Afterwards we drove back to Westchester and out to the very expensive yacht club on the Point. We weren’t members but Dad had hired the place for lunch. In keeping with Danish tradition, it was very formal with many speeches and then comic songs written especially about me. Mum and Dad sat Sid next to the Danish ambassador. As he had a Danish wife I suppose they thought he and the ambassador would have some Danish things in common. The ambassador, however, had obviously never been near a black person who wasn’t actually providing some service. It was not something he disguised well and Sid spotted it immediately. The Danish dignitary could clearly think of nothing to say and finally uttered the unlikely phrase, ‘Have we met before?’
To which Sid smiled and replied, ‘It’s hard to say. We all look alike.’
I can’t remember now why I got confirmed. Certainly it wasn’t my parents’ idea. In Denmark, all citizens are automatically a member of the church. I don’t know if it’s still the case but you used to have to apply to Parliament for leave to depart the fold. Dad was so anti-religion that he actually did this, which caused the devil’s own trouble years later when we wanted to bury him in some corner that was for ever Denmark. I think I was already, at that age, battling between individuality and some terrible quest to ‘belong’. To belong to almost anything.
Now, thirty years later, Sid’s store was long gone. While Richard went to do some essential retail therapy, I sat in the sun outside Sid’s old place and flicked through a copy of the local newspaper to try to reacquaint myself with the area. The Westchester County Weekly is a typical suburban broadsheet with huge savings on offer for sports recreation vehicles but it also had a worrying number of sex ads at the back. Were these around when I was a kid? Or had things changed that much? There was a whole section just for Threesomes.
‘Attractive MWC, in their 30s and 40s seek attractive BIF for 1st experience, who is looking for friendship and who enjoys the finer things in life. Must be D/D free.’
I had no idea what any of that meant. I didn’t even know if I qualified as a possible applicant. I didn’t think so but it was hard to be sure. Richard turned up with a three-foot statue of Babe Ruth under his arm.
‘Richard, do you think I’m a MWM or a BWM?’
‘I don’t know, darling, I expect you’re entirely unique.’
As we drove up the Boston Post Road I saw Westchester in a slightly different light. As well as being awash with extremely appealing real estate it was clearly also packed with people seeking something new under the sheets. So much for the quiet calm of the suburbs.
Cathy was always the prettiest, the thinnest and, as far as any of us noticed these things, the richest. Today she is pretty, thin and rich.
So far, with the two women I had met, the notion of elastic social mobility in American life was not proving a strong point. Cathy lives less than a mile from the place where she grew up and no doubt belongs to the same tennis, yacht and golf clubs as her parents. The house could be a million miles from Rita and Ron. There is no antipathy but there is the chasm of a social divide. Where Rita’s house would seem large to a European, Cathy’s house would seem large to anyone. It stands on a wide street that would shriek affluence if anyone in the neighbourhood ever did anything so low as shrieking. The garden is vast enough to swallow up several more properties. Clearly they too have someone else to mow the lawn. The house next door was for sale for $700,000. It was much smaller and had infinitely less ‘yard’. I tried to picture myself living there but failed.
Cathy had married a boy called Billy who had been at high school with us. Rita had been to the house before but it was a long time ago. At first she took us to the wrong place where we met a neighbour. Everyone was laughing as we finally trooped up Cathy’s path. She emerged looking stunning in a stripy top and deep tan. Her husband Billy and two of her daughters were just leaving for the day with their dog.
‘I thought I’d set the dog on you.’ The first words Cathy had spoken to me in maybe twenty-five years. The dog was going mad at the possibility.
We were all amused. I shook hands with Billy and there was much chatter. I suspect everyone concerned was nervous. Cathy told us that one of her three daughters was at rehearsal and it occurred to me that that was the sentence our parents must have used a million times. I gave Cathy and Billy’s youngest child a tin shaped like a London bus. I couldn’t remember if it had toffee or tea in it or indeed why anyone would want such a tin, which I had bought at the airport.
‘How long has it been?’ asked Billy.
‘Nearly thirty years,’ said Rita.
