Unity (6 page)

What’s the difference (this is Wolfram-speak) between actors who simulate sex in a haze of synthetic sweat and porn stars who use their entire bodies? Why is the fake admired and the truth reviled? The reply that immediately sprang to mind was ‘Art’, but I knew that he would dismiss it with some ‘eye of the beholder’ claptrap. So, weighing my words, I said that it might be that pornography was too real. It’s the same reason that we value a painting more than a photograph – and a formal study more than a holiday snap. Art is about selection; about leaving gaps; about engaging in a dialogue with the public, whereas pornography permits a dialogue only with itself and, from what I’ve heard (I’m not being coy here; I’ve never seen a porn film – have you?), it is largely restricted to grunts. I quoted your phrase (watch out for the boomerang!) about the distinction between erotica and
pornography
being that pornography aims straight for the groin without stopping at the imagination along the way. Art, I concluded, lay in what was held back. ‘Yes,’ he replied pointedly, ‘holding back is what the English do best.’

Do write and let me know what you think – although don’t address anything here. We fly back to Munich at the end of the week. I wish you could fix a trip. Why not pretend to come down with scarlet fever or something equally noxious to growing boys?
(I still remember your scrofula in
Troilus
). It would be an act of compassion. I can’t tell you how starved I am of intelligent conversation … well, I could, but it would make your head swell. When I rang last month, I was greeted so brusquely – I presume by your shot-putting matron – that I vowed never to risk it again. It’s not that people here aren’t friendly, but there’s no one with whom I can kick around ideas. Let’s hear it for those after-hours sessions in your room in Christ’s! Fliss is, as ever, my salvation, but she appears to have inherited her mother’s belief that ideas are best contemplated in private, like bank-balances and bowels. You ought to have been there last Christmas when Um (that’s a phonetic representation of my confusion over what to call her) pounced on my mere mention of castratos. ‘A eunuch is not a fit subject for the dinner table,’ she decreed. I had to do a quick check to ensure that my own balls were still in place.

Speaking of bowels, you ought to be very grateful that you weren’t cast as Hitler, given the aspect of his psyche that Wolfram intends to stress. If you’re not familiar with
coprophilia
, look it up in the school dictionary as soon as the boys are safely tucked up in bed. On the other hand, you may find the pages so well thumbed that they open of their own accord the way that mine did at
orgasm
. ‘A climax of venereal excitement’: even now the words carry an electric charge but, then, they were so seductive that I almost confirmed the definition on the spot. I very much doubt that the same will apply to you. A sick-bag may be more in order. Nevertheless, it should be instructive. Don’t ask me how he plans to shoot it; I’m only the writer. And, as if to prove that writers don’t enjoy the same cachet in Cannes that they do in Cambridge, Fliss came out with a joke that was doing the rounds in the Carlton Bar. It concerned an actress so dumb that she slept with the writer. Wolfram guffawed; Mahmoud sniggered; I smiled politely. I was surprised that she should show so little self-
awareness
. When you think about it, the joke’s on her.

If you can’t place Mahmoud, substitute Mohammed. After all, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past six months. No wonder he’s been giving me such filthy looks. Why didn’t he say
something
? If I’d been mangling your name, wouldn’t you have set me straight? But, no, not a whisper. I wouldn’t have felt so bad if it had been anyone else: if I’d been Wolfganging Wolfram or Renéeing Renate. Mohammed makes me sound like my father addressing every black man as ‘Boy’. I was so convinced that it was an epithet unique to Africans that, when a teacher in Hastings yelled ‘Boy!’ at me, I was appalled. ‘You can’t say that,’ I piped indignantly. ‘I’m English.’

Mahmoud … Mahmoud … Mahmoud: it’s ingrained on my mind and on my conscience. Wolfram took him to the Festival Ball. I thought it very brave of them to go as partners, but Fliss maintained that Mahmoud’s gender was less of an issue than his race. His Arab blood inspires a level of prurience that would be lacking if he came from Tunbridge Wells. I admit (to you, and you alone) that I too have indulged in the odd speculation. Even so, it ill behoves Fliss to rail against national stereotypes while dealing them up herself. Not content with Germans who eat frankfurters, French who chew garlic, and English who are
rosbifs
, she has produced an adult version. The Germans believe that you can do whatever you like so long as you’re locked in a cellar; the French that, whatever you do, you must be home in time to dine; the English that, no matter what you do, you’ll have to pay for it in the end.

