We never went to Somerset, but when I was sixteen I went to a Thursday matinée and saw my first Elizabeth Green film. It was a light thriller called Dangerous Brew.
Elizabeth played Joyce, the teenage daughter of a rich businessman who wants to make her own way in the world. She packs a bag, runs away from home and gets a job as a waitress in a coffee shop.
The businessman is pacing up and down, frantic with worry, but his wife tells him not to worry. She says, ‘Joyce isn’t stupid,’ and ‘She’s doing what you did when you were her age.’
‘But I never had her advantages.’
‘Maybe she thinks they’re disadvantages…’
The father thought about that, and knew there was truth in it.
Joyce loves working in the coffee shop, and when she meets and falls in love with a customer called Danny, she feels her life is complete.
But Danny is a liar and a thief, and tries to persuade Joyce to act as lookout while he robs a drugstore. He is caught and she runs.
As I watched I was with her as she ran and hid. She couldn’t believe that she had been so wrong about Danny, and as she sat on a river bridge and watched lights on the water, I wanted to go to her and hold her and tell her that I was the kind of man she needed. She could have trusted me, I would never have used her, I would never have lied to her and put her in such a fix. In close-up, her face hazed and tears filled her beautiful eyes. Her skin looked thin, and all her nerves fizzed.
My nerves fizzed… a policeman approached her… twenty-five minutes later she was home with her rich father and her mother. They sat in their sitting room and waited for the policeman to leave. I waited for an angry scene but it didn’t come. Everyone had learnt a lesson except me. I went to see Dangerous Brew every day for a fortnight, so I could repeat entire scenes word for word, and imitate Danny’s laugh perfectly.
Dangerous Brew, Lost in an Accident, Captain Gentleman, Unit 505, The Forfeit Board: these are the titles of Elizabeth Green’s first five films, and I watched them all a few times, except Unit 505, which is a waste of time. She plays the only female member of Unit 505, a top-secret government organisation. She had to dye her hair black for that one, and spent most of the time nodding and agreeing with men in suits.
Elizabeth Green, with your cheap films and your skin like glass and your hair tumbling on to your shoulders. Your blue eyes blinking, and your mouth opening slightly. I missed you when I went to sea but grew closer to you. I invented new roles for you, and you played them better than any I had seen at the Gaumont, endlessly.
I was eighteen in 1945 when I left home and joined my first ship. Apprentice on the SS Iris out of Tilbury, carrying grain and sugar to Skolvig.
My mother held me in her arms and I knew what she was going to give me. Her eyes were bigger than hope or the moon in the sky. We stood together at the seamen’s gate. The ship loomed behind us and the derricks swung the last loads aboard. The night was thick, and tried to swallow our words. Lights shone on the river, and all the things the river was flooded my head. Father, excuse, work, escape. ‘This is yours,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ I pretended.
‘I’ll show you.’
The man’s leather cap was still in its brown paper bag; she took it out and brushed fluff off the peak. ‘Always wear it,’ she said. ‘I bought it when you were born. It’s lucky.’ She stroked the lining and started to cry. ‘You know why, don’t you?’
‘No.’
She said, ‘You were born a special baby. You were born in your caul. Do you know what that is?’
‘Sailors keep them?’
‘Yes. But do you know why?’
I didn’t.
She explained. Her womb, blood on her fingers, her waters not breaking, her first sight of my shrouded head, the midwife’s shriek. ‘Promise me, Michael,’ she said, and she put it on my head. She adjusted it carefully, and stroked a curl of my hair. ‘Will you?’
I didn’t need to ask why. I reached up and touched her hand, and said, ‘I promise.’
She kissed me.
‘Always,’ I said.
‘Darling…’
She had never called me that. ‘Mother…’ I buried my head in her shoulder and breathed her scent of carbolic and coal smoke. She patted my cap and I looked at her. Deep lines creased around her eyes and mouth, and glistened with tears. She looked very tired, and for a moment I had to stay. I could not leave her under the damp stars, with the fog on the water and the drunk sailors who trailed through the gate. But the ship hooted and I turned towards the sound.
‘And don’t forget your mother.’
‘Never.’
‘Write, won’t you?’
‘Every day,’ and I showed her a pad of paper and a blue pen I had bought specially.
‘Promise again…’
‘Mother…’
She took a deep breath and sprayed me with tears. ‘I’m missing you already.’ She gulped. ‘Michael…’
‘I’ve got to go, Mother.’
‘This is the night I’ve waited for.’
Elizabeth Green said that to me. Who could have dreamed that?