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An American in a Queen’s Land

Raymond met us for lunch in the restaurant of the Cumberland Hotel where we were to stay until our new home was ready for occupancy. He was dressed, sans chains, in a business suit, shirt, and tie. However, his thinning hair was still combed, Brutus fashion, across his forehead. There were, I now realized, two Raymonds. Hollywood had only temporarily shed him of inhibitions carefully inculcated by exacting parents and Britain’s rigid public schools. I had advised him that I would have to bring the children with me to lunch and he had graciously accepted their inclusion. As we entered the massive room with its dark-wood-paneled walls, white starched linen, and rather starchy-looking diners as well, I silently prayed Cathy and Michael would remember their manners. They did. Still, I had overlooked Michael’s knack of feeling free to express himself.

An explanation might be necessary here. My son has a very high IQ. This was ascertained when he was three, and preschools refused to enroll him, citing his ability to read at a highly advanced level, adding that his vocabulary was extensive. The same thing occurred when he was set to enter first grade. The principal insisted that it would be better if he went directly into second grade. “Children who are too advanced become bored when the work in no way challenges them,” he told me, adding, “The fact that they seem to know all the answers is disturbing to the other youngsters.” I did not approve, mainly because I felt that being physically younger (and smaller) than his classmates could be a problem for him. I never discouraged him from reading what he wanted to read—books on my shelves, the daily newspaper—and enjoyed our conversations about them.

“Would you like to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace?” Raymond asked him in what can only be called a condescending manner (that voice that is often used when an adult, who is uncomfortable with children, is talking to a child).

“I’d rather go to Parliament,” Michael replied.

Raymond was taken aback. He smiled indulgently. “They don’t allow ch-ch-children in Parliament,” he countered. And then, obviously curious about the request, asked, “Why do you want to go there?”

“That’s where they make the laws.”

“Yes, but it’s not like a courtroom.”

“Law courts pass sentences. Parliament and the American Congress pass laws,” he replied in a matter-of-fact manner.

Raymond said he would arrange for a car to take us to the changing of the guard and then drive by the Houses of Parliament. Michael shrugged his shoulders and said, “okay,” and then got busy with his dessert. With much relief, Raymond turned back to me and to the main purpose of the lunch: advising me of what my schedule would be. He had obtained a working permit but I still had to appear at the Home Office to finalize the arrangements and sign some papers. His assistant, a young man named David Deutsch, would accompany me. A house on nearby Albion Street would be at my disposal in two days. It came with a resident housekeeper, Mrs. Barnes. An agency would be sending several applicants to the hotel for interviews for the position of nanny.

We briefly discussed the script. I told Raymond how I planned to adapt my story to an English setting. He seemed pleased but leaned in close across the table to speak to me in a confidential voice. “Don’t forget the sex,” he admonished.

Back in our rooms, the newness of it all set in. On parting, Raymond had handed me an envelope containing one hundred pounds (in a variety of rather large-sized notes) for out-of-pocket expenses. It also included a list typed up by his secretary with some “helpful hints,” and a request that I record expenditures in regard to my work.

I sat down with Michael at the desk in the room and spread out Raymond’s expense money, along with the bills I had exchanged for American dollars at the foreign exchange on the boat. The British monetary system in the 1950s was nondecimal and more than a little confusing. Twelvepence was one shilling; twenty shillings made a pound (“It’s called a quid,” Michael popped up). There were many more coins than we had in the States: the penny (one pence), twopenny (tuppence), threepenny (thrupence), each coppery colored and of a different size; the silver sixpence, a one shilling, two shilling; and larger half crown. Biggish, colorful paper notes in denominations of ten shillings, one, five, ten (“a tenner,” Michael smiled), twenty, fifty, and one hundred pounds. To add to these, there was the “guinea,” a currency without a coin or note. To figure any item marked in “guineas” you added one shilling to the pound to the selling price (if, for instance, the item was selling for twenty guineas, you would be charged twenty-one pounds). To further the complexity of my money expenditures, Mitchell Gertz had made it clear in my contract that I was to be paid in American dollars. As the rate of exchange varied daily so did the amount of my paycheck—which upon receipt I had to take to American Express and exchange my dollars for pounds at the going rate (often higher or lower than what it had been moments earlier).

