Ancient Images (20 page)

    There was no reply at Roger's. In any case, it would be quicker for her to track down the information herself. The nearest library she was able to locate that held copies of Hansard, as she phoned towns that appeared promising on the map, was in Manchester, at least three hours' drive away. "Someone owes me a stiff drink when all this is over," she told herself, and went back to the car.

    In half an hour she was back on the motorway, and beginning to feel as though her interviews and her nights in hotels were nothing more than breaks from the race of heavy lorries and buses. As the mountains sank, a cloudy twilight advanced over the glum fields. By the time she reached Manchester, cars were switching on their lights. She had to drive twice through the gloomy Gothic one-way streets in search of somewhere to park. A line of meters opposite a bookshop from which police were bearing armfuls of confiscated horror magazines proved to be unusable after four o'clock. The second time she passed the library, a car was backing out of a space, and Sandy slipped in with a groan of relief.

    The dome of the library loomed above the streetlamps like a fallen lump of the sky. She climbed the wide steps beyond the columns of a portico and hurried into the lobby, which sent the echoes of her footsteps chasing her. An attendant directed her to the Social Sciences desk, where a man with a soft thick Lancashire accent found her an armful of bound volumes and carried them to a table for her.

    The index of debates during 1938 included no entry for Censorship or Horror, but there were several entries under Cinematograph. The most substantial dealt with the Cinematograph Bill, and she turned to that debate. The Bill was moved by the Secretary of State for Air, and was meant to ensure that a fixed quota of British films would be shown in British cinemas. In an attempt to do away with quota quickies, cheap films produced in the knowledge that British cinemas would have to show them, the Bill set the minimum budget of a feature film at fifteen thousand pounds. The Archbishop of Canterbury expressed disappointment that there was to be no statutory test of quality. "Day by day and night by night, the films are for weal or woe moulding the habits, the outlook and the way of life of the community…" Lord Moyne regretted "the common type of imported film which gives a false picture of life," and the Bishop of Winchester thought it "a most serious matter that 75% of the time in cinemas is occupied with foreign films." The speakers seemed to be presenting such a united front that you could hardly call it a debate, Sandy thought, scanning another column and then another. She turned to the last pages and found that there was only one more speaker, Lord Redfield. She gazed at the name, her thoughts beginning to race, before she read his speech.

    

    

    Lord REDFIELD: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the discussion of the Bill the noble Viscount has moved. I am happy to be assured of the general health of our film industry and of any industry that we may call our own. Nevertheless I should like to sound a note of warning. The right reverend Prelate has reminded us of the moral basis of this Bill, which bids to counteract the colonization of our picture-houses and the minds of our picturegoers by alien influences. Yet your Lordships are aware how much more dangerous an enemy within may be, and I feel obliged to draw the attention of the House to an unhealthy aspect of our film industry-that is, the germ of the British horrorific film.

    I apologise to any of your Lordships who deplore the invasion of our fair language by this ugliest of words, but it appears that the content of this breed of film is such that no existing word can adequately describe it. In speaking of these films the noble Lord, Lord Tyrrell, said that the power of the cinema, improperly used, might bring civilisation to an end. The noble Lord also issued a stern warning against the production of films dealing with religion or politics, since this could contravene the exhibitors' licence not to show films that might lead to disorder. I ask your Lordships to appreciate the greater threat posed by horrorific films to the civilisation of which we may consider ourselves guardians. He is not a true Englishman who will not shed blood in defence of the land-I speak as one who lost many tenants to the trenches during the Great War-but righteous violence is altogether separate from the lust for blood which these films stir up. In some of our counties- though not, your Lordships may rest assured, on any land that bears the Redfield name-libertarianism apparently demands that parents be allowed to subject their children to the influence of these films. It is heartening to observe that our nation recognises the snares of libertarianism for what they are, and that there have been public outcries against the exhibition of such films. I am relieved to learn that a certification is shortly to be introduced that will bar children from viewing films that are judged to be too mild in their gruesomeness to be banned outright from our shores, and I think your Lordships may be proud to hear that our national aversion to the horrorific has caused Hollywood producers to turn their energies to the creation of more wholesome fare. But, my Lords, all those advances may be rendered fruitless if British producers are allowed to exploit these savage appetites.

    I understand that only one such film is presently being produced here, and it is my belief that an example should be made of it in order to check this poisonous growth. The story of the film need not concern us here-it is drawn from an undistinguished piece of gruesome fiction on which time has already passed judgment and which no civilised taste would wish to see revived-but it is of such offensiveness that the producer has been forced to import actors sufficiently degraded, or sufficiently desperate, to accept the work. One, who plays the role of an English lord, was in fact born an Englishman, but emigrated to America and adopted a Russian name, the better to portray thugs and monsters. I gather he was once a lorry-driver, and your Lordships may agree that the world would be healthier if he had remained industrious and unknown. His partner has played both Jesus Christ and the vampire Dracula. Your Lordships may wonder that any nation which is not steeped in heathenism refrains from casting out such a blasphemer. In his native Hungary he was a revolutionary, and was almost slain by the just wrath of the patriotic crew of a vessel on which he fled. His American audiences have been led to believe that his father was a baron when in fact the father was a baker, a trade which an Englishman would surely have thought cause enough for pride. I am informed that the mere appearance in public of this actor has been known to lead to panic, and I wonder if the laws barring undesirables from our shores may not apply in his case.

