Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘Lonnie,’ I said, ‘I don’t think you’re the least little bit like Macbeth.’

‘And there you have it in a nutshell. I’m not. A tragic figure, a sad man, fated and laden with doom. Now, me, I’m not like that at all. We Gilberts have the indomitable spirit, the unconquerable soul. Your Shakespeares are all very well, but Walter de la Mare is my boy.’ He lifted his glass and squinted myopically at it against the light. ‘ “Look your last on all things lovely every hour.” ’

‘I don’t think he quite meant it in that way, Lonnie. Anyway, doctor’s orders and do me a favour – get to hell out of here. Otto will have you drawn and quartered if he finds you here.’

‘Otto? Do you know something?’ Lonnie leaned forward confidentially. ‘Otto’s really a very kindly man. I like Otto. He’s always been good to me, Otto has. Most people are good, my dear chap, don’t you know that? Most people are kind. Lots of them very kind. But none so kind as Otto. Why, I remember–’

He broke off as I went round the back of the bar, replaced the bottles, locked the doors, placed the keys in his dressing-gown pocket and took his arm.

‘I’m not trying to deprive you of the necessities of life,’ I explained. ‘Neither am I being heavy-handed and moralistic. But I have a sensitive nature and I don’t want to be around when you find out that your assessment of Otto is a hundred per cent wrong.’ Lonnie came without a single murmur of protest. Clearly, he had his emergency supplies cached in his cabin. On our stumbling descent of the companionway he said: ‘You think I’m headed for the next world with my gas pedal flat on the floor, don’t you?’

‘As long as you don’t hit anybody it’s none of my business how you drive, Lonnie.’

He stumbled into his cabin, sat heavily on his bed, then moved with remarkable swiftness to one side: I could only conclude that he’d inadvertently sat on a bottle of scotch. He looked at me, pondering, then said: ‘Tell me, my boy, do you think they have bars in heaven?’

‘I’m afraid I have no information on that one, Lonnie.’

‘Quite, quite. It makes a gratifying change to find a doctor who is not the source of all wisdom. You may leave me now, my good fellow.’

I looked at Neal Divine, now quietly asleep, and at Lonnie, impatiently and for obvious reasons awaiting my departure, and left them both.

Mary Stuart was sitting where I’d left her, arms straight out on either side and fingers splayed to counteract the now noticeably heavier pitching of the Morning Rose : the rolling effect, on the other hand, was considerably less, so I assumed that the wind was still veering in a northerly direction. She looked at me with the normally big brown eyes now preternaturally huge in a dreadfully tired face, then looked away again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I found myself apologizing. ‘I’ve been discussing classics and theology with our production manager.’ I made for my corner seat and sat down gratefully. ‘Do you know him at all?’

‘Everybody knows Lonnie.’ She tried to smile. ‘We worked together in the last picture I made.’ Again she essayed a smile. ‘Did you see it?’

‘No.’ I’d heard about it though, enough to make me walk five miles out of my way to avoid it.

‘It was awful. I was awful. I can’t imagine why they gave me another chance.’

‘You’re a very beautiful girl,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to be able to act. Performance detracts from appearance. Anyway, you may be an excellent actress. I wouldn’t know. About Lonnie?’

‘Yes. He was there. So were Mr Gerran and Mr Heissman.’ I said nothing so she went on: ‘This is the third picture we’ve all made together. The third since Mr Heissman – well, since he–’

‘I know. Mr Heissman was away for quite a bit.’

‘Lonnie’s such a nice man. He’s so helpful and kind and I think he’s a very wise man. But he’s a funny man. You know that Lonnie likes to take a drink. One day, after twelve hours on the set and all of us dead tired, when we got back to the hotel I asked for a double gin and he became very angry with me. Why should he be like that?’

‘Because he’s a funny man. So you like him?’

‘How could I not like him? He likes everybody so everybody just likes him back. Even Mr Gerran likes him – they’re very close. But then, they’ve known each other for years and years.’

‘I didn’t know that. Has Lonnie a family? Is he married?’

‘I don’t know. I think he was. Maybe he’s divorced. Why do you ask so many questions about him?’

‘Because I’m a typically knowing, prying sawbones and I like to know as much as possible about people who are or may be my patients. For instance, I know enough about Lonnie now never to give him a brandy if he were in need of a restorative for it wouldn’t have the slightest effect.’

She smiled and closed her eyes. Conversation over. I took another steamer rug from under my seat, wrapped it around me – the temperature in the saloon was noticeably dropping – and picked up the folder that Goin had given me. I turned to Page 1, which, apart from being titled ‘Bear Island’, started off without any preamble.

‘It is widely maintained,’ it read, ‘that Olympus Productions is approaching the making of this, its latest production, in conditions so restrictive as to amount to an aura of almost total secrecy. Allegations to this effect have subsequently made their appearance in popular and trade presses and in light of the absence of production office denials in the contrary those uncorroborated assertions have achieved a considerable degree of substance and credence which one might regard, in the circumstances, as being a psychological inevitability.’ I read through this rubbish again, a travesty of the Queen’s English fit only for the columns of the more learned Sunday papers, and then I got it: they were making a hush-hush picture and didn’t care who knew. And very good publicity it was for the film, too, I thought, but, no, I was doing the boys an injustice. Or so the boys said. The article continued:

‘Other cinematic productions–’ I assumed he meant films ‘–have been approached and, on occasion, even executed under conditions of similar secrecy but those other and, one is afraid spurious sub rosa ventures have had for their calculated aim nothing less, regrettably, than the extraction of the maximum free publicity. This, we insist, and with some pride, is not the objective of Olympus Productions.’ Good old Olympus, this I had to see, a cinema company who didn’t want free publicity: next thing we’d have the Bank of England turning its nose up at the sound of the word ‘money’. ‘Our frankly cabbalistic approach to this production, which has given rise to so much intrigued and largely ill-informed speculation, has, in fact, been imposed upon us by considerations of the highest importance: the handling of this, a story which in the wrong hands might well generate potentially and dangerously explosive international repercussions, calls for the utmost in delicacy and finesse, essential qualities for the creation of what we confidently expect will be hailed as a cinematic masterpiece, but qualities which even we feel – nay, are certain – would not be able to overcome the immense damage done by – and we are certain of this – the world-wide furore that would immediately and automatically follow the premature leaking of the story we intend to film.

‘We are confident, however, that when – there is no “if” – this production is made in our own way, in our own time, and under the very strictest security conditions – this is why we have gone to the quite extraordinary lengths of obtaining notarized oaths of secrecy from every member of the cast and crew of the film project under discussion, including the managing director and his codirectors – we will have upon our hands, when this production is presented to a public, which will have been geared by that time to the highest degree of expectancy, a tour de force of so unparalleled an order that the justification for–’