What They Do in the Dark (11 page)

‘So …’ Snapping herself to attention, Quentin could see that Mike was itching to get back to work, to tweak some lights and confer with that silvery-haired cinematographer of his and then shout ‘Action’, presuming that was the word they used over here.

‘Is Hugh busy?’ she prompted. Mike looked shifty. There was absolutely no way he’d know about her and Danny Larson, right?

‘He is, I’m afraid – meant to say – got a batch of rushes up from the processors which are looking a bit wonky.’

‘Wonky.’

Quentin could see he thought she was challenging him, when she was just unfamiliar with the word.

‘Nothing serious. Just a slight colour problem – he’s sorting it out now.’

‘So maybe there’s someone who could take me to him …’

Mike hesitated. Right there, Quentin had had enough. With the journey and the lack of sleep, and maybe the craving for chemical alteration, she felt as though she’d already slipped into watching what they called rushes and she knew as dailies; repetitive, discontinuous interludes which needed an editor’s hand to splice them into the illusion of action with consequences that lead to another action. And so on, building to a climax. Instead of which she had the view of the shrunken English freeway, Len’s gnomic expressions of anti-American preju dice, the school, all spooling off into pointlessness like the black frames that ended a reel of film. Nothing.
Nada
.

‘Anything I can do, Mike?’

Gratefully, Quentin felt the arrival of organizing energy. It emanated from a small, wiry woman around her own age with bright eyes and too much make-up.

‘Oh, Katrina …’

She couldn’t readily place the woman in the crew, but Mike didn’t like her, that was for sure. Quentin offered her hand, just to yank his chain.

‘Quentin Montpellier.’

‘Ooh, American—’

‘That’s right!’

‘From the studio,’ Mike muttered grudgingly. Katrina’s eyes widened.
See, asshole
, Quentin mentally addressed Mike.
She can see it. Power
.

‘And you are …’

‘Katrina. Lallie’s mummy.’

Ah. Lallie’s ambitious mommy. So Mike was pissed with her for muscling in, and who could blame him?

‘She’d love to meet you, hasn’t stopped talking about it – she’s mad about America, terrible—’

‘Well, I’d love to meet her too,’ Quentin reassured her, professionally. ‘Maybe Katrina could take me to see Hugh, Mike?’ she suggested. ‘I wouldn’t want to hold things up.’

And so she was borne off by Katrina, who enlisted Len to transport them to the hotel where Hugh was staying. This was presentable enough by Polish standards. Despite everyone in the cast and crew who wasn’t local being billeted there, they still had rooms for Quentin and Len, and Len was even galvanized by this happy outcome into dealing with the luggage without being asked. Katrina, calling the receptionist by name (no one wore name badges, Quentin noted, although they did have odd militaristic burgundy uniforms), eased their passage. She had talked a lot in the car, and Quentin was struggling to understand her, not just because of the accent, but also because Katrina seemed to assume a lot of prior knowledge on Quentin’s part, particularly of Lallie.

‘… course, we’ve been keeping our heads down with Mike,
but he’s got a lot on his plate, hasn’t he? I wouldn’t like it, everyone “Mike Mike Mike” all the time, poor man doesn’t get a minute, but Hugh’s lovely – Uncle Hugh, Lallie calls him, which is funny because she’s got a real Uncle Hugh back home – a friend of Graham’s nan’s actually, I mean, not a proper uncle as such, but she calls him Uncle Hugh, and he’s nothing like this Hugh, but she says to me, “I’ve got two Uncle Hughs now, mam” …’

Katrina had unselfconsciously followed Quentin into her cramped room. It was really dusty, although since most of the people she’d seen since she arrived also appeared dusty, she was beginning to think this was a British thing. The receptionist had mentioned a shower, but Quentin, remembering her previous European trip, held no illusions about its prospects. This didn’t prevent her using it as her excuse to hustle Katrina out without causing offence.

‘Twelve hours on the plane … need to freshen up …’

Katrina obligingly made for the door. ‘Just give me a knock when you’re ready. Two two five. Then I’ll run you along to Hugh.’

