Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Hallo?’ I said, with caution, into the old dusty receiver. For a few seconds there was no response from the other end, and then I heard Harry’s voice, although hardly heard would have been more accurate.

  ‘I had lunch with your father—’

  ‘Yes, I know. I saw you on to the bus, remember?’

  ‘I’m afraid he poisoned me.’

  I was speechless for a few seconds.

  ‘He wouldn’t poison you, Harry, only Russians and Italians poison people,’ I said with some authority.

  ‘Just a – a bad joke – to go with the bad mussel. I did as you said and followed him in whatever he ordered, so the wines matched even though I hate mussels. Got back just in time for Dermot to call the doctor. He had to give me an injection – the doctor, not Dermot – to stop me being sick.’

  After which the phone went dead. My imagination became one of those flies you can never swat without falling out of the window.

  After locking up all the security files, which took forever, I caught a taxi.

  Harry was back in his half of the room, looking not so much pale as greenish-white, almost as if his complexion had taken on the colour of the sea to fit in with the mussels.

  ‘I am so sorry, Lottie-bags, made a titty-poo of myself.’ Harry smiled bravely. ‘He was very nice, your father, and dropped me back here, which was when I started to be Uncle Dick.’

  ‘I should have known he would choose mussels or oysters or something like that – oh, dear.’

  I patted Harry’s hand in a lame kind of way and continued to visit him for the next few days, at the end of which Harry was recovered, but Dermot certainly was not.

  A few evenings later he beckoned me to go into the kitchen with him. He closed the door, which was unfortunate because he had just bought kippers and they were sitting on the grill pan waiting to be cooked, and I thought they were eyeing me, which was almost worse than the way Dermot was eyeing me. In fact, it seemed to me that the kippers were looking at me in a more kindly fashion. Actually, by the time Dermot had finished accusing me of ruining Harry’s life, I almost envied the kippers their future in the grill pan.

  ‘Since Harry fell ill he has changed beyond recognition. He is like that painter – Augustus John – after he knocked his head in the sea.’

  I frowned. I had not noticed that Harry had changed that much. Very well he was a little paler, very well he was a little careful of himself, but when last seen he was out and about and finding himself some clean socks, which was huge for Harry.

  ‘Do you know what he wants to do now?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Get even better?’ I ventured.

  ‘No, no, this is nothing to do with his health, no. This is political. He wants to become a communist!’

  I knew then why my heart had sunk when Harry had kept saying that my father was so kind. My father was brilliant with his agents. They all said, time and again, how kind he was – so if Harry had told Dermot that he wanted to become a communist, that must mean that Harry had agreed to work for my father undercover, like Melville and Hal. The first thing you had to do was to go about spouting Marx to all your friends – although Melville and Hal had not taken that line, on account of the kind of specialised work they did. Besides, no one would have believed them. They took the Daily Telegraph into rehearsal and voted Conservative so they could go on getting parts as officers and gentlemen in war films and plays.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I said, averting my eyes from the kippers. ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. That is a change of character.’

  ‘Exactly, just like that great painter Augustus John who went from being a nice shy boy to a raving sex maniac.’

  ‘But a very talented one,’ I said, because I always try to look on the bright side when I am around Dermot, for all sorts of reasons.

  He shook out his copy of the Manchester Guardian at me. I knew what the shake meant. It meant that he might be left-wing himself but he drew the line at communism.

  Happily, Dermot’s attention had now switched to the poor kippers, so I was able to sidle out of the kitchen, close the door and bolt off to find Harry.

  ‘Coffee?’

  He nodded happily. Once we were in the noisy coffee bar we were able to talk frankly, which is not something I like doing. But I knew that if what Dermot had said was true, matters must now have become quite serious.

  ‘So you are embracing communism.’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘It’s all part of what you have to do if – you know – if you’re working for you know what.’

  ‘But your father is a member of the Sunningdale Golf Club; your mother is a pillar of the Church. What can possess you ever to think they will countenance your views?’

  ‘Oh, they don’t have to know, really they don’t. Just enough to make them worried, but not too anxious, your father said. Enough to make them think that I am just going through a phase. For the moment I am only a volunteer at CPHQ. They’re trying me out on little tasks.’

  I knew that a great many agents, double or otherwise, had to convince their families that they were proper communists, but I supposed that in Harry’s case my father was treading lightly to begin with, which was just as well since Harry was so good-natured it seemed to me that neither of his parents would believe him. They would probably think he was just having them on.

  I went to work the next morning convinced that nothing would come of it, and nothing did seem to come of it until a few weeks later, weeks during which Harry did seem to change a bit although nothing outrageous – it was mostly a matter of costume. He started wearing collarless shirts and adopting a pair of what he imagined were Trotsky-style glasses, but which I thought made him look more Chekhov than communist.

  As I say, other than that nothing much happened until one Saturday morning when I was going to take the Underground to meet Arabella for lunch, I passed a strange-looking figure standing outside the station. I did not do a double take – I did a triple take. The strange-looking figure was Harry and he was holding out copies of the Daily Worker to passers-by, most of whom happily ignored him.

  ‘I’ll take one,’ I said, my eyes lowered.

