Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

  “Of course you are out of work, darlink … everyone is.” She lit another cigarette from the butt of the last, and coughed cheerfully, “Haven’t you got an agent or something?”

  “I had … Tony Forwood, but apparently he has given it up, now he’s an actor himself.”

  She laughed, and coughed again. “Of course he has. After seven years in the Army he couldn’t possibly stay in an office. He spent so much time getting jobs for total idiots at twice his salary that he decided to go back. He got married, you know, to Glynis Johns.”

  “Yes, I knew; he wrote to me years ago.”

  “But they’ve broken up. It’s sad because there is a baby, a boy, did you know?”

  “No. Lost touch in 1942.”

  “Well, he’s in London in a play … but he’s wretched and ill, I hear … you should go and see him, he’d be pleased. He doesn’t see anyone much now. It was a big blow, the marriage breaking up. Go and see him, and give him my love.”

  * * *

  Chesham Mews was just like any other fashionable mews: narrow, cobbled, faintly incestuous. Window boxes, yellow, white, pale blue, the summer’s geraniums and lobelia dying into November. Spring is fashionable in a mews. Not autumn. Louvered shutters, wrought iron numerals, carriage-lamps at every primrose door.

  I rang the bell three times, waited patiently, rang again. A window above opened and he looked out blearily. Hadn’t shaved, pale faced, hair ruffled.

  “Yes, what is it?” He had been sleeping.

  “It’s me.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  “Came to see if you were in.”

  “I’ve got ’flu. In bed.”

  “I knew …”

  “The key is on a string, put your hand in the letter box.”

  A long, steep, flight of stairs. One smallish room. A large divan bed, some chairs, a cream painted table with a crackle-finish. Over the fireplace a Medici print of a scarlet amaryllis, a couple of Chinese tea-caddies, clothes scattered here and there, motor magazines; incongruously, a tapestried chair worked by his grandmother, claw and ball legs, squatting beside the gas-meter. He was in the bed swamped in crumpled sheets, blankets helter skelter, a pink rubber hot water bottle, cold, on the floor. He blew his nose hard on a bit of Kleenex.

  “Well then.”

  “Well then.”

  “I have to play in the evenings, so I stay in bed all day … I’ve got ’flu.”

  “Yes, I know … Lusia told me. You’ve stopped the agent business, I gather?”

  He scrabbled for another Kleenex and blew his nose again.

  “Yes … so many idiots, thought I’d do it myself. More money, less work. You just demobbed?”

  “Last week … I’m looking for a job.”

  “Everyone is. It’s not easy … I don’t know what I can do …” A helpless look into the middle distance.

  “Marriage broken up, I gather?”

  He plumped up a sagging pillow. “Yes … Lusia again?”

  “She knows everything.”

  “So it seems. I’ve moved in here for a while. Give us time to sort it out; we were very happy together, but … well, Peace takes a bit of adjusting to, you’ll see. I’m a parent too.”

  “Yes … what time do you have to go to the theatre?”

  “About six. Do you want to see it?”

  “Not much. Where are you?”

  “The St James. A Boy Wonder Impresario. Daubeny. Quite pleasant. Bright. Might be useful for you to meet him one day.”

  “I’m leaving the theatre, I just want a job to carry me on until January. I owe the Army two hundred quid or something, they over-paid me, so they say. I’m broke. Can’t go to my father after all this time and expect to be kept.”

  He scratched his head and yawned.

  “Have you tried Actors’ Reunion yet?”

  “What are they; or is it?”

  “A group of ex-service people; all actors. You do an audition and if you’re lucky and get a part, the Agents and Management promise to come and see what you can do and you might get something from that. If you get a part, that is. It’s very hard, you must realise; the ones who didn’t go in are hanging on like grim death; and suddenly thousands of people who weren’t actors before discovered they had a talent in army concert parties. They’re in too. A chap who has done a couple of impersonations in a troop concert, or played Elvira in ‘Blithe Spirit’ in a prisoner of war camp, suddenly knows that he is ready for ‘Troilus and Cressida’, or his name in lights at the Windmill. Very optimistic and totally lacking in style. You’ll find it all a bit changed.”

