Free Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool by Peter Turner

started spending more and more time together, either having meals in her rooms or taking late night walks through London. Mostly
we’d end up by the Thames and would walk along the Embankment. She loved to hear me talk about Liverpool. She was fascinated by the place and determined to visit it as soon as she could.
Liverpool, to Gloria, held the same fascination as Hollywood did for me. While I’d be wanting her to tell me stories about the movies, she’d be wanting me to tell her stories about my
family;
    ‘When did your sister Bella marry Jimmy?’
    ‘Bella married Arthur. It was Mary who married Jimmy.’
    ‘I thought Maisie got him.’
    ‘She did, but that was a different Jimmy.’
    ‘Tell me again how John met Rose?’
    ‘He was staying the weekend with Joe and Jessie and she was the girl next door.’
    ‘. . . and they’ve been married ever since?’
    ‘Yes, they’ve got six kids.’
    ‘They must all be so in love. Liverpool sounds heaven.’
    When I told her that my sister Eileen was married to an Arab and now lived in Baghdad, she nearly fainted on the spot.
    ‘Oh, that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.’
    I wasn’t sure if Eileen would quite agree.
    ‘. . . and tell me more about
you.
I wanna hear all about Betty.’
    ‘I was only five or six,’ I pleaded. ‘Betty was just a kid from across the street.’
    ‘Well why did you call her Boo Boo?’
    The questions went on and on. Gloria was obsessed. She loved me to tell her stories; about my mother in the war, about my father making toys out of old bits of wood to give to us all at
Christmas. She could make me recount to her adventures of childhood summer holidays spent on the beach at New Brighton, of the fun whole families had following Bessie Braddock around the streets of
Toxteth in the late fifties, carrying ‘Vote Labour’ placards. Gloria loathed right wing politics and politicians.
    ‘I can’t stand the sight of Ronnie Reagan,’ she said. ‘I’d like to stick my Oscar up his arse!’
    One day she received an invitation to visit a London film school to sit through a screening of one of her films.
    ‘Why don’t you come with me, Peter?’ she asked. ‘It’s
Human Desire
.’
    ‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen it before.’
    At the end of the screening she was asked to answer questions for the students. I could see that she was uneasy. An eager-looking student stood up to pose his question. As an actress who had
worked with directors like Fritz Lang, Dmytryk, Minnelli And De Mille, he asked, in her considered opinion, what was the difference between a good director and a bad director? Gloria’s face
turned white.
    ‘Well,’ she said after a long silence and a lot of dubious looks. ‘I guess a good director’s a good director and a bad director’s a bad one.’
    She laughed along with everyone else, and the rest of the session was a success.
    Walking home later that afternoon, Gloria became unusually quiet.
    ‘Hey, Peter. Can I ask you something?’ she said, as we were halfway along Prince Albert Road. ‘How do I join the Royal Shakespeare Company? I wanna play Juliet.’
    ‘Don’t be soft,’ I said. ‘You’d be better off playing the nurse.’
    I thought I knew her well enough to make a silly joke, but it backfired. Gloria was furious.
    ‘Dammit!’ she shouted. ‘How do I join the Royal Shakespeare Company? I wanna see if they think I can play those parts.’
    ‘Well maybe you could join the RSC,’ I said, trying to placate her. ‘It’s a good idea, but I don’t think that you’d be quite right to play Juliet.
That’s all I mean.’
    We’d just reached the entrance to the zoo when she turned on me.
    ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it, Peter? Now I know why you don’t like me. You just think that I’m too old. That’s why you don’t want to get real close. You
think that I’m just an old lady. Well you’re wrong. I’m gonna go to that theatre right now and I’m