by Simon Brett
‘That still doesn’t make it polite.’ Twinks caught her mother’s intonations perfectly.
The star let out a relaxed chuckle. ‘I like a woman who has standards.’
‘Glad to hear it. I wouldn’t think you find that many of them out here.’
‘And I like a woman who has spirit. Has anyone ever told you, Twinks, that you look beautiful when you’re angry?’
‘Nobody of my acquaintance would have had the brazen effrontery to say anything of the kind. My Mater also brought me up to believe that making personal remarks is the behaviour of the guttersnipe.’
‘Bully for her. She sounds like one tough old bird. And she certainly produced one beautiful daughter; beautiful when she’s angry and beautiful when she ain’t. Anyhow, I like what you said to Toni and Gottie and Wilbur.’
‘Why?’
‘Hell, because you put all three of the dumb clucks in their place.’
Twinks shrugged.
‘What’s more,’ Hank Urchief continued with a sly smile, ‘I kinda liked it from my point of view.’
The smallest wrinkle of puzzlement crossed her perfect brow. ‘Why?’
‘Well, you just gave the bum’s rush to one of the sexiest men in Hollywood, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and one of the richest men in Hollywood. There aren’t many people out here who’d dare to do that.’
The perfect shoulders shrugged again. ‘It’s no icing off my birthday cake. I just speak as I find.’
‘That’s a very rare thing out here in Hollywood.’
‘Why?’
‘Because getting on the wrong side of powerful people is a pretty sure way of digging a great big grave for your career.’
‘And why should that worry me?’
‘Hell, that kind of stuff worries everyone.’
‘Not me,’ said Twinks, speaking no more than the truth. ‘If doing what I’ve been doing for the last three days is “having a career”, then it’s as much fun as milking frogs.’
‘Hey, but you’re the hottest stuff Hollywood’s seen for a long time.’
‘Don’t talk such toffee,’ said Twinks.
‘You’ve just realised the dream of every girl. You’re playing Helen of Troy in Gottfried von Klappentrappen’s The Trojan Horse. What’s more, you’re playing opposite me. That’s about as good as it gets for an American girl.’
Twinks was about to say that, compared to English girls, American girls were very easily satisfied, when Hank Urchief went on, ‘Besides, you got more than that. You’re my girl.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’re my girl. That’s why I was so pleased when I heard you cut the other three off at the knees. That was you saying, “Get lost, losers! The broad you’re dealing with here is Hank Urchief’s girl.”’
‘You think that’s why I – to use your colourful but indelicate phrase – “cut them off at the knees”? Because you have some kind of ownership deal on me?’
‘Sure thing, babe.’
‘Well, Mr Urchief, you’ve got things about as wrong as the man who thought he’d picked up a cooked prawn and put a live scorpion in his mouth. I am not anyone’s girl. I am a person, not something that can be sold by the pound like fresh fish! Nobody owns me! You can own a dog, you can own a racehorse, maybe out here in Hollywood there are people you can own, but I, Honoria Lyminster, am not one of them! I have no intention of spending my life dangling on some man’s charm bracelet. And if you thought I was going to be impressed by your so-called celebrity, then the women you usually spend your time with must all be soft-yolked voidbrains. You, Mr Urchief, as it says all over your publicity, were brought up on a turkey farm in Minnesota. Out here that may be a tick on your homework, but where I come from, to admit to such a background would be regarded as irredeemably common!’
Though he didn’t know the full appalling implications back in England of her final word, Hank Urchief got the gist from Twinks’s intonation. He looked humbled and chastened, then he noticed that her raised voice had attracted considerable attention to their exchange, and that the top names in Hollywood stood, gaping, in a circle around them.
‘So, Mr Urchief,’ said Twinks from the very pinnacle of her hauteur, ‘I have only one more thing to say.’ She turned to face her victim as she pronounced the words: ‘Snubbins to you!’
The phrase may have been unfamiliar to the Californian crowd, but there was no mistaking its meaning. A communal shocked intake of breath was followed by a communal silence as Twinks found her Humungous Studios publicity minder and, in that voice of her mother’s that brooked no argument, demanded a car to take her back to the Hollywood Hotel immediately.
