Unity (7 page)

I, on the other hand, will be more than happy to sit through his entire repertoire of anecdotes. And there’ll be ample opportunity. This is one writer who won’t be restricted to a courtesy tour of the studio, taking care not to trip over the stars. At first, Wolfram asked me to stay on as dialogue coach (oh yes, like I’m going to tell Sir Hallam Bamforth how to speak his lines!). Now, however, he has decided to cast me as Brian Howard.
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There’s no need to rack your brains; Howard is another post-Edinburgh addition. It’s not a large part so I don’t expect my Oscar to gain a twin, but it should be fun. I only wish that I hadn’t agreed to write a rather steamy scene between Howard and one of the boys that Unity pimped for him at the Munich
fasching
.
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Wolfram’s purpose – and it’s an honourable one – is to highlight Unity’s double
standards
in indulging her friends while, at the same time, her beloved Storms were dragging sex offenders to jail. If I suggest toning it down, he’ll accuse me of exhibiting double standards myself. I suppose I’ll just have to grin and bare it – and hope that my mother nips out for an ice cream.
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There are some things that I won’t bear, and some people that I won’t bare them for, at any rate in private. Not everything in Cannes has been stardust and glass slippers. Three nights ago, I
had a nasty run-in with Wolfram, which I was convinced would put paid to my whole film career. I should make it clear that there was no damage, apart from the permanent dent in my trust. But it shook me. We’d come back from the Warner Brothers party. Fliss accompanied some actors for a drink in the bar and Wolfram followed me upstairs, saying that he had something to discuss. I don’t know whether he was buoyed by the reception of his film or high on drugs or simply in holiday spirits, but he pounced on me, right here, in this room, on the bed where I’m writing this letter. I’ll spare you a full account, except to say that, for someone so skinny, he was remarkably strong. I was so taken aback that I was afraid he’d mistake my shock for acquiescence. I decided that the best bet was to treat it as a game: a bout of locker-room horseplay. ‘I give in,’ I yelled. ‘You’re the winner!’ But he was having none of it and grappled with me like a man possessed. I had no recourse but to hit back, which I did, punching him hard in the chest. I winded him and broke free. I expected him to slink away. But not a bit of it. He accused me of provoking him, of giving off signals, of not knowing my own mind, oh, of all sorts of rubbish. I’d accuse him of attempted rape if the word weren’t so loaded (although I now know that it is no more restricted to women than Boy is to blacks).

What is it with the stalky business of sex? How could he have shown such a lack of respect for my feelings, not to mention his own dignity? I’m not naive (no, really, you and Fliss played that card far longer than was warranted); I’m aware that he’s attracted to me. But so what? I’m attracted to his films, and yet I don’t try to steal his camera. I decided right from the start that the most sensible tactic was to make light of his interest and root our relationship in play. Anything else threatened to turn me into the stuffed shirt of his allegations. So I studiously ignored his leaning against me in lifts and rubbing his leg against me at dinner and giving me neck massages which left me far tenser than when I was hunched
over the keys. My reserve merely confirmed his view of the cold, passionless English: a confusion of temperature and temperament with which, to avoid embarrassment, I was willing to comply.

Please don’t be offended, but can you explain to me why gay men assume that anyone who doesn’t respond to their advances must be repressed? I know that it’s a generalisation and there will always be exceptions (I’m writing to one now), but you only have to think back to Brian and Crispin solemnly asserting that all queer-bashers are secretly queer in order to appreciate the truth. They’re as bad as the people who claim that Hitler was
anti-Semitic
because he feared that he might have Jewish blood: a view which is not merely flawed but dangerous. It’s as if self-hatred were the only hatred that can be understood and – what’s more insidious – that can be justified.

