Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘I told you, it was good. Powerful, and direct, and … truthful. It tells the truth about something.’
‘Ah, but does it, though? You see, film’s such a tightly structured medium, that even in a short piece of work like this, all sorts of decisions have to be made. How long a shot’s going to last, how a shot’s going to be framed, which shots are going to come before it, which ones are going to come after. Now doesn’t that whole process become suspect when you’re dealing with something that advertises itself explicitly as a political film? Doesn’t it make the role of the film-maker himself intensely problematic, prompting the question – not “Is this the truth?” but “Whose truth is it anyway?” ’
‘You’re absolutely right, of course. Do you think you could show me how this freeze frame business works?’
‘Sure.’ Graham picked up the remote control, rewound the tape a few minutes and then pressed Play. ‘So my point is that the whole thing is deeply manipulative, not just of the audience, but of its subject. Mrs Thatcher invaded the Falklands and I invaded this woman’s life – both of us on the same pretext, that we had their best interests at heart.’ He pressed Pause and the old woman froze into jittery stillness, in the act of opening a can of soup. ‘In a way the only really honest thing for me to do would be to expose the mechanics of my involvement: to have the camera pan round and suddenly rest on me, the director, sitting in the room with her. Perhaps that’s what Godard would have done.’
‘Can’t you get rid of those lines across the screen?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes you can. You just have to keep pressing the button and eventually they go away.’
He pressed the pause button some more times.
‘It’s a bit blurred, isn’t it?’
‘The technology’ll improve. Anyway, would it have been anything more than an empty self-referential gesture, that’s what I have to ask myself. Because I know exactly what you’re going to say next: you’re going to say that any attempt to foreground issues of authorship would just be a throwback to formalism, a futile strategy to shift emphasis from the signified to the signifier which can’t do anything to alter the basic fact that, at the end of the day, all truth is ideological.’
‘Do all the machines have this feature,’ I asked, ‘or do you have to go to the more expensive end of the market?’
‘They’ve all got them,’ he said. ‘It’s their main selling point. Quite a radical development, when you think about it: for the first time in history, control over cinematic time is being given to the audience and taken out of the film-maker’s hands. You could argue that it’s the first real move towards the democratization of the viewing process. Though of course’ – he switched off the tape and stood up to draw the curtains – ‘it’d be naïve to suggest that that’s why people were buying them. At college we call it the WP button.’
‘WP?’
‘Wankers’ paradise. All your favourite movie stars in the buff, you see. No more of those tantalizing scenes when some gorgeous actress drops them for a couple of seconds and then disappears out of the frame: now you can stare at her for as long as you like. For an eternity, in theory. Or at least until the tape wears out.’
I looked past him, gazing sightlessly at the window. ‘That would certainly … have its uses,’ I said.
‘Anyway, it’s been nice having this chat,’ said Graham. ‘It’s always helpful, getting a bit of objective criticism from someone.’
There was a short pause and then I snapped out of my reverie, suddenly hearing him again. ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I found it very interesting.’
‘Well look, I’m just going into town. Can I get you anything?’
∗
I was alone in the house for the first time. There is a sort of quietness I associate with such moments: more than absolute, it insinuates, takes root, and keeps watch. The opposite of a dead silence, it quivers with possibility. It is alive with the sound of nothing happening. You don’t get silence like this in London: not silence that you can listen to, savour, swathe yourself in. I found that I was walking around the house on tiptoe, and that the occasional noises of footsteps outside in the street or cars chugging past seemed highly intrusive. I tried to settle down and read the newspaper but could only manage it for a minute or two. With Graham’s departure the house had changed its character completely – had taken on a magical aspect, like a forbidden temple which I had somehow managed to infiltrate, and I was seized with the impulse to explore.
