You, Me and The Movies

by Fiona Collins

  ‘I didn’t know,’ says James. ‘I mean, I know he’s a lecturer. I don’t know much else. I’ve never been in here. I’ve only been in the garden, for a barbecue once, and in the hall, bringing a parcel in for Mac when he’s been away.’

  ‘If you were a woman you’d have gone for a good nose round,’ I say, then I wonder why I’m being so horribly sexist. It was the sort of thing Christian used to say, with an awful, mitigating chuckle: that women were nosy, unreliable gossips and bad drivers. Soon after we married, he was suggesting ways in which I could ‘improve’ myself – my untidiness being an obvious bone of contention, but others were dug up – how I watched television, my loud laugh; the ‘annoying’ way I breathed … and the list of faults he quickly found in Julian and my friends never had an end. I would never nose round someone’s house, uninvited; I don’t even know who my neighbours are. ‘Sorry,’ I add weakly, and I’m aware that sounds strange, but I’m sure by now James thinks I’m a complete weirdo anyway.

  There are photos, on the bookcase – only a few, in frames, squeezed at odd angles between books. One of Mac up on stage doing a talk at the BFI, which makes me both smile and feel incredibly sad, another of him on a sunny pebble beach – Nice, maybe? – with his top off, looking tanned and happy. He looks about forty; he still has all his ‘Macness’ going on. There are no family photos. No wife. No Lloyd.

  ‘Is this you?’ asks James. He has slid out a Polaroid photo from where it was sneaking between two books.

  ‘Oh God, yes!’ I cry. In the yellow-green-tinged eighties Polaroid I am grinning, all teeth and crazy hair, from under a neck-high white sheet. Mac is looking amused, studious even, next to me, from behind his round, rimless glasses. This is the only photo ever taken of Mac and me – there were no selfies in those days, of course, and no one around to witness our secret relationship, let alone record it. But one lecture-free afternoon, he had set up his camera on a tripod and taken a photo of us under the white sheet of his bed, as though we were John and Yoko on one of their Bed-Ins, minus the chocolate cake. Mac looks handsome and clever, as always. I look ridiculously young, silly and in love, and as Keira Knightley famously and annoyingly – to some – says in Love, Actually, ‘quite pretty’. We look guileless, when we were not. We look simplicity itself – a deception, in hindsight.

  I am amazed to be here, in Mac’s sitting room. After all this time, and all that passion and all that hurt, he has found a place for me in his house in London and I feel sheepishly delighted by it but, more than that – much more – a great, great urge to go back to that moment in time right now. Back in that bed. Back under that white sheet. When things had seemed so uncomplicated and love had not yet become a wounding double-edged sword.

  Of course, news of our relationship is a novelty for James. ‘Oh,’ he says, looking at the photo like a forensic scientist … I wonder if he is appreciating the mise en scène … ‘Not just a former student, then?’

  ‘No,’ I say and I can’t help but smile, though I wonder if James thinks I should look more ashamed. I should feel more ashamed, but they were such ridiculously happy times, in Mac’s bed, in his arms. ‘And I wasn’t even that. Are you shocked?’

  ‘Not really.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m not shocked by much.’ For the second time in ten minutes, I wonder what his story is. He’s an enigma, really, but aren’t we all? We are all a sum of our untold stories. He looks at the photo again. ‘You look really pretty here,’ he says, ‘but I prefer you now.’ Now I am shocked. I wouldn’t think anyone in a million years would prefer the current version of me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, at a loss. I daren’t look him in the eye. What a funny thing to say! He continues looking at the photo, the scene of all our crimes. ‘What did you say we needed to pick up?’

  ‘Pyjamas and some toiletries,’ says James, and I watch as he slides the photo back between biographies of Lana Turner and Gene Kelly. ‘Are you coming up?’

  Briefly pondering if he’s a psycho, with a Swiss Army knife in his inside jacket pocket and the heart of an evil serial killer under his crisp white shirt, I follow him upstairs. I’ll be surprised if Mac has any pyjamas, to be honest. His bedroom is neat and masculine – a white bed – nothing changes, then? – and a dark wood wardrobe and chest of drawers, more film posters – They Live by Night, A Fistful of Dollars, On Golden Pond. The same blinds. A navy carpet. Neat and ordered.

