The Man In The Seventh Row

by Brian Pendreigh

  'Fucking hell,' said Gordon when Jenny Agutter took all her clothes off and swam, full-frontally naked, her nudity all the more delicious for its unexpectedness in an AA film.

  'Fuck,' said Gordon when she took all her clothes off and swam full-frontally naked again, turning every which way, in a flashback at the end for everyone who missed it first time round.

  'Michael will be really pissed he missed that,' said Gordon when the film was over.

  'Yeah, it was really good,' said Roy.

  'I meant the nude scenes,' said Gordon.

  'Yeah, great,' said Roy, 'but it was a really good film as well.'

  'Aye, but do you think it would have been such a good film if she had gone swimming in her undies?'

  'It wouldn't have been as good,' conceded Roy. 'But, Jenny Agutter's pubic hair was just one factor in making it a really good film. It was really poignant at the end when she's living in some concrete jungle somewhere and she remembers a more innocent time when she swam naked with nature all around her. And there's that poem "Into my heart an air that kills ..." And the chill air comes from her past.'

  'Yeah, but even without the poetry, the nude scene would have made it a great film.'

  His father and Gordon were the two people that most often accompanied Roy to the cinema. Wednesday afternoons were his father's half-day and sometimes Roy would meet him straight from school. If they were going to an X film, Roy would stick his stripey school tie in his pocket and fasten up his duffle coat so the cashier could not see his blazer. They never arrived in the middle of films now. Roy wanted to be comfortably established in his seat when the lights dimmed, so he could enjoy the thrill of anticipation at the silent appearance of the opening credit, the one that confirmed that it had an X certificate, which it displayed as proudly as any school kid with his certificates.

  Gordon subsequently helped Roy set up a school film club, or rather 'cinematic society', which Roy thought sounded classier. Just a dozen or so turned up for Carry on Teacher, 40 for James Dean in East of Eden, but they had three times that many and had to turn people away from Blow-up and If ..., which were among the first films to get a few flashes of pubic hair past the censors without having them snipped off.

  The kids in Carry on Teacher might seem delinquent, but it is only because they love their teachers. The kids in If ... might seem delinquent too. They do not use itching powder, they use machine-guns and massacre the staff and prefects.

  'It's a serious artistic film,' said Mr Moon, the English teacher who had to approve their bookings. 'The boys should have the chance to see it.'

  And so, in a liberal decision that should have shamed the national censor, the august Royal High School of Edinburgh ruled that If ... complete with pubic hairs and dead teachers, was suitable for everyone from Second Year upwards.

  The announcement came up on screen: 'British Board of Film Censors, 3 Soho Square, London Wl. This film has been passed ...' And in suddenly enormous writing 'X.' The silence was broken by the sound of young cinephiles whooping and thumping their feet on the wooden floor in appreciation.

  The likelihood of a nude scene or nude scenes plural, was becoming a factor in determining which films Roy went to see, maybe even the main factor, but it was certainly not the only one. If he was going with Gordon or his father, they would also have a say in which film to see. Whatever they suggested would invariably be fine with Roy, who wanted to see every new film that came out. More often than not however they would let him decide, for he was the one who bought the 'ABC Film Review', which could usually be relied upon for a few nude scenes of its own.

  Both Gordon and Roy's father liked westerns. In the Forties and Fifties westerns constituted between a quarter and a third of all American feature films. Although the number of films and the proportion of westerns declined in the Sixties, the genre was enjoying a minor revival by the early Seventies. Not only did the period produce some belated classics, like Little Big Man, but also dozens of westerns that would turn up at the Playhouse or Tivoli for a week and then disappear. Films like Lawman, starring Burt Lancaster, and Chato's Land, with Charles Bronson as an Apache, which together represented the western chapter in the career of an unlikely young English film-maker-turned-restaurant critic, Michael Winner. It did not matter to Roy that they were not all classics, they all represented a classic genre, another fascinating world.

  Many westerns of the period presented a revisionist view of the west with the Indians as goodies and cowboys as baddies. Gordon rated Soldier Blue, with its brutal cavalry massacre, as the best film he had ever seen. Roy was rivetted by A Man Called Horse. The poster showed Richard Harris dangling from ropes which seemed to emanate from his chest.

