The Driftwood Dragon

by Ann Charlton

  '… he's a great guy.'

  She murmured agreement, her eyes straying to her husband who looked fantastic in a dark suit and a white shirt. '—a fascinating business we're in, Dru. But not easy—Locke and I have had a long, hard struggle to get where we are today—'

  Locke picked up Barry's daughters, one in each arm to pose for a photograph. Laughingly he coaxed the children from their shyness with his natural, easy charm. A great guy.

  '—tells me you helped him learn lines for Man Alive. Have you had any experience in the business?'

  It was a courtesy question. No one in their right mind would think this dimwitted, mouse-haired girl had ever had the gall to get on a stage. She smiled. 'No. I don't know the first thing about acting or films or anything like that.'

  If Eric thought that was a drawback in marriage to an actor, he didn't show it. In fact, as he stayed chatting to her, showing a warm interest in her very ordinary background, Dru came to the conclusion that Eric must be something of an actor too. For she could almost believe that he was genuinely reconciled to a plain, untalented sister-in-law.

  'I won't mislead you, Dru—it won't be easy mixing it with the show people—not that you have to do much of it if you don't want to—but you'll have Locke and me to smooth the way. Of course he has to spend a lot of time away but I hope you'll always feel free to turn to me if you have any problems—'

  Rather distantly Dru noticed that Eric seemed to expect her to have problems—he was right of course. She would. But she had a feeling her current stunned state was giving him the impression that she was a shy, timid mouse. Privately he must be baffled by his brother's choice. Her one redeeming grace—if her direct, sharp tongue could be called that—was gone for the moment and she was neither the beauty nor the character of the family.

  '… fans won't like it,' Eric laughed. 'Prepare to be hated by thousands who wanted their hero to stay single and the image intact…'

  But that was her job, she thought. His wife was to discourage the fans and give the press something less controversial to write about. But one day… Locke looked over and caught her eye. He smiled and started towards her, but the children, emboldened now, caught at his hands. One day, she thought smiling—she might mean more than that to him…

  '—never thought he would marry again.'

  Locke gave in to the little girls, crouched down to them.

  Dru turned slowly to Eric.

  'Again?' she said.

  'Oh—' Eric pulled his mouth down, shot a thoughtful look at his brother, 'I just assumed he would have told you—'

  'No.'

  'It was a long time ago, before he made the big time. We never mention it in his bio notes anymore. They were married a bit more than a year—she died in an accident poor kid.'

  'What was her name?'

  'Eva.'

  The press were drawn off by one of the showy Rolls to the airport. When it got there, a hotel waiter and a receptionist would get a celebrity welcome for a few minutes. There would be no honeymoon as such. Locke had his rehearsals and they would spend their first married months in his apartment. Locke drove them there in a four wheel drive Toyota. He owned a Rover as well he told her which she could use, but he liked tooling around in a 4WD. Tonight it was good camouflage.

  'I've finally found a way to keep you quiet,' he joked in the car. There was an air of strain about him now that the festivities were over. She smiled but didn't answer.

  'Are you regretting it?' he asked sharply. 'Thinking that he might have changed his mind if you'd waited?'

  Dru looked up, startled. Surely he didn't imagine she was thinking of Michael?

  'No, I'm not thinking that—' She was thinking that Eva's loss could still drench him in the cold sweat of nightmare and make her name a cry of agony on his lips. She was thinking that she'd known the risk when she married him—known that he needed her— hoped that he would one day love her. She was thinking that she might have to settle for need.

  Dru rallied. Then need would have to be enough. The show must go on—wasn't that what they said?

  'Actually,' she said, 'I'm wondering how you'll survive on my cooking.'

  There was none of the tension she expected, living together—married, yet not truly husband and wife— she tried to help him with his lines again, he tried to teach her to cook. They quarrelled and laughed about both. They read each other the largely fictional accounts of their marriage in magazines and newspapers. The press, frustrated by a lack of access to the honeymooning star simply did their best with their imaginations and the releases given out by Eric.

