Spies and Stars Read online

  ‘You don’t realise what it’s like to write for a comedian.’

  ‘Nor do you.’

  ‘I’m not ringing Dewi.’

  ‘He’ll be thrilled.’

  I sighed happily. Well, I would. The chips had just arrived.

  As it happened Dewi was not as thrilled as we had both imagined he would be.

  ‘Leslie Johns can be tricky, Lottie.’

  ‘There are two of us, Dewi, we should be all right.’

  ‘Depends on what you call all right. Remember Bennett Hunter? That was the only time Harry has ever called me after six.’

  ‘He never told me he called you after six. What about?’

  ‘Ask Harry.’

  Dewi put the phone down, but of course I didn’t ask Harry, I couldn’t – not after the chocolate cake incident. I turned my thoughts to higher things such as Sunday lunch at Dingley Dell, which in recent weeks had become a bit of a bookie’s parlour.

  Hal and myself, and of course Harry, had all decided to liven things up by coming up with who was the least likely MI5 recruit. Melville was the stakeholder.

  I had always understood that if my father had a recruiting principle it was to attract people who were seemingly anonymous.

  ‘Hal and I are some of his exceptions,’ Melville stated. ‘And Harry, of course – a bit. We are the show business exceptions.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he has anyone in Variety working for him,’ Harry mused.

  ‘The moment we see someone at the Palladium coming on with the catchphrase “what I couldn’t tell you … my lips are sealed”, we will know,’ Hal boomed.

  ‘I think my money is safe,’ Melville said complacently.

  All good stuff, as my father would say, but just at that moment Harry and I had been recruited by Leslie Johns and we had to go to work for him straight away as he needed fresh material for his summer show.

  Since I was still committed to the service and Commander Steerforth in particular – not to mention Arabella – we went to work for Leslie Johns after I had finished for the day at MI5 and visited him on Saturdays.

  Leslie Johns’ house was vast, at least by our standards. While Dingley Dell was elegant and old-world faded and gracious to its fingertips, if a house can have fingertips, Leslie Johns’ was a bit like his Bentley. It radiated success from every inch of its Tudoresque beams to its impeccably mown lawns.

  The door was flung open to us – and I do mean us because Monty had once again insisted that we use Rollo.

  ‘It’s not me, it’s Mademoiselle,’ he said, trying to look innocent, at which he was not at all clever. ‘Mademoiselle told me to look after you. Besides, I’m a fan of Leslie Johns.’

  ‘And what Zuzu wants Zuzu gets,’ Harry said, sighing.

  ‘Precisely,’ Monty said, breathing in and breathing out in that particular way he always did when Zuzu’s name was mentioned. It was as if her particular magic made him feel short of breath, which I could understand. Zuzu always left you wondering why everyone else wasn’t her, or hoping that if you tried hard you could become more like her. She trailed enchantment in her wake. She could make roses open, stars leave their galaxy to join in the fun; and you always knew where she had been because she would leave a light fragrance of Je Reviens on the air.

  Hurry and I were shown into a very large drawing room with not one but two televisions in evidence.

  ‘When I’m on telly I like to see myself double, which I usually do anyway thanks to the dry Martinis,’ Leslie quipped as he came into the room.

  There was something very endearing about him. He never referred to his hard climb to success or the ghastly days of the war when he was playing the factories with only his old mum in attendance. He left his publicity woman to do that. Leslie seemed merely to take it for granted that everyone in Variety had a stiff climb to the top and they were all the better for it.

  ‘So – where to begin? I love your work.’

  Harry and I attempted to smile modestly, and waited.

  ‘I caught the revue you were in,’ he went on, speaking to Harry. ‘I slipped in and saw the dress rehearsal. That tank sketch was the funniest thing in the show.’

  There was the now familiar-to-me sound of Harry’s jaw dropping.

  ‘I would certainly like to use that for my summer show. So, what else have you got in the famous pipeline?’

  ‘We have a sketch about a farmer who befriends a pig,’ I improvised quickly.

