Message Personnel
by Stefanie Ritch
I was standing on the platform looking at the tracks. Sometimes there are rats or mice scurrying past. I don’t know quite what I was thinking about at that time, but in any case I must have been moved.
When I looked left I suddenly saw a face I recognised, or perhaps I was just stunned by her beauty. It was a famous face with bone structure chiseled by the Gods. She was meant for film, theatre, modelling. And yet she was standing a few feet away from me about to take a tubular train.
She was tall, magnificently elegant in swathes of green, but effortlessly casual with a chic short white haircut. So it felt right to ask her:
“I expect you saw the performance tonight?”
“Yes. Isabelle? At the Barbican”.
“Exactly”, I replied “Isabelle as Phaedra”.
“Yes, did you enjoy it?”
“Oh yes”, I said. I don’t think I told her I’d seen it five times.
“I just love Isabelle Huppert. My husband worked with her in one of her first films so I have fond memories of us talking about her”.
She said this as the Tube arrived and we both hopped on and remained standing, holding onto the silver poles.
“I’m so sorry. It’s perhaps because I’m tired but I cannot for the life of me think what your name is”.
“I’m Siân”, she said smiling. “Siân Phillips. I’ve been in things but not a filmography as long as Isabelle Huppert’s!”
Siân Phillips is probably the only star I’ve had the pleasure of having such a casual, pleasant and human conversation with, and on the London Tube of all places.
“Before you go, I have a question. I wonder if you could help me answer”.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. Who knows what she had expected.
“I have to decide by Monday whether I choose to go to Moscow or Paris. It’s for a job.”
“Well there’s only one answer to that, darling. Paris!”
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“Yes”, I said, almost feeling a burden had been lifted.
“Oh God yes. If I could choose, I would be there now. Do you speak French?”
“Yes. I’ve been a French teacher here for the past five years”.
“Well then Voilà. You have my blessing. I am getting off now, but it was lovely meeting you this way and I wish you the most wonderful time in Paris”.
That night when I got home I got a phone call from my dad and I told him what had happened, who I had met. He said he was glad and that he had called to say he had thought of a valid reason to not go to Moscow after all.
“You can’t stand the cold,” he said. “Remember the time you got frostbite skiing in Italy?”
It was indeed a very valid reason, not that I really needed any other at that moment after Siân’s degree of certainty. But it was additional support.
I looked out onto Canary Wharf that night. I must have done. There was nothing to keep me there but the stunning view from the Bow Belles.
The next day, I remember I had a long lie and was woken by the sound of the buzzer. This usually did not occur unless there was a package to be picked up. And even then, it would be possible to leave the package in a cubby hold downstairs. When I got to the interphone there was no voice on the other end.
I made an effort to go out. Although I felt a bit puffy and disappointed with myself, my hair was a dark fringed bob I’d had done by a wonderful hairdresser next to The Morgan Arms. I had recently acquired new clothes from a kind fashion designer who gave me free samples of her designs for COS. I sincerely hope she was aware of my gratitude.
I took the bus to Whitechapel, even though it isn’t all that far away from where I lived. But it was raining. I remember sweating slightly when there was too long a pause, and in fact thinking of it now, I even called the Whitechapel Gallery to check they allowed latecomers to access the event.
I rushed in, showed my ticket and the guy said it was just through those swinging doors. Once inside, it was a large white room. All seats seemed to be filled and there were some white benches at the back. I, however, preferred to sneak in and stay standing at the brick wall. I was already cringing with rage and embarrassment that this pretentious venue had given their special guest speaker a microphone that squeaks. She was introducing the film Wanda, by Barbara Loden and was, at that moment, talking about the connection with Marguerite Duras. Once finished, she received echoing applause as she walked up the middle aisle and stood behind the right side of the room. Surprisingly no one looked round to follow her. But I, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Everybody else was decidedly looking at the opening credits on the screen.
She looked round and gave me a look as if she knew who I was, mouth opening into a wide smile and wide eyes. Because her arms were folded, she sort of twisted, bending forward, as one does when they have just noticed an old friend and then walk towards them as if to say “Hey, it’s been a long time”, or perhaps more appropriately “Well, what are you doing here, stranger?”
I smiled. Of course. But one has to understand that at this point I wasn’t able to actually grasp what was happening. She stopped folding her arms as if she had suddenly noticed that it was unwelcoming. She sort of stretched them back so that her elbows could meet and started swaying from side to side like a child does when she wants to show how sweet and good she is, or perhaps to show off how good she is at hiding the fact that she’s been up to mischief again. Then that pose relaxed into just a very genuine, lovely smile which beamed its way across the room to me, the fly on the wall. A smile which can only be created by the goddess herself.
At this point, a tiny figure in white was walking through the fields onscreen. I think we both sort of twisted our heads towards the screen then, because that was the reason we were there after all, to watch the restored film she had bought the rights to and was promoting; a film by an actress who had been forgotten and had died too young.
But then she folded her arms again and walked over so that she was just in line with me but no more, as if giving me a chance to come to meet her. Here, how far can you walk now? But when she saw me looking I couldn’t get over how everyone in front of me was watching Wanda while I, was getting a private silent movie of my own by the most famous star of film and stage that I personally had ever known. This close. This far. This real. And she must have seen how terrified I was because now I don’t know what she was doing. Her eyes suddenly grew red. Her face was cold. It was the face I recognised from all the films I had watched, the plays I’d seen: The Piano Teacher, Madame Bovary, Merci Pour le Chocolat, La Séparation, 8 Women, Carnage, Tramway, Phaedre… they come into my head in titles, French and English and German, and the list goes on and is added to every day and goes on and on from so many movies and so many plays and books and songs and texts and magazines and interviews and it feeds and it feeds and it…
At the time I think I knew that the message was simply that we could communicate everything that had to be said in silence. She twisted on her heel and walked towards the people who were watching Wanda and started whispering to a man I understood to be her son. I sort of remained there by the brick wall, innocently pretending to watch the film which really I had no interest in after what had just happened. In fact, I knew I cursed myself for not having had a strong coffee beforehand. And so I left, I slipped out of the room and ran with clopping heels out of the gallery to find that coffee bar I so liked next door. I suddenly realised I perhaps could not take a flat white into the ever so white Whitechapel gallery and so I asked for a double espresso and downed it instantly, checking my teeth for stains in a small mirror.
I ran back in and saw that she and her son were now looking in the gallery bookshop. I mean - it would have been the perfect opportunity, wouldn’t it have been? To find some random book which I hadn’t thought to have brought myself and just ask her sweetly to dedicate something to me?
It was hopeless. I pretended I hadn’t seen her and went back in, sat on a bench and watched Wanda instead.
Recommended listening: Message Personnel (Françoise Hardy).
Recommended viewing: At the very least: Rosebud, by Otto Preminger.