  ‘I don’t feel right going through his drawers,’ I say, and then I laugh as it’s a silly innuendo, especially in the light of what James now knows.

  ‘Well, quite,’ he says, with just the flicker of a smile, and I silently thank him for not cashing in on my comment. ‘I’ll do it.’

  James has a good look through Mac’s drawers and wardrobe, almost a rummage, I think. He’d give Becky a run for her money. She’s a rummager. If something’s not worth rummaging in her bag for, for twenty minutes, then it’s not worth having. I must email her. James puts everything back exactly as he found it, though. He stacks and he folds.

  I sit on the edge of the bed, feeling awkward. I look around the room. It looks fairly freshly decorated; the window panes are clean. Mac always was more house-proud than me; most people are, to be honest. My eyes alight on something that makes me grin but I try to hide it. James has already seen me in Mac’s bed wanton and half naked; he doesn’t need to witness me grinning shyly over a pair of cowboy boots in the corner of Mac’s bedroom and possibly shamefully blurting out I once wore them to have sex with him.

  ‘He hasn’t got any,’ James finally says. I knew it! Same old Mac. It’s weird, being here, though. I’m being given a sense of who the Mac of today really is – not the man in the hospital bed, who, apart from the past he shares with me, has no context, no imprint, no footprint. It makes me wonder about Helen and about Lloyd, both why there are no traces of them here and what sort of an imprint I may have left on them.

  We go back downstairs and get ready to leave. James picks up the pile of Mac’s post.

  ‘Just want to make sure there’s nothing important,’ he says, flicking through. I notice the top envelope has a red stamp across the top.

  ‘London Film School,’ I say, peering at it. ‘A newsletter?’

  ‘I believe he might do some lecturing there,’ says James. ‘I think I met a man at Mac’s barbecue, that time, who was from the London Film School.’

  Mac had signalled to me he was sort of still working. Maybe he lectured only occasionally; the London Film School hadn’t come up when I googled him. ‘What was that barbecue like?’ I ask.

  ‘It was OK,’ replies James. ‘Odd bunch of people. I’ve never seen any of them again.’

  ‘What was Mac like?’ I imagine him roaming around, waving his hands in the air, keeping everyone entertained.

  ‘Quiet.’ He shrugs. ‘Mac is always fairly quiet.’

  This surprises me as it’s far from how Mac used to be. No visitors at the hospital (apart from us), no visitors at home, quiet …? Has Mac’s light dimmed in recent years; have we both changed irrevocably? But I’ve seen that twinkle at the hospital; I know the old Mac is still there. I pick up the envelope and wonder. I also wonder if someone at the London Film School would know about Mac’s son. Where Lloyd Thomas is.

  We stack the post back on the hall table, lock up and James suggests a quick trip to Marks & Spencer, before they close, to pick up new pyjamas – I expect Mac will probably hate them but never mind. It’s an amusing experience, shopping with James. He doesn’t do the usual, male smash-and-grab shop, but takes his time, picking things up and putting them down again, making sure the piles he has disturbed are re-neatened, even sniffing at fabrics like a curious terrier. I wonder if people think we are a couple, then wonder if that tickles me, as a notion, or totally horrifies me. He’s handsome, yes, but so awkward.

  ‘What about these?’ says James, holding up a paisley pair in burgundy silk that come with a matching silky robe, all on the same hanger.

  ‘Perfect, if yo
u think Mac wants to channel Robert de Niro in Casino …’

  James laughs, and it takes me by surprise because I haven’t seen him laugh yet. His teeth are very even and his laugh temporarily crinkles his entire face. He looks nice when he laughs, and I laugh too because he got the reference. He hangs the ‘mob boss’ combo back on the rail and we carry on looking.

  Finally, we walk to the hospital and troop in, laden with bags. Mac is awake and his left eyebrow twitches at seeing us come in together, but I may be imagining this.

  ‘We’ve brought you some stuff,’ I say, pleased to see he is with us today. ‘Toiletries and some new pyjamas.’ I take the pyjamas from my bag – plain pale blue cotton, with top and bottoms joined together and suspended from a plastic hanger – and hold them up against me with a coquettish tilt of my head. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Cute,’ says James, and Mac’s eyebrow could be twitching again.

