The Twilight Hour (3 page)

‘He doesn't want a hero. He just wants
her
.'

‘But Gwendolen will want a strong leading man. She'll be that much stronger with someone to match her.'

‘For God's sake,' muttered Colin, ‘we don't want a lot of romantic tosh – love scenes, sex, that's just bourgeois decadence.'

Alan and Hugh both shouted their derision, and I was puzzled. Why was Colin so down on passion? He
must
be unhappy in love. There was another angry silence.

‘D'you want more toast?' I enquired brightly, to cover up the sticky silence. They ignored me.

After a while Hugh said cautiously: ‘I know you think I shouldn't have been talking to Enescu off my own bat, but it really will be worth it. Working with him we'll get known – and then we won't need him any more. Besides which, he's in with Stanley Colman and Colman's the man with the money.'

This further enraged Colin. ‘Stanley Colman! Why the hell do we want to have anything to do with him?'

Hugh smiled: ‘He's got money, hasn't he? He's just someone who got lucky in the war. I quite liked him.'

‘Black marketeer more likely. For heaven's sake, what are we doing with these people?'

‘We're trying to get money for our film. We can't be too choosy,' said Alan. ‘And you're the one who says the end justifies the means.'

That shut Colin up. He sat there sulking. I spread the toast thinly with marge. ‘He won't give you any money, anyway,' I said, ‘he'll give it to Gwendolen Grey.'

The three men stared at me.

‘He's in love with her, didn't you notice?'

‘Oh, darling!' said Alan with an indulgent smile. They thought love had nothing to do with it. They were so wrong! Love – or sex – had everything to do with what happened later … or some twisted version of love.

‘Giving it to Gwendolen Grey
will
be giving to us – if we get in there,' said Hugh. ‘Enescu is a real original – he's taken something from the German expressionist films of the twenties and put a new slant on it – it
can
be used for social criticism, it heightens everything, it makes it all less drab. And he's had this wonderful idea of giving his next film a really artistic dimension.' He paused and looked sideways, enquiringly, at Alan, but Alan gave a shake of the head so minimal I don't think Colin noticed it.

‘Artistic? What does that mean?' Colin was frowning.

‘Oh – I don't know the details. Anyway, really it's up to us to develop the refugee idea in a way that'll interest Radu. If he takes the bait, well and good, if he doesn't then –' and he shrugged, ‘we try something else.'

three

ALAN AND I HAD OUR FIRST BIG QUARREL
outside the Communist Party HQ. Covent Garden seemed an odd place for the Communist Party to have their headquarters, I thought, as we picked our way over the cobbles, trying not to slip on the packed snow or trip on potatoes and broken orange boxes. I'd passed through Covent Garden from time to time – after we'd been to the Charing Cross Road bookshops, once to the ballet – but I'd never guessed that Communists occupied the ordinary-looking building on the corner, across the street from Moss Bros, who hired out evening clothes. It was just another office block, and it seemed incredible that behind its façade lurked that secret, mysterious entity, that shadowy – shady – organisation: ‘The Party' – as Colin referred to it, as though it were the
only
political party.

We waited for Colin outside. Alan stamped his feet and banged his gloved hands together. He'd wrapped his woollen scarf, which I'd knitted him, right round his mouth and jaw, and was wearing a wide-brimmed black hat. I huddled into my musquash. My toes had gone numb.

A man in a heavy overcoat and a homburg hat hurried out, followed by a woman in belted tweed. ‘Are you waiting for someone?' She sounded suspicious, as though we were spying on ‘The Party'. Her hair, permed into ringlets, sprang out stiffly, like iron filings, from a dark green beret.

‘Colin Harris. He's expecting us.'

The woman looked us up and down in appraisal. ‘Why don't you wait inside? It's unbearably cold out here.' There was a pile of
Daily Workers
in a bin outside the door. She handed us one. ‘You could read that while you're waiting.'

I smiled. ‘Thanks. We often get it from Colin, actually.'

‘Do you?' The woman hesitated. I thought she might be sizing us up as potential recruits. But her companion, who had walked on, called back.

‘Come along, Doris. We'll be late.'

Alan watched them go: ‘Doris Tarr,' he said, ‘I remember her. It was her job to recruit intellectuals, the workers by brain. Thank God, she didn't recognise me. Ugh, so patronising and proselytising.'

‘What does proselytising mean?'

He looked down at me with a kind smile. ‘Always trying to convert you, get you to sign up to their beliefs.'

‘Colin doesn't do that.'

‘That might be because he's having problems,' said Alan, darkly.

