Eureka

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘I suppose you turned him down flat.’

  ‘Au contraire. I’ve got a few scores to settle with certain members of the judiciary – not to mention the police and the Home Secretary. It would also give me a chance to tip my hat to you.’

  ‘Vere, you thanked me at the time. I don’t require a public acknowledgement.’

  ‘I’d like to, all the same. In fact I was hoping you might be able to help me. I can recall it well enough, but – pace Hugh Vereker – I’m not much of a writer. You could do something quite persuasive.’ He tilted his head slightly. ‘Perhaps it would be a chore. But I’d split the fee, if that made a difference.’

  For a moment Nat was touched. ‘Of course I’ll help you. And there’s no need to pay me.’

  Vere smiled. ‘And I must insist on paying you, dear boy. It would be the only way of ensuring its delivery.’

  The address was a dusty little street of terraced houses round the back of King’s Cross Station. Billie had walked here via the Caledonian Road, patrolled even at mid-morning by prostitutes, singly or in pairs, bobbing their heads down to the cars idling alongside. She followed a rag-and-bone man and his limping horse; they looked fagged out in the early-summer heat. In the distance she could see Jeff waiting. As she approached he raised his hand to waggle the keys.

  ‘Isn’t the landlord coming?’ she asked.

  Jeff frowned. ‘Why should he bother? He’s got my deposit.’

  He turned and unlocked the front door. She followed him into an entrance hall, its ancient papered walls brownish and buckled from rising damp. A thin strip of carpet had been worn through to the boards. Billie sniffed the dismal bouquet of cooking odours left behind by a standing army of former tenants.

  ‘Pongs a bit, doesn’t it?’

  Jeff steered his gaze upwards. ‘I told you it was run-down. No one’s cleaned here for yonks. Come on.’

  Their footsteps scraped on the gritty staircase to the first floor. Disused gas brackets still clung to the walls. The landing window showed a cobbled backyard, weedy and cheerless.

  ‘I suppose there’s more light at the top, isn’t there?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jeff doubtfully. ‘I don’t really remember. It looks different from when I first saw it.’

  On reaching the third floor he got the other key out. This admitted them to a low-ceilinged attic room, where a diffident sunlight angled through the sash window. Billie tried the light switch – dead. The room had been looted of all fixtures; even the grate had been ripped from the fireplace. Billie sensed Jeff’s mood begin to droop, so she put a bright note in her voice.

  ‘It’ll look cosy once it’s decorated – and we could give these windows a clean,’ she said, swiping down a grey cobweb with her finger. ‘I can see you here, the artist in his garret …’

  Jeff thrust his hands into his pockets and looked around distractedly. Outside on a half-landing Billie found a toilet with a dingy washbasin. She turned a tap, which dribbled reluctantly. She glanced down at the lavatory bowl, half expecting to find something dreadful, but it was empty.

  ‘Running water, all mod cons out there,’ she said, returning to the room. Jeff was standing at the window, hands still in his pockets.

  ‘It looked bigger, somehow, when he was showing me round,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Jeff, you’ve always said how difficult it is to work at the flat, with my stuff in the way. But now look, you’ve got a place all to yourself. Think how much work you’ll be able to get through!’

  He sighed heavily. ‘I’m not sure I can work here. It’s so fucking grotty’.

  Billie felt her shoulders slump. It was grotty, but he was so fucking miserable. They were silent for a minute.

  ‘Well, you can only try,’ she said. ‘If it’s not for you just give him a month’s notice.’

  Jeff puckered his mouth. ‘A month? Some hope. I had to take the lease for six.’

  She stared at him, aghast. ‘Why did you agree to that? That’s such a long –’

  ‘The landlord said take it or leave it. Reckoned he’d got someone else lined up if I didn’t.’

  Billie hardly dared ask her next question. The enthusiasm over his collages hadn’t been mentioned for a few weeks, and she feared Jeff’s reaction to an enquiry. ‘The gallery haven’t paid you yet, have they?’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s a hitch. Mapleton wants to reconsider, seems his deputy didn’t know about a cash-flow problem or something.’

