Frank had absorbed what was going on, just as I had. He had an urgent word with Johnny Formosa, across me, muttering that he shouldn’t worry: she was on her way back to England and the film was safe in her hands. Chubby-faced Johnny frowned dubiously, having some sort of anxious private debate with himself, but he finally stood up, took the camera from the heavy and walked round with it to Henrietta. His expression when returning it was contorted, like a man badly stubbing his toe, but intended, I felt, to approximate to a smile. ‘Just taking a look,’ he said. ‘Nice piece a kit.’
Henrietta caught my eye, and as we went to the ladies’ we fell about, indulging in wild giggly speculation about the nature of Mr Formosa’s particular line of business. We decided it might be for the best if we never knew.
Flying on to Frank’s house in Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs was another high spot, but it was the last hurrah before going home. Joe had rehearsals, his new play opened in the West End in late January, and Christmas wasn’t far off. I wanted to see my parents. I also had modelling jobs lining up fast. The agency had telephoned the Romanoff residence, keen to know the exact date of my return.
Frank’s house, known locally as The Compound, was on the seventeenth fairway of the Tamarisk Country Club. But for all my sense of gearing up for London and imminent change, staying at it was bliss. It was a lazy, way-out, desert weekend, days to treasure, an experience to be packed away carefully between layers of tissue paper, preserved for years to come.
It was unforgettable, the times spent poolside, gazing up while Frank joked and entertained us with his mimicry; he could do Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Louella Parsons, to perfection. The times at the card table, partnering Leo Durocher, the gin rummy duke, who joked, as Frank refilled his bourbon glass, ‘God watches over drunks and third basemen.’ The times I watched Odile flirting sexily, catching her host’s eye – although Gloria said Frank was too fond of Rubi to make any clandestine assignations. He’d made one and broken it apparently, which couldn’t have been too popular.
The time we went out to eat on a hot, hot night with not a whisper of breeze, at the restaurant called Don the Beachcomber, which was part open-air, with sweeping palm fronds, slatted screens and peacock-back chairs, just like exotic film-shots of Hawaii I’d seen. I was encouraged to try a Mai Tai. It was fruity and thirst-quenching. I downed it and had another. The room began spinning, swimming, I tried to focus . . . When we came to leave, I felt Joe take my arm. He steered me, supported me: he knew, understood, and I had never felt more grateful. ‘My saviour,’ I muttered, slurring the words as he laid me down and undressed me in the cool dark of our room. He lay down next to me and made gentle love. It felt beautiful, was beautiful – a Joe I had known once, long ago.
The times when George, who was friend and father to Frank, as well as valet, told me stories. About Marilyn who, for all her warmth and sexiness had untidy, grubby habits and that wouldn’t do for Frank. He was a neat freak and shacking up with Marilyn, as she wanted, would never have done. George told of how Frank wanted him to keep watch over Marilyn whenever schedules allowed, all day and all night, too.
‘Mr S is worried silly about that chick, but hell, looking after her sure takes some self-control. I mean, fuck it, I’m no fag – she has me walking up the walls! Never bothers with clothes, wandering in and out of her bedroom asking for reassurance about her body, her sex appeal – threatening to go test it out on guys in local bars . . . Marilyn’s so goddamn insecure.’
George talked about Joe Kennedy, patriarch, founder of the Kennedy dynasty and one-time Ambassador to Britain, coming to stay at the Palm Springs house – very keen to persuade Frank to raise funds for the Presidential push.
Not George’s favourite guest, it seemed. ‘That guy! He hated blacks like me, wanted an all-white staff. He was rude and crude, the creep – just a great big anti-Semitic hood under that fancy Ambassador façade.’
The times over those few days that I just absorbed; took in the house that was filled with books – Keats, Shelley, Henry Miller, biographies of politicians, hefty books on astronomy, a book on cacti: there were splendidly architectural spiky cacti plants in the grounds. Striped awnings too, orange and white; orange was a colour Frank loved. ‘It’s cheerful, like the sun,’ he said more than once. He wore orange sports shirts, orange silk handkerchiefs in jacket pockets. The paintings round the house were vivid, modern. The background music – on another incredible sound system – was usually jazz, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, or singers like Ray Charles.
