Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

  All so long ago.

  Now, here on my hill in Provence, that day is almost forgotten. Perhaps a chicken for supper, dogs snoring by the fire, the Mistral whipping and clattering at the shutters, stars hard and bright above the hills, the village clock clanging out the fading day, tinnily. The theatrical splendours of those past Christmases have all long since faded; the set has been dismantled, the cast dispersed, some older, some no longer here. Which is most probably why I now choose to ignore it. Stocktaking, especially on the edge of evening, is not very amusing.

  * * *

  One bitter, thin-sun morning, Millie Milestone telephoned to ask if I could sit an extra couple for lunch and dinner: “A sweet couple, just kids … they leave for the States tomorrow, and you know what a London Sunday in February is like. They’ll walk round the Park twice and cut their throats on the second Martini.” He was coming down with Akim Tamiroff and his wife Tamiroff, and his own wife Kendall. They all lived now in London, uncomfortable exiles from McCarthy.

  The kids, as he called them, arrived in due time. Cold from the drive, pleasant, and as far as they were introduced by a vague Millie, their names were just Nancy and Alan. He was neat, tidy, dressed in a dark blue suit, glasses, and a sad nervous little smile. Nancy was bright, sparkling, blonde and pink, she laughed a lot and the day was brighter.

  It was a quiet week-end. Kate was working in London on a film, and the other regulars had decided that the icy roads would be a hazard in the dark, so stayed in bed with the Sunday papers. After lunch came the obligatory walk over to the dell. We all started pulling on the old mackintoshes, scarves, gloves and wellingtons which were always kept in the downstairs bathroom, where years before the local cricket team used to shower and change after a game. It was, naturally, called the Cricket Room. Nancy said she was still frozen and preferred not to go. We stood at the windows and watched the Russians, Alan and Forwood plod away into the thin snow and failing sun.

  “I don’t know your names, you know … Millie was a bit vague.”

  “Well, my name is Nancy Olsen; I’m an actress, of sorts …”

  “‘Sunset Boulevard’!”

  “Right … I was the girl … and the little fellow all hunched up between Tamara and Kendall is my husband. And he’s called Alan Lerner. J. He’s a lyricist, he’s really quite famous. Do you know ‘Brigadoon’. ‘Paint Your Wagon’ or perhaps ‘An American in Paris’? Well, those were his.”

  “Ah. It seemed to me that he was something rather good in a bank.”

  “A sort of clerk?” she smothered her laughter.

  “Something like that. Modest, silent, good at figures …”

  “He’s that all right. But I think it’s that awful coat he wears.”

  “And you leave for the States tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Sadly. We’ve been here a week trying to meet with Rex Harrison, do you know him? It’s very difficult … Alan’s written a show and wants him terribly badly but he just won’t take any notice. It’s easier to ride a tiger than get a meeting fixed with Harrison.” She shrugged sadly. “Oh well … we tried.”

  “Couldn’t you wait a week? I know Rex quite well, he often comes down on Sundays, he’s coming next week.”

  “You talk to Alan, if he ever comes back from out there … we’re booked out at lunch-time tomorrow. He’s fed up; you know?”

  In the Cricket Room, in a swirl of damp coats, scarves and muddy wellingtons, Alan accepted my apologies for thinking him something in a bank, and we all went in to tea.

  “What is the Show?”

  Alan was spreading a crumpet with Gentlemen’s Relish. He grinned a wry grin. “You’ll disapprove, I know that.”

  “Come on; tell.”

  “It’s Shaw. A musical of Pygmalion. We’re calling it ‘Lady Liza’.”

  Amidst cries of derision he calmly went on with his crumpet. Nancy looking a little anxious stirred her tea into a tempest.

  “Disapprove! How could you! Shaw! Honestly you Americans pinch everything you can lay your hands on …”

  “Well, why didn’t the English think of doing it? It’s been about for years? And it’s all Shaw’s dialogue, we haven’t Americanised it; and we want Harrison for Higgins. Can you think of any other Higgins in the world?”

