Until the appearance during one wet Thursday morning of a certain Gerald Akersley, Auntie Vera's only brush with Hollywood had been the twice-weekly trip to the cinema that she used to make in the 1960's. Where for a reasonable sum, a couple of hours of celluloid escapism, together with a tasteless ice-cream could be had without the need to talk to anyone else.
However, as brushes with Hollywood go, the meeting of Auntie Vera and Gerald Akersley was more of the toothbrush variety rather than that of the industrial yard-broom sort.
She had been studiously sitting in her front room gazing at a picture of a country scene in an elaborate frame that hung at a slight angle on the wall above her fireplace. It had been given to her many years ago by a friend, and try as she might, she couldn't remember who it had been.
This thought troubled her.
The television was droning away in the background at slightly less than its normal ear-splitting volume as she pondered on who it was that had liked her enough at one time to donate the picture to her. If only she could remeber which year it had been, it would cut down on the number of potential donors of kitschy reproduction country prints. Perhaps, she mused, if she stopped thinking about it the name would come to her.
She stopped frowning at the picture, and let her eyes wander across to the television.
She would normally leave the television on, not in order to watch it, but because she found that the endless drivel that emanated from it had a gentle somnambulistic effect, and it helped her to doze off without having to retire to her bedroom. And after ten minutes of mind-numbing day-time TV she was slumped in her chair, gently snoring away, all thoughts of her un-remembered friend forgotten.
It was during an interview between an insufferably upbeat woman presenter and her surgically enhanced thirty year old actress interviewee, that was then being broadcast to its audience of bored housewives, listless students, unemployed bus conductors and sleeping old ladies, when Vera was awoken by the ringing of her door-bell. She opened one eye and squinted at the clock on the mantelpiece. Having discerned that it wasn't time to eat, she closed her eye again only to be fully awoken by the door-bell ringing once more. With some reluctance she rose from her chair and moved to the door, muttering to herself that if it was one of her neighbours calling to 'look in' on her they had better have a good reason for doing so.
Upon opening the door, she was confronted by a middle-aged man, wearing an unpleasant check jacket, who was holding a bunch of flowers and a large box of chocolates.
"Surprise!" said the man, as he thrust the bunch of flowers towards Auntie Vera.
Vera rocked back on her heels, and unable to think of a contradictory response, looked at the man with some alarm.
"I bet that you didn't expect me?" continued the man.
This was true. It hadn't crossed Vera's mind that her peaceful dozing in front of the television would be disturbed by what appeared to be a chocolate-bearing lunatic florist.
"Erm, no not really" she managed to say.
"Well, it has been a long time. It must be nearly thirty years now. Erm... Can I come in?"
Auntie Vera was always reluctant to allow anyone into her flat whom she didn't know, and briefly considered closing the door on her uninvited visitor, but he appeared to know her, and there was also the matter of a box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers to think about. She quite liked having fresh flowers around the place and considered herself fortunate to live close to an accident black-spot. But it had been quiet recently, and at the moment her flat was flowerless. She decided to find out who it was that was trying to buy his way into her flat with gifts for her.
"I'm terribly sorry," she said, "But who are you?"
"Who am I? It's me, Gerald... Eddy's son."
"Eddison? Like the light bulb?"
"No, not Eddison... Eddy's son. I'm the son of Eddy... You know,... Eddy, your brother."
"Oh Edward! But he died years ago."
"Yes I know. But I'm his son Gerald. Your nephew."
Auntie Vera searched her memory bank regarding the little boy she had last seen in the days before mobile phones, personal computers and irrelevant radio presenters. All she could remember of Gerald was that he had been an unpleasant, sullen little git who wouldn't eat vegetables.
"Gerald!" she said... "Do you eat vegetables now?"
"Erm... Well yes. Why do you ask?"
"And didn't you once push your sister off her bike and break her foot?"
"Erm, yes that's right. Actually I'd forgotten all about that. I was only ten at the time... And she was alright once the plaster cast came off."
Auntie Vera and her nephew, having exhausted their opening conversation, stood and eyed each other for a moment like two goldfish who have just met, but can't quite work out what's supposed to happen next.
The spell was finally broken when Vera's eye once again caught sight of the flowers and chocolates.
"Well, well. Little Gerald eh? I suppose you had better come in. Let me just take those things from you." And with that, Auntie Vera led Gerald into her flat and showed him to a chair.
She placed the flowers in a vase, put the choclates in a cupboard, and filled the kettle with water from the sink.
"Are you still doing the same thing?" she asked as she organised cups and saucers and sugar and milk. - She had always found that asking people whom she knew about, but whom at the same time she knew very little about, if they were still doing the same thing, whatever that was, was a good opening gambit.
"Oh yes, still in films."
"Oh that's nice."
"Yes," said Gerald as he made himself comfortable in Vera's second best chair. "I'm developing one at the moment."