  ‘But what’s-his-name – he said he wanted the lot. He promised you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he fucking promised!’ Jeff cried impatiently. ‘But so what? It looked like a sure thing and now it’s not. Maybe you should call ’em up and demand they honour their agreement.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, Jeff. I want this as much as you do.’

  ‘Oh really? As much as I do?’ His voice trembled with bitterness. ‘I’ve waited for this break for years – literally, years. I’ve had to put up with so much shit, so much rejection, just hoping that one day somebody would get what I’m … doing. Finally, just when it looks like I’ve cracked it, they come back and tell me, “Well, we’re not sure any more.” Do you understand what that’s like?’

  ‘I imagine it’s awful,’ said Billie. She was only trying to be sympathetic, but he addressed her with such scowling, eye-rolling exasperation, that it felt as though she were somehow to blame for his setback. She could have told him about her own experience of rejection – the cycle of auditions, the hope of a call back, the lengthening silence – but she knew that Jeff would scorn it as an irrelevance. His suffering was his own, not to be trivialised by comparison with another’s. He gazed morosely out of the window and began rolling a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve paid the first month’s rent,’ he said presently. ‘After that, who knows.’

  Billie nodded. ‘Well, if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll just have to go on the game.’

  Jeff, perhaps thinking he’d misheard, turned a frown on her. ‘What?’

  ‘Those girls who get into men’s cars on the Cally Road – seems they’re always in work, and I wouldn’t have far to walk home. Earn a bit extra for us.’

  She watched his expression, momentarily stunned, then horrified and disbelieving. Got him! She burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Jeff, your face …’

  Jeff straightened, a little annoyed to have been taken in. But then a smile twitched one side of his mouth. ‘Daft cow,’ he muttered, and joined her laughter with his own. She had rescued the mood, as she had to do quite often these days. It seemed to her you could divide people into two types. There were those she thought of as ‘radiators’, who gave out warmth and cheer and vitality. And then there were ‘drains’, their emotional negatives, who sucked the life out of everything. Even as she laughed, watched him shake his head, she felt under no illusion as to which category Jeff belonged.

  Freya rubbed her eyes, itching from the dust. She had been hunkered down all afternoon in the Chronicle’s airless library, leafing through back issues of the paper. An acreage of yellowing newsprint sprawled over the desk. Her search had centred exclusively upon one name: Reiner Werther Kloss. She had followed his career off and on since his precocious debut Rosa Luxemburg seven years ago. As well as the papers, she had open A Biographical Compendium of Film, in its most recent (1965) edition.

  Kloss, Reiner Werther, b.Bad Wörishofen, 1933

  It is a mark of this young director’s energy and instinct for controversy that he has within a relatively short career become an enfant terrible of the new German cinema. Coming of age in a country traumatised and guilt-stricken by the last war, Kloss worked in theatre, first as an actor, later as a playwright and director. Strongly influenced by Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, his plays focus upon the individual conscience haunted by the sorrows of war, terrorism and personal betrayal. Other plays, notably 29 Marks and Black Friday, explore the moral infirmities of a heartless and hypocritical society. In 1960 he made
his first film, Rosa Luxemburg, a sensational biopic of the doomed revolutionary socialist. It won a Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival. His second feature, Blut und Feuer (1961), an allegory of the Hitler Youth movement, caused rioting outside cinemas. He changed direction for his next, Three Months on Reichenbachstrasse (1963), a contemporary story about a sexually ambiguous young man, which some commentators have identified as veiled autobiography. Kloss, born into an artistic, well-to-do family in Munich (his mother sang opera professionally), was a child prodigy, singing and performing magic tricks from the age of four. During the Allied fire bombings he was sent to live with his grandmother in rural Bavaria. Both of his parents were killed in an air raid on the city in October 1942.

