‘Hello.’ Connie shook hands with him, and smiled some more. From further along the table the ad-agency copywriter and art director nodded at her, too cool for introductions. The agency producer was very pretty, Connie noted.
Angela and Rayner were conferring over the schedule of the day’s shots.
‘I’ll just get some breakfast,’ Connie murmured.
Two Balinese men in white jackets were clearing plates. Connie followed them out of the back of the tent. Behind the scenes, enclosed by canvas screens, Kadek Wuruk, who was moonlighting from Le Gong Restaurant (‘Don’t Go Before You Come’), was frying eggs on a two-ring gas burner. He beamed at Connie and waved his spatula at her.
‘Hello! Welcome,
Ibu
. Egg for you? Very good, you know. My own chickens.’
‘Yes, but no thanks. It’s a bit early for me. I’ll have some coffee, though. Everything okay, Kadek?’ There was quite a limited range of Balinese first names.
‘Everything fine, great.’
His assistant was chopping onions, three women were peeling vegetables, two young girls were washing up, and a line of boys processed by with cases of bottled water. Connie was reluctant to pass back through the canvas flap that separated kitchen from tent. It was more comfortable out here, with the women laughing and chattering and the shy girls with their bare lovely feet planted in front of the portable sink unit. She poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup, and watched Kadek Wuruk and his assistants at work as she drank. There would be
nasi goreng
for lunch.
She heard a crackle of walkie-talkies.
‘We’re in,’ the first assistant called to the crew. It was the signal for work to begin on the other side of the canvas. People began shifting towards the set, but there would be several hours of waiting and watching while the rest of the gear was brought in and lights and cameras were set up. If everything went really well the camera would be turning over before the lunch break was called. Connie’s
gamelan
orchestra was listed as the first shot.
When she had first arrived in Bali, Connie had been intending to make a short stopover on her way to London from Sydney. The plan had been to keep still, to take stock of what was left of her life, and let her bewilderment subside a little. It was only a few weeks since Seb had told her that he was in love with a Chinese violinist, and intended to marry her.
At that time Sébastian Bourret was becoming a soughtafter conductor. When he made the announcement, sitting on the balcony of their rented flat overlooking Sydney Harbour, Connie had been his lover and partner for more than six years. Their home was nominally in London but Seb travelled so much that they were away more than they were there, and this had suited Connie well. Their peripatetic life together had been comfortable and civilised, and she had been sure that it was what they both wanted and needed. She had her own work, composing music for television and commercials, and as technology developed it was becoming increasingly easy to do that work anywhere in the world.
She wasn’t under the illusion that Seb was wildly in love with her, at least after their first year together, any more than she was with him. But they had much in common, and they were considerate and mutually respectful and deeply fond of one another.
Then Sebastian really had fallen in love, with the gifted Sung Mae Lin who was no bigger and looked hardly older
than a child, even though she was almost thirty. Unwittingly Mae Lin made Connie feel too big and the wrong age, and unwanted, and unhappy in a way that was too familiar, however hard she fought against that and the memories that were stirred by it.
None of it was Mae Lin’s fault, or Seb’s, really, or her own for that matter. It was just one of those things that happened. There had been no alternative for Connie but to withdraw from her own life, as quickly and as gracefully as she could manage it.
Seb and Connie had said goodbye to each other gently, and with regret, but there had been no question that he might change his mind. Connie had seen him only once since then, when he was conducting a Beethoven Festival concert series in London. He and Mae Lin had two children now. Twin girls.
Connie’s London home was still the apartment that she had shared with Seb. He had made his share of it over to her and she had kept the place, although it was bare of most of the furniture they had chosen and there were few of her possessions set out in it. She liked it better that way; it was easier to slip in and out of an almost empty space. Minimalism was closer to invisibility.
When she’d arrived in Bali, she had had no plans and no expectations of the place. It had simply been somewhere to put herself that felt like nowhere in particular.