  'A man called 'Horse' becomes an Indian warrior in the most electrifying ritual ever seen,' said the poster.

  Richard Harris is captured by Sioux but becomes a warrior by enduring a terrifying ritual in which pegs are inserted through the flesh of his chest, ropes are looped round the pegs and he is then hauled up to the roof of the lodge and suspended there until he experiences a sacred vision of the white buffalo. Roy devoured Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and writings on Native American culture. He took to wearing Indian beads around his neck in solidarity with the Indians and had the poster for A Man Called Horse on his wall until he left home.

  'It was a bit far-fetched,' Roy's father said. A regular complaint.

  The nation waited with bated breath for A Clockwork Orange, starring Malcolm McDowell from If ... According to the poster it was 'the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven'. In a futuristic Britain, Malcolm McDowell and his gang of bowler hat wearing 'droogs', get high on milk-plus, beat up a tramp to the soundtrack of Gene Kelly singing in the rain, gang-bang one woman and beat a second to death with a giant phallic sculpture. McDowell's eyes are clamped open and he is forced to watch scenes of appalling violence as part of his aversion therapy, while Beethoven plays on the soundtrack.

  All Roy's father had to say was: 'It was a bit far-fetched.'

  Although Roy's father was a member of the film guild, he preferred action to arthouse. His other regular complaint was 'It's a bit slow.' He had broad tastes in cinema, which could include a bloody, controversial, anti-war comedy like MASH and Pasolini's sexually explicit adaptation of The Decameron. It was only much later that Roy wondered if he, or indeed his father, should not perhaps have felt some embarrassment at going to see The Decameron or A Clockwork Orange together, when other teenagers went with their peers and lied to their parents that they were at some Bible Class social. It never entered Roy's head that either of them should be embarrassed by the sex and nudity, though he certainly never discussed them with his father in the way he would with Gordon. He dismissed the whole idea of censorship as absurd and never for a second considered that the violence of A Clockwork Orange or Soldier Blue could in any way corrupt him. People had fainted at the sight of blood spurting all over the place in the field hospital in MASH but Roy's father was a butcher and Roy saw blood and butcher meat every day.

  When the family moved to Merchiston, Roy and his father went to films together at the Tivoli in Gorgie. Oliver Reed being burned at the stake in 17th Century France for jiggery-pokery with nuns in Ken Russell's scandalous The Devils. And films no one would remember, like the Van Cleef western Sabata and Hammer's Twins of Evil, starring Madeleine and Mary Collinson as sisters with a tendency to drink blood and take their clothes off.

  Roy and his father would buy chips and eat them as they walked home.

  'What did you think of it?' his father would ask as they made their way home from some neglected gem like Frogs, a film that did for swamp life what Hitchcock did for birds.

  'I really liked it,' Roy would say.

  They would walk a little farther.

  'What did you think?' Roy would ask.

  'A bit far-fetched,' his father would say.

  Roy would cycle into the West End on Saturdays to b
uy the 'Evening News' as soon as it printed so he could see what was on the following week, read John Gibson's reviews and plan his cinema visits. One Saturday his eye fell immediately on The Dirty Dozen, but there were so many films he wanted to see, and it was old now and would be on television sometime.

  'The Dirty Dozen is on at the Astoria,' he told his father.

  'I'm sure I've seen it,' his father said.

  'You have; you saw it in Millport.'

  'There's no point in seeing it again then. What else is on?'

  'Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn in There's a Girl in My Soup at the Cameo.'

  'I like Peter Sellers,' said his father. 'I remember when The Ladykillers came out.'

  So they went to see There's a Girl in My Soup in a double bill with Summer of '42, in which a man recalls his first sexual relationship a long time ago in the summer of '42. Gary Grimes plays 15-year-old Hermie, who spends his summer holidays reading about sex and going to the movies and idolises Dorothy, an older woman played by Jennifer O'Neill. Her husband is away. Eventually Hermie and Dorothy make love.

