by Mark Watson
‘It’s here,’ said Tim, seizing a chance to be useful. ‘I’ve got the script—’
‘Just tell him,’ Elaine cut in. ‘Tell him and he’ll give it to you.’
Tim had slogged for days over this small amount of writing; he found he was able to recite it without difficulty. ‘What if I told you an unbelievable fact: by 2016, 99 per cent of the world’s wealth will be owned by 1 per cent of us. But when you see something with your own eyes, you have to believe the unbelievable.’
‘All right, Rain Man,’ said Raf.
‘OK,’ said Bradley, ‘let’s go with that.’
‘If I can just jump in,’ said the continuity advisor, who was a small ponytailed lady, so quiet until now that Tim had forgotten she was there. ‘I wonder if “unbelievable fact” might actually make people think it’s literally not true.’
Tim felt called upon to defend not so much his work as the company’s aims. ‘Well, the thing is, the whole concept here is “believe the unbelievable”. We’re deliberately flagging up how unbelievable it is.’
‘I see that,’ said the ponytailed lady. ‘I just wonder about softening that message.’
‘I don’t think there’s much point in the message,’ Tim said, ‘if we soften it. The point is how obscene the poverty is. Surely.’
Tim’s point won the day, but more time had been swallowed up. It was two minutes to one by the time Jason had been briefed. Again Bradley ran them through speed-camera-action. Jason walked into the shot. Tim felt a clutch of excitement, in spite – or because – of all the hassle.
‘What if I told you—’ Jason began, gesturing chummily at the camera.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said the sound man, motioning over his shoulder. The noise of drilling was blaring from the construction site. The sound man slipped off his headphones. Miles straightened up from his camera, hands on hips; Bradley clutched his forehead.
‘OK. Everyone back to first positions.’
‘And that’s lunch,’ Ruth said, looking at her watch.
This announcement animated the team as nothing had so far today. The crew members left their posts at once, as if they were elves who had been working under some spell from which they were now released. Elaine the agent ushered Jason Streng away before anyone could speak to him. Raf and Bradley, locked in conversation, went immediately to the front of the line. The rest of the crew formed a hierarchy which Tim hoped he was imagining, the photographer and continuity advisor and Fixer all ghosting in front of local crew members as though they were not there. Tim caught up with Ruth.
‘Do you want to sit down? I’ll get you something.’
Ruth seemed amused. ‘I’m not the charity case here.’
‘No, no.’ Tim took off his glasses. ‘I’m just . . .’
‘This is what I’m used to,’ said Ruth, ‘it’s the job. But it is damn hot. I’m sweating like, what do you call it?’
‘Er . . . like a . . . pig?’
‘Sweating like a bitch.’ Ruth dried her hands on her top. ‘I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the phrase I want. Ah, shit.’
As she bent to collect a tray, she had dropped her big, impractical bag, and the floor of the catering truck swam with her possessions: coins and receipts, a lip-salve, a disposable camera, a chunky historical novel, a faded photo of a boy of about eleven. Tim got down to help, in the process losing his glasses, which slid off his face. The two of them scooped up their things, shuffling out of the way of the queue as it bustled past. Ruth smiled in acknowledgement.
‘You’re a good man.’
‘Is it always this chaotic?’ asked Tim.
‘That thing with the kid was horrible.’ She paused. ‘I mean, it was exceptional. But everything is exceptional in some ways, because the thing with this shoot is that there’s a problem with—’
They sucked in the conversation as Raf approached, wearing his characteristic expression of contempt and impatience. ‘Ruthie.’
‘It’s Ruth, thanks.’
‘Ruth. I do apologize. Can I just ask why the fuck we have a location where they’re going to interrupt us every ten minutes with construction work?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Ruth spread her arms in penitence. ‘I was led to believe this was the old town, not the middle of the city.’
Raf shook his head and went away. Tim tried to think of something to say to Ruth, but she had already left in the opposite direction. He collected a tray of food and sat down on a table next to a man who introduced himself as Ian. He was of similar build to Jason Streng, and had the same skin-tone, but was less good-looking: Tim realized that this was the body double.
