Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

So to America I went. Forwood decided to come too. Alan Lerner had invited me to play in his projected film musical of Colette’s “Gigi”, but I had three firm projects lined up in a row for the following year with Rank; so delicate manoeuvring and diplomacy would be required before I could accept the chance to work with Dietrich, Chevalier, and Audrey Hepburn (the suggested cast at that time: in the event, dates on both sides proved inflexible, and I played Sydney Carton instead). Mr Davis paid the fares, the Mauretania carried us there, and as dawn broke one December morning, I stood on deck and watched the flat steel waters of the still Atlantic as the first thrusts of the New World rose inch by inch slowly into the mussel-shell light of the sky.

  Skyscrapers glittering in the morning light, their upper reaches hidden by the clouds, dark canyons sliding past geometrically, cars and trucks speeding like toys, lights winking, gulls wheeling, bottles, crates and cabbage leaves bobbing idly in the oily waters, piers and jetties, giant cranes, steam drifting into the white air, Christmas trees in windows, sirens blowing, dirty snow, and Alan Lerner huddled against the bitter cold at Immigration to meet us in.

  “You are mad! It’s much too early …”

  “I was writing all through the night … I never sleep. Welcome to New York!”

  “I’m overwhelmed.”

  “American hospitality. And since you are god-father, it’s high time you saw the child.”

  A low, long, black Cadillac to Rex and Kate’s borrowed house on Long Island. A white clap-board, shuttered farmhouse, set among bare trees and snowy lawns, from which George Washington once watched a battle. Logs blazing, lights gleaming, dogs leaping, Kate laughing, polished wood and fat armchairs. Bacon and eggs, toast and Cooper’s marmalade, scalding coffee, and legs still a little wobbly from six days at sea; later in the afternoon the House Lights dimming, the overture beginning, the gentle hush falling, filling one with all the long forgotten excitement of a first pantomime at the Lyceum; a long and exhilarating way to come to see a matinee … and Kate.

  It was her Christmas. And she was determined that it should be one we would all remember. There were about eight of us, including Cathleen Nesbitt, Margaret Leighton, Forwood’s son, Gareth, and Kate’s ravishing sister, Kim. An enormous tree arrived, higher even than the room, decked in silver and sprayedon frost. Holly wreaths, tied all about with scarlet ribbons and studded with candles hung at the front door and every window; boughs of fir and ivy were thrust into every nook and cranny; packets and parcels, brilliant in wrapping papers, spilled from every chair and table, the drawing room was the Fairies’ Grotto in Selfridges. Music played all day, the record-player never seemed to cease, sending us all scurrying faster with yards of ribbons, evergreens, and boxes of glittering baubles for her tree. Cards were stacked on every free space, and food and drink arrived in such quantities as would have delighted Pickwick or Jorrocks and must have frightened the wits out of Rex at the cost. But he smiled bravely all about him, well pleased with Kate’s delight.

  She, in typical fashion, had just borrowed a large advance from the salary of her first Hollywood film which was to begin almost immediately, in order to buy everyone presents, her spending was so extravagant that one felt she must have had the entire salary plus overage in advance; not just a part. A Byron first edition in red calf for Rex, a mink-lined duffle coat, “not the best mink, it’s only a lining.” Cashmeres and gold fountain pens from Carrier’s, for the rest of us, trinkets and jewels from Tiffany’s to fill the stockings from Father Christmas. There was never to be such a Christmas; I don’t believe there ever was. Sometimes in the hurry and rush there came a little pause. Suddenly tired Kate would crumple into a huge armchair, and legs and arms akimbo, her slow smile of pleasure lighting a tired wan face, she would ask for a drink and play, for the millionth time it seemed, her favourite record, Judy Holliday singing “Just in Time”.

  “Oh, wifey … I’m getting to be an old, old woman … oh! I am a lucky lady … it’s Chriss’mus … Chriss’mus … and I’ve got all my loves about me.”

  * * *

  If occasionally Kate seemed weary, then I was a wreck by the end of the week. The excitements and delights were exhausting, not a moment was wasted, and not a second left idle. Our daily walks together with Rex along Jones Beach beside the leaden, December sea, in a bitter wind, did much to revive me—and the scalding plastic cups of clam chowder from the deserted cafe on the beach tasted like negus—but the nightly journeys into New York, the constant round of parties, suppers, shows and conversation gradually took their toll of the pale Country Squire from the Home Counties, and by New Year’s Eve I had decided that I would do no more for a time, and stay quietly in the company of the Late Show on television. Kate was anguished.

