The forty-two-year-old Helpmann had recently retired as a principal dancer with the Sadler’s Wells ballet. Although I had never seen him dance on the stage, I recognized him at once from The Red Shoes, a movie I had seen twice. This was the film that inspired many girls of my generation to take up ballet. It also turned lovely, auburn-haired Moira Shearer, a relatively unknown dancer with Sadler’s Wells, into an internationally famous movie star.
As soon as we were seated, I told Helpmann how much I had admired his dancing in The Red Shoes. “I especially like the bit where a newspaper swirls around and around in the wind and then turns into you, all covered in newsprint.”
“That was rather good, wasn’t it?” He smiled at me but still looked like a gaunt, long-faced man who could play a ghoul. “If you liked The Red Shoes so much, then you must see my latest movie, The Tales of Hoffman. Moira is in it, too, and it’s full of magic, music, and fantasy.”
“Oh, I hope The Tales of Hoffman is playing in Johannesburg.”
“Do you live in Johannesburg?”
How easy it was to talk to Helpmann and Olivier, both of them taking an interest in me that did not seem feigned for my father’s sake. He could not have heard us anyway since he and Danny Kaye were taking turns regaling their end of the table and causing explosions of laughter. Rarely had I felt so grown up and self-confident.
“Speaking of films,” Olivier was saying to me, “I hope you know, Christopher, what an extraordinary actor and director your father is. He may be out of favor now—his reputation has suffered in recent years, and many people don’t appreciate his style of acting or understand his films—but time will show how wrong they are. Orson is the true artist among us, and when he finishes his Othello, it will be a film for the ages. People will be watching it long after my Shakespearean films have been forgotten. Have you seen my Henry V by the way?” I nodded but before I could say anything about it, he rushed on, “Now don’t tell me how much you liked it. Everyone tells me that, and it’s not the point. My films may be crowd-pleasers, but they are utterly conventional, and I am the first to admit it. When it comes to making films, I don’t begin to have your father’s brilliance or originality.”
I had been in awe of Olivier with his striking good looks and kingly bearing, and now I realized what a modest man he was, in spite of his enormous success, wealth, and fame. He was speaking to me simply, directly, and I was touched that he wanted me to know, in case I didn’t, what a great creative force my father was.
After lunch the sun came out, and my father took me on a stroll through the lovely gardens, past tennis courts and greenhouses, until we found a bench under a blossoming fruit tree. “I am so proud of the way you handled yourself at lunch, Christopher,” my father was saying. “Everyone’s been coming up to me and complimenting me on my daughter, how self-possessed she is for her age, how intelligent and delightful. It’s going to be awfully hard to send you back to Johannesburg …”
“Oh, please, Daddy, don’t remind me!” I hadn’t thought of my schoolmates in weeks, and suddenly there they were, taking up space in my mind again: all those beefy South African girls in their frog green tunics and brown stockings, stampeding up and down the hockey field while I trailed behind, feeling hopeless and inadequate.
“What we have to do is arrange the next visit with your mother so we’ll both have something to look forward to. Maybe you could spend Christmas with me this year.”
“Oh, yes, yes, please ask Mummy right away.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll write to her tonight, and you must ask her, too, as soon as you get home.”
So it was really ending. In less than a week I would be back in the house where my stepfather made me feel I never measured up to what was expected of me and my mother increasingly went along with his views. I would be back in boarding school where, apart from my few friends and a teacher here and there, no one found me intelligent, delightful, or worthy of notice. So, I told myself, I must remember every precious moment of these days with my father. Like treasure saved for hard times ahead, I must store them away in my mind. And the brightest jewel to gladden a dark hour would be this stupendous day at Notley Abbey, the day I had made my father proud of me—not as I had tried to do when I was younger by showing off at the piano or wheedling my way into one of his movies. No, his affirmation of me had come when I least expected it, while I was having lunch with the Oliviers, far removed from the Pringles’ withering eyes—and just being myself.
