Chapter 19: Satterthwaite House

It took a few weeks before our flat was really a place to live. For the bedrooms, we simply went Ikea, except for the foam mattresses where we picked better quality foam from an online outlet along with better slats. Dining room and living room were a bigger production. Jenn went hunting in estate furniture shops and found a beautiful, cherry wood dining table with ten matching chairs and a sideboard for the dining room.

For the living room, we picked a modular system of stackable containers made of beech wood frames with white inserts. It came from a German manufacturer, was quite pricey, but eminently flexible and adaptable to changing needs. We combined this with a large modular arrangement of upholstered seating elements, forming a U-shape open towards the ex-fireplace, and with a low cocktail table in the center —centre? — of it. In the end, the sale of the Cayenne barely paid for our new furniture.

Once we had our new home more or less finished, the pre-production team got into swing. Brenda flew in from L.A. and took quarters in our second large bedroom. She wanted to pay a third of the lease, but we haggled her down to a quarter. We three formed the core team, but twice a week, we walked over to the Beeb headquarters, to confer with Wigley and Paul Duncan, a creative director, comedy, at BBC2. The latter gave us quite a lot of input, sharing his knowledge of the British market and — most importantly — the British press. Here in London, the newspapers and the tabloid rags could still make or kill a show. He and Brenda were an instant match on the creative side. Paul, the creative brain, had a vision, and Brenda, the wordsmith, put it into dialogue.

Morton Wigley juggled available resources and budgets with ease, allowing me to concentrate on my core competence, to give input on story development and to find potential cast members. We had a bit of a discussion over Aurelly Deschamp, Brigitte De La Hugeot’s daughter, but when the girl flew in for three days for test shoots, he was won over. She could talk in a stereotypical French accent and she exuded raw sex appeal. Brenda and I assured Morton that she would be painted as a cunning manipulator, and not as a French Maid stereotype, and she was the first to join the cast.

On a whim, I contacted Geoff Harding, asking him if he was interested in playing a supporting character, and he agreed readily to visit us in London to discuss the character and other modalities. His only condition was for Jenn to be the understudy and eventual replacement for the leading actress, Carrie Dunlop, in a play during the autumn in a West End theatre. It was A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright, and considered a feminist classic. Jenn agreed immediately after she was assured that she would get stage time later in the autumn, because the lead actress playing Nora would have to bow out due to her pregnancy. I have rarely seen Jenn in such a giddy mood, and it was hard during the following weeks to get her input on our planned show.

Morton Wigley was ecstatic about Jenn getting that much exposure prior to our show’s start, and he immediately contacted the producer of the play to see if the Beeb could produce a taping of the play, preferably after Jenn would take over.

The next few weeks were a bit crazy, with Brenda and I trying to settle things like first season story arc, locations, and recurring characters, Jenn attending daily rehearsals, and Carly demanding attention from us. There was no other way than to hire a nanny, and here, Paul Duncan helped. He found us a real gem of a woman, Scottish by birth and genetics and Paul’s distant cousin, who accepted a six months contract to look after our little not-always-angel. The woman, Elizabeth Bessie Duncan, had to be the current resting place of Mahatma Gandhi’s former soul. She exuded friendly patience combined with unshakable resolve to a degree that I wished she’d been my nanny when growing up! She was even able to head off Jenn’s tantrums after another day of rehearsals, an extraordinary feat, well deserving of a date with the Norwegian King. In short, we extended Bessie’s contract to two years after the first two weeks, and it was the best casting I ever did.

If I expected some peace and quiet to settle on us, I was deluding myself. Two weeks into November, poor Carrie Dunlop woke up with contractions and had to be whisked to the nearest hospital. By eleven am, Jenn was called up to fill in during that evening’s performance, and pandemonium reigned for about two hours, while Jenn was going over her lines again, discovering a pimple on her forehead, finding her costumes to be too wide — she’d lost a few pounds during the hectic autumn — and generally being a nervous wreck. I really did my best to calm her and distract her, but I feared the worst for her. We arranged for a late ticket for me, and Brenda was appointed Carly’s guardian for the night.

