MI5 and Me

by Charlotte Bingham

‘The Lord alone knows,’ my father said dolefully. ‘Film folk hardly know what they’re doing from one day to the next, and even then it’s doubtful. I’ll try and get you put down on the schedule for next week.’

  I had to tell Rosalie and Mary Claire that I too was taking some leave to help out at home.

  ‘I hope it isn’t another of these sudden departures to look after a sick mother?’ Rosalie observed. Then she said with some dread in her voice: ‘Section Head is sending me Mary Claire, which is not what was wanted on voyage.’

  I must have looked surprised, because I had never heard Rosalie be anything but kind.

  ‘She has terrific speeds.’

  Rosalie shook her head.

  ‘She keeps stopping work to go for a gasper. I’ve seen her in the ladies’, her head stuck out of the window, puffing away as if her life depended on it.’

  ‘You could suggest snuff.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Rosalie agreed, brightening. ‘Hope you have a good leave.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it will be.’

  How wrong I had been I only realised the following morning when I shared Hal and Melville’s chauffeur-driven car. They put me up in front beside the driver so they could talk in low voices about the director, the film, and possibly even Arabella.

  At the studio everyone seemed to know where they were going, except for me. My father had not bothered to outline my job except to say that I was going to be an extra. I asked Melville as he was the last out of the car.

  ‘I don’t know, dear heart. One has never been an extra. Go to makeup, that’s always safe. Everyone starts in makeup, and then waits to be told what to do next.’

  I found makeup. It was being guarded by a burly-looking individual.

  ‘Who are you?’

  I told him.

  ‘I haven’t got you down here,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you should have,’ I told him.

  ‘Your name again?’

  Once again I told him. Once again he failed to find me on his list.

  ‘You can’t go in there if you’re not on the list.’

  I looked at him, feeling suddenly angry. If it weren’t for people like me he wouldn’t have a list, I thought – probably wrongly – but then it was very early in the morning.

  For no reason I know, and to this day I don’t understand why I did it, I took out my MI5 pass and flashed it at him.

  ‘Security,’ I said, in what I hoped was a growly voice.

  He almost bowed as he waved me past, and it was only when I was in the makeup area with all the lights and the people and the rest of it that I realised I would probably end up in the Tower because of what I had done, but somehow the whole show business atmosphere had got to me, and I knew without any doubt that I had entered the kind of world where anything could happen, and probably did.

  ‘So what are we doing for this little miss today?’ asked the makeup man.

  ‘Just the usual,’ I said, with assumed nonchalance.

  He cast a look at me in the mirror.

  ‘Are you in the party scene this morning?’

  I really didn’t know whether I was or not, so of course I nodded.

  ‘I’ll give you the same makeup I give Vivien Leigh,’ he told me, his head tilted to one side as he stared at me. ‘You remind me a little of her, the same small features – they need bringing out. But I’ll lose your eyes. Your eyes are bigger than hers were, or are. Although I haven’t done her since just before Gone … but I don’t suppose the eyes have got any smaller.’

  He worked away at me for what seemed like hours, and the more he worked the more miserable I felt. I had never liked makeup much and now I was being plastered in it, I liked it even less.

  ‘Off you go, dear, and if I were you I’d ask for a change of costume if you can. That frock is truly naff.’

  I looked down at it. It was my best dress, and Hal had chosen it.

  ‘Who should I ask for if I want a change?’

  ‘Production office has the lists. But there’s no need to hurry. They’re still setting up.’

  The great thing about film sets, as I soon discovered, is that everyone assumes that you know where you’re going so no one stops you. I found the production office, and by some miracle Arabella as well.

  When she saw me she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

  ‘What have they done to you?’ she gasped. ‘Oh my God, Lottie. Who or what on earth are you meant to be?’

  ‘A guest at the big party scene,’ I said, thickly, through a layer of bright red lipstick.

  ‘What sort of a party giver would ask the likes of you?’

  I felt tearful.

