You'd think that Victor's enthusiasm for his project would have begun to wane by now, after suffering such a string of painful disasters. But we're all of us troupers, aren't we? Yes, he was at times rather jaded, and did think briefly about letting the film die and releasing the crew from their contracts, but the human race is an indefatigable, inscrutable gang of incompetent, mendicant sophists struggling through - and some of them even glorify it or themselves by writing about it or filming it or acting it. Bah. He was a trouper so he carried on, more determined than ever to finish filming and to show his life on the big wide screen.
He had planned a sort of documentary ending, hoping that simple fascination for his life would satisfy the demand for vicarious escape. As the writer, this worried me and I tried constantly to think of an ending that would satisfy both Victor's request for truth, and the audience's requirement that the ending be less strange than truth.
We made no further attempts to film with Sandra, nor any other members of his families. We felt it safest not to speak to anyone he had ever known. So it was appropriate now to return to Australia, his abandoned country, letting our art imitate the last leg of his life. Victor was very offended when the film crew refused to fly on the same plane with him, but who could blame them? Their fears were groundless in the end since there was only a minor emergency, affecting just one engine of four.
It was nice to be going back to Australia, but I have to admit regret at not being able to make a proper farewell to Sandra. Wendy and I were staying at the same hotel, and we had planned to catch the same flight out. It was incredible. A few days earlier I would have walked through a minefield to be next to Wendy, but as soon as I finally gave up all hope of ever gaining her love and decided to test the substance of Sandra's friendship, Wendy was beside me all the time. Everywhere I went, there she was, as if on purpose to ruin my chances. She was there, I should say, except when I found courage to open my mouth and ask her again to say she loved me, or tell me once and for all to piss off.
Yes, I do exaggerate, for there were times when she was not around, but they coincided with times I couldn't find Sandra. I knew Wendy was spending more and more time with Victor, and I desperately needed a distraction from what I thought was her motive. I prefer not to think about such things, so let's go to Australia, where we were filming the last scenes of Victor: my venous life:
I began to feel that Wendy was hanging around me with a purpose, as if she had finally fallen for whatever charm I have left. That sounds vain, I know, but I have a certain track record with women, even if it is so intricately entwined with fortune and divorce. Nevertheless, Wendy was trying to be with me, and I wasn't going to argue with her motive - I have already admitted my desire for her. It also gave me excellent opportunity to keep an eye on her, for while my suspicions of her involvement in a murder plot were growing, all tangible evidence still evaded me.
I asked her, "Why have you been hanging around me so much?"
"Is it noticeable?" she answered. "It's just in case someone really does want to murder you."
"Would you help them?"
"Maybe. Or I might protect you." She winked and we both laughed. I reached out to gather her into an embrace, but she slapped my hand away. "I've warned you more than once, haven't I? We have work to do, Victor." Her tone was harsh, but as she moved - there is no other way to say it - she skipped away merrily. I love it when women confuse me, which is most of the time.
I do not really know why I was so composed on the way back to Australia; perhaps it was because the remainder of the film looked so easy to make. But when we started filming again I developed what can only be called delayed irrational paranoia. If anyone so much as poked a camera in my direction I jumped and held onto the nearest person, like a swimmer who knows the shark will take whoever is swimming furthest out in the surf. My acting ability was completely shot - even though I was playing myself, and playing a recent version of myself at that. To act another person is accepted, because the spectator who pays for a ticket and steps into the theatre is colluding with the lie; they accept that they are not seeing reality. But to pretend that I was not playing a fictitious character who is unaffected by the presence of a camera is to utter a reprehensible lie. The only solution is to count on the audience knowing that I am playing myself at a different time, and thus forgiving a new untruth, though paradoxically, they will doubtless find it further from the truth than if I were to play Julius Caesar.
We hadn't much left to film - just the writing of the autobiography and the filming of the film. I wrote Victor: MVL by dictating to a ghostwriter who englished my words. Most ghostwriters these days are computers, so I wrote while pacing around a table where a screen displayed my incoherent utterances in what it thought was acceptable English. I still find it odd that with so much technology in them computers are unable to write in Standard English, though for some reason they are programmed with rules that allow them to speak approximate received pronunciation.
For example, if I said to it, "Then one day Vivian decided to not have a bath, 'cause she'd used all the hot water, which the Thionic Water Company claimed was impossible," it might reply, "Finally the day arrived when Vivian decided not to bathe as, despite claims of its impossibility by the responsible party, the Thionic Water Company, she had exhausted the hot water." I would tell it that you can't exhaust water, and it would apologise in the same manner of a BBC newsreader. I said, "Can't you just write what I say?"
