Their Finest Hour and a Half Page 5

  ‘They’ve thought of a word that means “overseas”,’ said Cecy, ‘and a word that means “leave” and a word that means “France” and another that means “England”.’

  ‘I see.’ The garrulous young Welshwoman was standing in the shadows at the very edge of the set. She was looking down at her script and Ambrose treated her to a speciality glare, the one he liked to think of as ‘twin venomous orbs that poison darts doth send’. He’d developed it during the silent era for long moments of speechless antipathy.

  ‘And a word that means “troop train”,’ continued Cecy, ‘and a word that means “regiment”, and a number that means the date, and a word that means “embarking”.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Catrin looked up at Ambrose as he uttered the syllables – it might possibly have been the tone in which he spoke them that attracted her attention – and catching his gaze, she flinched visibly and dropped her script. It was only a small noise, a whisper of paper across the cement floor, but a crew member glanced at her, accusingly.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Catrin. There was a horrible, extended silence and then the sound recordist took off his headphones and twenty-five faces looked in her direction.

  ‘Cut!’

  She tried to make herself very small, and then decided that she might look even smaller if she moved towards the exit.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Ambrose, as he watched the doors close behind her. ‘I do hope we’re not going to overrun the morning session. I have an awfully important lunch date.’

  Sammy had reserved their usual Monday table beside the window at La Venezia. He had specified one o’clock, but by ten past had still not arrived himself, and Ambrose ordered a second gin and stared out at the street. A sandbag from the pile on the corner had burst, the hessian rotted from a year of rain and dog urine, and one of the waiters was sweeping the grit into the gutter. Mario – or perhaps it was Angelo – applied himself listlessly to his task, stopping frequently to look along the road. A pigeon walked behind him, bobbing and halting and dodging, like a child playing at spies. Ambrose ate an olive and looked at his watch again. A minute had gone by.

  It seemed to him that time passed very slowly at the moment. There was a war, of course, but so far all it had really meant was that he could no longer eat the food he preferred, or buy his favourite drinks, or drive his motor car whenever he wanted, or walk about after dark without barking his shins every ten yards, or travel abroad or even, for God’s sake, keep a bloody housekeeper. Three in ten months! Mrs Parsons, who had been with him for years, had moved to Plymouth to be with her daughter; Madame Lefevre had started well, but since the invasion of France had developed the habit of breaking into bouts of loud weeping during the dusting and he’d been forced to let her go; and Betty Clive, a plain but strapping girl with a chin like a spade, had lasted eight days before announcing that she was off to join the FANYs in order to meet, drive around, and eventually marry an officer. Now he was scraping along with the help of next door’s char and a washerwoman so old that he had to help her up the stairs. There had been times, lately, when he had looked back with something approaching nostalgia on the heel-clicking efficiency with which his ex-wife had run the household. It had been hell at the time, but at least he’d never had to cook his own breakfast or shine his own shoes – at least he’d never found himself sitting on the first-floor lavatory with nothing but the current copy of The Times with which to wipe his arse. Sammy, at least, had a sister for all that sort of domestic flim-flammery; he really didn’t know how lucky he was.

  Sammy, at this moment, rounded the corner opposite the restaurant, spotted Ambrose in the window and gave a little wave with the two remaining fingers on his left hand. His right was toting a large, stained canvas bag, the cloth straining over some ill-defined mass. He negotiated the curb (always difficult for someone of his bulk), gave the broom-carrying waiter a covert and obviously admiring glance, and squeezed himself through the door.

  ‘I have to be back at two fifteen,’ said Ambrose. ‘I’ve already ordered.’

  ‘Veal?’

  ‘Off. Cutlets Milanese and semolina pudding.’

  Sammy sighed, and leaned the bag against the table leg. One of the cloth sides drooped down, revealing a bloodied row of teeth and a lidless jelly eye.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sammy, hitching up the side again. ‘Half a sheep’s head for Cerberus. I had to walk all the way to Beak Shtreet for it, but he simply can’t live on potato peelings and bread shcraps, whatever this government may say. Sophie says she’ll boil it up and make him some brawn, lucky fellow. Is this for me?’ He took a sip of his favourite, loathsomely sweet dessert wine, then belched delicately, holding one finger in front of his mouth to stem the noise. ‘I beg your pardon. How’s the filming?’

