Day 110 - Bollywood in Budgee Springs - Chapter 7 (1757 words)

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Bollywood in Budgee Springs

Chapter 7

Charlie is back at the bar, flanked by his two bets mates and across the bar from a third, the publican. All three of his friends are having a quiet drink away from the women who have all taken to the prospect of auditions to be in a movie. This is exactly what was expected, a film coming to town, but in the world where things would progress in a certain way, at a speed and destination that made these happy, predictable and reliable, this was an unwelcome change.

“Bugger me, I’m not bloody doing anything in this movie. I’m putting my foot..” One of the men declares but before he ends the sentence at the volume he started, he looks around to ensure none to the MoM's are there, especially his wife. He casts a sideways glance at the women at the far side of the room and lowers his voice to a volume a little more circumspect. “... down”

Charlie laughs, a widowers confidence of not facing the consequences of such an attitude. “You're putting my foot down? Very quietly, I can see that.”

His friend retorts “Easy for you to be brave; I’ll be in the doghouse for the rest of my life if I 'ruin it' for her. You're lucky you're a ...” He drops the rest of that thought as the insensitivity catches him up “... oh yeah. Sorry mate, I didn't mean it that way.”

Charlie shrugs it off as if it were nothing, but despite the years since Max's mother had passed, and with such a shocking suddenness, it occasionally felt like it were only yesterday. Charlie knew that if she were here, like Ella and the rest of them she would have been all over the idea and would have taken no nonsense from him about it. He could play the man of the house, but deep down he would give her whatever she wanted to see her smile again. That was no longer possible and in the intervening decades since he had moved on in so many ways, but she had never left him inside.

This would have been a nirvana for her, and in all fairness to his son, Max had come up with a plan that would really work for the town and bring in money, attention and a bit of life to Budgee Springs once more. He could see the benefits, but even if he were in charge he would never have gone down this road. She knew every word to every film that still sat in a box of unplayed DVD's in the back room, under the guest bed. A catalogue of movies, musicals and comedy greats from the fifties and sixties. They had been kids when they had first seen them, barely in their teens by the time the mid sixties came about, but here in the countryside while the town had got an influx of motorbikes and leather jackets, Nellie Watson, who would grow up to become Nellie Clarke would take every opportunity to get to the Budgee Springs Odeon and catch the rerunning matinee musicals in the weekends.

They had been to the films with their families, they had progressed to going with their friends, and then when the old musicals were no longer cool enough for their friends, they went together. They became dates, and then a regular treat as they grew and made a life together. Charlie tolerated them, he was not particularly entertained by them but he also was not bothered by them. There was a look that Nell would get in her eyes when they sat in the darkened theatre, holding hands with her gaze locked on the screen and his drifting away to stare at her watching the film instead of whatever was happening on the film.

When Charlie closed his eyes and saw her face there, which still happened to him now, it was her profile lit by flickering lights through the nitrate film that were burned into his own reel of memory. She was still there, and it was unfair on him that she would not leave him alone, he knew that she would not leave him alone. That was one of the things that held him back with Ella, they had been friends back in the day, and he knew her late husband while she was close with Nellie when they had been young, they had kids at the same time and liked the same things.

If was unfair that Ella reminded him of Polly, and it was wrong to like her just for that alone. Not that there were not things about Ella that Charlie didn't like and it was unreasonable to lay all the similarities as a reason to not move forward with their relationship. Spending time with Ella was bitterness and pain, but it had an overlay of lightness he felt in her presence. How much of it was her, and how much of it was Polly's memory, Charlie could not distinguish.

Now she was as excited as Nellie had been when they were young, the look on Ella's face Charlie had seen when the Indian Man, Ash, had been talking of parts and being in the movie. That was a shovel in his chest, digging deeper than he wanted to go. He needed a reason to get away from the film, get away from the people involved, but he could not let go either. This could be the happiest moment of Ella's senior years, he could not do anything to stop her, that level of selfishness and cruelty was not in him. The depth of pain that it would dredge to watch Nellie living out a dream through Ella though, what would be the price exacted on him for that?

