Chapter Twelve #2
‘Don’t look,’ I kept telling Nick, every time he picked up his phone to track the latest on Twitter.
‘I’m not looking,’ he kept replying, throwing his phone aside. For five minutes.
I look across at him now, in his twenty-first century uniform of jeans and a loose jumper, and, seeing the defensive way he’s standing in the doorway of Doverley’s library – his arms folded, his face set – once again ache for him.
Twitter did take that grim cuteness poll down in the end, but not before it had notched up several million votes: 48% to him, 48% to Felix. 4% ‘on the fence’.
‘You’re the only one whose child I’ve ever wanted,’ I choked out to him at some point between sunset and sunrise last night. We weren’t in bed, but slumped on the floor at the foot of it, our phones in our laps, our heads tipped back against the mattress.
He turned, looking at me.
‘You’re the only one whose child I’ve ever wanted,’ he said.
But I can’t give you one, I thought, but couldn’t bring myself to say. Not that.
Not again.
I’ve said it more than enough.
Just as he’s tried to convince me it doesn’t matter to him.
I can’t be convinced, though.
I won’t be.
Never have I felt surer of that than I do now, seeing – properly seeing – his pain.
Honestly, I don’t think he’ll ever be convinced, either.
So where does that leave us?
The question is too huge, and too awful, to think about, so I park it, and move my attention from Nick to Felix, who’s standing beside him, also with his arms folded, and also scowling.
None of us want to be here for this emergency meeting that Blake, the movie’s head publicist, has called, and Felix, unshaven and rumpled, is making no secret of it.
I don’t think he can have slept much last night either. He posted on his own Twitter feed at 3 a.m.
Claudia and Nick are my friends and two of the best people I know. They’ve been through enough, so please leave them alone and stop this abhorrent intrusion on their privacy.
He got a lot of likes.
He’s still getting them.
That poll still notched up more votes though.
I catch his eye, and, fleetingly, his face softens in a smile.
He finally replied to my apology text on Monday, the morning after Nick and I reshot Iris and Robbie’s reunion.
I miss you too, he said, filling me with relief. I’ve written this message about five thousand times already, with too many words, when only a few are needed. So I’ll cut to the chase. I’m sorry as well. You deserved a more understanding friend than you got. I guess we’re both idiots.
I’m the bigger one, I typed back.
No, he replied. You don’t get to call that.
Things aren’t completely back to normal between us. There’s this lingering strain we can’t seem to shake, no matter how many times I drop by his trailer to say hi, or we attempt to chat like we used to between takes. But his smile now means a lot.
His Tweet last night did.
In the midst of all this, it really does matter, knowing that he’s back on my side. In my corner.
Other than him, Nick and me, there’s just Blake and Emma here for this meeting. Emma’s beside me on a sofa by the cold fireplace. Opposite us, Blake’s in an armchair, his laptop open before him.
You wouldn’t know, looking around the library now, that it’s been used as a set this past week.
All the rigs have been taken away, the windows have been stripped of blast-proof tape, the officers’ bar has been dismantled, and the notice boards – variously adorned with propaganda about careless talk costing lives, and advertisements for local dances – have been removed.
There’ll be no more filming here. Thanks to Emma’s food poisoning, all the mess scenes, male scenes, have now been shot.
Another air sequence is in the can, too.
There are plenty more to go – not least the boys’ final flight – but nonetheless, Nick, Felix and the rest of their crew have spent hours on Mabel’s Fury’s cutaway, re-enacting the fear and devastation that was life for Robbie, and Tim, and tens of thousands of other World War Two bomber boys, night after night after night.
The intensity of the flight filming has shaken Nick, I can tell.
It’s got under the skin of everyone involved, I think.
I have now tried to watch some of it myself, but couldn’t.
It was too upsetting. And of course I realise that none of it was actually real.
I do know that we’re all of us actors, playing at war from within this safe, secure pocket of our increasingly volatile world.
But this war that we’re playing at wasn’t a game, it wasn’t a movie.
It was a tragedy, of unfathomable proportions, and the more time I spend immersed in recreating it, the more overcome I feel by how much was given, and how much was lost. That was real.
It is real, and it’s breaking my heart.
I shift in my seat, and Emma turns, giving me a wan smile.
