Call Me the Breeze (36 page)

‘I’m hearing you,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if you’re not shouting loud enough!’

I remember laughing at that. I shouldn’t have, maybe, but I did.

I tapped the bar counter with my pencil and tried to articulate further, inwardly, it seems to me now, being just that tiny bit amused as I caught a glimpse of Austie’s ‘intelligent’ look, with his chin on resting on his hand and his brow so tightly knitted, as though he were thinking:
Ladies and gentlemen: Tonight on the
South Bank Show — ‘Cinema!’,
with Austie Hogan
!

At any rate, I proceeded. ‘The idea originally was for a hard-hitting, extremely realistic film set in the Ireland of the 1970s, a dirty, uncompromising, high-octane narrative called ‘Psychobilly’ about the life that was lived here at that time. Using our own very town here as a sort of … example. A microcosm, I think, is the word.’

‘Yes, it is!’ agreed Austie as if he knew, sagaciously adding: ‘That’s what it would be now, Joey!’

‘But now I think I’ll go less for realism than a wild experimental approach. Just turn the camera loose and see what it comes up with! When you’ve a good tight script you can afford to operate like that. You getting my drift here, Austie?’

‘Uh-huh,’ he replied.

‘A sort of Cronenberg/Cassavetes style, with some Andy Warhol influence. Maybe with a dash of Buñuel.’

‘Bunwell,’ nodded Austie.

‘With original music by Boo Boo, I hope.’

‘The fellow whose arm went west!’

‘Exactly!’ I continued. ‘And which is one of the central events which we will be dealing with in the movie. There will be others, of course, which I’ve decided to approach maybe more in the Cassavetes mould. Yes! For those sections I’m more inclined to retain the idea of black and white. Sharp, crisp realism. Hard-edged monochrome. Documentary style. Like it happened
then
but it’s also happening
now
— you still following me? You see, Austie, there’s something really immediate about monochrome even though it’s not used much, not now, obviously. The effect I hope to achieve is that, while we’ll know it’s the past, it will still hit us hard. We’ll allude to each and every single tragedy. Within reason, of course! The band being blown up, the Peace Rally atrocity and, of course, the senseless slaying of Detective Tuite by Sandy and Boyle Henry. Subject matter which is obviously sensitive but will be treated in an appropriate manner.’

It was at this point that Austie stood back from the counter and gasped: ‘
What
?’

This, of course, was the moment of the
error of judgement
, for up until that moment he’d already lost interest. He wiped the counter, then looked quite stunned as he stared at me again and said: ‘
What did you just say, Tallon
?’

To relieve him a bit, I laughed just a little and tossed my head back: ‘Oh, no real names of course! I mean, I’m not that stupid! No, we’ll fictionalize all the names and ensure there’s no problem like that. I mean, it’s not about compromising people in that way. What it’s about is the truth. Isn’t that what they mean when they use the term “
cinema verité
”?’

Austie frowned just a little then sucked his teeth as he flicked the dishcloth across his shoulder and spread both palms on the counter. Then he fixed me with his gaze as he frowned and said: ‘I couldn’t tell you what they mean, Joey.’

‘Well,’ I sighed and stretched my limbs, ‘I think I’d best be going!’ Then I thought for a minute as I waited for that final crystallization. I moulded some shapes in the air with my hands and said: ‘I’m thinking
Faces
, Austie, and I’m thinking
Hands
! I’m thinking
Killing of a
Chinese Bookie
! But most of all, I’m thinking truth!
The Peace Rally! Tuite! The Animal Pit
! The very heart of the seventies at last laid bare so we can know the truth about ourselves! Am I making sense? Why, I might even call it
The Animal Pit
! What do you think?’

‘
The Animal Pit
,’ repeated Austie in a monotone.

It was only when I got out on to the street that I realized what it was I’d forgotten to say. When I went back in, Austie was talking on the phone. I heard him using the words ‘Animal Pit’ and ‘Tuite’.

‘Austie!’ I said as he slammed the receiver down abruptly and swung on his heel, grey-faced.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped as he turned sharply like he was trying to hide the telephone. I was a bit wrong-footed by this abrupt and unexpected change of mood. I had intended to tell him about the Big Fellow but now there didn’t seem any point.

‘If you’ve got something to say, just say it!’ he said, then realized what he’d said. And the way it must have sounded.

‘Do you hear me, Joey?’ he laughed then, wiping his hands. ‘I think I must be working too hard!’

It was only just then that I thought of the pies and felt the blood coursing up towards my face, in that way that always happens when you know you’ve been talking too much.

‘
Well? Well
?’ I kept hearing him say, like he was standing at the far end of the bar. Except that he was standing right in front of me.

‘
Well? Well
?’ was all I could hear.

Someone came in then, and he turned and walked away. I stood there looking as he chatted to them behind his hand. Then the two of them turned and looked in my direction. They gave me the very same look Boyle Henry had done. That first time. I didn’t know what to think then. I was almost on the verge of calling for a pie, managing to pull back just at the very last second.

My head was buzzing as I fell out into the street. To make matters worse, I caught a glimpse of Jacy coming out of the Fuck Me and had to duck into the bookies in order to avoid her. My heart was pounding as I heard her going past. She was dressed in a cheap imitation leather raincoat, carrying a bag that was swinging all right, but it wasn’t the patchwork shoulder one you saw her with in the seventies. It was the type you might see your mother with.

Or anyone. Just then I saw Boyle Henry pull up and the door of his car swing open. It was a new one, with smoked-glass windows. When I
looked again she had already climbed in and, indistinctly, through the smoked glass I could see him leaning forward to give her a kiss. I winced.

