She sang “Some Enchanted Evening” and did some shattering imitations of various celebrities beginning with Ethel Merman, making hay with several Barrymores and a few famous political figures, and finishing with her own Daddy.
After lunch we drove back to the studio in Rome where some indoor scenes in Othello were being shot on a set of a hallway in a castle. My father introduced me to everyone, actors and technicians, their names and faces a blur while I smiled and shook hands. I’d like to come here every day, I wanted to tell them. You all make me feel so welcome.
That afternoon I watched them filming a scene between Othello and Iago; my father more handsome than ever in blackface, transformed into the tortured Moor, and Micheál unrecognizable as the cunning villain with a gaunt, lined face and spindly legs. I watched take after take but found myself unable to stay in the moment. In my mind I was already in the car, being driven back to the apartment on the Via del Corso, and it was too late to fling myself on Othello’s metal-plated breast and cry out, Why can’t I live with you, Daddy? Please. I won’t be any trouble. Please let me stay here with you …
Several days after my visit to the Scalera Studios, my father ran out of funds. Not for the first time, the production of Othello was called to a halt and the cast disbanded. Finding himself at liberty, my father turned his attention to me. We spent one afternoon prowling through the dank, smelly catacombs littered with ancient skeletons. My father was bent over the whole time to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, but this did not stop him from filling my ears with grisly tales of Christians being fed to the lions. “Now that you’ve been to the Colosseum, Christopher, you can imagine it perfectly.” I shuddered. “And while all the horror and bloodshed was going on, the spectators were howling and cheering and the Roman matrons were doing their knitting …”
On another day he took me to his lovely villa in nearby Frascati where we had lunch at a refectory table—“a monks’ table,” he called it—in an airy white dining room. Afterward, he showed me around the villa, and what a welcoming house it was, with its spacious, light-filled rooms, comfortable furniture, colorful rugs scattered on stone floors, wood-burning fireplaces in all the rooms, and from every window and terrace an enchanting view.
In the late afternoon, we stood on the upper terrace, gazing down at the luxuriant garden and at the valley beyond. With his hand on my shoulder, my father murmured in a wistful baritone, “It’s so beautiful here in the spring. You should see it when the fruit trees are in bloom. Look, Christopher.” He pointed out the almond and cherry orchards nestled in the valley among stands of cypress, pines, and olive trees. “But I am so rarely here,” he sighed. “We were shooting Othello in Venice, you know, and before that in Morocco, and God only knows where the next location will be or where the next pot of gold is coming from …”
More than ever, the question was on my lips, the question I longed to ask, but never would, because I already knew the answer.
AFTER SPENDING SEVERAL months in Rome, I traveled with my mother and stepfather to Johannesburg, South Africa, where we were going to live for the foreseeable future. Jackie had connections with the South African gold-mining industry, although how he made his living, once he transformed himself from a military man into a businessman, is not any clearer to me now than it was then. What worried me, in any case, were not Jackie’s mysterious dealings in gold. Rather it was how, if we were living a continent away from Rome, I was ever going to see my father again.
We traveled to South Africa on “a flying boat,” an airplane that took off and landed on water. It was a strenuous journey that began in Sicily and took four days. It was also a bumpy ride because the plane flew at a low altitude like a floundering whale. The air pressure in the cabin was so erratic that we were given oxygen masks and advised to keep them on at all times, except, of course, when we had to use the airsick bags, which were soon in short supply. Day after day, the sound of retching filled the cabin. I was miserably ill for the whole trip, a combination of airsickness and asthma, and lay on the cabin floor, gasping for breath. Jackie tried to buck me up by drawing funny pictures of me in my oxygen mask, or with my head stuck in an airsick bag, but only he and my mother were laughing. Although the low-flying plane afforded spectacular views of the pyramids, the Sahara, the dense, ominous stretches of jungle, and the majestic Victoria Falls, I did not cheer up until the trip came to an end.
