Well Groomed (29 page)

THE NEXT MORNING, NIALL had been collected by his driver to travel to the Celt location shoot long before Tash woke, leaving her a note to explain exactly where they were filming and what time it was best to get there.

Propped up in bed, she squinted across the room at the evidence of his quick exit: a damp towel left on the floor after a hasty shower, a lidless can of deodorant beside her feet on the end of the bed, a rejected pair of socks lying inside-out on a chair, gaping like fledglings’ mouths.

The unfamiliar room glared in the steely early-morning light. Heavily panelled with pock-marked oak, filled with dark austere furniture and clustered with macabre hunting prints, it was very grand and very unwelcoming. Cold and lonely, Tash cuddled deeper into the counterpane and squinted across to a broad, squat desk at the far end of the room. Even without her contact lenses in, she could see that it was coated in pages of the film script, call sheets and the copious character notes that Niall made before every job.

In Celt, he was playing a character called MacGinnen – a hell-raising, womanising rebel laird with a heart of gold, who led an eighteenth-century posse of outlawed Catholic Highlanders; a sort of Robin Hood set in Scotland. The whole film was Hollywood-backed and, as Niall openly admitted, historically inaccurate schmaltz. Loosely based around the 1715 rebellion, it was a good excuse for lots of long-shots of beautiful Scottish glens, passionate love-affairs between hairy Scotsmen and fragile French babes, and dramatic sword-clashing battles. According to Niall, the American market – its taste whetted by Braveheart and Rob Roy – couldn’t get enough of romantic Scottish epics. He thought the Celt script stank, but he was being paid a lot of money to act in it, and cast and crew were undoubtedly excellent.

This was a world from which Tash felt totally alienated, however hard Niall had tried to persuade her of its prosaic banality. As ever, he had described this project in his pithy, sardonic one-liners, or rambled on about it for hours when he was frustrated and needed to use Tash as a vent. He always talked her through everything he did so that she didn’t feel excluded, tried to put faces to the countless unfamiliar names that popped up with every new project – people who became temporary friends and drinking partners, or enemies, or butts of jokes, and then faded away after the wrap party. Tash felt she had a pretty good thumb-nail sketch of those involved and the scale of the project. But close to and faced with the reality of a film in progress, she always felt hopelessly shy and estranged from his working life.

His wake-up note suggested that she roll up around midday, when the shooting of a long fight sequence was due to end and they would break to re-set the cameras for a closer shot. He told her to seek out the third assistant director, Mel, who would point her to the catering truck, Niall’s trailer, and some friendly faces. Tash quelled a childish desire to be pointed back to Berkshire.

The day’s shooting was taking place on a windswept stretch of Highland moor a few miles away. It was undoubtedly a breathtaking backdrop – a head-spinning mix of heather shag-pile, folding glens, barbed pine forests and distant, snow-tipped peaks jagging up into bleak, grey mist. All were being lashed by a hard, spitting rain that felt like schoolboys throwing pebbles. Half a mile to the left, a sheet-metal loch was being pitted and corrugated by the skin-stripping wind, and overhead the clouds were pressing down as though God was sitting on his suitcase, desperate to pack the contents down further. Savage and romantic, it was a spot guaranteed to get the Americans into their day-glo shorts and over the Atlantic in droves to buy novelty sporrans. Tash wondered if the film had been sponsored by the Scottish Tourist Board. It was the ultimate in product placement.

She, however, approached it from a less salubrious angle – behind the camera. Beside a tiny open lane, a muddy area had been cordoned off as the location’s base and was teeming with action as well as rain. At the base of a wooded hill, it was relatively sheltered from the wind, and groups of stressed-looking film types were clustered around sipping tea from steaming beakers, huddling beneath the hoods of their brightly coloured kagoules. Dozens of cars had squelched up the ground and were parked beside rows of pantechnicons, caravans and smaller transit vans. To one side was a logo-covered catering lorry with a make-shift tarpaulin cafeteria hitched up to the side of it.

Wheels spinning in the mud, Tash parked the design classic beside a remarkably clean Jaguar and headed towards the tented eatery, wishing she had ignored vanity and put on her wellies as her ankle boots sank so deeply into the wet mud that it seeped inside over the rims.

