A Woman of Integrity

by J David Simons

  Chapter Thirteen

  Heading South

  The arrangement was to meet south of the river in a coffee shop near Borough Market. She should order a taxi from her usual private hire firm, the charge would be on Sal’s dime as he put it. He wanted to be that side of the river, closer to Victoria Station and the train back to Brighton, it would give them more time to talk.

  Growing up in north London, Laura rarely used to cross the Thames. All the action in those days had been in the centre of the metropolis. Soho, Oxford Street, Carnaby Street, Leicester Square, Shaftesbury Avenue, the National Gallery, the British Museum. Who ever went south? Then came her interest in the cinema with the National Film Theatre (now the British Film Institute), then the Southbank Centre, then Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge, the refurbishment of Borough Market and it felt as if the whole city was slipping southwards. She never went to the centre anymore. That was for tourists, politicians, civil servants and the Royal Family.

  Sal was waiting for her inside at a table by a large open window. The whole place still boasted the original wood, stacks of jute sacks, the air thick with the smell of roasted beans. She wondered if you could get a caffeine hit from the aroma alone. Sal certainly looked as if he could do with a cup, his face washed out with tiredness under his tan. He stood up on her arrival, held out his hand when she would have expected him to kiss her cheek. She sat down and they ordered.

  ‘So here we are,’ she said, trying to find a space for her bag somewhere. She couldn’t believe how nervous she was. Eventually, she slung it over the back of her chair.

  ‘Yeah, I’m really glad you’re interested in doing this. As I said last night, you’re my first choice.’

  ‘And as I said last night, I’m flattered. Did you stay on long at Caroline’s?’

  ‘Long enough for Fredrik to tell me when I might die.’

  ‘You probably should tell me then since we might be working together.’

  ‘According to him, I should live past eighty. Apparently Californian males do quite well on the life expectancy stakes provided we don’t get killed in an earthquake. Or take our own lives. It seems suicide is the biggest cause of death in The Golden State. It must be all that healthy living pushing us over the edge.’

  ‘Or all those rejected screenplays.’

  Sal laughed at that and she finally felt herself beginning to relax. The waiter also arrived with their coffees. She took a quick sip. Too strong. She could be blabbering away in a couple of minutes on a caffeine buzz if she wasn’t careful. ‘So what’s the plan?’ she asked.

  Sal scratched the back of his neck. Something ursine in the way he moved his body, she thought. As if he might wrap his big arms around her, protect her. It was a comforting thought. This big white-haired, blue-eyed bear come to save her career.

  ‘There is, of course, a lot of stuff about Georgie out there in the public domain,’ he said. ‘And one really crap unauthorised biography that came out just after she died. However, what I want to do is to tell her story entirely through source material. Letters, diary entries, notebooks, interviews. And of course, there must be the photographs. As many as we can get our hands on. The whole stage plastered with her photographs. Georgie’s story in her own words and pictures. Georgie by Georgie. I fancy that as the title of the play too.’

  ‘I assume you have access to all this material.’

  Sal produced one of his sloppy smiles. ‘Actually I don’t. Up until now, hardly anyone has. Her literary estate has been fiercely guarded by the trustee.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘A certain Quentin Holloway. He’s one of Georgie’s cousins. Second or first once removed, I’ve never really understood these things. The simplest way I can put it is that Georgie’s mother and Quentin’s grandmother were sisters. Margaret and Ginny.’

  ‘And why has this Quentin been so protective?’

  ‘No idea. It could be the terms of Georgie’s will. It could be he’s just bloody-minded.’

  ‘I see. What about finance?’

  ‘Nothing in place yet. I thought I’d wait until I gained access to her literary estate before I started hunting down investors.’

  Laura gave a short laugh that hid her disappointment. ‘So basically you have no source material… and no finance. What about people who actually knew her?’

  ‘Not many left I’m afraid. And those that are still alive are being just as protective as Quentin.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound helpful.’

  ‘There is me, of course. I did get to meet her all those years ago.’

  ‘An account of afternoon tea at The Savoy is probably not enough to create Georgie by Georgie.’

  ‘Probably not. Getting hold of the source material is paramount.’

  ‘So we’re back to square one.’

  Sal leaned forward, placed his hand over hers. A gentle, reassuring touch. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re beginning to doubt me. But I’ve got a lot of experience putting these kinds of projects together.’

  ‘I’m sure you have. I just assumed you might be a little bit further along with it.’

  ‘I do have you.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, I thought if you and I both went to meet with the reluctant Quentin Holloway, you might be able to charm him into giving us the access we need.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Hepburn Archives

  Extract from an unpublished memoir

  I had been renting a room in a flat in Pimlico which I shared with a young woman called Lucy. She worked as a secretary in a lawyer’s office, she had a fiancé somewhere across Vauxhall Bridge just south of the river. Apart from dropping in to collect her post or staying over when her parents were in town, I hardly ever saw her. It was an arrangement that suited my relationship with Max who could come and go as he pleased.