  ‘He thought I should look like Vivien Leigh.’

  ‘You look like Medusa. You just need a few snakes coming out of your hair.’

  ‘He also said I should get a better frock. Can you arrange it?’

  Arabella looked down the list.

  ‘I think you’d better be a different kind of guest,’ she decided. ‘I’ll put you down as Scary Guest. You might even get a line or two – but forget the new frock. The one you are wearing is quite terrifying enough.’

  Arabella did not know it, but her arbitrary judgement of my Vivien Leigh look could not have been worse for me. The rest of the guests at the party were relatively anonymous, all being listed as Party Guest #1, etc., whereas because of Arabella’s list, I had now been singled out. First of all, despite hiding behind a pillar, when I finally walked out I bumped straight into Melville, who gave a small shriek.

  ‘What have they done to you, Heart?’

  I tried to look nonchalant.

  ‘Scary Guest in the party scene,’ I said, tapping my chest indicatively.

  ‘Scary Guest is about right. Just don’t let Hal see you. He’s the world’s worst corpser.’

  Even I knew that corpsing was theatre slang for laughing at the wrong moment.

  But it proved impossible to hide from Hal as he came on to the set just when the Assistant Director was looking round for the party guests, finally calling: ‘Scary Guest, please? Scary Guest, come and stand here, if you would.’

  I had been trying to hide behind a pillar but now had to emerge, feeling as if I was coming out on to the world’s stage.

  Not being used to filming, I had no idea that it was perfectly normal for everything to take an age while everyone frowned and moved cameras and lights before frowning some more and moving them all back again to where they were originally. When I was standing where the Assistant Director indicated Scary Guest should go, Hal of course spotted me, although at first – as he told me later – only by recognising my dress.

  Of course he started to laugh. He laughed so much he had to leave the set for a drink of water.

  Melville remained calm throughout while giving me I-told-you-so looks before the director arrived surrounded by a flurry of attendants, all of whom looked incapable of decadence.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked his Assistant Director, staring directly at me.

  I attempted to look innocuous, just any old extra standing about not wanting to do anything much except be helpful.

  ‘This,’ the Assistant Director told him, ‘is someone called Scary Guest, Chief.’

  I don’t know why but I had expected Leslie Robertson – this famously up and coming film director – to be taller and somewhat fetching. In fact he was the very opposite: a small man wearing a collarless shirt and smoking an untipped Gauloise. He looked me up and down and frowned. He obviously didn’t remember ordering up any Scary Guest.

  He looked over at Hal, who was trying hard not to look at me.

  ‘Silence, everyone!’

  Silence except from the returned Hal, who once again started to laugh helplessly.

  Ten minutes and several glasses of water later, Hal, his makeup repaired, was at last laughter-free, but only because I had been escorted to the back of the party scene. As I was dutifully milling about with the other extras a tall be
spectacled young man looked at me with sudden interest, although not the kind that girls are usually meant to invite.

  ‘I daresay you got the Gus treatment,’ he said, nodding at my hideous hairstyle when there was a lull in proceedings.

  I agreed that I must have.

  ‘The dress is mine.’

  He stared at it.

  ‘I should leave that in costume and find something else,’ he said in a kind voice.

  ‘My mother’s dressmaker made it for me.’

  ‘Very kind of her, I am sure, but take my advice and leave it in costume and ask them for something a little bit more chic.’ He leaned forward and whispered in my ear. ‘And get rid of the slap. You’re really very pretty, you know.’

  Harry Bart was at RADA studying to be a proper actor. I found this out when we broke for lunch. I was impressed, but at pains not to show it.

  ‘I thought that was just a place for debutantes to pass the time of day.’

  ‘No – no, that’s the other place, although we do have some,’ he conceded, taking his glasses off. ‘But mostly we are ambitious young people striving to become stars, and have our own trailers, before taking on vast Shakespearean roles and getting knighted.’

  I sighed. It all sounded so much more fun than being in MI5 and trying to defend the nation’s security.

