The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life Page 5

  You know you’re feeling good about yourself, if, when you sit on the tube, the people around you look good. You sit there and everyone glows, their faces alive with hope and simple dignity. The courage of a daily life lived, hope for the future, love of family, the belief that somehow in some way it all adds up to something and is worth it. It shows.

  Other times it isn’t like that. This is one of those other times. Everyone looks like I feel: yellowish-greenish, blank-eyed, spotty, lank-haired. Misproportioned, broken people, all of us, sinners and castoffs. It shows.

  This is the last train on the Central Line. I’m sitting with a romantic comedy on my knee but I can’t concentrate. There’s a guy sitting across from me trapped in semi-sleep, his head drooping with the rocking of the train, lower and lower, until he begins to fall and pulls himself up short. But he never quite wakes up, and so he never really sleeps. Next to him is a sick-looking girl. Farther down the carriage is an Eastern European refugee begging for change, her baby in her arms. They’re very well organized. You can see them gathering in an alley off Oxford Street to arrange the shifts. In my pocket are the pills, rattling quietly with every step. I’m finished. An unsmiling doctor has taken away my youth. I am a dried-up sexless drone, a clapped-out pump feebly fluttering in my passionless chest. They’re right, all of them. I should go home. I’ve had it. I’m finished.

  I’ve always been able to rise above it. Whatever it is. I’ve always been known for my unflappability, my sangfroid, my perspective on things. I’ve always seen life as the greatest adventure of all. That was the spirit I always tried to communicate to Sophie too. But I’ve lost it now. I’ve lost the spirit. I’ve lost the drive. I’ve lost the perspective. I just feel old and tired and useless and even afraid. I’ve always had the courage to look life right down the barrel, with a little smile. Not anymore. I’m shaking in my shoes. This is beyond a joke. This is serious stuff.

  My Bundeswehr boots are truly in blitzkrieg mode now. Coming out of the Oxford Street tube I’ve hit my stride and I’m moving on through. It’s late. Shops all shut and the place has shut down. No cars, no one on the footpaths. London like this reminds me of downtown Auckland any weeknight.

  EXT. LONDON STREETS—NIGHT.

  HIS BUNDESWEHR BOOTS POUND THE LONDON PAVEMENT. HE’S HIT HIS STRIDE NOW AND HE MOVES RAPIDLY ALONG EMPTY DARKENED STREETS. A NAKED MANNEQUIN STANDS POSED IN A SHOPWINDOW. THE FOOTPATH GLISTENS IN THE LIGHT DRIZZLE THAT FALLS, DROPLETS GHOSTING AROUND THE STREET LAMPS. HE PAUSES TO HITCH UP HIS UNDERPANTS.

  I spend so much time in other people’s half-baked screen fantasies the boundaries tend to dissolve. Sometimes I feel like I’m not living my life at all, I’m in the straight-to-cable movie of it. And indeed, if life does imitate art, it imitates the bad scripts, the ones that don’t add up, that make no sense, bristling with dei ex machinis, unmotivated action and arbitrary events. Help, help, oh, help. Am trapped in endless Wednesday-afternoon screening of cliché, which happens to be my life with only half a bag of peanuts and no interval in sight. The story so far: clapped-out stressed-out fucked-over midlife disaster, lost and alone, blunders into furniture with fly undone. We all larfed.

  FLASHBACK:

  SOPHIE LAUGHING, HER HEAD FLUNG BACK, HER THROAT EXPOSED. FREDERICK TAKES HER IN HIS ARMS.

  Frederick

  Darling, let’s have a baby.

  SOPHIE STOPS LAUGHING. HER FACE GOES COLD.

  Actually it wasn’t quite like that but that captures the essence.

  Yes, indeed, we’ve just had a major plot development, a real biggie this one. Ex-wife of our hero has become pregnant to Hollywood überstud. A plot development that will probably fuel the action for goodness knows how long, flinging our hapless hero into yet another round of nerveless spastic behavior masquerading as a plan of action. But—but, but, but, here’s the wisdom of the script reader: we’ve just had a major plot development, but will it actually lead anywhere? In art, yes. But for Life itself, as for the fourth-rate bottom-of-the-barrel script, the answer is the same—we just can’t say yet. And there’s another thing we don’t know. This is the one that sends chills down my back. Something that, in art, would be well established by now: what’s the genre? I’m hoping for romantic comedy, but there are other, darker, possibilities after all.

