‘With your help,’ I say to Stewart. ‘Thanks so much.’ I’ve emailed him twice, since he wrote from New York: firstly to tell him Mac had died and about Lloyd; secondly to invite him here today. In neither was I brave enough to answer his question about whether he’d met me before, but I get the feeling he knows exactly who I am, and does it really matter now? He’s not looking at me in a judgemental way, certainly. He looks kind and he is smiling, snowflakes alighting on his big bushy beard.
We take our places in a small circle – me, James, Fran, Becky, Kelly and Scarlett (who are still trying not to stare at James), Stewart and the women and the two young men. The wooden bench Mac sat on forms the final plane of our semicircle, which I thought was a nice touch when James suggested it; we might get one of those plaques made, later on. Lloyd is opposite us and is unrolling a white screen upwards from a metal stand which he has planted into the ground. He pulls a cube-shaped mobile projector from his carrier bag, unwraps it from what look like two navy jumpers and places it, facing the screen, on the camping chair.
‘Are we expecting anyone else?’ asks Becky, to my right.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say.
‘Who are that lot, then?’
At the bottom of Larkspur Hill, seven or eight people, broad brush-stroked by dark daubs of coats, hats and scarves, arrange themselves in a silent cluster. There’s some quick handshaking, some light hugs, then the small army begins to move up the hill towards us. At their head is a diminutive figure, with dark hair and a long straight fringe, who strides with long, booted steps and purpose.
James, to my left, glances at me. ‘Is that a severe fringe I see before me?’ he queries.
‘Looks like it,’ I say, incredulous.
As they get nearer, I notice most of the dark, blizzard-muffled flock seem to be clutching the same rectangular-shaped item in their hands. The small marching figure at their head carries one too. Fringe and flock reach us. The small figure – gimlet eyes, fitted double-breasted military coat – thrusts out an ungloved hand to me.
‘I’m Perrie Turque,’ she says crisply, ‘and these are some of Mac’s old Film students, from the glory days. I tracked them down via Facebook.’
The flock – fifty-somethings down to early forties, perhaps; there are touches of grey and eyes crinkled by time – nod at me and smile. ‘Hello, Perrie,’ I reply, shaking her hand. ‘I’m Arden.’
‘Thought you might be. I looked up your photo on LinkedIn.’ Of course she did. A lacy trim of snow edges the bottom of Perrie’s formidable fringe. She swipes at it with an index finger and it disperses into the air. I let her know Mac had died and when the memorial was, but I never heard anything back from her … enigmatic and infuriating woman … yet here she is.
‘Hello,’ trills one of Perrie’s tribe, a slight woman with lank grey-blonde hair overlaid with a doily of snow. I look at the hardback book she’s holding in her hand, the red cover polka-dotted with melted snowflakes; it’s the book Mac wrote – The Language of Celluloid. All the other ex-students are holding the same, some hardback, some paperback, snowflakes glancing off them or disintegrating on its navy spine.
‘How amazing!’ says Lloyd, coming over to shake hands with them all. ‘Absolutely great. And you all have Dad’s book! That’s so cool! Perrie,’ says Lloyd, surprised, when he gets to her.
‘Lloyd,’ Perrie nods curtly. ‘Nice to see you.’
Lloyd blushes and beats a rather blustery retreat. I venture a smile at Perrie and she smiles back, brisk but not unfriendly.
‘Thank you for coming,’ I say to her, when the flock has dispersed a little, and I realize I have so much to thank her for. ‘I didn’t even know you were in the country.’
‘I flew back for this,’ she says, ‘Belize. I’m off to New Zealand tomorrow. Mac was a fantastic lecturer and should never be forgotten,’ she adds, not a trace of emotion in her clipped voice.
‘He won’t be,’ I say, refusing to choke up – not yet. ‘Not ever.’
Perrie and her small band of Glory Days students are directed to elongate the semicircle and Lloyd crouches at the side of the striped camping chair and starts the projector. White light tunnels through the whirling snow and lands as a square on the screen; there’s a flickering silence, then one of those spluttering ticking countdown begins, just like on the old movies – eight, seven, six, five … Lloyd adjusts the focus. The screen remains pure white and the soundtrack starts and, oh God, it’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’, from Midnight Cowboy.
