Smokescreen

Chapter Seven

Friday turned out to be a meagre day for world news, which left a lot too much space for the perils of Katya. Seldom had the Press been invited in advance to such a spectacle, and in most papers it seemed to have made the front page.

One of them first unkindly suggested that it had all been a publicity stunt which had gone wrong, and then denied it most unconvincingly in the following paragraph.

I wondered, reading it, how many people would believe just that. I wondered, remembering that mischievous smile, whether Katya could possibly even have set it up herself. She and Roderick, between them.

But she wouldn’t have risked her life. Not unless she hadn’t realised she was risking it.

I picked up the Rand Daily Star, to see what they had made of Roderick’s information, and found that he had written the piece himself. ‘By our own Rand Daily Star eye-witness, Roderick Hodge’ it announced at the top. Considering his emotional involvement it was not too highly coloured, but it was he, more than any of the others, who stressed, as Conrad had done, that if Katya had not taken the microphone away from me, it would have been I who got the shock.

I wondered how much Roderick wished I had done. For one thing, it would have made a better story.

With a twisting smile I read on to the end. Katya, he reported finally, was being detained in hospital overnight, her condition described as ‘comfortable’.

I shoved the papers aside, and while I showered and shaved came to two conclusions. One was that what I had done was not particularly remarkable and certainly not worth the coverage, and the other was that after this I was going to have even more trouble explaining to Nerissa why all I could bring her were guesses, not proof.

Down at the reception desk I asked if they could get me a packed lunch and hire me a horse for the day out in some decent riding country. Certainly, they said, and waved a few magic wands: by mid-morning I was twenty-five miles north of Johannesburg setting out along a dirt road in brilliant sunshine on a pensioned off racehorse who had seen better days. I took a deep contented breath of the sweet smell of Africa and padded along with a great feeling of freedom. The people who owned the horse had gently insisted on sending their head boy along with me so that I shouldn’t get lost, but as he spoke little English and I no Bantu, I found him a most peaceful companion. George was small, rode well, and had a great line in banana-shaped smiles.

We passed a cross-roads where there was a large stall, all by itself, loaded with bright orange fruit and festooned with pineapples, with one man beaming beside them.

‘Naartjies,’ George said, pointing.

I made signs that I didn’t understand. One thing about being an actor, it occasionally came in useful.

‘Naartjies.’ George repeated, dismounting from his horse and leading it towards the stall. I grasped the fact that George wanted to buy, so I called to him and fished out a five rand note. George smiled, negotiated rapidly, and returned with a huge string bag of naartjies, two ripe pineapples, and most of the money.

In easy undemanding companionship we rode further, dismounted in some shade, ate a pineapple each, and cold chicken from the Iguana Rock, and drank some refreshing unsweet apple juice from tins George had been given to bring along. The naartjies turned out to be like large lumpy tangerines with green patches on the skin: they also tasted like tangerine, but better.

George ate his lunch thirty feet away from me. I beckoned to him to come closer, but he wouldn’t.

In the afternoon we trotted and cantered a long way over tough scrubby brown dried grass, and finally, walking to cool the horses, found ourselves approaching the home stables from the opposite direction to the way we set out.

They asked ten rand for the hire of the horse, though the day I had had was worth a thousand, and I gave George five rand for himself, which his employers whispered was too much. George with a last dazzling smile handed me the bag of naartjies and they all gave me friendly waves when I left. If only life were all so natural, so undemanding, so unfettered.

Five miles down the road I reflected that if it were, I would be bored to death.

Conrad was before me at the Iguana.

He met me as I came into the hall and surveyed me from head to foot, dust, sweat, naartjies and all.

‘What on earth have you been doing, dear boy?’

‘Riding.’

‘What a pity I haven’t an Arriflex with me,’ he exclaimed.

‘What a shot... you standing there looking like a gypsy with your back to the light... and those oranges... have to work it into our next film together, can’t waste a shot like that...’

