Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  The Oprah Winfrey Show

  What I have to admit is that — regardless of whatever emotional crises or problems I might have had — and I do not intend to condone them or attempt to justify myself in any way — of late the outbursts have been particularly horrendous, with ‘you fucking ignoramus’ being the least of the abuse Bonehead’s had to endure. Which is dreadful when you think of the way things were at the beginning when the two of us first moved in.

  When I’d begun to believe that what I’d been longing for might now actually be possible. Even the nameplate on the gate — ‘Dunroamin’ -making me chuckle when I saw it. Can you believe it? I thought as I shook my head — Bone was paying the taxi — Joey Tallon’s found his fucking home at last!

  Of course, the trouble usually starts when there’s alcohol on the job, or, in Bonehead’s case, whiskey, which drives him absolutely crazy. Once he starts he’s impossible to shut up.

  The Oprah Winfrey Show was the best of the lot — a reprise of his turn all those years ago in Mountjoy, of course. When I looked up from my drink that night — I was absolutely plastered by now — what the fuck did I see there in all its glory? Only this headcase with a ‘pencil mike’, i.e. a biro into which you talk, with his face blacked up as he bawls: ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Youse is all very welcome to the Oprah Show! Today we are very privilegeded [that was exactly how he said it!] to have as our guest one of Scotsfield’s finest writers and fillum-makers! Well, excuse me, what am I talking about? Why, one of Ireland’s finest writers and film-makers! Yes, one of its best artists who only last year saw his first novel published and now is working on number two!’

  Which he shouldn’t have bothered saying for it only got me riled up again and I feared I was going to get bitter as my fingers tightened around the glass and I heard myself saying: ‘Don’t start that shit now, Bone!’

  But, thank God, it passed.

  For I know how hard it was for him to understand my having been offered a shitload of money to write another book and not being able to come up with it. The truth being that I don’t know how I managed to write the first one. I’d been more than prepared for the world to wipe its arse with my efforts!

  And, after all the negative convictions, to end up lionized by London publishers, asked for my opinion on this, that and the other. Hailed as ‘fresh and original’, not to mention as ‘Mr Triumph of the fucking vernacular’!

  Although the London Review of Books, obviously, didn’t bother to include the word ‘fucking’.

  As if that weren’t surprise enough, to arrive then at a literary dinner and be seated beside my old mentor, Johnston Farrell, now a celebrity beyond his wildest dreams on account of the runaway success of his ‘gripping, suspenseful thriller, The Cyclops Enigma, set in a dark and troubled landscape in the Ireland of the nineteen seventies’.

  A subject, as I am sure you have guessed, I happened to take more than a passing interest in.

  Although I didn’t mean for the whole thing to become so heavy, with me needling him constantly throughout the meal and glowering till long after it was over like the worst kind of soak imaginable. But it had been building in me all evening and what made it worse was that you could see that Johnston had started believing all their guff, everything they’d been saying about him and the book. Which was really embarrassing considering, if you’re honest, that The Cyclops Enigma, while OK as a thriller, was a crock of cack-handed old bollocks — if you’re talking about telling ‘the story’, that is. The proper fucking story, I mean. The only one worth telling.

  ‘You’ll never know because you don’t fucking feel! If you felt you’d have fucking told me!’ I slobbered sourly. ‘You’d at least have bothered to discuss the fucking thing! Let me know what you intended to use!’

  There was plenty from my diary that he’d gone and rewritten, but in the stupidest of hammiest prose, more than adequately complemented by the lurid ‘Gothic shocker’ jacket, complete with Kalashnikov-wielding hooded psychopath crouching against a backdrop of mountains.

  ‘You know what you’re like, Farrell?’ I remember snarling. ‘You’re a soap-powder salesman, that’s all you are! And you’ll never be anything else! But don’t worry, Johnston, they’ll love you for it! Already you can see how much!’

  They were lining up to talk to him as I turned on my heel. He didn’t bother replying, for you could see he was much too hurt. Or — who knows? — maybe just the tiniest bit guilty. If not, indeed, a mixture of both.

