Letters полностью

For Merry Bernstein, with a shriek of nonsimulated fright, upstages us all. The spot is on her — and, clearly, vice versa; Fay Wray-like (but that tiara, those wings!) she looks up from the landing into the darkness with an expression of Terrified Disbelief. She screams again… Now a smaller spot obligingly searches the pavilion balcony, passing over grips, sound crewmen, waving bystanders, until it fixes on Jerome Bonaparte Bray. He stands outside the balcony railing, balancing who knows how; he wears no wings, but his famous cape is spread like a flying squirrel’s between his outspread arms and legs. He smiles, well, nuttily. He cries a name (not Merry’s; sounds to me like Morgana); he reaches for his crotch; he leaps into thin air; and in flickering, odd slow motion — Prinz must have wired him up! — he lands upon poor Tinkerbell.

I mean upon her. Merry is knocked flat; her wings are squashed; Bray’s cloak entirely covers the pair of them, who look to be wrestling or humping under a blanket. The girl squeals and squeals.

Prinz and Bea are nearest by, but up on their rigs. Ambrose and I, the closest on foot, dash to pull Bray off. Not as difficult a job as one would expect: he is extraordinarily light, or else somehow half suspended still by a wire I can’t see. He comes up squeaking, buzzing, clicking, salivating; no Dracula marks on Merope’s throat, but the lap of her leotard is soiled as if by axle grease. She scrambles whimpering from under like a half-swatted dragonfly. Light as he is, Bray is hard to hold on to, something about the material of that cape. He slips silkily from my grip; Ambrose still has him fairly fast, but as I make to resnatch him I see Bea Golden dollying grimly in as if to do the mike-boom trick again!

I prevent her. By 1814, Columbia may have been the new Gem of the Ocean, but Britannia was still its boss. We went at it on that dolly, then on the quayside proper, like a pair of fishwives, she wasting her breath on insults and obscenities, me settling the score not only for 4 July but as it were for all I’d put up with at Ambrose’s hands on her account till the past few days. Unfair, surely; paradoxical, too (since it was Ambrose I was fighting for!)—but mighty satisfying all the same. She snatches my hair: ha ha, ’tis Britannia’s wig! Hers is Dolly Homespun’s genuine article, which I lay hold of to good effect. My crinolines and whalebone corseting are dandy armor against her nails; if she rips one petticoat through, there’s another beneath. But her bit of bunting is all she’s got, and while it still waves at the scuffle’s end (in fact more than at the outset, for I’ve clawed it half off her) it sorely needs a Mary Pickersgill to restitch Stars to Stripes.

All this, of course, whilst cameras roll merrily and spectators cheer. Not all of them for Old Glory, either — there must have been a few Canadians in the crowd — though I grant the applause at my most telling blow might have been as much for B.G.‘s jugs as for the stroke that bared them. Comes my Author now to “relieve” me, just when I’m in position to strike Columbia’s colours altogether. Balls! cry I, when he scolds me for so exerting myself in my Condition — but enough I suppose is enough. We step out of the light, still fixed on Columbia as she regroups. Merry B. meanwhile, in proper hysterics, has fled to her Director’s arms — anyroad to his camera crane, where he coolly comforts her whilst she bawls and swipes at her lap. Somehow reascended to the balcony, Bray shrills imprecations upon us all, in particular upon Ambrose, who he ominously vows shall Pay. The crowd applauds him to the waiting Newswatch helicopter, which promptly buzzes off — to Lily Dale? (We’ve not seen him since).

Now bedraggled Bea sees what’s what on that camera crane and, her knockers rewrapped in the St Sp B, makes to turn the Eagle’s talons on Tinkerbell, who to my further satisfaction (her leotard mopped and her dander up) lays the same order of insults on her that were lately laid on me: M-F’ing Old Bag, & cet. The Director has his hands full keeping them apart. Britannia and weary Literature retire arm in arm from the scene, not much the worse for wear and withal fairly pleased with ourselves, as well as mightily entertained. In this reenactment at least, the redcoats might not have won the Scajaquada Scuffle, but Brother Jonathan surely seems to’ve come off second best.

Having been in her position myself, I was even able then to feel a certain sympathy for Bea, as aforementioned; especially next day, when word came that filming will not be resumed until Friday next, at Fort Erie. Our Director appears to have withdrawn with Tinkerbell to New York City; Ms Golden, very distraught, to the Remobilisation Farm, whether to rejoin the company on 15 August or not, we don’t know.