Stars Don't Cry (The Silver Bridle Book 2)

by Caroline Akrill

  “Will I get paid?” I asked.

  Anthony pushed away his empty plate. He tried not to smile.

  “Paid?” Angel looked pained.

  “Now look here,” I said heatedly, “I know what the rates are and I also know what you are charging Mr Goldstein because I heard you making the arrangements on the telephone. If I have to go tomorrow, I’m not giving my services for nothing!”

  “Calm down, Grace Darling,” Anthony said. “You’ll get paid.”

  “Less our agency discount of course,” Angel added swiftly. “After all, you wouldn’t be doing the work if it wasn’t for us.”

  “I wouldn’t be doing it at all if I had a choice!” I glared at them both. They grinned back at me. It was infuriating to see them looking so pleased with themselves.

  “Eat your supper like a good girl, Grace Darling,” Anthony advised. “We shall miss breakfast in the morning because we have to be on the road by five.”

  “Five!”

  “Too early for you?” He patted the top of my head as he got up from the table. “My word, you do have a lot to learn about the film business.”

  I was still burning with outrage later that evening as I knelt by the little window in the Room of the Costumes, my face cooled by the soft, dew-laden evening air, drenched with the scent of an old honeysuckle clinging precariously to what was left of the plaster. After supper I had helped Angel with what she euphemistically called ‘evening stables’, which involved checking every stable, skipping out any droppings, forking over the straw, topping up the water buckets, checking the horses’ rugs, and distributing hay nets. I had not disliked these rather domesticated duties, and had found pleasure in the comfortable atmosphere of a stable yard in the evening; the warm, relaxing presence of the horses; the sounds they made; the appreciative nicker at the appearance of a hay net; the scrape of a hoof; the gentle snortings and dribblings in the water buckets. But when Angel had suggested we might look out the harness for the following day and hinted that it might not be clean: “If I found you a sponge, I don’t suppose you could…” I had drawn the line and stamped back to the farmhouse to bed. Now, of course, I felt rather guilty, and yet I told myself there was no earthly reason why I should. I had done more than my share.

  One of the massive front doors banged and Anthony appeared below, walking swiftly towards the woods across the overgrown garden. He was carrying a bottle. I drew back from the window in case he should look up and catch sight of me. In case he should imagine I was spying on him. Where was he going? Was he a secret drinker? Was there a woman waiting for him somewhere in the woods, or in one of the village cottages beyond? Not that I cared. Not that I was even interested.

  Yet it had been Anthony who had insisted on buying the new divan bed. He had wanted me to be miserable in comfort.

  Lying under the buttercup yellow duvet, pondering the oddities of fate that had delivered me into his hands like a lamb to the slaughter, that had sent me to bed supperless – I had not been able to stomach the coq au vin and had only managed to dissuade Angel from saving it in the refrigerator by invoking the shade of the streptococci casserole – and that now promised to make me a black widow at five o’clock in the morning, I fell into a troubled sleep.

  “…I can’t get away

  To marry you today,

  My wife

  Won’t let me.”

  Anthony appeared to find the situation amusing in a tight-lipped sort of way, but the black horse with the purple plume showed his impatience by digging a hole in the gravel with a front hoof. The activity caused the hearse to tremble violently. Anthony stopped singing and flicked the horse’s rump with the end of the reins. The black horse stopped digging and began to throw its head up and down instead, making loud snorting noises. The sun had clouded over. Large drops of rain began to fall.

  We had been up by four o’clock to be on the road by five and had reached Pinewood by eleven. On our arrival at the studios we had been redirected to an isolated little church somewhere north of Slough. When we had driven up the rough approach lane we had been met by the Assistant to the Assistant Director; a thin, bearded, anxious-looking individual who had started to berate Anthony for being a few minutes late almost before he was out of the cab. Anthony had retaliated by pointing out that had he been sent a shooting schedule as was the usual procedure, instead of being called out at the last minute by telephone, he could have driven straight to the location instead of being redirected from Pinewood, so the subsequent delay was not his fault.

