Pacific

by Judy Nunn

  ‘The father appears a small role in the overall film,’ he continued, ‘but Clifford Huxley is a very important character, I’m sure you’ll agree. Pivotal to the development of Sarah. Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night and I suddenly realised that I’d already seen Sarah Huxley and her father.’ Simon was leaning forward again now, elbows on the table, eyes once more electric with excitement. ‘I swear to you, Sam, I realised that I’d actually been watching Sarah and Clifford Huxley when I saw the two of you up there on that stage.’

  The penny suddenly dropped. A Doll’s House. ‘Alexander Wright,’ Sam said.

  ‘Do you agree?’ Simon’s query was earnest and concerned. ‘The chemistry between the two of you is perfect. Am I right? Tell me I’m right.’

  ‘Yes of course.’ Sam was under his spell again. The man was a chameleon. Now she liked him, now she didn’t. But he was certainly right. ‘Alexander is wonderful casting,’ she agreed.

  ‘Wright by name, right by nature.’ Simon gave a bark of delighted laughter. ‘Alexander Wright is Clifford Huxley! I’m so glad you approve.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Nick added dryly, ‘he’s flying in tomorrow.’

  ‘Samantha! My darling doll wife,’ Alexander intoned as he kissed the air beside her cheeks. He was deeply grateful to Samantha Lindsay. She was directly responsible for a career breakthrough which, at his age, he’d presumed an impossibility. Alexander was eager to embrace Hollywood. He would never have admitted it, but treading the boards eight performances a week, albeit in the West End, had become rather tiresome. This was his big chance at the movie career which had, through no want of trying on his part, somehow eluded him throughout his life.

  ‘The old team, eh!’ he exclaimed, laying it on for all it was worth. ‘Husband and wife, now father and daughter. We are destined to work together.’

  ‘Alexander! It’s beaut to see you, it really is.’ She deliberately swung into the Australian vernacular as she hugged him warmly. She could read him like a book and she was aware his performance was all bravado, that he was hoping, indeed praying, she would welcome him like an old friend.

  ‘Oh my dear,’ he said, so overcome that for a moment he dropped his theatricality, ‘it’s lovely to see you too. It really is.’

  Standing nearby in the production offices Mammoth had hired at Fox Studios, Nick Parslow gave Simon Scanlon an ‘I told you so’ look. Simon had voiced his worry about Sam’s personal opinion of Alexander Wright.

  ‘Her agent swears she won’t mind,’ he’d said. ‘But what if she can’t stand the man? He’s a good actor, but I hear offstage he’s a pompous old fart.’ As always, Simon had made his enquiries.

  Nick had been quick in his reassurance. ‘You can trust Reginald, Simon,’ he’d said. ‘He knows what he’s talking about, and he always has Sam’s best interests at heart, he wouldn’t let anything interfere with her work. Or her personal life for that matter,’ he added knowingly. Nick and Reginald had become close friends, and both shared the deepest of affection for Samantha Lindsay.

  Simon had deliberately called Alexander in first, eager to read Sam’s reaction, and half an hour later the other actors involved in the opening scenes arrived at the production office.

  ‘Mickey!’

  There was an exuberant reunion between Michael Robertson and Sam the moment he walked through the door. They’d worked together in the theatre on many an occasion, including the production of Red Centre, and when Reg had told her that Michael had been cast as her missionary husband, Sam had been ‘over the moon’.

  ‘How amazing!’ she’d said. ‘I’m over the moon! I can’t think of anyone I’d rather work with. How utterly, fantastically amazing!’

  ‘Not really,’ Reg had said, ‘it’s the way he operates.’

  ‘Who? How?’

  ‘Simon Scanlon. He’d been favouring another actor over Michael, Nick told me, but when he found out the two of you were such good friends, Michael had the job, simple as that.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sam hadn’t been too sure how to take it; it didn’t sound right to her.

  ‘As far as Nick and Simon are concerned, Sarah Blackston is the crux of this film,’ Reg had said. ‘It’s the woman’s story and they want to concentrate on her, despite the lover and the POW camp, and Brett Marsdon and the American market. It’s the story of “Mamma Black”, Nick told me. And Mamma Black is you, Sam. Simon Scanlon will do anything to keep you happy.’

