Death of a Scriptwriter (7 page)

Fiona sighed with relief after he had left. It was not as if she were addicted to the stuff. That was the great thing about pot. You could take it or leave it. Still, there was a little left in
that roach. She climbed out of the window and began to look for it.

In her caravan, Penelope put on her costume for the opening shots and thanked her stars that Josh was safely in Glasgow. It consisted of a gauzy, near-transparent Indian gown
under which she was to wear nothing. The first scene was to be shot with the members of Lady Harriet’s commune on the shore of Loch Drim. Penelope had planned her future on the journey north.
When the series was filmed and just about to be aired, she would take her final payments and put them in a new account in her name only. She would tell Josh that payments had been delayed to
explain why the cheques did not appear in their remaining joint bank account. Then she would leave him and go to London, and with any luck he would drink himself to death before he found her.

A girl arrived to do her make-up, and then Sheila came to drive her down to the set. ‘I wonder what the locals are going to think of that getup,’ said Sheila, ‘not to mention
our famous author.’

‘I won’t have to cope with it,’ said Penelope. ‘That’s Fiona’s job.’

There was quite a large audience on the waterfront to watch the first day of filming. Dressed in sixties Beatles style, the hippies wandered about, smoking and chatting.
‘What do you think of your leading man?’ Sheila asked Penelope as they moved forward to join the others.

‘He’s all right,’ said Penelope, who privately thought that Gervase Hart, who played the part of the chief inspector, was painfully like Josh in drunkenness and bad temper. But
she had learned quickly in her career never to criticize any actor. ‘He doesn’t appear in this scene, so I won’t be seeing him today.’

‘Places,’ called the director, Giles Brown, a thin, nervous man with a straggly beard.

Sheila helped Penelope out of her coat. There was a gasp from the assembled locals.

Her costume did not leave much to the imagination, thought Hamish as Penelope’s voluptuous curves were revealed by the thin gown.

The cast had rehearsed their lines over and over again in a cold, grimy church hall in Glasgow. The Highland day was sunny and warm, and there was an air of gaiety about the cast.

Then a voice cried, ‘Stop! This cannot go on!’

Everyone turned round. The little minister, Mr Jessop, was thrusting his way to the front of the crowd.

‘That woman is nearly naked!’ he shouted.

Fiona moved quickly forward. ‘It’s only a film, Mr Jessop,’ she said placatingly.

The minister was red with anger. ‘I will not have such goings-on in my parish.’

Then Hamish saw Patricia’s car driving down the hill into Drim. More trouble, he thought.

Patricia got out of her car and edged her way to the front of the crowd, saying in her authoritative voice, ‘I am the writer. Let me through.’

Then she stopped, aghast at the sight of the hippies and the nearly naked Penelope, and all the joy of getting yet another book back in print fled from her mind. ‘What is this
travesty?’ she asked in a thin voice.

The minister swung round, sensing an ally. ‘Just look at that woman,’ he cried, pointing a shaking finger at Penelope.

Patricia looked and quickly averted her eyes.

‘It’s like this, Minister,’ said Jamie Gallagher with a false smile and truculent eyes. ‘Lady Harriet is head of this commune in the Highlands, and – ’

‘
My
Lady Harriet!’ Patricia was now as white as she had been red a moment before. She had consoled herself on the road over with the thought that the naked Penelope Gates on
the cover of her book had just been a publicity stunt. Had she not seen weird and wonderful covers on paperback editions of Dickens? But for this slut to play Lady Harriet, noble, gallant,
intelligent Lady Harriet, was past bearing.

‘I forbid it,’ she said. ‘There is nothing in my book about any hippie commune.’

‘There’s nothing in your book that’s film-able,’ said Jamie. ‘Och, calm down, woman. It’s just a bit of poetic licence.’

‘I shall have it stopped!’

‘You can’t do anything about it,’ said Jamie. ‘You signed the contract.’

Patricia stared at Fiona. ‘Is this true?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘And who is this man?’ demanded Patricia, who had forgotten what Jamie looked like.

‘This is Jamie Gallagher, our scriptwriter.’

‘You are a charlatan,’ said Patricia to Jamie. ‘Why say you are going to film my book and then change the whole thing?’

‘I am making it suitable for television,’ said Jamie. ‘Can someone get this woman off the set and keep her off?’

‘You are not filming pornography in my parish,’ howled the minister.

