Well Groomed (30 page)

It was a far drier and more luxurious waiting-room than the tent, but Tash knew why he preferred to hang around in the latter, which was raucous and friendly and full of stimuli.

The trailer would be uncomfortably cramped with more than four people in it. There was a small eating area with rather repulsive Dralon seats fitted around a plastic table. There was also a minute loo and shower, a small kitchenette with a microwave, and a portable television which was showing racing from an equally windswept Ayr.

Tash again found it familiar – it was just like the living accommodation of the horse-box she and the Lime Tree team travelled and lived in when eventing in two-and three-day events. It even had the same tendency to steam up on the inside during rain, and the same slightly chemical smell which came from exhaust fumes and plastic fittings.

Niall immediately headed for the kitchen area and located a bottle of Bushmills.

‘Can I just have a coffee?’ Tash watched him worriedly.

‘Sure.’ He flicked on the kettle and poured himself several inches from the bottle.

Tash longed to ignore the move, but she was worried about him. Close to, he was pale and drawn, his face pinched with tension, eyes darkly smudged from lack of sleep. He had also dropped an alarming amount of weight. The director had asked him to grow his hair for the part – a long, straggly mop of black ringlets, it hung round his head like Rembrandt’s beret emphasising the haggard look. The camera simply piled on weight, so Tash knew that with his broad shoulders and sculpted features in high relief, he would look impossibly noble and romantic on screen, but in the harsh neon lights of the little caravan kitchenette, he cut a pathetically gaunt figure.

Shooting her a cheery wink, he knocked back almost half a glass of whiskey in one gulp.

‘Shouldn’t you lay off that until you know the scene definitely won’t be shot?’ she asked, trying to keep her tone light and breezy.

‘I guess I should.’ He drained the rest.

Tash sat on one of the repulsive Dralon seats and fingered a pile of script pages awkwardly as she watched him making coffee. His movements were clumsy and impatient, and he cursed under his breath, revealing the rawness of his nerves. But still MacGinnen’s smile remained plastered to his mouth like a Band Aid holding back emotion.

‘They seem like a nice bunch,’ Tash started falteringly. ‘The rest of the cast.’

‘Sure – this lot are a great bunch,’ he agreed happily, pushing his hair out of his eyes. ‘Better than the Edinburgh lot, who were all a bit precious. D’you like Minty?’ He looked up from his task expectantly. ‘I saw you chatting away to her earlier.’

‘She’s very beautiful,’ Tash said carefully.

‘Bloody talented actress.’ Niall brought her coffee over. ‘This is only her third film since graduating from drama school, and she’s incredibly professional. She’s worked so hard on her character since being up here.’

Tash nodded, remembering. ‘Yes, you were going through lines with her once when you called.’

‘Was I?’ He looked blank.

Tash blew on her coffee and said nothing, realising that he had forgotten the call altogether. She could remember it almost word for word. She had told him she’d loved the Four Poster Bed script, not knowing that Lisette was producing it; he had promised to fly down to Berkshire the following weekend, which he hadn’t.

Smiling apologetically, he turned back for a nip of whiskey and then peeled off his oilskin. Beneath it, he was swathed in a vast speckled green plaid. It was wrapped around his waist beneath a thick leather belt before being hitched up over his shoulder where it was secured by a chunky brass buckle. Beneath it was a tatty, oversized cloth shirt, gaping at the front where the string had come unlaced. His lower legs were wrapped in what appeared to be long woollen bandages with cross-laced leather shin-pads on top. He wore the same ensemble on his forearms.

‘You’re soaking wet!’ Tash reached out to touch the damp cloth.

Niall shrugged. ‘This is my third costume of the day – the first got coated in mud in the battle scene, the second was soaked afterwards, and I had to put this on for the close-ups. Costume wanted to dry it off for me, but Nigel – the director – insisted I kept it on for the kiss.’

‘The kiss?’

‘That’s what we were supposed to be shooting before the rain really set in.’ Niall pulled on a huge Aran over the entire damp ensemble. It bagged in an extraordinary fashion over his costume, making him appear hunch-backed. ‘MacGinnen – fresh from battle – returns with his posse to the nearby woods, where his love is waiting – that’s Minty – and leaps off his horse to kiss her. Everything’s set up – we just have to shoot the bugger.’

