ONE - TILLY

 

Relax. It’s going to be fine.

I walked into the office block I knew so well, telling myself it would be okay. The building was filled of people like me. All of them pushing, fighting, clawing their way to the top of the movie business. On the fortieth floor was the man at the top. Eli Caffrey was waiting for me to tell him I'd failed to find the castle.

I caught the elevator up. I was crammed in with half a dozen men in suits, me the only woman listening to their muttered conversation. "She's the one he sent."

"What, her?"

Were they all hustling like me? Making it up as they went along? Maybe, but then maybe they wouldn’t have become location scout for Gold Standard Productions. Only an idiot would do that. Get a job with the most demanding producer in Hollywood and promise him something she couldn’t deliver. Step forward, Matilda Beal. Take a bow, Tilly.

Out of the elevator and along the corridor, passing by the film posters on the walls. I'd been the location scout for all of them. Trouble in Paradise. I found the island for that one. Off the coast of Crete but dressed up to look like the tropics. My first big movie.

Romancing the Dead. I got the shopping mall for that, middle of Idaho, three weeks of schmoozing the mayor to get permission to shoot, finally getting the signature with twenty-four hours left until deadline.

Each poster was of one of Gold Standard’s hits. There was Eli’s name at the bottom of them all, produced by…

The producer got on the poster. The location scout did not. No mention of me. But I was connected to all those box office smashes.

I was good at what I did. But that counted for nothing if I didn’t find the castle they needed.

I walked into the office at the end of the corridor. “Mr Caffrey is ready for you,” Lauren said. She was smiling. Her hair was immaculate, her make up perfect unlike mine. No matter how long I spent on it, I looked like the bride of Frankenstein compared to the secretaries in here. It was like they’d been hired to intimidate us mere mortals.

She had time to get her hair perfect. She hadn't just traipsed halfway around the world to find the right snug little cottage with thatched roof only to get back and find out the script had changed and now a castle was demanded instead.

I was screwed. The right castle didn’t exist. I had failed.

“Tilly,” Eli said as I walked into his office. “How ya doing?” He leaned his arm out towards me.

I accepted his outstretched hand despite him nearly yanking my arm out of its socket.

 “Fine, Eli, just fine. Going to tell me it’s changed to a palace made of glass? I might need a bit of notice if it has.”

He sat back down as I tentatively wriggled the bones in my hand. He picked up his cigar from the salad bowl sized ashtray. He inhaled, the tip glowing bright red before he blew out a lungful of cherry scented smoke into the air. It was the smell I always associated with him, even years later.

“No time even if we wanted to. There’s only a fortnight left." He grinned broadly. “Tell me you got something?”

“It’s going pretty well,” I replied, my heart sinking. Could he tell I was lying?

I hadn’t found the right castle. Not even close. It had to be on an island surrounded by mountains. Old but not falling down, big enough to fit a film crew inside, consent from all involved along with a hundred other specifications that were making my task all the more difficult.

“You know, I don’t let anyone else have the freedom I give you,” he said, pointing his cigar at me.

“I know,” I said, examining him closely. He was in his sixties, receding hair gelled so much it reflected the light of his desk lamp. Skin yellowed from all the cigars and sunken eyes from decades of late nights and too much white powder up his nose. He wore a Hawaiian shirt like a uniform, never seen in anything else.

He had a way of staring when he was angry and he was staring at me in exactly that way, his smile fading. He was looking at me like he didn’t believe me. I made my own smile wider. “When have I not come through?”

“Two weeks left,” he said, sucking on his cigar again. “Anyone else, I’d be bawling ‘em out right now but you’ve never let me down, Tilly.”

“I’m just finishing up the details, that’s all.”

“You better be. If we don’t get the right castle, you know what that means?”

I nodded. “Sure I do.”

He told me anyway. “It means Jurgen Harbor drops out. If he’s not directing, then the actors drop out. The money drops out. The goddam tea lady drops out. The whole thing goes in the can and we lose two years of prep and a shitload of money.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all in hand.”

“No pressure,” he said, nodding towards the door, the meeting over. “But if you fuck this up, I’ll make sure you never work in Hollywood again.”

 I kept my smile on my face until I was outside but then it dropped and that gnawing worry was back in the pit of my stomach.

There had been no point to the meeting. He’d done it just to remind me what was riding on this, as if I didn’t already know. I needed a castle and fast. Jurgen Harbor demanded it.

Jurgen Harbor was the darling director of Hollywood. Avant-garde but still somehow bankable. His movies were out there but, with some kind of alchemy of editing and marketing, they never failed. He’d never had a flop.

He told everyone it was because of the locations, not the characters. “I create worlds,” he said in his famous Teutonic accent. “The worlds must be real and they must match my dreams. For it is in my dreams that stories are born.”

What that meant for me was a hundred and one castles that weren’t right and I was running out of time to find the one he envisioned. I was also running out of places to look.

If I didn’t find the castle, Jurgen would drop out of the project. All the big names attached were only onboard for a chance to work with him. If he went, they went. Eli’s stock went down in the industry and I knew exactly who he’d pin the blame on. Me.

So I had to find a castle, get permission signed in person, get back. I had two weeks to do it. No pressure. It was only my career, my life, my whole world.

I went home feeling demoralised.

“How’d you get on, sweetie?” Mom asked as I walked in the front door.

