What They Do in the Dark (19 page)

‘How’s it all going up there? Pleased with my lovely little girl, I hope,’ Frank beamed into the phone, whose ancient mouthpiece hummed with years of his own breath. He realized, with a practised repression of annoyance, that although Quentin was a Yank, she was actually in the country. Veronica wasn’t to know.

‘She’s terrific—’

‘Isn’t she? I always say, a star’s a star, whatever the age.’

There was a silence down the line, inexplicable as a time delay.

‘What can I do for you, my love?’

‘I just wanted to get a little background, about Lallie …’

Uh-oh. Unless it was just financial stuff, fees and precedents. ‘Fire away.’

Veronica, realising her help wasn’t needed, disappeared to make him his post-forty-winks cup of tea.

‘Well, I met her and her mom—’

‘Katrina, yes.’

‘Yeah.’ There was a little pause. ‘Quite a lady.’

‘Oh darling, if it’s the mother you’re worried about, I have to say you could do a lot worse, believe it or not. I mean, she’s protective, but she does let Lallie just get on with it—’

‘Yeah, I can see that, that’s not a problem for me.’ In the fractional gap before Quentin launched her next sentence, Frank’s mind tumbled through the possibilities like a safe cracker: puberty? The nose (they’d fix it, why not)? The decision to go with American talent instead (despite it being an English part)? Her being too common to play a princess (elocution lessons – the kid was a mimic, for Christ’s sake)?

‘I just wondered … if, given the mom and all, she’s being pressured to work.’

Fuck me, so that was it. Frank burst through. ‘God, no! Have you spoken to her? She’s born to it, darling, absolutely. I mean, I’m not denying Mummy has a big hand in it, you can see that for yourself, but Lallie, heavens – she loves the business, absolutely eats, sleeps and breathes it.’

Again, a little silence. Maybe there really was a delay – it was still long distance, even if it was only Yorkshire.

‘She seems a little … joyless to me.’

Bloody hell. He’d have to have a word, pronto. What had Katrina been doing up there?

‘I’m sorry about that, it doesn’t sound like my girl at all. She might be tired, to be honest – she went on to the film straight off her telly job and it’s been a long stretch. They do still get tired, kiddies, even though they restrict the hours. It’s only natural.’

‘OK.’

Frank was not used to dealing with Americans of this ambling,
considered kind. Women, yes, but they tended to be hyperactive New Yorkers who condensed any conversation into its essence and shot it straight into your bloodstream. This girl sounded almost dopey.

‘Maybe you saw her at the end of the day?’

‘We had breakfast.’

‘Ah …’ He chuckled. ‘She’s not one for the early starts, I could’ve told you that. Did she say she was keen?’

‘She said. Mom did most of the talking. She doesn’t know the book – she liked my pitch, I think.’

This sounded better. Solid ground. Veronica put his tea on the desk. Frank became brisk.

‘Terrific. It’s a wonderful opportunity for her, I’m sure she can see that. I’ve mentioned to the mother about booking a holiday once she’s finished on this one, that should set her right. I’ll insist, Quentin, you’re quite right. She’s only human.’

This was a favourite technique of his. We’re all in this together, working on a problem slightly to the left of the one you thought you had before we started the conversation. He pressed his advantage.

‘And are you thinking about screen tests at this stage? Might that help, to get her out at the studio, see how she looks in costume, down to action as it were? That might be a thought, if you wanted – she could do the holiday first for a week – I know she’s mad to go to Disneyland, like they all are. It’d really set her up.’

‘Oh. Yeah, that could work for us. I’ll talk to Clancy in the office.’

He wasn’t there yet, that was for sure. There was still this hesitation, this gap on the line. And he didn’t buy that it was just because Lallie hadn’t done a song and dance when she met her – although why the hell not, he had no idea, considering she was a song-and-dance machine whenever he saw her. Maybe she really was tired. He scribbled a curve of zeds on his notepad, next to where he had written and underlined ‘holiday’.

‘I hear the rushes on this one have got everyone talking.’ He hadn’t, but they always had.

‘They look terrific.’

‘What about Lallie?’

‘I think she’s going to be amazing.’

