What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,14
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 sharing 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.