Their Finest Hour and a Half (32 page)

‘No.'

‘It means hours and hours of boredom for the sake of forty feet of celluloid, it means people bellowing through megaphones, and other people shouting, “What? I can't hear you?” It means extras arranged in tasteful patterns. It means
art
.'

‘So what are you going to do?'

‘Make notes for my next script.'

‘What's that?

‘A romantic comedy set in a sanatorium for people with facial tics and it's called—'

‘
Forty Winks
,' she supplied.

‘Very good.' He nodded, with grudging respect. ‘
Very
good. You're mustard these days, aren't you? Whatever happened to Little Miss Blush? Oh, she's back.' He grinned at her discomfiture. ‘Okeydokey. Well, enjoy yourself this afternoon. Don't speak to any actors if you can possibly help it.'

She walked along the harbour and over the headland, and then took a path that undulated across the top of the dunes. Choosing a spot near the apex of one of the tallest, she sat on a springy clump of marram grass. Badgeham Beach lay like a theatre stage before her, an arc of grey sand stretching from the shallow hump of the headland to her right, as far as the wire and warning signs of the minefield to her left, and sloping gently down to a choppy sea forty yards away. A fishing boat with an engine was anchored a good distance offshore, and there was activity on board, a huddle of little figures surrounding the black tripod of the camera. Three rowing-boats were drawn up on the edge of the water, and a fourth bobbed at anchor.

At the foot of the dunes to her left, just beside the coiled wire of the minefield, a tatty marquee and a couple of smaller tents had been pitched, and there was a table with a tea-urn, and a number of folding chairs. Soldiers milled around. Those who were near enough for Catrin to see were painfully young – schoolboys with pimples, their narrow shoulders hunched against the wind. They were going to be even chillier soon, thought Catrin, as she read the single sheet of script that Buckley had handed her.

Ambrose, sitting on the least decrepit of the camp-chairs, watched Kipper work out a system of cues with his team. ‘So it's white flags for rehearsal, red for a take,' said Kipper. ‘Two above the head for smoke, one above the head for first positions, one sharp flap for action, two flags in a V for setting off the electrics and two flags flapping for “cut”. And keep the dunes at the back clear between the markers, though I doubt they'll be in shot.'

‘We re'earsing the extras in the water?' asked Chick.

‘Yes.'

‘Only they're complaining already about it being cold.'

‘Stuff 'em,' said Kipper, crisply. ‘They're getting paid, aren't they? And tell them to keep their bloody kit on, I just tripped on a pile of webbing, and costume keep having to pick up helmets. Any other questions?'

‘I have a question,' said Ambrose, approaching the group. He held out his page of script. ‘It states here that the scene is “Uncle Franks's POV”. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always been under the impression that “POV” stands for “point of view”.'

‘Yes,' said Kipper, cautiously.

‘So the camera on the fishing boat out there will be recording what Uncle Frank sees when he steps up on deck after rousing himself from an inebriated stupor in the bilges?'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought so. And yet, apparently, my actual physical presence is required, so I was rather wondering which part of me is going to appear on camera. My eyelashes?'

‘The director feels that later on we may want you for some over-shoulder shots.'

‘So
later on
you may wish to use part of the back of my head?'

‘That's right.'

‘And until then, I'm to remain in full costume and make-up on a freezing beach with no shelter other than an antediluvian tent reeking of mildew?'

‘Yes,' said Kipper. ‘I'm sorry, but if you go back to the Crown I've got no one to spare to come and get you. Not this afternoon.'

‘I see.'

Ambrose sat down again, shifting his chair into the lee of the bell-tent. There was no one else there apart from Chopper, who sat as if nailed to the spot.

‘Waiting for your close-up?' asked Ambrose, peevishly. He was feeling neglected; there was a lack of care on this shoot, a laissez-faire attitude towards those who should be cherished and nurtured, a kow-towing to the nabobs of accountancy that showed in every cheese-paring decision. Even in provincial rep, Cecy had been given an electric fire and access to a kettle. There had been a warmth there that had been most pleasant . . .

Chopper gazed at him, impassively. ‘Die,' said Ambrose. There was no response. ‘Die,' he said again, trying to remember the hand-signal that Chick used – was it a snap of the fingers? He tried it, and Chopper lay down neatly. ‘No,' said Ambrose. ‘
Die
. Die for the King.'

*

‘You're not cold, are you?' asked Arthur, as he escorted Edith across the beach.

‘Not in the least,' she said. ‘I used to walk here every morning in the winter. I wonder what they've done with those huge metal items that were stuck in the sand?'

‘Tank traps,' said Arthur. ‘They've been removed especially for this scene, they brought in a tractor to do it. There weren't any tank traps at Dunkirk, you see.'

She nodded, and he could almost have cut a caper, for this was
conversation
, a proper back-and-forth, one speaking, the other listening, a balanced sharing of thoughts and experience such as he had never previously managed in the social company of someone from the distaff side. For this was by no means the first time that he had asked a lady out.

‘The large tent over there is for the use of the extras,' he said to Edith.

‘And the two smaller ones?'

‘Costume and make-up, I think. I'll introduce you.'

It was the sixth time, in fact. He had made a start on the wooing front a respectful two months after his father's funeral, inviting Rose Pritchett to a musical evening at Wimbledon town hall. Miss Pritchett worked as a waitress in the directors' dining room at Waring's, the factory at which Arthur was catering manager, and he had been attracted by her friendly demeanour. The invitation had been refused, with the entirely reasonable explanation that Miss Pritchett was already ‘seeing' a chap from the transport department, although he'd learned subsequently that this was untrue.