Only very late at night would Frank ever play one of his own albums, murmuring the words or pointing out favourite pieces of orchestration. It was never a fast, fun album. He would put on something sad and moving like Only the Lonely and often grow distant.
I thought he seemed nervous as well, on occasion. President Kennedy was soon to visit Palm Springs and coming to stay at The Compound. The amount of preparation had been prodigious, with the building of a heliport and a special new Presidential Suite; Frank needed things perfect in every detail. I hoped for his sake that all would go well. I hoped too, that the gentleness Joe had shown me when the rum had gone to my head had been a sign and, home again, back in real-time living, we would find a new path, wide enough to travel together.
Chapter 12
December–February 1962
‘So tell all,’ Sally said, when I phoned into the Agency for my bookings. ‘Was it truly unbelievable?’
‘You can say that again. I haven’t landed back yet, I’m still way up in the clouds.’ I kept it short, keen to know what I had on in the next days, wanting to unpack and get sorted.
‘Duffy tomorrow and Wednesday, two full days for Elle. Vogue on Friday with Norman Parkinson, that’s on location, Camber Sands, leaving at six o’clock from his house in Twickenham. It’s summer evening dresses on the beach, I’m afraid, but he says he’ll have flasks of coffee and rum.’
‘God, I hope not rum, can’t do rum. I’m freezing in my winter woollies after Palm Springs, and Vogue pay such peanuts, too.’
‘We’re trying to push them, Susannah.’
‘I’ll be a shrivelled prune, hypothermia at the very least.’
I took down my immediate bookings. Another day with Vogue on Monday, the photographer was David Bailey. Sally reeled off future jobs. It was all go till Christmas. Great to have work, to be in demand, but editorial jobs – whole days with Vogue and Elle – didn’t pay the bills. Joe and I hadn’t earned a farthing in three months.
‘I’d better get some rest now, Sal, after the overnight flight. This is my only free day.’
‘Before you go, we’ve had a call from Gil Foreman’s studio in New York. They want you for an ad – Jim Beam bourbon – and are prepared to come here to shoot it. I told them you’re fully booked till Christmas, but they asked if you’d ever work nights. It’d be well paid at least, Susannah – you should do it. The account exec’s coming as well, even a stylist. It’s a big campaign, a big deal.’
Sally couldn’t imagine the fluttering butterflies she was causing. ‘It’s provisionally booked in for next Tuesday evening,’ she went on. ‘Eight o’clock. Gil Foreman can’t do weekends apparently and his studio’s done a lot of rearranging. He really seems to want you.’
‘He took a few test pics in New York for Jim Beam. Of course I’ll do it, Sal, how could I refuse?’
He was crossing the Atlantic, following up . . . but what of it? No good getting carried away, he obviously just felt I was right for the job. Coming to London didn’t mean much with a money-no-object account like Jim Beam. And yet . . .
I began the depressing business of unpacking cases full of creased, dirty clothes. The pile grew. Perhaps our smiling Spanish cleaner, Palmira, wouldn’t mind a day on laundry. She was into washing, even made her own soap and had once shown me how, boiling up great lumps of fat for hours. I’d tried to tell her, in my non-existent Spanish, that I’d be better off sticking to Daz.
Joe was out seeing his agent
. His new play was opening on 31 January, exactly when Eileen Ford wanted me to come to New York. It all got going again in February, she said. If I came a couple of days early and did some go-sees, I’d be booked right up.
The phone rang. It was Alicia and, far from fluttering butterflies, my stomach froze to a block. She couldn’t have assumed Joe would answer. Was it me she wanted? Did she know he was out? I felt on red alert, but having just unpacked the outfits she’d loaned me that I longed not to have taken, I was at least able to thank her and get it over with.
She wanted to probe. The questions kept coming. Yes, we’d had a sensational time, I said. Yes, it had been extraordinary. Was she trying to gauge how things had been between me and Joe, how much he’d missed her? ‘Isn’t the baby almost due?’ I asked. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Vast,’ she laughed. ‘I’m an elephant. Come and see for yourself, if you’re bringing back the clothes. Tomorrow any good?’
