Chapter Four
Patrick’s movie was titled Tongue-in-Cheek, in reference to the style of British humor, but in itself was tongue-in-cheek, as it also suggested a very specific sexual act at the center of the film’s plot. It all took place in the mid-1970s, a gloomy period in Britain after Harold Wilson’s swinging sixties and before the rise of Margaret Thatcher. It was a decade of strikes—postal workers, miners, and dustmen—where the Queen’s Silver Jubilee was followed by the Winter of Discontent. Jude Law was cast as fictional prime minister Lyle Bancroft, whose taste for the aforementioned sexual act comes to light in his divorce proceedings just as he’s taken residency at Number 10 Downing. He becomes embroiled in scandal and the—ahem—butt of the nation’s jokes and, being a deeply serious man, lacks the talent and grit to effectively strike back and neutralize a rather precarious political predicament. Patrick played Peter Wiggins, a disgraced American sitcom star (“Imagine that,” he’d said to Cassie when she’d sent him the script, first via email and then printed) running from his own scandal (being outed as bisexual), whom Bancroft’s advisers hire to teach their man to be funny. An unlikely friendship develops between the British politician and the American comedian as they bond over being other people’s punch lines, and Patrick’s character gets to the heart of why Lyle’s sense of humor had been so stymied.
“It’s all very King’s Speech,” Cassie had explained when she was trying to sell him on the project. “Except, you know. Funny.”
“You’re being unusually ass-ertive.” It would be the first of many puns between them.
“I think you should do it. The King’s Speech did wonders for Colin Firth’s career.”
“I recall,” Patrick said. Firth played King George VI and the film centered on his friendship with an unorthodox speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush. “It won him his firth Oscar,” Patrick quipped in honor of Grant and his old lisp.
Jude had been a most generous scene partner, and while he’d aged into more interesting roles, he retained a magnetism that had yet to dim. It was easy to imagine not only his party electing him prime minister, but an ex-wife allowing him to do the dirty deed at the heart of the film. Jude seemed unbothered by growing older, almost relieved, and Patrick admired him for it. Patrick himself had never been burdened with quite such good looks. He was handsome, no doubt, especially in his youth. But his looks were not driving his fame. In real life, Jude was slyly funny, and he and Patrick had developed their own camaraderie, which served them both on set and off. And now Patrick was almost sad the movie was wrapping.
On the last day of shooting, Patrick arranged for Maisie and Grant to play small parts as extras; they were to be members of a cheering crowd who warmly greet the prime minister as he triumphantly leaves the House of Commons and all seems forgiven. Patrick thought they’d get a kick out of being in the film; if nothing else they had bragging rights for when they returned home (it was the ultimate “What I did on my summer vacation” answer). For Patrick’s part it was free babysitting, as he wasn’t sure what else he would do with them while he was at work.
When Patrick emerged from hair and makeup, the kids were already waiting for him; Maisie was dressed in a jumpsuit made of drab olive corduroy and her hair pulled back in a braid, while Grant was clad in gray dress shorts and long socks as part of a primary school uniform.
“Don’t you both look groovy.” Patrick himself was sporting a maroon leisure suit with its shirt-like jacket and long bell-bottom pants.
An actress named Thomasin walked by on her way to the set and pointed at Grant. “He looks just like you,” she said, and kept walking.
“Thanks, that’s a great compliment!” Patrick called after her. He then turned to Grant and said, “For you.”
“Oooh,” Maisie said when she finally took in his whole getup. “Your sideburns are for the film.”
“Yes, I told you that.”
“Yeah, but we don’t listen to you.”
Patrick longed for the days when they hung on his every word.
“What did you think, I was just reliving some latent Jason Priestley thing?” Blank stares. “Never mind, come here. We have to take a picture for your dad.”
Patrick lowered himself on one knee and Grant rested against his uncle’s thigh as he motioned for Maisie to lean in. A breeze caught the kid’s hair just as he looked away from the camera at something off in the distance; the resulting photo was just so cool and badass. They looked like a band of thieves on a wanted poster, Patrick the mastermind, Maisie and Grant street-smart orphans who could swindle you for all you were worth. It was the kind of movie Hollywood used to make with Ryan O’Neal. “Are you two excited?”
The kids’ response lacked a certain vivacity.
“Oh, come on. You’re in a movie. You’re going to see how the magic is made. You can’t be that blasé. We could probably even get you Taft-Hartley waivers. You ever thought about joining SAG?”
“SAG?” Maisie said. Once again it was clear from their expressions they thought he was speaking in tongues.
“SAG. The Screen Actors Guild. That’s how I get my health insurance.”
Maisie was unimpressed. “We get our insurance from Dad. Besides, we don’t even have any lines.”
“Ooh, I want to have a line!” Grant exclaimed.
“You’re not getting lines.”
Grant put his hands on his hips in frustration. “You have lines!”
“What do you think this is, some sort of Montessori-type thing?” Patrick balked. “Not everyone’s part is the same. Now, come on. You’re extras in a Hollywood film. I don’t know what more you could want out of the summer.”
Maisie challenged him with a glare. “We’d like to stop our dad from making a huge mistake.”
Patrick looked at them both, remembering when they were six and nine. It was easier then; they didn’t understand everything that came out of his mouth, but they were always open and enchanted. Now they had agency to push back against his wilder antics and they were more immune to his charms. On top of that they devised their own agendas and had no problem advocating for them; everything was all so straightforward in their minds. “One thing at a time, okay?” There would be plenty of long days ahead to work out the Greg situation as they traveled by rail around Europe.
