by J M Gregson
‘Did you know your mum was going to speak, Lucy?’
‘I most emphatically did not! I’d have held her down if I’d even thought she might.’
‘Good thing you didn’t. She had a great effect.’
‘Except that hardly anyone knew the man she was talking about.’
‘Fazal Mahmood? I knew about him. People still talk about him at East Lancs. And some of the older people in the audience were nodding their heads tonight. They like their cricket, you know, Pakistanis. And Agnes picked on one of their great heroes. She struck a positive note when those yobbos were trying to disrupt the meeting.’
As they moved into Percy’s shabby house, which she was slowly improving, Lucy thought how fortunate she was that the two people she loved most in the world were so fond of each other. ‘I think she only insisted on attending the meeting because she knows I’m involved in trying to unearth the militant faction.’
‘She’s a good woman to have on your side.’
‘And yours. I don’t think she’d have gone there tonight if you hadn’t been on the platform. She said she never gets the chance to see you at work. And you rose to the occasion.’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken like that. It was to support her, I think. I realized how much it must have taken for her to get up at all.’
Lucy stifled a sudden yawn. ‘It’s been a long day.’
Percy’s face cracked into a delighted grin. ‘I never heard a more blatant effort to get a man into bed. But I’m putty in your practised hands, as usual.’ He leapt gallantly to his feet. ‘Lead the way up the stairs, my shameless darling!’
Paul Barnes was one of the fortunate ones among British farmers early in the twenty-first century. He had inherited not only his own farm but a sizeable sum of money six months later. In the rich pastures of the Ribble Valley, Barnes ran one of the few mixed farms remaining in the county, including a valuable dairy herd. He had the money to tide him over hard times, to develop the potential of his land, and to employ skilled and trustworthy assistance.
It was reliable help on the farm which had allowed him leisure time to join the shooting party where Adam Cassidy had enjoyed himself on the previous Saturday. Five days later, Paul was able to leave the milking in capable hands whilst he took his single child to school. The boy had a mass of fair hair and the fresh complexion of his father. He raced into school without a backward look, greeting his friends as he went. The father watched him go, standing a little to one side of the school gates beside his Land Rover, whilst the overwhelmingly female group on the other side of the gates chattered eagerly. There were glances cast towards this tall, personable man, but if he was conscious of the attention he disregarded it, staring fixedly towards the village school and the shrill-voiced children disappearing into it.
Barnes climbed into his vehicle but did not drive away. It was only after the crowd of mothers had dispersed that the single one who remained moved slowly towards the Land Rover. He did not look up from the document he was studying, though he was acutely aware of her presence. The passenger window of the vehicle was already down when she arrived beside it. ‘Can I give you a lift home?’ Paul said with a smile.
‘It’s scarcely worth it. I haven’t far to go,’ the woman said. Nevertheless, she reached up to open the door and climbed into the Land Rover, whilst Barnes started the engine.
‘What news?’ he said tersely, staring not at her but at the road ahead of him.
She glanced at the last two of the mothers, who were still in animated conversation forty yards away. ‘I’ll tell you when we’re somewhere more private,’ said Jane Cassidy with a smile.
Jane’s husband had left the house two hours earlier. He had a full day’s location filming scheduled, on the bleak slopes of the Pennines near the Snake Pass. It was important to use the limited daylight to shoot as much as possible on this sunny day of settled weather. Very soon now, the full rigours of winter would overtake this high, remote place.
The site wasn’t far from the burial places of the children killed in the horrifying ‘Moors Murders’ of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley half a century earlier. The body of one of them, a twelve-year-old boy, had never been discovered; it lay somewhere beneath the peaty earth around here. Adam shuddered at the thought as he drove on to the site, where the film crew were already assembled at eight thirty in the morning. Despite his sheepskin coat, he was glad of the hot coffee handed to him as he entered the caravan where he would change.
