Their Finest Hour and a Half

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Tommy likes you,’ said Cecy, nodding at the passive black bundle on his lap. Ambrose raised a hand to pat it, and then thought better of the gesture.

  ‘He travels with you, does he?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I pop him into his little basket and off we go together, and he’s the most wonderful gauge of character. I’m always suspicious of people who don’t respond to animals – I think there must be a tiny little core of ice at the centre of their soul. Don’t you?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Ambrose, non-committally. ‘And how are your – er – twins?’

  ‘Oh gosh . . .’ She didn’t speak for a while, and when she did her voice was quite light. ‘Such a long, long time ago. No twinnies, I’m afraid, they were born much too early,’ and Ambrose wanted to pull his tongue out by the roots.

  ‘Another toddy?’ she asked.

  He managed, somehow, to nod.

  ‘And then you must tell me all about what’s been happening to poor dear old London Town. I’ve felt quite the deserter, skulking in the provinces. Is it true about the Café de Paris?’

  He found his voice again and led Cecy through the boarded windows and sandbagged foyers of the West End, and he had just moved on to a subject very close and very dear to his heart – viz., the nightmarish difficulty of trying to find a domestic plumber – when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Oh – now that’s sure to be Gus,’ said Cecy. ‘Do come in!’ and a bearded man entered the room, caught sight of Ambrose and leapt back in mock-surprise.

  ‘Egad, milady Cecilia, thou hast a visitor!’

  ‘This is Ambrose Hilliard, Gus.’

  ‘Nay, thou needst not vouchsafe his name, for well I knowst that visage – hath I not seen it oft a-flicker in the darkness, stretched full twenty feet from ear to ear? Greetings sirrah!’ He swept a bow, and Ambrose nodded, coldly; a wag, forsooth. The fellow had played the station-master, but was not quite as old as he had appeared on stage. The paunch had been fake, the thinning hair and beard whitened with chalk.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Cecy, ‘I first met Gus in 1916. I was ASM at Hampstead and he was juve lead, isn’t that right, Gus?’

  ‘And she don’t look a day older, do she, what, I say?’ said Gus, adjusting an invisible quizzing-glass, having leapt inexplicably from Shakespeare to Sheridan.

  ‘And then I walked into the rehearsal room in Ipswich and there he was. He’s been the life and soul, really he has.’

  ‘And this fair lady hath been the queen of all our hearts.’ Gus knelt and took her hand and laid it against his chest.

  ‘And now you’re being most awfully silly,’ said Cecy, looking nonetheless rather pleased. It was a second or two before she detached her hand and resumed knitting. ‘Ambrose is on location with Baker’s Productions.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Instead of standing up, Gus sank back on his haunches and lolled against the leg of Cecy’s chair, his posture self-consciously bohemian, though he lacked the boneless ease of youth. ‘Is it a comedy?’

  ‘Drama.’

  ‘Oh, I thought Baker’s was all slapstick and pies, and fat boys climbing ladders.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Ambrose, lips barely moving.

  ‘No offence, old man,’ said Gus. ‘Now before I forget, Cecy dearest, I just came in to ask if you had any spirit gum.’

  ‘Right out, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh bother.’

  ‘Is it for the wig?’ asked Ambrose. ‘I noticed during the matinee that it needed patching – just at the back,’ he added, helpfully. ‘There’s a bald area, small but obvious.’

  There was a pause. Gus reddened slightly and Ambrose felt a nice jolt of satisfaction.

  ‘I’m sure that Jillie must have some,’ said Cecy, suddenly full of bustle. ‘Yes, look, just here, she uses it for her kiss curl, I’m sure she won’t mind if you borrow a dab. It’s for the braid on your shoulder, isn’t it, Gus? Keeps happening, doesn’t it? I could sew it on for you if you’d prefer.’

  Gus, clambering awkwardly to his feet, ignored her and fixed Ambrose with a dyspeptic eye. ‘So sirrah,’ he said, back at the Globe again, ‘thou wast in the audience this post-noon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ambrose, shortly.

  ‘And yet thou wast not – ah, conundrum!’ He posed with a finger under his chin, his expression arch.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Cecy.

  ‘I meanst that in the blackout twixt the first and second scenes in Act Two, I hath espied a most egregious late-comer, a fellow in hat and coat a-creeping into the stalls like the veriest mousie!’ Gus essayed a rodent scamper and then paused to look at Ambrose again. ‘’Twere not so, sirrah?’ he enquired, pointedly.

