CUT TO: A well-appointed dining room, candlelit, windows open to the night. VEREKER, frail but jolly, has just entered and shaken hands with GEORGE, and they sit down to dinner.
GEORGE (V.O.)
… and we talked and dined, as if we were old friends. He was so genial, quite a different character from how I’d imagined him. I remember Chas telling me something similar –
CUT TO: GWEN raises her eyes to CHAS a moment, then bows her head again to the letter.
GEORGE (V.O.)
I couldn’t square the man with his books. The high ironic style didn’t go with this twinkling fellow. But that was a puzzler for another day … By the time we’d finished dinner and the cigars came out my nerves were quite taut with anticipation – I had never been so eager to have a matter out in all my life.
CUT TO: GEORGE talking very earnestly with VEREKER, who listens, smiling. Room has gone darker, the candles in a confessional quiver. The camera holds on this two-shot while GEORGE’s v.o. continues.
GEORGE (V.O.)
So, finally, I laid out my theory, identifying what I believed to be the animating principle of his work – the figure in the carpet. Even at the last I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but he gave me a look when I’d finished that felt in itself like an admission. Then he smiled, and he said, ‘Well done.’ I think I laughed with the relief of it. All those hours of wondering – and I’d got it at last!
11
The cooling system in the studio had broken down, and the atmosphere was close to swampy. Berk, his denim shirt darkening at the armpits, had been arguing with one of the engineers. He couldn’t understand why nobody had bothered to fix it. ‘I’m sweating like Nixon here, and these people just hang around with their thumbs up their asses.’ The engineer to whom he addressed this complaint languidly examined his thumbs and walked off.
For one so arrogant Ronnie Stiles had proved rather more popular among the unit than Nat could fathom. Being good-looking lent Ronnie great confidence, and he had become susceptible to the vanity – common in his profession – of having vastly more to say than a mind that was fit to supply it. Ideas of improvisation were his speciality. Reiner responded to him with such good humour even Nat nearly missed the sarcasm beneath; but the director would have his revenge. The set was a bedroom for a love scene between Chas and Gwen. Its cramped design, already an inconvenience, now became a positive trial in the heat. Just before the camera rolled Ronnie, in bed with Sonja, moved his hand an inch above her breast. He turned with a leer to Reiner.
‘How about I put me hand there?’
Reiner turned enquiringly to Sonja, resting on her elbow. She exhaled a jet of smoke. ‘Not unless you want me to put this out on it,’ she said, holding the glowing tip of her cigarette an inch above Ronnie’s wrist. Someone sniggered in the background.
‘And there is your answer, Ronald,’ said Reiner. ‘Camera, ready?’
So Ronnie kept his hands to himself, though he seemed to brood on his moment of thwarted invention. He was overheard at the lunch break complaining about Reiner as a ‘jackbooted tyrant’, and would do little goose-stepping impersonations behind his back. In the afternoon, he was in his bedroom for a solo scene: Chas waking up in the night from his paper-chasing dream. They had just fixed the lighting to show his sleeping face in the dark when Ronnie called for a halt.
‘Reiner, can I just run something by you? I don’t think we’re making enough of this moment.’
Reiner stared at him. ‘Enough?’
‘Well, I’ve just woken up from a nightmare, yeah? Wouldn’t it look more convincing if I sat bolt upright in bed, staring into the camera?’
‘No,’ said Reiner.
Ronnie knitted his brow. ‘Why not?’
‘It is not a nightmare, merely a dream of frustration that has woken him.’
‘Yeah but, this is cinema. A sudden look of fright’ – he bugged his eyes – ‘very dramatic.’
Reiner paused, scratched his beard. He looked over to Nat. ‘Let us ask the writer. Have you ever woken from sleep in this way?’
‘Never in my life,’ Nat replied.
‘Has anyone here done so – jumped from sleep to waking like a jack-in-the-box?’
Jürgen, the cameraman, shyly poked his head round. ‘Just once. I was out camping and had accidentally set my bedding on fire.’
