by Muriel Spark
‘Tom, you know how it is. Agree with everyone, but have your own way finally.’
‘Oh, yes. But it’s wearing. I hate to have enemies.’
‘I don’t think you have enemies,’ Claire said.
‘No? Then who took that shot at Dave, and why?’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘For a spectacular like this I need a crane,’ Tom said.
‘There are those wonderful new cameras,’ said one of the cameramen. ‘Cranes are really out, Tom.’
‘Nonsense, I need a crane. I have to direct the Battle of Agincourt. I have to take shots of those helicopters that Cedric sees in his dreams. I have to know from above, from some mountain, what’s going on down there in the fort on Hadrian’s Wall where they are sorting and sifting the grain.’
‘Well, Tom, I should think you had enough of the crane last time.’
‘This time I’ll fasten the safety belt. I’ve borrowed a mobile crane, like the one they sold, a Chapman. I hope the technicians are up to moving it about. If not, hire the experts.’
Tom was on location in Northumberland filming a sequence of a Roman British fort at Hadrian’s Wall, a busy scene in the courtyard of a specially-constructed inn and, after that, a rowdy scene at a fair. Rose Wood-stock as the centurion’s British wife, so tall, so fair and beautiful, crossed the courtyard between a milkmaid with a pole across her shoulders bearing up a pail on each side, and a boy piling wood in neat, efficient rows. She was next seen at the fair, moving from stall to stall in the fruit market and at the pastry-cook’s. Marigold, as Cedric, in her rough knee-length tunic, cross-strapped legging sandals and her sullen glitter-eyed look, stood against a tree contemplating the centurion’s lovely wife. The latter turns her head and catches the gaze of the dark sooth-sayer. (A repeat shot, for Marigold had already posed under a tree looking at nothing — ‘in case’.) ‘O.K. Cut.’
Work stopped early. They started early with the light just right for continuity. By six in the morning the long shed which was headquarters was already alive with actors and their preparatory activities. Tom arrived promptly. At this stage in the film he was no longer an object of awe. No hush greeted him as he came into the shed, which satisfied him greatly. It meant that work was proceeding seriously. There was hardly a square foot of the shed unoccupied. It seemed that everyone was changing their clothes, or, being young children, being changed by their mothers or minders. In a corner at a table, sat the music man, touching up a piece of music. Along one side of this location-studio a row of dressing tables had been fixed, each with a mirror encircled by fierce lights. The make-up men and women were busy on the actors, dabbing light and shade on their faces, splashing them with artful, cosmetic mud, tracing deep wound marks, pock-marks, brushing out their hair, making them into Roman soldiers or early Britons.
‘They look too clean,’ Tom would often say, ‘too well-fed. In Roman Britain the children would often be dirty and skinny, with bad teeth. Can’t you at least make their teeth look bad?’ He knew they could do this, and that they would scatter a touch of ‘decay’ among the healthy teeth of the minor and meaner actors.
Enough for now of the British fort. On with a French crowd scene. ‘My Colossal’ Tom said, referring to the film. In fact he hated crowd scenes, but had decided to do as many as he could in Northumberland where he had hired a lot of space. The cast was indeed colossal, but he loved his very long, very high barn and the caravans that he and the principal actors worked from. Cedric the Celt is made to see and describe a ‘helicopter’ from which (Tom’s crane) can be filmed a shot of a border skirmish, — a small crowd of marauding Danes. Tom’s crane, which had been lugged carefully to Northumberland, was one of his real joys on that location.
He had to have a meeting with his producers, the men with the money, in London; he went there at the week-end accompanied by Rose Woodstock. As a large box-office participant, Rose, with her lawyer, attended the meeting, which took place on Saturday afternoon. Tom had been looking forward to spending the evening alone with Rose, dining at some glamorous night-spot where Rose loved to be seen, then afterwards to her flat for the night. She was, in fact, well-disposed to this idea. But something about financial meetings and the sight and sound of top stars discussing their percentages of gains (which they called their percentuals), always put Tom off the romantic side of his life. Rose was not at all pleased when he told her he would have to spend the evening ‘discussing something’ with Claire. ‘I wanted to discuss a new part to be written-in for me.’
Tom knew she would immediately get hold of someone else to go out with, perhaps someone younger and more exciting. But he was Tom Richards; he could not help his moods.
Claire was not in the house. She was out for dinner. Tom made himself comfortable with a sandwich and a glass of wine. What a fool I am! he thought, as he realised he had probably done permanent damage to his love-affair with gorgeous Rose. But at the same time he knew there had been nothing he could do to change events. He had been overtaken by a moral distaste for Rose Woodstock, and even that was probably unjust. She was perfectly entitled to make an attempt to alter a contract in her own favour; she was justified in having a lawyer by her side when she did business. But it had put Tom off; he could not change his nature.
Nor could he be more than icily pleasant to Claire the cook when she offered him her attentions. ‘I have some boeuf bourguignon all ready,’ she said, practically licking her lips about it. ‘My nephew’s here on a visit.’