  ‘Thank you, miss.’ Harry had assumed a Cockney accent that would have got him a part anywhere.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, taking my copy of the Daily Worker and attempting to be heavily sarcastic. Then I mouthed ‘see you for coffee at six’, which Harry ignored because someone had just kicked him on the shin and shouted ‘bloody Russian’ at him.

  I had to leave him even though he was hopping about a bit clutching his ankle, or else his cover might have been blown.

  I was pretty anxious about him, and when he turned up, very eventually, he was limping so badly my first thought was that he must be up for Richard III.

  ‘Not funny, Lottie-bags, not funny at all. Really, the things people do to you if they think you’re a communist.’

  I sighed, but only inwardly.

  ‘I suppose you know all about this undercover stuff, because of your father, ahem, ahem, ahem?’ Harry asked.

  ‘What I know could be fitted into an egg cup,’ I said, with complete honesty. ‘Actually I don’t like all this undercover stuff – it makes me feel as if nothing is really true.’

  Harry looked around to make sure there was no one too near us before pulling up his coat collar; presumably so no one could lip read what he had to say to me, although actually he shouldn’t have bothered as our exchange was not all that interesting.

  ‘What I have discovered is that communists are very, very boring,’ he mouthed at me. ‘They do not make jokes and, worst of all, don’t laugh at anyone else’s. Most of them have beards, which are hosts to goodness knows what, and they put cheap Biros behind their ears, and some of them don’t even wash their shirts. I tell you, Communist Party HQ is what my father calls absolute hell.’

  ‘Can’t you give up all this now, before it’s too late?’

  ‘Not really.’ Har
ry looked momentarily sad, but then he brightened. ‘I have to do more to free our country from these people, Lottie, really I do, and besides your father has plans for me.’

  Now my heart really did sink. I found myself praying: O, dear Lord of all that is beautiful, keep Harry and plans away from each other.

  ‘What sort of plans?’ I mouthed back at him.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. He wants me to meet him at Lord’s Cricket Ground, carrying a copy of the Daily Telegraph and dressed in a suit.’

  ‘But supposing you get a job?’ I asked, speaking normally.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Harry continued, still mouthing his words. ‘If I get an acting job, fair enough, he says, but for the moment I must try harder selling the newspaper. I sold a couple today – one to your father, which was very good of him, I thought,’ he added, brightly.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Have you thought of changing your pitch?’

  ‘No, apparently CPHQ are keen on me staying at the same old Ken High Street corner pitch, beside the chap pretending to be blind who is selling matches. He keeps lifting his shades to see how much he has snaffled.’ Harry nodded. ‘Yup. We’ve become quite friendly. I go and have tea with him at Lyons’ Corner House and he tells me all about his life: how he had to take up begging on account of missing out on his army pension, his wife leaving him and so on. He’s quite decorated, you know. You’d think he would be bitter, but he’s not. He’s as cheerful as you or I.’

  I went back to Dingley Dell feeling thoughtful only to bump into Hal and Melville both hurrying back into the house carrying copies of the Daily Worker.

  ‘Really, Lottie darling, the things I do for England,’ Melville said, sighing.

  ‘I shall read it cover to cover,’ Hal boomed. ‘I think of it as a political Beano. Apparently these asses really believe we are all equal. They wouldn’t if they’d ever toured with Dougie Robinson.’

  I went downstairs a few hours later to find Mrs Graham lighting the dining-room fire with several more copies of the wretched thing.

  ‘Really can’t see who would want to read such nonsense,’ she murmured. ‘Have to set fire to these before any visitors catch sight of them. Red rag to a bull it would be. Still,’ she turned to look at the nicely laid table, ‘we have Mr and Mrs Bernard Walters to dinner tonight, so that should brighten things up a bit.’

  Bernard Walters was always in the newspapers; even I knew that he had the impresario’s golden touch and a finger in every entertainment pie. I stopped halfway up the stairs on my way back to the drawing room, and then I went down again.

  ‘I will be in for dinner tonight after all, Mrs G,’ I told her.

  ‘Very well. Put yourself where you want. Your mother being away, you can play hostess for her.’

  I re-laid the table, carefully putting myself next to Mr Walters, and then I zipped upstairs to change.

  In the drawing room I could hear animated voices, and Melville playing the piano, quietly, which my father liked him to do because he said it covered awkward moments, if there were any.

  Mr and Mrs Walters were charming and evidently very rich in that unapologetic way that is so impressive to people like me. Their clothes, their wristwatches, jewellery and footwear, seemed to be staring out at the rest of us with pity. My father had several rich relations but they never looked like the Walters did. The relatives wore faded clothes, and very, very old jewellery, and their shoes and handbags all looked as if they should be in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The ladies often had monograms engraved on their handbag clasps, and the men’s signet rings bore crests that were small and discreet; although their cigarette cases were gold, they were worn gold. So all in all, to me at least, the Walters were birds of paradise, a fresh breeze blowing in from the affluent West End where they had many shows running, shows that bankrolled their new venture into cinema.

