It took Roy about three months to get Debbie to go on the pill and sleep with him. They progressed fairly quickly from snogging to fondling to petting and he could unhook and remove her bra down her sleeve without her having to remove her top. Her bedroom was the only upstairs room in her house. Her parents never went up there, communicating by shouting from the foot of the stairs. Roy and Debbie spent most of their time smoking cannabis, listening to the Eagles and exploring each other's bodies, with their eyes and their fingers and their tongues, until he was sufficiently familiar with her every nook and cranny to draw the shape of the portwine birthmark on her left buttock from memory. Lately they had not had sex quite so often.
By the time John Wayne gets back to the homestead his brother, sister-in-law and nephew are dead. Debbie and her older sister Lucy are gone. Big John does not cry. Not on the outside. He does his crying on the inside and sets off with the posse after the Comanche who have taken his nieces. He follows their tracks, he reads their signs, he understands their ways, and he hates them. He shoots out the eyes of a dead Comanche, because the Comanche believe that without eyes a dead man cannot enter the spirit world and must wander forever between the winds. Big John always knows what is going to happen and he knows when the Indians will attack. He is, as always, the man you would want to be next to when they came – a leader, a hero, a real man, John Wayne. But inside ... inside... . he lost his war, he lost his country, he lost his woman and now the Comanche have taken the last of his family. He finds Lucy's body, horribly mutilated, only telling his young companions much later. Ethan can stand the sight of it, but lesser mortals must be shielded from such truths.
Ethan continues the search for the band of Comanche led by Scar. He is accompanied latterly only by Martin Pawley, a part-Cherokee, part-English, part-Welsh orphan, raised as one of Ethan's brother's family. He was played by Jeffrey Hunter, in the original.
In the version Roy watches with Anna, Marty is played by Roy. He sticks faithfully to the script, or at least fairly faithfully, though he cannot help but appropriate Ethan's catchphrase of 'That'll be the day', once or twice, and the looks exchanged between the two searchers take on an extra depth.
For seven years they search for Debbie who has grown to be a young woman. She will, to be precise, have grown up to be Natalie Wood. Slowly it becomes clear that Ethan continues the search, not to rescue Debbie, but to kill her, because she will have been polluted by the Comanche. It will be like putting a dog or a horse 'out of its misery'.
A Mexican arranges a meeting between Ethan and Scar. When Ethan tells Marty he cannot come to the meeting, Marty looks him full in the eye and says 'That'll be the day.' Scar tells Ethan how he lost two sons, killed by white men. He asks one of his wives to bring the scalps he took in retribution. It is Debbie who brings them.
'Do you know where the toilets are?' asked Debbie.
'Toilets,' said Roy, 'Toilets? They've been looking for her for seven years, and just when they find her you have to go for a piss.'
'Don't be stupid. I'm bursting.'
Debbie Edwards tells Ethan and Marty the Comanche are her people now and tells them to go. Ethan tries to kill her, but Marty stands in the way. Finally by chance Ethan and Marty discover the whereabouts of Scar's encampment, which is about to be attacked by the Cavalry. Before they attack, Marty rescues Debbie and kills Scar. Ethan subsequently scalps the corpse. Debbie runs away but he catches her, lifts her as he did when she was a child and declares that it is time to go home. They return to one of the homesteads, and in one of the most famous final sequences of any film, they all enter – a mish-mash of different nationalities and cultures, all except Ethan, who takes one step towards the door and turns away. The door closes on him. The film ends.
'Brilliant,' said Roy to Debbie.
***
'Brilliant,' says Anna to Roy. 'He's really a tragic character. Isn't he?'
'I said that too,' says Roy.
Anna looks quizzically at him.
'I once split up with someone because she disagreed. I told her it was the best film ever made. And she said it was ...'
He can see the curiosity in Anna's eyes. She said it was what? Crap? Too violent? Boring?
'She said it was "only a western".
***
She said it was only a western and that John Wayne was a racist and a fascist and she was not going to see any more of his films 'on principle'.
