Читать книгу The Confessions Collection - Rosie Dixon, Timothy Lea - Страница 81

‘What’s a clitch?’ says Sid.

‘A what? Oh, a cliché. Something very corny.’

‘Why don’t they bleeding well say so, then? How are ordinary people supposed to understand words like that? I bet that’s not an English word. How about “derivative”?’

It is a few days later and we are reading the reviews of Oliver Twist that have appeared in the Sundays. They are not good. In fact they are diabolical. ‘Sex for sex’s sake.’ ‘Violence laid on with a trowel.’ ‘No concessions to artistic integrity.’ ‘I beg you to miss this film.’ And those are some of the better headlines. Justin says that it is because the critics are jealous of Loser’s genius and irritated by his off-hand manner but I reckon it is because he is a useless director. Sidney seems to be coming round to my point of view at last.

‘He’s too far ahead of his time,’ mutters Justin.

‘Like Martin Peters,’ I say helpfully.

‘More like Mary Peters,’ snarls Sidney. ‘I’ve always had my doubts about that bloke. His bloody chauffeur and those dogs. He wants to change his sheepskin and get his hair shorn.’

‘Sidney! Now, come on. I always thought you believed the sun shone out of his light meter.’

‘I’m not one to start casting nasturtiums while the enterprise is still under way,’ says Sid loftily, ‘but I think I can speak freely now. I didn’t expect to make any moola out of a straight version of the movie but I did think somebody would find something good to say about it. As a prestige production it’s got less to recommend it than a long-distance spitting contest. How many of the circuits are distributing it?’

‘Well, old bean, at this moment in time –’ says Justin,

‘None of them. Just as I thought,’ snorts Sid. ‘So I suppose we’re going to soldier on at the Bioscope for another couple of days until we’re pushed out by Naughty Nudes of Nineteen hundred and Nine.’ Justin picks up a pencil.

‘What was that again? Edwardiana is terribly popular at the moment. You might have something there.’

‘I haven’t got anything here, have I?’ says Sid bitterly.

‘My dear fellow,’ says Justin, putting his arm round Sidney’s shoulder, ‘you mustn’t be discouraged. We can’t guarantee a coconut every time you throw a ball, you know. I’m certain that sooner or later you’ll make a tickle. Not many backers make a packet on their first flutter.’

‘What about Oliver Twist and that other skin-flick?’

‘Yes. They should bring in a spot of bunce.’

Sidney’s face darkens. ‘ “Should”!? I thought they were supposed to be cast-iron certainties.’

Justin shrugs and waves his head about in a gesture of non-committal agreement. ‘The picture is rather black in the middle of Africa at the moment. They’re getting very puritanical. No mini-skirts or bikinis. All tits under tarpaulin and no afro haircuts. They’re trying to stamp out Western decadence.’

‘What about Scandinavia?’ I ask.

‘The market seems to be approaching saturation. They’re onto pigs at the moment, or perhaps I should say –’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ says Sid hurriedly. ‘I don’t recall any porkers in our masterpiece?’

‘Tastes change so quickly,’ explains Justin. ‘It’s terribly difficult to keep abreast in this business.’

“I’d have thought it would have been very easy,’ I say. ‘ “Keep a breast” – get it?’

‘Shut up! says Sidney. ‘I don’t need any of your lousy jokes at a moment like this.’ He turns on Justin. ‘So, reading between the lines, what you’re saying is that I’m going to be cleaned out?’

‘Nothing of the sort, dear boy,’ purrs Justin. ‘I’m only counselling caution, that’s all. In this business the stakes are high but the rewards are immense.’

‘I seem to be tied to one of the high stakes,’ moans Sidney, ‘but I don’t see any sign of the rewards.’

‘As I said, you must have patience. I’m certain that if you back our next idea you’ll make a fortune.’

‘You told me I was going to make a fortune with this idea. Didn’t he, Timmo?’

