Less voluble, but no less vigilant ladies, whose homes lay in the avenues and closes south of Pawson’s Lane, moved slowly in small groups around the platform. This not only enabled them to avoid a social admixture which, they were considerate enough to realize, would have embarrassed their less fortunately placed fellow townswomen, but it was calculated to give them a head start if the platform and not the caravan should prove to be the focus of the afternoon’s activities.
A third group, the smallest, loitered on the river bank in graceful contemplation of the upper air. Every now and then they peeked at tiny gold watches, glistening amidst the fur of coatsleeves like the eyes of little animals. These women were residents of Stanstead Gardens and its tributaries, Brompton, Mather and Darlington Gardens, and they were on hand partly out of curiosity and partly on account of the rumour that a ten-guinea fee was to be paid everyone selected for actual screen appearance.
Precisely at one-thirty, the Assistant Environmental Research and Liaison Executive in charge of the number two mobile and called Hugh by his peers, leaped briskly up the three steps to the platform and held up his arms.
“Ladies...”
The factions began to draw together to form a single audience. Even the Gardens-dwellers ventured within listening distance. They turned to one another, trying out smiles.
“Ladies,” cried the AERALE, “as you know, this is a big day for”—he frowned for a second, snapped his fingers—“for Flaxborough. With your kind assistance and”—he glanced at the sky—“that of the beautiful weather you seem to enjoy in this part of the country”—good-humoured groans—“we intend to put this town on a million television screens. Right, everyone? Right. Now you know what that means, don’t you? It means that some of you lovely ladies—no, don’t laugh, I can safely say that seldom have I seen so high a proportion of attractive women in all the crowds that have come to testify to the power of our Product—it means, I say, that some of you luscious ladies will have the chance you have been waiting for—and which, believe me, you so richly deserve—the chance of being a real film star! What do you think of that, eh? Fabulous? Fabulous, right. So we’ll get right along with all the wonderful things that are in store for Flaxborough while this fabulous weather holds and while all you lovely ladies are still smiling. Smile, smile, smile, that’s the style, right? First of all, there’s a fabulous young man I want you all to meet. He’s our Location Visual Kinetics Executive—and anyone who can say that gets a free packet of Lucillite here and now, I promise you, ladies—can you say that, madam?—no, never mind, we’ll just call him Antony, shall we? Antony, come up here and meet all these lovely ladies...”
And soon they were all friends: the ladies both of humble station and high degree; Hugh, with his chubby chops, a nose like an aubergine, and eyes restless as riot police, darting always here and there in the crowd to see that the quips and sallies were being properly acknowledged; black-bearded Antony, who wore heavy gold ear-rings and manipulated his camera like a harpooneer; and the four Lucies on herd control and powder-room whisper duty.
Neither the Area Promotion Director of Dixon-Frome nor their consultancy’s Deputy Chief Brand Visualizer had yet put in an appearance. They were taking a working lunch at the Roebuck in order to discuss in depth the new concept of Mantis Motivation in the domestic detergent field.
No such advanced theory lay behind the programme of filming and interviews from which a two-minute commercial would eventually be sculpted by the Tele-kinetics Division of TEAK. The idea to be promoted was simply that Lucillite was of such remarkable cleansing potential that it would enable clothes to be washed even in the polluted water of a modern river.
The treatment of the finished film was to be in a style combining historico-fantastical and chemo-whimsical elements.
Some shots had been taken the previous day. Polystyrene rocks had been set in the mud at the water’s edge, and Lucies in seventeenth-century gowns filmed while they dunked seventeenth-century shifts in the river, slapped them on to the polystyrene rocks and belaboured them with plastic paddles. This performance would be condensed into the few seconds’ screen time sufficient for viewers to be told that in Good King Charles’s days rivers ran pure—pure enough for washing the family’s clothes. There would follow the interpolation of some stock library shots of industrial effluent to point the question, “But would you put your husband’s shirt into this?”
Hugh, held all the time at close range by Antony’s lenses, moved among the women like a faith-healer with a full head of steam. He halted before a benign-looking woman on whose coat was pinned the tiny “L” monogram that showed she had been interviewed by a Lucy, found reasonably articulate and co-operative, and coached in the art of giving prescribed answers with apparent conviction.
“Would you like to try doing your weekly wash in that river, madam, as they did in Good King Charles’s golden days?”
“Ha, ha,” said the woman with great care and solemnity. “You must be joking of course.”
Hugh shook his head, put one arm round the woman’s shoulders and smiled into the middle distance. “My dear, you won’t think I’m joking when I tell you what I’m going to do. You’ve brought your weekly wash along here today?”
“Yes I have. I don’t know what my hubby will say I’m sure.” The woman stared steadfastly at the microphone and waited.
“Fabulous. Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell one of those young ladies to take your things and—no, wait for it—and WASH them in that dirty old river water. Now what do you say to that?” He gave her shoulders a squeeze and grinned round at the assembly.
“Well all I can say is good luck to Lucillite and its sapo-ni-fied gra-nules but I must say you are taking something on this time.”
Hugh released the woman from his evangelical embrace and without sparing her another glance he began to wind up a few yards of slack in the microphone cable.
“Lovely,” said Antony. “Marvellous.” He made cabbalistic motions with a light-meter. “I want the river shots now. That lovely boatman. Before the light goes.”
“We’ll have some more of these little personal chats later, shall we, ladies?” Hugh was addressing the women in general. “That will be fabulous, and I’m looking forward to it, I truly am. But for the moment I want you all to gather over there by the river and stand—yes, that’s right, just stand there—and look out over the water at the boat. Like you were waiting for Bonnie Prince Charlie. You all know who Bonnie Prince Charlie was? Of course you do. That’s marvellous. Just stay like that a minute. Fabulous...”
Into Antony’s ear he inquired: “Where’s that prick who’s supposed to be taking the bloody boat out?”
The boatman was eventually discovered asleep in his craft, moored a hundred yards up river. He was a Flaxborough man (“a genuine local”, in Antony’s enthusiastic phrase) and the admen had recruited him the previous evening on the strength of his assurance, given with a wealth of circumstantial detail in the bar parlour of the Three Crowns, that he was a ferryman of long experience and wide renown. His name was Heath.