  On the crackle-topped table there was a dirty breakfast tray. I suggested that I might make a cup of tea, which I did on a sort of hot-plate in a corner kitchen, washing the cups, and chucking the sloshy tea dregs down the lavatory. It was quite like old times. I found some damp biscuits in a cupboard, a half empty packet of tea, and no milk.

  He grumbled quietly. “Biscuits are all soggy.”

  “Well, they were on a plate beside an old cauliflower, that’s why.”

  He looked surprised. “A cauliflower? Thought I’d had that ages ago.”

  “So you’re not an agent any longer then?”

  “No. Too much of a sweat, filthy job, idiot people impossible to handle.”

  “Where is this Reunion Theatre thing?”

  “Not terribly sure. There’s something about it on the desk there, among the papers and things … I should have a try if I were you, half London is anyway so you’ll be in good company at least. And you were an actor before, it might help; most of them don’t know Stage Right from Stage Left and they can’t time an egg, let alone a laugh … try. Anyway you’ll need a new agent, I’m afraid; it really is not my line.”

  The audition for the Actors’ Reunion Theatre, which I had the good fortune to attend a week later, was held in the Duke of York’s Theatre, on the set of “Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary”. Although it was barely ten-thirty in the morning the theatre was full from pit to gallery and I thought that a performance must have started and that this was the Show. The fact that it was merely one solitary, monthly audition daunted me very much indeed. Forwood’s depressed words of the week before became facts. Here they all were, the out of work ex-actors, clambering for a chance, looking for the break, and here I was among them. I could now no longer wear my uniform, my two weeks grace was up, and the last of my money jingled sadly in my pocket.

  I decided to sit where I was in the warmth of the auditorium, and then walk back to Victoria and get a train home. Realising that it might go on for some time—how could anyone in their right senses audition an audience of nearly five hundred for a one act play for children which had a cast of barely fifteen, excluding crowds?—I took a seat on the centre aisle towards the back so that I would be able to leave for the train without disturbing whatever was going on at the time. The more ambitious had all arrived early and were packing the Stalls nearest to the stage where, at a small trestle table, amidst the stag-heads and painted beams of Ralph Lynn’s farce, a small, worried, body of adjudicators sat in a self-conscious line. Someone got up and called for silence, Ladies and Gentleman, and explained that the play they were about to cast this month was a one act-er called “The Man in the Street” and that the Director, present on the stage, would be Allan Davis, ex-The Buffs, and that he would now come among us to cast his play. It seemed to me a very dotty way of going about the business, and God knows what happened to the people who had jammed themselves into the Circle, for Mr Davis, ex-The Buffs, wasn’t going to have the time to trot up there, which he very sensibly didn’t.

  Instead, with a spirited leap into the Orchestra Stalls, he hurried up the aisle, cast list in hand, looking for his actors. I remember that he was very spick and span and crack-regiment-looking; bright eyed, confident, a head as neat and smooth as a nine-pin, a voice, light, clear, authoritative and crisp. No wasting time … Up and down the Stalls he hurried, peering along every row, pencil in han
d. Like a ratcatcher.

  “I’m looking for Jesus now!” he cried. “A young Jesus … no beards … smooth faced Jesus … anyone feel like a Jesus?” It was a rhetorical question, and no one answered. “I’ve got Mary Magdalene and Joseph!” He ticked off the names as if he was checking the company stores. “But what I need now is Jesus.” He had reached my area by this time, tripped over my feet sticking into the aisle, and when I withdrew them hastily, apologising, he grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet and cried, “Got him! I’ve got my Jesus … trot down there and give them your name,” and as I bewilderedly walked down to the glaring stage I heard him hurrying up into the Pit calling out for Pontius Pilate.

  We rehearsed in the Dress Circle Bar for a week or so, very seriously and with intense concentration, while charladies battered about with buckets and a long thin man hoovered the carpet round our feet. Mr Davis was very particular and gave the whole horrid little playlet the importance of “Tosca”. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was all about, save that it was a play for children and had a religious flavour if not much religious fervour.

