Paul, compared with all this, was brash; he had met American millionaires, and even American millionaire brewers, but they had not been in the least like Rowden. To that extent he was secretly baffled, but he gave Rowden the usual treatment of brilliant talk and affable self-display, hopeful though by no means sure that the man was being impressed. One evening wine unleashed his tongue to such vainglory that Rowden smiled and put his hand under the youth’s arm as they walked into the library for coffee and cognac; Paul by that time was in the midst of a survey of all the grandiose theatrical ideas that had ever effervesced in his mind, one of which he had just thought of suddenly at the dining-table and which lifted him to a peak of excitement the more he enlarged upon it—Othello with an all-Negro cast, except for Othello himself, who should be white. Into a rare and breathless silence Rowden then managed to interject: “My dear young man, I admire your enthusiasms and I think it quite possible you are almost as wonderful as you say. But tell me… how are you going to LIVE in this world?”
“LIVE?”
“Yes. Make a living.”
“You mean money? Oh, I manage. I pick up a bit from journalism, and then I have a travelling fellowship—rather a juicy one—it’s supposed to enable me to do ‘creative writing’, whatever that means, but there’s no problem, because if the worst comes to the worst I’ll bundle some of my articles together and call ‘em creative—who the hell can swear they aren’t?”
“You, of course, KNOW that they aren’t.”
“Oh, sure. I’m not really a writer. I’ve got creativeness in me, but it’s not that kind… But don’t worry—I’ll get by. The fellowship’s a racket, but it helps me around—they might renew it for another year. And sometimes I meet rich people who save me hotel bills.”
Rowden was at first antagonized by what he took to be boorishness; but then, beneath it, he caught other notes—frustration, ambition, cool self-criticism, and a sort of celestial you-be-damnedness. On the whole he was beginning to like Paul very much indeed.
Paul added, with a grin: “I’m only kidding. If you think I’d stay here just for that you don’t know me. I’m really grateful to you. But it isn’t all on one side, is it? I’d have been worth my keep in the old days when artists had patrons. Then you could have built a theatre for me and I’d have made you famous.”
“Quite a proposition.”
“I’m still kidding. You must think I have a nerve.”
“I do.” Rowden smiled and continued: “Do you write as you talk?”
“God, no. I wouldn’t sell much if I did. I’m a sort of actor in print. I’ve created a fictional character that I call Myself, so I never write what _I_ think, but what I think this character would think. The novelist does that all the time, but he does it honestly—he LABELS it fiction, but I pretend I really am the slightly ridiculous fellow I’ve invented.”
Rowden eyed him critically, as if wondering how much of all this to suspect or discount. “Isn’t it rather confusing at times?”
“Sure, though of course it’s nothing new—the public always tend to identify an actor with his part.”
“Not the educated public?”
“Yes, to some extent. Or else why would the man who plays Jesus in the Oberammergau Passion Play have to quit smoking and drinking?”
“I didn’t know that he did. Tell me, how did you launch yourself into this rather strange journalistic career?”
“Ah, that’s a story in itself.”
He told it, but he didn’t tell the whole truth about it, which was as follows. He had been in England just after the 1918 Armistice, awaiting the voyage home and demobilization. His war service had comprised a year in an Army office in London. The reason he had not been sent to fight was a pituitary condition which made him put on weight with alarming ease; without proper dieting or treatment, he was at that time in danger of becoming almost comically fat. (Back home as a civilian, a year later, he took medical advice, lost most of the excess poundage, and managed after that to remain merely stoutish.) It happened that during the early days of 1919 Mr. Lloyd George was to leave for the opening of the Peace Conference in Paris, and reporters were badgering him in vain for a scoop. In such circumstances one would have thought it sheerly ridiculous for Paul to seek an interview with the great man for an American small-town paper; and so it was, yet he succeeded. He simply sent a letter on U.S. Army notepaper and enclosed a photograph. “You will see from this “, he wrote, “the sort of fellow I am —I certainly carry a lot of weight around here, but it isn’t the kind that helps. In fact, Mr. Lloyd George, I’m just a Yank without rank who’d be proud indeed to shake hands with you before I go home to Reedsville, Iowa.” Perhaps the P.M. was seduced, or amused, or merely obliging; it is even possible that he practised the same mixture of innocence and guile, for he had never been unmindful of the value of American publicity. At any rate, Private Paul Saffron was invited to call at Number Ten Downing Street at four-thirty one January afternoon. Of course there was no political scoop, they didn’t talk about politics or the war at all, but they did discuss America, England, Wales, tea, coffee, the beauties of nature, and choral singing; moreover Paul, who had a rather pleasing bel canto tenor, was able to demonstrate that a lament of the Seminole Indians was remarkably similar to a hymn tune popular among the slate miners of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Amidst these amenities half an hour passed, and then an hour, whereupon Mrs. Lloyd George joined them and Paul had to sing again. It was all very neighbourly, more like Iowa than London’s West End—which, of course, was exactly the point that Paul made in the two-column piece he wrote. And the whole article, which was picked up by some of the big newspapers after its début in the Reedsville Clarion, proved something else too— that America was much more interested in a number of other things than in war and politics.
