Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  So now we stumble slowly towards recovery. I hope. I am in the unfortunate position of not being able to drive. So: a taxi every morning (£6 a time!) to do the chores … and then come back and try to COOK! I’ve never boiled water! Somehow we manage. Coz now shuffles about with my prepared veg, and pokes the sausages and so on. Apparently, last night, I nearly killed him because I put too much Worcester sauce in the baked potato-cold-minced-lamb. As he is quite incapable of tasting anything, and has been for years, I can only fear that I must have over-done the shaking-of-the-bottle. I found it scrumptious.

  But of course I quite like Indian food.

  However the urine is running clear, no more clots, so far .. he is not allowed to drive, walk far, or generally move about … which galls him .. but he’s settling for it. What he CANT bear are people … so no people. It does’nt bother me a fig; but I sometimes feel he’d be better to make an effort, just a little.

  We’ll give it another week anyhow.

  I was desolate, as he was (he wont remember to write to you for ages) about your burgulary … it’s the little things you love most which hurt … not the object d’art … Lu, my sister, got ripped off a year ago, and was shattered to bits because one of the things taken was a small, five inch high, Lalique glass Madonna and child which Tote had given her, oh, ages ago, and which she simply treasured, and ‘spoke to’, as she put it, daily. She did’nt mind a bit that the clocks had gone, the Georgian silver, a bronze of some value, my mothers pearls[;] all she minded was that Lalique glass Madonna. And I DO know how she feels … take the entire house, but leave me that. ’Course they did’nt … she fitted into their pockets neatly and went off for ‘drug money’.

  Golden days here … odd .. it’s like September, and the leaves are yellow and all about the place, but the bees and lizards scuttle and fly, and the birds are far too well fed to bother with my peanut-bag. Yet. It was the same last year [ … ] blue and gold and South of France … ten days later we had five inches of snow, the Garage was blocked by a ten foot drift, and the temperature fell to –19 for over a week. So I know what to expect now! Anyway, one makes the most of it .. I honestly dont think that we’ll be able to stay on here much longer. Twelve acres to mow, the house rather bigger than I thought, the terror that something might happen suddenly again and that we could’nt make it to the hospital, or even down the track in snow, for example. So where? Probably, with deep reluctance, back to U.K .... have’nt worked it out yet, but when Coz is ‘in form’ we’ll have to have a ‘serious talk’.

  The thought appalls me! How can I pack all this up alone? Christ!

  I start my wretched TV film in mid-Febuary in Beaulieu … it’s only an hour and a half away from here, but I might just as well be working in Cirencester. We’ll have to get Guardians and so on .. and Coz will have to come and sit in the hotel and be grumpy. He’ll hate it all. But I cant leave him here alone. He cant open a tin even!

  Growing old is brutal. I thought that it started gradually. It does not. One AGES gradually and grows-old overnight … disconcerting.

  I am busy correcting the French translation of ‘West of Sunset’ which is really v. good … I laughed aloud at my own nonsense! ‘BACKCLOTH’ comes out in Sept: as I think I told you … and the film should take me up to the end of March .. after that it is all a puzzlement .. except that I’m getting more offers to write TV scripts (which I resist) and someone wants a book on Provence.

  How original can one be? I cant do that either … because it would mean a long tour about Provence, at least four months .. and that’s now out of the question.

  The way I type and spell should put anyone off .. I seem to have rather run out of typing, and spelling, today. Perhaps it’s because it’s almost four in the afternoon and a smudged face, Bendo’s, is pressed against the glass door of this studio waiting for his grub … then the fire to lay and light .. and Coz’s tea to cart up … two bits of cake as well .. and then the evening begins: it is dark by five, but, to cheer him up I remind him that the 21st is the longest [sic] day and that after that the sun starts to re-mount. We’ll see.

  This is a dotty letter .. but it is just to re-assure you that I am in full control of my faculties and think that we’ll make it through … and that the real reason I was ‘distraught’ the other evening was because I had forgotten to telephone you, as promised, and had taken a sleeping pill! So apologies for that … I’m really quite cool and brisk.

