Corporate Bodies (3 page)

‘Yes,' Griff Merricks conceded soothingly. ‘But when we filmed that, we did it in longshot. What we're doing now is cuffing to Charles in close-up to say the lines. All we need to see from him on the truck is the final turn of the steering wheel.'

‘But what I'm saying is that the people watching this video's going to think that he and me're the same person.'

‘Yes, that's the idea.'

‘That's why you've put us in these bleeding overalls, isn't it?'

Trevor pulled disparagingly at the pristine blue fabric. Charles looked down at his overalls, thinking of all the wasted effort he'd put into matching Trevor's usual costume. He caught the eye of Will Parton, who was clearly thinking the same thing. The writer smugly preened in his neat suit and tie. Charles looked abruptly away. If he started giggling now, the aggrieved Trevor was quite likely to assume the laughter was at his expense and become even more belligerent.

‘Well, it's partly that, Trevor,' Griff Merricks was agreeing tactfully, ‘– so that you and Charles look alike – but it's also because the overalls have got the Delmoleen logo on them, and throughout the film Ken's very keen to build up the corporate identity, so that whenever we see one of the workers – I mean, a Delmoleen employee other than a management executive – we see them wearing these overalls.'

‘But nobody in the company actually does wear them.'

‘No, Trevor, but for the video they do.'

‘Huh. Right load of cobblers this video's going to be then, isn't it?'

‘We-ell . . .'

Charles's gaze wandered round the warehouse. It was a massive space, divided into sections by high walls of shelving loaded with pallets of Delmoleen products. Other yellow forklift trucks lay idle in the narrow aisles. The shutters of the loading bays along one wall were open, showing the maws of empty lorries. At one end of the space were offices, two prefabricated structures, stacked on top of each other like shoe boxes against the wall.

It felt strange to be working there. Not that Charles hadn't worked in stranger settings, but that had always been for drama, when all the resources of the location had been dedicated to the production. In this case, the priorities were different, and the film crew was clearly a positive hindrance to the main business of the warehouse.

Still, Trevor seemed impervious to the resentment of his work-mates and was in no mood to expedite the morning's shoot. ‘Point I'm making is, if you have him' – a contemptuous finger was jerked towards Charles – ‘turning the wheel of the truck like a wanker, people who see it're going to think I'm a wanker, aren't they?'

‘It's a point of view . . .' Griff Merricks looked nonplussed. Maybe conciliation wasn't going to be enough in this particular case; unfortunately it was the only weapon his armoury contained.

Charles stepped into the breach. ‘Look, Trevor, perhaps you could show me again how to do it,' he humbly suggested, vacating the driver's seat. ‘You do it so well, and I know I'm making a real pig's breakfast of it.'

‘You can bloody say that again,' Trevor concurred. But the simple psychology had worked; it had brought a grin – albeit a patronising one – to the driver's face. He sprang into the truck's seat with insulting ease.

‘Look, can we make it quick, please . . .?' This wingeing voice belonged to Alan Hibbert, the Warehouse Manager, who had been hovering around uneasily all morning, trying time and again to move the proceedings along.

He had received assurances from Ken Colebourne that the filming would only take a couple of hours and would cause minimum disruption. Unversed in the ways of television and film – where everything always takes immeasurably longer than it's meant to and where the words ‘minimum disruption' always mean ‘maximum disruption' – Alan Hibbert had actually believed the Marketing Director's words. And was now, to his cost, finding out the truth.

Ken Colebourne had kept saying that they were only using one aisle for the filming and that the work of the rest of the warehouse could continue uninterrupted, but every time Alan Hibbert tried to get one of the other forklifts going, it either became entangled in the spaghetti of cables spawned by the cameras and lights or was ordered to stop because it was making too much noise during a take.

The marriage between show business and the industrial process was not getting off to a very good start.

‘Look, it's dead simple. Bloody child of three could do it.'

Charles grinned weakly, prepared to suffer Trevor's scorn in the cause of speed.

‘First you switch on the ignition – right?'

Charles, nodding like an idiot, watched the key turned, as if the operation were a complex feat of microsurgery. ‘Right.'