Reiner laughed, and fired off a few phrases of German that no one else could catch. Someone else offered the experience of waking from an attack of cramp. Reiner nodded, and said, ‘Let us allow, then, that fire and – was ist? cramp? – may cause a sudden movement in the sleeper. Otherwise it is an invention entirely of the cinema to catapult oneself into an upright position. Ronald?’
Ronnie, stubborn to the last, argued for at least ‘giving it a try’. Reiner, to general surprise, agreed. ‘Let us see then your “dramatic” moment of awakening. Jürgen, place the camera over – yes, just there.’
They set up the shot. On the call of ‘Action’ – Reiner spoke the word softly, not in a director’s bark – Ronnie raised himself upright from the pillow and, hyperventilating, stared into the lens. Nat looked at Reiner, wondering. This would be a test of his authority: to let Ronnie have his way, or to overrule him with disdain. In fact, he did neither. He exchanged a quick word with Jürgen, and then said, ‘Let’s try it again.’
They tried it again, and again. After the sixth take of Ronnie jerking himself forward, alarm written over his face, there was a pause. Reiner changed the angle slightly, and said, ‘Again.’ The sticks clacked and they did another, and on it went. By the eighteenth take Ronnie looked thoroughly fed up, and his vaunted expression of fright now undeniably absurd.
‘OK,’ said Reiner, nodding his satisfaction. ‘Thank you, Ronald, for your patience. But before we break let’s do one more, as the script has it. “We see Chas asleep in bed. His eyes flicker open, he wakes and clicks his tongue, exasperated.”’ He smiled on the last word. So Ronnie did the shot, waking from sleep, moving nothing but his eyes. A click of the tongue. ‘Cut.’ A sigh of relief could almost be heard around the room. Having checked the monitor, Reiner said to Jürgen in a voice just loud enough for Ronnie to hear: ‘Print the last one.’
Billie absent-mindedly packed her groceries at the shop till. At the studio they’d had a laugh behind Ronnie’s back over the nineteen takes that afternoon; someone had even sneaked a Polaroid of him pulling his woke-up-in-fright face and pinned it to the noticeboard. She had been in such a good mood, and decided to call on Vere in his dressing room.
Without really thinking about it she threw open his door and cried ‘Helloooo!’ Vere, seated, his head bowed as if in prayer, looked round with a start. His brow darkened with annoyance.
‘Has nobody ever told you it’s polite to knock?’ he hissed.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she began, suddenly flustered.
He turned away, muttering to himself. ‘Hardly know why I bother.’
Billie, caught on the threshold, was about to withdraw on tiptoe when Vere turned again and fixed a cold eye upon her. ‘So what urgent message did you have to communicate?’ His voice, usually so mellifluous, was as clipped and formal as a Kensington privet.
‘Oh, er … I didn’t – I was just –’
‘If your interruption has no purpose, would you kindly leave me in peace?’
The shock of this was like water dashed in her face. He had never spoken to her like that before. As far as she knew he had never spoken like that to anyone. She gasped out another apology and closed the door. But it preoccupied her on the way back to Waterloo in the train, and all the way to Kentish Town on the bus. She had noticed that Vere had been a little subdued of late, which may have been why she’d called on him, hoping to restore some of the old cheer. That was a mistake. But why? What on earth had happened that he should turn on her so furiously?
At her mother’s house she was relieved to find that preparations were under way. The fusty odour of ageing carpets and unwashed clot
hes had been masked by joss sticks, and the thump of music from upstairs had been silenced: Nell must have told her lodgers to clear off for the evening. Surfaces had been dusted. Even the spotted mirror in the hallway, which threw Billie’s questioning expression back at her, had been given a cursory wipe. Downstairs, the kitchen was fragrantly fogged. Nell was tending a large pan of soup, while Tash sat at the table peeling carrots.
‘Here she is – the film star!’ crowed her mother, her smile showing the glint of a gold tooth. She was wearing her paint-flecked dungarees.
Billie rolled her eyes. ‘Mum,’ she said, half in greeting, half in reproof. Nell’s ingenuous pride in her was a bit embarrassing. ‘You’d better not say anything like that in front of him. I mean it.’
‘Why not? He’s the wotsit – scriptwriter – isn’t he?’
‘Yes, and that’s why you shouldn’t.’
