Golden Hour (20 page)

“You wake up. Wake up yourself.”

“You need a carer, Mum—”

“Who are you to preach at me? Are you so perfect?”

“I'm just trying to get you to see what you're doing, for your own sake. If you go on being impossible you'll have no one.”

“I don't want anyone.”

“Listen to me, Mum. This is infantile. You have to take this in. We can't go on otherwise.”

“I don't want to listen to you when you get like this.”

“You have to listen.”

“I'm not listening. Leave me alone. I don't want Bridget. I don't want you. You'd better go.”

“And how are you supposed to cope then?”

“You think you're helping me, coming here and lecturing me? Crushing me, destroying me? No, thank you, Elizabeth. You can go now.”

Liz jumps up, on the point of running from the room. She's in a turmoil of rage, she wants to hit her mother, she wants to shock
her into listening. At the same time she knows the whole encounter has gone horribly wrong and must somehow be rescued.

“All right,” she says. “All right!” Almost shouting. “I'm sorry. Okay? I'm sorry! This is me saying I'm sorry!” Shouting she's sorry. “I'm apologizing. I'm saying sorry.”

Mrs. Dickinson does not answer and does not look up. She has her jaw set in a tight expression Liz knows all too well.

“You can't go on like this, Mum. You just can't.”

Now her mother is pulling herself forward, her prelude to getting up out of her chair.

“You need Bridget. You just do.”

Now she's up on her feet. Not looking at Liz. Setting off across the kitchen to the back door.

“Where are you going?”

“You won't go when I ask you. So I'll go.”

“
Where are you going?
”

Liz is shrieking now, out of control. Her question is needless, the old lady is all too clearly going out into the garden.

She wants to scream but she traps the screams in her mouth. Forces them back down her throat, but not out of her head. Why can't you see you need help? When will you stop fighting me? How can you be so stubborn and self-destructive? Why do you drag me down with all your problems? When do I get free of you? When do you die?

Shocked by her own rage, she follows her mother's slow progress to the back door. In the doorway, holding the doorframe for support, Mrs. Dickinson speaks without turning round. She speaks in a slow faraway voice, as if to indicate that all is now over between them.

“I don't want Bridget to come any more. I don't want you to come any more. I want you all to leave me alone. I'm going out now to talk to the guinea pigs.”

And out she goes.

Liz remains for a few moments in the kitchen, pondering her options. But the truth is she's too angry to produce any rational response. Her mother's blank refusal to listen, the defensive wall she erects in the face of any criticism, enrages Liz far more than her occasional rudeness. It makes her want to punish her mother in exactly the way she's asking to be punished.

You want to be left alone, I'll leave you alone. I have a life. I don't need this.

“I'll go, then,” she says, projecting the words at her mother's stooping back. And receiving no response, she goes.

Coming south out of Alfriston the road descends into a treelined hollow and then begins to climb.

“Is it almost time?” says Caspar.

“Almost,” says Alan.

He's pleased that his son remembers the road and its special cry. It must be over a year since they last drove this way.

Then with a swoop they're rising again beyond the high hedges to the summit of the hill. There, thrillingly, is the end of the world: a wide view of rolling sheep-dotted grassland, and beyond it the great glittering sea.

“Woo-oo!” cries Cas.

“Woo-oo!” cries Alan.

This is High-and-Over, the humpbacked hill that makes you shout as if you're on a rollercoaster. Coming back the other way is even better because as you go over the hump there before you—Woo-oo!—the road drops so steeply it's like you're in a plane coming down to land, and your landing strip is all England.

They head on round the fringes of Seaford and onto the Eastbourne Road.

“Will we see Rocky actually talking?” says Cas.

“No,” says Alan. “They add all that later.”

“So how will they know what to do?” says Cas. “I don't understand.”

“I don't really understand myself,” says Alan. “Maybe there'll be someone there who can tell us.”

Alan has met the director, Ray Stirling, only once, and is shy of interrupting him during filming. He remembers a guarded young man with attentive eyes, who nodded a lot and asked very little. But there'll be other lesser members of the unit who'll be ready to answer Cas's questions.

