Lucky Break (21 page)

‘No,' Dan laughed. ‘I'm having a perfectly straightforward affair, back at base camp, with Sergeant T.P. Miller, and she's the one who sends out the search parties, and then of course there's the reunion . . .' Dan blushed in spite of himself. ‘Read it if you really want,' he shrugged. ‘I'll get it for you before I go out.'

‘Where are you going?' Her voice rose in alarm.

‘To the gym. Where else? And by the way, from today I'm on a diet. Nothing white, and nothing that grows underground.'

‘Oh, come on. Fat, puny people have sex as well, you know.'

‘Maybe. But not in the SAS. And anyway, what are you saying?'

Jemma laughed. ‘Dan, that's the most ridiculous diet I've ever heard of. Not even carrots?'

Dan stared at her supercilious face. ‘Not even carrots. Not even radishes. Not even onions.' He felt prepared to fight for his diet to the last.

‘What else is there?' She flung open the fridge.

‘I don't know.' All he could think of was salami. ‘Spinach,' he offered gratefully. ‘Lentils. Don't worry, I'll do some shopping on my way home.' Dan grabbed a towel from a pile of washing and stuffed it into his bag. ‘Don't worry about it.'

‘Can you buy Pampers? Newborn,' she called as he headed for the door, ‘or are they too white?' and then a moment later she was in his arms. ‘Sweetheart. I'm sorry.' She stretched up, tearful, for a kiss. ‘Congratulations. Really. It's great. I'm glad you've got work.'

 

That afternoon the gym was full of actors, and whereas last week Dan had imagined them watching him, pityingly, his presence there proof that he was unemployed, now he felt euphoric. He nodded to Declan McCloud, who he'd last seen at an audition for a new detective series which neither of them had got, and stepped on to the running machine. ‘Why don't you jog round the park?' Jemma had once asked him, but he didn't like jogging round the park. He felt bored by it, and self-conscious, aware of his imperfect technique, whereas on the treadmill, with the music playing and the screens alive, he could slip into a pounding kind of trance. He wondered if Declan had been up for his job. He'd have been perfect for one of the parts. He'd have been perfect for
his
part. He glanced across at Declan now, his neck straining, his biceps bulging as he lifted an inordinately heavy set of weights above his head. He hoped he had, and hadn't got it. Or maybe Declan was already busy. Maybe he'd been offered it, and turned it down. Dan ran faster. Maybe everyone had been offered it. Was that why the producer was so pleased when he said yes? Sweat darkened his T-shirt. He was panting, running for his life, keeping his elbows by his side, his hands like scissors, hareing like James Bond across the tarmac. Stop it, he told himself. It's my job now. And as he readied himself to leap into the open door of a helicopter before it soared away, he had one last flashing thought: now all he had to do was be the best.

 

Alice Montgomery wasn't a name Dan knew. The director had seen her in an independent film and decided she was perfect for the part of Sergeant T.P. Miller. Strong, charismatic, and totally unselfconscious. But Lenny, Dan's agent, had better news than that. He'd heard that the director had a new baby, born around the same time as Honey, and his wife was planning to be out on location for at least some of the shoot.

Dan burst in with the news.

‘Born the same day?' Jemma looked amazed, and Dan tried to remember exactly what Lenny had said.

‘The same week. The same time. That's good, isn't it? You'll have someone to keep you company.'

‘Yes,' Jemma agreed. ‘That is good. Look, I've decided. I might as well come out with you and make the best of it. I'm sure their winter isn't actually that cold. And at least we can travel together.'

‘Really?' Dan looked at the pages of the script, spread over the kitchen table. ‘Are you sure? It'll be pretty barren. The location is doubling as the site of the Gulf War, don't forget.'

‘That's not what you were saying this morning.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, I got the impression you wanted me to buckle down and get on with it. I mean people must live there. Real people. With babies, and nappies, and kettles.'

