Читать книгу Goddess of Love Incarnate - Leslie Zemeckis - Страница 18

CHAPTER EIGHT

While she missed the aquiline-nosed Maxwell, it was exciting to again be with Cordy. The newspapers snapped photos of the young couple everywhere they went. Piled together with two of his new teammates from the Hackney Chiefs in the back of an open landau, Lili beamed as fans cheered.

“Willis Van Schaak [sic—she seemed to vacillate between “Marie” and “Willis,” maybe unsure of who she was or else to hide from Maxwell, who was still unaware of her engagement to Cordy] is now in London to marry U.S. Speedway champion Cordy Milne . . . wedding next Saturday. Miss Van Schaak flew from Los Angeles to New York to catch liner for London.”⁸⁵

Cordy treated her well and it was a turn-on for Lili to be in the spotlight that spilled onto her. She liked knowing other women wanted her fiancé. However, her heart remained elsewhere. Lili would honor her commitment, yet her intention was to return to California, divorce Cordy, and then return to England to marry Maxwell. For some reason she felt honor bound to go through with the marriage and then break it off, instead of letting Cordy down beforehand.

She spent the next few months following Cordy to various speedways as he raced with the Hackney Chiefs. She also spent equal amounts of time alone and bored while Cordy hung at pubs with his teammates reliving their victorious seconds on the track.

Quickly she tired of the routine. She wanted to go dancing at night, but Cordy was too tired or wanted to hang with his friends.

Lili found her own place to be alone. The Lyons Corner House was a chain of upscale art deco tea shops with a live band. She could sit for as long as she liked, eating rich cream puffs. Idle, with no friends and no work, panicking as the wedding day approached and missing Maxwell, conflicted about Cordy, whom she no longer even wanted to kiss, she found herself eating dozens of cream puffs as she devoured British Vogue. She gained twenty pounds.

Lili at her marriage to Cordy

While the press was still speculating about whether Edward would make Mrs. Simpson his queen, Lili prepared to wed. The white wedding gown she had sewn was forsaken and instead she opted for a black silk dress, claiming she wanted “to be different.”⁸⁶ It could have easily been a reflection on her nuptials or the fact she had gained too much weight to fit into her intended wedding gown.

On a warm, rainy afternoon, Saturday, July 25, 1936, Lili stood next to Cordy in Hackney Wicke Stadium and exchanged rings.⁸⁷ It had been Cordy’s manager’s idea to “stage” the wedding at the site of his impending race. The papers back home showed Lili’s picture and acknowledged that “Mrs. B. Clark” (Alice) had to write her approval as Lili was considered a minor.⁸⁸ A reception for five hundred was held at the Hackney Wick Club.

It would not be the last time a wedding and headlines fused together for Lili.

AFTER THE CEREMONY THE NEWLYWEDS POSED FOR PHOTOGRAPHS IN front of a borrowed limousine while fans pelted them with rice. Lili held a long spray of flowers. She looked like a young, happy bride. She was all of that, except for happy.

In her French biography, Lili claimed to beg off sleeping with Cordy on their wedding night with the excuse that it was her time of the month. She didn’t want sex with him, despite Cordy threatening he would have to find another woman as the days of abstinence turned into weeks.

Lili hoped marriage would change Cordy and they could move to a more private apartment, one that didn’t have her sharing a communal bathroom in the hall with strangers. She longed to be back on the SS Manhattan. They began to argue over little things. Cordy kept to his routine of races and hanging with teammates. He didn’t want to take her to shows and plays and ballets. And he didn’t want her going on her own. She didn’t have her own money and depended on Cordy for everything. He insisted on paying for things directly. She resented it. Was this her adventure? There was a whole exciting world in London and she was missing all of it.

Lili began to see Maxwell while she continued to beg off sleeping with Cordy (she might have started seeing Maxwell prior to the wedding). She reveled in how Maxwell thought her “mysterious” because of the game she played with him, disappearing and reappearing days later. She recalled how she pushed the “role” of an enigmatic woman as far as she could with him.⁸⁹

Cordy, never immune to a pretty face, took care of his sexual needs through the willing fans that appeared at the tracks. Women loved his boyish charm and daredevil ways packaged in an unassuming manner. Cordy must have been mystified by his bride. She wasn’t like the sunny Marie from Pasadena, the sweet girl he had fallen for. This girl moping around the apartment had changed. She was moody and secretive.

During Cordy’s out-of-town competitions Lili stayed behind and met with Maxwell for lunches.

Whether he eventually found out about Maxwell or not, Cordy was fed up with Lili and plotted his revenge.

One morning when Lili was out he invited a pretty young thing—probably a fan—back to the apartment. He delayed getting the girl into bed until he was sure Lili would be returning. They were in the midst of making love when Lili blithely walked in, shopping bags in hand.

