Wise Children (22 page)

Old ladies loved him. He had the most fan mail of any of us, requests for photographs on cards with hearts and flowers on, plus gifts of sailor suits and teddy bears and Kiddicars and offers of adoption because he had the high tenor of an angel. I never heard anything like it. I can hear him now:

‘Philomel with melody . . .’

Enough to melt your heart.

Now, if our father was to take the part of Oberon, I’ll give you three guesses as to who will play Titania.

Give up?

Why, Daisy Duck, of course.

And it turns out the whole ‘magnificent, foolish, heroically vulgar enterprise’ – as Irish called it – was intended just to show her off, to, as they say, ‘showcase’ her glamour, her talent, her star quality, her – pardon me while I emit a titter –
sheer class
.

Dear old Daisy. She was a trouper and a half all right; she’d got guts, legs, leather lungs, tits out to here, chutzpah, sass, star quality. But class – no.

So it went on. Pre-production they called it. Then the phone rang. The white telephone in Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. Nora and I were standing on our heads, at the time; all that pasta was taking its toll on Nora’s bum while the sodas up at Irish’s place were blowing me up something shocking, so we were doing a few exercises. I picked up the receiver with my foot and toppled over when I heard that voice. It always set me a-flutter. I never got used to it, I never will. If I turn on the telly and get an earful of that magisterial baritone ecstasising over no matter what, from after-dinner mint to toilet roll, I grow alert and wistful as the dog on the record label: His Master’s Voice.

Is it as bad as that, Dora?

You’ve only got the one father.

Melchior’s feet were firmly underneath the Hollywood table. He’d rented a lovely hacienda-style home up in the hills, there installed the Lady A., who appeared transfixed in a permanent state of gracious amusement at the antics surrounding her, and, before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’, he was lording it over what they called ‘the English Colony’.

The English Colony was a rum lot. The men all wore monocles, the women all wore tiaras, and they turned up in costume dramas as Gladstone and Disraeli, Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale, etc. As a group, they kept themselves to themselves, away from the hoi polloi, held tea parties on Saturday afternoons when everybody else was having group sex, played cricket on Sundays, drank pink gin at sundown and talked as if their upper lips wore plaster casts. Old Nanny, the very one whose sister lived in Kennington, small world, wearing a uniform and veil, could occasionally be seen in the Hazards’ big yard, supervising a brace of russet-haired moppets in braids and cotton frocks, our bloody cousins, who, it turned out, would tumble through
The Dream
as supernumerary fairies. It was Family Time all round.

But had our father called us up to welcome us to Hollywood? To tell us no dream of his would have been complete without us? Did he, hell. All he wanted was, his little bit of earth.

The Shakespeare casket was the last thing we’d been thinking of in the heady weeks since we lit down in the Forest of Arden. I couldn’t think who’d had it last. I wondered if we’d left it on the train? We turned that cottage inside out, went through all our trunks . . . We were in a cold sweat until we stumbled on it at last, by accident, in a little cubbyhole off the master-bedroom, which I think was meant to be a dressing room, or the place where the missus could stow away the master if the master came home plastered. We’d never ventured into this little cranny before, it was quite dark, the curtains always drawn against the sunshine, but
there
was the Shakespeare casket, safe and sound, sitting on the minuscule dresser as if in a little shrine, because somebody had set it up and flanked the pot with candles and lit them. There was a stick of incense on the go too. What a rich sense of ritual, of occasion, in that room. We were astonished.

Who’d gone to all that bother? We found out later it was the Mexican cleaning lady. Catholic. Ever so Catholic. She thought there must be a holy relic in the casket, because it was packed with such care, and she treated it accordingly. We hardly liked to disturb the casket, but we thought we ought to check the earth was still intact so we opened it up. Whew! No wonder she’d lit up incense. She must have thought the relic was starting to rot. As soon as we lifted the lid, a rank aroma wafted from the pot and filled the little improvised chapel with an unmistakable smell.

And that was how we found out where Daisy’s Persian cat did wee-wee whilst on the Super-Chief.

