They Do the Same Things Different There (26 page)

Some extracts survive. As film historians it is impossible not to appreciate what Tozer is attempting. But in practice, as casual viewers, we would have to judge it doesn’t work. Tozer has not found a way to make the sound sync accurately to the image; it is rarely more than a second or two out, but that jarring second makes everything seem imprecise and unreal, even eerie. And the voices of the actors are not what we might expect. We see the tramp again. In the silent movies he demonstrates a charm that is both winning and humane. In the sound rushes, he reveals he has a high-pitched voice like a strangled dolphin. The charm is gone. So, too, is the illusion.

As the Turks invade, so Tozer’s picture house is burned to the ground. It is not clear whether the Turks or the Byzantines are to blame.

Matthew Tozer’s fate is unknown. Many people fled the city, and there is every chance that he too might have escaped. But if he did, there is no record of his attempting to make any more films. Either Tozer becomes like Emperor Constantine, one of those anonymous casualties who were lost in the battle—or he survives, in exile, disillusioned, thinking himself a failure and his art form a failure, rejecting his talents and never returning to them for as long as he lives.

Is it wrong to hope that he was butchered by Turks? Is it wrong to wish for him that one little mercy?

Historical opinion has turned against Tozer in recent years. The argument is that without his interference the population would not have been distracted, and would have been better prepared to repel the Ottoman conquest. Professor Kettering has even published his theories that Tozer was a Turkish spy, deliberately undermining the morale of the Byzantines from within with his dreadful movies; it is a theory that I find at once both absurd and heinous, though nothing Kettering says anymore should surprise me.

What is harder to dispute is Tozer’s legacy. Sadly, it is negligible. The footage of Tozer’s movies was only discovered in a basement in Ankara in the 1920s. By the time Tozer’s advances came to light, the motion picture industry was already in full swing. The great filmmakers of the 1890s, Lumière, Michon, Méliès, all reinvented cinema without ever realizing Matthew Tozer had been there first. Mack Sennett produced his movies without Tozer’s influence; David O. Selznick, head of production at RKO Pictures, famously viewed the recovered prints of Tozer’s films, shrugged, and asked what all the fuss was about: “It’s already been done.”

And yet surely we cannot write off Matthew Tozer as a failure. We must not.

When we see the history of the world put before us, it’s easy to think it’s just a catalogue of wars and genocidal atrocities. Of peoples conquering peoples, and then getting conquered in turn. That the development of Mankind has been nothing more than an exercise in studying new acts of brutality to be turned against still larger sizes of population. That, in effect, all Mankind’s inspirations are directed toward evil.

But what then of Matthew Tozer? What then of that spark to
create
, to produce art for art’s sake, if only because it wasn’t in existence before? To take a population and want not to decimate it or enslave it, but instead crowd it together, into one room, into the dark, and make it laugh? And maybe with Matthew Tozer the spark didn’t die. Maybe the spark lasted out the centuries, just waiting for the right conditions in which to take fire. Maybe, in spite of all, Matthew Tozer and the better impulse will win out.

We can speculate. And, oh, we can speculate, we can imagine, we can dream. Sometimes I think that’s the true gift Matthew Tozer left us.

In the end it was the afternoons that were killing him. The evenings were fine. The evenings he could cope with. He wasn’t working in the evenings, it was true, but that was okay, lots of people didn’t work in the evenings. He’d play with Ben a bit, like a normal dad, might read him a bedside story if Ben fancied it. Like a normal dad, and in a normal family too, he’d cuddle up with Cheryl on the sofa and they’d watch a spot of telly, and at last Cheryl would say that she’d best get to bed, she had to be up early in the morning. And he’d go with her, though he didn’t have to be up early, not anymore. And mornings were okay. He could ignore the mornings. At quarter past seven the alarm would wake them both, and Cheryl would kiss him on the head, and tell him she loved him, and get up to rouse Ben. At first he’d get up when she did, but she said there was no need—Steve, she’d say, why not lie in? Steve, you may as well lie in. And so he’d lie in, and shortly after eight he’d hear Cheryl and Ben leave the house and close the front door behind them. For the first few weeks he’d doze until nine-ish, then nine thirty. Recently though he’d crossed the line; as he lay buried in the darkness he’d tell himself that so long as he was up by noon it’d be all right, that’d still mean he wasn’t sleeping the entire morning. He wouldn’t need to feel guilty, he’d still be normal. But now he was finding he wasn’t opening the curtains ’til as late as twelve fifteen, even twelve twenty once. And as he’d blink out into the sunlight, he’d see that the world outside hadn’t ended, the world had continued without him, and he was now firmly stuck in the afternoon, and it weighed down his very soul.

