It began on my own initiative when I took on a date with Charlie Markham and I won’t say Steven encouraged me. When I set out in my high heels and spotted nylons and the little black dress with the cleavage he told me, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” But I was on course for ruining myself. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some masochism lurking somewhere – that’s what the likes of Johnnie Bridges do to you. You lose all proper sense of yourself. You’ll go for anything that might make you feel real for a minute. All I said was, “What do you mean?” And he said, “I don’t know but I should be careful.” The word careful meant nothing to me in those days, so I went out to dinner with Charlie and then back to his flat, which was all cut-glass and crossed swords over the mantelpiece until you got to the bedroom, which was meant to be seductive but was really dark and gloomy, with dark red walls and black paint and mirrors on the ceiling and a huge fourposter with dark posts and red velvet hangings. It was more like a torture chamber, really, like the spare room at Death Abbey, the one with the flickering candles and the ghost – the mad monk, which was Charlie, who was what they sometimes call inventive. How I got through that night with my nerves, let alone my skin, in one piece I’ll never know. I seem to remember falling back on my cheerful cockney sparrer act, giggling when I could and giving uninhibited working-class-style screams when I couldn’t help it, especially when he got the cane out. I should have left but I thought, well, I came up here in the first place and, anyway, I thought at any moment he’d stop. Course, the truth was he couldn’t get it up without feeling he was hurting and scaring me and the more I fought back, trying to make the best of it, the longer it was all going to take. So I spent the night running round the room. Finally I’m lying there wearing a lot of costume jewellery and a mask, letting him beat me on the bum with a pillow on it (the pillow was my idea) and screaming and begging him to stop only half-acting and I think after that he actually managed it. I was so pulled and pushed about by then I couldn’t remember what happened, though I remember feeling nostalgic about Johnnie and thinking about him just lying there with me and making love like a normal, loving person. I got away about six and straight into a taxi. Steven was up when I got in – he’d obviously been out all night himself. He was a bit drunk – he roared when he saw my face and then laughed his head off when I told him what had happened. He managed to make me a cup of coffee while he fell about the kitchen. What he was laughing at was my outrage, as well as what happened. “He’s been thinking about you ever since he first frightened you in the shrubbery,” he said. “He muttered something like that,” I said. I was amazed. “A lot of people are like that,” he told me. “Somewhere along the line their bodies and their imaginations get into a fatal knot.” I moaned. Believe it or not during the morning round comes a great big bunch of roses, signed “Love, Charlie” and after that a phone call. Charlie, asking me out again. I couldn’t believe it. After a night of love like that, more like interrogation by the Gestapo, I couldn’t think of anything more horrible. I laughed and said no. After that his voice went a bit funny. I’d made an enemy and the day came when I regretted it. Not that it made much difference in the long run.
After that night I think Steven realized he was on to a good thing as far as I was concerned. So the next night he invited me out to supper with this famous actor, Sir Christopher Wylie, from the Old Vic, a very handsome, vain, middle-aged man. And at least he didn’t want me to pretend to be tortured or any kind of horrible fantasy. Being in the trade he probably couldn’t stand bad performances. His problem was he just didn’t want a normal relationship. He wanted someone to fuck without strings when he felt like it and I didn’t mind that. The next was Lord Clover, who had relations in the Cabinet, the Army, the Navy, and the Foreign Office and had this big country house, Lowton, in Sussex. He was something in the Cabinet himself – not a minister but something or other. His wife lived abroad and I commuted between Lowton and Grosvenor Square, where his other house was. He wanted a passive, always naked, woman. I never had to speak or do anything but drift from the bath to the bed. He talked to me incessantly, and if I’d been a spy I could have got pay from the Russians. He actually told me about discussions about defence in the Cabinet and even I could see that was wrong. But if I said a dicky bird to him – he’d hit me. Straight up – I once asked for a cup of coffee and he belted me one round the face. I used to lie there, wishing he kept a diary.
When the scandal started I got a cheque for £2000 from a company, and a phone call after it was delivered telling me to keep my trap shut. Which I did, having no desire to cause any trouble, although I almost think I ought to have done, after what happened to Steven. But I was ill, anyway, at the time.
