Cooking the Books (11 page)

The coffee was easy. The rest was only available if we went outside and sat on the concrete step or grabbed an audience chair and watched the set. So we did that, and found ourselves next to the writers, Gordon and Kendall.

‘This is always the most exciting bit,’ Kendall informed me, shaking his dreads. ‘When it goes from our heads onto the page and then onto the screen.’

‘Scary, though,’ remarked Gordon.

‘So who’s that?’ I asked, observing an elderly man in shirt sleeves being fussed over by several assistants, who were bringing him tea, smoothing his cushions and turning away a big light so that it did not shine in his eyes—all with an air of veneration which might be considered proper in a cathedral.

‘Oh, don’t you read the gossip mags?’ asked Kendall. ‘No, I guess you don’t. No sensible person does. Just us showbiz folk. That’s Mr Leonard, superstar where hair and makeup are worshipped. He’s here to criticise the role of the hairdresser and offer suggestions. He still works,’ she added. ‘He came in at five thirty to do Ms Atkins.’

I could see Ms Atkins, who was sitting very still so as not to smudge her maquillage.

‘So, what’s happening today?’ I asked, thinking that I ought to get back to my ovens in case Tommy had something else for me to do.

‘You’ve got the idea about the show? The Kiss the Bride office runs everything connected with a marriage. And each week we have a new wedding and a new set of problems. That can range from problems between the bride and groom, problems with the suppliers, problems with the family. After all, a wedding is the only theatrical experience where you cannot control all the cast.’

‘And you have only one performance,’ added Gordon.

I was looking at Mr Leonard. He was small and dapper. That shirt was handmade. His hair was white and flowed back from the high unlined forehead in lustrous waves. He reminded me more of a conductor of an orchestra than a makeup person. He was magnificent. As I was staring, he turned his eyes on me and for a moment looked straight into my face. And he smiled. A small wintry smile, but a definite smile. This caused the fluttering assistants to redouble their efforts. They all looked in my direction and one came rushing up to ask me to attend on the presence.

Carrying my hard-won coffee, I complied. All around me the actors and crew were settling into their places. Mr Leonard offered me a well-manicured hand and I took it.

‘Hello,’ he said in a deep, rich, London-club voice. ‘You’re new.’

‘Corinna Chapman,’ I introduced myself. ‘I’m just a baker.’

‘I thought so,’ he told me. ‘A very dear friend of mine was a baker. I have always henceforward loved the scent of flour and yeast. Would you care to sit beside me? It is refreshing to meet a woman with such good skin who does not use cosmetics,’ he added.

An assistant fetched me a chair and I sat down. This was unexpected.

‘I always forget,’ I apologised for my naked face.

‘You don’t need it,’ he said soothingly. This voice must have contributed to his success. It was like honey, rich and sweet. You just wanted to keep listening to it.

‘But makeup and hair is your business,’ I protested. He smiled his little smile again.

‘These people—’ he indicated the actors with a wave of his patrician hand ‘—are fragile. They don’t seem so to an outsider but they are brittle. Frail. They need to apply a mask in order to know who they are. And it is my trade. I apply their masks. I make them real. I tell them that they are beautiful. Actors are massively self-involved. They have to be. Their bodies are their livelihood. A spot, a wrinkle, a white hair, the least increase in weight—disasters. Horrors. They need to be comforted. It is a very hard life. I’m glad I never felt drawn to it.’

‘Me too,’ I agreed.

‘Consider Molly,’ he continued. I was a little intimidated by this rush of confidences. How could I repay it? I didn’t feel like handing over a chunk of autobiography to this elegant puppet-master. ‘She’s terrified that she is getting old and fat. Usually she would have a tantrum. But she needs this job. So she is sitting very still, and the only sign of strain you will see is the way she is chewing off her lipstick. It will have to be done again. Ah, good, there is my Gervaise. He will repair it.’

Gervaise was an outrageously camp young man in skin-tight jeans and a Mr Leonard T shirt that showed off a lot of very burnished muscles. He undulated over to Molly and produced a palette and a series of brushes. He also said something to her which made her laugh.

