'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  ‘If there’s one thing I know about, it’s monkeys,’ was Jean’s stock response. ‘You must never give them too much to eat. My mother’s instinct tells me it’s had enough.’

  Two years later, when I was about to leave New York for good, a plump Jean came to see me with her current gentleman friend and the tiny monkey-child, by then fully grown, with rickety legs, totally deformed due to malnutrition, which left the sickening impression that instead of depriving her monkey, Jean should have applied the starvation dictum to herself.

  In between babysitting and hauling old ladies out of baths, I went to parties. One invitation went: ‘I’ll be giving a large and crowded party. Do you think you would like to come? It’s from nine o’clock at Central Park West penthouse. Luciana.’ I had never met this Italian lady, though I had seen her at other social occasions looking as though her face had been dipped in flour. Her husband was a correspondent for La Stampa. The last party I had been to on the West Side had been in the Dakota Building. I shall always remember the occasion as Susan Sontag was accompanied by a very odd girl, and as she, Sontag, Bob and others were leaving the party, she rushed up to everyone, holding out a small black casket, saying. ‘Would you like to see what I’ve got?’ Everyone shook her off but me; so she grabbed my arm and flicked open the box, which contained a rotted foetus.

  It was at Luciana’s party that I met Hamish Hamilton’s son who was, in fact, courting the hostess. Alastair maintained we had met already at his parents’ house ten years before,* when Cyril and I had been to a dinner party and his mother, Yvonne, had taken me up to her son’s cot to bid him goodnight. He had turned into an elegant young man with immense charm. He loved music and then seemed to have a literary bent. And so began one of the most foolhardy affairs of my life that continued briefly on our return to London. With Alastair, my jealousy knew no bounds. He only had to glance at a passing girl in the street for me to sulk. He was then suffering from a kidney complaint and kept flying back to London for medical consultations, and would write describing the gruesome sessions with doctors. His mother, he said, was once more showing him off to her friends, including W. But he was determined to get back to his Darling Little Pussycat. When he did, we lived together in the slum to which he had a spare key. Once he went off on some mysterious weekend to the country and came back unexpectedly to be confronted by Charles Addams. For some inexplicable reason – for he had never done so before – Charlie had spent the night in my apartment and Alastair had let himself in the door as Charlie was scurrying naked into the shower. Whereupon there were fisticuffs with Addams, oddly enough, the victor. As Hamish Hamilton was Charles Addams’ London publisher, Alastair rose unabashed to his feet and said, very seriously, ‘How do you like the colour process my father has just done on your book?’

  Passing through New York in 1982, I went to dine with Charlie on his birthday. Dangling from the ceiling in the sitting room of his apartment was an enormous red balloon sent by the New Yorker congratulating him on being seventy. Looking up at it, Charlie kept saying, ‘Seventy! But that’s aulde, isn’t it?’ I saw him last in 1986, when he claimed to have given up drinking. He died sadly enough two years later.

  The apartment rented to a Brooklyn couple, Alastair and I then took a Greyhound bus heading toward the Mexican border. ‘It’s such a comfort to Take the Bus. Plan your Trip of a Lifetime. Travel 3,000, 5,000, even 8,000 miles.’ I had already done this trip; the ticket then cost $99 and lasted three months. Ceaselessly on the move air-conditioned buses drew in and out of terminals on schedule, and when one arrived in a town, a reliable and courteous albino, with a seared face and neck, would be standing at the base of the coach with a helping hand, saying, with impersonal affability, before trotting happily off duty. ‘It’s certainly been a pleasure having you folks aboard. I hope you have a pleasant journey.’

  I did it during a Christmas rush when hundreds of heated buses were manoeuvring servicemen across country on leave and trusting owl-faced, grey-haired old ladies, wearing plastic-petalled skullcaps, their chests gleaming with silvered mistletoe and holly sprigs, sat dozing about the rest rooms. The buses were comfortable and clean. When not spending the night in a women’s hostel, I stretched out at the back of the bus and slept. Seen off by Jane, I left New York for Chicago and from the Dakotas proceeded on to San Francisco. Travelling through the beautiful state of Montana, an old cowboy took the adjoining seat. When he knew where I came from he asked how we got about in England – on bicycles?