  The heated exchange which followed was almost terminated when Anthony, in the most uncompromising of terms, invited the Assistant to the Assistant Director to procure his hearse from some other party, climbed back into the cab, restarted the engine, and slammed the door in a fine temper, almost detaching several of the AAD’s long, tapering fingers which he only managed to snatch away in the nick of time.

  After this unpromising start, we were conducted to the make-up caravan with hostility and unseemly haste, but when we had been prepared and costumed to everyone’s satisfaction, and had the black horse polished and plumed, harnessed and hitched to the hearse, nobody seemed to want us. The Assistant to the Assistant Director immediately lost interest and vanished amongst the gravestones leaving us abandoned at the lychgate, and now, some two hours later, it had begun to rain.

  Perched uncomfortably on the tail end of the hearse in my widow’s weeds, I sat under a hideous green umbrella decorated with shocking pink daisies, and waited for Angel to return with coffee from a converted bus parked some way down the approach lane which was dispensing food and drink to the actors and film crew. If my face was pale under the spotted veil it was not only because I had been to make-up, but also because I felt decidedly weak and empty. I had not eaten for twenty-four hours.

  All around the ancient little church there was activity of a sort; various members of the thirty-strong film crew, linked to what was happening inside by walkie-talkies, sheltered under the creaking cypress trees; actors in Victorian dress awaited their cues under the green and pink umbrellas handed out by props, some of the women wearing floor-length plastic costume protectors; two video cameras set up on tripods stood swathed in polythene; and cables from the Outside Broadcast Video Unit parked out of sight behind some laurel bushes, snaked across the grass, over and around the weathered tombstones.

  The black horse did not like the rain. He fidgeted about, shaking his rain-beaded plume, scattering droplets, and finally shook his whole body in a convulsion which rocked the plywood coffins and precipitated a sheaf of wax lilies into my bombazine lap.

  Anthony, wickedly handsome in make-up, having spurned the umbrella offered by props and donned a riding mackintosh and trilby hat, jumped down from the front of the hearse and grimaced up at the sky. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled to attract the attention of the nearest technician. A gestured exchange appeared to indicate that nobody had any idea how long they would take to complete the interior shots, and that nothing could be done outdoors anyway until the rain stopped. Resignedly, he began to unhitch the black horse.

  “Come on, Mary Poppins,” he said in a humourless voice, “let’s get the covers on before everything gets soaked.”

  “So much for the glamour of filming,” I said irritably as I helped tug a tarpaulin over the hearse. “So much for watching the top directors at work, and meeting the actors.”

  Anthony yanked down his side of the canvas and strapped it to the wheel hubs. He did not reply.

  “You knew it would be like this,” I said. “You expected it.”

  Anthony straightened. He gave me one of his customary thin smiles.

  “Of course he knew.” Angel appeared at my side, balancing a tin tray on which were three steaming polystyrene containers and a stack of buttered toast. Costumed in narrow black trousers and a sombre frock coat, with her hair scraped up and secured on the top of her head, she had been transformed by make-up into a sunken-cheeked, hollow-eyed boy.
“We once worked on a film for thirteen consecutive days before we even saw a camera,” she informed me.

  “If we don’t see a camera today,” I retorted, “I won’t be seeing one at all on this film because you won’t persuade me to come back again.” Never had instant coffee smelled so inviting. I pushed back the spotted veil and took a piece of toast from the stack.

  “Any actress worth her salt would be prepared to endure a little inconvenience for the sake of her profession,” Anthony said in an acid tone.

  “Being hired out against one’s will as a piece of human scenery is not my idea of a profession,” I snapped. I took a second piece of toast as an insurance policy. I was not sure when I would see a proper meal. Even the horses were better fed. The black horse had been given a corn feed prior to leaving Moat Farm, he had chewed a hay net during the journey, and now he was comfortably ensconced in the horse box eating another corn feed. When I had complained of hunger, Angel had looked aggrieved. “You were offered food last night,” she had reminded me. “It wasn’t our fault you chose to leave it. You can’t blame us.”

