Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Rehearsals are a nightmare,’ he moaned. ‘Everyone’s drying all over the place.’

  ‘Surely not—’

  ‘They are, they have hardly opened their mouths before they have to shout prompt! In fact, the cast have renamed the play Prompt. You should hear them in the canteen, moan, moan, moan; it’s replaced “rhubarb” as a crowd noise.’

  ‘Oh, I expect it will be all right.’

  But of course it wasn’t at all right, and I knew that from the look that Harry gave me.

  ‘I will tell you how un-all right live television is. Last month one of Dermot’s friends had a door jam on him – had to make his entrance through Sherlock Holmes’ fireplace. He didn’t have a covering line so he said “Doorbell wasn’t working”, and then of course they all went. And he will never work again, poor man.’

  Harry was in such a stew I tried not to find this funny.

  ‘Only two days to go and even our famous ex-Hollywood star is looking seedy.’

  The night of the play my father and mother had to go out to a cocktail party, but knowing that Harry was on the newly converted Bush telly they duly hurried home to watch him, which I found oddly touching, but my father was like that – he always liked to support his old agents, even ones like Harry who made a bit of a pickle of everything. I was feeling both thrilled and excited until my mother found me something to do.

  ‘You keep guard against Hal or Melville coming by while we warm up the set,’ she stated. I hung about the hall feeling, and probably looking, like a spare hairnet. Finally the door opened and my mother beckoned me in.

  ‘Ghastly, too ghastly.’

  I went in and saw my father standing looking at Len’s handle as if it was a hand grenade.

  ‘It simply won’t budge,’ my mother said, speaking for him. ‘It will only do BBC. I can’t understand it, it was fine this morning when I showed Mrs Graham because she wants hers done too.’

  We all stood about staring at it forlornly.

  ‘Such a pity,’ my mother said, many times. ‘We came back from the Ormsbys specially – although we didn’t say why, of course.’

  I was to meet Harry afterwards. As I hailed a taxi at the appropriate time I was so glad that I had heard his lines. There would be no tripping me up over what the play was about. I almost felt smug. As I walked into the restaurant and went up to the table where Harry was sitting, I was all smiles.

  ‘Marvellous, marvellous, simply marvellous—’

  Harry looked at me and I can only describe his expression as tight. ‘Before you go any further, Lottie – the play was cancelled on account of the political crisis.’

  It was my turn to have a tight expression.

  ‘That’s what I mean – marvellous, marvellous that – it’s been cancelled – because, because let’s face it, you weren’t enjoying doing it.’

  Seeing Harry’s expression I knew just how Dermot’s friend had felt when he shot down the chimney to face Sherlock Holmes. Finally Harry smiled and patted my cheek in a paternal kind of way. ‘Well done, Lottie,’ he murmured. ‘I honestly think you could take over from Houdini when it comes to getting out of tight corners.’

  I felt oddly proud, and then I told him about Len’s handle getting stuck on BBC, and we had a lovely laugh and dinner and went home and talked about our new idea, which was very close to saying we lived happily ever after, because new ideas make you feel like that.

  THE RETURN

  I knew something was up when Arabella asked me to lunch at Fenwick’s. We hadn’t lunched there for a while on account of trying to save up for holidays in faraway places that I always pretended I yearned to go to, when I would far rather be having spaghetti Bolognese in a coffee bar with Harry.

  ‘It’s not about Commander Steerforth’s flowers and Monty, is it?’ I asked, determined on getting down to the nitty and the gritty before I ordered, because being left in ignorance during lunch gives me indigestion.

  ‘Oh, no, we’ve solved that,’ Arabella said, airily. ‘Monty takes them all round to the nurses at the local hospital and they put loving notes on them.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Some people never get a card or a flower or a visit, so the nurses put “Thinking of you at this time, from a loving friend” on Commander Steerforth’s flowers, and the lonely patients are delighted. Also it gives them something to think about – you know, who the loving friend might be, and so on – takes their minds off everything.’

  I frowned.

