CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE

by John Mortimer

  My engagement, like my enthusiasm for Oxford, wilted. Jack Beddington, son of a barrister my father knew, and a neighbour in the country, was in charge of propaganda films at the Ministry of Information. Mr Beddington, many years before, had seen me do a ‘Punch and Judy’ show in my puppet-theatre and took the view that the performance showed just the talent needed to wage the movie war against Fascism. He offered me a job for when I came down from Oxford. I got a ‘war degree’. It was given with no ceremony and luckily for me there were no classes. It was just one more utility BA ‘in a nutshell’. I left Oxford station for the last time and went up the line to London, scene of all excitement, to the Blitz and to the Swiss Pub and the Coffee Ann, to the bookshops in the Charing Cross Road and to the Ministry of Information with the girls with pillar-box red lipstick and padded shoulders and Betty Grable curls, and silver barrage balloons floating over gutted terraces in a blue sky, and to Winter’s Pacifist Service Unit in Paddington.

  The pacifists used to take turns in cooking, and the quality of the stew, when I went to visit Winter, depended on the varied talents of the pacifists on the rota. However bad the cooking there were always bitter arguments about the size of the helpings, on which subject the conscientious objectors, before my astonished eyes, almost came to blows. Only Winter remained imperturbably calm. After dinner was over and washed up he would fill his pipe and play the Brahms Fourth and tell me that he had seen so much of man’s mayhem in the Blitz that he had decided to qualify as a doctor after the war. Although his education had been entirely classical, and his decision would mean his starting again with elementary science, he was prepared to work as a hospital porter and put in the necessary five or six years’ study.

  He also told me that he had fallen in love with the red-haired girl-friend of the leader of another Pacifist Service Unit. Her name was Lillian and one night after supper, and a movement of the Brahms, we went to visit her in a bed-sitting-room in a tall grey house left standing like a solitary tooth in the decayed mouth of a crescent behind Westbourne Grove. Lillian was strikingly handsome, but whilst we were talking to her quite innocently, she heard her lover come up the stairs and she told us to go out and hide on the fire-escape as his visit would only be a short one.

  As we did so, a small, stocky pacifist in ARP uniform erupted into the room. He heard some stirring behind the black-out curtains and immediately opened the wardrobe, pulled out an army rifle and, loading it in a practised sort of way, advanced on our hiding place at the top of the fire-escape. When he saw us he accused us both of the gravest misconduct with Lillian and offered to ‘wing’ us both in a sensitive area. Winter took the pipe out of his mouth and smiled reasonably.

  ‘You can’t possibly do that,’ he said. ‘You’re the head man of a Pacifist Service Unit. You totally rule out the use of force. Isn’t that what you told your tribunal?’

  I saw no future in a political argument about violence in public and private situations. I could see that the collapse of Western Civilization might seem of lesser importance to the irate pacifist than the suspected gang-bang of Lillian. I dragged Winter away down the iron stairway and didn’t stop running until we had got to a safe bar in Notting Hill Gate. There was a great deal in the incident which should have given me a clue as to the future of Henry Winter.

  Chapter Eight

  Films, there is no doubt about it, have afforded me over the years many such things of value as experience, laughs, foreign travel, disappointments and lessons in the transience of human hopes. If working for the movies has brought me only a few great satisfactions it is probably my fault, or the fact that satisfied writers in the film industry are about as numerous as black Africans in the South African government. The writer, in the eyes of many film producers, still seems to occupy a position of importance somewhere between the wardrobe lady and the tea boy, with this difference: it’s often quite difficult to replace the wardrobe lady.

  The films that were being made by the Ministry of Information during the last war were largely documentaries. Why a childish aptitude for the ‘Punch and Judy’ show, a form of drama involving fictional executions, ghosts, crocodiles, and married relations of a savagery which make Strindberg’s plays look like ‘The Archers’, should have led Jack Beddington to believe that my talents were best suited to the ‘Documentary Cinema’, I don’t know. However that was the view he took, and had he not done so my lifelong, maddening, frustrating but somehow irresistible love affair with moving pictures might never have started. As it was, it began, in the least romantic way possible, when I went to live in Slough, a place handy for Pinewood Studios and the ‘Crown Film Unit’. I lodged with an aircraft fitter and his wife. When I started as a fourth assistant film director I was on a salary of £2 a week; for thirty shillings the fitter gave me a room and the run of my teeth.

