"Oh yes?" Audley spread a disparaging glance over Bradford dummy5
and Lexy both. "As observed through the keyhole by the Right Reverend Sidonius Simplicius, presumably?"
"The New York Times gave it half a page, nearly," said Bradford. " 'Scholarship prostituted' was the theme."
"Scholarship?"
"Apparently." Bradford nodded. "It seems that when Miss Palfrey wasn't groping around below the belt she kept a pretty tight hold on her history .... You know, I'm really quite surprised you haven't read it—the Times man said it was a cross between Gone With The Wind and I, Claudius on one side, and Forever Amber and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the other, but I think it had Kipling undertones—not just your children's stuff, but the real McCoy short stories, like Love-o'-Women—"
"Good God!" exclaimed Audley.
"Oh yes—we Visigoths know our Kipling. And a lot better than most of your civilised Limeys, I'd guess. We haven't got your hang-ups about him, for a start."
"Not mine. I haven't got any hang-ups about Kipling." Audley was on the defensive, and clearly didn't like it. "But you seem to know a great deal about this—what's it called?— Princess of the Sunset?"
" In, not of." The American began to move the bottles again, and then thought better of it and shifted them off the table altogether. "Goddamn empties—we're running out of booze!
Let's have some more bottles out of the rack, Lex . . . In the dummy5
sunset—the sunset of the Roman Empire—you're damn right I know about it—the book anyway, if not the sunset. That's why I'm here."
"What d'you mean, Mike?" Jilly passed the corkscrew to Lexy. "I thought you were here to write?"
"Another Great American Novel," murmured Audley. "About how Patton liberated Europe in spite of Monty and me."
“Shut up, David," said Jilly. "Mike?"
"Yes . . . I'm writing—sure. But I also have this little job on the side, for a friend of mine." Bradford grinned at her. "A bit of intelligence work, actually."
Roche forced himself to watch Lexy struggle with the corkscrew.
"Intelligence work?" Stein leaned forward. "For whom?"
Lexy looked up. "Just like David, you mean?"
Not at all like David!" said Audley.
"Not you, David— that David—" she nodded towards Roche, and then addressed herself to the cork again "—how the hell does this thing work?"
Indeed?" Audley looked at Roche, whose astonishment had graduated to consternation. "Intelligence is your line, is it?"
Roche pointed at the corkscrew. "You screw it the other way, Lexy— clockwise." He shrugged at Audley, and shook his head, and hoped for the best from the shadows. "Nothing so romantic, I'm afraid. Just Signals liaison with NATO—
dummy5
because I speak fluent French."
"He jolly well does, too," agreed Lexy enthusiastically as the cork popped. "He had La Goutard eating out of the palm of his hand—you should have seen it!"
"Oh . . ." Audley sounded disappointed. "Jolly good . . ." He turned back towards the American. "So what's this cloak-and-dagger 'little job' then, Mike? A little something for Washington?"
The American chuckled. "Washington hell! Hollywood, I mean—"
For a film?" cried Lexy. "Mike—you didn't tell us! Are you going to make a film of your book? Gosh! Let me fill your glass—then you can discover me. I've always wanted to be discovered—"
"Shut up, Lexy—" Jilly waved her friend down "—it isn't his book, it's got something to do with Princess in the Sunset.
Right, Mike?"
Dead right, Miss Smartpants."
"Antonia . . . what's-her-name?" Lexy refused to be waved down. "Wow! Come on—tell us, Mike—"
"He's trying to tell us, if you'd only shut up! They're going to make a film of it?"
"Yeah. . .That is, they've bought it. . . . There are these guys I know in the studio—I was over here with one of them in
'44 . . . and I've done some script advising for them, and they sent me the Princess draft—that's how I know about it—"
dummy5
Bradford nodded to Audley "—there was this historical analysis from a history professor at Harvard, plus all the reviews from the papers, you see."
"A professor from Harvard? Big deal!" Audley's sniff of derision would have done credit to Jilly. "So what did he say?"
"Oh, he said the history was good. Like . . . well, it seems she really was beautiful, this Galla Placidia lady—beautiful and mean, like Scarlett O'Hara and Lucrezia Borgia rolled into one, with her pretty fingers in a lot of pies."
"Yes?" Audley prodded him.
"Well ... it was one hell of a time, with your barbarians flooding into the West, but the Romans still in there pitching
—Theodoric the Gothic king . . . and this guy Constantius, the Roman general, who forced the barbarians to settle down beside the Romans—he was big time as well. And after him there was an even bigger man, with an unpronounceable name—"
"Aëtius," murmured Audley. " The last of the Romans—yes, I think you could call him 'big time', Bradford."
"Right—and all the time the Huns are knocking on the door, ready to destroy everything if the Romans didn't line up with the Goths somehow. And all the while Galla Placidia was playing both ends against the middle—I tell you, it's one hell of a time, and one hell of a story."
"I don't think she was as bad as that," said Lexy. "She had a dummy5
lot to put up with—the way the Goths—the Visigoths—treated her, you know, Mike." She nodded wisely. "Simplicius describes it all."
Bradford laughed. "Yeah—the purple passages!"
"Who is Simplicius? I've never heard of him." Audley rotated on his stool.
"He's the one who tells the story. And 'Simplicius' is a joke-name, because he's a real crafty son-of-a-bitch—he's really the guy who pulls the strings, in fact."
"But not historical, eh?"
"Maybe not. But he comes over like a real person. For my money he's the best thing in the book. He ends up a bishop, but he's really another pagan bastard just using the Christians as his intelligence service."
Jilly held out her glass to be filled. "But. . . where do you come into all this, Mike?" She lifted the glass towards the bottle. "That's enough—I want to stay sober to hear about Mike's 'intelligence' assignment."
"Fill 'em all up, Lexy," ordered Audley. "And then open another bottle."
"Yeah . . . well, Antonia Palfrey is my assignment." Bradford paused for a moment to watch the last of the bottle's contents descend into his glass. "And Miss Antonia Palfrey's small print is my problem."
"In her book, you mean?" said Jilly.
"The purple passages, eh?" Stein chuckled wickedly. "The dummy5
Hays Office doesn't mind the barbarians murdering and looting, but they're drawing the line at rape?"
"She's just a simple little old spinster lady . . ." Bradford sighed and shook his head at no one in particular.
"They're always the worst ones," said Stein mildly. "They should have known better—your Hollywood friends."
"Damn right!" Bradford looked up suddenly. "Not the book though . . . though they should have read the damn thing more carefully—they should have figured anyone who dreamed up a character like Sidonius Simplicius would be tricky . . . but no, not the book." He grimaced. "Or not really the book."
"What then?" asked Jilly.
"The contract, of course!" Stein sat back.
Bradford nodded wordlessly.
"Oh—bloody good show!" The shadows on the Israeli's face creased into a delighted grin. "The little old spinster lady took the studio lawyers for a ride—did she?"