CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
1973

In January, Paul and Marigold arrived in Frankfurt, took a bus to Wiedenbruck and got there just before the Volkswagen factory closed. Excited, they climbed into their brand-new orange van, a Westphalia with its traditional pop-up top. As they drove out of the parking enclosure, they realized the shops had shut. No blankets, nothing to cook with, none of the necessities for a long camping voyage.

“Oh well,” Paul sighed, “let’s celebrate with a good German dinner!” So after quantities of cheap German wine in a decent restaurant, they donned layers of extra clothing, and did their best to sleep on the bare freezing bed. Midwinter here was damp and cold, worse than Canada. Not an auspicious beginning.

The next day, they bought supplies at a local hardware store and set off. After crossing Germany, they stayed a couple of days with the long-suffering Michelle de Broca in Carièrres-sur-Seine. Then down to the Cognac region of France where they tasted brandies in many cellars, and on to San Sebastian near the Spanish border, where they camped beside the mighty Atlantic breakers.

On they drove to Algeciras, with Gibraltar rearing up ahead, and then at last by ferry into the warmth of Morocco.

In Tangier, the lovers awoke to a Moroccan symphony: the Muezzin in their minarets calling Muslims to pray, the distant chorale of dogs led first by one, counterpointed by another and another, all to a background of asthmatic donkey brays, the coughs of a passing camel, unfamiliar birdsongs, children’s laughter and, later in the desert, the yapping of fennecs, desert foxes.

They soon became accustomed to, and loved, the absolute lack of planning or preordained destinations, and the underground of campers who passed on key information: which towns were pleasant, which sites friendly, where open camping was allowed, whom to trust, what to find where. Complete within their van, they could go anywhere at any time, snooze or make love at midday or midnight, no hassles with hotel bedbugs and surly waiters — a self-contained and open life.

Every morning, something new blew in on the desert wind.

The first morning in Tangier, Paul fulfilled his one obligation and took Marigold to meet his Aunt Leo. Leo had remained with the Mater (as Paul’s grandmother was known) all through the Second World War. In WWI, Hilda had served as an ambulance driver with the Scottish Women’s Regiment and then, in the ’20s, had left to go hitchhiking in South Africa, so brave for a lone woman. Rene had been sent to Australia to open a school of Greek dancing. Perhaps for these reasons, instead of dividing the family’s possessions equally among her three surviving daughters, the Mater left everything to Leo. Forget Rene and her only grandchild starving on a disabled Veteran’s pension; forget Hilda, eking out a living by teaching convent girls the elements of acting.

Leo kept everything she had inherited. Finding England too rainy and damp, she headed into the sun and settled in a roomy apartment at 25 Imm. Miramonte, bringing all the furniture from The Lions, their Essex home. When Paul and Marigold arrived, they were shocked by the drawn drapes and white sheets covering furniture like ghosts hulking in gloom. In one darkened bedroom surrounded by knick-knacks, Leo lay, drinking Spanish champagne mixed with cheap brandy.

Paul was quite unprepared for the vitriol that poured upon him and his beautiful friend. Snide remarks about his wasteful film life and this paramour flew thick and fast. Leo, unhappy and existing on one raw egg every morning, was only visited at night by a plump Arab maid, Zohra, who fussed over her and made her a bite of dinner.

Leo being a blood relative, Paul felt they should return the following day. But after that, he and Marigold were only too happy to escape this emaciated harpy with red-henna hair and suppurating ankle that kept her bedridden. When she waved them good bye, they thought they heard a mumbled, “Good riddance...”

From Tangier they motored down through Rabat, the capital, and Agadir, past endless Atlantic beaches, to a little oasis with hot springs outside Goulimine. They rested there, reading, climbing the surrounding hills for a view of the great Sahara and visiting the camel souk (market) on Saturdays when Bedouins and other “blue men of the desert” arrived with their goats, their beads and ambers and sacks of dates. The village houses, sand-coloured, some whitewashed, with little vegetable gardens and sheds for animals, were enclosed by high walls. Dogs, cats, goats, donkeys and chickens, all lived in safety at night.