Nell looked in appeal to Tash, who said with a smirk, ‘It wouldn’t look cool.’
Tash, four years older than Billie, carried herself with a worldly self-confidence her sister admired and envied. She was a lecturer at Hornsey College of Art and seemed to know more about everything – fashion, foreign politics, modern novels, cinema, cooking – than Billie knew about anything. She smoked roll-ups and wore a lot of black. Tonight’s outfit was a paisley scoop-necked T-shirt and skirt with shiny black patent-leather boots. Only the defiant set to her mouth might have given an admirer pause. Billie wondered for a moment what Nat would make of her; Tash could be quite uppity.
‘I like what you’re wearing,’ Billie said to her.
Tash barely glanced up. ‘Yeah, just the thing for peeling carrots. So what time’s your friend coming?’
‘I told him half seven.’
Her mother let out a little shriek. ‘I’d better get changed! Can’t have him seeing me like this.’ She tore off her apron and made for the door. ‘Darling, keep an eye on that soup while I’m gone.’
Billie looked about the kitchen, where they would eat, and realised that here too Nell had been on a thorough spring clean. New ivory-coloured candles had been set in holders, the ‘good’ crockery and napkins were out, the Chianti looked a little pricier than the usual stuff. Billie gave the soup a stir and turned to her sister.
‘I’ve not seen this house look so spick and span in years.’
Tash lifted her chin in agreement. ‘He that’s coming must be provided for,’ she said in a prim Scottish accent, and they laughed: it was a line Billie had once spoken onstage. That Tash had remembered it was typical; she could quote reams of poetry off by heart. They talked about their week; Tash had been hard at it in the library – term had finished and she was trying to write a book.
‘How are things with Jeff?’
Billie paused. ‘Not so good. He’s very down, you know, about his work. The gallery can’t sell it.’
‘Won’t someone else take him on?’
She shook her head. ‘Even if they did, his recent stuff’s gone. I found him breaking it up with a hammer.’
Tash pulled a face. ‘That doesn’t sound healthy.’
‘I think he’s going slightly mad,’ said Billie, staring off. ‘He should probably do something else, but I wouldn’t dare say that to him.’
Tash, listening, had gone to the stove and was putting the chicken she had sautéed into a casserole with the stock. She looked around for a moment.
‘Did you get the paprika?’
Billie slapped her forehead. ‘Oh drat! I knew I’d forgotten something.’
Tash said it didn’t really matter, she could use curry powder instead, but Billie wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’ll be just a sec.’
She hurried off to a corner grocery where the man sold her a dinky jar of paprika. She was crossing Fortess Road again when she noticed a gleaming motor swing by and park just up from the house. It was Nat’s Rolls, and Nat was climbing out of it, looking around with the bemused air of an explorer who had somehow fetched up on the wrong continent. His frown cleared on spotting Billie along the pavement. His clothes, a lilac shirt beneath an off-white suit, were unmistakable, and as incongruous as the car.
‘How nice to see your friendly face. I have to say this neighbourhood is quite new to me,’ he said, swooping down and planting a kiss on her cheek. He reeked of L’Heure Bleue.
‘This is us,’ said Billie, nodding at the house. As he sauntered up the path with her she remarked upon his loafers: sleek, mottled and expensive-looking.
‘Alligator skin,’ he supplied.
‘You don’t see a lot of shoes like that in Kentish Town.’ Or a lot of people like you, she thought. He was carrying a couple of bottles of red wine. Billie was anxious about her guest, who she supposed never really mingled outside showbiz types; he might be easily bored by plain north Londoners. She hoped that his Rolls would be safe on the road outside. When her mother came downstairs to greet him wearing a floaty orange kaftan and vampish make-up Billie looked in alarm to Tash; but Nat stepped forward and ducked his chin to her hand in a flamboyant gesture of chivalry. Nell gave a little giggle in response. When he performed the same number on Tash she merely offered an arch smile, and turned back to the stove.
Nell made a show of being impressed by the wine Nat had brought. ‘Haut-Brion,’ she read from the label.