‘Well, for you all!’ snorted Cathy. ‘Because I am only twenty-nine.’
‘You were a mere twinkle in our eye,’ I assured her. Cathy’s house was gorgeous. Rooms spread from other huge rooms. There appeared to be a different sitting room for every mood or activity you might choose. Pensive in the sunroom, crossword-puzzle solving in the sitting room, musical appreciation in the den and on and on. In a large basement room of indefinable use there was a television, which was at least four foot square.
‘It’s great for Nintendo,’ Cathy told me. We were all slightly hyped up to see each other.
‘You look great,’ I said to Cathy, because she always did and I suspect she always will. She looked down at her brown arms and shrugged.
‘Tanning — it’s the only thing I do well. If you do something well you should stick to it. Would you like a drink?’
Billy had also found something he did well at. The handsome young boy had grown up to be in charge of tax exempt securities for Morgan Stanley.
‘Tax exempt securities?’ I said. ‘That must be fascinating. You must be desperate for him to get home and tell you all about his work.’
There was no pause as I made the glorious discovery that the concept of irony was not lost on Cathy. She nodded enthusiastically.
‘Absolutely. He gets in the door and I say “Tell me every little thing about your day.”’ She looked around her huge kitchen in which we were sitting. ‘It’s been very, very good to us.’
Billy and Cathy had dated in high school and then for ten years didn’t see each other until they met again at the tenth Gladys reunion. The Gladyses had met first followed by a high school party which I had missed due to working in pantomime that year.
‘I owe my life to the Gladyses. No question,’ said Cathy.
I asked Cathy for tea.
‘Hot tea?’ she asked as if I had suggested vodka stingers first thing in the morning. I watched her boil the water on the stove. It took for ever.
‘I don’t make tea — work with me here, people.’
Neither she nor Rita has an electric kettle. I decided that Americans are very advanced till it comes to the subject of boiling water. Maybe it’s because they only ever need to use the coffee machine. It was when she made me a second cup by pouring some more from the pot and puffing it in the microwave that I could sense Englishmen turning in their graves. I talked about going to England. About how strange it had been as I had never lived there before.
‘Still,’ I said, ‘England is that bit smaller and that bit easier to excel in.’
Cathy dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘In China you would have done well! Really, a little dark eye make-up and you would have done fine. There are a billion and a half of us — we love her. I saw you on TV one time and you’re talking with a British accent and it seemed so weird to me. I’m yelling at the TV, “Sandra, are you unwell?”’ She paused for breath. ‘I love England. You know, British women have lovely skin because it is so wet and damp over there.’
So far I was batting two out of two for finding others who also thought the year of the Gladyses was important.
‘It was good. We had a lifestyle, we had a menu.’ She paused and then added, ‘None of us named our children Gladys. I find that odd. I don’t remember my junior or my senior year,’ she said. ‘High school was the year of the Gladyses.’
Of course, just like Rita�
��s mother, Cathy had a story to embarrass me.
‘Do you remember when you went up to Wing Foot to be a caddy?’
I am mortified even now. Wing Foot Golf Club was and still is one of the most exclusive clubs in the United States. It is, to paraphrase Mark Twain, where the rich go to have their good walks spoiled. That year my brother, Nick, then fifteen, was making good money working at the club as a caddy. He would go up there at weekends and come back with cash in his pocket. I thought it was a great idea, so I went. Cathy is still wide-eyed with the horror of it all.
‘My brother John comes home and says “Sandi is trying to caddy”. And you kept going up there, kept going up. I don’t know if you could have carried the bag. What did you do?’
‘I just sat on the bench all day. They kept saying no. And the caddy master was so horrible that it just made me more determined. He said to me, “You can’t even come in this room,” but I was very, you know, American rights. So I would go up and sit.’
Cathy was incandescent at my stupidity. ‘Sandi, the only reason caddies are men is because it’s a horrible job. Girls go babysitting because there is no heavy lifting. They should have said to you, only idiots caddy, and you’d have said, “You’re right, I’m out of here.”’
