“So what DID he say?”
“He thought it was a heart attack. I told him he had been warned by the other doctor about his heart.”
“Had he?”
The strain touched her lips now, making them veer and tremble. “I told the doctor he had.”
Paul didn’t speak for a moment; he was pondering. Presently he said: “I’m still puzzled—I can’t see that you’ve any reason to draw the conclusion you do. When and where did you last see the bottle with pills in it?”
“On his bedside table. It was nearly full. I was taking him a cup of tea before breakfast. A few days ago—perhaps a week.”
“Then how can you be certain about what happened this morning? Any time during the past week he could have—”
“But he wouldn’t, unless he had an attack, and he hadn’t had one since —oh, months.”
“How do you know THAT?”
“He’d have told me, or else I’d have noticed. He always coughed so much and it left him weak afterwards. It’s not something you can hide from people in the same house.”
“That may be, but I still say there’s no proof that he took all those pills this morning.”
“I think he MUST have.”
“But WHY? Surely you don’t WANT to think so? And if the doctor was satisfied—he was, wasn’t he?”
“Yes—after I talked to him. He wrote out a certificate, but I don’t think he would have if he’d seen the empty bottle.”
He said sharply: “What did you do with the bottle?”
“That’s why I’m glad we didn’t go to Glendalough. I broke it into little pieces and buried them in the garden.”
“You DID? Let’s hope you were lucky and nobody saw you… And don’t you ever tell anyone else about all this.”
“Oh, I won’t. But there’s something I haven’t told even you—yet.” She went over to the roll-top desk and opened it. “This was the Irish grammar he worked from, and the pencil and exercise-book he used. They were on the chair by the side of the bath, and there was a note clipped to the book, written on a torn page. Here it is. Nobody else has seen it.”
She took it out of the pocket of her skirt and unfolded it. Paul read the carefully pencilled script:
“DEAR CAREY—I know now it was a mistake ever to come to Ireland but I did it to please your mother and I pretended to be happy here, but I’m not, and actually I never have been. It’s a terrible thing when all at once you realize you’re learning a language that bores you and going to a church you don’t really believe in. I turned Catholic too, you know, to please her. They don’t like me at the office, they don’t like my English accent, they have a nickname for me—they call me Fitzpomp. It’s odd how all sorts of things can go on and on for years and you can stand them, and then suddenly you feel you can’t stand a single one of them for another minute. Well, why should you? There’s a line in some Latin writer—Seneca, I think—that says: ‘We cannot complain of life, for it keeps no one against his will’. So I don’t complain, and this letter, though it may tell you more about me than you have ever suspected, is really no more than a… “
The letter ended at that, and had no signature; it was as if the writer had been seized with illness in mid-sentence.
Paul was wondering why she had not shown him the letter at the beginning; it would have saved so much argument. The detached part of his mind caused him to pick up the exercise-book and compare the writing in it with the note; they were the same, there was no doubt of that. He saw her watching him make the test, but he could not guess what she was thinking.
He said at length: “How old were you when your mother married again?”
“Twelve.”
“And your real father… you remember him?”
“I was ten when he died… We lived in Kildare near the Curragh. He used to hunt with the cavalrymen—oh, you should have seen him on a horse. We had a farm, but it never paid… such wonderful times, though—and every Christmas he took me to the Theatre Royal to see the pantomime. That’s when I first decided I wanted to be an actress.”
“You didn’t have such good times with your stepfather?”
“No… but he was all right—we got along quite well.”
He handed the letter back. “You were lucky to find this too, before anyone else did. Are you going to keep it?”
“You think… you think I’d better not?” She hesitated a moment, then struck a match and held the paper to it. When the flame was down to the last corner she crumpled the charred pieces into an ash-tray.
He said: “Perhaps that’s wise.”
“You don’t blame me, do you?”
“BLAME you? Blame YOU? What on earth for? Did you ever guess he was so unhappy?”
