A FAREWELL PARTY had been planned for me: a last big bash at The Old Meuse. Everybody came: Auntie, Dingle, my brother John, all the dancing students, Auntie Gladdy and her husband Bill, Susan, Trisha Waters, friends from far and near.
Pop became horribly drunk that night. He had a terrible case of gout, and was limping around on a cane. Toward the end of the evening, when the party was in full swing and everyone was dancing, he walked into the big living room and looked up at the saucer-shaped porcelain light fixture on the ceiling.
“I never did like that thing!” he said loudly. He suddenly attacked it with his cane, smashing it to pieces.
The guests made a swift exodus. My brothers and I were hurried to our rooms, and Pop went on a colossal rampage. He stormed around the house ranting and raving. He wrapped a towel around his fist and went out to Auntie and Dingle’s bungalow and punched out all the windows, saying, “I reckon that man owes me three hundred pounds!” He then punched Dingle, who somehow landed a punch of his own and gave Pop a bloody nose. My mother called the police, and Johnny called Dad, who came immediately and offered to take us all back to Ockley for the weekend.
I was due to leave for America in three days and had much packing to do, but I was hustled into Dad’s car along with Donald, Chris, and Mum. Auntie was in a terrible state, but she was with Dingle. I don’t know where they went that weekend.
Pop had been working himself up for days, his rage bubbling ever closer to the surface and threatening to explode. It may have been a coincidence that he acted out just as I was due to leave, but he must have seen that I was getting a great deal of attention. In contrast, Pop’s career in vaudeville was nonexistent, and his work as a cash register salesman was not proving successful. Auntie and Dingle’s presence on our premises seemed to drive him crazy; the dancing lessons taking place in the garden studio irked him, my mother’s support of my aunt and neglect of him…he probably felt he didn’t have a friend in the world or a place to call his own. And of course, he was an alcoholic. Later we discovered bottles of scotch and vodka stashed all over the house.
Mum found out that he’d put an ad in a “lonely hearts” magazine, seeking a dinner companion. When she asked how he could do such a thing, he replied that it wasn’t for sex, it was for company. I don’t know if that was true, but it was deeply sad and it rocked my mother’s world for a while.
So I spent my last weekend with Dad, Win, and the two boys. Mum returned to The Meuse the following day to talk to the police, who took Pop away, but they released him forty-eight hours later. My mother obtained a restraining order to prevent him from coming near the house, at which point I was able to go back and finish packing for my departure.
The restraining order was for several weeks. Mum was distraught. Auntie was panicked and angry. I was in a dilemma; how could I leave my mother and the boys? Would she ever be safe? I begged her to file for a divorce. She said that she would.
Suffice it to say that my departure for America was a nightmare. Everyone urged me to get onto that airplane for the U.S. My mother, Dad, Aunt Joan, Dingle, Auntie Gladdy, Charlie Tucker, Johnny, Don, Chris—they all came to Northolt Airport to see me off. Saying goodbye was agony. Mum and Auntie were stoic, telling me everything would be fine and not to worry. Go!
I remember the plane’s huge engines warming up on the tarmac. We had been grouped in a sort of army Nissen hut, which was the Northolt holding area for passengers. I walked across the concrete in the dark night and up the steps into the big four-engine Constellation, to take my first transatlantic voyage.
I had not yet met any of my fellow company members, who were traveling to America on the same flight. Everyone was bubbling with excitement, wondering what awaited us overseas. I tried to fit in, but I was very preoccupied. I sat next to Dilys Laye, the young girl who would be playing Dulcie in the show, and she seemed worldly and calm and not at all worried. She was a pleasant companion. We decided on the journey that we would try to room together. We spent a sleepless night traveling from London to New York, stopping to refuel at Gander, Newfoundland, on the way.
The trip took about eighteen hours, and I was wiped out and emotionally exhausted by the time we reached that amazing city. I couldn’t stop thinking about the family. Would Mum hold out? Would she really go through with the divorce from Pop? What would happen to the house if she did? Where would she go? Would Don and Chris be all right? My Boy Friend salary was going to be small. I planned to send half of it home—but would that be enough for them, and would that leave enough for me to live on each week?
We arrived at Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) Airport on August 24, 1954. We walked down the steps of the plane onto the boiling hot tarmac, to be met by a horde of press and photographers who asked us to pose on a baggage trolley.
The first thing they said to us was “Show us some cheesecake!”
I kept saying, “Excuse me?” but a couple of the girls knew what they wanted and hiked up their skirts. I felt embarrassed that the moment we got there, we had to show them our legs.
I was met at the airport by a diminutive man named Lou Wilson, a friend of Charlie Tucker’s whom Charlie had arranged to be a sort of sub-agent/manager and keep an eye out for me. Lou was a small-time producer, entrepreneur, and a dreamer. He was sweet, kind, welcoming, and I warmed to him right away.
We were taken to the Piccadilly Hotel on Times Square and 45th Street (today it is the site of the Marriott Marquis Hotel). I was shown to a small room on the third floor, directly above the convention halls. It was noisy and hot.
I had a single bed, a tiny shower, toilet, and washbasin, and a tiny window that looked out over a large airshaft. I remember shutting the door behind me, feeling alone and somewhat dazed.
That first evening, there was a small dinner reception for us at Sardi’s.
When Dilys and I returned to our hotel afterward, we piled into the elevator with a bunch of other people. A total stranger, a gregarious fellow, looked at us and said, “Y’all is mighty purty.”
“I beg your pardon?” His thick Southern accent was unintelligible to me.
“Y’all is mighty purty,” he repeated.
I grasped he was saying that I was pretty and I thanked him. He asked where I came from, so I politely told him, “Walton-on-Thames, Surrey,” and received an empty look.
“Ah come from Georgia,” he said.
“Oh, how nice,” I replied.
When Dilys and I got out of the elevator, I asked, “Did you understand a word that man said?”
“Nope,” she answered.
“Neither did I!”
But I did get the sense that Americans were very friendly.
Neil called from Canada, and I told him of the chaos surrounding my departure. He said, “I’ll come down right away.”
At sight of him, I really wept. I collapsed into his arms, and we tumbled into bed.