Silver Wattle (25 page)

Hugh saw me looking at the cover. ‘The muslin diffuses the sunlight,’ he explained. ‘In Hollywood they use klieg lights. Here we use nature.’

‘Does it give a different effect?’ I asked.

‘It’s cheaper.’ Hugh’s expression was harsh but I sensed laughter under his breath.

‘You’re going to have to be tight with the schedule,’ he told me, opening his camera case and setting up the tripod. I was mesmerised by the way he cradled the camera in his arm while balancing on one leg. ‘Peter bought his film from a director who’s going out of business. But he could only get 9000 feet to shoot this feature, and based on what Peter’s done with his other films we’re going to need nearly all of that which means we can’t do too many takes.’

‘What if I see a problem with the scene?’

‘You can make a suggestion,’ said Hugh, locking the camera onto the tripod. ‘But it’s Peter’s call to do a retake.’ He peered into the lens and tilted the camera upwards.

It seemed as though we were going to do a lot of single takes, so I assumed my next task was to make sure the scenes ran on time. ‘I didn’t receive a copy of the script,’ I said. ‘Do you have a spare one I could use?’

He lifted his head. ‘Peter doesn’t use a script,’ he said. ‘He explains what he wants his actors to do as he goes along.’

His mouth twitched and I felt an undercurrent of humour ripple beneath his tough exterior. I was seeing a different view of him here behind his camera. In the wide world, I had been his enemy: another person trying to extend him sympathy. But on the film set we were colleagues. Just as Esther sometimes gave me glimpses of the carefree girl she used to be, so I was discovering touches of Hugh that belonged to his former life. There was something else that was different about him that day too.

‘Where’s Giallo?’ I asked. ‘I thought you two were inseparable.’

‘We usually are,’ said Hugh, studying the scaffolding that was constructed around the set. ‘But he can’t stand Valerie. He keeps telling her to bugger off.’

‘You taught him that?’ I laughed. I found myself warming to Hugh despite his gruff manner.

When the actors were in costume, Peter asked if I could help Leslie with his make-up. I did not have much experience with cosmetics and found I enjoyed powdering Leslie’s face and creating ghoulish circles under his eyes. Leslie checked the result in the mirror.

‘You’ve made both sides of my face symmetrical,’ he said. ‘Not many people can do that.’

With Leslie’s face close to mine, every time he spoke the bones in my ears jangled. I wondered how Klara would have coped with his penetrating voice.

We waited for Valerie who was applying her own make-up. She rubbed rouge on her cheeks and darkened her eyelids and brows before adding another layer of powder. Sonny came and sat next to me. Valerie followed his path in the mirror and a scowl creased her forehead.

‘So you’re from Europe?’ Sonny asked. ‘Adela. It’s a beautiful name.’

Valerie patted her face violently. A cloud of powder floated around her like dust in a windstorm. Peter and Hugh, who were discussing camera angles, glanced in her direction.

‘Thank you for the compliment,’ I told Sonny. ‘I like your name too. It suits an Australian. The country has so much sunshine.’

‘I’m ready now!’ announced Valerie, knocking over her stool when she stood up. She leapt onto the set. ‘You’d better hurry, Sonny,’ she said. ‘Time is money.’

My heart jumped to my throat when Hugh pulled himself up onto the scaffolding and scrambled across it to check the perspectives he wanted. He was dangerously close to the side of the building. If he fell, it was a long drop.

Leslie turned to where I was looking and followed Hugh’s perilous trail with me.

‘The wound he sustained in France wasn’t serious,’ Leslie whispered. ‘But gangrene set in. They took his leg off here in Sydney after he’d languished in veterans’ hospitals for months. Peter said a couple of times Hugh has gone missing and he’s found him lingering outside Sydney Hospital, as if waiting for his leg to come back.’

The picture of Hugh standing outside the place where his life had been shattered tore at my heart. I wished there was some way he could find happiness again.

Once the camera had been set, Peter asked me to drop the needle on the gramophone. I did as he asked and Pachelbel’s Canon in D floated on the air. He shouted instructions to Sonny and Valerie. ‘That’s right, Valerie,’ he said. ‘Yawn and stretch and climb into bed.’

