Wise Children

by Angela Carter

  Nora was squinting away at a leaflet she’d picked up on her way out of the cinema. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, dir. Melchior Hazard, Hollywood, USA. ‘Dora,’ she said, ‘why do they call it a “masterpiece of kitsch”?’

  We went to look for somewhere to have a cup of tea, but no more Joe Lyonses, gone the way of all flesh. Do you remember the Lyons teashops? Thick, curly white plaster on the shopfronts, like walking into a wedding cake, and the name in gold: J. Lyons. Poached eggs on toast keeping snug in little tin pigeon holes as you shuffled down the counter. The moist and fruity Bath buns with crumbs of rock candy glistening on the top, and a little pat of butter lined up alongside. The girl would pour hot water, whoosh! in a steaming column into a fat white pot and there you were, your good, hot cup of tea, with the leaves left in the bottom of the cup, afterwards, to tell your fortune with.

  I haven’t had a cup of tea with leaves in it for years. For decades. I wonder what the fortune-tellers do, these days. Palms?

  Fancy getting nostalgic for a Joe Lyons. We only ever used them for a spot of lunch when times were hard, when we were tramping the rounds, agents, stage doors, etc. Then we’d expend a tanner each on something with chips, a banger, some beans.

  You only miss an institution like a Joe Lyons teashop when it’s gone.

  But we couldn’t find a place to get a cup of tea at all, nowhere on the Hill, after all that, so we had a gin, instead, to fortify us, in that great, draughty barn of a place down the Portobello. Outside, it was raining still, and the dark coming on. I sometimes wonder why we go on living.

  In those days, four farthings made a penny and Britain was entirely surrounded by water; in these days, there is no such thing as a penny any more and it is as if this foggy old three-cornered island were dangling from a cloud – now we’re in the air. You feel that you could pucker up and blow away the miles between 49 Bard Road and that apartment in New York where I could be tomorrow morning, if the apartment still existed, if Peregrine still existed, if the past weren’t deeper than the sea, more difficult to cross.

  The only time I ever flew was in a harness at the end of a steel cable, on the set of The Dream, in Hollywood, USA. Hollywood was a long haul from London, in those days; it took weeks, transatlantic, transcontinental. First leg, we went by water, Nor’ and I, and so arrived in Manhattan, the gateway to our father’s dream, early in the morning and stood at the rail, gawping.

  Never seen anything like it. What we’d seen at the pictures had been a pale shadow. All the high towers, in long rows, shifting and parting in front of us as we came into port. Everything seemed to rise up before us out of the sea like a lost city coming up for air. Our hearts began to pound. We thought that anything might happen.

  We leaned on the rail and gawped, like mere trippers, although we were smart as paint and I can prove it, I’ve got the cutting here. There we are, see? On the front page of the New York Post, in our best suits – Schiaparelli, I kid you not – charcoal wool, fox wrap collar and cuffs, buttons, typical Schiap touch, in the shape of crochets and quavers, soft little high-crowned hats pulled down over our left eyes. Look hot, stay cool, we’d instructed one another; we’d got the stance to match the suits off pat, you stuck your hipbone forward, let your shoulders droop, put all your weight on the one leg.

  Look at the headline: ‘New York welcomes Shakespeare treasure.’ Sub-head: ‘Twins bear precious gift.’ See that thing in Nora’s arms, that looks like a decapitated doll? You’ll never believe it. It was a pot, a sort of jar, about the size of the ones they use for ashes in the crematoria, and it was hollow inside and in the shape of a bust of, that’s right, William Shakespeare; our father had had it specially made, in Stoke-on-Trent, and the bald patch lifted off, that was the lid.

  And what did this bizarre vessel contain?

  Earth.

  We travelled with a box of earth, like Dracula, and never let it out of sight. Earth from Stratford-upon-Avon, dug out of the grounds of that big theatre by some reverential sidekick and then entrusted to Nora and myself, a sacred mission, to bear the precious dust to the New World so that Melchior could sprinkle it on the set of The Dream on the first day of the shoot.

