The result of the ballot was overwhelming. More than eighty percent of the thousands of postcards were votes for Keith. So we found our new leading man, and Keith Pardoe, the Art Director, became Keith Pardoe, the film star.
It was by the grace of God that our television program proved such a success, because we had been deprived, at the last moment, of the co-operation of Fiametta Fettini, who was to have been its principal attraction.
The day after my visit to Medham, Giulio Palladio turned up, unannounced, in my office. He looked not unlike the wretched Peppi, with his melancholy monkey face and his shiny black hair and the dark rings of dissipation under his mournful eyes. I was annoyed to see him, for I could imagine no reason for his visit except that he was seeking a lunchtime drinking partner and I was very busy. As I have said, he figured officially on our budget as Fiametta’s manager, but that was purely a courtesy title. I had never known him do a stroke of work or interest himself in the film in any way. Fiametta’s English agent ran the business side of her affairs and everything else she ran herself.
“I’m sorry, Giulio,” I said, “not today. I’m busy.”
“Pooge,” said Giulio, looking like Peppi deprived of a banana, “it is on business that I am come.”
I did not even register the sense of that remark. I was engaged in reading over the typescript of a letter I had dictated, and I merely said, “I’m busy now and shall be all day.”
There was a long silence. When I had finished checking through all my letters, and signed them, I looked up and saw with surprise that Palladio was still there. He was sitting absolutely still, never taking his big liquid eyes off me, saying nothing, obedient, passive, but utterly immovable. Suddenly, he infuriated me.
“Why are you still here?” I said angrily. “What do you want?”
“You can see me now?” he asked hopefully. “Business finished?”
“I can see you perfectly,” I replied with some irony. “What I cannot do is go out and drink with you.”
“You can hear me?” he asked tentatively. His English was not good.
“Of course I can.”
“Then I tell you. Fiametta go back to Rome tomorrow.”
“She can’t,” I said. “Out of the question. She is due to appear in our television program. If she thinks she can take a holiday just…”
“This is not holiday.”
“Not a holiday? Then what is it?”
“Is work. Cinecitta Studios in Rome.”
“No. She is under contract to us. She has no right to accept other work.”
“Is a contract from before,” said Palladio. He smiled ingratiatingly, as if hoping to soften my heart.
“An earlier contract? She never told us about it. What does it involve? How much work?”
“Four weeks,” said Palladio blandly.
At that I exploded. “Wait there,” I said. “I’ll see about this.” I reached for my telephone and dialed the number of Fiametta’s London agent. “She’s trying to pull a fast one, and if she thinks she can bamboozle me by sending you here with a story of… Hello? Mr. Travers, please. Mr. Croombe-Peters. Yes. Hello, Dick? Croombe-Peters here. Never mind about how I am. What’s all this about Fiametta Fettini having to go back to Rome to do four weeks’ work at Cinecitta? You haven’t? That’s what I thought. Yes, by all means ask her. I shall be interested to hear what she says. Thanks, old man. ’Bye.”
I put down the receiver. “Well,” I said to Palladio. “Mr. Travers has never heard of this mysterious contract and neither have I. So you may go home and tell Fiametta that she is being paid to stay in England, and in England she will stay. And that is all there is to it.”
Palladio left, looking like a whipped monkey, and I went back to my work, feeling pleased with myself. I was considerably shaken, therefore, when I received a telephone call from Dick Travers in the afternoon, confirming that there was, indeed, a contract requiring La Fettini’s presence in Rome.
“She never told me about it, old man,” he said. He was obviously acutely embarrassed. “Of course, I suppose she imagined all her work here would be over long ago. No, I’m not sure what it is. Probably one of these Italian epics with every big star doing a cameo part. Yes, yes, I know it’ll inconvenience you—I couldn’t be more sorry, but I don’t see what we can do—yes, quite watertight, I’m afraid—of course, she’ll be completely at your disposal when she comes back—I do appreciate that you could fight it in a court of law, but then you’d only antagonize her, and you know what she’s like…”
We were at Fiametta’s mercy, and she knew it. I personally never believed in the contract from beginning to end; she wanted to go to Rome for private reasons, and since she was our big star and we had already got a considerable amount of footage of her scenes in the can, she was in a position to dictate. I had to bow to the inevitable. The television program took place without her, and I rearranged the schedule so as to start our re-shooting with scenes which did not require Fiametta.
As it turned out, everything went very smoothly. Since we were now well into the summer, I had arranged to shoot the location scenes first, and leave the studio sequences until later on. For once in a way, the weather was ideal, and reel after reel of film was sealed safely away into the cans.
The weather, however, was only one of our reasons for rejoicing. Even more important was the spirit of vitality and enthusiasm which infused the whole unit. I think we had all harbored an unspoken fear that Keith’s performance on television might have been just a flash in the pan. In fact, he got better and better. I have never seen a team working in closer harmony than that which existed between Keith, Sam, and Biddy during those few weeks. At last they were realizing to the full the dream which had been born that night in The Can; they were making a film which was truly theirs, with no outside factors to distract them. Biddy’s script suddenly seemed to grow flexible, adapting itself to the vagaries of Sam’s mood. Sam’s direction became subtler; his analysis of character more meaningful; and his use of symbolism more controlled. Instead of having to hack an approximation of his vision out of the intractable material which was Robert Meakin, he was molding Keith’s performance out of a living, responsive medium.
