‘Good idea,’ Felix agreed, ‘and I might see if I can buy some decent flowers. Nice as the cottage is, I do rather object to those plastic petunias festooned all over the hallway. There’s a decent greengrocer in the high street that may have a few … Oh, and talking of beach huts, didn’t Hackle say that he owned one or that he had borrowed it from somebody?’
‘Yes. From his cousin Walter up in Scotland, the one who is a landowner and knows Vincent Ramsgate.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘The travel writer and broadcaster; the one that’s always on the wireless prosing on about some place nobody’s ever been to – or wants to. I mean, does one really relish the idea of eating desiccated yak on the Russian Steppes in a howling blizzard? It’s not my idea of fun! Much more interesting if he talked about the drinking dens of Dresden or the brothels of Berlin. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Oh yes,’ Felix replied, ‘far more civilised.’
They spent a pleasurable two hours dawdling in the high street, admiring St Edmund’s, pottering on the promenade and revisiting the Sailors’ Reading Room, before (in serious need of refreshment) gravitating towards East Green’s Sole Bay Inn.
As they passed the brewery, two men came towards them; one was middle-aged and stoutish, the other dark-haired and younger. As they drew level the latter seemed to look at Felix quizzically; and out of the corner of his eye Cedric saw him say something to his companion. The other nodded.
‘Huh,’ Cedric muttered, ‘anyone would think he knew you.’
‘He does,’ said Felix tightly.
Cedric was startled. ‘Really? Whatever do you mean?’
‘Didn’t you recognise them?’
‘Certainly not.’
Felix sighed. ‘They were those two police officers who were so officious the last time we were here – the ones who kept pestering me about Delia Dovedale. Frightful they were – rotten so-and-sos!’
‘Ah, of course, when you were a key witness. Yes, they were a bit nosy … still, only doing their duty I suppose. And it’s nice to think that one of them is sufficiently alert to remember your face so clearly; most reassuring in these troubled times, I consider. After all, one has to be so careful, there being such odd types about. One should be grateful for such vigilance,’ he added primly.
Felix, about to seethe at his friend’s indifference, caught Cedric’s wink just in time. ‘And I consider it is your turn to stand the drinks,’ he said.
Plain, scrubbed and restful, the little pub’s interior was much as Cedric remembered it from the war; and putting down the two halves of best local bitter, he settled happily at the small table that Felix had chosen by the window. The window let in considerably more light than it had in Cedric’s time; for in those days the thick blackout curtains, despite being drawn back in the day, had always given the place a somewhat shrouded effect. For a brief moment he felt an odd wave of nostalgia …
‘Posteriors up!’ Felix announced, lifting his glass. ‘And let’s hope we don’t see those wretched police people again!’
Cedric raised his own glass and smiled. ‘Oh, I expect the younger one is quite a film fan. Once he hears of Hackle’s project I daresay he’ll be only too ready to do a spot of essential surveillance – probably ask you to wangle him a spectator’s place on the set.’
Felix tossed his head. ‘Just let him try!’ he snorted.
Sipping their beer, they relapsed into a companionable silence.
However, the silence was not to last. From outside there was the sudden blast of a klaxon, followed by the squeal of brakes and a loud slamming of car doors. The next moment the door to the pub was flung open and three people stood on the threshold: two youths of about twenty and a girl. The youths were big, the girl small: petite, slender and with blonde cropped hair. She wore shorts, and without his glasses Cedric at first took her for a boy. However, the shrill voice and expansive gestures suggested otherwise.
‘Oh, isn’t this quaint!’ Tippy Tildred exclaimed. ‘And so authentic – a real old fishermen’s cubbyhole!’ She gazed around, her eyes taking in the wooden floors, plain walls and the two ‘old fishermen’ sitting po-faced by the window.
One of the youths laughed. ‘Oh yes? And what do you know of fishermen’s cubbyholes? Damn all, I should say.’