‘Do you want to place a bet or not?’ the bookie kept saying to me. I didn’t know how long he’d been saying it. I couldn’t stop thinking:
Where did she go, that Californian girl who surfed in the sun? Where could she possibly have —
?

‘Do you hear me, Tallon?’ he said again, and just to keep him quiet I put a bet on some fucking horse.

‘There you are!’ he said as he handed me the slip, then smiled as if all was well.

If only he knew
, I thought to myself as I opened the door on to the blinding street.

I didn’t sleep very much that night, tossing and turning and thinking of the bar, with Austie standing wiping a glass before looking up and saying: ‘
That’s him
!’ as he pointed at me sitting there, reading Hermann Hesse. Except it was a Hermann Hesse novel without any words. The pages were completely empty. When I heard Austie saying that, I started flicking frantically through it in the hope that some print might magically appear. But it didn’t. The pages remained obstinately blank. Then Austie wiped the glass again and looked up. Now
his
face was blank. With just a slit for a mouth, which piercingly but insouciantly remarked: ‘Oh, it’s him all right. It’s Joey Tallon. He used to work here, a long time ago. Ah yes. But that’s what it was — a long, long time ago.’ He left down the glass and looked up again. But this time he was different. He looked like Charles Manson. But not the good one, the gentle gardener. The other one. There was only one thing for it, I realized, as I shifted about in the sodden, tossed bed.

And that was to do some writing.
That will keep me busy
, I thought. But I couldn’t manage to get the pen to stay steady on the page, so I put on my clothes and went off out to the reservoir. I was on the verge of tears when I heard Charles Manson’s voice — the sinister one — ever so gently stirring among the leaves. It said: ‘I’m way up here, Joey! How are you doing? Are you OK? You don’t look too good! You don’t look so fucking good, man! You look like shit! You look like hell!’

That was as much as I could take. ‘You may think so,’ I said as I tried to locate where I thought he might be, far beyond the massive bank of cloud, ‘but that is where you’d be wrong, my friend! You see, I’m feeling just fine! Because today’s the day!’

And it was. It was the day of days and nothing would stop me making it special. So I fought with myself far down deep inside and said: ‘Now don’t be dumb! Don’t go screwing it up!’

Except that I wouldn’t be because, after an invigorating draught of the fresh clean air, I was already starting to feel OK. I listened acutely to the leaves as they rustled, and who did I hear coming through on the breeze? Was it Manson, he of the wild hairy mane and the crazed, glass eyes? No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t Charlie Manson the ruthless psychotic hippy killer. It was The Seeker. My old pal Eamon Byrne. And he sounded so peaceful. More content than ever I’d remembered him.
Up there in the precious harbour
, I thought as I found myself smiling.

Then I went off to get me some breakfast. All the better to fortify myself for the long day’s shooting ahead. It was going to be great. I could feel it now in my bones. What sleep did I need, I asked myself. Being up all night imbued you with a kind of alertness, the kind of nervous energy that could only improve one’s work, ensuring that you missed not a single detail.

It was a tremendous feeling when you realized that. Aware now as you pulled on your ‘shooting gear’ — the waistcoat and black polo neck, plus the eyepiece strung around your neck, of course! — that everything in the end had come good, regardless of whatever sweats or revisitings of old anxieties there might have been. Not to mention ridiculous dreams about Austie No-Face.

‘I must tell him about it sometime,’ I laughed as I strode towards the college, thinking of him laughing whenever he heard about it, tossing back his head as he wiped another glass, going: ‘Oh now! Me flogging whiskey without a fucking face! Can you imagine it, Joey? Can you just imagine it now?’

Which indeed I could, no problem at all. For right at that moment I could imagine almost anything. But not in a bad way. Absolutely not. In a really terrific way, in fact, that made everything once again seem possible. Yes, we were back on track, I thought to myself, and as I strolled through the gates I just could not stop myself indulging, for that minute or so before it was time to start working, in the idea of a certain Joseph, now a celebrated film-maker, fêted internationally, with his name in lights over the cinema facades of the world. His movies written up in all the trade papers, waving to fans from some balcony or other.

‘I’m going to put Scotsfield on the map!’ I told the kids in my pre-shoot pep talk. ‘You wait and see if I don’t! Yes, kids, this is gonna be the one! And every one of us is part of it!
The Animal Pit
! A major motion picture, produced and directed by Joseph Tallon, and distributed by Wonderful Pictures!’

The Big Fellow scenes, once we’d begun in earnest — there’d been a few technical hitches — started rolling like clockwork. The student who played him — a different one this time, a stouter chap — looked really good. I got him to dress up in his grandfather’s hat and suit — a fabulous, wide-lapelled brown chalkstripe. ‘
Give me a smile
!’ I barked through the loudhailer, and started the camera rolling. He looked absolutely great in the viewfinder, tipping back his fedora and waving, with this fiercely hideous grin on his face.

‘
Look out, you fuckers
!’ he shouts out suddenly. ‘
He’s the buddy you don’t wanna see
!’ then he goes and strangles one of his classmates, shaking him like a puppet.

‘
Louder! Louder! Gurgle louder
!’ I cried at the top of my voice until I was practically blue in the face, at one point jumping up and down. The student he ‘killed’ was kind of blue as well, but what a performance!

‘
Jesus Christ
!’ he says as he tumbled away. ‘I thought for a minute you were really going to do it.’

‘Excellent,’ I said, ‘really excellent,’ nodding to myself as I swung the loudhailer.

The scene after that also went very well. It was the part of the movie where the Peace Rally’s just started and the Big Fellow is making his way through the crowd, in those final few seconds before the bomb goes off.

(The situation here — now! With erstwhile archivist and general Man Friday Bonehead, right here in Dunroamin’, this fabulous, rambling country retreat of ours!)

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
!’