The Man In The Seventh Row

by Brian Pendreigh

  He saw Clint Eastwood the soldier in Where Eagles Dare, Clint Eastwood the cop in Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood the western anti-hero in High Plains Drifter and Clint Eastwood the DJ in Play Misty for Me. He remained faithful to him throughout that strange period when he decided he was Clint Eastwood the comedian and his perfect co-star was an orang-utan called Clyde. Given a straight choice between Clint Eastwood and Alison Westwood, it was no contest. So when she walked out, Roy stayed with Clint Eastwood. A contest between Alison Westwood and Clyde the orang-utan might have been harder to decide.

  Roy had asked Alison Westwood out only to show his friend David how it was done. David had not seen as many films. He had never seen Camelot and therefore was ignorant of even the rudiments of handling a woman. So Roy took him into the telephone box outside the Ritz Cinema, where they had just been to see Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. It was the must-see kung fu movie, but it contained few hints on how to chat up girls. Stare hard, move your hands around in front of your naked torso and say: 'Eee-chaa-oooooooo?' It might just work with Clyde the orang-utang. It might just work with Alison, come to that.

  'Hello, is that Alison? It's Roy here, we met at the school disco. Yes, I'm the one who told you I was going to be a cowboy when I grew up. Well, I wondered if you were doing anything on Friday night?'

  That was the key line, and was usually met by confirmation of the girl's availability or alternatively with the information that she had to wash her hair.

  'I was thinking I might go and see the new Dirty Harry film and I thought maybe you might want ... It's a cop film, you know with Clint Eastwood? Eastwood. Yes, it is a coincidence, almost ... You want me to come round for you? OK. Where do you live? That's Morningside, isn't it? Right ... I'll be there at seven. See you then. Don't bother with the fur coat either. Bye, Alison.'

  The Ritz had been the first cinema Roy ever attended without an adult. It was a half-hour walk from his new home in Learmonth. He went, that first time, with his friend Johnnie Grant, the red-haired, freckled boy, who lived in a top-floor tenement flat in Comely Bank Row. His parents did not have much money – his father was a joiner or something like that – and Johnnie slept in a windowless box-room but he knew things that Roy didn't know. He knew about the balloon machine in the gents at the Ritz and he knew about poetry. He taught Roy a poem on the way to the cinema, reciting it with all the meaning he could muster, as he strode along, his pace dictating the delivery of the lines:

  'Skinny Malinky Long-legs, Um-bi-rella feet,

  Went to the pictures and couldnae find a seat.

  When the picture started,

  Skinny Malinky farted.

  Skinny Malinky Long-legs, Um-bi-rella Feet.'

  It was terribly rude, but Johnnie urged Roy to join in. Before they reached the cinema they were marching, stride for stride, arm in arm, as they recited the poem together.

  They were expensive balloons from the machine in the gents' toilet at the Ritz and they felt slimey, like snails. Johnnie blew one up and released it when John Wayne told Robert Duvall to fill his hands, the sonofabitch. It flew around the cinema with a farting noise and landed somewhere in the front stalls. An usherette shone a torch along their row.

  'It was them,' said a girl in pigtails a few rows behind, pointing an accusing finger.

  Roy and Johnnie stared intently at the screen and the usherette said nothing, but Johnnie did not dare blow up the other two. After the film Johnnie chased the pig-tailed clipe out of the auditorium. He followed her no farther, but retreated to the toilet where he attached the remaining condoms to the taps. They gradually swelled with water and Johnnie and Roy carried one each, beneath their jackets, out of the cinema.

  They climbed a nearby tenement, right to the top, four, five storeys up, and held the water balloons over the banister. Johnnie held his balloon out as far as he could reach and when he was finally satisfied that it was lined up over the desired spot he released it with a shout of, 'Bombs away.' A split second later Roy's balloon followed it. Johnnie let out a yelp of delight as they hit the hard stone floor, one after the other, in quick succession, and water exploded everywhere. He climbed over the banister, so he was standing in the stair well, as if he might follow the balloons to the concrete below. The front half of his foot was on the very edge of the step, on the wrong side of the railings, the dangerous side, the heel supported by nothing other than forty feet of air. Holding onto the railings, he climbed down one stair at a time, moving with the assurance and speed that comes with regular practice. He jumped the last three or four feet and inspected the wreckage of the Durex water bombs. They galloped home through Stockbridge and Johnnie went round saying, 'Fill your hands, you sonofabitch,' for days. He even acquired a black, plastic eye patch like the one John Wayne wore in the film, though Roy thought John Wayne's probably wasn't plastic.

