8

In London it was nine o’clock, a clear and cool Sunday morning. And thank goodness it was quiet. He was at the back of the hotel away from the street, and his window overlooked a narrow passageway that ran between two buildings. He was up and half dressed, in his socks, shorts and shirt, and he had stopped dressing midway, after fastening his garters, when he had remembered a request made the night before, that had not been attended to. He decided to wait, to make a little test, and so he got back into bed, pulled the bedspread up over his bare knees, lighted a cigarette and waited for the phone to ring. Ten minutes later, gauged by the time it took to smoke the cigarette, he picked up the phone. When the clerk at the desk answered, he asked, ‘What time is it, please?’

There was a pause. Then, ‘Nine-thirteen, sir.’

‘I thought I asked to be called at nine,’ Carson said.

‘Sorry, sir.’

Carson hung up the phone, letting it drop with a bang. He was in that sort of mood. It was not that he expected de luxe service—far from it; certainly not in a hotel like this one. But even at the incredibly low rate of a guinea a day he expected a few minimal things, like being called in the morning when he had asked to be called. He raised his knees, making two mountains under the bedspread, lifted the ashtray from the night stand, floated it in the valley between the mountains, and lighted another cigarette. The sunshine and the quiet of the room did little to rid him of his disgruntlement; the faded yellow wallpaper and chipped and bubbled plaster ceiling were the features that annoyed him most, that cancelled out any cheeriness the day itself offered. He smoked, enjoying feeling martyred and enjoying the thought that he had got out on the wrong side of the bed, a singularly lumpy bed.

What he was doing was playing the system. His official hotel for the trip, the one stated on his itinerary, was the Dorchester. This hotel—and this morning he couldn’t even remember the name of it—had been one he’d found last night running through the list of hotels in the telephone directory at the airport. It was in Paddington, near the station, some distance from the Dorchester. This morning, after breakfast, he would wander over to the Dorchester, leave his name at the desk, ask that messages and mail be held for him, tip the message clerk ten shillings and that would be that. That was the way the system worked. The difference between the Dorchester and the place where he was staying was four pounds, or about eleven dollars, a day. This was the difference between what the company paid him for a hotel room, and what he paid. It was differences like this that had bought Clyde Adams his Rolleiflex camera, his slide projector and screen. It was what had paid for Muriel Hodgson’s Schiaparelli cocktail dress from Paris and it bought countless leather handbags, bottles of perfume, French gloves, English shoes for other salesmen and their wives. In the fraternity of salesmen for the Locustville Chemical Company there was no secret made of it. It was the system.

It was a little too simple to say that he disapproved of it; it was too late for disapproval. He had been participating in it for too long. He knew it was dishonest, and looking back, perhaps, if he had wanted to be a crusader, he might have made an issue of it. At one time, he could have. But not now. He had let himself be pulled into it by the others and by now the system had worked to his advantage too many times. It would be even more dishonest if now he should suddenly, indignantly, protest the system, and expose it. If he wanted an excuse for playing the system, one had been given him, plainly enough, by Jesse Talbot, head of the Export Division.

It had come as a result of something that happened during his first foreign trip.

Carson had arrived in Paris, where he had been scheduled to meet Bert Hodgson, who was flying in from Geneva. Both men were to be staying at the Georges Cinq, and when Carson got to the hotel, he asked whether Bert had arrived. Bert had not. Carson registered, went to his room, and unpacked his suitcase. A little later, after phoning several times to see whether Bert had checked in, Carson decided to go down to the bar for a drink.

He was crossing the lobby when he saw Bert Hodgson come through the door from the street, wearing his hat and coat but carrying no brief-case, accompanied by no luggage. Bert greeted him warmly.

‘Hey,’ Bert said, ‘I got a real swell place—over near the University. It works out to about a buck-eighty a day.’

‘Aren’t you staying here?’ Carson asked.

‘Hell, no,’ Bert said. ‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell for?’

‘It’s on the itinerary,’ Carson said. And then he said. ‘Besides, it’s one of the nicest hotels in Paris.’

