From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (24 page)

But.

Barney was also right about Obi and Girl. Ren knew that, too. They should film them. It was the right thing to do. It had to be done.

What a curious thing it was, Ren thought, as she fell headlong that night into her yearned-for sleep – how Barney could sweep her up in his gushes of inspiration, how he flicked aside her objections like miserable toast crumbs. It had always been that way. He had always commanded their games and activities. He had been teacher to her pupil when they played School, admiral to her cabin boy in War at Sea. He had been Robin Hood and King Arthur and Batman; he had even been Snow White! He had always taken the leading role. Of course he had become Chief Executive of thethrillingalchemy, of Vision and Decision. Slasherdom had been Ren’s destiny from the very beginning. It was the lot of a younger sister, she supposed. Probably it would always be that way.

Ren had pulled her perfectly plump pillow right in under her chin and mentally prepared herself for the next episode in Kettle Productions. Whatever it would bring.

‘Blimey,’ breathed Barney, after
Orange Boy Lives V
had arrived and, most eerily, affirmed his new determination.

‘Obi and me,’ said Barney. ‘We’re like this.’ He crossed his fingers. Waggled his eyebrows. Barney, Ren had noticed, was a lot more confident about Obi when he was not actually in his presence.

Once again they sat on the top step of the stairs and looked in quiet wonder at the zine. Mum and Dad were having their Sunday sleep-in. Barney and Ren could pretty much do as they liked. Have a second breakfast at Coralie’s and watch Albert with his latest chess victim. Tool around with Edward and Henrietta, whose parents also slept in on Sundays. Go to the Basilica with Jack and his family and listen to Suit’s choir.

Plan the clandestine segment of
The Untold Story
.

‘It definitely won’t be Twenty Questions, then,’ said Ren.

‘No,’ said Barney. ‘They want it now. They
want
to tell us.’ He seemed supremely confident about this.

It was still a mystery quite how Obi and Girl knew about
The Untold Story
. It had not been part of Twenty Questions the first night. Had they overheard conversations between retailers or residents? Had they been in one of the customer audiences, unnoticed by Ren and Barney? Had they lurked, chameleon-like among shelves or displays? The more you thought about
not
noticing them, the more it seemed possible that they had been everywhere, all the time. It bothered Ren.

Barney had no time for these unsolved musings. He was so buoyant about the chiming of his idea and the clear invitation in
Orange Boy V
that he cared little about anything else. He didn’t even care about his depiction in the zine.

In a way,
Orange Boy Lives V
was the strangest zine so far. This was partly because Ren and Barney had now met the artist-characters and somehow that had altered everything. It had changed how they read the pictures; it changed the
sense
of the pictures. And their private Orange Boy story, cobbled together from the zines and the gaps between, now seemed fanciful, even childish, in the face of actual Orange Boy.

But also, they themselves were now
in
the pictures. It was entirely strange to behold yourself in an
Orange Boy
zine – in the story of someone else. It was as unlikely, Ren thought, as being transported to
Hark! A Vagrant
, to converse with cartoon-Anne of Green Gables. Looking at Ren-in-the-zine made her feel peculiar, almost out of sorts: as if her limbs were not properly attached, as if her real-life body belonged to someone else.

And it was doubly strange, because zine-Barney-and-Ren were clearly actual Ren and Barney but also not
quite
like them – or not the way they saw themselves.

‘Do my glasses really look that enormous?’ asked Ren.

She was torn about her portrait. In the zine her spectacle lenses were as wide as windows, her eyes giant marbles. On the other hand, the artist had given her impressively long eyelashes and made her freckles seem, well – you had to admit it – quite charming.

‘Almost,’ said Barney. ‘But, my head is definitely not that big.’

The portrait of Barney was clever. It caught Barney’s height and his long limbs and the haystack quality of his copious hair. But somehow, the hair was much wilder than real life and the head was certainly exaggerated in proportion to his body, so that the Barney figure seemed
all
head and hair and as if he was almost too big for each panel.

‘Big-headed Barney,’ giggled Ren. ‘In life and in zine art.’

They had not yet discovered who did the zine drawings. Or, if Obi and Girl had each drawn different zines. There were differences between them. They had studied them minutely.