We tipped Pussy’s night-soil out the window but whatever were we to do now that the sacred earth, thoroughly desecrated, was gone for good? Easy. We filled the casket up again with soil from the Forest of Arden, from the facsimile Elizabethan knot garden itself; we thought that would make it more authentic. So there was the sacred earth, as good as new; and Melchior’s plan was, the first day of the shoot, to sprinkle it all over the wood near Athens, as a consecration of the grounds, a dedication of the actors and a photo-opportunity of the first water.

I remember that day, the day
The Dream
began, as if it were yesterday. We all arrived in costume – we were a motley crew and no mistake. None of your soppy fairies with butterfly wings and floral wreaths. No, sir. As Peaseblossom and Mustardseed, our bras and knicks had leaves appliquéd at the stress points, there were little lights in our shaggy wigs, and when we saw how the rest had fared in the wardrobe, we thought we’d got off lightly, I must say, because some had antlers sprouting out of their foreheads and fur patches covering up the rude bits; others were done up as flying beetles, in stiff, shiny bodices split up at the back; and one or two with boughs, not arms, plus a lavish use of leather and feathers all round.

Furthermore, remember that not fairies alone inhabited the wood near Athens. A giant mouse, saddled and bridled, trotted past. A bunny, in a wedding wreath and veil. Some dragonflies, in masks. Several enormous frogs. Dwarfs, giants, children, all mixed up together. Suddenly I had a sinking feeling; I knew it in my bones. This film is going to lose a fortune.

Genghis Khan had dug deep into his pocket for this opening spectacle. There was a hundred-piece orchestra of ancient instruments
in situ
, he’d brought them down from Berkeley and dressed them up in tights and ruffs. One wore a yarmulke. Lutes are a bugger to tune, one reason why they went out, so the wood near Athens twanged and pinged with discords as they tried to get them all in tune.

Puck somersaulted past and goosed me. Irish blew a kiss. Drunk as a skunk and clutching his briefcase to his bosom, soon he would be drunker. He’d fallen off the wagon because I’d missed a date. He didn’t own me, you know. He’d got a nerve. I’d only started taking German lessons, hadn’t I? One lunchtime when Nora was having a quick linguine and cunnilingus
chez
Tony, I’d taken the book of the day to share with my hot dog in the commissary. This runty little German chap with cropped hair and smelly feet, baggy blue suit, no tie, some kind of script consultant somewhere, he took one look at the title of my book. ‘Schopenhauer!’ he sneered. His conversation was brusque and surprising. He always looked on the black side. He was a tonic in Hollywood. He kept my feet on the ground.

Irish blew me an ironic kiss. Peregrine had an arm round Irish’s shoulders, not only to express affection but to help keep him upright. The Lady A. was there, in a Lanvin frock and pearls, her role in
this
production was only that of the director’s wife, but her daughters were there in costume. Melchior had given his little Saskia a cameo. The Indian prince.

That
Indian prince, in gold lamé pyjamas and matching turban with purple feather fastened with an amethyst pin. Pure jail-bait. Imogen was just another fairy, with the one line: ‘And I.’ But the assistant director, the besotted Peregrine, twisted the wardrobe’s arm until off came the owl mask and feather camisole of the original design and on went a tiny pink tutu, so Imogen stuck out like a sore thumb.

There was a newsreel team, energising a wisecrack out of Daisy Duck in her fairy queen frock, tulle and spangles, look! no panty-line, while Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorised with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland that he had built. Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, continuity girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity, according to Irish’s acid-tipped pen, irresistibly reminiscent of the movements of maggots upon rotting meat.

But there was one figure in all this mêlée who didn’t quite belong, who drew attention to itself by being so inconspicuous, so that it caught my eye – huddled in raincoat, dark glasses, headscarf, as if wardrobe had equipped her with a ‘disguise’ outfit from a B-feature. Everywhere that Daisy went, this sad little shadow would go, slipping after her, dissolving into the crowd if ever Daisy looked in her direction. That was odd. What was going on?

