(smiling, holding her)
I can’t think why. I’ve got everything I want.
CHAS breaks from their embrace, distracted by something outside the window. Camera changes to his POV, overlooking the street. A huge removals van has just pulled up at her front door.
CHAS
(pointing down)
Not trying to move me out already, are you?
JANE
(giggling)
Silly. It’s just some of Hugh’s old things – furniture and so on. Been in storage since he died. I thought I’d choose a few pieces and put the rest up for auction.
JANE leaves the bedroom. CHAS continues dressing.
EXT. HOUSE – DAY.
CHAS leaves JANE’s house, dodging out of the way of overalled men carrying in boxes.
INT. CLUB ROOM – AFTERNOON.
CHAS sits in the bar of a gentlemen’s club, reading a newspaper. A waiter has just brought him a drink.
CUT TO: A man entering the bar sees CHAS. It is GWEN’s fiancé DEAN DRAYTON.
DRAYTON
It’s Pallingham, isn’t it?
CHAS
Yes. Drayton.
He rises to shake hands.
DRAYTON
I didn’t know you were a member here.
CHAS
Recently enrolled. My wife encouraged me.
DRAYTON
Ah yes. Gwen was talking about Jane only the other day.
CHAS invites him to sit down.
CHAS
In what regard?
DRAYTON
Well, you know Gwen has been editing George’s book about Vereker. Last week she came across a note in George’s hand, a reminder to himself to chase a box of papers Vereker had promised to give him. But it now seems those papers never showed up – they weren’t in George’s study, nor were they among the papers Jane handed over when he became literary executor. So Gwen’S rather keen to ask her if everything from the estate has been released. She thinks there’s a load of papers out there relating to a ‘secret project’ of Vereker’s.
CHAS
Secret project?
DRAYTON
Gwen wouldn’t explain it to me. All she said was these papers would provide some clue or other to his work.
CUT TO: CHAS is staring at him as if he has seen – or heard – a ghost. He seems unable to speak.
DRAYTON
Sorry, have I said something wrong?
CHAS
No. No. You say that Gwen told you this last week?
DRAYTON
Yes, she’s been madly busy, else she would have written to Jane. Of course there may be no telling where the papers have gone.
CHAS, suddenly pale, rises from his chair.
CHAS
I’m so sorry, would you excuse me? There’s an urgent bit of business I’ve just remembered I must attend to.
CHAS leaves DRAYTON, puzzled, in the bar.
EXT. STREET – DAY.
CHAS emerges from the club on Pall Mall and looks wildly around for a taxi. Seeing none, he begins to run.
CUT TO: CHAS sprinting through St James’s Square, then on to Piccadilly. He sees a bus bound for Chelsea and jumps on the back.
CUT TO: CHAS on the bus, his face a picture of anxiety. He looks about, as if baffled at his fellow passengers’ complete unconcern.
CUT TO: CHAS dashing through the gracious terraces of Chelsea, arriving at JANE’s house panting, out of breath.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
CHAS bursts in to find JANE examining a vintage cabinet, plainly from the estate of VEREKER. She looks up in alarm at his pale, sweating face.
JANE
Darling, what’s the matter?
CUT TO: CHAS has noticed something outside in the garden. A bonfire.
EXT. GARDEN – DAY.
He dashes out to find one of JANE’s gardeners tending a brazier piled high with papers, which he prods in a bored, unnoticing way. CHAS stops, aghast.
CHAS
What are you doing?
GARDENER
Mrs Pallingham wanted this stuff burnt, papers and so on –
CHAS
Oh no. No. No. No. For God’s sake …
CHAS tries to grab a handful of burning paper, but it’s already charred to a crisp.
CUT TO: JANE comes up behind him, looking worried. She signals for the gardener to withdraw. CHAS stands there immobile, like a man watching his hopes go up in smoke.
JANE
Darling, what’s going on?
CHAS
The papers you found. What were they?