But the oddest thing of all about the zine was that, though the Girl character matched the real-life Girl, the Obi character in the fifth zine did not match at all. He was still the younger, sweeter Orange Boy of the other four zines, not the temperamental despot of the Post Office, the tufty-haired, whiskery-chinned cross-patch they had met three days before.

‘Talk about airbrushing,’ said Barney. ‘I reckon Girl does the drawings. She must see him differently. Like when they first met – three years ago. Before he changed.’

Ren considered zine-Orange Boy. It was so nice to see him again, his soft and solemn face. It had been a rude shock meeting real live Orange Boy. They had admitted this to each other later. They had been entirely thrown by the gaping difference between Obi and his zine representation. They had been disturbed by the not-matching.

‘Or maybe,’ said Ren, thinking. ‘Maybe he never changed.
Maybe he’s always looked like he does now. Maybe he is the artist but he just sees himself differently.’

Barney squeezed his eyes shut.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Maybe, when Obi looks in the mirror he actually sees Orange Boy. Orange Boy is there underneath everything.’

Ren looked again at Giant Glasses Ren, a near stranger.

‘Maybe people always see themselves differently.’

It was certainly true that when Ren looked in the mirror she did not really see her glasses or her eyes magnified behind them. She saw her (charming) freckles and her (silky) brown hair and her even teeth (unlike Lovie’s crooked ones) and her dark eyebrows that North Island Gran had once told her were very striking.

‘What do you see when you look in the mirror?’ she asked Barney.

‘Not saying,’ said Barney.

Ren bet she knew anyway.

Barney would not see striking eyebrows or a good set of teeth. He would not see someone handsome or muscled or suave in the mirror. He didn’t care about any of that. He would not even see himself, Barney Kettle, Big-Hair Boy. Barney would look in the mirror and simply see George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg or Terry Gilliam. These were the great and famous film directors in whose likeness he was forging himself. He was already hanging out to grow a beard.

How
interesting
it was, thought Ren, sitting on the steps that Sunday morning,
Orange Boy Lives
in hand. When Obi looked in the mirror he saw his past self. When Barney looked he saw his future.

‘So, Slash!’ said Barney, slicing through Ren’s thoughts. He stood and surveyed the Square and surrounds. He struck a heroic pose.

‘One day,’ he said, in Dickish (Dick’s proclaiming manner, they had decided, was an actual language). ‘One Day, my Girl. All This Will be Yours!’

It really was very good to have a brother who made you laugh so often.

The Square was almost empty of people. Sunday breakfasters seldom appeared before 9 a.m. The empty metal chairs glinted in the sun. Birds walked on the café tables. Brown Betty emerged from the alley and crossed the Square. She was just like a good extra in a film, executing her small walk-on with unhurried grace.

Let’s just sit here for a while, Ren thought. Watching the quiet.

But Barney was ready and eager to step forth into the next episode of his great and famous future.

‘C’mon!’ he said. ‘You need to adjust the timetable. We need to work out where to squeeze in The Post Office Interview, or Inter
views
, more likely.’

He was thinking of them in capitals, Ren could tell.

‘What a
molto
great title,’ said Barney. ‘Let’s use it! Let’s give all the interviews individual titles. Say, “The Yoga Room Dispute” or “The Gilded Palace Concert”, or –’

‘“The Meltdown at Brummel’s”,’ suggested Ren.

They laughed, the tiniest bit remorseful.

The interview with Claude had been brought to an abrupt end when Edward, in his modelling role for the ‘Makeover’ section of the interview, had accidentally ripped the seam of an expensive nainsook shirt. Edward’s movements were never smooth or gentle and the shirtsleeves had been tight fitting. The rip had been audible from some distance. Within seconds Claude – who had been a rather sullen interviewee, and not at all happy about meaty Edward and the delicate nainsook shirt – had delivered an operatic tantrum. Edward and Ren had been cowed by Claude’s fury; they had shuffled backwards in the face of its heat. But Barney had been galvanised: he had been positively delighted! He had captured it all on film, following Claude’s every word and gesture as he raged between the counter and the dressing room. He was especially pleased with the part where Claude yelled
stopfilmingrightnowImeanRIGHTnowyouskodylittlegobswipe
and tried to cover the lens with his hands.