  He returned to the disasters of war in The Private Life of Hanna K (1964), an intense study of love and betrayal which won several awards in France and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It also made a star of Sonja Zertz (b.1937), a Stuttgart-born actress whom he first directed onstage. The New York Times called it ‘one of the most disturbing films ever made about the psychological effects of conflict’. Despite the acclaim of American critics he has so far resisted the call of Hollywood; indeed, he has never directed a film outside of Germany. At the time of going to print he was developing a film provisionally entitled The Laudanum Waltz. On the evidence of this handful of pictures Kloss may already claim to be one of the most gifted and idiosyncratic film-makers at work today.

  At the Palais-Royal press conference back in March she had seated herself at the front, the better to study him. Behind his Lennon spectacles Reiner’s eyes were pale grey, with a languid blink. He was dressed rather untidily in a blue woolly and jeans, a black Mao cap and a pair of biker boots; a scrubby beard added to the student look. The friendly, almost puckish front he presented was hard to reconcile with the sombre explorations of his country’s recent past. Freya, responding to this, told him how moved she had been by the love story of Hanna K. Though it was the truth, she generally preferred not to throw praise around: film people tended to be conceited enough already.

  But it was worth it when he smiled in reply and said: ‘I shall save up that compliment and take it out later to enjoy – like a biscuit at teatime.’

  Later, she made to waylay him as he was leaving the room. Reiner had never spoken at any length in public about his work or his life. Would he be prepared, she asked, to give an interview for the Chronicle? He looked at her as though from a long distance, and shook his head. ‘Ach, I’m afraid not. My English is rather limited. Also, I fear the prospect of strangers turning out my laundry and holding it up for inspection.’

  ‘It’s your work I want to discuss, not your laundry,’ said Freya.

  ‘That’s worse!’ he replied. ‘You would be tampering with a mechanism whose workings are not clear even to myself. That is as it should be. The artist must be always vigilant – in talking about your work, you risk losing the secret things that inspire it. Sometimes it is less important to understand than to feel.’

  And on that resonant note Reiner was hustled away by his entourage.

  In the library Freya packed up her notes, returned the box files to the librarian and rode the lift to editorial on the second floor. She was about to settle at her desk when she spotted across the room the stately figure of Delphine Frampton, holding forth to a couple of colleagues. Delphine, editor of the women’s page, had risen through the ranks by dint of severe application and her unbiddable Anglo-French temperament. It had earned her a reputation as a bit of a dragon. Freya liked her, sensing she might be a kindred spirit, though a twenty-year age difference and Delphine’s rather brusque social manner had kept Freya at arm’s length. It struck her now that they really ought to talk, for Delphine was a devoted filmgoer.

  Freya wandered over to her desk. Delphine lifted her chin imperiously and said, ‘What is it, dear?’ Her clipped tone made her sound immediately in a hurry, but Freya wasn’t to be put off.

  ‘I wonder if in your travels you’ve ever come across Reiner Werther Kloss?’

  ‘Never met him, but I did enjoy his last one – Hanna K – awf’ly good.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Freya agreed, ‘but he’s made another one since. Have you heard of The Laudanum Waltz?’

  ‘Oh ye-e-ers,’ said Delphine, perking up. ‘A legal dispute cropped up around its release, and then it vanished.’

  ‘So nobody ever saw it?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. There was a rumour that the studio tried to recut the film behind Kloss’s back. He found out and took off with the negative – said he’d burn it sooner than let them ruin it.’

  ‘Did he? Burn it?’

  Delphine shrugged. ‘That was the studio’s theory. But there’s no convincing proof he ever had it in his possession. If he did destroy it, though, it’s quite a story. I mean, here’s something you devote two years of your life to making – all that preparation, the writing, the shoot, the edit and so on. Then in a fit of rage you reduce it to ashes. You would really have to be quite …’

  ‘Mad?’

  ‘I was going to say “single-minded”,’ said Delphine. ‘But yes, “mad” seems about right. I hear he’s wonderful to work for, so long as you do exactly what you’re told. He works very closely with his editor, Arno somebody.’

