by Ingrid Pitt
We walked and walked along the endless track. After about four hours we saw a boliche, a decrepit-looking hut, in the far distance by the side of the track. It was the station of a tiny village. When we eventually arrived, no one seemed to be around. At the back was a little patio covered with vines. A water bottle was suspended from a beam. I grabbed it and got stuck in but Tonio took it way from me at once and poured the water over my head. It seems you don’t drink water when you’re dehydrated.
We wandered around to the front where, in a lean-to, stretched out on a leather sofa, was an Indio-looking fat man dressed only in pants and singlet. When he saw me, he did one of those cartoon take-offs and disappeared into another part of the boliche. We stood around wondering if we should follow but soon the door opened and the man reappeared dressed regally in his station-master finery. We tried to explain our plight to him, about Sires slowly dying in the desert, but he insisted that we left matters of business until he had finished welcoming us. He made tea for everyone, reminded us that it was the Queen’s birthday and pointed to a brass plaque, shining brilliantly on the wall, which claimed that the station had been built in Birmingham. Finally we were allowed to share our problems with him and he conjured up a boy who was detailed to take Gunter to some unspecified place to fetch a lorry. About half an hour later Gunter turned up on the back of a load of wreckage which I was assured by our station-master was a truck. Gunter wasn’t too keen on ploughing off into the desert again as it was getting dark now, but nobody else volunteered so, with bad grace, he finally agreed to navigate if Tone would drive. When they eventually got back with Sires we were all tucking into a huge feast of steak. Sires wasn’t much disturbed by his adventure. He just asked what had happened to our car and driver. We all looked at each other and dissolved in laughter. Hours later a Land Rover arrived from the governor and we piled in. We were told that the driver had walked back along the tyre tracks of his car and had been home for hours.
Back at the governor’s estancia we were in bad odour. He had, unknown to us, laid on an asado at which we were meant to have been the guests of honour. We decided that we had ‘done’ San Juan and slipped away gracefully the following morning.
Gunter decided that we needed a break, as much to avoid any of the fall-out of our souring the relationship between the San Juan governor and de Benedetti as to rest after our adventure. Gunter’s finca, or small farm, in San Marcus Paz outside Buenos Aires was all ponchos and leather. We sat under the Southern Cross and talked of gauchos and horses. London and Steffanie seemed a galaxy away and I missed her.
The next day Gunter was keen that we should watch him play a game of ‘pato’, which turned out to be rather like rugby on horseback. The game is called pato, which means duck in Spanish, because in the old days the ball had been a live duck. Two teams would fight to grab the unfortunate fowl by the neck and ride with it to the far end of the field without being flattened by the opposition. Nowadays the duck has been replaced by a leather ball with a number of loops jutting from it.
As Tonio and Gunter brought the horses into the paddock, I had a brilliant idea, but before I could voice it Tonio caught my eye and said, ‘Forget it!’ It would have been fun to watch him join in.
After the match, which Gunter claimed his team had won, although he could have told me anything, everyone was invited back to the finca for asado. Gunter was really laying on a feast. He had an accordionist, four guitaristas and some bombos (drummers). The entertainment went on well into the night. Someone sang Tango. The guitaristas did a duello, where two or three gauchos sit and challenge each other with their guitar playing. Then the story-tellers got into their act.
I was exhausted and went to bed, dreaming about stars and horses and Steffi – so far away . . .
Thirty
I had not spent much time in BA since our return from ‘exile’ in Uruguay and had been unaware of the changes that had taken place. Returning from a horror conference in New York, I was struck by the large number of road blocks. Soldiers swaggered around with lethal-looking weapons in their hands and a glint in their eyes which said they would just love an excuse to use them.
In Buenos Aires we discovered that Robin had found out from his solicitors that all was not well with his property deal. Although he had already signed over the cash and received shares, Bairstow Eves had decided that the deal was dodgy and had withdrawn, a fact that the property developer had neglected to pass on to Robin. Without the underpinning of the wealthy Bairstow Eves group the whole deal was coming unstuck. Reluctantly Robin decided he had to get back to London.
One morning as I sat outside the Piccolo, the little cafeteria beside the hotel in which we were staying, reading the English-language Buenos Aires Herald, the headlines on the entertainment page jumped out and grabbed me by the windpipe: ‘Pinches kills industry inches by inches’.
George had been given a golden handshake from the Rank Organisation. When Tonio joined me I said we could go home now. He thought about it but said it wasn’t the right time. Olivera was ready to start shooting and, anyway, he’d already sent a ticket to Steffanie and she was due out the following week. It was the greatest surprise I could have imagined.
Tone explained that while we’d been away the Ultimo Enemigo project had been shelved. The admiral in charge of the Film Institute had not been keen on a story featuring a woman taking on the military, overthrowing them and taking over the government with the help of US mercenaries. Olivera now planned to shoot Gaucho Girl, a sanitary tale about a young orphan girl who inherits a rich estancia in Argentina. It was doubly exciting for me because Steffanie was to be the eponymous heroine while I played the Cruella de Ville-type, trying to get my hands on her loot.
