Spies and Stars

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘It’s why you were placed on Planet Earth,’ Arabella agreed.

  Zuzu then said, ‘You will take him for a drink,’ looking at both of us, but I suddenly realised that she meant me.

  ‘I can’t take grubs for drinks, Zuzu,’ I said, feeling quite faint just at the thought.

  ‘Of course you can—’

  ‘No,’ Arabella put in swiftly. ‘She can’t. She’ll make a hash of it.’

  I was never more grateful that Arabella knew just what a twerp I was. Zuzu considered this, and then nodded slowly.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Arabella, and anyway you’re more beautiful.’

  The gratitude that I felt for my two friends’ appreciation of my limitations knew no bounds.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ I asked Arabella later as we waited for the bus.

  ‘Of course I will, my mother knows him. He came to one of her evenings not long ago. Monty didn’t take to him, so he put the chap’s mink-lined Mackintosh in the kitchen scraps bin.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Yes, really – he sent it on later, but only after he had told the Grub that someone else must have gone off with it, which made him wait in an agony of uncertainty. He’s good like that, Monty.’

  I felt more than relieved, I felt reprieved.

  ‘So the plan is simple, yes?’ I asked, trying not to sound anxious.

  ‘Yes, it is simple,’ Arabella agreed. ‘Mother is away in Italy – she is looking for new recipes for Monty who hates to travel. He is in charge at the flat.’

  ‘Does he know about Zuzu being back?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Arabella said, curtly, as she hopped on the bus and I followed and we sat on the back seat for three. ‘We can’t have Monty knowing, at least not yet – he will start to polish Rollo even more than he does already.’

  *

  I felt I ought to find out more about our man, so I caught up with my father just after he had poured himself a stiffy.

  ‘What sort of person is this terribly important grub?’

  ‘He’s a bit of a lounge lizard so best to have someone with you when he’s about,’ said my father, lighting a cigarette and wandering off into the garden.

  ‘Apparently he might pounce,’ I told Arabella. ‘So how about if I come in halfway through, or near the end?’

  ‘But we don’t know when the end will be, Lottie,’ she said in the kind voice she always used to me, before adding, ‘oh, very well, but only at the end of the first hour. I’ll see him at the flat.’

  I couldn’t leave it at that, because leaving things to take their course was not my way, unfortunately, so I got Monty to let me in the service entrance and then hung about the kitchen, getting under his feet and eating his carefully prepared cocktail snacks while imagining how Arabella was getting on.

  ‘Why she would want that excuse for a man to come visiting I wouldn’t know,’ Monty said, snorting lightly, and sighing.

  I looked at the string of onions hung over the stove and I too sighed because staring at onions is the only thing to do when you know the answer to something.

  Later I looked at the clock and saw that the first hour must be up. ‘Ready for the off, are you, Miss Lottie?’ Monty asked, as I put on some lipstick and he held the mirror. ‘You don’t want to do too much primping,’ he went on in a disapproving tone. ‘The creature in there might get the wrong idea. Now off you go, and don’t say too much.’

  I thought I was quite on top of everything until Monty showed me into the drawing room, when I instantly realised that I was completely unprepared for the scene in front of me.

  The Grub, seated on one of Arabella’s mother’s squishy sofas, was coddled up in his fur-lined Mackintosh, and not unnaturally sweating for the fire was lit and the room very warm. I realised instantly that the reason he was keeping his grub garb on was because he was in mortal fear it would disappear again. I almost felt sorry for him, for not only was he a rather sodden grub, but it seemed to me that he emanated a strangely inhuman smell, which must be a result of the mink-lined Mac’s stint in Monty’s kitchen bin.

  ‘We are finished here,’ he told me, ‘so don’t mind me – go ahead and talk girlie talk.’

  I looked across at Arabella and knew at once that she was feeling very un-Gandhi-like. This was most particularly apparent because her delicate nostrils were flaring. She did not like people referring to her as a ‘girlie’. It did not go down well.

