‘But I love them,’ I said, insincerely. ‘They keep me in touch with the world of achievement. And of course I’ve got nothing else to do.’
‘I hope that’s not true.’ He was looking at me carefully, as he always did; to him, writers were people, not names or labels, and he liked to find out what sort of mood and shape we were in, though, as a spectator of the human comedy, he was rarely disposed to do anything about his findings. ‘How’s my book coming along?’
‘Slowly,’ I said. ‘You know I’ve been working on this Pink Safari thing.’
‘How’s that coming along?’ he asked, with markedly less enthusiasm.
‘It’s pretty well finished. But I’m staying on to help with the production.’
‘Book!’ he said suddenly. ‘When do I get a book?’
‘In the new year, I hope.’
‘Really?’ He was still watching me, with clinical interest. ‘That’s good news. Can you say when, in the new year? It’s time we published you again.’
‘I honestly don’t know, Hobart.’ I wasn’t going to worry too much about this examination; I had been working hard on Erwin’s musical, and did not feel guilty of waste of time or effort. ‘You know how some things go fast, and then they go slow. The book got stuck, but one of these days it will come unstuck again, and land on your desk.’ A waiter, squirming his way through the throng with a tray of someone else’s drinks, passed close to me, and I reached out and abstracted two glasses of what looked like very strong Scotch and soda. I had been drinking vodka, but a thirst was a thirst. ‘Courtesy of the house,’ I said to Hobart, handing him a glass. ‘Never say I don’t look after you.’
‘Oh, you look after people, all right.’ He sipped the drink, and made a face, and stared at me intently, over the rim of his glass. ‘This seems to be rye and ginger-ale … When is Kate coming back?’
Unlike other inquirers, he was actually interested in the answer, and I told him as much as I knew. ‘In a few days,’ I said. ‘She got tied up in South Africa, but that seems to have been straightened out.’
‘I’ll be very glad to see her again. You must have missed her.’
‘Very much.’
‘Seven months must have seemed a long time.’
‘Infinity.’
He took another sip of his drink before saying, in a gently censorious tone: ‘I’m sure it will be good for you to have her back in New York.’
There was no mistaking the subject of this, and though I did not resent his interest, since he was a good enough friend to be allowed the latitude, the idea of baring secrets and sharing the confessional made no appeal at all. I was not seeking a father figure, however small and discreet, even though I had taken a $40,000 advance on my patrimony.
I looked away from him, as any keen party-goer might, and glanced round the packed room. The uproar, aided by a low ceiling and a rising intake, had now reached a fearful level of decibels.
‘If New York were all like this,’ I said, ‘Kate would be better off in South Africa. Luckily it isn’t.’
Hobart had not quite finished.
‘When she comes back,’ he said, ‘you must bring her to dinner.’
‘We’d enjoy that.’
‘Like old times.’
The phrase, in this context, rang particularly false; we always dined with the Mackays three or four times a year, and we would no doubt be doing so again. If this was a revival of ‘old times’, so was renewing one’s driving licence. But in the interests of peaceful co-existence, I said again: ‘We’d like it very much.’
‘If you won’t find it too dull.’
‘Now why should I find it dull?’
He gave a very small wave of his hand, the only kind feasible with the amount of room we had to spare.
‘Well, you know – the theatre crowd. I thought you might have developed a taste for fast living.’
I had had enough of this little contest. ‘You’ve been reading the wrong papers, Hobart,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t changed, and I don’t intend to. Anything else is a cowardly smear circulated by my political opponents.’
With that, he seemed to be satisfied. He smiled, much more easily, and said: ‘Time for me to go,’ and promptly poured the rest of his drink into the potted palm, with the courage of small men who know what they want and what they don’t. Then, without disguise, he slipped the empty glass into his side-pocket.
‘Only way to deal with it,’ he said, noticing my expression. ‘I give it to the doorman on the way out.’
I was still surprised. ‘After that, anything I do will seem normal.’
‘Mind you keep it that way,’ he said, and with this cautionary farewell he made for the door.
I moved slowly after him, ready to leave also; I had done my duty for the night, and the small exchange with Hobart Mackay had been vaguely unsettling, the first hint of its kind from a man who had always seemed to view other people’s habits, as distinct from their writing, with the blessed unconcern which one could bestow on other people’s children.
Pressures, great and small, seemed to be building up, about to burst in upon poor old Steele, who had only wanted a quiet life, and a big strong girl to serve the nectar … Manoeuvring my way towards the door, I heard a fruity, long-forgotten voice declare, as if pronouncing the ultimate in benedictions: ‘Just looking round. I might even – ah – settle here,’ and I turned swiftly towards the source, and by God it was Lord Muddley.
I had not seen him for years – nearly seven years ago, to be exact, during the strange early reign of Kate Marais. It was funny to come upon this early Georgian dinosaur, this genuine fossil from the vanished past, and to recall the last time we had met, over a flaming row in a Johannesburg nightclub, with Kate – new Kate, cool Kate, unknown Kate – keeping the ring for us. But I did not expect our re-encounter to be unduly funny, otherwise.
