Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York

by Paul Gallico

  If there is anything further I can do to aid you in your quest, do not hesitate to let me know. However, knowing you, your energy and intelligence, I have no doubt but that you will discover the right Mr Brown.

  With kind regards and wishes for good luck,

  I am yours, as ever,

  CHASSAGNE

  BUT if the Marquis had no doubts about Mrs Harris’s ability to locate the missing father, Mrs Harris, now that she was there, was beginning to entertain some herself, since the one man upon whom she had banked so heavily proved to be the wrong one.

  Using her Cockney shrewdness and wit, she had had no difficulty locating a particular Mr George Brown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, referred to in the newspaper cutting, and who had turned out to be the wrong one; to find the right one amidst the teeming millions who inhabited this vast land mass, so great that not even the fastest jet planes could reduce it appreciably in size, was a very different matter. She discovered for instance, to her horror, that there were no less than thirty-seven George Brown’s in the Manhattan telephone book alone, with an equal number in Brooklyn, and further specimens crowding the other three boroughs. Just to name a few of the large cities with whose names she was now becoming familiar, there would be as many in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, besides which she had no assurance whatsoever that George Brown lived in any of these cities; he might be a wealthy tobacco planter in the South, a textile merchant in New England, or a mine owner in the Far West. A letter written to the Air Force brought the reply that there had been some 453 George Browns on its roster at one time or another, and which one did she mean, where had he been stationed when, and what had been his serial number?

  For the first time Mrs Harris became fully aware of the enormity of her task, as well as the realisation that she had let her romantic nature betray her into doing something not at all characteristic of a sensible London char, and that was to go off half-cocked, saddling herself in a strange land - or at least she would be saddled when she collected him from the Marquis - with a small boy whom she would be forced to conceal from her kindly employers.

  The almost fortuitous visitation of the chicken-pox it was true would give her more time and breathing space before she had to face the problem of how to conceal little Henry in a penthouse apartment day and night, but for the first time Mrs Harris felt the cold wind of discouragement.

  Yet she did not give way to despondency, but remained her cheerful self and did her work as well. Under her aegis the running-in of the Schreiber penthouse was prospering, Mrs Butterfield, relieved of her fears and tremors by the continued absence of little Henry, was cooking like an angel, other servants were being added to the staff, with Mrs Harris inculcating into them her own ideas of how a house ought to be kept clean, and Mrs Schreiber, given confidence by the presence of Mrs Harris, was beginning to lose her trepidation and commence those rounds of dinner parties and entertainments expected of a man in her husband’s position.

  In the course of the social duties connected with business and the eminence of their position at the head of one of the largest film and television studios in America, the Schreibers were called upon to cater for and entertain some genuinely appalling people, including newspaper columnists who wielded a make or break power over entertainment properties with multi-million dollar investments, rock ’n’ roll and hillbilly singers, crooked labour leaders who could shut down the studio unless properly buttered and kow-towed to, mad television directors whose frenetic profession kept them just one barely discernible step away from the booby-hatch, morbid and neurotic authors who had to be pampered in order to produce a daily output of grist for the mills to grind, and an assortment of male and female actors, stars, glamour girls and boys.

  Many of these were faces with which Mrs Harris had long been familiar and admired only in their enlargements in the film theatres or their diminutions on the television screens, and who now sat living and in the flesh, close enough to touch, around the Schreibers’ groaning board, devouring Mrs Butterfield’s roast beef and Yorkshire pud, and accepting service from Mrs Ada Harris, imported from five Willis Gardens, Battersea, London, S.W.11.

  Not all of them were as dreadful as one might imagine, but the house-broken ones would appear to have been definitely in the minority.

  Mrs Harris, elegant in the black dress and white apron which Mrs Schreiber had bought her, acted as third server upon these occasions, removing plates and passing the gravy, salad dressing, and cheese biscuits, while the temporary butler and first waitress took on the more serious work of getting the food to the ravenous maws of the illustrious free-loaders.

  If Mrs Harris could be said to have a weakness besides her romanticism, it was her affection and admiration for the people in the world of theatre, film, and television. She bought and cherished the illusions they made for her lock, stock, and barrel.

