We shuffle forward, past illuminated panels depicting space flight. Space, the final frontier. One day, far in the future, when population pressure is high enough and the commercial incentives are in place, vast ships will spread out across the galaxy in search of new worlds and cheap real estate.
We emerge on a high mezzanine-floor looking down into the launch bay. The cars arrive, the passengers disembark, the cars move forward, the passengers embark. We shuffle forward, the line moving faster and faster the closer we get. I follow Melissa into the front car. We sit on hard curved plastic seats. Ahead of us is blackness. From somewhere out of the blackness comes the sound of wailing. Just as a solid metal bar clamps down on my shoulders, locking me helplessly in place, I realize with a sickening lurch of sheer terror, I’ve been tricked.
Horror.
The car lurches forward with a violent jerk, stops abruptly, starts a long clanking climb up a near-vertical slope. It is dark. Smoke curls from hidden vents as we pass. Higher we climb, and higher.
Torment. We are whirled and buffeted by terrible winds in the darkness. There is no up, no down, no left, no right. There is only suffering and a profound sense of separation from God, from light, from one’s internal organs. My spine is broken in at least three places. My head slams against the headrest. Strange moons flash past. The souls of the damned wail in my ears. I’m going to throw up.
The car slows, violently, emerges from darkness. I climb out after Melissa and stagger down the exit tunnel and out into the dazzling light of day. Waves of nausea travel from the soles of my feet to my scalp. I want to find a bush and crawl under it. Young people in baseball caps and ill-fitting jeans are everywhere. They are talking. They keep glancing at me and whispering.
“Wow, that was so cool. What did you think?”
“That was the worst experience I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
“I thought it was good.”
“Pure, unadulterated suffering.”
“So you don’t want to go round again?”
“I would rather be hung, drawn and quartered.”
“Well, I’m going to go again.”
“You’re not going to leave me here alone are you?”
“You’ll be okay. Go get a hot dog. I’ll meet you back here in an hour, then we can do something else.”
EXT. DISNEYLAND—DAY.
SEEMINGLY UNCONCERNED SHE WALKS OFF AROUND THE CORNER TO REJOIN THE QUEUE. HE SITS ON A NEARBY PLASTIC BUCKET SEAT AND RESTS HIS HEAD IN HIS HANDS. HE’S ALONE IN DISNEYLAND. SOMETHING APPEARS TO BE RESTING ON HIS LEFT SHOULDER. HE TWISTS AND TURNS TO LOOK BUT HE CAN’T SEE ANYTHING. HE CLOSES HIS EYES.
INSERT:
ROBES FLAPPING IN THE DESERT WIND.
INSERT:
EYES. THE EYES OF THE PROPHET. BLUE, BOMB-SITE EYES: BURNT OUT. BY SIN. THE EYES OF THE PROPHET. BLUE BOMB-SITE EYES: ZEROING IN. ON SIN.
Frederick
God, the eyes.
HE OPENS HIS EYES. PEOPLE IN BASEBALL CAPS AND BADLY-FITTING JEANS ARE HUDDLED TOGETHER IN CORNERS, WHISPERING AND POINTING. SINNING.
I get to my feet. The something, which weighs heavy on my left shoulder, which has been sitting there for all this time, I know at last what it is. It’s Death, not any old death, either, but my death. I get up and walk, Death perched as easily on my shoulder as a parrot on his pirate. Death is real. The cliché is the reality.
I look around me. Death looks around too. The confections in plastic and steel, the people queuing, in baseball caps and ill-fitting jeans, to ride the mini-motorway over there to my left, to zip along in tiny cars, nose-to-tailing under a baby overpass just exactly like the monster freeway they all took to get here; the hot dog stands, the vast domed structures, brightly-colored, the old-world vehicles, Pluto over there signing autographs with a giant white-gloved hand: it strikes me with such force that I stagger backward. I clap my hand to my forehead. Light pours into all the hidden spaces. Blinding, hideous clarity, more clarity than a human heart can stand. Death has to cling on tight as I fall to my knees there in the bright courtyard outside Space Mountain, passers-by looking on, curious. Christ, God, Jesus, all the saints and blessed martyrs. The most appalling fiendish twist of all. The truth about Disneyland, about its mystique, its strange attraction is that Disneyland is REAL.
