by Amanda Coe
Mrs Bream gets up and comes over.
‘Miss, Pauline Bright stole a sausage, Miss.’
Pauline is chewing furiously. Mrs Bream looks at her.
‘I never, Miss,’ Pauline protests, bits of sausage meat tumbling from her mouth.
‘And she called me a rude name, Miss.’
Sighing, Mrs Bream tells Pauline to come and sit next to her, guiding her softly by the arm as though she’s giving her a treat, which she is in a way, because beautiful Mrs Bream, with her perfect, bell-like pageboy and trendy dresses, is one of the most-loved teachers in the school. I feel stung, and even more so when Mrs Bream says, in the gentlest way possible, ‘You know, Gemma, it’s really best not to tell tales, lovey.’
Pauline’s smile is triumphant as she takes her place next to Mrs Bream. And maybe because of this small victory, or because of the bond of the film she’s ended for me, I let her play with me when we’re released into the playground. Christina objects, but I ignore her, and Pauline and I play the skeleton lady together until the bell rings.
35. EXT. SCRUBLAND. DAY.
A car pulls up at the edge of the track. COLIN is startled and backs away from JUNE as a middle-aged WOMAN, dowdy and suspicious, rolls down the window. Her HUSBAND is at the wheel, picnic rug and basket visible on the back seat.
WOMAN
[to JUNE] Everything all right, love?
JUNE
I’m fine. Aren’t I, Dad?
COLIN registers surprise at her invention. The WOMAN sees it.
JUNE
Me dad and me had come for a picnic but he was telling me off because I forgot to bring the sandwiches.
WOMAN
Can we give you a lift?
COLIN
You’re all right.
The car drives off. JUNE shoots COLIN a look.
Filming in cars was always a pain in the bee-oh-tee-tee you know what. Given the schedule, Vera couldn’t see why they didn’t alter the scene so that she and Douglas Alton, who was playing her husband, were going for a country walk instead. Douglas agreed with her, although both of them were far too professional to do more than comment within ten feet of the director as he conferred with Tony about the first set-up of the day. The long shot of the car driving along and stopping would be picked up later with underpaid doubles standing in for her and Douglas, and they were to begin instead with a two shot of her rolling down the window to talk to June, with Douglas in the driver’s seat, slightly to the left of her in the frame.
‘Could have done it with a back projection down at Elstree and kept our feet dry, love,’ Dougie muttered as Tony agonized over lens sizes.
Vera had known Dougie for years. When Mike had talked through the scene with them, she had been unsurprised to hear him suggest that he put the car into gear without actually driving away at the end. Dougie was the laziest actor in England. The decline this film marked into his first non-speaking part perfectly suited his inclination to do as little as possible. She herself had once witnessed him argue that the character he was playing was far too patrician to pour himself a drink, insisting that he should stay in his chair and let a servant do it for him instead. In that case, he had won. Over the car, Mike prevailed. Well, they would see. Dougie’s idleness apart, when all the other elements had run smoothly in the scene, Sod’s law just begged for the engine to stall, killing the take.
After another half an hour to set up and run through, they were ready to begin. The AD, nervous, nasal Derek, delivered Dirk and Lallie’s lines, nervously and nasally. Since the shot was actually from Colin and June’s point of view, the two leads didn’t appear in it, and rather than get his star actors to stand out of sight and mouth the lines, Mike preferred to keep them in their caravans, out of the cold. Besides which, as he had confided to Vera over an early cigarette at the catering van, it was merry hell trying to arrange the schedule around the strictly limited hours which Lallie, as a minor, was legally allowed to work. Even with her mother as chaperone, and more willing to bend the rules than the usual stage-school harridans, they had to save every minute they could.