Bert’s eyes had clouded. ‘Is that so?’ he asked. ‘Well. Pretty fancy, aren’t you, Greer?’

When he got back to Locustville, Jesse Talbot had said, ‘By the way, Bert Hodgson says you two did fine in Paris.’

‘It went pretty well.’

‘You like to treat yourself in style, Bert says. You like the finer things of life.’

‘I don’t know what Bert means by that.’

‘Says you were staying at the Georges Cinq.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What were you doing there?’ Talbot asked.

‘That was my hotel,’ Carson said. ‘On my itinerary.’

Jesse Talbot paused and scrutinised him for a moment. ‘Are you kidding?’ he asked finally. ‘You really stayed at the Georges Cinq?’ Then, cheerfully, he had said, ‘Well, you’re new here. You’ve got a lot to learn. Yes, you’ve really got a lot to learn.’

Jesse Talbot was a division head, and a vice-president. So, if he wanted, Carson could rationalise that the company actually expected him to cheat it. Looking around the room of his third-class hotel now, he thought: yes, they’re giving me the glorious opportunity to cheat them out of eleven dollars a day, and I, by accepting it, am expected to give them my labour and devotion, some of my youth and, I suppose, part of my pride. He snuffed out his cigarette in the ash tray and, doing so, tipped over the ash tray, scattering black ashes across the top of the bedspread. He brushed at them angrily with his hand.

He had never told Barbara about the system. It wasn’t just because he was ashamed of it, though that was part of it. It was mostly because he knew that the system would give her just one more reason to resent Locustville. And so, as far as even Barbara knew, he was always at the Dorchester in London … the Georges Cinq in Paris … the Excelsior in Rome.

But the thing was, of course, that Barbara was right. At least partly. The trouble—most of it—came from working in, and out of, the town where the company’s main office was. It was the town, more than the company, that had put them in the peculiar situation they were in. Everyone knew, apparently, that Carson and Barbara—as the Locustville friends would put it—‘had money from somewhere else.’ And they did—inheritances, a couple of small trusts, stock that brought them a small income. They did not have as large a private income as Locustville probably thought they had but they had some; enough to make Locustville suspicious, God knew he had heard a few remarks made—not pointed ones, but little, casual, half-smiling, half-resentful remarks about them, about money, about things the Greers could afford that the others couldn’t. A small mistake, an oversight, like staying at the Georges Cinq that first time, was enough to confirm the suspicions. After all, everybody connected with the company knew pretty much—or could guess—what he earned. Asked to estimate the size of Carson’s semimonthly paycheque, any one of their friends could have come within ten dollars of the exact figure. And his semimonthly paycheque was not large.

Locustville permitted the Greers to have their private income. But it did not permit them to show it. Barbara had managed to collect, on birthdays and anniversaries, three good fur coats, a diamond cocktail ring, an emerald bracelet, two pairs of diamond earrings. None of these could be worn in Locustville. An exception was having Flora, their maid. Barbara had insisted on that, even though the other salesmen’s wives did not have maids. Still, she had lied about it—telling the others that she paid Flora much less than she actually did. In fact, both Carson and Barbara had become accomplished poseurs, skilful liars; they nodded sympathetically when their friends complained about the size of their monthly car payments. ‘Yes, of course, we know,’ they said, as they sat at cocktail parties discussing mortgages, pay-as-you-go plans, interest rates on personal notes, freezer-plans and endowment policies that would one day assure their children of a college education. Actually, Barbara had never worried about paying a bill and foresaw no time in the future when she ever would worry. At least there was no need to worry as long as they lived in Locustville, where they were forced to live on less money than they had. Carson smiled. Life in Locustville might be inhibitive, but it was economical.

