The Moon’s a Balloon

by David Niven

  When I had last seen him, we had lunched together at ‘The Cock ‘n Bull’ on Sunset Boulevard and he had been quite definite in his prognostications that Neville Chamberlain and his government were leading us all unerringly into war.

  Now he was appointed to a job in Naval Intelligence in Paris, though he later had a misunderstanding with Winston Churchill who was never on his wavelength. He was for the moment installed in a beautiful apartment in the Place Vendome.

  I went to see him one evening. The apartment was filled with a mixture of French and British diplomats and a sprinkling of officers in uniform. One of them, a very tall R.A.F. Group Captain, cornered me and introduced himself by the name of Pope. ‘It might amuse you,’ he said, ‘but that character you played in Dawn Patrol was me!—and I still have the pyjamas.’

  Pope told me that I was probably too old to be taken on and trained as a fighter pilot but thought I might get fitted in elsewhere in the Service. I was only twenty-nine so this came as a rude shock. However, he recommended that I go to see John Acheson, the Air Attache, at the Embassy, and I presented myself promptly, the next morning.

  ‘No way to join up here in France,’ said Acheson, ‘you’ll have to get to England…keep your mouth shut and I’ll, get you on the mail plane—it goes every evening.’

  He signalled me later in the day and I found myself clasping my suitcase, sitting on a pile of mail bags and gazing down on, of all things, the white cliffs of Dover topped by those ghastly Citadel Barracks.

  It was a gloomy, grey, drizzly evening in late October and as the pilot circled over Hendon aerodrome, I caught my first glimpse of the barrage balloons flying like monstrous grey toys over the city. I had not let anybody know I was coming and by the time I found Grizel’s studio flat in Chelsea, it was black-out time.

  We sat for hours and she brought me up to date. Max had joined my father’s old regiment, the Berkshire Yeomanry and was billeted underneath the grandstand of Newbury Racecourse.

  Joyce was making camouflage nets and driving for the Women’s Volunteer Service and, pointing down at her own coarse blue trousers, Grizel said, ‘I’ve joined the Chelsea Fire Service.’

  Max lent me his little flat in Queen Street and, after contacting a few friends and being given a great deal of conflicting advice, I set about the business of getting into uniform myself. There seemed to be a certain amount of difficulty over this because it was the time of the ‘phoney war’. The Navy, indeed, was fully involved but the R.A.F. was confined to dropping leaflets on the Germans suggesting politely that it would be much wiser for them to quit before they got hurt and the Army was stagnant on the Belgian border. All reservists had been called up, plus sufficient classes of conscripts.

  An added snag was that my face was all over London. Dawn Patrol and Bachelor Mother were enormously successful and the publicity department were excelling themselves. Everywhere, I was grinning out of newspapers or leering down from billboards. It was impossible to go unnoticed and the press quickly caught up with me.

  To save myself from endless harrying, it seemed wiser to get the whole thing done at once so I telephoned Goldwyn’s representative and, still being Hollywood-minded, I allowed him to arrange a press conference with one or two newspapers. He set it up in the Odeon Cinema, in Leicester Square, and over a hundred reporters and photographers showed up.

  I explained that I had come to join up and added that I hoped to get into the R.A.F.

  The next morning Grizel called in a state of shock. When I read the front pages, I wanted to cut my throat.

  HOLLYWOOD’S FIRST RECRUIT!

  RELAX! THE DAWN PATROL IS HERE!

  NIVEN SPURNS ARMY!…IT’S THE R.A.F. FOR ME!

  I stayed hidden with friends in the country for a week to give things time to settle down and then visited the Air Ministry to make enquiries…On the way, I noticed with rising panic that the ‘ads’ for Bachelor Mother had been altered…above my name, red stickers had been added—

  THE STAR WHO CAME HOME TO JOIN THE R.A.F.

  I was directed to the office of a certain Group Captain. Unfortunately, I was swept into it on the crest of a giggling wave of secretaries, clutching pieces of paper and pencils.

