And if she were to put the same plain question to Wanda there would be an equal impasse; something transfiguring would happen again, a glow on top of a glow, the look that could come to the same bashful terms with guilt or innocence, as Carey had seen already in the girl’s response to that deliberately testing phrase “my husband”. And there was nothing more to be learned.
Except one matter, which Carey held herself justified in probing at the first chance. It came when Paul left them at the table to buy a cigar. Carey said then, changing the subject abruptly: “I saw Malcolm Beringer in New York before I sailed. He gave me an impression that he and Paul had quarrelled while they were working on the picture.”
“Is Mr. Beringer a friend of yours, Mrs. Saffron?”
“No, I wouldn’t call him that. Why do you ask?”
And then a long cool silence, until the girl continued: “You see, it has been hard for me to exchange ideas with Paul, because of the language, but Mr. Beringer spoke German well—so he acted as interpreter amongst all of us.”
“Yes, I can understand that, but how did it affect the quarrel?”
Wanda smiled. “He was able to say things about Paul that were not true.”
“I see. And when you found out they weren’t true… ?”
“Yes, then there was the trouble.”
Paul was already returning with the cigar. There was no time to explore further, nor perhaps any need either. Carey said, deliberately gay for Paul’s benefit: “Paul’s quick enough at most other things, I wonder why he’s so slow at picking up languages?”
“I will tell you why,” Wanda answered, in the same key. “First, it is because he does not really listen when others are talking. And second, it is because he feels the whole world has no right not to know English.”
Paul sat down and lit his cigar, pleasantly aware that they were having some joke at his expense; he did not know enough French to enjoy it with them, but he was sure it must be harmless.
* * * * *
Carey stayed at Riesbach for a week, and in many ways it was a very pleasant time. All the things she had long wished that Paul would care for, he now apparently did care for—hours of sheer laziness in deck chairs, rowing placidly on the lake, picnics in the woods, even walking, if it were not too athletic. Wanda was wise enough not to persuade him to do other things that she herself enjoyed; she used her power, if it existed, with a sparing scrupulousness. So when she felt in a mood to climb a mountain or play tennis or take part in the impromptu dances that often sprang up at the hotel after dinner, she made no attempt to drag Paul along; and of course there were always young men anxious to fill the gap. Paul seemed to have no jealousy when he saw her in the arms of some handsome ski-instructor; he and Carey would sit watching, Paul relishing the spectacle theatrically and passing frequent remarks on Wanda’s beauty and accomplishments.
Carey did not need to be told that Paul was happy. He gave every sign of it, and the loss of weight and healthier life had added a new kind of vigour —more physical, less nervous. In a sort of way Carey found him less like himself, which could also be called in some ways a change for the better. She noticed that he ate, drank, and smoked less, that he would choose fruit as a dessert instead of chocolate pudding, that he did not smoke his first cigar till after lunch. Little things. Once as the three of them were returning from an afternoon on the lake, wind-blown and sun-brown, they passed a large mirror in the hotel lobby, and Paul, in the middle, drew them both to a standstill with encircling arms. “Don’t we look wonderful?” he exclaimed, and it was true that they did. But at the very moment of joining in a laughing assent, Carey caught Wanda’s eye in the mirror and saw in it something so friendly, yet at the same time so inquisitive, that she felt Paul’s question was being repeated rather than answered. Carey said: “Well, we ought to, with the kind of life we’re leading. Sunshine and fresh air and no work.”
Paul said: “One of these days I shall make a picture about children, and when I do I shall remember Riesbach.”
He drew them away from the mirror, but the look in Wanda’s eyes which Carey intercepted before they left it was less inquisitive now, had more of shared awareness, as if she were saying: We both know that cryptic kind of remark, don’t we?… And Carey returned the look, as if to answer: Of course we do, it’s his way of clinching something in his mind by a dramatic attitude, as he would have an actor do the thing on the stage… and just to prove it isn’t as silly as it sounds, he probably WILL make a picture about children some day and it’ll be so good that people will think what a lovely childhood he must have had himself to understand it so well, but the truth is, Wanda, his own real childhood wasn’t lovely at all—he hated his father, he was miserable and lonely and insufferably precocious… this Riesbach interlude is a dream of his and we are the playmates he never had before—he’s seeing us now, with his arms round both of us, symbolically as well as actually, in a mirror…
One morning the Riesbach interlude came to a sudden end. She had cabled her address to Bill Michaelson, her New York agent, merely as routine, but on the breakfast-table there was a cabled reply saying that the new play was now finished, should he mail it over, or was she likely to be returning soon? Had this come alone she might have wondered whether to ignore it, at least for the time being; but for Paul also there was a message, summoning him to Berlin to complete the picture, new money having at last been raised. As they sat, the three of them, drinking coffee on the terrace in the mountain sunshine and exchanging these items of news, it seemed quite providential that so much had happened simultaneously, thus cancelling out blame, remorse, and responsibility. They packed that morning and took the lake steamer to Interlaken in the afternoon. The spell was over, and Paul was more normally nervous and excitable, fidgeting over trifles and almost absent-mindedly enquiring about the New York play. Carey told him what she knew, which wasn’t much, except that it was another comedy guaranteed to be a winner like the last one. He said moodily: “It’s about time you were bored with comedy,” which she knew was his oblique way of telling her that he was, or rather that he was so interested in something else that the idea of coming back to New York to direct the play wasn’t touching even remotely the fringe of his mind. Towards dusk at Interlaken station they boarded two trains that left, again by coincidence, almost at the same moment and in opposite directions— Wanda and Paul to Germany via Lucerne, Carey by the express to Paris. Two days later she was on the Berengaria.
