Once Upon a Time There Was a Traveller

by Kate Pullinger

  – And you know who else had a small part in that show? Betty Bacall! We used to jitterbug between rehearsals. But she contracted the measles, had it for most of the run. We thought it very unprofessional.

  – So measle-free we took New York by storm. It was the Depression but as the song says, were we depressed? Nowhere near! All our money went into our clothes. It was an investment. She used to wear this shell-pink, silk-velvet, ombré evening skirt. A Dior copy from Paris, was it?

  – I remember it like yesterday.

  – Looked a tiny bit as though someone had thrown a barrel of pink champagne over you. And she used to pair it with – and this was terribly daring – a tiny white cashmere with a perfect, white, heart-shaped moth-hole just below the left shoulder. Can you imagine? It really was the end. Drove people wild. And later when she met Louis and went to Hollywood… It wasn’t our kind of town, naturally, but we made our little mark didn’t we? And the parties that she had!

  – Louis loved a full house. He loved everyone singing at the piano and everyone in beaded gowns. We were just happy to be able to eat every day. What luxury!

  – He liked to serve mountains of pink and red crustacea on these mermaid-shaped platters. More like sculptures than plates. Turquoise and silver tails at one end with long golden hair at the other. Italian. And rivers of champagne. You could swim in it.

  – Once I did.

  – Once she did! They used to install these beautiful marble urns filled with flowers not just in the house but lit up with pink lights all the way up to the house from the gardens for a party – so elegant! I just adore tall flower arrangements outside. Used to have these white roses with a strong lemon scent and honeysuckle and tendrils of ivy trailing everywhere, and masses of stock, eglantine, hydrangea and narcissi, and in the spring-time silver ice buckets everywhere crammed with apple blossom.

  – Lily of the valley…

  – That’s it.

  – The flowers here disappoint me fifty times a day.

  – I know, dear… and I am trying to address it. Janet says they’re about as strong as the local florist can muster. Still… And there was this fashion then for very low-hung crystal chandeliers everywhere, very fluffy in appearance; French crystal, I think it was, and she put them in all the bedrooms, two feet off the ground, pairs of them next to all the bedsides in place of reading lamps. Can you imagine? She was more Hollywood than the natives! I came back one evening from London – my mother was bad and I had gone to see what could be done – and Hines let me in, and I remember hearing Marigold tell the decorator this was the Maple Drive House in this very certain voice, ‘Oh, do use the red silk velvet, you know, that intense throbbing crimson, like in Gigi!’ And I remember thinking, Lord we’ve come an awfully long way from the Dudley Hippodrome!

  – Yes, I was going to ask about that.

  – Remember they had that fancy sliding roof installed. Guaranteed to keep you cool on summer’s nights and warm in the winter, or so they claimed.

  – Oh, yes.

  – But no one was happy when there were thunderstorms. Gallery had to put up their umbrellas! George made a joke about it. They used to call him the Prime Minister of Mirth.

  – So many funny things. Remember you found that gardener called Ava. Marvellous hulk of a girl.

  – She was so strong.

  – That was when you were still with Louis, before we all came back from Calif and before he —

  – Deborah, his third wife was it, the ballet dancer?

  – Paulette, I think.

  – Yes, Paulette. Why am I talking about her?

  – Were you going to say about that thing she wrote about Louis in her memoir?

  – She said – wrote in her memoir – let me get this right, ‘Sometimes I think the only thing he ever gave me was athlete’s foot!’

  – But such a beautiful man.

  – Yes, he was. When you were standing in front of him it was actually a little bit difficult to believe. He was like a — like an oil painting of a famous hero that everyone adored… Is he still with us, do you suppose?

  – No, oh no, he left us, sadly. Ten years ago I think, maybe twelve.

  – Oh no. That’s too bad.

  – I’m sorry. Would you mind stopping the thing for a second? I just want to put a tiny bit of powder on her cheek – the lights you brought are very harsh on her face suddenly… Thank you. There, all done, you can resume the thing now, whenever it suits. Are you… is it on now? Good. Thank you.

  – And… and can you both tell me something about the book you’ve been writing together?

  – Are we doing another book?

  – Yes, that’s right. Next year.

  – Oh, I thought it was this year.

  – We were doing that bit about your father yesterday. ‘There’s a little bit of good in the worst of us,’ he used to sing. They used to say of her father that he had a wink that conveyed a wealth of meaning. And that he was a complete master of the unsaid. Can you imagine?

  – Whatever did they mean, Gloria?

  – Well, I know he took it as a compliment.

  – Well, that’s all right then, I suppose.

  – We’re not really allowed to talk about it yet, except to say it will blow off your socks.

  – I look forward to it! Um… um… And now can you say something about how you find the routine here? Some of the other residents I spoke to said there’s always something exciting going on.

  – Oh, we don’t join in on principle. Do we? We are not life’s joiner-inners.

  – That’s right. We’re in a world of our own making. It’s SO much nicer. They call us ‘the girls’ here – it’s what they called us when we were at the Empire, starting out. We’re still ‘the girls’ now. It’s how we think of ourselves. But we keep our distance. We are a little bit grand. A star is a star is a star.

