All was not lost. A short while after that I spotted on the library noticeboard the ad asking for tour guides. It was walking-tour guides they were looking for, to haul groups of terrorists about the place and spin yarns about our fabulous little city. Why not, I thought. It will keep my vocal cords ticking over, provide some badly needed pocket money, the flexible hours suit, and I certainly know how to convey in a manner that will appeal. On this occasion the interviewer was not so concerned with latching on to the kinds of words I used. I spun him a yarn daddy used to tell me about Nimmo’s Pier and that was all he needed to hear. Less than a week later I took my first group around the town. All in all it has proved a perfect arrangement.
*
Still no word from Fleming. That’s OK. I am used to the occasional silence from him. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I have reached the harbour-end of Merchants Road by now, location of the new theatre. They are putting the finishing touches to the building and I pause to check its progress. It’s more of a restoration job to an existing building, one that’s been here for about a hundred years and has been used as a theatre in the past. Daddy was in a couple of shows here. I came to see him perform. Joxer Daly. Willy Loman. Hamlet. The Story House, they are going to call the new version of the building. It’s only taken them since the dawn of time to get it ready. Still. It will all be worth it.
And still nothing from Fleming. Well. If he is going to be like that, so am I. I take a quick glance towards the busy builders, allow a bitten kerb snag my foot and, oops, down I go, collapsing in a dramatic heap amidst a pile of hacked-away rubble.
My favourite builderman spots me on the ground. Over he strides, all sweat and gristle. Hammer and chisel swaying out of the toolbelt tied about his waist, a beef and brawn stew heading my way.
He helps me to my feet. His strong arm. His gentle-firm touch. I have a good mind to collapse again. But I don’t want him thinking I am a drama queen, putty in his hands.
‘Nice pickup,’ I say, doing my best to remain limp in his arms after he stands me up on my dainty feet. ‘A girl could really fall for you.’
‘Is that so?’ he says, smiling, his gentle-giant voice so easy on my ears.
‘Tell me, big boy, how long until opening night?’
He takes a hammer out of the toolbelt and taps it off the hard hat he is wearing.
‘We’re getting there, I think.’
‘I don’t mind waiting a little longer if it means getting a gander at you every day.’
‘You’re a charmer, aren’t you,’ he says, putting on a big smirk.
‘And I like your hat,’ I say, and he starts to laugh. ‘Are you fitting double seats? Play your cards right and I’ll let you take me along on opening night. We might even take a private box. Know what I’m saying?’ I raise my eyebrows for effect.
‘Go on and let me finish here or the thing will never get done.’
‘That’s what you said this time last year.’
I do as he says, though. Treat them mean, keep them keen. ‘I’m sure it will all be worth the wait – just like you,’ I tell him, blowing him a little kiss as my phone buzz-buzzes with what I can only by now assume is an alert of Fleming’s imminent appearance. But I am wrong. It’s mother again, her sweet words putting the kibosh on my happy vibe. Where on planet earth are you? Your sister is asking for you.
Where on planet earth are you? Jennifer is the one she needs if she’s looking for an answer to that particular question. And I can imagine the stuff Jennifer might have by way of reply. Oh, mother, earlier I was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, saving a woman from a bunch of madmen about to bury her up to her neck and fling rocks. Then I went to Somalia to prevent all the babies from starving to death. After that I rescued a couple of villages from annihilation somewhere in the Amazon jungle. There is no doubt about it, she’s a hero, our Jennifer. A shining light righting all the wrongs in the world. As for yours truly? Right now, as of this very moment, I am up a do-not-disturb camel’s backside chewing a bunch of freshest daisies. I have a little chuckle and my phone buzz-buzzes again.
See you in fifteen. Usual place. This time it’s Fleming. Wanting to meet up in Barna Woods. I am about to reply and let him know he will see me precisely when he sees me when my phone buzz-buzzes a third time. Be at the house very, very soon or else. Or else what, I’m wondering, and hot on its heels arrives the next message. On your way get something from Brady’s. Something nice. And don’t forget your meds.
Mothers. As far as I’m concerned there are two kinds: irksome and I forget the other.
8
I’ve known Fleming for almost a year and a half. He’s a few years older than me. Five. Maybe fifteen. Who knows? For a time after we first got together I wasn’t even sure that Fleming was his first name or second name. He is six feet tall and looks like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. I wish. He’s a spaghetti string of a man with caved-in cheeks and a backside that reminds me of a peanut. Though he does have a decent speaking voice, and sometimes the light even picks up the baby blue of his eyes.