One “helpful hint” from Raymond’s secretary had to do with tipping: “In a restaurant ask if service is included. If not add 12½ percent.” I was to figure a fraction of a fractional currency. How daunting does that get? A shilling tip was adequate for a local taxi ride; a half crown “if going across town,” and a shilling more per mile for any “lengthy journey.” I was certain I would never get the money system straight and probably would overtip in order to reach an even amount. Somehow that seemed fair to me as the cost of living, from what I now observed, was at least 30 percent less than at home. I had not factored that in when Mitchell made the deal. But now I realized I could squirrel away a good sum, if careful.

The list continued: “When crossing a street remember to look right, then left. Our motor cars have right-hand drive, the reverse of yours.”

“Banks open at 10:00 a.m., close at 3:00 p.m. American Express closes at noon on Saturday.” (In the fifties, with tourism just regaining its prewar numbers, and communication and banking transactions a long way from being computerized, Americans abroad used American Express for a multiple of needs—banking, mail, a meeting place. It was one’s “home away from home.”)

“In dialing a telephone, note that O shares the last finger slot with “zero” and Q. If using a public telephone make sure you have a threepence coin. For information dial DIR. For use of a public toilet you will need a penny.” Aha! Now I knew the genesis of the phrase, “I have to spend a penny”!

In a handwritten note at the bottom of the page, most certainly added by Raymond, was the advice: “Do not use the word ‘fanny’ in conversation. Here it means a woman’s c—t!” And, in case I did not get that, he added, “It rhymes with front.”

We had arrived in the first week of October. The often reluctant English sun shone. Hyde Park was aburst with brilliantly colored autumn flowers and filled with Londoners sunning themselves on rented lounge chairs or stretched out on the dazzling green grass. The body count was amazing. Sunshine is a rare commodity in London. I would soon be aware of the gray days that dogged the city for months on end and the need, for nearly ten months of the year, to carry an umbrella. Coming from Southern California, I never quite got used to it.

Our new abode was only two blocks from Hyde Park, situated on a handsome street of large town houses, mostly of late Victorian and Edwardian vintage. At the corner was a massive, deep dirt cavity surrounded by a fence where once—a sign proclaimed—a church had stood and would soon be rebuilt. It had been demolished by the Germans during the war. Similar devastation remained visible in many sections of the city, especially the East End (we would be living in West London). Although this was now the 1950s, Britain remained a long way from putting World War II behind. Bomb sites were not the only reminders. A wartime approach to daily life prevailed. One queued for everything and remained patient about it. After my successful (if exhausting) day spent at the Home Office, I was issued a ration book for myself and each of the children to be used for small portions of dairy goods, meat, butter, and sugar. Restaurants made up for the lack of these staples by the use of substitutes (cereal in sausages, meat pies, and loaves were to be avoided at all cost). On the first morning of our residence on Albion Street, two half pints of milk were delivered on our doorstep (and all those where children under the age of ten were known to reside). We were also issued temporary health cards.

The house was like no other I had ever inhabited. When I stepped through the door I was suddenly in Victorian England and where the rich and mighty probably had lived privileged lives. Our landlord was a member of the peerage who chose at present to reside in his country estate. Many titled families with stately homes found themselves strapped financially at the war’s end and were happy to rent out their former London town houses (others of the landed gentry had recently opened the marble halls of their country estates and castles for paying tours). One entered our new home on the ground floor into a grand hallway—marble floors and vaulted ceilings held high by dark-wood beams. The reception rooms with their brocade drapes and polished wood floors on the right; dining room, butler’s pantry, and breakfast room on the left. At the rear, its windows overlooking the gardens, was a library with shelves filled with aging leather-bound volumes. A sorely out-of-date but handsome globe on a mahogany stand occupied one corner, and a huge library table was placed in the center of the room.