The pencils of Heddan Schoulders and her lesser acolytes could hardly be seen, so fast were they moving across the paper of their notebooks.
15
Heddan Tales
BRIT BARONETTE HUMILIATES HOLLYWOOD HUNKS!!!
Yes, once again your friendly dirt-disher, your hack on the inside track, your bulletin buddy Heddan Schoulders was right on the hot spotteroonie when what happens happens. And boy, did it happen at last night’s party, given by sultry sheik Toni Frangipani! Hollywood’s new sensation, important English import, the frock with the purtiest clock on the block, Honoria Lyminster, whose Helen of Troy has turned The Trojan Horse into a stamping stallion, has shown what it’s like to be real royalty. Last night she put so-called Hollywood royalty in its place with a handful of lizard licks from her pretty little tongue.
First to put his incautious head on the block was her host, Toni Frangipani himself. If you believe his publicity, there’s not a woman on the planet who wouldn’t roll over like a poodle for oodles of canoodling with the Sheik of the Sahara. Toni only has to turn his smouldering eyes on some babe and the tottie instantly turns hottie. Toni flickers through more female fantasies than a centipede has socks. Uh-uh, not any more, I think we’ll have to redraft his résumé! Last night, in front of all the Hollywood high-rollers, Lady Honoria Lyminster treated Mr Frangipani like an Italian waiter who’d just slopped the soup over her! Not content with wiping the floor with him, she wrung him out as well. Baroness Lyminster reduced Toni Frangipani from Hollywood stud to collar stud. Not so much a dressing-down as a stripping naked to his birthday suiteroonie. Wow, did she put a big pin in his balloon! It might just be that, through his Italian connections, the shook-up sheik and ultimate it-man may be looking for a hitman.
But that wasn’t a full evening’s work for our dangerous duchess. Next, she was propositioned by Teutonic tyrant, Gottie von Klappentrappen. Most movie models who’d just been cast in his latest crackerjack The Trojan Horse would be doing contortions to keep the right side of the movie maestro whose restless eye seems to be on the rove again. What’s more, rumours of ructions with his latest wifie, superannuated siren Zelda Finch, mean the bouncing ball may once again be looking to bounce into other boudoirs. But after the words exchanged last night, one boudoir the Prussian playboy won’t be bouncing into belongs to his new Helen of Troy. The flea she put in his ear was so big Gottie’s gonna be deaf for months!
Some dishy dames might call it a day at that, but not our perky princess. Her next knuckle-up was with lip-zipping zillionaire Wilbur T. Cottonpick, who’s got financial fingers in more pies than you see in a math test. But no amount of mazuma makes a match with our forthright filly. Cottonpick too was cut down to the size of a cricket.
But hey, I hear you saying, that kind of behaviour’s bonzer if a broad’s gotta boyfriend. And didn’t you hear from this column – more reliable than Wells Fargo – that Honoria Lyminster was sharing snuggle-time with Minnesota Mightyman Hank Urchief? Well, if you’d heard what she said to him last night, you’d think the unthinkable – that your smear-supplier Heddan Schoulders had got something wrong! If I did, it’s because my source of secrets on that scene was none other than Hank Urchief himself. I guess he, like a whole lotta men, was just bigging up his boudoir credentials.
So, four cinemati
c skirt-chasers brought down in one evening by one brave broaderoonie. And what do we dumped-on dames say about the destruction of those four egos by Queen Honoria of Lyminster? We say: ‘Good on ya, gal! Keep up the good work!’
16
Kidnappers Beware!
Neither Blotto nor Twinks read the newspaper in which Heddan Schoulders’ daily column was published and drooled over by everyone else in Hollywood. So they weren’t aware how Twinks’s evening at Toni Frangipani’s had been chronicled. Nor were they aware of the shock-waves the column had sent through the film-making world. Four industry icons had been cut down to size in a way that rarely happens in Hollywood to people who are still in their pomp. (People whose careers were on the slide were reckoned to be fair game. Many stars of yesterday had had their professional demise hastened by pillorying in the gossip columns. It was too easy for the commentators, like shooting fish in a barrel. But soon after, the unfortunate former stars were treated to a worse fate than vilification from the gossip columnists: total silence from them. No coverage of any kind. The silent telephone, the unreturned calls to agents and producers. Total eclipse of career. Hollywood could be a cruel place.)