  Now she led the way into the part of the horse box vacated by the hearse. We sat on straw bales which had immobilized the wheels during the journey. No sooner had we arranged ourselves than the crunching of heavy wheels upon gravel heralded the arrival of another vehicle, another horse box.

  Anthony swore.

  “It’s Hender Copper,” Angel said in a low voice. She sounded rather pleased.

  Hender Copper was not at all how I had visualized The Enemy. He was short and thickset with ginger hair standing up in a crest and a freckled, rather jolly face. As soon as he had clambered out of the cab, the Assistant to the Assistant Director appeared at his side as if by magic.

  “My God, you took your time!” he shouted. “Noon, I told you! Do you know what noon means? Have you any idea how long we’ve been waiting? Do you know what time it is now?” He thrust his over-sized wristwatch under Hender Copper’s nose. “It’s one o’clock, that’s what bloody time it is!”

  “I know what time it is,” Hender Copper protested. “I’ve been sitting in a traffic jam for an hour. You’ve no idea what it’s like in Slough at this time of day – all those traffic lights, all at red…”

  “I don’t want to listen to any excuses! I want you ready in five minutes, Mister Copper. You do know how much time you’ve got? You know what five minutes means?” In case there was any doubt, the AAD pointed it out in an exaggerated manner on the face of his watch. “You’ve got from there to there, Mister Copper, so you better get a bloody move on!” He now half-turned and spotted us sitting on the straw bales. “Well now, this is charming, isn’t it,” he said in a caustic tone. “Everybody waiting at the church, and here you are having a nice little tea party…”

  “Breakfast,” Anthony corrected him, “this is breakfast, not tea. We arrived two hours ago, if you remember. We started out at five and we arrived at eleven fifteen.”

  “Anyway, it was raining until a few seconds ago,” I pointed out. “It has only just stopped.”

  “And nobody’s waiting,” Angel added, “they never are. You always say we’ve kept you waiting, but the only people who have to wait are on our side of the camera. We know that. We weren’t born yesterday.”

  The AAD gave us a savage look. “I suppose it would suit you better if the whole bloody film crew were kept waiting on full pay whilst you mess about, arriving when you feel like it, organizing coffee mornings at our expense. I don’t suppose you have a clue how much it’s costing per hour to shoot this little epic!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Anthony leaned back against the wall of the box in a leisurely manner, tipping the trilby hat over his eyes like a gangster as he considered it. “You’re on video, not film, so that brings the price down a bit; you’ve got an average strength crew; you’ve got about twenty actors, no stars that I can see, nobody expensive; and then you’ve got us – I should say it’s under two thousand an hour. It’s a fairly low-budget production.”

  If this was an accurate calculation, the Assistant to the Assistant Director was not about to give Anthony any credit for it. “Five minutes, you lot!” he shouted. “In five minutes I want you ready for shooting outside the bloody gates!” He hopped off in a frenzy to check that Hender Copper was unloading, then sped off down the lane to reappear a few seconds later dragging a girl in a pink overall clutching a make-up box.

  Within ten minutes Hender, made-up and costumed in a layered greatcoat and a top hat, was on the box seat of a hansom cab with a grey horse between the shafts.

  “Right,” the AAD shouted, “where’s the bloody widow?”

  Did he mean me? I looked up from where I was kneeling, unstrapping a corner of the tarpaulin from the hearse wheels.

  “Hey, you,” he yelled, “get in here!” He held open the door of the hansom cab.

  I straightened. “Do you mean me?”

  “Of course I mean you!” he shouted. “Unless we’ve got more than one widow! Unless the whole bloody place is crawling with widows!”

  “Better do as he says without arguing,” Angel whispered, “otherwise he’s going to twist a gut.”

  The girl in the pink overall dusted my nose with white powder, stroked on some lip gloss, and pulled down the spotted veil. I held up the bombazine skirts and gingerly mounted the tiny, wobbly little step into the cab. Before I was halfway, the AAD, deranged with impatience, shoved me from behind and bundled me inside like a piece of baggage. He slammed the door.