I’m sorry to dump all this on you, but I thought that you’d want to know. Fliss, on the other hand, showed a lack of concern that was almost hurtful (although that may have been my fault for fudging the details). Even so, I’d have been murderous if he’d tried anything similar with her. Like Judge Out-Of-Touch castigating a victim for wearing a mini-skirt, she managed to make out that I was the one in the wrong. She accused me of over-reacting (her exact phrase was ‘being a drama queen’, which struck me as particularly inapt). Sex was such a trivial thing (this, remember, was my girlfriend speaking!); it would cost me so little and please him so much. I should think of it as cabbage (I presume in the sense of swallowing something unpleasant). She dismissed my disgust as a morbid fear of penetration. Which is nonsense. If it’s anything, it’s a healthy fear of pain. Besides, as she knows better than anyone, it goes way beyond the physical. I’m not gay. The closest I’ve ever come was when I was playing Patroclus. And you may recall how slippery I found him. What you don’t know – but then this seems to be the moment for revelations – is how hard I worked at his sexuality. Stumped by his attraction to Achilles, I
decided to improvise. I locked the door, stood naked between the wardrobe mirrors, stared at my bottom and wanked. It didn’t help.

My fears about having to face Wolfram turned out to be
groundless
, since he acted as though nothing untoward had occurred. I was determined to prevent any further misunderstanding so I told him what I’d told Fliss, namely that I was in love with her and could never contemplate sleeping with another woman, let alone a man. Neither of them responded in the way that I’d hoped. Fliss, ignoring my avowal, tempted me with Brigitte Bardot. I explained that it would make no difference if the woman on offer were Brigitte Bardot or Hermione Gingold; it still wouldn’t be her. Wolfram patted my cheek (a sure sign that I was back in favour) and called me his incurable romantic – ‘meiner unheilbarer Romantiker’ – which, needless to say, was not a compliment. In his view, believing in love in the age of Freud is as anachronistic as ironing a shirt in the age of nylon or reading a book in the age of film. ‘Romantic love is dead.
Madame Bovary
and
Anna Karenina
will be as obscure in the future as the bible stories that inspired our grandfathers are to us.’

I have to stop now, which is probably just as well since I’m sure you have your fill of tortured sexuality at school. Fliss has come back from the Menachem Golem party. See what I give up for you! She wants me to tell you that she thinks you’re a star for ploughing through all this (Gee, thanks for the vote of
confidence
!) and that she promises to write you a letter soon. She also wants me to tell you … what …? I can’t quite make out above the water, but I think it’s that ‘just because I can’t be bothered doesn’t mean that I don’t care’.

Must dash. The room is filling up with a delightful scent of lavender and I’m being summoned to scrub the most gorgeous back in Cannes.

Ever your devoted pal,

Luke.

8 München 40,

Giselastrasse 23,

West Germany

11th Sept 1977

Wertester Freund,

Thanks so much for the Oxo cubes. You’ve saved my life. I won’t pretend that they can ever replace Marmite, but they’re easily the next best thing. And, until the manufacturers (what a miserable word for the geniuses behind Marmite) come up with an airmail version, the jars would be ruinous to post. You’ve made an old Marmiteholic very happy. So, once again, many thanks.

Now, please, please, please, can we drop the guilt-trip? So what if your letters are shorter than mine? In the immortal words of Fliss’s yoga teacher, ‘it’s not a competition’. Besides, an Oxo cube is worth a thousand words. No, but seriously, if anyone should apologise, it’s me for rambling on. I put it down to growing up in the Sudan. Every month, my grandmother used to send us one of those niggardly pre-paid air-letters, which felt as if every phrase had been carefully costed. She wasn’t going to pay for any excess verbiage! An analyst would probably say that was what drove me to the other extreme (‘It is quite clear, Herr Dent, that your hostility towards your grandmother springs from a repressed desire to sleep with her’). So, if you have a problem, blame it on my childhood. I always do.

I also owe you an apology for having waited so long to reply, but Munich has been manic. At least now we’ve survived the first week of shooting, we can take the odd moment to relax. The schedule here is even tighter than in England. You must have grasped the pressures we were under when you visited us on
location
(Now that really was too short!). I’m only sorry that you chose such a dreary day. If you’d wanted to watch a chauffeur park a Rolls Royce ten times, you could have taken the tube to Bond
Street. In fact, that was all too familiar a pattern. Unbeknownst to anyone (apart from Fliss and her entire family, who thought it not worth a mention), Schloss Benthall is in the direct flight-path of an American airbase. As the five-hundredth plane roared past, we started to suspect that they were under secret instructions from Hollywood to fly as often and as low as possible. Even so, I hope that you picked up enough tips to impress the boys – if only with your inside knowledge of the factors that can disrupt filming. I’m sorry if I failed you on the ‘dish-the-dirt’ front. I know what an old gossip you are! When I’m summoned to MGM, I promise to give you the exclusive story of my love-nest with the stars. Speaking of which, Fliss sends her love.

