The Morrisons arrived, accompanied by their sons—a teenager and a ten-year-old, both of whom looked as though they’d rather be hanged than here.
“Oh, strife,” Shirley said, her only concession to cursing. “Why can’t Charlie and Joan leave those boys in a barn? There goes the food.”
“I’ll put another few pounds in the kitty,” Hannah promised. “It’s nice for Joan to get out of that miserable flat. It’s just not her, the poor dear.”
These gatherings were nice for everyone, after a fashion. The American exiles in London met regularly to exchange news and leads on possible work, and quietly put any extra cash into a pot to help any of the group who needed it. Some of the blacklistees were in far more dire straits than others, though they put a good face on it. Surrounded by Americans, it was also a way to feel at home, even if many of them would never have been friends back in the States.
Joan sailed up to Hannah and Shirley with much rustling of her crinoline and kissed their cheeks. Hannah could smell half a bottle of hairspray.
“I hope you don’t mind we brought the boys,” Joan said to Shirley. “I know Bobby ought to be able to manage Alvie for a few hours, but he’s really still a child himself, poor thing, and still in shock from the move. Besides, our neighborhood—”
“Will and I are always delighted to have the children here,” Shirley assured Joan. Hannah sipped her drink to hide her expression. Will had once told her privately that Bobby reminded him of “the sort of white boy who can get carried away,” which meant that, his Hollywood liberal upbringing notwithstanding, Bobby was not to be trusted in a group of white boys who spotted a lone black person. Or even a lone white woman.
Hannah agreed, though Bobby seemed too indolent for trouble. He was furious with his father for joining the Communist Party in the 1930s, sentencing them to the loss of their glamorous Hollywood life and, worse, his privileged American adolescence. He seized a whole plate of canapés and flung himself into a corner, hiding his face in a Superman comic book. Alvie parked himself near the table holding cookies, committed to an evening of sneaking the lot of them.
Charlie, armed with a drink, came to greet Shirley.
“Thanks for not minding the whole Morrison clan,” he said, gesturing toward the boys. “Little monsters. I keep telling Bobby the blacklist will be over soon and we’ll be back with the sunshine and starlets before he knows it.”
Will joined them to top off everyone’s drinks—he enjoyed being the host. “A teacher involved with the NAACP went to renew her US passport to visit her mother in Canada. The request was denied, which is how she found out she was accused of Communist sympathies. I shouldn’t count on seeing that sunshine anytime soon.” He kissed his wife’s cheek and returned to the throng.
“It must be unconstitutional,” Hannah grumbled. “And anyway, you’d think the government would want to be rid of all the Communists.”
“I guess they figure, keep ’em at home, the pinkos turn yellow, then turn themselves in?” Charlie said. “It’s a nutso time, all right. Better here than there, even with not much going on. You, ah, hear of anyone needing my sort of talent?”
Hannah looked at him. Joan had done an admirable job patching his clothes, so he looked distinguished rather than downtrodden.
“I’ll let you know,” she promised. “I’m always ready to read something,” she added, though reluctantly. Charlie specialized in huge, sprawling Westerns, the sort that sent Hannah into a sleep not even gunfights could disturb.
“Yeah, I’m trying,” he said. “I’m not much for television, though. Can’t get myself to think that small.”
Hannah suspected he meant no offense, though it was hard to tell with Charlie.
“Door’s always open,” she told him. He headed off to talk to the men with the air of a man who had done his duty and could now have fun.
“I bet he doesn’t want to work for a woman,” chimed in Olivia, whose husband Ben was writing a French film.
“Oh no, that’s not the case at all,” Joan cried. “He’s just a movie man through and through. He practically lived at his local picture house in Williamsburg.”
Olivia raised a brow and glided away—she was a minor actress and liked to circulate through rooms, reminding everyone of the character type she was.
“Why don’t you write me something, Joanie?” Hannah asked. “You’re so good with short stories.”
“Those cream puff things?” Joan pealed with laughter. “Silly romantic nonsense. It was all right for Woman’s Day, not the sort of television you want to do.”
Hannah sighed. She’d attempted this tack with Joan before.
“What about trying for the magazines again?” Hannah suggested. “You could at least bring in something.”
“No, no, no. The boys keep me far too busy.”
Hannah knew Joan included Charlie in that grouping. Probably more than Bobby and Alvie.
“To London!” Will boomed from his corner, raising his glass. “To freedom from persecution!”
“Is it time for the toasts already?” Shirley glanced at her watch. “I’d better get another bottle.”
“To telling HUAC and the FBI to stuff it!” Charlie shouted.
“To getting to work without that damn Production Code!” Ben cried. This was met with huge cheers. Working abroad wasn’t easy, but the screenwriters who got to write for the French and Italian industries waxed lyrical about the artistic freedom. The irony escaped no one.
“To better days ahead!” Will called again, and this was echoed several times.
“To London,” Hannah whispered into her own drink. “To getting to call my own shots and fight back from exile.” Her eyes wandered to her bag.
“No more scripts for you, young lady,” Shirley scolded, flitting by.
“No, I’m behaving,” Hannah said. “Though I almost forgot—Rhoda sent a drawing for you.” She retrieved it—a startling likeness of Rhoda as a pirate, engaged in a sword fight. “She says she’s fighting J. Edgar Hoover,” Hannah explained.
“She’s the one to do it,” Shirley said, raising her own glass to the picture.
Joan admired Rhoda’s work. “It must be lovely, having daughters, though don’t you worry she doesn’t play with dolls?”
“Paul’s mother sent her a doll when she was three. Within a day, the head was floating in the sink and each limb was in a different room,” Hannah said. “I much prefer her as a pirate.”