From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (31 page)

He had pretended all the while that he was a wildlife cameraman. He had filmed sheep and magpies, which were plentiful, and rabbits, which were not, and then he had run out of wildlife. He filmed a clump of mushrooms under a pine tree (plus some unidentifiable insects). And several piles of sheep poo (flies hanging around). And the river, where there would be fish, he supposed, but they were keeping their heads down. Eventually, he had sat down
beside a willow and concluded that wildlife cinema was not for him. It was even duller than television golf, if that were possible.

He had spoken that thought to the bracing country air, just to hear his own voice in the loudly silent outdoors, to prove that he was really there.

Then he had gone back to the house and woken Ren to tell her about the experience, about the strangeness of being completely by himself in the wide, wide outdoors.

And even then he had known that Gran and Granpa were only a few metres away.

On the High Street he was never alone. And that was the way Barney liked it. The only way he could imagine it. It was a fact. There was always someone to hang around with. There was always something happening, even if the happening was more or less inactive, like lying round with Ren – or Jack, or Benjamin – and debating the relative merits of the Tintin books, or the time travel in
Twelve Monkeys
, or chocolate-covered liquorice as opposed to liquorice-covered chocolate.

And if there wasn’t something happening he had the power to make it happen by dreaming up a film and dragooning everyone into it.
C’mon
.

Parents were occasionally demanding, of course, and school was an inconvenience, but the really good thing about adults was they took care of all the basics: food, clothes, money and video cameras. They left you free to concentrate on vital matters like thethrillingalchemy – or the unaccountable and absorbing business of hand-delivered envelopes apparently addressed to oneself.

YOU.

Barney paused
Treasure Island
. He removed the earphones and surveyed the classroom. Everyone reading obediently. Ms Bloodworth was absorbed in her own book. The cover showed an angel in an orange dress and black gumboots. Her arms were outstretched.

A most uncomfortable thought pushed its way to the surface of his mind.

He pictured Obi and Girl in their Post Office cave. The little homemade nest. The huddle of their possessions. No adults. No school. Making their zines and their games. Answerable to no one.
Molto
great, Barney had thought in the days after his first visit, and again when he had filmed them drawing.

But.

How would it be to have no food waiting for you when you needed to eat?

To gather your clothes furtively, under threat of arrest?

To sleep in a boarded-up public building, on a bumpy bed of cushions?

To hide among strangers?

To draw pictures, make stories and games – odd, marvellous things – but have no one to show them to, to approve of them extravagantly, to tell you how marvellous you were?

We liked your life.

We should have left, but we couldn’t stop watching.

Barney looked out the window at the empty playground equipment, the climbing wall and monkey bars, the volleyball net and hopscotch squares. It would all be swarming with kids in ten minutes’ time.

He was such a lunkhead. And a lummox. Possibly even a drongo. And a drip. (Terms of derision favoured by Albert and Mum, respectively.)

And maybe, really, truly, a megalomaniac.

Barney put his head in his hands and pulled fistfuls of his hair, just quietly, not to distract anyone’s reading.

He had been so enthralled – in an anxious sort of way – by the Street adventurers’ flinty personalities, their cagey ways. He had been so impressed by their artistic abilities, their pictures and games, their provocative play. Most of all, he had been so incredibly
pleased to hear that the envelopes had been an attempt to make friends with him and Ren. He had been kind of dizzy with the pride of it. It was all he could think about after The First Post Office Interview.

But now the things Obi and Girl had said and done sounded quite differently in his head.

We couldn’t stop watching
.

If he thought about it hard, if he really
thought
, if he stood outside of himself and viewed himself and the Street from another angle (Barney imagined another camera fixed on the view) he could see quite clearly that watching his, Barney Kettle’s life – the Street-owning, Writer/Director,
confidenceandpurposeandvisionandaction
-driven, instruction-shouting, witlessly happy, megalomaniacal life he enjoyed – might be amusing and entertaining enough. A+ viewing. Up to a point.

But,
We couldn’t stop watching
, he heard now, had quite another meaning beneath its eager surface. There was another story behind the words. Another untold story.

Barney leaned back in his chair and sought the reliable vista of the Port Hills. It was always there. An orienting landmark.

