He sweated.
‘And furthermore you can tell Worldic that one more damn fool suggestion and I’ll never again turn up at anything they handle.’
‘But...’ he stuttered. ‘You see... after those pics in the newspapers... of you giving Katya the kiss of life... after that... see... we were flooded... simply flooded... with enquiries... and all the cheaper seats went in a flash... and the reception tickets, too... all went...’
‘But that,’ I said slowly and positively, ‘was not a publicity stunt.’
‘Oh no.’ He gulped. ‘Oh no. Of course not. Oh no. Oh no...’ He rocked to his feet, knocking his chair over. The beads were running down his forehead and his eyes looked wild. He was on the point, the very point of panic flight, when Danilo and Sally came breezily back from the courts.
‘Hullo, Mr Wenkins,’ Sally said in her adolescent un-perceptive way. ‘I say, you look almost as hot and sweaty as we do.’
Wenkins gave her a glazed, mesmerised look and fumbled around with his handkerchief. Danilo looked at him piercingly and thoughtfully and made no remark at all.
‘Well... I’ll... er, tell them... but they won’t... like it.’
‘You tell them.’ I agreed. ‘No stunts.’
‘No stunts,’ he echoed weakly; but I doubted whether he would ever have the nerve to pass on the message.
Sally watched his backview weave unsteadily into the club, as she sprawled exhaustedly in her garden chair.
‘I say, he does get himself into a fuss, don’t you think? Were you bullying the poor lamb, Link?’
‘He’s a sheep, not a lamb.’
‘A silly sheep,’ Danilo said vaguely, as if his thoughts were somewhere else.
‘Could I have some orange juice?’ Sally said.
Evan and Conrad arrived before the waiter, and the drinks order expanded. Evan was at his most insistent, waving his arms about and laying down the law to Conrad in the usual dominating I-am-the-director-and-the-rest of-you-are-scum manner. Conrad looked half patient, half irritated: lighting cameramen were outranked by directors, but they didn’t have to like it.
‘Symbolism,’ Evan was saying fiercely. ‘Symbolism is what the film is all about. And Post Office Towers are the new phallic symbol of national strength. Every virile country has to have its revolving restaurant...’
‘It might be just because every country has one, that the one in Johannesburg is not news,’ Conrad murmured, in a tone a little too carefully unargumentative.
‘The tower is in,’ stated Evan with finality.
‘Even if you can’t find an elephant that shape,’ I said, nodding.
Conrad choked and Evan glared.
Sally said, ‘What is a phallic symbol?’ And Danilo told her kindly to look it up in the dictionary.
I asked Evan where exactly we would be staying in the Kruger Park, so that I could be found if necessary.
‘Don’t expect me to help,’ he said unhelpfully. ‘The production department made the bookings months ago. Several different camps, starting in the south and working north, I believe.’
Conrad added casually, ‘We do have a list, back at the hotel... I could copy it out for you, dear boy.’
‘It isn’t important,’ I said. ‘It was only Worldic who wanted it.’
‘Not important!’ Evan exclaimed. ‘If Worldic want it, of course they must have it.’ Evan had no reservations towards companies that might screen his masterpieces. ‘Conrad can copy the list and send it to them direct.’
I looked at Conrad in amusement. ‘To Clifford Wenkins, then,’ I suggested. ‘It was he who asked.’
Conrad nodded shortly. Copying the list from friendliness was one thing and on Evan’s orders another: I knew exactly how he felt.
‘I don’t suppose you are intending to bring the chauffeur Worldic gave you,’ Evan said bossily to me. ‘There won’t be any rooms for him.’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said mildly. ‘I’m hiring a car to drive myself.’
‘All right, then.’
Even on a fine Tuesday morning with a healthy gin half drunk and no pressure on him at all, he still flourished the hot eyes like lances and curled his fingers so that the tendons showed tight. The unruly curly hair sprang out vigorously like Medusa’s snakes, and the very air around him seemed to quiver from his energy output.
Sally thought him fascinating. ‘You’ll love it in the game park,’ she told him earnestly. ‘The animals are so sweet.’
Evan only knew how to deal with girls that young if he could bully them in front of a camera: and the idea that animals could be sweet instead of symbolic seemed to nonplus him.
‘Er...’ he said uncertainly, and sounded exactly like Wenkins.
Conrad cheered up perceptibly: smoothed his moustache and looked on Sally benignly. She gave him an uncomplicated smile and turned to Danilo.
‘You’d love it too,’ she said. ‘Next time you come to South Africa, we must take you down there.’
Danilo could scarcely wait. Conrad asked him how much longer he was staying this time, and Danilo said a week or so, he guessed, and Sally insisted anxiously that he was staying until after Link’s premiere, surely he remembered he was going to the reception with the van Hurens. Danilo remembered: he sure was.
He grinned at her. She blossomed. I hoped that the sun kid dealt in compassion alongside the mathematics.
Evan and Conrad stayed for lunch, endlessly discussing the locations they had picked throughout the city. They were, it appeared, going to incorporate a lot of cinéma vérité, with Conrad humping around a hand-held Arriflex to film life as it was lived. By the end of the cheese, the whole film, symbolism, elephants, and all, seemed to me doomed to be a crashing bore.
Conrad’s interest was principally technical. Mine was non-existent. Evan’s, as usual, inexhaustible.
‘So we’ll take the Arriflex with us, of course,’ he was telling Conrad. ‘We may see unrepeatable shots... it would be stupid not to be equipped.’
Conrad agreed. They also discussed sound-recording equipment and decided to take that too. The production department had fixed up for a park ranger to show them round in a Land Rover, so there would be room to use everything comfortably.
Anything which they could not cram into their hired station wagon for the journey down, they said, could go in my car, couldn’t it? It could. I agreed to drive to their hotel first thing in the morning to embark the surplus.
When they had gone I paid off the car and chauffeur Worldic had arranged, and hired a modest self-drive saloon instead. A man from the hiring company brought it to the Iguana showed me the gear system, said it was a new car only just run-in and that I should have no trouble with it, and departed with the chauffeur.
I went for a practice drive, got lost, bought a map, and found my way back. The car was short on power uphill, but very stable on corners; a car for Sunday afternoons, airing Grandma in a hat.
Chapter Twelve
The map and the car took me to Roderick’s flat just as it was getting dark.
I tested the brakes before I set off, the car having stood alone in the car park for hours. Nothing wrong with them, of course. I sneered inwardly at myself for being so silly.
Roderick’s flat was on the sixth floor.
It had a balcony.
Roderick invited me out first thing to look at the view.
‘It looks marvellous at this time of night,’ he said, ‘with the lights springing up in every direction. In the daytime there are too many factories and roads and mining tips, unless of course you find the sinews of trade stimulating... and soon it will be too dark to see the shapes of things in the dusk...’
I hovered, despite myself, on the threshold.