From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (4 page)

There was always spare food, for instance, at the Sacred Fig (est. 2001) where Edward and Henrietta lived – leftovers from the previous night’s menu:
Tohu Jo
, or the famous Tea Salad, or – Barney’s particular favourite – Teething Cake, though that was so delicious leftovers were rare.

At the Nut House you could be sure of a small handful of something to go away with – usually peanuts or sunflower seeds, but occasionally Phil and Pete dispensed freshly cracked walnuts or roasted almonds.

Kirk, the barista at Hole-in-the-Wall (est. 2008) was always happy to give the High Street kids leftover muffins and slices at day’s end; it was the same for day-old bread at the Saturn Bar in the Square, or tired apples at Ted’s Fruit and Veg cart.

‘I thought a heap about food.’

‘Which kind?’ said Ren. ‘Be specific.’

‘No,’ said Barney. ‘It’s nuts to have a list of food.’

Ren wrote down Nuts and began a sub-list of all the nuts and seeds at the Nut House.

‘I have to write something,’ she said. ‘Otherwise this meeting will be pointless.’

If Barney visited Benjamin he could always count on a carrot or a wedge of kohlrabi from Benjamin’s dad, Kazimierz, who was a raw food fan. There were bags of vegetables in the corner of Kazimierz’s workshop, rough, bulging companions to the sleek and polished instruments he worked on.

As for free sweet treats, these were everywhere – Pineapple Lumps at Toto’s, chocolate-covered coffee beans at Coralie’s, Fruit
Bursts at Hair Today, small hot peppermints at Montgomery’s, where Gene was always giving up smoking. And of course, fudge off-cuts and peanut brittle crumbs and old mint puffs at Mrs Corry’s. Bambi stocked Carob and Ginger Health Bars, but, as Ren had once remarked, these smelt like tar and tasted like mud.

As if to confirm this magnificent Street bounty, Barney arrived at Benjamin’s dead on time for a serving of Kazimierz’s Seven-Vegetable Grated Salad.

‘A veritable cornucopia of colour,’ Kazimierz had said, putting a plateful before Barney. It was hard to believe that English was not Kazimierz’s first language. He had a bigger vocabulary than anyone else on the Street. He was also the only person who had beaten Albert Anderson more than twice at chess: there was a small trophy behind the bar at Coralie’s to prove it.

‘I thought about becoming a vegetarian,’ said Barney. ‘For about twenty seconds.’

Ren wrote down Vegetarian, Vegan, Pescatarian, Carnivore, Lactose-Intolerant, Gluten-Free and Paleo-Fan. There were people on the Street who fitted each of those categories.

While they ate Seven-Vegetable Grated Salad, Kazimierz and Benjamin told Barney about their holiday. Barney had been rather envious of their caving expedition. Caving sounded
molto
great. A cave would be a great setting for a film, Barney thought.

‘I thought about getting a set of lights.’

Ren wrote down Lights, then inverted her pencil deftly and erased it. She wrote Equipment Needed and wrote Lights again underneath. And Tripod. And then, for no reason Barney could fathom, Dusters.

After lunch, Barney and Benjamin had wandered down to Little Wilt to practise their juggling. They were trying out possible acts for the Open at the Buskers’ Festival. While they juggled – or more accurately, while they dropped and retrieved their juggling balls – Barney ran through alternative street theatre acts: stilt
walking; fire-eating; sword swallowing; unicycle … ‘I thought about being a living statue for the Open. A screen character: Professor Brown, maybe. Or Chewbacca. Or a Dr Who. Or Krusty, or Wolverine, or –’

‘You could never keep still,’ said Ren firmly. But she was writing it all down anyway. The pages were awash with nouns.

‘
I
could keep still,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t be any of those. I’d be Typhoid Mary.’

Typhoid Mary was in Ren’s current book:
History’s Infamous Women
by Martha G. Tapley, a volume Ren enjoyed reading aloud to Barney. He had heard the unpleasant history of Typhoid Mary while eating his toast-and-Vegemite-and-banana that very morning. Ren was working her way through the history section at the library. She was as big a library fan as Albert Anderson. The librarians were her
friends
. She always returned her books on time. Ren would never have
Delinquent
beside her name.

‘It’d be easy to find clothes,’ Ren mused, ‘you could just have any old kind, but I’d have black hands with fluorescent red blotches to show she was highly contagious.’

She wrote down Typhoid Mary.

‘That’s your thought,’ said Barney, ‘not mine.’

‘We need all the ideas we can get,’ said Ren. ‘Typhoid Mary would be
molto
great! We should really do that. It could be
Retro
Typhoid Mary, with the vintage dresses in the shop.’

