Unity (16 page)

The poor chap was distraught. I assured him that no one could have done more. Shortly afterwards, Dora rang with the news that Sir Hallam was out of danger. His long-term prospects, however, were not encouraging. He had suffered a severe haemorrhage. His left side was paralysed and his speech seriously impaired.
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I visited him in the hospital which, although it had been largely rebuilt after the War, was the same one where Unity was treated following her suicide bid. I took him a new biography of Vivien Leigh that I found in the English bookshop and, in an attempt to rouse him from his torpor, pointed out his name in the Index. To my acute discomfort, his only response was ‘Potty!’, which he repeated with all the passion he had once invested in Lear’s ‘Howl’. I presumed that he was alluding to her well-known mental problems and that his brusqueness was simply the result of the stroke. ‘No! Potty!’ he said, dismissing my gentle chiding. He grew so agitated that I feared that I must have misunderstood and asked if he wanted me to call a nurse. ‘Potty, potty!’ he cried. So I frantically scanned the room and, sure enough, on the top shelf, concealed by a towel, was a chamberpot. Not knowing – and, to be frank, not caring to know – how he planned to use it, I took it down, only to watch him fling it aside with a great wail. ‘Oh the potty of it!’, he exclaimed. And, with tears welling in my eyes, I was forced to agree.

This letter comes stamped with a capital D.
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I know you’re as silent as the proverbial but, please, don’t repeat a word of it to a soul. Sir Hallam needs the chance to recuperate without being hounded by the press. Even Gerald has been relatively solicitous – although his explanation for what caused the stroke was beyond gross. The man has missed his vocation: he should have written for
Der Stürmer
.
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Perhaps the saddest moment of all came yesterday, when Sir Hallam was due to be flown home. The only person who could be found to collect him was his agent. He has a legion of admirers but not a single available relative or friend. ‘Oh the potty of it!’ indeed.

After so much high drama, I think you’d agree that we were entitled to a few days of calm, a few days with nothing to do but to sit in the trailer, complaining about the script (!) and the director and the interminable waiting. But no, that would have been too much like a normal film. For
Unity
read crisis, and this time the culprit was Felicity – or rather, Felicity and Geraldine together. As I mentioned before, when they heard about the failure of the
hijack
, Baader and two of his comrades committed suicide (a fourth was rescued). You’d have supposed that it was an open-and-shut case, but not for Geraldine Conspiracy-Theory Mortimer or Ahmet Smash-Imperialzionism Samif. Not content with blaming the government for every other injustice, they now blame it for the deaths which, in their view, were assassinations. But surely, even if the authorities were that devious, they wouldn’t be that stupid, when they know every disaffected activist will be on to them, crying ‘Foul!’?

To listen to Geraldine – and you don’t often have much choice – you’d take Baader for another Che Guevara. Felicity, as always, echoes her sentiments as though they were Holy Writ. Then, on Thursday, without a word to anyone – including, if you can believe it, Ahmet – they took the train to Stuttgart, where the three terrorists were to be buried. Can you credit such irresponsibility? We were forced to jettison a whole day’s shooting. Wolfram’s rage was awesome, not least because he was dressed and made-up as Hitler. Even so, it was the sight of the usually imperturbable Thomas tearing pages out of the script that brought home to me just how serious the disappearance was. All day long, a hundred people sat kicking their heels, with nothing to do but think up increasingly bizarre explanations for what had happened. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Gerald,
unexpectedly
cast in the role of anxious father. He immediately held a press conference at which he maintained that, in spite of her having issued a statement condemning the abduction of Schleyer,
his daughter remained a target for neo-Nazis. He had scarcely finished speaking when the studio received the first of a spate of calls from men who claimed to be holding both actresses under duress.

Eager to escape the Jeremiahs, I returned to the hotel with Dora. As we sat waiting for news, I idly flicked on the television, only to catch an outside broadcast from Stuttgart. I instantly –
instinctively
– knew that that was where the two women had gone. And I wasn’t alone in my intuition. At the very moment that the camera zoomed in on the pair, each wearing regulation dark glasses and carrying a single rose, the telephone rang. It was Wolfram who, not pausing to draw breath, subjected me to a
ten-minute
diatribe on my failure to control my ‘girlfriend’.