  Silence seemed the only option. Gus paused hopefully for a moment longer, then waved the tube of gum at Cecy, and said, ‘Do thank Jillie for the kind loan,’ and left the room.

  After a long moment, Cecy picked up her knitting again. ‘Well really,’ she said, tightly, ‘what a pair of silly boys.’

  Ambrose found that he could not meet her eye. He looked, instead, at the orange glow of the electric fire.

  ‘So you missed my scenes,’ said Cecy.

  ‘I’d thought that the matinee began at three.’

  ‘I see.’ She came to the end of a row, and shook out the length of khaki before counting the stitches in an emphatic whisper.

  ‘Muffler?’ asked Ambrose, when she’d finished.

  ‘Ear-warmers.’ She folded the knitting on to her lap. ‘You know, when I first met Gus, all those years ago, he could barely speak when he wasn’t on stage. He’d been invalided back from France and he couldn’t keep his voice on the level, you see, it kept wavering, and as time went on he started assuming different accents and characters, I think as a way of concealing his difficulty. It seems to have stuck with him, doesn’t it?’

  Ambrose nodded, uncomfortably.

  ‘No one ever mentioned anything to him, of course,’ said Cecy. ‘One never did, did one? All those fellows coming back with twitches and stutters and nightmares – we all thought it was kinder to pretend that we hadn’t noticed. I don’t think anyone guessed that with some people the effects might go on and on and on . . .’ She gave a brisk sigh. ‘Still, one can’t blame the war for absolutely everything, can one? Sometimes bad behaviour has an excuse, and sometimes it’s simply bad behaviour, and I must say I’m awfully tired of all that sort of thing. Kindness and friendship are what I value these days. Kindness and friendship,’ she repeated, firmly, ‘and nothing more. Now . . .’ she nodded towards the kettle. ‘Another drink?’

  ‘No. Thank you. I really ought to be heading back.’ He shifted slightly and the cat opened an eye.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Cecy.

  ‘Really. The trains . . .’

  ‘Well, it was very kind of you to come all this way. It was, actually,’ she added, a fraction more warmly, ‘and it was very kind of you to compliment my performance, even if you didn’t see it. Us thespians, we’re awfully good at pretending, aren’t we?’

  A response was clearly called for, but Ambrose could produce nothing but a vague nod. Over the last hour and a quarter he had chalked up pleasure, depression, mortification, fury, triumph, guilt, remorse, and even – could it be true? could this really have happened? – a bizarre spurt of near-jealousy. He had nothing left in stock. He lifted the cat from his lap, and it bit him, savagely. Pain, ah yes, he hadn’t yet experienced pain.

  ‘Oh Tommy,’ shrieked Cecy. Ambrose clutched the fleshy web between thumb and forefinger and watched the blood drip on to his trousers. Yes, pain.

  *

  It was past midnight and Arthur was still awake. He had always found the business of getting to sleep rather tricky, a skill unmastered, but in the army he had temporarily discovered the knack and had fallen nightly into unconsciousness like an anchor dropped into water – no dreams, nothing but a blink of darkness before the morning, and this despite the cement mattress, the barnyard smells, the snores like the
grinding of machinery. Here in Badgeham, on a feather bed with no noise but the distant sea, he lay with his eyes open and stared at the pale square of the whitewashed ceiling.

  It had rained all day. The crew had worn waterproofs and the camera had been protected by a huge umbrella, and for the first hour or two all had been efficiency and vigour and then, as the damp had begun to creep into both canvas and bones, the pace had slowed. People had stopped cracking jokes, and every scene had been halted before its completion, the photographer objecting to drips from the edge of the umbrella, the fellow with the microphone complaining about splashing footsteps, the actors slipping in the mud. Lunch had been taken early, in the hope of the weather easing, and in the barn in which cast and crew sheltered, the director formed a worried huddle with the other important types while the actors commandeered the hay-loft and sat with their legs dangling over the edge, their feet swinging in a free and easy manner. All around the barn little groups formed. Arthur sat on a bale of straw and ate a Bovril sandwich and listened to the hum of conversation.

