Eleven
I stand naked in front of mirrors now and then.
Other old men must do this. But how do you bring it up to check, and would they admit it?
It would be more noble to claim it as an existential reflex. To remind myself that I still exist. That I am not yet a ghost. In truth, I’m wallowing, in the comparison of the doddering now to every then.
Somewhere in this pale wattled throat is the spectre of a once-elegant neck. You have an elegant neck, someone once told me, whom matters not. It could even have been myself, staring in a mirror at some other time, comparing my body of then to another, even more youthful one, a person now so improbably distant he was likely someone else entirely.
We are so many people in a life, and now a new addition.
The Shinigami.
After the last email I read, I asked Akira to track down the rest of them. Maybe there is some kind of threat here. I should be pleased. I have met people so ego-haunted they would feel insulted not to have a maniac come-a-stalking. Why not me? I have inspired feelings of repulsion in direct proportion to the savagery of my asset-stripping and made films so reactionary and so right-on that gun-toting apocalyptas and smoked-out hippies must be equally infuriated.
I should stand my stalker beside me as I look in the mirror, take him through all these reflections on reflections. I will tell him it is only recently I have been defined by these spindly legs and pigeon chest, bones all sticking out as if my skeleton is determined to get a head start on death.
At least there is something authoritative about crumbling, late-period JJ, it being the sum total of my physical evolution. Emotionally, I remain feeble. I was once a voracious reader of my own press, gratified by generosity and overly aggrieved by every hatchet job. These days I assume that everyone I meet is a Nazi – not your fascist-lite Colonel Blimps but full-throttle, wet-lipped Gestapo-types. This way I will always be pleasantly surprised, at least sometimes.
I pad across to the panoramic window. The snow is lightly falling once more, the room, perhaps the whole world, unnervingly silent. I press my body against the surprisingly warm glass and stare beyond the slowly whitening grounds to the cliff-edge, the sluggish sea beyond. Movement draws my eyes to a figure below me. Someone in a bulky red jacket. He strides towards the sea with such purpose I expect him to start running, to leap, legs cycling, over the cliff . . .
I want him to look up, to see the naked old man pressed against the glass like a figure out of Bosch.
It would hardly be fair.
I peel myself from the window and go back to the bathroom to pull on a white dressing gown so all-consuming it might have been designed for a polar bear. Maybe it once was a polar bear.
Then a knocking at the main door. Erin. She tries to appear indignant but only succeeds in looking as if she’s smelled a particularly bad fart. She’s come to escort me to breakfast with her and Frank Stone. Over her shoulder Akira appears around the corner of the corridor. He sees us and immediately stops. He has a black folder in his hand. ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll come down.’
‘I’ll wait.’
She pushes quickly past me before I have a chance to answer. I look at Akira who turns and walks away.
‘I’m not going to disappear,’ I say, as I follow her through to the lounge.
She stops at the big window, hands on hips. ‘I’m not saying you will.’
I salute as I turn away.
‘You do know I can see your reflection,’ she says.
As I dress, I can hear Erin on her mobile phone, staccato sentences like verbal hieroglyphics. She frowns when she sees I am carrying the portfolio bag containing the storyboard. We head down to The Ghillie’s Bar. Only once, between calls as the discreet wooden door to the private bar is opened for us, does she address me. A quick compliment on my charcoal-grey Armani suit.
As soon as I step into the bar, Lewis appears. He is becoming more comfortable in my presence, the face salmon-pink as opposed to puce. I ask for coffee and wander across to the window.
The snow still falls. I realise that the figure in the red jacket trudging back and fore across the white wilderness is Frank Stone. He’s holding a sheaf of papers in his left hand and seems to be talking to himself, his right hand flailing. Now and then he stops and scribbles something.
‘His way of working, apparently.’
I almost drop my coffee. ‘Christ’s sake, Erin. How long have you been standing there?’
‘I read it in an interview. The flow only comes when I’m moving, something like that. Seems to work for him.’
‘The flow being the script.’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘You told me you were using mine.’
