The Man In The Seventh Row (27 page)

Anna never did see
Fargo
. She had not been to the cinema since
Brief Encounter
. It was not a conscious decision. It is true that she did mope around for a while after Roy went away, that she felt disorientated, even bereaved, but lately she had been far too busy to mope.

She sips from the thin elegant glass of Rioja and tucks her legs beneath her, facing the newspaper spread out beside her on the couch. She turns the pages without really registering the contents. These last few months she has felt a new contentment with her life. Her eye is caught by a short item reporting that several cinemas will again be staging a festival of classic movies ahead of the Oscars, following the success of last year's event. She scans the cinema chains' adverts, United Artists, Laemmle, instinctively looking for Mann's Theatres. She has a funny feeling that Mann's Chinese Theatre will be showing
Blade Runner
and
Brief Encounter
, not that she has any intention of going to see them. Her eye runs down a list of films –
The Wild Bunch
,
Bonnie and Clyde
,
Out of Africa
, no mention of
Blade Runner
or
Brief Encounter
. But a little shiver runs down her spine as she reaches the film at the end of the list.

She sighs and takes another sip of wine, no longer looking at the paper, staring towards a poster of
Braveheart
on the opposite wall, but not seeing it, staring into space, enjoying the moment of respite and the unfamiliar peace. She swirls the wine around in her mouth, enjoying its flavour, before swallowing.

Should she go? It is not her type of film – as if that had anything to do with her considerations. She has never seen it, and yet the idea of it has come to haunt her, because it meant so much to Roy. Of course Jon would have preferred the Japanese original. She can reel off the cast like a contender in a trivia quiz and had read on the Internet that director John Sturges claimed he could turn any film into a western, including
My Fair Lady
, which would revolve around a bet that any loser could be turned into a master gunfighter with the right training. She had read too that the two leading men almost came to blows for real. The young second lead kept on trying to upstage the established star. He had grown up on a farm in Indiana and prided himself on his ease with firearms, while the latter was a Russian of Swiss-Mongolian parentage, had read philosophy at the Sorbonne and came to cinema via the circus. There was an existential quality about his life to which Jon might have warmed, and he would certainly have been impressed by the Sorbonne connection and would have felt it worth reminding everyone that he went there too.

Anna's favourite story about the movie was not something she had read in an article or seen on the Internet, but one Roy had told her, about a little boy and his first visit to the cinema. She must go to the film if only to check if it could be true, if Yul Brynner really does keep his hat on until half-way through
The Magnificent Seven
.

***

In Britain wealth and privilege have evolved over centuries into the class system. In Britain wealth is a birthright, in America it is more a question of how much you have in the bank. In Britain the rich, the poor, the upper class, the middle classes, the working class and the workless live in their own clearly defined communities. America is not so organised. In America wealth and poverty co-exist cheek by jowl. One second you can be on Sunset Boulevard with its hookers and billboards and bustle, and the next you turn a corner and you are in a quiet residential street where big houses nestle in the foothills and you can look out from the patio windows over the lights of the plain below, like
ET
at the beginning of his film.

Up past the Chateau Marmont, the hotel where Clark Gable and Jean Harlow conducted a torrid affair and John Belushi overdosed, stands a whitewashed villa, where a woman who looks a little like a slightly younger, long-haired version of Anna Fisher is sitting at a computer terminal. Music plays loudly in the background, so at first she does not hear the telephone ringing. She turns the volume down and cradles a mobile phone between her shoulder and cheek, while continuing to read the computer screen.

'Oh Anna, hi,' she says, with a note of some surprise in her voice, turning away from the screen. 'Yeah, I'm great. How's my reclusive sister?'

There is a moment of silence as the caller answers.

'Really? Who with? Oh. Well what are you going to see? Why don't you go see
The English Patient
? Well, at least you're getting out at last. Of course I will. Just drop him off on your way. It doesn't matter how late it finishes, because you can leave him overnight and pick him up in the morning, and that way you'll get a decent night's sleep ... You could stay here too.
OK
, but I insist that Roy stays overnight.'

Jenni had been worried about her sister, but less so since the arrival of the baby. She had been desperate to see what the baby looked like. She had only recently married and she and Dave had no children yet. The truth was she had never had anything to do with babies at all, knew nothing about them, except that they were fragile, small and smelly. This would be her first niece, or nephew, the first time she would have a chance to see a baby close up, over an extended period, an opportunity for a test-drive. She was interested in the baby because it was just that, a baby; she was interested because she might, just might, want to get one of her own; she was interested in it specifically because it was her sister's baby; but she was also interested because it might offer some slight clue as to the mysterious father. What colour would it be? Not just its skin. What colour would its eyes be? And its hair? What would it look like? What would it be like?

It? 'It' turned out to be a 'he', with a tiny penis and enormous balls, which Anna assured her was normal. The first time Jenni saw Roy she readied herself to disguise her disgust at the sight of the semi-solid substances that she had been warned issue continually from a baby's every orifice. She would ignore the puke and the smell and the screaming and the green shit and pretend that he was beautiful. But there was no puke or smell or screaming or shit of any colour, just at that particular moment. And the baby was beautiful.

He was three months old now, but already Jenni had been pestering Anna for an opportunity to look after him.

'You need to get out. Just leave the baby with us for a night.'

She had been reading about babies.

'I've been reading about babies,' she told Anna. 'Ask me something.' And she thought she could even stand the puke and the smell and the screaming ... and ... and the shit. 'Go on, ask me something.'

Roy is awake when Anna arrives to turn him over to her sister's care for the night. He lies silently in his carrycot examining Jenni, with his piercing blue eyes and he coos contentedly.

'Like a pigeon,' says Jenni, running her fingers through his blond curly hair.