He kicked the bedspread to the foot of the bed and swung his legs over the side. This put him in view of a crazed and yellowed door mirror and he examined himself, dispassionately, in its reflection. Hair receding perhaps, but neatly, in two even arrows above his temples, but not on top. And there was, he knew, an invisible roll of stomach under his shirt that appeared when he sat down, but otherwise he was in good shape. He decided to get up, finish dressing, and get some breakfast. He did not like to lie around in bed too much, even on a Sunday. But the trouble was, after breakfast what could he do? This was one reason he hated to start a trip on a Sunday. Sundays, in the selling business, were solitary days, especially the very first, the arrival Sunday. Later on, if you were lucky, you met someone who asked you to Sunday dinner, or one of the distributors asked you out to his house for the afternoon. But today, this Sunday, loomed blankly ahead of him with nothing to do but walk around, looking in the windows of closed stores, walk in the park, walk to the Thames embankment and look at the excursion boats. Or else sit in his room and look at the walls. Barbara had packed a couple of books, but he didn’t feel like reading. Still, he thought, perhaps that was what he would do—carry a book out to breakfast with him and, afterward, take it to Hyde Park or to the Thames embankment, find a bench and read it. He stood up beside the bed, feeling at loose ends, thinking: where do I go from here?

He walked to the window and stood in his shirt, shorts and socks, looking out. Opposite him was a blank brick wall. Below, the passageway—a street, really, but too narrow for traffic—ran a short cobblestoned distance, then turned the corner of the building and went out of sight. It was empty and he rested the heels of his palms against the window sill and looked down at the emptiness. A boy—tall, golden and oddly flowery—appeared from around the corner and suddenly, unexpectedly looked up and saw him there. Surprised, Carson noticed that the boy looked remarkably like Woody deWinter. And the boy stopped, tilted his head and smiled at him. Blushing, Carson stepped quickly back into the room. (Christ, a fairy! he thought.) He went back to the bed and sat down upon it, staring at his stockinged feet.

The trip was beginning all wrong. All the auspices were wrong. It had started wrong as long ago as Friday night with Nancy Rafferty arriving, getting tight, acting like an ass. He tried to be tolerant of Nancy; after all, she was an old friend of Barbara’s. Barbara felt sorry for Nancy and so, he supposed, did he, but somehow—to him—feeling sorry for someone was a pretty fruitless occupation. You could spend your whole life, he supposed, feeling sorrier and sorrier for someone. He could feel sorry for that boy in the alleyway just now, for instance, the boy who had looked like Woody. Or he could feel sorry for Woody. In fact, at one time, he had felt sorry for Woody.

He thought: Ah, poor Woody.

It was through Woody that he had first met Barbara. He and Woody had been in the same class at Princeton. And for the first semester of their freshman year, they had been roommates—not through choice, but as a result of one of those arbitrary room assignments made by the dean’s office. They could not have had less in common.

They had tried, of course, to be friends during the first few weeks of college. They had tried because all roommates were supposed to be friends. But it soon became clear to both of them, in one of those subtle understandings that only two young men can reach with one another—understandings that evolve wordlessly, without rancour, that call for no explanation or apology—that friendship was not destined for them. They planned to join different clubs. They allied themselves with different groups of friends. Carson, who that summer before going off to college had been fattening himself and muscling himself with exercise, eight hours of sleep every night, and three quarts of milk every day because he wanted to make the football team, got on the freshman squad. When he and Woody met on campus, they smiled pleasantly and called ‘Hi!’ to each other. Studying together, in their room, they exchanged a few pleasant, casual remarks, then lapsed into silence, each retreating carefully into his own book. If they spoke at all during these quiet, studious evenings, it was with elaborate politeness.

‘Mind if I open the window, Woody? It’s getting a little smoky in here.’

‘Sure, Carson. Go ahead.’

‘There. How’s that? Too much air for you, old man?’

‘No, no, that’s fine, Carson. That’s perfect.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure.’

And then, a little later: ‘Carson, would you mind if I lowered that window about an inch? It’s getting a little chilly in here.’

‘No, I don’t mind, Woody. Go right ahead, please.’

‘There. How’s that? Is that all right for you …?’

And like any two young men who must live together and yet acknowledge, mutely, that some design, biological or celestial, has set them for ever at variance to one another, they were fiercely loyal to each other in the company of others. ‘You know what I think?’ one of Carson’s friends had said. ‘I think your roommate deWinter is a queer.’ And of course there were jokes made about Woodcock deWinter’s somewhat dandified name.