"Well it's nice that you have a job indoors," said Vera as she poured the tea. "It's in a chemist's is it?"
"What?"
"Where you develop people's films."
"No. I make films."
"Oh, in a factory?"
"No in a studio. I make films."
"I wouldn't have thought that a studio was big enough. Don't you need a lot of machinery?"
"No I don't think you understand. I don't make films. I make films. I'm a film producer. You know, like the cinema."
Auntie Vera had never met anyone involved in the film industry before, and were it not for Gerald's offensive jacket she would have reacted much more favorably. Particularly as he was 'family'. And while not being awe-struck - Awe tended to miss her by a good few yards whenever it was thrown at her, she was nevertheless quite interested to learn more. Perhaps Gerald had produced some of her favourites. It would certainly be a feather in her cap if she could relate to her friends at the pensioner's day-centre that she was related to the man responsible for 'Love Story', or even 'Nightmare on Elm Street' come to that.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Gerald had not quite made it as far as Hollywood - In fact not much further than Catford, where he had spent the last twenty years producing corporate videos for companies that built swimming pools, and people who ran Indian restaurants.
As Gerald related his story of missed opportunities and 'what-might-have-been-if-only-Speilburg-had -replied-to-his-letter' tales of woe, Auntie Vera sensed the approach of a request that would probably cost her more than the price of a box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers.
Sure enough, by the time that the second cup of tea was being drained and there only remained one final biscuit on the plate between them, Gerald admitted that all was not well with Akersley Productions.
It appeared that Gerald had lost most of what money he had, after the payment for the block-buster of a cinema advert that he had been working on for a furniture warehouse had disappeared at the same time as the furniture warehouse company had. For a while he thought that he would have to close down himself, but salvation had arrived in the shape of the Chow-down Cat Food Company, who had asked Gerald to produce a 60 second film promoting their product. The Marketing Director of Chow-down seemed to think that the company's product should be targeted at the more mature cat owner, and was keen to have a film that featured not only a cat, and their product, but also the type of customer that they were targeting.
As Gerald related all of this to Vera, she noticed that he was eyeing her in a most alarming way. She had seen that look before. Normally in the eyes of sales-people who sense the fear of their prey, and are about to pounce with a useless contract for the maintenance of an electrical appliance.
Sure enough, as Gerald finished relating the near-endless list of golden opportunities that would come after the release of Chow-down's cat-food ad, he paused slightly, and said a little too earnestly:
"You're quite photogenic you know Auntie."
"No I'm not."
"Oh you are really. I can tell. You would be perfect for the cat-food ad."
"Well you can bugger-off! I've got better things to do than flog cat-food for you... I don't even have a cat."
The experience of seeing a grown man crumple as though he had been dealt a blow of such intensity that it was only a 50-50 chance that he would be able to draw another breath, was one that took Auntie Vera rather by surprise. Gerald had slumped down in his chair, and looked on the verge of tears.
"Are you alright?" said Vera.
"No not really... You were my last chance."
It turned out that the financial affairs of Vera's nephew were much more serious than Vera had realised, and when Gerald had said that she was his 'last chance', it was possibly the most accurate thing that he had said to her during the whole time that he had spent in her flat. Gerald was stony broke. Not just in the gutter, but in the pot-hole at the end of the street where the gutter finished. All that he had left was his film equipment, and if he didn't produce Chow-down's ad rather sharpish the equipment would very shortly be making its way to the pawnbrokers. This information put Gerald's request in a somewhat different light, as although Auntie Vera wasn't keen on the idea of becoming involved in the promotion of cat food, she also couldn't really dismiss a cry for help out of hand.
And so it was that by the time Gerald left the flat some two hours later, Auntie Vera found that she had been talked into the role of 'caring older lady with cat' and had agreed not only to be filmed the following morning, but had also agreed to provide the cat that was to feature within the film.
This presented something of a problem, as not only did she not own a cat, but she also wasn't particularly fond of them. The only cat that she knew about was the castrated tom-cat owned by her friend Kitty Gasket.
She decided to go along to Kitty's place and ask if she could borrow it for a couple of hours.
Kitty showed her customary level of delighted surprise when she opened her door to find Auntie Vera outside. Vera could never work out how it was that Kitty was always pleased to see everyone that called on her.
"Come in, come in," said Kitty. "Oh, I'm not properly dressed yet. Look at me, still in my housecoat. What must you think?"
Auntie Vera thought that Kitty Gaskett was as mad as a budgie in a bucket of mirrors most of the time, but knew that now was probably not the moment to point it out. Also Kitty was one of the few friends that she had, and more importantly she owned a cat, which at the moment was laying on the top of Kitty's sofa with one of its hind legs in the air and its face buried in its crotch.
"Kitty," said Vera. "I wonder if you could do me a small favour?"
To be continued.