Their Finest Hour and a Half (33 page)

‘All right, then.' Myrtle nodded, as if agreeing to the terms of a contract. ‘I will. Thank you very much.' She closed her notebook with a snap, and set off in search of fresh prey.

On the beach below, one of the assistant directors was shouting into a loud-hailer, and Catrin just caught the words ‘quiet' and ‘rehearsal' as they were whipped away by the wind.

She thought about the autograph that she'd just given to Myrtle. It had not, strictly speaking, been of her real name; she'd been called Cath Pugh when she'd met Ellis, but he'd said that a beautiful girl ought really to have a beautiful name (and oh, how she'd loved that), and he'd suggested ‘Catrin', from a book of Welsh legend, and she'd tacked his surname on to the end, just to save any awkwardness, and had bought herself a ring in Woolworths, and had left Cath Pugh behind her in Ebbw Vale, and whatever might or might not come to pass once the film was over, she knew that she never wanted to go back to being Miss Pugh again. And, after all, it was not just actors and actresses who rechristened themselves. Catrin Cole might not be her married name, but perhaps it could be her
nom de plume
 . . .

On the camera boat, a white flag waved briskly, and the lines of mock-soldiers began to shuffle into the water, and towards the four rowing boats that bobbed offshore. Further back on the beach another group of extras set off on a pre-arranged course, weaving between carefully placed crates and packs, while a third contingent made their way down one of the dunes, walking in ragged formation.

On the margins, well outside the frame of the shot, stood the other army: props men and costume standbys, sparks and chippies, the make-up artist, the art director, the location manager and his assistant, the stills photographer, the caterers, the runner. And all this, thought Catrin, from a single sentence on a page – all this from a decision, taken in utter naivety, to confirm a story that had never existed. She felt a jolt of guilt, and then a tiny, unexpected, nudge of pride. I did this, she thought. Catrin Cole (writer) did this.

‘. . . to my dear friend Myrtle, and then your name,' said the girl with the catarrhal voice and the shoulders of a coal-heaver; she spoke with the local accent, an oddly-inflected mutter delivered with the mouth half-closed. ‘And also what your job is,' she added.

‘What my
job
is?' repeated Ambrose, acidly.

‘Yes. Please. Everybody else has.' She held out her notebook and he took it reluctantly and flipped through the pages.

‘Ah splendid,' he said, ‘I see that you've already captured the elusive signature of the camera-car driver's mate. Surely the addition of lesser names can only dim its lustre?'

Sarcasm, of course, was wasted on the very young; Myrtle merely gave him a nervous glance and picked at one of her fingernails.

‘Oh very well,' he said, finding a blank page.

‘Thank you very much.' She took back the book and scrutinized what he'd written. ‘I thought you were him,' she said, with satisfaction.

‘Did you?'

‘My mother said to look out for someone quite old. And is that your real name?'

‘Yes,' said Ambrose, untruthfully. ‘And now I really must get back to my
job
, which is to prepare for the next scene without being constantly interrupted.'

‘Sorry. Thank you.'

He watched her lumber away, notebook in hand. The rehearsal had been halted and a procession of sodden extras was beginning to walk up the beach in search of hot tea. Ambrose returned to his former occupation.

‘Roll over,' he said. ‘Go on. Roll over. Or sit.
Sit
.' There was no response; the dog lay as if carved on a crusader tomb.

‘Stay, then,' said Ambrose, sourly, and shook his fist at the silly creature, and Chopper, at last receiving a signal that he recognized, jumped up keenly and began to nose around the base of the tent. ‘Oh, for God's sake,' said Ambrose.

‘All extras in first positions for a take,' shouted someone. ‘Now. Not after you've had some tea.
Now
.'

‘Look through here,' said the camera operator, and Arthur bent his knees, and pressed his eye to the viewfinder, and felt his breath catch. The wide, cluttered beach had contracted to a precise rectangle. The tents were excluded, and the rolls of wire, and the trestle tables with their tea-urns, and the huge white sky above, and the spectators on the dunes, and the knots of crew who waited on the margins, so that what he saw was only a stretch of dark water and a swathe of sand pocked with litter and patterned with skeins of anonymous soldiery. A curl of smoke drifted across the scene.

