'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  A month later I was in Austria with W. I wrote saying how provincial and depressing I found Vienna, with the monotonous diet of goulash, the coffee with greasy blobs of cream and the highly coloured bottled raspberry juice that W. drank all the time, while exclaiming ‘Very good, very good’ to everything. Marjorie replied that she thought I would not have agreed with her about Austria, as I would be living at a more elegant level than she had been when there. The boys were home and the flat a shambles with meals, meals, meals galore. But John was on the wagon and in good form. They had just come from John’s ex-wife’s funeral at the Golders Green Crematorium – the Welfare State’s version of a Viking’s funeral. It is a gentle Everglades, hygienic without cleanliness, sans life, sans death, sans everything. But the parson had taken elocution lessons, and afterwards in Camden Town they had bought the boys a grassnake that had already escaped from its cage three times and released its stink glands on everyone. ‘I see you hanging on air,’ she added, ‘suspended between C. and W., rather in the manner of Blondin walking Niagara on a tightrope. Hail and farewell (I have not been drinking) Marjorie.’

  The last letter was written from a ward in St Mary Abbot’s Hospital. She had a busted ulcer, brought on after John had gone off to spend a week with friends in Dieppe. It happened on her birthday, when she had fainted in the King’s Road. She was having dramatic midnight blood transfusions and was rather pleased with herself for achieving what she considered to be a good healthy sort of ulcer, but depressed to think that she would have to remain in the ward at least another two weeks. ‘It is so depressingly boring and gloomy here …’ Would I please write, ‘as it’s so nice to get letters’.

  Soon after, Marjorie jumped to her death from the top of the Strand Palace Hotel.

  It was sad losing three friends, though now I think that perhaps they were fortunate to have been spared old age, further loneliness and increasing disenchantment.

  *

  Some years back, Cyril and I had entrusted some meagre savings to Michael Becher, who was then a stockbroker. Michael invested unwisely. But when I left Chester Square and moved into Lyall Street, Michael refunded some of the money he had lost that, to his consternation (he probably assumed he was saving me from total penury), went on a carpet for the sitting room that contained nothing but a divan, a Danish dining table and four dining chairs. The flat never became entirely furnished. The bedroom was carpeted in blue with red curtains, the same sateen being draped round the bedhead and attached to the ceiling by a crown. Sutro provided the most up-to-date cooker. As I had no use for the two top-floor rooms, they were advertised in The Times and eventually became rented to a pair of budding actresses, one of them a German girl cut off from her family by Checkpoint Charlie. The girls were quiet, good tenants and always managed to pay their rent. I became a landlady.

  Jocelyn Rickards lived in Lower Belgrave Street with John Osborne. I would walk to their house dressed in what John liked to describe as ‘my shelter clothes’: a blue djellabah, a woolly shawl over a sheepskin-lined overcoat, under which I wore striped men’s flannel pyjamas, a cashmere pullover and, for added warmth, thick, woolly socks and mittens. They would joke about my voracious appetite that often coincided with bouts of gloom. They identified me with the character in N. F. Simpson’s play, One-Way Pendulum, who was employed to go round to people’s houses and dispose of the leftovers in their fridges.

  Jocelyn introduced me to the writer, Wolf Mankowitz. We hoped it might lead to a job. But after deploring the fact that I had let such a big fish as W. escape my net all he did was give me the task of compiling a book of Jewish short stories. Most of them were so derivative that nothing came of the scheme.

  A Co-Respondent hunt still being on, only the most intrepid gentlemen dared to be seen in my company. Alan Ross (editor of The London Magazine) would take me to Lords cricket ground, though I had never been able to appreciate cricket, even when I was a little girl and Daddy used to take me to watch the famous batsman, Jack Hobbs.

  Alan had a passion for louche postcards, the kind you might find on the Brighton pier. They would be sent from Leeds or from wherever he had been to cover a cricket match that he then wrote up for The Observer. (1) A very made-up blonde with taloned shoes and a skirt up above her thighs is sitting on a couch, while a young man is about to put more coal on the fire: ‘Before you do that, poke it up a bit,’ she says. (2) The same blonde is seated on the lap of a red-faced, moustached colonel, and she says, ‘Do you feel in the pink, Colonel?’ ‘Yes, if I can.’ (3) A naked skeletal subaltern with a large, bushy moustache, clutching a towel round his parts, is having a check-up and the doctor says, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to have it off, it’s sapping your strength.’

