Smokescreen Read online

  In the bar Terry and the Director of Photography were holding a desultory discussion about focal lengths, punctuating every wise thought with draughts of sangria. The Director, otherwise known professionally as the lighting cameraman, and personally as Conrad, patted me gently on the shoulder and pressed an almost cold glass into my hand. We had all grown to like this indigenous thirst quencher, a rough red local wine diluted by ice and a touch of the fruit salads.

  ‘There you are, dear boy, it does wonders for the dehydration,’ he said, and then in the same breath finished his broken off sentence to Terry. ‘So he used an eighteen millimetre wide angle and of course every scrap of tension evaporated from the scene.’

  Conrad spoke from the strength of an Oscar on the sideboard, and called everyone ‘dear boy’ from chairmen downwards. Aided by a naturally resonant bass voice and a droopy cultivated moustache, he had achieved the notable status of ‘a character’ in a business which specialised in them, but behind the flamboyance there was a sharp technician’s mind which saw life analytically at twenty-four frames per second and thought in Eastman-colour.

  Terry said, ‘Beale Films won’t use him now because of the time he shot two thousand feet one day at Ascot without an 85 filter, and there wasn’t another race meeting due there until a month after they ran into compensation time…’

  Terry was fat, bald, forty, and had given up earlier aspirations to climb to Director of Photography with his name writ large in credits. He had settled instead for being a steady, reliable, experienced, and continually in-work craftsman, and Conrad always liked to have him on his team.

  Simon joined us and Conrad gave him, too, a glass of sangria. Simon, the clapper/loader of Terry’s crew, had less assurance than he ought to have had at twenty-three, and was sometimes naïve to the point where one speculated about arrested development. His job entailed operating the clapper board before every shot, keeping careful records of the type and footage of film used, and loading the raw film into the magazines which were used in the cameras.

  Terry himself had taught him how to load the magazines, a job which meant winding unexposed film on to reels, in total darkness and by feel only. Everyone, to begin with, learned how to do it with unwanted exposed film in a well-lit room, and practised it over and over until they could do it with their eyes shut. When Simon could do this faultlessly, Terry sent him to load some magazines in earnest, and it was not until after a long day’s shooting that the laboratory discovered all the film to be completely black.

  Simon, it appeared, had done exactly what he had been taught: gone into the loading room and threaded the film on to the magazine with his eyes shut. And left the electric light on while he did it.

  He took a sip of his pink restorer, looked at the others in bewilderment, and said, ‘Evan told me to write “print” against every one of those shots we took today.’ He searched their faces for astonishment and found none. ‘But, I say,’ he protested, ‘if all the first takes were good enough to print, why on earth did he go on doing so many?’

  No one answered except Conrad, who looked at him with pity and said, ‘Work it out, dear boy. Work it out.’ But Simon hadn’t the equipment.

  The bar room was large and cool, with thick white-painted walls and a brown tiled floor: pleasant in the daytime, when we were seldom there, but too stark at night because of the glaring striplighting some insensitive soul had installed on the ceiling. The four girls, sitting languidly round a table with half empty glasses of lime juice and Bacardi and soda, took on a greenish tinge as the sunlight faded outside, and aged ten years. The pouches beneath Conrad’s eyes developed shadows, and Simon’s chin receded too far for flattery.

  Another long evening stretched ahead, exactly like the nine that had gone before: several hours of shop and gossip punctuated by occasional brandies, cigars and a Spanish-type dinner. I hadn’t even any lines to learn for the next day, as my entire vocal contribution to Scenes 624 and 625 was to be a variety of grunts and mumbles. I would be glad, I thought, by God I would be glad, to get back home.

