Cora tugged heartlessly at her cocktail dress.
‘This was the problem. I had to ask Vi to take the waist in again. It was so unbecoming it made me look, well, can you imagine, blowsy. Blowsy, me? Wouldn’t do at all.’
She leaned over to stroke the silky, sulky cat, now all the sulkier at having her ablutions disturbed.
‘Nice pussy,’ she cooed nervously. ‘Who’s a pretty pussy?’
Hanway donned a mask of heroic patience.
‘Let me remind you, Cora, you are supposed to be playing the dowdy neglected wife. We can’t have you looking too alluring.’
The director suddenly snapped out of his languor. Lifting the cat up off his lap, he disengaged its claws from the hem of his boiler-suit as cautiously as a hiker untangling a strand of his jumper from a barbed-wire fence and plumped it down on a canvas chair that was next to his own and on the back of which was printed the name Cato. Then, leaping to his feet, he clapped his hands together.
‘All right, everybody in place! We’re going to rehearse the scene!’
Turning to Lettice, who had been diligently hovering over him throughout his brief exchange with Cora, he said, ‘I want all the extras on set.’
Cora, meanwhile, aware of her friends’ presence, mouthed a flighty ‘Yoo-hoo!’ and waved over to them. Raising her kohl-rimmed eyes as though to say ‘No rest for the weary!’, she then huddled together with Hanway while he presumably gave her a few final instructions on how the scene was to be played. At the same time, the extras had begun to position themselves as ordered. There were a dozen of them, half male, half female, all in smart evening dress. And, bringing up the rear, chaperoned by a spinsterish, stern-faced nanny, were two children, a cherubic boy of about ten, the picture of brattish disgruntlement in his starchy sailor-suit, and a shy little girl less than half his age who, in her beribboned white party frock and miniature ballet pumps, was a Mabel Lucie Atwell postcard teased into dimpled, pink-cheeked life.
Then it was the turn of the film’s two leads to walk onto the set. If Gareth Knight was no longer quite the jeune premier, yet with his raven-black moustache, his suave throw-away manner and above all his smile, that fabled smile of his that had broken many a shopgirl’s heart, he still managed to cut an enviably dashing and devil-may-care figure. As for Leolia Drake, the actress who had been chosen to replace the late Patsy Sloots, she certainly had what is known in the trade as a photogenic physique, being luscious, gorgeous, curvaceous, voluptuous and all those other quintessentially feminine adjectives that end in ‘ous’.
‘By the Lord Harry!’ exclaimed Trubshawe, smacking his lips. ‘Now that’s what I call a real corker.’
Without for an instant compromising his stencilled-on smile, Knight bowed curtly to Cora and shook Hanway’s hand. The director stepped over to offer a few words of encouragement to the two children. The scene was ready to be rehearsed.
And it was a scene, as Trubshawe remarked at once, that bore a striking resemblance to the premise of Evadne’s Eeny-Meeny-Murder-Mo. The setting was a chic cocktail party and, even if he was still almost totally ignorant of the ramifications of the film’s plot, he had soon worked out, from the dry runs which the actors were put through by Hanway, not only that the party was being given by Knight and his wife (Cora’s role) but also that the latter, while playing the perfect hostess, was keeping a watchful eye on the rather too attentive court her husband had started to pay to the very youngest and sexiest of their guests, the film’s heroine (Leolia Drake’s role).
It was when Knight actually went so far as to whisper sweet nothings in Drake’s ear, sweet nothings which may not have been audible but were certainly visible, that the crisis erupted. A glass of champagne in her hand, Cora was seen to become so enraged by her philandering better half that she ended by snapping its stem in two. At which point, even though the camera hadn’t been turning, the director bawled out, ‘Cut!’
In all there were four run-throughs. None of them, however, appeared to satisfy Rex Hanway. Each of his ‘Cuts!’ sounded more fretful than the last. And, after the fourth and final rehearsal, nearly sliding off his canvas chair in frustration, he cried out:
‘No! No, no, no, no, no! This won’t do at all!’
Everyone, cast, crew and extras alike, fell silent. No matter how insecure his authority had been in the first few days, Hanway now commanded a silent respect from his underlings.
Lettice got to her knees in front of him.
‘But, Rex, it’s exactly what we have in the script.’
‘What do I care?’ said Hanway intemperately. ‘The script is wrong.’
‘Wrong? But –’
‘It isn’t The Brothers Karamazov, for God’s sake. It’s just a blue-print.’
‘Of course, Rex, of course.’
‘No, no, there’s something missing, there’s definitely something missing. It’s boring. It’s a big nothing of a scene. It’s not even a big nothing, it’s a small nothing, it’s a nothing nothing.’
He held up a clenched fist hard against his brow in a possibly conscious imitation of Rodin’s Thinker.
‘Perhaps, darling,’ ventured Cora, ‘if we –’
‘Be quiet, please!’ he snapped. ‘Can’t you see I’m thinking?’
‘I was only going to suggest –’
Again, though, she was prevented from completing her sentence. As suddenly and dramatically as he had planted it, Hanway removed the fist from his brow.
‘I’ve got it!’
He stood up and marched purposefully onto the set, led his trio of principals off to one side and began whispering to them. When they had understood his new instructions – Cora fervently nodding in agreement, Leolia Drake beaming up at him, Gareth Knight shaking his head in mute admiration – Hanway snapped his fingers for the little girl to be brought over. More whispering – on this occasion, it took her somewhat longer to comprehend his intentions. Yet she too, once light had dawned on her, started to giggle. Then he had a few quiet words with his cameraman, who at once proceeded to make the necessary adjustments.
The scene was now ready to be filmed. Silence was repeatedly called for – one hapless member of the crew being collectively cursed by his mates for sneezing three times in a row – and Hanway, poised expectantly on the edge of his chair, finally shouted, ‘Action!’
At first nothing had changed. Holding the same glass of champagne, Cora made the same desultory chit-chat with the same dinner-suited male extra, all the while spying on Knight, who, exchanging the same monosyllabic pleasantries as he zigzagged across the crowded room, nevertheless made the same circuitous beeline for Leolia Drake. She, meanwhile, as though fearful of the intensity of her feelings towards him, attempted to avoid catching his eye as she slowly sidled away towards the door.
Then, on cue, she walked backwards straight into the little girl, causing her to topple over onto the floor.
The actress at once got to her knees to help her back up.
‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m terribly sorry. Gosh, aren’t I the clumsy one. Are you all right? No bruises?’
When the little girl solemnly shook her head, Leolia on a sudden impulse kissed her on the right cheek.
And it was at that instant that Knight swiftly stepped forward. He too knelt down beside the little girl and, neatly timing his gesture to coincide with Leolia’s, kissed her on the left cheek. To anyone who happened to be watching them – and if none of the extras were, everybody behind the camera was – the effect was exactly as though they were kissing each other through the child.