Cordy jumped up. The girl screamed and dived under the sheets.

They waited for Lili’s explosion.

Lili turned around and closed the door behind her. Presently they heard quiet banging coming from the other room. A teapot whistled as the naked girl reached for her bra and slip. She stayed under the covers wiggling into them.

“Some tea?” Lili breezed through the door, a tray filled with scones, jam and cream, a pot, and cups.⁹⁰ She placed the tray on the foot of the bed as the two stared at her astonished. Without so much as another word Lili left the apartment. She didn’t care what Cordy did. For Lili, when a romance was over sexually, it was over. She couldn’t stand the thought of someone she was no longer head-over-heels in love with touching her. It was only a matter of time before the marriage would end.

LILI MADE AT LEAST ONE FRIEND IN ENGLAND, A SHOWGIRL WHO worked at the Windmill and had admired Lili’s body as she sat around a pool one afternoon. At her friend’s suggestion, Lili made her way to Piccadilly Circus. At Archer and Great Windmill Streets stood the Windmill Theatre. This would be the first of two important places in Lili’s life that would have a windmill as a beacon. Perhaps this first windmill, though briefly enjoyed, would be why she had such a huge affection and loyalty for the second, in Las Vegas, years later.

The Windmill was built in the exact spot where, in the eighteenth century, an actual windmill had stood during the reign of King Charles II. It was a small theatre with only one tier that hosted a variety of acts. Despite losing money the theatre manager boasted continuous entertainment from dancers, singers, and showgirls for nearly twelve hours every afternoon into the evening. After World War II the theatre would claim never to have closed during the war, not even at the height of bombing. In 2005 a movie about the manager and theatre would be made, starring Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins and titled Mrs. Henderson Presents.

Lili met the forty-nine-year-old producer Vivian Van Damm, known simply as “VD,” who copied the format of the Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge in Paris by displaying nude girls, which was completely legal as long as the girls did not move, holding a pose without so much as wiggling a toe. Lili’s girlfriend was one of the “Windmill Girls” and Lili hoped to become one too. Girls in the shows posed in costumes as everything from Annie Oakley to mermaids to Indians. The numbers were theme-oriented, an important element that later influenced Lili. She would use themes throughout her career, dressing as a cowgirl and Indian, even a mermaid, as first seen at the Windmill.

One production at the Windmill featured a fan dancer, a girl who concealed her complete nudity behind a giant ostrich fan until the final moment. The prop-heavy ingredient of the show seemed to cement itself inside the ever-curious and clever mind of Lili. She quietly observed what was going on around her and would take from productions and performers to create her own iconic numbers.

The Windmill boasted a glass stage and an even more daring act as a nude girl held on to a spinning rope. The rope moved but not the girl, so no laws were broken. Lili delighted in technicalities that bent and twisted around the rules. There was always a streak of rebelliousness in Lili, who despised authority and being told what she could or could not do.

“I’ve got just the spot for you,” VD declared, taking one look at Lili.

“But I’ve no training. What do I have to do?”

“All you have to do is stand at a big stake, burning . . . nude of course.” Lili was to be Joan of Arc.⁹¹

Lili learned, when VD took over management of the theatre, that he had started a nonstop run of shows. Despite this, the theatre was still losing money. VD was hoping to change that and the prettier the girls he added, the better.

Lili would always claim Cordy stopped her before she had a chance to appear. But it is more than possible, even probable, by looking at what she did later in her shows, that Lili worked a night or two before she confessed to her preoccupied husband, who indeed would have told her to quit. There was much from the Windmill she would incorporate in her future onstage.

LILI AND CORDY’S CRAMPED RENTED ROOMS WERE TOO SMALL TO contain their opposing wills. Cordy came home one afternoon and told her the team was moving to Australia for six months. In his hands he held two second-class tickets. She was horrified. She told him she wasn’t going.

To Cordy, Lili was a wild thing he couldn’t control. He had better luck with his motorbikes than with his wife. He was forced to admit defeat. The relationship was over.

With Cordy out of the picture Maxwell should have taken his place, but when Maxwell didn’t come through on a marriage proposal or a plan for their future together, a despondent Lili decided it was time to return home.

By September of 1936, just four months since her maiden voyage, she was back on another luxury liner, this time the SS Ile de France, which was even grander than the Manhattan. It did much to lift her spirits. She would spend the rest of her life trying to recapture the experience of these crossings, free, feted, and fussed over, as if nothing could touch her while in the great ritzy cocoon on the sea.

For dinners Lili made her grand entrance down a sweeping staircase rising three decks high. The rooms were modern in décor. There was a grand foyer four decks high, a sun deck, merry-go-round, gymnasium, shooting gallery, and chapel. She felt at home enjoying the attention from crew and passengers. She was wined and dined at every turn. Men scribbled notes on dinner menus that she glued into a scrapbook. In them she refers to herself as “WVS” or “Willis,” never Marie, though she was called that by others.

