Bron-20

Continued from Chapter 19: Bron-19 | ABCtales

It hadn’t been a bad morning’s filming, thought Chris. At least, not bad by recent standards, and not bad at all by the standards of West Two Productions. None of the equipment had broken down on set, no one had muffed their lines catastrophically and even Bron’s North Walian vowels had been kept in check.

She’d just had to say: “Howdy! What’s doin?” in the scene where she interrupted Seargeant Mearns and a member of the ground crew in their muttered conversation, hunched conspiratorially over an engine cowling. (Actually a large plastic office waste bin repainted in metallic silver. Geoff and the rest of the props team had been busy again.)

Chris was just about to suggest a decampment to the Churchill Arms when there was a tap at the large door that fronted onto the mews. Then a louder rap. Then the door jerked open, inwards, scraping on the concrete. The feet of a zimmer frame thudded down on its grey rubber feet into the gap. “Hi-yall! Anyone there?”

The door shuddered fully open, revealing an elderly lady, steel-grey bouffant hair rising vertically from her scalp. Beige slacks, red chemise. She wheezed and panted, leaning on the frame. She was a tall woman, even with her slumped posture “You’all the folks at West Two Productions?”

“’Fraid so,” said Chris.

“They told me I’d find you in here. I’m Mary. Neat little set-up you have here…”

“Mary?”

“Mary Hinds. Loo-ten-ant Hinds, late of the 509^th fighter squadron – Roxey’s Raiders…”

“Lieutenant Hinds! I thought, we thought…”

“You thought I was dee-yud? No - still alive an’ kickin’, just about. Tho’ this ere emfa-seemya’s givin’ me hell, ah can tell ya. Lemme siddown…”

“Of course, Lieutenant…Mary.” Geoff hastily dragged an orange plastic chair across the studio and set it down behind it. She collapsed into it, wheezing heavily.

“Thought I’d hop across the ocean to give you folks a helpin’ hay-und. Tell you’all if you makin’ any mistakes. I read about yo’ur movie in the paper. Well, read it on their computer thingammijig…”

“Oh, the piece in the Sun Herald. News does travel fast these days.”

“I would have been with y’all sooner. Only it took me a while to snee-ayk out of the Home, get to a travel agent, git myself onto a plane … and then it was stuy-yuck at that Heath-Row airport of yours. Border folks wouldn’t let me in, said ah needed a piss-pot…”

“What, like, a commode? Well, it is a long flight…”

“No! A paarse-port

“You went all the way from the States to London without a passport?”

“Never knew ah needed one.”

Geoff broke in: “So what happened?”

“They put me in a little room for hours, say’ud they were goin’ to send me straight back to Atlanta. But then some high-ups from the embassy turned up, an some more of your immy-grasion people. The embassy guys were nice. One of them was from Georgia, like me. But they took this evrythin’ in the purse of mine apart wi’a fine-tooth comb – driver’s licence, medicare, social security card, asked me all sorts of questions about me, ma folks, what I’d been doin’. Everthin’ short of puttin’ on a rubber glove an’ shoving their hand up mah arse…Not that I’d have minded. The Georgia guy was quite a dee-ush.” She laughed wheezily, rockin backwards and forwards on the orange chair.

“Anyways, then I says: ‘Well, ah didn’t need no pass-port when ah was chasin’ the Japs all over the Pacific back in ’44.’ Then I told them the whole story, ‘bout Lootenant Hinds, Air Corp’s first lady combat pilot, Roxy’s Raiders…. They made a few calls to some record office in the States, mah story all checked out. Ah tell you, they was eatin’ out of mah hand by the time I’d finished with ‘em. Fixed me up with a temporary card and said I was free to go…”

“Wow!” said Mike. “Well, Lieutenant Hinds, this is Bron. She plays you in the film…”

“Please to meet you Bron! Well, ah must say, you don’t LOOK much like ah did, even back then. My, you’re a purdy girl – I was a bit of a, not a Plain Jane, but… well nowhere like as fine-lookin’ as you, young lady. And I’m a good hee-yud taller. Have you always been an actress?”

“No, Miss … Mary. Before, I worked in a metal factory. And now I work on the railway - when I’m not here with the guys doing the film.”

“My, that’s a lovely English accent you have, Bron. So you work on the railroad. As a hostess?”

“No, I’m a shunter, at the depot. I couple and uncouple the carriages…”

“My my! Well you aint no shrinkin’ violet, that’s for sure…”

To be continued in Chapter 21