‘No. I just meant, let me go out there first and get settled. Then come out, maybe a couple of weeks later, when I know what I'm doing.'

‘And the journey? With bags and a pushchair and Honey.' She picked up a stray page of the script and began to read. ‘I mean. Is the flight straight through? Or will I have to change?'

Dan longed to tell her it was straight through. All she would have to do was get herself on the plane, and he'd be there to meet her at the other end, but he knew she'd have to change, wait for eight hours at Johannesburg airport, and then take a smaller plane west over the mining land to Upington, where she'd arrive twenty-four hours after leaving Britain.

‘Look, it's brilliant that you're coming out,' he put his arm around her, ‘but let me see if there's a schedule. See what scenes I'll be doing the first week. And then we'll sort out the practicalities. The arrangements for travel and everything. All right?'

Jemma stood stiffly beside him. ‘All right.' She knew what he was saying. ‘So . . . have they cast everyone yet?'

‘Not sure.' He kissed the top of her head.

‘Have they cast your Love Interest?'

‘Umm,' he moved away to unpack the shopping, ‘there's a shortlist, I think. No one I've heard of. Right. Sea bass. Brown rice. Salad. Shall I make supper?'

‘OK. But I have to point out, unless you've moved on to a new diet, fish is white.'

Dan unrolled the dense paper packet, releasing the slimy dark grey scales of the fish. ‘Not on the outside, it isn't.'

‘True. But you're not planning on eating the skin.'

Dan shot her an irritable look. ‘It's only for a couple of weeks. As soon as I arrive on set I'll be living on location food with the odd strip of biltong. So let me do this. The trainer at the gym says it works brilliantly.'

‘Fine.' Jemma set the table. ‘Maybe I'll lose some weight too.' She thumped down a glass, and just in time Dan remembered: ‘Don't be silly. You look great. And anyway, Honey's only six weeks old, you're meant to be a little . . . bigger.'

Jemma filled a jug of water. Dan could see her smiling to herself as she put the salt to one side.

‘Would you mind,' he said when they were halfway through their meal, ‘if I went to a film later? There's something this director thinks I should see, and it's only on for a couple more nights. I thought it might be helpful, you know, get an idea of his style . . .'

Jemma looked over at Honey, a brand-new smile lifting the corner of her sleeping mouth.

‘Maybe,' Jemma slid her finger into the curl of their daughter's tiny palm, ‘we could all go. She's been so good today. She might sleep through.'

Dan bit his lip. ‘We could . . . But I think it's quite a violent film. Vietnam. I'm not sure if her ears could take it.'

‘Or mine.'

‘Sorry. It's just . . .'

‘It's fine.'

‘I'll try not to wake you when I get home.' And he turned his full attention to his fish.

 

The film was actually set in Tuscany, at the house of an English professor, and could have done with some bombs and a few helicopters to liven up the action. He felt uncomfortable about lying, but then it was him who had to show his arse – literally – to millions of people, and he'd never have been able to concentrate with Jemma there.

The girl, Alice, who was to be T.P. Miller, reminded him of a white version of Charlie. She was tall and angular and there was a light in her eyes, sly as a fox. The professor and his son were both in love with her, and she played them, one against the other, with enviable skill. Late one night, after a scene of competitive charades, she peeled off her dress and dived naked into the pool. Her body was lean, an arc in the moonlight, leaving barely a ripple on the surface, and as the two men tore at their own clothes, both struggling to be the first to leap in after her, she clung to the rail at the side of the pool and watched them, her eyes glinting, her mouth curved in an impenetrable smile.

Yes, Dan thought. She's good, she's very good, and he began to play the scenes they were in together over in his head. Alice Montgomery in army fatigues, leaping into jeeps, barking out orders, unfazed as the enemy approached.

