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love?’ and was admonished by the script girl (always a girl, although well into her forties), then for three takes, with eye lines and script lines perfect, she was encouraged by Mike to ‘take it down’, until on the seventh take, when Vera felt that she hadtaken it down as far as was possible, short of just thinking the scene instead of performing it, a plane flew over.
    ‘Shit!’ shouted Mike.
    ‘Go again!’ shouted Derek, remorselessly.
    During the eighth take, Tony announced a slight camera shake so they cut and went to take nine. Take nine was a print. Nine takes wasn’t bad, particularly given the car. Everyone swarmed in for the next set-up and Vera moved off for a fag.
    Vera felt pleased with herself. She was, after all, a pro. She watched Sue-the-double, her Lallie wig now in place and jacket off, playfully massage the bicep of the boy who had been helping the boom operator. Shameless.
    ‘Fuck me, darling, did I win medals at Rada so I could work as a cunting chauffeur?’ moaned Dougie recreationally, as they wandered off for their celebratory cigarette.
    ‘Couldn’t cadge a fag, could I? I’ve run out.’
    With a start, Vera realized Sue-the-double, her wig off, was grinning at her from the other side of the horse-chestnut under which she and Dougie stood to smoke. The ground beneath it already looked like a pub ashtray, after a single day of shooting. Vera handed the girl a cigarette and readjusted her stare. She could see now that it was the real Lallie cavorting with the muscle boy over by the lights, not her adult counterpart. She could see too that it was just innocent horseplay, as Lallie jumped at him and demanded a piggyback. Vera was too vain to wear her glasses, except for a role.
    After another forty minutes or so (Dougie had some professionally bitter stories to impart about a telly he’d done recently), they moved on to cover the next part of the scene, for which Dirk and Lallie were required. The make-up department had applied their best efforts to dimming Dirk’s glamour in order to make him a convincing kiddie fiddler, although in Vera’s opinion there was a theatrical abundance to the fake dandruff scattered on the greasy shoulders of his windcheater, and not much could be done toalter the confident, rather camp individuality of his stance. Although their paths hadn’t exactly crossed at Rank but had run parallel, in that they had appeared in many of the same films without actually sharing many scenes or even remotely similar billing, their acquaintance had never sparked into friendship, not even at the bantering level she shared with Dougie. Such was the polite remoteness of Dirk’s conversation whenever they met that Vera always felt compelled to reintroduce herself, hoping each time to fix herself in his memory. It never worked. Dirk was forever the austere but devastating senior prefect and Vera the ink-stained inhabitant of a remedial stream. Today had been no exception.
    Vera watched the kid’s mother – what was her name? – detach the child from her game with the forbearing crew member and lead her, skipping at the restraint, to the business end of the set. What it must be like to have all that energy, Vera thought, infinitely accessible. No one had made the offer to replace Vera and Dougie with a couple of strips of gaffer tape. Although to be fair, considered Vera, a kiddie like Lallie probably needed something real to get a bead on, so to speak.
    They ran the scene with the four of them. Both Dirk and the girl were word- and note-perfect. Mike raised his eyebrows at Tony and Derek, and adjusted Dirk’s position slightly. They went for a take. As far as Vera could tell, that too seemed perfect, although Mike immediately asked for another one.
    ‘Can you come in just half a second sooner on Dirk’s line?’ he asked Lallie. Lallie nodded vigorously. She did too – her tone unfaltering and not a fraction of a second out either way. After Derek’s ‘cut’, the