'Fuckin' shut up,' yelled Jo from the next room. 'You're driving me fuckin' mental.'
She appeared in the doorway, her eyes fiery and angry. Rosebud looked at her in silent, open-mouthed surprise. She did not cry, but looked at Roy with a look that said 'What's up with her?' The anger slipped from Jo's face.
'Can I take her?' she said. 'I want her.'
The next day Jo got up, dressed and took Rosebud out to visit one of her friends. Roy told her not to overdo it and Jo told him not to mother her. About a week later Jo moved the cot into her room and told Roy she was better. She said Roy had been wonderful and could go on staying at the flat until he found a place of his own.
'I wondered,' he said, 'if maybe I shouldn't just stay indefinitely.'
'Don't be silly,' she said. 'I'm better now. It was just baby blues. All mothers get them. I'm better now. And there isn't room here for you and me and the baby.'
'I suppose not,' said Roy. He got a flat of his own, not far away, still on the Southside. He started work at the university and he looked after Rosebud from Friday night until Monday morning whilst Jo was singing. One Friday Jo was not singing. but Roy went to her flat just the same. Jo made him dinner and they drank a bottle of claret. Rosebud slept whilst they drank another bottle and made love. Afterwards they shared a cigarette but they both knew it was over. Roy got up, got dressed and, without waking Rosebud, he lifted her into her carrycot.
Roy would gallop along the hall and round the living room with Rosebud bouncing up and down on his shoulders, chuckling to herself and slavering over his head. He played
The Magnificent Seven
to her on the video.
'That's Yul Brynner,' he said, 'the one with no hair. And that's Steve McQueen, the one who says he has never ridden shotgun on a hearse before.'
'Aga banka boo,' she said.
'Ah, Lakota dialect,' said Roy. 'Like in
Dances with Wolves
.'
'Da,' said Rosebud. 'Da. Dada.'
He taped all the children's films on the television for Rosebud. They watched Disney's
Alice in Wonderland
together, with its little protagonist thrust into a crazy world of hatters and hares, dormice in teapots and unbirthday parties; a terrifying world with its big nasty queen wanting to cut off everyone's head. Rosebud watched in silence. At the end Roy told her the joke about Bing Crosby and Walt Disney, knowing it would mean nothing to her. But when he laughed she looked at him and laughed, even more heartily.
'Off with head,' she said. And Roy laughed some more. 'Off with head, Dada.'
Tears of laughter rolled down Roy's cheeks.
'Off with head, Dada,' she said, over and over again.
She watched
Alice in Wonderland
over and over again. Whenever the Queen of Hearts ordered a decapitation Rosebud would shout 'Off with head, Dada' in the same brisk, regal tone.
She watched
Alice in Wunnerlan
. And she watched Disney's
Nokey-nokey
, the story of the wooden boy, with the big, 'normous nose and the wee friend called Jimmy Cricket.
'Nokey-nokey goes where the naughty boys go, Mummy. And he almost turns into a donkey ride. And he gets eaten by a big fish. And he lives happily ever after with his dada.' And Rosebud sang: 'Hi, diddy-dee, actor's wife for me.'
'Children under three not admitted to any performance,' said Roy, reading from the programme as the maroon double-decker bus crawled along Princes Street towards the Filmhouse. The former church had been converted into a twin-cinema to replace the Filmhouse's old basement premises that Roy had gone to as a teenager. 'So if anyone asks you your age you're three,
OK
?'
'I'm two and three-quarters,' said Rosebud in a tiny voice that held not a trace of her mother's rasp.
'Just say you're three.'
'Three,' said Rosebud, 'quarters.'
'Just say you're three and I'll buy you a tube of Smarties.'
'Actually,' said Rosebud. She often began sentences with 'actually', a habit she had picked up from her grandmother. 'I'm three.'
Nobody asked. They paid their £2, climbed the stairs and sat in two red seats in the middle of the seventh row of Cinema 1. The cinema was less than half full.
