Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

I was about to speak again when Rachel touched my sleeve, stopping me. She lit a cigarette and then crossed the room, her customary boiling, decisive energy leashed a little, but still capable of making her skirt snap, and took up a position by my mother at the window. Ma did not acknowledge her presence; she continued doggedly polishing the glass, her eyes pinned on a vast tree spreading its branches directly outside her window.

Rachel said, “I’m a friend of Harry’s. The name is Rachel Gold and I give a very decent manicure. If you do a lot of windows one thing you’ve got to look after is your hands. And you’ve got nice hands, very shapely. Unlike Harry, who owns a set of bricklayer’s mitts. Besides, he’s the nervous type and chews his nails. Anyway, if you’d like, the next time I come to visit I could do your nails for you. However you’d like. If you’re the conservative type we could go with a little clear polish. If you feel like kicking over the traces, fire-engine red. And we’ll chat while I do it. It’s a very relaxing thing, to get a manicure and make small talk. Would you like that?”

My mother stopped rubbing at the window, she turned and intently searched Rachel’s face.

“Well, Harry,” said Rachel, “I think your mother and I have a date.”

When we said our goodbyes that afternoon, I saw that Mother’s eyes never left Rachel; they followed her out the door. I hadn’t seen that happen before.

So the manicuring sessions became a ritual. I noticed a change in Ma, nothing miraculous or earthshaking, just a tiny heightening of attention. In the past, I had only hurled bits of stilted conversation at her: How was she feeling? Wasn’t that a nice rain last night? Weren’t the flowers in the grounds beautiful at this time of year? Hard little pellets of desperate talk which rattled off her solitude like cold sleet off a tin roof. Nothing but racket.

But what Rachel did was different. A kind of girlish conspiracy grew between them, a conspiracy which revolved around small luxuries and attentions which had never been part of my mother’s hard life – manicures, chocolates, the cosy beauty-shop conspiracy of women.

Rachel plays it like an actress, for my mother, for me. She plays the professional beautician, mimicking the beautician’s professional chatter. But, underneath, it is more than a performance. Under the guise of gossip, she is telling my mother things about me, and me about myself. It is like a beauty-parlour séance. Rachel the medium, through which Mother and I, the world of ghosts, commune. For a long time I didn’t see the point of telling Mother anything about myself. I tried to reach her by asking about her. But now, if she is listening – and I am growing convinced she is – Mother is learning who I, this stranger, this ghost, have become since her illness.

This Sunday, Rachel is up to her usual tricks.

“You know, Tillie, I think Harry’s beginning to reveal a side of himself neither of us ever suspected.”

A faint smile plays across Ma’s lips as she sits absorbed, watching Rachel work on her cuticles with an orange stick.

“Which side’s that?” I ask.

“His ambitious side. I don’t know what you think, Tillie, but I find it surprising. Because, frankly, since he signed on to the script department he hasn’t exactly been the picture of vaulting ambition. He didn’t show much push, wasn’t a go-ahead guy. To tell the truth, I don’t think he much cares for the work. Not to say he wasn’t grateful when I put a word in for him, got him the job, but it seemed to me he was grateful for a job, not for the job. I always got the impression it was all the same to him, short-order cook, tram conductor, hod carrier, photoplay dramatist.”

“I do my job.”

“Of course he does. Better than most. Better than Wilson, or Dermott, or poor Ehrlich. Harry can write title cards in his sleep; for him it’s merely a case of filling in the blanks, like doing a crossword puzzle. For a bright boy like Harry it’s easy enough. What the camera can’t convey he puts on a title card. The trouble with the aforementioned Unholy Trinity is that they’re too stupid to recognize the blanks. If you can’t find the blanks you can’t fill them. Tillie, you wouldn’t believe what I caught Ehrlich doing the other day. He was writing a title for a scene in which hero and heroine are wound around one another, osculating. Ehrlich writes, ‘Emily and Tom kiss with inexpressible desire!’ ”

I can’t help laughing. Mother actually smiles.

“For the Dermotts, the Ehrlichs, the Wilsons of the world, contributing to the literature of the silver screen is stating the obvious. But not Harry, not for our Little Truth Seeker, Tillie. No,” she says, shaking her head, “he’s too pure to yearn for vulgar success in the movie game. He thinks that to succeed in the business is proof positive of idiocy. He has contempt for what he does.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“He has a point, I suppose, Tillie. But my contempt has limits. I may have contempt for the idiotic pictures I write, but I keep going because I want to get somewhere. Gal to gal,” whispers Rachel to Ma, “some day I’m going to direct a picture.”

“And I’ll play Hamlet.”

“You know, Tillie, in the early days, in the days of the one- and two-reelers, there were women directing pictures. Because the money boys didn’t think it mattered. Budgets were small, a thousand dollars, so the stakes weren’t big. And you could take a picture of a wagon-load of horseshit and sell it to the public. As long as the flies on it could be seen to move. People just wanted to see moving pictures. What did it matter who directed horseshit? But now the studios say picture-making has got too technical for women to handle. Not like the old days, one stationary camera, point it and shoot, painted backdrops, no rough location shooting. They say big crews of men won’t take orders from women. And they say women don’t have the money sense to handle a big budget – unlike that paragon of fiscal responsibility, Erich von Stroheim. You’ll love this, Tillie. Do you know what Erich did on Foolish Wives? He insisted, on the grounds of authenticity, that the actors playing officers wear monogrammed silk underwear. Which the camera couldn’t photograph. There’s hard-headed business sense for you. Yet Stroheim’s excesses are genius. A woman’s would be whim.”

“What are you whining about?” I say. “I’d like to make the kind of money you make. You don’t strike me as so hard-done-by.”

“He’s not listening, is he, Tillie? Because I’m not talking about money; I’m talking about power. And I think Harry is after power, too. But here’s the difference. I come right out and say what I want and Harry hides behind this polite, fastidious English facade -”

I correct her. “Not English.”

“All right, Canadian. Excuse me if I can’t see the distinction. It’s not a bad thing, politeness, I suppose, if it’s genuine and you don’t take it to extremes. But isn’t it just a little hypocritical, too? Of course, maybe Harry’s undergone a sea change, maybe he’s not really nice any more. After all, he’s made himself indispensable to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He and Mr. Damon Ira Chance are apparently as thick as thieves.”

This digging sarcasm is irritating. “What the hell do you know about it? Nothing.”

“Understand, Tillie, I’m only drawing conclusions from the evidence. Mr. Chance has a general factotum by the name of Fitzsimmons who guards the master’s door like it was the entrance to the Holy of Holies. And who gets admitted? Occasionally a big-name star. Occasionally a big-name director. Who else? Your boy. Seems he’s making good. Very good. Out of the blue, a lowly seventy-five-dollar-a-week title-writing drudge penetrates the Holy of Holies, is admitted to the Presence. Smells like ambition, if you ask me.”