A Woman of Integrity

by J David Simons

  She let her foot slip on the accelerator, had to break hard to avoid hitting the car in front. What was she doing? What had she been thinking of when she decided to do this play? And now she was going to be filmed live for a documentary as well. Sal bloody Yerksaw. She always had found it difficult not to like the man. Life would have been so much easier if she had taken Edy’s offer, she would be off in California by now, rehearsing for The Boston Tea Party, earning some decent money, soaking up the sun instead of this heavy English rain bouncing off the M25 like a strafe of bullets. She could have been acting alongside Jack. Or just being with Jack. Lying in bed with Jack. Instead of sitting in her Mini with this stop-start jerking along the motorway, all 250 seats sold out for tomorrow’s opening night. Press in attendance with their iPhones charged, ready to text in to base the slightest fault or failure. Georgie by Georgie. What had she been thinking?

  She arrived at Quentin’s with a headache, although thankfully the rain had stopped. She had come back to the house to somehow connect with Georgie, breathe in inspiration from her spirit. She ate a simple lunch with Quentin in the kitchen, the conversation was light, the talk away from the theatre altogether, Quentin seemed to understand her mood, she was grateful to him for that. She was also grateful that after lunch he said he would leave her alone, that he was going upstairs for a nap. She poured herself a glass of wine, wrapped up warm, went out into the garden, walked down the lawn, the grass still wet from the rain, cut blades sticking to her shoes, she didn’t mind. She remembered coming out to this house for the first time with Sal, thinking how quintessentially English the view was, with the rolling fields, the village with its church spire in the distance, and now all she could think was how quintessentially Georgie it all was.

  She found the apple tree. She sat down on a nearby bench, closed her eyes, tried to imagine Georgie there on her little ladder, reaching for the fruit she had decided to pick. Had she stretched too much, toppled off her ladder? Or had there been a heart attack, a blood clot to the brain? She wondered what the death certificate had said, she had never asked Quentin. He had only told her that he had found her dead on the ground. As she sat there, she pictured Georgie going down to the cottage in Sussex to visit her ailing mother just after the war, how they had gone out to pick apples together just as they had done when Georgie was a child. But this time it was her mother who had remained on the ground with her pinny open, ready for the apples that Georgie stretched to pluck. The mother became the child, the child became the mother. Would it always be thus?

  She sipped her wine, a slightly cidery taste like the apples in her imagination, she thought about the conversation with her own mother that very morning.

  ‘You’ve moved to Brighton,’ her mother had said, ever disdainful of any location beyond the M25 unless it was a port – air or preferably sea – designed to take her out of the country. ‘What will I tell everyone?’

  ‘That I’ve moved to Brighton.’

  ‘But you’ve always lived in London.’

  ‘It’s time for a change then.’

  ‘But why? Why?’

  ‘London is too crowded, too expensive these days.’

  ‘Is there something I should know?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you ill? Do you need the sea air? Some bronchial complaint?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You could come stay with me.’

  Laura let the offer hang somewhere in the telephone line between them, both of them knowing that while upbringing dictated such a proposal should be made, reality dictated it should be politely refused. ‘That’s kind of you to say,’ Laura said. ‘But I can manage.’

  ‘You know I’d lend you money if I had it.’

  ‘I know you would.’ Although her mother’s financial circumstances were always a bit of a mystery to her. Not enough to pay for her husband’s nursing care but plenty to keep the London property and to fund her various cruises. Laura had thought for many years that when her mother said ‘I’m going on a cruise’, what she really meant was ‘I’m having an affair’ now that her husband had no idea who she was. A choice Laura would not have blamed her for, if ever she had been confided in. ‘Have you been to see Daddy recently?’ she asked.

  ‘I go when I can. Although I often wonder why I bother.’

  ‘They say the voice of a loved one is comforting.’

  ‘I’m not so sure I am a loved one. It’s better for you to be the one to visit.’

