A sleeping disorder is a physiological misfortune. It can happen to anyone, like cancer, or heart disease. Chrissie bore her condition uncomplainingly. But she fell prey to a different ill luck, the sort that should have been avoidable. It emerged in the choice – or perhaps rather the imposition on her – of the people paid to look after her interests. The famous attract hangers-on in the way a coat picks up burrs. Chrissie hadn’t been famous for long but she had somehow accumulated a retinue of people larger than the neediest showbiz veteran’s. I had evidence of this when Nat Fane introduced me to her at Television Centre. She was surrounded, as I initially thought, by friends, who turned out mostly to be hired ‘assistants’ of one stripe or another. A manager, Bruce Haddon, orchestrated this party like Count Dracula with his brides, always sniffing the air for their next feed. Accountants, agents, public relations executives, and – for all I know – food tasters and soothsayers milled around, claws out, a squadron of winged Furies ready to pounce on anyone daring to approach their mistress. The only employee one saw doing a demonstrably useful job was Ken, her driver, who also happened to be the least self-important of all her staff.
Chrissie did have real friends, of course, most of them from school. One must remember how recent those schooldays were – the dew of youth was still on her. She had been born in December 1940, in Bromley, at a time when its citizens would have been among the first to hear the drone of the Luftwaffe’s bombers approaching London. The youngest of three daughters, doted upon by her parents Reg and Sonia, she grew up in an unlyrical neighbourhood with unexceptional prospects. She was working in a cafe on the high street when a talent agent spotted her: he must have thought it the find of his life. If such a discovery had occurred in 1950 fame might have come calling, but it would have taken its time. In 1960, with television colonising so many living rooms, Chrissie Effingham went from unknown to face of the moment almost overnight. As well as portrait stills in magazines she was being beamed into people’s homes, initially in teen-aged ensembles, then spectacularly in an advertising campaign for a well-known brand of bread. In a matter of days she became ‘That Girl’.
After the evening at Television Centre I met her once more. We had a fry-up breakfast at a cafe in Islington, where she had reverted, without effort, to the girl next door: she wore a sweater and ski pants, her face barely made up. None of the clientele recognised her. She chatted about her parents (she had plans to buy them a house), her friends back in Bromley, her dog Alfie. There was talk of her going to work in New York, and the whisper of a film role at Ealing. She had much to live for. A week later I ran into her manager, who was furious about this ‘unscheduled’ meeting with Chrissie, or, as he called her, ‘my client’. It seemed that he expected his permission to be sought for any social engagement, even one that meant just dropping in on someone – as Chrissie had on me. And yet this self-appointed custodian of her time had the last laugh. Following a heated exchange between us he vowed that I’d ‘never see Chrissie again’. On that score, it grieves me to say, he kept his word.
She will be mourned, as the loss of any promising young woman might be. One suspects that more will come to light about the circumstances surrounding her death. For now, I want to remember not That Girl on the TV but that girl who, in Nat Fane’s words, ‘simply cheered you up by walking into the room’. I want to remember her here, in the flat where I write this, performing a little shimmy to Dexter Gordon’s ‘I Was Doing All Right’. The expression on her face was eager, poised on the verge of a smile. She was happy. She was doing all right.
Freya Wyley
Freya watched Nat, cross-legged in an armchair, hand over his brow as he read the piece. She had finished it in the ash-grey light of dawn and later telephoned him at Albany; he agreed to come over. It was now late on Monday morning, and the papers, scattered on her floor, were exultant with shock. MODEL FOUND DEAD IN MAYFAIR FLAT. Most of them had used the stock photograph of her hurrying down a street wearing a thin stone-coloured mackintosh, looking away from the camera.
Nat nodded, gazing at the typed pages. ‘It’s strong stuff … “Brides of Dracula”? They’ll spit feathers when they read it at Haddon Management.’
Freya stared at him. ‘But is that all? I wanted it to say something about her, and how lovely she was.’