Every seventeen days it rains in Buenos Aires, and, when it does, the streets all look like Venice. It was on one of those days that Steffanie arrived. This time I didn’t hold back. She knew I was there the minute she stepped out of the Jumbo. Tonio and I stood at the bottom of the gangway, right on the tarmac. She sorted out the blokes at Customs all by herself and had no problem with them wanting to unravel her Christmas presents. She just wouldn’t allow it. It was wonderful to be together again and we were both excited at the prospect of working together.
Steffka had not really slept for a couple of days so instead of going out to celebrate our reunion we sat outside the Piccolo with our favourite boccadillo de Roquefort and cappuccino. We were just about to go in to bed when a couple of Ford Falcons slewed up on to the grass and half a dozen men, waving guns, leaped out. Everybody froze, knowing from bitter experience to sit tight and keep their hands on display. The likelihood was that the men were the police, but this was not reassuring. If they shot you, you would be found with a gun in your hand and nobody would investigate the matter further. The young men didn’t bother to identify themselves. They made us line up against the wall and went along the line. Steffanie thought it all very exciting. I was petrified. When they found out we were British they were quite civil and waved us back to our seats. I wanted to go inside and jump into the safety of my bed but Tonio told us to sit down and see what happened. After they had searched everybody and found nothing of interest to them they went inside the hotel. We sat and waited. No one left. Everyone felt that they had passed some sort of test and might not be so lucky if they moved off and were put to the question again. In the hotel, the police rounded up four men and a woman. They put a man in the boot of each car and the woman and the other two men in the back seats. Without looking at us again they jumped back into the Falcons and powered away.
Instantly everybody began to talk. I gripped Steffanie’s hand and made for the door of the hotel. Although I had seen similar instances on the streets I had never before been directly involved. When we had first arrived in Buenos Aires, in spite of the bad publicity surrounding the Peróns and the crippling inflation, there had been a sense of freedom. People sat around in cafés and said what a fool Perón was, how stupid Isabel was. Now, no one dared sa
y a word. I wanted to get out and prayed that we would soon be able to afford to leave.
Olivera had brought together a group of fantastic character actors and a boy called Cacho to play opposite Steffi. Cacho was a budding Adonis and could ride like a Tartar. It was decided that he would give my daughter some extra riding lessons. Steffka and I did make-up tests, had our wardrobes made and learned our lines. Tucked away in the security of the studio for two weeks, everything was calm and orderly. We then went to an estancia near Santa Fe where the outdoor locations were to be shot and had started shooting the interiors when Olivera called Tonio into his office and asked him where his half of the production budget was. This was the first mention of our buying in. Steffanie and I were not being paid and Tonio had written the script for nothing. Now Olivera wanted cash. When Tonio pointed out our contribution, Olivera became irritable and said we would be paid when we’d put up our share of the budget. He didn’t seem happy to be making the demand and we suspected he was under pressure from the military, now running the industry. Olivera’s request brought us up short but we didn’t panic. Herbie Henderson had said he was keen to invest so we visited him. He seemed delighted with our proposal and we had the impression that things would now move very quickly.
We worked until the end of the week, daily expecting to receive funds from Herbie. When nothing happened I contacted him. He seemed overwrought and said he had personal problems. ‘It’s nothing to do with our deal. Why don’t you come round on Monday and we’ll sort it out on the spot?’ I didn’t like the further postponement. Alarm bells began to make a deafening sound. At the studio, Tonio was doing some fast talking. He had coaxed Olivera into giving us another week so I didn’t tell him about my reservations.
On Monday Steffka and I went to the studio and Tone went to Herbie’s office. When he asked for Herbie the receptionist gave him a letter. Herbie was sorry he was unavailable. The previous week he’d had a big bust-up with his wife and over the weekend there had been a reconciliation and they had jetted off to Paris to replight their troth. He would attend to our business when he returned – whenever that might be. We knew it was the end.
We confessed our problem to Olivera. He was sympathetic but couldn’t be persuaded to continue without money up front or a distribution contract for the UK in his pocket. It was time to go. We’d spent over two years in Buenos Aires and had sunk practically every penny into it. Maybe George’s successor, Stan Fishman, wouldn’t carry on the vendetta and I could get work back in England.
It was January, the jacaranda trees down the Avenida del Libertador were in blossom and it was time for the Grand Prix. We decided to stay for it, then go with the teams to Brazil and afterwards back to London. It was a great finale to our South American adventure.
Thirty-One
It was great to be back in England. Now that George had left Rank we hoped it might make a difference to my re-emergence. Unfortunately it didn’t. The ban on me had run for so long that I was virtually a non-person. To fill the empty hours I began to write a thriller, Cuckoo Run, based on one of the scripts I had touted around Argentina. I had almost completed it when I received a call from Bill Kenwright. Bill managed a touring theatre company, which kept a lot of actors in work. He ran things on a tight budget but was also firm and faithful. He asked if I’d do Dial M for Murder for him on a theatre tour and I quickly accepted.
We opened at the Opera House in Glasgow. Tonio came up for opening night and then went back to London. He was playing with the idea of forming a touring theatre company himself and was working on finding a backer. He drove back up on Saturday, had a kip in my dressing-room, then took me to our house in Richmond.
