He knew he was destroying himself; but in his lonely hours he saw that he'd (also) created himself. This was not Richard Jenkins but Richard Burton. A new identity and the deed-poll made it official. But the twin personae were at war; both had flaws, and he knew it. That was why his classical, especially Shakespearean, acting was so successful. The commingling of poet and peasant. He was at home with the grandest themes. Those of man's identity, of his place in the cosmos, of the absurdity of existence. And that's why he always looked out of place, ill at ease in the pot-boilers. His finest performances were those in which the flaw was ennobled into something breathtakingly exhilarating and beautiful. He told us something universal which we'd always suspected. But what he told us was a lie. He said the contradiction was reconcilable. It wasn't.
Nobody could live with that self-knowledge. Only strong love, hate and self-abasement in alcohol made it tolerable. He had not gone gentle into that good night but went to it a wrecked and broken man, but still with all guns blazing, almost with a pride at having cheated death of a beslippered ancient scholar. His last thoughts were two excerpts from Shakespeare. The beginning of Macbeth's 'To-morrow' speech and of Prospero's 'Our revels now are ended'. Both suggesting that life is a play, therefore unplayable for real. But Rich always played, and played to win.
'Be not lost,' he said to me, 'so poorly in your thoughts.'
'Sorry, Rich. I was just thinking.'
'Time,' he said, 'to stop thinking and start writing. We have thirty-thousand words—big, bold publishable words—to write. And I intend to clast a few icons. '
'Only twenty-eight thousand. We're already about two thousand words in.'
'Rod,' he said, 'I have a hunger and a thirst and if I feel like writing three-hundred thousand words then I shall. And the devil be damned.' He waited. 'Are you coming along for the ride?'
'This is my book,' I insisted.
He smiled, stubbed out his cigarette and blew the smoke slowly into the air. 'Mine too, now.' He waited. 'Books can't stand on their own,' he said. 'They have to be performed. So always choose your performer with care.' He smiled with quiet self-confidence. 'There's only one can perform this—' he pointed to himself— 'and I'm just the kiddy.'
We heard a commotion. 'Quick,' he said. 'It's my baby child. Look lively!'
'Richard!' called a female voice.
We bent over the MS. 'Don't look up,' he whispered.
'Richard!'
'My pain's back,' she said, and waited. 'Richard,' she pleaded, incredulous that he could ignore her, 'I need you.'
He looked up. 'I love you,' he said. 'Only you do I adore.'
She said: 'If it be love indeed, tell me how much.'
'There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned.'
'You left me,' she said, hinting at his death. 'Wherefore?'
'Wherefore could I not?'
She jumped up and landed awkwardly. 'Richard! Pain!'
'Excuse me, Rod,' he said. 'I have a task of some delicacy to perform.'
*
Or, on another occasion. We met again, alone; E must have been filming, or something.
'What,' I said, 'is the desert like?'
'Do you mean Raid on Rommel or The Desert Rats?'
'No. You misunderstand.' He did; his expression was innocent ignorance. 'Not celluloid deserts. Real ones.'
'How do you mean? Rommel was shot in a real desert—in Mexico.'
'No, Rich. The desert for those who died too soon.'
He looked at me. Searched my eyes, and behind them, for the question behind my question. I smiled, knowing he knew what I meant.
When he spoke the tone was low, almost conspiratorial. His voice told me that his experience was broader and deeper than anything I'd ever imagine let alone achieve. Oh, yes, he'd seen it all. Had flown on a sledge of stars at the edge of the world; had scaled and fallen down bottomless chasms; had supped—even briefly flirted―with the devil.
'I think you have mistaken me.' Almost a whisper but one with perfect enunciation. 'No, almost certainly you have mistaken me.'
There was no reply I could give, none requested. He placed an arm around my shoulder and said:
'Now, then, Sir Roderick. Shall we press on...?'
32
'Now, then, Sir Roderick. Shall we press on...?'
I nodded.