The decor of the house, almost as it must have been a century earlier, evoked the cultured and moneyed lifestyle of the previous inhabitants, obviously an educated and aristocratic family. I could not help but wonder how many ghosts of those past dwellers might be occupying the rooms with us. There was the distinct smell of oiled wood and well-worn leather. An impressive, dark-wood staircase was situated halfway down the entrance hall. At the end of the hallway, concealed behind a door, a narrower stairway led down to the basement where the kitchen, supply room, laundry, and staff quarters were situated, with little access to natural light. A dumbwaiter brought food up from the kitchen in covered dishes to the butler’s pantry. We did not have a butler. Mrs. Barnes, a no-nonsense widow in her sixties, managed these duties plus her own and was the sole occupant of the below-stairs accommodations. A charwoman came daily to help her in the upkeep and cleaning. Twice weekly a laundress (her Irish brogue so thick I had a hard time understanding her) did the laundry one day, the ironing the next. As there was no washer or dryer, on those days the under-stairs area was exceedingly damp as clothes and linen were strung out in the back washrooms. A groundsman (fee paid by the landlord) attended the garden and hedges weekly. As—less than a day after our arrival—it had rained in London almost on a daily basis, there was no worry as to watering the plants.

On the floor above the ground floor, there was a comfortable sitting room that adjoined the master bedroom, both of which would now be designated (by Mrs. Barnes) as “milady’s apartments.” My bedroom enjoyed the garden view, an Italian marble fireplace (every main room had a fireplace—there was no central heating), and a large bed that is unforgettable. Four richly carved, mahogany bedposts propped up a canopy of heavy, fringed, gold-tasseled green velvet (faded in streaks by its age and where light had fallen upon it) that cascaded from the corners to the floor (think of that green velvet, gold-tasseled gown Scarlett O’Hara fashioned from her late mother’s portieres to meet Rhett Butler). The velvet drapes could be pulled shut—sealing out the cold once the coals were ashes in the fireplace. (Coal was the fuel Londoners depended on for heat, and the coal trucks with their blackened delivery men were a common sight.) There was also a connecting dressing room with a cot covered in scotch plaid, there—I was told—for the husband’s use when his wife had her “monthly.”

A hallway led from these “en suite” rooms (a sitting room, big, old-fashioned, white-and-black-tiled bathroom included), to two guest chambers. The top floor was described as “the children’s wing.” It also contained staff quarters, as once there would have been at least one upstairs maid and a nanny. A good-sized, sitting-playroom centered the children’s rooms and off it a tiny kitchen for the nanny to prepare the young ones’ tea. The nanny I had hired, Fiona Ffife, a lanky, good-natured young Scotswoman with carrot hair, a ruddy complexion, and a strong scent of heather about her, was to have the entire upstairs staff quarters, giving her a bedroom and sitting room, albeit neither of them very commodious.

The house had seen better days. Still, evidence of those times remained. It came furnished and that included crested silver cutlery, trays, toast racks, tea set, and a fine china dinner service for twelve, as well as a few truly remarkable antique chests and tea tables. Framed portraits and landscapes, mainly eighteenth and nineteenth century, hung on the flocked, wallpapered walls, fadings on it indicating the removal of perhaps the most valuable of the owner’s collection. Raymond’s company was paying thirty-two pounds a week for all this grand old-English luxury (rents in London were almost all due weekly in the 1950s), approximately $400 a month. Mrs. Barnes’s weekly salary was seven pounds ten, Fiona’s eight pounds, and the daily char a small hourly rate. I was, of course, responsible for feeding the members of my household staff, and for the telephone, utilities, and coal required for the stove and fireplaces. One of the first purchases I made was a number of portable electric heaters as the house often had a definite chill. In the bathrooms there were heating rails for towels, a small luxury but one I came to love. There is nothing like the cozy feeling of wrapping a toasty towel around one’s naked, shivering self when stepping out of a bathtub onto a cold tile floor.