So it went on – I’m in taxis, limousines, first-class carriages. I’m eating in all the best places and both the blokes are buying me dresses and shoes and I don’t know what. I wasn’t happy but I wasn’t unhappy either. Ivy was unhappy, though. Because of course I never, or hardly ever, saw Josephine and it was hard on Ivy to have her all the time. She used to cry when I left and Ivy said she’d ask every day, five or six times a day, if I was coming. And, of course, I hardly ever did and when I arrived it was Fanny’s Return, smelling of scent, all fur coat and no knickers and a fair performance at motherhood. I still feel rotten when I think about it. My whole life was a performance anyway – you don’t get any gold bracelets for being your natural self in that game.
Steven kept me going. He would have made a fortune as a ponce if he’d put his mind to it. Flatter and charm, a little threat here and there and I think the little white tablets he used to slip me when I got a bit down helped too. That, and providing a place where you could let your hair down and chat – you get like a tired actor and need the relaxation. And the taking care – he was good at making you a cup of tea, he’d massage your feet, he’d even remember Sid’s birthday. It’s the taking care you need, after a hard day on your back, making sure the client’s satisfied, relaxed and happy when you go. Oh – he was a genius, Steven. When you’re blasted out with surrendering everything to keep someone happy – like a slave, really – you’d go to the ends of the earth for a man who asks you how your leg is, or what games you liked to play when you were a kid. Of course, these men weren’t that different from half the men in the world, anyway, taking it for granted you were there to serve them. Sometimes I’d go to bed with him, Steven, but not often. In a way I felt as if my sex had somehow gone stale, like an old bun with mildew on it. I used to wonder why Clover and Wylie never noticed there was anything wrong with me. Probably there was something worse wrong with them, that was why they couldn’t tell. So I couldn’t face going to bed with Steven, or anybody, most of the time. He was very sweet and consoling when I did but it wasn’t enough.
Meanwhile the phone calls went on and, honestly, the money situation in that flat was a shambles. What with my wages at the club and the presents I should have been rich but it all dribbled away in bills and buying three pairs of shoes at a time and giving two to my sister because they didn’t fit. Shirley was a comfort to me at that time. She was very clever, very kind, especially to Josephine, and if there was one thing she loved it was the wages of sin. She’d go to the pictures with her mates in twenty guinea shoes, smelling of Arpège and burn a hole in a Hartnell blouse with a Woodbine. She’d sing under her breath, if Ivy bawled me out for a neglectful mother and no better than I ought to be:
“See the little country cottage
Where her aged parents live
Drinking the champagne she sends them
But they never can forgive.”
It got on Ivy’s nerves shockingly but for some reason at that time Shirley was a real friend to me and it wasn’t because she thought my life was wonderful either. She could read in Latin. She was heading towards the university. This drove Ivy mad too. I was a trollop and Shirley was practically an intellectual and Ivy couldn’t work out which was worse.
Anyway, like all things, good and bad
, it came to an end. It was human nature that brought me down. Human nature and bad organization. I was walking into the Dorchester one day, where I was due to meet Clover and a couple of big-wigs for lunch (that was what was happening, on top of everything else – I was getting into a famous little socialite, pretty and enchantingly common, witty and sharp as a tack and, quite honestly, fairly handy as an after-the-event commentator on the scene as it presented itself – I would say whose face had fallen when a certain name was mentioned or who hadn’t been too pleased when so-and-so walked in. And in spite of being very ignorant in a lot of ways I had a good sense of what was happening. The problem was to know when to be smart and let on I knew something and when to be our old friend, the sexy blonde who makes two short planks look like Einstein. Never mind – it all came in useful later on, when I was working for myself. At the time it seemed like another little job for tired Mary).
So there I was, that day, done up in a dark red Hartnell suit with a tight skirt and waisted jacket and a little hat perched on my head, same colour, with a tiny veil, moving through the foyer, heading for the restaurant, thinking of nothing but lobster, when who should I bump into but my old friend, Johnnie Bridges, also very well dressed. And beside him none other than Ferenc Nedermann. I hadn’t seen either of them for about eighteen months. The truth is that after that terrible date with Charlie Markham I’d spent over a year hardly knowing what was going on. It was autumn now, autumn 1957, and I’d hardly noticed.
