our old typewriter. I typed a clean copy. I agonized a little, but then I packed up the drawing with the letter and addressed it all to the theater, the only place I could think of that made any sense. I mailed it the next morning. I knew I’d be wondering about it a lot, and thinking about it was tantalizingly scary, but I felt good. I’d done what I could and that was that. The letter would not be, should not be, answered. In my imagination, Hugh’s secretary passed the package on to him; he read the letter and smiled, he looked at the drawing, and looked and looked again. He had it framed and hung on the wall of his London study as a curiosity that interested him for a reason he didn’t understand. Sometimes he would look at it and remember his days in New York and wonder who in the world the “N.F.” whose initials were in the corner of the drawing might be.

  I am not a fool; I knew none of that was at all likely to happen. But I loved to pretend that it might.

  11. Leon

  Hugh was ordinarily a late riser, and over the years I’d come to bless that habit. The early mornings were mine alone, and I especially loved them in New York, where the days began not exactly with perfect peace and quiet but at least with a minimum of noise and a lovely view of rooftops and wires and the Hudson River off in the distance, sparkling as if it knew no human blight. I’d brew a pot of the tea I’d brought from home and read the papers end to end, scanning always for a mention of Hugh and, I admit, censoring a number of clippings from his view.I had boxes and boxes of his clippings and I saved everything, but I didn’t like to upset him unnecessarily, more for my own protection than his. The slightest criticism of the play disturbed him in those days (unusual for him), and there were a couple or three of theater gossip-columnists whose inventions or exaggerations of what they’d seen or heard seemed to Hugh invasions of privacy so egregious that they must be dealt with swiftly and by the sword. Once he had rung up a silly woman reporter from a restaurant where he’d picked up a paper, asked her address (which she’d willingly given—expecting, no doubt, some romantic interest, or at the very least an exclusive interview), and told her he was coming right over in a cab to “cram a copy of the rag” containing her slanderous remarks “right down [her] wrinkled bloody throat.” I feared for what the next day’s “rag” would contain, but oddly enough, there was no mention of the episode.

  Also in the mornings I’d open Hugh’s mail—or, to be more precise, I’d open whatever seemed not too personal. Ruby’s little letters, unmistakably addressed in her child’s hand, would be placed immediately onto his breakfast tray; other letters from England would be sorted according to sender, and some of these would go onto the tray as well. I opened all business letters and fan mail. Sometimes I recalled the days when his biggest film, a war saga, had brought sacks and sacks of mail from the studio, letters from all over the world, in many different languages. Eventually we’d been forced to hire a gaggle of secretaries to answer them and mail out “autographed” pictures of Hugh in his film character’s military uniform. (Hugh always hated the sight of those letters; he hadn’t liked the film that much himself. Once he set fire to three bundles of them in the garden’s empty birdbath before I could stop him.) In more recent years there had been usually only five or six letters a month, though since the beginning of this Broadway engagement there had been more, especially at first. Somehow New Yorkers always found out where one was, and many letters came directly to us at the hotel.

  I handled these letters myself, rarely calling any to Hugh’s attention. People sent things, too: blue gloves, for the most part, and occasionally baked goods, books, or photographs for Hugh to sign. I signed these with his name, since he would not do it. Now and then he’d ask, “Is my public still writing me, Leon?” and seemed satisfied with a yes, though I suspected a no would not have upset him unduly.

  I will not say I was jaded, but I’d been at this game so long that it took a great deal to surprise or even interest me. In the early years, when letters were especially generous or amusing, or when the writer seemed in dire need of Hugh’s personal touch (sick people, especially children, would always succeed in getting his attention, for example), I’d leave them on the desk for Hugh to peruse. Occasionally he would have me send theater tickets to someone, or write something nice on a photograph and ask me to send it “posthaste” (I think he thought that was some kind of Postal Service designation). But of late years Hugh had not been at all interested, so I had taken over the task completely, using my discretion as to which fans would receive a more personal reply, always penned by me. I’d felt awful about that at first, but had come to reason that it would make people happy and they’d never know the truth at any rate.

  This particular morning the post held nothing more than rubbish mail, some credit card bills, and a medium-large flat package done up in brown paper. It had been addressed to the theater and forwarded to the hotel. The thing was uncommonly stiff, and the return address was simply “Forrest” at a location in Boston. Hugh and I had visited Boston once years before, but it had been a very quick trip and to my knowledge he had no real friends there. And, I reasoned, trying to decide whether to open the package or not, no real friend would write to him at the theater. So I opened it.

  A letter on cheap stationery fell out, but I did not bother to read it. There was a drawing inside, matted on stiff cardboard and wound in a sheet of tissue, and I undid the wrapping and propped the drawing up against the teapot for examination.