I’m a mess before an image even comes on the screen and when it does, it’s Mac’s cowboy boots. A photo of them, taken on Mac’s kitchen table. There’s a small ripple of laughter from the semicircle, whipped by the wind, but from me, immediately, tears, which turn to unchecked sobs when the image cuts to a photo of Mac looking typically Mac, older than I remember him, but younger than he was in these last weeks – maybe early fifties? He’s looking pretty Midnight Cowboy himself; he’s leaning on a fence, in jeans and a white shirt, one foot up on the second rail, and looking into the middle distance like a matinee idol in a movie still, as long thin clouds scud above his head and tail off into a far-off dusty tan horizon. Is he on a ranch? Did Mac achieve his dream and make it out to the prairies after all?
The thought makes me cry even harder. I try to keep the tears in but it’s impossible. He got there; he got to the prairies. I’m so happy for Mac, that he made it, but God I miss him. I miss the time I spent with him and all the years I didn’t.
I’m probably making an utter, jibbering fool of myself so I daren’t look at anybody else. Nilsson is already singing about going where the sun keeps shining and now on the screen is Mac, as a child in bib and braces, on what could be the steps of a nursery; then, in a sepia school uniform, perched on a high stool with a birthday cake and candles in front of him; as a teenager, bell-bottomed trousers and a lairy shirt – quite the dedicated follower of fashion; then – twenty-something? Beard, top off, sitting in the front seat of a car that may be a Ford Capri. I smile through the tears that simply won’t stop.
‘Wow.’ I glance to my left; Scarlett and Kelly are looking at each other, their mouths open and tears in their eyes, too, clearly marvelling at just how handsome Mac was. It’s an amazing photo – the sun is in Mac’s eyes and he is grinning like life was just rolling out in front of him like a country road, which of course it was. Now he’s with Lloyd as a baby, leaning over the side of a paddling pool in a suburban back garden and handing his son a plastic watering can. Helen is half in the photo, in a black swimsuit; Mac is in shorts and a Spencer Tracy T-shirt. Now Mac stands towering next to Lloyd, who’s puffing out his chest in a Boy Scout’s uniform and long socks. Now Mac and Helen have their arms round each other on a sofa and Lloyd – a teenager – has his head sticking in from the side of the photo, laughing.
I see Mac through a veil of smattering, sliding snowflakes which soften him and give him that ethereal quality he will always have for me now. My Mac, the Mac who belonged to others. The final picture, as Nilsson warbles to a close, is Mac looking about eight or nine, grinning with a wide-eyed baby on his lap, who is happily chewing his own fist. Reggie. Oh God, Reggie. My heart is officially broken. Sadness envelops me like the whirling snow. I simply don’t have enough tissues in my bag for the tears I need to cry.
The image fades and John Denver’s ‘Sunshine on my Shoulders’ starts with its gentle, lilting twang of guitar chords and I have to stop myself from gasping through my never-ending tears as here is Mac as I remember him, in his early thirties at Warwick University. He’s on the steps outside the Arts Centre, he’s in chinos and desert boots and a pink shirt and his tweedy blazer and my heart gives a great lurch and I smile, as that’s him, that’s my Mac – there he is. Mac in a seminar room, on one of those low, woolly chairs, in mid discussion with a handful of enthralled students, his arm raised in animation, a photo I’d seen in his room. A photo I’d loved. Mac giving a speech at the BFI – was it the one I
went to London with him for? No, wrong clothes, and he has an amusing hint of a goatee. It’s after me, I think; it’s after me. Mac below a big sign for the UEA; Mac, laughing his head off, with his arm round Stewart Whittaker, and standing in the doorway of the London Film School. That one makes me smile through my tears. He still had it; he still had flashes of light in these later years when life may have faded for him. Oh God, and when the song gets to the part about giving you a day just like today, I am in silent floods, holding poor Becky’s hand so, so tight. Mac gave me so many wonderful days. He wished so very much for me. The man who made me who I am, who brought back some of the girl I used to be. My flawed hero, my memory creator and memory jogger; the man whose life was carried as a trophy before him by others; the man who carried a piece of my heart, always. I loved him, I loved him.
For the last minute of the song we stay on a photo of Mac sitting on the steps outside his flat at Warwick. I’ve never seen this photo before. He’s squinting into winter sun. One arm floats on a knee, his other, bent, offers him a hand to rest his chin on. He looks happy. Amused. Content. He was everything to me and I’m so thankful he came back to me, however briefly. To remind me of us.