Lord Muddley had not changed. The beefy red face was still matched by the small boiled eyes, like pale carrot-rings in a stew; the built-in condescension, the aura of fat insolence, were both unaltered. He had added a monocle to his ensemble, and, that night, a hairy checked suit which smelled very slightly of wet retriever. Otherwise, his lordship appeared to have remained his barnacled, stupid self.
He recognised me, after a long unblinking stare; it was like being inspected by a rather dopey foreign general. ‘Ah, Steele,’ he said, in the authentic plum-cake voice of Old England, ‘I thought it must be you. I suppose this is actually your sort of party, isn’t it?’
The man he had been talking to melted swiftly away, with a readiness I could understand, and we were left to the joys of each other’s company.
‘Ah, Muddley,’ I said, not to be outdone. ‘What are you doing among all these clever people?’
‘I came with Baxter, our consul-general. You know Sir Norman?’
‘No.’
‘Pity. Quite a capable fellow. He might be able to help you.’
The idea of the British consul-general giving me a hand with the dialogue of The Pink Safari was not within the compass of my imagination, and I let the thought, regretfully, go by. Instead I asked: ‘Are you living in New York now? I thought you were going to – ah – settle in South Africa.’
‘But I did!’ he declared promptly. The noise round us made it necessary for both of us to shout, and his answer rang out like a challenge. ‘I should have thought you would have known that. I gave it two years! But it was hopeless, quite hopeless! South Africa simply isn’t a white man’s country any more!’
This was an interesting viewpoint. ‘I should have thought,’ I said, ‘that it had become specifically a white man’s country, and that a lot of the trouble stems from that.’
‘No, no, no. That’s just newspaper talk. After all, you can’t count Afrikaners as white men, can you? They’ve been out the
re too long, that’s their trouble! … My point is that it is not an investment country any more. There’s too much unrest. It’s impossible to count on a settled return. The politicians worry so much about their blasted natives, they can’t do a decent job of running the economy. You can see this sort of thing all over the world nowadays. I mean, take the United Nations.’
‘Tell me about the United Nations.’
‘It’s ridiculous!’ said Lord Muddley. ‘And I know – I looked in just the other day. Nothing but a blasted nigger-minstrel show! Damned committees of Africans and Buddhists telling us how to run our affairs. I mean, take a man like U Thant. What sort of a secretary-general could he possibly be? Fellow probably couldn’t write his own name, five years ago.’
‘I believe he is actually very well educated.’
‘Nonsense! And if he is, it’s our fault for doing it. Things were far better off as they were.’
I could see that the interior Lord Muddley had not changed, either. He had been a pompous old idiot when we first met, and I had allowed it to get under my skin. He was a pompous old idiot still, but now I could not bring myself to worry about it. Vaguely I supposed that there was room in the world for both of us; that this was part of nature’s system of checks and balances, and that Lord Muddley was one of the checks; and that if he had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him, to preserve the equilibrium, to inhibit the spread of common sense, or stop the ants taking over.
There were certain mysteries in our universe which the wise man must come to accept. Otherwise, tortured by doubt and misgiving, he would never be reconciled to this or any other century.
During my silence, Lord Muddley had been staring at me, his little eyes as blue and sharp as cornflowers. Now, when he spoke, it was in a different way, more calculating, more to the point.
‘I believe I saw you on television a few days ago,’ he said, as if television, from his single use of it, had now received official sanction. ‘That’s partly how I recognised you.’
‘I hope you enjoyed the show.’
‘I couldn’t understand a word of it,’ said Lord Muddley. ‘Lot of gibberish, as far as I was concerned! However, I believe it’s very popular with certain classes of people … They tell me you’re getting to be quite well-known as a writer, these days.’
‘Now who told you that?’ I asked, intrigued.
He almost smirked. ‘Oh, I pick these things up, you know. It’s the sort of thing I hear about. Tell me, how much does a best-seller – isn’t that what it’s called? – make? In round figures.’
‘About half a million dollars.’
‘You’re joking,’ he said, incredulously. ‘Why, that’s getting on for two hundred thousand pounds!’
‘One hundred and eighty thousand.’
‘From a book?’
‘From a successful book.’
‘Good heavens!’ he said. ‘I must look into this. I used to do a bit of scribbling myself, in the old days. And I’ve had, as you probably realise, a very full life. I really had no idea it was so easy to make these large sums.’ He was looking at me, now, as if I might suddenly have become eligible for one of his clubs, against all probability, all reason. ‘Let me see – how many of these things have you written so far?’
‘Only two.’
‘Two best-sellers?’
‘You could call them that. One big, and one small.’
‘Ah …’ He made a ponderous pounce on what seemed to be a flaw in the balance-sheet of creativity. ‘But how much does a small one make?’
‘About a quarter of a million. Dollars.’
‘Well, well …’ His tone told me that I was eligible for election once more. ‘You were writing when we first met, weren’t you – when we had that – ah – top-hole party in Johannesburg.’
