“It’s a long story, Norris—too long to tell during a theatre interval.”
“You were married in Dublin, weren’t you, to your first husband?”
“No, not in Dublin—in London.”
“You don’t mind talking about him, do you?”
“Of course not.” After all, it was Austen who would not talk about him any more, who had doubtless never told Norris of his existence, though it was clearly impossible to keep the boy always in ignorance of such a plain fact.
“Is he alive?”
“Oh yes. We were divorced.”
“I knew that. Dunne told me. But that’s about all I do know. What sort of a person was he?”
She smiled, sampling the enormity of the question. Then she said, with far greater ease than she could have anticipated: “He was… IS, I mean… a very clever man… quite brilliant. He directed plays—I believe that’s what he’s still doing. That and motion pictures.”
Norris pricked up his ears, for he was a patron of the screen far more consistently than of the stage. “What’s his name?”
“Paul Saffron.” She saw no reason not to tell him, but more pressingly she could not think of any sensible way to evade the question. Yet she knew it would have displeased Austen.
“PAUL SAFFRON?… Oh, you mean those German pictures—Ohne die Wahrheit and Donnergepolter… Wonderful!… I saw them at a little theatre on Ninety-Fifth Street—there weren’t even any English titles dubbed in, but you could understand without knowing the language.”
“I didn’t know you’d ever seen them, Norris. You never mentioned it.”
“It was last Easter, just before you and father came back from Florida. I’m glad now I didn’t happen to mention it.”
“Oh?”
“Well, father wouldn’t have liked it, I’m certain.”
Had he gained THAT impression from Dunne? Or by intuition? She was relieved when the curtain rose on the second item of the one-acter programme —Lady Gregory’s Workhouse Ward, an old favourite and so ineluctably Irish that it could hardly survive a journey across the Channel, much less the Atlantic. Norris seemed to enjoy it to the full, but at the next interval he plunged immediately into a renewal of the earlier conversation. “Carey… where does Paul Saffron live?”
“I don’t know exactly. On the Continent somewhere.”
“Is he foreign? Is it Saffron?” He gave the word a French pronunciation.
“No—American. He was born in America.”
“I’d certainly like to meet him some day.”
To hear him say that gave her a shock which only in retrospect she found tantalizingly pleasant. She said: “You might, possibly, if you travel abroad later on, though I’d have to warn you against him.” And then, realizing how he might misunderstand unless she said more, she continued hastily: “I mean —he’d probably be rude to you if you didn’t have any particular reason to see him.”
“But if I said you were married to my father, wouldn’t that be a reason?”
“Oh, my goodness, I don’t know.”
“You think he’d be mad at ME? After all, I couldn’t help it even if you WERE my mother—and you’re not.” He went on, thoughtfully: “I’ll bet he’d be interested in me on account of you… What broke up your marriage with him?”
Carey felt herself flushing deeply; this was going too far, no matter how preordained it was that he must eventually explore and chart the situation. She contrived a laugh as she said: “I can’t discuss it, Norris. I’m sorry.”
“You think I oughtn’t to know things like that till I’m older?”
“Maybe—and if you WERE older you wouldn’t ask. Now please let’s talk of something else.”
“Sure. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset at all, darling, but you mustn’t ask any more personal questions of that kind.”
As if to signify acceptance of her taboo he changed the subject abruptly by saying: “It’s odd, isn’t it, that I’ve never seen you act. Were you very good at it?”
“What?” She hadn’t been listening.
He repeated the question, adding: “Is THAT too personal, too?”
“Not a bit. It’s just hard to answer except by a plain no. I wasn’t VERY good… that is, I wasn’t a Bernhardt or a Duse. But I must have been FAIRLY good, or I wouldn’t have been able to take leading parts on Broadway.”
“With your name in electric lights?”
“Oh yes.”
Clearly he was impressed by that. He mused after a pause: “I’ve often wondered if people like them—Bernhardt and Duse—would disappoint us if we could see them today. There’s no way of knowing, exactly, is there? It’s different with an old film—you can make allowances if the print’s worn or the style’s out of date—the acting still comes through. But great stage actors—after they’re dead, how CAN you tell what they were like?”
“It’s true we can’t judge them ourselves, Norris, but we can read what people thought at the time—critics and others who wrote about them. We know from all that how good they must have been.”
“Just as YOU must have been.”
“Except that I was never in their class at all. And I’m not dead yet either.”
“It’s the same kind of argument, though. Circumstantial evidence… I still wish I’d seen you, Carey.”
She laughed. “Maybe you will, one of these days. We’ll get up a play some week-end at the farm. The Rushmores would love it, I know.”
