My Autobiography (6 page)

I was only too pleased to leave her presence and the whole atmosphere, for a lurking fear was growing within me and I began to wish we were back at Norwood.

Father arrived home later and greeted us kindly. He fascinated me. At meals I watched every move he made, the way he ate and the way he held his knife as though it were a pen when cutting his meat. And for years I copied him.

When Louise told of Sydney’s complaining about the small bed, Father suggested that Sydney should sleep on the sitting-room sofa. This victory of Sydney’s aroused Louise’s antagonism and she never forgave him. She continually complained to Father about him. Although Louise was morose and disagreeable, she never once struck me or even threatened to, but the fact that she disliked Sydney held me in fear and dread of her. She
drank a great deal, and this exaggerated my fear. There was something frighteningly irresponsible about her when she was drunk; she would smile with amusement at her little boy with his beautiful angelic face, who would swear at her and use vile language. For some reason, I never had contact with the child. Although he was my half-brother, I don’t remember ever having exchanged a word with him – of course I was almost four years older than he. Sometimes when drinking Louise would sit and brood and I would be in a state of dread. But Sydney paid little attention to her; he seldom came home until late at night. I was made to come home directly after school and run errands and do odd jobs.

Louise sent us to the Kennington Road School, which was a bleak divertissement, for the presence of other children made me feel less isolated. Saturday was a half-holiday, but I never looked forward to it because it meant going home and scrubbing floors and cleaning knives, and on that day Louise invariably started drinking. While I was cleaning the knives, she would sit with a lady friend, drinking and growing bitterly morose, complaining quite audibly to her friend of having to look after Sydney and me and of the injustice imposed upon her. I remember her saying: ‘This one’s all right’ (indicating me), ‘but the other’s a little swine and should be sent to a reformatory – what’s more, he’s not even Charlie’s son.’ This reviling of Sydney frightened and depressed me and I would go unhappily to bed and lie fretfully awake. I was not yet eight years old, but those days were the longest and saddest of my life.

Sometimes on a Saturday night, feeling deeply despondent, I would hear the lively music of a concertina passing by the back bedroom window, playing a highland march, accompanied by rowdy youths and giggling coster girls. The vigour and vitality of it seemed ruthlessly indifferent to my unhappiness, yet as the music grew fainter into the distance, I would regret it leaving. Sometimes a street-crier would pass: one in particular came by every night who seemed to be shouting ‘Rule Britannia’, terminating it with a grunt, but he was actually selling oysters. From the pub, three doors away, I could hear the customers at closing time, singing drunks, bawling out a maudlin, dreary song that was popular in those days:

For old times’ sake don’t let our enmity live,

For old times’ sake say you’ll forget and forgive.

Life’s too short to quarrel,

Hearts are too precious to break.

Shake hands and let us be friends

For old times’ sake.

I never appreciated the sentiment, but it seemed an appropriate accompaniment to my unhappy circumstances, and lulled me to sleep.

When Sydney came in late, which seemed always, he raided the larder before going to bed. This infuriated Louise, and one night when she had been drinking she came into the room and ripped the bedclothes off him and told him to get out. But Sydney was prepared for her. Quickly he reached under his pillow and whipped out a stiletto, a long button-hook which he had sharpened to a point.

‘Come near me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll stick this in you!’

She reared back, startled. ‘Why, the bloody young sod! – he’s going to murder me!’

‘Yes,’ said Sydney, dramatically, ‘I’ll murder you!’

‘You wait till Mr Chaplin comes home!’

But Mr Chaplin seldom came home. However, I remember one Saturday night when Louise and Father had been drinking, and for some reason we were all sitting with the landlady and her husband in their front-room parlour on the ground floor. Under the incandescent light Father looked ghastly pale, and in an ugly mood was mumbling to himself. Suddenly he reached into his pocket, pulled out a handful of money and threw it violently to the floor, scattering gold and silver coins in all directions. The effect was surrealistic. No one moved. The landlady sat glum, but I caught her roving eye following a golden sovereign rolling to a far corner under a chair; my eye also followed it. Still no one moved, so I thought I had better start picking it up; the landlady and the others followed suit, picking up the rest of the money, careful to make their actions overt before Father’s menacing eyes.