We remain with him on the steps until the final few bars of the song fade away, and I can’t bear it. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to go. The picture slowly, awfully fades to black, in one of those circles that decrease to nothing, and the circle of us quietly applaud for a very long time as we stand there in front of a white screen in the swirling snow and the bitter, beautiful cold and remember him.
As we make our way silently back down the hill, a troop of dark-coated soldiers, heads bent, I see Lloyd take his phone from his pocket and he must hate us because he hits us with one more song to break our hearts and the rousing strings of the opening bars of ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ echo softly through the snow.
‘Oh no!’ I say to Becky and I’m crying all over again and letting the tears run down my face, mingling with downy flakes of cold, as we make fresh footsteps in the snow – Becky and I, James, Lloyd, Fran, Stewart Whittaker and friends, Julian and Sam, Helen’s nieces and Perrie Turque and her merry band, still clutching their books. As Glen sings about being where lights are shining on him, I feel a hand take mine, but it’s not Becky, as she’s the wrong side; it’s James, and I look up at him, surprised, and he smiles gently at me and we walk down the hill to ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’, glove in glove.
The place where we have come to celebrate Mac’s life is called The Ellipsis and, beautifully apt, it’s a tiny, converted art deco cinema, three streets from Mac’s house; a snug building with beautiful ceilings and a lobby with an original carpet patterned with overlapping fans like pistachio-green halos. The downstairs restaurant is in what must have been the stalls and it is plush and walled in panels of red and gold, with a polished wood floor and white-tableclothed round tables radiating from the arched stage, but we walk through it – where elegant people in luxury knitwear are having coffee and brunch – to a bronze staircase which leads up to the old circle and the Hollywood glamour of the Crescent Bar. Here, the curved back wall is draped with red velvet curtains and bordered with padded raspberry leather banquettes, either side of a shiny, lit-up bar; dimmed, golden chandeliers preside above our heads; and at the front of this fan-shaped space, where once cinema-goers gazed from the front-row in the circle at the silver screen, are gilt railings, like those on an ocean liner, to keep us from falling on the glamorous people in their rosy nest below. Up here, we are to have cocktails and canapés and an attempt at fun, as Mac would have wanted.
We cluster at the bright bar, ordering drinks. Becky has gone back downstairs to the loo, Fran with her. Julian and Sam stare at the contents of his wallet, then realize it’s a free bar. Perrie is gripping Stewart’s arm and talking intently at him, her students mingling with his colleagues and the two young men.
There’s a strange air of gaiety and relief amongst our small crowd, as waitresses glide round with tiny trays of smoked salmon and cucumber canapés, coats are heaved off and thrown on to banquettes and snowy hats are shaken and stowed under high stools at tall round tables. It’s warm and it’s cocoon-like, under the muted gleam of the chandeliers: the saddest part of the day is done; now is the time to tell stories, to laugh and to joke, to bring back the good times and to remember the beginning, the middle but not the end. The air is definitely charged with something, I feel, as I shrug off my own coat and toss free my hair into its longer curls. Hope and possibility, I decide, as that sounds good to me, and I wonder if life can be good once more, for me.
James silently held my hand all the way down the hill and along the street into The Ellipsis, only letting it go as we crossed the art deco threshold and stepped on to that fanned lobby carpet. He’s at the bar now, with a barmaid smiling at him, and I want him to take his gloves off, now mine are, and come and hold my hand properly, an unexpected want which terrifies me. I like him, I think, I really like him, but I need to hold his hand again to make sure this terrifying truth is real. That how I felt when he held it was not at all how I felt when Becky did. That he is not just a friend, but has suddenly become something more.
My timing is terrible.
Lloyd appears in front of me. He has a giant pina colada in each hand and passes me one.
‘Thank you,’ I say, wondering how lethal it is, but then deciding I might need lethal, at this juncture. ‘Great venue,’ I add. ‘It’s lovely here.’ Lloyd nods. ‘You’re quite the movie maker, you know, Lloyd. Your tributes were really lovely.’