‘I see.’ Tash gnawed at a nail uncomfortably. She wished he hadn’t invited her on set on the day he kissed one of the love-interests. She wondered vaguely if he’d done it deliberately.

‘Don’t tell me you shoot the sex scene tomorrow?’ she joked.

‘No, that was last week. Although there’s one with Juliet Richards when we go back to Edinburgh in ten days’ time.’

‘I see.’ Tash turned over a couple of pages of script, noticing the copious notes Niall had made in the margins. One of them read: ‘
Imagine she’s T dressed in her old jeans
.’

She hid a grin as a warm wave of reassurance lapped her face. Then her smile dropped slightly as she noticed that the line read, ‘D’ye think I’d want you now, huh?’

‘Dialogue’s a bit hard to read, isn’t it?’ She scanned the page.

‘Hellish.’ Niall had poured himself another drink and sat beside her. ‘It was written by a Yank who thought he had a strong grasp of the vernacular based on three weeks’ touring the Highland distilleries on some package holiday. But the voice coach is shit hot, so all might not be lost. Come here.’

Prising the script out of her hands, he pulled her into a rather rushed and clumsy kiss. He tasted of whiskey and cigarettes and Tash fought an urge to ask him to clean his teeth. She hoped he wasn’t using her as a warm up for Minty. She just couldn’t shake off this feeling of paranoia, however ridiculous she told herself she was being.

The kiss was becoming more aggressive by the second and Niall was pressing down on her with some force now, pushing her back against the seating and hitching her leg roughly up his side with a strong hand as he tried to force her to lie back. Tash wasn’t enjoying it at all.

But before she could wriggle away from his grip and tell him off, the door burst open and Niall pulled abruptly away as Minty swept in, her beautiful face pink from the warmth of her own trailer.

‘The rain’s stopped, darling!’ she announced in a breathless voice. ‘Nigel says there’s enough light to go for a couple of takes, so get into make-up
tout de suite
for a touch up. See you!’ Without even a perfunctory glance at Tash, she whisked out again.

Tash felt a light stain of colour leaping to her cheeks, aware that she and Niall had been caught necking like teenagers. She briefly let herself indulge in a fantasy that Minty had a honking crush on Niall and was devastated to catch him indulging in carnal pleasure with his intended, minutes before she herself was going to steal a much-coveted and totally celluloid kiss with him.

‘I’ll just clean my teeth.’ Niall headed into the bathroom, pulling off his jumper in his wake.

Tash took a great slug of coffee that ran down her chin, her fantasy image disappearing as quickly as a popped balloon.

‘Niall around?’ A bedraggled blonde poked her head around the door, clutching a clip-board in a plastic bag.

‘He’s just coming.’ Tash nodded towards the bathroom.

‘Great.’ The girl grinned, her nose red from the cold. She was a young, soft-voiced American with incredibly white teeth that had probably cost thousands of dollars. ‘You must be Tash – I’m Mel. Come and watch, you can stand with me.’

If Niall really wanted to impress Minty, Tash reflected sourly, he should invest in a set of teeth like Mel’s.

The celluloid kiss was a long time coming. Tash had been on location with Niall before, and it never ceased to amaze her how much faffing, forethought and energy was expended for just a few seconds of film.

The shot had been set up on the edge of a tightly clustered pine wood. Beside it ran the tracks for the craned trolley cam which would swoop to earth as it captured Niall galloping in from battle followed by his gang, and then swing around to track him as he slithered to a halt on a marked spot where he would leap from his steed and straight onto Minty.

As ever, there seemed to be an enormous number of extraneous people hanging about swigging from beakers of tea, banging their hands together for warmth, or dragging on cigarettes. The techies were easily recognisable from their practical anoraks, baseball caps and occasional fleeting attentions to a wire or a piece of tracking. They huddled together talking through the technicalities of the scene, slightly apart from the artistes – themselves conspicuous by their costumes, inertia, and the preferential treatment they received from everyone else. Also hanging around the hub of the action were other more arty production types who were notable for their impractical outfits, loud voices and occasional temperamental fits.

