Strange Music (10 page)

She tripped silently downstairs with her finger to her lips. ‘I've just got her off to sleep.' She spoke more normally when the kitchen door was closed behind them. ‘If you've come looking for blood on the carpets, you're going to be disappointed. Coffee?'

‘Please. I'm glad to hear it. I felt a bit guilty going back across the yard last night.'

‘Oh, sure!' She measured the grounds into the cafetière and filled it with not-quite-boiling water from the kettle that sang on the Aga, which she and Felix had just had installed. ‘I know you and Isabella like to boil it to death in a percolator but this is
real
coffee, European style.'

‘Did Faith explain why she wanted to see your movie show last night – and why she wanted me to be there, too?'

‘Something about writing a new soundtrack to it?' She jiggled the filter to make the floating grounds fall.

‘Yes, but for what reason? Did she explain that? She thinks that what passes for documentary on television is just too bland.'

Angela laughed as she pressed down the filter disc.

‘Yes,' Eric agreed. ‘Albert Pierrepoint would be a slight case of
overkill,
as our nuclear warriors say. But she would like to produce a documentary with more bite. More substance.'

Angela paused. Then she set the cafetière down. ‘You can finish filling this cup,' she said. ‘I think I've got something for you. It's an illegal transcript I made during the war – the thing they sent me to Ravensbrück for. It's a transcript of a conference in January 'forty-two in Wannsee at which the
SS
told the rest of the Nazi hierarchy how they were going to murder up to ten thousand Jews a day. The final solution to the Jewish problem, they called it.'

Eric did not return to the cottage until after lunch.

‘I can't stop long,' Angela warned him. ‘I'm on a special night shift. We're migrating a whole studio.'

‘OK,' he said, laying the English translation of her Wannsee transcript down. ‘This is genuine? It says you were the recording engineer? And this is exactly what you recorded?'

‘Word for word.'

‘Jesus flaming Christ! And that's why they sent you to that concentration camp? Why didn't you ever say? I'd have cheered along with you last night. Who did the translation, if I may ask?'

‘Felix and me, if you're worried about copyright. D'you suppose you and Faith could make something of it? For
TV
– a sort of half-drama-semi-documentary?'

Eric sat down. ‘What have you done with it so far? Who've you shown it to? I mean, you didn't originally do it for radio or television, I suppose. In fact, why
did
you translate it at all?'

Rather than answer him, she explained how it all came about . . . how she, a lowly recording engineer in the
SS,
recorded the Wannsee Conference, which determined ‘the Final Solution of the Jewish Question' . . . was so appalled that she made a transcript and a carbon copy . . . met Marianne (then working as an apprentice architect under Albert Speer, at the behest of her father, a Swedish steel baron) . . . and passed the transcript to her to convey to the neutral Swedish embassy.

‘And the carbon?' Eric asked.

‘I hid it. Then gave it to the British after the war. British army intelligence – who said they lost it. Felix and I got the top copy back from Hermann Treite, the chauffeur at the Swedish Embassy, after the war – that time we went to Hamburg.'

Eric returned to his question: why had they translated it?

She shrugged. ‘Felix got too busy with commissions . . . and then we started Pippin and . . . you know. D'you and Faith want to take it up?'

He nodded. ‘How can we not? But I need to know more. How did British army intelligence lose it?'

‘They
say
they lost it. And then they found a
supposed
protocol of the conference, which we – Felix and I and some friends in Germany – think was a deliberately watered-down version planted in the archives near the end of the war, probably by Eichmann, to deceive the allies. The covering letter was in poor German but not poor enough for the allies to notice. And that has now become the officially accepted protocol. I don't suppose anything will change that now. Too many reputations are at stake. So . . . one-up to Eichmann, if he's still out there somewhere. Listen – oh God! – I should be halfway to Welwyn North by now!'

‘Fear not! I'll drive you up to town and I can collect Faith from Manutius, and we can discuss the idea on the way back. I don't think it would be fair to ask her to read it without some preparation!'

On the way into town he asked about Felix.

She bridled. ‘What about him?'

‘The translation is half his, I suppose.'

‘Oh, that!'

‘No, Angela, you know I'm not really talking about “oh, that.” I'm talking about letting it go. About Felix letting it go. Flirting with Judaism isn't going to help.'

‘Maybe he just has to go through with it. I don't know.'

‘There's no guarantee he'd come out the other side. And his art would suffer. It would degenerate into sentimental lechery.'

‘How can you be sure of that? You can't know.'

‘Marc Chagall? Jules Pascin? How many more do you need? When is Felix's birthday?'

‘The fifteenth of January – next month.'

‘Perhaps I'll buy him a decent copy of the Old Testament. He can read all about the
Vernichtung
of the Hittites and Amorites and Canaanites, et cetera – “as the Lord God commanded.” Did you ever read it? Your Wannsee transcript is just milk and water by comparison with the arrangements God had in mind. And they were all Semites, too! Hitler wasn't the first with the darkness.'