‘It’s a damned dirty lie,’ Carson had said. ‘Woody’s a great guy.’

Woody was an inch or two shorter than Carson, blond and slightly built someone had told Woody once that his face resembled one of the faces of the Sistine ceiling—the face of the young Adam stretching out his fingertips to God: it was not an ascetic face, but it was pale, soft and brooding. At seventeen, Woody liked to fancy himself both intellectual and musical, although, for some reason, he was poor at his studies and only mediocre at music. He dreamed, too, in those days of becoming an actor. ‘I want to contribute,’ he told Carson earnestly. He had come to Princeton with a phonograph and a large collection of records. He studied better, he said, while listening to music. Often at night, he would turn to where Carson sat—they had desks at opposite sides of the room and sat back to back—and ask, politely, ‘Mind if I play my Vic, Carson?’

Without turning, keeping his eyes focused on the page of the book in front of him, Carson would reply, ‘No, I don’t mind. Go right ahead, Woody.’

‘I’ll keep the volume low,’ Woody would say.

Listening to his records, however, Woody would not appear to be studying. He would sit, tailor-fashion, on the floor in front of the record-player, staring into space with a rapt expression, his hands moving to the rhythm of the music, as though he were conducting the orchestra. Carson continued to study. Sometimes one or two of Woody’s friends dropped in and together they would listen to the music, whispering occasional words of conversation until Woody said, ‘Ssh! Carson’s studying.’ Then it would be quiet in the room except for the strains of—almost always in those days—Ravel.

They were days, as Carson looked back on them, that passed like an odd, unhappy dream. With music hovering behind them, he and Woody moved within the framework of the suite on tiptoe, as though each boy was treading cautiously, taking care not to brush against a raw edge of feeling or step upon an exposed and tender nerve. Nerves and feelings and little tendrils of pain stretched like cobwebs all about them, and when they were alone in the suite together, Carson began to notice a strange heaviness and thickness around his heart. The suite had two rooms, a common study and a common bedroom. One night Carson took a deep breath and said, ‘You know, Woody, I’ve been thinking. You like to listen to your music so much and—no kidding—I enjoy it, too. I really do, but—well—sometimes when I’m studying, with the music going and all—well, sometimes it’s a little hard to concentrate. Do you know what I mean? Honestly, I don’t want you to stop playing your Vic—hell, Woody, I enjoy it as much as you do—but, well, I’ve been thinking. After all, we’ve got the two rooms here. I could move my desk into the bedroom and you could move your bed out here, where your desk and Vic are. Then we could close the doors between …’

Woody was silent, his face grave. Woody had a nervous mannerism of reaching up, with the first two fingers of his right hand and tugging at the forelock of his blond hair, his two fingers working like scissors. He began to do this now. Finally, he said, ‘Sure, Carson. Sure. That’s a good idea.’ And then he said, ‘I hope—’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

They moved the furniture that night.

The door that closed between them, separating them more than physically, might have severed them completely from each other. They might have stopped speaking. They almost stopped speaking, but not quite.

That was how it happened that, one afternoon about a week before the Triangle Club dance, Carson returned from a lab and found Woody with his dinner jacket out across the bed, brushing lint from its midnight blue lapels. Carson said a polite ‘Hi,’ and then, just before going into the other room and shutting himself off, he paused and said, ‘Who’re you bringing down for the weekend, Woody?’

Woody shrugged. ‘My cousin Barbara,’ he said.

‘Are you kidding? Your cousin?’

‘Yes,’ Woody said. ‘She’s my second cousin.’ And he added, ‘I’ll probably end up marrying her some day.’

Carson laughed. ‘You don’t sound too pleased with that idea, old man,’ he said.

‘Oh, she’s all right,’ Woody said. ‘She’s not so bad.’ He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘I’ve got a picture of her. Want to see it?’ he asked.

Looking at the picture, which showed Barbara in tennis shorts, her dark hair pulled back in a scarf, Carson agreed that she was not bad, not bad at all.