One Saturday, after school, I came home to find no one there. Sydney, as usual, was away all day playing football and the landlady said Louise and her son had been out since early
morning. At first I was relieved, for it meant that I did not have to scrub floors and clean knives. I waited until long after lunch-time, then began to get anxious. Perhaps they had deserted me. As the afternoon wore on, I began to miss them. What had happened? The room looked grim and unyielding and its emptiness frightened me. I also began to get hungry, so I looked in the larder, but no food was there. I could stand the gaping emptiness no longer, so in desolation I went out, spending the afternoon visiting nearby market places. I wandered through Lambeth Walk and the Cat, looking hungrily into cook-shop windows at the tantalizing steaming roast joints of beef and pork, and the golden-brown potatoes soaked in gravy. For hours I watched the quacks selling their wares. The distraction soothed me and for a while I forgot my plight and hunger.

When I returned, it was night; I knocked at the door, but no one answered. Everyone was out. Wearily I walked to the corner of Kennington Cross and sat on the kerb near the house to keep an eye on it in case someone returned. I was tired and miserable, and wondered where Sydney was. It was approaching midnight and Kennington Cross was deserted but for one or two stragglers. All the lights of the shops began going out except those of the chemist and the public houses, then I felt wretched.

Suddenly there was music. Rapturous! It came from the vestibule of the White Hart corner pub, and resounded brilliantly in the empty square. The tune was
The Honeysuckle and the Bee
, played with radiant virtuosity on a harmonium and clarinet. I had never been conscious of melody before, but this one was beautiful and lyrical, so blithe and gay, so warm and reassuring. I forgot my despair and crossed the road to where the musicians were. The harmonium-player was blind, with scarred sockets where the eyes had been; and a besotted, embittered face played the clarinet.

It was all over too soon and their exit left the night even sadder. Weak and tired, I crossed the road towards the house, not caring whether anyone came home or not. All I wanted was to get to bed. Then dimly I saw someone going up the garden path towards the house. It was Louise – and her little son running ahead of her. I was shocked to see that she was limping
exaggeratedly and leaning extremely to one side. At first I thought she had been in an accident and had hurt her leg, then I realized she was very drunk. I had never seen a lopsided drunk before. In her condition I thought it best to keep out of her way, so I waited until she had let herself in. A few moments later the landlady came home and I went in with her. As I crept up the darkened stairs, hoping to get to bed unnoticed, Louise staggered out on to the landing.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ she said. ‘This is not your home.’

I stood motionless.

‘You’re not sleeping here tonight. I’ve had enough of all of you; get out! You and your brother! Let your father take care of you.’

Without hesitation, I turned and went downstairs and out of the house. I was no longer tired; I had got my second wind. I had heard that Father patronized the Queen’s Head pub in the Prince’s Road, about half a mile away, so I made my way in that direction, hoping to find him there. But soon I saw his shadowy figure coming towards me, outlined against the street-lamp.

‘She won’t let me in,’ I whimpered, ‘and I think she’s been drinking.’

As we walked towards the house he also staggered. ‘I’m not sober myself,’ he said.

I tried to reassure him that he was.

‘No, I’m drunk,’ he muttered, remorsefully.

He opened the door of the sitting-room and stood there silent and menacing, looking at Louise. She was standing by the fireplace, holding on to the mantelpiece, swaying.

‘Why didn’t you let him in?’ he said.

She looked at him bewildered, then mumbled: ‘You too can go to hell – all of you!’

Suddenly he picked up a heavy clothes-brush from the sideboard and like a flash threw it violently, the back of it hitting her flat on the side of her face. Her eyes closed, then she collapsed unconscious with a thud to the floor as though she welcomed oblivion.

I was shocked at Father’s action; such violence made me lose respect for him. As to what happened afterwards, my memory
is vague. I believe Sydney came in later and Father saw us both to bed, then left the house.

I learned that Father and Louise had quarrelled that morning because he had left her to spend the day with his brother, Spencer Chaplin, who owned several public houses round and about Lambeth. Being sensitive of her position, Louise disliked visiting the Spencer Chaplins, so Father went alone, and as a revenge Louise spent the day elsewhere.