  ‘But supposing they don’t have any friends?’

  ‘That’s the whole point, Lottie. Really, I don’t know how Harry stands you.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ I agreed, settling on an egg salad with double mayonnaise.

  ‘No, the Commander and my beautiful mother are very well suited. He gives her flowers, takes her to a play, and brings her home. Monty insists on waiting up for her, so of course the Commander dare not keep her out late. It is a very happy arrangement. Nowadays my mother likes to be admired but does not want anyone what she calls “hanging around”. She says if she needs that she will get a cat.’

  I frowned again. I didn’t think that Commander Steerforth would like to be compared to a cat.

  ‘Do you want to get to the point or shall I?’ I asked, feeling hungry and impatient at the same time. Arabella instantly assumed her best Gandhi-like expression.

  ‘This is not to be repeated to anyone, but something has happened to Zuzu.’

  ‘Does Zuzu know?’

  Arabella closed her eyes very, very slowly and then opened them again – something at which she was very accomplished.

  ‘When things happen to people, Lottie, they are usually the first to know.’

  I thought about it for a minute.

  ‘Not everyone,’ I said, thinking of myself. ‘Sometimes things happen to people and they don’t really realise.’

  ‘As soon as you start eating I will tell you.’

  Arabella knew me too well. Eating was one of the best times to get me listening.

  Arabella on the other hand could eat and talk at the same time because she was very elegant like that.

  ‘Zuzu is in grave trouble with Head of Section because of something. But no one knows quite what.’

  ‘Is she back then?’

  ‘Yes, she’s been sent home from Singapore or wherever she was, but no one must tell Monty. He will get too excited.’

  I thought Monty was not the only one. I felt very excited at the thought of seeing Zuzu again.

  ‘Is she having visitors?’

  ‘She’s not in hospital, Lottie, just in trouble with the powers that be.’ Arabella threw me a deep look. I caught it deftly before she continued, ‘Do you think your father might help?’

  I frowned.

  ‘She’s not in his Section.’

  ‘I know she’s not in his Section,’ Arabella said with commendable restraint, ‘but sometimes people in other Sections can help.’

  ‘I’ll ask him,’ I said, happily going back to my egg mayonnaise.

  ‘What will you ask him?’

  ‘Whatever you want me to,’ I said, closing my eyes because I loved mayonnaise and Harry hated it so I always had to have it ‘out’– when he was not there – or he felt queasy.

  ‘That’s settled then.’

  What I found out a little later was that Zuzu was indeed in the claggy. It seemed she had started an affair with an international star who was on location filming near where she worked for MI5 in Singapore. The newspapers were now following the story, hoping against hope that she was going to turn out to be a sort of Mata Hari put in by MI5. I thought it all sounded like a puff of smoke that would soon drift off to the Gulag. But there was more to it than a short piece in a daily newspaper, because the international star had been implicated in a political scandal in America.

  ‘Imagine that.’ I sighed with admiration as I heard who the star was. ‘It takes Zuzu to have an affair with someone like him.’

 
; For a second I felt vaguely envious, imagining her wafting about in silken robes while the star gazed at her in adoration.

  ‘It takes Zuzu to be that loopy.’

  ‘They can’t do anything to her, can they?’

  It was Arabella’s turn to sigh.

  ‘The authorities can do anything they please; you must at least have learned that by now, Lottie? This could stop the US of A investing in our film business. And that is serious. Any hint of someone being left-wing and film people all become hysterical.’

  That brought my fantasy to an abrupt halt. Not that I would have had an affair with a star while I was still in tandem with Harry, absolutely not. But you know how it goes. Your mind can wander off the straight and narrow sometimes, and I had once seen one of this particular star’s pictures three times. He was that kind of draw.

  ‘I don’t suppose he is really a communist, probably just said something like he thinks poor people should have food on the table, which scared the liver and lights out of the studios.’

  ‘Quite. But that does not bring us any nearer to helping Zuzu.’

  Arabella gave me her best deep look to remind me that I was now tasked with confronting my father about it, which would not be easy.

