Spies and Stars Read online

  Once my suitcases were packed and everything at the ready, my parents said goodbye to me with stiff-upper-lip expressions. Hal and Melville lined the hallway to wish me luck and embrace me.

  As I was turning to go and get into Rollo where Harry was waiting for me, Melville gave me a small box.

  ‘It’s for Harry.’

  On the drive to the airport he opened it.

  It was a badge with at its centre a winking eye.

  Melville’s note read: First prize for agent-spotting, Harry. Wear it with pride.

  Harry pinned it on immediately.

  At the airport the burly actor took us to the bar where he poured Martinis down Harry, and then – I kid you not – strong-armed him up the steps of the waiting plane and into his first-class seat.

  When the plane took off I could not contain my happiness. We were on our way at last. Everything had fallen into place.

  Commander Steerforth had given me leave to take a sabbatical – knowing that we were to be doing undercover work, he patted me on the shoulder and murmured encouraging things. He said he thought I would do a fine job in America because of spying being in my blood, which in a strange way I suppose it is.

  Arabella gave me a sacred stone from somewhere holy and Eastern. She didn’t tell me where because she knows my geography knowledge stops at the King’s Road.

  ‘It will bring you luck.’

  As the plane rose into the skies I put my hand into my handbag and took out the little stone.

  ‘Here, hold this,’ I said to Harry, but the Martinis seemed to have taken effect because he had fallen fast asleep.

  I stared ahead, thinking of that great country the US of A. The country of Lincoln, of Cole Porter, of Duke Ellington … of practically everyone.

  I was going to the place of their birth. In eighteen hours I would be in New York.

  But I nearly wasn’t.

  WELCOME TO AMERICA

  Our journey was sybaritic thanks to Pan Am. Comfortable bunks, wonderful food, altogether a dream of luxury travelling, thanks to Mr Zuckerman and the studio.

  Harry stepped off the aircraft looking as if it was his birthday, until he faced a customs officer who was not in the best of moods.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ he said, having finally checked through everything. ‘I need to ask you one more thing … what’s that badge you’re wearing?’

  ‘This?’ Harry answered gaily. ‘Oh, this was awarded for being great at spotting spies! It’s a British thing!’

  ‘Is that so? Are you good at spotting spies, sir?’

  My toes turned to scrunch mode as I hoped that Harry would not break the golden rule never to joke with customs officers, anywhere, at any time. But having landed in one piece he was in rollicking good form. He promptly looked around the customs area.

  ‘I’ll show you how good I am. For instance – see that man over there, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth?’

  He got no further – within seconds he was paddling the air as he was marched off to a security room while I followed, mouthing words like ‘he was only joking’, ‘really – just a silly bet’.

  Harry looked as if he was about to pass out as a security man – at least, that is what I thought he must be – emptied the contents of his suitcases all over the customs officer’s desk.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, pulling myself up to my best height, which unfortunately is not exactly tall. ‘Please understand, what my friend, my writing partner here, means is that he was given that badge as a joke. It is a prize for spying on theatrical agents. He is an actor, a comedy actor, sir. That is a joke award that actors give each other when they have spied more theatrical agents than anyone else has. As I say – he is a comedy actor.’

  Harry gave me a dark look because of course he did straight parts too. ‘I can show you my Equity card,’ he said, regaining his colour slightly.

  The security man started to laugh.

  ‘You English! Of course. You’re a comedy actor. I just noticed it on your passport. I love actors. I have a cousin who’s an actor. He waits tables too, but mostly he acts when he’s not waiting tables.’

  He looked at me. ‘And you’re a writer?’

  ‘We write together.’

  ‘But you’re not married?’

  ‘Partners – we are in a writing partnership,’ I explained.

  ‘Well, it’s been a pleasure.’ He looked at Melville’s badge again. ‘But if you don’t mind, I think we’ll confiscate this. Don’t want any more misunderstandings. Your badge, sir, will make a great exhibit in our exhibition next year. You wouldn’t believe the things we’ve confiscated – rubber ladies, shrunken heads from the South Seas, and now your badge. Won’t that be something? I hope you’ll feel proud.’

