‘Bravo, bravo,’ I shout, Peterson now looking at me with panic as I start to applaud and rise in my seat, feeling a hand on my shoulder. Gentle Akira. I pat his hand too, in acknowledgement.
Erin’s gaze is blank. She has spent so long on the full range of reactions to me that she cannot be bothered offer any. She turns away. One by one the domino faces say they have nothing to say.
* * *
Music fills the stateroom. Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder was inspired by Othello, Duke. Did you know this? Did our father? It seems unlikely, sat there in the midnight kitchen with the bottle half gone.
Ahl shake a spear. Right up yer erse!
Never a funny or a maudlin drunk. Just dangerous, moods like a roulette wheel. I see him as me, shirt unbuttoned, sitting on the edge of the double bed that fills most of the width of the plane. He’s as perplexed as I am too, scratching an armpit and wondering how it ever came to this.
The door to the main cabin slides open. Erin steps inside. I have a brief view of Peterson’s bald head above the headrest, improbably red and shiny, like an over-polished cricket ball.
‘Can I turn the music down?’
Before I answer she has picked up the remote control and sat down at the small mahogany table on the port side. She is holding a hardback book which she places face-down on her lap.
‘We need to run through the itinerary.’
I look at her blankly.
‘For the award thingy and the interviews. The council is presenting you with the Freedom of Inveran.’
‘I already have it.’
‘What?’
‘The Freedom of Inveran.’
‘You do?’
‘Surely do.’
‘Looks like you’re getting it again. Maybe it lapses after a few years. Freedom. It’s always conditional.’
‘Isn’t that the truth.’
‘You’ve got a book signing in the town as well. Once we’re done it’s on to Edinburgh and London.’
‘BBC interview?’
‘BBC interview.’
‘Monkey?’
‘No monkey.’ She offers a thin, papery smile and looks at the scatter of storyboard illustrations on the bed.
‘You’re working hard.’
I look at the picture in my lap. ‘Can’t seem to get this one right.’ Robert the Bruce is sitting in a crowded tavern. An imbalance in the frame that I can’t pinpoint. Too many people? I just don’t know.
‘Quite the labour of love. All this.’
‘You mean, why am I bothering with this when someone else is making the film?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
I pour another drink as she watches me. She has the patience of the desert but I have no idea what she’s waiting for. I remember a sombre little girl, handing me her latest drawing of ponies, waiting for my reaction that will only disappoint her. I feel a familiar sense of failure which I bat straight back in the forlorn hope of trading my guilt for hers. ‘Maybe there’s something he might like.’
‘Stone?’
‘He’s still the director, isn’t he? Unless you’ve changed your mind.’ I smile. ‘Happy to step in, you know.’ In truth, the thought of making another film fills me with something close to panic.
She nods, almost imperceptibly, her gaze moving back to the pictures. ‘What about Inveran?’ she says.
‘What about it?’
‘Are you not looking forward to going back? Going home. It’s been so long.’ Her voice is gentle, nostalgic for somewhere she knows so little about. ‘I got this for you.’ She hands me the book.
A Hundred Years of Inveran.
I flick through old black-and-whites. The railway station, Shore Street and the spire of the United Free Church, the promenade and children on bikes, George Street with dark-clothed men and women in hats, frozen in their stroll past signs saying druggist, bootmaker, Kodak supplies.
I drain my drink, the hum of the jet like the persistence of memory. Look there, Duke, it could be me and you on Bowen Street, stopped outside The Ritz and looking up at the big block letters of the films.
‘Check this out,’ says Erin, reaching across and flicking to the back of the book. ‘Do you recognise it?’
It is a cottage in medium-shot beside a single track. Machair falls away from the road, down to a pebbly shore and the sea. On the gable end is a blue plaque, a smaller image of it in close-up.
The Breda Boys. Entertainers and film-makers, lived here from 1935–1957.
‘Did you know about that?’
