Rehearsals went on, hour after hour. I had no clear sense of how much time passed: day might as well be night. The studios were a collection of shed-like buildings on the edge of a small town near the Thames, but once inside them I felt as if I might as well be underground. There were no windows; interior and exterior light had to be created by electric arc lamps strung from the invisible ceiling, and windy or misty conditions created by large fans operated by the technical staff. Everyone seemed to drink coffee, but I preferred tea. “Cup of tea for Miss Hope!” became Dennis’s refrain that first day. David never drank coffee or tea, only water. And Aidan accompanied his coffee with a swig of something from a hip flask he kept in his jacket pocket.

David chided him. “Inseparable from that thing, aren’t you? Like a baby and its bottle.”

“You’d drink, too, if you had to put up with a director whose childishness is more evident than any baby’s,” Aidan retorted. “Light me a fag, will you, Jeannie?”

Jeanette did not obey; smoking on the film set was strictly forbidden. But Aidan never gave up his quest to irritate everyone, though it was obvious that all he did was bore them. When I asked Maria why he did it, she shrugged and said, “That’s not for me to say, Miss Hope. Mr Tobias is a lovely actor, even when … you know, he’s had a tipple, and that’s what matters, I suppose.”

Jeanette did not seem to consider it necessary to introduce me to the technicians. They ignored me as they went about their work. But to their surprise, and possibly their embarrassment, I could not ignore them.

“And you are…?” I said to the man in the cap while he was adjusting a lamp.

“Cinematographer, Miss Hope.”

“And what is your name?”

“Harry, Miss Hope.”

“And what does a cinematographer do?”

Blank look. “Er … the moving pictures. I’m in charge of the photographing.”

Blank look from me.

“Er … the cameras, like. I keep them working and sort out the lighting, and the effects, and how it all looks through the camera. You know, get it all how Mr Penn wants.”

I held out my hand for him to shake. “Well, I’m very pleased to meet you, Harry.”

While I was drinking tea during a break, I tried the same tactic on the boy who was winding cables in the corner. “And you are…?”

“Me?” His face was scarlet. “Grip, Miss Hope.”

“Grip? Your name is Grip, you mean?”

“No, miss. My job. I’m a grip. Me and all them others, we’re the grips,” he said, nodding towards a group of five or six men, also on their tea break, playing cards on a box.

“And your name is…?”

“Alfie, miss.”

“And what do you, er, grip, Alfie?”

Met by his silent bewilderment, I tried again. “Look, I am very new and want to find things out. I mean, why are you called a grip?”

His embarrassment increased. “Don’t know, miss.”

“Well, what do you do?” I asked patiently.

“We’re like stage hands. We do what the gaffer tells us.”

The gaffer? I felt defeated. “Very well, Alfie, thank you. Now, I had better let you get back to work.”