  ‘What do you do when you’re not being a party guest?’

  ‘I work in … the War Office,’ I said, quickly correcting my near treasonable error.

  ‘The War Office? But not all the time, surely, or you wouldn’t be here?’

  ‘Oh, no, not all the time, but some of it. I’m a secretary. You know – shorthand and typing and that kind of thing.’

  The moment I mentioned shorthand and typing, Harry looked interested.

  ‘I can’t type,’ he said. ‘Think you could teach me? I want to learn how in order to write scripts in which I can star.’

  ‘Do you have a typewriter?’

  Of course he didn’t have a typewriter, but since we had one back in Dingley Dell, before I knew it I was offering Harry the opportunity to come and learn on it, while he was offering me the chance of a different chair in makeup, well away from Gus.

  ‘Can I give you a lift home?’ he offered.

  ‘I have a lift, thank you.’

  I suddenly realised it was not quite the thing for an extra to climb into a chauffeur-driven car with the film’s leading actors, so quickly changed my mind.

  ‘Actually I would prefer to go home with you. I felt a bit sick in the car I came in this morning.’

  Harry dropped me off at Dingley Dell, before driving on to Earls Court where apparently he was sharing a flat with some Australian male models.

  The next morning I still shared the car with Hal and Melville, who had at last stopped teasing me about my role as a scary guest.

  ‘I see from the script, Lottie, that today you’re a factory worker toiling away at your loom,’ Hal boomed from the back of the car. ‘Oh, dear, yesterday was bliss. I fully expected Comrade Robertson to explode when I went. I haven’t had a corpse like it since playing Malvolio at Guildford Rep.’

  After that, the talk in the back of the car between Hal and Melville was once more kept low although I did manage to catch different words, and phrases, the main one being motivation, as well as lavish praise for each other’s performance.

  ‘That’s bad,’ Harry told me later over lunch. ‘Actors should never discuss each other’s performance – it takes the edge off. Probably why it all went so badly this morning. How about Leslie? He was in despair.’

  It was true the director’s face had grown ever bleaker as Melville and Hal played the scenes exactly as they must have been rehearsing them in the car. The gist of his fury was that the actors were playing their parts all wrong.

  Finally Leslie took to sermonising, during which monotonous and really very long political diatribe Melville stared at nothing at all. He just fiddled with his prop gold cufflinks leaving Hal to take the floor, which he very willingly did.

  ‘My dear old Heart,’ he finally boomed at Leslie, when the director had at last finished his sermon. ‘Not all factory owners are bastards, and not all workers are saints. So why not shake off the clichés and let us play fully and properly rounded characters?’

  There was a long silence followed by the crew suddenly bursting into applause. Hal of course looked round at them and bowed.

  ‘There will be nothing for you or anyone else to play unless you do as directed,’ Leslie quietly warned him in return. ‘And if you’re not very careful and don’t all come to your senses, I shall close the picture down,’ he told his rebellious cast and crew.

  ‘So now who’s being the horrid factory owner?’ Melville murmured, with an audible sigh.

  I had no idea why my father had been so interested in sabotaging Leslie Roberston’s film, but seeing how intransigent Melville and Hal were being about the interpretation of their roles, I realised that he must be using the same tactics that communists were adopting to cause strikes in factories, he was getting at the target from the inside, and of course, actors being actors, Melville and Hal were thoroughly enjoying themselves. The car journeys in the morning were lightened by the sound of their laughter as they planned yet more fiendish antics destined to throw Leslie Robertson into chaos and confusion.

  For myself, I was having a grand time on the factory floor. Gone was the Vivien Leigh makeup and in its place was a ground-down lady with a scarf tied in the accepted manner – knotted on top of my head – and a blacked-out tooth.

  ‘I think you should lose the tooth over lunch,’ Harry said, shuddering slightly. ‘Or at least do me a favour and don’t smile.’

  ‘It’s more fun than being Scary Guest, except I got myself pushed into my loom by Hal this morning.’

