Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘What are you doing with your life?’

  Harry looked daunted, which was only understandable. ‘How do you mean, Dermot?’

  ‘What do you think I mean, Harry?’

  This was a heavyweight advancing on a bantam. Not that Harry was especially small or anything, I should add quickly, but Dermot was in full fisticuffs mode. I thought I ought to say something before things went from beastly to quite ugly.

  ‘Hmph,’ I said, hoping this would calm things a bit. It didn’t; in fact, it had the opposite effect.

  ‘You have betrayed every Socialist principle that we have ever talked about in this script,’ Dermot said, breathing hard.

  I frowned. Last time there was a political dust up, Dermot, flat mate extraordinary, had found copies of The Daily Worker and accused Harry of being a lackey of the Communist Party. So what was he thinking?

  ‘It’s a comedy,’ I said, stoutly. Actually I don’t know quite how stoutly I said it, but I do know that the mention of our script being a comedy further inflamed Dermot. Even his nostrils flared.

  ‘That,’ he said coldly, and his voice was very cold, ‘makes it much, much worse. In fact, that is what makes it a betrayal of all your values. Bernard Shaw would be ashamed of you.’

  He emphasised ‘your’ in such a way that it was immediately plain to me that he knew I had none.

  ‘Iz oo cross wiv us, Dermot?’

  Harry was trying to lighten the atmosphere by doing his baby voice, which he only ever did when things were getting tough. Seeing that not even that was having an effect, he changed tack.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dermot, we won’t sell it.’

  ‘I’m sure we won’t,’ I added, at my creepiest.

  But we did. Neither of us could believe it; we sold it to a film company whose offices were in Soho.

  ‘They want to meet you. They love it,’ Dewi shouted at us, stubbing out his thirtieth cigarette of the day. ‘Off you go.’

  Harry had an aversion to ladies with large chests so I had to cover his eyes as we passed the windows of Soho nightclubs until we reached the office of Chancy Pictures.

  As we climbed the rickety staircase to their less than salubrious premises, I could not help wondering what my father would say, or even Harry’s father – a long-time member of the Sunningdale Golf Club – and that was before we went in and sat down on the kind of chairs that my mother would put a hankie on before doing the same.

  ‘I have to say, this is a great script,’ Mr Chance told us, as he flicked a fly off his teacup. ‘Dewi told me it was great, and it is great.’

  I tried not to look at Harry. What was it with this first script we had written together that inflamed and enthused everyone so much? It was thrilling, but only for a second.

  ‘Now to improve it …’ Mr Chance continued.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘We’ve just had one, thank you, Mr Chance,’ Harry said, and pushed his chair back a little from the desk, as if the tea might be catching.

  ‘It has so much in it that is good, but it needs more … more danger, more sex!’

  Harry frowned. As the oldest person in our partnership he took it upon himself to speak up for our work.

  ‘This is a satire, Mr Chance, and as such sex, as such, does not really pertain.’

  ‘It should. We should have pertaining sex in it, and it will help the – yes, the satire. Make it much funnier. For instance, if he’s selling the Daily Worker and a tart comes up to him and takes him off to her boudoir, she could be converted to communism by reading the newspaper. She could become convinced.’

  Harry frowned. I could see him trying not to see that Mr Chance was not the right producer for The Happy Communist.

  ‘You see, the flaw in this script is that the young man is not happy. We have to follow the title,’ Mr Chance went on inexorably. ‘The Happy Communist means he should be happy, so that will mean we can have any amount of encounters of a sexual nature, finishing up with him becoming even happier, see?’

  Harry could see he would not be right for Chancy Pictures. Even I could see that. He stood up and waved at Mr Chance from our side of the desk. I knew he was waving because he was worried about the teacup and the fly, and feeling a bit daisy about shaking Mr Chance’s hand. Harry was a bit delicate like that. It was something we shared. We had both spent some time practising going in and out of public places using only our elbows on the door handles.