‘And you do, it’s very tender,’ he said, thoughtful still. ‘I’m glad you mention me … but wouldn’t you like a quote of mine with a little more sparkle?’
‘The piece isn’t about you, Nat. And I like what you said anyway – it’s just how I felt about her.’
Nat tipped his head in acquiescence. They had met each other on the doorstep in a mood of forlorn bewilderment. Nat’s agent had telephoned him with the news. Apparently the concierge in Chrissie’s building had heard her dog whining inside her flat and gone to investigate at about four in the morning. Having received no reply to his knock he let himself in, and found her lying lifeless on her bed. The police had been called, and an ambulance soon followed. An array of prescription drugs was found on her bedside table.
‘The signs are that she took an accidental overdose,’ said Nat.
‘So they don’t think that she –’
Nat took her meaning with a heavy shrug. ‘We must hope not. But one can never be sure. The autopsy report should clear it up.’
A gloomy silence intervened. They had talked about her to a standstill. Freya rolled a cigarette and lit it. Nat, glancing at his watch, said, ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
She blew smoke from the side of her mouth. ‘I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, which I cancelled. I couldn’t face it after all this.’
‘Oh?’
‘Just a touch of anaemia.’
‘Hmm. You are looking a little peaky.’ He got up and stood at the window, gazing out. ‘Extraordinary place you’ve chosen to live …’
‘We can’t all afford Albany.’
‘I swear to you, on my way here I saw a chimney sweep and his boy, sooty faces and all. Merry Islington! I know you deplore the modern craze for building, but this place – it’s like Dickens still lives.’
‘I like it,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s a good neighbourhood for writers, this square in particular, as I was saying at the Cosways’ only the other night …’
‘Ah, yes, the grand reunion. And how were your long-lost friends?’
‘Friend – singular. Nancy was … the same girl I always knew. Same warmth, same smile. We talked, and the years between just melted away. And then I fucked the whole evening up.’
‘Oh … what did you do?’ Nat looked eagerly amused.
She sighed, and recounted their argument about Stella in The Hours and Times, and the unpleasant note on which it had ended. As she listened to herself talking she sensed how prickly she must have sounded, and how ungrateful after all that Nancy had done to repair things.
Nat eyed her narrowly. ‘I’m surprised you should have taken offence.’
‘Why? You’ve read the book – Stella’s a bitch.’
‘That is your view of her. I take a different one – and I dare say Nancy does, too. But in any case, aren’t you forgetting something?’
‘What?’
He looked incredulous. ‘The book is dedicated to you, for heaven’s sake! What more proof of her regard do you need – blood?’
Freya looked away; she didn’t really have the heart to defend herself, but she had one more go anyway: ‘That may only have been a decoy, to cover for the harsh truths about my character.’
Nat’s expression had become pitying. ‘I don’t for a moment think you believe that. She wants to be friends again, and for some reason you’re making it as difficult as possible.’ He paused, then went on. ‘And what of him – did you speak?’
‘Briefly. He knows that I detest him.’
‘I wonder how he’s taken the news – he and Chrissie were rather close. Regular dance partners at the Corsair, I’m told.’
Freya stared into the middl
e distance. ‘Isn’t it strange and terrible to be talking about her as someone in the past? This girl, so full of life, just – snatched away.’
Nat turned back to the window; after a long moment of brooding he murmured something, so softly she almost didn’t hear it. ‘She should have died hereafter.’
When she had telephoned the abortion doctor that morning he had asked her whether she wished to make another appointment. She had dithered for a moment, and said no, she would call back later. Her head was in such disarray with the news of Chrissie that she felt herself incapable of making a decision on the spot. She would leave it for a day or two: once the shock to her system had worn off she would know what to do.
When she arrived at the Journal on Tuesday she had a quick scour of the paper, and was puzzled. There were news stories and opinion pieces about Chrissie’s death, with photographs of her looking sad and thin and doomed. But her own piece wasn’t among them. She knocked at Ivan Brock’s door, which was open, and entered.