  But, bullshit and all as his book might be — and, believe you me, The Cyclops Enigma fucks up on so many levels — it can never be taken away from him that he was one motherfucking good teacher and those first few months after he arrived in Scotsfield will always remain close to my heart. With him strolling in there to the Scotsfield Hotel, with all his books and papers underneath his arm and that good old waistcoat looking splendid!

  ‘How are you then, Joey, my man?’ I can hear him say. ‘We’ve got lots of work ahead of us tonight!’, and it does me good just to think it!

  I suppose, in a way, when I took out this stuff and started going through it, I was secretly half hoping that something might come leaping out at me, the way it seemed to do that very first time when I found myself writing as if by some weird unnamable magic. Scorching along like the hammers of hell and ending up with the guts of a finished book, all of it scribbled in a matter of days in Boo Boo’s Dublin flat.

  But that’s not the way it happens, I’m afraid, and you can search all you like from the year 1976 to the year ten fucking million, but if it isn’t there and isn’t meant to be there …

  … well, then you’re fucked, aren’t you? You’re the one-off man, the one-hit wonder, the naive fluke artist who just happened to get lucky that one special time. Which is the way, if I’m honest, I perceive the situation to be. Irrespective of Bonehead’s heart-warming and extremely flattering aspirations on my behalf. I’m sorry for saying that, Bone, but I can’t render it otherwise. I would if I could but I can’t, that’s the truth. Because that’s the way it is with art — it always suits its fucking self!

  If you don’t believe me, then take one fucking look around this poxy room. Christ! It’s like a rubbish tip now with all this paper! And not so much as a whisper of a novel in sight. Nothing, only a stack of notebooks and diaries, not to mention box files and ex-Bank of Ireland ledgers. Into one of which — there are a few blank pages at the back of this one — I shall now proceed to enter my pen picture of a boot-blacked Oprah!

  What a scream Bonehead is as he climbs over chairs and shoves his mike into the faces of the audience. ‘So! Whatcha tink, young fella?’ he says. ‘You’re a Scotsfield man! Whaddya tink of the achievements of Joseph Tallon?’

  ‘The achievements of Joey Tallon?’ he replies in answer to his own question, with exaggerated biliousness. ‘Why I always taught he was a bollocks dat couldn’t write his own fuckin’ name, to tell you da troot!’

  Then asking me to come up and show the audience how much weight I’d lost — almost four fucking stone, actually, ever since accepting the Kingfisher commission! ‘Yes! Look at him, folks! Where are the old pie days gone now, Joesup? Eh? Maybe you’d tell us dat!’

  I hadn’t a clue how to answer that, because these depressions are different from the old ones. Once upon a time you could handle them a little by keeping yourself busy, walking, eating pies or whatever.

  Now, all you want to do is stare out the window, drinking vodka or whiskey — anything you can get your hands on — as the little oblong cursor keeps pulsing away on the computer screen as if to shriek: ‘Hey, Joey, can’t you do it? Hey, Joey, can’t you do it?’

  Before answering: ‘Joey can’t do it! Hey, Joey can’t do it!’

  Whenever he had finished his speech about me there would be a few more ‘interviews’ along the same lines. And then, when he’d gotten a bit drunker, that dark look would come over his face and you’d hear the venom in his voice as he slowly turned to address
‘Mr Boyle Henry’, delivering his tour de force.

  ‘You bollocks you, Henry!’ he’d snort. ‘It’s you’s to blame for everything! Why couldn’t you just let Joesup make whatever pictures he wanted? But no! Because you were afraid he was going to steal all the limelight from you, weren’t you? You and the blondie bird! Like a fucking auld twig she is!’

  Funny as it might have been at times — and there’s no denying it was, the wicked way he twisted up his face like the most spiteful and hateful old crone — I didn’t want him saying that about Jacy. And whenever he did, a row inevitably developed.

  ‘I asked you not to say it! The last time I told you I didn’t want you saying it. And now you’ve gone and done it again!’ I’d find myself snarling — the words would be out before I had the faintest inkling —and there we’d be again, in the middle of another outrageous scene.

