Slipstream (42 page)

He returned on a Sunday morning, straight off the plane. He looked dreadful, haggard, with blue circles under his eyes. He was dead tired, he said. I put him to bed to sleep, and set about
cooking. In the evening we had some food and talked. He told me then that Suzanne
did
love him, he’d not realized how much. ‘And you love her?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Not enough. I’m in no state to love anyone. I feel as though I’m going off my head. I’m no use to you. I’m no use to anyone. I’m in a
mess I can never get out of,’ he replied. I thought he needed help, and asked if I found someone for him to talk to would he agree to it? He’d think about it, but meanwhile, he was
going back to his flat: Suzanne was going away again, and he would be on his own.

I’d been doing a certain amount of TV on panels with David Stafford-Clark, a psychiatrist. He and his wife had been to dinner with me and I felt I knew him well enough
to approach him. I rang him up and he made an appointment for me to go and see him. I went. This was the third time in my life I’d approached a doctor of this kind on behalf of somebody else:
for Robert Aickman, and for my brother Colin, and both times I’d been offensively rebuffed. So it was with some trepidation that I went to see David.

He was extremely kind. He listened to what I could tell him of Sam, and said if Sam would agree to it, he’d be glad to see him. This happened. For some weeks or perhaps months, Sam went to
David, and I saw less and less of him, and my feelings about him changed from wanting to
be
with him, to simply wanting him to feel better at any cost. Occasionally, Sam rang me up to see
how I was. I never asked him about how he was getting on with David, as the whole process seemed too fragile for me to intrude. I did ask him how he was and the replies were always, ‘Simply
splendid, much the same.’ In the end I stopped asking. I knew the affair was over, but I was resigned to feeling more anxious about him than unhappy.

A hot summer, and Nicola was staying with me at Blomfield Road. It was Sunday evening, and Nic and I were just wondering what we could do that wouldn’t make us any hotter when the
telephone rang. It was Ingaret Van der Post. Would I come round for a drink? When? Well, now – this evening. I said I must bring my daughter with me and she said of course.
‘Round’ meant two longish bus rides, as the Van der Posts lived between South Kensington and King’s Road. There was only one other guest, Jim Douglas-Henry, whom I found charming
and I could see that he was interested in me. We arranged to meet again. We had our drink and went back on our buses. The next morning I saw Nic off at Paddington to go back to Slimbridge and her
beloved pony and Pete.

Lorna Mackintosh asked me to stay for a couple of weeks that summer in the new house she’d bought in Cornwall. She was now
married to Roger St Aubyn and the marriage
was already full of dangerous rocks. It wasn’t a happy visit and half-way through it the telephone rang at midday. It was Sam – for me. ‘How are
you
then?’ he asked.
I’d told him about Jim, and after I’d asked how he was and received the usual sardonic reply, ‘Marvellous!’, he said, ‘Well, I hope you will be very,
very
happy,’ and rang off.

Later that day there was a call from David Stafford-Clark. I don’t know how he found me, but he did. Sam had been found dead in a garage – he’d killed himself. The police had
found a note from me on him, as well as evidence that he was seeing, or knew David, and David was warning me. He said he would deal with the matter, but perhaps I’d better come back to
London.

I remember sitting on the train unable to stop crying – not continuously, but in endless sudden bursts. Trying to imagine the degree of desperation that had driven him to this dreadful end
was too much – I couldn’t. The shock of it recurred, each time as though I’d just heard it, and his last words on the telephone now seemed unbearable.
Why
hadn’t I
realized how desperate he was, and what could I have done to prevent it? I wept and wept until I was dry.

Suicide is the angriest death – a way of telling those who loved and cared for you most how useless they have been. In the successive nights I grieved for his father, his mother, his other
unknown family; also, and far from least, the wretched Suzanne. I couldn’t write or ring her up, since she might not know of my existence and discovering it might make things worse for her.
The man through whom I’d met Sam rang me and very gently told me about the funeral and where Sam was buried.

