by Anna George
The first scene to be shot was a sex scene. She wanted to shoot it early lest, over time, her stars’ chemistry waned. She observed the two receiving the finishing touches to their makeup. Built like a rugby player, with Islander good looks, Jay Morehu was joking with the makeup girl. For a second, Elle appreciated his fortunate genes. Near the bath, dressed in lemon terry-towelling, Lucy was subtly studying, perhaps also admiring, her co-star. The two leads, so different to each other, looked right: like a pair from the ark chosen to propagate the species.
Which was why, seeing them together during rehearsals, Elle had been thrilled. But as the days had passed she’d noticed a shift. Perhaps because Lucy’s Freddie was proving, at times, spark-snuffing. The actor seemed to be playing the strident character Elle had penned, not Mira’s slightly more nuanced version. Freddie was cutting slivers off poor Mike. While Lucy was wonderful with the banter, Elle had had to pull her star aside twice during rehearsals and ask her to pull back. Afterwards, she’d seen Lucy’s performance lift and Jay respond, but . . . Surveying the Footscray warehouse, which was now Freddie’s shabby-chic home – complete with Asiatic artwork, fifties furniture and wilting plants – Elle couldn’t help wondering: could her leads deliver the requisite heat? Could they recreate what was so difficult to sustain in real life? Her nerves trampolined in her stomach. It didn’t help that the first scene was set in a lime-green sixties-style bathroom. Peering at the clouded shower screen, her face puckered. Her art was reflecting her life these days and not the other way around. It didn’t augur well.
Their first scene was to be a long one. The characters were to talk at length before their kiss in the bath. While the crew tweaked their equipment the actors ran through it at half speed, reminding themselves of its rhythm, and they both understood its beats. Everyone seemed to love this scene, including Elle. It was one of the few wholly written by Mira. And it was so hopeful. In it, idealistic Freddie comes to accept the transient nature of being in love and opts to commit to devoted, fallible Mike. After it, the characters progress to what psychologists call ‘affectional bonding’, a stable, caring union. A grown-ups’ happy ending.
It was, though, probably the most challenging scene in the shoot – especially given Lucy’s contractual stipulation of ‘no nipples’.
Questions continued to be flung at Elle, and she chose the least wrong answers. ‘How sweaty do you want them?’ ‘Subtly glossy, please.’ All the while, Lucy was eyeing Jay as he kidded about. Approaching her actors, Elle couldn’t decipher her female star’s expression. She whispered into Lucy’s ear, ‘Remember – here, she makes a choice.’
Nodding, Lucy turned to Jay. He grinned at her and gave a thumbs up. The warmth in his face was so intimate that Lucy blushed. And Elle was heartened. That spark flaring again.
Back by the camera, Elle found the questions petering. She savoured the final notes of the orchestrated chaos of two dozen moving people: the hot lights and leaning microphones, the veins of cables and the omniscient camera. Julia Carter, her director of photography, was almost ready for the two-shot. A big-boned woman with auburn ringlets, Julia, like the rest of the largely female crew and a third of the cast, had worked on Daisy. Julia gave Elle’s arm a sisterly punch and Elle felt a belated pop of excitement. Yes, this was what she knew, who she was. This was where time evaporated, days disappeared, where she could fly. She took another deep breath. They were good to go.
She scrolled through the scene’s dialogue in her head. As it reached Freddie’s epiphany, the words suddenly resonated in a new way. She heard David’s insistent proposals and her own repeated refusals. Her reserve and his frustration . . . She tried to resist the inevitable question. Failed. Were their troubles her fault as much as his? Shocked back to life, the nerves in her stomach rebounded and took flight.
The call went out to close the set. Superfluous bodies exited, upping the air’s charge. As the actors shed their robes and climbed into the bath, the slate in Elle’s mind went blank. She could hear the assistant director making her calls for quiet, for sound, for camera. The clapperboard slapping. Seconds ticking, dollars burning . . . She felt a tap on her shoulder. But she was gone. Back in the shower cubicle, with David behind her, cupping her breasts. Her pulse dancing. Heat creeping up her throat.
‘Elle?’ Her first AD’s face twisted with concern.
An hour-long second passed. Elle swallowed, her cheeks flaming. She managed a nod. Then she made herself sing out: ‘Action.’ And they were away. To her relief, she kept David at bay until lunch.
