The Man In The Seventh Row

by Brian Pendreigh

  The Clanton brothers, the McLowry brothers and Billy Claiborne took part in a brief, bloody gunfight at the corral in Allen Street on 26 October 1881. At the end of a furious, point-blank exchange three men lay dead in the dirt, none of them Earp's. Earp survived to become a Hollywood legend, not just on screen in the shape of Henry Fonda and Burt Lancaster, Randolph Scott, James Stewart and President Reagan, but in real life. For he lived long enough to collaborate on a star biography and to give film-makers a first-hand account of his adventures, and in so doing shape his own legend. His friends included the movie stars William S. Hart and Tom Mix and the director John Ford, who said he filmed the gunfight just as Earp said it happened, even though Old Man Clanton was in Ford's gunfight, whereas in real life he died several months before it happened.

  Roy joined the throng in Allen Street, where the saloons and boardwalks have been preserved for the tourists, along with shops selling quality souvenirs at discount prices. Fat men, women and children in jeans and cowboy boots. Every few yards notice boards recorded Who Shot Who, an innovation that had not at that point been copied in South Central LA, which stubbornly refused to acknowledge the tourist potential in murder. At the OK Corral itself nine dummies stood motionless where the gunfighters had stood. They looked like animation figures having a break from filming Postman Pat.

  'Kee-ow,' yelled a small Oriental boy, pointing a smoking finger at Wyatt Earp, whose pistol was broken, the remains balanced on his outstretched hand. Out in Allen Street amateur enthusiasts recreated a gunfight, with much shouting, shooting and falling over in the authentic spots where real cowboys died a century previous. They looked mean and unshaven beneath their stetsons and sunglasses. And a minute or two later they got up and did it again. And the fat men, women and children cheered and clapped.

  Nobody really knows how it was. But Roy knew that, given the choice between the Sunday afternoon amateurs, the lifeless dummies, the self-aggrandising old phony who hung around Hollywood spinning yarns, and Henry Fonda standing up for law and order, his dead brothers and his darling Clementine, Roy had to opt for the gospel according to Henry Fonda. In another John Ford film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, one of the characters, a newspaper editor, says that when the legend becomes fact, they must print the legend.

  Roy was doing archaeological work up at San Carlos, looking for Apache artefacts from the 19th Century, but his principal work was rubbish. He was working with the University of Arizona on the famous Garbage Project, which applied archaeological study methods, not to prehistoric middens, but to contemporary household refuse in an attempt to learn a little about the diet and lifestyle of American people in the late 20th Century.

  'Couldn't you just ask them?' says Anna.

  'Ah,' says Roy, with a grin. 'That's the point. You can't just ask them. Eighty-five per cent of interviewees in Tucson said that in an average week they had no cans of beer. The rest said they had between one and eight. And nobody had more than that. But their garbage proved that what they were saying was garbage.'

  'They were lying?' asked Anna.

  'Or else memory did not quite correspond to reality,' says Roy. 'More than half of those in the survey drank more than eight cans in an average week. It didn't work so well at San Carlos. And I think the results were being distorted by my own consumption. So I went home, back to the land of the MacDonald tribe, where the population is happy to admit to drinking eight cans a night.'

  'You went back to Scotland?' says Anna. 'And what do you do now?'

  'I got a job at Edinburgh University,' says Roy. 'I teach archaeology, just like Indiana Jones.'

  'You teach history,' says Anna. 'Just like me.'

  19

  A black cat with a splash of white in the centre of its forehead is lurking at the far side of the lounge as they enter Anna's apartment, unsure whether to stay because she was about to be fed, or go because a strange, threatening man was coming into her kingdom. She sits there, licking her paws like a child washing its hands before eating, watching Roy.

  Roy stands looking out of the window at the silver-streaked, solid, black expanse of ocean and the sky punctuated by the lights on the wing tips of planes full of unknown travellers flying to unknown destinations. And wonders what he is doing here.