“Oh, amateurs,” he said, not contemptuously, but with the most crushing disinterest. She did not wish to approve such an attitude, yet she could not bring herself to dispute it. She was relieved again when the curtain rose on the third and final item. It did not hold her, perhaps because it was a recently written playlet that evoked no memories—or perhaps because of the cross-examination she seemed barely to have survived. It WAS odd, though, that Norris had never seen her on the stage, so that he could not know that part of her which was professional and accomplished. Her life since marrying Austen had been too peaceful to provide acting moments off-stage, and even if it hadn’t been, she was probably too proficient to be suspected of them. So she was ruefully sure he had no idea how good she was; and she had a sudden vision of him, amazed and starry-eyed, bursting into her dressing-room after a triumphant opening night… ‘Oh, Carey, you were WONDERFUL!’… the word he had used about Paul’s films.
And yet, when she came to think about it, she did act occasionally— even with Austen. Sometimes, when she was the gracious hostess at a dinner-party, the thought had come that she was playing the role of his wife —not INSTEAD of being it, but in addition; so that he was getting double service. But Norris, she knew, got only single service—she never played any role with him, if only because she did not know what it would be. Stepmother? The word seemed as unfitting as any she could think of. That there was deep friendship between them she was certain, a warmth that had helped her reclaim him from the category of problem child. Or rather, she had tried to make Austen see the problem as the larger one of himself, herself, and the world.
And so in Dublin with Norris, and without Austen, she was thoroughly enjoying herself. One day they took the Terenure tram and walked past the semi-detached villa where James Fitzroy had learned his Gaelic to the last. Another day they visited Kingstown and climbed the hill to her great-uncle’s old house; he had died only a few years before, and a new house built close by obscured the view of the harbour on which he had so often trained binoculars. She remembered the spot (to within a dozen yards) where she had first mistaken Paul for an advancing gunman… only fourteen years ago, yet it seemed, and was, in another age, for by now the gunmen were in office and grown respectable—a typical Irish progression. Even the Abbey Theatre had followed it, becoming by now a rather conservative institution whose leading personnel had mostly left for the fleshpots of America, and in which the early plays of O’Casey were exhibited from time to time like upheld relics of an uproari
ous past. She felt not only a stranger in Dublin but a stranger to the kind of city it had become, and this made her feel a stranger to the kind of girl she had once been herself—not merely innocent, then, of what the world was about, but ignorant of the fact that the truth was not to be discovered. As the wife of a rich American she was doubtless now envied, and as a beautiful woman she could be admired, but as an Irishwoman she had been suspect from the moment the porters at the Shelbourne saw her Hartmann luggage and knew she would throw half-crowns about like sixpences. She was aware of all this, but it was Norris who gave it meaning. He, with his American birth, background, and accent, was REAL; and she noticed also that he was far less shy than in his own country. It was as if being a foreigner gave him greater confidence to be himself.
He kept his word by asking no more personal questions (that is, about her previous marriage), but he often skirted the subject, and sometimes her unsatisfactory answers must have told him he had touched it. As when, for instance, he probed her acting career in Dublin—what parts she had played, how she had become successful, had it been easy or hard, sudden or gradual. She was deliberately vague, until he sensed she was concealing something; he then said: “Don’t you like to look back?”
“I don’t mind, Norris. Why should I?”
“I just thought you might have some regrets.”
“Darling, if you only knew how little I did here to have any regrets about. They only gave me the smallest parts.” She hoped the evasion would satisfy him, but of course it failed to.
“That wasn’t what I thought you might regret. It was the idea of giving it all up—later—after you’d been a success. I wondered if coming back here and thinking about it might make you wish you hadn’t.”
“Oh no. I was GLAD to give it up—you’ve no idea how exhausting the theatre can be, even if you are successful. Perhaps ESPECIALLY if you’re successful. Anyhow, I’ve been very happy since, and if I ever wanted to, I dare say I could go back.” She added mischievously: “Would it give you a thrill if I did?”
“ME? You bet. But not father.”
“I didn’t ever promise I wouldn’t go back.”
“All the same, he doesn’t expect you to.”
“That wouldn’t matter, if I wanted to do it.”
Then she checked herself, a little appalled. She wasn’t sure she had spoken the truth, but even if she had, it was hardly a thing to have confided in Norris. She must not let this vacation, with all its chances, generate a conspiracy between the two of them against Austen. She went on hastily: “Of course I don’t really mean that. It WOULD matter, but I’m sure if I wanted to do it your father would wish me to.”
To which Norris retorted derisively: “Why don’t you try him one of these days and see? Tell him Hollywood’s offered you a big contract to star in a film.”
“HOLLYWOOD? Why should I say that?”
“Well, it COULD happen, couldn’t it? Didn’t they ever go after you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Why did you turn them down?”
“Oh, there were many reasons—so many I can’t even remember them all.”
He said judicially: “You know, Carey, I think you’d be good on the screen. You’re so beautiful—you’d be a joy to photograph.”
“Well, thanks. I love compliments.”