He had asked Dulcie Reed next, from Waring's switchboard, and they had spent a Sunday afternoon together in South Kensington, leaving the Science Museum after only half an hour, as Miss Reed had declared the heat there to be stifling, and going instead to Farelli's Ice Cream Parlour where she had eaten a knickerbocker glory and a Key lime wafer, and drunk a vanilla cream soda before looking at her watch and exclaiming that her mother would be expecting her home at any moment. Alice Davies, secretary to the Waring's distribution manager, had accompanied Arthur to an exhibition of marine water-colours at Dulwich Picture Gallery, but had declined a visit to the tearooms afterwards as she was suffering from a headache. Edna Brady (pudding cook, Waring's canteen; stroll on Wimbledon Common followed by a meal at Lyons Corner House) had thanked him for a nice time, which had been encouraging, but then he had overheard her in the kitchens the next morning, complaining that if she'd known she was going to spend an afternoon with a mute, she'd have chosen Harpo Marx, since he might at least have been amusing.

Conversation, then, was important; until that point, he had thought it enough to be polite and to pay for everything.

On the next occasion (a steamer to Hampton Court with Avis Glickman from the accounts department) he'd written six possible topics of interest on the palm of one hand, but she'd spotted the list early on, and had made a joke of it, and when it came to saying goodnight, she had dashed into her parents' house before he could even shake hands. After that, he'd begun to get the impression that some of the female staff at work, previously pleasant and respectful, were starting to giggle the instant he left a room. An envelope had appeared in his pigeonhole, containing a typed list of all the women who worked at the company, with five of the names crossed off and the handwritten addition: ‘Who's next?!' Who indeed? Outside of Waring's, he knew no women.

Not long after that, war had been declared, and he had enlisted, and although his fellow soldiers had spent much of their time discussing the female of the species, Arthur had learned nothing that could ever be repeated (or even thought about) in mixed company. Certainly, none of them had possessed the worldly wisdom of Ambrose Hilliard; none of them had ever advised him to ‘dazzle her, man'.

He watched Edith talking to the wardrobe mistress. ‘Dazzled' would be a wild exaggeration, but she appeared animated, alert,
interested
. She was asking questions, and giving detailed responses, and although she still appeared a little anxious he was beginning to wonder whether that might be the natural cast of her features, and he almost liked her the better for it – for, as he had discovered (five times), an expression of amiability could be illusory.

‘Of course, they'll all end up being dots on the horizon,' the wardrobe mistress was saying. ‘You'll see what I mean if you go on the boat with the camera – there won't be a single extra in close-up, and ten days' work will have gone for absolutely nothing, which I knew would happen. I've been in the business twenty years, and I said to Kipper at the start, I said: “Before I begin attacking a hundred and twenty brand-new uniforms with a rasp, can you assure me they'll actually be visible?” But I got the usual dusty answer. Mind you, if I'd known there was someone here with your sort of experience it would have made life a darn sight easier, where on earth have you been hiding?' and Edith smiled, and threw Arthur a quick glance of what he interpreted, after a moment of surprise, as gratitude.

‘And the worst of it,' continued the wardrobe mistress, a touch hysterically, ‘was being lectured, hour after hour, on the evils of drink and fornication by a local woman who'd volunteered to help me out. As if I had the time for fornication! Chance would be a fine thing . . .'

A man with an armful of flags asked Catrin to move, and she walked another fifty yards, in the direction of the tents, and sat down again, a short distance from a cluster of other spectators. Near the water's edge, the extras were being formed into lines, and the stench of burning tyres heralded a column of black smoke that rose from somewhere behind the dunes. In the centre of the beach, three men were burying a length of hose, and marking its sinuous course with driftwood stakes. A wire poked up through the sand at one end, and stretched back towards a cleft in the dunes.

‘Excuse me.' It was a plump, dark-haired young girl wearing a school mackintosh. She held out an opened notebook. ‘I'm collecting autographs. May I have yours?'

‘Mine?'

‘Yes. Because you work on the film, don't you?'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because you're not from around
here
,' said the girl heavily, with the implication that ‘here' was an unspeakable hell-hole. ‘I'll bet you live in London, don't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're so lucky.'

‘I wouldn't call it so very lucky at the moment.'

‘Oh
bombs
,' said the girl, dismissively. ‘I'm going to live there when I'm grown-up.' She proffered a fountain pen. ‘Could you please put “to my dear friend Myrtle” at the top, and then your name and also what your job is on the film? My mother says it makes it more educational if I ask people that.'

Catrin bent to her task.

‘So you're a waiter?' asked Myrtle, peering critically at the result.

‘No, a writer.'

‘Oh yes. I thought that “r” was an “a”. And is Catrin Cole your real name?'

‘My real name?'

‘Yes, because Doris Cleavely's real name is Joy Weeks.'

‘Oh. Oh, I see . . .'

‘She told me it took her ages to decide what to call herself, but I've already chosen a name for if I become an actress.' Myrtle paused, delicately.

‘I'd love to know what it is,' said Catrin.

‘It's Deborah-Anne Duvalier.' The syllables were lovingly enunciated. ‘Do you like it?'

‘Very much. And where will you live in London?'

‘Claridges.'

‘Which floor?'

Myrtle's pink face turned pinker. ‘Are you teasing me?' she asked, huffily.

‘Maybe just a little bit. I'm sorry.'

‘Because I don't know which floor.'

‘Neither do I, but if you're a famous actress, you should probably have a town-house on Park Lane as well.'