The funny thing was, I wasn’t surprised to see him. He stopped dead when he saw me, though. I walked up to him and said, “Hullo, Johnnie,” in a calm way. “How are you?” I said. “Bit of trouble with the face?” To look at us, all poshed up in hundreds of quids’ worth of clothes, standing on thick carpet in a big hotel, you wouldn’t have guessed who we were. But Johnnie put his hand to his cheek, sort of defending it. There was a razor mark down one cheek. I’d thought the Roses had finished with him but perhaps they hadn’t. Or the mark had been made by someone else.
“Accident,” he told me. “I’m getting a plastic surgeon to attend to it next week.” He was annoyed that I’d mentioned it. Which was why I had mentioned it, to make him feel he looked rotten. He recovered a bit and asked, “How are you, Moll? You’re looking very well.”
“Well off, you mean,” I told him. “And how are you, Mr Nedermann.”
“As well as ever,” he said, looking at me rather mournfully.
“It’s lovely to have run into you both again,” I said to both of them. “We must all get together some time – just for now I’ve got to hurry off. I’m late for lunch.” And with that I swept off, all court train and tiara, feeling satisfied with my coolness, carelessness and smart clothes. Until, of course, the needle started going in, after the soup, and I began to brood about Johnnie and wonder what he was doing.
Then, funnily enough, I began to worry about Josephine, whom I hadn’t seen for a fortnight, and before I knew where I was I’d got up, saying I wasn’t well, and buggered off back to Meakin Street in a taxi.
I daresay by that stage I was ready for a change. I’d have done well to have got out and stayed out, stayed in Meakin Street from then on, before the whole thing turned into a catastrophe. Truth to tell, I was tired out. It was no joke working at the club from ten or eleven at night until three or four in the morning, lending Simon a hand with the organization during the day and then squeezing in all these dates with Clover and Wylie and pretending to be keeping each of them a secret to the other, although I think they knew really. And by that time both of them were putting pressure on me to spend more time with them. I started wondering if Clover even had the idea that with a little French polishing and a fresh set of papers he couldn’t get rid of his wife and set his little rough diamond up as the new Lady C – a born optimist. Anyway, with that and Johnnie turning up, too, there’s no doubt I should have stayed at Meakin Street from then on and kept out of trouble, but, no, I had to let it get complicated. I was a glutton for punishment in those days. When Johnnie rang me at the club and asked me round to dinner at his new flat off Grosvenor Square, I said I’d go. Needless to say, I went telling myself I’d have a good boast about where I’d been, what I’d been doing, and who with, since he left me in the lurch and then, when I’d impressed him with my new life, my cheerfulness and my enormous beauty I’d let him make a pass and then, as they say, spurn him like a dog. And what do you think I did? Took him back of course. Which left me with a job which kept me up all night and half the day, two peculiar lovers who weren’t supposed to know about each other and a third who really had to be kept a secret, especially from Arnie Rose. Small wonder eventually the balloon went up. My God, the things you do when you’re young.
It was the music – Johnnie put on this recording of these French cabaret songs. I think he did it because my boasting and sophisticated air of poise and beauty were really taking him in. So he had to rattle me and get me in the mood. And it was that little, sad song, in French, the one I sometimes heard in my dreams and didn’t know why, that was what got me going. Perhaps, without that, which was like a trick played on me by a past I didn’t know anything about – well, perhaps I’d have stayed clear of him that time, got up and gone home like a lady. Or perhaps not. But the music softened me. I fell for it. The fox had me again. Once again it was the same old tale – the soft skin and the hard prick; by this time I knew he was rotten, but the tragedy is that a lot of rotten men aren’t like that in bed. It’s when they’re on their feet that they get evil or seedy or corrupt. That’s what a lot of men don’t understand when they see a woman hanging around with a bloke who’d sell his old mother for ninepence and throw his little brother in for free – they don’t know that while they’re with a woman, for that hour or two at night, they’re innocent.
All The Days of My Life Page 31
