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The razor, Norah decided.
She had considered stealing Mrs. Pendergast’s laudanum and downing it with the bottle of after-dinner port, but that left the possibility that someone would find her and either be clever enough to induce vomiting or convince Mrs. Pendergast to pay for a doctor to visit and attempt to save her life.
If she was going to go to the trouble of doing away with herself, she did not want anyone to undo that effort. No, it would be easy to steal a razor from Lawrence on any of the nights he was out whoring and gambling, and then only a few moments of pain before she slipped away in the warm bath.
Taking her own life was a sin, of course, but most days the prospect of eternal damnation was not worse than the reality of life in the Pendergast household. After the previous day’s work of laundry, scrubbing the entirety of the upstairs floorboards, and cleaning up after Mrs. Pendergast’s loathsome grandchildren, Norah wouldn’t mind getting some kind of rest. Even if it was eternal.
When the bell rang, she ignored it. Molly, the downstairs maid, was responsible for greeting visitors and judging whether they were worthy to be conducted to the see the lady of the house, if the lady had bothered arising from her bed that day.
“Mrs. Blackstone,” Molly panted, breathless from her flight from the front door to the back parlor. “The lady at the door—she’s asking for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes, Mrs. Blackstone. She says she’s your sister.”
“I don’t have a sister,” Norah said blankly.
A voice began echoing through the house, ringing against the marble floors of the front hall. It did have excellent acoustics.
“What is that terrible racket?” Mrs. Pendergast’s spare face was creased in its usual expression of disapproval as she descended the staircase.
“At the door, madam. A Miss Flamande.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Blackstone’s sister.”
The noise was drawing closer. The woman at the door had not waited to be received, quite the social faux pas. Instead, she was making her way through the dim hall. Even in the shadows, her kohl-darkened eyes and siren-red lips stood out against her porcelain complexion.
“She’s not my sister,” Norah said. “She’s my husband’s sister.”
*
After a brief but boisterous argument, Mrs. Pendergrast retired to her bed, nearly prostrate with shock, to hear her tell it. And Norah was well aware that she would tell it numerous times, to her son, her doctor, and every caller for the next week.
Before retreating, she had banished Chrysanda Flamande—or Christine Flint, as Norah knew her—to the servants’ kitchen, Norah along with her. She hadn’t been swayed by Christine’s insistence that as a silent film star, that she was “perfectly respectable, darling, practically bosom friends with Mary Pickford.”
Norah had never met Christine, and Jim’s memories of her were a thirteen-year-old’s recollections of his fifteen-year-old sister who had fled Pittsburgh for the fast pace of New York. She had kept up a faithful correspondence with Jim and Norah through the war, but after Jim’s death and the horror of the influenza epidemic, they’d lost touch. The last letter Norah sent to Christine had been returned, months later, as undeliverable.
“Clayton and I divorced, darling. He enjoyed the company in Hollywood a little too much, if you know what I mean.” On Norah’s confused look, she elaborated. “He stayed out at night with the boys, not me.”
“Oh,” Norah said, unprepared for Christine to speak even obliquely about the subject. Surely homosexuality was a crime in America as it was in England—though maybe things were different in the utterly foreign land of Hollywood.
“A. F. Brown is wild about me. He owns Colossus Studios. We just finished filming Kiss of Darkness, and you should see the necklace he gave me. I’m simply wild about anything Chinese.”
“How nice,” Norah said rotely.
Christine paused for a breath, obviously prepared to keep prattling on, but she narrowed her eyes to take in Norah’s appearance—her rough hands, the circles under her eyes, the unhealthy pallor that confronted her every time she looked in a mirror. “You seem exhausted, darling. You should have a vacation. Come visit me in Los Angeles for a month. We’ll get you some sun and champagne.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Whyever not? We’ll book you passage on the same liner I’m sailing on.”
Norah was too tired to equivocate. “I don’t have any money, Mrs. Flint—Christine. And even if I did, Mrs. Pendergast would never allow me to leave.”
“Allow?” Christine said sharply. “She’s not your mother.”
“No. But she feeds and clothes me, and I have nowhere else to go.”
Christine had filled every moment of silence since her arrival twenty minutes ago, but her eyes narrowed as she paused. Apparently she was capable of careful thought. “Is she good to you?”
Several of Jim’s stories about his sister Chavaleh had featured kittens saved from drowning or birds with broken wings. Not all of them had happy endings, and Norah had no wish to be another neglected animal rescued by this fluttery woman, even if they were technically family.
“How long are you staying in England?”
Christine ignored Norah’s attempt to change the subject. “That’s it, you’re coming with me. I have to go to Birmingham, then it’s down to Southampton to meet the ship.”
“Don’t be absurd—"
“You’ll be my assistant,” Christine pronounced with all the gravity of the late Queen Victoria. “What do they call them over here? Companions?”
“You want me to leave here and go live with you in Los Angeles? Dependent on your generosity? How will that be any better?”
“You won’t have to be dependent on me. I’ll pay you a salary. And if you want to leave, just leave!”
Maybe it was that simple for Christine, who had already gathered and discarded two husbands. “This might sound mad, but the last thing I want is another person I have to be grateful to.” One of Mrs. Pendergast’s favorite refrains was how Norah should count herself lucky that she had taken Norah in when no one else would. More than once, Norah had thought it would be luckier if she had died when her parents did.
“Think of it as business!” Christine waved a manicured, red-tipped hand past her objection. “Everything’s a business deal in Hollywood. We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other during the crossing and the train ride. If you can’t stand being around me by the time we reach Los Angeles, I’ll give you a month’s salary and you can come back here or go anywhere else you want.”
“A month?”
Christine’s smile turned wicked. “I’ve tried being poor, darling. Being rich is much more enjoyable.”
Norah’s imagination didn’t stretch far enough to imagine a life in Los Angeles, companion to an actress, but she did see the choice laid clearly before her. The lure of suicide, an easy end to her pain, or a step—a leap—into the unknown.
Wherever Jim was—in heaven, or returned to the earth, or waiting for the world to come—he would be so happy to know that she and Christine were together.
“California is sunny, isn’t it?” Norah asked.
“Honey, just wait and see. I don’t know how you stand it here. I’ve been in England for three days, and all it’s done is rain.”
“Then let’s go,” Norah said, pretending at bravery and hoping the real thing would follow.
“Perfect!” Christine pushed back from the table and began walking to the front of the house, leaving Norah to hastily trot after her through the green baize door. “Pack your things and we’ll leave right away! We’ll go to my hotel for the night, then take the train to Birmingham in the morning.”
Norah ascended the staircase, accompanied by the sound of Christine merrily lighting her bridge on fire. “Oh, stuff it, you old windbag! She’s coming with me, and you should be ashamed of how you treat her!”
She didn’t hear Mrs. Pendergast’s surely outraged reply as she folded her few clothes and gathered her possessions. Using what Norah assumed were her feminine wiles, Christine commandeered a footman to carry her trunk down the stairs and load it into the hired car.
As Christine swung the car around and began terrorizing the streets of Manchester, Norah offered thanks that they were continuing the journey by train the next day.
“What are you doing in Birmingham?”
“Picking up the dogs, of course.”
“The dogs?”
“Three Pekingese. You do like dogs, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” Norah said, “but I’ll figure it out.”