Only

by Caroline Baum

  A day visit as preparation for the entrance exam confirmed all my hopes and dreams; the place was achingly beautiful, reeking of scholarship and admission to the elite. This was where I would flourish and find kindred souls. Everything hinged on Oxford.

  With the self-contained independence typical of an only child, I undertook the complex selection procedure on my own, without consulting my teachers or seeking advice about strategic course choices. Cocky with overconfidence and proud to boot, I insisted on applying for the course to which it was hardest to gain admission—Philosophy, Politics and Economics—at the most popular and exclusive women’s college, Somerville.

  A more canny and informed strategy would have been to choose a less high-profile college and a less demanding course, more within my academic grasp. In languages, I had achieved near-perfect grades, among the best in the country, I was told. But I despised these, as they came too easily, and refused to apply to study either French or Russian at Oxford. It was a fateful mistake.

  Handicapped by ignorance, I did not share my correspondence with the university with anyone who might have steered me on a different path. In those days, we had no careers advice. Without such counsel, I rejected not one but two highly desirable and prestigious scholarships from colleges that were not my first choice, little knowing that the key to the whole process was simply to get in: one could always switch later. I never compared notes with fellow students as no one else I knew was aiming for the same objective. Unschooled in the whole process, my parents trusted that my grades would win me the place of my choosing. For once they did not interfere.

  The last of three letters from the university arrived on Christmas Eve, 1976. It was brief and to the point. It said that since I had refused the scholarships offered, there were no further options available and my application to Oxford was now declined.

  Clutching the letter, which I read and reread, I threw myself on my father’s bed, howling like a mortally wounded animal until I thought I would vomit. My throat was so raw from crying I felt sure it would bleed. Eventually I became hoarse and lost my voice from sustained wailing. This was my first experience of failure and disappointment, and it gripped me like a convulsive fever. I had no plan B and nowhere else to go.

  I have no memory of my mother’s reaction to the news. She was downstairs in the kitchen when I opened the letter. She probably thought my reaction was melodramatic and that Oxford did not matter that much. I don’t want to give the impression she was any less cerebral or cultured than my father—quite the contrary. Her intelligence was very different from his, but just as sharp. As an autodidact, she made up for her lack of formal education with voracious inquiry and wide reading. She did not, however, set the same store by status and prestigious academies. She did not believe that fulfilment hinged on admission to an august institution.

  My father read the three lines on the crested sheet of notepaper and lay on the bed beside me and wept with me, his hopes as withered as mine. His daughter, who had never wanted for anything nor ever wanted anything so much, was being denied and he was powerless to help. For once he did not reproach me, or blame me for the stubborn pride that had caused my fall. He was all empathy. Our crying fell into step like a rhythmic chant of loss and regret. Keening, the Irish would call it. He, who had lost so much, knew and recognised the sound I was making as primal sorrow. I will never forget the kinship between us in that moment.

  Christmas was dire. I wandered around in a stupor of bereavement, adrift and with no sense of purpose or direction. Elated friends who had been successful in their bids for other courses at other colleges were stunned at my news and could not think what to say by way of consolation: we had assumed we would all ‘go up’ together.

  My head teacher, learning the news on the grapevine, rang to express disbelief and sympathy. It was some time before I understood that my own unbending determination had cost me what I cherished most, which only made the reality harder to live with.

  For the next twenty-five years, I could not visit Oxford. If it appeared on television I looked away, as if crossing to avoid an old lover in the street after a bitter break-up. I was invited there for parties and weekends and always refused. Once I had to go past it in the car and on glimpsing the gleaming spires I got down on the floor of the back seat and hid.

  Regret is like envy. It gnaws and corrodes the wiring of the soul. It is a futile and impotent emotion some are blessed never to experience. But regret is hardwired into my DNA, inherited from a father whose burden of if onlys was too heavy for one lifetime. He never told me how his own Oxford dream had been thwarted by a lack of funds. I only discovered his private disappointment when I read Mary Hughes’s diary, decades later. He must have felt my hurt keenly as a repeat of his own. Now he could afford anything, but could not buy me the one thing I wanted more than any other.

