I had just encountered true glamour for the first time. And I can say without hyperbole that every day of my life since that moment, I have tried to model my style after Edna Parker Watson’s.
—
Peg rushed at Edna and pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Edna!” she cried, giving her old friend a spin. “The Dewdrop of Drury Lane makes an appearance on our humble shores!”
“Dear Peg!” cried Edna. “You look exactly the same!” Edna released herself from Peg’s arms, stepped back, and took a look up at the Lily. “But is all this yours, Peg? The entire building?”
“All of it, yes, unfortunately,” said Peg. “Would you like to buy it?”
“I haven’t a farthing to my name, darling, or I absolutely would. It’s charming. But look at you—you’ve become an impresario! You’re a theater magnate! The façade reminds me of the old Hackney. It’s lovely. I do see why you had to buy it.”
“Yes, of course I had to buy it,” said Peg, “because otherwise I might have ended up wealthy and comfortable in my old age, and that would’ve been no good for anybody. But enough about my dumb playhouse, Edna. I’m just sick about what’s happened to your home—and what’s happening to poor England!”
“Darling Peg,” said Edna, and she placed her palm gently on my aunt’s cheek. “It’s wretched. But Arthur and I are alive. And now, thanks to you, we have a roof to sleep under, and that’s a good deal more than some other people can say.”
“Where is Arthur?” asked Peg. “Can’t wait to meet him.”
But I myself had already spotted him.
Arthur Watson was the handsome, dark-haired, movie-star-looking fellow with the lantern jaw who was, at that instant, grinning at the cab driver and pumping the man’s hand with altogether too much enthusiasm. He was a well-built man with a good pair of shoulders, and he was much taller than he looked on the movie screen—which is highly abnormal for actors. He had a cigar clamped in his mouth, which somehow looked like a prop. He was the best-looking man I’d ever seen at close quarters, but there was something artificial about his good looks. He had a rakish curl that fell over one eye, for instance, which would have been a lot more attractive if it hadn’t looked so deliberately cultivated. (The thing about rakishness, Angela, is that it should never seem intentional.) He looked like an actor, is the best way I can describe it. He looked as if he were an actor hired to play the part of a handsome, well-built man, shaking the hand of a cabdriver.
Arthur marched over to us in great, athletic strides and shook Peg’s hand just as forcibly as he’d done to the poor cabbie.
“Mrs. Buell,” he said. “Awfully good of you to give us a place to stay!”
“A delight, Arthur,” said Peg. “I simply adore your wife.”
“I adore her, too!” boomed Arthur, and he caught Edna in a tight squeeze that looked like it might hurt, but which only made her beam with pleasure.
“And this is my niece, Vivian,” said Peg. “She’s been staying with me all summer, learning how to run a theater company into the ground.”
“The niece!” Edna said, as though she’d been hearing fabulous things about me for years. She gave me a kiss on each cheek, wafting a scent of gardenia. “But look at you, Vivian—you’re simply stunning! Please tell me that you’re not an aspiring actress and that you won’t ruin your life in the theater—although you’re certainly pretty enough for it.”
Hers was a smile far too warm and genuine for show business. She was paying me the compliment of her undivided attention, and thus I was instantly smitten.
“No,” I said. “I’m not an actress. But I do love living at the Lily with my aunt.”
“But of course you do, darling. She’s marvelous.”
Arthur interrupted, to reach in and crush my hand in his. “Awfully nice to meet you, Vivian!” he said. “And how long did you say you’ve been an actress?”
I was less smitten with him.
“Oh, I’m not an actress—” I started to say, but Edna put her hand on my arm and whispered in my ear, as if we were dearest friends, “It’s quite all right, Vivian. Arthur sometimes doesn’t pay the closest attention, but he’ll get it all sorted out eventually.”
“Let’s go have drinks on my verandah!” said Peg. “Except that I forgot to buy a home with a verandah, so let’s go have drinks in the filthy living room above my theater, and we can pretend that we’re having drinks on my verandah!”
“Brilliant Peg,” said Edna. “How violently I’ve missed you!”
—
A few trays of martinis later, it was as if I’d known Edna Parker Watson forever.
She was the most charming presence I’d ever watched light up a room. She was a sort of elfin queen, what with her bright little face, and her dancing gray eyes. Nothing about her was quite what it seemed. She was pale, but she didn’t seem weak or delicate. And she was awfully dainty—with the tiniest shoulders and a slender frame—but she didn’t look fragile. She had a hearty laugh and a robust bounce to her step that belied her size and her pallid coloring.
I suppose you could call her a non-frail waif.
The exact source of her beauty was difficult to place, for her features were not perfect—not like the girls I’d been romping about with all summer. Her face was quite round, and she didn’t have the dramatic cheekbones that were so much in vogue back then. And she wasn’t young. She had to be at least fifty, and she wasn’t trying to hide it. You couldn’t tell her age from a distance (she had been able to play Juliet well into her forties, I would later learn—and had easily gotten away with it, too), but once you looked closely, you could see that the skin around her eyes was crumbling with fine lines, and her jawline was getting soft. There were strands of silver in that chic, short hair of hers, as well. But her spirit was youthful. She was utterly unconvincing as a fifty-year-old woman—let’s just put it that way. Or maybe her age didn’t matter to her, so she didn’t project any concern about it. The trouble with so many aging actresses is that they don’t want to let nature do as it wishes—but nature seemed to have no particular vengeance against Edna, nor did she have a gripe against it.
Her greatest natural gift, though, was warmth. She delighted in all that she beheld, and it made you want to stay near her, in order to bask in her delight. Even Olive’s normally stern face relaxed into a rare expression of joy at the sight of Edna. They embraced as old friends—for that is exactly what they were. As I discovered that night, Edna and Peg and Olive had all met on the battlefields of France, when Edna was part of a British touring company, putting on shows for wounded soldiers—shows that my Aunt Peg and Olive helped to produce.
“Somewhere on this planet,” said Edna, “there’s a photograph of the three of us in a field ambulance together, and I would give anything to see it again. We were so young! And we were wearing those terribly practical frocks, with no waistlines.”
“I remember that picture,” said Olive. “We were muddy.”
“We were always muddy, Olive,” said Edna. “It was a battlefield. I will never forget the cold and damp. Do you remember how I had to make my own stage makeup out of brick dust and lard? I was so nervous about acting in front of the soldiers. They were all so horribly wounded. Do you remember what you told me, Peg? When I asked, ‘How can I sing and dance for these poor broken boys?’”