  ‘Do tell,’ Leslie said, lighting up a cigar.

  ‘The farmer can’t bring himself to send the pig to market so he teaches it to do tricks, one of which is to impersonate him.’

  Leslie drew on his cigar.

  ‘I can just see it. I can just see it,’ he repeated. ‘The pig can keep coming up with my catchphrase all wrong. Once he learns it successfully, I can make the audience honk along. Finally we exit hand in hand, with his trotter in mine. We must get a pig costume made straight away – animal costumiers are notoriously slow. Always some excuse – either they can’t get the ears for the rats, or the horses’ hooves have to be different sizes. Or the teeth don’t fit. Always something, I promise you. I’ll order up the pig today.’

  I have to tell you, the moment Leslie turned his back Harry gave me a look that would have made a lesser writer break out in a sweat. In return I did what I always do when he does that – I pulled a face. Unfortunately Leslie turned round at just the wrong moment.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, quickly blessing himself.

  ‘She always does that when she’s happy,’ Harry put in quickly.

  ‘I’ll know what to look for then.’

  ‘So,’ Harry went on. ‘You like the pig idea.’

  Leslie’s face grew serious.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I adore it. I knew you were the writers for me when I saw the tank sketch in rehearsal. Just knew it.’

  It was soon incumbent on Harry to come up with some more ideas because I was exhausted by my own brilliance, as I often was. It meant I had to go into a minute’s trance from which I returned with reluctance.

  When I did return Harry had come up with two other ideas for sketches, if not three other ideas, and it was Leslie’s turn to go into a trance-like state, sighing as he did so before ringing for champagne.

  ‘How did it go?’ Monty asked as he drove us back to ordinary life.

  ‘Brilliantly,’ Harry responded before turning to me. ‘You’re doing the pig sketch,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m having nothing to do with it.’

  ‘It was a good thing he only caught the dress rehearsal of the tank sketch, wasn’t it? I mean before Debbie’s lockjaw set in.’

  ‘Depends on what you call a good thing,’ Harry said gloomily.

  I left him at the flat and went back to Dingley Dell because I could see he was about to get an attack of ‘should we be doing this sort of work?’ which in the past has always led to him suggesting that I should read Bernard Shaw’s Prefaces, or Proust in the French, which of course I intended to do when I had finished being a writer. I mean you have to spend your time advisedly when you’re writing. Keep away from brilliant minds or they put you off your stroke.

  Very soon, to everyone’s astonishment, Leslie Johns had a clutch of sketches for his summer season show. And even the pig costume was on its way.

  The opening night was hugely attended. Happily for the management, it was pouring with rain so no one wanted to linger on the beach or the seafront, which meant that they had a shoal of last-minute bookings.

  From the moment the show started it was a success. It might be that the holidaying audience were easily pleased, but the moment Leslie Johns strolled on-stage, his trademark top hat placed at a rakish angle, the audience adored him. This was not such a surprise since they already did, but the truth was he was magnificent. He had a stage presence that hardly needed lighting.

  By the interval Harry had turned from being an admirer to an adoring fan.

  ‘He playe
d the audience like an old Joanna,’ he said. ‘So relaxed, so in touch with them. He makes everyone feel as if he is playing just to them. He is brilliant – quite brilliant.’

  The curtains closed, the show ended and we joined the queue outside Leslie’s vast dressing room. Once again it was filled with happy faces drinking champagne.

  Harry was visibly flattered when Leslie asked us to stay behind when the rest of the crowd had gone.

  ‘At least half of this show’s triumph is due to your work,’ he said. ‘Thanks to you the evening never sags. There are no “once this is over we’ll get to the good bit” moments.’

  We both looked suitably modest, which actually we felt. Especially me since Harry’s sketches were actually better than mine, and less heavy on props.

  ‘Leslie, you are a genius, but then you know that,’ Harry told him, and we both raised our glasses to him. ‘What you do is far harder than anything a theatrical knight does. They have a genius called Shakespeare to support them. You only have yourself and scribblers like us. You are brilliant. And as I say – so relaxed.’