About a week later I went to see David. After we had talked about Sam and he’d attempted to absolve me of guilt, I said I seemed to do nothing but make dreadful mistakes with people and
that perhaps there was something wrong with me and I needed help. Would he help me? No. Why not? ‘Because I should fall in love with you.’ He then said that if I wanted it he would find
someone else. I said I’d think about it, and tell him if I did, but my innate suspicion of the experience I’d had with other psychiatrists intervened and I
didn’t ask him. Afterwards I thought it was very honourable of him to say what he did. It was then that I grasped how much I wanted to stop being men’s mistress. And I realized that for
years I’d wanted to marry Michael; then I’d wanted to marry Paul, and even – briefly – Arthur. I’d repressed my feelings about Michael because somewhere I knew that he
wanted to stay married to Felicity, with whom he settled to a happy old age. And I was certainly glad I hadn’t married the other two. But still the idea persisted that what was wrong was that
I hadn’t found a man for whom I’d be the central person and he for me. And I now wanted children. I felt I’d grown up enough at least to be a decent mother.

Some time earlier in 1958, Natasha and Stephen Spender asked me to dinner. It must have been spring, because I remember a large flowering cherry in their back garden. Oona and
Charlie Chaplin were there. I sat next to Charlie at dinner, and he told me that they were in England for some months as he was making
A King in New York
, in which his eldest son was also to
star. We got on very well, and I asked him if they’d like to come to dinner at Blomfield Road. To my surprise they were both enthusiastic and I remember a second very enjoyable evening.
During it I said how much I should like to come to the studios and watch the film being made. Charlie not only agreed to this but – I suppose on impulse – said if I wanted to write
about him making the film, I might; he would give me the world scoop on doing it, as he wasn’t allowing any journalists on the set. Naturally, I felt very flattered, and when I met Terry
Kilmartin, who’d succeeded my friend Jim Rose as literary editor of the
Observer
, he agreed to publish the article. My vision of Charlie, prior to knowing him, had been of an emaciated
little man, with a white face and his eyes, below his bowler hat, ringed with black like a lemur. His film image included the little square black moustache that you might buy in joke shops stuck on
with glue, and a face that could change from pantomime yearning to a dazzling smile of the most airy dismay. A beautiful mover, his elegant hobble with his stick was all part of that early persona.
Now, his body had filled out, his hair was white, but his lovely hands were as expressive as ever. His
movements still possessed that neat, charming agility that had endeared
him to so many.

Charlie was directing his film, as well as playing in it, and watching him show other actors what he wanted was endlessly fascinating. When he talked to them, he never seemed to get what he
wanted, but when he showed them, by saying their lines to the appropriate movement, it was clear as day. I particularly remember his struggling with Dawn Addams, whose appearance reminded me of
Paulette Goddard – one of his earlier wives. She had a line to deliver, and half-way through it he wanted her to do a 90-degree turn. They shot it several times without success, and then
Charlie leaped on to the set: ‘Watch me. Just watch me.’ He delivered the line spinning on one heel and was in just the right position as the line came to an end. ‘Easy!
See?’ But everything he did seemed that. I went day after day because it was so fascinating.

Oona was almost always there, and I got to know her better during those weeks. In spite of having – I think – six children by then, she had a kind of changeless beauty: slim and
dark, with her hair simply knotted into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, her face a pale oval, expressive and very intelligent eyes, and a wide mouth. She gave the impression of complete
serenity and although she looked remarkably young for her age, she knew exactly how to handle Charlie’s mercurial moods. She adored him, and it was clearly mutual. He would constantly turn to
her for reassurance. He’d not made a film for a long time, and I think somewhere inside he was anxious whether he could produce something that would do well in a new era and was afraid of
it.

Later, I went to stay with them in Vevey in Switzerland, at their large rectangular house, with gardens and views of snow-covered mountains and a wide glacier. The children were all present at
supper and since, that first night, the cook was off, Oona had made a Mexican meal that Charlie particularly liked. I sat next to five-year-old Victoria who, the moment the meal began, turned to me
and said, ‘Do you know what I quite thought?’

‘No.’