‘Yes,' he said, straightening up, ‘that's really quite . . . like.'

The director nodded briefly, and resumed his conversation with Kipper, and Arthur returned to the stern of the fishing boat, wondering as he did so whether it was the slight motion of the deck that had caused his forehead to film with sweat.

‘Was the wardrobe mistress right?' asked Edith, as he sat down beside her. ‘Are the soldiers just dots on the horizon?'

‘Just dots,' he confirmed, taking out a handkerchief to dab his brow. ‘You're not cold, are you?'

‘No, not a bit.'

‘Good, good.' He folded his handkerchief carefully, suddenly aware that he had entirely run out of things to say. The pit of silence yawned. Could he ask her if she were cold? No, he had only just done that. He cleared his throat, uncomfortably.

‘All right,' said Kipper, with perfect timing. ‘Going for a take.'

*

The earlier wind had dropped, and there was silence on the beach apart from the soft slap of waves and the occasional sneeze. A gull flew the length of the dunes and then broke from its course and wheeled in a long curve above the lines of static figures, and Kipper, on the cabin roof, waited until the flake of white had left frame before raising his red flag and flapping it sharply.

Action
, thought Catrin, if one could use such an energetic word about such a gradual progression. The extras inched into the surf or trudged along their set routes, and although she spotted the odd grin, or muttered aside, most seemed to be taking their roles with admirable gravity, looking apprehensively out to sea, or glancing up at the ceiling of smoke. Those in the water, or scrambling awkwardly into the rowing-boats, looked wholly and convincingly miserable.

The gull returned, tilting like a fighter plane above the beach, and Kipper on the cabin roof raised two flags in a V, and in an instant a chain of explosions erupted along the centre of the beach, following the curved line of the hosepipe, sending plugs of sand six feet into the air but with a noise that sounded strangely innocent – burst paper bags, Guy Fawkes bangers, party balloons – and the figures on the sand threw themselves flat, and the scene in front of Catrin was no longer a moving picture but a tableau, save for a streak of brown at the corner of her vision, a shape that darted away from the reports in a series of scrabbling runs. ‘Hey!' called one of the spectators. ‘Look where it's going!'

It was most peculiar, and it happened quite suddenly. Arthur had been sitting beside Edith, his arms folded tightly because his hands had started to shake again. He had seen Kipper marshalling his flags in readiness for cueing the electrics, and he was trying to prepare himself because, out of all the awfulness of those days on the beach at Dunkirk, it was the strafing that had caught on his memory like a hook – the feeling of utter nakedness, the banshee shriek of the dive-bombers, the hammer of the guns, the sand spitting – and he steeled himself and took a deep breath.

Kipper raised his arms. There were a few distant pops. Some of the extras dropped on to the ground. ‘Cut,' said the director.

Arthur felt an odd internal jolt, as if he had just missed a step in the dark.

‘I thought the explosions would be louder,' said Edith.

‘Yes. The sand muffled them, I suppose.'

I'm
alive
, he thought, I survived, I'm here and I'm watching play-acting, I could have died on a French beach but I didn't, I came back, I was lucky.

He placed his palms on his thighs. He felt quite steady, and immensely real, and solid; he had never been so aware of his own body, of the muscle and bone, the density and heft of each limb. The bullets missed me, he thought, they
missed
me – and for a queer moment, the world seemed to dangle before him like a Christmas ornament, glistening and bright, hanging just within his reach.

‘Hold that take, but we're going again,' shouted Kipper, and the words were like a draught that slammed a door shut. The bright world was gone again.

‘I wonder why they're doing another take?' asked Edith.

‘Oh . . .' For a second or two Arthur could hardly catch his breath. He took off his spectacles to polish the lenses, but they were already quite clean, and he put them back on again and saw Edith, neat and interested and smart in her maroon coat with ivory buttons. ‘. . . I suppose it might be something technical.'

