Mrs P's Journey

by Sarah Hartley

  Tony’s whereabouts remained unknown to Phyllis until she received a letter from him in the spring of 1925, in which he revealed that he had spent the winter months making his way through the Spanish countryside on a donkey, happily etching and drawing. Andalucia, he wrote, is where you and I should go for the famous Easter festivities.

  Within days, Phyllis joined her brother in Granada, where Tony began a detailed journal.

  The next week we crossed to Gibraltar and as it was Good Friday we ate hot cross buns for breakfast. We caught the boat to Ceuta (North Africa) and arrived there literally without a penny in our pockets.

  We asked everybody for Señor Bakewell, a friend of Mama’s. Nobody knew him. So we hired a horsedrawn carriage and looked for him. This took us along the entire beach and back again to the port. Here we found him rushing around looking for us everywhere. ‘Please pay the cab,’ (we said)which he did and took us in and gave us tea. He said Phyllis must stay with him and I would stay at the local hotel. Phyllis played the piano rather well and the next day she played to Bakewell and his English staff. One of them became enamoured with Phyllis. Ultimately we decided to go on to Tétouan (in Morocco).

  En route to Tétouan by train, their carriage was sprayed with bullets.

  The Riff War is on. Phyllis and her unnamed boyfriend disappear for hours in the countryside, but their wanderings almost cost Phyllis her life. There was a curfew on and I ran down to the town gates to wait for them as the bell rang. Phyllis and her boyfriend had to run a mile down a long straight road to reach the town before the gates were closed. Once closed the Riffs came under the walls looking for anybody left outside and slit their throats.

  A few days later we returned to Madrid and Phyllis to Paris. She had a delayed sunstroke but was looked after by a doctor in her compartment.

  The excitement of travelling through Spain lit a small fire in Phyllis; from now on, its embers would burn constantly. Within a few weeks, Paris would leave her breathless, as if its very streets choked her imagination. To travel – in France, in Spain, anywhere – she knew was the antidote.

  After her return to Paris, Dick Pearsall took it upon himself to meet Phyllis after she had finished work at the Galeries Lafayette on Saturday. He walked her up to Parc Monceau and, as they wandered through the colonnades, he listened to her stories of Spain.

  If he did indeed ever fall in love with Phyllis, then it happened in those few hours. He wanted her enthusiasm. He wanted to have it, to keep it, to throw a blanket over it and call it his own. Phyllis, he believed, would inspire him, she would ensure his success. The day before, he had received a letter from his brother, a postmaster in Cape Town, who had signed off, most likely in jest: So, old man (for Dick was thirty-seven now) when are you going to catch yourself a bride? And where are you going to find one in Paris who understands your hatred of garlic?!

  His irritation with this comment would not disappear. The cure, he knew, was Phyllis.

  ‘I have been thinking in your absence and I wonder if you would do me the honour of becoming Mrs Richard Pearsall.’ Dick had interrupted a story that involved a doctor, a fainting nun, some wild dogs and a plate of sausages.

  Phyllis turned her head to his, astonished at both his interruption and his proposal.

  ‘Thank you, Dick. I’d like that very much,’ she replied.

  And that, quite simply, was that. A no nonsense, no fuss proposal, just as Phyllis would have wanted. Why she accepted, without ever having spent any time alone with Dick, is hard to know. Yet for all her struggling with independence, perhaps Phyllis knew that ultimately her future would need to include a husband. If no man had stepped forward until now, then why not choose a man who had protected her, had taken care of her and who had slowly allowed his admiration of her as a teenager to grow into a longing as she reached her twenties?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘Met Him in France, Left Him in Venice’

  Though hills and valleys never meet, it is true that human beings, good and bad, often cross each other’s path.

  ‘The Two Travellers’, Grimm’s Fairy Tales

  ‘I’m no longer Pig! How I will miss being Pig!’

  Sitting in her nightdress, at the little table on the balcony of Dick’s Paris apartment, Phyllis was writing out her luggage labels before their early start.

