by Dana Gynther
“Well, it was really swell of de Brunhoff to recommend you—”
“And how!”
“But doesn’t he mind losing you at Frogue? Seems he’d want to keep his ‘intrepid professional’ in situ, working for him.”
“He was just thinking of me.” Fastening her trunk, she didn’t look up. What was the Freudian term for what he was doing? Projection. That was it. “Michel thought it was a grand opportunity.”
“Trading Paris for London? If you say so.”
She stood up and clapped the dust off her hands. “I’m done. Let’s go up to the boulevard for a drink. But just a quick one—tomorrow we’re off!”
The Voisin packed with Lee’s gear, they headed due north through the dense winter fogs up to Calais, the tip of France closest to Great Britain where the ferries ran. She was enthusiastic about everything: the low bridges over marshy flatlands, the naked landscape dotted with windmills, the passing architecture that became more Flemish as they went north. But she was especially thrilled about her new adventure and independence.
When they arrived late that afternoon, though the skies were gray and the sea a blackish-blue, they pretended to be on a romantic holiday to the shore. Hand in hand, they checked in to a small portside hotel and climbed the steep stairs to their room.
“How I love an ocean view.” Lee turned around and beamed at Man; he joined her at the window and put his arm around her.
“This sort of reminds me of our rooms at Emak Bakia, down in Biarritz,” he said. “Without the servants, mountains, and summer, that is.”
“Well, it’s the opposite end of the country, but the ocean’s the same.”
“And you’ll be on the other side of it tomorrow.”
“I’m just crossing the Channel, you dope, not the Atlantic.”
“It’s still too far to swim!”
She kissed his cheek. “I know.” Man had been making an effort to be supportive, but she knew it was hard for him.
“You can call me whenever you want, day or night. Just reverse the charges. I’m happy to pay.” He’d told her that a half-dozen times already; she kissed him again. “How long do you think it’ll be before I hear from you? A couple of days?” He looked at her anxiously.
“I guess it depends on how busy I am. Don’t worry. I won’t fall off the map.”
“And remember, you can tell me anything. I know you’ll meet some fellas and all that. But you can be up front with me, kid. I’d feel better knowing what’s going on over there.”
“Whatever you say.” She nodded, but knew it would be a huge relief for him not to witness her with other men; he didn’t need to imagine any rivals. Lee would keep that part of her experience to herself.
He poked his head out the window and looked up the quay. “We need to find a quality restaurant for tonight. Get some good French cooking under your belt before you cross tomorrow. On the other side of the Channel, I hear it’s all mushy peas and boiled meat.”
“Mmmm, that’s what I grew up on.” She said, licking her lips and pulling him to her by his tie. “Tell me, what else can I get under my belt before I go?”
After a night of fine dining, champagne, and fondling farewells, they parted on the docks the next morning.
“Remember!” he called out. “I can arrange to come visit whenever you’d like.”
With a brilliant smile, she waved down at him from the rails. Lee was reminded of her great good-bye to her father from the ocean liner decks on her first crossing to France at age eighteen, jumping up and down and waving like a castaway trying to flag a ship. Then, too, she’d been thrilled about traveling away, off on an adventure, (nearly) on her own. What a shame they didn’t throw streamers and confetti on ferries. She looked around at the other passengers, the businessmen, soldiers, and students; for most of them, this was routine. At the sound of the horn, Lee headed to the lounge, ready to meet new people, to start her new life. As the ship left shore, however, it began to dip and roll. In just a few minutes, everyone, in varying tones of green, quietly moved to the window seats in desperate search of the horizon line. Lee spent her first hours of freedom begging her breakfast to stay down.
After the rocky crossing and a surprisingly unpunctual British train, Lee arrived at Victoria station in the late afternoon, wrinkled and exhausted. She was almost glad that the film studio had only thought to send a lanky, spot-ridden teen—surely, the lowest errand boy on their staff—to greet her. Straining under the weight of her trunks, he hailed a cab and accompanied her to the hotel. During the long taxi ride, he didn’t try to make conversation, but gave her a note from the film director, Dimitri Buchowetzki. In polite, rather sparse English, he welcomed Lee to London and bid her settle in before coming to the set the following Monday.
