Chasing Charlie

by Linda McLaughlan

  I hoped Louise had behaved herself this morning. This was a big job for Katherine and it was so important that everything ran smoothly, and the client went home happy. It was six forty-five. I opened the passenger door.

  ‘Good morning, Ms Laverell. I’m sorry we had to get you out of bed so early this morning. Make-up is this way.’

  Louise looked at me haughtily and sighed. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Sam Moriarty, third assistant director, Ms Laverell.’

  ‘And you are?’ What a line. It was so tedious that Louise couldn’t, or wouldn’t, remember me from other jobs. I’d worked with her on several occasions in the past. Of course, I would always be invisible to her. She would never consider a third someone worthy of speaking to, let alone remembering. There were far more important people locked into Louise’s one-track mind. People who talk to other people like her at exclusive private parties, at openings, at awards ceremonies. It was people like Louise that had my enthusiasm for my job hanging by a thread some days.

  Louise contemplated her options. A cab beeped angrily behind her car, which was – surprise, surprise – blocking the way. Blocking the road as if Louise was more important than anyone else in the entire city in that moment.

  ‘Marm?’ the unit driver queried, looking rather anxiously into his rear-view mirror. I glanced at him. He was a pimply little beggar, with no discernable chin, his young hands clutching the wheel anxiously. I didn’t recognise him and he didn’t look like he’d been in the job for long. I felt a pang of pity for him. He’d obviously be much happier breeding Labradors or pet bunnies or something, not cowering in the seat in front of Louise, his vulnerable neck just there for her to sink her nails into.

  ‘Fine,’ Louise huffed. She placed an elegant shoe onto the road and stepped out, coming up to my shoulder. I took one step back and opened my arm, directing her to the footpath, not unlike an aircraft marshaller minus the ping-pong bats. You could never be too careful with actors – they might not be able to make it to the footpath without being shown the way. Once I was sure Louise had stepped safely onto the footpath, I stepped back quickly to shut the car door, leaning in to offer a ‘Good luck, mate!’ to the relieved driver.

  Louise stood on the footpath. It was early dawn but nonetheless she wore dark glasses, the collar of her large woollen coat turned up against the potential invasion of fans or paparazzi. I looked around. The crew were exchanging rude banter while they lugged equipment into the house they would be filming inside that day. No one was even looking our way. Poor Louise, I smirked, no attention for her at all. All that money spent on her Armani sunglasses for nothing. But below her glasses her mouth looked sad, and I reminded myself of the other thing about actors. At the end of the day, they could be staggeringly insecure. I sighed. I couldn’t really feel animosity for this woman. She was someone to be pitied rather than intimidated by. I took another look. Written on that mouth was a whisper of what I’d seen in Mara lately: Mara the worrier, trying to keep it together; Mara, the one who just cared too much about the tiny circle of friends and family around her. I cursed myself for my mean thoughts about Mara being a control freak.

  I was so lost in these thoughts that I walked straight past wardrobe and had to pull up abruptly.

  ‘What!’ Louise snapped.

  ‘Sorry, Ms Laverell, I was thinking about something else, wardrobe’s just back here.’ I retraced my steps, walked over to the trailer and stood next to it. Louise’s lips pursed as she marched past me to the door, her coat bristling with disdain, but then she stopped. I wondered what she was up to for a moment until I realised she was waiting for me to open the door.

  ‘You don’t want to make me late, do you?’ Louise demanded.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered to Louise’s shoes as I opened the door. ‘I was just thinking about a friend who’s worrying about things too much at the moment,’ I added under my breath. I’d said it aloud without thinking and I was sure she wouldn’t hear me but Louise’s heels stopped their click-clack mid-step. She turned to me, standing by the door beneath her, and took her glasses off.

  ‘What did you say?’ she said, her tone much less biting.

  ‘Oh.’ I bit a suddenly wobbly bottom lip and looked up to meet Louise’s eye for a second.

  ‘Nothing really, it’s just things at home have been a bit strange lately. One of my best friends hasn’t been very happy,’ I found herself blurting out, wondering why of all people I would be sharing this with Louise Laverell?

  Louise looked at me, her face softening the tiniest bit. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Moriarty.’ And then she turned and went into the trailer, leaving me to shut the door behind her. I stood blinking on the footpath and pressed my fingernails into my palms, then forced myself to take three slow breaths.

  In. You are pathetic! Out. In. Pull yourself together! Out. In. And bloody well get on with your bloody work! Out.

  Vic was coming up the road, her jaunty step obvious even in the half-light. I meant it when I told Dad that she was my favourite first. In her late thirties, Vic was fairly formidable at times of stress and took no nonsense, but she was rock solid and had a wicked sense of humour. She also made me feel calmer just seeing her.

  ‘You all right?’ Vic asked as she gave me a brief, hard hug.

  ‘Fine, yes. Just being a girl over something. Nothing important.’ I waved my call sheet under Vic’s nose. ‘Can we talk through a couple of things on this?’

  Vic didn’t press me and got straight down to business, running through who was due where, when and discussing the weather. Then Vic spied Ed and blew slowly through her teeth.

