Chapter 31
Beatrice
All of my childhood, I grew up planning to get out.
I was convinced that ending up in New York would be proof that I was a failure.
No one at school ever had the dream of sticking around, of being just another one of the locals.
For years, forever, I have tried to run from this tiny village, all its people, and its insignificance in the world.
I wanted to be more than New York. I didn’t want to be like my parents; I didn’t want to be like their parents.
A few years ago, I did my family tree, hoping to find something interesting, some connection to a person of great importance: a saviour, a leader, someone that people actually remembered.
I got back about as far as the seventeenth century.
The only news articles were those of farmers and their crops, or poachers and their convictions.
Every man, woman, and child on that family tree was born and died within a forty-mile radius of this very village.
It’s a strange feeling, wanting to be something, but knowing it’s in your DNA to simply exist, to just add to a population, to witness centuries of stories of great people, never destined to be one yourself.
It’s only now that I see it differently.
Sat in the passenger seat beside my grandad as he drives me home from the train station, I realise all of this flat land around us, bountiful with crops, filled with life, was cultivated by generations of my family.
They’ve taken it from marshland and barren flatlands and turned it into my home.
Without every single one of them and their ‘insignificant’ lives, this land wouldn’t thrive, it wouldn’t be my home, it wouldn’t have raised me.
It’s thanks to all of those people that I even have the space to dream, that I have the freedom to know there are opportunities out there.
There is no greater feeling than coming home to a place that was built for you, a place that I will always belong, I will always be welcome, I will always be loved.
Maybe I won’t be remembered, maybe none of my work will ever be seen by the masses, but I know that in this tiny pocket of the world, I am something special, and that’s more than I could ask for.
Arthur hasn’t called and he’s not miraculously waiting for me at my front door when I get home.
Grandad doesn’t ask why I’m alone, or why I got the train home; he just waits up for me to crawl into bed, then kisses me on the forehead as he tucks me in, just like he used to when I was a kid.
He knows he doesn’t need to say anything, but in every way apart from words, he tells me that he’s here for me.
When I wake again in the morning, though my body feels heavy, I drag myself out of bed.
Nan and Grandad are already up and out when I go down for breakfast and the house is so silent that I can hear my own breaths and the occasional hum of a car on the road two streets over.
Deciding that I can’t sit here, doing nothing, with only my own thoughts running around my head, I wander down to the Big Apple and hope Tracy isn’t too busy for a chat like old times.
The morning is crisp, the wind races across the fields until it bundles me up in a throwback to winter and I have to keep my head down in defence against it as I hurry into the pub.
‘Are we back to winter again or what?’ I announce to the room as I walk in, my hair still shrouding my flushed face from the cold, but the chatter is so loud I don’t think anyone hears me.
Wrestling the strands out of my face, I finally see the cause for the commotion: Arthur is in the centre of the room, surrounded by a crate of mental equipment and a hoard of eager OAPs.
They all watch him with such fervour and fuss around his stockpile so manically that it’s as if they’re a flock of hungry pigeons and he’s a dropped a chip, slathered in salt and vinegar, and tasty enough to fight over.
Even my nan and grandad huddle around him, clamouring for a camera or a boom mic. Traitors.
He came back. I should have a thousand feelings at the sight of him here, at home.
But I don’t. All I can think is that he came back.
Okay, maybe I’m a little angry. More than a little.
Rather a lot. How can he have come to see every soul in the village except me?
Why send me home alone if only to rock up the next day as though nothing has happened?
‘What the fu—’ I begin but Arthur cuts me off.
‘Ladies and gentleman, our fantastic writer and director, Beatrice Norton.’ He swings out his arm as though inviting me on stage and they all clap as if I’m not just the girl who fetches them a packet of Nobby’s Nuts every Friday night.
Instinctively I walk into the crowd as directed and see the array of equipment he has strewn across the carpet.
It’s high-spec stuff, none of the old camcorder shite that I was begging people for only last week. No wonder they think he’s a hero.
‘What is going on?’ I say through gritted teeth as I draw near to Arthur.
He smiles, then grabs something from behind him and sets it down before me.
An old-school canvas director’s chair, complete with the lettering on the back, is placed in front of me and he gestures for me to take a seat.
Typical man; thinking one gift will solve all his wrongdoings …
I sit down anyway, not for him; it’s just that I’ve always wanted to see if they’re comfier than they look.
It turns out that they are and I can’t help but smile a little as I lean back into it. Arthur’s famous grin returns.
‘We’re making a film,’ he declares. ‘Did you know that Bill once had a pint with the fella who operated the camera on Oasis’s “Wonderwall” music video?’ He looks over to Bill who holds the weighty camera in his arms, looking positively proud.
‘I did not,’ I confess.
‘And did you know that Barbara once had a conversation with “Leonardo DiCaprio” on Facebook where he asked her for fashion advice and she sent him an iTunes voucher so he could make his flight to get to the set of The Revenant; you know, the one that finally got him his Oscar?’ Barbara blushes and grins as Arthur winks at her.
‘It’s basically thanks to her that he won.
’ I grimace thinking how much of her hard-earned cash the definitely-not-real “Leo” managed to scam her out of, but she seems happy enough now, flinging around various items of clothing in her makeshift costume department.
