Children of Light (8 page)

Walter Drogue senior was a man from the mists of legend, a contemporary of Walsh and Sturges and Hawkes. The introduction of this celebrated figure did not put Lionel any more at ease. He felt offended by old Drogue’s nakedness. Drogue senior did not offer his hand but instead placed it, all venous and liver-spotted, on his daughter-in-law’s caramel shoulder.

“Well,” Lionel declared, with a fatuous enthusiasm that chafed in his own hearing. “I’m certainly privileged to meet you, Mr. Drogue.”

“Yeah?” old Drogue asked.

“I was just spying out the way, you see. We haven’t been up here in the dark.”

“I’m glad you came,” Walter Drogue the younger said. He had descended to chin level in the whirling green water. “Give us a chance to rap informally. Just ourselves. What would you like to drink?”

Desperate as he was for escape, Lionel decided a drink might be welcome. And indeed there were things for him and Drogue to talk about apart from the general company. The presence of Patty and the old man would have to be endured.

“Well, I won’t say no,” declared Lionel affably. “If I could have a whiskey? A scotch?”

He had hardly spoken when Patty Drogue disengaged herself from the old man’s pawings and hurried into the bungalow.

“So,” Drogue junior said from the depths of his whirlpool, “couldn’t take it, huh?”

Lionel looked down at the immersed director and chose to conclude that he was being good-naturedly teased, as an outsider.

“Actually,” he said, “I’ve been enjoying myself enormously.”

When Patty Drogue came out again, she was carrying a tray heaped with bottles and glasses and shakers filled with ice. Lionel, to demonstrate an easy manner, took up a bottle of unblended scotch and poured himself an undiluted measure.

“That’s good,” the younger Drogue said. “It’s a pretty crazy way to pass whole weeks. Especially if you’re not really playing. As a rule, locations and spouses don’t mix.”

“We’ve been all right,” Lionel said. “I don’t think we’ve been in each other’s way, Lu and I.” He glanced across the pool and saw that both Patty and old Drogue had settled into pool chairs. Apparently no conversations went unwitnessed in this family circle. “And I see you bring Mrs. Drogue.” The whiskey was as smooth as good brandy. Lionel drank rarely but this glass warmed his blood.

Patty Drogue laughed. Her laughter had an unsettling edge, as though he had said something ridiculous.

“That’s true,” Walter said. He too seemed to be suppressing a secret hilarity. “I always bring Mrs. Drogue.”

Lionel assumed an expression of self-assured amusement to show that he could join in the fun.

“South Africa,” young Walter Drogue said, “South Africa’s easier to handle?”

Lionel held his smile.

“You have to understand that my parents live there. My mother got there from Europe in the very nick of time.” He was silent for a moment. “And of course they’re quite anxious to see their grandchildren. At their age they can’t count on too many visits.”

“I didn’t mean to put South Africa down, Lionel,” Walter said. “I mean—why should you carry the weight? You left, didn’t you? To practice here.”

Lionel was growing tense. He finished his drink, and before he had a thing to say about it, Patty Drogue brought him another.

“I left,” he said. “I suppose I could have stayed and joined the Resistance. I mean … friends of mine did. But my parents wanted us all to go. Myself and my sisters.”

“Your parents loom large in the picture, huh?”

“You should talk,” Patty Drogue said casually to her husband.

Walter junior shrugged good-naturedly. The older Drogue watched her with his blank cautious eyes.

“Silence, exile, cunning,” old man Drogue said from the shadows. “And you get to hear the bellyaches of rich Americans. Your parents should be proud of you.”

“Wherefore do we lecture Lionel?” Walter Drogue asked charitably. “We’ve been showing our films to segregated houses out there. We used to do it in our own South. We have plenty to answer for.”

“I realize that Mr. Drogue spent time in prison,” Lionel said, belching on his drink. He was afraid he might appear obsequious. “Perhaps I’m not made of the same stuff.”

“Perhaps,” old Drogue said. “I was indicted. I never did time. Life is made of perhaps. Perhapses.”

“Lay off him,” the younger Drogue said. “He’s not getting paid to take this shit from you. Go pick on a qualified professional.” He turned sympathetically toward Lionel. It seemed to Morgen that a pattern was emerging in which each of the Drogues would seize an opportunity to protect him from the others. Perhaps even the old man would rally to his defense at the next attack. He glanced into the dark corner where old Drogue was lurking; it seemed, after all, unlikely.