  ‘Slapdash. Amateurish. You realize that half of these shorts are played during the intermission and the other half when the only people in the cinema are the cleaners. Did you know that I’m co-starring with Cecy Clyde-Cameron?’

  ‘No, really? Dear Cecy – how is she?’

  ‘Fat.’

  ‘She used to be shtunning. Didn’t she marry poor old George Garamonde?’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘I’m sure she did. And I think I heard that she had twins. Some years ago now, of course.’

  ‘Looks as if she’s still carrying them.’

  Sammy tittered and looked around for service. Only two other tables were occupied and there were no waiters in sight. Sammy turned back and clasped his hands across his stomach. ‘Lovely fresh sunny day,’ he said. ‘Shpring-like. Dogwood flowering in the shquare.’

  Ambrose felt a twinge of irritation. It was a familiar accompaniment to his meetings with Sammy, a sort of indigestion of the soul provoked by the various imperfections embodied by his agent: Sammy’s blancmange physique, for a start, that personified the flabbiness of his negotiating skills. Then there was the ridiculous name and speech defect. If you were trying to conceal the fact that your family were naturalized German Jews, then choosing the surname ‘Smith’ when you had never quite lost your accent and, moreover, lisped affectedly on every ‘s’ preceding a consonant, might be perceived as a bad idea. The single statement – ‘My name is Sammy Shmith’ – would be enough to make the average Local Defence Volunteer reach for his wooden rifle. Then there was the fact that he was an obvious bum-boy, capable of uttering the phrase, ‘I’ve simply never shpotted the right girl’, while simultaneously eyeing up the nearest pair of fly buttons. Add to all this the fact that he had failed to find Ambrose a decent leading role for nearly six years, and it seemed astonishing that they were still associates – and yet, as a breed, agents were so short-sighted, so inflexible in their outlook, so lazy, so astoundingly and relentlessly unimaginative, that Ambrose had never found another who entirely suited his needs. He regarded these weekly lunches, therefore, as a way for him to keep a close watch on Sammy, to ensure that every thespian avenue was being explored for a role of suitable worth and proportions – and if, occasionally, the conversation strayed into reminiscence or gossip or topical comment, he was careful always to steer it back towards more important areas.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Sammy, veering off-topic immediately, ‘did I tell you about Philip Cadogan?’

  ‘Heroically joining the army? Yes, you did. More than once.’

  ‘But did I tell you that he was evacuated with the BEF? Three days on the beach at Dunkirk dodging Shtukas and then picked up by trawler. He said he shlept for a solid twenty hours when he got back. I bumped into him in Black’s and we had such a jolly talk. I think service life suits him, he’s looking far more mature. I think that once this is all over he’ll find that he’s moved seamlessly from juvenile to leading man.’

  Not unless he’s seamlessly acquired a chin from somewhere, thought Ambrose, glancing over his shoulder towards the kitchen door. Still no sign of the cutlets. ‘So what did you think of the new prints?’ he asked, turning back. ‘I have to admit he’s clever, that photographer chap
. All that business with shadows and filters. I thought the three-quarters profile with cigarette for Spotlight, and the full-face for publicity, the one where I’m wearing the fedora.’

  ‘Ah yes . . .’ Sammy looked uncomfortable. ‘I wanted to have a word with you about those . . .’ He looked down at his hands, one podgily intact, the other a partial, rosy stump. ‘I was thinking that a little change of tactic might be in order . . .’

  ‘What d’you mean, “tactic”? I thought they were jolly good.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure that making you look so very . . .’ He searched for a word, his expression pained. ‘. . . so very callow is quite the direction that . . .’

  Ambrose found himself temporarily bereft of speech. Sammy floundered on: ‘I think it might be more fruitful in terms of casting to embrace your . . . your . . . your . . . your . . . your . . . exshperience – yes, your impressive exshperience. More fruitful. In terms of casting. In terms of being in line for the role of . . . of senior ranks in service movies, for instance, there’s going to be a lot of call for that, I’d imagine, rather than for the . . . the . . .’ He looked desperately around the room. ‘I say, they’re an awful time with the order, aren’t they?’