Enough of this dodgy shag story and back to the Festival.
The Magic Mountain
was a triumph. The film is said to be a hot tip for the Palme d’Or (although Wolfram holds out little hope after his run-in with Rossellini
26
) and Dieter Reiss to be favourite for Best
Actor. I worried that, if he wins, he might pass on playing Julius Streicher which is, after all, a minor role. Wolfram, however, was confident of his loyalty. The group works like an old-fashioned rep. One week, you’re playing the Countess and the next, the maid … unless you happen to be Renate, in which case you’re always the maid. She’s here too, of course, although, according to Fliss, she had to buy her own ticket. She would have been reduced to sleeping on the beach, had Kurt – the composer – not lent her his bath. Wolfram was furious, damning him for a traitor. Then, the following day, he took out a wad of notes (we’re talking
Godfather
-thick) and told Renate to buy herself a dress for the premiere … Sometimes, I yearn for the clear-cut animosities of the ADC.

The film’s success was especially welcome, given the problems of financing
Unity
. Wolfram depends on official subsidy, but the board unexpectedly turned him down. Werner says that this is partly the result of the continuing controversy over
The Judge
, but also of fears about the subject. The Germans, understandably, have stringent laws about representing Hitler. (I should have liked to ask Wolfram how that squares with his anything-goes
philosophy
. Are they manifesting Nazi attitudes in banning depictions of Nazism? But, as always, my
esprit d’escalier
was stuck on the bottom rung). Wolfram claims that the reason for the board’s fighting shy is a mixture of a budget which is far higher than for his previous films (news that fills me with a perverse pride) and his decision to shoot in English. Fortunately, he has found a backer in Thomas Bücher, an independent producer whose work is unknown to me – to judge by the titles, they’re the kind of flimsy romantic comedy that would sink in mid-Channel. He has had a chequered career, including a spell in a concentration camp, a fact that made me intensely apprehensive about meeting him. Feeble I know, but I felt so callow in the face of his experience. I was sure that I would say the wrong thing (It’s your fault with all your digs about foot-in-mouth disease!). What’s more, I was filled
with an overwhelming dread that, the moment he sat down, he would roll up his sleeve. I needn’t have worried. His cuffs were as perfectly aligned as the rest of him. He is a sixty-year-old man of great dignity: poker-backed, silver-haired, with haunted, hooded eyes like the Buñuel actor, Fernando Rey.
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With his impeccable clothes and grooming, he looks as if he were permanently setting out for the opera.

At the end of
The Magic Mountain
press conference, Wolfram announced his plans to film
Unity
. He then summoned Fliss and me on to the platform (WITH NO WARNING!). I was horrified to hear him say that
Unity
had won the Best Play award in Edinburgh and that I was under commission to both the RSC (or, as he put it, the Royal Stratford Company) and the National Theatre. Do you think they collect cuttings? Will I be writer non grata for life? As we faced the photographic firing squad, I broke out in a muck sweat. Fliss, on the other hand, was coolness personified. In contrast to the starlets, she played the English rose, fresh and demure but with prickles – a
Dorothy Perkins
crossed with Dorothy Parker. Her mother would have been proud. The journalists went wild for her family tree. You’d think she were a member of the Royal Family rather than a remote connection. Some of their reports even elevated her to Lady Felicity (strangely enough, the German press did the same to Unity). Still, it seems to have worked. When it comes to column inches: Breeding Five, Breasts One.

When not meeting the press, we’ve been meeting actors. Since we start shooting in less than three months, you may think that it’s cutting it a little fine (and you wouldn’t be far wrong), but it’s Wolfram’s way. He likes to bring me along, ostensibly to help with the English but, as he already has an interpreter, I just sit there
sending out positive vibes. Sometimes he even forgets to introduce me, which is fine except when I’m taken for his boyfriend, as happened with Sir Hallam Bamforth or, worse, when I’m left to entertain a boyfriend as happened with Kris Bryant (all I can tell you is that the legendary muscles of steel stop short of his wrists!). Said boyfriend’s entire conversation consisted of gym routines and health food (‘I’ve checked out every grocery store in town. And you know what? No wheat germ!’). I felt like Mrs Carter, forced to watch a display of folk-dancing while her husband and President Brezhnev determined the fate of the world.

