Roots of Evil(57)

Conrad was delighted to be approached, although he would not admit it. He told Alice that he was being offered an entirely contemptible sum for his beautiful compositions: did these plebeians, these groundlings, believe him to be a machine to churn out beautiful music at a button-press?

‘Press of a switch,’ said Alice, more or less automatically. ‘Will you do it?’ she asked, and Conrad hunched a shoulder and looked at her from the corners of his eyes like a mischievous child who knows it is being clever, and said he might as well. But the money was still an insult to an artist, he said, although to Alice, still juggling the damson frock with the black, the money seemed a very large amount indeed.

He shut himself away for several weeks, but when he emerged (a little thinner from not always bothering to eat, smudgy shadows around his eyes from fatigue and concentration), he was perfectly right about the music being superb. The film-makers were delighted with it, and they were delighted, as well, with the sultry baroness who appeared to be the composer’s frequent companion – it was best, perhaps, not to inquire too deeply into the precise nature of this companionship. They were all men of the world, yes?

They beamed at Alice across a table at the Café Sacher, which was where Conrad took them to celebrate, but which Alice, managing not to blink at the menu, thought might cost him most of the film-makers’ fee. (She had worn the damson gown for the occasion, and had added a narrow black velvet throat-band which was a new idea, and already being copied.)

The film-makers studied Lucretia, at first covertly and then, since she appeared not to notice their regard, more openly. There was the dark hair that was so much admired these days, and the smooth magnolia complexion. Very alluring. And would the baroness perhaps find it entertaining to see the inside of their studios? A very short journey – a car would of course be sent. And – perhaps while she was there, she might agree to a test for the screen? An experiment, an hour or so of amusement for her, probably nothing more.

This was unexpected. Alice thought: Do I want to do their screen-test? I don’t suppose anything will come of it, but I think I’d better agree, because those two frocks won’t last for much longer, and there’re other things to be bought. Underwear, shoes, food…And I won’t ask Conrad for money; I’ll hate it and it’ll put me under an obligation to be grateful to him, and I won’t do it.

And so Lucretia took the screen test, staring with seductive insolence into the camera lens, and the results were pronounced to be dazzling.

A film called Alraune – the story of a girl born in macabre circumstances, growing up with the burden of a dark legacy, growing up to be a wanton – went into production.



In the village where Alice had been a child, they had sometimes played games of Let’s Pretend. Let’s dress up and pretend to be somebody else for a while. I’ll be the queen or the empress, and you can be the servant, and for a few hours we’ll believe it’s real. Like that old poem, ‘When I was a King in Babylon, and you were a Christian slave…’

Making films was a little like a grown-up version of the game. Let’s pretend to be a girl called Alraune; a creature consumed by bitterness and surrounded by dark sexuality…

Alice knew, with the logical, sensible part of her mind, that Alraune was not real. She knew that Alraune was a being forged from dark dreams and subterranean myths; and that she had been born out of a writer’s macabre fantasies.

‘But I don’t think,’ she said to Conrad, ‘that I should like to meet that man, that Hanns Heinz Ewers who created Alraune’s story. I suppose he’s long since dead; the original book was written years ago, wasn’t it? In 1911 or 1912.’


‘He is not dead, and I think he still writes a little,’ said Conrad. ‘Most of his work is as dark and as – as uncomfortable as Alraune.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I think he has campaigned quite strongly for the German cause, and I believe he is a supporter of the Nazi Party and Herr Hitler.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, though, is there?’

‘No,’ said Conrad slowly. ‘No, of course not.’





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




The irony was that while the film-makers’ money solved one set of problems, it set up a whole new set of difficulties of its own. Alice Wilson, that sheltered English girl, had never in her life seen a bank cheque, and when the first one was given to her, at first she had no idea how to deal with it. Her parents had said banks were not for such as them; servants were paid their wages on each Quarter Day in the year, as was right and proper, and their own tiny pension was brought to them on the first of each month by his lordship’s agent, who counted it out on the kitchen table and then made them sign a piece of paper. Alice’s mother had always maintained that it was not for women to know about money; Alice had found this slightly exasperating at the time, but looking back she found it rather sad.

In Miss Nina’s employment she had been paid the princely sum of ￡40 a year, ten shining sovereigns on each Quarter Day, together with a Christmas gift of two dress lengths of cloth, one of wool, one of muslin, and a stout pair of leather shoes. This was all that any servant, fed and housed and wanting for nothing, could possibly need or expect. But now Alice would have to deal with banks whether she wanted to or not, because the film people assumed she had a bank account into which she would pay their cheques. They also expected her to sign what Alice uneasily suspected to be legal documents – contracts and agreements requiring her to act in a specific number of films for them over the next two years. This was gratifying, but it was also worrying. She could not possibly sign her real name to the contracts, but she was afraid that signing her false name might constitute the committing of a crime.