As soon as she embarked at Cherbourg she felt tired and lack-lustre. It was as if the Riesbach interlude, now that it was over, had withdrawn its own illusion of well-being, leaving only the memory of an enchantment too slight to lean on. The goodbye to Paul, so far from upsetting her, had been in some sense a relief, and though he had said he planned to be back in America by September, she was surprised to find that the idea of his return did not fit into her mind as something terrific to look forward to—rather, in her present mood, as merely another and a further horizon of ordeal. For the new play was already the nearer one, and although she knew how difficult Paul was when he was directing, the thought of some other director made her feel very glum. But of course it could not be helped. Thank goodness Paul’s all right; he’s happy; let him get back to his work and I to mine; in this spirit she could face any future. On the boat she surrendered to something else that was harder to analyse—not quite depression, but a deep lassitude of the body that matched an inner indifference the like of which she could not remember in her life before; it centred on the new play, which of course she would study as soon as she reached New York, but she was actually glad she hadn’t it with her during the trip—she lacked even a desire to read it.
She spent the first four days at sea in her room, the weather being rough. On the fifth day, approaching the Grand Banks, the skies cleared and the rolling lessened, so that many of the passengers, like herself, appeared on deck for the first time. She did the regulation walk, then found a vacant chair, a rug, and a novel
. Next to her in the long line was a grey-haired man, rather good-looking and apparently asleep. There was something about him that made her think she might have seen him before—not that she could know him personally, for she had a good memory for acquaintances, but perhaps his was one of the faces that sometimes emerge from the blur beyond the footlights, randomly and as a challenge when an audience is cold—see that man at the end of row three, centre aisle—he’s not laughing, MAKE him laugh, make HIM laugh… occasionally in comedy one got as desperate as that, and it was significant that now, with the new play distantly on her mind, such desperations were easy to remember. She was staring at the man, still wondering and remembering, when she realized he had opened his eyes and was staring back at her.
He smiled and said slowly: “Miss Arundel, isn’t it?”
She was used to this kind of thing, and though it was sometimes a nuisance, she knew that if it ever ceased happening she would have much more to worry about; apart from which, in this instance, she had been staring first. So she returned his smile. “Yes, that’s right.”
“I thought I recognized you.” She was glad he didn’t try to get up or perform any polite manœuvre, tucked in as he was under a very luxurious fur rug. “I’m one of your countless admirers, Miss Arundel. My name is Bond —Austen Bond.”
“My real name is Saffron. Mrs. Paul Saffron.”
“Ah, yes.” She couldn’t be sure whether the name Saffron meant anything to him or whether he was merely being cool towards the revelation. “Are you coming back to New York to give us a new play?”
It was the one thing she didn’t want to talk about. “I expect so,” she prevaricated, “sooner or later.”
“I hope sooner.”
“Thank you.”
“No, no, it’s I who should thank you for giving me so much pleasure.”
To which by all usage she should have murmured vague appreciation and changed the subject, thus ending the seesaw before it began to be ridiculous; but instead she let what was uppermost in her mind dictate a reply— she said: “Don’t forget the director also—and the author—they have a lot to do with a good play.”
“Of course. And I notice you put the director before the author.”
“That was accidental—or perhaps it’s because my husband IS the director—WAS, that is, of my last play.”
The steward came with bowls of hot soup. The effort of dealing with them seemed to make the conversation more intimate, if also more scattered. They discussed foreign travel for a time (she told him she had been visiting Switzerland, and he said he had been on a business trip to Sweden); then the novel on her lap led to gossip about books and writers. He talked intelligently but not learnedly. Now that he was sitting up she could see he was less elderly than she had thought at first; the grey hair was misleading, he did not look more than fifty. He had a proud, strong type of face, the kind that looks sculptured, and there was a sense in which his voice and accent conveyed rather than betrayed the fact that he was American. If he were an actor, she reflected, Paul would probably not cast him for the part of an ambassador because he looked too much like one.
Presently he asked if she were travelling alone, and when she said yes, he asked if she usually dined alone, or had made friends on board. She answered ruefully that so far on the trip she hadn’t dined at all.
“I think there’ll be better weather from now on,” he said.
“I hope so. I’m not a good sailor, though I’m probably not the worst one either.”