‘I think we should all go to the castle and talk this through,’ said Fiona.

‘How are things going in there?’ Hamish asked Major Neal.

‘Stormy, I think. I’m sorry for Miss Martyn-Broyd. She seems to be in shock.’

‘They seem quieter now,’ said Hamish, cocking an ear in the direction of Fiona’s office. ‘I’m surprised to hear that BBC Scotland think so highly of Jamie. You
wouldn’t think he could write anything intelligent.’

‘Oh, did you see
Football Fever
?’

‘Who didn’t?’ replied Hamish.
Football Fever
had been a television documentary on the lives and passions of Scottish football fans. It had been witty, clever and
fascinating and had sold all over the world.

‘Well, that was Jamie’s script.’

‘You can’t tell a book from its cover,’ said Hamish sententiously.

‘It’ll probably look all slick and clever when we see the finished result.’

‘You could be right,’ said Hamish. ‘Here they come.’

The minister emerged with Fiona, Giles Brown and the production manager, Hal Forsyth. They were all laughing and chatting.

‘So that’s all settled,’ said Giles, clapping the minister on the back.

‘Most generous of you,’ said the minister.

Greased his palm, thought Hamish

Then came Jamie, who strode past without a word. Where’s Patricia? wondered Hamish.

When they had all left, he found her sitting alone in Fiona’s office, clutching a script.

She looked up and saw Hamish. Her eyes were bleak. ‘I’ll kill him before I let him get away with this.’

‘Who?’

‘Jamie Gallagher. I told him right in front of all of them. “I’ll kill you.” ’ She began to cry.

Hamish sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘There now,’ he said. ‘Just think about your books.’

‘I am thinking about them,’ sobbed Patricia. ‘Look at this!’

She unfastened the clasp of her large handbag and took out one of the book jackets.

‘Oh, my,’ said Hamish. ‘The things they do. But I saw a paperback of Jane Austen’s
Emma
and if you didn’t know the work, you’d have thought it was
porn. Before I came up to the castle, I saw some press down by the waterfront. Why don’t you go and say your piece to them? It pays to advertise.’

Patricia dried her eyes and blew her nose. ‘It’s all a nightmare. I just want to forget about the whole thing. It’s the end of a dream.’

‘You’ll have a whole new readership. It could be the start of the dream.’

‘I don’t want the sort of readers who will be attracted by that cover.’ Patricia put the cover back in the handbag and closed it with a snap. ‘What happened to the
world?’ she said, looking about her in a dazed way.

It’s moved on and left you behind, thought Hamish, but he did not say so.

After he had said goodbye to Patricia, he went back to the waterfront. ‘How did you square it with the minister?’ he asked Fiona.

‘Contribution to the church – and that.’ She pointed at Penelope.

Penelope was in the same gown, but underneath she wore a long silk underdress.

‘Cleaning up the act?’

‘Oh, we’ll have the saucy bits in a set where we can keep the public out,’ said Fiona. ‘Where’s Patricia?’

‘Gone home to have a good cry, I should think. Why the hell buy her book if you want to change it that much?’

‘We wanted a Scottish location, and the plot isn’t bad. She should be grateful and shut up.’

The locals were beginning to drift off. It was all very boring. There seemed to be so many takes, so many long pauses, so little action.

Hamish reluctantly decided to go back to the police station and see if he was wanted for any duties.

His uneasy feeling about the whole business was melting away under the sunlight. Patricia now knew the worst and would get over her shock.

He had feared that the arrival of the television company would start up jealousies and rivalries among the village women, but the locals now looked bored with the whole thing.

Above the general store in Drim, Ailsa Kennedy, wife of the proprietor, Jock, was studying her new hairstyle in the mirror and wondering if that cow Alice MacQueen had gone out
of her way to sabotage her chances of appearing on television. Before she went to Alice’s, her fiery red hair had been long, almost to her waist. Now it had been chopped off and framed her
face in one of those old-fashioned sixties styles with flicked-up ends. Alice could only manage old-fashioned styles. Ailsa scowled at her reflection. Her husband’s face appeared in the
mirror behind her.

‘What have you done to your hair?’

‘Got it cut,’ said Ailsa.

‘You look a fright. I thought you said you’d never go near Alice’s. It’s this stupid fillum, and you’re to have nothing to do with it, lass. Did you see thon
actress? Near naked, if the minister hadn’t made her cover up.’

