Recently, my life seems to have become very hectic, so last Wednesday in an effort to re-establish some sort of pace, I found myself in the local video store, fingering my way through the back catalogue of Merchant Ivory films. That's where I stumbled across, A Room With A View (1985). I had seen the film when it was first released and to be honest, at that time it bored me half to death. For some reason Jerome and I queued up in the rain that day, under the misapprehension that the narrative followed the exploits of a sleazy hotel owner's obsession with peeping into his guests rooms - and boy were we disappointed.
My abiding memory was of a movie that never really got moving, it just plodded along at the pace of a plough horse. But that was 15 years ago, and last Wednesday, plough horse pace seemed to be exactly what my mind needed.
I paid the man his £2.50 and headed back across the flat of the city, video under my elbow. The rhythm of my footsteps kept time with the sing-song sounds of people talking, backed by a chorus of Echo boys spreading the news and a well-tuned cacophony of hawkers flogging everything from fresh sprouts to pigs' snouts. I suppose you could say that downtown Cork is a bit like living in a musical.
My family have traded on those very streets for the best part of a century - not exactly Fagan's little helpers, more like the Von Trapp family - without the view. Due to the bowlshaped topography of my town, rooms with a view were always at a premium. In fact, now that I think about it, room itself was a scarce commodity.
The family home was a busy little enterprise, more social than commercial, and through the open door our shop floor melted into the street and in turn the street came into our home. Above the shop I lived with my parents, 12 siblings, a clatter of pets and a string of guests who came to dinner and stayed. Hardly a night would pass without nigh on 20 hearts beating, sleeping, under our roof. Outside, the streets were bustling too, with families and extended families talking and taking air. And maybe that's why to this day I am most comfortable in a crowd.
At the age of seven, I was introduced to a most bizarre concept, when a school mate of mine mentioned that his Granny was coming home and she would be moving into their spare room. Spare room? I ran home baffled, battled my way past pets and people, tugged on my mother's apron strings and asked, "How come we don't have a spare room, Mam?"
She just broke down laughing. And for weeks after that as part of the family's entertainment, my mother would call a halt to all domestic activities, gather everyone around and invite me to repeat the question. "Eh, how come we don't have a spare room, Mam?"
They'd all fall about the place; every dog, cat, goldfish, brother, sister and hamster holding their splitting sides - laughing. It was my Aunty Rosie set me straight, "The only spare room you'll ever have is in there!" and she pointed to that space between my ears, deep inside my skull. And last Wednesday as I sat watching A Room With A View, my Aunty Rosie's observation was the key that unlocked the beauty of this film for me.
Directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, A Room with a View, is a love story with a difference. So often love and passion are portrayed as blind and reckless, but in this study of the pains and pleasures of courtship, love and passion are offered as considered options.
Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) is about to marry Cecil (Daniel Day Lewis) and no doubt Cecil is Mr Right: right education, right social standing, right side of the fence. But with as much passion as a bag of marsh mallows, Mr Right is definitely the wrong man for Lucy. This is a fact that may have passed her by but for a chance meeting with George Emerson (Julian Sands). George is a dreamer with conviction, who has the disarming knack of saying what he thinks and when he spontaneously kisses Lucy on their second encounter, it is clear that his passion is on a collision course with Lucy and Cecil's suffocating and proper existence, of social convention.
The film's opening scene has Lucy and her Chaperone (Maggie Smith) in Florence insisting on a room with a view. But the room referred to in the title is that place in Lucy's mind, a metaphorical room that has been unlocked by George's passion for her. A room from which Lucy is offered the grand vista of her life.
Incidentally, Lucy's room with a view is similar to the spare room identified by my Aunty Rosie when I was seven. My spare room is a place where I can climb mountains, jump in lakes, run with dogs and foxes, undefined by walls or horizons - a room with a view as far as the mind can see. And maybe that's why I can always find peace of mind in a crowd. It's just a matter of stepping out of the living room into my spare room and closing the door behind me.
