Past the pirate-stones, into the fort’s main gate, down to the clearing with its pond.
And face to face with a goat. A chewing goat, with an expensive, hothouse daffodil bobbing from its lips.
It was the last flower in sight.
I dropped the satchel and caught the camera being ejected from Will Currie’s shoulder as he launched himself at the devil’s spawn, a roar in his throat and murder in his eyes. The goat took one look and shot through the picturesque ruined gate to skip light-footedly away on the tumbled stones towards the valley below.
* * *
Telegrams were exchanged, the phone lines having proved erratic. Hale assured us replacement flowers would be there by afternoon. The girls introduced themselves to the residents of the decidedly bizarre royal palace uphill from the ruined fort, where most of the marquee employees normally worked, and desported themselves through the once-royal hallways (bereft of tourists, what with the weather, the economy, and the political turmoil) of the former convent (which had borne the cheering name Nossa Senhora da Pena: Our Lady of Punishment) while Will and I planted a second set of flowers.
I hired a guard for the night, a fit young man who understood that a return of goats would mean his instant death, and we arrived on Wednesday morning to find the daffodils intact, the sun out, the walls still standing.
But no pond. Had the goats consumed that, too?
“I thought this was a pond,” Will screamed at the hapless young man.
“Pond?” said the man.
I knew he spoke some English, so I contributed a few synonyms. “Lake? Pool? You know – a body of water.”
“Water? Yes, puddle.”
“Well no, not exactly-” Will started, but I laid a hand on his arm.
“I think it may be, exactly.” And so it turned out: What we had thought to be a conveniently located pond was merely a puddle; in the absence of rain the day before, it was now more of a wallow.
“Well, perhaps we could still …” I started, but Will was already shaking his head.
“A dozen nice English girls are not going to be stripping down for a frolic in mud. Without water, there’s no reason for them to be here. Fflytte will toss it all out.”
“So,” I persisted, “let’s bring in some water. Don’t look at me like that. If we can bring in flowers, we can bring in water.”
“I’m not carrying buckets up that hill.”
“I hadn’t thought of doing it personally, no.”
* * *
Thus it was that on Thursday, four days after we’d come to Cintra, the camera finally started turning. Before us lay a pond of very expensive water, trucked and carried in before dawn that morning by a small army of hirelings, local farmers, and servants from the palace – and if it was mere inches deep and more mud-choked than sparkling, on film it would be fine. Around the pseudo-lake, the surviving flowers stood – and if they looked moth-eaten and wilted up close, despite several sprinklings of water, again, they would look just fine on film. As we came off the carts at the garden tent, the sun even came out – and if it was cold enough to put a rime of frost on the blossoms and set the girls to shivering, well, we had a brazier going behind the camera to warm up between takes, and adding a blush to cheeks was the reason we’d brought Maude, the make-up woman.
Of course, some of the girls had tried to insulate themselves by wearing jumpers and woollen hose under the spring frocks the scene required, making Sally complain at the ill fit of her laboriously constructed costumes. However, once I had mused loudly about how fat this Portuguese food was making the girls, there was a flurry of activity around the impromptu dressing-room, and the problem went away.
The girls took their places. Graziella flitted about (tripping over a pair of shoes I’d ordered her to put on). I consulted my heavily annotated copy of the Pirate King script, printing the scene’s details in big, clear letters on the slate. Will, soft cap reversed, put his face to the camera and had Frederic stand against the tree, then shift an inch or two at a time, while I adjusted the reflective screen. When he was happy with how the light hit the actor’s face, Will told Signorina Mazzo to stop breathing in his ear, asked Mabel to move her head left a fraction, and finally said, “Miss Russell, hold up the slate in front of the girls for a few seconds, then say ‘Camera!’ and get away fast.”
“Me?”
“Just say it.”
So I pronounced the word, and thus began my career as a moving picture director.
The scene went beautifully, even a rank amateur like me could see that. Bibi had a natural bent for placing herself at the forefront of any scene, with the other girls forming a visual chorus around her. Daniel Marks set his shoulders to indicate a degree of intense fascination, wrapping his torso around the tree to watch the girls without being seen. Will’s arm worked the crank with a smooth and unvarying speed, until he stopped cranking and stood up, saying, “Cut.”
The scene disintegrated with Mabel jumping up to exclaim that she’d been sitting on something sharp and Bonnie complaining that Celeste had been blocking her light, and Frederic objecting that we weren’t filming his good side. He became quite upset when I made the mistake of saying I couldn’t see any difference, but Will smoothed things over by saying that he would be doing a number of close-ups from the desired side, since Fflytte would be sure to want them.
Then he pulled the girls together to do the scene again. It took a couple of hours to finish the group shots, some of which required me to act as his assistant, turning the handle as he panned the camera. He had to correct me a couple of times, telling me I was slowing my turning speed, but the takes seemed to satisfy him. Later, he shifted the camera to Daniel Marks, then to Bibi, first in their rôles as Frederic and Mabel, then in modern dress as the director of Pirates and his actress-fiancée. Afterwards, he had Bibi change back into her Pirates garb, to shoot three takes of Mabel’s expression on seeing Frederic, then an assortment of different poses – looking down in contemplation, raising a startled hand to her mouth, casting a look of mischief at a sister. He also filmed several versions of Bibi slowly drawing one stocking down a shapely ankle: with flowers in the background; dangling over the pond; with flowers and pond; with a flower floating in the pond …
“I think the sun is going,” I finally said, drawing an end to this fascination. The rest of the girls and Marks had long since retreated to the refreshments of the tent, and the wind was growing chilly. Bibi jerked up her stocking and stepped into her shoe, wrapped herself in her warm furs, and flounced away down the hill, leaving us to carry the film and equipment.
“How was that, do you think?” I asked the cameraman.
“Some of it looked very nice, although I won’t know for sure until I see it later.”
“What, tonight?”
“Have to be – can’t leave until I’m sure we got everything Mr Fflytte needs. I can give it a squint, just to see there aren’t any major boobs.”
“Do you want some help?”
“You don’t need to.”
“What can I do?”
“Come to my room tonight and give me a hand with the developing.”
* * *
It did cross my mind that Will might intend something other than film to develop within his room. However, I knocked on his door just after dinner, and although he answered in a state of relative dishabille, the stink that wafted out was in no way suggestive of romance.