What They Do in the Dark (17 page)

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.

‘Is she developing?’

Katrina nodded as though she’d just asked 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.’

Quentin’s smile was willing but uncertain.

‘Darling, Hugh. You were adorable,’ said Vera, squeezing him back.

Vera caught Quentin’s visible relief as she got it. Oh dear.

‘He used to sing Noël Coward songs for us,’ she added for reassurance.

‘Let’s draw a veil, shall we?’

They moved on. Vera wondered, seeing the two of them together. Quentin’s eagerness to understand their interchange was of a piece with her not wearing a bra, parading her vulnerability. She’d never seen that before in an American; openness, yes, tiresomely so sometimes, but not this invitation to wound. Would Hugh be nice to her? He was no Sidney, she knew, but she had heard rumours when his first marriage broke down in his twenties. And come to think of it, there hadn’t been a second marriage, despite a long engagement to someone Vera couldn’t now recall, someone double-barrelled and horsey. Well, looking at them, they made a handsome couple, although Hugh’s Savile Row style was certainly at odds with whatever it was Quentin was calling hers. And she was probably closer to twenty years younger than him than ten, but that was par for the course.

‘Hiya!’

Before they could reach Mike, Katrina detained them both. Vera wondered if they knew Lallie’s true age. Possibly no one did, with the exception of the mother. Maybe she was consulting them about the bra, although Quentin was obviously the last person to ask for advice about that. Quentin patted the woman’s arm, reassuring. Hugh laughed. As they attempted to break away, Lallie appeared. Hopping with energy, as usual, trying to enter the circle of adult conversation, demanding attention and attention and attention. Vera, unfathomably stirred, found herself wanting to
shout over, ‘No one’s looking at
you
,’ and in that moment, Lallie glanced up and caught her eye. Because of course Vera was looking at her. The girl twitched a shy smile of acknowledgement, looked away. The tentative quality of her reaction disarmed Vera. Eleven or twelve, what did it matter? She was a tot.

‘Ravishing, darling.’ Hugh held Lallie at arm’s length, appraising her costume. It was school uniform, broken down to show the kind of home Lallie’s character came from. Lallie gave him a twirl, followed by a few moments of Bruce Forsyth. Vera could see how delighted she was by his approval. She and Quentin might have to fight it out for him, the good-looking swine.

Hugh chucked the girl’s chin as he spoke to Katrina. Lallie’s upturned face was radiant with trust. As long as Hugh’s hand dawdled, on her shoulder now, she shone. But all the while, her eyes played ping-pong between Katrina and Hugh. No tricks missed.

‘I’m not sure we’re going to let you take her away,’ Vera heard. Hugh was addressing Quentin for Lallie’s benefit, and more pointedly, her mother’s. ‘We want to keep her here. We’ve got big plans.’

Quentin’s smile tightened and held. In front of Vera, the grip started up a conversation with Tony about a dolly track and she couldn’t hear any more. She was left with the tantalizing feeling of having witnessed a piece of gossip in the making.

‘I presume those two are at it?’ asked Anne baldly, once Hugh and Quentin had been driven away in that comfy car of his. ‘Oh, I think so, don’t you?’ she said. That, at least, was certain. But what about Lallie? Was what Vera had seen the thin end of a Lallie-shaped wedge destined to come between the two of them? Quentin had suddenly looked less charming after Hugh’s crack about hanging on to her. Perhaps Quentin was a tougher nut than she appeared. Maybe, like the clothes, she simply had a new way, and producers didn’t have to be Hughs and Sidneys any more. And she could certainly talk to people, not in Hugh’s RADA-royal
manner, but arm-touchingly, warmly. Well, they would find out, wouldn’t they, if anything went wrong and touch came to shove?

The filming day wore on with no sign of Vera’s scene being called. The little boy delivered to be Lallie’s character’s little brother proved undirectable, and Mike got the shot only through the monkeys-typing-Shakespeare approach of endless takes. In the end, they dropped the dialogue and hoped the child could simply manage to open the door, which he achieved without mishap around take fifty-eight. Anne of course was faultless, but a bulb blew on a light, and Tony and his gang took an age consulting over how best to replace it and then discovering the bulb they needed was back at the unit base.