Grocery shopping was not an easy task but it was a great adventure. There was one “supermarket” on the nearby Edgeware Road. It was not comparable in any way to the supermarkets back home. It seemed most of whatever you thought you needed, the London store did not stock. One quickly learned the art of substitution. Shopping was better done in the individual shops—and there were many of those clustered along the busy high streets of almost every neighborhood: greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, bakeries, chemists, dairy, charcuterie (prepared foods and jarred items like pickles, olives, “gentleman’s relish,” and marmite, the latter two requiring a cultivated taste). Flower stalls brightened many corners.

Shopping for food was time consuming, there being queues for everything. People bought fresh foods in amounts that would be used in a day or two (refrigerators were not yet in every home and easily spoiled food was often left to keep cool on windowsills). My American training had taught me to buy more than one tin of something if it was at a reduced price. My first time out I purchased three cans of baked beans, planning for them to be stored in the larder. You carried a fishnet bag (or two or three) to hold your purchases. Some things were wrapped in paper, but grocery bags were not generally given and it was a juggle to fit your items into these bags without them poking through the holes. One could, of course, order from the few top department stores (Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, and Selfridges, etc.) who had food floors stacked with the best quality of available provisions and offered accounts and delivery. That was, however, an expensive way to go and I only used these outlets when absolutely necessary.

I never stopped thinking of the short time I would be enjoying the bounty I had reaped of new experiences and steady pay. Soon I would be returning to the States, unable to use my identity in my chosen career. And there was still the possibility of being subpoenaed to appear before the Committee. Raymond’s generous contract, I now realized from Mitchell Gertz’s first letter (wherein he boasted of his great negotiating powers), had been due to his desperation to make a deal with MGM which required his ownership of three viable properties. He had two—mine was the last needed to finalize his negotiations. When I completed my contractual obligations and went home, there was no chance of my receiving my current handsome fee. To make things scarier yet, I had earned my living from the age of seventeen as a writer and knew no other way to seek gainful employment. At university I had studied theater and Russian literature. Small chance for that to help me. The future looked cloudy at best. I was determined to make the most of this glorious reprieve while saving what I could for what—it seemed only natural to believe—would be tough times ahead.

Adjusting to a new culture and surroundings was not easy for the children. I tried to make our time together as sharing and as learning an experience as possible. They had been through a lot in their short years what with our moving about, their father’s neglect, the divorce, my illness, and now being thrust into an unfamiliar world. I went to work almost immediately. But they were used to my having “writing-can’t-disturb-Mommy-except-for-an-emergency” hours. Fiona made the children afternoon tea (more like a light supper) in the upstairs kitchen.

For the first weeks, Mrs. Barnes cooked our remaining meals (cold meat left in the larder for Sunday night dinner when she was free). I would bring the provisions home and she would whisk them away below stairs. Her pride in her culinary abilities was estimable. She served us in the dining room—arms folded as she waited to be congratulated after a meal. This was not an easy matter. Mrs. Barnes was a hard worker and a lovely woman. She was also a terrible cook, and my children were not always able to conceal their displeasure of what was on their breakfast and dinner plate. The fine vegetables I had handpicked at the greengrocers all came out a mash and unattributable. The lack of eggs during the war had caused her to guard those I brought home as if they were golden. After three consecutive mornings of being served the tinned beans on burnt toast for breakfast (toast seemed always to be charred as it was made in an antiquated—antique, really—toaster), I rebelled. Eggs for everyone tomorrow morning, I insisted. They were set before us the next day scrambled in fat drippings, their volume inflated by gummy, cooked cereal. It was my difficult problem to tell her that she could do the preparing, chopping, and washing, while I would handle the cooking. In terms of the unwritten laws of English household staff members, this was a demotion and she did not take it kindly. I was stiff lipped by her for a good week. Finally she relented and became interested in how and what I was preparing for a meal.

