“Of his life?”
“The poor fellow did not have an easy young time of it, did he?”
“No. He said to me once, ‘Maybe God can’t change the past, but I can.’ That’s what he called the plays, alternatives to reality. ‘I can’t cope,’ he said, ‘but I can create. Re-creation’s the best revenge.’”
Mabyn smiled. “The real life sounds fantastical itself. Just the tales of that old trunk! Imagine having to hide in it all night from Mafia casino owners. Really, what a life Ford’s led, compared to mine. Well, compared to most, I’d wager. But, of course, I needn’t tell his biographer that, need I?”
Theo laughed out loud. “Actually, I hadn’t heard anything about the Mafia.”
“No? In Las Vegas?” Father Mabyn proceeded with enthusiasm to tell the convoluted, and undoubtedly entirely fabricated saga, a few episodes of which Ford had clearly lifted from Desert Slow Dance.
Theo looked across the little table at the plump, red-cheeked priest. “You liked Ford a lot, didn’t you?”
Mabyn’s kind smile spread over his face. “I did. I will be proud to tell my grandchildren someday—yes, yes, Mrs. Roberts, if I ever manage to find a wife in time to have any; needn’t look so pointedly—I will tell my grandchildren with pride that I, an undistinguished cleric in an insignificant little town, was kidnapped one day by the great American playwright, Joshua Ford Rexford. I only wish…” The vicar put down his fork and knife and looked with surprising sadness across at Theo. “I wish God had given it to me to have been of some help to him. That I’d been, well, clever enough or deep enough to help. He is a very unhappy man. Almost in despair, I think, for all his marvelous love of life.” Mabyn reached out his hand. “Please. I hope you won’t consider it presumptuous of me to say that, a comparative stranger. To someone who, well, who loves him so deeply as I know you do.”
“No.” Theo shook his head. “And I’m very glad he met you.”
“There is,” the vicar said, “I believe, at least—there is more real goodness in the world than people think. And less real greatness. God gave Ford—and how Ford kicks at the thought—God gave him that rare gift of great talent.” Mabyn held up his pudgy fingers, tracing them slowly across the air, much as he had rubbed the fading words of the stone in the churchyard. “And I believe, as his friend ‘Will’ said—abandoning all pretense of Christian humility, we must admit—‘Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime.’” The vicar’s fervent green eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “I believe Ford Rexford will last like that. Whether he knows it or not.”
Theo rubbed his hair. “Oh, he knows it. How could he not? The jackass can read. Knowing doesn’t seem to help much, though, does it? I mean, with this life.”
“Oh, this life. No, so far, he has royally messed up this life.” The vicar peered into his glass as if the temporal world were in there with the port. “But fortunately, he is mistaken about its limits, too.” He raised his wine glass. “To Ford Rexford! Here’s dirt in your eye, partner!”
“Mud.” Theo toasted Ford.
The next morning, Father Mabyn helped wedge the large trunk into the back of the car. “Tell him he’s in my prayers,” said the vicar.
“If I find him, I will.” Theo shook hands through the open window. “And if he calls, tell him I want to see him. Thank you, Father James. I hope we’ll meet again.” The American grinned. “In this life, I mean.”
“Whenever.”
•••
Theo reached London late that afternoon. He drove to Brown’s and had the footlocker carried up to his room. He didn’t enter the hotel. After he returned the rental car, he walked to the nearest Underground station, passing on the way a bookstore in whose window a clerk was stacking dozens of copies of Ford Rexford plays. He was surprised by this prominence, but attributed it to the success of the revival of Her Pride of Place.
Then, waiting for the tube to take him to the Middendorf agency, he saw seated on a bench a young man in jeans who was reading a paperback of Ford’s Proof through the Night. An acting student, Theo decided.
It was not until he was standing in the crowded train, jostled in the rush-hour press, that he learned the true cause of all the interest. He looked down and saw the front page of the newspaper held by a woman seated near him. In a lower column, a headline said:
joshua ford rexford dead
american playwright killed in autocrash
The words separated into letters, the letters broke apart into slashes of ink, disconnected, nonsensical. As long as he could keep them from coming back together, as long as he could stop the letters from joining into language, they wouldn’t mean anything, they wouldn’t be words, and so they couldn’t be true.
