Call Me the Breeze (30 page)

‘
Things
?’ he smiled — Jeez, he was exhausted, but he definitely wouldn’t give in — ‘Things like what — Barbapapa, say? Or just big fat stupid Joey?’

‘Maybe,’ she went on as she exhaled the smoke. ‘But whatever they say they’re wrong. They’ve got you all wrong, Joey. You are The Gardener. What he could have been.’

They had spoken about Charlie for hours the night before. How, for him, if things had turned out otherwise …

‘You see flowers where others see only weeds. You know what I’m saying, Joey?’

He smiled. Sure he did. A day from the past rose up out of nowhere, shining.

‘I used to bring Mona primroses,’ he told her.

There was a pause and he luxuriated in the rhythms of her breathing.

‘What was it you liked about Mona? The more I think about it the more she truly seems to be the heart of the onion. The key to who you are, Joey Tallon. There was something about her, wasn’t there?’

He thought of those first few days after Mona’s funeral when he’d go out to the reservoir to listen to her soul.

‘It would only last a moment, before it went back far beyond the clouds, or wherever it is they go.’

‘They go home, Joey. That’s where they go.’

He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘they go home.’

She pecked the top of his head with kisses. Tiny little ‘popping’ pecks. They felt exquisite. She rubbed his chest with her palm and dangled her arm around his neck. She gave him another little peck. He was weak.

‘And where do you think it is, that home? Where does Joey Tallon think that home is to be found?’

He swallowed and tried not to think again of his mother weeping by the sink in the shadows of the kitchen. Once she had screamed: ‘So that’s where he’s gone — to ride prostitutes in China! That’s what they’re saying, isn’t it? But it doesn’t matter where he’s gone! For he’s left her with the bastard and me with the shame and to a living death in this fucking town! But I won’t “living die”! I’ll
die
!’

Her eyes had been the size of the plates she was supposed to be washing.

‘I’ll die! That’s what I’ll do!’ she had insisted as she twisted the dishcloth tighter.

‘But she didn’t die, did she, Joey?’ said Jacy. ‘Your mother didn’t die.’

‘No. She got Alzheimer’s and they put her away. She died then. That was when she died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Joey as his fingers brushed her bound wrist, occasioning an agonizing wrench of guilt. He looked away and tried not to think of his father, out there beneath a foreign sky. Or of Mona, so pale and abstracted …

‘Where did Joey really believe,’ she began anew, ‘that that kind of rest might be found?’

Her nails described little threads and patterns up and down his forehead. She placed another tender kiss on his shining pate.

‘In the Karma Cave maybe? Is that what he thought? Is that where he thought he might find it?’

His saliva was thick as paste and his face was blotched as he tried to meet her eyes. But he hadn’t the courage when it came to the crunch. However, he could feel his own eyes glittering with excitement as, at the very last moment, he avoided hers.

It was like all the skins were peeling away at once. If there is a millisecond in one’s life when every ache is assuaged and every sharp-edged anxiety that is born of entombed, unspoken secrets in a single instant goes floating free, it occurred in that space just before the ‘precious moment’. When Jacy had whispered in his ear: ‘Tell me everything, Joey. I want you to surrender completely now. Let me take these glasses off.’

He could feel all his tensions ease as he gave himself to her totally. He could hear Mona’s voice, he told her, calling to him from an island. Out of nowhere he heard, elegiac but vivid, the strains of ‘Harbour Lights’. It was as though, he explained, he were on a tiny boat, alone in the vast silence of a cobalt ocean. Then there were strange lights winking on the horizon and bizarre sounds echoing in the darkness. They were calling to him, but Joey only heard Mona, her voice coming from a tranquil place that was rimmed by coral reefs and palm-fringed beaches. That was the only sound he could hear now. The others were far off and had nothing to say to him in any case. The bizarre sounds, they were the blades of helicopters. Mona’s whisper gliding just above the lapping water: ‘
Come to the island of green-roofed temples
[was it perhaps where his father was? Was that where he had gone all those years ago?], towards this
safe harbour sail. And sleep in the Cave of Dreams. For ever in the Cave of
-’

The twin prongs of the peninsula slowly opened in a ‘Y’ as onward he sailed and the first rumble issued from the mountain.

