‘Hideous,’ she shouted, now well into the kitchen, and her voice seemed to him to be more cheerful. ‘I’ve seen ’em on television. They look dirty.’ He buttoned his shirt and vowed he’d manage with a cut-throat somehow, and went back along the corridor, his tie thrown over one shoulder and his jacket, hooked on to a forefinger, over the other.
‘Do you know how to use this damned thing?’ he said and stared at the razor, a wicked looking object, yet with a certain charm; the curves of the glinting steel were handsome. ‘Or better still, do you know how to cope when I start bleeding to death?’
‘If a man of eighty-three could use it, so can you,’ she said. ‘There’s some shaving soap, too. You can go up to the bathroom if you like but the light’s better here, and it’s easier to give you hot water. If you don’t mind me being here. I’ll make you some toast.’
It was an oddly companionable ten minutes. He soaped his face thoroughly, watching her covertly in the little mirror that was set over the sink as she moved around the kitchen cutting bread, finding marmalade in a cupboard, putting out cups and saucers, and she seemed to him to be glowing. It wasn’t just the yellow sweater, either, he decided; she really did look better than she had at any time since he’d met her.
Gingerly he set to work with the razor, and she saw him and laughed and came over to him.
‘Not like that, idiot,’ she said, and her voice was relaxed and friendly. ‘Like this.’ And she leaned over his shoulder and rearranged the razor in his hand, and again he smelled clean hair and soap as he had on the day when he’d first met her; and this time it had the added dimension of being familiar; and the same stir of sexual hunger lifted in him and he was grateful he had more clothes on now than just a pair of underpants.
‘You see?’ she said. ‘Now hold it flat to your face - no, not like that! You’ll cut your throat. Like this - that’s it. You see? It’s not that difficult.’ And she watched him as, carefully, he slid the blade through the film of pallid soap. ‘You’ll make an English-man yet.’
‘You reckon that’s a good thing to be?’
‘The sort Geoffrey was, yes,’ she said and turned away to crouch down so that she could look at the toast beneath the old-fashioned cooker’s grill. It was beginning to smell good and he felt a sudden lifting of his spirits. She had lit the fire in the old grate, too, and the overhead light in its red shade glowed richly. The whole feeling of the room was of stuffy cosiness and security, and he began to whistle softly between his teeth, the way he only did when he felt really good.
‘Then I’ll see what I can do to emulate Geoffrey, if you’ll teach me,’ he said and went on to finish shaving and then to dry his face, as she took a battered dark blue tin pot to the kettle, now singing at the back of the cooker, and filled the small room with the rich scent of freshly made coffee.
‘I’ve got better things to do,’ she said. But her tone was still amiable, bantering even. ‘D’you eat butter? I’ve got some. I can’t stand that margarine stuff.’
He reached into his jacket pocket to find a comb. ‘Then you do care a bit about food? So far you’ve given me the impression that you’re rather above it in some ways — ’
‘Then you took the wrong impression,’ she said. ‘Breakfast’s ready!’
‘May I comb my hair in here? In my mother’s house combing hair in the kitchen was the crime of the century.’
She lifted her shoulders. ‘I don’t give a damn,’ she said and poured coffee. Swiftly he fixed his hair and then came to sit down opposite her.
‘If you want more toast there’s bread in the crock over there.’ She indicated a squat grey piece of pottery with a lift of her chin. ‘And the grill lights with a match. Help yourself.’ And then swiftly spread butter and marmalade on her own toast and pulled a book from the dresser beside her, propped it up against the coffee pot and started to read and eat at the same time.