  ‘You should toughen up,’ Harry said, looking patronising.

  For revenge I smiled at him.

  ‘You make me feel sick when you do that,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Well, people in those days couldn’t afford to go to a dentist, even if they could find one. They had to tie a tooth to a door knob, then get someone to slam the door.’

  ‘My grandmother used to do that with us,’ Harry said, lighting a cigarette. ‘It always worked.’

  I was impressed, but seeing that he seemed to have all his teeth, I didn’t quite believe him.

  ‘It’s great if you have what we used to call a wobbler – you know?’

  I changed the subject.

  ‘What are you doing after the film?’

  ‘Finish at RADA and starve, really. And you?’

  ‘Back to being boring at the War Office.’

  ‘Of course it’s not the only thing you do.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘It’s not the only thing I do. I also teach out-of-work actors how to type.’

  ‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’

  Harry smiled suddenly while quickly putting a hand on my mouth so I couldn’t smile back.

  ‘Is the quick brown fox going to be coming round to my flat this weekend?’

  This was his way of asking me to pinch my parents’ typewriter and bring it round to him, instead of smuggling him into the house and letting him have a go on the Olivetti when they were out at cocktail parties or away at weekends with friends with large draughty houses.

  ‘No – you’d better come round to us as usual.’

  The truth was I was worried that if I nicked it for even a few hours, I might be in very hot water. My father might need it suddenly and immediately, for doing stealthy things.

  ‘Come round on Saturday morning and with luck it will be free. The ancestors don’t get up until late on a Saturday as Mrs Graham doesn’t come in until midday and they don’t know how to boil an egg, so Saturdays they diet and sleep.’

  Harry duly presented himself at the front door of Dingley Dell, only to be told to go down the area steps and knock on the dining-room window, which I would open for him.

&nbs
p; ‘Do all your friends come in this way?’

  ‘Some do, some don’t,’ I said, indicating the typewriter. ‘Now don’t look at the keyboard, just stare ahead and try to remember where everything is.’

  I was feeling pretty nervous just for lending him the wretched thing – anyone who knew my father would know why – but Harry had a way with him, and I have to admit that it was not the kind of way I was used to. He made you want to adopt him; even though you knew that by helping him it would be sure to turn out the worse for you – you still went ahead and did it. It was actually quite annoying; nearly as annoying as watching him trying to memorise the keyboard, or tap out the wretched fox jumping over anyone and everyone.

  I was in the kind of nervous state that comes over me when I think I am doing something wrong but am going ahead with it anyway, when the dining-room window was flung open and a policeman’s helmeted head appeared. Harry jumped up, at the same time losing what little colour he had. As if that wasn’t enough the dining-room door opened too, and my father appeared in his best Chinese silk dressing gown, blocking off any possible escape route.

  ‘What are you doing, Lottie, may I ask?’ he asked in his calmest voice, which is actually his most terrifying. As he had his swordstick in his hand, I felt I had to tell him the truth.

  ‘I’m teaching Harry – this is Harry – to type on your typewriter,’ I said, trying to sound normal.

  My father glanced at the typewriter and Harry’s forlorn effort.

  ‘Not getting very far then, are you?’

  ‘Is this all right with you, sir?’

  The policeman stepped over the sill into the dining room, a large sheaf of papers in his hand.

  ‘I suppose it has to be, Constable,’ my father said, hanging his swordstick on the back of a dining chair.

  ‘So nothing missing then?’

  ‘Only normal good manners,’ my father stated, staring from Harry to me and back again.

  There was a sudden silence during which all four of us realised we were terribly embarrassed, the policeman not least. He cleared his throat.

  ‘About these parking offences, sir.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ My father nodded at him. ‘Come upstairs and I will settle everything with you.’ He turned to me. ‘You may put back the typewriter and tell your friend here there is a very good night school on Kensington High Street, and the next time he climbs in anyone’s dining-room window, do two things – close the window afterwards and don’t do it in full view of a policeman.’