Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘What I like about you, Lottie, can be summed up in one word.’

  I waited, but Harry always needed a gasper after a headstand, so off he went in search of one of Dermot’s ciggies.

  He came back smoking.

  ‘I shall do as you say and do it now. I will tell Gus, yes, I will.’ He picked up the telephone receiver. And then he replaced it.

  ‘Are you rehearsing telephone acting?’ I asked in a kindly voice.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  Harry breathed out Gauloise smoke in a very impressive manner. ‘But I am also trying to stay calm.’

  He sat down suddenly.

  ‘Gus will have a twin fit,’ he announced, rather too loudly as if we were standing on a station platform.

  ‘You employ Gus – he doesn’t employ you.’

  ‘There speaks an innocent bystander.’

  Harry gave me a bitter look and I felt duly crushed.

  ‘Agents run this business, Lottie. I am lucky to have one at all. They can get rid of you, you know – just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And try getting work without an agent.’ He snorted, lightly inhaled his Gauloise and started coughing. ‘I think,’ he said finally, ‘I will go and see Gus rather than – rather than do it on the phone.’

  *

  Back at the coal face at MI5 and struggling with six sheets of carbon paper that were refusing to wind themselves anywhere except round my fingers, I was in a frosty mood.

  ‘You look as if you might need a thrilling piece of Victoria sponge,’ Arabella announced with her usual authority.

  I agreed and we retired yet again to the canteen.

  ‘Any more of these tea breaks and communism will take a hold of this country,’ the lady behind the serving counter said, slicing the Victoria sponge.

  ‘Our people are at a conference,’ Arabella explained, looking dignified.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then. Why not ask Stalin in and give him some Victoria sponge? And a cup of tea too while you’re at it.’

  ‘She’s such a spy,’ Arabella said as we sat down with our backs to her.

  ‘Well, she would be, wouldn’t she?’ I said, sounding suddenly reasonable. Arabella thought for a minute.

  ‘I wonder whether they run checks on people in catering.’

  Frankly I couldn’t have cared, but Arabella was more dutiful than I so she went on pondering the subject of catering people being double agents, while I moaned on about Harry and his indecision. About his acting part on ITV and his agent being against it, and my being for it, until Arabella finished her sponge and put down her new personalised cake fork that she kept in her handbag, and gave a very loud sigh.

  ‘There is a Cold War on, atom bombs being made on every street corner, and the whole of Europe could be swamped by Russians intent on exterminating us. Please forgive me if I could care less about Harry appearing on ITV.’

  I stared at her in admiration. Arabella had a way with her, there was no doubt about it.

  Later at Harry’s flat, while the smell of yet more cabbage being cooked assailed me from all sides – did Dermot eat nothing else? – I repeated Arabella’s speech. I could say to Harry, but really, if I am honest, it was at Harry.

  He stared at me, hurt and reproach in both eyes. Well, now I think about it, it would be quite difficult to confine reproach to one eye.

  ‘I know you are speaking the truth, Lottie, but that is not your truth. You are far too nice to suggest that my being on ITV does not matter as much as the Bomb.’

  I said nothing because actually I wasn’t that nice, and we both knew it. A whole minute went by during which I thought I too might take up smoking Gauloise cigarettes.

  ‘Very well, I will do the part, but only because you think it is right.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. So now your career will be in ruins because of me,’ I said, bitterly, but Harry did not hear the bitter bit – he was already dialling his agent and sounding stern with the telephonist, insisting on being put through, and thereafter followed a conversation to which I was not party because I was in what Elizabethans called the privy, but which my father for some reason called ‘the aunt’. My mother, however, always determined to be polite, called it the ‘excuse me’. I on the other hand called it the la-la. One way or another it went to show how reticent the English were about loos and toilets, although why I could not say without going for a further education course, something which I have always avoided on the sound premise that too much thinking can make you weak.

  When I finished doing my hair in the bathroom, staring into the cracked pub mirror with its Say Seager’s Gin slogan, I emerged to the unfamiliar sight of Harry smiling for the first time in days.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, ‘Gus only thinks it is a good idea. I mean after all this. He is starting negotiations this very minute. Just think, Lottie, I will be on the dreaded telly for the first time, and you and your parents will be able to watch me.’

  After Harry kissed me I gave a crooked smile. Unfortunately he spotted it.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It’s never nothing when you give the crooked smile. What?’

  ‘We don’t have ITV. We have never been converted.’

  ‘In that case it’s time you were. Not to have ITV looks like prejudice.’

  ‘My mother didn’t like the idea of commercials.’

  ‘Here we go again.’

  ‘I actually like them. I saw some on Monty’s television in his sitting room. I saw a woman pour coffee out of a jug on to a white shirt—’

  ‘Lottie. Stick to the subject. Look, I know a chap who can go round to Dingley Dell and convert your parents’ set. He’s called Len. He’s a good man.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask my mother. And she’ll have to ask my father. And they will have to keep it from Hal and Melville.’

  But Harry was not listening; he had picked up his script and was walking up and down and learning lines in a muttering kind of way. I left him for our favourite coffee bar and some deep thinking before confronting my mother on the issue of conversion.