Ren was pretty wacky, Barney thought not for the first time. Her eyeballs were practically touching the lenses of her glasses, she was so excited. Anything gruesome or catastrophic certainly spun her wheels: strange diseases with unpronounceable names, murder, plague, assassination, deformity, freak accidents. Years ago, she had been obsessed with beheadings. At bedtime Dad had been obliged to read her a book about Henry VIII’s wives. Before
Infamous Women of History
, Ren had read – and Barney had heard much of –
Atishoo, Atishoo
, a story of the Black Death.

‘Nope,’ said Barney, ‘it has to be something that really excites
me
. I’m the Director.’

But what
did
excite him right now? He didn’t know.

‘Adirectorneedstobelieveinthecreativeintegrityofhisstory,’ gabbled Barney, in place of an idea. It sounded impressive. It was a line from
So, You Want to be a Filmmaker?
He’d copied it into his Filmmaker’s Diary, but he was rather hazy about its meaning.

From behind them came an extraordinary sound – a choking cough, a harsh yelp, a short, snapped-off bark of a laugh – it was hard to tell.

Barney and Ren swivelled in their seats – and found Suit staring at them, startled, as if caught in an unlawful act. His normally pale face was a little flushed, his fingers worked away at a paper napkin. He made the noise again – perhaps it was a laugh – and rushed the napkin to his mouth, his eyes round.

‘Hi, Suit,’ said Ren.

‘Hello, Ren,’ said Suit, quaveringly. He lowered the napkin. ‘Hello, Barney.’ He blinked several times rather rapidly.

‘I do beg your pardon. Very bad form to eavesdrop. My apologies.’ But another brief bark escaped him and Suit squished the napkin hard against his lips, as if to prevent further renegade sounds.

Barney and Ren stared. It was hard to know what to say.

‘So sorry,’ said Suit, lowering the tissue. ‘It was just …’ He gave a little throat-clearing cough. ‘It was just
Retro
Typhoid Mary. I mean to say. And the creative integrity.’ Back came the tissue, but a squeak escaped Suit’s mouth anyway.

Barney was intrigued. Now that he thought about it he was sure he’d never actually seen Suit laughing before. Little smiles here and there, but not actual laughter. How
interesting
, as Albert Anderson would say.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Suit, taking a deep, slow breath. ‘I think it must be the heat.’

‘Have some water,’ said Ren. She did a rapid eye swerve at Barney.

‘Retro Typhoid Mary,’ repeated Suit. He sipped carefully from his water glass. He blinked some more.

‘Well, really, it’s very, very funny,’ he said, soberly. ‘And thinking about it with the creative integrity. You know. I mean. What can one say?’ He cleared his throat again.

‘Yes,’ said Suit. ‘Yes, indeed.’ He put the glass down carefully, recovered now.

‘I do apologise. I know you’re having a meeting.’

Barney and Ren smiled at him.

‘Refining ideas?’ he asked, politely.

They nodded.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Suit. He stood, pulled his cuffs, smoothed down his suit jacket and pant legs. He picked up his satchel. He smiled tentatively.

‘Let us hope for the best, then,’ he said, and walked to the door. Barney and Ren stared after him, watching the doors swing.

‘Suit is
soooo adorable
,’ said Ren, in Teeny Weeny Sweetie, the voice she used when she and Henrietta were fussing over puppies or kittens or anything small – their favourite salt-and-pepper sets, or the little buns and bottles and soaps in the Sylvanian Families Dolls’ House. Or Fern and Hwan’s new baby, Soo – who Barney thought the farthest thing imaginable from sweet, more like a big aging tomato, all red and creased and looking like she might burst.

‘What if he ever lost the alarm clock?’ said Ren. ‘Or couldn’t have a Black Doris friand? Coralie always puts one aside for him, but you never know, there might be a Black Doris shortage.’

Ren wrote Black Doris beside Typhoid Mary and considered the pair.

‘Black Doris is an
excellent
name. She could have been a friend
of Typhoid Mary. And so could Mad Annie.’ She wrote down Mad Annie, which was actually a rum drink Coralie liked.

It was nice that Coralie put aside a Black Doris friand for Suit, thought Barney. And it was nice of Albert Anderson never to get annoyed at the loud ticking of the alarm clock during his Mini Film Festival evenings. And nice of Father Barry and Hwan and Fern not to have minded when the alarm accidentally went off during Baby Soo’s baptism at the Basilica.

People on the Street were pretty nice, he thought.

‘I’ve always wanted to see Suit making a watch,’ said Ren, pensively.

