Shooting Script

I said softly: 'Perhaps just enough to want to save him from those long dull evenings in the cat-house?'

Her head came round with a snap and her face was a hard, glittering glare. For a moment it looked as if I was going to be smoking my pipe from somewhere around my tonsils.

Then she suddenly flashed a wide grin. 'Maybe. Maybe – once. Women are suckers for wanting to save men from a man's world. Never works. I'm not too particular about wedding rings, but I'm damned if I'll settle for a brand on the backside.'

'I'm encouraged to hear it.'

Her voice got a little colder. 'Don't puff out your throat at me, Carr.'

We ate at the stars' table, which meant that the food got brought to us instead of queueing up for it. It was the same food; peas and rice with chicken, which is about as close to a Jamaican national dish as you'll get, apart from salt cod and ackee. Whitmore, Luiz, the director, J.B., four others, and me.

Whitmore said. 'We got to get somebody in to do the Spanish for us. You heard what that slob of a writer asked the boys to shout about just now? -"Viva el liberador", for Chrissake.' He looked at Luiz. 'You heard that?'

Luiz shrugged elegantly. 'To me, it seemed reasonably appropriate. Those of Spanish blood who rush across rivers under fire often shout the mostnaïvethings.'

Whitmore grunted. 'Well, we got to get somebody.' He turned to me. 'Anybody you know speak Spanish, fella?'

'I know one man. I don't know if he'd be free, though.'

'We can try him. Tell J.B.'

So I gave her Diego Ingles' name and a telephone number where you could sometimes catch him between beds.

Another man, who seemed to be head of the camera team, suddenly asked me: 'Have you ever flown a camera plane before?' His accent was English English, so I seemed to have struck another part of the eighty per cent.

I shook my head. 'I haven't agreed to fly this one, yet.'

J.B. said: 'He's worried about what we might get for him.'

The cameraman looked a little contemptuous. 'It'll be my neck up there, too, you know. So if I don't mind-'

'That's splendid,' I said, 'as long as your neck's as good as mine at recognising a crackedmainspar.'

Whitmore said calmly: 'What kind of plane d'you want, fella?'

'I'd've thought a helicopter was the most versatile. But I'm no helicopter pilot.'

J.B. said: 'Choppers are out. You know what they cost an hour?'

The cameraman said: 'Vibration.'

The director pushed away his plate and started fitting a cigarette into a stubby holder. 'We can do without the aerials, Walt.'

'Sure – you can cut any picture at the bone. So who pays to see dry bones?'

I said: 'There's a Harvard – what you'd call a Texan – on the Boscobel strip. A film company used it as a Jap bomber last year.'

The cameraman said impatiently: 'We're not looking for Jap bombers. And you can't do good aerials from a single-engined plane: it has to be hand-held stuff and you don't get the down-ahead tracking shots.'

Whitmore nodded, planted his elbows solidly on the table, and started to peel an orange in big tearing, sweeping strokes. 'Okay, fella. So what do you figure we should get?'

I said carefully: 'If you want to shoot down and ahead you need twin engines – and a glass nose. That wipes out my Dove. You'd better try and pick up an old bomber – B-25 or a B-26 – with a bomb-aimer's position in the nose. There's still a lot of them around, in Central and South America.'

Whitmore cocked an eyebrow at the cameraman, then the director. Then said: 'Sounds good. Can you find one, J.B.?'

'I can start people looking.'

'Fine, fine.' He ate a strip of orange. 'Hell, maybe we could write it into the picture. Say instead of where the government sends a patrol on horses, they send a bomber. That's where we're walking up the river. So I have a Browning or a Thompson and I'm standing in these goddamn rapids up to my knees and shooting hell out of this bomber overhead. Could make a great scene.'

The table went very quiet. The director slowly put both hands to his head and started muttering.

But itwould make a great scene – for Whitmore. Him standing to his knees in foaming white water, blazing defiance at the sky with a tommy-gun.

Just to be technical, a bomber doing 200 mph would be 100 yards ahead one moment and 100 yards behind two seconds later. Perhaps that's why so few bombers ever get shot downwith Browning automatic rifles and Thompson submachine guns.

It would still be a great scene – and everybody round the table knew it.

Luiz said: 'I think I see where we all get our feet wet once more.'

Whitmore ate another piece of orange. 'Fine. Tell the dialogue boys what we want.' He looked back at me. 'Now we got another problem. We need a location. We can do all the jungle, river, tin-roof village stuff here. But justa couplascenes, we need some real Spanish architecture. Something like those big two-peak churches you get in Mexico – you know?'

I knew. I'd seen him park his horse outside that type of church half a dozen times. It labelled the film Spanish New World faster than you could speak it aloud.

The cameraman said: 'Puerto Rico – I did a documentary there once. It's full of-'

J.B. said:'Not Puerto Rico. We'd be back in US labour laws. The budget'll blow to hell and we'll never make Eady.'

The director said: 'Walt – we can get Roddie down here and he'll build you one in a week.'

J.B. said: 'Roddie costs money. He's another American salary, Boss.'

'Will you let the man speak?' Whitmore roared. Everybody shut up. He nodded to me. 'You're the local boy, fella. Let's hear from you.'

'Nothing like that in Jamaica: we've been British too long.' I shut my eyes, pinned up a mental map of the Caribbean, and started touring. 'Cuba's the nearest, but… Mexico's seven hundred miles, the nearest point in South America's a good five hundred. There's Haiti just down the road, but I've never heard of anybody getting any work done in Haiti.'

The director said: 'Let's get Roddie down.'

'And there's the República Libra.'

Whitmore and Luiz looked at each other. Luiz gave another slow shrug. 'We could take a look this weekend.'

'Yeah. ' Whitmore looked at the cameraman. 'You wanted to do some servicing on the cameras anyway, right? So we won'tshoot Saturday and Sunday and our friend'll fly us down to the República. There'll be' – he counted round the table: himself, the director, Luiz, a delicately dressed young man who hadn't said anything yet, and J.B. "There'll be six of us. Fix a hotel, will you, J.B.?'

'Hold on,' I said. Everybody looked at me. 'The Republica's having a little trouble right now. I don't know how they're reacting to strangers: they may want to keep them out, they may want to let them in just to prove everything's nice and normal. I just don't know.'

Luiz said gently: 'But we can find out.'

'Yes. But you've got an extra problem with me. They seem to have taken against me: decided I've been helping the rebels. A couple of their jets bounced me the other day. So however they take to you, they may not be too glad to see me in Bartolomeo.'

'You don't wanna go?' Whitmore asked bluntly.

'Not quite that.' It might be the best thing to go – a chance to argue it out with the Repúblicaauthorities when I could offer them solid proof that I might bring profitable trade to the country. It might put the Republic back on my map – and I certainly needed places on that map.

'Not quite that,' I said again. 'Just that they might not think I'm adding tone to your business.'

'I guess they won't put me in jail,' Whitmore said. Then his face tightened into a thin, slightly crooked smile. I knew that expression: it came when the unshaven character at the far end of the bar announces that he can't stand the smell of lawmen. 'Just stick close to me, fella. We'll manage.'