The Happy Years (1944-48)

by Cecil Beaton

  My mother’s dressing-table drawer of powder, rouge, mascara and false kiss-curls held an uncanny fascination for me. Once, on the annual summer holiday in Norfolk, on my way down late to breakfast in the furnished house which we rented for a six-weeks’ duration, I stole into my mother’s bedroom, opened the imitation old-oak drawer, and painted my face like one of the pierrettes in the troupe we had been taken to see the night before. This was not an attempt at a joke, and somehow I imagined that the transformation my face had so hurriedly undergone would not be noticed by my parents busy with their eggs, bacon and fried bread. But my father, on leaving the dining-room, caught sight of this cosmetic mask coming down the stairs. He became so enraged that I was locked for the day in my bedroom. The punishment did not unduly upset me. I resented such unfair treatment — nobody understood me at home — and I would just as soon miss the usual outing spent on that miserable, grey Sheringham beach, sitting in an east wind on uncomfortable pebbles, or dashing into the icy North Sea. When eventually released from my imprisonment, I casually threw to one side a water-colour portrait I had painted during the day. It was of my theatrical love, Lily Elsie. It was the best likeness I had done to date, with my heroine looking over a shoulder in a Vermeer-like pose, wearing a huge Greek chignon, and with red dots in the corners of her blue-dusted eyelids. My mother nodded to my father as if indeed she had given birth to a young Vermeer. My father, too, was impressed with the likeness and the azure background.

  Greta sympathized more with my father than with me. ‘Are you very affectionately demonstrative to your mother?’ she asked. ‘No — we love one another but can’t show it. I’m very selfconscious with her.’ Greta conceded: ‘Parents make it so difficult for us.’

  I also talked about the first stirrings of love at Harrow School, the lack of all sex at Cambridge, and lesser-discussed topics. Greta asked if my mother was worried about me, for, she said, it must be terrible for parents, who only wish for their offspring to lead sheltered, conventional lives, to find them ‘cutting-up’ and being so strange.

  Instead of becoming morbid about the subject, we started to laugh at the idea of my having been such a sissy while, at the same time, always being so wiry, energetic and, if put to any challenge, extremely headstrong. This had led to my involvement in complicated situations with all sorts of unsuitable women — when, for instance, some gesture made in a mood of bravura was interpreted more seriously than was intended. ‘You’re so violent! Sometimes during the day your fingers round me are like steel, and they almost break into my back. It’s a wonder you’re safe. Your mother must worry when you rush ahead quite madly. So far you’ve got along all right, but I don’t know what keeps you preserved.’

  All barriers of reserve seemed to be down so I ventured to steer the conversation to expound my views about why we were good for one another. I started off: ‘I’m poor in worldly terms, and have nothing to offer you — nothing, absolutely nothing but salvation: in fact,’ I said, ‘I am the Salvation Army.’ I didn’t get any further for she laughed so much there was no possibility of being serious. We left the restaurant, lingering en route to the Tower. ‘Call me when you get back home,’ she said. When her hotel operator asked me: ‘Who’s calling Miss Brown?’ I replied: ‘The Salvation Army.’ When Greta picked up the receiver she was still amused.

  We met outside my hotel. Greta had given Miss Cleghorn a message that she wished to show me a certain painting in a gallery nearby, but she had changed the plan, and now wanted to explore the freshly-snow-covered park. But I was wearing thin shoes with no galoshes. I telephoned from the downstairs hall for Miss Cleghorn to throw the galoshes out of my window into Fifty-Eighth Street. It was not at all a typical New York scene that was watched by a gang of road-cleaners and passers-by, for I believe one can be heavily fined for throwing anything out of a window. But the incident was made unforgettable for me by the changing expressions of surprise, alarm and childish glee on Greta’s face as, surreptitiously, she was witness to the proceedings. Terrified of being noticed in the centre of the hubbub, she could not yet altogether extricate herself from the excitement. Miss Cleghorn’s spectacled white face appeared above. One black object hove nearer and nearer. A tremendous thud! Then another! The galoshes had arrived without accident. ‘That’s one way of getting a pair of pullovers,’ said a truckman.

