Eumor’s visit had been like a stone briefly troubling the pool; I felt that if I waited long enough, the ripples would go away. But this was a Chamber of Commerce forecast, tailored strictly for the vacation trade. I was first made aware that the boat itself was beginning to rock, by an entirely new greeting from Joe the doorman.
I had been on television the previous night, as a guest detective trying to unmask such diverse toilers as the girl who crocheted ball-pockets for billiard tables, and the man who ironed the newspapers at London’s most august club, restricted to the octogenarian nobility. (I had guessed him wrong; I thought he was a pants-presser with a funny accent.) But Joe the doorman did not pass judgement on my performance; this time he broke precedent. He said: ‘Hallo there, Mr Steele! I was reading about you last night.’
‘Reading?’ I said, surprised. ‘What have I been doing this time?’
‘Oh, I didn’t believe any of it,’ he assured me, with a cheerful grin. ‘It was just an item … But I saved it for you to see.’ He fished inside his coat pocket, and came out with a crumpled evening paper, a paper, which, to put it mildly, I did not normally read. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been all the way through it.’
I thanked him, and put the paper in my own pocket, and went on up to the apartment, where I planned to spend a quiet day. I forgot it for about an hour, while I was going through the mail, and listening with half an enchanted ear to David Oistrakh, well-known communist infiltrator, playing his insidious violin. Then something made me remember the conversation downstairs, and I took the paper over to my desk, and looked for the ‘item’ which had caught Joe’s eye.
It was not too difficult to find; he had folded the paper at the appropriate page. It was halfway down a gossip column headed ‘Show Biz Confidential’.
Jonathan Steele (I read) now toiling on the final version of Erwin Orwin’s Pink Safari musical, based on Johnny’s own blockbuster, Ex Afrika, still manages to make the scene in his spare time … He’s all over town these days and nights with stunning Susan Crompton, who you can catch (if you’re quick enough) as the low-cut ‘Spirit of Paris’ in Erwin’s other opus, that ever-lovely, ever-running darling, Josephine … Nice casting, Johnny … Meanwhile, back at the ostrich farm, current mate Kate Steele sits it out in wildest Johannesburg, her home town, counting the loot from a recent inheritance … Better get your head out of the sand, Kate, or you’ll wind up as the ex in Africa.
I was glad that I had a drink in my hand, at that moment; there was a sudden and urgent need for a different taste. I read the column again, more analytically, feeling a little sick and a little chilly round the conscience. Then I poured another drink, and turned off the hi-fi set, and gave the matter some serious thought.
The report was considerably dated, as far as history was concerned; yet, amazingly, this was the first time Susan and I had appeared in print as a team, explicitly or otherwise. I had always been expecting something of the sort, though not perhaps so viciously angled; but there was an enormous amount of competition in this area, from New York’s perennial crop of public lovers, and writers as a class were of less amorous interest than Hollywood apes, French poodles and imported English stallions.
So far, in spite of a less-than-discreet progress all around the town, we had been left off the form-sheet; we had remained technically anonymous.
It was difficult to judge if this anonymity had now been breached. Kate might never read the paragraph, nor hear about it; and if she did, she still might not take it seriously. It was, I thought suddenly, couched in her own kind of prose, the kind she and her gossip column had thriven on, in the distant past; and she must know that a lot of such ‘revelations’ were balanced on a very slender wire of fact, if they were sustained by anything at all. She might decide to take the professional view that fire and smoke, so often unrelated, were in this case part of the same mirage.
I was still speculating about this, an hour and several drinks later, when the phone rang. It was Susan, Susan in a serious mood.
She began immediately. ‘Johnny, there was a terrible thing in one of the papers last night. Shall I–’
‘I know,’ I told her. ‘I heard about it.’
‘Who told you?’
‘The doorman. Who told you?’
‘People have been calling me up all morning,’ she said excitedly. ‘Well, three people, at least.’
‘What people?’
‘Girls in the show. Johnny, what do you think?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ I told her, and after about twelve straight drinks this was fundamentally true. ‘I think we’ve been damned lucky so far, that’s all. Now we’re not.’
‘Are you angry?’ she asked after a moment.
‘Not with you. Why should I be? You come out of it all right, anyway. They said you were stunning and low-cut. What more do you want?’
‘You are angry,’ she said. ‘Johnny, I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have this happen for anything in the world. Aren’t people awful?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s awful but us.’
‘Would you like to come back here and talk about it?’
‘I don’t think so. At the moment I’m in conference with a bottle of Comrade Smirnoff’s best. Stunning and uncorked. I’ll make out with that.’
‘Darling, isn’t there anything I can do?’
‘Not a thing.’ I gathered a few stray thoughts together. ‘Susan, don’t worry about this. It’ll either blow up in our face, or it won’t. Probably it won’t. There are hundreds of these damned gossip items every day, and they’re forgotten in twenty-four hours. Who reads the bloody paper, anyway? Doormen, and stunning old show-girls, and pimps, and truck-drivers, and Broadway drunks, and all our best friends.’ I realised that my thought-gathering had not been too successful, and I tried to sum up, in a common sense verdict. ‘Kate may never read it, anyway. By the time she gets back, they’ll be libelling someone else instead.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘With every fibre of my being.’
‘It is libel, isn’t it? Can’t you sue them?’
‘Oh sure. Just let me get my trousers on … Susan, it isn’t libel, and no one is going to sue anyone, and with luck she won’t hear about it, and that’ll be that.’
‘I wish you’d come over, all the same.’
‘I’m lying low,’ I said. ‘Eliot Ness gave me the signal. Goodbye.’
When I woke up, it was with a wonderfully dry mouth, but in other respects I felt better all over. Already, the gossip item which had so downcast us was out of date; already, there must be another issue of ‘Show Biz Confidential’ on the stands, and people would be reading and talking about some other sordid couple. There was nothing plucked so featherless and forlorn as yesterday’s love birds.
