Agent of the Reich Read online

  Making small talk, she led Lucy down a dimly-lit corridor to an office door half way along it. She held the door open for Lucy and then, following her in, helped her off with her raincoat, which she hung up on a hatstand in the corner.

  “Do take a seat,” she said, indicating the chair in front of John Elliott’s desk. “He won’t be long.” And with that, she set off back down the corridor.

  Despite the smile and the chattiness, there was something rather cold about the woman, and Lucy was relieved to be left by herself in the office. To pass the time, she began to look around the room. There were several framed photographs of stars on the walls: John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Trevor Howard, Celia Johnson and a few others. Three filing cabinets stood side-by-side along the wall behind the desk. One was marked ‘Artistes’ and the various draws labelled ‘A-F’, ‘G-M’ and so on. She noticed there were two large film canisters on the desk.

  All these movie-related items gave her a slight thrill: it excited her to think that she might soon be part of this world. She would never have thought of herself as ‘Holywood’ material; her aunt had always told her she was plain and would be lucky even to find a husband. Yet here she was, possibly on the threshold of a career in the movies.

  The door opened suddenly and John Elliott breezed into the office, interrupting her reverie.

  “Miss Walker! I’m so pleased to see you again. Thank you for coming,” he said, smiling as he shook her hand. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I was at a meeting with the boss, Hugo DaSilva. You’ll be meeting him as well, later. Would you like some refreshments? Tea, coffee?”

  “Coffee would be nice.”

  He pressed a button on the intercom on his desk and asked Miss Wilks to bring them two coffees.

  “Now, Miss Walker – or may I call you Lucy?”

  “Of course,”

  “There’s no time to waste. You have a busy day ahead of you. The programme for today is this: I’ll start by giving you a tour of the studios and introducing you to some of the crew, although I have to warn you there’s not much to see at the moment – a lot of our equipment and props were destroyed when our Croyden studios were damaged in an air raid a couple of weeks ago.

  “Then, after you’ve had a look around, I’ll take you to see the director, Mr DaSilva. The meeting with him will have to be brief, I’m afraid, as he doesn’t have much time to spare today – he’s got a lot on. After I’ve introduced you to Hugo, we’ll have a spot of lunch, and then in the afternoon we’ll set you up to do a reading with Bob Mitchell. This is nothing to be apprehensive about: Bob’s very easy to work with, and we’ll keep it all very informal. After that, we’ll do your screen test, and we should finish for the day around 4pm. How does that sound?”

  “Yes, that’s fine with me. I can stay as late as you want, just so long as I’m away before the last bus leaves.”

  “Excellent! Now, before we start the tour, there are a few formalities – as always, there is a form to fill in.” He opened a draw in the desk and took out several typed sheets pinned together. “This is for our personnel department. They need to know your contact details, work history, that sort of thing.”

  Miss Wilks came into the room at this point and, staring at Lucy with the same forced smile as before, set down before them a tray with coffee and biscuits, then left without saying a word. Lucy found her slightly unsettling but supposed she was probably harmless enough.

  “So,” Elliott continued, “if you tell me the information, I’ll write it on the form. First of all, then, full name?”

  “Lucy Vera Walker.”

  “Age and date of birth?”

  “Twenty three; 14th June, 1917.”

  Place of birth, nationality, present address … the list of questions was comprehensive. The form filling seemed to Lucy to drag on for ages and after a while she began to get a little restless. She was eager to see round the studios and meet the other staff; the endless questions on the form were starting to frustrate her. Furthermore, she felt Mr Elliott was making matters worse by asking a lot of questions of his own. Lucy assumed he was just making polite conversation, and so she was reluctant to complain. He seemed particularly interested in her friends and relatives.

  One of the questions on the form was ‘Marital status?’

  “Single,” she responded when he read it out.

  “Are you engaged or seeing anyone at the moment?”

  “Is that a question on the form?”

  Elliott smiled at her. “No, it’s not on the form. I apologise if I appear intrusive, but details like this can be useful to know. The cast of a film are often invited to ‘do’s’ and it’s helpful to us to know whether you have a partner to take.”

  “It’s ok, I don’t mind answering, it’s just that there seem to be an awful lot of questions.”

  “Well, I have to admit the film industry isn’t all about glamour. The business side is rather more prosaic.”

  “No, I don’t have a fiancé, and I’m not going out with anyone at the moment.”

  Further down the form it requested a list of her interests.

  “I suppose my main interests are reading and going to the cinema,” she answered.

  “Do you go to the cinema with a girl friend?”

  “No, I usually go by myself or with my aunt.”

  “One of the minor perks of this job is that we can get you free tickets to any of our films that are showing. As many tickets as you want, within reason. Are there any friends you’d like to treat to a free show?”

  “Well, apart from my aunt, I suppose there’s Mr Pickering, my boss at the bookstore.”

  “No one else?”

  “Not really.”

  The last question on the form was ‘Next of kin?’

  “Why do you need to know that?” Lucy queried.

  “It’s for insurance purposes. Some of our actors do their own stunt work and there can be risks involved. Our insurance company needs to know who to contact if there’s an accident. Don’t worry though, I’m happy to say there have never been any fatalities at Lyonesse Films, and anyway, your part doesn’t require any dangerous stunts.”