Peter did not give me much guidance on my role as a script girl. I tried to keep my eye on the action but I could not help admiring Hugh’s camera technique. He had an extraordinarily steady hand to crank the camera as evenly as he did. After the first take, I realised watching him was more engaging than the picture we were filming. The story was about a newly married couple who move into a house where a man was murdered ten years before. The ghost returns to demand revenge. A series of events leads to the murderer being found and brought to justice, the ghost departing in peace and the young couple being able to sleep at night undisturbed. I inwardly scoffed, not only at the predictability of the plot but the ludicrousness of it. There was no justice for murder victims. Mother was proof of that.

By the end of the first week of filming, I was so bored that Klara had to wake me up in the mornings by whistling in my ear. Sonny, I discovered, was not an actor but a stablehand from Royal Randwick Racecourse who Peter had talked into being in the film because of his good looks. To describe Sonny’s acting as wooden would have been understating the fact. The way he moved his head and legs gave the impression that the rotation of his joints was a third that of ordinary people. He would have been perfect if we were making a horror picture about a stiff Egyptian mummy that had lain in its sarcophagus for thousands of years. Leslie was the opposite. He pulled grotesque faces and used flamboyant gestures to perform the simplest of actions. Whether he had to open a door or peer through a window, he rose on his toes or fell to his knees according to the emotion. Valerie, however, was the worst of all. She wore the same sour expression for everything from shock to ecstasy. ‘Smile, Valerie,’ Peter called out. ‘Laugh with relief and hug Sonny.’ Valerie responded to Peter’s direction by feebly performing the actions required. He could have elicited more emotional depth from a cardboard doll.

I took still shots for the film’s publicity and wondered how Peter had convinced investors to put money into such an unartistic and disorganised venture. Even the title was uninspiring:
The Ghost of Spooky Hill
. And this was Peter’s third picture! Had the first two been any better?

Hugh’s camera work, on the other hand, was brilliant. He could not do anything about the non-existent script and stilted acting, but the way he shot the picture transformed it. He filmed everything with a hint of slow motion, which gave the picture a surreal atmosphere that was not there on set. ‘Most films are taken at sixteen frames per second,’ he explained to me. ‘But I’m cranking the camera at twenty-two to create an eerie mood.’

‘Won’t that use up more film?’ I asked.

Hugh looked impressed by my question. ‘I’ve already accounted for that. I shot Peter’s last film this way.’

A few days later, when Hugh and I were waiting for Peter to give the actors their directions for the scene we were about to shoot, Hugh asked me if I wanted to look through his camera.

‘What do you think of the composition?’ he asked me.

Peter had a habit of placing his actors in a straight line and having them face towards the front of the set rather than each other. The way Hugh had composed the shot, setting the characters against the rear wall, they looked as if they were in a police line-up. Instead of being static, as Peter would have left it, the shot was atmospheric. I was puzzled why a talented cameraman like Hugh was working on this film.

I told him that I liked the shot and why. ‘Not everyone would have picked that up, you know,’ he said. ‘You have a keen eye.’

Klara resorted to splashing cold water on my face the morning of the final day of shooting. I only had another eight hours to go, but the thought of spending them on a slow and badly performed endeavour was excruciating. Even Peter had appeared to be running out of steam the last few days, and he was supposed to motivate us. Besides that, the weather was turning colder and staying in bed was more enticing.

After some blowing in my ear and bed-rocking from Klara, I managed to wake up in time to catch the tram to Surry Hills. I was surprised when I arrived at the set to see everyone there except Peter.

‘He wants you to direct today,’ said Hugh.

‘Me?’

Valerie sniffed and patted her hair.

‘Peter’s got the measles and Leslie starts on his new production tomorrow. We have three more scenes to go,’ Hugh said.

It would have been more logical to have shot all the scenes performed on the set in one go. But for some reason—perhaps because he did not have a script—Peter had filmed everything in chronological order. We had filmed scenes inside the house, then gone to Macquarie Lighthouse for the cliff scenes and Rose Bay for some flashbacks. Now we were back at the set with the weather threatening rain.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Valerie sniffed, Sonny stomped around, and Leslie pranced as if he were performing in a children’s pantomime. I talked them through their performances before we shot each scene. Then I did something Peter had not: I made the actors rehearse.

