by Leah McLaren
Act 1, Scene 6
Int. Empty Victorian garment factory—the scene of the crime.
The voices of Celia and David can be heard off camera as they make their way up the stairs.
CELIA (OFFSCREEN)
Once again, Inspector, I’m not sure what you think you’re going to find here that the police already haven’t.
Int. stairwell.
David is helping Celia up the rickety steps.
She struggles a bit and tears her petticoat on a nail.
CELIA
Good heavens.
DAVID
Are you all right, miss?
CELIA (IRRITATED)
Yes, yes, fine. To be perfectly honest, Inspector, I’d be a great deal better if I was back at the morgue doing some useful work.
DAVID
My dear Miss Hornby, thank you again for your skepticism, but surely as a doctor you must agree that no hair can be left unturned, particularly when lives are at stake.
Just this snippet, Meredith knew, would take most of the morning to get on film. First a camera setup for the interior of the factory, then another for the stairwell. They would shoot the interior scenes of the factory first, and likely get to the stairwell segment later. Meredith made a mental note to ensure the wardrobe people had provided a visibly ripped petticoat for Celia in the interior garment factory scenes.
The truth was, for all her copious work and attention to detail, few directors or editors even looked at the continuity notes anymore. Schedules could be generated by computer. The log was kept more out of tradition and protocol than genuine need. The bulk of Meredith’s job was to record the difference between what was on the page and what was shot. If dialogue was added or cut, Meredith made note. If an actor strayed into an unscripted moment of genius or folly, she noted that too. If anything changed from the original plan, she was on it. Her first loyalty, as continuity girl, was to the script.
She removed a ruler from her case and darkened the dividing lines of eighths using her sharpest pencil. Then she flipped forward in her binder to the Daily Continuity Log sheet, on which she would take careful note of the setup, scene and slate (the clappy board) number, as well as shot time, pages shot and, most important, which take of which shots the director wanted the lab to print and send out to the editor. With her Polaroid camera, digital stopwatch, binder and sharpened pencil, Meredith would record and keep track of even the most seemingly unimportant detail on the set, from the exact time (down to a quarter of a second) the crew broke for lunch, to the precise measurement of the rip on the hem of the actress’s petticoat. She would keep notes for the assistant editor in a daily log, recording the scene, slate, time and print numbers for him to note when he looked over the rushes in the following days.
Meredith was the editor’s eye on set. They were in it together, she and he (in this case, a grumpy little Glaswegian named Rowan, who lived and worked in a dark suite deep in the Hammersmith riverbed). As the rest of the crew busily manufactured random narrative fragments out of time and out of context, Meredith kept the order in her daily logbooks so that the editor could put the story back together again.
The grips were setting up a camera across the room, wheeling around dollies, taping down wires and trading lame jokes. No sign of Richard. Meredith took the moment of calm to take stock of her kit—opened her black nylon pack and accounted for its contents by touch.
Script in script binder—check. Book light for night scenes—check. Wite-Out—check. Victorian slang dictionary—check. Polaroid camera and extra film—check. Pencils and sharpener—check. Hat, mitts, scarf for outdoor shooting—check. Envelopes: legal size—check. Eraser—check. Organic yogurt and Fuji apple for lunch—check. Waterproof felt pens—check. Reinforced three-hole paper—check. One-hole punch—check. Paper clips—check. Ruler—check. Self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements...self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements...no! Where were the freaking self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements?
Meredith took in air and closed her eyes. Yes, she was sure she had noted them the first time she completed the checklist that day, just before leaving the flat at dawn. The self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements were a small but essential tool for her job. Without them, she would have to punch holes in her blank paper, clip them into the binder and simply trust that they would stay secure. If a careless technician bumped against her while she was working, or if her binder slid off her knees onto the floor (as it often did if she was absorbed in watching the monitor or talking to the director and forgot to steady it with her elbow), then carefully compiled pages of log sheets would be in danger of detaching at their weakest, unprotected spots. Columns of painstakingly listed shot details could be damaged or, worse yet, lost completely. What if she wasn’t looking when a page ripped off and got stuck on the second AD’s boot as he walked by, barking call times into his walkie-talkie? By the time Meredith noticed the missing log sheet it could be six hours and two setups later. The page could have been swept up by the cleaners, dumped into the dustbin, bagged and ready for the afternoon pickup. It would be too late to get the page back, impossible to remember all the relevant details, a disservice to the editor and the director—and she would be fired. For the second time in her life. And all because her brand-new packet of self-stick paper reinforcements had probably slipped beneath her dusty little bed.
Meredith felt her guts constrict. There was a pounding in her ears. It was not impossible she would die. People died all the time. Cells exploded in their brains or their throats just swelled shut. She reached deep into her pack and found the inner pocket containing a small bottle that held a dozen or so dissolvable half-doses of Ativan from a prescription she had filled four years before after a particularly bad breakup. She wrapped her hand around the bottle and the imminent-death feeling gradually faded.
She’d spent enough time in therapy to know her anxiety was likely brought on by the sudden close proximity to her mother. But Irma was trying her best. She had somehow arranged this job, hadn’t she? And she was supportive of the donor quest—devoting herself to the task of setting up Meredith with a suitable specimen using every connection available to her.
