Film World

This story was published in the Waterford Review, Vol. 4 in 1994. I have made some minor changes.

Melissa McDermott was in a film. It was progressing slowly but she tried not to mind, being fully aware that much of the footage would anyway finally find its way on to the cutting room floor. That was how it worked in films -- much more material was shot than was ever used. She had looked into it and that's how it was. She would have preferred perhaps more actual contact with the director but she understood that his way was stealth. That the player, herself, was never to be quite sure of the position of the camera. So she constantly ensured that she was presenting a pleasing view from every angle.

Melissa McDermott knew she was in a film because, for one thing, everywhere she went she was accompanied by music. She had only to walk into the supermarket or café for the orchestra to strike up. Just to pass a shop in the street.

She wasn't sure what part she was playing, even what sort of film it was, but she felt in her heart that she had a starring role. In any case, all would become clear in due course. She mustn't be impatient.

It was lucky chance that she had changed her first name from the mundane Maureen to the much more appropriate one she now used. What had happened was this: someone had once asked her what she called herself and astonishment at the directness of the query had thrown her into confusion.

"M...Miss er McDermott," she had replied.

"Melissa!" the person -- a man of course -- had misheard. "What a pretty name!" And he had smiled at her before passing on out of her life.

Now she wore the name proudly pinned to her chest at the supermarket checkout  -- where she sat every day awaiting developments in the film she was in. "Melissa McDermott" -- it seemed so appropriate for a star. M.M. like Marilyn Monroe, who had also changed her name from something more homely.

Every morning she prepared for the day in the shabby little bed-sitting room she had so carefully embellished with pastel drapes, a small reproduction of Monet's "Waterlilies" and a pale china shepherdess to suit the character she felt herself to be playing, a wistful, sensitive, solitary girl awaiting the moment when she would be sparked into self-fulfilment.

She would look at herself framed by pink plastic in the mirror and observe a small face, a frail slightly hunched body. Immediately she would -- self-consciously, even though there was no one to see her except possibly the director with his hidden camera -- throw out her breasts until the slightest bumps became discernible under her blouse. For Melissa McDermott, though sharing initials, was not endowed like Marilyn Monroe. But then, of course, voluptuousness wasn't appropriate for the character she was playing.

She wore just a touch of make-up and hoped it was good enough for the camera. Most of her fellow check-out workers trowelled on heavy pancake that sometimes ended under the line of their chins, giving the effect of a mask, blusher, glinting eye-shadow, mascara that made their lashes stand out spikily, gloss on pouting lips. Melissa's naked face (but for a touch of lipstick, a sprinkling of powder) stood out from the rest, the same way that her hair, a natural light brown bob, contrasted with those perms and brash highlights.

She knew exactly what she was waiting for. What the director intended. At a certain moment, HE would appear, the male lead. Undoubtedly the director was taking his time and she couldn't help but wish, secretly, that they could move to that part of the film which would surely have more action. It wasn't her place to tell a director his business but she felt that if she were a spectator instead of a participant she would have lost interest long before. She tried to stop herself gazing hopefully at any young male who came to her check-out with his basket of baked beans, small sliced pan and frozen meal for one. In the café where she went for her lunch, she would wait with sickening nerves in her stomach for some nice-looking man to ask politely if the other seat at her table was free, and if he did, stare at her cheese sandwich and wait for him to make some remark. And if he asked her if she was using the sugar or salt, she would mumble something unintelligible and push it at him so violently that on more than one occasion it had crashed to the floor.

Melissa McDermott had an aunt who lived in the city where she worked and whom she visited most Sundays for her lunch. There, over boiled meats, she would be subjected to three hours of intimate details regarding the old woman's irritable bowel. Melissa never believed the film continued here, particularly as there was no music to alleviate the tedium of the conversation, but only the constant patter of the television, a match, a black and white cowboy film, a quiz in which ugly people won unlikely domestic appliances or holidays in the West Indies.

Once a month, she took the bus down the country to the family home on the edge of a small town. Her mother was always too harassed by the demands of the numerous little ones to bother too much with "Maureen", as she still called her, after the first searching look in her face (mam's eyes inevitably dropping to see if there was any evidence of swelling in the region of her belly). Melissa found she no longer resented minding the younger girls with their naive questions about the city. She had acquired prestige as one who had gone away to better, stranger things. At Sunday Mass, she sang out almost loudly, the light of devotion in her eyes. Was there not perhaps a camera lens peering at her from behind a pillar, the shadowy director lurking in a side chapel?