  ‘Clive Brook,’ said Ambrose, his voice a sliver of steel. ‘Clive Brook is older than I am and he is still playing leading men. Are you going around telling Clive Brook that he should start playing senior roles?’

  ‘Not my client,’ said Sammy, in a tiny voice, pleating the tablecloth between his fingers.

  ‘Leslie Banks – again, older than me. Are you telling Leslie Banks that he—’

  ‘Ambrose . . .’

  ‘. . . that he should be playing Polonius instead of Hamlet?’

  ‘Ambrose, my job is to find you work.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you do your blasted job, then?’

  ‘Because I can only do it with your cooperation. You may remember that you turned down a perfectly decent film offer last month.’

  ‘Playing Audrey Cane’s uncle? Fifteen lines, shuffling round in a smoking-jacket, while Leslie Banks – older than me – gets to do an entire mad-act as her unstable lover?’

  ‘You turned down The Merchant at Wyndham’s.’

  ‘Playing Old Gobbo?’

  Sammy shrugged, his little currant eyes blinking unhappily. ‘Character roles,’ he said, softly, ‘are not to be shneered at.’

  ‘Christ, Sammy, have you seen the “Character Actors” section of Spotlight? You can’t honestly think that I . . . ?’ Ambrose lifted his spoon and peered at the convex side; he saw a giant nose, a slit-trench mouth, eyebrows like twin hedges. His eyes, though, even through the distorting murk, were still as green as Venetian glass. Reassured, he dropped the spoon. ‘I can’t bear all this labelling,’ he said. ‘It’s meaningless. An actor acts. You may as well ask a river what it thinks of its name – Thames or Tiber, Rhine or Styx, it makes no damned difference – it simply goes on being a river.’

  ‘Oh now, don’t tell me,’ said Sammy, fluttering his fingers. ‘That’s from Inshpector Charnforth and the . . . the Red Rose Mystery.’

  ‘Blue Sapphire Mystery, actually. My point, Sammy, is that—’

  He saw the object out of the corner of his eye and ducked; the noise and explosion of glass seemed simultaneous and a half-brick crossed the room and shied a bottle from the table beyond theirs. A woman screamed.

  ‘Filthy Eyeties!’ shouted a figure in the street, already running. ‘Good God,’ said Ambrose, shaking a splinter from his hand. The table was heaped with glass, the gin tumbler crammed with lethal fragments. A waiter burst out from the kitchen, took a fleeting look at the damage and ran back in again. Ambrose pushed his chair away from the table.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Sammy. He reached his good hand towards Ambrose’s face, and plucked gently at something. There was a tiny prick of pain beneath one eye, and Sammy was holding a wicked shard between his fingers, two inches long, a needle’s-breadth wide. One end was tipped with a dot of blood.

  ‘Tell me, I’ve not—’ said Ambrose, heart stopping.

  ‘No scar,’ said Sammy. ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed with a dab of greasepaint. So—’ He looked around the restaurant, at the other diners squawking and flapping, at the kitchen door, now firmly shut. ‘I wonder . . .’ The door opened suddenly, revealing the head waiter, his face grey.

  ‘I regret to announce to our valued customers that we’re closed,’ he said, ‘until further notice. The staff of La Venezia wish to point out that we are in full support of the Allied cause. God save Mr Churchill. Fuck Hitler.’ The door closed again.

  Sammy gave a little whistle. ‘Italy’s in the war, then.’

  ‘Looks rather like it.’ Ambrose touched the little wound beneath his eye, and examined his fingertip for blood; there was none. He rose slowly and shook his jacket above the litter of glass on the floor. ‘Apropos of your earlier comments,’ he said, checking behind the lapels. ‘I’m prepared to be pragmatic. I am not an unreasonable man. I will, if nothing better turns up, take the occasional character part.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sammy looked suddenly hopeful.

  ‘Provided that it is an extensive role. I will not play Old Gobbo but I might consider, for instance, playing Falstaff.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sammy again, less hopeful this time.

  ‘What you don’t seem to understand is that I’ve never been interested in cameos. What is paramount for me is the chance to build up a character over a number of scenes, whereas—’

  Like Banquo’s ghost, Chick appeared suddenly in the gap where the window had been. ‘They want yer,’ he said.