    I hope your Lordships will not feel I have devoted more time to my theme than is justified. The noble Lord, Lord Moyne, warned your Lordships of imported films that present a false picture of life; how much more vile is a film such as this, which presents a false picture of England! Is our land to be represented abroad by such trash? Is the world to be led to believe that the English have a taste for savagery, a thirst for blood? There are horrors enough in Germany and elsewhere overseas without worse being stirred up in the name of entertainment. The day may dawn when we as a nation will need to bare our teeth at the Hun. Until then, let England enjoy the peace which it has earned and which is its right and its nature, and let all those who seek to undermine that peace be hunted down and subjected to the full force of the law.

    Lord Strabolgi, the next speaker, thanked him for his eloquent plea for vigilance and expressed the hope that any appropriate action would be taken, and returned to the subject of the Cinematograph Bill with what Sandy suspected might be relief. She wondered if any of the listeners had been struck by the most suggestive aspect of Lord Redfield's speech: how knowledgeable he was about Karloff and Lugosi, about details so obscure that she was certain he must have gone to some trouble to learn them. She scanned the little that remained of the debate, then leafed through the volumes in search of other speeches by Lord Redfield, without success. A librarian announced that the library was closing shortly, and Sandy carried the pile of volumes to the desk. She had one more lead to follow. The librarian found her Willings' Press Guide, and in a minute she confirmed what she had thought the moment she'd seen Lord Redfield's name. The Redfield family owned the
Daily Friend
.

    

    

    Sandy booked into the Midland, a four-star hotel opposite the library, and imagined how next month's bill from her credit card was growing: another forty pounds to manure it by the time she checked out tomorrow. In the lobby she caught sight of a poster for the Corner House, which was showing the version of
Alice
Graham had restored. She jogged to the cinema to give herself another look at the film. The auditorium was full of children enjoying Laurel and Hardy in the roles of the Walrus and the Carpenter. Perhaps some small children at the back were restless, for the exit doors that gave onto a subterranean foyer crept open more than once. Sandy was certain Graham would have been delighted to see a new generation enjoying a film that might have been lost except for him.

    After the film an upsurge of children carried her out of the cinema and left her beneath a streetlamp. She thought for a moment that the coach had left a child behind, until the low shadow dodged into an alley. She bought a Greek sandwich to eat as she strolled back to the hotel, feeling optimistic but bemused. She was almost sure she knew who had bought the rights to Spence's film in order to suppress it, but why had they? Before she reached her room, the exhaustion of driving overtook her. She lay awake in bed for a few minutes, wondering drowsily why someone was padding up and down the corridor, and then she was asleep.

    In the morning she went out before breakfast for a copy of the
Daily
Friend.
LAYBYS AREN'T FOR LAYABOUTS
SAY
LORRY-DRIVERS,
a headline declared. Enoch's Army had attempted to park for the night in several laybys on a road fifty miles or so west of where she had encountered them-she wondered where they'd been wandering meanwhile-and lorry-drivers were complaining that they had nowhere to pull off the road for a break. "Someone's liable to get killed," a lorry-driver had apparently said in bold type. Sandy leafed through the paper at the breakfast table, and was about to discard it when a full-page Staff o' Life advertisement caught her eye. "Hold on," she murmured, her memory brightening.

    She went over to the library as soon as it was open, and consulted a business directory. Staff o' Life was both owned by the Redfield family and based in the town of Redfield. She copied down the phone number of the factory at Redfield, and hurried back to the hotel through a procession of businessmen and early shoppers, barely noticing them as she homed in on the telephone in her room. She felt lithe with clarity, cool with anger. Smoothing her skirt as she sat on the bed and then picked up the receiver and dialed all felt like a single movement that was reaching down the line and finding her quarry at last.

    The phone rang twice and released a woman's voice that was completing a remark. The voice came closer. "Staff o' Life?"

    It sounded welcoming, almost intimate, and sufficiently Northumbrian to turn the first word into "stuff." "I'd like to speak to Lord Redfield," Sandy said.

    "May I ask what this is in connection with?"

    "His family history."

    "One moment, please. Connecting you with the press office."

    "Wait, it isn't something-was Sandy protested, but the voice had already been replaced by a recorded jingle, a music-box version of a song she remembered from childhood:

    "
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, Bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it and prick it and mark it-was-"

    Sex and violence gets everywhere, Sandy thought wryly, trying to ignore her sense of being listened to. A voice interrupted her thoughts and the jingle. "Press office. Mary speaking."

    "I've been put through to the wrong extension. Can you transfer this call to Lord Redfield?"

    "What would this be relating to?"

    "It's a private matter."

    "I'll put you back to the switchboard."

    "Before you do you might tell me-was Sandy said, and held her breath. The press officer was saying, "Can you switch this caller to Lord Redfield? She says it's private."

    There was a pause that made Sandy's head swim. It was apparently meant as a rebuke to Mary in the press office, for at last the operator said, "Putting you through to Lord Redfield's press secretary."

    "… And put in the oven for baby and me," the jingle resumed, having omitted the notes where the song would have indicated what the cake was to be marked with. "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake," it repeated, and a woman hummed the next bar. "Annabel Worthington, Lord Redfield's press secretary," she said.

    "I keep being wrongly connected," Sandy said with all the impatience she could muster. "I'm trying to reach Lord Redfield about a family matter."

    "Whose family?"

    "His."

    "If you'd like to leave a message I'll make sure it's passed on."

    "I don't think Lord Redfield would want me to. I think he would want to speak to me personally."

    "Does he know you?"

    "I believe so."

    "But you haven't the number of his direct line?"

    "Not with me, no."

    "If you'll leave your name and a number where he can reach you I'll see the information is with him as soon as he's free."

    At the moment this seemed to be the best Sandy could hope for, and certainly preferable to another round of extensions and pat-a-cake. She gave Annabel Worthington her name and the number of the hotel, and added impulsively, "Tell him it's about his grandfather."