My mother became a widow at the age of thirty-six. I don’t think she ever recovered from my father’s death. Instead she sought solace by intensifying the things which gave her comfort in her life – her church, her garden, village life – but sadly not me. My father’s death had somehow driven us apart rather than closer together. I had not only lost my father but my mother as well. I was an orphan at the age of eighteen.
When I look back at that time, I am ashamed at how little consideration I gave Mama in the aftermath of my father’s death. I assumed there was some kind of War Pension due to her but I really had no idea about our income and expenditure or what her worries were concerning the maintenance of the cottage, putting food on the table and paying the bills. She had left all these matters up to Papa and now he was gone. How was she coping with the death of her husband? Why was she cutting herself off from me? What did I care? I was wrapped up in the hardness of my own selfish ambition. Perhaps it was my own way of dealing with my grief. But all I wanted to do was to get away from the village of Five Elms Down as quickly as possible. And my mother was in no fit state to stop me.
My best friend in those days was Polly McKenzie. Same village, same age, same class at school. Pretty Polly. Yes, that was what everyone called her. Fair hair and freckles, blue eyes, tiny retroussé nose, and a Cupid’s Bow of an upper lip. She certainly used to shoot off a lot of arrows with that bow of hers, scored a lot of bulls-eyes too. While Polly was praised for her prettiness, I was often described as being attractive. It was a distinction I did not find pleasing. I remember once complaining about it to my Aunt Ginny.
‘Prettiness is fleeting,’ she told me. ‘Attractiveness will always endure.’ She was right about the fleetingness of Polly McKenzie. Sadly, she was killed in a car accident at the age of twenty-seven.
Like me, Polly wanted to be an actress. Or at least she wanted the glamour and attention that such a career brought. Fortunately for us, a lot of the early British silent films were being made at Shoreham-by-Sea, an hour’s bicycle ride from our village. The Shoreham Beach Studios contained a proper production set-up with a large glass house specially built as a film stage in order to capture as much light as possible from the long, smog-free, summer days of the south coast. The studios boasted several hand-cranked cameras, a dark room, a preview theatre, bungalows where the actors and crew could stay during a shoot. A veritable Hollywood by the sea. Polly and I would cycle down there whenever we could, volunteer for odd-jobs around the set in the hope we would be brought in as extras. On one such day, we were watching the legendary Sidney Walcott filming a scene for On the Pleasure Pier, a love story between a servant lass and a wealthy business man, when one of the production team sauntered over to where we were standing. He couldn’t have been much older than we were, not particularly handsome but he was all swelled up with the confidence that comes from having something desirable to offer two desperate young women.
‘We need someone for filming on Brighton Pier tomorrow,’ he said, eyeing both of us up and down, then waited until he was sure our interest was snared. ‘Cashier girl. Handing out change for the amusements. A couple of lines. Simple. Early morning. Fancy it?’
Oh how my cheeks redden even now at the thought of how that little lure suddenly drove a wedge between Polly and me and our lifelong friendship. I felt her edge me aside so she could show our benefactor a close-up of her prettiness, her back arching slightly to ensure her pert little bosom was on prominent display. As for me, I decided to go for a more sultry look, eyes down, head slightly tilted to the left to show off what I imagined was my best profile.
‘You can have it,’ he said, pointing at me.
Such was Polly’s surprise that she actually grabbed the young man’s arm to haul him back as he moved away from us. ‘What do you mean, she can have it? I’m the prettier one. Everyone says so.’
‘It’s not pretty we’re after, miss. We want our hero falling in love with the servant lass. Not the cashier girl.’ He pulled himself away from her grasp. ‘Anyway, your eyes are too blue,’ he said, winking at me.
‘Too blue? I don’t understand.’
‘That’s the way the film stock is right now. Light blue registers as white. You’d have no irises at all up there on the screen. Your friend with the nice brown eyes suits us better.’
Well, that was the end of my ‘we’ll be friends forever’ relationship with Polly McKenzie but the beginning of my film career.
I went to see my performance of On the Pleasure Pier when it was shown at The Dukes cinema in Brighton. My mother said she was too ill to attend so Aunt Ginny came instead. Somehow I preferred it that way. When that image of myself as the cashier girl came up on the screen, I could feel my cheeks flush and my heart jump with the thrill of it all, seeing that which was me and not me both at the same time. Aunt Ginny grabbed my hand, squeezed it all the way through the minute or so of my scene. After the film was over, we walked down to the sea front. Under the struts of the pier, she slipped off her stockings and shoes, commanded that I do the same even though it was hard to walk on the pebbled beach. She bought us both ice cream cones, then went off to wander joyfully in and out of the surf, I think she was more excited by my appearance on the silver screen than I was.
‘You’re going to be a star,’ she told me, arms outstretched, shoes in one hand, cone in the other. ‘I can see it straight away, Georgie. You have such a luminous quality.’