‘And then you simply push this lever on the left of the steering wheel forward and you're in gear – right?'

Charles watched this manoeuvre completed with the ardour of Galahad being given a sneak preview of the Holy Grail. ‘Right. You don't use the clutch?' he asked breathlessly.

‘Can do, but don't have to,' Trevor assured him. ‘And look – you're moving.'

‘So you are,' agreed Charles, amazed by the miracle of the forklift truck slowly edging forwards.

‘And then you give it a touch of the accelerator to go faster.'

‘Just like a car, really.'

This thought did not seem to have struck Trevor before. ‘Well, yeah, I suppose, if you like. Bit like a car.'

On reflection, he decided this comparison might diminish the mystery of his calling. ‘Different from a car, though.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘I mean, driving a forklift . . . well, it's a specialised skill.'

‘I'll say.'

Trevor flashed a look at Charles, suspecting mockery. Unable to decide whether or not there had been any, he went on, ‘Anyway, what you got to do is swing the wheel like so.' He matched the action to his words. ‘With a bit of bloody beef, though. If people are going to think it's me, I don't want to come across as a bleeding fairy, do I?'

This prompted a laugh from somewhere over behind the stacks. Trevor turned sharply at the sound but could not identify its source.

‘No. Right,' said Charles, long accustomed to the fact that 50 per cent of the population thought all actors were ‘bleeding fairies'. Presumably, it had been one of that 50 per cent who had just laughed.

‘Reckon you can do that then?' Trevor asked, his voice again heavy with sarcasm.

‘Think so.' Charles judiciously mixed humility into the confidence of his reply.

Trevor didn't look convinced. He nonchalantly swung the wheel of the forklift again and brought the truck to rest exactly where it had started.

‘That's terrific,' said Griff Merricks. ‘Thank you very much, Trevor. Right, Charles, could we run it?'

But the real operator wasn't going to relinquish his seat to any thespian surrogate quite so easily. ‘You don't smoke, do you?' he asked Charles accusingly.

‘No, I don't.'

‘Oh.' Trevor couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice. ‘Only you mustn't smoke round one of these.'

‘Well, I wouldn't, because I don't.'

‘And the whole warehouse is a “No smoking” area, anyway, Trevor,' Alan Hibbert pointed out testily.

But the operator was not to be deflected from his narrative. ‘Point is,' he continued, eyeing Charles beadily, ‘some of these trucks run on Calor gas, and there's a risk of a leak and if you get a naked flame from a cigarette –'

‘Yes, well, since, as I say, I don't smoke, and since this one I'm working on is actually powered by electricity, I don't see –'

‘Bloke in a warehouse over Northampton,' Trevor continued inexorably, ‘he had a crafty fag while he was driving one of the Calor ones . . . Whole thing went “woomph” . . . they was picking bits of him off the shelves for months.'

‘Well, that sounds –'

‘What you have to watch with the electrical ones,' Trevor went on, ‘is that you don't leave them with the engine running. Flattens the batteries. Have to be recharged every night, you see. If there's one way to get yourself unpopular in a warehouse, it's to leave your engine running and flatten your battery.'

‘Well, I'll certainly be careful not to –'

‘And this machine's got a “Quick Release” button, and all . . .'

‘Has it?'

‘It's got a guard over it, so's you can't push it by mistake . . .' Trevor appraised Charles disdainfully, ‘well, unless you're a complete wanker. It's meant for lowering the forks quick when you've unloaded but, if you press it when you got a pallet up, whole sodding lot comes smashing down.'

‘Ah,' said Charles, bewildered as to the cause of this sudden verbal diarrhoea. Maybe it was just intimidation, or perhaps the operator, affronted at the assumption that he wasn't up to the task of speaking, wanted to assert his credentials in that department.

Griff Merricks seemed to take the second view, or at least to reckon that it was Trevor's exclusion from a more active role in the filming that was making him so uncooperative. ‘Um . . .' he proposed, ‘I was wondering whether you would mind doing something else for me in the video . . .'

