Hushed

by Joanne Macgregor

  “… pressed her for an answer, but Rosemary delights in surprises, so we don’t yet know if she will opt for (a), a sensible business degree leading to a rewarding and satisfying career at that most impressive of corporations, Poseidon.” He pauses here for laughter and applause. “Or, (b), a stimulating study of the ins and outs of marine creepy-crawlies.” More polite laughter.

  “I choose (c), none of the above,” I mutter.

  “Either way, my dear, we wish you all the best and congratulate you for the exemplary matric results which we are sure are headed your way. Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses in a toast to Rosemary.”

  “To Romy!” everyone echoes. Except my father, who says, “To Rosemary!”

  “Speech, speech, speech!” the general cry goes up and all faces turn expectantly to me.

  I stand up but stay next to my seat. No way am I making a long speech at the microphone.

  “Thank you all for coming and for your kind wishes. And thanks to my parents for all their support during my years of educational imprisonment.” Zeb snorts his drink out of his nose at that. “Today, my father recommended — again — the rewards of business and study, and my mother reminded me of the pleasure of working with family. Meriel, however, suggested I run away and join the circus.”

  “I was only joking!” Meriel shouts over the laughter.

  “Nana, meanwhile, urged me to find a passionate prince before my hair turns grey.”

  “I was being perfectly serious,” Nana retorts, and polishes off her glass of wine.

  “I think … Well, I’m pretty sure, actually,” I begin, and my father sits up straight, looking at me eagerly, “that I will only find my path by walking it myself.” My father slumps back in disappointment. “So here’s to legs!” I say, raising my glass of Coke.

  Everyone around me cheers, and I sit down.

  “Short and sweet,” Zeb says.

  “Just like you.”

  He taps his nose with his middle finger while giving me an evil look. The music starts up and people trickle onto the dance floor.

  “Ah, never mind Romy, you’ll figure it out sometime. Right now, though, it looks like your gran wants a word. See you later.”

  Zeb nags and drags the rest of our group onto the dance floor, and they begin moving self-consciously to the hits of the seventies — my parents’ choice of music.

  Nana, carrying two glasses of wine and shedding white feathers, walks over to me. Although her balance is unsteady, her gaze is as keen and perceptive as ever.

  “Here, have a drink.” Nana plants herself in Zeb’s vacated chair and slides one of the glasses of wine over to me. “You’re too young to be so sad, and I am too old to waste time in sobriety. Let us be gay!”

  I laugh as she clinks glasses with me. “Nana, you know what that word means now?”

  “I do, and I lament the loss of a wonderfully twinkly word. Drink up and tell me, what’s the matter, my dear?”

  “Nothing really. I mean,” I puff out an irritated sigh, “somewhere kids are starving to death and villages are being bombed and sharks are having their fins cut off — so really, I’m fine. I have nothing to complain about. I’m probably just being a spoilt brat. I’ve got a good life, my parents haven’t beat me, or starved me, or sent me to work in a sweatshop. They love me — I know that — they want what’s best for me. But …”

  “But?” Nana leans over and studies me intently.

  “But I feel trapped, locked in … I want to live my life, Nana, not theirs! Is that so strange?”

  “Ah.”

  “I mean, look at them.” I gesture to where Marina, Cordelia, Genna, and Meriel sit chatting to my parents. “I’m young — I’m not ready to be an old woman yet.”

  “You feel restless,” Nana says.

  “I do. That’s exactly what I feel.”

  “You crave adventure.”

  “Yes.”

  “And excitement.”

  “Yes.”

  “And fun and drrrammah!”

  “Well, not drama so much. But fun, yes. Definitely fun.”

  “And, love!”

  “What?”

  “I smell romance in your restlessness. A grand affair looms on your horizon!”

  “Hardly,” I reply, a little sourly.

  “But there is a man, yes?”

  “Well …” I dip my thumb into the hot melted wax of the candle, and peel off the milky fingerprint. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of? What a lukewarm, lily-livered response! You must reach out and snatch at love when it comes your way, sweet child. Grab it and hold on tight. It comes around so seldom!”