Tonight, with luck, Susan and I would start to be forgotten again. And perhaps Kate, six thousand miles away, burying her head, counting her loot, would never hear about it anyway.
But that guess turned out to be wrong. Kate did hear about it; in fact she must actually have read the column; some prompt and kindly friend must have sent a helpful cutting winging southwards within twenty-four hours. Three days later, I had a cable from her:
Returning in about ten days. Who is stunning Susan Crompton, or can I do it? Love Kate.
It was a fair warning, a very fair warning indeed.
Waiting for her (and it was strange to realise, after so long a separation, that ‘her’ meant Kate), I went to several parties, by myself, in a kind of reverse effort to stay out of the limelight. It seemed possible that if enough people saw me moping unaccompanied round the town, they would begin to think: Poor old bachelor Steele – he must be pining his heart out … But the price of this ingenious stroke of camouflage was, for my own taste, rather high.
The six-to-eight cocktail circuit, as established in any city where more than a quarter of a million people huddle together for urban shelter, always seemed to me a prime example of the stupidity and self-delusion lying in ambush for group behaviour of any sort.
It was as if someone, ignoring the law of diminishing returns, had worked out that if four people could enjoy themselves in one room, forty could have a real whale of a time, and four hundred could touch dizzy heights of ecstasy. And if one were really shooting for the moon, there was still the regal or presidential bash for four thousand.
The result, in cities like New York, or Washington, or London, or San Francisco, or Paris, or Rome – all highly civilised places where people should have known better – as well as in vulgar carbons such as Toronto or Johannesburg, was the conviction, deeply embedded, already sacrosanct, that a party could never hope for the higher ratings unless there was no room to move, no way of talking save to scream against the uproar, no time for anything but banality, and no way to survive except by burying the nose deep inside a glass, and dulling all the other senses as quickly as possible.
The idea that only an idiot would prefer to stand and shout when he could sit and read, or listen to music, or dine with six friends who were prepared to take turns at talking, seemed to have gone the way of the crinoline.
Yet I launched out upon this tormented sea nonetheless, and did my share of elbowing, and shouting, and grinning, and gulping, like any compulsive good-timer. The outcome, though negative for fun, was at least instructive.
I learned that no one seemed to give a damn what I was doing with my spare time, or which bed I was bouncing on, or where I hung my hat. A few friends asked: ‘Where’s Susan?’ and a few others: ‘Where’s Kate?’; neither group used any special or distinguishable tone of voice, and neither group waited for an answer, which they could scarcely have heard in any case.
It was an effective illustration of the fact that, by and large, in spite of the grinding gossip wheels, other people’s love affairs were really the dullest topic in the world; and that the type of exhibitionist whose peculiar pleasure it was to perch high on the headboard and crow to the world: ‘Look at me – I’m loving the daylights out of Liz,’ had only his own pointing finger as the emblem of success.
However, there was one exception to all this, one chance-encountered man who did take a personal interest in how I was spending my time. This was Hobart Mackay, my publisher, whom I met at a literary-and-stage gathering in one of the big party rooms at the St Regis.
Hobart went to a lot of such parties; he could not have enjoyed them, since he was essentially a quiet and studious character who did more thinking than doing. But he probably felt it necessary to keep an eye on other publishers and authors, to ensure that the former did not steal from his own stable, and the latter, if they felt like straying, knew that they had a comfortable home to go to.
He was a small man, about fifty, with short sandy hair and a blue bow tie; he looked like a university professor who had not changed his basic style since his own student days. We saw each other by chance across the jam-packed room – he was not an easy man to see at such a party – and he raised his eyebrows comically, as if in despair at the company we were keeping. Then he was lost to view behind a massive man with a bushy white beard, who really did look like a writer, and then we finally came together, in an eddy of traffic beside one of the St Regis potted palms.
‘Hallo, Jonathan,’ he said, with a slightly harassed smile. His glass was empty, and he could not have been farther from the bar, which was at the opposite end of the room, and under fierce and continuous siege by crowds of much larger guests. ‘It’s nice to see you, but I wish you were a dry martini … I didn’t know you came to this sort of circus.’
‘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 there 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.
I heard Kate’s bell ring in the kitchen, and presently, through my open door, saw Julia making for the stairway with a coffee tray. On impulse, I waylaid her.
‘I’ll take that up, Julia,’ I told her, and when I had the tray in my hand I asked: ‘Did you enjoy yourself in South Africa?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she answered. Her face, impassive at the best of times, was a positive mask of inexpression.
‘Did you go home and see your family?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How were they?’
‘Just the same.’
‘What’s your brother doing now?’
‘He was away,’ said Julia, with even less expression than before, and went back into the kitchen.
So much for those interminable travellers’ tales … Upstairs, I knocked on Kate’s door, and called out: ‘Room service,’ and went inside.
She was sitting up in bed, with her hair falling loosely over sunburnt shoulders; whether from her long sleep, or the aftermath of love, her face seemed completely and innocently at peace, smoothed out like a child’s; she looked about sixteen years old. She smiled when she saw me, and said: ‘What a funny hotel this must be.’
‘Very versatile staff,’ I said, and manoeuvred the tray, which had snap-down legs like a hospital model, into its position across the bed. Then I took my own drink from it, and bore it away to the window seat. I remembered that I had sat there before, seven long months ago, when Kate had been packing for her flight, and I had surprised her by saying that I was going to Barbados. I wondered who was going to do the surprising now.
As sometimes happened, she got my thought. Sipping her orange juice, she looked at me across the room, and then she said: ‘This is where we came in, isn’t it? … How’s the bottle going, Johnny?’
‘Very well.’
‘You’ve put on weight, haven’t you?’
‘About eight pounds. But it’s all good stuff. I’ve been eating rather a lot, for some reason.’
‘Eating? But you never eat anything.’