  He and the Lady A. and the twins had all gone ahead long before, of course, to do the ‘pre-production’. It took an age to set it up. The bald man – we soon learned to call him Genghis Khan, as everybody else did – had made his announcement on the night of the fire in the heat of the moment and there’d been a long haul after that until ‘a wood near Athens’ started to go up on the lot near Culver City. But now, oh, thrilling thought! Hollywood was only a three-day train ride away and we trembled on the brink of stardom, or so we might have thought that New York morning. I never saw so many cameras. Snap, snap, flash. We docked. Snap, flash, snap. We even featured in the Pathé News. That was when we took the earth through Customs. But we’d had Grandma’s motto drummed into us since babyhood: ‘Hope for the best, expect the worst.’ We were prepared.

  Then: ‘Girls!’

  Perry, the welcome committee, crushed us to his bosom, the old bear hug, blushing and giggling like a little kid.

  ‘Like it?’ he asked us, gesturing round the grand horizon as if he’d bought it us for a present. ‘Like it?’ he said, gesturing around the glove-leather inside of the long, white car that took us home. ‘Like it?’ he asked us, gesturing around our destination.

  It was outrageous. Done up like a Spanish chapel in gilded leather panelling with a genuine El Greco nativity under a neon strip that swung back to reveal a wet bar. He popped champagne. Big wrought-iron chairs scattered here and there, enough to give you piles just to look at them. That was the living room. Then you went up a spiral staircase and, in a room with half the wall a window, where you could see all Central Park and the lacy, steely chorus line of skyscrapers across the other side, there was a round bed a good six feet across with polar bear skins heaped upon it, and a round mirror in the ceiling over it.

  ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’ I asked him as we peeked, wondering, into her lavish closet. He put his finger on his lips: ‘Top secret!’ Then the white telephone interrupted us, it rang. Perry picked up the receiver but did not speak; listened, looked grieved; replaced it with a sigh.

  ‘Poor cow,’ he said, but did not tell us whom he meant.

  A big Persian cat, white to match the telephone, jumped off the bed and came up for a bit of attention, shoving its head against our charcoal skirts, covering us with hairs. Where did Puss do its wee-wee? We were on the fifteenth floor. That was a problem. But a positive embarras de richesse as regards toilet facilities for humans – one bathroom for the lady, whoever she might be, done out in pink marble and chrome; one for him, more austere, in black tile, with, smart touch, black towels. Nora put down her glass, stripped off, had a shower. I fancied a lie-down, stretched out on the bearskin rug. Perry took the weight off his feet, too.

  ‘Come on, old man. Tell all.’

  You’d never have thought that Perry was past forty. I don’t know what infernal deal the Hazard brothers made with time, but he’d not aged so you’d notice. Old Uncle Carrot-Top. His hair was still that bright, offensive, bad-boy red, and still stuck up in spikes. The trowelful of freckles flung over his nose never faded and he was bigger than ever, the size of a warehouse. As for his suit, it was a chocolate brown in colour, with a broad, white stripe; his shoes were dappled white and chocolate. He looked every inch a pimp, but one who’d risen to the top of his profession.

  ‘All this belongs,’ he said, ‘including me,’ he added, ‘to . . .’

  At that, as if on cue, in she swept; why shouldn’t she make an entrance? It was her own house, her very own New York pied-à-terre, after all! She wasn’t one whit abashed to find a naked chorine in the shower, nor a clothed one prone upon her mattress dallying, to all appearances, with her inamorato, but cracked us all her famous grin, kicked off her shoes.

  ‘When does the orgy begin?’ she enquired.

  Delia Dela
ney. Even the name has a period ring; stars are called Finkelbaum or Hackenbush or Brown, these days. She was a raucous one, née Daisy Duck, on Hester Street, youngest of seven, her father a fish peddler, not a pot to piss in. She was but twenty-five years old that New York morning long ago, just the age of the big sister we never had, and fresh back from her hairdresser, who’d touched up the roots of her pubics, she kept them bleached, then trimmed them into a heart shape. She didn’t miss a trick, did Daisy.

  From babyhood she sang at weddings, talent shows, Daisy Duck a.k.a. ‘Little Dolly Daydream’, another period handle. In the movies in New York from 1918, rescued by dogs from burning houses, softening the hearts of crusty misanthropes, etc. In Hollywood from 1921 she dropped the ‘Little Dolly’. She became a Mack Sennett bathing belle; then she danced on tables, she rode in rumbleseats, she was ‘flaming youth’ personified. She was custom-built for the pictures – teeny tiny, one inch less than five foot, and a perfectly enormous head. Her face went right from one side of the screen to the other. Gloria Swanson was like that, as well. Joan Crawford, too. You need the big face, for the close-ups.

