by Roddy Doyle
She laughed.
—There’s never been a woman like her, she said.—Never, ever. We’d be making bloody history.
—Grand.
—He’s on our side, Mister Smart. But you’ll have to fight.
She walked to the door.
—Is there any more fight in you, Mister Smart?
The answer came quickly.
—Fuckin’ sure.
—That’s the spirit.
—That story, I said to Meta Sterne.—In the magazine.
I was standing in Ford’s new office, at Republic. I’d changed my mind about waiting for him to come after me, right after I’d watched Maureen FitzSimons’s arse walk out my door. I’d walked to Republic, all the way. I was going to march straight in to Ford, flatten the cunt - I’d make him sit down and we’d write the script in one big go.
I’d thought of stopping a cab but I didn’t know how it was done. I used to - I knew that; I remembered being in cabs. But I watched the taxis pass and both hands stayed deep in my pockets. I pursed my lips but I’d lost my whistling teeth; they weren’t in my head any more. I knew how to get there, the boulevards and corners. But the journey took all day. Shadows were hard to read in this city but I could tell it was late afternoon. The sweat had crusted on my back; the pain was solid in both my legs. But I still meant business. I wiped the dirt from my crocodile boots before I marched up to Ford’s door.
—Saturday Evening Post? she asked.
—I must have it put it down somewhere, I said.—I never got the chance to finish it.
She slid open a drawer and lifted out the clean-shaven coastguard and his iceberg. She held it out, across the desk.
I took it.
—Thanks.
I pointed at the closed door to Ford’s inner office.
—Is he in?
—No, she said.—He isn’t.
She smiled. Then she looked back down at her desk.
Other men had crossed him and been shunned for years; stars and stuntmen, any men or women who’d needed his work and love. Maureen FitzSimons had said it: turn down Mister Ford and he was a demon.
Fuck him.
I didn’t wait.
I sat on the bed and I read it.
Shawn Kelvin, a blithe young lad of twenty, went to the States to seek his fortune.
It was right; I had been twenty. But what did fuckin’ blithe mean?
And fifteen years thereafter he returned to his native Kerry, his blitheness sobered and his youth dried to the core, and whether he had made his fortune or whether he had not, no one could be knowing for certain. For he was a quiet man, not given to talking about himself and the things he had done. A quiet man, under middle size—
My arse.
with strong shoulders and deep-set blue eyes below brows slightly darker than his dark hair. That was Shawn Kelvin. One shoulder had a trick of hunching slightly higher than the other—
That was true. I did carry one shoulder higher than the other. But only after I’d been shot a few times and I’d fallen off a train. He’d got the eyes right too, although he could have made more of them. The dates were way off, and the geography. I’d never returned, to Dublin or Kerry, or anywhere else.
But I couldn’t be sure. There were holes in my life, holes that I still fell into. I’d been twenty when I left. I remembered leaving, standing on the deck of the night boat to Liverpool. I remembered myself exactly then. I stood in the wind and felt the rise and drop of the boat as it tried to cut across the waves. I’d left, but I’d never gone back.
But I had to keep reading. I couldn’t be certain I wasn’t in there. The Quiet Man was nearly twenty years old; it had been published in 1933. I’d had brothers, sisters I couldn’t name. I’d done things I couldn’t properly recall. I’d met people I didn’t know. Was one of them this man, Maurice Walsh, the chap who’d written the story? Had I spilled my guts to him one night in Chicago or St Louis, or anywhere? I could say No, but only because I couldn’t remember.
She was past her first youth into that second one that has no definite ending. She might be thirty - she was no less - but there was not a lad in the countryside would say she was past her prime.
That wasn’t too far from Miss O’Shea. She’d been out of her young years when I’d accidentally caught up with her, at her mother’s house in Roscommon. She’d been sick but she’d been beautiful, out there in the field, when - Two and two? - I’d turned and found her, much older than me but still a young one.
I kept reading, but the more I read the less I had to care.
