Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York (27 page)

While his background and origins remained undisclosed, he must have been a poor boy - not to mention poor white trash - for the sudden access of fame, wealth, and adulation made him drunker even than he was wont to become on his favourite tipple of Bourbon and Branch. Added to these charms was the fact that he chewed tobacco, had grimy fingernails, and apparently did not wash either himself or his hillbilly uniform too often.

The Schreibers put up with him because they had to; their guests did because most of them were genuinely fond of the Schreibers, and many of them had come from equally humble origins and somehow had adjusted themselves.

It did not take Mrs Butterfield long to loathe Mr Claiborne with equal fervour, since his remarks about her cooking were delivered in a loud voice which, when the swinging doors opened, penetrated right into the kitchen, and on anything she missed Mrs Harris indignantly filled her in.

Mr Claiborne was vociferous and uninhibited on all subjects which in any way pertained to himself. For instance, one evening when Mrs Butterfield had concocted a really delectable cheese soufflé, the hillbilly singer rejected it out of hand after a sniff at it, saying, ‘Pee-yew! That smells! What Ah wouldn’t give for some real old-fashioned Southern cookin’ - po’k fat back with turnip greens and pot liquor, or good old Southern fried chicken with hushpuppies. That’s the kind of eatin’ foh a man. Ah cain’t put this foreign stuff in mah belly. Ah’ll just hold off until you pass the meat an’ potaters.’

At another meal he delivered an oration on his prejudices. ‘Ah ain’t got no time for niggers, nigger-lovers, or
foreigners. Ah say, ship all the niggers back where they come from, and don’t let no more foreigners in. Then we’ll have God’s own country here sure enough.’

Poor Mr Schreiber turned quite crimson at these remarks, and some of his guests looked as though they were about to explode. However, they had all been briefed that if Mr Claiborne were to be irritated he might suddenly break off the contract negotiations going on and take his fabulous popularity and box office value elsewhere.

Mrs Harris passed along her opinion of Mr Claiborne to Mrs Butterfield in good, solid Battersea terms, concluding more mildly, ‘He looked right at me when ’e passed that remark about foreigners. It was all I could do to keep me tongue in me ’ead.’

When Mr Schreiber protested to Claiborne’s agent, Mr Hyman, and asked whether he could not exert a civilising influence on him, at least so far as his personal appearance, tongue, and table-manners were concerned, that individual replied, ‘What do you wanna do? He’s a nature boy. That’s why he’s the idol of them millions of American kids. He’s just like they are. Clean him up and put him in a monkey suit and you’re gonna spoil him. He’s gonna make plenty of dough for you, so why should you care?’

T
HE
day dawned eventually when Mrs Harris, notified by the Marquis that little Henry was no longer catching, in fact was once more in the full flush of youthful health, boarded the Congressional Limited at Pennsylvania Station and took that train to Washington, where first, with her usual energy and initiative, she engaged a cab driver to take her for a quick swing around the nation’s capital before depositing her at the French Embassy.

After a tour which embraced the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Pentagon Unit, and the White House, the driver, who had been in the Navy during the war and spent a good deal of time in British waters and British ports, leant back and asked, ‘Well, Ma, what do you think of it? It ain’t Buckingham Palace or Westminster Abbey - but it’s our own.’

‘Lor’ love yer, ducks,’ Mrs Harris replied, ‘you can’t have everything. It’s even prettier than in the pictures.’

At the Embassy Mrs Harris was greeted by the Marquis de Chassagne with great warmth - compounded in part
from the genuine affection he felt for her, and in part from relief that what might have turned into a very sticky business was now happily concluded at least so far as he was concerned.

A quite new Henry Brown came storming forth to throw his arms about the person of Mrs Harris; new in that, as with most children bedded with chicken-pox, he had grown an inch during the process, and through proper nourishment and lack of abuse had also filled out. The eyes and the large head were still wise and knowing, but had lost their sadness. Somehow he had even managed to acquire some manners by imitation, and during the luncheon treat that the Marquis provided for Mrs Harris he succeeded in refraining from bolting his food, eating with his knife, and other social misdemeanours.

Mrs Harris, herself a great stickler for etiquette and the gracefully lifted little finger, was not insensitive to these improvements and remarked, ‘Lor’ love yer, dearie, your father will be proud of you.’