  She glanced at the clock, and I knew that she must be calculating what was happening elsewhere with Zuzu. This became more than obvious when she embarked on a long conversation about fashion models she knew who were very much in the news at that moment, the papers all saying they were the Gaiety Girls of their generation because so many of them had married into the aristocracy.

  At the same time as the conversation turned to matters that would normally have bored Arabella senseless, she rang for Monty and ordered more cocktails, which were duly delivered and drunk far too quickly by the Grub whose condition had become quite feverish due to his devotion to his horrible Mackintosh.

  At last he staggered to his feet, but not before Monty had plied him with more of the same.

  ‘Must go and file—’ he said, happily. ‘Thank you for your story, most illuminating.’

  Once again I almost felt sorry for him. Even though I had no idea how he was going to be turned over by that will o’ the wisp, the Tinkerbell of the Secret Service known as Zuzu – I just knew he would not stand a chance.

  Arabella was far too well trained to let me know what the outcome of her interview might be, and so I had to be content to travel home by bus wondering what was going to happen next.

  I was due to meet Harry at our coffee bar. He was there ahead of me, but not sitting in front of a coffee; he was sitting in front of something much stronger. I was already quite nicely thank you because of Monty’s cocktails so I contented myself with a coffee, and waited to hear about Harry’s experiences on BBC radio with the kind of poets and writers whose work is normally only found between leatherbound volumes in discreet libraries.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Well, as in well, well, well – here’s a fine kettle of fish.’

  At work, when writing together, we had a pact never to use ‘well’ in dialogue, so it seemed almost shocking now that we were both using it in real life.

  ‘How did it go with all the illustrious poets and playwrights at the BBC?’

  Harry gave me a deep look.

  ‘They were all wonderful – marvellous – funny – brilliant—’

  I knew the ‘and’ word would be good here, so I took a punt and used it. ‘And?’

  ‘Drunk as skunks.’

  I was intrigued.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘How do you think, Lottie? From drinking alcohol, and as soon as they arrived. And their producer – a lovely man – was the same. Footless, opening the gin bottle at half-past ten. I thought: We’re never going to get through the work if this is how it is. But do you know?’ He sighed. ‘We did, and what is more, and what is so – so – amazing, they were better than anything or anyone I have ever worked with.’

  I let out a sigh of satisfaction before ordering another coffee because Monty’s cocktails were beginning to have a latent hammering effect.

  ‘I suppose it is only to be expected that the artistic temperament requires stimulus, like Coleridge writing “The Ancient Mariner” on drugs, that sort of thing?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘You’re not getting it, Lottie. The point is, if they can be so brilliant while plastered, is this the way forward for the rest of us? I mean could alcohol be the answer to everything?’

  I felt it important to consider this as Harry took a gulp of his drink. ‘I think you have to be brilliant to get drunk and still be brilliant,’ I offered, at my most philosophical. ‘But if you and I got drunk, because we’re not brilliant we would simply get drunk.’

  ‘How dreary, Lottie.’r />
  I frowned. Of course Harry was right, it was a dreary thought, but on the other hand, who was to say that all these immortals of our times were happy?

  ‘Of course they’re happy. If you’re brilliant you are always happy,’ Harry stated, firmly.

  ‘That’s my point,’ I said, quickly. ‘We have to strive to be brilliant, and stay sober, to be happy.’

  ‘It’s all so ordinary.’

  Harry was not often miserable, at least not to the naked eye, but I could see he was miserable now. That all these brilliant, funny people had made his own life seem dull and ordinary. They had lowered the temperature for him. They had certainly lowered mine, and then I remembered how, when Zuzu had come into my life and then was gone again, I had felt the same way. Harry needed something to raise him up again after keeping company with the Gods of Literature and Poetry, after being with the immortals, but what that might be I could not say. I realised I was too close to him to help him. Anyway I had too many hammers applying themselves to my head.