  Humbled and chastened, I decided I would not apply to Oxford again but would accept one of the offers from other universities. I selected York, a modern university that was the antithesis of everything Oxford symbolised. My father was delighted. At the time, he told me almost nothing about his association with the city, never mentioning that he had an adoptive family there that I could have met or taking me to his favourite haunts. He was not yet ready to uncover the past.

  CHAPTER 13

  An assignment

  By the time I graduated, I had secured a sought-after job at the BBC as a researcher for Michael Parkinson. The prestige of the position helped heal the Oxford wound. At last, I had the respect I craved from my parents and my first real taste of independence and professional responsibility. I was living away from home, earning good money and embarked on the career of my dreams, dealing in the currency of celebrity my parents prized so highly.

  At barely twenty-one, I was the baby on the team, younger than all the rest by about five years, with a lot to prove. The pressure was particularly intense because in the year I joined the show, we went from making one program a week to two, which stretched us in terms of sourcing guests. Even in London, some weeks talent was thin and we scrounged around for old hoofers or repeat visitors on whom Mike could count for a new store of anecdotes. The deadlines were relentless.

  Unlike the seasoned researchers who had speciality areas—such as sports stars, actors or politicians—I had no time to carve out a niche as a specialist and was a free-ranging trouble-shooter, often called on to do the jobs no one else wanted or to fill in for someone who was on another assignment while I developed my chops. This was how I came to score big names like Lee Marvin, my first interviewee, whom I met in his suite at the Berkeley Hotel. He was dressed in an impeccable navy pinstripe suit, looking for all the world like a wealthy banker instead of the Hollywood hell-raiser he was supposed to be. I was mildly disappointed that he was gracious, polite and sober. Not what I expected at all.

  My second interviewee was Ingrid Bergman. She had just written her memoirs, and was dying of cancer, though we did not know it at the time. She was one of Mike’s favourite guests, one of the leading ladies of his heart—he simply melted in front of her. At her Knightsbridge home, she was formal, chilly and reserved, sitting erect on the edge of the sofa. When she came to the studio she was different. She sent the make-up artist away, allowing only me to stay in the dressing room while she prepared herself.

  I knew that when she came to Hollywood she had refused to have her teeth fixed or the shape of her brows altered. Her down-to-earth Scandinavian nature would not tolerate anything artificial. But she had, over the years, learned the tricks of the trade; now I had the privilege of watching her apply foundation, powder, eyeliner and lipstick with total concentration and professional skill. She knew that she could not disguise the puffiness due to the drugs she was taking, nor could she stop one eye from weeping erratically, but the lines and the textures she applied helped her draw on a mask that would enable her to get through what must have been an ordeal, designed purely to promote her book. Perhaps she needed the money, as did m
any stars at the end of long careers. It was an honour to watch the transformation.

  On set, the magic happened. A light came into her eyes, the soft Swedish lilt of her voice gained warmth from Mike’s adoring gaze, and we were all entranced. Afterwards, she was relaxed enough to linger in the green room for drinks, despite her shyness, because she liked the other guests. I still have a photograph of the occasion. When she left, she gave me the bouquet of flowers that had been in her dressing room.

  It sounds petty but the tiny telling details you remember about these encounters are who offered you a cup of tea in their home and who did not. Who touched you a little too much. Who had no books on their shelves. Who displayed their award statuettes prominently. Who had a flashy car in the driveway. Whose fur coat was the most sumptuous. In those days, whether you liked it or not (I did not), you got to hold a lot of fur coats. On a scale of one to ten, Kiri Te Kanawa’s was an eleven.

