“Not then, of course. But during the early ‘twenties, when I was still young and impressionable and taking my first trip abroad, I had the nerve to write to him and he was gracious enough to meet me at a Montmartre café. How naďve he must have thought my ideas! Yet he listened, and discussed them, and gave me just the few words of encouragement I then needed.”
It made a winsome picture—the modest youth from Iowa at the feet of the world-weary Gamaliel in Paris, and the only thing amiss with it, Carey suspected, was that it had probably happened very differently, if at all.
There followed more anecdotes, delightfully told, yet as they continued Carey began to feel some strain in her enjoyment of the performance, as if she were watching the try-out of a new kind of trapeze act. After more cups of tea and another half-hour of chatter she was really quite glad when Paul rose to go. He shook hands with her, and Austen took him out to the hall. A moment later Austen returned. He went to the sideboard and mixed himself a whisky and soda. By that time Flossie was clearing away the tea-things and drawing the curtains.
“Good talker,” Austen commented when they were alone. “Do you think he made all that up about Diaghileff?”
She knew then that the assessments had not been all on one side. “The speech? He might have, though he seemed to know it by heart.”
“I must see if I can check on it. Really quite worth remembering.”
“Paul or the quotation?”
He smiled. “I must admit I hadn’t imagined him quite so affable.”
She said: “Yes, nobody can be more charming than Paul when he chooses.”
“So he chose to be just now?”
“Evidently… He’s broke, he says, and wants work. In films.”
“He won’t find it easy to get.”
“No? Because he’s made enemies?”
“Partly. I don’t think Hollywood will bid very high for his services.”
“Oh, Hollywood…”
“Well, where else can he try? There’s no other place over here.”
“What he’d really like is to make a film of his own—maybe IN Hollywood, but independently. He did that in Europe, and apparently he had some big successes. Commercial successes.”
“I know he did, but the system’s different over there—or was, before the war. Anyhow, his European reputation doesn’t count at the American box-office, and for four years he’s been out of touch with everything.”
“You seem to know a good deal about the film business.”
“Only financially. My little venture with Everyman taught me a few things.”
“I can understand it taught you not to trust Paul.”
“Well, no, not exactly. The circumstances were unusual… I wouldn’t generalize from that one experience. He’s a slippery customer, but not, I’d say, from any financial dishonesty—it’s his temperament.”
“That’s very reasonable of you, Austen. If only HE were as reasonable… but he isn’t. If he had been he wouldn’t have had to lose those four years.”
“Yes, that was a pity. Four years is long enough for most people to forget and be forgotten.”
“So you think if he wanted to make a picture now he wouldn’t find anyone to back him?”
“You mean a personal corporation with a bank putting up the money?”
“I—I don’t know. Is that the way it would be done?”
“If it COULD be done. But I don’t think there’s a chance. Of course, he might interest one of the big studios in whatever picture idea he has. But he’d have to sell it for what they’d offer, and if they employed him on the job he couldn’t expect a big salary.”
“I think he wants authority—control—more than money.”
“Unfortunately what he wants isn’t likely to matter much.”
“That seems hard, when he has such abilities. Do you have influence with any of the studios?”
“Not to a point where I could help a man who asks for the moon. There are only a handful of people in Hollywood who have real authority and control —it’s a rare thing there.”
“But you COULD find him a job—a subordinate job—if he were satisfied with that?”
“It’s possible. One of the smaller studios has connections with some banking people I know. That might work if I cared to try it.”
“If you cared to, naturally. And I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. There’s no reason why you should raise a finger for him.”
“It isn’t that, Carey. I’d help him if he were helpable. But if his sights are too high—ridiculously high, what can anyone do? And incidentally, I’d rather you weren’t mixed up in this at all. He and I have now met, and I’m not sorry that happened, because he can contact me again, directly, if ever he wants.”
“And you WOULD help him then?”
“If he were in a mood to take what he could get I’d certainly put in a word.”
“That’s reasonable, Austen,” she said again. “Very reasonable.”
But the word ‘reasonable’ was so dubious to her that she could hardly speak it without catching an ironic sound in her own voice. Suddenly she noticed that his face was pale and that he was taking, unusually for him at that time of day, an extra drink.
They did not discuss Paul again at dinner, nor during the days that followed, and the longer he was not mentioned the harder it became for her to broach the subject, though she often wanted to. For there were many things she was anxious to know—whether, for instance, Paul had followed up his meeting with Austen by making any direct request for help. And there was the disquieting possibility that he might have written to her, or telephoned, or even called at the house again, and that on Austen’s instructions some message had been intercepted. More than once she decided to take up with Austen this matter of the orders he had given to the servants, but each time when the chance came she said nothing, unwilling to start an argument that might make them both unhappy.
She was conscious, since the meeting with Paul, that some strain was on her life with Austen—probably nothing serious or lasting, just a faint shadow on the happiness she had so long enjoyed.
Then they had news of Norris that took all other things out of their minds.