Chapter 9
TAMINTHA HAS A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. It’s an old nineteenth-century rectory, with a twelfth-century wing. The main building is big, gray, square and solid. Slate roof, stone floors, mullioned windows. Freezing in winter. There’s a tennis court, several acres of fields, a defunct orchard, a trout pond half-choked with pond weed; home to a family of ducks and six trout—all called Simon. You can’t tell them apart anyway. Over the dry stone wall at the back of the house is the graveyard of a medieval church. Jumbled headstones, eroded gargoyles and hanging festoons of dark glossy-green ivy. Crows call from the oak trees and wheel heavily in the cold air, flocking, black against the steel- gray sky.
Come with me now, as we vault the dry stone wall (easy does it), and approach the ancient church. Noseless knights gaze down serenely from the portico. There’s an old yellowing sign pinned to the door advising that the Bosnian Children’s Relief Fund is still looking for items of warm winter clothing in good condition, especially in smaller sizes. Pinned above it is a newer sign advising that the Afghan Famine Relief Fund is still looking for tins. The interior of the church is surprisingly small, like a child’s church. Slanting shafts of bejeweled light strike the stone flags from the high narrow stained-glass windows. The air is cool. There is quiet and peace here, total separation from the hurly-burly of contemporary life. It’s whole, untouched, and maybe just a little bit sad. Let us take a pew. Let us sit in peaceful contemplation.
The fourteenth-century wing of the rectory is the same age as the church. It abuts the Victorian wing to form the short stroke of an L. It is Tamintha’s personal obsession. It took her six years of labor, red tape and unthinkable expense to transform it from what it was when she bought it—a roofless pile of very old stones with a sign saying DANGER KEEP OUT—to what it is now: a rabbit warren of odd-sized rooms, turrets and basements, a beautiful winding stone staircase, a second-story doorway opening into thin air, and a magnificent banquet hall complete with rush-and-hound- ready stone floor and a high ceiling supported by massive beams in genuine French oak—there was a particularly vicious round of continental storms that year and it was cheaper to import. You know it’s real—real stone, real oak. It’s the original building, rebuilt. It’s real, but it isn’t.
I’m in a four-poster bed with a lumpy mattress and a three-foot pile of duvets and blankets. As long as I don’t move, I’m warm. My breath is steaming around me. It’s eight-thirty a.m. I’m feeling peaceful but dejected and soon I’m going to be hungry. Time to be getting up. I put one foot on the floor. Good God almighty. It’s a stone floor and it’s so cold it burns like hellfire. I pull my foot back in, lie still, and listen. I can hear nothing. No footsteps, no voices. No dogs, no cats. No lowing cows, no babbling brooks, no jets overhead. I’m at the very far end of the medieval wing, in the turret room. I could scream my head off and no one would hear me. I could starve up here, and who would know? Who would care? I am lonely and bereft. I crave human company. I need food, sympathy. But the first thing is to wash and dress. The en suite bathroom hasn’t been connected up yet and the nearest shower is a thousand miles away, next to the kitchen. The logical thing is to stay here and starve to death. I wrap my feet in a duvet, hop across the room, gathering up clothes and shoes.
I pause at the top of the stone spiral staircase. I can hear nothing. There’s a charming little window set in a deep stone sill and I can look out through the sinuous thorned curve of a climbing rose onto the orchard. Downstairs people will already be in the kitchen, rugged up in big woolly oatmeal cable-knit sweaters and Timberland shoes, smoking drugs and drinking coffee and eating poached eggs on toast and planning walks that they will probably never take. I br
eathe deeply.
Tamintha hails me chummily from over by the Aga. “Have some porridge.”
“Maybe in a bit. Hi, guys.”
The film types wave and smile. There’s an unshaven one, a shaven one, and an in-between. Also, there’s Ella and Russell over by the fire, and I go over. Ella and Russell are our best friends. Ella has their two-month-old baby in her arms, Russell is sitting next to her, bending forward and making coo-coo noises. It’s very nice. They don’t seem to be aware that there’s anyone else in the room. The baby’s name, for some reason, is Brian. Sophie and I are the godparents, something which was arranged just last night.
Some babies have an ancient, wise-beyond-their-years look, a sort of Buddha-like calm. Brian doesn’t really have that look. He has more of a middle-aged harassed-dope look. He has the body of a sumo wrestler with two tiny bright blue astonished eyes drowning in a massive head. Bluish veins crisscross his skull. He looks like something from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. His fist is in his mouth, up to the wrist. Russell and Ella gaze at him with rapt admiration. It’s true what they say. Even the ugliest baby in the world is the most beautiful baby in the world.
“Hey, Brian.”
I want one. I’ve known this for some time, actually. I didn’t realize this happened to men. It does. I see a baby, and I want one. It’s a little bell, ringing, back of the head. Ring-a-ding-ding. Every time.