  We opened one morning, at the deathly hour of eleven, in modern clothes (there were no costumes or make-up naturally) on the stag-hung, chintz-settee’d set of the current farce before a sparse audience of Agents, Managers’ Assistants, Casting Directors and what were called, in those days, Talent Scouts. Sparse they might have been, but at least they had showed patriotism in coming to give the “ex-actors” a chance. I remember that I wore my one pair of grey flannels from Whiteway and Laidlaws in Chowringhee, Calcutta, and a blue and white striped shirt which I had bought in the market in Batavia. There were hardly any lights, because there were power cuts at the time, and we were all frozen to death, and to my intense surprise I was a great success as Jesus; and after the play was over found myself jammed into a corner of the Stage Box surrounded by excited, complimentary, quacking people handing me telephone numbers and begging that I call them, all, it appeared, immediately.

  In a slightly dazed state we, the cast and Mr Davis, withdrew to a pub in St Martin’s Lane and had a stiff drink where he told us all how good we had been, and, leading me aside, told me that he thought I had great quality but to be careful and not let “anything go to your head”. He needn’t have worried. Though the exercise had been amusing, even in a way, stimulating, it had still not re-awakened the almost completely dormant desire for the theatre which I had allowed to slip away in the cornfields of Normandy. All I wanted was an immediate job to help me out until term time. It was uncomfortable borrowing a quid every time I wanted a drink or a packet of rationed cigarettes, from my patient, understanding, but hard up, father.

  Forwood, adding up some bills, was amused and tried to give advice.

  “It seems stupid not to go and see someone, if they were all so keen about your work … wasn’t there anyone there you could deal with?”

  “The lot of them sounded mad. All yelling and shoving telephone numbers at me … I frankly wouldn’t trust one of them. I told them I really wasn’t interested at all … there was one fellow though. Quite small, just gave me his card and said he’d be glad to advise me if I needed any help. I quite liked him. Very cool and collected … he just faded away, very sensible and sure.”

  “He sounds your best bet then: what’s his name?”

  I fished about in the pocket of my Calcutta flannels. The card was crumpled. “Fredrick Joachim, an address in Regent Street.”

  Forwood slid the bills into an envelope. “I’d give him a call. He sounds all right, never heard of him, but he sounds sensible.”

  Fredrick Joachim’s office, three floors up in a shabby building over a coffee shop at the top end of Regent Street, was the exact size of his desk. That is to say, it was about six feet by four, and contained himself, crouching in a small chair, his pleasant secretary who crouched beside him, a chair for “The Client” and a slit of a window which faced a dark well. I asked him what he would do if there was ever a fire in the coffee shop below, and he said, very sharply, that he was an optimist.

  He also said that he thought, but was not at all sure on just one performance, that I might have something but was unable to specify what exactly, and that if I cared he would try and get me a few bits and pieces and then we could all make up our minds together. He promised nothing at all, said that he was just starting out as an agent after six years as a War Reserve Policeman, and showed me his lace-up boots from the Force which, he said, were just the thing in this frightful weather. We exchanged telephone numbers and shook hands, a difficult effort, since I had to lean across the pleasant secretary and he had to hunch himself out of his chair, trapped behind his littered desk.

  At first he sent me off on a round of all the Studios to meet the Casting People. Everyone was polite and kind but each asked the same question, “What have you done recently?” and when one said nothing since 1940, except be in the Army, they all looked sadly wise and suggested, as Beattie had done, that I must be a little rusty and perhaps I should call again later after I had done a little work. Sweet Heaven! What work?

  “I think,” said Freddy sipping a cup of filthy coffee in the coffee shop below his office, “I think this thing called Television could be useful, they say it’ll be very important as soon as they can get sets and things … but people do watch it, quite a big public, about 9,000 sets, I gather, mostly in shop windows and so on, quite large crowds. We might try that. Since they are just starting up they’ll not be too choosy. I think they’d take anyone. Even you …”

  We started on Television. And he was proved right. I got my first job, to my relief (funds were absolutely rock bottom by now, and the train fare from Haywards Heath was a killer at seven shillings return), in a television production of “Rope” … the play I had started out with in Catterick all those years ago. The auditions were held in a cold room in Marylebone and I got the part of “Granillo”—the neurotic killer, not the lead, to be sure, but I was more conscious of the salary than the billing.