'You're missing the point,' Roy said. 'John Wayne's character is a racist, but the film doesn't condone or excuse it, it explains it, explains the rottenness that has eaten into his heart. A hero gone bad. He looks like he is in total control, living life on his terms, but really he's a loser. He lost his war, he lost his country, he lost his woman and he lost all the family he ever had. And in the end there is no place for Ethan in civilised society. In the end he loses everything. That is the tragedy.'
'His tragedy is pretty tragic for the Indians too,' said Debbie.
'The fact you think it's only a western, that is the real tragedy,' said Roy.
'It's a film about John Wayne the racist killing Indians, pretending to be a film about John Wayne the hero killing the savage who murdered his family.'
'You're right about one thing, that Ethan's tragedy is the Indians' tragedy too. Scar is Ethan's alter ego. He sees himself in Scar. It is a mirror image, a distorted mirror image. Even the name 'Scar'. He sees himself in the mirror and wants to kill himself, because despite the dignified exterior he loathes himself. He is the past, not the future. There is no place for Ethan or Scar in the future.'
His voice rose aggressively as he forced home his point, striding ahead of Debbie up the road towards the East End.
'I'm entitled to my opinion,' she said, falling behind. 'I think it's only a western, an old, racist western.'
'Well, if that's your opinion, you might be best to keep it to yourself. You just didn't understand the film.'
Debbie started to cry.
'And how could you, you went to the toilet at the most important part? What's the point in going to the cinema at all if you don't see the whole film? There's no point in talking about it.'
'Is there any point in talking about anything?' she said.
'No,' said Roy, though only because it was the answer the question had invited. He stopped. She walked past him, crying, and continued to walk. He waited for her to turn back and they would kiss and make up. But she kept on walking. He watched her figure get smaller and smaller and disappear among the Saturday afternoon shoppers. He caught one final glimpse of her red jacket through the crowd. And then she was gone.
***
'I wanted her to phone, but she never did,' Roy tells Anna. 'And I never phoned her.'
'You must have been unbearable,' says Anna.
Roy smiles sheepishly. They look into each other's eyes. Anna leans forward and their lips brush against each other.
14
Roy had always been tall for his age and he had dark, downy fuzz on his upper lip by the time he was 12. This was in the days before designer stubble, certainly the days before designer stubble was acceptable as part of the uniform of one of Edinburgh's selective schools. Shaving was a hassle at first. But Roy quickly learned that his five o'clock shadow was a virtue when it came to girls and movies, both of which operated a system of prohibiting entry to certain events deemed unsuitable for those under a certain age.
When he was at primary school they filmed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in Edinburgh and one of the girls in his class was in it. It was not a big part: she was on the bus that passes the school at the end. Roy's father took him to see the film being made in Stockbridge, and they watched girls pouring out of Donaldson's School for the Deaf in 1930s uniform. Roy waited months and months and months for the film to appear in local cinemas and when it did it was an 'X' – no one under 16.
'But why is it an X?' he asked his mother.
'Because one of the actresses has no clothes on,' his mother said.
>
'She goes right through the film without wearing any clothes?' asked Roy incredulously. All the girls he had seen at Stockbridge had clothes on.
'No, she just takes her clothes off once or twice,' his mother told him.
Roy thought about whether it was a shame that he could not see the film because of this naked actress, or whether the promise of a naked actress was something to look forward to in the future. His pal Johnnie had shown him a magazine called 'Parade' that contained pictures of women without clothes, the sight of which had produced a pleasurable swelling in his shorts. And one of his 'Animal Life' magazines contained a picture of a bare-breasted native woman wearing bird of paradise plumage in her hair. He often consulted that issue. But films held out the promise not just of naked women, but of moving naked women.