  HE SWINGS LEFT INTO UPPER REGENT STREET, KEEPING A WEATHER EYE OUT FOR VIOLENT CRIMINALS. STOPS AT A QUAINT (GEORGIAN?) BLOCK OF FLATS AND PUSHES THE BUTTON FOR NUMBER TWO. HE CHECKS HIS WATCH. HE SHUFFLES NERVOUSLY. THE INTERCOM CRACKLES INTO LIFE.

  Frederick

  Hi, it’s me, Frederick.

  THE DOOR BUZZES IN PLACE OF REPLY. HE SKIPS UP THE FOUR MARBLE STEPS AND SHE’S WAITING IN THE DOORWAY IN JEANS AND T-SHIRT, HALF-LEANING ON THE WALL.

  “Hey, come on in.” She turns and heads for the kitchen. I follow, closing the door behind me. It’s a great flat. Big and well appointed. Tamintha explained once how it really belongs to a friend, but he spends half the year in Hong Kong. It’s complicated. I forget exactly. She has shares in his business. They’re married. He’s gay. Immigration. Accommodation. Something like that. Anyway, it’s a nice flat. In the kitchen, Tamintha waves a slice of bread triumphantly. “Vogel’s!”

  “Wow, where’d you get that?”

  “Sainsbury’s. Honey?”

  “Ta.”

  She rolls a joint while the toast is toasting. While she rolls, I watch her eyebrows. You could imagine them propping up a cathedral somewhere. She has her good features. She flicks her hair off her forehead. The toast pops and Tamintha spreads honey, lazily, in thick golden circles. Nice executive wrist action.

  After Sophie left, Tamintha put me up for a couple of weeks. I didn’t want to stay in the flat. I didn’t want to be alone. I stayed in the guest room just down the hall. We’d smoke a joint, eat some toast, talk. I didn’t leave this place for days on end. I’d read scripts, read Empire, read Cinema Papers or Vanity Fair or FHM or Vogue or Harper’s, or Dostoyevsky. I’d go for long walks in my Bundeswehr boots. Then I found Mrs. Traversham and gradually I began to pick up the threads of my old life. I’d go to movies. I’d ring Channel Four. Daydream. Have meetings with other no-hopers in cafes and pubs and bars, discussing projects no one had any real interest in, least of all me. I’d ring Channel Four again. I’d think about getting a real job, like maybe taxi driving. Those black-cab guys are amazing. Imagine it: a whole city in your head. I’d get drunk. I’d run out of money. I’d ring my folks. I’d ask them for more money. They’d send more money. I’d buy more clothes.

  That’s my life. Horrible but true. A lot of people think it’s easy having rich parents. Let me tell you, it isn’t. It can seriously stunt your growth. Not that I’m complaining, you understand. I mean, I know I can’t complain. In fact that’s the hardest thing of all. You can’t complain. What sort of a life is it when you can’t even complain? I want to complain. But who’s going to give me the time of day? Who’s going to listen to a forty-two-year-old rich kid complaining, in a world of child poverty and war and drugs and disease? No one. Even I’m not going to listen. Which, speaking cinematically, is the kiss of death. Here I am, the unwilling hero of the film of my life-of-undetermined-genre, and I’m not even a sympathetic character.

  I have to give it up. This is the thing. If I were poor and struggling and somehow getting by, at least I’d get some sympathy. And God knows, we all need sympathy. Yes, I don’t know where or how exactly but somehow I know I’m looking at a new life. Today is the first day. Etc. No more handouts. From now on I take control.

  Sophie is pregnant. Sophie has a child.

  We take our toast and tea through to the lounge. I sit on the pastel-blue sofa, which is comfortable but almost impossible to get out of. It’s very low and very soft and my view is blocked by my own knees. My Bundeswehr boots feel like overkill now, but I don’t want to take them off. Tamintha puts on a CD. I think it’s Miles Davis. Uh-uh. The honey and toast is on the coffee table. I take a bite.

 
“Careful, it’s heads.” She hands me the joint, curls up at the end of the sofa, feet tucked under, facing me.

  “Careful? At my age?” I cough violently.

  “There, there, old man, have a sip of tea.”

