Leaving Home

by Anne Edwards

  Everywhere I went, tributes to royal ancestry permeated the great buildings, shrines, and museums. Squat center of the West End of the city spread the massive Buckingham Palace (known familiarly as Buck House) with its twenty-four-hour watch by the palace guard in their tall, black bearskin hats and gold-trimmed scarlet uniforms, their changing a popular rite for the influx of tourists to view. Buck House looked strangely like a government building rather than a palace. In fact, about one-third of its three hundred plus rooms are given over to offices of staff members, and numerous other areas are delegated for state matters and state occasions. There was the fabulous Ball Room where investitures and banquets were held, the impressive Throne Room, State Dining Room, the Ball Supper Room, and the Balcony Room overlooking the front of the palace with a view down the Mall. At times of great occasions the members of the royal family came out on the room’s wide balcony to wave to their subjects. The “royal wave” was an art form learned early in life by them—hand no higher than one’s head, palm open, hand moved as though caught in slow motion—small nod of the head to the one side and then the other.

  Unlike American presidents (who, after all, had only from four to eight years of power), whose relatives mostly lived ordinary lives greatly lacking the luxury of the White House, many of the reigning monarch’s extended family had for years lived in regal splendor and shared occupancy in the various state-owned great houses and palaces in the city—St. James’s Palace, Kensington Palace, Marlborough House, and Clarence House.

  By the time I arrived in London, the Windsors (formerly the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas) were already the longest running soap opera in the history of the world with an aura of both melodrama and scandal. Mrs. Barnes was proud to confide to me that her grandmother and mother had worked as kitchen maids in the households of Edward VII and George V, regaling me with some amazing and fairly scandalous stories (as heard through the soap suds and retold to her). These tales did in no way diminish her love and respect for the monarchy. I found, generally, that the British were in awe of their sovereign but viewed that person as human with foibles that all people experience. They also possessed a curious double standard. It was acceptable for Edward VIII, like his grandfather, Edward VII, to keep a married mistress, but not for him to marry a divorced woman. There were antiroyalists, but not in any great number; the vicissitudes of the Depression, then World War II, and now the work of moving forward into the second half of the twentieth century had bound the people of Great Britain together. In a sense they were all survivors. I held them in great respect—awe, really. When death and destruction had stalked them during the war they held fast. What David had said—that few families had not lost at least one parent, son, daughter, or close relative—I found true. The British had looked to the late King George VI for guidance and felt a great love for him, his wife, and his two young daughters. When, quite suddenly, he died in 1952, it was a severe blow to his subjects. London was almost entirely draped in black, whole buildings covered burka-fashion with only their window-eyes exposed. The extent and length of the mourning nationwide was all-encompassing.

  One bright spot eased the pain of the country’s loss. Young Elizabeth’s coronation was set for June 2, 1953 (she was actually Queen from the moment of her father’s death; this would be the official crowning). Buildings shed their shrouds and were scraped of years of encrusted black coal dust. Storefronts were freshened. The many parks and squares in the city were planted lavishly with brilliant, summer-blooming flowers. Then Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s grandmother, consort of George V, the very symbol of majesty and much beloved by the people, died. By arriving the following year, I had been catapulted into a historic time in Great Britain purely by a set of circumstances I could never have predicted. I found the British a most dependable, stalwart people, and at one point I wrote home to a friend, “In case of sudden catastrophe, fire, flood, earthquake, rise up and shout, ‘Is there an Englishman in the crowd!’ for even if there is only one, I’m certain he—or she—will lead you and all others to safety.” Still, for all their cool courage, the British could not control the weather. England endured rain and grayness for great expanses of the year. Yet, there was a sense of buoyancy about the people, a good dose of panoply and parades to lift one’s spirits, and royal scandal to titillate and amuse.

