Hello America! Part 1

Story contd.

Maddie and her husband were settled in an apartment in White Plains and also had bought a house in Vermont. I was thrilled when she invited me over for a visit. William and the boys were quite happy about it, I was able to afford it and I had just had a big birthday. Maddie would be working in New York to start with and then we would go up to Vermont.

It was my first flight and I was excited and nervous. I was sitting next to a young girl so we agreed to hold hands as we took off and chattered happily throughout the flight. Maddie had told me how to be picked up by a limousine which is a cross between a chauffeur driven car and a bus. I asked a fellow passenger what was her favourite place in the States and she said San Francisco where she had just been on holiday. It was quite a few years before I found out for myself.

When I tried to tip the driver at the end of the journey he said his mother came from England and he wouldn’t take it - which I thought was sweet. As Maddie was working, Maria, Liam’s wife, met me in White Plains and took me to the apartment. Liam was Jamie’s brother and I was quite startled when Maria said Jamie had recently been over on business and had stayed with them. I’d just missed him. I didn’t want to spend this great experience by mooning over a lost love, so I put him out of my mind.

The next day Maddie said I should go into town with her, see her office and then spend the day sight seeing – on my own! On the train on the outskirts of the city I looked down to a sort of scene straight from hell- derelict buildings – it looked like a bomb site, and every other person I saw - they were black -seemed to be crippled or helpless. I had never seen anything like it and Maddie said to stop staring as people wouldn’t like it. This was 1970.

Her office building was a sky scraper and we whizzed up at a dizzying speed. Later Maddie told me that the receptionist had asked her if her sister was in the movies. All too soon I had to go and start sight – seeing and I felt quite lonely and wondered if maybe I should spend the day going up and down in the lift or elevator. Telling myself not to be such a wimp, I found myself on the pavement and asked the first reasonable looking man where the Empire State building was. Turned out he was from Broadstairs (a UK sea-side resort) and that I was standing right outside the building. Doh!

If, like me, you are a member of the cinema generation, your first trip to America is magical – like stepping into the screen at the King’s Cinema in Waterfoot where one might see Andy Hardy, Clark Gable, Bette Davis or any of the screen gods and goddesses. Diners, drug stores and motels all had this romantic feel. After the Empire state building I went to the Frick Museum which I loved. There was a little garden place with water where I could rest my tired feet and I revelled in the Fragonard paintings and lost my heart to Rembrandt’s ‘Polish Rider’.

I remembered I had the telephone number and address of the black American who had played Lord Windermere when we were fellow students on my drama course, some years back. Maddie said it was unlikely he would have stayed put, but his wife answered the phone and later Charles rang and said he’d love to meet up even though it meant a long train journey. In the end Charles, Barbara – an English friend of Maddies’s, Howard – a gay Chinese colleague of Maddie’s and Maddie and I met up in a splendid cocktail bar in the Plaza hotel. After a martini or two we were the best of buddies and went to inspect the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Then Howard thought he should take us to eat in China Town where we ended up drinking gallons of fragrant tea. I notice Barbara was wearing a badge which said Moratorium.

She explained it was a plea to stop the fighting in Viet Nam for a year to reflect and hopefully to resolve the problem.

As we waved farewell to Charles at the railway station we all agreed it had been a very special night. Maddie and I spent the night at Barbara’s apartment and I wondered how she ever slept - with the constant background of sirens on the street below. It would soon be the week-end and then we were off to Vermont. Would there be moonlight?