  I am no connoisseur of art—that’s Hugh’s department. His house in London is filled with paintings, sculptures, glass, and pottery from all over the world, each costly piece selected lovingly by himself or his first wife. None of it offends me, but it brings me no real joy to speak of. There was something about this drawing, however, that hooked me in.

  I supposed at first that it was another purchase of Hugh’s, but then realized that such a purchase would never have been posted in such a flimsy wrapper, or sent to the theater address at that. I sipped my tea and I sipped that drawing. It was the strangest-looking thing. I thought it might be an antique, considering its style, but the paper on which it was rendered was very new indeed, and the color, where there was color, was too vivid, and the whites too white, to be old.

  It was a picture of the i
nside of a theater, seen from a vantage point somewhere in the upper rear, with a stage full of actors, well-lit in the front, and a tall, thin male actor at the front of the stage with a peculiar look on his face. A shaft or beam of light, like something one sees in those Roman Catholic holy cards that nuns give out to children for good behavior in school, led from the actor’s dark eyes (which gleamed with an unearthly, almost electric, light) to something in the front rows of the audience. The detail was most unusual: the whole of the thing was executed in an elegant array of tiny, finely drawn lines, so that unless one looked closely it seemed to have a palpable texture; one felt as though it would be a bit rough to the touch. Most of the drawing was simply black on white, but the beam of light was a soft golden color and, as I mentioned, the man’s eyes, though black, seemed to have a color all their own. Down in the lower right-hand corner of the picture were the initials “N.F.”

  So deeply was I in communion with this strange drawing that Hugh’s unexpected entry into the kitchen gave me rather a start. He was wearing an old, fuzzy, grey bathrobe, had an unattractive greyish-blue stubble on his chin, and his eyes were sunken deeply enough into his face so that he looked about a hundred and three years old. He seemed cheerful enough in spite of that, however, and considering that the hour was well before noon, I thought he seemed very cheerful indeed. He smiled at me and croaked one word—“Coffee”—then plopped down at the table next to me, leaned over almost backwards, and acrobatically lit his cigarette in its holder by turning on the stove. I did not argue about the coffee, for once, I was that surprised to see him; I simply got up to fix him a mug.

  “And what have we here, old boy?” he asked, picking up the drawing and trying to focus his bleary eyes upon it. “Dabbling in the arts, are we, Leon? I have always wondered what it was one did in these early hours, but I must say you’d be the last silly bastard I’d suspect of finger painting. HOLD ON!” At that Hugh jumped from the chair, threw the drawing across the room as if it had burned him, and turned upon me with a hateful eye. He was indeed fully awakened.

  “For God’s sake, Leon! Where did that thing come from?” he roared.

  I was flabbergasted. “It came just this morning in the post. I was just taking a little look-see at it when you came in.”

  Hugh retrieved the drawing from where it had landed, set it up again against the teapot, sat down, and gazed at it with his head in his hands. His cigarette, abandoned, had fallen to his lap and was starting a hole there. I took it away to the sink. He continued to stare at the picture, muttering foul words and bending a spoon in his hands. I took the spoon away.

  “Wouldn’t you like to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if I were daft. Then he smiled, radiantly. “Coffee,” he commanded.I served him his mug.

  “Leon,” he said in a syrupy, mocking tone, “can you really not identify what you see here just before you?” He gestured at the painting, noticed his cigarette was missing from its holder, and lit another, this time from a lighter produced from his robe’s pocket.

  “Indeed not,” I said. “I was looking at the thing because it was so very odd. . . not because I was trying to ‘identify’ it. What is it, anyway?”

  Again I received the cold and mocking stare. “Where is the package this came in?” Hugh asked.

  I gave him the torn brown paper.

  “And was there nothing else?” he inquired. He downed the mug of coffee in one gulp and banged it on the table, signaling for more. Not being an idiot, I gave him an instant refill.

  It was only then I remembered the letter that had fallen out of the wrapping. During all the ruckus it had been knocked to the floor, and I picked it up and handed it to Hugh.

  His face changed from sneering to terrorized. “Have you read it?”

  I told him no.

  He handed it back to me. “Then read it to me now,” he said, and he couldn’t have looked more resigned to a beastly blow than had I held a telegram bringing certain news of death or disaster.

  The letter I read to him was nothing special at all: some woman (probably young, I thought) had written to thank him for his performance in The Lion’s Share, which she had seen some weeks before, and had enclosed a drawing of her own as a little gift. It was a simple, polite letter—short and, I thought, rather nice on the whole, especially for an American. It was signed “Nora Forrest” and the return address in Boston was given again, as is only proper. The writer asked for nothing, and I certainly approved of that.

