Being a Girl

by Chloë Thurlow

  It was just what they did when they were shooting Casablanca, the best film ever made, said David, write the script at night and go out and shoot it next morning. That was David’s dream, to remake Casablanca, which I thought rather silly. If Casablanca was the tour-de-force everyone said it was, if no one could match the stature of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, what was the point in making an insipid colour version of a black and white masterpiece?

  There wasn’t a point, none at all, not that I said as much. I grinned and agreed. That’s what girls are expected to do. We play roles. We are obedient. We become what we are expected to be . . . although I could see a time coming when I rebelled. When I met the right man, I would be the perfect woman.

  Anyway, we gave the script the final tweak and I was feeling feisty when we climbed into bed. I laid David down in the missionary position, straddled him like a jockey and worked my knees into his flanks as I rode him across the finishing line to an ecstatic climax.

  It was late. We were drained, literally, and the last day of shooting was the longest, a full twelve hours from eight until eight. I could hardly open my eyes when I rolled out of bed all damp and sticky, but a film set is like a drug, as soon as you get a whiff of eggs and bacon frying the fatigue flows from your body and you feel completely alive.

  We returned to the house of those kindly people the electricians were tirelessly chipping. Murray McVite exploded every five minutes and the runners named Max and Garth and Jake were running around with polish and marker pens concealing the scratches and scuffs.

  ‘It’s like being a virgin letting your house be used by a film crew,’ said Murray. ‘It only happens once.’

  The gaffer shone the spotlight in Murray’s eyes.

  ‘Just testing,’ said Pete.

  ‘Bleedin’ sparks,’ Murray muttered, and I realised that all the yelling and complaining was just movie ritual, that the crew, like members of a family, like the actors themselves, had roles to play. Assistant directors would always be ill-tempered, the sparks would always be grumbling, and the runners were destined to run around like headless chickens never entirely sure what they were supposed to be doing.

  The two Petes, ably assisted by the runners, were now chipping the paint on the stair stays as they lugged the light stands upstairs. David would be shooting two scenes in the bathroom, the one where Ricky drops his mobile phone down the loo, then the space would have to be ‘re-dressed’ to look like a different bathroom for the scene where he peels off the bloody bandages and reveals the tattoo on his chest. First though, in natural light, we would be shooting the scene where the girls are clearing the shelves and Ricky appears with a towel around his waist.

  Roddy Wise was already in make-up with Adam. I managed to squeeze by the commotion on the stairs with a cup of coffee and was leaning on the windowsill in the back bedroom watching the sun polish the glass sides of the buildings at Chelsea Harbour when Stephanie Jones arrived in a little white dress and a straw hat.

  I hadn’t seen Steph since we’d done our lesbian scene and she had gone through a complete metamorphosis. She was 42 and looked suddenly like a girl, her hair mussed when she removed her hat, her eyes aglow, her lips painted scarlet. Just as I’d suspected, my girlie juice was an elixir. I had between my legs the fount of eternal youth, the philosopher’s stone, the white shell from which Venus emerged in a painting by Salvador Dalí, sublime and surreal. Steph looked marvellous and I was certain I was responsible. I had awoken the inner Miss Jones and it was something to be proud of.

  Maja delivered our camouflage pants and tank tops and Stephanie asked me to lower the zip on the back of her dress. She stepped from the material and my mouth dropped open. She was naked, not a stitch, just a pair of white killer heels that bowed her back and made her breasts all perky.

  ‘Well, it is hot,’ she said, ‘and I feel so sexy walking along the street exposed.’

  I remembered that day when I’d gone for lunch at the Jewel Royale with Mummy and Binky, and after lunch for no apparent reason I’d whipped off my knickers and marched through Soho to see Jean-Luc Cartier. It confirmed my theory, girls just want to be seen in the altogether, bare as new-born babies, they want to be free of macho posturing and enjoy the gift of their beautiful bodies. I stared at Stephanie’s fiery-tipped breasts and a curious thing happened, my own breasts started to buzz and tingle as if the sparks had joined us with invisible wires.

  There was a rap on the door. ‘Ten minutes to make-up.’