  ‘Everything ship-shape, Arthur?’ called Hadley Best from the hay-loft. By way of reply – his mouth being full – Arthur gave a thumbs-up, and noticed that there was a streak of Bovril on the back of his cuff; that was the problem with sleeves that came down to one’s knuckles. Of course, he was beginning to understand that no one in the picture business (apart from the actors) cared two hoots about smartness – it was, apparently, quite the normal thing for a crew to sport frayed collars, flapping ties, filthy turn-ups, patched elbows, long hair and black nails, it was part of being ‘behind camera’, it was almost a uniform – but at least the crew’s clothes fitted them.

  ‘Change of plan,’ shouted Kipper, the first assistant director, clapping his hands. ‘Change of plan, everybody. Blame the weather. The director’s decided that we’ll be leaving sequence 21 to 27, and moving on to scene 42, exterior French farmhouse with Mr Best and young Master Chopper, camera position within the barn, shooting out towards the yard. We can say goodbye to our extras for the afternoon, thank you ladies and gentlemen. You’ll find the cashier’s office in the back room of the Bull, open until half past six. In the event that we complete scene 42 while we still have some light, we’ll be moving on to 87A.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ muttered one of the chippies.

  ‘And see me if you need the new pages,’ called Phyl, waving a sheaf of paper.

  There was a gradual movement of bodies within the barn, the leisurely shuffle that passed for violent activity within the film world. Arthur joined the queue and collected a copy of the scene.

  42. EXT. FRENCH FARMHOUSE. DAY

  Start in darkness. Door opens slowly (pushed from inside) to reveal farmyard and DOG sitting in background. Trees and countryside beyond – a wide, dangerous view.

  ALAN (OFF)

  (whispers) Don’t be a fool, Johnnie. There’s a sniper out there.

  JOHNNIE, crouching, steps forward into silhouette.

  JOHNNIE

  (whistles softly) Come on boy! (Whistles again, more loudly.)

  The DOG looks at him but doesn’t move. JOHNNIE flinches as he hears the crack of a rifle. He makes a decision.

  ALAN (OFF)

  (shouts) Johnnie!

  JOHNNIE runs over to the DOG, slips his belt through the DOG’s collar, and runs with him back to the farmhouse interior.

  NB – (C.S. DOG and collar action to be shot in studio.)

  ‘OFF’, Arthur had learned, meant ‘not visible in shot’ which, in turn, meant that the actor who spoke the ‘OFF’ lines didn’t actually have to be present – a gap of the right length could be left in the dialogue, and the words recorded afterwards in a nice quiet sound studio somewhere in London. The scenes on location, he had found, were full of such shifts and short-cuts, all of them attempts (it seemed) to simplify the astonishing complexity of outdoor filming.

  Sometimes, during a ‘take’, an actor moved at the wrong time, or forgot a word, or picked up his cigarette with the left hand instead of the right, or said, ‘Sorry, everyone, but it’s awfully distracting to have all those people standing just in my eyeline, can we go again?’ Sometimes the camera needed re-loading, or the microphone dipped into shot, or a cow mooed at an inopportune moment, or the director changed his mind about the framing, or a shadow fell across an actor’s face, or there was too much light or not enough light or light of the wrong quality, or a local urchin accepted a dare to run up behind the sound recordist, shout ‘bugger’ and then scarper – there were many, many reasons why a scene might need to be re-shot, but it was never the fault of Chopper because Chopper was eerily perfect, every time. People congregated to watch his performance. Arthur was beginning to suspect that the other actors, the human ones, found this rather irritating.

  ‘So do I wait for the dog to turn his head before I flinch?’ asked Hadley Best, plaintively, during the rehearsal. ‘Or do I take my own cue?’

  ‘I’ll cue you where the sniper’s shot’s supposed to go,’ said Kipper. ‘They’ll replace it with the real noise at the edit. Settle down, everybody, the director’s decided we’ll be taking sound for Mr Best on this one.’

  ‘What sort of cue?’ asked Hadley.

  ‘I’ll click my fingers,’ said Kipper. ‘That be all right for you, Dick?’

  There was an affirmatory grunt from the sound recordist.

  ‘And settle down,’ called Kipper, for the sixth time, as if everyone were dancing a conga instead of standing around with their hands in their pockets. ‘Going for a take, everybody. Slate it.’