This puts me in a difficult position because Justin is the only film producer I know and I want to keep in his good books – his good films as well, should he ever make one. However, I do recall him making it very clear to Sidney that the skin-flick side of the business was likely to pull in a few swift bob.

Luckily at that moment the tellyphone rings and I have a couple of minutes to think of an answer I never need.

‘Good heavens!’ says Justin. ‘How many? Mounted police? Are you sure you’ve got the right cinema? B-I-O-S-C-O-P-E? Yes. That’s right. Goodness me. Very well, we’ll be right over.’ He put the receiver down. ‘Amazing!’

‘What is?’

‘Apparently, there are queues all round the Bioscope. People are fighting to get in.’

‘Blimey! And it’s only half-past eleven. Get your skates on. This I’ve got to see.’

By the time we get there we have convinced ourselves that a cache of banknotes has been found in one of the seats or the place converted into a knocking shop, but there is no doubt about it. The sign outside the cinema states quite clearly: ‘Oliver Twist – a Tymely Loser Production. Vicious! Degrading! Disgusting!’ The queue that starts in Kensington High Street is filing past posters quoting the critics as saying, ‘Pornographic twaddle’, ‘The violence appalled me’, ‘The sex sickened me’, ‘Insults the intelligence of a retarded ten-year-old’, ‘Makes Crossroads seem like War and Peace’, ‘No thinking person should see it’.

‘Brilliant, eh?’ We turn round and there is Mac standing beside us, practically wagging his tail.

‘Did you do this?’ asks Sidney.

‘It’s the only thing I could do. I read through every single review and the only favourable comment in any of them was that the credits were well handled.’

‘Ken sent them out to be done,’ says Justin.

‘I’m not surprised,’ continues Mac. ‘They were quite nice. Completely out of character with the rest of the movie. Anyway, when I read that lot I thought: I can’t build a publicity campaign round the credits. I mean, they’re over in twenty-five seconds and if we put them at the end nobody is going to wait that long to see who was responsible for what they were watching.’

‘Good thinking, MacDonald,’ nods Justin.

‘Then it occurred to me that we had so many anti-superlatives –’

‘Yer what?’ says Sidney.

‘People saying it was the worst instead of the best. I thought: there’s a kind of distinction for you. People might like to tell their friends they’d seen what is supposed to be the worst film ever made. I mean, I bet you’d be interested in seeing the ugliest woman in the world?’

‘Not very,’ says Sid. ‘I’m married to her.’

‘Very satirical,’ says Justin. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. And that, harnessed to the sex and violence – or social realism, as we call it – has done the trick?’

‘I remember you saying that people were fed up with sex and violence,’ I say.

‘It depends how you handle it. If it’s done badly enough then it seems to be all right.’

‘I think there’s another reason for the success of the film,’ says Mac. ‘People distrust critics as a lot of phoney highbrows, so that if they say a film is a load of rubbish then the average man in the street reckons it must be just his cup of tea.’

‘Mac, I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you for this,’ gushes Justin. ‘When I look at that queue of lugubrious, long-haired layabouts, idly flicking the flies away from the ends of their noses with their bicycle chains, a lump comes to my wallet.’

‘It’s nothing, J.T.,’ says Mac modestly. ‘Nothing that a couple of thousand greenbacks couldn’t more than adequately repay.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of sullying an act that so embodies the very essence of true friendship with anything so sordid as money,’ says Justin, squeezing Mac’s eager hand in both of his. ‘Some deeds are beyond price.’

Mac looks as if he would like to discuss the matter further but he does not get the chance. A whiff of sheep-dip indicates that Ken Loser is standing by our side. His mood is exultant. He waves an expansive hand at the queue and spits down the front of Justin’s raccoon reefer jacket. He does not mean anything by it, it is just the way he speaks when he is excited.

‘Huh!’ he snorts. ‘One in the eye for the lackeys of the capitalist press who dared to sneer at my genius.’