  “You can’t! But you can’t! It’s the most important party of the year … the Gilbert Millers are famous for it! People murder to get invited … Rex begged them to invite you and now you say you’ll stay at home with Doris Day! You can’t, Diggie, you can’t. Please come?”

  I refused flatly. No more opening of doors to unsuspected delights. I had had my fair share, more than, it had been marvellous, but enough was enough.

  “No. I hate parties, I always get stuck with someone’s aunt who is deep into Botticelli or something … usually in a corner or behind a door. And no one knows me and I don’t know anyone there, and I hate New Year anyway. I’ll stay here, very peacefully, and watch the telly, and go to bed early. I’m dead.”

  “Rex will be terribly disappointed, he went to such a lot of trouble.”

  “Well, bugger the Gilbert Millers … if they have half New York going they won’t miss me.”

  “But it’s so rude …” she wailed miserably off to change.

  Forwood nobly stayed behind with me and I ate a light, sensible-to-sleep-on supper and settled down to watch the telly and it was absolutely appalling. After the hundredth commercial break for toothpaste, wrapped bread, shampoo, lavatory paper and Aunt Maude’s Home-Baked Deep-Frozen Apple Pie I capitulated and accepted his advice that it was New Year, we were in New York, we were invited to the grandest party in town, a car awaited us and I was being very ungracious to my extraordinarily generous host and hostess. In black tie and a certain amount of suppressed fury, hopeless at the prospect of what lay before, we skidded into the city.

  We all arrived at the party together and entered the elevator just as midnight started to strike. In a wild fit of joyousness Kate threw her arms around the lift-man and we all embraced and wished each other a Happy New Year. The lift stopped right at the open door of the Gilbert Millers’ opulent apartment: the sound of Auld Lang Syne and cheers greeted us, and we pushed out happily, colliding with a tall, pale woman in a flowing scarlet dress who hurried into our vacated cage. As we reached for brimming glasses, Miss Garbo was borne silently from our sight forty floors to the street below.

  And I was stuck with someone’s aunt, a pleasant, rangy, white-haired woman of seventy, with wrap-around American teeth, who had just come back from a dig in Iran. We talked very pleasantly of shards, and artifacts, of sandstone and clay, of the total inability of the desert people to comprehend the excitement of finding a set of knucklebones, intact and in spanking condition, at a depth of fifty feet which could safely be dated to at least 44 B.C. “Time, as Plato said, brings everything,” she cried happily. It also brought Kate speeding to my side. “Come with me, Diggie … there is someone in the next room who wants to meet you.”

  And there she was. Sitting in a bit of a lump in a corner, dressed in pink, hair very short, plump, jolly, laughing a great deal at something that Rubinstein was saying to her. She had a thin jade bracelet on one wrist, pearl ear-rings … the wide, brown, laughing eyes I knew so well. Kate introduced us and I kissed her quite simply on the lips. I said, “Oh … I love you!” and she laughed her extraordinary chuckling laugh and said, “Oh no! I love you!” and I burned a hole right through the bodice of her dress with the tip of my cigarette. Judy Garland. She gave a little sc
ream, and then we laughed, and she pulled me down beside her and made me sit there on the floor and I stayed there, on and off, for almost ten years. Almost.

  “It’s so good to meet you. I’ve seen every movie you made …”

  “I’ve only been doing it for ten years.”

  “I saw ‘Stranger Inbetween’* five single times.”

  “I saw ‘Pigskin Parade’ … once.”

  She cried out with laughter. “I was awful, pigtails and cutes.”

  “I suppose I really went to see Betty Grable.”

  “I suppose you did. 1936 … almost twenty years ago.”

  “More. I’m loyal.”

  “You are? You’ll come and see me, here, at the Palace?”

  “I’m sailing on Saturday.”

  “You’ll come Friday. I’ll get you seats; now don’t run away? We just met, and it’s taken such a long, long time.”

  “I won’t run away, I promise … Friday.”

  “And I want you real close; right up front. I hope you’ll like me.”

  “I will.”

  She laughed, and threw her arms round my neck.

  “You better, Buster. I’ll be doing it for you, a Command Performance.”

  “Don’t you do that for all your fans?”

  She was suddenly grave.

