Simply Divine (33 page)

'Shush, it's her Moment,' cautioned the clapperboard girl. 'We don't want to miss a piece of acting history.'

Pausing for a good few minutes in front of the camera, Champagne stuck her chest out and flashed a prolonged and utterly plastic grin before sashaying slowly off set.

'Cut!' said Brad. 'Perfect, Champagne. Got it in one. Take a break, everyone. Lunch.' He passed a weary hand across his forehead, looking as if food was the last thing on his mind and strong drink the first.

The two girls exploded. 'That bit wasn't even filmed,' hiccuped the redhead. 'There's no one sitting on the camera.'

Jane smiled broadly. It was true. The seat behind the lens was empty.

'Is it a shawl?' honked Champagne, wobbling across the grass towards Brad.

'She means a wrap,' tittered the make-up girl.

Jane, giggling, suddenly felt the smile freeze on her lips. Champagne, looking furiously in the direction of the sniggering, had spotted her.

'Where the hell have ^0« been?' Champagne honked, stumbling over, her green eyes flashing furiously. 'What about this story you're supposed to be writing about me?'

The clapperboard and make-up girls melted away,

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leaving Jane feeling alone and unprotected. 'I got delayed,' she said hurriedly.

'Well, you'd better catch up quickly then,' Champagne barked. Til have to show you round, I suppose. I bet you don't know the first thing about a film set, do you?'

'Er, not much,' Jane admitted.

Champagne rolled her eyes and tossed back her white-blonde hair. 'Well, you'd better come with me,' she huffed. 'But first, you can take me to lunch.'

'Fine,' said Jane, looking at the queues of actors starting to form at the trestle tables some distance away. It would be fun to eat with the cast. And useful. She'd pick up lots of good anecdotes for the piece and it would be a chance to meet Lily.

'You surely don't think we're eating
on set?
Champagne declared, looking at Jane in amazement. 'I'm sorry, but I think a star of my calibre has the right to expect something a bit more upmarket than the filthy crap they serve here. Can you see Demi Moore queuing up with that lot?'

'No,' said Jane, truthfully. Demi Moore was, indeed, nowhere to be seen. Lily Eyre was though, chatting happily to a bunch of cameramen as her plate was loaded with what looked like the most delicious noodles. Jane's stomach rumbled. She adored noodles. And the smell was heavenly.

Suddenly, from somewhere close by, something started playing an irritating and familiar-sounding tune in high-pitched, tinny notes. Looking around without success to identify where it came from, Jane realised it was 'There's No Business Like Showbusiness'. To her surprise, Champagne suddenly put her hand down her cleavage and extracted a tiny gold mobile phone. She snapped it open. The tinny music stopped.

'Yah?' Champagne listened for a few seconds. 'Yah,' she

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said finally, closing the phone and shoving it back down her dress. She sniffed and tossed her hair. 'That was my New York acting studio,' she said loftily. 'Calling to tell me to make sure I'm projecting enough. Do you think I'm projecting enough?'

Jane's eyes dwelt briefly on Champagne's bulging bust, straining against the thin material of her dress like a dam about to burst. 'Oh yes,' she said with complete truth. 'You're projecting more than enough.'

'The food on that set is simply uneatable,' Champagne complained ten minutes later, her temper not improved by having to hobble all the way to the gatehouse where Jane had parked the car. 'Can you believe it,' she huffed from the front seat, 'Brad won't even let me have my own chef. I mean, it's the bare minimum a star expects on set. Julia Roberts would freak out. Tom and Nicole would go ballistic.'

'Brad should think himself lucky,' said Jane, starting the engine, 'that you didn't insist on a chef for Gucci as well.'

Champagne looked at her in contemptuous astonishment. 'Well of course I did,' she honked. 'I told him that Gucci needs a very special Russian diet. Can't eat anything but caviar at the moment, poor lamb. But of course Brad took
absolutely
no notice. Callous
bastard.
Can't think what I ever saw in him. Wouldn't even let me have a bodyguard, let alone a personal trainer. Stingy
bastard'
She paused for breath. 'Still, he
had
to give me a trailer in the end. He actually thought he could make me stay at the local pub with everybody else. Can you
imagine?

Jane didn't bother to reply. By now they had reached Lower Bulge.

Lunch, in the event, was nothing more substantial than

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a bag of cheese and onion crisps each and a half of Old Knickersplitter in the Gloom. 'Can't believe no one in this town knows how to fix a lobster club sandwich,' huffed Champagne as, a mere half an hour later, Jane drove the 2CV back to Mullions as hard as she dared, hoping the piles of noodles would still be on offer when they returned. But when they arrived back on the set, not so much as a beansprout remained.

Champagne climbed out of the car in such a manner as to expose as much tanned bottom as possible. 'I'm back now,' she announced to no one in particular. 'You can carry on filming.' She staggered over the grass towards the girl with the clapperboard. 'Where's my call sheet?' she demanded.

Not batting an eyelid, the girl detached a piece of paper, from a folder in her bag. 'Here you are,' she said, handing it to Champagne, who scanned it eagerly before looking up in fury.

'But I'm not in any scenes at all this afternoon according to this,' she shouted. 'What the fuck's going on? Where's Brad?'

'Filming the big love scene,' said the production assistant. 'The set is closed, I'm afraid.' How much full frontal nudity could there possibly be in a film called
Three Christenings and a Hen Party!
thought Jane. Could Brad be barricading himself inside the set for other reasons altogether?

'I
demand
to see him,' raged Champagne. 'What do you mean, big love scene? I'm the one who makes the big scenes around here.'