  Hugh said not a word when I finished reading, but simply reached out for the letter, folded it twice over, and put it immediately into his pocket. He kept a hand on that pocket while he finished his coffee, as if he were afraid the letter would escape. He continued to contemplate the drawing. I knew better than to speak.

  After a while he rose, put his mug in the sink, ran water in it (I had never seen him do anything so domestic before), and asked me quite quietly how long it would take to “have something framed.”

  I said I supposed it could be done in a day or two.

  “Bugger,” he said. “Then measure this thing for me, will you Leon, and go buy a ready-made frame right away. After you’ve measured it, bring it upstairs. I’ll be in the bath.” Then he exited the room, with great drama, as if on stage. The second cigarette had burned a tidy little dimple in the hotel’s table.

  I purchased a frame for the drawing and put it all together. Much to my amazement, Hugh insisted on carrying the thing around with him everywhere for several days. He took it from room to room, always propping it up in some prominent place but rarely, it seemed, actually looking at it. At the theater it reposed on his dressing table, and when it came near time for him to go on stage, he’d tuck it in the closet. He’d take it out again when the play was over, then slip it into a large plastic bag and carry it with him to the car. I was never allowed to touch it, and the few times I asked him about it I received no reply. His mood was consistently distracted, though not disagreeable, and I was content to humor this minor obsession of his, knowing that sooner or later the story would out.

  After about a week, there was a development.

  “Leon,” Hugh said to me one evening as I brushed some hairs from his jacket, “this drawing has been disturbing me a very great deal.”

  “I know,” I said. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

  He ignored the question, which did not surprise me, and asked, “Do you think this Miss Nora Whoever might have a telephone?”

  “I expect so, Hugh,” I answered. “Most people do.”

  “Then please find the number.”

  That was easy enough. When I brought it to him on a slip of paper he simply looked at it and said, “I see.” Into the pocket went the paper.

  The next evening, after his bath, he asked me, “Leon, would you do me a favor, old man, and see if this number will ring?” He handed me the piece of paper.

  “I’m sure it will ring, Hugh. Would you like me to try it for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now?”

  “Please.”

  So I picked up the phone by his bed, dialed the number, heard the first ring, then handed him the phone. He listened momentarily, then put the receiver back on its stand.

  “Thank you, Leon.” And then he went to bed.

  This idiocy continued for another day or so. Each night we would ring up the woman in Boston, and each time Hugh would hang up the phone. Then one evening I refused to make the call.

  “Why are you disturbing this person?” I asked him. “Don’t you think it rather rude to ring someone’s number every night and then hang up? Perhaps the poor woman thinks someone dreadful is after her. I don’t understand all this, Hugh; it seems to me very silly.”

  He handed me the little scrap of paper. “Call it again,” he said.

  I said no, thank you very much, I was finished with this foolish business; I was going to bed.

  “Dial it, Leon,” he told me. “
Dial it and if she answers, tell her I received her letter and the drawing. Tell her I’m going to be in Boston next Monday”—there were no performances on Mondays—“and that I would like to meet her for lunch.” He paused, breathing heavily. “She will probably accept. Make whatever arrangements necessary for the trip, Leon, and kindly do not look at me as if I were some bloody loon.” He turned off the lamp next to his bed and crawled into it. “Call from the other room,” he said, “and let me know what happened in the morning.”

  I was outraged, fascinated, puzzled, and amused. I made the call. The woman answered on the third ring. I told her Mr. Hugh Sheenan had received her package and requested the honor of her presence at the Ritz-Carlton for luncheon the following Monday at one o’clock, and asked whether I could send a car for her. There was a long silence. Then, thank you, she said, but she would meet Mr. Sheenan at the Ritz; she did not require a car. She sounded not at all surprised, but rather vague—completely emotionless and polite. I said, how would we know her? She said she’d be wearing a yellow dress and that she had “sort of long” light hair. She thanked me twice for calling.

  In the morning, when I passed Hugh’s open door on my way to the kitchen, he was sitting up in bed, smoking. I reported the conversation.

  “Thank you, Leon,” he said, and then, “A yellow dress.” For the rest of the day he was quiet but nervy, and I do not think he slept that week at all.

  12. Nora

  Writing to Hugh Sheenan, and sending the drawing, had been a kind of exorcism. I’d worried that I’d do nothing but wonder what had happened to my package, but instead I felt a huge sense of relief—as if I’d accomplished something extremely difficult and frightening. Although I went on thinking about the play, it was no longer with the same sense of urgency. I felt, in a way, that it was mine at last; I had lost a great part of the anxiety that my memories would escape.