We sit watching a sort of busy black-and-white haze for a while. Then we watch another one. Even on fast-forward, this takes a few minutes. It feels longer.
‘Well, this is very experimental,’ Paul says.
‘Christ, it’s like watching a Béla Tarr movie,’ Rob says.
‘Heathen,’ mutters Hol.
Over the years, Hol has got me to watch lots of films I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. She’s brought some on DVD when she’s visited, recommended (a few) new releases or (quite a lot of) old films in reconditioned prints playing at Bewford’s New Campus Regional Film Theatre – though I only ever actually go there if she or Guy drags me along because I hate walking into a cinema by myself – plus she emails or texts to tell me there’s something worth watching on TV.
She got me to watch black-and-white stuff like Citizen Kane (good surprise ending, though I didn’t really know what to make of it at first, so I guess she’s right that it bears rewatching); The Wages of Fear (nerve-racking but a bit preachy – we might have watched the wrong version); Seven Samurai (quite violent, though a bit long, and very muddy); The Misfits (not getting it, though we watched it together and it made Holly cry); Casablanca (good, and very funny, though I think I both impressed and annoyed her when I pointed out that when Rick refers to ‘German seventy-sevens’ in the Paris flashback montage, there was no such calibre of gun, and, even if there had been, it was laughable that even an arms dealer would be able to identify it or them from just a few distant rumbles. Probably the writer was thinking, vaguely, of the anti-aircraft gun turned anti-tank gun, the eighty-eight. Anyway, when some of the foreigners are called after cars – Captain Renault, Signor Ferrari – it’s probably a sign that not all that much in-depth research has been done); The General (not just black and white but silent! But funny. And short); and L’Atalante (not just black and white but in French too, and which I still don’t get. Though quite short).
Then there were films that she was surprised I’d missed but thought I might like, like John Carpenter’s The Thing (ultra scary); the original Point Blank (bit weird and dated, but good); Taxi Driver (which I didn’t really like); Delicatessen (weird – must be an acquired taste); Chinatown (only okay; not seeing it, though another good ending; Hol reckons Polanski is a genius and you just have to ignore the alleged sex-with-a-minor thing); Fargo (great, though neither of us can work out what the bit in the restaurant with her old flame is doing in there. Hol hearts most of what the Coens have done – apparently I must watch something called The Big Lebowski); Goodfellas (bit rambling, but good); and The Godfather (brilliant).
Some films she really loves felt too long to me, like Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, Kagemusha and 2001: A Space Odyssey (I fell asleep).
Others I just struggled with, like Les Amants du Pont Neuf and The Conformist. She reckons she should have kept those back for when I’m older, like she’s keeping back The Leopard (which is not about a leopard) and Tokyo Story (which at least is set in Tokyo).
She is mostly okay with the first two Terminator movies and the first two Alien movies, which is a relief because I love them.
We disagree a bit about Die Hard, which I secretly think is one of the best films ever. The only rubbish bit is John McClane falling even a short way down the lift shaft and saving himself by catching hold of the lip of the air vent with his fingers; that’s implausible. Hol dislikes it for the unnecessary dead-bad-guy-comes-alive-again bit at the end, especially as Al, the squad-car cop, then gets to reassert his own lost manhood and respect through a gun, by shooting somebody (even if it is a bad guy). And also for the dire sequels (though Three wasn’t too bad), though it’s hard to see how that’s really the fault of the original film.
We disagree a lot about Star Wars, which I love and she hates. (‘Rick Blaine gets a gun calibre wrong by eleven millimetres and you pound on him; these guys are duelling with fucking “light sabres” and that’s okay?’ she said. ‘And what about the fucking Nuremberg rally at the end?’ I was forced to point out firmly that the film’s only flaw is using ‘parsec’ as a unit of time.)
Oddly, we disagree about Toy Story, which she likes more than I do. I think with her it’s partly a technical thing. I feel the film’s unfair to Sid, the set-up-to-be-horrible kid next door with the teeth braces and the vicious dog. His mash-up toys were much more interesting and imaginative than the boring Andy’s ordinary ones. Unless you really do believe toys come alive and have feelings, in which case, okay, he’s a monster.
