The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [67]
My hands tense. It’ll be the first time I’ve touched a camera since…
But of course I can do it.
I thought I’d feel more, but it’s just grey plastic and cables, inert, innocuous, not an instrument of mass destruction. Maybe it helps that it’s so small, nothing like the heavier on-the-shoulder camera I used in the helicopter. I hold it up to my eye, half expecting to see through the viewfinder a flash of Steve’s head, welling crimson, but the frame is filled only with Martin’s hairy, worried face.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Know it like the back of my head. You ready, Martin?’
I’ll take that croak as a yes.
As we leave the caf, he hangs back and grabs my arm. ‘Be gentle with me, India.’
‘You have done telly before?’
‘Yes, but only as the chap being interviewed. Now I’m supposed to be front man, every sensible word has flown out of my head.’
I’m scanning the camera furiously, running my fingers over the casing. ‘Tell you a secret. I can’t remember where the eject button is so I can load the tape.’
‘Well, don’t ask me. I’m useless with technology.’
Somehow between us we set up in the henge with the camera loaded and Martin semi-coherent, and Daniel hasn’t noticed what a pair of idiots he has in his employ. Martin strikes a manly pose, staring into the far distance, while I position the camera.
‘Take off your jumper.’
‘You forward young thing.’
‘It casts too much colour up onto your face. You’ll look like a tomato. Can you hold this piece of paper?’
‘What’s written on it? “Beware, lunatic talking”?’
‘It’s for the white balance. Don’t ask me to explain.’ Daniel is wandering between the tall stones of the Cove. ‘Does Mr Porteus make you as nervous as he does me?’
‘Too right,’ says Martin, fervently, throwing his sweater to land untidily next to his leather satchel by the tripod. ‘Am I white enough?’
‘Lily-like. Now, in your own time, speak.’
‘Hang on–what am I supposed to do with the rest of me? Where do I put my hands? No, don’t answer that.’
‘Lean on the stone, looking casual…Oh, shit.’
A green Land Rover has pulled up on the verge by the gate. A pair of muddy cowboy boots descends from the driver’s door: Ed, wearing aviator shades. Michael, togged up for telly in a Barbour so pristine the wax gleams, is walking round from the other side.
‘What’s up?’ asks Martin, uneasily. ‘Haven’t got coffee froth in my beard, have I?’
‘Nothing. I thought they’d be meeting in the office.’ Another car parks behind the Land Rover, disgorging the National Trust’s film liaison officer, in green wellies, and the curator, in pink ones and a long flouncy skirt. ‘Carry on. We’re rolling…and speed.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry. Something camerapersons always say. It means ready, steady, go.’
Not everyone’s face works on camera, but Martin’s does, even with the beard. He’s a boyish mixture of earnest and enthusiastic, eyes warm and twinkly, and although the sun shows up the creases at their corners, he’s fit and muscled for a middle-aged bloke. Ed’s wiry, but nowhere near as buff.
‘Oh, Lord, I see what you mean,’ says Martin, coming over to watch a playback on the camera’s LCD screen. ‘I do need to smile more on a closeup.’
‘Relax and enjoy it.’
‘Easy enough for you to say. You try.’
‘Fortunately no one is ever going to ask me to step round the camera to the other side,’ I say. ‘There’s too much of me to be a presenter.’
‘Bollocks, India. Most men prefer a girl with some meat on her bones. You’re tall enough to carry it. You’d look great.’
Does he mean he prefers…? We’re standing close. The smell of him is warm, spicy, male.
‘One more?’ he says.
I readjust the tripod and bend to the eyepiece, while Martin faces the camera. ‘That’s good…No, hang on a mo.’
Behind him, Ed has reappeared, strolling across the grass towards us.
‘Before we carry on,’ I say, straightening up, ‘something else I want to show you. Watch the last take again in the viewfinder.’ When he’s beside me, leaning in to the camera, I lean in too, intimate. ‘There–see that thing you do with your hand? It’s a bit flouncy. Fine to use your hands, but you don’t