Poor Caroline (20 page)

He found himself listening drowsily to Johnson's scheme
for raising the moral and aesthetic standards of the British
film.

'Friend o' mine - Basil St. Denis - nephew or something
of Lord Herringdale - I'm a democrat. I sold papers in the
streets of Toronto when I was knee-high to a grass-hopper.
But I know what I'm talking about when I say that in a
matter of taste Eton or Oxford put it across the
Hoi Polloi
nine times outa ten. Mark my words, Macafee, in matters
of taste give me heredity and devil take environment. We're
forming a Company - I don't cotton much to the title, but
Caroline - she's Miss Denton-Smyth, our secretary - says
that we've gotta get the churches in. Christian Cinema
Company. Don't you forget it. Rake in the parsons, and
the pence'll look after themselves. Of course we gotta get the Jews - Isenbaum's the right stuff though. Money with
out millions. None o' this Jew Suss run-a-cabinet nonsense
about him.' In Hugh's mind, drowsed by warmth and
whisky, the staccato sentences danced upon the flames.
They pirouetted round him while he lay in a pleasant stupor,
only half conscious that his host from time to time refilled
both glasses and carolled jubilantly, 'Here's how.' Enor
mous, through blue smoke clouds, rolled Johnson's figure;
enormous, boomed his voice; enormous, rose and fell the
rhythm of his monologue.

'Service,' he cried. 'Science and Art walk hand in hand
in Service. I'm British. C'nadian. Lived in the States, but
my heart's with the Lil' old Home Country. What I wanna
see is the British sound film circling the world from Hudders
field to Honolulu. While we had the silent movies, Holly
wood got 'em. Climate gets away with it every time. But
now we've got the Talkies, Culture counts more than
Climate. I wanna see Science counteracting Climate an'
puttin' the British culture on the map. I'm writin' a book
now - like to see part of it? dictate two hours every morning
to my sec'try before I go down to the Schools. I'm gonna
prove the English film 'll put Old England back as the hub of the universe. . . . The speech of Shakespeare against the
California sun.' On and on it flowed. Hugh's mind de
tached single phrases. 'Midwife to ideas.' 'Science the
handmaid of beauty.' Art. Science. Psychol'gy. Absolute
Form. Design. The Christian Cinema Company. Hugh
was unaware that he had contributed any sentence to this
rhapsody, yet it seemed to him as though the Christian
Cinema Company and its vast ideas swept round him in a
fiery flood.

'Of course. The Tona Perfecta's jussa thing we need. . . .
Synthesis of sound an' form. Abstract patterns of sound an'
movement. Have another whisky? Gotta meet St. Denis.
Whassatelephonenurra? Give youring.'

Like warm swirling waters, Johnson's eloquence closed
over Hugh's head. He was not actually drunk. When at
last he rose from the leather chair, he found that he could
stand and walk quite steadily. But he was not master of his
speech. The whisky acting upon his empty stomach had
robbed him of his habitual secretiveness. As he walked
homeward through the e
mptying streets he realized that he had committed himself to go and see a paragon called St.
Denis about the sale of the Tona Perfecta design to the
Christian Cinema Company.

§3

Hugh lay awake in bed that night, calling himself every
kind of fool. He had wasted an entire evening. He had
acquired a headache. Instead of eating a sensible dinner, he
had drunk too much whisky. The pangs of hunger gnawing
at his vitals rivalled the hammers of headache tapping behind his eyes. If he chose to drag himself out of bed and
grope his way to the inverted packing-case which was his
larder, he could quell his hunger with part of his breakfast
loaf. But he could not recall his lost evening, his sense of
dignified isolation, nor his opportunity of acquiring without
expenditure of time or money Powell's
Experiments in Light
ing.
He had forgotten the one thing he set out to obtain.
The book which he had taken such trouble to borrow still
lay in Johnson's flat at Battersea.

'I've got nothing out of the fellow but a headache!' raged
Hugh.

He was mistaken. Two days later, while working at his laboratory, he was interrupted by knocking and voices. He
shouted to his decrepit assistant.

'Go and tell whoever it is to get to Hell out of here!' He
was unaware that he had learned this phrase from Johnson.

Campbell opened the door, but before his message could be given Johnson pushed his way past him and rolled for
ward into the room, followed by a tall, slim, dignified, blond
gentleman to whom Macafee took an immediate dislike.

'You thought you gonna getta way from me?' shouted
Johnson effusively. 'But here we are. Aw! The Hellova
time we had to find you. Mr. Hugh Macafee, inventor of
the Tona Perfecta Cinema Film, meet Mr. Basil St. Denis,
Chairman of the Christian Cinema Company. Now, I hope
we're going to do business. I hope this is going to be a real historic occasion.' He looked round him with dramatic ex
pressions of wonder and admiration. 'Now, then, where's
this wonderful sound film of yours? Can't you fix us up a
little private demonstration?'