ONCE I WAS back in Johannesburg, I could hardly wait for Jackie to be out of the house so I could tell my mother about my visit with my father. Fortuitously, my stepfather left early in the morning to exercise his polo ponies, continued on to his mysterious place of business, and was not seen again until afternoon tea. So I had my mother to myself while she breakfasted in bed.
It reminded me of the good old days to perch on the end of her bed and chatter away, reclaiming the child who had romped on the beach in Santa Monica. Yet my mother was no longer the beauty she had been in California. She had gained weight, lost her waistline, and the medication she took for the two slipped disks in her back made her face puffy. At thirty-five Virginia Pringle was beginning to look matronly.
Like a soft shawl hugging my shoulders, I felt wrapped in the new self-assurance I had brought back with me from London. First, in glowing detail, I told my mother about everything Daddy and I had done in Rome, every museum, church, and art gallery we had visited, and how thrilling it had been to go around Rome with him. Then I told her how in London Daddy had made history come alive for me at the Tower of London and Hampton Court, how he had introduced me to Danny Kaye and taken me to lunch at the Oliviers.
When I fell silent, there was a long pause while my mother stared off into space. Then in the crisp British voice that still sounded strange to me, she said, “I never thought I’d come off second best, but I guess that old saying is true. Familiarity does breed contempt.”
“It’s not true! I don’t feel—”
“Oh, yes you do, Chrissie.” She shoved the breakfast tray off her lap and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. “Orson’s the glamorous one in your eyes—it’s obvious from the way you talk about him, as though you’re in love with him, for God’s sake—and I’m just an old shoe. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to put up with me and Jackie, whether you like it or not!”
I was dumbfounded by her reaction. Couldn’t she be even a little glad for me that I had spent such a fantastic and unforgettable time with my father? “But I thought you wanted me to see Daddy. I thought—”
“Of course I wanted it. Haven’t I always encouraged Orson to take an interest in you? I was the one who arranged this visit, if you remember. He would never have thought of it, I can assure you.”
“But he did think of it, Mummy. He called me on my birthday, remember?”
She continued as though I hadn’t spoken, cold rage building in her voice. “It just never occurred to me until now, when you sit there like a stage-struck little fool, babbling your head off about Orson and Larry and Vivien and Danny, that I’d come off second best.”
She’s not going to spoil it for me! I flounced out of the room, leaving my mother to her novel, her nail-biting, and her cigarette, but later that day, she almost succeeded in upsetting everything.
When Jackie came home in time for afternoon tea, they held a conference in their bedroom that I overheard, in spite of the closed door. They emerged, convinced I had returned to them “with a swelled head.”
So at dinner that evening, they both worked hard at “taking Chrissie down a peg.” Much was made of my undistinguished academic record at Kings-mead. The only subjects in which I appeared to excel were English and music, but I should be getting good marks in all my subjects. Why wasn’t I doing better, since I could hardly be accused of being stupid? It must be the lazy, self-indulgent temperament and lack of discipline I had inherited from Orson. (Daddy’s not lazy. He works all the time!)
One of my teachers had noted in her report that I tended to daydream in class. “Well, Chrissie,” Jackie continued, “if you’re going to be wet behind the ears and stare out the window instead of paying attention to your teachers, then you can forget about graduating from Kingsmead or any other school. It’s high time you got cracking, pulled up your bootstraps …” And so on.
Clinging to the last shreds of self-confidence, I managed to say, “Maybe it doesn’t matter if I finish school or not because I’m going to be an actress.”
“An actress!” they hooted in unison.
“What makes you think you have the talent to be an actress?” Jackie’s voice conveyed that I was no more important than a bug he could crush under one of his highly polished riding boots. “Really, Chrissie, you’d better take a hard look at yourself and smarten up.” He turned to my mother. “You see, Virginia, this is the result of letting Chrissie gallivant around Europe with Orson. She’s obviously forgotten everything we’ve tried to drum into her and fallen under his influence, which, if I may say so, is hardly in her best interests …”
I wanted to scream at them. I wanted to throw my plate of food at them. Instead I burst into tears.