‘I want a sandwich and a glass of red wine. A ham sandwich. Definitely, that’s all.’
His wife, Claire, he reflected in his dark thoughts, had been brought up between Claridges and the Paris Ritz. Claire was a woman of style. Beautifully dressed. Less than ever, could he understand her loyalty to her Hungarian cook ‘with her communist sausages, her cabbage and her mash-potato swill. Every one of her meals is an act of sabotage.’ Tom longed for Dave, and perhaps also Dave’s wife, to talk to.
Tom rang Cora and was relieved to find her in. She so much restored his soul.
Marigold’s blue, red and gold actor’s caravan was comfortably arranged inside and well-heated against the cooler evenings. In the front was a dressing room and a large mirror in which Marigold, when she wore her blue tunic for the film, looked more like a renaissance painting than that of an early Briton, a painting garlanded with lights (by Ghirlandaio himself?) of a dark, wild-eyed youth. Perhaps through living for a time in the country she had lost her bloated look.
She had decided to stay in Northumberland for the week-end and remain in her caravan rather than in the hotel room which was booked for her. She loved caravans. Not only for this reason the thought had sometimes fleetingly crossed Tom’s mind that Marigold might have nomad blood. How that could be he didn’t care to hazard since he himself was of no such descent that he knew, and probably neither was Claire. It was a thought best left alone to stew by itself, and although he was a brooder this was far from a subject on which Tom would brood.
The caravan was one of four — one each for the day-use of Tom, Rose, Marigold and Brian (the actor who played Paulus the centurion). It had a dressing room section, a bed-recess, a good arm-chair, a wash-room, an ample corridor with a phone and a fax machine, a small kitchen and a room at the back with a circular bench round a circular table.
At two in the afternoon, punctually, a car drew up. Kevin Woodstock. Marigold was expecting him. ‘Bad news,’ was what she said. ‘The insurance company has demanded that everyone who enters and leaves the studio while it’s not in use shall show a pass. There’s a double guard day and night, mainly on account of the big crane, I imagine.’
‘But you have a pass,’ he said.
‘I have a pass. But I’m not going to use it to let you in. What kind of a fool do you think I am?’
‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ said Kevin.
‘I only found out after you’d left London.’
He looked across the field to the great barn where
there were some lights on. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that I could get in unnoticed, but I’m not going to risk it. The police are still on my heels. Good-bye, darling.’
It was indeed a dangerous moment for Kevin Woodstock. Rose and Tom were back on intimate terms and certainly he was jealous. ‘Why should he come and take my wife whenever it suits him?’ he had said to Marigold, overlooking the fact that Rose had been separated from him for almost two years, that their divorce proceedings were well advanced, and Rose had been in the interim living with Johnny Carr. In fact Kevin needed money. He needed it now as he had needed it when he had shot Dave so neatly. As Marigold had said it was simply ‘bad news’ that he couldn’t just go unnoticed into that studio with her and sabotage the crane.
Marigold watched him swivel his car round and head back for London. Just then a fax came through from Claire. She wanted to talk to Tom with all urgency.
Marigold phoned back. Claire was not at home, only Tom. ‘I’ve had a fax. Ma wants to talk to you urgently.’
‘Thanks. She’s not at home just now, but I’ll wait. What are you doing? Where are you?’
‘In my caravan for the week-end.’
‘It’s up to you, but I think you’re crazy. Take care who you open the door to.’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
Marigold looked at the fax and saw it had come from a number different from Claire’s. She faxed back:
‘Pa is at home. Marigold.’
Claire, having dinner with a friend, remarked, ‘Sometimes Marigold is quite decent to us, quite civilised.’
‘Why should she not always be?’ said her friend. ‘She has taken the trouble to answer my fax. I had her private fax number, you see …
The friend sighed.
Claire got home as soon as she could decently get away from her friend’s dinner. She found Tom still up.
‘Tom, I had a dream,’ she said. ‘Very vivid. I wasn’t going to mention it, but in the course of the day it seemed I must. It was so very clear. Normally I forget my dreams, but not this one.’
‘You sound like my Celt.’
‘Perhaps I do. And Caesar’s wife had dreams. It’s the crane. I dreamt you went up and fell down thirty feet. Someone had tampered with it. There is a point where it tilts forward you know, and that had been unscrewed.’
‘How weird. I’ve been up with a cameraman already and swung down again without trouble. It’s quite exhilarating up there. No director, should be without a great crane.’
‘I want you to have it examined. Be careful.’
‘I will. Where was the crane in your dream?’
‘In a huge studio barn in Northumberland. Something like yours, in fact. All the crew was there and your crane working electronically.’
‘It would take a lot of know-how to sabotage a great crane.’
‘I think I could do it,’ said Claire. ‘It’s a question of loosening things, that’s all.’
‘Well, I’ll have it well tested before I use it. I’ll be back on the set Monday morning. It’s so beautiful in Northumberland.’