We first crossed paths down town, by the entrance to Buttermilk Lane. A film unit was shooting a scene and I had stopped for a gander. Onlookers, please put your fingers in your ears, someone from the crew yelled out, this is going to be loud. Then came the command, Action! and a string-vest skinhead brandishing a machine gun emerged from a side door, pointed his weapon my way and began to ratta-tat-tat. I hadn’t heeded the close-your-ears warning and the shock alone had me clutching my chest as I was sent reeling backwards. I ended up on the seat of my skirt. For a moment everyone looked at me, bystanders and film crew alike, we-told-you-so written all over their faces. Best performance we’ve had all day, hollered the crew member who had issued the initial warning, and he started to clap. Everyone laughed and joined in the applause, and it was while all this was going on that the helping hand reached down and assisted me back on my feet. Hang on, he said, as soon as he saw that I was OK, and he spun around, sought out the loudmouth filmmaker and popped him right on the kisser. Let’s go, he said, hurrying the pair of us away from there. I thought it was romantic.
For the rest of the day we sat together outside Little Mary’s. I thanked him for being my knight in shining armour. He smiled and told me it was what he was born to do. I smiled and told him my name. He smiled again and told me when he was eight, under cover of dark, his father hot-wired their neighbour’s car and drove it like a bat of out hell out of town and was never seen again. He told me his mother was a zombie who gets by on cheap vodka and daytime TV. He told me he shared a house with his five brothers who drink Aldi beer all day and knock each other senseless all night. He said he liked spending as much time as he could away from the house. He told me one day he would like to have a son. He asked me was there anything I wanted more than anything and I shared my movie-star dream with him. He told me the worst thing about dreams is waking up. Besides, he said, television is the place to be. Then he told me he had it within him to go places – if he was bothered. He could be leader of the country if he wanted to. Fly a fighter jet. Figure out cures for cancer and megalomania. Prevent war. If I wanted to I could be a spaceman, he told me. I told him I’m pretty sure he’s one already.
More drinks arrived. Hours flittered by. Some day I might do something that lands me in prison, he said. Like what? I asked him, but he didn’t offer anything. I’ll cook for you – some day, he said instead. Some day? I asked. When my brothers leave town or die, whichever comes first. Just don’t hold your breath. I asked him why his brothers had to leave town or die in order for him to cook. He shrugged and said because they are territorial and self-involved. Tell you what, I would later say, and after I had discovered that his brothers considered Fleming fair game for their we-are-tough-men antics, let me cook for you.
He asked me what I liked, where is my favourite place, who do I want to be. I didn’t bother answering the first two questions. I told him Lana Turner’s father had been bludgeoned to death after
winning big at a travelling craps game. I told him Veronica Lake’s father died in an industrial explosion when she was twelve. I told him Barbara Stanwyck had been orphaned at the age of four. So you want to be the famous daughter of a long-dead father, he said to me. Already halfway there, I replied.
He claimed to know the names of every American president – from the very first to the present day. He could list them in order too. Ask me to do it anytime you feel like it, he said. So far I haven’t asked.
He told me he had a job looking after a rich man’s house. Clipping hedges. Weeding. Mowing the lawn. Walking the shit-a-lot dog. Gathering up all the turds that came out of shit-a-lot. He told me he had a nickname for the rich man. Frogface Two. He told me he had been fired from the job that very day. Why? I asked, and he told me he had flung dogshit at Frogface Two. Why? I asked, and he told me Frogface Two had called him a loser. I am not a loser, he then said, looking intensely at me. I just don’t want to win. I told him I didn’t like the way those people back there had laughed at me. And one day a few months later, when I was feeling lowly, he told me if I jumped into the abyss he would jump right in after me. I thought that was romantic too.
Those first few hours zipped by. People came and went. The evening cooled.
‘I have to go now,’ I said.
‘Go where?’ he asked.
‘To my doctor.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘Can I walk you?’
I thought that was most romantic of all.
*
And here I am. Barna Woods. I like it in here. There is nobody to answer to and I can come and go whenever I feel like it. The trees are my friends. They swish and sway and lean my way for some chummy chat and glimmers of light flit through the resilient leaves. There’s this craggy, dead-limbed thing that I climb from time to time – when I am in a lofty kind of mood. And of course there’s the hollowed-out oak.
I hear Fleming before I see him, scratching his way, grunting and tut-tutting, and as usual saving his best curse words for the innocent brambles nicking him here, there and everywhere.
‘I think we need to have a think about our meeting place,’ he says when he appears and then stands over me, shaking leaves and twigs out of his messed-up hair.
‘Nice to see you too,’ I say, as I clamber to my feet.
We go right in, to where the trees are thickest and the roots are pushing up through the ground, and where I hug the tree trunk best suited to my wraparound arms while Fleming gets up close and personal. ‘Wait,’ I say, pausing him briefly and hitch my skirt fully up and make him whip me with a tree branch. Ha! Ha! I do no such thing. I coo and titter at his sudden need to declare me some kind of woman, and even permit myself a wheeze of genuine contentment. ‘Thanks, big boy, you can get ready to finish up now,’ I say over my shoulder, and a few shuddering moments later he is in a crumpled heap.
‘I was thinking,’ I tell Fleming, once we’re sitting back to back upon a sturdy stump, smoking the after-sex rollies I’ve made for us. ‘When I become a world-famous star I am going to buy all this.’
‘All what?’ Fleming says, as though there is nothing except fresh air around us.