‘Yes.’
‘I believe I met your wife, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she here tonight?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘She’s in South Africa. Her father died, and she had to clear up his estate.’
‘Indeed? Was that – ah – a complicated matter?’
I told him what he wanted to know. ‘About two million dollars. Kate got it all.’
‘Well, well …’ By now his monocle was quite misted over, and he extracted and wiped it, looking at me the while with that pop-eyed stare which linked the angler to the fish. After a moment he said: ‘Now that we’ve met again, I expect to see more of you. When does your wife return?’
‘I’m not sure. Not for some time.’
‘But you’ll keep in touch with me, I know.’ Some semblance of heartiness had come into his voice; it rang very strangely, like a plastic gong. ‘Perhaps we can arrange another party, one of these days.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m kept moving about pretty strenuously, at the moment. Looking round. But Baxter – the consul-general – will always know where to find me.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘It’s most agreeable,’ he said, with true condescension, ‘to meet a fellow countryman so far from home. I think people like us should stick together, eh? Are you dining anywhere tonight, by the way?’
‘Yes. I’m fixed up, I’m afraid.’
‘Some other time, then.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes indeed. Some other time.’
He had been funny after all, I decided as I took my leave; funny, in a grisly sort of way. I felt that I had added to my collection of oddities without too much involvement. But what had been truly bizarre was to have the bad news of South Africa confirmed from so novel an angle. It seemed to rank as something almost incomprehensible to man, like Stonehenge, or a bird’s-eye view of a bird.
It did not persuade me to burnish up my shining armour, pick out a spear, and go forth into battle for the current cause. In fact, the very reverse; it multiplied the pleasures of neutrality.
It proved, in this respect, to be very good practice for Kate.
Her plane from Lisbon was late, and it was past midnight before we were driving back from the airport, through a clear black December night, with Julia mounting guard over the luggage in the back seat. Kate looked beautiful; very sunburnt, very well, exquisitely dressed and accoutred; sixteen hours of flying, plane-swapping and waiting about might have been just what she needed, to groom her for our meeting, to bring her up to her own level of perfection.
We held hands all the way into town, with that kind of electric anticipation which only lovers on the brink could ever really feel; we were clearly delighted to see each other again, and we knew we had the means to prove it, as soon as we were under cover.
It was like that, all the rest of that night. She did not think much of the state of the apartment, but it was a loving kind of criticism: I am here, her glance seemed to say, and I will set this nursery to rights by and by: but first I will deal with the chief inhabitant, my first-born favourite child … We went swiftly to bed, because we had that kind of feeling, instantly recognised, urgently shared; and in bed, as usual, all cares were smoothed out, all problems solved by simple sensual alchemy.
She had chosen to make it so. I had thought that she would come back armed with questions, even accusations, and insist upon plain answers before she even took off her gloves. But though we both knew that a cloud hung in some corner of our sky, and would not go away until we had looked at it together she did not want to handle it like that.
‘All post mortems tomorrow,’ she said at one point, when it had become clear that there was only one thing for us to do next, and that very speedily. ‘We’ll talk about your terrible misdeed later. Just for now, I propose to be the only girl in the world.’
She was. Once again, it was the shape and feel of a different person which gave to desire that extra teasing quality, that mortal
thirst which must be slaked at this very fountain, and at none other; and that night, something more had been added even to this: the delight of loving, anew, a known body, with all the subtleties and tender agreements of love which had been mislaid or forgotten.
Throughout our rendezvous, during all the deep headlong dive into the private compartments of our marriage, we always knew what the other was going to do next, with precise recognition. Alone among all the possible examples of fore-knowledge, of routine, of exact response, it proved to be the most exciting part of lovemaking.
Six years together, seven months apart – who could say which was the spur of action, the actual word which cast the spell, the key to this most delicate of locks? Did it also, for me, owe something to the secret, all-but-lapsed pleasure of carrying another person along on this delicious road? Was it bound up with the simple male pride of the man who could swing it? And what was it for her? Use or un-use? The accustomed persuasions of the past, the wildness of the present, or a wishful trust in the future?
We did not know, we could not really share this speculation, and we did not try to find the answer, since we did not need to. We only recognised that we had rediscovered the fiery simplicity of Eden, in ourselves, in each other, and that to lie together after a time of lying apart was sweet to all the senses, overwhelming to all emotions, and very exciting indeed.
Next morning, as so often happened up and down the ladder of marriage – next morning was different.
Kate, taking her full entitlement, slept very late, while I pottered about my study desk, running off some letters which would later go down, via dictaphone belt, to one of the young ladies at the secretarial agency. Jack Taggart called, about some translation rights of Wrap-Around, and Erwin Orwin, about a rehearsal which he did not want me to miss. I was in a suspended mood, waiting, like Job or Oedipus, for the day’s ration of bad news. All problems still remained, queueing up for solution; the postponement had been pleasant indeed, but this was the morning after.