We also completely disagree about all superhero movies (including Batman movies, even though technically, like Tony Stark in the Iron Man films, he’s not a superhero). I think they’re brilliant and she thinks they’re brain-rotting rubbish. No matter how good they are. I mean, that’s just mental.
She has no time for Bond movies either, which I suspect is actually unpatriotic.
Never mention the Carry On films, and how maybe they’re a bit underrated and a good laugh really. Especially if you’re just repeating something you’ve heard elsewhere and can’t even begin to defend such a position. Which is ‘cretinous’, apparently.
However – to end on an upbeat, life-affirming note – we agree on the wonderfulness of Jaws, The Searchers, Leon, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Catch-22, Get Carter, The Untouchables, Pulp Fiction and anything by Miyazaki – in fact almost anything by Studio Ghibli.
‘Nah, they were mostly shit, though.’
‘No they weren’t. They were interesting.’
‘“Interesting”?’ Guy says with a sneer as I plump his pillows up for him. ‘That the best you can fucking do? What next? Fucking “compelling”?’
‘Have you taken this one?’ I hold up one of the pill packets from the bedside tray.
‘What? No. Who cares?’
‘Well, you should,’ I tell him. ‘I care,’ I add.
‘I’ve just watched those abysmally shit films we made when we were young and stupid instead of old and disillusioned; I’ve lost the will to live. What is that one, anyway? I don’t even recognise it. Are you sneaking in new pills for me to take just for the sake of it?’
This touches a nerve, because I have occasionally thought about sneaking some Imodium into his meds regime, just to give me a break. Though sometimes he gets constipated anyway, without any help. Which is a relief, until the log-jam breaks.
I look at the label on the pill box. ‘Claristipan.’
‘What’s that supposed to do?’
‘I’m not sure. Might be a white blood cell thing. You should keep the leaflets that come with these. You’re supposed to.’
‘They’ve started disappearing. I can’t find them any more.’
‘That’s because I’m keeping them. I have a loose-leaf folder. I rescue the leaflets from your litter bin and flatten them out and put them in clear plastic envelopes.’
‘Well then, you tell me what … Clovistipan does.’
‘Claristipan. I don’t think I’ve got the leaflet for this one. I could look it up on WebMD.’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Don’t bother. I haven’t taken it. Give it here.’
Guy swallows one of the capsules. ‘Fucking pills,’ he says. ‘I’d rattle when I fuck, if I could still fuck.’ He coughs. ‘If anyone still wanted to fuck me.’
‘What about these ones?’
‘What about what ones?’
‘These; Genhexacol.’
‘That was the first one I took!’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘Are you just mentioning my fucking meds to try and distract me? Are you embarrassed when I get morose? Do you not know how to cope when I start sounding depressed? Is that it?’
‘No, no. What about these? Chloratiphene.’
‘Fucking stop it! One of the few pleasures I have left is wallowing in my own fucking despair. You want to deny me even that!’
‘It’s not good to wallow.’
‘I don’t have anything else to fucking do. I don’t know what else I’
m good for. Wallowing is all I’ve got left.’
‘You have your friends here. You’ve been … you’ve been brighter, more lively, with them around. Talking more, even moving better.’
‘Stimulating company. Makes a pleasant change.’
‘There you are, then,’ I say, ignoring the part of this directed at me.
‘Just fucking guilt brought them here, anyway. Or thinking there might be some money in it. Hoping they’ll be mentioned in the will. They’ll be fucking lucky.’
‘That might apply to Haze. I think the rest … Actually I think they’re all here because they want to be. Even Haze.’
‘Still guilt,’ Guy says, settling back into his pillows and looking like he’s getting himself comfortable. ‘I fucking guilted them into coming here. Come and see the dying man. Roll up, roll up for your last chance. Make your peace, settle your scores, square your conscience …’
‘It doesn’t do any good, thinking like that.’
‘What, being fucking realistic? Have I missed something? Did we get the all-clear last week and I’ve got no cancer whatsoever any more and you’re still doing all this because you just like the routine, or you’ve developed a fetish for wiping my arse and don’t want it to stop?’
