The Happy Years (1944-48)

by Cecil Beaton

  Of course Reddish House did not possess the wayward romantic remoteness of Ashcombe. Instead of hiding in folds of wooded downland, it presented its extremely formal exterior onto a village street. But just as I was looking out of its old glass window panes a dogcart trotted by, and children were returning from school; the village life seemed to have a delightful Miss Mitford quality. Moreover, the house was a real house — not a fantasy, makeshift pretence like Ashcombe. This was the abode of an adult person: perhaps it would be a good thing if I started living up to my swiftly advancing age. But could I afford to buy a real house? And particularly one like this which must surely be so much in demand — small, compact, but of a fine quality? The fact that it was illustrated in early books as a gem of domestic architecture gave it an extra cachet and value.

  Although I had never made his acquaintance I sent a telegram to Dr Wood commiserating upon the recent death of his wife, then boldly asked him for the first offer of refusal of his house. I discovered that the property had been left by Mrs Wood to her daughter who did not wish to occupy the house herself, yet was unable to keep her father there in solitary misery. She wished to sell her legacy as quickly and as painlessly as possible. No doubt if she had advertised in Country Life the house would have fetched more than the ten thousand pounds she asked me and with which, with alacrity, I bought it — only later wondering how I would find the money to foot the bill.

  Soon my enthusiasm to convert the house to my own taste had fired me to the extent that a dozen times each night I would switch on the bedside light to record a note or an idea about the way the hall could be enlarged, rustic oak-beams covered, and extra windows inserted.

  When my Ashcombe furniture appeared from storage out of the vans, most of it had immediately to be sent for sale in the Caledonian market, whence much of it originally came: what had been suitable for weekends of charades and folly was not suitable for Reddish. Besides, the made-over junk had not worn well. Reddish House dictated a more sober style of decoration, and its contents must be more respectful to all my predecessors whose histories I was busy piecing together from the voluminous deeds — dating from 1599 and beautifully inscribed and decorated with calligraphy and waxen seals — which came to me with the house.

  Restrictions on travel allowances are now lifted. Being able to fly to Paris gives me the feeling of independence that has been denied, and here I have found on the Left Bank chairs and tables that delight in form, colour and price, and in the Flea Market there are all sorts of old curtains and materials of a quality not to be found in England, even with coupons to spare.

  Broadchalke promises another great new interest: I am in love and life seems good.

  Part VII: New York Idyll, 1947-8

  ARRIVAL

  October, 1947: New York

  Sanatorium atmosphere of Atlantic boat trip: fellow passengers non-existent, long sleep, meals (potatoes in their jackets), no mental taxation, nerves gradually padded. Return to health and strength somewhat retarded on arrival by cruel Customs chaos on the dock. At last freedom.

  The New York light is so harsh it makes your eyes feel old. The colours are the primary ones: butcher blues and vermilion on hoardings, in shop windows, or on the children roller-skating. They do not fade impressionistically into the distance. All is sharp, crisp, hard, without subtleties of gradation. The taxi stops at a crimson light by a news-stand. Typical of the brash, relentless, conscious anti-art use of colour is the border of scarlet on the covers of Time magazine. This frame would destroy the pictorial effect of whatever it contained, but it strikes exactly that discordant note of commercialism which even the more enlightened people understand, and even respect.

  After the really terrible squalor of the back streets, the immaculate side-walks of Park and Fifth come as a shock. Everything seems so prosperous: the shops highly polished, the merchandise gleaming; the men in sharply-pressed suits, the women with freshly-set hair and new fur coats. But this eggshell smoothness has no real character.

  From my hotel room I telephone immediately to the Ritz Tower — to the person who has occupied my mind for the last two years. ‘Miss Brown don’t answer.’ Why is she hiding from me again? I am in despair. How to get through the day? Are my hopes dashed? Will I never see her again? Next day I telephone Wickersham 2-5000; my heart is pounding while I wait to be put through to her room. An unfamiliar voice replies, very gay and laughing and high-pitched: ‘No, I am not well. I have got sinus trouble — you can hear it in my voice.’

