A Family Brought Together by Pigeons and Eyeball-Filled Jars

[film rolling]

[cheerful music]

[hands clapping rhythmically]

[mystical music]

[Beryl] I’m into art now.

I’m drinking from the cup of creativity again.

I back on track.

[exclaims in foreign language]

Besotted with drawing.

It’s all I want to do.

I think I’m quite good at it, you know,

in a Rousseau-esque sort of way.

Ive was my model.

I work him to the bone.

He is very tolerant, though.

Last week when I asked him to be a nude

descending a staircase, he said…

Who we referencing, Ber?

Do a show about your owny.

[Beryl] Art.

I’m obsessed.

I think I’m turning into my sister, Beverly.

She never liked drawing or playing with dolls like me.

She liked insects.

Wood lice and beetles.

She kept them all in a big fish bowl.

[insects skittering]

She’d wait until they packed out

and she’d put them in coffins

she’d made out of little raisin boxes.

Then she’d bury them in the garden.

[wind blows]

After at while she’d dig them up

to see what had happened to them.

She was really obsessed.

[microscope clicking]

Melvin lived next door.

And one day Bev borrowed his favorite train set,

so that our pet mouse, Peter, could ride in it.

She’d bride him with a promise of sexual favors.

Bev forced the mouse to drive the train,

but she soon got bored with that.

So she put things on the rails to cause derailments,

catastrophes, she called them.

[mouse squeals]

She got more and more ruthless.

[train crashing]

Finally, she tried to blow up the little crossing

with a firework.

[explosion]

[mouse squeals]

She hoped to bump off the mouse,

but the carpet caught fire

and the mouse turned brown, but survived.

Well later he did die of trauma.

She gave the mouse, the works.

A state funeral into the garden.

She played [unintelligible] on Dad’s Dansette record player.

She made us all wear black.

[sad piano music]

I found these the other day – my first drawings.

I used to draw all the time. I just couldn’t stop.

The walls of my bedroom

are completely covered with my drawings.

I dunno. It was just like a drug.

I used to get into trouble at school

for drawing all the time, instead of doing proper work.

Once I got caught drawing our teacher Ms. Maps.

In the nude. She knew it was her.

She recognized the hairs

poking through the holes in her stockings.

She just went quiet, like a mouse.

[glass shatters]

Oh yeah, Miss Maps.

Drawing’s all I ever think about now.

I draw all the time, but I still make things

for people too, but that last jumper

I knitted for Deedee’s little girl where

It’s lovely Beryl, It’s really artistic.

Only I never saw her actually wearin’ it.

All I ever wanted to do was to go to art school,

be creative, have a career.

But then I got pregnant with Colin.

Yeah, Colin, another obsessive in the family.

One day when he was young, he brought home this pigeon.

It couldn’t fly, it had a broke wing.

He called it Percy.

[pigeon coos]

Oh, Colin adored Percy.

They were inseparable.

He did everything for him. It was a love affair.

He even hoisted him up on the clothesline,

So he could relate to other birds.

He built Percy a state of the art pigeon coop.

It had everything. Mezzanine, floors,

Central heating run by a steam engine.

It was a palace in the garden.

[Percy coos]

In the house we had nothing, no bathroom or nothing.

Colin worshiped Percy.

It ended in tragedy though.

[pigeon call]

[Colin gasps]

[dramatic violin]

He saw the culprit.

Colin vowed revenge.

The crossbow he made was precision built.

The arrows had Percy’s feathers in them.

He practiced firing at particular piece of wall and waited.

and waited.

Colin shot the cat.

[cats meowing]

It landed in the neighbors garden,

she was a cat fanatic. She called the police.

They called it a crime of passion.

Colin got off with a caution.

He stayed totally obsessed with precise, technical detail.

You know, things like railway signaling systems.

[thunder roars]

His Yamaha organ.

[organ plays]

Screw threads.

Well, TPI flag angles for metric UNC

and UNF screws at 30 degrees,

our total threat angle of 60 degrees.

And he taught himself to speak Dutch.

[speaks Dutch]

I can’t believe he’s 38

and still lives at home with us.

I wish I could have a bloody girlfriend

like a normal bloke.

[he groans]

Yeah. Obsession. The whole family’s obsessed or something.

Colin, Beverly, now me.

[Colin grunts in pain]

I blame our Grandma’s influence, she was obsessed too.

With pickling.

Gran preserved everything. Pickled in big jars.

Cabbage, eggs, pigs trotters, cows tongues,

lambs, chicks, nothing was safe from her.

[sound of footsteps shuffling]

Bev loved going to gram’s house

just to stare at all the jars,

Wow.

especially the beetroot.

And sometimes she stole them.

I always knew because it left crimson stains on her arms.

She wouldn’t wash them for days.

She cried when the stains disappeared.

[curtain opening]

When grandma died,

the woman next door came in

and laid her out on the table in the living room.

She put pennies on her eyes

and a bucket underneath the table with holy water in it.

[door creaks open]

I saw Bev sneak in.

[creepy strings play]

She stayed in there for hours.

Just staring and fiddling with Gran’s body.

She wasn’t sad though.

When she came out, she said,

I kicked the bucket.

Mom did think Bev was a bit strange though.

Well we all did.

She was quite weird though.

Like when we went to the seaside,

she never wanted to play on the beach with me.

She always went to the carcus store to stare

at all the pickled fish. She was entranced.

She saved up to buy a jar of jelly deans.

She never actually ate them though.

She just brought them out on special occasions to look at.

I used to find decayin’ food in her room.

Hidden in drawers.

