There was a section in London which was filmed subsequently. Actually, that house that appears in the London section, in the English section of the movie, is actually the home of John Murray, the publisher, who was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's publisher, and the film is organised from a desk and a telephone in Murray's office. At that time Merchant Ivory didn't even have an office in England, or anywhere. Yes, they had an office in Bombay but that wasn't a great deal of use... great deal of help. So, John Murray, who also became a good friend and who later published my book, for which many thanks, became a friend. And the English section, which was filmed subsequently, also included some shots in Richmond Park, and they were done much later. They were done when the film was almost completely edited. I got a phone call one day where James noted that Ismail had hired a camera and me, in order to film Mahmud Sipra, the shipping tycoon, who had ambitions to become an actor. And I later had new contact with him when he was the producer, or the co-producer, of the film... the ill-fated film, The Bengal Lancers which was started but never finished.
Well, prior to that I had filmed his test, where he just invited us to come to his somewhat palatial office in Mayfair, and filmed him at his daily task, with two telephones and sort of saying: yes, right, well if you can't get through this so and so, divert that bulk loader from Hong Kong to Singapore, yes, well, if the price drops below 300 a ton, then buy. You know, that kind of thing. And we were just there, with a full crew. We had a camera, an assistant and a sound man and assistant, and at the end of the shoot, we were all handed a little brown envelope with 500 or some pounds in it, anyway, quite a lot of money, and that's how I got to know Mahmud Sipra. But James got word of it, you see, that we were doing this shooting, and he said: I desperately need a few calm scenes of a river flowing or some trees waving in the breeze, or something like that, to represent England, which, at the point when they're sitting there in India during a sand storm, and she plays Schubert... Schumann, and I want to inter-cut these scenes. So I said, 'Well, yes, God, we've only got the camera for one day, and there was never anymore money to hire another... for more time'. So I said, 'Well, the only place I can think of we can possibly do it, within easy reach of London, is Richmond Park'. Where... I'd grown up in Richmond, so I knew about Richmond Park. But it had changed considerably in that period.
So we went off to Richmond Park. I went off to Richmond Park with one assistant, and dodging the police, because you're not... let alone shooting, you're not even allowed to stop. All the roads to Richmond Park are lined with yellow lines, you're not even supposed to stop except in the designated parking areas. So, with the police, sort of, on our tail, we found four angles which look beautifully peaceful. But I laugh every time I see that. I have to smile every time I see that stuff because I know that just out of frame to the left is a busy motorway, and just over the skyline to the right are some skyscrapers poking up above the trees. It was all just so, and we got it by the skin of our teeth, because before we were finally told we really have to leave. But it's in the movie. Those four shots are in the movie.