The two continuity girls were busy. Television drama scenes are not shot in chronological order. Location shooting dominates the planning, because it is more difficult and infinitely more expensive than studio work. They had already shot the end of this episode, when Alec Dawson intervened as the villain was about to strangle the sleeping heroine. It was important that both the length of hair and hair styles remained the same here as in other scenes. Adam had his hair cut in the same style each month and he was already in the trousers and sweater he had worn for previous outdoor scenes. He needed only minimal make-up for open air shooting.
‘Such a professional!’ one of the star-struck continuity girls sighed, as they moved on to the next caravan.
‘And way out of your league, girl!’ said her older companion with some satisfaction.
Michelle Davies, the actress playing the damsel who landed herself in distress, had a leading role alongside Adam in this scene. They were fleeing together across the moor from the villainous gang who were pursuing her. Just when they appeared to have eluded their pursuers, a helicopter was to appear above them and cause renewed consternation. Very John Buchan, except that a helicopter had replaced the monoplane. ‘Just like The Thirty-nine Steps,’ said Michelle. ‘One brave man and a girl who fascinates him against an evil world!’
‘Very Alfred Hitchcock, more like!’ said Adam, who had read Buchan avidly as a boy and didn’t remember many women.
It was bitterly cold up here, but the scene was supposedly taking place in the summer, so that they could not be warmly clothed. Director, camera crew, everyone save the actors, wore bobble hats, scarves, gloves and thick coats or anoraks, but Adam and Michelle were hatless and coatless. They moved as quickly as they could along a predetermined route over the small stony path. As they were supposed to be fleeing for their lives, the haste which kept them marginally above hypothermia was quite appropriate.
Adam wondered if this speed would prevent them synchronizing with the arrival of the helicopter above them. The plot called upon them to look at each other in horror at the first faint noise of the helicopter, then fling themselves between rocks and coarse grass to utilize the minimal cover available. But the pilot did not let them down. As they neared the prearranged spot, the characteristic whirlybird note of the machine could be heard behind them.
The cold and their haste meant that they were panting appropriately as they whirled to identify this latest enemy. The helicopter was not visible at first, but its note grew steadily louder as they looked at each other fearfully. Michelle made herself wait for a second or two, glancing from her saviour towards this new source of danger. Then she delivered her line. ‘It’s them! I know it’s them. What the hell do we do now?’
She timed it exactly right. A second later, the helicopter rounded the hill behind them and came into full, terrifying view. The noise of its blades redoubled. Adam took one look upwards, another sideways, and said ‘Quick! In here!’
He flung her face down ahead of him between the mossy rocks, then threw himself alongside her with his arm protectively around her. They had a considerable off-camera pause now, whilst a different camera specially set up for the moment tracked the helicopter circling above them and coming lower, winding up the melodrama as the audience wondered whether the villains would spot the fugitive pair beneath their minimal cover.
Michelle turned her face sideways and grinned at him. ‘Not great dialogue, is it?’
He smiled back, still breathing hard from his efforts and the tension of performance.
‘Effective enough, though. I don’t expect people say very much when they’re in fear for their lives! More to the point, it’s bloody cold and wet here. What happened to that rug they were going to leave for us?’
‘Joe decided it might show up in the aerial shots, so it had to go.’
‘They could have bloody told me! Joe Hartley’s not the one who has to lie still on this freezing ground.’ He shivered a little, holding her body tight against him, feeling the warmth of her through their summer garments. Then, impulsively, he kissed her, letting his tongue enter her mouth softly, feeling her teeth before her tongue, firm and exploratory, answered his.
She pulled away after a few seconds, so that her deep brown eyes could study his face through her dark hair, which had fallen over her face. ‘That was nice! Nicer still for being unexpected.’
‘All part of the service, madam! It will help the chemistry we’re supposed to display for the rest of the day. Speaking of which, we’d better be ready for our cue.’