  Leslie smiled and slowly, carefully, put his champagne glass down. ‘My dears, let me show you the price of relaxation,’ he said, and opened his hands.

  His dresser nodded at them. ‘And his feet aren’t that much better, are they dear?’ he said. Harry and I fell silent for a second. We were not just star-struck, we were awestruck. So that was what it took to be that relaxed?

  It was always difficult to go back to real life after being in a Variety star’s dressing room, but the fact was we had other commitments.

  MI5 was on full alert. Commander Steerforth was on brilliant form, and hot on the scent of yet another double agent. This was always exciting, but it did make Arabella a bit jealous as her boss was only a foot follower when it came to netting agents. She made up for it by going for night classes in hieroglyphics

  ‘Why hieroglyphics?’

  ‘Because I want to visit the Pharaohs’ tombs and read the walls without a guide telling me all wrong. You know, the Egyptians were a great people. If their dog died they would cover themselves with black ashes and their household furniture in black cloths. The mourning went on for days on end.’

  Following this information we both fell into a reverential silence because both Arabella and I worshipped dogs.

  ‘Elgar had special chairs for his dogs,’ she continued. ‘No one was allowed to sit on their cushions without his permission.’

  I nodded. I worshipped Elgar too.

  ‘And Kipling, he was the same about dogs. And of course there’s Byron’s “Epitaph” to his Newfoundland—’

  Before she could delve any further into writers who loved dogs, I unwrapped a small parcel.

  ‘How strange we should be talking about this again,’ I said, handing her a book and a badge. ‘I have enrolled us both in the Dog Spotters Club. You get a badge too.’

  Arabella sighed happily.

  ‘This will make walking across Green Park even more exciting,’ she said happily.

  It was not the only excitement in my life. Melville was still running a book on one of us being able to spot my father’s least likely agent. It was driving Harry mad. He wanted to win so much.

  ‘The little lady who comes up from the country with the home-made marmalade—’

  ‘Everyone knows her,’ I said in disparaging tones.

  ‘The window cleaner with the eyepatch he keeps changing from eye to eye.’

  ‘Harry, he’s been an agent from the beginning of time. You are hopeless at this, you’re never going to win the money.’

  Nothing made him more determined than being told he was not going to win. A few weeks went by and then I bumped into Melville on the stairs.

  ‘You’ll never believe this, Lottie.’

  ‘What is it I will never believe, Melville?’

  ‘Harry has won the five pounds for agent spotting. I coughed up straight away. No one will be able to top this.’

  ‘You’re jolly joking!’

  ‘I am not jolly joking, Lottie.’

  ‘Tell me! Tell me quick as you can before I pass out.’

  We both sat down on the stairs, which is something Melville and I do when we are exchanging confidences.

  ‘Yes, Harry only got it in one. Telephoned me just now.’

  ‘Go on, I am in very long suspenders.’

  Melville lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘It’s Lonny Langley.’

  I stood up and then sat down again.

  ‘Is there no one who doesn’t work for my father?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  Now we were both whispering. Well, hissing is probably a better word. ‘So how did Harry find out?’

  ‘Apparently it was when he went to meet your father on spooky business, and realised he used Lonny’s catchphrase ‘Passed Me By It Did’ as his password. Perfect really.

  My mouth fell open, which was never attractive as Melville promptly told me. Everything was falling into place. Now I realised why my father so enjoyed Leslie Langley on the telly. Perhaps even some of his sketches were coded messages? Anything was possible.

  ‘Anyway happy endings all round. Harry has given the money back. I am to donate his winnings to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund.’

  I felt very proud of Harry for lots of reasons, so when I met him that night in the coffee bar I bought him a spaghetti Bolognese.

  We neither of us talked about why. We both knew.

  That’s partnership for you. Knowing.