Living was cheap. Twenty five cents bought five pounds of potatoes, or six pounds of tomatoes or eight oranges; meat cost a dollar a pound. With their van, they encountered real desert Bedouins, hitch-hiking. Conversations would spring up, and with that, inevitable invitations for mint tea in distant secluded desert tents. The couple soon learned to eat with their hands, observing that wives never ate with visitors and only men did the shopping. Only at weddings and fêtes could a young man spot a future wife and so acquire, as Marigold pointed out, a free slave for life.

After getting down to the southern tip of Morocco at Tan-tan Plage (beach) where they were chased by beach bees and nuzzled by donkeys, they came north to Marrakesh for the Fête des Thrones, March 3rd, the day Hassan II had ascended the throne in 1961. In the great square, Jemaa el Fna, they mingled with snake charmers, fire-eaters, tumblers, singers, dancers, scorpion-eaters, boxers, story-tellers. This Square of the Dead had been named after those condemned by the king whose heads he’d struck off and stuck on pikes to stare down at the crowds.

In the medina (old city) with its labyrinthine alleyways, they passed darkened rooms where little boys and girls sewed busily, some grouped around candles, hammering away at bronze trays, stitching jellabas, or pounding at plywood cabinets. School was supposedly compulsory until age thirteen, but local school inspectors hardly ever penetrated here.

One day while driving off the beaten path, they came upon an improvised barrier blocking the rutted track. A group of armed and fierce-looking Berbers held up their hands. With no way to turn around, Paul quickly reversed. The men started running towards them.

Marigold, panicked. “What’ll we do? They’ll pull us out... I’m going to be raped!”

Thinking fast, Paul got fearlessly out of the van, put on a broad smile and greeted them warmly in French: “I’m happy to meet you... How are you? What’s happening? We are Canadians. We want to help.” In French he told them that he and “his wife” loved their beautiful country. It seemed to work. Smiles appeared and they explained that their government was the problem.

This motley bunch, trying ineffectually to confront the savage might of Hassan II’s secret police, brought them behind some bushes. Uh-oh! What now?

There, buried in a pit in the sand, meschoui, slow roasting lamb, lay cooking in leaves. Paul ran to get some wine from the van, and they all tore at the meat with scalded fingers and passed the bottles around in spite of Muslim inhibitions.

But the next encounter with danger did not end quite as happily.

After the Gorge of Dadès with its breathtaking trails twisting up and down sheer sides of the snow-covered Atlas Mountains, against all advice, they drove north and across the Rif Mountains towards the only border crossing into Algeria.

The French occupying Morocco had never been able to subdue the Rif tribes, known for their savagery. Cars with hoods up would beckon drivers to stop and help the supposedly stranded group. Earlier at a campsite, Paul had been told these decoys were offering hashish at a low rate. A few miles beyond, les flics (police) would search the van and arrest the hapless tourist. The offenders would then have to pay baksheesh to get released, which the police split with the decoys.

One evening, they pulled off onto a level area on the hillside, put up the slanting roof, pulled the curtains around, and cooked supper. As they were getting ready for bed, voices approached. They froze. Men! Talking quietly, laughing. Marigold was even more afraid; something told her they were up to no good.

The men began to bang on the van. Paul and Marigold exchanged whispers — what should they do?

The van began to rock as the devils tried to tip it. Paul stood ready to drop the roof and signalled Marigold to start the motor. With roof down, she dropped the front curtain and gunned the van over rough rocks to the main road, where they lost their pursuers and sped to the next village.

At a police station, Paul asked the sleepy police sergeant in his best French if they might stay the night? Soon the Caïd, head man of the village, paid a visit. He welcomed them most courteously and apologized: the young men had only been having fun. Nonetheless, he promised that the next morning, if they came to the main square, they would witness every village teenager thrashed, as a lesson not to frighten tourists, Morocco’s most important trade.

