Others, of whom Litvak had been one, had voted loudly for an Israeli girl who could be fitted out with Charlie's kind of background. Litvak was viscerally opposed, as others were, to the idea of counting on the loyalty of a Gentile, least of all an English one, for anything. Kurtz had disagreed with equal vehemence. He loved the naturalness in Charlie and coveted the original, not the imitation. Her ideological drift did not dismay him in the least; the nearer she was to drowning, he said, the greater would be her pleasure at coming aboard.
Yet another school of thought--for the team was nothing if not democratic, if you ignored Kurtz's natural tyranny--had advocated a longer and more gradual courtship in advance of Yanuka's kidnapping, ending with a straight, sober offer along the classically defined lines of intelligence recruitment. Once again, Kurtz strangled the suggestion at birth. A girl of Charlie's temperament did not make up her mind by idle hours of reflection, he shouted--and neither, as a matter of fact, did Kurtz. Better to compress! Better to research and prepare down to the last detail, and take her by storm in one tremendous push! Becker, when he had taken a look at her himself, agreed: impulse recruitment was best.
But what if she says no, for God's sake? they cried, Gavron the Rook among them. To have prepared so much, only to be jilted at the altar!
In that case, Misha my friend, said Kurtz, we will have wasted a little time, and a little money, and a few prayers. He held that view through thick and thin; even if, in his most private circle--which comprised his wife and occasionally Becker--he confessed that he was taking one devil of a gamble. But there again, perhaps he was playing the cocotte. Kurtz had had his eye on Charlie ever since she had first surfaced at the weekend sessions of the forum. He had marked her down, enquired about her, twisted her around in his mind. You assemble tools, you look for the tasks, you improvise, he would say. You match the operation to the resources.
But why drag her to Greece, Marty? And all the others with her? Are we a charity, suddenly, lavishing our precious secret funds on rootless left-wing English actors?
But Kurtz was unbudgeable. He demanded scale from the start, knowing he would only be whittled down thereafter. Since Charlie's odyssey must begin in Greece, he insisted, let her be brought to Greece ahead of time, where the foreignness and magic of her situation would detach her more easily from domestic ties. Let the sun soften her. And since Alastair would never let her go alone, let him come also--and be removed at the psychological moment, thus further depriving her of support. And since all actors collect families--and do not feel secure unless they have the protection of the flock--and since no other natural method presented itself by which to lure the couple abroad--So it went on, one argument predicating another, until the only logic was the fiction, and the fiction was a web that enmeshed everyone who tried to sweep it away.
As to the removal of Alastair, it provided on that very day in London an amusing postscript to all their planning up till now. The scene occurred, of all places, in the domain of poor Ned Quilley, while Charlie was still deeply sleeping, and Ned was treating himself to a small refreshment in the privacy of his room in order to fortify himself for the rigours of lunch. He was in the act of unstopping his decanter when he was startled by a stream of obscenities, delivered in a male Celtic brogue, from the direction of Mrs. Longmore's cubby-hole downstairs, and ending with the demand that she "call the old goat out of his shed before I personally go up and drag him out." Wondering who of his more erratic clients had elected to have his nervous breakdown in Scottish, and before lunch, Quilley tiptoed gingerly to the door and put his ear to the panel. But he failed to recognise the voice. A moment later there was a thunder of footsteps, the door was flung open, and there before him stood the swaying figure of Long Al, known to him from occasional sorties to Charlie's dressing-room, where Alastair was in the habit of sitting out her performances with the aid of a bottle during his own protracted spells of idleness. He was filthy, he had three days' growth, he was blind drunk. Quilley attempted, in his best Pickwickian style, to demand the meaning of this outrage, but he might as well have spared his breath. Besides, he had been through a number of such scenes in his day, and experience had taught him that one does one's best to say as little as possible.
"You contemptible old faggot," Alastair began pleasantly, holding a shaking index finger directly beneath Quilley's nose. "You mean, scheming old queen. I'm going to break your stupid neck."
"My dear chap," said Quilley. "Whatever for?"
"I'm phoning for the police, Mr. Ned!" cried Mrs. Longmore from downstairs. "I'm dialling nine-nine-nine now!"
"Either sit down and explain your business at once,"
Quilley said sternly, "or Mrs. Longmore will phone for the police."
"I'm dialling!" called Mrs. Longmore, who had done this occasionally before.
Alastair sat down.
"Now then," said Quilley, with all the fierceness at his command. "What about a little black coffee while you tell me what I have done to offend you?"
The list was long: played him a fool's trick, Quilley had. For Charlie's sake. Pretended to be a non-existent film company. Persuaded his agent to send telegrams to Mykonos. Made a conspiracy with clever friends in Hollywood. Prepaid air tickets, all to make a ninny out of him in front of the gang. And to get him out of Charlie's hair.
Gradually, Quilley unravelled the story. A Hollywood film production company calling itself Pan Talent Celestial had telephoned his agent from California saying that their leading man had fallen sick and they required Alastair for immediate screen tests in London. They would pay whatever was necessary to obtain his attendance, and when they heard he was in Greece they arranged for a certified cheque for a thousand dollars to be delivered to the agent's office. Alastair returned from holiday hot-foot, then sat on his thumbs for a week while no screen test materialised."stand by," said the telegrams. Everything by telegram, note well."arrangements pending." On the ninth day, Alastair, in a state of near dementia, was instructed to present himself at Shepperton Studios. Ask for one Pete Vyschinsky, Studio D.
No Vyschinsky, not anywhere. No Pete.
Alastair's agent rang the number in Hollywood. The telephone operator advised him that Pan Talent Celestial had closed its account. Alastair's agent rang other agents; nobody had heard of Pan Talent Celestial. Doom. Alastair's judgement was as good as anyone's, and in the course of a two-day drunk, on the balance of his thousand dollars' expenses, Alastair had concluded that the only person with the motive and ability to play such a trick was Ned Quilley, known in the trade as "Desperate Quilley," who had never concealed his dislike for Alastair, or his conviction that Alastair was the evil influence behind Charlie's zany politics. He had therefore come round in person to wring Quilley's neck. After a few cups of coffee, however, he began protesting his undying admiration for his host, and Quilley told Mrs. Longmore to get him a cab.
The same evening, while the Quilleys sat in the garden enjoying a sundowner before dinner--they had recently invested in some rather decent outdoor furniture, cast-iron but done in the original Victorian moulds--Marjory listened gravely to his story, then to his great annoyance burst out laughing.
"What a very naughty girl," she said. "She must have found some rich lover to buy the boy off!"
Then she saw Quilley's face. Rootless American production companies. Telephone numbers that no longer answer. Filmmakers who cannot be found. And all of it happening around Charlie. And her Ned.
"It's even worse," said Quilley miserably.
"What is, darling?"
"They've stolen all her letters."
"They've what?"
All her handwritten letters, Quilley said. Going back over the last five years or more. All her chatty, intimate billets-doux scribbled when she was on tour or lonely. Marvellous things. Pen-portraits of producers and members of the cast. The dear little drawings she liked to do when she was feeling happy. Gone. Whipped from the file. By those awful Americans who wouldn't drink--Karman and his frightful chum. Mrs. Longmore was having a fit about it. Mrs. Ellis had gone sick.