MRS ERME
Good Lord! I feel exhausted just thinking about it. What about your own work in the meantime?
GWEN
It can wait. This can’t. Our doubt is our passion. We shall sift the evidence page by page. It may be harder than we imagine – but we shall solve this case if it kills us!
MRS ERME
You sound rather like Nancy Drew, dear.
GWEN
Ha! I’ve always dreamed of being a ‘sleuth’.
MRS ERME
(rising from the table)
Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a lie-down. Thank you, my darling. Gentlemen –
She nods to both GEORGE and CHAS, who stand up in deference. She makes a shuffling exit from the room.
INT. LIVING ROOM – AFTERNOON.
A more relaxed mood now that MRS ERME has gone. GEORGE and CHAS are seated in armchairs, both intent upon the chessboard between them. GWEN enters carrying a tray of coffee which she sets down on an adjacent table. Looking over CHAS’s shoulder she briefly surveys the state of the game.
GWEN
Someone’s looking vulnerable on his flank.
CHAS
I fear I’ve been, um, impetuous.
A pause while the two players stare at the board. GWEN watches CHAS as she pours the coffee.
GWEN
Not to divert you from the fray, Charles, but I wonder if I might ask you something?
CHAS
By all means.
GWEN
When Vereker said – I got this from George – that his ‘secret’ was apparent in every line he wrote, did he throw it down as a challenge? Or was he simply musing on its unfathomable nature? In other words, do you think he actually wants someone to find it?
CHAS
I’ve wondered about that myself. He no sooner told me about his secret than he warned me off trying to uncover it. ‘Give it up,’ he kept saying. Of course, there’s another possibility …
GWEN
Which is?
She has been hovering at CHAS’s shoulder; now she walks round to sit on the arm of GEORGE’s chair.
CHAS
That there mightn’t be a secret in there at all. He could just be having us on.
GEORGE
Why would he want to do that?
CHAS
I don’t know. To amuse himself?
GEORGE
He doesn’t strike me as the whimsical type. I mean, if Shakespeare had claimed there was something cryptic in his work nobody would have doubted him.
CHAS
Yes, but – Shakespeare! Would you really attach the same credence to a claim of Hugh Vereker’s?
GEORGE
So you’re suggesting he’s deceitful?
CHAS
No, no – that’s not what I mean. I just don’t know how you can be so sure that there is some deep secret there.
GEORGE
Oh, but Chas, my boy, you must remember that day we talked about Vereker in my office. When I gave you the novel to review I asked you to bring out the –
CHAS
‘The sense’, you said. Of course I remember. But I’ve no better idea of what you meant then than I do now.
GEORGE, his attention back on the board, moves a piece.
GEORGE
Check. Well, I was vague, granted. But I did convey to you the possibility of something ‘overlooked’ in his work before you met Vereker that weekend.
CHAS
This project of yours … Mightn’t it be easier for all concerned if I simply introduced you to him?
GWEN gets up and comes back round to CHAS’s side, her eyes on the game. CHAS picks up his queen, hesitates, then moves it across the board. GEORGE looks at GWEN, whose expression is eager.
GEORGE
That might rather spoil the fun. One doesn’t wish to encounter the fox before one’s had a chance to run him to earth.
GWEN
Well –
GEORGE
Gwendolen and I disagree on this. She’s dying to meet him. But she must play fair.
CUT TO: He picks up a chessman and moves it decisively across the board.
And that’s checkmate.
INT. LIVING ROOM – LATER.
GEORGE has briefly left the room. GWEN now occupies his seat, facing CHAS, who regards her with interest.
GWEN
When will you next see him?
CHAS
Vereker? Oh, we’re barely acquainted. Jane – Jane Burges – is his friend. That’s how I met him.
GWEN nods, looks thoughtful. She notices CHAS’s pack of cigarettes and holds them up enquiringly.
GWEN
May I?
CHAS feels for his matches, and quickly offers her a light.