I’m ashamed to say that I lost my rag. I shouted back that she was no longer my girlfriend. He had seen to that. I poured out my resentment about the way he had treated us both and swore that my experience on this film had soured me so much that I would never go near another. Abandoning all restraint, I ran through my repertoire of insults, ending with the charge that he was typecast as Hitler. Dora looked on amazed: convinced, as she told me later, that the rift was irreversible. But, to the surprise of us both, he waited until I wore myself out and then asked me to meet him in the hotel bar at six.

I duly presented myself along with Dora, who had insisted on my need for a witness, only to find him slouched over a beer. As he swivelled towards us, looking more febrile and emaciated than ever, I was struck by the fear that he would die before the end of shooting. I tried to suppress it as he patted my cheek – both cheeks, to be more precise (all four, to be graphic) – and handed me a box containing a heavy gold bracelet. ‘For my English
Robespierre
,’ he declared: an allusion that left me almost as confused as the gift. I could never wear it (I’d feel like Ronnie Biggs!), but I
felt strangely touched. Here was a sign that, whatever Dora’s misgivings, our relationship might still be repaired.

Don’t put up the bunting yet, but I have hopes that a further repair job may be possible. Felicity and Geraldine returned to face the wrath of the entire unit. What’s more, Felicity was given an official dressing-down by the Embassy. For weeks, the papers have run stories about her relationship to the Ambassador. They have now taken an unwelcome twist. Her uncle is due in Munich this weekend to attend a commemoration service for the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered at the ’72 Olympics. It was originally scheduled for six weeks ago but, along with everything else in the country, it had to be put on hold during the hunt for Schleyer. Dignitaries and politicians, including Cyrus Vance and half the Israeli cabinet, are flying in from around the globe. Felicity is supposed to be accompanying her uncle. So it must be the source of some embarrassment, to say the least, to HMG that she was photographed at the funeral of three people who, if not actively engaged in it, remain popularly associated with the Palestinian cause.

True to form, Felicity expressed no contrition, but nor did she show any of her usual naughtiest-girl-in-the-school defiance. She endured the rebukes with an air of martyrdom, claiming to be astounded that no one – not even Wolfram – had applauded her stand. Then, citing exhaustion and an early call the next morning, she went up to her room. I waited for a few moments before following, half-afraid that she would leave me outside the door. To my relief, she seemed pleased to see me, but the presence of
Geraldine
and Ahmet put paid to any intimate chat. Geraldine then launched into a blow-by-blow account of the aftermath of the funeral, when the police set up road-blocks and harassed the departing mourners, arresting anyone who protested, including her. She was hauled off to a police station where she was
strip-searched
by two (male) officers. I found this as improbable as Baader’s murder, but I knew better than to press the point. When I advised her to file a complaint, she snarled that this wasn’t ‘an episode of Dixon of Stuttgart Green’.
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So I proposed, instead, that she appeal to the British Consul – there must be some benefits to friendship with the Ambassador’s niece – only to be harangued on the various smears that the British government had used against her. At which point, I resolved to keep my suggestions – and doubts – to myself.

I was unnerved by her naked hostility. It’s hard enough being a scapegoat for the crimes of my race and nation without adding those of my sex. Ahmet even insinuated that it was only a lack of uniform that prevented me from behaving as brutally as the
officers
– a strange accusation from one who takes guns to bed. Fliss, on the other hand, was friendlier than she had been for weeks. Paying little attention to Geraldine and Ahmet’s departure, she perched on my chair and said that she wanted to talk about me. I should have known that what she meant was my attitude to Geraldine. I offered to patch up relations with a grudging ‘for your sake’, at which she charged me with being a typical Englishman who still swallowed his medicine ‘for mummy’. Then she sounded a note of the old Fliss and said that one of the things she had always loved about me (check out that adverb!) was my desire to see the best in everything. On occasion, however, that became culpably naive. The world wasn’t as simple as a Boy’s Own Story. Sometimes the only honest response was to blow it up and start again. But by then I’d stopped listening for, while the words were recycled Geraldine, the tone was authentic Fliss. And, sure enough, a moment later we were in each other’s arms and she was
telling me that she loved me: she always had and she always would.