Russell grins. “I think he recognized your voice.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He was looking around, sort of.” Russell wants me to have a baby too. He really wants me to have a baby. He’s desperate for me to have a baby. If Sophie and I have a baby, now, then we can stay pretty much in step and be couples with babies together. We can hang out at the playground, spell each other with babysitting, share a world view. Otherwise, and Russell senses this keenly, we’re on divergent paths.
“He seems very alert this morning.”
“It’s the country air. It stimulates him.”
I breathe in. It’s the smell, isn’t it? It’s the smell of those babies, it’s just incredible. Like fresh-baked bread. You just want to eat them. “Anyone seen Sophie?”
The unshaven film type looks up from teasing the dog with a piece of bacon. His name is Rufus. He’s huge, yellow and shaggy. That’s the dog. The film type is called Boris. He has something technical to do with coordinating the marketing of prerelease publicity campaigns. He’s obsessed with Sophie. He invites her to lunch all the time and keeps dropping by on Wednesday mornings around ten-thirty in the hope that I’m at the office. It’s okay. He doesn’t stand a chance—I’m never at the office. Besides, he’s too short and he wears his jeans too tight and his shirts too loose. Sophie likes him though. She’s being mates with him. He and I go out for a beer too from time to time and he surreptitiously pumps me—about Sophie. I don’t mind.
“Sorry, haven’t seen her this morning.” Boris goes back to the dog. He makes a point of never knowing where Sophie is. Sort of a courtesy to me. Instead, Tamintha answers. “She’s checking the orchard, I think.”
“What for?”
“Trees?”
I put on a Barbour and a pair of gumboots from the communal store near the backdoor. I slip out, closing it quickly to keep out the cold. Rufus slips out too, and lopes ahead. He’s a great lolloping hound, half Irish setter, half cow. I put my hands in my pockets to keep them warm and schlep across the courtyard.
Sophie has just got back from shooting Shag City. She flew in from LA just last Thursday, and for those two days she’s been quiet and distant. Withdrawn. Jet-lagged, tired out, wrung out. She’s always like this when she gets back from a job. She’ll recover.
I have a plan. It’s over, I’m telling myself. The whole thing is over. I’m going to draw a line under it. I tried drawing a line at it, but that didn’t work, so now I’m shifting the line. I’m going to put the whole thing behind me and I’m going to start again. I’m going to tell Sophie that, and I’m going to tell her that if she’s willing to put the whole thing behind her, then I’m willing to put the whole thing behind me. I’m going to tell her I’m willing to quit the film business and get a proper job. Whatever it takes. The time has come. I want us to have a child. “I want us to move forward.” I’m going to use that phrase. I’m going to drop it in at the right moment. I can feel it on my tongue, smooth and heavy.
I come around the corner of the dry stone wall. I stop. Straight ahead is the entrance to the old orchard: a gap in the wall and a wrought-iron arch. A crow croaks. To my left, over the dry stone wall, is the graveyard. I lean against the wall. I run a hand across the stone. Rufus comes lolloping back to check on me. He tosses my hand on the end of his nose.
I take a couple of breaths. I’m not scared, not exactly, but I’m pretty excited. This is going to be a big moment. This is going to be a moment to look back on. I know that already, whatever happens. I’m going to say it again. Let’s have a kid. Kid. I’m going to lay down an ultimatum. I go on through the arch and cross the orchard. Apple trees all over the place. Shiny bark. She’s right over the other side, sitting on the dry stone wall, swinging her legs. She’s looking out across the valley. It’s a peaceful view: rolling green hills, the odd cow. One of the big shocks I got when I came to England was that they do actually have grass over here. Grass, cows, trees, everything. You could walk a whole day out here, and not a single dark satanic mill in sight. I’m walking up behind her. She still hasn’t heard me approaching. She’s just sitting there, swinging her legs, looking out at the countryside, and coming up behind her I’m the future. I’m the juggernaut future, I’m progress, I’m coming up behind and I’m going to change everything forever.
After the big fight, we pretended nothing had happened. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t even say sorry. We couldn’t. We’d taken positions. We’d dug in. It was trench warfare. The script went through a few more drafts and I didn’t read any of them. I never asked how it was going. I never asked anything. She never told me. Sometimes she’d get phone calls: Matt would call, or Janine would, or someone. Janine I could stand, even Matt (“Hi, Frederick, howya doin’?”). Matt was always insufferably cheerful and friendly. But it was the Someones, they were the ones I couldn’t stand. I never got used to those Someones.