‘You’re early,’ I remarked.

‘Might as well wait here as anywhere else.’

‘Come upstairs, then, while I change.’

He came up to my room and with unfailing instinct chose the most comfortable chair.

‘Have a naartjie,’ I said.

I’d rather have a Martini, dear boy.’

‘Order one, then.’

He rang for his drink and it came while I was in the shower. I towelled dry and went back into the bedroom in underpants to find him equipped also with a Churchillsized cigar, wreathed in smoke and smelling of London clubs and plutocracy. He was looking through the pile of newspapers which still lay tidily on the table, but in the end left them undisturbed.

‘I’ve seen all those,’ he said. ‘How do you like being a real hero, for a change?’

‘Don’t be nutty. What’s so heroic about first aid?’

He grinned. Changed the subject.

‘What in hell’s name made you come out here for a premiere after all those years of refusing to show your face off the screen?’

‘I came to see some horses,’ I said, and explained about Nerissa.

‘Oh, well, then, dear boy, that does make more sense, I agree. And have you found out what’s wrong?’

I shrugged. ‘Not really. Don’t see how I can.’ I fished out a clean shirt and buttoned it on. ‘I’m going to Germiston races tomorrow, and I’ll keep my eyes open again, but I doubt if anyone could ever prove anything against Greville Arknold.’ I put on some socks and dark blue trousers, and some slip-on shoes. ‘What are you and Evan doing here, anyway?’

‘Film making. What else?’

‘What film?’

‘Some goddam awful story about elephants that Evan took it into his head to do. It was all set up before he got roped in to finish Man in a Car, and since he chose to ponce around in Spain for all that time, we were late getting out here. Should be down in the Kruger Game Park by now.’

I brushed my hair.

‘Who’s playing the lead?’

‘Drix Goddart.’

I glanced at Conrad over my shoulder. He smiled sardonically.

‘Wax in Evan’s hands, dear boy. Laps up direction like a well patted puppy.’

‘Nice for you all.’

‘He’s so neurotic that if someone doesn’t tell him every five minutes that he’s brilliant, he thinks everyone hates him.’

‘Is he here with you?’

‘No, thank God. He was supposed to be, but now he comes out with all the rest of the team after Evan and I have sorted out which locations we want to use.’

I put down the brushes and fastened my watch round my wrist. Keys, change, handkerchief into trouser pockets.

‘Did you see the rushes of the desert scenes while you were in England?’ Conrad asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Evan didn’t invite me.’

‘Just like him.’ He took a long swallow and rolled the Martini round his teeth. He squinted at the long ash on the end of his mini-torpedo. He said, ‘They were good.’

‘So they damn well ought to be. We did them enough times.’

He smiled without looking at me. ‘You won’t like the finished film.’

After a pause, as he didn’t explain, I said, ‘Why not?’

‘There’s something in it besides and beyond acting.’ He paused again, considering his words. ‘Even to a jaundiced eye like mine, dear boy, the quality of suffering is shattering.’

I didn’t say anything. He swivelled his eyes in my direction.

‘Usually you do not reveal much of yourself, do you?

Well, this time, dear boy, this time...’

I compressed my lips. I knew what I’d done. I’d known while I did it. I had just hoped that no one would be perceptive enough to notice.

‘Will the critics see what you saw?’ I asked.

He smiled lop-sidedly. ‘Bound to, aren’t they? The best ones, anyway.’

I stared despondently at the carpet. The trouble with interpreting scenes too well, with taking an emotion and making the audience feel it sharply, was that it meant stripping oneself naked in public. Nothing as simple as naked skin, but letting the whole world peer into one’s mind, one’s beliefs, one’s experience.

To be able to reproduce a feeling so that others could recognise it, and perhaps understand it for the first time, one had to have some idea of what it felt like in reality. To show that one knew, meant revealing what one had felt. Revealing oneself too nakedly did not come easily to a private man, and if one did not reveal oneself, one never became a great actor.