It’s silly of me, I know, but I can’t help thinking I must get to him. But George would go mad if he found I’d gone behind his back.
A beat, while CHAS clears his throat.
CHAS
Well, if you really – I could probably arrange something.
GWEN
(coyly)
Charles, are you trying to make mischief?
CHAS
(abashed)
No, I – I just thought if I could be of service …
GWEN
You heard what George said – I must ‘play fair’.
CHAS
Yes. I’m terribly sorry. Forget I mentioned it.
At this moment GEORGE returns to the room. CHAS fidgets in his chair. GWEN is a perfect sphinx. GEORGE looks from one to the other, smiling uncertainly.
6
A perfect matutinal stillness reigned in Ennismore Gardens as Nat parked the Rolls beneath one of the plane trees. It was one of the oddities of London that you could turn off a roaring thoroughfare and find yourself somewhere as silent as a cobbled close. The stucco mansions lining the south and west sides of the square were preposterously grand; they could have been embassies, or discreet hotels for the untouchable rich. He shut the car door with a heavy clunk that almost echoed in the quiet.
He had come on a mission. At the end of lunch at the Trat, Berk had taken him aside for a moment – Nat had presumed it was to tell him off for calling Harold Pulver a gangster. He was wrong. It turned out that Vere Summerhill, lined up to play Hugh Vereker, was having cold feet about the project. The actor was an old friend of Nat’s, though they hadn’t seen one another in a while; Vere had spent much of the last decade working abroad.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Nat, unconsciously picking up Berk’s New York lingo.
‘He says he’s not sure about the script.’
‘The script? What script? I’m in the middle of writing it.’
Berk gave a little wince. ‘There’s a rough outline. Of a script. I sent it to him.’
‘A rough outline. Written by whom?’
‘By me. It’s more like a guide than a script.’
Nat tried to conceal his astonishment. As far as he knew Berk had never written anything longer than a memo. ‘You’ve – are you telling me you’ve read Henry James?’
‘I’m familiar with the background material. Look, I’m not claiming to be Joe Mankiewicz, but I had to give Vere something.’
‘Hmm. The willies, by the sound of it,’ said Nat. ‘So what am I supposed to do?’
‘Reassure him. Tell him how much this movie depends on him – no word of a lie, by the way.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
Berk sighed, dropping his gaze. ‘Look, just between us, the only reason Reiner agreed to do this picture is Vere. He’s nuts about the guy, has been ever since he was a kid and Vere was, you know, the next David Niven. It might be a queer thing for all I know.’
So that’s why they hired me as screenwriter, thought Nat. It all went back to a cause célèbre of recent times. Vere, a leading man in the thirties and an RAF hero in the forties, had lived an apparently blameless bachelor life into his early-middle age. One night in the autumn of
’53 he met two young naval ratings in a pub and went back home with them. The next day, after the men left his place, they got into a fight with two others and beat them up. It so happened one of the victims was a policeman. When the sailors were arrested the story of their night with ‘that actor’ came out, and the police cut them a deal. In return for dropping the assault charges the men would testify against Summerhill, claim that he had made advances and then ‘overpowered’ them – an unlikely contest, given the sailors’ strapping physicality. Vere was hauled up on a charge of ‘gross indecency’, the first time the phrase had been used since the Wilde case in 1895. Nat had stood bail for him, which ensured his place in the older man’s affections forever.
But Vere was convicted all the same: six months at Pentonville. On his release he found himself shunned by certain old confrères in the business. He did some stage work, which was well received, but he resented being broke and soon upped sticks for France, ‘where they don’t mind queers and ex-convicts so much’. In exile his reputation recovered; he picked modest, unshowy roles in a string of new wave films and to general surprise became sought after by a growing band of young directors. At Cannes he won an award for his performance as an artist dying of TB in The Last of the Bassanos. When De Sica named him in an interview as his favourite actor his stock took another leap. An international fashion house chose him as a model for their new range of sunglasses. Almost by accident Vere had returned to what he was in the 1930s – a star.
