The water wasn't that deep. Maybe twenty feet. In a few seconds we'd settled on the sea bed. The ocean floor. Outside, it was as black and thick as a Stygian night, whatever that is. They'd left the keys in the ignition and although the engine had died, the electrics on the dashboard were still working. The clock said 12.35 and we'd half a tank of petrol. Things we didn't need to know. There was no point in struggling, but we did, for one minute, then two, then three as the water started to lap about our feet. But then we gave up. We were tied together, our faces close enough to feel hot breath, but helpless as far as escape was concerned.
I said, 'This is it then.'
She was sobbing. 'Shit, shit, shit,' she cried between gulps.
'If you've any last words, you may say them now.' The water was freezing. It smelled green.
'It can't just end like this!' Alice screamed.
'Fuck!' I yelled, straining again against the ropes.
'Oh Jesus!' she said.
'Fuck it!' I yelled.
Our heads fell back. I started to laugh. She said: 'What?'
I said: 'This is just so fucking ridiculous. I'm trying to think of some profound thought with which to leave this level of existence and all I can think of is Sean saying, Your chips are getting cold.'
She looked at me for a moment, then started to laugh. It wasn't funny, yet it was the funniest thing in the world. In seconds we were laughing hysterically. And then we stopped as the water reached our knees.
I said, 'Do you love him?'
'I do.'
'This much?'
'Almost. What about your wife?'
The temptation was to shrug. But it would have been a lying shrug. I nodded. 'Too much,' I said. I sighed. My throat was dry and a headache was beginning to throb across my brow. 'Nothing like a bit of drowning to sober you up.'
'I know,' Alice said. 'I could do with a drink of water.'
We both started laughing again.
The water was seeping into my groin. I looked at her and said, 'I'm of the firm belief that we should not depart this mortal coil feeling angry.'
Her teeth were now chattering, a toxic mix of cold and fear. 'What would you suggest?'
'Well, I can say this because it really doesn't matter if I embarrass myself now, nobody's ever going to know. But even though I'm happily married and you are very obviously recently happily married, I think you're one of the most beautiful people I've ever met. You may have a severe personality disorder as well, but right now I can think of nothing nicer than kissing you right before I die. It would be a nice way to go.' She had the beginnings of a look of complete disbelief on her face when the electrics gave up and we were plunged into total darkness. For several moments there was just the chill lap of the water. 'This is no time to play hard to get,' I said.
Silence.
The water had evidently found a more efficient method of entry. From its leisurely climb up our bodywork at the start of our nightmare, it was now fairly racing up us. Cold and foul.
I thought of Patricia.
And Little Stevie.
And the Clash.
And chips that were cold.
And then there was something moist on my lips and a warmth that was as old as time and as fresh as a daisy. Her tongue met mine and we lost ourselves in a kiss that was as beautiful as our predicament was ugly.
It was the only way to go.
11
My funeral service was held at Roselawn Crematorium on the outskirts of Belfast. It is a long, low building, almost like a bungalow, but with a chimney that is a little too big for cosy nights in in front of the telly.
Though I'm sure there would have been several ministers fighting over my corpse – there are quotas to be achieved even in God's kingdom – I had not left any specific instructions for my departure, other than taxidermy as my least favoured option. I called myself a Protestant still, but that had bugger all to do with religion. It had to do with culture, football, attitude and land rights. No, it would be a civil service, come full circle from our wedding not that many years before.
I hovered above, expectantly.
There were about two hundred seats within the chapel. There was piped organ music. There was my coffin sitting at the front, waiting to be lowered into the inferno. Mourners were beginning to file in. There came Patricia's mum and dad, he hobbling on the stick, not long to join me. My brother. Journalists from the various papers I'd worked for. Lee Cooper, the stripping nun. Fat Boy McMaster, studiously ignoring his former manager Geordie McClean. Sam Cameron, whispering to Mouse about the possibilities of writing a book about my life and seeing Mouse's brow crinkle up, torn between telling him to piss off and asking how much. Then Patricia. She was wearing a short black dress and high heels and held Little Stevie by the hand. He wore a black crombie coat and shiny black shoes. They walked to the front of the chapel and stood for several moments before my coffin. Little Stevie lifted his little hand to his brow, and saluted. There were emotional gasps from the congregation.