‘It must be going around with Erwin … You’ve got yourself a lovely tan, Kate. But I told you that last night, didn’t I?’ I toasted her in spiked tomato juice. ‘You were wonderful.’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’ She had reached the coffee stage now, and with it came the new line of thought, the one I had been waiting for; and with that, we were off to the races. ‘Johnny, who’s Susan Crompton?’
Answering, I used the light tone, but not, I hoped, too light; Kate was an excellent judge of such revealing falsities. ‘She’s just a girl in one of Erwin’s shows.’
‘It sounds very convenient.’
‘It’s not like that at all. How did you hear about her, anyway?’
‘Somebody must have known I could read, so they sent me some material.’
‘Who, for God’s sake?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh … What a lousy trick.’
‘The master speaks.’
‘Oh, come on, Kate!’ I said, energetically. ‘You know what those gossip columns are worth.’
‘What’s this one worth?’
‘Absolutely nothing. I’ve met her a few times, and we’ve been out together.’
‘And she’s stunning, like the man said?’
‘In a show-girl sort of way.’
‘What sort of way is that?’
I took another drink before I answered: ‘I mean, she’s tall, and quite good-looking, and she’s in a show. There are a million girls like her.’
‘You must have been busy.’
I laughed: ‘You can’t do them all.’
‘Some people try.’
‘Well, not me,’ I said, moving up for a bit of opposition. ‘Good God, if you knew the amount of work I’ve been doing! I haven’t had time for that sort of thing, even if I’d wanted it.’
‘Why didn’t you want it?’
‘I just didn’t. There wasn’t any message. What’s the opposite of chemistry?’
‘Sophistry.’ But she was frowning. ‘When did you see her last, then?’
‘About a week ago. Maybe a bit longer.’
‘That must have been when I cabled.’
‘I suppose it was, if you want to figure it out.’
‘I want to figure it out … Why did you stop?’
That seemed a good moment for a flash of irritation, and it needed no special effort to produce it. ‘I didn’t stop anything. We went out a few times, and that was it. I’ve been out with all sorts of people. Jack Taggart, and Hobart Mackay. I was at a party with Lord Muddley, the other night. Remember that character?’
‘I remember Lord Muddley,’ she told me, ‘and I’m not too worried about you and him. I’m worried about stunning Susan Crompton.’
‘You needn’t be,’ I said shortly. ‘She’s just a girl.’
‘That’s not the most reassuring thing you’ve ever said.’ Now, in a curious move, she turned over on her side, and put her head back on the pillow, and addressed me via the nearest wall. ‘Johnny, don’t fool around. If you’re involved with her, I want to know about it.’
‘I’m not involved with her.’
‘Were you?’
‘No. It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘What was it like?’
‘We went out a few times. I told you.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘Down in the fifties somewhere.’
‘Somewhere? You mean you walk around till you suddenly meet her? Don’t overdo it, my friend.’
‘West Fifty-fourth Street.’
‘That’s better.’ She turned her head, till she seemed even farther away from me, her face buried in the pillow. I had a sudden, bitter, panicky thought that she was doing this because she had gone into mourning, for me and for us; because she did not want to watch my face when I was lying; because she knew the whole story, or thought she did, and would never be persuaded otherwise. Her voice muffled, she asked: ‘Is it over, Johnny?’
‘A thing can’t be over if it never got started.’
She answered me with some words spoken into the pillow, which I could not hear, and I said: ‘What?’
Her head turned, and suddenly she sat up to face me. ‘I said, white man speak with forked tongue,’ she told me, in a swift change of mood. ‘Madison Avenue jargon joke … Steele, I’ve had enough of Susan Crompton, and I’d like to be sure you have.’
‘Admitting nothing,’ I said, ‘I’ve had enough of Susan Crompton.’
‘How old is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Johnny!’
‘Twenty-something. Twenty-five, maybe.’
‘I’ll find out, you know.’
‘Tell me when you do.’
We were fencing still, but it was not so serious now. Kate seemed to have accepted something; perhaps she had even begun to accept the actual facts as I knew them and as she suspected; but if this were so, she could have decided at the same time not to be worried or deeply wounded by them, because the thing must assuredly be over and done with, a part of the buried past.
Perhaps, when she had used the phrase ‘post mortem’, she had already been willing it so … The topic seemed to have been disposed of, for this particular session; and in my relief I felt she was entitled to a remark she made later that afternoon.
We were downstairs, after lunch. When the doorbell rang, Julia answered it, and returned with the message that it was ‘the electrician’; and then Kate went out into the hall, where I heard a man’s voice in conversation which I could not distinguish. When she came back, I asked: ‘Who was that?’
She answered, very calmly, out of the blue: ‘Just the man to see about the lie-detector.’
Good old Kate.
We had given half a day to one of the issues in contention; it had been quite long enough for me, and if there were loose strings still untidily showing, they were not enough to trip a strong and wary man. But it appeared that we had two such topics to discuss; and for the second, I presently began to think that the rest of her life might not be enough. At nightfall, after a dinner enlivened by lots of homecoming champagne, and one of Julia’s nicest South African dishes, a sort of Cape-Malay version of stuffed eggplant which they called brinjals, we came to Kate’s chief concern.
The meal had supplied the clue. It was South Africa itself. As a matter of distraction, I welcomed the fact that it seemed so very important. But before long I realised that this welcome was likely to be overstayed.
She started with Maraisgezicht, her home, and why she had not been able to leave it for so long. It was, I had to admit, a sad story; and as she sat there, her legs stretched out on the zebra-skin couch, looking young and very pretty in a dress so elegant, severe and simple that it could only have been available to an heiress, I found myself moved by both pictures.
Kate was the one I preferred. But in essence, she was not there any more. She was far away, staring up at the façade of her great house, wandering through its rooms, trying to take care of its people, her people.