The words are resounding in my head even as I write and, although I don’t think that they can ever again carry the simple charge that they did before we came to Munich, they fill me with hope. I was wrong to condemn her for going to the funeral. My guess is that she had some sort of revelation at the graveside: a recognition of the fragility of life which persuaded her that what the two of us share is far too precious to throw away. So, strange as it may sound, I owe Baader a debt of gratitude. What’s more, it’s time for me to acknowledge my own role in the split. You wouldn’t believe that anyone, let alone a writer, could have been so insensitive. Here’s Fliss, in her screen debut, worrying that the entire burden of the film rests on her shoulders. And here’s me, a veteran of the dailies, assuming that she’s as enchanted by her performance as everyone else. So, do I reassure her? Do I give her confidence the much-needed boost? No. I leave her to flounder in her insecurities.

Yesterday was devoted to mending fences. Uncle Ambassador rapped Fliss over the knuckles but he still wants her to accompany him to the service. His hand was weakened by the illness of his wife (familially known as the Diplomatic Bag). Fliss made her usual profession of indifference but I could see how desperate she was to go. Whatever she may say to her po-faced friends, you and I both know that there is a side of her that hankers after status. I suspect that it’s in an attempt to keep it under wraps that she has made me promise to stay away from the stadium. Not that she has any need to worry. Given its size and our respective places in the VIP stand and the terraces (don’t worry; I shan’t labour the symbolism), it would be a miracle if we managed to spot one another in the crowd. Nevertheless, I’ve no intention of arguing. I only applied for my ticket at her request. I shall be glad of a quiet
Sunday. Besides, I may need to recover my strength. The best news of all is that she has agreed to spend tonight at the flat.

I don’t want to tempt fate, but I feel in my bones that we’ll be back together before too long.

Question: what’s incurable yet in the best of health?

Answer: a romantic.

Well, it works for me.

And, to think, you’ll be out here yourself in a fortnight. I doubt I’ll have a chance to write to you before then, so please don’t forget to send me all the details of your arrival. Unless I’m wanted on set, which, given that Brian has only one remaining scene seems unlikely, I’ll be holding up my Welcome sign at the airport.

Ever your devoted pal,

Luke.

8 München 40,

Giselastrasse 23,

West Germany

6th Nov 1977

Dear Michael,

You’re very kind. I have heard the phone ring, but you must forgive me if I didn’t answer it. I’m beset by journalists. They, at least, are paid for their prurience, unlike my so-called friends who mask their curiosity as concern. Dora sent around a crate of champagne, although whether it was out of sympathy or lust I couldn’t say … Thank you so much for the Marmite. You’re very kind. And airmail too. I hope it didn’t bankrupt you. I shall save it until I’ve been able to work out whether nothing tastes of anything or everything tastes the same.

Fliss loved you, you know, however much she used to tease you. She was the one who insisted that we include you in all our plans. To be honest, there were times when I found the constant presence of a third party oppressive. You seemed to be so sensitive to everything except for our need to be alone. Fliss forbade me to mention it for fear of hurting you. But then she didn’t feel the same way. To her, three could never be a crowd. The universe was built on threes: from the three persons of the Trinity to the three particles of the atom to the three acts of
Private Lives
. Triptychs and trilogies and trios. Besides, in a triangle, she could stand at the apex. In a couple, she would always be on one side.

Did you see the photographs? The German press showed no restraint. All that slaughter splattered across the front pages: the perfect complement to their breakfast sausages. We slept together the night before. After such a gap, it felt like a repeat of the first time but without the nerves or, rather, with only good ones. I say
slept
but, in truth, we barely dozed. We made love and we talked. And we were so at one with each other that we completed our
sentences twenty kisses later. We devised schemes for our life back in England. Was that the mark of someone who was proposing to plant a bomb the next day? Was the whole night a charade? No, absolutely not. What no one understands is that I knew Fliss. I would have known if she had intended to play truant for an
afternoon
, let alone plot a murder. And you’ll back me up. You knew her too. In a world full of closed minds, we shall hold out for the truth.