Postscript
Reflections in Bedford Square
P. J. Kavanagh
As it is unlikely that I shall ever again spend a day in a caravan in Bedford Square, it might be worth trying to de- scribe it. The caravan itself is comfortable, furnished in tasteful shades of oatmeal and brown. It is not easy to see what is going on outside the caravan, because the curtains have to be kept drawn otherwise parties of people peer in. London is full of peering parties at this season. Through a crack in the windows I see, as I write this, that a man with two bottles in brown paper bags has set up camp on the pavement opposite. Now he is standing up and relieving himself thorough' the iron gates of Bedford Square gardens. Now he has begun to sing, in a good voice, but the contents of the bottles in the brown paper bags seem to have affected his sense of melody, and pace. I think I can distinguish the tune, very slow indeed, of '0 come all ye faithful'. It seems mean not to share my large caravan with him, but I do not do so. I see, the plane tree leaves reflected in the windows of Sigourney Weaver's Win- nebago, see the top of her tracksuited knee as she reposes herself inside it. A Winne- bago is an even larger caravan with 'rest- room, toilet, dining-area' a member of the crew informs me. She certainly needs it, poor girl, for she finished filming at 11 last night, after an 8 a.m. start and after spending six hours driving round Soho in a taxi with me.
When I say 'with me' I mean with the director also, and the camera operator and the lighting camera-man and the sound- recordist and their vast lamps and equip- ment, all in the back of the taxi.
Sigourney is a tall, intelligent young woman, fit-looking, like the nicer kind of lacrosse captain. She is the female star of the film we are making —Half Moon Street — and the male star is Michael Caine, who has not yet started filming. I have an opportunity in the taxi to ask Sigourney about her first name and she confesses that she was christened Susan and at 14 could no longer stand being called Susie. She found Sigourney in The Great Gatsby.
We are very hostile to each other in the taxi — I mean our film characters are or, as Sigourney would say, `hostel', which does not sound so bad. Nevertheless I am disconcerted by the loathing in her brown eyes whenever we play, and re-play, our scene in the jam-packed stifling taxi, more lamps wobbling outside it, attached to it like wings, as it slowly makes its way up Dean Street, down Frith Street, over and over again. It is difficult to know where we are because white reflecting-card is taped to the windows.
It is very intimate in the back of the taxi, five of us, with cables and equipment. At one stop at a Soho kerbside the make-up girl, obviously unable to get in, asks Sigourney to rearrange my hair behind my ears. She does so, murmuring with teasing surprise, 'Oh such soft hair! Such soft little ears!' That is altogether more like it, and I tell the director, squatting agonisingly among the legs and equipment, who also wrote the film, that that is the scene he should have written, instead of this hostel one. He tries to laugh but he is engaged in what appears to be a passionate embrace with the lighting camera-man who is trying to reach past him, round him, through him, to adjust some paper masking on the lamp. `God! I could lick the hair on your arms!'
That was yesterday: the master-shot and Sigourney's close-ups. Today I am sitting waiting for the whole process to be repea- ted, for my close-ups. We are quite a village in Bedford Square: two canteen wagons with good food (`Shooting Break' and 'Set Meals'), a posh lavatory (con- sidering) and teams of friendly, helpful people whose jobs I have not yet identi- fied. I shall miss Sue, and Terry, and the rest.
Now I am called to enter the dreaded taxi again to be photographed in a way that will make my soft little ears four feet high. I note in the caravan mirror that I seem overnight to have grown a promising car- buncle on my nose, just in time for the magnification of that organ, and acknow- ledge with grim pleasure that at least my id is in good order. Then it will be back to the soaking hedges for a while, that care nothing for noses.
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