To her immense relief, Niall was already in there, sitting at a table around which were crammed a large number of assorted eighteenth-century Highlanders, some of whom were incongruously wearing Puffa jackets and waterproofs over their long, muddy plaids and sodden shirts.

He was laughing his head off as he munched his way through an enormous baguette. Bright-eyed and wild-haired, he looked utterly removed from the tortured, drunken soul of the night before.

Tash paused in the gloom of the tented entrance, breathing in the combined smell of cooking, cigarette smoke and damp canvas, a curiously reassuring mix which reminded her of the competitors’ tent at large horse trials where she would huddle with the Lime Tree team between phases, listening to the commentary, sipping milky tea and discussing all things equine as Gus nicked her fags.

Niall had polished off his baguette now and was helping himself to the large tag-end of one discarded by his neighbour. Tash caught her breath as she realised it was Minty Blyth, his corkscrew-haired co-star, huddled in a vast waterproof cape and sulkily smoking a Marlboro. Even dressed in scruffy Scottish garb, her glorious hair teased out like a furze bush, her face smudged with mud, she was exquisite – all curves and creamy skin.

As Tash watched her, she looked up, aware of the attention. Tash braved a smile, but Minty had already looked away, assuming she was some minor member of the crew or an extra fascinated by stardom. Turning back to Niall, she listened as he regaled the table with one of his raucous, exaggerated stories which rendered them all tearful with laughter as he hammed it up and acted out all the roles with grand gestures and big theatrical faces.

Tash moved forward, wishing that he would look up and welcome her to save her the embarrassment of general scrutiny as she crept up to tap him on the shoulder.

But he was far too absorbed in his storytelling to notice her. Minty did, however, watching Tash suspiciously from the corner of one big, dark eye, wary of the likelihood of a battered autograph book being thrust into their cosy clique.

As Tash approached the table, one of the assorted kilt-wearers said something that made the rest of them collapse in a delighted howl of riotous laughter. Tash tried not to feel a pang of worry as Niall’s head lolled on to Minty’s shoulder with familiar ease and he wiped away a tear of joy before stretching across her to extract a cigarette from her packet. Smiling a big, feline smile, Minty seemed totally at home with the gesture. There was something about the easy, tactile way that their bodies made contact which unzipped Tash’s chest with jealousy and she had mentally to slap herself down for being so suspicious.

Squelching up to Niall, she cleared her throat awkwardly.

‘Are we being called, darling?’ One of the kilts looked up at her, assuming her to be an assistant to a third assistant or similar.

‘Tash!’ Niall looked round and leaped up with delight, tipping Minty so acutely to the right that she nearly fell off the bench. ‘I thought you were never coming – great timing. We’re all waiting for the rain to clear. Come here.’

He enveloped her in a great bear hug and indulged her in a rather perfunctory kiss before spinning her round to face the table. He’d transferred mud on to her cheek with the kiss, and pushed her hair into her eyes so that she was winking like a pervert in order to see, but she managed a hearty smile.

‘Here – meet a great bunch of people. This is Tash.’ He clutched her proudly, and she derived a certain amount of bolstering satisfaction from the fact that Minty was looking exceedingly huffy.

Various muddy faces peered up at her in fascination. Tash tried not to squirm around uncomfortably as she felt like a small child being eyed up by a new batch of classmates. Her eyes were still full of hair and watering madly, and she had the disconcerting feeling that she was something of a disappointment to them.

‘Tash!’ One of the kilts got to his feet and stretched across the table to shake her hand. ‘You’re
the
Tash, are you? Delighted to meet you. I’m Brian.’

There followed a lot of names and pointers for Tash to remember people by – ‘He was in The Minister, remember?’ – ‘This is the one I told you about who fell off his horse twenty times on the first day’s shoot’ – ‘Played alongside Gere in that political thriller last year’ – ‘She turned down the latest Sharon Stone role’. Tash tried to follow them all, but after a couple of minutes she was completely lost. Some of the faces were extremely familiar, but the one she was drawn to again and again was Minty Blyth’s. Eyeing her through a cloud of hair and smoke, she seemed to take an instant dislike to Tash, and, with a sinking heart, Tash could guess why.

