Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (3 page)

Gloria wasn’t sleeping. She was ‘thinking’. Thinking was one of her pastimes. She would often enjoy spending long periods by herself just thinking, sitting with a finger to her
lips and looking serious and intense. Occasionally her eyes would light up, the finger would come away from her mouth, and she would turn her head as if to say something, but then suddenly change
her mind and continue as before. Eventually her thoughts would come together and she would involve me in a discussion of some kind, usually about relationships and love.

Lying against the pillows, looking directly into the light coming from the lamp on the table next to her, she was immersed in her thoughts. I closed the door and she slowly turned her head.

‘Oh, Peter,’ she said when she saw it was me. ‘Did I make you late for your play?’

‘No, you didn’t. Of course you didn’t.’ I sat down facing her at the bottom of the bed.

The room was big enough for two single beds with a table in between. There was also a chair, a hard-backed, straight wooden chair.

She smiled at me and pointed towards a small black hold-all leaning against the chair. I opened it and could see what she wanted; a green plastic wash-bag in which she kept her make-up.

‘Oh hand me that, honey,’ she said. ‘It might have something I need.’

She pulled out a piece of broken mirror and winced when she took a look.

‘I thought as much, I’ve been taken to the laundry.’

Her hair had been brushed, her face had been washed and she was wearing a flowery cotton nightdress that belonged to my mother.

I opened her suitcase onto the empty bed and started to unpack. Besides knickers and socks, there were her photographs, two pairs of jeans, a short white fur coat, a grey knitted sweater with a
collar, a few white shirts, some vests, a tie and a pair of silk pyjamas. Underneath all these were her precious black suede shoes.

Gloria had problems buying shoes because she had problems with her feet. They were big. It really was difficult for her to find a decent-looking pair that would fit, so she would trudge around
the shops for hours, most times in vain. The black suede stilettos came from a shop in Bond Street, I sat with her the day she bought them, trying to encourage her, while she went through almost
every shoe in the shop. She was miserable and close to tears. The shoes she was wearing, her only pair, were caving in at the heel and about to fall off her feet. The shop was near to closing and
the assistant was getting bored, but Gloria was determined. Finally the manager came up with the black suede stilettos. Gloria squeezed her way into them.

‘I think it would rather help, madam,’ the woman said sarcastically, ‘if you would not wear socks while trying the shoes.’

‘I don’t happen to agree,’ Gloria said in a perfect English accent. Then standing up and reverting to her American film star’s voice she announced to the world, ‘I
always wear socks!’

It was a peculiar and unnecessary habit. She did wear socks, she always wore them, because she was embarrassed about the size of her feet.

‘I remember when you bought these.’ I held the shoes up to her. ‘It was over three years ago. Not long after we’d met, I’m amazed you still have them.’

‘So am I,’ she sighed. ‘Those shoes are so important to me, I keep on having them fixed.’

I moved up close to her and took her hand.

‘I have gas in my stomach, Peter, that’s all. That doctor gave me a shot. Now look what’s happened. It’s made me feel that I’m dying. Huh.’ She faked a short
laugh. ‘Now isn’t that stupid?’

Suddenly she started to breathe heavily and gulp and swallow.

‘Burp me, Peter. Please, burp me.’

I lifted her away from the pillow and gently rubbed her back.

‘Don’t tell Paulette.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t tell my kids.’

‘Let me take you to a hospital,’ I said.

‘No, don’t do that, Peter,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want a fuss.’

I could see the determination in her expression and knew she would not be moved.

‘Are you listening to me, Peter? I don’t want any fuss.’

‘Eugh! You gave me a fright!’

I bumped into Jessie at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I was just going to say goodnight to Gloria,’ she said. ‘I want to see if she needs anything. Me and Joe have got to go home soon, we’ve got to get back to the
kids.’

‘She needs another nightdress,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she likes the one she’s wearing. And she’s asked me to get her some apricot kernels and grape juice
from a health food shop.’

‘Well look, Joe and I have got to go into town tomorrow because we still haven’t got that suitcase for your mother, so we’ll take you. Let’s say we’ll call for you
here at about half past ten in the morning. I’ll arrange it all with Joe.’ She went upstairs to the middle room and I waited till she closed the door behind her.