Alan has his own solution to the puzzle of how Rocky talks. He doesn't talk, he thinks. His dialogue is addressed to an imaginary listener, just as Alan's own thoughts are.

“Please don't ask me to run,” Rocky says. “Running is exhausting and undignified, and the destination is rarely worth reaching. Good things are as likely to come if you lie down and wait for them, and if they don't come, well, at least you're comfortable.”

As they cross the narrow bridge over the river by the Golden Galleon he looks out for signs of the film unit. He hasn't told Cas, but this is the first time for him too, the first time he's ever visited a location film shoot. The thought that such a mighty machine has come into being to bring to life
his story
makes him feel a little dizzy, except that it's hardly his story any more. There was no single point in the last eighteen months when he was able to say: this is a change too far, this is no longer what I intended. But little by little, draft by draft, the project crept away from him.

Through it all, only Rocky remains: sharp-tongued, world-weary, cynical, but fundamentally loyal. Rocky alone holds Alan's place on the movie, and represents his creative mind. If all goes according to the schedule, this afternoon they are to film the scene that introduces the sheepdog at the start of the film.

EXT. THE DOWNS—DAY

Sheep graze in late afternoon sunlight. Beyond, the curve of the river, the rolling green hillside, the blue sea. A MAN lies in the grass, a handkerchief over his face, an empty bottle by his side. The handkerchief rises and falls with the even breathing of sleep. A gray-and-white BEARDED COLLIE lies beside him, a second handkerchief over his face. It too rises and falls as he sleeps. A bee buzzes by lazily. The sheep drift over the hillside. Two hikers go through a gate. They fail to close it properly. The man and the dog sleep on.

The sheep find the open gate. One pushes through. Others follow. Beyond the gate is the road. Cars passing. A sheep goes on to the road. A car sounds a sharp horn and swerves to avoid it. The car horn wakes the man. He sits up abruptly, the handkerchief falling from his face. He is HECTOR, late thirties, disheveled, friendly-looking.

HECTOR: Bloody hell!

He jumps up, sees that the sheep are through the gate. Panicking, he turns to the dog.

HECTOR: Rocky! The sheep are on the road!

The handkerchief is puffed from the dog's
face. The dog opens one eye, not raising his head.

ROCKY: So?

HECTOR: They'll be killed!

ROCKY: So what's new? Every sheep is born to die.

Alan sees the film unit now, filling the car park opposite the Visitors Center like a traveling circus: a cluster of long trucks and smaller vans, round which men and women are coming and going in a purposeful way.

On the facing hillside a white Landrover is crawling slowly up the track toward a cluster of crew members. The sky overhead remains dull and gray.

He pulls up by the entrance to the car park, where a young man with a yellow armband stands guard, holding a clipboard.

“I'm really sorry,” he says politely. “Would you mind parking just over the road there? This is closed for filming.”

“I've come for the filming,” says Alan. “Alan Strachan. I'm the writer.”

“Oh, sorry.”

The young man studies a list on his clipboard.

“What was the last name again?”

“Strachan.”

In front of them three men are unloading sheep from a farm truck. Cas watches with interest. Two small black-and-white collies run back and forth yapping at the sheep, keeping them in a tight huddle.

“Dad,” says Cas, “which one's Rocky?”

“I'm sorry,” says the young man. “I don't seem to have the name.”

Alan sees Flora pass by, carrying two mugs of coffee.

“Hey, Flora!”

She turns and gives Alan a lovely smile.

“Alan! Great you could come!”

The young man lowers his clipboard.

“Should be a space the far side of the catering truck,” he says.

Flora walks beside the car as Alan drives in.

“Not a lot happening,” she tells Alan. “We're waiting for the sun to come out. Three weeks of gorgeous sunshine and now this.”

“Can't they use lights?”

“Apparently not.” Flora gives a light laugh. “Don't ask me why. All I know is the schedule says golden hour and for golden hour you need sunlight.”