“I never guessed anything he said in the letter. That’s what makes it all such a shock. How could he not love Ireland, the poor little man?… though dear knows it’s had its troubles. And I never heard that they called him Fitzpomp at the office. FITZPOMP…” She spoke the word as if sampling it. “He seemed so keen on learning the Gaelic—he didn’t have to do that if he didn’t want to—he’d been looking forward to taking an examination—it must have been on his mind at the end because he was saying over the words—I HEARD him… and the last thing— almost the last thing he did was so normal—so tidy… just as he always was… so tidy…”
“What was that?”
“He screwed on the top of the empty bottle and put it back in his vest pocket. That’s where I found it.”
Her voice had a note that made him exclaim: “Carey, you must pull yourself together—isn’t there anyone else here in the house to help you?”
“I’m all right. My aunt and uncle came over from Sandymount— they’ll stay till—oh, till afterwards. And there’s Mrs. Kennedy too. I’m all right now—really I am. I’m glad I told somebody the truth and I’m glad it was you. I expect I told you because you’re a stranger and leaving so soon. And I’m glad you made me destroy the letter.”
“I didn’t make you, but—”
“I know, I know, and you were right. Ah God, he wasn’t a bad man. He was kind to my mother—she bossed him a lot—it’s true he did everything to please her. He was lonely after she died, but he seemed to manage. He took up all sorts of things—hobbies—studies —memory-training—those things in correspondence lessons to help with the Gaelic. Every evening he’d put in a couple of hours. And the machine over there—he bought that—it’s supposed to develop muscles… I got so used to him, I don’t know yet how much I shall miss him. I’m watching myself, in a sort of way, to find out. It’s like when you’re on the stage—you don’t exactly FEEL, you FEEL yourself FEEL. I suppose that’s the trouble with me now—I’m really ACTING—I can’t stop it—I’ve been doing it all day, more or less—I had to with the doctor—and then with all the others since… Are you shocked? Is there something wrong with me to be like that?”
He wasn’t shocked, of course; he had already diagnosed that she was acting; the problem, to him, was in the fact that he himself was not directing. If their conversation since he entered the house had really been stage dialogue, he would have known exactly what the ‘playing attitude’ should be, but because it was all happening in life he was uncertain how to behave. He knew that his compassion was one of the warmest excitements he had ever felt, but he could find no words for it. Fortunately she had now given him the kind of cue he could pick up. He said, taking her arm a little roughly: “There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Don’t you know how natural it is for any artist to come to terms with an emotion through the medium of his own art? It’s the great thing that compensates him—whatever he suffers, he has that outlet that nobody else has—he can use up what he feels, he can DO something with it, create something out of it, so that even pain, in a sort of way, seems worth while. If, for instance, he’s a writer, he can make personal sorrow work for him in a book—a musician can put it into his music—a painter can see it on canvas. And all that never surprises anyone
. But with the actor, the art is ACTING—so that whenever something happens to you that matters enough, that’s just what you do. Most people wouldn’t understand it, because they think of acting as a kind of pretence or sham—anyhow, they don’t often notice it in a good actor, because it’s his art not to seem to be acting at all. But he is, and he knows he is, and—as you say—he can’t stop it. It’s really the highest form of sincerity—and since you liked your stepfather, it’s a tribute to him that you should be doing it… as you are now… SO WELL.”
“AM I?” She was moved almost to tears, and he did not tell her that his long speech had been a repetition, personalized and slightly adapted, of a paragraph in an article on acting which he had submitted to various magazines so far without success.
She added: “Paul, since you say that, is there—do you think —any chance for me?”
“As an actress?” Trying to assemble his judgment, he was excited by her emotion; it was intoxicating to think that she must assume his eloquence to have been improvised.
