Gone to Ground (22 page)

He paused to sip some tea.

"There was this nightclub sequence, a few musicians on a small stage in one corner, piano, bass and drums. Someone from Ted Heath's band on saxophone. Bob somebody? Bobby? I can't remember. Perhaps a dozen tables on the set, lots of extras. Stella's character—one of them—I suppose you know she plays twins—gets up to sing with the band. 'I Must Have That Man.' One of those songs Billie Holiday used to sing. I think she even had some kind of flower pinned to the dress she was wearing. The same as Holiday used to. I thought they'd get someone else to do the vocals for her, dub it in later, but, no, she did it all herself. Not a great voice, small, but she could carry a tune.

"Shooting it, though, that was a nightmare. Smoke everywhere. Gauze across the lens at one point. Curtis, the director, he'd been making us watch all these movies from America.
Out of the Past. The Dark Mirror.
A couple he'd made himself.
Death by Night,
one of them, I can't remember the other. Real Poverty Row stuff. Most of the set in shadow because there is no set to speak of, and precious little scenery. All shot in ten days too. Cheap and quick. 'Just light the faces,' he'd say. 'That's what I want, just let me see the faces.' Black and white, you know, but a lot more black than white."

With a slight rattle, Hedden set his cup back in its saucer.

"Considering it was all done pretty much on a shoestring, I don't think it looks too bad." He leaned forward. "You've seen the film, of course."

"No, I'm afraid not. There's a DVD available now in the States, apparently, I checked on Amazon, but because it's a different system, you can't play it here."

"Well," Hedden said, "if you don't mind helping me set up the screen, I've got an old 16-mil print. We can watch that." He was already on his feet. "You might have to help me lace the film through the projector, as well."

The plot, despite devious twists and turns and a succession of betrayals, was relatively simple. Good sister, Alma, meets the man of her dreams, a clean-living and heroic surgeon named Philip, who is dedicated to furthering medical understanding of the human brain, and accepts his proposal of marriage, while bad sister, Ruby, no better than she should be, sneers from the sidelines. There is a subplot, involving Ruby, a crooked nightclub owner and some stolen jewels, but the main concern of the story is with Ruby's jealousy of her sister and her intention to steal Philip away at all costs. Which for a time, of course, she does.

In the buildup to the final scene—borrowed, Hedden told Lesley, from an earlier film called
Angel Face
—Philip, having finally succumbed to Ruby's seductive wiles, comes to his senses after being confronted by a distraught Alma, and goes to Ruby to tell her their affair is over and he is going to marry Alma after all. Putting on her best false face, Ruby pretends to understand, even to be pleased, and says she will drive Philip to where Alma is waiting. Once behind the wheel, however, she accelerates faster and faster and finally drives the car off the edge of a cliff and into the sea, where they both drown.

The last shot is a close-up of Alma, black veil across her face, at the funeral of both her betrothed and her sister, where they are being buried side by side.

"Not exactly," Lesley said, "what you'd call a happy ending."

Hedden reached up and switched off the projector, stopping the end frames of celluloid from flapping in loose circles. Lesley pulled back the curtains, letting natural light back into the room.

"So," Hedden said, "what did you think?"

"I liked it. The camera work, especially. And I'm not saying that just because you're standing there. It was really atmospheric."

"Ah, that was down to Jack, the director of photography, more than me. I just pointed the camera through the gloom and hoped for the best."

"I'm sure that's not true. But anyway, that was what I liked. And Stella, of course. She's extraordinary, isn't she?"

"She was very good," Hedden agreed.

"First she's this nice young girl, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and then, the next minute, she's changed into this—I don't know what you'd call it? Tart? Harlot? Slapper, I suppose that's what we'd say today. Except that's she's evil with it. And sexy, my God! Talk about sex on a stick."

"Exactly," Hedden said. "And this, remember, was Britain in the fifties, when everything that wasn't buttoned down was buttoned up."

"You know the scene that threw me most?" Lesley said. "When Alma's sitting at her dressing-table mirror, dabbing a little powder on her face, running a comb through her hair, all very demure, and then she stands up and turns around and suddenly she's face-to-face with Ruby and it's as if she's still looking in a mirror, except that Ruby's got all this heavy makeup on, the whole works, and even though it's black and white you can feel how red the lipstick is on her mouth. Extraordinary."