  Inside the hansom cab everything was black. It was dark, stuffy, claustrophobic, and very spooky. I did not like it. The seat was narrow and uncomfortable. My costume was too hot, the bodice and the sleeves were too tight. I did not know why I had been taken away from the others and put inside the hansom cab. I had no idea what people expected me to do. The whole thing was crazy. I fumbled around for the doorhandle. There did not appear to be one.

  On the box seat, Hender whipped up the grey horse. The cab lurched forward almost throwing me to the floor. It was too late to get out. I held on to the upholstery. The wheels scraped and crunched along the gravel making an unbelievable noise. The horse’s hooves threw up a constant battery of stones against the front of the cab. It sounded like gunfire.

  As we passed the hearse I heard the Assistant to the Assistant Director screaming at Anthony to hurry up because everyone was waiting, and Anthony inviting him, in his most relaxed and insolent tone, to have a nice quiet lie down in one of the coffins.

  In spite of everything; in spite of the crashing and splattering gunfire of gravel; in spite of the appalling discomfort; in spite of the restrictive nature of my costume; in spite of the fact that I did not have a clue what was going to happen next, I started to laugh.

  All alone in the lurching, jolting hansom cab, deathly pale under the spotted veil, the black widow laughed all the way to the funeral.

  The Assistant Director in charge of operations at the lychgate was balding, plump and harassed, dressed half-and-half in Camera Crew Chic and Business Executive Smart which consisted of scuffed suede shoes and washed-out jeans, topped with a Jermyn Street striped shirt yanked open at the neck and an Old Boy tie pulled askew with one end flung over his shoulder.

  “Is she a Walk-On or an Extra?” he asked the girl standing next to him as I descended from the carriage. “Is she just a Noddy?”

  The girl with the clipboard consulted her papers. “She’s down as an Extra here, but you could upgrade her, depending on what you want her to do.”

  “Depending on how much grey matter she’s got up top, you mean.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” I protested, “and I can act. I’ve got Equity.”

  The Assistant Director clutched at his temples. “Heaven preserve us from an Extra who thinks she can act!”

  The lychgate was now the scene of frantic activity. Two Riggers were laying tracking rails for the dolly, the wheeled truck which carries the camera and allows it to follow act
ors as they walk, by the side of the church path. Another two cameras were being set up on either side of the gate. Lighting Engineers were bringing up large sheets of polystyrene used to bounce light, and Sound Engineers were fixing a microphone to the end of a boom mounted on a platform which enabled it to be suspended above the actors, just out of shot.

  The hearse arrived in a flurry of gravel with Anthony and Angel up front in their sombre black, wearing top hats with streamers. Within a few seconds Props were busily polishing rain-spots off the bodywork and Make-Up had been summoned with a hair-dryer and extension lead on a rolling drum and were drying off the purple plume and the black horse’s mane, both of which were slightly damp. The black horse loathed the drier and pranced about, arching his neck and snorting, but calmed down after receiving a thump on his shoulder from Anthony.

  I stood with Hender Copper beside the hansom cab and watched all these goings-on. Anthony had not exchanged a word or even a glance with Hender. As far as each was concerned the other might not have been present. It seemed odd to me that Anthony should indulge in professional jealousy – he did not seem the type to let a little competition worry him – and I could not imagine anyone disliking Hender for himself because he was friendly and cheerful and obviously popular with the crew. Whilst we waited he told me the story of the hansom cab, how he had found it in a farmyard without any wheels being utilized as a chicken house and how he and the local blacksmith had restored it, how the wheels had been taken from another vehicle, how a local woman had done the upholstery and how it had taken fifty sheets of fine sandpaper and nine separate coats of paint to achieve the mirror-bright finish.

  Over the walkie-talkies the voice of the Director could be heard issuing instructions from the OBVU behind the laurels. The cameras on either side of the gate were already rolling, filming establishing shots to iron out any problems before shooting began. The results were appearing on monitors inside the OBVU where the Director was looking at three separate screens recording the output of the cameras from their differing angles. This would continue throughout the filming and later the best shots would be chosen and spliced together to make up the finished film.