  Following the wall, and keeping as far from Roy as possible, Tiffany makes her way into the recess which is divided from the lounge by a kitchen unit. Anna feeds Tiffany and then, without asking, brings Roy a plain, heavy glass, classic and functional, containing at least a double measure of Scotch. Is it just his imagination, or does her glass have more in it?

  'Macallan,' she says, and knocks back most of the contents of her glass in one.

  'Slainthe,' he says and does the same.

  It is the overpowering stink of the stuff that he cannot stand, as much as the taste. It always seemed like petrol fumes to him. Or maybe the smell of whisky just triggers some deep-seated psychological nausea, like Beethoven's music does to Alex in A Clockwork Orange. It triggers subconscious memories of when Roy was 16 or 17, the room spinning like a roundabout, ignoring his pleas to get off, the vomit in the gutter, the drilling in his head.

  'You don't like Scotch, do you?' says Anna.

  He shakes his head sheepishly. 'Not a lot.'

  'Well, why not just say so?'

  She takes his glass, with what is a combination of a snort and a laugh, and pours the remnants into her own.

  'Wine? Chardonnay?'

  He says that is fine. She brings it in a tumbler. This is a woman who takes drinking as seriously as Roy used to.

  'Put on a CD and if you want anything just whistle,' she says, busying herself in the kitchen with bowls and pans and pasta. 'You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together ...' She leaves the quotation hanging unfinished in the air.

  'Where did you come from?' Roy asks.

  'Originally? Winslow, Arizona. Like in the Eagles' song.'

  ''Take it Easy',' says Roy.

  'You know it?' says Anna, sticking her head round the end of the unit. 'That's where I was born. We moved around a bit in northern Arizona and Utah.'

  'What did your father do?'

  'He was a cinema manager.'

  'A cinema manager?'

  'Yeah, a cinema manager. He got into drive-ins just as the customers all got out.'

  'You must have had the perfect childhood. All those movies.'

  'Sexy Air Hostesses Get Their Kit Off and Kung Fu Dragon Fighters. Soft porn and martial arts. Occasionally we had something like Midnight Express for the discerning viewer but my dad wouldn't let me watch them. Everybody else could see them. Across the street there was a mound where you could see the whole film for free. You just couldn't hear the words. But I reckon you could follow the plot of Sexy Air Hostesses and Kung Fu Fighting without the words. Utah is the Mormon state and the authorities complained that the movies might cause an automobile accident – drivers turning their heads to see the screen as they went by. My father pointed out that you couldn't see the screen from the road, you had to park your car, get out and climb the mound. But they closed the drive-ins anyway.'

  Cold sharp Chardonnay mixes on Roy's palate with the fuel from the whisky in a peculiarly potent and not unattractive cocktail.

  'Why European history?' he asks.

  'I don't know,' says Anna. 'It just happened that way. I got the chance to go to Oxford for a year and they're hotter on their own history than American stuff.'

  Roy already knew that she had been to Oxford, for he had just read it on the fly-leaf of 'End of Empire', which he found in one of the plain, unvarnished bookcases that lined the walls. The book was about A4 size and every other page had a picture on it, sketches of slaves, drawings of white men killing black, brown and yellow, photographs of British soldiers 'liberating' the Falklands.

  'Anna Fisher was born in Arizona in 1966,' said the short biography, 'and educated at UCLA and Oxford University, England. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches Eu
ropean History at UCLA. She is currently working on a book about the Cold War.'

  'And I was always really into British movies. The movies I grew up on were the ones I saw on television ...'

  'End of Empire' by Anna Fisher was sandwiched between William Faulkner and F Scott Fitzgerald, a pretty impressive place to be. He is surprised that she does not separate her novels from her factual books. There is a computer by the window and papers stacked on a shelf behind it and it is there that Roy finds the manuscript about the Cold War, beneath a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and letters and bills. It is not what he imagined.

  'And I loved your Ealing comedies.'

  The front cover says simply: 'Ice by Anna Fisher'. He opens it.

  'Kind Hearts and Coronets ...' says the voice in the kitchen.