  “I see. My next of kin would be my Aunt Irene – both my parents were drowned in a boating accident when I was six, and my aunt brought me up.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Lucy. It must be difficult losing your parents when you’re so young. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, I was an only child.”

  “What about other close relatives: cousins, grandparents, other aunts or uncles?”

  “No. I had an uncle in Derby who I used to visit, but he died three years ago. Aunt Irene is my only living relative.”

  “Thank you for being so patient, Lucy. I’m sure it must have been very tedious for you answering all these questions, but that’s the boring part over.

  “Next, there is the matter of expenses,” he continued, opening another drawer in his desk and taking out a black metal cash box. “The studio pays a flat rate of three pounds per day for these auditions – I hope that is acceptable?” He opened the box and counted out from it three singles, which he passed across to Lucy.

  “Three pounds! That’s more than I get paid in a week. You don’t need to give me all this; I just need my return bus fare to Lewisham.”

  Elliott smiled across at her. “There’s your time as well, Lucy. You’ve had to take the day off work and you’ve taken the trouble to get here and take part in the auditions. The least we can do is compensate you. Besides, if you land the part, you’ll be getting paid a lot more, so you’ll have to get used to generous remuneration.”

  Lucy folded the notes and slipped them into a pocket of her dress.

  “OK, well I think that is the formalities over,” he concluded. “Now we can get on with the tour.”

  #

  They left Elliott’s office and walked down the dingy corridor outside to a large double door at the end. Elliott opened one half, went through, and turned
on the lights in the room beyond.

  “Come in and have a look around,” he said, holding the door open for her. Lucy entered and was immediately struck by the size of the room: it must have been at least thirty feet high and a hundred and fifty feet long. It was illuminated by four rows of shaded incandescent bulbs hanging on long flexes from the trusses supporting the roof.

  “It’s like an aircraft hangar,” she remarked.

  “This is one of the warehouse’s main storage areas,” Elliott continued. “What you see in here is all that’s left of our kit after the air raid in Croyden.”

  The space was almost completely taken up with movie paraphernalia. Three aisles ran the length of the room and these were intersected at regular intervals by aisles at right angles, so that the contents of the room were divided up into a lattice of rectangular islands. Elliott started to walk down the central aisle. “Come on, I’ll show you some of the stuff.”

  Nearest to the door were scores of clothing racks holding all manner of theatrical costumes: period clothes, uniforms, cowboy outfits, costumes for musicals, costumes for biblical epics – everything you could imagine. “These are all from our wardrobe department,” he said, indicating the racks. Lucy followed him down the aisle, trying to take it all in. She felt as if it were Christmas morning. Once or twice she stopped to take a dress off a rack in order to have a better look at it or hold it up against her.

  As they progressed down the aisle, Elliott gave a commentary on what was there, pointing out things of interest or recounting anecdotes about particular articles. Immediately beyond the costumes were numerous large items of cinematography gear: on one side of the aisle were a dozen or so movie cameras, some mounted on dollys, some on tripods; on the other was a row of microphone booms.

  “This is some of our hardware,” Elliott continued, waving his arm towards it. “Cameras and sound equipment – obviously.” He went on to describe a technical innovation that was incorporated in the latest camera models.

  After these came the lighting equipment: there must have been at least fifty large set lights mounted on stands, and beyond those were racks of overhead lights lying on the floor. Lucy was curious about the metal flaps that surrounded each lamp, and, going over to one of the stand-mounted lights, she began to move one of its flaps to and fro. “What are these for?” she asked.

  “They’re used to adjust the amount of illumination projected onto a scene. They’re known as ‘barndoors’ in the trade.”

  Further along, tables had been laid out on either side of the aisle. These were loaded with projectors and developing and editing equipment, and underneath were large cardboard boxes with labels such as ‘lenses’ and ‘filters’. On one table there was an open box containing dozens of clapper boards and another filled with light meters.

  “This is an interesting bit of kit,” Elliott said, pointing to what looked like a silver oil drum on wheels, standing on the floor at the end of one of the tables. Attached at the side was a control box with various knobs and switches, and a wide flexible tube emerged from the lid of the drum. “It’s a fog machine for producing ‘pea-soupers’ or smoke effects on set. Dry ice is loaded into a basket at the top of the drum and then lowered into heated water to produce a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour which is blown out through the tube at the top by a fan.”

  Beyond the tables there must have been fifty or more crates and boxes, stacked two or three high and each stencilled with ‘Property Dept.’ on the side. Finally, at the end of the central aisle, and taking up the rest of the space in the storeroom, were the large props and scenery items: things such as furniture, fake shrubbery and bushes, building facades in sections, and even some horse-drawn vehicles, including a hansom and a replica Roman chariot.

  “And lastly, we have some examples of the scene-painters art,” Elliott said as they eventually reached the end of the central aisle. All along the rear wall, scores of backdrops had been propped up, stacked one on top of the other six deep.

  Lucy was fascinated by it all and would have been happy to spend the rest of the day examining the contents of the room, but Elliott was keen to keep going.