  Harry gave his badge a sad parting look after which we were whisked away to our New York hotel. Stuart – our new friend the winking man – was now in charge of us.

  ‘Well, that was a close-run thing—’

  ‘Nearest-run, Lottie. That is the quotation. “The nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life” – spoken by the Duke of Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo. And by the way, since we’re on the subject, I am not just a comedy actor.’

  ‘I know, I am sorry about that, but we were in a bit of a jam.’

  I left Harry while I went to my own room and stared out of the window at the beautiful sight of Central Park below. It was beginning to snow, and somehow that made it even lovelier. Soon we would be boarding a train for Los Angeles, but before that happened I wanted to walk down Fifth Avenue in the snow, which I did, leaving Harry sleeping off his dreadful experience with the security man thinking he only did comedy.

  The next morning Stuart called for us. His expression was funereal.

  ‘Mr Zuckerman’s plans have changed,’ he announced. ‘You are to stay here in New York for the next few days. It means we have to change your train tickets to Los Angeles – something to do with him seeing a kinescope of the last show. He had to fly out there to explain certain things. He’s coming back soon, and you will of course have to be on hand.’

  ‘Does he need any jokes yet?’

  ‘Oh, he always needs jokes,’ Stuart answered. ‘And by the way, everyone calls me Stu, except for my mother, and what she calls me, happily, is unrepeatable. Where can I take you in New York?’

  Harry chose the Empire State Building, which surprised me because he doesn’t like heights. He had explained, more than once, that if he climbed up them he had an uncontrollable urge to throw himself off. On occasion I had to hold the back of his jacket when he was in the front row of the dress circle.

  I soon realised why he chose the Empire State Building.

  ‘What are you trying to see exactly, Harry, what is it you are exactly trying to see?’ I demanded as Stu held him firmly by the jacket.

  ‘Home,’ he said, swallowing hard. ‘I’m trying to see the Earls Court Road, and Dermot.’

  ‘Not Dermot, Harry. Definitely not Dermot.’

  ‘Who is this Dermot?’ Stu wanted to know.

  ‘His flatmate,’ I said, briefly.

  ‘Are they such close friends?’

  ‘No, Harry can’t stand him. He just wants to see if Dermot’s pinching his butter.’

  Stu took me aside while Harry continued to stare out. ‘He’s your writing partner, right?’

  ‘That’s quite enough.’

  ‘He’s a bit eccentric, yes?’

  I considered this. ‘No, not eccentric – mad.’

  ‘He’s probably a genius and it weighs heavily on him.’

  ‘Well, that is a possibility, but just at the moment I think we should all go back to the hotel and have something nice to eat and drink.’

  Which was what we did, little knowing that it was the start of endless episodes of ‘let’s go and have something nice’ because nothing at all was happening. We kept asking Stu for news from Mr Zuckerman, but his answers were always in the evasive.

  Harry started to
panic.

  ‘He’s got our passports, Lottie, and our smallpox certificates. Supposing we never get them back? We might never see Dingley Dell or Earls Court again.’

  ‘I know, we’ll have to stay in New York for the rest of our lives,’ I said happily.

  For me that was a rather marvellous thought but not for Harry, who immediately demanded to go back up the Empire State Building to try and see the Earls Court Road.

  At last there was news.

  ‘Mr Zuckerman will not be taking you to Hollywood, or rather Los Angeles, at the moment. He’d rather you stay here and become part of … that is, write for The Gerry Andrews Show. He thinks your line on things will suit Gerry just fine. You will be moving from here,’ Stu went on, glancing round the sumptuous suite.

  ‘Going home?’

  ‘No, no, we can’t let you talented guys go! No, the studio has a very cosy apartment that will be quite adequate for your needs.’

  Once again the apartment had a fine view of the Park, but it was so cosy that two people could not stand together in the kitchen. The sitting room was a touch-knees affair.