And so, at the dance, when Carson caught sight of Woody across the crowded floor of the Dillon Gymnasium, dancing with his cousin Barbara, he made his way through the moving couples and cut in on them. There were cheerful introductions and, for a moment, Carson and Woody were laughing, best-friend roommates. ‘Watch out for him, Barb!’ Woody said. ‘He’s a notorious masher. That’s why he came stag.’

‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Barbara Woodcock said, smiling. And a few minutes later when they were alone on the dance floor, she looked at Carson directly and smiled again. Her smile was the carefully developed, practised smile of a pretty girl, wide and lipsticked, and she knew how to make her eyes sparkle, but still it was a wonderful smile and she swept him with it. ‘You’re exactly the way Woody described you in his letters,’ she said. ‘Exactly!’

Carson laughed. ‘That’s a loyal roommate for you!’ he said ‘How did he describe me?’

She looked at him very seriously. ‘You’re very good for Woody,’ she said. ‘Did you know that? He hasn’t been too happy at Princeton. But you’ve been one of the saving factors. He admires you so.’

They danced, and then—too soon for Carson—Ed Hill cut in on them.

Perhaps two hours later, going down the steps to the men’s room, Carson met Woody, alone, coming up. Woody’s hand gripped the stair rail. ‘Carson!’ Woody said, reaching out with his free hand to stop him. ‘Carson—wait a minute.’ His voice sounded strange and choked and his blue eyes were clouded. Woody held his face close and Carson could smell the faint, sweet odour of whisky.

‘What have you done with Barbara, old man?’ Carson asked easily.

‘She’s all right. Listen, Carson,’ Woody said. ‘I want to talk to you. Can I talk to you?’

‘Sure,’ Carson said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘Listen,’ Woody said. ‘Listen, I mean it. I’ve got to talk to you. Can we—’ He gestured around him loosely. ‘Can we talk somewhere where it’s not so public?’

‘Sure. Where?’ Carson said, and he added, ‘Are you sure Barbara’s okay?’

‘She’s fine. Fine. Don’t worry about Barbara. Look,’ he pointed. ‘Let’s go down there—those other stairs.’

‘To the basement you mean?’

‘No—just over there. Behind the door. Where it’s not so public.’

Carson followed Woody slowly down the steps to the door that led to the basement stairs. Woody pushed open the heavy door and the two of them stepped inside, on the darkened landing.

‘What’s on your mind?’ Carson asked again.

‘Don’t worry about Barbara,’ Woody repeated. ‘Don’t ever worry about Barbara, Carson, she’s always fine. Always.’ He giggled. ‘I’m drunk, Carson,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you get a cup of coffee?’

‘No, no,’ Woody said. ‘I want to be drunk, that’s why I’m drunk. Listen, Carson.’

‘What?’

‘Listen—I’m telling you,’ Woody said. There was only a faint light shining from the street light through an upper window; in it, Carson could not see the expression on Woody’s face. ‘Carson—’ Woody began.

‘Yes. What’s the matter?’

‘She told you.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘She told you. She told me she told you.’

‘Who told me what?’

‘Barbara. She told you. She told you how much I admire you.’

‘Well—’ he began.

‘No. Stop interrupting,’ Woody said. ‘Let me finish.’ His hands twitched as if tugged by invisible wires. ‘I know she told you because she said she did. She told you that I thought you were one of the few things—the few admirable things in the Class of 1950. In the Classes of 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1950. In this whole damn, snotty, phony, middle-class white-shoe college! And it’s true, Carson, because all the rest of them, all the rest, are nothing but shits, shits.’

‘Okay,’ Carson said pleasantly. ‘Now look, let’s go up and—’

‘No, I haven’t finished. Listen. You’re my roommate, Carson. Sometimes I just don’t think. I forget. With the music, I mean. I didn’t want to disturb you. You used to say you enjoyed it!’

‘Sure,’ Carson said. ‘Sure, Woody, I did. I did enjoy it. It was very nice.’

‘Do you mean that?’ he asked. He was speaking faster now. ‘Do you mean that? Because—that day—that night—that time you said—you know, that time you moved out? It hurt me. It did. It hurt me terribly. It was like—it was as if you had put a knife right through my stomach, through here. Do you know what I mean, do you know how much I wanted—do you understand. Danny, do you?’