  Ada Harris was a moral woman, with her own rigid code of ethics and behaviour, and one who would stand for no nonsense or misbehaviour on the part of others. To show people, however, this strict code simply did not apply, and she acknowledged that they lived in a world of their own and were entitled to different standards. Thus, Mrs Schreiber’s Friday night dinner parties were as near heaven socially as Mrs Harris ever expected to come. To view Gerald Gaylord, North American’s great film star, on a Thursday afternoon off, his beautiful head the size of a two-storey building on the Radio City Music Hall screen, and then the following Friday to see that same glamorous bean close up, and gaze upon him engulfing six Martinis one after the other, was a bliss she had never expected to attain.

  There was Bobby Toms, the teenage rock ’n’ roller with the curly hair and sweet face, and she closed her eyes to the fact that he got drunk early in the evening and used very bad language in the presence of ladies, language that was only surpassed by that issuing from the exquisite lips of Marcella Morell, the film ingénue, but who was so beautiful that even the most dreadful words when she used them somehow seemed beautiful too - if one had the same feeling towards show people as Mrs Harris. There was a hillbilly singer by the name of Kentucky Claiborne who came to dine in unwashed jeans, black leather jacket, and fingernails in deep mourning, a famous comic who actually was funny in real life as well, dancers, heavies, beautiful actresses who dressed glamorously - in short, a veritable paradise for Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield as well, who tasted the thrills of high life in the theatrical world via the reports of her friend.

  However, broadminded as she was and extraordinarily tolerant in her approach to the people of the wonderful world of entertainment, Mrs Harris soon found the fly in this ointment namely - the hillbilly singer - who made himself so disagreeable that it was not long before he was loathed by everyone with whom he came in contact, including Mrs Harris.

  Before his first appearance at a Schreiber dinner party Mrs Schreiber had given her something of a warning of what to expect, since the good-hearted American woman was certain that Mrs Harris would not have encountered such a specimen in London, and did not wish her to be too greatly shocked by his appearance and comportment. ‘Mr Claiborne is a kind of a genius,’ she explained. ‘I mean, he’s the idol of the teenagers and inclined to be a little unusual, but he is very important to my husband, who is signing him for North American Pictures and Television, and it is a great feather in his cap - everyone is after Kentucky Claiborne.’

  The name had already awakened memories of curiously unpleasant feelings within Mrs Harris, recollections of emotions which eluded her until she suddenly had a moment of recall to the time when her adventure in a sense had begun; this was the night back in her little flat in London when the Gussets next door had used the caterwauling of an American hillbilly singer by that name on the wireless to cover up the beating of little Henry.

  By that osmosis through which servants pick up what is going on about them, not only through their ears and the gossip of pantry, kitchen, and servants’ quarters, but also somehow through th
e pores of their skin, Mrs Harris acquired the information and imparted it to Mrs Butterfield that this same Kentucky Claiborne, emerging from nowhere in the southern portion of the United States, had had a meteoric rise as a hillbilly singer, due to the fact that his recordings of folk songs had suddenly caught on with the teenagers, instigating a competition of frantic bidding among the moving picture and television powers to sign him up.

  Mr Schreiber, who in a short time had metamorphosed into a genuinely brilliant cine-mogul, had not been afraid to gamble and was far out in front in the race. His lawyers and the lawyers of Claiborne’s agent, a Mr Hyman, were in the process of hammering out a contract in which the singer would be paid the sum of ten million dollars over five years - a sum so vast that not only Mrs Harris, but all the entertainment world, were staggered.

  In the meantime it was necessary to keep Mr Claiborne in an amiable frame of mind, which was difficult, for it was obvious even to Mrs Harris that, celebrity or not, Kentucky Claiborne was vain, shallow, selfish, self-centred, loud, rude, insulting, a bore, and a boor. As his agent, Mr Hyman, put it to Mr Schreiber: ‘So what d’you want? He’s a jerk - but he’s a jerk with talent. The kids are nuts about him.’