‘No. I didn’t.’ I search for an emotion that won’t come, as if my presence in this deeply personal place has become conditional on something I am again not quite ready to admit or to face up to.
I flick through the photos some more. Town shots, mainly: pipe bands in the square; HMS Cumberland lit up in July 1919 to celebrate the end of the war; the sweeping horseshoe bay from the air.
Then a waterfall.
My flinch is automatic. A coldness rushes over me like the water pouring into those black pools. The Craigie Falls, that day with Anna we know so well, Duke. The cold is now becoming a rising heat in my cheeks. I remember what I said and the reply I didn’t catch, the thundering waterfall turning her words into the first of the dozens of versions I told myself across the years.
‘Keep it. The book. It’s for you.’
I run my finger across the photo. It the first time I have thought of the falls in a very long time. I see the falling water and feel the wet spray. Now the slow turn of Anna’s head, my own filling with sound, a disorientating fizz that slowly rises to a deafening peak then suddenly stops.
I look up from the book and realise I am grimacing. Erin looks at me carefully then opens the stateroom door.
‘Oh. One other thing. Do you know what a Shinigami is?’
‘A Shinigami?’
‘I think that’s how you say it, yes.’
‘Can’t say I do.’
‘It’s a Japanese god. Shinto, to be precise. A god of death. We had to look it up. That’s what he’s been calling you.’
‘Who?’
‘No idea. We’ve been getting some emails, off and on for a few weeks. No name, of course.’
‘The god of death? Decent gig, I suppose. Never likely I would get wisdom, or love.’
‘I’m surprised he isn’t typing in purple font. You’ve never seemed so interesting.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘Believe me, that is not time well spent.’
‘What about you?’
She frowns slightly. ‘Did I never tell you about the onion?’
‘The onion?’
‘I was once sent an onion with pins it. There was a note saying it was a voodoo spell to make me go blind. A punishment for all the evil that Breda Inc. has done. Ever since then I get a weekly review from the cyberbods. There’s some strange people out there, Jay. It’s completely fascinating.’
‘Sure you don’t fancy another hobby. Stamp collecting?’
‘There’s rumours about protests too. The security context is ever-evolving. We keep an eye out.’
Her own eyes have narrowed like a lizard’s. A monitor lizard.
I look back down at the Falls as she slides the door shut. I am left with a startling quiet, just the hum of the jet engines and the erratic thumping of my heart. Shinigami, I say. The word hangs oddly in space. I turn Ellington louder and louder until I can’t hear it. Or you, Duke, you and Anna.
Shinigami? Don’t make me laugh. If I truly am a God of Death then why can’t I instruct my memories to kill themselves? I should email this lunatic straight back. Tell him to have a re-think on his mania.
Six
Ivor Cutler, in a dry, mock-offended aside once said, ‘If you think I’m a liar, I’m not.’ Neither, I assure you, am I.
So here it is.
Duke, my father and I sit on a train. First class, Inveran to Edinburgh Waverley, changing at Glasgow.
At our feet
sits a monkey. Inevitably, we have decided to call him Charlie. Charlie the Chimp. He’s being held on a leash by a sad-eyed Russian called Leonid Baltacha, whose fearsome baldness lends him an uncanny resemblance to Yul Brynner. Both stare out at the magnificent landscapes, while now and then curious faces appear at the carriage door to gawk at the chimp.
Leo appeared the day after our call to Edinburgh Zoo requesting assistance with a shipwrecked primate. He once trained monkeys for the Moscow State Circus but defected during their first UK tour. In thanks for this propaganda coup the Home Office found him furry new comrades at the zoo.
The Russian went immediately to the byre and closed the door behind him. When he emerged an hour later he was holding the monkey by the hand. We were told three things – by Leo, not Charlie. First, Charlie was a male chimpanzee. ‘Genus pan troglodytes. Like Cheeta, Tarzan’s chimp,’ he added, in response to our blank stares. Second, the chimp likely came from West Africa, probably the Congo. Third, Charlie was tame, very biddable and had ‘professional ambitions’.
