Hadley, page 8
“Can I pour you some champagne?” Panda said.
“I think I can help you,” Joe said.
“No, I can manage.”
“Not you, Panda. I mean I think I can help Hadley.”
“Help me do what?”
“Help me do what?” Joe mimicked. “I can help you do this, I can help you do that. What was that film, now? Back in the Fens?”
“‘Great Expectations’.”
“Right. ‘Great Expectations’. I checked it out in my records. It never got made. Boy, it was a long time ago and I wasn’t directly involved.” Joe was playing with his ear. “I was just in the neighbourhood. But the director got run over and broke his legs and one of the actors came down with botulism. Both on the same day.”
“Really?”
“Really. I checked the records.”
“I’m surprised our paper didn’t pick up on it. Broke both his legs?”
“That’s what the records say. They weren’t explicit. Your friend Torment’s movie debut was delayed somewhat.”
“Extraordinary. What records might they be, then?”
Joe declared the subject closed with another laugh and a dismissive wave of his hand. “Listen Hadley, if you don’t mind, I’d like to spend the rest of the drive in silence. I love this drive. Basically, I love Hong Kong. Panda understands. You don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
I briefly caught Panda’s glistening eyes and detected a faint sneer. The car swished down towards Central and then turned up Cotton Tree Drive, Magazine Gap Road, Peak Road, a different harbour view at every turn. A few more weeks and mist would cover the hills and apartment blocks and the smell of wet leaves would remind me of my childhood in England. An unexpected rush of collywobbles accompanied the thought of how many typhoons Adolf Lee would feature in this Hong Kong movie. There had to be at least one. And at least one fire in a floating restaurant and a stock market collapse. And probably some bollocks in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel.
The car turned on to Harlech Road, a narrow track that circles the Peak. This was for walkers and joggers – no cars allowed except for those needing access to the weather-beaten blocks of old flats and the occasional isolated houses sitting on the most sought-after real estate in the world, fenced off with barbed wire and notices warning of big dogs.
You start off on Harlech Road, passing waterfalls and stone cliffs and hills iced with cement to stop rocks falling on your right. The cement turns dark green with lichen within weeks. On the left is jungle full of Burmese pythons with views down to Aberdeen and out across the South China Sea. Then the track starts edging round the Peak (the name changes to Lugard Road) and the hum of the harbour grows until you are looking down on the lights of the boats and the construction and traffic and people playing tennis in fancy clubs squeezed in between the high-rise buildings. Time it right, and the sun will be setting on the final stretch back to where you started at the Peak Tram. The whole city, by this time, has turned pink.
I knew Harlech Road very well, but the limo turned down a drive into unexplored territory. There were rhododendron bushes down each side and expanses of lawn beyond. At the edge of a neglected hard tennis court with no net, the car turned into another drive and stopped outside a white bungalow. I was amazed – too amazed to say anything. Before I could collect my thoughts, I found myself sitting in a long drawing room where Joe was tinkering with bottles and glasses. I was aware that Panda had somehow been dismissed. Just like in the movies.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I’m getting you a Scotch, no ice, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. Yes. Please. Panda, you mean? Yes, she is. Stunning.”
“Beautiful. And colourful. Extraordinary story.” Joe gave me my drink, sat down and loosened his tie.
“Extraordinary?”
“She came third in one of the Hong Kong pageants. Miss Great Ass or something. Caught the eye of a young Macau gangster who plied her with roses and a fast car and had her working on her back within three weeks, servicing Cantonese movie celebrities.”
I shuffled in my seat. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding. But she liked it. She thought it was challenging, fun and the lifestyle she got by doing it was straight out of the teen magazines she used to read on the Star Ferry. She found bit parts in Cantonese soaps which went down big on the mainland and then got a Canto pop record deal. One thing led to another. We found her. I found her. Good English. Here she is. Cheers.”
“I seem to remember there was some scandal about a boyfriend found dead near one of those weekend getaways at Big Wave Bay.”
“That so?” Joe said. “Don’t recall.”
“The newspapers said he was involved in illegal road racing and gambling. Probably a Triad killing. Maybe it was the Macau gangster?”
“I’ll ask her about that one. But don’t believe everything you read.”
“No, you’re right.”
“I mean, I don’t have to tell you, right? About the crap newspapers print.”
“Right.”
Joe fidgeted, downed his drink. “I read the news today,” he said. “Boy oh boy.”
I swallowed. Again the image of the Cadillac written on the wing mirror slipped into my head. “So who are you guys?”
“Hah! You like that line. ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’… William Goldman script. The man in the white hat. Deliberate repetition to reinforce the mystery. There’s no need for such dramatics. I’ll try to explain a little. On the condition that you keep it quiet.”
“Okay.”
“My first bit of advice to you is… don’t be such a pup.”
“What?”
“It’s something I’ve noticed about you. You hold on to this Englishness, this aloofness. You think you’re great and sophisticated with a superior slant on life. You think you’re better than all other nationalities and races. But you’re not. You’re an observer, a sneerer, but you don’t actually do anything. You don’t take any risks. You don’t raise your head above the parapet. The people in the world out there, if they knew you, if they knew you, would despise you.”