  – But we’re gracious though, aren’t we, Gloria?

  – Oh yes, we’re all about that. Unless, you know, we’re provoked. Some of the gents who live here claim they knew us from the old days. They like to tease her. ‘You wouldn’t of even spoke to me back then would you, Marigold. Aloof? Forbiddin’? She wouldn’t even of give you the drops from ’er nose, not that I’d ave ’em.’

  – Yes! Oh yes! [clapping her hands wildly] Wonderful!

  – Do be careful of the mic.

  – I am sorry. Now, where were we? Did you say Louis was coming to visit?

  – No, darling. He won’t be coming, I’m afraid.

  – He was always so busy with everything. Why are you so busy I used to say? What is it that is so important that you can’t even —

  – Yes, he did like to live a full life.

  – I was going to ask more about your extraordinary friendship that has spanned almost six decades.

  – Now this bit I do feel strongly about. You see Marigold was the first person I knew who really loved music the way I did. From the inside out, is how we always thought of the songs. She thought about what they meant, didn’t consider them silly pieces of fluff, throwaway. We’d listen to old love songs and think about the girls in those situations, the girls on the records, I mean the American girls: Ella and Dinah and Deanna and Judy and Billie, looking for, and finding and losing, love.

  – Oh, Billie took things very hard.

  – I used to listen to the records like it was a novel, so in one song she’s in love and then in the next it’s all wrong, then it’s wonderful again, then she seems to have shot ’im. Then she’s waiting for him to come home. It made such strange sense! And then we’d think about those men they fell for. Why did they get into those predicaments? Why did they keep getting into them?

  – Thing is, Gloria, if you fall for a playboy, fair enough, you’re a fool to yourself, but it happens to us all at least once or twice and I’m the last person on earth to judge anyone harshly. You know how it is, wherever you go you see people looking at you pityingly as though you’re a lamb to the slaughter, a
nd you feel a bit foolish and confused and as green as a baby gem, and you know you’re not the first or the last… But do you really think you should try to get him to retire to a farm! If that’s what you think’s going to happen then you ought to be shot!

  – Well, yes, but —

  – Do you think that’s why people move to the country?

  – How do you mean?

  – To keep their men folk away from you know… harm?

  – Well, when you put it like that it does have the ring of truth.

  – Is that what everyone thinks I should have done with Jack?

  – I don’t know, my love. I don’t know. Perhaps we never really know these things. Jack is… Jack was… It’s such a long time ago. But we’re all right. Did you remember this morning to take your [lowers her voice and whispers something inaudible].

  – If you’ve ever waited for someone, in a way you wait for them always…

  – But coming back to your earlier question, everyone else I had met up till then thought the songs just didn’t bear being gone into that closely, but I thought they could and so did, so does, Marigold.

  – Yes, yes I do. Like in ‘Making Whoopee’, when it says, ‘He doesn’t phone, or even write.’ Everyone knows phoning takes less effort than letter writing, so it should say and easily could say, shouldn’t it, he doesn’t write or even phone, and everyone else says, well, it’s just like that on account of the rhyme, what’s the problem, dah di dah di dah, but this is Cole Porter we’re talking about – he wouldn’t use the wrong word just because it rhymed. That sort of thing, you know? Why isn’t it: ‘Most every night, she sits alone/He doesn’t write, or even phone…’ Doesn’t that make more sense? I used to sit wondering about that line for hours at the Cecil House. Sometimes it got dark without me realising it and I’d be sitting in the gloom. It just didn’t make sense. Of course nothing about that time adds up. So often it’s the one thing men don’t tell you that makes sense of everything…

  – I think it was the second time we met and Marigold telephoned me afterwards. I was actually washing my hair so water was dripping down my back and making a little pool on the landing. I was renting with three other girls, two typists and a dancer – two left feet she had, we all felt sorry for her – and there were never enough towels. Then without even saying, Hello, Marigold says, Okay, me here, what do you think? In ‘Thanks For The Memories’ when the gentleman sings, ‘And how I jumped, the day you trumped my one and only ace’, to what is he referring? And I say, Well, evidently he’s talking about playing cards, and the trump card of the correct suit will beat even an ace of a different suit… and she says, Yes, obviously. I am not an imbecile – she was quite severe with me – but it’s figurative, of course. The poor fellow tries one last crazy saving thing and it just doesn’t work and it’s curtains for their relationship. But what is it? What’s the thing he pulls out of his hat, his best shot? Does he give her a huge diamond out of the bank that once belonged to his mother’s mother and she drops it down a grille in the street the same day, or does someone else give her a bigger one that night? I need to know, she said. She was quite adamant. So we discussed all the options.

  I said, Obviously she’s run through all his money.

  Well, yes, of course, she says. But what does it consist of, this last attempt? It’s gotta be something financial. I think he names the biggest sum he can muster, or his father dies and suddenly he inherits the lot and she says, sorry, not enough, no dice.