'I'd hate to disturb you,' said the tall fair gentleman. 'But
Mr. Johnson, before whom I am as a babe when it comes to technical matters, assures me that you have done something marvellous.'

Hugh looked at Campbell. The experimental film pre
pared for National Cinema Products Limited was
there.
The apparatus for trying it out was there; but the acoustical
properties of the laboratory were imperfect. He began to
explain this with angry emphasis. Johnson interrupted him.

'Aw, cut that. Cut that. We know all about laboratory
trials. We're willing to take fifty per cent, for granted.
What we want is something new and something safe. You
say your films are non-inflammable?'

'Compared with the ordinary film on the market, yes. I
wouldn't guarantee it fireproof if you threw it on a furnace.'

'That's good enough for us. If we can advertise films safe
for the kiddies - morally
and
physically we've got the matinee
market!'

Hugh saw no harm in exhibiting his treasure. He needed
money. His new ideas on colour photography had just
reached that stage when the first delicious movement of
creation stirs the faculties. Afterwards would come labour
and disappointment, but at the moment no details clouded
the fluid and radiant vision of achievement. And just be
cause of this, he needed money. He would require more
apparatus, more materials, more assistance, more leisure,
before he could bring to birth his new conception. If the Christian Cinema Company would pay him cash for use of
the Tona Perfecta, he was prepared to tolerate even the
acquaintance of the too-effusive Johnson and the dandified St. Denis.

It appeared that the two directors of the Christian Cinema
Company were satisfied with what they saw. Three days
later Hugh received an invitation from the company, signed
by St. Denis, asking him to join the Board. If that was the
first step, Hugh was prepared to take it. He could endure
the attendance of a monthly meeting. He could look after himself in a nest of villains. But he wished that he knew
more of company law and the ways of the world.

For when he first visited the offices in Victoria Street, his
co-directors puzzled him. Miss Denton-Smyth might be
cracked, but she seemed too poor to be a crook. Having
been brought up on the morality of the 'Cotter's Saturday
Night' Hugh cherished a naive illusion that honesty and
poverty were interdependent qualities. Isenbaum was a Jew, and should therefore be rich and shrewd. Guerdon
was a Quaker and should therefore be cautious and honourable. St. Denis was a dude, but possibly he could not help
that, and Johnson was clearly a scoundrel, but he had the
one merit of professing his boisterous belief in the qualities
of the Tona Perfecta Film. Hugh was prepared to forgive
more than he guessed to men who praised the Tona Perfecta
and called him a great man.

He listened to discussions about raising capital. It all
seemed wonderfully easy.

'We've only got to find a millionaire!' cried Miss Denton-
Smyth.

They talked in thousands and millions of pounds. It was
only after Hugh had been a member of the Board for two
months that he realized its hazardous pecuniary state. Its
circulars provoked little interest and less money. Isenbaum's
original investment was almost exhausted. The minimum
sum required in order to induce the Ferens Milmer people
to manufacture the film was thirty thousand pounds. 'A
mere trifle!' roared Johnson. 'A bagatelle!' said St. Denis. 'Get it, then!' said Hugh. In the panic of anxiety for his
invention, he devised an offer which filled him with admira
tion for his own business acumen. The Christian Cinema Company must show solid sig
ns of its forthcoming pros
perity. It must produce before the end of the year three
thousand pounds, five hundred as retaining fee for Hugh,
and two thousand five hundred as a guarantee of future pay
ments. Miss Denton-Smyth invited him to lunch, thanked
him for his generosity, but explained the difficulty of collect
ing cheques at Christmas. Hugh shrugged his shoulders and
gave her grace until the last day of January. Then he re
turned to his own work and shut himself up in his laboratory.

But his peace was broken. The affairs of the company
could not be wholly excluded from his daily life. While he
tramped back and forth between his bedroom and the works
at Annerley, he would chuckle to himself, thinking of Basil
St. Denis and the fat Jew, Isenbaum. He had 'em on a
string. They'd to raise that money, or he'd make them all
sit up. He'd break their pretty bubble. Company? They
were a pack of children playing at the serious and important
business of adults. Business? He'd show these business men
what he thought about them. He brooded bitterly on the
National Cinema Products Limited and their treatment of
him. He reflected upon the inevitable loneliness of all great
men. He sat shivering in his wretched room, gloating over
his power to break so futile and dishonest an illusion as the
Christian Cinema Company.

When the end of January arrived, and he found himself
walking along Victoria Street towards the office for his last
directors' meeting, he told himself that he had been infamously treated. He had been led on false pretences to
believe that the company would pay him for his invention.
He had given them liberal terms which they had not ful
filled. He had lost other possibilities of marketing his inven
tion through their refusal to face reality, and reality meant
for them the acknowledgment that their whole enterprise
was an expensive farce. He worked himself up to a mood of
righteous indignation as the lift carried him up past one floor and another.