Erin lets her eyes meet mine and keeps them there. ‘A few little tweaks, Uncle Jay, you have to expect that.’
As I must expect Stone. He opens the door with a shaking of snow from his all-consuming puffer jacket. If he fell over he’d struggle to get up. Stone knows how to make a better entrance than that.
‘Whoo-hoo,’ he shouts. ‘Cold as a witch’s titties but it sure gets the creative juices flowing. Mr Jay!’
Mr Jay.
A greeting to convey both respect and familiarity. He has decided he knows me. Yet his expression conveys genuine delight. That California insistence, I’ve forgotten how tedious it is. He grins as he rushes over and grins some more as he crouches in front of the fire and warms his hands.
I glance at the bar with forlorn hope. Today, I have promised myself to wait until eleven, maybe ten.
‘I have to say—’ his expression changes utterly in that pause from aw shucks vacuity to papal seriousness ‘—that your script is just wonderful.’
‘Which bits have you binned?’
He’s startled, momentarily. Then breaks out a smile and wags a finger. ‘It’s that Scottish directness, isn’t it?’
‘Which bits? You were out there a while with the red pen.’
‘I was. Reading. Admiring. Just making a coupla . . . snips.’
‘The flow only comes when you’re moving, eh?’
‘Yes.’ His face clouds. ‘That’s right.’
Because whatever you do, don’t mess with the mantra. ‘My best bits come to me when I’m having a crap.’
Again, he seems momentarily startled then starts laughing. Once more that cartoon yuk-yuk-yuk. ‘You’re something else, Mr Jay, something else. Isn’t he, Erin?’
My niece’s wariness becomes weariness. ‘And just what that something is,’ she says, ‘who knows?’
‘Oh! I just remembered,’ says Stone. ‘Have you seen this?’ He waves his hand in the air and before it’s by his side again an immaculate, red-headed PA has materialised with a tablet computer. ‘The Hollywood Reporter has voted A Man’s a Man number sixteen on the greatest films of all time. And your book! Number eight in the UK charts. A star is born all over again!’
‘It’s like fashion,’ says Erin. ‘Flares and big collars. Hang around long enough and back round they come.’
I smile at her. Frank smiles at both of us. Then Erin too breaks out a frosty one and now we’re all smiling.
‘Free publicity for The Bruce. I’ll take it! And don’t you have some big days ahead.’ Stone’s tone has shifted. Maybe this is how he speaks to all his friends. An odd wheedling that emphasises random words, as if speaking to an idiot. ‘The book signing and the awards ceremony. Your recognition.’
‘Here today, gong tomorrow,’ I say.
Stone slaps his thigh, laughs and then looks suddenly wistful. ‘You remind me of my father, you know.’
‘No, I remind you of old people. Here’s something else for you to admire.’ He grabs the portfolio bag that I thrust at him. ‘My storyboard.’
As I walk away I hear the bag being unzipped then Stone shouting after. ‘This is something else, something else, Mr Jay.’ Something else to ignore.
There was no need for that breakfast. No need for me to be there at all. Just lip service being paid
to my role.
Executive producer. A grand title for an empty role.
My value is to the marketing rather than the creative process. Yet PR must also have a storyline and the essence of mine is nostalgia, the forgotten star making his final film. Get the oldies to the box office, the curious who have sometimes wondered what happened to him? My continued presence in this hotel is proof of my acceptance of the role. As the stylish stencilling of the mirror now hanging on the wall of my suite so eloquently shows, Nostalgia is ever-attractive to me.
Treacherous too, today’s jewel tomorrow’s landmine. We remember, we remember but do we really?
I open the folder Akira has left and read the ten or so emails to The Shinigami. When I finish there is zero chance of making 11am without a drink. I take a bottle from the cabinet and settle back in the low chair by the window. I re-read the emails and the various extracts about Shinigami that Akira has also printed out from online dictionaries of religion and mythology.
I discover I am a reaper, essentially, a parasitic being who extends his own life through the deaths of others.
See me hover . . .
