“Now,” he began, “you remember yesterday there was a fearful battle at the very gates of Ferdival Castle, and no one knew how many lay dead on the field. The brave knight, Sir Forticoeur, had waited till he saw that all was lost, and after rescuing the fair Princess Gwinnathred from unthought-of horrors, they retreated to the Grimly Wood. There, against a hummock, weary after so many hours of wielding his mighty sword, he slept, with his golden helmet with the scarlet plume hung on the branch of the tree where Olduff, the owl, roosted, and beside the knight sat the Princess Gwinnathred, careworn but watchful. Evening was nigh and the gloomy wood was fearful quiet, and yonder some four hundred leagues lay the castle, and who knew when the king would arrive with help?”
Until now (though the nursemaids all were lending an ear to the tale) the two ladies on the bench had gone on talking to each other, but as Mr. Thingamabob continued, Nellie turned her head and listened more carefully.
“Now, as everyone knows, there was no stronger, no nobler, no more wise nor valiant knight in the whole kingdom than Sir Forticoeur, but on this day, after such evil tidings and fell deeds, his strong heart was near to breaking, and who was there to mend it, since the king himself had not come? Who was to help him from this worst of predicaments? Surely not the sad and mournful maid, the Princess Gwinnathred.”
“Princess Gwinnathred?” echoed Nellie aloud to her friend. “Why, I believe he’s telling one of the Bobbitt stories.” Matters became clearer with Mr. Thingamabob’s next sentence.
“Then, having mistaken their way, who should come into the gloomy wood but Bobbitt and Missy Priss—”
“Why, that’s you,” said Nellie’s companion, Hilda.
“Hush,” said Nellie.
“And who should Bobbitt and Missy Priss come across but Sir Forticoeur and the Princess, who cried softly, ‘Whatever shall we do?’ while the gallant knight slept. ‘Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish, I’m sure,’ said Missy Priss in her starchy fashion, eying the sleeping knight and the mournful maid, who, glad to see her friends again, repeated, ‘Whatever shall we do?’ ‘Yes, Missy Priss,’ asked Bobbitt, ‘what indeed shall we do?’ ‘Why,’ returned Missy Priss without a moment’s hesitation, ‘we must put pluck in our hearts and mind our manners; that is what we must do!’ Here she took up Sir Forticoeur’s sword, which was not easy for her, since it was very heavy, and used it to make a fearful bang on his buckler, so that Olduff the owl flew away as the sound rang throughout the wood. When Sir Forticoeur awoke with a start, Missy Priss gave him a good shake. ‘No nonsense, sir. On your feet; this is no time for sleeping. Dark things are afoot and it is for us to trip them up.’ So saying, she handed him the golden helmet with the scarlet plume, and telling the Princess to take heart, and with Bobbitt safely by the hand—for who knew where he might run off to next?—she led them farther into the wood until they came to the cave of the Evening Witch, and here they prepared their strategy….”
Meanwhile a baby in one of the prams had become fretful, and Nellie nodded to the nursemaid to quiet it down so that she might hear the rest of the story. It was all so familiar to her, and yet how strange, hearing it thus, in Central Park, from this very odd-looking creature in his weird raiment atop the bronze mushroom. He told it, she thought, very well, and there was not a murmur from the children. The next part, of course, was the retaking of Ferdival Castle after the meeting with the king, then the famous tourney between Sir Forticoeur, the Golden Knight, and Sir Mordant, the Dark Knight, on the field of valor.
Happily, in short order Mordant was toppled from his horse by Sir Forticoeur, who stood above him, ready to part his head from his shoulders, and then mercifully offered him his life. Mordant is sternly ordered to leave the kingdom under pain of death, and afterward there is a great celebration, the fair Princess Gwinnathred is given in troth to her knight, Sir Forticoeur. Alfie, late as usual, arrives on the scene in time to toast the betrothed lovers, Bobbitt and Missy Priss receive the thanks of the king and court, and then the three are magically whisked away from Ferdival Castle and back to the Wickham house for a jubilant retelling of their adventures.