Cooking had always been one of my favorite pastimes and I liked to think I was good at it. My mother, Marion, was a talented cook, self-taught and creative. The two of us had lived with my uncle Dave for several years of my early life. My parents were separated and in that era—the early 1930s—a woman resided with a member of her family during such unfortunate circumstances. Uncle Dave was a well-known vaudevillian who was brought to Hollywood to appear in motion pictures. The Hollywood offices of the studio that hired him had not been informed by their New York arm that he was a mime. This was the beginning of talking pictures. Mimes—even famous, comic ones—were not wanted. A few years later Harpo Marx came along, but he had brothers and a musical instrument to do his talking for him. Still, Uncle Dave had a contract that the studio had to fulfill and an income for the length of it. Most other former vaudevillians were not that lucky. They came to Hollywood looking for that big break which had not happened and were unemployed and broke.

My mother and my aunt Theo (Uncle Dave’s first wife—whom I greatly loved) took to cooking large quantities of inexpensive recipes—stews, chili, and something my mother invented called “deviled bones” (made from the remains of the roast she had made the previous day) to feed the hungry theater and out-of-work vaudevillian performers who gathered at our dinner table. Uncle Dave filled in with hamburgers from our backyard grill. “Chasen’s” was born of that beginning (and constructed on an adjoining lot). The scents of all this home cooking, so rich with spices and glowing with the warmth of those gatherings, comprise the happiest times of my childhood. I have always associated food and cooking with them. Therefore, I was quite pleased to have decided to take up the reins as cook to my household. My nemesis was not Mrs. Barnes, but an enormous old black stove (circa 1910) that dominated the kitchen and was fed by coal.

“The stove is your problem,” I told Mrs. Barnes, “the food made on it mine.” So she fed it and kept the temperature at least near where I needed it, and I cooked.

The char prepared fires in all the rooms before she left so that they could be lighted early the next morning. Keeping the house warm once London was awash in daily rain was no easy task. Dampness crawled into the very center of one’s body and splayed outwards to one’s extremities. After breakfast with the children, I retired to my bedroom, doors closed and knees raised; as I reclined on the bed, yellow lined pad and sharpened pencil at hand, my portable Olivetti nearby to transpose my written words, I started my work day. (This was a regime I had developed during the onset of polio.) To keep my hands from becoming numbed from the cold, I often wore gloves as I worked on my Olivetti or pushed my pencil along the lines of my yellow pads. I had regular office hours, usually nine to four, lunch on a tray, Monday through Friday. Saturday was shopping time, Sunday exploration of London and the outskirts with Cathy and Michael. I met with Raymond and David Deutsch for a story conference every two weeks and saw them both socially as well.

Raymond was married to a beautiful young woman, twenty years his junior, who he adoringly called “my angel.” He had a teenage daughter, Larain, from his first marriage. Larain was going through great angst at the time. We bonded and she often came by for supper or joined us on an excursion (later, when Fiona was no longer in my employ, Larain would be a big help as a “childsitter”). Claire was blonde and looked a bit like the fair Elaine—pure and innocent. Raymond never tired of telling the story of how he fell in love with her upon first sight, how he arranged secret meetings with her, and how her brawny brothers nearly killed him when they discovered they were lovers. He had the scars to show for it—and did.

The Strosses lived in a handsome flat on Connaught Place, a short walk from Albion Street. Residing in the same building was an American family, Gerry (Gerald) Adler, his wife Kit, and at that time their two children, Nancy (Cathy’s age) and Steve (still an infant). Gerry was a lawyer and the British director of international enterprises for NBC. There were only two television channels in Great Britain at the time, and they went off the air before midnight, often way before midnight. Scheduling was haphazard. Programs started at ten minutes after the hour, six before the hour—however long a show took. And there were no commercials. Viewers mostly rented sets and paid a fee for a television license. Radio was the best free ticket in town. It was excellent. I quickly became addicted to a program called A Book before Bedtime, on which well-known theater actors read a chapter from a classic each weeknight.