‘Do you think Joe will allow me a brandy if I tell him I’ve wet my knickers in the cause? From the outside, I hasten to add. It’s fucking cold in here!’
She had the actress’s determination to swear as hard as any man in the company. At that moment Adam found it quite exciting. He waited for his cue, which was the disappearance of the helicopter noise and the infernal machine with it. He had a sudden, farcical fear that he would stand up with an erection when the cameras were on him. He daren’t let Michelle in on the thought, or they’d have been corpsing together when that moment came.
He waited until the noise grew very faint, then cautiously raised his head and watched the helicopter move round the curve of the hill to the east and disappear. He stood up, eyes searching the clear blue sky. ‘Looks like we got away with it, for the moment. But we’ve got to move fast. They could be back at any time.’ He took her hand and broke into a trot along the path, hoping that the cold did not show in the stiffness of his movements.
After a few more lines of terse dialogue between them, the call came to cut. In the finished version, there would be a scene slotted in here involving the thwarted enemy heavies, discussing among themselves their frustration and what they would do next. The filming plan for today was that Adam and Michelle would resume after lunch with the conclusion of their flight across the moorland. They trooped back hand in hand to the location site centre. Michelle complained to their director about her freezing wet belly and was duly accorded her brandy.
‘I’m pretty sure it didn’t show on camera in that last shot,’ Joe Hartley reassured her. ‘Fortunately, you had your backs to the camera in that, except for the facial shots.’
‘Typical bloody director,’ grumbled Adam. ‘You can catch sodding pneumonia so long as he gets his shot and can pretend it’s high summer!’
A few minutes later, after much-needed visits to the Portaloos, they took their hot soup into Adam’s caravan and tried to thaw out. ‘It’s much more luxurious in here than where we have to slum it,’ said Michelle, reviewing the place before she sat down. She made a mock curtsey. ‘But I suppose we have to keep the star happy!’
She had rearranged her lustrous dark hair into its usual style. Her brown eyes looked bigger in the limited space and light of the caravan; as the colour heightened in her cheeks and the warmth flowed back into her limbs, she looked very pretty. Adam said with a smile, ‘The star is very happy at present!’ He stepped forward and kissed her, then held her slim body tight against him as he felt her respond. He ran his hands over her shoulder blades, then down her back and, for a delicious moment, over the curve of her bottom. He felt a tiny shiver run through her frame. He was not quite sure whether it was the last of the cold or a shudder of desire. But it was certainly not resistance; she held him tightly, and made no further move until he pulled away a little and held her at arm’s length.
He studied her for a moment, relishing the nose that should have been a little too long for perfection yet in her was just right. Then he smiled, deliberately breaking up whatever there was between them for the moment. ‘That was nice! We mustn’t go any further yet, or I won’t be able to carry you in this afternoon’s scene!’
Michelle noticed that ‘yet’ and was pleased by it. She too wanted time to think. The fact that he was a married man wasn’t very important for her. Lots of actors, male and female, enjoyed a sexual fling with each other when the occasion offered it – usually on location shooting, when they were far from home. She was sure now that she would enjoy such a fling with this man. He had the looks, plus the power which is always an aphrodisiac – he didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, but both of them knew that the star of a series always has power. It would be nice to consolidate her bigger role in the next series.
The afternoon’s scene Adam had mentioned involved their transfer to a different section of the Pennines. She was supposed to sprain her ankle as the speed of their flight across the moors told on her. Adam was to help her along with her arm round his shoulders as she grew increasingly exhausted. Then, as they sighted the welcome lights of a farmhouse through the near-darkness, she would faint and he would carry her the last seventy or eighty yards, making light of his own fatigue as he rose to the demands of heroism upon his stamina.
It was supposed to be almost ten o’clock on a summer evening; this was the climax of twelve miles of fear, tension and the physical effort needed to outwit their pursuers. Here the early winter darkness was a help again. There were no trees and little vegetation at this height, which was one reason why the Pennines had been chosen. By four twenty, Adam was panting gallantly beneath his delightful burden and hammering on the door of the farmhouse, whilst casting a final anxious glance at the darkening landscape behind him.
