Call Me the Breeze (31 page)

Then we hear another scream and the camera, having remained static all the way through, out of nowhere goes
vroom
! and careers
wildly across the screen. Straightaway back to the doll with her pink, plump cheeks and the oval red mouth that never makes any sound. I banged down my new scene title and, having considered it for a bit, was more or less happy with it. It read:

SCENE
1: ‘The Lakelands’ Saddest Fuck’

Swinging through the double doors on my way back to class after lunch, having got the rest of the scene finished to my satisfaction, I was positively exhilarated. I knew in my gut it was going to be a powerful opener: the camera ever so slowly pulling away, with the doll’s button eyes just staring at the ceiling. It would be hard for Mangan to execute, of course, and I knew the old fucker would probably protest, even if we were just going to see his warty old back. But a crate of beer ought to sort out that, I thought — no, knew!

Plus the prospect of having other assorted items purchased for him in the backstreet sex shops of the capital.

Which was exactly what transpired, Mangan, already out of it after all the beer we’d drunk, practically tearing the camera out of my hands, in fact, as I outlined the project to him. Stumbling around the place pointing it like he’s fucking Bergman or Bertolucci, framing me in the viewfinder with this great big leer on his face, going: ‘
Don’t be thinking you’ll blame it all on me! I seen you at it plenty of times! Talking away to her and everything, like she was your wife, haw haw
!’

He swung the camera towards her, as she lay there beside the bed with her head flopped on to her chest.

‘I heard you! Mona this! Mona that! You were at it the whole time and don’t deny it! Don’t start saying different, Mr Film Man! Hee hee!’

Which I had to admit was true. I didn’t see any point in denying it any longer, especially not to him, seeing as he was capable of far worse activities in that department himself. For I’d heard
him
! Anyway, I was completely shit-faced that night, not only because of the beer but also from the sheer excitement of his having agreed so readily to come on board with the project. I mean, he was the very first actor I’d asked!

Drunk as I was, just lying there on the floor of his caravan, I had this great feeling about the movie. That there was this kind of weird light around it, you know? That no matter what you did, somehow you just couldn’t lose.

The only thing that went wrong that night was when I woke up back in my own bed, bathed in sweat and with Mona’s pale face looking at me from behind the curtain of black hair as she trembled and said: ‘
He didn’t really see us, did he? Tell me he didn’t hear us, Joseph
!’

Meaning, of course, that Mangan hadn’t been aware of our … relationship, if you could call it that.

‘No,’ I told her, ‘he didn’t!’, instinctively turning from those penetrating dead doll eyes. I still lay with her sometimes, whenever the depressions would come on. They could be troubling, those eyes. They were eyes that said: ‘
I’m neutral. It’s nothing to do with me. None of it. It’s all the one to me, Joseph
.’

I didn’t get to sleep for an hour or two after that. But the next morning I felt fine again, and why wouldn’t I when I was about to embark on the project of a lifetime? The
real truth
about 1976 in an ordinary old backwoods country ‘n’ Irish town. A hillbilly, rockabilly backwater full of shady politicos, sex movies, female wrestlers and dead detectives.

Not to mention activists for peace getting blown to kingdom come!

I figured I had all bases pretty much covered, because if I was prepared to tell the truth about my own life — with the names subtly changed, of course — it wouldn’t seem that I was being unfair to anyone else. No one would be able to say: ‘You steal our story but you won’t tell your own! That’s not playing the game, Joey boy!’

No, that wouldn’t come into it because it wasn’t that kind of project. Truth and …
verisimilitude
— is that the word? — well, truth anyway would be of the essence.

I’d just sit there in my office, thinking, whenever the kids had gone for their lunch:
Yes! Here he is! Scotsfield’s own Andy Warhol! The John Cassavetes of the lakelands
!, with everybody clapping as they presented me with some award, don’t ask me what.