  I wonder about the logistics of actually getting them on Mac – I suppose the nurses will do it. It will be nice for him to get out of that undignified backless hospital gown. James goes to find Fran so he can give the bags of booty to her and I pour Mac some water. I watch as he sips from his straw, I tuck one corner of his pillow back in the envelope flap of his pillowcase; I gently smooth back his silvery, floppy hair. I remember that photo as I look into his eyes and smile – me and him, so carefree and so happy – and wish I had slipped it into my coat pocket to study at home. I sit down. Mac’s lips are moving. He makes a small noise, a muffled croak. Does he want something? Does he want to say something to me? I lean forward and bend my face down to his, so my left ear is close to his lips. He smells of toothpaste and something lemony.

  He whispers in my ear. Oh, he is flirting with me, even now.

  ‘Damn, you’re the … best girl in the Midlands,’ he whispers.

  THEN

  Chapter 9: Bonnie and Clyde

  It was boiling hot, the day we watched Bonnie and Clyde. It was the summer term, June. We had planned to smuggle ice lollies into the screening room, from the tiny freezer compartment of Mac’s fridge, but they had melted to stumps in our fingers long before we’d got there. We’d had to wash our hands in the loos opposite; for fun, and a spot of jeopardy, I’d dashed into the men’s with Mac. We’d been tempted to do it in one of the cubicles – well, I had; Mac had looked mildly horrified – until I’d conceded we could do it after the film, in more comfortable surroundings. And without the accompaniment of the hand dryer, which appeared to have got stuck at warp factor 10 and reminded me of the one Madonna cools her armpits under in Desperately Seeking Susan.

  I hadn’t seen Bonnie and Clyde before; I’d only ever seen some of the iconic stills from it, but it didn’t disappoint. Right from the opening shot of Bonnie naked in her bedroom, it had me. I was absolutely hooked; I barely moved a muscle for the entire film. God, I was obsessed with Faye Dunaway. Who could not be? Her ethereal sensuality and almost brittle beauty were mesmerizing – I wondered if I could dry my hair straight into a style like hers with a huge hairbrush. And then there was Warren Beatty’s swagger, the berets, the coats, the brutal final scene of the movie. It helped that the screening room was hot, as hot as Texas; it added to the mood. Despite my cute cotton sundress with the straps that tied into dinky bows on the shoulders and the white plimsolls that I’d slipped off my feet on to the floor, I was as sticky as Bonnie and Clyde were in the southern American heat. And I took every breath with them.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, at the end, turning to Mac, who was fanning himself with one of the pale blue reel boxes. ‘That was intense.’ The tragedy of it appealed to me. Bonnie and Clyde’s Big Love. I felt it right in my heart.

  ‘Yup,’ said Mac, speaking American. He had not mentioned Big Loves or Bigger Loves or any kind of love at all since our middle-of-the-night chat on Valentine’s Day. I was in love with him, though. Every time I looked at him, I thought, I love him, but I didn’t dare say it out loud. What if he didn’t feel the same, and why would he? This was an affair, something that wasn’t supposed to last for ever, however much I wished that it might. I didn’t want to make a colossal fool of myself; I had already gone too far saying ‘this is pretty much it’ and hoped he didn’t remember that. I’d gone all light and bolshie since that night – well, more than usual – to cover my tracks.

  ‘Not the usual cultural signifier of women,’ I added, layering on the ‘bolsh’ with a flick of my hair over one shoulder.

  ‘Nope.’ Mac was grinning at me. I could tell he was gratified that I loved the movie as much as he did.

  ‘Bonnie is sexually vivacious,’ I said, ‘and totally on an equal footing with Clyde.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Although I hated it when he made her change her hair, in the diner,’ I added, and Mac nodded. ‘I mean, he said he didn’t like it and she just changed it.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you doing that!’ he chuckled. He lazily slid an arm round me and pulled me in close to him, although the back of my neck was already too hot from the itchy velour of the sofa-seat.

  ‘Well, no.’ I leant forward, away from him, and pulled my sweat-dipped curls into a hand-held temporary ponytail. ‘But, in general,’ I said, ‘both Bonnie and Clyde were just so brazen, so unashamed.’

