The Little Drummer Girl (13 page)

Richthoven Enterprises,she read,Export, followed by a post office box number in Vienna.

Passing a kiosk, feeling wonderfully, dangerously alive, she bought her bloody mother a crochet-work tablecloth and for her poisonous nephew Kevin a tasselled Greek cap. When she had done that, she chose a dozen postcards most of which she addressed to old Ned Quilley, her useless agent back in London, with facetious messages intended to embarrass him in front of the prim ladies who comprised his office staff. "Ned, Ned," she wrote on one, "keep all your parts for me." And on another, "Ned, Ned, can a fallen woman sink?" But on yet another of them she chose to write soberly, telling him of the mainland. "It's time our Chas topped up her culture levels, Ned," she explained, ignoring Joseph's stricture not to tell too much. About to cross the road and post them. Charlie had a feeling of being observed, but when she swung round, pretending to herself she was going to meet Joseph, all she saw was the flaxen hippy boy again, the one who liked to stalk the family and had presided over Alastair's departure. He was goofing along the pavement behind her with his arms trailing like an ape. Catching sight of her, he slowly raised his right hand in a Christ-like gesture. She waved back to him, laughing. Crazy devil's had a bad trip and can't come down, she thought indulgently as she dropped the cards into the box one by one. Maybe I should do something about him.

The last card of all was to Alastair, full of faked sentiment, but she didn't read it through. Sometimes, particularly in moments of uncertainty or change or when she was about to do a dare, it suited her to believe that her darling, hopeless, bibulous Ned Quilley, aged a hundred and forty next birthday, was the only man she'd ever truly loved.

four

Kurtz and Litvak called on Ned Quilley at his Soho offices on a misty, soaking Friday at midday--a social call with business as its aim--as soon as they heard that the Joseph-Charlie show was safely running. They were in near despair since the Leyden bomb, Gavron's croaking breath was on their necks every hour of the day; they could hear nothing in their minds but the remorseless ticking of Kurtz's battered watch. Yet on the surface, they were just two more respectful, well-contrasted mid-European Americans in dripping new Burberrys, the one stocky with a forceful rolling walk and a bit of a sea captain to him, the other gangly and young and rather insinuating, with a private academic smile. They gave their names as Gold and Karman of the firm of GK Creations, Incorporated, and their letter paper, hastily run up, sported a blue-and-gold monogram like a thirties tie-pin to prove it. They had made the appointment from the Embassy but ostensibly from New York, personally with one of Ned Quilley's ladies, and they kept it to the minute like the eager show-business citizens they weren't.

"We're Gold and Karman," said Kurtz to Quilley's senile receptionist, Mrs. Longmore, at two minutes to twelve exactly, striding straight in on her from the street. "We have a date with Mr. Quilley twelve o'clock. Thank you--no, dear, we'll stand. Was it you we spoke with by any chance, dear?"

It was not, said Mrs. Longmore, in the tone of one humouring a pair of lunatics. Appointments were the province of Mrs. Ellis, a different person entirely.

"Sure, dear," said Kurtz, undaunted.

And that was how they operated in these cases: officially somehow, with broad Kurtz beating the rhythm and slender Litvak piping softly behind him with his smouldering private smile.

The stairs to Ned Quilley's offices were steep and uncarpeted, and most American gentlemen, in Mrs. Longmore's fifty years' experience of her post, liked to comment on them wryly and pause for breath at the turn. But not Gold; not Karman either. These two, when she watched them through her window, skipped up the stairs and clean out of sight as if they had never seen an elevator. It must be the jogging, she thought, as she went back to her knitting at four pounds an hour. Wasn't that what they were all doing in New York these days? Running round Central Park, poor things, avoiding the perverts and the dogs? She had heard that a lot died of it.

"Sir, we're Gold and Karman," said Kurtz a second time as little Ned Quilley cheerily opened the door to them. "I'm Gold."

And his big right hand had landed in poor old Ned's before he even had a chance to draw. "Mr. Quilley, sir--Ned--we are surely honoured to meet you. You have a fine, fine reputation in the profession."

"And I'm Karman,sir," Litvak privately explained, just as respectfully, peering over Kurtz's shoulder. But Litvak was not in the handshaking class: Kurtz had done it for both of them.