They took their seats. Patricia glanced round several times, as if she was waiting for someone, then eventually gave a little smile at a man who came down the aisle towards her. I thought at first that he was going to take the service, that he was coming to check some last-minute facts with her – yeah, great journalist, everyone loved him, fantastic in bed – when he kissed her full on the lips and sat down beside her. She took his hand. With his other he ruffled Little Stevie's hair, ginger like his own.
Jesus Christ!
Not that I'm religious.
Tony!
Patricia's lover!
Ex-lover, or so I thought!
Couldn't even wait until I was cold – or hot, as it happened.
Fuck.
The bitch.
And then heads turned and there were two big, beefy guys at the door, with sunglasses and little earplugs looking about them like the President was about to enter. But it was Sean O'Toole, in a black Armani suit. There were excited whispers from the congregation. Sean paused, looked behind him, put his hand out, then Alice appeared in the doorway in her short skirt and white jacket.
Alice. Looking beautiful.
They began to walk down the central aisle.
As Alice walked she suddenly looked up to the ceiling. She could see me, even in my bat shape, hanging from the rafters. She smiled. She mouthed the words: 'Nice kiss,' then walked on.
I didn't know what the hell was . . .
. . . there was a fat, sweaty man's mouth on mine.
Then I spewed green slime onto the dock. There was coughing beside me. There were lights. My chest was on fire. My stomach had come loose. I was rolled onto one side and I continued to throw.
I forced my eyes open. They stung. There was . . . goo in them. I dragged an elastic arm up and wiped the mess away and tried to make out shapes. There were angry voices. The crackle of a walkie-talkie. Alice was vomiting beside me.
I was not dead.
I sat up.
'Holy fuck,' I croaked.
One of the men turned. The thought had flashed across my mind that these men, these men who had so recently kissed me and brought me back to life, might be the Colonel's men having their fun, ready to toss us back in again unless we swore to bring filming to a halt, but I saw now that they were not, that they were Sean's security guys and that in the harsh light of their car headlamps they were jittery and scared and panicked. They were also both coated in green slime.
I delved around in the polluted byways of my mind for something smart to say, but all I could manage was, 'Thanks.'
The guy closest said, 'No problem.'
I looked at Alice, still heaving, and asked the stupid question, 'Is she okay?'
'As okay as anyone can be, drinking that stuff. You must have a strong constitution.'
It was years of drinking Harp. It had tasted pretty much the same and been considerably cheaper. I raised myself gingerly to my knees. I was dizzy. I was soaked. I was poisoned. But I was a
live. 'What . . .?'
'Sean sent us after you. Well, after Alice. He doesn't let her go anywhere without us.'
'Does she know . . .?'
He glanced at her. She was too busy throwing up to be listening. 'I doubt it.' He paused, then gave a little laugh. 'Yes, I know what you're thinking, how can fat bastards like us not be noticed – but believe it or not we're professionals. Ex-SAS.'
It seemed the wrong time to ask why they were ex. The other guy helped Alice to sit up.
My hero reached out a hand and pulled me up. There were anchors on my feet and needles in my eyes. 'Okay?' he said. I nodded and nearly toppled over. He steadied me. 'I'm just sorry it took so long,' my saviour said. 'We had to make a choice. Steam in and maybe they would panic and kill you anyway, or wait and see what they'd do. Seeing as they'd made a point of coming down to the water, we figured it was better to wait.'
'I'm glad you did.' I let out a long, bubbly sigh. 'What now?'
He looked up the road behind us, stretching dark and lonely between warehouses. 'We've ordered a taxi for you. We have to get back to Sean. He's by himself out there. Go to your hotel. Wait there. Don't let anybody in. Sean'll decide our next move.'