  ‘Phyllis Pearsall. Mrs Richard Pearsall. I like it, Dick, thank you. I shall keep it. For ever.’

  Dick snored.

  Phyllis unsealed the telegram from her father again to see if there was anything her mother had missed or chosen not to read out to her. Her father had still addressed it to Miss P.I. Gross, and even in the future he never contemplated calling his daughter Mrs Pearsall.

  But no. It still simply said: MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES.

  No love and no luck for me or Dick, Phyllis thought.

  This was the first day of their married life together. 1927. Her pen paused. Like every girl who marries an older man, Phyllis flinched at the realisation that her future was held hostage by a wiser being, who would use his own life as a template for her future experiences, and who would never understand how to treat her as an equal. She flicked the thought away. For life? The mess, the misery and the emotional muddle that had twisted itself around her parents’ union had left her with a scepticism that was years ahead of its time. To come from a broken home had provided her friends with enough salacious gossip to spread around the world twice. Then on top of that to have an alcoholic mother who had dragged an American lover around before making an honest man of him, and a father who flitted from hostess to hostess, gave rise to steamy anecdotes that became as common as olives at a cocktail party.

  Phyllis was not in love. No matter. As long as she had a paint box under her bed at night and her prayers for fine weather were answered, then she could be happy. None of her friends or family ever saw her wear a wedding ring, and if an engagement ring existed, she must have discarded it early on in her marriage.

  Love is barely touched upon by Phyllis in any of her writings or her art – except when she refers later in life to the collective love of her company and its staff. Rather than being afraid of commitment, it is as if she has been an unwilling witness for so many years to so many scenes of overwrought and destructive love between her parents that she shies away from what she believes is the inevitable pain that comes with being in love.

  Today, her independent attitude would not be given a second thought, but back then, when a woman was defined by the man she married, Phyllis was a feminine outcast. She had not inherited her mother’s ability to feign neediness or reel in suitors with endearing signs of feminine weakness, nor was she tempted to do so. It wasn’t a lack of anything. She just didn’t have the need to feel adored, to surround herself with fawning young men. Yet like Bella, her approach to sexuality was straightforward. At times she appeared coldly indifferent to sex and at others a confident predator.

  As a little girl, she had told her mother that when she grew up she wanted a big family. ‘Three, perhaps?’ Bella had suggested. Phyllis had shaken her head. ‘Twelve. I want twelve children, please.’

  Even then, Phyllis had seen the tears in her mother’s eyes as she retreated into the nursery and quietly shut the door on Sandor’s shouting.

  ‘Show me your farm children,’ Bella would say, laying her hands on their heads, trying to wobble a smile as she did so. Or she would pull back her skirt to kneel down on the rug with them and hum away as they all sketched pictures in their drawing books.

  Mama was always safe as long as she was with us. Twelve children, Phyllis had thought as a girl, would be more than enough protection for me. Yet fifteen years later, she was not so sure that the man she was now staring at, her husband, would be the father of her children.

  ‘Children?’ she would say to anyone who asked in later years if her career had got in the way. ‘No, they just didn’t happen.’

  Dick’s face, she noted, was as gentle as a baby’s whe
n he slept; his frown marks were nowhere to be seen and his mouth lay open and relaxed.

  ‘I have married kindness,’ she said to herself.

  Yet what a strange way for a young woman to refer to a man with whom she had happily shared a bed on the first night of their wedded life together – but who had made no move to consummate the marriage. Was Richard Pearsall a homosexual? There is no evidence to suggest that he was. Apart from having a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, there would have been no pressure on Dick to conform by marrying, especially in the laissez-faire circles of Paris.

  A kiss on the forehead – that was all he gave her. Look – no hands, Phyllis had thought. That single gesture only emphasised how alone she felt as she turned in Dick’s tumbly soft bed, to face the window. Whatever his amorous intentions towards Phyllis before they married, once they had been made man and wife, he chose to remain celibate.

  The biggest irony must have struck Phyllis then. Daughters are traditionally supposed to seek husbands who are the very image of their fathers, yet Dick had none of Sandor’s sexual rapacity nor strengths – his arrogant charm, his infectious energy or his passion for attacking life with both hands.