American film and television production was booming in England as budgets could be slashed dramatically from what they would have been had they been shot in the States. Gerry was a towering, gentle man. Standing, he would always bow his head to talk with you, as most people were at least a foot shorter. He was extremely sympathetic to the plight of HUAC’s victims. Kit Adler, formerly a puppeteer who had starred in her own television kiddie show in upstate New York, was a delight. When we met at dinner at the Strosses’ we immediately hit it off.

David Deutsch was a constant presence and escort on my evenings out to the theater or cinema. I was not lonely, nor was I looking for romance. My current physical condition made sex something to be avoided for the present. God knows I would have welcomed a bit of loving but my body was still in the healing process. I had been lucky to have had a fairly mild case of polio. My lungs were clear and the paralysis had affected only my right leg, the inner thigh, and a bit of necessary plumbing, the last creating private doubts that I would ever be able to reveal myself to a lover again. During the past year, after a rather lengthy hospital stay, I had been in intensive outpatient therapy care and had shown considerable improvement, mentally and physically. On my last visit to my doctor in Los Angeles, I had agreed to see a London colleague of his. I put off doing so as there were just too many other things that seemed to have first call on my time. Also, I greatly welcomed my reprieve from medical services. I promised myself to make the call the day my script was completed.

I never discussed my physical condition with my new friends, and everyone was too polite to ask. After several evenings with David, I realized he had taken a more romantic approach toward me. He brought me, and the children, small presents, put his arm around me in the theater, and kissed me on the cheek rather lingeringly at partings. One night he asked whether my “situation” was permanent (meaning, with the glance that accompanied the inquiry, would I always need canes).

“No,” I told him, more hopeful than sure. “My doctor at home says I am progressing well. But it will be a while. . . .” I hesitated.

“A while for what?”

“Until I fully recover.”

“Look,” he said with great serious concentration, his hand tightly grasping my shoulder. “We here in Britain have been through a long, painful, costly war. I don’t have a friend who has not lost a member of his family or suffered from serious wounds—physical and emotional. We Brits may appear unromantic by American standards, but I can tell you honestly we can love and deal with situations that require great understanding as deeply as any of your countrymen.”

I was greatly moved. That night, before we parted, he held me in a tight embrace and I did not pull away.

A few days later, he asked me to join him for tea with his mother at her home. (He had his own flat in a section of the city called St. John’s Wood.)

“David, what is this about?” I prodded.

“I would just like you to meet my mother. She greatly admires women of independence and talent.”

So I went.

David was an earnest fellow about my age, of average good looks and height. He did not stand out in a group and was not a talented conversationalist. However, he was bright and good natured. What he lacked in charisma he made up in curiosity and conviviality. We enjoyed many of the same things—films, theater, history, and—oddly—art deco design (a big passion of mine). We did not, however, laugh over the same things. David had a very British sense of humor, which had a way at times of being sophomoric—a lot of scatological and bathroom jokes bred, I assumed, in the all-boy boarding schools in which well-born British males were raised.

Raymond had told me a great deal about David’s background (he, on the other hand, was reticent about it). His father, the late Oscar Deutsch, had developed and owned the Odeon cinema chain, the largest in Great Britain, and was responsible for the proliferation during the twenties and thirties of the fanciful art deco movie palaces in both America and Great Britain. These, in turn, inspired the art deco design in films like the Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire musicals. It had obviously not been easy for David to be the son of a strong personality such as Oscar Deutsch was said to have been. Although unharmed in the war, he was, nonetheless, a wounded soldier in life. I cared for him as a good friend might, but I was not in love with David, nor did I think—in view of the shortness of our relationship and my imminent departure—that he had any long-range feelings for me.