'He's so gorgeous,' says Jenni. 'Does he look like his daddy?'

Anna smiles.

'Yes, he does.'

This is a breakthrough, but Jenni knows not to push too much.

30

Greasy-haired and unshaven, Eli Wallach leads a small army of mounted bandits into a little Mexican farming village, swept along by the grandeur of Elmer Bernstein's music. Not handsome enough to be a goodie, he struts around in his scarlet shirt and stripy trousers, gesticulating with his arms and bemoaning change in society, shameless women's fashions and the decline of religion. The bandits wear sombreros, the peasants wear pristine white pyjamas. Wallach and his men help themselves to chickens, skins, grain and cigars, and he assures the villagers he will be back for the rest, prompting one of them to run at him with a machete, never a good idea when you are ten or twenty yards away and your opponent has a gun.

A small deputation of villagers, including one who looks curiously like a young Mexican Oliver Hardy, ride over the border to buy guns. They arrive just in time to witness an argument over whether an Indian can be buried on Boot Hill. The undertaker's driver has quit. Prejudiced? The undertaker says that when it comes to getting shot the man is downright bigoted, and there is no one else to drive the hearse.

'Oh, hell,' says a voice off-screen.

The camera switches to a man with strong, handsome features, a little menacing and almost slightly oriental. He is dressed in a black shirt and stetson and is leaning on a fence. He will drive the hearse, he says. To the sound of slow, threatening drums, he walks purposefully over to the rig. Another man borrows the stagecoach driver's scatter gun and joins him. He is younger, fairer, dressed in light, faded colours, with his off-white hat pushed back on his head. He says he has never ridden shotgun on a hearse before.

Brynner and McQueen. They died years ago, long before Anna went to see the film. But on the screen they live on. They live on, larger than life. The man with the shotgun and the easy charm and the man with the cigar and the suit of black. In
The Magnificent Seven
Brynner and McQueen achieved immortality. They are Akira Kurosawa's samurai knights relocated in the American West, with guns and horses and wistful talk of Dodge and Tombstone in the days before they became civilised. They are the embodiment of the legend, the myth, of the Wild West in corporeal form – not the way it was, but the way it should have been. Gunfighters who fight for the thrill of the fight, for the adventure, but who manage to make sure they are fighting on the right side nonetheless. Most of all they are a couple of boys playing at cowboys and Indians. The only difference between them and Roy and a million other kids around the world is that Brynner and McQueen had the right clothes, the guns, the horses, the landscape and they had the demeanour to become the legend.

But at the end of the day they are still just a couple of boys playing cowboys, thinks Anna. They are gone now, but their ghosts illuminate the Chinese Theatre. Cinema is the gateway to immortality, the door to another dimension, to another state of being, another plane, life after death. Brynner and McQueen are dead, but every night, somewhere in the world, they still ride the range with the others in the Magnificent Seven.

Senor Oliver Hardy and his friends approach Brynner, who keeps his hat on even in his hotel room, and they offer him the vacant post of village saviour. They promise to sell everything they own to pay him. Brynner observes dryly that he has been offered a lot for his work, but never before has he been offered everything.

Horst Buccholz – Chico – is the first to approach Brynner about joining up. He has the right clothes – a black hat and a leather waistcoat with silver bits – and he has a gun, but perhaps not the right demeanour. The proud, young, hot-headed Mexican is not what Brynner wants, not yet, though Brynner will be convinced in due course.

The first man hired is Brad Dexter – Harry Luck – though in the public consciousness he is very much the seventh man, the odd one out, the obscure one who was not and never would be a member of that party known as film stars. Harry is convinced that Brynner's story about defending Mexican farmers is a cover for something grander – gold, cattle, maybe payroll.

Brynner and the Hardy boys meet up again with McQueen in the saloon. He has been offered a job in a grocery store as a clerk. He has heard of a job defending a village in Mexico, but cannot find out what it pays. Twenty dollars for six weeks, says Brynner. That is ridiculous, says McQueen. Brynner explains it is the village of the men with whom he is drinking. One of the Mexicans says that they appreciate McQueen's position, and that working in a grocery store is good, steady work. McQueen asks Brynner how many men he has. Brynner raises a single finger. With a look of weary resignation, and a furrowed brow, McQueen raises two fingers in a gesture that is apparently meant to signify that he will be joining Brynner, though it could be interpreted as a comment on the proposed scale of remuneration.

Together they ride out to an isolated homestead where a man named O'Reilly is chopping wood for his breakfast. With a single blow of his axe the powerful figure of Charles Bronson cleaves a log in two. A friend of Harry Luck, he is used to hiring out his services for a lot of money, $600 or $800 a time. But right now $20 seems a lot.

Waiting for Brynner in his room is a southerner dressed like a gambler, with a white shirt, a black lace tie, grey waistcoat and black gloves. Robert Va
ughn, the man who would become
The Man from
UNCLE
. Right now he is Lee. Brynner thought Lee was looking for the Johnson Brothers. In a southern drawl, Lee declares that he found them.

Six. They need one more.

By a railway halt, two cowboys argue over whether 'He can' or 'He can't'. The audience has no idea who 'he' is, or the subject of the dispute. The one who claims 'He can' warns the other to keep his voice down or 'He' might hear. The second one, an arrogant, hectoring man, does not care. He is prepared to bet two months' salary that 'He' cannot do it. The doubting cowhand lumbers over to a long slim figure lying asleep in the dirt, with his back and head propped against the bottom of a fence, and his hat pulled down over his face to shield it from the sun. Long and slim, the figure looks almost liquid; like it is in the process of melting and, as it does so, has slipped down from an upright position to one that is very nearly horizontal.