years ago.
And the librarian got rather ratty when I suggested putting a bit more about the family into the book.' She yawned. 'Anyway, Tigger and Charles were so completely uninterested. They think it's rather common to know too much. It was a bit disheartening in the end.'
'Then you'll have to find something else to take up. I can't believe you're short of offers from the local charities.' Even as I spoke I knew I was sounding more and more like a German governess but the truth was I felt like one, watching this spoiled beauty pouting against the fence.
She sighed drearily. 'So I suppose you're saying I've just got to tough it out?'
'Well, haven't you?'
She caught my eye as the whistle blew. The drive was over and we headed back to the Range Rovers. There we were distracted by a certain amount of fuss and suppressed rage, which appeared to have been caused by Eric Chase firing more or less directly at M. de Montalambert's nose. Eric was, of course, wildly indignant at the very suggestion, while the other side was muttering a collection of extraordinary French phrases, some of which were quite unfamiliar to me. I was appealed to as an independent witness but, needless to say, chatting to Edith, I had missed the whole thing.
Caroline listened to my protestations and nodded her approval. 'Quite right,' she said, blandly. 'I should stay out of it if I were you.'
I wasn't absolutely sure as to what she was referring.
After tea, I was just getting into my car at that slightly awkward moment when one lot of guests leaves and the next contingent draws up, when Charles followed me out across the gravel and came up to the driving window. I wound it down, wondering what I'd forgotten as I'd already done all my goodbyes, tips and signing. 'I meant to tell you,' he said, 'we've had an offer from a film company. My father's a bit blank. It's your neck of the woods. What do you think we ought to do?'
'They want to make a film at Broughton?'
'I don't know if it's a real film or one of those television things, but yes. What are they like? Is it safe?'
As a general rule, speaking as an actor, I wouldn't let a film unit within a mile of my house, under any circumstances, but it is nevertheless true that they are fairly reliable when they are dealing with anything that might qualify as 'historic'. Of course, whether or not it is worth it rather depends, like everything else in life, on what one is getting out of it. The best I could do was give Charles the name of an agency who might know the form for negotiating with film companies and suggest that he did what they told him.
He thanked me and nodded. 'We must stipulate you as part of the contract,' he said with a smile, as I drove away.
TEN
Oddly enough, and in sharp contrast to most of my Show Business acquaintance in similar circumstances, Charles kept his word. The film in question was one of those made-for-television pieces, which gather together as many fashionable actors as are short of money at the time, and run for three interminable hours on Sunday nights.
It was supposed to be the story of the Gunning sisters, an obscure pair of Irish beauties who arrived in London in 1750, took it by storm and married respectively the Earl of Coventry and the Duke of Hamilton. As it happened, the Hamilton marriage was unhappy — a situation rectified by the early death of the Duke — but the widowed Duchess went on, with some panache, to marry her long-term admirer, Colonel John Campbell, himself the heir to the dukedom of Argyll.
This was clearly the stuff of which pseudo-historical mini-series are made. Broughton was to double as both Hamilton Palace (demolished in the twenties) and Inverary (which I suppose was too far from London. Either that or the present Duke of Argyll didn't relish the prospect). In addition, various interiors would be employed for the vanished splendours of Georgian London.
It was to be directed by an Englishman named Christopher Twist, who had enjoyed some success with a couple of zany pieces at the end of the sixties when that style was in vogue and who was still eking out a living on the scraps of his earlier reputation. I knew the casting director, who had been kind to me in the past and I assumed it was due to her that I had been summoned for the quite reasonable part of Walter Creevey (a gossip of the period who had been written up as the double Duchess's confidant, although I don't believe there was much factual evidence of their friendship) but as soon as I had sat down Twist gave the game away. 'I gather you're a close friend of the Earl of Broughton,' he said.
I suppose anyone who lives in Hollywood may be forgiven for falling into American ways as, unlike many other peoples of the globe, Los Angelinos do not appreciate any code but their own. I was nevertheless slightly irritated, not by the misnaming of Charles's title, nor by the clumsiness of referring to his rank in full, but by that most intrusive phrase, 'close friend'. In my experience, anyone who says they are a 'close friend' of some celebrity has generally a slight acquaintance at best. Just as
'sources close to the Royal Couple' in a newspaper means gossip from the outermost circle of Royal hangers- on. 'I know him,' I said.
Twist wasn't put off. 'Well, he thinks very highly of you,' he continued. He had that odd, mid-Atlantic manner of speech that reminds one of a television chat show where every trivial remark is supposed (a) to denote a caring soul and (b) to bring all reasonable conjecture on the subject to an end.
'That's nice,' I said.
'So,' he lay back in his chair, stretching his legs and revealing a pair of cowboy boots covered in frightful Red Indian patterns, 'tell me a little about yourself.'
It is hard for anyone who is not an actor to comprehend fully the level of depression into which one is plunged by this question, when the credits of one's feeble career must be dragged out and displayed like the tawdry contents of a salesman's battered suitcase. I shall consequently pass over it and say that I was given the job. This was not because of the 'little about myself that I had told but because Twist did not want to start on the wrong side of Lady Uckfield, who had apparently, I later learned, been most resolute in my cause.
As soon as my agent had confirmed that I was hired for the full eight weeks of the movie — which would involve six weeks in or around Broughton — I telephoned Edith.
'But how perfectly thrilling! Of course you'll stay with us.'