  ‘Just as well we get on, Aitch,’ I said tersely, because I had just inspected the kitchen cupboards and found only glasses, which said quite a lot about the previous writers to have occupied the flat.

  The hall porter directed us to Lewis & Conger and we bought some china to eat off.

  ‘Our writers eat out,’ Stu told me when he called by to find me unwrapping the plates and cups. ‘Or else they use their fingers.’

  What now lay ahead of us was writing jokes for Gerry Andrews, so we bought every newspaper that was printed every day, watched the news on television, and wrote a sheaf of American one-liners.

  ‘They’ll never use them,’ Harry said happily. ‘We’ll get the sack sure as eggs are chickens.’

  We didn’t go to rehearsals but Stu invited us to watch the latest kinescope, which was only viewed after the show had gone out.

  ‘What a crazy system,’ Harry told him. ‘Why not view it before the show goes out and then you can do something about it?’

  ‘That’s just the way we do things over here.’

  The evening our particular show went out to a live audience of untold millions we sat with our fellow scribblers. No one introduced themselves. There were only tense smiles, and then the show began.

  We were hardly five minutes in when the man next to Harry got up and left.

  ‘Is he unwell?’ Harry whispered to his neighbour.

  ‘He’s sick as a dog. His gag just went flat. That’s him done.’ The writer pulled a finger across his throat. ‘Gerry doesn’t forgive. That poor guy will be taking the subway home, if he can afford it.’

  This cheered Harry up so much he simply could not take the smile off his face and I could see he was crossing his fingers that none of our jokes would get even a titter. To his horror and my amazement they all got woofers.

  ‘You sure can write American,’ Stu told us as he showed us to the lift. Harry couldn’t understand it.

  ‘They’ve got all these guys over here who’ve been brought up with gags and one-liners and they use us? I mean this is the land of great comedy.’

  He was almost indignant.

  ‘Maybe they’re all out in Hollywood, or maybe they’ve all had to do National Service or whatever they do here and haven’t got back yet?’

  The thing about The Gerry Andrews Show was that by British standards it was not very long. What with the sponsors insisting on breaks what seemed like every five seconds plus time for the other acts, there really wasn’t very much material needed.

  We went on writing jokes for the show for the next few weeks until it ended its run, by which point even I was ready to go home if only to sample Mrs Graham’s roast beef once more.

  But it seemed that Mr Zuckerman had other plans for us.

  ‘Mr Zuckerman thinks you will be most useful to him for his new shows,’ Stu announced.

  ‘We don’t think we can stay for more shows,’ we both said at once.

  Stu gave us a firm and steady look, not a wink in sight. I knew what that meant. It meant that he had our passports and without them we could not leave the US of A.

  ‘You won’t need passports to go to Hollywood, Harry, and they’ll let you on the train without going through customs,’ he joked. ‘They’re in safekeeping, believe me. The studio has them. You’ll meet up with some new people in Los Angeles.’

  I took Stu aside.

  ‘Why do you need our passports?’

  ‘In case we need to lock you up—’

  ‘For writing bad jokes?’

  ‘That’s the least of it.’

  I must have looked alarmed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lottie. You’ll like Hollywood. You’ll like the train journey, and the weather. You’ll definitely like the weather. You leave from Grand Central tomorrow.’

  Harry revelled in the idea of taking a train. He had seen so many movies featuring them he knew it would be great. Smiling attendants, glamorous passengers, wonderful food … it would be everything he liked.

  I was sad to leave New York and our touch-knees sitting room, and seeing shows, and eating at Sardi’s and all that, but Harry was already whistling songs from great train journey musicals, or at least I think that’s what they were.

  Harry packed for both of us because having done tatty theatrical tours he was very good at it. He was also very good at ironing, for the same reason.

  ‘We won’t last long in Hollywood, Lottie. You’ll see,’ he said as we settled ourselves into our train seats. ‘One look at our material and they’ll send us packing. I don’t know how we lasted on The Gerry Andrews Show.’

