The Man In The Seventh Row

by Brian Pendreigh

  Roy and Anna do not talk. She is enthralled by the film. He watches familiar scene follow familiar scene, each line of dialogue suggesting itself to him before it is delivered by the actor on screen. More and more men join Wallace as he makes his way to Stirling and a rendezvous with history. No bridge in the film. Just Stirling. Audiences in Beverly Boulevard care nothing for an absent bridge. What they will remember is the scale of the thing, the thousands of men, the horses, the colour, the spectacle, the passion, and Wallace's men with their staves, twice the length of a man, with sharpened points, laid out in front of them. The English knights charge, their horses thundering across the plain, towards the line of Scottish infantry.

  Wallace urges his men to wait. His hair is braided, his face masked by blue woad right down one side, like a Swedish football fan. The horses speed towards the Scots.

  'Hold ...' cries Wallace.

  The faces of the men around him are set with determination beneath their war paint.

  'Hold ...'

  The horses get nearer and nearer, bringing with them the prospect of death. At the last minute the Scots grab the staves to form a lethal barricade over which English knights and horses are fatally thrown by their own momentum.

  Each face around Wallace seems frozen for a split second. The big, burly, bearded friend from Wallace's childhood. A curly haired man with a brow furrowed by too much hope and too much loss. A dark-haired young man with his teeth bared. And another, whose features are partially hidden beneath the flash of blue lightning painted on his face. The audience is thrown into the midst of the bloody battle. Swords swing through flesh. And there, in one corner of the screen, in one little private part of the mayhem, is the man with the blue flash of lightning on his face. His blue eyes twinkle in the sunshine and look, for just a moment, straight at Roy and Anna. Then he is gone. Roy saw him. Anna probably did not.

  The camera follows Wallace through the gore. The clash of steel against steel, then a scream as steel meets flesh. Bodies tumble and in an opening, suddenly ... the man with the lightning on his face. He grits his teeth as he raises his sword, two-handed over his shoulder. With a terrible shout, heard above the clamour of the combat, he swings it across the body of his adversary in one single motion. The viewer sees only the victim's back but can imagine the blow must have cut the man almost in half. Blood splashes the camera.

  Anna's fingers grip Roy's arm for a second. The swordsman is momentarily hidden from view behind the English soldier. When he falls, for a moment the viewer's gaze is square upon his slayer's face, perspiration gathering on his brow and running down his cheeks into the dimple on his chin. And then he is gone.

  Roy is unsure what Anna may have seen. The battle moves on. The camera follows Wallace. The man with the lightning on his face is lost in the fight. Anna leans towards Roy. He can smell the sweet, enticing bouquet of her breath again.

  'I see what you mean,' she says. 'You do look like Kirk Douglas.'

  Every morning at four o'clock Seamus shook Roy awake and in military formation they would proceed through a series of tents that would transform them from middle-aged Scottish civilians into medieval Scottish soldiers. Long queues waited sleepily at the mouth of each tent. The first issued plaids to the Scots, Italian chain-mail and armour to the English. No one wanted to be English. In the second tent their faces were painted. Roy suggested the lightning design himself. The make-up girl looked dubious, but someone muttered something about 'primal forces of nature' and his face was duly daubed with lightning. The third tent handed out hair and wigs, but Roy's hair was long anyway at that time and it had been dark brown. Some of the Irish soldiers who were there as extras had very short hair and Roy always thought you could spot them in the film, crew cuts with the odd long braid dropping curiously over one red ear.

  The Irish soldiers were there only for the big battle scenes. Roy and Seamus had been with the film since the start in Scotland. Seamus Wallace knew the people in the Wallace Clan Trust and he was a professional historian. He was there through the trust, both as a historical advisor and an extra. And Roy was there because he was a historian too, so Seamus had told the trust, which was not exactly true but not entirely false.

  'You're a sort of historian,' Seamus insisted, 'You're an archaeologist.'

