Life’s a Scream

I must have been the wimp of the decade for I continued to escort George wherever he wanted to go and I hated myself for it. I told myself repeatedly that everything would turn out for the best, while other wiser people just waited to see how best to avoid the fall-out. I had given up the idea that I’d ever meet a man I could fall in love with and had settled for my friendship with George. I thought that once he saw that I really wasn’t interested in a physical relationship with him he would go back to being my friend. One day I believed it, the next I didn’t. It was a routine. And, like all routines, it was hard to break. The real problem, which I wasn’t willing to face, was that I still wanted him to find me work. He realised this and continued to dangle this carrot. His telephone calls always started with, ‘I was talking to Lew Grade . . .’ or Eric Pleskow or Joe Levine or Disney or anyone else who would impress me. He’d then go on to tell me about deals he was putting together on my behalf. I don’t think I really believed it but I didn’t admit it, just in case.

With our relationship not improving, it was a relief when I was offered a job in Switzerland. It was a children’s television show called Ski Boy. I was over my Hollywood film fixation and would accept anything where a camera might possibly be focused on me, followed by a pay-cheque. I told the producer I would love to do the job but unfortunately Steffanie was just getting over flu and needed me.

There were four other actors, Steffka and I on the flight. I didn’t know any of them so sat in the rear of the plane, with Steffanie beside me by the window and my belongings on the aisle seat. I settled down but suddenly became aware that a man stood over me, looking at the seat piled high with my cast-offs. Sod him! I thought. There are plenty of other seats. But he continued to stand there. I looked up and gave him my best drop-dead look but he merely smiled and asked if I would mind shifting my things. I couldn’t believe it. I sat up and pantomimed looking around at the rows of empty seats. It didn’t faze him. He still looked expectantly at my gear. Before I could get really crude a stewardess came into view. She wanted to know what the hold-up was. I explained. She regarded my oppressor. He looked at me and kept his smile firmly in place. His body language suggested he was prepared to remain there indefinitely. The stewardess backed down first. She told me that if I insisted on keeping my goods on the seat I would have to buy another ticket.

I switched my drop-dead look to her, thought through the situation and decided the hassle wasn’t worth it. I slung the bags under my seat, the stewardess hung up my coat and the lout sat down. I hated him utterly. He pulled out an Evening News, turned to the crossword, searched unsuccessfully for a pen and then had the impudence to ask me if I had one he could borrow. I was more furious than ever but made a production of getting a pen out of my handbag. He sat there staring at the crossword for a while, then handed the pen back. ‘Too hard,’ was his explanation.

We sat in silence for a while. Steffka was staring out at the clouds and occasionally looking past me at our uninvited companion. He gave her a smile and she responded. Traitor, I thought. He refolded the paper and found the junior crossword. Again he had the temerity to ask for my pen. Seething, I slammed it on the table in front of him. As he picked it up I noticed he was wearing a bracelet with his name on it. Cretin! Can’t even remember his own name . . . I thought.

As we neared the Pyrenees the weather changed and the plane started jiving about. I love flying but am not at all keen on crashing. I gripped Steffka’s hand and braced myself for the inevitable. Steffanie looked across me to my persecutor and explained my behaviour. He reassured her that everything was all right. We’d just hit some thermals approaching the mountains. Once we were over them everything would be calm again.

I was feeling seriously pissed off, not only because he seemed to be sympathetic to my malaise but because he was trying to reassure me. I hate being reassured. It’s so condescending. ‘You’d know about that, would you?’ I asked cuttingly. After all, someone who couldn’t do the children’s crossword was hardly an Einstein. He confessed he was a pilot.

Prat! I thought. I pointed towards his bracelet with his name on it. ‘That’s in case you forget your name, is it?’ I asked smugly. He explained that he was a racing driver and for the purpose of identification the bracelet had his name and blood group on it.