As we looked at each other, Leo’s sad face exploded in laughter. ‘A joke, gentlemen, a joke.’
From Waverley, we took two Hackneys to the Victoria Hotel. Here was where the old man decided the Breda Boys now belonged. Charlie, Leo and I waited in the lobby while the old man and Duke went over to the reception. The cane swung 180 and the silver whippet rapped the desk. For my father, the manager offered a one-look assessment. For the monkey, a double take.
Yet having money, in some places, does not mean instant recognition of it. Such was the case at the Victoria Hotel, ground zero for the Scottish-holidaying Mayfair and Klosters set. It took my father’s raucous, ten-minute insistence on the equal value of his poppy to get us rooms.
Charlie, undoubtedly, would have preferred the hotel to the zoo. Yet that was his home for the night. Half a dozen chimps squatted in the rain like forlorn convicts on Death Row. They stared at Charlie sadly, one of them manically chittering what must have been a warning to flee.
There in the rain, watching a bald Russian stroke the head of shipwrecked chimp, a dozen other simian eyes peering at me, I realised how insane the idea of adopting a monkey actually was.
‘We used to have dogs, Leo. Half-daft collies with black eyes. I never trusted them. I don’t much like animals.’
‘Ah, but a monkey is more like a person.’
‘I’ve never been too good with people either.’
‘Yes, I hear you, my friend. Most of the time it is indeed easier to like a monkey.’
‘And Charlie likes you.’
‘Yes.’
‘So do you understand what I’m saying?’
Across one long moment, Leo looked confused, then dubious and finally hopeful. A smile slowly creaked into place. He was happy. He couldn’t have been happier if I’d tossed him a banana.
A Pathé newsreel team arrived the next morning. Leo brought a grateful Charlie back from the death cell and they filmed us wandering around Edinburgh. In the Royal Mile, the old man slipped into his best Oliver Hardy, turning to waggle his tie at the camera as Charlie lobbed an apple and knocked off his fedora. The crowd swelled, the sun shone and Duke doffed his brand-new trilby: autographs for all the pretty girls and a peck on the cheek for the old women.
‘The hero of the Breda proving a big hit with the ladies too,’ the overly cheery voiceover would say.
The media blitz didn’t end there. The old man was relentless. The Daily Mail eventually offered the interview deal he’d been looking for. They offered to send a journalist but the old man said we’d head south, paid for by the Mail, of course. There were TV possibilities in the offing he needed to follow up. Andy Stewart’s manager had given him a contact for The Good Old Days.
Duke and the old man headed south while Charlie and I returned to Inveran. Leo came too, a week’s holiday where he would look after Charlie on a trial basis before deciding if he wanted to join us.
Then as later, making films, Leo and I just clicked. He was sombre yet sharp, an old man in waiting whom I instantly liked.
I had an old magazine I’d been holding on to. A feature on Houdini with a diagram of one of his contraptions. For Charlie the Chimp’s debut we simply ripped it off.
That’s showbiz.
Duke and the old man got back a week later, purring about London. ‘You hear that,’ my father said, pulling the door back and fore. ‘That is the sound of doors opening.’ Leo and I took them out to the byre for the gala performance of Monkey No See. We had an instant hit and the old man knew it. All he managed was a nod of the head. I think this was the first time I’d been able to follow through on an idea without it being instantly dismissed or represented as his. He didn’t like it.
So began the Breda Boys era. Leo signed on and Johnny Walker led the celebrations. When I couldn’t take any more of the endless toasts, an increasingly morose Leo was proposing I headed into Inveran, to the Ritz and some western double bill. There was no escape there either.
As I walked in I saw myself on-screen in the pre-movie, Pathé newsreel. My guts twisted as I listened to the jaunty voiceover, my sour face in huge size. No wonder the old man changed the Breda story. Who’d have listened to Hercules if he had a face like a burst settee?
