The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  3

  England, 1949

  ‘First impressions count,’ Muz said as I dashed past her on a balmy late August afternoon. I was heading to an audition for a part in a play scripted by a fellow tipped by those who held the artistic purse strings as someone who would go far if he quit drinking. Muz was in the entrance hall of our Kensington family home, arranging roses in a vase. On the gramophone in the west reception room, Perry Como crooned ‘Some Enchanted Evening’. Her hips swayed to the beat. Though I cringe a little now, I did indeed call my mother Muz, and I referred to my father as Wiggin. It makes us sound as though we had stepped out of a Bertie Wooster novel. If only.

  Had Wiggin not already left for the courts he’d likely have twirled Muz about before flipping his hat from the coatrack onto his head. Grand gestures were part of his DNA. He was a constant source of amusement for me as a youngster. Many a morning before he set off to work we played tricks on one another. Sometimes I handed him Muz’s pink umbrella instead of his black number. In return he twisted his right earlobe and released two top teeth, a miraculous feat, it seemed to me, until aged seven I found them attached to an orthodontic plate in his bathroom. As a special treat he would take me to his workplace and show me his ceremonial garb. I preferred the furred scarlet robe to the full-bottom wig, the latter made, I thought, from caterpillar larvae stitched together.

  At Muz’s suggestion, I had for the audition pinned up my auburn shoulder-length hair in a chignon. ‘Blow the opposition off the stage, Chicky,’ she said, abandoning her flowers to clip a wayward wisp into place.

  Also on her recommendation, I wore a navy pencil skirt and a buttery-cream silk blouse ‘to match your skin tone, dear’ with pearl buttons down the front. My nylons, procured by Muz at great expense, had a lustrous sheen. In my handbag I carried a lipstick, a powder compact and funds to extract myself from what Wiggin called ‘unsavoury situations’, which to him meant immigrants in general and Continentals in particular. The testimonies about those he presided over in the Old Bailey led him to believe the cleverest were on the lookout for guileless English girls to marry, thereby permitting them to move a step closer to citizenship.

  ‘The daughter of a law clerk has already been duped,’ Wiggin had said, waving The Times at Muz and me the previous evening. He milked this tale for all it was worth. ‘If another Wog cites “hot blood” as a defence I’ll drain him of every drop and pipe the whole lot through the radiators. That’ll save on the oil heating bill.’

  We didn’t argue. It was better to let him vent, even though it was at moments like this that I wanted to disown him.

  ‘You can’t trust them,’ he went on. ‘Look at what the Eyeties did in the war. The blighters changed their spots.’

  Over the same summer Muz harped on about the pitfalls of allowing the wrong kind of man to take advantage of an ‘impulsive temperament’, implying that I possessed one. I was already in trouble with her and Wiggin for refusing to go to Cambridge, although I must have done well enough in the exam to be asked for an interview.

  ‘Fusty old dons prattling on about antiquated subjects would bore me,’ I’d said over a Saturday lunch in the garden. In reality I didn’t think I had what it took to compete with the best brains in Britain, but I couldn’t admit this was the case. Wiggin came from a long line of legal notables and Muz’s side had land.

  ‘Educated minds prevent chaos and anarchy,’ Wiggin replied, his eyes hardening like wax. ‘Cambridge would set up a smart girl like you for an independent life. Think about it.’

  ‘I want to go to RADA,’ I said. In his view this was a lowly second cousin to a top university. Before he could present a counter-argument, I pushed my plate aside, rose from the table and snapped the head off a delphinium as I stomped the length of the herbaceous border.

  For a fortnight I sulked in my bedroom listening to jazz turned up full bore on the radio, only venturing downstairs for meals where I eyed up my parents along with the cold cuts and pickles.

  Eager to change their perceptions of RADA, I collected articles about distinguished actors who’d gone there, referring to their achievements every chance I got. But I made no progress until I resumed speaking to Muz and Wiggin in a civil tone and pretended to appreciate, if not take, their advice.

  They gave me a Humber Hawk for my eighteenth birthday. I suspected that they chose this staid model to put off male drivers tooting at me on the road, and also to keep me out of the Underground, a perilous place in their minds for females at night. As I walked around the car, thanking them half-heartedly, I wrinkled my nose at the dull sage-green paintwork. In retrospect I see just how indulged I was, though sadly back then I took for granted their attempts to do their best for me.

