Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (2 page)

'No,' I said, 'it doesn't. Just the same as when you make me or your mum a cup of coffee, it doesn't make you a barista.'

'You said I was a barista,' said Baggins, invoking that thing where your child can remember everything you ever said in order to make you feel bad.

'I just said that to make you feel better because the coffee was rotten.'

'Don't be cruel,' said Brin. 'Don't listen to him, you make better coffee than your dad.'

Baggins gave me her best evil look and tossed her mum a conspiratorial glance.

'So,' I continued, 'the people who make the films and publish books etc, they like agents because...'

'Bored now,' said Baggins.

And so we stopped talking about agents.

*

T
ext of the e-mail from Mr Marion Hightower, Vice-President, Macaw Films:

––––––––

D
ear Mr Kite,

I wanted to say that I'm really excited to be writing to you about your early draft movie script, THE JIGSAW MAN.

We are a small, LA-based production company, and although you are unlikely to have heard of us, we have close working ties with some major movie companies you will have heard of, such as Columbia and Fox.

We absolutely love your script and we love the Jigsaw Man, and we'd love to option the script from you and move forward into a phase of further development of the project.

As soon as we have the go-ahead from you on this, we will be showing the script to Creative Artists, the agency for Jason Statham, as we feel Jason would be perfect in this role. We will also be speaking to some directors with whom we've worked in the past.

We'd love for you to come out to Hollywood at your earliest convenience, naturally at our expense. If you could send a contact number by return e-mail, one of my people will give you a call to make the necessary arrangements.

I look forward to working together.

Best

Marion Hightower

*

I
was sitting in bed looking at my iPad when I read the e-mail. It was like it was happening to someone else. No, that's too melodramatic. It was like it wasn't real. It read like the e-mail someone would write if they wanted to trick someone into thinking they were about to get a Hollywood film deal. The movie equivalent of an e-mail from Nigeria requesting that you send £500 so they can deposit several million pounds in your bank.

I handed the iPad to Brin. She read it, and then made that little noise she makes when she thinks you might be looking for her to be impressed and she's keen to let you know she's not.

'It sounds fake,' I said. It seemed wrong that neither of us should be excited, but that was how it had to be. I was genuinely not excited by it, and Brin was genuinely not excited by anything these days. At least, nothing that was related to me.

'It's from Hollywood,' she said. 'Of course it's fake. Everything in Hollywood's fake. They make things up. So even if it is serious, which I highly doubt, it's still done in the style where it looks like they're making something up.'

I took the iPad back from her and re-read the e-mail.

'Like the man Marion said,' she continued, 'they're buying your ticket, so if you turn up at the airport and you have a seat on the plane, and you haven't had to pay for it, then I suppose there'll be something in it. Just don't stay too late at all those Hollywood parties.'

I didn't say anything. Maybe she was right. It seemed absurd that they'd mention the name of an actor straight off – and Jason Statham was not the Jigsaw Man! – but on the other hand, it was exactly the type of thing that you would expect from Hollywood. Chutzpah.

'Google him,' she said.

I stared at the iPad and then handed it to her. I didn't want to Google him. She Googled him.

Marion Hightower had been executive producer on a lot of movies that we'd never heard of before. But at least it appeared that he did exist.

*

I
was manager at the local Starbucks. Of course, I'd once imagined sitting in the corner, doing a large jigsaw every day, whilst I dispensed wisdom. That had never been going to happen. Not in a chain café. I just ran the place, it wasn't mine.

I aspired to having my own café one day, but even then, was I going to be able to do what the Jigsaw Man had done? I'd be copying him, that's all. I would be trying to be someone else, and consequently I'd likely feel incredibly self-conscious. When he did that thing I so admired, the Jigsaw Man was himself; I'd be someone else. It wouldn't be so different from putting on a mask and cape and fighting crime in the middle of the night.

Anyway, even though I had my table picked out, there was never any chance of me setting up a jigsaw at Starbucks.

Sometimes I did jigsaws at home. I was the Jigsaw Man in my own home. I never seemed to be particularly wise though.