‘Best dramatic footage
ever
!’ said Barney. It was all bumps and jerks and muffled shouts and flashes of Claude’s pink palm.

Priceless dramatic footage almost made up for the sweated labour they now faced. Ren had calculated there were at least seven months of housework in front of them. Dad had forked out for the wrecked nainsook shirt on the strict understanding that Barney and Ren repay every cent.

‘C’
mon
,’ said Barney, pulling the top of Ren’s T-shirt. ‘Get up! We have to get moving! Honestly, there’s no time to lose.’

Thanks to Ms Bloodworth’s surprising offer their filming timetable had been given much-needed extra time.

(Barney was now Ms Bloodworth’s most devoted fan. It was quite a turn of events, his approval of a teacher. Everyone was amazed.

‘What’s surprising?’ said Barney, carelessly. ‘First reasonable teacher in the history of my life.’ He
had
been stunned by Ms Bloodworth’s offer, he admitted. And a little impressed with her cunning (the sting-in-the-tail maths with Nick). But the clincher, Barney had confided to Ren, was the astonishing news that Ms Bloodworth was Albert Anderson’s new girlfriend. This prized piece of information had travelled the Street like wildfire. Albert had not ‘stepped out’ – as Marie Scully liked to say – since he had broken up two years ago with Anita, the practice nurse at Dr Beverley’s. Anita had gone to nurse in Liberia and Albert had been very downcast.

‘Hooray for romance!’ said Mum.

Barney didn’t care much about romance. The point
was
, he told Ren, that any friend of Albert’s was, by definition,
molto
okay by him.)

As a consequence of the deal with Ms Bloodworth, they could
count on getting at least two extra interviews in the can every week until the deadline.

‘Just as well,’ Ren said. Her tone was reproving. This was her fourth version of the timetable. She was busy creating a small hurricane with pencils and erasers and reams of paper.

Their initial timetable had been a massive undercalculation. Every interview had gone on much longer than they had anticipated. Rushes viewing then became correspondingly longer. Ditto the editing, which, Barney enjoyed saying at least once a day, was going to be a
complete nightmare
.

After several Emergency Meetings and much groaning from Barney about the lack of hours in a day and the tedious requirement of school attendance, they had squeezed extra time by shortening some of the coming interviews: Ted, Kirk, Willy Edwards and other sundries around the Street and Square. They decided also on snappy intercuts with their favourite Poly students, the ones who visited the Street regularly. Different lengths, different rhythms, said Barney, clicking his fingers a good deal, a new habit of his – mixing it up, mixing it up, he kept saying, keep the viewer interested,
surprise
the viewer.

But now, The Post Office Interviews (filming and rushes) had caused the timetable to bulge once more.

‘But they’ll be at night!’ said Barney. ‘Nights are extra.’

‘True,’ said Ren. Or ‘Trrihew,’ as it came out. She had a pencil between her teeth. It made her feel wonderfully purposeful.

But in a minute she had removed the pencil and was thinking once more about the long strange night inside the Post Office. She thought about the monumental tiredness they had battled over the two following days. She thought about the risk of Mum and Dad discovering their empty beds. Dad had once told them that when they were little he had often gone into their bedrooms to check their breathing. Ren didn’t
think
Dad did that now, but you never knew. Every so often he had an unexpected outbreak of parental
protectiveness: he interrogated them about their road safety practices. Or he suddenly started monitoring their protein intake. Or their night-time flossing. Or if there was enough air in their bedrooms when they were sleeping …

‘I think you should do Obi and Girl on your school afternoons,’ said Ren, and listed the reasons why.

‘But it’s so much more
dramatic
at night.’

Ren thought of the candlelight, the planes and shadows of Obi and Girl’s faces, the high ceiling and empty, unexplored storeys above them. The curtains of cobwebs. The cold stone of the Post Office floor. It seemed like a dream she had once had.

‘But you can’t show any of that. Not really.’

Barney’s face squished and stretched.

‘But if I did it on those afternoons you’d miss out.’

Ren was touched. How unusual: Barney thinking about her.