Melting the Snow on Hester Street

Dougie Fairbanks was talking to her. He was saying something as if it were quite fascinating … Someone’s chauffeur had made a killing on the stock market … She hardly needed to listen. These days, everyone knew someone who knew a chauffeur who’d made a killing. In fact conversation around Eleanor’s star-studded banqueting table wasn’t much different from conversation at a million dining tables across America that night. There was only one thing anyone ever seemed to want to talk about any more: who’d made how much on what stock and at what margin … the increase in values of Bethlehem Steel versus General Motors, National Waterworks versus United Founders … The stock market was everyone’s obsession.

Added to which, it happened that the day of the Beecham Supper Party, 17 October 1929, had been a reassuringly good day on Wall Street: an excellent day, after a disconcertingly bad one, at the end of a record-breaking summer. There had been a couple of serious wobbles at the beginning of the month, ‘just to keep things exciting’, Max and his friends confidently agreed, but that morning, newspapers had been filled with the comforting forecasts of the experts:

‘Stock prices,’ declared Professor Fisher of the University of Yale, ‘look as if they have reached a permanently high plateau.’ His respected voice was just one of a chorus of bullish experts, academics, business moguls and financiers, and the markets had taken comfort. Up, up and up went the stock prices again, back on their apparently relentless rise. It meant that anyone who’d put in a call to their brokers before sitting down to dinner – and that included most of Eleanor’s guests and Eleanor’s husband, too – would be wanting to chew over their successes this evening.

But not Eleanor. On this particular night, 17 October, with fifty-one guests to worry about, and a dipping arc light, and Marion Davies, and the flags, and bloody Max, kissing her so tenderly one minute that her heart swelled with hope, and talking so animatedly with Blanche Williams the next, Eleanor was finding the usual subject less than compelling.

‘Well that’s just too fantastic, Dougie,’ she said blandly. ‘He must be one happy chauffeur.’

‘Isn’t it terrific!’ Douglas Fairbanks shouted. Because Douglas always shouted. Because he hated not to be the centre of attention. ‘And isn’t that such a terrific feeling!’ He turned to the rest of the table: ‘Doesn’t everyone think? Don’t you think so, Von Stroheim? Isn’t it great to know we live in a country where your average Joe can turn himself into a millionaire just by … knowing how to do it? Mr So-and-So from Nowheres-Ville can make a million! Just like that! Just like you and me! That’s why I love America!’ He thumped the table with such emphasis it made Eleanor jump. ‘That’s why I’m proud to be an American! Charlie-boy, c’mon. Admit it!’ he shouted. ‘You heard Professor What-Not, Tuesday. You heard what the man said! Are you telling me you know better than the professor from Yale?’

But on this, as Douglas knew well, his friend Charlie Chaplin would never agree with him, nor with Professor What-Not from Yale. Charlie – an Englishman, in any case – was, that night, the solitary voice of caution among them. ‘You know exactly what I think, Dougie,’ Charlie said wearily. He’d said it many times before. ‘You got people making money out of money that never even existed in the first place! It’s a trick of the light, I keep telling you. It’s a whole pile of nothing, built on a mountain of Zilch. It can’t go on.’

‘Aw, Charlie!’ groaned Marion. ‘Don’t go getting started on that again! … J-just nobody wants to hear it!’

Charlie smiled at her. Shrugged. ‘Dougie asked me,’ he said. ‘In any case, I’m only passing on what I’ve been told by the experts …’

‘By ONE expert!’ Douglas Fairbanks shouted. ‘And you know, you keep on about your “expert” like the guy’s some kind of oracle … but he’s a solitary, single voice, Charlie-boy. There’s no one out there supporting him …’

‘There’s going to be a crash.’ Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s what he told me. And it’s going to be catastrophic. It’s only a matter of when … Personally – as you know, Dougie – I’m out.’ He looked up and down the table. ‘I’m guessing I must be the only person round this table without a stock to my name. Ha! Maybe I’m the only person in the entire business!’

‘Butch Menken’s sold out,’ someone commented. Not Eleanor.

‘Butch sold up, did he?’ Charlie said. He looked at Mary Pickford, whose voice had provided the information. ‘When, I wonder? Do you know?’

‘Oh, a couple of weeks back. I considered following him …’ She smiled. ‘Where Butch Menken leads …’ she said.

‘… We all should follow,’ Charlie finished for her wryly. ‘Well. He’s a smart man.’ Eleanor said nothing. She examined the silver-plated dessert fork in her hand, didn’t glance up. There was a tiny lull, hardly perceptible – because of the history: Butch, Max and Eleanor used to be thicker than thieves. It was quickly, tactfully, broken by Marion.

‘Made a killing though, dintcha, Charlie?’ she called out. ‘Every s-single stock he owned. Sold the lot. Pretty much, huh? Imagine it! And now he’s sore, because if he’d stayed in just one more day, or two more days, he would have made another k-killing, same as all the rest of us! Isn’t it so, Charlie!’

