he: A Novel(23)

They are drinking in the basement of Del Monte’s in Venice. He thinks Del Monte’s has improved since it was forced to become a speakeasy. The company is better.

Jimmy Finlayson has married a woman named Emily Gilbert, who is nineteen and believed herself to be marrying a man of thirty, because Jimmy Finlayson, like an elderly spinster seizing the moment, has shaved some years from his age. Maybe Emily Gilbert wasn’t thinking at all, because fond though he is of Jimmy Finlayson, Jimmy Finlayson is nobody’s idea of an Adonis. Now Emily Gilbert is living with Jimmy Finlayson and Jimmy Finlayson’s sister, Agnes, in a house in Los Angeles that would be too small for all three of them even if it were ten times the size and occupied an entire city block. This is why Jimmy Finlayson is sitting here in the speakeasy of Del Monte’s, just as he is sitting with Jimmy Finlayson for very similar reasons.

Jimmy Finlayson is convinced that the marriage to Emily Gilbert will not endure for very much longer. Jimmy Finlayson is grateful for this. Jimmy Finlayson also believes that, in a similar manner, the man beside him would be happier if Mae were no longer in his life.

I can’t divorce her, he tells Jimmy Finlayson. We’re not married.

If that joke was ever funny, it has long since ceased to be.

I wasn’t talking about divorcing Mae, says Jimmy Finlayson. I was talking about killing her.

He almost chokes on his bourbon – in Del Monte’s the liquor is good, for those who can afford to pay – until Jimmy Finlayson gives him that squint, and he has to hide his face in a handkerchief, he is laughing so hard.

It is September 21st, 1923. They are at leisure because Mother’s Joy has finished production. The picture is poor, but he has not yet begun to worry. Roughest Africa is about to be released, and the word is that Motion Picture News will describe it as a humdinger. And he works well with Jimmy Finlayson, so well that Hal Roach has begun to pair them regularly.

But there is no respite from Mae, not at home and not in the studio. Mae is with him for Mother’s Joy, and will be with him when Near Dublin begins filming on Monday. At least Mae has a named role in Mother’s Joy. In Near Dublin she will be credited only as a Villager, along with Hal Roach’s other makeweights.

Why didn’t Mae ever get a divorce? Jimmy Finlayson asks.

– Her husband wouldn’t grant her one.

This is not, of course, the only reason why he and Mae have remained unmarried. He is sure that Rupert Cuthbert might be persuaded to let Mae go, for money if for no other reason. Mae knows this, too. He could probably afford to make it happen. He does not think it would take much for Rupert Cuthbert to sign the papers. But some fuss might arise, and the gossip hounds would sniff it out. Hal Roach would not like this.

In truth, he would not like this either.

How bad is it between the two of you? asks Jimmy Finlayson.

– Bad. Bad as it’s ever been. What about you and Emily?

– The last time I fucked her, I got frostbite.

He laughs again.

– How old is Emily now?

– Twenty-three, going on a hundred.

– And how old does she think you are?

– She still thinks I’m thirty. Arithmetic was never her strong point. At least I can say I once got to fuck a nineteen-year-old.

Mother’s Joy is inaptly named. Filming it is a chore: cheap sight gags, and Mae’s unhappiness at playing old fruit beside the new. Increasingly, she is being given jobs only to satisfy his stipulation that she should work with him, even when there is no suitable role for her. Flavia in Mother’s Joy is another of these parts, and Mae knows it. Her detachment is visible on the screen, so much so that it’s hard to tell if the chill she exudes is real or assumed.

But there is one scene in which Mae manages to display genuine emotion: the wedding sequence, when she, as the heiress, rejects him at the altar, announcing that she has taken a dislike to him, and he responds in kind. As he watches Mae say her lines in her wedding gown, he understands that at this moment she is not acting, and neither is he.

But he will not let Mae go, and Mae will not let him go.

Not yet.





45


Chaplin meets the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein.

Chaplin tells the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein of his admiration for Battleship Potemkin. The great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein thanks Chaplin, and asks Chaplin for $25,000 to make a picture in Mexico.

Chaplin politely demurs.

The great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein taps someone else for the money, spends $90,000, and returns from Mexico with a set of holiday snaps.

Chaplin is nobody’s fool.





46


He is arguing with everyone. He is arguing because he is unmoored, and troubled in his heart. He is arguing because he feels undervalued. He is arguing because he is tired of barely getting by.

And he is arguing with Mae, and he is arguing because of Mae.

Hal Roach isn’t paying him enough. Even Mae says so, and in this much, at least, Mae is not wrong, because Mae knows the value of a dollar. Worse, Hal Roach pays slowly, and Hal Roach takes too long to sign off on pictures. Harold Lloyd is a star, and Hal Roach’s treatment of Harold Lloyd is of a different order to how the rest of the actors are treated. He is not a star, and Hal Roach lets him know it.

He wishes A.J. were here. A.J. is taking care of his business affairs outside the United States, but A.J. is in Ealing, not Hollywood. Whenever he calls A.J. in frustration, and raises the possibility of returning to vaudeville, A.J. counsels him to stay in pictures. A.J. has at last smelled the dying of the music halls, and vaudeville must surely follow.