“There she goes, crying again,” my mother observed to Jackie in her Queen Victoria voice. “She’s such a little bore.”
MY MOTHER WAS aware that Jackie’s negative view of “Orson’s influence” on me was prompted by jealousy and his own fears about coming off second best. So, happily for me, when my father wrote asking if I could spend Christmas with him in London, she agreed. As long as Orson did not try to undermine her and Jackie or interfere with their plans for me, my mother was ready to send me off at a moment’s notice. “Orson’s better company than anyone in the world,” she told me out of Jackie’s hearing, “and I’m thrilled he’s finally taking an interest in you. I always hoped this would happen when you were old enough to deal with him.” Either she had forgotten her earlier accusation that I overly glamorized my father and saw her as “an old shoe,” or she had thought better of it. I never knew with my mother; she was as changeable as the moon.
One day while we were looking over my meager wardrobe and deciding what I should take to London, my mother suddenly snapped, “It’s high time Orson began contributing to your upkeep. You desperately need a new winter coat and some smart new dresses, and this time he’s going to pay for it and not me!” To my dismay, my mother drew up a long shopping list I was to present to my father, which made me feel like a charity case. Meanwhile, she fired off an airmail letter about the winter coat my father was to purchase ahead of my arrival.
Here is my father’s bemused reply:
7th December 1951
Dearest Virginia,
Your letter regarding Christopher’s coat specifies navy blue and mentions a fur collar. Is this a mistake? Have I read it wrong? Surely navy blue and a fur collar aren’t a happy combination. I am not trying to save dough on the fur. Please airmail further thoughts on this subject so that I can meet our child at the airport with exactly what you think we ought to have.
Much love,
Orson
Reading the letter over my mother’s shoulder, I mumbled, “I don’t really need a fur collar.”
“Of course you do! It will look lovely on you.”
“But fur is so expensive.”
“I’m not asking Orson to buy you a full-length mink, for God’s sake.”
In the next flurry of letters between Johannesburg and London, my father replied, “We are getting the coat including fur collar and counting the minutes till Chrissie’s arrival.” He asked if I might leave school a few days early in order to catch his last performance in the title role of Othello at Saint James’s Theatre. It was closing on December 15th, after a controversial six-week run. “I expect you’ll say no,” he went on, “and will quite understand if you do, but can’t resist asking.”
Alas, she did say no, and I missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see my father’s staged version of Othello. The British drama critic Kenneth Tynan raved, “The presentation was visually flawless,” and the stage at St. James’s “seemed as big as a field.” (Other critics were dumbfounded by the liberties Orson took with Shakespeare’s text and the cinematic elements he brought to the stage. During a midnight magic show he put on at the Coliseum, attended by Princess Elizabeth and the duke of Edinburgh, my father quipped, “I have just come from the St. James’s Theatre, where I have been murdering Desdemona—or Shakespeare, according to which newspaper you read.”)
At the time, though, my mother said nothing about my father’s production of Othello, and when I arrived in London shortly after it closed, I did not know what I had missed. In fact, I had little notion of what my father was doing during the many hours and days he could not spend with me. He seemed to be tied up with one thing or another most of the time, which was not what I had expected after our previous visit. My disappointment grew each time I was handed over to his secretary, whom I will call Phoebe since I can’t remember her real name. She was a curvaceous, red-haired woman with nicotine-stained teeth and a husky smoker’s laugh. She and my father seemed so easy with each other that it occurred to me Phoebe’s working hours might continue late at night, in his bed—a thought I immediately swept from my mind.