  The man restored order and eyed me with distaste. He knew who I was. Unless he had been blind he couldn’t have avoided it. Nevertheless, he went through the motions of asking my name and occupation and what I wanted to do.

  ‘Ever heard of Wilfrid Lawson?’

  ‘Yes…he’s a wonderful actor.’

  ‘Maybe…we took him on and we’ve had trouble, nothing but trouble ever since…Drink.’

  I said, ‘Look—all sorts of people drink, but I’ve come seven thousand miles at my own expense and I’d like to join the R.A.F.’

  ‘So I’ve read,’ he said nastily, ‘but we don’t encourage actors to join this service.’

  For a moment I sat there stunned, then I felt anger rising from the soles of my feet.

  ‘Then fuck you!’ I said.

  ‘Get out of my office,’ he shouted. ‘Get out!’

  We were standing toe to toe when an inner door opened and an Air Commodore appeared.

  ‘What the devil’s going on in here?’

  ‘And fuck you too!’ I shouted unreasonably and made for the door and the giggling crowd outside it.

  A week passed. I heard that Henry Clowes, who had nearly been killed five years before when the Guinness label Bentley overturned on Salisbury Plain, was now Adjutant of the Scots Guards. Philip Astley was separated from Madeleine Carroll and he offered me a room as a paying guest in his flat at the top of Hay Hill.

  ‘It won’t work,’ he said, ‘they have blinkers on about the theatrical profession in the Brigade—look at me—I was Adjutant of the Life Guards when I got engaged to Madeleine, but I was out of the regiment before I married her—don’t try it—it’s a waste of time.’

  I did try it and I asked Henry Clowes if he could get me into the Scots Guards.

  ‘No problem at all,’ said Henry when I warned him about the footlight barrier—‘that was in peace time. I’ll talk to the Colonel tomorrow—and phone you at once.’

  Another week passed so I called Henry at Wellington Barracks.

  ‘It didn’t work, did it?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m terribly embarrassed,’ said Henry. ‘No, it didn’t.’

  Goldwyn’s representative called me daily.

  ‘Look, Dave, I’ve got about thirty offers for you on my desk—shall I forward them to Mr. Goldwyn?’

  I was in no mood to be tampered with by the end of November when David Kelburn, now a full lieutenant just back from a North Atlantic convoy, told me the naval facts of life.

  ‘Of course you can get into the Navy tomorrow if you want to—as a stoker—but you want to be an officer; don’t you?…Well, that means standing in line with thousands of people who know about the sea…little things like navigation. Go back to your old regiment.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m going to change my butcher. I don’t want a lot of childish black marks hanging over me today.’

  We were having a late supper on the balcony of the Cafe de Paris…I stared gloomily down on the dancers. Most of the young men were in uniform, the cavalry men with colourful stripes on their pants and chain-mail on their shoulders and the exotic Rifle Brigade and 60th who wore green patrols with black patent leather cross belts and silver buckles, the newly commissioned, proud but selfconscious in drab khaki. Many R.A.F. and naval officers were also present.

  Suddenly, the orchestra leader stopped the music and Poulsen, the owner, stepped forward…’Ladies and gentlemen, in case anyone is interested, the air raid warning just sounded.’ Such was the effect of the ‘phoney war’ that this announcement was greeted with cheers, hunting cries and cat-calls…in ten seconds it was forgotten.

  Less than a year later, at the height of the blitz, a bomb shrieked through the roof and exploded on the dance floor, killing Poulsen, nearly all the orch
estra and a tragic percentage of the dancers.

  David got up to speak to some friends and I was left looking jealously at a table of R.A.F. pilots and their girls immediately below me. Although I was sitting unobtrusively in the balcony, they noticed me and raised their glasses, perhaps mockingly, perhaps not, but I was so selfconscious about the blaring publicity of my arrival in the country that I preferred not to speculate. One girl had her back to me. She too, was in the powder-blue uniform of the R.A.F. She turned and looked up. Long blonde hair fell away and I found myself gazing into a face of such beauty and such sweetness that I just stared blankly back.

