Free The Man In The Seventh Row by Brian Pendreigh Page B

grandmother who had wanted to watch It's a Wonderful Life . It did not sound like there would be much adventure in it, little chance of an Indian attack, a fencing duel or a showdown in the main street at high noon. Roy's doubts were well founded. There is no fencing, no shooting, no fighting and hardly anyone dies at all.
    'Is it a true story?' asked Roy very doubtfully.
    'It is a true story,' his grandmother told him, 'in spirit.'
    'I don't believe in angels,' said Roy.
    'Oh, but there is such a thing as angels,' said his grandmother. 'Maybe they don't have wings, but that doesn't mean they're not angels. You're my little angel.'
    Roy put his arms around his mother.
    'I'll be your angel, Mummy,' he said sweetly. She was not entirely certain that he was not poking fun at her. The cut looked more dramatic than it was. It needed only three stitches, though it left a tiny scar. Roy's father reported the matter to the police, but they never caught his assailants.
    Roy had bled at the hands of the Brewery Boys, but he had seen enoug h films, from Oliver Twist to Lady and the Tramp to know that just because someone (or some dog) was dirty it did not necessarily mean they were dirt. This was before The Dirty Dozen of course, when dirt took on the attributes of positive virtue. 'The Clean Dozen', 'The Washed-behind-their-ears Dozen', even 'The Always-wash-their-hands-at-mealtimes Hundred' were never going to strike fear into the hearts of Jerry. It was the dirt that did it, the threat that it might come off on the tablecloth and contaminate polite Aryan society.
    After seeing Dr No Roy went to look for Connery's house at the other end of the street. Finding James Bond's house was his secret mission. Maybe Roy expected a plaque on the wall, or graffiti to proclaim 'James Bond wiz here', or a little cluster of fans and tourists on the pavement outside. Something. Something to mark it out as James Bond's house. But there was nothing.
    He met Alan Robertson, a boy he knew from school, and asked him. He did not know where James Bond lived, but invited Roy to play football with him. Alan was a dirty boy with skinned knees and a hole in the elbow of his jumper, a grey school jumper, despite this being the holidays. They played football on Bruntsfield Links where Tommy Connery played, long before he became Sean, little boys in short grey trousers, with shirt tails flapping, both dreaming of scoring winning goals for Scotland, 30 years apart. Tommy left school at 14 and joined the Navy. He never fulfilled the dream of playing for Scotland, he became James Bond instead. Roy spent a summer in that park and he would follow Tommy's route back to Fountainbridge, wandering downhill from Bruntsfield, allowing himself to be enveloped in the rich, sour smell that permeated the air around the brewery.

    ***

    The local cinema was the ABC Regal, just down the road from Roy's flat. It was not really a local, but an enormous city centre establishment, with seating for almost 3,000, the flagship of Associated British Cinemas. It seemed just as likely to Roy that he might see Sean Connery there as it did that he would see him in Fountainbridge. It seemed logical that he would need to check how his films were doing or that he would have some business to transact with the manager, collect his share of the ticket money maybe. Not that Roy can remember a James Bond film ever playing at the Regal. Nor did he remember ever going to the Regal, despite it being the nearest to home. It may or may not have had an ABC Minors Club, the legendary Saturday morning programmes of cartoons and serials that introduced many of Roy's generation to cinema, but Roy never went. Roy's formative cinema experiences, and subsequently his formative sexual experiences, took place down the coast, not round the corner.
    Roy did go to the pictures sometimes in Edinburgh: True Grit at the Ritz, Thunderbird Six at the Regent, Born Free at the Playhouse, where his grandfather dropped him and