Hedden smiled, almost apologetically. "We stole that, too. From
Black Narcissus.
Powell and Pressburger. Except it's in reverse. In Michael Powell's film, Deborah Kerr walks in on Kathleen Byron inside the convent where they're both nuns, and surprises Byron secretly putting on makeup. But then, nothing's new." He looked across at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I have to take a tablet. Three, actually. Then perhaps we can have another cup of tea. And talk about Stella."

By now the light outside was beginning to fade. Hedden's hand shook noticeably less, Lesley noticed, when he lifted the teapot. There was a wedge of Lancashire cheese to accompany the cake.

"Which one was she most like in real life?" Lesley asked. "Stella? The good twin or the bad?"

Hedden didn't answer immediately. "It's hard to say. When you're filming, it's a bit like—I suppose it's a bit like being on holiday. Except you're working twelve, thirteen hours a day. What I mean is, you're thrown together with people who, for the most part, you don't know and suddenly you're in their company all the time. You might think that's a way of getting to know someone really well, and so it can be, except the way people often behave in those kinds of situations—stars, especially, and that's what Stella was—it isn't natural." He shook his head. "Hedging my bets, aren't I?"

"That's okay."

"I suppose if I had to come down one way or another, I'd say she was both. I know that sounds as if I'm avoiding the issue altogether, but I think it's true. She was one inside the other: the bad Stella hiding inside the good. You'd meet her and she'd be very polite and proper—she'd been through the Rank Charm School after all. Deportment and elocution and all the rest. But there was something in her eyes. At the back of her eyes. Meet her under normal circumstances and you could miss it. But looking at her through the lens, it was there. Waiting to be let loose. So that when the story line gave her the chance ... well, some of those scenes, you said yourself, her sexuality, it's tangible."

"And you put it on the screen."

"I did my best."

"What I don't understand, if she could do that, act like that, why wasn't she a bigger star than she was?"

Hedden cut off another corner of cheese.

"That's a difficult one. But I think what she had to offer, what made her stand out from all the Jills and Belindas wasn't what was wanted just then. The occasional sex symbol was allowed, but they had to be more like Diana Dors, busty and blonde and a bit exaggerated. Just this side of a seaside postcard. The sexiness Stella had wasn't just in her body, it was in here too." Hedden touched his fingers to the side of his head. "The British film industry didn't want to know. Oh, if
Shattered Glass
had made a fortune at the box office, it might have been different, but I doubt if it did much more than break even. If that. To the best of my knowledge, Stella didn't work for well over a year after we wrapped. And when she did, it was back to playing the Almas of this world. Where Ruby was concerned, no one wanted to know."

"What was she like to work with?"

"Professional. On the set on time, knew her lines. However many takes Curtis asked for, she didn't complain."

"And she got on with everyone?"

"I'd say so. Some more that others, that's inevitable. But she never came over all grand, like some, and as far as the grips and lighting technicians and so on were concerned, she went out of her way to be pleasant."

"You said some more than others?"

"I did, didn't I?" He smiled ruefully. "In those days, if you didn't have an American star, there was no chance of getting U.S. distribution. Not that Dennis Wade was any kind of a star. But he was an American. And he'd had so-so parts in a couple of decent Hollywood movies. Curtis had worked with him before on a couple of occasions. Just when Dennis was getting started. He'd played Dane Clark's younger brother, got shot by Dan Duryea in the first reel, that kind of thing. What he did have in his favour, nationality aside, he was handsome and he was cheap."

Lesley could agree with the handsome part. Dark, curly hair, even features, a strong jaw. "He and Stella, they were an item?"

"Supposedly. They spent quite a lot of time in one another's company certainly. Around the set, at least. And the publicity department made the most of it. Photographs of them together in
Picturegoer
and
Picture Shorn
You can imagine the kind of thing, I'm sure."

"And you think that's what it all was? A publicity stunt?"