"Sir, I am sorry but I am not programmed to understand Australian English. Would you like to see the catalogue? I can download a module if you wish."
It showed the list of available Englishes: Standard (Received pronunciation!); Educated Welsh; Educated Scots; Educated Irish; Educated American; Thames Estuary etc... the last but one on the list was Australian (no distinction between educated and uneducated), just above Archaic New Zealand.
New Zealand is the only English-speaking country in the world that has been brave enough to rationalise the spelling. That was fifty years ago now, and the result is that schoolchildren, relieved of the burden of knowing the difference between boar and bore, the thirteen different ways to spell the "sh" sound, and wondering why wart doesn't rhyme with bart, cart, chart, dart, fart, gart, hart, mart, part, start and tart, found that they had enough schooltime left to learn two other complete languages. Most chose Chinese and Spanish, though they use the modern orthographies developed in South America, where they had simplified the endless Spanish verb irregularities to facilitate swearing, and Taiwan, where it was necessary to type Chinese text into a portable telephone. So a generation grew up speaking several languages, and overnight it seemed that the entire population just dropped English for one of the others.
That was down to television; it was not that the programmes in the other languages were any better, in fact they were just as bad, but that there were fewer of them. That generation had grown up with the ability to zap around several thousand English-speaking TV stations, and, having reached retirement age before they found anything that was better to watch than the local football match, decided the Next New World Order would come from somewhere else. A decision had to be made though, if only because the street signs were becoming traffic hazards in themselves, either because they were so big, or because the writing was illegibly small, so the government mandated that Spanish be spoken as the national language, only choosing it over Chinese because there were almost as many Germans in New Zealand as in South America, and they wanted to talk to each other.
As soon as we were back in Australia I rang Sandra. It was easy - nowhere near as hard as getting the courage to say anything personal to Wendy. Sandra answered but refused to put herself on visual.
"Hi, it's Tim."
Silence.
"Victor's writer," I added.
"Oh."
"I ... I can't see you."
"My telephone is programmed not to transmit my face until after 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm a grump before that."
"Oh. How are you?"
"What do you want?"
"I just thought I'd let you know we got home safely."
"Well that's very considerate. I was gaining sleep over that."
"Gaining?"
"Because of the drugs I took to stop worrying."
"Oh. Guess what? I watched one of your films on the plane. But don't worry, I made you keep your clothes on."
"What a gentleman."
"Actually it was a public system and it wouldn't let me take them off. I could have hacked into it, because I'm a great programmer, but I didn't."
"Still a gentleman. When do you finish filming?"
"Next week."
"Meet me in Hawaii then. If you're such a good programmer you'll be able to find me."
"Of course. And I'll wait till after 3 p.m."
What was I doing? I could not believe my actions. We were in Victor's flat filming when I made the call. Wendy came in just as I finished. "How's your mum, then?" she greeted me.
"OK. How's the filming?"
"Crap. We're taking a break while Victor takes some sedatives. He's all jelly today."
The scene was the room where Victor wrote Victor: my trouble and strife. [See the final four chapters of Victor: my Vera Lynn for a complete description of the process. Briefly, Victor dictated to a computer that englished the text as they went.] In reality it was bare and windowless, but Wendy chose to shoot it in a room overlooking the harbour. I think her intention was to allow the magnificent scenery to compensate in some measure for a perceived lack of drama.
The crew were preparing for a short scene with Victor walking around, talking to a computer. Normally we would have given the computer screen its own window in the image so that viewers could see and play with the text, but Wendy preferred just to film the image of a large screen. Victor seemed very curious about it as they were setting it up. There was a cable to the back of the display and, with an air of curiosity, he put out his hand to touch it, but recoiled quickly before he made contact. Then he whirled around furiously to face a camera that had lowered itself to eye-level.
"Wat are you pointing that thing at me for?" he asked the camera-programmer.
"Checking the light," said the camera-programmer.
"Checking the light?" He called to Wendy; she ignored him, which made him even crankier, so he approached her and said, "That chap says he's checking the light. Do you think I'm an idiot?"
"Does the pope have tits? Get back on the set. We're almost ready for a take. Do something about your make-up will you?"
"First I want you to tell me why there is an electric cable on the set. I have not seen an electric cable since about 2015. If I recall properly they are not only archaic and superseded, but dangerous."
"It's a data cable, Victor. The current couldn't hurt you if you ate it. The receiver in the screen is broken, that's all."
"The receiver in the screen? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"I doubt that, but if you can't discriminate between wisdom and stupidity, you couldn't know. Just ignore the cable and we'll edit it out later." She signalled and two stagehands came to hustle Victor onto the set. She said, "Come on, Victor. Time to do some work," then called, "What's his line?"
