3 November 2018
Day 1 of shooting
‘Hello, Iris,’ Nick says, and, on cue, I freeze, set down the cup I’m holding, then turn to face him. But as I do, raising my eyes to meet his dark gaze (deepest brown, is how Robbie’s eyes are described in the novel,almost black), the entire thing still jars, feels wrong, even though this is now our one-hundred-and-forty-second attempt at this torturous scene.
‘Cut,’ comes Ana’s call, saving us from having to push on and fail at the rest of it (like we already have, one-hundred-and-forty-one times). ‘Let’s take a break.’
And, as the camera rolls back, it’s like the room exhales. The silence that’s been blanketing the set evaporates, replaced by a buzz of conversation as everyone moves, heading to the Portaloos, or the refreshment table, as relieved as I feel to not begoing again.
It’s gone nine. We’ve worked through dinner. We’ve been at this scene ever since lunch, when the weather closed in, forcing us to abandon Naomi’s montage sequences outside. They’d all been going so smoothly, too. Not even I managed to screw up walking through Doverley’s meadows, or jogging up and down its front steps (a tap, a skip, of the uneven one); and afterwards around the base, when Nick and I set to exchanging loadedstares across crowds of uniformed extras, Ana declared the tension between us sliceable.
‘Maybe I should go missing more,’ I joked to Nick, in a vain attempt to lift the mood between us, not that I really expected him to laugh.
Which he didn’t, still one hundred per cent pissed about the way I disappeared to the attic last night.
‘Without a word,’ he said, earlier this morning, seeking me out in my trailer just as soon as he’d finished his scene in the library with Felix. I was in costume, all made up and ready to go, trying, without success, to push what I’d seen at Iris’s window from my mind. He was in uniform, too, neither of us quite who we were any more. The dislocation of it unsettled me, even more than I already was; his eyes, so dark and aggrieved above his air force blues, disorientated me. It was them that I focused on as he continued talking, saying how worried he’d been when he’d woken at 4 a.m. and discovered me gone. ‘Why didn’t you leave a note?’
‘I didn’t mean to be that long,’ I told him.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I went all over the house looking for you. Except the attic, obviously. Your and Ana’s secret … ’
‘It’s not a secret.’
‘Well, I definitely didn’t know about it. I wound up walking the entire damn estate.’
‘What?’ I said, stunned. ‘Outside?’
‘Yeah.’ He let go a humourless laugh. ‘Outside.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘You were missing. Not answering your phone. What else was I going to do?’
‘Wait?’ I proffered.
‘Yeah, I guess that’s what you’d have done in my shoes.’
‘Nick, come on. It was just a few hours.’
‘Not to me it wasn’t,’ he said, and went, slamming from my trailer, too angry to want to hear anything else I might say.
And now here we are, one-hundred-and-forty-two takes closer to insanity, the tension between us still very much sliceable, just not, apparently, in the right way.
We’re on the outskirts of the reconstructed base, inside one of three super-sized hangars, all of which have been built as soundstages. This one holds the set for the interior rooms of the control tower, and the airmen’s canteen. Next door is a cutaway ofMabel’s Fury, where Nick, Felix and the rest of them will film their flying sequences. Next door to that is the inside of The Heaton Arms, a dance hall, and Bettys cocktail bar. Not all of the movie’s going to be shot here on site – the sequences at Bomber Command HQ, and during Iris, Robbie and Tim’s childhood, will, for example, be filmed in other locations, with a different cast, in the new year – but the plan is to film the bulk of the wartime action here, and down the road in Heaton. Timing-wise, it’s super ambitious, but it’s been near impossible to align everyone’s schedules, so we need to make the most of having everyone in the same place. Ana’s also hoping we can get the ending done ahead of Christmas – when the ending is finally agreed on – and we will need to move for that, although where to is still, obviously, in hot dispute. Imogen’s finale in the novel has Iris on a Yorkshire beach, wading into the rolling sea and disappearing beneath it. Honestly, I’m hoping that’s not the one we go with. I don’t want to immerse myself in the North Sea, ever, and definitely not in the middle of winter. Besides, I hate that ending for Iris.
It’s just so unbearablysad.
But for the present, that’s still weeks away, and this scene that Nick and I are currently butchering is in the control tower’s recreated breakroom, where Iris and Robbie meet again. Iris is about to start her first shift, and Robbie – who’s just learnt from his bomb aimer, Jacob, that she’s been looking for him – runs up to see her before taking off. He’s in full flight gear, withtime for only the briefest exchange with Iris before leaving. It’s a gorgeous passage in the novel, full of words unspoken, and emotion unspent. Written on the page, it rings absolutely true, but here, now, it’s the nightmare of the rehearsals all over again, only a thousand times worse, because for every failed take, we’re not only haemorrhaging time, we’re wasting money too, and the movie’s nearly been called off twice as it is because of its stratospheric costs. It’s only going ahead now because all overheads have been kept to a minimum – no entourages, personal make-up artists, or diva requests of any kind – and because Ana, Nick, Felix, and I have agreed to work for a cut of profits rather than an upfront fee.
‘I feel like crying,’ I say to Nick, as we take the bottles of water a runner brings us.
‘Don’t do it, Claude,’ calls Ana, reminding me that my microphone’s still on. ‘You’ll ruin your make-up.’
I reach down, switching my mic off, and Nick does the same with his.
‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘We’ll get there.’
Wearily, I raise my bottle to my lips, drinking. I’m sweltering under the lights in my thick uniform, and know it must be even worse for him, layered up in his bomber jacket and flight suit. He hasn’t complained about it, though. He hasn’t let go so much as a sigh of frustration at how long this is taking. He’s on best behaviour. We both are. The set is packed, the eyes of the entire crew on us, and neither of us want to give them a sideshow.