In the morning he suggested we ate breakfast in the garden. It was perfectly situated, faced south, had huge horse-chestnuts to provide shade and was surrounded by an ancient brick wall. The only thing that spoiled it was the Anderson shelter, a relic from World War Two. When my eyes adjusted to the light I couldn’t believe what I saw. The Anderson shelter was gone and in its place was a bed full of beautiful flowers. I looked around the rest of the garden. In the short time I had been away he had planted flowers everywhere. It was so wonderful that I dissolved into tears.
I’d been crying a lot recently and had also been feeling sick and getting terrible stomach cramps. I knew that I was ill but couldn’t admit it. After all I had gone through, I needed to feel strong. To be ill was to be weak and inferior. So I hadn’t said anything to anyone, not even to Tonio or Steffka. Tone had sensed that I wasn’t well but as I only saw him at weekends while I was touring I’d managed to hide my pain from him.
We were on our way down to Brighton, where I was to open at the Theatre Royal. I’d been feeling unwell all weekend but had covered it by saying I was merely tired and needed to rest. Half-way to Brighton, I had to get Tonio to stop the car so I could be sick. When I finally got back in I was exhausted. Tonio wanted to turn back immediately but I told him not to be silly, that I’d eaten something which didn’t agree with me. He wasn’t convinced. He made me promise that I would go to the doctor the following morning. I said yes but had no intention of going. I was more frightened of finding out something vile than continuing to suffer. But Tonio read my mind and insisted on staying over and taking me to the surgery.
The next morning the doctor made an appointment for me to go immediately to the hospital for tests and within a week ovarian cancer was diagnosed. My initial reaction was anger with myself and with the world, and disbelief. ‘I couldn’t possibly have an operation now,’ I told the surgeon. ‘I’m in the middle of a tour.’
‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘But you’ll be dead before you finish the tour.’ That set me back.
For a while I continued to come up with terrified excuses. I was booked up for only another seven weeks, surely nothing could happen before then . . . But Tonio held the doctor’s line and, moreover, accused me of being selfish: who was going to cook his eggs and bacon on Sunday morning? What about Steffanie . . .?
I dreaded having to tell Bill Kenwright but he was brilliant. When he heard my tale of woe he insisted that I went into hospital at once. Having thought myself indispensable, I was a bit taken aback. Bill told me he would find a stand-in for however long I was away and that as soon as I was better I could take over again, which was the kindest thing he could have done, for it gave me a reason to get on with my recovery.
I didn’t tell my mother about the operation as I didn’t want to upset her, or for her to think I was a weakling, so I pretended I was away in some theatre where it wasn’t possible to get home for the weekend. When I later told her about it she said she had known all along. I’ve no idea how because no one told her.
They wheeled me into theatre and got ready to put me under. I hate that final period before you pass out, when you think you’re never coming back. Steffka and Tonio had been with me all morning until it was time to go. I was morose. I said goodbye and thought I would die. And if I didn’t die, I wouldn’t be quite a woman any more. When I suggested to the doctors that they shouldn’t take everything out – the ovaries, the womb, the lot – a kind nurse leaned over me. ‘Listen, darling,’ she said, ‘I’ve had all that stuff out and it’s bliss not having the . . . well, you know . . . those days once a month.’ I’d been bleeding all over the place, even on stage, and her words were a great consolation.
When I came to, I was in a foul mood. Steffi did her best to cheer me up and while she was there I was fine, but as soon as she left this great big black dog leaped out of the closet and gnawed at my entrails. I felt empty – as though I wasn’t a woman any more. I thought stupid thoughts like perhaps my Tone would go off me. He had a horror of hospitals, and when he came to see me he was tongue-tied and couldn’t wait to get out of the place. I would have to do some serious ‘pumping myself up’ if I wanted to get my equilibrium back. After all, what they’d taken out wasn’t anything I still had any use for . . .
Renee Wilson of Worldwide Films came to see me. S
he had always been a firm friend and proved it by ordering me to go and live in her house in Bexhill until I had fully recuperated. It was right by the sea, had a live-in maid and was ideal for convalescing. I didn’t need much persuading.
After a week at Bexhill I was determined to get back to the theatre. I thought it would prove a point, although I’m not sure I ever knew what that point was. Tonio tried to talk me out of it but realised at last that there would be no living with me unless I had my way. I phoned Bill at his office and told him I was ready to come back. I quite expected him to say that there was no point as there were only three and a half weeks of the tour remaining but he simply asked when I wanted to start. I told him I was ready to leap out of the wings immediately. He suggested I saw a performance to get back into the play and then took over on a Friday. With the weekend coming up it would give me a chance to rest. Steffanie was on holiday and came with me to look after me. She became my dresser, gofer, comforter, food provider and general ‘feel-good’ factor.
Going back to work was both a good idea and a bad one. Good because it stopped me worrying about myself: I was too exhausted most of the time. And bad because I was so weak and in pain. Between my entrances I lay down on a sleeping bag that Steffka put on the floor in the wings for me. At times I had to sit or lean on the furniture while I was on stage because I was so weak I couldn’t stand up unsupported for any length of time.