101 Pieces of Me (3 page)

“It’s
near
London,” said Frank. “It’s where the film studios are, like it says.”

Da did not look convinced.
“As you are under twenty-one years old,”
he read on,
“would you please seek permission from your parents. If they are agreeable, I would be grateful if they would sign the enclosed form and send it back to me at the above address. I remain, Miss Freebody, your humble servant, George Bunniford, Newsreel Director.”

“A screen test is a sort of audition,” I ventured.

“I know what a screen test is.” Da gestured with the letter towards Frank. “Living with you and this boy, with your film magazines and whatnot, Mam and I can’t help knowing more than we want to about the whole daft business.”

“It’s not daft, Da!” Frank’s flushed face looked up from his polishing. “If Sarah was in the films, we’d be rich! We could live in America, and I could have a motorcycle, or even a motor car!”

Da chuckled and tossed the letter back to me. “Ask Mam. She’ll know what’s best.”

I went and kissed the top of his head.
Ask Mam
was halfway to
yes
.

“H
old the board a little higher, if you will, Miss Freebody. That’s much better.”

Click. Squawk
.

“Thank you. You can give the board to Jeanette now. And while we’re getting ready for the next photograph, would you show me your smile? That’s right, smile as if you mean it!”

Click. Squawk
.

“Now, would you turn your head to your left and lift your chin? Very nice.”

Click. Squawk
.

“And now the right side?”

Click. Squawk
.

“Now, we’re going to film you using the moving picture camera. Jeanette, would you hand the board back to Miss Freebody? Thank you.”

I took the board, which said
SARAH FREEBODY, D.O.B. 11.5.1907
, and pressed it to my chest. Behind it my heart beat fast. I hoped the make-up that had been put on my face would hide how much I was perspiring. The lights that a young man had arranged in front of me were hot and very bright. They were so bright, in fact, that the man instructing me was invisible behind them. His attempts to “put me at my ease”, as he said, had failed. I had never felt so unsure, so detached from real life, nor so excited.

“Ready?” came the disembodied voice.

“Yes, I believe so,” I replied.

“Er, Miss Freebody, I was actually addressing the camera operator.”

“Oh, sorry!” Perhaps the make-up would conceal my blush, too.

“We shall be taking moving pictures of you, my dear,” continued the voice kindly, “so you must
move
. Do whatever you wish, letting us see you from every side, including the back. Keep moving. And don’t look at the camera.”

The camera began to work, not clicking and squawking like the one that had taken the still photographs, but making a loud whirring sound, like the wings of an enormous bird. Of course I looked at it. Jeanette, who was perhaps ten years older than me and wore large earrings and her hair in a mass of waves, came and removed the board. I tried to smile at her, but she took no notice.

The camera was still on. Without the board I felt naked, though I was wearing a light dress, a pair of borrowed shoes and my best underwear.

“
Move
, Miss Freebody!” came the instruction. “And don’t look at the camera!”

What did Lillian Hall-Davis do when the camera was on her? Into my mind came her face, flickering high above me on the screen, glowing with beauty and life. Copying her, as I had done so many times before, I took a few steps in a small circle, looking over my shoulder when I turned my back. I put my hands on my hips and swayed from side to side, trying not to imagine what I looked like. Maybe the invisible people behind the lights were smiling at my discomfiture. Anxiety swept over me; I bit my lip, recognizing dimly that I had forgotten to breathe. I took a big gasp of air, searching the blackness for any sign of someone who might tell me if what I was doing was acceptable, or stop me. But no one spoke. All I heard was the noise of the camera and my own rushing breath.

On and on it went. I seemed to have been standing in this wilderness of light for ages, moving my body awkwardly, like a child made to perform at a birthday party. Unlike such a child, though, I would not be indulged by my audience.

“Miss Freebody!” called a different voice from the darkness. “Dennis has asked you twice. If I ask you a third time, do you think you could possibly not look into the camera?”

I
could not see who had spoken. The voice was male, confident, well-modulated. The voice of a man in charge. I was relieved he had arrived. Surely he would soon tell the camera operator to stop filming. The imminent end to my ordeal gave me courage. “Where shall I look, then?” I asked.

“Look at
me
, if it would help.” And the man stepped in front of the light.

He looked young, in his mid-twenties, and wore a suit and a thin moustache. I liked his face; it was boyish yet serious, with an expression of sympathy. “Just speak to me as if you had met me in the street,” he told me. “Now, how did you travel to the studio today? By omnibus or train? Move your head a little, out of my shadow, and I want to see some animation in your face as we speak.”