  Johnnie and the Ritz are both gone now. Johnnie was killed within the month when he fell from the top floor landing of his own tenement, so Roy always remembered him as a ten-year-old with an eye patch going around saying, 'Fill your hands you sonofabitch,' and letting off slimey balloons into the darkness. John Wayne won an Oscar. Clint Eastwood survived his comedy period, returned to westerns and he too won an Oscar. David asked Alison Westwood out and they got married. Sometimes Roy remembers Alison on those rare occasions he goes to the Dominion. He always remembers Johnnie and the balloons when he passes the site of the Ritz cinema in Rodney Street.

  How many of the cinemas he'd visited have gone now? Old cinemas, in which the red crushed velour seats had been blackened and matted by thousands of overweight arses. Fleapits they called them. Roy did not know if they really had fleas. He had never seen a flea, but the ABC in Edinburgh had a cat which often came and sat on his lap. Cats always seemed to seek him out, despite or maybe because of his allergy. The purpose of the ABC cat, he reckoned, was to keep mice away. And in an open-air cinema in Africa he saw a lizard during Chariots of Fire. It ran across the screen and finished ahead of Eric Liddell, which pleased him – Liddell was such a sanctimonious character.

  How many cinemas had he been to before he visited Mann's Chinese Theatre for the first time a few days ago to see Spike Lee's Girl 6? It's not exactly vintage Spike Lee, not a patch on Do the Right Thing, with its freshness, rich characters and violent energy. The central character in the new one is an aspiring actress, reduced to working for a company offering 'phone sex'. She is Girl 6. The aspiring actress finally makes it into the movies and the film closes with her walking down Hollywood Boulevard, along the Walk of Fame, where celebrities' names are inscribed on bronze stars on the sidewalk. She is seen making her way towards the Chinese Theatre, where the words Girl 6 are displayed on the marquee.

  That was weird. He was sitting in the cinema watching a film and the character in the film is shown approaching the very cinema in which he is sitting. It was as if she might suddenly appear alongside him and watch herself on the screen.

  It never happened at the Warner Village at Leicester or the Point at Milton Keynes. In all the hundreds of times he had been out to the multiplex at Newcraighall, near the old coal workings on the edge of Edinburgh, never once had he seen a film in which the star was seen getting off the 14 bus on the main road, walking past the pet superstore and Toys R Us, and crossing the car park towards the multiplex.

  Roy went back to see Girl 6 again. He did not care too much for the film, but he loved that ending, and felt he was a part of it. And he loved the Chinese Theatre. He saw Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo there, in which Mia Farrow escapes the drudgery and pain of real life through regular visits to the cinema. And as she watches a favourite movie the main character steps out of the screen and they run off together.

  He had not seen The Purple Rose of Cairo before. He had seen The Graduate before, so he knew what to expect from it, just classic, uncomplicated, pre-post-modernist comedy. He knew the stars would not come walking down the street towards the cinema and the characters would stay firmly roo
ted in their own world, up there on the screen. That was yesterday and a lot had changed since then.

  At last the lights dim and the film plays. Three men ride into town, they gag the barber and his son, they wait for Henry Fonda and in the blink of an eye he shoots them. The barber's son asks if nobody is faster. And the barber says that nobody is faster. But Roy thinks he hears him add the word 'except ...' under his breath. Roy shudders as he sees the title 'My Name is Roy Batty' appear on screen.

  10

  A voice catches Roy unawares.

  'You've been a long way away.'

  He focuses for a moment on the Snow White pictures, turns and sees the young woman from the Roosevelt Hotel and smiles. 'My Name is Nobody?' he asks.

  She nods. 'My name is Anna Fisher,' she says.

  'Batty ... Roy Batty.'

  ***

  'What's the difference,' says Roy as they step into the Hollywood sunshine, 'between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney?'