‘It leads to unnatural performances,’ sniffed Valerie. It was the first sentence she had directed at me since we had been working on the picture.

I wanted to answer that she could not give a natural performance if she tried, but I needed her cooperation. So I coaxed, coddled and flattered her. Her acting turned out the same, but Sonny’s and Leslie’s performances improved.

‘Good,’ said Hugh at the end of the last take. ‘You could direct a film of your own, you know.’

‘I would love to,’ I confided. ‘But I’m not sure where I would find the money.’

‘Finding money isn’t my forte,’ Hugh said, packing up his camera. ‘But if you get it and need someone to film your picture, let me know.’

Although Hugh’s manner was abrupt, his compliment meant a lot to me. My toes tingled at the thought of making a picture with a cameraman of his calibre. I had a vision of us creating something as legendary as DW Griffith’s
Broken Blossoms
.

‘That wouldn’t be disloyal to Peter, would it?’ I asked.

Hugh shook his head. ‘I think this will be Peter’s last film. I’ve seen the signs.’ He must have noticed my confusion because he added, ‘Peter changes his mind about what he wants to do every two or three years. First it was painting, then dog breeding and now it’s making pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow he takes up the piano and decides to compose music.’

‘How does he afford it?’

A wry look came to Hugh’s eyes. ‘His family lives in Roseville. They back him.’

I thought of the messy studio downstairs and the camp bed Peter slept on. Was he acting the part of the poor artist?

At the end of the day’s shooting we had a tea party with lamingtons. Hugh put a jazz record on the gramophone. Sonny clasped Valerie in his arms for the quickstep. She danced as she acted; stiffly. But she seemed to be enjoying herself. Her high-pitched laugh startled me; I had become accustomed to her gloomy temperament.

My mind drifted to Philip. I wondered what he was doing. He had not tried to contact me again. Perhaps he had seen the folly of it.

‘You get along well with Hugh,’ Leslie said to me. ‘I’ve never seen him be friendly to a woman before. He hates them.’

I remembered the hostile way Hugh had stared at me at the Vegetarian Cafe and marvelled myself at how his attitude towards me had changed. ‘Why?’ I asked.

Leslie took a sip of tea. ‘He used to be a champion tennis player, you know. He didn’t want to go and fight. He thought it was a useless war that had nothing to do with this country. But his fiancee’s mother handed him a white feather. Then, when he ended up without a leg, she suggested his fiancee marry someone else.’

The day of Klara’s concert, my heart raced all morning. Was Philip still coming to the concert as he had promised Klara? I knew it was best if he stayed away, but I longed to see him. I was pacing the floor in the parlour when Uncle Ota came home. His hours at the cinema were erratic and he often took a nap at home before lunch. It was only when he walked into the room and I saw the frown on his face that I realised something was wrong.

‘I’ve received a letter from Doctor Holub,’ he said, reaching into his pocket and unfolding a piece of paper.

I stared at the letter in Uncle Ota’s hand. ‘What did he say?’

‘Milosh has left for America.’

I sank down onto the couch. It was two years since Klara and I had arrived in Australia. ‘He’s looking for us, isn’t he?’

Uncle Ota bit his lip. ‘Milosh has told clients it’s a business trip to find suppliers of oak wood, but we can guess its real purpose. Doctor Holub says Milosh has appeared in public with his mistress. Perhaps she won’t marry him unless he secures a fortune.’

My skin prickled. Mother had bought Milosh a partnership in a successful firm but it was not enough for paní Benova. ‘Secure a fortune’: what a euphemism, I thought. It meant to get rid of us.

‘We are not there,’ I said. ‘What do you think will happen when he can’t find us?’

‘America is a vast land. Even if you were there, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Whatever he hopes to achieve, it has given us time.’

‘Did Doctor Holub say anything about Aunt Josephine?’ I asked.

A smile softened the strained look on Uncle Ota’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He has included a note from her.’

He handed me a piece of blue paper. My eyes filled with tears when I recognised my aunt’s handwriting. She wrote that she thought of us every day and that she would soon be visiting Marianske Lazne, a spa town, and would write to us properly from there.

‘I wish I could tell her what I am doing with my photography,’ I said.