The Twilight Hour Read Free Page B

Grecian profile and his greenish eyes with their long lashes tinged his expression with melancholy. He had broad shoulders too, but he wasn’t as tall as you’d expect if you saw him sitting down; the lower half of his body dwindled away to short legs. Still, I liked the way he stood, planted firmly on his feet, what you might call a commanding presence.
    We sat at two rickety tables. Tommy’s minion, a weedy-looking boy of about fifteen, came over and wiped the shiny tablecloths. Soon he returned with thick, chipped white plates piled with bacon and eggs, fried cabbage and bread and fried potatoes. There was tea in mugs. Our new friends weren’t eating. The two men ordered coffee, but when it came, Enescu nearly choked. ‘You call this coffee? My God, you British. Never have I eaten such terrible food,’ he said tactlessly. ‘I tell you, in the war, and during my escape, and all through Europe, never, never did I eat food so terrible as what I eat since I come here. Your food is a crime!’
    I felt a faint, resentful flicker of patriotic pride. Didn’t he know we’d had rationing, shortages, fair shares? That’s how we’d won the war. And I’d heard that the French had had to make coffee out of acorns. But before I could speak Colin cut in.
    â€˜Fighting the Nazis, were you?’ he enquired in a dangerously neutral voice. I stared at Alan, willing him to head Colin off, but Enescu smiled dazzlingly. ‘One day I hope to make a film on this subject. The time is not yet. What you and I –’ and with the hand holding his cigarette he gestured at their circle – ‘what we should be doing is a different project. I am telling you, the success of my film, this is what should be pursued. People are wanting fantasy, escape, beauty. They are not yet ready to hear more about the war, about horrors. Later that will come. For now it is romance, excitement, yes, but in history – historical drama. Look at Olivier in Henry the Fifth .’
    Alan said, rather ponderously: ‘But that was about this war in a way. It was extremely patriotic.’
    Radu smiled harder than ever. ‘Your Gainsborough films then – The Wicked Lady ! What a film. A tragedy Gwendolen has not starred in this film. Margaret Lockwood was okay, she was good fun, you might say, but with Gwendolen –’ and he kissed the tips of his fingers – ‘it would have been unbelievable.’
    I waited for the explosion. I knew they all despised the Gainsborough films, tosh for housewives, they thought those costume dramas. But there was merely a chilly silence.
    â€˜What subject exactly,’ began Alan cautiously, ‘had you in mind?’
    Radu looked round at them. He must have caught the atmosphere, for he changed tack. ‘Maybe it is possible – the refugee idea. But this has to be done in dramatic way, romance, passion. Otherwise, it is too much for audiences.’
    All the while, Gwendolen Grey smoked languidly.
    â€˜How did you get into films?’ I asked her.
    Her long lips curved in a faint smile. ‘Oh, it’s a long story.’
    A story she evidently wasn’t going to tell me.
    .........
    Someone had heard about a party. We all squeezed into the back of Stanley Colman’s Bentley. I was on Alan’s knee. Gwendolen Grey sat in the front.
    The party was in a lofty, battered stucco terrace overlooking Regent’s Park. We passed under the scaffolding that seemed to be keeping the house from collapsing altogether, and trudged up magnificent flights of stairs. Bomb damage had torn the plaster away from the walls in places and the lower floors looked uninhabitable. A howling draught came through badly boarded up windows from which all the glass had long since been blown out. It was not completely dark, for candles had been perilously placed at intervals on the stairs and sent long shadows up the walls.
    At the top of the house the