Call Me the Breeze (40 page)

For I didn’t think he
really
believed I had it in me. An instinctive ability to organize people. To bring out the best performance, which is the first real skill of any director.

‘I want you to think of all those things,’ I continued, very assured and in control now, ‘and I want you to ask: What made it all happen? I want you to ask this question: Can we ever be absolved?’

Then I said I wanted to read them something. It was a poem I’d come across in the paper. That very morning.

‘Cast,’ I said, ‘I want to read you this!’

They irritated me a little by taking a long time to settle down and I was on the verge of saying: ‘Oh, very well then! I
won’t
fucking read it!’

But in the end they dutifully complied and there wasn’t a single sound to be heard. Apart from the leaves.

I cleared my throat and flattened out the paper. Then, with my eyes, for all the world like little cameras, panning across them, each and every one, I declaimed the poem to the best of my ability.
Now there’s a poem about peace
! I kept thinking.
Not like Carmel Braiden’s pile of rubbish that won Fr Connolly’s prize
!

There wasn’t a whisper. Rapt is a word I might employ to describe the waterside atmosphere. As I reached the climax, I declaimed:

They applauded as I finished. Then they began to drift off homewards, with the usual valedictions of ‘See you tomorrow’, ‘Ciao’, and so on and so forth.

I strolled over then to have a chat with Boyle. He was ecstatic, he told me. He said that he just couldn’t believe the performances I’d managed to ‘elicit’ from the cast. That was the word he actually used! And it made me think that even Boyle must want to get in on the ‘creative’ act if he’s starting to use words like that — ‘elicit’!

I couldn’t believe it as I stood there rapping. That I’d ever been afraid of him calling. Late at night or any other time. It embarrassed me, in fact, when I thought about the imaginary conversations I’d had with him so many times in the caravan. In which I’d hear him giving vent to certain ‘reservations’, if not outright disapproval!

The truth was that he couldn’t have been more complimentary. I even began to wonder was he overdoing it a bit — in front of the actors, you know? But all the same it was great to hear.

Then he said: ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Not at all,’ I replied as he lit up his Hamlet. The twists of blue smoke went waltzing past his nose, smelling sweet in the summer air. Then Hoss arrived up in a Land Rover and said he was sorry he was late, that he had been looking forward all morning to the filming.

‘Ah, you missed it, Hoss!’ said Boyle. ‘You were great in it. You should have seen the young fellow doing your part! He was terrific, so he was!’

Hoss wanted to know all about this, so I explained as best I could.

‘The most important thing for us to realize,’ I said, ‘all of us who were involved — in whatever way — in this, is that the film isn’t in the business of blame.’

I collected my thoughts and continued: ‘That’s not what it’s all about, Hoss,’ I said, reassuring him, for this was one of the queries which kept coming up: would real names appear in the final cut? Appear at all, in fact? In
any
cut …?

I shook my head, vehemently.

‘
Of course not
!’ I explained. ‘It’s just to help the actors achieve … that feel of gritty realism, yeah? For ultimately what the movie’s about is not what happened out at the reservoir that night in Scotsfield or
anywhere else for that matter. It’s about what has happened in our
hearts
, and how it really is possible for art, when it acts as a mirror to the soul, to become a powerful agent for transformation and rebirth! If not outright absolution!’

‘Sounds good,’ said Hoss. ‘What do you think, Boyle?’

‘I wish I had his brains,’ said Boyle. ‘It’s been humbling, Hoss. That’s as much as I can say.’

I just heard Boyle say that and no more, I was so busy trying to articulate my own feelings. To frame them in language that would do them justice.

‘I suppose in a sense I want it to act as a symbol for Ireland and for what has been going on here this past thirty years. Do you know what I’m saying, Mr Henry?’

Boyle nodded eagerly.

‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘And let me tell you this: I’m impressed. Are you impressed, Hoss?’

Hoss said that he was.

‘I’m extremely impressed,’ he said. ‘Very, very. Right, Boyle?’

‘Very, very,’ agreed Boyle Henry.

‘Extremely, extremely impressed,’ affirmed Hoss.

Then Boyle tapped his cigar and winked at me: ‘Do you hear Hoss, Josie?’ he said. ‘Using all the big words!’