Soon after we arrived in Johannesburg, we drove south to Cape Town to visit some of Jackie’s friends. I stared out the car window at huge termite hills dotting the dusty landscape, thorn trees with flat tops, a herd of impalas leaping gracefully over the road. These flat, open grasslands were called “the veld,” Jackie explained, and covered most of the Transvaal, but once we left the interior and reached the Cape, there would be orchards and vineyards, mountains and the sea. “It will remind you of California,” Jackie told me.
Meanwhile, nearing a township, we passed Africans gaily dressed in tropical colors and walking on foot in single file. The men carried staffs and the women walked behind them, balancing enormous bundles on their turbaned heads. They were blacker than coal, blacker than any Americans I had ever seen, and when they smiled, the whiteness of their teeth was dazzling. Half-naked children with spindly legs and runny noses ran shrieking after our car, which quickly enveloped them in clouds of dust.
My first look at South Africa convinced me I had been transported to an alien planet. Everything was strange and turned upside down, beginning with the weather. It was summer when it should have been winter, and there was “a rainy season” followed by “a dry season.” We ate a weird-tasting fruit called “pau-pau” that looked like cantaloupe but tasted nothing like it. And Cape Town, with its rows of Dutch gabled houses clinging to the mountainside, its vistas of the Atlantic Ocean and flat-topped Table Mountain, looked nothing like California.
Back in “Jo’burg,” as the locals called it, we moved into a modest house with a small garden in a white suburban enclave. It had a thatched roof weathered to a charcoal gray and a veranda where tea was served in good weather by the African houseboy in his white, starched uniform and white gloves. This daily ritual took place at eleven in the morning—“elevenses”—and again at four in the afternoon. The houseboy glided wordlessly in and out with the tea tray containing a pot of strong tea, another pot of hot water, a pitcher of milk, lemon slices, lumps of sugar, and a plate of “biscuits.” We were allowed to say thank you and to ask for more hot water, but Jackie made it clear we were not to get familiar with the servants or speak to them any more than was strictly necessary. This made me feel very uncomfortable, especially in the early morning when the houseboy awakened me with a knock on my door, brought a cup of milky tea to my bedside, and opened my bedroom curtains. All I could say to him was “Good morning” and “Thank you.” It didn’t seem right to me that a grown man, especially one as tall and dignified as our houseboy, should be waiting on a young girl.
We acquired a puppy resembling a Great Dane except that she had a ridge of fur growing in the wrong direction along her back and so was called a Ridgeback. She was my dog, I was told, which meant that it was my job to sit outdoors with her and pluck the ticks off her coat. These I smashed with a stone, blood spurting in all directions, and after a week or so, I came down with a bad case of tick fever.
Lying ill in bed, I could hear the servants’ lively chatter outside my window as they passed back and forth between the house and their separate quarters in the backyard. They spoke a lilting language punctuated with clicking sounds, which I later learned was Zulu. I learned to distinguish between the voices of our houseboy, our male cook, the “girl” who cleaned, and the “boy” who worked in the garden but was not allowed in the house because he had not been issued a white uniform and gloves. At mealtimes I could smell the cast-iron pot of “mealie meal,” or corn mush, simmering over an open fire in the yard, and sometimes late at night, I was awakened by whoops of unrestrained laughter and loud explosi
ons of talk—sounds that made me uneasy. What if these native people, so polite and reserved by day, rose up in fury one night and turned us out of our house? Why should we live in comfort while they were crammed into rickety shacks with tin roofs and had to wash in the yard, filling a bucket from a coldwater spigot?
Appalled by the servants’ living conditions, my mother made curtains for their tiny rooms, covered the bare floors with rugs, and installed a radio. The result: The servants left in the night, taking the radio with them. “That was extremely foolish of you, Virginia,” Jackie scolded her, “and I hope you’ve learned from your mistake.”
“But …”
“You frightened them away, you silly woman, with your rugs and curtains and American notions of how to treat them. These natives aren’t used to our amenities. How do you think they live in the bush?”
“I have no idea …”
“You’d better smarten up, Virginia, before you make utter fools of us both.”
