“That doesn’t sound too exciting.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be an ordinary job—or even an ordinary bank, for that matter. It might mean going abroad—to Switzerland, and I wouldn’t mind that a bit, except that… well…”
He hesitated and she said: “You feel that if you did you’d be giving up something else even if you’re not sure what the something else is?”
“Exactly. And of course that’s where he has a case. He says ‘Try the bank and see if you like it’. If I answer ‘I don’t think I’d like it’, then he says ‘Well, what WOULD you like?’—and I don’t know.”
“Have you had this argument with him?”
“Oh, not an argument. Just friendly talk from time to time. All very detached and reasonable. I like the idea of going abroad, though. Too bad I’m not religious, I could be a missionary. Matter of fact, I wish I were a doctor, then I could be a missionary without being religious.”
“Why do you want to be a missionary at all?”
“I’m damned if I know. Does that sound a silly answer?”
“It’s better than trying to invent a reason.”
He laughed. “I think I’ll travel, when I’ve got myself a bit stronger. Father’s offered to take me on one of his business trips abroad, but I’m not really sure that’s what I want. Unless, of course, you went too—then it might be fun. But he never does take you on business trips, does he?”
“It’s my own fault, Norris. He flies everywhere and I hate flying.”
“So do I. Loathe it. The Wright Brothers were the Wrong Brothers so far as I’m concerned.”
“Perhaps so far as the world’s concerned too. There’s not much time, is there, to save anything?”
“That’s an odd remark. Fifty years ago the only answer would have been ‘Yes, if you begin early, putting by a few pennies each day’. But now the question means something else, doesn’t it? And that, I suppose, is the real grudge I have against any kind of job father would find for me. I’d feel like an old clock slowly running down if I really devoted myself to it. And father does devote himself. Not that I mean he’s an old clock slowly running down…” He laughed with some embarrassment. “A very elegant clock, at least. I hope I’ll look as handsome when I’m his age.”
“I hope I’ll look as young when I’m his age.”
“Young? YOU?” He said shyly, and with a different kind of embarrassment: “I can’t imagine you anything but young at any age.”
He looked at her across the low table on which all the equipment of afternoon tea was laid out—silver and china sparkling in the firelight; outside, beyond the curtains not yet drawn, snow was beginning to fall in dark slanting flakes against the window. The book he had been reading lay open on another table near his chair, and an interrupted page was in his typewriter. The deep green walls, with their few pictures, framed the red carpet in a way that was striking yet warm; bookshelves made their own pattern of colours carelessly mixed. She had a curious impulse she had had before when wakened in the night by something that might be a distant explosion or a minor earthquake shock—an impulse to note the hour and the minute, so that the next day, if she saw it in the papers, she could tell herself: That was IT… She looked at the clock now; seventeen minutes past four. It was the word ‘young’ that had exploded—but not shatteringly at all, just enough to waken her into a new awareness.
She said with a half smile: “I’m forty, Norris, and how have I devoted myself? I wonder if acting’s any better than banking, from your point of view?”
“Oh, but of course it is. And I haven’t got a point of view—I wish I had. I’m just fumbling around trying to find one.”
* * * * *
When she saw him across the dinner-table that evening it seemed somehow like the day after and she was reading in the papers about that special moment of the earthquake. He and Austen conversed politely, and after the meal they both listened to music on the radio.
She did not sleep well, and in the morning, not knowing quite why, she told Norris she had some shopping to do. “Last-minute things for Christmas —perhaps you’d better not come with me—there’ll be crowds.”