‘Yes,’ says Sid, ‘but –’

‘Exactly,’ Justin moves in fast to prevent damage. ‘A wonderful achievement, Ken, brilliantly capitalised on by Mac here. Congratulations both of you. I think we may have tapped a gold-mine. Of course it’s going to need careful handling. Something rather unusual in fact. Mac has had one or two very original ideas, which we must discuss when you have more time.’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ says Loser. ‘Anything must be better than that attempt at cultural assassination,’ he indicates the posters. ‘It’s almost touching, isn’t it? Despite the heinous slanders of the fascist hyenas, they still come.’

‘Long may it continue, Ken,’ humours Justin. ‘Now, may I suggest we repair to the local hostelry and imbibe a few swift jars to celebrate this latest assault on our bank manager’s credulity? I’m afraid I seem to have left my wallet at home, but I’m certain that Mac –’

As it turns out the boozer selected by Justin is dead opposite the cinema queue and I can see Sidney’s beady eyes clicking like cash registers as he keeps an accountant’s eye on the suckers trudging past.

‘Multiply that by thousands and you have the scene all over the country in a couple of weeks,’ beams Justin. ‘It’s very fortunate that we have the whole of our talented team here today because it gives me a chance to raise another outstanding project that has been taxing our perfervid imaginations of late, eh, Ken?’

‘Filming the conception and birth of a baby through the baby’s eyes,’ says Loser enthusiastically. ‘You see, we start off with this shot of an enormous –’

‘No, Ken! I wasn’t referring to that,’ says Justin, hurriedly. ‘I meant the Horror Westerns.’

‘Horror Westerns?’ says Sid in his ‘Worried, Clapham’ voice.

‘Low budget Horror Westerns,’ says Mac, soothingly.

‘It’s a brilliant idea,’ rabbits Justin. ‘And you could be in on the ground floor of it. I mean, this thing,’ he nods out of the window, ‘is going to run and run. Your great grandchildren will be living off it. You’ve got to do something with the loot.’

‘I think I’ll put it in a building society,’ says Sid.

‘Very secure, of course, but hardly going to bring in the returns that I can guarantee with this latest venture. Consider it. What two subjects never pall? Horror movies and Westerns. Put them together and you must have a box office smasheroo. Imagine the scene, Glint Thrust –’

‘Not him again.’ I have heard that Glint and Rosie were up to their old tricks again at Justin’s party. Sidney was not pleased.

‘I’ve got him on a six picture contract. He’s practically paying me for the privilege of working. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Glint glides into this ghost town, and when I say “ghost”, I mean ghost. He pushes open the door of the saloon and there, behind the bar, is the hideous Creature from the Black Lagoon, liberated by an underground nuclear explosion. Only one man in the world knows how to handle him.’

‘Count Frankenstein?’ says Sidney.

‘Precisely,’ says Justin. ‘Brilliant, isn’t it? This one must make us all a fortune. It’s got everything. Horror, horses, sex, violence, the wide outdoors, all wrapped up in one bonanza package by the old maestro here.’ He hugs Loser enthusiastically.

‘And lots of social comment,’ says Loser seriously. ‘I want this film to say something. I see the monster as the embodiment of the struggling proletariat, rising up against the brutal forces of international capitalism as represented by Count Frankenstein. His predilection for orgies with novice nuns is symbolic of –’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute!’ croaks Sid, ‘you’re talking as if this is all signed, sealed and delivered. I haven’t agreed to anything yet.’

There is a long pause before Justin shakes his head solemnly.

‘Quite right,’ he says, and both Loser and Mac nod in agreement. ‘Absolutely right. We were jumping the gun. I’m sorry. Now, let’s have another drink and talk the whole proposition over in detail. Barman, five large brandies please.’

Two weeks later, I am sitting beside Sid on a plane bound for Nicosia, which I have been told is in Cyprus, which I believe is an island down the other end of the Mediterranean from the Costa del Chips.

