Situation Tragedy

by Simon Brett

  But there seemed no momentum to any of the activity. It wasn’t just the slow pace of everything, which is de rigueur in television, there was an even greater lack of purpose. It took Charles a minute or two to realise that this was due to the absence of the Director.

  Scott Newton had not been in the coach; he had insisted on coming to the location under his own steam.

  Even as Charles remembered this, the throaty roar of an engine and a fusillade of gravel announced both Scott Newton’s arrival and the nature of the steam under which he was arriving.

  A brand-new silver Porsche screeched to a halt beside the coach and the young television director bounced out, looking, in his tinted glasses, his ginger corduroy blouson suit and his white soft-leather French boots, exactly as a young television director should look.

  ‘Morning, crew and artists,’ he cried. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. Is everyone here?’

  Mort Verdon fussed up to him. ‘Not quite everyone, dear. Dob wasn’t coming in the coach. Hasn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘Okay, let’s start with one of the other set-ups that doesn’t involve her. What about the Colonel being chased by Reg the barman?’

  Slowly this message filtered through, and men and equipment started to move slowly to the side of the house where the first set-up was to be. Even the men whose only function was to wear lumberjack checked shirts deigned to wear them over there.

  Charles couldn’t help noticing the new confidence that illuminated Scott Newton. He decided that it was because they were filming. Film still has a glamour and tradition, and it is easier for a director to fit into the supercool Hollywood stereotype on location than it is in the prosaic and crowded setting of a studio. But Scott Newton was also obviously in the money. The new clothes and, more than that, the new car made it clear that his agent had negotiated a very favourable contract for The Strutters. Scott Newton no longer looked like a man with financial worries.

  Charles found himself beside the young man while they waited for George Birkitt to change into the relevant tweeds for the scene ahead and, because he thought Scott would appreciate it, commented that the Porsche was a very smart motor.

  Scott’s reaction proved him right. Clearly not enough people had made the observation. ‘Yes, not bad, is it?’ he agreed airily. ‘Really good to feel a bit of power under your foot. Drinks petrol, of course, but . . .’ he shrugged, ‘. . . if you want the power . . .’

  ‘Must have set you back a bit.’

  ‘It’s leased, actually. Makes sense. My accountant says I’m going to have to pay so much in tax this year that I may as well offset what I can.’

  Yes, his agent had certainly negotiated a good contract. Life seemed to have come right for Scott Newton. Any agonising he might have had about the wisdom of leaving the BBC had dissipated. He was now director of a major series, which would lead to other major series and . . . Nothing could stop him.

  Charles couldn’t help thinking of Walter Proud. He had once talked in exactly the same brashly confident tones.

  A further scrunching of gravel and the sound of an altogether more sedate, but no less powerful engine than the Porsche’s, now interrupted the proceedings and announced the arrival of Aurelia Howarth and Barton Rivers.

  The vintage Bentley was a green monster with its hood fixed back in honour of the warm weather. The couple behind the windscreen looked like its first owners. Aurelia wore a large hat bound round with a silk scarf, and Barton Rivers had added a white flat cap and white gloves to his uniform blazer. When he tottered, spidery, from the car and went round to open his wife’s door, he revealed again white flannels and black shoes.

  The arrival, like that of visiting royalty, suspended all other activity and everyone drifted over towards the car. Scott Newton got there first, still full of his new possession. ‘What do you think of the car, Dob?’

  ‘Very nice, dear.’

  As with Charles, he couldn’t resist boasting of his affluence. ‘Expensive to run, mind.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage, dear.’

  ‘I’m sure I will, Dob.’

  At that moment Bernard Walton, who was going to miss no opportunity of asserting his authority over the day, once again materialised from the house and, throwing his arms around Aurelia, gushed. ‘Dob darling, lovely to welcome you here again. Always such a pleasure to see you, whether the call is purely social or, as today, when you’re working. Hello, Barton, old boy.’