It often happened. In the secure, gang-like intimacy of a location shoot, actors who had to kiss and make eyes at one another daily on a film set were also eating together in the hotel at night, going through lines together afterwards in the bar, sharing a car ride together in the early hours of the morning, sitting in make-up together gossiping. Living in one another’s air pockets, it was inevitable that the love-affair on-set often carried on in extra-curricular time. Or, if not, the feeling between the actors was often so strong and visceral that it seemed to eclipse other long-standing relationships away from the shoot. Tash knew that Niall had an appalling habit of unintentionally encouraging his leading ladies to fall for him, with his friendly charm, patience, tactile warmth and occasional glimpses of a deeper, more brooding side that they ached to understand. His was a lethal, aphrodisiac mix of ingredients guaranteed to induce dizziness in all who fell under its spell. Tash should know, as she herself had fallen for it. And she had a shrewd idea that Minty had too.

‘So you’re the jockey?’ she asked, eyeing Tash’s thighs sceptically.

‘Eventer.’ Tash smiled back. ‘It’s a sort of equestrian triathlon.’

‘Oh.’ Minty clearly wasn’t interested enough to question her further.

‘I’ll get you some coffee, angel.’ Niall loped off, indicating for her to sit down in the tightly gathered group.

Squeezing into the space that he had vacated, Tash found herself pressed next to the smoky-eyed actress in an involuntarily close pairing. Minty leaned pointedly away and lit another of the endless stream of cigarettes that kept her voice so low and husky.

‘Is this your first visit on set?’ she asked rather condescendingly.

‘On this film, yes,’ Tash nodded, deciding that she had to try and make herself like Minty for Niall’s sake.

‘I’m afraid you’ll find it terribly dull.’ Minty fiddled irritably with her plastic cup. ‘Lots of hanging around and such.’

‘Oh, I don’t really mind that.’ Tash smiled as Niall made his way back to her, a great big grin tugging at his craggy face. ‘I’m here to see Niall, so the more hanging around the better. We can hang around together.’ She felt bubbles of warmth popping inside her as she looked at him.

‘You two not been together long, then?’ Minty watched Niall too as he paused at another table to have a chat with a harassed-looking costume lady who had noticed pickle stains on his shirt.

‘A couple of years.’

‘Re-a-lly?’ Minty’s arched brows shot up, and then she flashed a bewitching little smile. ‘Still keeping an eye on him then, huh? Very sensible – he’s a dreadful tart, isn’t he? I must check whether they’re going to keep us hanging on any longer. C.U.L.’

With a swirl of damp petticoat and plastic mac, she wandered out of the tent.

‘What’s C.U.L.?’ Tash asked one of the kilts.

‘Some crap she’s picked up in the States – stands for Catch Up Later or something.’

‘Oh,’ Tash said vaguely, still dwelling on the tart line. What had she meant?

‘Ignore her, she’s a complete bitch.’ The kilt winked kindly. ‘Cigarette?’

Tash took it gratefully, and relaxed as Niall settled in beside her and slung an easy arm around her shoulders as he pressed his face into her neck.

‘It’s great to see you, angel,’ he sighed.

‘You too.’ She breathed him in happily, but as he played with the zip on her jacket and smiled roguishly into her eyes, she was uneasily aware that he was in character; he was MacGinnen, the rampaging, womanising Celt with the heart of fire. The real Niall had been the one she had encountered the night before in his hotel room, and that had been an altogether darker character.

It was, as Niall pointed out delightedly, a typical wet day on location. For every two minutes of frantic action, there were twenty of toe-twiddling inertia.

‘And I’m being paid a fortune to drink tea and grope Tash!’ He howled with laughter. ‘Christ, but I love this job! It’s God’s own paradise this side of heaven, so it is.’

For the most part it rained, and Tash whiled away the time sitting in the tent with the others, swapping gossip, playing cards, reading the papers and drinking endless cups of tea. Niall was smoking in public again, she realised, as he worked his way through an entire packet of Marlboro in just three hours.

Despite this, he was on rip-roaring form, and gloriously attentive. When there appeared to be no immediate prospect of the next scene on the schedule being shot in the downpour, he whisked her off to his trailer for a bit of privacy.