‘I couldn’t just walk in, and then out again,’ she told me. Her face was serious, and troubled; it was clear that this was a picture which had never left her, which she had brought back to keep her company and to grieve over. ‘Dad had been ill for such a long time. I’d always thought that the place would run itself, even if he weren’t there to watch over it, because it’s been going for so long, more than two hundred years, in the same mould. But that wasn’t true. It needed him, and if not him, then someone like him. Otherwise, it was just falling apart.’
‘But what about the agent?’ I asked. ‘Weren’t there two of them? What were they doing?’
She was frowning even more deeply. ‘One of them died, and the other–’ she paused, ‘–the other, I had to get rid of.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he didn’t deserve anything else. He was an Afrikaner, of course; one of my own people. He used to be very good at his job. But he’d changed, like so many other Afrikaners. He’d become brutal, Teutonic, harsh – all the bad words. I was ashamed of him, and so were the people he was overseeing. Ashamed and puzzled, like when a friend suddenly becomes your jailer, like it must be when one’s parents get divorced, or start hitting each other, or punishing their children for no reason beyond the pleasure of it … Anyway, he had to leave. He could go and play Hitler anywhere else, as far as I was concerned. But not on my money. Not at Maraisgezicht.’
‘But someone had to run the place. It must need a lot of discipline.’
She shook her head from side to side. ‘Not discipline like that. Not a private cage, with a long whip, and a bunch of mangy lions to use it on … The big Cape Province estates have never been run like that, and they don’t have to be … Do you remember meeting Simeon? Simeon Marais, the major-domo?’
I nodded. ‘A proud man.’
‘Not any more. By the time I got there, he’d become absolutely brutalised. Koopman – that’s the agent – used to treat him like an animal, like a dog he didn’t like. Simeon had never had to learn tricks like that – servile tricks, jumping and running with a man shouting at him, hitting him … But he’d learned them now … And he’s an eighth generation Simeon Marais!’ She put her hand up to her temples, in despair, in remembered pain. ‘It was like that all over Maraisgezicht. It was disgusting, repellent! So I got rid of Koopman, and the night he left they all came and thanked me, and I don’t know if there were more people crying than laughing.’
‘But you know an agent doesn’t have to behave like that. You could get another one, a good one.’
She shook her head again, more vigorously. ‘It’s my house, and they are my people. How can I leave them to be handled by strangers? They need me, Johnny. Most of them knew me when I was a little girl. Some – a few – can remember my father when he first went off to school in Cape Town. On a red pony, they said, with a satchel of books, and a little shotgun for luck … I can’t leave people like that. I have to take care of them, and of Maraisgezicht. With all that money, I can do it. It can be a great house again, with hundreds of people who can count on working there all their lives, working as men … I can do it. But I have to be there, to make sure that things go right. We have to be there.’
This was fast becoming a fantasy, with tentacles which might stretch anywhere, with undertones of fact which I did not like at all. I tried to ward off my share of it.
‘I don’t think I’d exactly fit in there, Kate. Can you honestly see me helping you to run Maraisgezicht? Or lending a paternal hand with the labour force, with my little shotgun in my hand? It’s not my line, it never was, and it never could be.’
‘You would fit in!’ she insisted. ‘But in a different way, an even better way. You could try to do for South Africa what I would try to do for Maraisgezicht.’ And as I looked at her in astonishment: ‘It’s true. There’s a desperate need for people like you.’
I laughed, in absolute disbelief. ‘The jails must be full of them.’
‘That’s exactly it! All South Africa is going that way, and unless people who know the country, and love it, and want to change it, agree to come to the rescue, it’s going to go down in ruins.’
She paused, but it was only for breath. She seemed ready to break over me with an even bigger wave, an avalanche of argument which truly took me by surprise. I scarcely recognised her tonight. She had left me a simple traveller, and returned as a messiah with a message.
‘I was wrong about South Africa,’ she said after a moment. ‘I was wrong, and you were right.’ And as she saw me ready to disagree, she held up her hand for the floor. ‘I mean it. I was wrong about not getting involved. One must get involved. Anything else is simply cowardice. Anyone who doesn’t speak out now doesn’t deserve to have a tongue to speak with.’
‘But what on earth is the use of speaking out? I told you – you just end up in jail.’
‘Then keep out of jail!’ she answered forcefully. ‘Keep on the right side of those monstrous laws. It’s not too difficult, for a clever man. But you must still do something about them. It’s not too late – I’m sure of that – but very soon it will be.’
Unwisely, I asked: ‘What monstrous laws?’
‘You read about them in the papers,’ she answered, ‘and often it doesn’t mean much. You tend to think: people don’t go to prison for nothing, people deserve what they get if they try to defy the law. It’s not true any more! South Africa is becoming a colossal jail, for anyone who doesn’t keep to one line of thought and one single conviction – that things are going to stay as they are forever. If you show the least sign of resisting, you can be labelled a communist, or a criminal, or a traitor, and you might as well be dead. They just take you out of circulation. You can be imprisoned for anything! I found that out at first hand.’
That sounded like a brand new item. Pouring out some more champagne – it seemed a good night to stay with the grape – I asked: ‘What happened?’
Kate was very ready to tell me. ‘As soon as we got there,’ she said, ‘we found that Julia’s brother was in trouble. Bad trouble. Her mother hadn’t told Julia anything about it, because she was afraid to write. He was in jail. He’d been there for eight months. Something to do with that fatuous treason trial. Treason!’ She positively ripped the word out. ‘He works on the railways – just a man with a hammer, some kind of maintenance work – and he joined a protest meeting up in the Transvaal, trying to improve union rights for coloureds, and the police stuck a communist label on the movement, and rounded everyone up, and suddenly Julia’s brother was awaiting trial for treasonable activity against the republic. And he’s still being held.