“I know it’s the most awful time to ask,” she went on, noticing his hesitation. “But I HAVE asked, so won’t you answer? Is there the merest outside chance? You’re leaving so soon and you can help me either way. If you say no, I’ll give up the whole idea, because I don’t want to waste my time. But if you say yes, then…”
His judgment still balked, and he could only remember what he had realized from the first—that she possessed the genuine histrionic personality plus a quality of her own that the stage might either destroy or magnify, depending of course on how she was trained and directed. What was it? Talent? Some half-physical attribute? He answered: “Yes, I think you might have a chance.” His words had the kind of delayed sincerity that made him feel, a few seconds after speaking them, that he hadn’t been insincere at all. (For presumably she did have a chance, at the Abbey, of being properly directed.) He went on, gathering confidence: “Why, sure—of course you have.”
“You REALLY think so?”
“I do… I do…”
The answer made the thing seem like some sort of ceremony involving them in vows and pledges; I do, I do, his mind kept echoing, incredulously.
“Oh, bless you, Paul—even if you don’t mean it… no, don’t argue —not another word—I know you have to go—”
Actually he didn’t want to go now at all; he wanted to explore a relationship that had begun to fascinate.
“But Carey—”
“Dear, no, I’ve talked too long already—I’ll bet my aunt and uncle are wondering who that man is. Thank you, Paul—you’ve helped me so much—in so many ways—”
“Will you do something for me, then? As soon as I’ve gone, go to bed and try to sleep.”
“Yes, yes, I promise that. I promise.”
In her changed mood she was almost shooing him out of the house.
“And I’ll write to you from Rome—”
“Yes, if you have time—but you’ll be so busy—”
“I’ll find time, Carey… because I…”
“Goodbye, Paul—goodbye.” They shook hands in the lobby as she opened the door. All the way back to Venton League he wondered why he had not kissed her. It did not seem important till he himself was in bed and trying to sleep. Then, with the mail-boat to catch in a few hours, he felt hemmed in by timings and mistimings.
* * * * *
Paul wrote to her from the Holyhead boat the next day—a constrained letter, oddly aloof, because there was a battle going on in his own mind. He was fated, it seemed, to fight too late, when the issue could not be affected and the victory of second thoughts could only bring regrets and remorse. This time it was the fact that he had left Carey in such trouble, deserting her when she might most need him. Actually he doubted whether he could have helped her more than he already had by his advice and encouragement; but this prompt physical departure from the scene had an air of callousness which shocked him when now he contemplated it. Surely it would seem to her that he could cancel anything except business, and for anyone except her. If she mattered to him, he ought to have stayed in Dublin for at least a few days, even if he had left Venton League and taken a room at a hotel. But perhaps, he reflected, the fact that he was now on his way elsewhere proved that she DIDN’T matter to him. It was an argument that made him uneasy, as if, in his bones, he WISHED her to matter to him and would suffer if it were proved otherwise.
He wrote to her again from London, but there was no time for her to reply before he was off to Rome; he gave her an address there. If she didn’t reply, it might mean that she too had sized up the situation as one calling for caution, or at least for a meditative pause. During his first week in Rome he glanced many times across the hotel desk to the pigeon-hole where his mail was put when he had any; he was curious, but not too anxious yet. No letter came from her; and then, as if to make that a bad start in retrospect, other things began to go wrong too. Mussolini was neither in Rome nor willing to see him, and from a succession of urgent cables it was clear how confidently and absurdly Merryweather had been counting on a repetition of the Lloyd George fluke. Paul almost wished he could share the editor’s concern; as it was, he felt only increasing distaste for the kind of fraud he was beginning to think he was. Perhaps the sooner he failed as a journalist the better, but it must be quick and catastrophic, before he could rescue himself by another fluke. Because he so nearly HAD pulled off that interview with Mussolini, and the reason for missing at the last moment had been nothing but his own caprice, if one could let it go at that; he had neglected to exploit one of Rowden’s letters of introduction to an Italian of wealth and influence. The man had evidently liked Paul on sight and been ready to pull some final string, but Paul, after one short meeting, had fought shy of him from a personal squeamishness as hard to admit as to ignore.