In her raw state she had fled from the big hotels and beaches and cocktail bars of the coastal strip close to Denpasar and headed inland. It was here in the village that she first heard
gamelan
music played live, by solemn musicians, not for tourists but for the musicians themselves and their knowledgeable friends. This was temple music, and music for festivals and processions and weddings. She had loved the sonorous gongs, and the shimmering notes of metal that fell through the air like drops of clear water.
Angela peered from between the flaps of canvas.
‘I’m here,’ Connie said, rapidly gathering her thoughts. She drank the last mouthful of her coffee and stood upright.
‘I’ll be on set.’
The day’s set was the temple at the edge of the rice paddy – permit to use for filming applied for and finally granted by the authorities in the nick of time – over which the set dressers were swarming.
Constance consulted her watch, having already looked at it more times this morning than she would normally do in a week. ‘The musicians will be here in fifteen minutes or so.’
‘Right. Straight to costume and make-up, then.’
The bus carrying the musicians arrived punctually and Connie hurried forward to meet them. Battling with their instruments, a line of six men spilled down the steps. They were not much bigger than their metallophones, big xylophones with keys made of bronze, and considerably smaller than the great gong. They were her friends.
‘I am very, very nervous,’ Ketut called as soon as he saw her.
Connie held out her hands to him. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t want to do it?’
There were beads of sweat on his forehead and above his long-lipped mouth. Ketut had smooth skin and it gleamed in the bright sunlight like oiled wood. ‘Oh, no. We are film stars already in Seminugul, let me make clear. There is no going back. But I am afraid of letting you down, Connie.’
Ketut was one of the most talented musicians she had ever worked with. She had been recording some of his performances with the big ensemble of fifty musicians called the
gamelan gong
, and she counted herself lucky to be able to play percussion with this smaller, less perfectionist group. Connie knew that she was not the best drummer in the
world, but she loved the sessions when they played together. Sometimes, during the rainy season, they could make music for hours under a roof of palm thatch while water dripped from soaking leaves.
The musicians clustered around her.
‘You won’t, Ketut. You don’t even have to play if you don’t want to, just look as though you are for the camera.’
The actual music track would be laid down in postproduction. This was the music that Connie had been commissioned to produce. She found herself blushing in retrospect at the memory of the demo disc she had supplied.
‘Light and poppy, but unmistakeably tropical-island exotic,’ was the agency’s brief.
Confronted by Ketut and the others, combed and dressed in their best clothes, and versed as they were in the classical traditions of their native music, she felt embarrassed.
Behind her she could hear the Australian gaffer routinely cursing into his walkie-talkie because someone hadn’t brought over a camera dolly. All the musicians were staring into the snake-pit of cables, and at the little temple caught under the brilliant ultra-sunshine of the lights.
‘Don’t worry, really, don’t worry,’ she reassured them all. She asked if they wanted anything to eat or drink and they shook their heads. So she led them over to the caravan that was being used for male costume and make-up and left them there.
The script called for a Balinese wedding.
The temple was dressed up with flowers and baskets of fruit. Over the pop-eyed stone statues props people had fixed parasols of bright yellow silk with lavish fringes, and there were rakish garlands of scarlet and orange blossoms draped around the necks of stone dragons and snakes. The hot colours seemed to vibrate under the lights.
Eleven o’clock came and went. Connie supervised the
unpacking and setting up of the instruments, on the exact spot that the crew indicated. The musicians emerged from make-up, giggling among themselves. They had been costumed in sarongs of black and white checks with broad saffron-yellow or vermilion satin sashes tied round their middles. They wore flowers around their necks, their eyes had been painted and their lips reddened. Their ordinary haircuts, as worn by waiters and teachers and shopkeepers, which is what they were, had been combed and gelled into slick quiffs. Every time Ketut or one of the others caught a fresh glimpse of a fellow musician there was another explosion of laughter. Trying not to laugh herself, Connie shepherded them onto the set.
Another long interval of adjusting lights and equipment followed. It was hot, and hotter still under the lights, and a Balinese make-up girl kept darting forward to powder a shiny face.
