Jessica Ayre - One-Man Woman

ONE-MAN WOMAN




Never again would Jennie let a man invade her feelings, only to shatter the equilibrium of her life, the way Max had done so cruelly. In future she was going to concentrate on her very pleasant job as a television make-up girl, and leave men severely alone. But how long would she keep her resolve, once she had met Derek Hunter?

Another book you will enjoy

by

JESSICA AYRE

NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Lynda Harrow was a very talented interior designerwithout conceit, she knew it; and she ought to have worked very well with the equally talented architect Paul Overton. So it was very disheartening when he seemed to be doing all he could to disparage her and her work. It was even more disheartening when she fell in love with himand realised that the glamorous Vanessa Tarn had got there first!

First published 1982

Australian copyright 1982

Philippine copyright 1983

This edition 1983

Jessica Ayre 1982

ISBN 0 263 74121 4

05-0283

Jennie Lewis stood back to look at the face beneath her. It had put on years in minutes. She gently added another furrow to the brow, drew a few more pale, crinkly lines around the corners of the mouth. Then she dabbed some blue-grey cream under the eyes and rubbed it in delicately with her fingertips.

'I think that's it,' she said. 'You can look now.'

Daniela Colombi raised her head and opened lustrous eyes wide to look into the brightly-lit mirror.

'Madre mia!' Her shriek pierced the quiet of the dressing-room, making the walls echo. 'What have you done to me, you cruel girl?'

Jennie flinched as if she had been hit.

'My instructions were to age you by some thirty years,' she controlled her voice, 'and I've done just that.'

'You've done it too well,' Daniela Colombi muttered. 'I look older than my motherper Dio, my grandmother!' She grimaced into the mirror, tried a smile, then a frown, and sighing, reached for the slightly scruffy grey-streaked wig perched on a dummy's head at the corner of the dressing table. She pulled it over the transparent plastic cap which covered her own luxuriant curls and gazed at her reflection. Suddenly a deep throaty laugh broke from her. It so jarred with the newly wrinkled face and thin-lipped mouth that Jennie too found herself giggling.

'You're brilliant, my Jennie, brilliant!' Daniela Colombi turned and patted Jennie's smudged hand. 'I must only swallow my enormous vanity and get used to my new self.' She got out of her chair, and then catching herself, sat down again and repeated the gesture more slowly, as if arthritis had suddenly gripped her joints.

Then she gave Jennie a sly wink, smoothed down the shapeless black dress which added pounds to her curves, and shuffled slowly towards the door.

Jennie watched the Italian actress in amazement mingled with admiration. Beautiful, voluptuous Daniela Colombi had turned into a suffering, shabby old woman. Reaching for a glass of tepid water, Jennie breathed a sigh of relief and sank into the nearest chair. She wiped a bead of perspiration from her brow and allowed herself a moment's rest.

They had been shooting for some weeks now and the pace had never slowed. It was Jennie's first major television film job. The cast and production team were of international repute and despite herself, Jennie was secretly thrilled. Her initial trepidation at working with stars had faded as she quickly fell in with the smooth professionalism of the rest of the team. Only Daniela Colombi presented a problem, and the make-up supervisor had assigned her specifically to Daniela. It had taken Jennie a little time to get used to Daniela's open shows of temperament, her rapid and violent shifts of mood, her outspokenness. She was quite unlike any actress Jennie had worked with before. Her blatant vanity, her quickwitted digs if everything wasn't just right, made Jennie nervous. Yet the actress's genuine warmth, her ability to vent her feelings immediately and loudly, had grown on Jennie.

So unlike me, Jennie thought as she pulled herself to her feet. She put together the creams, crayons, powders she would need for touching up between takes, washed her hands, drying them carelessly on her slender jean-clad legs, and strode out into the studio.

Once again the labyrinthine complexity of the vast space took her by surprise. A warren of constructed insome with ceilings, some without, always with their fourth wall missing, like little makebelieve rooms in a doll's house. Yet lifesize, and set off from each other by lanes filled with soft-ware: cameras, monitors, lights. If she raised her head she saw a tangled web of girders and beams from which outlandish instruments projected, like some intricate spacecraft from the year 2500. It was all strangely hushed, lifeless, despite the seemingly random movement of people, the echoing sound. Until suddenly, with the clack of a clapperboard, lights and actors brought one room in the maze, one particular set, to life.

The commotion at one end of the large hangar-like space indicated to Jennie that they hadn't yet started to shoot. As she approached, she noticed Daniela Colombi at the centre of a noisy group. Among them were Matthew Tarn, the bulky good-natured English director; and his Italian assistant, Piero Sraffa, quick and elegant in his movements. Towering over the others was the scriptwriter, Derek Hunter, his blue gaze unseeingly directed at Jennie.

Jennie stopped in her tracks until Daniela waved her insistently towards the group. 'Come, Jennie, you're the one they should be congratulating, not me. I'm simply your creation.'

Jennie felt a flush rising to her cheeks, as Daniela urged her to the centre of the hubbub. She hated being conspicuous and she stood there uncomfortably, shifting from foot to foot, as the other woman acknowledged her handiwork.

'Let me tell you something,' Daniela Colombi looked at her conspiratorially and stage-whispered. 'They all secretly prefer me this way.' She cast her oddly wrinkled luminous eyes over the group of men. 'The all-embracing peasant mamma they never hadand too old to challenge them!' She burst into an infectious laugh which stopped short as she met Jennie's eyes. 'Oh, I'm embarrassing you, cara.'

Jennie shook her head a little stiffly. But she was grateful that Matthew Tarn chose this moment to call them to work. She briskly inspected Daniela's face, then turned toward a chair at the far end of the set. Just as she was moving out of earshot, she overheard Daniela say, 'So solemn, these English girls. What's wrong with you men? Can't you bring a smile to her lips?'

Jennie felt herself flush again. She was relieved that she was now all but invisible to the rest of the crew, and could watch their co-ordinated activity from a safe distance.

A hush fell over the set and as the clapper boy shouted out, 'Scene 212, Take 1,' an old peasant woman busied herself with scrubbing the stone floor. Despite the intrusive floodlights, the movement of the cameramen, Jennie was transported to a Sicilian kitchen, only to be rudely thrust back into the present by a shout, 'Boom!' .

Jennie shook her head and smiled. It had never ceased to amaze her that with all this sophisticated technology no one had ever devised a sensitive microphone which didn't need to be held on a long pole over the set and inevitably cast its shadow on something or someone. Now the scene had to be started all over again. Jennie laughed to herself. Daniela couldn't often have scrubbed floors, but she did it with an air of practised authenticity.