‘When I was inside Mummy’s tummy, I quite thought Daddy was Spanish.’ I asked her when she stopped thinking that. ‘The moment I came out. I could see he
wasn’t.’

I went to sleep that night in a beautiful room with a view of the glacier, and a sweet-smelling log fire – one of the greatest luxuries in the world.

One morning Oona showed me her quarters: a suite of rooms, bedroom, dressing room, bathroom and a small study, the walls lined with books including a complete set of the works of Eugene
O’Neill, her father. She was eager to show me everything: her collection of Fortuni dresses, sea-coloured greys and blues and greens, the silk so finely pleated that you could twist the dress
into a rope for packing and not harm it. She also had the largest collection of lipsticks, I should think, in the world. She told me she hunted down every shade of every make. She was very proud of
them. It was during that morning I realized that, in spite of loving Charlie and having a large family and anything she wanted, she was essentially lonely. When she showed me the engagement ring
Charlie had given her, a very large jewel, she said, ‘It was what I asked for. The largest topaz in the world.’ During that morning she intimated that she wanted me as a friend. I loved
her. One night, Charlie said he was taking us all out to dinner. ‘All’, however, didn’t include the three-year-old Eugene, who sat in the middle of the hall floor, scarlet with
rage, and uttering his ultimate threat. ‘If you don’t take me, I shall
read
in
bed
.’

I used to battle on with the first part of my novel, which I was now calling
The Sea Change
, working in my bedroom. In the late morning, Oona would come in for a chat and sometimes
I’d read to her.

Several times, after dinner, Charlie ran some of his early, silent films. The children would be entranced: ‘Look out, Daddy! You’ll fall over that!’ and shrieks of laughter if
he did, or
just
didn’t. The dance of the bread rolls was rerun, because they – and I – enjoyed
it so much. Once I looked across the room at Oona,
wondering how many times she’d seen these films. Her expression was serene, pleasure at the children’s amusement and watchful that Charlie, too, was happy. He was: he was at his most
gentle and expansive when surrounded by his family. Then they were still very young. Oona told me one day that Geraldine, the oldest, had said to her, ‘Never mind, Mummy, when I’m old
enough, I’ll have the baby every year.’

I flew back to London with them, and began to understand why they lived in the comparative isolation of Vevey. Charlie was recognized wherever we went, stared at, commented upon, and often
besieged for autographs. Sometimes he took it amiably, sometimes not. He, like many others, had been a victim of the McCarthy witch-hunts and had left America. He told me that Oona once went back
incognito to fetch ‘various things’ but he never did.

During the shooting of the film, we sometimes went on Sundays to lunch with the Ogden Stewarts, who, also exiled, lived in a beautiful house in Hampstead. Donald Ogden Stewart was one of the
best scriptwriters of his day.
The Philadelphia Story
was a notable example of his work – the first version, with Katharine Hepburn. The house was full of Paul Klees. They also kept a
monkey in a very large cage, and my brother asked whether the monkey had recognized Donald after he’d been away for some weeks. Donald said, ‘No. But he pretended to.’

Once, Oona and Charlie invited me to Paris for the weekend. I was to fly to Paris and stay at the Georges V hotel. The next day, Charlie said he wanted to go to Versailles. We set off in a
chauffeur-driven car, but as soon as we arrived and got out, Charlie was besieged. It was quite frightening: people surged round him until he was almost invisible. Oona and the chauffeur pushed
their way through, and hustled him back into the car. He was very cross: ‘People have no
manners
.’ Back in the car he cheered up, and talked of an early visit to Paris when he
was much poorer and less well
known. He said, ‘I stayed in a small hotel, an awful little place – the bedroom had terrible wallpaper that kept me awake.’
Suddenly he, magically, became the wallpaper, twisting his body into wild zigzags and at the same time being himself in bed watching it. There is no way to describe this – it was simply very,
very funny.

Once we were all back in London, I went with them to a showing of
A King in New York
in Leicester Square. There were crowds and crowds of fans, but they were orderly. The film
wasn’t a success. I don’t remember the Chaplins saying anything about it at the time, but it didn’t get a good press, although much of that was respectful about past
achievements.