I must have been distracted that day, even though I was trying not to think about the impending phone call from Marion Hightower. He was due to call me that evening at home. 7:15 my time, 11:15 in the morning in LA. Brin had woken up sceptical.

'What are you thinking about?' asked Ruby.

I was working behind the counter in the café that morning as Alex hadn't made it into work and we were short. Always happy to do it. More comfortable serving coffee than looking at a computer screen and making projections and filling in reports.

The morning rush had slowed. There were a few customers in but none waiting.

'I wrote a film script once,' I said.

'Oh, wow, that is so cool. What's it about?'

'A warrior-philosopher,' I said.

Just then, even though I'd said it a hundred times before, I had a moment of realisation that the phrase
warrior-philosopher
sounded utterly preposterous. However, Ruby was eighteen and easily impressed.

'Wow,' she said. 'A warrior-philosopher. You mean, like...' She hesitated, and just for a moment looked like the dumbest blonde on the dumbest TV quiz show you could imagine. Then she said, 'I don't know, I can't think of any warrior-philosophers...'

I shrugged, and said, 'The Spartans,' very self-consciously.

'Cool,' she said. 'Like the movie. So that's what it's about? Lots of men in skirts with swords?'

'It's about a guy who sits doing jigsaws. Thinking. The jigsaws are a metaphor.'

'Right. Cool.'

'And while he's thinking of ways to piece together life, society, whatever, he dispenses wisdom to anyone who asks. But then society starts to fall apart, as no one listens to his advice, and he has to take to the streets to bring order.'

'Wow. That sounds epic. It's one of these, what-d'you-call-them, costume drama things. Old, you know... kind of shit.'

'Set in modern day Glasgow,' I said.

'Oh.'

It had been years since I'd explained to anyone what the film script was about. I used to describe it with passion. Standing there, in the cold light of morning, and talking about it for the first time in forever, I realised how stupid it sounded. And then I thought, well, just because it's stupid, doesn't mean that someone isn't going to want to make it into a film. In fact, these days it might even be a pre-requisite. And I started to wonder if Marion Hightower would want to film in Britain, or whether he was getting me over to California to ask me to rewrite the script, setting it in LA, New York, or in Anywhereville, Anystate, USA.

'Can I have a skinny latté, please. And two blueberry muffins.'

We turned to the lady at the counter. It was a surprise that we hadn't already noticed her, as she was blocking out the sun.

––––––––

PAUL IS DEAD:

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER GUY?

––––––––

P
aul is dead? Sure, you're thinking, I know. I saw him die at the Olympic opening ceremony.

However, the man who made us all suffer through "Hey Jude" that warm London night in July, was not the man who exploded onto the music scene with the Beatles in the early 1960s. As many internet conspiracy sites will tell you, Paul McCartney died in a car accident in November 1966, and was replaced by a doppelgänger, according to the wishes of – depending on which site you read – the other Beatles, Brian Epstein, the Wilson government or MI5. To this day, this doppelgänger continues to live out the lie.

I'm not here to talk about the evidence. We all know it. The changes to McCartney's facial features, the very obvious height difference between the two men, the clues liberally sprinkled among the album covers, particularly
Sgt. Pepper
and
Abbey Road
, from the OPD armband to the funeral procession across the most famous pedestrian crossing in the world, featuring an out-of-step, barefoot McCartney.

Instead, I want to start a discussion on the musical legacy of this second man. Whatever his name before he was inserted into the Beatles, we will call him Paul, because regardless of his previous identity, he has now been Paul for well over forty–five years; and whatever the original McCartney achieved before his death, this new version has written many, many more songs, and deserves to be considered an artist in his own right, rather than constantly compared to the man who preceded him.

(cont...)

*

A
week later I was getting ready to fly to LA. Mid-December. Even after speaking to Marion Hightower I hadn't been completely convinced that it had been going to happen. Nevertheless, he clearly knew the script inside out – I quickly read it again to refresh my memory of what I'd first written almost ten years previously – and had sounded very excited about the whole enterprise. In the course of our twenty-five minute conversation I think he mentioned every major Hollywood actor that had ever lived as being right for the lead part, while honing in on Emily Blunt as the love interest.

