101 Pieces of Me (5 page)

“Maria, I think these shoes are too tight,” I ventured awkwardly.

“New shoes for Miss Hope!” called Dennis, though I had not addressed him.

“Dennis orders Maria about, not you,” whispered Aidan in my ear. “It gives him something to do.”

I thought Dennis, and everyone else who worked in the studio, had plenty to do. If I squinted, the scene before me turned into a swimming mass of colours: the dark shapes of the cameras, the huge lights above, the cables on the floor as thick as elephants’ trunks, the illuminated eighteenth-century stage where I sat and the muted twentieth-century shadows where those who were watching me lurked. Their faces looked ghostly as they worked in the gloom – talking, arguing, occasionally laughing, jotting things down, operating machines of which I had no knowledge, examining those same machines when they did not work properly, and cursing casually, not always under their breath.

However, my own job seemed clear. I had to turn up on time every morning, do as David or Dennis requested and learn, by process of trial and error, how to act in a film. Everything was so new and complicated. I was determined to be careful about what I said and to whom, and to hold my tongue unless spoken to.

Aidan Tobias, however, had no such scruples. He said whatever he liked. I wondered if he knew how lucky he was to be in films and not have to work on a farm or in a factory or an office like most young men. He did not seem to like being an actor, and I found that baffling.

The rehearsals that day were exhausting. I was glad I was not acting in the theatre, where I would have had to project my voice as well. But because the films were silent, we could say the lines as loudly or as softly, as well or badly, as we wanted. Eager to please, I stuck valiantly to the script I knew the audience would never hear. The words helped me to understand what my face and body were supposed to be showing the viewers of the film: love, fear, happiness – whatever David demanded. But Aidan was so easily bored, and so experienced, that he no longer needed such an anchor. He would sail carelessly into improvisation, jokiness and sometimes downright rudeness, in his own words instead of the scripted ones. Everyone would laugh, the scene would be ruined and we would have to do it again.

R
ehearsals went on, hour after hour. I had no clear sense of how much time passed: day might as well be night. The studios were a collection of shed-like buildings on the edge of a small town near the Thames, but once inside them I felt as if I might as well be underground. There were no windows; interior and exterior light had to be created by electric arc lamps strung from the invisible ceiling, and windy or misty conditions created by large fans operated by the technical staff. Everyone seemed to drink coffee, but I preferred tea. “Cup of tea for Miss Hope!” became Dennis’s refrain that first day. David never drank coffee or tea, only water. And Aidan accompanied his coffee with a swig of something from a hip flask he kept in his jacket pocket.

David chided him. “Inseparable from that thing, aren’t you? Like a baby and its bottle.”

“You’d drink, too, if you had to put up with a director whose childishness is more evident than any baby’s,” Aidan retorted. “Light me a fag, will you, Jeannie?”

Jeanette did not obey; smoking on the film set was strictly forbidden. But Aidan never gave up his quest to irritate everyone, though it was obvious that all he did was bore them. When I asked Maria why he did it, she shrugged and said, “That’s not for me to say, Miss Hope. Mr Tobias is a lovely actor, even when … you know, he’s had a tipple, and that’s what matters, I suppose.”

Jeanette did not seem to consider it necessary to introduce me to the technicians. They ignored me as they went about their work. But to their surprise, and possibly their embarrassment, I could not ignore them.

“And you are…?” I said to the man in the cap while he was adjusting a lamp.

“Cinematographer, Miss Hope.”

“And what is your name?”

“Harry, Miss Hope.”

“And what does a cinematographer do?”

Blank look. “Er … the moving pictures. I’m in charge of the photographing.”

Blank look from me.

“Er … the cameras, like. I keep them working and sort out the lighting, and the effects, and how it all looks through the camera. You know, get it all how Mr Penn wants.”

I held out my hand for him to shake. “Well, I’m very pleased to meet you, Harry.”

While I was drinking tea during a break, I tried the same tactic on the boy who was winding cables in the corner. “And you are…?”

“Me?” His face was scarlet. “Grip, Miss Hope.”

“Grip? Your name is Grip, you mean?”

“No, miss. My job. I’m a grip. Me and all them others, we’re the grips,” he said, nodding towards a group of five or six men, also on their tea break, playing cards on a box.

“And your name is…?”

“Alfie, miss.”

“And what do you, er, grip, Alfie?”

Met by his silent bewilderment, I tried again. “Look, I am very new and want to find things out. I mean, why are you called a grip?”

His embarrassment increased. “Don’t know, miss.”

“Well, what do you do?” I asked patiently.

“We’re like stage hands. We do what the gaffer tells us.”

The gaffer? I felt defeated. “Very well, Alfie, thank you. Now, I had better let you get back to work.”

O
ne person never seemed to have a break. The film set was haunted by a young woman with fashionably bobbed hair, who scribbled constantly on a notepad. Her eyes darted everywhere; she missed nothing, and when Aidan and I left the set she photographed it solemnly, from several directions, with a still camera. I could not fathom what she was doing.

