Читать книгу Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead - Livia J Washburn - Страница 7

Downtown Atlanta was hot and muggy, even at eleven o’clock in the morning. Clouds scudded across the sun every now and then and offered a little relief from its glare, but that didn’t affect the humidity.

I was sort of used to it—although anybody who tells you that you can get used to ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity is a flat-out liar—but many of my clients weren’t. They were from cooler, drier climates.

The German couple was really sweating. I heard them sigh in relief as we went into the air-conditioned Visitors Center next to the Dump, as Margaret Mitchell had called the house on Peachtree Street, which had been known as the Crescent Apartments when she and her husband, John, moved into it in 1925. They lived there while she was writing a little book called Gone With the Wind.

I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s not such a little book, actually. More of a doorstop. They could’ve sold it in the bookstores by the pound. It’s been read by more people around the world than any other novel ever written.

People love Gone With the Wind.

Some of them love it so much they’re willing to pay to come to Atlanta and see the apartment where Margaret Mitchell lived while she was writing it, visit the Gone With the Wind Movie Museum located in the same house, and have an authentic, genteel Southern lunch at Mary Mac’s Tea Room nearby.

The highlight of the tour, though, is the visit to Tara Plantation. It’s not the real Tara, of course—not that there ever actually was a real Tara except in the mind of Margaret Mitchell and the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers. In the first draft of the novel it was called Fontenoy Hall and was based on the farm of Mitchell’s maternal grandparents, but the name Tara and the image of the magnificent house were set firmly in the minds of millions of readers and moviegoers. One of the old plantation houses outside of Atlanta, a place originally called Sweet Bay after the magnolia trees that grow there, had been remade into a near-replica of the movie location. It was also a working plantation, producing a good cotton crop most years using only historically accurate methods.

Well, except for the slaves, of course. Historical accuracy only goes so far.

I had a short spiel prepared and went into it as soon as all the tourists were inside, along with Luke, Augusta, and Amelia. Melissa was holding down the fort at the office.

I’d done quite a bit of reading about Margaret Mitchell, from her birth in Atlanta through her early life and her disastrous marriage to Red Upshaw, the man most people believed to be the model for Rhett Butler; her later marriage to John Walsh and the ten years she had spent writing Gone With the Wind, with John editing it page by page; her other works (most people didn’t know she had ever written anything other than the one book); and her tragic death after being run down by a car on Peachtree Street, not far from here, as she and John tried to cross it to go to a movie theater. I covered that ground pretty fast, because I knew that what people really wanted to do was wander around the house, look at the exhibits, take pictures, and buy stuff in the gift shop: the same things that tourists do at every attraction in the world.

Luke sidled up to me after I turned the tourists loose to sightsee on their own. In a quiet voice, he said, “I think it’s goin’ pretty well, don’t you, Miz Delilah?”

“I hope so. Everybody seems to be having a good time.”

He hitched up his pants. “Yep, this here is a fine tour. Gonna be real popular. You’ll see.”

“It was my idea, Luke,” I reminded him. “I always thought it would work.”

“Yeah, sure, but you had your doubts. I know you.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. I had doubts about everything. That’s just part of being a natural-born worrier.

“Believe I’ll just circulate,” he went on, “in case anybody has any questions, you know.”

“Thanks, Luke.”

“All part of the job.”

He moved off through the Visitors Center and on into the Mitchell house itself. I walked into the gallery, where various historical exhibits that had to do with the South, not necessarily Margaret Mitchell or Gone With the Wind, were on display.

Right now it was a series of famous photographs from the Depression. I was glad to see some of the younger members of the tour group studying them. Too many young people don’t have much interest in history these days. I think there’s a lot of truth in that old saying about those who don’t learn from history being doomed to repeat it.

“Mrs. Dickinson?”

I turned to see one of the men from the tour standing there. “It’s Ms. Dickinson,” I told him, trying to sound nice about it. But I had taken my name back when Dan and I got divorced a few months earlier. I wasn’t Delilah Remington anymore and never would be again—although after more than twenty years of marriage I sometimes had a hard time remembering that myself.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you what a fine tour this is. I’m really looking forward to visiting the plantation tomorrow. I hope you’ll do me the honor of dancing with me at the ball.”

The Gone With the Wind tour that I put together with Luke’s help lasts three days. One day in Atlanta to see Mitchell’s apartment, as well as through the Visitors Center next door and the movie museum. The Tea Room lunch breaks up that part of the tour.

The next day, the group loads onto a bus in the morning and rides out to Tara—not the movie set, but the other plantation remade into a tourist attraction—where they get not only a tour of the whole place but also an elegant dinner and dance hosted by actors portraying characters from the novel, before staying overnight and having breakfast the next morning, then returning to Atlanta.

It would be more accurate to say that the actors on the plantation were portraying the actors from the movie. They were chosen for their resemblances to Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel, and other cast members. It’s quite a show, I tell you. I’d seen it several times myself. Being from Atlanta, when I decided to start my own agency and specialize in Southern-oriented tours, Gone With the Wind was a natural. Everybody’s read the book. Everybody loves the book. And who wouldn’t want to go hang around for an evening with Scarlett and Rhett?

“Oh, I’m not much of a dancer…” I said to the man who had come up to me—I was surprised at myself for feeling flustered all of a sudden.

“I have a hard time believing that. Why, a person can tell just by looking at you how graceful you are.”

He was flirting with me, I told myself in disbelief.

And I didn’t know whether I liked it or not.