I was not a great actor. I was competent and popular, but unless I whole-heartedly took the step into frightening personal exposure, I would never do anything great. There was always for me, in acting beyond a certain limit, an element of mental distress. But I had thought, when I risked doing it in the car, that my own self would be merged indiscernibly with the trials the fictional character was enduring.

I had done it because of Evan: to spite him, more than to please him. There was a point beyond which no director could claim credit for an actor’s performance, and I had gone a long way beyond that point.

‘What are you thinking?’ Conrad demanded.

‘I was deciding to stick exclusively in future to unreal entertaining escapades, as in the past.’

‘You’re a coward, dear boy.’

‘Yes.’

He tapped the ash off his cigar.

‘No one is going to be satisfied, if you do.’

‘Of course they are.’

‘Uhuh.’ He shook his head. ‘No one will settle for paste after they see they could have the real thing.’

‘Stop drinking Martinis,’ I said. ‘They give you rotten ideas.’

I walked across the room, picked up my jacket, put it on, and stowed wallet and diary inside it.

‘Let’s go down to the bar,’ I said.

He levered himself obediently out of the chair.

‘You can’t run away from yourself for ever, dear boy.’

‘I’m not the man you think I am.’

‘Oh yes,’ Conrad said. ‘Dear boy, you are.’

At Germiston races the next day I found waiting for me at the gate not only the free entrance tickets promised by Greville Arknold, but also a racecourse official with a duplicate set and instructions to take me up to lunch with the Chairman of the Race Club.

I meekly followed where he led, and was presently shown into a large dining-room where about a hundred people were already eating at long tables. The whole van Huren family, including a sulky Jonathan, occupied chairs near the end of the table closest to the door, and when he saw me come in, van Huren himself rose to his feet.

‘Mr Klugvoigt, this is Edward Lincoln,’ he said to the man sitting at the end of the table: and to me added, ‘Mr Klugvoigt is the Chairman.’

Klugvoigt stood up, shook hands, indicated the empty chair on his left, and we all sat down.

Vivi van Huren in a sweeping green hat sat opposite me, on the Chairman’s right, with her husband beside her. Sally van Huren was on my left, with her brother beyond. They all seemed to know Klugvoigt well, and as a personality he had much in common with van Huren: same air of wealth and substance, same self confidence, same bulk of body and acuity of mind.

Once past the preliminaries and the politenesses (how did I like South Africa: nowhere so comfortable as the Iguana Rock: how long was I staying) the conversation veered naturally back to the chief matter in hand.

Horses.

The van Hurens owned a four-year-old which had finished third in the Dunlop Gold Cup a month earlier, but they were giving it a breather during these less important months. Klugvoigt owned two three-year-olds running that afternoon with nothing much expected.

I steered the conversation round to Nerissa’s horses without much difficulty, and from there to Greville Arknold, asking, but not pointedly, how he was in general regarded, both as man and trainer.

Neither van Huren nor Klugvoigt were of the kind to come straight out with what they thought. It was Jonathan who leant forward and let out the jet of truth.

‘He’s a rude bloody bastard with hands as heavy as a gold brick.’

‘I have to advise Nerissa, when I get home,’ I commented.

‘Aunt Portia always said he had a way with horses,’ Sally objected, in defence.

‘Yeah. Backwards,’ said Jonathan.

Van Huren gave him a flickering glance in which humour was by no means lacking, but he changed the subject immediately with the expertise of one thoroughly awake to the risk of slander.

‘Your Clifford Wenkins, Link, telephoned to me yesterday afternoon to offer us all some tickets to your premiere.’ He looked amused. I gratefully accepted that he had loosened with me to the point of dropping the meticulous ‘Mr’ and thought that in an hour or two I might get around to Quentin.

‘Apparently he had had second thoughts about his abruptness to me when I asked for your address.’

‘Probably been doing some belated homework,’ agreed Klugvoigt, who seemed to know all about it.