To hasten the process of converting my mother to the racist views Jackie held in common with the majority of white South Africans in that era of apartheid, he arranged for a group of white women to visit Virginia at teatime and “smarten her up.”
“You must never treat them as your equals,” one told my mother, “or they will rob you blind!”
“You hire them to do a job, and if they don’t do it, or annoy you in any way, you sack them at once,” another advised.
My mother was also instructed to “sack” any “native” who was lazy, spoke out of turn, or showed the slightest sign of being “uppity” or impertinent. The houseboy could get drunk every night and beat his wife on his own free time, but if he was caught helping himself to the master’s liquor cabinet, it was back to the bush with him. Before they left, I heard one women advise my mother to lock up her jewelry, the silverware, and the liquor, since even a “good boy” was not to be trusted. It struck me as curious, listening in my corner, that the mature African men and women working for these white South Africans were referred to as “boys” and “girls.”
During our first year in South Africa, my mother changed from the open-minded American woman who had treated African-Americans as her equals, the woman who had loudly cheered and danced around the living room with Charlie Lederer when we heard on the radio that Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected to a fourth term. She became a female clone of Jack Pringle, and the two of them teamed up against me, because I refused to change my essential self and blend in seamlessly with my surroundings. I was not a chameleon like my mother. And, strangely, the absence of my father made me realize how much he had already shaped me and that his power did not depend on his presence. I was Orson’s kid—not Virginia’s and certainly not Jackie’s—now and forever.
MY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY had come and gone without my hearing from my father. That evening my mother came to my room to say good night and found me slumped in a chair. “Now look here, Chrissie,” she said, “you can’t expect Orson to remember your birthday when he’s in Europe and you’re in South Africa.” It was uncanny how one look at my long face had been enough to tell her why I was sad.
“Marie’s in America,” I pointed out, “and she sent me a birthday card with five dollars in it. She isn’t even my nanny anymore.”
“Marie’s a dear and you must be sure to write and thank her.”
“What I mean is everyone except Daddy remembered my birthday even though I’m living in South Africa.” I had received cards and presents from Granny and Skipper, Aunt Caryl, Grandmother and Grandfather, even Charlie Lederer.
“I see what you mean, Chrissie, and I can see it’s upset you, but it’s nothing to cry about.”
“I’m not crying!” I might, though, if I let myself think about how far away my father was and how little hope I had of seeing him again. “I don’t care about getting a birthday present from Daddy,” I went on, keeping my voice cool and steady. “What bothers me is he didn’t call me today or even send a telegram.”
“He obviously forgot.”
“He never forgot before!”
“There’s no law saying he has to remember every one of your birthdays, is there? Oh, don’t look so tragic! It was different when we all lived in Hollywood and you were more in Orson’s life.” She brushed my hair out of my face, then stood hovering over me as though she wanted to be warm and motherly but didn’t know how. Then, in a softer voice: “Instead of sitting there feeling so sorry for yourself, why don’t you think about all the birthdays he did remember?”
With that she left, gently closing the door. Now I was alone, I could cry as much as I wanted without being accused of feeling sorry for myself, but what good would that do? I sighed, thinking over my mother’s last words. Then, as though she had flung open the doors of an old toy cupboard, I suddenly saw the doll my father had given me on my fifth birthday — the most beautiful doll dressed in old-fashioned velvet and lace. She had a porcelain face, real hair, and pretty blue eyes that opened and closed when I rocked her in my arms. I saw the stack of Land of Oz books; the recordings of Peter and the Wolf and The Nutcracker Suite, which I had played until I knew every note by heart; the fluffy, pink bedroom slippers with the pom-poms on top, a smaller version of Rita’s slippers. I had worn mine until they fell apart. One by one, they came back in a joyful parade, all the birthday gifts from my father. Gifts that were always exactly what I wanted.