By Thursday, she couldn’t feel any pain. Or nerves. She couldn’t remember how long she’d been shooting. She couldn’t remember doing anything but making this film. The week ended with all scheduled scenes finished, and with minimal overtime. The powers that be were happy. Mira was happy. And so was she. As the shoot had progressed, she’d gone on, she thought, to work well with the actors. Lucy pulled back and Jay was extraordinary: sensual, earthy, fun. Elle was cheered. It’d been more than three years since she’d directed Daisy but, at moments, she’d been that lucid director again. And, remembering, she’d drawn strength from that version of herself.
Then, at 10.20 on Friday night, as she lay in bed replaying the day in her head, he called. And they spoke. Twenty minutes later, she heard him enter her house and tiptoe across the floorboards. Her thoughts split between her work and him. While her working week had absorbed her, arriving home she’d felt his absence like a grinding ache. Her kitchen and her bed felt redundant without him. When he entered the semi-darkness of her bedroom, a part of her separated, like the yolk from the white. He was wearing a new winter suit and he’d cut his hair. These changes somehow made their separation tangible and aggrieved her.
‘How was day five?’ he said.
‘It’s going well.’ She could hear her own wariness.
‘Good for you,’ he said softly.
Sitting up, she searched his face for evidence of suffering. In their week apart grey flecks at his temples had multiplied like weeds, and dark pockets hung beneath his eyes. Somehow his face was rendered more compelling by his anguish. He looked so handsome and harmless, so unlike the man she’d left in Red Hill. Despite herself she thought to massage his shoulders. She imagined his skin on hers. She wanted to tell him about her week, share everything.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘I found this; I don’t think you have it.’
From behind his back, he produced a book, time-browned and soft. Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.
Taking it from his tentative grip, she was reminded that he had truly erred. And that she had made a decision. Sombrely, she set the book on the floor.
‘No. Thanks.’
After a moment, he kneeled at the edge of her bed, his face expectant. She said the only unequivocal thoughts she had.
‘Last weekend was exactly not what I needed. But the worst of it was you actually scared me.’
She watched him absorb her words, like a body blow.
‘Elle, I know. And I’ve seen a psychologist, twice this week already,’ he said. ‘A woman in Albert Park. She’s smart.’
Shock and relief tugged at her features; she clasped her hand to her mouth.
‘I don’t want to be like this any more,’ he said. ‘Please don’t give up on me.’
His eyes glazed.
Then with him kneeling beside her, she held their relationship in her hand – again. This time, she felt its weight: almost twelve months, perhaps two hundred nights and four hundred telephone calls. It was small but heavy. Weary but warm. A relationship barely out of infancy; it had been fed by shared experiences, good and bad; had developed limbs through travels taken; had learned its own language; and it had grown. Yes, there had been missteps, but there was life. And, for once, miraculously, it was hers.
Peering into his pained, gentle face, she could feel herself teetering.
‘You make your film. Our kids can wait a bit,’ he said. After tha
t, it took only a tremble of her brow. David lifted the covers, as if lifting a piece of skin, and climbed into bed beside her. He lay still, like a splinter, and she clung on to him.
‘Elle,’ he whispered, ‘you’ve seen my worst; let me show you my best.’
In the dark, feeling his breath on her ear, his hip against her belly, she felt something give. The part of her that had separated fell away. And, with its falling, she shrank. Instinctively, she knew not to examine this development or her new shape. Otherwise, their slim chance would be lost.
One night the next week, around 11 p.m., she came home after hours of viewing the rushes in the edit suite. She was keen to sleep but he’d waited up. He’d been to see his psychologist, Marion. He poured her a red wine as she plonked onto the couch. Then, calmly, he revealed how her reaction, long ago, to his house had made him feel. Hurt, sad and frustrated. She managed to keep herself quiet, not interrupt, and stay awake. He went on to say that her reluctance to advance their relationship had left him demoralised. Confused and nervous. Gratified, she watched him. When he was done, she said, ‘Thanks for telling me.’ And, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ After, they had sex for the first time in six days.
