Chitter 2

 

SASDY:  Listen here to me now!  Belfast is where all the politics are at the minute and we might be very far away now but we’re under the same sky, remember.

ABBY:  And that’s where that man is from---Belfast?

SASDY:  Can’t you tell by the moustache?

ABBY:  What about his moustache? 

SASDY:  They all look like Burt Reynolds up there in the bandit country.

MACKENNA:  Belfast is not the bandit country.  That’s the border areas are called that.

SASDY:  Forgive me.  I’m just saying, I can’t see us depoliticising any time soon with your man around, with everything that’s going on up there right now.

ABBY:  It’s a tall order anyway, when you think about it, this whole draining out the politics business. 

SASDY:  Ah, ye of little faith.  Are you the first one we’re going to have to banish the way they do in the more committed collectives out there?

 

ELDER: (loudly overhead) And no politics, people.  Please.

 

JEREMIAH:  I feel like I’ve seen you before.

DEVIN: (proudly) Well, I’ve been compared to Clark Gable in the past.

CRISPIN:  I say Burt Reynolds!

JEREMIAH:  No, it’s something else.  I mean, I don’t think we’ve met but I’m positive I’ve seen your face recently somewhere.  Have you been on the TV like your sweetheart?

DEVIN:  I don’t think so.  When was Gone with the Wind last on?

EVERLY:  We don’t watch TV, Jeremiah.

JEREMIAH:  I know, I know.  Well, I don’t know, maybe I got it wrong. 

 

IMOGEN:  I can’t believe it.  We were just listening to one of his songs on the way in.

ISMAY:  Understand...I did not know Serge well.  We were introduced at a party hosted by a journalist friend.  You do not need me to tell you that French men are magnificently horny – my journalist friend as I recall was one of them – and the more famous they get, they grow hornier and become like those obscene comic books that you just cannot resist looking at, for even though they are puerile and quite bad... they are funny, sometimes very funny.  But Serge: he was not like that.  Not when I met him at least.  I believe he was in love with Brigitte Bardot at the time and it made him a very gentle and sweet person to talk to.  Although there was definitely a vulgar side to him, yes.  He talked about his experiences with prostitutes for a great length of time in our discussion but not once did he ask if there was a going rate for me personally, which I found charming, and also saddening, but it was a pleasant wound to walk away with.

IMOGEN:  You probably hear this all the time, but your English is way way better than mine, you know.

ISMAY:  Oh, English is easy.  The mouth doesn’t have to do much.  Just flap-flap-flap.  And the words come.

IMOGEN:  Really, is it that easy?

FRANCES:  Come on now, it’s not just a load of flap-flapping for everyone, is it?

ISMAY:  No, not for everyone.  And it’s true some people don’t just flap.  Some take care with the words they speak.  But most people flap.  Like him over there (she pointed at Sullivan, giggling to herself)  He’s a flapper.

SULLIVAN:  (his mouth agape)  Wha’?

FRANCES:  (whispering to Imogen)  Actually he’s a drunkard.

IMOGEN:  Oh?

FRANCES:  He came here in an awful state a while back...ah, I’ll say no more.

IMOGEN:  He doesn’t look drunk now.

FRANCES:  Oh, we keep him well away from it while he’s here.  You’ll see later when the bottles come out.

 

ELDER: (loudly overhead) Let’s wind down the chitter-chatter, people.  Our screening is imminent.

 

EVERLY: Look. (she was pointing up to Fatty Arbuckle’s picture on top of the bookcase) He is smiling now.

JEREMIAH:  I don’t think he’s smiling, my love.  It might just be a special effect of solarisation.

SULLIVAN:  How can you even see up there from where you’re standing?  Your eyes must be super-powered.

EVERLY:  I have good eyes.  Citrus and flaxseed daily, as you know.

SULLIVAN:  Oh, I know. 

CRISPIN:  I hadn’t noticed the expression on his face.  Was he not smiling before?

EVERLY:  I assure you he was not.

   

DEVIN:  What is this screening he’s on about?

SASDY:  The film.  Isn’t that why you’re here?

DEVIN: Imogen is.  I’m just along for the ride.  Come here, I’ve been meaning to ask, what is it yous have upstairs?

MACKENNA:  Eh...nothing really.  It’s pretty empty up there.  Just an attic space.  The roof is much wider, makes it look bigger from the outside.  We’re rarely ever up there, any of us.

DEVIN:  Fair enough.  It’s still a big shack alright.  Seems to me there’s enough room for the lot of you.  What do yous do here anyway?  Apart from all the meditating.

MACKENNA:  Oh, there’s stuff to be done around the place.  We all muck in.  It’s not a doss house now.  We have trade brewing in the fruit we pick, the veg we grow out the back.  You might get fed-up with all the cranberries as a matter of fact.  There are many of those coming in and out the doors. Some of us will even gather thorns and other unpleasant herbage and sell them on to the more absurd apothecaries you’ll find around the country.

DEVIN: (under his voice) And...Elder?  He’s the leader is he? 

MACKENNA:  I suppose.  We don’t really say leader though.

SASDY:  If you scramble his name about, you get leader.  If you spell it L-E-E-D-R.

MACKENNA:  But you’d be spelling it wrong if you did, wouldn’t you?

ABBY:  I’m a thorn-picker.  I like it.  You know, it might seem like there’s nothing to do around here.  That’s what I thought when I first arrived.  I thought to myself, this is going to be a very boring place.  But... there’s much more to it, there really is.  I take it you saw the woodland that is nearby further along the hillside.  If you go deeper inside the woods, you’ll find a small stone circle.  I try to stay away from there if I can, the place scares me, but it’s there if you want to take a look.  Have you met the French woman yet, the writer?

DEVIN:  I think I have.  French, you say?

ABBY:  She’s convinced the circle is a meeting point for other life forms.

DEVIN:  What do you mean by other?

ABBY:  She only ever says other.  But I think she means little green men.

DEVIN:  The lepercons?

ABBY:  No, as in not from around these parts, you know.  Things...from another world.

MACKENNA:  It’s a fake stone circle, I should remind you.  Built in the 19^th Century by the Lord Chichester, former possessor of these lands.  His only purpose being to brighten up his garden.

ABBY:  Still, it’s a creepy old place, and there are plenty of other creepy old things around here.  Not long ago, we found...

MACKENNA: (interrupting her sharply) Yes, there are.  Lots of things.  The tracks of our pagan past are all around us...if you look with care.  Sure the land is old, is it not?

 

 

Conversation softened all round as Elder yelped for those gathered to accompany him to the screening room. Devin noticed a cardboard box in the corner as he followed everyone out into the hallway.  It was full to falling apart with old newspapers.  The Independent. The Times. The Farmer’s Journal.  It was a box that looked soon for disposal.  If you had stopped to look inside the box, you would have seen when you got to the third paper from the top one that was dated February 1977 and featured prominently the story of a football match in Belfast involving the Cliftonville and Linfield football clubs.  Normally, a story such as this would be at the back with the other sports stories, but this one was front page as the game had, not unexpectedly, turned to sectarian violence before the half-time whistle sounded.  A photo took up most of the page in which was captured a man with more than a passing resemblance to Burt Reynolds and his face in a frozen OOF as a police baton knocked him hard in the ribs while in the same moment his fist was out and landing cloddishly on the nose of a fellow supporter.