Reading it again I realised two things. Firstly, it was terrible. Secondly, Jason Statham was the Jigsaw Man.

We were at the dinner table. Brin, Baggins and me. I'd made macaroni cheese. Mac and cheese as the young ones call it these days. Today's generation have an aversion to syllables. Brin and I were drinking a slightly more expensive than usual sauvignon blanc from Marlborough Sound in anticipation of my film deal. Baggins was drinking apple juice.

I was already feeling nervous about the flight. It had been four years since I'd been on a plane. I wasn't out and out terrified of flying, I just didn't like the turbulence. I wasn't scared that I was going to die. It wasn't that. I would compare it to being on a rollercoaster. When you get on a rollercoaster you don't necessarily think you're going to die, that's not why it's terrifying. It's because you're moving at great speed and are not in control. Same for me on a plane that's bouncing around at thirty thousand feet. I'm not worried that we're about to hit the ground, but the sensation of moving around while travelling very fast and having nothing to do but sit there trying not to spill your gin and tonic into your lap, gets right down into my soul. Base fear. Nothing else scares me like that. Nothing.

Well, I guess a rollercoaster would, but then I never have to go on a rollercoaster. Life, on the other hand, occasionally throws up situations where you're required to get on a plane and there really isn't an alternative.

I had found myself saying to Marion Hightower, 'Is there a boat I can get?' He'd laughed.

'You'll be all right, Daddy,' said Baggins.

'I know,' I said, even though I didn't mean it.

'You said you were travelling in first class, didn't you?'

I nodded.

'Do you get turbulence in first class?'

Brin laughed. I wanted to laugh, but it wasn't as if that was something I'd never thought of.

'You'd think,' I said. 'Paying that much, the least they could do is guarantee there'd be no turbulence. But no, it affects you up there just the same. Well, they say you feel the turbulence less at the front, but if it's bouncing around, it's bouncing around.'

'God, it's not going to bounce around,' said Brin.

She'd persuaded me to go to Australia once, before Baggins had started school. I fretted for weeks about the flight. Imagined this gigantic storm encircling the world, and us having to fly through turbulence and continually falling through pockets of clear air for twenty non-stop hours. As it turned out, there was barely a bump, in either direction.

'If I could know that in advance,' I said.

'Why don't you ask the pilot?' said Baggins.

I smiled, but really I was thinking that I'd rather move the conversation on. Talking about it was only making it worse.

'What kind of car do you think I'll get picked up by in the morning?' I said.

'If things get bad you can always go to your happy place,' said Baggins.

For a moment I was reminded of a time that for some reason – just because it was a few years earlier – seemed happier and less stressful, even though in reality it hadn't been.

When Baggins was younger and was worried about something, anything, I'd say to her to close her eyes and imagine she was in a happy place. A special place, somewhere she felt safe, somewhere there was no stress and nothing to be worried about.

'Yes, I'll do that,' I said.

'Where's your happy place?' she asked.

I took a sip of wine, staring at the table. Where was my happy place? Did I even have a happy place?

'Have you got a happy place, Mummy?' said Baggins, when I didn't answer within the allotted three seconds of attention span.

It hadn't been so long ago, yet the thought of Brin being happy seemed such a distant memory that I presumed it would draw one of her usual snorts, but I guess she mostly reserved those for me.

'Nairn,' she said. 'Sitting on East Beach, looking out at the sea on a warm summer's day, and at the hills on the Black Isle. And taking a picnic. A still day, barely any breeze. The water calm, that wonderful smell of summer in the air. Then walking through the sea out to the sand bars that stretch forever out into the firth when the tide goes out.'

She smiled at Baggins, a look that excluded me. Baggins nodded her approval. We'd been to Nairn and sat on East Beach every summer for the previous five years. It would have been difficult, in fact, to think of any other happy place.