Call Me the Breeze

by Patrick McCabe

  The Film-makers

  The dawn had long since passed and everyone was a little bit drunk. Boyle hummed to himself as he poured himself some more vodka, before returning to combing the white powder. He asked Joey whether he would like a sniff.

  ‘No, Mr Henry, I’ve given drugs up,’ he replied.

  Boyle sighed, looking pained. ‘Do you not approve? Is that what you’re saying?’ he asked.

  Joey shook his head. ‘No. It’s got nothing to do with that. I’ve just given up, that’s all. For a long time now.’

  ‘Well, is that a fact?’ Boyle said.

  ‘Yes!’, blurted Joey, louder than he’d intended.

  Boyle paused, then frowned. ‘Don’t get snotty now, Joey! That mightn’t be such a good idea!’

  ‘I’m not getting snotty,’ Joey protested.

  ‘It’s nice to be nice,’ said Boyle, snorting some coke. ‘Isn’t that right, Hoss?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Henry. It’s a very good thing to do.’

  ‘It just that your attitude puts me in a very embarrassing position, Joseph, that’s all I’m saying,’ went on Boyle. ‘You see, now you know that I take drugs, you might go off and tell people.’

  ‘No! I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t do that!’ said Joey.

  ‘Would you not?’ asked Boyle, sniffing again as he raised his eyebrow.

  ‘No. That’s one thing I definitely wouldn’t do. Because I know it would …’

  ‘Would …?’ quizzed Boyle.

  ‘Affect your position …’

  You could barely hear Boyle as he said: ‘Affect my position?’

  Joey nodded. He hadn’t meant to say that either.

  ‘Thanks, Joey. Thanks for saying that. It’s just that I’d be worried, you see. I’d be worried you might put it in one of your films. One of these films you’ve been making.’

  Before Joey got a chance to reply, Sandy McGloin announced: ‘Do you know what, lads? I’m hungry!’

  Boyle contemplated his cigar and said: ‘Are you, Sandy?’ Then he glanced towards Joey and said: ‘Did you hear that, Joey?’

  Joey nodded. Boyle came over.

  ‘So what do you propose to do about it?’ he asked, sucking his teeth.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joey.

  ‘You don’t know?’ said Boyle. ‘Well, maybe this will help you clear your thoughts!’

  The crack of his hand rang out sharply then lingered for a bit in the air. Joey’s face stung. The smoke of the Hamlet was obscuring Boyle’s face but you could still see the movement of his lips. They weren’t unlike, Joey thought — absurdly, perhaps — two small independent creatures communicating in the undergrowth.

  ‘Just tell us, Joey, where we can get some grub then, Joe Boy,’ Boyle said, ‘for Sandy.’

  ‘I think there’s some bread in here, Mr Henry,’ said Joey, his face still flushed as he stumbled awkwardly to the cupboards, trying hard not to look in Jacy’s direction. She was shivering.

  ‘Boyle,’ she said, ‘I’m not feeling well. Can we go now?’

  ‘Well, maybe if you didn’t drink so fucking much you mightn’t feel so bad!’ snapped Boyle.

  She cast down her eyes.

  ‘I can see your bum, Joey,’ said Hoss.

  ‘Look at Joey’s bum,’ said Sandy. ‘Jacy, look at Barbapapa’s bum.’

  Joey stood up and handed Boyle the loaf of bread. Boyle broke off a chunk and started feeding it to the chicken. He said: ‘He likes it. He likes his bread.’

  He was staring right at Joey now, steadily tapping his foot. He lifted the Rhode Island Red.

  ‘Have you had enough to eat now, chicky?’ he asked as he gently stroked the dome of its head. The bird shook its head like a peevish dowager.

  ‘Here, Joseph,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Joey replied.

  ‘Do it, will you?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Wring its neck! What the fuck else would you do? Isn’t it a chicken, for fuck’s sake?’

  Joey hesitated.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t do that, Mr Henry.’

  Boyle stared fixedly at him.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Please, Boyle!’ interjected Jacy. ‘That’s enough! Let’s go! You’ve made your point!’

  ‘You want to leave him, do you? You want to leave your old friend like that? You are her old friend, aren’t you, Joey?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Henry,’ he said.

  ‘Well then, don’t disappoint us. Do it.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he reiterated.