‘Danny?’ he said. ‘Who’s Danny?’

‘I mean Carson. Danny’s someone you remind me of—someone who used to give me swimming lessons. You remind me of him. But what I’m saying is, do you understand?’

‘Sure,’ Carson said kindly. ‘Sure I do. So let’s—’

‘Listen!’ Woody commanded. ‘Listen! I’m telling you everything. I’ve got to. Everything. The one thing, the important thing. What two people—like the Greeks used to say. Because—because I do admire you, Carson. Worship you because you are fine. You’re fine. And decent. And true, and if you loved the music, if you say you really, truly loved the music, then …’ His voice seemed to vanish, to become a whisper. ‘Then … then … are you listening to me? Do you understand?’

A warning, then, swift and sudden came like a short cold gasp in his chest and stomach; Carson felt it, wondered why he hadn’t felt it there before. He thought: oh, Christ! A fairy. But immediately innocence, or perhaps loyalty, made him dismiss the thought, ignore it, try to save the moment. ‘I understand,’ he said quickly. ‘Let’s go back to the dance.’

But Woody had refused to have the moment saved. ‘No,’ he said in a distant, whispery voice. ‘No,’ he said despairingly. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t see, you don’t understand that I love you, Carson. I love you,’ and Woody’s hand groped towards him palely in the dark.

Carson drew back, hard, against the door, almost falling upon it. He turned and pulled it open, shouldered through it, and let it slam closed behind him. He ran up the stairs.

He hadn’t been sure, exactly, where he was going. Then he saw Barbara Woodcock standing alone. His first impulse was to avoid her, but she had seen him and started toward him.

‘Where in the world is Woody?’ she asked him, her eyes worried.

He forced himself to smile. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, and then, as he led her toward the floor, he said, ‘I guess Woody had—you know—I guess he must have had a little too much to drink. I guess he’s gone somewhere to sleep it off.’

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Do you think we should try to find him?’

‘No. Let’s just let him sleep it off. That’s the best thing.’

They danced. Woody did not appear again that evening.

They danced and danced. Carson talked a good deal. Whether he was compensating for his experience on the stairs or not, he did not know, but he became quite animated. He told Barbara funny stories about his days at Lawrenceville, all the hare-brained things he and his friends had done, about what characters some of the teachers were. Barbara seemed to enjoy the stories enormously. ‘You’re one of the wittiest people I’ve ever met!’ she said once. She laughed until the tears came to her eyes. Then she told him about her own times at school, and about Burketown, where she and Woody both lived, about her father’s farm where they kept saddle horses and had a lake for boating, and about her little sister, Peggy, and about her mother, father, and grandmother and grandfather, and what seemed like innumerable aunts, uncles and cousins—all of whom lived in this same middle-sized Connecticut city. ‘They ought to call it Woodcockville,’ Carson said once, and she laughed as if he had said the funniest thing in the world. ‘Don’t let anybody cut in on us,’ she said. And later, ‘I never had so much fun with anyone in my life!’ And still later, ‘Do you think we ought to see where Woody is?’ ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her.

Walking her slowly back to her room at the Inn, along the dark, shadowy sidewalks, under the lighted Gothic windows of the dormitories from which flowed music and laughter and, inevitably, the sound of showers running, Carson decided that he was in love with her and walked more slowly, swinging her hand in his. They talked, and their talk was both intense and trivial.

‘The trouble is, I’m not smart,’ Barbara said. ‘I’m wasting Daddy’s money going to college. I wanted to go to college, but now I’m afraid I’m wasting his money. I keep wondering if it wouldn’t be better if I got a job somewhere and did something.’

‘Of course you’re smart,’ he told her. ‘What do you mean you’re not smart?’

‘I’m not, I’m not,’ she insisted soberly. ‘I cram furiously for tests and pass them—just barely—and three days later I’ve forgotten everything I learned. My friend Nancy Rafferty is just the opposite. She’s brilliant, really—gets nothing but A’s. She’s the sort of person who deserves to go to college.’