  It was so exciting to have that conversation. Can you imagine?

  – But, Gloria, what do you think of this? I’m just thinking off the top of my head now, but imagine if it was a woman singing, what if she would say, ‘Darling, I am expecting a baby,’ and that would be her ace, hoping he would be over the moon, that it would seal in everything? But supposing he wasn’t delighted. Not in the least. What if he just shrugged as though the whole thing was her problem and he didn’t care one way or another and walked out of the door backwards, waving and apologising. So she would feel she had no choice but to get rid of it.

  – I’ll have to think about that. She’s always had the most marvellous imagination, you know, like a novelist who takes three hours to read the newspaper every morning because he is imagining everyone in the news’s feelings.

  – Yes, I do do that.

  – But, of course, William, the correct answer to what does he mean by ‘how I jumped, the day you trumped my one and only ace’ is this: nobody knows.

  – There’s so much that’s maddening, Gloria. So much is wrong with the world. People always sing ‘It’s All Right With Me’ as though it’s a sweet enchanting thing, but actually it’s very hard-hearted. There’s a powerful man, predatory, trawling a bar or a party, trying to pick up a girl, any girl, because the one he likes isn’t free. It’s a song about someone looking for a quick — It should be sung hard, with hard eyes, worldly, menacing. But people don’t do it like that. They sing it like a love song. Why do people who don’t care about people pretend to be romantic? I can’t stand it!

  – That song always makes me think of Bob. He would show an interest in a pillar box when Joan was out of town.

  – Well, yes. Yes he would. Or a lamp-post.

  – A bollard!

  – A Belisha beacon!

  – He did always like flashy women.

  – You’re too funny, Marigold. Stop! You’ll have me —

  – Were there songs you were both particularly keen on?

  – When I was dressing at the Palladium – it was a wonderful place to work – we didn’t think of it as a theatre, we thought of it almost as a cathedral. And backstage it was like a labyrinth with all the stairs and passageways. Anyway, Marigold, she was in Calif and she would ring me up on Sunday nights – this was in the late fifties – and we would have the most wonderful ‘chinwags’, we called them then, in, in our day!

  – Yes, and sometimes whole conversations made up of song lyrics.

  – Marigold would telephone on Sunday evenings, it was terribly exciting, seven sharp, I wouldn’t break the date for anything, not even when — In any case she would telephone and say something like, oh, I don’t know, can’t think of it now. I might be a bit down and say, ‘I had that feeling of self-pity’ and she’d say, ‘Dinner for one please, James?’ and I’d say, ‘Picking on a wishbone from the Frigidaire,’ and she’d say, ‘I’ve got a little story I want you to know,’ and I’d say, ‘As the adding machine once said, you can count on me.’ And she’d say, ‘I’m in love with wonderful guy,’ and I’d say, ‘With nights of tropical splendour?’ And she’d say, ‘What made you think that I was one of those girls,’ and I’d say, ‘Is it more, don’t throw bouquets at me?’ And she’d say, ‘My romance doesn’t need a castle rising in Spain,’ and I’d say, ‘Derby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill, kind of stuff?’ and she’d say, ‘I’m biding my time,’ and I’d say, ‘What is this thing called love?’ and she’d say, ‘Well, I don’t understand the Parisians.’

  – Except it was much better than that.

  – Dinner here is at a quarter past six, can you believe?

  – [Singing] I don’t get hungry for dinner at six. I wear a ball gown with beige control knicks!

  – Very good! There’s usually some kind of show, a bit of singing. No one can dance any more but we say the name of the steps, mark the routine with the flats of our hands to show we still remember. A sherry or a martini at a quarter to, they bring us… They allow only one, but it can be as big as you like.

  – We like to shop for glasses in the vase department, don’t we, Gloria.

  – We do not, she is joking. Naughty! And if we’re feeling Good Olde Merrie England, we’ll have the sherry, but if we’re in Broadway mode, if we’re all I’ll Take Manhattan, then it’s a martini. And the funny thing is we never know which way we’ll go until they ask us, do we?

  – We never know. [Starts to sing] ‘And when you came to visit, my parents said, “Good Go
d! What is it?”’

  – You are on a roll this afternoon, Marigold! The soap pays for all this. It’s all right here. We provide our own glamour. Not too many low-slung chandeliers. We were awfully hoity about telly to begin with… but you have to bend to the times.

  – [Singing] ‘I wasn’t born to stately halls of alabaster, I haven’t given many balls for Mrs Astor.’

  – Isn’t she wonderful? A hairdresser comes twice a week to sort us out. She does our nails if there’s time and any other bits and bobs.

  – She really is wonderful.

  – And so after I stopped working so much myself, and I didn’t want to be a dresser for the rest of my life because there were only so many times I could say, ‘You were a knock-out, Miss Kerr,’ I began devoting more and more time to organising Marigold’s career, running the fan club, answering the mail, sending out the ten by eights and organising the personal appearances. We accept any charity requests involving children and animals. Especially if it’s local, otherwise they must provide a car and driver. Requests come in all the time.