  ‘It is a year and a half since I have seen you.’

  ‘Is it really? How terrible — how sad.’

  ‘Did you enjoy Europe?’

  ‘Ain’t going to tell you.’

  ‘I rang you up yesterday but they said —’

  She interrupted me: ‘“Miss Brown don’t live here any more.” Well, she answered today. I’d love to come and see you. Are you in the same rooms?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be today and then tomorrow is Saturday.’

  ‘You’re still busy at weekends?’ I asked rather bitterly, knowing that she has to be at liberty when ‘the little man’ is free.

  ‘It may not be before Monday.’

  ‘Well, I have something for you — a lot of things.’ (Meaning all the letters I had written and not posted since her silence.)

  ‘Are they matches?’

  ‘Matches?’

  ‘Don’t you remember, when matches were difficult to come by, you gave me a big box and they have lasted all this time.’

  ‘And my red pyjamas I gave you — do you ever wear them?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but I look at them sometimes.’

  ‘I’m so glad, honey.’

  ‘Honey?’

  ‘Yes, honey.’

  ‘Hohney-chile.’

  It is all so easy and I am relieved; it might have been the terror, the silence, the return to emptiness. I am now at the beginning of a new offensive: if I am clever enough not to force the issues I may win through.

  RENEWAL OP FRIENDSHIP WITH GRETA

  ‘Perhaps I can come to see you between 3.00 and 3.30?’

  ‘Fine,’ I answered.

  ‘Will anyone be there?’

  ‘No one. It will be a morgue of silence, solitude and secrecy.’

  ‘Now don’t overdo it.’

  The third of October — one of my happy days. Luckily I was busy with the morning’s chores so other things took my mind off my obsession with the coming encounter. Then I made preparations as for a marriage. Flowers in the room — Old Golds placed around in profusion. I wore my second-best suit, my favourite being kept for another time — now I would rely on the impact of the shock of reunion. I came back early from lunch and waited; what would the next hour bring? I had remained in an uncertainty for so long; I had had to reassure myself with great difficulty at times that only circumstances were against me, and that all was really well. But the uncertainty that things might have changed has recently grown. Lately quite a few friends have met Greta on her holidays abroad and my news of her has consisted only of second-hand reports from them. All I had to reassure myself with was the very welcome, gargantuan box of chocolates sent to Pelham Place from Beverly Hills.

  When Greta arrived in London there had been photographs of her trying to duck in and out of Claridge’s wearing a vast, conspicuous white hat. This hat was subsequently seen in many parts of the city — but not by me. Each day I telephoned. Sometimes no reply — sometimes a hurried talk and she would call me when she could see me. Meanwhile Bobbie Andrews, the actor, told me he had taken Greta for a long walk in the park: she had been wearing the huge, white hat. I was extremely jealous. One morning, when I was out, Greta left word with my secretary that she would visit me that afternoon. I at once became almost frantic with nervous apprehension. The film studios had telephoned summoning me immediately to see Korda. The command was rejected. Another call came from Claridge’s to announce a delay.

  I lay fla
t on my back trying to calm my nerves, then another brief message to my secretary: ‘Unable to come around today.’ The following morning the huge, white hat left England.

  Perhaps the same sad game would be played this afternoon. Prostrate on the sofa with my eyes closed I visualized the arrival, the wandering around, the sitting in this chair. My heart started to thump so violently that it was almost alarming. I looked at my watch: ten minutes had passed, the longest ten minutes ever experienced. The watch again — five more minutes had passed. A bowl of fruit was moved from a side table into the centre of the room: some books were rearranged. Pages were turned of La Divina Proportion, but how to concentrate? Perhaps she would not be coming after all, and my punishment must be taken sweetly: nothing to do but to await with fortitude the next opportunity. I began to feel quite sick. Was there time to go to the loo? From the bathroom I wandered into the bedroom and looked through a mound of carefully sorted photographs. Then, at last, the bell. I must put down the photographs, one batch neatly on top of another. Again the bell: she was impatient! Only a thin slice of wooden door now separated us.

