The Loved One Read online

  “Where is Sir Ambrose? He’s sure to come this evening.”

  He came at length and it was noted that he already wore a band of crepe on his Coldstream blazer. Late as it was he accepted a cup of tea, snuffed the air of suspense that filled the pavilion to stifling, and spoke:

  “No doubt you’ve all heard of this ghastly business of old Frank?”

  A murmur.

  “He fell on bad days at the end. I don’t suppose there’s anyone in Hollywood now except myself who remembers him in his prime. He did yeoman service.”

  “He was a scholar and a gentleman.”

  “Exactly. He was one of the first Englishmen of distinction to go into motion-pictures. You might say he laid the foundations on which I—on which we all have built. He was our first ambassador.”

  “I really think that Megalo might have kept him on. They wouldn’t notice his salary. In the course of nature he couldn’t have cost them much more.”

  “People live to a great age in this place.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that,” said Sir Ambrose. “There were other reasons.” He paused. Then the false and fruity tones continued: “I think I had better tell you because it is a thing which has a bearing on all our lives here. I don’t think many of you visited old Frank in recent years. I did. I make a point of keeping up with all the English out here. Well, as you may know, he had taken in a young Englishman named Dennis Barlow.” The cricketers looked at one another, some knowingly, others in surmise. “Now, I don’t want to say a word against Barlow. He came out here with a high reputation as a poet. He just hasn’t made good, I’m afraid. That is nothing to condemn him for. This is a hard testing ground. Only the best survive. Barlow failed. As soon as I heard of it I went to see him. I advised him as bluntly as I could to clear out. I thought it my duty to you all. We don’t want any poor Englishmen hanging around Hollywood. I told him as much, frankly and fairly, as one Englishman to another.

  “Well, I think most of you know what his answer was. He took a job at the pets’ cemetery.

  “In Africa, if a white man is disgracing himself and letting down his people, the authorities pack him off home. We haven’t any such rights here, unfortunately. The trouble is we all suffer for the folly of one. Do you suppose Megalo would have sacked poor Frank in other circumstances? But when they saw him sharing a house with a fellow who worked in the pets’ cemetery… Well, I ask you! You all know the form out here almost as well as I do. I’ve nothing to say against our American colleagues. They’re as fine a set of chaps as you’ll find anywhere and they’ve created the finest industry in the world. They have their standards—that’s all. Who’s to blame ’em? In a world of competition people are taken at their face value. Everything depends on reputation—‘face’ as they say out East. Lose that and you lose everything. Frank lost face. I will say no more.

  “Personally I’m sorry for young Barlow. I wouldn’t stand in his shoes today. I’ve just come from seeing the lad. I thought it was the decent thing. I hope any of you who come across him will remember that his chief fault was inexperience. He wouldn’t be guided. However…

  “I’ve left all the preliminary arrangements in his hands. He’s going up to Whispering Glades as soon as the police hand over the remains. Give him something to do, to take his mind off it, I thought.

  “This is an occasion when we’ve all got to show the flag. We may have to put our hands in our pockets—I don’t suppose old Frank has left much—but it will be money well spent if it puts the British colony right in the eyes of the industry. I called Washington and asked them to send the Ambassador to the funeral but it doesn’t seem they can manage it. I’ll try again. It would make a lot of difference. In any case I don’t think the studios will keep away if they know we are solid…”

  As he spoke the sun sank below the bushy western hillside. The sky was still bright but a shadow crept over the tough and ragged grass of the cricket field, bringing with it a sharp chill.

  Three

  Dennis was a young man of sensibility rather than of sentiment. He had lived his twenty-eight years at arm’s length from violence, but he came of a generation which enjoys a vicarious intimacy with death. Never, it so happened, had he seen a human corpse until that morning when, returning tired from night duty, he found his host strung to the rafters. The spectacle had been rude and momentarily unnerving; but his reason accepted the event as part of the established order. Others in gentler ages had had their lives changed by such a revelation; to Dennis it was the kind of thing to be expected in the world he knew and, as he drove to Whispering Glades, his conscious mind was pleasantly exhilarated and full of curiosity.