  ‘You didn’t tell me that photographer friend of yours was so hot.’

  ‘He’s Mara’s twin brother.’

  ‘He’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s all right.’ I kept looking at my call sheet, fiddling with the bull clip holding it onto my clipboard. Vic waited for me to say more but I kept studiously fiddling. I couldn’t find it in myself to meet her eye but there was no mistaking the smile in Vic’s voice when she said, ‘Right then, let’s get cracking.’

  The first couple of hours passed quickly. I watched Ed from the corner of my eye as I worked and quickly realised I had nothing to worry about. He looked every inch the professional photographer. I’d never been concerned about the images he would take but I had wondered how he’d cope with the dynamic of a shoot. How the machine worked. How everyone was integral to making it work smoothly, with everyone dependent on everyone else working hard without faffing about, or getting in anyone else’s way, and adhering to the many unspoken rules of how close you can get to certain people. I was relieved to see Ed just getting on with it, occasionally checking with the producer or the production manager but not once disturbing the director, the DOP or the talent. All of whom were susceptible to having a major sense-of-humour failure if they were bugged by underlings. A bit harsh if seen from the outside, I suppose, but they did need to focus completely on what they were doing.

  Ed’s job for the day was to take photographs for the client to use in-house. They wanted a record of the day to use for training in their marketing department, and also as a record of things achieved, I supposed. Thinking about it, most of the clients who came along to the shoots spent their working lives in an office somewhere, stuck in front of a computer. They were happy occupiers of Squaresville, white men in ties, who drove nice cars, had matching sofa sets and sent their children to good schools. Sometimes they were uptight on set. Overseeing their employer spending tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds in a day or two all for thirty seconds of airtime would do that. But in the end they couldn’t help but enjoy themselves. They were around funky film-crew types, people who never wore suits, who wore trainers, who smoked. Men and women who had exciting-looking boxes and kit in big shiny trucks, and crackling two-way radios on their hips. Burly grips who carried around the camera, laying down track. Gaffers who confidently set up expensive lights in places that didn’t ma
ke sense to the common man. And actors lurking in make-up trailers – or on bigger productions, in their own trailer, waiting to be called. They added the glamour, the pizzazz, that these square suits just loved being around.

  I noticed Ed unobtrusively taking photographs of the clients, who were speaking with the producer and director, and Louise. She was smiling and gesturing to the client, knowing perfectly well what side her bread was buttered on. Nice one, Ed, keep it up, they’ll love that.

  Lunch arrived and was set up on a trestle by the caterers. Lamb meatballs with couscous, beetroot and rocket salad, and crusty sourdough. I waited outside the house, listening for the call from Vic. When the director was happy, Vic called a wrap on the current scene and the crew piled out for lunch. Ed came out ahead of them into the weak sunshine, taking photographs of everyone lining up for the food. He looked as if he was going to take photographs all lunchtime so I went and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Hey!’ He turned, his eyes bright.

  ‘Get some food – they won’t need a million photos of them eating. It’ll just make the poor sods stuck in the office jealous,’ I said.

  ‘True,’ Ed said. ‘If you’re sure? I am hungry,’ he said, eyeing the table.

  ‘Come on then, let’s get a plate before these greedy buggers eat it all.’ We made our way to the table, passing crew crouching on the edge of the footpath and on the backs of trucks, their plates piled high with food.

  ‘This looks amazing,’ Ed said appreciatively, and then leant in close to whisper, ‘The men inside were grumbling about what they were going to have for lunch!’

  ‘Oh, they always do, Ed, it’s part of their job description.’

  ‘But why? This is great food, and they don’t pay for it.’

  ‘Good question,’ I said, piling food onto three plates, one for Louise, one for Vic and one for the director. Ed took one out of my hands. ‘It’s one I’ve never found an answer for. I mean, how many people do you know outside hospitality who get fed at lunch, with really high-quality food at that?’ I asked him.

  ‘I know people who work in restaurants where they have to buy their food.’

  ‘Exactly.’ We took the plates over and handed them to the director, Vic and Louise. I pointed to a spot for Ed to eat and went back to get a plate for myself.

  I’d met other ADs over the years who were so busy at lunchtime they didn’t get any food themselves. It was a critical point in the day to assess the schedule with the first, make any changes for the afternoon and touch base with the second in the production office. It meant having several intense, important discussions with people, so for ADs it wasn’t really a break, but I always made sure to get some lunch. I knew from bitter experience that if I didn’t eat, come mid-afternoon I would simply cease being any use to anyone. I loaded up my plate and looked around for Ed. There he was, eating with one of the runners. He looked at me and grinned and my tummy fluttered a little.

  Damn hunger pains. I walked off in the opposite direction to find Vic, the sound of Ed’s easy laugh rising over the rumble of the crew chatting.

  Vic and I were only halfway through discussing the afternoon’s schedule when Katherine joined us in a flap.

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ she said breathily, her usually composed face flushed.

  ‘What?’ we chimed, looking at each other. What crisis needed to be solved now?