So what, Nat wondered, had tempted him back to Blighty? It surely wasn’t money. Vere could now run to an apartment overlooking Cap Ferrat. And this place wouldn’t be cheap to rent either, he thought, looking up at the imperial facade of Ennismore Gardens. He pulled the ancient doorbell, and a buzzer sounded to admit him. A wrought-iron balustrade climbed away from the gloomy entrance hall. On the second-floor landing Vere had stepped out to greet him.
‘Ah, the young pretender himself,’ he smiled. The epithet dated from Nat’s early days as an actor, though Vere couldn’t have known the stab of pain it caused.
‘Not so young any more, alas,’ Nat replied with a laugh, shaking his hand.
Vere wore his sixty-odd years with the same ease he did his Riviera tan and his suavely cut suit. His dark hair was possibly dyed – the ex-matinee idol’s vanity – but the lines on his face and the slight blurring of his features bespoke authority more than age. As he showed him around the rooms with their high cornicing and floor-to-ceiling windows, Nat listened with renewed envy to Vere’s magnificent light drawl; even banalities were delivered with a musician’s feel for cadence.
‘You’ll have tea, of course? It’s the one thing I always miss when I’m away – the French can do weather and wine and perfume, but they’ve not a clue about milk.’
On the way through to the living room Nat couldn’t help noticing the treasure on the walls; Vere had collected ‘a few nice things’ in the years since they’d last met. He spotted a Christopher Wood marine painting and a Paul Nash from the Western Front; there were sketches by Augustus John, Vaughan, Minton, a few Hockneys. On the chimney piece stood an exquisite small painting of a girl’s head by Ossian Blackler. Nat studied it for a moment.
‘I ran into Ossie recently, in Soho. Told me he’s got a big show coming at the Royal Academy.’
‘Yes, I read about that. How is he?’
‘Same as ever. Congenitally incapable of charm. Not that it seems to have held him back.’
Vere was absently revolving the gold signet ring on his little finger. Nat, wondering for how long he could delay the inevitable, said brightly, ‘So, back in London … for a long stay?’
‘Oh, a little while. I’ve got a full MOT at Harley Street coming up.’
Nat stared at him. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’
He shook his head. ‘I had a scare last year. Thought it might be cancer – but a false alarm.’
Vere picked up a gleaming silver box inlaid with ivory and offered Nat a cigarette. They both sparked up. Behind them came a brittle pitter-patter of feet: a blue-grey whippet trotted round the coffee table and folded himself on the sofa next to Vere. This, said Vere, was Mr Snooks, tickling and stroking his silky ears. The dog accepted the endearments before laying his head flat on the edge of the cushion. His sweet mournful eyes blinked at Nat.
‘There’s pathos in that gaze. He ought to go on the stage.’
‘He’s a little shy, old Snooks,’ said Vere, favouring his pet with a grave smile. Rather like his owner, thought Nat, who sensed an ever more fugitive personality behind Vere’s genial front. His stock-in-trade as an actor had been to project an outward poise from within a fervent romantic core. It had won him many hearts. But in life he seemed to have tamped down real feeling to the point of invisibility. His public ordeal – the revelation of his homosexuality and the trial that followed – had changed him forever. He had once confided to Nat that prison hadn’t really bothered him: he had been toughened by the war. What he couldn’t take was the catastrophic loss of dignity; that the press had been allowed to rummage about in his private life had sickened him. In consequence the portcullis had clanged down and whatever constituted his soul was hidden away from snoopers – and everyone else – for good. He was always friendly, always affable, always unknowable.
Nat took a deep breath. ‘I heard from Berk that you’re not altogether happy about the film.’
Vere sighed, and looked away. ‘I’m sorry, dear boy. I just don’t see what’s there for me – I don’t grasp this character at all.’
‘Well, it’s no wonder. You haven’t read the script yet.’
‘How so?’
‘I’m still working on it. I had no idea Berk had sent this “outline” to you in the meantime.’