JANE
Oh, I didn’t look at them. They were so old. But the little cabinet they were stored in is exquisite – it’s a cherrywood thing, with a roundel embossed on its frame. I thought we might put it – Chas?
CUT TO: CHAS is looking dead ahead, his eyes streaming. The smoke from the bonfire drifts right across him. JANE looks on in distress.
JANE
Chas. What is it? Please tell me.
CHAS
It’s nothing. It isn’t … anything.
JANE
But you’re crying …
CHAS
It’s from the smoke. I’ll be fine. Just – just give me a minute, will you?
JANE continues to stare at him anxiously, then turns back towards the house.
CUT TO: The camera slowly pulls away and up, looking down on CHAS in front of the fire, a man alone. Charred fragments whirl up through the air, disappearing.
FADE OUT.
CREDITS.
20
Vere Summerhill died at a hospice in Chelsea one morning in October. Nat had been at his bedside the night before, but arrived too late for the last moments. He had visited most days towards the end, reading to him, sharing The Times crossword, reminiscing. (He had kept notes.) The Chronicle, at Freya’s instigation, had asked Nat to write a personal tribute. Its final paragraph ran:
Vere Summerhill died as he had lived, with fortitude, nonchalance and wry good humour. He would joke that he had ‘died’ many times before, up on the screen; the cinema-going public had seen their idol take his leave of the world so often – as a fighter pilot, cavalier, cowboy, infantry officer – that we came to think of him as indestructible. His final role, as the writer Hugh Vereker in the forthcoming Eureka, may come to be judged one of his greatest. Summerhill was already dying while filming continued, and it is the mark of the man that his illness remained a secret from the rest of the cast. He preferred to keep his colleagues cheerful, and to do his suffering in private. As an actor he will be remembered for his poise – that unflappable heroic calm under pressure – and for his voice, whose fluid musical lilt he seemed to control like a virtuoso clarinettist. The right notes were always at his command. It is hard, grievously hard, to think of that voice stilled forever.
Nat drove down to a quiet village in Hampshire to meet Celia Summerhill, Vere’s sister. She was three years younger, a spinster, bird-like and bright-eyed. At certain moments, in a sideways look or an inflection of her voice, he caught the disconcerting ghost of his old friend. The funeral was private, attended by a few friends from her choir. Vere was buried in a corner of the churchyard, next to a plot Celia had reserved for herself. She would be the last of the Summerhills. Back at her house she had brought out an old scrapbook of her brother’s early career, newspaper cuttings of the matinee idol, and later the flying ace. Nat couldn’t help noticing that the record stopped just before Vere’s trial and imprisonment for homosexual offences. One might have assumed that he had died fifteen years ago.
Some weeks later he attended a memorial service at St Paul’s, the actors’ church, in Covent Garden. There were readings from MacNeice’s Autumn Journal, Tennyson, and A Shropshire Lad. During the adagio of Finzi’s Concerto for Clarinet and Strings, Nat felt his eyes grow hot with tears; he remembered Vere playing it on his old gramophone at Ennismore Gardens. The church was full, though he spotted few of his famous contemporaries from the Lon
don days; the notoriety of his prison sentence had made him as much of a pariah as Wilde had been in his day. One who had stayed loyal was Edie Greenlaw, a grande dame of the stage who had known Vere since the 1920s. At the conclusion of the service she sang ‘When I Grow Too Old to Dream’ in a quavering alto.
At the reception afterwards Nat searched her out.
‘My dear,’ he said, placing a reverent kiss on her sunken powdered cheek, ‘that voice of yours would be the envy of a nightingale.’
Edie drawled, ‘Oh, you’re very kind, darling, though that’s always been Evelyn’s song, you know.’
‘Not any more. Vere would have been thrilled.’
He saw her eyes moisten behind the squashed spiders of her caked lashes. ‘Dear, dear man. The times we had! Did you ever see us in Antony and Cleopatra?’
‘I think I was in short trousers at the time,’ said Nat, with an apologetic wince.