‘That’s OK, Katrina – I’m sure I can find him myself.’

Quentin caught the fall of the woman’s face as she pulled the door after her. Thwarted ambition? Being the mother of a kid actor was all about that. Get close to the rep from the studio. Or was she hoping to buddy up with Quentin so that she could bitch some more about Mike? The garrison mentality of location shoots guaranteed relationships were as overcharged as they were overdiscussed. Or maybe, Quentin realized, the woman was just plain lonely. She was a mom. She spent her day hanging around a place where everyone else was incredibly busy and focused. That was it; the poor bitch probably just needed a friend. With that thought she felt guilty. And the guilt led to the other thoughts about what she might procure to bring about a more insulated state of mind. She took herself to the shower.

The unit uncertainly grouted to the tiling above the bath
waited a couple of seconds before drooling lukewarm water from its rectangular head, tickling unsatisfactory pathways over parts of Quentin’s skin. Even so, when she got out, she had to admit she felt better.

Without swabbing herself with the thin hotel towel, Quentin lay on the bed. She goose-pimpled and cooled, bobbing in and out of consciousness the way, as a kid, she used to tread along the shallow end of their pool with her head almost submerged, alternating between the heat and chatter above the water and the soundless, cool isolation of the world beneath. At some point she must have drifted under completely because suddenly she jolted back into the room. A man was staring at her. She yelled. Instinctive pervert-response.

‘Good God – I’m so sorry.’

He erased himself with the closing door, and it wasn’t until she met him down in the lobby, twenty minutes later, that Quentin was entirely convinced that he didn’t belong to her dream.

‘Well, it’s one way to break the ice,’ said Hugh.

Urbane. Quentin had never before met a man to whom this word truly applied. Although appropriately and convincingly apologetic about their encounter (Katrina had told him where to find her, he’d knocked and, getting no answer, tried the door), he was also utterly unembarrassed. Not even a token peek down her cleavage, either, although let’s face it the sight of her from soup to nuts should have been recent enough.

‘Maybe some sort of producer’s prerogative?
Droit de seigneur
? Could try to convince you it was some quaint custom we have …’

Already, Quentin could tell that Hugh was the real deal. If she could have popped, snorted or smoked him, he could hardly have permeated her so instantly and so blissfully.
He’s the man. He’s in charge. He can handle it all
. He led her through the dingy hotel corridors like an astringent washcloth cutting through years of accumulated grime; she felt cleansed in his wake. Everything
about him looked extraordinarily alert, even his skin. Although it was poreless and fresh, perfect, in fact, the perfection it emanated was the accomplishment of maturity rather than any residue of childishness. Still, it made him look wholesome, despite the urbanity, incorrupt. He was of that indeterminate middle age that turned women invisible but made men look as though they were wearing a good suit. Which, in fact, he was. She didn’t want to fuck him, exactly. She sort of wanted to swim in him.

‘Sorry about the hike – but the lift’s due to be condemned,’ he told her as they took a flight of stairs at a light run, weightless in his case. ‘Except of course no one will bother to do it until there’s actually a disaster of some kind.’ He dipped back towards her, making some gesture. ‘So glad.’

Probably gay, she realized with pang. Although it was harder to tell with English guys. Already she was worrying about how she’d feel when they parted. She’d come down, she knew. She wanted to live in Hughland. For ever. She was even in love with his watch, an assertive Rolex which suggested that time would be kept, really kept, accurately and reliably.
He’s chosen that. That’s the kind of man he is. Jesus, Quentin, get a grip
.

They were on their way to watch dailies, as per the schedule, because this was her job. One of the larger rooms – the hotel didn’t run to a suite, as Hugh explained – had been cleared of its bed to make a viewing room. There was a projector on a chest of drawers and a decent-sized screen at the far end of the room, slightly askew on its tripod. The curtains were drawn. Another man, youngish, with a corpse pallor suggestive of the hours he spent in these shaded rooms, was threading film into the projector as they arrived. Hugh introduced him as Bri. He nodded, paying no attention to Quentin. She totally knew the type. Nothing personal, because a guy like him just didn’t do personal.