After this flash-in-the-pan success, Paul felt he had it in him to earn a living from journalism if he had to, though he hoped he wouldn’t, for his passionate leanings had already centred themselves elsewhere. But an editor named Merryweather had become interested in him and was shrewd enough to realize that while magazines and newspapers were full of stuff emanating from INFORMED sources, the UNINFORMED source, the fall guy who steps in where experts fear to tread, could be equally readable in a small corner of his own. (Later the technique was developed into one of the humaner and more profitable arts by Will Rogers and later still by Ernie Pyle.) It was the pose of having no pose—the trick of telling the public, in reporting a war, how scared one was, or of an international conference, how bored.
“I’m the Little Man,” Paul said, gulping Rowden’s brandy to give himself the right feeling about it. “I’m the world’s hero because I’m not a hero —I’m Constant Reader, Pro Bono Publico, Worried Taxpayer, Average Citizen—I write as if writing’s easy, unprofessional, no particular talent required, just a few pipes of tobacco and a sort of cute way of looking at things… I’m Lowbrow and I’m human—my God, how human I am —when I did a piece about my dog’s birthday I got over five hundred letters and a truckload of dog-food from readers… Did that ever happen to Shakespeare?… And I haven’t got a dog, I don’t smoke a pipe, and I think I’d loathe the fellow I pretend to be if ever I met him. One of these days, when I’ve made a big hit with a play, I’m going to lose all my public in one grand gesture—I shall confess that all the time I’ve been secretly enjoying Beethoven Quartets… Only I’m afraid the editor wouldn’t publish it, he wouldn’t let me destroy my humble little Frankenstein midget, always on the watch for the Funny Side of Things, bless his tiny guts… And finding it, too. My first article on Ireland—you’d never guess how I’ll start it—nothing about the Free State, or Cosgrave, or the shooting— leave that to the regular writers. I’ll do a piece about a girl—I met her just after I came ashore at Kingstown, Dunleary, whatever you call the place. I took a walk in the town and saw this girl driving a horse and buggy and she was sitting with one leg bent under her… the oddest thing… like this…” He got up
from the chair and reseated himself with his own leg clumsily imitating the posture. He was aware by then that he had drunk too much.
Rowden said: “Charming, I’m sure. Some more brandy? No?… But coming back to the stage… of course, you know about our own Abbey Theatre? Maybe we should go one evening while you’re here…”
* * * * *
They went to the Abbey to see a new play called Moon of the Galtees, by a new Irish writer whom some of the critics had praised. It was typical of Rowden that he did not choose the opening night, that he bought seats in the third row, and that he took Paul to the city by tram. The chauffeur and Rolls-Royce would pick them up afterwards.
Paul was naturally astonished when he recognized Carey on the stage, as of course he did immediately, despite her part as a rather minor leprechaun. (It was that kind of play.) His desire to see her again revived and expanded, during the first act, into all kinds of agreeable expectations. At the interval he told Rowden excitedly that here was an amazing coincidence: that leprechaun was actually the girl at Kingstown, the one he intended to write about! Perhaps they could go back-stage after the show? But Rowden, at first vaguely assenting, then demurred. “I’m afraid it’ll be rather hot and noisy —if you’d like to meet Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields I can have them to dinner at the house some evening. I know them fairly well. Yes, that’s quite an idea. Yeats, too—you MUST meet him—he’s usually here, but I don’t see him tonight. And perhaps Lennox Robinson and Dr. Starkie and A.E… We have a genuine intelligentsia—just the people you’ll enjoy meeting.”
“But I’d like to see that girl.”
“The LITTLE girl?”
“Sure. The leprechaun. After meeting her the way I did it would be amusing —”
“I’d preserve my illusions, if I were you. The article might work out better.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the article.”
“You like her acting, then?”
“Hell, no.” He added hastily: “I mean, she’s not good for the part, the part’s not good, she seems to be untrained, or else badly trained, or something.”
Rowden smiled. “It would be hard to make conversation then. Why don’t you write your little friend a note? And I’ll try to fix our party for next Sunday—that’s always a good day.”
So they didn’t go backstage, but Paul left a scribbled message for delivery to her after the show, and the next day he sent flowers. He wasn’t the kind of person who sent flowers to girls and he was rather surprised at himself for thinking of it.
She wrote back: “Thank you for the roses. I love roses, and everybody wondered who they were from. I didn’t see you in the audience, but I’d half expected you on opening night, because I’d left tickets for you at the box-office. I’d written to you about that at three hotels. I never thought you’d be staying anywhere else. All this sounds complicated, I’ll explain when we meet. You don’t say if you liked the play. Tomorrow will do fine —say two-thirty at the Pillar.”