  Love shouldn’t depend on submissiveness I muttered as I drove to the audition. At the last moment Wiggin had reluctantly agreed to support me while I pursued an acting career. ‘Only for a year, mind, then we’ll have a serious talk.’ He had most actors pegged as ‘lefties who are all for bringing in refugees, knowing full well they won’t be called upon to deal with the consequences’.

  That morning over breakfast he’d made a last attempt to stifle my theatrical ambitions. One ear tuned to the news, he suggested I train instead as a BBC announcer.

  ‘I don’t want to be on radio,’ I said crossly. ‘I want to be on the stage.’

  ‘The choices we make when we’re young shape our future,’ Wiggin said. ‘I want the best for you, Julia.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But it’s my life, not yours.’

  I wanted to land the role I was going for, but that afternoon as I drove along Holland Park Avenue I had no inkling of the actual one I was heading towards. Eager to impress the casting director I had undone the top button of my blouse and freed my hair, letting it fall about my face and neck. Muz might have been to heaps of opening nights but she had no idea what went on behind the scenes. It was common knowledge among my friends that in certain sectors looks outranked talent. Better to turn up semi-chic than passé, I thought.

  As the sky changed from grey to a whitish blue, swallows darted between the plane trees and terraces of the large Victorian townhouses. Emulating their boldness, I launched into a cheery rendition of ‘They Say It’s Wonderful’. I’d reached the last bar when ahead on the pavement I spotted an elderly woman and a scruffy lad in an altercation. He was tugging at her handbag; she was screaming blue murder. The beast put his boot in and sent her bottom-up to the ground and her hat into the gutter.

  Ignoring the risks ‘like getting stabbed’, Wiggin said when he heard of the incident, or ‘interfered with’, Muz’s contribution, I jammed on the brakes. I was locking the Humber when a second car screeched to a halt on the opposite side of the road. Its male driver also ran towards the tussling pair. I helped the woman to her feet while he apprehended the thief.

  Once we had the situation under control, we transferred our attention to one another. He was dark-haired and olive-skinned. Better looking than Gregory Peck in Gentleman’s Agreement. Early to mid-twenties, I guessed, and from southern Europe. His caramel-brown eyes stayed on my sapphire-blues longer than Muz would have deemed socially acceptable. We didn’t look away until the victim coughed. Then my accomplice returned her handbag, which he had grappled from the thief, and tightened the headlock he had him in.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ the Continental asked the woman. He had a noticeable though pleasant accent.

  ‘Only my pride,’ she said, sliding the handle of her bag up her forearm. She glared at the youth, who grunted something unintelligible.

  Keen to prove my worth, I said, ‘I’ll find a phone box and call the police.’

  ‘The closest is around the corner,’ said the woman, her hands shaking as she tried to do up a button of her cardigan.

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ I said, helping her to locate the slit, the dreamboat watching on. Worried he might think me too young to date, I added, ‘I’m older than I look.’ Mortified at making such a ridiculous comment, I
fled down the street in my new high heels, ungainly as a fledgling flamingo, the complete opposite to the aspiring thespian Muz had shooed out the door.

  Two policemen came to arrest the thief and interview the bag owner. After they were done, Ben and I, for in the interim we had introduced ourselves, escorted Mrs Leighton to her house in Ladbroke Road. At her front gate she hunched over to undo the latch. The crimps in her snow-white hair where her rollers had been made her seem vulnerable, prompting me to say, ‘Is there someone I can call to come and sit with you?’

  ‘There’s no one left, dearie. Three sons died in the war. My husband went last year.’ She pressed her hands to her chest. ‘Faulty ticker.’

  ‘We could keep you company for an hour,’ Ben said. ‘Couldn’t we, Julia?’

  I glanced at my wristwatch. The audition had already started. ‘Sure.’

  Mrs Leighton shook her head. ‘I lived through the Blitz. A spotty larrikin can’t scare me. You two get off. I’m fine, really.’