But wait! How could I have forgotten the most special gift of all? On the evening of my seventh birthday, my mother told me to sit by the radio. “Your father has a wonderful surprise for you.” She tuned in his half-hour evening program on his This Is My Best series, and I heard his unmistakable voice as clearly as if he were in the same room: “Good evening, this is Orson Welles.” After announcing that tonight’s special guest was the singing star Jane Powell, he went on, “My eldest daughter, Christopher, is seven years old today, and like most ladies and gentlemen of her age, Christopher likes her father to tell her a story. Well, I don’t know of a better one than ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ …”
I clapped my hands in delight. He knew it was my favorite story! On our last visit, having seen the Walt Disney movie, I had amused him by singing Snow White’s song, “Some Day My Prince Will Come.” Now Jane Powell was going to sing it for me on my birthday. My father’s radio play moved forward in a fast-paced, thrilling way. The wicked queen was as scary as Snow White was innocent and beautiful …
For a long time after the program ended, I had sat by the radio, lost in a magic world of poisoned apples and happy endings. Five years had elapsed since then, but no one—not even Jack Pringle—could take that memory away from me.
So now I knew what I had to do. Whenever being without my father began to hurt too much, I would come and sit quietly in my room, close my eyes and remember.
ONE MORNING WHILE my mother and I were having our “elevenses” on the veranda and Jackie was away at his office, she announced that I was going to boarding school. “But why, Mommy? I thought I was going to live with you and Jackie.”
“You are, silly. You’ll be home for the hols.” She was beginning to sound more British than Queen Victoria.
“But why can’t I live at home and go to school during the day?”
“Jackie thinks the discipline of boarding school will be good for you. It will smarten you up, he says.” She smiled gaily and gave me an extra biscuit with my tea, but I was not fooled. Jackie had found the perfect way to remove me from the scene and, at the same time, convince my mother that the banishment was for my own good.
There followed months of misery at Kingsmead College, an all-girl school modeled on the English system of treating young girls like military recruits. We wore hideous green tunics that had to be two inches above our knees—we would periodically kneel on our desks while a teacher came around with a measuring tape—pale green bloomers to protect our modesty when it was windy, and opaque brown stockings. No makeup or jewelry was allowed. While kneeling meekly on
her desk, a girl might have a ribbon or barrette yanked out of her hair and be sharply reprimanded by the teacher with the measuring tape. On Sunday mornings, when we marched two abreast to the church in town, wearing brown bowler hats and green blazers over our uniforms, the boys from a neighboring boarding school leaned out the windows, shouting, “Here come the frogs!”
Up to this point in my life, whenever I found myself in a new place, not too much time passed before I made at least one friend. Kingsmead was the exception. As my first term wore on, the girls continued to treat me as an outsider and a freak. They made fun of my American accent and the hours I spent practicing the piano. At night, I would find my bed short-sheeted. Worse, I would find it crawling with the infinite variety of insect life that thrived in South Africa. I knew better than to report these activities to the matron, a scrawny, bespectacled woman who ran our dormitory like a boot camp.
One evening, to my surprise, the matron summoned me to her office and handed me the telephone. “Your mother wants to speak to you personally,” she sniffed, communicating how highly irregular this was.
“How are you, darling? Are you liking school?” At the sound of my mother’s voice, I burst into tears and the matron yanked the phone away from me.
“Hello, Mrs. Pringle, this is the matron speaking. Chrissie is quite overcome, hearing from you, but some of our girls do get weepy when they hear from home. They need time to adjust to being here, so it would be better if you didn’t call her again, since it will only upset her and she is such an emotional child, isn’t she?”
IT WAS NOT until my second term at boarding school that I made my first friend, a sweet-natured Jewish girl named Wendy Miller. On Saturdays, Wendy and the handful of other Jewish girls at the school went to synagogue, and I would have liked to accompany them. Having been brought up with no religion, I was curious about all of them. The Christian girls in my class were attending confirmation classes, and I wondered if being “confirmed” would make me more acceptable. Then, in his sermon one Sunday, the priest ranted on that only the members of the High Anglican Church had any hope of going to heaven; everyone else was headed straight for hell. I wanted to leap to my feet and shout, “How dare you people send Wendy to hell?” It was the end of my flirtation with the Church of England.
In My Father's Shadow Page 11