  Subduing her naturally nasal tones – she hailed from the Bronx – with sound she triumphed, the classic thirties blonde, tough, sweet, lewd, funny, fast, tender. I’ve got a lot of time for Daisy Duck. She used to lend us all her couture frocks.

  She used to punch and pummel old Perry as if he were a giant teddy bear, she fancied older men, her father having been caught in the crossfire in a shoot-out in Fulton Fish Market through no fault of his own in the early days of Prohibition, and her fancy did her no harm at all in Hollywood, I can tell you, where she had, I kid you not, left lipstick on every pair of underpants further up the hierarchy than assistant director on her way to the top.

  In she came, in her barathea suit, white, to match the cat that matched the telephone. She thought the world of that cat, it went everywhere with her. After she’d slipped off her mink, we all had some more champagne. Then, brr brr! brr brr! The telephone rang again.

  ‘For you,’ said Peregrine. ‘I did it, last time.’

  She picked up the receiver, put it to her ear – and then she shouted ‘DROP DEAD!’ down the telephone, you could have heard her clear through to Yonkers. She gave a mighty tug and ripped the cable off the wall, then tossed the entire contraption straight, with a tinkle of broken glass, through the bedroom window, mouthpiece and receiver going up in separate arcs high into the sky to land, who knows where but I trust softly, on the grass in Central Park.

  ‘That’s the way to deal with nuisance calls,’ she said to Perry.

  She’d got real style, she could put on a show. When she was peckish, she’d shout: ‘Fishy!’ and snap her fingers and up would pop a slavey out of nowhere with a peeled shrimp on a toothpick. She spelled Duck with an umlaut, thus: Dück. No relation to ‘Donald Duck and Henry Hen, Were two rather unusual men’, said Perry.

  Transvestite poultry?

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ said Daisy. ‘That’s Hollywood.’

  He loved us both but I was the one he talked to. Just one of those things. I was the one he took out in the white car that last morning in New York. He drew up at the kerb, by a hole in the ground, a construction site.

  ‘That’s New York,’ he said. ‘See it come down, see it go up.’

  ‘What used it to be, Uncle Perry?’

  ‘It was the site . . . the site . . .’ He couldn’t go on. The tears were running down his cheeks and so I knew he’d brought me on a pilgrimage, the site of the old Plaza, and Desdemona, Desdemona dead.

  We left for California on the Twentieth Century Ltd. Now we were part of Daisy’s entourage, it was long-stemmed roses all the way. When her white car deposited us all at Grand Central, cops in hats like threepenny bits held back the crowds, who cried and shrieked, thrust flowers at her, papers, pencils: ‘Delia! Delia!’ and fought and clawed to get at her. She was only a little thing, but she sailed through as to the manner born, smiling, waving, blowing kisses, she couldn’t get enough of it, but we were scared stiff, huddling under Perry’s greatcoat, hiding from all the hungry eyes and mouths come to gobble you up, like the wolf in Red Riding Hood. Daisy was the dish of the day, and we’d have been snapped up, too, like side salads, if we hadn’t dashed down the red carpet to the private car sharpish, Daisy’s cat racing before us, ears flattened by its own speed.

  Even while the train steamed out of the station, the fans still sprinted down the track alongside, ‘Delia! Delia!’ until forced to fall back as the train plunged into the tunnel, left forlorn, bereft, starving for her.

  That was when I got my first taste of fame. It scared me stiff.

  Do you want your name card on the door? If you do, you want to party. Daisy always wanted to party. Her berth – well, not really a berth, more of a suite. Done out in white, which was her colour, except her mink, and that was blue. Ubiquitous wet bar; I never met a dry bar. Next door, a three-quarter bed. Lewdly, she opined she’d have to sleep on top of Perry, and it was true he took up all of that bed himself – he seemed to grow before our eyes, swell up, expand inside the train that speeded us all across the continent towards our fortunes in a great state of alcoholic euphoria and erotic disturbance, that is to say, of booze and sexy fun.

  Needless to say, Nora was soon in love again. There was a young kid on his way to Hollywood to seek his fortune, too, but not in front of the cameras, in front of a hot stove – off to join his uncle in a catering business, or so he said. Very musical kid; never parted with his violin case, came to Daisy’s party clutching it, but wouldn’t give us a tune, he said a string was broken. He was from what they call Little Italy, below Houston Street, but his father hailed, originally, from Palermo. Eyes drawn in with charcoal, hair like pitch. I’ll say this for Nora, she liked a change.