‘Do …’

Having tweaked the screen straight, Hugh waved to one of the
armchairs placed in front of it, economically adapting the end of his gesture into an indication for Bri that he should start up the film. They both sat. The dry-leaf skittering of the reel feeding through the sprockets began, calming to an automatic whirr as the countdown flashed up on the screen, the numbers huge in the middle of their target-shaped cipher. 4, 3, 2, 1. There was no sound, of course. Hugh jabbed a cigarette into his mouth and lit up, first proffering Quentin the packet, which she declined. His chair was at a slight angle to hers, so that the definite edge of his profile teased her line of vision to the left. He inhaled as though the smoke was essential to the continuation of breathing.

‘Sorted out some of the earlier stuff for you to see …’

The screen flashed an apocalyptic white, then it began. A clapperboard, mutely snapping. This dipped from view, revealing muddled activity which dissipated into a suddenly empty frame. Now there was just an expanse of parched dun grass, surmounted by a flat grey stripe of sky. The shot held, second upon second, waiting in thick light like the view through a dirty window. A smudge appeared on the line of the horizon.

‘
Lawrence of Arabia
,’ remarked Quentin.

‘I think we’re calling it an
hommage
,’ Hugh told her.

The smudge grew, and resolved itself into the figure of a child. The kid. Lallie. Our heroine. She came erratically closer, running, then walking. Her distress was immediately readable, as was the fact that she was a child unwilling to accommodate her distress.

‘Titles here. Plenty of room.’ Hugh gestured to the space to the right of the approaching figure.

‘What about the fight with the mother?’

Hugh shot her an appreciative grin.
See, Hugh, I’m on the ball, Hugh
.

‘Pre-title. Haven’t got it yet, of course. Means we can just jump straight in.’

The little girl had almost reached the camera. Her hair snaked
unkempt around her face, her clothes were slightly too small for her. Not, it was clear, a kid to whom anyone paid much care or attention. She palmed furious tears from her face, then swerved off to the left and disappeared behind the silhouette of Hugh’s profile. A second, then the girl’s face poked back into view, confronting the camera. Now she was grinning, although her cheeks were still streaked with tears. Lallie’s lips clearly formed the shape of ‘OK?’, before she was nuked by the flash of light at the end of the shot.

‘That was OK,’ said Quentin. There it was; a whole new world, right there. She watched two more takes, one marred by a lurch of the camera as it pursued Lallie across the barren grass.

‘It looks good,’ she told Hugh. It was the truth. And she felt good. It was fine, she could do this job. The movie was going to be more than fine, maybe. Her name on the credits. She basked in the moment as Bri threaded the next reel of film and Hugh leaned to stub out his thoroughly smoked cigarette in a crowded ashtray.

‘It’s going to be great,’ she told him.

Hugh arched into his seat and palmed back his lively brown hair. ‘I do hope so.’

‘But I guess every film’s a masterpiece in the dailies,’ she added, because it was something her dad used to tell her, along with ‘There are no rights or wrongs in this business, baby, only opinions’, and ‘Never put an actress in silk after thirty’. She didn’t believe it or anything. At this moment, noting the pristine band of shirt cuff which divided the flesh of Hugh’s hand from the pressed linen of his jacket, at this exact moment, she felt as though she’d flushed that paternal brand of cynicism away at LA airport, along with the Ludes and Valium. Yay for her.

I
T HAD HAPPENED
, finally, and like stifling heat breaking into a storm, the catastrophe brought a kind of relief. Pauline walked back into the house one afternoon while it was still her mam’s morning. She could see Joanne had just got up: although she was dressed as much as she ever got dressed in the day, her breath smelled, and her hair was matted with stale hairspray. This was a usual sight, as was the avidity with which Joanne sucked down the smoke from her fag. At least three mugs of tea and at least three fags to go with them – that was the minimum Joanne required to transform into something human. Shooting a look at her, Pauline deduced she was on her opener, and so to be avoided.