Their Finest Hour and a Half (22 page)

‘We do try to have a nice range of experience on our books, Mr Hilliard, and I'm afraid that we already have more than one client of your calibre and playing age.'

‘Is that two ‘l's in Hilliard?'

‘Could you just remind me of the last time we saw you on the cinema screen, Mr Hilliard?'

‘Oh that's an unusual first name, isn't it, sir? Is that spelled the same way as the creamed rice?'

‘Would you be willing to perform in pantomime, Mr Hilliard?'

He'd slammed the receiver down so hard after that one that he'd cracked the cradle, and now the damned thing buzzed all the time – another petty repair that wouldn't be fixed until after the Luftwaffe stopped visiting. Every upstairs ceiling leaked now, and since a landmine had descended on the Euston Road, none of the doors would close without a good kick. Still no housekeeper to be found, of course, and the drain in the area was blocked so that the bloody kitchen smelled like Calcutta. He could barely remember a time when coming through his own front door had been a pleasure.

After ten days he had received four postal replies. Two had misspelled his name and none were able to offer him representation. He threw them on to the fire. The fifth letter came back unopened, the address crossed out and the stark word ‘GONE' written beneath it. Ambrose spent the next morning searching for his share certificates, and found them in a box at the back of the wardrobe. Felling's Superior Buttons, Caley's Chocolates, Dorita Iced Cream, Reissman & Moffatt, Gaiter and Whip Manufacturers to the Gentry, Corrie Fine Suet – duds the lot of them, the dividends minuscule. He should have shot his bloody broker, missing out on those
Daily Express
shares in 1931.

Another week passed. He bumped into Martin Brawley on The Strand and they talked in a guarded fashion.

‘I've been dipping a toe in agency waters,' Brawley said, ‘testing for nibbles. You?'

‘Too busy, old chap.'

‘Oh really? Anything meaty?'

Ambrose gave an enigmatic shrug. ‘This and that,' he said.

Brawley was looking rather shabby, Ambrose thought, a stain on his hat-band, his coat frayed at the cuffs. Appearances were so very important.

Back at the house, Ambrose pondered his next move – perhaps a direct approach to studio casting, something casual: hello there, just passing through, had a long-standing lunch appointment with a fellow from head office, thought I'd drop by, awful thing about Sammy Smith, wasn't it? Yes, very sad. No, not busy at the moment, taking a bit of a break out of respect. Really? Well, if you think I'd be suitable . . .

Ealing might be a decent start – not too much of a journey and plenty going on there, by all accounts. He dressed, the next morning, with particular care, and emptied a whole packet of Kensitas into his silver cigarette case, the one presented to him by the management of ABPC at Elstree after
The Laird and the Lass
had been announced as the third most profitable British film of 1927. The inside of the lid was inscribed: ‘May ye have a' the luck o'the Glens.' Outside, the wind was brisk and he wound a grey silk scarf around his neck before giving the front door its requisite heave.

It wasn't until he turned the corner into Portland Place, and saw the congregation exiting All Souls, that he realized that it was a Sunday.

He felt shocked – almost literally shocked, as if he had changed a bulb with wet hands. Timing, awareness of time, punctuality; they were more than professional virtues, they were the essence of the actor. He had thought it was a Friday, so where had the days gone? He groped back through the week. He had picked up his groceries on Tuesday. Or perhaps it had been on Wednesday. He had opened the garage door on Thursday and given the motor car a dusting, the poor old bottle-green Alvis, squatting on its bricks in the dark – or was it possible that he'd done that on the Friday? In which case, how had he occupied himself on Thursday? There'd been a brief but noisy raid one night; perhaps he'd slept through part of the morning. He'd taken a walk in the park one afternoon. He'd spoken to a neighbour about a broken chimney pot. Or had that been the week before?