Yet the camera loved Duke. I was watching a film star being born. At one point I looked at him with such furious disgust that I almost expected myself to attack him. I had to leave the cinema.
I felt even worse when I passed the door of Miller’s Café and Anna Chambers suddenly appeared.
‘JJ. Where’s the monkey?’
‘Chimp. It’s a chimpanzee.’
‘Called Charlie?’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Well, it’s a chimp, JJ. What else were you going to call it?’
‘Well, I—’
‘I’m only teasing.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘That was quite the event at the Town Hall.’
‘It’s quite the story.’
‘Certainly is. You boys are heroes. What is it they say, you’ll never buy a drink in this town again.’
‘It’s what my father wanted all along.’
She smiled. Then looked at me a bit more closely. ‘Can I ask you a favour?’
Standing there on the edge of the streetlamp light, her eyes gleaming and her hand again squeezing my arm, I’d have done anything she asked. Instead, I said, ‘Depends.’ I didn’t sound casual, my mouth so dry that my voice made a strange squeak – it sounded more like deep-end.
‘Duke. Can you ask him to call me?’
‘Call you?’ No squeak this time, instead my words sounded more like air being let out of a tyre.
‘At the newspaper. I want to do a follow-up interview with him. I want to call it The Man Behind the Smile.’
I smiled weakly. ‘Sure you don’t want to do a piece on me instead? The Man Behind the Frown.’
‘Can you talk to him?’ She was looking at me very earnestly. And now holding my hand.
The next time I’d touch that hand was when I shook it on her wedding day, a few minutes after I’d handed Duke the ring.
Three weeks later The Man Behind the Smile was syndicated. ‘A poignant look at a vulnerable man,’ a TV host would say to me gravely, years later. ‘You must miss him so much.’
‘You have no idea,’ I replied.
* * *
28th June 1956. I’m Laffin, You’re Laffin at The Glasgow Empire. Rita Cardle and the Gibson Sisters, on up to Harry Gordon. Then The Breda Boys, second on the bill with Jimmy Logan at the top.
Backstage, we were terrified.
Two thousand seats. Two thousand Glaswegians whose default setting was unimpressed.
Never mind the English Comics Graveyard, this was ground zero of all Variety. We’d never played Glasgow, never mind The Empire. It was the Breda fame which landed us a contract with Moss Empires theatres. They were keen to cash in and this was the first night of a UK tour. We were just wannabes. I could feel it backs
tage, everyone waiting for us to die on our arse.
‘Sure boys,’ said Jimmy. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ He mimed a noose around his neck, pulling it upwards.
Then we were on. We went through The Big Sheep and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.
Afterwards, Duke and I met stage front.
‘So that’s it then, JJ.’
‘Sure is, Duke, sure is.’
‘Sad, innit.
‘Innit just.’
‘Shame we don’t have a big finale.’
‘Everyone loves the big finale.’
‘They surely do.’
‘You know what, Duke.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve got this . . . thing.’
‘Have you been to the doctor about it?’
‘No, I mean—’
‘They’ve got ointment for things like that.’
‘I mean a monkey.’
‘JJ, I’ve told you this before. People go to the doctor, animals go to the vet. Did you get mixed up again?’
‘I can make it disappear.’
‘Using the ointment?’
During this patter, the contraption Leo and I had built in Inveran was lowered from the back of the stage, a ten-foot-high, red-painted wooden frame with stanchions allowing it to stand freely. A sign hung at an angle from the top, stencilled with the words Breda Boys Magic Inc.
At the same time, Charlie joined us, led by the obligatory bombshell in a swimsuit. I led him behind the framework and went back to Duke. We stared at the girl as she sashayed off stage.
‘That’s what you call misdirection.’ I said.
‘I thought she was Ms McGurk?’
‘Boom, boom,’ I said and a noise like a gunshot went off at the same time to gasps from the audience.
The Accidental Recluse Page 7