‘Look, Allegra. Come and see this.” Nana held up a copy of Vogue. She
flattened it open on the dining table. Underneath her weathered fingers was
a photo of a dark-haired girl with her hand to her cheek, gazing soulfully
out at me.
“That’s your sister. That’s Anjelica.” I knew I had a sister and her name was
Anjelica, but that was about all. I hadn’t seen her since the turbulent,
forgotten months in London after Mum died when I was four. She was nearly as
lost to me as Mum was. She had inherited our mother’s beauty, I knew, and
was modelling in Paris and New York.
After Mum’s death in a car crash I had lived for a while in Ireland in the
manor house of our father, John Huston, the film director. I didn’t see much
of him. He’d split from Mum, a former prima ballerina, long before she died.
Now I was living with her Italian-American parents in Long Island.
I was eight when Anjelica came to visit. She was 21, taller than anyone else
and thin, with the bony angles of someone who was important in the world.
Neither of us knew what to say to the other. I showed off my bicycle-riding
skills, waving with one hand. She didn’t look impressed.
That Christmas of 1972, my nurse took me to California, where Dad was living
with his new wife, Cici. Anjel was living there too. Being with Anjel in New
York had been rather like being with Dad: stepping into a world where I
didn’t belong, unsure if I was measuring up. But here she was full of
enthusiasm and energy. She wanted me for her sister. She called me “Legs”.
One night she took me to Chinatown where her new boyfriend was filming on
location. A street was blocked off. Black vintage cars gleamed under huge
lights on high poles. Daddy was on the set, though I barely saw him.
We waited in her boyfriend’s trailer. Finally, the door swung open.
“Hey, Toot!” Not as in toot-toot, the noise of a train. More like “tuht”.
“This is Jack,” said Anjelica to me. At the age of nine, I hadn’t heard of
Jack Nicholson.
“Allegra. Pleased to meet you.” He shook my hand then sat down in front of a
big mirror surrounded by lights. A woman bent over his nose, where a line of
black threads was sewn in knots, like a butchered centipede.
“It’s just make-up, darling,” Anjel reassured me.
A few weeks later, a fever hit me at Anjelica’s house. She put me in her bed,
and I heard footsteps on the stairs. A man appeared in the doorway. Jack.
“Leggsie!” The beam of Jack’s attention made me feel like a minor deity evilly
laid low.
“I brought Scatman to see you,” he said. “The Scatman will make you feel
better.”
Beside him was a black man with a lined face that cracked into a wide grin. He
perched on my bed and started to sing, his voice gravelly, the tune wild and
rollicking. It was the title song from The Aristo-cats, a Disney movie which
Anjel had taken me to see. Sickness brought Scat Cat himself to my bedside,
singing just for me.
JACK’S daughter, Jennifer, was a year older than me, blonde and pudgy like me,
so that we could have been sisters. We found it funny that if Anjel and Jack
married, I’d be Jen’s aunt.
They took us to Aspen for two weeks to ski. We made a perfect family: Jen and
I sharing a bedroom, Anjelica cooking roast chicken and spaghetti bolognese
in the evenings, and Jack the ringmaster, the source of all excitement.
I loved Jack’s voice. Like Daddy’s, it had a way of soaking into all the air
in a room. But Jack’s voice was slangier than Daddy’s and had a dangerous
edge. Everything he said seemed to hold a hidden joke that you were in on if
you heard the grin behind the words. Dad’s voice made you his disciple;
Jack’s made you his accomplice.
I loved the way he called me Leggsing-ton. Jen was Bimbooreen. Arthur
Garfunkel was the G, Warren Beatty the Pro. Anjel was Toots or Tootman.
The first time Anjelica took me to Jack’s house, he stood up to kiss her. It
was the first time I noticed that Anjel was taller than he was. I spent many
weekends there with Jen. We had the living room to ourselves in the
mornings, before Jack and Anjel got up. We’d do a jigsaw puzzle of a pig
(Jack collected pigs, so there were pig-shaped things everywhere) or we’d
play Petropolis, a kind of special-edition Monopoly for millionaires. Some
French count had given Jack a set: the properties were countries, with
embossed leather ownership cards; the houses were solid silver oil derricks;
and the hotels were oil platforms plated in gold.
Jack’s bedroom had a little balcony overlooking the pool. Jen and I would be
swimming when Jack made his first appearance of the morning – folding back
the hinged balcony railing, taking a running leap and cannonballing into the
pool with a wild whoop. Bozo, his black labrador, would leap in after him,
crazy with excitement.