‘He knows my methods,’ purred Mr Leonard. ‘Trained him myself. He’s done a very passable job with the ingenues. Young faces present difficulties,’ he told me. ‘They are not fully formed. But they are a nice blank page if made up by a master.’

Kylie and Goss were also sitting carefully in upright chairs, waiting for their cues. I almost didn’t recognise them. Kylie was subdued. A mousy girl without any attractive features. Goss was vivid and cheeky, a little bit punk.

‘Astounding,’ I said. Mr Leonard was gratified.

‘It’s all just masks, dear,’ he said cosily. ‘Emphasise an eyebrow, suppress a quirk, thin or thicken a lip. But they are very interesting masks.’

‘Silence,’ called Tash. And we fell silent.

The sequence today was about the Bellefleur wedding. Ms Bellefleur was an oppressed girl who always did as Mother said. Mother was an overbearing old fusspot who questioned and quibbled and swore. Her husband was crushed. The groom was irritated. The girls were hyped up and the dialogue shot back and forth. Then the actor hair and makeup person fussed in and was instantly nailed by the bride’s mother. Mr Leonard leant forward, paying close attention. ‘Oh dear,’ I heard him murmur in that woodwind voice.

I looked around. Everyone was watching. Except Kendall and Gordon, who were staring at Mr Leonard. Finally Molly Atkins entered and demolished the whole cast: makeup person, mother, father, bride, groom and office staff. Then Tash called a halt and said to Mr Leonard, ‘Your opinion?’

He paused for a moment. Then he said, ‘Not bad,’ to a collective sigh of relief. Kendall and Gordon came to his side. ‘Perhaps a few little suggestions,’ he told them. I slipped away.

I had almost got to the kitchen door, carrying my empty cup, when Molly Atkins sighed and collapsed.

There was panic. Her assistant was the first to reach her, and then the entire cast milled around picking up arms and legs and imploring her to speak before Ethan the cameraman gathered her up and carried her to her dressing room. The unit nurse was summoned. Tash ordered everyone back on the set to get them out of the way and soon a harassed-looking young woman appeared, carrying a medical bag. She was shoved into the cubicle. The murmur of voices came to me as I stood at the kitchen door.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Heart attack?’ suggested Harrison.

‘We’re doomed if she can’t go on,’ said Kylie.

‘Not doomed yet,’ said Goss. I applauded her optimism.

‘We can shoot around her,’ suggested Ethan. ‘Put the understudy on.’

To my astonishment, Tash nodded, yelled a few orders, and Emily—that little mouse!—appeared in a red suit. Had they stripped Molly Atkins as she lay unconscious? What sort of world was this?

The play went on, but I went into the kitchen, my spiritual home. I caught sight of Emily straddling a chair, head back, mouth open to deliver a blistering line. She was so like arrogant, confident Molly Atkins that I shivered.

Bernie, beside me, was shivering too.

‘Actors,’ she commented.

‘Indeed,’ I agreed.

We took another cup of coffee out onto the back step, after all. We were joined by some of the catering staff, all worried.

‘I really need this job,’ said Lance the Lettuce Guy. ‘The hours fit in with mine. I have to pick up the kids from school.’

‘What do you think’s wrong with her?’ worried Tommy. ‘What did she have for breakfast?’

Heads shook all round. Finally Bernie volunteered that she had been told that Ms Atkins did not want any breakfast, just a cup of tea. Black without milk or sugar. Tommy cross-examined the step-sitters. No lunch, apparently, and no dinner either. No one had seen Ms Atkins eat anything the previous day.

Tommy heaved a sigh of relief and groped in her apron pocket for a cigarette. She lit it and said, ‘Well, at least it isn’t my food that’s to blame,’ and there was a general agreement. It struck me that no one was at all worried about Ms Atkins herself. But it wasn’t my business and I just drank my coffee. Come to think of it, I wasn’t concerned about her either. Tommy finished her smoke and said, ‘We’d better get back and see what’s happened,’ in the tone of one inviting her friends to a judicial murder.

Tommy bustled off to find out what was happening and I fell in behind her as though I had every right to be there. The kitchen was loud with wailing about their future and I have never had any patience with wailing. Until you have reason to wail, of course.