  The first page is a synopsis. 'A young black doctor (Denzel Washington), an eccentric white preacher (Clint Eastwood) and a tough, worldly Irish policeman (Sean Connery) make the final preparations to take a group of juvenile offenders for a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains ...'

  'The Ladykillers ...'

  'The teenage gangster, the junkie, the hooker gather at the community centre. They look up at the sound of a terrible rumbling in the earth. They think "earthquake", but nothing happens. One shrugs.'

  'Passport to ...'

  'They set off in their mini-bus. They leave the city far behind and enter the wilderness. There is snow on the high peaks and ice on the lakes ...'

  'To ...'

  'The preacher declares that they will sever all contact with the outside world during their trip and switches off the radio ...'

  'Something like Picardy ...'

  'In a television studio a newscaster reports that there have been unconfirmed stories of an enormous explosion in a nuclear arsenal deep underground in the former Soviet Central Asia. It has registered as an earth tremor all around the world. Experts discuss the likely threat from radiation.'

  'Passport to Picardy? No.'

  'The ice twists and cracks as it creeps slowly across the countryside ...'

  'Not Picardy. Where was it?'

  'The newscaster introduces another expert who says there is evidence that the Earth has been thrown off its axis ... The world might be entering another ice age ...'

  'I'll swap you that for this,' says Anna, taking the manuscript from him and refilling his glass.

  'Pimlico.'

  'What?'

  'Pimlico, it's an area of London. It was Passport to Pimlico. I thought you said you didn't know anything about films. Now it turns out you come from a film family and you write film scripts.'

  'One script. And no one has seen it, except you. I'm not at all sure about it. I don't want anyone to read it. Not yet.'

  She pauses, wanting to tell him more of what prompted the script, though nervous of his critical eye on the script itself.

  'I think we're going to see a whole big revival in the disaster movie cycle. There's Twister out this summer and there's going to be at least two volcano movies. One stars Tommy Lee Jones and the other Pierce Brosnan, the new James Bond. Dante's Peak. I think it could be huge. We've had fire, earth and water. Volcanoes. Dinosaurs. What about ice? Just think of the special effects in an Ice Age movie. And Pimlico wasn't an area of London. It was an area of France.'

  'Ice is cool,' says Roy.

  'Freezing.'

  'And that's the Cold War book?'

  Anna nods.

  He asks if he can put something on the video player. He chooses a cassette from the bookcase with four shelves of videos arranged in alphabetical order and slips it into the machine. Anna dishes up creamy tagliatelle with Parma ham and mushrooms into two bowls and fills their glasses to the top.

  'What's the movie?' she asks.

  'Wait and see,' he says, pressing play and joining her at the table.

  'I don't need to wait and see,' she says, lifting a forkful to her mouth. 'I know what it is from the space on the shelf.'

  The Paramount mountain then a deserted street in the grey, early, New York morning. A yellow taxi draws to a halt and a woman emerges dressed in a full-length black evening gown, long matching gloves, pearls and sunglasses, her hair stacked on top of her head. She looks at the jewellery in Tiffany's window while eating breakfast of pastry and coffee.

  'I know this movie backwards,' says Anna.

  'The version where she has her breakfast, gets in the taxi and reverses off down the street?'

  Roy used to think he knew it backwards to. But when Audrey Hepburn gets back to her apartment and discovers she has no key and wakes up Mr Yunioshi to let her in, it is not Mickey Rooney playing Japanese, in oversized dentures and heavy glasses, it is Roy. Oh well, he thinks, at least this is one role where he cannot be worse than the original.

  'Miss Golightly, I ploh-test.'

  Anna and Roy sit silently on the floor, leaning against the same floor cushion, propped against one of the ubiquitous bookcases. Holly Golightly is a former country hick who wants to be a New York sophisticate and manages to get $50 from male admirers every time she goes to the powder room.

  'Miss Golightly, remember Pearl Harbour, Miss Golightly. No powder rooms there. Just Tola! Tola! Tola! and then boom.'

