Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? A Memoir(41)

While the film crew, like everyone else, centred their focus on my older siblings, I made myself busy behind the scenes, picking up cables and peering through cameras in a way that suggested this was my fourth shoot this week, but with a punctilious edge that implied I thought standards were slipping. I would repeat things I heard them say, as if I too thought we needed a brighter lamp for the kitchen shots, and had myself just been thinking they needed to hurry up with the externals before evening set in. When they started keeping their conversations, and equipment, away from me, I brought out the big guns: telling tantalising dinosaur facts just within earshot of those crew members who seemed the most discerning, hoping to bait them into asking for the full experience.

‘Hey kid,’ I imagined they’d shout, lowering a boom mic so as to focus more intently, ‘what was that you were saying about the wingspan of a pterosaur?’ This never came to pass. I eventually gained better access by going straight to the top and shadowing the producer, Marion. I think I can say she would have been completely lost had it not been for the guided tour of the house I offered, entirely free of charge, listing every room and its contents in a detailed but efficient way, giving her the basics of each in well under forty minutes. She must have found my incessant questions very enlightening, since she seemed anxious to get through as many of them as she could as quickly as possible, and was always telling me how little time she had. I was particularly interested in what, exactly, a producer did (many things), how many things she’d produced (plenty) and if a producer was more important than the director (they were, according to Marion). I also wanted to know if she had one of those director’s chairs, and if it was called a producer’s chair, and if I could have one, and if she’d ever filmed a volcano, or in space, or if this would be shown in America, and if she had ever been to America, and if I should go to America to maximise my potential as a TV star. She let me wear headphones and look at the notes for the production, and showed me other tips and tricks of the trade. It was the first time I’d ever seen that ‘let’s wrap this up’ gesture TV people use for segments that are going on too long, when she made one towards a cameraman as a way of telling him to stop letting me look through the viewfinder for the eightieth time that day.

It was exciting to have these people in our house, but also mildly unnerving. Occasionally, I’d be aware of them moving something, a pot or a fruit bowl, so it wouldn’t be in frame. This was probably just so the viewer’s eye wouldn’t be distracted by something in the background, but I took it to be a judgement on the feng shui of our home, as if it were unimaginably gauche to have a fruit bowl on a countertop when it was so better suited to being on the table instead. I made mental notes of their decisions and for years afterwards would unconsciously make these same adjustments if I passed, say, a cup that was too close to the television, or three chairs packed tightly together when it would be more aesthetically pleasing for them to be ever so slightly spaced out.


In reality, I guess they tiptoed around me because our story really was that sad, and they were probably very moved, if not moderately freaked out, by how excited I was to be part of all of this. They may also have been wondering just how best to get closer to this marvellous young man who surely had such a huge career ahead of him; to nurture his genius, or maybe hang on to his coat tails and follow him to fame and fortune. I expected immediate stardom and requests for paid work doing public appearances; opening youth centres, doing in-store events at shopping malls, that kind of thing. I imagined myself being charming and precocious on late-night chat shows and studiously refusing to mention my siblings unless they were extra nice to me in the days beforehand.

All I wanted was to be something like a low-level god, pampered in easy wealth and adored by everyone I met. Like most children, I had watched the careers of child actors like Macaulay Culkin and Mara Wilson and seen a template I wanted to pursue for myself. I had little to no interest in, nor aptitude for, anything in the dramatic line. It’s just that unlike, say, medicine or international finance, acting seemed like something for which children could be famous. I figured I’d just sort out the work side of the deal later, while keeping the fame and fortune part as my guiding light. Besides, it seemed obvious that most child actors weren’t particularly good, so I could leverage my appeal on my amazing personality and all this wisdom I was picking up about shot choices, light rigs and cup placement.

I barely made an appearance in the eight-minute final cut. I was in a few group shots, and one heavily staged sequence in which we were filmed walking out of our front door on the way to school. As I’ve said, no one used the front door of our house except visiting priests or doorknockers, so this had a perverse ring of falsity I found incredibly thrilling. Here we were, acting. As ourselves, of course, but acting nonetheless. This brief walk to school in our uniforms – donned on a day when we weren’t even in school – struck a note of duplicity I found so exciting I reckoned I would never get tired of it, no matter how many BAFTAs I won. Unfortunately, my only other appearance of note was the one for which the show became notorious to all who watched it, in our family and out: a lamentable sequence in which Conall and I are shown kicking a ball around the garden. This wouldn’t have been too bad, except a combination of factors made it seem like a home movie shot in Chernobyl. For one thing, it was a particularly dismal December day – like I told the crew, shot choices are everything when you’re chasing the light – so both Conall and I were suffused with a grainy, greyish tinge. On top of that, we were wearing scuffed-up little dress shoes that suggested we probably didn’t have trainers, most likely because none had been dropped into our garden that week by a NATO helicopter. Lastly, there was the fact that it was not a football we were kicking, but a rugby ball, entirely deflated. This we paddled toward each other while attempting not to gurn at the camera, giving us the gormless effect of two rain-soaked peasant children taking a break from our labours by cheerily kicking an oblong leather bag filled with potato peel. It seemed as though a factory horn might at any moment call us back in for eight more hours at the smelting plant.