But despite the hills and the solidity of his desk and the dependable presence of his classmates and teacher, he felt almost wobbly – in his stomach, in his legs, in his lummoxy head.

He was remembering when he had been best friends with Wilton Maxwell and had gone often to his house to play. Wilton and his family had once lived in an apartment in the South Precinct but now had a mansion on the west side of town.

Wilton’s house had been like Ali Baba’s cave. Everything in it was shiny, even glittery; some things appeared to be made of actual gold. Wilton had a widescreen television, his own laptop, a milkshake machine, a dishwasher, and an entire room just for his Lego structures, which were large and eye-watering but could only be touched by Wilton.

The Port Hills melted from Barney’s view. He was seeing Wilton’s gleaming red bike, his tree hut and trampoline, he was recalling Wilton’s holiday visit to Disneyland. He was remembering exactly his feelings whenever he went to Wilton’s house. Greed and envy. He had
wanted
everything that Wilton had. The bike, the widescreen television, the room full of Lego. He had even wanted the dishwasher. He had certainly wanted the waffle maker, and the packaged waffle mixture, a kind that would never be permitted in the Kettle household.

Barney had liked Wilton’s life. For a while there, he couldn’t get enough of it.

He had never thought of his own life being enviable. But if he considered it now from the point of view of Obi and Girl, he could see it might seem very good indeed. Enviable.

Reliable adults, food galore, plenty of fun. Nothing to fear. An entire street of people who looked out for you. Adults who took care of things and left you time to play in the world, to make your
own
world. To dress up and race around. To laugh and shout and have enjoyable displays of temperament. To be kids. But also, to be taken seriously.

Of
course
Obi and Girl liked his and Ren’s life. They had liked the look of it so much they had wanted to find out every little detail about it – by stalking and spying, through Twenty Questions. Blimey, they had even wanted to know Mum and Dad’s middle names! Barney had thought nothing of it really; it was just all part of that eerie night.

But now he remembered the longing in their questions. He heard their offhand remarks again. He heard the sharp notes and undertones.

Barney still believed that Obi and Girl had wanted to be friends. Just as he, Barney, had wanted to be friends with Wilton Maxwell. To be part of his life and his good fortune.

But Obi and Girl weren’t six years old. They knew that it
couldn’t be a real friendship, or that it could only be fleeting. They had known quite well that the King and Queen of High Street lived in a sealed-off, fortunate universe; that they, Obi and Girl were drifters, unanchored and unnoticed, who could only ever visit, who could look and listen and taste and touch, but only for a very brief time.

That would be hard to take, wouldn’t it? That would certainly be a bitter pill – as Dad described taxes: something unpalatable that you were obliged to swallow.

That would certainly make you feel less than friendly, despite your yearnings. And of course, it could make you not
like
the objects of your envious gaze. Oh yes.

He must talk to Ren.

When the lunch bell rang, Barney took his camera bag and backpack and went to find Ren. She was in the cafeteria with Lovie and Henrietta. They were queuing for iced fruit smoothies, which were a new thing at Kate Sheppard. Barney hadn’t tried one yet. He was not a fan of queues.

‘Hey Barney,’ said Lovie, ‘did Marcel really say a whole sentence on film?’

‘Yes,’ said Barney, ‘but it was a one-word sentence.’

Ren beamed, smugly.

Lovie and Henrietta groaned.

‘What was the word?’

‘Wait,
wait
,’ said Ren. ‘Barney, you say the word and then you two have to work out what the question was. Just to make it more interesting.’

‘Interesting for you,’ said Henrietta, with the air of one who was usually on the losing end of such diversions.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Barney said to Ren.

Henrietta and Lovie sighed ostentatiously.

‘About Suit’s interview,’ said Barney, plucking that from
nowhere.
Although
, as it happened, there was something he’d been –

‘What’s the one-word sentence, first?’ said Lovie.

‘Grease,’ said Barney.
C’mon
, he said to Ren with his eyes.

‘We’ll get yours,’ said Henrietta.

Barney walked quickly in the direction of the benches on the far side of the monkey bars.

‘What’s the
hurry
?’ said Ren. ‘And why have you got your camera bag?’

They had not walked to school together. Ren had gone earlier with Henrietta and Lovie. She was proving something to them, she said. What? That she did not spend all her time with her brother.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Barney. But before he could explain, Ren pulled a face.

