He found the small building in Lexington Street he was hunting for; a narrow door had the inevitable row of plates beside it. ‘R & M DISTRIBUTION’ read the third one, and unlike the other plates, was well polished, with stains of the stuff they had used to give it its deep gloss whitening the brickwork around it, and he thought — a small company, run by someone who cares for nothing else but his work. And climbed the inevitable three flights of stairs inside after the entryphone buzzed in response to his ring.
‘Mr Rossily?’ he said to the girl at the desk marked ENQUIRIES. ‘I think he’s expecting me.’
‘If you’re Mr Wiseman,’ the girl said tartly, ‘Ms Rossily is waiting for you now. You’re almost half an hour late — ’
‘My last appointment ran late,’ Abner said, and tried to look comfortable. Why be surprised that Jo Rossily should be a female? ‘He was half an hour late and — ’
‘You could have phoned us,’ the girl said and pressed a button on her phone. ‘Jo, your eleven-thirty appointment has just shown. It’s almost twelve. You have an early lunch, remember.’ And she listened and then nodded dismissively at Abner as a door behind him opened.
‘Mr Wiseman? Come in. Coffee?’
‘No, thank you, Miss Rossily,’ he said, and looked swiftly at the girl behind the enquiry desk with an attempt at humour. ‘I wouldn’t dare after being late and all. Your — er — receptionist here might put poison in it — ’
‘Ms Rossily makes her own coffee,’ the girl said scornfully, and began to rattle at her word processor, and Abner followed the other woman into her office.
She was tall and square, with shoulders made even squarer by her black suit. Power dressing, he thought, vaguely remembering silly articles in magazines, but then, as she reached her desk and turned and looked at him, changed his mind. She wasn’t trying to put on any show or to intimidate him. She was just a woman who was in charge of this setting and knew it. She needed no padding for her ego, whatever fashion put on her shoulders. And older than I am, too, he found himself thinking. As long as she doesn’t try to put me down the way some of those bitches at home do.
‘I gather Monty Nagel is our contact point,’ she said and reached out a hand. It didn’t match the square shouldered suit jacket, for the nails were short and rather broken and the skin reddened. ‘You have a script to show me?’
He reached into his document case. ‘Not really a script,’ he said, and launched again into an explanation of his working methods and how scripts for his films grew organically rather than being deliberately writer-created, and she sat and leafed through it, listening and showing no sign of any reaction.
‘I see,’ she said at length and put the script down on the desk. ‘And what do you want of me?’
‘You’re a distribution agent — ’ he said, half questioningly, but she didn’t respond, just looking at him, and he went on, ‘And I’m trying to get the whole thing set up as best I can to get the money men going.’
‘What money men?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Who have you got already?’
He thought very briefly. To try to fool this lady would be crazy. Her clear eyed view of reality showed in every line of her face, and in the uncompromising stare she was fixing on him. None of the usual crap you had to use to bring people on board would work here.
‘As yet, not a one,’ he said as cheerfully as’he could. ‘It’s one of the reasons I’m here. To set up cash, and — ’
‘No joy in the States? You’ve got a good track record. I know your stuff.’
‘“Public service television” is what they say to me there,’ he said with a hint of bitterness. ‘Art-house movies. But they’re all after big bucks. Anyone who isn’t Spielberg or Lucas gets nowhere.’
‘Not entirely true,’ she said, still with that direct stare. ‘Other people are making movies as well as them. I distribute here for quite a few.’
‘I’m tough to work with,’ he said then, after a long moment. ‘I don’t let money people get involved in production. They’re separate functions from where I stand, so they don’t get any input except their dollars. They don’t like it.’
The shoulders seemed to soften a little as she relaxed and for the first time smiled. She wasn’t that old after all, he thought. Tense, tired perhaps; there were shadows under the dark eyes and smudges of violet on her temples that looked even darker because her hair was a dusty fair colour that seemed to highlight her pale face. But not that old. His own age perhaps, if that.
‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I can’t be doing with the sort of people who play Aesop’s ass carriers.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘One of the fables,’ she said and picked up his script again and began to leaf through it. ‘A man and his son taking an ass along the road try to please everyone they meet — sometimes they lead the ass, sometimes they ride it, sometimes they carry it. And they never get it right.’ She looked up at him then. ‘I prefer people who know what they want and make sure they get it.’
‘Then we could do business,’ he said. ‘I hope,’ and grinned.
She didn’t smile back, but sat and stared at him consideringly. And then said, ‘I think I might be able to get Channel Four in on this. I have a good relationship with them and it’s their sort of project. They may even consider some financial involvement. Don’t get excited,’ she said then and he reddened a little. He hadn’t realised that the little surge of hope she had lifted in him had been so obvious.
‘I know better than to hold my breath, ever,’ he said. ‘In this business, you can die trying.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. What sort of percentage for me if I do?’
‘I haven’t got my agency sorted out yet,’ he said. ‘Nagel may be the one — ’
‘I can deal with him,’ she said. ‘He’s straight and a good man. I’ll call him.’
‘You won’t be the only one.’ Abner needed to recover his sense of his own value. ‘Everyone I’ve seen is showing interest. It’s clearly a project people are going to want to be part of.’
‘I’m sure,’ she said and held out her hand and got to her feet in one smooth movement. ‘I’ll be in touch then. Leave your address and phone number with Maggy.’
‘She’ll take it, I hope,’ Abner said, trying again to be a little lighter in the hand. ‘She sure didn’t take to the idea of making coffee.’
Jo Rossily shook her head. ‘You’ll have to understand something if you work with me, Mr Wiseman. We don’t run any sort of hierarchy here. Maggy has her job to do and I have mine. Personal things we do for ourselves. We’re not into servants, you understand? Any of us. We’re all women in this office, and we all have equal value, even if our jobs are different.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘OK, I apologise. Maggy isn’t into making coffee for the head honcho, right? I saw that movie too — is she the “M” of the company then?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re “R and M Productions”. The “R” I imagine is for you, Jo Rossily. Is the “M” for — ’
‘Oh!’ she shook her head, and again that brief smile lifted her face. ‘No, that’s my financial partner. He doesn’t work here. His name is Mayer. Good afternoon, Mr Wiseman. I’m running late so you’ll have to forgive me…’
It wasn’t until he was sitting over a sandwich in Chubby’s Bar in Poland Street that he realised what she had said. Mayer. Could it be that all-over-the-place guy Matthew Mayer, again? If it was, it was time for him to meet the man face to face. Indeed he was getting very interesting.
Ten
‘Quite a place,’ Abner said approvingly and chased the last of his steak and kidney pie around his plate. ‘That was incredible. How did you find it?’
‘I didn’t have it,’ she said and leaned back in her chair. ‘The menu said it was made with Guinness. Disgusting stuff. But you seemed to enjoy it.’
‘I didn’t mean the pie, though that was — well, anyway. No, I meant, how did y
ou find this restaurant? You said you don’t get out that much — ’
‘It’s in the Good Food Guide,’ she said, almost scornfully. ‘And we used to come here, Geoffrey and I, when we could. You get value for your money.’
‘That’s important to you’ — he watched her as the waiter, a lissom young man in a long apron, somewhat given to extravagant gestures, cleared their table and put a menu down in front of them - ‘value for money?’
‘It is to most people in Oxford.’ She sounded even more scornful and bent her head over the menu. ‘This is an academic city, remember. There are some people here with more money than judgement who go in for scampi in baskets and bottles of wine that cost enough to keep a family for a week, but by and large people here have more sense. That’s why places like Browns do so well — I’ll have the cheese. Stilton — ’ and she pushed the menu away from her. ‘And coffee at the same time.’
‘Class never goes away here, does it?’ he said and then nodded at the waiter. ‘Cheese for two. And coffee.’