Waiting for the runner to return on his motorbike, they decided to set up for Vera’s scene, but the arrival of the bulb set them back on their original course. Vera could see how it would go. Barring a miracle, her scene was going to drop off the end of the day. One more night at the hotel, at least, and God knows when or if they’d bother to pick up the missing scene. Well, it had happened before and it would happen again. No one was looking at
her
.

I
WAKE UP
the morning of the audition with a balloon of joyous dread bobbing in my stomach. It’s impossible to eat breakfast, although Mum nags, and I know if I don’t make the attempt she might decide I’m ill and use it as an excuse to stop me going. She seems to want to do that quite badly, so I’m on best behaviour. Ian doesn’t help by making lots of comments about me being a film star and being ready for my close-up. In the end Mum tells him to give over, which is a relief. He’s taken aback by her command, which she barely bothers to coat with another tone. It’s the kind of thing she says to Dad all the time, but she’s never done it before with Ian. It makes me see the permanence of this arrangement between them. The balloon tugs inside me, heavy.

Although we’ll be at school, we don’t have to wear uniform, and we approach disaster when I appear wearing my dungarees as a tribute to Lallie. Mum says I need to put on a dress instead. I very strongly want to wear the dungarees; they are what I’ve been wearing every time I’ve been to the audition before drifting off to sleep, and Lallie has got talking to me about them (‘Nice dungarees’, ‘Thanks’), and we’ve become friends and live together in her TV house with Marmaduke the butler. Mum, though, insists on a dress. Will it be the same? Will it even be possible to enjoy meeting Lallie wearing a dress? I appeal to Ian, who sides with Mum even though I know he’d prefer to support me. In the end it comes down to an ultimatum: do I want to go to the audition?

We arrive ten minutes before the official start, me in a dress, and the hall is already packed. Christina isn’t there – they left for Butlin’s at the weekend – so I sit near Michelle and Maria from my
class. The mums and dads hover for the spare ten minutes, during which Mum gets out a brush and refinishes my hair. Then they’re all told to go away by a woman who was there when we signed up, an oldish woman with lots of interesting rings on her fingers and clothes of a kind I’ve never come across; they don’t match, but she’s smart. She has a posh voice, which helps to quell us, and doesn’t seem the type to be got around.

‘Thank you so much for coming today,’ she says. ‘As you know, it won’t be possible to use each and every one of you, although I think I’m right in saying that there will be a scene in the playground where anyone who wants to can appear … ?’ She dips her head towards a man, neither young nor old, just grown-up age, who is clearly important. He nods tightly.

‘So let’s get started! I’m Julia, by the way, the casting director – you’ll be meeting me first. And this is Michael, the director, Mike, who some of you will be meeting later. He’s a very busy man! Oh, and Pam, my assistant – she’ll be seeing some of you as well.’

Pam is one of the other people, mixed in with the teachers, there to shepherd us. She’s younger and has a friendly look I like, although Julia clearly doesn’t think much of her.

A group of fourth-years is led away by Pam. As it becomes clear that this is all that is going to happen, everyone goes quieter and starts to get bored. I’ve brought my ballet bag with me, at Mum’s suggestion, just in case I need to slip my shoes on (I’ve brought tap as well) and show them what I can do, and Michelle and Maria and I occupy ourselves for a time with its contents, them trying on my shoes and me showing them a few tap steps sitting down with my knees up in the air.

The fourth-years come back, full of pioneering self-importance, and another ten are sent in. Everyone crowds round the returned group, eager for news, but we’re marshalled back in line with a few tantalizing scraps. These are soon amplified into concrete rumours: apparently one boy, Andrew Meeton, had to swear.
Maria asserts, disappointingly, that the swear word was ‘bugger’. But it reaches me from the other side of the row that what he actually had to do was pull his trousers down and show them his arse. I am suitably shocked, but confident that, being a girl, nothing of that sort will be required of me. Admittedly, the tap shoes are looking doubtful. I eat the two chocolate digestives Mum has tucked into the bag for a snack. The chocolate is melted from the heat, so I lick my fingers and the spaces between my fingers clean, like a cat having a wash.