“Shall I clear up in here?” Margery asked.
“Let’s take a look at Fiametta’s room first,” I said. I stepped aside to let her go first through the canvas-curtained door. As she went, I quickly picked up the little notepad and slipped it into my pocket. I didn’t feel that Robert Meakin’s executors were going to worry very much about a sixpenny jotting book.
Fiametta’s room was, as Margery had said, in much the same state as Bob’s. Her maid had cleared away everything usable, but the litter remained—old lipsticks, crumpled face tissues, an ash tray with lipstick-smudged butts still in it.
“All this must be swept up and tidied,” I said. “The things in Bob’s dressing room had better go to his widow, I suppose. One can’t be too careful over things like that. Fiametta’s nasty bits and pieces, she can have back. Can you cope here while I go and fix this business of the name signs?”
Margery nodded. “Certainly, Mr. Croombe-Peters,” she said.
“Thank you, Margery. I’m really very grateful.” I hesitated, and then, on impulse, I added, “If you’re not busy today, perhaps we might lunch together.” As soon as I had said the words, I regretted them, and cursed myself for a fool. Nobody knew better than I that discipline was impossible to maintain once senior executives started fraternizing with lower grades of technicians—and heaven knew, I had enough trouble that way with Sam. Well, I was stuck with today’s date, I reflected grimly, but it would be the last.
Margery gave me a cool, serious look. It was almost as though she could read my thoughts and was lightly amused by them. I felt myself growing pink. Then she said, “It’s very kind of you, Mr. Croombe-Peters, but I never go out to lunch. I always have so many Continuity Sheets to get typed, I’d never finish if I took a lunch break. I’ve brought sandwiches.”
I didn’t know, and I still don’t, whether this was a simple statement of truth, or whether Margery was being supremely tactful. I only know that I was profoundly grateful, and that my liking and respect for the girl went up by several notches. She gave me a charming smile and began packing up Fiametta’s disgusting litter. I went out on to the platform and into battle with the Property Man.
There was a certain amount of discussion, of course, but the situation was saved by one of the painters arriving early. In no time at all, the old name cards were safely out of the way and new ones of a different color put up. Margery made a most efficient job of tidying and cleaning the dressing rooms; when she had finished, she handed me the sad little relics from Bob Meakin’s room and the sordid bits from Fiametta’s room, packed up neatly in a cardboard box. If she noticed the absence of the writing pad, she did not remark on it.
It was as well that we took prompt action, for Keith Pardoe arrived a good ten minutes early. For someone as constitutionally unpunctual as Keith, this was remarkable, and a fair indication of his state of mind. There was no doubt about it, Keith was in a wrought-up and near-hysterical mood.
He came running down the stairs in a parody of lightheartedness which deceived nobody. “God, what a marvelous morning,” he cried. “Hello, Pudge! Here already? I’ve been up since six. Walked all the way. ’Morning, Harry. How are you? All set for the fray?”
We were all acutely embarrassed. The forced heartiness and brittle bonhomie were a million miles from Keith’s usual slow, sardonic style. It brought back all too vividly the awkwardness and humiliation of Keith’s breakdown at the time of the accident, and made it very clear to everybody that he had by no means recovered from that emotional strain.
There was an agonizing silence. At last, I said, “You’re early.” A ridiculous remark, but the only one I could think of.
“I told you, I’ve been up since five—six—what does it matter? How’s the schedule, Pudge? Still going well?”
“We’re still two days ahead, as we were yesterday,” I replied. I was beginning to get a little irritated. Keith, like everybody else, knew perfectly well that we had achieved the miracle of running two days in advance of our planned schedule. “We weren’t supposed to be here till next Tuesday. I had quite a job changing the booking.”
That was a mistake, of course. Keith picked it up at once. “Really?” he said. “London Transport are running excursions to the scene of the accident, are they? See the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and the spot where Bob Meakin was killed—all for sixpence on the Red Rover.” His voice was rising dangerously. “I’m surprised the crowds aren’t out today. What’s happened before can happen again, after all. The greatest popular show since the last public execution.”