  Rivalry with this shy, lanky artist would never have occurred to Sandor. Any man, he believed, who was still scratching around for money at the age of thirty-seven, even worse, making a living as a mediocre painter, deserved to be left behind. His family may have been monied Irish stock, but Sandor didn’t understand his sort and for once, he kept that information to himself. In time, eight years to be precise, his daughter would realise that she didn’t understand them either.

  ‘Poor Dick.’ That’s what people would say, long after his dark shadow had faded out of the Gross family photograph. He had found himself rather taken by Phyllis and Tony’s peculiar brand of young Bohemian eccentricity in Paris, but unlike many of their contemporaries, it was no affectation. It was a family lunacy.

  His eyes could not rest for one minute on his faraway mother-in-law who laughed like an angel but whose smile trembled with fear. Beautiful, he thought, but thank Dear God she is not mine to handle. If Bella ever allowed Dick to interrupt her continuous sing-song chatter, she would stare at the top of his dark hair as if it was infested with fleas, or wander off into another room, humming and evidently bored.

  Dick had never stuttered or fumbled with etiquette but there was something about the Gross family that made him do both. No matter that he was taller, younger and better educated than Sandor, he paled in the presence of his father-in-law and so chose to leave any major conversations to his gregarious wife.

  Luckily for Dick, Sandor was not the typical British father when it came to the pressure he might have exerted on Dick to keep his daughter in the manner to which she had become accustomed.

  ‘Good money has been spent on the finest education for my daughter. I made my own wife earn her own living – why shouldn’t Phyllis? There are no meal tickets in this family.’

  Two days before their wedding, Phyllis had flown home to London as she told friends, ‘to marry Tony’s considerate artist friend Dick, who for long had wooed me.’

  Some might argue that their odd coupling was one of convenience. Here he was, a close friend of Tony’s, and so by association his character (if not his career) were approved of by Mr and Mrs Gross.

  Bella had relayed the story of her traumatic marriage so many times, it was as if it was haunting her and she always ended in a light voice of warning to Phyllis: ‘Finding a man one’s parents like is half the battle.’

  The 11 a.m. ceremony at Chelsea Register Office, Phyllis later described as ‘drab’ and unlike most brides she never elaborated about the occasion, other than to say that she carried sprigs of white heather. No photos were taken. Indeed, there were no dramas, or tears or hiccups, simply because no family were invited.

  It had been Dick’s idea, not her own. Keeping them away, out of spite, was not her style. The unconditional love she had for her parents was unusually strong. Even if it meant the likelihood of them running amok on her special day, she would have loved to have turned around to see her father give a wink as he stood upright in his American cashmere suit, and her mother, her head leaning on Alfred’s pinstriped shoulder, wearing a gorgeously soft cream hat laden with fresh gardenias.

  ‘Brush your hair. Don’t forget a touch of lipstick – but not too dark as it will make you look washed-out. And what about wearing those little pearl-drop earrings your grandmother gave you?’

  Bella may not have been there to ease any fears the bride may have had, but that morning as Phyllis smoothed on her new stockings and took her navy-blue georgette dress off its hanger, she heard her voice just the same. It was at times like these – times of significance, when Phyllis could have slammed the door on her future if she had truly wanted to – that in a strange sort of self-punishment, she instead chose to press on and face things alone.

  Those moments of solitude allowed her to breathe in composure and to reflect on her loneliness. Lonely and alone were two separate worlds for Phyllis.

  ‘I was never alone. There were friends and, of course, there was always Dick.’

  Acquaintances, friends, relatives, neighbours, business clients – somehow people felt the need to wriggle and nudge their way in and out of her life, sucking up her time in the hope that her bright happiness would bury itself in their skin too.

  Just as she was about to be invited into another, unknown family, her happiness was weakened by a swelling gloom. If getting married had been the ultimate attention-seeking device, to shake her parents into saying, ‘Phyllis, why ever do you want to get married? My, how we miss you! Come and live at home, darling – and stay here with us,’ it had not worked.

