What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,49
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.