‘I’m just saying. It’s better to try to stay positive.’
‘Oh, fuck off—’
‘Dad, even the oncologists—’
‘I take the fucking point that if you have a choice of being negative or positive about something like this, you might as well be positive; can’t do any harm even if it borders on self-delusion and happy-clappy fuckwittery, but there’s a funny fucking thing about having terminal cancer – I mean, apart from the hilarity of all the pain and the weakness and the fear and the general humiliation of the disease and the fucking treatments …’ He breaks off to cough. ‘It makes it hard to be fucking positive about any fucking thing, with the notable exception of feeling positive that you’re going to fucking die. A prospect that seems like a blessed fucking relief, some days: that’s a positive result, something devoutly to be wished for, when the pain’s bad and you look back on a life that you wish you’d known was going to be this short so you could have shaped it different, and look forward to just more pain and increasing disability and helplessness, with the ever-enticing prospect of confusion and idiocy lying ahead, if and when the fucking cancer spreads into my brain. Oh yeah; lot to feel fucking positive about there!’ He’s been wheezing through the last half of this tirade. He collapses into another fit of coughing.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘like I say …’ God, this feels lame. It’s like he infects me with his despair when he talks like this. ‘You have to try to stay’ – I’m looking for another word instead of ‘positive’, which I feel we’ve kind of devalued now – ‘optimistic,’ I end up with.
‘Yeah,’ he says, wheezing again. ‘You know why you’re supposed to be so fucking positive? Do you?’
‘Well, I think people just think that—’
‘Because people are piss-scared. That’s why. Because nobody wants this to happen to them, and so they think, Well, it just won’t happen to me. If they’re God-botherers they think it’s because their made-up God loves them and they won’t get it because they don’t deserve it. If they’re not God-botherers they just think that it’d be different for them. If they got a whiff of anything ending in “oma” they’d escape its clutches with one mighty fucking bound through the sheer power of positive thinking. So they tell you to think positively, as though that’s going to help with a metastasising cancer rampaging its way through your fucking body.’
Guy breaks off, coughs again. He’s looking sweaty, his eyes are bright.
‘You might as well walk into a burning building and try to put out the fire through the medium of modern dance. But it means when you do lose your brave fucking battle – because it always has to be a brave fucking battle, doesn’t it? You’re never allowed to have a cowardly battle or just a resigned one; that’d be letting the fucking side down, that would … Anyway, they can secretly think, Well, fucker didn’t think positively enough, obviously. If that had been me, I’d have thought so positively I’d have been fine; I’d be fit as a fucking fiddle by now and out publicising my number one best-seller How I Beat the Big C and appearing on chat shows and talking with Spielberg’s people about the fucking film version.’ Guy coughs again. ‘So you don’t even get to die in peace; you don’t even get to die without the implication that it’s somehow your own fucking fault because you weren’t fucking positive enough.’
It’s your fault you smoked! I want to scream at him. I can feel tears trying to well up behind my eyes.
Guy looks up at me, face flushed and glistening in the bedside light. I should probably take a facecloth to him. He smiles. Or maybe sneers. It’s something in between.
‘Oh, it is my fault,’ he says quietly. ‘Of course. Silly me. I smeuked tabs, diven I?’ He puts on this fake Geordie accent sometimes. ‘Smeukin tabs’ – smoking cigarettes, and its variations – is a favourite phrase.
I feel my own face flush, as though mimicking his. I hate that he can read me this easily, that my own thoughts and feelings are so transparent to him. Maybe they’re this transparent to everybody! That would be even worse. I look away, blinking a lot, and pick up another pill packet, and would ask him if he’s taken these yet, but he’s kind of closed that option off too.
‘Do you fucking understand I don’t fucking want to die?’ he says. His voice is quiet, and shaking. This is sort of a relief; I thought he’d be shouting at me by this point and spitting inadvertently and screaming that people got effing lung cancer before smoking was invented, or didn’t I effing know …
Okay, so he’s not shouting, but I almost wish he was, because I kind of know how to cope with that, with the shouting and the spitting, however inadequately, but I don’t know how to cope with this: this low, impassioned-sounding voice. I don’t know how to cope with it at all.
