Chapter 11
Violet
Violet’s car dipped and bounced along the muddy track to the location. She was barely doing five miles an hour, but the potholes were so deep in places that she was still bouncing around in the driver’s seat like a pinata. This place was so hard to find, she had gotten lost twice on the way there.
Whose idea was it to have them shoot down some back lanes, off roads with no road signs and no passing places, somewhere so remote Google maps actually said, Huh? when she typed it in. Luckily, having been advised to give herself plenty of time, she would still be early for work.
This was their second week out on location.
They had finished the shoot at Chelmswood village and Manor House, and for most of the week ahead, they were shooting at Mauden Hall.
The sprawling house was standing in for Hassenholme, the estate of Sir Henry Ballonby, the man Beatrice’s father wanted her to wed.
In real life, it was the home of some Baron Violet had forgotten the name of.
The family lived in one wing, and the rest of the sprawling house was open to the public for much of the year.
Her visions of spring fields peppered with crocuses and the Hall rising gently into view over a lush green ridge had been dashed.
It had been raining for days and was still drizzling now.
Everything in their country location was coloured in a palette of greys and browns.
Dull grey sky, brown muddy roads, bare brown wintery trees, occasional old brick houses with slate roofs dotted on the horizon, all softened and blurred at the edges by a grey mist.
The front passenger wheel on Violet’s little Corsa plunged into a pothole that she had thought was just a small puddle, and the seatbelt jerked her back. The car lurched out of the hole and bucked forwards.
‘Oh god,’ Violet muttered, as headlights appeared around the corner ahead of her.
This was not a road for two cars. This was barely a road for one car. Actually, this was barely a road.
The approaching vehicle seemed to be having a better time of it than her and continued on towards her.
‘Fuck fuckity fuck,’ Violet swore.
A sweat broke out on her top lip as she contemplated the overgrown verges on either side of her. Then, just ahead, her headlights caught a little white temporary sign that read, Passing Place.
She bounced towards it, angling the Corsa in as the other vehicle neared, blinding her with million-watt LED headlights.
Violet squinted against the glare, bounced in and out of another pothole, and came to a stop in the passing place at a tilt.
The other car, some sort of SUV, flashed its horrifically bright lights in a thank you and growled on by.
Despite getting lost twice and being stuck half in a ditch, Violet was still eleven minutes early for work. Feeling very pleased with herself for her contingency planning, she parked her car as directed on the temporary parking surface and hurried over to unit base and the trucks.
As she weaved between parked cars to reach the trucks, she realised that the drizzle had finally stopped and a thin, watery sunlight was filtering through the clouds.
The Hall looked like it was waking up after a long sleep, and the sloping lawns that gracefully rolled away from the house glinted with dew droplets in the weak winter sun.
Violet sucked in a deep breath of fresh air and tipped her head back slightly, letting the faint morning light fall on her face.
She hunched her shoulders against the damp.
Inside the AD’s trailer, radios were already chirping away, and Rachael was sitting with elbows on the desk, phone clamped to her ear with one hand, pinching the bridge of her nose with the other.
Rachael glanced up.
‘Gimme two seconds….’ she mouthed as she listened intently to her phone.
‘No, Dave, please tell her that her call time hasn’t changed since we issued the call sheet yesterday, and since I told her about her pick up time on wrap. She needs to get in that car ASAP!’
Violet could hear a raised voice on the other end, then Rachael shut off the call. Closing her eyes, she rubbed at her temples.
‘It’s not even 07:30, and I think I’m getting a migraine.’
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ Violet offered. ‘Or some painkillers?’
‘No,’ Rachael said, with a quick smile. ‘I’ll live, but thanks though.
What I need you to do today is stay with Finn on the second unit, then stick with him when he’s back with main unit this afternoon.
We’re shooting a lot of quick pieces for a montage, as well as a couple of interior scenes, and starting the big external.
I need someone with him at all times to walk him from place to place so we don’t lose any time between shots. ’
As she spoke, she handed Violet the second unit call sheet printout and sides.
Violet opened her mouth to protest, but Rachael was already moving on.
‘We’ve got some dailies in who’ll help on the floor so you can give Finn your full attention.’
Violet squirmed. That was not something either she or Finn would want.