Of them all, Nigel the director was the loudest and most tempestuous. Wearing a tatty Goretex coat and a baseball cap promoting one of his previous films, he seemed to derive a sadistic satisfaction from making everyone do three times as much as they really needed in order to satisfy his near-obsessive perfectionism. Gnawing at his lower lip, eyes darting madly, he stalked around barking orders like a despotic military leader conducting the last stages of a bloody coup. Terrier-like, he snapped and snarled at everyone in sight – Tash included – as he demanded that everything was triple-checked and set to go before they started the final camera rehearsal. Even rehearsing the actors through the scene – which, according to Niall he had already done before the rain broke earlier – was something of a five-act play.

‘Don’t suck her face off, Niall!’ he screamed. ‘Open wider, Minty darling – no, no, not like that. That looks revolting. For God’s sake, use your tongues.’

Tash cringed under her shared umbrella as she watched Niall kiss Minty over and over again, and seem to enjoy it far too much. It was a strange experience, and something of a first. She had seen him kissing a multitude of actresses before – but that had always been in two dimensions, after the scene was cut and edited and projected on to a white screen. Watching the live performance was agony.

‘Kinda odd for you, huh?’ Mel watched her cheerfully.

Tash nodded. ‘I guess I’ll have to harden myself to it.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a bit like being married to the mob, isn’t it?’

Mel, who had been looking across at Nigel’s frantic hand signals to the horse trainer, turned back to her in amazement.

‘Did you just say married?’

‘Yes – well, not yet, I mean.’ She blushed, realising she was spilling more beans than an overturned Heinz lorry. ‘Later this year.’

‘Christ!’ Mel grinned, rubbing her red nose with a mittened hand. ‘That was quick work, wasn’t it? I thought you and Niall only met kinda recently?’

Remembering that Minty had said the same thing, Tash started to detect a lie. She swallowed uncomfortably. ‘A couple of years ago, actually.’

‘Oh.’ Mel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I see.’ She was plainly astonished.

‘But perhaps it would be better to keep quiet about it.’ Tash smiled apologetically. ‘I mean, if Niall’s not eager for people to know.’

‘Sure.’ Mel was looking across at Nigel again. ‘Here we go, they’re in first positions.’

Tash looked up and saw that Minty was now in place under a pine tree, a costume assistant holding an umbrella over her until the last moment to stop drips from the trees landing on her nose. A make-up assistant was fiddling with the long black tresses, using a Polaroid picture as a guide.

In the distance, Niall and three more of the kilts were waiting on horseback for the hand-signal from a nearby walkie-talkie-wielding techie which would cue them to gallop into shot. Steam was rising from the horses, who had already been pounded around a distant field for twenty minutes to give them the sweated-up, battle-weary look. Plumes of hot air puffed from their impatient nostrils as the assorted actors – some with clearly limited equestrian skills – fought to keep them in check.

Tash felt a sudden, aching pang of homesickness for Snob and the Lime Tree Farm mob. She longed to be sitting in the warm, cluttered kitchen at the farm right now, tucking into one of Zoe’s off-the-wall meals and talking about the progress of the horses and the gossip on the circuit.

Nigel was barking into a walkie-talkie as he crouched beside the swarthy director of photography, both looking into a monitor at the base of the camera crane which displayed what the camera operator had in frame. Up on the crane, the camera-man and his focus-puller were sitting in a tight space, shoulders high as their ears against the cold. Tash decided they looked like two grumpy sailors perching in the crows nest at the top of a ship’s mast.

Someone was yelling for silence on set behind her head.

‘Okay – let’s go for it on the first take, shall we?’ Nigel yelled. ‘Where’s the fucking clapper?’

Tash jumped, wondering whether she was supposed to applaud, but the next moment a nervous-looking youth had darted in front of the camera crane and was holding an electronic clapper-board over his head.

‘Not yet!’ Nigel snapped witheringly. ‘And get out of shot, Cynthia!’ The brolly-woman dashed away from Minty, who licked her lips in anticipation.

‘Turn over,’ Nigel barked. ‘Standby for take – everybody quiet, please.’ He pulled down the peak of his baseball cap so that it tipped towards his nose in very Third Reich fashion. ‘Okay. Camera?’

Up on his crane the focus-puller nodded and yelled back, ‘To speed!’