Naturally enough, it was at this point that Professor Quelch and I, ascending from the lobby, stepped from the electric elevator to the soft carpet of our floor to be confronted by a Wolf Seaman who had clearly caught the sun and had hay fever. He was burning red. There were tears in his eyes. I suggested he should lie down. I would send someone to him. Perhaps he required a doctor. He spoke in incoherent, guttural Swedish. I could understand hardly a word. In his hand he held a crumpled buff form, obviously a telegram. After we had taken him back to his room and ordered him a large gin and tonic, he was able to tell us that he had stopped at Sir Ranalf Steeton’s office on the way back from the pyramids. Sir Ranalf had been hoping to see him. He had accepted a cable from Goldfish on Seaman’s behalf. At last the Swede permitted me to examine the wire. I remember it clearly:
where are you stop if not there inform me immediately of whereabouts stop stop all production stop where is your star since cherbourg stop await further instructions stop ps has he gone to tangier stop s.g.
Seaman was baffled. I, of course, understood something of Goldfish’s bewilderment and, I suspect, anger. In my obsessions with my own problems I had forgotten to pass on the earlier message to remain in Alexandria until our new star arrived. Clearly the star had arrived and, finding us gone, with Goldfish’s steamer getting ready to depart for Tangier, where Captain Quelch had further business, had decided to take passage on the Hope Dempsey.
I advised Seaman to relax. This was just another of Goldfish’s self-contradicting cables. He sent them when he was bored. Tomorrow would bring us a further wire countermanding everything in the previous one. We should proceed as normal and begin shooting tomorrow.
‘That would be wonderful,’ said Seaman with that heavy tone he intended for irony, ‘if Sir Ranalf Steeton did not have to authorise all our bank orders. We have no money, gentlemen. We cannot pay crew, actors or our hotel without Steeton’s authority. We have only the money we carry. And Steeton’s master is Goldfish. He must do as Goldfish commands. I respect him for that.’
‘But tomorrow or the next day Goldfish will be asking us why we have no “footage”,’ I said. ‘We shall waste time if we pay too much attention to this cable.’
‘He has never been so adamant.’
‘You have never understood him to be so,’ I coolly pointed out. Thus, little by little, I was able to calm the Swede long enough to get his agreement not to inform the others. It would cause unnecessary alarm. Meanwhile, we would begin shooting as planned, early the next morning when the sun’s rising above the pyramids would be the backdrop to the first love-scene between myself and Mrs Cornelius.
Our story must become an actuality! Mrs Cornelius and I would appear in a prologue where, as modern lovers doomed by society’s rules to separate, we meet, ostensibly for the last time, and embrace beneath the stern and battered features of the Great Sphinx; I, Bobby Sullivan, the playboy, apparently debonair and fancy-free; she, Colleen Gay, the debutante, engaged to a titled man of honour and probity whose heart and reputation she dare not and will not threaten. Our story would then sweep back in time some three thousand years, to the age of the Boy King. Now ‘Colleen Gay’ is unhappily betrothed to the sickly child whom she loved as a brother and to whose cause she is committed. I, too, as the new young High Priest, am loyal to the Boy Emperor. However, there is another, namely Esmé’s Cleopatra, who also loves me and is prepared to bring down the entire dynasty to further her own petty ends. When Tutenkhamun is poisoned, we, of course, are blamed. A motive is obvious in our almost unendurable love. Wolf Seaman had found the story moving and he was sure it would appeal to the audience jaded by his sexual comedies.
Even Goldfish had known this could be the movie play of the decade, one which would heighten his reputation, more, even, than The Squaw Man. He, better than any, understood the value of a strong moral where heroic self-sacrifice, preferably from both male and female leads, is the turning-point of a tale in which virtue is finally rewarded.
Several times, Seaman wavered. Professor Quelch, doubtless concerned about his fees, lent his voice to mine, pointing out that only he knew the great secret places in the desert, the old temples and tombs which would best serve our story. The combination of authentic locales, strong scholarship, a powerful script and wonderful actors would be bound, under Seaman’s inspired direction, to win a vast world audience.
Seaman needed audiences. His old brand of pessimistic irony was no longer finding favour with a public regaining its pre-war optimism. Flame of the Desert would attract the kind of universal success he needed. That success was his only motive. Genuine artistic integrity destroyed Griffith’s career, but Seaman had his eye forever on the market. Within another ten years he would be making his fortune on Lash LaRue, Tim Holt and Sunset Carson, adventures which a greedy public demanded in vast quantities. He knew pretty clearly where he was going!
It took Quelch and me the rest of the afternoon to restore Seaman’s confidence and remind him that his crew awaited orders to begin a shooting schedule. With the help of several more gins he pulled himself together and by six o’clock was the centre of attention in the small meeting-room we had hired to discuss the next day’s work. Even Esmé attended, sitting near the front in one of her loveliest cream lace outfits. The sight of her seemed to restore Seaman’s confidence further and when he came to address us on our duties and responsibilities he was able to do so with a certain authority.
I must admit that secretly I was, from time to time, faint with anxiety, fearing the end of all my ambitions. Indeed by the time dinner was over my anxiety had become almost uncontrollable. Under normal circumstances cocaine is a wonderful means of recovering myself, but it was not effective then. I had little experience of dealing with such feelings. Anxiety came to me later in life than to many. Childhood and adolescence were virtually free of worry and it was only after I began to understand my responsibility for others that I experienced real anxiety. Whereupon I knew only one means of releasing myself from its grip: through the pursuit of sexual gratification. I had this in common with Clara Bow. Until recently careless lust rid me entirely of my fears. But since 1940 I chiefly used local prostitutes from Colville Terrace and Powys Square. They had no expectations of me. I had none of them. There is nothing but pain to be gained from attachments to the women one uses for the Release of the Beast, as I call it. In 1926 I had not yet learned that lesson and, when dinner was over, addressed Esmé on the matter. It was now perfectly safe for me to visit her in her room. With Wolf Seaman, Mrs Cornelius planned to be at Sir Ranalf Steeton’s for the rest of the evening. Esmé was feeling tired. I told her I would bring something to make her more wakeful. At length, almost as if she were wearying of the debate, she agreed to receive me.
By the time I arrived in her room, I was determined to make up to my darling for all those long months of unfulfilled desire. That night I planned to show her no mercy. That night, I discovered, she expected none.