Harry nodded, all the while flicking through the pages and shaking his head.
‘She’s right. Nothing to be done. Not even oxygen will revive this dross. Talk about a kitchen pinafore script! That’s what we call them in England – kitchen pinny scripts.’
Stu-two looked delighted and put a Vitamin C tablet under his tongue, which made his mouth foam.
‘Follow me to the witch’s cave.’ He stopped suddenly and lowered his voice. ‘Don’t faint on me but she looks like a slug in a wig at this time of the morning.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Actually, that’s not fair on slugs.’
He was not wrong. Mary Day was sitting at a desk surrounded by what I knew must be downtrodden miserable writers. They barely glanced up as we came in. She, on the other hand, stared at us as she slowly took some plastic rollers out of her hair.
‘Here are the British writers, Miss Day,’ Stu-two said, indicating us.
‘Well, I didn’t think they were chorus girls, Stuart,’ she said, intent on lighting a cigarette. ‘Sit down,’ she nodded at one chair.
Harry sat down and I promptly sat on his knee.
The writers all started to laugh as Stu-two brought me a chair of my own.
‘So you two work together. Rows every hour of the day, I guess?’
Harry always got affronted when someone said that, which they quite frequently did, so it was tiring for him. I looked at the ceiling and wondered if there wasn’t something else for people to say when it came to one man and one woman working together.
‘I couldn’t work with my husband,’ Miss Day said, turning round to address her captive audience. ‘I would murder him.’
None of the writers smiled.
‘So what do you think of the script we left you to read?’
Harry looked at the other writers, knowing that at least one of them must have been involved.
‘I never criticise another writer’s work in front of them,’ he said pointedly.
‘Okay, guys, leave. Not you, Stuart, you can stay. We all know you can’t write your own name.’
‘Charming, isn’t she?’ Stu-two whispered to me as the other writers trouped out of the room.
‘So, Mr British Writer, what do you have to say about this script?’
‘Do you want the truth?
‘Of course.’
‘It’s melted jelly. And sour cream too.’
At this Stu-two turned away, clapping his hand to his mouth, or maybe he had put another tablet in it.
‘It’s what we call in England a kitchen pinafore comedy, which is okay if it’s funny, but this isn’t funny.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Go back to England.’
‘Are you that yellow?’
‘Yes, oh, yes.’ Harry smiled happily at the astonished Mary Day, and I felt so happy for him I could almost have helped the wretched woman take the rest of her rollers out – I say almost because although I knew sacrifices had to be made at all times, I might have passed on the chance at the last minute.
‘Whatever they need to make them stay, give it to them,’ Mary Day commanded, turning to Stu-two. ‘Anything and everything they want – just get a script out of them.’ She suddenly started to laugh. ‘Kitchen pinafore indeed!’
Her laughter followed us past the writers waiting outside, and into the lift.
‘Isn’t she something else?’ Stu-two asked, without a trace of fondness.
Harry looked ahead of him, thinking. He knew we were on a sticky wicket. Write a fresh script for the beastly woman and we just might get our passports back – oh, and our smallpox certificates. Don’t write the script and we would have to do something drastic. The studio could ‘lose’ our documents and that would mean endless waiting, and new passports, and heaven only knew what colour tape.
‘Okay, Lottie-bags, pens out – ideas please!’
To say that writing for that woman was a slog was to say the least.
‘We have to slug it out, Lottie. After that, with any luck, we can make a break for it.’
The show we wrote was in the I Love Lucy mode. There was not much else you could do with two sets, a kettle and a few changes of apron. The husband was a useless idiot – obviously based on the Slug’s own choice – and he actually caused us the most trouble until we hit on the idea of making him a gardener.
His declared war on slugs gave us such undercover fun that somehow our gaiety must have translated itself to the script because the Slug herself adored it.
‘Please not more weeks holed up here—’
‘I know. It’s terrible, Harry. Room service, a television, a radio, a fridge filled with every drink imaginable. It is a living hell, I do see that.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do. Movie stars everywhere, cocktails in the evening. I think a letter to The Times is needed.’
‘The movie stars don’t even speak to us.’
‘Film people don’t talk to television people, you know that. They think television has killed film. Besides, they live in fear of all their old films being re-run, which will show up their ages.’
Despite Harry’s moans we were engaged in writing another script. The gardening husband had caught fire with the other writers. Stu-two brought us information from the front line. We started to wonder if he could be trusted. He seemed to know too much about what we were writing. Whenever he came into the suite we hid our work, and when he left we turned out the pencil vases, which he continually filled and re-filled – to such an extent that we suspected he was putting recording devices in them.
Remembering that we were also meant to be working for MI5 in a strong and silent way, of an evening we would sit straining to hear other people’s conversations in the cocktail lounge. One evening we must have seemed rather too interested because a very handsome couple followed us into the lift.
After a few exchanges of looks between themselves the male partner asked us in a very attractive voice, ‘Tell me, do you party?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Harry answered blithely. ‘We party all the time. We love parties. Wine and cheese – all sorts.’
They started to laugh.
‘We’re on this number, here’s our card – call us, do.’
