Chapter 20
Arthur
‘You did this in three days?’ I skim through the pages again, unable to calm all of the thoughts and ideas rushing through my mind all at once. The pain of her words on Tuesday are dulled a little by her actions now.
‘It’s not finished or anything.’ She fiddles with the straw in her drink and refuses to look me in the eye.
‘It’s only an outline. Just a rough plot and a few key points.
Oh, and just one scene that I couldn’t not write.
’ Excitement peeks through her apprehension just for a split second and she seems like an entirely different person.
This isn’t the hostile farm girl I met two and a half weeks ago.
This isn’t the sarcastic barmaid who’s always ready to bite back the minute I tease her.
No, the woman in front of me is one full of hope, one who has a dream she is wearing on her face.
A dream that glows on her skin and brightens her eyes to a beautiful hue.
A dream that I’m going to help her achieve, if it means I get to see this version of her more often.
The scene she has written is the story Bruce told the two of us when I met him for the first time: my father and Jimmy together at the Gliderdrome. It’s so vivid that just reading it feels as though I am stood beside them having their conversations, smelling the air filled with smoke and booze.
Okay, perhaps the fact I am currently in the pub is helping, but still … She has a gift.
‘I just thought it would be interesting to show how two men with the same background went on to be heroes in their own rights but in entirely different ways. I thought you found that part to be the hook with your note on The Road Not Taken. I never had you down as a poetry fan.’ As her anxiety subsides, her excitement is given the room to glow a little brighter.
‘Neither had I, to be honest.’ I cast my eyes to the bar, unable to confess whilst holding her gaze.
‘I studied that poem whilst I was retaking my GCSE English. Something about it has always interested me, I suppose. The idea that we can choose our paths, and neither option is wrong, and knowing how way leads onto way that there is no point returning to that choice, because life offers you another, and another, until your own path is carved of many choices that are neither right nor wrong.’ She watches me so intensely as I speak, that I, for once, am unafraid to continue.
‘Then I wonder if my dad, knowing what he knows now, would have picked a different path that day after the bar fight? And if that could have changed anything for Jimmy.’
‘I thought the same thing.’ She sighs, and her gaze shifts to the opposite side of the pub.
Jimmy is in his usual seat, a half pint in front of him, just watching the world of the Big Apple play out before him.
‘And I think before we take this any further, we need to ask Jim’s permission.
Maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know his story.
Or it would upset him too much. That would be the last thing I’d want. ’
Me too. Though, how exactly do you ask a man if you can broadcast his life to whoever will listen?
Would he really want his lowest moments dramatised for all to see?
There are real people, with real feelings at the heart of all of this, and I suppose that’s something that Hollywood so often forgets.
I hadn’t even thought of it, in all honesty.
I’ve aways been more of an ask forgiveness rather than permission kind of person, but this isn’t just my life placed on the table here. This is exactly why I need Beatrice.
‘You’re right. Without Jimmy’s say-so, we’d be missing the point entirely.’ I remind myself more than anything that all of this started as a way to raise awareness. To represent people like Jimmy and my sister.
‘Would you like me to talk to him?’ Beatrice asks with the best of intentions, but I know this is something I have to do myself and that’s exactly what I tell her.
‘What are you kids over here tittering about in secret, eh?’ Tracy emerges from the back room with a smug grin on her face. ‘Are you distracting my staff again, Cavendish? I might have to start asking you to contribute to their wages.’
‘Sorry, Tracy,’ I reply with hot cheeks. ‘I was just heading over to see Jimmy anyway.’
‘Good luck,’ Beatrice whispers as I collect my glass from the bar and pluck up the courage to tell Jimmy about my proposition.
From just that small, throwaway phrase, I find myself renewed again.
A little shot of confidence surges in me and I shimmy around Barbara and duck under the outstretched arm of Al to take the seat opposite Jimmy.
‘Eddie.’ He nods, raising his glass to me before taking a sip. ‘How are you, my lad?’
I could talk to him as though I am my father, use whatever relationship they had to guarantee his agreement to the project, but this isn’t the big-city film industry. I’m here in New York to learn to be a better person, to find the authenticity that was missing in my life before now.
‘I’m actually Arthur; Edward is my dad.’ I outstretch my hand and Jimmy shakes it warmly.
‘Pleasure to meet you, son.’ My heart sinks a little, but Jimmy looks at me with such affection that it softens the blow. ‘You are ever so much like your old man. He was an old friend of mine, you know. How’s he doing?’