  We went in to eat in a private dining-room as uninviting as the bar. I found myself between Simon and the handcuffs’ girl, two-thirds of the way along one side of the long table at which we all sat together haphazardly. About twenty-five of us, there were: all technicians of some sort except me and the actor due to amble to the rescue as a Mexican peasant. The group had been cut to a minimum, and our stay scheduled for as short a time as possible: the management had wanted even the desert scenes shot at Pinewood like the rest of the film, or at least on some dried up bit of England, but the original director had stuck out for the authentic shimmer of real heat, damn and bless his departed spirit.

  There was an empty space around the far side of the table.

  No Evan.

  ‘He’s telephoning,’ the handcuffs’ girl said. ‘I think he’s been telephoning ever since we came back.’

  I nodded. Evan telephoned the management most evenings, though not normally at great length. He was probably having difficulty getting through.

  ‘I’ll be glad to go home,’ the girl said, sighing. Her first location job, which she had looked forward to, was proving disappointing; boring, too hot and no fun. Jill—her real name was Jill, though Evan had started calling her Handcuffs, and most of the unit had copied him –slid a speculative look sideways at my face, and added, ‘Won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said neutrally.

  Conrad, sitting opposite, snorted loudly. ‘Handcuffs, dear girl, that’s cheating. Anyone who prods him has her bet cancelled.’

  ‘It wasn’t a prod,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Next best thing.’

  ‘Just how many of you are in this pool?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘Everyone except Evan,’ Conrad admitted cheerfully. ‘Quite a healthy little jackpot it is.’

  ‘And has anyone lost their money yet?’

  Conrad chuckled. ‘Most of them, dear boy. This afternoon.’

  ‘And you,’ I said, ‘have you?’

  He narrowed his eyes at me and put his head on one side. ‘You’ve a temper that blows the roof off, but usually on behalf of someone else.’

  ‘He can’t answer your question, you see,’ Jill explained to me. ‘That’s against the rules too.’

  But I had worked with Conrad on three previous films, and he had indeed told me where he had placed his bet.

  Evan came back from telephoning, walked purposefully to his empty chair, and splashed busily into his turtle soup. Intent, concentrated, he stared at the table and either didn’t hear or didn’t wish to hear, Terry’s tentative generalities.

  I looked at Evan thoughtfully. At forty he was wiry, of medium height and packed with aggressive energy. He had undisciplined black curling hair, a face in which even the bones looked determined, and fierce hot brown eyes. That evening the eyes were looking inwards, seeing visions in his head; and the tumultuous activity going on in there showed unmistakably in the tension in his muscles. His spoon was held in rigid fingers, and his neck and back were as stiff as stakes.

  I didn’t like his intensity, not at any time or in any circumstances. It always set up in me the unreasonable reaction of wanting to avoid doing what he was pressing for, even when his ideas made good sense. That evening he was building up a good head of steam, and my own antipathy rose to match.

  He shovelled his way briskly through the anglicised paella which followed, and pushed his empty plate away decisively.

  ‘Now…’ he said: and everybody listened. His voice sounded loud and high, strung up with his inner urgency. It would have been impossible to sit in that room and ignore him.

  ‘As you know, this film we are making is called Man in a Car.’

  We knew.

  ‘And as you know, the car has figured in at least half the scenes that have been shot.’

  We knew that too, better than he did, as we had been with it all through.

  ‘Well…’ he paused, looking r
ound the table, collecting eyes. ‘I have been talking to the producer, and he agrees … I want to change the emphasis… change the whole shape of the film. There are going to be a number of flashbacks now, and not just one. The story will jump back every time from the desert scene and each desert shot will give an impression of the days passing, and show the man growing weaker. There is to be no rescue, as such. This means, I’m afraid, Stephen…’ He looked directly at the other actor, ‘… that your part is out entirely, but you will of course be paid what was agreed.’ He turned back to the unit in general. ‘We are going to scrap those cool witty scenes of reunion with the girl that you did at Pine-wood. Instead, we will end the film with the reverse of the opening. That is to say, a helicopter shot that starts with the car in close-up and gradually recedes from it until it is merely a dot on the plain. The view will widen just at the end to indicate a peasant walking along a ridge of hill, leading a donkey, and everyone who sees the film can decide for himself whether the peasant rescues the man, or passes by without seeing him.’