I frowned. I didn’t like the way they were looking at us as if we were ripe fruit. Back in our suite I put their card on my desk. The following evening our hotel telephone rang. It was the unmistakable voice of the man in the lift.
‘Come on over,’ he said. ‘Come on over and we’ll party.’
‘I’ll call you back,’ I said.
Harry thought we should go in the interests of international relations. I thought I had quite enough relations already, but I did see his point.
From the moment we went into their suite, which was on low lights with accompanying low music – Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Swinging Lovers – I felt as if I should have a small lady’s gun, white and silver if possible, in my handbag.
I quickly thought of Commander Steerforth and Arabella and all the wonderful people I worked with when I wasn’t on sabbatical in Hollywood.
What would they do in this situation? They would act calmly – that would be Arabella – and correctly – that would be Commander Steerforth.
‘I wonder if you could turn up the music? I am slightly deaf,’ I said. ‘And the lighting. My writing partner here, Harry, is short-sighted.’
They did so, but only fractionally, as they handed us glasses of champagne.
‘Don’t drink – it’s drugged!’ I found myself silently screaming to Harry, while at the same time I did see that he too was alert to danger because he was scratching his left ear, which I knew he always did in rehearsal when he wanted to signal to fellow actors about the director ‘we’ve got a right one here’.
For the next few minutes we kept raising our glasses to God Bless America, and Here’s to the Queen of England, and Long Live Hollywood, and goodness knows what other toasts, while our lips took only token sips at our glasses.<
br />
‘We thought we would take room service – in there.’
The relevant door was open. We could see that ‘in there’ was a bedroom with a vast bed.
‘Why not come to our suite? Our room service is faster and our “in there” much bigger,’ Harry said, putting on his most droll expression.
For some reason they seemed to think this was not just amusing but hilarious. Before they could finish laughing we put down our glasses and fled to our suite, calling to them to follow ‘in five minutes’.
I caught Harry by the arm as he ran past me into the suite, slamming the door behind me.
‘She’s a Ruski!’ I said.
‘Do stop speaking Bulldog Drummond lingo, Lottie,’ Harry implored even as he emptied out the pencil vases, which was actually his nightly routine.
‘No, she is, I spotted it at once. They never say “the”. Russians always say “bedroom”, not “the bedroom”. Didn’t you notice?’
‘Her accent is impeccable – pure Long Island. And as for the bed, it didn’t need a “the” in front of it as far as I was concerned.’
I picked up their card from my desk. ‘I tell you, she is a Ruski.’
Whether I was right or not, we took the telephone off the hook and ignored the plaintive little knocks at the door of our suite, turning up the television and living off what was in our fridge.
Curiosity as well as our duty to MI5 took us back to the cocktail lounge the next evening.
The moment the couple saw us they came over to where we were sitting. We valiantly pinned on our most polite expressions.
‘You hurt our feelings,’ they told us. ‘We were sincere in our invitation. We thought you were nice people.’
‘I’m afraid you got that wrong,’ I said firmly. ‘We’re both writers. Writers are not nice people.’
They went back to their usual places, looking dignified and hurt.
‘You shouldn’t have given their names to you know who last night,’ Harry said. ‘Poor things, look at them, we’ve broken their hearts.’
‘There’s something about them,’ I said, going all Arabella and mysterious on him.
‘Never mind that, we have a script to finish.’
Which we did indeed have, and did indeed do. We finished it just before the first we had written was printed up and sent to our suite courtesy of Stu-two.
Harry immediately seized on it and took it to read in his bedroom while I watched television with my mouth open, which had become a bit of an unfortunate habit with me when watching American telly.
‘LOTTIE!’
Harry threw open the door. He took a deep breath. He had a very good diaphragm so was good at doing deep breaths.
‘There is not one word of this which is ours. NOT ONE WORD. No – I tell a lie. There is one line left, which is mine – no, it’s yours – no, it’s both of ours. Just one line, I tell you. It’s outrageous. I’m going to put in a call to Dewi.’
‘Dewi will be asleep, Harry.’
Dewi had nothing to say from his bed, which was good because Harry was already packing our bags. In the middle of his suitcase-filling, Stu-two dropped by.
‘You can hire anyone, why hire us?’ Harry asked.
Stu-two tried to look surprised that Harry was so upset.
‘That’s television,’ he said, sighing. ‘I mean Tuesday is rewrite day, we have to keep other writers happy, and rewriting television is not exactly the movies. But listen, don’t go – you two deliver great material. We appreciate it, really we do. Unpack and stay for one more script. Make the Slug happy, huh?’
‘Just one then.’
Stu-two put a Vitamin C tablet in his mouth and chewed for a minute. ‘Here’s a thing – quite a thing. A couple along the way from here … guess what?’
At this I stopped filling the pencil vases for him, and even Harry stopped fuming for a second.
‘They’ve been arrested for being over-sexed?’ he quipped.
‘Not even close. They’ve been arrested – yes, for being Russian spies. How about that? The Slug wants to put them in a script for the show. She wants Mary Day to arrest them in the supermarket. Knock them out with her kettle and tie them up with her apron. And I wish I was kidding but I’m not.’
It was my turn to breathe in and out fast.
