by Tim Heald
Bognor thought he’d got his wires crossed about butchery and Byron Rogers, and a real Englishman would never have described death as “passing away,” but in other respects, he was pretty near right. Bognor awarded him a mental seven out of ten and allowed him to be motioned inside.
The house was eerily impersonal yet not like a hotel. Bognor tried to put his finger on it and came up with frayed edges once more. There were none.
Mrs. Ponti, aka Gina, was waiting in the drawing room. Lamb dressed, he thought, thinking of her more mature rival in Kingston, as lamb. She was much younger than her husband; looked it, dressed like it, and arguably behaved like it. She reminded Bognor of the Italian girl who married the French president; at one and the same time mildly overawed and slightly bored. A difficult combination to pull off, particularly on purpose.
“Sir Simon,” she said, holding out a hand, attached to a jangling arm. Bognor kissed it, which he suspected was the correct thing to do but not what one did in Northamptonshire. Such behavior would have been thought effeminate, and he was glad there was no one except Signor Ponti to see.
“Jolly nice of you to ask me down,” he said. She didn’t say anything but merely simpered.
“Jolly nice part of the world,” he said, “though I’m afraid I don’t know it awfully well. Friends of mine used to shoot at Broughton House and Rockingham but not me, alas.”
The first half of this was a lie; the second all too true. It was what chaps said and did in this part of the world, though not the Pontis and their friend Silverburger. Bognor felt snobbish even as he said it, and also a bit of a parvenu. He knew he could not have got away with it with people who really knew what was what. He wondered if the Pontis fitted in to Venetian society and whether they would seem at home in some sort of sepulchral palazzo riddled with damp and decay. He thought probably not. Too much money. Too much effort. Bernardo, in particular, tried too hard.
The prints were either David Gentleman or school of. The china came from a smart antique shop. Everything gave the impression of being put together rapidly and at some expense. Lunch, which was served presently, was dished up by a manservant in striped trousers and a crisp jacket who knew how to do clever things with dessert spoons and held one hand behind his back while serving. The food, some sort of vegetable soup and some sort of chicken with rice, was too good but above all too recognizable. Likewise the wine, which was a presentable Orvieto and a passable Barolo. Italian and much too good for the average deputy lieutenant who would have served plonk or pale ale and food that could have been fish or fowl and might have been either, disguised as it would have been in a tepid and tasteless sauce.
“Did you know Irving Silverburger well?” inquired Bognor when rent-a-butler had gone.
“Alas, poor Irving,” exclaimed his host, pouring more wine into a cut-glass goblet and looking lachrymose. “But what a stylish way to leave. Like something from one of his own movies.”
Bognor thought of saying something along the lines of The Coffee Grinders being one of the worst films he had ever seen and couldn’t remember a single memorable death other than the bloke who was scalded to death by a Gaggia machine, but he decided not to. Instead, he said, “Shot in the back by someone during Carnival,” which everyone knew and was banal to the point of being quite stupid.
“Someone armed with a crossbow,” said Gina, “which means he probably wasn’t English. Didn’t the English always use the longbow? Hearts of oak.”
“It could have been a woman,” said Bernardo. “There is no strength involved in the crossbow. At Crécy, the bowmen of England were big fellows, like bouncers. They had biceps because you needed them to pull the string properly. But anyone can use a crossbow. It requires skill but not strength.”
“Do you think the assassin was a woman?”
Bernardo slurped from the side of the spoon nearest him—another gastronomic solecism that would not have gone unnoticed in proper, snobbish society. It wouldn’t have passed muster at the Bullingdon. Boris Johnson and David Cameron wouldn’t have approved.
“I don’t think about the gender of the person who killed him, but nevertheless the killing had something beautiful. Did not your Mr. Yeats write about a fearful symmetry?”
“He wasn’t one of ours, actually,” said Bognor. “He was Irish. And anyway, it was William Blake. Writing about tigers. ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright.’ Only, for some reason I can’t remember, he spelled it with a Y not an I. Still, he was one of ours.” He drank some soup without making any noise. They were looking at him suspiciously. Policemen weren’t supposed to know things such as that. Nor to drink their soup noiselessly. Bognor was not, he kept telling himself, that sort of policeman. But they didn’t know that. Not yet anyway.
And anyway they were foreign. Even more reason for not knowing.
“I’m sorry,” said Bognor, not in the least sorry but saying that he was because it was what a certain sort of Englishman said at the beginning of a sentence when he was attempting to wrest the conversation back to its beginnings. “You were telling me how well you knew Irving.”
“We met in Davos,” said Bernardo, “some years ago.BG.” He laughed. “I, too, am sorry. BG is a family code for Before Gina. We have been together for three years now, and Davos was before that. So, yes, I had known Irving a long time. Gina, less long.”
“So really he was your friend rather than Mrs. Ponti’s.”
Gina, who had no more idea of the English way with soup than her husband, demurred.
“Irving was our friend,” she said. “To begin, he was Bernardo’s friend, but since the last year or so, he was a friend of the both of us.”