‘It’s only a... an adventure film,’ I said. ‘You might not enjoy it.’

He gave me a dry sardonic smile. ‘You won’t accuse me again of condemning what I haven’t seen.’

I smiled back. I considerably liked Nerissa’s sister’s husband’s brother.

We finished the excellent lunch and wandered out for the first race. Horses were already being mounted, and Vivi and Sally hurried off to upset the odds with a couple of rand.

‘Your friend Wenkins said he would be here today,’ van Huren remarked.

‘Oh dear.’

He chuckled.

Arknold, in the parade ring, was throwing his magenta-shirted jockey up into the saddle.

‘How heavy is a gold brick?’ I asked.

Van Huren followed my gaze. ‘Seventy-two pounds, usually. You can’t lift them as easily, though, as seventy-two pounds of jockey.’

Danilo was standing by the rails, watching. He turned as the mounted horses walked away, caught sight of us, and came straight across.

‘Hi, Link. I’ve been looking out for you. How’s about a beer?’

I said, ‘Quentin,’ (not two hours: ten minutes) ‘this is Danilo Cavesey, Nerissa’s nephew. And Danilo, this is Quentin van Huren, whose sister-in-law, Portia van Huren, was Nerissa’s sister.’

‘Gee,’ Danilo said. His eyes widened and stayed wide, without blinking. He was more than ordinarily surprised.

‘Good heavens,’ van Huren exclaimed. ‘I didn’t even know she had a nephew.’

‘I kinda dropped out of her life when I was about six, I guess,’ Danilo said. ‘I only saw her again this summer, when I was over in England from the States.’

Van Huren said he had only twice met Nerissa’s husband, and never his brother, Danilo’s father. Danilo said he had never met Portia. The two of them sorted out the family ramifications to their own content and seemed to meet in understanding in a very short time.

‘Well, what do you know?’ Danilo said, evidently pleased to the roots. ‘Say, isn’t that just too much?’

When Vivi and Sally and Jonathan rejoined us after the race they chattered about it like birds, waving their arms about and lifting their voices in little whoops.

‘He’s a sort of cousin,’ said Sally positively. ‘Isn’t it the greatest fun?’

Even Jonathan seemed to brighten up at the idea of receiving the sunshine kid into the family, and the two of them presently bore him away on their own. I saw him looking back over his shoulder with a glance for me that was a lot older than anything Jonathan or Sally could produce.

‘What a nice boy,’ Vivi said.

‘Nerissa is very fond of him,’ I agreed.

‘We must ask him over, while he is here, don’t you think, Quentin? Oh look, do you see who’s down there... Janet Frankenloots... haven’t seen her for ages. Oh, do excuse me, Link...” The great hat swooped off to meet the long-lost friend.

Van Huren was too depressingly right about Clifford Wenkins being at the races. To say that the Distribution Manager approached as directly as Danilo had done would be inaccurate: he made a crabwise deprecating semicircle, tripping over his feet, and ended damply by my side.

‘Er... Link, good to see you... er, would you be Mr van Huren? Pleased... er... to meet you, sir.’

He shook hands with van Huren, who from long social practice managed not to wipe his palm on his trousers afterwards.

‘Now. Er... Link. I’ve tried to reach you a couple of times, but you never seem, er... I mean... I haven’t called you when you are... er... in. So I thought... well, I mean, er... I would be certain to see you here.’

I waited without much patience. He pulled a batch of papers hastily out of an inside pocket.

‘Now, we want... that is to say, Worldic have arranged... er... since you did the press interviews, I mean... they want you to go to... let’s see... there’s a beauty competition to judge next Wednesday for Miss Jo’burg... and er... guest of honour at the Ladies’ Kinema Luncheon Club on Thursday... and on Friday a fund-raising charity reception given by... er... our sponsors for the premiere... er, that is Bow-Miouw Pet-food, of course... and er... well... Saturday’s... the official opening of er... the Modern Homes’ Exhibition... all good publicity... er...’