I was silent but preparing a protest. I tried to summon up a bit of anger. “It isn’t deliberate,” I said.
“Don’t mind me. It’s a little rant, that’s all. It’s a little speech I’ve made to many Brits before you. The modern Westerner is inherently weak. Too much too easy. And no religion too. But let’s talk about this movie you’re involved in. It may be taking off. Don’t worry about needing ten, twenty takes in any scene – that’s how this business works. People forget their lines, people lose their tempers, people forget they don’t have divine rights. This movie’s perfect for you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t get on with Chris Torment. I was at school…”
“You were at school with him, I know.”
“How did you know?”
“He treated you shamelessly.”
“He did.”
“And he had intimate relations with your sister.”
“Intimate relations with my sister? What do you mean my sister?”
“Well…”
“How do you know? I don’t believe you.”
“I can show you the video.”
“You have a video of Torment having intimate relations with my sister?”
“No, not really.” Joe stood up to forestall any protest. “But I’m not lying to you, Hadley. Let me put it this way: this movie project that you are involved in is gaining momentum.”
“But what do you mean, intimate relations?”
“Just forget about that for now. Listen to me. This movie is gaining momentum, which is bad. It’s good for Adolf Lee and it will be good presumably for your friend Torment. But it’s not good for the people I represent.”
“Who are they?” Intimate relations?
Joe pulled down a book from a shelf next to a huge, flat television and threw it into my lap. It was ‘Mr Tony’s Book of Movies’, with the words ‘Best Seller’ splashed across the front.
“Think of a Chris Torment movie and look it up.”
I opened the book. “I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”
“Well that is a major part of the problem, you stuck-up Brit. Let me help. ‘Northwest Frontier’.” I searched for the page. “Four stars for the best. I have yet to find a Chris Torment movie that has scored anything.”
I read: “‘Northwest Frontier’. Relentless, moribund ‘action’ flick set on the northern frontier of India. Laughingly inappropriate remake of a 1959 British classic starring Lauren Bacall and Kenneth More. Chris Torment, in the part originally played by More, wears extraordinary khaki shorts.”
“Look up another.”
My memory leapt back like a wet salmon and I happily turned to ‘Silent and a Stranger’. “Chris Torment limps around the screen sulking like a six-year-old when he should be striding and rampaging. The film’s only saving grace is that, as the stranger, he is more often than not silent.”
“Try ‘Othello’.”
I sniggered and found the page quickly. “Chris Torment manages to make Iago as devious as a two-day-old puppy.”
“I rest my case.”
“I’m sorry, but I think I am missing the point.”
“You Brits are so protective of your actors,” Joe said from the end of the room. “You have some mighty fine actors, don’t get me wrong. But you let people like Torment get away with murder. All he is, is a pretty face. He’s not a song-and-dance man, he’s not funny, he’s got about as much personality as a coffee table and yet he’s paraded around like Larry Olivier. I mean, what is it about this guy?”
“There’s nothing you have said that I don’t agree with. I hate everything about the man. But I still don’t see the point.”
Joe sat down and slowly placed his elbows on his knees.
“This here’s the problem,” he said. “There’s speculation that Torment may take over as the next James Bond. The guy is pushing forty-five, for God’s sake.”
“Go on.”
“We’re talking James Bond here. There is a heritage that has to be protected. Resurrected and protected.”
“So you…”
“…want to stop him. Yes. As I said, this movie, ‘Love in Hong Kong’ or whatever, is likely to make waves, and Torment may find himself washed along with all the hype and come out of it looking terrific. Now you and I both know that he isn’t terrific at anything. He’s useless.”
I paused. I felt as though I was in a vacuum. “So who are you guys?”
“You’ll never know. The only reason I’m letting you in on this much is because you’ll never know the full story. You thought you had stumbled on a story all those years ago. You don’t know how big it actually is. You thought we were movie producers, and that’s kind of what we are, but without the billing. The key point is that we insist on integrity. The only reason I’m telling you so much is because of what Torment has done to you and what you may be able to do for us, as part of this film. Just remember that no one would believe someone like you if you were to talk about it. And you would never get the chance to. People have tried before.”
“Tried what?”
“To spill the beans. To expose us.”
“You mean… Wait, are you threatening me?”
“We have a lot of money. That’s how I know so much about you. That’s how I know about your sister, whom Torment courted and seduced when she was seventeen.”
“‘Courted and seduced’? ‘Whom’? What language are you speaking? What are you talking about? Does Adolf Lee or Torment know about you? Who you are?”
“Not specifically. They suspect people like us exist. As it happens, I am helping Adolf in another capacity with this film. He is using some of my back catalogue.”
“Back catalogue?”
“Some of my archive material. I film things, you see. All the time. I am filming even as we speak.” Joe nodded my head towards the top of the far wall where I saw a tiny black security camera sunk into a recess. “I have footage of the strangest moments.”
“Does Panda know about you? About your organisation?”