‘Of course. I forget what a child you are. Well, we were always larking around, trying to outdo each other. It became a little contest between us as to who could get the audience going. If it looked like I was winning Vere would contrive to whisper something and make me fluff my line: one night during my death scene I heard him mutter, “I fear that asp has just contracted food poisoning.” The cast were in fits.’
‘I must apply to you for more in that vein for his biography. I’m thinking of calling it The Last English Martyr.’
‘Quite right too,’ said Edie.
‘At the end he asked me if there was anything I wanted – he gave me this,’ said Nat, holding up Vere’s signet ring on his pinkie. It still felt unfamiliar on his hand.
‘He was so terribly handsome, wasn’t he? If he hadn’t – well, I seem to have had a rapport with queer men my whole life. At Jimmy Erskine’s I was usually the only woman present. He said he liked me for being the one person ruder than he was.’
‘I wonder what Jimmy would make of things today, now Parliament has passed the sex bill.’
Edie narrowed her eyes. ‘I imagine he’d be disappointed. Half the fun for Jimmy was the risk. He loved to think he was getting away with it.’
Nat nodded. ‘Yes, unlike Vere, who led a life of almost blameless privacy and then got fitted up by the police. I’m not sure he was ever the same after Pentonville.’
‘It might have been worse for him. I’ll always remember that photograph of you shielding the poor man on the steps of the Old Bailey during the trial. You were like Robbie Ross, raising his hat as Oscar walked the gauntlet at the Bankruptcy Court; “men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that”.’
He held Edie’s gaze for a moment. ‘That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I wonder, once I’ve got a draft completed, would you write a little foreword on Vere? After all, you knew him longer than anyone.’
Edie’s mouth puckered with doubt. ‘Oh, darling, I don’t know …’
He took the old woman’s hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Please. It would mean so much. Think of it as a final gift to Vere.’
After a pause she said, ‘We-e-ell, I could possibly …’ My God, Nat thought, if there were an Olympics for wheedling I’d have the podium to myself.
A feline gleam pricked her eye. ‘There’d be a fee, I dare say?’
Nat smiled: expert wheedler he may be, but Edie was no fool. ‘I’ll have the agent send you a contract.’
Freya was at home one Saturday morning when a knock came at the door. She opened it to find a woman whose face she recognised but couldn’t immediately place.
‘Hello,’ said her caller, hopefully.
A second passed, and the clouds parted. ‘It’s Billie, isn’t it?’
Billie smiled in relief. ‘You remember. The boat trip –’
‘I wasn’t sure for a moment. You’ve done something to your hair.’
She nodded: she had gone blonde for a play they were just rehearsing. Freya (thinking the colour didn’t quite suit her) invited her to come in. Billie followed her down the hallway, admiring the paintings and drawings on the wall. She looked around the bookshelves, inspecting this and that, while Freya went off to the kitchen to make them tea.
‘Nat gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind me dropping by,’ Billie said as her host returned to the room. ‘I’ve actually been wandering around the neighbourhood this morning. I’m looking for a place to rent.’
‘Ah. I think you were living in Kentish Town when we last met.’
‘Yes, still am, with my mum,’ Billie said, pleased, for some reason, that Freya had remembered. ‘Though before that I rented a place not far from here, in King’s Cross. So I know Islington a bit.’
‘It’s not a bad place to live. Lots of actors and writers have moved here. It’s quite cheap, and near enough to the West End.’ She paused before saying, ‘So you’re back to the stage …’
‘Yeah. I mean, Eureka was quite an experience, but –’
‘I hope we’ll get to see it one day.’
Billie returned a dubious expression. ‘That’ll depend on the lawyers, and the money. I saw you on the telly, by the way, when they announced that Pulver was dead. How did you manage to find him?’
‘A fluke. I got a phone call tipping me off.’ It didn’t sound very convincing to her own ears, but the police had believed it, and she wasn’t about to spill the beans now. She sensed that Billie was troubled by something. ‘What’s on your mind?’ she asked.
