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What is the MacGuffin?
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MacGuffin
Poet, fifty-something, wltm younger female character with a view to collaborating on short story. Experience of MacGuffins an advantage. Please reply Tele Box 3428.
When I saw the advertisement printed in the local paper I thought: no chance. However, the following evening, checking the telephone Box number, I was amazed to find that I had received an immediate reply: Hi. I’m Sally – your friendly neighbourhood MacGuffin. I make it a rule to never go beyond 1,000 words on a first date, but if that’s OK with you how about the Royal Hotel, Friday, 8.00 pm in the bar. Hope to see you.
And so it’s Friday evening at 7.00pm and I am bathed, shaved and wondering what to wear. I quickly decide against the dishevelled look I adopt at open mike poetry events. I need to make the right impression. Smart but casual – slacks, open neck shirt, sports jacket. I try the entire contents of my wardrobe in every possible combination, before finally deciding on inoffensive pastel shades. Dressed and hair combed, I check my wordcounter: 176. No more words to waste. I quickly descend the two flights of stairs from my flat to the street below and walk briskly towards the Royal Hotel.
I am there at ten to eight. I order a large brandy and try to sit on a bar stool, but in my nervousness I knock it over. The loud crash reverberates around the nearly empty room, and a group of businessmen at a table in the corner look up. The youngest of them says something which makes the others laugh. I feel like walking over and telling him he is just a figment of my imagination, but decide instead to afflict him with some nasty illness. Aids? Cancer? No, this is a light-hearted short story. Something painful and embarrassing but not terminal. Haemorrhoids. I pick up the bar stool, sit on it, and turn to see the young yuppie shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
Then I see Sally. She is beautiful – tall and slim with short blonde hair. She has walked in from the riverside terrace and seems to recognise me instantly, hurrying over to kiss me lightly on the cheek.
‘Thank you for coming. It’s lovely to meet you.’ She stands back as if to study me. ‘Every inch a poet,’ she remarks, playfully. ‘So what makes you want to try and write a short story?’
I feel rather embarrassed. ‘There’s this magazine being produced, on this MA course, I wanted to write……….’ my voice tails off, but I have to ask her. ‘What is a MacGuffin?’
She laughs. ‘It’s a literary device. Don’t worry about it.’
I check my wordcounter: 447. I need to move the story on a bit.
I ask her if she would like a drink. ‘I could use a G and T,’ she replies, then noticing my slight frown at her use of these words, asks, ‘Cliché?’
I nod. She shrugs her shoulders. ‘I’m just a character. I say whatever the writer wants me to say.’ She leans towards me and whispers, ‘I do whatever he wants me to do.’
I can feel her breath against my cheek, the pressure of her breast against my arm, and I have to delete a complete paragraph to avoid the story ending prematurely.
She perches elegantly on a high bar stool beside me. As I order her drink I catch our reflection in the mirror behind the optics. I suddenly wish that I wasn’t writing in the first person – this stunning woman needs an impressive younger man at her side. Seeing her sitting next to me seems hardly credible.
She senses my unease. ‘Typical poet,’ she whispers. ’First person isn’t autobiographical. Be whoever you want to be.’
I glance in the mirror again to see myself in a new light. A handsome, distinguished, bronzed face smiles back at me from beneath a mop of dark hair displaying the first few wisps of silver on the temples.
I pay for the drinks and suggest that we move outside. As she slides gracefully from the bar-stool she seems smaller than when she walked in. She takes my arm and looks up at me. ‘I love tall men,’ she says, adding, ‘and you look so young.’
Outside the warm evening air welcomes us. We walk to the far end of the terrace, away from the lights and the tables. She leans against the rail and gazes across the river. I take her hand. In the easy silence that follows, her hand feels as if it has always belonged in mine. By now the sky is dark, lit only by a thin crescent moon and stars which brighten each minute as the night grows more intense. Across the river I can see the water playing with the reflections of lights from boats moored against the opposite bank. I can hear music, voices, laughter – all distant – so distant that they seem to belong to another world.
Then, without the need for words, she is in my arms and I no longer care whether it’s a cliché. I am wrapped in the smell of her perfume, the warmth of her body and the darkness of the night. The words are flowing as easily as the water which caresses the timbers of the terrace beneath our feet.
But later, in her room, I start to question my ability as a writer. What kind of story is this? It’s unstructured. It’s self-indulgent – the central character is about to go to bed with a woman he has only just met. And where the hell is that MacGuffin?
I feel suddenly deflated and sink down on to the edge of the bed. Sally comes to sit next to me and takes my hand: ‘It will be all right,’ she says gently, ‘just don’t be too explicit.’
I shake my head. ‘I’ve only got 16 words left.’
She laughs, slowly removes all my unnecessary adjectives, and we spend a wonderful last paragraph together.