  ‘Sammy, Sammy, Sammy!’

  Alexander Wright watched from the sidelines as the lanky actor whirled Sam off her feet. He had the distinct feeling that his proprietorial relationship with Samantha was being severely upstaged, but he tried his very hardest to look like an indulgent parent.

  ‘Alexander, this is Michael Robertson.’ Sam introduced the men personally, instead of waiting for Simon’s official introductions all round. ‘Two of my favourite actors,’ she said. And Alexander beamed, once again reinstated.

  The moment did not escape Simon Scanlon. Samantha Lindsay was more than a bloody good actress, he thought, she was a bloody good diplomat. He couldn’t have been happier.

  He made the formal introductions. There were three other actors playing the minor roles of household staff: the butler, the housekeeper and the maid.

  ‘Hello, Anthony. Hello, Fiona.’ Sam shook hands with them warmly. ‘Great to be working together again.’ Anthony Cole and Fiona Hedge were character actors who’d been around for years and, although their roles were never large, they were rarely out of work, particularly since the arrival of big-budget overseas movies. They were colourful troupers who, from the radio days of old, could handle any accent thrown at them. Both were thrilled that Sam recalled them from the guest roles they’d had in ‘Families and Friends’ when she’d been a teenager.

  Ada, playing the maid, was unknown to them all, a young actress fresh out of drama school, but Sam greeted her with equal warmth, putting the girl at ease in an instant.

  Jesus Christ, but Samantha Lindsay was a gem, Simon thought.

  The first two days were devoted to discussion of the script, the characters and their relationships, and in the rehearsal room adjacent to the production offices the actors were encouraged to interact freely. Simon was not going to block any specific moves until they were in the studio set, he told them. He was very receptive to any suggestions from the cast, and was pleasantly surprised by Alexander’s perceptiveness.

  ‘Clifford is not unlike Torvald, is he?’ Alexander commented, referring to the character he’d played in A Doll’s House. ‘Not a bad man in the true sense of the word. Thoughtless and misguided, and very set in his ways, but even when he appears malicious, he doesn’t really intend to be, does he?’

  ‘Spot on, Alexander, spot on!’ Simon applauded. Alexander Wright might behave like a buffoon at times, he thought, but he certainly wasn’t dumb when it came to interpretation. ‘He’s a “right” man who sees the world only from his own perspective. It’s his insensitivity to those about him, particularly his daughter, which makes him so shockingly cruel.’

  Two weeks had been allotted to shoot the opening scenes, after which they would relocate to Vanuatu where the American star, Brett Marsdon, would join them. Simon had deliberately orchestrated the proceedings so that the Huxley household would become a close-knit unit. The opening of the film, he said, was totally isolated. ‘A film within a film,’ he told them, ‘think of it that way.’ This was a conspiratorial household where the old servants had known the mistress before she died. They were fully aware of the father’s deep-seated dislike of his daughter, and the unspoken reason why: that Clifford Huxley had never forgiven his daughter for robbing him of his beautiful wife in childbirth.

  ‘But they’re not going to risk their jobs, are they?’ he said. ‘They’re not going to threaten the comfortable lifestyle they’ve had for over twenty-five years, so they’re conspirators. Only the young, newly appointed maid has no idea why Clifford Huxley is so contemptuous of his daugh
ter. The maid is an innocent in a household destined to emotionally and psychologically destroy a young woman. The maid is, in many ways, the audience. Out there in the dark, discovering the secrets of the past as it’s unravelled before them.’

  Ada was thrilled – she’d thought the maid was just a bit part. She hadn’t realised that her character was of such depth and importance.

  It was one of Simon Scanlon’s greatest talents. He made every actor, no matter how seemingly trivial their role, feel valuable and indispensable to the production. And he did so because, to him, they were.

  Then there were three days of meetings and discussions with designers, hairdressers and makeup artists, followed by costume and wig fittings, and at the end of the third day, Simon announced that they were moving into the set the following morning.