  Laura wasn’t so sure she was such a loved one either. Perhaps the sound of the sea outside the care home was enough comfort for him. She changed the subject. ‘Are you coming down to see the play?’

  ‘To Brighton?’

  ‘Yes, Brighton.’

  ‘Why this little play then? What has happened to your career?’

  ‘I’m going back to the theatre, that’s all. Lots of actors do that.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Are you coming then?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll come.’

  ‘I’ll reserve a seat for you. Just the one?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Would you like to bring someone?’

  ‘Who would I bring?’

  ‘I don’t know. A friend? One of your cruise buddies? Someone to keep you company.’

  ‘It’ll just be me. Your mother.’

  She must have fallen asleep, tired from the drive, the wine making her drowsy, she didn’t know for how long. Quentin coming out to join her, the weight of him beside her on the wood causing her to jolt awake.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  They sat quietly for a while after that until she asked. ‘Was this Georgie’s bench? Or did you put it here afterwards?’

  ‘I actually put it here on her bequest. A condition of the will.’

  ‘That’s funny. I want to do the same thing. For me, it’s a bench in Highgate Wood.’

  ‘The two of you have so much in common. She really would have liked you. I’m sure of it.’

  Again they drifted into silence, Laura pulling her jacket in tight against the cold, Quentin looking slightly ridiculous in a grey woollen hat with a red pompom. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘On the verge.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of greatness. Of doing your own thing.’

  ‘On the verge of a nervous breakdown is more like it.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. I’m convinced of it.’

  ‘I’ve just agreed to Sal filming the whole damn play.’

  ‘Back on the scene, is he?’

  ‘He felt he owed me.’

  ‘Seems fair. I always thought he’d come good in the end.’

  ‘The jury is still out on that.’ She laughed, it felt for the first time in ages since she had done so. ‘It’s been a long journey, Quentin.’

  ‘For both of us.’

  ‘I suppose it has.’ She looked over at him. With his tiny eyes, hard to know who it was that lay behind them, but yes, it had been a long journey for him too.

  ‘Has it changed your opinion of Georgie?’ he asked.

  ‘Finding out she had a daughter was a huge shock.’

  ‘It was hard for a woman in those days.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t blame her for what she did. I don’t blame her at all. Unmarried, pregnant, her dreams of being a movie star shattered. She was at her lowest ebb.’

  ‘It certainly adds a little more drama to your play.’

  ‘I actually discovered something else in her papers I wasn’t expecting.’

  ‘Oh, do tell.’

  ‘I think I’d rather wait for tomorrow night.’

  Chapter Sixty

  The Hepburn Archives

  Handwritten notes by Georgie Hepburn, written on guest stationery of The Savoy hotel, Strand, London. Date: 16th May 1982

  The hotel is very still yet there is always that constant hum. Whether from generators, elevator shafts, air conditioners or giant refrigerators, I do not know. It is a comforting sound,
like a mother’s early morning vacuuming while the child lies in bed in a half-sleep. I’m so tired, so very tired, but I cannot sleep myself. That interview at the Beeb still lingers, putting me in a reflective mood. I have left the curtains open to the night. I can see a few stars, the hotel courtyard, rooms opposite mostly with lights extinguished, drapes closed. London is out there somewhere too with its wet pavements and black cabs, with its men and women of the wee small hours, their various secret and sequinned lives to lead. A newspaper headline on the dressing table tells me that the Price Commission has been abolished, another that Elton John is to perform live in the Soviet Union. At an earlier stage in my life, such events would have been of interest to me. Now they belong to the consciousness of other generations.

  I used to play this game with myself. I would be alone in my bedroom at the cottage in Five Elms Down or perhaps in the beach-house in Malibu or in a hotel room as I am now and the world is ending in some undefined apocalyptic disaster going on outside my window. I am lying on my bed listening to the explosions, the screams and the sirens outside, flashes of light on the pane, this general feeling of panic and hysteria when suddenly there is a knock on the door. I would turn my head, lift myself from my bed and slowly walk towards the door. I would reach out for the handle and then I would stop. Who would I want to be there when I opened it?