Patrick sent the kids to set with a second AD, adding, “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you packed them up with wardrobe and sent them back to the States.” The director laughed; everyone always assumed he was kidding.
They shot the scene several times, Patrick trying his level best not to break character while cameras were rolling to scan for Maisie and Grant in the crowd. He kept his focus on Jude (or rather, Prime Minister Lyle Bancroft), and it honestly felt thrilling to be greeted with cheers each time they emerged from the building, even if everyone was being paid to cheer and the hoots and hollers were for their characters and not them. He couldn’t believe he’d taken such a long leave from acting, hiding away in the desert, as he did for the better part of ten years. Now that he was back in front of the cameras, he realized how much an integral part of him acting was. Yes, Palm Springs had almost constant sunshine, but it was nothing compared to the hot lights of a movie set. The excitement, the bustle, the camera on a crane that panned over them before swooping high above to take in a crowd that would be digitally replicated and expanded later. It was just so exciting. Even his leisure suit was growing on him; he wondered if there was any way he could keep it when filming was done. Maybe he’d even wear it to Greg’s wedding, just to see the look on his brother’s face. Perhaps that alone would be enough to stop the ceremony in its tracks. Although it was just as likely that in Italy no one would blink an eye at his seventies fashion; in Europe it was hard to tell.
Between takes, however, Patrick kept a firm eye on the kids. They’d been placed in the crowd alongside two actors dressed, he supposed, as their mom and dad. These more experienced extras were offering the kids both encouragement and ideas, and he watched as they rehearsed little bits they could do for the camera together. Patrick’s heart grew heavy as he studied Maisie and Grant with a proxy mother and father. The kids were part of a complete family again, fictional as it was, looking happy and cheering, and he was struck in that moment by how much these children had lost. Of course he knew what they had missed out on these past five years—he missed their mother terribly, too. But to see it so plainly, through this window into an alternate universe, he felt it all anew.
“Would you let your kids go into acting?” Sara had asked him once when they were still in their freshman year at school. Patrick was newly out and had yet to even go on a formal date. Kids were light-years away.
“Kids?” Patrick replied. They had just returned from rehearsals for the fall play and were buzzing with how much more professional their college theater department was than their respective high school drama clubs. “What world are you living in?”
Sara scrutinized him with a look that made Patrick panic; she always saw a future for him that he could not.
“Where is this coming from all of a sudden?” Usually late at night they would gripe about things that had transpired that day—their castmates’ reluctance to get off book, for instance, or the director’s ridiculous insistence they rehearse in spandex pants—rather than ponder a time to come.
Sara lay on her dorm room floor and looked up at the tapestry she’d pinned to the ceiling, a stand-in for the night sky. She stared so intently Patrick wondered if she was waiting to see a shooting star. “My parents are threatening to cut off tuition unless I study something more practical.”
“More practical to who?” Patrick asked, but the answer was crystal clear. “They can’t do that!” One thing about coming out, it made Patrick enraged with all of the world’s injustices. But he knew they very well could, as his own parents had threatened the same before school even began. “The only sane course of action is announcing a keen interest in something even less employable than drama. Tell them you’re taking up the French horn.”
“That’s the sane course of action?” Sara pressed.
“I’m not saying actually do it,” Patrick replied. Try as he might, he could not picture her in a band uniform.
“I just think if I had kids, I would want them to be happy. At all costs. I’d want them to find their happiness.”
The simplicity of it was profound. “Happiness,” Patrick repeated, like it was a novel concept. He wasn’t even certain he’d ever thought to visualize that for himself and here she was wishing it on others who did not yet exist, perhaps at the cost of her own. He reached for a book on her shelf, a collection of one-acts for two people, published by Samuel French. “Want to read a play?” It was something they did for amusement in the wee hours.
“No. You have to get out of here. The Faucet is coming over.”
Patrick groaned. “I’m being sexiled for the Faucet?” The Faucet was a sophomore Sara had hooked up with twice who leaked an alarming amount whenever the least bit excited; his penis was quite like a spigot. “You can’t have kids with the Faucet.”
“What’s wrong with the Faucet?”
“The way his anatomy works? He’s more likely to impregnate his pants.”
Sara laughed. “There’s a special place in hell for people like you.”
Patrick stood up and spun on one heel. “Yes, obviously I’ll be in VIP.”
Sara pulled the pillows off her bed and threw them at Patrick one by one until he opened the door to leave. “Good night, Patrick.”
He leaned in the doorway, and looked adoringly at his friend. They’d known each other only a matter of weeks and he already wanted to repay her for everything she’d done for him, nudging him closer to happiness than he’d ever been. “Someday I’ll introduce you to someone else. Someone better. And your kids will be all the happier for it. Whether they’re actors or not.”
Patrick became aware of a tugging on his sleeve and it snapped him out of his trance. It was one of the actors pulling him back inside as the director called for another take. Patrick found his starting mark and stood, listening as the crowd of extras was once more quieted and stilled. Maisie and Grant could have this again. A complete family. If only they would open themselves up to Livia. Sure, he liked to have his fun, calling her the Baroness and whatnot, needling his brother about her wealth and family lineage. But he had to sell the kids on all the good that could come from their father remarrying. Not for his sake, not for Greg’s. But for theirs. Having, if not a mother again, a mother figure who could make them happy. He felt certain of it, even if they were not. They were young still, they needed that.
He had a mission now for their summer trip as they wound their way slowly to Italy for the wedding. He hoped that he was up for it, and he almost convinced himself he was just as the director called, “ACTION!”