The girl pouted and flounced her hip. ‘I do read, you know. And a few of us have imaginations – not like some people I could mention. Now, how about some drinkies? I’m parched!’ She turned to the other boy: ‘Darling Charlie, I’ll have a double rum and Coke. Phew! I’m going to need that for this afternoon’s wake. I shan’t understand a word Bartholomew is saying – but at least he’s found me a marvellous costume. I can’t wait to put it on; I’ll look fantastico! It’s scarlet and full-skirted, with laces at the back and sequins and black pom-poms down the front.’ She gave a little pirouette.
‘Christ,’ said Charlie.
Felix silently echoed the observation. He was about to nudge Cedric’s foot to signal their departure, but at that moment, to his horror, the girl had pranced up to their table.
‘Oh, that is the snazziest panama.’ she cooed, pointing to Felix’s hat lying on the chair next to him. ‘My uncle wears that kind; they are so smart!’
Coming from anyone else, the endorsement might have pleased Felix; but as it was, he was furious. ‘What a coincidence,’ he remarked stiffly.
However, worse was to follow. Without warning, the girl stretched out her hand, picked up the hat and put it on her head, tilting it rakishly over one eye. And before Felix could protest, she had rushed to the small mirror over the bar, crying, ‘I say, look at me! Talk about Burlington Bertie!’ This was followed by gales of laughter and more pirouettes. Felix sat frozen.
Hastily, Cedric stood up and held out his hand. ‘Actually, I am afraid we must be off. If you don’t mind, Miss …?’
‘Oh, my name’s Tippy, Tippy Tildred,’ she beamed, returning the hat. ‘I’m up here to do some filming, and so are Charlie and Frank. They’re the grips, and fearfully important.’ She turned to her companions: ‘Aren’t you, darlings?’
Charlie and Frank looked a trifle uncertain.
With hat retrieved and fixed smile, Cedric steered Felix out of the pub and on to the sanctuary of the pavement. ‘I suggest,’ he said quietly,’ that we go and inspect the beach huts and see if we can spot Hackle’s. It’s blue, I think.’
Back at Cot O’Bedlam Felix announced that he had a slight headache and would lie down before setting off for the studio. ‘On the whole,’ he said, ‘I think that for this preliminary session it would be better if I were to go alone. There’s bound to be masses of introductions and instructions and it is essential that I immerse myself thoroughly in the general style of things without distraction. Once I am properly au fait with matters it would be most agreeable to have you with me to lend support and applause.’ He smiled graciously.
‘Most wise,’ said Cedric (rather pleased at the prospect of a lazy afternoon with a good book), ‘and then, when you get back, you can tell me all about it … Uhm, will you be taking your panama? It could be a little breezy up there, you may have to hold—’
‘No,’ Felix sniffed, ‘it might be wrested from me.’
As envisaged, Cedric spent a most reposeful afternoon reading, toying with the crossword, composing a postcard and then indulging in the merest soupçon of some chocolates and a snooze. When he awoke it was nearly six o’clock, and the click of the front door latch signalled his friend’s return.
‘Busy schedule?’ he enquired. ‘What was the studio like – all lights and cameras and continuity girls?
‘Oh yes, plenty of that … well, lights and cameras. I didn’t see much of the last, unless you count some crone called Mabel who sat on a packing case chain-smoking and muttering that all the sequences were up the spout.’ Felix paused, and added, ‘She may just have had a point … Anyway we didn’t stay long in the studio itself, because after Hackle had outlined the agenda and assured
us that the film was about to make cinematic history, he insisted on giving us a protracted tour of Gun Hill and the adjacent area. Some of the scenes are set there, and he felt it would help us to “absorb the spirit of the place”.’
‘Really? Given your earlier experience in that location, I should think you’ve absorbed quite enough of its spirit. Not one of life’s more reassuring events, I seem to remember!’2
‘Exactly,’ Felix replied with a shudder, ‘and the less said the better; we don’t want that business raked up again … Still, I must toughen the sinews, or whatever one does, as apparently some of the part I am playing involves a couple of shots of me loitering amidst the artillery on the wind-torn cliff.’
Cedric looked doubtful. ‘Sounds a mite chilly, I should say … But if you don’t mind my asking, what exactly is your part?’ he enquired curiously.
‘It hasn’t been totally defined yet but it’s obviously rather subtle.’
‘Oh yes? In what way subtle – what do you have to do?’
