Fast and Louche

by Jeremy Scott

  A Better Tomorrow … The meeting ended in a jovial flush-faced au revoir. Roused and exhilarated, a resolute body of overweight men marched off behind their Leader, their hearts and spirits high, with the pinstripes bounding beside them, muzzles raised and baying for war …

  Three weeks into the campaign, with only days to go before the election, bookmakers’ odds had lengthened to 3–1 against the Conservatives. The opinion polls, published in all the national papers, played an unprecedented part in the campaign, revealing Wilson to be personally much more popular than the aloof Heath, who, disdaining his opponent’s walkabouts and impromptu chats in shopping malls, relied on prepared speeches to a mass assembly and daily press conferences.

  Nothing the Conservatives threw into the battle made any difference, nothing they or we came up with served to turn the tide. All the polls showed steady and growing support for Labour. In our tactical planning sessions with Whitelaw the mood had degenerated to manic frenzy underlaid by sweaty-faced desperation.

  ‘Well, what these geezers fucking want, then?’ Terry Donovan asked me as he spun the wheel in his big hand to turn the chocolate brown Rolls-Royce into the King’s Road.

  He was one of the film directors who, along with Bryan Forbes and Gordon Reece, had been hired by Garrett’s to direct the footage making up the Party Politicals. A top fashion photographer, he was one of the Cockney snappers who revolutionised photography in the ’sixties (and his later clients would include Margaret Thatcher – whose image he was instrumental in altering – the Duke and Duchess of York and Princess Diana). I had always liked Terry enormously, but this was the first time we’d worked together on a production.

  ‘Vox populi,’ I said, in answer to Donovan’s question. ‘They want the C2s, Ds and Es to love them, the proles, the masses. They want to hear them repeat the message – the “voice of the common people”.’

  Terry said nothing for a while, he was thinking. He spent a lot of time driving slowly around Greater London in his Roller, looking out and thinking. A Buddhist with off-centre views, he once got rid of his possessions and lived in the car.

  He said, ‘There’s this bird in East Dulwich, she’s dead common. Talk your fucking ’ead off, too. Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit all day long, got a slant on everything.’

  ‘Sounds what we need, Terry,’ I agreed.

  ‘Speed of light,’ he said and, turning the big car out of the King’s Road to cross the river, we headed for south London. I asked how he knew the girl we were on our way to visit.

  ‘Her old man’s done this an’ that for me … bit of duckin’ and diving, know what I mean?’ he explained.

  Terry’s life was characterised by such connections and I knew this was all I was going to get. He didn’t do explanations, he was entirely instinctive in the way he worked – and he was usually right.

  He was in this case. Tracy was the epitome of the downmarket consumer whose vote the Conservatives most needed at this critical moment in the last flurry of their, and our, campaign.

  She lived in a council estate of post-war modern housing. Yet the development was not dismal and wasted, as often today, but well kept. There were grass and trees, no litter, and no graffiti or signs of vandalism. Modest family saloons stood parked in front of the apartment blocks, far from new but highly polished and clearly lovingly maintained.

  Tracy was delighted to see Terry – as everyone always was, for he brought a cheerful ebullience into any room he entered. He had a huge appetite for absurdity and laughter, he was fun. ‘The old man out on the job, then?’ he asked breezily as he surged into her flat with myself following in his large wake.

  ‘He is an’ all, works ever so hard,’ she said fondly. It was obvious their marriage was a good one.

  If a set designer had to construct a film set typifying the flat of a young working-class couple who had worked hard, done well and earned enough by their own industry to make their modern home really well-equipped and comfortable, even luxurious in its G-Plan way, he would have come up with Tracy and her husband’s apartment. The vividly patterned carpet was thick and of good quality, the mirrored cocktail cabinet new and expensive. Their TV set was the largest available, and a later design than we had in the Garrett offices. The couple were model consumers, every available surface was crowded with decorative objects, china and silver. And at least one of them – perhaps both – had taste; some of the pieces were excellent.

