Joshua Then and Now (38 page)

Where a pleasant surprise awaited him.

The paperback rights to
The Volunteers
had been sold in the United States for a modest advance, even by the standards of those years, and he took his father out to lunch to celebrate. “Twenty-five hundred bucks,” Reuben said. “Well, that’s great. Really great. Hey, Josh, aren’t those paperback books handled by magazine distributors, like?”

In New York, a year later, Joshua’s paperback editor took him out to an expensive dinner and told him how pleased everybody was with his surprisingly good sales. “The book is ordering astonishingly well in places like Phoenix, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and Florida. And, oh yes, Louisville, Kentucky, where I always thought they never read about anything but horse-racing. Frankly, we never expected there would be such interest in a book, however talented,” he put in quickly, “about the Spanish Civil War.”

“Obviously,” Joshua said, reaching for his drink, “there’s been strong word-of-mouth in some areas.”

A
WEEK AFTER TRIMBLE’S GUY FAWKES PARTY, JOSHUA
sat in his study unable to work, fingering the long thin key to the Kingdom of Shapiro, wondering if, after all, the time had come to crack the safety deposit box in Cornwall. Or cash the check Kevin had given to Pauline. Then, miraculously, the phone rang and something did turn up. Peabody at
Playboy
. As they couldn’t afford Harold Robbins, he said, and Jacqueline Susann wasn’t available, would he consider doing a piece for them on the new Hollywood? Only three days later, Joshua flew out to L.A.

Joshua loved Hollywood and its confident hustlers. On a previous visit he had delighted in spinning through the canyons in somebody else’s Mercedes, gearing down to consider the more outlandish mansions, each garden perfect. He liked to wander through the unbelievably opulent men’s shops on Rodeo, startling the prissy clerks by bargaining. He enjoyed the tanned, trim, middle-aged producers on health diets, toting scripts to market in Gucci attaché cases, even as their East Side grandfathers had once carried sewing machines on their shoulders. They strutted into the Polo Lounge or La Scala or Dominic’s, bound in safari suits, blissfully playing the room, death just another sour-grapes rumor out of the East, bad word of mouth, something that used to figure in grainy European-made films, which everybody knew were bum grossers.

Strolling down Wilshire Boulevard, the morning after his arrival, he ran into Murdoch, a Sidney Murdoch so bloated he hardly recognized him. The two friends, who hadn’t seen each other in half-a-dozen years, fell tearfully into each other’s arms and immediately repaired to La Scala for lunch.

“Who would have dreamed,” Murdoch said, recalling their first meeting, “that we ever would have lived to run into each other here?”

“Those unforgiving literary lads we once were.”

“Are you appalled, dear boy?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m thrilled. And I want you to know I’m doing splendidly here.”

Murdoch had been raised on the Hollywood of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Bogart, and Rita Hayworth. The scandalous life of the stars. The depravity that was the rule on board Errol Flynn’s yacht and in Charlie Chaplin’s mansion. He had flown out to Hollywood on an assignment grudgingly dredged up by a fearful Margaret, who had long been his literary agent as well as Joshua’s. Margaret was understandably concerned about his venture and lectured him severely about his drinking and his lechery. “You don’t understand what you’re getting into. Hollywood’s quieter than Leatherhead on a Saturday night and considerably more boring.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure,” Murdoch said, filled with glee.

Murdoch, innocent Murdoch, his once magical powers failing, had been hired by Bill Markham to write a treatment based on his magnificent second novel, set in the Midlands. Determined not to be mistaken for just another British ninny on arrival, he had put a good deal of uncharacteristic thought into his transatlantic attire. Gone were the Hush Puppies, the shirts from Marks & Spencer, the baggy tweed suit from Cecil Gee’s. Murdoch had floated off the plane wearing a floppy widebrimmed felt hat, dark glasses, a foulard from Sulka, a shirt from Mr. Fish with more stripes than an old-fashioned barber pole, flared trousers, and soft Chelsea boots. The studio flunkey who had been dispatched to drive him to The Beverly Hills
Hotel chatted knowledgeably, he thought, about the delights of Covent Garden and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

“Oh, who gives a damn about all those prancing pooves,” Murdoch said.