‘No,’ I said. And for hell’s sake don’t lose your temper here, I told myself severely.

‘Er,’ Wenkins said, seeing no danger signals. ‘We... er... that is, Worldic, do think... I mean... that you really ought to co-operate...’

‘Oh they do.’ I slowed my breathing deliberately. ‘Why do you think I won’t let Worldic pay my expenses? Why do you think I pay for everything myself?’

He was extremely unhappy. Worldic must have been putting on the pressure from one side, and now I was resisting him from the other. The beads sprang out on his forehead.

‘Yes, but...’ He swallowed. ‘Well... I expect... I mean... the various organisations might be prepared to offer... er... I mean... well, fees.’

I counted five. Squeezed my eyes shut and open. Said, when I was sure it would come out moderately, ‘Mr Wenkins, you can tell Worldic that I do not wish to accept any of those invitations. In fact, I will go only to the premiere itself and a simple reception before or after, as I said.’

‘But... We have told everybody that you will.’

‘You know that my agent particularly asked you, right at the beginning, not to fix anything at all.’

‘Yes, but Worldic say... I mean...’

Stuff Worldic, I thought violently. I said, ‘I’m not going to those things.’

‘But... you can’t... I mean... disappoint them all... not now... they will not go to your films, if you don’t turn up when... er... we’ve... er... well... promised you will.’

‘You will have to tell them that you committed me without asking me first.’

‘Worldic won’t like it...’

‘They won’t like it because it will hurt their own takings, if it hurts anything at all. But it’s their own fault. If they thought they could make me go to those functions by a species of blackmail, they were wrong.’

Clifford Wenkins was looking at me anxiously and van Huren with some curiosity, and I knew that despite my best intentions the anger was showing through.

I took pity on Clifford Wenkins and a grip on myself. ‘Tell Worldic I will not be in Johannesburg at all next week. Tell them that if they had had the common-sense to check with me first, I could have told them I am committed elsewhere, until the premiere.’

He swallowed again and looked even unhappier.

‘They said I must persuade you...’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘They might even fire me...’

‘Even for you, Mr Wenkins, I can’t do it. I won’t be here.’

He gave me a spanked-spaniel look which I didn’t find endearing, and when I said no more he turned disgustedly away and walked off, stuffing the papers roughly into the side pocket of his jacket.

Van Huren turned his handsome head and gave me an assessing look.

‘Why did you refuse him?’ he asked. No blame in his voice; simply interest.

I took a deep breath: got the rueful smile out, and stifled the irritation which Clifford Wenkins had raised like an allergic rash.

‘I never do those things... beauty contests and lunches and opening things.’

‘Yes. But why not?’

‘I haven’t the stamina.’

‘You’re big enough,’ he said.

I smiled and shook my head. It would have sounded pretentious to tell him that so-called ‘personal appearances’ left me feeling invaded, battered, and devoured, and that complimentary introductory speeches gave me nothing in return. The only compliment I truly appreciated was the money plonked down at the box-office.

‘Where are you off to, next week, then?’ he asked.

‘Africa is huge,’ I said, and he laughed.

We wandered back to look at the next batch of hopefuls in the parade ring, and identified number eight as Nerissa’s filly, Lebona.

‘She looks perfectly all right,’ van Huren commented.

‘She will start all right,’ I agreed. ‘And run well for three-quarters of the way. Then she’ll tire suddenly within a few strides and drop right out, and when she comes back her sides will be heaving and she’ll look exhausted.’

He was startled. ‘You sound as if you know all about it.’

‘Only guessing. I saw Chink run like that at Newmarket on Wednesday.’

‘But you think they are all running to the same pattern?’

‘The form book confirms it.’

‘What will you tell Nerissa, then?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know... Probably to change her trainer.’

In due course we returned to the stands and watched Lebona run as expected. Van Huren seeming in no haste to jettison me for more stimulating company, and I well content to have him as a buffer state, the two of us, passing the cluster of tables and chairs under sun umbrellas, decided to sit down there and order refreshers.