He felt the days judder under his feet like a faulty escalator. Of course, he thought, reaching for a handhold – of course! The problem was that the one firm date had gone: Monday, lunch with Sammy. Over the years the venue had changed – Veeraswamy's, La Venezia, Pacani's, Josef, Maison Basque – but the day had remained constant, the arrangement only ever cancelled if Ambrose were filming, or Sammy taking his yearly holiday in Broadstairs. (‘Not a shpectacular place, I know, but highly comfortable.' ) Monday had been a day for discussion; it had had a purpose and a shape, it had been the hook on which the rest of the week could be hung, and now that hook had been permanently unscrewed.

Ambrose walked back to the house, took off his coat and scarf, and sat for a while in an armchair beside the window. When the phone rang, he was asleep.

‘Mr Hilliard?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's Sophie Smith.'

She left one of her frigid pauses.

Ambrose struggled for an appropriate remark. ‘And how are you, Miss Smith?'

‘My health is quite good, thank you. I hope you don't mind that I'm telephoning you on a Sunday.'

‘Not at all.'

‘I remember my brother saying that you had no religious feelings whatsoever.'

‘Well . . .'

‘And this is a business call.'

‘Business?' he repeated, cautiously.

‘I have spent the last week reading through my brother's papers from the agency. He kept a safe for his financial work, which was intact, and also his diary and several of his clients' files survived the bombing.'

‘I see.'

‘Sammy always shared his thoughts with me and I think that I have a very good understanding of the way he worked. It's true that I have no business experience, but I have a clear head and a great deal of common sense and nothing, now, with which to occupy myself. I've made the decision, therefore, to continue with the agency. It will still be called ‘Sammy Smith's' and until I can find an office I shall work from this flat.'

‘And you will be the . . . titular head?'

‘I shall run the business, Mr Hilliard.'

‘Oh, I see.' He wasn't quite sure what he thought about this; was any agent better than none? She might ‘do' in the interim, he supposed – she might prove a useful stop-gap until he could find a real professional. ‘Well, that seems rather enterprising of you,' he said.

‘I couldn't, of course, run it in exactly the same way as Sammy.'

‘No, obviously not.'

‘My brother was a very kind man, and a very good man. He regarded his clients as friends, which I feel may sometimes have clouded his judgement.'

‘Do you know, I've often thought that myself.'

‘Have you really, Mr Hilliard?'

There was another wintry pause, broken this time by Sophie.

‘My brother's diary mentions a possible film for you.'

‘Really?'

‘A small character role.'

‘Oh. Is that the same role that Sammy mentioned when I called him on . . .' Not a good area, he realized, backing away. ‘Is that the Baker's feature?' he amended.

‘Yes.'

‘How small is the role, exactly?'

‘There's no completed script as yet. The story is based on a true incident at Dunkirk, in which two girls and their uncle piloted a boat across the channel.'

‘That's the role? The uncle?'

‘Yes.'

‘He pilots the boat?'

‘No. He's drunk and asleep for the early part of the story, and then I believe he wakes up and mends the engine and then dies before the end of the film.'

‘Not my bag,' said Ambrose. ‘Sounds more of a music-hall part. Tell them to ask Tommy Trinder.'

‘You don't want me to put your name forward?'

‘No.'

‘There's currently nothing else for you.'

‘Nevertheless.'

‘I would strongly advise you to take it.'

If he hadn't been talking to a grief-stricken quasi-widow then he might have become irritated at this point. As it was, he reminded himself that she was completely out of her depth, poor woman. He thought of that narrow flat, of the dark corridor that ran the length of it. ‘This is not a role for me, Miss Smith,' he said. ‘But thank you.'

She sighed. ‘You see, Mr Hilliard, I'm not sure what to do now. Because my brother, after a conversation like this, would replace the receiver and say, “What Ambrose doesn't understand is that the roles he is waiting for are simply never going to arrive. He's behaving as if he's thirty-five and not fifty-three.” And I'd say, “Well, why don't you tell him?” I'd say, “What can you lose by being honest? Let him know that ageing, enormously conceited, moderately talented actors are ten a penny, and that he should be grateful for every part that you manage to find him.” But Sammy was too kind to do that. He would never have told you, for instance, that the reason you have a good chance of getting this role is because the makers don't want star names. They've decided that, since this is a true story, they'll use faces that the audience don't immediately recognize. “Faces that look real”, was the phrase they used. Sammy wrote the casting notes in his diary, here . . .' There was the dry scrape of pages.
“Playing age late fifties, early sixties. Dissipated look” –
and underneath he's written “
Try Ambrose
.” He wouldn't have told you that, but I can see no reason not to. The whole point, surely, is to find suitable work for my clients and I can assure you – I can absolutely assure you – that there is nothing else for you at the moment. Do you know how many feature films are currently in production in British studios?'