The studio had booked her a hotel in a nameless neighborhood way up in the north of London—“a straight shot to Elstree by Tube”—which was no Bloomsbury, Kensington, or Chelsea. Disappointed, she went up to her small, clean room; she bathed, unpacked, napped, then, finding herself hungry, went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. She enjoyed being able to do exactly as she pleased—without demands or expectations from anyone—but it was strange being alone in this bustling capital, dining by herself surrounded by couples and clusters.
For the next two days, Lee explored the city center, but her excitement dampened along with her shoes. Ambling past street vendors and roller-skating kids—all seemingly unfazed by the drizzling cold—she restlessly ventured into places more for refuge than genuine interest: the Portrait Gallery, bookshops, churches, then, after five, pubs. She was hoping to meet interesting, artistic people, to find her niche. Where were the jazzy rhythms and creative energy, the risqué corners she’d known in Paris? Where was their Montparnasse? Hidden under umbrellas, Londoners seemed to rush back and forth, from work to shops to home.
On the third day, she decided to put in an appearance at British Vogue, confident that she’d feel right at home. Lee found their offices off Oxford Street and, before she went in, reapplied her lipstick and ran her fingers through her limp hair. How did anyone manage to look good in this weather?
“Good morning,” she greeted the secretary, while trying to find a place to dump her dripping umbrella. “I’m—”
“Wait!” The secretary put up her hand. “Your face is so familiar. We’ve run pictures of you at least a dozen times. You’re . . .” She knit her brow and frowned.
“Lee Miller.” She filled in the blank.
“Of course! Are you going to be working here?”
“That depends.” She looked over at the closed door beyond her desk. “I’d like to talk to the editor.”
“Silly me! Let me tell her you’re here.”
Like Michel de Brunhoff before her, Alison Settle was delighted to meet Lee. When the secretary went to fetch tea, Lee could hear the buzz in the corridor (model . . . Frogue . . . Man Ray . . . ), which led to a few staffers popping in to gawk. When they finally had the office to themselves, Lee explained why she was in town.
“Working for the pictures,” Alison said. “How exciting!”
“Yes.” Lee smiled at her and took a sip of tea. It hadn’t been terribly exciting yet but, hopefully, it would all improve once she got started. “I still don’t know my timetable, but I’d like to do a few shoots for Brogue while I’m here.”
“We’d love to have you model for us. Have you ever worked with our crack photographer, Cecil Beaton? He’s charming, and his work is divine.”
“Actually, I was rather hoping to take the photos. That’s what I’m doing in London—working as a photographer. At Frogue, I’ve been working alongside George Hoyningen-Huene for a year now. Setting up shots, taking pictures, developing, and printing. The whole bit.”
“Oh right, I’d heard that you’d switched sides.” Alison’s eyes twinkled. “I’m sure we could use you. Whenever you have some spare time, we’ll schedule you in. We’d love to have your byline.”
During the long
morning she spent at British Vogue touring the facilities and chatting with her British colleagues, everyone was friendly and flattering. When she suggested dinner or drinks to the perkiest of the bunch, however, they all declined with tales of part-time nannies, prudish parents, or how the husbands of working girls felt abandoned enough as it was. Back on the street, she headed to a pub and ordered a pint by herself surrounded by lone, silent drinkers.
• • •
Sunday night, Lee lay sleepless in the hotel bed, wondering what to expect from the big, almost-Paramount production. The Blood of a Poet was a poem, really, not exactly a normal cinema experience. She breathed out and turned on the light, trying to imagine the bustle of a large crew, various sets, expensive equipment, movie stars.