If you feel that that last paragraph does not sound like me, you are right. I was, in fact, quoting from the article which Ralph Tweeting, of the high-brow magazine Artform, wrote about Sam after spending some days on the set. I would not have put it quite like that, myself. As far as I was concerned, everyone seemed relaxed and happy, and work went ahead well. We kept up to schedule and within our budget for the first time, and the whole unit worked with a will.
As for Keith, he was thoroughly enjoying himself. I hope I do not sound spiteful when I say that he reveled in the personal publicity which his new role brought with it. I suppose it was only natural that he should. In any case, the three of them were entirely happy. At last all outsiders had been eliminated from the charmed circle—except for myself, of course. And they were prepared, in their exaltation, to tolerate me.
If I say that our troubles started again with Fiametta’s return, I do not mean to imply that she was responsible for everything that happened subsequently. She merely triggered off the first of a series of misfortunes.
On the actual day of her return, we had no inkling of this. She came back in an apparently radiant mood, bringing her personal circus with her and attracting the usual bevy of journalists to the airport. We encouraged this publicity by sending Keith out to meet the plane, and several newspapers carried photographs of them embracing warmly. My only quarrel with Fiametta was that she had allowed her skin to get deeply suntanned in Italy, and I had some satisfaction in pointing out to her, when I welcomed her at the airport, that in consequence the make-up experts would have to be at her house by half-past six in the morning, in order to paint on her London pallor before the day’s shooting began.
Even this, however, did not damp her high spirits and good temper, as she swept off with Keith in th
e Rolls-Royce which we had hired to take the two of them into town. She seemed to have forgotten poor Bob completely. In fact, sometimes I found it hard to believe that he had ever existed. Like a footprint blown from desert sand, he had passed into utter oblivion. Even the press had lost interest in him. Keith was the new star, the new story. At that time, none of us ever mentioned Bob, nor indeed, as far as I know, thought about him; and yet we should have remembered him constantly, and with gratitude. For by his death he had unwittingly made possible what promised to be a great film.
I have said that we had no premonition of trouble as we stood in the sun that day at the airport welcoming Fiametta back; and yet, I think, we ought to have foreseen something of the trials that lay ahead. It should have been obvious that emotions would run high when we were faced with re-shooting the scenes in the Underground station. We told each other laughingly that it was ridiculous to be superstitious, and I went ahead and arranged to hire the derelict station and the train once more. We were scheduled to begin shooting there the very day after Fiametta’s return from Rome.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CALL WAS for eight o’clock at the Underground station, but I was determined to be there well ahead of time, to make sure that everything went smoothly. It was a Friday morning, fine and sunny, and I found it no hardship to be up and about by seven. In fact, I walked across the park to Piccadilly before I hailed a cab to take me to my destination. By half-past seven, I was clattering my way down the motionless escalator, out of the balmy summer morning into the dusty subterranean cavern.
I was not, of course, the first to arrive. The electricians were already there, trundling their heavy arc lamps into position, and the Second Assistant Director was having some sort of discussion with the Property Man. I noted without surprise that there was no sign of Gervase Mountjoy. Admittedly, the call was for eight o’clock, but any decent First Assistant would have taken the trouble to be there sooner. Once again, I found myself faced with the job of assuming Gervase’s responsibilities. I went up to the Second Assistant, a fresh-faced youth named Harry.
“Mr. Mountjoy not here yet?” I asked. One had to be sure.
“Haven’t seen him, Mr. Peters.”
“Well…” I glanced at the Property Man, “what’s up? A spot of bother?”
Neither of them answered me for a moment. They looked at each other shiftily, as though they were in some sort of an alliance against me, although I had distinctly heard them arguing as I came down the stairs. It annoyed me. “Well, come on, out with it,” I said.
“It’s the name card,” said the Property Man at last. “It’s a painter’s job. I don’t see as I can do it.”
“What name card?”
“You can at least take the old one down, Props,” said Harry. He had gone rather pink.
“It’s not strictly speakin’ my job,” repeated Props, stubbornly but unhappily. “I’d like to help, but I don’t want no trouble.”
“What name card? Where?” I demanded.
Before either of them could answer, a new voice said, “Mr. Croombe-Peters,” and I looked up to see that Margery Phipps, the Continuity Girl, had come onto the platform. She looked—I don’t know just the right word—agitated and upset and at the same time curiously excited, the sort of anticipatory excitement that you see on the faces of spectators just before a heavyweight fight or a horror film. “Mr. Croombe-Peters,” she said again, “can I speak to you for a moment?”
“Very well,” I said. Margery was, as a rule, a most imperturbable person. If she was worked up about something, it must be important.
“This way,” she said.
I followed her off the platform and into the corridor at the far end, and instantly I saw why she was upset, and I understood what Harry and Props had been arguing about.