For the first day since I had arrived, the sunshine had grown hot. No breeze stirred the fringes round the flowered umbrellas, and ladies in all directions were shedding their coats.

Van Huren, however, sighed when I commented on the good weather.

‘I like winter best,’ he said. ‘When it’s cold, dry, and sunny. The summers are wet, and far too hot, even up here on the highveld.’

‘One thinks of South Africa as always being hot.’

‘It is, of course. Once you get down near to sea level, it can be scorching even as early as this.’

The shadows of two men fell across the table, and we both looked up.

Two men I knew. Conrad: and Evan Pentelow.

I made introductions, and they pulled up chairs and joined us; Conrad his usual flamboyant self, scattering dear boys with abandon, and Evan, hair as unruly as ever, and eyes as hot.

Evan weighed straight in. ‘You won’t now refuse to turn up at the premiere of my Man in a Car, I hope.’

‘You sound very proprietary,’ I said mildly. ‘It isn’t altogether yours.’

‘My name will come first in the credits,’ he asserted aggressively.

‘Before mine?’

Posters of Evan’s films were apt to have Evan Pentelow in large letters at the top, followed by the name of the film, followed, in the last third of the space, by the actors’ names all squashed closely together. Piracy, it was, or little short.

Evan glared, and I guessed he had checked my contract for the film, and found, as I had done, that in the matter of billing my agent had made no mistakes.

‘Before the other director,’ he said grudgingly.

I supposed that was fair. Although he had directed less than a quarter, the shape of the finished film would be his idea.

Van Huren followed the sparring with amusement and attention.

‘So billing does matter as much as they say.’

‘It depends,’ I smiled, ‘on who is sticking knives into whose back.’

Evan had no sense of humour and was not amused. He began instead to talk about the film he was going to make next.

‘It’s an allegory... every human scene is balanced by a similar one involving elephants. They were supposed to be the good guys of the action, originally, but I’ve been learning a thing or two about elephants. Did you know they are more dangerous to man than any other animal in Africa? Did you know that nothing preys on them except ivory hunters, and as ivory hunting is banned in the Kruger Park, the elephants are in the middle of a population explosion? They are increasing by a thousand a year, which means that in ten years there will be no room for any other animals, and probably no trees in the park, as the elephants uproot them by the hundred.’

Evan, as usual on any subject which took his attention, was dogmatic and intense.

‘And do you know,’ he went on, ‘that elephants don’t like Volkswagens? Those small ones, I mean. Elephants seldom attack cars ordinarily, but they seem to make a bee-line for Volkswagens.’

Van Huren gave a disbelieving smile which naturally stirred Evan to further passion.

‘It’s true! I might even incorporate it in the film.’

‘Should be interesting,’ Conrad said with more than a touch of dryness. ‘Leaving a car around as bait at least makes a change from goats and tigers.’

Evan glanced at him sharply, but nodded. ‘We go down to the park on Wednesday.’

Van Huren turned to me with a look of regret.

‘What a pity you can’t go down there too, Link, next week. You want somewhere to go, and you’d have liked it there. The game reserves are about all that’s left of the old natural Africa, and the Kruger is big and open and still pretty wild. But I know the accommodation there is always booked up months ahead.’

I didn’t think Evan would have wanted me in the least, but to my surprise he slowly said, ‘Well, as it happens, we made reservations for Drix Goddart to be down there with us, but now he’s not coming for a week or two. We haven’t cancelled... there will be an empty bed, if you want to come.’

I looked at Conrad in amazement but found no clue in his raised eyebrows and sardonic mouth.

If it hadn’t been for Evan himself I would have leapt at it; but I supposed that even he was a great deal preferable to Clifford Wenkins’s programme. And if I didn’t go to the Kruger, which very much appealed to me, where else?

‘I’d like to,’ I said. ‘And thanks.’