Chapter 26
Exit the Guardsman
Time and death call me away.
—Sir Walter Raleigh, in a letter to his wife
It sounded so much like a Ford story, and after all, so few of those were true. Why should this one be any different? Later, Theo would remember that he’d even thought, Stupid joke, Ford; this is in very poor taste. He would remember that he’d thought, Rhodora, you don’t believe this, do you? Besides, different newspapers told the tale in such inconsistent ways, and wasn’t that also typical of Ford fabrications? According to an early report, an Italian sports car convertible had smashed after midnight into the embankment of a bridge in the center of Stratford-on-Avon. According to a later report, the convertible was a Jaguar and it had crashed through a fence, diving into the Avon River at 11:05 p.m. One paper said Ford had drowned. Another said he’d died of a broken neck. Two alleged that he’d been drinking heavily prior to the accident; a third didn’t mention alcohol. The fact that he hadn’t used his seat belt was stressed by some; the fact that he wasn’t wearing shoes struck others as particularly interesting.
Only an evening tabloid had a picture of the twisted wreckage of the convertible being pulled from the water. Only the Times, which said almost nothing about the accident itself, cited correctly the number of Ford’s Tonys and Pulitzers, the number of his plays, the number of his wives. But the one thing that every paper claimed, however many newsstands Theo walked to, block after block, hour after hour, was that Joshua Ford Rexford, the American playwright, was dead. He had died late last night in an automobile crash in Stratford-on-Avon, England: alone, barefoot, in his sixty-sixth year. That much they agreed on.
The messages handed to Theo by the desk clerk at Brown’s made the same nonsensical claim. No matter how long he sat in the dark by his hotel room window, resting his feet on Ford’s black army trunk, no matter into how many arrangements on the scratched surface of the trunk he moved the small pieces of note paper, their messages persisted in this idea that Ford was not alive. The Middendorf agency believed it; Jonas and Mole believed it; from across the whole breadth of the ocean, Adolphus Mahan and Theo’s parents and Steve Weiner all appeared to believe it was true. There was even a message saying Bernie Bittermann was already on a plane to London, and with him was Ford’s older sister, Ruth, who (Theo knew) had never before in her seventy-two years left Texas; they were coming to claim the body, which suggested strongly that they both believed Ford was dead. The fact that the BBC wanted Theo Ryan to call them back implied the same belief. Was it only Rexford’s official biographer who declined to accept this latest story of Ford’s as any more factual than the thousands he’d already heard?
That night Theo not only didn’t return the calls, he didn’t make any of his own—because as long as he didn’t talk to Rhodora, as long as no message came from her, what everyone else was saying wasn’t true. Finally, however, he did answer the persistent knocking at his door, and accepted condolences from Jonas and Mole, pretending to agree with them that Ford was dead. When they said they’d ordered dinner to be sent up to him, he promised to eat it. When they told him there would be a “Special R
eport” on Rexford’s death at 11:30 that night, he even turned on the television and heard the BBC commentator add new plot twists to this preposterous tale of Rexford’s Last Evening Alive. It all sounded just like Ford.
The story was that yesterday the playwright (“highly inebriated, according to a number of witnesses”) had attended a performance in Stratford by the Royal Shakespeare Company of Antony and Cleopatra. Wearing jeans and a tuxedo jacket with ruffled shirt, he’d gone backstage at the second intermission, signed autographs for the Queen’s maids, Iras and Charmian, and visited Cleopatra in her dressing room. (Fifteen years ago, Cleopatra and he had had an affair when she was starring in the London premiere of Maiden Name; the affair was not mentioned in the interview by the BBC.) The star cried beautifully, and regretted that she hadn’t asked Ford to surrender the pint of scotch visible in his jacket pocket when he’d stumbled while trying on her pharaonic headgear. What had the playwright talked about with her? About old times and Shakespeare. About how Shakespeare had “done everything right.”
bbc: Artistically?
star: Financially, actually. About Shakespeare’s owning stock in his own company, then retiring and investing in real estate. Of course, I know Ford meant artistically as well. He loved Shakespeare so. Quoted it for hours when I knew him first. He loved this play in particular. (Here, more beautiful tears and an averted face, backlighting the profile.)