“Don’t let him demean you, Lionel. He thinks he invented political commitment. He thinks he invented facing the slammer.”

“Well,” Lionel said, “it’s true enough about me. I’ve had friends go to the slammer for fighting apartheid but I’m quite untouched.”

“You know what the cons say?” old Drogue demanded of them. “They say never trust a man who hasn’t done time.”

“You don’t have to place your trust in me, Mr. Drogue,” Lionel said. “I’ll be on my way in the morning.”

“There were bets down on whether you’d finally leave or stay,” young Drogue told him. “Weren’t there, Pat?”

“Do I have to say how I was betting?” Patty Drogue asked plaintively.

“Bets?” Lionel asked. “I don’t see why anyone was betting. We knew from the start how long I’d be here. I mean, your girls bought my tickets.”

“Yeah, sure,” Drogue said. “But we thought under the gun you’d be more flexible about it.”

“My schedule is not flexible in the least, Walter. I’ve taken all the hospital leave I can manage. I was back and forth to New Orleans a
dozen times. It’s taken me a year to organize my appointments in time for this trip.”

Young Drogue gave him a long cool look and shrugged amiably. Patty stared into the surgical green light of the whirlpool bath. The old man was invisible within the patio’s toy jungle.

“We haven’t changed our plans,” Lionel said. “I don’t see why that should surprise anyone.”

Walter emerged naked from the lighted pool and slipped into a boxer’s silk robe that had Y
OUNG
D
ROGUE
embroidered across the back. The Drogues’ collective nakedness had begun to repel and embarrass Lionel. In his experience, the clothed party held the advantage in mixed encounters. Within the Drogue compound, this principle seemed to have been reversed.

“O.K.,” Walter Drogue the younger said.

“So,” Lionel said, “as I am on my way out, I thought we might speak privately for a bit.”

Young Drogue sat down on a plastic chair and stretched, yawning luxuriantly. “What a good idea,” he told the psychiatrist. “Patty,” he told his wife, “bring me a drink, please. And bring the good doctor one. And the aged P.” Walter Drogue the elder swore audibly from his corner of darkness.

“We exploit Patty a little,” Walter explained to Lionel. “She wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I’d like to speak privately,” Lionel said.

“This is privately, Lionel,” Walter Drogue said. “This is as private as we let it get.”

“It’s about Lu Anne,” Lionel said.

“No shit?”

“I think I just wanted to know … from a second source, as it were, how things were going.”

Walter gave him a soft smile. “Fine, Lionel. Things are going fine.”

“She’s quite good, isn’t she?”

“Oh, I think that would be an understatement, Doctor. She’s always good, your Lu Anne. But this is something else.”

“And the picture? Your feeling about the picture is good as well?”

“Lu Anne and I are the picture,” Walter Drogue said. “We two together. And we’re good enough to eat.”

“I’ve been seeing dailies as soon as they come in,” Lionel told Walter Drogue, “and I’m terribly impressed.”

“We’re sitting on a treasure, my friend. We’re going to astonish the world.”

Patty returned with another tray of drinks.

Lionel wiped his glasses. His head ached with the whiskey.

“I thought …” Lionel began. “I wanted to be sure everything was all right with her.”

The director was silent. Lionel drained his glass.

“Would you like another?” Patty Drogue asked.

“Oh no,” Lionel said. “Not now.”

“She likes bringing drinks,” Walter Drogue explained.

“It’s my way of atoning,” Patty said.

“Tell me what you think,” Walter Drogue said soberly. “You’re her husband, you’ve been living with her. You’re a … specialist in human behavior. How do you think she’s doing?”

“I don’t think that since she left the stage she’s been so involved in a show,” Lionel said.

“Surely,” Drogue said, looking about with his bright-eyed smile, “this is good news?”

“Well,” Lionel said, “yes.”

“But …?”

“Her eyes,” old man Drogue said from the shadows. “I remember her eyes from when she first came out here.” They all turned toward him. “It didn’t show up in her glossies,” old Drogue went on. “You could turn the page right past her. Up on the screen, her eyes, they’d fucking lay you out. I remember,” he said. “From when she first came out here.”

Lionel stared at his huddled figure in the darkness, trying to think of something to say.

“Before sound,” old Drogue said, “they would have loved her eyes.”

“Even you don’t go back that far,” Patty Drogue told the old man
playfully. “Can you really say ‘before sound’?” She did a bass imitation of his rasp.