  Barton Rivers did his death’s head grimace. ‘Nice to see you, dear boy. Lovely day for the match, what?’

  Mort Verdon busied up to the leading lady. ‘Aurelia boofle, sorry to interrupt, but I have to chivvy you, dear. Time to get into your cossy and have your slap done.’

  ‘Yes, of course, darling. Must just see to Cocky. The little darling’s in his little basket in the back of the car, and he does so hate his little basket.’

  ‘Of course,’ sympathised Mort, whose pressure was always discreet, and who knew that Aurelia wouldn’t settle until she had settled the dog. He followed her to the car, in case she needed any help with her darling.

  George Birkitt, standing beside Charles, was less sympathetic. ‘Bloody dog. I thought she’d have left it behind. This whole bloody production seems to revolve round that pooch.’

  ‘Doesn’t do much harm,’ said Charles mildly.

  ‘Huh. It offends me. I wonder if they make mousetraps big enough,’ George Birkitt mused.

  Charles chuckled, but when he looked at his fellow-actor, there was no smile on the other’s face.

  Cocky was released from his wicker prison and celebrated his freedom by leaping around everyone’s legs, yapping. ‘How is the little love?’ asked Bernard Walton with a great deal of warmth, though, shrewdly, he kept his distance.

  ‘Ah, he’s not a very well boy. The nasty old vet says he’s not a well boy.’

  ‘Good,’ murmured George Birkitt. ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.’

  ‘Come on, boofle,’ urged Mort Verdon tactfully. ‘I think we’d better get changed for the filming.’

  ‘Of course, darling. Now where are the dressing rooms?’

  ‘It’s just caravans, I’m afraid, dear.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She spoke the word coolly, without real disapproval, but Bernard Walton saw another opportunity to demonstrate his magnanimity. ‘Dob darling, come and change in the house. Honestly, I hate to think of you cramped in some awful caravan, while the house is just here. Come on, love, you can go into the guest room where you stayed last time you were down. Barton, you come along, old boy.’

  And, before anyone could remonstrate, Bernard Walton led the royal pair into the house, with a rabble of commoners, dressers and make-up girls trailing behind.

  ‘Make you bloody sick,’ said George Birkitt savagely. ‘Turning up bloody late, disrupting everything, no apologies. I just don’t think it’s professional.’

  Charles shrugged. ‘I think it’s remarkable she gets here at all, at her age. Particularly with dear old Barton Rivers driving.’

  But George Birkitt was not mollified. ‘What I object to is the fact that I got up at six to get to W.E.T. for my make-up call, came in that bloody coach with everyone else, and she has the nerve to just roll up about ten o’clock, and of course she isn’t in make-up, so everything’s behind. And no one ticks her off or anything, everything just bloody stops and we all bow and scrape and grin inanely for a quarter of an hour until her ladyship allows us to get on with our work. I mean, you know I’m the last person to make a fuss, but I do think somebody ought to say something. Peter, or Scott. God, how I hate all this star business.’

  ‘Oh, come on. She’s an old lady. Deserves a few allowances.’

  But George Birkitt wasn’t listening. ‘I think, for the next day’s filming, I’ll drive myself down.’

  The filming started, and made its usual, infinitesimally slow progress. Once again Charles realised why film stars were paid so much. If they coul
d stand the constant repetition, the constant disruption, the tiny daily advance, then they earned every penny. For him, working in film had all the appeal of building a ten-foot model of the World Trade Centre out of match sticks.

  He was fortunate, or not, according to how you looked at it, to get his scenes out of the way early on. Under Scott Newton’s perfectionist direction, they only spent about an hour and a half on Reg the barman chasing Colonel Strutter the twenty yards from the privet hedge to the house. Another day, in another location, they would have to film the beginning of the chase, the segment from the golf clubhouse to the privet hedge. (Because the clubhouse adjacent to Bernard’s house was in the wrong style for the decor of the studio set already built, they were doing that sequence at a different club.)