  'It was a bit slow,' said Roy's father and despite the promising storyline Roy didn't get to see Jennifer O'Neill's bits.

  In some ways it was a distraction to be waiting for a nude scene that never comes, willing a character to take her clothes off or be sitting silently urging her: 'Get out of bed, go on, and don't wrap a sheet round you, people don't wrap sheets round themselves in real life, it would undermine the movie's integrity if you did it. Go on, get up.' Ann-Margret got out of bed and left the sheets where they should be and Carnal Knowledge's rating rose by one star in the little book in which Roy recorded every film he saw. Every naked actress was recorded on a mental list: Jane Fonda stripping in Klute, Angie Dickinson's bum in Pretty Maids All in a Row, Susan George's breasts in Straw Dogs and the Mohican haircut below Glenda Jackson's navel in The Music Lovers.

  Roy's first Edinburgh Film Festival, in the summer of '72, proved a positive skinfest, providing a rare chance to see a naked Susannah York in Images and Jaqueline Bisset, sans culottes, in Secrets, two films that even dedicated cineastes may never have heard of. But Roy retained a soft spot for Jenny Agutter. She was Naughty Naked Nude Number One on his list for a long time, until Mrs Roberts came along and he returned to real life for a while.

  15

  Roy's father was much older than his mother. He had been in his forties when Roy was born. Lately he had not been keeping well and increasingly he was too tired after work to go to the cinema. The family went to North Berwick for their last summer holidays together in 1973 and didn't go to the pictures at all.

  That summer Roy walked along the beaches by himself and spent a lot of time reading, Steinbeck and books about American Indians. He did not have a watch or clock, but he knew it was still very early morning as he climbed the Law, the massive hill that rose suddenly from the town's southern edge. He had woken with a start and for a minute or two watched the dust dancing in the stream of sunshine that poured through the window, before deciding he wanted to be outside in the sun.

  The house was silent but for the ponderous ticking of a grandfather clock on the landing. Dew had soaked the lawn and made it a rich, wet, early-morning green. Birds sang and the gate squeaked as Roy pushed it open and stepped into a deserted street. The sky was a gorgeous, cloudless blue. Like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, Roy walked alone down the High Street, past the Playhouse, as the clock on St Andrew's Church struck five. He could hear himself breathing as he walked up Law Road. Cows in a field stopped to watch him go by before returning to the business of silently chewing their lives away.

  The Law rose before Roy. He had often climbed it with his parents, meandering along the path that led around the back and gradually wound its way to the summit. The dew seeped through his training shoes, chilled his feet and turned the bottom of his jeans a darker shade of blue. It was at that moment he decided that he was not going to follow the usual path. He would climb the north side, despite the warning signs that it was not safe.

  His breathing became more laboured as the slope became steeper and the grass thinner. The occasional gorse bush clung to the shallow soil that covered most of the rock. The bushes had been burnt, leaving only thick roots poking out from scorched earth and Roy had to occasionally grab hold of a protruding root to pull himself up. He had been able to walk up the lower slopes, but now he had to climb. He plotted his path, considering each rock and stone, each clump of root and tuft of grass that might afford a grip or toehold. He worked his feet into little crevices while overhead his hand stretched out to bared rock.

  He felt a moment of dizziness as he looked down at the town far below. He thought of James Stewart in Vertigo and he also thought of Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse. 'A man becomes an Indian warrior in the most electrifying ritual ever seen.' The words kept playing in his head. An invisible rope must, surely, pull him to his summit. No, no, not A Man Called Horse. He was not Richard Harris, he was Jon Voight in Deliverance, after the mountain man has shot his pal Ronny Cox, who did the duet with the banjo-playing kid. Voight and Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty were at the foot of the cliff, and the mountain man was waiting at the top to shoot them too when they got back into their canoe. But Voight decides to climb the cliff, with his bow and arrows, and face the mountain man on top of his mountain.

