'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  ‘After all,’ said the waiter, ‘we do get flour from Russia,’ adding that the mameys were only good for icecream.

  Though the return flight was scheduled to depart at 12.25, all passengers other than diplomats had to report to the airport at eight in the morning. When the luggage had been checked, I ran into a Reuter correspondent. He was awaiting the arrival of prisoners taken hostage during the American invasion. He took me up to the press balcony overlooking the deserted runway. The prisoners were due to arrive from the prison at 9.30. We kept scouring the horizon for some sign of life. In the distance, a Canadian plane took off, having deposited a cargo of meat that got flown into Havana twice a week. When the first car pulled up on the runway, the negotiators stepped out and some time later Castro’s car drove up. When the Pan Am plane landed to take the prisoners away, two journalists got out. They were not allowed up into the press room, so they stood on the runway shouting up at fellow reporters. Jokes were made to the effect that the delay must be caused by Kennedy’s cheque having bounced. A French reporter shouted down that he was no longer allowed to telephone. Another kept shouting down scraps of information. The prisoners had been well treated … there was still a small colony of Americans in Havana, living quietly and unmolested.

  ‘I hope you don’t get into trouble,’ someone said to me, ‘but you should have reported to the snakepit downstairs an hour ago.’ A few days back a woman journalist had been searched and had missed her plane for having a stack of hotel notepaper in her suitcase; it was thought that she had made notes in invisible ink. I remained long enough to see two buses draw alongside the Pan Am plane, and the sick and wounded, wearing odd trousers and shirts, some with missing limbs, sadly and silently boarded the plane which took off immediately. The vacated runway instilled a sense of desolation. There was chaos down in the lobby. It took an hour for everyone’s papers to be scrutinised. Cubans were having to exhibit their valueless baubles. One decrepit old Negress said, ‘I’ve got to leave, I’m sick, you see.’ Men’s breast pockets were stuffed with cigars but their suitcases were practically empty.

  I had thoroughly enjoyed my visit. The Cubans I had met had struck me as being very gentle, humorous and friendly. But it was a relief to get back to Kingston and see Jamaicans in flowered hats contentedly trooping off to church as a fashion show was being held round the hotel swimming pool.

  Then I boarded a cruise ship. On arrival in Miami I left my passport stamped with a Cuban visa in the care of the cruise ship’s Greek purser and entered the United States with an immigration card.

  Back in New York, I stayed in the Hotel Fourteen, or in Charlie’s little house on Long Island. He was then passionately attached to Joan Fontaine. Though still pretty, the actress had become rather stout and most exacting, it was said. I came upon them at a party given by the journalist, Gavin Young, who always invited people from various milieux and gave large, amusing parties in New York. Some wondered how he managed it on Observer pay. Intending to be friendly, I went up to Joan Fontaine. I cannot remember what I said, but she immediately took offence and flounced out, leaving Charlie at the party. Though known to be incapable of retaining the simplest employment, the incident increased my popularity, for it looked as though I had scored over this glamorous lady. Even Gavin, whom I wrongly assumed to be a misogynist, seemed impressed and embraced me with abandon on his doorstep when I left – as a gesture, alas, that was never repeated. But eventually we became good friends.

  Bob then took me to live with him in a large airy apartment over Carnegie Hall that the pianist, Peter Duchin, had lent him for the summer. Not that I saw much of Bob. He spent nights on 33rd Street rewriting articles for Harper’s. He would turn up for breakfast with ‘Hello, Kiddo’ and slip into the bed as I was stepping out. Infinitely more sympathetic and kinder, but with less energy (in order to keep going he took stimulants that he handed on to me) and a slogger in more ways than one, Bob struck me as being very similar to Weidenfeld. Determined to lure Bob into his publishing firm, W. surfaced again at this point, saying to Bob, ‘Don’t think for a moment that I minimise the difficulties that you would face in making the major change of leaving Harper’s and coming to work for us … as to financial terms I of course sympathise with your point of view looking at figures from an American angle.’ In spite of W.’s persistence when he was out to get what he wanted – ‘Perhaps we can collaborate all the same by your acting as an adviser …’ – Bob remained uninterested. It was only after a lengthy newspaper strike that Bob left Harper’s to become an editor on the newly founded New York Review of Books.