He was a nice-enough-looking man, I suppose. About fifty, which made him approximately the same age as me. Medium-sized, with dark hair that I was pretty sure was at least partially a toupee, but a good, expensive one. The smile he gave me was a little smirky. Not too bad, though.

But the important thing was, he was a client, and I don’t like to mix business with pleasure. An old-fashioned attitude, I know, but I’m an old-fashioned girl.

How could I be anything else with a name like Delilah Dickinson?

“I’m sorry, Mister…?” I’d heard his name earlier but couldn’t remember it.

“Riley. Elliott Riley.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Riley, but I have a policy about not fraternizing with my clients—”

“Fraternizing? What is this, the army? I just want to dance with you tomorrow night at the plantation.” He moved closer to me. A little too close. “I got a thing for redheads, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” I told him, and this time I didn’t bother trying to keep my voice pleasant. I let it get nice and chilly. He had paid for the tour in advance, after all. But that didn’t entitle him to any special privileges, no matter what he appeared to think. “If you’ll excuse me…”

He took hold of my arm as I started to turn away. “What is this? What happened to that famous Southern hospitality you advertise on your Web site?”

“I’ll give you the same sort of hospitality we gave you damn Yankees at Manassas if you don’t let go of me.”

I know, I shouldn’t have said it. You may have guessed that I have this problem with my temper when I’m pushed far enough. Just don’t blame it on my red hair. That makes me mad, too.

Mr. Riley’s face sort of pinched in. He didn’t let go of my arm. I was trying to figure out whether I needed to take a step closer to him before I kneed him or if I could reach the target just fine from where I was, when Luke moved up behind him and said, “Everything all right here, Miz D?”

My fiercely protective son-in-law was three inches taller and probably thirty pounds heavier than Riley, who took one look over his shoulder and then released his grip on my arm.

“Everything’s fine, Luke,” I said. “Just talking to one of our clients. Isn’t that right, Mr. Riley?”

“Uh, yeah.” He looked nervous now with Luke looming behind him. He gave me a curt nod and moved on into the gallery. Luke didn’t try to stop him.

Instead he asked me in a quiet voice, “Was that guy botherin’ you, Miz D?”

“Oh, not too much. Just flirtin’ a little, I guess. Nothing I couldn’t handle. But I appreciate you stepping in like that, anyway.”

He nodded, looked satisfied with himself, and said, “That’s my job. I’m a troubleshooter. I see trouble, and I shoot it.”

“Didn’t Barney Fife originally say that?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“I hate to say it, but you’re gonna have to get used to things like that, Miz D, now that you’re single and out on the market again.”

“Being single is not the same thing as being on the market, Luke.”

“Yeah,” he said, like he hadn’t heard me, “a woman like you who’s good-looking in, uh, an older sort of way, you’ve got to expect to get some attention from those older, desperate kinda guys—”

“Luke,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth too hard. “Why don’t you go back to circulating, in case any of our clients need anything.”

“Oh. Sure, Miz D. But I’ll be close by if you need me. Just give a holler.”

“I’ll do that,” I promised, although I wasn’t sure I could think of a situation that would make me holler.

Boy, was I wrong about that.

After everyone had had a chance to go through the Visitors Center and have a look at Margaret Mitchell’s apartment, which has been restored to look as much as possible like it did during the years she was writing her novel, we all adjourned to Mary Mac’s Tea Room for lunch. I kept an eye on Elliott Riley, just to make sure he wasn’t bothering any of the other single women. He kept to himself, though, and didn’t even talk much to anyone else. Despite what had happened earlier, I felt a little sorry for him, obviously vacationing by himself like that. Had to be pretty lonely.

After lunch, we all returned to the Gone With the Wind Movie Museum, which was part of the Mitchell house on Peachtree Street. The exhibits there told the story of how the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel became one of the most popular motion pictures of all time, and certainly one of the most eagerly awaited when it was first released in 1939. The lengthy search for the perfect actress to play Scarlett O’Hara, the troublesome production that saw four different directors, including Victor Fleming, George Cukor, and Sam Wood, and the producer, David O. Selznick, work on the movie at one time or another (despite the fact that only Fleming received screen credit—see, I told you I read up on this stuff), and the controversy over whether or not Clark Gable would utter an uncensored version of Rhett Butler’s famous final line from the book. You know the one I’m talking about.

A screening room in the museum showed vintage newsreels about the fabulous world premiere of the film in Atlanta, as well as a documentary about the making of the movie. Let’s be honest. As many people as have read the book, a whole lot more have seen the movie. Without Gable and Leigh, de Havilland and Leslie Howard, the story would be a lot less appealing. So most tourists are more interested in the movie museum than anything else. It has plenty to keep people entertained for quite a while.

While the tourists were wandering around the museum and watching the newsreels in the screening room, I found a quiet spot in a corner and caught my breath. Things were going well so far. I hoped that the word would get around about what a nice tour I had put together. We just had to get through the plantation visit the next day without any catastrophes occurring.

I had to rethink that a few minutes later when I heard an angry shout from inside the screening room. It was followed by another yell and then a growing commotion. I muttered, “Oh, Lord, what now?” and looked around for Luke and the girls. But I didn’t see them anywhere.

Whatever was going on in there, it wasn’t good. I hurried in that direction. A couple of security guards employed by the museum beat me to it. They slapped the door of the screening room open and ran inside. I got there two or three seconds later. My heart was pounding pretty hard, because I didn’t know what was going on in there. All I knew was that there was trouble.

And my hopes for a perfect tour were disappearing with every yell.