Needless to say, Paul and Marigold wanted no part of that, and hightailed it for a very different atmosphere: Algeria and socialism.

What a contrast. No family compounds, everything built out of cement blocks from Russian factories. True, electric lights lit villages; true, no starving children appeared in the desert to snatch loaves of bread. But everywhere, bleak, sullen looks. Next Tunisia, and the island of Djerba, full of Roman remains that reminded him of Shelley’s Ozymandias. On to the flat schotts, dried salt lakes, and then to the strange cave dwellings. Small clean rooms had been dug into the sides of deep, round, flat-bottomed holes, and made comfortable with tapestries and rugs. With only one narrow staircase down steep walls, the cave-dwellers were safe from wild animals or other marauders.

With their money running out, they took the ferry over to Sicily, then up through Italy and across into Austria, where they stopped for a few days with Harry Boyd, Paul’s hockey friend. Finally, after six months of travel, they left the van in a garage near Orly Airport and flew back to Montreal.

Paul had found life with Marigold reviving. She was strong willed and had a great sense of herself. Their nights were just glorious. He’d been hoping and providing chances for her to share some of the housekeeping. But she was not cut out for a life of domesticity. What about the future? Could he really write scripts, go through shooting, editing, and all the time cook as well, and do every household chore?

***

With no money left, the sooner Paul got another project, the sooner he’d get the wherewithal to live. Marigold just could not stifle her antipathy to anything domestic — cooking, washing up, doing laundry, keeping up the house, much as she wanted to. So in the end, she decided to go off and pursue a career in the fields of film and music; she had a lovely voice. The couple separated in yet another poignant farewell: they had each loved in their own way.

Once again, Paul was alone in his castle-like home.

Later, in November of 1973, Graeme Gibson would gather a dozen authors to protest Ryerson Press being sold to an American company, McGraw Hill. It turned out to be the nascent Writers Union of Canada, which soon drew in Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, and Paul’s friend Pierre Berton. Margaret Laurence, living in the UK, became Honorary Chair. But Paul was no longer interested in writing — novels at least. He was on the track of his next screenplay.

The new “vibes circling the globe” at that time, Psi Phenomena and New Age attitudes were being touted in a wave of books: The Secret Life of Plants, The Secrets of the Great Pyramid, and Lyall Watson’s Supernature. The glimmerings of an idea began to take shape.

The winter solstice, the ancients believed, was the time of maximum conflict between the powers of light and of darkness. A clue. While in England researching this next film, Paul and Glenn became intrigued by so-called ley lines, dead straight paths along which the ancients must have aligned their impossibly straight grid of ancient centres, miles apart: Salisbury, Stonehenge, and so on, all impossible without the ancients tapping into mysterious sources of energy. So why, they figured, would not these ley or energy lines cover the entire globe? Put a stone age monument where all the ley lines converged, and you’d have an epicentre capable of producing astonishing energy.

One physically bulky character in G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday suggested to Paul a “Gabriel Pentecost”. Being immensely rich, he could feed into his enormous computer centre (a gigantic room filled with monster machines) the coordinates of the still unexplained monuments: Tikal, Machu Picchu, Easter Island, and thereby locate the earth’s energy lines. Then the computers would find one central point where they all intersected. Of course, because of his latent love for Morocco, he wanted that point to be on a peak in the High Atlas.

Paul and Glenn travelled to Los Angeles, having heard about some new computer complex. They managed an entry into a highly secret area to witness a giant computer, as big as a truck, which could, from just scientific formulae, draw a three-dimensional-looking egg. Amazing! What a scientific advance!

He kept constantly revising his script, hardly aware he was still somewhat unbalanced. He believed the film’s message would somehow change the world’s consciousness. Why not indeed finally fuse mind and matter, spirit and the material world?

