101 Pieces of Me (2 page)

“B
ut you’re
always
an attendant!”

“Not this year, Flo.”

Florence Price had been chosen as May Queen of Haverth. The previous year, it was Mary Trease. Even though I had been a May Queen attendant four times, I had no part to play in the May Day Parade of 1925 at all.

“Why not?” asked Florence.

I stopped threading privet branches round bits of wire, which was hurting my hands anyway.

“You know why not. Mr Reynolds said to give some other girls a turn.”

“Mr Reynolds! He—”

“I know what he’s like, but he’s the headmaster and he chooses.”

Florence sighed discontentedly. “I’ve always thought the vicar should choose, I have.” When I did not reply, she sighed again, louder. “At this rate, you’ll be too old to be the May Queen, ever.”

“Flo, I’m eighteen, not eighty!”

She digested this, busy with the garland. “But I am seventeen. And last year, when you and Mary were both seventeen, he chose Mary.” She looked up, her freckled face indignant. “It isn’t fair!”

“No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “And it’s especially unfair this year, considering.”

“Oh, Sarah!” Florence was dismayed. “You mean the film, don’t you?”

We were sitting in a front pew of the church, our feet surrounded by foliage. Privet, laurel and hawthorn had to be woven into strands to garland the cart that would carry the May Queen and her attendants through the village. It would be decorated with flowers first thing on Monday morning, and more flowers would be placed in the horses’ bridles and the girls’ hair. This year, thrillingly, it was rumoured that a moving picture was going to be made of the parade.

“I’m sure it’s just gossip,” I told Florence.

She shrugged. “Perhaps. But Mr Reynolds told Mr Hopkins the newsreel people want to come and film it. And Mr Hopkins told my da, and my da told us.”

I tried to remember what I had seen on the newsreels at Aberaeron: a football match, a politician speaking on a platform (though as films had no sound, the content of his speech was written on the screen), fashionable women in London, an unemployed men’s march in some European country. Would anyone watching a newsreel really want to see a May Day parade in a village in the middle of Wales?

“It does seem a pity,” mused Florence as she worked. “Greenery looks so dull in the films, all grey and blurry. No one will see the beautiful colours of the flowers.”

“But they’ll see
you
, Flo!” I exclaimed. “You’ll be up there looking lovely, and if it
does
get put on a newsreel, people all over Great Britain will see you and say to the person sitting next to them, ‘There’s a lovely girl, Mavis!’ Or George, or whoever. Won’t they?”

She grinned, her hands busy with the foliage but her blue eyes on my face. “Oh, Sarah! You and your films!”

M
onday dawned misty, and by mid-morning a drizzle had set in.

“Good for the flowers,” said Da, standing back to scrutinize the May Queen’s cart. It was his job to drive it at the head of the parade. “I’ll put some blossom in my cap, shall I?”

Frank was leaning against the gatepost, scowling. “They’ll never come and make a moving picture in this weather,” he said. “Just when we had a chance to do something interesting, bloody Welsh weather goes and spoils it.”

“You watch your tongue, Frank,” said Da. He looked down at his muddy boots. “It’ll be a while yet before it lets up, though. You girls had better watch your good shoes.”

I was not sure I even wanted to
wear
my good shoes, or my best dress. Like Frank, I had been excited at the prospect of film-makers in the village. If they were not going to come, I wondered if I might put on my coat and boots, and keep dry. “Florence is going to need an umbrella,” I told Da gloomily. “You’d better put some blossom on that, too.”

“Cheer up, girl!” He slapped me lightly on the back. “At least you’re not going to be up there in the rain in a thin dress! Maybe next year, eh?”

But by midday the rain had stopped, though the sky remained blank and greyish-white. I put on my dress and shoes, and my new hat. My reflection showed how narrow the close-fitting cloche hat made my face, and how large my eyes looked beneath its brim. I combed out some curls in front of my ears, but that made me look like a girl with side whiskers, so I tucked them back in. I touched my lips with the precious lipstick I had saved for and bought at the chemist in Aberaeron, then twisted it back down into its brass tube and stood back. There was little else I could do to make myself look more alluring; my dress was as fashionable as the pattern Mam had made it from would allow, my stockings were silk, my shoes, though second-hand, were not very worn, and newly polished. I thought I looked all right.

The street was full of puddles. I picked my way between them, my excitement growing. Men were setting up tables for the May Day supper, women were bringing baskets of food, children scampered everywhere, shrieking and getting in the way. There was no sign of Flo or her attendants, but I saw Mary Trease standing by the pump and waved to her. She smiled and came towards me, clutching her handbag. Her dress, of a pale lemon, silky material, fluttered around her knees.

