by Kim Newman
Terry and Butler came down, buttoning up, big grins on their stupid faces. Bob was still shivering.
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Whistles sounded. Bob looked at faces in the street. No one had made any more attempt than he had to detain the assassin. No one seemed even to notice anything unusual.
Terry took charge and got them out of there before the police arrived.
"Blimey, Bob," said Butler. "Can't leave you alone for a minute."
On our last evening in Pay-Gone there was an ENS A concert hosted by Simon Dee in an aircraft-hangar on the edge of town. The comedian was supposed to be Terry Milligan, but he was cancelled by the Ministry of Defence because he'd thrown a batter pudding at 10 Downing Street in protest at the war. Instead, we got Arthur Askey dressed as a bumble-bee. Cliff Richard came on and brought the house down with "I've Got Sixpence',' Britain's Eurovision entry that year. I think even he was surprised at the way everyone sang along, but he probably wasn't aware of the superstition among troops in Indo. On the exact date when you have just six months' service left you start a "chuff chart". Thereafter, you tick off each day as it passes. This gave rise to a song popular in camps and barracks throughout South-East Asia:
I've got six months, lousy ****ing six months,
Six months to hang on to my life,
I've got two months to whore, two months to be sore,
And two months to get cured for my wife.
You won't have read in the papers about what happened next. The censors like you to think our troops are wholesome chaps who suspend their sexual desire for the duration of hostilities until they can go home and get married. That night, as a troupe of go-go dancers called Pan's People kicked into their routine, two thousand battle-scarred squaddies rushed the stage. Vietnamese girls are beautiful, but they don't look like the girls back home. We'd none of us seen a girl from back home for quite a while. In their spangled union jack shorts and halters, with long white legs and bulging breasts, Pan's People were the girls from home we had all been imagining every night. Any man in the audience would have raped the pack of them — seeing on each the faces of his fiancee, girlfriend, some shopgirl, a meter maid — while the rest of us cheered him on.
Redcaps came in with firehoses and doused our ardour. I understand two blokes were crushed in the chaos. I wonder what they told the families.
Diana had a rich father and a Triumph Spitfire. It made getting to Avening a lot simpler. All morning they'd driven through the Cotswold countryside, stopping for a pub lunch of cheese, beer and fresh bread.
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No scampi and chips in a basket here. This was England as everyone wanted it to be. With the aid of the AA map, they'd finally found Avening and asked a man at the local garage for directions to the Powell place.
In the back garden, next to a heap of uncut firewood, was a battered Land Rover. The cottage was tiny, cut into the side of a hill at the top of a country lane. It seemed unusually modest for the home of the director of A Matter of Life and Death.
Bob knocked. Somewhere a dog barked. The door opened. A small man in his sixties answered. He wore a cardigan and frayed carpet-slippers. He had a small, meticulously-groomed moustache, a large, bony, bald head and huge, bright eyes.
For a moment, he said nothing. Then he noticed Diana. He smiled at her.
"Who's your agent, then?"
Diana giggled. "Haven't got one."
"But you are an actress?"
"How did you guess?"
"With your looks it would be a sin not to be an actress, or perhaps a King's mistress."
Bob cleared his throat.
"In you come then," said Powell to Diana. "You as well," to Bob. "I suppose you're the chap who had the memorable adventures in Indo-China."
"That's right," said Bob. "Have you been sent my book?"
"Unfortunately, yes," said the old man, leading them into a small, cosy living room. "Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong?"
"Lapsang Souchong," said Bob.
"And you, my dear? You remind me of a pre-Raphaelite model. Cup of tea?"
"PG Tips'll do me fine," said Diana, taking off her coat and flopping onto a sofa.
"Good girl. I'm all out of the posh teas anyway. Temporary financial embarrassment. Haven't made a movie for three years. And that was a nudist flick for a Greek friend."
Powell went off to busy himself with the kettle. Bob took off his crombie and sat next to Diana. She had never heard of Michael Powell and barely recollected the films he had made with his Hungarian partner, Imre Pressburger. But she was an actress and a movie director was a
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movie director. No wonder the cunning little vixen had insisted on driving him down here.
