Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

It was a long, long night. Several times I asked if we couldn’t continue tomorrow but he said no, this was like amputating a leg, you didn’t stop in the middle, pick up the saw in the morning. He never permitted himself a rest; even when he stood at the window watching Wylie his voice went on, growing slightly frayed and raspy, hoarse from hours of talk. He talked as he made coffee at the stove to keep me awake. He talked as he paced up and down the room.

We finish about dawn. He asks me to read aloud the part about the girl. I do and he listens closely, his head cocked to catch every word. Then he asks me to read it again and listens as closely as he did the first time. “Put her down for fifteen,” he says, judge rendering a decree. “She mightn’t have been fourteen like I said first. I’m more comfortable going high than low.”

“All right.” McAdoo gets up and stands at my shoulder, watching me make the change.

“What did I say?” he asks me.

“What did you say?” I am tired and don’t grasp what he means.

“I said the truth wouldn’t pleasure your boss. Am I wrong?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I really don’t.

“Your man wants it, he takes it all. She’s all of a piece. Nobody’s going to cut it up like an old coat, for patches. The girl stays.”

I say nothing, collect my notebook and pencils, wiggle my last cigarette out of the package and light it before going out. It is a strange dawn, the overcast sky diffusing a tea-coloured light over everything, like tint in a Griffith picture. Wylie has finally given up his watch and dropped asleep. He lies cocooned in his blanket, the fire subsiding into ashes and tendrils of grey smoke, the gun fallen to the ground beside him. McAdoo picks it up, wipes the dust from it as fastidiously as Wylie would himself.

“There was a number of us had the second sight,” he says. “We knew what was coming. The only mistake is one of us never shot him in his blankets when he slept.”

“Jesus, Shorty,” I say, “that’s a little cold-blooded, don’t you think?”

He aims the pistol at the sleeping Wylie’s head to make his meaning perfectly clear. “We could have shot the snake in his blankets. Before he bit,” he repeats. Then he puts the gun up like a duellist prepared to step off ten fatal paces; his ten paces carry him over the threshold and into the bunkhouse, walking like a somnambulist.

Mr. Chance’s office at the studio is the very antithesis of his house. It is cluttered. Or rather I should say the walls are cluttered. Hardly an inch of them isn’t covered by black-and-white publicity photos of actors and actresses who have starred in Best Chance productions. I am certain that most of these people have scarcely had more than a handshake from the reclusive Chance, yet that hasn’t stopped them from autographing their pictures to him with the most intimate and saccharine effusions, each signatory striving to outdo his rivals in the fine art of Hollywood ass-kissing. Directly above the door of the office, Webster DeVilliers, a.k.a. Walter Digby of Pass Creek, Indiana, smiles toothily down on me. His mug is inscribed with the words, “To Mr. Chance, ‘Our Star’ from the East! Lead Kindly Light! Yours for Best Pictures, W. DeVilliers.” Anyone who knows Walter Digby of Pass Creek also knows that no. irony was intended by this inscription. There are many, many more testimonials to Mr. Chance’s genius. Perhaps a hundred. “To Dearest Mr. Chance, The Genie in the Bottle of Motion Picture Art, Twyla Twayne.”

“To Mr. Chance, Good, Better, Best Chance!!! Roger Douglas Braithwaite.” Have the big game mounted in this trophy room volunteered their stuffed heads? Maybe yes, maybe no. But this smells like Fitz’s idea. I can imagine him making the rounds like the grand vizier of some oriental satrap, extorting tributes. “Pitcher for Mr. Chance. Write something nice. Get it back to me by tomorrow.”

Mr. Chance is seated behind a big teak desk, commanding a corner where two floor-to-ceiling windows meet, Venetian blinds closed to deflect the stares of the curious. His manner smacks of the principal welcoming back to the old school a former pupil who has made good.

“This is top drawer,” he says, flourishing the transcript. “Absolutely top drawer.”

“I’m glad you’re pleased, sir.”

“Oh, I’m more than pleased. Much more than pleased. You are to be congratulated, Harry. We have our picture. It’s all here.”

This strikes me as overstating the case, but if the boss is happy, Harry is happy.

Chance’s tweed suit and sparse hair are both rumpled with childish excitement. He speaks in short, emphatic bursts. “The story of a great battle. Obscure but nevertheless great. Both are important. Obscurity and greatness. Novelty and awe. You see? Think of Custer – famous in defeat because he fought against overwhelming odds. But this, this is much better. Victory in the face of overwhelming odds. America needs this example, Harry. The strength of isolation. A dozen souls pitted against hundreds. The magic of the number twelve. It’s almost as potent as a seven, don’t you think? Twelve disciples, twelve jurymen, twelve tables of Roman law, twelve months of the year, twelve days of Christmas – can you think of any other significant twelves?”

“No.”

“No matter,” says Chance. He is scrawling a lengthy note on a piece of paper now. His face shoots up. “About McAdoo,” he says eagerly, “can he act the part?”

“Part?”

“Part, Harry, part,” he urges brusquely. “You’re in the business. You know what I mean. Does the man have presence?”

I consider a moment. “He’s not very talkative. On the other hand, when he says something… I think people are inclined to listen.”

Chance nods. “And this quality would be conveyed in interviews?”

“He won’t do interviews.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll be afraid of looking ridiculous. Like Buffalo Bill.”

“No one thinks Buffalo Bill is ridiculous. Besides, people don’t refuse their moment in the sun.”

“He will. To him, it’s not the sun.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be.”

Chance writes something on his pad. “That is unfortunate. But if he refuses to conduct himself as a hero, then for our purposes he is better off dead.”

“Dead?”

Chance laughs. “Not literally dead, Harry. I was thinking more along the lines of an announcement of the great plainsman’s passing – the timing would have to be nicely calculated. You, as friend and biographer, could represent him to the press. That might do very well indeed. There are heroes more compelling dead than they ever were alive. Custer, for instance. Not a man to survive close scrutiny, Custer. Tied to his wife’s apron strings and very foolish. But he made a heroic corpse.”

“And what if Shorty McAdoo doesn’t want to play dead?”

“Well, as I said, it’s a question of timing. You say he has expressed a desire to relocate to Canada. For our purposes, Shorty McAdoo in Canada is as good as dead.”

“And if he changes his mind about Canada?”

Chance lays his little gold pencil down on his desk. “Then it must be changed back.”

“You mean money.”

“Of course, money. Or other persuasions if necessary.”

“Such as?”

“In the past, Mr. Fitzsimmons has proved useful in such situations.”

“Fitz’s tactics – they wouldn’t work on a man like McAdoo. In fact, they’re likely to produce the opposite effect.”

Chance smiles. “I will take that under consideration, Harry. But perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse. We don’t own the rights yet, do we? The rights must be secured. Do you have any idea what we might get them for?”