“What was that?” she asked again. It chilled her a little that Austen should have known so much about Paul without mentioning it till now, and that, in substance, it fitted so neatly with what she had learned from others.
“It may not be true, but the story is that he came to be on pretty good terms with the German camp commandant and actually sold him on the idea that he should be let out on some kind of parole to finish the film, but the plan hadn’t time to go through before the war ended. Of course it was just the way to be tagged a collaborationist, and it certainly was incredibly stupid when the German defeat was already in sight. Anyhow he made enemies by it, and some of them are over here now, so I guess a Senator can be forgiven for dropping him like a hot potato.” He added judicially: “I suspect the real truth is, and has been all along, that he simply wanted to finish that damned film, and to do so he didn’t care whom he trafficked with—the Vichy French or the Germans or the Americans or the Free French or the Devil himself. That would be in character, wouldn’t it?”
“So what do you think will happen?”
“Goodness knows. Trouble for him of one kind or another, but that won’t be anything new in his experience. And he usually falls on his feet, doesn’t he?”
There were visitors waiting for them at the house, and the subject of Paul was not resumed when they were alone again. Carey had expected it would be, if only to clear up one point—should she answer Paul’s wire in the negative or merely ignore it? She was certain the matter must have occurred to Austen, and the fact that he did not mention it seemed to indicate that he was deliberately leaving her to do whichever she wished or thought best. She did what she thought he would have preferred—she sent no answer at all, and she somehow knew that he knew and was grateful for her decision. They had reached that point in understanding of each other. Meanwhile Austen was having his first real vacation for years, and as Carey was not in a play and had no plans for one, she could share his enjoyment of it. Norris was in Germany, having come through the invasion campaigns without a scratch and with a certain amount of credit. At a world-moment heavy with destiny Carey and Austen could both feel that their own personal case had been dealt with leniently, so that they could now become spectators for a breathing spell. Every morning Austen watched the tractors and drag-chains at work on his waste-land and at lunch reported progress as if it were symbolically important in their lives, and almost every evening they listened to the radio like a good bourgeois couple and went to bed early. And on his sixty-first birthday they had the liveliest week-end party they could assemble.
* * * * *
One afternoon in October the first really cold spell hit New York City and Carey decided not to go out. She sat by the fire in the library, reading a novel, half dozing, and catching the muted sounds of wind and traffic that made more satisfying the sanctuary of the room. Richards, back after demobilization, was taking his day off. Towards four o’clock she heard the front door bell; after a pause it rang again, and then again, so she got up to find out what was happening. By the time she reached the hall Flossie was at the door, closing it on someone from whom she had taken a card. Had she put it on the tray as usual Carey would have made no comment, but she saw her slip it into her pocket, and this stirred a mild curiosity. “Who was that, Flossie?”
“Oh, nobody, ma’am.”
“Let me see the card.”
Flossie delivered it with a hesitation that just fell short of intransigence. She was an elderly Scotswoman, unsuitably named, but of intimidating character and loyalty—a breed of domestic rapidly becoming extinct, Austen had sometimes said, with more regret than Carey could muster. Carey stared now at the card, then hurried across the hall. There was a built-out porch with side windows that gave views along the street in both directions; she could see a man walking slowly, aided by a stick, towards Lexington. She turned back to Flossie.
“Will you please go after Mr. Saffron and bring him back here?”
“I told him you weren’t in, ma’am.”
“But I AM in.”
“I told him what Mr. Bond said to tell him.”
“Mr. Bond? I don’t understand…”
“He told Richards if ever a Mr. Saffron called he was to say you weren’t in.”
(_A_ Mr. Saffron—as if the woman didn’t know who he was.)
“Flossie, whatever Mr. Bond said, I’m sure he’d wish you to do what I ask. So will you please bring Mr. Saffron into the library… He seems to be lame, so you won’t have to run to catch him up.”
A moment later Paul was ushered in, leaning on his stick. He looked old, but his face was ruddy red, and he had a beaming smile for her as he crossed the room. “Paul!” she exclaimed, waiting for Flossie to leave as if nothing else could be said till they were alone. But after the door closed she could not think of anything to say at all. Her chief emotion was one that had been mounting ever since the incident in the hall—anger, resentment, and a kind of helpless opposition to the all-seeing and all-knowing surveillance that Austen had put around her. Doubtless his motives were of the best, but she knew that if she tried to defend him to herself she would find the whole situation sheerly intolerable, the more so as it affected Flossie and Richards. It was a peculiar thing (and she had often reflected on it) that Austen could win the utmost allegiance of servants and employees—or was it because of his frightening skill in choosing the kind from whom such allegiance was obtainable? But even that did not fully explain why it was not offered to her. Maybe because she valued it less, and freedom more. All this was in her mind as she took Paul’s hand.
