Living With Miss G (38 page)

I had heard the story. Her good friend, actor Charles Gray, lived just across
the road from her. He had friends in North Wales near Snowdonia where Ingrid
Bergman’s
Inn of the Sixth Happiness
had been shot. Miss G and Charles
traveled by train to spend a weekend with them in their cottage. After midnight
they were awakened by a loud banging on the door. The houseman went down
to attend to it. He found a distraught young man outside. He had plainly just left
the pub. The pub had plainly stayed open after hours.
He knew that Ingrid Bergman was staying there. He had missed getting her
autograph when she made the film. He must have it now. Would he please ask
Miss Bergman if she could come down and sign for him now?
“Jesus,” said Miss G. “Everybody knew he had got his actress wrong, but
no one was going to try and explain that to him at that time in the morning. So I
sailed down the stairs, and he saw me and pleaded, ‘Miss Bergman, please, may
I have your autograph?’ I gave him a great smile and signed his paper “Ingrid
Bergman,” and he sailed off happily into the night.”
Miss G looked pensive. “He must have one of the most original autographs
in history, Ingrid Bergman’s forged by Ava Gardner.”
It was during the last week of that summer reunion that Miss G and I made
our last journey together. In the past we had traveled far, and we had traveled
fast. We had traveled drunk, and we had traveled sober. And we had fun. Oh,
how we had fun.
This was a shorter journey: a couple of hundred yards up Ennismore
Gardens, then across the main road, pausing at the traffic island in the middle,
then into Hyde Park with its wide expanse of grass and lovely trees stretching
before us, and the gleam of the Serpentine Lake in the distance. The reason for
the expedition? Morgan needed his run.
We would both get about, but slowly. Miss G with her bad left leg, me
with my two wonky ones. Morgan on his lead, his four short trotters ready to
race, was anxious to tow us under buses. So we rolled a bit, occasionally
bumping into each other like two drunks rolling home from the pub.
We let Morgan off his lead, and he was happy. We went on chatting about
old times. And before we knew what happened, we realized that we had walked
too far, and we still had to get home. But we could achieve that in easy stages.
Then Miss G said, “Rene, I’m tired. Let’s sit down on that bench over
there.”
I said, “I agree.”
Then she said, “I’m too tired to get to the bench. Let’s sit on the grass for a
few minutes, and then make it to the bench. That was a big mistake! Morgan
was not very pleased. That was playtime, down time, ball-throwing time. We
ignored him. Then we started to get up, and we couldn’t. We just couldn’t move
our various bits in synchronization to stand up.
I said, “Well, I suppose we could scream for help.” Miss G laughed and
said, “Let’s hope it won’t come to that. Why don’t we squiggle around onto our
knees and crawl across to the bench?” I agreed, and we started our crawl across
the grass.
Morgan was bewildered. What were we doing imitating him? He started to
circle us, yapping his head off, and Miss G yelled, “Shut up! You’ll attract
everybody’s attention!” We reached the bench, hauled ourselves onto it, and
collapsed in great gales of near hysterical laughter. We laughed until the tears
poured down our faces. We laughed until it hurt. We laughed until we damn
near wet our britches.
Miss G gasped, “Rene, did you ever think it would come to this?”
I sputtered, “No…never, never, never……”
It was about five months after I returned to the States, on January 25, 1990,
when Carmen, ever watchful of her mistress, thought she heard a sound
sometime after midnight. She knew that Miss G with her bad arm had difficulty
in turning over sometimes. She went into the bedroom and began to put her arm
around her to make her more comfortable.
Then she heard Miss G sigh and then relax. And Carmen knew she had
died.
Carmen wept. Thousands of miles away, I wept too.

Mearene Elizabeth Jordan was born in 1922 in St. Louis,
Missouri. Her parents, James Mack and Onnie Brooks
Jordan, were both Decatur, Mississippi, natives who left
the Deep South in search of better opportunities. Rene
attended Dunbar School and Washington Tech in St.
Louis.

As was the custom, she left home at 16 and
went to Chicago, where she found a job in a sewing
factory, then as a nurse (nanny) for a Jewish family. Her
job description included singing a certain song about a
train to coax the baby to eat. At the sound of
“Whoooo!” the little fellow opened his mouth, and she
got a spoonful of lamb chop in quickly. However, he
would spit it out, so Rene started simply eating it herself.
After all, there was a depression going on, and she was hungry. By the time her day
off rolled around, the baby had such a ravenous appetite he ate well for his parents.
They were so delighted they gave her a $5 raise.

Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, she followed a couple of
sewing factory friends to Los Angeles where wartime work was plentiful. Their
boss in Chicago, Mr. Huney, was nice enough to help them line up jobs there and
give them references. Rene worked in a sewing factory in LA until 1946 when she
began her fascinating journey in the employ of screen legend Ava Gardner.

During a “sabbatical” from Ava and Madrid in the late 1950s, she took a
beauty course in hopes of one day opening her own business. This she finally did in
about 1975 as Gardner’s film career began to wind down. Her beauty shop was in
the Oak Park section of Sacramento, California, where a sister lived. She and Ava
soon began missing each other, so she would leave her shop and customers in the
hands of a trusted beauty operator and spend summers either in London or
traveling around with “Miss G.” One particularly memorable visit was to North
Carolina, where they stayed with Ava’s sister Elsie Mae Creech, who ran a little
country store next to her home near Smithfield.

During Rene’s last visit in London in 1989, Ava’s stroke had limited her
activities, but she was still full of life. Rene noticed how damp and drafty her
expensive, exclusive apartment was, even when the heat was running, so she lined
the doors and windows with aluminum foil to keep her beloved Miss G from
catching pneumonia. Unfortunately, foil was no match for decades of smoking,
combined with London’s cold, damp air, and this turned out to be Rene’s final
pow-wow with her famous best friend.

At age 90, Rene has given up the beauty shop. She still resides in
Sacramento, where she enjoys a much simpler life. Rarely a day goes by, however,
that she doesn’t remember and reflect on her amazing life with Miss G.