I looked across at Alice. She was rubbing goo from her eyes. It was stupid question time again. 'Are you okay?'
She gave the faintest of nods. 'I've . . . felt better . . .' she said weakly. She looked at the security guy beside her and then at the water. 'You . . .?'
He shrugged. 'Yeah. It's not that deep, but it's dark and nasty. Took us a while to find you. Had to cut you loose to get you out through the window. Then went back for him.'
'I'm glad you got your priorities right,' Alice said.
He smiled. 'Well, we stopped for a fag first.'
The taxi came. The driver took one look at us and tried to drive on. The security guys gave him several large-denomination notes. He stuffed them into his shirt pocket then climbed warily out of his car. He removed what appeared to be a paint-spattered curtain from the boot then draped it over the back seat.
We got in. The security guys hurried into their car and raced off ahead of us. The driver looked at us and our dank evening wear in the mirror. 'Where to?' he said.
'Jury's,' I said.
He nodded for several moments, then said: 'No offence, but I don't think you'll get in dressed like that.'
I put my arm round her and we shivered against each other. She said: 'You sure know how to show a girl a good time.'
We were out of the docks and back into the centre of Dublin. There were lots of people on the streets and everything was neon lit, but it wasn't welcoming any more. When we stopped at lights people peered in, as they will at any stationary vehicle. But it felt like they knew what was going on, that they were in the Colonel's pay, they were his eyes and ears and trigger fingers. It was paranoia, but who could blame me. I had nearly died, and for no reason. I was incidental to it all, and that was scarier than being to blame. It could have been me or Kissinger in the car with Alice, it wouldn't have mattered to them. It was all about Sean O'Toole and his stupid bloody film.
I had come within a millilitre of death, and had no idea why I should be reincarnated as a bat.
'One thing,' Alice said.
'Mmmm?'
'Don't mention the kiss.'
'Okay.'
'Sean's very . . . jealous. He wouldn't understand.'
'That's okay.'
'We were dying. It just seemed such a good idea.'
'I know.'
Her eyes flitted towards me, then quickly away again. She was looking out of the window. We were stopped at a traffic light. There was a multi-screen cinema beside her. Two of Sean's films were showing. There was a poster of him. She took a deep breath.
'It was a lovely kiss though,' she said.
'I thought so,' I said. There was no doubt about it. I was falling for a girl with green slime in her hair.
12
The sniffy doorman said, 'Are you residents?'
'Protestants, mate,' I said and pushed on past him. We walked up to the desk. I asked for my key. The girl was a professional. She hardly batted an eye. It was an electronic key card, the kind you're meant to carry with you, but I'd never trusted myself with them enough to take them outside. They were too easy to lose track of, particularly when you were submerged under twenty feet of murky water.
We went up to the eighth floor and I let Alice into my room.
'Tidy,' she said.
'I haven't unpacked yet,' I said.
'What do you do, wait until you get home?'
'Usually.'
We looked at each other. We were awkward. It wasn't that we had nearly died together, but that we had kissed. It changed things. Particularly the fact that it was a good kiss. If she'd had bad breath, holes where there should have been teeth and a viper's tongue, it wouldn't have been so bad.
But.
We were soaked. The kiss made it difficult to get out of our clothes. I said, 'Why don't you go in and take a shower? Or a bath. There's a bathrobe. I'll order us a couple of drinks.' She looked at me. I added, 'I'm sure Sean'll be along in no time.'
She nodded. She went into the bathroom. I lifted the phone and ordered three bottles of Harp and a half-bottle of Smirnoff Vodka and a bucket of ice. I held the phone against my chest and shouted, 'What do you want to drink?' through the bathroom door. There came a muffled reply. I added a bottle of white to the tally. Sam Cameron was paying for it. And he would, probably with his life.