It was only then that I realized, for the first time, that Keith Pardoe was not merely affected by emotional memories. He was frightened. It was hard to believe, but in some extraordinary and superstitious way he seemed to think that there was a real possibility of history repeating itself, this time with himself as the victim of the accident. It was so childish that I actually laughed.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Today won’t be an easy day for any of us, but for God’s sake don’t get morbid.”
“No,” he said, suddenly serious. “No, of course you’re right, Pudge. That’s your trouble. You always are. That’s why nobody can stand you.”
This was more like Keith’s usual self. I was so relieved at his change of mood that I overlooked the insult, and smiled. “Where’s Biddy?” I asked.
“She’s,” Keith hesitated, “she’s not coming today. She had some rewriting to do on next week’s stuff—the Hampstead Heath sequence.”
So Biddy Brennan was not as tough as she liked to make out. For the past three weeks she hadn’t missed a day’s shooting, and if there was rewriting to be done, she had either scribbled in her battered notebook then and there, on the set, or had taken it home and presumably sat up all night working. There was only one explanation of why she was absent today, and while I didn’t exactly blame her—I was not looking forward to the day myself—nevertheless I felt that she might have supported Keith by coming along. In any case, it showed that our iron butterfly had an Achilles heel, if I may mix my metaphors.
“Well, I suppose I’d better…” Keith hesitated. The nervousness seemed to be coming back. “Have we—I mean, are there the same dressing rooms…?”
“Not the same,” I said, quickly, “but in the same place. Yours is all ready. I’ll show you.”
“Thank you, Pudge,” said Keith.
He followed me docilely down the platform and into his canvas booth. Inside, he looked around quickly, and I was devoutly thankful that Margery had made such a good job of cleaning up. The place looked like new.
“Good,” said Keith. “Very nice. Good.” He sat down on the plain wooden chair and regarded himself earnestly in the mirror. At that moment, a diversion was caused by the arrival of the Wardrobe Master with the clothes which Keith was to wear that day. I escaped thankfully, hoping but not really believing that the worst was over.
Sam was the next person to arrive. He came clattering cheerfully down the stairs at five minutes to eight, closely followed by Fred Harborough, the cameraman, and a giggling gang of girls from the make-up and hairdressing departments. Gervase Mountjoy arrived at two minutes past eight, thus contriving in his usual maddening way to be late, yet not late enough to constitute the basis of a serious complaint. The extras, stand-ins, and George Temple had all arrived by ten past. The place buzzed and hummed with work and chatter. Nobody mentioned Bob.
I was glad to notice that Sam appeared to be quite unaffected by morbid imagination. He came straight up to me and began arguing that I hadn’t budgeted enough for extras in the Hampstead Heath sequence.
“I’ve got to have half-a-dozen pearly kings and queens, Pudge,” he said, “and they come expensive. Be a good chap and unbelt a bit. After all, we’re two days ahead.”
This was Sam in his charming, persuasive mood. I noticed, however, that he never lost an opportunity of rubbing in those two days ahead, as though they were a rich gift from the director to the produc
er, a gift which ought to put me under a permanent obligation to him. Certainly it was a fine achievement and I did not want to belittle it, but I found that I frequently had to point out that the two main causes of our present happy position were generous scheduling and good weather, and that at any moment we might find our luck turning and be faced with the prospect of being two days behind schedule.
I put this to Sam now. “These two days certainly give us a reserve in hand,” I said in conclusion, “but it’s a reserve I have worked very hard to build up.”
“Nothing to do with you,” remarked Sam under his breath.
I ignored him. “Having built up my reserve,” I went on, “the whole purpose is to keep it—quite literally—against a rainy day, not to squander it on unnecessary extravagances.”
“I’m the one who says what’s necessary and what isn’t around here,” said Sam, truculently.