  The sky had brightened to forget-me-not blue. Between cracks in the pavement, bees hummed around tufts of alyssum. Overhead a constellation of starlings roiled and wheeled as if panic-stricken.

  Ben took off his cream linen jacket, slung it over his shoulder and rolled up the sleeves of his tangerine shirt to his elbows. He had elegant wrists and clean well-trimmed fingernails.

  We walked in the direction of our cars, talking about a film we’d both seen. When we reached the avenue, rather than veer off in separate directions, we hesitated, glanced at each other. ‘Come, Julia,’ Ben said, ‘we’ll talk’, and he led me across the road to a sporty blue Jensen. I noted he was taller than me despite my heels.

  Good manners too, I thought as he opened the passenger door. I slid in and edged the hem of my skirt over my knees. He sauntered around to the driver’s side, glided into the leather seat and turned on the ignition. My stomach did a flip as he reached for the gear stick inches from my legs.

  He glanced at me. ‘I woke this morning with a good feeling about today.’

  I tittered nervously. ‘Me too.’

  Over a supper of fish and dauphinoise potatoes at a restaurant in Soho he asked where I was headed before the kerfuffle. ‘To an audition,’ I said and I went on to describe the chasm between my parents’ hopes for me and my aspirations.

  He ran a thumb and forefinger down either side of his chin and leaned closer. ‘A friend of mine is throwing a party this Saturday. The theatre crowd’s bound to drop in. Come along and I’ll introduce you to those with influence.’ He raised his wine glass. ‘To a future leading lady.’

  A rush of heat moved up my neck to my face. ‘I had better return to my car. If I get a ticket, I’ll never hear the end of it.’

  ‘There’s a coffee lounge a couple of doors down from here,’ he said. ‘Meet me there mid-afternoon tomorrow and I’ll give you the low-down on who to impress.’

  I turned up to our second tryst aware that Wiggin would be furious had he known. Ben was outside smoking: tan chinos sitting low on his hips, a narrow maroon tie accentuating the whiteness of his shirt. His face lit up when he saw me coming towards him. He opened the door of the establishment and signalled for me to go in ahead. As I passed him, I detected a hint of Colonia, a classy aftershave. A waitress showed us to a table near a window. Determined to blast Wiggin’s perception of Italians to smithereens, I had come loaded with questions, thinking the more I learned about Ben the better chance I’d have of passing him off as a suitable boyfriend. What an innocent I was.

  I started with a perennial. ‘What were your initial impressions of London?’

  ‘I liked everything,’ Ben said, ‘apart from the climate.’

  ‘You speak excellent English.’

  ‘When the Americans liberated Napoli in ’43 they employed me to assist two British officers attached to a special force. I drove them to and from meetings. Over time I picked up the lingo. And I enrolled in language classes when I arrived here.’ He angled his head towards mine, waited for a reaction.

  I gave what I hoped was an encouraging smile. ‘Go on.’

  ‘To soften my accent, I also paid for elocution lessons.’

  The self-effacing chuckle that followed suggested he knew he’d never pass for an Englishman. I fanned my hands to convey this wasn’t a problem, at least not for me.

  Over cream buns, a rare treat, I learned he had an import-export business not far from where we were, and a flat within walking distance of his office.

  ‘You’re a fair stretch from Clerkenwell,’ I said, the area where the Italians lived who were the bane of Wiggin’s professional life.

  ‘I prefer to be near the action,’ Ben replied, and reached for my hand. ‘Julia,’ he said in a silky voice, ‘you already have the qualities of a talented actress. All that’s missing is an exciting life.’

  He will give it to me, I thought, raising my head a little. He leaned over and kissed me. His lips were soft, then insistent. I felt awfully grown-up.

  Over the next few months, through Ben’s contacts and with my friends egging me on — Marsha, another actress-in-waiting, Clinty who had set up a fashion joint, and Diann, a Kiwi girl we befriended at a café where we sat in black coffins, knocking cigarette ash into candlelit skulls — I landed a couple of parts that gave me the experience I needed to apply for a place at RADA. A journalist chum of Ben’s wrote a decent review, and another, a stage director, whipped up a fabulous character reference. I posted my application, dizzy with excitement. Ben and I celebrated with dinner at Quaglino’s. Afterwards, we went to his flat for the first time. Climbing the stairs, I was a bag of nerves. I had no idea what he might expect of me.