‘Ah,’ said the Marquis, ‘I was coming to that. Have you found him yet?’

Mrs Harris had the grace to blush. ‘Blimey, no,’ she said, ‘and I ain’t ’arf ashamed of meself - boasting to Mrs Butterfield how I’d find him in half a jiffy if I ever got to America. Me and my big mouth! But I will.’ She turned and promised little Henry: ‘Don’t you worry, ’Enry, I will find your dad for you, or me nyme’s not Ada ’Arris.’

Little Henry accepted this pledge with no particular alteration of expression or change in his taciturnity. At that moment, truth to tell, he was not especially concerned whether she did or not. Things had never been so good with him, and he was not inclined to be greedy.

The Marquis accompanied them to the front door of the Embassy, where the blue Rolls-Royce waited, its figurehead and chrome-work gleaming, with the handsome and immaculate Bayswater behind the wheel.

‘Can I ride up front, Uncle Hypolite?’

‘If Bayswater will permit it.’ The chauffeur nodded gracious acquiescence.

‘Both of us - Auntie Ada too?’

To his surprise Mr Bayswater found himself involved in a second acquiescence. Never before had anyone but a footman ridden beside him in the front seat of a Rolls.

‘Goodbye, Uncle Hypolite,’ said the boy, and went up and threw his arms about the neck of the Marquis and hugged him, ‘you’ve been a real swell to me.’

The Marquis patted his shoulder and said, ‘Goodbye, my little nephew and grandson. Good luck, and be a good boy.’ To Mrs Harris he said, ‘Goodbye, Madame, and good luck to you too - and when you find the father I hope he will be a good man who will love him.’ He stood on the pavement watching them go until they turned the corner, and then went back into the Embassy. He was no longer feeling relieved, but only a little lonely and a little older.

Thus, driving up along the National Turnpike from Washington in the Marquis’s elegant Rolls-Royce, Bays-water, little Henry, who in a new suit and shoes purchased for him by the Marquis looked more than ever like a young Lordling out of the pages of the
Tatler
or the
Queen
, and Mrs Harris sat all together up front in the chauffeur’s compartment and chatted and compared notes.

Mrs Harris thought she had never seen anyone quite as elegant or attractive as Mr Bayswater in his grey whipcord uniform and the grey cap with the badge of the Marquis above
the peak. Mr Bayswater found himself somewhat surprised by the pleasure he was taking in Mrs Harris’s company. Ordinarily on such a trip he would have listened to nothing but the gentle, almost inaudible purring of the Rolls-Royce, the whine of the tyres, and the exquisite silence of the body bolts and springs. As it was now he lent half an ear to the questions and chatter of Mrs Harris, who was all settled into the comfortable leather seat for a proper chinwag.

He even deigned to talk to her, something he had not been known to do while driving since 1937, when he had had to speak sharply to Lord Boothey’s footman sitting next to him to keep his eyes straight ahead instead of letting them wander all about. He said, ‘I have driven through Madison, Wisconsin, a city of wide avenues and pleasant homes, but I have never been to Kenosha. What would you say was the most attractive feature of that city?’

‘Something they had in the café of the ’otel there - North Country flapjacks with little pig sausages and genuine maple syrup. Coo! I never ate anything so good in me life. Four ’elpings of them, I ’ad. Afterwards I was sick. But blimey if it wasn’t worth it.’

‘Moderation is the signpost to health,’ declared Mr Bayswater somewhat sententiously.

‘Go on with you, John,’ said Mrs Harris, using his Christian name for the first time. ‘Did you ever eat a North Country flapjack?’

After he had got over the initial shock of hearing his first name thus falling from the lips of a female of the species, Mr Bayswater smiled a kind of a greyish, wintry smile, and said, ‘Well, perhaps I haven’t, Ada. But I’ll tell you what we’ll do, since you rather fancy your stomach; there’s a Howard Johnson’s about five miles ahead, and we’ll stop
there for a snack. Did you ever eat New England clam chowder? You’ll be sick again, I’ll warrant. It’s the best in the world. And for the nipper there’s ice cream. Howard Johnson’s has thirty-seven different varieties of ice cream.’