  Her complexion was so perfect that the inevitable description, ‘English Rose’, would have been an insult. Her eyes were the merriest and the bluest I had even seen. She looked at me for a long moment and when she got up to dance, I saw that she was tall with a divinely willowy figure.

  I had a funny feeling that I would never forget her and in my mind, she became marked down as ‘the W.A.A. F.’.↓

  ≡ Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

  I was shaken out of my musings by a rude voice behind my chair. I turned to see a beefy young man in army uniform. He was swaying slightly.

  ‘When are you going to win the war single-handed?’ he asked.

  A girl was plucking ineffectually at his sleeve. To avoid him, I looked again down on the scene below. A hefty shove in the back nearly embedded my front teeth in the table top.

  ‘I’m talking to you Niven,’ said the young man. ‘Please, Sidney,’ said the girl. ‘You promised not to.’

  ‘Piss off, Janet,’ said Sidney, loudly.

  Heads were turning and I could see even more unpleasant publicity looming ahead. Luckily, David arrived with some naval reinforcements and Janet led a glowering Sidney back to his table.

  ‘I don’t know why you rush it,’ said David, ‘the bloody war will probably last a hundred years anyway…everybody’s waiting to get into uniform—you’re not the only one.’

  ‘My name’s Jimmy Bosvile.’ I looked up and saw, in the darkness of the night club, what I took to be a small wiry, elderly subaltern, wearing khaki with black buttons.

  ‘I was with an air commodore this morning who was talking about your visit to his office the other day…how splendid! I wish I’d been there.’ Bosvile sat down and I filled his glass.

  ‘Having trouble finding a home are you?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come to the Rifle Brigade?’

  ‘You couldn’t get me in to the ladies’ lavatory in Leicester Square,’ I said, sourly.

  He laughed. ‘I happen to command the Second Battalion:’

  Only then did I notice that one of the pips on his shoulder was a crown…a lieutenant colonel.

  So it was arranged. I told him very briefly of my previous military history and he said, ‘You’ll be commissioned as a second lieutenant, but put your two pips up anyway. Mark Kerr is my adjutant, he’ll write and tell you what you’ll need in the way of kit…When you’ve got it together, come down to Tidworth. I’ll expect you in about three weeks.’ He smiled and we shook hands.

  The Rifle Brigade! Probably the most famous of all the elite light infantry regiments in the British Army…Army again…oh! well…the die was now cast. I had achieved what I had set out to do several weeks before in California…I had a strange feeling of anti-climax.

  Philip Astley was himself waiting to be called up in some capacity. Some ten years older than me, he was doubtful what jobs could be found for him. ‘Ever been to a war cemetery?’ he asked, ‘it doesn’t matter what war or which army…the average age on those crosses is about twenty…it’ll be the same this time.’

  When instructions arrived, I visited a recommended tailor. While he was measuring me for my uniform, I asked him, ‘How’s business in these days of drastic clothing rationing??

  ‘Very slow, sir, very slow indeed…of course, it’ll pick up nicely once we start having heavy casualties.’

  I decided to visit my club. My brother and Brian Franks and others had insisted that I join during my last visit to England. My name had been put down and some months later, I had been duly elected to Boodle’s. Mr. White, Mr. Boodle and Mr. Brooks all kept coffee houses in St. James’s Street in the days of the Prince Regent. The horse racing, gambling ‘bloods’ had frequented White’s, the politicians—Brooks’s, and Boodle’s had been the haunt of the landed gentry. Upon the demise of the owners, these coffee shops became clubs.

  It is arguable which, today, has the most attractive interior but Boodle’s, with its cream-coloured columns and bow windows certainly has the most beautiful face.

  Davy, the hall porter, showed me round the premises at eleven o’clock one morning. The perfect club servant, he had spent his whole life in Boodle’s since he had started there as a page.

  ‘Of course, some of my older members are a little awkward nowadays, sir…they don’t take to the rationing at all, sir…luckily Chef can still put on a good table because so many of my members bring game from home…’

  He prattled on as he showed me the beautifully proportioned rooms. ‘Of course, the Scarlet Pimpernel, he was a member, sir, and all his gang too…Very exciting times those must have been, sir.’