  We trudged through the high snowdrifts and enjoyed watching the kids on toboggans, skis and sledges. They had transformed the whole park into an endless playground and the scene was like Brueghel pictures of winter with small black figures moving in every direction. Greta’s mood became so euphoric that she even made jokes to passers-by. Once she followed a mother pulling a child on a dog-cart and cooed: ‘Look at its boots! Those feet are to me all of childhood.’ Then she went up to one baby and looked in its face, and did the most enchanting imitation of its surprise and wonder at her face in such close proximity. We were fascinated by the skaters, and the youngsters sliding down icy slopes on their backsides. ‘I used to do that as a child and ruined my coats, and my little mother used to be so upset.’

  As we were walking home some young hooligans shouted her name and ran after us, their cries of ‘Greta Garbo’ ringing through the park. I wanted to chuck snowballs at them, but Greta said no — we must just do nothing but suffer. ‘If we show we’re angry they’ll be after us. They’ll have fiendish sport, but if we do nothing they’ll have no fun — and I know: I was awful as a child! We used to do all the tricks of ringing door-bells and running away, and next door to us was an embittered old spinster and she made the mistake of going for us. Then we let her have it! We were a gang, and we threw water at her windows, and sand, and I was the ringleader. I wasn’t at all like a girl. I used to play leap-frog, and have a bag of marbles of my own — a tomboy.’

  By now the sky was dark and the lamps came on, looking, as Greta remarked, like a Valentine with the falling snowflakes dotted around. Walking through the snowstorm was strangely peaceful and calm. We came back to my room with cold faces and glowing health before going on to the little Brazilian restaurant for dinner. Here we shared a bottle of Chilean wine which made Greta very communicative. Our first meeting — in Hollywood — she confessed had left little impression on her except that she remembered my soft white leather jacket. This, under the strange circumstances, was quite surprising, and not at all flattering. I said it was better, perhaps, that we had preserved our real relationship for later on in life when I was more experienced. But she disagreed. ‘No, I think it would have been very nice if I had let you come and eat spinach with me, as you suggested, the following day. I should have been intrigued lest you fall into bad habits, and you might have been so surprised at having this relationship that you would have been unlike anyone else.’ She said she had left it till late if she was to be married, though a Frenchman had said he liked his women ‘like a salad, un peu fatiguées’. Women getting on in years were so grateful for a lover! We talked about a mutual friend’s recent marriage. Suddenly something happened to the man, and he was able to give that woman something no ordinary man would have been able to — complete and utter pristine love — and oh, she was grateful!

  December 26th, 1947

  ‘ll neige,’ she said on the telephone. That was a euphemism. New York was buried under snow: friends called up to discuss the sensational storm outside. No buses or taxis running, the life of the city at a standstill, except for men scraping a passage-way through the streets and a few enthusiasts skiing down Park Avenue.

  I had invited a dozen friends in for drinks, the reason for the party being to dissipate the bogey of ‘the little man’ by inviting him to bring Greta to my rooms. All day the snow continued to fall from a soup-brown sky; a strange silence pervaded the town and nothing moved. I wondered if Greta herself could come. Yet I knew in my heart she would arrive, for she enjoys violence in the elements: storms and blizzards excite her. (‘One never knows if the roof will be blown off.’) She appeared, covered with brillia
nce and sparkle, with ‘the little man’. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright, her skin flaked with snowdrops, her clothes all grey and shiny black. She wore gum boots, a nun’s coif around her face, and on top of that a black seafarer’s hat like the old-fashioned advertisement for Elliman’s embrocation.

  Apart from Pavlik Tchelitchew, who reported, at various times of the day, that the snow was mounting higher and higher, and that it was ‘disaster’, and Mona, who telephoned during the festivities to say she was marooned, everyone whom I had invited materialized. The fact that they were incarcerated here gave the gathering a curious atmosphere. When the writer, George Davis, who has eulogized Garbo for years, arrived, having been in a subway that wouldn’t function, he found the experience of meeting his goddess for the first time was even more dreamlike than he had visualized. George said: ‘She’s the only one who has this dream quality of unreality, and it’s fitting that I should have had such difficulty in getting here today — that I should meet her in these Scandinavian conditions.’ George later remarked that Greta still possesses a unique quality — that she would always develop — that it is nonsense to say that she belongs to one epoch: like all great artists she can change to become part of the next phase of artistic activity.

