“I’m not an actress, sir,” Antonia said, acutely nervous.
“You don’t need to be. All you have to do is walk and look at the camera. No lines. I promise. It will only be a few minutes. I can’t do this without you.” He seemed so upset and so desperate that she didn’t want to deny him. She nodded agreement, wondering what she was doing. “I want her in a shroud,” he said to Margaret. “I want to shoot it right now, the light is perfect.” The set they were using was a forest, with an eerie mist drifting through it. Brigid and Margaret hustled Antonia away, then helped her undress in a tent, down to her underpants, and wrapped her in a sheet like a shroud. Brigid thought to put part of it over her head, which made her appear even more mystical. They had one of the makeup artists come to dust her down. She looked ethereal and ghostly pale, like an exquisite creature from another world. They dusted her chest, arms, and throat with powder too, and they brought her back to Hamish barefoot, with her wide blue eyes frightened because she was. He looked straight at Antonia and spoke softly.
“My God, I want to cry you’re so perfect. Thank you for doing this for me. It’s the greatest gift you can give me. Rolling in one minute,” he shouted to the crew, and got on a dolly with a camera mounted on it, and told her where to stand. He followed her, and gave her the cue when he was ready to start, and told her to walk as gracefully as she could, with her feet barely touching the ground. “Stay looking frightened, it’s magical. Follow me,” he said, as he moved backward with the camera rolling. There was not a sound on the set, and Antonia was incredibly beautiful with just a dusting of powder and the sheet and nothing else.
They did it three times with her eyes never leaving his, and he went to her and thanked her for doing it. “You saved my picture,” he said. He was deeply emotional about it, and Brigid and Margaret came to lead her away, and help her dress. Brigid held out a release to her that said she had agreed to be in the film for a walk-on part.
“You’ll be paid union scale,” Margaret told her. “It’s hardly anything.”
“This really meant a lot to him,” Brigid explained. “When he gets an idea like that and he can’t make it happen it really upsets him.” Antonia had seen that, and it didn’t seem like a lot to do. It wasn’t a part in a movie, it was just a minute, but for him it was a work of art.
She followed the others back to the set, and a few minutes later, she was sent to the main office to pick up some insurance papers Hamish had asked for, and Antonia forgot about what she’d done. The look in his eyes was so intense as she followed him. No one had ever looked at her like that. She had felt invisible, but as though he were the only human in the world who could see her. It had been an extraordinary feeling.
He watched the dailies that night with the cameramen, after they finished shooting and everyone else had gone home. He held his breath as he watched Antonia. They had three brief segments of her, and he ran all three again and again.
“Oh my God. She’s like an angel, or a ghost,” he said almost to himself as he watched her. “She’s exquisite. I want to cry when I look at her.” The cameramen agreed that she was unusual and beautiful, and the piece of her coming out of the forest was exactly what he had wanted. She moved almost as though she were floating above the ground, with perfect grace.
* * *
—
Hamish noticed Antonia on set the next day, and stopped to talk to her, in his gentle velvet voice.
“You were amazing yesterday,” he said so no one else could hear him. “I saw the dailies last night. You were the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You’re a natural, the way you move, the look in your eyes, your expression. The camera adores you. You could have a major career on the screen.” He barely spoke above a whisper, but she heard him clearly, and felt afraid.
“I can’t do that, Mr. Quist. It’s not me. I want to write screenplays one day. I want to work behind the camera, like you do, not in front of it. I want to be invisible, not have everyone seeing me.” There were tears in her eyes and he reached out and touched her arm ever so gently, almost like a feather, but she felt his strength passing through her.
“Don’t be afraid, Antonia. You can’t hide. Your beauty is begging to be seen. Don’t deprive others of it.”
“I’m not beautiful,” she said, her lip trembling, and she didn’t want to be like her mother, but she couldn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t understand.