From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (12 page)

‘Seriously,’ Barney said, standing, wiping his face with a tea towel. ‘This is getting complicated. We’ve got two jobs now. Big ones. Edward and the others are actually going to come in handy. And –’ No. Could he allow this? Surely not. But it seemed unavoidable. ‘And – I can’t believe I’m saying this – you’ll have to do some camera work.’

‘
Really
?’ said Ren, her eyes big with wonder. She clasped the Orange Boy notebook protectively against her chest. ‘I can’t believe it either. Are you getting sick?’

‘No,’ said Barney. ‘I’m getting practical.’

‘You’re never practical. You must really be sick.’

‘Shut up,’ said Barney. ‘I
am
practical. All great film directors have to be practical. As well as megalomaniacs. Filming is all about logistics. I’ve told you that.’

‘You have?’

‘
The detailed organisation and implementation of any large and complex operation
: i.e.: a film.’ This was written in his Filmmaker’s Diary, too. Barney had memorised it.

Ren looked unconvinced.

‘And, so I’m not great on detail,’ said Barney, on a roll now. ‘That’s where you come in. I’m Big Picture.’

He was channelling
So, You Want to be a Filmmaker?
Hal and Felix were in retirement on the top shelf of the living room bookcase but their pearls of wisdom had lodged in Barney’s brain, much like the words to
Silent Night
or
Hairy Maclary
or
Hickory Dickory Dock
. Pearls had emerged fully formed, just now, thanks to the fortifying effect of the ice-cold water.

‘The Big Picture,’ said Barney, ‘is that we’ve basically got two sets now:
The Untold Story
set which is kind of public, that just rolls on, whoever’s being filmed, blah blah. And, the secret
Orange Boy
set – which could be anywhere at any time. A floating set –’

Blimey, how impressive. A floating set. He was having a little burst of thethrillingalchemy. It was
awesome
the way it just rose up out of you. He must always have a bottle of icy water on hand from now on.

‘– because who knows where that will go.’

‘We’re going to
film
Orange Boy? How? He doesn’t actually exist in human form.’ Ren was getting cranky. She didn’t like it when Barney barged about from one idea to another. She preferred scribbling away in the notebook and thinking about things in orderly progression.

‘Orange Boy
delivery boy
exists. We just haven’t located him. But we’re going to track him down. With a
camera
. Which, if
you think about it, is definitely a job for me. You can be stand-in cameraman on the
US
set’ – they were referring to the doco this way now – ‘and I’ll go out tracking.’

‘
A
,’ said Ren, rising up on her toes to better argue, ‘if I was stand-in I would be a camera
woman
. B
, we only have
one
video camera.’ Her tone was a disagreeable combination of Mum and Ms Temple at their most acid. ‘
C
–’

‘
C
,’ said Barney, ‘we actually have
two
cameras. You’ve forgotten North Island Gran’s.’

‘Oh,’ said Ren, dropping back onto her feet.

She had sat down at the table again and reopened the notebook. ‘Huh.’

North Island Gran had given her video camera to Barney years ago when he clamoured to film everything. His current beloved PD170 was a Christmas present soon after from all his grandparents. These days Gran’s little camcorder was mostly at school with Mum, but she brought it home at the end of term. It was in the living room cupboard with
The Game of Life
and
Balderdash
and
Cluedo
.

Ren got busy again with the HB 5. She headed up a new page: Two Sets Timetable.

‘How can you
track down
with a camera?’ she said. ‘It’s not a magnifying glass. You’re not Sherlock Holmes. And why is tracking down Orange Boy definitely a job for you? If I can film on
US
I can do it anywhere else.’

Barney ignored her.

‘Something tells me,’ said Ren, as she ruled up the new timetable grid, ‘that your dictatorship is coming to an end.’ She began numbering the days of the month. ‘I have a strong feeling.’

In your dreams, he thought.

Barney replaced
Relative Christmases
and picked up the zine beside it:
The Seven Haircuts of Man
. It was a concertinaed zine,
showing the haircuts the author had sported over his childhood and teenage years. They ranged from passable to bigmistake. Barney had suffered similar haircuts himself, until his last birthday when he had received from Mum a bottle of hair product and a handwritten voucher promising that he could buy his own clothes; decide his own hairstyle; cease having to play two sports. Mum’s birthday vouchers were good value. If you lobbied skilfully enough throughout the year you could usually manoeuvre the elimination of some tiresome parental requirement.

