“If I’m honest, and I should be – if I can’t be at my age, then when? In Heaven? – I actually got my job while I was still on the boat, although I didn’t realise at the time. As I said, most everyone onboard was dreadfully ill for the entire week’s voyage, but I was bright as a button throughout. When you’ve been brought up poor, you’re like a Spartan if you make it through your childhood. Not all my brothers did... but I was tough, although you wouldn’t have known it to look at me, I looked so frail and angelic.
So all these people, rich and poor alike, were sitting out on deck, for the proximity to the ocean should they need to be sick. And being just about the only not-ill person on the ship, aside from the crew, I was rather bored. I wasn’t a big reader at the time, that came a little later, and I had no-one robust my age to play with, so I started to dance and sing to raise the spirits. I didn’t put on a formal show, you understand, I was really just making up a running order as I went along, and repeating the same stuff further around the deck to a fresh, if green-gilled, audience. Anyway I’d been doing this for a few hours, raised a few smiles, when I noticed that one man in particular seemed very taken with me. I’d do my bit – a couple of songs, some tap-dancing, a little monologue – and then move on, and wouldn’t you know, he’d come with me. He wouldn’t follow me immediately, he’d wait a while then appear at the edge of the new group I was entertaining, and it happened several times. I had heard about men like that. Mother always kept me safe from the predatory sorts at the theatres but I knew the stories and was on my guard – not that I had a clue what they’d do if they caught me! – doubly so, as I was travelling alone. So at the end of every day, when I got tired, I’d run off, faster than he could catch me if that was his plan, find my bunk and hide myself away.
When we came ashore in New York, I doubted I’d ever see him again – hoped I wouldn’t, I suppose – and I didn’t, until the first night of the revue. I was halfway through my song when I looked down and saw him in the middle of the front row. I almost wavered but managed to hold my note, and I carried on as if nothing had happened, although I knew he’d seen me recognise him.
The thing was, he looked different. I mean, no-one travels in their very best clothes but he’d looked amongst the poorest people on deck at the time, quite scruffy and dishevelled, not at all gentleman-like. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that he was a terrible alcoholic, that he’d only been on the boat because he’d been blind drunk and ended up in Southampton after drinking with sailors, so had hopped on the ship on a whim, rather than make his way back to London and fly home to New York. I mean, can you imagine it – being so drunk you thought a week on a boat would be as good as flight? Although flying was still very new, I suspect he was as fearful as he was intoxicated – or maybe he was intoxicated because he was fearful, so really he’d wanted to get the boat all along? I never thought about that before, how funny...
Where was I? Oh yes, so he’d looked quite the tramp onboard ship, but in the front row he was all shiny and smart, with a glittery watch chain and diamond tie pin and slicked-back hair. He looked a bit like the Monopoly man, only without the top hat. It wasn’t done to wear a top hat in the theatre, of course, or indeed indoors at all. We had standards in those days. So I’d seen him and was a little worried, even seeing him in his best bib and tucker, so I ran straight to see the producer who’d hired me, to see if he would do anything to keep him away from my dressing room. Only when I burst into his office, who’s there but Mr Monopoly himself? The two of them were beaming and shaking hands like old friends, so I could hardly say anything, could I? Then we were formally introduced, and it turned out Mr Monopoly was the son of an oil family. I mean, that’s not how he was introduced, that would have been crude... did you hear that? Crude – oil, it was a pun! What fun. No, the producer told me his name and I put two and two together. He was certainly dressed well enough to be wealthy, and his appearance on the ship fitted with the stories about him sometimes written up in the papers. Gossip columns were new in those days, thank goodness, but he was already a fixture, having more money than sense and lots of fun. So I had the measure of him, even if he thought I was some fresh-faced, know-nothing import from England. I knew enough to steer clear, not least because I was still a month or so off my 16th birthday, and I wasn’t going to make any exception to my morality. I would even make Charles wait, I told myself.
Anyway, he took great interest in me and would be in the front row most nights, unless he had a prior engagement at a ball or was too hungover to attend. But I always refused his offers of dinner after the final curtain call, insisting I needed to get an early night to stay fresh for the next-day performance. Which appeased my producer, who’d lost countless girls to predatory playboys, only to have to replace them then deal with the sobbing wretches looking for work to raise the bastard children they’d ended up with. I wasn’t going to be one of those girls, once pretty, now timeworn and pudgy, given shifts in the laundry if they were lucky. I was always going to be centre stage; that was my plan. How else would I catch Charles’ eye? I wouldn’t settle for less than Chaplin.
The problem was, Mr Monopoly was ever so generous. He started by sending me shoes, new pairs of shoes to dance in when he could see from his front-row seat that mine we getting worn. I sent back the first few pairs, but then he sent a box containing the most beautiful pink pair, with my name embroidered on them. Well, I could hardly send them back, as the shop could never resell them, could they? What were the odds that another customer would want a pair with ‘Agatha’ sewn into them? So I kept them.”
Stacey snapped Stop.