  ‘I see,’ Boyle replied. ‘So I have to do it myself then. Is that what you’re telling me, Joey? Why is it I always have to do everything?’

  Joey didn’t answer. Boyle said nothing and reached into his pocket, sighing melancholically.

  ‘It’s just as well that I came prepared then, isn’t it?’ he said as he flipped the cutthroat razor open. He ran his thumb along the edge and turned to Hoss and Sandy.

  ‘Say goodbye to the chicken,’ he said, ‘Say goodbye to the chicken of forgiveness.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Hoss as he wiggled his fingers.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Sandy.

  It didn’t take him long to completely decapitate it. He put the bird down and it ran around for a few seconds before collapsing.

  ‘Get me a tissue,’ said Boyle, and swiped the blade clean. Then he smiled and said: ‘It’s time to go to work. You ready, Joey? Get those duds off! Hoss, we ready to roll?’

  ‘Ready when you are, Captain Birdseye!’ replied Hoss as he grinned behind the camera.

  Hooray for Hollywood

  It was Hoss who did the bulk of the filming, his celebrated sense of humour, despite his good fortune and Armani suit, clearly having lost none of its spark. He winked at Sandy, who twinkled and shook his head. Hoss camply placed his hand on his hip and said: ‘I know what you are probably thinking, Joey — this is a violent movie, right? Would I be right now in saying something like that? A video nasty, maybe?’

  Sickened, Joey nodded, for there could be no denying the idea had fleetingly crossed his mind.

  ‘Not at all!’ snorted Hoss good-humouredly. ‘Sure what would we want to make another one of them for? We’ve already done that! It’s … in the can! Right, boys?’

  ‘Right!’ chirped Boyle, sniffing a little and rubbing his eye.

  ‘100 per cent!’ piped Sandy, as he flicked some coke up his nostril.

  ‘If you don’t believe us, Joey, all you’ve got to do is go over to Mangan’s caravan just as soon as we’re wrapped up here. Jasus but he’s a great actor! I can see now why you picked him! I say there, Boyle, you pay attention! We’re getting ready to shoot here!’

  ‘Please, Boyle, what more do you want?’ pleaded Jacy, hoarsely.

  ‘Now, baby, baby! Don’t go spoiling things!’

  ‘That’s right, Jacy!’ laughed Hoss. ‘Who knows, we might win ourselves an Oscar? Whaddya think, Joey? Think we might make it to Tinseltown? I reckon we’re in with a fighting chance. They love comedies over there, you know!’

  ‘So that’s old Mangan fucked then!’ said Boyle.

  ‘That’s one thing you can be sure of!’ laughed Sandy. ‘Pissing down his leg like that! I mean, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Who’s going to give you Oscars when you go and spoil it like that?’ scoffed Boyle. ‘Not a hope in hell!’

  ‘All the same,’ said Hoss, ‘make sure you watch it now, Joey! You owe it to him! After all, it was you who introduced him to the big time!’

  ‘And encouraged him to open his big fucking mouth!’

  ‘I dare say he’s regretting it now!’

  ‘We won’t, though! We’ll make our money out of this little baby!’

  ‘Short and all as she might be!’

  ‘OK, folks! That’s enough talk! Come on, get ready!’ called Hoss, as Sandy took Jacy’s hand and led her over to the bed.

  ‘OK, Joey! Take off your clothes!’

  ‘Hooray for Hollywo
od!’ sneered Boyle, sniffing again.

  The blood rushed to Joey’s cheeks as he tried to steady his fingers, unbuckling his belt.

  Unusual Cinema

  Transgressive films, of the type specified by Hoss, are generally expected to be affairs of an extremely shoddy nature, blurred and grainy with shaky hand-held camerawork and hopelessly indiscriminate editing.

  The Mangan video, which I’d watched after they’d gone, proved to be very much that, its hideous texture and content heightened, if anything, by the fact that I was close to exhaustion while viewing it.

  The tracking for some moments was slightly askew. The exposure, predictably, was bad. The frame blurred into a washed-out umber then ran into leader tape. There was no sound. A hair on the lens remained in shot throughout. There was a hand visible on screen — it appeared no less than three times; I wasn’t sure to whom it belonged. There was a lot of wind noise and a couple of shots photographed from a half-cocked angle on the floor where everything was happening on its side.