Barney replaced
Seven Haircuts
and selected
Possible Occupations
.

Art woke from his morning sleep and shuffled through the shop, out to the back.

Of course, going to school was the ultimate – and most impregnable – parental requirement. Barney had made no headway at all with its elimination. High school was looking inevitable. It was a dismal prospect.

‘Tea, vicar?’ called Albert Anderson.

Barney took
Possible Occupations
out to Albert’s portable tea table, which lived in the general vicinity of Comic Strip’s back door. The table moved around according to where the sun shone, but today they sat in the slender shade of the dwarf maple near the back entrance to Forget-me-Knot. Art rearranged himself beneath the table, ready for sleep once more. Sleeping was his main occupation. He was a very old dog.

All the shops on the east side of High Street had back entrances opening out onto Luna Square. While you drank peppermint tea at Albert’s table you could watch the passing parade: the shoppers coming and going from the boutiques and design stores; the Museum visitors; the long lunches taking place in the Saturn Bar’s courtyard.

The Poly jazz students were back in action; a quartet played in the north corner of the Square. They all wore sunglasses. Everyone in the Square wore sunglasses except Darius, who was in the
very middle being a living statue. Sunglasses would certainly have been inappropriate as today was his Greek Athlete incarnation. (Particularly good in hot weather: it required very little clothing. On the other hand, it required him to be bent forward in About-to-Throw-the-Discus pose.) Barney watched Darius with admiration. His concentration and stamina were awesome. Merely observing made Barney itchy and restless.

‘Filming on schedule?’ said Albert. He passed the Chocolate Wheaten packet.

‘Pretty much,’ said Barney. ‘Mariko tomorrow. After school. She’s back now. Interview and maybe origami demo.’ He snarfed a biscuit and reached for another. He wondered about Ren, busy with the alternative shoot.

Barney still couldn’t believe he had agreed to Ren doing the first sleuthing shoot. But then he really hadn’t had a choice. The steel of rebellion, it appeared, had entered Ren’s heart. The mere suggestion of her being behind a camera had triggered a coup. Kettle Productions, she said, had to become more democratic or she wouldn’t help. Barney had been astonished, then disbelieving, then outraged. It was all so sudden. This was the kind of thing he expected from Edward and JohnLeo, not his trusted Arch-Slasher. It was like courtiers ursurping the King. Like Snowy turning on Tintin. Too bad, said Ren, her arms folded like Mum’s during hostilities, her eyes pulsing like the Upside Down Catfish’s.

In the end they had tossed for first go at the sleuthing camera and, wouldn’ tyouknowit, Ren had won.

So now she was roving the Street and environs, her eyes peeled and Gran’s camcorder at the ready. Possibly she was nearby, perhaps in the Square right now. Officially – should anyone enquire – Ren was the second unit, filming pick-ups for
US
. Barney was very pleased with this cover story. He was very pleased with so many aspects of their film life just now. It more or less softened the effect of Ren’s mutiny.

It was so incredibly enjoyable having a secret project. Life was so much more stirring. Of course it was
molto
exciting talking about it all, speculating and strategising about Orange Boy and his elusive maker. But ordinary, unexciting activities like making breakfast or going to Ted’s Fruit and Veg for Mum or having a shower (an activity Barney tried to avoid) or helping Dad shift heavy objects around the Emporium – all these had became almost interesting, or at least quite bearable. Whatever you were doing was accompanied by the thrill of secret knowledge. There was a hum, a quiver about their days. A kind of dog-whistle noise and vibration that only Barney and Ren could hear and feel.

Occasionally Barney did feel guilty about keeping the wonder of Orange Boy from Jack and Benjamin. Nor did it feel quite right to sit at Albert Anderson’s tea table, concealing an experience that would surely fascinate Albert. A zine experience, at that. Still, neither he nor Ren wanted to share Orange Boy. Not yet, anyway.

Barney took another biscuit and bit down on his misgivings.

‘This is a good one,’ said Albert, picking up
Possible Occupations
. ‘A girl from the high school. Brings in a bunch once a month. I usually take a couple.’ He turned the pages. ‘She has a certain wry tenderness.’

Barney reached for his third biscuit and considered the possibility of Orange Boy’s artist-slash-delivery-boy actually being a girl.

