Poisoned Cherries

Chapter 46

There is a myth that movie-making is all early starts and late finishes and that the other side of the coin for guys like me is that we earn our vast sacks of gold by being dumped in arduous locations for weeks and months on end and are then screamed at from six a.m. till midnight by neurotic directors who are overly jealous because we can act and therefore are recognisably famous while they can’t and therefore aren’t.

I believe that’s true on occasion, but it’s never happened to me yet. My experience is of filming in attractive cities and countryside, under the guidance of a mentor who explains how he wants a scene to look and sound once it’s shot, rehearses until he’s happy it’s going to turn out that way, then completes in a minimum of takes and with no histrionics at all.

But then, so far, I’ve only worked with Miles Grayson. No, as I’ve come to appreciate, the people who really work hard on movie projects are those behind the cameras. . and there are a hell of a lot of them. Every one seems to look after his or her own bit of the business, and most of them seem to have exotic titles. For example, there’s someone called a focus puller; I assume that her job is to pull focuses, but how she pulls them, and with what, is and always will be completely beyond me.

The crew’s first day at the McEwan Graduating Hall was scheduled to begin at six-thirty. For the cast, it began at mid-day.

Susie had a flying start; she had asked Mandy to pick her up at seven-thirty, and she was up and ready. We had a coffee and toast breakfast, I took some in to Liam, and then we headed for the Mound.

‘Thanks,’ I said as the lift wound quietly down to the ground floor.

‘What for?’ she laughed. ‘Coming through for a posh dinner at the Caley, sat beside Ewan Capperauld and across from Miles Grayson, then getting to sleep with you? That was not a chore, my darling, I promise.’

‘No. I mean thanks for putting up with me and all the shit I have brought into your life; having a minder at home, surprise visits from Prim, and all that crap.’

She patted my chest. ‘Listen, all of that is offset by the incredible good you’ve brought into it. There wouldn’t have been a Janet without you.’

‘Which begs. . no screams. . the question,’ I told her, ‘that has been gnawing at me. I know you’ve said you love me, and you keep on showing it, but is that only because we’ve made a family together? A family’s something you’ve never had, not properly. So, without Janet, would there still be a me?’

The lift doors opened and we stepped out; the entrance hall was empty.

‘Funny you should ask that,’ Susie whispered, ‘because just occasionally, when I brush the stardust out of my eyes, and look at the real world, I ask myself that very same question about you.’

‘What’s your answer?’

‘I’ll tell you. Remember the signature I want from you, the one we joked about last night? I want it on our marriage forms.’

I whistled; as in whistling in the dark, perhaps. ‘Jesus! You’ve taken my breath away. I mean, no one’s ever proposed to me before. You sure about it?’

‘I’m in business, Oz. I wouldn’t propose a merger if I didn’t think it was absolutely right for my company. The same principle applies in my life. I know how I feel and I know what I want. Now, how about you?’

‘I know how I feel too. For a while I believed that there was no goodness in the world any more. But you and Janet changed that. I love you and our daughter and I will always be around for you. I don’t need to tell you that, I hope. But remember, I’ve stood before the anvil twice, and twice I’ve been burned by the heat of the forge.

‘Christ, the ink isn’t even wet on my divorce, never mind dry. On top of that, am I a guy you can trust?’

‘I think so. If I can trust you after what I walked in on the other night, for God’s sake. .’ Her eyes were laughing; they made me want to say, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ right there and then. But it wasn’t as easy as that.

‘Let me think about this, Susie. There are things I have to sort out.’

‘Such as? Whether or not you really love me?’

‘No. The past; that’s all.’

The light went out of her eyes in an instant. ‘Prim got to you, didn’t she? You’re having second thoughts about the divorce?’

I shook my head. ‘Not one.’

‘Well she is, in that case.’

‘I wouldn’t let her. No, that’s a done deal, honest; even if she did try to back out, it’s done. I’d use her fling with Johnson as grounds.’

‘She might counter-sue.’

‘Tough.’

‘Well, what is it that you have to sort out?’

‘Everything. Me. Jan. Everything.’

Her eyes were full of doubt now. I had hurt her and I knew it, but if I told her the real reason for my hesitancy, the mad idea which was still there at the back of my mind, that would hurt her a lot more. The devil alone knew what it would do to her.