Trying to hold my composure, I simply nod. ‘He’s doing well. He sends his love.’ A lie, I know, but I can’t help myself.
‘Good man, your dad.’ He shakes his head and swigs from his glass as though remembering times like the one written in the script on the bar.
‘I’ve heard a great deal about you, Jimmy.’ I don’t clarify that it isn’t my father who has shared these stories, although I’m sure that will be what he assumes. ‘And you have lived such an interesting life.’
‘I would hardly know, lad. My mind isn’t what it ought to be these days.’ He scratches the top of his head as though wishing to dig his nails directly into the folds of his brain in frustration.
I hesitate for a moment, deliberating it all. Would it only hurt more, for him to see his life projected out before him, knowing how it ends?
‘Pretty girl that barmaid, in’t she?’ Jimmy speaks again and I follow his line of sight. Beatrice flits around the pub collecting glasses and other shrapnel left lying about the place. When she spots us looking, she waves, a nervous grin stretching across her face.
Turning back to Jimmy, I lean against the table with a sigh and shake my head. ‘She is,’ is all I can confess.
‘I had a girl like her once, you know.’ Jimmy looks off into the middle distance, as though he has to concentrate hard on the memories before they disappear.
‘I don’t remember her name now, but I can see her clear as day.
She had such a stern old look about her, she could make grown men stick to their seats with one pointed look, but the moment she smiled, man, you couldn’t help but melt.
You’d be lucky getting a girl like that.
You know when she softens up to you that you’re sommat special. ’
Stealing another glance at Beatrice, I see she’s already watching us intently, trying her hardest to decipher what’s being spoken without her.
Being caught staring, she flushes, opens her mouth to shout what I’m assuming would be an insult, realises she’s in her workplace, then sticks out her tongue in a childish gesture before turning on her heel and escaping out the back.
‘Very lucky.’ I laugh, trying to stop myself remembering the taste of that tongue, and the softness of her lips.
Like a shot of adrenaline, the feelings she stirs in me motivate me to proposition him with the thing I was too shy to mention before.
‘I’d like to make a film about you, Jimmy.
I’ve never made one before, at least not by myself, so I can’t promise it would be anything special, but I want to tell your story.
Well, me and Beatrice do. The barmaid,’ I clarify at the end of my rant.
‘A film about me?’ He laughs. ‘You taking the piss?’
‘No, no, not at all.’ My back grows sweaty and I look back to search for Beatrice at the bar and she gives me an encouraging thumbs up, and I take another renewing breath.
‘My sister,’ I begin, my apprehension warbling through my voice.
‘My sister has a similar condition to yours. It’s completely different circumstances, but I would like the opportunity to tell the world about the condition, but also about you, who you are, who you were, who the man is behind your diagnosis.
I would like the privilege to tell your story, and I feel that, in a way, it could help my Lizzie too. ’
‘Why not make a film about her?’ He poses the question to me, and it’s one I have also sat with these last few days. ‘Why me?’
‘I don’t know.’ It’s the truth. Why wouldn’t I just write about Lizzie? I know her better than I know myself, so why dedicate so much of my time to a man I’ve only met a handful of times?
‘It’s too hard,’ he states, watching me closely. I nod, the motion sending a single tear over my waterline that I catch quickly before anyone else sees.
‘You can do it, you can make the film. On one condition.’ Jimmy smiles in his melancholy sort of way.
‘Yeah?’ I’m hopeful. I’m so close to succeeding.
‘You come back to your sister, and tell her story too, when you’re ready.’ I can’t form any words; emotion is too thick in my throat so I only nod erratically and stick my hand out for him to shake.
‘Thank you,’ I finally manage to squeeze out, and he sips at his pint as if nothing has unfolded.
‘You look like an old friend of mine. Eddie Cavendish.’ His sad eyes smile.
‘I’ve got that one a few times, believe it or not.’ I take a swig of my own drink before looking across the bar for Beatrice, and the beaming smile she emits at the sight of my successful thumbs up has made it all feel worthwhile.
When Dad told me he’d come in two months, it felt so long, too far away, too out of reach.
Now, two months is an almost impossible deadline.
I have made promises, commitments, right here in New York.
I can’t just leave halfway through, with unfinished business.
I’m not my father. I have two months to make this film.
I have two months to give what I can to Jimmy, and to Beatrice. I need to succeed.