  Roy looked doubtful.

  'Well, you are the biggest film fan I know and you'd like to see a film getting made, wouldn't you?'

  They stood on the Curragh plain with their faces painted blue and 150 English cavalry charging towards them. Day after day for a fortnight they fought and re-fought the Battle of Stirling, till Roy felt it had been going on about as long as the Vietnam War. In between takes they played cards, talked to some of the supporting actors about other films on which they had worked, and they waited. There was a lot of standing around and waiting.

  'Hold, hold, hold ... and cut.'

  Hundreds of men exhaled in relief and walked away in all directions, just to enjoy the freedom of being able to do so, because their bodies were their own again for a while, until the film would claim them once more.

  Roy liked to watch Mel Gibson directing other, smaller scenes. Each scene was laboriously set up, cameras arranged and Gibson looked through the viewfinder at actors who would never appear on film. When he was satisfied, the real actors would arrive and the stand-ins would step aside, their moment in the spotlight over until the next set-up. They would film and film and film again. Roy wondered what Wallace would have thought. Wallace was finally going to be an international star 700 years after his death, like Ben-Hur and Robin Hood and Spartacus. Children might play at being Wallace when they tired of Power Rangers.

  Roy watched mechanical horses accelerate from zero to 30 miles an hour on a 20-foot track and finish off with a somersault. He watched Gibson sitting alone, thinking about his next scene. Gibson nodded distractedly to him once as he passed, but they never spoke. Gibson ate with his men, stood in line for his meals with his men and his children played football with his men. Once or twice he joined a knot of actors as if keen to hear the story unfolding, but the storyteller would fall silent. It was the loneliness of command, for they did not know if he was coming to listen or to issue his orders. Or maybe it was the loneliness of being, not an actor, but a film star.

  Gibson worked and worried. Roy watched and waited. Each day the army rose at four, dressed in plaid or armour, donned their war paint, brushed and ruffled their hair, collected their weapons and waited. Roy concluded there was a lot of waiting in both movies and war. And, as in a war, nobody seemed very sure what was going on. Except maybe Gibson the general. Lieutenants assembled their own little bodies of men. The army was assembled for a charge and they whispered to each other, 'Shouldn't Mel be in this scene?'

  'Mel's no' here,' piped up one Scots voice. They had to send for him.

  'Mel, Mel, the battle's about to start without you. Come quick or you'll miss it.'

  The novelty of being in a film quickly wore off for the Irish soldiers. They had never been to war, so they did not appreciate the need for so much waiting nor were they good at it. They drank heavily at night. One passed out in the heat of the next day. The can of beer, which constituted his hair of the dog, leapt in the air, hit another soldier and knocked him cold too, with blood spouting from his head, at the sight of which a third soldier fainted. That was an unusually exciting day.

  It was rumoured the film was running out of money. Men in suits and dark glasses arrived. Like FBI agents or people who might investigate UFOs, they looked more deadly than anyone on the battlefield, and the army speculated on what might happen. Some crew were paid off and toilet rolls became more difficult to get. But still they filmed the same scenes over and over again. Roy wanted to go home now. He had been in a film. He had done his tour of duty.

  Five months earlier Roy had stood on a hillock in the rain, overlooking the glen beneath Ben Nevis, a surprisingly flat river valley, with alder, rowan and birch dotted along its length, and wat
ched the cast and crew below. The cast in rough medieval plaid and sackcloth, the crew in baseball caps and jeans and thick waterproof jackets. Roy pointed through the rain at a figure in a bush hat with a megaphone, an assistant with an umbrella failing to keep up with him.

  'That's the director Mel Gibson,' he said. 'He's in charge. He tells everyone what to do. He's the man that's actually making the film.'

  'Like Walt Disney?' said the little girl who stood beside him on the hillock, holding his hand.

  He looked down at her face, the colour of coffee, her lively blue eyes and he smiled.