  The cast had met the set designer, Rodney, a talented man in his mid-thirties, easygoing and affable, who had worked on the last three of Simon’s films. But no-one had been shown a model of the set, or even a ground plan of the layout. It was a deliberate ploy on Simon’s behalf.

  ‘We’ll meet at ten o’clock outside Stage 7,’ he said. ‘We’ll all go in together, and you’ll explore the home where you’ll be living for the next eleven days.’

  Sam arrived at the studios the following morning a good half hour before the others. She always arrived early, having instructed her regular driver, an eager young runner called Ben, to collect her from the Quay Grand an hour before her scheduled call each day. After Ben had driven through the studio gates and past the guard house, she’d alight at Stanley Crick House.

  The picturesque vine-covered building had been the Royal Agricultural Society’s members’ stand in the days before Fox had taken over the Sydney Showground, once home to Australia’s largest annual agricultural exhibition. It stood on the border between the two sectors which now constituted Fox Studios. On one side was the vast professional complex of sound stages and production offices, recording studios and editing suites, workshops, makeup departments and dressing rooms. On the other was Bent Street, the equally vast public area of retail shops and markets, cafes and restaurants, entertainment venues and art-deco cinemas.

  Sam enjoyed wandering around Bent Street before the tourists arrived, exploring the shops, having a latte in an outdoor cafe and generally soaking up the atmosphere. To her, the whole of Fox Studios seemed a world unto itself, like a walled city, locked away from the realities of outside.

  Today, however, she didn’t alight at Stanley Crick House, but instructed Ben to go directly to Sound Stage 7. She wanted to explore the exterior of the huge sandstone building which she’d admired from some distance, unaware that this was where they would be filming the Huxley house scenes.

  Stage 7 was housed in a restored heritage pavilion and was the largest and most recently converted sound stage on the Fox lot, having opened for production only earlier that year. Sam looked up at the massive facade that had once been the main entrance to the pavilion. Wide stone steps on either side led to a portico supported by twin Ionic columns, beyond which was a large stained-glass window depicting a map of Australia. High above, in massive letters carved deep in the sandstone, was the inscription: ‘AUSTRALIA’S 150TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE PAVILION 1938’. It was a proud building.

  She walked up the steps to the portico and looked out over the view. Below her were the myriad streets and shopfronts of the tourist sector, for all the world like a miniature village. Behind them to the right was the old stone clock tower and, rearing over a hundred metres high in the background, modern and strangely out of place, were the giant night lights of the Sydney Cricket Ground.

  Sam found the perspective exciting. The odd mixture of styles and shapes, the blending of old and new, past and present, all added to the sense of anticipation she’d had from the moment she’d awoken that morning. There’d been enough discussion. She couldn’t wait to start work in earnest.

  Half an hour later, when they all met at the rear stage door of the studio, there was the same feeling of anticipation amongst the others.

  Simon and Nick led the way inside, followed by Rodney, the set designer, and the actors trooped in after them.

  The immensity of the gutted and soundproofed interior was overwhelming. Nissen hut-shaped, 3,600 square metres in area, rising to a height of twenty metres, it looked exactly like an aeroplane hangar. But it didn’t house aircraft. Sitting solidly and incongruously upon the huge floor space was a Victorian mansion. There were two sets: the ground floor of the house, and behind it, the upper floor, enabling each to be lit from the lighting grid which was rigged high above.

  ‘Take your time and wander the sets,’ Simon instructed after he’d called up the work lights, ‘we’ll have discussions with Rodney afterwards. I want you to get the feel of the place first before we go into technicalities.’

  Alexander, Mickey, Anthony, Fiona and young Ada continued to gaze about, awestruck. They’d never seen a studio so huge. But Sam wasn’t looking at the studio at all, she was staring at the set. They were facing the ground floor of the house, and there were three bay windows. She walked around the corner to the right; the main entrance would be on that side, she thought. It was. Several stone steps led up to a porch. She pushed open the front door and entered.

  There was a small hallway with a coat stand and pegs on the walls. She crossed through it. The kitchen would be down several steps to the right. And there it was. A big kitchen, the hub of the house, cosy and warm. A large wooden table and bench, pots and pans hanging from pegs, and an open door leading to a narrow staircase. That would go up to the servants’ quarters, she thought.

