Angel

There was a sudden knocking on the door, and Will Brent came in. Will was from Wardrobe, and he said quickly, ‘I came to help you get out of your costume, Gavin, but I see you’ve already done so. Sorry to be late.’

‘No problem, Will, I’ve only taken off my doublet. Perhaps you’ll help me with the rest of my stuff, especially these boots.’ Gavin grinned at Will and stuck out a leg.

‘Right away,’ Will said, loping across the room.

‘I’ll see you at the wrap party,’ Rosie murmured, kissed Gavin lightly on top of his head, and went over to the sofa to retrieve her bag.

‘Remember what I said, Angel Face. You’re on for my next picture,’ Gavin called out before turning his attention to the surgical collar. Gingerly, he adjusted it on his neck, grimacing as he did.

TWO

A blast of cold air hit Rosie in the face as she stepped outside. Shivering, she pulled her jacket closer around her and looked up.

Above her the sky was bleak and unremitting, filled with clouds the colour of lead. Even though it was still afternoon it was already gloomy and growing darker, the kind of English winter’s day to which she had grown accustomed of late.

There was a hint of drizzle in the wind, and she could not help wondering what the children of England would do if it rained after all.

Today was November the fifth. Bonfire Night, they called it. Aida had told her this over lunch last week, and the producer had recited the ancient verse, passed down over the centuries, which she had learned as a child: ‘Please to remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot.’ Bonfires would blaze throughout the British Isles tonight, effigies of Guy Fawkes would be tossed into the flames, fireworks exploded, and potatoes and chestnuts roasted in the fire, as was the tradition – providing it didn’t rain, of course.

‘All being well, we’ll be wrapping the picture on the fifth,’ Aida had said to her, over their snack in the studio restaurant last Tuesday. ‘But I’m afraid we won’t be allowed to have a bonfire. For security reasons, obviously. However, maybe we can come up with something appropriate – to celebrate Bonfire Night as well as the end of the film.’

She had not been able to determine exactly what Aida had meant by appropriate, but she and everyone else would soon know. The wrap party was scheduled to take place in a few hours.

Rosie glanced around as she hurried across the deserted back lot of Shepperton Studios, walking in the direction of her office in the production building.

She had been based here for the past nine months, and the territory had grown so familiar to her it now felt like home. Also, she had enjoyed working with Aida and the crew, who were all British, and with whom she had felt comfortable and at ease from the start.

Quite unexpectedly, it hit her how much she was going to miss Shepperton and everyone connected with the movie. That was not always the case; sometimes she was relieved and thankful when a film was finally in the can, so that she could make a fast escape, fleeing without looking back. But an enormous camaraderie between the cast, crew and production people had built up on Kingmaker, and over the long months of working together the feelings of closeness and intimacy had become more pronounced than ever. Perhaps that was because this particular production had been troubled right from the outset, and in consequence everyone had hung together to fight for it, determined to make it succeed. She was sure it would. In the picture business it was something of a given that a difficult film frequently turned out to be the best, once it was cut, edited and scored, and up there on the screen.

They had all worked incredibly hard, extending themselves beyond the call of duty, even when they were almost too exhausted to continue. Yet somehow they had. And Gavin, who had put his heart and soul into the role of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, had given a stellar performance, an Oscar-winning performance. At least that was her opinion, but, no doubt about it, she was prejudiced.

Pushing open the double glass doors of the production building, Rosie went down the narrow corridor and into her office. After closing the door behind her she leaned against it for a moment, her eyes sweeping around the room, taking everything in: the drawings lining the walls, the racks of costumes, the huge table covered with research and the many and varied accessories she had designed.

During the nine months she had been camped here she had accumulated innumerable possessions, and it struck her that she was facing a great deal of packing in the next few days. It was a relief to know she had her two assistants, Val Horner and Fanny Leyland, to help catalogue her drawings, pack them along with the costumes she wanted to keep for her archive, and box up the books and photographs which had been used for research.

Her main sketches of the costumes for Gavin were pinned on the long wall of the office, and now she walked over and stood looking at them, for a moment studying the designs intently, her head to one side. Then she nodded to herself.

Gavin was right, Kingmaker had been a very demanding film, not only because of its size, elaborateness and huge cast, but also because of the pomp and ceremony and other historical elements in the script, which she had had to take into consideration, and which had naturally influenced her designs. It had been quite a challenge. Nevertheless, she responded well to challenges; they seemed to bring out the best in her. And difficult and backbreaking though the work had been, she was gratified that she had had the opportunity to be part of a picture of such sweep, scope and magnitude.

