Jo told Derek, ‘We can’t use any of Ruby’s long shots. She had her legs open, you can see her big knickers.’
Jo was fed up. Her love of cinéma-vérité was the reason she’d studied film at Goldsmith’s, but she’d hoped to work with Mike Leigh and improvising professional actors, not the general public. They were hopelessly inarticulate and usually fell back on familiar phrases, such as ‘It was a nightmare’, ‘We were devastated’, ‘It hasn’t sunk in yet’ and – the old favourite – ‘I’m over the moon’.
Five minutes later, when Eva still hadn’t come down, Derek said, ‘I’ve had enough of all this fart-arsing about, I’m going up. Follow me!’
He was slightly unnerved by the prospect of what was upstairs. He’d had a few nasty surprises in the past, like the 103-year-old man who, when Derek asked for the secret of his longevity, shouted, on a live interview Wanking!’ He whistled the theme from The Exorcist as he slowly climbed the stairs.
Jo said, ‘We’re skating on thin ice here, Derek,’ as she followed him up, filming as she went.
When Derek reached the landing, he hissed at Ruby, ‘Get out of the way, you’re blocking the shot!’ then pushed by her, making her stagger a little.
Jo said, ‘A nice shot of you pushing an old lady aside there, Derek.’
Eva saw Derek Plimsoll and a woman with a camera on her shoulder coming through the door towards her. She shouted, ‘Don’t let them in, Mum! Close the door!’
Ruby didn’t know what to do. Jo was also conflicted; she didn’t like the way this was going. The lovely woman she saw through her lens was obviously terrified, but Jo was surprised by the starkness of the white room. The light was beautiful. She could not turn her camera off, so she adjusted the white balance, and carried on filming.
Eva scrambled under the duvet and shouted, ‘Mum! Mum! Phone Alexander! His number’s in the book!’
Jo managed to film a couple of seconds of the woman’s face before she scrambled under the white duvet.
Derek walked into the shot. He announced, ‘I’m in the bedroom of a woman called Eva Beaver – or, as tens of thousands of people are now calling her, “The Saint of Suburbia”. I was invited into the house by a Mrs Brown-Bird, Eva’s mother, but Eva is a shy, nervous woman who has requested that her face should not be filmed. East Midlands Tonight will honour that plea. She’s there. She’s the lump in the bed.’
Jo’s viewfinder showed a hump under the white duvet.
Eva shouted from under the duvet, ‘Are you still there, Mum?’
Ruby said, ‘Yes, but I can’t tackle them stairs for a bit.’
She plumped herself down in the soup chair. ‘I’ve been up and down like a bleddy pogo stick. I’m seventy-nine. I’m too old for this carry-on. I’ve got a cake downstairs I’m neglecting.’
Derek shouted, ‘Mrs Brown-Bird, we’re trying to film here! Please do not talk, whistle or sing.’
Ruby got out of the chair and said, ‘I’m not staying here, if I’m not wanted.’
She staggered to the banisters on the landing and leaned heavily against them until she felt able to go downstairs to the kitchen, where she began to look for Eva’s phone book. Alexander’s name was the first number in it, in his own handwriting. Ruby sat down at the kitchen table and laboriously pressed buttons on the phone.
He answered immediately, saying, ‘Eva?’
‘No, Ruby. She wants you to come round. There’s some television people here and she wants them gone.’
‘What? She wants a bouncer?’
‘Yes, she wants you to come and chuck them out of the house,’ said Ruby, expanding on Eva’s instructions.
‘Why choose me? I’m not a street-fighting man.’
Ruby said, ‘Yes, but people are more frightened of black men, aren’t they?’
Alexander laughed down the phone. ‘OK, I’ll be there in five minutes. I’ll bring my deadly paintbrushes, shall I?’
Ruby said, ‘Good, because I’m fed up with all this argy-bargy. I’m going home.’
She placed the phone carefully in its charger, put on her hat and coat, took her shopping bag from the back of the kitchen door and went out into the cold afternoon.
Eva had persuaded Jo to switch the camera off and was sitting up in bed with her arms folded, looking – in Derek’s eyes – like a modern Joan of Arc.
Derek said, ‘Now, are you going to be sensible, and give me a face-to-face interview in your own words, or do I have to speak on your behalf? If so, you may not like what I have to say.’
‘This is what I’ve got to say. Fuck off out of my house!’
‘I’m not happy with this,’ Jo said. ‘You’re bullying her, Derek, and I may have to inform Human Resources.’
Derek said, ‘It’s OK, we can lose anything you’re not happy about in the edit.’
‘But I’m not involved in the edit. All I’m allowed to do is point a camera.
‘You weren’t so high-minded when we doorstepped that grieving widow last week.’
‘Which one? There were two grieving widows last week.’
‘The one whose idiot husband fell into the industrial bread mixer.’
‘I wasn’t happy.’
Derek grabbed Jo by the shoulders and said, ‘But that was such an artistic end shot you took – the tears running down her face, that kind of rainbow effect you got.’
Jo said, ‘I shot her tears through a crystal vase. I’m not proud of it. I’m ashamed.’
‘We’re all ashamed in television, deary, but it doesn’t stop us doing it. Never forget, we give the public what they want.’
Derek dropped his voice and murmured to Eva, ‘By the way, can I say how sorry I am that your husband’s about to leave you? You’re probably devastated, aren’t you?’
Eva said, ‘Do you know the meaning of the word “devastated”?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘It means, “destroyed or ruined, shattered into a thousand pieces”. But here I am, sitting up in bed, in one piece. Now, please close the door behind you.’
As he stamped down the stairs, Derek said, ‘This is why I loathe working with women. They can’t think further than their fanny.’ In a falsetto voice that was meant to be female, he said, ‘Oh dear me, I’m getting emotional and my hormones are taking over and everything must be ethical and from a woman’s point of view!’
They heard a key turn in the lock, and Alexander walked in carrying a large framed painting covered in bubble wrap.
‘Is it you who’s bothering Eva?’ he asked.
Derek said, ‘Are you the Alexander Mrs Brown-Bird’s been telling us about? Friend of the family, eh?’
Alexander said, firmly, ‘Please leave immediately, nobody wants you here.’
‘Look, sunshine, this is a big story in our neck of the woods. It’s not every day we find a saint in suburbia. We’ve got close-up shots of her in the window, we’ve got an interview with the mother, and Barry Wooton has told us his very boring, but very tragic story. All we need is Eva. Just a few words.’
Alexander gave a broad smile, reminding Plimsoll of the pregnant crocodile they’d recently filmed in Twycross Zoo.
‘You interviewed me at the opening of my first exhibition,’ he said. ‘I think I know your introduction by heart. “This is Alexander Tate, he’s a painter, not of the ghetto, not portraits of gang members, not edgy depictions of urban decay. No, Alexander paints watercolours of the English countryside…” Then cue the harpsichord music.’
Derek said, ‘I thought it was a nice little piece.’
Jo said, ‘Derek, you were patronising Alexander, and implying that painting watercolours was an unusual activity for black people.’
Derek said, ‘It is.’
Jo turned to Alexander. ‘My life partner is black. Do you know her – Priscilla Robinson?’