Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

  It was still raining the next morning when we drove down to Noël and Sarah Harrison’s house to deliver presents to their horde of children. They lived in a kind of mini ranch house up a dank, shadowy canyon, feet deep in thick brown mud, with two horses steaming miserably behind a split-rail fence, and flickering fairy lights looped mournfully round the dripping porch. Sarah was lying full length on a settee, covered in a rug, wearing green velvet and a long fox stole. She also had Hong Kong ’flu and a very high temperature; the children ripped packages apart and hit each other, and Noël, dressed for Katmandu and clinking and clonking with chains and lumps of Tibetan jade, opened gallon jars of Californian wine which he poured into hand-blown glass goblets capable of holding, at least, three goldfish apiece. Firelight gleamed on the knotty-pine walls, the beaming children’s faces and the exhausted, fevered one, of their pretty mother who coughed and streamed apologetically into a steadily mounting pile of paper handkerchiefs and her black fox stole. But the Christmas Spirit, helped enormously by the gallon jars, prevailed and reached a splendid peak with the arrival of Lionel Bart dressed in early Carnaby Street and cowboy boots with a car load of Pretty People all bearing gifts and contagious good humour. We left, in the gathering afternoon, to the beat of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” at full blast; the horses, up to their withers in mud, hung despondent heads over the split-rail fence in the still-teaming rain.

  There was a party that evening at George Cukor’s elegant house high up a hillside road. It was set in a walled garden, lofty columns, ivy, white marble figures shadowy in the heavy mist, ilex and magnolia. Inside, polished wood and shining silver, a great bowl of punch, the scent of pot-pourri and beeswax, flowers in profusion, books, paintings, elderly smiling maids in black, neat white aprons crackling, deep old chairs and gentle, amusing conversation. Proudly he showed us all a gift he had received, a kind of bird made out of pine-cones and nuts, which we all dutifully admired, since the donor was present, wondering privately what on earth he would do with it in a house so clearly unsuited to its rustic quaintness. One of his dogs, however, settled its future neatly, by eating it entirely, half an hour later, thus saving Mr Cukor a good deal of anxiety.

  Driving back through the wet night I was happy that I had spent such a day with good friends in their own homes, it had given me a feeling of security and strength which I had needed, for much earlier, before setting off for the Harrisons, I had learned that I no longer had a home. The house in England had been sold. I had telephoned my father in traditional Sussex quite early that morning.

  “Merry Christmas! I suppose you are only just starting over there aren’t you? We’re nearly over it here. Mother’s just putting a little capon in the oven for supper.”

  “Just starting here. It’s raining and cold.”

  “Never! But good about the moon-business, wasn’t it? Extraordinary!”

  “Yes, marvellous. All well with you? Any news from the house?”

  “We’re quite fit, thanks. Antonia and Eduardo are very well, and all the dogs and things … no messages this week … Judy Garland called a couple of times, she said she couldn’t reach you in Rome and didn’t know where you were … by the way there is one thing; you remember the people I told you about who liked the house last week? Well, they want it. No conditions; accept the price and want possession as soon as possible. Mid-February too early for you?”

  “I don’t know. I still have to finish here, then go back to Italy to finish that. It might fit. Is it definite do you think?”

  “Absolutely. I think they’ve signed their contracts and so on. They know they’ll have to wait a little for you to pack up. Otherwise …”

  “Well, look; I’ll call you from Rome as soon as I get there in a week or two, but say mid-February should be all right definitely. Mother well?”

  “Fine. A bit of a cold, just sniffles really, it’s the weather here. So I’m to say mid-February for certain, right?”

  “Yes. I’ll need a week to pack the place up, you see.”

  How odd, I had thought, to pack up England. In a week.

  * * *

  “Funny feeling; not having a home any more.” I was looking for spoons and knives. Forwood was boiling eggs in the kitchenette for Christmas Dinner.

  “It’s what you wanted.”

  “Yes, I know … but now … feels odd. Possession mid-February. Rather soon.”