‘Well, I never,’ Harry said, and I could see that he wished he had Melville’s badge back.
After Stu-two left I didn’t say ‘see’ to Harry. I didn’t say ‘I told you so’. I just said: ‘The.’
The fact ‘the’ is a word that comes up rather a lot when you are writing did not improve our artistic relationship.
‘Do you think they knew about your father?’
‘Ruskis always use sex,’ I said avoiding that one.
‘What a thing,’ Harry said, frowning. ‘All a bit real, don’t you think, Lottie-bags?’
The arrests were all over the newspapers and the news, which we found a bit close to home, but at least it stopped Harry from feeling bad about hurting the handsome couple’s feelings. He was very sensitive like that.
After much excitement and our writing two more shows for the Slug, even Stu-two was happy to say goodbye to us.
He was very gracious, although still foaming. He gave us back our passports. Oh, and our smallpox certificates.
‘You’ve been a terrific help. Two very talented people. The show has benefited from your scripts big time.’
I was sad to say goodbye to Los Angeles: to the clock that chimed the hour outside the window, to the gaiety of the shops, to the hotel staff who were incredibly gracious, and the barman who even put up with Harry lecturing him about how to make a proper Martini.
When we got back to Dingley Dell and Earls Court we found it was great to be home, but to be truthful Hollywood had spoiled us. I didn’t realise just how much until I found myself constantly picking up the telephone to order food to be sent up. Somehow Dermot’s stuffed cabbage was not quite the same.
As for Harry, he felt only too happy to be back. Arriving for work of an evening, I would find him standing on the pavement outside the flat on his way to his favourite shops – past all the slow-moving traffic – happily singing ‘Day of Days’. His version.
TINY TIMES
It was Sunday at Dingley Dell. The sun was shining. Melville was playing the piano and Hal was booming at my mother. My father was mixing drinks and humming along to Melville’s playing.
Downstairs Mrs Graham was cooking lunch, and Harry and I had just won an award for an episode of The Mary Day Show we’d entered in a writers’ competition for a joke.
Needless to say, it involved Mary arresting spies in the supermarket, although Harry drew the line at her tying them up with her apron.
‘Irony can go no further,’ he said happily when we picked up the award from Dewi’s office.
On hearing the good news Dewi immediately put our fees up, which meant that one day we might be able to buy a house and get married.
In Knightsbridge Monty was in seventh heaven, laying out a delicious buffet for Arabella and Zuzu, who was back in town. All Mademoiselle’s favourite food had been prepared. Rollo was spotless and shining, waiting to take them all round the Park in stately fashion.
Recently I’d written the start to something along the lines of a novel. As Harry only read thrillers, and Arabella still had her head in Egyptian tombs, I gave a chunk of it to Monty to read. He approved of it – with only one stipulation.
‘Don’t you go giving it some dreadful modern dreary ending,’ he warned. ‘I won’t have it, really I won’t. You make sure it has a Tiny Times ending.’
Tiny Times was Monty’s way of saying Happy Days – always said with a contented sigh, naturally.
It came from Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol famously saying at the end of the book, ‘God bless us, every one!’
I lived in dread of offending Monty, as well I might, so I was going to end my book with Tiny Times, and Harry and I dancing down the street
back to his flat where we’d placed our award on a shelf so we could see it. If we got stuck at work we sang a snatch of ‘Day of Days’ and that always did the trick. It also annoyed Dermot, which was good.
Tiny Times indeed.
TV AND FILM WITH TERENCE BRADY
Comedy
No, Honestly Series
Yes, Honestly Series
Pig in the Middle Series
Father Matthew’s Daughter Series
Oh Madeline Series
Play for Today Series: ‘Making the Play’
Drama
Take Three Girls Series
Upstairs, Downstairs Series
Thomas and Sarah Series
Nanny Series
Forever Green Series
Films
Magic Moments
Love with a Perfect Stranger
Stage Plays
The Shell Seekers
I Wish I Wish
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Charlotte Bingham wrote her first book, Coronet Among the Weeds, a memoir of her life as a debutante, at the age of 19. It was published in 1963 and became an instant bestseller. Her father, John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris, was a member of MI5 where Charlotte Bingham worked as a secretary. He was an inspiration for John le Carré’s character George Smiley.
Charlotte Bingham went on to write thirty-three internationally bestselling novels and the memoir MI5 and Me. In partnership with her late husband Terence Brady, she wrote a number of successful plays, films and TV series including Upstairs Downstairs and Take Three Girls. She lives in Somerset.
charlottebingham.com
Also available by Charlotte Bingham
MI5 and Me
A Coronet Among the Spooks
Much to her surprise, eighteen-year-old Lottie has just found out that her aloof, rather unexciting father is a spy. And now he’s decreed that she must make herself useful and get a Proper Job – so she’s packed off to MI5 herself, trussed up in a dreary suit. Luckily her delightful colleague Arabella is on hand to enliven the torments of typing and decode the enigmas of office life. But as Lottie’s home fills with actors doubling as spies, and Arabella’s mother is besieged with mysterious telephone calls, the girls start to feel well and truly spooked…
Spies and Stars Page 18