  As to W., he faded out altogether until over twenty years later when, to my surprise, he rang me up from London. I was living in Seine-et-Marne.

  ‘Your voice hasn’t changed at all,’ he said. ‘I hear you’re writing an autobiography.’

  To reassure him, I replied, ‘Yes. But I haven’t got on to you yet.’

  ‘I’m in the throes of writing mine,’ he confided, ‘and I’ve said some very nice things about you.’ The conversation was brief and terminated by him saying, ‘As you live in the country I expect you’d like me to send you some books.’ My voice might not have changed. Neither had his character. It was about this time that he was aligning himself with Getty and opening up a branch of his publishing house in New York.

  No books arrived. So I wrote a rather snappy note saying ‘How typical!’ A month later, two parcels arrived simultaneously. The books had been sent in duplicate and included two art books and two copies of A. J. Ayer’s Wittgenstein, together with two copies of a first novel by Paul Pickering, Wild About Harry – none of them, alas, readable. Since then, Taki has written in The Spectator that he ran into Weidenfeld in Italy where ‘our noble lord, since receiving a knighthood at the same time as the Beatles’ honour, has been staying at a house taken by two rich and ageing but very elegant American ladies. No sooner had he arrived than a native reported he had seen an escaped baboon and the fuzz arrived. Upon closer inspection of the property, the “baboon” turned out to be nothing more lethal than our George, sunning himself in the nude. Apparently, this noble lord’s secret charm – published here for the first time – is that he is covered with hair from head to foot, including his buttocks.’ Weidenfeld is quoted as saying that Taki would never have been able to get away with what he does if it weren’t for the protection he gets from four people: Gianni Agnelli, David Somerset, Tony Lambton and John Aspinall.

  ‘But I do understand why the great publisher feels the way he does. After all, protection comes to him naturally. He married one of America’s richest, La Payson, and now is friendly with an even richer one, La Getty. Protection is his middle name …’

  After Taki wrote this, inquisitive people kept ringing me to check on W.’s buttocks.

  Whether it was tit-for-tat or merely incidental, Joan Fontaine vamped Bob’s-your-uncle and afterwards Charlie told me she had found it very heavy going. By then I had moved into an apartment on East 83rd, delegated by Earl, who had upgraded to the fifties. Known as a railroad apartment that you entered through the kitchen, with a sitting room on one side and a slit of a bedroom on the other, it was quiet and had a view of the sky. Opposite was a wasteland. In fine weather, one could climb on to the roof and sunbathe in a deckchair. The rent was $75 a month. Although I always referred to the building as a slum, I was very happy living there throughout the next two years. Those prepared to mount five dun flights smelling of cats and cabbage were pleasantly surprised on entering to see a Sidney Nolan, ‘Bird Over Harbour,’ and some pretty English furniture.

  A piece on Cuba came out in The London Magazine and was picked up by an American monthly, Atlas, under the title, ‘In the Streets of Havana’. Atlas, the magazine of the World Press, dealt only in current affairs in translations and reprints from abroad. This resulted in a fan letter from Mr Morrow, a West Coast publisher, friend of the poet Kenneth Rexroth, whom I had met in San Francisco. Morrow Books specialised in mysticism and religio
n. Alan Ross went on encouraging me to write. Like someone ordering a baker’s dozen, he sent postcards saying, ‘Another short story, please. How many does that add up to now? I think your last is one of your very best, though perhaps the last line is a bit flat.’ Whereupon, I would sit down and mint out another one. When Morrow came to offer me a job as his secretary, I was bent over the typewriter and looked so ashen that before committing himself he insisted on my having a check-up with his doctor. At that time, future employers demanded a certificate of health, exonerating you from any venereal disease, as nowadays it might be AIDS. Then Morrow took me to meet his wife. The Morrows lived out of New York on a turnpike, where they eventually found me a dismal bedsit. Morrow had a tiny office. His room was next to mine. From where I sat, with earphones attached to my head, I could see him through a glass pane and when not questioning his spelling (as we know American and English words do not always tally) I typed to his dictation. To my horror, in less than a month, I once more became deaf. I could see his lips moving, but could not decipher a word. Morrow lost no time, which is probably why he now has a flourishing publishing house. He dismissed me kindly, recommending his analyst.