A week later, he cut back at work and signed up for life-drawing classes. He did their shopping and kept house while she helmed the runaway train that was her film. Their world was righting. Then, one Saturday morning, he proposed again and she didn’t let herself hesitate. Yes, he was flawed, and his behaviour challenging, but he was hers. He was, in essence, a decent, intelligent person who could make her heart sing. And she wanted him close. Always. It wasn’t, she knew, a rational decision.
David wanted them to marry as soon as her shoot wrapped. And they did, one dewy morning in September. Elle found it surprisingly easy. A few forms, an appointment here or there. A venue booked. And, in a low-key way, it was done. Easier than buying a house and far easier than making a feature. Harder had been breaking the news to Mira, but she had managed – largely because shock had rendered Mira speechless. Telling her brother had been difficult too, once she’d tracked him down at an IT company. Their call was beaded with silence, but, eventually, Jude had agreed to come.
On the day, Mira was rather subdued as her witness, but that didn’t matter. The bride and groom were ecstatic and Jesse and Max were delightful flower boys, bearing jasmine. After the registry ceremony that Elle had stitched together, everyone picnicked at the Botanic Gardens beneath willow trees. Elle wore a baby-blue, sleeveless, knee-length frock circa 1954; something she found in a vintage store in Brunswick and swore she’d seen, by Givenchy, on Audrey Hepburn. And a cluster of jasmine in her hair. David wore wax to tame his kinks and an op-shop white dress shirt that she’d found for him in Coburg. And he’d surprised her with a gift: a lamp. An elegant, lithe woman clasping an orb above her head. Art deco. Elle had been stunned, thrilled. Thrilled too, for the day flushed out people from both their worlds: a cluster of his work colleagues, a handful of artists, and his impeccably dressed mother, Lillian Forrester. The young painter and his waif-like girlfriend, another extraterrestrial, were there too; along with, of course, the best man, the inimitable Alex Carras, with his charming wife, Fi. On Elle’s side were her convivial composer, Jody Tan, and actor friend Kate Collins, and most of her cast and crew, including sweet-talking Jay Morehu, who had captivated the celebrant.
There were a few notable absentees. Lucy had declined graciously, as she was Frankfurt-bound. David’s elderly godfather had double-booked himself. And Elle’s mother had been grounded in Darwin by a sinus infection – a phone message her only presence. (‘I’m proud of you, Elle,’ it said, ‘I didn’t think you had it in you.’) Her mother’s absence was more disappointing than she might have expected, although it did neatly avoid the possible outing of her lie to Mira. Having a mother, it seemed, was becoming important to her again. And, hugely, she missed her father. But once the day was underway, she was pleased to see her younger brother making an effort as the ambassador of her family. A change had come over Jude in their three years apart; though his smile was still cheeky and his look vintage-scruffy, his auburn hair was shorter and he seemed calmer, plumper. ‘Dad’s given up beer,’ said Max when Elle caught her older nephew peeing beneath the willow’s canopy. ‘And he wants to take me and Jess to see the dinosaurs.’
‘Good for him,’ she said, and meant it.
Jude emerged then beneath the willow. In the shadows, smiling with those big white teeth, he could have been her father. They faced each other.
‘Please don’t take this the wrong way,’ he whispered, ‘but the last time I saw you, Elle, you were as hard as tarmac . . .’ His blue eyes misted. ‘And now . . .’ She nodded, the barb passing right through her: painless. ‘Congratulations,’ he said.
She hugged him, and it was as if something was restored. As if she was an expert now at forgiveness.
‘You do put on a first-class show, sis,’ he said later as he left.
On the whole, Elle thought their day enchanted. The finest part of it was seeing David in a wider social context; with everyone he was magnetic, courteous, lively. He introduced her around as though she was a rare discovery that he alone had made, and he scarcely left her side. Their friends mixed well and everyone suppressed their surprise at the speed of the event – everyone except Mira, who, perhaps wrong-footed by the shift in Jude, bickered with him and with Troy, and snapped at her children. The greatest surprise, though, was Elle’s own copious, silent tears. Starting during the ceremony, they didn’t abate until well after the kiss. Dabbing them away, she did her best to ignore them and so did the groom. When it was over, he pulled her close and she smelled his melon scent. ‘Sweetheart, you won’t regret it,’ he said before kissing her tenderly again on the lips. And she believed him, wholeheartedly, as the small crowd clapped.