  Despite careful preparation, things did not always go to plan. I had a nightmarish time with Royal Ballet star, prima ballerina Lynn Seymour. She was struggling with a drinking problem that I was way out of my depth to handle. Capable of unparalleled dramatic and sexual intensity on stage in tragic roles such as the lead in Mayerling, she regularly left audiences emotionally wrung out. But that kind of talent takes its toll, and she was destroying herself while reaching for greatness; it was public and painful to watch.

  When she came to the studio, she was intoxicated by at least one substance, slurring her words and dressed in what looked like a torn fishing net. The make-up people had to find invisible tape to hold her clothes together and cover up several gaping holes in awkward places. Behind the scenes, faced with her dangerously unpredictable behaviour, we wondered whether to send her home and just ask the other guests to talk for longer. But in the end we decided to risk it and she held herself together—just, and only thanks to some real safety pins in judicious places.

  The audience sensed that this was someone fragile and on the edge, and were riveted, but the anxiety backstage was palpable and Mike was not amused. When a guest took him out of his comfort zone, he blamed the researcher. It was not his best trait, and he too was having a problem with drink, as he later admitted, but it was a reality we all danced around.

  Within a few months, I realised that Mike had not warmed to me. As a result, I felt the need to prove myself, week in week out, whereas other, more senior members of the team with an established rapport and track record got a lot more leeway. Having earned their stripes, they could rest on their laurels a little and josh him out of a bad mood with shared war stories of tricky guests and near disaster averted.

  When I gave him my brief after a thrilling afternoon with the Royal Shakespeare Company director Trevor Nunn, he threw the document back in my face, furious, and told me to start again. It was too highbrow. He did not want a bloke delivering a lecture about Shakespeare and Dickens (Nunn was just about to stage his landmark eight-hour production of Nicholas Nickleby). He wanted anecdotes, jokes, behind-the-scenes gossip. What we would now call the Luvvie Stuff. I got what he asked for, but he bore me a grudge for weeks and I felt I had lost the little trust I had earned.

  Anxious and insecure, one weekend I watched a rerun on television of the film Serpico. The story of the whistleblower cop, played with dazzling commitment by Al Pacino, was a welcome break from celebrity caprices.

  At the Monday morning editorial meeting when we threw names around, I piped up ‘Did anyone watch Serpico over the weekend? I wonder what happened to him?’

  His face like granite, Mike turned his attention to me.

  ‘Find him,’ he said, walking out of the room and leaving the challenge hanging in the air.

  The team looked at me with undisguised pity.

  After being shot at point-blank range through the face following his revelations of corruption in the NYPD, Serpico had gone into hiding. Where to start? I had no idea. But I did remember the film was based on a book by Peter Maas. I tracked Maas down through his agent. Did he know where Serpico was? Could Maas contact him for me? A kind man who could probably hear the desperation in my voice, he said he would get back to me. Hours later, he called. ‘He’s willing to talk to you.’

  He was, Maas reported, living at a commune just over the Welsh border. He gave me a number. When I called, a softly nasal voice agreed on a date and offered to pick me up at the station. Elated to have got this far, I consulted train timetables and told no one about the progress I was making. I wanted it to be a big surprise, my way back into Mike’s good books with a flourish.

  In those days, there were no mobile phones. Also, in those days, any duty of care that producers or editors had towards their staff was never made explicit. We acted as independent adults and the issue of liability in doing our job was never discussed. There were no guidelines about personal safety. We came and went from the office, usually only casually mentioning to a colleague that we were going to be out for a few hours or a day and that was it. I had never heard any stories of researchers having problems beyond the odd unwelcome pass or flirtation or the guest who turned up slightly the worse for wear.

  I was going quite a distance but could make it in one day if I caught particular trains, allowing for a couple of hours to assess Serpico as suitable talent. Of course in my mind I could not help but expect Al Pacino. When I got there, the station was a tiny isolated stop in the middle of nowhere. A man with curly hair and a pick-up truck was waiting in the car park. It could only be him.