I was not the only one to be teased that afternoon. Rita had had a racy reputation with boys in high school which Cathy set about taking apart as fantasy. Her manners were impeccable. Just when the stories began to become uncomfortable she softened the moment by telling a story against herself.
After high school, like Rita, Cathy had been heading for a theatrical career. Then, while she was at college, out of the blue her father died. This unexpected event left her feeling responsible for her mother and three younger brothers. She had switched immediately from studying theatre to business administration and graduated on a fast track.
‘I just knew I had to start bringing in the cream of wheat. I just felt this overwhelming obligation to help.’
‘Are you sorry?’ I asked.
‘That my father died? Yeah, it bummed me out. It was a big bummer … It sucked.’ We both laughed at her deliberate misunderstanding of my question. She smiled and became serious again. Said she had no choice. That she had grown up ‘in half a minute’. Sitting in her comfortable home she seemed philosophical. ‘It all worked out.’ She sees the horror of show business from her brother-in-law who is a well-known actor. I asked her if she had a job now and she was very clear.
‘I don’t work because I don’t have to. My husband says I am on full scholarship.’ So there she was, content with three kids, a husband and a dog.
She knew that she was not leading a typical American life, that she was fortunate. ‘I am very happy. I have three wonderful children, a dog I can’t stand, I love my husband … if it ended tomorrow, it’s been a great ride.’
I looked at Gladyses Two and Three, the next in line after me. Both had made their children the focus of their lives. I wondered if this was what I was going to find with all the eleven middle-aged women who had once had different dreams and ambitions.
I asked Cathy about the future. About life after the kids had grown up. She talked vaguely about ‘issues’ and ‘getting involved’. She was exercised about a homeless man who had taken to walking around the local area. He had a shopping cart piled high, which he trundled past, as she said, ‘Two to three million dollar homes’. She had a good heart and it obviously bothered her but when I asked her what she intended to do about it, she shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t gotten to that point yet.’
Cathy remembered everything about the year of the Gladys Society. That we took naps on the asbestos curtains lying around on the stage. It was, she said, ‘The happiest time we ever had. Nothing went wrong for us. It was fun, no one. got into any trouble, no one had really hit the real world yet. We always just had the best time. I never felt that connected again.’
The three of us planned a reunion. We said we would eat spaghetti, drink iced tea and play charades as we had done every Friday night that high school year. It would be at Sue and Anne’s old house, which their parents had sold years ago.
‘It’s going to be tough,’ said Rita, who is practical.
‘I’ll rent it,’ said Cathy, who is rich.
We laughed at the idea that it might still not be too late for me to graduate high school. ‘Will you come if they let me?’ I asked her.
‘I’ll laugh my head off,’ she declared. ‘I’ll be in the front row throwing popcorn.’
‘Come into the city and I’ll take you out for dinner?’ I suggested.
‘Yes!’ she said emphatically. ‘Rita? Your mom still on Blossom Terrace?’ It was all very familiar and jovial. ‘Sandra,’ she called as we began to drive away, ‘get rid of that fake accent. It’s not working for you.’
It had been a wonderful afternoon and we had promised much more but I am fairly certain that I will never see Cathy again. I discovered that she had been to Europe and had not looked me up. I think she was really just being polite to someone who had called. Cathy has made a tidy life for herself in which I do not belong.
That evening, quite late, Richard and I made our way to the Algonquin Hotel, one-time home to my comic muse. Richard headed off to make some calls and I was glad to be alone; I needed to think about my trip so far. It was in this legendary hotel that the American writer Dorothy Parker had often strutted her stuff in front of an admiring throng. Here my great-aunt Signe Toksvig had broken bread and martini glasses with Parker and the rest of the Round Table. I sat and thought about Cathy and Rita. I have three children, just like them, but the circumstances have been so different. I had mine after much thought and deliberation with my then partner, Peta. She bore the children and I earned the money. We went through much pain at the hands of the British tabloid press and we are both fiercely protective of our brood. Although we have separated, the children are still the single biggest focus of both our lives. I do not have a husband to put me on scholarship and I suddenly wondered if I minded very much. I miss the kids terribly when I travel. Indeed, it is because of them that more and more I try to find work that allows me to stay at home and still earn the money. So I can make a living to look after them and collect them from school, cheer the netball matches and moan over Latin homework. I have no choice but to keep working, yet I wonder what kind of person I would be if I had to give up my work and stay at home all the time. Great-aunt Signe and her husband, the Irish poet Francis Hackett, never had children. She used to say ‘Our books are our children,’ which, as a child, I thought was immensely noble although it made meal times rather dull. Now, I don’t know what I think.