Right from the beginning, when they had first gone into preproduction, she had been exhilarated about it, brimming with excitement and energy.

Her main focus had been on Gavin, who was cast in the leading role of Warwick. The Earl had been the most powerful man in England during the middle two decades of the fifteenth century. A Yorkshireman of Royal blood, descended from King Edward III, he was the premier Earl of England in his time, and one of the greatest magnates and warrior knights who had ever lived – truly the stuff of legend. It was Warwick who had put his cousin Edward Plantagenet on the throne of England during the civil war between the Royal Houses of York and Lancaster. Commonly known as the War of the Roses, so named because of the emblems of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, Warwick had been a major player in that war. He had, in the end, been responsible for defeating the Lancastrians in several bloody battles, and had handed the realm to Edward of York, the legitimate heir.

Because Warwick was the power behind the throne and the chief adviser to his nineteen-year-old protégé, King Edward IV, his contemporaries had dubbed him the Kingmaker. This name had stuck over five centuries, hence the title of their movie. The screenplay, by Oscar-winning screenwriter Vivienne Citrine, focused on Warwick in 1461, when he was in his thirty-third year and at the height of his powers, the action continuing for two more years, with the film ending in 1463.

Rosie’s main concern had been to create costumes for Gavin that were medieval in style, but which also suited him, flattered him, looked good on film, were comfortable to wear and move about in.

As always, her aim was to give the clothes genuine historical accuracy. It was her belief that costuming, like sets, must bring a period vividly to life on celluloid, and thus help to make the movie realistic and wholly believable. She was as renowned for her skill at doing this as she was for her immense talent, and it was one of the many secrets of her success as a theatrical designer. Rosalind Madigan’s costumes had long been noted for their unique sense of period, whether it was a period from the past or of the present, and she also made certain they delineated the rank, class and nationality of the characters in a film or a play.

Her research for Kingmaker had been so extensive she realized at one point that she had done far more than she usually did, and than was necessary. But this was because of Gavin. The film was his idea, and his own personal project. He was one of the executive producers, and had even raised the money to finance it. Hollywood had wanted no part of it, despite the fact that Gavin was as big a star as Costner, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and at the top of the box-office charts. In fact, Gavin had faced the same kind of situation Kevin Costner had when that actor had tried to get the Hollywood studios interested in Dances with Wolves. None of them had wanted to commit to it, and Costner had gone out and done it all himself, had raised the money required with the help of Jake Ebert, an independent producer based in Europe.

The actual concept for Kingmaker had been entirely Gavin’s – his vision – and he had believed in it with such a fervour he had ignited everyone around him, filled them with his own brand of enthusiasm.

A history buff, and long intrigued by Warwick, he had been seized once more by the drama, excitement, achievement, glory and ultimate tragedy of the Earl’s life when reading yet another biography of him. His imagination fired, and filled with inspiration, he had selected a few key years, when Warwick’s star had been at its apex, and had developed his own story outline for the film. He had then hired Vivienne Citrine to write the screenplay. Together they had worked on it for over a year, until Gavin was satisfied it was as perfect as it could ever be, that it truly was a fine shooting script.

Rosie herself had been very taken with the project from its inception. Gavin had first discussed it with her when she had seen him in Beverly Hills late in 1988, and not unnaturally her excitement had known no bounds when he had finally managed to glue it all together last year.

Long before they had started preproduction in England, she had begun her research for the costumes, reading biographies of Warwick and Edward IV, as well as history books about England and France in the Middle Ages. She had studied the art and architecture of the period in order to have a total visual picture of the times, and once she was in London she had spent long hours in the historical costume departments of various museums.

When the assistant director, production designer, production manager, several other members of the unit and Gavin had left the studios to go scouting locations, she had gone with them.

They had first visited Middleham Castle on the Yorkshire moors, once the great Northern stronghold of Warwick, which still stood but had long been a desolated ruin, its broken towers and shattered chambers windswept and open to the elements. But Gavin had felt it was important to see the castle and the terrain where Warwick had grown up and had lived out a large portion of his life.

Together she and Gavin had walked through the vast empty space that had once been the Great Hall. It was roofless now, its walls crumbling into further decay. Under a sky of piercing blue, they had stepped across a stone-flagged floor partially grown-over with grass and with tiny spring wildflowers sprouting up between the cracks. Despite its tumbledown appearance it had been impressive and had captured her imagination, and Gavin’s also. Later they had driven over the sombre implacable moors where Warwick had fought some of his most decisive battles.

