On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  Alone in her flat she put a record on the gramophone. Brahms’s Third Symphony began to play softly into the silence of her flat. By the time she had turned over two records from the set of ten she went to bed, the music having pushed her character in the play out of her head.

  When she lay down to sleep in her bedroom with the lights off she thought of Tinus, christened Martinus, and not the man who she knew wanted to make her a film star. If they all knew the nearest she had been in her life to a man was holding his hand they would probably laugh in disbelief. She was sure Janet and Horatio were lovers. Poor William, he did so much want to take her out.

  As she dozed into sleep, she was wondering what it would be like to be someone’s lover. Poor old Oscar Fleming; she had driven him up and down the proverbial wall so many times without him getting anywhere, the words of her mother always ringing in her ear: ‘Never give ’em what they want, luv. Once they get what they want they don’t need you no more.’ The reality of her thoughts fed into a dream as she fell fast asleep, folded in the warmth of her own bed.

  The phone ringing by the side of the bed woke her in the morning. The alarm clock on the bedside table told her it was just gone eleven o’clock. Genevieve had slept right through the night. She could not remember any of her dreams.

  “Hello.”

  “Louis Casimir. Ten o’clock on Wednesday. A driver will pick you up at your flat and bring you to the studio. This Wednesday coming, Genevieve.”

  “This Wednesday at ten o’clock in the morning. Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Genevieve.”

  The man’s voice was loaded with innuendo.

  Within seconds, she was fast asleep again, only waking when her alarm clock went off at noon, the start of her day. She remembered to write the ten o’clock collection time from St John’s Wood on the notepad beside the phone. Then she went and ran the bath.

  They made her read Shakespeare. The lights were hot in the studio. Genevieve spoke with the slightly husky voice they had taught her to use at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She knew the part by heart even though they gave her the script. When she had played a part she never forgot the words. They made her read the part of Juliet on her own. They didn’t have a Romeo on call in the studio. There were four cameras set up taking pictures from different angles. She read her part twice before it was all over.

  Louis Casimir invited her to lunch. There was a small executive dining room in the studio. Genevieve refused the proffered wine. They were lunching alone.

  “I have to go onstage tonight, Louis. This is all so nice just the two of us.”

  She had dressed provocatively, spending an hour on making sure everything looked right before the driver rang for her from downstairs in the foyer of her block of flats. The man’s look had told her all she needed to know.

  “Will you dine with me after the show on Saturday night?”

  “We can have a lovely long evening. I don’t work on Sundays.”

  “I know, Genevieve.”

  “I must go now, Louis. I have an appointment with my hairdresser.”

  “The driver will take you wherever you want to go.”

  “I know he will.”

  “The board will have looked at your film test by Saturday.”

  “I said there’s no rush, Louis. Where are you going to take me? Somewhere nice?”

  “Somewhere very nice.”

  “That will be wonderful.”

  In the company car, the driver smiled at her in the rear-view mirror.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Home. Don’t tell your boss. I said I had a hair appointment.”

  The man winked at her in the mirror.

  By Friday afternoon when Paul Dexter barged into his office, Louis Casimir had removed Genevieve from his mind; he had not thought of her all morning.

  “You’d better come and see the rushes, Mr Casimir. They are back from the lab.”

  “Are they any good?”

  “See for yourself. I’ve sent out calls to the rest of the board. I told them three o’clock.”

  The man was visibly excited. Louis went back to the paperwork on his desk to hide his own trepidation.

  All the blood had drained from his face. He was frightened, not sure if he wanted Genevieve in his life. Ever since their lunch for two she had taken over part of his mind, the part his wife would not want to know about.

  At five minutes to three, Louis got up from his desk and made his feet walk to the small cinema at the end of the offices, the tension gripping his chest. Most of the people who counted to make a decision were waiting. They all sat down in the rows of seats in front of the big screen when he made his entrance. Everyone knew something abnormal was about to happen. Word, good or bad, spread like bush fire in a film studio.

  The house lights went down reducing the audience to silence. The projector whirred from the small room high up at the back of the theatre. Then Genevieve was in front of them up on the big screen larger than life, her sensuality screaming before she opened her mouth. Louis had never seen so much sex appeal up on a screen, the girl’s slightly husky voice adding to her attack on the senses of every male in the room. The camera had taken the meaning behind Genevieve’s eyes and thrown it in their faces.

  “Are we all agreed then?” he said when the house lights came up. “Fine. Paul, draw up the contract.”

  Back in his office, Louis poured himself a drink from the whisky bottle. The last thing he wanted to do was go home to his wife. She was far too perceptive. He wanted to go somewhere and get drunk on his own in a place no one would ask him questions.

  “See you on Monday,” he told his secretary.

  “Don’t you want them to send up the car from the garage?”

  “Tell the driver to go home. I’ll come back later and drive myself.”

  In the dark street outside, Louis had no idea where he was going. He put his hat firmly on his head, hunched his shoulders into the overcoat and began to walk, quickening his pace in an attempt to relieve the tension gripping his body. Everything he wanted from her was physical, none of it mental. By the time he found a public house, snow had gathered on the shoulders of his overcoat.