  He had vetoed interviews for a few weeks and Eric himself left them alone to fly to Mexico. According to Locke he made trips abroad as casually as some people caught a city bus, sometimes travelling twenty-four hours simply to stay somewhere forty-eight.

  'Just two days?' Dru exclaimed. 'It hardly seems worthwhile.'

  'Two days if the place has decent nightclubs—three if it has a racetrack and four or five if it has a casino as well,' he grinned. Dru shook her head. This was a world that occupied the 'What People are Doing Overseas' pages of magazines. The world of the beautiful people, the unusual, the talented and the rich. She wouldn't fit into any of those categories. Eric's secretary delivered a file of press cuttings culled from publications the world over. It was an ongoing job, monitoring the material used about a star and ensuring it was not libellous. 'Call it our publicity file if you must put a libel on it,' Locke quipped. Dru flipped through it amazed to find her picture alongside Locke's with Italian captions and even Japanese. She was glad she couldn't read them. The ones in English were lowering enough.

  'Cinderella marries the Ransome Man—'

  'After years of squiring the world's most beautiful women Locke Matthews marries a girl-next-door type—'

  Harve Randall, a columnist known for his acid wit, suggested that the star was so fed up with an exotic diet that he'd decided on a change. 'From caviare to cabbage' was how he phrased it.

  Dru began to see how irritating it was to be publicly examined. These writers knew nothing about her yet their readers would take their words at face value.

  Locke's apartment was both beautiful yet in some ways modest for a man of his means. The furniture was more comfortable than elegant, the paintings a mix of traditional and modern, the lighting either concealed, shy spotlighting or explosive Star Wars chandeliers. A crammed bookcase and collected small ornaments from all over the world. There was a relaxed air about it. Atmosphere. It was the home of a genuinely nice man and it showed. But while he could afford so much more, Locke shared pool and sauna facilities with the other tenants in the apartment block. The position was close to town—easy access to the airport—right around the block from Centennial Park's two hundred and twenty hectares.

  'I'm comfortable here—the other tenants don't bother me and I could never be bothered moving,' Locke said lazily. 'But we'll get something else if you want to move. I own a few properties here and there—'

  She hastily squashed any idea that she might find the apartment inadequate. Anywhere you are is fine with me, she could have said. But didn't.

  Mrs Curtis, who had been cleaning for Locke for over a year, came in each day. She was a thin, angular woman who said very little, perhaps because she always had a cigarette in her mouth even while she vacuumed, dusted and polished. She never dropped a flake of ash, dividing her work unerringly between strategically placed ash trays. Her skin was lined heavily as if someone had traced a map, pressing hard with a blunt pencil, and Mrs Curtis' face had been underneath.

  She arrived one morning with her usual reconnaissance report of the street outside. 'That pair from the T.V. magazine are out there again,' she informed them. 'And a reporter fellow bailed me up in the garage. Offered to put my picture in the paper if I'd tell him all about you two—what sized bed you slept on—and all that—'

  She looked blandly at them. Dru flushed a little. Mrs Curtis didn't look the kind of woma
n who would be fooled by her freshly made bed every morning, or the relatively smooth half of Locke's.

  Locke frowned. 'What did you say?'

  Mrs Curtis drew out a duster from a capacious pocket and began doing the bookshelves.

  'Told him if I ever saw my picture in the paper I'd sue him.' She glanced at Dru. 'And I told him that people's sleeping arrangements was no one's business but their own.'

  'Thank heavens for the incorruptible Mrs C,' Locke said later. 'Someone would probably keep her in cigarettes for a year just for giving the lowdown on our honeymoon.'

  It was a strange, unreal time. Dru had little to do and was reluctant to go out alone and invite the press' attention just yet. When she discovered that Locke got up at an unearthly hour each morning to jog in the park, she waited a few days to be invited along.

  'I want to come with you,' she announced one morning at last as he laced up his running shoes. He laughed at her defiant expression.

  'I thought you'd never insist,' he said.