The moment I entered Lili Deutsch’s elegant sitting room, I knew I had made a grievous mistake in accepting the invitation. As Lili did not rise to greet me it seemed obvious this was not to be a simple social visit. David took my arm and advanced toward his mother. Her smile was obligatory as he made the introduction. Groomed impeccably in a gray tea gown (long, elegant, and simple), ropes of real pearls (how could they be anything else?) about her neck, Lili Deutsch looked very much the “grand dame” as she nodded for me to be seated on a chair opposite her. Her first words to me after “How do you do,” offered not as a question but as a statement, were “I understand from David that you are an American and a divorcée.”

I admitted to both crimes.

“And you have two children.”

“A son and a daughter.”

She poured tea from a magnificent silver pot into fine china cups without a single drip. “Milk or lemon?” she inquired.

“Neither.”

There were in Lili Deutsch vestiges of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell in his The Importance of Being Earnest, who, when confronted by the young woman her nephew has brought her to meet, asks about the girl’s parents. She is informed that they are both deceased. “To lose one parent is tragic,” Lady Bracknell responds archly, “to lose two, careless.” David’s mother could have forgiven me many things. However, never that I was both a divorcée and American (shades of Wallis Simpson, I suppose). She had been hostess to Britain’s most famous stars, political figures, and, as the silver-framed photographs on display in the sitting room revealed, members of the royal family. One, in a prominent spot, was of her standing beside the sweet, jolly-faced Queen Elizabeth, recently widowed consort of George VI and mother of the current, young Queen, also named Elizabeth. At the bottom of the photograph was a handwritten inscription (which I could not read). There followed about twenty minutes of strained conversation. Mainly Lili addressed David—who called her “Mum”—testily chiding him for being rather inattentive during the previous weeks, and then relating to him her current complaints. David had morphed into a different man than the one I thought I had come to know in the past three months. He seemed suddenly to have regressed to truant schoolboy, be it one about to enter his third decade. He was not wholly in fear of Lili. “I already told you that, Mum,” he said with a decided edge. Still, he was noticeably anxious for her approval and clearly experiencing some pain that it was not being extended and that her attitude toward me was frosted with disfavor.

Not able to endure David’s discomfort, his mother’s pompous attitude, and my own awkward situation, I rose to say that I was sorry but I must leave. This was obviously a social gaffe, for David jumped immediately to his feet and chimed in with a fictional excuse for my abrupt departure. Lili, unperturbed, walked us to the door of the sitting room, no farther. David leaned over and gave her a glancing kiss on the side of her pale, bisque-like cheek—his lips barely touching her pale white skin. I was conscious of the click-click of my canes as I cautiously walked down the highly polished hallway floor to the front door where the uniformed maid stood at attention to see us out.

Once on the street, I could not control the anger that was rising inside me. I’m not sure if I felt more fury toward David for placing me in such a wrongheaded situation, at Lili for her arrogant rudeness, or at myself for not making it clear to David before it got this far that I was not in the least interested in marrying him—or anyone else for that matter—as that was what I had suddenly realized he had in mind. Once out on the street as he prepared to hail a taxi, the anger in me seeped out. He had placed me and himself in an ugly situation and done so without consulting me or asking my views.

“How could you? You brought me here on a fraudulent premise!” I accused. “She admires independent, talented women, does she! My God! Your mother looked at me as though she were interviewing a highly unacceptable, prospective daughter-in-law! Well, she is damned right!” A taxi had just pulled over to the curb. I got in and closed the door before he could join me.

My anger toward David cooled rather quickly. I had, in fact, after meeting Lili Deutsch, greater empathy for him. He apparently was desperate in his wish to change things between his mother and himself, for her to see him as a grown man—a married man. I was going to leave in a month’s time, if he didn’t stop me. Therefore, his rush to move things along between us. I told him what I felt and he seemed to take it well enough. We vowed to remain friends. And we did.