‘It was only a small scene.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Your obvious talent shines through. Your luminosity. Yes, that’s the word. Luminosity. It will only be a matter of time before you’ll be spotted by one of these directors or whoever it is that chooses actresses for these wonderful new films. You’ll see. Your father would have been very proud of you. I’m just sorry Margaret… your mother… wasn’t here to see it.’
‘She gets these headaches.’
Aunt Ginny sighed, popped the last of her cone into her mouth with a flourish. ‘That woman needs to pull herself together. Your father was a remarkable man. But she can’t go on mourning him for the rest of her life.’ She grabbed my hand and together we tiptoed among the seaweed and the pebbles. ‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘How are you coping?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure? After all, you adored your father.’
‘I try not to think about him too much.’
‘Hmmm. The two of you, different peas in the same pod. Well, if you ever need a shoulder…’
I decided to change the subject and asked after Uncle Richard and my two cousins.
‘I hardly ever see him these days,’ she told me. ‘Always out all over the place, managing the estate, only comes back for his tea. Oliver is just about to start prep school and Percy just turned five last week. Too many males for my liking. It would be nice to have a daughter like you to balance the ship.’ And with that remark she burrowed into her purse. ‘Did you get paid for your acting job?’ she asked.
I shook my head.
‘Well, here you are,’ she said, handing me two half crowns.
‘You don’t need to…’
‘I’m your aunt, Georgie. I’m allowed to do such things.’
Chapter Seven
Lady Caroline’s Party
Lady Caroline Hoffman. Or simply Caroline Fletcher as she was in her drama student days. Caroline had done well for herself. Leveraged her few years in the spotlight as one of the sexy stars (blonde, skinny, tight sweaters over perky breasts) of a highly successful sitcom into a marriage to an extremely wealthy businessman. Lew Hoffman, recently dubbed Sir Lewis, no doubt for his contributions to one of the major political parties. Laura wasn’t sure which one, it could have been all of them, as Lew liked to spread his bets. A stocky, tensed-up figure of a man, much smaller than Caroline, who had made his money in oil, mining, farming and real estate. As Sir Lew was fond of saying, he liked to invest in things he could put his hands
on, dig his fingers into – like his wife. Caroline would give a complicit giggle to this well-worn remark although Laura knew it had been several years since Sir Lew had put his hands, fingers or any other part of his body anywhere near the once-sexy Caroline.
The Hoffmans owned a town house in Knightsbridge in a gorgeous Regency terrace that film companies were always using for period shoots. As Sir Lew tended to be away a lot, Caroline hosted these intimate evenings by herself, embracing her temporary singleton status by only inviting individual guests without their partners (if they had any). Whatever Laura’s own relationship status at the time, she usually looked forward to these opportunities to be out by herself and to be herself.
It was dinner for sixteen. Eight men, eight women. The usual balance between business and creative types. Caroline, during a brief hiatus from her hostess duties, pulled Laura aside to explain the seating arrangements.
‘I have quite a treat for you this evening,’ she said breathlessly, fanning her fingers at the red yoke spread across her neck and bare shoulders. Her low-cut dress revealed most of the infamous breasts that had so excited adolescent television viewers (as well as Sir Lew) in the 1980s. ‘To your right, I have put Sal Yerksaw. Heard of him?’
‘Should I have?’
‘Documentary film maker and theatre producer. American. From California. He’s over here doing some project or other. Tanned and good-looking.’
Caroline pointed him out. A rather attractive urbane gentleman with a thick shock of white swept-back hair that gave him a senatorial look. He was casually dressed in a black polo-neck and grey sports jacket while all the other men wore dark suits, various patterned ties to match their personalities.
‘And to my left?’
‘Fredrik Nilssen. Swedish. He works with Lew. A genius in his field, according to my dear husband. It could be an oil field or a field of clover for all I know. He is officially married but possibly separated. Are you all right? You seem a bit… edgy?’
‘I’ll be fine. I haven’t had a good day.’
‘Well, let’s hope a little male attention will cheer you up.’
Sal Yerksaw certainly wasn’t going to be that male attention. He seemed more interested in the pretty young authoress to his right, the recent winner of some prestigious literary prize. On her more confident days, Laura would have assumed Sal was deliberately ignoring her in a bid to make himself look nonchalant in the company of a well-known actress. The way she was feeling tonight though, she was no longer sure in her assumptions.
Sal’s behaviour left her solely in the company of Fredrik Nilssen sitting stiff with his rimless glasses and that cool Nordic stare so hard to read. Everything about him was neat. His hair, his fingers, his grey suit and tie, his movements as he adjusted his place card, spread a napkin on his lap. If there had been an exit route from his dinner companionship, she probably would have taken it. But given their tied proximity for the next hour or so, she decided to be as gracious as possible.
Fredrik turned his head – but not his body – towards her and said: ‘Would you like to know when you are going to die?’
She looked back at him. At the candlelight reflecting in his glasses, his pink-spotted, sun-starved skin, his lips formed into a quivering smile. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
‘Your age at death. Would you like to know?’
‘That’s an unusual question…’ She glanced at his place card to remind herself. ‘…Fredrik.’
‘You must be asked lots of usual questions, Laura. I was trying to be different.’