Vere rested his chin on steepled fingers. His next words came slowly, with a little wince. ‘Darling, you know, I got through an awful lot of rubbish as a young actor. Cavaliers, courtiers, pirates, princes, whatever was offered. Most of it was damned good fun. But I never kidded myself that I was playing in anything other than rot.’ He took a meditative drag on his cigarette. ‘Well, the experience has taught me a couple of things. One – always get paid in sterling. Two – make sure your character is still standing by the last reel. If he dies any earlier it’s not worth doing.’
‘Good advice,’ Nat said uncertainly.
‘I’ve found it so,’ agreed Vere. ‘Which leaves me in a dilemma. Young Reiner couldn’t have been more charming when we met, seemed to know all my work, even the stuff I’d forgotten. He told me something about this little story, about my character, “the eminent novelist”. Made it sound intriguing. His people would send me a script, he said, so I waited, and waited. When it eventually arrived … oh dear. Henry James it was not. One would hardly have believed it worthy of Jesse James.’
‘As I said, that’s just some piece of junk Berk has thrown together. They ought never to have bothered you with it.’
‘But can you really see me as this fellow?’
‘Put aside any doubt on that score. You’re one of the few actors alive who has it in him to play a literary genius.’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth Nat knew he’d overegged it. Why ‘genius’ when he could simply have said ‘author’? You couldn’t flatter someone so cloddishly and hope to get away with it. He risked a glance at Vere, who said quietly, ‘Darling Nat. You have such an understanding of this business.’
Nat heaved an inward sigh of relief. Even Vere, civilised, unassuming Vere, had bought into the self-deluding myth of his profession: the actor was the almighty. But the cloud hadn’t entirely lifted from the older man’s brow.
‘All the same,’ he continued, ‘there remains a difficulty.’
‘Oh?’
Vere made a little gesture of regret. ‘I decided to read the original story. This novelist – Vereker – he’s a creature in the shadows. I don’t think that’s going to work, do you?’
Nat sensed Mr Snooks, the whippe
t, staring at him, a loyal retainer awaiting satisfaction for his master. ‘I think it does work. Vereker is the steady centre around whom the others satellite. So even when he’s not there in person –’
‘But that’s my point. After those early scenes with Charles and Jane he simply evaporates. We hear of him through mere reports. One needs to have him on the screen, otherwise …’
There was a hint, albeit slyly veiled, of a threat. Vere would not be fobbed off. If he had twigged how keenly Reiner wanted him for the part then Nat didn’t have much room to negotiate. So he plied him with assurances that the character of Hugh Vereker, far from evaporating, would be central to the dramatic design of Eureka. He flattered and cajoled and fudged the truth for a good ten minutes until Vere at last conceded that he ‘might be able to get near the fellow’ after all. My God, thought Nat, if he’s this needy now what’s he going to be like once the cameras start rolling?
Over another pot of tea and a cigarette the mood relaxed again, and Nat fanned out a few choice wafers of gossip he knew would please Vere. The actor had been out of England for so long Nat found himself in possession of far more material than he’d planned to draw upon. At some point Jimmy Erskine’s name came up.
‘You went to the funeral?’ said Vere.
‘I did. A pitiful turnout, I’m afraid.’
Vere shook his head sadly. ‘Poor old fellow. You know, I always thought he’d led a charmed life. Everyone knew how much he liked the trade, including the police, and yet …’ And yet I was the one who went to prison for it, was his unspoken remark.
‘Luck of the devil, old Jimmy. Though it didn’t last – he died alone.’
‘Was there no one – at the end?’ Vere asked.
‘He had a chap who looked after him: George. But if you mean was there – no, nothing like that. Jimmy’s boys were long gone.’ Nat had an inkling that Vere would recoil at anything more explicit.
‘I read his memoir, the second one. Of course there wasn’t a word about what he’d got up to. Which reminds me. A publisher recently asked me whether I’d care to write an “honest account” of my case, the trial and prison and so on.’
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