  The toe of Roy's trainer kicked and worked at the dirt of the hill, enlarging a slight depression. Here was the boy forced to become a warrior to survive. They thought he was just another sap from the city, but he would show them how wrong they were. The Law was covered in a film of loose dust, but underneath the earth was hard, hard as brick. Sometimes he dug his fingers right into the caked earth beneath the grass tufts. Sometimes, if he did not dig his fingers in deep enough, the grass came away in his hand along with roots and earth. More than once Roy had to move slowly sideways across what now seemed more like a wall than a hill in order to find a route upward. Once or twice he even had to move downwards to avoid a patch of uninterrupted bare earth with no rocks or roots or grass tufts to accommodate foot or hand.

  Moving down was awkward, as Roy's feet scrabbled blindly and clumsily beneath him. Muscles ached. Fingers found another half-inch from somewhere to reach another embedded root that would enable him to pull himself fractionally nearer his goal. His foot searched for the slight indent of dirt he knew would carry him another few inches towards the top. A few small stones came loose and fell. Slowly he moved upwards, resting more often now, fuelled by the dangerous thrill of it all and Jon Voight's determination and the knowledge that he really had no choice anyway. No longer could he shout for his dad to come and get him down. He was on his own.

  Again he had to work his way sideways along a ledge in search of his next hold. He stretched his arm high overhead, perched on the toes of one foot. His fingernails were broken, the tips of his fingers dirty and bleeding. All that separated him from the road hundreds of feet below was a little blackened dust and a lot of willpower. His hand reached for a ledge with solid roots, beautiful solid roots that would afford a safe hold. His chest and knees held to the dirt, the dirt that coated his lips and clogged his nostrils. He stretched as far as he could, but the ledge remained just beyond his fingertips. His hand returned to its earlier hold and he stood helplessly on his narrow ledge, breathing heavily. He could not move up. He could see no way back. He could not move down. He was stuck.

  The clock struck again. One. It seemed many miles away, down there in the little toytown in the sunshine. Was anyone in that smug little world watching the tiny figure on the hillside? Two. They would not be able to see him from the town. Too small. Three. For whom does the bell toll? Robert Jordan? Gary Cooper? Four. Roy Batty? 'Young man falls to death on early morning climb,' the papers would say. Or 'Young man falls to death in most electrifying ritual ever seen in North Berwick'. What would his parents say? Five. What would Mrs Roberts say? She had passed him a cup of tea last night. He hated tea. But he
drank it for her. She was quite old. Thirty maybe. Maybe not that old. He wondered if she slept naked. Six.

  He composed himself on his little black ledge between Heaven and Earth, and thought of Jon Voight, thought how Jon Voight seemed stuck, how he took the photograph of his wife and son from his pocket for inspiration only to see it slip through his fingers and fall towards the river below. He thought how Voight forced himself upward again. One more time. The right hand rose again and the left foot launched upwards. For a split second he seemed to hang motionless in mid-air like Tom in a Tom and Jerry cartoon before he realises the ground is no longer beneath him, and plummets to earth with an expression of bemused resignation on his face. Roy's fingers struggled for a grip. Over the ledge. They closed on something. Gripped around it, gripped around the beautiful root and his feet kicked upwards to the next hold and the ascent was renewed.

  Roy wanted to stop and work out how he had done it, but he had to keep moving, continue the most electrifying ritual ever seen. That was all important. Reach the top. Kill the mountain man. His aching muscles and bleeding fingertips pleaded for respite, but he forced them to go on. Become an Indian chief. Become a man. Easier now. More holds. Hillside turned to rock with many cracks and twists for a warrior's feet and hands. He climbed between two lips of rock onto the grass slope beyond. He'd made it.

  He ran up past the deserted, war-time look-out post, past the skeleton of some other small building. He collapsed by the stone that pointed to Edinburgh and Fidra and the Bass, lay on his back, exhausted, looked at the sky and laughed quietly to himself. If this were a film, he thought, the helicopter carrying the cameraman would rise above him, spiralling as it went, to show him lying there, victorious, on his summit, with the world spread around him like a blanket on the ground. He got to his feet. The sun struggled to break the chill of early morning, but Roy took off his shirt, pulled an imaginary arrow from an imaginary quiver, laid it across an imaginary bow and shot the mountain man.