  The title ‘fourth assistant’ director may sound impressive. The duties connected with it are not, however, of an artistic nature. I had to get the director’s tea, buy him cigarettes, park the lady producer’s car in the mornings and call ‘Quiet please!’ at the start of each ‘take’. It is always hard to know where to be on a film set; you are forever treading on a cable or in immediate danger of being in the shot. Those fears added to my natural diffidence to produce an almost inaudible, ‘Quiet please!’ during which the technicians went on hammering, pushing heavy lamps about or placing bets. Rebuked for this I once yelled, ‘Quiet, you bastards!’ in a sort of hysteria, as a result of which the whole unit threatened to strike.

  ‘Once the film bug bites you,’ said the Head of the Crown Film Unit, a man called Ian Dalrymple who smoked cigarettes through a white paper holder, ‘you never recover.’ In the days when I bumped the producer’s car short-sightedly into the petrol pumps, or watched the aircraft fitter fall asleep in his armchair all the evening, his mouth open and his top row of teeth fallen, as often as not, on to the bottom, or lost fifty electricians on a train journey to Liverpool, or when the camera crew set fire to their table in the Adelphi Hotel by lighting cigarettes with strips of film, I thought that if enthusiasm for films was a disease it was probably curable, at least as far as I was concerned. I didn’t know how right, in fact, Ian Dalrymple was.

  Documentary films, during the war, reached the peak of their prestige. They emerged from small beginnings, being based on the theories of John Grierson, a puritanical Scot with a contempt for Hollywood, and the early work of the Post Office Film Unit, for which Auden wrote scripts and Benjamin Britten wrote music. Documentaries were called upon to play a major part in the propaganda of war. One director of genius emerged, Humphrey Jennings, who had been a surrealist painter and whose films were poetic and touching in a way that our more orthodox products never were. In fact most of the films we made were conspicuously lacking in human interest. Their great concern was with machines, usually bombers or other engines of death, which were shown rising slowly into the air to the music of Dr Vaughan Williams. Human beings were treated with less respect. They never said much to each other except, ‘Roger and out’, or, ‘What about a brew-up, George?’ or, ‘Gerry’s a bit naughty tonight’. They sat stolidly on tractors or watched the return of the herring fleet with dogged patience or, if women, toiled at the assembly line with their hair tied up in scarves. I don’t remember any of our films in which the characters complained about the war or tried to fiddle extra expenses on the fire-watching or had love affairs with the wives of soldiers posted to Burma or the Western Desert, although these seemed to be the chief occupation of the carpenters, plasterers and electricians with whom I spent my time. For a great deal of it we played Pontoon in a disused prop-room, among the thrones and four-posters of Korda’s pre-war film empire, totally unaccompanied by the music of Dr Vaughan Williams.

  ‘Seen the King last night, John?’ Charlie, the prop-man, used to call out as he spotted me lurking in a corner of the ‘Ops Room’ set, trying to avoid the camera or the all-seeing eye of Doris, the lady producer with the fur coat slung over h
er shoulders, khaki trousers and short cheroot, who might, if she spotted me, bark an order to fetch her car or the director’s vitamin pills. At first I didn’t know whether Charlie’s daily question was based on a misconception of my social status. Did he think Old Harrovians were in daily contact with Royalty? Then he would repeat the formula more slowly, making the words clearer.

  ‘Had it in last night, John?’

  I tried an enigmatic smile, not wishing to admit that I had spent the evening dozing on the leatherette settee opposite the aircraft fitter.

  ‘Didn’t spend out on her I hope.’

  Charlie was as anxious as I was about my financial situation.

  ‘No, I didn’t spend out on her.’

  ‘Never invest a penny piece till she’s given you one. That’s the rule, boy. Then you can run to a half of mild and bitter between the two of you.’