She drove the car herself, as she often did, but not to the shops. It was a hard, bright, icy day, and before she realized it she was on the ramp leading up to the Washington Bridge. There was nothing for it then but to cross, and afterwards she turned north along the familiar road to Newburgh. She came to a small town some thirty miles out and had a sandwich at a lunch counter. Then she drove back, without much awareness of time. She was in New York again by mid-afternoon, and along Riverside Drive she passed the street that Paul had given as his address. Impulse was too late for her to make the turn, but by a couple of streets further it had become a definite whim to see where he lived. She turned and drove there, already unhopeful about it. Yet in New York you could never be sure, that was one reason why the city was so endlessly fascinating—each street, if you knew it well enough, so subtly different from its neighbours that even number itself acquired unmathematical attributes. Presently she identified a red-brick, sham-Gothic apartment building, several decades newer than the decaying brown-stone houses that enclosed it, and possibly at one time a spearhead of social change now merged and indistinguishable amidst the general slatternliness of the district. Children swarmed along the sidewalks and gutters, and when she pulled up they stopped their games, not because the car was anything special (an old Buick in days when every bookie had a new Cadillac), but from some instinctive curiosity that met her own as she stepped out. Even then she had no plan to visit Paul—merely to ask for his new address, for she could not imagine he would have stayed long in such a place. But she found there was no one to ask—neither doorman nor desk nor elevator; merely a cluster of mail-boxes, some of them broken and open. She studied the name-cards, hardly expecting to find Paul’s; yet it was there—“Paul Saffron 4K”—and immediately the thought of him, crippled with arthritis and living on a fourth floor without an elevator, became a challenge to pity and then to action. Surely, if he were in, she could at least pay him a Christmas call, and with such an excuse the idea of seeing him grew warmly, easing her mind from the strain that had held it clenched all day after the almost sleepless night.
Paul opened the door to her ring, and his first exclamation was not so much surprise to see her as at her looks. “Carey! What have you done to yourself? Climbing stairs must suit you… Come in. I was wondering if you’d ever accept my invitation.”
“Your invitation?”
“To see some foreign films. They run them at a theatre round the corner from here. Nothing worth seeing this week, though.”
“You invited ME?”
“Sure, I’ve written several times, but no answer. Too bad I didn’t know you were coming today, I’d have bought some tea. Will you drink coffee?”
“Why, yes, but don’t go to any trouble. This is just a Christmas visit.”
“Good. What would we poor people do, I wonder, without you rich people to give us a helping hand?”
Then she noticed the room, inventory-making as she always did: the scuffed Edwardian furniture, ugly types of an ugly period; an oblong of threadbare carpet in the centre of the floor, wallpaper peeling off at the corners, an ancient gas chandelier wired for electricity, the imitation marble mantelpiece surmounting a radiator, a contraption on one of the walls that was presumably a pull-down bed. A further door led to a dark bathroom, and the view from the window was of ancient balks of timber buttressing a half- demolished property.
Meanwhile she was asking Paul about his arthritis, which he said was much better, and his prospects of a job, which he said were non-existent.
“I just thought you might have had some luck. I—I don’t know how you’d feel about—about talking to Austen. Directly, I mean— now that you’ve met him. He knows people, and if he could help you to get something—”
“It would give him a kick, would it, to turn me into a Hollywood office-boy??
?? No, Carey—thanks to your own generosity I’ve so far managed not only to keep the wolf from the door but also the termites out of my brain.”
“But I know how it used to get on your nerves to be idle.”
“Who says I’ve been idle?” He pointed to a pile of manuscript on a table under the window. “See that? I’ve been hard at work… My life story. I tell the whole truth, that’s what makes it unique. Probably a best seller. Full of big names when I get to the successful years. Already I’m as far as Othello at Hampstead—remember that? Here, take it with you when you go —I’d like your honest opinion.”
“But if this is your only copy—”
“I have an earlier one in rough, and my typing’s not so bad. I WANT you to read it. After all, it’s your bounty that’s enabling me to write it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep on talking like that, Paul.”
But she knew that in his own way he was enjoying the situation. From his earlier word ‘generosity’, to this last one, ‘bounty’, she could read the progress of a drama in which he was already richly casting himself.
“But you WILL read it if I ask you?”
