Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  I tried hard not to remember my mother telling me she had seen Love on the Move in France and the cinema audience rocked with laughter from start to finish, but then as she always said the French take love more lightly.

  ‘I am sure we can age the father,’ I said quickly, before Harry could say something quite different.

  ‘I thought perhaps he could be in a wheelchair?’

  ‘With the best will in the world, I don’t think he can surprise Mike with how fit he still is from a wheelchair.’

  ‘He could have very, very strong – hands.’

  ‘I am sorry, sir, but I think that would skew the story too much. We will age him, of course, but no wheelchair.’

  The star looked surprised at Harry’s firm tone while I stared past him and wondered if we would ever get to see the stupid document of a political nature Roland Andrews was meant to be signing.

  ‘White hair then, very white hair … we’ll put that into the script.’

  I didn’t like the word ‘we’, but I let it pass as Harry was beginning to look irritated and not bothering to conceal it.

  ‘I was thinking that Sir John would be perfect for the father, but whether he will do it is another thing. He is terribly vain about his age, you know. Just can’t see what has happened to him.’

  At this Roland Andrews ran his fingers lightly through the sides of his own deeply black hair.

  ‘You must be thrilled at the idea of Dame Nellie and myself, are you not?’

  We nodded dumbly, two birds on a wire.

  ‘There is only one fly in the ointment at the moment.’ We both stared up at our star, both feeling as if we had just swallowed one.

  ‘Darling Nellie is left of centre – always has been – and she wants me to sign this document supporting one of her most treasured political causes. It is a terrible dilemma for me. I respect her feelings, but not this document. However, for the sake of the film—’

  ‘Don’t do it, sir!’ Harry struggled to his feet. I followed, albeit more slowly. ‘Nothing is worth sacrificing your political conscience for, for – for which to sacrifice your political conscience.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed quickly, thinking of my father and his grim expression over dinner. ‘But for the sake of the film—’

  ‘Don’t sign, sir,’ Harry went on, holding him, lightly, by both arms. ‘Think of everything you did in the war, all the bombs dropping as you played Romeo, and Lear, and … and all those.’ He looked up with assumed reverence at the portrait above the chimneypiece. ‘Think, think, think!’

  I thought there were at least two too many ‘thinks’ at this point, but Roland Andrews did not appear to agree.

  His eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I did not think that your generation would ever appreciate what we did. This is the first time that someone your age has even mentioned what we thespians went through on those tours. I mean Crewe alone—’

  ‘Crewe, exactly! Think of Crewe.’

  Roland walked away down the room, looking thoughtful.

  ‘Ghastly as it is, I think you are right. If Nellie sticks to her stance over me signing, I can’t. I shan’t sign!’ He started to walk back up the elegant room. ‘After all, it is I to whom you came, not Nellie. It is I who was asked to shoulder the film, not Nellie.’

  He paused then and, bending down, lifted the cushion under which we knew the envelope with the bank statements lay fermenting.

  ‘I do wish Shaughnessy would stop putting my bank statements under cushions, really I do. It’s a habit from the war, you know, he thinks it plumps them up more and saves on feathers.’ He took out the contents of the envelope and glanced at them briefly. ‘These are from nineteen thirty-nine … gracious how times change. Look at the cost of the telephone then!’ He threw the papers on the fire. ‘So, now we have come to a decision, have we not?’

  Neither Harry nor I realised that we had, but we did our best to look as if we had – I opted for grave but responsible. I didn’t look at Harry, but I think his expression might have had a touch of muted triumph.

  There was a profound silence, which I would soon recognise as being that of a star thinking, but I was at that point unversed in their ways.

  ‘So, no Nellie, no signing of the petition, so whom to ask now?’

  We knew enough to keep our traps shut.

  ‘I shall ask Dickie to ask Julia Mannering. She is so easy to work with. We did the factories together during the war, singing and doing sketches during their lunch hours. They hated us, but it kept their spirits up throwing spent cartridges at us. Yes, Julia and I will fit the bill all right. And Shaughnessy will be thrilled. He loves her dearly, they are always gossiping on the blower of a morning when I’m sleeping in. Yes, Julia would be perfect, and not so young that we wouldn’t believe in her love for me, and then – the parting, and the coming together in this Beatrice and Benedict of a partnership. It could be glorious, your words and our acting, our energy – all quite perfect. We shall have a hit! And to celebrate—’

  He rang the bell for Shaughnessy.

  ‘Bring in the wretched petition, Shawn ducky.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Moments later we watched with huge satisfaction as the petition joined the bank statements, and Shaughnessy left, smiling so widely that we knew at once he had been listening at the door.

  For a second Roland Andrews watched him leaving with an affectionate but despairing expression on his face.

  ‘I’m sorry about Shawn,’ he said, dropping his voice. ‘I keep telling him about the ladders in his nylons, but he doesn’t listen.’

  Harry looked sympathetic.

  ‘My mother always says soap can stop ladders,’ he told Roland.

  Roland nodded, but I could see that he wanted us to go so he could telephone his agent to telephone Julia Mannering’s agent, and put the wheels of casting into motion.