  “Give me a large whisky.”

  “Aren’t you a bit out of your way?”

  A big man with rough hands pushed through the working class drinkers. In his left hand he carried a sheaf of flyers he was handing out. Louis sensed the big man did not like him dressed in an expensive overcoat with fur trim round the collar.

  “You need one of these, my china. Read it and get out. This is working men. Englishmen. You ain’t English. Not with a nozzle like that. You’re Jewish, my china.”

  The man had bad breath. The barman had yet to pass Louis his drink.

  “Thank you,” he said taking the leaflet.

  They jostled him on his way out to the door. Someone kicked the door shut behind him after they’d pushed him back onto the street.

  He had forgotten which way he came, looking both ways up the street. He was shaking with fear. He began to run up the street to where traffic was crossing. At the intersection, he flagged down a taxi, giving the man his home address in Hampstead.

  Half an hour later he stumbled into his own home, the leaflet still clutched in his hand.

  “What’s the matter, Louis?”

  He put the leaflet in his wife’s hand and went to pour himself a drink.

  “It’s here in England,” said his wife from the hallway.

  “We’re going to America.”

  Earlier that week Louis had joined thirty thousand of his fellow Jews demonstrating against the Nazis. The pamphlet was retaliation from the British fascists led by Oswald Mosley telling the Jews they were not wanted in England.

  When he and his wife looked into each other’s eyes, all they saw was fear. They were Jews. Nobody wanted them. Even in England where both of them were born.

  The next day, when the curtain went down on the ev
ening performance of Lady Come Home, Genevieve expected to see Louis Casimir in her dressing room. She was thinking of Christmas and where she was going to be. Her father was spending a week at his ancestral home, which was too far to travel with a performance of the play on Christmas Eve. The previous year, Genevieve had been out of work and had spent the day with her father and grandparents at Purbeck Manor, despite the sour looks of Mrs Mason who frowned on the circumstances of her birth. Harry Brigandshaw had eaten Christmas lunch with them without his family who were staying with the Pringles in the railway cottage. No one had even mentioned Mrs Brigandshaw during Christmas lunch.

  She found her dressing room full of flowers and people but no sign of Louis Casimir. In a corner by himself was William Smythe, his face better than the last time she had seen him at the Mayfair. He was grinning his head off, which made her annoyed now she was not going to be a film star. Obviously her screen test had been a disaster. Oscar Fleming had made her prepared the day after the test.

  “Film tests can have strange results, Genevieve. What comes across on a stage doesn’t always work on the big screen. Don’t get your hopes up. Wait and see.”

  Oscar Fleming as usual was right. He too had heard not a word when she spoke to him at the start of the show. She sat down to take off her make-up, ignoring William Smythe and the rest of the people in her dressing room. It was a let-down that was not expected, despite Oscar Fleming’s warning.

  By the time the greasepaint was wiped and washed from her face, she had forgotten William Smythe. There was still no sign of Louis Casimir and the promised supper. Even if the screen test had been lousy, there was no reason for him to doubt her personal charm. It seemed to Genevieve at the age of nineteen she was losing her grip on men. Looking at herself in the mirror, she wondered what had gone wrong. Behind her, still grinning like a Cheshire cat, stood William Smythe having come out of his corner.

  “What do you want?” she said without turning round.

  “What I want and what I will get are two different things.”

  “Why are you here? Where’s Janet?”

  “Janet belongs to Horatio. Or, more exactly, my friend Horatio belongs to Janet. Aren’t you pleased about the screen test?”

  “It was a disaster.”

  “What gave you that indication?”

  “Mr Casimir was meant to be here to take me out.”

  “Then his wife got him first. I have a source at the studio. They’ve already drawn up a three-picture contract to start when this play closes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Have dinner with me and I’ll show you a copy of the contract my friend filched this morning. I told him I was your agent.”

  “You are at least persistent, William Smythe.”

  “In my line of work it pays to be persistent.”

  “Your face looks better.”

  “You didn’t know he was married?”

  “In my line of work it doesn’t really matter. Where are we going?”

  Janet Bray had never been jealous in her life. So far as she knew, no one from the Hall had become a film star. When William came back with a copy of the three-picture contract he had obtained under false pretences posing as a freelance journalist, she was happy for Genevieve.

  “She needs an agent. They tell that to the drama students at the Hall. Why don’t you act as her agent?”

  “I know nothing about the theatre.”

  “Of course you do. You’ve reported on its ups and downs long enough. The girl isn’t even twenty. They’ll take what they want and throw her out.”

  “She’s twenty-one.”

  “As a matter of fact she isn’t. You’re freelance. Make this another string to your bow.”

  “You don’t want me to go back to Germany?”

  “Of course I don’t, silly. Just look at your face all bashed up. Why get yourself killed?”