So the incidents at Toni Frangipani’s remained undiscussed by the aristocratic siblings as they drank room service cocktails in Blotto’s suite at the Hollywood Hotel. He certainly had more important things on his mind. ‘I’m stuck up a chimney with a sweep’s brush behind me, Twinks me old chammy leather. There don’t seem to be any leads on Mimsy’s kidnapping.’
‘And when you met Lenny Orvieto, you really didn’t get a whiff that the Stilton was iffy?’
‘No, he’s a Grade A foundation stone. Kind of boddo one wouldn’t hesitate to go into the jungle with. Runs this absolutely pukka charitable set-up to help out poor greengages from Italy when they first arrive in the States. It’s called the Cosa Nostra.’
‘Is it?’ asked Twinks, suspicion glinting in her azure eyes. ‘I understood that the Cosa Nostra was just another monicker for the Mafia.’
‘Wrong on all counts, my dear sis.’ It was rarely that Blotto had to put Twinks right on any matter of fact, and he found he was rather enjoying the experience. ‘Apparently, a lot of people plump for the wrong plum there. No, the Mafia’s a nasty load of stenchers, into drugs, protection rackets and all that kind of rombooley. Whereas the Cosa Nostra just help people out – like the Good Samurai.’
‘I think you probably mean “Samaritan”,’ his sister suggested.
‘Possibly,’ Blotto conceded. ‘Anyway, the Cosa Nostra are definitely on the good side of the egg basket.’
Twinks still didn’t look convinced. ‘Blotto me old tin of tooth powder . . .’ she began tentatively.
‘What is it, Twinks me old needle and thread?’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Come on, uncage the ferrets.’
‘Well,’ she continued diffidently, ‘I think maybe, Blotters, you should prepare yourself for the tidgy possibility that Lenny “The Skull” Orvieto may not be all that he seems.’
‘What, you mean that in real life he’s got hair?’
‘No, that wasn’t quite the pen I was pushing. Fact is, I happen to know that, whatever spaghetti he may be feeding you, he’s actually an extremely vicious and violent Mafia boss.’
‘Well, I’ll be battered like a pudding!’ Blotto thought for a slow moment, then said, ‘Sorry, Twinks me old Bath Oliver, but I’m afraid I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s Jemima’s very own truth!’ his sister protested. ‘I was told by no less a person than Hank Urchief.’
This did give Blotto pause. The one man whose heroism he had never doubted, whose word was his bond and who was no more capable of lying than George Washington after cutting down the rain forest, was Chaps Chapple. And the actor who played Chaps Chapple was Hank Urchief. So if he said something, it must be true.
‘Tickey-Tockey, Twinks,’ he said slowly. ‘I think I’ll have to recalibrate my binoculars as far as Lenny “The Skull” Orvieto is concerned.’
‘I’m afraid you’d better, Blotters.’
A rare flash of anger reddened her brother’s usually serene countenance. ‘To think I believed the lump of toad-spawn, and all the time he was just jiggling my kneecap.’
‘I’m afraid he was, Blotters.’
‘Well, nobody jiggles Devereux Lyminster’s kneecap and gets away with it. I’ll go back to Lenny Orvieto and grill him like a well-done steak. We have strong reason to believe there’s a Mafia connection to Mimsy La Pim’s kidnapping. If Lenny’s the biggest Mafia boss in Hollywood, then he must be behind the crime. I’ll confront him and demand to know why he wanted to do the vanishing trick on a sweet, innocent little sugar cube like Mimsy.’
‘Ye-es.’ Twinks hesitated. Though normally the most forthright of women, she never felt very happy about giving her brother bad news. But in this instance, it couldn’t be avoided. ‘There was something else Hank told me about Lenny “The Skull” Orvieto . . . something you might find a bit of a candle-snuffer . . .’ She stopped.
‘What was it? Now come on, Twinks, don’t fiddle round the furniture. Tell me the worst.’
Reluctantly his sister did as she was told. ‘To quote his own words, Hank Urchief described Mimsy La Pim as Lenny “The Skull” Orvieto’s “current bit of skirt”.’
