Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks (15 page)

‘You're not going to say nothing dirty to them, are you?' she said. ‘Excuse me for asking, but we have to.'

I reassured her.

‘I'll have to keep your number by me,' she said, ‘in case there's complaints, you know, afterwards, like. No offence meant, but you'd be surprised how many people ring up foreigners and swear at them.'

I agreed, wondering who. Insights were bursting in on every hand. It clearly wasn't all beer and skittles, being a world leader, trying to keep up the balance of payments and build new schools and hold back the opposition, with Englishmen phoning you up all hours of the day and night, shouting ‘Eff off!'

She gave me the Pope's residential number. I dialled direct, 01039 6 6982. It was engaged. Odd. Was he, perhaps, on The Other Line? Or just on the balcony, waving? I tried again, trembling slightly at his proximity – five hundred million subjects under his thumb, and that thumb about to curl over the receiver in response to a far, agnostic call.

‘Allo.'

‘Your Holiness?'

Pause.

‘Wod?'

‘Am I speaking to the Pope?
II Papa?
'

Scuffling.

‘Allo, allo. Can I 'elp you?'

‘May I speak to the Pope?'

A long, soft sigh, one of those very Italian sighs that express so much, that say
Ah, signor, if only this world were an ideal
world, what would I not give to be able to do as you ask, we should
sit together in the Tuscan sunshine, you and I, just two men together,
and we should drink a bottle of the good red wine, and we should
sing, ah, how we should sing, but God in His infinite wisdom has,
alas, not seen fit to . . .

‘Can the Pope,' I said, determined, ‘come to the phone?'

‘The Bobe never gum to the delephone, signor. Nod for you, nod for me, nod for Italians, nod for nobody. Is nod bozzible, many regrets, 'Is 'Oliness never spig on delephone. You give me your name, I give mezzage to 'Is 'Oliness, 'e give you blezzing, okay?'

‘Okay,' I said. A blessing, albeit proxied, was something.

‘Don menshnit,' he said, kindly, and clicked off.

By great good fortune (or even the grace of God: who knows how quickly a Pope's blessing might work?), there was a different operator on 108 when I tried to reach Richard Nixon. He put me on to 107, who got me the White House in three minutes flat, which gave tricky Dicky a thick edge over Mao, Kosygin and Il Papa when it came to accessibility. I thought you'd like to know that, Dick, since I didn't get the chance to tell you myself. Accessibility, as Harry Truman might have said, stops here. Or almost here. The lady secretary at the White House was extremely kind, incredibly helpful and understanding; doubtless because, given America's readiness to empty magazines at those in power, you can't be too careful with nuts who phone up to speak to the President. Fob them off with a ‘Get lost!' one minute, and the next they're crouched on a nearby roof and pumping away with a mail-order Winchester. The President, she said, was down in Florida, at Key Biscayne, where his number was 305 358 2380; someone there would speak to me. They did, and they were just as syrupy and sympathetic, and who knows but that I mightn't have got into the Great Ear if I hadn't played one card utterly wrong? What happened was, the call from the Kremlin, booked, you'll remember, an hour before, suddenly came through on my other phone, and I was mug enough, drunk with bogus eminence, to say to the American voice:

‘Sorry, can you hold on a sec, I've got Kosygin on the other line?'

It was a nice moment, of course, but that's as long as it lasted. America hung up. Tread carefully when you step among the great, friends, their corns are sensitive.

I rather liked the Kremlin.

‘Is that Mister Coren?' they said.

It's no small thrill to think one's name has echoed down the corridors of Soviet power, from room to room, while nervous men, fearful of the punishment that follows bureaucratic cock-ups, have tried to find out who one is, and what one wants with the Prime Minister. After all, so much is secret, so much unknown. I might have been anybody, even the sort of Anybody whose whisper in a top ear could send whole switchboardsful of comrades to the stake. Who was this Coren, this cool, curt international voice who seemed to be on such good terms with Alexi N. Kosygin that he thought nothing of phoning him person-to-person? For men who remembered Lavrenti Beria, no kindness to strangers was too much. Which is no doubt why I actually got to Kosygin's private secretary, who was himself extremely civil.

‘I merely want to present the Prime Minister with my good wishes,' I told him.

He was heartbroken that the Prime Minister was inextricably involved at present, but swore to me that my message would be passed on immediately. And I have not the slightest doubt that it was. It's a long way to Siberia, after all, and the cattle-trains leave every hour, on the hour.

Which left me with just two numbers in my little black book: Havana 305 031 and Cairo 768944. It took me a day to get through to one, and three days to reach the other (all calls to Egypt are subject to censorship), and when I finally did make contact, Fidel and Anwar were, needless to say, busy elsewhere. Both, however, promised faithfully to ring me back, which is why I leave them till last. Courtesy I like. Not, though, that they actually
have
rung back, but who knows? Even now, the dark, dependable forefingers may be poised over their respective dials, groping along the cables for a chance to chew the fat and swop a joke or two. If not, and if they read this first, don't worry about it, lads. It's nothing urgent.

I just wanted to say hello.

17
The Rime of the Ancient Film-maker

There has been much speculation as to why, when Ken
Russell's first film on the Lake Poets was so uncharacter
istically restrained, his second was so characteristically
extravagant.