For reasons he never quite understood, the film Little Big Man marked the beginning of his adult passion for movies. He had not been to the cinema for a while when he went to see Little Big Man at the ABC 3 with his father in the autumn of '71. The ABC Film Centre had been open for almost two years, but with his move from Fountainbridge to Learmonth, it was no longer the local cinema and he had never been. It seemed new, different and luxurious. Just 300 gold-coloured seats, smaller than any of the local cinemas he had visited. He went with his father, just the two of them, on a school night, to the last performance. His father had been working late and they met at the shop, walked round to the cinema together and sat seven rows back.
Little Big Man had an AA certificate, which meant no one under 14 should be admitted, and Roy was one month short of his 14th birthday, which gave the film the taste of forbidden fruit. It was a western of course. Dustin Hoffman played 121-year-old Jack Crabb, whose memories seem to embrace the entire history and mythology of the west, from Wild Bill Hickok to Custer's Last Stand. But it was a different history, a different mythology. For Hoffman's character was not a barrel-chested Indian-killer. He was raised by the Cheyenne and in this film it is the white men who are the savages. It was at times gentle and humorous, like the Cheyenne, at other times bitter and disillusioned, like the white man. Roy loved it.
While other kids played rugby or records after school, Roy went to the cinema. He saw Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate at the Dominion in a double bill with The Thomas Crown Affair, with Steve McQueen, who was of course one of the seminal North Berwick seven, playing a really cool bank robber. He saw Deliverance, the story of four city men fighting for survival against rapids and hillbillies, at the ABC, in a double bill with Bullitt, with Steve McQueen playing a really cool cop, with a jazzy soundtrack, a jazzy blue polo neck and a jazzy Ford Mustang.
At the Ritz, Roy saw A Gunfight with Kirk Douglas, the original man with the dimple, and Johnny Cash, the 'other' man in black, as two old gunslingers. Roy was listening to Cash's 'A Thing Called Love' while other kids were getting into T. Rex and Deep Purple. Down on their luck, Cash and Douglas agree to one last gunfight in a bullring, charging spectators to get in, winner takes all, loser dies. Cash shoots Douglas, but then there seems to be an alternative ending where Douglas shoots Cash. Or was Cash just imagining that?
Roy wished his father was there, so he could ask him, like he used to ask him 'What happened next?' when the ending of some film they would be watching on telly was not entirely clear, like The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Atomic bomb tests have knocked the Earth out of its orbit and it is headed towards the sun. So what do they do? In one last desperate throw of the dice the powers-that-be decide they had better explode four more bombs, simultaneously in different parts of the world, to knock it back on course. At the end there are two newspaper headlines prepared reading 'World saved' and 'World doomed'. And that is it. But which is it?
'What happened next?' said Roy.
'It's up to everybody to make their own mind up,' said his father.
'What do you think happened next?' said Roy.
'I don't know.'
'But it's like stopping the film half way through ... or the end of an episode of Dr Who,' Roy complained. 'But then we find out what happened to Dr Who next week ... The writer must know whether Earth was saved or doomed.'
'I'm inclined to agree with you,' said his father. 'I don't like films like that.'
Roy and his father agreed they liked a definite, unambiguous ending. Roy was not even entirely convinced that Butch and Sundance might not have got away after they came charging out of their hideout.
Films were still shown in double bills then and while it might seem logical to put A Gunfight on with another western, or at least some sort of action film it was paired with Carry on Teacher, a mediocre, 11-year-old episode of the British comedy series. The Hunting Party, one of the new crop of very violent westerns, was on a double bill with the Beatles film Let It Be at the Caley. The Caley regularly screened an old western on Saturday afternoons. Roy arrived so early for The Hunting Party and Let It Be that he saw virtually the whole of 3:10 to Yuma as well, with nervy Van Heflin assigned to look after outlaw Glenn Ford until the eponymous train arrives. Roy's enjoyment of it was marred only slightly by the nagging worry that some usher might come along at the end and ask him to pay again if he intended to stay for the other films. Roy rehearsed the arguments in his mind, while Heflin and Ford psyched each other out on screen. Would Ford's men come for him? Would an usher come for Roy? Heflin got Ford onto the train and Roy stayed put when the rest of the audience got up. No one queried his right to stay, so he saw a triple bill that day. 3:10 to Yuma was the best.