‘Oh?' The speed of reaction showed that the director had judged his subject right. There was a glint of enthusiasm in Trevor's grudging acquiescence. ‘I suppose I could, if you insist – since my day's work's bloody shot to pieces, anyway.'

‘Well, what I'd like you to do, Trevor, is to be seen chatting with the secretary who comes out of the warehouse office.'

‘What do I say to her then?'

‘It actually doesn't matter what you say. We won't hear it, just see you talking – OK?'

Trevor nodded magnanimously. ‘Sure, I'll help you out.' He got down from the seat of the forklift. Granted another role in the proceedings, he no longer needed to continue asserting his dominance over Charles.

‘So what I'd like to do now . . .' the Director illustrated his intentions with wide arm movements, ‘is pick up from the end of the manoeuvre you just did for us, Trevor. We've got you bringing the pallet down at the end of the aisle – that's in the can. Then I want to sweep across the warehouse . . .'

‘What, do a pan, like?' asked Trevor, keen to assert his mastery of video jargon.

‘That's right – pan across the warehouse . . . and if you're walking towards the office, just as the secretary comes out . . . I'll linger for a moment on the two of you chatting . . . then come across to the end of the aisle . . . just as you're emerging on the forklift, Charles, and . . .' A thought crossed the Director's mind. ‘Is this going to be all right with you, Will?'

The writer, thus deferred to, shrugged his agreement. Serene in his suit, he was leaning against a pallet of Delmoleen ‘Bedtime (Lite)' and being very accommodating about whatever changes to his script happened to be suggested. Like the video's director, he had no creative interest at all in the filming. So long as
Parton Parcel
was being paid, so long as
Parton Parcel
paid him, and so long as nobody demanded any rewrites, he was quite content.

Even if he hadn't been a representative of the production company, the writer would still have been there for the shoot, maintaining at least the illusion of interest. And, Charles thought cynically, Will's attendance at Stenley Curton had the additional advantage of keeping him away from home. Stuck in his flat, he really would have no alternative but to start writing the definitive play.

‘Then, Charles,' Griff went on, ‘you say your bit and –'

‘But how will I know when to walk and when to talk?' asked Trevor.

‘I'll give you a cue.'

‘A cue? What do I want a bleeding cue for?' The blank look on the operator's face suggested that he was thinking in terms of snooker. Perhaps interpreters, fluent in show business jargon, would be required.

‘I'll give you a wave,' Griff Merricks hastily amended.

‘Oh, right. So . . . what, you give Heather a wave and all, so's she knows when to come out.'

‘Yes. Though in fact it won't be Heather who gets the wave.'

‘Why not? Heather's the only secretary round the warehouse. Runs the Dispatch Office – and don't we all know it? Real Miss Bossyboots, she is.'

‘Yes, it's just we, um, we thought it might be better if we had someone else as the secretary.'

‘Not bringing in another bleeding actor, are you? Actress, I should say.' Maliciously he added, ‘If you can tell the difference.'

‘No. No, it's someone from the company . . . Ah, here she is.'

The Director turned to greet a young woman who had just entered the warehouse. Nature had made her pretty, and artifice had been enlisted to make her even prettier. Probably still only in her late teens, she had short blonde hair and big blue eyes emphasised by mascara-spiked lashes. A trim figure was outlined by her tight navy business suit. The skirt, fashionably short, and the heels, fashionably high, showed her legs to advantage. The perfect picture was marred only by a discontented tightness round her thin lips.

‘Ah, Dayna . . .' said Griff Merricks. ‘Perfect timing. We were just getting to your bit. Dayna, this is Charles Paris.'

‘Good morning, Dayna.'

‘Hello.' She had the local accent, but there was a lethargic sexiness about her voice.

‘And I don't know if you've met Trevor . . .'

It was clear from Trevor's expression, if not from Dayna's, that they certainly had met. In fact, the girl's arrival had reduced the operator to confusion. She offered him a cool grin, but he could only redden and stutter in response.

Suddenly further participation in the video seemed to have lost its appeal. ‘Yeah, well, I think, actually, maybe I won't stick around. I'm on early dinners, so I think I'll, you know, be off . . .' And he walked out of the warehouse.