His father had wangled Elaine a speaking part in Oh! What A Lovely War but Hathaway wasn’t sure whether she’d taken it as, after Greece, she wasn’t speaking to him. He couldn’t see her anywhere in the crowd and then he and the other Avalons joined the procession on to the pier. They did it once, twice, three times before Attenborough declared himself satisfied. It had taken five hours.
‘Well, if this is film making, you can keep it,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve had more fun watching paint dry.’
Hathaway sauntered off, still in his uniform, down to his father’s office. Halfway there, he saw his father walking towards him, flanked by Victor Tempest, Tempest’s wife, Elizabeth, and, in a very short skirt, the chief constable’s wife.
‘How’s the war going?’ his father shouted before they all met and shook hands.
‘No action yet,’ Hathaway said, giving the women his best smile and trying not to ogle the length of bare leg on show.
‘John,’ Tempest said. ‘You should say hello to the scriptwriter on the film – I assume you’re still reading spy thrillers?’
‘I am, Mr Tempest – Mr Watts, I mean – I don’t know what I should call you.’
‘Victor Tempest is only my working name. Why not call me Donald?’
‘All right, Donald. I’m not sure this is my kind of film, really.’
‘Great cast, though,’ Donald Watts said. ‘All doing it for a nominal sum. Johnny Mills was telling me he got Attenborough involved. Dickie wanted to do a film about Gandhi but said he’d have a go at this. He phoned up Olivier – you know he lives in Royal Crescent? He’s not been well but he agreed to do it for peanuts, then everyone else came on board.’
‘I see,’ Hathaway said. ‘But what’s that got to do with thrillers?’
‘You’ve read The Ipcress File?’
‘Of course. Len Deighton. Very good.’
‘Well, he wrote the script for this film.’
Hathaway was impressed.
‘I’ll look out for him.’
‘Do that. If I’m around I’ll introduce you.’
Tempest turned to Hathaway’s father.
‘We’d better be getting on, Dennis. Good to see you.’
‘I’ll let you make your own way – I need a word with my son.’
‘And I need the toilet,’ Elizabeth Watts said. ‘I’ll say my goodbyes now – don’t wait.’
As she disappeared into the nearby toilets and his father led him towards the office, Hathaway caught sight of Tempest and the chief constable’s wife in a prop mirror leaning against the side of a stall. Presumably thinking no one was watching, Tempest had slipped his hand under the back of her mini-skirt and up between her thighs.
Hathaway was hardly listening when his father said:
‘Philip Simpson has resigned and the twins have been arrested.’
Hathaway nodded absently. He was thinking about Tempest’s hand slipping up between those white thighs.
‘Is that it?’ his father said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Is that all the excitement you can muster?’
Hathaway switched focus.
‘So we can let loose the dogs of war.’
Dennis Hathaway laughed and squeezed his arm.
‘Soon, sonny boy, soon.’
ELEVEN
1969
By the time Bruce Reynolds, the last Great Train Robber to be captured, was sentenced in January 1969 to twenty-five years, Hathaway was still waiting to see his father take over Brighton. Philip Simpson was no longer chief constable, though he was still visible around town and up at the racetrack. He’d become a father for the first time a year earlier but it had coincided with him coming down with cancer. He looked like a skeleton. The twins’ empire had crashed. But Cuthbert was still being a pain in the arse, and Dennis Hathaway didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.
Hathaway and Charlie discussed it many times but Hathaway dissuaded Charlie from bringing out the clown costumes.
There was talk of closing the West Pier down. It was rotting at the far end – Hathaway could kick a hole in the floorboards in the office. Charlie had done so. His father tended to use his office in the Laines most of the time.
Hathaway and Elaine had limped back together. They saw each other now mainly for sex. She had seen an ugly side of him and it repelled her, though at the same time he could tell by the way the sex had changed that she was also drawn to his brutal side.
She didn’t know the half of it.
Elaine was doing her finals but she was also getting bit parts in Brighton-based film and TV programmes. Her one line in Oh! What A Lovely War got her an Equity card, though when the film came out her line had been cut. The camera was on her a bit – and on Charlie in another scene. Hathaway couldn’t spot himself.
Elaine played the friend of a runaway in an episode of Marker, a TV series about a seedy ex-con who set up as an enquiry agent in Brighton. She flirted with Sid James on the Palace Pier in Carry On At Your Convenience. She played a go-go dancer alongside an actress called Susan George in a film called Die Screaming, Marianne, filmed in one of Dennis Hathaway’s discos and at Brighton Station.
Hathaway was on the set for that. When Elaine wasn’t around he tried it on with George – she was the sexiest girl he’d ever seen, even sexier than Judy Geeson – but she wasn’t having any.
Bill Boal, the innocent Great Train Robber, died in prison just as Elaine was filming On A Clear Day You Can See Forever at the Royal Pavilion.
Hathaway went on the set and reported back to Charlie over a couple of joints in a pub garden out on the Downs near the Plumpton racecourse.
‘That Barbara Streisand – God, the tits on her.’
‘What’s she doing?’ Charlie said.
‘Making a film with Irene Handl.’
Charlie laughed.
‘She’s made it big, then.’
‘Elaine’s playing one of her maidservants.’
‘You know I’ve never actually met Elaine?’
‘Yes, you have, but you were too out of it to remember. She’s having a party at the end of finals – come to that.’
‘What, me and a room full of students? I’ll be like their granddad.’
‘Nah. It’ll be the usual yellow-mellow thing – music, drugs, drink, probably sex.’
‘I’d say that’s guaranteed for you if it’s Elaine’s party.’
‘Nothing is guaranteed – and look, I’m warning you, Charlie, they’re a weird lot.’
‘What kind of weird?’
‘They play mind games – makes you want to punch them – but you can’t punch anybody, Charlie. That’s a massive no-no.’
