by Amanda Coe
‘Come on!’
Pauline grabbed Gemma’s school dress and pulled her past the gate. Gemma ran, docile. She wasn’t as fast as Pauline, and tried to ask what was happening. Pauline tugged her for a good way across the playing field, until she could see that Mrs Maclaren wasn’t going to continue the chase. The teacher was waving her arms a few feet beyond the gate, the stupid bitch.
‘Can I come to your house?’ she asked Gemma.
‘You what?’
‘I can’t go home ’cos me mam’s poorly and she says I’m not allowed to stay hanging round town.’
Gemma cast a look back at stringy Mrs Maclaren, who was retreating into the school.
‘Why were you running? What did you do?’
‘She started chasing me – I didn’t do owt. I reckon she’s turned, you know, like what your dad’s girlfriend did at your house.’
Pauline rolled her eyeballs and lurched, knock-kneed and zombified. Gemma almost giggled, swerved away so she couldn’t get her.
‘So can I come then?’
‘I’m not allowed,’ said Gemma. ‘I’ve got to meet me mum at her salon.’
‘I’ll come with you then.’
Gemma looked horrified. ‘You can’t. I’ll get done.’
‘I meant I’ll come into town with you, spaz.’
She could see Gemma couldn’t think of an excuse. It was a free country, anyway.
‘He’s not me dad,’ Gemma said, as they headed for the subway where the perv lurked. ‘When you said my dad’s girlfriend. He isn’t my dad.’
They didn’t say much else to each other, but Pauline was content with the two of them together, side by side, as long as it lasted. She didn’t know what Gemma had meant by a salon, so it was a surprise when they stopped outside a hairdresser’s and Gemma said it was her mum’s work. A customer was coming out as they stood by the front, which was brown glass with cartoony pictures stuck against the window of women with hairdos. Before the door shut again, Pauline inhaled an acrid tang. The customer looked nothing like the vast-eyed women in the pictures, although her hair did, exactly.
‘You’d better go, I’ll get done.’
Gemma hustled her out of sight of the window, towards the men’s clothes shop next door.
‘I’ll get done!’
She left her there and went inside the salon, releasing another waft of cooked hair. Pauline edged round and peeped, to see Gemma marching through the reception and past the waiting women there, towards the back, which was divided from the front by a wrought-iron screen that allowed incoherent glimpses of basins and driers and bits of Gemma with bits of her mum, reflected in bits of mirror. Pauline sank down and sat on the pavement, her back against the window of the men’s outfitters. Dreamily, she scratched at her knickers, where she itched. She decided to wait, so she could talk to Gemma when she got out. It was another warm day.
Pauline absorbed herself for a while smearing pictures into the glass of the men’s shop window. The lower section where she was sitting was painted black from the inside. As she finessed a knob and balls, the owner hammered on the glass and told her to clear off. So, for a while, she made slow circuits of the precinct. A pub, a haberdasher’s, some kind of office business you couldn’t see into, a bakery. She realized she was hungry. Staring at the uniform rows of long doughnuts piped with cream and a single scab of garish jam, she saw herself reflected. Her own hair was monstrous. Pauline had thought at home of taking the scissors to it, but it belonged to Joanne, the transformation of the peroxide, and as long as it stayed her body possessed something of her mother, even if her true ugliness advanced every day with the dark regrowth. One of these days, she saw, catching herself in the bakery window, her real hair would be longer than the white bits. By that time Joanne might be back.
She nicked a doughnut. It was a simple matter of waiting until the woman at the counter was talking to a customer, then leaning in from the open door and plucking one from the display. Pauline didn’t run off, because experience taught her that the running was often what alerted them that you’d nicked something. Licking a channel through the cream, it occurred to her that she could offer the doughnut to Gemma, who loved sweet stuff. Then she remembered that she’d already given her the purse thing that day, and allowed herself to eat it, taking her time.
Lolled against a wall, she was still scavenging sugar from her chin and fingers when Gemma finally left the salon with her mum. It took a second for Pauline to recognize the mum because her hair was a different colour from when she’d last seen her at school. Today it was a dense brown. She had Gemma by the hand and was giving her a talking to of some kind, tugging Gemma back towards her now and again as though she was trying to escape, which she wasn’t. Gemma’s face held the rebuke. She’d got a comic in the hand her mum wasn’t hanging on to.