  Charles was told that an hour and a half for thirty seconds of film without written dialogue was not bad going, though to him it seemed very slow. It meant that by twelve o’clock he had discharged his obligations for the day, and was in theory free to leave. On the other hand, he was a long way from a station, and no one seemed likely to be driving anywhere until the day’s filming was over. So he might as well stay around until the coach returned.

  He didn’t really mind. He had noticed that there were some crates of wine in the location caterers’ minibus. He felt relatively content.

  The only thing that made him feel less than completely content were the trousers that Wardrobe had reckoned to be right for Reg the barman. Charles liked trousers better the longer he wore them. His two main pairs had a combined age of twenty-one years and now he never noticed that he had them on. The ones Wardrobe had chosen for the rare, probably never-to-be-repeated appearance of a barman’s bottom half, felt stiff, tickly and alien.

  At twelve-thirty sharp they all broke for lunch. (The Union rules were no less closely observed because they were on location. Indeed, over the few days Charles had been involved with The Strutters series, he had noticed an even greater consciousness of Union rules. Maybe this was another symptom of the approaching industrial trouble which George Birkitt had forecast at the time of the pilot.) Bernard Walton was in no way inconvenienced by the arrangements, though it appeared that he had swept Aurelia Howarth and Barton Rivers off for a private lunch in the house. The location caterers opened up their double-decker bus to reveal rows of tables and chairs, and served a substantial meal of truffled pork pâté, cold duck with a wide variety of salads, and fresh strawberries (not cheaply available in May), washed down with a choice of, or, if you felt like it, a mixture of, red and white wines.

  Since he hadn’t been involved in the recent filming, Charles was early in the queue and sat down alone with his loaded plate and a large glass of red wine. Two of the men whose only function was to wear lumberjack checked shirts, and therefore hadn’t been involved in the filming at all, sat down opposite and, oblivious, proceeded to discuss their profession.

  ‘You reckon he’ll overrun?’ asked the older one.

  ‘Don’t know. He seems to be more or less up to schedule.’

  The other one grimaced. ‘Might pass the word round to the lads to cool it a bit, or we won’t get into the overtime.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Incidentally, I need a flyer off of you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, do own up. You come in my car with Rog and Bill, we’re all going to claim the first-class rail and taxi link, I got to get a cut for depreciation on my motor.’

  ‘Have Rog and Bill paid up?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay then. There you are.’

  ‘You on this filming for the Wragg and Bowen thing next week?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Reckon we’re on to a flier there.’

  ‘What, you mean we’ll have to stay overnight?’

  ‘No, no, sonny. The location’s only an hour and a half down the motorway. No, we only claim the overnights, don’t do them.’

  ‘Sure.’ A pause over the truffled pâté. ‘You reckon it’s all all right today?’

  ‘Filming? Yeah, okay, I reckon. Mind you, I’m just waiting for him to do a shot that’s got one of the greens of the golf course in it.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed, son? They’ve got the sprinklers on.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Oh, come on, where was you brought up? If you got running water in the shot, then you got to have a plumber on the set, haven’t you. Specialist work, son. Need a fully paid-up plumber when you’re using sprinklers.’

  ‘Didn’t know that.’

  ‘You got a lot to learn, son. Have a word with Rog, he’ll fill you in about your rights.’

  ‘I must do that. Oh well, cheers.’

  They raised their glasses and drank. The older one grimaced at the taste. ‘’Ere, I don’t reckon this lot’s château-bottled. Might have a word to Rog about that, and all.’

  The arrival of George Birkitt beside him prevented Charles from concentrating further on this illuminating conversation. Colonel Strutter’s mood had not improved.

  ‘Did you see that? Bloody Bernard Walton’s taken bloody Aurelia and her lunatic husband off to lunch.’

  ‘They’ve known each other a long time.’