‘Looking forward to it?’ asked Tim, not sure what to say.
‘Totally,’ said Ian. ‘Nice gig to get. Been out here before?’
‘I haven’t, actually,’ said Tim.
‘Came out a couple of years ago,’ said the double. ‘Stayed with friends, they work for Deutsche Bank here, you know? They have this thing called bubble parties, on a Friday. Friday is the holy day here or whatever. So all the Brits and the Aussies and that, they get together and go from hotel to hotel, having these brunches. But brunches is basically a code word for just getting rat-arsed.’
‘Sounds great,’ said Tim.
‘And you should see Christmas, mate, seriously. Everyone gets together and starts at nine in the morning and just gets completely shit-faced.’
‘Fun!’ said Tim.
‘And New Year. Honestly, mate. Everyone gets, and I’m not exaggerating here—’
Tim wedged a new question into the smallest of gaps. ‘So have you done . . . have you done this sort of thing before?’
‘Naked stuff? Speciality, mate. Done scenes in Hollyoaks, done a couple of ads, all nude. So gradually, what you want is to become someone who’s seen as being able to do stuff with clothes on. Cross that border into clothed gigs.
‘I used to be a personal trainer,’ he added. ‘Still do a bit of it, if you ever need.’
Ian reached into his trouser pocket for a business card – something that would not be possible, Tim supposed, when he was actually working. Tim was relieved when Ruth came to say that lunch was over.
Almost as soon as the afternoon’s work began, Raf became anxious about the time all over again, and he expressed that anxiety by snapping at anybody nearby. As Miles and Bradley began their pageant of setting and re-setting cameras, muttering to one another and glancing up at the sun whose very existence they seemingly took exception to, Raf made an ever greater show of checking his watch and sighing. He reminded Tim of a teenager forced to stay at a tiresome family event.
‘We’re not just standing here with our dicks out,’ Miles explained, with the placid air of someone who had spent years disregarding requests to go faster. ‘We don’t get this right, it’s going to look silly.’
They only had the location until four o’clock, apparently, and it was already two. The Fixer and Ruth went off to negotiate an extension to the time, though in the former’s opinion this was ‘as likely as snow falling’. He said it with one of his grins, which did little to improve Raf’s mood. Tim wondered why, if time was so pressing, they hadn’t begun earlier in the day, and why a whole hour had been deemed necessary for lunch when it was served right there on the set. He tried to make himself useful by taking on the menial tasks that would have been Ruth’s. He fetched water for crew members and took a taxi receipt from an extra, to pass on to Ruth when she returned. Eventually, as Jason emerged from his trailer, the agent close at hand, Tim was given the job of holding a parasol over the star. It was the closest he had been to Streng, if you didn’t count the time spent as an accidental intruder in his bathroom. As they walked towards the set, it felt a little like being one of the people who carried the Pope’s sedan chair. Tim stared down at the ground, trying to observe the dictum that nobody could talk directly to Jason, but to his surprise Jason broke the silence.
‘You one of the runners, mate?’
‘No. I’m t
he – I’m the creative on this ad. Tim Callaghan.’
‘Good to meet you.’ Jason Streng reached out to shake his hand. The agent glanced at Tim for a second as if to appraise his suitability for this honour.
‘There aren’t any runners,’ she said, wryly, ‘because of everything we talked about.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jason Streng, and fell into a pensive silence. Tim wanted to know what this meant, and the question made him think again of the conversation he’d overheard. But there was no time for riddles just at the moment: the shot was finally ready. Elaine, the agent, reminded Jason of the line he needed to say; the make-up lady fiddled briefly and ineffectually with his face; the continuity expert made some remarks about ‘integrity’ which, meaning nothing at all, were quickly forgotten.
‘Speed, camera. And action,’ called Bradley.
‘So,’ Jason began, snapping from apathy into a kind of camera-intimacy Tim admired. ‘What if I told you an unbelievable fact: by 2016—’
‘Wait, wait,’ shouted Miles. ‘Ah, too late. Someone in shot.’