‘Class? You mean it’s snobbery to care about value for money? Well, Well.’
‘No. To make judgements about people according to what they eat. What’s wrong with scampi in a basket, whatever that may be?’
She stared at him for a long moment and then laughed, and he looked at her approvingly. The laughter lifted her face and banished her customary scowl and completed what was in many ways a transformation. When he’d arrived at the house she’d been wearing the same rusty black cardigan and baggy trousers, but when he’d said firmly - after spending several hours over the packing cases that held the Rise and Fall of National Socialism — that he wanted a proper dinner and she needed one too, she had nodded without argument and gone away for fifteen minutes, to reappear ready to go out and looking quite different. Still wearing black, but this time a dress that fitted her body well and displayed long legs in dark tights that made her startlingly elegant. She had pulled her hair back from her face and pinned it into a soft knot on the top of her head to reveal a long neck that looked very vulnerable. She had even powdered her face and applied lipstick, and he had looked at her almost shyly when she came down the dusty stairs.
‘You’re right, of course,’ she said then. ‘It shouldn’t matter when people do unutterably naff things, but there it is — one notices.’
‘Naff?’ he cocked his head at her, and again she laughed and lifted both hands in a gesture of helplessness.
‘I couldn’t explain that this side of Armageddon. Live here a little while and you’ll understand.’
‘You’re a difficult lot, you Britons. Like to be awkward. Just for the sake of it sometimes.’
‘It beats being as eager as a puppy to tell people everything there is to tell within five minutes of meeting,’ she retorted. ‘And all that hand shaking and back slapping.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘It’s too much.’
He said nothing, just sitting and looking at her and suddenly she went rather pink.
‘That was snobbery too. And of a very nasty kind. I’m sorry.’
He still said nothing, just lifting his brows a little and not taking his gaze from her face.
‘I don’t know what right I have to be so. I suppose I learned it after we came to live here. God knows I’ve no cause to regard myself as anything special. Please accept my apology.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ he said and considered leaning forwards to set his hand on hers and then dismissed the notion. That would be a mad thing to do with this young lady. ‘You’re right, in a lot of ways. There are some Americans who make one hell of an object of themselves just the way you say. “Hi there, Joe, whad’yaknow, you in Kiwanas or Elks? Put it there, pal.” It makes me shudder too.’
She smiled and bent her head to the cheese, which had now arrived, and there was a long companionable silence as they demolished their platefuls. Then, when there was just coffee and the remains of the bottle of claret he had ordered, he said carefully, ‘You said you learned to be fussy about the way people behave after you got here. Here to Britain or here to Oxford? I mean, you sound totally British but there’s something — I don’t know exactly. You could have been born some place else.’
She was silent still and then looked at him and lifted her brows. ‘You’re a perceptive person, Mr Wiseman.’
‘I am? I’m glad to hear it. In what way?’
‘I’m English in that I was born here. In London, actually, not here in Oxford, though I suppose the place has had quite an effect on me. We came to live here when I was around ten. My — my father was English, of course.’
There was an unwillingness in her; he could feel it as though it were a palpable thing, but there was a conflict there too. She seemed to be trying to hold back while something else within her was pushing words out.
‘My mother wasn’t, though,’ she said then and bent her head so that her face was shadowed over her coffee cup. ‘Perhaps I get my foreignness from her.’
‘Wasn’t English? I know you said she was Jewish, but I thought — she could still have been English.’
‘Could have been, but she wasn’t.’
He said nothing, leaving it to the inner conflict, whatever it was, to serve his purposes. It did.
‘She was Polish,’ she said then, abruptly. ‘Her name was Basia Novak. Born in Bialystok, her father a doctor, her mother a schoolteacher, originally.’
He took the risk, looking at her bent head, feeling her need to talk and her shrinking from it at the same time, pitying her because he knew how she felt. Hadn’t he felt the same? Hadn’t Hyman? ‘What happened to them?’