Until two weeks ago, Bob hadn't heard of Michael Powell either. Him and Terry had gone to the pictures twice a week for fifteen years and knew all the actors and actresses, but couldn't imagine why anybody would read credits. Kenneth had to explain to him the difference between a producer and a director. However, when given a list of Powell's films, Bob realised he had seen most of them back when they were kids, though Terry had insisted they not go to see The Red Shoes, which Thelma had been interested in, because it was a girlies' film, about ballet.
When the Gelbfisch corporation bought the rights to It Airit Half Hot, Mum, Bob had gone to London to meet one of Gelbfisch's producers, a hyperactive young Italian (actually he insisted he was Sicilian), Martino Scorsese. Through the producer's excited discourse Bob gathered Gelbfisch thought it best to have a British director for this subject, and he, Scorsese, had just the man in mind.
A man who hadn't worked for three years, had been rude about his book within moments of meeting him, and was now trying to seduce his girlfriend.
"Sugar, anyone?" shouted Powell from the kitchen.
"No thanks," said Diana.
"Three for me please," said Bob.
"Only joking" said Powell. "I'm afraid I don't have any."
In a tiny cinema at an advertising agency's offices in Soho, Scorsese had shown him The Red Shoes. It was about a young ballerina and a ruthless White Yank impresario played by John Barrymore who told her she could be happy in love or be a great artist but not both. Scorsese sighed with pleasure every time Barrymore appeared. Terry had been right about it being a daft girlie film, but Bob found himself in tears at the end when the company perform the ballet without Moira Shearer, who had just killed herself. Maybe it was Scorsese's enthusiasm, but Bob was moved—perhaps even upset—by the film. He couldn't forget it, even if he didn't like it.
Thelma said something similar about Bob's book.
Powell's career stalled in 1960, when his Peeping Tom was refused a certificate by the Lord Chamberlain's Office and the negative impounded by the police. It was allegedly the most disgusting picture ever made in Britain, but of course no one would ever know. Since then, he had only shot "glamour" films—silent strip-off shorts lasting one reel or, more
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bluntly, the length of the average wank—and Nakeder Than Nude. Scorsese desperately wanted to get Powell working again.
Powell came back with the tea.
"Didn't bring any Scotch, did you?"
"No, I'm sorry," said Bob.
"Pity," said Powell. "I asked Gelbfisch's representative on earth to get you to bring me a bottle. It's the least I deserve for having waded through your book."
Bob was burning at this persistent rudeness.
"I noticed a pub in the village," said Diana. "They won't have called time yet. I'll go and get a bottle." Iheres no need.
"It won't take a minute. I insist."
She pulled on her coat and disappeared.
"Sit at the table," said Powell, "and I'll explain what I'm going to do."
Bob did as he was told, and accepted a cup of sugarless tea.
"I'll make this movie," said Powell, fixing him with inquisitor's eyes. "
Not because of your wretched book. I'll do it for the money, but mainly I'll do it for little Scorsese. He's watched all my films, dozens of times. He was quoting great lumps of dialogue to me over the phone the other day. I've been here for years. The phone wouldn't ring for weeks at a time. Then this crazy Sicilian calls."
On the table was the figure of a winged lion, painted gold. Powell picked it up and fidgeted with it for a moment, drifting off into a personal reverie.
"Look," Bob started
"You didn't come all the way down here to be insulted?"
"If you don't like the book, why don't we just forget it?"
"Should never have put it between hard covers, Bob. It's a penny-dreadful, a poorly-written compendium of cliches. Some nice yarns in it, I admit, but there are two reasons I dislike it. First, there's no magic, no poetry. Second, and this is far more important, there's a great dishonesty at the heart of it. Haven't got a fag on you, have you?"
Bob fished a packet of Strands and his new Dunhill lighter from his pocket and flung them onto the table. Powell put a cigarette in his mouth and offered one to Bob. Bob refused. Powell lit his cigarette, passed the lighter back, and stuffed the packet into the pocket of his cardigan.
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"Now," said Powell, "you're feeling hard-done-by. You're probably trying to think of a way of saying how dare I insult you after all you've been through that won't sound petulant."
