Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  26th … Late evening, here in the caravan

  Well, in the end I decided I could take it no more and demanded a private meeting with Fr Connolly, who’s really getting on now and I know would rather not be bothered with things like this, but I just had to speak to someone.

  ‘What’s the use of saying one thing and then going back on it, Father?’ I asked him. ‘Then how is anybody to know where they stand?’

  We had a good long chat in his office and he asked me what exactly I had been doing. I gave him the whole lowdown. About being in the process of making a feature we could maybe sell to the studios with a view towards clinching a three-picture deal. Obviously I kept the detail to a minimum. I mean, I might be stupid, but at the end of the day the man is a padre so I wasn’t going to start on about life-size synthetic dolls or any of that business. ‘It’s essentially about rebirth,’ I told him, and he looked kind of sad when I said it. Like it was something he wouldn’t mind experiencing himself. Anyway, I said goodbye to him and he said he’d do what he could, fair play to him.

  Which wasn’t very much, apparently, for two hours later who comes bursting into my office (well, it’s not actually mine as such — I share it with Eddie the supervisor)? Only Mrs Carmody, with this fucking face on her like she’s about to have a stroke. Then she starts going on about money again. At first I was afraid I was going to blow my top, but fortunately not — good sense prevailed — and I permitted her to rabbit away. Then I said: ‘But at the beginning of the year I was informed that I was entitled to spend what I liked. That there was loads of money in the kitty for equipment. All of it coming from Europe. That’s what they told me, Mrs Carmody! They really did now, and you can confirm it with your colleagues if you wish!’

  That, she said, was the last straw, then glares at Eddie as she throws this bill on to the desk with the various bits and pieces that I’d ordered since I came meticulously compiled into a neat little list, with each place and date of purchase marked, as well as the model and brand name. I stared at it for a minute, then coughed politely. I suppose I was hoping to spot some small error on their part, the better to enable me to argue my case. But there was none that I could see. Whoever had written the list had done their job and done it well. I coughed again and scanned it carefully one last time. I could feel her scowling at me. I read:

  Item

  Pelco VS5104 4 by 1 sequential switcher — £50

  Magna Tech MD636-C mag film dubber w/long life, 1, 3, 4 track heads — £6,000

  Canon DV camcorders (3) — £4,290

  Olympus Digital still cameras (2) — £1,280

  Nikon ED 50-3,000 mm zoom lens — £1,000

  Asstd equipment (inc. Lowell and Century Strand kit) — £2,300

  ‘Are you aware that the total cost of these items is over fifteen thousand pounds?’ she said.

  ‘Is that how much they are?’ I replied. It was a stupid answer, I realize that.

  ‘Yes, it is, as you very well know, Mr Tallon!’ were her final words as she spun and stood in the doorway.

  I didn’t quite know what to say. I stared at her for a minute then looked away, regretfully. I was sorry that it had come to this. All I had wanted was to get along with everybody. With Carmody. The staff. Everyone. It was just a pity it hadn’t worked out that way. Eddie attacked me too, once she had left. He told me he was sending the great bulk of the equipment back. And that he had ‘no fucking intention’ of covering for me any more. ‘You fucking got that, Joey?’ he snapped. ‘Always too far! You always push it too far! But not with me! Never fucking again! Got that? You got that, Tallon, you fucking —?’

  ‘Charming.’ That was all I could think as he slammed the door. I lifted the list to look at it one last time before putting it away and starting work on my script, which, unlike certain relationships in Scotsfield Community College, was forging ahead with a life of its own.

  It was something that really did lift my heart! I just couldn’t wait to direct it, make it come alive! Take it to that final stage! See those characters live and breathe in whatever way the kids might choose to interpret them!

  And what fucking good kids they were! Already you could tell there were some fabulous actors amongst them. And actresses too, don’t forget now, Joey! If not world class, then definitely fucking close.

  It was all I could do while sitting in that office, tweaking this scene and that, not to fling down my pen and go running off to the video suite to grab the nearest camcorder and — fuck the begrudgers! — shout ‘Action!’ as loud as I could.