She made a faint movement of her shoulders. ‘The same that happened to hordes of others. Six million others.’
It was as though ice had been trickled into his collar at the back of his neck to snake its way down his back, and he took a sharp little breath. ‘Then you know, too.’
Now she looked at him. ‘Know what?’
‘How it feels. What’s it like to be a — ’ He managed to produce a small grimace, trying to make it a smile. ‘Call it a postscript.’
She frowned, puzzled, and then her face cleared. ‘Oh, your film. Your movie.’
‘Yes, my film.’
Again there was silence and the waiter came and refilled their coffee cups and emptied the wine bottle into their glasses and they still sat silently until Abner said carefully, ‘I’m not asking you to tell me, but there are things that — ’ And stopped, not sure how to go on.
‘Things you’d like to know,’ she said harshly and managed to grin at him. It wasn’t a friendly look though, as it had been last time. Her face merely twisted, for her eyes had no glint of pleasure in them. ‘For your film.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘For me. I’m still trying to understand how I feel. My parents were in the camps, but they didn’t tell me until I was grown. Seventeen. I’m still trying to handle it.’
‘You’re lucky,’ she said, still with that harsh sound in her voice. ‘You had some good years, then. Seventeen? That was luxury.’
He blinked, startled. It hadn’t been the reaction he’d expected. ‘Luxury?’
‘Of course it was! You spent seventeen years not knowing about it all. Not being reminded all the time, not feeling wicked because you were young and alive and — Christ, you don’t know what luxury is if you don’t realise that!’
‘You knew from the start then? When you were a child?’
‘There wasn’t a time I didn’t know. The whole bloody story over and over again, she told me. Other kids got Cinderella. Not me. I got David and Sonia and the rest of them in gas ovens. Great stuff to go to bed with. Sleep well, kiddies.’
The ice moved across his back again. ‘She told you — your mother?’
‘Who else? She knew it best.’ She shook her head then. ‘My father tried to tell it sometimes. A better way. But there was no better way.’
‘Will you tell me?’
‘Tell you?’ She lifted her head and star
ed at him. ‘Why the bloody hell should I?’
‘Because it’s history,’ he said carefully. ‘Because your father told you that the material you have at the house was to be made available to people who need it. An obligation, you said. For historians and academics. And perhaps for a serious filmmaker. Isn’t speaking of your own experience in the same category?’
There was another silence, and then, moving sharply, she picked up her wine glass and drank the claret as though it were water, fast and without stopping to taste it. She put her glass back on the table with a sharp little gesture and said in an even tone, ‘Right. David Novak, born in Bialystok, very middle-class and so forth, trains to be a doctor in Berlin, returns to Poland, sets up a good practice. Makes money, marries girl from equally middle-class sort of family, very full of itself, I suspect. Sonia. She’s got a degree from a French university, very cultured, all that stuff. They have six children, and Basia is the oldest girl, with two older brothers, and one sister and two brothers younger. Good school, ballet classes and so forth all lined up. Got that clear in your head?’
‘Yes,’ he said, almost dazed with the speed at which she was talking. He ached for a notebook, or better still a cassette recorder, and prayed somewhere deep inside his head that his memory would be as effective for spoken words as it was for written ones. Would he be able to close his eyes and hear all this again? Oh, God, please, please let me hear it all, hold it all.
She had started again and he scrambled to fix his attention on her.
‘… in a camp in Germany, I don’t know why. Anyway, there they were, David sent to the men’s side of course, Sonia and the children together elsewhere. David, it seems is valuable. Doctor, you see. So he gets to eat sometimes and lives. Not the others, Sonia and Laszlo, and Frederic and Ben and Jacob, they die in the first year. Typhoid or some such — ’ She shrugged as though it didn’t matter. ‘They were fortunate, clearly. At least it was what you could call a normal death. Basia and her sister Malka recovered. Amazing, wasn’t it?’
‘Amazing.’
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