I had seen all of Cassavetes’ work by now — they had a stack of his movies in the new information technology section of the library. I liked the way he shot his pictures and — I was quite prepared to admit it —would definitely be stealing some of his tricks. Lots of hand-held camera movements, in what they called on the back of the case ‘
cinema
verité style
’, as well as extreme close-ups and lots of rough-shod camerawork. I was still without a title, though. I had gone off
The Plan
, for it had begun to seem kind of … ordinary. As though it were just about me and Jacy and what had happened between us ‘that fateful night’, to employ a phrase of Johnston Farrell’s, when, in fact, it had begun to open out now in all sorts of directions and encompass much more than that. I came up with about fifty possibilities, but none of them proved to be satisfactory.

However, it didn’t worry me. I knew it would come in time.

(The proposed titles are extensively listed in the back of the ‘Community College Ledger’, along with all sorts of doodles and sketchy plot ideas. There is even a drawing of the principal with a shoal of arrows raining down on her and me storming off with my camera going: ‘
Fume
!’ as this raincloud of rage gathers over my head!)

The more I’ve been thinking about the movie, the more I keep thinking, The more fucking realistic the better. A real, in your face, yeah-this-is-the-way-it-was-my-friend-type approach. With lots of fuzz guitar and heavy reverb. (note:
must talk to Boo Boo in detail about the soundtrack),
and actual newsreels of those turbulent times intercut with our improvised, videotaped footage. Some of it will be documentary-style, in other places hard-hitting drama. I can’t wait to get started pitching it to some people, and if I wasn’t having such trouble with Mrs Carmody — she called me into her office again today — I’d get on a bus and head straight on up to the smoke
.

Wait till I tell you! I couldn’t believe it when I was rummaging through the paper this morning, waiting for the kids to arrive, and who did I come on? Only Johnston Farrell! ‘Well, what do you know,’ I said to myself, hardly able to believe what I was reading! Turns out his ‘border-country thriller’ (that’s what they’re calling it) has, apparently, had offers not from one but
three
major publishers. And not just in Ireland either, where they’re known for paying buttons, but across the water in London, where they say the money is big
.

I didn’t know what to think when I saw his photo. Part of me felt kinda queasy and, I suppose, in another way — if I’m honest — kinda
jealous. But then I thought:
That’s just fucking stupid, Joey! Smalltown petty envy, that’s all it is, and it’s kind of beneath you, my friend, Joey Tallon!
So I knuckled myself on the forehead a bit and thought that the next time I happened to be up in Dublin I’d poke around a bit and search him out. I thought that was a pretty good idea, all right. Talk about old times and shit. I smiled and said to myself: ‘Well, how about that! Good man, Johnston
!’

But even after thinking some more about how stupid it had been to be jealous, I couldn’t put this other thought out of my head, and as the kids filed in couldn’t stop myself from wondering. I’d keep seeing his face as we sat there in Austie’s way back then during the long winter nights. ‘Yes, Joey, tell me more!’ I’d hear him saying
—
he was always writing things down — ‘Was there a bed in the cabin? At what point did she cry?’ He even asked me where she had gone to the toilet, for fuck’s sake! Mad! And I began to feel a twinge of resentment. I did, and I won’t deny it
!

But after a while I decided I was just being paranoid, and the session with the kids that day turned out to be so good that all I could think as I handed around the sheets — ‘The Films of Cassavetes’, which I’d photocopied from a film book entitled:
Movies of the Great Directors —
was when would I get a chance to jump on a bus and hit the city. To rap with Johnston, my good old buddy, whatever disagreements we might once have had now consigned at last to the dustbin of history
.