I made my way up the staircase, turned right on the landing, and stepped into Joan’s bedroom. It was a bright, cheerful room which faced on to the main road. There was a double bed, neatly made, with a pink duvet and several pale blue cushions arranged against the pillows. In the middle of these sat a figure I recognized from one of memory’s most distant corners: a battered yellow teddy bear called Barnabas, her bedtime companion since infancy. I noticed that his eyes didn’t match any more: one was black and the other was blue. It must have come off quite recently, and a brief, affecting image flickered across my mind – Joan sitting at the end of the bed, a needle and thread in her hand, sewing the button on, patiently restoring eyesight to this worn childhood relic. I didn’t touch him. I glanced at the neatly stacked bookshelves, the family photographs, the desk with its gift stationery and Liberty print lamp. In the corner there were more functional-looking ring binders and a cardboard box full of notes and papers. Nothing on her bedside table besides a half-empty glass of water, a box of tissues and a magazine, the cover of which boasted a picture of two green bomber jets in mid-flight, with the caption ‘The Mark I Hurricane – Britain’s wartime triumph’. I smiled and picked it up. This was the Sunday newspaper magazine published a couple of months ago with my juvenile story in it. I wondered whether Joan had simply never got around to putting it away, or if it was there for a reason, to be marvelled at and pored over every night before going to sleep. I wouldn’t have been surprised.
If this was the case, anyway, who was I to make fun of her: I had read and re-read the thing often enough myself, and even now I couldn’t resist sitting down on the bed, opening the magazine at the familiar page and immersing myself once again in the warm waters of that shallow glory.
Michael Owen [read the introduction] was born in Birmingham in 1952 and has recently received great acclaim for his novels
Accidents Will Happen
and
The Loving Touch.
Michael was only eight years old when he created his first fictional character, a Victorian detective who went by the exotic name of Jason Rudd. He was the subject of numerous adventures, the longest and most exciting being
The Castle of Mystery,
of which we present the opening pages here. Sadly this is not the first in the series – an earlier case, involving a character called Thomas Watson mentioned in this extract, has been lost
–
but Michael assures us that it provides a good introduction to the world of Rudd and his assistant Richard Marple, which he describes as ‘Holmes and Watson revisited, with a healthy dash of surrealism’.
THE CASTLE OF MYSTERY
Chapter One
Jason Rudd, a distinguished detective of the 19th Century sat at a wooden carved table, opposite his companion Richard Marple, who had accompanied him on many of his adventures.
Jason was middle-sized and had light hair. He was more or less the bravest of the two, but Richard was extremely courageous too. Richard had dark hair and was very tall, but Jason had the brains. He could not do without Richard.
You see, Richard could perform athletic feats, and Jason couldn’t. They were about the most formidable combination in Britain.
At this moment however they were engaged in a game of Chess. The board was old and dirty, despite Jason’s efforts to polish it. Jason moved his knight and smiled.
‘Check’, he said.
But Richard moved his bishop and took Jason’s knight.
‘Bother’!
Jason sat extremely still hardly breathing. He always did this when he was thinking. He moved his queen.
‘Checkmate’!
‘You’ve won, well done’.
The two shook hands then sat down.
‘I’m getting exceptionally bored’, pronounced Jason. ‘I want something to think about. I mean, chess is alright but I’d like something like that Thomas Watson business, which reminds me, how is Thomas?’
‘Not too good I’m afraid. His arm is yet to heal’.
‘Is he in danger of dying, or worse?’
‘He is in danger of dying’.
‘He is? That is bad. We must see him. What about tomorrow or the next day?’
‘Tomorrow would be convenient’.
‘Then shall we make a day of it?’
‘Certainly, if my wife approves. Er, what is the time please?’
‘Five minutes past ten’.
‘Then I had better be going’.
‘Alright,’ said Jason, ‘Shall I see you out?’
‘No thank you’.
Jason watched Richard get his coat. He heard the door open then close.
Richard walked out. He was half-way home when a man stepped out of the dark and blocked Richard’s way.
‘I’m Edward Whiter’, he said.
He had an American accent, a beard and yellow teeth.
‘Are you Richard Marple?’
‘I am’.
‘I would wish to see you and Mr Jason Rudd together now’.
‘For what reason?’
‘I want to talk to you. It is about a very frightening business and I wish you would help me’.
‘Then when do you want us to start this?’
‘Tomorrow’.
‘I am sorry but that is impossible’
‘You must do it’.
‘Why?’
‘Because we don’t want our people to believe in it’.
‘Believe in what?’
Edward lowered his voice and whispered ‘The curse’.
‘The curse? What curse?’
‘The curse of Hacrio Castle’.
‘Alright. I’ll take you to see Jason. I’m sure that he’ll be very interested’.
‘That’s good’. He now spoke with an English accent. He sounded much pleasanter. He ripped off a false beard and smiled.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you Mr Marple,’ he said. Richard, being rather surprised held out his hand. They shook hands.