  The divorced man Margaret loved, Group Captain Peter Townsend, was a former fighter pilot, one of England’s most decorated war heroes and equerry to her father, King George VI, throughout the final eight years of his reign. Peter was fifteen years Margaret’s senior, tall, slim, exceptionally good looking and possessed a memorable face, the kind that stood out in a crowd. It had more to do with an attitude than anything else. As I was relatively soon not only to make his acquaintance but to consider myself his friend, I came to understand Margaret’s attraction. Peter’s flinty gray eyes had a directness that took magnetic hold when he was engaged in conversation. And, unlike most other members of the court, none of the usual stiffness and arrogance of their honored posts existed in his makeup. Peter was not an outsider or of questionable reputation (he had been the injured party in his divorce and had custody of his two sons) as Wallis Simpson had been when Edward VIII chose to give up the throne in order to marry her. During the war Peter had led flight squadrons into what he knew could be harm’s way and staunchly fought to bring them safely through. His wartime heroism, in fact, had made him a national legend. This posed a serious problem for the Queen as many of her new subjects were in favor of her sister’s marriage to one of their country’s great heroes despite the dictates of the Church.

  “That Margaret!” Mrs. Barnes bleated to me. “Got a sure streak of her uncle Edward VIII, she has! My mum saw it in her when she was a young girl of maybe eight or nine and come to visit her grandmother, Queen Mary, may the saints take good care of her! She’d come down to the kitchens in the palace for cookies. The whole downstairs would be in a flap, I’ll tell you! She weren’t supposed to be there. And my mum and the others were not dressed proper for a royal visit—even one from such a young one! ‘No good will come of her,’ my mum told me.” Seldom did Mrs. Barnes, while she lived with us, say a kind word about Margaret. But she did speak well enough about Townsend. “A man can’t help but be took by all that pomp,” she once said. “A man’s just a man, after all.”

  The “affair of the princess and the pilot” remained a topic for discussion and in the press long after I arrived in London. It was a terrible time for the royals and their subjects. A royal soap opera, really. Sister was pitted against sister. The Queen was at a standstill with the Church. There could be no concessions. If Margaret chose to marry Townsend, she would lose her title, her position in the line of ascension to the throne, and her state income and possibly be excommunicated from the Church of England. The young, beautiful princess was in despair, blaming her powerful sister for her adamant stand against the marriage, looking—in the flood of media photos of her—wan and as if she had spent a good deal of time crying. Which, indeed, she most probably did.

  I was facing some dilemmas of my own, although none of them newsworthy. My first draft screenplay was completed and my tenure in London appeared to be coming to a close. The news from the States was not promising. HUAC was still swinging its executioner’s ax, decimating families and careers. Among people I knew there had been one tragic suicide and several unexpected divorces caused by the investigations and the blacklist (where husbands and wives had strong differences on positions a mate took before the Committee, or could not deal with their newly demoted and insecure future caused by the blacklist). Mitchell Gertz sent me a terse, three-word telegram:

  DON’T COME HOME!

  A letter followed explaining that two of his clients had their passports confiscated upon reentering the country. This meant that they could not leave if work was offered abroad. How was I to support “we three”—the kids and me—once the money from A Question of Adultery was depleted if I opted to return home? This was a question that
was not often out of my thoughts.

  I had not squandered the money I had earned. Still, what remained could not sustain us for more than six months if we continued to live on Albion Street. I needed to secure an assignment in London or come up with a story that could be filmed in England, both options a definite challenge. From my struggles with my script on Question I had learned that the English spoke English (or about a dozen curious versions of it—cockney, etc., etc.) and Americans did not speak English—or write it. They spoke sometimes with a Southern drawl, a Brooklyn dialect, or a nasal Boston twang. It might take time to secure work and I would have to radically change our current lifestyle, and also hope to get an extension on my work visa.

  With these troubling musings rattling around in my head, I set off, on a particularly gray day, for Wardour Street in the heart of the district where most of Britain’s film production companies were located (the studios were in outlying Shepperton). I had completed work on Question, but before a film could begin shooting, the screenplay had to be approved by Britain’s Film Censorship Board. I was thus on my way to an appointment with Raymond and some representative members. There appeared to be problems that had to be fixed before the board would grant approval for filming to commence.