It could have been an insult, but it didn’t feel like that. Instead it made him feel that she regarded him as safe and good to be with, as comfortable as a pair of familiar old shoes, and he liked being cast in that role. Abner sat and crunched his way through his own toast, making another two slices — because he was hungrier than he would have thought possible — and drinking scalding hot coffee. He leaned over to replace the coffee pot with the marmalade jar when he wanted more, so that he didn’t disturb her reading and thought absurdly, we could be married, we’re so easy together, and then was amused at himself. Marriage had never been on the list of things he intended to do. There had been women, of course there had. He was as normal as the next man and far from attracted to asceticism, but a permanent sharing-a-kitchen sort of relationship had never seemed to him something he could handle or wanted. Yet here he sat, staring at a girl across a table as she read a book and ignored him, a girl with a scrubbed face and no attempt made to look good, with hair tied back, he now noticed, in a rubber band, and dressed rather like a New York bag lady. An uptown bag lady, perhaps, but still a bag lady.
‘I must go,’ he said and got to his feet.
‘Mmm?’ She looked up at him a little blankly.
‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘I’ve trespassed long enough on your hospitality.’
She stared at him with unfocused eyes for a moment and then they sharpened, and she looked at his directly and laughed. ‘My God, but you can sound pompous!’
He frowned, nonplussed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to apologise. I suppose it’s me, really. I’m not used to being with people much. Listen — thanks for dinner last night.’ She got to her feet and stood there a little awkwardly as he shrugged on his jacket. ‘It was very kind of you.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said stiffly, and knotted his tie with a savage little jerk of his wrist. ‘I’m sorry I outstayed my welcome, is all.’
‘You didn’t,’ she said, and stood back to allow him to reach the kitchen door. ‘In fact — ’ she seemed to hesitate and then went on with a little rush — ‘in fact, you’ve been very good for me. I’m really grateful. I slept better last night than I have for - oh, ages. Maybe talking about things isn’t such a bad idea at that. Someone said to me when Geoffrey died I should go to some sort of do-gooding counsellor and I said the very idea made me puke, but last night — ’ She shrugged, looking now as gawky and shy as a schoolgirl. ‘Well, you helped, you know? I’m sorry I cried.’
He was completely disarmed now. ‘I’m not,’ he said and smiled and held out one hand. ‘I’m really not. It was a compliment that you were willing to talk to me. I truly appreciate it. Will you talk some more?’
She looked at him consideringly for a long moment. ‘For my good or for your film?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘Both.’
She nodded. ‘Fair enough. Then yes. Not that there’s a great deal more to tell you, really. I know little about how it was in the camps that I haven’t told you, but I dare say you know most of that. It’s hardly a secret any more. Geoffrey had a room full of books and papers on that upstairs. I’ll show you next time you come.’
‘It’s afterwards, though, that interests me.’
‘Yes, I know. I understand that. Well, it quite interests me. As you may have noticed. So, as I said, fair enough.’ She held out one hand, holding it stiffly as a child does when doing as she is told. ‘We have an arrangement. Goodbye.’
‘Er — goodbye,’ he said, taken aback yet again by the abrupt dismissal and turned to go. She made no effort to follow him. Abner left the kitchen door open behind him, and went along the dim and chilly corridor to the front door. Still she made no move, just standing there watching him, and he pulled on the door, which hadn’t been locked and opened it.
Outside the morning air was damp and cold and slid across his face with an agreeable shock, and he stepped out on to the cracked door step and then looked back, his hand on the door knob, ready to close it behind him. She was still standing there, watching him, and seemed to have no intention of moving at all, but
then just as he pulled the door closed behind him she lifted one hand and smiled.
All the long way to the station as he walked with long fast strides he saw that vision of her, framed in the soft red light of the kitchen, and it was a pleasant one. It wasn’t till he was buying his ticket and had to speak that he realised he had been whistling through his teeth in his happy fashion ever since he’d left the house.
Thirteen
The next week was, for Abner, the most productive time he could ever remember spending, apart from when he had actually had a film out on location. He returned from Oxford filled with a vigour that made him realise just how under-stretched he had been, operating on only half of his cylinders since his arrival in London, and determined to get back into fast, hard action at once.