  They sit at the same table in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, with its potted palms, whitewashed walls and ornate, painted ceiling. The Spanish revivalist building hosted the first Academy Awards in 1929 when Wings became the only silent movie to win best picture. The hotel's owners included Louis B. Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and for a long time it was a regular meeting place for producers, stars and directors, including Uncle Walt himself. He made it his command headquarters in 1941 when his animators began a long and bitter strike over low pay and long hours. More recently the producers, stars and directors had retreated to their strongholds in Beverly Hills and Burbank, Bel Air and Malibu and left Hollywood to the pushers, the whores and the Japanese video-makers. But for Roy this is still the heart of the film business, a bruised and broken heart perhaps, but still pumping the stuff of dreams. Roy sits not just with Anna Fisher, but with Gable and Lombard, Errol Flynn and debonair David Niven, surrounded by imaginary happy crowds, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He sips not just a Budweiser but Hollywood itself.

  Roy explains 'disnae' is Scottish vernacular for 'does not'.

  'Oh, I get it,' says Anna. 'Bing sings and Walt dizznay. Neat.'

  A smile curls around her lips. She looks down momentarily, a thought flits through her mind, and the smile is still there when she looks up again. 'Have you ever met Sean Connery?' she asks.

  'No,' he says. 'We lived at the other end of the street, Fountainbridge. Our paths crossed, but at different times.'

  'Fountainbridge? That was the name of the street? Was there a fountain? Or a bridge? A bridge over a fountain?'

  Roy laughed. 'There was no fountain when I lived there. Just a brewery. It's a big long street, stretching out from the edge of the city centre – that's where we lived – past the brewery, which is where Connery stayed. Not in the brewery exactly, but in a tiny old tenement flat. I think it was different when he was there. The area was different. His family had come from Ireland, his mother was a cleaner and they lived in a two-room flat without its own toilet, beside the brewery, the smelly part of Fountainbridge. It was much rougher then.'

  'And the Battys?'

  'The Battys lived in a two-bedroom flat, with its own toilet, above their own butcher's shop, at the city centre end of the street.'

  Quick as a flash Anna chips in: 'That must have been offal too.'

  His mother thought it was awful. Her father had worked in a bank, but both her parents died before Roy was born. She always said Fountainbridge was temporary, as if she expected to wake up one morning and find the whole neighbourhood gone. Doreen would have been happier if home had been in Marchmont or Comely Bank, and if business had not been such an offal business, but her main complaint was the neighbours and the neighbours' children.

  'You can take the man out the bog,' her husband said, 'but you can't take the bog out the man.'

  Roy tried to translate this into words he understood: 'You can take the man out the toilet, but you can't take the toilet out the man.' Yes, it seemed to make sense.

  'What does cunt mean Mummy?' Stephen asked. 'Mary wants to show me her cunt for thruppence.'

  His mother shrieked and said they must leave, leave, leave. Three times. Just like that. And she cried when Roy came home with a bloody nose given to him by two boys who claimed to be 'the Brewery Boys'. Somehow it became four boys when Roy tearfully related the details. It was no ordinary bloody nose. There was blood everywhere, a trail that led from the flat, down the stairs, back to the scene of the crime. But it was not simply the amount of blood that qualified the bloody nose as extraordinary, but the way in which it was sustained. One of Roy's assailants had stuck a pen knife up Roy's nose and pulled it right through the flesh.

  'I hate this place,' Doreen Batty said. 'Sometimes I just want to ...' She held her head in her hands.

  'Kill yourself?' suggested Roy innocently.

  'It would be worse if you weren't here, Mummy,' he continued, as the blood dripped from his wound. 'I saw it on television with Grandad and he explained it.'

  His mother looked up.

  'The man thought he couldn't look after his family and he wanted to kill himself. But the angel showed him how much worse they would be if he wasn't there. The angel showed him that it is a wonderful life.'

  Roy's mother pulled him to her and cried even more. Her tears diluted his blood.

  He smiled to cheer her up, though, in truth, he had not liked the film much. Neither had his grandfather, who said it was a load of bunk, which sounded like swearing to Roy. He considered it best not to repeat his grandfather's word.