  “No. Well, it’s more than likely that he’ll be here next Sunday, he said so. If you stayed on for a week; played it by ear, and just happened to be here for lunch next week while he was present. Very casually, you know. We won’t say anything about you two at all, you’ll just arrive, and then it would be up to you, wouldn’t it?”

  He looked across the table at Nancy doubtfully, his glasses winking in the candle-light.

  “You want to risk it?”

  “If you do; and I want to buy a Corgi, remember? And Dirk says he knows a kennels near Oxford, so …”

  Tamara, sipping her tea comfortably smiled across us all: “I’m a witch; a Russian witch. You stay. You will see.”

  Rex was involved in rather a full Sunday without actually being told much about it. Millie and Kendall were there, the Tamiroffs, Peter Brook and his wife Natasha Parry (daughter of Lusia, my catalyst from the Savoy), Katie, Michael and Anne Gough. And Alan and Nancy. It was a perfectly normal Sunday. The only people absent from the obligatory afternoon walk over the fields were Rex and Alan. After tea, in the fading March light, we all gathered round the spinet in the Long Study, which was the only form of piano I possessed, and even though it was a full octave short Alan played the entire score, and sang, in a rather wavering voice, all the songs of his show, for the first time to a full audience.

  Three years later, half an hour after the curtain fell on the First Night at Drury Lane, I, at Alan’s request, introduced the music of “My Fair Lady” on television, sitting by the fire in the drawing room of Beel House where, as he pointed out, a small part of theatre history had started off. It was a graceful, if undeserved, gesture, for if I had not met Lewis Milestone in Cyprus all that time ago, would Alan Lerner have finally managed to meet Rex Harrison in Buckinghamshire? Tamara Tamiroff only smiled, her gentle witch’s smile and, shaking her head, said that it was Fate.

  * * *

  At the time of this fateful lunch I had just, a few days before, finished my eighteenth picture, the second “Doctor” film. Although the option period was now almost forgotten, only Betty and Ralph seemed to have any idea of a plan for me and although I was handing out cups at gymkhanas and playing my Squire role to the hilt, I was still just hopping about from film to film wherever I was lucky enough to be asked. It didn’t make for a settled feeling; I knew that as long as the Doctor films would be made I should probably be asked to be in them, but apart from that (and they could only happen now and again) there was a clear feeling of disinterest from Above.

  Looking over the smooth lawns at Beel House, I had many moments of grave doubt at the wisdom of leaving the modest comforts of Bendrose just across the fields; at least the house had not been mine, Beel was. I had not only to support myself, but a large house and a busy staff of four, plus weekly gardeners. Stupid idiot. I had probably jumped too soon; I longed to be the proud possessor of an Oxo tin again, when I at least knew, to the last halfpenny, what I had in my bank. But there were also rumbles of doubt and worry, not only in my head, but in the Aberconways’ Bedroom as well. The Studio writhed with rumours of changes to be made, heads to fall, and new brooms sweeping clean. A mounting panic almost choked me; after all, no one could prove that I had actually had anything very much to do with the success of “A Doctor in the House”: the film itself was the winner, and I had shown no definite signs yet to them that I was Box Office. So now that I had gone too far and attached myself to a large country house and dependants it was fate that I should be chucked out. There was trouble at the Millers, all right, and I was convinced that my time had come. Even Olive Dodds could offer little comfort; she too, who always smiled, was now looking fairly grim, probably worrying about her own job. I only hoped that when t
he blow came I would be able to weather it, and spent more time than was healthy wandering round the rooms of Beel House, an anxious Camille saying goodbye to them all.

  The Blow was a summons to lunch at the Dorchester to meet Mr Rank’s Chief Accountant. At least that is what I understood at the time, and I experienced a slight flicker of hope; if I were to be dropped, surely Earl St John would have sent the news personally? And with pleasure. This must mean another tremendous cut in salary of such proportions that only the Chief Accountant could possibly confront me.