Sir Hallam, by the way, is ninety percent committed. ‘My memory’s too poor for the stage and my hooter’s too big for the box, so it’s the flicks or the workhouse,’ he said, with a disarming smile. Wolfram has asked him to play the British Consul, which may surprise you, but the part has been beefed up for the film. He has one great scene (though I say so myself), where he makes an impassioned plea to Goebbels to abandon the whole Nazi programme. Signing him would be such a coup. There can be no finer representative of civilised values, nor one who inspires more affection across the globe. It makes no sense: fifty years of triumphs in the classics and he’s best-known for playing a purser in a disaster movie opposite an actor (and I quote) ‘whose phenomenal gross – though discerning viewers might prefer to transpose the epithet – has made him the toast of Hollywood.’

Knowing that he was once your idol, I took pains to remember everything he said in order to report back. I expect that you’ve long since reordered your pantheon in favour of Thomas Arnold or A. S. Neill
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but, on the assumption that you still have a niche for old heroes, I offer this account. As with Bücher, I was terrified about meeting him – although for different reasons. Again, I was
instantly put at my ease. As soon as we’d cleared up the confusion over my status (he was mortified), we had an excellent talk. He has the modesty that accompanies true greatness (I’ve always thought that a cliché until now), expressing his profound gratitude that young people should take an interest in him, since they – we – are what keep him fresh. Fliss gave his words a sinister slant, alleging that he’s rapaciously queer, but then she says that about everyone she admires yet doesn’t fancy. He strikes me as utterly asexual – as though he’d spent so many years reciting Shakespeare that his veins flow with blank verse rather than blood.

We met in the hotel Bar, where Fliss seems to have taken up permanent residence. She claims to be studying how the rich spend their money (she’s so acquisitive
29
). When I suggested that she look a little closer to home, she did her usual trick of describing the dower house as a tied cottage. Meanwhile, I pass the time by playing celebrity-I-spy. That evening, the first that I spotted was Sir Hallam. Unlike an American star with his phalanx of publicists, he was sitting alone. Charged by Fliss, I invited him to join us. To my surprise, he accepted. He was embarrassingly flattering about the script … although Fliss later told me to discount his praise since he’s infamous for only ever reading his own role (which explains his appearance in
The Academy
among all those debauched Athenians). He informed us that he had met Unity backstage at the Old Vic. We pumped him for memories. ‘I think it was Diana Wynward who brought her. Now there was an actress. Did you see her Beatrice? No, of course not. You’re far too young…. The only thing I recall about her is that she barely spoke. But then very few people do in a
dressing-room
. Especially when you’re playing a King. And I’ve played so
many. It says in one of the books that I was a heartthrob of hers. Oh dear! One does attract some very strange people.’

As if on cue, an American matron with a magnifying glass dangling on an already voluminous bosom descended on us and asked ‘Sir Bamforth’ if he would sign an autograph for her
granddaughter
. The slighted knight graciously obliged.

Just as Wolfram relates everything to the cinema, so Sir Hallam does to the theatre. Mention any world event of the past fifty years and he’ll tell you what he was appearing in at the time. As soon as I brought up the Munich crisis, he told me that he had been ‘at the Haymarket in
Rosmersholm
with darling Hattie. It was terribly bad for business. The audience stayed away in droves.’ He himself made an extensive tour of Germany in 1936 (‘the summer between
Quality Street
and the
Dream
’), which he described, rather archly, as his sauerkraut days. It started with a mission to Berlin to persuade Christopher Isherwood, whose verse plays with Auden had enjoyed a modest success,
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to write a piece for him. ‘Of course, it came to nothing. I think they regarded me as too West End.’

He is endearingly indiscreet. Talking of ‘darling Hattie’, he remarked that her autumnal success was ‘conclusive proof of the adage that old age is the revenge of ugly women.’ George V, who slept through a command performance of
Henry IV
, was ‘a man so lowbrow he thought highbrow was spelt eyebrow.’ Churchill, who watched productions of Shakespeare with the text propped on his knee, ‘used to collect his thoughts so slowly that he appeared to be anthologising them.’ On learning that Geraldine Mortimer was being mooted to play Diana, he described her as ‘a woman who has never been able to live down to her reputation,’ adding that ‘most actresses are wanting to be discovered; she was discovered
to be wanting.’ Fliss, ever the cynic, claimed that the line sounded so rehearsed that he must have used it before.
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He is adamant that, if Geraldine is cast, he will have a clause written into his contract banning her from talking politics on set.