  When I was a young girl, the answer was always my father. He would come in to me as a comforting shadow, bathed in an aroma of pipe smoke, his whiskers would tickle my forehead as he kissed me goodnight. I am sure my mother would have been there with him or had come in earlier but it is always my father I remember. Even after he was killed – more so after he had been killed – I would want him to be behind that door, in his flying suit and goggles, his face stained from fumes and dirt, his helmet in one hand, the cord of the parachute that had floated him to safety in the other. Even when Max came along, it was always my father I wanted to see behind that door.

  Rollo changed all that. He changed it when he was alive, he changed it after he disappeared. When I look back now on the span of my life, I realise that we hadn’t even spent all that much time together, yet it is always him that I want to see behind that door. If I could distil my life down to one moment of happiness, one photograph on an index card of memory, it would be sitting behind Rollo in our tiny Gipsy Moth as he grappled with that awkward camera of his, singing that stupid song about Flying Down to Rio, trying to get there on time. And why should my choice alight on that moment? Of course, I was in love with him. But there were other factors too. The element of adventure, of danger, of freedom that heightened my senses. There was the energy and vigour of my younger self contained in that moment as well. And the aesthetics of a vast azure vault, the late morning sunshine glinting off the tops of the clouds, the land and ocean peeking through below. To be above everything yet so totally immersed in love and beauty and excitement. Yes, it is Rollo I still want to see behind that door. And because he never really died, but merely disappeared into thin air, I think that one day he truly might be there.

  I am going to try to sleep now. I have a magic pill the doctor gave me which helps when my mind is spinning like this. Quentin is due to meet me for breakfast in the morning, drive me back to Oxfordshire. He dotes on me so that sometimes I suspect he knows my secret. That I am really his grandmother and not some batty old cousin. I should speak to him about organising my papers, about whether to do something with those indulgent extracts of memoir I’ve been writing over the years. Perhaps I should arrange to have them published now that I have taken my first step into the public domain with my interview at the Beeb. Or should I set them on fire the same way as I did to Doug’s memorabilia? Perhaps I should think about making a will. Everything to Susan, of course, a few charitable bequests, the RAF Benevolent Fund, a bench in the orchard, the negatives of all my nature photos to Quentin. Later on if I am not too tired, I might sit with him in the garden, listen as he tells me about how the world continues to amuse and interest him even as it spins away from me.

  I think again about Susan asking me to go over to America with my exhibition. Well, that is not going to happen. I am too weary these days to traipse all over the United States talking endlessly about my work. I just want to potter around in the garden. Not to grow giant vegetables and spectacular flowers like my mother for the village fête. I have no need to compete on such a level. I merely want to be with nature as I’m sure we all do towards the end of our lives. To be one with the seasons, to witness the cycle of birth, bud, bloom and death. I have flown over the earth, I will spend my last days working on it and then my ashes will finally be scattered across it. Until then, I find myself returning to the orchard, waiting for the fruit to ripen so that I can get up there on my ladder, look up to the sky through the branches and reach for my reward.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Georgie by Georgie

  It had come to this, Laura thought. No make-up artist, no obsessive director, no frantic producer, no harassed production assistant, no screenwriter, no continuity girl, no gaffer, no grip. Just her, alone in her dressing room. Somewhere out in the auditorium there would be her sound-and-lighting guy, the Australian film crew. And the audience, of course. A packed house.

  Her mother would be there, seated beside Quentin, the two of them thick as thieves already even though they had just met. Victoria had come down from London, bearing flowers and chocolates and a new man in her life, Alfred was his name. Who was called Alfred these days? They had both laughed at that although Victoria didn’t care as Alfred was five years younger than she and very good looking. Marcus Green had turned up too. Marcus who had delayed and diluted her tax liability as much as he could but in the end she had sold the Highgate property to release her equity, to fund the play, to invest in herself. For if nothing else she had learned from Georgie, it was to do that. The thought led her to recall a conversation she once had with Jack over at his place in the States. They had been talking about happiness as lovers often do.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable?’

