The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life

by William Brandt

  “So why are they in the Secure Unit?”

  “The Secure Unit is for their protection. If they were on the main wing they’d be mincemeat.” He sees my look of incomprehension. “They’re the most vulnerable prisoners: the young, the small, the immature, the damaged. They’re all guilty of sexual crimes, which makes them prime targets for the other prisoners. Robbers and thieves come over amazingly moral when confronted by a weedy rapist. So we separate them from the main population.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ve got the other sort too, in A wing. The animals. I’ll take you through some time. Some of those fellows, you don’t go in the cell.”

  “It’s hard to imagine those weedy little guys doing those terrible things.”

  “Yes. But that’s so often the way of it. Of course the vast majority of them you could let out tomorrow. They’d be a danger only to themselves. There are others, however. Such as Gerard.”

  “Oh?”

  He shakes his head sadly. “Gerard will never be released.”

  “Never?”

  “Gerard’s been with us for three years. Two of them on remand. He began his sentence last year. Once he’s stabilized he’ll be extradited back to New Zealand. We had a psychiatrist examine him only last week.”

  “So, you’re going to move him?”

  “Yes, he’ll be going back to New Zealand. He’ll spend the rest of his life in a maximum-security institution there.”

  “How will you get him there?”

  “Fly him. A psychiatrist and two policemen will fly with him. He’ll be heavily sedated.”

  “What do the flying public think of that?”

  “They don’t know. It happens all the time.”

  “God.”

  “Oh, yes. The airlines don’t like handcuffs because it makes people nervous, so they do it with drugs: a chemical straitjacket. They dope them up, sit a policeman on either side, the psychiatrist to monitor the medication, and away they go.”

  He goes to get another round. I think about Gerard, about his hopes for the future—all illusion. He has no future. I think about his eyes. His bomb-site eyes. Dr. Higgins slides back into his seat, puts a full pint in front of me. “Yes, he’s a very severely damaged personality, Gerard. Poor chap. He’d end up killing again, or killing himself. No doubt about that.”

  “But he seems so harmless and so . . . so sorry.”

  “Oh, he is. He’s terribly, terribly sorry. He’s haunted by what he did. He’s horrified by it. He always has been. He’s tortured by it. For the first year he woke up every night, screaming. Every night.”

  “Good God.”

  “He’s been through torments you and I could never imagine. We had him on suicide watch for twelve months. He still isn’t allowed shoelaces.” I think of the grandpa slippers. Dr. Higgins pulls on his pint. “He’s made a lot of progress lately. In prison he’s in a controlled environment. Low stimulus. No decisions, no responsibility. But out in the real world he’d spiral down into the same delusional behavior that led him to offend. He’d meet someone, he’d become obsessed, he’d become paranoid and dangerous. It would happen all over again and he’d be utterly powerless to stop it. I could time it almost to the day.” He sucks again on his beer.

  “But he told me he’ll be out in ten years.”

  “If I told him now that he’ll never get out he couldn’t take it. It would destroy him. He’d be lost in a permanent nightmare, he’d never stabilize again. It’s vital to choose the moment to tell him the truth. There’s plenty of time, after all. Once he’s adapted to imprisonment, once he’s established some sort of a life for himself, become institutionalized. The day will come, maybe five, six years from now. Maybe longer. One day, he’ll be strong enough to face the truth.” He looks at me keenly. “That screenplay. That’s all he has, you know. That’s what’s got him this far. He’s pinned all his hopes on it. All his dreams.”

  “Mm.”

  “A few words of encouragement, it would mean all the world to him.”

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Dr. Higgins sucks on his beer. “My job, you know, is very simple. It’s my job to care.” He glances at his cheap digital watch. “I’m so sorry, I’m going to have to dash. My wife is expecting me.” He drains his beer, shakes my hand and is gone. I stay behind for a while. In my briefcase I carry the work of a man without a life. Dead but unburied, buried but undead.

  Chapter 7

  I CHECK THE ADDRESS ON THE CARD. Sixty-nine Bishop’s Prick Lane. Looks like the place all right. I approach the white-haired grandmother in the ticket booth. “Excuse me . . .”

  She speaks without looking up from her knitting. “Yes, dear, that’ll be six pounds, live sucking and fucking, on stage starting in five minutes, all right darling?”

  “I’m actually looking for Melissa . . .”

  “Six pounds, love, includes a free drink, up the pink staircase, starts in five minutes. There you go sweetness-heart, enjoy the show.”

