Prose
Films
The old man sat, slumped down, on the tattered and worn sofa, his eyes locked on the screen's display of piracy and shipwreck.
"Jack Jones was in 140 films, you know."
I said I hadn't realised.
"He's one of those that's in all these films. Got the right face for it."
"Hmm."
"There was a whole bunch of them. All in these films." He regurgitated the knowledge in a bored drawl, his gaze never moving from the masts and sails before him.
He looked as though he had sat there, telling the same people these same facts, for years. It was hard to believe that this was the terror of the council; the little man's representative who would not think twice about fighting for weeks to have a move of his enemies blocked and be making it himself all the time.
"I suppose you'll be wanting to do downstairs soon," He grunted, as though it was most disagreeable to him that we should "do" the basement flat that sat below, built into the slope of the hill.
"Not for a while thanks." I said, interested at this old man engrossed in his "Saturday morning films" though it was only Tuesday. Time seemed to have slowed around him.
A longhaired and rounded cat padded quietly across the cheap rug over the worn and patchy carpet. The sound of the outside world was lost to the raucous score of the film as Jack Jones ran through another opponent of freedom and love. The house looked not to have changed a lot prior to the current "doings". There were paintings on the walls of eternal summers and dreamy lakes. A room filled with junk laid a weary testament to the past before the "Saturday morning films" and the long haired cats. A walking stick lay long unused in the corner, below a faded print of some distant harbour. Remnants of the building work lay amongst the detritus. Copper pipes and spanners snuggled next to rolled up posters and long unread novellas.
For me too time had begun to slow. I was out of the office, and had been for some time, away from the phones and the hum of computers, nowhere to sit down and nothing in particular to do. Here I had entered a tiny oasis of squalor and calm, for despite the supposed building works, nothing seemed to be being done. The workmen lazily spread a terracotta-coloured paste on the front of the house, warning, "it'll dye ya", making the thinly rolled cigarettes hanging from their bottom lips, not even smouldering, jump and threaten to fall to the reddening pavement. They seemed content to slop the stuff against the scored cement of the house front, marking their progress with splatters across the asphalt.
"My son was in the films too. Good walk on parts. No words though mind. He was in that - that local thing. With the detective -" he fumbled for the name. I prompted.
"Yes, that one. He had a good part in that one. No speaking of course. Was in a programme for American television too. He's very tall you see. We never saw it though. Wrote to the company and everything. Not a word."
I tried to imagine the ginger haired edifice I had glimpsed earlier on - and whose traces were every where; enormous shoes, an out sized jumper, all seeming monumental in the small room - actually acting, if a walk on part with no words were acting, but failed. I couldn't imagine him outside of this small and dingy world.
A radio blared out from an upper floor, the music leaving most of itself behind in reaching the room where the man sat, muted and subdued. There was little fight in it to contend with the trumpets, strings and drums of the film.
"Colour in these films is so much better than colour these days. Silky. Real Technicolor."
I agreed quietly. The colours on the screen melded with their surroundings. The little vase on the top of the set was the same once blazing red as the blood on Jack Jones' sword, the white of its top as a piece of his worn shirt. There was the same orderly squalor.
The eyes stayed fixed on their horizon. The huge stomach rose and fell gently beneath its shroud of tattered blue wool. The polyester workmen's trousers shifted as the slippered feet fidgeted. A fat hand clutched at the arm of the settee.
"That ugly little man was in all these films too you know."
I nodded silently.
Tim Williams