  *

  As we went back on the bus I realised that we should be feeling triumphant. After all we had achieved our objective, we had done our patriotic duty, Roland Andrews would still be in line for a knighthood, and his butler might even stop the ladders in his stockings happening. I had no idea which was the most important to whom, but I knew that my father, and indeed my mother for completely different reasons, would be very pleased.

  Such was not the case with Harry, however.

  For the next few days whenever we met to work at his flat he was in a blue funk.

  ‘All these old birds staring into each other’s eyes, our film is ruined,’ he said, again and again, until finally I met him for work wearing a pixie hood.

  ‘Please take that thing off, it does nothing for you.’

  I lifted one of the pixie’s ears.

  ‘Not until you take off the LP – moan, moan, moan. We should be getting on with something else. Forget Making the Play. Okay, we loved writing it, and we loved writing The Happy Communist – and look what happened to that. We’ll get paid. We’ll get a credit. That, as they say, is show business.’

  ‘Have you seen Julia Mannering lately? My mother saw her in Peter Jones’ haberdashery department. Said she looked older than God.’

  ‘And my mother said the British love old dolls and guys. Prefer them actually, and that great writer Somerset Maugham said the English would never go and see a ballerina dance unless they knew she had only one leg, or an actress unless they were in agony that she was going to forget all her words. It stirs them up, makes them love performers more. They will love Roland Andrews and Julia Mannering. You’ll see. Now where’s the next idea?’

  Harry looked sulky.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did have one this morning.’

  We sat down opposite each other, and before long he had quite forgotten about Making the Play as we started to map out a comedy about two young writers, an old actor and a butler, only this time the document under the cushion was the wretched petition, which Harry said added edge. I was only too happy to agree, even though I thought he was wrong
.

  As to my father, he was muted in his appreciation of our work, as he would be.

  ‘Good stuff,’ he said, patting Harry on the shoulder, lightly.

  He knew this was big coming from my father, so he smiled broadly, and accepted a stiff drink. I had a better time with Commander Steerforth.

  ‘Come off active service and won the battle too. Well done!’ he said, smiling happily. ‘Now any chance of a slice of Victoria sponge from the canteen, do you think?’

  I beetled off to get the Commander early tea and am sorry to say that the moment his face lit up at the sight of the lovely fresh slice of sponge meant more to me than the sight of that wretched petition burning in Roland Andrews’ fireplace.

  But then Harry always suspected that I was deeply shallow, and I am sorry to say that I think he might have been right.

  THE CONVERSION

  Television was not something that anyone ever discussed in our house. To put it another way, it was not a word that was mentioned, or even referred to as existing. Dingley Dell was not alone in this. I myself knew no one who had a television. To a person, everyone’s parents had all disapproved of the young queen allowing her Coronation to be filmed by the BBC.

  Of course, they had not seen the ceremony in their own homes – that would have been tantamount to being found to be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. If questioned on the subject they had only ever seen the film of the Coronation in their clubs, or in the basement on Nanny’s set. It was just not done to own up to having a television set.

  My father seemed completely unaware of this self-imposed embargo among nice people. He loved television. He thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, which he also loved – either fried with his early-morning breakfast bacon and egg, or done up in a nice squishy sardine sandwich.

  One of his most engaging characteristics was that he simply did not understand snobbery of any kind. Of course, due to running agents and often as not working until the early hours, he did not have much time to actually watch television, so he particularly enjoyed it on a Sunday evening when he would sit silently fascinated by a conjuror, or a chap putting contestants through a series of simple word games on a magnetic board.

  ‘I enjoy this,’ he would murmur if you came across him in the back room where the small Bush television was discreetly housed. ‘They win quite a lot of money at this game, you know – quite a lot – and if they don’t they still get a prize. Jolly good stuff.’

  My mother was tolerant of his affection for television, but she was also insistent that he did not mention anything that he had seen there at the lunch or dinner table. The reason for this was not that she felt embarrassed by it, but because it raised panic among actors, particularly Hal and Melville who even when out of work, or resting as they called it, would sigh and shake their heads at this new medium.

  Harry understood their reluctance even to talk about it.

  ‘It’s because it’s live,’ he said with some authority. ‘It scares the poo-bah out of them. I mean if you dry in the theatre – the words go and you can’t think of the next phrase, let alone sometimes why you’re there – and fear does do that to you, you’re doing it not in front of an audience of a few hundred in television, it’s in front of millions.’

  ‘In fact, Hal told me that Melville was offered a great big television role as a police officer and turned it down. He wouldn’t even go near it, because he was so frightened of what would happen to his career if he flopped. I mean apparently you are sunk, but sunk, if you don’t bring it off whereas in the theatre there is always the next night to get it right.’

  ‘Or not,’ said Harry shortly. ‘They’re just funks.’

  ‘They do great radio roles, they don’t mind those. Hal was brilliant the other night as a Nazi commander.’

  ‘Type casting,’ Harry said, even more shortly.

  ‘And Melville played Feste so beautifully last Christmas—’

  ‘Feste is one of those parts – like the waiter in Shaw’s You Never Can Tell – where you always walk off with the notices.’

