Their Finest Hour and a Half (21 page)

‘Doesn't it? Oh well . . .' Buckley shrugged and reached for his hat. ‘. . . that's it, then. We'll just have to shut down the production. Come on Parfitt, get your coat, the expert from the Valleys has spoken.' Parfitt made the combustion-engine noise that indicated one of his rare laughs.

‘But, really,' said Catrin, ‘there weren't any Americans at Dunkirk, so how can there be one in the film?'

Buckley sighed and then made a lunge for a piece of paper that was lying on the edge of Catrin's table. He sat reading it, silently. ‘Not bad,' he said, handing it back. ‘Rose Starling dictated that to you, did she?'

‘No.'

‘You were eavesdropping on the platform, when she saw her fiancé on to the troop train?'

‘No.'

‘So how did you come to write those lines?'

‘I just . . . I don't know, I simply imagined what they'd say.'

‘And if this ever gets to the cinema, do you think that all the Mauds and Annies sitting in the one-and-nines blubbering into their hankies will believe that this is exactly what Rose Starling said to her Johnnie?'

Catrin stared at the scene. It had taken her three days to write, and she had barely slept for thinking of it, she had tested every word on her tongue, and yet now it looked to her as authentic as a posy of crêpe flowers. ‘I don't suppose they will,' she said. ‘No.'

‘Baloney,' said Buckley, crisply. ‘You're forgetting that we've
got
them, all the Mauds and Annies, they're
ours
– they're not members of the Kinematic Discussion Group, they're not in some lousy boulevard café debating the role of the artist, they're sitting in the dark and they're watching a story, and if that story's good enough – if it's well enough told – then for ninety minutes it'll seem real to them, and if it seems real to them, then they'll believe every word. Doesn't matter if it's not
true
. And in any case,' he added, taking up his old place in front of the wall of cards and bouncing on his toes a couple of times, like a PT instructor, ‘in any case, the bastards in the MoI control the film stock, and if we don't give them what they ask for then the film doesn't get made. So if they demand a bloody elephant at Dunkirk then it's incumbent on us to come up with a convincing subplot incorporating Group Captain Jumbo of the Third Gloucesters and his adventures on the road to La Panne. Isn't that right, Parfitt?'

Parfitt turned his mottled face slowly towards his co-writer. ‘So I've
heard
,' he said, with peculiar emphasis.

‘Howdah you mean?' returned Buckley, pulling on a pair of imaginary braces.

‘I mean, you're a hard tusk-master.'

Catrin ducked; a stampede of elephant-based puns was clearly on its way. She looked instead at the scene between Rose and Johnnie. It was a flashback, written to slot in between two shots of Rose at the tiller of the
Redoubtable
as she steered towards Dunkirk, her eyes on the horizon and her thoughts on her fiancé. Catrin knew the lines off by heart, and this time, as her eyes slid down the page, she tried to watch it rather than read it: John Clements as Johnnie, perhaps, Margaret Lockwood as Rose, their faces ten feet wide, a drift of blue smoke across the screen, the crunch of someone eating an apple in the row behind . . .

‘Do you think,' asked Catrin, tentatively, ‘that we might get Margaret Lockwood to play Rose?'

Buckley laughed. ‘No actress who thinks she's famous and distinctive is going to want to play one half of a pair of identical twins.'

‘Couldn't she play both? They do that, don't they, in—'

‘In films that cost five times as much, yes.'

‘Oh.'

‘You have to use over-shoulder doubles and so on. It all takes far longer to shoot.' He folded his arms, and stared at the scene cards as if he could rearrange them through the sheer power of his eyeballs. ‘Of course,' he said, ‘another vital point that hasn't occurred to the assembled mandarins at the Ministry of Wanton Paper Shuffling is that all the American actors who were working in London before the war began suddenly found pressing engagements on the other side of the Atlantic once the bombs started dropping.'

‘Couldn't they use an English actor – doing the accent, I mean?'

‘Not unless we want the USA to side with Germany.'

‘Oh.'

‘They're allowed to inflict their lousy English accents on us, you see, but any Yanks who appear on screen have to be
orthennic
. So . . .' He stared at the cards for a few seconds longer, and then rounded on his writing partner.

‘Parfitt, what's your opinion?'

Parfitt shrugged.

‘Well
I
think,' said Buckley, as if Parfitt had advanced a closely-worded and passionate argument in favour of scrapping the entire plot and starting again, ‘that we have to slide this Yank into the gaps – we don't want to tinker with the story too much, we've already got pretty girls and heroism and comedy and sacrifice and a dog.'

‘All exits covered,' said Parfitt.

‘Exactly. And if we add anything to location, Shipton in accounts will whip off that milksop mask and turn into a knife-wielding madman. Catrin, what would an American be doing at Dunkirk?'

‘Er . . .'

‘No, scrub that, what
wouldn't
an American be doing?'

‘Fighting.'

‘Good girl. So what would that make him?'

She thought hard. ‘An observer.'

‘Good girl again. Well done, Mrs Taff. Gives us a start, doesn't it – cynical, wise-cracking observer won over by the best of British pluck.' He smiled his wolfish smile and smacked his hands together. ‘Gird your loins, Parfitt,' he said. ‘Strap on your sword. There's work to do.'

*

Sophie wore an opaque veil at the funeral, and when offered condolences, merely inclined her head without speaking. She was surrounded for much of the time by an honour guard of tiny old ladies, their coats emitting a choking cloud of naphthalene, their ancient shoes cracked across the bunions and polished to mirror-brightness. Yiddish whispers, like an epidemic of throat clearance, rustled the air. At the graveside, Ambrose stood behind them and found himself gazing down at a sea of hat-crowns, the undulating black nap broken only by the occasional rakish feather or the wink of a jet clasp. From his viewpoint, Sammy's coffin was invisible. He was glad of that; it stopped him from having to think about how many people it might contain.