"But, my dear fellow," Ned protested with his deprecating Edwardian charm, "my goodness, it's I who am honoured, not you!"And he led them at once to the long sash window, the legendary Quilley's Window of his father's day, where, as tradition had it, you sat gazing down into Soho market quaffing old Quilley's sherry and contemplating the world go by while you made nice deals for old Quilley and his clients. For Ned Quilley at sixty-two was still very much a son. He asked nothing better than to see his father's agreeable way of life continue. He was a gentle little soul, white-haired and something of a dresser as stage-struck people often are, with a quaint cast in his eye, pink cheeks, and an air of being agitated and delayed both at once.

"Too wet for the tarts, I'm afraid," he declared, bravely flapping an elegant little hand at the window. Insouciance, in Ned's opinion, was what life was all about. "Get rather a decent turnout this time of year, as a rule. Big ones, black ones, yellow ones, every shape and size you can imagine. There's one old biddy been here longer than I have. My father used to give her a pound at Christmas. Wouldn't get much for a pound these days, I'm afraid. Oh no! No, indeed!"

From his cherished break front bookcase, while they dutifully laughed with him, Ned extracted a decanter of sherry, officiously sniffed the stopper, then half filled three crystal glasses while they watched him. Their watchfulness was something he sensed at once. He had the feeling they were pricing him, pricing the furniture, the office. An awful thought struck him--it had been at the back of his mind ever since he had received their letter.

"I say, you're not trying to buy me up or anything frightful, are you?" he asked nervously.

Kurtz let out a loud, comforting laugh. "Ned, we are surely not trying to buy you up." Litvak laughed too.

"Well, thank God for that," Ned declared earnestly, handing round the glasses. "Do you know everybody's being bought up these days? I get all sorts of chaps I've never heard of, offering me money down the telephone. All the small, old firms--decent houses--getting gobbled up like what's-its. Shocking. Cheer-ho. Good luck. Welcome," he declared, still shaking his head in disapproval.

Ned's courting rituals continued. He asked where they were staying, and Kurtz said the Connaught, and, Ned, they really loved it, they had felt family from the minute they arrived. This part was true; they had booked in there specially, and Misha Gavron was going to fall straight off his branch when he saw the bill. Ned asked them whether they were finding opportunities for leisure, and Kurtz replied heartily that they were just loving every minute of their time. They were leaving for Munich tomorrow.

"Munich? My goodness, whatever will you be doing over there!" Ned asked, playing his age for them, playing the anachronistic, unworldly dandy. "You chaps don't half hop around, I will say!"

"Co-production money," replied Kurtz, as if that explained everything.

"A lot of it," said Litvak, speaking in a voice as soft as his smile. "The German scene is big today. Way, way up there, Mr. Quilley."

"Oh, I'm sure it is. Oh, so I've heard said," said Ned indignantly. "They're a major force, one has to face it. In everything. War's all forgotten now, swept far under the carpet."

With a mysterious drive to perform ineffectually, Ned made to refill their sherry glasses pretending he had not noticed they were virtually untouched. Then he giggled and put down the decanter. It was a ship's decanter, eighteenth century, with a broad base to keep it steady in a rolling sea. Quite often, with foreigners, Ned made a point of explaining this to put them at their ease. But something about their intent manner restrained him, and instead there was only a small silence and a creaking of chairs. Outside the window the rain had thickened into driving fog.

"Ned," said Kurtz, timing his entrance exactly. "Ned, I want to tell you who we are a little and why we wrote you and why we are stealing your valuable time."

"My dear chaps, please do, delighted," said Ned, and, feeling like someone completely different, folded his little legs and put on an attentive smile while Kurtz settled smoothly into his persuading mode.

By his broad, raked-back forehead Ned guessed he was Hungarian, but he might have been Czech or really any of those places. He had a rich, naturally loud voice and a mid-European accent that the Atlantic had not yet swamped. He was as fast-spoken and fluent as a radio commercial, and his bright narrow eyes seemed to listen to everything he said while his right forearm beat everything to pieces in small, decisive chops. He, Gold, was the lawyer of the family, Kurtz explained;Karman here was more on the creative side, with a background of writing, agenting, and producing, mainly Canada and the Midwest. They had recently taken offices in New York, where their current interest was independent packaging for television.