Bob shook his head. "I don't care whether you like the book or not."
"Of course you do!" he smiled. "You're being dishonest again. Now, what we need is a shopping list."
Powell took an envelope from a letter-rack and produced a stub of pencil.
"Unpaid rates bill. Should be big enough to make the list of the things we're going to have to change."
"That's enough!" said Bob, standing up. "I'm a frigging war-hero, me. I don't have to put up with this."
"Sit down!" snapped Powell. "Have one of your cigarettes."
Do as the man says, Bobby, or thee and mell have a major falling-out.
Survivor-Guilt, again.
There was plenty in the book that was dishonest, Bob knew. He couldn't go on too much about the whores with Thelma reading over his shoulder as he typed. Not that that mattered anymore. She'd found out about him carrying on with Diana. All the train-trips to London and overnight stays, pretending he was on business to do with the book. The marriage had been in trouble anyhow. Compared to his new friends, Thelma was just so trivial in her concerns, so boring. They wanted to change the world, she wanted to change the curtains.
Bob took a Strand without lighting it.
/ wasnt talking about Thelma, Bobby lad. This rude old get here has tumbled the Other Thing, hasn't he? The unfinished business.
"As it happens, I had another offer yesterday. The reputation, no matter how unearned, of having made the most shocking film ever shot in Britain can sometimes be helpful. So, either I film your book, or I make Confessions of a Radiogram Repair Man, a sex-comedy which has precious little sex and isn't funny. But it's British, and our cinemas are swamped with Russian police films, Australian musicals and German horror movies. I do have yet another choice, to starve, but I don't much fancy that.
"Bob, you rightly believe you've had hard times and have earned certain rights. So you have. Fair enough. But you can't expect medals from an audience. They don't automatically care about your suffering. They'll buy their tickets and want something in return. Two hours of magic, wonder, terror, laughter and tears. Gelbfisch bought your book,
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and Martino, bless him, is giving it to me. You now forfeit any rights you have in this work, and gracefully pass them on to the experts. It'll be an exploration. We'll find out things you don't know about yourself. Maybe things you don't want to know."
Bob was afraid, but couldn't let it show. He sighed, smiled and shook his head in resignation.
"Whatever you say, Mr. P."
"Call me Micky."
Diana returned with a bottle of Johnnie Walker.
"Just the ticket, my dear," said Powell, patting the chair next to him. "Come sit. Bob, are we on exes?"
"Eh?"
"Expenses. Did Martino float you any of Sam Gelbfisch's wonga for development?"
"Couple of hundred quid."
Powell's eyes twinkled.
"Excellent. We must adjourn to somewhere more amenable. Bob, be a good fellow and toddle into the village and get a jerrican of three-star. Then we can take the Land Rover. Harvey's in Bristol, I think. Imre tells me great things about the new chef."
As Bob left, he noticed Powell patting Diana's knee. There was no resemblance, physical or vocal, but Micky Powell reminded him of Terry.
"You lot, get out to the mortar pits and piss on them."
"Come again, Sarge?"
"Water's low and the mortar tubes are overheating. Your piddle'll cool them down for a while. Get cracking."
"Why-nor," said Terry, "me grandbairns'll never believe I passed water for King and Country."
Bob and Butler laughed a little too loud, a little too long. They pulled on helmets and their new Russian-made flak-jackets and ran out of the bunker at a crouch to the battalion mortar-pits.
This was Day 67 or 68 of the siege of Khe Sanh, depending on which reckoning you used. By chuff-chart, it was Day 42, exactly six weeks before Bob was due to ship home. And Terry, Butler and Casper. If they got out of this place. There wasn't an airstrip anymore. The Viet-Cong and the NVA had pushed the perimeter in that close. It was ten days since the last transport, a Blackburn Beverley, had attempted a
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landing. It lay in a blackened, twisted heap inside what had become enemy territory two days ago.
Behind the mortar pits, a small queue of men lay on their bellies. A corporal ushered them in, one at a time, to have a burst on the tubes. Bob had got over being piss-shy after about two minutes in Indo-China.