  ‘You like Mexico? Where did you go? By plane direct from a cold climate to the Peurta Vallarta? Or did you fly direct to Yucatan, squat in the Hotel Merida, described as “hot dog” in the Mexican guide, and survey the ruins from a hired car? Are you fastidious? Do you mind what you eat?’

  Alastair and I bussed round Mexico. With my basket over his arm, trotting round the Maya ruins where we saw iguanas running about the temples, Alastair became the blue-eyed burro.

  It was in Mexico City that I attended my final bullfight. Cesar Herón was the matador of the day. As the band struck up he walked into the arena accompanied by a man carrying a ten-year-old boy across his arms. A megaphone explained that the boy was blind. Herón was donating all the proceeds of the afternoon’s takings to the hospital to cover the operation for the boy to regain his sight. Would these aficionados present like to contribute something for this poor boy who remained stretched out awkwardly in his father’s arms? Centivos rained into the arena. As Herón’s equipe dashed across the sand to gather up the shower of coins, the megaphone claimed, ‘We have now reached the sum of … generous people … we have now reached a further sum of …’ Then two excessively well-padded picadors entered the arena looking as though they were about to topple over. They were greeted with howls of derision and, from the top tier, cans and bottles literally rained down on their heads. The picadors exited ducking Coca Cola bottles. It had not deterred them from widening the gory gash at the back of the bull’s neck.

  Six bulls were killed as rapidly and hygienically as possible. Herón was awarded three ears and one departed with the impression of having visited a well-run abattoir.

  From Vera Cruz Alastair and I flew back to England.

  Old friends were scattered. Those I saw greeted me with enigmatic smiles and the refrain, ‘Whatever are you going to do now, Barbara?’ Old B. was going through yet another divorce. He had written to say he could put me up in his London flat. But when I arrived, finding me, in his words, ‘still youthful and attractive to the eye’, he tried to tuck me up in his double bed. A rehash with an old lover – I was not that desperate. Then Julian Jebb went abroad and lent me his flat in Maida Vale. Alastair had been packed off to Rome. Ruth Sheradski had just opened an antique shop off Sloane Square. While Ruth scoured other antique shops buying tasteful objects to resell at a profit, she gave me £12 a week to take charge of ‘loot’.

  But very few people came into the shop and as London remained enveloped in fog, I was soon pining after my Beautyrest bed, early morning exercises with Jack Lalanne on the TV, the amusing people who used to mount my dun stairway and all the art galleries I frequented in New York. So I rang Anne Moynihan who was in the Bouches-du-Rhône and she offered to lend me her large studio-apartment in the rue de Payenne. I flew to Le Bourget. The Spanish maid spoke no English. While rain pattered on the roof for days, I would stand before the window watching little birds hop about a tiny place dominated by a catalpa tree. The only person I knew in Paris was an American lady Eileen Geist, who would include me with the children when obliged to take them to an afternoon movie. Otherwise, should I wander round her flat in the rue du Bac, Eileen would be engrossed in doing the editorial work which enabled her to go on filling her wardrobe with high-necked, beaded cocktail dresses. But should Countess Tartempion (French for ‘thingamibob’) drop by, with an ‘ouf’ of relief, Eileen would let her stylo drop, rush over to the wardrobe and, after handing me Le Monde and a saucer of soft peanuts, say, ‘We’re just going ro
und the corner for a coffee. I’ll be back in an hour or so.’ Goodness! I would think, have I become that much of a bore? Then Cyril telephoned and gave me Derek Jackson’s number. (I had met Derek many years before when he was married to Janetta, when they joined Cyril and me on a gastronomic tour of Bordeaux.) The previous summer, when I had flown over to Europe to stay with the Moynihans in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Derek and Eileen had been there. Derek had offered to put me up in Paris on my way back to the States, but I had chosen to stay with Eileen in the rue du Bac, as I thought it would be cosier. Eileen had a brisk purposeful walk, kept her hair Topsy-style and whatever she wore looked as though it had been bought the day before. Although she had the reputation of being a high-powered intellectual, I did not find her at all intimidating. In fact, she gave the impression of being most anxious to please, to the extent that if someone made a joke, humorous or not, she would give a charitable laugh.

