The Man In The Seventh Row (19 page)

Holly gets the taxi driver to stop, and, despite Cat's plaintive miaowing, she turns him out into the rain. The taxi no sooner starts again, than Paul tells the driver to pull over. He tells Holly that people do fall in love but she doesn't have the guts to face the reality of it. He gives her the novelty ring they had had engraved at Tiffany's and heads out into the rain.

Tiffany has ventured from the kitchen and is rubbing herself against Roy's outstretched legs. Anna nudges Roy and points to the cat. 'She never normally goes near any men,' she says incredulously.

After a moment of hesitation, Holly gets out of the taxi too. The rain mingles with her tears as she finds Paul looking for Cat. They find him sheltering in a packing case in an alleyway. Holly tucks Cat inside her raincoat. Holly and Paul embrace, with Cat squashed between them, 'Moon River' playing on the soundtrack. And, with a kiss, Holly acknowledges that she and Paul are indeed after that same rainbow's end.

Roy kisses the tears from beneath Anna's eyes. He sniffs and is forced to wipe his own eyes. 'It's that damn cat,' he says. 'I'm allergic.' She takes his hand and silently leads him to the bedroom. 'I never cry.' They embrace.

Outside, lightning forks across the sky and momentarily illuminates the Pacific. Anna pulls Roy onto the bed and slips her hand under his tee-shirt and into the forest of hair on his chest. Somewhere, hot, red flames jump to devour the dry wood that has been thrown to them. Anna and Roy's bodies twist together. A horse neighs agitatedly and rears on its hind legs. An express train whistles as it disappears into a long, dark tunnel. Above Santa Monica Pier, the black heavens are suddenly lit up again, this time by a starbust of fireworks, red and green and silver. The carousel beneath the fireworks spins around and waves crash on the shore. The fireworks spread and fall, like a flower budding, blooming and dying, throwing off its pretty, coloured petals and decomposing into nothingness, all in the space of a couple of seconds. The carousel slows, the train exits its tunnel, the horse whinnies contentedly and the waves slip away again into the Pacific, leaving a damp patch and a little foam behind them on the sand.

Later, two figures wrapped in white linen sheets stand silently looking out of the window. One passes a cigarette to the other.

'I'll be gone soon,' he says.

'I know,' she replies.

20

It seems appropriate to watch
Chinatown
at Mann's Chinese Theatre, if only for the reason that neither has much to do with anything Chinese. In both, China is a state of mind.

After breakfast with Tiffany, Roy and Anna go there, to Mann's Chinese Theatre, to the late morning showing of
Chinatown
. Anna has never seen it before. Roy has seen it a dozen times and finds something new to take from it every time. Jack Nicholson got the ambiguity of the character just right, the teflon overcoat of cynicism that stops the man from crumbling. Just walk away. You have to just walk away. Every good dick knows that. Don't get involved. But they always do.

Roy thought he might be playing Jack Nicholson's part, the detective Jake Gittes. He is slightly disappointed to see Nicholson on screen in the opening scene in his white suit, smoking a cigarette, drinking whisky, showing Burt Young pornographic pictures. They are pornographic pictures of Young's wife and her lover. Roy is disappointed, and yet relieved, a little, just a little, not because there is any reason to think that he is no longer being sucked into that parallel world of the movies, but because he is not sure what he might have done with the role of Jake Gittes. Leave it to Jack. Don't go singing 'Singin' in the Rain' in a city in the grip of drought.

Jake's second client is a woman in black who smokes her cigarettes through a long holder. She thinks her husband is having an affair. Jake advises it is better not to know, let sleeping dogs lie. But she wants to know. She says her husband is Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Mulwray is in the news because of his opposition to a new reservoir project. Jake photographs him with another woman and the pictures end up in the paper.