  ‘Don’t fucking say it, I said!’ I’d growl, as uncompromising and black as ever I’ve been. ‘Don’t ever say that about Jacy!’

  As he stood there, half helpless, always utterly bewildered.

  ‘But look what she did on you, Joesup! Can’t you see it? She was as bad as him!’

  Once it was said, when the words had been uttered, I cannot tell you the effect they had, the sheer depth of loathing they elicited within me. With it always ending up the same way — me losing it and flinging myself at him. Grabbing him in a headlock and bawling: ‘Take it back! Take back what you said about Jacy!’

  And ending up by just releasing him as I lay there in a heap, no strength in my limbs to sustain what I’d started, just enough to manage to croak: ‘She called me The Breeze, you see. That’s what you’ll never understand, Bone. That’s what you — or anyone else, by the looks of things — will never be able to understand!’

  Which is a lie, of course. She didn’t. At least, not in the way I wanted. But it had still been good to see her, simply to be in her presence. And to be privileged to observe that, despite all that had happened, she was still as beautiful as ever.

  I suppose you could argue that, in a way, all along my film was an attempt to deal with my relationship with Jacy. Of laying those old ghosts to rest. A way of saying to her: ‘I know I done bad, baby. Do you think you could ever find it in your heart to forgive me?’

  For, since those days, what I’d longed for more than anything was absolution, then, ultimately, I guess, deliverance. Which was why in the script I’d rewritten that scene so often — the one I liked to think of as the ‘precious moment’, that ‘nanosecond’ when forgiveness happens against all the odds. When she stands with her hands in the back pockets of her sky blue Levis, just staring out through the French windows across the expanse of the Big Sur sands — you can hear the crash of the surf — before turning with a smile to answer that question. ‘Forgive you? Is that what you’re asking me to do? Of course I forgive you — ain’t that what lovin’s all about?’

  How many times I’ve rewritten that scene I can’t even begin to remember. All I know is that I just loved sitting down and starting on it all over again, seeing it each time in a totally different light, the kind of picture you want to go on for ever, although knowing in your heart that it can’t, for there is only one kind of movie in store for the likes of Joey Tallon when it comes to ‘Forever’ or ‘Eternity’. A low-rent, straight-to-video ‘disaster flick’ in which the author goes out in a blaze of glory, still dreaming, incongruously, in flames!

  Which is certainly a long way from where I’d expected to end up — no, not what I’d anticipated at all — back in those early days of ‘Joey Cinema’, as off I shot once more through the streets with my eyepiece swinging, explaining my incipient ‘project’ to everyone — I was as high as a kite on the energy of doing that alone!

  ‘What it’s about, if it’s about anything,’ I would expound, ‘is not just me and my demons. And it definitely is about that! For I’m not alone in this! No, if The Animal Pit is about anything, it’s about a community that at long last faces its fears! With me as the central character, obviously! Or someone who is to some extent based on me! You see, what we’ve got to do is face down the beast! To look in his eye! To effectively exhume … the animal pit, if you know what I’m saying!’

  Most of the time they didn’t, of course. They didn’t have a fucking clue, to tell you the truth, although you couldn’t have persuaded me to believe that then!

  ‘Sure!’ I remember them saying. ‘That’s what we’ve got to do! Face down the beast, Joey! Right you be then! I have to go on now and get my tea! See you then, Joey, ha ha!’

  It doesn’t take too much to read between the lines there now, does it? But no, off I would go, absolutely delighted with the account I had given both of myself and my masterpiece. I must have been the fastest director who ever stood behind a camera — the fastest walking, that is, not the fastest ‘working’. Tearing about the place with my pockets full of memos. All these ideas on a wall of death going scrambling around in my head like crazy, arguing with each other from morning until night.

  One minute it would be Cassavetes, the next Martin Scorsese. I was even reading about the Indians (Satyajit Ray) and the Japs (Kurosawa) in the hope that I might pick up something from them.

  Sleep, once and for all, became a thing of the past, the only respite I could manage being a stolen minute or two out by the reservoir. Or maybe a nod at the counter in Doc Oc’s, which had sort of become my unofficial office, so delighted was I that I had dispensed with my idiotically paranoid ‘imaginings’ re. Boyle Henry et al.