She smiled and must have depressed a hidden bell push in the best country tradition because the hired man shimmered in and cleared away, reappearing as noiselessly with the chicken and rice.
“I see,” Bognor said after the three of them had been served and were alone once more. He didn’t, of course, and he was at a loss about Davos. There was some sort of pseudo-geo-economic conference there every year, but neither Bernardo nor certainly Silverburger had that sort of financial clout. He supposed they might have been there as some sort of hangers-on, but it seemed more likely that they had simply been skiing or après-skiing or whatever one did in the snowy mountains in Switzerland in winter. Bognor had never understood the point, much preferring heat.
“Such a shame that at the end of the day, of his day, that The Coffee Grinders was his only film,” said Bognor. “It will become a sort of last will and testament, a celluloid memorial.” He sighed. “Alas, poor Irving.”
“In a way, yes,” said Bernardo, shoveling chicken and rice into his mouth with the fork turned up like a spoon. “But out of defeat we hope to grab a little victory. Isn’t that so, my dear?”
He smiled adoringly and proprietorially at his wife who smiled back though not in as wholehearted a way as her husband and in a way that made Bognor’s antennae sing.
“That you should have been a star was what Irving would have wished. And our money will make his wish come true. Isn’t that a fact?”
To which, she simpered some more, and Bognor felt sure at once that she had married Mr. Ponti for his money and for his power and influence. Without him, she would never have been a film star.
Bernardo raised his glass.
“I drink to the memory of a great man,” he said, “to a great man of the movies. And I drink also to the success of his final memorial. Lady and Gentleman, I give you The Lemon Peelers.”
There was no doubt about the Pontis’ intentions. He was going to use his money to produce the film that Irving G. Silverburger wanted to make, and his wife, Gina, was to play the leading role. That was their wish, and they canonized it by making it also the last testament of Irving G. Silverburger. It had been the final wish of their friend, and in carrying out their own wish, they were also executing his. They only had the Pontis’ word for this, but who was going to argue with them? “How interesting,” said Bogno
r, who was certainly not about to pick a fight. He cut a piece of chicken, which was good, and, he guessed, organic-ish and local. It probably came from a nearby barn. Butchered perhaps by Byron Rogers. He allowed himself the ghost of a smile and settled back for their version of the plot so far.
“We’d discussed it with Irving before …” began Bernardo. “He was killed,” said Gina. She suffered from no visible qualms when it came to discussing the murder of their friend. Unlike her husband, who obviously believed that there were proprieties to be observed. “There’s no point beating about the bushes. He was murdered.”
Bognor ignored this, politely, enjoying the lunch and smiling serenely.
“So,” he said, “what’s the plot? Roughly.”
“Well,” Bernardo thought hard. “We thought we would open in the local village shop.”
“There is no shop,” said Gina. “We would have to make believe.”
“Quite.” Bognor smiled encouragingly. “So you have a village shop, fabricated, but in a rural English village not a million miles from the Rose Queen of the Shires.”
“Exactly,” said Bernardo. “You have hit the screw on the top.”
“Nail on the head,” Bognor said pleasantly.
Both Pontis seemed surprised by this rejoinder.
“Gina enters the shop, and she asks the person who is serving from behind the counter if she may please have a lemon. And this person is saying that they do not carry exotic fruit.” Gina herself took up the story, “Because the counterjumper, she says there is no call for exotic fruit such as the lemon. And then there is a cut to me behind a bar somewhere, and I am peeling a lemon to put in the dry martini, which is shaken but not stirred.”
“À la mode de Bond,” explained Bernardo.
“Actually,” said Bognor, “Bond preferred an olive and later switched to vodka. And when he was asked if he preferred his drink shaken or stirred, he asked, ‘Do I look like I give a damn?’ That was in Casino Royale. Ian Fleming wasn’t nearly as good a writer as his brother Peter. Better known though. And more of a drinker. They reduced the strength of Gordon’s so you’re better off with Tanqueray. Personally, I prefer Plymouth.”
And he took another mouthful of the chicken, followed by a swig of Barolo. He would have been just as happy with a Barbera, but he had a quaffer’s taste and a slight aversion to the Nebbiolo grape. However, he judged, correctly, that his erudition on the subject of lemon in a dry martini was enough showing off for one meal.
The Pontis were impressed but not overly so. They obviously thought he was bluffing but did not know enough to call it.
“We would like it to be a suitable memorial to a dear friend,” said Bernardo. “He would have wished it.”
“A pity it couldn’t have been made while he was alive,” said Bognor.
“I agree,” said Bernardo. “His death was very shocking. However, he talked of his plans in great detail, and we know what he would have wished.”
“Good,” said Bognor. “What about the lunch at Harry’s Dolci?”
“The lunch at Harry’s Dolci?” they asked together.
“Yes,” said Bognor. Forget hell being other people, his idea of the inferno was asking a question that was batted back as an uncomprehending repetition until the end of time.
“The lunch at Harry’s Dolci,” he repeated inanely, fully expecting the words to come boomeranging back like some maddening echo. He was surprised, therefore, and mildly relieved to hear Bernardo reply in immaculate foreigner’s English.