Jake almost gets into a fight with another customer in a barber's shop over the way he makes his living, but the barber defuses the situation with a joke about a man who is tired screwing his wife. His friend tells him he should do what the Chinese do, screw a little and stop, screw a little and stop. So the man screws his wife and stops to read 'Life' magazine, and he screws a little more and stops for a cigarette, and he screws some more and stops. And his wife tells him he is screwing just like a Chinaman. Jake repeats the joke to the guys in his office just as Faye Dunaway walks in, claiming to be the real Mrs Mulwray. Her husband's body is found drowned in a reservoir. Evelyn Mulwray is the daughter of a man called Noah Cross, Hollis Mulwray's former partner from the time they privately owned the city's water supply and the author of the new dam scheme. Noah was played originally by John Huston, director of
The Maltese Falcon
and father of Nicholson's one time real-life partner Anjelica Huston.

But his part has been taken by Roy, who looks older than normal, with lines running out from the corners of his eyes and taller, though Jack Nicholson is pretty short of course. Roy wears black jeans and a black stetson, like the villain in an old western serial, though he still smokes a big cigar like Huston did. He sticks closely to the script; he just says the lines differently, and adds one or two.

'Water is power, Mr Gittes,' he says in a rich, dry voice. 'The ark was never lost, Mr Gittes. It served its purpose. I dammed the water, I controlled the water, I controlled everything, even the animals. I let them live, you know, Mr Gittes. Two by two, Mr Gittes. And Mulwray? There was no longer room for him on my ark. There were already two of us.'

And he draws on his big cigar, patriarch, cowboy, capital.

Chinatown
has sucked its director Roman Polanski into the action on screen as well, as a little man with a bow-tie and a knife. Maybe he wasn't happy with some aspect of Jack Nicholson's performance. He sticks his knife up Jake's nose and pulls it straight out again, the quick way, sideways, as a hint that he might be best advised to drop his investigations.

Anna shudders and turns to Roy and notices for the first time the line of scar tissue on his left nostril, white and untanned against the darker surrounding flesh. Her fingers close around his fingers, which are cold as ice. Their faces are lit by the light from the screen. For film noir
Chinatown
is very bright, all white suits, and white houses, and desert, no shadows, no hiding places.

Jake discovers that Noah has been buying up land. He makes love to Evelyn Mulwray, then follows her and discovers that she appears to be keeping prisoner the young woman whom Jake photographed with her husband. Jake accuses Mrs Mulwray of killing her own husband and imprisoning his lover. She says the girl, Katherine, is her sister. Jake doesn't believe her. She says Katherine is her daughter. Jake slaps her. She says Katherine is her sister and her daughter.

***

People are not always what they seem. Jack Nicholson had finished shooting
Chinatown
when he found out that the woman he thought was his sister in real life was his mother. Time and again life mirrors art. And it's not the drink and drugs that fuck your mind. It's not the films that fuck your mind. It's life that fucks your mind, life and death.

***

Noah is Katherine's father, Evelyn's father, Evelyn's lover, Hollis Mulwray's killer. Jake, Noah and the police are up in Chinatown, where Evelyn and Katherine are hiding. Evelyn shoots and wounds her father and attempts to get away with her daughter. A policeman shoots at the car. It comes to a halt, down the street, its horn blaring. Jake runs over. Evelyn is dead. 'Forget it Jake,' someone says. 'It's Chinatown.'

It's all there. And every time you look at it you find something new, something you had overlooked before, like a case that goes on and on forever. And there is no happy ending, there never can be a happy ending.

***

'Love never lasts,' says Anna. 'Nothing lasts.'

'You have to see the sequel to find out what lasts.'

'
The Two Jakes
? I never saw it.'

'No one did,' says Roy. 'But it just confirms what we already know. Katherine is in it, her husband is dead. She asks Jake if she will ever get over the pain, if the past ever goes away. He makes some wise crack and she leaves. But he chases after her and tells her that it never does go away.'

Roy's voice is breaking and he struggles to get the words out.

'The past never goes away. You never forget.'

Anna puts her arm around his shoulder. 'You're still in love with Jo, aren't you?'

'Jo?' says Roy, looking as if he has not quite understood who Anna is talking about.