  ‘The director Arthur Penn liked to portray outsiders,’ said Mac, and I released my ponytail and sat back against his arm. ‘He said something like, “Society would be wise to pay attention to people who don’t belong, if it wants to find out where it’s failing.”’

  ‘Yes.’ I lapped up the words, let them digest within me. God, I loved this! Sod being on the Film Studies course – this was better! I was closer, closer to all the knowledge and I adored it. Who cared that I was barely scraping by on my own course? That there was an overdue and unfinished essay waiting for me, back in my room, I was in no rush to return to? ‘What was America like at the time?’ I begged, eager to learn.

  ‘Well, the Hays Code was on its last legs and in came the sexual revolution and women’s rights, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and frequent riots across America. The movie is such a good reflection of all that was going on, as Hollywood so often is. Was Bonnie satisfying herself or satisfying the male gaze? Was she expressing sexual power or was she a victim of it?’

  ‘The male gaze …?’

  ‘Oh, it’s all about the male gaze,’ said Mac. ‘Coined by theorist Laura Mulvey. I’ll lend you her book.’

  ‘Yes, please. Do you like gazing at me?’

  Mac laughed. ‘Of course I do.’

  The male gaze … I totally got it, and probably didn’t even need to read the book. I loved seeing myself through the prism of how Mac saw me – sexy, fun, irresistible. Perhaps that’s why I had started things with him in the first place – from the very moment he raised his eyebrows at me in that corridor I liked how he viewed me. He immediately put me in a sexual, seductive frame and I adored being there; in the lens of Mac’s viewfinder I was more than I had ever been.

  These discussions with Mac made me feel alive. I felt I had something to add, too, which thrilled me. I never had the chance to debate with anyone before, not all this stuff that I loved. Marilyn imagined herself as a semi-intellectual but it wasn’t semi, it was a big fat zero. Dad never said much at all – he didn’t have the confidence for tackling issues – and Steven from Home had never exactly been a debate buddy. He talked about football or whether he was going to have a battered or plain sausage from the fish and chip shop. I’d asked him once if he liked Brando and he thought I was talking about the shop in the precinct that sold knock-off Fred Perry T-shirts.

  ‘So you liked Bonnie and Clyde, then?’ Mac stretched out his legs. He was wearing a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up – a little Brando-esque himself, I thought. He’d spilt a little green ice lolly on it – he had a cute exclamation mark near his left nipple.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  There was chatter outside the screening room, a gaggle of st
udents passing. We waited until they had gone then Mac leapt up the steps to the projection booth to extricate his reels and box them up. I waited, twiddling one of the straps on my dress and planning that night’s seduction. I was hoping it would involve a quick trip to Sainsbury’s to pick up some Lambrusco (Mac) and a lying naked-in-wait in his bed (me). There was only a week to go until the end of term. I felt hollow at the thought. A return to Dad and Marilyn, boredom, nothing to do, nowhere to go, an atmosphere of varying unpleasantness … I’d hoped to meet up with Becky this holiday – but she had arranged to spend the summer on a kibbutz in Israel and was deserting me. I’d been too wrapped up in Mac to organize anything. Besides, I had no funds: I couldn’t go Interrailing, I couldn’t afford a cheap quickie to the Med, I had not researched fruit picking as I really didn’t fancy it, and I had failed to look into Camp America because the thought of spending time with a load of American kids in baggy shorts and back-to-front baseball caps appalled me.

  I wanted to stay in Mac’s viewfinder. I didn’t want it slipping from me, in case it never came back.

  ‘Can we meet up in the holiday?’ I asked him, later that night, after the seduction. I was lolling in his bed, the sheet completely off. ‘Just once. To keep me going? I can’t bear to not see you for the whole zillion-whatever weeks.’

  So much for covering my tracks and not revealing my true feelings, but my confidence was borderline off the chart since twenty minutes before, as he’d entered me, Mac had whispered something similar to a line Clyde had made to Bonnie, in the movie, except that I was apparently the hottest girl in the Midlands. Not quite Texas, but I’d taken it. I’d giggled and so had he. I felt invincible, like I was riding the crest of a wave on a jaunty surfboard and could shout anything while I was up there, without risk.