“Certainly, though I’m no judge of writing, as I tell Norris.”
“Norris? Ah, the boy who liked my pictures. I remember. How is he?”
“He’s grown up now—back home from the Army. He was injured in Germany after the war ended—a car smash. Not badly.”
“And Austen?”
“The same as when you saw him three weeks ago.”
“How could he ever be different?”
“You were being so charming to him that afternoon I guessed you didn’t really like him.”
“Why should I like him any more than he likes me?”
“All right, let’s leave it at that.”
“Personally I think he’s a cold fish.”
“He isn’t.”
“Well, YOU should know.”
She could ignore the innuendo all the more easily because his description of Austen as a cold fish hadn’t reminded her of her own relationship at all, but of the two weeks that had followed Dunne’s last operation, when Austen had visited the old butler daily in the hospital, and of Austen’s tight-lipped grief when all was over. The remembrance of this armoured her against the resentment she might have felt had Paul said anything less unfair. She even began to feel a sudden ease in being with someone whose outrageousness, whatever he said or did, could neither surprise her nor change her opinion of him. Let him say what he liked about Austen, Norris, herself, anyone he chose. She didn’t care, and it was good not to care. Even the room began to look less depressing. It was warm at least, the ceiling was high, and the derelict house that obstructed the view had a Gothic picturesqueness. Doubtless there were many far worse places where people had to live and find happiness.
She did not stay long after that, for she would already be later home than usual. Before leaving she wrote Paul a further cheque and said she would return the manuscript as soon as she had had time to read it. “Of course I may be too busy during the holidays…” What was in her mind was that she would rather not be seen reading it in front of Austen, so that her chances to do so would require contrivance.
“I don’t mind how long you take, Carey, but bring it back yourself.”
“I won’t promise, Paul—it depends how busy I am.”
“But I’ll want to discuss it with you.”
“I will if I can. How shall I know when you’re in? Give me your number.”
“I have no telephone, but I’m always in after three. When I see a picture I go when the theatre opens for the cheap prices.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” she said tolerantly, as of a play she did not think very good, but could learn without difficulty. With the money she had given him she knew he could not be really hard up at all. She wished him a happy Christmas with a comfortable feeling that, even alone, he might actually have a happier one than hers. He had such reserves of self-comfort, far more than she had herself.
* * * * *
When she got to the house Austen was already home, scanning the evening papers by the fire. Norris was not with him. “He’s resting,” he said. “He said he’d stay in his room till dinner.” She was fairly certain that Austen had not been wondering where she was, and that part of his indifference was due to anxiety about Norris.
Norris came down to dinner, looking no longer tired, but rather excited; the evening passed without special incident and they all went to bed earlier than usual. She did not see him alone till the next morning, when he sought her out in her room while she was writing gift labels. He said hello, and took one of her cigarettes, then he apologized for having behaved oddly the previous evening.
“Oddly? There was nothing odd, Norris… you just looked a bit tense, that’s all.”
“I was, too. It’s stupid, but I’d been waiting for you all day.”
“Waiting for ME?”
“You weren’t back for lunch and you didn’t telephone Richards or anyone.”
“Norris, darling, I don’t always telephone. They know if I don’t turn up that’s all there is to it.”
“Of course, and that’s why it was stupid of me—I had all day to wonder where you were—and to worry—I thought perhaps you’d had a car accident—I have car accidents on my mind, I suppose… So I just waited and waited… couldn’t write anything—couldn’t even read by the time you came home.”
“Oh, Norris, I’m SORRY.” She gripped his uninjured arm and faced him; he was smiling now, so she smiled back. “And you know where I went? I changed my mind about the shopping, it was such a lovely day. I drove to the country. Just like one of your own expeditions, only with a car. I wished you were with me, only I knew you wouldn’t enjoy being driven. I had my lunch at a place called Mack’s Streamliner, just this side of Newburgh. Made up with stainless steel to look like a streamliner. On the left as you go north.”