“More! More!” the children clamored, but as usual, Mr. Thingamabob shook his head, clapped his hands, and sprang down from the mushroom. “Tomorrow,” he told them, “or perhaps the day after—who can say?” And he began an antic little dance, tootling his whistle and shaking his tambourine. Then suddenly he stopped, shielding his eyes against the sun, and looked over at the nursemaids and the two ladies seated on the bench. He took up his pack, put away his whistle and tambourine, and walked over to them.
“Hello, Nellie,” he said. She gave him a puzzled but proper nod. “Hello,” she replied as Mr. Thingamabob removed his turban, then the nose, glasses, mustaches, and eyebrows, all of which came off in one piece, and stood before her with his real face.
“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked, laughing. “’Tis me. Bobbitt.”
Nellie stared at him, unable to believe her eyes. “Bobbitt?” she said, while BobbittBobbittBobbitt, the nursemaids repeated down the line on the bench. Then Nellie was laughing and crying all at once, and she got up, throwing her arms about him and kissing him, and saying to her friend, “Hilda—this is Bobbitt! My Bobbitt!”
Hilda had been hearing about Nellie’s Bobbitt for years. Bobby Ransome had been the most famous child actor of the fifties; his star had shone for less than a decade, a bright comet blazing across the Hollywood heavens, and many people had held their hands up, trying to catch some of the falling Stardust. Nellie said it was a miracle, finding him this way. She held him off at arms’ length and exclaimed, as if this were a very strange fact of life, “Why, Bobbitt, you grew up!”
As it had been fifteen years since they’d last seen one another, this was a perfectly natural thing, and when he sat down beside her, holding her hand, all she could do was drink him in, still unable to believe it all. Fifteen years had wrought their changes in that adored face. Gone was the little pug nose, the cherubic mouth, gone were the peach-blown cheeks, the golden curls of “the Gainsborough Boy.” His face was lean and tanned. But the eyes were as bright as Nellie remembered, and he had lost neither his ingratiating smile (“Bobbitt’s smile is a yard wide,” people used to say) nor that winning way of cocking his head when making a point: “See what I mean?” His hair was neatly trimmed and made attractive ringlets over the back of his collar, and was only slightly darker than it had been when he was a child. His voice was low and pleasant, with an eager, humorous timbre, and that trace of bantering Irish brogue that had endeared him to millions.
“Bobbitt,” she repeated, pressing his hand against her cheek, while he discreetly mentioned the fact that perhaps she might call him Robin, which was the name he was known by now.
“Robin,” she repeated, and RobinRobinRobin was passed along the line.
Don’t tell her, Nellie said, that he was living here in New York and she hadn’t known it! He laughed and gave a droll wag to his handsome head. No, he’d only recently arrived from Europe; but he was here for an indefinite stay. Mr. Thingamabob, he explained, was merely a diversion, something to keep him occupied and to amuse the children while he was waiting for an important piece of news, which was to say that he was having discussions with some Broadway producers about a show.
A show! Bobbitt was going to do a Broadway show? No, no, he put in quickly, he wasn’t going to be in it; he had written the music and lyrics. They were hoping Gwen Verdon would do it, and Joel Grey. Robert Preston was also interested. GwenVerdonJoelGreyRobertPreston, went the names down the line of nursemaids. They sat in subdued astonishment as the famous names reached their ears. Robin had seen Deborah Kerr only the other night—DeborahKerrDeborahKerrDeborahKerr—and he had recently bumped into Van Johnson on the street—VanJohnsonVanJohnsonVanJohnson. He’d dined in Paris with Olivia—One of the babies had begun to cry and the nursemaid gave the pram a shake to quiet it; she wanted to hear. Olivia who? Oh, de Havilland, yes—and?—and Olivi
a had asked Robin to call her sister—JoanFontaineJoanFontaineJoanFontaine—and this weekend he was going to Southampton to visit Carol Channing and audition his songs.
The conclusion of this brief, pleasant, and unlooked-for reunion was that Bobby (she must remember to call him Robin) wrote Nellie’s number down, saying that when he got back to town he would call so they would get together for a longer visit, “For old times’ sake,” they said, exchanging a secret, private smile.
