We got there just in time for dinner. Dawn had hired a chef from a London agency, a big black guy who appeared in the drawing room while we were sipping sherry, to run through the menu for us. Once he had finished, my future sister-in-law took my arm and pulled me into a corner. ‘Miles and I flew up to see Dad yesterday,’ she said, quietly. ‘He’s okay, thank God, but he’s had a bit of a shake. Oz, it scares me just to think about it.
‘We’re taking no chances with this character. For as long as you’re with us, Mark will be going everywhere with you. We’ve hired him from a firm of security consultants.’
I’d have appreciated being consulted myself about that, but I wasn’t of a mind to protest. I didn’t want to leave any more casualties lying in my wake. So I simply nodded and said, ‘Fair enough. I’ll pick up his tab though; this is my problem, after all.’
‘Oh no,’ Dawn insisted. ‘We’re all involved. Mark’s fee is part of the production costs; we’ve even done a deal with his firm. They get billing in the end titles.’
I had to laugh. ‘I can see it now: bodyguard to Mr Blackstone, Mark Kravitz.’
‘Not quite. Personal assistant to Mr Blackstone, actually.’
‘Bugger me,’ I gasped. ‘I’ll be getting a star on my door next.’
She gave me a funny wee smile. ‘You never know. .’ she whispered, turning and walking over to the bar on the sideboard.
‘How you doin’, son?’ Scott Steele bore down on me, hand outstretched. ‘Good to see you again.’ I noted that he was not one of nature’s sherry-sippers. The old boy was straight into the straight malt.
‘Not bad, actually. Glad to be back with the team.’
‘Aye, I heard you had a difficult time last week.’
Jesus, I wondered, how much does he know?
He answered my silent question at once. ‘Dawn says her father’s on the mend, though,’ he said. ‘I was glad to hear it. Food poisoning can be a real leveller, especially for us older guys.’
As well as a chef, Miles had hired a butler. He brought our conversation to an abrupt halt with a call from the doorway, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.’
Prim and I don’t regard ourselves as super-rich, only ordinary rich. So it would be pretentious for us even to think about hiring a private chef. But if we ever did, I wouldn’t look past the guy who cooked for us in that Surrey mansion. His menu was at first sight robust, lobster, followed by a mango sorbet freshener, then medallions of beef in a rich port-enhanced sauce, but he had the touch and sensitivity of a true artist. By the time the creme brulee arrived, all the movie talk had subsided, and we were discussing nothing but our chef and his talents. He chose the wines too, a nice white Rioja and a rare but very interesting light German red.
We were well into the coffee and Sambucca before I remembered why we were there. ‘So what’s the schedule for the week, Miles? I asked, across the table.
‘Easy for you tomorrow, mate,’ he replied. ‘You’re in the sound studio beginning your narration sequences. That’s where you’ll be all this week, in fact. Next week though, you’re on set.’
I frowned at him, my curiosity stirred; I hadn’t been expecting that. At once, he answered the question which was written on my face. ‘We’ve been playing around with the ending, Oz. One of my few virtues as a movie-maker is my flexibility. If I think something will work, I’ll go with it. I’ve never been completely sold on the way the script finished, neither has Dawn. So when she suggested an extra twist, I had the screen-writer work it up. It involves you.’
‘Hey,’ I said, doubtfully. ‘I’m stretched to my limit as it is.’
‘No you’re not, Oz. You’re still finding your limit. We’ve all been watching you work, Dawn and I, and Weir; you’re never going to play Hamlet, old son, but you can do this.’ He reached under the table, picked up a sheaf of paper, and tossed it across to me.
‘That’s the revise; read it, learn it and get ready to rehearse it. We shoot it next week.’
I picked it up and began to read, as conversations continued around me. There wasn’t a lot of it, but I studied every line slowly and carefully. The deeper into it I got, the further removed I seemed to become from everyone in the room. As the implications of the changes dawned on me, the only sound I could hear was my own heavy breathing. As I finished and looked up, I realised that was because everyone was watching me.
‘What the hell’s this?’ I asked. ‘I’m the villain?’
Miles nodded. ‘That’s right. You and Dawn are the bad guys.’ He laughed. ‘Shit man, anyone can make a rich-girl-snatched-for-ransom-rescued-from-the-jaws-of-death-by- heroic-boyfriend type of movie. But I like my endings to have zing. So in the end, you and I land on the deserted rig carrying the access documents to the Lugano bank where Scott, your father, has lodged the ten million pounds ransom money. We expect to find Dawn, your sister in the movie, and the bad guy we’ve been tracing all through. Only we don’t. There’s no one there but her.
‘I realise that she’s planned the whole thing, but what I don’t twig at first is that you’re in on it too. The twist is that Scott has remarried and has changed his will to leave everything to your new stepmother; you and Dawn don’t like it. You know also that he has an illness which will kill him inside two years, so you dream up this kidnap scam to claim your inheritance, sort of in advance.
‘Like you can see from the script, it works.’
I stared at him. ‘But I’m not qualified for this,’ I protested.
‘Sure you are. You’re a natural, Oz. I suspect that you’ve been a bit of a play-actor all your life.’
I thought about that. It’s certainly true that when I was a kid I had so many imaginary friends that I wasn’t sure at times what I was doing and with whom. Christ, thinking back, I almost had to keep a diary. In those times too, Jan and I used to plan adventures and act them out. But still. .
‘Isn’t it a risk, though? Okay, you’re happy with what I’ve done so far, but every step forward is into unknown territory.’
‘Where’s the risk?’ Dawn countered, in her LA-modified Perthshire accent. ‘You take a look at Miles’ record as a film-maker, not just from the critics’ viewpoint, but in financial terms too. He’s always made money on his projects, often very big money, yet he’s always flown by the seat of his pants. If this doesn’t work we’ll go back to the original ending, and the cost of the extra shoot will be all that we’ve lost. Even then, we’ve had good luck with the weather, so that won’t put us over budget.’
Weir Dobbs leaned over and looked up the table at me. ‘Don’t get carried away here, Oz,’ said the chubby wee New Yorker. ‘We’ve given you a few extra scenes, that’s all. Everyone agrees that this is a better ending, but it’s your character that makes it work, not you. Read the script carefully and you’ll see that it’s Miles and Dawn who have to do the serious acting, not you.’
I treated him to a mock scowl. ‘That’s you friggin’ movie people all over, isn’t it,’ I told him. ‘First you build a guy up, then you slap him right back down.’
‘You better believe it, son,’ Scott Steele chuckled.
‘What d’you say then, Oz?’ Miles asked.
I looked him dead in the eye. ‘Same as I always say. You better talk to my agent.’
‘Jeez,’ he said, turning pure Aussie. ‘You are learning this business.’
Chapter 42
Voicing over isn’t all that difficult, honest. Ever since I’ve been involved in it, I’ve been amazed at the silliness of the money in relation to the skills required for the work. Maybe I’m down-playing it, but when I was in her class at primary school in Anstruther, Mary taught me not just to read, but to do it with feeling, with expression and with an understanding of the meaning of the words.