  I bloody well have to be now.

  Off I go to feed dog and Coz … and split logs (HOW I hate it) and lay the fire and close the house and watch the birds come in to roost.

  It was a lovely letter of yours, and a pretty (if familiar) (Bethlehem or wherever, Goddy) card .. I sent only a few, to people in the U.S and some local friends … the Postoffice ladies, the woman who does the washing .. WAIT until she gets a look at Coz’s bloody sheets! and so on … so you’ll have to accept this, whenever it arrives, with all my love and blessings for a safe, healthy, and, shall we say, amusing? life as a Vicars wife … we’ll all laugh about it one day, they say, so we might as well start right now!

  Devotedly

  Dirk OXXXOX

  LATER 4.45 pm Fed Bendo, and then decided to take him [for] a walk through the Attenboroughs Gate .. Coz, awaked by the barking, decided to come as well. A very slow, tottery, march with his stick .. but in the last of the light rather beautifull. It was; not Coz … the first Forsythia out in the hedges and Bendo thieved a nice olive log from the Atts. log-pile for tonights fire. Coz wandered off to make his tea and I’ve come up to add this … I don’t really know what for! It’s as full of news as a washing-up cloth.

  D XXX

  To Hélène Bordes Clermont

  3 February 1986

  Ma chere Planche –

  I sit and freeze: even here in the Studio above the woodshed .. and the typewriter has become tiresome with the cold and will not respond; or maybe it’s my hands?

  […] I am now rapidly becoming involved in the damned film and will soon be on my way down the hill to Nice, where I will stay until we finish … sometime in March. It is too difficult to commute from here to there and still be fresh and bright for work! I am, alas! not the young man I once was .... so to the Negresco, or somewhere, and a warm room and a not-too-far journey to the Location. At Cap Estelle …

  I confess I dread it all. The early mornings, the worry about the lines, the constant demands from the actors to change this or that, to increase their parts or to alter a line to ‘make it funny’. I shall behave just like Pinter! He refused to even listen to anyone, and sat like a stone image and let the seas break all about him: secure, un-budging, definate. I hope I have the courage!

  [ … ] I am so happy that St Jacques1 seems (at this moment) to amuse you .. it is beautifully written in English, and by a, then, very young man … his work is rare and perfect .. sometimes one has to wait for five or six years for the next book to come out, and it is always worth the wait. Always. Anyway to me. The film in which I ‘played’ him was called ‘Ill Met By Moonlight’ (Shakespear!) and it was a true adventure which he underwent in Crete when he captured the German Governor General and brought him off the Island to Malta! He used to dance, sometimes, dressed as a cretian peasant, with the German Officers in their Mess and gently slip a hand-grenade into the pocket of their uniforms … and run! He was decorated for his gallentry … and the General he captured grew extremely fond, and admiring, of him and they remained friends until well after the war. A strange, brilliant, funny, erudite young man … he was difficult to ‘capture’ on film! But he rather enjoyed my performance … his only grief was that my ‘derrier’ was less large than his! He likes his ouzo and wine and food … so he did get rather fat .. I used to call him a ‘bloated Byron’ … which he thought a compliment .. he is married and lives on a beautiful Island in a house which he and his wife built themselves. He has no children, preferring, rightly, beasts to them!

  [ … ] There is a long piece o
n me in some chic magazine in Paris called ‘Citie’… I have not seen it and it is bound to be rediculous … so dont be too cross. I am not the master of what the journalists write … they do as they please and invent rubbish … I have learned over the years to be tolerant and remember that we say in English, ‘What is in todays paper will be wrapped round the fish tomorrow’. Sometimes it helps.

  We have had tempests, snow, hail, fog, ice … Nice, and it’s silly Carnival des Fleurs has been almost destroyed … and the house here is cold and wet .. not the kind of weather I enjoy de tout! Maybe it’ll clear by the time we start work on the coast … but who can tell?