I sat in the legendary Blue Bar where some of the greatest wits of America once gathered, drank and fell. I was very tired. I felt like the invisible woman. The bar staff in the small and not very blue place are breathtakingly old. They have clearly served many a dry martini straight up with a twist, but not to this woman sitting alone in a corner. I melted into the oak panelling or, given what I know of American history presentation, possibly facsimile oak panelling. I had imagined a rather fine literary scene for myself, sitting silently, toasting both my great-aunt and the fine Miss Parker — ‘One more drink and I’d have been under the host.’ No one came near me to assist in this venture. Would those two ladies who battled the inequities of their age have sat alone for twenty minutes and been ignored? Would they not have stomped to the bar and demanded attention? I don’t know. I wanted to commune with their ghosts and in a strange way I became them instead. Crowds of people came and left, great packs were joined together with much embracing and ‘come here and give me a hug’ while at the bar a couple kissed loudly like the bad plumbing on the fourth floor. All the while I was ignored. For a brief moment the one elderly waiter passed right by me. I was tucked in the far corner. I had deliberately chosen a chair directly under the television so that I didn’t have to look at it. The sound was switched off so it was not a problem
but it was tuned to Relentless News Are Us and I couldn’t stand the endless flickering intended to suggest urgency. I tried to be oblivious to the news and the waiter was oblivious to me. Entirely new people, people who might never have been to the Algonquin before, arrived, blown in from an evening that promised snow. They stood and shivered, uncertain for a moment, and then found a table and almost instantly the octogenarian waiter and a drink.
I was not there. I was Dorothy or Signe or any one of the women sitting solitary and unnoticed. I’m sure I read that Dorothy Parker died alone and penniless in a New York hotel room. It always broke my heart but now I feel I understand it. I suspect if she had been a man it would never have happened. I think someone would have noticed. Finally, I went to the bar and said to the bartender that I couldn’t get the waiter’s attention. He said, ‘Well, you have mine.’
I ordered my drink but it was not what I had wanted. I wanted to be dignified. I wanted to raise a single eyebrow and find that service was at my elbow. Probably, sadly, even stripping would not have done the trick. Moments after he had left me in the bar, Richard had returned to tell me that he had been waiting in the foyer when a stark naked man clutching his private parts (those jewels that we will all grab unless a man holds on to them tight) had appeared behind the golden lift doors, shouted ‘I want a man’ and disappeared upstairs again. Jolly japes but there is a part of me that knows with certainty even such a man could have got a drink with no effort in the Blue Bar. I think about those brilliant women, those witty women, those women who took the English language as a personal challenge and I know they would be disappointed. Nothing has really changed. We have gone nowhere.
Richard and I sat down to plan the next trip. The waiter appeared immediately. The whole thing put me in a pensive mood. I have spent a lifetime leading what others regard as an unconventional life. For me it was not a matter of choice. I simply am, in the words of the song, who I am, but perhaps deep down I envied my friends the conventional life after all. Always comfortable in Richard’s company, I said I thought in another age we might have married and been very happy. He agreed. We might have had one child he said and then found that the getting of it wasn’t quite our thing. It’s so English. That exchange of body fluids not being quite the thing, and yet I should have liked the social acceptability of it all. The ‘Have you met my husband?’ of it all. He would have sat with me till I had got the drinks I wanted and then we would have gone our separate night-time ways. Maybe it would have been better. I never meant to be a person at the barricades. I am very tired of fighting for everything. To me the Blue Bar at the Algonquin Hotel in New York was a holy shrine to learned women. I had no idea I wouldn’t be able to get a fucking drink.
Gladys Reunited Page 8
