Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

  I hugged her to me laughing, whisky slopping unheeded, Chinchilla hairs wafting into the packed room. “You see! I’m moulting! They’ll all get hay fever or something dreadful … some allergy … I wonder what there will be left to hand back to Sylvia tomorrow?” A tall, blue-suited oaf carrying three drinks in his podgy hands pushed between us. “How does it feel,” he roared, “to be a Star Overnight?” He weaved his way through the pack.

  Elizabeth looked quite put out. “How frightfully rude,” she said.

  * * *

  Later, much later, in my small sub-let flat in Hasker Street (two rooms and a hot-plate on the landing; share of bathroom, for a quid a week), we sat together in the sitting room where I was to sleep on the divan, she to have my bed in the back room. The Chinchilla drifted hairs gently into the stuffy air. She had made some cocoa (habits die hard) in two mugs, we were both half asleep.

  “What do you think it’ll mean, then, all this?” She was curious, amused, not very serious.

  “I don’t know. Depends on tomorrow’s papers and what they say really.”

  “But they were awfully nice, the criticky people, weren’t they? That funny woman with the hat, she was someone frightfully important. She said you were spell-binding!” She laughed, knowing much better herself. Remembering my moods and torturing, and sulks and one thing and another; sister junk. They remember everything you ever do. If they love you. “But if it does work out, I mean, what then?”

  “Well … we might transfer to a bigger theatre. Make more money. They might make a film out of it.”

  “With you?” Her attack was sharp, pointed.

  “I don’t know … probably with Stewart Granger or someone, I don’t think with me, they never use the original actor, always film stars. It’s a sort of rule.”

  “Oh dear! It’s all ups and downs, isn’t it. Like snakes and ladders.” She looked downcast, and sipped away thoughtfully. “I’m dreadfully tired, are you? You must be, all that acting and so on. I think Daddy quite liked it, don’t you? Seemed really quite impressed; for him; he had a very long talk with the Author boy. Funny creature, isn’t he? So young. Sort of desperate. I think they are all a very funny lot in your profession. Do you think you could become famous? Like Charles Laughton or Michael Wilding or someone?”

  I started putting a pillow case on the grubby floral cushions for my bed. “I don’t honestly know. Probably not. The people at Rank said my head was too small and my neck was all wrong.”

  She looked startled, and peered up at my neck curiously. “Your neck? Whatever is the matter with your neck? Herbert Marshall had a wooden leg, but you couldn’t tell.”

  I was tired now. I didn’t know what would happen, all I did know was that something had happened, and that it was warm and pleasant and rewarding. So far. “I don’t know, honestly I don’t. But if all went really well I suppose I might be a bit famous or something, if it lasted, and I could make a lot of money. If I was clever and all that.”

  She put the cocoa mugs on to the tin tray and took them to the door. “How much money, I mean sort-of how much?” She stood looking at me with interest. I pulled down the floral divan cover and revealed a grey-looking blanket. There were no sheets.

  “A hundred pounds a week even. I don’t know.”

  She went out on to the landing and stacked the mugs, not clinking them so as not to wake the elderly interior decorators who lived on the ground floor. Coming back in, and closing the door gently, I saw that she was smiling contentedly to herself. “A hundred pounds a week! Goodness! I consider that very nice indeed,” and seeing my worried face she laughed and added, “well, I mean, just for acting it’s not bad, is it? I mean it’s better than a wallop …”

  I finished it off for her, “a wallop in the belly with a wet fish!” We laughed, tired, warmed by the childhood joke, Lally had said it was plain vulgar when we once dared to use it, and given us a cuffing.

  “Much better than that!” I said.

  * * *

  The Press the next morning was all a Rave. That is to say we were a hit and I was “an actor to watch” and indeed, as the podgy oaf of the night before had said, and perhaps he even wrote it, A Star Overnight. My father telephoned from The Times with carefully concealed pleasure and read one or two bits over the line; my mother came up with Aunt Freda and had coffee—we laughed at the caricatures of myself; and Forwood called up in the middle of it all.

  “Maddening having one’s friends becoming stars overnight. Are you free for some lunch?”

  I wasn’t. “I have to take my mother and an aunt to lunch. I wish I were free.”