There, in the snow beyond the window. Not as many fangs as in that black-and-white illustration. More gummy; a decrepit, soup-sooking Shinigami. I search the whiteness for hinoki greens, trancing images coming almost too quickly, flooding across me with a deep sense of yearning.
Beyond the glass, I picture Shuzenji, the room called Yamabuki. There is a low, black lacquered table and tatami floors, shōji screens left and right and sliding doors to the outside deck directly ahead. It is dusk. Anna and I sit side by side, a granite bowl between us filled with floating tea-light candles. I feel such an exquisite sadness. To hold her hand would do nothing to close the distance that has grown little by little each day we have been here, the perfect location, it seems, for her to study what she so rarely speaks of. She is looking across the pond to the Shinto temple on the tiny island where she spends so much time. I will find out why, eventually.
I top up my glass. Again, I wonder about this stranger sending the emails, who knows so much.
* * *
Tonight the book signing, a couple of days from now the civic ceremony. ’Tis the greasy spoon to The Ritz. The Buckfast to the Burgundy. The bacon roll to the . . . You get the message, Duke. A populist slumming of it.
The worthies whose bums will benumb in the Town Hall seats will not queue for me this evening, my Testament in their greedy hands. Too busy at home, half-naked with hanging bellies, searching closets for suits and frocks that they desperately hope still fit, accessories to set it off just so.
You loved all this.
I see your jitteriness as we wait at St Stephen’s Garden for the car to take us to Leicester Square. Antsy, an ever-filling glass. Not that you were nervous. Not you, Dukey boy, your edginess simply impatience for the flashbulbs and the shouts as you glided your way up the red carpet, beautiful Anna at your side who you haven’t complimented, who you have barely noticed . . .
I knot my tie in the window. I should be able to see Erin in the reflection yet my vision is filled with you, Duke. Her voice is close, almost directly behind, shifting in and out of my awareness. ‘A sell-out . . . a hundred and fifty . . . they’ve cleared a whole floor for you . . . ’ You were born to all of this, Duke, a facsimile of the old man’s ambition. ‘It’s heart-warming . . . all that affection . . . ’
Yet don’t be jealous. I will not wink as I raise my glass. It would be crass in the extreme to offer even the tiniest reminder that this could have been your night, your book waiting to be signed by all those people, who will whisper, ‘He’s looking old . . . I never knew he was so small . . . ’
‘Jay. Jay!’
I turn from the window, Duke’s face instantly replaced by Erin’s. And Frank Stone, somehow materialised. Akira is still on the chair beside the bed. He gives a reassuring, near-imperceptible nod.
‘Frank’s come to say good luck,’ says Erin.
Stone, perplexingly, is dressed head to toe in tweed. The Scottish laird as delivered by central casting.
‘You’re not coming then.’
The laird steps forward. Looks serious. ‘This is your night. I don’t want to, you know . . . steal your thunder.’
‘Very kind.’
‘It’s your night.’
‘But you’re coming to the civic ceremony, my award.’
‘Of course!’
I wait in vain for the explanation as to why thunder is more likely to be stolen at a bookshop than a town hall. Instead, he shakes my hand and then – as if he’s decided to go for it – gives me a hug.
‘Five minutes. I’ll come and get you,’ says Erin. ‘Go easy on that.’ She points at my glass and follows Stone.
I pour another. I sit down at the coffee table and open Akira’s folder. I re-read my stalker’s email about Simon Warner, the hints of what he revealed before he died. Simon was ages with me, the son of our neighbour, Old Donny. A funny-looking kid, the nickname Simple Simon was inevitable. I can’t picture Simon, but remember his cottage a few hundred yards along the road, as neat as ours was scruffy. Simon had a thing for birdwatching. Always out with the binoculars.
I didn’t see him that day. Yet he was there, Duke. The email says there was a sea eagle above our cottage and Simple Simon was watching it from the top field. That’s when he saw you go into the byre.
Then me.
Immediately after. That’s what always troubled Simon, apparently. I had no idea that I’d been seen.
‘Don’t worry, Johnny.’ Akira puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘He is just a crazy person. He probably doesn’t even know himself what he’s talking about.’
