Chapter Text
Guy couldn’t help grimacing as he walked through the foyer of Harry Samson’s home.
Ever since turning fifty, Harry had begun using his parties as a kind of contest with himself. Each was bigger and louder and more extravagant than the last—until Harry himself was almost invisible amongst the flashy entertainment and crowds of strangers guzzling bootleg gin.
Guy recognized fewer and fewer of the faces—everybody was so young, these days. When he’d made his way to America ten years ago, everyone had been older. Established.
He was now beginning to realize how he’d relied upon always having someone else to look towards. It had once seemed that the post-War crowd would be new forever—that there was something in all the glossy photographs and glowing reviews that could paint over the natural way of things.
They were all of them ill-prepared to become yesterday’s arrivals.
Harry was dealing with the changes in one way—they would all have to find their own.
The air was stifling, indoors and out, as he moved through the crush of people, most of whom didn’t give him a second glance. He could lose himself there, if he decided to. No one would know any different. He could grow old here as well as anywhere else—take what he could in the darkness and sleep it off while the sun shone. People did it every day.
Penelope Sawyer wasn’t one of them. She stood alone at the corner of the lawn, her eyes narrowed as she searched Guy out. Her lifted chin and straight-backed posture made her particularly imposing, especially amongst the glassy-eyed crowd.
“Miserable, isn’t it?” she remarked by way of greeting.
“You’re the one who insisted,” Guy reminded her.
“If I didn’t insist, we’d never go anywhere at all.”
Back before the fame or anything else, Penelope had been around. After all of that had gone, Guy supposed Penelope would be there still. They’d been signed to the studio at the same time, taking small parts in the same films, until someone caught onto their potential as a starring duo.
It had changed everything for them. They were a sensation, everyone’s new favorites. Guy still had the reviews in a box somewhere. Guy Dexter had been a little thing, up until that point. A costume he put on at the studio. A series of poses, a face that filmed well.
All at once, Guy Dexter was everything. His whole personhood became tied up in it. The new house in Hancock Park, the parties, the dinners, the travel…he was Guy Dexter to the entire world, wherever he went.
Still, people always wanted more, and it hadn’t taken long for an idea to take shape. If Sawyer and Dexter pictures sold, how much more could be gained by taking the partnership off the screen?
For a dizzying, reckless moment, it had felt exactly the thing to do. He and Penelope got along splendidly and always had. The fan magazines were panting at the thought of it. They’d both known the score, and it hardly mattered. People did it all the time, in this business.
Except he couldn’t, in the end. Penelope had asked for no explanation beyond the obvious.
“If you can’t, you can’t,” she’d said, mouth turning up to one side in her signature way as she’d added: “Only, you’d better mean it.”
He had. Meanwhile, Penelope had found herself another husband, though the effect was less dazzling than it might have been. She’d never held the inconvenience against Guy, even though most gossip rags blamed her for the split. A few had even determined there’d never been any split at all, and Penelope Sawyer was simply taking more than her fair share.
It seemed an awful deal, but Penelope never complained.
“What do I care? As long as people come and see the films.”
People always did—how could they not? She was striking onscreen, effortless. Like most of them, she carried her looks out in front of her. But there was something else to Penelope. Something truly skilled. She didn’t pantomime, didn’t pout or preen. She simply was, on the screen, and whatever she did felt true.
Guy couldn’t fault half the world for thinking he was in love with her. He was almost sorry he wasn’t.
But she was an awful tease…he shook his head in the face of her pointed words.
“You always talk as if I were a shut-in,” he complained. “But you never leave the city unless you’re dragged.”
“I’m working.” Penelope snatched a martini glass from atop a moving platter so gracefully that the man carrying it didn’t so much as blink. “You can’t hold that against me.”
Guy accepted the glass, taking a grateful sip. Harry Samson might have been overcompensating for middle-age, but he brought in the best gin. That forgave quite a lot.
“Talking of which: Jack Barber’s looking to poach me for the summer,” he said suddenly.
Penelope eyed him suspiciously. “What for?”
“ The Gambler. All about a man who chooses the tables over love.”
Penelope smiled over her gin and tonic. “You’d better watch it, Dexter. That stuff will turn you cynical.”
Guy laughed. It sounded odd, hollow.
Harry’s place depressed him—that was the trouble. He shouldn’t have let Penelope convince him into coming.
“The role might be interesting, anyway,” he said with a shrug.
Not that interesting was always the best choice. He knew what he was good at, and straying from that carefully cultivated path carried certain risks.
But he’d liked the pitch Jack had sent over. There was something real about Bill Benson. Was it cynical, to say that some people gambled away their whole lives? Or was it simply the truth?
Besides, Jack Barber was a reliable director. Not always the most visionary in the room, but he knew what would look right on camera, and he knew how to get it.
They wanted Myrna Dalgleish for the female lead, which could be great fun. They’d done a picture together some years before—Guy had tried and failed to convince her to move to America.
(“Why should I?” she’d said with a scowl. “I’m doing just fine here.”
Which had been quite true.)
“Will you do it?” Penelope asked.
“I think I might.” Guy looked away from Penelope as he said it, dodging her perceptive stare. “It’s too hot in the summer, anyway.”