‘What are you looking at?’
Pauline was amazed. Gemma’s mum was staring straight at her, savage.
‘I’ve seen you hanging about – what do you want, eh?’
Ordinarily, Pauline would have told her to fuck off. As it was, she and Gemma stared at each other, locked in bewilderment.
‘I – I go to school with her.’
‘She does, Mum.’
Gemma dropped her comic and had to pick it up. Her mum had a look entirely familiar to Pauline from Joanne – it meant free-roaming rage that had just found an outlet.
‘What’s your name, eh?’
‘Pauline.’
‘Pauline what?’
‘Pauline Bright,’ offered Gemma, cravenly.
‘What, from that lot down Clay Lane?’
She didn’t need a response. Gemma’s mum pulled Gemma’s arm like she was cracking a whip.
‘I don’t want you hanging round her!’
‘I’m not, Mum, honest!’
‘And you, leave her alone from now on or I’ll get the police on to you!’
‘I wasn’t doing owt!’
The habitual phrase leaped from Pauline with a new meaning. Injustice seared a blade of tears in her throat.
‘I know you’ve been fighting – I sent a letter to the school! So stay away! I’m warning you. Scruffy little beggar.’
The woman’s face was ugly beneath her make-up, rearing towards her. Pauline spat. Then she ran.
‘I wasn’t doing owt, you fucking bitch!’
She stopped running when she couldn’t breathe easily any more. She didn’t want to go home, so she took a long loop back to the bus station and watched the buses arrive and depart, the people getting on and off, until the short night darkened. She hadn’t even done owt either, except try to be nice. She fucking hated Gemma’s mum, the fucking bitch.
Call sheet: ‘That Summer’
July 3rd 1975.
Director: Michael Keys
DOP: Anthony Williams, BSC.
First AD: Derek Powell.
2.00 p.m. call.
CAST: John Reed [PC MERCHANT], Anne Fortune
[MARY], TBC [LITTLE BROTHER], Vera Wyngate
[WOMAN IN CAR].
LOCATION: Moxton Rd, Carr Hill, Doncaster.
Scenes 80, 83.
80. EXT. RESIDENTIAL ST. DAY.
PC MERCHANT arrives to break the news to JUNE’s mother and father.
83. EXT/INT. RESIDENTIAL ST. DAY.
WOMAN IN CAR sees PC MERCHANT leave JUNE’s house.
Today was Vera’s swanswong. When she’d been sent the script, she’d had pages more, including a court scene, but it had all been cut. Since she got paid the same fee, she really didn’t mind, although actually it was always nice to work – not just to have a job, but to turn up and have a natter and get to know the lie of the land. Of course that was clear the moment you set foot on set; whether it was a happy crew, whether there was a star or another cast member creating intrigue and unhappiness with the director (usually, in her experience, and God knows she’d done this herself in her time, because they felt they were being ignored), whether there were two stars jost
ling for supremacy or creating some magic because they were either at it or so desperate to be that the thwarted energy crackled its way into the can. All these things and a million others were apparent in a couple of hours, but none made a blind bit of difference to how good a film was. A happy set was absolutely no guarantee of a good film. One of the most enjoyable experiences of Vera’s career had been on a heated biopic of Edward Elgar called Hidden Rhapsody, which had turned out a tortured stinker despite incontinent daily giggles. Of course the script had never been in its favour – come to think of it, most of the giggles had been triggered by the lines they had to say.
She couldn’t really tell whether this one was any good, script-wise. It was sparse, as seemed the fashion these days, and the story was a little grim for Vera’s taste. Personally, she liked a love story. But the atmosphere on set, beyond the industrious concentration you took for granted as men and women dedicated themselves to sorting out the myriad problems they specialized in (floor cables, a squeaking door, a shiny chin), was uncharacteristically hard to discern. Make-up were always the first port of call for cast intrigue, but that afternoon, Vera could get very little out of them as they drabbed her down. It wasn’t that they weren’t forthcoming. There just seemed, disappointingly, little to tell.