It was Gervase Mountjoy’s responsibility, of course, but I think I have made it fairly clear that he showed up extremely badly on the occasion of Bob’s death. I suppose he cannot be blamed for fainting as he did, but on his recovery he had simply crawled, green-faced, into a taxi and disappeared, leaving the rest of us to do the necessary, if unpleasant, clearing up. As a result, nothing had been properly organized. I myself had supervised the loading of the lamps and electrical equipment into lorries, and Props had coped with his usual efficiency in the disposal of all the movable articles which were his responsibility. But in the general confusion, we had all overlooked the matter of dismantling the two plywood-and-canvas dressing rooms; and there they still stood, grimy relics of disaster. Worse, they still bore their boldly painted signs: “Fiametta Fettini” and “Robert Meakin.”
Margery said, “Look, Mr. Croombe-Peters. Isn’t it awful? We must get them out of the way before…”
“We shall need the dressing rooms,” I said, “but they must be spruced up and given new name plates. What are they like inside?”
“Horrible,” said Margery. “Full of—well, go and take a look.”
I pushed my way in through the canvas flap that served for a door to Bob Meakin’s dressing room and looked around me. As I did so, it struck me that Margery had used exactly the right word. What I saw was horrible in the truest sense, the horror of ordinary, everyday objects charged with an unbearable load of emotion.
Bob’s dresser had, of course, removed his employer’s personal clothes, and the Wardrobe Master had collected the few items of studio-owned costume which Bob was not wearing at the time of his death; but nobody had touched the little, unimportant things. On the trestle table under the big mirror were enough poignant reminders of Meakin to send either Fiametta or Keith into hysterics if they should see them.
There was a half full bottle of whisky and a glass; there was an empty packet of a very expensive brand of cigarettes which Bob always smoked; there was a big pot of cold cream for removing make-up, and a lot of cotton wool, some of it unused, and some smudged with grease paint. There were the horn-rimmed spectacles, with one of their plain glass lenses miraculously unbroken, which Bob had been wearing when he died, and which I remembered having removed myself from his shattered body. A paperback detective novel, with the ironic title Death Gives No Warning, was lying open and face downward on the table, beside a small, empty leather box, whose black velvet lining was slashed into two deep slits, presumably to hold cuff links. In a plain cardboard box were disquieting reminders of Bob’s battle against the encroachments of time: a tube of a most discreetly tinted foundation lotion, widely recommended to ladies for “smoothing away those wrinkles as if by magic,” and a little bottle of the special spirit-gum preparation which I knew was used to keep a toupee firmly in position. In the center of the table, immediately underneath the mirror, there was a pad of cheap scribbling paper and a ballpoint pen of the kind that can be bought for a few pence. I am not by nature an inquisitive person, I hope, and so I cannot really explain what it was that made me lift the cover of the writing pad. The top sheet had been torn off, leaving a little ragged edge; but the sheet below bore the imprint of writing as clear and decipherable as if it had been in ink. Bob’s writing had been bold and flamboyant, and the ballpoint had pressed hard onto the yielding surface below. My mind registered the first words. “Dear Sam, Nobody enjoys breaking a contract, but…”
“Fiametta’s room is just as bad,” said Margery’s voice behind me. “Full of old lipsticks and things. We must get them cleared up or there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re quite right, Margery. I’m very glad you called me.”
“I simply had to,” she said. “I mean, a scene would be too awful, wouldn’t it?”
“It would indeed,” I said. We looked at each other and smiled.
It occurs to me that I have not said very much about Margery Phipps so far, which is an undeserved omission. The trouble with living among tempestuous characters, or writing about them, is that the most admirable people tend to get pushed into the background; and so it has been with Margery. She was a pretty girl, but you didn’t realiz
e it straight away. She had none of Fiametta’s obvious sex appeal or Biddy’s eccentric brilliance. Her brown hair was always neat, but never dressed with fashionable extravagance. She wore just the right shade of light red lipstick and a little powder, but no other make-up. She dressed plainly but becomingly, usually in a crisply clean white shirt and a dark skirt. She always reminded me of the recruiting poster’s ideal of a member of the women’s services—and when I say that, I mean it as a very great compliment. She also possessed the efficiency without bossiness that should characterize a good officer.
Of course, if she had not been efficient, she would never have made a Continuity Girl. I thought suddenly of the job she had on hand that very day. Three months ago, in what seemed like another world, we had taken the shots of Fiametta leaving the little restaurant which had been built on Stage 2 at Ash Grove Studios. In the film we would cut straight from there to her arrival at the Underground station. Of course, she would wear the same costume, the same accessories; but it was for Margery to say exactly how the scarf had been knotted, the precise position of the brooch, in which hand she had carried her handbag, whether or not she wore a ring, the angle of the rose in her hair. Certainly, Margery had her Continuity Sheets to help her—her own summaries which she noted down in shorthand, shot by shot, and then typed in a multitude of copies to be distributed to various departments. The Continuity Sheets were the Bible of the film, but they could not tell you the angle of a rose. It occurred to me that the degree of observational power developed in a Continuity Girl would put most professional detectives to shame. And with that thought came a question—had Margery noticed the writing on the pad?
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