Happy Little Bluebirds by Louise Levene

Author:Louise Levene
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408878781
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-03-02T06:35:52+00:00

Chapter 9

She mustn’t forget to look English, said Miss Cavendish, when she telephoned Evelyn in Bel Air on Thursday morning to remind her about Dorinda McGee’s elocution lessons. Mr Kiss had rung from the airport and was very specific: ‘sumsing in tweed’. Publicity would be sending a photographer to capture the new voice coach at work.

Evelyn’s reflection looked very English indeed in the glass front door of the McGee mansion, and she did a tiny double take at the sight of herself back in her dismal grey suit.

A swarthy man in a butler costume answered the door. Behind him a woman’s voice drifted down the wide oak stairs.

‘Craven? Is that the masseuse?’

The butler raised an eyebrow and Evelyn shook her head and gave him one of the cards with ‘Voice Culture’ on it.

‘I have an appointment with Miss McGee.’

‘Miss McGee is in the rose garden, madam.’

The house, mildly medieval in style with mullioned windows and a heavy beard of ivy, was set in a large formal garden ringed by a moat-like rill. Twelve identical child-sized canoes were secured to the landing stage with twelve identical mooring hitches.

To the rear of the house beyond the swimming pool (heart-shaped) were a series of flower beds, neatly arrayed like the hospital kind and all planted with a pale-pink hybrid tea called ‘Pussycat’ which had been named in honour of the star by the American Rose Society. It was all as tidy as a park but the pattern had been wrecked by a newly-dug bed drilled with fully grown, shop-bought vegetables. A ten-foot section of white picket fencing had been leaned against the stately yew hedge. Behind it, neat rolls of turf waited to be relaid once Miss McGee had finished playing at self-sufficiency in her own little Potemkin pumpkin patch.

America’s Pussycat wore blue denim dungarees, a red gingham blouse and two dozen large freckles which had been drawn across her nose with a brown pencil. There was a crudely sewn patch on one knee of the overalls and a three-cornered tear on the other. The child was poking implausibly at the wet red soil between the rows of pumpkins with a very shiny new trowel while a photographer adjusted his lights and a youngish man in a sherbet-coloured jacket made suggestions from the touchline. There was a wide-brimmed Panama on the grass next to him and a moat-like ring around his brilliantined hair where the natty hat had sat.

‘Give her the worm,’ he ordered as the photographer screwed in a fresh bulb. One of the McGees’ Japanese gardeners reached down for a teacup and tipped an earthworm into Rindy’s waiting palm.

‘Try to look scared, disgusted.’

But the veteran of Dolly Daydream needed more specific direction. Did he want scared or did he want disgusted? Or did he actually want both at the same time? Could she do both? Sure she could do both.

‘Now give me grumpy-but-cute. And you look too clean. Rough it up a little.’

The child slipped a small mirror from her bib

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