'So,' he said, 'can you give me a plot summary?
'I thought you'd read it?'
'Skimmed.' He waited. 'Indulge me.'
'I'm Rod writing a book. The book is about Charlie and Belinda. It is also about Rod writing a book about C & B. Also a book about real people interacting with fictive people. And a book about dead people interacting with living people. It's also about a narrator—and I'm not sure who he is—misleading, deceiving and entertaining his readers. But the narrator is not Rod. Not me.'
'Wheels within wheels and an infinity of mirrors, then?'
'Yes.'
'Okay, where are Charlie and Belinda now?'
'I forget. Let's look back.................................................….........
Ah, here we are, chapter 25: Martin calls on them in Wimbledon and in chapter 27 Charlie meets Amber then remeets the doc. There is a suspicion in Charlie's mind that Belinda could have had an affair with Martin or Burgess, or both.'
Burton drew long and heavily on his cigarette. 'And did she?' He released the smoke slowly.
'I don't know, Rich,' I smiled. 'I'm writing to find out.'
'But you have a game plan, don't you?'
'Yes: to win.'
He chuckled. 'Rod, you are a large tease. Now where's your synopsis?'
'I haven't written it yet.'
'Why not?'
'Because I don't know what happens until it happens.'
He laughed again. 'A bit like life, then?' I nodded. 'So, can you guess what might happen to Charlie in the end?'
'I'm not sure, I don't know. But whatever happens will influence the way the novel starts.'
He chuckled again: the boy Jenkins from a grim coal field; the man Burton from a rare constellation. 'You're playing with me,' he continued. 'You told me chapter 1 was already written.'
'It is—but I'll have to rewrite it in the light of the ending.'
'Rod, I'm jam-packed full of the desire to write. I've got phrases, clauses and sentences clawing at my brain. I must have a chapter to myself, to test them out, as 'twere.'
'Rich, this is outrageous. I'm a writer tapping keys on a PC. You're the ghost of an actor who died last century. In a sense neither of us exists.'
'Never,' he said, 'refer to me as a ghost.' His eyes were frightening. 'If you prick me, do I not bleed?' He grabbed my hand and held it to his chest. 'Feel me, I'm real.'
I felt him: he was.
He said: 'You exist. I can feel you.'
'Okay, I give in: you're real.' I felt overawed and exhilarated: Rich was taking me seriously. And before him I shuddered. 'But I'm sure some philosophers would want to question us closely about our term real.'
'To hell with philosophy and necessary doubt. Let's carouse till the second cock and devil take the hindmost!'
'Okay, Rich. You can have the rest of this chapter.'
He laughed. 'Rod, I don't think you understand. I must have a chapter to myself—I mean to clast a few icons!'
He frightened and thrilled me: I thought it best to agree. But he'd also be doing me a favour: a few days' rest while he wrote chapter 33 for me. Mm? Well, ghost-writing is an allowable fiction. Anyway, I was running out of ideas so fresh blood would revitalise the piece.
I offered my hand: 'Chapter 33's all yours,' and we shook. Then he nudged me off the stage and took to the task like a sop loose in an alehouse, like a miner alone in a pit, like a starving man tossed carelessly into a banquet.
33
We began as a band of thirty men with one goal. The weather and time of year had been against us but we took the challenge. Now, however, we're—I'm—down to one.
> I thought I could overcome any obstacle, fulfil any promise but the place I landed up belied my
'Rod! ROD!! RODERICK!!!'
I rushed to him. 'What's the problem?'
'I'm stuck. I don't know what happens next.'
'I know the feeling, Richard.'
'What's the answer? I've tried a cigarette and a couple of those anaemic Monkey's Bums. I don't understand because I felt so full of it.'
'It's sometimes better to let the piece write itself: it could be very different from the piece you think you want to write.'
'Damn pseudo-intellectual bunk! In my notebooks, my thoughts, and my writing of them, came almost simultaneously.'
'I love that almost.'