“Oh, just peachy,” I replied, walking through to the lounge, sinking onto the sofa, laying on my back. She was on the computer but she spun around in her chair to face me.

“That good, huh?”

“That good.” I threw my head back and put my arms over my face, sighing loudly.

“It’ll be all right,” she said.

“Will it?” I replied. “I get my dream job, working with the biggest producer and director in the whole industry. I get six months to find the right cottage and I manage it right at the last minute. Then they change the script to a castle and I’ve only got two weeks left and I got nothing.”

“They can’t say you haven’t worked hard. You’ve been all over the world.”

“And where has that got me? I’m about to lose my job and I’m twenty-five and living with my mom because I still somehow can’t afford a place of my own in this town. What’s that you’re looking at?”

She had sat back down at the computer, clicking through a series of photos.

“I thought you might need some help.”

“Mom, I don’t think you can help with this.”

“What about this one?” she asked, clicking the mouse and zooming in the picture of a Gothic castle.

“Seen it,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s in Switzerland and they won’t let anyone film there. Plus it’s not on an island.”

“Yes but technology. Can’t they just put one in with their computers.”

“Jurgen Harbor doesn’t use CGI, mom. It’s one of the rules for his purity of cinema thing. Don’t look at me like that, it’s not my rule.”

“Okay, what about this one.”

“Nope.”

“This one?”

“Rang them. Missing its roof.”

“How about this?”

She clicked through one castle after another and my mood darkened. “Nope. Nope. Seen it. Nope. Wait. What was that one?” I sat up, twisting to look closer at the screen. “Go back one.”

“This?” she said, hope flickering across her face.

“Yes, that. Where is that?”

“Britain, I think. Loch Doon Castle.”

“Have you got a number for them?”

“I think it’s on their website.”

“Where’s my cell?” I asked, scrambling for my bag. I dialled the number as Mom read it out to me.

“Pick up, pick up.” I listened to the dial tone while examining the picture more closely. It looked perfect. On an island, the fabric of the building still intact. Lived in. Mountains in the background. Jetty for landing a boat. Footbridge to another island behind it. Everything Jurgen wanted.

The number rang. It kept ringing. I was just about to hang up when it clicked through to an answer machine, some Scottish woman reciting a message from the other side of the Atlantic. “This is Castle Doon. Please leave a message.”

“Hi, this is Matilda Beal calling from Gold Standard Productions. I’d love to speak to you about your castle if you could give me a ring back on…”

Mom sat next to me, fingers crossed on both hands as she listened. She didn’t speak until I’d hung up. “Well?”

“Answer machine,” I said. “Hopefully they’ll ring back.”

They didn’t. Time ticked by. The days went one after another. I left increasingly frantic messages on the Castle Doon machine. No one got back to me. It was like the place existed only in my head.

“What are you going to do?” Mom asked as I hung up yet again.

“I don’t know. Lose my job.”

Then the phone rang and I leapt for it so suddenly, I almost threw it on the floor. “Yes, hi, hello.”

“This is Angela Granville. You requested a call back, I believe.”

“I did. Hi, yes. Listen, we’re looking for a movie location and I think-”

“The owner does not give permission for any commercial filming to take place at Castle Doon.”

“I understand that but if I could just speak to him, perhaps-”

“I'm afraid that's not possible. Good afternoon.”

Then she hung up, the line going dead. I sank into the computer chair, groaning loudly. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m dead.”

“What did they say?” Mom asked.

“That they don't let people film there.”

“Was that the owner?”

“No, it was Angela someone.”

“So why not speak to the owner?”

“Because that's not possible,” I said, imitating a Scottish accent as best I could. “Good afternoon.”

She ignored my attempt at mimicking the voice I’d just heard. “Then go speak to him.” She loaded the castle website on the computer. “Look, here.”

My eye followed where she was pointing. “So, I don’t get it?”

“You can stay there as a guest. Look, book here.”

“So, so what?”

“So you book a stay, perfectly ordinary, just a vacation. Then you get to know the owner while you’re there, do some schmoozing, tell him how much you’ll pay, how much publicity he’ll get from the film. You then come back to a glittering career and I get to buy a new hairdo with the proceeds and hide some of this grey.”

“How did I not think of that?”

“Because you’re not as clever as me?”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie.”

“I better book a vacation. And the flight. What if there’s no flight out there in time?”

She slid open the drawer of the desk, pulling out an envelope. “I might have sorted that for you.”

“What?”

She passed me the envelope. “While you were waiting for a call back, I did some research of my own. You are booked into Castle Doon for a two night stay at the start of next week. I’d have given you longer but that was all I could afford. I have also booked you on a flight out, economy. My savings don’t stretch to first class.”

“Mom,” I squealed, throwing my arms around her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you don’t want me to help with packing. I hate packing.”

“Thank you,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. “I owe you.”

On the day of my flight, she saw me off. I climbed into the back of the cab with my suitcase while she stood on the sidewalk. “I’ll see you in a couple of days,” I said as the engine started. “Hopefully still with a career.”

Then the cab rolled away and I got a last glance back at her still waving figure.

I watched the city out the window as we drove, wondering if I’d come back to rapturous approval and a career going stratospheric or joining the soup kitchen queue.

It all depended on what happened when I spoke to Robert King, owner of Castle Doon. I just hoped he was the kind of person amenable to my winning smile and my checkbook.