by Gemma Whelan
Next to the computer lay a copy of Sean’s script, Eye of the Storm, a screenplay by Sean Collins, based on the novel by Fiona Clarke. Fiona had never seen a screenplay before. She picked it up with trepidation. Part of her life was contained between these covers. She thumbed through it—118 pages—shorter by necessity than a novel. She fished in her book bag and checked the exact number of pages of her novel—288. What had been kept in the screenplay, what left out and what had been added? She could read it in one evening.
Still clutching the script tightly, Fiona opened up the French doors and stepped out onto a little patio with its view of the beach. A small group of children played in the fading light, and their excited shouts rang through the warm air. She stood and gazed out on the ebbing tide, allowing the motion to lull her into a dreamy relaxed state.
She recalled their family visits to the seaside every summer. There was that first delicious pot of tea, which Mam said tasted so good because of the different water. There were the towels spread out on the warm sand, the banana sandwiches on fresh crusty white bread, the salt sea smell and the crash of the waves against the rocks as Fiona lay on her stomach and read her books. There was Mam in the summers when she was well—relaxed, eyes half closed, a faint smile on her lips, hair glowing in the warm sun. And Dad, contentedly reading. And at night, the drifting off to sleep to the ebb and flow of the tide.
Her Dad had tried to teach her to swim several summers in a row, but she screamed in terror every time her face touched the water. She was convinced she was going to drown, and no amount of breathing talk helped, so her Da finally left well enough alone. Fiona sometimes walked down to the edge of the water, stood on the wet sand, and let the waves rush in and splash up against her ankles and calves, over and over again. She stood there and watched Declan and the other holiday-makers as they swam and cavorted like dolphins in the sea. She herself never ventured any further than the shore.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IMAGININGS
“Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.”
LEWIS CARROLL—Alice in Wonderland
The morning after her arrival, Fiona had a ten o’clock meeting with Sean Collins by the pool of her hotel. She took a little longer than usual getting ready. She reasoned that it was because she had more time on her hands since she wasn’t writing, and it felt like she was on her holidays by virtue of just being in Southern California and that it had nothing really to do with the fact that it was her first meeting with Sean Collins of the soft voice and easy sounding ways. She had spoken to him just a few times on the telephone and despite her initial antipathy towards any intrusion had gotten to like how he sounded. She felt somewhat shell-shocked from having read through a version of her life story, albeit in disguise, the previous evening. She had not been able to formulate any clear responses to the script yet, but she had a strange and uneasy sensation of her past floating just above her head in a misty cloud.
She sat under an umbrella by the deep blue pool and poured herself a mug of morning coffee from the café. She felt a bit overdressed in her beige cotton pants and pale blue long-sleeved shirt, and Pam’s hint about her clothing choices nagged at her. She leafed through Sean’s script from time to time but found it hard to focus, as her mind kept wandering to the anticipated meeting with this person who apparently admired her work and had enough trust in her novel to want to film it. She was nervous.
Sean arrived on schedule, wearing khaki shorts, a pale green cotton shirt and leather sandals. He seemed to be about thirty-four or five, was dark blond, fresh-faced and freckled and had an easy, confident manner that matched his telephone voice. He carried a slim black leather briefcase and a bag of fresh muffins. Fiona got up to shake hands.
“I assume you’re Sean,” she smiled.
“Must be the muffins that gave me away,” he grinned as he shook her hand with a firm grip.
“Is this the best-dressed L.A. director ensemble?” Fiona teased as they both sat down. “Shorts and briefcase?”
“Only on weekends—and pool meetings!” Sean laughed and offered her a muffin. “How is the place—okay?”
Fiona poured coffee for them both. “It’s grand, thanks.”
“Sorry about the phone.” Sean munched his blueberry muffin, “I think it’ll be hooked up by tomorrow.” He sipped his coffee appreciatively. “And an answering machine, too, of course.”
“I don’t mind,” Fiona replied. “I don’t really care about the telephone. Answering machines, on the other hand, I have great respect for—they save me from the phone!”