"Our creative rôle,Ned, is confined ninety per cent to finding a concept that is acceptable to networks and finance. The concept--we sell this to the backers. Production--we leave this to the producers. Period."

He had finished, and he had looked at his watch with a strangely distracted gesture, and now it was up to Ned to say something intelligent, which to his credit he managed rather well. He frowned, he held out his glass almost to arm's length, and with his feet he traced a slow deliberate pirouette, instinctively responding to Kurtz's mime. "But, old boy. If you're packagers, old boy, what do you want with us agents'?" he protested. "I mean, why do I rate lunch, what? See what I mean? Why lunch if you're packaging!"

At this, to Ned's surprise, Kurtz burst out in the most cheerful and infectious laughter. Ned thought he had been quite witty too, to be honest, and done a rather good thing with his feet; but it was nothing to what Kurtz thought. His narrow eyes clamped shut, his big shoulders lifted, and the next thing Ned knew, the whole room was filled with the warming peals of his Slav mirth. At the same time, his face broke into all kinds of disconcerting furrows. Till now, in Ned's estimation, Kurtz had been forty-five at worst. Suddenly he was Ned's age, his brow and cheeks and neck as crisp as paper, with crevices in them like the slashes of a knife. The transformation bothered Ned. He felt cheated somehow. "Sort of human Trojan Horse," he afterwards complained to his wife, Marjory. "You let in a high-powered showbiz salesman of forty and all of a sudden out pops a sort of sixty-year-old Mr. Punch. Bloody odd."

But it was Litvak this time who supplied the crucial, long-rehearsed answer to Ned's question, the answer on which everything else depended. Leaning his long, angular body forward over his knees, he opened his right hand, splayed the fingers, grasped one, and addressed it in an accented Boston drawl, the product of worker-bee study at the feet of American Jewish teachers.

"Mr. Quilley, sir," he began, so devoutly that he seemed to be imparting a mystical secret. "What we have in mind here is a totally original project. No precedents, no imitators. We take sixteen hours of very good television time--say, fall and winter. We form a matinée theatrical company of strolling players. A bunch of very talented repertory actors, British and American mixed, a wide range of races, personality, human interaction. This company, we move it from city to city, each actor playing a variety of rôles,now starring, now supporting. Their real-life human stories and relationships to provide a nice dimension, part of the audience appeal. Live shows in every city."

He glanced up suspiciously as if he thought Quilley had spoken, but Quilley emphatically had not.

"Mr. Quilley, we travel with that company," Litvak resumed, slowing almost to a halt as his fervour deepened. "We ride in that company's buses. We help shift the scenery with that company. We the audience share their problems, their lousy hotels, look in on their fights and love-affairs. We the audience rehearse with them. We share their opening-night nerves, read their reviews next day, rejoice at their successes, grieve at their failures, write letters to their folks. We give theatre back its adventure. Its pioneering spirit. Its actor-audience relationship."

For a moment Quilley thought Litvak had finished. But he was only selecting a different finger to hold on to.

"We use classic theatre plays, Mr. Quilley, out of copyright, low cost all the way. We barnstorm. We use new, relatively unknown actors and actresses, now and then a guest star for mileage, but basically we are promoting new talent and inviting that talent to demonstrate the whole range of its versatility over a minimum four-month period, which hopefully is extended. And re-extended. For the actors, great exposure, great publicity, nice clean shows, no dirt, see if it goes. That's our concept, Mr. Quilley, and our backers seem to like it a lot."

Then, before Quilley even had time to offer his congratulations, a thing he always liked to do when someone told him an idea, Kurtz had stormed back into the act.

"Ned, we want to sign your Charlie," he announced; and with the enthusiasm of a Shakespearian herald bearing news of victory, he swept his whole right arm up into the air and held it there.

Very excited, Ned made to speak, only to find Kurtz was once more talking clean through him.

"Ned, we believe that your Charlie has great wit, great versatility, fine range. If you can reassure us on a couple of slightly urgent points we have--why, I think we can offer her the opportunity of a place in the theatrical firmament which you and she will surely not regret."

Yet again Ned tried to speak, but this time it was Litvak who got in ahead of him: "We're all set to go for her, Mr. Quilley. Give us a couple of answers to a couple of questions and Charlie's up there with the big ones."