Yeah, in the end, it was the afternoons that did it for him. That and the conversation he’d had after dinner one evening. Steve had asked Ben what he’d been up to at school that day, and he enjoyed doing that, Ben was always full of stories of new games he’d learned and new friends he’d made. But Ben just looked at him curiously and said, “What did
you
do today, Daddy?” And he didn’t have to justify himself to Ben, and Ben didn’t even
want
to be justified to, he didn’t really care, an hour before bed on the Xbox his grandparents had bought him would keep him happy. But Cheryl had just said, “Yes, Ben, ask your Daddy what he’s been up to today.” And there was nothing accusing in it, it was as calm as you like, he couldn’t even see Cheryl’s face, her back was turned as she did the washing up. Steve hadn’t answered, and there was an awkward silence—well, awkward to Steve, Ben didn’t seem bothered, and Cheryl, Cheryl was still giving fierce attention to the dinner plates. Then Cheryl said something else, it didn’t matter what, and it was just as neutral, and the subject was changed. They didn’t mention it again; he didn’t apologize for being out of work, and she didn’t apologize for making him feel bad about it; they cuddled on the sofa, watched
TV
, then went to bed when Cheryl said it was time.

That weekend he went for a drink with Ray. Ray had been laid off the same time he was. He hadn’t seen Ray for a while; at first they’d meet for a pint every few days, and they both took some comfort from that, in shared anecdotes and shared recriminations. But that was back when his unemployment had seemed like a temporary inconvenience, when deep down Steve believed the management would phone him up one day to say sorry and offer him his job back. “Why not give Ray a call, see if he’s up for the pub?” Cheryl would say sometimes, and she’d take a tenner from her purse and hold it out for him. And he knew it was his money too, really, some of that was his dole, but it felt like pocket money. Besides, he found Ray hard to face these days. He feared Ray was coping better with his redundancy than he was. But that weekend Cheryl had pressed him, maybe she felt bad about the dinner incident, “Go on,” she said, “have a treat,” and waved the tenner in front of him. So he phoned Ray. Ray got in the first round, and he told Ray what he’d been planning. “You must be joking,” said Ray. “We’re skilled labourers. We’re engineers. You wouldn’t catch me working in a fucking
garden
.” And Steve didn’t dare tell Ray that garden shifts came later if you were lucky, they started you off in public parks and forests. During the second pint, Ray said, “What you’re forgetting is. That it’s not our fault we were let go. It’s not our fault.” During the third pint, Ray asked how much the Tree Scheme would bring in, and then said, “Christ, we’ll get more than that staying on the dole.” And Steve said that it wasn’t about the money, it wasn’t about fault, it was the afternoons, the afternoons were just getting longer, didn’t Ray find the afternoons were getting longer and longer and there was no end to them? And Ray finished his pint, and said he’d go along to the training with him. You know, just to see what it was like.

Training lasted a day. “Surprised you need a day,” said Ray. “After all, all we do is just stand about, isn’t it?” No one wanted to sit in the first few rows of the seminar room, but the place was soon packed, and the latecomers had no choice. Free refreshments were available at the back, and dutifully Steve took his plastic cup of orange squash like all the others. At last a man in a suit stood up in front of them all. “A lot of you here today,” he said. “But not many of you will make the grade. You probably think there’s nothing to this job. Some of you will think you’re too good for it. But there’s more to the tree than you think. Regulating the carbon dioxide intake, drawing nutrients from the soil with its roots. The tree is a very complex animal.” Steve spoke up and said surely it was a plant, not an animal, and Ray sniggered at this, and there was a tittering around the room, but Steve hadn’t meant it as a heckle, not really. The man up front pursed his lips. “Yeah, there’s always some clever bugger who thinks he knows it all.”