Jack’s ability to play awed me: a bit wild but always in control, abandoned to
the moment but for just as long as the moment lasted.
He spent long hours upstairs in his room, reading – history and philosophy,
Hegel and Nietzsche. He collected paintings obsessively. They overflowed the
wall space and had to be stacked in the Garfunkel Suite, as the maid’s room
was known. Eventually, there was no room for Arthur Garfunkel to stay in it
any more.
He treated me exactly as he treated Jen. I watched TV with him, swam, laughed
at his jokes. That was all I wanted: to be included in the nucleus of his
world.
Usually I slept on the sofa in the TV room, where the screen virtually covered
one wall. When Jack’s pals came over to watch basketball he jumped up and
down, cheering the game as loudly as if he were in the stadium. His pals
pounded the air and cheered too – but a little less loudly, like backup
singers. It reminded me of Dad: another king, another court. What happened
was what Jack wanted, and everyone was there to service him.
Anjel had her place in Jack’s court, though she was not quite the queen. I saw
her in tears often, and somehow I got the idea that she had her own room at
Jack’s house so that she would have somewhere to cry.
The room was at the top of the stairs, at the gateway to Jack’s private realm.
The first time I went in, my head swam. Paintings and drawings and
photographs covered the walls. And there were the oyster shells and pearls
sunk in cotton wool, surrounded by a rectangle of mother-of-pearl, that had
hung in my room at Dad’s house in Ireland. I had thought they were mine.
I realised now that of course it was Anjel’s. She had lived in the house
before me and had had my room there during the golden age when Mum was alive
and celebrities of film and literature had come to Dad’s doorstep.
Everything that I thought was mine had once been hers.
“That’s Mum’s bed, Legs,” Anjel said fondly. She had many memories of Mum, and
in them Mum was alive. But I was almost afraid to look at it, as if it would
turn me to stone. It had faces on it, carved into the high finials at the
head and foot. It was painted grey.
Anjel didn’t take the bed with her when she moved out of Jack’s. To me, that
meant she hadn’t really left him. And among the photographs she hung on the
wall of her dressing area was one of a teenage boy with that same dazzling
grin: Jack’s high school graduation photo.
“He was cute, wasn’t he, Legs?” She loved him still. I could hear it in her
voice, and it made me happy. I was sure she’d be back with him soon – where
she belonged. But she had a new boyfriend, Ryan O’Neal. RYAN was playing
Frisbee on the beach when she introduced me to him. Not one Frisbee, but
lots: a bombardment fired back and forth between Ryan and two other men. I
found out later that they were his brother and his coke dealer.
He was big and broad-chested with wavy blond hair and lips the same colour as
his skin. He’d starred in Love Story. When I was in fourth grade in Long
Island, a boy in class was reading the book and the rest of us were shocked.
Ryan had two houses: one on the beach at Malibu and another in Beverly Hills.
We’d spend a few days at one, then a few days at the other, according to his
moods.
His daughter Tatum was in England, making International Velvet, but her
cupboards were bursting with the clothes she’d left behind, all scented with
Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, which – I discovered when she came home – she
sprayed directly onto them and poured into the rinse water of the washing
machine.
She and her brother Griffin lived with Ryan because, I was told, their mother
was crazy. Griffin was a year younger than me and small for his age, with
leaf-green eyes and a freckled face like a street urchin out of Dickens. He
seemed lonely.
He tried on my high-platform shoes once at the beach house, acting the clown.
Anjel glanced nervously at the stairs. I realised she didn’t want Ryan to
see his son wearing girl’s shoes, even for fun.
Ryan was filming The Driver that summer, and it was mostly night shoots. He’d
wake up around two or three in the afternoon and head out onto the beach,
Anjel and I following, for a session of Frisbee. Griffin rarely played; he
liked to surf, but mostly he just stayed in his room, smoking dope.
Then we’d all have a sauna together. Soon I stopped being self-conscious about
my nakedness, or about Ryan’s. I did start shaving my legs.
Once it was dark, we’d drive in his magenta Rolls-Royce Corniche down to the
dock neighbourhood of San Pedro. Usually I sat on the armrest between the
two front seats, while Griffin burrowed like a little animal in the back.
Ryan draped his right arm across me to rest his hand on Anjel’s thigh as he
drove.
When I was alone with him in the car, Ryan rested his right hand on my thigh,
too. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked me once.
“No,” I said casually, though I wasn’t sure it was okay. For one thing, it
didn’t seem safe for him to drive with only his left hand.
“I can’t drive any other way,” he said, and held the silence until he was sure
I understood that he was telling the truth.