The next interview was with a young male actor who’d played multiple walk-ons in this production of Antony and Cleopatra, and whose “only excuse” for letting Ford go on stage in his place for his last role (“the Guardsman”) was that he was “so awed and overwhelmed and, well, thrilled to meet Mr. Rexford that I suppose I allowed him to talk me into it.” The young man’s only excuse for confessing all this on national television was blazingly evident to every other actor in the business. With a vivacious solemnity, he described how Ford had glanced at the few lines, repeated them successfully, donned the military tunic, hefted his lance, strapped on his helmet, and entered the play near its tragic climax, which, in fact, it was the guard’s small duty to help initiate:
{enter a guardsman}
guardsman: Here is a rural fellow that will not be denied your Highness’s presence: He brings you figs.
cleopatra: Let him come in.
{exit guardsman}
The audience had no idea that the unshaven, stiffly upright, and somewhat bowlegged supernumerary making this announcement to the captive queen and her maids was, according to the BBC commentator, “thought by many to have been for his time the greatest living playwright in the English language.” A few people who’d sat in the front rows that night were to dine out on the fact that they’d thought they’d recognized Ford Rexford, or had at least suspected something out of the ordinary. But they hadn’t; although, one woman had noticed how extraordinarily blue the guard’s eyes were and she was to think of those eyes over the years whenever she saw a Rexford play. Of course, Cleopatra, Iras, and Charmian had known immediately that this guardsman was not the guardsman they’d expected, but other than the slightest startled flutter of their lashes, they’d treated him exactly the same as any other palace nobody. All they wanted from him was the asp in the basket of figs.
{enter guardsman, with clown bringing a basket}
guardsman: This is the man.
cleopatra: Avoid, and leave him.
{exit guardsman}
In his younger days, slim and handsome, Ford Rexford had appeared in a few of his own plays and a few of his movies. He loved acting—a chance to be everybody and do everything—as anyone who’d ever lived around him was well aware. This last role of his, a walk-on, a spear-carrier, a member of the chorus, was just the kind of joke Ford liked to play. Then to change back into his jeans and make a present of his boots to the young actor, who held them up for the BBC camera. “When he took his socks off, he was very upset that his, well, that his feet had gotten old,” said the young actor. “He kept staring at them, and said mine would look that way too some day.” The young actor smiled to indicate the improbability of age ever assaulting him. Ford was next overheard by a policeman as he stood outside the church where Shakespeare was buried, singing, “Amazing Grace.” And then seen with a meteoric leap to fly off a road into the river of the Swan of Avon. They were all good Ford scenes. But to die there? To break his neck and die?
The BBC special report ended with a few quickly filmed tributary sound-bites from British theatrical luminaries, in which the words “great genius,” “tragic loss,” and “deeply shocked” appeared often. A celebrated playwright who, Theo knew, utterly despised Ford (and vice versa) sonorously intoned the final bite: “The voice of a giant is silenced, and the stages of all the world are a little darker tonight.” Theo heard Ford beside him in the room snort: “A little darker? You prick!”
These tributes were followed by a three-minute montage of photos of Ford, stills from his plays, shots from his movies, film footage of him loping up to podiums to accept prizes or hopping out of limousines with beautiful women. Obviously, Rexford had warranted one of those preplanned obituaries and they’d had their file all ready to roll, for there was old news coverage of him at civil rights marches and presidential conventions, as well as homier footage from an earlier PBS documentary. As a voice-over to this montage, they’d chosen (because of the circumstances) to have the actress who’d played Cleopatra that night reciting from one of her speeches about the dead Antony. She had a lovely voice.