Felix hesitated, and then explained that so far it involved his leaning against the barrel of the third cannon on Gun Hill and gazing out to sea with right shoulder down and left profile up. ‘At an angle,’ he added.
‘Hmm, sounds a bit uncomfortable. Do you have to say anything?’
‘I am required to whisper: “the seagull, the seagull”.’
‘Well, that won’t tax the memory. And why the whispering – are you supposed to have laryngitis?’
Felix scowled. ‘Of course not. Apparently it’s part of the character’s mysterious aura.’
‘I see … And will you be wearing any clothes?’
‘Clothes? What are you talking about? Of course I shall be wearing bloody clothes! You don’t think I am going to be poncing around as some nudist, do you!’ Felix glared.
‘Calm down, dear boy,’ Cedric said soothingly, ‘I was merely wondering whether you would be in costume – an ornithologist’s smock, for example.’
There was silence as Felix seethed. And then glancing at the clock, he said tightly, ‘I propose taking my martini on the veranda. Doubtless you have something better to do.’
Ten minutes later, bearing his own drink and a dish of olives, Cedric joined him. ‘Do you know,’ he said genially, ‘there’s an awfully good grocer’s in the high street that actually stocks these, and even sells Camembert. It’s a sort of delicatessen; most enterprising. I don’t recall it being there the last time we came, do you?’ Other than stretching out an indifferent hand for an olive, Felix made no response.
His friend tried another tack: ‘I say, do you think that Tippy Tildred girl is entirely all there?’
‘Absolutely not! Totally barking – and nasty with it,’ Felix exploded happily. ‘And do you know what …’
The rest of the evening passed most amicably.
2 See A Southwold Mystery
CHAPTER SIX
The following day, with the vital Fred now arrived and the cast tenuously acquainted with their roles, shooting began in earnest.
When Rosy and Lady Fawcett arrived at ‘Cousin Walter’s’ rambling mansion they found themselves plunged into a confusion of lights, cameras, amplifiers, piles of packing cases, trailing wires and an abundance of discarded coffee cups. There was also much noise and toing and froing.
In the midst of it all, or rather ensconced in a corner, sat Cedric reading a book. Passive and oblivious, he could have been Eliot’s still point in a turning world. Felix was nowhere to be seen – presumably in some nether room practising being gnomic and Janus-like.
The two spectators seated themselves on a couple of canvas chairs conveniently placed near the action area; but moved hastily when told by an electrician that these were the special preserve of the ‘big shots, Him and Him’. He stuck his thumb in the direction of Bartho and Sam. The scriptwriter was looking somewhat peeved, and Rosy wondered if he had had to fight his corner over some aspect of the text.
From a door behind them Alicia appeared and sat down in the chair next to Rosy. With aggressively tousled hair, highly rouged cheeks and clad in the tumbling folds of an eighteenth-century negligee, she was clearly in seduction mode. She carried a cup of coffee, and rather incongruously was smoking a cigarette.
‘I’m worn out already,’ she grumbled, ‘and we haven’t even started the bloody thing! God knows where Robert has got to, he was still gobbling eggs and bacon when I left the hotel. No sense of timing, that man!’ She took another drag of her cigarette, and gesturing to the chaise longue in the centre of the set, snorted derisively. ‘Well, that’s on its last legs all right. I daresay it belongs to Bartho’s cousin, one of the relics of the place. If that’s what we are supposed to do our love scene on I shan’t answer for the consequences – broken frame and bruised backsides!’
‘I knew the feeling once,’ Lady Fawcett sighed nostalgically.
Alicia’s momentary interest was diverted by the entrance of Robert at the far end of the room, looking mildly dashing in ruffled shirt and knee breeches. ‘About time too,’ she said, ‘but I just hope he isn’t soaked in that awful Old Mice, I can’t stand it.’
‘Soaked in what?’ Rosy asked startled.
‘Oh, you know: that dreary aftershave, Old Spice. It’s so unsubtle.’
‘Ah, you mean the one with a picture of a galleon on the bottle. Yes, I agree it’s not the most delicate. But perhaps with that ship motif he may think it fits the Sole Bay theme,’ Rosy laughed.
‘You could just be right,’ the other replied gloomily.