It was Ruth, trudging back from her assignment. Her T-shirt was damp with sweat, and her body language suggested someone who had been standing up for several days rather than hours. As Miles called out, she looked up and realized she had wandered into the camera’s view, but it was too late: they would have to start again.
‘Sorry.’
‘Jesus Christ, Ruth.’ Raf put his hands on his hips. He appeared to be chewing gum. ‘Did you at least get us some more time?’
‘It’s not possible,’ said Ruth.
‘Another fine mess,’ murmured Miles, with as little sense of grievance as ever.
‘The Fixer’s still there, negotiating; he’s offered them, erm, what do you call it, what do you call them?’
‘Bribes?’ Tim suggested helpfully.
‘U2,’ said Ruth. ‘He’s offered box tickets to U2. But it’s still ongoing.’
‘Oh, I like U2,’ said the sound man. ‘I mean, not so much the newer stuff, but . . .’
‘Joshua Tree,’ agreed Miles. ‘Classic. Cast-iron classic. I saw them—’
‘Fucking hell,’ Raf burst out. ‘We’ve got two hours here. We’ve got virtually nothing in the bag because nobody seems to be able to do their fucking job. Now I’ve got crew members walking into shot. I mean, is it amateur hour?’
‘We’re not just pissing about,’ said Miles, still calm. ‘We don’t get these angles right, we’re not going to get anywhere.’
‘We’re not getting anywhere as it is,’ said Raf.
‘I am making a commercial here!’
This was almost a scream, and it had come from the previously taciturn Bradley. The sound of his raised voice sent an immediate hush around the set; they could hear the faint cry of another muezzin, and the thrumming of the construction vehicles.
‘This is not a high-school project!’ Bradley continued, taking off his baseball cap; sweat glistened on his bare forehead. ‘This is millions of dollars! I am going to get every shot right if we are here till Thanksgiving!’
‘I don’t know when Thanksgiving is,’ Raf began, ‘but—’
‘Maybe you should look it up, buddy!’ Bradley cried, and although this made little sense as a comeback, the director began to walk away as if he had conclusively won the argument. The whole crew watched as Bradley left the set, heading for the WorldWise trailer. His stride was so small, and the gesture so melodramatic, that he seemed certain to turn and come back with every step until the trailer door slammed behind him.
‘That’s a genuine tantrum,’ said Ruth; she pronounced the last syllable of the adjective like ‘wine’.
‘Well, now I’ve seen fucking everything,’ said Raf.
There was virtual silence; the continuous hum of activity around the fringes of the set had been stilled. Local crew members bowed their heads, as if frightened to be caught watching this scene. Miles and the sound man looked at one another in bafflement. Tim could see that nobody knew what to do.
‘I’ll go after him,’ he heard himself say.
It was only as he reached the trailer that he wondered why exactly he’d volunteered for this, but it wasn’t the first time. He had always been a peacemaker. He’d once resolved a dispute over a taxi between a drunk Rod and a total stranger, which would otherwise have led to a fist-fight. People sometimes saw it as a kind of saintliness, not grasping that Tim’s loathing of arguments was so ingrained that his motive in cutting them off was largely self-preservation.
Bradley could be doing anything, Tim thought as he walked in: could be ready to harm somebody, could be headbutting the wall. But in fact the director was sitting completely still in a chair, his little notebook held in trembling hands. He looked at Tim with what seemed like gratitude.
‘Are you OK?’
There was a pause.
‘All I need,’ said Bradley, ‘is the space to work. I am not a guy who asks for a lot on set. I need people to be patient. That’s all.’
‘I think it’s just that everyone is under strain,’ said Tim.
‘Well, sure, because . . .’ said Bradley, and then his voice seemed to shake a little. ‘I am just trying to make a commercial here.’
‘I know,’ said Tim, touching Bradley lightly on the shoulder. This seemed to galvanize Bradley; he rose from his seat. ‘It’s just all a bit frantic,’ Tim added, sounding very English to his own ears. ‘And, you know, the heat.’
‘Sure,’ said Bradley. ‘I appreciate you coming out here,’ he went on, as though Tim had made a long journey to speak to him. ‘OK. We can do this. We can do this. I’ll be back in a moment.’