  The room was filled. Vodka and slivovitz were the most popular drinks: soon everyone was warm to the cockles, and enthusiastically applauding the late arrivals. Greta’s honesty is often mistaken for wit. She answered in good faith to Dali’s inquiry: ‘You-h, Garbo-h, skee-ee?’, ‘Yes, but only on level ground’ — at which everyone went into roars of laughter. I paid little obvious attention to Greta, but when I did sit next to her she turned and, like a woodpecker, repeated an affectionate phrase in whispers.

  ‘The little man’ seemed ill at ease, and his eyes never met mine with any confidence or honesty. On his arrival he said: ‘You must have asked an enormous number of people to get this crowd here.’ Throughout he emanated a troubled, electric atmosphere. Even the drinks did not give him any false faith in me, and he was quite correct in his surmise. When, accepting another drink, he said: ‘I’ll just have a sip to show there is no ill-feeling’, I whispered to Greta: ‘Is it going all right with him?’, and she said with infinite conviction: ‘Oh, yaaish — yaaish.’

  Long past their dinner-time the party guests, wrapped up in their coverings of wool and mackintosh, started the trek home. I was able to have a quick encounter with Greta while others were fitting on their snow boots. When I tried to kiss her she said: ‘Oh, don’t be so foolish!’ and a look of terror came over her face. ‘When do you telephone?’ ‘Tomorrow.’

  Monday, December 29th, 1947

  We walked to the Twenty-One restaurant and were thrown into a rowdy melée of people. Greta was very gay and taking everything in her stride. The great tall impresario of the place said: ‘I’ll give you a nice quiet corner in the shade.’ To which G. replied: ‘No, we’ve come here to be in the lights and in the centre of everything!’ I was quite as amazed as the tall impresario. Some saw-drill-voiced woman came up to Greta and rasped: ‘You’ve given me so much pleasure — what is it your name is?’ Greta did not help her out, and considered she was being classed with Bob Hope and Betty Grable. A beat-up, gin-sodden wreck, at least twenty years older than Greta, teetered up and, without wishing to be wounding, confessed: ‘Oh, Miss Garbo — I used to worship you when I was a teensy, weensy, bitsy li’l girl!’

  I remarked upon being irritated by the busy young man opposite who, with his girlfriend beside him, spent the evening telephoning from their table. ‘Perhaps he wants to show her how important he is; maybe he doesn’t feel secure, or maybe his mother is very ill. You don’t know — you just jump to conclusions — you may be wrong.’ Her advice to be calmer, more generous, was friendly and well-meant. ‘You are apt to be critical and outspoken. Others encourage you to show off and be audacious. But who are you to judge people who may be doing their best? It isn’t very intelligent of you to behave like that: to put it at its most superficial, it doesn’t pay off. You see, I had a very troublesome, difficult time in my youth, and I learnt a lot of these things then. It doesn’t do to ask an eye for an eye — not that I’ve read the Bible since I was a child — and then I was so shocked by Abraham and all that incest.’ I marvelled at Greta’s strength of character, and at how she is impervious to anyone behaving badly to her. She will never meet wrong with wrong.

  This all sounds as if we had a heavy and quarrelsome dinner but, in fact, I felt we had achieved an added sympathy for each other. She has taught me much, and I encourage her to continue the course of lessons. One of my luxuries is that I quite enjoy airing my shortcomings; I sometimes boast of my ignorance, my weaknesses and faults of character. I admit that I rely too much on my instinct, that I am incapable of analysis, and am not the deepest of wells. I am grateful to Greta that, with her guidance, I am able to scratch a little beneath the surface to look for the meaning of things.