'Jo, your wife.'

'I'm not sure,' says Roy uncertainly, 'that I was ever really in love with Jo, my wife. I wanted us to be a family, but it all fell apart. I'm still in love with Jo, my daughter. Jo was my wife and Jo was my daughter.'

21

Roy could still remember the first time he saw his daughter Jo, a little grey head poking nervously out between her mother's bloody, black legs, with a wrinkled forehead, a worried look in the enormous blue eyes that dominated her face, and the mouth silently opening and closing as if she were talking but someone had turned the sound down. She looked doubtful, as if she might at any moment change her mind and disappear back to where she came from.

'Come on, baby,' said Roy, 'Just a wee bit farther, my wee lovely.'

She looked just like
ET
. Roy called her
et b
ut her mother did not approve of the nickname. Jo insisted on calling the baby Josephine. Roy pointed out that calling a baby after her mother would only cause confusion. But Jo explained they were not calling the baby after her mother, they were calling her after her grandmother, who was also called Josephine.

'But just for birth certificates and passports and things. She'll be called Jo.'

Roy said he would have to call the baby
ET
in order to differentiate between mother and child, but it was just the first in a series of nicknames. Roy settled for calling her Rosebud, after the sledge in
Citizen Kane
. And it even got that Jo called her Rosebud too. It was one of the few things Jo and Roy ever agreed on after he got back from San Carlos.

He had had no communication with Jo while he was away. At first he missed her but after a month or so the ache and the emptiness he felt at night, alone in bed gradually dissipated. He had mixed feelings about seeing her again after all that time. Eight months. He swithered about phoning first, but all the way back from
LA
to Heathrow and Kings Cross to Waverley he pictured himself standing in the doorway, and the surprise on her face, and then maybe they would make love with the intensity they had in the early days. Absence makes the loins grow harder. But then what? Half an hour later, when he had poured all his absence into her, then what? He even considered just letting himself in and shouting out from the hall 'Jo, I'm home.' But he decided he had better ring the bell. He wondered if she had grown her hair or put on weight. There was a moment of sweet anticipation as he heard her behind the door.

'Don't look so flabbergasted,' she said. 'It's your doing.'

A week later Rosebud was born, prematurely. She was always small for her age. Her grey skin quickly turned coffee-coloured.

Roy had not known if Jo would want him to move back into the flat. He had not known if he would want to move back. Rosebud changed everything. When she cried in the night it was Roy who got up and fed her, changed her nappies, carried her around the room. It was Roy who rocked her on the couch, singing 'Over the Rainbow' to her, until her eyes flickered and closed and she fell asleep. He eventually dropped off, still sitting on the couch, because he knew that to move would wake her and start the whole cycle all over again.

Rosebud did not cry much. Jo cried more. She lay in bed and sobbed and would not be consoled. Roy cooked her boiled eggs and pasta and took them to her in bed, but she ate little. Someone had told her that she should drink stout to regain her strength and she was drinking eight bottles of Guinness a day. Then she would stop sobbing and lie for hours just staring at the portable television in the corner, not even noticing what was on it, and eventually she would fall asleep. Roy was ready to run between the two, with a bottle of milk to quieten one and a bottle of Guinness to quieten the other. Roy slept on the couch in the lounge, aware of every movement in the little cot beside him and in the big double bed next door.

Jo said she was too tired to even hold the baby. The doctor gave her drugs to help her sleep. She cried less and slept more. As the weeks passed, Roy sang to Rosebud, as quietly as he could. Her big eyes opened wide as she seemed to recognise 'Over the Rainbow' and he made her little brown limbs move in time to 'Singin' in the Rain', pausing after the delivery of each single word in that opening line, to crank up the anticipation, and he jiggled her around the room in his arms to the theme tune from
The Magnificent Seven
.

Dee-dee. Dee-dee-dee; Dee-dee. Dee-dee-dee-dee; Dee-dee-dee-dee. Dee, Dee-dee. Dee-dee, Dee-dee-dee.