  I settle back and look at the ceiling. I know this ceiling well. During those three weeks I spent a lot of time staring at it. There’s a crack along the center line and to one side a very faint stain that looks like Australia. Why do stains always look like Australia and never like New Zealand? It’s so typical of Australia to hog the limelight like that. I hate Australia and all things Australian. It’s so unfair. It’s just like Canada and the US. I love Canadians. I also love the Irish and the Scottish and all other peoples of small countries who are condescended to and made the butts of jokes by large neighboring arrogant countries that sometimes even invade and occupy them and cause terrible social dislocation that they then have the temerity to turn around and poke fun at them for. (Sometime in the next five hundred years I just know that Australia’s going to have a crack at us. The kangaroo-skin jackboot of Canberra will descend.) I’m also reasonably fond of the Scandinavians although some of them are a abit right wing. I also, incidentally, have enormous postcolonial guilt, but that’s another story.

  Tamintha holds out her hand for the joint and I pass it. She inhales, holds it, passes it back and watches me closely. “Have you had any thoughts about the job?”

  “Actually, no. But I have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Is Sophie pregnant?” I inhale, pass and hold.

  Tamintha sighs. “So she rang you at last?”

  “No, she didn’t ring me.”

  “Damn. She’s such a naughty, naughty girl. I told her to ring you. I told her you’d find out. I wanted to tell you, really I did, but she swore me to secrecy, and I thought it would be best if you found out from her, direct. She said she wanted to call you herself. She wasn’t sure how to break the news.”

  “It’s no big deal of course. I was just curious.” My boots now feel way too big. They take up half the room. I stand up. With difficulty.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m just going to the kitchen.” I start to move. My Bundeswehr boots are Bundeswehr boats and the corridor seems longer than I remember it. But I get there. I roll up my sleeves while the water runs. I stand facing the sink. It’s a very nice kitchen, this. The brass pots on the wall glow in my peripheral vision. The sink seems to be taking a very long time to fill. I realize I haven’t put in the plug. I put in the plug. She was right about this dope, it’s very strong. The thing is, I’ve had a little shock and I need time to think. I need to formulate a concrete policy and make a plan of action. One thing we know now, for sure. Sophie is definitely pregnant. There’s now no room for doubt. Sophie is with child.

  Tamintha pokes her head around the door. Her eyes widen in horror. “No! Frederick, please, no, stop!”

  I ignore her. They say no, but deep down they always mean yes.

  Tamintha folds her arms. “Well, I’m not helping, that’s for sure.”

  “Nobody asked you to.” I turn off the tap. A lone soap bubble rises, bobbling gently, then bursts. I pick up a plate.

  “So, how did you find out? If Sophie didn’t ring you?”

  “From Brad.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A mutual friend.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

  “Very few have. Er, did I just wash this?”

  “Oh, leave ’em, for Chrissake.” Tamintha reaches over and takes the plate from my hand, puts it on the bench. “Frederick,” she says.

  “Tamintha,” I say.

  Sophie is pregnant. I lean toward Tamintha. Her face is getting bigger. Her eyes are dark, bottomless pools. Sad pools. I’m sad. She’s sad. We’re all sad. Our lips collide slowly, enormous, dry and rubbery, two bouncy castles. A click of tooth on tooth. Two sad faces, striving for purchase. Well, that settles it. I am now kissing Tamintha. I don’t know why I’m doing this. This is insane. Sophie is pregnant.

  The bedroom is blue. There’s a blue lampshade, and blue covers on the bed. Tamintha leads me to the bed. I can’t do this. She is holding my hand. I feel dizzy. I feel hot and cold and greasy all over. Tamintha has led me to the bed. I sink, slowly, slowly, to the blue covers. Her eyes are two pools of sadness. Huge globes, empty and dark and sad. I see nothing.

  “Frederick? Are you okay?”

  “Tell you what, I’m just going to use the bathroom.”

  The corridor is now doing distinctly unpleasant things. It just can’t settle on a length and stick to it. Just when you think it’s over, it adds extra feet, and then just when you think you’ve got yards to go, you’re standing in the bathroom.

  I lock the door. Bathrooms are safe places. Hygienic surfaces, locks on the doors, and a window overlooking the truth. I place my feet thus and thus, taking position. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it again. That really dumb thing. I look in the mirror.