  ‘You think we should convert?’

  ‘Well, it might be fun. Harry is going to be on in a few weeks, and my feeling is that you might enjoy it.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask your father, I don’t think he knows about ITV.’

  The matter was not referred to for some time, until eventually even Harry thought there might be something up.

  ‘Perhaps MI5 don’t like commercials?’

  ‘They should do – personally, I think they’ll bring down the Iron Curtain.’

  My father and I had long disagreed on this. He could not see that heavenly white washing could brainwash people in a good way.

  Finally I was called into my father’s study to face an interrogation. ‘Your mother tells me you think we should convert?’

  ‘You might enjoy it,’ I said, feebly.

  ‘Indeed we might,’ he agreed. ‘And this fellow Len, this friend of er – Harry, he can do the conversion?’

  I said that was the rumour, although I did not know Len personally. ‘Your mother insists we will have to keep this matter between ourselves. Hal and Melville are a bit sensitive about television and so on, they imagine it will destroy theatre. They think everyone will sit at home and watch it and not want to go out.’

  My thoughts were racing. Hal and Melville were around the house a great deal at the moment, as they would be on account of suffering a great many setbacks. How was I to get Len in and out to the back room without them noticing?

  ‘I’ll tell him to disguise himself,’ Harry suggested, cheerfully.

  ‘What as?’

  ‘I don’t know – a plumber, or something?’

  Of course, inevitably, Len arrived just as Hal was leaving the house. ‘There’s someone at the front door who says he’s a plumber, Lottie,’ he boomed, before frowning at Len. ‘You’re dressed very smartly for a plumber, aren’t you?’ he added accu
singly.

  Len looked towards me with the expression of a drowning man waiting to be thrown a rope.

  ‘I once played a plumber in rep. I even took care to smell like one,’ Hal went on progressing past Len, ‘and I certainly did not costume him like that.’

  ‘He’s got a change in his bag, haven’t you, Len?’ I asked hastily. ‘Come with me and we can talk about taps.’

  We closeted ourselves in the back room.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, but what could I do? Harry told me to say I was a plumber.’

  ‘Never mind that now, you’d better have a look at the Bush before we go any further. I mean, you know, conversion might not be possible on this.’

  I took the Chinese shawl off the Bush telly with something of a flourish, hoping that it would not look as small and old as it normally did.

  Len stared at it. The Bush was one of the first models to be produced way back when a radio was still called a wireless. It had been a surprise present to my grandmother from my grandfather, not because she longed for one but because he wanted to watch Annette Mills and Muffin the Mule on whom he doted, but when he died no one else wanted it so my mother took it on out of pity.

  Len gave me a deep look.

  ‘I haven’t seen one of these in a while, I must say.’

  He went on staring at the Bush in deeper and deeper fascination.

  ‘Since the Coronation people have more modern sets. Lots more modern sets … everywhere I go a new model. This one is going to be a bit of a challenge, and Harry did warn me – but not quite what a challenge.’

  I made solicitous noises.

  ‘It might respond to the operation,’ Len mused. ‘Or it might not. If it doesn’t then I’m afraid it might end up deep frozen.’

  ‘What happens then?’ I asked nervously, thinking of my father’s favourite programme on Sunday evenings.

  ‘Well, a television has to respond to conversion, it can’t just convert. It has to want to convert.’

  ‘I don’t want the old Bush to be forced to convert, really I don’t. I think that would be awful.’

  Len nodded to me to move away from the door.

  ‘I hear,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘that Harry is not going to be on the BBC but on the Other Side?’

  ‘Just for one play. He has to work, Len.’

  ‘Of course he does, course he does.’ Len paused. ‘So, do you want to go for the whole conversion, do you want to risk it? Have you faith in me?’

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘Yes, Len. Go for the whole conversion. The Bush is strong – it has had to be to last this long with us.’

  I left him, but I did not go very far as I had promised my mother I would guard the door while he was operating.

  I was hovering outside trying to look personable when Melville passed by.

  ‘Anything wrong, Lottie? You have the look of a stricken rabbit.’

  I smiled weakly.

  ‘Just thinking, you know, I do that sometimes.’

  Melville frowned.

  ‘If you’re thinking perhaps you should sit down?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No, really, if I sit down when I’m thinking I always fall asleep.’

  ‘How irritating.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, clearing my throat.

  Melville frowned, remembering something.

  ‘I had an uncle like that. He could only think when he was mounted on a horse. Once he got off – his mind went quite blank.’

  As I watched Melville going off into the morning I felt bad. What would he and Hal make of us all not just watching a television, but a converted television? They would think much less of us, particularly if they knew that Harry was going to be on it in a very long play.

  Len came to the door and silently beckoned to me.

  ‘I think I may have solved it. It has taken some thinking out. These old televisions do not like conversion, they like to stick to what they know, which is the BBC, and really you can’t blame them.’

  ‘It’s very good of you to try, really. It has hardly ever been watched, you know, only on Sunday evenings when my father does like to tune in to It’s Still Sunday!’

  ‘We always watch that, as a family. The spelling game on it helps the children, my wife says.’

  ‘You mean when they put up jumbled words?’