Kipper was standing on the cabin roof again, holding a single flag above his head, but after a moment he jumped down, picked up a megaphone and leaned out over the bows.

‘What is happening?' he shouted, the words well spaced. ‘Where is everyone going?'

The occupants of the beach were drifting across to the right, and congregating between the tents and the coils of wire that demarcated the minefield.

‘What is happening?' shouted Kipper again, and one of his assistants came to the edge of the water and shouted something back, through cupped hands.

Edith looked at Arthur. ‘Did he say something about a dog?' she asked.

In his flight from the explosions, Chopper had plunged towards the wire and had almost found a way through, but a strand had caught around his chest and he had panicked and kept going until the loop had pulled taut into a deep ‘V' and he could run no further. He stood now, some twenty feet into the minefield, panting, bleeding a little, the wire stretched into a series of stiff curves behind him, like a scrawled signature.

The growing crowd stared at him, with collective impotence. ‘Here boy,' called one young fool. Ambrose turned to admonish him and saw, in the distance, the short, menacing figure of Chick approaching. The fellow had been stationed right at the other end of the beach and still held the flag he'd used for acknowledging Kipper's signals; he held it rather in the way that one might hold a rifle. Ambrose felt a flicker of personal anxiety.

The same youth opened his mouth again. ‘Your dog ran away,' he called, as Chick came within earshot. ‘He ran away when the charges went off.'

‘My dog don't run away unless I tell 'im 'e can run away,' said Chick, without breaking stride. ‘So some bastard's been muckin' abaht with 'im. Dixie, you got the nips?' One of the electricians tossed him a pair of pliers and Chick tucked them into the pocket of his overalls, threw the flag to one side, and carried on walking, straight through the gap that Chopper's run had opened in the hedge of wire.

There were gasps, and a stifled scream from somewhere in the crowd. ‘Oh
God
,' said someone. ‘Wait! We've sent a man round to the battery,' but Chick continued as if deaf, following with calm intent the paw-prints that jigged across the virgin sand, reaching the dog in the same length of time that it took for Ambrose to wonder whether anyone had seen him issuing orders to Chopper, and if so whether he might be called upon to give evidence at the inevitable inquest. ‘
Actor “must shoulder some of the blame” says coroner
.'

The watchers had fallen silent, and the dog's faint whimper became audible as Chick knelt beside it, cut through the wire with a few swift snips, and then lifted the stocky brindled form and unhurriedly re-traced his steps. He reached the gap again, passed through and kept on walking. Kipper was climbing from a rowing-boat into the shallows and he called out to Chick, ‘How's the dog? Where are you taking him?'

‘Bermondsey,' said Chick. ‘He's off the picture. And so am I.'

‘What?'

‘You 'eard.'

There was a long moment during which Kipper seemed too shocked to speak, and then he rallied himself, and ran through the surf after the retreating figure.

‘But we've already shot half of his scenes,' he called out. ‘You can't take him now.' The answer was a brief, loud obscenity. Kipper appealed again but this time there was no reply. Chick walked steadily, inexorably across the width of the beach, and up the path and over the headland. For a brief moment he was silhouetted against the smoky sky and then he – and Chopper – were gone.

‘
Actor “must bear substantial portion of cost for cancelled feature film” says auditor
.' Ridiculous, thought Ambrose, giving himself a mental shake – nevertheless, he glanced around to check for accusatory stares. Most people were looking back at the minefield again. ‘They're probably duds,' said one youngster in uniform, feinting a leap over the wire.

Kipper blew a long blast on the whistle, and with a certain reluctance, the crowd shuffled round to face him. ‘Never mind what's just happened,' he shouted, rather shrilly. ‘Never mind standing around gossiping, let's have a bit of concentration here. The director's decided we're going again very shortly, so we need extras in first positions.' He waited for several seconds, but no one moved. ‘Now!' he added, peremptorily.

A raspberry, wet and derisive, was blown as he turned to wade back to the rowing-boat and then one of the extras, soaked to the armpits, took off his tin hat and lobbed it towards the spot on the minefield from which Chopper had been rescued. It bounced harmlessly.