‘Who fucking does want to die?’ he says, staring up at me. ‘Until something in your life gets so bad you feel it’s the only thing that’ll stop the fucking awfulness?’ He looks away, into the darkness at the far end of the room. ‘I’m scared to fucking death, Kit. Not of anything; not of hell or any bollocks like that; just at the thought of not fucking being any more. It shouldn’t be frightening – it’s just returning to the state you were in before you were born, before you were even conceived – but it is, whether you like it or not, like your brain can’t accept it’s not the most important thing in the whole fucking world, the whole fucking universe, and it’s terrified that when it goes, everything does.’ More coughing. ‘I hate the thought of the world and all the people in it just going merrily on without me after I’m gone. How fucking dare they? I should have had another forty, fifty years! I’m getting short-changed here and it’s not even as though any other bugger is going to benefit from the time I’m losing. Just lose-fucking-lose, all round.’
He looks up at me. ‘Fuck me,’ he says quietly. ‘You’re actually crying. Reduced me own flesh and blood to tears.’
I take a big sniff. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘Least I know you are my dad.’
‘Oh, don’t start,’ he says, sounding suddenly tired. Which is also better than shouting, and I suppose I have to admit I was trying to shoe-horn in something about my mother there, and finding out who she is. I feel suddenly ashamed that I even thought of exploiting his obviously fragile emotional state just to find out something I want to know. Though, at the same time, doing all you can to find out who exactly your mum is doesn’t seem all that unreasonable.
‘I’ll tell you now,’ he says. ‘If I’d known it was all going to end this early, I don’t know that I’d have accepted responsibility for you, lad. Took the best years of my life, looking after you.’
Hearing him say this gives me a bad feeling in my belly. ‘Sorry to have been such a burden,’ I tell him, trying to stop crying. Failing.
‘T
oo late for that now, isn’t it? And you were just a babe in arms anyway. Not your fault. It was that bitch of a mother of yours.’
‘Don’t talk about her like that. Please.’
‘I’ll—’ he starts angrily, then glances up at me and, after a moment, sighs, letting out as big and as deep a breath as he’s capable of these days. His chest rattles and he nearly coughs. ‘Ah well,’ he says. ‘Yeah. Not your fault, and I … appreciate what you’ve done for me, what you’ve been doing, recently. Suppose it’s unfair you get the brunt of everything. But you’re all I’ve got, aren’t you? Eh?’ He smiles uncertainly and reaches out to pat me on the arm, though he doesn’t look me in the eyes. ‘You’re a good kid. None of this is your fault any more than it’s mine.’
Less, I want to say, but don’t.
‘Yeah, well,’ he says, and goes, I think, to try to put one hand behind his head, but then stops, grimacing with the pain, and lets his arm flop down by his side again. ‘Maybe I’ve been wrong,’ he says, and sighs. (And, just for a moment, I think he means that maybe he’s been wrong to keep the identity of my mother secret from me all this time, and he’s finally going to make amends now, and tell me. But no; we’re back to him.) ‘I most certainly do not believe in hell, purgatory or heaven or any of that dreamed-up, sado-fantasist bollockry. However,’ he says, holding up one skinny finger, ‘I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised, following my death, because I don’t think I’ve been that bad a person, and if you can’t expect a bit of magnanimity and compassion from God, who the fuck can you expect it from? If God is supposed to be less forgiving than your average council care worker, fuck ’im; what use is the twat?’ He tries a smile, grinning up at me.
I think, in his own awkward way, he’s trying to lighten the mood. The sheen of sweat seems to have gone now. He’ll just accuse me of fussing if I try to wipe his face.
I think I must have a blind spot where religion is concerned. I just don’t get it. Either it’s telling you stuff that’s just provably not true – like the Earth being six thousand years old, for example, when there are tree-ring records that go further back than that (I mean, tree rings!) – or it’s telling you stuff that it swears is true but that it has no proof of, like life after death. That’s such a big claim you’d think there’d be some pretty robust proof out there, but basically there’s nothing, apart from claims in old books about miracles happening; old books often written ages after the events they describe.