‘My Chrissie Effingham obit isn’t in.’
‘I know,’ he said neutrally.
‘So it’s being held over till tomorrow?’
He leaned back in his chair and fixed her with a look. ‘No, it’s not. I’m not running it.’
‘What? You’re joking.’
‘’Sfunny, they were the very words that came to mind when I finished reading it. “She must be joking if she thinks she can get away with this.”’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ She felt a sudden heat bloom in her face.
Brock pulled a disbelieving frown. ‘It’s defamation! First you accuse Haddon and his staff of being bloodsuckers. Then they’re “a squadron of winged Furies” –’
‘It’s a classical reference.’
‘I don’t care what it is. But that’s not even the worst –’ He reached into his tray and plucked out the typewritten pages, flicking through them. ‘Here: “Haddon vowed that I’d never see Chrissie again … on that score he kept his word.” You’ve practically accused him of doing away with the girl! He’ll have his lawyers on to us like that, and I wouldn’t blame him.’
‘All I said was Haddon kept his promise that I wouldn’t see Chrissie again – I didn’t say “see Chrissie alive again”.’
‘But you implied it, and he’d sue. We’re not going to get involved in a court case just so you can have cheap shots at a perfectly respectable bloke.’
Freya couldn’t tell which she felt more – incredulous or furious. ‘Cheap shots? What the f— If you’d met Haddon –’
‘I have met him.’
‘Then I’m amazed you can’t tell that he’s a creep. You seem more interested in defending him than you do supporting one of your own writers. Excuse me if I find that hard to understand.’
Brock shrugged. ‘No editor in his right mind would run that piece.’
‘I can think of one or two who would – I might try them.’
‘I’d look at the small print in your contract first,’ he advised.
That tore it. She couldn’t take it elsewhere and risk losing her job; it would be another mark against her as ‘a volatile commodity’, in Barry Rusk’s words. She decided to be conciliatory. ‘All right, then. I’ll take out all the references to Haddon and his crew – it will be a straight tribute to Chrissie, which is after all the point.’
But Brock was shaking his head. ‘We’ve got people working on it now. I’m disappointed with this. It’s too personal, too mixed up with your own feelings about her. There’s no detachment.’ He tossed the pages back onto his tray.
She stared at him. ‘I don’t fucking believe this,’ she almost shrieked, ignoring his moue of distaste at the expletive. ‘I brought you the idea about doing Chrissie weeks ago, and you said, in this very office, that it was a good one and you’d make sure nobody took it off me. Now you’ve not only spiked my piece but you’re doing exactly what you said you wouldn’t.’
‘I think you should calm down,’ said Brock sternly.
‘No, I won’t calm down. You made me a promise, and you’ve broken it. What gives you the right to behave like that?’
‘Lower your voice. I made no promises, nor would I. If you’d been professional about it and written a proper obituary of Chrissie, as instructed, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. And what gives me the right? Take a look there –’ He pointed to the open door and its stencilled sign: EDITOR. ‘What does it say?’
Was he really going to make her recite it, like a fucking tutor? He was waiting, arms folded. She let out a gasp of disgust. ‘You say it. A pity you don’t know how to act like one.’
She walked out, pulling the door behind her.
She half expected him to give her the sack after that, and during the next few days she braced herself for a summons to his office. None came. This leniency did nothing to improve her mood, however. She brooded about his betrayal, and his removal of her from a story she had considered her own. It was doubly sickening because she knew that, had Chrissie lived, she would have been kept writing fluff about her clothes, her celebrity, her latest ad campaign. With her dead, Chrissie was suddenly a bigger proposition, so Brock set his news lieutenants – all men – on the saga, even sending one to the funeral in spite of the family asking for privacy. The autopsy report put a new wrinkle in the mystery: as well as barbiturates, alcohol had been found in Chrissie’s blood, though it was well known that she didn’t drink. An inquest had been called.