Meanwhile, why the sudden attack of reticence? Of course I’d be happy to jot down a few observations of life on set for your English class. What’s more to the point is whether you’ll be prepared to shoulder the additional guilt such a letter is bound to inspire (I know that’s below the belt, but you deserve it). There’s no point in my trying to squeeze into Size 4 shoes, so I’ll just have to hope that the boys are interested in the same things I am (which, if you believe Fliss, is more than likely). I give you full permission to discard or embellish whatever you wish.

I think that my overriding impression is one of muddle, although I don’t suppose that that’s very helpful (‘Clarity of thought, Dent minor. That’s what’s kept the upper classes up!’). Wherever you look, there are people busy with their allotted tasks. The grips are laying cables from the generator vans and tracks for the cameras. The electricians are installing lighting rigs. The sound engineers are checking … well, I leave you to guess. The actors are being ferried between wardrobe and make-up, while their stand-ins seize a solitary moment of glory in front of the focus puller’s tape. And yet out of all the mayhem, the crash of equipment and egos, there somehow emerges a film.

My second impression is harder to convey. It has to do with
vulnerability. As with the planes, we’re forever at the mercy of forces beyond our control. Take last Monday. We were filming at the Führerbau, the former Nazi reception building. (For all Wolfram’s talk of psychic resonance, I find it spooky. Lord knows how the drama students cope. Cambridge ghosts were oppressive enough and few of them were mass murderers.
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) The scene in question was one where Unity and Diana take Lord and Lady Redesdale to tea with Hitler. Although it could hardly have been simpler – an establishing shot of Martin Bormann greeting the group on the steps and ushering them indoors – tension was heightened on account of its being the two Geralds’ (Geraldine’s and her father’s) first day on set in Munich. Apart from the hanging of two giant eagles above the doors, the building itself required remarkably little transformation, but Gerhard (the Director of Photography) spent hours adjusting the lighting. Wolfram’s trademark ‘Seid ihr fertig?’ became ever more pointed, but Gerhard refused to be rushed. Then, the moment he declared himself satisfied, the heavens opened. So we all trooped inside to a mock-up of Hitler’s office, which had been prepared as a
contingency
, only to find that the sky had turned so overcast that it too had to be relit.

Dora – that’s Dora Manners in case you’re wondering (although I think I introduced her to you in England
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) – who’s playing Muv,
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put it best when she compared it to queuing for bread in Russia. As soon as it’s your turn, they run out of supplies. In our
case, it’s Gerhard who’s cast as the villain. Every shot, however short, requires its own lighting. First we do the master shot. Then it’s relit. Then we do a close-up. Then it’s relit. Then we do a reverse shot. Then it’s relit. And, each time, the actors are left to kick their heels. Do emphasise to any budding Bogarts or Bogardes in the form how essential it is that they develop a liking for
crosswords
. I shall never again sneer at film stars who complain of exhaustion (all that ‘working on a trawler is nothing compared to the trauma of filming
The Cruel Sea
’). In a twelve – and sometimes fourteen hour – day, they face the camera for a matter of minutes and yet they have to remain in a constant state of alertness. On reflection, it’s less like waiting for bread than waiting for a bomb.

Talking of Dora (or should that be thinking of Dora? See, I can read you like a book), let me tell you that she’s amazing. I swear that, given half an hour, you’d be crazy about her and I don’t mean in that gay man/icon kind of way. She’s exactly what you’d expect from all those Ealing films. It’s almost a shock to see her in colour. The husky voice is every bit as seductive off-screen as on.
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The champagne curls and retroussé nose are every bit as charming. Far from damaging her looks, the laugh lines (her actual laugh is
deliciously
dirty) add authenticity. Lord knows how old she is. Fliss, who hasn’t taken to her (do you detect a whiff of the hen coop?), says that she starred in her first film before the War, so she has to be knocking sixty. You’d never guess. I made the mistake of suggesting that it must be because she’s small-boned. Ouch! She certainly makes no concessions to age and has been openly flirting with younger actors. One of them, Liam Finch (a.k.a. Oswald Mosley), actually asked her how old she was. ‘It all depends where you measure from,’ she purred. ‘How about birth?’ he replied.