On himself, and on himself only, lay the task of moulding her into a wife and lover.
I could laugh at the thought of moulding Miss O’Shea. She’d have boxed the fuckin’ head off me. I could relax now. I read, because it was a story. And I finished it. I took the pages away from my face. It was dark.
I’d been worried. I’d been terrified that I’d be in there, with Miss O’Shea, my life already told. It was the fear that I wouldn’t know it, that I’d read it and not know myself, no matter how often I read, or coaxed and battered my memory.
But it wasn’t about me at all. I felt that certainty, and I stretched. I hadn’t stretched like that since I was a young fella. The enjoyment of it, the pride - the sheer length of this fine man - I did it and heard no cracks. I could relax; I could rest. I was still intact.
Then there was the fury.
Your man in the story, Shawn Kelvin, a steel-worker and a boxer, came home to Ireland from Pittsburgh. He set up house and married Ellen O’Grady, a fine-looking bird with a tongue and a temper. Her brother, Big Liam - for fuck sake - wanted her out of the house, so he could bring another woman into it, a widow with a few quid. There was a dowry too - the fuckin’ dowry that Ford had tried to shove into my life. Kelvin wasn’t fussed about the dowry; he was happy enough with the woman. But Ellen was having none of it. She wanted what was hers. There’d have to be a scrap, because Big Liam wouldn’t cough up. But Kelvin wouldn’t fight Big Liam. Ellen was ashamed of him, and that was the start of the lockout; the legs stayed shut. So Kelvin demanded the money, in front of the wife and Big Liam’s farmhands. He told him he could have the sister back; all deals were off. He more or less threw her into the muck in front of Big Liam. So Liam stormed off, and came back with the money. Kelvin took the cash without even looking at it, and made straight for the thresher - whatever the fuck that was, some farming machine with a coal-burning engine. Ellen went ahead of him. She opened the door of the firebox and stepped back to let Kelvin throw the readies into the fire. Big Liam came charging at Kelvin but, no surprises, Kelvin decked him with a few good thumps. Kelvin shook the sweat off his neck, turned to the missis, and they all lived happily ever after.
And John Ford thought he could force my life into that. That the life and even partially remembered times of Henry Smart could be reduced to a fight across a fuckin’ farmyard, for a couple of quid and the right to ride a good-looking culchie.
I’d kill him. I’d give him his final scene. I’d batter him through the floorboards.
I went back out to Republic. I walked into a new, hot day.
But Ford wasn’t there.
He was never there. And then there was no there. He’d moved again, to a different studio. There was a different director in Ford’s Republic bungalow. A younger man, with a younger secretary. She’d never heard of Mister Ford, she said. She was a hard girl behind the gorgeousness, or because of it. The message was clear: I’d be found when I was wanted. I could fight when he was ready.
I walked to every studio; there was one at the end of every day-long avenue. Fox, Universal, MGM. I waited at the guarded gates. I climbed high fences after dark. I clubbed a German shepherd to death with the leg and its boot before I could get the thing off properly. I didn’t have time, and neither did the dog. I fell on him as his last bark licked my face.
I gasped and laughed. I was living.
I crept under palm trees, behind the lines of
studio bungalows. I peered through blinds, for photographs of cowboys and their leading ladies. I found plenty but none of them were Ford’s. I jemmied locks and remembered how to get past window glass. I sat at desks and read scripts and script notes. I read in the dark. I looked for Ford in the lines. I resisted temptation; I added no notes of my own. I read all the hard men and war heroes, bad girls and heroines. But Ford wasn’t directing any of them.
It stopped mattering, because every night I read. I learnt the codes and shortcuts. I knew what a script looked like now. I knew the layout and the language. I sat in the cave under Cecil B. DeMille’s desk and read every script in his Paramount bungalow, using a torch I’d bought on the way.
I heard the key. The door opened.
I walked out, past the woman who’d opened it. I was carrying the waste bin.