‘I’m booked all day. I could drop them in at the weekend?’
It was too much to hope that I could just hand the clothes to the housekeeper and scarper; Alicia and Toby wouldn’t risk weekending at their Gloucestershire home with the birth so close.
‘Joe could bring them,’ Alicia said, turning me to ice. ‘He’s looking in later today. He wants Toby to up the ante and be an entrepreneurial angel for the play. But Tobs is such a mean old bugger at heart, he’ll never cough up. Joe’s on a loser there!’
I shivered some more. She must have talked to Joe already that morning – he must have called her even as we landed – and she wanted me to know it. All my quiet hopes dashed, just delusions, Alicia was right back on the scene. Joe’s play was financially sound. It had to be, with rehearsals about to start. The Toby-as-an-investor line was just what had come into her head, the bitch, the cow. How could she?
I heard myself give a false little titter. ‘I wouldn’t trust Joe with your clothes for a minute. No, I must see them safely delivered. I hardly wore them, by the way, so don’t think I’ve done too much damage.’ Unlike Alicia . . .
‘Absolutely no rush with the size I am! The baby’s due any day now, but the betting’s on late – a Christmas baby, we think.’ Who was the ‘we’? Joe? Toby?
Alicia had even taken my mind off Gil Foreman. I went back into the bedroom and stuffed a pillowcase full of Joe’s dirty laundry. Could she really have a clue whether the baby was his or Toby’s? It got to me. I grabbed the pillowcase in hysterical rage and hurled it across the room. Shirts, pants, socks, flew out, airborne like paper planes, hanging suspended for seconds before landing in a sorry mess. Then I fell on the bed, crying uncontrollably, exhausted and over-reacting, but the bitterness was rife. Yet the bile in my bloodstream soon drained, the tears were shortlived. Gil Foreman was coming to London. A sort of disbelieving elation was taking root; who cared if it was for purely professional reasons? He was coming to London and I was seeing him the following week.
It felt best to wise Joe up to my evening booking well in advance. ‘You’ll never guess,’ I said, having asked after his agent, where he’d just been, and not mentioned Alicia’s call, ‘but one of the photographers I saw in New York is in London next week and he’s booked me. It’s for an ad for Jim Beam bourbon, but it has to be after-hours so I’ll be working late next Tuesday.’
‘Why can’t this jerk Yank snap you in daytime? What’s wrong with nine to five?’ Joe sounded testy and suspicious, which I hadn’t expected. ‘You’re not going to start working nights as well now, are you, wifey, like some squint-eyed office cleaner or tart?’
‘I’m fully booked, Joe, there is no other time. And the money’s good, I really should do it.’
‘God, you’re such a tedious bloody slave to your modelling, so typically bourgeois. I’m home and around for once, you could have thought of that. About the only time for ages too, with the play coming up – which with any luck should have a decent run.’
When I’d be home and around, I thought sarcastically, but that would never have occurred to Joe. ‘He’s a top American photographer, love,’ I said instead. ‘It’s quite a coup.’
Joe sniffed. He was resentful of any success of mine, bad-tempered, sensitive about my paying the bills, although that never seemed to stop him spending like a gambler’s moll. It was a vicious circle. The more Joe ran up debts, the greater my need to work.
He always made me feel guilty about it, though, dreary and over-cautious, convinced that I was quite as boring and bourgeois as he made out. Joe’s sneers always hit home. So what, if we had a few outstanding bills? Alicia, no doubt, would have had a far more cavalier approach. Vanity came into it, I knew. I was busy and in demand, didn’t believe in the compliments, they just went with the job, but the small success of my career taking off was a secret source of pride.
Alicia’s clothes burned a hole in my cupboard. I felt guilty about not taking them to be cleaned. Tough titty, it was bad enough having to return them and face her. I decided to drop them in on Monday morning, on my way to Vogue, so I’d have every excuse not to stay.
Over the weekend, Joe’s mood yoyo-ed between ebullience and surliness. He’d asked some actor friends for Sunday lunch, and the cooking gave me space, time for private thoughts. And on Monday morning, when Alicia’s tired-looking elderly housekeeper came to the door, I could have kissed her. I felt released.
