by Amanda Coe
COLIN
What are you playing at?
TEACHER
I think you’d better leave her alone, don’t you?
She starts to lead JUNE back towards the school, with the other children.
COLIN
June!
The children and TEACHER walk on.
COLIN
June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?
Vera’s appearance wasn’t even scripted – it had come to this. But Mike had decided, at the very end of the third scene, that he’d like a look from her, a connected passer-by, at Colin’s impotent rage, and they’d summoned her from London. Since they had now had to stump up for a third week (her agent always negotiated for a weekly, not a daily rate, commercials apart, bless him), Vera was more than happy to get back into her headscarf and mac and settle down for the day.
It was always strange, leaving a set and coming back, like missing school and having to find your feet again. One of the make-up girls was different; Vera’s favourite had already left to start on a Hammer shooting in Wales. Hugh wasn’t about, and the American girl had gone off to Italy, apparently promising to be back for the wrap party. The remaining familiar make-up girl, Julie, had told Vera that before Quentin left she had approached the grip, whose name Vera had now forgotten, for downers or uppers – pills of some sort. Apparently he’d put her on to the boom operator, as a joke, because the boom (whose name she also couldn’t presently recall) was the steadiest man in the business, as he had to be occupationally, and wouldn’t take so much as an aspirin in case it interfered with his professional capacities.
Vera felt sad on Quentin’s behalf, hearing about all this, but hadn’t she said – if only to herself – that the girl was too heart-on-sleeve? She had probably been on drugs all along. It explained her clothes, for a start.
Vera established herself with her ciggie and cup of tea in a good spot, out of the way of the crew but with a view of the action. The school playing fields were part of a larger public space, the haunt of dog walkers and idlers, and, now that it was the school holidays, children. Some of their classmates were being employed to play rounders with Lallie, and word was bound to get out. But while the shadows were long, the fields remained almost empty.
It was a shame there was no one to natter to; the girl playing the teacher had been talkative in make-up but she was needed now, and Dirk of course couldn’t be relied upon for conversation. Anyway, Mike had buttonholed him and was talking over something to do with the scene, Dirk nodding judiciously. Everyone felt a tiny bit off the leash, Mike included, she thought. His stammer had relaxed, for one thing. The absence of producers may have accounted for the change in atmosphere, or it might just have been the demob-happy rush of the last day.
Lallie’s mother – what was her bloody name? – dragged a chair next to Vera and plonked herself down in it, juggling her own tea and fag with all the ostentation of a music-hall turn.
‘That’s better. You don’t mind, do you?’
Vera smiled warmly and told the woman to be her guest.
‘Can’t believe it, me. Last day.’
Vera agreed that it was impossible to believe. The mother huddled up to her tea, as though it was cold. Perhaps there was the faintest undertow of autumn in the air compared to the previous weeks.
‘Lallie said when I got her up, Mummy, what are we going to do tomorrow? I said, have a lie-in for a start, hen!’
Vera laughed with her, easily. ‘What are you going to be doing next?’
The woman’s face jumped. ‘Now you’re asking.’
‘She’ll be rolling in offers after this. Everyone’s full of how marvellous she is. Anyway, I thought they wanted her in America.’
‘Aye. Well.’ The mother took a furtive drag of her cigarette and leaned into Vera, lowering her voice. ‘That’s what the producer was talking to us about, Quentin …’
It wasn’t that much of a shocker, given the vagaries of the business. Apparently, after Quentin had given the child and her mother some flim-flam about flying them over for screen tests, the mother had forked out for flights herself. Then Quentin had turned a bit elusive, and taken off for Italy before Katrina managed to pin her down about it. Katrina had heard people thought she’d started drinking.
‘You don’t know what’s going on,’ Vera reassured her. ‘Anything could happen. She could lose her job if she’s got a drink problem.’ Unable to resist, she added, ‘I heard it was drugs.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Katrina sizzled her fag end into her last inch of tea. ‘I can’t be bothered with it, to be honest. Our kid’s got a contract with LWT, they want her to start shooting a Christmas special in October. I just thought we could fit it in, since she’s been so mad about the States. I mean, you do it for them, don’t you?’
Vera agreed that you did.
‘We can’t get the money back, for the plane. I asked. Looks like we’ll just go on holiday, like.’
Vera accompanied Katrina’s bleak gaze to where Lallie was running about with her stand-in, both of them dressed in aertex shirts and gym skirts.
‘Won’t get her dad’s ticket back, though. Have to ask me mam to come with us instead.’
Vera saw, as the twin figures swooped and chased, that Lallie was now very slightly taller than the adult pretending to be her.
‘Doesn’t your husband like flying?’
‘Oh, no, he’s fine with flying.’ Katrina toed the polystyrene cup further under her chair. ‘It’s me he’s not keen on.’
74. EXT. SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS. DAY.
JUNE is playing rounders with her school class. COLIN watches.