—Grand morning, I said, the new janitor, in good suit and fedora.
—Yes, said the woman.
I dumped the rubbish behind a bush and brought the bin back in. I put it back beside her desk. She hadn’t moved.
—See you tomorrow, I said.
I broke into Ford’s house. I stood in the hall and knew he wasn’t there. I looked in the hidden rooms. I looked for scripts - Rio Grande, The Quiet Man - but I found nothing.
I kept moving. It was the best time I’d lived in years. I was awake and younger. Over walls and fences, through wooden and cast-iron doors. Singin’ in the Rain, High Noon. I read them all; I prowled the sets. I fed the horses and pissed in the water tank. Gene Kelly never knew what rained on him while he was singing. I roamed all night and slept through the days.
—Mister Smart.
I left Bill at the door. He followed me in.
—Ready? he said.
—For what?
—Mister Ford wants to talk with you, said Bill.
—Is that right?
—Yes, said Bill.
—Grand, I said.
—All set? he said.
And I told him.
—No.
He was shocked, then anxious and annoyed.
—You won’t come?
—No.
—What do I tell Mister Ford? he said.
—It’s up to you.
—You won’t meet him?
—I didn’t say that.
—Should I come back tomorrow?
—Fair enough.
—Tomorrow morning?
—Grand.
He walked to the door.
—Goodbye, Mister Smart, he said.
—Good luck, I said, and followed him to the door. He stopped and looked back. We could hear a fight going on, a few rooms away. A serious one - things breaking, angry people grunting quietly. Bill looked at me. He was hunting for reassurance, something solid to tell Ford. He shrugged and walked away. I watched him till he turned the corner to the elevator. I heard it start; the cables groaned as they pulled it to him.
I shut the door.
I was wide awake, alert. Trained killer - I never slept. Before, in the old days, I’d woken straight into every escape or confrontation. Nothing had been unexpected.
I was ready. I didn’t move.
I couldn’t hear anything beyond or beneath the usual. Early, pre-dawn morning - all the expected sounds. The corridor outside was empty. The hotel’s clients were fast asleep or dead.
The crack on the head came before the grunt. Hands were on me, heavy on my head and shoulder. The hands had weight but the knocks to my head weren’t meant to kill or even hurt me. One hand pressed my face hard into the pillow. Things seemed to squirm and shift inside it, right against my skin and eye. I tried to push against the weight. I got my head up, but I knew it: I was being let move, an inch or two. There was enough power there to push me down, to smother me or even break my neck.
—The leg on, Mister Smart?
My face went back down into the pillow. Harder this time, longer - I was losing.
The leg was beside the bed. The sheet was off me; he’d have seen I wasn’t wearing it.
That was what drained everything out of me. The sight of myself, what he must have been looking at. The old man, naked, the meatless arse; the old insect, one of the legs pulled off.
—Ready to get up?
I nodded - I tried to.
—Okay?
I nodded again. I could turn now.
—Sorry, Mister Smart, he said.
I covered myself with the sheet, for his sake and my own.
—Just following orders, Bill, yeah?
—No, he said.—Nobody told me to do this.
—Then what the fuck are you up to?
This time he really hurt me. He swung his open hand from right across the room; the crack filled the place. I hit the floor, between the bed and wall. I’d landed on the wooden leg.
—Put it on, he said.
He watched me carefully; he stayed close. I stopped holding the leg like a club, and I saw his feet shift slightly. But he wasn’t giving me room. I wasn’t going to get him now.
He watched me strap it on. He watched me get the clothes on. He moved, just enough. He stayed right with me.
—Why? I asked him.
I put my notebook into one of my jacket pockets. I remembered the fedora and I put it on.
—There’s just so much a man should have to take, he said. I was ready to go.
—I don’t mind taking the orders, he said.—It suits me fine. Mister Ford is a good man.
I looked at him. Not for the first time, I’d underestimated a man. I’d never fuckin’ learn.