“Okay.” He munched his muffin. “We’ll try to keep calls to a minimum!”
“Are you a native of Los Angeles?” Fiona asked him.
“No—San Francisco Bay Area, Berkeley,” he replied. “My parents still live up there.”
“I visited San Francisco a few years back.” Fiona recalled her visit to Phil’s family. “I liked it. It’s so open compared to New York.”
“The architecture? Or the people?”
“Both, maybe. I think of it as a kind of polymorphous organism, where all of these disparate worlds exist side by side without regard to the others, and, ironically, this seems to offer an inordinate degree of privacy.”
“And is that very different from, say, here, or Ireland?” Sean queried, between bites of his muffin.
“My first impressions of the West Coast are of an openness and friendliness. In Ireland, especially the Ireland of the past, everyone knew everyone else and made it their business to know your business. As Nellie, my father’s cousin, would say, they’d live in your ear, if you let them!”
Sean had an open infectious laugh. “Well, you might say the same for some aspects of L.A.”
“I think New York is the antithesis of that. There, you could dart around in a mad rage, tearing your hair out, and everyone would think it was normal!”
“And you like that?” Sean asked.
Fiona thought she detected a mischievous note in his question. Was she challenging Sean in order to ward off probing into her own private world? She answered him honestly and frankly.
“It’s easier to get lost that way. Easier to be invisible.”
Sean smiled but didn’t comment—he let her remark stand.
They continued to eat and sip until they had finished their muffins, and then Sean pulled out his copy of the film script and of her novel.
“Well, what do you think?” he queried. “Any first impressions?”
Fiona thought about it for a minute and then launched in.
“It’s strange and a bit eerie for me, really. It’s as if I partly recognize the characters, like they were ghosts.” Ghosts again.
“Do they seem like your characters, though?” Sean asked. “I know they’re what drew me to the book initially.”
Fiona paused and took a deep breath. “The main character, Sheila, she seems—very sympathetic in your script,” she ventured.
“How do you mean?” Sean inquired.
“Well, she’s careless, negligent, she’s to blame for her little sister’s death.”
“Actually I didn’t think that.” Sean countered.
“But she’s older,” Fiona cut in, “so when they’re out in the storm and their hide-out is caving in, she should have acted sooner.”
“Yes, but still she’s only a child, too. It’s not fair to expect . . . ”
“Of course, it’s fair.” Fiona was getting adamant. “Her parents had trusted her, she prided herself on being responsible, so . . . ”
“But none of this makes her a villain,” Sean countered.
“But I think it does!” Fiona ventured.
Sean laughed easily. “Well, it must be some Irish Catholic guilt thing that I don’t understand,” he said lightly. “But I’d like to.” He reached into his briefcase and took out a portfolio cover.
“Here. Maybe it’d be easier to start with place and get back to the characters later.�
��
A diplomat, Fiona smiled to herself.
“I have location shots here of various places in the U.S. which could work for the Irish landscape.” He opened up the large covers and began to lay out beautiful photos. Rich green landscapes, rolling hills, charming valleys and lush vegetation. Fiona looked at them all and appreciated their beauty, but they did not resonate at all with her experience of her own rural Irish landscape.
“Sean, I know these are not actual photos of Ireland, but they don’t seem real to me in the context of the Ireland I grew up in. And it relates to something it’s hard to put a finger on about images of Ireland in American films. There seems to be a haze, a gloss, a kind of veil that makes everything look vague and mysterious but plays into some kind of nostalgia. Maybe these images could pass for a ‘generic’ Ireland—but they don’t feel right, exactly.”
“So, in film terms, do you mean that the image should be grainier, and we shoot (literally!) for more definition and detail?”
Fiona nodded affirmation. “I don’t know much about the technicalities of film, but yes, I think so.”
“Okay. Thanks. I think we’re on the right track. I want to understand the world of your novel as much as I can. Try to cut through the layers. This is rural Ireland in the 60’s and 70’s. It wasn’t in Technicolor, was it?”