  I heard him stifle a yawn. “Never mind. But it is a very nice beginning, just don’t let it go to your head.” He hung up and we all went off to Kettners. At the door there, a thin, scraggy black cat suddenly sprang across the street and, arching its back, tail like a pole, it rubbed itself hard against my legs, and then shot back into the shadow of a bombed building opposite. It was a very nice start indeed.

  In the late afternoon I walked from Sloane Square down to Notting Hill with all the evening papers, which were as good as the dailies had been, and sliding over the packed snow I knew, really for the first time in my life, just how splendid it felt to have wings on your heels, and in the theatre the Company were gathered together for Second Night Notes, and in a solemn ceremonial, presented me with an inverted china pudding bowl. To put on my head to see if it still fitted. We were all extremely relieved to find that it did.

  And the day after I wrote a polite, and regretful, letter to Windlesham.

  * * *

  Although I had more or less scooped the pool with the play, we were all of us singled out for our individual praises. My part was extremely flashy, noisy, and centre-stage for most of the time. I also had a splendid scream in the Third Act, and that is usually irresistible to both audiences and critics alike, who tend to confuse the part with the player. You really can’t miss with a good yell. However, the other member of the Company who was especially singled out was a quiet, pale, sensitive girl called Mary Horn whose work was, quite simply, staggering. She got a great deal of praise but eventually, after a year or so, she withdrew from the theatre and went off to be a House-Mistress in a boys’ school in Scotland. A grievous loss to the theatre.

  But none of this worried me at the time naturally. I kept my money safely in a large Oxo tin in my suitcase under the bed, and knew just where I stood in the world financially. I gave my ration book to a pleasant lady called Millie in the Express Dairies at the end of the road and lived on a diet of Weetabix, Kraft cheese, H.P. sauce and an occasional apple. I washed my clothes in the washbowl in the shared bathroom and took things like sheets and pillow cases down to Hillside Cottage once a fortnight to my unfortunate mother. I brought a few bits and pieces from the cottage to stick about the anonymous furniture of my two-roomer, got a cracked lustre jug from a junk shop in Walton Street, filled it with catkins, and settled into London life, if not exactly its society.

  My demob suit was wearing out, worn as it was, daily. And the shirts and slacks which I had brought from Calcutta and Singapore looked faintly dated once they were unpacked and worn in the King’s Road. My father sent me off to his tailor and I got a fine grey flannel suit made, bought a neat green hat from Henry Heath, some chamois gloves from Gieves, and succeeded in looking more like a trainer of horses than a moderately successful out-of-the-West-End actor.

  The play was packed nightly and we became fashionable. Everyone came to see us. Film companies, agents, talent scouts and on one memorable night, Noël Coward. Nervously we were all told to assemble on stage after the Show since The Master wished to address us individually. We stood in a short neat line of seven. I was beside Maureen and at the end of the line. I didn’t hear what he said to the others, saw him kiss Beatrice, wag his finger often, and when he got to Maureen I just heard him say: “The name Pook is disaster, change it immediately.” Maureen, shattered with nerves, said, “It must be to somethin
g beginning with a P!” and Noël murmured gently, “We aren’t playing word games, dear.” And moved on to me. I got the finger wagged. “Never, ever, ever take a pill, not even an aspirin before a show, and never, ever drink until after curtain-fall.” He said, in general, that we were all lovely, talented, moving and clever and thanked us.

  As we wandered off to our dressing room, he shot out a very firm hand and took my elbow: “And never, ever, go near the cinema!” and was gone into the night.

  I obeyed his first commands implicitly.

  Letters started to arrive from elderly Gentlemen Novelists, and odd-sounding ladies with double-barrelled names with addresses in Hampstead and South Kensington. Forwood got me a job in a Crime Film. It was hardly what you might call a part; just a policeman sitting in an office. And I was never noticed unfortunately. The uniform they gave me didn’t fit and so was pinned up the front and the camera was behind me; however, I did have one line to say, “Calling Car 2345. Calling Car 2345” into a sort of microphone, and although it starred the Attenboroughs I never met them. But it was a start, and for that one day’s work I earned double my week’s salary in the theatre; and coming back to Town on the bus from Islington Studios I vaguely thought how simple it was, and how much better paid, and how I could, in a very short time indeed, fill the Oxo tin and move to a larger flat than the one with the hot-plate on the landing in Hasker Street. But equally I knew that it was a flashy sort of job, and that it didn’t take, or need, much talent. The theatre was at least honourable. I had a lot to learn.