Darkness meant they could do no more today, but everyone waited anxiously to know whether they would need to come up here again tomorrow to undertake repeat shootings. By five twenty, Joe Hartley was assuring them that he was delighted with his early viewing of the afternoon’s shoot in the director’s caravan and that they were shutting down the generator for the day. Everyone, from the leading players to the assistant carpenter, breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to abandon ship. The temperature had dropped sharply with the disappearance of the sun and a bitter wind was sweeping over the Pennine slopes, making departure more welcome than ever.
The actors voiced their relief in noisy congratulations to one another, to the cameramen, to anyone who had been involved in the day’s work, very much in the manner of the nervous relief which follows the first night of a play. Michelle Davies was now wrapped in a padded brown coat with the collar turned up high around her chin. Her woollen bobble hat meant that only a fraction of her face showed as people hurried to their cars. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to check that Adam Cassidy was behind her, making sure that her invitation would extend only to him. ‘Irish coffee available at my place if you fancy it,’ she said cheerfully.
Both of them knew that it was more than that she was offering, but she said it as lightly as she could, so that a rejection would be less humiliating if it came. Cassidy took a moment to answer, watching his footing in the darkness on the uneven ground. Then he said, ‘That would be nice. It would let the traffic get away before I venture north. I’ll follow your car. I don’t know exactly where you’re based, so don’t do a Jenson Button on me!’
The traffic thickened on the M62 as they approached Manchester, but he had no difficulty in following her red Mazda sports car as she turned off at junction 17 and headed north towards her eventual destination of Darcy Lever, an exotic name for a village on the outskirts of Bolton. She waited for him whilst he parked the Mercedes, then led the way into the ground floor flat nearest to the outer door in a newly erected block. Neither of them turned down their collars until they were inside the flat. It was one of the prices of television fame that you were likely to be stopped by strangers at inopportune moments.
‘This is nice!’ he said conventionall
y, as he eased himself out of the sheepskin and looked around the place. And it was. The rooms were much more spacious than in most modern developments; the fittings in the kitchen he could see to his left were of excellent quality.
She smiled at him, grateful for the fact that even the man who played the suave Alec Dawson seemed as uncertain as she was over the next move. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and get the whisky out.’
As she turned her back to move towards the sink, he slid his arms round her waist and put his face against the back of her head. Her long dark hair was still damp from the hills and the winter darkness; he fancied he could smell the wildness and freedom of the Pennines still upon her in this civilized, comfortable place. He breathed the single word ‘Later!’ softly into her ear and felt the face he could not see breaking into a smile.
The heating was on in the bedroom and he pulled the thick curtains swiftly shut. He slid beneath the silk sheets on the big double bed with scarcely a shiver and took her naked into his arms. Her love-making was urgent and direct. He had no need for foreplay or any skilled technique. She led the way, urging him on as much with her movements as with her brief and scarcely intelligible cries. His contribution was but to synchronize his excitement with hers, ensuring that they came together, then held each other afterwards for a long, delicious moment of climax and satisfaction.
A few minutes later they lay contentedly upon their backs and stared at the ceiling. ‘You needed that,’ he said with a smile.
She did not respond, so that for a moment he thought she had been offended by the comment. Then she said softly, ‘It’s been a while.’ She gripped his hand beneath the sheets for a moment, then slid away from him. ‘I shan’t be long. Don’t go away.’
He heard the cistern flush in the bathroom, then muffled movements in the kitchen they had left so peremptorily. It was ten minutes before she was back, carrying two china beakers upon a small silver tray, her face filled with the concentration of a schoolgirl bringing her latest triumph before admiring adults. ‘Irish coffee! You really meant it!’ he said with delight.