‘We were in Johannesburg,’ she went on, ‘because Dad was in the hospital there, and that was where her brother was in prison, so I told Julia to try and see him, or get a message to him, in case he wanted anything – and the next thing that happened, she was in jail too. It was absolutely monstrous! They came and picked her up for questioning, one day when I was out. She was completely terrified, of course. She wasn’t even able to leave a message for me. They asked her where she’d been lately, and when she said New York, they suddenly started asking her streams of questions about who she knew in America, and if she belonged to any clubs, and whether she’d brought any letters or messages over – things like that. They kept her there for three days, interrogating her all the time, trying to link her with what her brother was supposed to be doing, before they even let me know about it. Then it took another two days to get her out, and it would have taken longer if I hadn’t put every lawyer in town onto the job, and all the newspapers as well.’
Kate paused, thinking, remembering what must have been, in the context of her settled life, her position in South Africa, a fairly shattering experience. I had been interested in the story, but not much more than that. Coloured railway workers who tried to drum up union agitation in South Africa were obviously due for the high jump; it was a fact of life, and Julia’s brother must have known about it.
Of course it was all wrong, but so was a whole calendar of other laws – liquor laws, parking laws, obscenity and libel laws – which the prudent man steered round, or over, or away from. Keeping out of trouble wasn’t the trick of the week, in South Africa or anywhere else. It was the commonest of common sense.
But Kate was back to her story. ‘As soon as I got Julia out,’ she said, ‘I sent her down to her mother in the Cape, because the old woman was pretty well shot by this time, and Julia needed a rest and a change of scene. Then I suddenly realised that I was being followed myself. I got a private detective to check on it, and it was quite true. The police were trailing me all over the place, even when I went to the hospital to see Dad. My letters were being opened. They were probably tapping my telephone, for all I know. They actually came to Dad’s funeral. And all because I raised the roof about Julia.’ Her eyes flashed sudden fire. ‘In South Africa! My country! Damn it, my family was there before most of those towns had names! And most of those jumped-up policemen and politicians too! Can you imagine what it was like, to be treated like a criminal in Johannesburg? My father opened five of the Reef gold mines. He was a Marais, and I’m a Marais too. And now apparently I’m not a Marais any more, I’m a run-of-the-mill police suspect, with a bunch of those blond Afrikaner blockheads following me all over town.’
Her indignation was so fierce that I could not help laughing. The proud lineage had certainly taken a beating, and I knew, better than most people, what it must have meant to her. By now, I was beginning to suspect that this crusade of hers was grounded in something else beside political morality, that injured self-respect was playing a large part. But this was clearly not the moment to raise the point.
‘Don’t laugh,’ she snapped irritably. ‘You wouldn’t have thought it funny if you’d been there, or if it had happened to you.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You looked so indignant.’
‘I was indignant. I was furious. And I still am.’
‘Well, you’re home safe and sound now, anyway.’
‘And that wasn’t so easy, either,’ she flared out again. ‘Do you know, I had the damnedest time bringing Julia back here with me? First they said, no, she couldn’t leave, she had to stay there for further investigation. Then they said she could go, but they would impound her passport so that she couldn’t come back to South Africa again. Johnny, it’s her country! … If it hadn’t been for Gerald Thyssen going into action and getting them to drop it, Julia would still be there, being hauled in for questioning whenever the police felt like it. And she’s still going to run into trouble, whenever we want to go back.’
‘What did Gerald do?’ I asked, curious.
‘He’s Gerald Thyssen,’ she said curtly. ‘He mines gold. It’s the only thing these crooks understand.’
After a moment, during which I felt somewhat excluded from great affairs, I said again: ‘Well, you’re out of it, anyway.’
‘But that’s exactly what they want,’ she declared. Apparently I was doomed, tonight, to produce all the wrong answers, the kind which only triggered a fresh fuse. ‘They want people like me to get out, and stay out, so they can go ahead with their stinking little police state. There’s a terrible I’m-all-right-Jack process going on down there; whatever awful thing happens, no one does anything about it, as long as they’re left alone themselves. It’s like bullying at school; the victim takes the heat off all the others … It just isn’t good enough, not for any country, and particularly a country where the people being bullied are a five-to-one majority. Black South Africans won’t stand for it much longer. They’re sick of injustice, they’re sick of being kicked around, and they’re sick of running the elevators.’
I shrugged. ‘Who isn’t?’ I was growing tired of this topic myself; all I had was a thirst, and it wasn’t a thirst for facts, nor for causes either. ‘Who doesn’t want to step up in the world? We all do.’
But I had only lit another firecracker. ‘Oh Johnny, don’t say things like that!’ she burst out passionately. ‘That isn’t even remotely the problem, for people like you. These are men and women who have nothing! All their hopes, all their real lives are being squeezed out of them. I saw it happening. That man Koopman was making a slum out of Maraisgezicht, and his friends are making a slum out of the whole country. We can’t just ignore it; the bell is tolling for us. All cruel laws are wrong, whether they hit you or whether they pass you by.’ Suddenly she got up, and crossed over to me where I stood by the drinks cabinet; she seemed to be on fire with her determination. ‘Come back with me, Johnny. Let’s go together. There’s so much for both of us to do, and we’re just the people to do it.’
The plea was incomprehensible; it would have made more sense if she had been urging me to sign up as a space-pilot. I almost backed away from her, so startling was the lunatic proposition. Though I wanted to avoid an argument, there was a tide here which had to be stemmed, before it ran completely wild and carried me away with it. I half turned from her, in physical disengagement, and busied myself at the bar. Over my shoulder, I said, as coolly as I could: ‘How can I conceivably do that?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? There are hundreds of arguments.’ I was untwisting the wires of a fresh bottle of champagne, and I gave this the attention it deserved before going back to my answer. ‘To begin with, I can’t afford to. I’m busy now, and I shall always have to work for a living, in the future. Work means writing. I can’t possibly break it off now. It’s ridiculous to ask me.’