That, at least, sounded genuine. So what was the problem? Everyone wanted more than they should: his clients from him, the producers from the clients, it wasn’t right, really. There had to be limits.

‘Well, that’s all that matters, isn’t it, at the end of the day – what you’re getting?’

‘I guess so.’ Pause. Frank had given up. ‘She is a child. I mean, just a little kid.’

And Lassie’s just a collie, darling, but it’s a bit late in the day
… which reminded him. Frank wrote ‘worming tablets’ next to his doodles on the pad and triple-underlined it. Kenneth had been dragging his arse along the carpet when he’d left that morning, and if he had them it was only a matter of time before Charles succumbed.

‘Well, she is and she isn’t. She’s got a gift, that’s plain as the nose on your face.’ He wished he hadn’t mentioned noses; it might bring Lallie’s to mind, and for all he knew Quentin herself might have a problematic schnozz. ‘And let me tell you, the first time I met her, she told me that the thing in the world that makes her happiest is working. This is from a nine-year-old girl. It’s born in her.’

In the gap, he pencilled in the loop of the ‘b’ in ‘tablets’. Come on, Frank. ‘But can I say, I think it’s wonderful to come across someone in your position who’s really concerned about these things. Hand on heart, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot, but also hand on heart, I’ve got to tell you that she’s not one of those kiddies who’s forced into it – I wouldn’t be looking after her if she was, couldn’t live with myself. But it’s good to know that if she does go to the States, she’ll have someone apart from me looking out for her.’

Quentin actually laughed at this, an unpleasant, gentle little chuckle which took him by surprise.

‘Do you know Hugh Calder?’

Where was this going? He felt uneasy.

‘Of course. Best in the business, Hugh.’

‘Do you think he’s a nice guy?’

Frank stopped doodling, banjaxed. Never for long, though.

‘What can I tell you? The man’s charm itself. You’ve met him …’

Now he thought he heard a sigh down the line. He amended his approach.

‘I don’t know about nice, but he’s a true gent. Tough, mind – well, you have to be, don’t you? He wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing if he was a pushover, but, let’s say, honourable.’

That was over-egging it a bit, but you never knew what got back to people. He could hear Quentin breathing, as though she had come up a flight of stairs.

‘Is he into women?’

Crikey. What had he heard? This and that, nothing to frighten the horses. He’d certainly never gleaned an atom of queerness around him. The breathing continued, awaiting his answer. If he hadn’t known better, Frank would have believed that Quentin really was ringing him from what was for her the middle of the night, wanting him to keep her company. He got those calls from clients every so often, the ones he had to give his home number, although of course it was the line in the office; he wasn’t mad. It still drove Lol to distraction, that interruption to sleep so Frank, dressing-gowned, could coax them through when they told him they’d taken pills, or wept for their marriages, or more usually their careers. In his experience, the pill-takers weren’t repeat callers, and he didn’t resent a genuine emergency, but the ramblers, the lost souls who wanted hand-holding in the sozzled small hours, they were a piece of work. And this woman wasn’t even a client. Besides, he
had a meeting with bigwigs from Anglia at two.
Is he into women
, indeed.

‘As far as I know,’ he said maliciously, and started to wind up the call. He thanked Quentin again for her concern over Lallie, emphasizing its rarity and re-emphasizing their common values, lauded her non-existent non-brainwave about Lallie taking a holiday, and finessed the ending by pressing her to suggest a time when the studio might want Lallie to fly over. October, she proffered. Such provisional motes were all Frank needed to accrete the solid pearls of business: the next time they spoke, he would tell her that October was OK for Katrina and Lallie, and they’d be going ahead with booking tickets, unless the studio preferred to arrange it? With any luck this would be a conversation he’d have with Quentin’s assistant, who more likely than not would oblige, already presuming October to be a done deal. And by then it more or less would be – Quentin’s seniors would hear that Lallie was coming over, their minds would be concentrated on her as their lead and they’d want to make it work, bar her not delivering the goods. It took a stronger soul than this girl evidently was to face Frank Denny down.