"'Chapter 125, Vivian Takes Another Bath,'" returned the continuity prompt, a small black loudspeaker that followed her everywhere.
"OK, Victor you're pacing up and down dictating to the computer. You're line is 'Chapter 125, Vivian Takes Another Bath.' Are you... oh snap out of it, Victor! Time, time, time, you know."
After being called to action from the glacial peak of Wendy's voice, he did manage to begin acting, though he was disconcerted still, and all through the scene he could just see from the corner of his eye the protruding wire. In fact his acting all that day was poor, with the sincerity of alcohol-free beer. You might think that playing oneself was particularly easy; indeed you might say it was impossible not to play yourself, since you must, by someone's definition at least, be yourself at all times. But there is an undeniable and unavoidable tendency to try to make yourself more interesting. There are those who are prepared to glory (especially retrospectively) in extravagant indulgence at least six of the Seven Deadly Sins (there's not much of a vogue for envy), but who wants to reveal themselves as even a little timid, rancorous, small-minded or dull? And who doesn't fear, deep-down, that they may be at least a little of that, at least some of the time.
Anyway he was frustrated that day. He should just have continued acting the way he had during the rest of the film, and he knew it, but before he had been acting a past that was actually beyond the faithful reach of his memory and could, without compunction, play it just the way he remembered it. This was too recent.
He played the scene a few times, but none of the takes was satisfactory, and calling for a break he sat on the computer table to try to rub the discontent from his eyes. He stretched and leaned lazily backwards, placing his left hand squarely on the cable that protruded from the computer. He reacted as if it were a snake and he a mongoose, for instead of recoiling he grabbed it and yanked as hard as he could, pulling the computer onto the floor, chipping the Italian marble tiles.
No, he was not electrocuted; that takes a lot of ingenuity with modern equipment, but the protective myelin sheath around his nerves was being stretched ever thinner. He was about to call for coffee, but thought it better not to risk poisoning so close to the end, and, it being his own house in which we were filming, he went to make it for himself.
He joined me in the kitchen where I was talking to the coffee maker, trying teach it to make a decent Spanish carragio, coffee with brandy, which was made extra difficult by the fine quality of Victor's cognac.
"Coffee, Victor?"
"I'll make it," he said, making no attempt to conceal his wariness.
I noticed his fatigue and tried to be gentle. "We should be finished by the end of the week," I said.
He thanked me for my concern, but his tone was unfairly sarcastic, so I leaned back on the bench with an effacing smile, retiring, as it were, from my defence, saying "Si, Señor. ¿You'll be rid of us soon, no?"
"Don't ply me with Romantic sentiment in my kitchen."
"Alright. We're pissin' off at the end of the week. Feel better? You're shaking, Victor. Let me make the coffee. You sit down."
"Alright, but I'm watching, OK?"
He was not watching, however, for as his voice softened, so did his demeanour. He stared blankly at the walls, no longer caring about filming, nor the carriage of his story, nor for those he had asked to bring it forward.
"I have been beguiled, Tim. By you and Wendy both. She cares nothing for this film, for any objective truths - she cares nothing for me, and that is the basis, for it is a film about me. She has distanced herself from the subject, for all I have tried. It is still just a job, yet I don't think it can have been naive of me to think her an artist. Was I wrong to think that?"
"Do you want me to make a pithy remark about judgement?"
"Do the Spanish have a saying?"
"Probably, but we're Australian boys, aren't we?"
Perhaps he knew what I meant. I didn't, but the nuances of the tacit Australian languages are subtle, and could be interpreted, like any language, in any defence. For as language is an actor's best weapon, silence is the best defence, and not, as is so often believed, a last resort.
After the scene with dictation to the computer, which included filming the filming process to imply that the autobiography was also filmed, the only remaining scene to shoot was the editing of the film itself. If you point a video camera at its own monitor, the image on the monitor will contain that monitor itself, and that image will contain that monitor ... and so on to infinity. On straight vision monitors the image would soon be lost in the finite resolution of the screen. In varivision, however, the viewer could enlarge the monitor in the monitor, and so the infinite self-similarity is not lost in incandescent display. In a similar way I had programmed into Victor's autobiography a means to show that the filming of the autobiography was filmed, and the filming of the filming of the filming was filmed.... and so on to infinity. It was a childishly simple loop, but it entertained viewers for hours.
The scene showed Victor alone in an editing suite viewing segments of the film that had already been shot, and doing with them what editors do. He insisted that there would be no animation or synthetic changes of the action or characters, at least for filming the editing. Perhaps I had underestimated his innate respect for truth. I had also underestimated his stupidity, for he allowed Wendy to choose the segments that would be shown.