  There were a lot of people turning up uninivited to the shoot in the new Theatre and Artbase (the community hall extension), yet another massive whitewashed structure in the centre of town entirely funded by European money, which discomfited me not a little — as had all the paperwork and deposit business — but was a difficult problem to solve. For it wasn’t as though we had the resources to employ security. Which in any case wouldn’t have been appropriate, because one of Artbase’s principal tenets — one of the reasons it was established indeed, and why it adjoined the Scotsfield Sports Complex, which was thronged with people coming and going throughout the day — was that its facilities should be available to all. And in any case, I was only too aware that in a small town like Scotsfield you could very easily ruffle feathers by acting the big shot and refusing people entry. So I just used to say: ‘OK. Let them in. Just so long as they don’t interfere.’

  Quite a lot of the time I didn’t take any notice, for I really had enough to be thinking of than be bothered with who was there and who wasn’t. But I have to say I did get a jolt when I looked up one day and saw Fr Connolly, pale with anxiety and wearing that same old expression I had come to know so well. The one that seemed a mixture of concern and bitter anger and which fixed on you and said: ‘You promised you wouldn’t do it!’ And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I started to get all flustered when I saw him, dropping the eyepiece and forgetting my directions. The kids asking then: ‘What do we do, Mr Tallon? What do we do now, Joey?’ and frustrating me further, making me shout: ‘I’ll tell you, OK? I’ll tell you! Just wait, can’t you? Can’t you just wait for a fucking second? Huh? Huh?’

  It wasn’t until the next day that, during a break in filming, I began to work out my strategy to deal with all this. I mean, I knew I had to be tactful with these ‘casual observers’ who, with the passing of time, seemed to be becoming increasingly more casual. I knew I couldn’t turn around and throw the whole lot of them out. Perhaps I could have done it on the very first day, but I had permitted it to go beyond that now. I don’t know exactly at what point in my thinking it was —close, I seem to remember to that stage where I was on the verge of deciding to get a circular printed, a sort of a flier, really, just to explain my position. I looked up and saw Boyle Henry and Sandy McGloin. Standing in the wings, both wearing tracksuits and carrying squash racquets.

  I hadn’t been expecting them, and the moment I laid eyes on them I launched straight back i
nto my work, barking orders and waving my arms. A lot of it didn’t make sense. Half the time the cast would look at me, then bump into each other as they did what I’d just requested of them. One of them somehow went falling over a sofa, which made the rest of them corpse and crack up laughing.

  I lost it then, which was really stupid of me. But I couldn’t help it because the pies had come back. Why don’t you make a movie called Pies, Joey? I found myself thinking. That would be a good idea! Make a movie called Pies and, who knows, perhaps Boyle could star. Mr Boyle Henry, that is. Mr Henry. Mr Boyle. And Sandy. The famous Sandy McGloin. Sandy ‘Waistcoat’ McGloin, that is. Oh yes!

  They stood there, smiling. When Boyle Henry caught my eye he raised his racquet and gave me a great big broad appreciative grin, nodding as if to say: ‘I approve of what you are doing here, folks!’

  Before I knew it I was shouting at the kids: ‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing? I told you to stand over there! Do you hear me? Are you stupid? Listen to me, you!’

  It was ridiculous, I know. But I couldn’t help it. The more I said to myself: ‘I made a mistake there for sure, but this time I won’t repeat it! I’ll rectify matters, this time!’ the more I’d go and do the same thing over again, spitting out sentences and waving my arms. When we had finished, Boyle and Sandy came over. Boyle asked me a question. I can’t remember what it was. It was something to do with the content of the script. I knew I hadn’t answered it to his satisfaction, for the only thing he said in response was: ‘I see,’ stroking his chin, as though vaguely dissatisfied, and turning over the substance of my reply in his mind.

  He waited for a while as if expecting a better attempt, but I couldn’t think of anything. ‘Put that down, Jason!’ I shouted at one of the kids who was fooling around with the props. ‘Put it down, I said!’