Wish Her Safe at Home (26 page)

We used to spend at least one evening there a week...
“our local,” as we used to call it. At first we had meant to sip only sparingly at our sherries but we soon discovered everyone was just so anxious to buy us drinks it would have seemed ungracious to refuse. People were so very
pleased
to welcome us there! “Oh, don’t leave us yet! Don’t leave us yet!” Before they’d finally consent to our departure we always had to offer a finale: “Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home.”

So altogether—I realized it even then, lying in bed with a silly, small-hours lump in my throat—home would always be a part of me. And I was glad.

I knew that I would always miss it.

Despite the excitement of Elsinore—and Larry—and my career; and of all that lay ahead.

Sometimes, even towards the end of November, I went to sit in the park. Luckily the weather had continued mild, so I was still able to wear my picture hat and just a cardigan over my beautifully embroidered dress. I went to the park because I needed the exercise and fresh air. I went there because I could no longer afford to go into cafés or look for down-and-outs, and because when I searched for ordinary housewives or widows waiting by their garden gates for somebody—almost
anyone
would have done, poor souls—to tell about their latest operation or the shameful way in which their daughter-in-law was treating them...
well, maybe it was the approach of winter that sent them scurrying indoors. I don’t know. But the ducks on the lake were made of sterner stuff and I could always talk to
them
for as long as we all wanted.

But, yes, poor souls. Those women had so little; I had so much—so unreasonably much. I had Larry and Horatio. I had Roger and Celia and Thomas (and
that
situation, despite my lover’s misgivings—Larry’s?—Horatio’s?—really did seem to be working out; we were all so happy with it; even the lawyerly Mr. Wymark was now considering moving in: a real little commune) and I was healthy, beautiful and very much admired. Not simply was I in my prime; I was one of those rare and fortunate creatures able to appreciate her prime while she still had it, not pine for it as soon as it was gone.

And something else. The best of all—obviously. The
very
best of all!

Yes!

Dear Lord.

At last!

I was
blooming
!

Which was naturally the reason why I needed exercise. And fresh air. Every day, it seemed, my bulge grew bigger. I was so glad that I didn’t have to wear a coat.

I felt extra proud I looked so well: all rude and glowing despite my marathons of throwing up: for I’d observed that people couldn’t help but stare; simply couldn’t help it. Young men gave whistles. Yet it wasn’t embarrassing—not in the slightest. I accepted it rather as a film star must, not as her due (good heavens, no, that sounds so
horribly
presumptuous), but with grateful recognition and a lot of secret pleasure. I thought of Rudolf—and kept on inclining my head in humble yet gracious acknowledgement.

I had also written a letter to a famous women’s magazine, in which I had said it was so important not to take your husband (or husbands) for granted; not to grow careless over your appearance or personal hygiene habits simply because you were married and therefore your man (or men) was hooked and landed. A woman’s appearance, I said, was such a lovely, precious and God-given thing and of course she had a sacred duty towards it
even after marriage
—oh, how I stressed that point! Wives, I said, should always be lovers too and I wrote out for them the whole wise lyric of that probing song, only putting in dots where I couldn’t quite recall the words. I offered, indeed, to write them a series on marriage and beauty and its attendant responsibilities; on how to hold your man (or men); my life with Larry; my brief idylls with Rock Hudson and Robert Taylor and James Dean; and—above all—on some truly marvellous fucks I’d had and on how to prepare yourself for motherhood.

* * *

It was kind of them. They seemed so pleased with the idea that they sent two of their most important editors to discuss it—a man and a woman. They joined me one morning in the park. (Obviously I wasn’t difficult to find. My renown was spreading far and wide; they could have asked practically anybody.)

“Hello,” they said, and sat down on the bench, one on either side of me. I had expected to meet them in London but had forgotten that the journalistic nose, once it had scented a scoop, wouldn’t wait to let the hair grow from its nostrils.

“So good of you to come,” I said. We shook hands. They seemed touchingly surprised by my politeness, a sad indictment of the rest of their contributors. This made me more resolved than ever not to let them guess my disappointment: I’d been imagining, you see, how it would feel to be welcomed into their Fleet Street offices, introduced to a number of their colleagues, taken out to lunch: a personality, someone of just a little consequence.