As the perimeter shrank, eight thousand men and 60 artillery pieces were noosed into a smaller and smaller area of rocky, messed-up orange soil. Every enemy shell had been carried over the mountains on the back of a peasant, but now every shell was pulling its weight. There were dozens of casualties each day and they could only be evacuated by helicopter. The Army and Air Force were overstretched and the Navy was pressed into service, taking the wounded out to HMS Bulwark somewhere out off the coast.
The brass were getting edgy about sending the wokkas. You could tell when they were coming, not by the sound of their engines or rotors, but by the enemy machine-guns and ack-ack opening up on them all along the valley. Now they only flew in in the thick fog that covered everything until the late morning, but the treens had the range of the landing-strip, and threw everything they had at it anyway.
"You next," said the corporal. Bob scuttled into the sandbagged pit where half a dozen men, stripped to the waist, worked the mortars.
"Over here," said a squat little bloke with fair hair and a black beard. Everyone had beards now. If there'd been water for shaving they wouldn't have to Jimmy Riddle on the artillery. "Try to give it a hosing from the middle down to the bottom. If you've not got enough, concentrate on the bottom."
They'd been here more than two months. At first, they'd been on "offensive patrols" but found nothing. In the dense elephant grass and bamboo thickets, you couldn't see anyone not holding a gun to your nose. Mostly, they'd been holding a shrinking perimeter, living in holes in the ground covered in sandbags and oil-drums and empty shell-casings full of dirt, trying to ignore the rats, being shelled and shot at by snipers every hour of the day, wondering if they'd ever be able to sleep again.
Bob undid his fly and pissed. The mortar-tube hissed and a cloud of toxic steam billowed up from it. The little bloke studied his work with interest. The poor sod was only doing his job.
It was bad enough that the wokkas couldn't get casualties out, much worse that they
couldn't get supplies in. Food and ammo were low. Three divisions were supposed to be fighting their way up to break the siege,
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but no sign of them yet. The Raf dropped HE and napalm all over the jungle to no effect. The treens moved their big guns to new positions every night.
"Nice one, son," said the blonde bloke. "Cover your ears."
A round was dropped into the tube. Bob put his hands to his ears and turned away with his cock still hanging out. The shell went away with a nasty, loud "boink!"
"I'd put that away if I was you," said the blonde bloke. "Send in the next one, would yer?"
Bob buttoned up and scrambled out of the pit. "You're in, Butler...Ha-ha! You're in—urine—get it?"
Captain Fisher had given a compulsory lecture, which was supposed to convince the men that there was no comparison between the British position at Khe Sanh and the Free French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. No, Captain Fisher said, this was more like the British at Kohima-Imphal, where General Slim lured the Japs into wearing themselves out by attacking a strong position, then defeated them. That night, someone finally settled Billy Liar's hash. Person or persons unknown sneaked into Fisher's billet and cooked off a gold-top in his sleeping-bag. "White-saucing" was by no means an uncommon fate for unpopular officers and NCOs. Lieutenant-Colonel Windrush didn't even bother to start an enquiry. The bush telegraph had it that the CO was crackers or hitting the bottle, or simply just as pleased as everyone else that his intelligence officer had vaporised.
Crackers or not, Windrush had more important things to worry about.
Crouching behind the sandbags of the mortar-pit, Bob wondered whether or not to make a run for the billet. Along with food, water and ammo, cover was in short supply.
Khe Sanh was, in Army parlance, a super-sangar, a fort and artillery base on a plateau deep in the Annamite mountains, surrounded by other mountains, near the border with North Vietnam and Laos. Its artillery covered the main NVA infiltration route into South Vietnam. Billy Liar aside, the Viet-Cong and the NVA—and their friends in Debs DC— certainly saw it as Britain's Dien Bien Phu. Its loss could finally force the British to pull out of Indo-China. That would prompt the Australians and New Zealanders to leave too. The Russians might be unwilling to stay on by themselves. Potentially, the future of communism in South East Asia hung on this rat-infested, rust-coloured shit-hole on top of a mountain in the middle of a load of bigger mountains.