He started by finding himself somewhere to live, for it suddenly seemed intolerable to stay at the Bayswater hotel one more day. The cost of apartments in London horrified him, but a long morning spent chasing from one letting agent to another eventually paid off. He found someone with what was called a studio flat that she was desperate to let on a short lease and finally bargained hard to cut the costs and took it, biting back anxiety as he wrote the cheque for three months’ rent in advance. It swallowed almost half of his entire living budget, but he felt it was worth it. The worst that could happen was that he’d live on baked beans and fried onions again, the way he’d had to when he was making Yesterday’s Babies, and he’d survived that. He could again. And the apartment was perfect: one large room, with a sofa that became a bed at night, in a small block overlooking a canal near Camden Town, north of the centre of the city, was all he needed. The kitchen, so-called, was ludicrous — little more than a cupboard with a minute sink, an electric ring and a sandwich toaster set over the smallest refrigerator he had ever seen — but who needed more for baked beans and fried onions? — but the bathroom pleased him. No bath, but a real shower stall as well as a basin and the lavatory, and that was more than enough. The furniture was sparse but sound enough, with its major component being a very large pine table set in front of the big window. Somewhere to work, spread his papers and put a typewriter. What more could a man want?
The chance to make his film; that was the more this man wanted, he told himself as he unpacked his few clothes and prowled around his new domain. I’ve got this sorted out; now get the job going. Both strands would have to be pursued side by side still; he wasn’t free yet to concentrate, as he longed to do, on the research and the preliminary work on the film. The money was still the major problem, so he went back to embark again on his haunting of useful people in the industry, hurrying from office to office around Wardour Street, hustling with all the energy he had. Monty Nagel was out of town, he was told, for another week, so he couldn’t be sure that he had an agent, but he decided to assume he had. It was the best way to operate, after all; he needed a name to flash about, as well as a reason for flashing it, and it was clear that Nagel was a power of some sort in the industry here. People knew him and nodded sagely when his name was mentioned and seemed more co-operative. If Abner told enough people that he was a client of this man, that would in a sense make it so. Nagel would find it harder to repudiate him than he knew. And Abner grinned to himself as he thought that and marched into Alexander Venables’ office in a little yard off Lombard Street, near Mansion House. This was the last of the contacts Nagel had given him and Abner was determined to make full use of him.
Venables turned out to be far from the elegant Englishman his name suggested. He was short, amazingly fat, though with a small and rather sweet face like that of a knowing cherub, and had as thick a European accent as Abner had heard outside the worst sort of US television comedy show.
‘Vell, vell!’ He beamed at Abner as he settled him in a deep armchair and pushed cigar boxes, glasses of wine and coffee cups at him all at the same time. ‘So you’re a friend of Monty, hey? Ach, such a good fella, zat Monty, a real mensch, the best in the voild!’
Abner looked at him sharply, convinced the man was putting him on; no one could be that from-the-haimish surely?; but Venables beamed back at him, his raisin-black eyes gleaming in his pastry face, looking as innocent of guile as any man could; and Abner, in spite of himself, smiled.
‘I guess he is,’ he said. ‘Everyone says he’s a good agent, that’s for sure.’
‘Like I said, the best in the voild, no one knows how good. Me, I know, on account of I’m a mensch too, you understand? Me and Monty, like this ve are!’ And he actually crossed his first and second fingers at Abner.
Abner smiled even more broadly. ‘I’m sure. So, are you enough like that to put some money into a project for one of Monty’s clients?’
‘He’s your agent?’ The raisin eyes gleamed more brightly still, and Abner heard the warning in the back of his head.
‘Near enough,’ he said cautiously. ‘We’ve signed nothing, but he’s the guy for me, and my movie’s going to make good money for him. Once we get going. He’s the man.’
Venables nodded in satisfaction and padded round his desk to insert himself with some care into the vast chair that stood there. He rested his pudgy hands on the desk — he couldn’t get close enough, because of his belly, to put more than hands there — and said with great benevolence, ‘So you haven’t got going yet?’
‘I’m clear in my head what I want to do,’ Abner said and reached into his document case for yet another set of pages. He’d had a half-dozen more made at a ridiculous price at a local fastprint set up in Parkway, in Camden Town near his apartment, and he was going through them at a hell of a rate. He’d need another half dozen soon. Jesus, but he needed money for so much, and the awareness of that sharpened him; he leaned forwards and switched on all the charm he had. He’d done it before, persuaded people by sheer strength of personality to back him, and by Christ, he could do it again. He had to.