Did Suit
make
watches, Barney wondered, or just fix them? And did many people actually wear watches these days? Suit must do other stuff at the jeweller’s as well. Funny, they knew all about Suit’s routines but nothing about his job.

Ren wrote Watches.

Under Watches she wrote, Flowers, Ferns, Willow, Cards.

Under that, Comics.

Then, Pencils, Pens, Paint.

Barney watched idly, thinking about Suit and his funny ways, about Suit’s little mysteries. But everyone had their little mysteries, he supposed. They had mothers you’d never met, or unknown friends at work, or favourite TV characters, or they were scared of car washes, or never ate yellow jellybeans, or couldn’t swim, or had once lived in Dar-es-Salaam, that sort of thing. Take Albert Anderson. Barney had never met his parents; he always thought of Albert as having been born an adult. Or take Bambi. Only the other day, Mireille had told them that for twelve years Bambi had been a trapeze artist in a circus!

Ren was writing with great fluency now, just as she did when working on her school assignments, which were always pages and pages long. Like her letters. She wrote letters to both their grandmothers, but occasionally also to the City Council and shops
and public amenities, drawing their attention to certain civic inconveniences. But this was just more nouns. What could you do with nouns? They weren’t ideas. Postcards, Gas Lamps, Toby Jugs – it made no sense.

Rice, wrote Ren. Sour Soup, Tea Salad, Seaweed Jelly.

Well, all right then. You could make nouns into sets. Sour Soup, Tea Salad, Seaweed Jelly equalled –

‘The Sacred Fig,’ said Barney. He read the list again.

Watches, Flowers, Ferns, Cards, Comics, Pencils, Pens, Paint, Sour Soup, Tea Salad, Seaweed Jelly –

Brazil, wrote Ren.

Brazil
? What the hey?

Pecan, Almond, Macadamia –

‘Nuts,’ said Barney. ‘The Nut House. You’ve already written all those.’

‘I’m doing something different now,’ said Ren.

Pins, Needles, Cotton, Measuring Tape –

Barney stood up and watched over Ren’s shoulder. It was a game now: Ren’s hand and the HB 5 going like mad, feeding Barney clues. She turned the page quickly, and continued, the pencil point rapidly softening, the letters getting fatter.

Sewing Machine, Overlocker, Puffing Chalk.

‘Zipper!’ said Barney.

Dresses, Leather Jackets, Skirts, Dressmaker’s Dummy, Piano, Salt and Pepper Shakers –

‘Our place!’ cried Barney. ‘I know what you’re doing!’

Busby’s Emporium was next door to Zipper (clothing alterations; est. 2003), which was upstairs from Ping’s, and both were next door to the Nut House, and that was next door to the Sacred Fig, which was next door to Comic Strip, which was next door to Forget-me-Knot!

Ren and her pencil were travelling down the east side of the High Street. They were writing sets of the
things
inside all the
shops, the things people made, sold, cooked, collected, fixed …

‘You forgot Hwan and Fern’s.’

‘Their jobs aren’t at their apartment,’ said Ren reasonably. ‘And I think Hwan leaves all his tools in the truck.’ Hwan was a gardener. Fern was a prison officer, though she was taking a year off to look after Baby Soo.

Between Flowers and Comics, Ren inserted Handcuffs in very small letters, and Brown Betty, which was a prison pudding but could also – now that Barney saw her written down – be another potential friend for Typhoid Mary.

And still Ren wrote: Lavender Oil, Water Music, Possum Fur Blanket, Whale Photographs (Stella’s Massage, est. 2005). Coconut Mushrooms, English Toffee, Pear Drops, Spearmint (Mrs Corry’s). Paper, Photocopier, Industrial Stapler (Dale’s Copy Centre, est. 2009) …

Barney felt the tiniest pop of an idea, far away in the recesses of his head. He didn’t quite want to examine it in case it vanished.

‘I’m
over
Felix La Marche and Hal Nicholas,’ he said, instead.

And once again he was surprised. He hadn’t known he thought this until the second he heard himself say it. But now he realised it for a fact. The time had come for him to part from Felix and Hal. It was just like years ago when he’d thought Wilton Maxwell would be his best friend forever but then, suddenly, one Tuesday lunchtime at school, between a stuffed pita pocket and a Braeburn apple, he’d realised he didn’t actually
like
Wilton Maxwell, who was very whiny and sometimes mean to Ren about her thick spectacles.

So, You Want to be a Filmmaker?
had been helpful, it couldn’t be denied, but the truth was Barney was sick of Felix and Hal’s bossy edicts. He was sick of all their shoulds and musts and their banging on constantly about the
hero’s journey
. He needed to break out. Maybe it was disloyal, but he needed to do something different, he needed –