  ‘He’s here now, in London, to make a film of “The Figure in the Carpet”. I’m hoping to write a story on him.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Delphine’s eyes flashed with renewed interest. ‘There’s certainly some juice there. Are you arranging an interview?’

  Freya shook her head. ‘He turned me down flat when I met him in Paris. I’ll get Nat Fane on the case – he’s writing the script.’

  ‘I shouldn’t get too close to Herr Kloss, my dear. As well as mad, well, they say he’s not averse to firearms, either.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, a friend of a friend told me. One of the cast – I can’t remember who – was making a terrible nuisance of himself, turning up late and offending everyone left and right. Kloss put up with it only because it would have been more complicated to sack him. The last straw: after another tantrum, the man threatened to walk off the set. I think everyone would have been happy to see the back of him. My friend said that Kloss reacted quite calmly, told the actor he was very welcome to try walking off, but he should bear in mind that he had a pistol stored in his valise and wouldn’t hesitate to use it. A silence fell, and the actor decided to call his bluff. Kloss got out of his chair, went to his locker and returned half a minute later with a Luger in his hand! And then showed him it was loaded.’

  ‘Golly. What happened then?’

  ‘They barely spoke again. But he didn’t walk, and the crew didn’t get another peep out of him.’

  ‘Rather brilliant of Reiner,’ said Freya.

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ said Delphine, joining her stiffened middle and index fingers in imitation of a gun barrel and blowing over the top of it. ‘Instructive, too. I shouldn’t mind trying it myself next time I negotiate a pay rise.’

  INT. CONCERT HALL – NIGHT.

  CHAS is seated in the middle of the auditorium listening to a symphony. He is on his own, and absorbed. After some moments he happens to look up, and the camera tracks his gaze to a box high to his left. He spots there JANE and VEREKER, and his expression turns shifty; he looks away. He hasn’t seen them in a year.

  Camera switches to JANE’s POV in the box. We see CHAS down below. Has JANE picked him out too?

  INT. HALL BAR – NIGHT.

  The concert interval. CHAS is drinking at the crowded bar. He is unaware of the approach of JANE behind him.

  JANE

  Chas!

  He turns to face her.

  I thought it was you.

  CHAS

  (shyly)

  Hello, Jane. How – how are you?

  JANE

  I’m here with Hugh. We haven’t seen you in such ages. I’ve missed you!

  CHAS


  I’ve been pretty busy …

  JANE

  Well, I know. I see your name all over the paper – even on the front page, wasn’t it?

  CHAS

  Yes. (He laughs modestly.) The front of the Middle, as it were. They use me because I’m available – and cheap.

  JANE looks at him fondly, shaking her head at his self-depreciation.

  JANE

  Hugh’s just upstairs. Why don’t you come and say hello?

  CHAS pulls a regretful face.

  CHAS

  Oh, I’m not really …

  JANE

  What’s the matter?

  A beat. CHAS is not moving.

  CHAS

  To be honest, I’m a little embarrassed. That weekend at your place last year – the way he so gracefully squashed my review. Now my name’s all over the place, as you say, and I imagine Hugh Vereker just thinks – ‘He’s no great shakes.’

  JANE

  (frowning)

  He hasn’t said anything of the kind. He hardly ever discusses his work – or his reviews.

  CHAS

  Doesn’t he? He’s not mentioned the, er, trick?

  JANE

  What ‘trick’?

  CHAS

  Oh, it’s nothing – forget it.

  JANE

  Look, I don’t want to force you, but it would be lovely to see you again. Will you come down to Bridges for another weekend?

  CHAS

  I’d love to be able to …

  JANE

  Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?

  The concert-hall bell rings, signalling the interval’s end. JANE is looking at him expectantly.

  CHAS

  Of course it’s ‘yes’. I’m just snowed under at the moment – been working like a dog.

  JANE

  All the more reason you should have a break. I’ll phone you next week with a date. You won’t let me down, will you?

  JANE leans in to kiss him goodbye. She searches his face for a clue to his strange mood. CHAS raises his hand in farewell to her smiling retreat. As he turns back to the camera we see his face, disgruntled and self-accusing.