I paced. I was soaked through, but I couldn't get out of my clothes yet. I couldn't be standing in my underpants when she came out. It would be too big a temptation for her. To run away. So I paced and switched on the TV and switched it off and looked out of the window at the traffic below and the lights of the city.
I would have to find out how she had met him and why she had married him. Where she came from and where she went to school and how many hearts she had broken, and in learning it all it would demystify her. Since I had married I had only kissed one other girl with passion, and it had killed her, almost literally. I had sworn it would never happen again. Perhaps, in the Big Book of Things, kissing Alice in the back of the car moments from my death wasn't that much of a sin; but the fact of it was that we'd both enjoyed it and neither of us had died. And now it was out there.
I pressed my forehead against the glass. I had to get a grip of myself. I was still half intoxicated. My veins were afire with the adrenaline of a near-death experience. I was letting my imagination run away with me. There must have been a dead dog floating in the stenchy river and I had picked up a bad case of puppy love.
Stop it.
Stop it now.
I tried to concentrate on Michael O'Ryan and why he was getting so upset with Sean's film. He had received plenty of bad press in his time, what difference could a movie make?
Because nobody believes bad press, but everybody believes the movies.
They become history. Our take on Nazis, Red Indians and Italians are formed by the movies. Our take on the Guildford Four, the fate of the Titanic and the assassination – or was it suicide? – of JFK is irrevocably influenced by the movies. What if Michael O'Ryan had convinced himself that he was a hero? Convinced himself that it was scummy here-today-gone-tomorrow journalists who portrayed him as a murdering psychopath? What if it was only when he read Sean O'Toole's screenplay to The Brigadier that he realised that not only this generation, but the next and the next, would come to regard him as a madman?
It seemed far-fetched. It seemed weak. But what other reason could there be for such an hysterical reaction?
But then, since when did a nut have to justify himself?
The door opened and Alice came out. Her hair was dripping. It had darkened under the shower. The make-up was gone. She had the bathrobe on. 'Thanks,' she said. 'Ahm, there's another bathrobe.'
We passed each other in the gap between the dressing table and the bed. We laughed a little, smiled like
teenagers. I paused in the bathroom doorway.
'There's a hairdryer over there,' I said.
'Thanks.'
'Ahm. There's drinks on the way.'
'I could do with one.'
'Do you want to phone Sean?'
'No. He'll be on his way.'
I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I took my trousers off. I removed my wallet from my back pocket. When I opened it up, a small fish fell out.
No, it didn't. But it might have, my life was such a fucking comedy. There was nothing in my wallet but damp money and red telephone bills. I took off my shirt and jacket. They were green, though not with envy. I rolled them in a ball. They didn't need washed, they needed chemo. I doubted if clothes were available on room service, but something would have to be done. In another life I would have had a manservant to go out and replace my wardrobe. Or probably not. In my other life, it seemed, I had been a bat.
I was naked. I looked at my face in the mirror. Thirty-something, now. Stubbled. Hair not noticeably receding. Dark under the eyes. I traced the outline of those bags, then saw in the reflection that my fingernails were caked black and green. Dublin Bay nail varnish. I removed my wedding ring and sat it on the edge of the sink and then unwrapped one of the free mini-soaps. I put in the plug, then turned on the hot water. I ran up a lather in my hands and started to scrub and pick at my nails. It wasn't the sort of dirt that would come out under the shower.
There was a sudden knock on the hotel room door.
'Dan?' Alice hissed fearfully.
I turned and grabbed a towel. I hurriedly tied it about my waist then pulled the bathroom door open. Alice was standing hugging herself, looking at the door. 'It's okay,' I said softly, 'it's just the drinks.' She didn't look convinced. 'Who is it?' I called.
'Room service,' a woman's voice replied.
I smiled at Alice. She smiled back and walked to the door. I returned to the bathroom and closed the door. Then I said, 'Fuck,' because the water in the sink had already started to overflow. I reached in and yanked out the plug. I dropped my towel onto the ground and started to soak up the overflow. There wasn't much.
Shooting Sean Page 6