Sally Wentworth - Set the Stars on Fire

by Sally Wentworth

  Lori's hands tightened in her lap as anger swept through her like an uncontrollable fire. 'How dare you speak to me like that? You're completely wrong about me. I don't go with men. I'm not…'

  'No?' The scorn in his voice lashed like a whip. 'The way you were responding to Tony Rodgers and letting him handle you almost in public didn't exactly strike me as being the actions of an innocent little virgin l' Lori stared at him in appalled consternation as she realised that nothing she could say would alter his opinion of her. Circumstances and Tony's spitefulness had combined to damn her utterly in his eyes, and even if she behaved like a nun during the rest of the film, he would still think her cheap and immoral. And that he should think so hurt unbearably. She bit her lip and looked away, unable to bear the derision in his face.

  `Quite,' he said coldly, mistaking her action for guilt. `And now can we forget about the way you mis-conduct your Life and get down to teaching you some of the techniques of film acting as against those of the stage and television. Now, your biggest fault is that you're pitching your voice as if you're playing to an audience.

  In a film your only audience is the camera and the microphone boom, and they're only a few feet away, ready to catch even a whisper. Look, I'll put the rushes on again and show you what I mean.' .

  Lori was still glaring at him angrily, but there was nothing she could do; she just had to grit her teeth hard and try to forget his insults, to concentrate her mind entirely on what he was telling her. And because he was now completely impersonal and businesslike she found this much easier than she had anticipated. The next two hours Hew by as Lewis patiently went through each scene with her, telling her where she had gone wrong and giving her advice and tips on how she could improve her performance. She found that he was ex pert at his job, his knowledge gained from years of studying and experience in the film industry. He taught her a great many things that she knew she might never have learnt by herself and he gave her the sort of help that was going to be invaluable. to her during the next three months. It was the help and encouragement she had been crying out for, and if it had been anyone else, Lori would have been humbly grateful for his instructions and guidance, but when the session eventually came to an end she found that she was unable to even thank him, knowing as she did that he had done so not to help her but simply to make his precious film that much better by her improved performance. As she gathered up the copious notes she had made, he said, 'I won't schedule you for any scenes tomorrow so that you can think about what I've told you.' And when she didn't answer he added rather caustically, 'All right, you can go now. We mustn't keep your latest lover waiting, must we? But don't worry, you're far too beautiful for anyone to stand you up. But you know that already.'

  Anger flamed her cheeks and her eyes. She opened her mouth to let fly at him, but then closed it firmly.

  What was the use? Turning on her heel, she walked out of the office without another word. And she had been back in her room and studying her notes for quite some time before she suddenly remembered that he had called her beautiful!

  The rest of the day Lori spent in solitary pleasure by the pool, writing to her mother, reading, and occasionally dozing in the sun, and that night, because the night-club was closed, she had her first good night's sleep since she'd arrived in Rhodes, waking feeling refreshed and revitalised. She jumped out of bed, determined to make the most of her day off. As yet she had seen nothing of the island except the road between the hotel and the location set in the old city, and she had made up her mind that today she was going to act the tourist and really explore. So she rushed through breakfast and then ran down to the main road to push her way on to a bus already crowded with people going to work or shop in Rhodes town. And the bus in itself was a novel experience. A smiling Greek woman lifted her small child on to her lap so that Lori could sit down, and after she had paid her fare she looked round and saw that there were pictures of local football teams stuck on the sides of the bus, often with coloured rosettes alongside them. The driver's windshield was gaily decorated with a fringed and tasselled pelmet in red and yellow, with a small icon and a pair of miniature football boots dangling from the centre, and what looked like photographs of every member of his family for the last three generations, plus several film stars, inserted into the bottom edges. Everyone was gossiping and laughing, calling greetings to each other down the length of the bus, and generally providing a vivid contrast to the taciturn unsociableness of its

  British counterpart.

  Lori enjoyed it all immensely and was sorry when they reached Rhodes and everyone got off, but before her rose the ramparts of the old city and she eagerly joined the throng of tourists who made their way to a narrow road leading to one of the gateways of the mediaeval town.

  Both sides of the road were lined with stalls selling souvenirs, everything from toy Greek soldiers to colourful ceramics, and Lori paused to buy an English edition of a guide to the island. Armed with this, she read that the gate she was about to enter was the Porte d'Amboise, which was guarded on either side by two massive, semi-circular towers which descended to the moat. Lori paused to take a photograph and then turned to look out over the wide, dry moat and to her delight saw several small, tawny-coloured deer roaming there at will, cropping the sparse yellow grass and taking no notice at all of the people crossing the bridge above Them. That wild animals could graze so contentedly here amazed her, and she flipped through the pages of her guide book until she found a paragraph explaining that the deer had been adopted as the symbol of Rhodes because in earlier times the old town had been plagued by adders who lived in holes worn into the volcanic tufa stone of the walls, but it was found that the snakes couldn't stand the smell of a deer near them and had to come out of their holes and then the deer stamped on them and killed them, so saving the city. Lori also read that statues of deer now stood on two tall pillars at the entrance to Mandraki harbour, exactly where the Colossus was supposed to have been built.