“Agatha. She is called Agatha. Not Louise. There is, like, one famous Agatha and she is not my grandma.”
“So if we found a tape of someone called Norma-Jean talking about her childhood in and out of foster homes, we should throw it away because who is she?”
Even Stacey has to have heard ‘Candle In The Wind’. The original version.
“Oh. So you don’t think Agatha is her real name?”
“No, I do think Agatha is her real name – Louise Dulac is not. It is a bit breathy and European for someone from the south London slums. No, I think precocious little Agatha grew up to be Louise.”
If insignificant little Stacey had a pseudonym, then it’s likely a starlet fleeing London poverty might polish up her moniker before making an assault on Hollywood.
Stacey pressed Play again.
“Well, you can imagine how jealous the other girls were when I wore the shoes. If looks could kill I’d have been assassinated by firing squad before the curtain rose. But I didn’t care – they really were beautiful shoes and the best part was, no-one could steal them, as often went on. I mean, everyone always denied it, but it was no better than a prison backstage – if something wasn’t locked away or guarded, it became communal property, however unhygienic that might have been. But the shoes were mine and mine alone – there wasn’t another Agatha for miles, as far as I knew. It was the first time I’d ever been glad of that ghastly name. So unbecoming for a movie actress, don’t you think?
When I wasn’t tap-dancing on deck, I’d spent much of my Atlantic trip thinking up a new name. Something exotic and sophisticated. I’d thought of Georgina as a first name, in honour of the king, but I’d never come up with a suitable surname. Then, because I was en route to stardom, I toyed with Estella; a Spanish-speaking girl in the chorus told me it meant ‘star’, but later I saw her pointing and laughing at my shoes so I skipped that, in case she was setting me up. You would think, in a week, that I’d have come up with something good, but no. I suppose I just wasn’t inspired enough, by the piles of puking people hogging the handrails. The smell!
Anyway, I decided to be more friendly with Mr Monopoly, in return for the beautiful shoes, but I still never agreed to go to dinner with him. And he kept bringing me presents, most of which I sent straight back. It wasn’t consciously a mating ritual for me, far from it – I literally didn’t think romantically of
any man but Charles – but it seemed to keep Mr Monopoly entertained. He started to vary the gifts he sent; rather than clothes he started to send me books. Now, I could read, and I was very proud of that. Very proud. Most of the girls my age in the show were largely illiterate but not me, and I read almost everything I could get my hands on, to keep up my schooling. Charles was a clever man, not just some clown, and I wanted to impress him with my brain as well as my beauty when we finally met, as you can imagine.
So, when Mr Monopoly realised I could read, he deluged me with books. Again, I sent a lot back – the big thick novels I knew I’d never read. I regret that now, very much – they would have been first editions. A Farewell To Arms, I think that was one of them, and The Seven Dials Mystery – that one I should have kept, what with it having my name on it too, don’t you think? Ha ha! But the first one I kept was this beautiful picture book of The Arabian Nights, with its magical illustrations. I didn’t even bother to read it, I just gazed at the pictures for hours and hours on end, it was better than the movies for me, because it was all in colour. You see, feature films wouldn’t be colour for another, what, decade or so? Was Oz the first? So these books were like looking into the future, only they were historical looking too. Like time-travel. I think he bought me The Time Machine too, actually, but I don’t think I ever read it.
So I would dance all afternoon and evening, and spend all day looking at the picture book. And after a while, I noticed the name of the artist. Dulac. Edmund Dulac. I didn’t know anything about him other than that he’d painted these pictures, but his name spoke to me of mystery, a bygone age, wisdom and continental refinement. It was what I’d been looking for. So immediately I started thinking of myself as ‘Miss Dulac’. I decided I would tell everyone once that this was my new name, then never answer to ‘Agatha’ again. Well I was terribly pretentious in those days. I mean, I was a teenager, not that teenagers were officially around until the ’50s or so. I was ahead of my time.
I told Mr Monopoly of my plans, and he said “They can’t just put ‘Miss Dulac’ up in lights, you’ll need a first name’. And of course he was right. ‘What about Lulu?’ he suggested, ‘Lulu Dulac?’ Now that’s a pretty name, but I happened to know that one of the girls who used to be in the show now danced elsewhere, to a very different type of audience, and she went by the name of Lulu, so to me it was cheap. Immoral, almost. So I said no, I wouldn’t be Lulu Dulac. Although as I speak it out loud now, it does sound wonderful, doesn’t it? Very lyrical. But no, I wanted something classier.
I still hadn’t accepted a lunch date with Mr Monopoly and had no intention of doing so, so instead he’d tried to entice me out to the cinema with him, as if I didn’t know what might happen when the lights went down. Again, I refused every offer, until one night he presented me with the chance to attend a premiere, right there in New York City. I was no closer to Hollywood for all the time I’d now spent in America but if I went, well, Hollywood would come to me! So I couldn’t refuse. I let him buy me a new dress for the occasion, and he met me from the theatre in a limousine to take me straight there, even though we could easily have walked, it was only a few blocks down Broadway. But all the stars were turning up in limousines and so we looked liked stars too as we pulled up.