  After twice rereading the script (once that very morning), I decided that the Censorship Board might have had an objection to one fairly graphic scene that I called “sex on the sand,” which Raymond had insisted I include, against my better judgment. He had just viewed the American film From Here to Eternity, that contained a highly erotic scene where Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster appear to have sex at the ocean’s edge in wet sand, the waves lapping up on their feet and the lower halves of their bodies. I was indignant. Using another writer’s creativity was highly offensive to me. Also, such a scene would be difficult to place in the script without slowing down the thrust of the story. After all, this was a couple who had been unable to conceive due to the husband’s problem (it being broadly hinted that he was impotent). The audience was surely going to be confused when they saw the two of them going at it like dogs in heat. Additionally, the story was set in London and the surrounding countryside. No ocean, or residual breezes, close at hand. By using the technique of flashback, I finally managed to weave a similar scene up front—taking them on a holiday on the Costa del Sol in the beginning of their marriage. I never liked it and had little regret if it had to go. I also thought the board might be objecting to the use in a clinic scene of close-ups of test tubes supposedly filled with sperm. That had also been Raymond’s contribution, and I knew I could rewrite the scene avoiding the offensive test tubes.

  Raymond, David, and the director, Don Chaffee, an animated, youngish man with an intriguing goatee, arrived at the meeting before me along with three members of the board—two men in black funereal suits, looking like aging clerics, and a woman of indiscriminate age who bore an uncanny resemblance to Margaret Hamilton in full makeup as the Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. The woman had an unfortunate mole on the side of one nostril which moved up and down as she breathed. I had a difficult time averting my glance.

  To my surprise, neither the Spanish scene nor the test tubes were mentioned. It was the language in the courtroom scenes. The word “panties” had been used four times, “intercourse” five times, and “climax” twice. I could not believe what I was hearing. At the end of an hour of haggling I agreed to substitute “underwear” for “panties,” and to cut three mentions of “intercourse” and one “climax.”

  The meeting had already lasted the better part of two hours when I left Raymond, David, and Don still talking to the censors to finalize our compromises. That evening I was attending a dinner party at the Adlers’ and I wanted to spend some time beforehand at home with the kids. When I reached the lobby of the building, it being only 5 p.m., I was startled to find it was pitch black beyond the glass windows at the front of the building.

  “One of a’r black fogs, I’m afride. No taxis,” the cockney doorman told me, holding his hand up as to stop me from leaving the building.

  “I have to get home,” I insisted.

  He shook his head but he lowered his arm.

  “Which way to the tube?” I asked.

  “Left. ’Bout five streets. But I’d sty ’ere if I was you.”

  Disregarding his warning, I opened the door myself and stepped out onto the street and into a thick, soggy blackness. There was an acrid smell that burned my nostrils. Streetlights were dimmed to tiny bug-like specks and did nothing to illuminate one’s path. Silence buzzed in my ears. There were no moving vehicles on the street. I put one stick in front of me to balance myself and probed with the other to make sure there wasn’t an obstacle to trip over. I then took a small step forward, continuing in this mincing manner for several minutes until I saw a beam of light advancing toward me.

  “Stand still,” a man’s husky voice called out. “I’ve got a flashlight. I’ll help you if I can.”

  I froze, and in a moment a rather large face streaked with black soot was staring down at me from a distance of about two feet, the brightness from the arc of his flashlight blinding me for a second or so. He had, during that short time, taken note of my sticks.

  “You shouldn’t be out in this,” he scolded gently. “Where are you going?”

  “To the tube stop.”

  “That’s a bit of a walk—and in this muck . . .” He came alongside of me and put his arm in a supportive way under mine. He was a stocky man, probably in his midyears, dressed in a proper overcoat, a bright red scarf about his short neck. He did not appear to have been drinking, although with the sour taste of the air, alcohol would have been hard to detect.

  “We’ll take one step at a time in rhythm,” he instructed. “One . . . two . . . one . . . two.”