  Tony, Tony, macaroni,

  Show us all your big baloney.

  Pardon me, vicar.

  Tony was a nice boy but he never moved me. We changed trains at Chicago. Onwards! To the Dearborn Station! To the Super-Chief!

  Nora’s Tony wasn’t, as you might say, in our class, he travelled third, so Nora would tippy-toe down the train and climb up to his upper berth, behind the green baize curtains; they did it for hours in there, she said, like snakes. Once he’d got it in her, they never moved, they let the train do all the work. CHOO-choo-choo-choo, CHOO-choo-choo-choo. The engine would get up steam, the pistons go faster, faster, faster until: WHEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee . . . So Nora never partied, after she met Tony, but I was nothing loath. That white cat sat on the pillow and purred. When I’d a moment, I’d exercise my mind with the problem: where did it do its wee-wee on the Super-Chief?

  Daisy put away the gin like nobody’s business, pissed as a newt half the time and never wore panties. She said they were bad for the health. Perry had not lost his magic touch and used to saw her in half whenever a few guests gathered together. And amongst those guests was always one man who struck my eye, although he was no chicken, wore glasses, pepper and salt hair. His suit was rumpled, sometimes stained. His tie was loose and sometimes off. If he had a certain air of distinction, down on his luck was written all over him. He always smelled of liquor. Yet of all the gaudy company that partied with Daisy Duck, a.k.a. Delia Delaney, as the Super-Chief rolled down through New Mexico and Arizona, he was the one whom Perry picked out most for conversation, and I would watch them from the corner of my eye even when some assistant producer, or stunt man, or second lead had his leg wedged in my thigh, talk about dancing being sexual intercourse standing upright. I could tell you a tale. But shabby old horn-rims was no dancing man; he’d gulp that Mother’s Ruin, gesticulate, pass out, but something drew me.

  ‘Dora, my dear,’ said Perry, who hadn’t missed my roving eye, ‘I want you to meet my dear friend, mon semblable, mon frère, my collaborator, just he and I, and William Shakespeare, working on the script. Irish, meet Floradora.’

  I had it in my handbag, you never know when you
might need it. Nora was off with her Tony, so I had our room to myself. He wanted to go out into the corridor while I fixed myself up, but I said, ‘Don’t go; either you can avert your eyes or take a look – I’m not shy.’ But he was shy, Irish by name, Irish by nature; he looked out of the window at the moon on the mountains while I fixed myself up.

  Night, silence, desert, rock, moonlight.

  ‘God, you’re lovely,’ he said, when he turned to look. I knew he’d say that. They all say that. I’d known in advance I wouldn’t be able to return the compliment, alas.

  My first old man. No, I do him an injustice. He wasn’t really old, not old like I am now; he was only just past forty, neck and neck with my wicked uncle who, at that very moment, was giving Daisy what she always said was the best time she ever had. But Irish had an old soul, you might say. He was a man with a great future behind him, already. He was a burned-out case. I knew I must be very gentle.

  See, the row of books. Over there. Take a look at the dedications: ‘Light of my life’, ‘Joy in the morning’, ‘My last chance’. My half-brother/nephew, young Tris, was very impressed with those dedications, he wanted me to do a programme, one time; I said ‘No.’ No suck old bones. Sometimes a graduate student writes; I burn the letter. Poor old Irish. I gave him all a girl can give – a little pleasure, a little pain, a carillon of laughter, a kerchief full of tears. And, as for him, well, it was he who gave me the ability to compose such a sentence as that last one. Don’t knock it. That’s lyricism.

  You’ll find me in his famous Hollywood stories. The last flame of a burned-out case, but oh, it had a glorious light! I never rate more than a footnote in the biographies; they get my date of birth wrong, they mix me up with Nora, that sort of thing. And I’m bound to say my best friend wouldn’t recognise me in the far-from-loving portrait he’d penned after I’d gone. I’m the treacherous, lecherous chorus girl with her bright red lipstick that bleeds over everything, and her bright red fingernails and her scarlet heart, sexy, rapacious, deceitful. Vulgar as hell. The grating Cockney accent. The opportunism. The chronic insensitivity to a poet’s heart. And you couldn’t trust her behind a closed door, either. Such turned out to be the eternity the poet promised me, the bastard.