  “You’re my friend. An old, old friend, remember that.”

  I was right up front for my Command Performance at the Palace, as close as she could place me. In the middle of the Brass Section. Rex’s sister, Sylvia Kilmuir, was with us. Pale from jet lag, she had just arrived in New York that morning; I wondered how she would manage with the blasting noise. Stuffing her fingers in her ears she smiled a wink and shook her head in wry disbelief. The theatre was almost empty.

  The first half was fearful: Hungarian ladies in red boots and sparkling gypsy head-dresses urged irritated dogs over boxes and through flaming hoops; a ventriloquist with a doll on his knee which talked animatedly while he consumed glass after glass of milk; two anxious dancers revolved endlessly in a Follow Spot on roller skates to the “Thunder and Lightning” polka. At the intermission we went into the street and smoked cigarettes.

  The second half was Judy, and the theatre was suddenly full. Wise people had ignored the Hungarians and the Skaters. The lights dimmed and “Over the Rainbow” started. Anticipation mounted, twelve youngish men leapt on to the stage carrying sequined boards on the end of long poles. They did a shaky dance, in lamé jackets, and one by one spelled out her name with happy smiles and wiggling, pointed toes; the twelfth member came in on a late beat and threw up the exclamation mark. And then she was there.

  Later, sitting hunched on the steps of the corridor outside her dressing room, we held each other laughing, while unrecognising people clambered over us to reach her room. She was drenched in sweat, a shabby pink candlewick wrap, her hair spiky and wet, like Gooley’s years ago at Catterick, a wet cat. Her eyeblack had run, the lips were smudged, her small hands held my arm firm as clamps.

  “Was I good? Did you like me? Did you really? As good as that! You’re kidding? What’s the matter with the dogs and the Hungarians? I don’t get to see them, they just warm up the place for me, for chrissakes; but you really did like me? Was I OK? I was what …? You’re awful! I couldn’t be that good … would it go in London? I want to bring it to London … how big is the Palace? As big as that … shit … the Cambridge? … Or they said the Princes? What do you mean you’ll take care of it? You mean you’d bring me over and do the show … you’d take a theatre?”

  “I’ll take any theatre you like, but the Cambridge is a barn. Maybe the Princes would be better … I’ll take the place and bring you over but without the Dancing Boys or the Hungarian Dancers. Just you alone.”

  Her eyes were wide with disbelief and laughter, people were still clambering over us to find her. She pulled off her ear-rings and shoved them into the pocket of her sagging candlewick and wiped her forehead on its sleeve.

  “You are mad, and I love you … my new impresario! But I need the warm-up. I couldn’t go it alone.”

  “The theatre was empty tonight until you came on … they were only there for the second half.”

  “I know … but that’s the way it is. I couldn’t do a whole show alone! For God’s sake! What do you think I am? Aimée Semple McPherson?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are one son-of-a-bitch. And I love you. Don’t leave me now, will you? Now don’t you leave me. People always go away from me, walking backwards … don’t do that to me, will you? Promise? Just you promise me?”

  Unthinkingly I made her the promise. She stared at me for a few seconds in silence and then, hugging me tightly, scrabbled to her feet and pushed through the crowd of people who had come to tell her how wonderful she was. And was. And I went into the street and joined the others and we went to the Plaza for supper.

  * * *

  In the deep leather chairs of the Oak Room Judy looked smaller than ever, and, rather crushed by an enormous black flat-brimmed hat, she poked about at her chicken fricassee tiredly. “Don’t talk about you bringing me into London. Sid won’t like it much … he’s negotiating something there himself; he’d be furious if anything got in the way. We’ll just leave it, huh? It was a marvellous idea, but he does all the deals, he always has, and he’s very, very good at it … so let’s forget it, okay?”

  She raised her glass of white wine and looked steadily at me.

  “But don’t leave me, will you? You have to promise all over again.”

  “All right. I promise. You want me to cross my heart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “And hope to die. I’ll remember that.”

  * * *

  We had taken Kate out to Idlewild (Rex had a matinee) to start her on the trip to California and the despairs and miseries, she expected, of Hollywood. She was bitterly unhappy about leaving, but sensible enough to know that she had mortgaged herself completely to MGM and the film by the wildly idiotic advance she had borrowed against her salary in order to buy us all the presents which had so delighted her only a few days before. Now the house, stripped of its glittering frost-sprayed tree, the ivy and the holly wreaths, the ribbons and laughter, seemed empty and chill.