It was a great deal easier when there was someone to address. “By train,” I said tilting my chin.

“Use your hands too,” he said. “Did you come from Waterloo?”

“Yes, I did!” I had ceased to be myself. I was outside my own body, watching this stranger performing as if she were in a film. I put my hands on my cheeks and widened my eyes. “All the way from Waterloo on a train!”

“And was your seat comfortable?”

I took my hands away, lowered my chin and gazed up at him, pretending, as I had done all my life, to be someone else. If no one liked my attempt to be a film star, at least I would have the comfort of knowing it was not Sarah Freebody who had made such an idiot of herself but a formless, nameless product of her imagination. “Oh, it was splendidly comfortable, sir!” I assured the man.

“No need to call me sir, Miss Freebody.” I felt his hand upon my wrist, and he turned to the darkness behind him. “Dennis, I believe we have enough.”

“Cut!” said Dennis, and the noise of the camera stopped.

The man turned back to me and shook my hand. “Thank you very much. That was very nice. Please do stay for lunch, then a car will take you to the station.”

It was over. The dead glass eye of the camera was no longer following me. I could feel perspiration trickling between my shoulder blades. Exhaustion spread through my body. “Could I have a glass of water?” I asked.

“Jeanette, water for Miss Freebody!” ordered Dennis.

I sat on a canvas chair and drank the water, watching Dennis and the man who had spoken to me standing in the corner, talking and nodding. I wondered who the man was. Dennis’s superior, evidently, but how important? I was grateful to him, whoever he was. I had been floundering, and if he had not actually rescued me, he had given me the opportunity to rescue myself.

Back in Haverth, they would be waiting for my triumphant return. For a few days their expectations would remain. But then I would receive another letter from Mr Bunniford, which I would burn in the kitchen range before Mam or Da or Frank could get hold of it.

Crumple. Whoosh. Crackle. The end of my adventure.

B
ut the letter I expected did not come. Instead, I received one on creamy paper embossed with gold. It was from David Penn Productions, of 110 Strand, London WC1, and it offered me employment as an actress in a film to be made at Shepperton Studios over the next few months. Again, a form had been enclosed for my parents to sign, and when they returned it, another, bigger collection of papers arrived. This was an official-looking contract, full of incomprehensible words.

Da took it to Mr Mord Williams, a lawyer friend in Aberystwyth whom he considered very learned. To my mind, anyone who did not know as much poetry as my father could not possibly be his superior in learning. But Mr Williams pronounced the contract legally sound, charging us half a crown for his services, and Da and I duly signed and returned it. Mam said the cream-and-gold letter was beautiful enough to frame, so she did exactly that and put it on the wall of my bedroom. By mid-June, I was on my way.

And I was no longer Sarah Freebody. Another letter had come from the production company telling me, to my delight, that I would be known as Clara Hope. And it was full of that hope that I stepped into the car that brought me from the Savoy in the Strand to another well-appointed hotel, this one in the country, by the Thames.

Jeanette, the woman who had been at my screen test, was waiting for me at the Thamesbank Hotel. “David Penn sent me,” she explained, “to make sure you settle in all right, and that you have everything you need.” When I asked if she was going to be my chaperone, she said, laughing, “I wouldn’t call it that! But I am here if you need me. I do whatever David wants, and sometimes what he
doesn’t
want!”

A few sleepless hours later, in the mist of a summer dawn, a different car collected me and delivered me to Shepperton Studios. And my new life began.

I
will try to describe what took place during those first few days at Shepperton, as I remember it happening, in the right order. But films, like the dreams my father’s poet compared them to, do not lend themselves to order. Time in dreams shifts backwards and forwards, and images come and go, and so it is with the making of a film. Unfamiliar sights, people, language and experiences tumbled like a kaleidoscope, and dazzled me.

As soon as I entered the studio on that first day, the man whose banal questions about my train journey had encouraged me during my screen test strode towards me, extending his right hand with an expectant look. “Miss Hope? I am David Penn.”

“Oh!” I shook his hand. “So that was
you
!”

“You seem surprised,” he said, smiling.

“Um…” I was embarrassed, but found myself so struck by his appearance that I could not look away. I had seen him before, of course, but I had not seen his smile before. It covered his entire face, from his eyelashes to his ears, from his hairline to his moustache. He carried the fact that he was the best-looking man in the room with ease, from the collar of the jacket draped over his shoulders to the tips of his brogues. For the second time, I was charmed by his attention. “I
am
a little surprised,” I admitted. “You are such an important person, I—”