Sluice
Who brings the magic in a life?
Ronald Armstrong loved films from the moment he walked into his first Saturday morning matinee in 1935.
Twelve years old and nervous, he succumbed instantly to the gentle dark and the sudden flickering light. Throw in the genius of Buster Keaton and the antics of the Cisco kid, and he was hooked.
From then on, every weekend had included a trip to the pictures. Even when he turned eighteen and joined up, he lived for the moment a new film would arrive for the troops, to be shown on the back of a white sheet strung up in a jungle somewhere North of home.
The magic of the screen, the transporting genius of the actors, the treasure trove that was every new story…Ron loved it all. It gave his ordinary life a magical edge.
And then he met Molly. And fell in love with her.
He took her to the pictures on their first date, but they didn’t see much. Molly liked kissing.
And dancing, it turned out.
When Ron wanted to go to the movies to see what Clark Gable was up to this week, Molly wanted to go dancing. So Ron took Molly to night clubs and local halls, even though he wasn’t very good at dancing. She loved it and loved him for taking her, and he loved to see her so happy, but he missed his flicks.
‘Don’t worry,’ Molly had laughed. ‘I’ll make your life magical!’
And for a while she did.
Ron got work in another town the same week Molly told him she was pregnant. They lived in a hostel with other young couples until Ron got a promotion and they wangled a mortgage from the bank, enough to buy a weatherboard two-bedroom place — their place.
By the time the third kid was on his way, Ron was middle management, and Molly took in ironing work. They re-mortgaged, built their own family house. Ron spent every weekend painting it and filling it with shelves and wall-paper, while Molly and the kids planted a brand new garden and veggie patch.
As the boys got old enough for school, Molly returned to secretarial work, part-time at the local library, and while they had no time to get to the cinema, what with weekend sports commitments, and the Church, she and Ron got to watch some movies on Sunday nights, exhausted, in front of their new black and white television set.
Of course, Ron had seen all of them, seen them on first release, on the big screen, but he still loved seeing them again, especially sharing them with Molly, who invariably fell asleep halfway through, her comfy old lounge chair a traitorous ally.
And while Ron tried hard to keep her awake with subtle pokes and loud, unsubtle ’MOLLY’s!’ she never could manage it. This didn’t affect her enjoyment though — she knew she loved Waterloo Bridge, for example, but Ron suspected that was only because she loved the haunting and romantic beginning, but slept through the heart-rending middle and snored through the tragic end.
The ending had brought Ron undone the first time he saw it, back in the day — surreptitiously drying his tears in the cinema, trying to breathe normally.
Time went by, the kids grew up, but Molly didn’t want to see any of the films that were being made in the seventies, nor on into the eighties. She thought they were immoral, false idols almost. The decline of her beloved Church seemed to her to be partly due to the attacks on ‘good’ living epitomised in modern films. She began to cherish the ‘old’ movies just for their lack of nudity.
Neither Molly nor Ron ever took their boys to the pictures.
Ron knew about the latest films, of course — classics apparently, some of them, movies his work colleagues raved about in the tea room, with names like The Godfather, All The President’s Men, Tootsie — but he stayed at home with Molly, doing his crosswords, watching the occasional re-run of a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby Road To movie on the telly.
Brett, their youngest, bought them a VCR for Christmas, 1985.
Ron immediately began collecting what was to become a massive video library, copying black and white classics off the ABC at 1.30 in the morning, the timer and channel set-up no problem for him. While he was a man who eschewed modern technology for the potential evils it provided — the internet was the work of Satan, for example — he was no Luddite.
There were lines drawn in the burgeoning IT sand, the reasoning behind which only he and Molly knew: CD’s yes, DVD’s no; mobile phones yes, laptops no; emails no, text messages yes. And no internet. Ever.
When copying late-night movies from the telly to watch at a more reasonable hour, the only ones which made the cut now were those made between 1930 and 1965 (The Sound of Music being the bookend). Thirty-five years of film. Great films, many of them, but now on repeat.
Ron retired. He and Molly toured the world, saw the sites, saw the fountain from Roman Holiday, returned home, and started watching their videos again.
Almost imperceptibly, Molly started to enforce a new censorial direction to their film watching — Citizen Kane was too edgy, how about the one with Bob Hope being the Dentist in the Wild West instead.
By this stage, Ron could (for a very specific era) out movie-trivia Bill Collins. Which was handy, as Molly was starting to forget what happened in many of the films, and who was who.