‘Oh, I’m no great brain either,’ Carson said. ‘Don’t get the idea that I’m a great brain.’

‘Oh, yes you are,’ she said. ‘I can tell. You’re very intelligent and Woody’s told me what good marks you get.’

‘Ah, what difference do marks make? Do marks make any difference?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they do. They make a great deal of difference. That’s why I know you’re quite smart and I’m not. I daydream too much …’

‘Yes, that’s my trouble, too.’

‘Daydreaming?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t seem to be like a daydreamer, Carson. Not really. No, you don’t strike me as that type at all.’

‘I do, though. Daydream a lot.’

‘What do you daydream about?’

‘Lots of things. Life, going into the Army, the future. What life means, things like that. The trouble with me is, I’m an idealist.’

‘Are you, Carson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Isn’t that funny! Because I’m an idealist, too!’

Remembering that evening now, so many years later, made him smile. Having confessed that they were both idealists, their relationship for the next few months continued on a quaintly cerebral level. Maintaining it was difficult, but eventually they had decided that hedonists were what they really were.

He had never mentioned the incident with Woody to anyone. How could he have? Whom could he have told? Born in Maryland, birthplace of gentlemen, Carson had taken the gentleman’s code to live by. Born to a world that called its father ‘sir,’ and clicked its heels perceptibly when spoken to by its elders, trained to look another man square in the eye and give him a firm handshake, instructed to believe that strenuous exercise was the best way to rid the mind of impure thoughts, that a man should start each day with a bath, a clean shirt and two clean handkerchiefs, that the only scent a man should have about him was the scent of soap, that suspenders were more healthful than belts for the male abdomen, that socks should be of dark, solid colours and neckties should never be red, he had also been taught never to intrude upon the sorrows of the less fortunate, nor speak of them to others. Besides, it was not the sort of thing one could tell another person. Even years later, after he and Barbara were married, after they had become accustomed to talking of such things between themselves with freedom and candour, without embarrassment, he never told her. Part of it was because he lived by the gentleman’s code. But part of it, too, was because, somewhere in his head, he had always had a vision of constancy and loyalty, an old-fashioned sort of honour and this picture, when he chose to glance at it, reassured him and bolstered him.

During their engagement and after they were married, Carson and Barbara saw Woody deWinter from time to time. It was inevitable. After all, he was Barbara’s cousin and lived in the same town as her parents did. He and Woody, whenever they met, spoke to each other pleasantly and politely. But Carson knew. And Woody knew he knew. That was all, and enough. No one else would ever know it, and each man knew this. In fact, their mutual silence may have, after a number of years had passed, given each man a small, tough kernel of respect for the other—a respect that they would otherwise not have shared.

But, at the time, Carson only felt sorry for Woody.

Woody went home to Burketown for Christmas vacation that year and, Carson heard later, tried to hang himself with the twisted silk cord of his bathrobe from the high clothes-bar in his bedroom closet. He had been found, half alive, by his mother’s maid, and had been revived. A note—the contents of which were never revealed—was in the roll of his portable typewriter.

When Carson had heard about this, back at Princeton, he felt very sorry indeed for Woody. Sorrier than he had ever felt for any person. But by that time, of course, they were no longer roommates.

He sat, now, on the edge of his bed in the London hotel, thinking of home. He did not encourage thoughts of home on his trips, since he found them saddening and considered them unbusinesslike. Yet, without wanting them to, his thoughts wandered fondly across the Atlantic to the house in Locustville, to Dobie’s and Michael’s faces, to Barbara’s face, to the thought of how slim and pretty she looked in some of the dresses he liked the best. Suddenly, for no clear reason, he remembered her on Friday night, walking across the terrace to put the peas on for dinner—her high, slim-hipped walk. He missed her terribly. He was sorry they had quarrelled the night before he left; it was too bad because it had been their first quarrel in quite a long time. Of course, being away from home made the picture of home more poignant and more dear. He smiled, knowing that perfection exists mostly in retrospect and at a distance, that, if he were home now, he’d probably be paddling Dobie for smearing all the bathroom combs with shaving cream or some such four-year-old indiscretion, and he might yell at Barbara, ‘Why can’t you make these kids behave?’ Or something else that would cause them to remind each other to remember the rules.