  Christmas 1957

  Awoke to weather forecast. ‘Fog patches will clear slowly during the morning, leaving a good deal of cloud. This evening cloud will thicken and there will be slight rain.’ Alone for the first time for as long as I can remember. Cyril is spending Christmas with the Goldsmids. Not a word from Alan. After lunching with Gogi (whose husband, the film director, Lee Thompson, had left for Hollywood) I ran into Gerda’s old beau, Goodley, in the street. Next day, Goodley came to lunch and Gogi to dinner. What a time! Afterwards, went to a party given by Leonard Rosoman and saw some new faces. Am quite vapid these days. Unless I take a pill awake each morning at four. It’s as though an alarm goes off at that hour, leaving me tired for the rest of the day. W. has been seen with Nika Hulton’s sister Elena, as related by Sutro. A saleswoman I have known for years has been questioned by detectives and subpoenaed. She was very nice about it, but the effect is always upsetting. We should be doing the same to W.; he would collapse at once. Let him think that Sonia or Caroline are giving evidence against him and it would work wonders.

  Imagining he was doing me a good turn, Cyril got hold of some Serpasil pills. They were administered to wild animals to calm them while in transit from the jungle to a zoo. All they did for me was tempt me to emulate Marjorie.

  ‘You must go on with them,’ Cyril insisted. ‘You have to feel far gloomier before you can reap any benefit.’

  I cheered up the following spring when Alan took me to county cricket matches. And, one sunny day, we boarded a channel boat to see an exhibition of Mary Cassatt’s paintings in the small Dieppe musée. As the boat was leaving Newhaven, three bulbous nuns in wimples appeared and stood conversing surreptitiously like spies on the quai. Alan exclaimed, ‘Look! There’s Cyril, Weidenfeld and Sutro.’ From then on, whenever they cropped up in the conversation, they were jovially referred to as ‘The Three Nuns’ – the name of a famous brand of tobacco at the time.

  ‘I’ve heard reports of some distasteful activities by Nun 1, relating to us and communicated (I understand unsuccessfully) to Nun 3,’ Alan would say. From Australia, he wrote, ‘This place like London is full of nuns. I shall be home tomorrow “nun” too soon.’

  After spending a weekend with Nun 3 in the Quirinale Hotel in Rome, I joined Alan in Sicily. We visited Palermo, Syracuse, Taormina and Cefalu. One night, on arriving at one of the newly constructed Jolly Hotels, we found everyone had gone to bed. A night porter showed us to our rooms. Proud of his mastery of the lingo, Alan asked him to bring some sapone. We waited and waited, and were about to go to bed without any when a triumphant night waiter appeared hoisting a tray with two goblets of zabaglione, that delicious Italian dessert of Marsala wine, honey and egg yolks warmed over a bain-marie. Alan’s comment was, ‘They need to wash their ears out.’

  When Alan flew off to Tunis, I was wondering round the Cefalu musée when a ragged young man wearing patched trousers and a threadbare jacket came up and asked if I had visited the château. He looked about twelve years old but claimed to be sixteen. He had large brown eyes and very white teeth, and was a very pretty boy when he smiled. From then on, every morning when I left the hotel, I found him awaiting me on the kerb. He took me to the Beasts House (Aleister Crowley) to see the reputedly erotic murals and
into the hills where his brother tended a herd of goats, and helped me carry the luggage when I caught the train back to Rome. As a parting gift I gave him Alan’s black pullover.

  *

  When Kenneth Tynan came to Lyall Street, he always joked about the stairs. All his current lady-friends, he said, inhabited top-floor flats, including Doris Lessing, to whose flat we went to a party one night. Tynan sometimes took me to lunch at the Ritz where I had had my last glimpse of Uncle Dudley, sitting amongst the palms, drinking tea with a group of friends, when he had become a stocky, Pickwickian figure and walked with the aid of a cane. It was after he had written to The Sunday Times to congratulate Cyril on getting a divorce, so we were not on speaking terms and merely peered at each other between the fronds.