* * * * *
Norris, having driven an ambulance for four years and in two continents without serious mishap, drove a jeep into the Rhine on a dark night six months after the war in Europe was over. He was nearly drowned and had injuries besides. At first these were thought to be severe, but just when Austen was arranging to fly to a hospital at Coblenz, wires he had already pulled began to operate and Norris was flown across the Atlantic. He arrived at LaGuardia on a December morning, Carey and his father meeting him. To their relief he could walk, the damage being mainly to one arm, and within a week (again thanks to Austen’s intervention which he never discovered) he was mustered out and convalescing at the farm.
But he failed to recover quickly to normal, whatever normal was, and it was also clear that either the accident or the cumulative experience of war had (to use another of the clichés) ‘done something’ to him. WHAT was the problem.
There was certainly a development from the boy to the man, yet also from the boy who had been precocious for his age to a man who, in a way that was rarely but acutely discernible, seemed to have held on to some delicate boyishness as healing aid to a troubled spirit. The doctors talked of long-deferred fatigue which the car smash and the half-drowning had unloosed; as a short-range diagnosis it doubtless fitted the symptoms, which were an excitability alternating with long periods of lethargy during which he did not seem interested in either events or people. But perhaps he was, in some way of his own. He read a good deal, and Carey was surprised to notice that many of the books were solid stuff—history, anthropology, religion, mysticism. Fortunately he had the desire for rest, which was what he most needed, and his old hostility to his father was less evident, as if it were part of an energy he no longer possessed. To Austen this dubious change brought great joy. H
e spent hours with Norris, talking, reading, listening to the radio, often merely sitting silently in an opposite armchair while Norris dozed; and when business took him to New York he urged Carey not to leave the boy alone too much, though she herself did not think Norris minded being alone. It was certainly quiet at the farm while Austen was away, sometimes for several days during mid-week. Mrs. Grainger, whom Carey liked, did the cooking, and there was no fuss or commotion—none of the well-oiled superfluousness of the routine when Austen brought the other servants along. Carey helped Mrs. Grainger with the house-work, and Norris, using his uninjured arm, seemed to like doing small chores on his own. If he did not speak for hours on end, Carey did not bother him, but if he felt inclined for chatter, or nonsense, or even serious conversation, she was always ready. Once she found him reading Thoreau, about whom he commented: “I don’t think I’d have liked this fellow personally, but I admire his pose. Nobody ever did it better.”
“You mean the simple life—Walden Pond? Don’t you think he was sincere?”
“Up to a point. But to enjoy the simple life you really ought to be simple, whereas to write so well about it you have to be complicated. I’ve a feeling Thoreau enjoyed it chiefly because he liked to write about it.”
“Why don’t you work up that idea into a critical article?”
“Trying to find me some occupational therapy? That’s what they call it in the hospitals.”
“Of course not. I just thought it sounded an interesting idea. For the Atlantic or Harper’s, if it turned out well enough.”
“I doubt if it would… If I had any talent, I think I’d rather paint than write.”
“How do you know you haven’t any?”
“That’s the come-on for all the racket schools.”
“I know, but if you could get any fun out of it, why not try?”
She bought him paints, easel, canvases, and a book of technical instruction, and to her pleasure he found an interest that at times almost amounted to enthusiasm. If there were sun she would carry his equipment to some sheltered spot outdoors, and on bad-weather days he did still-lifes in one room or another. He had talent, but not much, as he soon became ruefully aware. Sometimes, and also for nothing but fun, Carey painted with him, the same scene or model, and her effort was usually better than his, but still not in any way remarkable.
“A couple of amateurs,” he commented. “How you’d despise anyone on our level in the theatre!”
“Probably. One’s always intolerant of the non-professional in one’s own profession.”
“You still feel acting is that—to you?”
“I expect I always shall.”
“Any new play in prospect?”
“Not at present.”
“Looking for one?”
“Not particularly. I think I need a rest almost as much as you do.”
“Father never really liked you being in plays, did he?”
“I wouldn’t say he was keen on it, but during the war he didn’t seem to mind.”
“Maybe he counted it a sort of war work.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps he thought the war was an excuse for anything.”
“Well, it just about was.”
They went on putting finishing touches to their canvases. They had chosen a grouping of fruit and bottles on a tray beside a window, but the lighting and reflections were beyond their skill and the result was only middling. They knew that, yet they kept on, as if impelled by a desire more tolerable because the whole thing so clearly did not matter.
“We’re pretty hopeless,” she said seriously, studying her own attempt and assuming his was as bad.
“But it’s quite as sensible,” he answered, between brush-strokes, “as playing bridge.”
“I hope so, because I do that badly too, and your father’s so good. I always envy him at parties.”
“But he doesn’t dance and you dance beautifully.”
“So do you.”
“I’ll dance with you when my arm’s better.”
“Good.”
And after a pause: “By the way… did they ever give any details about the accident?”
“YOUR accident? THEY?”
“Anybody.”
“No—at least I never heard.”
