And so as we chugged off into the thick jungle, the American teacher’s wife from Orange County said, “Look, your father’s waving!” I turned and saw his waving silhouette on the boat against the setting sun. Behind them, the vast shimmering river. I waved back as I disappeared into the jungle, and thought of all the goodbyes over the years we had had. I could tell that he was sad. He was used to being independent. He loved the adventure of travel. Just last year he had crossed the Khyber pass on a pony, but our trip was telling him to quieten down a bit.
At sunset the pink dolphins would come, performing synchronised leaps from the water; at night we would moor on the edge of the jungle and settle into our cabins with large glasses of whisky that my dad magically produced out of his luggage, and listen to the nightly deluge. When the rain stopped, the captain shone a huge spotlight across the forest in front of us and then snapped it off again. Miraculously a million different-coloured fairy lights appeared, darting about through the trees. They lit up the whole forest. It was one of the most magical sights I have ever seen: my father and me in a picture by Pierre et Gilles.
It was hard to sleep in the stuffy little cabins so in the middle of the night, I would still be up, smoking joints while leaning against the railings of the boat, the dripping jungle foliage close enough to touch, mulling it over. No father–son relationship is entirely easy, after all, and my father and I had had more than our fair share of trouble, but the weird thing was that in the end it came to nothing. There we still were: an old man snoring gently in his cabin and a son unable to sleep on the deck. Both still resolutely chugging upstream in that beat-up pleasure boat; both waiting for the “click” when we would turn around and give in to the strong black current of the river and just let ourselves be part of the flow on the cruise home. I could watch him sleeping through the porthole of his cabin, still dressed. The light by his bed threw his face into tomblike shadow; both hands lay on his chest; feet crossed, mouth slightly open; the fan blowing beside his bed so that his hair stood up and waved in the breeze. Like a knight of the Round Table, I thought. My father and me. Still going after all these years.
CHAPTER 49
The Old Ladies of the Woods
One afternoon last summer in Paris I went to the Bois to see if I could find the old ladies of the night, those amazing human ashtrays I mentioned before. My friend Lychee’s murder remained unsolved (although I thought I knew who did it) and the old girls had seen her on the night she disappeared. It took more than an hour to find the clearing in the woods where they used to sit. In the old days their transistor radio and cackles could be heard from far away. Now only pigeons rustled in the trees. They were not there. Sitting alone on their tree stump was a tiny old lady in a mackintosh and a Bette Davis wig. She reminded me of Maria St. Just. It was hard to tell if she was one of them or just a civilian. Soon she got up and walked into the woods. I waited for a while as dusk fell but no one came. They were probably all dead. I sat on the stump and thought about Maria St. Just and all the old girls I knew.
I was staying with Natasha in her flat in Ormonde Gate when her sister called telling us to come immediately to their mother’s house in Gerald Road. Upstairs, the shrunken body of Maria was sitting on the chair in her bedroom. The window was open and the curtains blew gently in the cold breeze. She looked like a little sparrow in death, a different creature from the woman who made us all cry as children. The girls stood at the door to the room, unwilling to go in.
She became ill the day her husband Peter died. Within weeks of his funeral her fingers were knobbly and swollen and her body began to turn in on itself with arthritis. It was as though a spell had been put on her. Little by little, she became unable to move and soon this eccentric woman took her beloved dogs for walks in the car, driving slowly with them sitting beside her around the tumbledown Wilbury estate, holding forth in an odd patois of Russian and English on her favourite subject: her two lazy daughters.
Maria and I became great friends.
“Roopie doo, you can come to dinner with Tennessee if you’re not too pushy,” she would say, and I would sit breathless as the poor little lump sat speechless on Quaaludes around Maria’s dining-room table. I met Franco Zeffirelli at Maria’s, and Gore Vidal. She always came with “Peterkins” or with a queen friend to see shows I was in and take me out for dinner afterwards. She was the only “grown up” in a rather conventional world for whom being queer was of little account. “It’s not what you do. It’s how you do it,” she told me once.