Meanwhile, there was the small matter of her pregnancy. Whereas her first three months had presented no outward signs, now she was beginning to show. Twenty-three, twenty-four weeks had gone; still she couldn’t bring herself to telephone for the euphemistic ‘arrangement’, and she knew that with every day that passed the opportunity was narrowing. Partly it was complicated by the shock of Chrissie. She hadn’t known the girl well enough to feel she could wallow in the dam burst of bereavement. Whenever she was caught on the verge of tears she would reprove herself, even out loud: You hardly knew her, for God’s sake. Yet she couldn’t erase Chrissie’s look of hurt that morning at the cafe when she realised that Freya positively didn’t want a child.
But she was also still smarting from the barb Nancy had fired with such accuracy the night of the party, when they argued outside her house. It was true, by any reckoning, that Freya had always left things – school, college, jobs, men – when they didn’t suit her. Her most dramatic desertion, hitherto, was that of eight years ago, when she had packed her bags to leave London, and Nancy, behind. It was a rupture she had hoped would heal, in time, though of course she expected Nancy to do the patching up. And her expectation had been met.
That she, Freya, had contrived to upset the apple cart again was ostensibly down to a wilful misreading of a novel. But there was something else she had to come to terms with – something she could barely admit to herself. It was the possibility that she might be envious of her old friend. It wasn’t envy of her success, exactly. She admired Nancy’s writing and was pleased for her continuing acclaim, though it was slightly galling that her career should have advanced in a way that her own had not, baulked as it had been by bosses and colleagues, of whom Brock had proved to be the latest perfidious example. But no, it wasn’t that. It was more to do with an inkling that the balance of power in their friendship had decisively shifted. She had felt it the moment she and Nancy had come face-to-face with one another. What had taken her aback was Nancy’s poise, her self-confidence as hostess among other self-confident and influential people. This, the woman who had once despaired of being published and of getting a man. She had done both, while Freya had nothing but a child she wanted rid of.
She was half listening to the wireless one evening when the song came on. It was slow-paced, with a shimmering guitar and piano to the fore, allied to a ghostly doo-wop chorus. It didn’t register at first, but once the singer picked up the refrain she knew it for sure.
Are the stars out tonight?
I don’t
know if it’s cloudy or bright,
’Cause I only have eyes for you, dear.
She’d never heard it done like this before, like a fugue, the harmonising voices – black, male, American – crooning through the lyric and lifting it into the ether, where it floated and glimmered, iridescent, like a soap bubble about to pop. It had been a while since she’d thought of the song – she hadn’t played it since that night at Kay’s place in Fiesole, the holiday when Nancy heard that her novel had been accepted. ‘Their’ song, since VE night. She had a sudden longing to bring this new version to Nancy’s notice.
She opened the drawer of her desk and took out a sheet of writing paper. It had been so long since she’d written to Nancy she felt almost shy of starting again.
5 Canonbury Sq., N1
Dear Nancy,
I’ve been meaning to write and thank you for inviting me to your party a few weeks ago. I was so pleased to see you again after all these years, and I’m only sorry that I managed to ruin the night with my tactless and petulant behaviour. As usual it has taken me a while to realise something that would appear obvious to almost anyone else. My prickliness about Stella was misplaced, I see now, and far from creating a fuss I ought to have thanked you for that lovely dedication you made in the book. Nat Fane gave me a rap on the knuckles about that – well earned!
Regarding my ‘condition’, I have been through intensities of dithering you wouldn’t believe over these last weeks. I won’t trouble you with a full account, but certain events conspired to decide me in favour of going through with it. I can’t say that I’m overjoyed at the prospect of being a mother, and in fact I still have moments of blind panic, but in the end the thought of getting rid of it (it?) felt more terrible than the long slog of bringing it forth. I hope I’m not making an awful mistake. You are the first person I’ve told.
Freya Page 45