Connie positioned her recording equipment and ran the players through an approximation of the twenty-two seconds of music that would accompany the finished commercial.
‘This is really not Balinese wedding music,’ Ketut protested.
‘I know. Forgive me?’
Angela came across and reassured the musicians that they wouldn’t have long to wait. Connie could read the anxiety in her rigid shoulders. The schedule listed the bridal-attendants shot for completion before the lunch break as well as the
gamelan
orchestra, and that called for ten little Balinese girls wearing complicated headdresses who were at present corralled in the female wardrobe caravan. Connie began to sweat in sympathy with Angela, who had reckoned up and costed every minute of a week on location. Rayner Ingram was still frowning and shaking his head as he looked into the monitor.
But then, suddenly, there was a flurry of action.
‘We’re going,’ the first assistant called. ‘Camera rolling.’
Connie gave the signal to Ketut. As if there were no lights, microphones, cables or cameras, as if they were doing it for their own pleasure under a bamboo shelter in a rainy village forsaken by tourists, the little orchestra played her makeshift music.
Their faces lit up. The camera rolled towards them.
After twenty-two seconds, she gave them the cut signal. Reluctantly the metallophones and kettle gongs pattered into silence.
Rayner and Angela conferred. Then Angela and the first assistant crossed to the agency people and consulted with them. The musicians waited, their eyes fixed on Connie.
‘Going again,’ came the call.
They did three more takes. The agency indicated to Angela that they would like yet one more, but she shook her head and tapped a fingernail on her watch face.
The first assistant told the musicians, ‘That’s fine with the orchestra. Director’s happy. We’re done with you.’
It was Connie they looked to for confirmation. She beamed and applauded.
‘Ketut, you were brilliant. All of you. Thank you.’
‘I don’t know. There were some things,’ Ketut began, but the crew were hurrying them and their instruments off the set. Time was money.
Connie and the file of musicians heading back to the caravan passed another procession coming the other way. The bridal attendants were overawed eight-year-old girls cast from the nearby school. Their faces had been painted to resemble dancers’ masks, with eyes outlined in thick lines of kohl that swept up at the corners, rouged cheekbones and brilliant crimson lips. With tall gilt crowns on their heads and tunic dresses of pale gold tissue, they looked exquisite. Their role was to scatter flower petals in the path of the
as-yet-unseen bride as the bridegroom and his supporters waited for her at the temple steps.
Behind the children came their mothers in a swaying group, chattering and exclaiming. Some of the mothers knew some of the musicians and there was a slow-moving bottleneck as everyone stopped to talk and laugh and exchange views on the filming. Crew immediately hurried them apart. The children were needed on set.
Once they had changed into their own clothes the musicians settled into the service tent, eyeing the swooningly handsome Indonesian actor, cast as the bridegroom, who was busy with his mobile phone. Connie quietly handed Ketut the fee, in cash, for the orchestra’s work. At least, she thought, they had been well paid.
On the set five pairs of beautiful Balinese girls scattered flower petals on a strip of crimson carpet. Out of shot, set dressers sprayed the temple garlands with water in an attempt to stop them wilting under the hot sun. Miraculously, the attendants were wrapped after just two takes.
‘Okay, people, let’s have lunch,’ called the first assistant.
Within three minutes the service tent was full of ravenous crew. Ketut and the others politely took this influx as a signal to leave. Connie went with them to the bus.
‘We play again on Tuesday? You can come?’ Ketut asked her.
Tuesday was their regular evening for music.
‘Yes, please,’ Connie said. It was one of the best times of her week.
She stood and waved as the bus bumped down the ricepaddy track. The mother and daughter who were working in the paddy straightened their backs to watch too. They had been joined by several more women.
In the service tent Angela was asking Tara, the pretty agency producer, what she thought they might do about the
British actress who was playing the bride. She had spent the morning confined to her bathroom at the hotel. She must have eaten something that disagreed with her, Marcus Atkins remarked. The creative team sniggered.