  I started to lay the table with the hotel cutlery; Arnold was coming in to eat with us; they don’t have egg cups in America so we were using tea cups; it all seemed a bit upside down, like the rest of the hideous place. The salt was damp, the bread wrapped, the white-plastic-frosted tree with all its scarlet ribbons stood dejectedly in the corner where the delivery-boy had left it two days before. It bore a label which said, in florist’s writing, “Hi there! Happy Yuletide. Have Yourself Fun!” We didn’t know who had sent it; probably no one.

  “Do you think we could make February … all the packing; removal vans?”

  “Don’t know. You want two eggs or one?”

  “One. I’ll have a bit of cheese.”

  “You’ll have to get your arse up from here pretty quickly,” he said.

  * * *

  Fifteen mornings later we landed, ashen with jet lag, stale air, the in-flight movie and hours of taped Victor Sylvester, at Rome. The Cardinal was there to greet me, freezing in the bitter wind, huddled in a fur coat, neat little gloved hands clasped in eternal prayer.

  “Visconti is in Spoleto; is quite near the place we shoot the Steel Works, but not today, not tomorrow, maybe three days’ time.”

  “But I have raced across the world to get here for tomorrow!”

  He spread the doe-skinned hands apologetically. “He changes his mind again … you have a good rest … two, three days we will be making the scene.”

  Later in the day, furious and fatigued, we drove through the snowy hills of Italy to Spoleto; the hotel was warm, modern, small and ugly. Albino smiling happily in the bar.

  “So good to see you! Notarianni has told you we don’t work tomorrow? Maybe two, three days …”

  “But why? I left California yesterday I think … to be here in time … what has happened? Money?”

  Albino was gentle. “No, no, not money, now we have all we need; they like the film. Eccellente! Bravo, the Warner Brothers say, bravo! Now we relax a little; we wait for one of the other actors to come from Milano. He is very tired, all week he is in a play … and the other actor, he must come from Berlin … he is also in a play … very fatigued. We work in a day or two, you rest, you will see, all is well.”

  “Where is Visconti now?”

  Albino looked miserably at the terrazzo floor. Then he looked up, put his hand on my arm, to break the news gently. “In there; but please be very quiet, he is working very hard, not to disturb, anyone … please … do not trouble him?”

  In there was a small, dark room. In there he sat. Alone amidst a sea of small metal chairs, in the dark, watching television. I crept in and settled beside him in a chair. It creaked. He looked up, anger reflected in the flickering blue light from the set. He suddenly saw me, anger flicked to a small smile. He put a finger to his lips.

  “Ciao, Bogarde. You stay with me? Certo … not to speak …” He was whispering, his voice hoarse with the effort. “Not to speak. Is the Eurovision Song Contest … very exciting. United Kingdom is bad, France is bad, now is Denmark; poor. Maybe Italy will win? Capisci?”

  Chapter 13

  The removal vans trundled slowly down the long drive in a flurry of sleet and snow-showers, leaving the house empty, bare and strangely silent after the long racketing week of packing and crating-up of one’s life.

  Elizabeth had come to stay for the final week to comfort; and to assist Antonia with a woman’s hand, to fold blankets, sort sheets and pillowcases, and also to make endless cups of tea, on the hour, hourly, for all the removal men who accepted them with gratitude when they were not busy swigging the last of the v
odka, sherry and whisky from the decanters which huddled forlornly on a tin tray in the stripped Drawing Room.

  And now she too had left, taking with her an odd assortment of house plants, one howling Siamese cat, a cage of tropical finches fluttering, and Candy, the ageing English mastiff who knew (only too well by her hooped eyes and drooping tail) that something cataclysmic was afoot, and that she too would be shortly starting a new life elsewhere, and how would she manage?

  We were left, my parents, Antonia and Eduardo, Forwood, George and the ever-loyal Arnold, sitting in exhausted heaps on the window-sills of the empty Staff Sitting Room, drinking beer out of Italian-Spode breakast cups, waiting for the arrival of the new owners so that I could hand over the keys, a formality I could well have done without.