To that end, any shot which didn’t require Lallie’s face was in fact a shot of Lallie’s double, a stunted, bewigged twenty-five-year-old called Sue, to whom access was unrestricted in more than merely the professional sense. Vera could see her by the sound equipment, joking with the grip. She wore an adult bomber jacket which made the child’s costume beneath seem provocative. Her drab hair was coiled up to accommodate the wig which sat on the hair woman’s waiting hand, being brushed out by her assistant. As Vera watched, Sue squeezed the grip’s bum. Gripped the grip. She couldn’t share this with Dougie, who would have appreciated it, as Derek was shrieking, ‘Turn over!’, and they were seconds away from a take.
With the car engine supposedly idling, but to be added in the dub, Vera had to roll down the window, suspiciously eye the character of Colin, played by the absent Dirk Bogarde, but fictitiously standing to the right of the camera, then drop her eyes to the height of June, aka Lallie, also missing but represented by a strip of tape on the chest of Derek’s jumper, and deliver the line, ‘Everything all right, love?’ Derek responded with Lallie/June’s ‘I’m fine. Aren’t I, Dad?’, and Vera had to catch Dirk/Colin’s non-existent little flash of surprise at the child’s resourceful pretence that they were father and daughter. Then came her line, ‘Can we give you a lift?’ and Colin’s reply before Dougie drove them away, out of the frame.
It was a couple of takes before the eye lines were sorted out, with the piece of tape meant for Lallie positioned and repos itioned on Derek’s chest, then she fluffed by changing her line to ‘You all right, love?’ and was admonished by the script girl (always a girl, although well into her forties), then for three takes, with eye lines and script lines perfect, she was encouraged by Mike to ‘take it down’, until on the seventh take, when Vera felt that she had taken it down as far as was possible, short of just thinking the scene instead of performing it, a plane flew over.
‘Shit!’ shouted Mike.
‘Go again!’ shouted Derek, remorselessly.
During the eighth take, Tony announced a slight camera shake so they cut and went to take nine. Take nine was a print. Nine takes wasn’t bad, particularly given the car. Everyone swarmed in for the next set-up and Vera moved off for a fag.
Vera felt pleased with herself. She was, after all, a pro. She watched Sue-the-double, her Lallie wig now in place and jacket off, playfully massage the bicep of the boy who had been helping the boom operator. Shameless.
‘Fuck me, darling, did I win medals at Rada so I could work as a cunting chauffeur?’ moaned Dougie recreationally, as they wandered off for their celebratory cigarette.
‘Couldn’t cadge a fag, could I? I’ve run out.’
With a start, Vera realized Sue-the-double, her wig off, was grinning at her from the other side of the horse-chestnut under which she and Dougie stood to smoke. The ground beneath it already looked like a pub ashtray, after a single day of shooting. Vera handed the girl a cigarette and readjusted her stare. She could see now that it was the real Lallie cavorting with the muscle boy over by the lights, not her adult counterpart. She could see too that it was just innocent horseplay, as Lallie jumped at him and demanded a piggyback. Vera was too vain to wear her glasses, except for a role.
After another forty minutes or so (Dougie had some professionally bitter stories to impart about a telly he’d done recently), they moved on to cover the next part of the scene, for which Dirk and Lallie were required. The make-up department had applied their best efforts to dimming Dirk’s glamour in order to make him a convincing kiddie fiddler, although in Vera’s opinion there was a theatrical abundance to the fake dandruff scattered on the greasy shoulders of his windcheater, and not much could be done to alter the confident, rather camp individuality of his stance. Although their paths hadn’t exactly crossed at Rank but had run parallel, in that they had appeared in many of the same films without actually sh
aring many scenes or even remotely similar billing, their acquaintance had never sparked into friendship, not even at the bantering level she shared with Dougie. Such was the polite remoteness of Dirk’s conversation whenever they met that Vera always felt compelled to reintroduce herself, hoping each time to fix herself in his memory. It never worked. Dirk was forever the austere but devastating senior prefect and Vera the ink-stained inhabitant of a remedial stream. Today had been no exception.
Vera watched the kid’s mother – what was her name? – detach the child from her game with the forbearing crew member and lead her, skipping at the restraint, to the business end of the set. What it must be like to have all that energy, Vera thought, infinitely accessible. No one had made the offer to replace Vera and Dougie with a couple of strips of gaffer tape. Although to be fair, considered Vera, a kiddie like Lallie probably needed something real to get a bead on, so to speak.