And Irma’s connections were considerable. In spite (or perhaps because of) her immutable eccentricity, she had compiled a network of friends and ex-lovers who ranged across London society. She belonged to half the clubs in the city and was well known in the others. There were dinners and book launches and pub quizzes to attend several times a week. Irma sat on a number of boards and governing committees of art galleries, a library and a major literary prize. While she never contributed anything in the way of actual work in these postings, she amused her fellow artocrats by telling animated stories of the old days of Notting Hill—hanging out with the arty crowd, dropping liquid acid and sipping Campari on the rooftops. She was, and always had been, a hit wherever she went. And now, for the first time ever, Irma finally had something to offer her daughter: a rich and varied social life.
On Wednesday, Meredith was to attend a dinner at the Chelsea Arts Club with her mother. Perhaps the father of her child would be there.
Meredith pushed these thoughts from her mind and forced herself to concentrate on the job at hand. Richard was striding across the set, right hand pitchforked deep into his bale of brown hair. He obviously needed something big from her, and Meredith resolved to make herself useful.
“Meredith. Heavenly to see you. Turns out you’re just the person I was looking for.” Richard covered his heart with ten long white fingers and bowed like a courtier. There was a slightly sarcastic inflection to everything he said or did, as if his entire life were one elaborate adolescent boarding-school prank. Meredith felt very slow and cement-witted whenever he was around. She stood up.
“Sir?”
“Listen.” He lowered his voice to a clamp-toothed whisper. “We have a rather serious crisis on our hands—one that I think you could help to diffuse by employing your...” He searched. “Womanly ch
arms.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m afraid it’s Miss Swain.” He winced and looked around to make sure none of the crew members were in earshot. “She’s—how to put this delicately?—having a bit of a hissy fit at the moment. A sort of a does-my-ass-look-fat-in-this-dress tantrum. In her trailer. Won’t come out. It’s all quite ridiculous, but she’s utterly inconsolable—by me at any rate. She’s already scared the wardrobe stylist off set, and if she doesn’t calm down shortly I’m afraid Dan could be next in line.” He glanced across the warehouse to where Dan Button sat dejectedly polishing the carved ivory knob on his walking stick with a shammy.
“That’s awful,” said Meredith, feeling confused. Swain’s diva antics were hardly surprising, but Richard’s confidence in her was. Continuity supervisors had little contact with the actors, apart from annoying them by taking Polaroids of their costumes or reminding them to back-match their lines to their actions. Meredith preferred it this way. Actors were unpredictable, self-obsessed and invariably unstable. No good could come of befriending them. She worked around them like a stable hand sweeping out a thoroughbred’s stall.
“You see, Meredith, what I was wondering was—and no pressure, by the way, although to be perfectly honest, at this point the entire balance of the show does depend upon it—if you wouldn’t mind talking to her, American woman to American woman.”
“But I’m Canadian.”
Richard corrected his stoop and looked over Meredith’s shoulder toward a team of grips assembling weights on the back of a crane. “Ms. Swain’s trailer is the third on the left. The first setup should be complete in half an hour.” The conversation was over.
As she made her way to the line of trailers (affectionately referred to as “the circus”) Meredith marveled at how archaic the average film set was. In an era when computers could be chess champions and compose original symphonies, cinema was clunky up close. The makeup artist applied blue lipstick to the mouth of the girl playing the corpse; and fake blood—a mixture of gelatin, water and purple food coloring—was splattered at the scene by a propsmaster wielding a child’s plastic squirt gun. Cameras were still laboriously rigged on the outside of cars, fastened to the top of cranes or mounted Snugli-style on the chest of the Steadicam operator.
Meredith felt more of an affinity with the camera than with any of her breathing colleagues on set. She and the lens had certain things in common. They were both dispassionate observers valued for their ability to meticulously record details without judgment or embellishment. Immovable in their pedantry, both were utterly indispensable to the process.
The door of Kathleen Swain’s trailer was slightly ajar. Meredith tapped twice and stood frozen on the floating stainless steel stoop, listening for signs of life. After a half minute or so, she knocked again.
“Oh, what now?” That unmistakable sandpaper drawl.
The words sounded scripted to Meredith. What now, is right, she thought. Her hands were trembling. Maybe she should have taken that Ativan.
Meredith spoke—but did not look—into the crack in the aluminum door frame. “Ms. Swain, my name is Meredith Moore. I supervise continuity on the set and I was just wondering if I could maybe help you with anything.”
A stocking-clad toe appeared around the edge of the door and tugged it open. Inside, the trailer smelled mysteriously of baby powder and Chardonnay (or was it cat pee?). In a far corner a makeup girl was crumpled on a stool, sniffling into the industrial-size cosmetic kit on her lap. Swain lay on the daybed beside the door, wrapped like a California roll in what appeared to be a velvet curtain, complete with rod. Her face was covered with what Meredith thought were bandages, but on closer inspection turned out to be a pair of white cotton gloves.
“Continuity, huh?” she said, peering out from between her fingers. “Courtney, you’re free to go.”