The rounders match was incidental to Dirk watching in tortured fashion, so they went close in on the girls, pick-up shots really of them running, hitting the ball, calling to each other; Lallie found and then lost among the melee. Mike left it to Tony. And then it was the reverse close on Dirk. During all this, Katrina confided that her husband, Lallie’s dad, liked to put it about a bit. Katrina admitted that she’d gone right off sex after having Lallie, and gave graphic details of her episiotomy scarring. She didn’t feel right, down there. And she knew how squeamish he, Graham, was; he’d told her it would have finished him off to watch her give birth, not that she was asking him to. Anyway, she knew what went on when she was away with Lallie. She put on a brave face, for her. You had to, didn’t you?
75. EXT. SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS. DAY.
JUNE, at one of the rounders posts, spots COLIN. She carries on playing, but from now on she’s aware of him watching her.
Mike wanted a little track laid hugging the rounders pitch, so the camera could mimic Colin’s circling while Lallie ran, post by post, to home. It was always a fiddle, laying tracks, but the ground was flat and the grass negligible, so it was no more than an ordinary fiddle. During this, Lallie came over and asked Katrina for a drink, so Katrina resumed her brave face and Vera got on a bit with the crossword. The stand-in walked the posts so that Tony could assess timings for the camera’s movement along the track. Vera looked up from a bugger of a clue and was surprised by a clutch to her gut of strong feeling for Tony, so intent on getting it right. There was no one quite like him, after all.
Lallie came back from drinking a glass of squash with an orange clown-grin at the edges of her mouth, and had to be taken to make-up to remove it, with Katrina shouting at her. Once the child was back on set, mouth restored, Katrina confided that lately, things with Graham had changed. She’d had wind that there was someone in particular, if you got her drift. No one would blame him for looking elsewhere, Katrina didn’t, it was as much her fault as his, with her away so much for Lallie’s sake; but there was a bit on the side and there was something more serious.
‘If he’s moved her in, that’s that,’ said Katrina. ‘I’m not having it. If the papers get hold of it, it’ll be all over.’
‘Awful,’ Vera agreed.
76. EXT. SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS. DAY.
; The rounders match is dispersing. Children, including JUNE, gather the posts and other equipment. COLIN goes to approach JUNE but the TEACHER [MRS GREAVES] intervenes.
TEACHER
Can I help you?
COLIN
I just wanted a word –
TEACHER:
What about?
COLIN
It’s none of your business –
TEACHER
During school hours it certainly is – do you know this man?
JUNE
No, Miss.
COLIN
June – she’s having you on.
JUNE
I don’t know him, Miss.
COLIN
What are you playing at?
TEACHER
I think you’d better leave her alone, don’t you?
She starts to lead JUNE back towards the school, with the other children.
After a run-through where Mike made a few adjustments, they went quickly into a take. There was a momentum now: everyone could scent the end of the day, the end of the job. On take one, the first AD spotted one of the rounders-playing children looking straight at the camera. He was castigated, and they moved swiftly on to take two.
‘What about you?’ asked Vera. ‘Is there anybody … in London?’
Katrina was taking a cigarette out of her packet. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Who’d want me?’
‘You’re an attractive woman.’ Which she almost certainly would be, if she would just put down the foundation bottle.
‘When would I see a feller?’ asked Katrina, watching Lallie. She was checking her position with the continuity girl, whether she’d been holding the rounders bat in two hands up against her chest as she spoke or dangling it one-handed at the side. Oh, she was a pro, that one.
‘Aye, aye, it’s started,’ said Katrina, eyeing a knot of small girls with their mothers who jigged excitedly at the margins of the action, waiting for autographs. She liked the fans, Vera had noticed; another chance of a chat, perhaps. It was hard not to feel slightly insulted about one’s own listening efforts when she got up to go and talk to them. Katrina told them they’d been lucky to catch Lallie, it being the last day. Big party tonight, then back to London. Yes, lovely thank you. The Barrington. Spoiled us rotten. A real home away from home. All the time, Katrina was assessing when she could extract Lallie from the action and get her to sign the little girls’ bits of paper. She was hushed by Derek as they went for a take. The mums watched, rapt. As soon as ‘cut’ was shouted, Vera heard one of the women point at Dirk and ask, ‘Wasn’t he in those films?’
To Katrina’s annoyance, Mike was firm about going straight on without taking time for autographs.
‘This is the end of the story they’re doing then,’ said the Dirk woman, disappointed.
‘The end of the filming,’ Katrina corrected. ‘They do it all out of order. Does your head in!’
COLIN
June!
The children and TEACHER walk on.
COLIN
June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?
They did Lallie walking away first, so she could knock off for her tutor.
COLIN
June!