Back and forth he went between capitals in search of finance. In London, he met John Heyman, at his World Film Services headquarters and even got to see Barry Spikings and Michael Deeley at British Lion Films. He offered Solstice to the last of the great old British moguls, Nat Cohen; in Rome, to Italian producers Alberto Grimaldi and Carlo Ponti, and in Munich to Bavaria Films and Constantin. All frantic, rushed, trip after trip, hoping against hope the travel would somehow put him back where he once was, a bona fide film-maker.

Joe Schoenfeld, head of the William Morris motion picture department, took him to meet David Begelman, head of Columbia Pictures and former boss of Stevie Phillips. But David only said, “Paul, you’ve put so much together, let’s just forget the picture and shoot the deal!”

Charles Aznavour, the great chansonnier, had impressed Paul in Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste. He flew to St Tropez and spent time with Charles, a gracious host, who took Paul to his favourite nightspot. In Paris, for the part of JoJo Paul met Maria Schneider who had achieved momentary fame opposite Marlon Brando in Bertolucci’s film Last Tango in Paris. She too agreed. In New York he met Bergman’s hero, Max Von Sydow for the magician. For the young stonecutter, Paul asked the newly emerging Beau Bridges, the son of Lloyd and brother of Jeff.

For his greatest creation, Gabriel Pentecost, Paul wanted Orson Welles.

He first wrote to him when Orson was staying with Mrs. John Houston. Next, he chased Orson to the little French village of Orvilliers, where his Yugoslav girl-friend, Oja Kodar, owned a house. Paul went to stay with Philippe de Broca nearby, drove to Orvilliers, parked outside the isolated house where Orson was shooting and gave his letter in at the door to the first AD. Paul doubted the great man would emerge, and in fact he didn’t, but the letter and script got to him.

Keeping up the chase, Paul finally did meet Orson in his make-up trailer in Los Angeles, shooting a commercial for some Japanese company. He pinned Orson down, or so he thought. If he were to play Pentecost, though, Orson insisted on Oja playing Claire. He set up a screening of his The Other Side of the Wind, in which Oja had acted, with dinner beforehand. Secretive as always, the great man rang in the morning to say where they should meet. When Paul got there, the maitre d’ handed him a message where to go next. Paul went there and found, instead of Orson, the dark-haired Oja who said Orson would join them later, but he never did. After a pleasant dinner, some canny instinct told Paul that he would shoot most of the film with Oja and then? Orson just wouldn’t turn up. So in the end, all that fell apart.

***

One evening at dinner on Redpath Crescent, Donald Johnston asked him, “What do you think of this?” They had discussed Trudeau being re-elected for the third time, with a majority government. “The Income Tax Act provides for capital cost allowances (depreciation) that can shelter income for wealthy individuals, and even corporations. Our firm has been using it for aircraft.”

“Sounds interesting, I guess. But so what?” Paul began to clear the dishes.

“Well...” Donald handed him their plates, “I’ve been thinking...” Paul sensed a revelation coming, “we might be able to offer the same arrangement with film.” Paul’s eyes widened. “Investors could buy the rights in and to a motion picture — providing its copyright was owned by a Canadian. Depreciation on films is really high — sixty per cent. Properly structured, it could be an attractive investment for some wealthy individual.”

Paul was startled. “That might channel terrific amounts of money into our industry. So you’d talk to John Turner, the Minister of Finance? I knew him at Oxford.” Paul paused in the arched doorway. “Remember his sister?”

“Brenda? Of course. We’re very good friends.” Donald gave a sideways glance at Heather. Had he spoken too quickly?

“She was a killer at McGill,” Paul remembered.

“Let’s hope the government allows it.” Donald looked pleased with himself, and Heather smiled. She was so sweet, gracious, a perfect wife for this rapidly rising lawyer, and she even hailed from Nova Scotia.

“Donald, every film-maker will bless you.”

Thus began the era of tax shelter films, invented solely by Maitre Johnston. But with no immediate impact upon Solstice.

Then Paul’s agent, Joe Shoenfeld, retired. Another blow. His replacement was not excited about Solstice, nor indeed its director-writer.

Dead end after dead end.