  When I mentioned to Kenneth that I felt sorry for Cyril – he seemed to be so unhappy – Tynan was shocked. You had to have contempt for someone you pitied. He linked love with vedette worship. To merit love you had to be glamorous. He always referred to Cyril as the ‘Supreme Commander’.

  ‘He won’t do for you,’ Cyril countered. ‘You can divide people into ruminative or predatory types. We are ruminants. Tynan is predatory. He has the mentality of a journalist, always on the go. Elaine is not masochistic enough for him.’ When I asked Kenneth what he felt about Elaine, he said, ‘I couldn’t bear a divorce. You see, I’m in love with her.’ Then, realising he could not get away with that, he added hurriedly, ‘That’s ridiculous, I can’t say that, but if she left me I’d kill her’ – not himself, but her, as though she were an indaspensable prop to his narcissistic ego. Talking of illegitimacy I said, ‘It probably gives people more drive.’ It hadn’t applied to him, he said, he’d already had the drive before he knew. He compared our situation to the Last of Chéri. Even so, his two books were typically inscribed ‘For Varvara Queen of the Big Top’.

  From Tynan on, for several years it remained my fate not to be drawn to older people of either sex, as in the past, but to those far younger and you have to be a Lotte Lenya for that to work out.

  When Sutro’s chum, Ivan Moffat, came to lunch in Lyall Street, he said, ‘You can’t possibly remarry Cyril.’ Ivan held a typically American attitude to marriage: to go back was defeat. You had to better yourself by marrying someone richer or more renowned. Just as later, when Kennedy was assassinated, a popular topic of conversation in New York was who can poor Jacky marry now? Until she came up with Onassis.

  Cyril spent most of that year out of England, taking trips with the Hansi Lamberts, staying with Joan and Paddy in Hydra or with Bill and Annie in their Perfectionist’s Palace in Spain. When in London, he lodged in Percy Street, in Poppet’s flat that she had let to the art critic, John Russell, whom Cyril dubbed ‘one of nature’s undertakers’ because of his bedside wake at the demise of both Logan Pearsall-Smith and André Gide.

  The cottage had been put into the hands of an estate agent and listed as ‘Oak Tree Cot, a small, old-world cottage, pleasantly situated in lovely country with ⅓ acre of land’. Then the painter Michael Wishart wrote inviting me to Ramatuelle and I too slipped away. Cyril and I had once dined with the Wisharts in St Tropez, otherwise I hardly knew Michael, who was then separated from Ann. Cyril was not at all pleased when he learnt that I was in Ramatuelle. He wrote accusing me of shiftiness and deception. I replied that I had no reason to hide the fact and Ann also knew.

  The South of France had already become a summer tourist trap. The tiny place of Ramatuelle was a vast parking lot with blaring radios, molten thighs, bare feet, bleached heads and gaping locals. Michael’s walled house had faint privacy. Day and night couples tramped the alleys, or stood gazing up at the sumptuous, newly hung Wishart drapes. In the mornings, Michael drove off to work saying, ‘I want to paint a little picture of a few crocus-coloured Medusas for you,’ or he would come back and report that he was working on a ‘big gold and lettuce-heart green painting redolent of Aragon’. If I was feeling energetic, I would walk down to St Tropez and meet him for dinner. In August, to escape the hordes, we drove to Spain and were joined by Cyril in Madrid. When he arrived in the Hotel Fenix, Cyril came up to the room and we ordered drinks. The three of us were about to go out to dinner, when Cyril noted that his wallet was missing. Then I remembered seeing the waiter bend over and pick up something from the foot of the bed. We complained to the management, but Cyril never recovered his pesetas or travellers cheques.