When I entered the kitchen, Joe was sitting at the table over a bowl of hot soup. My mother was clearing up.

‘There’s some of that for you.’ She turned away from the sink and pointed to the soup. ‘I gave some to Gloria just before you got home but she could only manage a
sip.’ She dried her hands and sat down next to Joe. ‘Now look. The thing is we’ve got to get Gloria to a hospital because we don’t know how bad she is. She’s got to be
attended to properly. You can’t have somebody sick without a doctor.’

‘She’s told me that she doesn’t want to go to a hospital. She hates hospitals,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what we can do.’

‘We’ll just have to persuade her to go.’ My mother looked to Joe and then back to me. ‘She could be in jeopardy of her life.’

‘What do you think I should do, Joe?’

‘I think you should phone her daughter in California,’ he said.

‘So do I,’ my mother added. ‘Someone will have to come over here quick. There might be unexpected things to deal with.’

‘She asked me not to tell Paulette,’ I said.

‘Now look –’ my mother held herself upright at the table, – ‘I’m going to have to take charge over this lot. You’ve got to phone her daughter. That
family has got to be told.’

‘I know. I do know that. I’m just telling you what Gloria said to me.’

‘I think that this is a terrible thing and I don’t want Gloria to suffer, but I can’t take the burden of it now, I just want to go to Australia.’ She stood up to leave
the room. ‘Tell your father I’ve gone to bed.’

‘Does he know about Manila?’ I asked.

‘Don’t talk to me about bloody Manila. It might be that we won’t be going anywhere.’ She pushed open the kitchen door and bumped into Jessie in the hall.

‘Eugh! That’s twice tonight.’ I heard Jessie say before the door slammed shut.

‘How do you feel?’ Joe handed me a cigarette.

‘Shocked,’ I think I said. ‘Shocked.’

It was after one in the morning by the time my father put his head around the kitchen door.

‘Hello there,’ he said, and scratched the back of his head. ‘I didn’t hear you get back. It must be late. Your ma must have gone to bed then, has she?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s gone to bed.’

‘Joe and Jessie must have gone home then, have they?’

‘Yes, Dad. They’ve gone home.’

‘Oh well,’ he yawned. ‘That’s me for the night then. I’ll just let the dog out for a while.’

Candy appeared and trailed after him.

‘Are you going to Manila?’ I asked as he unbolted the back door.

‘I’ll go anywhere, me,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind where I go.’

Only a few of her things were scattered about the room but it seemed as if she’d always been there. Somehow she didn’t look out of place.

I stood at the end of her bed watching her breathing. When I was sure she was asleep I switched off the light but left the door open in case she called out in the night. Then I went to the
upstairs flat.

The room was cold and in darkness.

I dialled Paulette’s number in California – nobody answered.

I sat by the window under the light from the lamp in the street, holding the telephone, just letting it ring . . .

‘Let’s go and take a look at where I used to live,’ Gloria said, slamming on the brakes and throwing the car into reverse.

We shot across to the other side of the road, managing to miss a truck that appeared from around the bend, and then the car stalled on a small ridge at the entrance to the drive. We slid back
down onto the highway.

I panicked. I wasn’t sure if I should be frightened from the left or from the right because I was in California, in a car going backwards, on the other side of the road, whichever that
was, and the traffic was coming at us from every side. Suddenly we stopped. Then she accelerated. We veered back across the road, bumped up the ridge and ended safely in the driveway of a big
house.

‘Gloria. Why did you do that?’

‘It’s not my fault, Peter. It’s that stupid gateway. It’s at the top of a mountain!’

It was wonderful to get out of the car. I thought we were only going on a short trip but it had ended up being a three-hour journey. We’d driven to the shops in Santa Monica to buy
groceries; Gloria had invited her mother and Joy, her sister, over for a meal. We took a detour through Hollywood and Beverly Hills on the way home; partly because Gloria’s driving was so
awful that I couldn’t cope with going back on the freeway, and partly because it just seemed the best thing to do on a really beautiful day.