  The house was cold, dead, a shell now that its life was packed and trailing off to a warehouse near Victoria to await a new beginning. Somewhere a tap dripped; agreed fixtures and fittings left, a drum of Harpic and a brush in the downstairs cloakroom, telephone directories neatly stacked, a list of local traders pinned to a cupboard in the kitchen, a box of keys labelled “Greenhouses”, “Garage”, “Linen Cupboards”, a long-forgotten cigarette burn on the wooden shelf in the Boot Room.

  The gardens were bleak; fine snow drifting, bare branches riding harshly against a grey sky; urns, statues, tubs all long since removed by George; goldfish motionless in the fish-pool under thin ice.

  “You’re not saying goodbye?” Arnold in a duffle coat beside me, anxious, pale, tired.

  “Christ, no. Did that ages ago. Just checking, that’s all.”

  George came down the path pulling on gloves. “Well; I’ll be getting back now; before it gets too thick, it tends to drift up on the hill, don’t want to get stuck with all that fragility in my van.”

  I walked up with him, helped him slam the doors on terracotta, marble, lead, and a sundry collection of garden implements. We shook hands warmly, he started up his engine and with a quick wave turned out into the lane and went off after the rest of the house. I watched him go; wondering when next I’d see the Drummer Boy, the saucer urn from Crystal Palace, the camellia pots … and where? He pulled in sharply, after two hundred yards, to let a metallic-blue Rolls inch past gently towards the house. The new owners.

  “Here they come,” said my father. “Well, I think Mother and I will just get off now, leave you to it. She’s been saying goodbye to Antonia for ten minutes, both in floods of tears. Women, really; must say I don’t like this moment myself.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that, Pa, you know … I mean it’s not as if it was my ancestral home, I haven’t lived here for generations upon generations, it’s not my heritage I’m leaving as some people have to, my roots never got that far down, you know, in the end. I don’t quite know what I should have done if that had been the case … I’d rather not think, I suppose. And remember I’m leaving of my own free will. Before anyone lowers the portcullis. It’s not too late to start again. Just.”

  He rubbed his nose with a gloved finger thoughtfully. “Suppose you’re right. Well, good luck anyway, we’ll come out and see you as soon as you say; when you’re settled. April? May perhaps, when it’s still coolish … Mother doesn’t like the heat, you know. Not Rome heat anyway. Mother! Come along, dear, we’ll be in the way if we don’t get along now.”

  They drove away just as the Rolls stopped, pale blue, shimmering in the steel light. Doors slammed; the woman was wearing snow boots and a leopard coat, thin blond hair, clutching a lavender poodle in a jewelled collar.

  “Hope we didn’t interrupt anything?” She let the poodle down gently on to the gravel path where it squealed and shivered and cocked its leg nervously against the front door. “Look at him! Marking his territory already.” The woman laughed merrily and put out a diamond hand.

  * * *

  Forwood and I, with Antonia and Eduardo in the Rolls, Arnold hard behind in the Simca with all our luggage, left the house and drove up the hill, through the darkening afternoon, past the barns surrounded by softly bleating sheep huddled under the big oaks against the swirling flakes, which lay upon their fleece like powdered glass, and turned left out on to the main road. The journey had begun. We none of us looked back.

  * * *

  It was almost like a sailing; the room was crammed with flowers and the heavy scent of white hyacinths from Losey, daffodils from Irene, roses and roses, a wanton thrusting of early yellow tulips from someone else … notes, messages, cards and letters stacked, bottles chilling in beading silver bearing labels; “Bon Voyage”.

  “All we need,” said Forwood tiredly, “are the streamers …”

  In a collision of suitcases in my room I wondered exhaustedly which and what to unpack. A month here at the Connaught, to rest, one thought hopefully, from the long year of packing and unpacking before the final effort and final severance. First things first; I lugged a handgrip into the bathroom and set out shampoo, razor, toothbrush, lotions; from the window I could just see, under the tall lamppost, that the snow was settling in Carlos Place.

  From the azaleas in early May on the Spanish Steps, the industrial sun of Essen and Düsseldorf, painted reindeers in California, bougainvillaea blazing in Sidi Bou Said, the blinding heat of Visconti’s Steel Mills in Terni, the soft bleating of the sheep recently as we passed them on the hill … it had been a long time, a long way, many voyages; but perhaps the longest and most daunting was ahead. I would use this month to relax and prepare, just sleep perhaps.