‘Well, I know he had lots of enemies – Pulver, I mean – but when I read about what had happened I wondered if it was someone involved in the film. In revenge for …’
Freya shrugged. ‘It’s possible, of course. But we’ll probably never know.’ She leaned over for her cigarettes and offered Billie one. They smoked for a while and talked about the play she was starring in. It was a black comedy by a ‘challenging’ new playwright, a pretender to Nat’s throne.
‘I haven’t told him about my being cast yet. D’you think he’ll be upset?’
Freya laughed. ‘Nat’ll get over it. I’m sure it’s a good play, and you’ve got a living to earn.’
They were finishing the tea when Billie reached into her handbag and took out a brown-paper package. She looked worried as she handed it to Freya.
‘I’ve been meaning to give this to you.’ Mystified, Freya opened it and pulled out a scarf, silk, patterned, by Pucci. ‘You remember you lent me your scarf that day on the boat?’
‘Yes … but this isn’t mine,’ said Freya, puzzled.
‘I know, I’m sorry. I was going to return it, but’ – she hesitated, recalling the awkward moment – ‘something happened. When Sonja was still in London I visited her –’
‘She saw you?’ said Freya, surprised, and secretly hurt.
‘Yes, we talked; not for long. Before I left she saw that I was wearing your scarf, I don’t know how she knew it was yours, but she did. Anyway, she leaned over and held it for a moment, and then said, “May I have it?” I didn’t know what to say, so …’
‘You gave it to her.’
Billie nodded. ‘She was sitting there and I – I didn’t have the heart to say no.’ She had spent the last few weeks scouring the shops for a replacement, but she could never find an exact match. ‘And I remembered when you lent it to me you said to look after it, cos it was a present.’
Freya, distracted, shook her head. She considered the new scarf in silence. Billie, accusing herself, wondered if Freya was annoyed. She had done her a good turn that day, looking after her when she’d been sick on the boat and then lending the scarf to cover up the puke stain. She ought to have acknowledged her kindness by returning the thing at the earliest opportunity.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she began, unable to bear the silence. But Freya, to her amazement, had turned a smile on her.
‘It’s fine, honestly. I’m glad Sonja has it. Though I don’t understand why she wanted it.’
Billie, relieved at last, said, ‘Well, it was beautiful.’
They had another cigarette and talked on for a while. Billie wanted to know more about Freya’s father, whether he was still in London – she’d admired his work long before she’d ever met Freya. So did her mum, Nell; she was a painter too, though nothing like as distinguished as Stephen Wyley, of course. As a matter of fact she had a new exhibition on in a couple of weeks. Would she care to bring her dad to the private view?
Just as Billie was leaving, Freya asked her, out of nowhere, if she happened to have Sonja’s address in Munich. She thought she might write to her. Or maybe just book a flight and go there.
Nat was seated at a large lunch party he had never meant to attend among people he neither knew nor cared for. The sixty-odd guests were dining on duck à l’orange; he favoured the sustenance of gin and tonics. It was an occasion sponsored by a nabob of the arts who wished to debate a vital question about something Nat had already forgotten. A steady hum of conversation dominated the room. Across from him sat a Cabinet minister, flanked by a popular magazine writer and a society diarist.
He was there only because it was preferable to sitting at his desk staring at a blank page in the typewriter. He had fallen behind with the Vere biography. Thinking so much about his late friend had plunged him into melancholy. Death, or its spectre, hovered in his vision like Macbeth’s dagger. He had been doing the maths. If he was to die, like Vere, at sixty-three, that would afford him only another twenty-three years; allow three and a half years for a play to be written, rehearsed and staged, he could perhaps count on completing six (and a bit) until his allotted span was up. Knowing his own habits of dilatoriness and procrastination an estimate of five years per play was more realistic, which would mean four (and a bit) by the time he was sixty-three. Of course he might make it to McCartney’s fabled sixty-four, or beyond, there was no telling, but what if some debilitating illness slowed him down, or dammed up his inspiration, or unfitted him for writing altogether?
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