  He cleared his throat into a wholly attentive silence. ‘This of course means that we shall have to do much more work here on location. I estimate that we will be here for at least another two weeks, as there will have to be many more scenes of Link in the car.’

  Someone groaned. Evan looked fiercely in the direction of the protest, and silenced it effectively. Only Conrad made any actual comment.

  ‘I’m glad I’m behind the camera, and not in front of it,’ he said slowly. ‘Link’s showing wear and tear already.’

  I pushed the last two bits of chicken around with my fork, not really seeing my plate. Conrad was staring across at me: I could feel his eyes. And all the others’, too. It was the actor in me, I knew, which kept them waiting while I ate a mouthful, drank some wine, and finally looked up again at Evan.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  A sort of quiver ran through the unit, and I realised they had all been holding their breath for the explosion of the century. But setting my own feelings aside, I had to admit that what Evan had suggested made excellent film sense, and I trusted to that instinct, if not to his humanity. There was a lot I would do, to make a good film.

  He was surprised at my unconditional agreement, but also excited by it. Visions poured out of him, faster than his tongue.

  ‘There will be tears… and skin cracks, and sun blisters… and terrible thirst… and muscles and tendons quivering with strain like violin strings, and hands curled with cramp… and agony and frightful despair… and the scorching, inexorable, thunderous silence… and towards the end, the gradual disintegration of a human soul… so that even if he is rescued he will be different… and there won’t be a single person who sees the film who doesn’t leave exhausted and wrung out and filled with pictures he’ll never forget.’

  The camera crews listened with an air of we’ve-seen-all-this-before and the make-up girl began looking particularly thoughtful. It was only I who seemed to see it from the inside looking out, and I felt a shudder go through my gut as if it had been a real dying I was to do, and not pretence. It was foolish. I shook myself; shook off the illusion of personal involvement. To be any good, acting had to be deliberate, not emotional.

  He paused in his harangue, waiting with fixed gaze for me to answer him, and I reckoned that if I were not to let him stampede all over me it was time to contribute something myself.

  ‘Noise,’ I said calmly.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘Noise,’ I repeated. ‘He would make a noise, too, at first. Shouting for help. Shouting from fury, and hunger, and terror. Shouting his bloody head off.’

  Evan’s eyes widened and embraced the truth of it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He took a deep ecstatic breath at the thought of his idea taking actual shape. ‘… Yes.’

  Some of the inner furnace died down to a saner, more calculating heat.

  ‘Will you do it?’ he said.

  I knew he meant not would I just get through the scenes somehow, but would I put into them the best I could. And he might well ask, after his behaviour to me that day. I would, I thought; I would make it bloody marvellous; but I answered him flippantly.

  ‘There won’t be a dry eye in the house.’

  He looked irritated and disappointed, which would do no harm. The others relaxed and began talking, but some undercurrent of excitement had awoken, and it was the best evening we had had since we arrived.

  So we went back to the desert plain for another two weeks, and it was lousy, but the glossy little adventure turned into an eventual box-office blockbuster which even the critics seemed to like.

  I got through the whole fortnight with my temper intact; and in consequence Conrad, who had guessed right, won his bet and scooped the pool.

  Chapter Two

  England in August seemed green and cool in comparison when I got back. At Heathrow I collected my car, a production line B.M.W., darkish blue, ordinarily jumbled registration number, nothing Special about it, and drove westwards into Berkshire with a feeling of ease.

  Four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Going home.

  I found myself grinning at nothing in particular. Like a kid out of school, I thought. Going home to a summer evening.

  The house was middle-sized, part old, part new, built on a gentle slope outside a village far up the Thames. There was a view down over the river, and lots of evening sun, and an unsignposted lane to approach by, that most people missed.