  I want to go home. I feel about six inches tall and I want to go home. All the way home. Sophie said that once. “I want to go home.” That was during her year in the wilderness. The year she didn’t get any work. Her annus horribilis. We all have them, even the common folk. That year, Sophie depended on me utterly. I was her rock. I was her foundation. Without me she’d never have made it. I’d come home and there she’d be on the couch in T-shirt and socks, watching daytime TV. Day after day, daytime TV. What a terrible thing is daytime TV. One thing I have never done in my life and will never do is watch daytime TV. But that’s how low she sank in that year. It was the year she hit rock bottom. I’m not really naturally a bottom-dwelling type, I tend to float, but Sophie has a lot of lead in her pencil. She’s a sinker. When she goes down, she goes down. I remember the night that she bottomed out. I remember it very clearly. I came home, it was about ten o’clock. I found Sophie on the couch. She had a bottle of gin in her lap. Tears, T-shirt, socks. The TV was on.

  “Oh man,” I said. “You watched it, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  “I told you not to watch it. Did she win?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, shit. I told you not to watch.” I switched the TV off. She’d been watching the Academy Awards. That year a young, naïve, slightly overweight Australian actress trying to make it in Hollywood had been nominated for her performance as a young, naïve, slightly overweight Australian actress trying to make it in Hollywood and she’d just been awarded best female. (She subsequently went on to a meteoric career across the Atlantic.) It was the part Sophie had turned down the year before. They offered it to her first, and she turned it down.

  “I want to go home.” I hardly recognized her voice. And I have to admit I was shocked. I’d never heard talk like that before. For nine months, nine long months of silence, no interviews, no jobs, no auditions, no nothing, she’d stuck it out. But that was the last straw.

  The mistake most people make about pep talks is they think they have to vary them. They keep looking for fresh ways of motivating and encouraging. You don’t need to do that. Find the formula and stick to it. But what you do need to work on is delivery. The delivery is all. Passion, commitment and sincerity. That’s what counts.

  “Sam Neill,” I said. “Jane Campion. Lucy Lawless. Russell Crowe. Peter Jackson. Kerry Fox. Temuera Morrison. Cliff Curtis. Lee Tamahori. Lots of other people I can’t think of right now but whom I would certainly mention if I could. What do all these wonderful people have in common?”

  She sighs.

  “Tell me. Look me in the eye, and tell me.”

  Sophie rolls her eyes. “They’re successful New Zealanders in film.”

  “Do you think these people ever had moments of doubt or uncertainty in their lives?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And in those moments of despair, do you thi
nk they gave up? Do you think that’s how they got where they got? Because they gave up?”

  She hangs her head. “No.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

  “No.”

  “Now say it like you mean it.”

  “No. No, they didn’t.”

  “What do you think people said the first time A. J. Hackett ever suggested it might be a good idea to jump off a bridge with a piece of elastic tied to your legs? What do you think people said when Sir Edmund Hillary said he was going to climb Everest?”

  “There are some New Zealanders who fail, you know.”

  “Name one. Name just one.”

  “I can’t, they’re nameless. That’s what failing is. Being nameless. They’re just failed nameless faceless tiny little lost New Zealanders floating like scum on the surface of the planet. Like me. Nameless New Zealanders like me. I’m going to end up a tired old nameless bitter New Zealander with no money and no career.”

  “Well, okay.” (Now, here comes the crunch. Pay close attention. You have to be realistic. You have to include an admission of the possibility of failure.) “What would you rather be? Fifty years from now? A tired old nameless bitter New Zealander with no career who never tried, never gave it her best shot, or a tired old nameless bitter New Zealander with no career who gave it her best shot? Who can, at least, stand in front of the mirror, look herself in the eye, and say, ‘Sophie, you gave it your best shot’? Well? Which would you rather be?”

  She sniffs. I hand her a box of tissues. She blows her nose. “I had a call from Simon today.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got an audition.”

  “But that’s great! Why the long face?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not great. It’s an audition. Up until now it’s always been meetings. A meeting with the director to discuss the role. Now it’s auditions. I’ve been downgraded.” She chucks a script, which has been lying on the coffee table, across the room and bursts into tears. “And besides, I just can’t do it. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t do it anymore, I’ve lost all my drive and confidence and I can’t face an audition and I want to go home.”