DAY TWENTY–FOUR – THURSDAY
A burial took place at the private plot of the Special Air Service Regiment near their base at Hereford. The body of an old soldier was laid to rest. There was a bugler who played the Last Post and a salvo over the grave. About a dozen attended, including a noted barrister.
That evening, two bodies were recovered from a lake near Wanstead Marshes, east London. They were identified as those of Mr Mark Price and Mr Harry Cornish. The pathologist recorded that both men had died of ligature strangulation and that the instrument, most unusually, appeared to be piano wire. The file on the case was opened, but never closed.
THE ART OF THE MATTER
NOVEMBER
The rain came down. It fell in a slowly moving wall upon Hyde Park and, borne by a light westerly wind, drifted in grey curtains of falling water across Park Lane and through the narrow park of plane trees that divides the northbound and southbound lanes. A wet and gloomy man stood under the leafless trees and watched.
The entrance to the Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom was brightly lit by several arc lights and the endless glare of camera flashes. Inside was warm, snug and dry. Under the awning before the door was an area of only damp pavement and here the uniformed commissionaires stood, gleaming umbrellas at the ready, as the limousines swept up, one by one.
As each rain-lashed car drew up by the awning one of the men would run forward to shield the descending star or film celebrity for the two-yard dash, head down, from car to awning. There they could straighten up, plaster on the practised smile and face the cameras.
The paparazzi were either side of the awning, skin-wet, shielding their precious equipment as best they could. Their cries came across the road to the man under the trees.
‘Over here, Michael. This way, Roger. Nice smile, Shakira. Lovely.’
The great and the good of the film world nodded benignly at the adulation, smiled for the lenses and thus for the distant fans, ignored the few anorak-clad autograph hunters, strange persistent voles with pleading eyes, and were wafted inside. There they would be led to their tables, pausing to beam and greet, ready for the annual awards ceremony of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
The small man under the trees watched with unrequited longing in his eyes. Once he had dreamed that he too might be there, a star of the film world in his own right, or at the very least a recognized journeyman at his trade. But he knew it was not to be, not now, too late.
For more than thirty-five years he had been an actor, almost entirely in films. He had played in over a hundred, starting as an extra, with no spoken words, moving to tiny bit parts but never being cast in a real role.
He had been a hotel porter while Peter Sellers walked past and on screen for seven seconds; he had been the driver of the army lorry that gave Peter O’Toole a lift into Cairo; he had held a Roman spear, rigid at attention, a few feet from Michael Palin; he had been the aircraft mechanic who helped Christopher Plummer into a Spitfire.
He had been waiters, porters, soldiers in every known army from the Bible to the Battle of the Bulge. He had played cab-drivers, policemen, fellow-diners, the man crossing the street, the wolf-whistling barrow boy and anything else one could think of.
But always it was the same: several days on the set, ten seconds on screen and goodbye chum. He had been within feet of every known star in the celluloid firmament, seen the gents and the bastards, the kindly and the prima donnas. He knew he could play any part with utter conviction and convincingly; he knew he was a human chameleon, but no-one had ever recognized the talent he was sure he had.
So he watched in the rain as his idols swept past to their evening’s glory and later to their sumptuous apartments and suites. When the last had gone in and the lights had faded he trudged back through the rain to the bus stop at Marble Arch and stood, dripping water in the aisle, until he was deposited half a mile from his cheap bedsitter in the hinterland between White City and Shepherd’s Bush.
He stripped off his soaking clothing, wrapped himself in an old towel robe liberated from a hotel in Spain (Man of La Mancha starring Peter O’Toole and he had held the horses) and lit a single-bar fire. His wet clothes steamed quietly through the night until by morning they were merely damp. He knew he was flat broke, skint. No work for weeks; a profession vastly overcrowded even with short, middle-aged men, and nothing in prospect. His phone had been cut off and if he wished to speak to his agent, yet again, he would have to go and visit in person. This, he decided, he would do on the morrow.
He sat and waited. He always sat and waited. It was his lot in life. Finally the office door opened and someone emerged whom he knew. He jumped up.
‘Hallo, Robert, remember me? Trumpy.’
Robert Powell was caught by surprise and clearly could recall nothing of the face.
‘The Italian Job. Turin. I drove the cab; you were in the back.’
Robert Powell’s unquenchable good humour saved the day.
‘Of course. Turin. Been a long time. How are you, Trumpy? How are things?’
‘Pretty good. Not too bad, can’t complain. Just popped by to see if you-know-who might have something for me.’
Powell took in the frayed shirt and shabby mac.
‘I’m sure he will. Good to see you again. Good luck, Trumpy.’
‘Ditto, old boy. Chin up, what?’
They shook and parted. The agent was as kind as he could be, but there was no work. A costume drama was going to shoot at Shepperton, but it was already cast. A very overc
rowded profession whose only inexhaustible fuel was optimism and the chance of a great part tomorrow.