  Back at the flat Dermot was drinking black tea from a mug left over from his time in the army. We both knew he was waiting for us to come through the door brimming with good news, which would be bad news for him. I looked at Harry. Harry looked at Dermot.

  ‘Forgive me for saying this but there’s something on your head.’

  Dermot, resident hypochondriac at the flat, jumped to his feet and rushed over to the mirror.

  ‘What? What is it? What do you mean?’ He ran his hands through his hair.

  Harry sighed.

  ‘Well, if you can’t see the two horns that have popped up on top of your head, Dermot baby, you need spectacles.’

  Dermot did not find that funny. He snatched up his mug and retired to their room.

  ‘I hope you haven’t hurt his feelings,’ I said as the door appeared to close behind him.

  ‘Dermot doesn’t have any feelings,’ Harry said, with some relish.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Dermot shouted back from their room.

  ‘Dermot has big ears,’ Harry went on smoothly. ‘As well as horns that come out of his head and a long serpent’s tail.’

  ‘I am praying for you, Harry, and praying hard. I am praying that you are forced to sign a contract with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and spend a year wearing a toga and working for Wooden Top.’

  ‘Needs must when the devil drives, Dermot old thing.’

  The following day we went back to see Dewi to explain why we could not sell The Happy Communist to Mr Chance.

  Dewi was difficult to see, not because he had a queue outside his office, but because he was hidden behind clouds of stronger-smelling smoke.

  ‘I’ve taken my wife’s advice and given up cigarettes,’ he called happily from the other side of the smog. ‘She’s right, cigarettes are bad for you. They lack class. This is class.’ He waved his cigar at us. ‘Charlie Chance just called and said you weren’t happy with the idea of adding sex to your film. You need sex, Harry – you need sex, especially in a picture with the word “happy” in it. Who can be happy in this world without sex?’

  ‘It’s not that kind of property, Dewi.’

  I stared in some admiration at Harry. He had never used that word before about The Happy Communist. ‘Property’ gave it stature. I immediately grew a few inches taller at the idea that I was co-writer not of a film – but a property.

  ‘Harry dear, a film does not become a property until it is in the can, cast and filmed.’

  ‘That always helps, of course.’

  ‘And sex is always a requirement.’

  ‘Unless they’re aliens from outer space.’

  I don’t know why I said that, it must have been because of Harry’s fantasy about aliens landing all over the world during Sunday lunch.

  Both Harry and Dewi stared at me.

  ‘Lottie dear, even aliens have sex,’ Dewi said gently. ‘I think you’ll find. They have to procreate.’

  I shook my head, firmly.

  ‘Recent research has proved that in the atmosphere where aliens live, they reproduce in a different way. It’s like some fireflies have both male and female bits. It’s the opposite on Mars where they don’t have any bits at all. They do it by banging their heads together, apparently.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Dewi demanded, his expression serious, his tone indignant.

  ‘To make more aliens,’ Harry told him, his own expression equally serious.

  ‘But not during Sunday lunch,’ I offered.

  ‘Well, fa
ir enough, no one has sex during Sunday lunch,’ Dewi conceded.

  ‘So – do you want us to include aliens in The Happy Communist, to add that kind of sex?’

  ‘It’s not my Biro that’s signing, Harry, not my Biro.’

  ‘Well, we could try it, and see if it does the trick.’

  Dewi smiled widely.

  ‘My dears, I love triers. I will ring Charlie Chance, not mention aliens, just say that you’re willing to try and insert sex and be back to him as soon as he can say Wardour Street.’

  We left Dewi and went to a chemist where we bought some cheap scent and sprayed ourselves to get rid of the smell of cigars before staggering back to the flat, because walking does a great deal for shock.

  ‘I don’t know why you suggested aliens,’ Harry kept saying.

  ‘You brought aliens up, before Sunday lunch, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but not to put into The Happy Communist.’