  Harry left me at Dingley Dell and wended his way back to flat-sharing with Dermot and all, and I slid into the house in my usual way, which was through the dining-room window so as not to be noticed, only what with one thing and another – and certainly Monty’s cocktails had not helped – I found myself marooned behind the dining-room curtains just as one of my mother’s dinner parties was ending.

  Talk about stuck behind the arras.

  The talk went on for a while, broken up eventually by the usual chorus of: ‘Is that really the time?’

  Once they had all retired upstairs, I slipped out of the dining room and into the kitchen where I knew my mother always left the Evening Standard for Mrs Graham to read with her first coffee in the morning.

  I opened the paper. There it was, the full story. It seemed that the very famous star had been found by his long-lost sister, namely Zuzu, after many years of searching. They had both been sent to America as part of the children’s wartime exodus. Once there they had been parted, and following the death of their parents during the war, sister and brother had lost touch. Zuzu had found her long-lost brother while working for the War Office, after which she had brought him to England to re-establish his career by making a patriotic war film in which he played a heroic pilot.

  I stared round the kitchen with happy satisfaction. The saucepans had never looked more cheerful, nor the rows of cream-coloured tins with words like ‘Sago’ written on them more homely and comforting. Everything now became beautifully clear to me. Zuzu and Arabella had trapped the Grub by spinning him the wrong story while making sure the true story came out before his.

  It all seemed magnificently simple, and of course really rather brilliant, although I myself felt a little shabby to think that I had believed Zuzu could become entangled with a movie star. She was above movie stars, she was Zuzu, Mademoiselle, the meteor from Section XXX.

  Unfortunately my euphoria did nothing for Harry, who not so secretly resented Zuzu, because like the illustrious immortals he had met at the BBC she lit up lives with a special aura he suspected we might not have.

  I have to say, I confided Harry’s vaguely disquieting discontent to Zuzu next time we met, which was out to a celebration dinner in the countryside, chauffeured there by Monty in Rollo who was in shining form, as was Monty, stars in his eyes now that Mademoiselle was in our midst once again, for however little time.

  As I chatted to Zuzu I realised Arabella was looking on, her expression serious. We both knew that Harry needed something big to get him out of what was threatening to become a pit of despair.

  ‘A touch of adventure in the Wild Wood is what young Harry needs,’ Arabella murmured at one point. ‘Something frightening to make him rein back and realise how lucky he is.’

  Zuzu took the point; I knew this because her eyes were changing colour, always a potent moment.

  I think it was the mention of an adventure in the Wild Wood that did it. We all knew that the Wild Wood, full of unknown danger, existed for everyone in some form or another, but how to place Harry in his, to take him out of his melancholy, was not immediately apparent, at least not to me.

  Zuzu finally gave her best ‘got just the thing’ smile, and we left it at that. The rest of the evening passed very pleasantly indeed, and I returned to Dingley Dell confident that something would occur that would help Harry. The only trouble being that I had, in my innocence, assumed I would be left out of Harry’s projected cure. I had no need or desire to have my spirits lifted. I was more than happy already. Between them Zuzu and Arabella had defeated the Grub and put paid to the swirling rumours. The sun was shining and Mrs Graham had just finished making some crunchy ice cream.

  It was only when the telephone on my desk at MI5 rang and it was Harry that I remembered the mischief in Zuzu’s smile, and how her eyes had changed colour as she’d thought of the best way to help him out of his depressed state. My heart sank.

  Harry was not going into the Wild Wood alone – I was going too.