The makeup girl clamped her kit shut and shuffled out, giving Meredith a miserable glance as she passed.
Only when the door was shut tight did the actress take her hands away from her face. Meredith saw what she had already known: that in spite of age, stress, a slightly overzealous collagen injection artist and a layer of troweled-on camera makeup, Swain was still very beautiful.
“You’re not English,” Swain said. “But you’re not American either. That makes you Canadian.”
“How’d you know?”
“I’ve been to Toronto a bunch of times.” She stretched her arms above her head and yawned like a bored housecat. “In 1982 for The Taste of Honey, then in ’87 for The Sorceress, then ’91 for Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones. I got a Golden Globe nom for that one, you know. A complete surprise. And then I was there in 1998 for the opening of Blue Orchid. Oh God, Valentino sent me this dress the night before and it didn’t fit so I had to get it pinned. Terrible picture. Anyway, Toronto’s not such a bad town. Do you ever go to Bistro 990?”
“Sometimes,” Meredith lied.
“Well, good. You’re practically American, then. I just get sick of all these English people all the time. They’re so...shifty. You can never tell if they’re joking. And the men all smell funny. Sort of sad and sweet—”
“It’s the detergent.”
“What?” Swain had removed one cotton glove and was peeling a coating of pink paraffin wax from her previously concealed hand.
“It’s the cheap laundry detergent they use. I forget the brand name. It smells like a dead marriage.”
“Yes, exactly! It’s awful. Oh God, I’m so glad you noticed it too. I honestly thought I was going crazy.” Swain laughed long and hard, and after a little while Meredith joined in.
“Have a seat.” Swain motioned to the kitchenette table across the room, a whole two feet away. “Welcome to my movie star trailer,” she said, pronouncing the term “moovee schtaa” in her best mid-Atlantic lockjaw.
Meredith wasn’t sure if she was joking.
“You see, Meredith, the thing about acting, the truly rotten, vicious thing about it, is not the scrutiny, the superficiality, the endless rounds of boring interviews. Most of my colleagues have got it all wrong. They’re complaining about the good things. The really rotten thing is the people. The people are awful. I mean, most people are. But show people? The worst. And the higher up the food chain you go, the worse it gets. Me? I am a Hollywood movie star. In other words, a monster. As bad as it gets. You know what they say?”
Meredith shook her head.
“People in drama like drama.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“You know I made Courtney cry.”
“I assumed.”
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“I said some very nasty things to her because a moment before, I’d looked down at my cleavage and noticed that it was wrinkly. My famous tits, wizening into a couple of floppy papayas. There’s no operation for that, you know.”
“No?”
“Not that there’d be much point even if there was. I mean, you can only put off the inevitable for so long.”
Swain threw off her curtain in one swoop. Underneath she was wearing Victorian ladies’ underwear—a pair of bloomers, wool stockings and a corset. Her body was, it had to be said, not what it used to be. She was still slim, but her skin was loose under her upper arms and on her chest. Meredith correctly judged her to be about forty-five. Draped over the kitchenette table to the right was Swain’s costume, a heavy blue velvet dress with thousands of complicated-looking lacings and hooks and eyes. It would take at least twenty minutes to get her into it, and given the situation with wardrobe, Meredith realized the job would probably fall to her.
“Listen,” Meredith began, “I know this isn’t a great time, and that you seem preoccupied with other things. But they’re out there setting up for the first shot, and you’re in it. So it might be a good idea to get dressed. You know, to save time.”
Swain laughed. “Time is of no concern to me. The cliché is true—in the movies, time is money. And the money, i
n this case, belongs to Osmond Crouch. And guess what? Osmond Crouch owes me—not money, but something far more precious. He owes me my youth.”
A knock at the door and the second AD’s voice announced Swain’s call time.
“FUCK OFF!” she roared.
“I hope you don’t mind listening to me for a bit. It’s just that I get so lonely for female company, and these English women, they don’t really count. They’re all so cold. They don’t really have the same body image anxiety we do. It’s hard to relate.” Swain looked directly at Meredith for the first time.
“No children,” she pronounced.
Meredith shook her head, unsure where this was going. She suddenly wanted to leave. Just when she was about to gather her binder, Swain stood up, stepped into the layers of velvet and began pulling up her dress. She did not talk about this, just did it. Meredith began the painstaking work of slipping each little hook into its intended eye.
Swain sighed. “I was married three times, but no babies. I even miscarried twice, like Marilyn Monroe. That was during my second marriage, to Peter, the entertainment lawyer. The normal one. I didn’t realize it in my twenties and thirties, but husbands are really not the issue at all. They’re basically disposable. You can always find a better one at some point.” She giggled cruelly. “But babies...you only get one chance for those.”
Meredith continued hooking and eyeing.
“People tell me I should adopt. A little girl from China or a foundling from Guatemala or wherever. But I’ve never been one for rescuing people. I haven’t got much of a martyr complex. I don’t think that’s what parenthood is about. For me it’s about the flesh. My own flesh. Flesh of my flesh, to love and care for, for the rest of my life, you know? That’s what I long for. But you know, on the bright side, there are operations for that.”