  Had Phyllis truly wanted her family present, she possessed enough driving charm to persuade Dick. This wedding was another Roedean, another Fécamp. Phyllis had accepted Dick’s proposal not because she wanted to, but because it was what had to be done. It was what every parent wanted and every daughter. And if not Dick, then who?

  Dick had said he didn’t want any fuss. So, averse to any disagreements, Phyllis had acquiesced. Just as she did with her father, she tried so very hard to keep him happy and in a gentle mood. Anyway, most new brides would have believed that this was a romantic gesture of Dick’s – let’s just do it, you and me. Sadly, what Dick really meant was, You are about to become my wife, take on my name and my family. You do not need anyone else now.

  A few months into their marriage, Phyllis saw that, little by little, Dick was prising away her fingers that gripped tightly on to her mother’s hand. Of course, had his motives been purely unselfish and he had genuinely fretted about the chaos and distress her parents brought into Phyllis’s life, then it might have been forgivable. However, Dick resented the instant magnetic pull that Phyllis responded to when her mother or father needed her help.

  After the ceremony, the mistake the newly-weds then made was to walk to Bella and Alfred’s house, at 31 Tite Street to announce their news.

  Bella opened the front door on the latch and announced in a high squeaky foreign maid’s voice, ‘Mr and Mrs Alfred Orr are not at home.’ She then slammed the door.

  Phyllis knocked again. ‘Mama, it’s me and Dick. We just got married.’

  Bella opened the door. ‘Thank God. I thought you were the bailiffs. Darlings, get inside quickly – NOW!’

  She dragged the pair into the house and fussed with the double lock.

  Bankruptcy had thrown the house into chaos. The couple stepped carefully through the hallway where mink coats were piled on top of Sammy the canary in his Regency birdcage, and William & Mary tallboys stood draped with Persian rugs, while silver mirrors, tea sets, cutlery, candlesticks and fruit bowls had been thrown into tea chests.

  ‘We have overspent,’ Bella sighed, as she wafted through the treasure. ‘Alfred and I have been holding out, but I know they are coming any day now. My poor home made into a fortress. All my worldly belongings
to go again . . .’

  ‘Mama, Dick and I got married.’

  ‘Oh, darling, how marvellous! You can both help us out. But first, let’s celebrate! Alfred, put some clothes on. We’re going out!’

  The unlikely foursome of Phyllis, Dick, Bella and Alfred enjoyed a wedding breakfast of spaghetti and Chianti at an Italian restaurant on the King’s Road. The bill was paid by Dick.

  ‘Darlings, we are grateful,’ said Bella, looking at the empty wine bottles the waiters were removing from the table, ‘now we are at poverty’s door. This may be our last sustenance in a long while. But please will you help us out and store a few of our possessions at your place, Dick?’

  Dick’s studio in Clapham was already tightly cluttered. His new wife squeezed his hand hard.

  ‘Of course.’

  The next scene was one of such pantomime that it is best kept in its original form. On their return to 31 Tite Street, they found the house overflowing with men scurrying in and out with clipboards. The bailiffs had arrived, courtesy of the foreign maid who, when she realised what she had done, had fled – not to be seen again for a week.

  Dick expected his mother-in-law to be flung into an hysterical rage but was rather impressed when she took control of the situation with an award-winning performance.

  Bella stood on a chair in the hallway and clapped her hands.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, may I have your kind attention? Let me introduce you to my children.

  ‘This is their deeply moving wedding day. As you can see, we were right in the middle of sorting out their things to take away. The chinchilla cape for the bride, the golf clubs for my son-in-law. All that silver of course, and the mirrors, and the chairs in the corner there. My, aren’t you a lucky pair! Dick – why don’t you carry out those tallboys, the wonderful present from your father-in-law – who collects furniture, as you know – and we’ll all help you load your new things into a taxi-cab.’

  Then she turned to the bailiffs and smiled sweetly. ‘Why don’t you all run along and return in the morning to see what’s what then?’