The cabby looked, uninterested, at the plate and then made a face. ‘Can’t say I do. But they’re ten a penny round these parts. Keep one ’and on your wallet and the other on your private parts, mate. They’ll skin you of the one and give you something very nasty in the other if you don’t watch it.’ And nodded affably and drove away.
The girl at the entrance to the club hardly looked at him as he gave Garten’s name, just jerking her head in the direction of the end of the corridor; he walked along, barely able to see where he was going, and turned a corner to find himself in a small square room with a few lumpy old armchairs spread about and a bar at the far side, lit with alternate blue and red bulbs in a distinctly queasy fashion. Abner hated dives like this, and he peered around at the chairs, hoping now that the man he had come to see was not here so that he could legitimately turn and go. He’d tried, after all; no one could ask more of a man…
‘You must be Abner Wiseman. May I be so bold as to call you Abner?’ The man who had come quietly to his side was very small and round, little more than five feet two or three, Abner estimated as he bent his own head — fully a foot above him — to see, and with jowls like Alfred Hitchcock. The voice might be seductive and sophisticated; the man himself most certainly was not, for even in this light Abner could see that his clothes were unkempt and his shoes unpolished. Not at all an appetising figure.
‘Come and sit down and try this claret. Not a good one, I’m afraid, not even remotely good, but it’s wine and it’s red, and you can’t ask for more at these prices. I am not a wealthy man, Abner, but what hospitality I have is yours.’
Already repelled by the smoothness of the man, which sat oddly on his unpleasant appearance, Abner followed him. Half an hour, no more, he promised himself. Absolutely no more.
‘Well now, Abner,’ Garten smiled at him as he leaned back in his armchair after pouring a glass of wine for his guest with some ceremony. ‘What can I tell you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abner said. ‘You tell me what you want to tell me. You called me, after all.’
‘Indeed I did. Well, now, I gather the film you’re making is not about the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust itself, evil as that was, but the after effects. What happened to the people who came after. The children, the grandchildren…’
‘You’ve been well informed. Who is this Heller man you say put you on to me? I don’t know his name from — ’
‘Well, I dare say you don’t,’ Garten said soothingly. ‘It’s possible he got it from someone else, after all.’
‘Who?’ Abner demanded. The wine glinted in his glass invitingly but he was damned if he was going to drink it. He wouldn’t be beholden to this creepy guy for anything.
Garten shrugged and drank deeply, and then refilled his glass. ‘Who can say? Who have you seen?’
‘Why should I tell you that?’
‘My dear chap, so suspicious! Well, there it is. Understandable, I suppose. Well, let me see. Who does Heller deal with most? We’ll try a few names on you. Benson, the distributor, no? Or Sampson, his colleague and — not that one either? Jimmy Brandon, Joe Mandelson, Lee Capetelli, Monty Nagel — ah! Is that the one? Well, now, Victor sees a good deal of old Monty! Did he know of your project? Perhaps he was the one who told Victor, wanting to be of some assistance to you.’
Heller, Abner thought, and suddenly the picture was there in front of him. The shabby little man in a too voluminous suit sitting in the corner of Monty Nagel’s office and Monty snapping at the secretary who said, Here’s Mr Heller to see you…
An odd memory of an odd moment and now it infuriated him.
‘If he did he talks too much,’ Abner said wrathfully. ‘It’s my project, dammit! I’m not even contracted to the guy yet, if I ever am. Where does he get off telling the goddamned world and its wife what my projects are and — ’
‘Now, Abner, Abner, calm down!’ The voice added a satin quality to its underlying velvet. ‘I know Monty Nagel too and a better man never breathed. He means no harm, I do assure you. He was just trying to help you, of that I’m certain. It’s all I want to do, too. A man doing research needs to use every opportunity that comes his way. Why are you so paranoid on this matter?’
‘Paranoid?’ Abner said and then stopped. God, was that what it was? Was he being like Frieda, looking for threat at every turn, convinced that there was ill will directed at him from everywhere? And he took a deep breath to calm himself and then without thinking, reached out and took up the wine glass and drank.