‘I’m not asking you to break anything off. You can work in South Africa.’
‘Not if I get tied up in politics.’
‘But that would be your work. Writing about South Africa, writing about race relations, writing about the people there. You know so much about them already. You could do enormous good, even if you never touched active politics, just by being there and telling the rest of the world what was going on.’
‘I’ve done that once already.’
After a moment’s silence, I heard her voice say: ‘Johnny, can’t you even look at me?’
‘Oh, nuts!’ I exclaimed. I turned, irritated and impatient. ‘What the hell is all this? Kate, you’re talking absolute rubbish. I can’t go to South Africa, or anywhere else where the very stones are crying out for justice. I live and work here in New York. I like it. This is where my life is, and this is where I’m going to live it.’
‘It’s not a life. It’s a selfish holiday.’
I drank deep before I answered: ‘It may be selfish, but it’s not a holiday. I do work, damn it!’
‘What at? Making a funny musical out of a deadly serious subject? You’re just wasting your talents. You’re wasting your feelings. You’re wasting everything that ever made you worthwhile, as a man.’
‘So your courier said.’
‘Courier?’
‘Eumor. The cunning old Greek messenger of the gods, Eumorphopulos. He gave me an earful, too.’
She had crossed to the sofa, as if in retreat or despair, and was preparing to lie down again. ‘Did you listen to him?’ she asked more quietly.
‘I listened. Then we went to a strip-tease show. I’m just not in the market for a reforming influence.’
She sighed, dropping her head back on the sofa arm. ‘It’s this damned town, I suppose.’
‘It’s not this damned town!’ I said, with some spirit. ‘New York is wonderful, if you allow it to be.’
‘Look what it’s done to you.’
‘It hasn’t done anything that wasn’t there before.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not true, Johnny. Basically, you’re not phoney, you don’t give a damn about status or money. You’ve just lost your head over this crazy sort of life. You’re in the middle of a love affair.’
‘Now, now,’ I said. ‘No re-hash.’
‘Oh, not that one. You’re having a love affair with New York. With the idea of New York, the idea of fun and games, and a wild time as a celebrity, and money to throw away on things that nobody in their senses would ever want. It’s the very worst of the western world, a distillation of the whole damned idea of luxury, where they do more for the man who has everything than the child who has nothing.’
‘I read that somewhere.’
‘Then I wish you’d get it through your skull that it’s the literal truth.’
And so on. Kate would not stop making her absurd presentation, and eventually I ran out of patience, and we went off to our separate beds, as sundered as we had ever been. I was angry with her both for spoiling a perfectly good homecoming, and for interrupting me, with this picket-line parade of banners and slogans, when I was trying to concentrate on something quite different.
I was working, as hard as I had done for a long time, and this was the wrong moment for her to mount another crusade. There had been more than enough of that already. First it had been my awful writing, now it was my awful politics – or lack of them. Both campaigns were aimed at involving me in the fatal trap of participation.
I did not want to be involved, I did not want to take part. Though, long ago, I had believed that all artists should be thus ‘engaged’, that they owed mankind a duty to dismantle the flaws and cruelties and indecencies of our mortal house, and then to build something better with whatever sound timbers they could find, I did not think so now.
A writer, especially, had enough to do, scratching a living from the bare earth of invention … I took to bed with me a fresh astonishment – the totally unreal moment when I asked Kate, in exasperation: ‘Why do you feel this way about South Africa?’ and she had answered, soberly and seriously: ‘I learned it from you, and I shall always be grateful.’
That was really the low ebb of this weird little fairy-tale.
It was good to escape, each day, to another theatre, where I could play something like a man-sized role. There was more work for me now on The Pink Safari than there had ever been; Erwin Orwin was getting his money’s worth, and I was glad to give it him, in a job which involved more question marks, more sudden crises, and more quick thinking than anything I had tackled before.
Though we were now well into rehearsals, the show was still growing, and changing shape, and losing a bit here and adding a bit there; like a baby in the womb, the main format was traditional, but there were certain processes at work which would determine whether a fat boy, a thin girl, or a six-toed midget would presently emerge. If there was anything I could do, by way of last-minute jewels from my smoke-filled head, to ease the delivery, I was there to do it.
As an early Christmas present to me, Erwin had given Susan a minute part in the show. It was only a token appearance, involving a couple of those connective phrases which, in old musical comedies, used to be expressed as ‘Girls! Here comes the Duke!’ followed by glad cries, merry laughter and a reprise of ‘Welcome to Monte Carlo!’
But it gave her an obvious pleasure, and kept her within the fold. Erwin, discounting my thanks, remarked: ‘It saves trouble if you know where they are all day,’ and that was perhaps all that he needed to say, about a situation which had settled down to a pattern of slightly pedestrian sin.
Following the prudent tradition of such affairs, Susan never called me at the apartment. We used to meet in the early evenings, after rehearsal, and go back to her place on 54th Street; this hallowed time-slot for lovemaking, between the office and the domestic dinner table, was really all I could manage, without going too deep into lies and evasions. It had come to be enough.
The affair was now not very wild, not very anything. The new body was now the accustomed one; though beautiful as ever, warm and entwining as long grass under sunlight, she was no longer the girl I had to have at all costs. She was a girl who was there when I felt like it, the free pass which never lapsed, and that was a different thing altogether.
She was also, subtly yet perceptibly, a girl who was ready with the withdrawal symptoms, in case of need.
‘Do you still sleep with her?’ she asked me one evening when the matter of who-slept-with-whom was an appropriate topic.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’
She sighed. ‘Men always say that.’
‘Do they?’ The bare-faced lie seemed a good mirror of our situation at that moment, and I saw no harm in it. ‘Then it’s probably always true.’
‘Are you getting tired of me, Johnny?’
‘No. Not in the least.’ I rolled over and looked at her. I was tired of her, at that moment, but it had been a matter of mutual arrangement. ‘I thought I just showed you.’