  It was a new approach to courtship. At Oxford I had bought books on credit and sold them immediately second-hand to take ‘Home Students’ out to dinner at the Mitre, with nothing at all to show for it. I was in a new world, from which, in my one-class, one-sex schools and the isolation of my father’s house and garden, I had long been segregated. It was a world full of sauce sandwiches and fiddled petty-cash vouchers and playing Solo with the ‘Hourly Boys’ and tea-breaks and Union get-togethers when the sense of the meeting was put by Brother Chair, and girls who were known generically as ‘smiggett’, and where the expression ‘having your greens’ no longer meant finishing up the cabbage and making a clean plate. They were days which began in the cold light of dawn in a mocked-up gun emplacement and ended in the public bar of the Crooked Billet at Iver Heath, singing Roll Out the Barrel, or in an Uxbridge cinema watching Alice Faye or Carmen Miranda. They were times when I first experienced the only sort of group loyalty I have ever been able to manage, to a collection of people tirelessly engaged on one piece of work, producing a film, or a play, or a television programme or, perhaps later, defending a man accused of murder.

  ‘With Venus entering your birth sign this is a good week for you to make up a long-standing dispute with a partner.’ Jill, the continuity-girl, used to read the horoscope from her Woman’s Own and I kept up the pretence of having a partner, a bit of ‘smiggett’ next door perhaps, or a little woman in St John’s Wood. Jill also taught me many of the mysteries of the film business. When shooting in a street she used to put down five shillings on the expense sheet ‘To buying a penny whistle’, because there was a mythical child near all locations who wouldn’t stop ruining the sound by playing this instrument until it was bought up at an exorbitant price. Jill also showed me how film scripts were set out on a page. It was information which later brought me trips to Honolulu and Hollywood and enabled me, on one happy occasion, to write a scene which brought all the traffic round Notre Dame Cathedral to a prolonged standstill.

  INT. SET OF SUBMARINE. STUDIO. DAY.

  LONG SHOT, establishing TWO ABLE SEAMEN sitting at a table in the confined quarters of the submarine. They are wearing white sweaters and drinking cups of char. Around them mill members of the Film Unit, including the DIRECTOR, DORIS, JILL, CHARLIE the prop-man, and ME. The CAMERA TRACKS into a TWO SHOT of the ABLE SEAMEN whose names are PETE and JIM.

  PETE: What do you reckon’s going to happen when this lot’s over, Jim?

  JIM: I dunno, Pete. What do you reckon’s going to happen?

  PETE: I reckon there’s going to be some changes made.

  Background SOUND, hammering, whistling, an outburst of tap-dancing from an elderly Scots CHIPPIE. The CAMERA ASSISTANT has his arm round JILL.

  CLOSE UP DORIS

  DORIS: Keep it quiet now. This is a rehearsal not a bloody knees-up at the Crooked Billet.

  CLOSE UP JIM

  JIM: What sort of changes, Pete?

  CLOSE UP PETE

  PETE: Well, the kids. I reckon the kids are going to get a better chance this time. We’re all going to get a bit more equality. I mean, that’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?

  TWO SHOT PETE and JIM

  JIM: What are we fighting for, Pete?

  Pause

  PETE: (looking thoughtful) Well. I suppose it’s … it’s this thing they call democracy.

  MID SHOT the DIRECTOR with the FILM UNIT in the B.G.

  DIRECTOR: Wonderful! Why don’t we risk a take on that one?

  DORIS: All right. Going for a take. You happy, Dick?

  C.S. CAMERA MAN (whose name is DICK)

  CAMERA MAN: Quite happy, Doris.

  C.S. SOUND MAN

  The SOUND MAN takes off his headphones, and looks aggrieved as no one ever asks him if he’s happy.

  SOUND MAN: Sound reloading.

  C.S. DORIS (She looks intensely irritated)

  DORIS: Bugger sound! All right. Quick as you can, Sydney.

  MID SHOT the DIRECTOR, JIM and PETE

  DIRECTOR: Wonderful, chaps! Tremendous! Just give us a little more wonder, Jim, on this thing they call democracy.

  TWO SHOT JILL and ME

  ME: Look, Jill …

  JILL: Bugger off, I’ve got work to do.

  MID SHOT the DIRECTOR, PETE and JIM

  DIRECTOR: Puzzled but sincere!