What can I say? Once on the stage, my wife nailed the role. You may call me prejudiced, but that characterization came from the theatre critic of The Times, not a newspaper suspected of empty praise. Jenn was Nora for two hours, and they took three curtains after the last act. Of course, I had flowers ready when I picked her up after her performance, and the kiss she gave me when she jumped into my arms was borderline X-rated.

She had to give brief interviews to the few reporters who had attended, but the whole time, she never let go of me. She insisted on us walking home through London’s drizzling rain, and kept describing each and every scene and how she had experienced it.

At one point, I was even able to get in a word edgewise.

“I’m so proud of you, I could burst.”

She gave me a smoldering look. “I hope you have no plans for tomorrow morning, ‘cause neither of us will be awake before noon, and that’s my promise!”

She’s always kept her promises.

After the first three or four performances, Jenn settled into something like a full commitment instead of maniacal obsession, and when The Beeb taped her tenth performance, she had her part pat. On my advice, she also paid a visit to Carrie Dunlop, who was by now resting at home, trying to get over her seventh pregnancy month without a premature birth. She took Carly along for the visit, too, and downplayed the positive press echo as BBC trying to raise interest for our show.

Carrie played along, issuing a statement that she was relieved that the producers had found a congenial replacement for her, allowing her to rest without depriving the theatre patrons of a first class entertainment. This was accompanied by a faked selfie of the two women and of Carly.

The taped performance was shown in the evening of Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, in prime time, and we watched it together with our parents. Since Brenda was gone over the holidays and Carly was relegated to the small bedchamber, both sets of parents could bunk with us. Three days after Christmas, the parents even saw The Doll House live in the theatre, together with David’s parents. My parents were simply impressed, but Geraldine and David were overwhelmed seeing their daughter’s performance opposite the flamboyant Geoff Harding.

Jenn’s grandparents were simply awed. Jenn being successful as a TV actress was nothing, but to appear as the female lead in a classic play on one of the most prestigious stages of London, was almost beyond their comprehension. They would actually be able to boast about their granddaughter, the actress, in their circles of self-important salon dwellers. I could tell that Jenn had difficulties maintaining her composure when they waxed about how proud they were of her. Fortunately, we had no room for them in our flat — which also impressed them, the flat and it’s location, I mean — and after they left, we all gave in to our merriment.

Having the grandparents over also gave us a chance to give Bessie a few days off over the holidays during which she visited her kin near Inverness, but when our parents had to return to their school duties, she returned, rested and joyful. We also gifted her two tickets to The Doll House to see her employer in action. The next morning, Bessie showed up with a teenaged girl, her daughter. We hadn’t known that she had one, but Bessie was a war widow, raising her daughter alone with the help of a military survivor’s pension and her work as nanny. The girl, Tilda by name, was a little tongue-tied, sitting up close to the actress she’d seen the evening before, but she managed to pitch her availability as a babysitter on weekends, against a modest hourly rate and the taxi fare to their home. Nodding eagerly, I jotted down her contact information, even though the bookings would likely be through Bessie.

After a fourteen-week run, The Doll House closed down in late January, with the winter theatre season over, and Jenn could focus on our pre-production again. Geoff Harding had used the time in London to meet Brenda and Paul and define the character he would play, Penelope Satterthwaite’s uncle, a solicitor and bachelor, who loves his niece but is also a frequent visitor at the Beaulieu Hotel’s bar, managed by my character, Hawkeye Jefferson, the American. He and Penelope’s uncle are drinking buddies, with Hawkeye paying and Mortimer Satterthwaite drinking. Mortimer is playing both sides to keep the gin running, but sometimes works out as liaison between the warring parties when their common interests are threatened.