The filming was going on. Emily in her red suit was pro- viding the lines for which the others would react. I gaped at her for a few moments. There she was, cruel, arrogant, Ms Atkins to the life: even her voice was a ruthless mockery of the honeyed tones of the star. The crew had converged, in a huddle of cameras and booms. I was confused by the way the action kept stop- ping and starting. It wasn’t like this when Tommy and I were in the school play, when one had to keep going despite falling sets and forgotten lines. She had made a memorable Julius Caesar to my Calpurnia. Emily had to say over and over again, ‘Of course, you’ve never been interested in appearances, have you?’ and she was doing it perfectly. No droop, no loss of intensity, even through endless repetitions. Curious. This wasn’t acting as I vaguely knew it.

We entered the little cubicle where Ms Atkins lay and were greeted by the actress herself, eyes black with outrage, and the kneeling medic, who looked like she would prefer to crawl under the couch than continue to tend her patient.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’ Ms Atkins snarled. Well. At least she wasn’t dead.

‘You fainted,’ the doctor pointed out. ‘People don’t faint for no reason. Your blood pressure’s a bit low. How much have you eaten today?’

‘Nothing,’ snapped the actor. ‘I had some tea.’

‘You need some food,’ said the attendant. ‘Let’s see you eat something light and then I might let you try to get up.’

‘Soup, then,’ conceded Ms Atkins. She caught sight of Tommy at the door. ‘Get me some chicken soup,’ she ordered.

‘Chicken soup, right away,’ agreed Tommy. She ushered me back into the kitchen.

‘She’s all right,’ Tommy announced to general sighs of relief. ‘Needs food. Make Jewish chicken soup, Henry. Slice the celery very fine, remember what happened last time.’ Then she said to me, ‘Choux pastry, I think, Corinna—profiteroles and cream puffs? We seem to still have a job.’

‘For the moment,’ I said, and went to find Bernie. Choux pastry is a bugger to make and I was hoping a recent graduate would have a better hand with it than me. It ought to be like the Snark, ‘meagre and hollow, but crisp’, and mine had shown tendencies to be solid, indigestible and burnt.

When I informed Bernie that she could have the honour of making the choux pastry, she beamed at me and thanked me profoundly. I felt like a fraud.

As I was watching chocolate melt—always an engrossing occupation—I reflected on the look I had caught on Ethan’s face as he carried Ms Atkins to her room. He had looked guilty. I knew that expression. He had looked like a boy whose mother was making penetrating enquiries about the strange disappearance of the last slice of pizza and had not entirely accepted his explanation that aliens had taken it for testing. But what connection could the star’s anorexia have to Ethan? Had he said something to her about her getting fat? This was quite probable. The two of them had an agonistic relationship. Snipe, snarl, snap.

Bernie’s choux puffs came out of the oven looking gorgeous. My cream was whipped and my chocolate icing melted. We made a pyramid of them which would have made Pharaohs fight for our acquaintance.

I noticed the chicken soup going out to Ms Atkins. It smelt delicious. Daniel would have approved. A store of the very best stock is essential to the good governance of any kitchen and this was clearly twice-cooked mother of stock, so concentrated it was almost demi-glace. That ought to build Ms Atkins up to her fighting trim.

After which she would be going out to demolish poor Emily, who had had the nerve to wear her clothes and speak her lines as well as she could wear and speak her own. I did not want to watch this. I did watch, however. Inadvertently. Kylie and Goss, lurking by the door as they were not required on set, made frantic gestures to me to come and join them. As my work was done, I had no excuse. I sidled out into the main hall and was instantly grabbed, one to each arm.

‘What happened?’ hissed Kylie.

‘To Ms Atkins?’ completed Goss. They sometimes did this, sounding like the Bobbsey Twins. Who were really before their time.

‘She fainted from lack of nourishment,’ I told them. ‘Which is now being provided. She ought to be back with us very soon.’

‘So that’s . . .’ said Goss.

‘All right,’ concluded Kylie. ‘But why has she been fasting? We’ve been eating because Tash says she’ll sack anyone who fasts during shooting. She watches, you know. Tash sees everything.’