—But you, he said.—Calling you Mister Smart don’t come natural. Let’s go.
He didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. I moved; I did what he wanted me to. But he stood in my way.
—You’re shit, he said.—Like me.
There was no aggression in what he said, and he wasn’t trying to provoke me. That was what made it frightening. He believed what he’d said.
—I’m sorry, I said.
—Yeah.
—You have a passport? said Ford.
—No.
—You had one when you came here.
—It wasn’t mine, I told him.—And I threw it in the Hudson.
—We’ll get you a passport, said Ford.—You American now? I didn’t know.
—I don’t want a passport.
It wasn’t the same desert. It was the whole world, a vast land all around me, but still, it looked smaller than Monument Valley. The fort looked like the same one, a flimsy thing, picked up and dropped there. The walls were too low to stop anything. In fact, there was only one wall.There was a long line of army tents, brighter versions of the ones I’d seen in the migrant camps during the Depression years. There were trees here, a few of them, that made long vein-like shadows across the dust. We were in Utah, somewhere - the Moab. Somewhere I’d probably been through before.
—I’m just back, he said.
I said nothing.
—From Ireland, he said.—I was looking at some locations.
—The place is full of locations.
I hadn’t been going to talk or get sucked in. But the mention of Ireland had been enough; the mouth had opened and the shite spilled out.
—Point is, he said.—I couldn’t get there without my passport. Meta?
—Here.
She was under the same big hat.
—Let’s get Henry photographed, he said.—And, Jesus. Is he Irish or American?
—I’ll look into it, she said.
—He might even be Mexican, said Ford.
—He might have to be, she said.—If we need his passport any time soon.
—We do.
—Leave it with me, she said, but she stayed where she was, sitting just behind us.
(I found out later, I was American. There were no records in Dublin; I’d never existed.)
—So, said Ford.—We’re on the home stretch. We have the finance, and Duke and Maureen.
—What about Fonda?
—Too poker-assed to be a convincing Irishman. We just need the script. You ready?
—For what?
—The work.
—I’ve been hanging around for three years, I told him.
I’d worked it out in the station wagon; it was still an angry shock.
—So you’re ready, is my guess.
I stood up. I wasn’t doing it again, listening to him force my life into The Quiet Man. The chair was the trap. I could feel it, on my back. Henry Smart - Writer. The words were glue, already drying. But I’d seen scripts now; I’d read a few. I hadn’t written a word and I hadn’t seen a line being written.
—Sit down, said Ford.
—No.
—Then listen.
—No, I said.—You listen.
And he did. He lifted his hat and looked at me as I spoke.
I told him I’d read The Quiet Man and that there hadn’t been a sentence that I’d felt was mine. I told him I wouldn’t give him bits of my life to make his picture a bit less of a travesty. I told him more and I think I spoke for hours.
I was ready to walk and I didn’t care if I walked deeper in or out of the desert.
—You win, he said.
—What d’you mean?
—We’ll make it your way.
I knew enough by now. In the world of Ford there was only one way, and it would never be mine or anyone else’s.
He stood up now. There was no tension in his body.
—I’m sorry, he said.
Then he lifted his hand and slapped the words away.
—I understand, he said.—You’ve been hanging around. But that’s not it. I know.
He shrugged.
—But, he said,—we got the finance.
I stepped back.
He was messing again, the salesman, the barker. But he saw me move and he slumped again, became a smaller man than me.
—Listen, he said.—I have the finance. I used The Quiet Man to get it. That’s the package. And Duke, and Maureen. Now I have it. From that prick, Herb Yates. Took the fucker back to Ireland, showed him the cottage I almost starved in before I took the boat. Believed it myself. We were both crying. But I got it. And now I can do what I want. We’ll be in Galway. He’ll be in L.A. He’ll scream down the phone when he sees the dailies but the dailies he’s looking at will be three or four days late. We’ll be finished before he knows what he’s paid for.