Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

“You’re going too fast for me, Mr. Chance,” I say.

“No, Harry,” he says firmly. “I believe you understand me. I believe you see beyond what others see. I know what they say behind my back. That I am a man whose father made his money for him. A ridiculous figure, a standing joke in Hollywood. ‘He can’t make movies, and unlike Kennedy, he can’t make actresses either. A eunuch.’ ”

“No, Mr. Chance,” I falsely object, “I don’t believe anyone says such -”

He interrupts me. There is a burden of melancholy in his words. “I wish this cup would pass from my lips. But there is no one else. No one else but Griffith and me to make the pictures this country needs.”

The Hollywood style is grandiose. I am used to bombast and inflation, every picture described as “colossal,” “magnificent,” “unsurpassable,” “epic of epics.” But the people who make such announcements do not really believe them, you can hear the cynicism in their voices, sense it in their ridiculously purple prose. But in Chance’s voice there is a strength of conviction, of sincerity, which is almost moving.

Suddenly Chance looks exhausted. He fumbles for the square of paper under his plate, picks it up, stares at it. Stares at it in the same queer way he had earlier stared at his empty plate, face vapid and waxen. Is it some kind of epileptic seizure?

“Mr. Chance?” I say. “Mr. Chance?” Neither he nor Yukio moves. The houseboy remains standing behind his employer’s chair, face empty, blank as his master’s. “Yukio,” I say, “get Mr. Chance a glass of water. I don’t think he’s well.”

Yukio does not move but Chance does. He raises his hand and holds out the scrap of paper to me. “I’d like you to have this. As a souvenir of the evening. I have no further need of it.” He rises from his chair and slips it into my palm, the way an uncle slips a nickel into the hand of a favourite nephew. I mumble an embarrassed nephew’s thanks. “Harry,” he says, “I want you to know how important this evening has been to me. I do not feel nearly so alone. You believe as I do, that the mind’s highest struggle is to interpret the world, in whatever guise that interpretation takes – science, philosophy, history, literature, painting…” His voice dies away. He clears his throat. “And we shall offer another. We shall make a great motion picture. Won’t we, Harry?”

“Yes,” I say. And half-believe it.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very tired.”

We shake hands and Yukio leads me back through the bare house. I feel some guilt that I have not confessed to Chance that he is seeking help for making the great American film from a Canadian. But there is the question of money. And I have found that Americans, by and large, recognize no distinction between us. Why should I?

I start the car and turn down the drive. As I do, my headlights sweep over a set of French doors which open onto the garden. It is only for an instant, but I believe I have glimpsed Damon Ira Chance alone, in that vast marble desert of a ballroom, standing upright on a chair, in the dark.

The rest of the afternoon the twelve rode with the Bear Paw Mountains hovering mauve, abrupt, stonily upright in the east. For the first hour after Hardwick’s desertion of Farmer Hank, each man was mindful to keep his thoughts and his counsel to himself. It was dangerous to do otherwise with Tom in one of his black and bloody moods. Still, a number did feel a trifle downcast and guilty they hadn’t put a word in for the farm hand, pled the case that he ought to be left with a horse, even a pack horse, in exchange for the one which Hardwick had blasted between its blind eyes. It wasn’t consequences with the law they feared, but the verdict of public opinion. In these parts, cutting loose a man on foot to fend for himself could be regarded as a mite high-handed, even if he was cast out in peaceable country and ought to be able to hike back without mishap to his employer’s homestead by tomorrow. If he could recross the river.

And yet, there was no denying they were glad to have seen the last of him. If it came to an affray with Indians, settled men were not much use. Nobody knew for sure whether Hank was a settled man who owned a wife and children, but if he didn’t, he had the look of a fellow who wanted to own them, which was near as bad. You needed to have a little wild Indian rubbed into you to fight Indians. Which was why Hardwick was such a demon for warring with the red bastards – he’d been captured by Arapahos in Wyoming and seen hard use as a slave before he managed to pull foot and escape. Ever since this close acquaintance with the Arapahos, Hardwick had been apt to kill Indians whenever they annoyed him in the smallest particular.

The Englishman’s boy, like all the rest, had said nothing about casting Hank adrift. After a fashion, he was sorry for sorry-ass Hank, but watching him near drown the Scotchman confirmed that he was not only a fool, a shirker, and poisonous bad luck, but a man likely to drag anyone who tried to help him six feet under. Besides, the Englishman’s boy was in no position to hand around irritating advice, seeing as he had nowhere to take himself except back to Fort Benton, where trouble awaited him. He might smell trouble here, too, but maybe it was trouble that could be dodged. The white horse and Hank surely was a lesson. If Hardwick got down on you, God help you. If there came a time when he scraped up against Hardwick’s bad side, he knew now what to expect.

It was necessary to make the best of the cards he’d been dealt, and as things stood, he’d seen worse hands. In a couple of hours he’d be eating bacon and hard bread, which was a damn sight better than his dinner of cracker dust the night before last. He had a warm coat, a good hat, and he was armed. A strong, sound horse was carrying him. All he lacked was a new pair of brogans.

Scotty trotted up. Silt from the river had dried on his face in a fine, pale powder. It lent him a ghastly, otherworldly air, as if he were one of the risen dead answering to the last trump. A ghost with an odd look in his eye.

“I see Harris tweed in this howling wilderness,” he remarked.

“Which one’s Harris Tweed?” The Englishman’s boy glanced about him.

Scotty brushed the boy’s sleeve, fingered it covetously. “This is Harris tweed.”

“The stuff?”

“Yes,” said Scotty. “Harris tweed cut and stitched by a gentleman’s tailor.”

“Ain’t no gentleman wearing it.”

“Gentlemen are not commonly found in these parts. The conditions are not favourable for their support.”

“The one owned this coat died right enough,” said the boy.

The Scotchman sighed. “Misadventures are legion here. Road agents, sickness, storms, snakes, Indians -”

“Deep water with a fool in it.”

“Indeed.”

They rode on in silence for several minutes. Whereupon Scotty made a mournful request. “You wouldn’t consider selling me that jacket, would you?”

“No.”

“It’s sizes too big for you.”

“What’s the matter with the coat you got?”

The Scotchman stared down at its travel-stained front. “I suppose it’s largely a matter of comparison between the two. I mean to say -” He turned back to the Englishman’s boy. “The maker’s label on your jacket – what does it read?”

“Couldn’t say. Can’t read but a little.”

“If you would permit me?” They stopped their horses and Scotty short-sightedly scrutinized the jacket lining. “London,” he said at last, rebuttoning the jacket like a fond father putting his son in order before Sunday service. “Cruikshank’s.”