The flunkey said he would be sending a limo round to pick up Murdoch at seven for a dinner party at the Markhams’. Murdoch, anticipating a poolside quivering with
Playboy
centerfolds, juicy as they were wanton, hurried into the shower and soaped his hairy belly. He shook talcum powder over his genitals. But when he arrived at the Markhams’ mansion, he discovered that he was the only guest; he was dining alone with Bill and his cultivated wife, Ellen. Svelte, bony Ellen, who wore her black hair straight back, gathered with a jade clip. She wore a silk shirt and narrow black slacks. Her antique man’s pocket watch, settled between small tight breasts, was suspended from her long neck by a gold chain.

“How good of you to have me here,” a deflated Murdoch said.

The dinner party wasn’t at poolside, either, but at a table set in a room that had been cleverly redone with fittings transported from a seedy Camden Town pub, complete with jars of Scotch eggs floating in filthy brine and a mottled mirror advertising Watney’s.

“I can’t imagine what awful things you’ve heard about film people,” Ellen said, “but I want you to know that Bill brought you out here because he has the highest regard for your integrity.”

When she leaned forward to flick her cigarette at the ashtray, her pocket watch dipped, dangling free, and when she leaned back again, it swung with her, landing between her breasts with a most disconcerting thud. “You have written a seminal novel,” she crooned.

“It’s a minor masterpiece,” Markham pitched in, suppressing a yawn.

“But I’m willing to make any changes you require,” Murdoch offered affably.

“Oh, dear. No. You mustn’t think for a moment,” Ellen said, affronted, “that
everybody
in Hollywood is only interested in money. That would be selling us short.”

Ignoring her, Murdoch appealed to Markham. “Do you think we could get Ava Gardner to play Mavis?”

“We could get Ava Gardner to play anything,” Markham said, aghast. “She must be fifty now.”

“Oh yes. How stupid of me. What about Raquel Welch?”

“Tell him,”
Ellen said.

“Sidney, this is going to be our Tiffany project.”

Murdoch began to fizz with pleasure and anticipation.

“We’re not going after prurience in this film. We’re going to shoot this back in Leeds with
real
actresses.”

“There,” Ellen said, “aren’t you relieved?,” and she asked him if he knew Doris Lessing.

Seated with Joshua at La Scala three days later, Murdoch had to admit that he had phoned Markham three times since that first meeting and he had yet to call back. “But I’m not the least bit worried,” he said. “I’ve written a splendid treatment. Awfully sexy. I’ve put in all the filth I could only hint at in the novel. Joshua, they are justifiably put off by literary types here because of their pretensions. They find me refreshing, because I’m prepared to adjust. I’m willing to write for the market.”

They were well into the Remy Martin before Murdoch announced how proud he was of Margaret. “When I took her on,” he said, “she was no more than a mouse, incredibly shy, with those perfectly dreadful teeth, and look at her now. Thriving. Running my life, the bitch. Mind you, she never remarried, but,” he shrugged, “after me …”

They contemplated their drinks, two middle-aged cronies in a strange land.

“There’s something I always wanted to ask you, Joshua. It’s about Cambridge.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know quite how to put this …”

Joshua waited, bemused, his manner unhelpful.

“Remember, ah, Joanna?”

“Indeed I do.”

“I feel we’ve known each other so long we can ask each other anything.”

“Would you come to the point, please.”

“Did you realize we were young then?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. But we were, you know.”

“I know now.”

“Bloody hell, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Was it you who nicked her pearl necklace that time?”

“Certainly it was.”

“You did?” he asked, startled.

“Yes.”

“But how could you do such a thing?”

“I had no money to eat with, and she looked just as splendid without the necklace.”

“Easy as that?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you, my dear. You’re lying.”

“Of course I am.”

Murdoch grinned, relieved.

“But then,” Joshua said, “we’re both liars, aren’t we? Professionals, at that.”

“Artificers,” he said, “not liars.”

“Liars,” Joshua insisted. “Both of us.”

Joshua was wakened by an early phone call in his room at the Beverly Wilshire the next morning. Good news. There was a film producer in town foolish enough to want his services – Benny Leopold of Mandrake Productions. “I need you,” he said urgently.