He lent the vids to their retired friends. For their edification and Molly’s benefit, Ron typed out a small précis and stuck it on the front of each cassette.
On the rare occasions when their boys visited, sometimes with their families in tow, more often without, whoever had come would be forced to sit quietly in the lounge room while an increasingly confused Molly tried to place the particular movie she wanted to watch, the one with the woman who was in Gone With The Wind…
‘Vivien Leigh,’ Ron would supply for the umpteenth time.
‘Yes, and Robert…was it Robert Mitcham?’
‘Robert Taylor.’ Slightly brusque.
‘Yes, those two — what’s that one, Ron?’
They watched Waterloo Bridge so many times that it no longer made Ron cry. In fact, he started to hate it.
And Molly’s decline went on until she didn’t know who the boys were, and she roamed the house at night, searching for her childhood friends. The dementia, at first so slow, finally, swiftly, over-powered Molly, and the effort required to care for her almost took Ron with it as well.
Ron would not let himself have the treacherous thought…
…But his son’s wives would tell their husbands that it was a blessed relief for him, although he brought a lot of it on himself by never putting her in a home, and honestly the state of that place by the end. The smell.
A week after the funeral, the boys took their father out for lunch while the wives donned rubber gloves and used a plethora of various cleaning products and cloths to scrub Ron’s house clean.
The boys tried to take Ron to the cinema after a disconnected lunch, but he balked at the entrance to the Megaplex.
A relieved Brett received a text. All clear. They could bring him back.
Ron just nodded when they asked him if he was okay, when they told him they had to go now, but that they’d be back tomorrow.
The wives were worried about him — he hadn’t shed a single tear since Molly had passed away — but not enough to stay the night. Plus, he wouldn’t want them there, anyway, would he?
As the front door closed behind the last of them, Ron turned and looked at the empty lounge chair on his left. He sighed deeply, then reached for the telly remote.
The next day Brett received a call from Ron. He hung up and turned to his wife.
‘Well?’
‘He wants me to buy him a few things. He’ll pay, of course. I don’t know how he even knows this stuff exists — housebound, no internet, the man’s a genius!’
Two weeks later Ron walked into his lounge room and looked around. The room was transformed.
A huge 3D flat-screen television covered almost all of one wall. Surround-sound speakers owned every corner of the room, and right in front of the screen, back a reasonable viewing distance, was a black leather recliner rocker from the future.
Ron had the rest of his life to watch any and every film he wanted, and he was going to do it in style.
Ron’s simple plan was to start in 1966 and watch a selection from every year until he died. Because, although he had loved Molly with all his heart, there was still some love leftover for his first passion — the movies. And for too long it had been unrequited.
First cab off the rank: Antonioni’s Blow Up.
With the glow of the outside streetlight barely making it inside, Ron settled into the leather recliner, his legs stretched out luxuriously on the comfy support he had raised with the touch of a button.
He pointed the remote and the telly came to life.
A sudden flickering light intruded on the gentle dark of the room and Ron watched the opening scenes of the film with delighted boyish anticipation.
And then he sighed. He looked to his left, but there was nothing there, nothing except a black speaker tower. He watched the movie for a moment more, then reached for the remote. He paused it; climbed down from his dark throne.
Ron left the room, went to the study, found what he wanted and began dragging it back down the hallway. The effort made him stop every few steps, gasping for breath, muscles aching, but finally he had manoeuvred the comfy old lounge chair into the movie room.
He positioned it to the left of the recliner rocker. Nodded.
He climbed back in his seat, pressed play, glanced quickly left to make sure Molly hadn’t fallen asleep. But she wasn’t watching anyway. She didn’t like this one. She turned her sweet questioning face to him.
‘What’s that one with the woman who was in Gone With The Wind…’
‘Vivien Leigh, dear.’ said Ron.
‘Yes, her, and Robert…was it Robert Mitcham?’
‘Robert Taylor.’
‘Yes, those two — what’s that one, Ron?’
‘Waterloo Bridge, Molly.’
‘Can we watch that one? I don’t like this one.’
Ron nodded, reaching for the remote.
‘Of course, love. Of course, we can.’
Then he turned off the television and sat in the dark, staring at the silent empty screen.
And finally, he wept, great, gulping sobs, for his suddenly ordinary life.
All the magic gone.