  Later that year, Eileen had flown over to New York and I was in a position to add a few people to her intellectual list. Eileen was not at all embarrassed to be fêted in a railroad apartment, where the dominant room was the kitchen. She even invited some professional friends of her own. Auden climbed the dun stairs in his carpet slippers. Alan Pryce-Jones came as did Norman Mailer and Andy Warhol. The apartment was crowded. Everyone seemed at ease chattering and helping themselves to cheese out of the fridge. Stubs were light-heartedly thrown to the floor, and the following day the white lino was covered in burns and tiny stiletto dots, where the women, less fashionably-shod than Eileen (who wore flat, buckled Roger Vivier shoes), had ground their talons right through to the rotten boards beneath. But I didn’t mind. Next day people rang to say what a success that party had been and why didn’t I do that sort of thing more often? Bowden Broadwater claimed it had been like a sabbatical do and had revived his undergrad days. Soon after, I called Andy Warhol, and asked if I might go round and watch him making one of his pornographic films. His apartment was close by. While Andy focused his camera on a nude couple writhing about on the couch, I spent the afternoon rather bored consuming whisky until he suddenly turned to me and said modestly that if I cared to be included in the film he could create a role for a grandmother. A nude grandmother! Petrified, I fled.

  The Moynihans were also in New York. They took me with them on a trip to New Orleans. We had a lovely time visiting the Bayous and going to strip joints like the Club My-O-My, sparkling with unusual female impersonators. ‘New Orleans’ MOST UNIQUE NITE SPOT with the World’s Most Beautiful Boys in Women’s Attire.’ It was trips like this that I missed when I got back to England.

  * See Tears before Bedtime, Chapter XIV.

  Chapter XV

  Living at the Ritz

  Derek lived in a duplex house in the rue Louis-David. The sitting room led into a dark, walled garden. After inviting me out to dinner several times, he insisted I move in. In the mornings, Derek set off in a Deux Chevaux to the Bellevue laboratory on the outskirts of Paris where he did spectroscopy work, for which he was later awarded the Legion d’Honneur.

  There was a delightful café on the corner of the rue Louis-David, where I would sit writing letters and drinking coffee, and a comfortable neighbourhood restaurant with banquettes where we often dined. Otherwise, Derek would bring back smoked salmon or caviar and lamb cutlets which he liked to cook. Then, after dinner, he washed up the dishes. The char, he said, might break a plate; when he could have bought up all the plates in China!

  Derek did everything he could to please me. He filled my bedroom with red roses, those long-stalked, perfect roses that always remind me of hospital rooms. When I complained of the noise coming from the adjoining school playground, he would run upstairs and shout angrily down to the boys from his bedroom window. And once a week he came into my room and placed a wad of francs on the dressing table. It was an odd way of doing it. But who would have complained? It enabled me to have fittings at Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin and Yves St Laurent. Otherwise, I roamed the house pining after Alastair and reciting Edith Sitwell’s ‘Still Falls The Rain’.

  Derek had a diverse character which is what made him interesting. Educated at Rugby, an establishment he jokingly referred to as ‘Bugry’, by profession a physicist, at Oxford he had been made Professor of Spectroscopy. He was also an expert amateur jockey and had ridden in the Grand National. He owned a stable of racehorses that were trained in Normandy. His Welsh father, Sir Charles Jackson, had been one of the founders of the News of the World and Derek had inherited a fortune. He was fluent in both French and German. In the last World War he had been an air gunner in Bomber Command and, thanks to his association with Oxford’s Professor Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s scientific adviser and statistician, put in charge of testing ‘window’ strips of metal foil dropped by our bombers to confuse the enemy’s radar system. He had worked on ways of jamming radio transmissions directing German air defences and been decorated with the Legion of Merit by the United States. With all these attributes, he veered towards a Bohemian way of life which led to some odd foibles. He collected soap ends, a habit he may have picked up in France, where people hoard everything. He had been married four times: first, to Poppet John; then to Pamela Mitford; followed by Janetta Kee and Princess Ratibor, and he had left all four wives. I had not been in the house long before he wanted to make me his fifth. He had had a twin brother (who had been killed along with his showbiz mistress in a horse-drawn-sleigh accident at St Moritz) to whom he had been very attached. This, maybe, was the reason why he did not like living alone. Derek lost his temper easily and was always yapping at waiters. Of medium height, green-eyed and thin-lipped with brittle, grey hair and a strutting walk, he reminded me of a yapping Welsh terrier. He liked blurting out remarks, hoping to shock, like calling a church a ‘God Box’. He was very generous when it came to taking groups of friends to Prunier’s, Maxim’s or the Ritz and whenever his friends came over from England, they immediately rang up knowing they would be given a smashing dinner. I have never known a more loyal man. When I told him that Robin Campbell had always been very snubbing, he was never invited again, although Derek liked him.