‘There,’ said Garten with satisfaction. ‘That is better, isn’t it? Now we can talk comfortably.’
And he did.
Nine
Abner woke with a mouth that seemed to be fur-lined and tasting like a sewer, and a neck that felt to be twice as long as it should be. How much of that man’s red wine had he drunk? He couldn’t remember; only that they had sat there for a very long time indeed while the club filled with people who talked loudly, smoked furiously and smelled repellent. He could still recognise the thickness of old tobacco and other people’s sweat on his skin and hair as he crawled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. I’d give my soul for a decent shower, he thought muzzily. I must get a place of my own if I’m staying in this stinking town.
He made himself eat breakfast, remembering that half his trouble last night had been lack of food, and then sat crouched over his ringfile again. Note making, that was the answer, and he smoothed a new page and wrote at the top of it ‘Eugene Garten’. And then stopped.
After all, how much had the man told him? Precious little. He’d burbled on about the camps, talking of the horrors of it, the wickedness of it, the evil of the Germans; but what had he actually said that was new? He had spoken little of his own experiences, and when Abner had tried to get facts about his time in Birkenau out of him he had been evasive. The level in the wine bottle had dropped and then seemed to rise again, and Abner tried now to remember how many bottles there had been. Three, at least - and he rubbed his face with one hand, feeling the slight numbness of his lips. He had never had a head for alcohol and that stuff must have been particularly poisonous. He really did feel lousy.
So, what did he know about Garten? That he was living in a flat in Edgware - not far from Cyril Etting, in fact, though Abner had managed not to mention where he had spent his afternoon — and had his own business as a film publicist. Not a very successful one, Abner thought, for he lacked the glossy look of the breed. This man operated round the fringes of whatever he did, that was obvious.
So why had he come after Abner? That was the puzzle and Abner stared at his blank sheet and tried to order his thoughts. It had to be to tout for future work, surely. It was as he had thought; Garten had picked up from someone in this most gossipy of all businesses the fact that Abner was working on a project, and was trying to worm his way in on the ground floor. It was no more than that, and Abner closed the ringbinder and reached for another cup of coffee. He’d forget him; he had more important things to do now, like raising cash. And that would be a much bigger problem than some little runt of a man scurrying round trying to pick up a few crumbs to keep himself going. And for just one moment Abner felt a tinge of pity for Garten. But only for a moment.
The day ahead was a busy one. He had appointments with three of the people about whom Nagel had told him and he took the tube from Paddington to Oxford Circus, getting another frisson of pleasure from his increasing understanding of the system, and set off to walk up Oxford Street towards the first call. Simmy Gentle in Wardour Street.
Oxford Street was humming with people and reeked almost as badly as that club last night had done, but of fried onions from the cheap hamburger stands on the street corners — they called those things hamburgers? Abner thought, peering disgustedly as he passed. Christ! — and traffic fumes and human bodies; but there was the bite of winter air and a certain amount of wind between the buildings that sharpened him and made him feel better. He needed the walk and lengthene
d his stride, carefully checking the names on the side streets he passed, watching for Wardour Street.
Gentle’s address was almost the far end of it, and Abner stepped it out, weaving his way along the crowded pavements, comforted by the familiar logos on the buildings he passed; Paramount and Fox and MGM; but even more so by the unfamiliar names. There were a great many independent filmmakers here, and they all seemed to be making a living. They had buildings in what was clearly a costly part of the town and their display windows were filled with shrieking posters of their latest offerings. There’d be room for him and money to be found. There had to be.
Simmy Gentle’s office was on the third floor of the small building Abner found just beyond a street market filled with gaudy fruit and vegetable stalls and shouting people. He climbed the stairs — why didn’t somebody tell these people about elevators? — grateful to be feeling so much better than he had. The coffee and toast had done the trick, thank God. Never cheap wine again, he swore as he pushed on the door marked ‘SIMON GENTLE ENTERPRISES. RECEPTION. PLEASE WALK IN’. From now on, Coke is my limit.