They ran the scene with the four of them. Both Dirk and the girl were word- and note-perfect. Mike raised his eyebrows at Tony and Derek, and adjusted Dirk’s position slightly. They went for a take. As far as Vera could tell, that too seemed perfect, although Mike immediately asked for another one.
‘Can you come in just half a second sooner on Dirk’s line?’ he asked Lallie. Lallie nodded vigorously. She did too – her tone unfaltering and not a fraction of a second out either way. After Derek’s ‘cut’, the miraculous, unique point of concentration distintegrated once more into the myriad activities necessary to set up for another shot.
This time the whole scene was to run in close-up on Dirk, so Lallie was taken away for a brief respite that would presumably contribute to her precious tally of tutored set-time. The adult performers had just re-established themselves under the smoker’s horse-chestnut, when Dirk stopped in ravenous mid-inhalation.
‘Christ,’ he remarked.
Vera turned and saw a dark globule of blood had appeared under one of Dirk’s distinctively snubbed nostrils. It was already distending into a thickish trickle. It looked like make-up, straight out of Hammer – golden syrup and food colouring.
‘Your nose is bleeding,’ she informed him gratuitously.
The second nostril began to bleed. After anxious consultations and the leading of Dirk to his caravan with his head tilted back at a forty-five-degree angle, Lallie was re-summoned for what Mike intended as some pick-up shots. Vera didn’t mind. Her own time was paid for, after all. But when Mike told Lallie what he wanted from her, the kid asked him, politely enough, if it wouldn’t make sense for her to run the whole scene again, shooting it on her.
‘Wouldn’t you rather wait until Dirk can do it with you, darling?’ Mike asked solicitously. Well, as solicitously as he could, given that Lallie’s suggestion would be the best use of everyone’s time.
Lallie shrugged.
‘I’m not bothered,’ she told him. ‘He—’ she gestured to Derek – ‘can give me the mark so the sight-lines aren’t off.’
So that’s what she did. She played the whole scene to a piece of tape on Derek’s forehead (he was slightly shorter than Dirk). Mike ordered two takes, but Vera, watching out of shot, could tell that he’d be happy to print the first, if he had any sense.
WOMAN
[to JUNE] Everything all right, love?
JUNE
I’m fine. Aren’t I, Dad?
COLIN registers surprise at her invention. The woman sees it.
JUNE
Me dad and me had come for a picnic but he was telling me off because I forgot to bring the sandwiches.
WOMAN
Can we give you a lift?
COLIN
You’re all right.
The car drives off. JUNE shoots COLIN a look.
The look that Lallie gave Derek’s forehead was complicit, seductive and yet terribly, painfully innocent. A flick of the eyes that lasted less than a second. She gets it, thought Vera. She gets the whole thing. Afterwards, she wondered if it really could have been as good as she thought. It was like the momentary triumph of seeing a goal scored at a football match, without the benefit of the action replay. She hoped the editor would see it too, but there were no guarantees. Maybe Mike would decide the look was too knowing, that it was too dangerous to give the story that weight, although the script hinted at it, that the child was that powerful, but ultimately, of course, tragically, only as powerful as a child can be.
Heading back to the caravans, Vera patted Lallie on the shoulder.
‘Good work there,’ she congratulated her. ‘Quite splendid.’
Lallie rolled her eyes and contorted her mouth into a quick Barbra Streisand. ‘Gee, ya really think so?’ she spat in loud, third-hand Brooklynese. Vera walked on ahead. She could admire the talent without admiring the owner. It was almost a given in this business. Just because the kid was a genius, it didn’t mean Vera had to like her.
