It

to bugger himself. The union boss told Freddie he better watch his gob or there would be no more stunts on the set of Attic Room at all. Then he had rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a baksheesh gesture that had driven Freddie crazy. The union boss was big but soft; Freddie, who still played football every chance he got and who had once scored a century at cricket, was big and hard.
He threw the union boss out, went back into his office to meditate, and then came out again twenty minutes later hollering for Bill. He wanted the entire scene rewritten so that the fall could be scrubbed. Audra had to tell Freddie that Bill was no longer in England.
‘What? Freddie said. His mouth hung open. He was looking at Audra as if he believed she had gone mad. ‘What are you telling me?’
‘He’s been called back to the States — that’s what I’m telling you.’
Freddie made as if to grab her and Audra shrank back, a bit afraid. Freddie looked down at his hands, then put them in his pockets and only looked at her.
‘I’m sorry, Freddie,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Really.’
She got up and poured herself a cup of coffee from the Silex on Freddie’s hotplate, noticing that her hands were trembling slightly. As she sat down she heard Freddie’s amplified voice over the studio loudspeakers, telling everyone to go home or to the pub; the day’s shooting was off. Audra winced. There went a minimum of ten thousand pounds, right down the bog.
Freddie turned off the studio intercom, got up, poured his own cup of coffee. He sat down again and offered her his pack of Silk Cut cigarettes.
Audra shook her head.
Freddie took one, lit it, and squinted at her through the smoke. ‘This is serious, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Audra said, keeping her composure as best she could.
‘What’s happened?’
And because she genuinely liked Freddie and genuinely trusted him, Audra told him everything she knew. Freddie listened intently, gravely. It didn’t take long to tell; doors were still slamming and engines starting in the parking lot outside when she finished.
Freddie was silent for some time, looking out his window. Then he swung back to her. ‘He’s had a nervous breakdown of some sort.’
Audra shook her head. ‘No. It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that.’ She swallowed and added, ‘Maybe you had to be there.’
Freddie smiled crookedly. ‘You must realize that grown men rarely feel compelled to honor promises they made as little boys. And you’ve read Bill’s work; you know how much of it is about childhood, and it’s very good stuff indeed. Very much on the nail. The idea that he’s forgotten everything that ever happened to him back then is absurd.’
‘The scars on his hands,’ Audra said. ‘They were never there. Not until this morning.’
‘Bollocks! You just didn’t notice them until this morning.’
She shrugged helplessly. ‘I’d’ve noticed.’
She could see he didn’t believe that, either.
‘What’s to do, then?’ Freddie asked her, and she could only shake her head. Freddie lit another cigarette from the smoldering end of the first. ‘I can square it with the union boss,’ he said . ‘Not myself, maybe; right now he’d see me in hell before giving me another stunt. I’ll send Teddy Rowland round to his office. Teddy’s a pouf, but he could talk the birds down from the trees But what happens after? We’ve got four weeks of shooting left, and here’s your husband somewhere in Massachusetts — ‘
‘Maine — ‘
He waved a hand. ‘Wherever. And how much good are you going to be
without him?’
‘I — ‘
He leaned forward. ‘I like you, Audra. I genuinely do. And I like Bill — even in spite of this mess. We can make do, I guess. If the script needs cobbling up, I can cobble it. I’ve done my share of that sort of shoemaking in my time, Christ knows . . . If he doesn’t like the way it turns out, he’ll have no one but himself to blame. I can do without Bill, but I can’t do without you. I can’t have you running off to the States after your man, and I’ve got to have you putting out at full power. Can you do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I. But I want you to think about something. We can keep things quiet for awhile, maybe for the rest of the shoot, if you’ll stand up like a trouper and do your job. But if you take off, it can’t be kept quiet. I can be pissy, but I’m not vindictive by nature and I’m not going to tell you that if you take off I’ll see that you never work in the business again. But you should know that if you get a reputation for temperament, you might end up stuck with just that. I’m talking to you like a Dutch uncle, I know. Do you resent it?’
‘No,’ she said listlessly. In truth, she didn’t care much one way or the other. Bill was all she could think of. Freddie was a nice enough man,