‘All I’m saying …’ Charlie paused, sighed, and apparently thought better of continuing. ‘… Just don’t come crying to me when all the money’s gone …’

‘Ha! It wont be for m-money that M-Marion comes crying to you, Charlie boy …’ declared Douglas.

He looked around to collect the laughter – but was met instead with a brief, shocked silence. His wife, beside him, put a quietening hand on his shoulder. ‘Isn’t that right, Mary?’ he said to her weakly.

He was drunk. Clearly. And a fool. Everybody knew it. Even so … Eleanor glanced nervously at Marion.

‘Such beautiful candelabra,’ Mary Pickford said smoothly, in her sweet, steely voice. ‘Tell me, Eleanor, did you pick them up in Europe?’

Eleanor turned to her gratefully. She was about to say yes, to tell Mary a touching story of how she’d discovered them – all eighteen of them – covered in dust in a little antique market on a side street in Roma—

‘Oh, they’re terrific little antiques!’ broke in Douglas. ‘They remind me of a funny incident a few years ago …’

Eleanor longed to lean across and apologize to Marion, but so long as the stupid shoyte continued to jabber at her, it seemed quite impossible.

‘… I had the candelabra in the one hand and there was I,’ he bellowed, ‘a hundred foot up on the rigging, the whole damn thing swaying. Next thing – WHOOSH! … The entire set’s up in flames and I’m thinking to myself – I kid you not – I AM GOING TO DIE! Right here, right now. And I’m dressed as Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest!’

Eleanor, not really listening, offered him only the wannest of smiles.

‘Imagine me, El!’ he cried stubbornly, determined to get a better response, ‘I’m a hundred foot in the air …’ He stood up, grasping the nearest candelabra as he rose, his infuriating, actorish laughter filling the air. He held the flames aloft, waving them this way and that –

‘… I’m holding onto that rigging for grim death! …’

Eleanor watched him. Felt the cold, wet fear crawling slowly over her skin. Felt her lungs tighten, making it hard for her to breath.

She saw only the tip of the candle, the flame, and the tip of the flag …

‘… Next thing, WHOOSH! …’ Douglas shouted.

She sat quite still as he and the light swayed this way and that, from side to side and back again, flickering flame against dainty, deadly silken flag. She opened her mouth to protest …

‘HA HA HA! Can you imagine it, El?’

But she couldn’t hear him any more.

‘There I am. A man in tights!’

Her lungs had filled …

‘In tights, I tell you!’ shouted Douglas, laughing and swaying. She couldn’t breathe …

‘A man in tights! HA HA HA!’

There was a taste of smoke in her mouth, in her throat, and she could feel it … blackening her insides as it burned its path through her chest, scorching, melting, choking –

‘WHOOSH! WHOOSH! FIRE! HA HA!’

And then, somehow, Max was beside her, taking the candelabra from Dougie’s fist, placing it back on the table. ‘Eleanor,’ he said loud and clear, his strong hand on her shoulder … ‘Honey. I think it’s time we were on that dance floor, don’t you? They got the best Charleston playing … can you hear it? … It’s got my feet tip-tapping like nothing else …’

Eleanor smiled. Quickly, gratefully, feeling his touch, willing herself to recover. ‘I can hear it!’ she said, in the mellifluous voice she could use. ‘It’s too perfect! Let’s not sit a moment longer!’ But she was shaking. Max could feel it. He could feel her shoulder convulsing beneath his hand.

He bent across the table and kissed her. There and then. In front of everyone. Someone sighed, ‘Awwww …’, possibly Marion. The kiss lasted a second or two longer than expected, giving Eleanor time to collect herself. Douglas Fairbanks, observing it disconsolately, leaned down to Mary Pickford and kissed her on the lips, too.

‘Mary, my darling wife, I adore you!’ he cried.

‘Oh, for crying out l-loud, Dougie!’ Marion said. ‘P-pipe down for once in your life, why dontcha?’

And then Max and Eleanor pulled apart, Eleanor smiling at her husband. She stood up. ‘I hesitate to imagine what you’ve been discussing at this end of the table,’ Max said to everyone, but looking only at his wife. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been talking nothing but Investment Trusts, down our end …’

‘Eleanor, darling, you can’t even imagine how dull we’ve been!’ drawled Gloria Swanson.

‘Humblest apologies, Gloria,’ Max flashed her a smile. ‘We’ll do better next year, I promise.’

‘Except of course, if we’re to believe Charlie Chaplin,’ Eleanor said, with her lovely light smile, her beautiful soft voice, flirtatious and humouring to everyone around, ‘we shall all be in the poorhouse next year, anyway. There won’t be any parties!’

There followed plenty of laughter, and the scraping of chairs: chairs which, had Douglas bothered to look at them closely, he might have noticed were as familiar as the terrific little antique candelabra, and the terrific banqueting table, too. Every scrap was due to be returned to the studio props department first thing in the morning.