I have—as I hope I have made clear—a great admiration for Sam’s talents; but unfortunately, like all men of his class, he has never learnt how to conduct an argument without being rude.
“I’m prepared to go back to the office and study the matter,” I said, “but I must warn you that I think it’s highly unlikely that I will be able to increase…”
“You’ll bloody well do what I tell you,” said Sam.
“If you intend to take that attitude, there is little point in discussing the matter,” I said. I felt tired, and I was sickened that the old arguments were beginning to develop again, just as before. For the last few weeks everything had been so pleasant. This seemed like a foretaste of fresh disaster.
Sam looked sharply at me, and suddenly put his hand on my arm. “Sorry, Pudge,” he said. “That was unreasonable. Just bear it in mind, will you, though? We’ll talk about it later.”
That’s what I mean about Sam. However outrageous he may be, it’s impossible to go on disliking him for very long. Whether a sudden switch of mood like this was a genuinely friendly impulse or a shrewdly calculated move, I could never decide. But it was certainly disarming.
“I am absolutely prepared to…” I began, but I was cut short by the arrival of Fiametta Fettini.
As soon as I heard the commotion on the stairs, I feared the worst, and I was right. Without any sort of authorization that I knew of, Fiametta had brought a gaggle of press and photographers along with her, and she was playing the scene for all it was worth. Amid a pyrotechnic display of flash bulbs, she stood poised at the head of the staircase, swathed in black chiffon. Then, with a richly histrionic gesture, she cried, “I cannot! Mamma mia, I cannot go down there!” and covered her face with her hands in what appeared to be a fit of uncontrollable weeping.
Sam was up the stairs in an instant. “What’s all this?” he said, and I could tell from his voice that he was very angry.
“I cannot go down to that ’orrible place,” sobbed Fiametta, removing her hands from her face to give the photographers a chance. “The ’orrible place where…”
“Gervase!” Sam called.
Gervase unwound himself from a canvas chair and went up the steps.
“Miss Fettini is rather upset,” Sam went on drily. “Please take her to her dressing room.”
There was a howl of protest from the assembled journalists, but Sam took no notice. “At once,” he said sharply. “Go and lie down, Fiametta dear, and you’ll feel better.”
Fiametta shot him a look of intense dislike out of her black eyes—eyes which, I noticed, were completely dry; but there was nothing she could do but allow Gervase to lead her away in a fresh spasm of grief.
Then Sam turned to the journalists. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he said blandly, “you see how it is. Miss Fettini is in no state to talk to you, and the rest of us have work to do. So perhaps you wouldn’t mind going away.”
And with that, he turned on his heel and went downstairs, leaving the members of the press to face Harry and his minions, who arrived at that moment with several large signs saying “No Admittance.” One or two of the more enterprising journalists made feeble attempts to come down onto the platform, but they were outnumbered, and Fiametta was in purdah. Grumbling, they drifted away, and I went to find Sam and congratulate him.
I did not have far to look. As I came onto the platform, he emerged from the corridor where the dressing rooms were and hailed me. “Come here a moment, Pudge, will you?” he called. He looked angry and very grim. I joined him at the end of the platform.
“God, these bloody women,” he said. “You’d better come and see if you can do anything with her. She’s like a hellcat.”
“Me?” I said alarmed. Generally, I avoided these scenes, and I could not imagine that I could be of any practical use.
“She’s wild about being done out of her publicity stunt,” said Sam, “and so she’s latched on to some business about a lipstick case, just to make trouble. If anyone knows about it, you do. You cleared up here after—after last time, didn’t you?”
Before I could answer or protest, he had propelled me firmly inside the dressing room.