  This was true, as it is of many of the repellent characters who work their way to the top in the entertainment world. Now a thirty-five-year-old man with already thinning hair, deep-set eyes, and blue jowls, Kentucky Claiborne had suddenly emerged from the Deep South, where he had been moaning his hinterland folk songs in honky-tonks and cheap night clubs to the accompaniment of his guitar, to become a national sensation. His eyes, his voice, his demeanour, his delivery, apparently evoked the loneliness and melancholy of the pioneer woodsmen of America’s past.

  While his background and origins remained undisclosed, he must have been a poor boy - not to mention poor white trash - for the sudden access of fame, wealth, and adulation made him drunker even than he was wont to become on his favourite tipple of Bourbon and Branch. Added to these charms was the fact that he chewed tobacco, had grimy fingernails, and apparently did not wash either himself or his hillbilly uniform too often.

  The Schreibers put up with him because they had to; their guests did because most of them were genuinely fond of the Schreibers, and many of them had come from equally humble origins and somehow had adjusted themselves.

  It did not take Mrs Butterfield long to loathe Mr Claiborne with equal fervour, since his remarks about her cooking were delivered in a loud voice which, when the swinging doors opened, penetrated right into the kitchen, and on anything she missed Mrs Harris indignantly filled her in.

  Mr Claiborne was vociferous and uninhibited on all subjects which in any way pertained to himself. For instance, one evening when Mrs Butterfield had concocted a really delectable cheese soufflé, the hillbilly singer rejected it out of hand after a sniff at it, saying, ‘Pee-yew! That smells! What Ah wouldn’t give for some real old-fashioned Southern cookin’ - po’k fat back with turnip greens and pot liquor, or good old Southern fried chicken with hushpuppies. That’s the kind of eatin’ foh a man. Ah cain’t put this foreign stuff in mah belly. Ah’ll just hold off until you pass the meat an’ potaters.’

  At another meal he delivered an oration on his prejudices. ‘Ah ain’t got no time for niggers, nigger-lovers, or foreigners. Ah say, ship all the niggers back where they come from, and don’t let no more foreigners in. Then we’ll have God’s own country here sure enough.’

  Poor Mr Schreiber turned quite crimson at these remarks, and some of his guests looked as though they were about to explode. However, they had all been briefed that if Mr Claiborne were to be irritated he might suddenly break off the contract negotiations going on and take his fabulous popularity and box office value elsewhere.

  Mrs Harris passed along her opinion of Mr Claiborne to Mrs Butterfield in good, solid Battersea terms, concluding more mildly, ‘He looked right at me when ’e passed that remark about foreigners. It was all I could do to keep me tongue in me ’ead.’

  When Mr Schreiber protested to Claiborne’s agent, Mr Hyman, and asked whether he could not exert a civilising influence on him, at least so far as his personal appearance, tongue, and table-manners were concerned, that individual replied, ‘What do you wanna do? He’s a nature boy. That’s why he’s the idol of them millions of American kids. He’s just like they are. Clean him up and put him in a monkey suit and you’re gonna spoil him. He’s gonna make plenty of dough for you, so why should you care?’

  THE day dawned eventually when Mrs Harris, notified by the Marquis that little Henry was no longer catching, in fact was once more in the full flush of youthful health, boarded the Congressional Limited at Pennsylvania Station and took that train to Washington, where first, with her usual energy and initiative, she engaged a cab driver to take her for a quick swing around the nation’s capital before depositing her at the French Embassy.

  After a tour which embraced the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Pentagon Unit, and the White House, the driver, who had been in the Navy during the war and spent a good deal of time in British waters and British ports, leant back and asked, ‘Well, Ma, what do you think of it? It ain’t Buckingham Palace or Westminster Abbey - but it’s our own.’

  ‘Lor’ love yer, ducks,’ Mrs Harris replied, ‘you can’t have everything. It’s even prettier than in the pictures.’

  At the Embassy Mrs Harris was greeted by the Marquis de Chassagne with great warmth - compounded in part from the genuine affection he felt for her, and in part from relief that what might have turned into a very sticky business was now happily concluded at least so far as he was concerned.