  Steph opened the door and found Jake still standing there. ‘Tell Adam we need fifteen,’ she said, and closed the door again.

  I peeled off my clothes and the electrical charge zipped across the room and drew us together with a force that took my breath away. Stephanie had tasted the elixir and was thirsting for more. I dropped into the leather chair under the window, stretched my legs over the arms and she kneeled to the holy orifice. Now girls’ tongues are not like boys’ tongues, but I was soon a river of oily goo that Steph supped from my clean-shaven pussy and I thought how brilliant, we needed a high degree of sexual tension in the living-room scene and what could be better preparation?

  When we finally got to make-up, Roddy Wise was just leaving. He looked closely at me, he looked closely at Steph, and his lips pressed together in a knowing smile.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said.

  Adam leaned out the door. ‘This isn’t a conveyor belt, you know,’ he said. ‘I can’t do two at once.’

  ‘Tyrant,’ hissed Steph and he grinned.

  Roddy strolled off along the corridor, his shoulders rising and falling as he chuckled to himself.

  We managed to get the morning schedule done by the middle of the afternoon. We were two hours late already but everyone seemed to think the three morning set-ups had gone well and after lunch, Adam carefully painted the snake tattoo on my leg. I dressed and stood in the bath so that he could spray my clothes; in the film we’d been caught in a downpour leaving the wine bar; girls in wet clothes look sexy and it gives them an excuse to change into something more comfortable, like nothing at all.

  I had put on one of Mummy’s dresses, a reproduction chiffon ensemble from the thirties with a bow like the bow on a chocolate box on my shoulder. To hold the bow in place, Maja had found a silver snake pin in the Portobello Road; it was perfect: the snake was the film’s leitmotiv and my bare leg with the fake tattoo would one day grace the case of a DVD. We had written out Amanda’s change into the red kimono. It was redundant. Girls like Amanda Marshall wouldn’t waste the effort.

  Maja and Adam followed me downstairs. The crew was waiting. Murray shouted for everyone to be quiet and one of the runners gave me a bottle of champagne; it had already been opened so it would be easy for Ricky to open. The sound people would put the pop in later in the edit.

  ‘And, action.’

  Max snapped the clapper board. ‘Amanda’s Flat. Take one,’ he said.

  ‘Mark it,’ said Dudley, and the cameras were turning.

  I stood there in the damp dress, hair sticking to my forehead.

  ‘You’re not in a hurry?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  The camera stays on Ricky as I leave the room and return with a bottle of champagne and two cold glasses, one containing the sleeping draught. I give the bottle to Ricky. I smile girlishly as the cork pops. Some champagne spills over his hand. I smile again. I take the bottle and the camera follows me on the dolly as I go to fill the two waiting glasses. Amanda is such a bitch and I feel like a bitch as I turn with a look of adoration pasted on my sweet features.

  ‘To . . . to what? To beauty,’ he begins, and I say my lines as I watch him drink the champagne. I talk about being gang raped, being locked up and beaten up, the dominatrix in a leather mask, the backlash. I am a siren singing from the rocks, Eve the snake woman, a girl of eighteen, the ultimate object of desire. What man could resist betraying his lover?

  We drink. I refill the glasses and the camera follows as I l
eave the room, the lens tracking my high heels. I unclip the snake pin as I go. I pause and let the dress fall to the floor. You see the dress, my legs, the snake. I continue, the camera always on my heels, my calf, my thigh. I let my bra drop like a white cloud behind me. I pause again and delicately, oh so sexily, slip off my knickers, one leg at a time. Now I am naked. The camera pans slowly up my legs, over the snake circling my thigh, over my bottom, my back. I glance over my shoulder for a fraction of a second and toss my hair as I leave the room.

  The reverse shot reveals Ricky wearing the expression of the man about to be given the biggest box of chocolates in the world.

  We do four takes. Between every take Adam sprays my dress with water and the runners scurry around polishing the damp spots from the floor.