The atmosphere in the little canvas booth was charged with dangerous electricity. Fiametta sat at the trestle table, looking like an avenging goddess of death. She was fully made up, for the make-up experts had been at her house since six; and her pale face, deep red lips, and heavily blackened eyes added to the dramatic effect. She was breathing heavily through her shapely nose and drumming her long carmine fingernails on the table. In a corner, little Giulio Palladio sat hunched up, looking more like a frightened monkey than ever. Gervase Mountjoy was draped spinelessly against the wall, smoking and looking bored. An elderly maid and a young hairdresser were both in tears.
As I came in, Fiametta swiveled on her chair, ostentatiously turning her back on me. To the mirror she remarked, “I can endure many things, but to be robbed—no. That I do not stand.”
“What do you mean, robbed?” I said. I was determined to make an effort not to be intimidated.
She wheeled on me, her black hair flying like Medusa’s snake locks.
“Solid gold, with rubies!” she screamed. “Stolen! Stolen by you treacherous, dishonest English! And don’t speak to me of insurance,” she added, in a low growl, although I had not attempted to speak to her of anything. “How can insurance replace it when he gave it to me? Is it not enough to humiliate me before the newspapers, but that you must steal my most precious possession as well?”
“Fiametta is trying to say,” said Sam’s sardonic voice behind me, “that she left a solid gold lipstick case in her dressing room on the last occasion that she was here. It was given to her by Bob Meakin and was such a precious possession that she has only just noticed she’s lost it. Her maid must have overlooked it when she was packing up, and Fiametta thinks one of us has stolen it.”
“Think! I know it! You all hate me, you all wish to destroy me! You cut my best lines and give me the worst camera angles…”
We were off again. I had heard too many of these outbursts to attempt to check the flow until it had exhausted the worst of its venom. I stood quietly, waiting for the frenzy to die down, and looking forward with pleasant anticipation to the scene which must follow; for I had noticed what I took to be a gilt lipstick case studded with chips of red glass among the debris which Margery had cleared up that morning.
When we had all been accused of sabotaging her career, of brutality and heartlessness, and every crime in the calendar, Fiametta finally ran out of breath. In the silence, I said quietly, “Gervase, I wonder if you would ask Margery Phipps if she can spare us a moment?”
“Margery?” said Sam, surprised. “What has Margery…?”
I raised my hand. “Please,” I said, “just ask her to come along, and to bring the cardboard box with her. She’ll know what you mean.”
Everyone was looking thoroughly puzzled by now, and even Fiametta seemed at a loss for words. Gervase gave me a quizzical sort of look, and sloped off through the canvas doorway. I lit a cigarette. I
was enjoying myself. Nobody said anything. A minute or so later Gervase came back with Margery. She was carrying the box containing the bits and pieces from the dressing rooms, and she looked positively scared, poor girl, and no wonder. I smiled at her reassuringly.
“Ah, Margery,” I said. “May I see that box please?”
“Of course, Mr. Croombe-Peters.” Margery spoke in little more than a whisper. She held the box out to me.
I opened it, took out the lipstick case, and handed it to Fiametta. “Miss Fettini,” I said, “do you recognize this?”
Fiametta barely glanced at it. She was simmering with fury. “Yes,” she said. “It is my lipstick case. Where did you get it?”
“Margery,” I said, “will you tell Miss Fettini where you found this and the other things in the box?”
“Of course.” Margery was obviously relieved that there was no question of my blaming her for anything. She caught my eye and grinned. “These are the things which I found in these two dressing rooms when I cleared them up before the unit assembled this morning.”
To my amazement, Fiametta wheeled on Margery with such venom that I thought she was going to attack her physically. “Thief!” she screamed. “How dare you! How dare you touch my things! Give me that box!” She snatched the box out of Margery’s hands, slammed it down onto the dressing table, and stood there with her back to it and her hands outstretched, like an animal at bay defending her young. I had seldom seen a more ridiculous or unnecessary performance.
“So,” Fiametta went on, “if I had not had the good sense to make inquiries and protect my property, this cheap little sneak thief would have got away not only with my lipstick, but God knows how many other valuable things as well!”
Falling Star Page 8