  Lori promised herself a later visit to see them and went through the gateway into the old town, resisted the blandishments of an artist to draw her portrait there and then for three hundred drachmas and went on to the Palace of the Great Magister or Grand Master, who, rather like the Pope, had been elected by the Knights and held the office until he died. This was an imposing building, but a fairly recent reconstruction, which she didn't find very interesting, but when she entered the Hospital of the Knights she immediately felt that she had gone back five hundred years. For the first time it struck home to her forcibly that the Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem had been principally founded to maintain a hospital in Jerusalem for pilgrims to the Holy Land, only later taking part in the Crusades and assuming a military character, but always they had maintained a hospital and Britain's own St John Ambulance Brigade was their direct descendant.

  Lori stood quietly in the huge ward of the hospital and gave her imagination full play as she pictured the room .lined with cot beds, the nursing brothers moving quietly among the patients, the sun shafting through the high windows in summer, a blazing fire of tree logs in the massive fireplace at the far end of the ward in winter. All along the inner wall there were arched recesses at intervals, and Lori wondered if the dying were taken there to spend their last moments in comparative peace and privacy, while across the room, in the small Gothic chapel built out over the street, the chaplains prayed for the repose of their souls.

  The rest of the building was now a museum filled with ancient Greek and Roman artefacts found on the island, but Lori gave this a miss for the present and went instead to find the Street of the Knights because she knew that the film company would be shooting several scenes there in the coming weeks. She didn't know quite what she had expected the street to be like, but nothing could have prepared her for the feeling of timelessness when she came to the bottom of the street and stood looking up its long, straight expanse.

  If it hadn't been for the people in their bright summer clothes, it would hav
e been exactly like landing in a time machine. and stepping into the Middle Ages. The whole street had been preserved exactly as the Knights had left it on the day the remnants of them marched out of the city after having withstood the Turks for six months, and then only being beaten because of the treachery of one of their own number.

  Lori wandered slowly up the narrow cobbled street, gazing in awe at the heavy wooden doors under gothic arches leading to the Inns of the five hundred Knights, divided by their various languages or tongues : the Tongue of France, of Italy, of Provence, of Germany and Castile, eight in all. She glimpsed open staircases riming to the upper floors and longed to be able to explore inside, but behind the mediaeval facade the an4 lent rooms were now lived in by large families of stout women in black dresses and head-scarves, and olive skinned, curly-haired children who ran barefooted where the feet of the cream of European nobility had trod, and scrawny cats sprawled in the sun on the crenellated roofs where the flags of mighty nations once had flown.

  For a long time Lori wandered through the old castle and the town, and with every moment she was filled with the magic of the place, realising just why Lewis Brent had been inspired to make his film, to tell the story of some of the bravest men who had ever fought and died for what they believed in.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, the heat radiated from the stone walls and cobbled, twisting streets where no breath of wind could reach to relieve it. Her senses satiated by history, Lori found a small restaurant nestling under the walls of a mosque built by the Turks during their occupation of the island, and sat down at an outside table in the shade of one of the few trees in the town. She enjoyed herself trying to translate the menu, but finally played safe and ordered moussaka, a traditional Greek dish, with a side salad and a glass of wine. It felt good to sit and relax and just watch the world go by; she had needed this rest to recover from the strain and anxieties of the last few days. She would be better prepared now to face whatever the film crew threw at her, especially since Lewis Brent, however grudgingly, had given her the help she needed. Thinking of him made her take out her notes and she went through them again, although she already knew them almost off by heart. She tried to relate them to her own performance and was deep in concentration while she ate, but presently she noticed a couple of men from the film crew, wearing The Siege tee-shirts, looking into a tourist shop on the other side of the square.

  Hastily Lori put on her sun-specs, preferring to remain an anonymous member of the public on her day off. But she needn't have worried; the men saw a couple of pretty young girls, Scandinavian tourists from the almost white-blonde of their hair, walking down the street, and immediately turned towards them, ostentatiously displaying their tee-shirts. The girls saw them at once and nudged one another excitedly, then stopped, and Lori heard one say, `Oh, please. You are in the film?' The men nodded condescendingly, making the most of their claim to fame, and soon all four of them were chatting away and moved off together down the street.

  Lori watched them go, an amused smile on her lips. So that was why all the men wore the special tee-shirts, because it made it so much easier to pick up girls. The opposition hardly stood a chance. She couldn't recall what jobs the men did in the film company—with a crew of over two hundred it was hardly likely that she would-but she could well imagine the Lines that the poor girls were being spun. And the men were probably having a great time in Rhodes; the pick of the prettiest girls, and then finding new ones every two weeks when their package tour ended and the girls flew home.

