Simon Brett - Situation Tragedy

A further scrunching of gravel and the sound of an altogether more sedate, but no less powerful engine than the Porsche’s, now interrupted the proceedings and announced the arrival of Aurelia Howarth and Barton Rivers.

The vintage Bentley was a green monster with its hood fixed back in honour of the warm weather. The couple behind the windscreen looked like its first owners. Aurelia wore a large hat bound round with a silk scarf, and Barton Rivers had added a white flat cap and white gloves to his uniform blazer. When he tottered, spidery, from the car and went round to open his wife’s door, he revealed again white flannels and black shoes.

The arrival, like that of visiting royalty, suspended all other activity and everyone drifted over towards the car. Scott Newton got there first, still full of his new possession. ‘What do you think of the car, Dob?’

‘Very nice, dear.’

As with Charles, he couldn’t resist boasting of his affluence. ‘Expensive to run, mind.’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage, dear.’

‘I’m sure I will, Dob.’

At that moment Bernard Walton, who was going to miss no opportunity of asserting his authority over the day, once again materialised from the house and, throwing his arms around Aurelia, gushed. ‘Dob darling, lovely to welcome you here again. Always such a pleasure to see you, whether the call is purely social or, as today, when you’re working. Hello, Barton, old boy.’

Barton Rivers did his death’s head grimace. ‘Nice to see you, dear boy. Lovely day for the match, what?’

Mort Verdon busied up to the leading lady. ‘Aurelia boofle, sorry to interrupt, but I have to chivvy you, dear. Time to get into your cossy and have your slap done.’

‘Yes, of course, darling. Must just see to Cocky. The little darling’s in his little basket in the back of the car, and he does so hate his little basket.’

‘Of course,’ sympathised Mort, whose pressure was always discreet, and who knew that Aurelia wouldn’t settle until she had settled the dog. He followed her to the car, in case she needed any help with her darling.

George Birkitt, standing beside Charles, was less sympathetic. ‘Bloody dog. I thought she’d have left it behind. This whole bloody production seems to revolve round that pooch.’

‘Doesn’t do much harm,’ said Charles mildly.

‘Huh. It offends me. I wonder if they make mousetraps big enough,’ George Birkitt mused.

Charles chuckled, but when he looked at his fellow-actor, there was no smile on the other’s face.

Cocky was released from his wicker prison and celebrated his freedom by leaping around everyone’s legs, yapping. ‘How is the little love?’ asked Bernard Walton with a great deal of warmth, though, shrewdly, he kept his distance.

‘Ah, he’s not a very well boy. The nasty old vet says he’s not a well boy.’

‘Good,’ murmured George Birkitt. ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.’

‘Come on, boofle,’ urged Mort Verdon tactfully. ‘I think we’d better get changed for the filming.’

‘Of course, darling. Now where are the dressing rooms?’

‘It’s just caravans, I’m afraid, dear.’

‘Oh.’

She spoke the word coolly, without real disapproval, but Bernard Walton saw another opportunity to demonstrate his magnanimity. ‘Dob darling, come and change in the house. Honestly, I hate to think of you cramped in some awful caravan, while the house is just here. Come on, love, you can go into the guest room where you stayed last time you were down. Barton, you come along, old boy.’

And, before anyone could remonstrate, Bernard Walton led the royal pair into the house, with a rabble of commoners, dressers and make-up girls trailing behind.

‘Make you bloody sick,’ said George Birkitt savagely. ‘Turning up bloody late, disrupting everything, no apologies. I just don’t think it’s professional.’

Charles shrugged. ‘I think it’s remarkable she gets here at all, at her age. Particularly with dear old Barton Rivers driving.’

But George Birkitt was not mollified. ‘What I object to is the fact that I got up at six to get to W.E.T. for my make-up call, came in that bloody coach with everyone else, and she has the nerve to just roll up about ten o’clock, and of course she isn’t in make-up, so everything’s behind. And no one ticks her off or anything, everything just bloody stops and we all bow and scrape and grin inanely for a quarter of an hour until her ladyship allows us to get on with our work. I mean, you know I’m the last person to make a fuss, but I do think somebody ought to say something. Peter, or Scott. God, how I hate all this star business.’

‘Oh, come on. She’s an old lady. Deserves a few allowances.’

But George Birkitt wasn’t listening. ‘I think, for the next day’s filming, I’ll drive myself down.’

The filming started, and made its usual, infinitesimally slow progress. Once again Charles realised why film stars were paid so much. If they could stand the constant repetition, the constant disruption, the tiny daily advance, then they earned every penny. For him, working in film had all the appeal of building a ten-foot model of the World Trade Centre out of match sticks.

He was fortunate, or not, according to how you looked at it, to get his scenes out of the way early on. Under Scott Newton’s perfectionist direction, they only spent about an hour and a half on Reg the barman chasing Colonel Strutter the twenty yards from the privet hedge to the house. Another day, in another location, they would have to film the beginning of the chase, the segment from the golf clubhouse to the privet hedge. (Because the clubhouse adjacent to Bernard’s house was in the wrong style for the decor of the studio set already built, they were doing that sequence at a different club.)

Charles was told that an hour and a half for thirty seconds of film without written dialogue was not bad going, though to him it seemed very slow. It meant that by twelve o’clock he had discharged his obligations for the day, and was in theory free to leave. On the other hand, he was a long way from a station, and no one seemed likely to be driving anywhere until the day’s filming was over. So he might as well stay around until the coach returned.

He didn’t really mind. He had noticed that there were some crates of wine in the location caterers’ minibus. He felt relatively content.

The only thing that made him feel less than completely content were the trousers that Wardrobe had reckoned to be right for Reg the barman. Charles liked trousers better the longer he wore them. His two main pairs had a combined age of twenty-one years and now he never noticed that he had them on. The ones Wardrobe had chosen for the rare, probably never-to-be-repeated appearance of a barman’s bottom half, felt stiff, tickly and alien.

At twelve-thirty sharp they all broke for lunch. (The Union rules were no less closely observed because they were on location. Indeed, over the few days Charles had been involved with The Strutters series, he had noticed an even greater consciousness of Union rules. Maybe this was another symptom of the approaching industrial trouble which George Birkitt had forecast at the time of the pilot.) Bernard Walton was in no way inconvenienced by the arrangements, though it appeared that he had swept Aurelia Howarth and Barton Rivers off for a private lunch in the house. The location caterers opened up their double-decker bus to reveal rows of tables and chairs, and served a substantial meal of truffled pork pate, cold duck with a wide variety of salads, and fresh strawberries (not cheaply available in May), washed down with a choice of, or, if you felt like it, a mixture of, red and white wines.