She picked up the issue of Film Weekly bought at the newsagent’s the day before. Nearly lost among the lavish spreads on Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and Gary Cooper, there was a small blurb about Stamboul, soon to begin filming at Elstree. Although none of the cast members were especially famous, Lee had heard of two of them. Margot Grahame, the star of the production, was younger than Lee—just twenty—but had already been dubbed the British answer to Jean Harlow. Warwick Ward, the handsome leading man, was in and out of the tabloids, the subject of romantic scandals. She peered down at the small photo of him, wondering if she might have a love scene with Ward herself.
The next day, she shyly entered the grounds of the large studio, her personal camera hanging neatly off the shoulder of her raincoat, and was directed to soundstage number nine. After a fifteen-minute walk past offices, workshops, the canteen, and a film laboratory, she found the right hangar. She tiptoed through the large door and waited nervously, wondering what she should do. Everyone looked so busy! Finally, the same spotty teen from the station noticed her and came to greet her.
“Good morning, Miss Miller.” He looked half-awake. “Mr. Buchowetzki has asked me to show you around. He’ll be with you later today.”
With neither enthusiasm nor dialogue, the young man walked Lee around the modern studios. Here there were no flea-infested mattresses or broken-down oxen, but state-of-the-art equipment and an on-site darkroom bigger than any she had ever used. After the tour, he found her a chair to wait in and scurried off.
She smoked in silence, watching other people work: designers putting the finishing touches on various sets (including enormous panoramic paintings of the Istanbul skyline: day and night); cameramen moving their equipment; technicians checking lights; one actor discussing his costume with the seamstress, another arguing about his hair. Finally, after an hour of sitting ignored in a corner, the director appeared.
“Hello, there.” She stood up to accept his firm handshake. “Thank you for joining our team. I want to introduce you to Robert Mann, our head cameraman. I thought that, as well as taking stills, you could operate a motion-picture camera.” Lee gave him a delighted smile, always happy to learn new techniques, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can shoot stand-ins and backgrounds. Here’s Robert now.”
After minimal introductions, Buchowetzki disappeared again. Lee spent the rest of the day next to a cameraman so reserved, he preferred to see life through the camera lens and used more gestures than words.
Hours later, back on the underground, she slumped in her corner seat and made a balance of the day. Even though the work itself had been satisfying enough, Lee couldn’t shake a vague feeling of disappointment. At the film studio, she was not the leading lady she’d been in Paris, but rather a sideline member of the crew who held no status or glamour. She looked at her shadowy image, reflected in the window by the darkness of the tunnel, and compared this production unfavorably with her last. Buchowetzki was less involved, less intense than Cocteau, whose filmmaking was art, not work; the Stamboul crew was polite but standoffish. Warwick Ward had none of Enrique Rivero’s charm—at least, she didn’t think he did. He hadn’t said two words to her. There was no sense of community; after work, everyone had left alone, rushing back to their lives.
Chugging along in the stale-smelling tube, she felt homesick for Paris, where, in many districts and nightspots, she was well-known and celebrated. As a good-time girl, as a capricious beauty, as a grade-A photographer, as Madame Man Ray. Here in London, she was nobody.
Back at the hotel lobby, Lee closed herself up in the telephone booth and called Man, reversing the charges.
“What an angel you are for calling so soon,” he gushed.
Her spirits rose immediately. “Miss me?”
“Are you kidding? Last night I went to dinner with Breton and the others, down by the Seine. On the way home, I walked along the quay in the moonlight, imagining we were arm in arm. I hadn’t felt so romantic since I was a teen.”
For an instant, she tried to imagine Man Ray—with his widow’s peak, his stocky frame, his downturned mouth holding a pipe—as a fresh-faced teenager. It was nearly impossible.
“And the bed,” he went on, “it’s so big and empty.”
“My bed is empty, too, but it isn’t so big.” She stopped smiling to light a cigarette.
She told him about her promising day on the set, playing around with the big movie camera. He gave her technical advice about composition, camera angles, and lenses, then told her a few problem-solving anecdotes from his filmmaking days, clearly delighted to be her teacher once again.