  [ … ] and now I must leave you .. and commence the learning of my own script! Madness …

  As ever D

  To Bob Mahoney and Keith Richardson1 Clermont

  23 March 1986

  My dear Bob & Keith –

  A joint Thank You letter: I hope that you will forgive me, there is a stack of mail here, after five weeks away, which looms for attention.

  To thank you seems a bit silly: but there it is. I am a bit silly.

  But I do thank you for sticking so closely to my script .. for showing me such extreme kindness at all times, for your generosity in many areas (not least in the bottle!) and for your courtesy and understanding towards Forwood .... amazingly better since this new treatment we took on at the Pasteur Institute.

  I touch wood, naturally .. it is no great joke to see a man cut down in his prime and left helpless … and one does not believe in miracles any longer, anyway not at my age.

  For my part I am pulling out of a weeks total exhaustion! I crawled to my bed and more or less stayed there .. somehow Television (although it at no time felt like Television to me) is a rather demanding business and the fact that we shot a full Movie, I prefer that term, without any loss of quality at all, in four weeks still rather amazes me.

  The Crew were exceptional .. I loved them all and their kindness to me was overwhelming … red roses, if you please, in the car on my way home here which nearly un-manned me! I have worked with very many Crews all over the world … and found that none were better really.

  A few little hic-cups here and there, that wont really show in the end.

  Considering that none of them had worked together as a team before and were uncertain about Movies to start with, and the intense discipline required for concentration and so on, still leaves me astonished, and they loved it, that I know, and are terribly proud of their Film.

  I know that the Actors finally came round: a difficult start for them mainly because of the weather and a feeling that they were being a bit neglected by ‘Teachers Pet’! Understandable .. with the weather we had … but they got together finally and I think we worked well as a team.

  I am certain that your decision about Charlotte1 was the right one .. and she will give you a most unusual performance, certainly she was no hardship to work with! Easy as could be and quick to learn .. for my part I hope that ‘William’2 is not too drab and boring .. God knows it’s a sod of a part and duller than cotton stockings, but I hope that, together, we have given him some dimension.

  I dont know what happened at the Party,3 finally. I hear from some (NOT from Brock, who is the original clam) that it got a bit hairy towards the finish .. I pray that you will both be aware that whatever happens to wretched ‘Peter’4 must be ambigious … and not clearly ‘a queer plot’. That would bugger the Greene story and my efforts to script it … ‘Tony’5 only ever watches: remember. Thats his kick … but he does NOT cart the boy to bed! Do make it clear .. Think of Mrs Whitehouse, or whatever she’s called, and all your astonished and uncomfortable fellows at Yorkshire!

  Incidentally: I hope that you win your battle, if battle it is to be, over the Main Titles … they should perhaps be warned to take a deckko at my contract before they come up with any odd ideas!

  All that is left for you to shoot now, if this reaches you in time, is the Gymkahna … I wish that I was there with you, but I [am] not into horses and Yorkshire skies .. and I’ve done my part anyway.

  It seems a very long time ago since July, Bob, when you came here with that wretched book and when I agreed to meet you ONLY out of good manners, for I had absolutely NO intention of coming near the bloody subject at that time.

  I suppose that I’d had a beer too many too early in the morning!

  Anyway: I’m glad that I said ‘Yes’.

  It is not something I’ll try again in a hurry: but one-off aint so bad and, apart from being shit scared every single day from about Christmas onwards, it was fun and good to work again.

  But fear, daily fear, plus bronchitis for two weeks of the four, plus a conviction that I would not be able to keep up the pace and that I had, perhaps, lost ‘touch’ is too much of a strain to maintain at my age.

  But thank you both, once again, for making it so pleasant, so easy, and for looking after me so well.

  I hope that my own work will be some kind of proper ‘Thank You’ when you have cut it all together.

  Very sincerely

  Dirk.