  The confrontation with John Davis was so pleasant that I almost began to think that I might even be offered a raise in salary instead of a cut. He did, however, offer rather more than that. He started off by saying that certain changes were to be made generally, and that he was about to take a personal interest in the cinema section. He thought that I had worked exceedingly well over the years, had proved loyal and diligent, and that he was prepared to launch a campaign to involve me at the Studios for at least a couple of years, and that if I had the stamina to carry it through, he would make me into one of the biggest Stars, or biggest Box Office Attractions, Rank had ever had. How did I feel about that?

  I felt fine. Could it be possible that I had, at last, a friend at court? He demanded complete loyalty, dedication and submission to the plan which he had in mind. There were already five films, in a row, some of which would be produced by the Box-Thomas team with whom I had worked so very happily and successfully. Successfully was what he really meant. It didn’t matter much about the happiness: trade is trade, money is money. The commercial cinema is both those things. There was to be no room for anything else but success, and he wanted no excuses. Mr Davis was going to be extremely tough as a boss and very demanding; he would brook no failure on my part, but he was also very correct and just, hid nothing and asked only for total commitment and faith in him. I said that he would have them. He told me that he would be available to me, at any time, for any problem or worry which I might have, and hoped that I would dine with him privately the following week so that we could start to discuss, in detail, the first project he had in mind for me, A. J. Cronin’s “The Spanish Gardener”.

  On the journey back to Beel House I was pardonably, in a state of mild euphoria. The signal was green. Weights had fallen from my back to such an extent that I was literally buoyant. Now someone else, apart from the ever loyal Olive Dodds, believed that I might have a potential at Rank.

  Putting thoughts of Camille deftly aside, as we turned into Western Avenue, I hazily started a plan to purchase an extra two acres of paddock from the generous, unsuspecting Forwood family. I was a quick recoverer; a little encouragement went a long, long way. It always has. I knew that I had been taken in hand and was just about to be developed—manufactured would be a better word perhaps—like a stick of seaside rock with the lettering printed all the way through right down to the last little bit. And as sweet and sickly and forgettable as that product itself. I was to be a commercial creation pure and simple; that of course was the hidden message buried in the smoked salmon and the poulet à I’estragon. In return for loyalty, devotion, commitment, stamina and faith I should be raised to the giddy heights of a Box Office Attraction. I had promised all these. No one, however, had mentioned the word acting. Perhaps it really didn’t matter in the commercial cinema, perhaps it took too much time, and time is money etcetera … but what of Garbo, or Tracey? I knew from Dearden, Leacock, and a tense, harried, perfectionist called Joseph Losey with whom I had recently worked on a cheapish, unremarkable, and now unremembered film, only a few months before, that it was essential and, more than that, it was exciting. I knew that there was much more to it than what some critics cheerfully call good facial expressions. Bob Thompson, the operator on “Doctor at Sea”, had opened up unlimited vistas for me one day when he said, staring gloomily over his camera, that he didn’t know how the hell I’d managed to get so far with so little camera technique.

  “I know you can act all right, but you don’t know how to act for the camera, do you, mate? Not much good you giving us your all with half your bleeding head off frame, your face in shadow and your back to the microphone, is it? You don’t know a bloody thing about the camera, do you?”

  For the rest of the film he had taught me the basics of cinema technique. Everything from lenses, to lights, to sound. I was a greedy pupil, he was a thorough tutor.