“He was here before sound,” her husband told her. “He worked on
House of Sand.
”

“You look at their eyes from those days, you’ll see eyes.” He grunted, a laugh or the clearing of his throat. “They came from tough lives.”

“
House of Sand
!” Patty Drogue declared. “I love it! I love it,” she told Lionel, “when they say ‘before sound.’ ”

“That was the last one Everett French did. He was a lush then. I cut it for title inserts.”

“That’s romantic,” Patty Drogue said. “Everett French losing his shit to gin. Fitzgerald-like.”

“So
you
tell
me
,” young Drogue said, addressing himself to Lionel. “How’s my actress and your lady wife?”

“Listen,” Lionel said. He was holding on to Walter Drogue’s silken sleeve, the sleeve of his boxer’s robe. When he saw the Drogues staring at his hand he took it away. “There is a certain kind of artist, don’t you think,” he asked them, “who might be described as a
halluciné
?”

“Dickens,” Patty Drogue said with enthusiasm. “Joan Miró. What do you think, Walter?”

Young Drogue’s
faux naïf
smile tightened.

“Sure,” he said, turning the very word to bitter mimicry. “Dickens and Joan Miró.”

“Wagner,” old man Drogue said from his unseen perch. “Mahler. Max Reinhardt.”

Lionel was impressed at their erudition. “Those are all,” he said, “wonderful examples.”

“How about another drink?” Patty asked.

“No, no,” Lionel said. “Your guests will be here. I’ve got to get back shortly to pick up Lu Anne.”

“Bela Lugosi played Hamlet for Reinhardt,” the elder Drogue informed them. “They called him the greatest Hamlet of the German-speaking theater.”

“But over here,” Patty Drogue pointed out, “Abbott and Costello were waiting for him.”

“Because he was a junkie,” Walter said, still smiling. “Because it was Hollywood.”

“Well,” Lionel said, “that’s how I see Lu Anne.”

“As a
hallucinée
, right, Lionel?” Patty asked. “Not as a junkie.”

“No, no,” Lionel reassured Mrs. Drogue. “As a
hallucinée.
”

“Like Dickens,” young Drogue suggested.

Lionel paused a moment, then laughed politely. “Well, I don’t have to tell you this, Walter, I’m sure. But some performers put a tremendous emotional investment into their roles. They can’t hold back. They pay a very high price for their work.”

“And that’s Lu Anne, isn’t it, Lionel?” young Drogue asked.

“Well,” Lionel said, “yes. I mean, I don’t know that much about acting—how it works from inside. It’s a mystery to me. Like all mysteries, I find it a bit frightening.”

“You’re a philosopher, Lionel. A student of the mind. And you think the price of this performance might be a mite high for your wife in her sensitive condition. The scenes we’re shooting from now on are some of the most intense in the script. It’s a shame you can’t stay for them.”

“I’m sorry,” Lionel said. “I thought I was performing yeoman’s service putting in so much time down here. I was led to understand location shooting would be over by now.”

“That was last year.”

“Yes. Well, last year is when I arranged for the journey. Originally we thought we’d go together. My parents have planned around it. The kids’ schoolwork has been arranged for. Why are you treating me like a deserter?”

“Come on, Lionel,” young Drogue said. “I’m not doing that. Do you know who Gordon Walker is?”

“He’s the scriptwriter.”

“Did you know he was coming down?”

“I heard something about it,” Lionel said. No one had breathed a word to him.

“Old pal of Lu Anne’s, right? Sort of a second Dickens?”

“I know who he is,” Lionel said. “I know he went out with Lu Anne. What are you suggesting?”

Young Drogue displayed opened palms. “Hey, Lionel, I never suggest. If I want to say something I just up and say it.”

“It sounded to me,” Lionel said, “as though you were implying something that’s none of your business.”

“Not at all, Lionel. Nothing of the kind. You have to leave, so you’ll leave.” He sighed. “I just thought everybody should understand everybody else’s feelings. See, we’re Californians. Compulsive communicators. We’re overconfiding and we’re nosy. Don’t mind us.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Gordon Walker, Lionel,” Patty Drogue said soothingly. “I mean, there’s much less sex on movie locations than a lot of people think.”

Lionel turned to her blankly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ah, let him come,” young Drogue said. “Maybe tension will enrich her performance? Think so, Lionel? I think it’s possible. Anyway,” he told Lionel good-humoredly, “I can swallow that asshole with a glass of water.”