  Holly says she doesn't care that her rich Brazilian boyfriend has ditched her, she will use the air ticket he bought her and find another wealthy bachelor in Brazil.

  'Miss Golightly, Melly Clissmass, Miss Golightly.'

  Paul Varjak, the poor writer in the upstairs apartment, says he loves her. Holly says it won't work, she won't let him put her in a cage. Like 'Cat', she does not belong to anyone.

  'Miss Golightly, you people steal Seven Samu-lai and call it Magnificent Seven. Is too much, Miss Golightly. I phone for the police, report theft of Akeela Kulosawa masterpiece by funny baldy man.'

  Holly gets the taxi driver to stop, and, despite Cat's plaintive miaowing, she turns him out into the rain. The taxi no sooner starts again, than Paul tells the driver to pull over. He tells Holly that people do fall in love but she doesn't have the guts to face the reality of it. He gives her the novelty ring they had had engraved at Tiffany's and heads out into the rain.

  Tiffany has ventured from the kitchen and is rubbing herself against Roy's outstretched legs. Anna nudges Roy and points to the cat. 'She never normally goes near any men,' she says incredulously.

  After a moment of hesitation, Holly gets out of the taxi too. The rain mingles with her tears as she finds Paul looking for Cat. They find him sheltering in a packing case in an alleyway. Holly tucks Cat inside her raincoat. Holly and Paul embrace, with Cat squashed between them, 'Moon River' playing on the soundtrack. And, with a kiss, Holly acknowledges that she and Paul are indeed after that same rainbow's end.

  Roy kisses the tears from beneath Anna's eyes. He sniffs and is forced to wipe his own eyes. 'It's that damn cat,' he says. 'I'm allergic.' She takes his hand and silently leads him to the bedroom. 'I never cry.' They embrace.

  Outside, lightning forks across the sky and momentarily illuminates the Pacific. Anna pulls Roy onto the bed and slips her hand under his tee-shirt and into the forest of hair on his chest. Somewhere, hot, red flames jump to devour the dry wood that has been thrown to them. Anna and Roy's bodies twist together. A horse neighs agitatedly and rears on its hind legs. An express train whistles as it disappears into a long, dark tunnel. Above Santa Monica Pier, the black heavens are suddenly lit up again, this time by a starbust of fireworks, red and green and silver. The carousel beneath the fireworks spins around and waves crash on the shore. The fireworks spread and fall, like a flower budding, blooming and dying, throwing off its pretty, coloured petals and decomposing into nothingness, all in the space of a couple of seconds. The carousel slows, the train exits its tunnel, the horse whinnies contentedly and the waves slip away again into the Pacific, leaving a damp patch and a little foam behind them on the sand.

  Later, two figures wrapped in white linen sheets stand silently looking out of the
window. One passes a cigarette to the other.

  'I'll be gone soon,' he says.

  'I know,' she replies.

  20

  It seems appropriate to watch Chinatown at Mann's Chinese Theatre, if only for the reason that neither has much to do with anything Chinese. In both, China is a state of mind.

  After breakfast with Tiffany, Roy and Anna go there, to Mann's Chinese Theatre, to the late morning showing of Chinatown. Anna has never seen it before. Roy has seen it a dozen times and finds something new to take from it every time. Jack Nicholson got the ambiguity of the character just right, the teflon overcoat of cynicism that stops the man from crumbling. Just walk away. You have to just walk away. Every good dick knows that. Don't get involved. But they always do.

  Roy thought he might be playing Jack Nicholson's part, the detective Jake Gittes. He is slightly disappointed to see Nicholson on screen in the opening scene in his white suit, smoking a cigarette, drinking whisky, showing Burt Young pornographic pictures. They are pornographic pictures of Young's wife and her lover. Roy is disappointed, and yet relieved, a little, just a little, not because there is any reason to think that he is no longer being sucked into that parallel world of the movies, but because he is not sure what he might have done with the role of Jake Gittes. Leave it to Jack. Don't go singing 'Singin' in the Rain' in a city in the grip of drought.