  ‘It is quite clear that Mr Chance will not be interested unless we add some sex—’

  Harry stopped striding up and down the sitting room and stared at me. ‘Are you telling me that you will do anything for a sale?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Even to the extent of adding aliens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because once we have sold one property, we will go on to sell others. Look at any successful writer’s career. You have to sell, you have to make money, and then gradually you’re allowed to write what you want.’

  ‘No wonder Dermot thinks you have contaminated me.’

  ‘Now listen, Harry, love you as I do—’

  He stared at me.

  ‘As a writer and an actor,’ I continued, carefully. ‘I know we have to get on with this, we must just do it.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Easy,’ I said firmly, determined on busking it. ‘The happy communist is taken over by aliens when he is selling the Daily Worker on the Underground. They abduct him and his newspapers to Mars where they read them and, realising the error of their Martian capitalist ways, become communists themselves, while our hero returns to earth where he sets about teaching everyone at Communist Party Headquarters alien sex, i.e. banging their heads together. This dislodges all their brainwashing and the Communists end up laughing and making jokes.’

  I had to admit that to me what I had just said sounded like the sort of film – sorry, property – Mr Chance would like. To my surprise, Harry actually quite liked it too.

  So we set about it, but not without difficulty. Despite the fantasy about aliens having landed us in this situation in the first place, Harry found the script very hard going. He ate biscuits when things were difficult at work. We were on our ninth packet of Funky Dunkies by the time the young communists at CPHQ had started having sex by banging their heads and thereby dislodging their brainwashing – in the film, that is.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ Harry announced when we’d finished, which was stating the obvious but it had been hard work. ‘Now I to play golf with my father, you to the War Office and the dear Commander.’

  ‘How’s the scribbling going?’ Arabella asked with an uninterested expression on her face as she wound what looked like a telephone book of A4 paper into her Underwood.

  ‘So-so,’ I said, before answering the telephone on my desk. I had thought it would be Commander Steerforth for me, but it was Dewi, obviously ringing me because Harry was golfing.

  ‘My dear – good news. Charlie Chance has his Biro out. He wants the aliens and the communists. We have a sale, a contract! Now all we need are the stars.’

  Harry and I met in the coffee bar to celebrate with spaghetti and a glass of wine.

  ‘You were right, Lottie, better a sale than no sale. Now we have a film credit, we will be on our way.’

  Mr Chance did indeed get his Biro out as Dewi had predicted, but the contract was so long and in such small print that Dewi must have skipped the boring bits because not much time had passed before he telephoned Harry to break the news, and what news it was.

  ‘It’s a big compliment in a way,’ Harry tried to tell me.

  ‘In what way?’ I asked, coldly.

  ‘In the way of, they are getting someone more famous than us – at the moment – to breathe on it.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Who, Harry, who? Noël Coward?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Not exactly, no. Trevor Duncan. He’s had a string of hits – Up the Ladder, Down the Ladder – not our cup of tea, but they were very successful, Lottie.’

  ‘I need to sit down,’ I said.

  ‘You are sitting down—’

  ‘Are you telling me that Trevor Duncan is going to have top credit over us?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll still be there, on the credits, but he will have first credit. That’s what they do in movies. They get scribblers like us to build the house, and then they get a more famous name in and he replaces the doorknocker and changes a light bulb and takes all the credit. That’s the system.’

  I stared right past Harry, which he never liked.

  ‘Our first comedy credit has now gone to someone else,’ I said, in a flat voice.

  ‘It’s still a credit,’ Harry insisted.

  ‘It won’t be recognisable if that man gets his mitts on it,’ I moaned.

  ‘Look at it this way – at least your father won’t get upset. Trevor Duncan told Dewi he’s taking all the communism out of it, keeping the sex, and just having aliens.’

  *

  When I told Arabella she assumed her sphinx-like expression.

  ‘Just as well you’ve kept your job here,’ she stated, not feeling sorry for me at all.

  ‘Anyway we’ve started on something else. Another comedy, no aliens, no communists – just two people who fall in love and start to write together.’