  A quite new Henry Brown came storming forth to throw his arms about the person of Mrs Harris; new in that, as with most children bedded with chicken-pox, he had grown an inch during the process, and through proper nourishment and lack of abuse had also filled out. The eyes and the large head were still wise and knowing, but had lost their sadness. Somehow he had even managed to acquire some manners by imitation, and during the luncheon treat that the Marquis provided for Mrs Harris he succeeded in refraining from bolting his food, eating with his knife, and other social misdemeanours.

  Mrs Harris, herself a great stickler for etiquette and the gracefully lifted little finger, was not insensitive to these improvements and remarked, ‘Lor’ love yer, dearie, your father will be proud of you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Marquis, ‘I was coming to that. Have you found him yet?’

  Mrs Harris had the grace to blush. ‘Blimey, no,’ she said, ‘and I ain’t ’arf ashamed of meself - boasting to Mrs Butterfield how I’d find him in half a jiffy if I ever got to America. Me and my big mouth! But I will.’ She turned and promised little Henry: ‘Don’t you worry, ’Enry, I will find your dad for you, or me nyme’s not Ada ’Arris.’

  Little Henry accepted this pledge with no particular alteration of expression or change in his taciturnity. At that moment, truth to tell, he was not especially concerned whether she did or not. Things had never been so good with him, and he was not inclined to be greedy.

  The Marquis accompanied them to the front door of the Embassy, where the blue Rolls-Royce waited, its figurehead and chrome-work gleaming, with the handsome and immaculate Bayswater behind the wheel.

  ‘Can I ride up front, Uncle Hypolite?’

  ‘If Bayswater will permit it.’ The chauffeur nodded gracious acquiescence.

  ‘Both of us - Auntie Ada too?’

  To his surprise Mr Bayswater found himself involved in a second acquiescence. Never before had anyone but a footman ridden beside him in the front seat of a Rolls.

  ‘Goodbye, Uncle Hypolite,’ said the boy, and went up and threw his arms about the neck of the Marquis and hugged him, ‘you’ve been a real swell to me.’

  The Marquis patted his shoulder and said, ‘Goodbye, my little nephew and grandson. Good luck, and be a good boy.’ To Mrs Harris he said, ‘Goodbye, Madame, and good luck to you too - and when you fi
nd the father I hope he will be a good man who will love him.’ He stood on the pavement watching them go until they turned the corner, and then went back into the Embassy. He was no longer feeling relieved, but only a little lonely and a little older.

  Thus, driving up along the National Turnpike from Washington in the Marquis’s elegant Rolls-Royce, Bays-water, little Henry, who in a new suit and shoes purchased for him by the Marquis looked more than ever like a young Lordling out of the pages of the Tatler or the Queen, and Mrs Harris sat all together up front in the chauffeur’s compartment and chatted and compared notes.

  Mrs Harris thought she had never seen anyone quite as elegant or attractive as Mr Bayswater in his grey whipcord uniform and the grey cap with the badge of the Marquis above the peak. Mr Bayswater found himself somewhat surprised by the pleasure he was taking in Mrs Harris’s company. Ordinarily on such a trip he would have listened to nothing but the gentle, almost inaudible purring of the Rolls-Royce, the whine of the tyres, and the exquisite silence of the body bolts and springs. As it was now he lent half an ear to the questions and chatter of Mrs Harris, who was all settled into the comfortable leather seat for a proper chinwag.

  He even deigned to talk to her, something he had not been known to do while driving since 1937, when he had had to speak sharply to Lord Boothey’s footman sitting next to him to keep his eyes straight ahead instead of letting them wander all about. He said, ‘I have driven through Madison, Wisconsin, a city of wide avenues and pleasant homes, but I have never been to Kenosha. What would you say was the most attractive feature of that city?’

  ‘Something they had in the café of the ’otel there - North Country flapjacks with little pig sausages and genuine maple syrup. Coo! I never ate anything so good in me life. Four ’elpings of them, I ’ad. Afterwards I was sick. But blimey if it wasn’t worth it.’