The Pillar was the Nelson Pillar, stuck squarely and squatly astride the great width of O’Connell Street. Buildings on both sides had been destroyed in the ‘sixteen rebellion, but the Pillar had escaped except for bullet nicks; it dominated the scene, providing a terminal point for tram routes, and a lofty monument to an Englishman whose public and private life made his memory a constantly delightful anachronism in the streets of Dublin. So Rowden had remarked to Paul, and it proved a good way to start a conversation when he met the girl, for he was unaccountably nervous at first. He had been late at the rendezvous owing to delay in getting away from Venton League after lunch, for he had not told Rowden he was going to meet the girl. He had even wondered if she would wait when he did not arrive; the first thing he must do was to apologize. But he forgot all about that when he saw her, and as she did not mention it, the fact that she had been standing for half an hour amidst the scurrying crowd vanished for both of them as if it had never existed. She wore a blue dress and the kind of pert cloche hat that was in style in those days and happened to suit her; she came towards him smiling, having seen him first, a few anxious seconds first, for after leaving a taxi to cross the road he had nearly been run down by a tram whose driver gave him some picturesque language in passing. “I keep forgetting you keep to the left in this country,” were his first breathless words of greeting.
“I know, I saw it,” she said. “But there’s terrible traffic here all the time. The Pillar gets in the way of everything.”
Which led him to repeat Rowden’s remark about it, and she too found the subject helpful to begin with; she told him how the City Corporation had considered moving the Pillar (as a traffic hazard, so as to dodge the political issue), but so far nothing had been done because it would cost too much.
“At least they could change the statue on the top,” Paul said. “Why not some Irish hero?”
“Ach, there mightn’t be time. Before we could hoist him up there, somebody would have shot him as a traitor and half the country wouldn’t think him a hero at all. That’s what happened to Michael Collins.”
“That’s almost what happened to Lincoln.”
“It’s a curse on all of us, then. The English don’t do things like that.”
“They do as bad.” He laughed. “Come now, don’t say you’re on THEIR side.”
“My stepfather’s English. I wish there weren’t any sides.”
“Ah, then that accounts for it. He’s the one that keeps you broad- minded.”
“Not him—he’s more Irish than some of the Irish. Spells his name S-e-a-n instead of John and it’s pronounced ‘Shawn’.”
“Then I give up. This is a strange country.”
“You can’t give up if you’ve got to write about us.”
“I shan’t touch on politics much.”
“No?… Perhaps that’s sensible. But don’t romanticize, whatever you do —none of the Killarney-blarney, broth of a boy, top o’ the marnin’ to ye—that’s the stuff we can’t stand.”
When he reflected that this was the kind of article Merryweather would probably like, he almost blushed. “Maybe you’d rather be laughed at? I could do an amusing piece about those Gaelic changes you talked about.”
“Why not, then? It’s a good subject. The ancient tongue of Ireland that nobody speaks any more except a handful of peasants in the far west, so there have to be a handful of professors in Dublin to decide what the ancient Irish would have called a telephone if they’d ever seen one.”
“If I wrote that way it would seem like an attack.”
“And why not? ‘Tis time someone attacked us in fun instead of seriously.” She showed him the book under her arm. It was Martin Chuzzlewit, a library copy. “I’ve just been reading this. Dickens certainly didn’t spare the Americans. And it wasn’t all fun either.”
“D’you know, I’ve never read Chuzzlewit.”
“Why don’t you? I’ll lend you this—I’ve finished it.”
“Thanks.”
“It’ll probably make you angry.”
“I’ll bet it won’t. My family hadn’t come to America when it was written, so why would I feel insulted? I’ll tell you what I think when I’ve read it.”
They went on talking, as vagrantly as that, while they skirted the quays past the burned-out Four Courts and entered Phoenix Park. It was windy on the upland there, with fast scudding clouds and a hint of rain. The view of mountains reminded him of a backdrop, grey-blue shapes as if cut in cardboard. He told her this, and it gave her the cue to remark that he still hadn’t said how he liked the play.
“Oh, THAT? Well, it wasn’t bad. In some ways it wasn’t bad enough. You know when a play is really bad, anything good in it shows like a sort of outcropping. Take Twelfth Night—”
He wondered if the notion that a Shakespeare play could be called bad would shock her, and he had used the example chiefly to find out. But she seemed unconcerned. Or perhaps she had read Shaw. Or more likely still, her mind was anchored to the main issue,
for she went on: “So you didn’t like Moon of the Galtees? Ach, nor did anybody. They’re taking it off… And I don’t suppose you liked me in it either.”
“It wasn’t much of a part for you, was it?”
She grimaced. “As good as I generally get. I try to believe it’s because they think I’m too young.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen. Nearly eighteen.”
“I’d have guessed you nearer twenty.”
“I FEEL like twenty. And I dress to look older, but none of it seems to work. There’s a fourteen-year-old part in a new play they’re considering —I’ll bet they offer it to me.”
“Juliet was fourteen.”
“Ah, now, if only I could have a chance like that!”