‘They got this thing off the ground quickly, didn’t they?’ says Sid.

‘It’s the jet engines that do it,’ I tell him. ‘Your stomach will catch up in a minute.’

‘I don’t mean the plane, you berk, I mean the film. They were out there recceing locations almost immediately, weren’t they?’

‘I reckon they had it all set up before you sunk all those brandies and started busking that cinema queue.’

‘I didn’t do that, did I?’

‘Yes, Sid. And then, when that other poor sod started to do a soft shoe shuffle, you tried to shove his spoons up his hooter. “This is my queue! This is my queue!” That’s what you kept shouting. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘I do get a bit funny when I’ve had a few, Timmo. You should have looked after me.’

‘Do me a favour. When I tried to stop you signing the contract you threatened to bash my nut in with the Doctor Barnado’s box.’

‘Oh my gawd!’

‘Yes, Sidney. That evening did not reveal you in your best light.’

‘Evening! But I was home with Rosie by lunch time.’

‘That was the next day.’

‘Oh my gawd! I thought she was a bit funny.’

In his sober moments Sidney has explained that we are going to Cyprus because Justin has cooked up a deal which makes it an all-time low in low budget movie production. I have thrown out the names of Spain and Yugoslavia but these apparently offer us nothing when compared to the simple fun-loving Cypriots.

‘You see, they haven’t been exploited,’ says Sid. ‘We’re going to be the first.’

‘Sounds great, Sidney.’

‘It is, it is. With local camera crews and the price at which we can get extras, Justin reckons this is going to be one of the cheapest movies of all time. These guys work for nothing.’

This may be true because they certainly do not seem to work for money. When we get to Mexos, where the unit is supposed to be located, the men of the village are enjoying a spot of Egyptian PT outside the local coffee-shop, their eyes registering only a flicker of interest as they watch an old woman stagger down the dusty street beneath about half a ton of firewood.

‘We should have got a taxi, Sidney,’ I say. ‘I didn’t fancy sitting with all those chickens. Some of them got very frightened.’

‘Don’t worry. They’ll be all right if you soak them overnight.’ Sidney averts his eyes from the unsavoury sight of my trousers. ‘I didn’t know it was going to be market day, did I?’

‘Nevertheless, Sidney, I’d have thought we’d got past the stage of travelling by bus. You must be rolling in it.’

‘You look as if you’ve been rolling in it, and all,’ says Sidney gleefully, never being able to resist a chance for coarse humour. ‘It’s all right going on like that but you can’t afford to throw it about. Count the pennies and gather ye rosebuds while ye may, is what I always say.’

‘Very quaint and commendable, Sidney, but I still think you could lash out a bit more on creature comforts. I mean, I don’t fancy putting up in any of the doss-houses in this dump.’

‘You’re not going to. We’re sleeping in tents.’

‘Tents?’

‘I told you this was a low budget picture. I suppose you thought you’d be lording it in the Nicosia Hilton?’

I don’t bother to answer that because sometimes Sidney gets up my bracket so far he starts affecting my breathing.

We walk through the village which pongs like Ken Loser getting excited and sure enough there is a large tent pitched where the last mud structure gives way to a wide, flat plain.

‘Why is it parked there?’ I ask.

‘So as to be near the shooting.’

‘But we’re not using this place as a set, are we? It looks like a convalescent home for run-down mosquitoes.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sidney sounds puzzled. ‘I thought they were going to build a set with local labour.’

‘If that was the local labour outside the café, they didn’t look as if they could separate a pack of bath cubes.’

‘We’ll ask Justin,’ says Sidney, sounding more cheerful the minute his lips wrap round the reassuring syllables of the Maestro’s name, ‘he’ll know what’s happening.’

But when we peel back the flap of the tent stirring uneasily in the hot wind, it is not Justin that we see. Sprawled amongst a welter of beer-cans and empty bottles is the familiar figure of Mac.