  Eventually the snow melted, in this extraordinary winter, and the vague signs of spring arrived and with them came Peter Daubeny, the Golden Boy Wonder I had so briefly met back stage with Forwood, and who had been singularly, or so it seemed, unimpressed with me. Mr Daubeny bought the play, which impressed him enormously, and transferred us to the West End in April. We were giddy with delight, sure of a long, long run, rich with our new West End salaries (I got ten pounds a week now), and completely overlooked the fact, or chose to ignore it if we knew it, that our theatre was miscalled the Fortune, stood opposite the Stage Door of Drury Lane, had a public right of way running through the auditorium and across the stage dating from God knew when, and was extremely difficult to get to unless you were hell bent on being there. Which, in spite of magical critics again, no one was. No one even used the public right of way, and “Oklahoma” opened shortly after us, and filled the narrow street with steak-eating, jean-clad, healthy, Americans who all seemed to sing, dance and act. Confidently nursing our wounds we prophesied that we would get the overflow of those who could not obtain seats for this fantastic musical (we heard many curious stories from our dressers of people actually fainting in the Stalls and Circle from the sheer energy set before them), but there again we were miserably wrong. If you go out to see a new American musical, the first since the war, it is very unlikely that, being unable to get in you would turn your eyes across the street to our modest canopy and come in to see a tense play about the working class in South London. Forget it. And everybody did. After a very short time we slid into the eternal obscurity of the Fatal Fortune and our happy time was over. But not before Queen Mary expressed a surprising wish to see us perform, which threw us into complete panic and faint hope. Perhaps, if she liked it, we could solicit publicity from the Palace to help us fight the lusty Yanks across the street. But it didn’t make a mite of difference. “Oh What a Beautiful Morning!” became, alas, our requiem.

  Apart from Royalty, someone else came before the electric lights went out for ever on our humble, modest, moving play. Ian Dalrymple, quiet, soft spoken, thoughtful, articulate, who smoked his cigarettes through paper holders and looked more like a Cambridge don than a film producer, signed me up for his next film, “Esther Waters”, showing either great courage or arrant stupidity. But he was so gentle, so persuasive, so unlike the kind of film producer I had ever expected to meet, that I was lost. Mr Coward’s ultimate warning was drowned by Mr Dalrymple’s charm and detailed explanations of my role of “William Latch”.

  “But what about my neck?”

  He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked hard at me. “What’s the matter with your neck?”

  “The Rank people say it’s too thin. My head’s too small. I don’t look like David Farrar or James Mason.”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with it, your neck. Your head will soon swell anyway; and until it does we’ll have your hats made by Lock and you’ll be wearing stocks most of the time. I shouldn’t worry. This is new Cinema.” He seemed quite confident. So I decided that I should too; after all, he knew much better than I did. And wore glasses. So that when Mr Coward came to tell us all, just before we closed, that he had written marvellous parts for us all in his new play, “Peace in our Time”, mine was the only heart which sank. I knew I would have to confess.

  “You remember what I told you. Never, ever, the cinema.”

  “Yes.”

  “You ignored my advice?”

  “I didn’t know that you’d written me a part.”

  “You’ll dine with me tonight. This is madness …”

  It was not mentioned at the Savoy Grill—so many people came to the table that it resembled Gold Cup Day at Ascot. So we went back to his house in Gerald Road. It was not, as he pointed out, much more than spitting distance from Hasker Street.

  I was miserably shy, and walked stiffly beside him down the street and into the yard of his house. Impatiently he stood at the gate. “Go straight ahead, that’s the front door, I put on the light here.” He pressed a switch in the wall. “I shan’t jump on you. I’m not the type, and Gerald Row Police Station is immediately opposite you. Would you care for a whistle or will you merely shout?”

  We talked for an age. His advice was considered, wise, careful. The cinema would ruin me, I had a great deal to offer the theatre, a whole new world was starting there now the war was over; I must be patient, loyal, devoted and learn from my new craft which had, so far, welcomed me with such warmth. Magic lay before me and he had, incidentally written me a “walloping great part” in “Peace”. But it was to no avail. I confessed that I had given my word to Mr Dalrymple, that I wanted to try the cinema and do the theatre as well, that my contract would allow me to do one play for six months every second year, that I had not abandoned the Proscenium Arch, merely postponed my moment. He was not at all best pleased. “I think,” he said, “you are being a cunt. And I am very, very, angry indeed.”