  The pink staircase is very steep and narrow. Melissa said to come by any weeknight between seven and eight, which is happy hour. She didn’t say anything about the six quid. The pink staircase seems to go on forever. It’s very narrow and the steps are steep. I have to stop for a moment on the pink landing to catch my breath. My heart is heavy and hot in my chest, and it’s making a different sound. Every time it beats there’s a sort of squelching and then immediately after a squeak. It feels as if it’s swollen. I’m still in my tweed suit and the pills are still in the top pocket.

  After the pink landing, the painter seems to have given up. We switch to peeling black wallpaper. No more lurid posters either. I drag myself up the last steps to the door, push it open. I’m standing in a long narrow room, about the size and shape of a railway carriage. It’s dark. Windows along one side have been painted out with black paint. You can hear the rustle of the street below. Along the other side is a bar. The surface is thick with grease and dust. There’s a row of spirit bottles on the back wall and a stack of greasy glasses.

  The room smells of bodily fluids, whiskey and hairspray. There’s a cracked mirror ball hanging from the ceiling. Bob Marley is playing faintly from a hidden loudspeaker.

  There’s an entrance, covered with a black curtain, at the back of the bar.

  “Hello?”

  No answer.

  At the far end of the room are a few hard-backed seats. Between me and the seats is a greasy, stained mattress. It takes up the entire width of the room. It squelches as I walk across it. The carpet is so sticky I can hear my shoes peeling away with every step. I sit for a long time. It’s getting hotter. The tweed is getting prickly.

  There’s a quiet noise and I look up. A man is standing behind the bar. He seems to have appeared as if by magic. He’s small, pale and wiry, with a ginger mustache drooping either side of his mouth like a seventies porn star. Watching me without looking at me, he carelessly splashes a little Seven-Up into a clear plastic cup and pushes it my way.

  “Hi, I’m actually looking for . . .”

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even look at me. He leaves the drink on the counter and disappears through a curtained doorway behind the bar. I go over to the bar, ease myself into a stool. Time passes. It’s getting hot. I sip the Seven-Up. It’s warm and flat. I feel fidgety, then drowsy.

  A woman, perhaps in her fifties, ginger-haired, overweight, with a drooping face, comes out from behind the black curtain. She’s wearing a black toweling dressing gown. I glimpse leopard skin. Ignoring me, she looks around the room, sighs, then stumps back toward the curtain.

  “Excuse me,” I say.

  She is gone. The man comes out again. He pours another Seven-Up, pushes it toward me. “That’ll be seven pound.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Seven pound.”

  “But I thought the drink was free.”

  He rolls his eyes and grits his teeth. “First drink’s complimentary. You gotta buy at least one dri
nk after that.”

  “Seven pounds for a glass of Seven-Up?”

  “It’s in the rules.”

  “Rules? What rules?”

  “They’re hung up in plain view for all to see.”

  “Where?” By now he is looking at me with passionate hatred, shaking with rage. I put the money on the counter. “I’m actually just looking for . . .”

  He goes. Another twenty minutes passes. The reggae stops. By now it is really getting hot. I get up, squelch around the bar and put an ear close to the curtain. Not a sound. “Hello?”

  No answer.

  “Anybody there?”

  The ginger-mustached man sticks his head out. He gives me such an evil look that I step backward. “Inna minute, all right? Just ’ang on a minute.”

  I go back to my table. I’m boiling hot, irritable and nervous. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I should leave. I really should leave. Suddenly the lights go out. I’m in complete darkness. I fight an urge to shout. My sense of smell sharpens and a thousand terrifying odors flood my senses. I am about to start feeling my way for the door when a spot snaps on, focused on the bed. The reggae comes back, much louder. Bob Marley is saying he’s going to give someone some good good lovin’. The ginger-haired man and the ginger-haired woman saunter out from behind the curtain, both in G-strings. The man is flatfooted, small and wiry, with a tiny bottom. His skin is dazzlingly white, with such enormous ginger freckles on his shoulders, back, and upper arms that he could best be described as piebald. The woman is at least twice his size, roughly walrus-shaped, with a gigantic leopard-skin bra to go with the G-string.

  The ginger-haired man glances at his watch, as the ginger-haired woman yawns, climbs out of her G-string and bra, lies down on her back, spread-eagled on the mattress, the top of her head pointing toward me. She needs her roots done.

  The ginger-haired man yawns and casually flips off his G-string. He is already three-quarters erect. He coughs, spits on his hand and kneels between the ginger-haired woman’s legs.