  I placed my trust completely in him and concentrated hard on keeping a straight line within the beam of his flashlight. When we came to the first curb, he placed his arm protectively around my waist and made sure I was steady on my feet. We continued like this for maybe twenty minutes. Both of us so concentrated on what we were doing that no conversation passed between us. Finally, we reached the tube station and he opened the door and guided me inside. I stood for a time and looked around me. The place was packed. When I turned back—my guardian angel was gone, vanished into the impenetrable darkness outside. I never had a chance to thank him, or even to ask him his name.

  The trains were not running. I stood in a long queue to use one of the public telephones so that I could call home. I had forgotten to keep that thrupence in my pocketbook as Raymond’s secretary had advised, but the person next in line handed me one.

  The children were home and safe.

  Almost the entire night passed before the fog began to lift and we were informed that the trains would be moving. Queues for boarding immediately formed. I could not help but imagine that to some degree this must have been what Londoners had experienced during the war when the Underground had sheltered them during the German Blitz. Not all of those who sought its safety made it down the steps as I had. I recalled a memorial plaque on the entry to Bethnal Green Underground Station in memory of the “173 men, women, and children who lost their lives on the evening of 3 March 1943,” while seeking shelter from a German air attack as they descended the steps just moments before entering. This night there was no threat, just precaution. A cheerful mood existed. A man was playing jigs and old English tunes on a harmonica. People were singing along, taking it very much in their stride. Babies cried. The toilets had ten-minute waits. Food vendors were serving free hot tea, but doing a fair business with their snacks. Almost everyone had black smudge on their face and clinging to their clothes. An acrid smell had swept down and through the area. I learned later that Raymond, David, and Don Chaffee had been stuck half the night in the building where we had our meeting along with the Wicked Witch and her companions. I did not envy them.

  What I had experienced was what Londoners called “the bl
ack fog,” caused by the use of coal in heating their homes, offices, and public buildings. This had been happening since the days of Jack the Ripper but was becoming more frequent. Eventually, Parliament passed the Clear Air Act and coal was forbidden to be burned in the city. Time was given for the conversion to other heating and cooking methods. When the bill was finally put into law, I thought about my nemesis, the coal stove that commanded the kitchen on Albion Street. A fitting end for that brute, no doubt. Still, it marked the passing of an era. But that was yet to come. Right now my greatest problem would be to find less expensive lodgings for we three. My decision had been to remain in London, at least for the present time.

  I had come to feel a bond growing between myself and the British. Also, I did not have a job, family, or home to return to in the States. My parents were once again separated, my mother living for the time with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law in Hartford, Connecticut, my father somewhere (I had no address) in Texas. The Rossens were moving to New York and my chances to get a writing assignment in either Hollywood or New York were slim to zero.

  What I knew was that writing constituted my very being. Since youth I had not aspired to be anything else but a wordsmith. In truth, it was the literary path I most wanted to travel, not scriptwriting. I had many ideas for a novel that I started and put down as they never seemed good enough. I worked on character, profiles of people who I might develop. I began one short story after another and, displeased with the results, threw them away.

  My problem, I reasoned, might be that all my stories were set in America, and the people in them, Americans. I tried another approach and began working on sketches of the people I knew, or had observed in England. Meanwhile, I was grateful for a paying assignment given to me by Gerry Adler. My children seemed happy. We three could certainly make it through for the next six months. I decided to remain on Albion Street for a time so as not to disturb their current routine. Mine was also well established. Daytime, I worked on my assignment (a half-hour television adaptation based on the character of the Scarlet Pimpernel). Finally, I came up with an idea that I thought could be developed into that novel I was so anxious to write. Set in England by the sea, it owed a lot to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, if one considered the setting and the story, which was a love story and a mystery. My burgeoning work was, however, about an older woman and a younger man (no drowned or suicidal former wives or lovers involved). I did first drafts on several chapters but the underbelly of emotion that I needed was missing. I had to dig deeper into the English psyche which was in a separate place from my own. This time, I did not trash the pages. Some day, I reasoned, I might want to return to the story and try again.