  ‘The MD is coming this afternoon.’

  ‘Fine,’ Vic said. ‘What’s the problem with that? Is he a particularly difficult man?’

  ‘She is an exceedingly particular woman – a very busy woman, who’s on crutches.’

  Vic and I looked at each other again. Katherine was really getting her knickers in a knot over this. What was the big deal?

  ‘We can accommodate that,’ said Vic.

  ‘I could get her a chair,’ I said, shovelling in food while I could.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s great, ladies, but the problem is that she’s on crutches!’

  Katherine was uncharacteristically not making any bloody sense whatsoever.

  ‘That’s OK – we can meet her cab here’ – Vic gestured to the road in front of the house – ‘and help her out of it.’

  Katherine sighed. ‘Yes, but she’s being driven here in her own car from another commitment.’

  ‘So the car stops here and we’ll help her out,’ Vic persisted, her face puzzled.

  ‘But she wants to keep working on her laptop in her car. No, she won’t work anywhere else, Vic, I don’t know why. Like I said, she is a very particular, very busy woman. She wants to be parked close to set, so she can hobble up to the house a couple of times to watch, and return to her car in-between.’

  We looked at the trucks parked nose to tail down the street. There were absolutely no spaces available as far as the eye could see. At the far end of the street, Georgia the production manager was officiously bobbing along the footpath towards us, her phone jammed to the side of her face. Without thinking about it, we moved closer together, ever so slightly, huddling in for safety from her confident posh squawk, fresh-faced good looks and, above all, her very bouncy ponytail.

  ‘Kaarthrine!’ she squawked as she was ten yards away.

  ‘Georgia?’ Katherine frowned pensively at her.

  ‘I’ve jarst gort orf the phone with Ms Hawthorne’s secretary,’ she announced.

  ‘Yes?’ Katherine cringed.

  ‘She’s going to be here in fifteen minutes,’ she said, as if she was announcing the start of World War Three.

  ‘Christ.’ Katherine’s eyes rolled heavenward.

  Vic thought quickly. ‘Sam, grab a runner or two and check the street again to make sure there are no more spaces. I’ll talk to Pete about possibly moving trucks. Let’s meet here in two minutes.’ And they dispersed, leaving Katherine with the ponytailed seagull.

  I went to grab the runner next to Ed.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ed asked, looking concerned.

  ‘We need to find a parking space for the MD of Steins ASAP,’ I snapped, not meaning to sound so sharp.

  He put his hands up. ‘OK, just asking.’

  ‘Sorry, it’s a nightmare,’ I called over my shoulder as I followed the runner down the street.

  When I returned, Ed had disappeared. As expected, there were no car parks to be found within two blocks, and I returned to Katherine and Georgia with the bad news. Katherine was biting the side of her finger, looking up and down the road, her eyes wide with fright. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her start foaming at the mouth. Fair enough too – if she stuffed up in the eyes of the MD, then Steins wouldn’t be up for their advertising agency suggesting they use Katherine’s production company again in the future.

  I was madly trying to think of a solution but nothing was presenting itself. For once, not even Georgia was saying anything. She tugged at her ponytail instead, stroking the shiny beast as if it were a talisman.

  Vic returned then, looking fierce. ‘I’ve spoken with the HODs and Pete. There’s no way we can shift trucks, the schedule is too tight this afternoon to allow extra time to move equipment from further away. You’d be running into overtime if you did that,’ she said.

  ‘Fuck,’ Katherine said from the side of her mouth, the side of her finger taking up the front of it. Vic, Georgia and I looked at her to say more. ‘Fuck,’ she said again, retracting her finger from her mouth and holding it behind her back with her other hand, as if to keep it from intruding embarrassingly into her mouth again.

  Then Vic asked the question no one dared to ask.

  ‘What about moving the make-up truck further away?’

  ‘No fucking way,’ was the reply. I couldn’t blame her. Last time Katherine asked Louise Laverell to accommodate a change on shoot day – something to do with sharing make-up with a couple of extras or something – Louise threw such a big wobbly that the shoot was taken into overtime by an hour, costing Katherine’s company an easy £5,000.

  Then I cau
ght sight of Ed – where the hell had he been? – coming out of the gate of the house next door with a rotund little man in his fifties. They watched in silence as the man opened the door to the little Porsche and drove off.

  Vic ran to grab a cone from the back of a truck and stuck it in the car’s place. Instinctively we all moved into the space where the car had been, hovering around Ed as if he were our saviour, which, after all, he was.

  ‘What happened? How did you do that?’ Georgia asked. Ed put up his hands and smiled, trying to bat the questions off. But then Vic joined the happy little scene.

  ‘What the hell were you doing next door, Ed?’ she barked.

  His face fell. He wasn’t expecting that reaction. Katherine made sympathetic, don’t-be-so-harsh noises but Vic was unrepentant.

  ‘Liaising with the public should be done by the location manager or the producer only, Ed, not the photographer.’ Lesson number one, Ed – never, ever bend the rules with a first. Watch out, here comes her lecture.