  ‘Relentless,’ muttered Ambrose, putting on his jacket and hat. ‘I’ve not eaten, of course, and there’s no catering at that damned little studio, not even a cup of tea. It’s “Mr Hilliard”, incidentally,’ he added, in Chick’s direction. ‘Not a hard name to remember, I would have thought.’ He followed Sammy through the door. ‘Until next week, then.’

  ‘Next week where, is the question,’ said Sammy. ‘Perhaps we had better postpone.’

  ‘No . . . no, I don’t think so.’ The idea made Ambrose strangely uneasy. ‘No, we could try Veeraswamy’s. The Indians are, at least, on our side.’

  ‘I’ll book,’ said Sammy. He hefted his sheep’s head and waggled his fingers in his usual girlish farewell. ‘Au revoir.’

  Walking beside Chick, Ambrose felt like a prisoner under escort. He lengthened his stride and tried to pretend that he was walking back to the studio on his own. He had, he calculated, seven lines in the next scenario, two of which were ‘Yes, dear’ and one of which was the syllable ‘Ugh’. First eskimo, now caveman; it really was enough to make one weep.

  SUPPORTING FEATURE

  August 1940

  Late on Thursday afternoon, Dolly Clifford, who was celebrating her fortieth birthday for the third year in succession, handed a box of chocolates around the sewing-room and Edith ate a violet fondant, just to be polite. The next morning, when she woke at 3 a.m. with the impression that her head was being split in half with a blunt axe, she knew that she had discovered yet another addition to the list of foods that set off her migraines.

  ‘Ooh, we all get headaches,’ Dolly had once said, dismissively, but there was no similarity between what Edith thought of as her ‘usual’ bad heads – that dull grey band across the brows, concomitant with Sunday afternoons – and this terrible, cleaving, Technicolor pain. She groped for the handkerchief under her pillow, wet it in the glass of water on the bedside table, and laid it over her eyes.

  She awoke again much later, her head stuffy, the pain diminished and distant, as if telegraphed from another room. The daylight was hidden by the blackout curtains, but she knew from the noise of the plumbing that it was well after her normal waking hour of six thirty. By now, she should be walking to Wimbledon station, or standing on the platform with a thousand others, waiting for a District Line train to Edgware, via Paddington. She could not, at this moment,
imagine even trying to stand upright.

  There was a gentle knock at her door. ‘Are you awake, Edith?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ Her voice, to her own ears, sounded limp and pasty.

  ‘I think you’ve slept in, dear. I’m afraid you may be rather late.’

  ‘I have a headache, Mrs Sumpter.’

  ‘Oh I’m so sorry. Can I get you some tea? Or an aspirin?’

  ‘No thank you, Mrs Sumpter. I’ll just lie here for a while.’

  ‘As you wish, dear.’ She heard Mrs Sumpter’s poor swollen feet limp back down the corridor to her room.

  The next knock was more peremptory.

  ‘Are you requiring breakfast, Miss Beadmore?’

  Edith winced at the thought. ‘No thank you, Mrs Bailey.’

  ‘Then I have wasted your egg.’

  ‘Perhaps Pam can have it.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  It hurt her head to speak loudly. ‘Give it to Pamela,’ she said, with an effort.

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘Yes I am. Mrs Bailey . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I use the telephone later?’

  There was silence.

  ‘To ring work, Mrs Bailey? To tell them I’m not feeling at all well?’

  ‘I use the telephone myself on Friday mornings.’

  For heaven’s sake, thought Edith. ‘It would only be a very short call, Mrs Bailey. To tell them that I can’t come in.’

  ‘If you’re at home all day I have nothing in the house for your luncheon, Miss Beadmore.’

  ‘I won’t be wanting anything to eat, Mrs Bailey. I would simply like to make a phone call.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Very well, then.’

  Edith sank back into the pillow. Conversations with Mrs Bailey were always like this – a verbal variation of ‘scissors-paper-stone’ in which each exchange was a phase of combat, with firm rules and a definite winner. It required a clear head and good reflexes on the part of the other participant, and Edith felt exhausted by her marginal victory. She was still recovering when there was a third knock, this time simultaneous with the door actually opening.