‘Lumme,’ marvelled Mrs Harris, ‘thirty-seven kinds! There ain’t that many flavours to make ice cream of. Would you believe that ’Enry?’

Henry looked up at Mr Bayswater with great trust and confidence. ‘If ’e says so,’ he replied.

They pulled up to the red and white Howard Johnson restaurant at the edge of the Turnpike, where hundreds of cars were similarly lined up and nosed in like pigs at a trough, and there they sat and sampled Lucullan bits of American roadside gastronomy.

This time, however, it was not Mrs Harris, but little Henry, who was sick. He had got successfully through nine of the famous Howard Johnson flavours before the tenth - huckleberry liquorice - threw him. But after he had been cleaned up he was as good as new, and piling back into the Rolls-Royce they proceeded merrily northwards towards the great metropolis on the Hudson.

On the final lap Mr Bayswater regaled Mrs Harris with accounts of little Henry’s popularity among the diplomatic set before the chicken-pox laid him low and curbed his activities, which seemed to include running faster and leaping and jumping further and higher than the scions of the ambassadors of Spain, Sweden, Indonesia, Ghana, Finland, and the Low Countries.

‘My word,’ said Mrs Harris. And then, throwing a wink over little Henry’s head at Mr Bayswater, said, ‘But ’ow come they didn’t twig that little ’Enry wasn’t - I mean— ?’

‘Hoh!’ scoffed Mr Bayswater, ‘how would they? They can’t speak the King’s English any better themselves. A leader, that’s what that boy’s going to be.’

Little Henry here broke one of his long silences. ‘I liked the Easter party on the lawn best,’ he confided to Mrs Harris. ‘We had to ’unt Easter eggs that was hidden, and we had egg races on a spoon. Uncle Ike said I was the best of anybody, and some day I’d be a champion.’

‘Did ’e now?’ said Mrs Harris. ‘That was nice. ’Oo did you say said that - Uncle Ike? ’Oo’s Uncle Ike?’

‘I dunno,’ replied little Henry. ‘ ’E was a kind of bald-headed bloke, and a bit of all right. ’E knew I was from London right away.’

‘He is referring to the President of the United States and the annual Easter party for the children of the members of the Diplomatic Corps on the White House lawn,’ explained Mr Bayswater just a trifle loftily. ‘Mr Eisenhower conducted the ceremonies personally. I stood that close to him meself,’ lapsing again at the mere memory of the event. ‘We exchanged a few words.’

‘Lor’ love yer - the two of yer ’ob-nobbing with Presidents! I once was almost close enough to the Queen to touch - Christmas shopping at ’Arrods.’

The Rolls was purring - it seemed almost floating - over the steel and concrete tracery of the great Skyway over the Jersey marshes. In the distance, shining in the late afternoon spring sunshine, gleamed the turrets of Manhattan. The sun was caught by the finger tower atop the Empire State Building, glinted from the silvered steel spike terminating the Chrysler Building further uptown, more than a thousand feet above the street level, and sometimes was caught illuminating every window of the burnished walls
of the R.C.A. and other buildings in mid-town New York, until they literally seemed on fire.

Mrs Harris feasted her eyes upon the distant spectacle before they plunged into the caverns of the Lincoln Tunnel and murmured, ‘Coo, and I thought the Eiffel Tower was somefink!’ She was thinking,
Who would ever have thought that Ada Harris of five Willis Gardens, Battersea, would be sitting in a Rolls-Royce next to such a kind and elegant gentleman, a real, proper gent - Mr John Bayswater - looking with her own eyes upon such a sight as New York?
And the greying little chauffeur was thinking,
Whoever would have thought that Mr John Bayswater, of Bayswater, would be watching the expression of delight and joy upon the face of a little transplanted London char as she gazed upon one of the grandest and most beautiful spectacles in the world, instead of keeping both eyes on the congested road, and his ears attuned only to the voices of his vehicle?

Mrs Harris had the chauffeur drop them for safety’s sake at the corner of Madison Avenue, and as they said good bye and she expressed her thanks for the ride and the meal, Mr Bayswater was surprised to hear himself say, ‘I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing you again.’ And then added, ‘Good luck with the nipper. I hope you find his parent. You might let us know - the Marquis will be interested.’