‘Mr Bogarde’s a lovely man. Very professional,’ the girl observed, sponging pancake on to Vera’s jawline with an even roll of the wrist.
‘Hiya!’
The friendliness in the voice was toffee-apple sweet and just as brittle. The mother, of course, smart as paint as usual, ciggie on.
‘Hello, darling.’
One had to be friendly. One was, in the end, friendly. And surely if there was gossip, this woman, having the least to do, might be the source of it.
‘Ooh, mind if I take the weight off?’
Yvonne? Julie, was it? No, that was the make-up girl – perched on the vacant chair between Vera and the actor playing PC Plod.
‘You all right, Katrina?’
Katrina. Katrina pulled a face into the mirror, and for the first time Vera caught a glimpse of the daughter behind the slap. Maybe that’s why she wore so much make-up, to cement the mobility in her features that would have made her part of a joke.
‘All go, as per. Costume tests. Don’t know why they can’t do them at the hotel, but there you are. His Nibs wants to have a look.’
This explained why Katrina and the girl were on the set when they weren’t on the call sheet. Of course the business of filming was just the tip of a vast iceberg of other business concerning filming. Don’t think everyone’s looking at you, as her own mother used to say.
‘That’s a nice colour.’ The girl in charge of Vera nodded at Katrina’s nails, which were lacquered cinnamon brown. Katrina splayed her fingers critically.
‘I’m not sure, me. Did it in a rush.’
‘Ooh, reminds me, you’ve not got any on, have you, love?’
Vera waved her naked hands at the mirror. She knew better. Woman In Car wasn’t the manicure type, poor old drudge. The girl caught her left hand, scanned her nails just to be sure.
‘Haven’t you got nice hands,’ she said. Vera did, as a matter of fact, but it was, after all, the most meaningless of compliments, even to a woman her age. Although wasn’t it dear Viv Leigh who had been told early in her career that her hands were too big, and so had slogged to find ways of gesturing on stage to disguise the fact? They must have been like absolute shovels for anyone to notice, really. Vera suspected malice on the part of the producer who had made this observation, wresting back power from all that beauty. She knew the type. Darling Hugh’s dad had been a prime example – it might even have been him who had given Viv the complex.
‘Do you know, darling Viv Leigh was told—’
But Katrina had started at the same time as her, leaning in with the promise of scandal. Vera aborted her own anecdote.
‘Anyway, girls, big news.’
She cast a melodramatic look at PC Plod, on the other side of her. He had his eyes shut.
‘We’ve had a chat with the American producer.’
The second girl funnelled her mouth. Lallie’s face reappeared beneath Katrina’s mask of make-up, pantomiming excitement.
‘They want her to go over. Do this film.’
‘What film?’ asked Vera’s girl.
‘It’s from a book. The Littlest Princess. Lead part. I can’t believe it, me.’
Katrina and both girls jiggled in unified excitement. Vera smiled.
‘I mean, they’ll do screen tests and that. Fly us over. I’ve never been to America.’
‘You won’t want to come back!’
‘Lallie won’t. She’s mad about anything American, her. She’s heard about this ice cream, what is it – thirty flavours or something.’
But Katrina was in too good a mood to pursue the line of disparagement.
‘What about her TV show?’
‘Oh well, now you’re asking. It’s early days, isn’t it? The agent’ll sort it out.’
Vera could see that any American mess of pottage would buy Lallie’s English career as far as the mother was concerned. And who was to say she was wrong about that? She herself, fresh from her first film (Small Talk), had once had that prospect spread before her. It had lasted all of a week, and had coincided with her being squired around town by a rather dishy Yank producer who was raising finance for a Roman epic. What was glorious was that she would have gone to bed with him anyway – only American men and Scandinavians had those chests – so when he started talking about plane tickets and test scenes and how good she’d look in a toga, it was pure gravy. It had all evaporated, of course. Within weeks, he’d flown back to the States and forgotten her. But the excitement of thinking, age twenty, that all of that was going to be hers had been like nothing else.