A few days after my tea with David’s mother, Raymond informed me that he was going to need my services for another two months to do further work on my screenplay. The rent on the house would still be covered, as well as the other perks I had been given, but my salary was cut by a third (no Mitchell Gertz to negotiate for me, sadly). I accepted, with relief. Fear of what I would do after my stint abroad had been nagging at me. Now I had been given another reprieve, however short, and I was grateful to have it. The children had settled in. Michael was attending school, Cathy was in a playgroup organized at the American School, and I had made an appointment with the doctor suggested to me by my stateside physician.

David and I never spoke about that disastrous tea party again. When I gave thought to it, I realized that Lili had freed us both. David had made his first bold move in cutting the cord that held him to Lili. And I had realized that I needed help to deal with my problems. Still, I knew that divorcing the children’s father had freed me on one hand and brought me more responsibility on the other. Neither was David really free. He might one day soon revolt. But my instinct was that he would win that battle and still face a long, difficult war.

Believing I had only two more months abroad, I put in many extra hours in my pursuit of all things British. I was obsessed, and being obsessed with anything other than my own condition felt extremely good. My greatest pleasure was in wandering about London on my own or with the children. I had fallen in love with Great Britain—the people, the country, and its history. Once the Russians, with all that drama and melodrama in their history and fictions, had fascinated me. My mother, however, was a dedicated reader of English literature (she had studied to be an English teacher) and she was entranced with British royalty. We spent a lot of time alone during my growing-up years—my father moving in and out of our lives for such long periods of time. I read the four Ss at her request (Shakespeare, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shaw), and listened to her stories about “that scandalous Mrs. Simpson.” She possessed some talents as an actress and her recitations were always entertaining. Of all the royals, I had been drawn most to the commanding image of Queen Mary, George V’s consort, mother of the infamous Edward VIII, who had abdicated the throne to marry Mrs. Simpson, and of his brother, poor, stuttering George VI, who—nonetheless—got his country through a terrible war. As I was now living close to Buckingham Palace—just across Hyde Park from Albion Street—my appetite for more information about the history of the country that was my present host was spurred.

Reality soon invaded the peace I had negotiated for myself. A letter arrived from Sue Rossen alerting me to the possibility that Bob would recant his initial stand in a second hearing before the Committee. It would be the first of Sue’s letters to me in which she opened her heart, out of character for this seemingly iron-strong woman. She and Bob had not agreed that this was what he should do. In the end she had relented. True, Bob could work again, the money would once again flow, but she feared what this would do to their lives, how the children would be affected, how many friends would now turn their backs on them. She asked me if I had been in touch with any of the blacklisted members of the industry who were now in England.

This last query unsettled me. I had been so involved with my own good fortune and my wonder at being abroad that I had not contacted one person who I knew was in London trying to reconstruct a life after McCarthy had robbed him of his old one, although I had brought with me ways to reach several of them. The first name on my list, along with a telephone number, was Lester Cole, one of the original Hollywood Ten who had served a year in prison for courageously refusing to give the Committee names of friends and associates who might (or might not) have belonged to the Communist Party (or a left-wing organization) at one time, even if they had rejected it in recent years. I had met Lester and his wife a couple of times at the Rossens’. He answered the phone. Yes, of course, he remembered me. His wife had divorced him while he was serving time—“a betrayal, beyond betrayal,” he bellowed. He had heard rumors about Bob—and pressed me for an update. I told him what Sue had written me.

“Sonofabitch, lousy bastard!” he hissed.

I changed the subject and suggested maybe we could meet for coffee.

“Sure. Are you working?” he added.

I told him the story of my first interview with Raymond and how I now happened to be working on the script here in London. He laughed heartily.

“What are you going to do when the job is done?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Lester,” I said honestly. We set a date to meet.

After I hung up, I felt like a tsunami wave had flooded over me. Not only did I not know what I would do once I was off Raymond’s payroll, lately I had been avoiding any thought of it. Time was ticking away fast. I knew I had to find a reasonable course to follow.