“You look nice, Mary!” I told her. “What a pretty dress!”

“It belongs to my cousin down in Cardiff,” she confessed. “But she’s got lots of dresses. Sarah, do you think they’ll come?”

“The film people? I hope so!”

“Let’s you and I go and watch for them, shall we?”

I
had nothing better to do, so I walked with Mary to where the road made its final bend between Aberaeron and Haverth. Our village was on a slight hill, so from here we could see all the way to the next rise in the road.

And as we watched, a motor car appeared, breasted the hill and putt-putted its way towards us. Mary caught my elbow. “There they are!”

The open motor car contained two men – strangers – wearing overcoats and hats.

Behind them, in the luggage compartment, was a large leather box surrounded by metal canisters and rods, cables and lamps: clearly, the paraphernalia of film-making.

The car swept by us into the village and stopped outside The Lamb and Flag. Mary and I hurried to join the crowd which immediately gathered around it, in time to hear Mr Reynolds calling for everyone to stand back and to see one of the men shake his hand. “Afternoon, sir,” he said. “We spoke on the telephone. George Bunniford’s the name, and this is my camera operator, Mr Preston. Now, where is the best vantage point for viewing the parade?”

Mary and I ran, stumbling a little in our unaccustomed heels, to the corner of the street outside the baker’s. We knew the route the parade always followed. “Moll promised to keep me a place,” Mary told me breathlessly. “And I’m sure there’ll be room for you. You’re only slim, not like
her
.”

Mary’s older sister Margaret, known as Moll, worked in the baker’s, and took full advantage of the unsaleable cakes at the end of the day. She was actually a pretty girl, and evidently, considering the attention she received from boys, her curvaceous figure enhanced her beauty. Outside the baker’s shop, which was closed today, of course, was a horse trough, over which Moll had had the presence of mind to lay a plank of wood. If the three of us stood on this makeshift grandstand and it held our weight, we would have a good view of the parade as it rounded the corner.

There was only just room for Mary and me. “Now, Sarah,” she warned, “no jumping down there and trying to get in the picture, mind!”

“Couldn’t we do that?” I asked her eagerly.

“No, of course not!”

“Why not?”

“It would spoil the parade, some daft girl running in, wouldn’t it, Moll?”

Moll nodded gravely. “And if the parade is spoilt, they won’t take the pictures, and we’ll never see Haverth on the films. And it’ll be all your fault, Sarah Freebody.”

They were right; it was not our place to try to get into the picture on Florence’s big day. But Mary and Moll had not been surprised that I wanted to. They knew me well; they knew my dreams.

“Look, Sarah, it’s starting!”

I am ashamed to say I did not watch the parade. I missed Florence and the entire May Queen entourage; I missed the colliery band playing “Rhyfelgyrch Gwŷr Harlech” and the ponies with garlands round their necks and the Boy Scouts and the flag-waving and the cheering. I am sure it was all lovely, but to me it was not even there. I followed the movements of the camera operator, Mr Preston, and when I suspected the camera was turning towards me, I smiled at it. Mr Bunniford kept pointing out things he wanted Mr Preston to film, and I kept watching him. I so wanted to be in the newsreel! I wanted so very, very badly to be Lillian Hall Davis on a real screen, not just in my imagination!

Just as the May Queen passed, the sun came out. Seeing that the camera had turned straight to me, I waved. And it was on my face, not Florence’s, that a sudden shaft of brilliant sunshine fell.

“W
ho? Here, give me that.”

Da plucked the letter from my fingers and scanned it, frowning.

“George Bunniford,” I repeated. “He’s the man who came to make the newsreel film of the parade. You remember, Da, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember.” His frown lessened as he read on. “Well, I must say he’s polite. Was he the tall one or the short one?”

“The short one,” put in Frank, who was sitting on the stool by the back door, taking a long time to polish his boots. “The tall one was Preston, the camera operator. Bunniford was the director.”

“
Mister
Bunniford to you, boy!” The corners of Da’s mouth turned downwards, and he nodded approvingly at the page. “Director!”

“Can I go, then?” I asked him, as patiently as I could. “Can I go to Middlesex, like he says, and be in a film?”

“Whoa there, girl!” said Da. “He does not say anything about you being in a film, now, does he?” He squinted at the writing and began to read aloud the paragraph that had almost stopped my heart.
“Your recent newsreel appearance was seen by the notable film producer and director, David Penn. He has requested that I invite you to attend a screen test at Shepperton Studios, Middlesex, as soon as is convenient.”
Da looked at me over the top of the page. “And where might Middlesex be? I thought they made films in London.”