Spies and Stars Read online

We stared at him feeling duly humbled.

  ‘So how do you feel about working for me?’

  I left that one to Harry.

  ‘Intrigued,’ he said, after a short pause during which I knew he was rejecting anything that might sound too craven or – worse – grateful.

  ‘I too am intrigued.’ Bennett Hunter nodded. ‘Now remind me of your names?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Hunter, it’s very easy to get us muddled – I am Harry, shorter hair, deeper voice. This person here with long hair and lipstick is Lottie.’

  It was then something extraordinary happened. Bennett Hunter laughed, and he did not just laugh – he cracked up.

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear, I fear I am easily pleased at this juncture of a very long day. Out of an endless line of ******* writers, you are the first ******* writers to come through my front door and make me laugh,’ he said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief that had BH embroidered above what looked like a hand. ‘My dears, sit down, sit down!’

  ‘We are sitting down.’

  ‘In that case, stay down.’

  More laughter during which I tried not to gaze around the opulent room.

  Roland Andrews’ house had been swanky in a theatrical way but this was Hollywood empirical.

  Happily, on the way there we had both agreed that we would never get the job. This made us collectively carefree.

  ‘You have never written a movie, I daresay, my dears?’

  We agreed we had not.

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  ‘Two reasons,’ Harry said smoothly, and at once, which gave the impression that we had been asked this many times. ‘First we are not American, and secondly we want to see our work on-screen as it was written, and there is small chance of that in the film world.’

  ‘Not a small chance – no chance whatsoever. My dear Lottie, my dear Harry, I will tell you now, you will never see your work reproduced as you have written it on a screen.’

  This seemed to delight Harry, who immediately started to get up off the squishy sofa.

  He held out his hand to Bennett Hunter.

  ‘Thank you very much for seeing us, Mr Hunter. And we both wish you the best of luck for the future.’

  I struggled up off the sofa and held out my hand too, but he took neither, only shaking his head impatiently.

  ‘Sit down, my dears … Lottie, Harry, sit down. There is no need to rush out. We have only just begun our parley, only just begun.’

  I glanced at Harry. He sat down, so I too sat down, at the same time experiencing an inexplicable feeling of disappointment. I thought it would have been such a brilliant move to leave before being turned down anyway.

  ‘You two are very volatile, both of you, very volatile. I haven’t yet explained what it is I want you to write. And if you write it as I wish, who knows? You may even see your work on-screen, its integrity intact. The impossible does sometimes happen as we know from watching Hollywood films!’

  ‘We don’t want to keep you, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘Good, good, so many people do,’ he said, and appearing to think we had caved in he went to pick up his megaphone, but then changed his mind.

  ‘Please pour the drinks, Mr Harry Writer,’ he said to Harry.

  Now one of Harry’s many strengths was that he was brilliant at pouring drinks on account of having to work in bars when he was short of money.

  ‘What would you like, Mr Hunter?’

  Bennett Hunter gave him a long look.

  ‘What do you think I would like, my dear Harry?’

  Harry stared at him, frowning.

  ‘You’re like Billy Wilder,’ he finally announced. ‘You enjoy a mean Martini.’

  Bennett Hunter gave a satisfied smile.

  ‘My dear friend Billy drank ten Martinis at the Oscars last year. It was the record, but he still didn’t get best director – just a headache. He has over fifty pairs of tennis shoes. I have sixty-five. I remind him of that every time we meet.’

  Harry’s Martinis were so mean that after only a few sips I began to see Mr Hunter’s face not just in Technicolor but in triple vision.

  ‘Now what do my dear Harry and my dear Lottie know about movies and the movie business?’

  Once again I let Harry speak, mainly because what I knew about films could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

  ‘First of all,’ he said, eventually, ‘you need to set your film somewhere movie stars want to go – say, the South of France, or – or Venice.’

  Bennett Hunter beamed. Actually he did better than that: he radiated contentment at Harry, and I could see Harry caught in the beam.