‘Ah,’ said Blotto. Then, hopefully. ‘I assume that doesn’t mean she’s something he wears?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘I thought it probably didn’t.’ He struggled to digest the new information. ‘This turns the decanter on its head a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid it does, Blotters.’
‘Yes.’
Twinks allowed him a long silence to readjust to the new complexion that had just been put on things. Then she said softly, ‘There is one silver sixpence in the Christmas pudding, though, brother of mine.’
‘Is there?’ asked Blotto dolorously. He was unable to see any mitigating streak of light in the unremitting gloom into which Twinks’s words had cast him.
‘Well, presumably, now you know this about Mimsy La Pim, you no longer feel you have to follow your quest to rescue her?’
‘Puddledash!’ cried Blotto. ‘The very opposite! I will redouble my efforts! My mission is clearer than ever! Now there are two evil monsters from whom I must save Mimsy La Pim! The one who has kidnapped her and also the one who has imposed his wicked will upon her innocence – in other words, Lenny “The Skull” Orvieto! I, Devereux Lyminster, will rescue her from both those four-faced filchers. And I will succeed in my quest because my heart is pure – just like Sir Galleyproof.’
‘Galahad,’ said Twinks gently.
17
A New Helen of Troy?
The ego of the Hollywood male star is a force not to be underestimated. Though lording it through the waters of the film world like a killer whale, at the same time it’s as sensitive as a neurotic sea anemone. Swelling itself up like a bullfrog’s throat, it’s just as easily deflated.
And Heddan Schoulders’ report of Twinks’s actions at Toni Frangipani’s party had had a very deflating effect, not only on his ego but also on those of three other major players in Hollywood.
Men are not subtle creatures. Having suffered public humiliation at the hands of Twinks, all four injured parties demanded revenge.
For Gottfried von Klappentrappen the sense of grievance was twofold. Not only had his distended ego been publicly pricked by his new Helen of Troy, he also had worrying suspicions about the fidelity of his seventh wife.
On the set of The Trojan Horse the day Heddan Schoulders’ column was published, the director brooded like a globular landmine, liable to explode if anyone encroached on his private space. Woe betide the Greek soldier who got out of step or the Trojan one who poured his boiling oil from the ramparts too early that day. They got bawled out in a fine mixture of Californian and German.
Nor did his stars get much better treatment. Even without his other suspicions, Zelda
Finch’s ophidiophobia was really getting on his nerves, so much so that he couldn’t see his seventh marriage lasting a lot longer. And Hank Urchief’s laid-back cowboy casualness seemed by the hour to be increasingly unsuitable for a Greek hero. The star looked ill-at-ease slouching around in a breastplate and short tunic, and his bare legs seemed to be crying out to be covered by Chaps Chapple’s chaps. Von Klappentrappen bawled him out too. Everyone in the studio suffered from their director’s mood.
What made him particularly angry was the certainty that everyone around him knew more than he did. He was aware that a Hollywood film set has a communication system considerably speedier than the latest technology of telegraphs and transatlantic cables. And some off-camera sniggering suggested that most people on The Trojan Horse set could provide more details of his wife’s indiscretions than he could. He had to find out more.
He had only one source from which to get his information – the source of the rumour about Zelda and the blond-haired young man at Mimsy La Pim’s party. A source he now knew to be called Buza Cruz, though he couldn’t put a face to the name as there were hundreds of pretty little starlets employed on a project the size of The Trojan Horse.
A few questions to the stage crew had her quickly identified, though, and at lunch break von Klappentrappen didn’t turn to the gourmet food hamper he had supplied on set every day, but slummed it by going into the Humungous Studios commissary with the rest of the cast and crew.
Buza Cruz was sitting at a table with a gaggle of other starlets. For someone who, on screen, was only capable of looking as if she’d been turned to stone, she was remarkably animated. Clearly the leader of the gaggle, she led their giggling.
Which stopped abruptly as Gottfried von Klappen-trappen approached the table. The sight of the director in the commissary was sufficiently unusual to ensure the silence continued. He pointed to Buza Cruz and said, ‘I want to talk to you. The rest – raus!’ The gesture that accompanied the word made its meaning clear to those who didn’t understand German, and the gaggle scattered in a flurry of excited whispers.