THERE WAS NO phone at the Brights’ house on Adelaide Road. In cases of particular, often criminal emergency, they used a call box at the end of the street. Letters were neither sent nor received. So there was no warning for Pauline whenever her mother reappeared after one of her mysterious periods of work. Joanne was usually exhausted, and slept for the first couple of days. But once she had revived, she changed the atmosphere of the house as no one else could. Her initial tiredness apart, she had none of the family lassitude, rather a large and angry energy that she dispensed on whoever caught her attention. Until her interest waned, this was very likely to be Pauline.
‘Look at the state of her, Mam,’ complained Joanne, sitting at the table with a fag and a handleless mug of something when Pauline came in from school. Joanne was one of the few people to call Nan anything other than Nan. ‘Come and give your mam a kiss then.’
Pauline trotted over and clamped Joanne in a strangling hug. She couldn’t get on her lap because it was occupied by Cheryl, Pauline’s little sister. Cheryl looked confused but happy. She babbled all the time anyway, as though she couldn’t stop herself talking, but her racket today indicated her pleasure at the reunion with their mother.
Pauline hadn’t seen Joanne for six months at least. It had been so long that she had begun to forget about the previous visit, but as soon as she spoke it was as though it had been days ago.
‘She looks like a fucking gyppo,’ Joanne complained to Nan. ‘Can’t you do summat about her hair?’
Nan sighed. ‘I’ve got enough on my plate without being a bloody hairdresser.’
‘What d’you think you look like, eh?’ Joanne shook Pauline lightly. Pauline said nothing. ‘D’you like looking like a fucking gyppo?’ Pauline still said nothing. Joanne delivered a stabbing tickle under her arms, meant for affection. ‘When I go to’t shop I’ll get some shampoo. Eh? Dirty little bastard you are. You’re that bloody ugly.’
Nan grumbled around the kitchen. The gas supply for the cooker had been disconnected long ago, and a Baby Belling ring with a frayed flex was balanced on top of it. Nan opened the oven, which was full of old newspapers.
‘You haven’t seen my tablets, have you, our Pauline?’
‘No, Nan,’ said Pauline dutifully. Nan took tranquillizers for her teeth. She got Pauline to renew the prescription for her down at the chemist whenever she ran out. Pauline took the tablets herself sometimes, since Nan never counted them. They made you feel better, although they gave you a headache the next day, and if you took more than one, which she had only tried the once, your legs didn’t work properly.
‘I’ll find them for you,’ Pauline offered, and escaped the kitchen.
‘Never lifts a bloody finger when you’re not around,’ she heard Nan say.
‘Thinks I don’t know what the little bugger’s like,’ Joanne retorted fondly.
Pauline found the tablets down by Nan’s rank special chair, which had a perfect imprint of the back of Nan’s head and Nan’s bum worn into it. Gary was in the room watching cartoons with Pauline’s little brother, Craig, as well as Uncle Dave, Uncle Alan, Uncle Dave’s curr
ent girlfriend, Sharon, Sharon’s baby, Christopher, and Sharon’s brother, Keith. Craig tried to start a fight for the pill bottle when she picked it up off the floor, just because she wanted it, but he let go after Pauline kicked him in the face.
Pauline was furtively relieved to find that Joanne had disappeared when she returned to the kitchen, sneaking a couple of tablets into her jumper pocket for herself before she handed them to Nan. Joanne had run out of Coke for her rum and gone for fresh supplies. That was just one of the many remarkable things about her: she always went to the shops herself, instead of sending the kids out like the rest of the family did. When Joanne got back, she’d bought a lot more than the Coke: cans of beer for the uncles and Keith, dandelion and burdock and Tizer for the kids, bags of crisps, a Swiss roll, fags, milk, a bottle of lime shampoo and another plastic bottle which she flourished at Pauline.
‘Get us a towel, gyppo!’ she shouted excitedly. Pauline found one on the floor in Uncle Dave’s room, frayed and stiff with stains. If she ever needed to dry herself she used the candlewick spread that was the only covering on her own bed, shared with Cheryl. But since the taps in the bathroom basin had stopped delivering water, there hadn’t been much need for this.
Back in the kitchen, Joanne made her sit on a chair and draped the towel round her shoulders, wrinkling her nose at the smell.