“No.”
“The assassination attempt?”
Joe shrugged his shoulders.
“Are you political?”
“I don’t know what that means. If you’re asking do we try to bring down governments, then the answer is no. What we do is art, basically. Yeah. Basically, it’s art.”
“So what do you want me to do? Why don’t you just take him aside and tell him? Or break his legs or something.” A penny dropped. “Back in the Fens, ‘Great Expectations’. You said…”
“Violence tends to be a last resort in these situations. It’s part of our code of conduct. We like to do things with, how should I say, theatrical flourish.” Joe sat down excitedly and leant forward on his knees again. “You know the first movie I was involved in?”
“‘Mary Poppins’?”
“Hah! You are trying to be funny. But you are close, you feckless boy who weeps and wails. Julie Andrews was involved. ‘My Fair Lady’… We wanted her, not Audrey Hepburn. We wanted her beautiful singing voice. Wouldn’t it be lo-ver-ly, we thought. It was my first movie and we failed. But before we failed, you know what we did? To try to dissuade her?” I shook my head. “We sent her flowers. Eliza Doolittle. She’s the flower girl, see. So we sent her flowers, every hour of every day, signing off as an obsessive fan.”
“A flower stalker.”
“Well, there were wild threats enclosed in the little envelopes that came with the flowers. But she didn’t take the hint.”
“Why should it be so important? Who gives a shit?”
Joe appeared not to hear. “Another important part of our work, my work, is to keep things clean. I’m not a big fan of bad language or bad behaviour. It’s lazy.”
“You’re having me on, aren’t you? This is all some put-up job.”
Joe wagged his finger. “No, no. You are more likely a put-up job.”
“You mean you’re telling me you are some sort of CIA censor? What could have been so offensive about ‘Great Expectations’, for heaven’s sake? How many F-words did Miss Havisham have in mind? How many times was Pip planning to give Magwitch one? And what could be wrong with Audrey Hepburn?”
“Well, she had to be dubbed, for a start. By Marni Nixon. Did you know that? None of it is important now and I can’t remember all the details. I also don’t want to stray from the project at hand because time waits for no man and I want you to think about James Bond and what you could do, and what you would want to do, in order to stop Torment.”
“Time waits for no man? For heaven’s sake. Can I have another drink?”
Joe waved an arm in the direction of the cabinet. “I’ll make it easy for you. Think about actors you would like to play Bond. Dead or alive. Just for fun. Pierce Brosnan was never my choice, by the way, but I wasn’t involved in the franchise at the time.”
I poured myself a whisky and looked at Joe. How could he be so earnest? “I always thought Patrick McGoohan…”
“Brilliant! Now you are beginning to feel the passion of the role and for the job in hand. McGoohan would have been an excellent James Bond. Up there with Connery. He had the coldness and the brutality. All Brosnan and Moore had was charm. I’ve told the team that the actor who plays 007 must be dark, hard and brutal. He cannot look like a guy who has soft hands or wears an earring or uses hairspray. And he’s gotta have a sense of humour. It’s like, in news, I believe you have a saying that you want to throw a story forward? To focus on what happens next rather than what’s happened? Well, it’s the same here. We start again.”
“Do you know who it’s going to be?”
“Who?”
“The next Bond.”
“I don’t want to give too much away but we’ve narrowed it down and we know who we want. I can tell you that it won’t be another Australian or an American. Clive Owen’s too boring. Ewan McGregor’s too… Ewan McGregor. David Beckham passed a lot of the tests.”
“You have to be kidding. He’s not dark.”
“He has looks going for him. Getting old, though.”
“Can he act?”
“Look, forget about David Beckham. What’s important is that you’re really beginning to think about this part.”
“And David Beckham wears an earring, I believe. He may wear two. You wear an earring.”
“Yes, but I am not a contender. Are you going to help us out?”
“I haven’t a clue. I find you a bit scary, to tell you the truth. What do you want me to do?”
“Well, you’ve got options. You’re a newsman. Isn’t there something provisional you could do? Can you write something?”
“You mean make something up?”
“Sure. Put some innuendo out there. Get people worrying about his moral fibre, or – even better – his sexuality. You Brits are all so hung up about homosexuals. Get them talking about a gay James Bond contender. It’s perfect.”
“Can’t you lay off the Brits for one minute? You think I can just go around making up stories?”
“Isn’t that what you do?”
“I don’t understand. You say you have these high ideals about the movies, but it seems like you’d stoop pretty low to achieve them. You are completely amoral.”
The shadow of a smile crossed Joe’s face. It went away as quickly as it had come and left the impression that he believed he had scored a point.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“What question?”
Joe got up from his chair and walked slowly around behind me, like a school headmaster invigilating an exam. “The question I just asked. The one about whether or not you make up stories.”
“You think we can just make up stories? The whole point of the news agency business is that we get it right and are seen getting it right. Or else no one would ever use us. Everything is sourced.”
“So every quote is word for word legit?”
“Of course it is! You obviously don’t know much about news. How long do you think we would be in business if we made up quotes?”