  “No!” I squeak. “Stop!”

  The man squints in my direction. The woman twists around to look at me, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the spotlight.

  “You wanna show or dontcha?” says the man.

  “I don’t.”

  “What’s your problem, then?” says the woman, in a nasty tone of voice.

  “I’m . . . from New Zealand.”

  The man wipes his hands on the mattress and stands up. The woman gathers up her things and stumps out, muttering. The man goes over to the wall and flicks some switches. The room lights come back. He pulls a dressing gown out from under the bar, puts it on, and looks at me with folded arms.

  “I could ’ave you arrested, you know.”

  “What for?”

  “Wod’yer want?”

  “I told you. I’m here to see Melissa.”

  The man scratches his pubes.

  “Melissa. She said to ask for Melissa.”

  “’Ang on.” He disappears.

  More waiting. Finally he comes out again. “Follow me.”

  He disappears behind the curtain. I take a deep breath and follow him down a narrow corridor, painted black. A dressing-room door is ajar to one side. The ginger-haired woman is sitting at a makeup table. Then a flight of stairs, even narrower and steeper than the entranceway. Another door, another corridor, this one back to pink, with red lightbulbs and doors to either side.

  The man gets chatty. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Frederick.”

  “Melissa, was it, Frederick?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All right Frederick, ’ere we go, Frederick, that’ll be a hundred pounds, please, Frederick.”

  “But . . .”

  Instantly he is trembling with rage. I pull out my wallet. I give him his money. He puts a hand on my shoulder and gently shoves me toward the last door in the corridor. “’Ave a nice time then, Frederick.” He walks off.

  It’s a small room. The lighting is yellow. The ceiling is at an angle. There are batik cloths hanging on the walls. The air is sweet with cleaning products. New Age music. There’s a bed: low, double and hard-looking. Beside it is a hand basin, a bidet and a tubular steel chair. On the chair is a lava lamp, a pump action K-Y jelly dispenser and an economy pack of condoms. Cross-legged on the bed, wearing a dressing gown, is the girl from the street. She smiles, a little cheesily. “Hi, Frederick, you made it, come on in.” I step into the room. “Okay, so this is how it works. With Ernie, that was room hire. So for thirty minutes, you have a room. Now if you want something to go with the room . . . me, we can talk about that.” Then, more gently, “Would you like to talk about that?” She lets the dressing gown fall from her shoulders, revealing some very spectacular underwear. She’s perfect for what I have in mind. “Let me run you through the options. Option one, you can have the straight suck and fuck. That’ll cost you a hundred. For another fifty you can have doggie. That’s option two. Option three—that’s another fifty—you get the works.”

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Oh, sure, sit down.”

  “I really just wanted to talk for a couple of minutes. If that was possible.”

  She spreads her hands. “Cost you a hundred, in advance, but sure, no problem at all. If you change your mind, that’s fine too. But do please remember: the clock will be ticking, and when the time’s up, the time’s up. And Ernie will come knocking. What would you like to do?”

  “That sounds fine.”

  “Would you mind paying in advance, please?”

  “Certainly.” I pay the hundred. She thanks me politely, puts the money away, looks up brightly. She has much the same bedside manner as Dr. McVeigh, only with smiles. “Would you like me to stay like this, or . . . ?”

  “No, no. I’ve seen all I need to see, thank you.”

  She shrugs back into her dressing gown, takes out a cigarette, lights it and makes herself comfortable. She purses her lips to blow a thin stream of smoke in the direction of the tiny ventilation window. “So.” She smiles. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I have a business proposition to put to you. I’m looking for a woman to accompany me on an all-expenses-paid holiday, to the South Pacific.”

  “I do do escort work, yes.” There’s now a cautious note to her voice. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

  “To an extent.”

  She shrugs.

  “But I do have a number of specific requirements. It’s a birthday party. Whoever accompanies me on this trip will be mixing with the film world’s elite—film executives, actors, actresses, directors, producers. I need a companion who can plausibly play the role of my girlfriend in front of these people, many of whom are known to me personally, some of whom are close friends. In other words I need someone who can play the role of a reasonably well-educated, intelligent, socially adept young woman, who happens to think the world of me personally—and play it convincingly.” I pause to let the point sink in. “I immediately thought of you, because I thought it would be a nice touch to bring a New Zealander.”

  She nods. “Anything else?”

  “No sex.”