  With thirty pounds a week from the Rank Organisation as a sort of holding-salary until the film started, and ten a week from the tottering play, I was richer than I imagined I’d ever be. And one day walked with great courage and my Oxo tin into an Estate Agents in Sloane Square and rented number 44 Chester Row for ten guineas a week. Furnished; with garden, three floors, and basement.

  In the kitchen in the basement, with a quart of ale and a smoked haddock and mashed potatoes, and under the unbelieving, but pleased eyes, of Freddy Joachim, I signed my contract with the Rank Organisation for, at that time, seven years. In the morning I had gone along to Kettners Restaurant, found the black cat crouched in a wooden box in his bomb-site, and brought him back to S.W.I. I called him “Cliff” after the role in the play. As Freddy and I toasted ourselves in pale ale, I chucked Cliff the haddock skin, and then started on the washing up, with Freddy drying and stacking up the plates and things on the wooden dresser. We made a comfortable, domestic scene.

  “Seven years seems an eternity,” I said, wrapping up the remainder of the fish-skin and bones in newspaper.

  Freddy wiped out the saucepan carefully, “Oh! They’ll probably drop you long before that, you know, the contract is renewable every year. I very much doubt if you’ll last all that time. It’s a fickle business, and you aren’t really the right type for the cinema, you know. Of course,” he added brightly, “this role in ‘Esther Waters’ is what you might call a Character Part … probably why they picked you. You could be a very good c
haracter actor, I feel sure; but I can’t remember a real cinema star who was just a character actor. They need abit moreglamour; anyway we must cross our fingers, work hard, stay modest, and hope for the best. Things change all the time, we really can’t tell at the moment. Grasp the nettle, I always say.” He slid the saucepan, cleaned and shining, on to the shelf and took off the towel which he had tied round his waist as an apron. And then all the lights went out. Another power cut.

  “Don’t move!” I cried. “I know where the matches are.” By the flickering light of two candles Freddy took up the contract, and placed it carefully in his briefcase. “We don’t want to lose this, do we. I must admit I really didn’t expect it all to happen so soon, or even at all. You must feel very chuffed.”

  “I don’t know really. Chuffed or not. It’s all a bit frightening, signing your life away for seven years, and all those clauses … I wonder if I’ll even last seven years.”

  He smiled his kindly smile, wrapped himself into his black coat, folded a scarf round his throat. “These spring evenings are very chilly … most treacherous,” and patted my arm with an unexpected avuncularity. “Cheer up, do! You mustn’t dwell on the gloomy side tonight, it’s all gone so wonderfully well so far. It’s been quite a big adventure, yes, I really think that we can say that. A big adventure in a very few months, now all you have to do is work very hard, and show us all what you can do.”

  * * *

  Ten years later, on a scrub-covered hillside, in the centre of India, I was standing “like a stork” on one leg, with a broken foot, a clutch of Indian Royalty behind me, an uncertain future ahead, more than thirty films in the past and a thousand refugees starting their unhappy trek along the white twisting gorge road, vultures drifting in the opal light: it was a long haul from the shabby kitchen and the crisp new contract and Freddy wrapping himself up like a parcel for the walk to Sloane Square and the Tube.

  And I was still trying to “prove”, to show them what I could do. Would it ever end, this proving, this statement of determination? Wasn’t it enough that I had done what I had done in spite of skinny neck, small head and a pair of too long legs? I had long since closed, with wry regret, my Oxo tin and opened an account in a high marbled hall opposite the Law Courts. I had played bookies and thugs, soldiers and sailors and pilots. Bombed Berlin. Braved a bursting dam; been various doctors, in the house, at sea, at large and in distress; suffered from amnesia, and shot a policeman, I’d even played Sydney Carton. God knows what I had not done. But my determination to prove was still insatiable, the need to show what I could do was still my driving force. Today, I realised as I started to hobble down the slope to join my thousand refugees I was heavy with despair. One had to go on doing it simply to survive, but, I wondered as I came abreast of the hot, sweating, dusty mass dragging along the road, was it really all worth it? Swinging into line with them, hopping with my crutch, with what I hoped was a noble lift of the head (to favour the main camera up above me), I could not rid myself of the thought that it was all a dreadful waste of time, effort and life. Surely there were better things to do with the years I had, so far, been given than forcing myself to prove continually?