The Age of Cities (14 page)

She had no advice—not to mention respect—for Sunday toilers who expected instantaneous results from their gardens and who refused to make social sacrifices for maintenance. Usually young wives and busy middle-aged luncheon-and-committee ladies would drop by with a question or two, all the while gazing wistfully at Alberta's plot and wondering aloud about where they might have gone wrong. “You need to get your hands dirty. It's elementary, my dear Watson,” she'd throw in with a loopy English accent after telling them they must dedicate an hour of each day to their plots of vegetables or flowers in order to get to know them. In any case, Winston thought no good would result from possessing his mother's degree of enthusiasm. It would have led to a showdown, the
This town ain't big enough for the both of us
confrontation of a John Ford Western.

 

 

One time she explained to him, “Gardening's a two-way street, like a marriage, I suppose. You give and then you get.”

“Marriage was not exactly your forte, Mother,” he teased.

“You're right there, sonny boy,” she said, no hint of levity in her reply.

 

 

After she had reached her target in the tangle of tomato plants, Alberta turned to face Winston and replied to his salutation.

“Sorry, I saw another one of the little buggers hiding in there,” she said as she gazed briefly into the sky. “It is terrific, yes. I was feeling the exact same thing just a couple of minutes ago. You want to breathe in the air till your lungs burst. Though right now all I've got is that sour tang of tomato vine up my nose.”

“Funny, I was walking up Grant Street and had this idea of walking without stopping, just walk and walk, taking in the air and admiring the slant of light. It suddenly seemed like there was no practical reason to be indoors and following my routine.” Winston squatted for a moment. Then, uncomfortable with his trousers bunched and his shirt pulled taut, he sat on the damp earth. He untied his shoes and removed them along with his mismatched socks. The soil on the pathway was cool but dry and packed hard as pavement.

Alberta spoke as Winston made himself comfortable. “I suppose it's some animal drive. We sense that soon enough we're all about to hibernate, tucked inside our dim little caves during the winter months and waiting until it's safe or warm enough to go outside again.” She picked a tomato and tucked it into a pocket. “It's like we want to capitalize on our outdoor time, store up our acorns, I suppose. Maybe our brains can remember the light and recollect it during the February blues. Or greys.” She bent over again and darted her hand into the dense Amazonian growth, sly as a weasel.

“Gotcha, you little dickens,” she said. “But for a change you're wanting to be the grasshopper more than the ant. Maybe we can take a walk along the Flats on Sunday; I expect the skies will be clear. After church, though, of course.” She winked.

He smiled.

“Say, Frank Polovski dropped off an envelope for you today. From the city. I left it in the kitchen.”

“From the city? Perhaps it's news from the specialist,” Winston said.

“No, it was a Mr. Williamson.”

“I can't guess who that could be.”

“Well then, you got a letter from someone you haven't met,” she said. “Though it's a miracle it ever arrived here.”

“I'll be back in a second,” he said. He brought his shoes and socks with him to the back door.

Winston returned with an unstamped envelope addressing

 

Mr. Winston Wilson

River Bend City, British Columbia

 

It had a Vancouver return address:

 

Mr. Richard Williamson

401 - 1585 Georgia Street

Vancouver, British Columbia

 

“Oh. Dickie. Mother, it's something from that eccentric fellow I told you about months ago. The one I ran into again at the Hudson's Bay on that day we spent in the city.” He stood now and spoke from the edge of the path. Alberta had remained still in order to hunt in her tomato plants.

“What's it about?”

The card in the envelope was a party invitation.

A newspaper headline had been snipped in half and scotch-taped to the front of the plain white card:

 

Starlet Fails to

Save Errol Flynn

 

The newspaper's headline practically shouted its strange accusation. Who would expect a blonde teenaged girl—a Hollywood movie starlet, not a student nurse, nor even a candy striper—to revive a hefty middle-aged man with malaria and a pickled liver who had just suffered a heart attack? Winston thought it was doubtful that a doctor could do so. Flynn's unheroic death at a fancy hotel in the city had made news just weeks before; it had also incited
wages of sin
tongue-clucking in the staff room.