‘And did you know, your very own grandmother,’ the woman in question comes swanning over, makeup brush in hand, ‘was once the best makeup artist in Boston!’ (Impressive if he were talking about Massachusetts, but slightly less so when you realise that she was the makeup lady behind the counter in the local department store for a couple of years.) But who am I to dampen their spirits?
She’s a talent. I’ve seen her draw on her eyebrows perfectly every single day for over twenty years, in the dark, in the car, in the rain, you name it.
‘And your grandad,’ Arthur continues, ‘he’s helped build so many sheds for everyone in the village that he is the best set builder I’ve ever seen.’
Arthur doesn’t stop until he mentions every single name in the room and their precarious links to the film industry, making each one of them blush and grin with his praise until the room is practically vibrating with their own personal confidence.
I’ve never seen half of these folks look so energetic.
Arthur’s charm offensive really is an art that needs to be studied.
‘And you are the greatest writer, greatest mind, and greatest woman I have ever met in my life.’ He’s too bloody good.
‘We’re going to do this, me and you, and this lot, even if they are more of a hindrance than a help most of the time.
’ I hold his gaze in mine until everyone else in the room vanishes into the background and all that matters is him and me and the magnetic pull that means neither of us can stay away.
‘Arthur, where on earth did you get all of this stuff from? There must be tens of thousands of pounds worth of stuff here,’ I finally say, when I regain my senses.
‘Hundreds of thousands I reckon.’ My eyes instinctively widen.
‘I took a little detour on my way home.’ Every time he says that word, a little pulse bounces through my body.
A tiny flicker of hope ignites within me, praying that he’s changed his mind, that he will fight to stay.
‘Dad had all of this lying about getting dusty so I nicked it. He doesn’t need it; he’s got people that make his films for him.
I’m sure he won’t even notice it’s gone. ’
‘Arthur, Arthur!’ Before I can protest, Bill comes over with a fast limp and an excitable expression. ‘I’ve got an idea for a place we can film.’
‘Well young William, you had better speak to your director.’ Arthur points the gentleman in my direction and he sags a little as though disappointed not to be wowing Mr Cavendish with his ideas.
That, and he’s presented rather a few ideas to me before including but not limited to, a dial-a-ride service to and from the pub, and shooting paintball pellets at anyone speeding through the village, all of which I have shot down rather quickly.
‘Right, Beatrice,’ he begins and I hold my breath, ‘you know how it’s set in New York, yeah?’
‘Yes …’
‘Well, you know that old place on the banks of the River Witham at Langrick, just up the road? What was it called? The Witham and Blues, that’s it, that old restaurant that used to have those kiddies from the high school dancing about, big old diabetes-inducing milkshakes and stuff.
Well, they’ve still got that old yellow cab parked outside, you know, like the ones they have in America.
I reckon we could ask them to use it and I can drive about like a proper cabbie, like that “You talkin’ to me” fella.
’ Arthur and I watch him, stunned, for a moment, until Arthur begins to nod his head with such enthusiasm that I start to believe that he too has lost his mind.
‘Bill, you do know that you live in New York, right?’ I clarify.
‘Born and raised, gal. Born in my mam’s bungalow down Dogdyke Road.’
‘The film is set here, Bill, not the American New York.’
He looks at me, confused.
‘What would you want to make a film about this place for? We’re two roads and a pub, hardly anything exciting.’ All I can do is smile. This is exactly why I want to make a film about this place.
And that’s exactly what we do. With the help (hindrance) of the entire village, we spend the next three weeks up and down the county filming the story of Jimmy and Ed, their highs, their lows, their time in New York, and their time apart until it ends with Jimmy, sat alone in the Big Apple, waiting for his friend to return, the friend who forgot about him long ago. Arthur plays his father, of course.
I won’t admit it to him, but I have seen him in his previous roles.
You know, the cheesy cameo in teen movies, or the straight-to-streaming flicks that were never going to show off his acting ability when the script sounds like it’s been produced by some AI programme that’s still in its infancy.
All of them are superficial roles, but not this one.
Though the extras around him are pubgoers who can’t stop looking into the camera, the sets are out amongst the public with only Tracy as a bouncer to try and stop random civilians walking through the shot, and my camera work is far from anything professional, there’s something captivating about watching him both on and off the screen.
There’s real emotion in him. Perhaps it’s his closeness to his character, or his closeness to the whole production, but he gives his father a run for his money.
‘There’s nothing here for me, Jim.’ Arthur, as his father, sits on the dry-stone wall, kicking his heels as his co-star tosses stones into the dyke behind them. ‘This place, if I stay, I’ll be a farmer, or an alcoholic. If I stay here, I’ll end up like my dad. If I don’t get out now, I never will.’
‘What about me, Ed?’ Jimmy’s character, an aspiring actor we picked up in an audition from Boston College, delivers his heart-wrenching line. ‘It’s always just been us, together, a team. I ain’t like you, Eddie. I can’t just leave this place and not look back. Where would I go?’
‘Come with me.’
Producer Natalie was right in a way. This is a love story of sorts. A tragic, heart-breaking, but beautiful story of the love of two friends who lost each other, but have been irreversibly changed because they knew each other. Tommy is my Jimmy.
Arthur’s performance is so real, so raw, I find myself sweeping away a tear or two as I watch him.
He is a Cavendish through and through. There’s no doubt about that.