Derek Robinson - Damned Good Show

Rafferty sat in the kitchen, near a coal-burning stove as big as a sideboard, and watched his stockinged feet steam. Barriton gave them towels, and made tea. Rafferty was silent; Skull talked easily. He noticed Peter Fleming’s Brazilian Adventure on a bookshelf, and praised it, which led to piranha fish, and to scorpions, and desert travel, and crusader castles. Barriton had something to say about them all. One topic led to another. “Fame is over-rated, if you ask me,” Skull said. He picked up a tin of St. Bruno tobacco. “Everyone’s heard of St. Bruno, but who was he? Come to that, who was the great Greenwell?”

Barriton’s face changed; the boy in the man showed through. “Do you fish?” he asked.

“Not as often as the group captain.”

Rafferty cleared his throat, and tried to remember the difference between a March Brown and a Tupps’ Indispensable. Barriton said: “Take a look at my Greenwells. There’s no decent trout fishing in East Anglia, so fly-tying is the next best thing.” He was opening drawers and pulling out trays lined with yellow felt. Trout flies were lined up like gems in a jeweler’s. “What d’you think of that one, group captain?”

“My goodness,” Rafferty said. “That’s something. That really is something.”

“I hope that makes him happy,” Rafferty said. They were in the car, heading home. “These trousers will never be the same again.”

“You handled him beautifully.”

“Bloody retired pongo. Bloody blimp. Bloody has-been MP. Never flown in his life and he’s got the brass gall to be sniffy about our training methods.”

“He’s a lonely old man.”

“Lucky for him. If he’d been younger I’d have flattened him. Men like that haven’t got the faintest idea what Bomber Command’s about.”

“Few people do.”

“They don’t know what courage and strength it takes to go on hammering the Hun, night after night. Brave men in Bomber Command. None braver than 409. Give ’em the chance, and they’ll make Hitler look silly.”

Skull watched the countryside go by. “All the same,” he said, “S-Sugar missed the bombing range by… well, by rather a long way.” Rafferty looked at his watch. “And how did they end up in Yorkshire?” Skull asked.

“Won’t this damn car go any faster?” Rafferty growled. The driver put his foot down.

“You did jolly well with his Greenwell’s Glories,” Skull murmured.

“It’s about time you called me ‘sir’ again,” Rafferty told him. “Straighten your tie. Do up your tunic. You look a complete shambles.”

While Rafferty and Skull were heading westward, two civilians were driving roughly north, aiming for Coney Garth. Rollo Blazer was a film cameraman; Kate Kelly was his sound recordist. Their route was rough because after they left London they got lost. All the signposts in England had been removed a year ago, during the invasion scare. Kate had a map but until they knew where they were, it was useless. Every road they took twisted and wandered. And the rain blotted out any landmarks.

Rollo Blazer stopped the car at a T-junction. The wipers cleared the windscreen and revealed a high barbed-wire fence, a wet field and a sky loaded with cloud. Then a gust rocked the car on its springs and lashed it with rain and the wipers had their work to do all over again. The car was misting up. Kate used a headscarf to wipe the windscreen. “We must be in Suffolk by now,” she said.

“Why? What does Suffolk look like?”

She wiped the windscreen again. “Looks wet.”

“Left or right?”

“Damn good question.” A truck arrived behind them and gave a rasping blast. “Right,” she said.

The truck followed them. Rollo saw an entrance to a field and swerved into it. The truck charged past. He killed the engine. “Say what you like about the Blitz,” he said, “it filmed well.” Ahead stretched soggy grass and sky: dark green and gray. “You know what that’s going to look like on the screen. Cold porridge.” He took a Leica from a bag and focused on a passing bird. “Look, a fly in the porridge,” he said.

The wind was still gusting. It battered the grass and made the barbed wire shriek.

“My mike is ready to hate this place,” Kate said. “It’s all screaming and howling.”

“That’s the fly. It’s drowning in the porridge.” Someone knocked on his window. He wound it down. Four RAF policemen looked at him. All wore revolver holsters, and one had the holster open and his hand on the gun. “Identify yourselves,” he demanded.

“I’m Alfred Hitchcock and she’s Vivien Leigh,” Rollo said.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the policeman said. “You’re both under arrest.”

“And about time too,” Rollo said. “I’m bloody starving.”

It was the wrong thing to say but he delivered it well. Long ago, Rollo Blazer had been a promising young actor, talented and handsome, until he threw it all away.

His curse was his restless imagination. The off-stage life of a character intrigued him. At rehearsals he kept asking: “What’s the story behind the story?” It irritated the cast. “For fuck’s sake, Rollo,” an old actor told him, “the audience don’t give a damn what happens offstage. You can exit and convert to Satanism and strangle your grandmother, for all they care.” Next night, in Act Two, Rollo entered on cue and said, “I’ve converted to Satanism and strangled my grandmother, does anybody care?” Then he spoke his usual lines. For the rest of the performance, whenever he came on stage the audience was unusually alert. Rollo met the old actor in the wings. “You know,” he murmured, “I think they do care.” The man gave a wintry smile. “Any fool can chuck a brick through a stained-glass window,” he said. The curtain fell and Rollo was sacked.

He was glad. The prospect of a long run bored him. What next? He’d had bit-parts in a few short movies. It was fun but the money was pitiful. He borrowed twenty-five pounds from an aunt who thought he was twice as handsome as Leslie Howard, and gave ten to a cameraman to teach him how to shoot movies. This was 1930, when many a worker got a pound a week. Rollo learned a lot for his tenner. With the other fifteen he bought a slightly damaged Sunbeam Talbot and had it painted red. Red for Blazer.

The car became familiar at low-budget shoots on locations around London. Rollo said he was freelancing for movie magazines. He helped carry equipment, he watched and learned. One day a cameraman fell sick. Rollo volunteered. He wasn’t expert but he was cheap, and the film was already over budget. The director kept him on.

By 1939 he was a veteran of the British film industry. All the easy charm of the slim young actor had gone: he was stocky, even stubby, and his right shoulder sagged from carrying cameras. Rust-red hair was graying about the ears; freckles dotted his nose and cheekbones. At the corners of his eyes, years of squinting into a thousand viewfinders had left arrowhead tracks. He was thirty-four and divorced. He came across many attractive women and some who were beautiful, but if he thought too much about any of them the scar on his scalp itched.

Rollo had married an actress called Miriam. It was meant to be a union of minds and souls as well as bodies, but from the first they fought. While he was an actor they fought about the difference between good and bad theater. When he became a cameraman he despised the theater and they fought over that. No blood got shed until their final fight. She threw plates. Most women cannot throw straight, or far. He dodged a couple and then realized that he was safer standing still. She missed and missed. He leaned against a wall and laughed because he genuinely found the scene funny. “You’ve seen too many B-movies,” he said. “People only do this in the movies.” That made her furious, and her fury made her miss him by an even wider margin. He was laughing so much that his ribs hurt. She rushed at him with the last plate and smashed it on his head. When she saw blood trickle down his face, she ran from the room and from his life. He needed six stitches. Ever afterward, if he laughed too much or if the sudden sight of a delightful woman flustered his loins, the scar itched. Rollo Blazer took this as a warning. He had no intention of remarrying. Too old.