'There's something deeper, isn't there? There's something more subtle?'
I nodded. He went on:
'But suppose it's unreadable, inelegant, uncommercial?'
'Then we edit.'
'Thanks for the tips,' he said, offering me a cigarette which I declined. 'No—' softly '—you don't, do you?' as if recalling the detail of a dream.
I made a soft exit.
*
I thought it was a wrap but Clark approached and threw me a line. I recognised the cue but I felt weak, a little light-headed, almost timid—too afraid to ask anyone.
'Richard,' he said. 'I'm glad to meet you after all this time.'
Richard? I thought. I'm not playing a man called Richard, but I shook his hand. 'Clark,' I said. 'How's it going?'
'The movie?'
I was unsure but nodded.
'Swell.' He looked me up and down. 'Fancy dress...?'
I felt strange—anxious, weak. My life was crumbling and I was unable to pull myself together. I looked around: Henry, Elizabeth and the entire crew had gone. I was alone with Gable. 'Clark, I'm sorry,' I said, 'I can't recall the next line.'
'A bit like life, then?' and he smiled as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
I laughed unsurely. 'Perhaps a drink'd make me feel better.' Gable offered me his goatskin; I drank long and deep.
'You've got to watch this Nevada heat,' he said. 'Damn near turn a man crazy.'
Perhaps I was drunk and ill. If I just soldiered on I would soon feel better. I forced a laugh: 'Yes, bloody heat.' Smiling seemed to help.
Gable's next question floored me: 'Richard, tell me: are you a stray in my movie or am I a stray in yours?'
I laughed again as you do in your cups. What hallucinogen was in his goatskin?
'Clark, my friend, I don't know. You're dressed for a Western; me—or is it I?—for a war movie. But for the life of me I can't remember the title—even a working title.'
Gable loved this; laughed and slapped me on the back. 'Me neither.' So we shared the joke and started an impromptu dance. Afterwards he said: 'Where in hell has it gone?'
We were now great buddies—had a common loss. 'It...?' I asked.
'My outfit—I'm here shooting a movie with Marilyn Monroe, Monty Clift—bless him, and...well, if that ain't the darndest thing: I just can't remember.'
My rationalisation was that we were both getting drunker. Everything I said sounded funny. 'And I'm filming a few inserts.'
'Inserts...?'
I said, 'Don't laugh, but there was sufficient footage left over from Toro to make Raid on Rome. We're inserting dialogue scenes.'
He thought I was now going too far and seemed to sober up for a moment. That sobered me. As one we said:
'What the hell are we doing here?'
After a while he said: 'Rich, I'm moving on. I must search—I've lost my baby.'
'In this heat?' He couldn't be serious.
'It makes you wonder,' he said. We shook hands and off he tramped.
So, was I looking for someone, or something? Was it E? Were we still married or had we divorced? Was that why I was near Reno? My rational mind, even in my wildest times—and I could catalogue a career of those—and my most melancholic moments, had never failed to ground me. Now I was truly lost and the heat was a bitch. 'Elizabeth!' I cried. 'Elizabeth!'
My voice was swallowed by the sandy scrub. There had been a whole film crew here not one half-hour ago. A director, continuity girl, sound men, make up, so on, so forth. Had I fallen asleep and...no, that didn't make sense. Was I now asleep or in some borderland betwixt sleeping and waking from which no traveller returns? Was I being drawn inexorably into a black hole? Was this Hell...or Limbo? I have come to the borders of sleep...Here love ends, Despair, ambition ends...There is not any book...I may lose my way And myself.
*
'I did as you advised,' said Rich to me. 'I wrote the first thing that came to mind, allowed the thing to write itself.' He waited, smiled a thin smile. I noticed he had aged since we last spoke. He had less hair and what was left, was white. And I could sense, beneath his skin, the skull. I suspected he could too. He betrayed a vulnerability when, handing me a sheaf of papers, he said, 'Will this do?'