She’s still very pale, and is obviously far from being back to 100%, despite the long hours she’s championed through since returning to work (and, probably, because of them), which only makes me more thankful for the way she kept filming yesterday.
Not that you’d have guessed she was struggling.
She gave everything, and was so compelling that, at times, I forgot who she was, too.
That’s happened quite a bit this week. In spite of everything, I really have liked that part of things: being with Clare when the cameras are rolling, finding Emma again on the cuts.
And between us, we’ve got a lot done. On top of our first shift, we’ve also now shot our arrival in our recreated bedroom, cracking Clare’s medicinal brandy; after that, we filmed a blustery walk with Rusty (which The Screen printed its photo of); then, a montage sequence in the WAAF’s dining room, along with a handful of extras – none of them named, since the screenplay, like Imogen’s novel, leaves the other WAAFs at Doverley very much in the background.
‘Maybe I’d have done it differently if I could have interviewed one of them,’ Imogen’s said to me, ‘but all those I found records for were already gone. I think the others must be, too. I’m sure they would have come forward by now if they were still alive.’
Sadly, I think she’s probably right.
She texted me last night, saying she was thinking of me.
I replied, saying how much I appreciated it, and – realising she probably wasn’t having the best day herself, given The Screen’s article was followed by scores of others catastrophizing about the likely fate of this movie – hypocritically advised her to stay offline.
It’s all just clickbait. We’re on track.
It wasn’t a lie. Although very little has happened when it should have – and we’ve still done no night shooting at all – we’ve got close to one quarter of the scenes scheduled for this Doverley part of the shoot finished.
No one’s exhaling, though. We won’t until it’s over. And for the present, the reason that Nick, Felix, Emma and I are all here in the library with Blake is because Blake emailed us first thing – subject header: Damage Control – saying he needs our help.
Ana was copied on the email too, but hasn’t come along.
I assume she’s busy with Naomi and Jeff, the three of them doing some damage control of their own.
The studio execs are, unsurprisingly, none too happy about The Screen’s outing of Emma’s food poisoning, and have hauled Ana over the coals for keeping it from them.
She, being Ana, didn’t seem particularly fazed when she called by my and Nick’s room earlier, checking on how we were, but nor was she thrilled about the studio’s demand that she send them the raw footage of everything we’ve so far filmed, plus the new schedule for approval, and forecasted overspend, given the extension of Emma’s contract and everyone else’s overtime.
‘They’ll calm down once they’ve taken a breath,’ Ana said.
‘And I’ve convinced them we don’t need to replace Emma.
Now we just need to make sure no one gives them anything else to freak out about.
God –’ she gave a hollow laugh – ‘I’d love to know who this anonymous source is that spoke to The Screen. ’
‘My money’s on Blake,’ said Nick.
‘So’s mine,’ said Emma, when we ran into her and Felix on our way here.
And so, in fact, is mine.
It was that bit about this movie blowing everyone away. What publicist wouldn’t want that in the press?
‘Sceptical about me, were you?’ Nick says to Blake now.
‘Did you want to get me fired?’ demands Emma.
‘No,’ says Blake, removing his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbing his eyes.
I guess he hasn’t slept much either. ‘And I’ve never been sceptical about you, Nick.
I’m not the source. It’s like I keep saying, that’s not how I work.
And think about it, why would I tell The Screen that your casting, or anything come to that, is a publicity stunt? ’
‘To bury the lead?’
‘I didn’t do it, Nick. I don’t know what else to say.’
‘How about filling us in on what you need our help with?’ suggests Felix.
So, Blake does, beginning with his concern that the public might be starting to lose faith in this movie, no matter what The Screen’s anonymous source might have said about how great it’s shaping up to be.
‘A lot of the commentary since hasn’t even mentioned that, and we’re running a real risk of being written off before we’ve hit the screens.
’ He gives us a, can you imagine, look. ‘People who aren’t excited don’t buy movie tickets, and right now, what’s anyone got to be excited about?
We’ve got a director who’s been accused of trickery, and a lead actress who’s rumoured to be on the edge of a mental health episode.
’ He throws me a grimace. ‘Sorry to be brutal, Claudia, but I have to say it like it is.’
‘Do you, though?’ asks Nick.
‘It’s ok,’ I say.
‘No, it’s not,’ says Nick.
Which it isn’t, of course.