  Soon after, I received the following: ‘Dear Barbara, You are a very wonderful person and you should learn to respect yourself as much as those who love you do. The name of my psychiatrist is Dr Grace Baker 214 E. 61st.’ It was signed ‘the Rev Dr McKelway’, a manic-depressive writer on the New Yorker.

  It was Caroline’s psychiatrist who got me in the end. What attracted me was that he analysed with the aid of LSD. He was lanky, like my father, and had a small brush moustache. I had no trouble in getting a transference, which is supposed to be so important, once you go in for that sort of thing. The first session, Longman (I think he was named) questioned me about my childhood relationship with Daddy.

  ‘For something got fouled up somewhere along the line and we’ve got to set you up so that you can fend for yourself.’

  ‘Daddy used to take me for walks,’ I confessed, ‘but we never had any conversation.’ From then on, when I entered his room, Longman merely handed me a glass of water and the LSD pills, and sat waiting for a latent repression to surface (what is known as an ‘abreaction’ – resolution of a neurosis by reviving repressed or forgotten ideas of an event). The night after the first session, I dreamt of Daddy covered in blood rushing to attack me. Each session lasted four hours, during which I lay on the couch occasionally seeing goblins or breasts that turned into roses; but apart from that, nothing much. LSD affects the vision. The most ordinary object, like a necktie, can take on peculiar patterns and vivid colouring, and paintings appear magical. ‘You’ve got to get right in there,’ Longman kept saying each time he increased the dose. He got so little out of me that he would put on a Tchaikovsky symphony and leave the room. At the end of each session, with blazing eyes, I would be helped like an invalid into a taxi by his assistant-mistress, who was a reformed drug addict. Once she was out of sight, I dismissed the taxi and strode euphorically downtown to Caroline’s, and we sat up half the night ridiculing Longman and comparing our reactions. Longman was very indiscreet. In between sessions, he seemed to enjoy revealing the idiosyncrasies of other patients, one of whom, apparently, hoarded excreta in the rectum for weeks. It was due to him, Longman boasted, that Cary Grant had turned to heterosexuality and fathered a child. Once he got on to the fact I was paranoid, on arrival I would be put at the end of the queue and when my turn came, Longman poked his head round the door and said, as though referring to a female Tom Thumb, ‘Has anyone seen Miss Skelton today?’ All it did was to paralyse me with inferiority. Then, one day, after a session, I went straight on to a party. When I entered the room all the men appeared to have long flowing beards. In the taxi going home, I looked into the windscreen mirror and glimpsed Mummy as a toad. Longman merely whistled when I told him. But I could see he was excited. At last we seemed to be getting somewhere. The session over, he asked for money. When I said I didn’t have any, that was that. Psychiatrists claim that if they are not paid, analysis will never do a patient any good. All the experience taught me was that depression is due to the repression of an impulse and that a penchant for corpulent men implied a subconscious desire to abnegate poor Daddy, who had been as slim as a rake.

  Chapter XIV

  Aftermath

  A block away on 83rd Street, James Lord lived with a young man who was training to be a singer. Larry never attained his ambition: some said that he was incapable of memorising a libretto. James had written a very good short story called The Boy Who Wrote No, which had come out in Horizon and I was thrilled to have him as a neighbour. Since then, after twenty years’ research, he has published a biography of the sculptor Giacometti, whom he knew and admired. I saw a lot of Jim in New York and whenever I went round to his apartment, Larry’s voice would be reverberating along the corridor. Jim was very kind in those days. There was a carpenter in our street where we bought the planks, and Jim made some bookshelves and hammered them on to the wall behind my bed. A perfectionist in matters of taste, he invested in modern paintings and precious objects. The armchairs and sofa in his spacious apartment were covered in muted blue, nothing was out of place and the paintings had been hung with precisely the right amount of space in between. His Paris apartment now resembles a small museum and not everyone is privileged enough to be allowed in.