‘That doesn’t count … But I wouldn’t want you to go on, if–’ She threw the rest of the sentence away, as usual, and started another one. ‘I don’t mean you have to make up your mind, or anything. But this has gone on for a long time, hasn’t it?’
‘Nearly ten months,’ I agreed. ‘I haven’t kept any other score.’
‘It’s been the longest ever, for me.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘You’d say if you were bored?’
‘I’d say.’
‘What’s she like, really? What do you talk about? I hear she’s beautiful.’
‘Yes.’ I couldn’t get interested in any part of this conversation. ‘You hear right.’
‘And rich.’
‘Loaded.’
‘Johnny?’
‘M’m.’
‘You never say anything about her. Say something.’
‘Curried shrimps à la Creole.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. It’s the thing she cooks best.’ I reached out to touch the nearest plane of Susan’s body, which happened to be agreeably rounded. ‘Knock it off, Susan,’ I said, not too severely. ‘You don’t want to talk about this, and neither do I.’
‘I don’t really mind if you do sleep with her,’ she said, and I felt that this was true. ‘I just want to know about it, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘Just so that I know where I am.’
‘You’re in bed with me,’ I told her. ‘What more could a girl ask?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But don’t say I make you do things you don’t want to … Wasn’t that an awful row at rehearsal this afternoon?’
‘It was just a row.’
‘I don’t know how people can behave like that.’
‘They’re actors.’
Her quick change of subject was typical, not only of her attitude towards us – a friendly, take-it-or-leave-it permissiveness – but of what she was really interested in nowadays. Susan had become deeply intrigued with the small internal politics of the show, which I could never take seriously; for her, it really was exciting to watch, listen to, speculate upon and endlessly discuss the private lives and public demeanour of every member of the Safari cast.
Such up-to-the-minute gossip had become of daily, hourly, engrossing importance to her; and in this she was only joining the throng, following a trend which was probably as old as the theatre itself.
It was a self-contained world, private, trivial and confined. One was aware all the time of the total absorption of theatre people, not in their art (which though dull would have been excusable), but in themselves. Their days were filled with tremendous, to-and-fro discussion about nothing – about make-up, diet, clothes, missed cues, dry-ups, other shows, flops, smashes, show-stoppers, good and bad reviews and arguments in which they had demolished the opposition. There was occasional, grudging praise for perfection, and instant, spiteful comment on any observed weakness. It was like a nursery, full of boastful little show-offs stealing each other’s toys.
Above all, these people, like most exhibitionists, were immensely vain. Happy when they were bitching about the rest of mankind, they were happiest of all when listening to single-minded homage of themselves. The old theatre chestnut: ‘But let’s talk about you. What did you think of my performance?’ still remained the classic attitude.
At the beginning, when Susan joined the cast, I had feared that I might have to watch her being propositioned before my shadowed eyes; that, in this world of handsome, active youth, jealousy would find too much to feed on. I need not have worried. On a few occasions, I did observe the faint beginnings of a romantic approach. But it never lasted, it ran out of muscle well before the muscles came into play. These young men were actors, and their sole enduring love affair was with themselves.
Buttressing this vanity was an immediate readiness to quarrel. There were perennial feuds between various members of the cast, devious intrigues whose currents altered each day, like the changing delta of a shallow-running river. As on the stage itself, everything had to be larger and brighter coloured and more dramatic than life. The most furious rows could change to vows of eternal friendship overnight, and veer back again at the drop of a mink stole.
This was the touchy world of the tiff, the hunched shoulder, and the smacked face, and if one did not join in and take sides, one was rated heartless or, worse still, conceited, and a fresh grouping, a mute stockade of set faces and meaning looks, very soon made one aware of the fact.
Some of our crises stemmed from having a cast more ‘mixed’ than in any other comparable operation in New York. We would have had our troubles anyway, but this was an extra guarantee of action. The tender area of race relations (referred to by Susan and her friends as ‘the black and white bit’) ensured that when all other themes of discord ran out, there remained a rich lode of ill-will which had scarcely been mined at all.
The row that afternoon, which Susan had recalled with such pleasurable awe, had been typical of our brittle, tantrum-prone society. There were four leads in The Pink Safari, two black and two white; they all seemed to get along pretty well (‘So they damned well ought to, for the money,’ Erwin Orwin had growled, when I mentioned this amiable circumstance), except for Dave Jenkin, the leading Negro actor, who, as a matter of professional habit, did not get along with anyone but himself.
Dave Jenkin was a promoted song-and-dance man who had progressed, by an admittedly rocky road which would have vanquished anyone with less endurance, guts and gall, from small-time vaudeville player to Broadway personality and (when he found something to suit him) a very competent actor; in the process, he had also graduated, with outstanding success, from little bastard to big. Within the sacred grove of race relations, however, no one was allowed to point this fact out. He was one emperor who, by statutory falsehood, was always fully clothed.
It was a curious piece of artifice. Here was a man who, if he had been white, would have been written off, by almost anyone who met him, as a loud-mouthed, uncouth and conceited boor. If the question ever came up of his marrying one’s sister, he would have been shown the door as a matter of family necessity. But Jenkin was not a white man, and so none of this could be true. He was black; therefore, he was a great coloured artist, and woe betide the first fascist swine who denied it.
He had been a pain in all our necks ever since he joined the cast. He was abominably rude to everybody. He argued all the time. He was late for rehearsal, late on cue, late everywhere except for lunch. He arrived each morning with a hangover, and left with a chocolate chip on his shoulder. He should have been sacked at the end of the first day, when he had started bragging about ‘pepping up this turkey’; but that of course would have been a clear case of racial discrimination, shaming the democratic process.
There was also the fact that he was absolutely made for his part in Safari, if he chose to try. But the job of coaxing him to be a reasonable human being, let alone a good actor, was so mountainous and so unpleasant that, in happier circumstances, he would have been replaced over the weekend.