‘These trees. All the leaves and roots and bramble bushes will belong to me.’
‘Oh, and precisely when is that going to happen?’
‘Sooner than you think.’
‘That’s a line I have heard before.’
‘Keep talking like that and I won’t tell you about the opportunity I have.’
‘Opportunity? What sort of opportunity?’
‘What do you mean what sort of opportunity? A theatre opportunity. I am going to have an audition.’
‘I thought you gave up those things after what happened last time.’
‘I have put that particular experience behind me, Fleming. And I don’t expect to hear you mention it again.’
Fleming shrugs and it’s then I notice the swelling on the side of his head. I’m tempted to ask him about it, but can guess the answer. One of the perks of living with five volatile brothers.
‘I almost forgot,’ he says, cutting into the silence. ‘Did your sister show up?’ I wince at the question.
‘Maybe. Then again, maybe not.’
‘When do I get to meet her?’ he goes on, sounding a little bit too interested, and I jab his kidney with my elbow.
A moment of blissful silence passes.
‘She came all the way from Mexico, didn’t she?’ he says next. ‘That’s the other side of the world.’
‘Thanks for the geography lesson, but, yes, I do know where Mexico is.’
‘Is she going to stay around for a while?’
‘Hello? Last time I checked my name wasn’t Nostradamus. I’m thinking of killing her.’
‘Is that before or after you kill yourself?’
‘Hey!’
‘How does she look?’
‘Couldn’t say.’
‘What do you mean you couldn’t say?’
‘I only saw her from a distance.’
‘And so desperate were you to see me, you couldn’t stick around to say hello to her.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Fleming. You’re not that good.’
‘Admit it. You couldn’t wait to feel me inside you this afternoon.’
‘Keep talking, Fleming. And you will see what you will be feeling inside you.’
‘Promises, promises. I watched one of those Lana Turner movies you recommended. The Postman Always Rings Twice.’
‘And what is your verdict?’
‘Two enthusiastic thumbs up. Those pencil-mark eyebrows and that skin. Wow. I mean wow. I think I could go for Lana.’
‘I planned on having one husband and seven children but it turned out the other way around.’
‘Huh?’
‘Just something she once said.’
‘I’m going to hunt down some more of her movies. Does your sister take after your mother or father?’
‘What?’
‘Who is your sister like? Your mother or your father?’
‘That is none of your concern.’
‘Is it your father?’
‘Why are you so interested in this?’
‘I’m just making conversation.’
I take another drag of my rollie. I wanted to see Fleming in order to share my theatre news. I thought he might be impressed, might even have an encouraging word or two, and all he can do is lie on his backside and talk about that other one. I wish I hadn’t said a word about Jennifer coming home. Listen to him. Here he goes again.
‘Wonder what it’s like in Mexico.’
‘Couldn’t say. I’ve never been.’
‘Play your cards right and your sister might invite you.’
‘That is one thing I am certain won’t be happening.’
‘She’s one of those aid workers, isn’t she?’
‘Fleming, please stop saying things I have no interest in.’
‘I’d say you’re more interested than you let on.’
‘Well, I wonder who died and made you Sigmund Freud.’
‘No need to get snippy with me.’
‘Fleming, I came here today to tell you about this part I am up for.’
‘Tell away. I’m not stopping you.’
‘It’s a reprisal of a famous play from the 1940s. To mark its seventieth anniversary. Which one do you suppose it could be?’
‘I’m surprised you don’t know,’ Fleming says. ‘With all your knowledge.’
‘Oh, Fleming, of course I know. I just want to see if you know.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’
‘Do you know?’
‘Tell you what. Why don’t you just tell me.’
‘Sometimes you are no fun, Fleming. No fun whatsoever.’
‘Come on then. Out with it. Tell me what it is.’
‘I don’t think I want to now.’
‘I’ll take you for another roll in the mulc
h if you do.’
‘You can roll by yourself.’
‘Are you sure you’re ready? You know, to return to the theatre.’
‘Exactly what are you trying to say now, Fleming?’
‘Television. That’s where it’s all happening these days.’
Here we go again. According to Fleming television is the place to be. It’s a Golden Age. Anybody who is anybody is to be found doing something on television. Fleming has his own ideas for TV shows. Concepts, he calls them. I try my best not to listen when he starts in on his latest one.
‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’
‘Come again.’
‘The name of the play.’
‘Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of it. Good title. Brando is in it.’
‘He’s in the stage version and the film version. Vivien Leigh is in the film version. In the role of Blanche DuBois. That’s my part – in case you’re not sure.’
‘You know, being flippant doesn’t suit you. Not one bit.’
‘For my audition I’m thinking of doing the I-have-always-depended-on-the-kindness-of-strangers scene.’
‘Suppose they want you to do something else?’
‘Then I’ll do that as well. That way they will be doubly sure they have who they are looking for.’
‘You sound very sure of yourself.’
‘Now what are you trying to say?’
‘I just hope you are not setting yourself up for a disappointment. That’s all.’
Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame Page 4