'Lot of people,' said Rosebud. The lights dimmed.
'Why dey put the lights out?' she asked.
'Wait and see,' said Roy, wiping her runny nose.
The curtains drew back. All is darkness, but for the purple writing. Darkness. Stars. An indistinct figure makes it way through a forest.
'Is that Eaty?' whispers Rosebud.
'Wait and see,' says her father.
The figure on screen looks down on a patchwork of lights.
'I think that's Eaty,' says Rosebud.
There is a roar like a lion as a vehicle grinds to a halt nearby. Other vehicles appear, all bright light and violent movement, shattering the tranquillity of the misty night. They seem to encircle the figure.
'It's not too scary, is it?' asked Roy.
In the reflected light he could see Rosebud shake her head without averting her eyes from the screen. Roy took her little hand in his. The figure screams in alarm and Roy could sense Rosebud jump.
'Don't worry,' he said. 'It'll be alright.'
Ferns dance as the figure dashes through them. Torches cut the night air as the men from the cars pursue the little figure. The spaceship takes off and
ET
is left alone.
Rosebud screamed with Elliot when he discovers
ET
.
ET
's dumpy little body reminded Roy of the little figure in the red raincoat in
Don't Look Now
. That figure had reminded Donald Sutherland of his dead daughter. He pursued the figure through the walkways of Venice. It was not the ghost of his daughter, but a dwarf, who stabs him to death.
Rosebud laughed when
ET
got drunk and Elliott, who feels everything
ET
feels, drunkenly frees all the frogs from their jars in his biology class. She watched in silence when
ET
died and when he came back to life. The few snuffles in the cinema sounded like adult snuffles to Roy. Rosebud watched in silence as Elliott and his friends take
ET
to a rendezvous with his spaceship, with the authorities behind and ahead of them, and their bikes suddenly take off and fly through the air.
ET
says goodbye to Elliott and his spaceship takes off, leaving a rainbow in its wake.
***
Only later did Rosebud ask how the bikes could fly.
'
ET
had special magic powers,' Roy told her.
'Like the Blue Fairy in Nokey-Nokey?'
'Yes, just like the Blue Fairy in Nokey-Nokey.'
'Why did dose men want Eaty?'
'They had never seen anything like
ET
before and they wanted to find out what he was.'
'What were day going to do with him? Why did Elliott let all de frogs out? Was Eaty a sort of frog? Were dey going to cut him up like a frog?'
It was not a point Roy had considered, but he was enormously impressed that his little daughter had seen the link and thought it perfectly valid.
'Did Eaty really die or was he just pretending?' she asked.
'I think he was really dead.'
'Why did he die?'
'I'm not sure. I think maybe because there was not the right sort of air for him on Earth ... or maybe he was just sad because he missed his friends and family.'
'How did he be alive again?'
'Magic. Like the bikes flying.'
'Will I die?'
'Not for a very long time. But everybody dies in the end.'
'Why?'
Roy thought. 'Well if everybody lived forever there wouldn't be enough room for all the new people.'
'They could make them smaller,' said Rosebud. 'When will I die?'
'Not for a long time.'
'Next year?'
'No, no, not next year, or the year after that, or the year after that. Not for a very, very long time. There's nothing to worry about.' He was going to say that he and Mummy would die first, but thought better of it.
'If I die, can I be alive again?' asked Rosebud.
'No,' said Roy. 'That can only happen in the movies. He said that once people died they were dead forever, but they lived on through their children.'
'And in the movies,' said Rosebud, 'where was Elliott's dada? Where's ... Mex-ico? Was Eaty going to Mex-ico too? Is Mex-ico where you go when you die? Can we watch Eaty again?
'Do you get people from other planets? Can I phone home and ask Mummy? Is it a true story?'