There we were, anyway, stuck with Dave Jenkin, the distinguished Negro actor whose best protection was his skin. It was he who had precipitated that day’s quarrel, not the least in our long roster of confrontation. He had kept the stage waiting, at one important moment when he should have sailed in on cue; and apart from the irritation of this check, there was the additional annoyance that his voice could be heard offstage, in a deep-toned monologue which might have had a lot to do with Dave Jenkin but had nothing to do with my plot.
It was the stage manager’s job to rout him out, but before he could do so, someone more in the limelight took a hand. This was Sally Coates, the actress who was playing the ‘white girl’ lead, a cheerful and bouncing character whose reserves of energy and good humour had already done us many a good turn. It was she who had been held up and thrown out of stride, and she who, at last, felt compelled to point the fact out.
Standing centre stage, in the slacks and shirt which were the usual rehearsal rig, Sally called out briskly: ‘Dave! Wake up! You’re on!’
There was a silence, and then Dave Jenkin strolled onstage, at a pace which indicated his indifference to this or any other drama. His tightly-cuffed yellow pants and checkered shirt made a convenient focus for our dislike. He drawled: ‘You want me, honey?’
Sally Coates had already had enough of this long day, and she reacted snappishly.
‘No,’ she shot back, hands on hips. ‘I don’t want you one little bit. But the play does. You had a cue there.’
‘Well, now,’ said Dave Jenkin, in the same insolent drawl, ‘aren’t we the funny one today … Maybe if you spoke the cue louder, I could hear it.’
We were all waiting in silence – Erwin and myself sitting side by side in the second row, the director leaning over the piano on stage, the half-dozen other actors taking part in the scene, the usual drift of people watching or learning lines or hanging about – but now all staring in upon this unpleasant little tangle.
‘I spoke loud enough,’ said Sally sharply. ‘If you’d stop talking for a bit, and listen, you could come in on time.’ But she was not the girl to hold a mood of irritation. ‘OK, Dave – let’s go!’ She spoke her cue-line again. “And if I do, I know just the man to take care of you.”
Dave Jenkin stood silent, sullen and frowning. Finally he executed an absurd little step dance, a cut-and-shuffle from his remote, soft-shoe past, threw out his arms, and said: ‘What was that again?’
‘You heard me.’
‘I didn’t. That’s just the trouble, baby.’ The whining insolence was even more pronounced than usual. ‘I heard a mumble, that’s what I heard. Can’t hardly take that for a cue, can I?’
By my side, Erwin Orwin stirred. ‘Dave!’ he called out.
Dave Jenkin crouched and cupped his hand. ‘Yes, sir, boss?’
‘Let’s get on with it.’
‘Yes, sir! Any time I hear the call.’
Erwin drew a considerable breath. ‘All right, Sally,’ he said after a moment. ‘Let’s go back. Just give him that cue-line again.’
Sally repeated: ‘“And if I do, I know just the man to take care of you.”’ She then, being angry, improvised, ‘And I wish to Christ that was true.’
Without a word, Dave Jenkin turned and stalked off the stage. His reputed girlfriend, a small and lithe young dancer with the waist and disposition of a wasp, called out: ‘That’s the boy! You show ’em, Dave!’ and was countered by another girl, less sympathetic, whose contribution was a crisp ‘Shut up, you stupid bitch!’ Hair was pulled, faces once again were slapped; Sally’s husband, who had no part at all in the show and was in fact a nightclub singer on holiday from Philadelphia, came down centre stage and embarked on a long harangue vaguely directed at Erwin Orwin.
The piano player, a man of long-term, all-absorbent resignation, began to play the overture, in a key so satirically modulated that it sounded midway between the Danse Macabre and Chopin in a mood of revolutionary despair. Dave Jenkin reappeared in his street clothes, and strode purposefully from left to right on his way to the exit. Sally’s husband said something to him, whereupon Dave Jenkin, who had been a boxer before he became a tap-dancer, promptly knocked him down, and then continued his walk offstage.
Sally started to cry, and Dave Jenkin’s girlfriend took a running kick at the prostrate man, missed him, and landed flat on her cushioned-ride behind. From this non-vantage point, she called shrilly after her departing lover: ‘Keep going, honey! Don’t pay them any mind! Don’t even ignore them!’
Into this lively tableau, which had some affinity with the last act of Hamlet, Erwin injected his own personality. He suddenly stood up, and bawled: ‘Break! Five minutes! And everybody off stage!’ He then rounded on me, and snarled: ‘It’s all your God-damned fault!’ and as I looked up, genuinely startled, I saw that he was grinning, and we both broke into laughter.
It seemed perfectly natural that, five minutes later at the end of the interval, the rehearsal continued as if nothing had happened. Only Dave Jenkin, coaxed out of the nearest bar by his female friend (who had been threatened with automatic dismissal if she did not bring him back), made anything more out of it. Pleading sinus infection, he had his dresser follow him round the stage with a nasal spray for the rest of the afternoon, applying soothing surges of medicament at the conclusion of every speech.
‘I wish I had the use of that thing,’ grumbled Erwin Orwin, settling down again. ‘I’d try a different approach … But he’s good, all the same, isn’t he? The son-of-a-bitch is really good!’
Surrounded by such intermittent flurries, Steele the stolid anchor-man toiled, feeling at least a hundred years older than the assorted delinquents romping round his feet. But, trying for the long view, it was possible to feel optimistic. The Pink Safari had taken on a good hard outline, and a reasonably distinctive one. It had a book, a score, lyrics, a cast, eight different sets, a costume plan, and a schedule of future operations.
The time was now December. The play would be ready, even by Erwin’s spendthrift standards, in about a month. It would then have its first try-out in Boston in January, and open in New York in the spring – the second spring of its life.