  There was a boy’s bicycle lying half on the grass, half on the drive, and some gardening tools near a half weeded flower-bed. I stopped the car outside the garage, looked at the shut front door, and walked round the house to the back.

  I saw all four of them before they saw me; like looking in through a window. Two small boys splashing in the pool with a black and white beach ball. A slightly faded sun umbrella nearby, with a little girl lying on an air bed in its shade. A young woman with short chestnut hair, sitting on a rug in the sun, hugging her knees.

  One of the boys looked up and saw me standing watching them from across the lawn.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘Dad’s home,’ and ducked his brother.

  I walked towards them, smiling. Charlie unstuck herself from the rug and came unhurriedly to meet me.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m covered in oil.’ She put her mouth forward for a kiss and held my face between the insides of her wrists.

  ‘What on earth have you been doing with yourself?’ she asked. ‘You look terribly thin.’

  ‘It was hot in Spain,’ I said. I walked back to the pool beside her, stripping off my loosened tie, and then my shirt.

  ‘You didn’t get very sunburned.’

  ‘No… Sat in the car most of the time…’

  ‘Did it go all right?’

  I made a face. ‘Time will tell… How are the kids?’

  ‘Fine.’

  I had been away a month. It might have been a day. Any father coming home to his family after a day’s work.

  Peter levered himself out of the pool via his stomach and splashed across the grass.

  ‘What did you bring us?’ he demanded.

  ‘Pete, I’ve told you…’ Charlie said, exasperated. ‘If you ask, you won’t get.’

  ‘You won’t get much this time anyway,’ I told him. ‘We were miles from any decent shops. And go and pick your bike up off the drive.’

  ‘Oh honestly,’ he said. ‘The minute you’re home, we’ve done something wrong.’ He retreated round the house, his backview stiff with protest.

  Charlie laughed. ‘I’m glad you’re back…’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Dad, look at me. Look at me do this, Dad.’

  I obediently watched while Chris turned some complicated sort of somersault over the beach ball and came up with a triumphant smile, shaking water out of his eyes and waiting for praise.

  ‘Jolly good,’ I said.

  ‘Watch me again, Dad…’


  ‘In a minute.’

  Charlie and I walked over to the umbrella, and looked down at our daughter. She was five years old, brown-haired, and pretty. I sat down beside the air bed and tickled her tummy. She chuckled, and smiled at me deliciously.

  ‘How’s she been?’

  ‘Same as usual.’

  ‘Shall I take her in the pool?’

  ‘She came in with me this morning… but she loves it. It wouldn’t do her any harm to go again.’

  Charlie squatted down beside her. ‘Daddy’s home, little one,’ she said. But to Libby, our little one, the words themselves meant almost nothing. Her mental development had slowed to a snail’s pace after the age of ten months, when her skull had been fractured. Peter, who had been five then, had lifted her out of her pram, wanting to be helpful and bring her indoors for lunch. But Charlie, going out to fetch her, had seen him trip and fall and it had been Libby’s head which struck the stone step on the terrace of the flat we then occupied in London. The baby had been stunned, but after an hour or two the doctors could find nothing wrong with her.

  It was only two or three weeks later that she fell sick, and later still, when she was surviving a desperate illness, that the hospital doctors told us she had had a hair-line fracture at the base of the brain, which had become infected and given her meningitis. We were so relieved that she was alive that we scarcely took notice of the cautiously phrased warnings…‘We must not be surprised if she were a little late in developing…’ Of course she would be a little late after being so ill. But she would soon catch up, wouldn’t she? And we dismissed the dubious expression, and that unfamiliar word ‘retarded’.

  During the next year we learned what it meant, and in facing such a mammoth disaster had also discovered much about ourselves. Before the accident, our marriage had been shaking towards disintegration under the onslaughts of prosperity and success: after it, we had gradually cemented ourselves together again, with a much clearer view of what was really important, and what was not.