  Tracy had a vivid, vivacious personality. Aged twenty-six, she was quick-witted and clearly intelligent. With short, dark hair, a pert expressive face and bright eyes, she was very pretty in a wholly ordinary way. No vamp, no threat to other women. Her accent was strong south London, the way she voiced her thoughts uneducated but fluent and forceful; she spoke with conviction. She was exactly what we were looking for. Terry had got it in one.

  I used Tracy’s telephone to summon up a camera crew and we filmed her two hours later. Keeping the camera running, Terry covered her in mid-shot and close-up responding to my off-screen questions, which would be edited out in cutting. But Tracy had no need of questions to get her going: she was motor-mouth. She talked without pause – housing … jobs … health care … the social services … the economy … she had views on everything. And they were the right views, the right-wing views our client wanted.

  Hardly pausing for breath, she rattled on endlessly. And within that torrent of rabbit pouring from her mouth, precious gems lay embedded. About inflation she said, ‘ … go on any longer at this rate and we’ll be paying for a bleeding ten-bob loaf by Christmas’. On the Conservatives’ policy to restore British military forces to the Middle East she answered, ‘Well we’re not about to let that lot put one over on us, are we? I mean, this country may not be altogether perfect, know what I mean, but it’s a bleeding sight better than anywhere else.’ Her response to my question on race relations – an issue which figured in the campaign as a result of Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech on immigration – though undoubtedly expressing the views of the majority of the electorate at that time, was judged not suitable for inclusion in the final transmission. ‘Send the whole bleeding bunch of them back to Africa, climb back into the bleeding trees,’ she asserted roundly.

  Aside from that, her opinions accorded with Tory Party dogma, but principally it was her manner that carried weight, the sincerity with which she expressed her Conservative views. That and what she stood for, their home and its evident prosperity, their enterprise and the good life they’d worked so hard to achieve, the fact she was four months’ pregnant with their first baby … the future, the inspiration and the hope.

  Edited and put together, the film would network the following night – and would prove to be strikingly effective. But even as we wrapped up and made ready to leave the flat Terry and I were elated. Both of us knew that in those countless feet of exposed film stock we had it. Pure gold.

  Tracy wanted us to stay, have a cup of tea, and meet her husband when he got back from work. We couldn’t unfortunately, though I’d have liked to; he was clearly an enterprising fellow, successful in his job. ‘What exactly does he do?’ I asked her as we were on the way out.

  She shot a glance at Terry. ‘Well, he’s a … a real right Jack-the-lad in’t he?’ she said.

  Final opinion polls, published next day on the eve of the election, showed Labour’s lead yet further increased. Few, if any, of the Conservative leaders believed they had any prospect of winning, though Heath himself retained a determined positivity.

  It had been a crazy month. For those involved in the campaign there’d been little time to sleep. But all of us were sharing a rare level of nervous energy, we were wired. Most of Garrett’s people were socialist by conviction, yet they too were caught up in the race. All were still fired up, but when we got together in the seminary library to watch the election results live, no one was unaware that their efforts had been wasted, entirely useless. The other side was going to win. Dressed up for the ball, we were
attending a wake.

  A few minutes before midnight results started to come in. The first, Guildford, showed a surprising swing to the Conservatives. On TV the pundits discounted it, this was a traditional Conservative seat. But the second, West Salford – traditionally Labour – reflected the same swing. And so did the next … and as the results streamed in it became evident that the most surprising ballot reversal of the century had taken place. The final results became inevitable, and soon after 2 am Labour accepted defeat.

  A fortnight later all who’d worked on the Tories’ media campaign were invited by the new Prime Minister to a party at Ten Downing Street. Wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit and the same striped tie, I cut a conservative figure at the assembly. The living room of the house, which was decorated and furnished with the drab neutrality of a reasonably good hotel, was packed with a tightly wedged herd of undistinguished people, pleased as punch to be there.