  She went back towards the hall and turned right again, into what she knew would be the drawing room. She felt as if she was in a dream. That it wasn’t happening, that at any moment she might awake. A surreal experience, dreamlike and yet hauntingly real. She was in Chisolm House.

  The drapes were drawn over the bay windows, but there was a chair and table beside them, as if someone made a habit of sitting and gazing out at the garden. There was an escritoire in the corner, converted gas lamps in wall brackets, gold-leaf framed mirrors. She looked about, unnerved. It wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. There was a fireplace. There was a mantelpiece with a framed photograph perched in the centre. The only thing missing was Phoebe’s portrait. A tapestry hung in its place.

  ‘You seem to know your way around.’

  She was startled by the voice beside her. ‘Sorry?’ she said, shocked back to the present.

  ‘You headed straight to the main entrance,’ Rodney said. ‘You seem to know your way around.’

  Sam heard the other actors. They’d found their way to the front door and were now exploring the kitchen, she could hear their ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ of admiration.

  ‘I do,’ she replied. Her brief sense of panic was gone, but she still felt shaken as she gazed around at the walls and the fireplace and the bay windows. ‘I own this house,’ she said.

  Rodney grinned. ‘Taking method acting a bit far, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not joking, Rod,’ she said. ‘I bought a house in Hampshire only a month ago. It’s identical.’

  ‘Oh, this is a pretty stock Victorian design,’ he shrugged, ‘there’s nineteenth century houses like this all over England.’

  ‘But the electrically operated gas lamps, the mirrors, the escritoire in the corner …’

  ‘A lot of them converted their gas lamps to electricity, love,’ he assured her. She seemed a bit shaky, he thought. ‘Gold-leaf mirrors were all the rage in Edwardian days, and face it, where else would you put the escritoire?’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ Sam agreed, trying to sound casual. ‘Just a coincidence.’

  ‘ ’Course it is. Don’t let it rattle you.’ He grinned again; Rodney rarely took things seriously. ‘Besides,’ he added, rolling his eyes dramatically, ‘you can “use it to your advantage”, as Simon would say.’

  ‘Yes, I can cert
ainly do that,’ Sam smiled. ‘But don’t say anything to him, do you mind?’ She chastised herself. The similarities between the set and Chisolm House were purely coincidental, just as Rodney had pointed out, and it was foolish of her to dramatise the situation.

  ‘Sure, no worries.’

  ‘The set’s divine, Rodney. A masterpiece!’ Alexander was leading the troops into the drawing room.

  ‘Thanks, Alexander. What do you think of young Clifford?’ Rodney crossed to the mantelpiece and picked up the framed photograph. ‘It’s come up pretty well, I think. Archie spent half the night working on it, he wanted to surprise you.’

  Sam, having stood back and drawn breath in order to recover herself, joined the others as they gathered around to admire Clifford Huxley and his beautiful bride. The wedding photograph was an important prop, and the photo shoot had been held just the previous day in a private studio.

  It had been a nerve-wracking experience for Alexander. Not at first. At first he’d felt resplendent in his youthful makeup, his impeccable wig and his finely tailored Edwardian costume. The wardrobe and makeup team had spent two hours working on him and he’d been thoroughly convinced that he looked not a day over thirty-five, as was the intention. Then he’d been confronted with the girl who was to pose as his wife. She was all of twenty-two and one of the most glorious creatures he’d ever seen. His confidence had been instantly undermined. Dear God, but he’d look like a stupid old fool, he’d thought. He’d covered his humiliation with bluster, made the customary remarks about ‘old enough to be your father, my dear’, secretly knowing he was old enough to be her grandfather, and he’d dreaded seeing the final result. Now here it was. He held his breath.

  ‘You look wonderful, Alexander,’ Fiona said admiringly, Anthony beside her nodding in emphatic agreement.

  And he did. Young and handsome and thirty-five. Alexander glowed with a mixture of pride and relief. ‘Yes, it has come up rather well, hasn’t it?’