Phoebe was a relaxed person, who laughed effortlessly and went with the flow—a great asset when working in any capacity for Orson Welles. She put herself out to be nice to me. Although I liked her well enough and didn’t mind spending time with her, she was not the one I had flown to London to see. The morning my father told me he could not take me to the British Museum and Phoebe would take me instead, I was barely able to swallow my tears. On another outing it was Phoebe who accompanied me to the National Gallery, marveling that I was “so keen on art.” She couldn’t get over how many paintings I recognized from the art books I had been studying in the school library. Yet how sad and empty it felt to be impressing my father’s secretary when it was my father I wanted beside me, wandering from room to room, his deep, expressive voice in my ear. I knew that if he were with me, I wouldn’t be showing off. I would be standing in awe before the great works of art hanging on the walls, trying out the new pair of eyes he had given me. And later, hand in hand, we would walk along the Thames and talk and talk, and I would feel again the wonder of being treated as though I were his equal. He had lit a thousand fires in my mind that would burn as long as I lived.
“I’VE GOT A surprise for you,” my father announced dramatically while we were having breakfast one morning in the living room area of our luxurious two-bedroom suite. I can’t remember what hotel we were staying in, only that it was very grand. Breakfast was rolled in on a trolley by waiters who uncovered the platters of eggs and kippers, ham and sausages as though they were presenting us with the crown jewels. “Guess what? We’re going to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Saint Moritz.” My father beamed at me with a boyish enthusiasm that made me beam back at him, even though I had no idea where Saint Moritz was or what made it so special. Over several slices of toast spread thick with marmalade, he enlightened me. We were headed for the most famous and glamorous resort town in the Swiss Alps, patronized by movie and opera stars, kings and princesses, heads of state, and everybody who was anybody. We would be staying in a hotel so magnificent that it would make our elegant London “digs” look like a shack. We would be basking in Alpine sunshine, breathing in crisp mountain air, and feasting our eyes on panoramas of frozen lakes and snow-covered peaks. “We’re going to have a spectacular Christmas,” he concluded, polishing off the last sausage with evident satisfaction.
“Is Phoebe coming with us, Daddy?”
“Of course. We can’t possibly get along without her. Besides, I may have to go to Paris at some point, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to take you with me.”
“Oh.”
“But you’ll be having such a marvelous time, you won’t even know I’m gone.” He laughed at my solemn face. “I can
see you already, darling girl, twirling around on your ice skates and tearing down the slopes on your skis …”
“I’m not very good at sports, Daddy—”
“Nonsense! Who told you that?”
“—and I don’t know how to ski.”
“Then you’ll be in the ideal place to learn. We’ll find the best ski instructor in Saint Moritz. Phoebe will arrange everything.” And to make sure she did, he sent her to Saint Moritz a day ahead of our arrival.
So I had my father all to myself when we flew to Zurich, then traveled by train to the city of Chur, and from there took another train guided by overhead cables that crawled up the sharp inclines like a giant caterpillar, carrying us higher and higher into the Alps. I was overwhelmed by my first sight of mountains jagged with snow whose peaks cut through the clouds. We rattled over ravines so steep I had to close my eyes until the train, shuddering and swaying on its cables, was safely across. Absorbed by the view, I was content to sit quietly by the window, leaving my father to his book and his cigar.
It was early evening when we finally arrived in Saint Moritz. To my delight, we took a horse-drawn sleigh from the station to the hotel. I felt like a Russian princess, snug under our fur blanket as we whooshed and glided along on streets thickly packed with snow. I could see the vast frozen lake at our feet and the village gently rising above it in layers of lighted windows, but my eyes were drawn up and up to meet the huge mountains that ringed the horizon. Meanwhile, the tinkling bells on the horse’s harness inspired my father to burst into a lusty chorus of “Jingle Bells” in which I happily joined. Thus we arrived at our glitzy, mock-Gothic hotel in the center of town, singing and laughing our heads off. At such moments I was convinced that, in his heart, my father was younger than I was and always would be.
In My Father's Shadow Page 14