***
Breathlessly Rosebud related the story to her mother: 'Eaty's spaceship leaves him behind in a wood. And then Eaty goes to a wee boy's house. And the wee boy is called Elliott. And then Elliott finds Eaty. And they both get a fright.'
She chuckled to herself.
'And then Elliott gives Eaty Smarties and they become friends. And then ... And then ... And then Eaty dies ...'
'I don't think that was a very suitable film to take a two-year-old to,' rasped Jo. 'All that stuff about dying.'
'I'm three,' said Rosebud.
'No, you're not,' said her mother.
'Dada told me to tell people I'm three.'
Jo gave Roy a silent, withering look.
***
When Roy picked Rosebud up the following Friday, she was accompanied by a large cuddly toy
ET
which her mother had bought her and with which she slept every night. Roy smiled at Jo and kissed her on the cheek, but she turned away.
Roy and Rosebud went back to the Filmhouse to see the cartoon
The Land Before Time
about Littlefoot, the orphaned brontosaurus; Cera, the young triceratops; and their little dinosaur friends following the bright circle to the great valley.
'Why did Littlefoot's Mummy die?' asked Rosebud.
'She had an accident.'
'Will I have an accident?'
'No,' said Roy, 'and it's probably best that we don't mention Littlefoot's mummy dying to your mummy.'
Trips to the pictures became a regular Saturday afternoon outing. Often they would go to the special children's matinee at the Filmhouse. They saw Mij die horribly in
Ring of Bright Water
and Basil Rathbone die deservedly in
The Adventures of Robin Hood
, dispatched for his villainy by the dashing Errol Flynn. Rosebud dressed in green tights and green tee-shirt, and Roy's mother made her a little green triangle of a hat from felt. She looked more like a leprechaun than Robin Hood, thought Roy, but she was happy. Father and daughter replayed the fencing duel between Flynn and Rathbone with sticks from the park, Roy careful not to catch Rosebud's knuckles and Rosebud swinging so wildly that Roy was forced to employ all the dexterity shown by Errol Flynn to survive unscathed.
During the summer Roy and Rosebud were walking along the path beside the River Almond at Cramond when she dropped her
ET
doll into the water. It was a drop of about ten or 12 feet. There was a wall, but no steps nearby.
ET
lay there at the edge of the water looking up for help. Rosebud burst into tears.
'Don't worry,' said Roy. 'It'll be alright.'
'She's dropped her teddy bear into the river,' one passing woman said to another.
'Oh, what a shame,' said the other.
Roy took off his Kickers and his socks, grabbed the rope that tied a small boat to the shore and abseiled down the wall to
ET
, like Jon Voight had done in
Deliverance
after he killed the mountain man on top of the cliff. The water was shallow, but the mud looked deep. Without taking his feet from the wall, he stretched one arm over to grab
ET
, held him up to show Rosebud he was safe and clamped him between his teeth. Rosebud, the two passing women, an old man with a stick and four young boys with bikes were standing looking down at him. With
ET
in his mouth, he started to work his way back upwards. Hand over hand on the rope, he felt the strain on his arms as he walked up the wall. He got to the top to hear Rosebud telling the boys that he was her father and he was just like Robin Hood. Rosebud hugged
ET
. Roy laced up his Kickers.
'You missed it,' the old man with the stick said to another old man, who had just arrived. 'The little black girl dropped her toy monkey over the wall and the young man went down the rope and rescued it.'
'Did he?' said the second man.
'Actually, my dada can do anything,' said Rosebud proudly.
***
Sometimes they went to the
ABC
or the Odeon or headed away from the city centre altogether on the 14 bus, towards the city boundary and the
UCI
multiplex. One death that had been widely forecast was that of cinema itself, but here was Roy making his way to an entertainment centre that housed 12 cinemas in one, making his way to a new generation of cinema with a new generation of cinema-goer. She would get a selection of loose sweets, the like of which Roy remembered constituted the contents of the penny tray at the local sweetie shop when he was a boy.