But never mind all that. I cried gaily: “You should have given me some warning, though! If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake!”

“No need for cakes,” said the lady. I wasn’t certain that she understood the joke. “Isn’t it peaceful here?”

“Yes, it’s a lovely park. I like to feed the ducks.” And really it didn’t matter much: it had only been a very silly little joke.

“We hear you sit here often.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “What it is to be famous! I feel I should apologize!”

We all smiled at one another...
“The three of us,” I assured them, “already the very best of pals. Luckily, you know, I could always get on with anybody—absolutely anybody!”

“Would you like to accompany us now?” suggested the woman. “We’ve got a car just over there.”

“I’d prefer to stay in the sunshine for a while if that’s all right with you?”

“Very well then—though I can’t say I’ve noticed a great deal of sunshine!” That was clearly
her
idea of a joke; so I laughed politely. She glanced at her wristwatch. This had a broad leather strap—must have been meant for a man. (I’d have thought editors would automatically imbibe the ethos of their own magazines: the style-setting bits, in any case. No, apparently not.) “Five minutes more,” she said.

“Oh, yes!” I finished it for her. “‘Five minutes more, give me five minutes more, only five minutes more in your arms...
’”

Suddenly worried, however, that she might see some sort of message in this I added hastily: “Your watch reminds me of Sylvia’s.”

“Does it?” She nodded, then evinced mild interest. “And who is Sylvia?”

I had to laugh again—well, naturally I did—although I soon supplied her with a serious enough answer. “Holy, fair and wise is she! That’s right—the best woman friend I ever had, apart from my mother. And as a matter of fact shortly before my mother died I had joined ENSA and happened to be out in the Middle East servicing our brave young fighting men. And do you know what they’d say to me? ‘Ma’am, you have given us back our reason for living; you alone—single-handed!’ Indeed it was sometimes difficult to know how to answer them, revealing all the gratitude I felt in my heart, yet with prettily becoming modesty. I’d say, ‘Oh, fiddle-dee-fuck, my dears; oh, fiddle-dee-fuck!’ I think I got that more or less right, don’t you?”

I smiled, reminiscently.

“Well, anyway, Sylvia stood proxy for me at my mother’s deathbed. She told me it was the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. My mother said just before she went—I mean before Mummy went, not Sylvia—that she saw friends coming along the road to greet her and she heard wonderful music; Sylvia told me that she passed with a beam of joy upon her face. And I hope that when the time comes just such a thing can happen to all of us. The big adventure! Well, Sylvia herself was so affected that she’s now contemplating taking the veil. She really has earned that soubriquet,
holy
. She watches
The Sound of Music
at least once every six or seven days.”

There was perhaps a slight discrepancy here but it didn’t matter. Few people worried too much about chronology. Detail should always be subservient to spirit.

“Shall we go now?” asked the woman.

“Oh, just a little longer. Please! It is so pleasant here.”

She complied. I wanted to reward her. What further little titbits could I find?

“Well,” I said, “he was always kissing me and holding my hand. He didn’t mind in the least who saw.

“He would say, ‘How’s my pussycat?’

“‘I’m fine, puss. How are you?’

“‘What kind of a day did you have? Well, sit down and tell me all about it.’

“And he would say, ‘Happy Christmas, puss, my puss!’

“We were the most popular couple in Hollywood, the most envied, the most glamorous. He told the press: ‘I don’t suppose there ever was a couple so very much in love.’ I said at the same time, ‘Our love affair has been simply the most divine fairy tale, hasn’t it?’ And they printed it, you know, in
Life
magazine. Glorious.”

I looked to the woman for comment. She said, “Very nice.” I hoped she hadn’t thought I was belittling
Feminist
by mentioning
Life
. The man just grinned. He was my strong and silent type, not particularly good-looking, yet he evidently possessed some of the skills which Fleet Street must demand. I moved a little closer and pressed my own thigh up to his. Actually
I
didn’t get much of a thrill out of it; but was pleased to suppose that he had.

I smiled at him. “Hey, genius. I’d like you to meet your Scarlett O’Hara.”

