What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,50
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 started 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.
‘Hey, Vera!’ That lovely smile, as though you’d just given her a present. Hugh was right behind with his own charming smile, not trying quite as hard. Seeing him, Vera realised that she owed him the work. Of course she did: those evenings after a day on set having drinks at his parents’ Chalfont St Peter spread, with Hugh and his brother paraded to do turns for them, wearing side partings and pyjamas straight from Wardrobe. She’d always been nicer than necessary to Hugh, as a way of expiating her fear that Hilary might know about her lapse with Sidney.
‘Vera. You look terrible! In the best possible way …’
He squeezed her fondly as they kissed. ‘Vera’s seen me in my pyjamas.’