There was an acquiescent silence.

'Brad was so happy with what you shot this morning that he thought you probably needed the afternoon off to

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rest,' said the redhead quickly. Whatever was she doing in films, Jane wondered, when she obviously had a brilliant future in diplomacy?

Champagne tossed her head, faintly mollified. 'Yes, I was rather good, wasn't I? Oh well.' She turned and looked at Jane. 'Suppose I'd better fill you in on some of the jargon,' she declared. 'For the piece you're writing about me. Got your notebook ready?' She pointed at the lighting rig behind her. 'Lights,' she boomed, as if Jane had never seen one before. 'Big ones are called redheads and the little ones are called blondes.'

'Er, other way round actually,' murmured the redheaded clapperboard girl.

Champagne ignored her. And that big machine they are slung up on is called the cherry popper,' she announced.

'Cherry
picker,
actually,' said the girl before beating a retreat under Champagne's furious glare.

Champagne wandered over to a group of men surrounded by wires, microphones and speakers. 'This is Nigel, one of the sound men,' she revealed, pouting at a handsome
¹
, bronzed six-footer with blond hair tied back in a pom/tail. 'Nigel has a very large and hairy thing he waves around everywhere.' Champagne gave Nigel the most blatantly suggestive smile Jane had ever seen.

'I think Champagne means the boom microphone,' said Nigel, grinning back.

•'And this is Chris, the chief cameraman,' Champagne continued, dragging Jane into the personal space of a tanned and muscular hunk in a New York baseball cap. 'Otherwise known as the gofer.'

'You mean the gaffer,' said Chris in a broad Australian accent. 'Rather a different thing in the pecking order,' he grinned. 'But that's not me, anyway. The gaffer's the chief

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electrician. And his deputy, that's Ian rummaging in that box over there, is known as the best boy.'

Champagne lowered her lashes and smouldered at Ian, who started to scrabble even harder in what looked like a case of electrical leads. 'The best boy, eh?' she repeated loudly. 'Best at what, I wonder?'

As a flush crept up Patrick's pale and somewhat pimply neck. Champagne returned to pouting at Chris.

'Chris and I have discovered we've got lots in common,' she honked. 'We've both got some Scottish in us, apparently. His name is McCrae, and my grandmother was from Edinburgh.'

'What an astonishing coincidence,' said Jane, ironically.

Champagne glanced suddenly at the Rolex weighing down her wrist. 'Look, can't stand here all day. Come and find me later,' she ordered Jane. 'Must dash. I've got the runs.' She staggered off over the field.

'She means the rushes,' said Chris. 'It's when what's been filmed during the day is shown. Hardly worth her turning up, really. I don't think she's going to appear on much of it, to be honest.'

'Never mind,' said Jane, turning round to see Champagne flirting wildly with Nigel some distance away. 'I'm not so sure she intends to go and watch it. She seems to be more interested in the sound.'

Chris grinned as he watched them. 'Well, she's wasting her time with Nigel,' he said. 'He may look macho but he's as gay as New Year's Eve. Fancy a drink later?' he added. Are you staying in the pub?'

Jane hesitated. She had not considered the question of her overnight accommodation since unsuccessfully raising it with Saul Dewsbury. 'Yes,' she said. 'I think I probably am.'

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Chapter 2O

Tally shrieked as the bright red bloodstain began to spread over the virgin white satin of the wedding dress. 'Shit,' she yelped. 'Bugger.' The needle had driven right into her finger. It had been a charming thought of Saul's that she should embroider her wedding dress with the Venery family mottos of deer and hares, but they had not come out as successfully as she had hoped. Her hares looked like hamsters, and the deers' antlers like TV aerials. Not to put too fine a petit point on it, her sewing was a shambles. And, boringly, it had kept her practically imprisoned in her bedroom throughout the first few days of the filming.

The bloodstain, fortunately, was less of a disaster than it first seemed. It was on the inside of a sleeve and if she kept her left arm to her side throughout the wedding, no one would be any the wiser. Not that anyone would be anyway. Saul's insistence on a speedy, private register office wedding meant the two of them would be practically the only people present.

As she plunged the needle once more into the satin, Tally determinedly tried to bury all thoughts of the traditional ceremony in the family chapel which she had always imagined she would have. With flowers by Mr Peters and serried ranks of Mrs Ormondroyd's quiches

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alongside knockout glasses of the Fourth Earl's punch. And her mother s veil, but not, alas, the family tiara. That had been sold long ago to cover one of someone's less fortunate evenings at Monte Carlo.

The family chapel, in any case, had been ruled out of the proceedings the week before, when the crested and pilastered Venery family gallery high up at the back of it had finally come crashing down. It was a tragedy, Tally had thought as she surveyed the damage with brimming eyes, that she and Saul could not marry on the same spot where so many of her ancestors had celebrated their union.

'Such a shame,' she said to Saul. 'The Fourth Earl married no less than three wives here.'

'What did he do with the first two?' Saul stammered as best he could between his chattering teeth. Like the rest of the house, the chapel, as always, even in the scorching height of summer, was freezing.

'They died in childbirth, I think,' said Tally vaguely. 'Then there was the Fifth Earl,' she added, brightening. 'He got married here. Quite a wild chap, by all accounts. Took his mistress on honeymoon with him and his wife.'

'What did his wife make of that?' asked Saul, clutching his herringbone tightly round him.

'Went mad and died of diphtheria, I believe.'

'Well,' said Saul, still shuddering, 'looks like we're doing the right thing then. A wedding here sounds about the worst start to married life imaginable. Just as well the place has collapsed.'