  To see him unwrapping his valuables was like watching an avid stork brooding over a precious new-born hatch. Jim had some odd foibles. Nothing would induce him to take a taxi. I had another ‘standing’ job at the time, lifting urns in a tropical plant shop, which did not deter him from insisting on a long walk to the cinema in the evening. The only time I knew him to give a small party, he invited (although he hardly knew them) Caroline and Bob’s-your-uncle who were then ‘going together’. I can only assume it was to see my reaction. Caroline and I were no longer friends for, from being a delightful companion, she had begun to turn into an angry lady wielding a ferocious pen.

  It was about this time that a concerted effort was made on the part of various people to help me obtain a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Alan Ross wrote to a Mr Ford to say:

  Miss Skelton has asked me to sponsor her for a grant. I have published several short stories by her and hope to do a book of them early next year. I consider her someone of original and remarkable talent, who if she had the means to devote herself freely to writing, would greatly reward the investor …

  Stephen wrote:

  She is a most talented and serious writer and I think that she would make good use of a grant and do some very good stories or a novel …

  Alan Pryce-Jones wrote to say he was glad to be a sponsor:

  I have known her for a good many years – since she was first married to Cyril Connolly, an old friend of forty years, and then to George Weidenfeld, also someone I have been in touch with since 1945. Miss Skelton is an interesting woman in her own right and has written some excellent pieces. Neither of her former husbands give her more than a pittance … and I know her circumstances are painfully restricted. She has a real small talent and if any assistance can be given her, she would, I know, carry through any project she may have in mind to a successful conclusion …

  Nothing came of it. Then Jean Liedloff did her bit:

  To Whom It May Concern … I have known Miss Barbara Skelton for four years and have found her to be of the highest character, very fond of children and an excellent housekeeper. I can highly recommend her as a babysitter; she is extremely orderly and a very good cook, having graduated from the Cordon Blue [sic] School of Cooking in London with honours.

  And so it was that I spent the most depressing Christmas of my life babysitting. Doan wrote: ‘Meilleurs voeux pour 1963. Vous me dites rien de votre vie Americaine et me laissez d’imaginer le pire. A mon frère. Il a fait une magnifique exposition de peintures, qui a pour thème la ville rouge et les hommes bleus. Une visiteuse célèbre, Barbara Hutton, est ven
ue. Elle a été séduite par les tableaux et par leur auteur. Ils sont fiancés, ll a quitté son travail de laboratoire et le voici maintenant dans le tourbillon de la vie mondaine et cosmopolite. Actuellement, il est au Mexique où Barbara possède une villa paradisiaque. Et vous chère autre Barbara, donnez-moi de vos nouvelles. Affection, Thai …’ At this stage of his life, Doan, who had a French father and Chinese mother, seemed to have opted for the more exotic side of his parentage.

  I had met Jean at a party given by the Rolos, when she was a striking James Bond Viking, and we immediately became friends. Financed by several rich optimists, she had glamorised herself by making two expeditions with a photographer to the Amazon in search of gold. But apart from a thorough knowledge of the piranha fish, a radio broadcast and an article in a magazine, with photos of Jean semi-nude paddling a canoe with a native, nothing came of either expedition. She then got a job writing blurbs for an advertising agency and moved to a sunny apartment with a terrace, in the Sixties. We shared a love of exotic pets. Jean was partial to woolly monkeys. But like all bizarre pets, they lost their lives in tragic circumstances, for they do not mell with urban lives. She acquired her last woolly monkey when it was a baby. Every time I went round to see her, the wretched animal would either be in its cage making clucking noises or squatting beside the fridge frenziedly trying to wrench it open.