by Anne Edwards
“Would you like to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace?” Raymond asked him in what can only be called a condescending manner (that voice that is often used when an adult, who is uncomfortable with children, is talking to a child).
“I’d rather go to Parliament,” Michael replied.
Raymond was taken aback. He smiled indulgently. “They don’t allow ch-ch-children in Parliament,” he countered. And then, obviously curious about the request, asked, “Why do you want to go there?”
“That’s where they make the laws.”
“Yes, but it’s not like a courtroom.”
“Law courts pass sentences. Parliament and the American Congress pass laws,” he replied in a matter-of-fact manner.
Raymond said he would arrange for a car to take us to the changing of the guard and then drive by the Houses of Parliament. Michael shrugged his shoulders and said, “okay,” and then got busy with his dessert. With much relief, Raymond turned back to me and to the main purpose of the lunch: advising me of what my schedule would be. He had obtained a working permit but I still had to appear at the Home Office to finalize the arrangements and sign some papers. His assistant, a young man named David Deutsch, would accompany me. A house on nearby Albion Street would be at my disposal in two days. It came with a resident housekeeper, Mrs. Barnes. An agency would be sending several applicants to the hotel for interviews for the position of nanny.
We briefly discussed the script. I told Raymond how I planned to adapt my story to an English setting. He seemed pleased but leaned in close across the table to speak to me in a confidential voice. “Don’t forget the sex,” he admonished.
Back in our rooms, the newness of it all set in. On parting, Raymond had handed me an envelope containing one hundred pounds (in a variety of rather large-sized notes) for out-of-pocket expenses. It also included a list typed up by his secretary with some “helpful hints,” and a request that I record expenditures in regard to my work.
I sat down with Michael at the desk in the room and spread out Raymond’s expense money, along with the bills I had exchanged for American dollars at the foreign exchange on the boat. The British monetary system in the 1950s was nondecimal and more than a little confusing. Twelvepence was one shilling; twenty shillings made a pound (“It’s called a quid,” Michael popped up). There were many more coins than we had in the States: the penny (one pence), twopenny (tuppence), threepenny (thrupence), each coppery colored and of a different size; the silver sixpence, a one shilling, two shilling; and larger half crown. Biggish, colorful paper notes in denominations of ten shillings, one, five, ten (“a tenner,” Michael smiled), twenty, fifty, and one hundred pounds. To add to these, there was the “guinea,” a currency without a coin or note. To figure any item marked in “guineas” you added one shilling to the pound to the selling price (if, for instance, the item was selling for twenty guineas, you would be charged twenty-one pounds). To further the complexity of my money expenditures, Mitchell Gertz had made it clear in my contract that I was to be paid in American dollars. As the rate of exchange varied daily so did the amount of my paycheck—which upon receipt I had to take to American Express and exchange my dollars for pounds at the going rate (often higher or lower than what it had been moments earlier).
One “helpful hint” from Raymond’s secretary had to do with tipping: “In a restaurant ask if service is included. If not add 12½ percent.” I was to figure a fraction of a fractional currency. How daunting does that get? A shilling tip was adequate for a local taxi ride; a half crown “if going across town,” and a shilling more per mile for any “lengthy journey.” I was certain I would never get the money system straight and probably would overtip in order to reach an even amount. Somehow that seemed fair to me as the cost of living, from what I now observed, was at least 30 percent less than at home. I had not factored that in when Mitchell made the deal. But now I realized I could squirrel away a good sum, if careful.
The list continued: “When crossing a street remember to look right, then left. Our motor cars have right-hand drive, the reverse of yours.”
“Banks open at 10:00 a.m., close at 3:00 p.m. American Express closes at noon on Saturday.” (In the fifties, with tourism just regaining its prewar numbers, and communication and banking transactions a long way from being computerized, Americans abroad used American Express for a multiple of needs—banking, mail, a meeting place. It was one’s “home away from home.”)
“In dialing a telephone, note that O shares the last finger slot with “zero” and Q. If using a public telephone make sure you have a threepence coin. For information dial DIR. For use of a public toilet you will need a penny.” Aha! Now I knew the genesis of the phrase, “I have to spend a penny”!