  So now that all seemed safer and more secure for the first time, why not extend these lessons, work on a different plane, use a new dimension. Great opportunities to work for the camera, almost non-stop it would appear, were set before me; now was my chance to learn, and apply what I had learned: it couldn’t possibly harm the box office potential because very few people would ever see what I was trying to do … having conquered the thin neck, small head syndrome, surely to Heaven I could conquer the acting as well? No one would stop me, for no one would know. I would be doing it for myself, so that when the miracle time had ended, as end I felt sure it must one day, I would at least be cast adrift fully equipped and armoured against a bed-sitter in Earl’s Court, the pubs of Leicester Square, and supporting roles in plays for what Dearden once disparagingly called the medium of the mediocre, television. Grasp the nettle.

  As we turned down towards Chalfont St Giles into the home stretch, I suddenly remembered the telegram which Noël Coward had sent me on the opening night of the revival of his play, “The Vortex”. It was quite short. “Don’t worry,” it said. “It All Depends On You.”

  Chapter 8

  I suppose the greatest exit which we are called upon to make, or which is wished upon us, is our birth; that clumsy, uncomfortable, messy, bewildering affair which brings us often breathless into the long corridor of life leading directly, sometimes indirectly, but always inevitably, to our final supreme Exit, death.

  The corridor is lined all its length with doors; some open, some just ajar, some closed. Closed; but seldom, if ever, locked. It is entirely up to us which ones we choose to try, and we are only given a certain amount of time in which to arrive at the inevitable door at the end. Nothing very original about that.

  However, I have never been in too much of a hurry along the corridor. Indeed one might say that I have wandered down it over-cautiously, even reluctantly on many occasions, trying deliberately to avoid the doors so temptingly set along my path. I am in no hurry to reach the end, I have no fear of it, only of the manner in which I shall have to meet it, therefore a slow, wandering, lope, with as little fuss as possible has always seemed eminently desirable. But when forced, as I have often been, I have usually chosen the door which is slightly ajar rather than the ones which stand wide with blazing light, or murky with sombre shadow, always supposing, quite inaccurately unhappily, that if I approach anything with due caution and without making too much song and dance about it, I could in Lally’s words, always retreat gracefully. Complete nonsense of course. Once you are in you are in.

  The two matinee tickets which Rex sent for “My Fair Lady” seemed to provide me with a pleasingly just-ajar door. A trip to America, which I had never seen, two weeks of splendour in his house in the country, and a tempting chance to see Kate again for yet another Christmas together. The five years in which she had been a week-end lodger in Bendrose and Beel had made her very much part of one’s life, her ups her downs, her sighs her moans, as Lerner so perfectly phrased it, were second nature to me now. I had grown accustomed to her face, and missed it badly since she had upped and left to go to America and join Rex, spilling with happiness and delight, to be with him on his Royal progression and become the Queen to his King of New York. Kate, with her wit, her elegance, her beauty, her fun, her rage, her laughter; Kate gobbling handfuls of her ox blood pills for her anaemia, sobbing noisily while Bruno Walter conducted his last concert, knitting endless yards of zig-zag woollen things, trailing my father through the house one evening when, to all our amazement, her sense of smell returned for a few brief moments: “Ulric! Wi
fey, I can smell your cigar! Quick, give me things to smell … a rose … the cheese …” in and out of rooms to find the scents so long lost, to the kitchen for garlic and lemons, burying her face deep in a great bowl of sweet-peas; in my mother’s arms to savour her favourite scent, embracing us all to find again the traces of tweed, of wool, of soap, of self; tears of laughter and happiness streaming down her face. And then it was gone as suddenly as it arrived.

  Her downs were as giddy as her highs. Once when I, unthinkingly, suddenly lost my patience (for she could be maddening in a completely feminine way) and sent her grumbling off to her room, Tamara Tamiroff, who was present, took my arm and chided me: “Be kind to that little one,” she said, “she hasn’t very long here, my dear.” The constant nagging doubt, always suppressed, now so flatly stated, brought instant, and careful apology followed by swift reconciliation; with wild whoops of laughter and a most improbable Charleston danced through the hall: Kate had a fury for life.

  No door, therefore, open, closed, or ajar, was difficult to enter if she was on the other side of it.