‘My God! This place smells like a cats’ comfort station,’ snorts Sidney. ‘What the hell’s been happening?’

The person best equipped to tell us is stirred into action by the toe of Sidney’s boot. This item he seizes fondly before attempting to insert an arm up its owner’s trouser leg.

‘You jig, jig, quick, quick,’ he murmurs without opening his eyes. ‘Mac, Mac like Fatima.’

‘She must have been a right old boot,’ says Sid. ‘Come on, Mac, wakey, wakey!’

‘Say that again and I’ll bash your face in! – Oh, it’s you,’ says our Scottish comrade, all in one distinctly unpleasant breath.

‘None other,’ says Sid. ‘Where is everybody?’ Mac sits up and shakes his head.

‘They’re out looking at locations. We had a bit of a party last night.’

‘It looks very convivial,’ says Sidney. ‘When are we going to start shooting?’

‘You have to be very careful with that word around here,’ says Mac ‘There’s a lot of unrest between the Turks and the Greeks. At any minute it could get very nasty.’

‘The ones we saw looked under no strain,’ says Sid. ‘Are the locals Turks or Greeks?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t tell the difference. The trouble is that they can. It’s one of the reasons why we haven’t been able to get any sets built. They won’t co-operate. It’s worse than the bloody unions back home.’

‘Here we go, Sid. I hate to say “I told you so”, but –’

‘Shut up! What about the camera crew?’

‘Some of them are here.’

‘Some of them?’

‘The others had to go back and tend the vines.’

‘Oh my gawd! Have they ever seen a camera before?’

‘It’s difficult to tell. None of our equipment has got through customs yet.’ Sidney’s face is that of a man deeply disturbed.

‘So what have you been doing for the last ten days?’

Mac holds up a bottle to see if there is any liquid left in it. ‘Looking at locations and, and –’

‘And getting stoned!’ shrieks Sidney. ‘This is diabolical. All this moola I’m laying out and there’s nothing to show for it except a load of pissholes in the sand. Where’s Loser? Where’s the cast?’

‘What day is it?’ says Mac.

‘Thursday.’

‘Well, they were here on Tuesday night, or maybe it was Wednesday. Yes, it must have been Tuesday because that was the night Justin auditioned the belly dancers.’

‘Belly dancers? I thought this was supposed to be a horror film?’

‘They were horrible, some of them. Awful. Great rolls of fat and gobbling Turkish Delight all the time. I was –’

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ howls Sid. ‘This is ridiculous. Is everyone going mad? We’re supposed to be making a film and I’m standing in a tent in the middle of the bleeding desert with nobody here and sod-all happening. Somebody’s got to get a grip!’

There is a dramatic pause disturbed by the sound of a vehicle approaching, the note of its engine punctuated by multiple backfires.

‘That must be them,’ says Mac helpfully.

‘There’s enough of them, isn’t there?’ I say, giving the cauldron another little stir.

Indeed, the screams and shouts of drunken laughter are echoing from many throats, some of them widening out into a pair of bristols by the sound of it.

‘Now I extend my hospitality,’ says Justin’s voice, full of the bogus enthusiasm I know so well.

‘So soon after the last time? My friend, I congratulate you. He is a most frisky little fellow, is he not?’ This voice is full of Eastern promise and as rich as honeycake. Further information about the condition of Justin’s frisky little fellow is denied us because the man himself pushes into the tent and pulls up sharply when he sees Sidney. For a split second his cool skips a few degrees above freezing point, and then the smile bounds back onto his lips as if held by a piece of elastic round his neck.

‘Sidney. Timothy. What a lovely surprise! I don’t think you’ve met Abdul ben Krafti, our local Mukhtar and very good friend.’

‘Not unless you used to wrestle under the name of Istan Bull,’ says Sidney. ‘I once had the pleasure at the Wimbledon Baths Hall.’