In a handwritten note at the bottom of the page, most certainly added by Raymond, was the advice: “Do not use the word ‘fanny’ in conversation. Here it means a woman’s c—t!” And, in case I did not get that, he added, “It rhymes with front.”
We had arrived in the first week of October. The often reluctant English sun shone. Hyde Park was aburst with brilliantly colored autumn flowers and filled with Londoners sunning themselves on rented lounge chairs or stretched out on the dazzling green grass. The body count was amazing. Sunshine is a rare commodity in London. I would soon be aware of the gray days that dogged the city for months on end and the need, for nearly ten months of the year, to carry an umbrella. Coming from Southern California, I never quite got used to it.
Our new abode was only two blocks from Hyde Park, situated on a handsome street of large town houses, mostly of late Victorian and Edwardian vintage. At the corner was a massive, deep dirt cavity surrounded by a fence where once—a sign proclaimed—a church had stood and would soon be rebuilt. It had been demolished by the Germans during the war. Similar devastation remained visible in many sections of the city, especially the East End (we would be living in West London). Although this was now the 1950s, Britain remained a long way from putting World War II behind. Bomb sites were not the only reminders. A wartime approach to daily life prevailed. One queued for everything and remained patient about it. After my successful (if exhausting) day spent at the Home Office, I was issued a ration book for myself and each of the children to be used for small portions of dairy goods, meat, butter, and sugar. Restaurants made up for the lack of these staples by the use of substitutes (cereal in sausages, meat pies, and loaves were to be avoided at all cost). On the first morning of our residence on Albion Street, two half pints of milk were delivered on our doorstep (and all those where children under the age of ten were known to reside). We were also issued temporary health cards.
The house was like no other I had ever inhabited. When I stepped through the door I was suddenly in Victorian England and where the rich and mighty probably had lived privileged lives. Our landlord was a member of the peerage who chose at present to reside in his country estate. Many titled families with stately homes found themselves strapped financially at the war’s end and were happy to rent out their former London town houses (others of the landed gentry had recently opened the marble halls of their country estates and castles for paying tours). One entered our new home on the ground floor into a grand hallway—marble floors and vaulted ceilings held high by dark-wood beams. The reception rooms with their brocade drapes and polished wood floors on the right; dining room, butler’s pantry, and breakfast room on the left. At the rear, its windows overlooking the gardens, was a library with shelves filled with aging leather-bound volumes. A sorely out-of-date but handsome globe on a mahogany stand occupied one corner, and a huge library table was placed in the center of the room.
The decor of the house, almost as it must have been a century earlier, evoked the cultured and moneyed lifestyle of the previous inhabitants, obviously an educated and aristocratic family. I could not help but wonder how many ghosts of those past dwellers might be occupying the rooms with us. There was the distinct smell of oiled wood and well-worn leather. An impressive, dark-wood stai
rcase was situated halfway down the entrance hall. At the end of the hallway, concealed behind a door, a narrower stairway led down to the basement where the kitchen, supply room, laundry, and staff quarters were situated, with little access to natural light. A dumbwaiter brought food up from the kitchen in covered dishes to the butler’s pantry. We did not have a butler. Mrs. Barnes, a no-nonsense widow in her sixties, managed these duties plus her own and was the sole occupant of the below-stairs accommodations. A charwoman came daily to help her in the upkeep and cleaning. Twice weekly a laundress (her Irish brogue so thick I had a hard time understanding her) did the laundry one day, the ironing the next. As there was no washer or dryer, on those days the under-stairs area was exceedingly damp as clothes and linen were strung out in the back washrooms. A groundsman (fee paid by the landlord) attended the garden and hedges weekly. As—less than a day after our arrival—it had rained in London almost on a daily basis, there was no worry as to watering the plants.