‘I’m not bad,’ he admits. His beard is smaller today – has he had it trimmed for the occasion? ‘I messed around with that sort of thing as a kid. Then I stopped doing it because I didn’t want to be anything like my old man. Oh, sorry,’ he says quickly, ‘I’m not having a dig, I promise. At you or Dad. You made him happy, for a while.’ He looks at me and smiles sadly, before taking a sip of his cocktail.
I’m amazed. ‘Thank you, Lloyd,’ I say. ‘Your dad once made me really happy. It wasn’t just an affair, you know. I really loved him.’ I am about to add that I believe Mac to be the love of my life, too, but I remember what Mac said to me about a Bigger Love to come, so I shut up. I can hear his northern voice in my ear – You’ve got it all, Ardie. You’ve got everything you’ll ever need. Can I honour him, finally? Can I do something with all those things I’ve got and be happy again? Is the love of my life yet to come? I sip from my drink, eyes lowered and scout the bar for James but I can’t see him now.
I am probably a ridiculous idiot.
‘I can tell,’ says Lloyd. What, that I’m a ridiculous idiot? ‘That you loved Dad. You wept buckets earlier.’
Mac’s phrase. ‘Yes, sorry – I was never going to keep it together today.’
Lloyd nods slowly. Then he pats my arm, gives me a winky smile and walks off. I watch him go. Mac’s son.
Fran and Becky come back from the loo.
‘What are you drinking?’ Becky asks.
‘A pina colada.’
‘Oh, I might get one of those. Do you fancy one, Fran?’
‘Why not?’
Their coats are over their arms and I can see they’ve both touched up their make-up. Becky must have lent Fran her lipstick as they’re both sporting a dramatic plum. It suits Fran. I smile at another instant friendship formed in a ladies’ loo, but the way Becky is smiling at me – so kind and so concerned – makes my heart swell as I know that hers and mine is for a lifetime.
‘Will you be OK if we go to the bar?’ asks Becky. ‘We’ll be as quick as we can.’
‘Yes, I’ll be OK. Shove your coats under one of those banquette thingies.’
They bustle off and Julian spots me, from across the room. I give him a wave and sip my drink. He gestures that he’ll be over in a minute.
‘Hello,’ says James.
I turn and he is there. He still has his coat on, undone over his black suit and tie, but that terrible hat has go
ne, as have his gloves. I wish his eyes weren’t so grey and the memory of his hand in mine so fresh. He looks absolutely lovely, although part of his hair is sticking up, at the front, and I have to resist the urge to take my hand and smooth it down.
‘Hello.’ I sound high-pitched, mildly hysterical. I need to act normal. I’m at a function following a bloody memorial service, for God’s sake. Mac’s memorial service. A few moments ago I was crying my eyes out over him.
‘It all went really well,’ he says.
‘Yes, it did.’
‘And a good turnout.’
‘Yes.’
‘I liked the music.’
‘Mac’s favourites,’ I say. ‘You could probably tell. The combination of soundtrack and image totally killed me.’
‘Well, yes,’ smiles James, ‘you got through a lot of tissues.’
Thanks for holding my hand, I want to say, but of course I don’t. And then I wonder if he needed a hand-hold too, on the way to this social function, where we would be in a crowd of people and far from his comfort zone. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask him. ‘Here, at this do? Will you be all right?’
‘I think so,’ he replies with a smile. ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’ And before I can think what to say to this, he looks around him and says, ‘I think we picked the right venue. It’s very Film Studies. Did you apply for that job, by the way? Script reader?’
‘Actually, I did. Thank you for your encouragement.’
‘Oh, no problem. Well done. I hope you get it.’
‘Thank you.’
I feel a little bashful. I’m still trying to process what he said: You’re here. As for the job, I might get it, I might not. But I’m glad I’ve applied. I have the feeling, for the first time in a long time, that I’ve got nothing to lose. It’s a reckless feeling, but exciting. I remember it well.
We look at each other for a few seconds. James has a beer in his hand, hardly touched. I sip at the pina colada, relishing its coldness and its high alcoholic content. Out of nowhere I wonder what it would be like if I told James everything about myself; everything good and everything bad. The story of Marilyn and Dad and Christian and Felix and Julian, and how it was with Mac and me. The whole story, no omissions: who I am, really, everything I was before, and who I would like to be. I suddenly feel like I want to.
You, Me and The Movies Page 33