A Week in Winter(44)

‘They’re all right, you know,’ said Freda suddenly, ‘they’re fine. You mustn’t worry. They’ll be cold and hungry, but they’ll be all right.’ She said it with great confidence, but it seemed like everything was in slow motion until the telephone rang.

They were safe. The search party were bringing them first to Dr Dai’s house but there seemed to be nothing worse than cold and shock. Without giving any hint of her relief, Chicky Starr told the other guests that Winnie and Lillian had been caught by the tide and would need hot baths but that everyone was to start dinner without them.

When they came in the door, white-faced and wrapped in rugs and blankets, everyone cheered.

Lillian made very light of it all.

‘Now you’ve all seen me without my make-up, I’ll never recover from this!’ she laughed.

‘Were you trapped by the tide?’ Freda was anxious to know what had happened.

‘Yes, but we knew the tide would have to go out again,’ Winnie said. She was trembling but there was going to be no drama.

‘Weren’t you very frightened?’ The English doctor and his wife were concerned.

‘No, not really. Winnie was great. She sang all the time to keep our spirits up. She does a very mean “St Louis Blues”, by the way. She might give us a recital one night.’

‘Only if you do “Heartbreak Hotel”,’ Winnie said.

Mrs Starr interrupted. ‘Your son rang, Lillian, from England. I said you’d call him when you got back.’

‘Let’s have a bath first,’ Lillian said.

‘Did you actually tell him that—’ Winnie began.

‘I told him you’d been delayed, that’s all.’

They looked at her gratefully.

Lillian looked thoughtful. ‘Winnie, why don’t you call him? He’s your fellow. It’s you that he wanted to talk to anyway. Tell him I’ll talk another time.’ And she headed towards her bath.

Only Chicky Starr and Freda O’Donovan saw any significance in that remark. They both realised that some great shift had taken place during the long hours waiting for a high Atlantic tide to change. It wouldn’t all be sunshine or an easy road ahead, but it wasn’t only the weather that looked a lot calmer and less troubled than it had that morning.





John

John had to remember that they were talking to him when they called out his name. It had been so long since anyone had called him John, which was in fact his real name, or at least the name he had been given in the orphanage all those years ago.

Everyone else knew him as Corry.

There was a character called Corry in a children’s book which the nuns used to read at bedtime. A little cherub of a toddler that everyone loved. So John thought this was a good name, and the nuns humoured him.

There was a gardener in the orphanage; an old man who came from a place called Salinas. He was always telling them that this was a great part of the world and one day, when he had enough money, he would go back there and buy himself a little place.

Corry used to say the name Salinas over and over. He liked it.

He had no name. This would be his name.

He was Corry Salinas and when he was sixteen he got his first job working in a sandwich bar.

They had a contract to do lunches for film crews, and Corry soon caught everyone’s eye. It wasn’t just his dark eyes above the aquiline nose, his hair which curled slightly at the temples, his intelligent eyes which always seemed to smile conspiratorially – it was the way he remembered who liked peanut butter and who liked low-fat cheese. Nothing was too much trouble; even the most tiresome and self-obsessed starlets, who changed their minds and said that he had delivered the wrong sandwich, were impressed.

‘I don’t know where you get your patience.’ Monica, who worked with him, had a shorter fuse.

‘There are other sandwich bars. We want them to choose ours so it needs a bit of extra effort at the start.’ Corry was cheerful. He was not afraid of hard work. He lived in a room over a laundromat and cleaned the place each morning instead of paying rent.

He didn’t have to spend any money on food since there was always something to eat in a sandwich business. His savings account grew, and every cent was earmarked for acting lessons. No way could you live in Los Angeles and not want to be a part of the industry.

He and Monica were now an item.

Corry’s good looks meant that being an extra would have been easy. But that wasn’t really an option. It would mean hanging around all day for what was considerably less money than he earned through the lunch trade. He would hold out until he got a speaking part, and maybe an agent.

It was all part of the dream.

Monica’s dream was different. She thought they should move into a place of their own and set up their own fast-food business. Why work all the hours God sent just to make the employer even more wealthy?

But Corry was firm. His dream was to be an actor. He could not commit full-time to a catering business.

Monica was upset by this. She had seen too many people waste a lifetime chasing after a Hollywood dream. Her own father was one of them. But Corry was the love of her life, this handsome boy with the mobile face and the confidence that he would make it in the movies. She didn’t want to push him and risk losing him.

And then Monica was pregnant. She didn’t know how to tell Corry. She feared so much that he would say he couldn’t get involved. Contraception had been her responsibility. And Monica had not deliberately forgotten to take the pill. She spent days wondering how to tell him in the way that would least upset him. In the end she didn’t have to; he guessed.