For his bounty,
There was no winter in’t, an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like, they show’d his back above
The element they lived in…
Ford in New York pacing rehearsal stages; Ford at his ranch in Texas, leaning over a corral rail with some Mexican friends, admiring horses. Years ago in Tilting Rock, Ford sitting in his armchair with his feet on the black army trunk, a pencil and pad of paper in his hand. The last photograph of the playwright shown was the most famous one, the cover of Life, a black-and-white portrait of a lanky young cowboy in workshirt and jeans, grinning at the camera, sure and eager, as beautiful as a movie star; behind him, the great scenery of the western sky.
Think you there was, or might be, such a man
As this I dream’d of?
And the BBC signed off.
Within the week, Theo was to hear from various sources that there’d been disgruntlement in the theatrical community from Americans who’d happened at the time to be in London regarding the BBC’s tribute (which was re-aired over the next few days). The decision to use a British actress reciting Shakespeare, rather than an American reciting Rexford himself, was taken as a national slight. So was the decision (the BBC denied that it was a decision) to solicit testimonials exclusively from British luminaries, rather than from the disgruntled Americans, who felt they had more to say about Ford Rexford, and more right to say it, than any foreigner possibly could. As a matter of fact, none of these compatriots had known Ford nearly as intimately as the British actress, who’d slept with him for eight weeks. As for Theo, he felt sure Ford would have loved having Shakespeare’s Cleopatra sing his swan song, and wouldn’t have cared at all to hear what Amanda Mahan and Scottie Smith (two of the disgruntled Americans who chanced to be in London) had to say about the tragic loss of his great genius.
•••
Within the week, Theo Ryan had admitted as a fact unsusceptible to revision that Ford was dead. He’d had, of course, to act upon the premise long before that, while his heart was still sealed against it. He had obligations and responsibilities that required the premise. The next day he’d had to accept the sympathy of his parents and friends. He’d had to offer sympathy to other people; some of whom, like Pawnee Rexford, wouldn’t admit they needed it. He’d had to decline to turn over Principles of Aesthetic Distance either to Amanda
Mahan or to Buzzy Middendorf (who’d finally returned from Capri, or had at least admitted he was back); he gave as his reason for withholding the play, “legal questions regarding the estate.” He’d had to hear Adolphus Mahan pretend to be grieved for a decent amount of transatlantic time before saying that he wanted Theo’s permission to submit for prepublication serial rights Chapter One of the Rexford biography to The New Yorker and Chapter Two to Vanity Fair. (Mahan pointed out in a polite way the courtesy of his request, since he didn’t need Theo’s permission, as, by their contract, first serial rights were reserved to the publisher.)
That afternoon, Theo had had to meet with Bernie Bittermann as soon as the latter had arrived at his London hotel, to learn officially what he’d pretty much suspected, that he was to be Ford’s literary executor. He’d had to go down lists of names with Bernie to be sure everyone who should have been called had been called. Theo knew that Bernie, the most organized man alive, had not forgotten any conceivable name—from Ford’s first wife to Jenny Harte—or any detail of the playwright’s liabilities or assets, but they went over it all anyhow. He’d already had his first argument with Bernie, too, over the contents of the army trunk. He’d argued that as literary executor, he and he alone would examine and catalog the papers in the trunk. He would do it as soon as he felt capable of it, but he wasn’t capable of it today. Ford had left him “authority for the disposal of all manuscripts, correspondence, and other papers at the discretion of said executor,” and that’s exactly what that trunk was full of—papers. “I’ll go to the mat,” Theo threatened, towering over the business manager. “‘At the discretion of said executor’—that’s what it says.”
With a snarled, “I told Ford not to put it like that,” Bittermann finally yielded. “All right, all right, for now. You’re upset, we’re all upset.”
Bittermann was the trustee of the estate and Pawnee was the heir. Already, the accountant was fretting that Pawnee, a heavily mortgaged small-time rancher, would refuse the inheritance and that his older brother, Josh Junior, a millionaire real estate developer, would sue for half. It was that night, after he had returned from the Stratford mortuary with Bittermann and Ford’s sister, while Bernie was griping as he always had about Ford’s impracticality, if not perversity, in not anticipating a fight by his older son over the will, that the crack began to open in the seal around Theo’s heart. That’s what it felt like, like a sharp, scary, painful crack in his breastbone, splintering a space in the bone through which the fact could slip.
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