‘I have never visited the bath in my life,’ says Mr Krafti, and few standing to windward of him would care to argue the point. He makes Ken Loser seem like a Lifebuoy advertisement. He is a large, fat man with a hair-brush moustache and clobber straight out of the illustrated New Testament my Aunt Nora gave me one Christmas, and which I changed for a copy of Advanced Sexual Techniques two days later. Well, I was nine at the time.

‘The Mukhtar is being tremendously helpful in getting us established,’ burbles Justin. ‘He really knows the lay of the land.’

And more than one of them, I would say, by the look of some of the crumpet that is beginning to straggle into the tent. Knock-out birds with long black hair and eyes as deep and dark as treacle wells. A bit on the BC side threads-wise for my taste, but that seems to be the rule out here.

‘We’ve got a bit of way to go though, haven’t we?’ says Sidney, allowing a slight edge to creep into his voice.

‘Mr Nogget here has a hefty stake in the financing of the picture, so we have to be very nice to him,’ says Justin meaningfully, nudging Abdul with his eyes. Mr Krafti bows respectfully.

‘He who holds purse strings enmeshes fingers deep in short and curlies. Jolly good fun.’

‘Abdul performed Trojan service on our behalf during the war. Stoker ben Krafti I believe it was, eh?’

‘Senior service, not Trojan service,’ corrects Abdul. ‘Yes, I served under the old red duster, cor blimey. I know what the sailor boys like.’ He rolls his eyes and smacks the rump of one of the birds who is bending down to collect the bottles. Sidney coughs.

“Very interesting, Mucker,’ he observes, ‘but how are we getting on with Revenge of the Monster from the OK Corral?’

‘That’s only a provisional title,’ says Justin hurriedly. ‘I’m certain we can do better.’

‘Bugger me, I hope so,’ says Abdul.

‘I don’t want to give offence, Ben,’ says Sid, ‘but where precisely do we stand at the moment?’

‘You stand exactly forty-five metres due east of Bhirim Agrabad’s millet store,’ says Abdul helpfully.

‘Relax, Sidney,’ interposes Justin smoothly. ‘Everything is under control. It hasn’t all been wine, women and song, you know. It’s very bad form in this country to refuse hospitality, so we’ve had to play along for a bit.’ I wonder which bit, I think to myself. I would not say no to any of them.

‘I understand that,’ says Sidney. ‘I don’t want to offend the Mugger. We probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for what him and his lot did during the war.’

‘Cor blimey, yes,’ says the Mukhtar.

‘What worries me,’ continues Sidney without pausing for breath, ‘is the question of when we are going to start shooting.’

‘Shooting. Yes, shooting.’ Abdul nods vigorously and draws his fingers across his throat in a gesture that I find rather puzzling.

‘Virtually immediately,’ says Justin. ‘We sorted out a marvellous location today.’

‘Sort out! Bloody great sort out!’ Abdul is doing more nodding.

‘I’ve abandoned the idea of building sets. We can save money and time if we use a local village. Change the setting of the movie to the Mexico border and nobody is going to know the difference. I think we’re going to make a killing.’

‘Yes! Yes! You never say a truer word, matey,’ exults Abdul, his eyes revolving like catherine wheels. ‘Kill! Kill! Kill! We get the bastards this time.’

‘Tremendous enthusiasm,’ says Justin. ‘That’s what I like about the man. Loser is fascinated by him. He calls him Mr Life Force.’

‘They have a lot in common,’ says Sid, his nostrils twitching. ‘What about extras?’

‘No trouble, matey,’ says Abdul. ‘I have all the extras you need. They been waiting for this moment for a long time.’

‘You mean the film industry coming to Cyprus?’

Abdul waggles his head from side to side slowly. ‘Something like that.’

‘And the equipment?’

‘Abdul has a friend in the Customs Office.’

‘Yes,’ says Abdul. ‘He very good friend and he owe me a favour. I think he help us. Of course, I may have to give him a little present.’