  In his autobiography, High Diver, Wishart wrote, ‘Cyril was in a very good mood, which is by no means always the case. Barbara enhanced his good humour by complaining about me, while I paid the bills …’

  When Cyril got back to England he sent a mandat. From San Sebastian I wrote and thanked him, adding ‘This is a very pretty place, it seems to have come to life since the Farouk trip. The bullfights are the best and I regret to say (don’t be shocked) I am rather spellbound. Today, there were six, bad, tricky bulls; one jumped over the barricade immediately it got into the ring. Antonio Ordoñez was marvellous. Franco was there and Soraya, then divorced from the Shah of Iran, to whom Ordoñez dedicated a bad bull, which suddenly turned and spiked him in the left leg. He refused to have the wound dressed and did a perfect kill. Sorry to be such an enthusiast. Burgos is wonderful. The most beautiful town in Spain. Now don’t be discouraged about your new house. You will make it very nice, have lots of friends in it and be very happy there. Michael sends his best wishes et courage, he enjoyed Madrid much more because you were there. Don’t be unhappy, you wily old baby … B.’

  Chapter X

  ‘Whatever Are You Going To Do Now?’

  Due to Cyril’s fear of further publicity and my need to get over the whole Weidenfeld era, we finally agreed not to fight the divorce case. Sutro acted as my negotiator, with Marreco acting for W. Sutro hoped that finally he would be able to clinch the deal on desertion. In that way Cyril would not be implicated. So I wrote to Mr Pett of Gordon Dadds:

  It has now been decided to settle the case out of court and I have agreed to accept payment of £2,000, to be paid over a period of six years, with £400 down straightaway for this year. In return I withdraw my defence, but not until the covenant has been put through, of course. With regard to costs, Mr Weidenfeld pays his own (this must be guaranteed in writing) and Mr Connolly has agreed to pay mine as well as his own. Telephone me if you need to discuss anything. Today I am in bed with a lingering cold …

  Mr Pett was sorry to hear I was in bed with a cold and wrote to say that it was, of course, for me to decide whether or not to fight my husband’s case, but that I had obviously misconceived the position, if I hoped the case would be settled on desertion. For, if I withdrew my defence, W. would proceed and obtain a decree of judicial separation on the grounds of adultery:

  If he obtains his decree – as I think he is bound to do on an undefended case – he will, when the three-year period from the date of the marriage has expired, file a petition for divorce based on the same grounds as in his present petition.

  Mr Pett added that he did not know who had been negotiating the arrangements, but to his mind a covenant such as I suggested might well be quite illegal and that we had better leave the matter open until I had fully recovered from my cold.

  Next came a letter from W.’s solicitors, Theodore Goddard, to say:

  Our client instructs us he will pay Peter Jones’ account for £13.2.6d and the account of Phelps Beddard for £19.1.3d, which relates to some gift your client made to our client, and our client will instruct his servants to look into the question of the blue Bristol jug and the bottle of champagne.

  Our client instructs us that his telephone account shows toll and trunk calls made during the period March 14 to June 17 while your client was in occupation of the house at Chester Square totalling about £20, and this too he will pay.

  Gordon Dadds were cockahoop and they wrote, ‘It seems there is a change of tactics on the part of your husband!’ Adding:

  We have succeeded in tying your husband into knot
s over the particulars of the petition. We obtained a further order from the registrar. Your husband appealed to the judge and although he was technically successful, the judge made an order which in the end was very little different from that of the registrar. These further particulars have not yet been delivered but, when they are, then I am afraid that at long last we must file your answer …

  Which was the following:

  We have had a further discussion with our client and given her certain advice which she has accepted. We are therefore writing to inform you that our client has instructed us that she no longer wishes to deny the allegations contained in the petition.

  Then I flew to Morocco to join Michael Wishart at the Grand Hôtel Villa de France, Tangier. ‘Maison de premier ordre avec tradition et renommée depuis 80 ans, entourée d’un grand parc et terrasses, vue unique sur la Méditerranée et la Casbah.’ Typewriter left behind. Will one regret it? Usual discussion: what books should one have brought? I have taken a D. H. Lawrence and Wu Chieng-en’s Monkey, translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley. Will they be read? Very depressed and weepy, but then it often happens when taking pills. Am trying bromide as a calmative.