A week after the wedding, when Elle floated back to earth, she had a nasty shock. Her film, she realised, was intrinsically flawed. Early on Yvonne, her editor, had suggested there might have been a problem. But Elle had been confident of what they had, despite a tiny niggle of doubt. Initially, she hadn’t quite surrendered her original idea of Freddie. But now, as if through new eyes, Elle saw the truth of it. Lucy’s performance was uneven. At times she was actually unconvincing, specifically in the gentler scenes with Jay. And it was baffling. Baffling that it could have happened. Baffling that Elle did not see it clearly earlier, during the shoot or viewing the rushes. Others at the shoot and privy to the rushes had seemed buoyed by what they saw, including Mira. But that made her feel no better.
Sensing her mood, David suggested a drive one Saturday morning. The sea at Fairhaven was spearmint-green. Rugged-up retirees and knee-high children dotted the shore. During the journey he had tried to cheer her, though she alluded only vaguely to her problems. He liked the idea of her as an accomplished filmmaker. And so did she. By the time David parked, having left the Great Ocean Road to curl towards the west, he was singing and she felt better. Here was the good David. The man who had introduced her to love and who excited her, the man who wanted to share his life, have children with her. The man he was at his core and would become permanently, with Marion’s help.
On the foreshore, wearing only jeans and a thin cardigan, she felt her skin rise into pale bumps. Impatient for the sun’s remote kiss, her thoughts reverted to her film. Why was everything so difficult this time around? She tried to focus on the feel of the sand and the sound of the water. She stared at the faded, burnt-orange cliffs and distant sea spray. Further along the Great Ocean Road, surrounded by sea, were famous landmark rock formations, the Twelve Apostles and London Arch. As a girl she’d been captivated when part of the rocky outcrop that had been called the London Bridge fell. She’d spent hours toying with the notions of hard and soft, strong and yielding. Questioning the assumptions she’d made about rock. She’d thought of the thirty metres of layered rock as flesh, with its vulnerable under-side eaten away by the ravenous sea. But the mos
t tantalising thing about the story was that for six hours a couple had been on the remaining stack of rock. A man and a woman: stranded and alone while the water lashed. As a romantic youngster, she’d been fascinated by how they got there, what they said to each other, how scared they felt. And then who’d seen them? Who’d helped? She glanced at David, locking his car, removing his shoes. What would he make of that story? Did he remember it? She thought to cite it but something stopped her: a vague wariness, perhaps, about his reaction to her whimsy.
Unsettled, she strode along the shore and he followed, walking on his heels across the sand like a tourist. Near the water, on an impulse, she shed her jeans and cardigan to reveal a black, forties-style one-piece. The mild spring air whisked around her, along with his gaze. She was thinner now than she had ever been.
‘You coming in?’ A hint of defensiveness crept into her tone.
‘Are you mad?’ he asked, incredulous.
She hadn’t planned on a swim: the bathers more a reminder of summer against her skin. But now she felt compelled to have a dip. She watched the swell build as it approached the shoreline in sizeable, transparent sets. It was one of those days that surfers celebrated, when the conditions mysteriously came together – the breeze off-shore, the swell head-height, the temperature mild. The days that made up for the early mornings thwarted by too much wind or not enough swell. It was the sort of day that sustained and rewarded. And she felt it shift something within her. Grabbing his hand, she dragged him to the water’s edge. To her relief, he allowed her coercion until they were standing at the outermost rim of the sea, where the foam met the dry.
Pulling up his trousers, he slipped her grip, gently. ‘It’s way too cold for me.’
A wave swept their feet and David peered about, as if expecting an eight-limbed creature to pull him under. Another wave came and she took a step away. She felt the icy water nip her ankles. Her father and his father before him had been men with bronze shoulders and effortless muscles, like the sunbaker in Max Dupain’s famous photograph. After her mother left, her father had become an Iceberger at Brighton Baths, swimming every day at dawn, year-round. She was, she realised, unaccustomed to pale and shivery men hesitating at the water’s edge. She turned to look at David, alone in the shallows. With his rolled-up blue jeans and his woolly red jumper he seemed so out of place, she wondered if he truly was that blue-flamed gas fire she’d first observed long ago in her kitchen. Her husband . . . And, despite herself, she laughed. He was so complex and so vulnerable and so beautiful.