Now she was dead. Pippo, Franco Zeffirelli’s boyfriend, was staying in her spare room at the time and together we carried the body over to the bed. Her jaw was hanging open. Natasha called the doctor, and he told us to tie it up with a scarf. I went guiltily to the chest of drawers where strange ribbed brassieres and complicated girdles lay in neat stacks. It felt wrong to be going through her drawers. I chose a green chiffon scarf and wound it around her head. The mouth shut with a clatter that made me smile: it was the first and last time Maria would be open-mouthed. We brushed her hair and made the bed around her. We began to arrange her precious Russian icons around her body. I would put one in a certain position. Pippo would look at it and move it somewhere else. This went on until the mourners arrived and we went downstairs leaving Maria shrouded in flowers and icons and candles.
When death comes into a house something strange happens. Maria had kept her house alive with her incredible energy. Now the life had gone out of it, flown out of the bedroom window with her spirit. I noticed for the first time the peeling wallpaper, the threadbare carpets. A strange group assembled every night for psalms around the body with the Russian priest.
Like Lady “Bubbles” Rothermere, her great friend, she had been an unremarkable actress who married into the aristocracy. Both ladies were viewed with the deepest suspicion in post-war Belgravia, and both ladies had managed to lose their pasts in a mist of juggled dates and make-believe. It was worse for Bubbles. She was immortalised on film. She would never be able to change that scene in Reach for the Sky. Maria’s performances were all on the stage. Even if, as her detractors claimed, her brother drove a bus, or worse, her father drove a tugboat, it didn’t make any difference in the end, because Maria was as grand as they came. If it was a performance then it was one without cracks, right down to the dowager’s underwear in her chest of drawers. Who cared anyway?—Debrett’s needed the soubrettes.
I remember once reading a book by Mollie Weir, a now forgotten Scottish character actress, who wrote about an actress called Little Mary. They were both dancers in the West End in the fifties. Little Mary was going out with a lord, and she and Molly would go to the hospital—even then, in hospital, poor Peter—in their costumes from the show to cheer him up. At the end it says that “Little Mary got her lord, and I hope she is very happy.” I don’t think she was ever happy. She was Russian. She loved and hated too fiercely.
But she was loved back by the curious throng of guests who arrived at the house in the days after her death. They had drinks in the drawing room. Vanessa Redgrave. Elizabeth Harris-Harrison (Damian’s mother), Prince and Princess Galitzin. John Gielgud, Franco Zeffirelli. The Russian priest arrived, and everyone was given a candle. Then we went upstairs where Maria lay, cosily tucked in, the room flickering and jumping in the candlelight, the air thick with the smell of flowers and death and wax. We stood around the bed and the priest sang in Russian. The girls looked vacantly at the mother who had made their lives hell, but without whom it was hard to imagine living. Such is the irony of life and love. She had dragged this family of slowcoaches into the twentieth century and had died trying. As the priest sang we all looked at Maria (her jaw had never looked firmer), still marvelling that she would not spring up and say something squashing.
She was laid out in the Russian church in an open coffin before the funeral and then she was buried between Froggy Footman, the pug, and Mishka, the retriever, in the dogs’ graveyard at Wilbury. Maria may have gone over to th
e other side, the next world, but some girls of her age had new boyfriends and were going on tour.
I met Joan Collins through her ex-boyfriend Robin, who was several years younger than she. It was generally agreed, however, despite the chasm between their ages, that they were ideally suited. They adored each other. But Robin was afraid to venture out in public, and this was the only sore spot in a rather good arrangement. Joan needed someone to get her from book launch to political rally, from Swifty Lazar’s Oscar party to Valentino’s fashion show. Robin wouldn’t play. Actresses are actresses. One day the wind changes and, like Mary Poppins, they fly off to nurseries new. Joan unceremoniously dumped Robin and took up with a much younger man, theatre manager Percy Gibson. A lot of people took Robin’s side until the wedding bells began to peal, at which point, realising that they would be missing an event of considerable magnitude—Rank’s last shout—everyone began to revise and defrost. Percy was in the business. They could work together, etc., etc.