‘I – I’m very pleased to meet you Mr – Mr Whiter’.
‘Please, call me Edward. Now come on, where is Mr Rudd’s house?’
∗ ∗ ∗
‘I wish to tell you a story Mr Rudd. I imagine that it should interest you greatly. Shall I begin?’
‘Most certainly’.
‘Then I shall. It was dark. There was a terrible thunderstorm breaking out over Hacrio Castle. Faint cries were coming from inside. The Black Knight was hammering Walter Bimton to death with a spiked mace. Goodbye Mr Rudd’.
He got up and left the room. Jason heard the front door open and then shut.
‘A most surprising visitor. I wonder why he left so soon?’
‘I don’t know’, said Richard. ‘What do you think of the story?’
‘It was most interesting. We must locate Hacrio Castle. It will be most interesting for us to investigate’.
‘Yes’.
‘However, at present I am more interested in Edward Whiter. Why did he go so quickly? Why, he barely said a few words before he left’.
‘It is so, Jason. I wonder also. Perhaps we will get the answer later’.
‘It may be. Anyway, Hacrio Castle – have you ever heard of it?’
‘No, not at all, and I haven’t got any idea of what it might look like, either’.
‘Neither have I’, admitted Jason. ‘Still I don’t suppose it would be of any use anyway’.
‘You’re probably right. Got any ideas as to what mystery may surround it?’
‘Oh yes, I think I have’.
‘You do?’
‘Yes’. He lowered his voice. ‘I think it’s cursed’.
I closed the magazine, after taking a last look at that silly photograph of me looking precocious and introspective in Mr Nuttall’s cowshed, and put it back on Joan’s bedside table. It was strange reading that story again; like hearing an unfamiliar voice on a tape recorder and steadfastly refusing to believe that it could be your own. The temptation was to think of it as another potential bridge to the past: a way of retracing my steps until I would be brought face to face with the eight-year-old innocent who had written it, and who now seemed such a perfect stranger. But it was obvious enough, even to me, that it actually said less about the kind of child I had been than about the books I was reading at the time: stories of nice middle-class children spending holidays together in rambling country houses which would turn out to be crammed with trapdoors and secret passages; stories of Gothic adventure unfolding in lurid comic strips, their detail hovering just this side of parental acceptability; stories of remote and enviable American teenagers who formed themselves into detective clubs, and seemed to live in unlikely proximity to any number of haunted castles, ghostly mansions and mysterious islands. It was years since I’d read one of these books. Most of my copies had been given away to church jumble sales by my mother. But it was a safe bet, I thought, that there would be a few such items still to be found on Joan’s bookshelf: and I was absolutely right. I plucked at a colourful spine and found myself staring at a cover illustration which instantly gave off the dusty odour of past pleasures. It was tempting to take the book downstairs and start reading it there and then, but some puritanical impulse stopped me, insisting that I had better things to do than to wallow in this sort of nostalgia. So I put it back on the shelf, tiptoed out on to the landing and, resuming my earlier (and certainly no more noble) programme of exploration, pushed open the door to Phoebe’s room.
It was the largest of the three bedrooms; also the most cluttered, because it clearly served as both living quarters and studio space. A variety of paint pots, brushes soaking in cleaning fluid, old newspapers scattered over the floor and rags streaked with multicoloured oils all testified to the nature of her work; and in front of the window, catching the best of the sunlight, there was an easel supporting a large canvas, hidden from view by an off-white sheet. I must admit that I hadn’t been much prey to curiosity regarding Phoebe up until this point: I had noticed, in a superficial way, that she was very attractive (oddly enough she reminded me of Shirley Eaton, whose image had for so long provided my ideal of feminine beauty), but this would probably have had more effect if I hadn’t still been under the spell cast by Alice during our short meeting; and to me, at any rate, she had said scarcely anything of interest – had said scarcely anything at all, if it came to that – since my arrival. And yet there was something irresistible about the idea of spying on her work in progress; something wickedly analogous, I suppose, to the thought of glimpsing her in a state of undress. I took hold of a corner of the sheet and lifted it two or three inches. A tantalizing area of thick, grey-green paint came into view. I raised the sheet some more, until I could just about see a provocative little band of coppery red, placed teasingly on the edge of the canvas. It was more than I could bear, and in one sudden, ruthless movement I whipped the sheet away, so that the entire picture stood exposed to me in all its unfinished glory.