  'Yes, a bit like Walt Disney.'

  A voice shouted 'action' and the glen fell silent, but for the indistinct whisper of actors' voices carried on the wind, muffled by the rain. Roy and the little girl stood and watched the strange, unreal characters in the field of dreams that was a film in the making. Her hand was small and cold and wet in his. The rain eased suddenly, the last few drops fell and the sky lightened as the voice cried 'Cut'.

  'Look, a rainbow,' said the little girl, pointing to the ethereal arc some way up the glen.

  ***

  Los Angeles, March 1996

  All Wallace had to do was say 'Mercy' and his ordeal would be over. A swift deliverance was promised, no more torture. The crowd had wanted to see the Scottish murderer suffer. But even they had had enough. They had seen him hung, drawn and quartered – cut open like butcher meat – but still alive. They wanted no more. It could end with a single word, 'Mercy', that would signify Wallace's allegiance to the king.

  The film cross-cuts between Edward on his deathbed, Bruce, the nobleman who cannot decide where his allegiance lies, Wallace's men in the crowd and the vision of Murron. Wallace summons up a hidden reserve of courage and energy and yells out the single, final word, 'Freedom'.

  Roy can hear Anna choke back a sob. He feels her hand on his arm.

  The film reopens at the field of Bannockburn where it seems Bruce is about to pay homage to the English army. The English expect it, the Scots expect it, perhaps even Bruce expects it. Bruce addresses his troops dispassionately.

  'You have bled with Wallace,' he says, 'now bleed with me.'

  And the film ends with the Scots charging the English. Wallace is dead, but the man with the lightning in his face charges forward towards the viewer.

  Tears run down Anna's cheeks and one drops heavily on Roy's arm. They watch the credits roll, each thinking their separate thoughts. They rise and silently make their way to the exit. Roy wants to reach out for her hand, but does not.

  13

  They stand on the sidewalk of Beverly Boulevard outside the Fairfax cinema, neither one of them wanting to say goodbye.

  'What are you going to do now?' asks Roy.

  'I'd kinda thought I would just spend the day at the festival of old movies,' says Anna. She smiles at the craziness of the notion.

  'Maybe it's a bit silly – spending all that time in cinemas watching movies you can see any time on TV for free. But I've nothing else to do.'

  They stand a moment without saying anything. Anna thinks he must be about to go. It had been a brief encounter, a moment in time when their lives touched and separated. If he walks away, she cannot expect to meet him again by chance in Mann's or the Roosevelt, can she? No, almost certainly not. It is not impossible. Fate might throw them together again. But she does not believe in Fate. They will not meet again. She will know no more about the man from Sean Connery's street who had a part in Braveheart. Roy Batty. Soon he will be the Man With No Name in her memory. Just a fading picture of a blue-eyed, blond-haired man whom she might have liked to know a little better. He is divorced. Does he have children? What does he do? Who is he? She knows almost nothing about him. She knows where he came from, but where is he going? And when next she sees Braveheart on television, there may be a pang of regret when she sees the warrior with a lightning flash of woad on his face.

  'Where are you going?' she asks.

  'The movies,' he says.

  'Let's go together,' she says.

  They sit in her old red Buick poring over the extensive cinema listings in the Calendar pages of the LA Times. Anna suggests The Searchers. She has heard about it, but never seen it. John Wayne as a Civil War veteran who spends seven years on the trail of Comanches who have kidnapped his niece. Brad was not really a western fan, not really a film fan actually. He preferred books and chess and politics.

  'Have you seen The Searchers?' she asks Roy.

  'About a dozen times,' he says. His mind flashes back to the very first time, more than 20 years ago. He can still remember Debbie's tears. He can still remember her walking off towards Princes Street and out of his life after all they had been through together. And why did they split up? Because of John Wayne and The Searchers. It is a dangerous movie. She had loved him and he thought he loved her until they went to see The Searchers. It turned out they were completely incompatible and he never saw Debbie again.