  “Nana, you’ve been married five times,” I point out.

  “And I regret none of them. I loved them all. Such marvellous, handsome, dashing men. Though, perhaps, Arnold was not quite as appealing once he lost his hair, or Thomas his money, but there, one can’t have everything. The point is, we all need love. And you, it seems, have a chance at it.”

  “I doubt he even remembers me — we only met once, and he was pretty pickled at the time.”

  “You could reintroduce yourself.”

  “I probably couldn’t get close enough to talk to him.” Even as I say the words, the thought of that business card in my wallet flashes through my mind.

  “There is more than one way to talk, Romy. You have a lovely figure, a beautiful face, and eyes which are positively eloquent! You’ll capture his attention, I guarantee it. Never,” she clicks her fingers at a passing waiter for another glass of wine, “underestimate the power of body language, my dear.”

  Despite myself, I giggle.

  “There — a smile — that’s better. Now, about your future.” She rubs her hands together like a mob boss planning a jewellery heist. “Nobody is holding a gun to your head. If you choose neither of the paths your parents have planned, they will be disappointed, yes, but —”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “But one does not die from disappointment, Romy. Nor” — she fixes me with a knowing look — “from disapproval. The same cannot be said for boredom, however. Decide what you want to do, and do it.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “Leave him to me. Rex has had his own way for too long. Let him be thwarted for once — it’s character-building.”

  I look back at my family, sitting and talking contentedly together. Why isn’t that enough for me? Why do I feel so different to them? I wipe a quick hand over my eyes.

  “Romy, Romy, listen to me.” Nana places her arthritic hands over mine and clasps them tightly. “Life goes by so quickly. Too quickly. Make sure you’ve lived a little before you die. Trust me, you get years and years to spend with your memories — it’s a good idea to spend your youth creating some moments worth remembering.”

  “But what if —”

  “If you fail, you fail. At least you will have lived! A life without risk is a life without passion and love. And a life without those, is a life without soul.”

  “Thank you, Nana.” I lean over to hug her tightly, and kiss her soft, wrinkled peach of a cheek.

  “Dry your tears, love. No one’s appearance is improved by blotchiness. There. Now hear my last word on the subject. Laurence Olivier, who was a great actor, though a sadly disappointing lover, once told me: ‘If you can dream it, you can become it,’ but that was always a bit airy-fairy for me. I have always believed: if you can dream it, you can begin it. So that is my advice. Take the first step.”

  I give her hand a squeeze, grab my phone, and leave the stifling heat of the noisy restaurant. Outside the air is cool and tangy with the ocean smell of ozone. I thumb my phone on and enter the number imprinted onto my memory.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Romy Morgan. Last week you offered me a job. If the offer’s still open, I’d like to take you up on it.”

  Chapter 11

  There be dragons

  I climb the few steps and knock tentatively on the door
labelled Star Room 1A, Cilla Swytch — Director. The next door along is labelled Star Room 1B, Britney Vaux. Both rooms, along with a few offices, are located on the outside of one of three massive warehouses which dominate the film studio lot. The lot itself is an enormous operation located out on the flatlands near Cape Town International Airport.

  No answer. I knock again, harder.

  “Yeah?” barks a voice from inside.

  “It’s Romy Morgan, Miss —” Miss, Mrs, Ms? “Ms Swytch. You said I should come speak to you today?”

  “Who?”

  The door is flung open. I take in many things at once — the white stripe in Cilla Swytch’s black hair, how much taller than me she is, the vivid red of her lipstick, and the large lizards perched on her shoulders. The one on her left shoulder fixes its beady eyes on me, opens its mouth wide, puffs up a spiky collar of spines, and hisses.

  “Crap!” I take an automatic step backwards and tumble down to the ground. Embarrassed, I scramble to my feet, dusting the seat of my jeans.

  “And who are you, now?”

  “I’m Romy Morgan — here about the job?”

  “Oh,” she says, looking me up one side and down the other, “it’s you. I hardly recognised you. Hang on, I’ll just put my baby away. She bites.”