The girl behind the desk in the small office was pert and pretty and full of energy. She leapt to her feet as he came in, fussed over him with offers of coffee and told him Mr Gentle had just stepped out for a moment but would be back, and had said he was sorry, Mr Wiseman was to wait please. Would he like to see Screen International? Not this week’s, she was afraid, on account of it always came late, but still not too old.
Gentle was actually half an hour late for the appointment, by which time all Abner’s good humour had vanished. Sure he was coming cap in hand to this guy, but for Christ’s sake, did he have to be so goddammed ill mannered? He wasn’t asking for favours, he was offering the man the chance to invest in what was a real film, one that mattered, that could give him some credit higher than the stuff he’d already been involved with. Abner stared round again at the posters that adorned the walls, feeling the sneer rise in him. Cheap shlock thrillers, every one of them. Rubbish.
Gentle came in in a rush of apologies, a tall thin man with a harassed look, and some of Abner’s anger evaporated as he fussed and chattered at him.
‘Got caught up in a damned meeting — you know how these people are. Especially money people! They never think anyone else’s time but their own matters, have you noticed?’
Abner laughed aloud at that. ‘I’d noticed,’ he said with heavy irony and looked at his watch with some point. ‘I’d noticed.’
Gentle chattered on, oblivious. ‘I said I had someone waiting for me, but would he let me go? Would he hell! But what can I do? He’s — well, never mind all that. Just have some coffee, hmm? Did my little Tiffany look after you? A good girl, Tiffany. I don’t know where I’d be without her, eh Tiff? Coffee, girl, chop chop!’
At last they were settled in his inner office, a small and cluttered room with a desk piled so high with papers that Abner couldn’t see the man’s hands in front of him, but then he cleared a space by shifting whole piles on to the floor and looked at Abner with a wide grin.
‘Well, now, my old friend Nagel sent you, hmm? A good man, Monty. One of the best agents in the business. And tell me, who sent you to him?’
They talked personalities for a while, Abner mentioning his New York and LA contacts and sharing mildly salacious gossip about the private lives of some of the biggest names in the industry. It wasn’t time-wasting, but a way of ensuring that he was for real. Knowing and talking about the right people and having the right information about them was a vital qualification everywhere in this business, and Gentle listened and laughed and chipped in with occasional tittle-tattle of his own, to establish his own credentials, and then they both relaxed. Now they could talk real business.
‘Have you got some paper, a few pages we can use?’ Gentle said. ‘Monty is right. There’s money around but they like to see something before they put their cash on the mahogany, you know what they are.’
‘Sure.’ Abner reached into his document case and pulled it out, the neatly bound but slender script of three pages. More than that no film man would ever read; how many of the bastards were able to read at all? Abner would ask himself, and knew the answer, and so had pared down his prose till it shone with meaning. The most elegant and important of the pages he’d sweated over longest, his budget forecast and cash breakdown, and he watched Gentle’s face as he leafed through the pages, trying to look as calm as though it didn’t matter.
‘I’m not looking for too much hard cash up front,’ he said then, unable to stay silent any longer. ‘It’s a promise of underwriting I need. I don’t start with the sort of script most people expect, you see. It makes itself as I work. I write with the camera as much as anything else. It depends on who I find, what sort of people they are, how the project develops. Sometimes there have to be actors as well as the people it all really happened to, but even then it’s an improvisation job. We work together, we talk of the story, what we’re trying to do, and then it kind of just happens — so there’s no need at this stage for big money, only underwriting for the research stage. But with me that’s just about the most important — like a script, you see, but it’s cheaper. No high flying writers to take too much of the cream.’
Gentle nodded, not looking up. ‘I know your stuff. I saw Uptown Downtown. Bit arty for me. I like my blood thick, Winner style, you know?’
