boys, we’ll have to do it again.’ The screen flashed white, and by its reflected light Stone saw me standing in the doorway. Although one of his servants had announced my arrival he preferred to act as though it was a chance meeting.
We had exchanged banalities at parties and he’d given me a brief interview for the newspaper articles, but this was a meeting between virtual strangers. That however was not evident from the warmth of his welcome.
He came towards me smiling broadly as he took my hands in his. He delivered a salvo of one-word sentences, ‘Wonderful. Marvellous. Great. Super.’ Narrow-eyed, he watched the effect of them like an artillery observer. Then he adjusted the range and the fuse setting to hit instead of straddling. ‘Damned fit. And a superb suit. Where did you get that wonderful tan: I’m jealous.’ Perhaps because he told me the things he wanted to tell himself there was an artless sincerity in his voice.
‘You’re looking well yourself, Marshall,’ I responded. He gripped my hand. He was smaller, more wrinkled and more tanned than I remembered, but his voice had the same tough reedy tone that I’d heard in his films.
‘Are you having problems?’ I asked.
‘It’s the stutter, darling.’ He could say ‘darling’ with such virile aplomb that it became the most sincere and effective greeting that one man could use to another.
‘I see.’
‘I would never have used a hesitation if I’d guessed I’d be looping it.’ The joke was on him but he laughed.
‘The sound crew thought they could use the original track?’
‘They swore that they’d be able to, but I could hear the genny and so could everyone else. If we could hear it, then the mike could pick it up. I should have put my foot down. God knows, I’ve been in the business long enough to know about recordings. But a bloody actor must know his place, eh, Peter?’ He pulled a slightly anguished face – hollow cheeks and half-closed eyes – before letting it soften into a broad smile. Just as his speech was articulated with an actor’s care, so did all his gestures have a beginning, middle and an end. He shook his head to remove the smile. ‘Get Mr Anson a fresh pot of coffee and some of those flaky pastries, will you, Johnny.’
Another man helped me off with my coat. I said, ‘The publicity secretary said…’
‘Sure, Peter, she said you might look in. Sandy, take Peter’s coat.’ Yet a third man put my coat on a hanger and carried it away with either reverence or disgust, I could not be sure which. ‘Glad of someone to talk to,’ said Stone. ‘Bloody boring, doing these loops. Will it be a full-length book?’
‘Yes. About eighty thousand words and lots of photos. By the way, the publicity people will let me have plenty of film stills but I was wondering if you have any personal snapshots you could lend me. You know: school groups, holiday snaps, mother, father or wartime photos.’ He looked up and stared at me.
‘I was in the war,’ he said.
‘What did you do?’
He stared at me until I shifted uncomfortably. ‘What did you do in the war, Daddy?’
I laughed nervously. ‘You know what I did, Marshall. I sat on my arse in Hollywood.’
He sensed my discomfort. ‘Yes, I know. Why?’
I’d rehearsed the answer to that a million times, so I had it pat. ‘I’d saved thirty shillings a week to pay my fare to California. It wasn’t so easy to chuck it up when war was declared. It was May 1940 when finally I went up to Canada and volunteered.’
‘And?’
‘When that Army radiographer found an ankle fracture from schooldays had mended badly… I wasn’t exactly heartbroken. But I volunteered every six months for the rest of the war just to appease my conscience. The nearest I got to active duty was working with John Ford and Darryl Zanuck making a US Army film about venereal disease. That was my war, Marshall, how did yours go?’
‘I worked with a chap named Millington-Ash, a brigadier. He ended the war a major-general. On paper I think I was probably a lance-corporal.’
‘What kind of outfit was that?’
He smiled at me as if I’d made a social gaffe. ‘Put infantry.’
‘I’ll forget the whole thing if you like.’
‘Office work for the most part but they quoted the Official Secrets Act at me a couple of times – you know.’
‘You mean you were some sort of agent?’
He moved his head in the direction of the man bringing the silver pot of coffee and the cream pastries. He didn’t answer until the man had gone again. Even then he took the precaution of covering the microphone with his hand, in case it was alive. ‘Not for publication, Pete, my boy. We could both get into hot water.’
‘Subject closed.’
‘That’s the best. Now, tell me what your readers will want to know about me.’
It was a practical if unorthodox attitude to biography. For a moment I was unable to think of an answer. I knew what I believed to be the job of the biographer. I knew it to be a process of selection, of emphasis and the relationship between events and attitudes. Just as Toynbee had once dismissed the ‘one damn thing after another’ school of historians, so I believed that a man’s activities were only a means to an end. A biography must show what a man is, rather than what he does. But to emphasize the influence that a writer had upon a finished life story was a dangerous thing to explain to Stone. Tactfully, I said, “They’d probably like to know what your life is like. They’d like to share your pleasures and your disappointments and learn something of your craft. They’d like to know how much of your success was luck and to what extent you created your own opportunity.’
‘Yes, yes, yes, and how much I earn and what I spend it on, what my house is like and who am I screwing.’
‘Not exactly,’ I said primly.
‘Listen, Peter. If you are going to have a go at me, you’d better be frank right from the start.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘And why would some little creep grab me when I’m getting out of the Rolls this morning and tell me my last film was shit?’ He laughed to smother the spark of temper.
‘Did that happen?’
‘You get used to it.’ He sighed and smiled. ‘We all get them. Even the ones who are not actually insulting feel free to criticize your voice, your face, walk, dress, car, acting ability, et cetera. And they are amazed if you’re not grateful for it! There is a widespread illusion, Peter, that film stars lead protected lives and urgently need members of the public to stride up uninvited and start being frank with them.’
I nodded sympathetically.
‘Well, I don’t need it, darling. No one needs it. No one needs insults. You don’t need insults to your writing and I don’t need it for my acting.’
I guessed he was still smarting from the US reviews of Tigertrap. Too, he was girding his loins for