On the floor above the ground floor, there was a comfortable sitting room that adjoined the master bedroom, both of which would now be designated (by Mrs. Barnes) as “milady’s apartments.” My bedroom enjoyed the garden view, an Italian marble fireplace (every main room had a fireplace—there was no central heating), and a large bed that is unforgettable. Four richly carved, mahogany bedposts propped up a canopy of heavy, fringed, gold-tasseled green velvet (faded in streaks by its age and where light had fallen upon it) that cascaded from the corners to the floor (think of that green velvet, gold-tasseled gown Scarlett O’Hara fashioned from her late mother’s portieres to meet Rhett Butler). The velvet drapes could be pulled shut—sealing out the cold once the coals were ashes in the fireplace. (Coal was the fuel Londoners depended on for heat, and the coal trucks with their blackened delivery men were a common sight.) There was also a connecting dressing room with a cot covered in scotch plaid, there—I was told—for the husband’s use when his wife had her “monthly.”
A hallway led from these “en suite” rooms (a sitting room, big, old-fashioned, white-and-black-tiled bathroom included), to two guest chambers. The top floor was described as “the children’s wing.” It also contained staff quarters, as once there would have been at least one upstairs maid and a nanny. A good-sized, sitting-playroom centered the children’s rooms and off it a tiny kitchen for the nanny to prepare the young ones’ tea. The nanny I had hired, Fiona Ffife, a lanky, good-natured young Scotswoman with carrot hair, a ruddy complexion, and a strong scent of heather about her, was to have the entire upstairs staff quarters, giving her a bedroom and sitting room, albeit neither of them very commodious.
The house had seen better days. Still, evidence of those times remained. It came furnished and that included crested silver cutlery, trays, toast racks, tea set, and a fine china dinner service for twelve, as well as a few truly remarkable antique chests and tea tables. Framed portraits and landscapes, mainly eighteenth and nineteenth century, hung on the flocked, wallpapered walls, fadings on it indicating the removal of perhaps the most valuable of the owner’s collection. Raymond’s company was paying thirty-two pounds a week for all this grand old-English luxury (rents in London were almost all due weekly in the 1950s), approximately $400 a month. Mrs. Barnes’s weekly salary was seven pounds ten, Fiona’s eight pounds, and the daily char a small hourly rate. I was, of course, responsible for feeding the members of my household staff, and for the telephone, utilities, and coal required for the stove and fireplaces. One of the first purchases I made was a number of portable electric heaters as the house often had a definite chill. In the bathrooms there were heating rails for towels, a small luxury but one I came to love. There is nothing like the cozy feeling of wrapping a toasty towel around one’s naked, shivering self when stepping out of a bathtub onto a cold tile floor.
Grocery shopping was not an easy task but it was a great adventure. There was one “supermarket” on the nearby Edgeware Road. It was not comparable in any way to the supermarkets back home. It seemed most of whatever you thought you needed, the London store did not stock. One quickly learned the art of substitution. Shopping was better done in the individual shops—and there were many of those clustered along the busy high streets of almost every neighborhood: greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, bakeries, chemists, dairy, charcuterie (prepared foods and jarred items like pickles, olives, “gentleman’s relish,” and marmite, the latter two requiring a cultivated taste). Flower stalls brightened many corners.
Shopping for food was time consuming, there being queues for everything. People bought fresh foods in amounts that would be used in a day or two (refrigerators were not yet in every home and easily spoiled food was often left to keep cool on windowsills). My American training had taught me to buy more than one tin of something if it was at a reduced price. My first time out I purchased three cans of baked beans, planning for them to be stored in the larder. You carried a fishnet bag (or two or three) to hold your purchases. Some things were wrapped in paper, but grocery bags were not generally given and it was a juggle to fit your items into these bags without them poking through the holes. One could, of course, order from the few top department stores (Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, and Selfridges, etc.) who had food floors stacked with the best quality of available provisions and offered accounts and delivery. That was, however, an expensive way to go and I only used these outlets when absolutely necessary.