I was on Robin’s side, and Joan had not invited me to the wedding. But one night we were at dinner with Valentino, and we had it out.
“Now look here, Rupert,” said Joan, deadly serious. “I’m not twenty-five. I can’t show up to awards and fashion shows on my own. I want my man to be with me. If he feels embarrassed or compromised, or whatever it was he felt, then fair enough, but too bad. It’s a bore always having to rely on a queen friend to get from A to B. It wasn’t fair.”
I had to agree. “I’d love you to come to the wedding,” she continued. “We’ve been neighbours in the South of France. We’ve had a lot of laughs. So pull yourself together.”
I did.
The night before the nuptials, I’d been invited to a birthday party at Trade, a legendary and lethal club in Clerkenwell. I’d no intention of going, but Jamie came round to do my roots after dinner and one thing led to another so that by the time Joan’s wedding day dawned I was still only halfway through my evening, writhing around the dance floor, squeezing five into a toilet, and lunging at passing beauties until about two o’clock in the afternoon, when I left the club with eyes like saucers, drenched in sweat, and staggered into a taxi with several complete strangers. I had completely forgotten about Joan’s nuptials. Back in the hotel where I was staying, the party continued until Ruby Wax arrived to take me to the wedding.
“Are you on acid?” said Ruby when she saw me.
“Probably,” I replied.
“How many faces do I have?”
“Two.”
“Okay, let’s go!”
Inside Claridge’s, there was a line to greet the newlyweds. I could hardly speak and for some reason was walking diagonally like a crab. Joan’s tiny publicist swished up to us. “Joan and Percy would love to do a picture with you both.”
“Uhhhh?”
“This way.”
Suddenly we were in a makeshift studio with lights, assistants, make-up and hair (for Joan and Percy). I was standing between them. Percy was kilted. Ruby was playing up, doing high kicks and cracking jokes. I could only just stop my eyes from popping out.
Joan, on the other hand, looked sensational. Nothing suited her quite so well as a good wedding; this was her fifth. She looked like a portrait by Gainsborough, newly painted for the set of a Rank film: décolleté with a lavender train.
I was at a table with three of my favourite monsters, Ruby Wax, Wendy Stark and Lynda La Plante. Roger Moore was also there with his new wife. And of course no party was complete that year without Cilla Black. From the Shadow Lounge to the Shadow Cabinet, Cilla seemed to be everywhere.
The bridegroom sat between Joan and a little old lady with white hair—his mother, who was several years younger than the bride. Shirley Bassey came to sit on my knee halfway through the evening. I wasn’t sure whether she was a hallucination or not.
“It’s actually happening!” confirmed Ruby, laughing.
Shirley and I hit it off and vowed to make an album together. She was wearing a pair of red satin trousers with a beret and she suddenly slid to the floor like a slippery fish and disappeared. Everyone laughed, but then the toasts began and we forgot all about her until a few minutes later a manicured hand clasped the edge of the table and she hauled herself back on to my knee. Neither of us remembered having met before. Now the band was playing and she wanted to sing for Joan who arrived at that moment.
“Joan, it’s fantastic. Shirley wants to sing,” I said. Joan looked worried.
“Don’t encourage her,” she said firmly.
Soon we understood why. Shirley clambered onto the bandstand. The polite conductor, evidently thrilled, leant into the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Shirley Bassey!” We all sat up ready for “Goldfinger,” but Shirley had other ideas: free-flow a capella.
“Joanie,” she warbled, arms reaching across the ballroom. “Oh oh oh oh. I have known you since time was a baby boy . . .”
When I left she was still up there. No one could get her off.