  ‘Huh. Well, I don’t think there should be any discrimination of that sort. We’re all of us actors, for God’s sake, neither more nor less.’ He took a mouthful of pate. ‘And notice I wasn’t invited to the private lunchipoos.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the food’s not bad here.’ He reached out to fill his glass a third time from the bottle of red wine.

  ‘Not too much of that, Charles. Got to work this afternoon.’

  ‘You have, George. I haven’t. I’m finished.’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, Charles, do watch it in future. I’ve got a lot of scenes with you in this series, and I’ve got enough to do without worrying whether you’re going to be sober enough to remember the lines.’

  ‘I’ll be very careful,’ said Charles, mock humility masking his annoyance.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Mind you, though, George, I am one of those actors who has always been said to be B.W.P.’

  ‘B.W.P.?’

  ‘Better when pissed.’

  The location caterers had no sense of economy. W.E.T. was paying, so they didn’t mind the half-finished plates left by technicians who had overestimated their capacity. They seemed content to scrape half-full terrines into their rubbish bins. And they had no objection at all to Charles Paris appropriating a bottle of red wine to see him through the afternoon. (In fact, when he offered to pay them for it, they looked at him as if he were the first of some newly hatched species hitherto unseen on this planet.)

  So, since it was a nice sunny day, and since Bernard Walton’s garden was a very pleasant place to loll in, Charles spent a pleasant afternoon lolling. Occasionally he would stroll back to the filming to show a token interest, but nothing ever seemed to be happening. They were always waiting. Waiting for the sun to emerge from behind a cloud. Waiting for an aeroplane to pass, so that its sound wouldn’t affect the recording. Waiting, on one occasion as Charles passed, for Debbi Hartley to complete a costume change.

  This had clearly been taking some time. The men whose function it was to wear lumberjack checked shirts were looking at their watches and smiling, as the odds on overtime shortened. Scott Newton and Peter Lipscombe, who had appeared at some point during the day to see that everything was okay, were looking extremely frustrated. At last the director could contain himself no longer. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ he cried. ‘What the hell is she changing into?’

  ‘An actress?’ Mort Verdon asked, almost inaudibly.

  Once, just for a change of scene, Charles wandered down the steep zigzag of the drive towards the main road. He had it vaguely in his mind to walk along by the river. An interest in fishing, which he had not recently indulged, drew him to rivers. But when he got to the bottom, he saw that the Thames was a good deal further away than it had looke
d. There was a two-mile stretch of fields to traverse, so he turned round and started back up the drive.

  It really was steep. It made him realise, gloomily, just how out of condition he was. Not enough exercise, too much booze. He knew he should take more of the first and less of the second, but something stubborn within him resisted the notion. It made him think of Frances. That was the sort of advice Frances would give him. She was nearly always right. That was what at times annoyed him about her and made him, perversely, turn against her advice.

  He must ring her, though.

  Half-way up the drive he felt puffed and sat on the wall for a moment by one of the tall flower-filled urns. He leant his back against it, but it wobbled, so he sat upright and looked over the deep green to the Thames.

  Must start fishing again, he thought. Must start fishing, and must see Frances. In some way, the two intentions seemed related. Could it be that both of them offered the prospect of a kind of peace?

  The day’s filming finished in time. At twenty past five, Scott Newton said the magic words, ‘It’s a wrap,’ and it was all over. The director looked buoyantly confident. The men in lumberjack checked shirts looked disgruntled for a moment, and then started dismantling everything with a speed and efficiency that hadn’t been approached during the day. There were fixed payments for their tidying-up time, so there was no point in hanging about.

  Everyone was now in a hurry to be off. The actors made for the coach. They still had ahead of them the tedious business of returning to the W.E.T. dressing rooms where their day clothes were. Aurelia Howarth, to the annoyance of Wardrobe, said that she and Cocky were tired and so she’d go home in her frock and bring it back the next day. Barton Rivers appeared, white-gloved and grinning, to squire her to the Bentley. He shook everyone’s hands and urged everyone ghoulishly to play up, play up, and play the game.