  But that was not possible. Every day was filled with luncheons, suppers, dinners, drinks and various entertainments. The generosity and love of one’s friends was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to have a farewell party; and everyone did. The engagement book was steadily filled for days, even weeks, in advance.

  Ten days after arriving in London I was desperately planning to leave it; a surfeit of affection, wine, food and too many late nights. One morning I looked through the crammed book and made a sudden and firm decision; this would be the last day of all. After the planned luncheon I would pack up and just clear off and head for Italy.

  It was an amusing, decorative final luncheon. Kathleen Tynan, Caroline Somerset, Patrick Lichfield, Angelica Huston, a representative gathering of loving, if all-unsuspecting, friends, and when they had finally left, promising to meet again within a few days, I telephoned Arnold and alerted him to be ready with the Simca to drive down to Dover that evening, and called my father.

  “We’re leaving, tonight, try and get an early boat tomorrow morning.”

  “A bit sudden, isn’t it? Thought you had another couple of weeks?”

  “On my knees; if I don’t go now I’ll never go. It means I can’t get down to see you and Mother; do you mind?”

  “Goodness, no! Don’t you worry about us; we’ll see you very soon anyway wherever you land up, I mean unless it’s somewhere like Turkey.” His laughter cheerfully unbelieving.

  “No. Rome … it’ll be Rome I think for a while, to try it for size.

  “Well, have a word with Mother, and don’t worry about us.”

  “You are sure you wouldn’t come with me? Follow in a month or so?”

  A little pause.

  “No, my dear; as I said, we’re both a bit too old now; might have said yes ten years ago … but we’d be pretty lost, you know; all our friends are here, the ones who remain … I’d miss the Rose and Crown in Fletching and my Worthington …”

  “I’m sure you could get Worthington in Rome.”

  “No, off you go; good luck, and God bless you. Get some in for me though; I’ll need a little strength after the journey.”

  “Get some what?”

  “Worthington, of course … you are dense!”

  * * *

  We were the first two cars in the queue at the Customs shed next morning for the first boat across. The night before at dinner in the local hotel we had made the final plans for our journey. Arnold would leave us at Arras and go by way of Macon, we to
Paris; and the next night, all things, and the slightly aged Simca, being equal, we would meet up again at the Hotel de l’Europe in Avignon, then to Genoa and on to Rome; it all seemed perfectly straightforward. The Customs official, a tall gaunt man, his arms wrapped around him for warmth in the bitter wind, leant down and said good morning.

  “Wonder if you’d mind stepping out, sir; bit chilly, but I’d like to have a little chat, if you don’t mind.”

  I stood beside him in the dirty shed, gulls wheeling and crying, wind whipping a flag taut, scraps of torn paper eddying in a corner.

  “All yours, is it, Sir?”

  “Yes … both cars.”

  “Quite a lot of luggage, eh?”

  “Yes; a lot.”

  “How much money are you carrying, sir?”

  “Three hundred and fifty pounds.”

  “That would be all, would it?”

  “That’s all.”

  “And the other gentlemen?”

  “We have three hundred and fifty between us all.”

  He wandered to the back of the Simca and peered in.

  “Record player, I see. Spare tyres?”

  “For the Rolls. Expensive in Italy.”

  “Going on a little holiday?”

  “No.”

  “Ah … what are you going for then, sir, with all this luggage?

  “Ever.”

  He stood and looked at me impassively, his coat tails whipping around his legs, arms still wrapped.

  “I see. Thank you, sir.” The barrier went up and we started the cars.

  In the shuddering British Rail cabin, grey as the morning, one tartan rug on the bunks, I replaced the papers and passports in the briefcase, gave Arnold his, and rang the Stewards’ bell for something hot to drink.

  “Aren’t you coming up top?” Arnold looked worried, huddled in his sheepskin.

  “What for? It’s bitter.”

  “To see them go …”

  “The white cliffs?”

  He shrugged, and sat on the bunk.

  “You go up if you want to, Noldie. I’ve done it so often before.”