They parted, he going along one side of the boat basin, Nellie and Hilda along the other, still waving until they lost sight of Robin as he went over the rise, and then they continued on to Central Park West and down to Sixtieth Street, where they lived. Two other friends of theirs, Naomi and Phyllis, also had apartments in the building. They had known each other for years, and back in the days of vaudeville they were known as “The Four Belles.” They still called themselves the Belles, they were all widowed, wealthily or otherwise, and though they were no longer in show business they spent a large part of their time together. Every day they gathered to exchange their news at what they referred to as “The Belle Telephone Hour,” which was cocktail time, getting together at each other’s apartments on a rotation basis. They lunched, or dined, watched the soap operas, occasionally took in an early movie or theater matinee, and held poker sessions on an informal but more or less regular basis.
Though the Belles had, as people will, grown a good deal alike in their attitudes and behavior, they were easily distinguishable one from another. Hilda had become fat; she was big and horsy, with a long face, and because her step was heavy you always knew when she was about to arrive; Nellie said it was heavy because she had a heart of gold, and you know how much gold weighs. Phyllis was a “petite seven,” if people went by dress sizes, pert and pretty, and fun to be with, though no one in the world was more naïve. She often joked that after having buried two husbands, she still had never learned about the birds and the bees. Naomi was the one to watch or listen to: she had a dry, acerbic wit. “Did you hear what Naomi said?” was the common phrase among them, and usually she found plenty to say. She had a sharp eye and a sharp nose, and a tongue sharper than either. The most that Nellie’s gentle nature would allow was that Naomi was satiric, and perhaps this word fitted her as well as any other. Still, they were warm friends, accustomed to one another’s foibles and idiosyncrasies; and at their ages, with no males about, it gave them a feeling of safety and comfort to have each other so handy.
Though Nellie Bannister had been an actress for more than fifty years, now, in her early seventies, she was almost retired, except for an occasional TV commercial; but she lived comfortably on her carefully planned annuities. She was sometimes inclined to go off the deep end in the matter of gifts—and was famous among her friends for an impulsive generosity. She always liked to look on the bright side of things, she never wanted to hear bad of people, and her loyalty was an oft-cited example of virtue among those who knew her. In her youth she had been considered a beauty; what traces remained she was not prepared to fuss over, not even for the sake of a TV commercial. Yet even with age her looks remained warm, inviting, grandmotherly, pleasing to behold.
When Nellie and Hilda got home it was Naomi’s turn for The Belle Telephone Hour. Naturally, both Phyllis and Naomi were excited to hear of the unexpected meeting with Bobbitt—excuse it—Robin Ransome. Where had he been hiding all these years? they wanted to know. Was he just another has-been? What did he look like? Hadn’t he been one of those spoiled movie brats you were always reading about? Sipping her martini while Naomi passed the Ritz crackers and Liederkranz, Nellie said nothing could be farther from the truth. Generally it took a mother to spoil a child, but Robin’s mother, Lady Ransome, had never even come to Hollywood. As for the has-been business, like most child stars, Bobbitt had merely grown up and gone on to other things. He harbored no yearning for movies, he wasn’t one of those who, once having got out of the business, was always hanging around the fringes, trying to get back in. Bobbitt wasn’t interested in being rediscovered; he had other fish to fry.
Between them the girls recalled all the movies: Bobbitt, Bobbitt and Alfie, Bobbitt’s Flying Carpet, Bobbitt and the Magic Castle, Bobbitt and Missy Priss, Bobbitt Royal, Bobbitt in the Enchanted Forest, Bobbitt Over the Moon, Bobbitt’s Lucky Day, and Bobbitt Forever. Ten in all. Oh, said Naomi, aren’t we forgetting Bobbitt in Love? Such a bomb; and there went Bobbitt’s career down the drain. Nellie passed the Ritz crackers, conceding that the picture had not been good, but then it was not taken from the Bobbitt books, they’d made the story up in an effort to bolster Bobby’s career, but by that time his Adam’s apple had dropped and besides, everybody knew how fickle audiences could be.