  She shrugs. “Sure, no problem—but no reduction.”

  “In public we’d have to pretend to be lovers. Kissing, cuddling, the odd peck on the cheek. Holding hands. No tongues.”

  She nods briskly. She certainly has a can-do attitude.

  “Think you can do it?”

  “I do it all the time. You happen to have come to the right person. I’m a part-time actress. Just part-time, but I’ve got big plans.”

  “An actress?”

  “That’s right. I’m working with Ernie.”

  “Ernie?”

  “Guy that let you in. That’s his wife, Mara. You would have met her too. They’ve been doing that act for thirty-five years.”

  “My God.”

  “Yeah, kinda sweet isn’t it?” Melissa tips her head back a
nd blows smoke at the windows. She thinks for a bit. She blows more smoke. “When do we leave?”

  She waves good-bye at the door. I find my way down the pink corridor and down another flight of stairs marked EXIT, which take me down to a seedy nightclub. From the seedy nightclub I emerge in an empty cobbled alley at the back of a possibly Georgian structure. A light drizzle is falling. It’s dark and raw. I notice a blue plaque on the brickwork by the doorway. KARL MARX FREQUENTED THIS KNOCKING SHOP. You’ve got to give the English this. They do have a sense of history.

  Chapter 8

  EXT. PLAIN OUTSIDE CITY—DAY.

  THE ELEPHANTS SHUFFLE RESTLESSLY, BRIGHTLY- COLORED HOWDAHS PERCHED PRECARIOUSLY ON THEIR BACKS. CLAD IN LION SKIN, THE PRINCE SHAZAMAN LOOKS OUT ACROSS THE VALLEY TO THE CITY OF GRUZ.

  Prince

  Burn the houses. Kill the men. Kill the women. Kill the children.

  THE HORSEMEN ASSEMBLED ON THE HILL CHEER AND CLASH THEIR SWORDS AGAINST THEIR SHIELDS. THE ELEPHANTS TRUMPET IN FEAR. SHAZAMAN RAISES HIS SWORD AND CHARGES DOWN THE HILL ON HIS WHITE STEED. THE ARMY FLOWS AFTER HIM LIKE A BLACK TIDE OF DEATH.

  EXT. CITY OF GRUZ—DAY.

  THE SOLDIERS OF SHAZAMAN RAMPAGE THROUGH THE STREETS OF THE CITY, IMPALING, BURNING, SLASHING, DESTROYING. CHILDREN ARE FLUNG INTO THE FLAMES. WOMEN ARE DISEMBOWELED. MEN ARE CHOPPED INTO PIECES. SHAZAMAN RIDES THROUGH THE MIDST OF THE CARNAGE. HIS EYES ARE BURNING WITH THE LIGHT OF BATTLE, WITH THE THIRST FOR BLOOD.

  I have to say, Gerard’s script is not quite what I expected. I’ve skimmed through the first ten or so pages on the plane, while waiting for my tomato juice. So far there’s been no mention of a boy at all, and certainly no terminal diseases, although there’s been plenty of terminating going on. I put the script away and stretch.

  We met at Heathrow. She was standing under the arrivals board in her long green plastic mac, high boots and a red hat. My heart sank as she gave me that same saucy little wave. I’d been half-hoping maybe she wouldn’t show; but there she is, relaxed, confident, fresh. Me, I’m a mess. It’s six in the morning, I haven’t had time for coffee and it has now been over a week since my visit to Dr. McVeigh. I haven’t had a drink or a cigarette since. It’s turning out to be extraordinarily difficult—not so much the withdrawal symptoms, which, while pretty bad, are nothing compared to the terrible waves of clarity that sweep over me suddenly and unpredictably. It’s awful. Outlines are becoming sharper. I hear what people say. I understand. When I wake up in the morning, I wake up. I see the whole day, laid out before me like a tube map. I have perspective and insight. Ghastly. Like for instance, this morning I sat bolt upright in bed at two o’clock. I’d only been in bed for thirty minutes after an extended pedestrian tour of inner London. I thought to myself, I’m going on holiday with a prostitute from Levin, whom I’m going to try to pass off as my girlfriend in front of my pregnant ex-wife. It came to me, in a sudden blinding Apollonian burst, that this was not normal behavior. Yet only last week it seemed, under the circumstances, like the obvious thing to do. I thought about calling and canceling, but I didn’t quite have the guts to do that either. I couldn’t face turning up alone. I just couldn’t. I was damned if I was going to do that.