Fiona laughed. “Definitely not. Not in my experience anyway, or Sheila’s. But I do remember that I’d sometimes change scenarios in my head—after we got T.V. and I watched some of those American sitcoms. When my Dad came in, worn and weary from working in the fields since early morning, in my mind’s eye he would metamorphose into a clean, perfectly groomed businessman. The kitchen would be transformed from its basic sensible farmhouse quality to a bright, sparkling model room, where all the appliances glistened with blinding intensity. You could practically see the silver polished stars glinting like you do in commercials! Mam was perky and neatly dressed in a checkered apron, with a tidy trim hairstyle. Dad breezed in, packed his briefcase away neatly, carefully hung up his pressed jacket, and kissed his model wife on the forehead. Just like Donna Reed!”
“So you had your fantasy of the ‘perfect’ home?” Sean chuckled. “A lot of city kids romanticize the country—especially farm life.”
“Right.” Fiona agreed. “I always thought city people and their homes were spotless, spic and span. Never a dust mite in sight! Then I’d be sick with guilt after, because it was like I was betraying my parents.”
“You mean you felt guilty for just thinking about it?” Sean asked, incredulous.
Fiona laughed. “I can see you’re definitely going to need some lessons on guilt—sins of the mind!” she chuckled. “But didn’t you have notions like that too?”
“I’d put on plays with my friends—and I was usually the director. I suppose that was fantasy, wish fulfillment.”
“Well, it came true,” Fiona remarked. “Here you are—a director!”
“And here you are! You escaped!”
Fiona thought about this a second. The notion of escape.
“I left,” she said then. “I came thousands of miles, but I’m not sure I escaped.”
In a moment she began to leaf through the photographs again. “These photos are ideal landscapes,” she said to Sean. “It all depends on the kind of film you want to make—a realistic, honest-to-God portrait—or a picture of a quaint romantic Ireland.”
“You know I’m Irish too,” Sean began. “My . . . ”
“But you’ve never set foot in Ireland, have you?” Fiona cut in. “I bet even your parents have never been there?”
“No, but my grandparents . . . ” Sean countered.
“It’s so often portrayed as this perfectly charming little place, with perfectly charming little people,” Fiona continued.
“Look,” Sean answered reasonably. “I’m not in competition with you about being Irish. A lot of my sense of what it is to be from there, to grow up there, comes from films and from books like yours.”
“And what image do you get from my book?”
“It’s confused,” Sean replied honestly. “I know you’re very adamant about truth versus fantasy, but I think there are some of both in your book.”
“Do you now?” Fiona wasn’t sure how to respond. Sean was calling her on what she had already begun to intuit from re-reading her novel and her Dad’s diaries. That there was a confusion, a contradiction, between the essence of her past story as she remembered it, as she had fictionalized it, and the way her father experienced it. She already knew that Declan was at odds with her version of events. And here now was Sean, a stranger, with no source but her own novel, interpreting it differently also.
“But you were hired as an expert on this film,” Sean continued disarmingly, “so here’s your chance to set us straight!”
Fiona considered this challenge—or invitation—for a second. She took a breath, and relaxed. “Okay. It’s a deal!”
Sean smiled, then glanced through his notes and started to put them away.
“I’ve got a lunch meeting so better take off.” It was approaching noon, and the L.A. sun was getting high in the sky. “I’ll sort through my notes and work through some of the other main characters with you, the brother especially I have questions about. And we’ll work on the location when I chat with the producers.”
Fiona nodded, holding her breath. As she shook hands with Sean and watched him walk away, she flashed on the Irish myth of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge. Once Fionn had tasted, merely by licking his thumb, the transfer of knowledge was irreversible. Despite her own fears, Fiona had opened the door to Sean, offered him a taste of the truth of her past, and knew there could be no going back.
