They headed back into the bar, and at last I decided there really was no further point in hanging around.
I stayed over in the town. I went first to a restaurant and had a meal, then caught the first house at the cinema. The film was one of those low-budget Westerns made in Spain or Italy, and I was totally unable to enjoy it; not because it was uninteresting, but because I couldn’t get out of my head the image of a film-editor snipping away at the shots before the film reached the projector.
I left the cinema, and walked through the dark and deserted streets of the town. The wind was now blustery and cold, with rain stinging my face. I was quietly dreading the ferry across the river. The day before I had been confined in the village, as the gale had suspended all services; now the weather was rough enough to scare me stiff, but not so rough that the service would stop.
As I came to the top of the slope leading down to the jetty, I saw the boat heading away from the shore towards the village. Even there, in the lee of the bank, it seemed to me to be going up and down unpleasantly. I hunched my shoulders and thrust my hands deep into my pockets, resigned to a twenty-minute wait.
I walked slowly down the slope, and went into the concrete shelter. Tina was there, huddled inside her duffel-coat.
She said: “You’ve missed the last boat. I heard them say it was getting too rough.’
‘I’ve seen it rougher than this,’ I said.
‘It isn’t coming back, Chris.’
I decided to believe her.
‘I won’t be able to get back to my hotel,’ I said.
‘I think I know a place you can stay.’
She slipped her hand into mine inside my pocket, and we walked back up into the town.
For the sake of her job, Tina went down to breakfast five minutes before me, and when I joined her she was sitting at a table with Patrick and Frank. They seemed quite unsurprised to see me.
I was just finishing my kippers when a tall young man, smartly dressed in a dark suit, came over to the table, drew up a chair and sat down between Frank and myself.
Tina said quickly: ‘Ted ... this is Chris Priest. He’s going to take part in the film.’
‘Got something to say about the new complex, haven’t you?’ said Frank.
‘I—yes.’
‘Wonderful development, don’t you think?’ said Ted.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. Tina was drinking her coffee, but she caught my eye over the edge of the cup and I knew she was smiling.
‘I’m glad you’re with us on this, Chris,’ said Ted, his face beaming. ‘We need a good strong opinion. Er ... you’ve no financial interest in the complex, I suppose?’
‘Of course not,’ I said.
‘Pity ... It would make your case stronger if you had. Never mind, it’s only a small part of the film.’ He turned to Frank. ‘I had another idea on the drive down here this morning. I gather some of the local fishermen are against this complex because they say the sewage from it is going to be pumped straight into the sea. They think it’s going to harm the lobster beds.’
‘That’s right,’ said Frank. ‘There’s an item in the local paper this week.’
‘Good. Then why don’t we work some kind of insinuation into the commentary? Something to the effect that the traditional Cornish pastime of smuggling is getting under way again? And that this would be more difficult with a huge increase of visitors to the town? Then if we get one of the fishermen to speak up against the complex we’ll know his motives, won’t we?’
Throughout all this Patrick had been silent. I didn’t care for the thoughtful way in which he was staring at me, then glancing at Tina. There had, after all, been that tapping at Tina’s bedroom door at about one in the morning, and she’d whispered that it was Patrick’s nightly attempt ... but I wondered now how much he was beginning to connect in his mind.
Ted was saying: ‘And I was thinking about the old biddy from the watch-committee. I thought perhaps while she’s talking we could do a cut-away to someone prowling along a hotel corridor. Hint of promiscuous goings-on, don’t you think?’
‘Don’t let’s overdo it, Ted,’ said Frank.
‘We could always leave it out later if we don’t like it. We could shoot it here, in this hotel. And look, couldn’t Tina and this chap here’ (me) ‘do something that would-’
‘Drop it, Ted,’ Patrick said, sharply.
I poured myself some more coffee with considerable haste, spilling most of it into the saucer in the process.
‘We don’t want to overdo the visuals,’ said Frank, carefully. ‘After all, it wouldn’t be right to give the impression that this is a fun town. I think Pat’s right... we should play it straight. Let the words speak for themselves. Only if something needs underlining should we try to find a visual to fit it. That’s how we’ve always worked.’
‘OK,’ said Ted, a little sulkily.
I followed the others down to the square to pick up the van and the two cars. It had been decided that I would be interviewed on the site of the proposed entertainments complex: high on a rocky promontory overlooking the mouth of the river.
On the drive up (without any kind of stage-management, I found myself in the back of a car with Tina) I was trying to adjust my own understanding of this place to the distorted quasi-reality the television crew was trying to project.
I saw the town as a rather graceful pastoral community, mildly conservative, very insular. As a tourist resort, it was the sort of place people passed through as they came off the ferry; not the kind of seaside town where a married couple with kids would stay for a fortnight. I wondered how firm a proposal it was for this complex, and how much money was behind it, and whose. Would the National Trust—on whose land the complex was to be sited—stand for this kind of proposal for even one minute?
There was a long delay while the cameraman and his assistant set up the tripod and loaded the film-magazine on to the camera. The sound-recordist took a reading from my voice and set the level, and he and his assistant cursed at the amount of wind drumming against the microphone. In the background, Ted was going through the continuity-sheets with Tina, while Frank and Patrick sat together, sheltering from the wind in the back of the equipment van.
Finally, all was declared to be ready.
Ted came over and stood a disconcertingly short distance away from me, well inside my personal buffer zone. He took the microphone from the assistant sound-recordist, and held it out at chest-level between us.
‘When you’re ready, Chris,’ he said, and I was reassured to see that he was sufficiently professional to realize I was quaking in my boots. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just say what you feel, and if you muff it we can always edit it out later.’
I was too nervous even to ascribe an ulterior motive to his words.
Someone stepped in front of the camera and clacked a clapperboard (I hadn’t realized that those things were actually used) and then-
‘As a typical tourist,’ said Ted in his television voice, ‘how would you describe your reaction to an entertainments complex of the sort proposed?’
Never mind what I said. That’s between me and the film-editor. Suffice to say I ducked the issue.
We drove back to the town, and parked the cars and the van in the square. As I climbed out of the car, the barmaid came out of the door of the pub.
‘Mr. Mattinson!’ she called. ‘Mr. Mattinson, there’s a call for you. Gentleman in London, he says he is.’