I don’t remember anything about the event now, not a thing, other than that I got out of the car, started to read the marquee: ‘LOUISE BR... ’ and a flashbulb went off and I fainted. I’m told I was scooped up by Mr Monopoly and rushed inside, where smelling salts were administered, but that by the time I came round the film had begun and we’d missed the stars arriving. So much for my big Hollywood moment! So instead I was taken back to the limousine, which had been driven around to the back exit by now, and returned alone to my boarding house. I was right as rain, really, I’d just been startled and I think I’d been so excited I perhaps hadn’t eaten enough that day, nothing to worry about. But of course the most appalling rumours had already begun.
When I arrived at the theatre for the next performance, there were flowers on my dressing table, and one of the bolder chorines asked me, ‘When’s it due?’ to peals of laughter from the pony ballet. I laughed it off, but had begun to worry. What if I was pregnant? Now, please don’t get the wrong idea. I was very chaste. I hadn’t so much as let Mr Monopoly kiss me on the cheek, but sex education was very different in those days. In some ways, it was a more permissive time – the Hays Code had only just come in, so movies had been full of innuendo until then – but as streetwise as I was in some ways, I was terribly innocent in others. I’d briefly held hands with Mr Monopoly before we’d first left the limousine the night before, and in my ignorance I feared this was enough to become impregnated.
I was quite inconsolable by the time it was my entrance and couldn’t be found, giving my understudy the thrill of trotting out onstage in my stead – lest you think this was the beginning of some All About Eve ascent to stardom, I’m happy to report she was awful. Well, not happy, but, you know. Relieved, at least. So the producer barged through my door to find me in floods, and sent word to Mr Monopoly, who arrived at the stage door looking stricken, as if my fainting was the onset of some fatal disease. I’d been removed to the producer’s office by then, and was hysterically heaving out my confession between sobs and gasps for air. When I finally managed to string together a sentence containing the words ‘gloves’, ‘limousine’ and ‘pregnant’, the two men fell silent, before laughing so loudly they said it could be heard in the Upper Circle.
Then they couldn’t speak, as they choked on their own guffaws. Their merriment had calmed me down to the point of fury – there was nothing funny about being a fallen woman! Simply through exhaustion, I think, they eventually stopped laughing, and sat in facing armchairs to compose themselves. The producer spoke first. ‘I’m happy to tell you you’re not pregnant,” he said. “But you are naïve.” Now, to me, who had never before heard such a word, this was no consolation. Was it fatal? My crisscrossed brow obviously translated as much to the men. “You’re ill informed,” said Mr Monopoly. “You can’t fall pregnant by holding hands, far from it. And anyway, we were both wearing gloves, so we were...” The producer shouted, “Protected!” and they both fell about again. Well I didn’t know what to think, apart from that they thought I was an ignoramus. I didn’t care to be laughed at, so I made for my dressing room. The other girls were in the wings, so I spent that show blocking out the roars of residual laughter from the office, instead sketching the marquee from the previous night. It was far bigger than our theatre, jutting out across the pavement and almost into the street, it had seemed to me. And it was illuminated, making the signage letters look all the more bold and effective in the night light. ‘L-O-U-I-S-E B-R’ I pencilled in. I was about to add the ‘O-O-K-S’ when a thought occurred to me. I erased the ‘B’ and the ‘R’, carefully, and wrote in ‘D-U-L-A-C’ instead. ‘Louise Dulac’. It sounded so perfect to me then, and it still does. So I suppose you could say that although I wasn’t pregnant I did give birth that day, to my screen persona. If I’d never been to that premiere, if I hadn’t been blinded by the flashbulb, Louise Dulac might never have been born. And you wouldn’t be speaking to me now. Isn’t life funny? Now, shall we have some tea?”
Side One ended.
“Do you think she is telling the truth?” asked Stacey.
“I think she thinks she is,” I said. “At her age – looking back, what, 70 years? – this is probably what she remembers as happening. Like, I doubt she tap-danced off the Atlantic crossing and into a starring role. That is highly unlikely. And I doubt she was really as naive as she says. But if that’s what she remembers to be the truth, then that is the truth. History is written by the victors, and she has won by virtue of still being alive.”
“Alive then, anyway,” said Stacey.
So when was then?
“How long have you had the tapes?” I asked.
Stacey shook her head as if to say she didn’t know. “I just found th
e box one day and put them somewhere for safe keeping.”
“So you knew they were important, but you didn’t know what was on them?”
“Yes...” she said, in a tone that hoped I wouldn’t ask her any more about it.
(41) comments
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Daily Mirror, THURSDAY 14.10.2010
SHH! Oops – someone forgot to change names to protect the innocent... One of West London’s premier party planners is up in arms about being mentioned unfavourably in print, claiming her business will suffer from claims of indiscretion. Our lips are sealed.