‘I like this one,’ said Albert. He passed Barney the open zine.

Scene: a vet’s waiting room. Three people seated with their moggies in carry cages, the vet calling the next patient.
Veterinary science
, read the line beneath the picture,
is one of the best ways to meet new cats
. The vet had whiskers and little furry cat’s ears.

‘Good cats,’ said Barney. He bit the biscuit and took a gulp of tea. Peppermint chocolate. Nice. He scanned the Square for Ren.

‘Cat got your tongue, Maestro? You’re unusually quiet.’

‘Thinking about the shoot,’ said Barney, which was technically truthful.

‘Everybody behaving on set?’

Barney had shown Albert the footage of Dick Scully and Albert had developed genuine muscle strain from laughing so much.

‘Pretty good,’ said Barney. ‘Amazing what people say.’

‘Amazing what people do,’ said Albert, fingering his two-week beard. ‘The Unpublished Poet has challenged me to a rematch. He’s invited an audience.’

Barney contemplated a fourth biscuit.

A warts-and-all documentary was extremely enjoyable, too, Barney and Ren had agreed. It was surprising – and all-round
excellent
– how gabby and indiscreet people were on camera. Once talking they seemed to forget they were being filmed, or they forgot that the film would eventually be watched.

Solomon, for instance, had declared on camera that if his residency permit did not come through he and Hana would take to the hills. Like outlaws. They would take sleeping bags, said Solomon, and the means to hunt down and skin dinner. He could cook outdoors with the merest of utensils, believe it.

Barney did believe it. Solomon, who was The Saturn Bar’s head chef, had filleted and scaled a large terakihi as he talked, palming and flipping and scraping the fish, wielding his knife with great speed and finesse.

At Hair Today Deirdre had talked very freely, and with characteristic emphases, about her second husband’s spell in prison for
fraud
, how this had compelled Deirdre to abandon her life of leisure and open her first salon – beginning an altogether
brilliant
new phase in her life, said Deirdre, because not only had her salon proved
enormously
successful, she had also met her third husband who ran the hardware store next
door
. Wasn’t life
amazing
?

Deirdre’s interview had also conveniently knocked off a
couple of other interviews, because while Barney and Ren were at the salon Deirdre had completed a cut and colour for Billie Montgomery and a full foil on Stella, the masseuse above Bambi’s Health Store. Henrietta and Edward’s mother, Doris, was having a colour too, but she was immobilised behind a face-mask much of the time, unable to speak because of potential cracking. Barney had kept her in shot though, a surreal presence: white-faced, slick-haired and mute. And eerily still – but for her fingers which worked needles and wool at a fiendish pace. She was knitting a floor blanket for Baby Soo.

‘A hair salon is the
best
,’ said Barney when they viewed the rushes. ‘It’s like a fantasy set. Everyone has bizarre heads. And if it was a feature film you would hardly need a script. So much just happens.’

This was certainly true. During their four hours of filming, a customer had loudly burst into tears (the depilatory lotion had burnt her skin and left a red moustache-shaped trail on her upper lip), and a little boy had clasped hands to his curly head, squeezed his eyes shut and for the longest time loudly intoned
noscissors noscissors noscissors
while his mother and Chrissy, the apprentice hairdresser, stood helplessly by. The hair products salesman had made his monthly call that day, too, and directed a fast and flirtatious sales patter at Deirdre, who flirted right back, parrying all his pitches with great skill. It was like theatre sports, Barney thought. Or a stand-up double act. At the end of it all, Deirdre had secured half a dozen free sample bottles of Macadamia Oil Tangle Pre-Styler.

As the hair products salesman exited the salon, the nameless tabby cat entered, padding carelessly to the back room where, apparently, a bowl of Purina Dry awaited her.

Since she had coolly jumped into the
Feliz Navidad
perambulator during the Nativity tableau, Barney and Ren had often seen the tabby. She had appeared, seemingly from nowhere, one morning in the lavender courtyard of the Mediterranean; she had
strolled across the grass, leapt up onto the wooden bench and into Barney’s lap. Barney had felt oddly flattered. They had come upon her at Toto’s, too, hunched up and watchful on a seat in the indie film section. They had seen her at Coralie’s, sunning herself on the warm concrete outside the swing doors, and then a little later, inside the café, still as a statue beneath the aquarium, staring, just her right ear lifting and twitching.