Then the man turned on his overhead projector, and outlined on a whiteboard the differences between some of the major trees: those that were fruit bearing, those that were not. He produced graphs of climate change, how an average tree might be affected by differences in rainfall. Then he said he was proud to introduce someone who’d been working as a tree nigh on fifty years, and a grizzled gentleman got up and tried to explain some of the practicalities of the job. He told stories that weren’t very interesting and gave tips that were rather confusing, all with a grimness of tone that suggested he was imparting dark secrets of nuclear science. He stressed again that the tree was a complex animal. Then it was lunch: more orange squash, and some cheese sandwiches. “Now it’s time to get some experience in the field,” said the man, “as it were,” and they all filed out of the seminar room, down the stairs, and into the private gardens of the company offices. “We’re going to start you off on sycamores. Sycamores are easy. Any fool can do a sycamore.” So everyone gave their best stab at a sycamore, and the man walked through the little forest that had sprung up, appraising their efforts. “Good, good, keep steady, good, a little too feral, good.” Once in a while he’d take out a stick of white chalk and mark their sides with a little cross. Steve tried so very hard to be a tree; when the man looked him up and down it seemed to take forever, but Steve thought of Cheryl, and of Ben, and he didn’t waver, he stayed rooted to the spot. Then, at last, “Good,” came the grunt, and Steve was marked with a cross. “We have your details,” the man announced to them all at the end of the day. “If we want you, we’ll be in touch.” And then Steve went home.

And for once Cheryl was waiting for
him
when he got home from work. She threw her arms around him, “I’m so proud of you,” she said, and kissed him on the lips, “I love you.” She’d made him his favourite meal, a treat for her working man. Even Ben was excited, and he raced around the house, shouting, “Daddy Daddy Daddy!” And although Steve was tired, he really had to laugh at the little feller, “Daddy Daddy!” He half hoped that Ben would ask him over dinner what he’d done that day, but really was relieved he didn’t, because he didn’t know how to explain that he’d been a big hunk of wood. So they ate their spag bol to Ben’s chatter, and Steve and Cheryl hardly said a word, but once in a while Cheryl would prod Steve with her foot under the table and give him a private smile. And for dessert they had ice cream, everyone’s favourite. After Ben went to bed, they cuddled on the sofa as always, but they didn’t give the telly much attention. Steve tried to explain that it had only been a training day, that there was no guarantee that there’d be a job at the end of it, and Cheryl said, “I know you did your best. It’ll all work out. I
believe
in you,” and they made love right there and then, and they hadn’t done that for ages. It suddenly didn’t matter to Steve whether he heard back from the Tree Scheme at all.

But he did. The very next morning he was woken by a phone call. He answered it blearily. “Did I get you up?” said the man on the end sternly. Steve checked the time, and saw that it was nearly half past ten, and assured the man he’d been out of bed for hours. “I’m glad to hear it,” said the man. “Now, listen. I want to offer you a job.” Steve thanked him. “Don’t thank me. This is a probationary period, all right? To see whether you have the right aptitude. So the pay will reflect that, you’ll be on the probationary pay, all right?” Steve said it was all right, and thanked him again. “Don’t thank me.” Steve wasn’t sure whether he should phone Ray, if Ray hadn’t heard anything he didn’t want to crow, but it was okay, Ray phoned him. “You get the job too? Probationary pay. I nearly told them I had a bloody degree, I nearly told them to stuff it.” That evening he was nervous, and Cheryl told him that was to be expected. “Tomorrow’s a big day for you,” she said. “For all of us.” She told him to take a bath, and he did, though logically he knew cleanliness really wasn’t what the job was about. And at quarter past four the next morning he woke to the alarm, he was the one who kissed Cheryl and told her he loved her, he was the one who let her sleep in whilst he got ready for work.