  *

  ‘Can’t help much,’ he said with some finality. ‘She forgot the rule, you see, Lottie – mustn’t frat with the enemy – serious stuff. She’ll probably be asked to leave the service. You know, get the sack.’

  I didn’t like my father mentioning a sack, because Harry was always sure that if you were on the wrong side of the authorities they put you in one – with some added ballast, of course – and by-mistake-on-purpose dropped you into the swirling water of the Thames.

  ‘However, I’ll do what I can.’

  My father looked dubious and turned away before turning back.

  ‘Of course, you could do something to help this friend of yours,’ he said suddenly. ‘That would probably be better. Get on the right side of her – find out more about this chap, always the best way – get in close, watch his habits, make notes, etc. What he likes, who he talks to, where he dines out.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I would be very good at that,’ I said, too quickly.

  ‘In that case, nothing to be done. Your friend may well end up in dickie’s meadow.’

  All my childhood I had never been able to find out where dickie’s meadow was, but I always knew from the way my father referred to it that it was somewhere nice people would not want to be.

  ‘I’ll do what I can, then,’ I said, knowing that it was the last thing I wanted.

  I went up to my room and lay on my bed and thought of how awful it was going to be. I would be spying on a friend, and not just a friend – on Zuzu, but if it was the only way to get her off some draconian punishment that would end up with her being force-fed like suffragettes, so be it. Of course Arabella had to be in on it. Very little in my life worked if I didn’t let Arabella in on my plans. It was not that she was all-wise and all-seeing, it was because she had the one thing that Harry and I lacked – common sense.

  ‘As the great man said, there is too little of it about for it to be common,’ Harry always intoned.

  Arabella had advised against Harry being part of any plan as far as Zuzu went, and of course she was right, but it was very difficult to hatch a plan without him getting suspicious. He had this way of knowing things you hadn’t told him, so much so that I sometimes felt it was dangerous even to think in front of him. I suppose this all came about from our working together, but whatever the reason it was very constraining.

  Not that I told Arabella this. I just agreed not to tell Harry anything in case he was disgusted that I was willing to spy on a friend. He hadn’t been too happy about our part in infiltrating a certain well-known actor’s house. It had been against his principles and he had only carried it off because he was an actor, and not a bloated capitalist. Harry did not like bloated capitalists, feeling that they did not add to the beauty of things. Myself, I was all for them as long as they backed films and plays.

  As it happened I was right, and Harry being Harry he was on to it immediately.

  ‘It’s something to do with Zuzu?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘How big a bit?’

  ‘A sizeable bit – more a chunk really. Perhaps you could come too?’

  ‘I have been booked for a radio play, big names involved. Poets and playwrights that you usually only see on volumes of classic literary output in university libraries.’

  I kissed Harry because I was impressed by his coping with ancient poets, but he wasn’t paying much attention so I carried on with my plan to meet Zuzu at the star’s penthouse in Mayfair. I can tell you, I was in dread, so it was all I could do to leave.

  The reason I was in dread was that I feared that Zuzu, by dint of her involvement, would have become somehow less. Perhaps it was for this reason that I took Arabella with me and because she knew so much more about everything, and even if she didn’t she always looked as if she did. The penthouse was knee-deep in white carpet as we discovered when the French maid opened the door to us.

  We snowshoed our way through to the drawing room where we could hear the deep tones of the star and the lighter ones of Zuzu in what was obviously an important discussion.

  The atmosphere in the room was one to which I would eventually become used, but on this occasion it struck me as being almost eerie. It was as if life outside the windows was not taking place: there were no taxis drawing up in rhythmic succession, there were no meals being ordered in the famous restaurant downstairs, there was in short nothing going on except the life of the star, and his presence was filling the whole room. Or he certainly thought it was. And here’s a thing: I knew from Arabella’s best and most Gandhi-like expression as soon as she saw Zuzu that she had indeed changed.

  She was even more Zuzu than before.