She was friendly towards Maria, Harry, Dennis and Jeanette, so when a suitable moment arrived near the end of the day, I approached her. “And you are…?”

Her eyebrows shot into her fringe. “I’m Kitty!”

“And what is your job, Kitty?”

“Continuity, Miss Hope.”

“Continuity?”

She lowered her notepad and showed it to me. “Well, you see, I make sure everything’s exactly the same on the set for the next time.”

This meant little to me. “Um … the next time?”

“For going back over the scene. If you’ve got your hand under your chin when the camera films you from the front, Miss Hope, you’ve got to have it there when it films you from the back, and that could be on a different day altogether. If I didn’t note it down and take a photograph, we’d be forever going over bits of film and taking ages, and Mr Penn wouldn’t be pleased!”

“Oh, I see.” I did not, really. A different day altogether?

“And Dennis!” she added in a rush. “He’s a stickler for continuity!”

I seized this opportunity. “Tell me, Kitty, what is Dennis’s job, exactly?”

“Why, Miss Hope” – she was trying to hide her astonishment – “Dennis is the AD. The Assistant Director.”

“And Mr Penn is the Director?”

“Yes, and the Producer, too. He’s the big boss, and Dennis is our … immediate boss.”

“Oh.” I pondered for a moment. “I thought
Jeanette
was Mr Penn’s assistant.”

Kitty was beginning to look uncomfortable. “She is. She looks after him, like a secretary, and you know, manages everyone.”

“And Maria?”

“She’s the Wardrobe Mistress. The girls in costume and make-up are under her.”

“And you are under Dennis?”

She nodded. “And Harry too. They work together, under Mr Penn.”

“And the grips work under them, too?”

“That’s right.” She waited politely in case I had any more questions, then, tucking her notepad under her arm, she gave a nervous nod and made her escape.

I sighed. The business of film-making appeared to have class divisions as complicated as those of Britain itself. From the King to the vagabond tramping the lanes of Wales, everyone had their place, and so it seemed at Shepperton. With so many social tripwires all around me, how could I possibly stay on my feet?

“You look miserable,” said a voice at my elbow. “Justifiably, I’m sure.”

It was Aidan. In his drawn face I saw my own exhaustion. “Not miserable,” I told him, “but tired.”

“Hah! We’ve hardly done anything today, with only you and me here!”

He could tell from my expression that I did not know what he meant, and smiled without humour. “I suggest you go and look at the call list Jeanette’s put up. Tomorrow the rest of the cast of this ghastly enterprise will turn up for work, and believe me they’re a pretty rum crew. I’ve worked with a couple of them before. You’d better watch your step.”

I took little notice of his words. Whatever happened tomorrow, I was ready for it. Shepperton might be a place as far removed from Haverth as fairyland but, bewildered as I still was, I had realized two things. First, my contract would not allow me to get away from these people until we had completed the film, even if I wanted to. And second, I did not want to. Everything I had dared to imagine as I sat on the farm gate was here. Modern surroundings and modern people. Beautiful things and beautiful people. Knowledge, worldliness, power, achievement, creativity – all showered with the glamorous light of the cinema screen. I knew I stood on the threshold of a shadowy place that would present unimagined challenges. But I was ready for them. Now I was here, I wanted to stay in fairyland.

T
he call list was a typewritten piece of paper pinned to a noticeboard outside the dressing rooms. It was, as Aidan had explained, a list of the actors who had been called for filming the next day. I had assumed there would be more leading actors than there actually were. Besides Aidan’s and my own, there were only four main parts: the Comte de Montford’s uncle, a revolutionary leader, his mistress and her maid.

“How can a film about the French Revolution have so few people in it?” I asked Jeanette, who was standing at the call list, frowning. I knew all the action did not take place in one room, like a stage play; I had read the script. So where was everyone else?

“They’ll use extras,” she told me. “You know, people from a theatrical agency who do things like being peasants, Parisians, soldiers and sailors and so on, to make it look realistic. Tomorrow we’re just doing scenes with you six – or five, as it turns out.” She took a pen from behind her ear and crossed out someone called Simona Vincenza. “Miss Vincenza’s agent telephoned last night to say she can’t get here until Thursday. Something about an aeroplane. So that puts the whole schedule out. David’ll be livid.”

“Is she the maid or the mistress?” I asked.

Jeanette laughed so loudly and suddenly that it made me jump. She put her hand up apologetically. “Sorry, but the thought of Miss Vincenza playing a maid is such a hoot! I must tell Harry.”

“Um…” I tried not to look as embarrassed as I felt. “Please don’t, if that’s all right, Jeanette.”

She stopped smiling and regarded me with interest. Understanding came into her eyes. “Oh … very well, of course I won’t. You can’t know what Miss Vincenza’s like, after all.”

“Thank you.”

She was embarrassed that she had considered gossiping about my ignorance. She put her head down so that her hair fell over her face, and busied herself with putting the pen away in the pocket of her dress. “See you tomorrow, then!” she said brightly, and disappeared down the corridor.