Ambrose, beyond speech, shook his head; she answered anyway.

‘Nine. And only twelve in pre-production, most of which have already been cast with well-known actors. If you don't take this, then you will certainly be twiddling your thumbs for the rest of this year and very probably for half of next. Of course, you are free to find other representation. Another agent
may
offer you more than I can.' Disbelief corroded her voice. In the long, long silence that followed, Ambrose heard a tiny, repetitive noise, like the tick of a distant clock.

‘So shall I put your name forward?' asked Sophie.

Behind her, the ticking grew louder, the sound more complex.

Tick. Tickety. Tickety tack.

‘Mr Hilliard?'

Tickety tack, tickety tackety . . .

‘I—' He could barely remember the question. He raised a hand to his head. The tickety-tacks stopped abruptly and were replaced, after a brief moment, by a series of loud sniffs and then a low, salacious slurping.

‘Leave it, Cerberus,' said Sophie. ‘Don't be disgusting.
Leave
it. Mr Hilliard, I'm sorry for the interruption, you were going to tell me if I should put your name forward for the role of the inebriated uncle.'

Ambrose took a deep breath. Gathering the blasted fragments of his professional dignity, he made his decision, and spoke.

‘I shall have to think about it,' he said.

*

Edith's cousin Verna lived in a world of wickedness. She was a pretty woman, with glossy dark hair and eyes very nearly the colour of violets. She had lived the whole of her forty years in Badgeham and had married the methodist minister, a man with a placid nature and money in the bank, and her sewing shop was doing marvellously well, but when she talked (and she talked a great deal, in a soft but insistent little voice), she glanced around warily as if corruption might, at any second, begin to ooze through the walls of her house – because (as she told Edith) sin was everywhere. The weekly dance held at the Masons' Hall was a nest of temptation, and she'd noticed women going alone to the Crown and Anchor on the village green, there, no doubt, to meet with soldiers who might, or might not, already have sweethearts or even be married, and of course that was also bad, but she reserved a special opprobrium for the cinema, not for fear of what might appear on the screen, but because it was somewhere where men and women were allowed to sit next to each other in the dark. ‘If they kept the lights on then I wouldn't mind so much,' she said, taking pins from a pattern and dropping them, one by one, into a saucer. ‘But you don't know what might happen in the dark. Myrtle's been on at me to let her go to Norwich to see
Gone with the Wind
but I've told her there'll be men in that audience with only one thing on their minds. You know what I mean, don't you, Edith? I'm sure it's far worse in London.'

Edith, her eyes fixed on the long side seam of a pair of women's trousers, made a non-committal noise and pressed the treadle. Her cousin's next comment disappeared under the growl of the Singer.

The sewing-room was situated in an odd little glass-roofed lean-to at the back of the shop. It had once served as Verna's husband's greenhouse, before Verna had decided to expand the business, and when the sun shone there was still a lingering smell of tomatoes. The panes were criss-crossed with strips of anti-shatter tape, and a lattice of shadow fell across the interior. Bolts of cloth formed a layer of insulation along the walls, and on windless days it grew so warm that Verna would prop open the external door, and the neighbours' cats would slide through the gap and lie beatifically on the tiled floor. From the garden came the comfortable sound of her husband, Roy, double-digging his potato patch.

‘Of course, nowhere's safe nowadays,' said Verna. ‘They're sitting in the dark in the pictures and then they come out afterwards and they're still in the dark. Who's to say what's going on in bus shelters when you can't even see your hand in front of your face? You know what I mean, don't you Edith? I'm sure it must happen all the time where you live – you hear a noise and you can't think
what
it is. It could be buttons, it could be something worse.'