  “We need to move on,” he remarked, looking at his watch, “it’s almost eleven thirty.”

  #

  As they left the storeroom and began walking back down the corridor, Lucy noticed in the distance Miss Wilks showing a brown-haired girl into Elliott’s office and realised it must be another applicant.

  “How many are auditioning for this part?” she asked.

  “Five in total: two today, two tomorrow, and one on Wednesday.”

  They walked past Elliott’s office and on to the other end of the corridor, where they went through another double door into a second storeroom. This was not as long as the first one and just contained crates and packing cases of various sizes. They walked down an aisle between the stored items to the far end of the room, where a large area of floor had been cleared and an improvised sound stage rigged up in the space: there was a battery of lights, a camera and sound boom, and a set consisting of a contemporary room interior, complete with furniture.

  “This is the set we’ve put together for your screen test this afternoon,” Elliott informed her as they drew near to it. “Come and have a look and I’ll introduce you to some of the crew.” They approached two men who were tinkering with the mechanism inside the camera. “This is Ted and Barry, our cameraman and soundman respectively. Two of the best in the business.” The men looked round briefly and smiled at Lucy, and then went back to working on the camera.

  The sound of hammering was coming from behind the set and Elliott took Lucy round the back of the interior scene to where another man was kneeling on the ground nailing struts into a large wooden frame. “This is Len: Len is in charge of scenery.” The man looked up, smiled and waved to Lucy, and then continued with his hammering.

  A fourth man, wearing a brown workshop coat, was seated at a table nearby and was soldering something inside a box of electronics. “This is Lukasz, our chief electrician. He looks after all the lights and electrical gear.” The man looked up and nodded towards Lucy, but there was no smile this time. He stared at her impassively for several seconds and then returned to his soldering. Lucy noticed that one of his hands was disfigured, as if it had been burned.

  “Lukasz is one of our Polish allies,” Elliott said, speaking softly, as they walked round to the front of the set. “Rather a serious fellow. He managed to escape to Sweden and found his way here on a freighter.”

  “What happened to his hand?” Lucy enquired, but then regretted it, feeling she was being intrusive.

  “His arm and hand were badly burned when he tried to rescue someone from a blaze during the bombing of Warsaw last September. He came to England to join the RAF but they won’t take him on because of his injury.

  “OK,” he continued, raising his voice to its normal level as they walked back up the aisle, “you’ve met the crew who are here today. There are a lot of others but they’re away on location, setting up for the start of filming in a few days.” He looked at his watch. “I think it’s time now to meet the director, Mr DaSilva.”

  As they went down the corridor again, Elliott filled her in on the man’s background. “He’s originally from Switzerland but has been making films here in England for many years now. He’s a brilliant man; some would even say a genius. He likes to be at the cutting edge of cinema, both in terms of technology and filming technique. DaSilva’s films are renowned for their innovation, and he is probably one of the leading avant-garde directors in this country. He has an amazing imagination and is always keen to try new methods. But I have to warn you that he can be slightly eccentric at times and a little, well, overwhelming. Don’t be put off by him, though, Lucy. He knows what he’s doing.”

  They stopped at a half-glazed door just across the corridor from Elliott’s office. In large black lettering on the frosted glass was the name ‘Hugo DaSilva’. Elliott knocked on the p
ane and put his head round the door. “I have the first of the applicants here, Mr DaSilva. Do you have time to have a word with her now?” Lucy noticed a smell of cigar smoke had wafted into the corridor through the open door.

  A throaty voice with a pronounced foreign accent replied from within: “Yes, yes, of course! Please show her in.”

  “In you go then, Lucy,” Elliott said, ushering her through the doorway.

  Hesitantly, she entered the office and approached the small, stocky figure who was seated behind a desk at the far side. Coming to a halt in front of the desk, she peered at him inquisitively through the haze of tobacco smoke that filled the room. He had wavy, black hair and thick lips, and she guessed he was in his early fifties. So, she thought, this is what a genius looks like.

  Without saying a word, the man slowly put down the cigar he was smoking, placing it carefully in an ashtray on the desk, and then stood up and leant forward to shake her hand.

  Elliott introduced her: “This is Lucy Walker; she’s auditioning for the lead female role.”

  “Ah yes, Miss Walker from the bookshop! Please sit down,” he said, indicating a chair facing the desk.

  “We’ve done the tour,” Elliott continued. “I have to see one of the other applicants now, so I’ll leave you two together. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes and we can take a break then for lunch, OK Lucy?” He smiled at her and went out of the room, leaving her alone with the great man.

  DaSilva sat down, picked up his cigar from the ashtray and leant back in the chair. For some time he stared up at the ceiling while occasionally drawing on the cigar. He seemed to Lucy to have drifted off into a daydream. After a while, he lowered his gaze and regarded her silently. He had dark, glittering eyes and a slightly predatory expression.

  “So, what do you think of what you’ve seen so far?” he asked eventually.

  “Very interesting. You have so much gear – I loved the costumes especially. It’s a pity your studios were damaged: it would be good to see it all in its proper setting.”