  ‘Just a very quiet click, please,’ said Hadley. ‘It’s hard to explain to a non-actor, but I want to react to the sniper out there, and not the finger-snap in here, do you see what I mean? It’s a matter of authenticity. In fact, there’s no chance of actually firing a rifle is there?’

  ‘No,’ said Kipper. ‘Quiet click it is. Now, are we all ready?’

  They were all ready. The clapper-board clapped. The barn door was pulled shut.

  ‘And action,’ shouted Kipper.

  Slowly, the door opened. Arthur, from his vantage point two yards behind the camera, could see Chopper sitting in the drizzle. Hadley, crouching, stepped forward and left a long pause before giving a whistle.

  ‘Come on, boy!’ he called, softly. He whistled again; Chopper turned his head.

  The fractional silence that followed was broken not by a quiet click but by the most stupendous burst of heavy gunfire coming from immediately behind the barn. Arthur found himself lying on the ground, arms over his head, while all around him people shouted and cannoned into each other, and shrapnel clattered on the roof.

  ‘Mind the camera,’ shouted someone. There was a scrape, and a thud, and the muffled smash of glass and then the gunfire stopped, and only the slow drone of an aircraft was audible.

  ‘What the bloody hell . . . ?’ asked someone. ‘Who was that? That wasn’t Jerry, was it?’

  ‘No, that was my bastard lens-box,’ said the cameraman, bitterly.

  By the time that Arthur got to his feet and dusted himself off, most of the crew had run outside and were staring upward. He followed them. A Wellington was making leisurely progress from north to south, towing, far behind it, a red and yellow target.

  ‘But where are the guns?’ asked Phyl.

  ‘I bet it’s a mobile ack-ack unit from the battery,’ said Hadley. ‘They’re probably in that field just beyond the spinney.’

  The rain was spotting Arthur’s spectacles and he took them off to give them a polish, and found himself staring at Chopper. The dog hadn’t moved and was sitting as if welded to the spot, its blunt, brindled face turned towards its owner. Chick had been placed by the director against the outside wall of the barn, invisible to the camera.

  ‘Oh, incidentally, everyone, that’s a cut,’ shouted Kipper.

  As Arthur watched, Chick shook his fist as if about to throw a pair of dice, and Chopper became a normal dog again, trotting off in a bu
sy figure-of-eight, yawning, lifting his leg against the barn door.

  ‘So when you shake your fist, does that mean “stand easy”?’ ventured Arthur.

  ‘Yer might say that,’ said Chick.

  ‘He’s certainly a very good dog.’

  ‘He’s the best dog,’ corrected the owner. He seemed offended by the slightness of the compliment.

  Arthur busied himself with his spectacles, and found that his hands were shaking. He dropped the spectacles once, and then twice; his legs felt unstable, as if they might fold without warning, like those of an army camp-bed.

  ‘All right, everybody,’ said Kipper, ‘settle down. We’re sending someone to find out whether that little interruption’s likely to happen again. In the meantime, the director’s decided that we’ll do a mute version of the scene.’

  There was an upturned crate in a dark corner of the barn, and Arthur sat on it for a minute or two, and then began to wonder if he might feel better outside, away from other people, because the shaking was getting worse. He could think of nothing in the way of military expertise that he could contribute to the scene; there had been a rescued dog on the same paddle steamer that had picked him up at Dunkirk, and it had been shot dead on the quay at Dover, as a rabies hazard. He didn’t think that this piece of information would be welcomed. In any case, he didn’t think that he could trust his voice. He waited until Kipper shouted ‘settle down’ again, and then he slipped away.

  It was a slow, muddy walk back to the edge of Badgeham, along a causeway between salt-marshes. The Wellington circled lazily overhead, and the guns from the field beside the barn alternated with those from the main battery; the noise seemed more bearable in the open air. Arthur breathed deeply and swung his arms in approved parade-ground fashion. He had never minded drill: the concentration required was just enough to empty the mind of nagging worries, and moreover he found the enforced neatness rather satisfying.

  His father had been a military man, a career soldier until wounds sustained in France had rendered him barely able to walk, let alone fight. He had often talked about the army – not the army of boggy entrenchment and the sniper’s bullet, but the Edwardian army, brutal and thrilling, all glitter and ceremony and the rumble of hooves. He had wanted to be buried in his Lancers’ uniform, but he had survived too long – twenty-three years after Ypres – and the cloth had rotted before he had.