  On that evening when I returned shaken and angry from my audition at the Savoy, Max was sitting with his typewriter at the kitchen table. He had a habit of attacking his work – his shirtsleeves rolled up, his eyes close in to the paper feed, his forehead a deep trench of clenched lines, his fingers tapping away aggressively on the keyboard. But even thus engrossed in his writing, he quickly realised something was wrong. I told him what had happened at the hotel.

  ‘This is not good,’ he said, running a hand back through his thick hair. ‘Not good at all.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t good. Montgomery Studios was my ticket to America. A career in the talkies.’

  ‘For me too.’

  ‘Yes, for you too,’ I said, although to be honest with myself, I wasn’t sure if I envisaged Max as part of that future.

  Perhaps he sensed my misgivings for he returned to his typewriter, lifted his hands above the keys in readiness, then paused before saying with a snarl of bitterness. ‘You only use me.’

  ‘Please don’t start with this again.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve been frightened and humiliated today, Max. This is not the time.’

  ‘Not the time? So it is up to me to make all the time? To write these fabulous scenes. Just for you. Fabulous, fabulous scenes.’ He ripped out the sheet of paper from the typewriter, scrunched it into a ball, threw it at me. ‘Here. Take it.’

  ‘Stop it, Max.’

  ‘Ah yes, Georgina Hepburn, the glamorous star. What will be my next great scenario for you?’

  ‘I don’t want a fight.’

  Max sat back from his typewriter, glowered at me. ‘You should have gone into the bedroom with him. That is what you should have done.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You heard me. You should have slept with Montgomery.’

  ‘I can’t believe you said that.’

  ‘And I can’t believe you didn’t do what you were asked. One time. One little time. That’s all. Why the big fuss?’

  ‘You’re just trying to hurt me.’

  ‘It is you who are hurting me with all
this selfishness.’

  ‘You want me to behave like some kind of prostitute?’

  ‘What is it you think you are doing with me?’

  I started yelling at him and he yelled back. The upstairs neighbours banged on their floor for us to shut up. Words were thrown around that should never have been said. I slapped him across the face. Max didn’t respond physically, possibly chastened by his behaviour in the limousine. Instead, his punishment came in the form of verbal abuse, often in a language I did not understand. I broke down sobbing. Max went back to attack his typewriter. I slept in Lucy’s room that night, in the morning he was gone. He left a note on the kitchen table.

  Dear Georgie,

  Under the circumstances, I think it is better we stop seeing each other.

  [Signed] Max

  ‘Under the circumstances’. That’s what he wrote. He didn’t even have the courage to actually tell me directly. A piece of paper left on the kitchen table. A few spartan words, completely devoid of emotion. From a bloody scenario writer. Under the circumstances! What circumstances? Fear, that’s what. Frightened of being tainted by the same brush as me. And he was probably right in that respect. To this day, I have no idea what Montgomery or that little weasel of a procurer Hub told everyone about me but their power, influence and reach turned out to be immense. I could not believe how fast they managed to erect this giant wall of rejection in front of me. Hollywood. All the London studios. My film career was over just like that.

  Even as I write this all these years later, I realise the anger I have against the studio has never gone away. In fact, as the years have passed, as the stature of women in our society has increased, as my own sense of self-esteem has improved, my disgust at what I was asked to do has accumulated accordingly. But as for Max, devastated as I was that he should abandon me when I really needed him, over time I have become more forgiving. I used to think we were in love, but looking back I see it was our shared ambition that welded us together rather than any profound feelings we had for each other. We used each other, we were hurt by each other and we hurt each other back. We fought constantly and I used to mistake the intensity of these arguments for the intensity of our love.

  In the aftermath of my run-in with Montgomery Studios, Max suffered an immediate setback when he was dropped from consideration for the next Hitchcock movie. But he didn’t do too badly after that. He was soon signed up to the Cricklewood Studios then moved on to Pinewood where he wrote for some very successful films. I heard he was offered a contract in Hollywood sometime in the mid-Thirties but that he turned it down. He probably thought it was too late by then, his inner light had dimmed, the roots of his career firmly established in this country. And then the war would have intervened.

  I never managed to distance myself totally from him, how could I? Under the circumstances. We still had a couple of mutual friends who would pass on information from time to time. He stayed on in London, I learned he had married, a woman called Mabel, she was a secretary at Pinewood ten years his junior, they purchased a house in Twickenham. They didn’t have any children. Poor Max, he so wanted to be a father. And I never let him be one. For years after we broke up, I used to linger in the picture house at the end of a film to see if his name appeared among the credits.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Come on Down to Chipping Something

  Sal came to pick her up from her Highgate flat. He prowled around the place like some upmarket estate agent, poking his head into this room and that room, his large frame making the space seem even smaller, until he could eventually stretch out in the garden area.

  ‘Pretty,’ he said, standing over by the pond. ‘I like carp.’

  ‘Pink Floyd used to live here,’ Laura said, wondering whether her discarded mobile was visible through the green slime. ‘At least, that’s what the previous owner told me. Although I think he meant just one of the band and the rest came round to play. I’m not sure I believed him anyway. Although it’s exciting to think Dark Side of the Moon might have been written here.’

  ‘I’m sure one day the realtor will say Laura Scott lived here.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll get a blue plaque from English Heritage.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I think you have to be dead for about a hundred years to get one anyway.’