When it came to making a documentary drama out of the Wannsee transcript, the strategy also changed: no longer would Faith go into her interview with a ready-made demonstration film, which would probably have been considered too pushy, in any case. As Eric pointed out: ‘I can just hear one of those plummy voices saying, “We already have enough male Napoleons in television; the last thing we want is a female Napoleon to add to them, thank you very much!”'

So now the plan was for Eric to submit Angela's transcript (suitably edited and adapted for a radio play) to the Home Service drama department. Its broadcast would undoubtedly be a sensation, especially if the actors were told to use normal English accents rather than music-hall-comic German – and Eric would insist on that. And then, when Faith went for her interview, it would be the talk of everyone in the business, so she could say, ‘That's
exactly
the sort of thing television drama should be doing – hard-hitting realism with a social purpose. Stop just doing extracts from West End productions. Forget Priestley and Rattigan. Television is a window on the
world
!' et cetera.

It didn't work like that.

The Home Service turned it down flat, with a standard printed rejection slip saying they had considered it carefully but could not envisage a space for it in their present schedule. But one producer did leave a note a few pages into the script, saying,
Try the Third – this is more their territory than ours
.

Harold Byron, who commissioned enigmatic but groundbreaking scripts for the Third Programme, wrote:

‘There's more in the same vein,' Eric told Faith. ‘But you get the drift. Are you sure you want to work for this shower?'

‘More than ever!' was her response. ‘But
TV
not radio.'

They were walking in aimless circles round the big lawn, kicking snow, and dodging miniature snowballs from toddlers who had to walk right up to them in order to score.

‘So let's forget radio and let's forget high drama.' He folded the letter away.

‘And?'

‘In three weeks' time Selincourt is coming back to the Dower House to do another fashion shoot. The summer collection this time – they waited for the snow, of course, because that's the way
everyone
in the fashion industry's mind works. Anyway (speak of the Devil) my own darling Isabella is willing to sweet-talk them into letting us make a documentary of the event – to have a go at it, I mean. The outfits will be sumptuous. The lighting will be at least equal to the best the
BBC
can do. The girls will be gorgeous in their stately, snooty way. There will be tension, tantrums, and triumphs – I say! There's our title:
Tensions
,
Tantrums
,
and Triumphs
! What I'm suggesting is that we make the documentary ourselves and simply offer it to
BBC
television – as if we're a small independent. They already buy a load of crap from America – have you seen
The Cisco Kid
? – so why not from us?'

‘And if they don't buy it?'

‘That doesn't really matter. It's a sprat to catch a mackerel. Someone in Wardour Street will snap it up – to go in that
Look at Life
slot between the supporting film and the main feature, which is only there to pad out the time until they've sold enough ice cream.'

Faith stopped dead and hoicked some snow out from inside her collar – a lucky throw from Theo Wilson who, now rising four, was slightly more accurate than the others. ‘Go away, you little beast!' she shouted with enough menace to send him off with screams that turned to laughter. Then, to Eric: ‘Sometimes you frighten me, you really do.'

‘The point is, you'd be going in there to sell a documentary, not to tell them how much cleverer you are than they will ever be. Why, the very idea of applying for a position at Ally Pally hasn't even entered your mind . . . though now they come to suggest it (and here comes the mackerel) . . . well . . . yes, you're certainly
interested
. What are they offering? Only you have to know quite quickly because negotiations with
Look at Life Productions
in Wardour Street are already approaching the stage where binding commitments are looming. I think that's the way to play it. Why do I frighten you?'

‘What happened to all that missionary zeal about Angela's Wannsee transcript?'

‘Its time will come. Don't worry. We'll find a way one day.'

She laughed and said, ‘I rest my case.'

And then they turned to swoop upon The Tribe like angry raptors, flapping their overcoats and roaring while the children darted in all directions, screaming, laughing, scooping up snow and throwing it in comet-tails of powder.

The following evening Eric went over to Faith's little flat in the cottage and said, ‘I could frighten you even more.'

She shrugged resignedly. ‘Go on, then.'

‘You've been approaching this entirely the wrong way—'

‘
I
have!'

‘OK –
we
have. We're missing the fundamental point, which is that we – or you, with whatever assistance you think I might be able to give – want to do something
new
with
TV
. That's the important word –
new
. New
TV
. Not old
TV
. As soon as you have a new
any
thing you also have an old
some
thing, too.'

‘Yes . . . and the war is over and grass is green and what else?'

‘It's
so
obvious we've overlooked it. You have to make them think they represent old
TV
. That there's some vague, shadowy new
TV
waiting to come flooding in and leave them all washed up in some old backwater. We've been thrashing around for a single new programme when what we want is a whole new order.'

Faith swallowed audibly. ‘Right! It's my fault – I misled you. I misled myself. I thought the way we sell books to other publishers . . . I sort of assumed I could sell a
TV
idea that way, too. But I like this much better.' After a moment's thought she added: ‘What we must do next, obviously, is make a list of all the things we consider to be old
TV,
like putting a camera in one of the boxes at Sadler's Wells and showing a ballet from there—'