“Well, it’s not much of a story. I was driving a girl home after a dance. She was killed.”
“Oh, Norris… I didn’t have any idea of that.” She put down her brushes and he did also, neither of them giving another look to model or canvas. She began to tidy up, then. “That’s dreadful… Were you… were you very fond of her?”
“Not a bit. I’d never met her till that evening. I was taking her home because my friend, who’d been with her, had passed out. I hadn’t had any drinks myself and the whole evening was simply a bore. We were driving slowly when a truck came at us round a corner. I had to swerve and we skidded. The road ran along the river-bank. That’s all. But I thought I’d tell you in case you’d heard about the girl and might think there was some romance in it.” He paused, as if waiting for comment; when she made none, he continued: “Yet it affected me a good deal—I think more so in some ways than if I’d known and liked her. And the thing itself was worse than war, if you can imagine what I mean, because killing is what wars are for and you half expect it all the time. Just as you somehow expect girls to be pretty… She wasn’t, poor thing. But her family owned vineyards, and, if you dated her, they’d give you bottles of wine. Their whole dream, and the girl’s too, was that some G.I. would marry her and take her to America. My pal was after the wine. But for that she’d have been alive today and I’d have been—I suppose —still over there.”
She saw his face twitching with some kind of agitation and thought he had probably done well to tell her, as the first step towards forgetfulness. She said, as she began cleaning the brushes: “I’m glad you told me, Norris… I hope it’s fine tomorrow—we might try the barn, or if it’s too cold to paint, we could do a quick sketch.”
But it rained the next day and the skies were so dark that it was hardly worth while to sketch or paint anywhere; and the day after that they returned to New York for the Christmas season. Austen was waiting for them, happy over the boy’s progress to health and ready to give Carey full credit for the painting experiment. Norris seemed fairly happy also, or at least indifferent to where he was taken. Of the three, the only sufferer was Carey, for whom the return was to the secret surveillance which she had not yet complained of to Austen, and could not discuss with anyone else. She was certain now that Richards had Austen’s private instructions, yet nothing was provable, since it was fully a butler’s job to sort mail, take telephone calls, and so on. And even if, when she dialled a number from her room, she heard the click of an extension elsewhere, she knew there could be a hundred innocent reasons for it. She was always on guard against an obsession, having observed so many in other people; but to measure every suspicion against the possibility was almost an obsession in itself. Only while she was with Norris could she feel utter freedom, for Austen approved so much the time she spent with him, noting each day the boy’s rising spirits. So that in a room where she and Norris were together she did not start at a sudden tap on the door; it was sanctuary of a special kind, the glass-house where nobody would throw stones.
Because of his injured arm they tried to avoid crowds, though they saw a few plays and movies, but more often they walked the two quiet blocks to the Park and then roamed for an hour or two till dusk approached and it was time to return to the house. Sometimes Norris went out on his own and came back hours later; she never asked him where he had been, though he would tell her as a rule; he liked wandering about the city, taking the subway to some distant suburb and finding pleasure in the randomness. To her this was perfectly natural, or at least not astonishing, but to Austen it would have seemed queer, so they kept such expeditions a secret. They had a few other secrets, such as the books he read (she knew because she saw him reading them, but she never discussed them
unless he started it), a few records they both liked and that Austen would have played far too often if he had known what they were, and of course the biggest secret of all—that there were no important secrets. In the house they spent most time in a little sitting-room on the third floor—Norris’s since boyhood, but not boyish in character, for he had always had an aesthetic dislike of pennants and group photographs, and his entire lack of games prowess had left him without trophies. His mind, Carey thought, was abstractly intellectual rather than artistic, and he had not yet found an outlet for its proper use— maybe writing, eventually, if he developed ideas that could survive his own criticism of them. He would be formidable and fascinating in debate, and in this field it was the power of their sheathed weapons that kept father and son apart. If they ever argued, they soon reached the foothills of disagreement beyond which the mountain loomed unarguably. And the mountain was that Norris, despite facile cynicism and years at war, had certain hopes of the world ahead; whereas Austen, though he would have thought it naďve to discuss the matter, had almost none. Immortal longings against urbane misgivings was a conflict in which Carey was more on Norris’s side than she knew; in fact she did not know at all till one day, in the sanctuary of the sitting-room, Norris remarked that he didn’t think he would stay home long after he was fully recovered.
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to say, Carey, in a way that doesn’t make me seem either priggish or ungrateful. I like father much more than I did, and I can see now what a brat I used to be with him—he’s so patient and affectionate; I’ve treated him pretty badly. And yet my first instincts were probably right, if I’d only kept them under civil discipline—I mean, we don’t really have the same ideas about things. I change mine all the time, of course, but I never seem to change them to any of his, and I can’t help feeling that’s a remarkable coincidence. So it wouldn’t be much fun for either of us if I handed my future over to him and said ‘Make what you want of it.’”
“But do you think that’s what he’d like you to do?”
“He’d like me to go in a bank. He’s often said so.”