She loved Father. Even though very young I could see it in her glance the night she stood by the fireplace, bewildered and hurt by his neglect. And I am sure he loved her. I saw many occasions of it. There were times when he was charming and tender and would kiss her good-night before leaving for the theatre. And on a Sunday morning, when he had not been drinking, he would breakfast with us and tell Louise about the vaudeville acts that were working with him, and have us all enthralled. I would watch him like a hawk, absorbing every action. In a playful mood, he once wrapped a towel round his head and chased his little son around the table, saying: ‘I’m King Turkey Rhubarb.’

About eight o’clock in the evening, before departing for the theatre, he would swallow six raw eggs in port wine, rarely eating solid food. That was all that sustained him day after day. He seldom came home, and, if he did, it was to sleep off his drinking.

One day Louise received a visit from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and she was most indignant about it. They came because the police had reported finding Sydney and me asleep at three o’clock in the morning by a watchman’s fire. It was a night that Louise had shut us both out, and the police had made her open the door and let us in.

A few days later, however, while Father was playing in the provinces, Louise received a letter announcing that Mother had left the asylum. A day or two later the landlady came up and announced that there was a lady at the front door to call for Sydney and Charlie. ‘There’s your mother,’ said Louise. There was a momentary confusion. Then Sydney leaped downstairs into her arms, I following. It was the same sweet, smiling Mother who affectionately embraced us.

Louise and Mother were too embarrassed to meet, so Mother waited at the front door while Sydney and I collected our things. There was no umbrage or ill-feeling on either side – in fact, Louise’s manner was most agreeable, even to Sydney when she bade him good-bye.

*

Mother had taken a room in one of the back streets behind Kennington Cross near Hayward’s pickle factory, and the acid smell would start up every afternoon. But the room was cheap and we were all together again. Mother’s health was excellent, and the thought that she had been ill never entered our heads.

How we lived through this period I have not the remotest idea. Nonetheless, I remember no undue hardships or insoluble problems. Father’s payments of ten shillings a week were almost regular, and, of course, Mother took up her needlework again and renewed her contact with the church.

An incident stands out at that period. At the end of our street was a slaughter-house, and sheep would pass our house on their way to be butchered. I remember one escaped and ran down the street to the amusement of onlookers. Some tried to grab it and others tripped over themselves. I had giggled with delight at its lambent capering and panic, it seemed so comic. But when it was caught and carried back into the slaughter-house, the reality of the tragedy came over me and I ran indoors, screaming and weeping to Mother: ‘They’re going to kill it! They’re going to kill it!’ That stark, spring afternoon and that comedy chase stayed with me for days; and I wonder if that episode did not establish the premise of my future films – the combination of the tragic and the comic.

School was now the beginning of new horizons: history, poetry and science. But some of the subjects were prosaic and dull, especially arithmetic: its addition and subtraction gave an image of a clerk and a cash register, its use, at best, a protection against being short-changed.

History was a record of wickedness and violence, a continual succession of regicides and kings murdering their wives, brothers and nephews; geography merely maps; poetry nothing more than exercising memory. Education bewildered me with knowledge and facts in which I was only mildly interested.

If only someone had used salesmanship, had read a stimulating preface to each study that could have titillated my mind, infused me with fancy instead of facts, amused and intrigued me with the legerdemain of numbers, romanticized maps, given me a point of view about history and taught me the music of poetry, I might have become a scholar.

Since Mother had returned to us she had begun to stimulate my interest in the theatre again. She imbued me with the feeling that I had some sort of talent. But it was not until those weeks before Christmas when the school put on its cantata
Cinderella
that I felt an urge to express all that Mother had taught me. For some reason I was not selected to play in it, and inwardly I was envious and felt that I was better able to play in the cantata than those who had been chosen. I was critical of the dull, unimaginative way the boys played their parts. The Ugly Sisters had no zest or comic spirit. They spoke their lines eruditely with a schoolboy inflection and an embarrassing falsetto emphasis. How I would have loved to play one of the Ugly Sisters, with the tutoring Mother could have given me! I was, however, captivated by the girl who played Cinderella. She was beautiful, refined, aged about fourteen, and I was secretly in love with her. But she was beyond my reach both socially and in years.