  She sat for a while longer, then paid her bill and walked towards the outskirts of the town where she knew that some scenes were being filmed today. She found the place easily enough, because a largish crowd had already gathered to watch. There were quite a few tourists among them; but most of the spectators were native Rhodians, men too old to work, women taking time off from household chores, and dozens of children, all slim and dark, with large, melting brown eyes. Lori eased her way round the crowd until she found a vantage point and could see clearly, for once a spectator instead of a participant.

  The scene was being shot near the harbour gate and was of a parley between the Knights and the Turks. Lori recognised Dean because he had his helmet off, there being a break in filming, and then she saw Lewis Brent moving from one camera to another, making sure the shot would be set up as he wanted it, going over the moves with the actors, having the lights adjusted to make sure no shadows were thrown, checking and double-checking each detail; making absolutely sure that he got the best acting, the most authentic setting, perfect camera work. As Lori watched she began to realise just how hard and indefatigably he worked. He didn't made a film, he created it. Giving of himself unstintingly because it 'was something he believed in, something he would never be happy with if it was in even the slightest degree less than the realisation of his dream.

  And Lori began to feel very humble, realising now just what it must have meant to him to have her thrust upon him. She might hate him for his attitude towards her, his stubborn refusal to even listen to anything she tried to say in her own defence, let alone believe it, but she knew now that she respected him and admired his complete dedication to his work. She found herself experiencing a strange longing to please him, by giving the best performance of her life and to try to help make The Siege the brilliant picture that he envisaged - whether she would ever be able to tolerate him as a man was another question entirely.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LORI had made up her mind to give of her best for the film, but she would have been made to anyway, for during the next two or three weeks Lewis Brent worked her hard, giving her only one or two scenes to do per day, but expecting an extremely high standard and not being satisfied until he got it. And although he was still harder on her than any of the other actors, he treated her now as a director should, encouraging her, and taking her aside to give her advice instead of doing so in front of everyone. Whether he was pleased with her or not she didn't know, but although he still told her off when she made a mistake his voice had lost its sarcastic edge and he no longer let his contempt for her show.

  She found the work tough, admittedly, the immense concentration and emotion it required often left her feeling drained, but it was also rewarding and immensely stimulating. She soon found that she was able to follow his directions imaginatively and almost intuitively, once or twice even daring to tentatively offer a suggestion of her own. He had turned these down, as it happened, but not without considering them seriously and telling her why they wouldn't work, usual!; because of some technical difficulty.

  The crew, too, had become less antagonistic in their attitude; now someone brought her a lunch-box everyday, and a canvas chair with her name on it had mysteriously appeared on the set one morning. She had been careful, so terribly careful, not to be anything more than friendly with any of the men in the crew, never showing any favouritism to any in particular, terrified lest someone might think she was encouraging them-or, more to the point, that Lewis Brent might think she was encouraging them. Even when Dean came to casually throw himself into a chair beside her and talk shop, asking her what it was like to work on television in Britain and telling her about his own experiences in America, she couldn't enjoy the conversation because she was always worried about the director's reaction.

  But strangely enough he didn't seem to mind her talking to Dean at all, often telling them to discuss a scene that they were both in, or strolling across to have a word with them. Lori would look up at him rather nervously whenever he did so. He seemed to tower so tall over her; she always felt as if she wanted to get on her feet to face him, so lessening the advantage he had over her.

  Once she laughed aloud at some anecdote Dean had told her and the director looked quickly across and then came over to where they were sitting. Lori stopped laughing abruptly and gripped the arms of her chair, waiting for him to make some biting comment. But he merely looked down at her rather enigmatically and said, `Dean, can you go an
d stand in position for a minute so that they can make sure you'll be in camera frame?' Then he turned to Lori and said quietly, 'Relax. I'm not going to eat you.'

  Lori gazed up at him uncertainly, unable to read his mood. `Can I-count on that?'

  A faint Ricker of amusement came into his-grey eyes. `Just so long as you continue as you are.'

  `You mean with my work?'

  His mouth thinned. `I mean with everything.' `I see,' Lori answered rather shakily.

  `I hope you do.' He continued to look down at her for a few moments until Dean rejoined them, then he turned to the younger man and said, `I shan't need you two any more today. We won't shoot that scene until tomorrow when the sun. is rising. Why don't you take Lori up to see the Acropolis and the Stadiums I'm told they're very impressive.'

  Lori came slowly to her feet. `Did I just pass some sort of test''

  Lewis Brent turned to find her green eyes regarding him steadily. `A test?’

  You just called me by my first name,' she reminded him.

  `Did I? In that case I suppose I shall have to keep on doing so.' His expression betrayed nothing, not annoyance with himself because her name had just slipped out, or, alternatively, any degree of friendliness towards her because he had accepted her at last as one of his crew. Usually Lori was good at reading faces, she had the actor's trained eye for it, but his face was like a closed mask. `You'd better cut along; Dean's waiting,' he added.

  Suddenly Lori was angry because she still didn't know what he was thinking. She tossed her head, the red-gold in her hair catching the sun's rays and turning it into a flame. Pertly she retorted, `Thank you Lewis.'