‘Oh, go away,’ snapped Ailsa. ‘You give me a headache.’

Jamie Gallagher heard the beat of music from the community hall and strolled inside. Village women were performing aerobics under the direction of Edie Aubrey.

He stared at them for a long moment and then went out again to search for Fiona. ‘You’ll never believe it,’ he said when he found her. ‘There’s a whole time warp
o’ women in the community hall. You’ve never seen so many sixties hairstyles.’

‘I’ll have a look,’ said Fiona.

Ailsa Kennedy had just finished washing out the last of the offending hairstyle and was drying her hair into a smooth bob when she heard her latest friend, Holly Andrews,
calling from the shop below. ‘Are you up there, Ailsa?’

‘Coming,’ called Ailsa, brushing down her hair.

She clattered down the steps to the shop.

Holly was a tubby middle-aged woman who had moved to a little cottage in Drim after the death of her husband. She had lived before his death in a large house on the outskirts of Lairg and after
his death had sold up. Her brown hair was done in the same hairstyle that Ailsa had just vigorously washed out.

‘What have you done to your hair?’ gasped Holly.

‘What d’you think? I washed it out. I looked like an aging Beatles fan.’

‘They want our hair like this,’ shrieked Holly. ‘It’s so exciting. The film’s set in the sixties, and Alice has turned us out in sixties hairstyles because
that’s as far as she ever got in hairstyling, and the film people are wild about it. We’re all to be in crowd scenes.’

Ailsa clutched her now-smooth hair. ‘What have I done?’

‘Go round to Alice’s and get her to do it again,’ urged Holly.

Ten minutes later, Alice, with a superior smile on her face, whipped a smock around Ailsa. ‘I knew what I was doing,’ she said. ‘I knew it was set in the sixties.’

Ailsa bit back an angry retort. ‘Just get on with it,’ she muttered.

* * *

Jimmy Macleod, a crofter, listened in horror as his wife, Nancy, teetering on high heels across the stone flags of the kitchen floor, announced that she had a part in the
film.

‘You’re not consorting with naked women and that’s that,’ said Jimmy.

His wife looked at him contemptuously.

‘I’ll put a stop to it right now.’ He seized his jacket from a peg by the door and strode out.

In her office in Drim Castle, Fiona looked up wearily as Jimmy Macleod was ushered in by Sheila. He was a small man with rounded shoulders, a wrinkled face and an odd crablike walk.

‘Whit’s this about putting my wife in a fillum?’ demanded Jimmy.

Fiona smiled at him. She had already dealt with two other irate husbands and knew exactly what to do.

‘Wait right here,’ she commanded. She made her hands into a square and surveyed the now bewildered Jimmy through them. ‘Perfect,’ she said.

‘What are ye talking about, woman?’

‘You look the perfect Highlander to me,’ said Fiona. ‘A very good face for one of our crowd scenes.’

Jimmy looked at her, his mouth open and the anger dying out of his face. ‘You will be paid, of course,’ said Fiona. ‘Yes, we need the nobility of your face. What about a dram,
Mr ...?’

‘Macleod, Jimmy Macleod.’ Jimmy scuttled forward and sat down. His heart was beating very hard. He had gone to as many movies as he could afford when he was a boy. He felt as if some
fairy had waved a wand and transformed him into Robert Redford. Fiona poured him a generous measure of whisky.

‘Here’s to a successful show,’ said Fiona.

‘Aye,’ said Jimmy, a smile cracking his walnut face. ‘Here’s tae the fillum business.’

‘Film business,’ said Fiona, ‘of which you are now a member.’

And Jimmy thought his heart would burst with pride.

Jamie Gallagher was swollen up with vanity and whisky. He felt he could have turned out the whole television series on his own. Had he not told the director which camera angles
should be used? But going over the day’s rushes, Fiona had objected to several of his choices, although the final choice would lie with Harry Frame.

Jamie left the bar of the Tommel Castle Hotel and went up to his room, where he phoned Harry Frame.

‘We’ve a good team up here, Harry,’ he said. ‘But there’s one person I cannae get along with and that’s Fiona. She’ll have to be replaced.’

Harry’s voice squawked objections at the other end. The publicity had gone out with Fiona’s name on it. Jamie finally threatened to pull out of the series, and Harry capitulated.