  Roy and his grandfather preferred westerns and war films. Or silent comedies, with Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. His grandfather had first seen them when he was Roy's age and now they were repackaged in segments for television, wild, surreal slapstick that ended with the most poignant, haunting music Roy had ever heard, an elegy for a departed era. Departed eras. Departed eras provided films like The Adventures of Marco Polo, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Last of the Mohicans. Adventures on the high seas with titles like Captain Blood and The Buccaneer that told you all you needed to know about what you were about to see. Adventures in far-off lands with titles like Gunga Din and Beau Geste that were full of exotic promise and mystery.

  'Beau Geste,' his grandfather sighed. 'They don't make them like that any more.'

  'Is it a true story?' Roy would always ask. 'Is it a true story?'

  And, more often than not, it would be, no matter how incredible it seemed. Robin Hood really did steal from the rich and give to the poor, Marco Polo really did discover China and bring back silk and mints with holes in the middle, and John Wayne really did defeat the Japs at Iwo Jima.

  It was his grandmother who had wanted to watch It's a Wonderful Life. It did not sound like there would be much adventure in it, little chance of an Indian attack, a fencing duel or a showdown in the main street at high noon. Roy's doubts were well founded. There is no fencing, no shooting, no fighting and hardly anyone dies at all.

  'Is it a true story?' asked Roy very doubtfully.

  'It is a true story,' his grandmother told him, 'in spirit.'

  'I don't believe in angels,' said Roy.

  'Oh, but there is such a thing as angels,' said his grandmother. 'Maybe they don't have wings, but that doesn't mean they're not angels. You're my little angel.'

  Roy put his arms around his mother.

  'I'll be your angel, Mummy,' he said sweetly. She was not entirely certain that he was not poking fun at her. The cut looked more dramatic than it was. It needed only three stitches, though it left a tiny scar. Roy's father reported the matter to the police, but they never caught his assailants.

  Roy had bled at the hands of the Brewery Boys, but he had seen enough films, from Oliver Twist to Lady and the Tramp to know that just because someone (or some dog) was dirty it did not necessarily mean they were dirt. This was before The Dirty Dozen of course, when dirt took on the attributes of positive virtue. 'The Clean Dozen', 'The Washed-behind
-their-ears Dozen', even 'The Always-wash-their-hands-at-mealtimes Hundred' were never going to strike fear into the hearts of Jerry. It was the dirt that did it, the threat that it might come off on the tablecloth and contaminate polite Aryan society.

  After seeing Dr No Roy went to look for Connery's house at the other end of the street. Finding James Bond's house was his secret mission. Maybe Roy expected a plaque on the wall, or graffiti to proclaim 'James Bond wiz here', or a little cluster of fans and tourists on the pavement outside. Something. Something to mark it out as James Bond's house. But there was nothing.

  He met Alan Robertson, a boy he knew from school, and asked him. He did not know where James Bond lived, but invited Roy to play football with him. Alan was a dirty boy with skinned knees and a hole in the elbow of his jumper, a grey school jumper, despite this being the holidays. They played football on Bruntsfield Links where Tommy Connery played, long before he became Sean, little boys in short grey trousers, with shirt tails flapping, both dreaming of scoring winning goals for Scotland, 30 years apart. Tommy left school at 14 and joined the Navy. He never fulfilled the dream of playing for Scotland, he became James Bond instead. Roy spent a summer in that park and he would follow Tommy's route back to Fountainbridge, wandering downhill from Bruntsfield, allowing himself to be enveloped in the rich, sour smell that permeated the air around the brewery.

  ***

  The local cinema was the ABC Regal, just down the road from Roy's flat. It was not really a local, but an enormous city centre establishment, with seating for almost 3,000, the flagship of Associated British Cinemas. It seemed just as likely to Roy that he might see Sean Connery there as it did that he would see him in Fountainbridge. It seemed logical that he would need to check how his films were doing or that he would have some business to transact with the manager, collect his share of the ticket money maybe. Not that Roy can remember a James Bond film ever playing at the Regal. Nor did he remember ever going to the Regal, despite it being the nearest to home. It may or may not have had an ABC Minors Club, the legendary Saturday morning programmes of cartoons and serials that introduced many of Roy's generation to cinema, but Roy never went. Roy's formative cinema experiences, and subsequently his formative sexual experiences, took place down the coast, not round the corner.