I reach my hand up and put it on top of Akira’s. The other brings the glass to my lips. Then, as I look out the window, beyond the reflections, some words I have read echo with those I have recently heard. I shuffle back through the sheaf of emails until I find what I’m looking for.
I’m making a documentary. Lewis said exactly the same words to me in The Ghillie’s Bar.
Now, Duke, I may have been gone from Inveran for a long, long time, but I’m fairly certain the town hasn’t become a hotbed of cinéma vérité in my absence. Even I can join the dots on this one.
* * *
Unseasonal or otherwise, around here the snow never hangs around for long. It was a source of such disappointment for young JJ, waking expectantly to find that yesterday’s fall had all but disappeared. Here on the coast it’s never cold enough or hot enough, but perfect for the rain that so swiftly returns white winter or summer blue to the usual dejection of grey. It is one of the reasons I have lived so long in Japan, that land of defined and guaranteed seasons.
Again, I am sitting up front.
Akira taps his finger on the steering wheel and keeps a distance from the security car in front. Gentle Akira, who has always helped me keep my own distance. He is smiling, enjoying the music. Thelonious Monk is the consummate soundtrack to the drive. Dissonance of piano in black.
When I close my eyes I still see the headlights, sweeping the verge, shrunken snow patches in rain.
‘Almost here, Johnny.’
I open my eyes, the windscreen a TV with the channel suddenly switched. Dark countryside has become orange streetlights on wet pavements. We move slowly past a line of people, the multicolour of umbrellas. Only when Akira says, ‘They’re here for you, Johnny,’ do I realise they are queuing for the signing, waiting patiently in the rain for the bookshop doors to open.
‘Erin won’t be happy.’ I smile at a young woman in a red bobble hat, peering and waving enthusiastically as we pass. ‘Too many people. Too many threats. Eeeny meeny miney mo, how is JJ going to go?’
Akira shakes his head. Takes a hand from the steering wheel and waves a finger. ‘You should not be so faeces.’
‘Faeces?’
‘That is the word, yes?’
Now I understand. I start to laugh as the car comes to halt out
side the shop. ‘Facetious, Akira, facetious.’
Strangely, when they see me laughing, a few people standing beside the car also start to do so. I have a flash of the old man’s funeral. Hundreds lining the streets. They could be the same people; sombre then, laughing now but still gawking, mobile phones bearing modern witness. I get out and shake a few outstretched hands as security hurries me gently but insistently inside.
I wonder with expectation rather than anxiety if Lewis will be in tonight’s audience. I didn’t see him as we left the hotel and have no idea what I might have said if I had. How would the crowd react, Duke, if they knew what he does? Would their let-down linger, like the sad rain, or would they shrug it off, for although we admire so deeply, we need the certainty of disappointment?
Tonight’s MC is Lachlan Anderson; I am supposed to know who he is. He is tall and bald, with a whiff of repressed entitlement. He says, ‘Call me Lachie,’ pumps my hand as if drawing water and invites me to sit on a low stage behind which is a pyramid display of my biography. I resist the temptation to pull one out from the bottom. Lachie offers me water and I ask for red wine, nodding at the drinks on the other side of the rows of chairs. He nods at an assistant who scurries away.
‘I see you have a lackey, Lachie.’
He laughs but the eyes don’t. He informs me he is the presenter of an arts programme called Late Shift.
‘I don’t watch TV.’
The nonchalance wavers a little. His gaze shifts to Erin, who has materialised at the table. She gives him his orders while I sip my wine and watch the chairs fill up with smiling strangers.
I have chosen two excerpts. My first recalls when I heard A Man’s a Man had been nominated for an Oscar; the other is about a Mulholland party, when I found Dennis Hopper asleep beside the pool the next morning, naked, with his feet in the water. Beside him was a bread knife, a hacked-up watermelon and a pile of raw meat. Between readings, I take pre-arranged questions from Lachie about inspiration, how it feels to make a new film, who was my favourite actor to work with . . . Then the floor is opened up to other questions about inspiration, how it feels to make a new film . . .
The Accidental Recluse Page 15