A Pound of Paper by John Baxter

Author:John Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The End of the Affair

There was always a moment during the writing – usually about midway through the script – when one despaired and said, ‘For God’s sake, let’s chuck this up!’

Graham Greene on writing screenplays

Between 1976 and 1980, Joyce and I lived in London almost full time, with a brief tax exile in Dublin, and some excursions to the United States and Australia. We bought an apartment in Highgate, on the high ground above north London, which I started filling with books – many by Graham Greene.

R. A. Wobbe published Graham Greene: A Bibliography and Guide to Research in 1979 and I spent hours browsing the close-set pages. Obscure editions swam through my dreams like women.

I stalked Greene through London. When I read that the Samaritans was to hold a fund-raising auction, for which many authors, including Greene, had contributed signed books, I rang immediately.

‘Hello. I want some details—’

I didn’t get any further. ‘Hello!’ said a soft male voice, plangent with understanding. ‘How are you this evening?’

‘Uh, fine, thanks. I just want to know about this auction—’

‘Could I have your name, please?’

I gave it. ‘But all I really want—’

‘Now, John, what would you like to talk about?’

‘Well, Graham Greene.’

This threw him momentarily. ‘Graham Greene, the writer?’

‘Yes, I read in the Evening Standard—’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his books,’ he said, recovering quickly. ‘Which is your favourite?’

‘Look, you don’t understand. I’m not calling for help. I want some information—’

‘Of course you don’t need help, John. Now calm down.’

‘I am calm.’

‘No need to get angry.’

‘I’ m not angry…’

The Samaritan system worked. If I’d been thinking about suicide, I’d have dropped the idea by then.1

Being known as a ‘player’ earned me access to the stream of gossip that bubbles below the world of books like a subterranean river. Leads came from unlikely places. With his wife Candy, Al Reuter, whose jagged axe-murderer smile and hulking build belied his kindly nature, dealt in Royal Family memorabilia from a rat-hole of a shop off the Finchley Road.

‘’Ere,’ he said. ‘Saw some Greenes las’ week. Din’ want ’em meself, but she’s probably still got ’em.’

His tip led me to the daughter of film producer John Stafford, who was interested in selling some of the books Greene had signed for her father. Stafford, whom Greene once called ruefully ‘too nice a man to be in the film business’, produced movies of his Loser Takes All, Across the Bridge and The Stranger’s Hand, all of them traduced by bizarre executive decisions, often involving the choice of a director or star from Italy, where Stafford usually went to scrape up a foreign partner. Loser Takes All, inspired by Greene’s brush with movie mogul Alexander Korda, described how a young accountant, quixotically rewarded by his millionaire boss with a honeymoon in Monaco, gambles both his future and his wife, and nearly loses both. The role of the colourless bean-counter cried for somebody archetypally English, like Alec Guinness, so, naturally, Stafford cast Italian matinée idol Rossano Brazzi.

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