  Then, out of nowhere, the old tinker’s chalk-white face loomed into the frame.

  There was a leather belt fastened around his neck and they had affixed wooden clothes pegs to his nipples. There were congealed blots of candlewax spotted all over his chest and his face throughout was contorted in extreme pain. A pair of anonymous hands gripped his wrists and the camera homed in on a pair of pliers. Two fingernails were expertly, almost lovingly, removed as he writhed in agony — in complete silence. The entire thing didn’t last more than three minutes. It was only when you thought it was over and were expecting the tape to fade to black that you heard the sound of a cord being chucked, realizing that it was an electric drill, buzzing eagerly away out of shot.

  They didn’t use it on him, however. They didn’t have to. You could hear the faint sound of laughter — I suspected it was Hoss — as the camera closed in and tracked along the golden yellow trail where you could see he had lost it. I covered my eyes, then sat by the bunk to hold on to Mangan’s hand, consoling him as best I could. Every so often he kept repeating, as some fearsome, abstracted mantra: ‘They said if I opened my mouth about what they were going to do to you, if I said anything at all, that they would come back! Joey, I thought they were really going to do it! They were laughing, Joey! All the time they kept laughing!’

  I whispered: ‘It’ll be OK, Mangan,’ coughing up all sorts of phlegmy black shit and trying my best to sound convincing. The only things I’d been able to find to cover myself were a torn old jacket and a pair of enormous corduroys. I went over to the window and looked out at what remained of the caravan. Coils of black smoke were roiling up into the reddened sky. The air was thick with the smell of gas — the cylinder had exploded not long after they’d set the blaze. I started back instinctively as the entire structure groaned then slumped a little more before eventually caving in on itself, a ravaged cripple of broken glass and scorched galvanized steel. All of a sudden a great twisting funnel of black toxic smoke swept up out of nowhere, bloating into the acrid air as yet another window blew out. The PVC sheeting peeled like layers of crackling skin, the poisonous stench of melted polystyrene close to inducing a faint as my stomach succumbed to vicious cramps, a roof-support beam crashing to earth as the video ended abruptly and immediately began to rewind.

  Out of nowhere then, large as life, none other than Oprah Winfrey appearing on the screen!

  ‘I’ve just got one question to ask today,’ she said. ‘Do you think the world is in trouble?’

  A Political Career Reconsidered

  The answer in my case being a definite ‘Yes!’ when, a very short time afterwards, I picked up the the Scotsfield Standard and there — to my relief! — given pride of place in the ‘Local News’ section, discovered my letter of resignation, advising all the good people of the borough and its hinterland that I would not, regrettably, be standing after all as a candidate in the forthcoming elections. And that the ‘New Spring Manifesto’ and ‘New Spring Party’ could henceforth be considered ‘effectively disbanded’.

  I was just about to put the fucking thing down when a photograph tucked away on the inside front page happened to catch my attention. I gaped in astonishment for I truly could not believe my eyes. Yes, there he was, smart and dapper as ever, Boyle Henry, council chairman, senator, financial speculator, hotelier, presenting a bursary cheque to ‘local boy’ Johnston Farrell in recognition of ‘continued good work’ in the ‘field of the arts’.

  ‘Perhaps you should do the script of his next movie, Johnston,’ I found myself muttering bitterly.

  The Lovebirds

  Again, it had been Hoss’s idea. He stood in the middle of the caravan floor, stroking his chin, with the camera swinging by his side.

  ‘That’s the way I want it,’ he told us, ‘like the ones they’d show in The Ritzy. What’s this you call him, your man? They often showed them for a laugh.’

  He clicked his fingers, staring over at Sandy, who gazed insouciantly back.

  ‘Search me,’ he replied. ‘I never bothered going out there much.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks! You know him, Boyle! Riding the women and climbing out windows!’

  Boyle paused for a moment or two.

  ‘You know, I think I know who you mean,’ he said.

  ‘Course you do! What’s this you call the fucker? Robin Askwith! That’s him!’

  ‘Now you have it!’ beamed Boyle, and returned to his stash, rewarding himself with a sizeable pinch.

  ‘Do you mind him, Joey? There wasn’t a woman in the town but he’d given a poke! Do you think you might be up to it?’