There was no need to tell any of the attentive gentlemen she was heading for a divorce. She was simply a dancer leaving England after a season in London. She quickly got over any guilt she might have felt about Cordy and her affair with Maxwell. She wasn’t one to look back.

On board were members of the Ballets Jooss and it wasn’t long until a handsome young dancer by the name of Otto Struller won her attention. Feeling quite the woman of the world, Lili had a brief and passionate affair with Struller, who was twenty-five years old. His hair was short in back but with a long blond shock that fell over his eyes down to the middle of his aristocratic nose. He was muscular and graceful. Lili and Otto made a stunning and elegant pair on the dance floor, equally matched in beauty and grace.

OTTO TOO HAD BEEN DANCING IN LONDON. LILI HAD TO THINK, IF only Cordy had taken her to the show, or any shows, she might not be lying in Otto’s arms in his room on the Ile de France surrounded by art deco opulence. If only he hadn’t wanted to hold her back, she fooled herself into thinking, not for once admitting her desire for Cordy had already waned before she had set a heel on London soil. Lili was young and inexperienced in romance. She needed and wanted her head turned. She admitted she was immature, fickle, and easily believed the grass was greener elsewhere. There would be something about all of Lili’s subsequent romances, and even most of her marriages, that remained impulsive, and, as she admitted, “it was immaturity that doomed them to failure.”⁹² She discarded men after she outgrew them. She needed constant stimulation. The gypsy in her always longed to pack and go.

Alone in her room outfitted with a real bed, Lili dreaded the end of her voyage. She had hoped to return in triumph instead of with a short-lived marriage and dull Pasadena facing her.

On South Oak Avenue Lili settled back in among her family. Lili didn’t know how to put into words the hopelessness she felt.

Alice, who understood Lili and “had a gypsy soul,” told her “for the first and not the last time that life was too short to stay with a man unless she was crazy in love with him.”⁹³ Alice told her that if something made Lili unhappy or stood in her way, to get rid of it as quickly as possible. This no doubt led to a sense of entitlement that Lili (and Barbara) had. Lili would callously disregard relationships when she no longer wanted them. No matter her actions, Lili was taught to believe it was okay. If someone opposed Lili, Alice let it be known she was against them. She would remain fiercely loyal to her granddaughter.

Idella was quite another matter and launched into many a stormy scene. “You are supposed to be an example for your sisters,” Idella screeched. Lili had tossed away stability. Lili didn’t need stability; what she needed was romance. Lili tried blocking out Idella’s ranting and ravings about her “wicked ways.”⁹⁴

After the altercations, Lili admitted, “I kept away from my mother.”⁹⁵

Lili had to feel as though she had failed. At night her heart pounded while she fought for sleep on the porch, right back where she had started. Except for blonder hair, tweezed eyebrows, and a thinner waist, she was the same, no closer to living an exotic life than before. It wasn’t long before she would begin waltzing to a very different dance step.

According to Dardy, Lili had a brief romance with a young Pasadena boy, setting off on a road trip by car as he dragged his horse trailer behind. Dardy wasn’t surprised that it did not last.

Perhaps not wanting to admit how passionately she had fallen for Maxwell or how much she had hoped they would wed, Lili would claim she spent the next several years traveling back and forth on luxury liners, paid for by various lovers. At the time of her biography she was well into maintaining her image of a hard-boiled sophisticate. The truth is Lili did sail the Atlantic several times. However, it was usually with Maxwell, or on the way to visit him. For Lili, her relationship with Maxwell was serious. Serious enough to span three years.⁹⁶

On the sea she lived in a kind of a suspended reality. Lili (and Maxwell) traveled first class, dining on sturgeon and shrimp salad and “Matie Herring on Ice,” “Artichoke a la Grecque,” soups of potage essau, consommé ecossaise, chicken gumbo, and delicious cold beef broth. There were platters of boiled fresh codfish, sole a l’orly, soft-shell crab, halibut, poached eggs, shirred eggs, omelet, veal, lamb, chicken, pork, brisket, and on and on.

Lili was registering as Miss Willis Marie Van Schaak [sic].

From 1937 through 1939 Lili was often in the company of Maxwell, perhaps while she waited for her divorce to come through.⁹⁷ She experienced the best of the best, the SS Washington, the SS American Banker and Antonia and Queen Mary. She saved menus, itineraries, photos, and notes that she glued into her scrapbook:

“Good morning, we have searched the ship over a dozen times for you. . . . Have your dessert over here,” and, “Sweet!!!! Do come and talk to us. Mac has asked you to dine this evening.”⁹⁸

By July of 1938 Lili and Maxwell sailed from New York to England, arriving August 2. She is listed in the manifest as Willis Van Schaak [sic] and Maxwell lists himself as a “farmer” (perhaps meant to be “furrier”). Later in the month they sailed from New York to the UK, returning to New York by September 26. Maxwell spent Thanksgiving in America with Lili. By December she was finally divorced and no doubt hoped things would progress to matrimony with Maxwell.