  It was exhilarating. Their breath steamed in the frosty air. The sun lighted small treasures—the dew on a patch of clover, each drop magnifying its host leaf in iridescent magic—it back-lit a clump of long grass and shimmered down long, damp blades in a slippery slide to the earth.

  A horseman passed by on the equestrian track and the warm smell of hide and hair and leather mingled with the fresh scents of morning. Locke stopped running and Dru breathlessly followed his lead in a series of calisthenics.

  'I—never did this much—' she panted, when they ran on again. He looked over grinning, a faint sheen on his face but no sign of breathing troubles.

  'Damn—you—' she stopped and bent at the waist putting her hands to her knees. 'You go on. I'll wait until you come back.'

  She sat against a tree and gradually her body quietened to match the morning. A cyclist swished by, then another. Ducks and water fowl made plaintive cries and honks and way off, like a giant stirring, was the early hum of the city. She looked along the path. Locke had come back into view and she sat still, very still and watched him. His hair turned from brown in the flickering fig shadows to rich russet in the sun's open spaces. There was an easy grace in his movement, litheness in his big, muscular body in the tracksuit. Locke was close enough now for her to see his stubbly chin. He put off shaving until the last possible moment and when he did it, he used a Ransome razor—one of a truckload they'd given him, he'd told her—and foam from a shave stick. He always did the left side of his face first… so many ridiculous, unimportant little details she knew about him now. He still had clean sheets every day—he liked to drink his coffee when it was almost lukewarm—he worked hard at his physical workouts, like a demon at the play rehearsals and the pile of scripts in his study, but was too lazy to comb his hair before breakfast. He was warm and witty and generous and tolerant. But he could be impatient too—with the newspapers' guesses and misquotes and the frequent telephone calls.

  'For God's sake, Sandy, don't ring me here—' she was surprised to hear him snap into his study phone one morning. It wasn't the first time the unfortunate Sandy had had the rough side of his tongue either. She'd felt quite sorry for the man on two previous occasions. On one of them she'd overheard his first impatient reaction before he broke off and saw her. She'd grinned when he'd asked her to close the study door.

  'Not Sandy again? It's all right you know if you want to tell him off. I've heard rich language before.' Later he looked a bit shamefaced when she asked him if he'd demolished the poor man. Locke's anger never lasted long. It was another of the nice things about him.

  His running shoes pounded out a rhythm. Dru watched him come the last distance to her and felt a sudden shaft of despair. Friends he had said they would be and they were. She rose to meet him. I love you, she thought, and it's going to kill me that you won't love me. He stopped, chest heaving under his brown jacket.

  'So all that dashing about in your films isn't speeded up then?' she mocked.

  'I can run fast enough to catch you darling.'

  'Want to bet?' She took off across the grass, confident that she had the advantage now that she was rested and he still breathing hard. For a while it looked as if she might make it to the park gates before him but she looked back and he called her name on a warning note all at once. It was too late. She ran smack into a sapling and was thrown back on to the grass, stunned and out of breath.

  'God, Dru—are you okay?' He knelt beside her, turned her head to touch the welt that was marking her skin, ran hands over the shoulder which had led into the tree. With an arm under her he scooped her up so that her head rested against him. 'Dru—say something—'

  Hold me like this forever… she opened her eyes.

  'I did it on purpose you know. To save your ego. You never would have caught me otherwise.'

  There was relief in his green eyes and a warm affection that tore her two ways. Affection—how sweet and how wistful that could sound.

  'Since when did you do anything for my ego?' he laughed and lifted her into his arms. Ignoring her protests and the stares of early commuters, he carried her back to the apartment.

  They ran each morning after that. When a photographer appeared once, Locke ran behind a clump of trees and emerged the complete suburban man. He let his shoulders hunch and droop and leaned back a fraction. With his feet splayed outwards he looked the picture of middle age fighting to finish the distance in his morning jog. It was Dru who gave them away, doubled over with laughter.