Another clipping had been stuffed inside. Winston unfolded it and examined the grainy newsprint photograph. The EXCLUSIVE PICTURE featured Errol Flynn seated—according to the caption—next to “protégé Beverley Aadland, 17.” The photograph had been “taken shortly before the film star's death.” It was evidently a snapshot, and not a remotely flattering one. He was paunchy, wan, and grizzled, his hair uncombed and face unshaven; it was as though he had not been a swashbuckling, larger-than-life movie actor, but a belligerent professional wrestler who had been on a bender for a few days: tip-toe around him or else pay the price. His wiry protégé might be his shining innocent daughter, blithely enjoying a poolside afternoon at the neighbour's, a barbeque smoking just outside the picture's frame. She wasn't, of course; thanks to tabloids, everyone had read about Errol Flynn's proclivity for starlets and wild Babylonian parties. He was legendary, thought Winston. He reconsidered. Out of respect for Hadrian and Theseus, he decided that
infamous
was better, an accurate evaluation. Being a lecherous lush was hardly a ticket to the heights of Mount Olympus.

Another clipped-out headline—Flynn ‘Old, Sick Before His Time'—was stapled atop the photograph of the sorry spectacle. Winston smiled at Dickie's handiwork. He thought for a moment that the newspaper's exposure of the actor's ignoble final moments was cruel and gloating. An instant later he recanted, imagining that
live by the sword, die by the sword
was perhaps apropos. Errol Flynn was obviously still proud if he allowed for even one photograph of himself with his ample belly spilling over the waistband of his tight-as-sausage skin swimming trunks, full highball glass resting on the ledge of his sea lion's midriff. And besides, Winston thought, all of his fans would remember the countless heroes their hero had played during his prime.

Winston felt sure that if he happened to be wandering around shirtless—perish the thought—he would encourage no one to aim a camera in his direction. And he'd kept his shape far better than the star. Modesty should not be a trait that only women possess, he believed.

Winston walked along one of the packed mud trails of the vegetable patch to hand the clipping to Alberta, still busy ferreting out fat green worms hidden but dangerous in the cluster of tomato plants. With a huff, she exclaimed, “Little beggars, this'll teach you a lesson.” She straightened up and dropped her tightly curled captives onto the dirt, tamping the worms back into the earth with the gardening pole. Grendel darted out—tail twisted into a panicked question mark—spooked by the sudden pounding. He paused at the garden's edge and flopped over.

“Okay, that's that—for today at least,” Alberta said. She slipped off her gloves and stuffed them into her vest.

“What's this?” she asked as she accepted the envelope from Winston. “Hell, he really went to pot, didn't he? I remember him in
Captain Blood.
So handsome. I knew a couple gals who saw that picture a dozen times over. Joined fan clubs. Odd thing to do when money's so tight. Yes, sir, they'd just swoon whenever he'd pick up a sword. What's this all about, though? Was this Dickie fellow a big fan too?”

“No, Mother, I don't think so.” Winston had already looked at the card's remaining content, and was impressed to discovery that calligraphy was one of Dickie's talents. The upper half of the card was filled with two large words—

 

Errol Flung!

The lower half offered an explanation—

 

His ‘Wicked, Wicked Ways'

A Masquerade

October 31, 1959, Banff House

Arrive in Character

* A bottle of his favourite (vodka) will get you past the door

 

He handed the card to Alberta.

“‘Arrive in character', hey?” she said. “Sounds like your kind of event. You've always been so keen on Halloween.” Alberta's sarcasm was shot through with affection.

“I know. A masquerade is bad enough.”

“Do you think you'll go? There's very little time. It seems awfully extravagant to head all the way to the city for a party. And such a morbid one. No doubt there'll be one at the school?”

“There is, that's true. It's not the same, though.” Winston hoped Alberta would not press him to explain. He felt a child's urge to stamp his feet. “Extravagance is in order sometimes, don't you think? I'm going to think about it, in any case. And I'd be broadening my social circle as one ought, right?”