“Someone on the phone.”
“Who?”
“Didn’t say.”
They call, the Someones, any hour of the day or night. You might be eating, you might be sleeping. “Is Sewphie there, please?” Always this impeccable plummy accent. Tens of thisands of pinds in public school education and they haven’t even got the basics of telephone etiquette. I mean, what do they think? Who do they think?
Six weeks later she has her bags packed, the door is ajar and a black cab is coming in ten. I have that long to say something. She’s going to be away for three months shooting in Australia and I know I have to say something. I want to say something, I just don’t know what. I get up and I head straight for the dishes.
Sophie comes in. She stands behind me. There’s a long, long silence.
“If I kiss someone for a role, do you have a problem with that?”
“With or without tongues?”
She ignores this. She waits.
“I’ve never liked it. I put up with it, sure.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference?” This is my chance. This is my chance to say something. I know that. “What’s the difference? You’re asking me what’s the difference?”
“Yes.”
“The difference is obvious.”
There’s a toot outside.
“Look,” she says.
“Taxi’s here,” I say.
There’s a respectably long pause. “Yeah,” she says.
“See you.”
“See you.”
I heard the door shut. I heard the taxi drive away. I really didn’t like that last “see you.” It was barren and windswept, a plac
e where nothing can grow.
For the three months that Sophie was away on the shoot, I became a porn fiend. Seemed like the thing to do. Just my way of taking an interest in her work. I went to a little place in Soho. In the end I got to know the guy behind the desk quite well. His name was Gary and he wore a lot of silver. He was tall and slender and pale-looking and he had very fine features. Big eyebrows, arching. I liked him. I remember the first time I went into the shop, he smiled. That was a shock, for a start.
“Wot you lookin’ for then?” Startled, I looked around. The instant before he spoke I’d been staring, open-mouthed, at a great wall of pink. Pink, of course, is a soothing color, and strangely, despite the admitted seediness, the shop had a quiet contemplative air, rather like a small country church. Gary was in a corner, hemmed in by a tiny counter. The black curtain behind him was still swaying.
“Well, I’d like a movie to rent.”
“What sorta fing you lookin’ for?”
“Well, er . . .”
“Straight? Bi? Gay? Group? SM?” He looks me up and down with a practiced, sizing air, like he’s a suit salesman. The question has caught me off-guard. What do I want?
“Something nice. Lyrical, if you have it.”
He nods. It’s just as he thought. “Straight couple?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, all right.” He waves me away from the shelf. “Don’ worry about all that rubbish over there. Yeah got just the fing for ya, mate, got it right ’ere.” He reaches under the counter, slaps a video cassette, coverless, on the scarred wood surface. “Get a load a’ that. You’ll love it. That’s really ’ot, that is.” He pats it affectionately. The cassette has no identifying marks of any kind, beyond a small white adhesive label with the legend “3/44.” “Tenner for that, oright?”
I pull out a tenner.
“You wanna bag for that?”
I took it back to the flat and put it in the machine later that night, after a home-delivered lamb vindaloo and a half bottle of white burgundy. I’m feeling extremely nervous. After some white noise and some bars and tone, the scene opens abruptly. A real estate agent is showing a client around a clifftop pad overlooking the sea. The agent, who looks almost exactly like Al Bundy and keeps saying things like “definitely a lot of potential,” or “the view from here is really excellent,” leads her to a patio looking out over the ocean. Suddenly, for no reason whatsoever beyond the fact that she has just been cued by the director, the client lunges forward and begins to undo the real estate agent’s shirt. The real estate agent, looking slightly embarrassed, delivers a lame ad-lib—“Shouldn’t we get to know each other first?”—then lunges back. They kiss. Tongues are in evidence. Poppy lounge music starts as we now cut away to a close-up of a passing US Coast Guard patrol boat. For a moment I think I must have accidentally switched on the TV, but abruptly we cut back to the action. In a pretzel-like flexion, if not outright violation, of the rules of continuity, the real estate agent is now pantless and more or less erect. The client is on her knees, giving a solid if uninspired performance. Yes, Jim, it is an art form, but not as we know it. The words that spring to mind are “diligent” and “workmanlike.” Neither of them looks as if they’re enjoying it, exactly, but they don’t look as if they’re not enjoying it either. They’re concentrating, hard. The real estate agent groans once or twice, and says, “Yeah, oh, baby,” although he sounds distinctly self-conscious; his expression is inward-turned, he’s concentrating on maintaining his erection. Sex is the last thing on his mind.
The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life Page 13