I sat in the railway-carriage dressing room at Vogue, putting on make-up. Slate-grey clouds over Hanover Square, a mug of tepid instant coffee on the go, my thoughts were one way and obsessive: how was I going to handle seeing Gil Foreman tomorrow night? With fortitude and resolve? Feeling the way I did?
Jean Shrimpton wandered in. She hadn’t been modelling long, but we’d worked together once or twice before California. I remembered her as a willowy girl, all legs and shaggy brown hair, yet now, seeing her afresh, I couldn’t stop staring; she had a lightness and grace crossed with sexy gawkiness, and her eyes, under a wispy fringe, were arrestingly wide apart. I thought of sleek sophisticated older models, flame-haired Fiona Campbell-Walter, beautiful Bronwen Pugh. Jean was gorgeously, irreverently different.
‘Hi,’ she smiled. ‘I’m not here really. I just stopped by with Bailey to see the pictures we did for Young Idea.’ She leaned close into the mirror, applying an ice-pink lipstick, ‘They’re in the January issue and he said I could pick one up.’
Clare Rendlesham, Vogue’s most fearsome fashion editor, came in carrying a bright yellow suit over her arm. She gave Jean an icy, we-need-to-get-on-now sort of look, which I tried to balance by saying to Jean I couldn’t wait to see the January Vogue.
‘Not for my pics.’ She laughed and chucked the lipstick into her handbag that she slung over her shoulder, meandering to the door then in her own time. She was relaxed and easygoing, completely unfazed by Clare. There was nothing bourgeois about Jean Shrimpton, I thought wistfully.
For the first shot Clare put me in the short-skirted marigold-yellow suit she’d brought in, which seemed garish and dressy with too many buttons. It didn’t win any Brownie points with Bailey either. ‘Looks like a slab of margarine,’ he said, ‘and stiff as a Willie with it. ’Aven’t you got any less crappy gear, a frock with a bit of fucking movement?’
‘It’s the suit I want, it’s very new season,’ Clare retaliated, flashing her eyes all the more angrily when Bailey said it would get by on an Easter card with a load of fluffy chicks.
While I stood waiting, positioned on a pearl-grey backdrop in Vogue’s small studio, wondering who’d win, Bailey aimed the wind machine at the suit’s neat skirt. It sagged sadly into my legs, and Bailey had his way.
He was brilliant at playing the fashion editors, artfully, wittily rude with his East End cheek and cunning, and he knew how to have fun. Yet they all loved him, even Clare. He flicked through the rail in the dressing room and chose a dress that was flatteringly figure-hugging to the hips while floaty-skirted. Then with Elvis on disc, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ blasting out, we we
re on a roll.
Bailey said I had a faraway look in my eyes, just right for the mood. He didn’t know where and how far from the job my eyes were straying. He wouldn’t have minded, probably quite approved of looks that shouldn’t be there. It was dreadful being this obsessed, feeling so driven and disorientated, living for tomorrow night. It was all imagined, anyway. There’d be no passionate coming together, only the hollowness and ache of the let-down.
Joe ignored me when I got home. He was learning his script, which seemed little excuse for not even looking up. He’d either forgotten or lost interest in my booking the following night and I wondered about it. Joe hammered away at things, he never once let up. I sighed and cooked a favourite paprika ragout of his for him to have when I was out working.
In the morning I packed deodorant and scent in my tote bag, as well as the usual shoes, gloves, bras and make-up, in case the day overran. But I hoped to get home before my booking with Gil. I hurried off to a casting for a commercial, for a new soap called Care. I hated castings. It was the one time in the job when I could be made to feel like a piece of meat. I felt it at times too, when some berkish account executive hanging around on set, chose to speak to the photographer as if I wasn’t there. ‘Tell the girl the shampoo bottle needs to be closer.’ Or, ‘Tell the girl we need lots of lovely smiles!’ I had a name, why couldn’t these people use it? I hated to lose my identity.
The casting was at J. Walter Thompson, a very grand and reputable agency, most of whose executives were old-school, chummy and plummy; they knew a bit about good manners. They spoke to me directly, unlike the ‘tell the girl’ twerps.
Tell the Girl Page 15