“Well, Carey, my dear…” He bowed over her finger-tips, a little shakily, then stood with his back to the fire. “Excuse me for toasting my behind —if I don’t get warm before I sit down, you’ll never get me up again… Arthritis.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“You know what happened? They put me in an internment camp. No proper heating—we shivered every winter for months on end. But I’m getting treatment now… I’m glad I took another chance on catching you in.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Twice. What’s the matter with that old family retainer of yours?”
“She makes mistakes.”
“I’d cast her for Grace Poole in Jane Eyre—well, no, she’s too much the type. And your butler, who told me you were out, the last time —a pinchbeck Malvolio. Remember the drunken one we had at Mapledurham? There’s something quite fascinating about English butlers. One of the end products of our civilization. Some time I’d like to make a picture in which God is a butler.”
“Hardly box-office, Paul.”
“Ah, how necessary that is! That’s why I came to see you. I’m getting a bit desperate.”
“Desperate?”
He nodded, then moved from the fire and sat carefully in an armchair. She studied him with an effort of concentration, ticking off in her mind the many changes which were not, in the aggregate, so very much—hair wilder and completely grey, the bones of the face more high-lighted, the eyes brighter than ever, the chin jutting below the lower lip, the hands red-veined and nervous. He could have been, as the journalist had said, at least in his sixties; one might also have guessed that he had lost much weight and was beginning to put a little of it back, but into a seemingly shrunken frame. Yet all in all he looked rather well, with something of an old man’s polished-apple health.
“I’m broke, Carey, and I want a job.”
She smiled. “I don’t know about the job, but I can give you some money.”
“No, I want a lot of money—enough to work with. I have an idea for a picture—box-office and also great… You know those sons of bitches in France won’t have me back to finish the last one? Won’t even let me into the country! The lies they spread—that I was pro-German, that I offered to make Nazi films for Goebbels—not a word of truth in any of it—not a word!”
“I’m very glad to hear that.”
“But they won’t believ
e me. They CHOOSE not to believe me.” He launched into a long account of his martyrdom, from which he emerged as his own hero and the victim of malicious conspiracy and calculated persecution. He had always had a tendency to consider himself either ill-fated or ill-treated —accepting good fortune as no less than his deserts, and misfortune as some species of deliberate evil planned against him. Carey was surprised to find herself regarding him dispassionately, noting the progress of his obsession; yet at the same time she felt a very simple sympathy. She tried to imagine what it could have been like for him to spend over three years behind barbed wire—the merely physical hardships—confinement, cold, bad food, poor medical care. Oddly, perhaps, it was not of these that he made most complaint—on the contrary, he referred to them almost derisively, and his recurrent phrase ‘that damned camp’ was in the mood he might have inveighed against ‘that damned waiter’ in a restaurant, or a neighbour’s ‘damned radio’. He even joked about his loss of forty pounds in weight (at one time), and the outdoor work in rain and cold that had given him arthritis. From what she could gather the conditions at the camp had been rough, but not vicious; there had been misery rather than cruelty, and the camp commandant seemed to have been merely a stupid martinet. Paul was contemptuous of him—“a man who broke his word to me on every possible occasion”. (This, in view of their relative positions, seemed to Carey revealing enough.) But his bitterest grudges were against fellow-inmates who, he said, had spread poison about him after the general release, so that he was now persona non grata with the French; and on a special pinnacle of detestation there was a certain Frenchman, formerly his own assistant director, who was now in charge of the company that had been making the Job film. “You can guess why HE doesn’t want me back. A second-rater. If HE finishes the film, it’ll turn into a glorified floor show—that’s his type of mind—drilling a few dancing girls and he calls it direction…”
He went on till at length Carey interrupted: “There doesn’t seem much you can do about it, Paul, now you’re here. And you ought to be glad you’re here —I’ll bet there are thousands in Europe today who’d change places with you.”
“Okay then, so I’m here. What do I care where I am, after all? I can work any place. But it costs more here. I want a million dollars.”
She smiled again. “That’s a nice round figure.”
“I’m serious.”
“But you don’t seriously think I can write you a cheque for it?”
“I haven’t asked you for money at all. I’ve merely said I’m broke and I want a job.”
“Then let’s be practical. I’d like to help you, but what’s really in your mind? That I should ask my husband?”
“Not if you’re going to talk to him about HELPING me. Why SHOULD he help me? I’m offering something—something that ought to appeal to him as a business man.”
“I doubt if it would.”
“You mean he isn’t tempted by eighty or a hundred per cent on an investment? Several of my pictures have made it—he can have the figures if he wants—”
“Paul… quite apart from all that, doesn’t it occur to you he might not want to do business with you at all?”
“I never met a rich man who wasn’t ambitious to make himself richer. Maybe he’s the exception.”
“Maybe he is. He certainly doesn’t put money before EVERY other consideration. You don’t know him.”
“I don’t want to. There’s nothing personal in any of this. I ask nothing for myself except employment for my brain, the pride and pleasure of artistic creation, and a pittance to live on.”