  The Return of Bonehead

  That afternoon, when I was coming in after lunch and talking to one of the kids who was asking me about Cassavetes, I let this great big yelp out of me when I saw a vision, a wee fat man so nimble on his feet but with not a screed of hair on his head, being led along the corridor by one of my students.

  ‘Bonehead!’ I called and pressed the shutter-release button on the Canon camera I happened to be carrying. Well, you want to see the face of him, putting the hand up to cover his face — ‘No, please! No, please!’, like he’s this big fucking celebrity! — as I framed him in the viewfinder, calling out: ‘Over here, Mr Stokes, if you please!’ and ‘Ladies and gentlemen! We present: “The Return of Bonehead”!’ Us all having the best of a laugh then until, predictably enough, one of the students goes: ‘Sssk! Sssk! Here she comes!’, and who’s there at the end of the corridor? Yes, Mrs Carmody, principal, immobile there with her hands on her hips as if to say: ‘So is this what you call creative arts as well? Is this what he calls creative arts?’

  Which made me decide it would be best to call a halt to that little episode and take Bonehead off down to the staffroom for tea. He was in his element being introduced to all the teachers, putting on this accent so they would think he was educated too.

  I never fail, even now, to laugh when he puts on that voice. ‘Yes indeed, I’ve studied quite a bit myself, akshilly!’ he says. It can be hard to hold it together once you hear him saying stuff like that, especially when the half-tinker inflections come peeping out, although you wouldn’t want to let him hear you saying that! He’d go fucking loopers!

  So then after school we went out for a drink and I’ve never heard him sound so good.

  ‘Well, fuck me pink!’ he says. ‘Boys but you’re the man, Joesup, so you are. I always knew you’d do it. You’ve landed on your feet now, all right! The head buck cat in a swanky college! You’re in charge of the whole shebang?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I’m in charge of it, Bone,’ I said. ‘I’m more of a facilitator, yeah?’

  ‘Do you hear him! A — what? You’re a long way from Mountjoy now, Tallon, you boy, you! You effing facilitator, you! How the hell are you doing, Joesup?’

  All I could say to him was that as far as I could see it wasn’t me but him who had come this long way he was talking about. ‘No sign of the sombrero this time anyway, Bone, eh?’ I said, as he laughed and said: ‘Aye! Do you remember that! Me and me frigging sombrero! Sure I only wore that for a laugh now, Joey, as you well fucking know!’

  After that we got well stuck in and he told me all the news. Turned out that he’d met someone else and got on with her like a house on fire. ‘She’s the making of me, man,’ he told me. ’I adore the ground she walks on. The last woman, she was good but … well, we had trouble like

  He turned away and I noticed it again — that flinching from your gaze I’d seen in Mountjoy — as he mumbled something indistinct. I hadn’t a clue what it was. It only dawned on me later that he’d been on about the children’s homes again. I went to the toilet then and when I came back he was fine. It was like nothing at all had happened.

  ‘But here, that’s enough about me! How the fuck are they hanging, me old friend Joesup?’

  He gets a grip of me then and stands a couple of feet away, appraising me sunnily. ‘Let me look at you!’ he says. ‘Well, whoever would have thought it? The Tallon boy! The fucking one-man army, becripes!’
>
  ‘Hey! Hey! Come on!’ I said, and hit him a punch. I didn’t want to hear that stuff, not even in jest. All I wanted to know now was the truth and for everybody else to know about it too. And very soon they would.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘sure thing, old friend. Have another whiskey! Man but it’s great to see you! You and Pajo Stokes was always the best of mates! Right through the bad times, right, Joesup, old pal? And always will be!’

  He told me he was living in London now, working at the fly-tipping, the only problem being that there were a lot of ‘tinkers’ in that line of work. But it paid good money so what did he care, he said. ‘They live their life and I live mine, Joesup,’ he told me. It really was terrific to see him sounding and looking so good. And the way he spoke of his new woman — well, it was shit you don’t hear often. ‘Love’ (or, more accurately, ‘lub’), he reflected, drifting away as he said it, ‘you hear them going on about it in the songs — Daniel O’Donnell and that — but you never really think it’ll happen to you. Did you ever think that way, Joesup?’