All I can say is if not being able to figure out scenes in your script or having difficulty with what they call in the actors’ manuals the ‘motivation’ of a character is like walking around with a stone in your shoe, well, let me tell you there are plenty of other kinds of problem too. Chief among them being people who one minute are clambering all over you telling you how great you are, and the next are clicking their heels and going past as they give you this look … all I can say is it would freeze the fucking desert! Not only that, but now they’ve informed me they’ve withdrawn me from the Scholarship of Hope competition
…

The worst part of it is not knowing what you’ve done wrong. For at least if you knew that
…

I don’t know, it’s fucking bothering me, that’s all I know
!

Well, in the end I decided I could take it no more and demanded a private meeting with Fr Connolly, who’s really getting on now and I know would rather not be bothered with things like this, but I just had to speak to someone.

‘What’s the use of saying one thing and then going back on it, Father?’ I asked him. ‘Then how is anybody to know where they stand?’

We had a good long chat in his office and he asked me what exactly I had been doing. I gave him the whole lowdown. About being in the process of making a feature we could maybe sell to the studios with a view towards clinching a three-picture deal. Obviously I kept the detail to a minimum. I mean, I might be stupid, but at the end of the day the man is a padre so I wasn’t going to start on about life-size synthetic dolls or any of that business. ‘It’s essentially about rebirth,’ I told him, and he looked kind of sad when I said it. Like it was something he wouldn’t mind experiencing himself. Anyway, I said goodbye to him and he said he’d do what he could, fair play to him.

Which wasn’t very much, apparently, for two hours later who comes bursting into my office (well, it’s not actually mine as such — I share it with Eddie the supervisor)? Only Mrs Carmody, with this fucking face on her like she’s about to have a stroke. Then she starts going on about money again. At first I was afraid I was going to blow my top, but fortunately not — good sense prevailed — and I permitted her to rabbit away. Then I said: ‘But at the beginning of the year I was informed that I was entitled to spend what I liked. That there was loads of money in the kitty for equipment. All of it coming from Europe. That’s what they told me, Mrs Carmody! They really did now, and you can confirm it with your colleagues if you wish!’

That, she said, was the last straw, then glares at Eddie as she throws this bill on to the desk with the various bits and pieces that I’d ordered since I came meticulously compiled into a neat little list, with each place and date of purchase marked, as well as the model and brand name. I stared at it for a minute, then coughed politely. I suppose I was hoping to spot some small error on their part, the better to enable me to argue my case. But there was none that I could see. Whoever had written the list had done their job and done it well. I coughed again and scanned it carefully one last time. I could feel her scowling at me. I read:

‘Are you aware that the total cost of these items is over fifteen thousand pounds?’ she said.

‘Is that how much they are?’ I replied. It was a stupid answer, I realize that.

‘Yes, it is, as you very well
know
, Mr Tallon!’ were her final words as she spun and stood in the doorway.

I didn’t quite know what to say. I stared at her for a minute then looked away, regretfully. I was sorry that it had come to this. All I had wanted was to get along with everybody. With Carmody. The staff. Everyone. It was just a pity it hadn’t worked out that way. Eddie attacked me too, once she had left. He told me he was sending the great bulk of the equipment back. And that he had ‘
no fucking intention
’ of covering for me any more. ‘You fucking got that, Joey?’ he snapped. ‘Always too far! You always push it too far! But not with me! Never fucking again! Got that? You got that, Tallon, you fucking —?’

‘Charming.’ That was all I could think as he slammed the door. I lifted the list to look at it one last time before putting it away and starting work on my script, which, unlike certain relationships in Scotsfield Community College, was forging ahead with a life of its own.

It was something that really did lift my heart! I just couldn’t wait to direct it, make it come alive! Take it to that final stage! See those characters live and breathe in whatever way the kids might choose to interpret them!

And what fucking good kids they were! Already you could tell there were some fabulous actors amongst them.
And actresses too, don’t forget now, Joey
! If not world class, then definitely fucking close.

It was all I could do while sitting in that office, tweaking this scene and that, not to fling down my pen and go running off to the video suite to grab the nearest camcorder and — fuck the begrudgers! — shout ‘
Action
!’ as loud as I could.