Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I’ve just done the first load, always measure the soap myself,’ he said, beaming, and thrust the packet at the maid who continued to look French and cross. ‘Voulez-vous please get behind the drinks trolley toute suite, ma bonne Hortense?’

  I glanced at Harry. Drinking while writing was not something we did. It was just not ethical. However, I immediately saw an opening. We could refuse to drink and write, then take our leave at once. I imagined us being very dignified. Telling all our friends how committed we had been. Dermot might even admire us for our stand. It could be good.

  ‘Mr Hunter – we never drink until after we have written. It is a rule.’

  ‘Of course you don’t, Mr Harry Writer,’ Bennett Hunter agreed. ‘But tonight you are not writing, you are entertaining me. We are celebrating our contract together. Before I leave you for a few moments to make sure all is well in the laundry room, Mr Harry Writer, will you do the honours by making us Billy Wilder’s favourite drink, eh? While he does so, my dear Lottie will tell me a few of her weenies for this film we will shoot in Paris sur Seine. No doubt there will be bateaux mooches involved and of course the Ritz Hotel.’

  Even I knew that the Ritz in Paris housed a bar which all the American and many English writers and journalists liked to drink each other under – while telling themselves they were doing valuable research.

  I even remembered that Hal knew some of them.

  ‘A bunch of old soaks who think they’re amusing because their editors print “from our witty Paris correspondent” at the top of their weekly columns,’ he’d boomed. ‘And one of them threatened my sister with writing a lousy review of her book unless she went upstairs with him. She left before the melon, bless her.’

  ‘Well, of course we will involve the Ritz Hotel, Mr Hunter,’ I agreed, taking my Martini from Harry. ‘But first we have to decide will our hero have the camera on his shoulder, or will it be coming towards him? Technically that is what we have to establish first, you will agree?’

  As I finished speaking there was the sound of something being dropped.

  It was Harry’s jaw.

  ‘My dear Lottie, I see and hear you speak Cahiers du Cinéma,’ Mr Hunter purred.

  I could do nothing of the sort. But since I was quite small I had made a point of reading Mrs Graham’s Movie Weekly. Recently there had been an interview with a famous French director in which he said that sort of thing.

  ‘Of course, the French influence is very much à la mode at the moment,’ Harry put in, quickly.

  ‘How long can it last, Mr Hunter?’ I asked, looking grave but innocent, a look I was intent on perfecting. ‘How long will audiences want to sit through subtitles, or follow balloons through the streets of Paris? How long?’

  Mr Hunter was getting excited, but just as he was about to opine the pinger on his watch went off and it was obviously a signal that his wash had been completed. He sprang to his feet and exited the room while telling us not to move, which we couldn’t because we had hardly begun our Martinis, and they are sacred to Harry.

  ‘Where are you leading us, Lottie?’ he asked in a whisper, looking round as if he suspected the room was bugged.

  ‘How do I know? Your go next, Mr Harry Writer.’

  ‘Thanks, Lottie.’

  ‘Busk it,’ I suggested.

  ‘Cahiers du Cinéma indeed—’

  ‘You got us into this job with the washing thing. I mean that got us the job, your sympathy about the washing.’

  Before Harry could defend himself Mr Hunter came back into the room looking as if his editing suite had blown up.

  ‘Disaster, disaster!’

  He sat down very suddenly opposite us and drank deeply of his Martini.

  We waited, somehow knowing that it had to be something to do with washing.

  ‘Hortense has just given in her notice – that I could take – but her parting revenge for Waterloo was to put a tiny yellow duster in the washing machine! All my smalls from the Rue de Rivoli – ruined.’

  We stared at him, both of us struggling with our emotions.

  ‘Mr Hunter, if this weren’t so tragic it would be farcical,’ Harry said, eventually, straight-faced. ‘In which case you could always tell everyone your smalls were from the Rue Feydeau.’

  He was not usually in the habit of making heavy-handed jokes about French playwrights, but things were getting so desperate we had to have an excuse to laugh.

  Mr Hunter, who had just taken far too big a sip of his dry Martini, made a noise that was somewhere between a snort and a gasp of laughter.