  MID SHOT JILL and ME

  ME: What about the Uxbridge Odeon tonight? It’s Betty Grable in Sweet Rosy O’Grady.

  The CAMERA tracks back to the THREE SHOT.

  JILL and ME and CHARLIE the prop-man, who is loitering about with smoke coming through his fingers and a cigarette burning the palm of his hand.

  CHARLIE: Lovely bit of smiggett, isn’t she, John?

  C.S. DORIS

  DORIS: All right. Settle down now. We’re going for a take.

  C.S. DIRECTOR

  He is talking to JIM and PETE

  DIRECTOR: Democracy. That’s the word you’ve got to hit!

  Background noise, hammering, tap-dancing, etc., as before.

  C.S. DORIS

  DORIS: Where’s John? Can’t you get a decent bit of quiet? We’re going for a take!

  C.S. ME

  I sound far too apologetic.

  ME: Quiet everyone. I say, quiet, could you?

  C.S. DORIS

  Impatient.

  DORIS: Let’s get on with it or they’ll have won the bloody war before we finish the picture. You happy, Dick?

  MID SHOT CAMERA CREW

  They appear to be taking the camera to pieces.

  CAMERA MAN: Sorry, Doris. There’s a hair in the gate.

  C.S. DORIS

  She looks resigned.

  DORIS: All right. Relax, everyone. There’s a hair in the bloody gate.

  LONG SHOT the UNIT as they resume hammering, etc. The ABLE SEAMEN are both stroking the MAKE-UP GIRL, who is dabbing their foreheads with a large powderpuff.

  C.S. JILL and ME

  JILL: Terribly sorry. I can’t tonight. I’ve got to write to my gran.

  SLOW FADE TO DISAPPOINTMENT.

  It is, you see, a tedious and laborious way of writing, but it can be profitable if you stick at it.

  In spite of our bland official films and the movies made by private enterprise, in which Jack Warner looked dogged as the Sarge, and Corporal Gordon Jackson was terse and determined, and the young Dickie Attenborough always had the screaming hab-dabs in the bottom of the long-boat; in spite of In Which We Serve, in which Captain Noël Coward found non-commissioned John Mills snogging in a first-class carriage and merely said, ‘Carry on, Petty Officer Whatever’ (‘Thank you, sir’), the war was undoubtedly going on unscripted and far from the cameras. And yet the time which I had looked forward to as the execution of that sentence of death which had haunted my childhood dreams, was in fact the first moment when I felt I had come fully to life, a situation which filled me with a perpetually nagging sense of guilt then, and more so when the war was over. It was entirely a side result of the European catastrophe that people in England then seemed more united, even more cheerful, than they have since. All the hatred which we now
reserve for one another was, I suppose, directed against Hitler; and the English, with their perpetual gift for understatement, sang a song in which they called him a rabbit.

  Blown by the wind of these great events, lodged on the roof of Pinewood Studios where I sat fire-watching with a thermos of tea and a group of extras, I was, in spite of all my schoolboy foreboding, inordinately happy.

  From time to time a sweet, melancholy music could be heard in the corridors of the Crown Film Unit. It was the poet, Laurie Lee, playing on his recorder. Laurie Lee used to lean against the wall, bronzed from his walks across Spain, his long sojourns in Gloucestershire, looking like a small, sly Pan, piping endlessly, and the secretaries would open their doors and hope to speak to him. He was the official scriptwriter of ‘Crown’, not that he could be blamed for the dialogue of our more pedestrian films which was usually cobbled together by the director with the help of the amateur actors and a few ideas thrown in by Doris after an evening in the pub.

  ‘You see, Laurie isn’t really very keen on this war. He was much more interested in the war in Spain.’ One of the secretaries, whose name was Mavis, told me this. She was a hugely desirable girl with a face the colour of brown, farmhouse eggs and her eyes were like their hard-boiled whites with dark centres. I invited her home and broke all Charlie’s rules by treating her in all the pubs in the neighbourhood, and I filled her handkerchief with glow-worms when I walked her home across the common; but she did nothing but talk about Laurie Lee. After the weekend Charlie asked me if I had seen the King and I replied with a silence I hoped he might take for an embarrassed confession.