He went on, still judicially: “And also, as you said, you aren’t one of the VERY great actresses. In films you don’t have to be… No, I mean it —I’m not kidding. I know something about films—at school we have a society to study them and I’m president of it. I’d like to direct films some day. That’s why I’m such an admirer of—of Paul Saffron…” He looked embarrassed to have mentioned the name, as if he felt it might constitute a breach of the agreement. “Anyway, what I said is true—I do think you’d be a success in films. You have the face and the voice and the personality.”
“Plus a slight knowledge of acting which I could forget if I found it a nuisance… Yes, I dare say you’d make a good director.”
“Oh? Why?”
“You’ve already learned how to flatter a woman one minute and squash her the next, so that she doesn’t know whether she’s in heaven or the doghouse.”
“Is that what they do?”
“Some do.”
We’re still talking about Paul, she reflected, and Norris guesses it… She took the boy’s arm (they were walking along O’Connell Street near the Pillar) and said: “Let’s go to a movie, if you’re so keen on them.” It wasn’t a specially good one, but he responded excitedly as to ice-cream, animals in a zoo, a catchy song, or any of a dozen other simple enjoyments. He was old for his age, perhaps, but there was also a sense in which he was young for his brains. Nor did she take too seriously his announcement that he would like to be a movie director. There was already a long list of trades and professions, from lion-taming to private detection, that he had declared himself in favour of.
A few days later they drove north to Belfast and the Giant’s Causeway, then crossed to Scotland and toured the Highlands. By this time Austen had finished his European business trips and was waiting for them to join him in London. They had an enjoyable week there, sightseeing and going to theatres, but perhaps the most interesting event was again one in which Austen had no part. It was during a day he had reserved for business appointments in the City; Carey and Norris were strolling along Oxford Street when a poster faced them outside a small cinema—it was of a youth and a girl, hand in hand, against an idyllic background of forest. Over it was the title in large type Passion Flower, and in brackets under it in small type: Erste Freundschaft. Clearly the English exhibitors had felt themselves able to improve on a literal translation. To Norris, however, the two titles offered more than a joke; he exclaimed, tugging at Carey’s arm: “It’s one of Paul’s pictures… YOUR Paul… Oh, we MUST see it… Carey, don’t you want to?”
She didn’t know whether she wanted to or not. Several times, in New York, she had seen films that Paul had made, and had enjoyed them under difficulties, aware that Austen would have been unhappy had he known about it, and half-conscious of guilt because of that. She wondered how she had happened to miss Erste Freundschaft: maybe that was the year they had spent so little time in New York. Norris was chattering on: “It’s probably our only chance, with father not with us—an old picture too—we mightn’t ever catch it anywhere else… Carey, even if you don’t want to see it, may I? Do you mind? I’ll be back at the hotel by five…”
She was staring at a name in even smaller type on the poster— “Wanda Hessely”.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
The girl at the box-office told them, with complete lack of enthusiasm, that the ‘big picture’ had been on about ten minutes. They went inside. It was an old-fashioned building dating from the early days of films— very oblong, with a steep slope and bare walls. Not more than forty or fifty people were scattered about the middle. Carey and Norris found seats in an empty row. The print was old and flickered badly. The occasional English dialogue, flashed on the screen on top of the picture, was often absurd and always distracting. The sound track was worn, so that both voices and music sounded metallic. Twice during the performance the film broke and there were moments of dark silence that fidgeted everybody. And yet, against all these disadvantages, a vivid beauty was alive on the screen and somehow communicated itself, not only to Carey and Norris but to the small English audience who might well, after seeing the posters, have expected something very different.
For Erste Freundschaft was, in essence, nothing but a story of first love, but portrayed with such warmth and tenderness that its simplicity was almost disguised. There was no need for the overprinted English dialogue; one almost felt there was no pressing need for the German voices even if one had understood German. It was really (as Norris acutely remarked afterwards) a silent picture with the kind of accessory use for sound that silent pictures had had—no more.
Carey was glad the theatre was darke
r than most, for the film moved her in places, not so much to tears as to a helpless acquiescence that would have made her speechless had Norris offered any comment, but he did not; he seemed as enthralled as she was, though of course less personally. For he did not know she had met Wanda Hessely; and, come to think of it, the picture must have been made only a short time after that meeting at Interlaken. Carey’s acquiescence was partly with Paul’s opinion of Wanda—that she WAS a great actress, great enough to weave her personal beauty into the total spell of the picture; or perhaps this was Paul’s achievement. But it was when she came to thinking about Paul himself that acquiescence became most helpless yet also puzzled; for how had he ever managed to tell such a story? The man who made this picture is a man who understands love, she would have thought, had she not once been Paul’s wife. Yet the impact of what she had seen on the screen was so great that eventually she was thinking: he DOES understand, or did, in his own world, however far that has come to be from mine.
When they left the cinema dusk was falling, and neither she nor Norris had much to say during the short taxi ride to the hotel. She wondered whether he was old enough not to have found the theme sentimental. He had been so enthusiastic over the other Saffron pictures; it would be ironic if this one had pleased him less.