  I was myself. Along with everyone else I hadn’t expected Heath to win. I had not been smitten by him or Whitelaw; they seemed to me both bland and brazen, there was something spurious about the attitudes they struck and their complacent breeziness. Yet towards the end, when his disciples were losing faith and he stood embattled by misfortune, he had shown such dignity in adversity I had to admit an unwilling admiration. But I remained a bit underwhelmed by the other politicians I’d encountered. Not a whiff of inspiration came from any of them. And these were the elite, the best of them. To be a backbencher, valued only for your obedience, looked a pitiful existence. Badly paid, some of them toiled their entire lives without achieving the rewards of office, the stick-it-on-the-bill delights of a freebie to Barbados or a weekend at the Paris Ritz, the gratification that comes from shovelling the contents of the mini-bar into your briefcase on departure and the satisfied glow of a job well done.

  But the campaign had been an extremely interesting experience, I’d enjoyed it immensely. And it was fun to be invited to Number Ten for the valedictory payoff. I wasn’t drinking – hadn’t in fact since the start of the campaign – but I had brought with me a small packet of coke. I’d dipped into it at times over the past month and only a tiny amount remained. I’d determined to give up cocaine, and this seemed the perfect venue for a final blast. It was only appropriate to mark the occasion, for the whole business had gone so very well for everyone concerned. James Garrett had executed a notable account and been paid, the Conservatives had won, Ted Heath became PM, and Whitelaw Lord President. Terry Donovan had not only been congratulated by the Prime Minister for the best Party Political of the campaign – which, some said, had supplied the final chip that won the pot – but had been presented with a set of five new tyres for his Rolls by Tracy’s husband, Jack-the-lad, as a thank-you gift for making his wife famous by putting her on TV.

  Everyone had got what they wanted, everyone was happy. Preceding Sir Tim Bell by a full decade into the downstairs lavatory at Number Ten, I set out a long last line, snorted it, and strolled back to join the fun.

  21

  Côte d’Azur

  Fed by melted snow, the torrent roared down the narrow valley to where a natural dam of smooth boulders blocked its course, then surged over them to cascade into a rockpool overhung by trees.

  This was my view as I sat at a table by an open window in the south of France, working on a screenplay. It was the spring of 1971. I’d been hired to write a script for Jozsef Sandoz, a Hungarian producer who’d made half a dozen movies, one of them notorious.

  I wasn’t totally unqualified for the job, but near as could be. A ninety-minute script I’d written had been transmitted as a BBC Wednesday Play. Its story – a man going progressively more nuts working for a fashionable ad agency, to end up addressing the world while standing on water in the middle of the Round Pond – was close to my heart, and the writing had been instinctual; I knew nothing of technique or screencraft. But the instant purchase of that script, the speed with which it was produced, its peak-time transmission, reviews, and the fact that payments came in on the nail had convinced me the whole thing was a breeze – a presumption I would come to revise in the weeks ahead.

  The old olive mill in which I sat working on this sunny day had walls a yard thick and massive ceiling beams eaten away by woodworm. The flat was in a dreadful state of repair; the water heating yielded nothing above tepid, the Calor-gas cooker in the primitive kitchen was thirty years old and congealed with rust, all the furniture was infirm or broken. The windows looked out on the river and forest beyond and the place was utterly magical.

  It was Magda who had found it. A Polish-American fashion model, quick witted, funny and smart, I had met her in New York while I was living at the Algonquin. Always perfectly groomed, she had the unconventional face of the young Bette Davis and Dietrich’s Mittel-European voice. Her social talent had been a huge asset entertaining clients in New York, she was immensely stimulating to be with. Intrigued by her, I had asked her to come with me to the south of France.

  I’d always enjoyed writing, but I was also attracted by the movie business. I associated it with glamour. Here I believed I would find a larger stage than advertising provided, a more starry cast, a richer and more glittering spectacle.