‘Call me any time,’ he signed off. His tea was by now just on the wrong side of warm, so he asked Veronica to bring him another cup and warned her about further calls from Quentin. If she called again today, he was right, and she was a nutter. If it was tomorrow, she still probably was. By Friday, he’d be prepared to talk to her again. It was no skin off his nose. There he was with the nose again. Of course the Yanks were superb at all that malarkey – none better. That was another conversation to have with Katrina; Frank made a note.

P
AULINE WAS SUPPOSED
to fill in a form. In fact, her mum was supposed to fill in a form, but even if she hadn’t been in Leeds, Pauline couldn’t imagine approaching Joanne with the daunting sheaf of printed pages the hard-eyed woman had given her after she left the classroom. She’d tried to explain that her mum was away working, and they’d said in that case her dad would do. Dave was the closest in the house to a dad, but he’d just tell her to fuck off if she went anywhere near him with a piece of paper. Anyway, Pauline knew better than to let him or anyone else in the house know about the film, let alone needing permission, even though she had half a mind herself to rip up the typed sheets and dump them before it all went wrong. But somehow she couldn’t. Instead, she kept the form in her bedroom, flat in a drawer, and checked on it from time to time, as though writing might have germinated on the pages in her absence.

Gemma wasn’t talking to her. The last day of school, she’d run away from her in the playground and told a teacher when Pauline tried to catch up. Pauline had got a keyring she’d swiped from a place in town that mended shoes and cut keys, a really good keyring with a rubbery stupid-faced doll on the end whose arms and legs you could twist into shapes, but Gemma refused to take it. It had occurred to Pauline that Gemma might be able to fill in the form, since she had far neater writing than Pauline could manage, and proper spelling. But it seemed impossible, now, to get her to do it.

The night before Pauline was supposed to turn up at school
with the completed paperwork, she turned over the blank, grubbying pages and thought of money. What if she offered Gemma money, instead of things; lots of money? It was risky, but she steeled herself for it, knowing that Dave would knock seven bells out of her if he caught her going through his pockets (which she’d have to do while he slept or had passed out). She didn’t care, really. Since Joanne had gone, her life had been so lonely that getting knocked about a bit would be a welcome acknowledgement of her existence. She could always kick him back, and run.

But, as it turned out, she had a stroke of luck as she crept through the unusually quiet house in the very early morning. Nan, having got her sick money and her pills the previous day, was splayed comatose in her chair downstairs in the dark. Coins had dribbled from the beige post-office envelope she obliviously proffered in her slackened hand, but it was the folded five-pound note that Pauline pincered out and escaped with under the charnel-house miasma of Nan’s snoring breath. Leaving the house with the money, she doubted she’d even be blamed: anyone else passing through the living room would have taken the opportunity. Then she wavered, thinking of things she could actually buy instead of giving the five pounds to Gemma. The hair salon had taken hold in her imagination, and she thought of marching in there and making Gemma’s cow of a mother wash her hair and cut it because she was paying. It would be nice to have someone brush her hair, to make her look like everyone else.

It was too early for the shops to be open. Neither Gemma nor her mother would be at the salon yet, she realized, her stupid plan atomizing. So instead Pauline got on a bus and headed for Gemma’s house among the pale, suspicious shift workers. When she got there, she knocked on the door, straightforwardly. She didn’t care if Gemma’s mum answered; in fact, she was up for a fight. What she wasn’t expecting was Gemma’s dad or whoever he was, the fat man.

‘Can I see Gemma?’

Pauline didn’t, as a rule, look at people’s faces. In her experience there was seldom much to see there that was good, and at home eye contact often flared into violence. So as he stood in front of her, it was Ian’s belt that caught her memory, its sleek enamel buckle straining between his grey trousers and clean shirting, an uncommon executive rhombus in black, gilt and maroon. She remembered the look of it and her curiosity about how it came undone, with none of the usual belt-buckle mechanism visible. When they were down the alley by Wentworth Road, he had pressed it behind its display, and it had released, like a small conjuring trick. Remembering this, she darted a look upwards. There was nothing in his face she recognized – there was no exception to her habit of not looking at faces – but it was sweating and appalled. He recognized her, she could see. It had been difficult to get her hand down his trousers even with the belt and fly undone, he was so fat. That and the belt were the only things she remembered about him.