‘Marigold is there to-day,’ she said. ‘Her fax is working.’
‘I’m aware of that. She can’t get near the equipment without it being noticed. I inaugurated a pass system on the grounds of insurance. Tell me more of your dream. Any details.’
‘Only the details of some people, I think up there in the cage, surreptitiously loosening the limbs and the joints and a pivot. Who they were I don’t know. But they meant you harm.’
‘It’s so very difficult,’ said Tom, ‘to realise that one makes enemies, especially in one’s family. It’s not real.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘What we are doing,’ Tom told his crew, ‘is real and not real. We are living in a world where dreams are reality and reality is dreams. In our world everything starts from a dream.’
He had phoned Claire. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the crane. It’s lovely. We’re busy now, up to the neck.’
A vaguely familiar dark Volkswagen came up the drive. Claire, looking out from an annex to the kitchen where she had been sorting out the flowers, had a slight sensation of tiresomeness which she soon located. It was Jeanne. ‘Oh God!’ thought Claire. ‘To what do I owe this visit, what’s wrong with her now?’
What was wrong was that her role as Marie-Antoinette being amply fulfilled Jeanne had been laid off. She made this known to Claire without so much as a good-morning. Claire knew by now that Jeanne was by nature incapable of considering anybody else’s problems. If she could have got into 10 Downing Street with her gripe she would have felt herself entitled to total attention.
Why had Tom picked her in the first place? Claire thought back, how Tom, after his fall, in a state of confusion had hankered after the original girl. He felt that even the actress who had played her part, Jeanne, was his true hamburger girl, his obsession. He had even dreamed of changing his will in her favour, oblivious to the fact that she was only playing a part in his film. But how, why, had he picked on this thoroughly objectionable nuisance?
‘I can’t speak for Tom,’ Claire said. ‘But I have a very busy day ahead of me.’ She went on cutting the stems of her flowers ready to put them in vases. Jeanne helped herself to a chair and sat down.
‘Tom can’t get rid of me so easy,’ said the girl. It seemed to Claire that Jeanne was going to faint. Her face was grey-white; she was shaking.
‘You look ill,’ said Claire. ‘You should see a doctor.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Jeanne.
‘What have you been taking? What pills?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You look bad. Why don’t you let me arrange for you to see a doctor?’
‘I’ll see my lawyer.’
‘Perhaps you’d better do that. Is Marigold paying your lawyer’s bill?’
‘No, she isn’t. You only think of money. Why should Marigold pay for me?’
Claire simply didn’t believe her. She got rid of Jeanne eventually by promising to ‘talk to Tom.’ Later, Claire was glad that she had called after Jeanne, kindly: ‘Try to get some sleep. You need some rest.’
Jeanne found Marigold absent from her caravan and from the set when she got there next day. Tom, working in the open, noticed her and vaguely wondered what she was doing there. She seemed pleased with herself. Hadn’t she been paid off?
Tom had a lot on his mind, he and the main members of his crew were out shooting in his built-up fortified Roman town, but a good deal of activity was going on in the great shed. The crane had been brought there and lowered. Jeanne walked to the crane so decisively and jauntily that no one felt obliged to stop her. It seemed clear she was on some errand; and so, in a sense, she was.
It had been one of Marigold’s bitter confidences, ‘I’d like him to go up in the crane and this time come down with a final thump. He doesn’t need the crane. These days it is only a director’s expensive toy. I’d like to fix it for him, and him with it,’ that had worked on Jeanne’s drugged brain. She climbed in the open case and worked the lifting gear. On the rising platform, she tilted the pivot-arm to an angle, leaned over it clumsily and slipped nearly twenty feet. It was a very bad thump on to a cement floor. She was killed outright.
Tom looked down at her twisted face as the ambulance screamed to a stop outside the studio.
‘Who let her touch the crane?’
‘We couldn’t stop her … We thought you knew she was here …’
‘Where is Marigold?’
Someone answered him: ‘She’s not here this afternoon. She didn’t think she’d be wanted. She’s gone.’
A technician was looking at the crane. ‘Nothing wrong with the machine. She just didn’t know how to handle it. What did she want to go up there for, anyway?’
‘Perhaps to wreck it,’ said Tom. ‘Perhaps merely to see what it was like to look down at a crowd of people.’
Later, in London, he said to Claire,
‘I�
��m glad the film is coming to an end. We’re just about ready to wrap it up.’
Cora came over, appalled by the disaster. ‘Who sent her to Northumberland, Pa? How did she know about the crane? Did Marigold tell her?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. There was no secret about the crane. I wanted it, I needed it and I got it.’
Marigold had left for the United States. She had given a press television interview at the airport. ‘The great crane was quite unnecessary for the film. It was my father’s party game.’
Cora was so beautiful it seemed impossible that she could have an ugly suspicion.
Claire poured drinks all round. Both Tom and Cora felt her strength and courage sustaining them, here in the tract of no-man’s land between dreams and reality, reality and dreams.