I smiled. Then I continued: ‘So, in effect, what I’m saying, Hoss, is that your character — the character Hoss as he appears in the film —could effectively be almost anyone! Anyone who happens to get caught up in a conflict! It’s got nothing to do with you
per se
!’

You could tell he was immensely relieved by that, with whatever anxieties he might have had now more or less dismissed for good, it having become perfectly clear that what I was engaged in was not some kind of hastily cobbled together biopic along the lines of
Scots-field! That’s the Way It Is
! Some miserable little ‘cheap shot’, a tedious, whistle-blowing exercise that would end up achieving nothing but leave a bad taste in everybody’s mouth.

‘No, Hoss!’ I continued as I folded up some chairs. ‘What we’re after here is just one thing, and that thing, my friend, is the
truth
.’

I was delighted to see him loosening up so dramatically after that —that was clear from his broadening smile. Because, I mean, if I was in the business, I thought, of
blaming
people, whether it be Hoss Watson or anyone, regardless of what they had done, and I knew Hoss’d done
plenty of things … Of saying: ‘You, Hoss, did this!’ Or, ‘You, Hoss, did that! It was
you
killed such and such in the year 1973! It was
you
possessed explosives in the year 1976!’ — if that was all I was doing, then my picture was redundant right from the very start.

What about all the others who had perpetrated deeds of an equally heinous nature? Were a selected band of unfortunates to facilitate their convenient exculpation by shouldering all the blame?

No, I wanted to show things as objectively as possible and open up the audience’s hearts, so that the like of what we’d witnessed in our times would never occur again.

‘So do you get my drift then, Hoss? Mr Henry? It’s not a biography, really, as such.’

Boyle nodded. So did Hoss. Then he said, as he folded his arms: ‘I’m getting it, Joey. I get your drift. It is, in a way, kind of like, how would you say it? Kind of a version of
The Three Stooges
.’

‘
What
?’ I said, quite taken aback to hear him saying something like that. But when he explained what he meant I began to understand —kind of.

‘Using real people and actors, I mean,’ said Hoss. ‘Like Curly Larry and Moe. Because they were real people, weren’t they, Boyle? I say, weren’t they, Mr Henry?’

‘
They sure was, Hoss
!’ laughed Boyle. ‘
They sure was
!’ Then he ratcheted Hoss’s nose, and Hoss went: ‘
Ow
!’

‘
Take that, ya mallethead
!’ laughed Boyle, then said they’d have to be going.

‘Well, Joey, my friend,’ he continued then, ‘I don’t know how to thank you for allowing us to see this picture! Do you know something? Keep this up and Joey Tallon won’t be going to Hollywood! For
Hollywood
will be coming to
him
!’

‘Thanks a lot then, guys! Really glad you enjoyed it!’

‘We did, Joey!’ said Hoss as he unlocked his Land Rover. ‘Keep up the good work!’

‘Good luck then, Joey! We’ll be seeing you soon!’ called Boyle as he flicked away his cheroot, climbing into the smoked-glass motor. ‘And remember this: we’ll be seeing you!’

‘For we’re your biggest fans!
Oh yes
!’ called Hoss as he tore off across the grass, churning up the mud while his fingers wiggled out of the window. Before, I could have sworn, forming themselves into the shape of a ‘V’.

As I sat there long after they’d gone, listening, with my eyes closed, to the stirring in the leaves, I couldn’t stop thinking of the way that he’d said that ‘
Oh yes
!’ and kept analyzing it over and over. But in the end I took myself in hand: ‘Stop this now, Joey!’ I said. ‘We don’t want you starting that old bullshit! That doesn’t belong here now. Those are feelings from a faraway world that no longer has any relevance! You were wrong about Boyle and you’re wrong about Hoss! You
didn’t
hear a chuckle as he drove off through the field! There was nothing noteworthy about his fingers! That was your imagination, that stupid overworked imagination of yours, so stop it now and forget it! Start living right here in the
here and now
, and bear witness to your own philosophies! For what sense will it make if you don’t? You, the one who’s been crying out for a new way of seeing things. A new vision and order that will enable us to jettison the ghosts of the past. Then what do you do? You go and fall at the very first hurdle, the very minute that you’ve been tested! Reacting in that same old tired and predictable manner.’