The scene was shot without rehearsal, so the first time he saw that film segment was when the cameras were again recording. Instead of looking intelligently at the screen and making notes and cuts, Victor sat transfixed as he saw himself drugged and tortured by a wheelchair, attacked by a rogue camera, accused of larceny (twice), drugged again, falling off a building, shot at (twice), trapped and tossed by a UN patrol platform and petulantly kicking the memory chips out of a computer screen. He had expected to be watching the dramatic truths of his life played in front of him, and instead he was forced to watch these parodies. To have experienced them was so physically damaging at the time that he never thought further than to imagine that someone was imaginatively and artfully, if incompetently, trying to kill him.
But now, in the intensified logic of increasing paranoia, he saw them as commentary on a life made to seem entirely void of worth - as if to a puppet-master who cares not for the toys he commands by their strings. Each scene was tagged with the people who were close to him at the time, and each fall he subsequently took showed his complete failure at constructing a normal life to mitigate his vacuity. I have said enough, I suppose, to show you that all his successful emotional relationships were in fiction. They were all on screen, and here they were before him, allowing him to enter the theatre of cruelty, there to play his final part before another camera. At each scene he crumbled more, emotionally and physically, and when the film had been played out he was curled on the floor, crying desperately - yet no help came. The cameras were rolling on Victor, watching him read and write the true book of his life.
Soon the lights went off, and though he was foetally curled on the floor and crying, he could see Wendy. He had expected to see her grinning unashamedly, as if she had intended to be cruel but, unusually, she was sitting silently in her chair. She called for a break and turned off some of the lights, and when his eyes had adjusted Victor saw her coming hesitantly towards him and looking pensive. He was still on the floor when she sat beside him, put her arm around his shoulders and rocked him gently. Then he saw that she was crying.
"I'm sorry Victor. I went too far." She was stroking his forehead now, sobbing quietly. He felt her comfort, almost as he would have felt the presence of anyone that came to him kindly at that moment. He was no longer thinking, for he had shocked himself into near lifelessness. At that moment he felt closer to death than at any time during the filming accidents, but gradually as Wendy rocked him he felt his mind returning. He looked at her, but I do not think his expression carried any moment. She turned away.
"I'll go," she said. "You don't have to fire me again." She called to me, but I was already bringing him some brandy. He knocked it back in one as Wendy backed away. Then she turned then and ran out the door. After it had slammed I took Victor by the arm and lead him to a comfortable chair where we both took some more brandy - I know it's useless medicinally but, as I said, Victor kept some very fine cognac in his house. The place was deserted now, for the film crew had seen there would be more fun for them elsewhere - perhaps they were actually sensitive to his needs, but since he had not taken the time to know any of them, he couldn't be sure of that.
He said, "I still think you're a bit sensitive for a cowboy."
"I'm always nice to the animals," I said. "More brandy?"
He was sufficiently recovered to sip the brandy and wonder at the event. He had been close to complete nervous collapse and, curiously, couldn't understand why.
"I've never been very clever, Tim," he said.
We were silent. I thought of the way she looked at him before she left. It was her breaking heart that finally snapped mine, and I knew it was stupid of me to continue playing with my false hopes. If she loved this broken old man, so be it. Maybe I would go to meet Sandra, and then we could all live on Victor's money. My throat was dry when I finally spoke, and sipping brandy only made me quieter. "Why don't you go and see her?" I asked.
"No, I couldn't."
"I don't think she'd mind."
"You think I care about her?"
"Of course. We know she doesn't want me." I let out a nasal puff and turned my head away, my huge, rough-country frame rendered useless by the intangible strength of unshared emotions.
"Come with me," he said.
I wanted to, but I hesitated, for somehow I felt I would be out of place. "No," I said, "I think it would be better if you went alone."
We sat together silently for some time then. Eventually he nodded and let me call him a taxi. I helped him in, then watched despondently as he left to go and see Wendy. I half wished I was in the car with him, but I could tell that my spirit had stayed behind with me.
When I reached Wendy's house the taxi-driver had to help me to the door. He knocked and rang, but there was no answer. I tried the door and found it open, so I thanked him and reluctantly walked in. Yes, she was there. She was sitting in a bright, sunlit room on a lounge chair, being comforted by an elderly woman. I knew her, though there was a momentary hesitation before I recognised her. It was Mary, my first wife. Mary smiled at me and pressed Wendy's hand, causing Wendy to raise her head from its repose in her lap. Evidently she had been crying a lot and rubbing her eyes, for they were red and her face was filled with distress, yet she managed to smile.