  I was about to continue but stopped. After all it was not my subject. I had never acted. Besides, Harry was in a restless mood. I could tell that because he had taken to doing headstands against his sitting-room wall. I knew him well enough to know that to go on talking to him when he was upside down made him irritable, so I left him and went back to Dingley Dell.

  *

  At MI5 the next day Arabella gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. ‘Trouble at mill?’ she asked over a coffee in the canteen.

  ‘Harry is very restless. We haven’t written a word of the new script for days. Every time I go round to the flat to start work he diverts me in some way. I feel like an artistic wallflower.’

  ‘When a man is restless, my mother says, it is always either because they are having an affair or they’re bored with you, which really amounts to the same thing.’

  I couldn’t imagine anyone getting bored of Arabella’s beautiful mother. Quite apart from being beautiful she had been a famous agent in the war, working for Special Operations Executive in Europe; she was also famed for her ability to entrance men. Some of them had never got over her, at least two taking Holy Orders rather than settle for anyone else. Currently she was enjoying a warm friendship with Commander Steerforth, a widower of many years’ standing, but very shy. Apparently shyness in men was always indicated by how many flowers they bought you. It seemed that Commander Steerforth was never without a bunch of beautiful blooms.

  ‘Monty loves flowers but these vast arrangements are nutty nuts,’ Arabella told me factually.

  ‘Running out of vases, is he?’

  ‘Just that – every day a positive herbaceous border. But no one has the heart to stop the Commander, bless him.’

  I never like the conversation turning away from me for very long, so I brought it back to where I thought it should be.

  ‘So you think Harry’s having an affair?’

  ‘No, precious bane, I do not think that. I just said what my mother would say. Even so …’ Arabella’s gaze was obscured by a drift of cigarette smoke. It was a habit of hers when she’d had enough of my egoism. ‘Even so,’ she said after a moment, ‘there must be something wrong for Harry not to want to be working with you.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘You don’t think that Dermot has poached him as a writing partner, do you?’

  I gasped, but only inwardly. ‘That would be infidelity indeed.’

  I was determined to put on a brave face at the suggestion, but my insides had turned to ice. Harry and I had always agreed that artistic infidelity would be far, far worse than any other kind. We were both convinced that writing with someone was far more intimate than making love.

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Arabella continued relentlessly, reluctant to give up on her disturbing theory. ‘I mean what with both of them out of work and resting, there must be a lot of talk at the flat.’

  ‘They did make another stuffed cabbage together the other night—’

  ‘You didn’t eat any of it, did you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Some of those Bolshevik recipes can be fatal. My mother told me that behind the Iron Curtain they can put razor blades in stuffed cabbage and no one ever notices until the pudding.’

  I went home on the number nine bus, and began thinking, which I always find a trial, but Arabella had given me food for thought, or rather food poisoning for thought.

  Forget Iago and his stupid hankie, what about Dermot and his recipes?

  Harry always said men usually preferred each other’s company at work because they could say and do things that they would not do or say if there were a female person, not their mother, present. How to approach the subject?

  The following evening, after work, I decided to join Harry at the headstand wall where he was practising some kind of oriental thinking.

  ‘Harry?’ I said from upside down, which was not easy for me.

  ‘Ye
s.’

  ‘Did you enjoy Dermot’s cabbage the other night?’

  ‘Please, Lottie, I was just beginning to feel better.’

  That brought me down from the wall. I settled for cross-legged on the floor and watched Harry intently, because I thought I might be able to detect from his back view if he was lying.

  ‘Harry – be honest – are you unhappy with the idea we are working on?’

  He joined me on the floor.

  ‘I do have a problem, but that is not it,’ he confessed.

  He gave me a deep look and I waited, braced for the news that he had committed artistic adultery with Dermot.

  ‘I have been offered a big part on television – a play, a long play – and I can’t make up my mind whether or not to do it. Gus, would you believe, is dead against it, says it will finish me for films. Almost as bad as acting in a commercial, he says.’

  We both laughed. An actor appearing in a commercial was such a funny idea. Appear in an advertisement and after that you had no one but the cheque for a friend.

  ‘The thing is it’s not just a play, and a very long play, but it is for – ITV.’

  Suddenly it all fell into place. Harry’s quandary had affected his appetite for writing for good reason; I could see the problem straight away. If he took the part he would have money in his pocket, and if he didn’t – well, it was back to Dermot and his Bolshevik recipes, and costly games of squash with Gus. Nothing would change. There was a time limit to enjoying bohemian poverty and perhaps Harry had reached that limit. He had even had to sell his watch a while back, admittedly to me – but even so.

  ‘I think you should do it, Harry.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘That didn’t take long.’

  ‘Well, you’ve done a film, so no one can say you haven’t been offered one before and stop offering them to you now, and you haven’t been offered anything else, so why not? After all you’ll be doing a big role and be seen, which is lots better than not being seen – as Melville always says.’

  Harry kissed me, briefly, which he always did when he was not really thinking about kissing but just thinking, something he did better than myself on account of having been given a different sort of education, which unlike mine didn’t insist on flower arranging and how to get out of a taxi without showing your petticoat.