  ‘From now on,’ he said finally, ‘that is going to be my line. I should warn you that anything, but anything, you say in here that is either clever or witty is mine because I am paying you, Mr Harry Writer.’

  Even so he was still so distressed about his smalls that his concentration was gone, so we left him shortly afterwards.

  Once we were clear of the Hunter mansion we retired to our favourite coffee bar. Since we still had not got any further with the so-called comedy set in Paris that we were meant to be writing, I relented and told Harry about my Rolls-Royce idea. He groaned. Harry’s groan was someone else’s thumbs down.

  ‘Times are desperate,’ I reminded him. ‘We have a contract. Besides I want a motor car.’

  ‘Why can’t you want a car like everyone else?’

  ‘I like saying motor car. It makes a car sound more important, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said, and since he was in that kind of mood I left off talking about Merrily It Rolls Along and let him stare out of the window in a blue funk. Because that is the best thing to do when you are writing with someone else, leave them alone in their funk. After quite a boring fifteen minutes I left him and went back to Dingley Dell where I had a laugh with Hal and Melville, both sitting up late with my father’s whisky, moaning about theatre. I loved to sit listening to actors moaning. I found it very soothing, and of course they were very sympathetic about Merrily and Mr Hunter, and even thought he would like it.

  ‘Rolls-Royce and Paris? He will bite at it, darling, bite at it,’ Hal boomed.

  I knew he was just being kind, but as pressures increased and my motor car seemed to be fast disappearing down a minor road never to be seen again, I felt something had to be done, or rather said. We couldn’t just sit about and drink Martinis and talk about Mr Hunter’s yellow smalls.

  I was not wrong. The next evening Mr Hunter was waiting for us with the expectant air of a father-to-be. I avoided looking at him too closely because I knew there was a danger that I would picture him wearing yellow undies under his clothes. Harry poured the Martinis as usual, and to my astonishment began to expound on my idea, avoiding using my title, which I knew he particularly disliked – and no one could blame him.

  Mr Hunter was immediately intrigued.

  ‘My dear Lottie, this is just up our Parisian street, would you not say? How clever is Mr Harry Writer?’

  I smiled weakly, before giving Harry my ‘I’ll see you later’ look. He smiled back, but his smile had a shrug in it, and his eyes said ‘desperate times’, and he made a very soft ‘vroom-vroom’ sound as Mr Hunter walked up and down his drawing room, lighting a cigar and talking about the Rue de Rivoli and Maxim’s and the marvels of eating in Paris.

  ‘So this young man answers the advertisement for a chauffeur and takes the old lady to Paris, and she eventually returns to America where she dies, leaving him the Rolls —’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Was this the way you got your Rolls?’ he asked, pointing his cigar at Harry.

  Harry opened his mouth to say ‘no, actually’ or something similar, but I butted in before he could.

  ‘We never discuss the Rolls, Mr Hunter,’ I said. ‘Never, ever discuss the provenance of a Rolls, or it will immediately lose its magic.’

  Harry stared at me as Mr Hunter smiled and then sighed with pleasure. ‘My dear Lottie, I like your style. I have liked your style from the moment you came for an interview.
Both of you, you have style. And what is more you were the only ******* writers who made me ******* laugh.’

  Harry had stopped looking astonished so we were able to continue with the storyline, or ‘weenie’ as I still insisted we called it, to which I was pleased to say Mr Hunter also adhered.

  ‘So we have Paris, we have a Rolls-Royce, and we have a penniless young man. Now we need another female – not just the old lady.’

  ‘The wise old lady,’ I corrected him. ‘She is brilliant with stocks and shares. She teaches him how to play the market. Buy low, sell high … you know the kind of thing, Mr Hunter?’

  It was something I had heard one of my father’s agents say. Needless to say he was very rich and always trying to get my father to follow his example and play the stock exchange, but money was never of interest to my father. He only cared about matters of National Importance, and if my mother ever reminded him that money did not grow on trees he would stare at her in such a way as to suggest that if it didn’t – it should.