This would mean an entire day with Finn, at his beck and call.
After the day in the walled garden at the Manor, she had seen little enough of him for several days afterwards, preferring to do locking off to stop curious passers by wandering into filming areas, and dealing with irate members of the public who couldn’t park outside their houses.
‘Uh, you’re sure it’s not better to have a daily with Finn and me on the floor?’ she asked, pretty sure of the answer but unable to resist checking, anyway. ‘I know the crew now and how they like things run.’
Rachael shook her head. ‘No. I need someone who knows Finn and can keep this moving. I am counting on you,’ she looked at Violet from under her heavy fringe, ‘to help keep this to time. Don’t let Finn stand around chatting. I know what he’s like.’
‘Sure,’ Violet nodded. ‘You can count on me.’
‘He’s in makeup now. We’ve got twelve cast in today, all arriving in the same hour, and we’ll be swamped. You’ll need to take one of the quads to the first location,’ Rachael said. ‘It’s in the woods. Get one of the drivers on standby to leave at 08:00.’
‘No problem,’ Violet said, slinking towards the door.
Rachael’s phone started ringing, and she grabbed it. As Violet slipped outside, she heard Rachael snap, ‘Has she come down yet? You’re kidding me! You need to go in there and…’
Violet stopped off at catering to get Finn a coffee and a can of cola for her.
This must be, ooh, about the twentieth coffee she had fetched for him in the past few weeks.
The sting of waiting on him and doing his bidding hadn’t faded, though in recent days, he seemed to revel in it slightly less.
She radioed the transport team and asked for a quad to be ready for her and Finn at 08:00, then lingered by the catering truck, dropping two energy bars and a muffin into her coat pockets before tearing pieces off a fat, buttery croissant.
Shoot days were long, and she needed to keep her energy up.
The radio buzzed in her ear. It was Chloe at base, announcing that Finn was out of makeup and ready to travel.
Violet folded the rest of her half-eaten croissant into her mouth and set out at a march back to cast trailers.
Outside Finn’s trailer, she batted croissant crumbs off her scarf and took a breath. She was having flashbacks to her first day just a few weeks before, standing in this same spot. At least this time she wasn’t coffee-less.
She tapped on the door and waited. Footsteps approached, and she stepped back as the door swung open. Finn, a smile ready on his face to greet the caller, dropped it the moment he saw who it was.
‘Violet. What an unexpected…. Well, I can hardly say pleasure, can I?’
Violet rolled her eyes as Finn reached back into the trailer and grabbed his coat and what looked like rolled-up script pages.
Violet held out the coffee as he descended the steps.
‘Coffee,’ she said, when he looked at the offered cup with suspicion.
Finn took it and mumbled some thanks but held it like a grenade that might go off.
‘You never bring me coffee,’ he said as they fell into lockstep, Finn shadowing Violet as she steered them on a route for the transport pad and the quad driver.
‘I bring you coffee almost every day at some point,’ she countered. ‘Sometimes two or three times.’
‘Yeah, but…I usually have to ask for it. Or you have to offer, because you’re getting drinks for the other cast.’
‘Then consider this a small victory,’ she sighed. ‘You’ve worn me down.’
‘I have that effect on women,’ Finn said and gave a throaty chuckle.
Violet wished he sounded sleazy, but it was a deep, gravelly sound that managed to feel intimate even in the chilly, open air. She shivered and hunched her shoulders against the dank, cold air.
Violet walked up to the quad marked ATV 4.
‘You’re for Violet and Finn?’ she asked.
The driver, straggly hair sticking out from under a grubby grey beanie, grunted in agreement. He was a local guy who had no interest in them or what they were doing here. It was a day’s work, and that was that.
‘This is us,’ she said, gesturing for Finn to get in.
She climbed in after him, pressed herself back into the seat as far as she could go, and got a firm grip on one of the upright side bars to her left before saying to the driver, ‘We’re ready!’
The engine gunned, and the quad skidded forward. Violet winced, her shoulder thrumming from the jolt, and she braced herself further back into the seat with her feet. The driver swore, revved the engine, and then they were off, lurching forwards into the woods.
‘Travelling with Finn,’ Violet squeaked into the radio as her stomach turned over.
‘Copy that,’ Jake’s voice crackled down the line.