  ‘That’s the job.’ He nodded. ‘So now, here we are on Auntie BBC, you agree?’

  I nodded appreciatively.

  ‘That’s a good picture you’ve got there, Len.’

  ‘Not bad for an old set. Now, watch.’ He pushed a long handle to the side, newly fitted. ‘Just one shove – there – still watching? Good, stay watching … now there! Soap powder advertisement, must be ITV. Now another shove and we are back to Auntie BBC and the potter’s wheel. You have a go.’

  It took a bit of shoving but I managed, and when my mother returned home later that day, I took her into the back room for a lesson.

  ‘Just watch this.’ She stared in admiration, her head on one side. ‘Now you have a go.’

  She gave a tentative push. ‘No, you’ve got to really shove.’

  She soon got the hang of it, after which she wiped her hands with her lace hankie.

  ‘Of course we’ll only need the other side if ever er – Harry is on.’

  ‘But it’s good to have it anyway.’

  ‘Just must keep it from Hal and Melville. They still don’t know about it.’ She threw the large Chinese silk shawl over the Bush, and sighed happily. ‘Well, I’m glad that’s all over; these sorts of things are always such a worry.’

  Later I went round to the flat, to find Harry with his script.

  ‘Len’s converted Dingley Dell,’ I told him happily, taking his script from him to hear his lines. ‘He’s put in a handle and you just shove it over and ITV comes up.’

  But Harry was no longer listening, he was already in the role.

  Over the next hour I found myself frowning at what he was saying. The dialogue he was meant to be learning was so convoluted that it didn’t seem quite English.

  ‘It’s not quite English, Lottie,’ he admitted later over a coffee. ‘The writer is a foreigner who came to this country before the last war. He has had great reviews for his work, in the Observer and the Scotsman. The critics like his take on English, especially the Scots – but they don’t have to learn it.’

  ‘Just think of the cheque,’ I said in an encouraging voice.

  ‘I do, every minute of every hour,’ Harry told me, miserably.

  At MI5 Arabella appeared fascinated by the telly conversion at Dingley Dell.

  ‘Do you think Len could do it for Monty? Could he convert that set?’

  ‘I’m sure he could. It didn’t take him long to do at Dingley Dell.’

  ‘Probably best if you bring Len round yourself, you know how upset Monty can get if he thinks someone who isn’t Harrods is coming.’

  Len was impressed by the address. It was the first time his van had been parked in SW1.

  ‘Hardly a spit from Harrods’ food department,’ he said, in a lowered tone, and I noticed that he had changed into a suit with matching hankie and tie out of respect for the grand location.

  To my delight Len and Monty took one look at each other and instantly made friends. Monty did not raise his wig, because he wasn’t thinking, but he did tuck a bit back from his ear. And Len and I followed him through the kitchen and pantry to his own demesne, a bed-sitting room complete with television.

  It was the first time I had been in Monty’s part of the flat since he’d moved in to look after Arabella’s mother. He had made his bed-sitting room so stylish he could have given tips to a professional designer.

  The television was covered by an opera cloak, which he was able to remove with a great flourish.

  ‘Now this won’t need a handle,’ Len told him, ‘this will only need a change of buttons.’

  ‘Could you do your best to match them?’
/>   ‘It will be a pleasure. This set is one of my favourites.’

  Len nodded in the direction of Harrods – which was out of the window and over the rooftops.

  ‘Came from – ahem?’

  ‘They took the window out to bring it in here and install it, so as not to disturb Madam.’

  ‘If you are one of the elite there is nothing Harrods will not do for you.’

  Monty attempted to look modest, but not for long because of course Len was only confirming what Monty already knew.

  I went outside on to the fire escape while the operation was taking place because I felt I was in the way, and anyway I kept fearing that Monty’s telly might not react very well and that made me feel nervy.

  The doorbell rang, and I thought to answer it but rejected the idea in case it was Commander Steerforth visiting and he would feel embarrassed at seeing me.

  Monty passed me, sighing.

  ‘Please, please, not more blooms,’ he muttered, only to return with a large bouquet.

  ‘Sometimes I have even been forced to put them in finger bowls,’ he complained, rolling his eyes.

  I indicated that I would wait for Len downstairs, and eventually he drove me back to Dingley Dell.

  ‘That’s one of the best conversions I’ve ever done,’ he said as he parked outside Dingley Dell at a very unfortunate moment.

  ‘What are you doing in a television van?’ Hal boomed at me as I joined him on the top step.

  ‘Len’s a friend of Harry’s and his friend has a – you know.’ I made a box-like gesture.

  ‘Not a very big one,’ I added hastily as Hal’s nostrils flared.

  ‘Big or small, they are the curse of civilisation.’

  I tried to look vague, but must have ended up looking guilty.

  ‘You’ve never watched, have you?’ Hal demanded, throwing his scarf on to a hook.

  ‘Oh, look, Hal, a message from your agent,’ I said, quickly holding up a telephone message taken by Mrs Graham.

  That put paid to our conversation, or rather Hal’s interrogation of me, and I shot upstairs to change before I went round to Harry’s flat where nothing was going very well.