  Times without number since he first came to Hollywood he had heard the name of that great necropolis on the lips of others; he had read it in the local news-sheets when some more than usually illustrious body was given more than usually splendid honors or some new acquisition was made to its collected masterpieces of contemporary art. Of recent weeks his interest had been livelier and more technical for it was in humble emulation of its great neighbor that the Happier Hunting Ground was planned. The language he daily spoke in his new trade was a patois derived from that high pure source. More than once Mr. Schultz had exultantly exclaimed after one of his performances: “It was worthy of Whispering Glades.” As a missionary priest making his first pilgrimage to the Vatican, as a paramount chief of equatorial Africa mounting the Eiffel Tower, Dennis Barlow, poet and pets’ mortician, drove through the Golden Gates.

  They were vast, the largest in the world, and freshly regilt. A notice proclaimed the inferior dimensions of their Old World rivals. Beyond them lay a semicircle of golden yew, a wide gravel roadway and an island of mown turf on which stood a singular and massive wall of marble sculptured in the form of an open book. Here, in letters a foot high, was incised:

  THE DREAM

  Behold I dreamed a dream and I saw a New Earth sacred to HAPPINESS. There amid all that Nature and Art could offer to elevate the Soul of Man I saw the Happy Resting Place of Countless Loved Ones. And I saw the Waiting Ones who still stood at the brink of that narrow stream that now separated them from those who had gone before. Young and old, they were happy too. Happy in Beauty, Happy in the certain knowledge that their Loved Ones were very near, in Beauty and Happiness such as the earth cannot give.

  I heard a voice say: “Do this.”

  And behold I awoke and in the Light and Promise of my DREAM I made WHISPERING GLADES.

  ENTER STRANGER and BE HAPPY.

  And below, in vast cursive facsimile, the signature:

  WILBUR KENWORTHY, THE DREAMER.

  A modest wooden signboard beside it read: Prices on inquiry at Administrative Building. Drive straight on.

  Dennis drove on through green parkland and presently came in sight of what in England he would have taken for the country seat of an Edwardian financier. It was black and white, timbered and gabled, with twisting brick chimneys and wrought-iron wind-vanes. He left his car among a dozen others and proceeded on foot through a box walk, past a sunken herb garden, a sundial, a bird-bath and fountain, a rustic seat and a pigeon-cote. Music rose softly all round him, the subdued notes of the “Hindu Love-song” relayed from an organ through countless amplifiers concealed about the garden.

  When as a newcomer to the Megalopolitan Studios he first toured the lots, it had strained his imagination to realize that those solid-seeming streets and squares of every period and climate were in fact plaster façades whose backs revealed the structure of bill-boardings. Here the illusion was quite otherwise. Only with an effort could Dennis believe that the building before him was three-dimensional and permanent; but here, as everywhere in Whispering Glades, failing credulity was fortified by the painted word.

  This perfect replica of an old English Manor, a notice said, like all the buildings of Whispering Glades, is constructed throughout of Grade A steel and concrete with foundations extending into solid rock. It is certified proof against fire, earthqua
ke and Their name liveth for evermore who record it in Whispering Glades.

  At the blank patch a signwriter was even then at work and Dennis, pausing to study it, discerned the ghost of the words “high explosive” freshly obliterated and the outlines of “nuclear fission” about to be filled in as substitute.