‘I don't think he thinks I'm worth arguing with. He thinks I'm stupid – or just some flighty deb you've unfortunately got mixed up with.' This actually wasn't what I thought at all, and the moment I'd said it, I couldn't think why. Perhaps I was
wanting
to quarrel.

‘Don't be ridiculous. Communists believe in female equality.'

I'd been planning my next move for some time, and this seemed a good moment to grasp the nettle. ‘I'm going to get a job. I'm sick of moping about the flat all day. And it doesn't make sense, we haven't any money, we're broke.'

I wasn't sure how it had happened in the first place. While I was still at the Ministry, I'd discovered an amateur theatre group in Notting Hill. They'd given me a small part – that was how I'd first met Alan. After I'd holidayed with Mother in Devon, I'd meant to start looking for a job, but by that time Alan and I were talking of marriage. Three months later I found myself married and a housewife and somehow in the meantime I'd dropped out of the theatre group, which folded anyway.

The government was desperate to get women back to work; their posters begged women to train as nurses or teachers or go into factories. Nursing and teaching didn't appeal to me at all. I really only wanted to be an actress, but my father completely squashed that idea. No daughter of his, etc. My headmistress, Miss Pennington-Harborough, had said I was Oxford and Cambridge material, but Dad wasn't having that either. No, it was secretarial college for me, but I didn't much care for the idea of a secretarial job either, now the war was over.

Alan and I had discussed it, in a desultory sort of way. When I first met him he'd even said he might be able to get me an acting part in a film, but now we were married I had a feeling he liked me being at home. The flat was small, but still took a lot of cleaning, rations had to be queued for, it all took such ages, or perhaps I noticed it more, now the cold meant we were going out less.

‘What d'you intend to do?' enquired Alan in a neutral tone of voice.

For the moment it was just about money, not an acting career: ‘I thought – something in publishing. Or possibly … with a magazine.'

‘You can't just walk into that sort of work. You need experience.'

‘I have to start somewhere.'

‘You could start by helping me. I need someone to type out my manuscripts.'

So that was it. ‘You mean as your unpaid secretary.' I was surprised how angry I was.

It was one of those blazing rows that ignited from nothing. We were shouting at each other by the time Colin appeared.

‘What's up?'

‘He doesn't think I should get a job.'

‘I didn't
say
that!'

We rowed furiously as we walked towards the Charing Cross Road. Finally when we reached the corner, it was Colin's turn to shout: ‘Oh do
shut up
, both of you! Of course you should get a job. There's no place for ladies of leisure in the post-war world. That may be what your mother expected, Dinah, but things are different now.'

As if
I'd
been the one who wanted to stay at home! I was speechless with impotent fury.

Swiftly, though, my rage leaked out into bleak desolation and I was left as flat as a deflated barrage balloon. Who was this man I'd married? He was a stranger, I didn't know him, didn't understand him. And he didn't love me, he thought only of himself, his career. And all those promises of a film part – just a cheap seduction technique.

Leicester Square tube was nearby. ‘I'm going home,' I said. I began to walk away, but he put his hand on my arm to pull me back.

‘Dinah! Don't be ridiculous.' For a second I believed he was contrite, but all he said was: ‘You're behaving like a spoilt child.'

I stood there, hanging my head, mulishly silent, fighting tears.

‘Oh, do come on,' said Colin. ‘We'll be late. We're meeting Hugh and the Enescu gang at some seedy little club Colman belongs to in Mayfair. For God's sake, let's get it over with, try and make Hugh see sense.'

‘
Please
, Dinah.' Alan's voice was a little kinder now. I gave in, ungraciously. At that moment I'd honestly rather have been on my own, in the flat, having a good cry, not having to cope with the strain of keeping up with all these older people. They had such large, bulky plans, careers, obsessions – structures so large I couldn't get past them, couldn't get out into some space, some freedom, a place where I could have
my
plans, not fit in with them – with
him
all the time.

Alan hailed a taxi. That was another problem – we hadn't any money, but we took a taxi whenever we saw one, especially now it was so cold. Fortunately for our finances they weren't that frequent.

Now as we rattled along, Colin said: ‘We need to know a lot more about Enescu. How did he get the money to make
House of Shadows
, for example?'

Alan shrugged. ‘The fact that he got it is surely what matters.'

The taxi turned into a narrow street off Piccadilly. Colin muttered: ‘I'm sure I saw him hanging around the Athénée Palace in Bucharest with all the bourgeois riff-raff.'

Alan stooped to climb out of the taxi: ‘Are you saying you know more than you're letting on?'