  ‘My dear Harry, is your father in the business?’

  He thought for a minute. Even I found myself intrigued as to what his answer might be. Harry’s father worked in the City for an investment company, played golf at the weekend and went to church on Sunday, so from the little I knew of him, I could not imagine him having anything to do with movies.

  ‘My father invests,’ Harry said, giving an almost sinister emphasis to the word.

  ‘I like gentlemen who invest. Does he invest a great deal?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Harry said blithely. ‘He puts money in all sorts of things, beer, food, shipping, you know how it is in the City.’

  I later found out this was quite true but at that moment I was sure that Harry was busking it.

  ‘Movies even?’

  Harry smiled.

  ‘Oh, I expect so,’ he said, and his smile was huge.

  ‘I like this father of yours, my dear Harry,’ Mr Hunter told us. ‘I like him very much. So it was probably from this shrewd man that you learned the first truth about movie stars: they like to holiday when they work, so forget the studios, take them on location to glamorous places. Never mind the script, just find the right hotel!’

  I have led a very sheltered life, so I felt shocked at the idea that actors would choose films for their locations rather than their precious artistic content.

  ‘My dear Lottie is looking astonished at our news, Mr Harry Writer. No, she is looking bouleversé, as they say in La France, or did when I was last there filming with dear Gina. What a gal! She did my movie because it was set in gay Paree. So that exactly illustrates our point.’

  Harry smiled.

  ‘If it was so appealing to Gina Lalalalala – why not go again with Paris once more for your new movie, Mr Hunter?’

  A loud sound broke out in the room. I stared, trying to focus through the alco-vision of the mean Martini. The sound was Bennett Hunter clapping.

  ‘Now I know you are part of the movie family, Mr Harry Writer, because only a member calls the beautiful Gina that. And, yes, you are right. We shall go again with our new movie to gay Paree. That suits me so well, because it means I can get home to do my laundry of an evening, should I need to.’

  For a second I thought Harry’s Martini had gone to my ears, but no, it seemed Mr Hunter’s laundry was sacred to him.

  ‘I can trust no one else with my garments,’ he continued. Harry nodded happily at this as if he felt the same.

  ‘Quite right, quite right, Mr Hunter. There is always a feeling of helplessness when you hand your best shirt over to a maid who is probably about to leave your service.’

  Bennett Hunter stared at Harry as if he was the US cavalry come over the hill at just the right moment. This time he did not smile, he did not laugh – he purred.

  I looked from one to the other and my heart sank once again. It was obvious that Bennett Hunter had fallen in love with Harry. He finished his mean Martini and rose to his feet. Harry rose to his. I rose only to one foot and then the other, very carefully, to cover any overt swaying that might follow.

  ‘I will show you to the door,’ Bennett Hunter announced.

  It was only very much later that I realised that this was a great Hollywood-style compliment. ‘I will show you to the lift’ means that, barring accidents, you are more or less signed.

  Monty, standing bes
ide Rollo, was waiting for us in the drive wearing his best. He raised his cap at Bennett Hunter who smiled.

  ‘I like writers with style,’ he murmured.

  We had hardly climbed into Rollo before I started to worry about what would happen if we got the job. We had no experience of writing for what you could call proper films. You could hardly call our work on Sexy Aliens the right experience for dealing with someone like Bennett Hunter. As I sat voicing my jitters, Harry put on his not-listening-to-a-word face and stared contentedly out of the window.

  ‘He’ll sign us,’ he announced finally. ‘And you know what swung it for us? The bit about the laundry. I knew from some old interview that he does his own washing and always has. He has a thing about germs. That is why he uses the megaphone, so as not to get too near the person he wants to talk to. Notice he did not shake hands? If he has to go anywhere he wears gloves, like the Queen.’

  ‘Not those long evening gloves?’

  ‘You wait and see if we don’t get the job.’

  *

  The next day, back at my proper job in my Section at MI5, I confided my fears to Arabella, who threw me a bored look, which I caught.