  She was bundled into the car, a mass of expensive luggage, a black mink coat, and for some reason which I have now forgotten, Gladys Cooper’s Corgi, June, whom she was accompanying on the flight to the Coast.

  While Kate sniffed and hiccupped, slumped dejectedly in a corner, June whined and moaned in her smallish ply-wood travelling cage, and we fed her handfuls of tranquillisers all the way to Idlewild which merely had the effect of making her far more energetic and angry. It was a miserable ride. At the airport we shoved Kate through the barrier for her flight, clutching a furious June in her box, her boarding card, ticket, and a slipping bundle of hastily-bought magazines for the five-hour journey. She was still sniffing and teary, and looked pale and wan, dishevelled and weary, as if she had spent a week at sea in an open boat.

  “Look after Rexie, won’t you, promise me? And I’ll try and telephone when I get there; I can’t remember if we are ahead or behind … oh, it’s all so confusing …”

  Watching her tall, leggy, clumsy figure humping June along to the plane it never for one moment occurred to us that this despairing, hopeless exit was leading her directly to international fame, and that when we should all meet again together she would have become a World Star.

  There was a good deal more which we did not suspect.

  After the show we took Rex over to the penthouse on Park Avenue which he had chosen to rent so that he could rest between shows. He was, understandably, tired and rather strained, and, after some scrambled eggs and a pot of tea, decided to go and sleep until the Second House, asking only that we should awaken him in good time. We didn’t any of us speak very much; Kate had taken all the fun away with her, and we were fairly subdued, talking about politics an
d books back in the Long Island house until the small hours when the telephone rang and it was Kate from Los Angeles in a state bordering on hysterics, partly tears and partly helpless laughter. The Studio had found her an apartment, she didn’t know where, but in a dark street; the living room was filled with Tang horses, rubber trees and reproduction Modiglianis; the bedroom looked like an Amsterdam tart’s parlour, swagged and buttoned satin, scatter cushions, an immense lilac nylon teddy bear, and the ice box was filled with everything from milk to Dom Perignon.

  “It’s like Golders Green High Street on a wet Sunday,” she wailed. “Right opposite the window there’s an Undertaker’s place with a huge electric clock and it says, It’s later than you think!’ in bright green neon … Diggie, I can’t stay a night here!” Tears had given way to laughter. “I’ll slit my throat, wifey! Oh, I’se sick Miss Scarlett … help!”

  Rex told her briskly to get a cab and check into the Beverly Hills Hotel even if it meant that she and June were to sleep at the pool-side, and we were all much relieved to hear that she had already contacted Minna Wallis, a much loved and capable, not to say powerful, friend of us all, who had wasted no time and had installed her there, with the cab already at the door.

  We didn’t know it then; but the clock opposite her window was correct.

  * * *

  A monstrous clattering and banging had awakened me on my very first morning in Beel House. It was barely dawn, and the sun had only just risen above the icing-sugar frost which sparkled on the wide lawns. The branches of the cedar trees black and silver against the lint-pink sky. A raven, seemingly the size of an eagle, was battering frantically at the dormer window of the upstairs hall. Wings wide, beak gaping, eyes brilliant with rage. Again and again he crashed and lunged at the diamond panes. The shadow loomed across the floor, flickered like a magic-lantern silhouette against the white-washed walls.

  My theatrical mind instantly, and irrevocably, lined this simple moment of natural history with the supernatural, and bad omens and witchcraft proliferated all about the cold morning hall, and my head. I was convinced, on that first day, that my future in Beel House would be, as it were, cursed. Added to which I had most inconveniently been told that an elderly lady had died, quite suddenly, stuck irremovably in the guest-room bath. Here I now had proof of a lost, and indeed angry, as well she might have been, spirit come to haunt me in a most obviously Edgar Allan Poe manner. Ravens at the winter window, on my first morning. Of course it must be an omen. Of course it was perfectly absurd. Even I knew that. Somewhere. The raven was simply attacking its own reflection in the dawn light, the elderly woman could have died almost anywhere in the house; and in a house as aged as Beel it would have been most surprising if a great many other people had not died, here and there, in its rooms at one time or another. Reason tried to conquer superstition and theatricality; and succeeded. Almost. But I was never to be absolutely happy in my skin during all the years I lived there, even though they were among the most successful years of my career. If not my life.