  'We'll go to something else,' says Anna.

  'No,' says Roy, 'They say you see something different every time.' And Roy is sure he will.

  ***

  'I don't see why we have to see another western,' said Debbie as they walked past the Playhouse towards the little Salon cinema 50 yards or so farther down the road. If the Playhouse was the father of Edinburgh cinemas, the Salon was the baby, and a rather dirty, unattractive runt at that. The Playhouse's elegant dark stone facade dominated Greenside, while the Salon hid in its shadow, a narrow entrance, squeezed between shop fronts, and disappearing under the Georgian houses behind it. Other second-run cinemas showed films that were a few months or maybe even a few years old but the Salon showed films that were a few decades old, some of which no one had wanted to see even when they were new. The Searchers was different. Roy had already read up on it in his 'Pictorial History of Westerns', which promised one of John Ford's most haunting films and a superb performance from John Wayne.

  Roy handed over his pound note and took his change before they made their way downstairs to the dingy stalls. There was no balcony.

  'What a fucking dump,' said Debbie. 'It stinks.'

  'You get used to it,' said Roy.

  'What is that smell?'

  'It's the smell of history,' said Roy as he settled in the seventh row.

  'It's the smell of dust and piss,' said Debbie as she inspected the blackened seat next to him. The cinema was empty, but for a woman offering Eldorardo ice cream from a tray.

  'I don't know why I agreed to come. It's not even a new film. You could watch it on TV.'

  'Not on a big screen.'

  Debbie sat down huffily and they both sat in silence. Soon the faded red curtains would draw back in a strange striptease, to reveal a naked off-white screen, stained by the cigarette smoke of past audiences. The house lights would dim and John Wayne would once more appear to take Roy away from cold, rainy Edinburgh to ride the ranges of that place they called the Wild West.

  'I hate John Wayne,' said Debbie, as the Warner Brothers logo appeared on a brick wall. Roy could not remember seeing this opening card before and thought a brick wall a curiously inappropriate motif to introduce a western.

  'He's a man's actor,' said Roy.

  'Shite,' said Debbie. 'He's a crap actor ... and a fascist.'

  The film opens with a plaintive ballad that asks what makes a man to wander and to roam, what makes a man turn his back on home.

  'What a naff song,' said Debbie. 'Is this a comedy?'

  'Give it a chance,' said Roy.

  John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, who returns to the family homestead in Texas after fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. It has taken him three years to get home. He returns with a medal and two bags of freshly minted Yankee dollars, but little in the way of explanation for his prolonged absence. There is something about the way John Wayne looks at his brother's wife that suggests more than brotherly affection, which Roy did not really appreciate that first time round. Ethan gives
the medal to his ten-year-old niece Debbie.

  'Oh, she's called Debbie too,' said the other Debbie and Roy interpreted her subsequent silence as evidence that she was beginning to enjoy the film.

  Ethan rides off with a posse in pursuit of rustlers. They find the cattle dead and realise the cattle raid was a diversionary tactic. Ethan looks off across the desert, his eyes full of pain and impotent rage. He knows what is happening. Big John always knows what is happening. But there is nothing he can do. Not this time.

  Ethan's brother Aaron watches birds take off in alarm and spots something flashing off in the distance. His wife tells Debbie to go and hide where her grandmother is buried. She settles down beside the tombstone.

  Roy felt Debbie jump as a shadow fell across her little namesake. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  It was the shadow of the Indian chief, his face painted in red and yellow.

  ***

  Roy and Debbie had been going out together for six months. The longest he had ever gone out with anyone before was three weeks. His friends called her Mrs Batty and though he was not sure how he felt, he could tell she liked it. He was not sure he was the type who would stay at the homestead with the little lady. He saw himself more as the one who would turn his back on home, coming back only occasionally with his pockets full of Yankee dollars, no questions asked, no explanations proffered.