  4

  Six blissful weeks passed before we bumped into Oliver, a family friend, at Club Eleven, a bebop jazz joint. He sidled into our booth. As usual, he was affectionate towards me. I hoped Ben would get jealous.

  ‘Been his beard long?’ Ben asked, when after a while Oliver shot off to talk to an acquaintance.

  ‘His what?’

  ‘You’re not familiar with the term, Julia?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s given to women a certain type of man cultivates in order to conceal his actual preference.’

  ‘Of course, yes,’ I said. ‘Unofficially, I am.’ I had never thought of Oliver in a romantic sense. On some level I must have known. ‘Is this a problem, Ben?’ I wanted the two men to get along.

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ he said. Parting my hair at the back, he edged down a smidgeon the zipper of my emerald-green dress and pressed his lips to my neck, leaving them there until Oliver headed back towards us.

  Midway through a discussion about Ella Fitzgerald’s hit ‘Oh, Lady Be Good’, I reached in front of Oliver for my fizzy pink cocktail. ‘Tell your parents, Julia,’ he whispered, ‘before they hear about him from someone else.’

  I downed the remainder. ‘Meaning you?’

  He wagged a finger at me. ‘Want to dance?’

  ‘If you’re serious,’ he said as we twirled and dipped, ‘I could go out with the two of you from time to time. If he proves to be a decent sort, I’ll put in a good word with the judge and jury.’

  Every now and then I told Wiggin and Muz I was staying overnight with Marsha or Clinty in the city, though usually Oliver picked me up from Ben’s flat and drove me home. While I wasn’t ready for the Jensen to pull up in my parents’ driveway, I hinted at meeting a successful businessman. Whenever Oliver visited me at home he dropped Ben’s name into the conversation, saying he had a prosperous future. Nevertheless, when my parents suggested I bring this chap home for dinner, they weren’t prepared for an Italian to walk through the door. The air turned frostier than the ice in their whisky sours.

  ‘I run a successful company here in London, and my family has a villa in Napoli, an olive grove on the terraces of Pusilleco, a house on the Costiera Amalfitana, and business interests throughout southern Italia,’ Ben told Wiggin eight months into our relati
onship when he asked for my hand in marriage. He didn’t mention that I was pregnant. We had agreed to play that ace if my parents resisted.

  ‘She’s only eighteen,’ Wiggin said. ‘Too young to settle down.’

  He didn’t add ‘and too good for you’, but I’m certain he was thinking along those lines as he went about building a case to demolish ours. In chambers, staff called him Lord Loophole, a title he joked about at home.

  ‘It’s what I want,’ I said firmly, aware he’d capitalise on any sign of weakness.

  ‘He’s foreign,’ Wiggin snapped. ‘Not from around here.’

  ‘So?’ I replied with equal force. Ben’s background wasn’t important to me. Being pregnant was. I hadn’t a clue what to expect when I went into labour, and no idea what to do with a baby. In many ways I was still one myself.

  ‘And he’s Catholic,’ Wiggin said.

  ‘Lapsed,’ I said sharply. ‘Stop finding fault. Be happy for us.’

  ‘You’ve disappointed me, Julia,’ Wiggin said. ‘This isn’t what I wanted for you. For God’s sake, his lot are different from us.’

  ‘You’re being unfair,’ I said, my eyes tearing up. ‘He’s a good person.’

  Ben slipped his arm around my waist. ‘Sir, I love your daughter. We want to make a life together, preferably with your blessing.’ He sounded confident and strong, as though he could stand up to Wiggin.

  ‘We’re made for each other,’ I said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  Wiggin shot me a despairing look. ‘You’re too young to throw away your future, Chicky. One minute you want to be an actress, the next a wife. In a month you could fancy secretarial college. In a year you’ll regret not going to Cambridge.’

  I turned to Ben who said, ‘I’ll take care of her whims, sir.’

  Muz fidgeted with the band of her twinset. ‘Julia must stay in England.’

  ‘Certainly, if that is your wish,’ said Ben.

  My father’s pasty-white complexion turned puce. ‘Until she’s twenty-one she requires my permission to marry.’