For the first few days of my stay in California the weather had been dreary. It was drizzly and everything looked grey. Now, the sky was a diamond; the buildings and the roads, the cars and the
people all glistened. Palm trees, plants and flowers, the colours of which I’d only seen in a paintbox, were new to me. The names of the roads excited me: Sunset Boulevard, La Cienega, La
Brea and Vine. Everything was enchanting, even the people. They all looked beautiful, healthy and clean, dry-cleaned and rich, very rich. Especially in Bel Air, where every other house looked like
a
Beverly Hillbillies
mansion.

We were driving through Brentwood when Gloria spotted the house. It was an impressive-looking building, owned by the writer and producer Cy Howard, Gloria’s third husband and father of her
daughter Paulette. The marriage ended in divorce. Their union lasted for a number of years between Gloria’s second marriage – to Nicholas Ray, the brilliant and innovative film director
by whom Gloria had a son called Tim – and her fourth marriage to her former stepson, Nicholas Ray’s son Tony Ray, by whom Gloria had two more children. It was a family of complicated
relationships.

‘What do you think of the house, Peter? Do you like it?’ Gloria whispered quickly.

We had to peer through the protective screen of tall trees so that I could get a proper look, Gloria didn’t want to be ‘seen’ unannounced. I almost felt that at any moment we
would be set upon by a pack of hounds and taken before the master on suspicion of being vagabonds and thieves. I was reminded of a time in my childhood in Liverpool when my brothers, John and
Frank, took me on one of their escapades to steal apples from the gardens of the houses where the rich people lived. Once we were discovered, and because I was the youngest and couldn’t run
as fast as they, I was left hanging on a wall and was the one that got caught.

‘Yes. I do like it,’ I whispered back. ‘It’s nice. Did you like living there?’

‘Yeah, it was fun.’ Gloria took my arm and we stood away from the trees. ‘Betty and Bogey lived right over there,’ she added, pointing to the mansion next door.

‘That must have been incredible,’ I said. ‘Did you see a lot of them?’

‘Oh no, not really, Peter. Not when I was married to Cy. How often do you run across the neighbours? But we used to spend a lot of time together when I was married to Nick. He and Bogey
started up a film company. And I worked alongside him in
In a Lonely Place.
He taught me little tricks; “Just keep it in the shadows, Gloria,” he used to say. “Let the
camera come to you.” I liked him. A few times he called me up.’ She folded her arms and thought for a while. ‘We used to go out on the boat, stuff like that. It was nice. Bogey
just loved that boat.’ Gloria clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Hmm,’ she winced. ‘That Betty. She always looked so good.’

We sat back in the car and Gloria put her head out of the window to have a last look.

‘Cy Howard just loved this place. He’s so proud of it. He adored it.’

‘Why did you leave?’ I asked.

She thought for a while and then miraculously negotiated a three point turn.

‘I guess Cy and I just wanted different things from life. Who knows?’ She bumped the car back out of the difficult entrance to the driveway. ‘But I’m sure glad that I got
that divorce, Peter. I might have had an accident just driving home!’

The car squealed and tilted to one side as she turned the bend and careered on down the winding roads that led to the coast.

Gloria lived in a caravan. She called it a trailer. Positioned along the Pacific Coast Highway not far from Pacific Palisades, between Santa Monica and Malibu, it had a stunning view of the
ocean. After living in luxury houses in exclusive parts of Beverly Hills, now Gloria much preferred the trailer. She enjoyed it as a retreat on her visits from London and New York.

‘There’s no way that I’ll have a heart attack trying to keep up the payments,’ she told me. ‘I adore it. It’s cheap, it’s easy to keep clean and I
don’t have to vacuum. Peter,’ she confessed, ‘I’ve never vacuumed.’

It was small. The bedroom was at one end with the bathroom next door to it. In the middle was the living room that converted into another bedroom, and at the front end, overlooking the ocean,
was the kitchen. Built on the side was a wooden cabin used as a day room and at the back was a little garden where Gloria grew tomatoes and flowers. The swimming pool, also used by other residents
of the trailer park, was outside the kitchen window. I thought it idyllic.

Her mother and Joy were sitting in the day room which was cool and shaded from the sun. Whereas Gloria genuinely looked a lot younger than her actual age, I suspected that Joy probably looked a
lot older than hers. Although they were both tall, Joy was a bigger woman than Gloria, with a darker complexion, a deeper voice and a well-worn look. She didn’t wear make-up. She was plainly
dressed. It was difficult to believe that they were sisters.