"I honestly don't know." Levering himself forward, he refreshed their cups with more tea. "There were rumours even—I heard this later, of course, after we'd finished editing—that she'd become pregnant."

"By Wade?"

"So the story went."

"When I looked up her biography, there was no mention of a child."

Hedden gestured with his hands as if to say, who knows?

"She could have had an abortion," Lesley said. "Or had the baby and then put it up for adoption. That could account for the time she didn't work."

"I don't know. I think the reason for not working was simply, for her, the work wasn't there."

Lesley could hear the tiredness in his voice. "I've kept you too long," she said.

"No, not at all. It's been most enjoyable. It's not that often nowadays I get the chance to talk about old times."

At the doorway, they shook hands.

"Safe journey," Hedden said.

The sky overhead was several shades of gray and, out to sea, the horizon had been swallowed up in a darkening blur of what could be snow.

35.

INT. NIGHT CLUB. NIGHT.

The interior of the club is small, intimate, hazed in smoke. RUBY stands at the microphone on a small, circular stage, a white baby grand at her back. At slow to medium tempo, she is singing "I Must Have That Man," accompanied by piano, bass, drums, and saxophone. Hair up, she is wearing a long, close-fitting dress, a spray of gardenias pinned to her shoulder.

As the camera pulls back, we see RUBY'S twin sister, ALMA, sitting at one of the tables with PHILIP. Their hands are close together on the table's surface, fingers slightly overlapping.

From what we understand to be PHILIP's POV, we cut to a close shot of RUBY as she sings, moving in on her mouth and then pulling back to show first the fingers of one hand caressing the microphone, then her other hand stroking her thigh.

We cut back to PHILIP's face, fascinated, watching, before seeing a smile in RUBY's eyes as she realizes all of his attention is focused on her, and then ALMA's expression as she watches him watching RUBY.

We pull back to a full shot of the stage as RUBY finishes her song to applause, which fades and takes us into...

36.

INT. DRESSING ROOM. NIGHT.

RUBY is sitting at the dressing table, looking at herself in the mirror. Perhaps she has started to remove some of her makeup. She takes a cigarette from a silver case and is just putting it in her mouth as someone knocks at the door.

RUBY
Who is it?

ALMA
(from outside the door)
It's me, Alma.

RUBY reaches for her lighter, clicks it to life, lights her cigarette, inhales, and then releases a slow plume of smoke toward the mirror before answering.

RUBY
Come in.

RUBY swivels round in her chair as ALMA enters, PHILIP just behind her.

ALMA
You remember Philip?

It is clear that RUBY does. She looks at him in a half-amused, half-admiring kind of way.

Moving forward, PHILIP holds out his hand and, with the same look still on her face, RUBY takes it.

PHILIP
You were marvelous.

She has not let go of his hand. ALMA notices this.

RUBY
Yes, I was, wasn't I?

CCTV CAMERAS ON A PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE NEAR CRAFT'S Hill, on the A14 Cambridge-Huntingdon road, had recorded a white 15-cwt Ford van traveling fast in the outside lane, no more than ten minutes after the incident. The number plate seemed to have been deliberately dirtied over, only one number and two letters visible. Further footage, this time from a camera close to a motel on the outskirts of Huntingdon, showed the van still heading west, but moving more steadily now in the inside lane.

Without any details from the taxi driver who had seen the men running across the bridge after the attack, it was not yet possible to ascertain what vehicle the second group had used to make their getaway—or if they had used a vehicle at all. If they were local, as seemed possible, they could simply have split up and disappeared back into the city on foot. Witnesses were being asked to come forward, and those few who had done so were being interviewed and the value of their information assessed.

The two young men who had been attacked were still in Addenbrooke's Hospital, where the condition of one of them, the theology student, was a matter of grave concern; he had not yet fully regained consciousness, and members of his family had flown in from Honduras to be by his bedside. The architecture student from Hong Kong, meanwhile, despite two broken ribs and extensive bruising, had been able to sit up in bed and talk to detectives. Any descriptions he had so far been able to give them of his attackers, however, had been disappointingly vague and sketchy. One thing he had told them was that he thought several members of the gang had been using their mobile phones to photograph the attack.