I didn’t wear my seatbelt; I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone wear one. I
wanted to put it on, but I was afraid Ryan would take it as an insult to his
driving. I tried to relax my thigh so that tense muscles under his hand
wouldn’t give me away. I WAS living with my stepmother, Cici, who had split
up from Dad. Before long, however, I was spending most of my time with
Anjelica and Ryan. Cici wasn’t happy about it, but I put that down to things
like no proper bedtime and the fact that Griffin was allowed to smoke dope
and snort coke and maybe she thought I was doing that too, which I wasn’t.
The whole idea of taking smoke into my lungs revolted me. I didn’t make much
distinction between cigarettes and joints: Anjel seemed to smoke them pretty
much interchangeably. I liked the smell of grass better than the smell of
tobacco. Beyond that, I didn’t see any difference. People smoked to relax,
or just because they smoked. I knew marijuana was illegal, but so was
speeding and everybody did that.
Cocaine was different. That obviously was a drug – and Anjelica had been
arrested for possession of it during the Roman Polanski scandal, when the
cops searched Jack’s house after Polanski took a 13-year-old girl there. I
was 12, but the whole thing seemed remote from anything that might happen to
me.
I’d seen people snorting coke: bent over a mirror with a rolled-up $20 bill or
a fat silver straw stuck up their noses, their heads wobbling and their eyes
crossed as they followed the white powder line. Then they sat around leaning
their heads back and occasionally saying, “Oohhhh.” The whole thing looked
idiotic.
Cici and Anjelica were battling over me, and I didn’t know it. I’ve since read
Cici’s letters to Dad. She described me as “a creature of love and purity”
and said, again and again, how important it was to protect my innocence.
I dimly understood Cici’s qualms, but I didn’t care. If Anjel wanted me, I
would be there. I sensed she felt a chance of making us all a family: her
and Ryan, his children and me. But there were shadows here too.
I was sitting on Tatum’s bed in the beach house with Griffin, talking.
Suddenly Anjel ran in and slid open the cupboard door.
“Don’t tell him I’m in here,” she whispered. I hadn’t heard any arguing or
fighting from upstairs but she looked really afraid. She was shaking. “If he
asks, don’t tell him, please.”
She squeezed in behind Tatum’s scented clothes. I could barely see her feet
behind the ranks of Maud Frizon shoes. My heart started to race. I didn’t
know how close behind her Ryan might be. I couldn’t hear footsteps; but
maybe he was being quiet to surprise us. From inside, Anjel slid the door
closed. I hoped we’d be brave enough to keep her safe.
Five minutes passed. I imagined Ryan, as big as a bear in that small room,
tearing open the closet door. I tried to keep my breathing slow and steady.
I knew he had no reason to be so angry. I also knew by then that he didn’t
need one. He enjoyed the power. His moods alternated: a few days wonderful,
a few days demonic. He used to boast that his birthday was on the same day
as Hitler’s.
I heard a creak. The cupboard door slid open. Anjel pushed Tatum’s clothes
aside and came out, her eyes swollen and red. She was still shaking as she
vanished.
One day when I got back from school, Anjel wasn’t there. Griffin was in his
room watching TV, looking hunted.
“Allegra!” A barking shout from above. I went to the foot of the stairs. “Yes,
Ryan?”
“Bring me some soup. And a Coke.” Soup was always Campbell’s tomato. Coke was
always on ice, with half a lemon squeezed into it. I carried the tray
upstairs and set it on the bed in front of Ryan. He took a spoonful.
“Where’s the pepper.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Sorry. I’ll go get it . . .” He stood up. He seemed bigger than usual. I took
a step back. His hands were clenched into half fists.
“Get down those stairs before I throw you down.”
I sensed that the sight of fear might make him snap. So I went with mute
obedience, fetched his pepper and hid.
I got into Anjel’s car one morning, ready for school. I loathed my uniform but
it set me apart at Ryan’s house. I was a schoolgirl not a 13-year-old
glamourpuss, not a neglected, stoned surferchild. Griffin and Tatum didn’t
go to school. I did: I was normal.
Anjel put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.
“What am I going to do, Legs?” “Leave him.” She looked at me like I’d said
something amazing.
At the pharmacy in Beverly Hills, I saw the National Enquirer at the checkout.
In the middle was a photo of Anjelica with photos of Jack and Ryan on either
side. Her head was lowered, her hair falling lank over her face as she
hurried into a doorway.