Nat, on the verge of correcting her pronunciation from ‘Bryan’ to ‘Bree-on’, checked himself, and only said, ‘I think ’59 is considered a good year.’ He was rather tickled to find himself the Cantrip family’s guest of honour, and pleased that Billie’s boyfriend – Jed? – was out of the picture. Whatever the sister was cooking back there carried a promising aroma.
They started with gin and tonics, mixed by Billie with a heavy accent on the juniper. She couldn’t quite get over the spectacle of Nat Fane standing amid the clutter of her mother’s living room. He was steering an interested gaze around Nell’s paintings, hung in haphazard fashion and seeming, from Billie’s uncertain perspective, possibly a little suburban. But Nat thought otherwise.
‘These really are very accomplished. The brushwork … Billie tells me you were at the Slade.’
Nell smiled. ‘Oh yes, ages ago. I met the girls’ father there.’
‘It wasn’t that long ago, Mum,’ said Tash, with quick loyalty. She turned to Nat. ‘She was also a model in her spare time.’
Nat tweaked his respectful expression up a notch. She wasn’t bad-looking, it was true, for an older woman. And they did say that if you wanted to know how your girlfriend would look in the future, check the mother. He sensed an opening for a compliment. ‘Yes, I can see that. You have the model’s poise. And you’ve handed on to your daughters those tremendous cheekbones.’
Nell, waggling her hand in mock dismissal, looked as if she might pass out from delight. Tash, in contrast, let out a snort of scornful mirth. Billie, still nervous, decided to put on some music. She chose something she thought would calm her mother, a selection of arias, and indeed she was soon swaying along to Handel, her eyes closed in blissful absorption.
‘I heard this at Covent Garden recently,’ said Nat, after a moment. ‘Funny thing about opera; I can only really enjoy it when it’s sung in a language I don’t understand.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Tash.
‘Well, I have very little Italian, but the words always sound romantic. Translate them into English, though, and they’re usually banal. Take this, for instance’ – he paused at another flourish – ‘I had listened for years to “Ombra mai fu” supposing it to be some magical valentine, a love ode. Imagine my disappointment on discovering that the song is in fact addressed to a bush.’
Nell nodded. ‘Mm, that is disappointing.’
‘Maybe with opera the meaning is in the melody,’ said Billie.
‘Exactly,’ Nat replied. ‘Opera is ridiculous enough already without having it explained in English. Whereas the composers of popular song at least understand the essential wit of our native tongue. You can hear it all the wa
y from the music hall to Top of the Pops.’
‘But surely in opera you have to understand the drama going on,’ said Nell. ‘Otherwise it’s four hours of people screaming at each other – and you can get that at home.’
Nat laughed and shook his head. ‘It’s precisely because I don’t understand what’s going on that allows me to enjoy it. I don’t care two hoots if the cast is singing in German, Dutch or Cherokee, just so long as the noise they make pleases me.’
Tash, who had nipped off to the kitchen, now returned. ‘Dinner’s ready.’
‘Ah, two words that gladden the ear in any language,’ said Nat.
Whatever nerves Billie had been fielding about their guest evaporated over the dinner table. Nat had set his charm dial to full, mixing conviviality with just the right degree of flirtatiousness. Of course he still did more talking than listening, Billie noticed, but he had manners, too. He praised Tash’s chicken fricassee (‘Do I taste paprika in there?’) and declined to resume smoking until the others had finished. In the candlelight their faces had gone rosy with the wine. Her mother, mesmerised by Nat’s fluent chatter, seemed to look younger of a sudden, and even Tash, wary of extravagant personalities, had deigned to join in the laughter.
‘What’s the thing you’re most proud of?’ asked Nell, chin cupped in her hands as she gazed across at Nat. He paused for a moment.
‘I suppose I ought to say the Academy Award, or perhaps getting my first play on in the West End. But if I’m being honest, my proudest moment has nothing at all to do with my work.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some years ago a dear friend of mine was villainously framed by the police and put on trial, allegedly for soliciting two young men. The charge was gross indecency. I stood bail for him – noblest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe the only noble thing I’ve ever done.’
Billie looked agog. ‘You mean Vere?’
Nat nodded. ‘But I’m afraid they still sent him to prison.’
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