“Did you have a good time?”
“Wonderful. But I’m terribly sorry—”
“Oh no, it was my own fault. One thing, though… nearly to Newburgh and back would be—oh, I suppose seventy or eighty miles. Did you buy gas on the road?”
“No… Why?”
“Maybe Foster won’t notice it.”
“Foster? I don’t know what you mean…”
He said uncomfortably: “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but… well, I mention everything to you sooner or later… there’s quite a lot of checking up goes on here. Richards with the telephones, and Foster, I think, when you take the car out. I don’t KNOW, mind you—maybe I’m too suspicious of people who act suspiciously.”
“But, Norris, even if he did measure the gas, why shouldn’t I drive seventy or eighty miles if I feel like it?”
“Sure, sure. Of course.”
She heard the elevator whine as it reached her floor and then the slide of the opening door.
“These labels, Norris. Will you help me? Please read them over against this list of names.”
They were so occupied when Richards brought in the morning mail.
* * * * *
On Christmas Day they had a small party of friends, a dozen or so, and it was a pleasant time. Norris could not dance, because of his arm, but he talked with the guests and seemed at ease; she herself danced often, while Austen played bridge. Soon after midnight all the guests left except three players who were as keen on the game as Austen and about as good; it was an almost pathological keenness that Austen had, and since he had been losing up to then, there was an edge to his appetite for more.
They were playing in what was called the billiard-room, where there was a billiard table which Carey could not remember anyone ever using—a large basement room, afflicted with supposedly masculine trappings— moose-heads, ‘Spy’ cartoons, and a fireplace far too large for a modern fire. There was an alcove modelled on what some architect had imagined to be a typical corner in an old English pub; it had no virtue except seclusion.
Carey and Norris sat there while the bridge went on forty feet away, beyond the billiard table. They talked in whispers, not that they had anything to say that was specially private, but because the subdued ferocity of the game induced an atmosphere of tension.
“Go to bed if you like, Norris.”
“No, I’d rather sit with you.”
“I can’t very well leave just yet… though if they go on much longer… “
“I rather hope they do. I like talking to you like this.”
“But you still need plenty of sleep. I’m so glad you’re getting better so fast.”
“You really think I am? Don’t you wish we could take a vacation somewhere —Colorado or New Mexico—with no one to check the gas against the mileage?”
“Oh yes, Norris—I’d love it… but we can’t.”
“Then what are we going to do?” He flushed and added quickly: “I mean separately… what are YOU going to do and what am _I_ going to do? Will you be in a play again some time?”
“I might. I haven’t plans, but I wouldn’t like to rule it out of my life. On the other hand, I’m not consumed with ambition.”
“Were you ever?”
“Oh yes. My first was to be a nun—but the nuns at the convent knew me better and laughed me out of it. Then I wanted to be an actress and play Juliet, but Paul laughed me out of that. He said I wasn’t the type.”
“To me you would have been.”
“What a sweet thing to say… but now tell me your plans, if you’ve made any.”
“I know what I’d like to do. You’ll probably think it crazy, but to me it doesn’t look crazier than most other things these days. I’d like to go to medical school and later take up tropical medicine. My best friend— the one who took the girl who was killed to the dance—he was in the Pacific during the first years of the war—he told me plenty about it. They need resident doctors on all those Pacific islands. The natives have everything from leprosy to measles. Now the war’s over the Government’s beginning to realize how much medical work will have to be done in so-called peacetime, though I admit it’s a bit illogical to improve the health of a few ex-cannibals when we’re all going to be atom-bombed. Perhaps that’s why it appeals to me—because it’s illogical. When the radio-active manna begins to fall on the world I’d rather be discovered in some relatively pointless occupation such as treating a Polynesian scalp for ringworm… instead of sitting in a bank office doing fabulous things with a comptometer.” He laughed nervously. “Well, what do you think of the idea? You’re very silent.”