EYE OF THE STORM
Excerpt from a novel by Fiona Clarke
Our house was beautifully decorated and lit up for the holidays. The living room was festooned with colorful decorations, spiraling constructions of red and green and gold silvery material. In the corner, a tall live tree rose from a green pot, and the branches glimmered with angels and bells and gold and silver orbs. The carefully wrapped presents nestled under its branches. Mam had bathed myself and Conor and put on our night clothes so we could listen to letters from Santy on the radio. We sat in front of the crackling fire sipping hot cocoa. Mam sat on one side of the fire, knitting, and Dad on the other, doing a crossword puzzle. I was mesmerized by the voice of Santa Claus who was reading letters he had picked out from the hundreds of children who had written to him. My heart nearly stopped when I heard my own name, and all four of us stayed still like statues, breath held, rapt, as we leaned in towards the radio to catch every word.
“Dear Santy,
Please bring me a doll and a coloring book and crayons for Christmas. I’d also like a new baby sister. Please bring my brother whatever he asks for, too—he will write you a letter of his own, separately.
Love, Sheila
P.S. My Dada will leave out a bottle of Guinness and a slice of Christmas cake like he does every year for when you come to our house.”
I let out a squeal of delight and nearly burst with the excitement. Now I really believed in magic. Mam was smiling broadly at me, and then suddenly she stiffened, glanced over at Dad, stood up quickly and left the room. Dad gave myself and Conor a friendly tousle on the head, and out he went after her. We cuddled up, warm and toasty, and listened in to the rest of the Christmas letters.
The next thing I remember, I was being lifted out of the chair, carried up the stairs and tucked into bed. I dreamed of snow and new born lambs and reindeer. It seemed like no time at all until Conor came in and tugged on the sleeve of my nightdress. The house whispered with a sweet and mysterious excitement, and, bleary-eyed, I rolled out from under the warm blankets and let my brother lead my by the hand down the stairs.
My feet hardly touched the steps as I sailed down. I could hear the crackle of the fire and smell the turf as Conor and I stood a moment in the open doorway. The
Christmas lights on the tree and the fire in the fireplace were the only illumination, and, to me, it seemed like fairyland. I saw Dada in his chair beside the fire and raced over to jump up in his lap. Then I turned around to go to the tree and saw Mama sitting in semi-darkness in her chair on the other side of the fire. She wore a pale lemon fluffy dressing gown and cradled a white bundle in her arms. She was still and calm and sleepy. I climbed down slowly from Dad’s lap and cautiously approached the bundle. Mam opened the blanket, and there lay the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. She was a golden child with deep amber eyes, luminescent skin and a glowing face framed with fiery tendrils. I was mesmerized, transfixed. I couldn’t pry my eyes away.
“Well, Sheila, you got your little sister.” Mama’s voice seemed to come from far away.
I continued to gaze at her, half afraid I was dreaming and would wake up in my bed. “Can I touch her?”
“Gently, yes.”
And I reached out and placed my finger in the tiny curled up hand and felt the smooth flesh and ever so gently touched the silky cheek, soft and pliant like butter. “Oh, Mama! She is so beautiful. She must be the beautifulest of things in the whole wide world!” They all laughed. Then Mama closed over the blanket to keep her new baby warm.
“Did Santa bring her?” I asked. “I think I heard the reindeer bells.”
“She’s a Christmas present all right.” Dad said. “A special little bundle.”
Conor had closed the door to keep out the draught and then walked slowly over to the other chair where he stood silently as I examined and admired my new sister. He tried to interest me in the tree. “Sheila, don’t you want to see what Santa brought?” he asked. But I was riveted to the spot beside the baby girl. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I did open my presents later, and I saw the empty plate with the crumbs from the Christmas cake that Santa had polished off. He made short work of the bottle of Guinness, too; it was all gone, down to the very last drop. But, though I liked my presents and played with Conor and enjoyed all the special foods and treats, my life was changed forever the moment I laid eyes on my new sister who later was given the name of Aoife. I was drawn to her like a magnet, overwhelmed by her beauty, lost in admiration. She became the centre of my life for the next five years.