‘Was it like this?’ whispered Jacy. ‘Move your head up further, my darling. Come on now, Joseph, don’t be afraid. Move it right up — further.’

His head was positioned between Jacy’s legs. He slowly closed his eyes and the feeling that enveloped him then was so tranquil and rare, such a calm as he had never experienced. But somewhere —close by — he was deeply embarrassed. Jacy understood, however. She massaged his temples again and scissored her legs. He was finding it difficult to breathe and trying, through gesture, to indicate that. But it was just to galvanize him, she said, to locate and identify that strength of purpose within him, and then to consolidate it. The
doing
rather than the
thinking
, she explained.

‘I can feel the old tensions returning, Joey. And they’re telling you to fight it. They’re telling you not to surrender.’

He knew she was right. She was speaking the truth. He felt ashamed of his resistance, trifling as it was, compared to what it would, without a doubt, have been in the past. Before he’d
learnt
— from Jacy, and from
Steppenwolf
.

‘You’ve got to show courage,’ she insisted. ‘It’s essential for the journey. For the truth, the essence. Bring your head up further. Go on. Bring it up further, Joey. There’s a good boy. Don’t be shy.’

For a number of glorious seconds he vertiginously bobbed upon that lapping ocean. He swayed, lightheaded, far out in the blue. Then felt her stiffening sharply as he choked: ‘No, Jacy.’ But she didn’t hear him as all of a sudden the peninsula prongs closed. The winking of the lights seemed an anxious semaphore now. In her voice was the same rigidity that had invaded her body.

‘Tell me what she called you, Joey,’ she said.

Her rigid legs locked around his neck. He could feel the white cotton material bunching up in her lap. One of her shoes had fallen off.

‘I said, tell me what she called you, Joey.’

‘Jacy, you’re hurting me! I can’t breathe —!’

For a split second, he felt certain he’d blacked out completely. Once, as a child, he’d put a plastic bag —

‘What did she call you, baby?’

A flaring meteor of hot ash coursed a perilous trajectory across the sky.

‘Did she call you “baby”? Is that what she called you, Joey?’

A spume of lava like a deadly orchid mockingly, lyrically fanned its petals then, unexpectedly, swooped to devour an entire temple.

‘That’s it, darling,’ said Jacy. ‘Tell me! Tell Jacy how you like to put your head up between girls’ legs! Tell us, Joey! Tell the world! Let’s share your secret! What is it you want? What have you always wanted?’

The sky shone saffron. A giant wave reared silently, then fell, devastating everything in its path.

‘I want to be reborn!’

‘You want to live again!’

‘I wanted to live life over!’

‘You wanted to climb inside Mona!’

‘I wanted to climb inside Mona!’

‘You wanted to be her baby!’

‘I wanted to be her —!
Tthht
!’

‘That’s it, Joey! That’s it, Joey! Suck it! Suck that thumb!’

‘
Tthht
!’

‘You’re safe in the Karma Cave now, Joey!’

‘Safe and home with Jacy!’

‘With her you’ll be safe in this precious harbour!’

‘Safe for ever in this precious harbour!’

She relaxed her grip, and he knew the ‘precious moment’ was at hand. He could feel it approaching with almost every fibre of his being. The precious moment he’d for so long craved.

‘Safe for ever, you twisted
fucking bastard
!’

Huge blocks of steaming pumice bounced lethally down the volcano’s side. The entire island shuddered in the wake of another explosion. The crimson lava streamed into his eye. A column of red ash swirled out of it as she raked her nails along his cheek. He heard her scream and, blurred, watched her falling towards the door. The door swung open before her and she tumbled out into the night. The mountain cracked and the zig-zag fissure that ran down its front almost discreetly parted to reveal a core’ of light, but not the one he’d been expecting. There were cries of panic coming from all over the island. The floodlights were beaming directly at him. ‘
Jacy
!’ he called, and struggled to his feet. He shouted after her again as the cabin door slammed behind him.

There were one, two, three, four marksmen all in firing position with their rifles trained. But he couldn’t see them properly because of the hot fire. ‘
Don’t fucking move, you cunt
!’ the detective barked as he placed his coat around her. Then turned on him: ‘
Don’t even think about it, Tallon, you fucker
!’ he hissed.