‘I want to make the best film that’s ever been made about the hell it was that people went through in Europe in the Thirties, the Forties. But I want to tell it through other eyes — their children’s, their grandchildren’s.’
He was launched, very well launched, and he sat there, his shoulders up and his face flushed — he could feel the heat radiating from him — and bathed the man in words and images and ideas and hopes. He painted pictures of the picture he would make that were so vivid they made his own pulses accelerate and increased the heat in him. His back felt wet from sweat and still he talked, and the little fat man sat and watched him almost unblinkingly as he went on and on.
‘So, all right,’ Venables said, as at last Abner paused for breath. ‘All right. It’s development money you need, hey? Development for development, I can maybe manage, you understand. Not the big stuff — none of your twenty-five thousands, your thirty thousands. This you get from somewhere else. But me, I could take a small percentage, a bissel of a bissel, you understand? To get you off the floor. On account of right now are you on the floor or are you on the floor? Chee!’ And he pursed his lips into a damp pink round as he made the sound again. ‘Chee!’ And Abner remembered with a vivid mental picture the Hollywood kitsch he’d loved so much before he’d learned the greater value of Ealing comedies, and saw the fat man who had bounced his way through so many of them. Cuddles something. That was it, Cuddles Zakall. This man Venables was doing an impression of Cuddles Zakall and doing it rather well and he grinned widely and said, ‘So, OK, Mr Venables. Would I lie to you? I’m on the floor. A nice floor, with carpets, and all that, but still the floor.’
‘For Monty’s sake, I’ll do it. Not a lot, you understand, not a lot!’ He was writing a cheque, using a very fat fountain pen with some ostentation, and Abner watched the pudgy little hand curling slowly over the paper, almost unable to breathe. He’d done it; he’d made the first little log in the jam move. It might not be the big one, the one that started them all going, but it was a movement. The value of it was not whatever sum he was writing there but the fact that he was writing at all. Now
Abner had some money and that meant he also had a lever. He caught his breath and said as casually as he could, ‘Mr Venables, I’m delighted. Monty will of course negotiate the percentage’ — and that, he thought with a wicked little spurt of pleasure, will force Nagel on board, like it or not; some real cash to handle — ‘while I arrange the next stages.’
‘I like vell kept books, my boy,’ Venables said and reached for a rocking blotter of the sort Abner remembered Hyman having on his desk in the corner of the living room in Newark, and set it carefully on the cheque. ‘Vether it’s a stemp you buy or a camera, it’s all got to be in the books, you understand?’
Abner lifted his brows, feigning hurt. ‘Do I strike you as the sort of man who doesn’t run an efficient operation, Mr Venables?’
‘From now on it better be Alex.’ The fat man coughed then and spluttered a little. ‘Alex, tha’s me. Friendly is my vay, yah?’
‘Alex, then,’ Abner said and reached out his hand and the little man looked at the cheque for a moment, almost regretfully, and then handed it over.
Abner glanced at it swiftly and could have wept with gratitude. Five thousand pounds; not a vast sum, but enough to be worth taking seriously. A small lever to shift a bigger one to shift the biggest of all, that was what this was; and he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket book and then reached into his document case for a sheet of paper.
‘A receipt, Mr Venables,’ he said. ‘I do business the tidy way.’
‘Ah, receipts, who cares receipts? So long as it’s in the books. Put it in the books and send me after receipts. Anyway, like I said, you’re Monty’s boy, so you’re all right by me.’
Abner felt a pang of guilt. ‘Don’t forget, we haven’t signed anything yet, Mr Ven — Alex. I wouldn’t want to mislead you. But I know he will — it was Monty, after all, who sent me to you.’ He grinned then and leaned back in his chair. ‘Mind you, he sent me to a few people. The only one I haven’t seen yet is Milner — Barney Milner. But I’m holding back on him for a while.’
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