I skimmed through it. 'No, Rich.' My directness surprised me—and him. 'I need something more. Your desert scene is derivative—of mine.'
'Well,' he smiled. 'It has the virtue of consistency.'
'It's copying another's idea. I'd rather see the unpalatable truth. And I also know you're holding something from me: a unique experience which you want to communicate but are afraid to.'
'So,' he smiled, 'back to the—not drawing board but typewriter.'
I left him.
*
It happened one day when E wasn't there. She was either out shopping, in hospital or filming. I had managed to live drink-free for three months. (Yes: that deserves italics.) My melancholy had descended and I couldn't shift it. Fighting, I knew, was pointless. And I started to be tempted to give in—not to give up, but to surrender myself to it and so never let my fear of it frighten me again.
Alcohol had in the past been a way of dealing with death. As a youngster, death had been a classical or Shakespearean concept and I adored performing anything exploring the theme of death. This seemed at cross-purposes with another feeling, that of the world being such a beautiful place—it was almost too much to bear. The beauty was exquisite torture and so great it was overwhelming.
After such an experience only one can match it: death. Now, I knew I had no control over it, although in my quieter moments I suspected I was, as a result of my wicked ways, bringing it ever closer. Possibly courting, challenging it.
But to the other experience. As I say, I was alone in the house, E was away and I had what I suppose you'd call an out-of-body experience. I was standing in the centre, the dead middle of a whirlwind and for the first (perhaps second) time in my life I felt perfect peace. Then I stepped outside and was looking down on myself inside the whirlwind. The circle of wind had now changed into a black iron cage and when I looked inside I saw a young Richard Jenkins, asleep in the foetal crouch. On the outside I was now Richard Burton but totally without a body or any earthly sensations. I felt that I was cradling Jenkins—I had the mental image of cupped hands—but when I wondered who I was, I realised that I was a channel or conduit through which the power—an eternal cradling power—was flowing. Almost as if a voice were saying, 'Don't worry, I will save you.'
Now, I'm a rational man with a superior brain and education and a cynical turn of mind, and am sceptical of religious, even secular, conversions, but as I had not been drinking or taking any chemicals I knew that what I had witnessed, or been through, was profound. I had connected for a short while with an exhilarating cosmic power.
I've never told anyone this but often in my darker moments think of it. That's not the end: perhaps death, rather than the object of fear, could be an experience: one could almost swoon into it—an exquisite pleasure. But—and here's the rub—the timing and nature were not of my choosing. I had to continue to face the risks of life until—well, until God, or the Devil (for he may turn out to be just as palpable as his opposite) called for me.
The power that had rushed—no, not rush
ed: it flowed—through me was greater than me and all I could do was hope that when the moment came it would be divine and not diabolical.
*
Because Rich had been quiet for some time, I returned. He smiled but it was the smile of a much older man and the face spoke of a trawl through heaven, then hell, and here he was offering me—me—his piece of work.
'I don't know what you think of this,' he said. 'But it does have the virtue of originality. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to lie down.' He turned after a few steps: I thought he looked vulnerable, mortal. I could picture his body, arms crossed, at rest in a coffin. 'I expect you'll think it's just the ramblings of a drunken Celt from the valleys, or a chemically-enhanced star. Either way, it's the truth.' He gave me a final gentle smile before walking off.
34
'That makes me so angry,' she said. 'I knew Richard shouldn't have gotten involved with this project.' She waited, passion rising. 'Well, Roderick—or whatever it is you call yourself—what have you to say?'
'What,' I asked, 'is the problem?'
'Why, can't you see—? It's aged him.'
'Too much booze,' I said. 'Too many cigarettes. He's burned his candle at both ends—with your help and connivance—and is paying the price. All I did was give him a sheet of paper: A4.'
The passion in her eyes—more than mortal love—was thrilling.
She produced tears in both eyes, and they were convincing. Neither anger nor passion had weakened me; she now tried humiliation.
The Information Junkie Page 19