“Then perhaps you’d care to join me for dinner this evening?”
When she hesitated, not knowing whether she wanted to or not, he added with quick tact: “That is, if it keeps smooth.” He got up with rather surprising agility and stooped to lift her hand. “Shall we say seven o’clock in the bar near the small restaurant? I’ll look for you there, but if you don’t feel equal to it, please don’t bother. I’ll understand.”
She noticed as he walked away that he was tall and had a good figure —perhaps he was still in his forties and the grey hair could be regarded as premature.
By six o’clock she had almost made up her mind not to keep the appointment. He had given her an easy out, and it was true that the wind was freshening and the sea not quite so calm. But most of all she felt in herself a renewal of the inertia of indifference, plus a somewhat professional feeling that if she were not in a mood to be attractive she had no business to inflict herself on an audience, even a chance-met male audience of one. Then suddenly and for no reason she could think of except again a professional awareness of challenge, she decided to meet Mr. Bond at least for a drink and, if that much bored her, to excuse herself from dinner afterwards. The challenge thus accepted, even in part, she felt immediately encouraged; she dressed carefully and gave herself cautious approval in the mirror. She looked a little off colour, but the reason for it was obvious, and a drink was doubtless one of the things she needed.
He was waiting when she got to the bar, and in a dinner-jacket he had the kind of anonymous distinction that the English have succeeded so well in making fashionable. Only perhaps by someone Irish could the thing be seen through and at the same time admired as an accomplishment. She smiled a greeting and began: “Well, I managed it. I won’t prophesy, but I think I can last out a martini.”
He took her to a table. “Good. It must be very trying to be travelling alone when you don’t feel well.”
“Oh, I haven’t been really ill. Just resting and reading.”
“Lonely, though.”
“No—or rather, if it has been, I’ve enjoyed it. Such a change from one’s normal life—whole days of nothing to do, nobody to argue with, no problems, no appointments, no worries…”
“Do you usually have worries?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” The play that she hadn’t wanted to talk about came in useful now. “I think an actress always worries about her next play even before she knows what it will be.”
“Don’t you know yet?”
She told him about the new comedy by the author of her recent big success; she would read it as soon as she got to New York, it was partly for this she was returning. “I suppose it won’t come on till the fall, so there’ll be plenty of time for rehearsing and polishing up—rewriting this scene and that and the usual mood of wondering whether it’s a masterpiece or a piece of junk.”
“Somehow you don’t sound as if you were looking forward to all that.”
“Oh, I’m used to it.”
“But not looking forward to it this time?”
He had a very quiet, persistent, but kindly way of refusing an answer that evaded.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, and wondered why she was doing it, “I’m too tired right now to be looking forward to anything.”
“You’ll feel better on dry land.” The drinks arrived, which made him add: “Too bad it IS a dry land.”
So they had the usual exchange of views about Prohibition, and that led to general chatter about American affairs, including inevitably the stock market. She told him she had lost money and gave a light-hearted account of her husband’s action in selling at the top in order to finance a film-making enterprise in Germany. “He’ll probably lose it that way too, but how much more worth while.”
“Why should you think he’ll lose it?”
And she had to ask herself the same question. She answered, honestly, after a pause: “I expect it’s my own conceit. You see, this is the first time he made a deal on his own without asking my advice.”
“Would your advice have been against it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what the deal is. And what right have I to pose as business adviser anyway—I haven’t proved myself so smart lately.”
“Nor have a great many business people… Would you like another drink here or at the table?”
She smiled and he asked her why. She said: “It reminded me of what they teach waitresses. Years ago, when we were hard up, I was one for a while, and
whenever anyone ordered pie we were told to ask whether they wanted whipped cream or ice-cream with it. The customer who didn’t want either had to make a stand.”
“I hope you won’t make a stand now.”
“No, I haven’t the strength. Four customers out of five hadn’t. It was good psychology.”
“That’s very interesting.” He gave the order to the waiter, then said: “So you’ve had your hard times?”
“Oh, nothing very dreadful. Before we made our first hit we went through a few bad patches, that’s all.”
“In New York?”
“Yes—and other places. It was in California that I was a waitress. Only for a short time—till Paul found a play.”
“You’ve worked together as a sort of team?”
“Not deliberately—but I suppose it has been, more or less.”
“Until this German enterprise?”
“Oh, well, I couldn’t expect to be in that. I’ve had no picture experience.”
From his silence she knew he realized how stupid the remark was, except as a revelation of things it did not say. Presently she went on: “Don’t let me bore you with all this talk of my own affairs.”
“How could I be bored when I’ve been asking all the questions?”
That was so. She replied: “Yes, but theatre shop can be pretty dull to those outside the business, and I rather imagine you are.”
He nodded. “Yes, my own profession is far less romantic—and popular… I’m in a broker’s office.” The second drinks arrived and he raised his glass. “Well, here’s to the new play. Whatever it turns out to be I shall make a point of seeing you in it.”
“I’ll send you tickets for the first night.”