Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

That incident marked a turning point in relations between Roddy and Yolande. Her acting became bolder and more confident; Roddy’s criticisms became more muted. They ceased to be boss and junior employee and became colleagues. It was a great relief all round.

I don’t exactly know when their affair started, but I think it was fairly early on in the tour, and I suspect it was our second week which was at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. Do you know it? Lovely old theatre.

On the Tuesday morning Yolande and I happened to meet Roddy at the stage door. We had just been in to see if there was any mail for us and, as it was a fine April day, we were standing outside talking about nothing in particular when Roddy appeared. I could see he was in one of his restless moods, and on the spur of the moment he proposed to take us out on a jaunt. He was going to show us Hadrian’s Wall, an idea which seemed to thrill Yolande, me less so. I’d been. However I went because it was clear from Roddy’s look that he wanted me there. I wasn’t quite sure why, but, you know, Roddy was a compulsive performer and liked an audience for practically everything he did, even seduction.

We drove out of Newcastle and followed the wall. It was one of those soft, mild days of spring, full of haze and new bird song when the pale green of the hills blended with the grey ribs and ridges of Roman wall and fortress. Yolande listened to Roddy with the rapt wonder of a schoolgirl as he explained the wall to her. We got out at Housesteads, the best preserved fort on the wall, and wandered about, almost the only people there. At one point Yolande asked about Hadrian himself, what sort of man was he? Roddy who, outside military history and dates, was less well informed, hesitated. So I gave them an account of the only thing I knew about Hadrian, his passion for the glamorous youth Antinous whose mysterious death blighted the Emperor’s later years. Yolande was puzzled.

“I didn’t know they had gays in those days,” she said. Roddy, who was standing behind her, looked at me and winked. I ignored him and went into some rubbish about the Greeks and Plato and Socrates. For the rest of the time we were out I felt very uneasy. Roddy was flirting with Yolande and completely ignoring me, while she was laughing at everything he said in that way people do when they meet Royalty or fall in love.

He drove us back to the theatre. At the stage door I noticed that the theatre cat, a black, green-eyed streak of feline cunning, had stretched out its lean body on the door step to catch the weak Newcastle sun. When he saw it, Roddy did a thing I’d never seen him do before. He crouched down and tentatively tickled the animal’s stomach.

“Hello, puss-cat,” he said with a rather unconvincing show of bonhomie. The cat ignored him, and Roddy looked up at Yolande.

He said: “I wonder, old thing. I’m going back to my hotel. I’ve got to look over that bit in the third act where I got in such a tangle last night. Remember? You wouldn’t be an absolute brick and come back with me for a cuppa and test me on my lines, would you?”

There was a little pause, just long enough for it to be made obvious that she knew what he meant and he knew that she knew, and, well, you know the rest. I thought for a moment she was going to turn him down rather huffily, but she didn’t; she simply said: “Okay,” and off they went.

I’m pretty sure that was the beginning of things, because after that one would often see them together in the wings or in the dressing room corridors, just talking. They weren’t touching or anything obvious like that and I’m sure they thought they were being incredibly discreet, but very soon the rumours were flying around. You know how these things are picked up amazingly quickly by a company on tour with nothing much to do except gossip about each other.

One thing that one of the other actresses in the company said stuck in my mind. She said: “I wonder what would happen if Bel knew.” Bel of course was Belinda Courteney. Yes, the Belinda Courteney. Yes, she was one of Roddy’s girls at one time, but don’t tell her I told you. I’m up for an interview for the National next week and you know how her writ runs there. As a matter of fact I thought the Bel Courteney affair was over, but apparently some thought otherwise.

Yolande occasionally confided in me. I suppose I was a safe pair of hands, and she knew I knew, so to speak. I tried to sound kindly and wise: you know how one slips into these roles, especially if one is an actor. I was dear old Uncle Godfrey to her, and, I’m afraid, to me too in those moments. Yolande was a sweet thing, but such a child. She had become obsessed by Roddy and used to ask me about every detail of his career, the books he liked, the food he preferred, everything. I honestly think she thought he was going to leave Lady Margery for her. She said: “You know he hasn’t slept with her for eight years.” I refrained from saying that that was what he told all the girls, because it was only a guess, but perhaps I should have done.

Well, the tour wound up fairly successfully in October at the Theatre Royal Richmond, traditionally one of those “last date before the West End” venues, but it was not to be. There had been talk of a West End Theatre several times in the tour, but it came to nothing. With such a huge cast we needed a thousand-seater-plus just to break even and all the big houses were stubbornly full of American musicals that year.

So the company disbanded, but Yolande and I kept in touch, partly because I sensed she needed someone to talk to about Roddy. Most of her other friends wouldn’t have understood. They were non-theatrical and, frankly, just a bit odd. They tended to call themselves “aromatherapists,” “Feng Shui consultants,” “musicians,” “spiritual healers”: all those euphemisms by which the barely employable salve the wound of their uselessness. Forgive me, my prejudice is showing; it must be the Bell’s.

She had a little flat above a patisserie in the St John’s Wood High Street. She’d ask me round at odd times of the day for a cup of herb tea and, if I was lucky, a slice of carrot cake, but the subject of conversation was always the same: Roddy. They were still seeing each other, and he occasionally used to take her away for weekends in Paris or Torquay—his boat was down at Torquay, you see—but after one or two visits he wouldn’t come to her flat any more. The excuse he gave was that he was allergic to her cat, and one can’t altogether blame him. I’m not myself averse to cats, but this one of Yolande’s, a rescued stray, was not a notably attractive specimen. It was an elderly, neutered Tom, brindled, with a sagging belly and a passion for tinned sardines. Yolande, you see, was one of those people who is instantly drawn to anything even more defenceless than herself.

Rather unwisely I think, Yolande called the cat Roddy. I don’t know whether she actually addressed the cat as such in the other Roddy’s presence, but it would explain his allergy if she did.

I was managing to keep myself alive by the odd voice-over, and a beer commercial, but by the end of November Yolande was beginning to be rather uncomfortably out of work. She had some sort of part-time employment at a nearby book shop which didn’t bring in much, but it wasn’t just the money. Acting is a drug: once you become addicted, you need a regular fix. Yolande told me that Roddy had offered to “lend” her some money which she had indignantly refused, and he was beginning to see less of her. In December he went away for some filming in Spain; then just before Christmas something happened which lifted her out of the gloom she was falling into. She had a Christmas Card from Roddy, and there was a message in it.