‘She’ll go down a bomb,’ said Vera. ‘Americans eat up talent. Is it the woman you’ve been talking to? Quentin?’
The girls sniggered. ‘Quentin.’
Vera’s girl stopped dabbing.
‘She doesn’t wear a bra!’
‘It’s all the rage, isn’t it?’ said Vera. ‘Maybe she’s a women’s libber.’
‘I couldn’t go without a bra, me,’ said Katrina, who was small-breasted. ‘Wouldn’t feel right.’
She cast another look. The sleeping policeman continued comatose. Everyone had forgotten there was a man in the room.
‘Talking of …’ Katrina addressed Vera’s make-up girl. ‘Do you think our Lallie needs a bit of help?’ She skimmed her chest.
‘Is she developing?’
Katrina nodded as though she’d just asked for sympathy.
‘Just starting.’
‘Bless her.’
‘It doesn’t notice,’ said the second girl. ‘What do wardrobe say?’
‘They put her in something quite tight, you know, a T-shirt, and you can really see.’
‘Bless her.’
‘Oh God, talking of, I’d best get back.’
Katrina looked for somewhere to put out her cigarette. The make-up girl reached over Vera and gave her an ashtray.
‘It’s just –’ Katrina dragoned smoke through her nostrils as she mashed the butt – ‘I thought, best to get it sorted out now before the Yanks have a proper look at her, you know?’
She mimicked squashing her own breasts down, giggling.
‘She needs to be eleven.’
The girls laughed. Katrina unfolded herself from the chair, picked up her handbag. With a reorganizing glance back at the mirror, correcting a smudge of eyeliner, she was gone.
‘Bless her. How old is she then?’ asked Vera’s girl.
‘Forty-two,’ said Vera.
The other girl, Julie, tapped excess powder from her brush, with a cautionary look down at the inert policeman. ‘I think she’s thirteen, or coming up to it,’ she mouthed.
Vera wasn’t surprised. She herself was three, or was it four years younger than that, when she’d star
ted out. They’d shaved off a year at the Charm School, as was standard, and along the way she’d dropped a few more. No doubt, once she was in sight of sixty, she might hover in the late fifties for a bit. Age range early forties to early fifties, as her agent would doggedly maintain.
Released from make-up and costume, Vera settled herself with a cup of tea and a ciggie. Her scene wasn’t scheduled until the end of the day. It was supposed to come after the scene where PC Merchant – he had revived suspiciously quickly once Katrina had gone – delivered the news to the girl’s mother. But despite appearing as a single scene on the call sheet, he actually delivered the news in close-up, medium and long shots, with his car pulling up, with the mother opening the door, with the little brother noticing the car from inside the house and calling out ‘Mum’, so there were many permutations of lights to set and cables to lay.
It was a lovely day, and she had a chair and a paper, although she’d nearly finished the crossword. Happily, she knew Anne Fortune, the actress playing the mother. Like her, Anne had descended from more glamorous roles, although in truth she’d never been in Vera’s league, looks-wise, so as the years piled on she’d always got more work, particularly as she was legitimately northern and hadn’t erased her accent. Since it was Anne’s first day on set, she looked to Vera for names and faces, the basic drill.
‘Who’s that?’
It was the American girl, Quentin, arriving with Hugh. Anne hooted at the name, although she was careful not to let Quentin see once she knew she was from the studio. Vera and Anne watched the two of them make their way through the crew, Hugh holding the girl’s elbow and dipping to breathe names as she deployed those marvellous teeth. She really did wear the most extraordinary clothes. The younger generation had their own way, and Vera lived close enough to the King’s Road to see most of it, but surely if you were a professional woman who expected to command respect you needed to take that into account? Quentin’s glossy hair slithered over bare brown shoulders, while her braless nipples, nuzzling the thin stuff of her blouse, stirred a wake of wistful male glances as she and Hugh advanced. Delicious, of course. Vera liked her, actually. Quentin spoke to her as though she mattered. And she emanated such a lot of anxious energy; it was hard not to respond and soothe, even knowing that Quentin retained the power of life and death, professionally speaking.