  She disappears back into the room, and peeking into it after her, I see her carefully lower the prehistoric-looking creature into a giant glass tank with a floor of coloured sand, and a bright light stuck on the side.

  “There, my little chickabiddy,” Cilla croons, replacing the screen lid on the tank and returning to me.

  Warily, I eye the other creature still attached to her right shoulder.

  “Relax, the male of the species is always less deadly. And he’s a sweetie, aren’t you?” She tickles the beard-like spines under his chin. “Here, give him a stroke.”

  I don’t much feel like touching the thing — I’m quite attached to my fingers — but perhaps this is a test. I’d better not act like a wimp if I want her to give me a job.

  “Nice lizard. Er, good boy,” I say, stroking one finger down his rough back, towards his tail and away from his mouth.

  “He’s a bearded dragon, not a lizard. Oh look, he likes you.”

  The reptile raises a front hand — paw? — into the air and waves it in circles at me.

  “Right, let’s get to it, uh, what’s your name again?” she asks.

  “Romy Mor —”

  “Right, Romy. We’re due to start filming when the breakfast break ends — in precisely fourteen minutes. We can talk on our way to the soundstage.”

  “Yes, Ms —”

  “Call me Cilla. I’m the director, not a school teacher.”

  She locks the door of the room behind her and marches off across the gravel at a rapid pace. I run to catch up, looking all around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Logan.

  “What you see all around you is our lot. The fence keeps out press and other strays.”

  She points in the direction of the high perimeter fence topped with electrified wires. It’s still early, not yet seven o’clock, but people swarm in all directions, carrying clipboards, megaphones, lights, cameras, and what look like sections of narrow railway tracks.

  “Those are for the dolly, but you don’t need to worry about the gadgets and gizmos, you’re not going to be doing anything technical. You’ll be a personal assistant.”

  We stride across the lot towards the other two warehouses which are labelled with giant signs — Stage 2, Stage 3 — and have small golf carts and big trucks parked outside. People disappear into and emerge out of the warehouses’ enormous sliding doors like bees at the opening of a hive.

  I’m just about to ask who I’ll be assisting, and how, when we come around the corner of the first warehouse, and I walk straight into a gigantic shark’s head. The enormous jaws, at least a metre in diameter, are wide open, and the serried rows of sharp and bloody teeth are right in my face. I just manage to stifle my instinctual shriek. The muted whimper which escapes is drowned by Cilla’s loud laugh.

  “Fabulous, it’s fabulous! Has it got horizontal motion?”

  Now I see that the shark’s head is on a high trolley, and that the back end of it is a mass of wires, switches and levers. A young man with a shaved head and tattooed arms stands beside it, holding a set of controls that resemble a video-game console. He wiggles a lever on the console and the shark thrashes its head from side to side.

  “Fabulous!” Cilla repeats, stroking the head of the bearded dragon on her shoulder. Its eyes close in apparent bliss. “But you know what I’m going to say?”

  “More blood?”

  “More blood!”

  She yanks me away from my fascinated inspection of the model.

  “Amazing, isn’t it? Kyle’s a genius. Sad that animatronics is a dying field — so last century. We do almost everything with computer-generated graphics these days, but the actors find it useful to have something to act against.”

  “It’s fantastic, and so lifelike!”

  “We make magic here, Romy. Watch it, don’t trip on those,” she warns as we step over a tangle of electricity cables. I’m touched by her concern, but then she adds, “They’re connected to my lights, and lights are expensive.”

  “Assistants come cheaper, I guess.”

  She frowns at me. “And they’re easier to replace, so don’t you forget it.”

  We step from the early morning sunshine into the cool gloom of one of the soundstages, and I stop in shock. The warehouse is gigantic — bigger than several aircraft hangars combined. A catwalk of complicated metal platforms and gangways runs overhead, mounted between massed banks of powerful lights and fat aluminium air-conditioning tubes. An orange crane, with arm extended to the domed ceiling, lifts a man on a platform up to the lights. Trolleys, tripods, rigging and cabling litter the floor, but what snags my gaze is an enormous, full-sized fishing trawler “parked” on the concrete floor of the warehouse in front of a vast lime-green wall. The sides of the trawler are encrusted with rust and printed with faded lettering. It looks amazingly realistic.