Then the ancient musicians gathered themselves together at last at the behest of the conductor: what power on earth had got
Stokowski
into tights? Amid a welter of twangs, all embarked upon a mass rendition of, possibly, a galliard, although it sounded as if the lute section might have been making a stab at a pavane. When it ground to a halt, Melchior stepped out from among the trees in a burst of flashbulbs to address us, bearing aloft, on a crimson velvet cushion with gold fringe that I knew for a fact, because wardrobe told me, came off the set of
Elizabeth and Essex
, the Shakespeare pot that held, and you know I kid you not, veritable soil, rich with association, from the Forest of Arden.

Melchior smiled upon us, I had to put a hand out and steady myself on Nora’s arm just the same time she put her hand out for
my
arm. He smiled and then he said: ‘Friends,’ in his voice like Hershey’s Syrup, and although the old enchantment instantly overcame me, I quivered with anxiety: would he now continue, ‘Romans, countrymen’, so tense with the significance of the moment that he cued himself into the other speech? But he did not get the chance to get it wrong.

‘Friends!’

Genghis Khan dragged his eyes off Daisy, took one look at Melchior and leapt up as if shot.

‘Cut!’

Melchior clutched the casket and gaped.

‘Take five minutes break, you guys,’ said Genghis.

The lutenists left off anxiously trying to tune up on the q.t., the photographers stopped snapping. There was a babble of surprise. Peregrine and Irish rocked together, overcome with mirth. The Lady A. exhibited puzzle and affront, but not half so much as her husband did, who dropped his dignity pronto, and snapped at Genghis: ‘What is the meaning of. . .’

‘Get ’em off!’ roared Genghis. Daisy, I saw, was stuffing her hankie in her mouth or else she would have burst out laughing, too.

‘What?’

I thought his costume was a masterpiece, myself. It was balletic, really; there was a high, spiky crown of what might have been fishbones. And a long, black wig, down his back. And a fur bolero over his chest, which was bare. And a necklace of what looked like babies’ skulls. And snakeskin tights.

How well he filled those tights!

‘Get ’em off!’

Because the way that Melchior filled those tights was the snag; Genghis hadn’t gone to all this expense so that his wife would be upstaged by her co-star’s package, and he explained, in loud and rasping tones, that, before the show went on again, Melchior must retire to his dressing room and don an extra heavy-duty athletic supporter. Or even two.

‘Get it?’

Otherwise, one felt, Genghis would tear off the offending parts with his bare teeth. And now all present were too scared to laugh. Even Irish sobered up, although Daisy wasn’t the only one red in the face and chewing on a hankie, I can tell you. It took a moment or two for her husband’s predicament to sink into the Lady A.’s gentility and then she took a daughter by each hand and swept off with some dignity. I admired her for that. It was suddenly so quiet on the stage you could hear little Saskia’s voice trailing behind them: ‘Mummy, what had Daddy done? Mummy? Why are we going away? Mummy, why is everybody angry with Daddy?’

First Melchior went bright red. Then he went stark white. His dark eyes glowed like hot coals. He clutched his casket of sacred soil and glared at Genghis, mute with fury. If he’d had any class, I mean,
real
class, he’d have turned upon his heel and stalked off then and there. But that’s unfair. Think what was at stake. The entire production was at stake. His Hollywood future – that is, his chance to take North America back for England, Shakespeare and St George. That is, to make his father’s old dream everybody’s dream. And his chance to make an awful lot of money, too. Don’t let’s forget the money.

But, for the moment, it was a Mexican standoff. Genghis glared. Melchior glared. They went on glaring at each other under the fascinated attention of the fairies and the fools and the scriptwriters until Peregrine it was who broke the tension, and he broke it with a trick. Although his belly was still agitating with suppressed merriment, he kept his presence of mind, picked his way over the electric cables, among the lights and cameras, knelt down in front of his brother, then and there, with Genghis and the rest of us looking on.

‘I know what’s causing the trouble,’ said Peregrine.

With one swift pass of his hand he removed, from the problematic portion of Melchior’s costume, a scarlet macaw.

He rose up, bowed to every quarter of the compass, every section of the audience, presenting the macaw upon his finger to us all as it flexed its wings and turned its head inquisitively from side to side. Something about its sharp little beady eyes reminded me of Grandma.