“You’ve never said so.”
“I need a change. That’s all. Did you come with anyone?” Guy asked.
“No one I care about,” Penelope replied, brazenly earnest as she swallowed back the second half of her drink. “Why? Are you leaving?”
He hadn’t decided. A part of him worried that it wasn’t Harry, wasn’t his party. That he’d go home and feel just the same way.
Something had driven Harry to fill his house with strangers, after all. Guy didn’t see how he could avoid it happening to him, in the end.
“I haven’t even seen Harry,” he said, delaying his decision.
Penelope shrugged. “Who does, anymore?”
The shadows in the servants’ hall took on peculiar shapes in the silence of the late-night hours. For years, Thomas had blamed himself for them. He was drunk, he was conflicted, he was lonely…he was seeing things that were not there.
Only in the past year had he realized that the room’s peculiarities were indifferent to his moods and always had been. The shadows were what they were. If he wanted to live there, he had to accept them, for they would never alter on his account.
So he pretended not to mind as the shadows turned in on themselves, growing so dark they almost appeared discolored.
Perhaps they could put in more lighting, he thought idly, as he turned the page in the newspaper. Though he wasn’t sure where they’d find the money, not with the roof as it was…
He’d been about to turn the newspaper back over and start again when a door opened and familiar footsteps came down the hall at last.
“You needn’t have waited.”
But Miss Baxter didn’t look sorry that he had.
She rarely looked sorry at all, anymore. And why should she?
“How was the picture?” Thomas asked, reaching for his cup of tea.
“We enjoyed it.” (She was always saying that, now. We. It was only a matter of time before Molesley worked up the nerve). “Penelope Sawyer is lovely, don’t you think?”
Thomas shrugged. He went to the pictures more often, these days, as the house turned quieter and he received more invitations. It was something to do, and some of them were interesting enough.
But all that posing. It wasn’t anything like the spirit of real acting. Thomas would have rather gone to the theater, himself, but a chance for that was even more difficult to come by.
“She’s a better actress than most of them,” he said. “Though it’s too bad about her husband.”
(Not that Thomas could really feel sorry for Leo Murphy, a forgettable actor who surely only had his own career because he had married Penelope Sawyer).
“You don’t really think that’s true?” Miss Baxter sat down across from him, taking her gloves off. They were new—a soft shade of pink that matched the ribbon on her hat.
So many of her things were new. She was getting ready for another life, by degrees.
“I’m sure it’s true.”
He’d seen Penelope Sawyer acting alongside Guy Dexter, and it had been just about the only time he’d believed anything in a picture.
Leo Murphy never stood a chance.
“If it were true, why wouldn’t she marry Dexter in the first place? Everyone thought she would.”
“Perhaps he wouldn’t have her.”
He’d only meant it to tease Penelope Sawyer, but Miss Baxter looked past him at the comment.
“Never mind,” Thomas said brusquely. “Didn’t he walk you back?”
Her face brightened at once. She couldn’t really doubt Molesley’s intentions, not with all the evidence in front of her. It was only the hour talking—the stillness and the shadows.
“He did.” She smiled, and Thomas knew she was remembering it with fondness already. “I told him he might come in, but he has an early start. How was it here?”
“Just fine.” Thomas stood, picking up the kettle. “I’ll put more on.”
Miss Baxter made as if to stand:
“I should go up—”
“—you don’t have to.” Quickly.
She understood, sitting back down.
Thomas waited until the tea was poured to speak again.
“I’ve had a letter, today.”
Miss Baxter nodded. “From Mr. Ellis.”
Who else did he get letters from, these days?
He winced inwardly as the thought crossed his mind. Six months ago, that had hardly mattered. How could he be sorry for himself, when he had those letters in his hands.
Time and distance had dulled some of his gratitude. And—truth be told—Richard’s letters had fallen off in both quantity and quality. His precise metaphors, the crisp sarcasm, had given way to vagaries and phrases which meant nothing at all.
Thomas knew what it all foretold.
“I think he wanted to get it off, more than anything,” he said, hoping that was enough.
He might have known better. Miss Baxter turned her head to one side in sympathy, then said after a pause:
“I’m sure he must be very busy.”
“He might have said so.” Whether it were true or not, Richard hadn’t bothered to say any such thing.
Miss Baxter didn’t reply. She knew what it meant, she’d probably always known it would happen. What did he expect, one of them here and one of them in London? What could ever have come of it?
“I don’t know what to say to him.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t say anything,” Miss Baxter said. “Not right away.”
Lean back instead of pressing forward. That would be her advice.
But then, what had the alternative ever done for him?
“I wish he’d…well, it doesn’t matter, does it?”
He swallowed his tea too quickly, as if it were something stronger (and far less hot).
“It does.” Miss Baxter was quiet, but she was sure as she met his gaze. “Tell him, if you know what to say. But don’t say something else because you’re afraid he’ll forget you in the meantime.”
“It may be too late for that,” Thomas murmured. “It was a very short letter.”
“All the more reason,” Miss Baxter replied at once. “What do you lose, asking for what you want?”
He had no answer for that. Indeed, he’d been thinking much the same thing for a long while.
His reply to Richard was in the morning post.