  Frank Serpico was no Al Pacino, but he had a noticeable scar on his face from where the bullet had hit him and explained that he was deaf in one ear, from where the bullet had exited.

  ‘I thought I would take you to the village pub for lunch. They do a nice local trout,’ he said. When we got there, he came around to my side of the truck to open the door. How gallant, I thought, but the next minute, in the main street of the village, he pushed me against the wall of the pub, arms and legs splayed, and frisked me. It felt like being tickled just a little too hard. Embarrassed, I laughed and asked what was going on, as if the whole thing were a joke.

  ‘Just had to check you’re not wearing a wire,’ he said, as if this were completely normal. Without any further comment, we went into the pub.

  After lunch we drove to a remote commune. I took in vegetable gardens, stone dwellings, a barn, and felt the loneliness of the place. A good place to hide, heal, recover from physical and psychological wounds, perhaps. Frank introduced me to his large sheepdog companion and took me to his room. There was only one chair and he took it. I perched on the end of the bed with my notebook.

  By now I knew he was not right for the show. Too damaged, too self-absorbed in his paranoia. I was being polite, biding my time until I could go home. I admired him for what he had been, but felt sorry for what he had become and was puzzled by his willingness to come out of the shadows and talk; he must have craved the attention for complex reasons that I did not fully understand. I felt it would be unfair to expose his vulnerability and replace the heroic image people had of him with this far frailer thing. Better to leave him where he was to try to remake his life.

  Before I knew it, he was on me. I wriggled under him and he drew back, pointing a gun at me. To this day, I could not tell you whether it was a Colt .45 or a water pistol. All I managed to do was to say, very lamely, that my parents were expecting me for dinner and could he please take me back to the station. He switched back to sensible mode, pulled himself together and drove me to the station. As the train was pulling in, he kissed me on the mouth. I replayed that kiss, the final shaming punctuation mark in the whole episode, all the way home.

  The next day I went to work. At the editorial meeting I told the team in the sketchiest of terms that I had found Serpico, met with him and that he was not for us. There was a brief flurry of curiosity and amazement. To get him on the show would be a coup, Mike persisted. Was I really sure he was not up to it? I had to insist on Serpico’s mental i
nstability. I told no one about what had happened between us. And that should have been the end of the story.

  A few months later my friend Yvette rang to tell me she had scored a prized apartment in the heart of Kensington that was too good to miss. She could not afford the rent on her own and asked if I wanted to share. The decision had to be made very quickly as the owner was going overseas suddenly and was in a hurry to get the matter settled.

  As soon as I saw the flat I knew we had to have it, even though it meant the disruption of moving within a week. Everything happened very fast, and within days Yvette and I were carting boxes up two flights of stairs to our high-ceilinged expansive space. We had hardly had time to give out our new phone number to family. We’d let friends know once we’d unpacked.

  When the phone rang, I assumed it was for the owner and prepared to take a message. I heard pips that told me the caller was in a phone box.

  ‘It’s Frank,’ said the caller.

  ‘Frank who?’ I asked, not recognising the voice.

  ‘Frank Serpico. I’m at Heathrow, I’m just calling to say goodbye. The commune collapsed. Lost all my money. I’m going back to the States.’

  ‘But how did you get this number?’ I asked, dumbfounded.

  There was a pause. Then he said slowly: ‘I’ve known where you were all the time. Bye.’

  To this day I still don’t understand what that call was about or how he got my number. He did not speak to my parents. No one at work had taken a call for me.

  Yvette was a well-connected ambitious young American who had come to London to study drama. She reminded me of a modern-day Henry James character, eager with unformed ambition and naïve confidence that her charm would open any door. Somehow, she had become the protégé of Hollywood veteran Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who took an avuncular interest in her career progress and invited her to the theatre whenever he was in town. When the phone rang a second time, it was him. He’d got the number from Yvette’s parents, was staying at the Dorchester and wondered if he might take us out for dinner. We accepted as happily as only two young women keen to escape unpacking boxes would.