  ‘My dear Lottie—’ she began.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that, Arabella,’ I moaned. ‘Please don’t, you sound just like Bennett Hunter.’

  Arabella smiled.

  ‘He has a terrible reputation for bullying writers, and actors too,’ she said contentedly. ‘Many stars have walked off the set on account of his megaphone manners.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘He even uses it when speaking to the maid.’

  Arabella looked ever-more content.

  ‘Lottie,’ she said with a sigh, ‘Zuzu in her infinite wisdom has swung you an interview with a very famous director and all you are doing is moaning. You should be ashamed of yourself. Harry has stopped feeling miserable, I daresay, you might be going to write a movie in Paris for famous, famous stars – and yet here you are, looking as if you are about to receive a prison sentence.’

  I was duly humbled, and when I felt like a worm without earth I always went in to see Commander Steerforth because in my eyes he was a saint who had fought the war and come out of it with a love for everything proper, because after all, as he always said – we did win it.

  ‘Victoria sponge?’ I asked him brightly.

  ‘Not just before lunch, thank you, Lottie,’ he said in a kind voice, handing me back a memo I had taken down wrong. ‘How’s the scribbling going?’

  It had become a running joke between us to refer to my scribbling with Harry as ‘night work’ and myself as a night worker, which for some reason we both continued to find funny; because due to not trapping any spies lately, little jokes helped relieve the lack of tension. Still, we all hoped something exciting would happen to occupy us pretty soon, although my father seemed to think that communism was losing. And of course commercials selling cheerful products, apparently it had all had the effect of making people less cross.

  ‘The night job,’ I finally answered, ‘is in the pending tray.’

  We laughed and I scurried back to my desk only to find that Arabella had answered my phone and it was Harry calling.

  ‘The news is that that even now Dewi is negotiating with the famous cheese, apparently.’

  I sank down into my chair, clutching my files and staring at Arabella. ‘Let’s go and celebrate at Fenwick’s,’ she suggested.

  I nodded dumbly while silently praying that Dewi would make a hash of the negotiations. Agents negotiating contracts with very important people are usually very important themselves. I was sure that Dewi, even if he put out his cigarettes, or his cigars, and concentrated hard, would not be up to Mr Bennett Hunter, who was more used to dealing with Hollywood agents. So after a long day re-typing memos I had done wrong, and plying the Commander with Victoria sponge, I caught the bus home in the kind of mood I imagined comes upon a person who has had a prison sentence quashed. Dewi would make a hash of it. I was as sure of that as I was that Mrs Graham would be cooking beef at the weekend and Melville playing the piano and Hal booming at my mother about theatre.

  I was so confident that I began a new script about an impoverished writer who gets left a Rolls-Royce like Rollo by an old American lady he had been driving round England prior to her going back to the States, where she lived with a crowd of ungrateful relatives.

  It always made me feel very happy to be making a start on a new script. The blank piece of paper seemed to beckon me on to new adventures, taking my mind off everything else.

  I had hardly typed MERRILY IT ROLLS ALONG by Lottie Burrell, when someone knocked at the door and it was my mother, wearing her best martyred look.

  ‘Er – Harry is on the telephone,’ she said in a tone that indicated his call to our house was interfering with government matters of a serious nature.

  I rushed downstairs, hoping against hope that Dewi would not have made a deal with Mr Hunter.

  ‘Lottie,’ Harry said, and his voice had a quiet authority. ‘The deal was done, in five minutes flat. Mr Bennett Hunter told Dewi that he knew we were the right people for him and we would be admirably suited. He is sending a contract tomorrow and the money will be in the bank before you can say Gina Lalalala.’

  ‘I don’t think I have any more leave left, at least not enough,’ I said, thinking quickly that maybe if I hadn’t got any left, Harry would have to cope on his own.

  ‘You won’t need any, that is what is so great. He is in the middle of something else, editing it and so on – so he doesn’t want us round until after six.’