  It took three days to get to Hollywood, days during which we played Scrabble and wrote jokes we knew were probably going to be far too clever for television audiences.

  ‘They won’t want any wit, satire or irony, Lottie-bags,’ Harry said happily.

  Occasionally he stuck his head out of the train window and shouted at some luckless country person standing by the track, waving his hat at the train: ‘Do you understand irony?’

  Remembering Stu’s words about us getting locked up, I finally stopped him. ‘You don’t want to get arrested for insulting American citizens. Now that would be ironic. Or maybe just funny.’

  We were met at the train station by a studio car and whisked off to our hotel. The grandest in Hollywood bar none, entirely due to Harry’s reluctance to get on an aeroplane, which was not just ironic – but hilarious.

  I was so thankful to have arrived I fell asleep, only to be woken by Harry. ‘We’re wanted,’ he said briefly.

  Mr Zuckerman had sent someone for us. ‘Hallo, I’m Stu,’ he said.

  Stu-two was a great character; to say that he was a live wire would be to under-describe him. Harry was used to working with all sorts of characters, but Stu-two was a box of fireworks – just saying ‘hi’ to him was a match to set off his ceaseless display of rockets, whizz-bangs and meteors.

  ‘Vitamin C, guys?’ he asked once he had stopped talking for a few seconds. He took some tablets out of his top pocket, putting them in Harry’s. ‘You’re sure going to need extra vitamins when you start working on The Mary Day Show. Best to learn her signature tune – but perhaps you know it already?’ ’Course you do – just follow me.’ He started to sing in a commendably tuneful voice: ‘Day of Days, this is my Day of Days. Come on! Sing, sing, sing – you’ll get both barrels if you don’t know her sig tune, preferably saluting while singing it, folks. Follow me, please.’

  As we started to follow him round our suite, saluting and singing, my thoughts ran back to my room in Dingley Dell and our space at Harry’s flat, with the writing screen to protect us from Dermot. How far had we come to be reduced to this? The answer, of course, was very far indeed. We were in Hollywood: room service, producers, Stuarts both one and two at our beck and call.

  ‘Okay, follow me until we enter the witch’s cave, whe
reupon you will be abandoned by your guardian angel – that’s me. Nothing can save you from the big She Wolf.’

  We followed him, silently wishing we were back in Earls Court with the traffic roaring past the windows. For once in his life not even Harry had anything to say. The production office was downtown from our hotel, but we walked to it still singing ‘Day of Days’ with Harry improvising, which he did very well.

  Once at the office we were shown up to a white-painted room with a desk and two chairs. In the middle of the desk lay what was quite obviously a script.

  ‘Is this our homework?’ Harry joked.

  Stu-two nodded and he gave him a ‘good luck with that’ look before shutting the door and leaving us.

  ‘You read it, out loud, and I’ll try and laugh,’ I said nervously, because the expression on Stu-two’s face did not bode well.

  Harry read scripts very well – not all actors do, actually, don’t get me started about how some actors read. And I don’t just mean Dermot.

  Harry finished reading and looked across the desk at me. ‘LOTTIE!’

  ‘What?’ I asked, raising my head.

  ‘You’re alive then?’

  ‘I daresay I am,’ I admitted. ‘But really, what a thing! That is not a comedy script, it is a trip down boring lane, a colossal exercise in boredom. It’s so banal. I mean this woman does nothing except make jelly.’

  ‘They are sponsored by a jelly and cream manufacturers.’

  I covered my ears because Harry was shouting.

  ‘We can’t work on this,’ he said happily, lowering his voice. ‘We’ll have to go home, Lottie-bags.’

  For once I was in complete agreement, but before I could say anything the door opened and it was Stu-two again.

  ‘Sick bowl needed?’ he asked, gleefully dancing into the room. ‘Shall I ring for the studio doc?’

  I stood up because I wanted to make my point clear.

  ‘We can’t be of any use to this.’ I pointed to the script. ‘It is dead. We are in absolute agreement on this. We pronounce it dead on arrival.’