  Followed by music he stepped as it were from garden to garden for the approach to the offices lay through a florist’s shop. Here one young lady was spraying scent over a stall of lilac while a second was talking on the telephone: “… Oh, Mrs. Bogolov, I’m really sorry but it’s just one of the things that Whispering Glades does not do. The Dreamer does not approve of wreaths or crosses. We just arrange the flowers in their own natural beauty. It’s one of the Dreamer’s own ideas. I’m sure Mr. Bogolov would prefer it himself. Won’t you just leave it to us, Mrs. Bogolov? You tell us what you want to spend and we will do the rest. I’m sure you will be more than satisfied. Thank you, Mrs. Bogolov, it’s a pleasure…”

  Dennis passed through and opening the door marked “Inquiries” found himself in a raftered banqueting-hall. The “Hindu Love-song” was here also, gently discoursed from the dark-oak paneling. A young lady rose from a group of her fellows to welcome him, one of that new race of exquisite, amiable, efficient young ladies whom he had met everywhere in the United States. She wore a white smock and over her sharply supported left breast was embroidered the words, Mortuary Hostess.

  “Can I help you in any way?”

  “I came to arrange about a funeral.”

  “Is it for yourself?”

  “Certainly not. Do I look so moribund?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Do I look as if I were about to die?”

  “Why, no. Only many of our friends like to make Before Need Arrangements. Will you come this way?”

  She led him from the hall into a soft passage. The décor here was Georgian. The “Hindu Love-song” came to its end and was succeeded by the voice of a nightingale. In a little chintzy parlor he and his hostess sat down to make their arrangements.

  “I must first record the Essential Data.”

  He told her his name and Sir Francis’s.

  “Now, Mr. Barlow, what had you in mind? Embalmment of course, and after that incineration or not, according to taste. Our crematory is on scientific principles, the heat is so intense that all inessentials are volatilized. Some people did not like the thought that ashes of the casket and clothing were mixed with the Loved One’s. Normal disposal is by inhumement, entombment, inurnment or immurement, but many people just lately prefer insarcophagusment. That is very individual. The casket is placed inside a sealed sarcophagus, marble or bronze, and rests permanently above ground in a niche in the mausoleum, with or without a personal stained-glass window above. That, of course, is for those with whom price is not a primary consideration.”

  “We want my friend buried.”

  “This is not your first visit to Whispering Glades?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me explain the Dream. The Park is zoned. Each zone has its own name and appropriate Work of Art. Zones of course vary in price and within the zones the prices vary according to their proximity to the Work of Art. We have single sites as low as fifty dollars. That is in Pilgrims’ Rest, a zone we are just developing behind the crematory fuel dump. The most costly are those on Lake Isle. They range about 1,000 dollars. Then there is Lovers’ Nest, zoned about a very, very beautiful marble replica of Rodin’s famous statue, The Kiss. We have double plots there at 750 dollars the pair. Was your Loved One married?”

  “No.”

  “What was his business?”

  “He was a writer.”

  “Ah, then Poets’ Corner would be the place for him. We have many of our foremost literary names there, either in person or as Before Need Reservations. You are no doubt acquainted with the works of Amelia Bergson?”

  “I know of them.”

  “We sold Miss Bergson a Before Need Reservation only yesterday, under the statue of the prominent Greek poet Homer. I could put your friend right next to her. But perhaps you would like to see the zone before deciding.”

  “I want to see everything.”

  “There certainly is plenty to see. I’ll have one of our guides take you round just as soon as we have all the Essential Data, Mr. Barlow. Was your Loved One of any special religion?”

  “An agnostic.”

  “We have two non-sectarian churches in the Park and a number of non-sectarian pastors. Jews and Catholics seem to prefer to make their own arrangements.”

  “I believe Sir Ambrose Abercrombie is planning a special service.”

  “Oh, was your Loved One in films, Mr. Barlow? In that case he ought to be in Shadowland.”

  “I think he would prefer to be with Homer and Miss Bergson.”

  “Then the University Church would be most convenient. We like to save the Waiting Ones a long procession. I presume the Loved One was Caucasian?”

  “No, why did you think that? He was purely English.”

  “English are purely Caucasian, Mr. Barlow. This is a restricted park. The Dreamer has made that rule for the sake of the Waiting Ones. In their time of trial they prefer to be with their own people.”

  “I think I understand. Well, let me assure you Sir Francis was quite white.”

