“Let’s go have drinks on my verandah!” said Peg. “Except that I forgot to buy a home with a verandah, so let’s go have drinks in the filthy living room above my theater, and we can pretend that we’re having drinks on my verandah!”
“Brilliant Peg,” said Edna. “How violently I’ve missed you!”
A few trays of martinis later, it was as if I’d known Edna Parker Watson forever.
She was the most charming presence I’d ever watched light up a room. She was a sort of elfin queen, what with her bright little face, and her dancing gray eyes. Nothing about her was quite what it seemed. She was pale, but she didn’t seem weak or delicate. And she was awfully dainty—with the tiniest shoulders and a slender frame—but she didn’t look fragile. She had a hearty laugh and a robust bounce to her step that belied her size and her pallid coloring.
I suppose you could call her a non-frail waif.
The exact source of her beauty was difficult to place, for her features were not perfect—not like the girls I’d been romping about with all summer. Her face was quite round, and she didn’t have the dramatic cheekbones that were so much in vogue back then. And she wasn’t young. She had to be at least fifty, and she wasn’t trying to hide it. You couldn’t tell her age from a distance (she had been able to play Juliet well into her forties, I would later learn—and had easily gotten away with it, too), but once you looked closely, you could see that the skin around her eyes was crumbling with fine lines, and her jawline was getting soft. There were strands of silver in that chic, short hair of hers, as well. But her spirit was youthful. She was utterly unconvincing as a fifty-year-old woman—let’s just put it that way. Or maybe her age didn’t matter to her, so she didn’t project any concern about it. The trouble with so many aging actresses is that they don’t want to let nature do as it wishes—but nature seemed to have no particular vengeance against Edna, nor did she have a gripe against it.
Her greatest natural gift, though, was warmth. She delighted in all that she beheld, and it made you want to stay near her, in order to bask in her delight. Even Olive’s normally stern face relaxed into a rare expression of joy at the sight of Edna. They embraced as old friends—for that is exactly what they were. As I discovered that night, Edna and Peg and Olive had all met on the battlefields of France, when Edna was part of a British touring company, putting on shows for wounded soldiers—shows that my Aunt Peg and Olive helped to produce.
“Somewhere on this planet,” said Edna, “there’s a photograph of the three of us in a field ambulance together, and I would give anything to see it again. We were so young! And we were wearing those terribly practical frocks, with no waistlines.”
“I remember that picture,” said Olive. “We were muddy.”
“We were always muddy, Olive,” said Edna. “It was a battlefield. I will never forget the cold and damp. Do you remember how I had to make my own stage makeup out of brick dust and lard? I was so nervous about acting in front of the soldiers. They were all so horribly wounded. Do you remember what you told me, Peg? When I asked, ‘How can I sing and dance for these poor broken boys?’”
“Mercifully, my dear Edna,” said Peg, “I do not remember anything I have ever said in my entire life.”
“Well, then, I shall remind you. You said, ‘Sing louder, Edna. Dance harder. Look ’em straight in the eyes.’ You told me: ‘Don’t you dare degrade these brave boys with your pity.’ So that’s what I did. I sang loud and danced hard, and looked ’em straight in the eyes. I did not degrade those brave boys with my pity. My God, but it was painful.”
“You worked very hard,” said Olive, approvingly.
“It was you nurses who worked hard, Olive,” said Edna. “I remember the whole lot of you having dysentery and chilblains—but then you’d say, ‘At least we don’t have infected bayonet wounds, girls! Chins up!’ What heroes you were. Especially you, Olive. Equal to any emergency, you were. I’ve never forgotten it.”
Receiving this compliment, Olive’s face was suddenly lit up by the most unusual expression. By my stars, I do believe it