The silent-film star who came to tea

‘It was like peering out of the window and seeing Fred Astaire pruning the roses’

Even for someone who barely leaves the house if she can help it, the last two months before lockdown have taken on the heady nostalgic quality of 1920s Weimar Berlin.

In January, Mr Home Front and I had a slap-up lunch in Soho, before going to the Curzon to see The Lighthouse, a film about two lighthousekeepers – one young, the other old – who go mad during a storm. ‘ Steptoe and Son with seagulls,’ mumbled Mr HF before falling asleep 15 minutes in.

In February, Betty and I went to Champneys in Hampshire (my excellent Christmas present from Mr HF … a distinct improvement on the anti-wrinkle creams of previous years). I had a great time, waddling about in a white gown and flip-flops like Little Britain’s Bubbles Devere; eating and drinking to excess. An exceedingly uncomfortable massage, which at the time made me privately cross, virtually cured years of persistent lower-back pain.

At the spa, Betty and I, alongside a hen party from Croydon, shrieked with abandon under the invigorating showers. Three different settings: Tropical Rainforest, Caribbean Storm and Cold Mist. ‘Did they have Oldham on a Tuesday?’ asked Mr HF.

Then there was an outing to the BFI with my friend Annabel. We saw a 1916 silent western, The Good Bad Man, with excellent live piano accompaniment. Our late arrival meant we missed the introductory talk about the film’s actors. So when the wholesome young ingénue appeared, flashing her eyes at rakish cowboy Douglas Fairbanks Snr (who looked old enough to be her grandfather), I had a jolt of recognition.

‘That’s Bessie Love!’ I hissed in Annabel’s ear. ‘I met her in the 1970s!’

I was 15 when my mother asked one day if I would like to go with her to visit an elderly film-star friend of hers. ‘Eh? Who? Crikey, yes!’ I enthused. We took a train from Surbiton to Clapham Junction and walked to her sheltered apartment in one of the large Victorian houses overlooking the common.

Bessie Love, then in her late 70s, was a still pretty, birdlike woman, with the same elegant legs that had danced their way through The Broadway Melody of 1929 and a string of other films.

In a plainly furnished living room – I had imagined plush, pre-war Hollywood décor – we sat and drank strong black Nescafé. On her walls, pasted any old how, were cuttings about old films torn from magazines. ‘Like a schoolboy’s wall!’ remarked the Aged P afterwards.

Bessie was very gracious, answering my gauche questions, peppering her anecdotes with infectious laughter. Had she known Gary Cooper? (My crush at the time.) ‘Oh indeed, yes! He once said to me, “I wonder if people will still be watching these films many, many years from now.” ’

She spoke of her friend Mary Astor, then living in a care home in Los Angeles: ‘She hates it there! Just hates it.’

Sometime after, Bessie was invited back to ours. The prospect of having a Hollywood film star in our Surbiton house felt strangely surreal, like peering out of the window and seeing Fred Astaire pruning the roses.

A proprietorial female companion drove her over. Whenever I stood up to offer Bessie an egg-mayonnaise sandwich or a slice of cake, the companion would swish me away with her hand: ‘You’re standing in Miss Love’s light!’

‘Who was the companion?’ I asked my mother as we stood waving them off on the doorstep. ‘An ageing groupie.’ The following year, Bessie Love effectively dropped my mother after she’d criticised Jimmy Carter in her Christmas card. ‘He is a good and worthy President!’ said an indignant Bessie.

We never saw her again – except for a brief cameo appearance in the film Reds. She died in 1986.

At the height of lockdown, the care home suggested the Aged P and I Skype each other. Why not? It would make a change from frustrating, half-heard phone calls. It would also give me the chance to ask how she and Bessie Love had come to meet. And, if hearing was still tricky, she could read my lips.

Me: ‘The care home have arranged for us to Skype each other next Tuesday. We’ll be able to see each other for the first time in weeks!’ Aged P: ( Groan) Me: ‘Don’t you want to do it, then?’ Aged P: ‘Not particularly. I know what you look like.’

It went ahead anyway. Just before, I ran a comb through my Shirley Williams lockdown hair and even applied lipstick (the Aged P thinks I’m dying if I don’t). I wondered if she would finally rise to the challenge of Skype, like Norma Desmond ready for her close-up. But it wasn’t to be. The Aged P wore the pained expression of an ISIS hostage.

‘I don’t think my mother’s enjoying this very much!’ I eventually called.

A face-masked carer homed into view. ‘No, she’s not, is she.’ So it was back to phone calls: ‘Do you remember the day Bessie Love came to Surbiton?’ ‘Of course!’ ‘How did you two come to meet?’ ‘What?’ ‘How did…?’ ‘Hello?’ ‘HOW DID–’ ‘Alice?’