  ‘So who are we going to for the chauffeur? Burt or Cary? Cary? Yes, Cary. I know them both so well, I have their shoe sizes on file, the kind of chocolate cake that Burty likes, the kind of steak Cary goes for. Oh, yes, they will love this. But what about the girl? Sophia perhaps? Vivien certainly. Although she is now more woman than girl. She has such style, such style! And certainly convinced as Cleopatra ...’

  ‘We will leave the casting to you, Mr Hunter. We will just write.’

  ‘You will not just write, my dear Lottie, you will deliver me this script in the next fortnight. And not a day later.’

  Mr Hunter’s indulgent tone had changed to that of a hardened producer. We quickly drained our Martinis and sprang up.

  ‘See you in fourteen days, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘The bell has rung. It will be your driver.’

  We hurried to the front door feeling that even the time it took to get through the hall would be time away from writing the script.

  ‘Did you tell Monty to call for us?’

  ‘Naturally. Have to play the game with the Mr Hunters of this world, Lottie.’

  ‘You might have told me. I didn’t think you even liked the idea – didn’t like Merrily.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea. I hate it,’ Harry agreed as we settled into the back of Rollo. ‘But you want a motor car – needs must, Lottie-bags.’

  I stared out of the window. Everything always looked so different when we were in Rollo – trees and buses and even London taxis seemed to take on a sheen.

  ‘Do you really think we will get to the end of this script and it will go into production?’ I asked Harry later.

  He looked up from his typewriter as I looked down at my notes, which were as usual unintelligible.

  ‘I can’t even believe we have got this far, Lottie.’

  We had barely drafted a word when Mr Hunter started to telephone us. ‘Dewi should never have given him my number,’ Harry moaned.

  Night after night we sat up with that script, and night after night – sometimes at three in the morning – Mr Hunter rang Harry.

  Once his washing was done he had great trouble sleeping and it was soon apparent that he was determined that we should have the same problem.

  Into the second week Commander Steerforth started to look worried. ‘You’re looking quite pallid, Lottie.’

  ‘You should see Harry,’ I said briefly.

  At last the first draft was finished, one week and six days later.

  I thought I might have a headache coming on so Harry took it into the Hunter mansion.

  When he finally came back and we met in the coffee bar, I stared at him wordless, not because Mr Hunter hated it, but because Harry reminded me of someone, and I now knew who it was. It was the man I had seen coming out of the producer’s office what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Of course, I said nothing because I only had to tell Harry that a shirt didn’t suit him for him to take to his bed.

  ‘So – the Hunter verdict?’

  ‘He hates it. Too much dialogue, too little sex.’

  ‘Same old, same old,’ I said with some relief, thinking that although I would never get my motor car I could at least get some sleep – oh, and Harry too, of course. ‘So that is that,’ I added, looking round to order some more coffee as a sort of muted celebration.

  ‘No, Lottie, that is not that at all.’

  ‘It must be. The two weeks is over.’

  Harry stood up.

  ‘No time for coffee, we have another commission – at least, you have.’

  I could feel myself paling. No, really, pale to the lips, white to the gills.

  ‘Burt is coming over, touching down tonight. Mr Hunter wants his dear Lottie to make him a chocolate cake just like she made for Mr Hunter himself.’

  ‘That wasn’t my cake, that was one Mrs Graham made for me to take him. I can’t ask her to make another. She’s got so much on.’

  ‘But you can, Lottie-bags, because on it depends much. Anyway you never told me you left him a cake. Kind of creepy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yup,’ I agreed, miserably. ‘It was when Hortense dyed his undies; I thought it might cheer him up between maids.’

  ‘Well, it did cheer him up, and apparently Burty, as Mr Hunter calls him, had a slice or nine and is even now flying back into London with chocolate cake at the top of his dietary requirements. Mr Hunter requests another from his dear Lottie.’

  I hurried back to Dingley Dell. Perhaps Mrs Graham would lend me the recipe?

  Mrs Graham looked at me.

  ‘You’re never going to attempt a cake, Miss Lottie?’