  ‘Love is like armour, Bone,’ I told him. ‘Once you’ve got it wrapped around you, you’re damned well indestructible!’

  ‘Now you’re talking, Joesup!’ he said. ‘That’s exactly the way I feel since meeting herself!’

  I gave him the soul-brother handclasp then left him at the bus, for he had to get back to Dublin to catch the plane for London in the morning. We stood in the square for a bit while the engine was still running. ‘One way or another you’ll keep in touch, OK? Sorry I mentioned that stuff before. That auld one-man army stuff! Sure it’s all auld shite! What do you and me care, Joesup? All we care about is that we’re mates! That’s all in the past now, Joey! All in the past, just like Mountjoy! The only good thing about that place was Recks! Am I right, eh, Joey?’

  ‘Right!’ I said and gripped his hand again.

  ‘You know what’s the best part?’ he said. ‘The nicest part of all? Getting to where we are now, Joey. The place that you never think you’ll get to at all. It’s like the end of the journey. And it makes it all worthwhile.’

  He paused and then said: ‘Congratulations, Joesup. You’ve done powerful for yourself. Mr Recks would be proud of you, so he would.’

  Tttht!

  Spontaneously, I embraced him. And remained there till the bus was gone. Then I went back up the town and dropped into Doc Oc’s to make a few notes (the time was drawing near — first day of principal photography, that is!) and have a nice glass of wine to end the day.

  It hadn’t been my intention to remain there very long but when I became aware of Austie staring across at me with this tense expression on his face, I began to get the distinct impression that it might not be a bad idea for me to consider perusing my notes elsewhere. He kept wiping the counter with the dishcloth in slow, methodical arcs, smiling in the direction of Hoss Watson — now, as I’d learnt, the proud director of Lake County Spring Water (‘the freshness of the nineties!’) and looking every inch of it in his tailored Armani suit, but still very much ‘one of the lads’ — who was standing over by the pool table, cleaning his nails with the point of a dart and craning his neck towards the back of the bar. It was then I saw Boyle Henry slowly turning to look at me with a smirk on his face — not so much ‘enigmatic’, it has to be said, very much more ‘contemptuous’.

  Which made me do what can only be considered a very stupid thing. I started gathering up my books and getting ready to leave, but at the same time trying to make it look casual. As though it were a spontaneous act and nothing at all to do with them. But on the way out I dropped some of the books, then carried on across the street as though I hadn’t even noticed. I could hear Sandy McGloin shouting: ‘Hey! Barbapapa! You forgot your books!’

  I was so dehydrated when I got back to the camp that I had to drink five glasses of water. ‘I’m fine now,’ I said to myself. But then I began to sweat. However, not to worry, I reassured myself as I lay down on the bed. It was a new doll but the same Mona. She was wearing her black wig with the centre parting and her long floaty dress. The wig looked a little lopsided, so I did my best to fix it, trying to steady my hands as I did so. I didn’t put any lipstick on her. On Mona. Except that it wasn’t Mona. It wasn’t Mona Galligan, was it? Never had been and never would be. But I laid my head on her breast anyway. I lay on her breast. No, I didn’t. It was between her legs I lay. Between her legs, way in under that skirt. And do you know what else I did? I sucked my thumb. I sucked my thumb and lisped: ‘Tttht!’

  And then it was like I’d never been in the pub or seen Boyle Henry at all, safe for ever with her in the cave of wishful dreams.

  Sandy Serious?

  I was still feeling a little bit off colour the next morning so I took the day off and went off out to the reservoir to do some work on my script. I had made myself a lovely little hideout there — a sort of quiet little cove all covered over with briars where you could work away to your heart’s content. So as soon as I arrived, I got stuck in and, after an hour or so of intensive labour, bingo!

  Which if you find yourself believing, then sorry to say you are a very credulous person, for actually bingo nothing, and even after another two hours all I had managed to write were endless pages of disorientated rubbish. Even the handwriting itself was hard to read — might as well have been Swahili or Arabic for all the sense it made.