I hate being ignored so gradually I let my guard slip. He told me he had just returned from the temporada – season – in Buenos Aires and was on his way to stay with a racing mate at his chalet in the mountains outside Geneva. I told him we were going on location for Ski Boy in St Luc and he apologised for his derogatory remark about actresses, explaining that every hot-panted dolly bird strutting the pit-lanes of the world classified herself as either a model or an actress. He seemed quite intrigued that I actually had a job to go to.

At Geneva airport he not only schlepped my bags off the aircraft but was happy to be left with Steffanie while I went off to change some currency. I smiled to see them in animated conversation, Steffka’s pony-tail bobbing up and down as she chatted away a mile a minute. He was laughing at what she was saying and I had to admit he was growing on me.

Driving out to the location, I sat in the car and wondered if I would ever see him again. He’d asked for my telephone number before going off with a friend and to my surprise I’d actually given it to him. I thought about him for a while, then decided it was just one of those things . . . passengers that go bump as they pass in the air.

Ski Boy went like a dream, and Steffanie loved Switzerland and the snow. I played a journalist and had great fun both with the part and working with a pro like Michael Culver. Steffanie’s birthday was on the penultimate night of the shoot. I arranged a party for her and the cast and crew. We had a great fondue and I suddenly thought of this funny guy I’d met on the plane. I wondered how his skiing was going and realised that I wouldn’t mind hearing from him. I had to admit he was outrageously sexy and I don’t feel that way often.

Filming over, Steffka and I jetted back to England. I was just wrestling my oversized suitcase into the bedroom when the telephone rang. It was my aeroplane tormentor. He had returned early from his skiing holiday and wanted to take me out. Not wishing him to think I was one of his pit-ponies, I tried to keep my voice cool and to act distant, but when I put down the phone I had somehow agreed to have dinner with him the next evening. I insisted on calling him Tonio instead of Tony and on choosing the restaurant. That night he had me in stitches all through dinner as he told me about his life in the RAF and motor racing. I’d never laughed so much on a date, nor got so hot and bothered either . . . Back at my place he insisted on a cup of tea before he got down to business and an apple afterwards. As I stood in the doorway, weak-kneed, and waved him goodbye I wondered what I was letting myself in for, Years later, Tone confessed that he’d watched Steffanie and me horsing around in the VIP lounge and thought it was Christmas when he saw we were on the same flight. He was having me and that was that.

By May, Tonio and I were an item. He knew about George and insisted I told him what was going on but I was fearful of the harm George could do me in the business. So far I had managed to keep the work coming in. I was a panellist on New Faces and doing a reasonable amount of television. That could all be jeopardised if I broke off with George. But I knew I should have to make a choice pretty soon. I was going to too many motor-racing parties and public events for our liaison to remain a secret for ever and I was telling George so many lies that when I told the truth I instantly felt a tremor of panic. Then one of my ‘friends’ phoned George, met him for dinner and filled him in on my passionate love affair. He had already sensed it. I had changed. I was quite relaxed about my life and career, and contented within myself. I didn’t care that George knew. I was so incredibly happy to have discovered my knight in shining racing cars. Love had at last found me.

To distract me from my problems, Tonio began teaching me to fly. He kept a Cherokee Arrow down at Elstree and whenever we went anywhere he let me take the controls for most of the flight. No switching on the auto-pilot and getting your feet up for me, I sat there clutching the yoke and responding to every twitch or lurch. When George heard about this he went bananas, unable to stand the thought of me being independent. I couldn’t ignore him or his urgent notes, telegrams and messages any longer. Our relationship had to be settled once and for all. I arranged a meeting with him at his flat in Dolphin Square. Although I had long lost any hope of George behaving like a gentleman and honouring his promise to release me from our marriage should I find true love, I now saw a side of him I hadn’t known existed. He raged and screamed at me, demanding I leave Tonio at once to move into a family house with him. He threw insults at me about my family and Tone.