  But with all that ‘Bien entendu’, ‘Quoi! Quoi!’, ‘C va de soi’ and ‘Bonjour Messieurs et Mesdames, c’est moi qui vous remercie’ as a shop door slams in your face, and their way of dismissing you with a ‘Bon, allez’ when the conversation lags, as though you were the boring one, I have never been able to appreciate Parisians. There are exceptions, bien sûr. After all, I have now been living in France for over twenty years and I do have two good friends. But on the whole, they are family people, they prefer to stick to themselves, perhaps sharing W.’s sentiment (should a lot of drones come to dinner), ‘What good are these people to my business?’

  Derek also saw mostly English people. Nancy Mitford was always lively and amusing, and one night Meraud Guevara née Guinness ate a bad oyster at Prunier’s. Derek was also a close friend of the Fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, who had married his former sister-in-law, Diana. He was, therefore, on cosy chatting terms with the Windsors and then there was Ethel de Croisset, a charming American lady he named ‘la femme exquise’. Otherwise, June Churchill or the homosexual youngest son of Lord Rosslyn, Hamish Erskine, Mary Campbell’s brother, on whom Derek had once had a crush, might be staying in the damp spare bedroom. Then, with regard to theatre life, Sagan’s Le Cheval s’ennuit was all the rage. Television speakerines grinned and wore Popish perruques. Commercials could be hilarious. ‘Du Roquefort d’abord, du Roquefort d’accord’ still jingles away.

  Gavin Young became easy to reach and at this stage even Eileen seemed to find me less of a bore. We would meet for lunch at the Brasserie Lipp and sit wedged between glamorous people tucking into pig’s trotters. On sunny days, in a desperate attempt to obtain a tan, we frequented the rather sinister Bains Deligny, a swimming pool set in a boat moored on the Seine’s Left Bank.

  Once the Brooklyn couple had vacated my apartment, I planned to
return to New York but Derek went on proposing marriage, so I finally gave in, and accepted a topaz engagement ring.

  A marriage can be founded on many things: mutual attraction or love, a breeding instinct, mutual snobbery and social climbing, a need for security and financial advancement – in the French tradition. It was not for love that I married Professor Jackson. But first I was taken to see his lawyer in Switzerland and asked to sign a document whereby I relinquished all claim on my future husband’s millions. It seemed an odd formality instigated by someone professing himself to be so enamoured. Enfin, the deed done, a registry marriage took place in Lausanne with our two witnesses, the Moynihans. When the ceremony was over, the four of us partook of a celebration lunch. The wedding present was to be a Mercedes. Derek suffered from high blood pressure, which probably accounted for his sporadic rages, and he could not support the heat. But at my suggestion, we spent our July honeymoon in the Hôtel Baou that had just opened in Ramatuelle. Poppet and her third husband, a Dutchman, Pol, lived close by, and I had hoped that they might brighten up our evenings. Derek never went near the sea. He preferred to remain in his hotel room with a little calculating machine, doing spectroscopy work.

  On the first day, when I drove to the beach, the Pols suddenly appeared with a picnic basket. We were lying on the sands discussing houses for sale, when I said, ‘Goodness! How I’d love to have a house in the Midi.’ And I remember Poppet went, ‘pouff! How could you afford a house here? They cost a packet.’ Then I broke the news that I had married her ex-husband and I may be wrong, but I had the impression that our close friendship suddenly evaporated. We went on seeing each other, though, and from then on, perhaps imagining he might be my next victim, she kept a protective eye on Pol.