Towards the end of the film, the professor's son caught sight of her in the shower, head thrown back, water pouring off her lint-white body. Dan sank deeper in his chair. He alone in that small cinema had a future with her. He, of all the other faceless men in the seats around him, would soon hold that fierce, slippery woman in his arms. He would have to kiss that mouth, stroke her hair back from her face, wrap his arms around her slender body when the trials and strictures of the SAS became too much for her. Yes, he imagined himself in character, for ever in uniform, his body toughened by training and the challenges of war. That's it, he murmured to himself, and for an instant, he knew who he was.

 

‘Right,' he told Jemma the next day, ‘I've got the schedule and we're actually going to be in the desert, in a different location for the first two weeks, and then again at the end. It's very remote, we'll be sleeping in tents, apparently, it's where we'll be shooting the combat scenes, but then in the middle we'll be in a small town, and we'll be based in a hotel. I've asked for the biggest room they have,' he didn't stop for questions, ‘but I don't know what that really means. And the director's wife will be coming for the middle bit too, so they'll probably get the biggest room, if there is such a thing, and we'll . . .' he'd done it. ‘We'll just have to manage.'

That night they lay in bed, Honey stretched like a starfish between them. Dan put his arm across and felt for Jemma. ‘Will you be all right?'

‘When?' she asked.

‘On your own, here?'

‘Yes,' she paused. ‘I'm not sure what I'll do for eight hours at Johannesburg airport though,' and Dan squeezed her hand and held it there until she fell asleep.

 

Dan lay in his bed in the narrow hotel bedroom, the cot already set up in one corner, and fumbled for the off-switch on the alarm. A faint grey light crept in around the edges of the curtains, but outside it was silent. This time tomorrow there would be a little hump of baby in that cot and Jemma, leaky and inquisitive, would be beside him. As if in practice for their arrival he tiptoed to the bathroom, showered with the door shut, and then, still in darkness, pulled on his clothes. He'd have breakfast in the dining tent on set, the smell of rope and canvas and fresh air obliterating the usual fried odour of food, and then, most probably, he'd wait around for several hours before he was used.

It was still dark as they drove towards the outskirts of the town, past the signpost to Namibia, which always made him smile, and out into the desert. The set was an encampment of its own, with trucks and jeeps and army camouflage everywhere you looked. He felt a keen stab of excitement. There was nowhere he'd prefer to be. To be working, to be part of a unit, a cog in the wheel of something exciting and new.

‘Bloody freezing today,' the make-up woman, Hilda, shivered. She pulled a hand-knitted shawl over her shoulders. Through the door of the make-up wagon Dan could see the sun rising, the air lifting from the grit of dawn, burning orange as the whole sky lightened.

It was always cold here in the mornings. An ice breeze that cut through the day, underlying even the brightest sunshine, deceiving you, hardening your skin. If you were lucky you could find a sheltered spot and bask in the bright sunlight, but usually they were out in the open, toiling through barren country, or crawling on their hands and knees over the bare terrain. They hadn't done any of their interiors yet. The capture, the torture and interrogation were all to come. They had filmed one sex scene, though. Outside, at night, against a wall, when T.P. Miller, or Tippy, as he called her in their more intimate moments, had caught up with him, and although his character was meant to be on duty, he'd lost control of himself and seized her in a frenzy, pushing her back, not unwillingly, against the splintered planks of the barrack wall. Alice had asked for a closed set. No extras hovering, no unnecessary assistants, stunt men or runners. But after the eighth take, when he'd grappled her, pulled open her flak jacket and unfastened his belt, those spare sparks who'd declared themselves invaluable wandered off anyway of their own accord. Dan had never been involved in a sex scene before. He'd kissed. On stage and on television, but never had to perform. He didn't mention this to Alice, in awe as he was at the way she had so effortlessly seduced both father and son (and the director too, if gossip was to be believed) in her last film. She'd done it all with such an air of professionalism that it seemed almost as if it wasn't her. But in reality she was jumpy. ‘Christ,' she kept saying, ‘I hate these scenes,' and he'd smiled manfully and tried to keep himself calm.