  But when I reflected — I was on the verge of tears a couple of times and I know that must really sound stupid — I began to realize that it was only because I was still tense after the incident in the pub. Particularly because of the look Boyle Henry had given me. I tried not to think about it and after a while I gradually began to settle down and relax. I crossed my legs and performed some exercises, the way the author advises you to do in Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, another of my favourite books. It emphasizes that you should let whatever is bothering you come out and never ever try to impose your will, for it will inevitably affect the material. Now, as I felt them fading away — cares or anxieties or whatever you might want to call them — I had no intention of doing any such thing. All I was concerned about was sitting there and writing away to my heart’s content.

  With Gogol’s water flowing ever so gently and the birds chirping merrily beside me.

  After the success of that session — triumphant banishment of cares! -I tried my level best to make sure that every day, come rain, come shine, I always managed to get an hour or two out there after school. Preferably in the evening or what you often hear called the ‘gloaming’. I loved that word and sort of employed it as a mantra whenever I’d be doing the exercises. Which I happened to be in the middle of one day —

  ‘In the gloaming as the silver water -’ I was murmuring softly to myself, slowly closing my eyes as I did so.

  ‘Boo!’

  It was Sandy McGloin. ‘Boo!’ he cried again, lunging at me, ‘Boyle Henry’s looking for you!’

  I didn’t mean to cry out ‘Jesus!’ but it had slipped from my lips before I was able to do anything about it. That amused him.

  ‘I’m only joking you, Joey!’ he laughed then. ‘Sure he’s not looking for you at all!’

  He flipped open a packet of cigarettes and asked me did I want one. I said, no, I’d given up.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said as he dragged on a Major, ‘When I said just now that Boyle Henry was after you, did you believe me, Joey?’

  I said no. Actually what I said was: ‘No!’ and ‘I’m not sure!’

  Words you don’t want can sometimes leap out.

  ‘No,’ he went on, ‘he isn’t after you. What would he be after you for? Sure all that business with you and his woman Jacy, that’s all in the past now, Joey. Isn’t it?’

  I nodded. Vehemently. ‘That’s right. It’s all water under the bridge, Sandy. At least I hope so.’

  He cupped the cigarette in his hand and stared at it as he said: ‘If anyone ever brings it up, I’d hurt them.’

  Then he looke
d at me with a sad, appealing smile on his face.

  ‘I’m serious, Joey,’ he went on, as he pulled on the cigarette, ‘because we have a duty to forget all these bad things that happened. It does no one any good to dwell on their past. You kidnap someone, terrify them, whatever. You do your time, and that’s it. You’ve paid your debt. End of story.’

  He smiled and went off about his business. As he was going past the sycamore, he turned on his heel and called back: ‘Be seeing you then, Joey. Like the waistcoat, by the way!’

  Unconsciously, then, after he’d said that, I found myself tugging at it with a kind of uncertain defiance. It was a paisley-patterned waistcoat, kind of similar to the one that Johnston used to wear but without the tortoiseshell buttons. All of a sudden I laughed when I became aware of the umbrage I’d taken. Realizing he had probably meant nothing at all. Just his peculiar idea of a joke — making oblique comments about people’s dress. But of course, when you thought about it, that wasn’t so unusual. People of Sandy’s generation, they passed remarks on everything. The kids now, they were much different. A lot of them had actually admired the waistcoat, in fact. As far as they were concerned, you could wear whatever the fuck you liked. You’d see them coming and going in their black polo necks with their zippered brief cases all set to get started on their scripts for the day and they really just did not give a toss. The likes of Sandy and his generation, given half a chance they’d spend the next twenty years talking about a pair of trousers if they thought they’d get away with it, never mind a paisley-patterned vest, as the Americans call it.

  I decided to forget all about it and, chewing on my pencil, began to work anew. I laid my hand on my brow. The sweat had almost completely gone. I felt triumphant. I looked at the tops of the trees and it was as though in one bound I could have cleared them!