She stops by a trailer. Unable to wave goodbye, due to the full coffee mugs in her hands, she wags her pretty head. Then she taps on the trailer door with one foot. A sign on the trailer door says Colin Firth.

Alan parks where he's been told and he and Cas walk back past the catering truck. A short line of crew members waits to climb the steps to the food counter. A strong smell of melted cheese fills the air. Ahead, the sheep are being driven round the end of a cattle grid and onto Exceat Hill. Cas wants to run after them to find out which dog is Rocky.

“I don't think either of them is Rocky,” says Alan. “Rocky's the star. He's probably got his own trailer somewhere.”

He looks round for someone to ask, but everyone seems to be busily going about their own concerns. Alan is all too aware that he has no function here. It's an odd and not very pleasant sensation, being an outsider at your own creation. He feels an urge to get back in the car and drive away. If it wasn't for Cas, he would.

For want of any better plan they follow the sheep. Cas is watching the sheepdogs.

“How do they know what to do, Dad?”

“The shepherd gives them commands.”

“But dogs can't understand English. I mean, not really.”

“It's not exactly English.”

Alan makes one of the shepherd calls he learned while working on the screenplay, a little yipping sound. The dogs hear and look back, puzzled. Cas is impressed.

“They heard you!”

They pass a member of the crew, lumbering along with a lens case.

“Christ!” he exclaims good-naturedly. “You don't want to do this more than you have to.”

“Are they filming up there?” says Alan, indicating the huddle of figures on the hillside.

“If we get the fucking light,” says the crew man. Then seeing Cas, “Sorry about that.”

The track up the hillside is steeper than it looks, and is carpeted with sheep droppings. Alan and Cas keep their eyes on the ground as they climb, to avoid treading in the mounds of dark close-clustered pellets. When they pause to catch their breath and look up, they find the valley laid out in beauty below them. The wide meanders of the Cuckmere River curl down the valley floor to the shingled cove where the river meets the sea. The western flank of the Downs rises up to its graceful curving summit, and there beyond is the sea again, a line of silver against the gray sky.

“What's golden hour, Dad?” says Cas.

“It's when the sun's low in the sky and it makes long shadows on the hills, and a warm light on the actors' faces. Everyone likes filming in the golden hour. It makes everything look much more beautiful than it really is.”

“So when does it happen?”

Cas looks round as if expecting the sun to show itself from
some hiding place in the sky and oblige the waiting film crew.

“Should be pretty much now. But only if the cloud lifts.”

“What if it doesn't?”

“I don't know. We'll see.”

They walk on up the track. The huddle of figures round the camera is identifiable now. Alan makes out Ray Stirling, hunkered down on his haunches, talking to a youngish man with tight curly black hair. The camera crew are standing together, laughing at some joke. Make-up and costume have put up a wind-break, behind which stand two folding tables. Over to one side, apart from the rest, there's a stocky woman sitting on the grass with a dog.

“I think that'll be Rocky,” Alan says to Cas.

Then he sees Jane Langridge, halfway down the slope, talking into her mobile phone. She sees him and gives him a wave. She ends her call, but instead of coming up to say hello she makes another call.

Cas pulls at his hand. He wants to go and see Rocky. So does Alan. Now that the moment is approaching he feels almost nervous. What if Rocky is in some unknown way
wrong
?

The stocky woman looks up as they approach, mistaking Alan for someone in authority.

“Do you want him now?”

“No, no,” says Alan. “Just come to say hello.”

“Say hello, Billy.”

The dog looks up and meets Alan's eyes. He's a proper bearded collie, and he's the right coloring, and he has just the right look of tolerant contempt in his gaze. Alan doesn't demean him by petting him.

“Good to meet you, Billy,” he says gravely.

The dog is all right. The dog is good. This is more of a relief than Alan has been expecting. Apparently he really cares.

“I thought he was called Rocky,” says Cas. “Why do you call him Billy?”

“Rocky's who he's acting,” says his trainer.

“How will he talk?” says Cas.