  Next comes the scene with me waiting for Ricky in the bedroom. It is the first time that the head of the snake is fully revealed and, while the crew took absolutely hours shifting the camera gear, I lay back on the table in the make-up room, my legs gaping and Adam working with a fine brush trying to achieve a lifelike appearance about the snake’s head, the gleam in those maroon eyes, the expression on its thin lips. Adam had stopped being embarrassed by my nudity, in fact he seemed to enjoy it, and what with all the attention, and what with my pussy wide open, I was positively oozing.

  ‘You smell like you’re in heat,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were gay?’

  He looked up across my tummy. ‘You have to be flexible,’ he replied, and he kept his eyes on mine as he lowered his head and licked the warm juice from my fragrant lips. I was pleased to have made a convert.

  Maja accompanied me to the bedroom for the scene where I am standing naked waiting for Ricky.

  Roddy Wise was already there, looking dishevelled and excited, the glass of champagne in his hand. Our eyes meet when he appears on the threshold. Again I tell him I won’t be a second. As I slide from the room, he undresses and climbs into bed.

  Ricky is supposed to be getting sleepy and, when I saw the rushes later, I thought Roddy was brilliant the way he was fighting to keep his eyes open. I re-enter the room looking shy and slide between the sheets. Although we had rehearsed the scene dozens of times, this time it was different. There was an extra element. Two in fact. We weren’t wearing any clothes for one thing and, for another, Ricky had stopped being Ricky and had become Roddy. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. But a look passed between us, a pulse, a message, a frisson. The camera lifted on the jib high above the bed and as Roddy Wise slipped into my wet warm place it was a thrill knowing that David was watching.

  5

  Erotique Diabolique

  EVEN SHORT FILMS cost a fortune and they take forever. In pre-production you rehearse, tweak the script, drink endless cups of cappuccino and go out looking for costumes and locations. During production you shoot the film. The days are long but it’s lots of fun. The hard work begins in post-production.

  Francis Ford Coppola said a film is made three times, first by the writer, then the director, then the editor, which was terribly clever and absolutely true. When we first entered the editing suite the scenes on the monitor seemed fragmentary, like overheard snatches of conversation or views glimpsed from a passing train. But Sacha Vance, the editor, could see in his silvery-blue eyes the best in every expression, in every gesture.

  When I saw the raw footage of Stephanie Jones bringing me to an irrepressible orgasm in front of the director and crew I was so embarrassed I went red to the roots of my hair. But Sacha had cut the mildly pornographic into something charming and sensual. He did the same with the last scene when Roddy Wise eased my knees apart and slid his celebrity member into the jaws of the snake.

  ‘You’re a very dedicated actress,’ Sacha whispered, and I didn’t like to tell him I was about to go up to university and I wasn’t really an actress at all.

  David needed constant reassurance as Sacha brought the emotional heart of his film to life, snipping out a few seconds from one take and combining it with another, moving from a close-up of a clock showing ten o’clock to the rain-lashed streets to Amanda Marshall striding into the bar, the femme fatale and de rigueur for ciné noir. Excuse my French!

  According to Sister Theresa, the role of the writer is to put into words universal truths that will be understood intuitively and, as the writer’s work goes through its metamorphosis to film, the editor is the director’s conscience. The director has to get the shots in the can, but those gripping moments that send icy fingers running up our spine and bring a tear to our eye are all in the editor’s hands.

  After the edit, David had the soundtrack to worry about, and Hermann Mann came through by persuading George Trevor to take a sabbatical from his work on a West End musical to compose an original score. He began by asking David to name his favourite film and the velvety piano filling the bare spaces in the background was reminiscent of Casablanca and transformed the little movie once again. It had become a morality tale rooted in the zeitgeist, compelling, with something of the titivating, something of the tragic, and good enough, according to Mr Mann, to enter for the Cannes Film Festival, an honour indeed.

  David was elated but I was growing bored and a little anxious. I’m sure I even saw a line on my brow one morning and it had never been there before. It was still hot, but as the leaves died on the trees and we entered an Indian summer the turning of the seasons was a reminder that for me it was time to turn the page.