She laughed, partly because she knew what Paul’s idea of a pittance was, but chiefly because she was already transferring some of her indignation from Austen to Paul, and the load being thus more equally distributed made it feel less of a load altogether. She said: “Look, Paul, your affairs are no longer anything to do with me, so this is a free gift of advice. Get off that high horse and don’t be so arrogant. Because, if you can bear the truth, you’re not quite great enough to get away with it—you aren’t a Bernard Shaw or a Toscanini—”
“In my own field I am.”
He said that with the kind of simplicity that baffled argument even if it did not carry conviction.
“Well, anyhow, till the world admits you are—”
“Till then I must be on my best behaviour—or perhaps on my knees… is that it? And if I don’t—or won’t—what’s the alternative? Starvation? Even in that damned camp I didn’t have to BEG for a crust of bread.”
“Oh, stop talking nonsense—why must you dramatize everything? You’re not going to starve. But you’re probably not going to get a million dollars either… In the meantime, have some tea.”
“Thank you.”
She rang the bell. “And put your health first. It’s more important than any other plans you have. Is the treatment you’re taking for arthritis doing you good?”
“Yes, thank heaven.”
“I wish you’d let me pay for it… please, Paul, let me do that.”
“I would, but it doesn’t cost anything.”
“What?”
“It’s free—at the hospital. If I had some wretched little job bringing in a few dollars a week they’d put me in chains to make me pay, but as I haven’t a cent I get it for nothing. Isn’t that wonderful? Only the rich and the broke have a chance these days—the in-betweens are just out of luck.”
“But how do you LIVE? WHERE do you live? Are you in New York?”
He gave her an address.
“How do you manage without money?”
He grinned. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? I borrow where I can and run up bills. Didn’t you and I do that once? Don’t you remember?”
“But eventually, Paul…”
“Yes, I know. It’s a problem. After all, I’m a citizen, they can’t intern me here. I’m perfectly free to rob a bank, or hitch-hike to Florida, or panhandle on Forty-Second Street.”
She went to a desk and quickly wrote out a cheque for a thousand dollars while he went on talking. He talked wildly, extravagantly, and she only half listened. Then she came back and placed the folded cheque in the side-pocket of his coat.
“Thank you very much,” he said casually, without looking at it, but not ungraciously.
“I’m afraid it’s only a small fraction of what you asked.”
And he began to chuckle. “Who gets all he wants in this world, Carey? Perhaps YOU do… You’ve had most things. Fame, fortune, health… How’s that boy you once talked about—Norris, wasn’t that the name? Of course, you can guess what reminded me of him. I was counting the things you’d had, and I suddenly thought of the one thing you haven’t had… children of your own. D’you find Norris a good substitute?”
“I don’t find him a substitute at all. He’s in Germany now. It’s over a year since I saw him, but he came through it all, that’s the main thing… Here’s tea.”
She had seen the door opening, but it wasn’t Flossie carrying the tray. It was Austen. She felt a sudden constriction of the heart that made her quite breathless for a moment. Paul in the chair was invisible to Austen as he crossed the room, and by the time the two men confronted each other she was standing between them, vaguely smiling and gasping out an introduction. Austen seemed so little surprised that she guessed he had been told that Paul was there, and Paul, trying to rise with the aid of his stick, eased the situation by his infirmity. Austen gestured him not to get up, shook hands with him, and made some comment to Carey about the weather. She responded, and from then on, so far as she was concerned, it was all acting. Amidst the first exchanges of civilities Flossie entered with the tea-things, and this provided a whole ritual of movement while the two men conversed. Austen was reserved, but formally polite. Paul, to her relief, and presently to her slight amusement, turned on the charm. Never, she felt sure, had he been more genial. The things he did not mention at all were perfectly chosen— films, money, and his own personal affairs; while t
he topics that did inevitably crop up—post-war Europe and the general state of the world —were touched upon by him in a mood of urbane wistfulness that (Carey could see) made its own peculiar appeal to Austen. She thought: But for me these two men could be friends—for about five minutes, or until Paul decided it was too much of an effort. But as a spectacle it was fascinating —to see him feeling his way into Austen’s personality as if it were a part in a play that had to be interpreted. The climax came when Paul, having been gently pessimistic about the future of western civilization, quoted from a speech made by Serge Diaghileff in 1905: ”’… We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing- up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away. That is why, without fear or misgiving, I raise my glass to the ruined walls of the enchanted palaces, as well as to the new commandments of a new aesthetic. The only wish that I, an incorrigible sensualist, can express, is that the forthcoming struggle should not damage the amenities of life, and that the death should be as beautiful and as illuminating as the resurrection.’”
“All that from Diaghileff?” Austen said, when Paul made a pause.
“Yes. At a dinner in St. Petersburg.”
“Far-seeing.”
“Diaghileff was a far-seeing man.”
“You knew him?”