  ‘What fortitude the soul contains

  That it can so endure

  The accent of a coming foot

  The opening of a door.’

  Now I would open and know my fate. Now the certainty of reality gave me the incentive to act with decision and even a certain coolness. I had rehearsed all sorts of welcome: ‘My, my, my!’ or ‘Well, well, well!’ (in her idiom), or ‘At last, after all this time — what a long time it has been!’, or ‘What a charming surprise!’ Then would we fall into one another’s arms, or would we remain formally distant and circumspect?

  I teetered towards the door: with a sweep I opened it. I was not disappointed, but my heart withstood the impact: I still survived. She was wearing a black peaked hat and a falling dark coat: her mouth was very red, her face peakier than I had remembered, the nose more pointed. Her body had become a shred — there was hardly any flesh on it. Bowing formally, my reflexes caused me to exclaim: ‘What a charming surprise!’

  ‘Surprise?’ She was surprised.

  I stood my distance: she was again surprised. But I could not allow her to remain long in this state and soon she said: ‘So you’re massaging my back again, are you?’ All the while she was taking in various aspects of the room with an extraordinary intensity.

  ‘You remember this old sweater? I haven’t worn it since — this is the first time I have put it on. It is very warm today and I have been hunting.’

  ‘Hunting?’

  ‘On Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue. You get so many smuts in your eyes, and it’s so noisy and dirty.’

  ‘What are you looking for? Your fighter? Holder?’ The Old Gold is fit.

  ‘I expect you think I’m so busy?’ she remarked apologetically about the preparations for smoking.

  ‘Well, have you had any great emotional or spiritual experiences since I have seen you?’

  ‘La vie.’

  ‘And what do you want most out of it?’

  ‘Generally or specifically?’

  ‘Specifically.’

  ‘It would be foolish to tell you and I am not as foolish as all that.’

  ‘A French woman would tell me.’

  ‘Oh, let’s stop all this badinage! What is that word in English?’

  ‘Tomfoolery.’

  ‘Tomfoolery — oh!’

  We continue to yatter about nothing. It is pleasant enough, and I must play this coolly and not force the issue — not ask for explanations of the long past silence.

  ‘And so you met my friends David[28] and Michael[29] in the South of France, and you laughed at Michael’s impersonation of Queen Mary?’

  ‘Fantastic — it’s so true — so funny!’

  ‘Did you like them?’

  ‘Very much, and I love the British — the way they speak and their manners.’

  ‘Then what a pity you allowed so little time for your English stay.’

  ‘Don’t let’s discuss it. But a terrible thing happened at Claridge’s. I let the bath overflow, and I was so afraid the ceiling below would come down, and it took for ever to swab the floor with towels and my poor little sponge.’

  Even taking into account her love of secrecy, it was a bit baffling that nothing important was discussed: it was as if she were living on a different planet. But her practical side came out when, touring the apartment, she put things to rights and, as darkness fell, drew the mustard velvet curtains.

  Next day our meeting had changed to a calmer atmosphere when anecdotes and questions were exchanged. She even asked: ‘You enjoyed working with Korda?’

  ‘Up to a point. He’s a man of charm, but a cynic — and it’s difficult to work for someone who changes his mind to suit the situation; eventually the personal temperaments on the set made things difficult.’ I related how, only recently, hearing Korda’s voice on the telephone had made me quake in my innards. The idea of being at his beck, however polite his call, was anathema. After this interval I felt more qualms than ever at the prospect of getting into the trap again — yet my finances are such that, if some fairly substantial sum of money doesn’t come in soon, I shall have to sell the new house in the country. Greta said: ‘If you feel like this after three months’ interval, imagine how I feel after eight years!’ We both aired our anxieties and dread at the prospect of her working for films.

  ‘Yes, film studios are obnoxious places.’ The information that Korda had re-made the film of Anna, with Vivien Leigh in her part, in no way interested her. ‘You see what it was for me to be in such a jail all those years.’

  ‘And how was your visit to Sweden?’