Everyone had been told to meet outside the office at half past five sharp. Ray was there too, so were a few others Steve remembered from the training day. They too looked anxious, and were trying to hide it by horsing about and being noisy. “That’s it,” said their supervisor, “get rid of all your energy now, whilst you still have the chance.” Then he bundled them all into the back of a van, and drove them to Clapham Common. “When you’ve got more experience, you can choose where you want to stand,” the supervisor told them, “but for now, leave that up to me.” He planted Steve far away from Ray, and away from the lad he’d said hello to in the van, and for a while Steve felt a bit lonely, and then reasoned there wouldn’t be much chatting anyway. There were two breaks scheduled during the day: as his first, Steve picked the eleven o’clock slot, and Ray did too. As the trees gathered around, forming an impromptu copse, stretching their limbs and smoking their fags, Ray said, “Christ, this job’s boring, isn’t it?”

And it was boring, of course it was. But Steve soon realized that being bored wasn’t so bad. On that first day the sky was overcast, and so the common didn’t get many visitors, but perhaps that was just as well. It meant that Steve could concentrate on not wobbling. Not wobbling, he quickly discovered, was the key. Once he had the not wobbling sorted, he’d have the job down pat. And he learned that the odd wobble was fine, so long as you didn’t fight it—lean into the breeze, and you could turn it into a
sway.
The second day the sun came out, and with it the lunchtime workers with their thermos flasks and their sandwiches. One of them sheltered in Steve’s shade, and Steve expected he’d be jealous of him, this man in a suit, having a proper job, doing something respectable. But he wasn’t. He actually wasn’t: he peered down at the man’s face, and saw it creased with stress; he was just trying to grab a quick bite in peace, but his mobile phone kept on ringing, it rang no less than three times, and each time the man would put his sandwich down and take the call, and each time Steve heard him pleading to someone on the other end, yes, the contract would be ready by Tuesday, yes, the contract would be ready by the end of the day, please bear with him, please bear with him, please. And Steve felt sorry for the man, he wanted to protect him, and to shield him as best he could with his branches. It was funny—after an hour or so you didn’t feel the stiffness in your arms. First they numbed, then felt like something detached from the body altogether. And when the breeze fluttered his leaves, Steve thrilled to it—the wind just teasing them, they didn’t seem so much blown about as stroked. He’d zone out, and sometimes he’d think of the common, and how many different shades of green there were, no patch of grass the same. And sometimes he’d think of his family. That if he was moved off probationary pay that maybe they could have another baby, he knew Cheryl would like that, and Ben deserved a little playmate, someone he could look after. Maybe Cheryl and he could even get married at last. And sometimes he’d think nothing at all.

By the end of the second week Ray had had enough. “To hell with this!” he shouted, and Steve was sure the whole common must have heard him. “I’m out of here!” The supervisor told Ray that was fine with him, he was no use anyway, he didn’t have the aptitude, he just didn’t have the aptitude. But for now he’d have to finish the shift, if he wanted any pay at all he’d bloody well get back to work. “Christ,” said Ray, but did as he was told, dragging all his roots behind him and back into position. On the way back in the van Ray wouldn’t shut up about it all. “You’re being exploited,” he told the other trees. “This is the worst job in the world. I’d rather work for McDonald’s.” The other trees looked uncomfortable and didn’t say much. “You don’t have to rush off, do you, Steve, you’ve time for a pint?” But Steve told Ray that he’d best get back home, his family were waiting. Some other time maybe. “Yeah,” said Ray, “maybe,” and he went. Steve felt rather relieved that Ray wouldn’t be on the common with him anymore. He liked Ray and all, but he let the side down. He was a troublemaker.

That evening Steve told Cheryl what Ray had said. Cheryl was quiet for a while, and then asked, a little uncomfortably, whether maybe Ray was right. “You gave the job a go,” she said. “Darling, there’s no need to stick it out if you don’t want to.” And Steve assured her he was fine. He liked the job. He did, really! Couldn’t Cheryl see that? Isn’t that what he’d been telling Cheryl every night as they cuddled? “Well, yes,” said Cheryl. “But I’d always thought you were just putting a brave face on it. It all sounds horrendous.” No, no, Steve said. He was really getting to grips with it. “Oh,” said Cheryl.