Their conversation was interrupted by a microphoned bellow from Bartho demanding silence and action.
‘Ah, at last,’ Alicia muttered, ‘so here I come, lover boy.’ She stubbed out her cigarette on the floor next to Rosy’s foot, and gathering the billowing negligee, glided forth to do battle with her smouldering buccaneer.
On the whole the scene had not gone badly. And evidently ‘Old Mice’ had failed to feature, as the leading lady had seemed obligingly compliant. It was fortunate, too, that the scorned chaise longue had stayed the course – and indeed coped valiantly with the lunges and languors being enacted on its faded brocade. Yes, as amatory hurly-burly goes, the little scene had been moderately convincing.
It had been rapidly replaced by a large photographed backdrop of the retreat from Tobruk, with one of the cast (a budding Paul Scofield) intoning poignant lines about the ravages of war. Picture and poetry had been moving; but as Lady Fawcett observed to Rosy, it had been difficult to see its link with the preceding dalliance in a Suffolk drawing room three centuries past.
‘I expect it’s all part of the labyrinth,’ Rosy had whispered. ‘What you might call a juxtaposition of the gay and the gross, pulsating life and dreadful death. A sort of transcendent pastiche.’
‘How frightful,’ her companion murmured.
At eleven o’clock there was a pause for rest and recuperation, and people dispersed to the garden or to make fresh coffee. In an area adjacent to the studio, and which originally must have been a study or morning room, there was a sideboard with a tea urn, a selection of raddled rock cakes and assorted cans of fizzy drinks. Rosy and Lady Fawcett studied these dubiously and decided that they could wait until lunchtime for proper refreshment.
‘Well, it’s all very fascinating,’ Lady Fawcett remarked to Rosy, ‘but I am not quite sure that I’m any the wiser. And when I asked Sam to explain a little, he looked rather fierce and said that the concept of summary was alien to him, and that I would need to see the finished product to grasp its spiritual essence. And then when I said that—’
But her words were never finished, for Felix had suddenly appeared on the threshold looking white and scandalised. ‘Oh my God,’ he cried, ‘I have just encountered a bear – it’s huge and black and dreadful! It came towards me. I’ve only just escaped with my life! Quick, we must defend ourselves.’ He grabbed a nearby chair and rammed its back under the door handle.
Stunned, the others gazed
at him fascinated, and then at each other. ‘Has he been taking dope?’ Tippy giggled.
Cedric gripped him by the arm and whispered firmly, ‘This is absurd, Felix. Just because the last time we were here you were ambushed by a coypu, doesn’t mean to say there should now be a whole zoo after you. Do be sensible, dear boy – it was probably a trick of the light.’
‘Some damn light!’ the other squeaked, casting fearful glances towards the door.
At that moment another voice was heard coming from the garden. Its tone was light and coaxing: ‘Pixie, Pixie,’ it crooned, ‘come along now, don’t be a silly girlie-whirlie. See what daddy’s got for yoo-hoo …’
The crooning stopped, and Fred put his head in at the open window. ‘Here,’ he said in normal basso voice, ‘has anyone seen that bloody dog of mine? She’s been playing silly beggars all morning, crafty old cow.’
There was a momentary silence; and then Alicia said, ‘Actually, Fred, I think she may be on the other side of that door. One rather gathers she has been chatting up Mr Smythe.’ She approached the door, dislodged the chair, and threw it open.
There, sprawled on the floor like a shaggy coal heap or beached whale (or bear), lay what Rosy assumed to be the errant Pixie. The creature was indeed huge – the biggest Newfoundland she had ever seen. And as Felix had said, she was very black; a colour that accentuated the bright pink of the tongue peeping from the slumbering jowl.
Instantly, Tippy Tildred emitted peals of derisive laughter: ‘Oh, Felix, fancy mistaking that stupid old hearthrug for a dangerous bear, you are a silly ass!’
It was difficult to say which of the two, Fred or Felix, was the more stung by her reaction: Fred for her calling his beloved pet a stupid old hearthrug (and whose coat he assiduously groomed every day); or Felix for being dubbed an ass by a girl less than half his age.
Shot in Southwold Page 4