  I said nothing. I could see Jacy through the corner of my eye. I turned away. I felt sickened.

  ‘Well, you’d better be, that’s all I have to say! After all, this movie will be getting major distribution! Isn’t that right, Mr Henry?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Boyle said. ‘There’ll be very few in the town who won’t be getting to see this little baby at some point or other!’

  ‘I’m sure they’re all looking forward to it.’

  ‘Especially Mrs Carmody,’ said Boyle, sneezing. ‘Oops!’ he laughed.

  ‘I’d just like to see her face when she sees Tallon’s todger going inside this!’ chuckled Hoss as he dragged the doll over and threw it on the bed. ‘There she is, the star of the show!’ he trumpeted.

  Her long black wig had almost fallen off, her mouth wide open in a pink oval ‘O’.

  ‘We’re ready now, Joey, so chuck your plonker and let’s go, go, go! Jacy, get over there and tidy the bitch! Look at her, for the love of fuck!’

  Jacy came over to the bed and was kneeling so close to me that I almost fainted. I closed my eyes tightly and prayed for it to be over. It was then that I heard her whisper: ‘I’m sorry about this, Joseph. I’m sorry that it had to happen. I didn’t want to come here. I’m sorry.’

  When I looked again she was standing over beside them, but when I tried to catch her eye, she looked away.

  ‘Get over here, Jacy!’ Boyle Henry called, before growling disgruntledly when she refused the coke: ‘I seen the time you were glad of it!’

  She raised her voice then — a thing I never thought I’d hear her do —to him.

  ‘Well, that was then, Boyle! This is now!’

  I don’t know what she said to him then. I couldn’t quite make it out. He kicked the chair away and stood up, paling.

  ‘Don’t you fucking talk like that to me! You hear me? After all I’ve done for you!’

  Her voice trembled.

  ‘What have you ever done for me? You’ve never done anything for me in your life!’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth! I’ve done plenty for you, you ungrateful bitch!’

  He glared viciously at her. Then over at me.

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at, Tallon? Have you got something to say? Huh? Have you got something to fuckingwell say?’

  Hoss laughed heartily and put his arm around my shoulder.


  ‘Don’t mind those two, Joey! Sure you know what they’re like! Bickering away and the next thing you know they’ll be like lovebirds again! Hey, lovebirds! That’s a good name for our little movie! Isn’t that right, Boyle? It sure is, buddies! OK then, Joey! Whenever you’re ready! Ladies and gentlemen — it’s — The Lovebirds!’

  ‘Slap her in there, Tallon!’

  ‘Ride her, Joey! Ride Mona crossways!’

  ‘You have her now, young Joey! You’re home and dry with Mona!’

  ‘He’s home now all fucking right! Would you look at the big fucking pimply arse!’

  Overheard

  I never went into Doc Oc’s again, so whether they ever did get a copy of the video in there, to this day I still can’t be sure. But plenty of people saw it all right — you could tell by the looks I was getting. The nudges and the winks and the guffaws: ‘Look! There’s Tallon, the fucker!’ even more pointed than before. I didn’t stay around too long after that. It’s just a pity I hadn’t left before I did. Then I mightn’t have been sitting in the bar of the Scotsfield Hotel, my ears pricking up as soon as I heard her name.

  ‘Jacy? You mean Boyle Henry’s bit of fluff? Oh, she’s gone back to the home place in Wicklow, I hear. Got fed up being rid, shouldn’t wonder.’

  The ‘Doughboy’ Manuscript

  After that, things weren’t so good, I have to say. It was as if the earlier days in the prison had returned now with a vengeance. Only for Boo Boo I don’t know what I’d have done, for I’d nowhere else to go. He gave me the run of his flat in Dublin, and for weeks on end I never went out, drinking and toking worse than ever before but writing away like a lunatic. It was the only thing I felt I had left, with pages by the score shooting out of the printer. Hoping against hope that what I’d come up with would make some kind of sense. Never expecting for a moment that the manuscript would be published. Much less become a runaway success, for whatever reason!

  Although, looking at it now — I have the reworked manuscript here, or at least a good portion of it — I suppose some of it is, in a way, quite funny. A chapter or two, at any rate. ‘Rollicking’, as they’d described it. ‘Full of irreverent Irish whimsy!’