  She led him through the side gate to the front of the house where a yellow sports car awaited her. The roof was down even though the weather was neither particularly warm or sunny.

  ‘Porsche,’ he said. ‘Rented for the day. I thought we should make an impression.’

  ‘I’d better fetch a scarf then.’

  She didn’t particularly like sports cars, they were too close to the ground causing her to feel every lurch, jerk, speed bump and pothole as they drove through the streets of north London. Sal didn’t look too comfortable either crammed into the driver’s seat. But once they were out on the M40 (or the open highway as Sal called it), heading towards Oxford with the engine growling nicely, the sun finally coming out to warm up the day, she found herself relishing the experience.

  ‘Where are we going exactly?’ she asked.

  ‘Cotswolds’ he said. ‘Near Chipping something or other. Funny names you got here.’

  ‘You mean like Schenectady and Poughkeepsie,’ she countered, throwing her head back in exaggerated laughter. It was amazing what an open sports car, a handsome driver and a sunny day could do for her mood. She felt like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief except she was the passenger rather than the driver. She looked across at Sal with his designer sunglasses, his white hair blown back in the wind, drumming his fingers on the leather-clad steering wheel to the beat of some muttered tune. No Cary Grant, but he’d do.

  ‘All these pretty little villages,’ Sal said as they meandered through another narrow street lined with ivy covered cottages. ‘Reminds me of the England of my filmic youth.’

  ‘I think they make most English people nostalgic for their filmic youth. Hardly any locals can afford to live in these places anymore.’

  They stopped for lunch just outside Oxford at a delightful pub with a terrace out by the river. She knew she had been recognised almost as soon as they stepped through the door, she could sense the current of excitement as the information passed throughout the room, the murmured: ‘Isn’t that…?’ ‘She’s the one from…’ ‘Look who it is…’ from the staff and the other customers. She had to admit to being glad of the attention. Tokyo Winter had gone straight to DVD without being released here, The Bentleys had taken off worldwide but had been shunted out to a late-night spot on Channel 4, so it had been seven or eight years since she’d done anything high profile in this country. People probably thought she was dead. She sucked in a breath, grabbed Sal’s arm, led him straight through the bar area and out to the terrace where a table was hastily being prepared with proper linen.

  ‘I’d forgotten what it feels like to be out with someone famous,’ he said as they settled in their chairs.

  She wanted to ask who those other “someone famous” persons might have been but instead said: ‘And what does it feel like?’

  ‘Privileged and intoxicating,’ he replied.

  ‘Some men find it threatening.’

  ‘Then they have no right to be with you.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ She ordered a gin and tonic from the owner who had presented himself at their table instead of a waiter. Sal went for mineral water then ordered a steak. ‘Blood red raw,’ he added.

  ‘Last time I was in California,’ she said, ‘everyone was into blueberries and black rice.’

  ‘To hell with all that crap. I’ve just been told I’m going to live till I’m over eighty.’

  Laura ordered a poached salmon salad. ‘Tell me about Quentin,’ she said.

  Sal bent down, pulled out a folder from his satchel, passed it over.

  ‘Very professional,’ she noted.

  ‘I’m a documentary film maker. Resear
ch is what I do. Or at least what my paid researcher does.’

  She opened up the file. A photograph of Quentin Holloway was pinned to the inside cover. She glanced at Sal’s notes – age 51 – then back to the face. Quentin boasted a full head of (presumably) dyed blonde hair with a schoolboy parting on his left. Clean-shaven, blotchy skin, very thin lips so that his mouth cut meanly like a short scar across the lower part of his face. What struck her the most though was just how small his eyes were. Little wrinkle-free pin-holes that made it difficult to even know what colour they were.

  ‘Do you think he’s had Botox?’ she asked. ‘There are absolutely no lines around the eyes.’

  ‘What do I know about such things?’

  ‘I thought everyone in LA had something done.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to…’ She returned her attention to the photograph. Quentin was wearing a cravat. When was the last time she’d seen someone wear one of those. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘I believe he’s an art critic.’

  ‘Is that an actual job?’

  ‘It just means he’s a wealthy guy with an opinion on all the paintings he’s inherited.’

  ‘Is that where the money’s from then? Inheritance?’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  She resisted taking out her glasses, handed back the folder. ‘Just tell me what’s in it.’

  ‘Quentin’s grandparents, Richard and Virginia, owned a farm with a lot of acreage in Sussex, since sold and split among their three children – Oliver, Percy and the youngest, Quentin’s mother, Susan. Susan was married to a very successful financier. Kenneth Holloway. They divorced decades ago. As part of the settlement, she got the place we’re driving to now.’

  ‘How do you know all of this?’

  Sal raised his eyes in disbelief at her question.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  Sal went on: ‘Susan was also Georgie’s god-daughter.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘She died four years ago which is a pity for us as she and Georgie were very close. I believe Susan was the sole heir to Georgie’s estate and that is why Quentin as her only child ended up as trustee. When I emailed him about meeting up, he replied straight away. Very terse. Like a telegram. Afternoon tea at Witney Manor. Come on down.’