  ‘I am, Mrs Graham,’ I said bravely, trying not to see the look on her face.

  ‘Well, take my advice – treble the amounts in the recipe to allow for at least three attempts.’

  How I came to hate the sight of chocolate cake, could never be dragged to one of Burt’s movies or see the name of Bennett Hunter on a credit without feeling vaguely Uncle Dick, stems from that night.

  And the worst of it was that I knew it was entirely my own creepy fault and Harry was quite right not to feel sorry for me.

  Monty delivered the final cake in Rollo and reported back that it was received with unconcealed delight, as was Dewi’s call shortly after to say that a cheque for the script that Mr Hunter so hated had arrived on his desk.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said to us over a celebratory lunch. ‘Really I can’t. Bennett Hunter hated that script, really hated it. It took three calls to tell me just how much. But he still paid you. You know what he kept saying—’

  ‘Too much dialogue, too little sex,’ Harry and I both said together before Dewi could go on.

  ‘That’s right. Still, now you can get a car.’

  ‘We have one,’ we both said again, staring out of the restaurant window at the green Morris Minor parked outside. Dewi stared at where we were looking and tried to look as enthusiastic as we felt.

  ‘It’s got imitation leopardskin seats,’ I told him proudly.

  Dewi gave us both a grave look.

  ‘A very good thing you didn’t go up for the Bennett Hunter job in that,’ he said, sighing happily. ‘Always put on a good show. Or as my mother used to say – never look as poor as you feel.’

  A few days later as we walked round to Sunday lunch at Dingley Dell Harry mused as to how or where our script would end up. As a vehicle for some young lovely perhaps? Or maybe an ageing female star would be brought out and dusted down to make a come-back as the old lady who owned the Rolls Royce.

  We knew it would probably be some time before we found out the fate of the script, but for the moment the door of Dingley Dell was opening, and the sound of Melville playing Noël Coward’s ‘I’ll See You Again’ was drifting towards us. This together with the smell of roast beef cooking was reassuring to say the least.

  In the drawing room Hal was arguing with my mother, and my father was pouring drinks. All in all, everything was
pretty good in our tiny part of the world, until that is pudding appeared at the lunch table and a glazed look came over my face as my mother announced that my two previous attempts at chocolate cake had gone into Mrs Graham’s Sunday trifle.

  ‘You must do this again, Mrs Graham,’ Hal boomed at her. ‘Chocolate trifle – it’s magic.’

  Needless to say, Harry promptly hummed a reprise of ‘I’ll See You Again’ as he helped himself to a large spoonful.

  Myself, I thought only of the bliss of owning a motor car, and waited for the cheese.

  MUCH ADO ABOUT EVERYTHING

  Harry was away acting in a film with two very famous British comedians when the telephone on my desk at MI5 rang. It was Dewi and he was sounding excited, which must mean that someone with a leaky Biro had rung him with an idea. In a few seconds this turned out to be true. Apparently the agent of one of the comedians had rung Dewi professing interest in a script that we had written.

  ‘What script is this?’ I asked, immediately feeling suspicious, because as far as I knew none of our scripts was worth re-oxygenating.

  ‘The Happy Communist,’ Dewi answered.

  ‘But that has already been made as Sexy Aliens, Dewi. Remember?’

  ‘No, this is the original Happy Commie. Apparently Harry gave him the first draft – The Happy Communist as you both penned it.’

  ‘But again, it’s been paid for under Sexy Aliens, Dewi.’

  ‘Back to back, that is the new thing with scripts for films, Lottie, back to back – and inside out too. You film it at the same time using two different scripts, same actors, same director. Cheaper.’

  I was always uneasy when Dewi was at his most confident. Besides, The Happy Communist had been about a young man like Harry – tall, slim and not a month over twenty-five. Both the very famous comedians were short and tipping into forty, and that was just their waistlines.

  At Harry’s flat later that day I managed to look reproachful.

  ‘You gave Leslie Johns The Happy Communist without telling me,’ I stated.

  ‘I did,’ Harry agreed as he chopped onions to make us his favourite curry.