‘
That way has failed us, Joseph Tallon
!’ I cried aloud. ‘And failed us a thousand times! How many false prophets has this country had? How many times have the people been uplifted only to have their hopes, as so many times in the past, literally dashed to pieces before their very eyes? Is that what you’re going to be party to? Is that your intention, Mr Joseph Mary Tallon? Are those your intentions as you’re sitting here today?’

I rarely addressed myself by my full name. But I was pleased now that I had. It made me feel kind of …
whole
.

Which was a feeling that kept gathering inside of me as I lay there beneath the tree gazing across the still water where the midges were whirling and rapiers of light fenced with each other without making a solitary sound. It was mesmerizing; that was all you could say about it.

‘Yes,’ I continued, ‘this is what it means to be whole! To utter your own name and listen to the wind bearing redemptive messages from that place of peace and rest, then blowing across the water bringing them to all who desire to hear them.’

You just knew as you lay there you were in the presence of the others. Where were they exactly? You couldn’t tell for sure, but you knew
they were very close by. I rooted about in my shoulder bag and located my
Dead Souls
. I opened it up and rested it right there on my lap. I closed my eyes and listened again. To the soft wind blowing. ‘Ssh!’ I said as I raised my hand. ‘Was that Bennett I heard just now?’

I listened again, thinking of him there in his van by the water, unable to bear the guilt of his involvement in the Campbell Morris ‘incident’. Trying to steel himself to follow through with the decision he’d made some days before, the silver water’s sheer still surface now seeming anything but peaceful.

‘How you doin’, old friend?’ I asked him. I could feel him all around me. ‘What’s it like? Is Mona there?’ I asked, and the sun’s sudden wink as a cloud passed it by might have been his smile.

‘You’d better believe it,’ he said. ‘I remember when we were kids we used to say how it might be like the colouring book of a kid. The big blue sky and the golden swaying corn. And sure enough it is. That’s what it’s like up here now, Joey. You approach it from afar, the harbour drawing your boat safely home. At night you can see them twinkling, the lights that give signals to those hard-pressed, lonesome souls.’

Well, I can’t tell you how contented … no,
not
contented — that’s a lacklustre and anodyne old word for the emotion I’m trying to express — more like close to
incoherent
I became after hearing Bennett speaking those words. Now, after everything good that had happened, with the kids being so terrific in performance and Boyle Henry being so receptive and encouraging and everything, whatever unease I’d been experiencing was clearly nothing more now than old-fashioned paranoia. A tangle of infuriating brambles that served no other purpose than to impede the clear path of truth.

There were also, of course, the immense possibilities which my plans for Wonderful Pictures were suggesting inside my head. Not to mention another little project I had started on, a piece of prose fiction which I thought might end up being a novel, although I’d never written one in my life!

Ideas just seemed to keep popping up out of nowhere. I just could not believe my good fortune on this earth, I really and genuinely could not! With the result that it was all I could do not to run over to the nearest Friesian cow and give it a great big kiss on the forehead! Which I didn’t, on reflection thinking the better of it, for you never knew who might be watching, and that just might be a little bit too
much for them. ‘Fukken kissin’ fukken cows!’ you could almost hear them saying. ‘What next — riding sheep?’

I did, however, open up my
Dead Souls
and begin sonorously reciting my favourite passage, my voice gliding right across the still stretch of water as I gestured expansively. I was so full of belief because of the way things had gone that I think I must have thought that I was Charles Laughton! ‘
The spring
,’ I began, ‘
which had been held back for a long time by frosts
…’

Then, soliloquy completed, I lay down once more. It was so comforting beneath that sycamore, with all of them around you (Bennett jerking his thumb: ‘
Would you look at the lazy big bollocks
!’ and Mona going: ‘
Always mad for the books!’)
making you feel you were
already
at home, in that place where nothing would prove unacceptable. Where you could say: ‘I’m the Prophet of Spring,’ or, ‘I’m Cassavetes the Second!’ and no one would ever bother saying: ‘Oh, would you shut up, Joey Tallon, you and your nonsense and your fanciful ideas, when everyone knows you’re a great big stinky blob, that’s all you are and everyone knows it — and all you’ll ever be!’