  “Wow,” I say, taking in the scene.

  We walk up to the enormous boat, and Cilla leans forwards to inspect the decorative workmanship. A woman in paint-spattered overalls, who’s sticking fake barnacles onto the trawler’s sides, gives me a friendly, “Hiya.”

  “This is Romy, she’s the new gofer,” Cilla says.

  “Hi,” I say.

  I make to shake hands, but the artist shows me that hers are covered in glue and paint. Then she reaches out and sticks a fake barnacle onto the back of my right hand before turning back to her work with a friendly, “Good luck!”

  “Add a few mussels, and that rust needs more brown and less orange,” Cilla says, and then she’s on the move again. I sneak out a hand and tap the prow of the boat. It sounds oddly light and hollow.

  “Moulded fiberglass,” Cilla explains, indicating that I should follow her to a refreshment station at the far end of the warehouse.

  On top of a trestle table is a hot-water urn, two coffee machines, rows of cardboard cups, a wide basket of muffins and donuts, a fruit and nut platter, packets of chips and sweets, and a few dozen bottles of mineral water. Plucking a small grape from a bunch in the fruit bowl, Cilla peels it and holds it up to the dragon’s mouth between two of her blood-red nails.

  “Here my little chickabiddy,” she says in a sing-song voice.

  The reptile snatches it up between his jaws and swallows it in a series of gulps which make his throat bulge unpleasantly.

  I peel the barnacle off my hand and surreptitiously stick it on the underside of the table.

  Cilla picks up the only porcelain coffee mug on the table — a green one as big as a cauldron and emblazoned with the words She Who Must Be Obeyed — fills it with coffee, and takes a large swallow of the steaming brew.

  “What’s a gofer?” I ask, rubbing at the residue of glue on my hand.

  �
��You go for this and you go for that. Gofer.” Cilla’s sharp gaze scans the warehouse and fastens on a small mound of rocks covered in brilliantly coloured sea urchins and starfish. “Jake!” she barks. “I see you hiding there. Where are my storyboards?”

  A man rises sheepishly from behind the rocky outcrop and calls back, “Coming right up, Cilla.”

  “I’m going to do some raking over the coals today — I can see it coming,” Cilla says darkly. “If I don’t check up on everything, things get out of control.” To the man, she yells, “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  The man runs off, stumbling against a large boulder and sending it rolling right at me. I leap aside before it can wedge me against the table, but Cilla stops it with the toe of her high-heeled shoe.

  “Put it back where it belongs,” she tells me. “And don’t put out your back. Bend from the knees.”

  I grab hold of the huge rock and heave — but it’s as light as a beach ball. I give a surprised laugh and turn to look at Cilla in wonder.

  “It’s all an illusion, Romy. But what an illusion it is!” She laughs loudly, a startlingly deep, throaty kind of cackle. “You realise that working here, seeing the magic, is going to spoil you for the real world? There’s no going back once you’ve caught the fever of movies.”

  Chapter 12

  Zip your lip

  “So what exactly will I be doing?” I ask Cilla Swytch.

  Her eyes continue to rove over the organised chaos of the film set, on the lookout for any flaws, while she speaks.

  “Right, let me spell it out for you, Romy. You are going to be his runner, fixer, local guide, his handler and wrangler, his general dogsbody and assistant. He wants mineral water from a secret spring in Switzerland, you find it for him. He wants a pillow stuffed with the feathers of a hundred baby eiders, you get it for him. He has an early call, you make sure he’s woken up and on set in time. He needs sleep, you make sure he gets it. He needs new script pages, you fetch ’em. If he can’t work his phone, make his coffee or wipe his ass, you do it for him. Understand?”

  “I have to wipe his, uh, bum?”

  “Not literally!” she eyes me like I’m nuts. “I mean, he’s a handful, but he’s not … mentally deficient. Is that the politically correct term for it these days? You’ve got to be so careful. Can’t even call a moron a cretin anymore. They’re all just ready to pounce on you.”