“It was very agreeable.”
“And Irving paid?”
The pause was one of embarrassment. Both Pontis stared at the ground.
Eventually, Bernardo said, “Nobody paid.”
Bognor who had been brought up in an old-fashioned world in which everyone paid more or less immediately and credit was relatively unknown (unless one had an account at somewhere such as Harrods in which case payment was vulgar) looked surprised. “But someone must have paid.”
There was another silence, punctuated only by chewing and slurping.
Eventually, Bernardo said, “Nobody paid. Irving had one of those pink plastic cards, and he waved it at everyone and smiled. He was very charming. He seldom paid. Other people usually paid. Or someone. He usually managed, as you would say in your country, ‘to get away with it.’”
“I see,” said Bognor, seeing nothing and understanding less. He supposed charm would get you everywhere, especially if you were Italian. Well, American Italian of Jewish inclination. Actually, Silverburger was an all-American mongrel. That was the point, if indeed he had one. “Bit of a sponger.” It was what men of his generation thought about those who were always on the take. Silverburger was strong on the take, but he did not seem to have a lot of give.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Gina, managing to seem almost thoughtful to one who believed she had that capacity. Bognor was not of their number. He didn’t believe Gina was a thinker, and he didn’t believe this was just a matter of inclination. He did not believe that she had that capacity even if she had wished to think. Which, on the whole, she didn’t. Vapidity suited her, and even though she had no ability to be anything else, she was happy enough to have nothing but good looks between the ears.
“Then what exactly would you say?” asked Bognor, pretending that she might have something to say that would be of interest.
Bernardo, who had a brain, came to the rescue.
“I think what Gina means,” he began in the traditional disclaimer of the defensive partner, “is that Irving had real charm. With some people, it’s just skin deep, but Irving wasn’t like that. His charm ran deep. He was marked indelibly, through and through, like a stick of rock.”
“Blackpool,” Bognor said fatuously. It was a matter of word association. Force of habit acquired by living with a crossword fiend. It was vicarious response, but it elicited a joint rejoinder of “Che?” which reminded him that he was dealing with people whose first language was not English.
“The most famous candy of that kind comes from Blackpool. When you say that Irving Silverburger’s charm was like something printed on a stick of rock, I’m afraid the average Englishman thinks of Blackpool. Though there’s little charming about Blackpool. If you see what I mean.”
Neither Ponti gave the slightest sign of seeing what he meant, and Bognor wasn’t entirely sure what he meant himself. He knew, however, that he should stop digging and change the subject.
“The projected movie,” he said, finishing his food and setting the knife and fork in a neat parallel just as he had been taught in school, “is a sort of homage to Irving Silverburger. But how much of Silverburger will it contain? Did he leave much? Will it be slavish? Or free? What kind of adaptation do you plan? If you intend an adaptation. After all, they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Will it be a sort of ersatz Silverburger? Hamlet without the ghost? A Silverburger movie with no Silverburger?”
He looked at the Pontis in a polite conversational way as if he were simply the perfect guest and not an importunate pretend-policeman. After all, he was only returning their chat to the starting point.
“What happens,” he asked, “after the shop?”
“Sex,” said Gina. “We have to have sex. It is essential.”
“All Irving’s films,” said her husband, a little more decorously, “have men and women. The men and women have … relations. It is natural.”
“Essential,” said Gina. “It is essential.”
“So it’s a sort of soft-porn Aga-saga in the style of Silverburger?”
“Not soft porn,” the husband said with the vehemence of one who has been rightly accused. “Very tasteful. The taste is essential. Irving was always in the best possible taste.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Ponti. “Taste is of the essence.”
Whether or not Irving G. Silverburger was into taste or had the first idea what it meant was debatable. Indeed, Bognor would like to have seen the mat
ter debated, but he felt that this was not the place. A pity.
“Of course,” said Bognor. “Lots of violins. Good photography. Like an advertisement for bread. Or the tourist board.”
He hadn’t meant to sound patronizing and went slightly pink when he realized the effect he had had.
Nothing, however, was said.
“So,” he said, puncturing the silence, which was a little awkward, “when do you go into production?”
Technical term. The plates were cleared. Pudding was summer. It was pink; there was cream. That, like the chicken, was probably local, unlike the fruit, which had been frozen, and the bread, which was factory-sliced and came, he suspected, from a cellophane packet. Perfectly all right, though. “Production?” asked la signora, seeming not to have heard the word before.
“Production,” said her husband, almost saving the situation. “We don’t have a date yet.”
No money, thought Bognor, but he said nothing. He wondered if the film would ever be made or would remain hanging in the air, a suitable subject for conversation and even the occasional lunch. He had spent much of his life avoiding line-shooters who would waste his time and eat his food while discussing a project that everyone knew would never see the light of day. He suspected this was one such.
“No date?” he repeated, spearing a blackberry. “Ah.”
“We need to plan properly,” explained Ponti. “It’s not something you want to ad-lib. I prefer not to fly by the seat of my pants.”
“Quite,” said Bognor. “On the other hand, you need to preserve spontaneity.”