  I did not unveil my newly formed idea to Bernard Walters until halfway through dinner when everyone was very nicely thank you, because my father was always so generous with drinks that no one could stay completely sober for long – although tonight I had made a point of doing so. As it happened I had read Melville’s latest film script, a Walters production, in case there was a part in it suitable for Harry – which at that moment there was not, but more of that anon.

  ‘When are you due to start shooting the film Mr Walters?’ I ventured, smiling with what I hoped was dedicated fascination at him.

  ‘We start location shooting next week,’ he said. ‘Why, do you want a part?’ he added, jokingly.

  ‘No, very kind of you,’ I said, sweetly, ‘but I have no ambitions to be an actress.’

  ‘What a relief for your father,’ he said, laughing. I too laughed, although a trifle obediently.

  ‘May I tell you a story?’ I asked.

  ‘By all means,’ he said, but his eyes reflected the thought ‘oh, dear’.

  It didn’t take long, as well it shouldn’t since I had rehearsed and even timed it.

  ‘My,’ he said, after I had finished. ‘That is such a good take on what we need in the script. We could start there.’ He looked round the table. ‘I can just see Melville particularly – and Hal, of course. Young lady, you have given me the start and the finish to my picture. A young officer dying in order to save them, and then for them to end up as they do … brilliant!’ he said, sighing happily. ‘I love flashback. With flashback you know you can settle down, sit back, let the story unroll.’

  After which I sat back and crossed my fingers.

  Nothing untoward happened at Dingley Dell until a week or two later when I came back late from the coffee bar, but not just late, elated.

  On what I suspected was my father’s instigation, Harry had got a part in Officers and Gentlemen. Or, in his words, ‘Went up for it, and only gone and got it, Lottie!’

  ‘Apparently they’ve rewritten the script, and I have the featured part of a young officer, a big part, and what’s more I die, Lottie-bags! Gus is over the moon. Doesn’t understand how I got it, but apparently Bernard Walters asked for me, said he thought I had the right look – I am “touched with something tragic”, he said. Anyway I have a big part, and I am going to have a hero’s end.’

  How changed the script now was, and how closely it resembled my suggestion to Bernard Walters, I did not appreciate until I walked into Dingley Dell’s drawing room and found Melville playing the piano with Hal standing beside him, both of them looking dire.

  ‘Something the matter?’ I asked, nervously.

  ‘Nothing that need trouble you, Lottie,’ Hal boomed, while Melville played a very sad late-evening number.

  ‘New pages for the film this morning. The script has been rewritten fore and aft. For the first five minutes Melville and I are unrecognisable – we are blind, practically limbless and selling matches door to door – crutches, the lot.’

  ‘Well, that’s quite good, isn’t it?’ I asked, tension going to my throat so much that I kept clearing it. ‘I mean if you’re in the start, and so on.’

  ‘It means when the blasted flashback is over, young lady, no one will know who we are, don’t you see? How will we register from the off in our bandages and dark-shaded glasses? We won’t, is the answer, and registering at once is what we actors – we stars – are all about.’

  I knew this was what Gus called ‘a lot of actors’ abble dabble’.

  ‘Oh, I expect it will all turn out for the best. People will like discovering that it was really you, later on in the picture,’ I said, carelessly.

  Hal shook his head.

  ‘That is such a civilian’s remark.’

  To be a ‘civilian’ in theatrical terms means you are tantamount to being a complete outsider. I felt duly put down, but not as much as I should because I was a tiny bit proud of my suggestion having been taken up by Bernard Walters.

  Even so I climbed the stairs to bed feeling a bit dreadful. My take on the script, my idea for the start of the film that had been prompted by Harry’
s friend the match-seller, was to show the many dire results of the war, the gallant officers abandoned by the country they had served so bravely. The story had been planted in my head by what Harry had told me about his heroic old soldier friend now being forced to sell matches outside Ken High Tube Station.

  But, of course, I could not leave it there. I had to find out whether my father had pulled a string or seven to get Harry seen for the part of the young officer.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, staring into the drinks cupboard, which was always his way when he was being modest and at the same time definitely not going to admit to anything. ‘Although I did have a problem with Harry and the newspaper-selling. One of my people was selling matches at the next-door pitch, and he said Harry spent too much time talking to him and giving him tea at Lyons’ Corner House, and CPHQ were moaning that sales were down – communists as you know are money mad. Still, all better now that Harry has a part. Get things going for him. Bernard Walters is a good chap.’

  As soon as my father said someone was a ‘good chap’, I knew what it meant. It meant that Bernard Walters was one of his people. I made my father promise not to let Harry know anything about the dinner.

  Further conversation revealed that the chap selling matches was invaluable to my father. The boxes often contained code numbers and messages, but handed only to the right people, of course – and now that the match-seller had become part of the inspiration for the start of a feature film, I felt quite proud.

  Harry had the last word, finally. He was looking thoughtful the next time we met.

  ‘I think the heroic look that impressed Bernard Walters, Lottie, was because of me being kicked outside Ken High Tube Station. I think that is how it came about.’ He brightened. ‘I don’t have to be a communist anymore, your father says. Just report to him if I notice anything about someone, be a sort of part-time communist watchdog, on the lookout.’