  ‘Sir’, as Zuzu called him, had an authority all of his own making, a huge glass of something alcoholically lethal in one hand, an untipped cigarette burning away in the other. When he greeted us his voice was immensely impressive, deep cello notes bouncing across the room so that even ‘hello’ sounded positively Shakespearean.

  Yet he was as nothing compared to Zuzu. It was immediately obvious that her aura far outshone his.

  ‘Sir must eat early on account of studio hours,’ she explained, pursing her lips, which was one of her specialities. ‘You’ll join us, of course.’

  Arabella and I declined. My reason for declining was that when faced with an ego as large as that of Sir, I would not be able to swallow a morsel, and I like swallowing morsels. Not even lobster mayonnaise would tempt me to stay, and yet we both knew we had to stay for a little to collar Zuzu.

  Arabella and I perched on the squashy sofas, staring at him pacing about the room smoking and drinking and opining while Zuzu bossed her eyes at us.

  He stopped suddenly.

  ‘Why are you ladies laughing? Are you laughing? Is there something amusing happening?’

  ‘Only because Sir is being so amusing,’ Zuzu put in quickly, to cover for us.

  He thought for a minute.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, I am amusing,’ he agreed.

  An intense-looking woman came into the room bearing with her a couple of scripts. Zuzu clapped her hands. ‘Time for Sir to do his homework.’

  ‘Oh, God, must I? Some of the lines are so dead, I swear not even Olivier could revive them.’

  Sir took a deep draught of his drink at the same time as pulling on his cigarette, a feat that always leaves me feeling a vague admiration.

  Zuzu indicated that we could leave Sir’s presence now, and we followed her into the lift and downstairs to the bar, which suddenly seemed like an oasis of normality.

  ‘So – who sent you?’

  Arabella looked calm at this, eyes unmoving, while I cleared my throat and looked mortified.

  ‘The usuals.’

  ‘I am on leave, all a
bove board as far as the powers that be are concerned.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, sounding creepy.

  ‘So where’s the smoke drifting from? Why are the drums beating?’

  Zuzu ordered champagne cocktails and smiled, and I knew at once that all was not as it seemed. It was that smile. The one she turned on Monty that always had him spinning round and dusting the very heavens for her.

  Arabella responded after only a sip of her cocktail. ‘A grub is on to you.’

  I frowned. They were talking serious Section talk now, which was out of my league.

  Zuzu stopped smiling and lit a cigarette in her usual elegant way. ‘A lowly grub or a great fat grub?’

  ‘A big fat one. Writes for a distinguished newspaper and wants to drag the security service through the mud, denigrate the work, generally cause mirth and derision at our expense. You know the type: mixes with people whom he despises, ears flapping, eyes that can see around doors while he stays in the room. Very successful at it, so he gets asked everywhere.’

  Long before Arabella mentioned his name she had rather lost me, except for one thing – this so-called grub was obviously pretty horrid.

  Zuzu drew on her cigarette, sipped her champagne cocktail, and looked from one to the other of us, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘What’s his angle?’

  ‘Mata Hari, of course,’ Arabella said briefly.

  At that Zuzu gave her best gurgling laugh. Once again I thought of Monty and how he would raise his wig in delight when he heard that sound, and murmur, ‘Mademoiselle, oh, mademoiselle, oh, the delight of you.’

  ‘Oh, but this is such fun,’ Zuzu said. ‘We can have such fun with this.’

  Arabella and I looked at each other in some astonishment. Even I knew that people did not have fun with important grubs. Grub Strasse, as Melville called Fleet Street, always, but always, had the last word. It was just a fact.

  ‘Never fight the newspapers,’ was my father’s terse comment if the matter was ever raised at Dingley Dell.

  ‘So here’s how,’ Zuzu said, and she took a hotel napkin and drew an arrow on it. ‘One of you take him for a drink, and beg him, and I mean beg him, not to break the story that I am having a huge affair with Sir. You will exaggerate my role in the War Office; mention in passing that my father was a celebrated wartime agent, and so on. Meanwhile I will do what I do best – and make mischief.’