‘I admit you have my curiosity.’
‘Let’s say I could predict the month and year of your death with a certain amount of accuracy, would you like to know?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
She preferred not to ponder the inevitably of her own death. Especially today when dealing with the end of her career was enough demise for her consideration. ‘Better the joy of the unknown,’ she said, laughing nervously. ‘It adds a certain frisson to our lives, don’t you think?’
‘Not really.’
The conversation paused as the waiters moved in to serve the soup. Lobster bisque with a garnish of truffle oil according to the menu propped up at each place setting.
‘I love lobster,’ she found herself saying to no-one in particular, especially not Sal Yerksaw who still sat quite rudely with his body turned away from her.
Fredrik folded his hands on the table, stared at his soup. ‘Would it not be better,’ he said, ‘if we could properly plan out our lives? Arrange our careers, our finances, our dreams according to a finite schedule. Rather than all this randomness.’
‘And what difference would that make?’
‘Well, for example, if I knew I were going to die next week, perhaps I would be a little more forthright in this conversation I am having with this very attractive woman. Instead, I am being my usual reserved, risk-averse and boring self.’
Laura smiled, acknowledged the compliment with a graceful nod, happier than Fredrik could imagine for this little boost to her ego on this most awful of days. ‘All right then. If you told me I was going to be dead by the time I was sixty I probably wouldn’t want to know. But if you said I was going to live until ninety-five, then yes, I would be happy to be told that.’
‘So it is the fear of the brevity rather than the certainty?’
‘You could say that. What about you?’
‘I shall be dead by the age of eighty-two, with a standard deviation of about three months.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because I am an actuary.’
‘And what does that entail?’
‘I am involved with the assessment of probability of certain undesirable outcomes and their financial impacts on a company’s balance sheet. In short, risk management. For insurance companies, banks, investors, even film production companies.’
‘So when you turn up at the office, what do you do?’
‘Well, if you really did want to know when you were going to die, I would combine my analytical skills together with complex mathematical theories and algorithms to predict your probable age of death by evaluating a huge amount of statistical data. You wish me to go on? Or am I boring you already?’
‘You may continue.’
‘This data would include mortality rates for your age group, for someone living in London, the risks arising out of your career, relationship status, family history, diet, life-style, whether you had any children or any health-issues. If I were to hone in on you as a particular case rather than dealing in broad general terms, I would ask questions such as how often you drove a car as opposed to taking public transport, how far you lived from your place of work, how often you travelled overseas, whether you owned a pet. Are your parents still alive?’
‘They are actually. Both of them.’ Although her father was in a nursing home with hardly a shred of memory remaining to him. Her mother, still agile and attractive in her late-seventies, taking her anonymity in the mind of her husband as a form of release, spent most of her time hopping on and off various cruise ships across the world. Where she was now, Laura had no idea.
Fredrik nodded. ‘Longevity in your genes. Obviously a very positive sign.’
‘What about the randomness of simple accidents?’
‘I could work those into the equation. Road traffic deaths in your area, crime statistics, A&E records and so on.’
‘And relationships?’ Now she was single, she might as well know if they were good or bad for her health.
‘Traditionally, it was always better to be married. Especially for men. They tended to live healthier lifestyles within a relationship. They also took less risks if they knew that there was someone at home waiting for them. However, in recent years, the gap between the single person and the married person is narrowing quite considerably.’
‘Why is that?’
‘A number of factors. Possibly the most influential t
hese days is that married people end up being more obese than their single counterparts. There is a tendency to eat more as a couple, to let oneself go. A single person is more likely to try to remain thin in order to attract a mate.’
‘Are you married, Fredrik?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Yet you seem quite slim to me.’
Fredrik laughed. ‘You should also know, Laura, that for marriage to be a positive factor, the union must also be a happy one.’
Chapter Eight
The Hepburn Archives
Extract from an unpublished memoir
After my brief appearance in On the Pleasure Pier, I began to pick up other small parts in Sidney Walcott films down at Shoreham Studios, he was churning out about five or six a year by then. I think people in Britain forget what a thriving industry we had back in those days, especially down on the south coast where a lot of the early film camera technology was pioneered. But inevitably the studios moved up to London – to Borehamwood and to Lime Grove – and I followed. It was a life of constant auditions, a few successful, most not. Even the successful ones were nothing special. Frustration and rejection, those are the harshest lessons to be learnt by the aspiring artist whether they be actor, writer or musician.
I took acting lessons, voice lessons and dance lessons, did bits of theatre back in Brighton at the Theatre Royal or on the West Pier in the summer to make some money. But my heart was set on the film business. I wanted to be a star. Not in any old rubbish, mind you, but real quality films were hard to find in those days. There was such a voracious appetite for this new form of entertainment that the studios became like sausage factories, churning out any old slipshod rubbish to satisfy the mass audiences. And decent roles for women? Well, you can forget about those. We were either portrayed as blonde flibbertigibbets, screaming damsels in distress or dizzy comic turns.
A Woman of Integrity Page 3