Benny Leopold was a Toronto real estate developer, a millionaire several times over, with an obsession: the movies. He wanted to produce. He was a chunky little man, a natty dresser, no more than
five feet two, with mournful wobbly eyes and hair everywhere, winding out of his ears, curling out of his nostrils, even on the backs of his fingers. He had to sit on a cushion to see out of the windshield of his Rolls Royce. He took Joshua to Ma Maison and there he laid everything on the table. “On her deathbed,” he said, contemplating his cutlery, “my mother, may she rest in peace, made me promise that one day I would make a movie about the Jewish immigration to Canada in 1902, the struggles, the hardships our people went through, not glossing over our sexual hangups. Something, you know, adult –”

“You’re not suggesting nude scenes, are you?” Joshua asked, appalled.

“Only if they are artistically necessary.” He had a script, he said, written by an American with more than one first-class screen credit, but it needed more work. “He hasn’t got the background right. Now I’ve read
The Volunteers
and some of your other stuff, and I’m convinced you could at least get the documentary details right. Have you ever written a screenplay?”

“Certainly.”

Leopold looked pensive. “I’m afraid I don’t recall ever seeing your name …”

“Of course not,” Joshua said. “I’ve always used a pseudonym for my film work.”

“Well,” Leopold said, “this is a wonderful opportunity I’m offering you. I’m talking about a go-project, all the money there, and I’m prepared to guarantee you a co-credit.” Of course, he added, since Joshua was hardly a name writer, and would require a good deal of artistic guidance from Leopold, he mustn’t expect an enormous fee; and then straightening out imaginary creases in the tablecloth, he whispered an offer.

“So your mother, may she rest in peace, not only specified that you make a movie with lots of tit shots,” Joshua said, ordering another cognac, “but also that you hire a writer cheap.”

Outraged, Leopold all but shot out of his chair. “That’s not fair. You don’t know anything about me, my
modus operandi.”

“Right.”

“Well,” he continued, eyes pleading, “aren’t you going to ask me anything about myself?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Please ask me what I’m like.”

“What are you like?”

“Frank.”

“That’s refreshing.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me anything else?”

“Give me a hint.”

“Come on, fella. You constipated? Don’t hold back. Between us, everything has got to be in the open. Ask me more.”

“O.K., what more can you tell me about yourself?”

“I’m a former Communist. My god failed,” he said, making it sound like a death in the family.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It happens. Now I hope you can see that I’m a straight-dealer.”

“Good.”

“Good? Don’t you know anything about this town? This den of thieves?
Rare, you mean
. And what about my credits? Don’t you even want to know about my track record?”

“What about your credits, then?”

Leopold seemed to take on height, dimension. “I’ve made two movies,” he declared, telling Joshua their titles.

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen either of them.”

“You haven’t seen them. Prick. What about me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The first picture I made,” Leopold said, head rocking, hands clasped between his knees, “failed to win distribution.”

“Was it that bad?”

“I don’t know. I can’t show it. Not even to friends.” How was he to know, he explained, that the film unit he hired in Toronto, such obliging fellas, were non-union. The print had been declared black and no lab would process it for him.

“What happened to your other film?”

“It was a co-production with Eastern Europe. In fact, if I may say so,
the first Eugene O’Neill ever made in Hungarian.”

“What happened?”

“What happened? Distribution was in the hands of the reactionaries. They wouldn’t touch it. But what the shit, you’re new to the game, you win a few, you lose a few. But now I’m ready to fly, baby, you and me together.”

Murdoch, inevitably, began to run into trouble. He vomited over a jade collection at a party in Bel Air and he was thrown out of yet another mansion for pawing the hostess, a privilege she only allowed to names that went over the titles. Then Markham had to move him out of The Beverly Hills Hotel after he had made a nuisance of himself once too often at the pool. Murdoch phoned to protest. He was told Markham was in conference, but a room had been booked for him at the Century Plaza. Not a suite, but a room.

Murdoch had nowhere to go that night, but Joshua had been invited to a left-wing producer’s mansion right out there in Malibu, and he was foolish enough to spring the sodden Murdoch on the company. An old friend who just happens to be in town, Joshua said. Distinguished British novelist.
New Statesman
contributor. Certainly, bring him along.