  I had never really had any doubts that I would be going up to Cambridge but still it was a relief when the letter arrived; there’s only one place for every forty students who apply, and my parents in their undemonstrative way were terribly proud. Binky, if I knew Binky, would be working hard through her last year to keep up with me. It is the younger sister’s plight to be competitive, as well as spoiled, and now that I was growing up I could see these things more clearly. All she had ever really needed was a good spanking, and now that her bottom had received some attention we had become the best of friends.

  My life was on course except for one problem: by the time I got to King’s at the end of September, there was no space in halls. I was the Virgin Mary without a manger and gratefully accepted a sofa in a flat occupied by Tamara Tucker, who had gone up to university from Saint Sebastian’s the year before me and, as an Old Basher, was obliged to play the Good Samaritan.

  I had never really liked Tamara’s hockey-playing set at school, and now I couldn’t bear those cacophonous nights with the headboard in the next room banging out Beethoven’s Fifth on the dividing wall. Tamara was a fleshy, big-boned girl with a penchant for rugby players and was busy working her way through the college First XV.

  Dark rings were forming under my eyes, and when Professor Martin asked me if everything was all right, I felt such a child as tears started rolling down my cheeks. When I told him I was homeless, he produced a big white handkerchief and made me blow my nose.

  ‘You’ll never get ahead sleeping on someone’s sofa,’ he said, and I sniffed as he wrote down a telephone number. ‘Give Dr Goetz a call, Milly,’ he added, pulling the page from his notebook. ‘He has a very nice attic that’s ideal for a girl like you.’

  I dried my tears, returned the damp handkerchief, and keyed the number into my mobile the moment I left the room. I told Dr Goetz I had been given his number by Professor Martin and raced through the cobbled streets of the old town when he asked me to call on him immediately. By the time I reached the house and gave a tap on the daunting lion’s head knocker, I was hot and sticky, my breasts heaving in the tiny white blouse I had put on that morning not knowing that I was to meet the great Luther Goetz in person. He opened the door and studied me like I was a laboratory specimen.

  ‘Camilla Petacci, I presume,’ he said, and I nodded as I caught my breath.

  ‘Please call me Milly.’

  ‘I would be charmed.’ He paused. ‘Professor Martin’s your tutor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And
your school . . . ?’

  ‘Saint Sebastian’s,’ I replied, although I couldn’t see how this could possibly be relevant.

  He stroked his beard as he stood to one side to let me in.

  The hallway was big and airy with diffused pastel light falling through the stained-glass panels beside the entrance door. Dr Goetz closed the door and, having given me a close examination while I was waiting on the threshold, did so again while I stood on the shiny black and white tiles of the hall, my gaze drawn as if against my will to the haunting portrait on the wall beside the hat stand.

  ‘Donatien Alphonse François, comte de Sade,’ he said. ‘It’s a William Masterson copy of the portrait by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo.’

  I turned from the painting and the black eyes seemed to follow me. I smiled and felt silly.

  ‘Any message from Dr Martin?’ Dr Goetz now asked.

  ‘No, he just said to give you a call. You have an attic.’

  ‘I do indeed.’ He leaned forward and our noses were almost touching. ‘Let’s go and take a look, shall we?’

  I followed Dr Goetz upstairs to a room with a slanting roof. A big dormer window had a view over the River Cam that ran sparkling with sunshine at the foot of the garden. There was an iron bed with white cushions and an empty bookshelf waiting to receive my tomes of art history and Italian culture. My heart was thumping and I’m sure a faint smile was turning the corners of my lips. As my step-mother had learned from the Polish gardener, when you transfer plants from one place to another some wither and die and others take to the new soil and flourish. This room was the rich pasture I needed and I could see myself sitting there in the glow of a table lamp leafing through my books.

  I looked out of the window, at the trees, at the river beyond, at the spires of unknown churches piercing the horizon. The attic was like a room in a fairy tale. I would take it whatever the price, even if I had to go hungry, and was completely taken aback when Dr Goetz explained that he did not charge rent, but I would be expected to serve drinks when he had ‘little soirées’, and ‘it would be awfully kind’ if I were to give the study a weekly dust because he didn’t like the maid disturbing his papers.