Last year, I visited Elizabeth Taylor’s house once more, seven years after Roddy McDowall’s death. The occasion was her annual Easter egg hunt. I was in LA performing my seventeenth career revival plan to a fairly empty house. It was Easter 2005 and the three-day weekend stretched out before me like a tunnel. I don’t know why, but LA often made me miserable. I could never shake off the feeling of being an outsider, a boy on his first day of school. And so when Candice Bergen invited me to go with her to Miss Taylor’s party, I accepted with alacrity. Elizabeth Taylor was one of the ideals that had not been knocked off its pedestal for me, as was Candice, for that matter. (By the way, I call her Elizabeth, but please don’t think I pretend to know her. I don’t. I am merely her fan.)
It was a sunny day. The garden was no longer the white funeral bower of Roddy McDowall’s memorial. Now it resembled a fruit salad. Its herbaceous borders were crammed with phlox and tobacco plants. A little pen on the lawn contained a family of lambs, a sweet black dwarf pig and a duck. Their agent hovered discreetly behind a tree. Veronique Peck, Gregory’s widow, arrived, looking more beautiful than ever, in a flowing see-through coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Arnie Klein, the famous LA collagen doctor, sat with a group of daddy bears around a table by the pool. He wore a bracelet with “Botox” inscribed in diamonds. It was his nurse who had mothered poor Michael Jackson’s children. Would he be there? Candy and I wondered as we drove up the driveway towards the house. (Probably not: he was busy fighting for his life in the Santa Maria courtroom, celebrating Easter more traditionally, by being strung up and crucified for all America to watch.) But Carrie Fisher was there with her daughter, and Nastassja Kinski was there with hers.
By four o’clock Elizabeth still had not come down, although Bob Daly, the former chairman of Warner Brothers, informed us that her make-up and hair were already done, but that she had suddenly decided to take a bath. (Aha, I thought, the old Bianca Jagger technique: do your make-up and then soak in a moderately warm bath for that special glow.) Finally José, hairdresser to the stars, came down in a cowboy hat and a bag bulging with tricks of the trade to tell us she would be down presently. If I was starting over and was crazy enough to try this business again, José’s job would be ideal, I thought out loud. The others didn’t agree.
Half an hour later she made her entrance in a wheelchair. She had black spiky hair this time and more glorious jewels hung around her neck. No wonder she had a wheelchair; the weight of the Burton ring alone probably warranted a Zimmer frame. She looked tiny, like the sheep and the little duck, but when her eyes locked briefly with yours there was intense electricity. I should think there was not much point pretending with Elizabeth. Those eyes bored right through you. They were full of experience but also compassion. This was the only woman who dared give AIDS its public face way back in the grim Reaganite eighties. Ronnie never mentioned the word during eight years of office. She fought tirelessly and forced the world to look when everyone else would have happily brushed it under the carpet.
; Unlike many stars Elizabeth’s act never looked manufactured. All actors act. They can’t stop themselves. They have given everything to it, after all, but in many cases there was not much to give. The great thing about Elizabeth Taylor was that she had a great life force. She had lived spontaneously in front of the popping flashbulbs and there was no subterfuge, no filter in those famous eyes. Even on Easter Day, late for her own party, in a wheelchair, there was nothing faked, although the performance was stunning. At one point she valiantly decided to get out of her chair to chat. A hundred arms shot out and pulled her up as if she were a little baby being lifted out of her paddling pool. Everyone adored her and it was sweet to watch. On her feet she was tinier than ever, and finding herself simply standing and chatting, she slipped back into her chair after a few seconds as if it were a nearby couch.
CHAPTER 50
Goodbye, Hollywood
I was staying in the abandoned Deco tower on Sunset that I used to break into all those years ago when I was starting out. Like me, it had been through several incarnations since those days. Now it had been renovated by Paul Fortune and called the Argyle. Every foreign trader has their hotel in LA and mine had always been the Beverly Hills, but suddenly the smell of canned flora had lost its charm. The ramshackle Polo Lounge, that strange clumsy extension, no longer conjured up Sharon Tate or Jacqueline Susann, even though, that spring of 2005, I had my last tête-à-tête with Gavin Lambert there before he died. We talked about Roddy, John Schlesinger and Krishnamurti, a philosopher I loved.
Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins Page 44