Colin shrugged, but he looked at Alan very hard.

‘Well, keep it to yourself for the time being. Don't mess up this meeting. I mean it.
Don't
.'

Hugh was waiting for us in the tiny foyer and led us upstairs. The rather odd trio – possibly a
ménage à trois
, I suddenly thought, how very sophisticated – were seated at the far end of the room in a warm twilight of soft beige carpeting and tapestry
fauteuils
, tinted mirrors and vellum-shaded wall lights. I'd expected a more masculine sort of place, with leather and wood panelling, not this boudoir.

‘Like a tart's flat,' muttered Colin. That shocked me. How did he know?

The men stood up. Enescu actually kissed my hand! Stanley Colman clicked his fingers to bring the barman over to our table. There seemed to be a wide choice of drinks; no shortages here.

I sat and watched and listened – as Stanley Colman was doing. The Romanian seemed to like Hugh's idea for a feature film about refugees. Colin sat stonily silent as Enescu outlined his vision of a dark, romantic film, the tragedy of central Europe in the aftermath of war.

Finally Colin spoke: ‘I still think a documentary would reveal the truth more clearly.'

Radu smiled winningly. ‘But fiction
is
truth, really, it is just as true as
reportage
,' pronouncing the word in French. ‘What do
you
think, Stan? Would you put your money on a documentary?' A sly move, I thought, bringing in the money man like that.

Stanley looked from one to another of them. ‘I'll be frank with you,' he said. ‘I haven't even dipped a toe in the water, and I don't know if I will. To begin with I was interested in the cinemas – the buildings themselves. I didn't understand the link between the distributors and the actual theatres at first. But J Arthur Rank has that all sewn up – he owns the Odeons
and
the Gaumonts. The next thing is – well, how is this country going to compete with Hollywood? Things don't look good financially. And documentaries – is that what people want? Radu's right. All very well in the war, kept people's spirits up, that sort of thing, but now – don't you think the audiences want a bit of colour in their lives? A bit of escapism? Refugees – is that going to take people out of themselves? You know something? People don't
like
refugees. They don't want to hear about all the suffering in
mittel Europa
, they're too busy grumbling about the electricity cuts and the meat ration.'

Hugh was delighted; it was just what he'd said. ‘
Exactly
. We've been through all this, and I thought we'd agreed.'

Colin sipped his whisky in silence. Then, unexpectedly he turned to Enescu. ‘How did you start in films? There's no film industry in Romania.'

Enescu smiled modestly. ‘I have been very fortunate,' he said. ‘I was able to work abroad, in France, and before that in Berlin. With UFA. This was before the Nazi time, of course.'

‘You must have been very young.' Colin hardly bothered to hide his scepticism.

Radu smiled. ‘Indeed,' he said modestly, ‘I was very fortunate,' he repeated.

There was an awkward silence. Alan was looking apprehensive.

Colin was staring at him. ‘When did you actually leave? How did you escape?'

Enescu's smile never wavered. ‘Oh – this is a long story, very long. You don't want to hear the history of my life, I think.'

‘On the contrary.'

‘
Please
, Colin.' Alan frowned at his friend. Colin shrugged and looked away. I wondered what
really
was wrong. Colin so touchy; I couldn't believe it was just about what sort of film they were going to make.

Hugh turned to Radu. ‘Perhaps we can flesh out the ideas a bit.' He was clever, making the storyline sound less exaggerated and at the same time selling himself, referring to his wartime experience at the Crown Film Unit. Radu liked it, I could see. Alan nodded approvingly, although Hugh wasn't giving him enough credit for the success of
Home Front
. Colin sat stonily silent.

I got the feeling that Gwendolen was just bored by the whole conversation. Soon she stood up. She wore a close-fitting black dress with coffee piping, and a black and coffee turban hat. Her leopardskin coat lay abandoned on an empty chair. She walked over to one of the mirrors, removed the turban and shook her pageboy hair over her face, before smoothing it back again and replacing the hat. Stanley watched her.

I stood up too. ‘D'you know where the lavatory is?'

‘I need the powder room myself.' Again that hoarse voice with a metallic edge to it, not an accent, nothing you could pin down, just a rusty edge to it, the way blood tastes of iron, the way iron smells of blood.

In the stuffy little dressing room I stared at Gwendolen staring at herself in the glass. She took out her compact and powdered her face.

‘Nice to get away from the men for a few minutes, don't you think? They are so boring. Even your husband, dear, and he's quieter than the others. Don't you think? Talk, talk, talk, and all getting us nowhere.'

‘I thought the story for the film sounded rather exciting.'