  To Brock Van den Bogaerde Clermont

  29 March 1986

  My, very, dear Brock –

  The dust is settling: by that I mean that my desk is starting to look less like a stall in the Portobello Road and more like a proper, well tended, writers, work-area. I have written hoards of letters to the hoards who wrote letters to me while we were on the ‘shoot’ .. and now I am faced with more hoards who have had the kindness to send me all manner of gifts and (terrible!) cards for my birthday1… everything from stuffed Koala bears, Kiwi’s (I’m hot in Australia and N.Z) and polyester ties in various (appalling) patterns. I am writing on a new machine (your lot buggered up my old beloved somehow, and I have’nt had time to take her into the menders) so any mistakes must be forgiven … I have a feeling that this one will blow up before long anyway: it’s making the oddest noises .. Also it has strange keys like: and so on .. it’s half Frog and half Arab I think.

  Who would want to print a? upside down, thus ¿, only an Australian surely. What this letter is all about, really, is to say to you how enormously proud I was, and am, of you for your behaviour during the filming of your Uncle’s little Epic. It is so typical that one leaves the person one loves the most to the end of all the ‘Thank You’ letters … in the hope that they will, perhaps, understand that their work was not taken for granted. Yours was not, at any time, on any level.

  You behaved impeccably throughout: you gained the respect of the entire Crew, you held the lot of them together quietly and without fuss, you never for one moment let the Uncle/Nephew relationship show, beyond the natural, and deep affection, which you know we have for each other, and you made my job easier to do in consequence.

  I have always known, as you must be aware, from the very early days when I grew to know who you were, or to be more accurate, who you MIGHT develope into, that I have had the greatest hopes and respect for you.

  One reason why I rather pushed Dad into letting you come to learn French here was to help you to find feathers on your wings rather than just the ‘fluff’ of adolescence. The training, not at Berlitz, was not easy for you I know .. and there were terrible moments of self-doubt, on your part, sulks, on your part, and impatience on mine. I’ve kept all your letters .. so I know how painful sometimes your time was here. But, and it’s quite a big BUT, I do think that you returned to Chicago with a different slant to life … and you have maintained that slant; it is standing you in good stead now. You have learned, retained learning, dared, and won! Not bad …

  I am, as you know only too well, a pretty pernickety fellow .. I was trained in a bloody hard school, and sweated blood to get where I got .. I therefore have very little interest in people who dont take their chances, and who dont behave as professionally as I would wish.

  There are far too many people running after the bait in this world, and far too many who just make an easy grab for it: but that is not your
way, and it is’nt my way: your professionalism stands out a mile, your determination to suceed as ‘Brock’ is clear to all to see, your determination to learn, to be, if need be, temporarily shoved about in the course of that learning, is evident, and the fact that you are going to get there, right up on top, is as clear as daylight in a dark cavern.

  Go on fighting for your beliefs; keep your good manners; (there is NEVER any need to loose them, people think sometimes that one does’nt need Good Manners but they are grotesquely wrong .. it costs nothing to be polite, to smile, to remember someone’s name; and you will reap the whole field!) and always remember that, years ago, it almost must seem to you, you did say ‘I can do that!’ and you have. Remember too that I called you ONE.

  You are.

  If I bawled you out (I did it deliberatly a couple of times for not letting me know that the Unit had broken: of course I KNEW you’d broken! But a little reminder was needed; give ’em an inch and they’ll take a mile .. remember that yourself and NEVER let them do it to you!) it was professional, premeditated, and seperated us as ‘relations’ and made us more part of the Crew than they actually were aware. Joining a Crew is essential, holding them together the most important thing that can happen on a film .. no matter what. The result of the film can be screwed by the Director finally, but the intent, the careing, the affection, and the gut-breaking work are all up there on the screen somewhere, and it all comes from the top.

  So remember that when you get there: it’s a tough, sometimes lonely, always exhausting, job … but it’ll be worth it to you all your life.

  You are off soon to do the final ‘bit’. The film may be a cock-up .. it may fail on a number of levels [ … ] dont count on a great success .. but do remember whatever becomes of it that you have every reason to be proud of your contribution, you have learned a hell of a lot quickly, you have come a long way, and there is no way that you must retrace your steps .. it’s onwards and upwards for you, and no looking back.

  I loved working with you: it was all that I had secretly hoped it would be years ago, without ever thinking, for a moment, that we’d actually be there together shareing the Bill!