“The devil and the deep blue.” Charlie said to no one.

His friends said nothing, thinking that Jonno had gone too far, but sitting there nursing his beer Charlie felt exposed, though they knew nothing of what feelings railed inside, the way he wanted it was a wall, a seawall that kept the masses from the depths.

“Ain't that the bloody truth Charlie? ‘Struth it’s like they’ve got gold fever, strutting around thinking they’re gonna' be stars, bloody oath.” Jonno stares into the bottom of his glass, clears his throat and looks at the publican, who does the right thing and refills it with care.

Charlie lights up as an idea occurs to him. “Don’t worry mates, we ARE going to audition, we ARE going to be supportive of the Sheilas, but we are NOT going to be in that movie, I can guarantee it.”

“You have a plan to let us have our cake and eat it too?” Paul the bartender and publican was washing the empties and then stacking them to the side, getting ready for the evening crowd, more from habit as the evening crowd was the same folk as were sat down with him this afternoon.

“Yeah exactly how are we going to get out of these auditions?” Jonno takes another gulp of beer, wiping the foam with the back of his hand.

“Open your ears my boy, we aren’t getting 'out' of them, we go to the 'auditions' and we 'act'.” Charlie is grinning ear to ear.

“Nope, I don't get it.”

“Well then listen carefully. The girls, they will give us hell if we don’t go and make an effort right? And I mean a REAL effort, not the 'half-assed', looking like you are 'waiting in the women’s wear changing area in a department store' effort. Am I right?”

The men all nod together, Jonno looking backwards again at the women. His wife looks over and frowns at him, instantly suspicious. Jonno smiles at her and holds up his beer, quickly turning back to his friends, the forced smile turning to a shudder as he does so.

“We will, go and we make an effort, an effort so full of enthusiasm and 'acting', a truly appalling, over the top 'acting'. The kind of 'effort' that cannot be denied, the kind where our very heart and souls will be thrown into the simplest of scenes and the smallest of parts!

“Brilliant”

“Outstanding, why didn’t I think of that?”

“The girls won’t be able to fault us, because we ‘tried’ but the Indians won’t hire us if we’re really awful!” Charlie pauses and puts a hand under his chin in a thoughtful pose “How awful can we be?”

His friends are grinning and immediately start posing with their hands outstretched like a dramatic Shakespearian speech was forthcoming, making evil genius hand gestures and miming shock and outrage, while laughing uproariously at each other. The noise is getting the attention of the women who are now watching them closely and Paul clears his throat pointedly as the men settle down when he nods at the girls eye-balling them from thirty feet away.

“Well we can’t go too far, we don’t want it to be obvious. We should just act … um I guess ... obviously? Yeah, like in the silent movies where everything is overacted because they had no sound. Got it? Think Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd … you know.”

Jonno nods at the first two names but balks on the last one.

“Harold who?”

“Jeez Jonno, read a book already. Just think like a … you know what, how about you just try acting – I've seen you before, remember the school production we did, back in the day. You were the Ghost, the dead king. Just do that again.”

Jonno bristles at the suggestion that his performance fifty years ago was somehow sub par. “Hey the Paper said I was bloody good thank you, I was … what was the word?” He thinks back to the review in the local paper, he had it framed in the attic, but his friends find the adjectives for him.

“Crap?”

“Shit?”

“Actually like a dead man?”

Jonno reddens and then knows that despite the plan, he would act like his life depended on it, that'd show these gallahs. “Enlightening. The Bloody paper's review said I was bloody enlightening! Bloody philistines you have no sense of art!”

Charlie snorts into his beer. “Yeah, you know your mum wrote that right?”

“ Just... Just... Shut up!” They didn't know it yet but the plan was now one man short.