I never stopped thinking of the short time I would be enjoying the bounty I had reaped of new experiences and steady pay. Soon I would be returning to the States, unable to use my identity in my chosen career. And there was still the possibility of being subpoenaed to appear before the Committee. Raymond’s generous contract, I now realized from Mitchell Gertz’s first letter (wherein he boasted of his great negotiating powers), had been due to his desperation to make a deal with MGM which required his ownership of three viable properties. He had two—mine was the last needed to finalize his negotiations. When I completed my contractual obligations and went home, there was no chance of my receiving my current handsome fee. To make things scarier yet, I had earned my living from the age of seventeen as a writer and knew no other way to seek gainful employment. At university I had studied theater and Russian literature. Small chance for that to help me. The future looked cloudy at best. I was determined to make the most of this glorious reprieve while saving what I could for what—it seemed only natural to believe—would be tough times ahead.
Adjusting to a new culture and surroundings was not easy for the children. I tried to make our time together as sharing and as learning an experience as possible. They had been through a lot in their short years what with our moving about, their father’s neglect, the divorce, my illness, and now being thrust into an unfamiliar world. I went to work almost immediately. But they were used to my having “writing-can’t-disturb-Mommy-except-for-an-emergency” hours. Fiona made the children afternoon tea (more like a light supper) in the upstairs kitchen.
For the first weeks, Mrs. Barnes cooked our remaining meals (cold meat left in the larder for Sunday night dinner when she was free). I would bring the provisions home and she would whisk them away below stairs. Her pride in her culinary abilities was estimable. She served us in the dining room—arms folded as she waited to be congratulated after a meal. This was not an easy matter. Mrs. Barnes was a hard worker and a lovely woman. She was also a terrible cook, and my children were not always able to conceal their displeasure of what was on their breakfast and dinner plate. The fine vegetables I had handpicked at the greengrocers all came out a mash and unattributable. The lack of eggs during the war had caused her to guard those I brought home as if they were golden. After three consecutive mornings of being served the tinned beans on burnt toast for breakfast (toast seemed always to be charred as it was made in an antiquated—antique, really—toaster), I rebelled. Eggs for everyone tomorrow morning, I insisted. They were set before us the next day scrambled in fat drippings, their volume inflated by gummy, cooked cereal. It was m
y difficult problem to tell her that she could do the preparing, chopping, and washing, while I would handle the cooking. In terms of the unwritten laws of English household staff members, this was a demotion and she did not take it kindly. I was stiff lipped by her for a good week. Finally she relented and became interested in how and what I was preparing for a meal.
Cooking had always been one of my favorite pastimes and I liked to think I was good at it. My mother, Marion, was a talented cook, self-taught and creative. The two of us had lived with my uncle Dave for several years of my early life. My parents were separated and in that era—the early 1930s—a woman resided with a member of her family during such unfortunate circumstances. Uncle Dave was a well-known vaudevillian who was brought to Hollywood to appear in motion pictures. The Hollywood offices of the studio that hired him had not been informed by their New York arm that he was a mime. This was the beginning of talking pictures. Mimes—even famous, comic ones—were not wanted. A few years later Harpo Marx came along, but he had brothers and a musical instrument to do his talking for him. Still, Uncle Dave had a contract that the studio had to fulfill and an income for the length of it. Most other former vaudevillians were not that lucky. They came to Hollywood looking for that big break which had not happened and were unemployed and broke.
My mother and my aunt Theo (Uncle Dave’s first wife—whom I greatly loved) took to cooking large quantities of inexpensive recipes—stews, chili, and something my mother invented called “deviled bones” (made from the remains of the roast she had made the previous day) to feed the hungry theater and out-of-work vaudevillian performers who gathered at our dinner table. Uncle Dave filled in with hamburgers from our backyard grill. “Chasen’s” was born of that beginning (and constructed on an adjoining lot). The scents of all this home cooking, so rich with spices and glowing with the warmth of those gatherings, comprise the happiest times of my childhood. I have always associated food and cooking with them. Therefore, I was quite pleased to have decided to take up the reins as cook to my household. My nemesis was not Mrs. Barnes, but an enormous old black stove (circa 1910) that dominated the kitchen and was fed by coal.