Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

“I can’t do it.”

“Do what?”

“Write what he wants.” I can’t get into explanations. I can’t confess how scared I am. I can’t tell her that if I write what Chance wants, there’s every likelihood I’ll have a hand in attaching Shorty McAdoo’s name to a lie. After Chance’s bizarre performance at the party, I can guess at the savage, distorted, paranoid lens through which this picture is going to be shot, guess at what crazy, politically “visionary” message he thinks the movie will deliver. As he’s said all along, this picture isn’t supposed to be just another Western. To do what he requires wouldn’t just be a betrayal of Shorty, but of Rachel, too.

And myself.

Rachel is being her usual hard-headed, practical self. “You’re not Leo Tolstoy, Harry. You’re a scenarist. Somebody hands you the measurements and you cut the cloth. This shouldn’t come as news to you. Write what he wants, for Christ’s sake, and have done with it.”

The shore is deserted, not another soul in sight. The breaker-washed sand gleams like hot asphalt packed by a steamroller, flat, smooth, oily-looking. Waves monotonously assault the glistening beach, rolled banners unfurling liquid flags to a steady, muffled drumbeat. Sitting on the blanket with her feet tucked up under her, Rachel is tiny, porcelain-white and serious, a Victorian doll.

“Chance is nuts,” I say.

“This is news? Everybody who runs a studio is nuts. You’ve got to be. Mack Sennett has a bathtub in his office. Carl Laemmle’s son follows him around with a lard pail in case his old man needs a piss. Lasky and Thalberg hire a scenarist who thinks the filming of BenHur is the fulfilment of a prediction by Nostradamus. Need I go on?”

“This is different.”

“Different how?”

I shrug and announce, “Politics.” Immediately I wish I hadn’t.

“What, politics? You vote Democrat and he votes Republican? These are not irreconcilable differences, my friend. I don’t hide I’m a socialist and he hasn’t fired me yet.”

I don’t mention the Jew-hate. I don’t know how to tell her about that.

“I’ve been thinking of quitting,” I announce.

“What can I say? If your artistic sensibility – which I’ve yet to see any evidence of – is getting seriously bruised, quit.”

“What if he won’t let me quit?”

“Let you? What’s let you? We had an Emancipation Proclamation in this country. He can’t stop you from quitting.”

“I have this feeling he’s not going to let me out of this. He’s always been very secretive about this project. Only three of us really know what it’s about. Chance has been getting more and more paranoid about this picture.”

“You’re scared of him.”

“Goddamn right I’m scared of him.”

“You leave him so he puts it out you’re unprofessional, a bad writer. Who will listen? Everybody in the business has him pegged as a joke. He gives you a bad report card – it’s likely to come off as a glowing recommendation.”

“You forgot Fitz,” I say. “That son of a bitch is capable of anything. Fitz might get something into his head. He’s like the crazy, loyal servant in Murnau’s Nosferatu. Devoted to the master.” I look out to sea. The waves are rolling forward in relentless reiteration, repeating themselves over and over, like my worries of the past few days. The sky is turning denser, greyer, like cheap blotting paper, fibrous with skeins of cloud. Around me I can feel the air growing heavier, moister, closing in. “Chance sent me away to rework the scenario. But now I’ve seen the picture he wants to make through his eyes – I can’t do it. It’s a hallucination, not a movie. A Western Nosferatu. It won’t work. And when it doesn’t, he’s going to want somebody to blame. I’ll be the candidate.”

“Then maybe you’re right to quit before your name appears in the credits. In this town, a writer’s first picture goes bust, it’s likely his last.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got to consider my mother. What do I do? Quit my job and when the rent comes due at the nursing home let her get pitched into the state asylum? I’ve investigated. They’re worse down here than they are in Canada.”

“Find another job.”

“Where am I going to find another job pays one hundred and fifty a week? Nobody is going to hire me for that kind of money. Maybe nobody is going to hire me at all. With my responsibilities I’ve got to consider that.” I rummage nervously in the picnic hamper I’ve packed; not for a sandwich, for the gin. I offer the vacuum flask to Rachel first. “Drink?”

She shakes her head.

“You’re turning down a drink?”

She studies the leaden ocean. “I’ve been feeling out of control lately,” she murmurs.

I take a swig. “I thought you were the lady who said she liked feeling out of control.”

“It could be I didn’t say exactly what I mean. I do like feeling out of control. I like excitement. But if you’re out of control all the time then maybe something is controlling you. If that makes any sense.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure I don’t feel the same. Out of control. Or in somebody else’s control. But I’ll tell you one thing, whatever it is, I don’t like it. It feels bad.”

“Don’t make so many plans, Harry,” she says. “In my experience, plans have a habit of hoisting you on your own petard. Too much calculation can get you into trouble. If everything doesn’t fall into place, you fall out of it.”

I sit with the flask of gin in my hand. “That book Chance gave me – did you read it?”

“In a manner of speaking. My French is not as good as you assume it is. And this book, it wasn’t light reading. Very philosophical, in the French fashion.”

“I thought it was politics,” I say.

“Politics of a peculiar kind. The Western world is rotten, degenerate. Action is required. Myths are the only spurs to action.”

“Go on.”

“Not Greek myths – Apollo, Zeus, Hera. Myth in a sociological sense. Myth as a complex of pictures which express the deepest desire of a group. Sorel talks about the French working class and their belief in the myth of the general strike, the great violent paroxysm which will bring the bosses to their knees, destroy the bourgeoisie, and usher in a new age. According to him, the myth doesn’t need to have any grounds in reality, or have any possibility of being accomplished; it’s there to motivate people, provide the impetus for violent action. Because violence is the only means of invigorating a degenerate society. Your friend gave you an indecent book to read, Harry.”

I don’t bother to answer. A fine drizzle, scarcely more than a mist, is drifting down upon us. We are floating, soiled angels wrapped in a dirty cloud. The sea blurs; Rachel’s face shines luminous behind a veil of moisture. Like gauze on a lens, it softens her.

Before I know what I am saying, I tell her I love her.

She lights a cigarette, the flame cradled in her hand. “This isn’t like you, Harry,” is her only comment.

“You said not to plan so much. It just came out. Maybe I’ve adopted your style – out of control.”

“Or maybe you just want somebody to take over for you. Tell you what to do.” Her gaze is fixed on the beating waves. “I can’t do that. What I am willing to do is take care of the bills for your mother until you settle this thing.”

“I’m not broke yet,” I say.

“All right, then do something. Don’t play helpless.” She stubs out the cigarette. “I’m going for a swim. Think about it. Decide.”

I avert my eyes, listen to the rustle of her disrobing. Each article of clothing she discards, the strength of her perfume increases. Then the scent of her is gone, the void filled by the poorhouse-soup smell of the Pacific, suggestively warm, vaguely salty, vaguely vegetable. I wait, but not as long as I should have, stealing a glimpse of her as she covers the last few yards of sand to the waves, her outline bleary in the rain, delicate, moving – a small ghost.