  ‘I felt uprooted, knowing no one except a certain friend on whom I daren’t call under the present circumstances.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, my curiosity getting the better of my tact.

  ‘It’s a tricky subject. But the US uproots one: I have been here so long. Oh, well — what’s it matter? In any country there are only one or two people one likes. One has one’s work or, if not, then life is made up of unimportant details. There’s no difference.’

  I was then bold enough to confess: ‘The Swedish newspapers rang me to know if we were engaged to be married. Did they worry you about me?’

  ‘No — they never asked me anything.’ (Such a relief!)

  ‘Then why didn’t you answer my telephone calls?’

  ‘I don’t approve of the telephone.’

  ‘But we can’t just rely on the spiritual bond. Life is passing by quickly,’ I stressed. ‘Look how moth-eaten and haggard I’ve become! You don’t want to wait until I’m a total wreck.’

  ‘Don’t you know that Shaw said that old age must never be mentioned?’

  ‘And did you find the delights of Paris unalloyed?’

  She gave the impression of having been lonely: lunch and dinner, two dress shows, a horrible waste of time. ‘I can’t travel. I don’t know how to do it. I never see the bill. “The little man” gets all the tickets, makes the arrangements. I just go along, and pay my share at the end.’

  In her hotel room she had tried to study French, but she told amusingly of how she went into a shop and asked: ‘En quelles couleurs?’ The assistant said abruptly: ‘Oh, we have them in all colours.’

  Before leaving for Europe Greta had been exhausted — with tainting the windows of her Californian house. Her hands had become chapped with deep lines. She had scraped the window edges with sandpaper and then a knife, gouging big flakes off until they looked like fringes. Then: ‘Oh, so tiring to do the painting! To go on smoothly — and not to let it drip!’

  In Europe she had become painfully thin having caught a bug. Indeed at dinner she looked almost simian with untidy hair and large, smudged, red mouth.

  Greta’s due at four o’clock: I wait in my room expectantly. The bell rings: a messenger with an envelope. The bell rings again. She is looking very white but poignant. She describes having come from th
ree male interior-decorators. They are old acquaintances but their language offends her: ‘They say things “stink”, and they call people “bitches”. And I don’t like that, but don’t want to offend them by remarking upon it. Now I can’t stay long. I’ve got a lady calling for me here. We’re going on somewhere three blocks down Fifth Avenue.’ The woman arrives. She is a Mrs Sanson from Santa Barbara, in a fur coat and a smart back-tilted hat — the last sort of woman one would expect to be a friend of Greta’s. Florid-complexioned and reddish-haired, with a large diamond brooch, she proved to be a rollicking good sort, but without any imagination or claims to understanding of the ‘artistic temperament’. Mrs Sanson takes in the situation in a flash. Greta refers to me as her fiancé. In the ensuing conversation Greta lets drop the information that she had seen Lady Windermere’s Fan on Broadway, but after I had left the cast. ‘Oh, you go flitting about too much.’ Mrs Sanson, however, had seen me on the first night in Santa Barbara. The atmosphere has changed completely, the tension has disappeared and there are no more complications — instead jokes and pleasantries, cushions thrown across the room, and roses and kisses.

  ‘I am so busy!’ she says on the telephone.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Hunting. All I need is a horn and some dogs.’

  ‘Then you are too busy to see me today?’

  ‘’Fraid so. You take me by surprise and get me too muddled. But I haven’t had any air. Suppose we go in the park again? I haven’t been there this winter. Where shall we meet? How about the Zoo? How about that archway? I’ll be there at four punctually — I might lose you under that archway if I’m not on the tick.’

  I am having my hair cut. I look at my watch. How favoured, how blessed I am, that in half an hour I shall be keeping a tryst with that most rare and elusive creature! I go to buy socks and a pair of gloves. I look at the clock again: in fifteen minutes I shall be waiting under that archway. I rush back to my rooms at the hotel. Miss Cleghorn, surprised at my hurry, hands me a sheaf of telephone messages, but I do not look at them. ‘I’m going out for a walk in the park.’ She appears even more surprised at the information.