In the empty expanses of the Playhouse Roy saw Burt Lancaster in the western Valdez is Coming, memorable for the repetition of the title 'Valdez is Coming', as promise or threat. It was on with Kirk Douglas in the war film Cast a Giant Shadow. The programme ran for more than four hours once you included the trailers and the adverts.
You might think that James Bond was with British intelligence, but really he worked for United Artists. The man with the gong would precede the Carry Ons, Paramount had their mountain, Columbia had the lady with the lamp, MGM the lion and Universal the world. But one company dominated cinema programmes more than any other.
'Pa-pah, Pa-pah, Pa-pah, Pa-pah, Pa-pah Pa, Pa, Pa, Pa.' Pearl and Dean heralding the adverts.
'Experience the authentic taste of India at…', and a card would appear on screen and a different voice would read,
'The Taj Mahal, Corstorphine,' or 'The Maharajah's Palace', a dingy wee diner near the Hearts ground in Dalry Road, which would be pronounced wrongly.
Everyone said Roy looked much older than his 14 years, especially the bus conductors who only reluctantly gave him half-fares. It was not long after his 14th birthday that he decided to try and get into an X film, for which the age limit was now 18. This was the time of The Devils and Soldier Blue, but Roy decided not to be too ambitious at first. He liked to see every western that came to Edinburgh and Captain Apache, an AA film starring Lee Van Cleef, was playing at the Playhouse in a double bill with Cotton Comes to Harlem, a film about two black cops that carried an X certificate. He practised sucking in his cheeks to emphasise his cheek bones, which he thought gave him a harder, meaner look, though it made talking slightly more difficult. He wondered if maybe he should half-close his eyes as well: snake eyes like Lee Van Cleef. He deducted four years from his date of birth and memorised '31.10.53' just in case the cashier tried to catch him out by asking him his birthday rather than his age.
'Shtalls,' he mumbled through teeth that were clamping his cheeks in place.
The cashier was so old that she could no longer remember the difference between 14-year-olds and 18-year-olds and gave him his ticket without asking either his age or his birthday. All she said, in a rather concerned voice, was
'Is there something wrong with your eyes, sonny?'
'No, no,' said Roy, hurrying through the door.
He didn't attempt to do snake eyes anymore and his eyes were wide open when Judy Pace showed off her backside in Cotton Comes to Harlem.
The o
nly time he ever got asked his age was at the Jacey in Princes Street, which specialised in 'kinky' movies, not somewhere he would usually go. But he wanted to see the documentary Danish Blue because of the controversy that surrounded it.
'The controversial film passed by city magistrates,' said the advert. 'Banned in many major cities including Glasgow. Only for the broad-minded.'
Roy was not shocked, though he might have been if he had understood it. There were some queer references to what might go where in some films, but that did not stop him appreciating the visual qualities on display.
The only other problem Roy had with an X film was when he decided to go with his friend Gordon Ramm to see the western The Revengers at the Playhouse. It was an AA, but it was showing with an old Frank Sinatra film The Detective, which was an X. He was 15 by this time, Gordon a few weeks older, but he was an inch or two shorter. It might have been alright even then, if Gordon had not decided to bring along his next-door neighbour Michael McStay, who was 14 and looked 13. They did not even get to the box office.
The commissionaire, a young man in a heavy dark green coat with polished buttons and gold epaulettes, took Roy aside and explained to him that he could not take 'kids' in with him. A middle-aged couple interrupted to say that all three were with them, but the commissionaire said the law was that nobody under 18 could see the film.
Roy, Gordon and Michael dithered about what to do. Michael went home, but Roy and Gordon walked across the city centre, through Princes Street Gardens, beneath Edinburgh Castle on its volcanic rock, and past the ABC, to the Cameo which was showing Walkabout, some sort of drama in the Australian outback with Jenny Agutter from The Railway Children, which they did not know much about other than the fact it had an AA certificate.
The Man In The Seventh Row Page 9
