Wu Ming - 54

No, I’ve never worked for Don Luciano, I swear, he’s far too important, he’d never trust someone like me to place his bets. And a gift of 5,000 lire? Don Luciano isn’t a millionaire! He’s lucky with the horses, but that’s all. Ok, he did bet on Monte Allegro that day, you’re very well informed. So you can see that he knows his horses well, too, maybe a friend who’s a jockey told him that Ninfa had had a bad case of colic. I couldn’t have been the only person who knew something like that, rumours go around, you know how it is.

But excuse me, didn’t you want to know about that television?

Chapter 17

Palm Springs, California, 1 February

The maid set the tray of Wedgwood cups and the teapot down on the little table, waited for a nod and withdrew in silence. The tea was the only ingredient of a traditional breakfast to have survived Betsy’s new alimentary convictions. Rather than bacon and eggs, orange juice, and toast with cherry jam, there were oat flakes, bran, soya bean sprouts, and a vegetable drink based on celery, carrot and banana. Quite honestly not even the tea was the same, because the old Earl Grey had made way for a greenish Chinese variety from Hong Kong. At first Cary had welcomed the novelty enthusiastically, as he always did, trying to find out everything he could on the subject. Subsequently his interest had abated, and the crisis peaked when the crazed blender, rather than producing a carrot juice for his friend David Niven as he intended it to do, sprayed the whole kitchen with orange pulp.

Betsy Drake glanced up from her morning paper and looked at her husband in his blue pyjamas and indigo silk dressing gown, shaking his head as he flicked through some typed pages.

‘Something wrong, darling?’

‘No, nothing. I get the feeling that even old Hitch isn’t feeling so great. This script isn’t one for him.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘I can’t make a comeback with something like this. For pity’s sake, a captivating little story based on a novel by a certain David Dodge. A retired thief in a hotel has to demonstrate his own innocence by catching the man really responsible for a series of thefts. A beautiful girl tries to put him to the test with her jewels and falls in love with him. In the end he finds the guilty man and marries the girl. But I don’t know. ’

The tea was too hot. The bean sprouts were tasteless, the bran was utterly unappealing, and just looking at the vegetable glop made his gorge rise. Cary got to his feet and started pacing back and forth. Even dressed like this, he could turn up at the newsagent’s without anyone passing remarks about his elegance. Betsy couldn’t remember ever having seen him coming out of his bedroom in anything less than a dressing gown.

‘I have a sense, my darling, that you don’t know what it is that you really need.’

Without stopping, he expressed a thought out loud. ‘I can’t make a comeback with this stuff, God damn it!’

‘But listen, starting over would do you good, I’m sure of it.’

‘Sure it would do me good. But what with? They’ve also suggested I take part in a film about Tito, the President of Yugoslavia. What do you think?’

Betsy opened her eyes wide and straightened her back, surprised. ‘Who on earth wants to make a film like that? Clifford?’

‘No, MI6.’

‘M what? What is it, a new studio?’

The sofa’s soft cushions attracted him. Cary sank into them, arms at his side and legs outstretched.

‘Military Intelligence.’ He said the words in a serious voice. ‘The British secret service. And the CIA and the NATO governments. Two Englishmen were here the day before yesterday, secret agents of Her Majesty, not the fascinating spies you might imagine, they were like a couple of bank officials. They want me to go and see Tito in Yugoslavia, to discuss a film about his life. They’ve also given me a lot of documentation about the man.’

Betsy sipped her carrot juice as though it were medicine, waiting for her husband to continue. Pressing his eyes with his fingers, trying to concentrate, Cary went on. ‘A film about Tito. In Yugoslavia. Something that will present him as a hero in the eyes of the West. Turn him into an acceptable ally. He expressly asked for them to give me a part, and he’s very keen to meet me. You see? And the film doesn’t even have funding, a screenplay, a director. Nothing at all.’

‘But they must at least have told you —’

‘Let me finish, this is the good bit. Before going to Yugoslavia I would have to stop over in London, so I’d be away for a few weeks. But they don’t want people to know what’s going on, so I’d have to travel incognito. And do you know what brilliant idea they’ve come up with to make sure that my cover isn’t blown? A double, a man they say looks like me, a French Canadian with a ludicrous name, who would come here to impersonate Cary Grant. Can you imagine?’

There was a good minute’s silence. Then the sound of newspaper being folded, and the wheeze of the armchair as it was freed of Betsy’s weight. Now it was her turn to pace.

‘I don’t understand, honey, spell it out for me. They want a stranger to come and live in our house?’

‘That’s what I thought too, Betsy. But they’re not as crazy as all that. This man, this individual they say looks like me, wouldn’t be here all the time. He would come every now and again, show his face, go out and buy some aftershave and come back home again, take you for a walk, make everyone think that Cary Grant never moved away from Palm Springs.’

Betsy handed her husband the glass of vegetable juice; she wouldn’t let him leave it there. There was something tempting about the secret service suggestion. Admittedly, it wasn’t the kind of comeback for Cary that she’d been hoping for, a film to restore his selfconfidence and his desire to work. Neither would it win him back his success and his audience. But there was something active about it, meeting new people, seeing new countries, getting away from home for a couple of months. A little holiday for her as well: Cary was becoming increasingly nervous and depressed, and it was Betsy who paid the price.

‘Obviously I told them you would never accept such a situation. “Your wife will understand, Mr Grant,” they kept saying, over and over. Ludicrous, I said, going out with a stranger, someone who’s supposed to look like me, while I’m far away, and not even for work, but on an utterly unbelievable special mission. Can you imagine?’

The maid leaned against the door and Betsy beckoned her in.

‘Just leave the bean sprouts, Jenny. At least eat some bean sprouts, darling.’

She waited until the maid had gone, and tried to resolve her last perplexities.

‘I still don’t understand why this thing has to stay such a secret. You’d only be a famous actor visiting a head of state.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. Listen: this fellow Tito is a communist, but he’s not working with the Russians. So the British want to bring him over to their side. Except that for the time being they don’t want word to get out, they aren’t all that sure what’s going to happen. Most importantly, they don’t want the Russians to find out about it.’

A bowl full of bean sprouts took the place of the empty glass of vegetable swill. Cary looked at his wife, looked at the bowl, looked up again to say he didn’t want any, and found a fork in front of him. He picked it up and started choking them down.

‘“Your wife will understand, Mr Grant.” Ridiculous, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, darling, the mission may well be ridiculous, but in the end so are all things political. We can only understand them up to a certain point. On the other hand, couldn’t you do with a distraction? Something that isn’t acting, but isn’t brooding at home all day long, either. If you have to go to London, well, maybe you could use the opportunity to pass through Bristol to see your mother. And apart from that, you would meet an important, interesting man who would treat you with the greatest possible respect. You’d be doing a favour to America and everyone else. It doesn’t seem all that unacceptable to me, quite the opposite.’