He tried to locate her to explain. But she was gone. Instead, Boyle Henry was there, close by the yellow Datsun, smiling. Smiling directly at him, as if to say: ‘You see? You understand now, don’t you, Joey? No matter what you do,
I’ll win
!’

He brushed away the sparks — some of them had gotten into his mouth. He was still trying to poke the remainder of the joint out of the blinded hollow of his eye — there was ash all down his front — when he saw Boyle Henry giving him a cheeky little wave before climbing into the car, as a voice just beside him said: ‘
Can you look this way, Mr Tallon, I’m from RTE
!’

Even though I knew that a lot of it was still too personal and would have to be fictionalized and modified at some point, there can be no doubt that I was absolutely over the moon next morning having finished the script. On my way to work I thought about Johnston and how he’d been telling us one night about this guy Balzac, who, at last having discovered how his novel was going to pan out, threw open the window of his bedroom and shouted: ‘
He’s dead! He’s dead! Listen, everyone — the old fucker is dead
!’

Although obviously he didn’t say ‘fucker’. It’s just that I couldn’t remember the character’s name.

The great thing — not just having honed it down and getting to the essential truth, although that was exciting too — was the way the style was beginning to emerge — already I could see it all inside my head. What it needed, more than anything, was that
psychobilly
touch. Which would be in keeping with the milieu in which it was set, a trashy and sinister country-and-western Ireland of murder, paranoia and sentiment — a sort of rough and ready treatment of the original idea, not unlike The Mohawks’ music. Unadorned, no bullshit.
Blam
! Just get in there and do it, no frills, no fucking around. A movie that could be put together not only pretty fast but relatively cheaply as well. By the time I reached the college, I had decided that was the way to go. I could see it all so clearly, frame by frame. And how it ought to be directed.

For a start, I was going to use amateur actors, there being no doubt in my mind after the workshops I’d been doing with the kids that almost anyone could hack it as an actor. Of course they could! If someone could pick up a guitar and start belting out psychobilly tunes, not to mention storm the arenas of the world shouting about Martin Luther King, the way that Bono and co. seemed to be able to do, then I didn’t really see what the problem was with acting. It would be, in the words of Chico, a piece of piss.

‘People have been acting since the day they were born,’ I said to myself as I came striding in the college gates. Even guys like Mangan would be able to do it, I reckoned, regardless of what they thought themselves. And, having bought him a doll, I figured he owed me a favour or two. So I’d probably be calling on his services. For the part of one of the ‘old boys’.

old boy
1 —
Mangan
, I thought, and laughed.

Unlocking my office, I thought,
Yes, guys like Mangan would be as good as anyone, educated or fucking well not! Once they were given the confidence they’d be more than able to cut the mustard
.

After my first two seminars — which went terrifically well, I have to say! — I made a start on the production script and blocked out the first six scenes during lunch that day.

The very first scene I felt was pretty much well worked out. First of all we would see the tinker camp, with broken prams, car wrecks, dogs howling and the various beat-up old caravans, as the fire dies in the wee small hours, and then —
wham
! — one of Boo Boo’s songs comes blasting right over the soundtrack as we zoom in straight away on her inflatable face.

What we would have to get — essential, I reckoned — was the sheer unfathomable depth of helplessness in the doll figure’s eyes as he pushed himself deep inside her (the camera zooming in on the lettering
Not a cardboard imitation! Not an undersized toy! Genuine life-size inflatable with three workable openings
!). Then, perhaps, a bold black psychobilly logo:

Ireland, 1976! The Gypsy Camp!

On second thoughts, no, we wouldn’t bother with that, I reflected, and scribbled it out. Instead we’d go straight away into the scene, with the camera holding on the eyes all the way through as he kisses her face and runs his hands through her hair saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ There would be a torn old sofa. A tatty slipper. He is kissing her belly button and his trousers are around his knees. But we don’t see his face — Mangan would never agree to it if that was the arrangement. Then all we hear is an almighty, unearthly squeal — I could do that voice-over myself- as he reaches his climax, and the coruscating guitars go squealing ahead, until they’re spinning almost out of control …