Why, I asked Dawn Devonport—we are still pacing that insulted strip of grass behind the studio—why does Toby Taggart employ Billie Stryker to nose out the secret weaknesses and sorrows of his players? I knew the answer, of course, so why did I ask? ‘To have what he thinks will be power over us,’ she said, and laughed. ‘He imagines he is Svengali—don’t they all?’
It will seem odd, perhaps, but I did not think badly of Toby for this, no more than I did of Billie Stryker. He is a professional, as am I; in other words we are cannibals, the pair of us, and would eat our young for the sake of a scene. I cannot help but like him. He is large and ill-assembled, built on the lines of a buffalo, with absurdly tiny feet and skinny legs and a broad chest and broader shoulders and a shaggy mop of mahogany-coloured curls from under which shine out those glossy sad brown eyes of his, pleading love and forbearance. His name is Tobias—yes, I asked him—it is a family tradition on his mother’s side, from her father the duke back through the centuries to an originary Tobias the Terrible who fought at Hastings and is said to have cradled the mortally wounded King Harold in his armoured arm. This last is the kind of dusty heirloom that Toby loves to bring out proudly from the vault of the family’s past for us to admire. He is a sentimentalist and a patriot of the old school and cannot understand my disregard for the deeds of doughty ancestors. I explained to him that I have no ancestors to speak of, only a motley line of petty tradesmen and near-peasants who never swung an axe in battle or comforted a king with an arrow in his eye. I would say that Toby is an anachronism in the movie world if I thought there was anyone in it who is not—look at me, for heaven’s sake. How he agonises on the set. Are we all happy in our parts? Is he being true to the spirit of JB’s wonderful script? Is the studio’s money being well spent? Will audiences understand what we are attempting? There he stands, always to the right and a little behind the cameraman, amid a clutter of wiring and those mysterious long black boxes with reinforced metal corners that are strewn at random about the floor, in his big brown jumper and ragged jeans, nibbling at his nails like a squirrel at a nut, as if he were trying to get at the elusive essence of himself, and worrying, worrying. The crew adore him and are fiercely protective, flexing their biceps and glowering at anyone seeming to offer the slightest slight. There is something saintly about him. No, not saintly, not quite. I know, I know what it is he reminds me of: one of those prelates the Church militant used to produce, muscular but soft, big-hearted, privy to the world’s cesspit of sin yet ever undaunted, not for a moment doubting that this chaotic phantasmagoria into which he must sink himself each day will in the end be redeemed and turned into a paradisal vision of light and grace and resplendently cavorting souls.
I can hardly believe it—we are already in the final week of filming. They move so fast, the movies.