  ‘Not terribly fictional then?’

  ‘No, not at all. Just a goodly tale of life behind the typewriter.’

  The following Sunday we did not go to Dingley Dell for lunch. We said nothing to each other, but we both knew that we would rather duck it, just in case my father had remembered why he was upset with us. Instead we cooked a roast lunch at the flat. I found it a long laborious business compared to lunch at Dingley Dell, what with peeling potatoes, and basting the meat, and while we made a pact to avoid making Yorkshire pudding, Harry made splendid gravy out of a packet of Bisto. There was so much on the table that I almost felt guilty there were only the two of us to eat it.

  ‘Do you think we should ask Dermot in?’

  ‘He is in, Lottie.’

  ‘Well, do you think we should ask him into the kitchen to eat with us?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go near Dermot at the moment, Lottie-bags – he’s got a terrible headache, he’s living on Aspirin.’

  ‘Oh, poor Dermot, why so?’

  ‘I saved this up to tell you.’ Harry paused in slicing the beef. ‘I gave him the rewrite of The Happy Communist, and he’s been rehearsing Martian sex ever since, in case he goes up for it. You should hear the head-banging. He’s very method like that.’

  Harry smiled contentedly as I only just avoided doing the elephant trick with my wine.

  ‘What about Dermot’s principles?’

  ‘He said it was different now there are no communists in the script. Oh, and they’ve changed the title – it is now called Sexy Aliens.’

  ‘Sexy Aliens? So still a satire then?’

  ‘At least we have a cheque with Biro marks on it.’

  ‘We do, and it hasn’t bounced, so let’s drink to sexy aliens.’

  So we did, and then Harry had some more gravy – well, we both did – it was that good.

  THE SHALLOW END

  My mother was looking worried. ‘Your father is looking worried.’ Just for a second I thought I ought to join in and look the same, but Harry and I had just finished writing what we thought was a brilliant script about two married writers who have been separated but have to come together to wri
te a film because they have run out of not just love – but money.

  ‘You and Harry are coming to dinner tonight,’ my mother stated. I tried to look unsurprised.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, feebly, and for no reason I could think of I felt as though I was going to have to take my driving test again.

  Harry and I had not been in favour with my father lately. The Happy Communist had lowered our popularity rating at Dingley Dell, at least for a bit. Even though my father had been told that the picture was now called Sexy Aliens, and there were no communists in it, he had still taken umbrage in the way that only he could. I thought it vaguely unreasonable.

  ‘The dinner tonight is not for enjoyment,’ my mother went on. ‘It is for security reasons.’

  The palms of my hands became rather warmer than is considered quite nice, and I cleared my throat several times, which I always did when I felt I was sailing into troubled territory at Dingley Dell.

  ‘It seems,’ my mother went on, ‘that you can be of use to your father, you and er – Harry.’

  Since the news that we had written a comedy called The Happy Communist everyone at Dingley Dell now referred to Harry as ‘er – Harry’, as if by not quite remembering his name he would somehow disappear out of my life.

  When I told ‘er – Harry’ that we would be required at dinner, he looked appalled.

  ‘We can’t be of any use to your father, we are useless.’

  ‘MI5 like useless people. They use them all the time.’

  ‘But dinner? I mean we were meant to be finishing Act Two, and doing the rewrite on Act One, and I was going to make you Dermot’s recipe for stuffed cabbage.’

  ‘It might be nice at Dingley Dell. I mean dinner is often good there. Filet mignon and home-made ice cream—’

  ‘Not your mother’s ice cream?’

  ‘No, Mrs Graham’s ice cream. You know, the crunchy one you like.’

  That did it. Harry would walk on hot coals for Mrs Graham’s crunchy ice cream.

  My father was a stickler for punctuality. If anyone was late, it would be taken very badly. Five minutes late was a crime.

  ‘Mrs Graham, you know,’ he would say. ‘She has to get home for Mr Graham, to clean out their canaries and so on. Don’t want to make things awkward for her.’