But that wasn’t the point, really. The point was that he loved them, and the far-away idyllic dream of them all, living in a never-never land of perfect peace and happiness, only made the truth that much more apparent to him—that he loved them. If he let himself, he could ache with homesickness. But he wasn’t going to let himself. So he stood up, pulled on his trousers, tossed a necktie around his neck and knotted it, in front of the cracked and yellowed mirror, firmly. He washed his face with chilly water and combed his hair. He put on his shoes then, buffing their toes just slightly with the soles of his socks, put on his jacket, took two handkerchiefs from his open suitcase, folded one in his breast pocket—remembering the little lesson, ‘One for blow and one for show’—and squared his cuffs. He surveyed his finished self once more in the mirror and decided that he looked like an American.

First, he would have some breakfast. Then he would go over to the Dorchester and settle the arrangements for his mail.

He had been brooding for several days—perhaps it was weeks or months—about where he was going. It was not that there was anything wrong, actually, with where he was. He had progressed, with the company, at a normal rate of speed. He was thirty years old; by the time he was forty, perhaps, he would be a vice-president. Forty sounded old, but so, in fact, did thirty. Time disturbed him. The advance of it, joined with the increasing wonder: where am I going? In a company with the size and structure of Locustville Chemical, one thing was clear: he would never be president. But that was not what bothered him. He did not want, really, to be president of Locustville Chemical. That had not been his ambition when he joined the company.

He couldn’t remember, really, what his precise ambition had been then. He supposed he had had one, but it must have been one that was vague and ill-defined. To get ahead was probably what it had been. But now that he had got, so to speak, ahead, it seemed as though he ought to have some more specific goal. And yet he really had none. And the thought of being thirty years old and goal-less was not a pleasant one. Barbara hated Locustville; she had said so often enough. He had tried to cheer her with general promises, telling her that the answer to the future lay in one of those seven cities where the company had sales offices. But he had not told her the truth about how he felt. Somehow, with the rules they tried to live by, a thing like telling her the truth about how he felt was hard to do; it seemed impolite to do. And it was a hard thing, besides, to put into words. But perhaps he should try.

With a start, he realised that he had been staring blindly at his image in the mirror, as though hypnotised with the view of Carson Vickers Greer. He straightened the knot of his tie, turned away, picked up his room key, and went to the door. He opened the door and stepped out into the narrow hall, closing the door behind him.

His room was on the third floor. Next to the single, wire-caged elevator shaft, a flight of stairs descended. He knew that in a hotel like this one the lift, as its name implied, was for upward trips, not downward. And yet, with a slight feeling of vindictiveness because he had not been wakened at nine o’clock as he had asked, he decided not to use the stairs, but to make the lift come up and get him. He pushed the call button hard and heard its bell ring out below.

Yes, he thought, perhaps he ought to talk to Barbara about the future, and himself, and his restlessness. Perhaps when he got home he would.

He waited.

But when a young man has come to that point in life where he does not know where he is going, where he is not sure who he is or whom he once wanted to be—when he is no longer sure why he first set out upon the course he has travelled or why he has continued for the distance that he has—at that point, much as he may love his wife, there are things that he cannot tell her. It is not only because there are rules of courtesy and kindness. It is because the admission of his uncertainty and unknowing might become, in a way, an admission of his lack of manhood. And there is only a shred of consolation in thinking that the questions, which he eventually must answer alone, are questions that a woman might not even understand.

So he waited for the lift to begin its creaking journey upward, feeling lost, though comforted again by knowing that Sunday is always a lost day in selling, but knowing that he was more lost, perhaps, this Sunday than other salesmen were.

Cables, visible behind the grillwork, began to tremble; the lift was coming up. At least he wasn’t at the Dorchester. At least he was playing the game. At least he had found, stumbled upon, what was probably the cheapest hotel in London. When he ran into one of the other salesmen he would have something to talk about.