  “What are you going to call yourself?” Forwood asked, picking through a vegetarian salad, the cheapest meal on the menu, in the restaurant at Peter Jones, on the roof next to the Pet Department.

  “I haven’t thought really; I was D. v.d. Bogaerde at ‘Q’, sometimes.”

  “Sounds awful, and they’ll never get the diphthong right.”

  “Well … I quite like the name Simon. How about Simon and Garde. The second part after the whatever you called it.”

  “Wet name, Simon. There has never been a star called Simon anything, it’s weak.”

  “What about de Montfort? Or Bolivar for instance? I think Simon Garde would be jolly good. Neat and simple.”

  “Simple Simon. And dull.”

  “Well, Dirk, then, and the rest of the name without the diphthong, it is my name in Dutch after all. Dirk Bogarde. That sounds all right, doesn’t it?”

  “And drop the van and the den … and the diphthong? It’s awfully foreign to me.”

  “Well … my grandfather’s name was Forrest Niven. What about that? He was an actor too.”

  “I know that. But there is a Niven already. Leads to confusion.”

  I grew desperate over the salad. “Well, it really doesn’t matter. It’s not for long, it won’t last.”

  He was reasonable. “It might. And you can’t suddenly change it in mid-stream. Make sure before you start.”

  The chattering tide of Second Generation Harrods’ voices threatened to engulf me; a grumpy waitress spilled a bowl of beetroot on the table beside us and little shrieks of “Oh! how too awful … how maddening!” shattered my head.

  I pushed my half-eaten vegetarian salad aside and started on the caramel cream.

  “I’m going to be Dirk Bogarde and that’s it; that’s my new name, no one else is called that, for God’s sake.”

  Forwood finished the last of his shredded carrot. “There’s always Humphrey, of course …” he said mildly.

  “He
’s in America and anyway he’s the same family and it ends in ‘t’ … and the hell with it all. These bloody women are driving me mad.”

  I told Freddy that afternoon, and he pursed his lips and shook his head thoughtfully. “Doesn’t feel right … too harsh, you want a nice easy name that people will remember instantly. What about Paul, or Robert, or James?”

  “You tell them I’m that, and not to spell it like Dick …”

  “Ah!” said Freddy happily. “Dick! That’s the ticket! Dick is much easier than the other one: friendly.”

  A few weeks later at Victoria on my way home, I bought the evening papers. And there it was for the first time … splendidly new, correctly spelled, under the modest Television heading, squashed between Carrol Gibbons and The News (sound only), “David Markham and Dirk Bogarde in ‘Rope’. A thriller.” It was a beginning again.

  Freddy soon had me whizzing round London like a cotton shuttle. I went to all the Casting Directors and Studios and met Theatre Producers who showed a singular lack of interest. Forwood, one evening, arranged an interview for me backstage at the St James Theatre with the Boy Wonder called Peter Daubeny in whose play, “But for the Grace of God” he was playing; that was a total failure. Mr Daubeny, with tight crinkled fair hair and minus an arm which he had lost in some extremely brave encounter with the Germans in North Africa, smiled almost, and turned an implacable back, his empty sleeve neatly tucked into a pocket.

  At the Rank Organisation, a flourishing empire founded on flour-milling, in a palatial house in South Street which had once belonged to the Aberconways, I was interviewed for half an hour by one of the Chief Executives in her Ladyship’s ex-bedroom, a vast room filled with busy typists all clustered round a giant Partners’ Desk like pilot fish about a whale, at which the Executive sat in a grey suit, carnation and cigar. Helpless, I was asked to stand on a pale blue dais before him—it had obviously once supported a sumptuous bed—and told to remove my coat, jacket, waistcoat and finally my tie. Bewildered but complying, I stood before the assembled typing pool of Mighty Rank and was asked to turn around slowly, like beef on a hook. Which I did unsteadily.