  I had first encountered Sandoz at a meeting set up by my genial American agent, who knew he needed a writer to script a book he’d bought. The producer’s apartment spread over two floors of a Mayfair house, the place was overwhelmingly opulent and extravagantly furnished. Every single object within it was glossy and new, including his wife. All four walls of the library where we sat were lined floor to ceiling with fitted wooden bookshelves, filled with leather-bound volumes. Or, rather, their spines glued in place, for none was real.

  Not just the library but the entire interior and contents of the apartment had been acquired for nothing, I learned later. A squat man with a face like a smacked arse, Sandoz was an instinctive snapper-up of everything. He’d bought the bare shell of the flat before starting his last picture, which had been shot in Spain. Everyone involved in that production had remarked on the extraordinarily high quality of the studio sets and the luxury of the furniture and room dressings. Film sets usually have two walls, occasionally three, but Sandoz’s had four. At the end of the shoot the sets were pack-struck, put into crates and trucked to London. The picture’s art director and construction crew had worked to very precise plans. Everything slotted exactly into place into the empty apartment … clunk .… clunk .… clunk. The 1,500-volume library was created in seven minutes and the large flat fully decorated and furnished within an hour.

  He was refreshingly candid about these arrangements and his views on life. Admirably free of hypocrisy, he might be said to have possessed an instinctively generous nature. Speaking of women, he once said to me, ‘The way I look at it, if something’s good enough for me it’s good enough for my friends.’

  Unlike advertising, where in England most people were respectable and suburban in their lifestyles, the movie business, which was LA led, had exported its West Coast values to London with the several American producers who had moved to this then-lively colony to make pictures. Often to be puzzled by the quaintness of the city’s ways. Charlie Feldman, here to produce one of the Bond films, remarked that he couldn’t understand all this talk of ‘orgies’; to him, any number less than four was an intimate relationship.

  And these same liberal values seemed to obtain in the south of France, where Sandoz and his family (wife, new baby, new nanny, newly acquired Mercedes coupé charged to the production as is customary) had rented a villa (ditto) in Mougins behind Cannes, from whose poolside he intended to set up the picture. One day I drove over to his villa to deliver some pages I’d completed. Usually he’d be by the pool wearing only a gold medallion and body hair, but this morning I found him dressed and pacing the house. ‘Fuck the script, we got to move ass,’ he said. ‘Khashoggi’s winging in for the Film Festival. We got to find the family a house.’

  The financing for the pi
cture was to be provided by Adnan Khashoggi. I’d never met him, but I knew about him – everybody knew about him. You couldn’t open a magazine without coming across a photograph of him at some glossy event. His name had surfaced in the Lockheed/Prince Bernhart scandal and would remain notorious in the years to come.

  Sandoz, his wife, Magda and I piled into the Mercedes coupé and went to look for a house for Khashoggi and his family. It wasn’t easy, most were already rented, but eventually we found a five-bedroom villa with pool, poolhouse and servants’ flat, standing on a hilltop near Mougins. The owners drove a hard bargain, the short rental was exorbitant.

  Next day the four of us were at Nice airport to meet Khashoggi’s plane. He owned his own specially fitted DC8 but arrived in a Boeing 707 lent him by Kirk Kerkorian, president of MGM. The aircraft landed, taxied to the terminal, and off it poured a tide of people. They swept into the arrivals concourse in a human wave. At their head marched the stout, confident figure of Khashoggi attended by his bodyguard, Palestinian business secretary and Lebanese personal assistant. Behind came his English wife Soraya, her social secretary, a nanny, two nursemaids, and three small children. Following them were Khashoggi’s two younger brothers, with wives, children and similar retinues … and in their train shuffled a horde of Arab servants carrying suitcases and large, ill-wrapped bundles.

  Khashoggi showed a lordly indifference to the problem of how and where his army was to be housed. He passed only a token two minutes talking to us before getting into a waiting limo with his personal staff and moving to the Carlton in Cannes, where he had a suite reserved. Amid hysteria and confusion his two brothers scattered elsewhere with their retinues. We were left in the airport with Soraya, her secretary, children and nursery staff, and about fifty Bedouin.