Alberta patted down stray hairs lifted by the breeze. “I suppose. The big question, if you go, is who will you be? You could show up as that turbaned fellow in
Kim,
maybe, that'd be a cinch to put together. Just sheeting, no stitching to speak of.”

“I think turbans are more your style, Mother. Maybe you should come with me—as the agent in
Kim
. Now that I'd like to see.”

“Not this time around, my dear. My bones are too weary. Besides, someone has to make sure those hooligans from up the street don't throw eggs—or worse—because nobody's answering the Manor's door. That's one mess I refuse to clean up.” Alberta had reached an age when she felt quite comfortable regarding all youngsters as being disrespectful in a way that men in her generation would never have dreamed. She acted scandalized, but Winston had no clue whether she was serious.

She handed Dickie's card back to Winston. “Remember what happened to those Jehovah's Witnesses on 3rd. Bet they really thought the end was coming after that night. Ha! And that was because they had not been at home to deposit candy into grubby little paws.” The egging of that house three years back had been front-page news in the
Record
, citizens—including the mayor himself, who called for a six p.m. curfew—writing searing letters of condemnation, only to be met by others offering rationales or justifications.
Boys will be boys
had been the final albeit unsatisfactory consensus.

“I'll have to think about it. I'm certain that I don't want to wear anything Civil or World War. Nothing seafaring, either.” The pulsing excitement he felt across his chest told him the decision had been made. The distant mysteries of Dickie's abode—its cedar red Pomeranians, valuable porcelains, and unknown odours, textures, and decor—stood nowhere close to the hoard Egyptologists had encountered in desert pyramids, but they'd held Winston's interest for months. Now, a room packed with strangers, he thought, that was less relishable. “I wonder if Errol Flynn ever played a farmer?” he wondered. “Now, that would be an ideal costume.”

 

 

The streets were silent as clouds as Winston passed by houses clutching a brown paper grocery bag tightly under his arm. It contained the costume he and Alberta had cobbled together; he'd wrapped the leggings around his party offering—the transparent bottle of Russian vodka he'd purchased earlier in the week—and wanted to guarantee its safe passage.

Winston saw no raucous children. He spotted a pair of cowboys seated next to their father in a stalled car, but not one half-sized witch, skeleton, scarecrow, or fairy crossed his path. And, he guessed, all the adults were already well on their way to the kind of tomfoolery and future regrets that their drinking and once-a-year guises would encourage. An anxious sensation seeped into his consciousness and settled in his belly like a stone. He hoped spontaneity would not exact some awful price from him. Oughtn't he, an old dog, be rewarded for trying a new trick? Isn't that how it worked?

Hiking along the sidewalk, Winston breathed in the crisp October air, and gratefully drew pleasure from the banks of fog and the occasional bracing assault of rank brine drifting in from the sea. Hearing a sedan bursting with rowdy celebrants, he wondered how hard Dickie, playing impresario, would try for tipsy Flynn verisimilitude, and whether there would be something other than hard liquor for guests to swill. “If it was my party…,” he muttered, and then chortled, knowing full well that a party was the very last thing he would ever plan, never mind go so far as hold. Being in the thick of a congregation of fair-weather friends, polite-conversation work colleagues, and townie acquaintances in one cramped room was something Alberta might actually choose; for him, it was too taxing—and for the life of him he could think of no benefits.

If his host strived for realism, it would be too much, Winston sensed, at least if Dickie relied on the sorts of sources his mother had at hand. Alberta, sometime devotee of
Confidential
and its gutter-minded rivals, had been thrilled to present her son with racy bulletins about the rumour, innuendo, and matters of public record that had been dogging Errol Flynn since well before he arrived in Tinseltown. She reported that his early years had been taken up with countless scrapes involving errant wives and their protective, quick-to-see-red husbands, or else precocious young ladies and their outraged parents. When not being caught in the wrong bedroom—or on the criminal side of the age of consent—the man seemed to have been mesmerized by improbable and obviously shady get-rich-quick gold rush schemes in the South Seas; and they had tipped now and again into fraud or theft, involving police and pressmen with cameras in droves.