Sammy's other clients had congregated on the opposite side of the grave, beneath a charred yew tree. The half-melted canister of an incendiary lay wedged in a crook three yards from the ground, and above it the trunk had turned to charcoal. Every gust of wind filled the air with filthy specks, and the respectful stance of the group was interrupted by discreet brushings and little shakes.

Philip Cadogan, chinless juvenile lead turned infantry lieutenant, was standing in the front row, as was Martin Brawley, all-purpose heavy, his wooden features bearing, in grief, much the same expression that they wore when called upon to portray joy, love or laughter. Next to him, weeping copiously, was Lalage Bunting (heading into her third decade as an ingénue), and beside her stood Christopher Allenby, the uniform of the Auxiliary Fire Service hanging from his matchstick physique like a banner from a pole.

Sammy, of course, had been loyal to the proverbial fault. His list had creaked with dead wood: promising saplings that had withered to nothing, fruit trees that had long since ceased to bear. During visits to the office, Ambrose had overheard him on the telephone, trying to persuade casting directors that Lalage still retained her girlish spring, that Philip exuded manly authority, that Martin could act. His enthusiasm had been unquestionable; what was suspect was his judgement. There was no doubt in Ambrose's mind that there had been occasions when a script entirely suitable for himself had been diverted to a client perceived by Sammy as being in greater need. ‘Poor Chrishtopher,' Sammy might say, ‘he's been having an awful time with his wife's teeth.' And then the next thing that one knew, Christopher would be paying his dentist's bill courtesy of a role that required patrician authority, a full head of hair and a height significantly greater than that of his leading lady.

‘You see, I like to find my clients roles that will
shtrech
them,' had been Sammy's usual excuse, but the truth was that he had lacked the ruthlessness necessary for a good agent. His pruning hook had never left its sheath.

There was a sudden stillness in the graveyard; the long, unhurried Hebrew prayer had ended. The rabbi stepped aside, the undertaker's men moved forward and Lalage Bunting raised a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes.

Above her, behind the branches of the yew tree, there was a flicker of movement. Ambrose glanced up and saw something amorphous – something grey and jowled that shuddered and disappeared once more behind the trunk. He heard the patter of loose earth as the coffin containing most of Sammy was lowered, and then the grey shape appeared behind the tree again, higher this time and swinging slowly in the wind, and it was obvious now that it was a barrage balloon, half a mile away. A barrage balloon, straining against its wire as it lifted into the sky, but for all that, it was extraordinarily, unmistakably Sammy-like: the absent waistline, the bulbous nose, the sheer inertia of its bulk. Someone fanciful, someone prone to religious whimsy might have found the sight symbolic – Sammy's soul floating into the ether, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest and take thee onward to thy Saviour's breast – or whatever the Jewish equivalent might be. Abraham's bosom, perhaps. Moses's knee. Christ, he needed a drink.

There was no road to the cemetery gates, only a meandering path between the tombstones, wide enough for three to walk abreast. The groups on either side of the grave shuffled slowly into line, merging into a straggling crocodile with Sammy's clients forming the tail.

‘Oh hell,' said Lalage, attempting to tuck her handkerchief up her sleeve and making heavy weather of it. ‘I'm just a sodden
mess
.'

She tripped on the edge of a grave and dropped her handbag. Ambrose retrieved it and she took it from him without a word and stumbled onward.

‘I need a drink,' said Martin Brawley. ‘And we should raise a glass to Sammy, of course. Anyone know any decent pubs around here?'

‘There's the Bull,' said Ambrose. ‘It's just behind the station.'

‘Wine,' said Lalage, over her shoulder. ‘Sammy liked wine, we should toast him in wine, not bitter.'

‘You're right, Lal,' said Brawley. ‘We should try a restaurant.'

‘I'm always right.' She dropped her handbag again and this time snatched it up before Ambrose could reach it. ‘I hope you don't think
you're
coming,' she said, giving him a poisonous look. ‘Fancy sending poor old Sammy into his office in the middle of a raid. You should be
prosecuted
, you beast. Poor old Sammy, he'd do anything for anybody, even a cold fish like—' She fell headlong, this time, into a hollow between two graves, and lay there snivelling until Brawley picked her up.

‘Black coffee, I think,' said Ambrose. ‘Otherwise she'll have the most frightful hangover.'

‘Beast,' said Lalage again. She wrenched her arm from Brawley and wavered after the others.

Brawley glanced at Ambrose and shrugged. ‘A bad business,' he muttered, ‘a very bad business.'

‘Indeed,' said Ambrose.

They walked a few yards in silence before Brawley cleared his throat. ‘May I ask – have you thought what you'll be doing about future representation?'

Ambrose shook his head.

‘Only I was wondering,' continued Brawley, ‘what with Sammy having been something of a one-man-band . . .'

‘I must say,' said Ambrose, stiffly, ‘that I think it's a little early to be talking about such matters. The man's only been dead two days.'

‘Of course. I didn't mean . . . it's just that our little troupe of players may present something of a drug on the market and in the current climate when things are so very . . .' Brawley cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘Of course you're absolutely right – it's much too early to start thinking about it. Dear old Sammy.'

It wasn't easy – offices had closed or moved, younger staff had been called up, phone lines were down, numbers had changed – nevertheless by the third day after the funeral, Ambrose had dispatched five letters and had managed to speak on the telephone or in person to seven different agents, or their assistants, and he was beginning to feel more than a touch of disquiet.