  ‘I’d prefer to be rich and miserable than poor and miserable.’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘Rich and happy,’ she replied.

  He laughed at her stubbornness. ‘That’s the holy grail, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, you seem to have found it,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he said. ‘And you?’

  Well, now she was certainly a lot poorer but happier too. Jack had sent roses with the simple message – Proud of you. Let’s catch up when this is all over – it was probably the most promise for a future together she could ever expect from him. Caroline had texted in her support as had Edy although how her former agent knew about the play was a mystery to her. There was a smattering of press hacks present as well, one local, two from the nationals, movie star returns to the boards in a provincial theatre, a story hard to resist. She had given some interviews already, was due on BBC Radio Sussex in the morning.

  She looked at the clock. Two minutes to curtain, the black arrow of the second hand making a reluctant clunking sound completely out of synch with the rhythm of her heart. She patted some more powder on her cheeks, sponged it lightly to set it, breathed in deeply, then again. Calm down, calm down, calm down. She gazed at herself in the mirror. Hi Georgie, she said. We’ve finally made it. Clunk, clunk. One minute to showdown.

  She was pleased with the set. Jack’s producer friend had given her lots of good advice about that. The whole backdrop was plastered with black and white photographs of Georgie’s work. There was a mock apple tree just to the left of centre, a small step-ladder underneath where she would sit and speak to the audience. Other props too, a make-up table and mirror to represent Georgie’s acting days, an open cockpit, camera on a tripod, arc lamps. Various special effects – war-time bombing, London fog, ghosts from the past. But most of all, it was she who would be the centr
e of attention. She pushed her face close to the mirror, her breath steaming up her reflection. It’s time, Georgie. It’s time.

  It was not far from her dressing room to the side of the stage, only a few paces really, but what a momentous transformation she had to make in each of those steps. She moved out into the short corridor, the film crew already crouched down and ready to record her every movement. She spoke a ‘1-2-3 testing, testing’ into her microphone, got a thumbs up from the sound engineer. She sucked in a quick breath. A spotlight snapped on, she moved into its centre, let it follow her up to and across the stage. Her stomach was doing flip-flops, her legs shaking so much she thought she might collapse before she reached the step-ladder. She sat down on the top step, grateful to be able to grab the sides, to steady her trembling body. She fought to compose herself, breathed deep into her abdomen, then on her outbreath she cast out her voice to the theatre:

  ‘Born in nineteen hundred, I am as old as the century itself, an only child who grew up in the tiny village of Five Elms Down in Sussex where nothing very much ever happened.’

  She heard the tremor in her speech, the slight hesitancy, but slowly, she gained confidence as she folded into the part, let the words, the voice and gestures take over until she lost herself in Georgie, until she became Georgie. Until she possessed Georgie and Georgie possessed her.

  There had been a standing ovation, several encores, she had lost count of how many, the emotion from the audience so strong it hit her like an actual physical wave rushing towards her. She felt like laughing and crying all at the same time. A young girl came on stage with a bouquet of flowers, it took her a few seconds to realise it was Victoria’s daughter Pru. She bowed again, took the flowers, kissed Pru, went off stage in search of a towel. The audience settled back into their seats, began their chatter, searched for coats and bags, ready to leave, some for restaurants or home, others for the after-party. But the houselights didn’t come back on, the illusion between actor and audience not yet shattered, just that single spotlight clicking on to highlight the step-ladder under the tree. She wandered back on stage, still caught up in the excitement of it all, dressed in black polo and slacks, no shoes, she sat on the top step. She inhaled deeply, and with the exhale hoped she was expelling the spirit of Georgie so she could relax back into herself. She waited. The audience quietened.