  Janet almost said ‘and get Horatio killed in the process’, but held her tongue. She wasn’t meant to know William wanted Horatio to go with him back to Germany. The man was besotted with Genevieve, the only person Janet knew who could stop William putting his life in danger.

  “An agent takes ten per cent of the contract,” she went on. “I can get someone from the Hall who teaches the law of contract to see you. The Central School of Speech and Drama gave us all a general education as well as our specialisation.”

  “What about Oscar Fleming?”

  “All he wants to do is bed the poor girl.”

  “You don’t think he hasn’t? Don’t all actresses get where they want to go from the casting couch?”

  “Not all of them. Not ones with talent.”

  “What about her father?”

  “I don’t think the Honourable Merlin St Clair would know one end of a contract from another. He bought shares in Vickers Armstrong at the start of the war and made a fortune; they made the machine guns that killed half the German army. He’s lived off the money ever since.”

  “Harry Brigandshaw, he put up the money for Lady Come Home. He was once a big businessman. I’m sure he would like to look after her.”

  “Tina his wife won’t let him anywhere near such a girl. She went through it with Brett Kentrich. What’s the matter, William? Don’t you have the girl’s best interests at heart? If you are very clever, which I know you to be, you can kill two birds with one stone.”

  “You have a dirty mind.”

  “A practical one. Keep your mind on what’s important. The wellbeing of your own life. I don’t want my friend killed by Hitler’s thugs any more than Horatio wants you in harm’s way. You two have been friends a long time.”

  “I don’t need to see a legal expert to read a contract.”

  “Good. There’s a firm of solicitors in the City who specialises in the laws of contract. When you’ve made it what you want, ask them to legalise the terms.”

  “That sounds better. I’ll go see Genevieve tonight after her show. Are you sure she’s not even twenty?”

  “Positive. Just avoid asking a woman her age. We all lie one way or the other depending on what age we want to be. At fifteen you want to be grown up.”

  “She’s fifteen, for goodness sake?”

  To stop William seeing the smirk welling up on her face, Janet quickly turned her back and buried her hands in the soapsuds in the sink. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ she told herself smugly.

  When William finally went off with the contract to see Genevieve in her dressing room, Berlin with its hatred again seemed a long way away. Why people always thought making more money made them happier was beyond her comprehension. She and Horatio had each other to go through life. With the two of them earning money, they had enough. The next thing she had to do for William was suggest a bachelor on the prowl needed a flat of his own. There was always Adele Cornfelt to bring back from the past if Genevieve was unable to keep William’s mind off Adolf Hitler. The girl was still a nurse at the Tropical Diseases Hospital. She was humming to herself when Horatio came back from a late-night assignment for his newspaper.

  “Was the show worth a good review?” she asked.

  “It was lousy. I thought you were going home?”

  “Not tonight. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Where’s Will?”

  “He’s gone out to see Genevieve. To take her the contract and ask to be her agent. We have the place to ourselves for once in a while. Oh, and William says he’s looking for his own flat.”

  “Thought he was going back to Germany as Brad Sikorski, American.”

  “Not anymore he isn’t.”

  “Did you make him change his mind?”

  “Why would he take any notice of me?”

  The following day, Bruno Kannberg was sent by his newspaper, the Daily Mirror, to Hyde Park.

  Sleet was falling on the cold afternoon as the crowd continued to swell. Bowler hats mingled with cloth caps. Uniformed policemen on horseback watched and waited. Bruno stamped his feet on t
he hard frost-bitten ground to keep warm. When he puffed warm air into his cupped hands, he could see his breath. The leaflets had said three o’clock at Speakers’ Corner where a row of soap boxes were being kept clear by young men wearing brown shirts over layers of vests both to keep them warm and, Bruno suspected, to give them protection in a brawl. The similarity to Germany’s National Socialists was meant to be obvious. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon and thousands of people were milling around waiting for Sir Oswald Mosley. Groups of Jews were watching the imitation Brownshirts. A senior policeman in uniform standing close to Bruno was clearly worried.

  “I’m from the Daily Mirror. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “If you didn’t know, sonny, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Is there going to be trouble?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “May I quote you?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “May I have your name, sir?”

  “No you may not, now bugger off.”

  Both of them continued to stand next to each other in silence, stamping their feet. Bruno’s curiosity was turning to fear. Fascists ran Germany. Large numbers of Spaniards and Italians were leaning the same way. Now Bruno was looking at the same thing in England.

  “Ask me,” said a man on his left, “they’re better than the communists. You gotter have discipline or the commies will take over.”

  “England’s a democracy,” snapped Bruno without thinking.

  “You a commie, mate?”

  “My father fought in the White Russian army.”

  “Then piss off where you belong. This is England. It’s all you foreigners what crept in gives us English problems. England for the English, I say. Mosley’s an English baronet who knows best for England. Don’t want no commies or a French blood revolution. Some say the Prince of Wales is a supporter of Mosley, that they’re friends.”

  “Don’t you start trouble,” said the senior policeman.

  “Sorry, guv. Like you said. It’s a free country.”