‘You’re going to the Post Office,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Barney. How did she
do
that? ‘They’re leaving today. I wasn’t going to tell you. But then I thought I would. Since I usually tell you everything.’

He gave Ren his best silly eye flutter.

‘Well, Barney,’ said Ren in her Ms Temple voice. ‘I think you will find that life does not always organise itself precisely the way you like it.’

Ms Temple had said exactly this when Barney had protested his desk placement last year.

‘Whatever,’ said Ren.

Barney was surprised. He was sure she would protest more.

But, now, Ren sat down on the bench. Barney sat down too. He took a big swig from his water bottle. Eeew. Lukewarm. He was actually looking forward to rain. It was coming at last. Mum had read out the weather forecast this morning.

‘No more envelopes,’ said Ren, like someone had died.

‘No,’ said Barney. He thought of that first envelope, how he had pulled it from under the iron table leg. The way the word
YOU had flared and boomed. The inyourfaceness of it. It was almost an accusation, now that he really thought about it. (He was thinking more than usual today. It was exhausting.) Like a pointing finger.

‘I can’t really believe it,’ said Ren. ‘It’s like I can’t remember life before the zines.’

‘Me neither. It’s been awesome.’

‘I don’t not like them,’ said Ren, suddenly. ‘Not really.’

Barney watched Benjamin and Jack, Edward and JohnLeo coming out of the cafeteria. They all carried iced smoothies.

‘It’s just that – they’re so
different
. They weren’t what I expected.’

‘I didn’t really mind that,’ said Barney. ‘Not in the end. It’s been
interesting
.’

‘Sort of,’ said Ren. ‘But sort of sad.’

‘But also interesting.’

‘You like weird much more than me,’ said Ren.

It was true. He did. How excellent!

‘But you like syllogisms and they’re beyond weird.’

Ren giggled.

‘Maybe they don’t really like us,’ admitted Barney.

‘Yes,’ said Ren.

‘You can see why.’

‘Yes.’

A small film began inside Barney’s head. Obi and Girl, invisible, on the sideline of the
Feliz Navidad
set; in Comic Strip, beside the La-Z-Boy where Barney lolled; at the Mediterranean, in Mulberry, in Bambi’s, in Coralie’s, everywhere that Barney and Ren were, everywhere they walked and talked. And all the time, watching and weighing and wanting …

For a moment, he wondered if he did want to go to the Post Office today, after all.

But.

‘I just want to see them once more,’ he said. ‘See if they’ll talk properly about the zines.’

‘Bet they don’t,’ said Ren. ‘And anyway, you already know that Girl did the drawings. And probably they’re not even true?’

‘Well,’ said Barney, standing up. ‘I can say goodbye, anyway.’

‘What did you tell Ms Bloodworth?’ asked Ren.

‘Pick-ups, Street, filling gaps,’ said Barney, breezily. ‘I was vague.’

‘Barney Kettle,’ said Ren-slash-Ms-Temple, ‘your
nerve
leaves me gasping.’

‘See you at the Sacred Fig,’ he said.

Barney was at the school gate when he remembered the thing about Suit he’d meant to ask Ren. Damn.

He’d ask her tonight.

Barney thought about
The Untold Story
as he walked.

His
magnum opus
. So far. He was confident there would be successive
magnum opuses
in his great and famous future. But he could imagine a biographer in that future assessing
The Untold Story
as a decisive moment in the Kettle oeuvre. (Oeuvre was a word beloved by Hal and Felix. Barney had consulted Dad on its pronunciation: erv-rah, apparently.)

Filmmaking really was the gift that kept on giving. There were so many excellent parts to it: planning (almost the best part: the entire, as yet unmade, film played out in your head, a perfect thing, unblemished by reality). Actual filming (giddy joy, teeth-gnashing despair). Rushes (a bit the same). Editing (in the Cutting Room: a bittersweet period where you could both wreak revenge – delete bad performances;
and
suffer great loss – delete cherished scenes that were actually redundant). And then there was Re-living (a semi-permanent stage that occurred before, during and after all the others: your mind’s eye re-watching all the best bits of planning, filming, rushes and editing – and the première – whenever you had an idle moment).