After a long talk with her faithful admirer, Lee got the boost she’d needed; her self-confidence was fully restored. She went into the hotel bar and ordered a sidecar. As she was leafing through the Times, the barman whispered discreetly, “The gentleman at the end of the bar would like to treat you to your drink, Madame.”
Lee looked up from the paper and raised her glass at the stranger. That was more like it.
• • •
The initial feeling of being out of place soon faded away and Lee began enjoying herself in London. After a couple of days on the job, she took a photo shoot of the main actors for a film magazine—melodramatic stills that had them all in stitches—which led to lighthearted friendships. She didn’t find them as interesting as Cocteau’s international cast—and Warwick Ward didn’t give off the faintest spark—but they were fun to pal around with. The shy cameraman also came round and stopped squinting through the viewfinder to talk with her, lovingly and in detail, about his craft: light and shadow, movement and sound. Going to the studio every morning had become a pleasure; instructive and rewarding, social and fun.
After she’d been in town a month, visitors started arriving, eager for London theater, museums, ales, and pork pies: Yalies she’d known in New York, George and Tatiana from Paris, her brother, Erik, in town for three weeks. And then Lee kept meeting new people, mostly men, some local, others just passing through. When she wanted, she had a fling, occasional one-nighters, others that became irritatingly more serious.
Through it all, Man wrote and called. He spoke of his adoration for her, he outlined his future plans for them, he got his passport renewed in case she needed him, he begged her to tell him about her every move. Sometimes Lee would skim an ardent love letter while reapplying her makeup, then put on her coat and go out with someone else. At other times, however, when she was alone in her yellowy hotel room, tired and melancholy, she missed him, too.
That promising combination of time and distance hadn’t been able to make her decisions for her; she still didn’t know what she wanted from Man Ray. Entertained and busy, she kept putting off her return. When the Stamboul production was finished, Lee did a few photo shoots for Brogue; after that, she wandered up to the Lake District and Edinburgh. Finally, after six months away, she decided it was time to go back to Paris.
“This is wonderful news!” Lee pulled her ear away from the telephone; Man was nearly shouting.
“There’s a new train service that goes straight from Dover to Paris. I can’t imagine how they cram a train onto a ferryboat,” she said, incredulous, “but they say it’s the
quickest way.”
“Wonderful! I’ll be waiting for you at the Gare du Nord.”
“You’d better be. If you’re not, don’t be surprised if I get lost and end up in the wrong man’s studio. I haven’t been to Paris in so long, anything could happen.”
XXVI
On a muggy afternoon in late July, Lee lit from the train, delighted to be surrounded again by French conversations, even the most banal. Walking down the platform at the Gare du Nord, she breathed in deeply—the diesel steam of the trains nearly masked the ubiquitous smell of tobacco and perfume—wanting to immediately retake Paris. Due to a mix-up in the timetables, she was fifteen minutes earlier than expected. Whisking through the station, she scanned the faces around her, wondering if Man was already there. Suddenly, she caught sight of him on a bench, stopped short—the porter with her trunks almost slammed into her—and stared.
Man’s body was drooping down, his hands—carrying an exaggerated bouquet of lilies—folded between his legs. Although he was sharply dressed for their reunion, he had put on a few pounds and sported an unfamiliar haircut that was not to his advantage. His face was both puffy and lined, his body soft and slack, his enormous eyes those of a tragic baby, prematurely aged. In a single glance, Lee knew. This was not the alluring stranger who had magically risen up the spiral staircase in the Bateau Ivre, not the gruff gangster that she’d chained herself to, not the famous photographer who she had to have in the darkroom. No. She was no longer attracted to him. And, despite what she’d occasionally told herself alone in her English hotel room, she did not love this man.
Suddenly, he felt her presence and looked toward her. He shot out of his chair and enveloped her in a tight embrace. He kissed her again and again. She hid her face in his hug; he murmured superlatives in her ear. What was she going to do? The time away hadn’t helped. His feelings for her had not slackened, and her resolve to leave him had not strengthened. She sighed in frustration, disappointment, exhaustion.