  It became a game. In the afternoons Locke went to the warehouse where he rehearsed for Man Alive sometimes until late at night but the mornings were theirs. Sometimes Dru wondered if she would ever have Locke's nights, but his mornings were undeniably fun.

  'I want to buy you some clothes,' he announced over another of her disastrous breakfasts.

  'No thanks. I've got plenty.'

  'They don't suit you.'

  'Are you saying I've got no dress sense?'

  He deliberated, chewed on a charred sausage segment and swallowed it manfully. 'Yes.'

  'And you have?'

  'Of course.'

  'Hmmpy. You played a fashion designer in your NIDA days I suppose?'

  He dangled a wrist. 'Never. Get changed and let's go shopping.'

  It was an experience, shopping with Locke. Dru enjoyed the subtle change in the saleswoman when they discovered that their unpromising customer had a sensational man in tow.

  'Try this,' he said once and held out a garment to her.

  'I hate it.'

  'You'll look good in it.'

  'My shoulders are too wide.'

  'All that swimming.' But he didn't deny that her shoulders were too wide. 'Go on, try it.'

  Of course it did look good. The saleswoman fussed over her, bringing in armfuls of clothes for her to try. Dru could pinpoint the moment at which she recognised Locke behind his sunglasses. The price labels shot into the triple figures.

  Locke admired or criticised, and only once seemed impatient. He snatched a dress from the saleswoman and hung it up.

  'Not pink,' he said shortly. 'I hate pink.'

  Later he had another brief bout of irritability when, after splitting up briefly, Dru was a few minutes late rejoining him. She stared at his tight-lipped expression.

  'For God's sake try to be on time,' he snapped.

  'I'm only a few minutes late,' she protested at the childish outburst, 'What's the matter—can't the star bear to be kept waiting?'

  'As always Dru—you've put your finger right on it,' he growled and took her arm in a ferocious grip. It was an unfortunate moment to be photographed by the vigilant press. The resulting picture of Dru looking plain and bewildered with the impatient, incredibly handsome star could only invite speculation on the quality of this 'honeymoon'.

  But though not a honeymoon in the true sense it had its own special quality. They sailed on the harbour, drove to the Blue Mountains and shouted over Echo Point and Locke wore a disgu
ise once so that he could take her unrecognised, to view the city from Sydney Tower. He put on a full, gingery-brown beard. A lush growth that framed his beautiful mouth and grew in nineteenth century importance to his chest.

  Mrs Curtis took her cigarette from her mouth when she saw him. It was the equivalent of applause from anyone else.

  'You wouldn't!' Dru gasped.

  'I would.'

  'Where did you get it?'

  'Had it specially made. Saved all the clippings off my chest.'

  'Read this,' he tossed an orange script binder into her lap one day at breakfast. 'I want to know what you think.'

  'What I think? Locke, I don't know anything about screenplays.'

  'You've got a sharp brain as well as a sharp tongue. And you're honest. If it's tripe I know you'll say so,' he grinned, reminding her of the first play reading she'd done with him. It was flattery of a sort she supposed. Her mind and her honesty were things he appreciated… and wasn't that what any red-blooded woman demanded nowadays? She read the script, Brother Blade. The leading role was a Locke Matthews one. Robust, dominating. Easily turned into a Ransome Man.

  'I like it I think,' she said later. 'Will you do it?'

  He thrust out his lower lip. 'Prentice is a sound role—'

  'Travers is better.'

  'It's a small part.'

  'In the right hands it could be a great small part.'

  Locke stared at her. 'I don't think mine are necessarily the right hands…' he said at last.

  He gave her another script to read and another. Their discussions and arguments confirmed what Dru had suspected all along. Locke Matthews, successful, sought after Locke Matthews, had somehow lost sight of his real goals and now doubted his ability to play anything but the Ransome Man. She looked through his video tapes. None of his previous films were among them. Not too many people would believe that, Dru thought. An actor without tapes of his own films. She went to a library and hired a video of Locke's earliest film. The only one he'd made in pre-Ramsome-Ramage days. Dru was running it when he arrived home from rehearsals.