[flies buzz]

When I asked her about it all she said was

There’s bread in the British museum that’s 2000 years old.

Its fantastic Beryl.

She made a necklace out of old, dried up carrots

with rhinestones stuck in them.

She wore it to her tenth birthday party.

With earrings made out of dead wasps.

I drew ponies in my scrapbook.

But Bev had folders of mausoleums, mummies, and tombs.

Vladimir.

[horse neighs]

She told me she had dreams of meeting Lenin

in this tomb in Moscow.

She idolized him.

[ominous music]

[door creaks open]

[snoring]

Vladimir, Vladimir, where are we going today?

Ah, Beverly, surely I was dreaming I was in London

on Primrose Field eating ice cream.

Could we get a cone? And have my favorite piroshki?

Of course, Beverly. We can go there now. Take my hand.

[Beverly screams]

Are we nearly there?

Course it is all fantasy, but she was obsessed with him.

She even joined the young communist league

to get a free trip to Moscow, to see his tour.

But the bus only went as far as East Berlin.

[record scratch]

So Bev quit the party in disgust.

That’s the thing about Bev. She always went for it.

Fanatical.

[Colin speaks Dutch]

Do not yell, Colin. This is a seminal piece.

My first dynamic self portrait. I’m asserting my identity.

Making my physical mark.

It’s a new dawn for me.

Like Bev had when she discovered Trigger.

Trigger Gets Stuffed in California.

Well, that was it, wasn’t it?

Suddenly a whole new world opened up before her eyes.

Bev stuffed everything after that.

[Ladybug clanks and buzzes]

She had a book of instructions.

She’d learned it all by heart.

When our dog Rudy died, she stuffed him too.

[creepy upbeat music]

Then she put Rudy on the mantelpiece.

Mum said, Oh thank God, no more dogs doodoos.

When Bev was 18, she met this American GI.

Hi, I’m Lester. Can I take your daughter out, sir?

Well that was it. She married him

and moved straight to California. Didn’t last though.

Bev spent more time at the Trigger museum with her stuff.

Can you believe this?

Dad said,

I knew it. She’s bloody trigger happy.

After Lester, Bev got to a string of rich husbands

and got a pint of alimony.

She’s had three boob jobs, butt deductions,

lip collagen, and six face tucks.

And she spent a fortune fixing her teeth.

Don’t I look fantastic?

Body sculpture. She calls it.

She started her first business in LA

stuffing pets for celebs.

Her latest gigs called Remains to be Seen.

High-tech cryogenics for her choose.

She’s big time now.

And what have I done with my life?

I’m 59, married with a grownup geek,

still working in a factory

dreaming about what I should have done.

I could have gone to art school,

being somebody being a contender.

Now it’s the bloody change, right?

I look like shit. I’ve lost my looks, my figure’s gone,

and to cap it all, the other night

I caught Iver watching one of those twerking videos.

And you know what he said?

[techno beat]

♪ Come on and shake your ass, shake your ass girl ♪

Why don’t you get one of those butt lift things Beryl?

But to be absolutely honest,

I did secretly find off the internet.

But when I got it, well,

I spent about two bloody hours with it.

Whatever I did it wouldn’t fit.

[she grunts]

Oh, fuck it.

Why am I doing this shit? Oh I hate myself.

To cap it all, later on,

Iver found it in the pocket on the sofa.

Oh what’s this, open it by mistake? Did you love?

Must be for the girl next door. I would just take it around.

Should I? Oh, you didn’t try it on, did you Beryl?

You did?

That’s it. I need to hit to Bev.

She’s my rock.

[phone ringing]

Hi Hun. You okay?

I dunno, Bev. I just lost focus.

You know, I got distracted.

Don’t worry about it, Bear.

You just got to take control. It’s your life.

I mean, look at me, Bear.

Its real tough sometimes, but I keep pushing.

Oh, sorry, hon. I got to take this.

Well, hi. Thank you for getting back to me.

I hear you want to freeze your mother.

Would you like your mother? We have an economy deal.

I’m sorry. Can you hold?

There, check me out for Christ sake?

Don’t I look fabulous. I’m sculpting myself my own body.

I’m an exhibit, right?

I’m a living gallery. My body is my art.

I gotta go hun, just go for it.

What are you waiting for?

Muah.

She’s right though.

I just gotta go for it. No more assin’ about.

Iver.

How we doin’ this, Bear? Walking or running?

Dynamous night, velocity, energy, speed, love.

I want speed.

Here we go.

[he yells]

Whoa, dear God.

[screaming intensifies]

No, we missed it again.

Oh, you’re obsessed, c’mon.

I know! It’s the movement in between the moment of change.

I’ve gotta capture it.

I’m suffering for your art.

Its hyperfuturism, love. Go for it. Now, come on.

[groaning in pain]

[Voiceover interviewer] I’m talking live

with Beryl Thomas, who’s latest exhibition of drawings

opens here tonight. Beryl.

[Beryl] Oh hello.

[Interviewer] Can we start

by talking about what informs your work?

[Beryl] Well, I think it was Du chon or Cage, maybe

who believed that one should embark on a piece

without necessarily having a conception

of its eventual denouement.

It’s the process involved that’s crucial to the journey

that you’ll make, see?

Interesting.

It’s like you’re pushing the female gaze here to extremes

and in the process, not only objectifying men,

but actually deforming the male body in a quite deliberate

almost vicious way.

No, no.

I completely lose sight of the male form.

Sex is not involved.

I’m just looking for what Supreme moment of change.

The point of dynamic obstruction, the images in between.

It’s what I call hyperfuturism.

God, this vodka’s good, innit?