  As he said this there came vividly into Dennis’s mind that image which lurked there, seldom out of sight for long; the sack of body suspended and the face above it with eyes red and horribly starting from their sockets, the cheeks mottled in indigo like the marbled end-papers of a ledger and the tongue swollen and protruding like an end of black sausage.

  “Let us now decide on the casket.”

  They went to the show-rooms where stood coffins of every shape and material; the nightingale still sang in the cornice.

  “The two-piece lid is most popular for gentlemen Loved Ones. Only the upper part is then exposed to view.”

  “Exposed to view?”

  “Yes, when the Waiting Ones come to take leave.”

  “But, I say, I don’t think that will quite do. I’ve seen him. He’s terribly disfigured, you know.”

  “If there are any special little difficulties in the case you must mention them to our cosmeticians. You will be seeing one of them before you leave. They have never failed yet.”

  Dennis made no hasty choice. He studied all that was for sale; even the simplest of these coffins, he humbly recognized, outshone the most gorgeous product of the Happier Hunting Ground and when he approached the 2,000-dollar level—and these were not the costliest—he felt himself in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. At length he decided on a massive chest of walnut with bronze enrichments and an interior of quilted satin. Its lid, as recommended, was in two parts.

  “You are sure that they will be able to make him presentable?”

  “We had a Loved One last month who was found drowned. He had been in the ocean a month and they only identified him by his wrist-watch. They fixed that stiff,” said the hostess disconcertingly lapsing from the high diction she had hitherto employed, “so he looked like it was his wedding day. The boys up there surely know their job. Why, if he’d sat on an atom bomb, they’d make him presentable.”

  “That’s very comforting.”

  “I’ll say it is.” And then slipping on her professional manner again as though it were a pair of glasses, she resumed. “How will the Loved One be attired? We have our own tailoring section. Sometimes after a very long illness there are not suitable clothes available and sometimes the Waiting Ones think it a waste of a good suit. You see, we can fit a Loved One out very reasonably as a casket-suit does not have to be designed for hard wear and in cases where only the upper part is exposed for leave-taking there is no need for more than jacket and vest. Something dark is best to set off the flowers.”

  Dennis was entirely fascinated. At length he said: “Sir Francis was not much of a dandy. I doubt of his having anything quite suitable for casket wear.
But in Europe, I think, we usually employ a shroud.”

  “Oh, we have shrouds too. I’ll show you some.”

  The hostess led him to a set of sliding shelves like a sacristy chest where vestments are stored, and drawing one out revealed a garment such as Dennis had never seen before. Observing his interest she held it up for his closer inspection. It was in appearance like a suit of clothes, buttoned in front but open down the back; the sleeves hung loose, open at the seam; half an inch of linen appeared at the cuff and the V of the waistcoat was similarly filled; a knotted bow-tie emerged from the opening of a collar which also lay as though slit from behind. It was the apotheosis of the “dickey.”

  “A speciality of our own,” she said, “though it is now widely imitated. The idea came from the quick-change artists of vaudeville. It enables one to dress the Loved One without disturbing the pose.”

  “Most remarkable. I believe that is just the article we require.”

  “With or without trousers?”

  “What precisely is the advantage of trousers?”

  “For Slumber-Room wear. It depends whether you wish the leave-taking to be on the chaise-longue or in the casket.”

  “Perhaps I had better see the Slumber Room before deciding.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She led him out to the hall and up a staircase. The nightingale had now given place to the organ and strains of Handel followed them to the Slumber Floor. Here she asked a colleague, “Which room have we free?”

  “Only Daffodil.”

  “This way, Mr. Barlow.”

  They passed many closed doors of pickled oak until at length she opened one and stood aside for him to enter. He found a little room, brightly furnished and papered. It might have been part of a luxurious modern country club in all its features save one. Bowls of flowers stood disposed about a chintz sofa and on the sofa lay what seemed to be the wax effigy of an elderly woman dressed as though for an evening party. Her white gloved hands held a bouquet and on her nose glittered a pair of rimless pince-nez.