‘Well,’ he said and laughed. ‘Things will change now. You’ll see. Your future has always been behind you. I alone kept you going. You don’t have a career now, that’s for sure. Perhaps you’ve already noticed that nobody is falling over himself to hire you? Just wait until I really get to work. I guarantee you won’t be able to get a walk-on part in a skin flick. So just stop seeing this dago’ – which is what he called him, because I called Tone ‘Tonio’ – ‘and we’ll say no more about it.’

The argument was getting us nowhere. I turned to leave, only to find George had locked the door of the flat. As I scrabbled to escape he seized my shoulders and threw me on the floor. Demanding that we consummate our ‘marriage’ there and then, he tried to force himself on me and started violently pulling at my clothes. He was a big man and my karate lessons were of no use as he pushed his full weight on to me. Able only to move my neck, I head-butted him on the nose and the pain propelled him backwards. A well-directed kick to the groin sealed the matter. As he screamed with pain, I jumped up, unlocked the door and ran.

Tonio said, ‘Forget it, he’ll get over it.’ But I knew he would make good his threat and was even frightened that he would hurt Steffanie. I went to the police and filed his letter, just in case. Tonio and I went to the town hall and filled in my divorce papers. We wanted George out of our lives.

Michael Cort had signed me up to do a sort of Bond film in Turkey, Click, with Tom Adams, and not long afterwards Howard Pays offered me a film in Malta with Rossano Brazzi. I loved both scripts. They were totally different stories and each of them fitted me perfectly. Suddenly, however, I received a phone call telling me the film in Malta was off. Then Michael Cort came to see me and told me that George had phoned and threatened him. He said that if he employed me George wouldn’t play the picture in the Rank cinemas. I couldn’t believe it. George had told me about some of the dirty tricks he had played on people who had got on the wrong side of him. I had always assumed he was just showing off. Now I was forced to realise just how powerful and malicious he was. When I confronted him, he just sneered. ‘Prove it!’ he said. ‘You don’t think any of those idiots out there are going to put their arse on the line for you, do you?’ and he was right. No one in the industry spoke to me. Word had got out that I was persona non grata. When Tonio and I attended a première not a soul spoke to me, no one said hello. At lunch with Tone at the White Elephant, the ‘in’ place for the film industry at the time, people I’d thought were my friends gave a forced smile and turned away.

Tonio could see what it was doing to me and suggested we go to Argentina to shoot a film script I’d optioned. I thought of Perón, back in Argentina, President for the third time. Tonio had met him many times at the Automobile Club in Buenos Aires and at the Admirante Brown circuit. Perhaps he would help to get things going. Together we wrote Perón a letter.

Meanwhile the press learned about my problem with George. They asked me to tell all and help them do a hatchet job on the film exhibiting business, revealing how the circuit was booked and what backhanders were exchanged. I was sorely tempted, especially when they encouraged me to name my price. In the end I took Tonio’s advice. ‘Forget it!’ he said. ‘They’ll tear you to pieces in the process. We’ll go to Buenos Aires. If nothing happens at least you’ll be out of the way for a while and who knows . . .?’

It was decided that Steffanie would finish her school year and then come out to Buenos Aires to join us, either with Matka or alone, depending on how things went. But a week later we read in the paper that President Peron had died. In Argentina, at that time, you had to be in with the powerful if you expected to get anything done. Isabel was Perón’s deputy and had taken over the Presidency, but we didn’t know how long that would last.

While we dithered I received a call from Bruce Gyngell at ITC, offering me a job. I asked Bruce whether he knew I was no longer with George. Had he seen the bad PR I was getting? He said he came from Australia and didn’t give a shit about the bloody Rank Organisation and their personality problems. He wanted me for the female lead in an episode of a TV drama series called Thriller. I was delighted. I had one friend at least. And he was giving me a job.

‘Where the Action Is’ was filmed at Elstree with Eddie Burns from 77 Sunset Strip. Tonio drove me to the studio every morning and came to fetch me home at the end of the day. We put our longer-term worries at the backs of our minds and enjoyed ourselves like a couple of kids.