  We walked home through the streets of ice. An Alaskan gale was blowing: a frill, brilliant moon shone into G.’s room. We drank cold beer, and I remained dawdling only a little time as I felt weak from the effects of my cold. I whispered in her ears in the dark, and in a cloud of tenderness dragged myself away.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  31st December, 1947

  Its being New Year’s Eve today we felt the longing to celebrate together. But Greta had promised to dine with ‘the little man’ and I had arranged to go to Mona’s large party; perhaps if Greta were free she would telephone me at Mona’s. During the large formal dinner the butler came up to me and bowed. ‘It’s Mr Thompson on the line.’ This is just one more of the names Greta uses as a disguise. ‘Mr Thompson’ was already, by 10.30, back at his hotel: ‘he’ had been weeping and shed so many tears! Would I join ‘him’? Mona was large-hearted and understanding as ever, and I soon disappeared without bidding the others goodnight. In the taxi on the way down Park Avenue — with its long centipedes of brilliant Christmas trees — I watched the merrymakers hurrying to their midnight revels. I felt that I was the luckiest person alive to be keeping this tryst with the one person in the world I wanted. Greta did not appear as if she had been weeping though she looked serious. She said that she had been very cruel to ‘the little man’. He had become devoted to her and was the best friend she’d ever had, but she couldn’t be tied down like this. ‘Oh, I’ve said such wounding things to him, but I couldn’t help it. I became quite hysterical, and I laughed and I cried, and all my mascara ran and I looked such a sight.’ Enough of this.

  We hurried out through the merrymakers, and came back to my room to celebrate the arrival of the New Year by drinking some 1840 whisky that Margaret Case had given me. I gave a toast to our marriage and our life together, but Greta did not take up this theme and smiled a little diffidently. Our embrace was tender, but we did not have enough arms to entwine round each other’s shoulders and waists.

  All the sirens sounded and hooters hooted, and even the ships in the port made their bellowing noises. We stood at the window and watched the coloured sky, and wished and ‘skolled’ and drank, and by degrees I became quite drunk. I’d had champagne and brandy at Mona’s and was now digging into the old whisky, and I became very full of life without any inhibitions, using rough language and rather rowdily galumphing about the place. At moments we stared at one another as if in a trance, and felt taken possession of by some devil. Greta was gay, liking my attempts at jokes; sometimes we sniggered close together like schoolchildren forbidden to laugh in church or in class, and laughing so much more because of the hopelessness of the situation. Then we stood stiffly facing one another, she with her feet wide apart and her hair hanging partly over her face. Then she looked at me with lowered lids and one eyebrow raised — a typical and alluring regard of hers which has been copied by half the women of the world. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror I was appalled by the swollen, bloated face that confronted me, lips all smudged with rouge and eyes bunged
up. I said: ‘How is it possible for you to like anyone who looks as awful as I do?’ She made a kind reply, and I clasped her again. ‘Don’t ever leave me again — don’t make me unhappy again, I beg of you!’

  We walked back to the Tower and the town was filled with drunkards, and a lot of young people accosted us — much to her displeasure. But we laughed at some of the people wearing comic hats above sad, ordinary faces, and one elderly man with a long feather on his head was the most ridiculous sight in the whole city. The intense cold reminded me of Russia. Even our most heavy clothing seemed suddenly flimsy: soon my ears were hurting with frostbite and Greta could hardly get her breath. She pretended that she was quite tipsy, but she had had only a few sips of the ancient whisky. Suddenly she went up to a large and hideous old dog, wearing a heavy coat, that was being given an airing on its master’s leash. Greta screwed up her face and said: ‘Oh, the lovely little doggy!’ and shook her head at it. The dog’s master, an aged ‘confirmed bachelor’, was so surprised, but delighted, to have his dog admired that he shot a row of false teeth at us in a terrible semblance of a smile. We both doubled up with laughter. Outside the Ritz Tower we dawdled, and then I went up with her in the elevator. In her rooms she stripped to become a Madison Square athlete with white socks, small red slippers and tight underpants. She put on my hat and gallivanted about in the extreme of circus clowning. When I returned to my rooms ‘Mr Thompson’ telephoned to say that he had just read in the papers that New York marriages were undermined by drink.

  Next morning ‘Mr Thompson’ telephoned me. ‘I’m not up yet — haven’t got on my mascara; you’ve never seen me without it and I seem naked. My lashes are pale like an albino, and I look so surprised and open. I’m never going to let you see me without buckets of mascara on; I’m going out now to buy tons of it’ (‘toorns uf utte’).