Anjel used to like taking me to Schwab’s drugstore and buying every trashy
magazine, fashion magazine and gossip rag on the racks. We’d get back to the
beach house with 20 or 30 of them, dump them all on the bed in Ryan’s room
upstairs and make our way through them, laughing at the gossip and comparing
the horoscopes. I thought this was so chic and cool: it was sad to buy one
magazine and take it seriously, but fun to buy them all.
Now that she was on the cover of the worst of them, it wasn’t funny or chic at
all. I wanted to know what the National Enquirer was saying about her; but I
couldn’t touch it. I felt ashamed: because she was my sister, and they were
making her out to be a slut for going back to Jack.
The whole thing wasn’t fair. I knew what she’d put up with from Ryan. She was
right to go back to Jack; I knew how kind and fun he was. But I wondered if
I’d ever see Griffin again. I missed him: my comrade, my ally. I worried
that I’d been his last hope, and I’d abandoned him.
When school finished for the summer of 1978, Anjelica took me to London where
Jack was filming The Shining. It was the first time I’d been back since I
was little.
Before Mum died we’d lived in Maida Vale. Now we stayed in Cheyne Walk,
Chel-sea, overlooking the Thames, in a house with a gilt-and-purple sunroom
on top.
In the mornings, after Jack left for the studio, I’d sit with Anjel on her
bed, watching her put on her make-up. She’d apply coat after coat of
mascara, twirling the brush into her eyelashes, which grew longer and longer
in curved arcs, in perfectly parallel lines. When she finished, she’d open a
baggie and put a generous pinch of grass into the lid of a shoe box. Then
she opened a packet of rolling papers and used the flap to winnow out the
seeds.
She showed me how to roll the grass into a joint: stick two Rizlas together,
spread the pinch of grass so that the sausage was a little fatter at the
ends than in the middle, then fold over the edge of the paper and tuck it
in, pressing down the outside edges of my index fingers while my thumbs
rolled it tight. Then a businesslike lick from left to right to seal it,
slide it under the elastic strap of an enamelled art deco cigarette case,
and start on the next.
I never wanted to smoke one, and she never offered one to me. The thought of
losing control of my thoughts or my body terrified me. “HOW can you be
spending so much money?”
Anjel was furious, standing over me where I sat on the purple carpeted floor
eating my dinner and watching Top of the Pops on the tiny TV, with punk
bands such as X-Ray Spex and British singers such as David Essex that nobody
in California had ever heard of.
I knew I’d been spending too much, but I couldn’t help it. The tutors who were
teaching me my American schoolwork were scattered all over London, and I was
taking five or six taxis a day. I was trying to be frugal, not buying things
for myself beyond what was necessary, but in less than a week the envelopes
of 10 £20 notes that Tim, Jack’s cook, gave me were gone.
“Do you think you’re some kind of prin-cess? You can’t go on a bus or Tube
like everybody else?” But I’d never been on a Tube train. I didn’t know how
to read the maps.
I felt a rush of panic. What if Jack said I couldn’t stay because I was too
expensive? I knew he had lots of money, but that didn’t mean he had to spend
it on me. What would it mean for Anjelica? I didn’t want to cause another
break-up.
Jack was working long days on The Shining, and at the same time he was editing
a movie he’d directed, Goin’ South. He went back and forth over the sound
effect of a horse farting: taking it out and putting it back in,
obsessively. Anjel was walking on eggshells around him.
The foursome that she and Jack, Jen and I had once made was gone. Jen had gone
to live in Hawaii with her mother. Our spontaneous little family hadn’t
survived the interlude with Ryan. I sensed, without ever quite formulating
the thought, that Anjel had been defeated.
I remember only two flashes of the Jack who used to cannonball into the pool
with Jen and me: his delight when he got a special suitcase just for his
shoes and a day when he slid into the chauffeur-driven Daimler, where Anjel
and I were waiting for him, with the words: “Here I am, girls – a symphony
of autumnal browns.”
Anjel left Jack again and again and again. But they starred together in films
– including Prizzi’s Honor, which Dad directed in 1985. And when Dad died of
emphysema two years later I rode in the limo with Anjelica and Jack to the
Hollywood cemetery.
Jack and Anjel weren’t exactly together at that point, so it surprised me that
he came with us. Anjelica had turned to him, and he was there.
He had adored Dad, and Dad him. “I’d like to have one of that litter,” Dad
used to say about Anjelica and Jack. But creating their own real family was
one thing they never did.
© Allegra Houston 2009
Extracted from Love Child, a Memoir of Family Lost and Found by Allegra
Huston to be published by Bloomsbury on April 20 at £17.99.
Copies can be ordered for £16.19, including postage, from The Sunday Times
BooksFirst on on 0845 271 2135