IN HER CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY, WRITTEN WHEN SHE WAS SIXTY-FIVE years old, Lili writes that sometime in 1939 she received her first telegram:

CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU (STOP) MARRY ME (STOP)

COMING TO AMERICA (STOP) LOVE MAXWELL⁹⁹

A happy Lili with—presumably—Maxwell in America

Instead of excitement she was frantic and sent a return telegram telling him it was best to meet in San Francisco (to keep her family away). She had implied she was a rich young American and was afraid he would see the reality.

Sometime possibly in April of 1938 Ben died, and Alice moved in with Ian and Idella. Lili makes no mention of Ben’s passing.

She met Maxwell in the lobby of the Saint Francis Hotel in the heart of San Francisco on a balmy day. The St. Francis, on Powell and Geary on Union Square, was a simple square façade that belied its fabled and fashionable reputation. In 1921 Fatty Arbuckle held his infamous party after which starlet Virginia Rappe tragically died of a ruptured bladder, not raped by Arbuckle, as he would be put on trial for. Celebrities and heads of state regularly stayed at the St. Francis.

With a blue sky overhead and a mild breeze blowing off the Pacific, Lili had dressed carefully.

They would naturally have had separate rooms, but she spent the entire two days before the boat set sail in his suite. If he poured champagne and ordered caviar, they could dance effortlessly together as if it was their first night on the SS Manhattan, or cuddle in the Rose Room of the hotel and listen to jazz late into the night. She would have found herself swept up again. This is how she wanted to always feel. She later admitted she agreed to marry Maxwell because of the style of life he offered.

Lili would recall that her feelings were a mess. What would Garbo do, she wondered. Did she love Maxwell? She had pursued and wanted him for so long she was no longer sure. Would she be giving up her independence? Since leaving Cordy she had made no advancement in her life and future beyond aimless travel. Alice reassured her the best she could: “You’re young, Willis. It’s the time to enjoy everything.”

Days after Valentine’s Day, on February 17, Lili boarded the ocean liner with Maxwell and together they watched the Golden Gate Bridge fade in a swirl of fog. Arriving in New York on March 6, they sailed on the Antonia to the UK, arriving back on Maxwell’s turf April 4. In the ship’s manifest Lili lists Maxwell’s Bond Street shop as her proposed destination.

On the boat there was tension between Maxwell and Lili due partially to her continuous flirting—so much so she thought the two were finished. Maxwell instead surprised her by presenting her with a diamond ring.

Now that she was free to marry she was filled with doubts. She dreaded arriving back in London and the trial of meeting Maxwell’s family. She had told him she was the niece of Rosemary, Princess von Urach, desperately wishing she came from that sort of a royal family.

Maxwell booked her a room at the Dorchester House overlooking Hyde Park. The Dorchester had a long history with burlesque. Roz Elle Rowland had danced there nude except for a costume of gold paint. At the Dorchester Roz Elle met the suave and sophisticated Baron Empain of the famous Paris subway family, eventually marrying him. Coincidentally, Lili would end up friends with Roz Elle’s sister, Betty Rowland, who held the moniker the “Ball of Fire” for her flaming red hair and her hot style of stripping.

Lili was full of second and third doubts about meeting Maxwell’s family. Did she really want to go through another marriage? Would she have to beg for money as she had with Cordy? And after the numerous flirtations with other eligible handsome men on board the Ile de France she wasn’t sure she could stop herself. Or if she wanted to be faithful.

In a panic she locked herself in the bathroom.

What Maxwell’s perplexed family must have thought. Surely it was uncomfortable not just for Maxwell and his parents but also his brother, the future playwright Neville who would go on to write All the Year Round (a dismal failure), become a part owner in a chocolate shop—along with Maxwell—called Prestat (the chocolate was named top three in the world by 2003 and the company thrives today).

For two hours Lili read a book and did her nails while the family waited. Eventually they left.

There was no question. The relationship was over.

She tried pulling off her engagement ring but Maxwell insisted she keep it.

She left England with her four-carat ring and her heart still intact. She was sorry he was heartbroken but realized with a little kindness she didn’t have to stay with a man just because he wanted her to. They could part and remain friends. And she could keep the jewels and the gifts. Maxwell paid her first-class passage home. She didn’t feel upset this time. Maybe her adventures had begun after all.¹⁰⁰