On her return to the city, from such a visit one dull Sunday night as she dozed in the window seat, someone banged down next to her. He lit a cigarette. The fumes roused her.

"No smoking," she said.

The man shrugged and continued to puff away.

"Don't you see the notice?" Melissa's respect for the rules overrode her shyness.

The man muttered something that might have been a curse. He smelt sour, like he had spilt drink, maybe even urine on his clothes.

"I'll tell the driver," Melissa persisted. Once she had seen a picture of tar-coated lungs and it had filled her with dread.

"Driver's smoking, too."

That was true enough.

"One rule for them, one rule for us. It's always the way." The man smiled. His teeth were discoloured. "But seeing as how you asked me so nicely," he went on, "and cos I can't resist a pretty face...." He ground out his cigarette.

"Thank you," Melissa said and turned her reddening face towards the window again. Pretty, he said. He actually said she was pretty.

His name was Eddie. Like herself he had family in the country, a job in the city. It seemed he had been to visit his mam, to squeeze some money out of her.            

"Can't keep meself in smokes with what I get on the valeting."

It took Melissa a while to understand that Eddie wasn't a footman in a large house but a cleaner of cars.

When they reached the city he asked her to come for a quick jar, as he called it, before closing time. She refused politely but he grabbed her hand in his rough one and pulled her across the road. She couldn't break free: he was carrying her bag as well as his own battered back pack.

The pub was yellow with old smoke. A few men sat at the bar, some of whom greeted Eddie and looked her over. He found her a torn plastic seat and went to get the drinks, the glass of cider that she had requested and a pint of stout for himself. While he was standing at the bar waiting for the beer to settle, she studied him. Quite old, thirtyish, skinny with thinning hair, certainly not the matinee idol she had been expecting. However, the music was playing, the cameras were evidently rolling and she would have to go along with it.

He talked, not seeming to mind that her replies were mumbled. What he said she couldn't have repeated. Lots of incomprehensible information about people she didn't know, people who often, it seemed, tried to put one over on Eddie, apparently without much success. He grinned, baring his discoloured teeth.

"See, I wan't born yesterday," he told her. And she had to agree with that.

The pub seemed to ignore normal closing time and Melissa suddenly realised that she had missed the last bus out to the suburb where she lived. She would have to get a taxi but, never having done such a thing, was unsure how to go about it. In other films, people stepped into the street, clicking their fingers and shouting "Taxi!" but she didn't think, with several ciders taken at this stage, that she was able for it. Anyway, Eddie had her bag under his legs and she would have to wait until he went to the bar again before she could grab it.

In the meantime, she needed to pay a visit to the Ladies to splash water on her hot face and use the facilities. Flushed faces loomed at her through the smoke as she walked by. People laughed loudly. Not at her, surely. The lavatory was dirty with a wet floor. She could hardly bear to use it but had to. There was no water in the taps, so she couldn't even rinse her fingers, never mind cool her face.

Later she couldn't remember how they had got into the dark alleyway where she found Eddie on top of her, hurrying her, pressing her back against the hard ground, grabbing at her tiny breasts, forcing himself between her legs, probing the most secret part with a hard, warm wet stick. She struggled and sobbed while he hissed in her ear, "You're a great girl. Oh dear God!... Oh fucking Christ!"

When the man sank his teeth -- those brown teeth -- into her neck, Melissa McDermott rolled back her head in protest at the pain. Her open eyes saw a red light, the back window of a club where she suddenly remembered they had gone after the pub. Eddie had held her tight in a dance that was no dance but an opportunity to rub himself against her. He had pressed wet lips against hers and forced a snaking tongue into her mouth. She had tasted his sourness and ran outside to vomit. He had come after her, clasping her breasts from behind as the cider she had been drinking all evening poured out of her in a jerky stream.

Now pounding throbbing dance music filled the alleyway as the man on top of her reached his climax. Again, as his mouth looked for hers, she twisted away and suddenly glimpsed a figure outlined against the street lights of the main road beyond, looking straight towards her.

The director lowered his camera, turned on his heel and strode off into the city. It was, as they say in the film world, a wrap.