  He showed me a secluded corner of the main room. Large, leather chairs, discreetly separated one from the other, were placed beneath portraits of former members, Prime Ministers, Dukes and Masters of Foxhounds. ‘In this corner, some say Beau Brummel used to sit looking out into the street though personally I fancy he belonged to Whites…this is the silence corner, sir…in here my members speak only to the waiters, never to each other.

  ‘Welcome to the club, sir, we’ve never had a movie star in Boodle’s before.’ He withdrew.

  No other members were about at that hour so I settled myself in the silence corner with a weekly magazine and rang the bell. The waiter brought me my glass and tidied up an ashtray: without looking up he whispered, ‘I took my wife to see Bachelor Mother last night, sir…you’re her favourite fan. Lovely pictures of you and Miss Rogers in all the papers today, sir.’

  I had seen them. The film had just gone on general release and once more, I was staring out of the movie pages from enormous advertisements. From the silence corner, I had an interesting view of the passers-by in St. James’s Street. Always fascinated by the expressions of people who do not know they are being observed, I was too occupied to realise that I was myself being examined, with some distaste, by an elderly gentleman with a white walrus moustache. He stood right over me and flapped at me with a newspaper, a sort of fly-removing underhand flick.

  ‘Hhhrrrump!’ he said. I looked up at him.

  ‘Hhhrrrump!’ he went again and flicked once more.

  I wondered if he wanted me to throw him a fish.

  He ‘hhhrrrumped’ and flicked at me for quite a while and finally subsided angrily into a leather chair directly facing mine. There he breathed heavily, and furious, intolerant, upper-class eyes stared out at me malevolently from beneath cotton wool eyebrows.

  I tried to concentrate on my magazine but the tension between us was oppressive. At last, he appeared to relax somewhat. He sat back and opened his newspaper.

  Suddenly, he sat bolt upright as though he had sat on a nail. He stared appalled at the paper in front of him, then very slowly, like eighteen inch guns in a warship, his horrified gaze zeroed in on me. His eyes never left my face as he rang the bell beside his chair.

  ‘Bring me a list of members,’ he commanded with the voice of doom. ‘Very good, m’lord.’

  Those terrible orbs bored into me till the members’ list was brought to him on a silver tray. Before he opened it he took one last look at his paper, then his fingers travelled up and down the pages. The waiter hovered, nervously. Finally, the old man closed the list with a snap, looked at me for fully a minute, then let out a long moaning sound of deep despair—treachery! treachery! it said.

  He turned to the waiter and trying to keep his voice steady, said bra
vely, ‘Double brandy—quick!’

  ‘I enjoyed that very much,’ said a naval lieutenantcommander, with a pleasant ruddy face and a broad smile. ‘That’s our oldest member. He hates people sitting in his chair.’

  I had moved out of silence corner in a hurry and a few members were now filtering in. Over drinks and luncheon he told me he was in Naval Intelligence ‘probably stuck in the Admiralty for the duration’. Ian Fleming was his name and we laughed together at the same things for years to come.

  While I was gathering my necessaries together for a second military career, I found Trubshawe.

  He was still living at Barton, waiting, like so many others, to be called up, but his marriage to Margie was foundering and he was being comforted increasingly by the solicitous Mrs. Tower.

  Ditchley Park, in Oxfordshire, was the beautiful home of Nancy and Ronnie Tree.

  Nancy was a cousin of Norah Flynn and Ronnie had lately distinguished himself by being one of the small band of rebel Conservative M.P.s who had voted with Winston Churchill against Chamberlain at the time of Munich. They invited me for the weekend and in the lovely house, decorated with sublime taste by Nancy, I was to spend some of my happiest times. For some reason I returned on Sunday afternoon instead of Monday morning. Philip had also gone away so I was surprised when I let myself into the flat to find myself greeted by a minute Yorkshire terrier. Further shocks awaited me when I heard strange cries coming from the bedroom. I tipped down the passage and peered round the open door.