  ‘After six?’ I said. ‘But what about his washing – he said that’s how he spends his evenings, doing his washing.’

  Harry laughed.

  ‘I don’t think that’s in the contract – yet. See you for coffee, Lottie-bags.’

  My mother had followed me downstairs. She stared at the telephone receiver as I replaced it.

  ‘Bad news about the film?’ she asked, hopefully.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid we have been contracted.’

  My mother stared at me for a few seconds.

  ‘Well, if you will do these things, Lottie,’ she said finally, ‘you will find that’s what happens. Anyway, your father will be pleased. He likes to know about these people. Keeps a tab on them.’

  I frowned at her. Was there nothing MI5 wasn’t interested in?

  ‘This is the worst bit,’ Harry stated as I slid onto the bench seat opposite him and ordered a coffee. ‘You realise we now have to write the film, and we have to set it in Paris, and neither of us knows a thing about Paris.’

  I nodded, thinking of the script I had started, and wishing that I was going to write that rather than something for Mr Hunter. It wasn’t something I could tell Harry about. I led a secret life on my typewriter, the results of which I kept undercover in a coded folder, probably because Harry did not always agree with what old Hollywood would call my weenies – so I felt it was better to keep them in the Top Secret File.

  ‘Doesn’t matter that we don’t know Paris, there are books on it, aren’t there? You don’t need to know about a place to write about it. My father had a friend who wrote a bestseller called On Foot Through the Himalayas and he’d never left Chipping Camden.’

  Harry looked shocked.

  ‘Your family know some very strange people, Lottie.’

  I stared out of the window at some very odd-looking passers-by. It was true. My family did know a great many odd people. They probably knew some of the people who had just gone by the window. I thought about the script I was writing at home. It was not set in Paris. Actually it was not set anywhere at the moment. The hero, if he could be called such, had only just found the advertisement in an old evening newspaper left on the seat beside him on the number nine bus.

  ‘Lottie, you are meant to be listening to me.’

  ‘I am listening to you, Harry.’

  ‘We are meant to be talking about working for th
is great director everyone knows is very famous, except perhaps for you.’

  I saw my moment. Harry, I realised, knew me well enough to see that my heart was not in writing for Mr Bennett Hunter, however famous.

  ‘If we are going to do this – this picture for Mr Hunter – we must have an incentive in our minds, something that we really, really want.’

  ‘How do you mean? Like getting Dermot to wash up?’

  ‘Something like – say – a motor car.’

  ‘A motor car forsooth, if not fifthsooth?’ Harry mocked.

  I ignored him. I like old-fashioned words like wireless and motor car and luncheon. They make me think of boating on the Thames, and men opening doors for you and standing up when you left the table.

  ‘Actually, Harry,’ I said, clearing my throat so he knew I meant what I was about to say.

  ‘Actually – Lottie?’

  ‘I would like a motor car, and I will not write a word if you do not agree to putting whatever few shillings Dewi has got us towards one.’

  ‘Very well, I will put mine towards a car – you can put yours towards a motor car.’

  ‘Remember those words, Harry, you will need to, believe me.’

  Harry smiled. He was too full of the moment to pick me up on my implied threat, but then he had not witnessed the film writer coming out of the producer’s office that day. He did not know what was in store for us, whereas I was quite sure I did.

  There the evening ended – well, more or less, except for Harry insisting on going back to his flat and opening a bottle of Italian wine – the kind that people always use afterwards to put candles in – and singing along to his guitar. It was fine until Dermot came in and Harry forgot himself so far as to tell him that we had just collared a film to write, which of course sent Dermot to bed in a paroxysm of fury, charging us with being tainted with capitalist values from which he predicted we would never recover.

  The following evening, spruced up for our first appointment with the great man, we agreed not to ask Monty to drive us to his mansion but to walk round while discussing the story we might write.

  As before the maid opened the front door, and as before Mr Bennett Hunter was lurking about the hall, this time not with his megaphone, but a packet of washing powder tucked under his arm.