At the end of their trip they had travelled farther afield, had pushed on towards the East Coast. Gavin had wanted to visit York Minster, the magnificent Gothic cathedral in the ancient walled city of York. It was here that Warwick and Edward IV had once marched in soaring triumph and glory, moving across the plain of York on their caparisoned horses, at the head of their great armies, their silken armorial banners blowing in the wind, the two of them heroes to all of England – the valiant young King and the Kingmaker. To Rosie, this was one of the most colourful and effective ceremonial scenes in the script, and she had been excited about designing the costumes for it.

Between several more trips to Yorkshire, and many more hours spent cloistered in libraries and museums, she had eventually acquired enough knowledge to start all of her designs, confident that she knew more about medieval England than most people.

As it turned out, the only real problem Rosie encountered was the designing of the armour. Recalling the worry and anxiety of that now, she eyed the suit of armour standing in one corner of the room, and winced. She would never forget the terrible struggle she had had in creating the prototype.

There was one big battle scene in the script, which, despite the difficulty of shooting it and the costs involved, Gavin was determined to keep. And so she had had no alternative but to make a stab at designing the medieval armour plate.

In the end she had been able to overcome her many problems with it, but only because of Brian Ackland-Snow. Brian was their immensely talented production designer, another Oscar-winner – for the movie A Room with a View – who at the time had been in the process of bringing fifteenth-century England to life on the sound stages of Shepperton.

As far as Rosie was concerned, Brian was a genius, and she was well aware that she would be eternally in his debt. He had introduced her to a manufacturer of underwater diving suits who was able to copy her design for the suit of armour using a strong and rigid neoprene with a silver coating which cleverly simulated the iron used for armour in the Middle Ages. This synthetic rubber was light in weight and comfortable for the actors to wear, yet on film it looked exactly like the real thing.

Swinging around, Rosie walked over to the large table at the other end of the room, knowing she must assess the massive piles of research stacked there.

Immediately, she realized she would need as many as six large tea chests in which to pack everything. Apart from the books, sketches and photographs, there were swatches of specially-dyed fabrics, such as tweeds, wools and broadcloths; samples of suede and leather for boots, trousers, jerkins and doublets; pieces of fur, plus a vast array of velvets and silks. Baskets and trays held a fantasy collection of brilliant, glittering costume jewellery – brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, fancy buttons, belts, scabbards and gilded-metal crowns. All the stuff of pomp and ceremony and majesty needed for an historical movie of this nature.

What a production it has been, she thought almost wonderingly – costly, elaborate and complicated beyond anything they had ever imagined at the outset. And it had been so fraught at times. Tempers had flared, angry words had been exchanged, and there had been a few temperamental scenes, quite apart from the genuinely serious problems they had had to contend with: bad weather and illnesses, to mention only two, which had caused delays and spiralling costs. On the other hand, filming had never been anything but thrilling, that really was the only word to use, and it had turned out to be the most splendid production, the likes of which she had never before worked on. And perhaps never would again.

Whenever she had been able to, she had gone with Gavin to see the rushes – the footage shot the day before and processed overnight in the lab. Every scene she had watched in the studio screening room had taken her breath away. The ‘look’ was there, vivid and visually arresting; the unfolding drama was spellbinding; the acting superb.

Gavin was forever worried about the film; they all were, in one way or another. But just a short while ago, as the last scene was shot and the movie wrapped, she had known deep in her bones that they really did have a winner. A sure thing. She was convinced that Gavin had made a movie that was of the same quality, calibre and importance as The Lion in Winter, and that it would win a clutch of Oscars.

Eventually, she roused herself from her meanderings about her work and the film, realizing how much she had to accomplish in the next three days.

And so she went and sat down at her desk in front of the window and, pulling the phone towards her, she dialled. The number rang and rang until finally it was picked up, and a familiar girlish voice said, ‘Hello, Rosalind, sorry I took so long to answer. I was up on the ladder, putting your boxed files on the top shelf.’

‘How did you know it was me?’ Rosie asked, laughter echoing in her voice.

‘Don’t be so silly, Rosalind, nobody else phones me on this number, you know that.’

‘Only too true. I’d forgotten for a minute. Anyway, Yvonne, how are you?’

‘Fine, and so is everyone else. Collie and Lisette are out, though. Did you wish to speak to Collie?’