Dirk howled, which Mike didn’t go for. He asked for restraint, and the next time it was like a wounded old dog someone had trodden on in its sleep. The concentration moved on to the girl, and her walking away. Too fast. The fans, bored by all the stop-start, had wandered off.
COLIN
June!
She made more of a meal of it, this time. A little laugh with her friends, not too much.
COLIN
June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?
Lallie gave a look back, on the second cry, a taunt and a challenge. Take it down, Mike encouraged, maybe this time just stop and don’t quite turn. Keep rolling. Turn over. The pace was quickening. They had so much to do.
COLIN
June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?
Oh, and that worked perfectly, Vera could see. The decision not to turn, the contempt in that – I’m not even going to turn, you pathetic old bastard. Devastating, it would be, with Dirk’s anguish cut against it. So no wonder he’d do what he was going to, the scene they’d already got in the can. Come with me, little girl … They went one more time, for good luck, but she’d lay money that was the take they used.
Katrina had finally run out of chat. In any case, it was Vera’s turn now, once they’d cleared the shot of clutter. It had taken Mike’s fancy that Dirk/Colin might turn out of his last line to the teacher and there would be Vera/Woman watching him, some distance away, for a single (but Vera hoped quite long) conscience-lancing moment.
‘You see – that point of contact, it’d be nice, I think – you become the audience,’ Mike told her. His stammer hovered, almost landing on the ‘p’ in ‘point’. ’Tis all one, darling, she didn’t say. Put me wherever you like, tell me which face to pull. You’ve got me for the day and you’ve paid for me for the week. As Mike moved away from her, Tony winked, deadpan. Oh, she loved the man.
Derek came to get her into position, breathing his foulness upon her. Wide wide wide, Mike wanted, then bang in on her: the very last shot they had time for. Vera trotted up to the top of the field with Derek, he and Mike semaphoring back and forth to light on the exact place. Once there, Vera could see where Mike had got the idea from. The field formed a natural bowl with her perched on the lip, near the road. As flies to wanton dirty old men and what have you. Derek plodded back and Vera started breathing through her nose again. Poor boy. When would anyone ever tell him?
Vera felt like the outfielder in a game of village cricket. Eventually, she would get the thumbs up and spring into life. But for now they were back crowded round Tony and the camera. Two little girls were passing her. They’d come down from the road, one an absolute urchin with fierce eyes and a thatch of odd dark hair, the other blonde. It was the blonde one who spoke, politely.
‘Excuse me, is Lallie Paluza down there?’
Vera told the girl that she had been but that now Lallie was in one of the trailers parked up by the road, ‘doing lessons’.
‘What kind of lessons?’
Vera explained about tutors, and missing school.
‘It’s the holidays,’ the dark one objected. ‘Ey, there she is!’
She back-handed her friend, pointing to Sue the stand-in, who was having a fag with some of the crew. She still had her wig on, ready for the wide shot. From the distance they were, it was genuinely hard to tell she wasn’t Lallie, although to Vera her demeanour seemed entirely adult. The blonde girl’s eyes were perfect saucers of shock and disapproval.
‘She’s smoking.’
They were already heading off. A funny pair; certainly not sisters, and hard to put them together as friends. They’d soon see for themselves it wasn’t Lallie, if they got close enough before they were chivvied away. Maybe the real thing would appear and make their day.
Vera stood, alone once more, waiting for the sign. When the camera came close enough, she would be all judgement and wisdom, but for now, it was enough just to stand, hands on hips. She watched Tony, the dip of his head, the command of his fingers. Maybe that was why she was alone in her old age: all the men she had felt closest to loving were the ones who were absorbed by something else. She doubted that the men themselves knew this – either that she’d loved them, or the lack of threat her love posed to their greater concerns. Not that it mattered, in the end. Even if you did wear your heart on your sleeve, more often than not it all went to the bad. Like Quentin and Hugh, if she wasn’t mistaken. And look at the girl’s parents. Vera was sure the poor child would work out the lie of the land fairly soon, even if Katrina wasn’t telling her. That was, if she didn’t come across it in the papers first.
IT HADN’T BEEN Pauline’s idea to go and see the stupid fucking filming. She had been stood there, outside Gemma’s house, like so many days since she ha
d found out about her mam, waiting to see her. She had worked out they must be away, which was why she had only been going off and on. But that morning, the curtains were open, and Gemma’s bike was out propped by the garage, so she knew they must be back. There was a sign, as well, on a post hammered into the lawn: ‘For Sale’. Pauline, excited by Gemma’s reappearance, didn’t consider the implications of this. There was no point ringing the doorbell, so she settled herself on the kerb a few houses off and waited. Sure enough, Gemma got sent out to the shop – the milkman must have forgotten to start delivering again. Pauline hid at the mouth of the alley and jumped out at her. Gemma screamed. Good job she wasn’t on the way back from getting the milk or she’d have smashed it. She tried to run off, but Pauline grabbed her arm.