  STAIRWAY TO THE STARS

  Bennett Hunter had been our first major experience of film writing, and as far as I was concerned, what with the chocolate cake-making and Harry getting in a stew and having to ring Dewi in the middle of the night, it was probably going to be our last. For some reason every writer we knew longed to work in films. I was not one of them.

  Harry felt differently. He considered our experience with Mr Hunter to have been not as bad as I remembered it, but then he had not had to make three chocolate cakes in order to reach the kind of perfection needed to thrill Mr Hunter’s terribly famous movie star.

  As it happened I need not have worried about film work as there was a lull in interest in our writing. Happily, this did not affect Harry’s acting work. Far from it. A great many people were interested in his acting, so much so that it was difficult for him to know in which direction he should be going. All in all, this meant our writing partnership would be going on hold until after such time as Harry had decided which offer to take up. Many evenings of agonising went on at the coffee bar. I was all for him continuing to act in roles that paid, but Harry wanted to do something artistic rather than successful, so he finally chose to do a play by an unknown French playwright.

  ‘It’s a Mackintosh part,’ Melville said after he had read the play with waning interest. ‘Young actors love them.’

  Since it was about a tramp who had stepped off a train at the wrong station, I did not invite my parents because it wasn’t a musical and plays about tramps were the sort of thing that made my mother long for Hamlet. Harry’s parents declined for the sound excuse that they were on a golfing holiday.

  The first night was sparsely attended by civilians, just a few critics and people related to the cast, all of whom, after the curtains closed, quickly disappeared into the night looking bewildered.

  ‘What was happening out there?’ Harry demanded when I went backstage afterwards.

  ‘Lots of sleeping.’

  He was puzzled. He really believed in the play and couldn’t understand why the audience found it boring.

  ‘They don’t understand the philosophy behind it; they’re just not getting the metaphor.’

  ‘As far as those poor souls were concerned it might as well have been in semaphore,’ I said, sighing.

  ‘We have to have something besides Shakespeare and Noël Coward in modern theatre.’

  ‘Yes – but perhaps not this.’

  Harry was disappointed i
n me. He had worked hard to make the tramp a fully rounded human being, and to give him his due had done a good job; the trouble was that the tramp only seemed to want to talk about himself, and since the next train never arrived the audience became as irritated as a bunch of commuters who’d just been told there were leaves on the line. A suicide might have woken them up.

  Hal and Melville, to their great credit, came to a performance. They were sympathetic and kindly, but Hal was immediately into finger-wagging.

  ‘If this is the kind of play managements are putting on then I have no idea where theatre is going,’ he boomed.

  ‘I think there is room in the theatre for this sort of experimental play, Hal,’ Harry ventured.

  ‘There was certainly room in the stalls tonight!’ Hal boomed.

  I am sorry to say that we all found this very funny – although not Harry, of course. Hal and Melville left us to go to their club while Harry and I walked home, because funds were running low and our motor car was in the garage for repairs. Besides, it gave us time to talk over our problems, which were mainly to do with the direction we should be taking.

  ‘We must make a plan,’ Harry kept insisting.

  ‘Show business isn’t about planning. Show business is like buses: the right one comes along and you get on it, or you don’t.’

  Harry stopped walking.

  ‘Now you understand the play! That is exactly what it’s about.’

  ‘In that case, the playwright should have made his point better,’ I said, before making a mental note to call Dewi in the morning when I got to MI5.

  ‘There’s not much going on, Lottie,’ Dewi told me, sighing when he heard my voice. ‘Leslie Johns is having a great time with your sketches. I went to see the show last night and there were any number of people tearing up the place – they loved it.’

  I looked across my desk at Arabella who as usual was looking wise. ‘Lunch at Fenwick’s?’ she asked.

  Arabella was the kind of friend who just knew when you were in desperate need of egg mayonnaise.

  ‘You’re pulling in opposite directions,’ she said, stating the obvious, but it was good to hear it said out aloud. ‘Harry wants to starve for Art and you just want to get on with everything.’