But those were neither my own words nor certainly my normal voice. It was my west-coast American drawl, my gently comic take-off of dear Myron. Before our very eyes Atlanta had risen from the water, a roaring furnace of flame and smoke and showering sparks; and I stood there in my broad-brimmed black hat, with the fire’s reflection leaping in my eyes and my complexion prettily aglow in the rosy flickering light; and I heard him say, “The end to years of searching! Nearly fifteen hundred interviews, over ninety actual tests, the most publicized hunt in screen history! Now here she stands before us: the perfect choice, the perfect girl...
Hosanna in the highest!”

“Well, fiddle-dee-fuck,” I cried. “And thank ’ee kindly, sir.”

The flames died down into the water. Old Lord Fauntleroy’s drawing room, temples from
The Garden of Allah
, forests from
The Last of the Mohicans
, skyscrapers from
King Kong
—all of them had sunk beneath the burning lake. The ducks returned. I was stricken with anxiety; jumped up at once to get a clearer view. Oh, thank God! Thank God! In that most awesome conflagration not a single feather singed.

The editors had stood up too. Fleet Street might well be a jungle but—clearly—any contact with courtesy could still produce benefits.

I sat. They did the same. Three merry jack-in-the-boxes—well, two of them maybe less merry, like thick Russian novels on either side of a Wodehouse. I might have enjoyed a short period of gloriously undiluted fun. I remembered the Marx Brothers.

“One blessing,” I exclaimed. “At least
this
Christmas we shan’t be eating roast duck!” None too surprisingly my joke was wasted on the woman.

Perhaps that made it even funnier?

But then I frowned. No more
Happy Christmas
, either. “Happy Christmas, puss, my puss!”

For he had aged so rapidly. Had become an old man while I was still a lovely girl. Had it been wrong of me to take him? Should I have left him there in Shangri-La?

The answer was—oh yes! oh yes! But could I have done it? We rode a streetcar named Desire and so few of us ever had the strength to ring the bell. The stops were all request.

Now, therefore, as I remembered this, the sky grew dark. No warning, absolutely none. A whole canopy of cloud: massive, menacing, undeniable.

Not undeniable. Undefiable!
Was
there such a word? Well, if there wasn’t there ought to be—and, oh, what a difference just one letter could make!

For no one had ever triumphed through taking the path of least resistance.
Defy
, not deny—that was the name of the game. I thought I had been learning this.

But, no, what I had been learning was only the following: it grew so very difficult to be valiant ’gainst all disaster. Resilience and gaiety and awareness...
they all became so
wearing
. Required such quantities of superhuman strength.

And suddenly I felt frail. I couldn’t go on in this fashion—rise and shine, rise and shine—unerringly, day after day after day. Waiting for that red, red robin to come bob, bob, bobbin’ along. (Along.) Because
I
hadn’t got superhuman strength. Sometimes I prayed for just the ordinary kind; yet occasionally had to wonder whether God could even be listening.

Life
was
a vale of tears. So why had I thought that I could somehow skirt around it, keep my magic pink dancing shoes clear of the water?

They were good and damp right now.

No more “What kind of day did you have, my puss, sweet puss? Sit down and tell me all about it!”

And even dear little Doreen had never come to tea. Nor—a scrap less disappointingly—had Mrs. Pond.

And he had thrown my Oscar out into the garden because he had said that I was growing highhanded.

But I truly couldn’t help it. Hadn’t he seen that? Not any more than he could.

Oh, Larry.

And why, God, why—why little Alfredo Rampi?

Did
anybody
have the right to live in a fool’s paradise so long as just one person shrieked?

And was that
all
that it could ever amount to? Purely a fool’s paradise?

I stood up. (They both jumped up beside me.) “Shall we go?” the woman repeated.

I think I even smiled; I tried to smile; I had my baby to consider.

We made our way along the tarmac path. Each had given me an arm; I couldn’t be insensible to that. “Who claims,” I said—and now I certainly put on a smile—“who claims the age of chivalry is dead?” Admittedly, I addressed this more to the man than to the woman, but it didn’t prevent my feeling that at any moment we might all start skipping along in unison—