  INTO THE WILD WOOD

  I once saw a writer coming out of a very famous film producer’s office. His expensive suit was creased in a very unromantic way, and he was carrying the kind of briefcase that I later realised successful writers tend to carry – leather and vaguely authoritative – which when opened usually reveals nothing more exciting than a much-thumbed script and a spare pair of socks. I was only at the producer’s smart office to drop off a parcel from my father. The film was being made very close to the Iron Curtain, which as far as my father was concerned was very useful indeed. I guessed the parcel was probably going to be left in a dead letter box, so I signed the delivery book, putting the parcel’s contents down as ‘lace doilies’, and silently wished whatever it was inside a happy landing, and that was that.

  My errand was easy enough, but the sight of that sighing grey-faced film writer haunted me. Was this what happened when you wrote for films? I quickly came to the conclusion that the film writer must be a bit of a sad sack, and decidedly lacking in what Mrs Graham always called ‘gumption’. Why else would he look as though he was going home to have tea with the KGB?

  All this happened long before I discovered what Zuzu had planned for Harry, and therefore, as night followed day, for me.

  It was, on the face of it, a great act of kindness on Zuzu’s behalf and one to which Monty referred a great deal. More than a great deal actually. As far as he was concerned Mademoiselle had done Harry and me a great, great favour, but then Monty was not a budding writer. All he knew was that Zuzu, through her many contacts in the film world, had secured for us, two unknown scribblers, an interview with a highly regarded film director. Well, not so much highly regarded, as very, very famous, which I subsequently discovered in the film world really means the same thing.

  Harry too could hardly believe it. In fact, his state of disbelief was such that he could not bring himself to tell Dermot or anyone else at the flat, or indeed anyone at all, which I decided was just as well. What was in the offing had to be a state secret or Dermot and everyone would start to pitch in and point out why Harry and I should not go up for the job.

  Then Monty told us we would never get a job with the famous Bennett Hunter if we looked too poor. It seemed in order to get the job we had to make a great impression of being much employed and above all opulent.

  I wasn’t too sure about this, but when I told Harry he agreed with Monty that no one ever wanted to have anything to do with someone who was poor and needy. It was just the way of the world. People only wanted to help people who didn’t need it. Between them they settled on Monty wearing a smart suit and chauffeur’s cap, polishing up Rollo and driving us round to the great man’s house, a private mansion in leafy West London.

  Rollo had never looked so smart, Monty too, so much so that in contrast Harry and I, seated in the back, looked more than a bit on the shabby side, but I comforted myself with the thought that writers should always look only nearly new, rather than fresh out of Ha
rrods, because it meant that they were too busy with deep thoughts to care much for appearances. That was my fond belief and I stuck to it, or rather clung to it, as Monty carefully parked Rollo, and the front door of the mansion was opened to us by an immaculately uniformed maid.

  Unfortunately the maid was not alone. Directly behind her stood the terribly famous director – Bennett Hunter. I knew he was the director even though he wasn’t sitting in a chair with Director written on the back of it, because he was holding a megaphone, which he now used, most effectively, to speak to the maid who went off looking very cross and French which so often amounts to the same thing.

  Bennett Hunter lowered his megaphone.

  ‘I have to use this on her because she doesn’t understand English.’ He nodded at us. ‘I need no introduction, obviously,’ he went on. ‘One of the few perks about being so famous is that you need no introduction.’

  Harry introduced us.

  ‘We will retire to the drawing room now, my dears.’

  The sunken drawing room was swathed in evening light, which highlighted the pale blue silk-lined walls, which in turn were hung with gilt-framed paintings.

  ‘Please be seated, my dears,’ Mr Hunter said, indicating that we could sit opposite him, after which he placed the megaphone to his lips, shouting, ‘Bring in the drinks, Hortense.’

  Another maid, also crisply dressed, ventured down some steps. On a mahogany coffee tray she placed an exquisitely laid silver salver set with cocktail glasses and bottles boasting foreign labels, a cut-crystal ice bowl and gold tongs.

  ‘You two are the tenth writers or writing partnership I have seen in the last twenty-four hours,’ he announced. ‘There does not seem to be a great deal of film work about in England these days.’