So having fluffed, he left Italy and travelled to Paris to await further word from Merryweather; if none came he could take it that there were no more assignments for the time being. He certainly did not feel he could return to Dublin to face Rowden’s curiosity, whetted by some likely communication from the Italian friend. The one thing that tempted was the chance to see Carey again, but even this did not preponderate till after a certain evening in Paris. He had gone alone to a performance of the Magic Flute; he did not as a rule care for operas, because he found their dramatic foolishness hard to take, but this was a superlative blend of music and spectacle that made everything else forgettable and therefore tolerable; he sat entranced, and later, strolling along a boulevard, suddenly realized that not to see Carey again, not to follow up their relationship, would be like avoiding Mozart because one had once been bored by Bizet. At a sidewalk café he stopped for a drink, the goggle-eyed American in Paris to all misleading appearance; for in truth he was lost in abstractions that soon became self-incredulous—how UNLIKELY that a seventeen-year-old Irish girl whom he had talked to for no more than a few hours could not only have occupied his mind since then, but could now reach out to touch the troubled parts of it! It occurred to him also, and as an afterthought, that no one before had so attracted him by sheerly feminine qualities—the lilt of her voice from the first word of that first encounter, her lips twisting when she smiled, even the piquantly all-wrong quality she had given to a small stage part (the director’s fault, not hers). But most of all, and never an afterthought, was the mystery she shared with all (and how few they were) who had it in them to make a finger-point of contact with life through art —a feminine, creative mystery, the secret nerve that could break down every withholding in himself, whether from man or woman.
He wrote again that night, telling her whimsically that Mussolini had refused to have anything to do with him, so he would soon have to return to America, his travel fellowship year being almost over; but he would like to see her again before that. He didn’t think he would revisit Dublin, but if by any chance she could travel part of the way—to Holyhead, perhaps, or Liverpool… of course he could well imagine there might be
circumstances to prevent that, and he would fully understand, but still, if it were at all possible to arrange a rendezvous…
Even while he was writing he knew that part of him was counting on a negative answer or none at all, a rock-ribbed alibi for the rest of his life, so that he could always tell himself he had done his best, he had asked her anyway, it was fate and not he that had foreclosed. But at this the battle was joined again, the feeling in his bones against the arguments of his brain. Eventually he tore up the letter and wrote another, shorter and much more urgent; he told her he MUST see her again; he would come to Dublin if necessary and if she were still there, but if not, then somehow, somewhere, ANYWHERE…
By return came a note as short as his own. Legal matters, she said, had cropped up in connection with her stepfather’s small estate; there was a lawyer in London she had to visit almost immediately—wouldn’t London be as convenient for a meeting as Dublin?
More so, of course. He left Paris the next morning, having wired her to reach him at the Ellesmere Hotel, Euston Road. It was a cheap but respectable place, all he could afford, and he remembered it because during the war he had worked in an office of the U.S. Army just across from Euston Station. That part of London he knew as well as New York, or Reedsville, Iowa, and for the same reason: he had been lonely there.
* * * * *
The battle continued during his cross-Channel journey; first he was buoyant at the thought of seeing her so soon, then he half regretted having planned the meeting at all. As he entered the gloomy lobby of the Ellesmere Hotel he even hoped for some unavoidable hitch (but it would HAVE to be unavoidable)—perhaps his wire had never been delivered, perhaps her own London trip had been cancelled. Yet when, at the desk, he asked if there had been any enquiries for him and was told no, he felt acutely dismayed. The dismay increased during the next few hours; he couldn’t think what he would do with himself in London if she did not come; perhaps he ought to wire her in Dublin again. He unpacked in the comfortless third-floor bedroom; once the telephone rang, but it was the manager asking if he were a British subject —“I shouldn’t have bothered you, sir, but I noticed you gave an address in New York—we have to keep a record, you know, sir.” Paul had sprung to the instrument with such eagerness that he hardly knew how to reply through the deflation he felt; he stammered: “What’s that? Yes— I mean no—not British… American… By the way, I’m expecting a call —you’re sure there hasn’t been one so far?”