Tim wondered, as he walked back to the set, whether Bradley’s flash of emotion – so extreme, and so quickly dispersed – could possibly be about the argument alone, or whether there was something he was not being told here. He had an increasing awareness of comments not quite made, sentences left to tail off; something unspoken, anyhow. But for now, he had done well. He sensed the relief of the group as he conveyed the news that Bradley would soon be back. And as the filming recommenced, with a sense of purpose that suggested at least a semi-reconciliation between the combatants, Tim could feel people looking at him with a certain admiration which he had to admit he enjoyed.
The traffic was heavy on the way back to the Village, and Tim pressed his face close to the window to admire the jagged cityscape that hemmed them in. The sky was still an unbroken blue and the heat was still in the air, pressing on the car like a giant pair of hands; inside, though, the air-conditioning made it too cold if anything, and Ruth – who had looked ready to burst into flames earlier – now wrapped a cardigan around her shoulders.
Work had proceeded well for the final couple of hours, and at the wrap there were tentative handshakes between the main players. But although there was no urgency about their return to the resort, the car’s laborious progress quickly sent Raf into another of his scathing moods.
‘This city’s fucked up,’ he said, to nobody in particular.
‘I’m sorry it is continuing to fall short of your standards,’ said the Fixer, for the first time introducing a gentle mordancy into his voice.
‘You know what I read? The residential areas, they don’t have proper street names, people’s addresses are just things like D23 or whatever. So if you try and find someone’s house, you can’t. There was a kid choked to death last year, just choked on a piece of food. The ambulance literally couldn’t find his house and the parents were there going “left . . . right at the end . . . what number are you on now?” for twenty minutes. Asking him for landmarks he could see, and there weren’t any. And by the time they got there it was too late. I swear to God, I pissed myself; it should be in a sitcom or something.’
‘They have updated the system since then,’ said the Fixer quietly.
Raf began to sing ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. Tim felt Ruth tense a little next to him.
‘You didn’t seem like a fan of U
2 earlier,’ said Tim. He was trying to reproach Raf for the tastelessness of the joke in a light-hearted way, but Raf turned in the front seat and looked at him.
‘Know what I saw earlier? I saw you going into Jason Streng’s trailer. What the fuck?’
Tim swallowed. ‘Yes, I—’
‘Has it not been made clear that we don’t do that?’
‘I was trying to find a toilet.’
‘Well, maybe next time ask a grown-up for help,’ said Raf.
Tim felt his cheeks smart. The car was quiet. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Tim wasn’t even technically working under Raf, as the crew members were. He was here as the creator of the project; his status ought to be equal to Raf’s at least. He glanced around the car, receiving a grimace of sympathy from Ruth, but nobody else caught his eye. Bradley was staring down at his notebook. Miles was toying with his hair, trying to restore life to his wilted quiff. The Fixer’s eyes were out of the window, focused on the hectic road rushing by and the minarets and advertising hoardings, the dry expanses of earth where workmen and machines teemed; his thoughts could have been anywhere.
6: NOBODY
Christian Roper tapped a glass so energetically that Tim feared it might break. Then he went back to marvelling, through a mounting fuzz of drunkenness, that all these near-strangers were in his room. But – perhaps because of the length of the day, or the general intensity of all his impressions so far – nobody felt like a stranger. It was already hard to believe he hadn’t known these people a week ago.
‘To all of you who’ve worked your arses off today. Rest assured all the blood, sweat and tears have been worth it.’
When they got to the Village, the team had joined the Ropers at another beachside restaurant, where a private area was cordoned off for them. Tim had worried that Jo might act with hostility towards him, while semi-consciously allowing himself the hope that something of last night’s spark might remain. In the event, neither had occurred: Jo had given him a polite smile before returning to her conversation. Then, when dinner was over, she’d wandered off to smoke with Raf; Tim could see them on the beach, under the gaze of the Burj Al Arab, which was lit in gradated shades of red so it looked like a paint chart. There was an ease, and a complicity about them which gave rise to an envy in Tim he felt foolish acknowledging.