‘I don’t make that sort of film,’ Abner said stiffly, anger starting to rise again. ‘Death Wishes aren’t up my alley and never will be — ’
‘If they were, I wouldn’t be looking at this stuff,’ Gentle said and looked up and grinned again. He had the dreadfully even teeth of the over orthodonted, almost Californian in their ferocious perfection. ‘I’ve got a team already making that sort of stuff, and it’s doing very nicely, thank you. But I’m looking for something a bit different, as Monty knows. I’ve been thinking romance. I reckon romance is on the way back in a big way. Big women’s weepies, you know? Crawford, Davis, Stanwyck stuff — but this is interesting. It’s certainly different. Maybe I could get some of the available Arab cash, if you tone down the Jewish angle a bit.’
Abner stared. ‘Tone down the — how the hell am I supposed to do that? This is a post Holocaust movie, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Gypsies, queers,’ Gentle waved a hand vaguely. ‘Just an idea. But it’s not written in stone. If you don’t want to, you don’t want to! It makes it harder to get the money this way, but not impossible. I could talk to my partner — ’
‘Partner?’
Gentle waved his hand again even more vaguely. ‘He’s a sleeping partner, you understand. I do all the real work. But when it comes to big projects we have to talk. That was why I was late this morning. We’ve got a big horror movie on the floor. Believe me, anything you can do with Stephen King, we can do here. We’ve got blood merchants so revolting you could throw up. So listen, can you leave this with me?’ He waved the script package in the air.
‘For a few days,’ Abner said. ‘But I need to know soon. I’m offering this around. You know how it is. Can’t wait too long to — ’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Gentle said heartily and stood up. ‘Haven’t I been in this business since I was fifteen? Worked at Elstree I did, when films really were films.’
‘Ever work at Ealing?’ Abner was suddenly eager.
‘God, no! Not my style at all. I was on the big adventure stuff. Stewart Granger, James Mason — the really good old days. Just a boy at the time, you understand, but it was good.’ He shook his head in heavy reminiscence. ‘Like they say, they don’t make ’em like that any more, more’s the pity. OK, Wiseman, give me a few days. I’ll be able to do a Goldwyn then, hey? Give you a definite maybe. But I’ll do my best, I give you my word. If my partner shows interest it’ll help. He’s the financial genius. Me, I put the packages together. Given any thought to lighting or camera man yet?’
‘Too premature,’ Abner said. ‘Where’s the use of lo
oking at availabilities till I’ve got a deal?’
‘Sensible fella.’ Gentle led him across the room with one arm set in familiar fashion over Abner’s shoulders. ‘It’s just the way I think. Always trying to get people in bed together, and there’s an excellent fella I know I’m putting about a bit. Still, as you say, let’s get the first things first, hmm? Call me Friday.’
Out again in the street Abner turned left and started walking as though he’d lived in the neighbourhood all his life and knew exactly where to go. It pleased him to do that, made him feel more capable and successful, and he walked fast, keeping in his mind’s eye the page he’d studied in his London street map, making his way to Lexington Street. Maybe that photographic memory hadn’t quite vanished after all; he could see the map closely superimposed on the rushing passers-by and the hooting fuming traffic at a virtual standstill in the roadway. It was a comforting thing to be able to do.
Jo Rossily, he thought. What sort of a guy would this one be? The film people he’d met so far here had been an odd mixture of the same sort that he knew in New York and on the Coast, and what he regarded as stereotypically British; though how much of that was due to their accents he couldn’t be sure. As soon as someone opened their mouth and that extraordinary sound came out, he was back in a movie house, watching Passport to Pimlico or The Ladykillers. The characters in those hadn’t been stereotypes, of course; and yet somehow they had. Like these people here —
Again he had to drag his thinking back to the here and now. It was crazy the way being in this town affected him; at home where he worked he had his nose down hard on the scent and thought of nothing but the job he was doing. Here his mind wandered, looped around itself, came back to the beginning and then went wildly careering off again. It couldn’t all be due to just being abroad. Or could it? And there he went again, off the point.
Postscripts Page 10