Lost At Sea Part 22

ALTHOUGH THE KUBRICKS always guarded their privacy inside Childwick, I come to the end of my time at the house just as Christiane and her daughter Katharina decide to open the grounds and the stable block to the public. They're going to hold an art fair, displaying their work and the work of a number of local artists. Christiane has decided to let the boxes go. She's donating them to the University of the Arts London-to a special climate-controlled Kubrick wing, where film students and other students can look through them. She's letting them go because, she tells me, "I get very upset at seeing some of his old things. The paper is so dusty and old and yellow. They look so sad. The person is so very dead once the paper is yellow."

I'm there to watch a fleet of removal vans arrive to take them away. During the months and years that follow, Christiane oversees the publication of two books about the things inside the boxes-The Stanley Kubrick Archives (Taschen) and Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made (Taschen). She turns up for special screenings of his films-I watch her introduce Paths of Glory in the open-air cinema at Somerset House, Central London, and we have dinner afterward. I mention this to a friend, a Kubrick buff. "Oddly, I was just thinking about her today," he replies. "A Twilight fan said to me, 'Is there anything more romantic than Edward and Bella?'" I immediately thought, "Christiane Kubrick's protection of her husband's legacy."

One of the very last boxes I opened before the removal vans came contained a videotape. Kubrick was on the tape, addressing the camera, looking nervous. It was an acceptance speech. He'd been awarded the D. W. Griffith Award. It was just a few months before he died.

"Good evening," he says. "I'm sorry not to be able to be with you tonight ... but I'm in London making Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and at just about this time I'm probably in the car on the way to the studio... ."

All this time I've been looking for some kind of Rosebud and I think I find it in a few lines in this speech.

"Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film," he says, "also knows that although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a b.u.mper car in an amus.e.m.e.nt park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling."

I think Kubrick knew he had the ability to make films of genius, and to do that-when most films are so bad-there has to be a method, and the method for him was precision and detail. I think his boxes contain the rhythm of genius.

PART THREE

EVERYDAY DIFFICULTY

"I've thought about doing myself in loads of times."

-"Bill" to Christopher Foster

Santa's Little Conspirators

It is a Monday in late October and I'm standing inside a smoke-filled Lotto shop in the tiny Alaskan town of North Pole, population 1,600. This shop sells only two things: cigarettes and Lotto scratch cards. Chain-smoking inveterate gamblers sit at the counter and frantically demolish mountains of the scratch cards. They have names like Royal Jackpot, Blame It on Rio, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Outside, people are going about their business on Frosty Avenue. Friends are chatting on Kris Kringle Drive. A gang of hoodies are slouched against the candy-cane-striped streetlights on Santa Claus Lane, having just emerged from the Christmas-themed McDonald's.

Everything in North Pole is Christmas-themed. It is Christmas Day here 365 days a year. The decorations are always up. It never stops being Christmas here. Never. Wherever you are in the world, if you write a letter to Santa, and address it simply "Santa, North Pole," your letter will most likely end up in this tiny Alaskan town.

Actually, specifically, your Santa letter will end up right here, in this smoke-filled scratch-card and cigarette shop. It's late October, and boxes of them are already piled up on the counter near the fruit machine. They're automatically forwarded here from the post office. I pick an envelope up at random. It has only one word scrawled on it, in a child's handwriting: "Santa." It's postmarked Doncaster, UK.

I get talking to Debbie, who works here, selling scratch cards to the gamblers. Debbie is herself a chain-smoker, a blowsy strawberry-blonde with a tough, good-looking face. She says she can frequently be found alone in here in floods of tears, having just opened yet another heartbreaker.

"Just before you got here," she says, "I opened one that said, 'Dear Santa. All I want for Christmas is for my mother and father to stop shouting at each other.' I just fell apart."

"We get a lot of 'Could you bring my father back from Iraq?'" says Gaby, the shop's owner. Debbie answers as many Santa letters as she can, whenever she gets a break. She writes back using her elf name: Twinkle.

And she has help. Each week in November and December, a box of Santa letters is sent over to the nearby middle school, where the town's eleven- and twelve-year-olds-the sixth graders-write back in the guise of elves. It is part of the curriculum.

Six of last year's middle school elves, now aged thirteen, were arrested back in April for being in the final stages of plotting a ma.s.s murder, a Columbine-style school shooting. The information is sketchy, but apparently they had elaborate diagrams and code names and lists of the kids they were going to kill. I've come to North Pole to investigate the plot. What turned those elves bad? Were they serious? Was the town just too Christma.s.sy?

I need to tread carefully. So far I've tried to ask only one person about it-James, the waiter in Pizza Hut-and it went down badly.

"North Pole is the greatest place I've ever been," James told me as he poured my coffee. "The people here are always ready to do! We stay on track and we move on forward! We don't let anything get us down. That's the spirit of North Pole and the spirit of Christmas. People here are willing to put their best foot forward and be the best kind of people they can be."

"I heard about the thing with the kids over at the middle school plotting a Columbine-style ma.s.sacre," I said.

At this, James let out a noise the likes of which I've never really heard before. It was an "Aaaaaah." He sounded like a balloon being burst by me, with all the joy escaping from him like air.

"That was a, uh, shock... ." said James.

"You have to wonder why... ." I said.

"This is a very happy, cheerful, cheery place," said James. "Anything more you need?"

"No," I said. And James walked back to the counter, shooting me a sad look, as if to say, "What kind of a Grinch are you to bring that up?"

MONDAY NIGHT. People keep telling me that everybody in North Pole loves Christmas. But I've found someone who doesn't. Her name is Jessie Desmond. I found her on Mys.p.a.ce.

"Christmas is a super big deal around here," she e-mailed me before I set off for Alaska, "but for me it is a general hate. Please don't go off me about that."

We meet in a non-Christma.s.sy bar of her choice on the edge of town. She's in her early twenties. She was educated at the middle school and is now trying to make her way as a comic-book artist. She has the Batman logo tattooed on her hand.

"Christmas really grates on me, all the time, in the back of my head," she tells me. "Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. It drives me nuts."

"But there must be something you do like about North Pole," I say.

Jessie thinks about this. "Well, if you get into an accident or something, everyone's willing to help you," she eventually says, shrugging.

I decide it's safe to ask Jessie-being anti-Christmas-about the ma.s.s-murder plot.

"Do you know the boys?" I ask her.

She shakes her head.

"Apparently they drew up a list," I say.

"Well, I have a hate list on my wall too," Jessie replies.

"Yes," I say, "but I'm sure you don't have access to weapons."

"I have a revolver in my bedroom," Jessie says.

"Do you stand in front of the mirror with it and shout 'Freeze!' and imagine what it's like to kill your enemies?" I ask.

There's a silence.

"I might," says Jessie, finally.

I ask Jessie if she'll take me to her house and show me her gun. On the way she tells me she suspects the boys were just like her-all talk-and the town only took them seriously because everyone is terrified of everything these days.