And what, continued Naomi, sucking the pimento from her olive, about that dreadful Aunt Moira; a woman like that was bound to influence a child’s psyche, and not for the better. And nightmares … Naomi remembered Hedda Hopper or was it Louella Parsons saying—
Oh, bother what Louella or Hedda had said, Nellie protested mildly. It was true that as a child Bobby had been prone to nightmares; he had been put into the hands of a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, who determined that his troubled dreams were caused by the purely imaginative flights of fancy engendered by the world he lived in. The doctor had deemed them no cause for alarm, but it became essential that the books he read and the movies and television he watched be carefully monitored. But after all, Bobby Ransome had not grown up as Mrs. Jones’s boy or Mrs. Smith’s; he had lived the celebrated life of a miniaturized adult in the fantasy land that money and fame had provided him with.
God had somehow endowed him with those qualities adults look for in their children: looks, graceful manners, a bright, inquiring mind, plus the supreme talent merely to be himself before the camera. Even Louella had pointed out that the reason he made such a marvelous Bobbitt was that he was able to lose himself in that purely imaginative world Bobbitt inhabited, for it was not to see him in the real world that audiences packed the theaters, but in the fantasy one that lay beyond the real.
It was true, Hilda spoke up; people had wanted to forget their troubles just as much in the fifties as they had in the thirties or forties, and the notion of Bobbitt flying around on a living room rug was not as juvenile as it might have appeared; everyone wanted to go somewhere, if only to Baghdad in a movie.
The whole thing had been an accident anyway, Nellie said. Master Bobby Ransome’s career had begun at the tender age of ten, when Viola Ueberroth accidentally came across him in a Dublin tea shop. Here was this little Irish lad sitting with his aunt, whom he was visiting from Galway, where he lived. It was a chilly afternoon and together they were having a “cuppa” the national beverage. The boy was bundled up so only his face peeked out from under his cap and muffler, but it was a remarkable face, or so thought a chance visitor to the tea shop, she having a “cuppa” herself. Viola, having noted the boy, had been suddenly inspired by an idea—her sudden “ideas” having made her the important person she was. In his expression, his demeanor, his bright, cheery looks, and more particularly his angelic expression, in all this was something that struck Miss Ueberroth so strongly that she was compelled to make herself known to the boy and his aunt, and to inquire if there might be any possibility that he could play a little part in a movie.
That was how it began. Removing the cap and muffler from around the boy’s face, Viola was delighted to discover that he was even more beautiful; he had the enchanting looks one finds in some of Gainsborough’s work, and it was with this impression that she hurried to London, where she was to meet her brother, Samuel, then engaged in casting a film. Bobby Ransome was brought to London, Samuel concurred in his sister’s opinion, and the boy was given a screen test, then whisked away to Rome, where he was handed some pages with lines to learn and quickly put in front of a camera in a movie that, as it happened, starred the eminent actor William Marsh, and Sam Ueberroth’s girlfriend Lorna Doone, and in a cameo role, the once-gre
at Fedora. Bobby proved himself an adorably natural performer, easily able to hold his own in scenes with the older, more professional actors, and when The Miracle of Santa Cristi was released, Master Ransome came in for a large share of attention and critical acclaim.
His appearance in the movie, however, had been managed only with difficulty and through the persuasive powers of both Ueberroths. Studio publicity provided the information that Lady Ransome, of the old Irish peerage, whose antecedents went far back into the pages of Irish history, did not want her child being a “picture player.” The mother herself not being present on the set, the task of looking after Bobby fell to the father’s sister, Aunt Moira, and through all the havoc of the celebrity that was to follow, Aunt Moira kept strict watch over her charge. She had been the object of considerable speculation during the shooting of the film, a thin, obscurely driven spinster who stood beside the camera, watching Bobby’s every move and gesture, nodding or shaking her head, depending on the quality of his performance.
Nobody knew exactly why his aunt rather than his mother was looking after the child, except that Lady Ransome had to see to the running of a large estate—the father was in banking, and one day Bobby himself would succeed to the peerage. Both Louella and Hedda twanged away at this fact as if it were the only string to their harps, while Walter Winchell’s column noted a barrage of dukes, earls, and viscounts, all friends of the Ransomes, who were well connected in London court circles.