For the funeral.
He didn’t seem to have any idea what sort of meeting he’d just interrupted – or how important it was to me. He wandered in as if he had been invited and when he saw me, he smiled as if he hadn’t expected me to be there. ‘Tony,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘I’m busy,’ I said, feeling the blood rush to my face.
‘I know. I can see that, mate. But you must have forgotten. The funeral!’
‘I told you. I can’t come to the funeral.’
‘Who’s died?’ Peter Jackson asked.
I glanced at him. He looked genuinely concerned. On the other side of the table, Spielberg was sitting very straight, a little annoyed. I could imagine that he belonged to a world where nobody would walk in unless they were expected and only if they were being escorted by an assistant. Apart from anything else, there was his security to consider.
‘It’s nobody,’ I said. I still couldn’t quite believe Hawthorne had come here. Was he deliberately trying to embarrass me? ‘I told you,’ I said quietly. ‘I really can’t come.’
‘But you have to. It’s important.’
‘Who are you?’ Spielberg asked.
Hawthorne pretended to notice him for the first time. ‘I’m Hawthorne,’ he said. ‘I’m with the police.’
‘You’re a police officer?’
‘No. He’s a consultant,’ I cut in. ‘He’s helping the police with an investigation.’
‘A murder,’ Hawthorne explained, helpfully, once again sitting on that first vowel to make the word somehow more violent than it already was. He was looking at Spielberg, only now recognising him. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
‘I’m Steven Spielberg.’
‘Are you in films?’
I wanted to weep.
‘That’s right. I make films …’
‘This is Steven Spielberg and this is Peter Jackson.’ I don’t know why I said that. Part of me was trying to take back control. Perhaps I was hoping I could overawe Hawthorne and get him out of the room.
‘Peter Jackson!’ Hawthorne’s face brightened. ‘You did those three films … The Lord of the Rings!’
‘That’s right.’ Jackson was relaxed. ‘Did you see them?’
‘I watched them on DVD with my son. He thought they were great.’
‘Thank you.’
‘The first one, anyway. He wasn’t too sure about the second. What was it called …?’
‘The Two Towers.’ Peter was still smiling, even if it was a smile that had slightly frozen in place.
‘We didn’t much like those trees. The talking trees. We thought they were stupid.’
‘You mean … the Ents.’
‘Whatever. And Gandalf. I thought he was dead and I was a bit surprised when he turned up again.’ Hawthorne thought for a moment and I waited with a sense of mounting dread for what was going to come next. ‘The actor who played him, Ian McEwan, he was a bit over the top.’
‘Sir Ian McKellen. He was nominated for an Oscar.’
‘That may be the case. But did he win it?’
‘Mr Hawthorne is a special consultant for Scotland Yard,’ I cut in. ‘I’ve been commissioned to write a book about his latest case …’
‘It’s called “Hawthorne Investigates”,’ Hawthorne said.
Spielberg considered. ‘I like that title,’ he said.
‘It’s good,’ Jackson agreed.
Hawthorne glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got the funeral at eleven o’clock,’ he explained.
‘And I’ve already said, I can’t be there.’
‘You have to be there, Tony. I mean, everyone who ever knew Diana Cowper is going to attend. It’s an opportunity to see them all interacting. You could say it’s a bit like having a read-through before a film. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you!’
‘I explained—’
‘Diana Cowper,’ Spielberg said. ‘Isn’t that Damian Cowper’s mother?’
‘That’s her. She was strangled. In her own house.’
‘I heard.’ It had often struck me that Spielberg, the man who had shot the bloodiest opening in cinema history with Saving Private Ryan and who had recreated Nazi atrocities in Schindler’s List, didn’t actually like talking about violence. I could have sworn he’d gone a little pale once when I was outlining an idea I’d had for Tintin. Now he turned to Peter. ‘I met Damian Cowper last month. He came in for a chat about War Horse.’
‘Poor kid,’ Peter Jackson said. ‘That’s a horrible thing to happen.’
‘I agree.’ Both Spielberg and Jackson were looking at me as if I had known Damian Cowper all my life and not attending his mother’s funeral would be the meanest thing I could possibly do. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was sitting there like some passing angel who’d wafted in to appeal to my better conscience.
‘I really think you should go, Anthony,’ Spielberg said.
‘But it’s just a book,’ I assured them. ‘To be honest, I’m having second thoughts about writing it. This film is much more important to me.’
‘Well, we don’t really have much to talk about where the second movie is concerned,’ Peter said. ‘Maybe we all need to take a rain check and rethink where we are in a couple of weeks.’
‘We can do a conference call,’ Spielberg said.
We’d been talking about Tintin for less than two minutes. My script had been thrown out in its entirety. And before I could start coming up with ideas for The Calculus Affair or Destination Moon or even Flight 714 to Sydney (spaceships … Spielberg liked spaceships, didn’t he?) I was being thrown out. It wasn’t fair. I was in a meeting with the two greatest film-makers in the world. I was meant to be writing a film for them. And yet I was being dragged out to the funeral of someone I hadn’t even met.
Hawthorne got to his feet. It tells you something about my state of mind that I hadn’t even noticed when he’d sat down. ‘Very nice to meet you,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ Spielberg said. ‘Do please pass on my condolences to Damian.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘And don’t worry, Anthony. We’ll give your agent a call.’
They never did call my agent. In fact I never saw either of them again and my only consolation as I sit here now is that so far there has been no new Tintin film. The Secret of the Unicorn got rave reviews and made $375 million worldwide but the response in America was less enthusiastic. Maybe that’s dissuaded them from continuing with the sequel. Or maybe they’re working on it now. Without me.
‘They seemed very nice,’ Hawthorne said, as he walked down the corridor.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ I exploded. ‘I told you I didn’t want to come to the funeral. Why did you come here? How did you even know where I was?’
‘I rang your assistant.’
‘And she told you?’
‘Listen.’ Hawthorne was trying to calm me down. ‘You don’t want to do Tintin. It’s for children. I thought you were leaving all that stuff behind you.’
‘It’s being produced by Steven Spielberg!’ I exclaimed.
‘Well, maybe he’ll make a film of your new book. A murder story! He knows Damian Cowper.’ We pushed through the main doors of the hotel and went out into the street. ‘Who do you think will play me?’
Eleven
The Funeral
I know Brompton Cemetery well. When I was in my twenties, I had a room in a flat just five minutes away and on a hot summer afternoon I’d wander in and write there. It was somewhere quiet, away from the dust and the traffic, a world of its own. In fact it’s one of the most impressive cemeteries in London – a member of the so-called ‘magnificent seven’ – with a striking array of Gothic mausoleums and colonnades peopled by stone angels and saints, all of them constructed by the Victorians partly to celebrate death but also to keep it in its place. There’s a main avenue that runs in a straight line all the way from one end to the other and walking there on a sunny day I could easily imagine myself in ancient Rome. I would find a bench and sit there with my notebooks, watching the squirrels and the occasional fox and, on a Saturday afternoon, listening to the distant clamour of the crowd at Stamford Bridge football club on the other side of the trees. It’s strange how different locations around London have played such a large part in my work. The River Thames is one of them. Brompton Cemetery is most certainly another.