Nothing So Strange

by James Hilton

  “Was Bradley the very good friend of yours?” Mr. Small asked.

  “Yes.”

  He had been keeping his eyes on me with a sort of lie-detector intensity, but that didn’t bother me, because I usually tell the truth, as I did then, and I only lie when I can justify it to myself enough to be able to stare anyone in the face. There was, however, a core of puzzlement in me about the whole business that I thought might soon make me look confused, so I was glad when Dr. Newby created a diversion by asking: “What exactly do you mean by a very good friend, Miss Waring?”

  I stared at the doctor and thought how dreadful it would be to have that melancholy raffishness around all the time, which presumably was Brad’s fate. He looked as if his experiences, whatever they were, had converted a slight original eagerness about life into mere inquisitiveness. I couldn’t resist the temptation to shock him.

  “I mean that I’d have gone to bed with him if he’d ever asked me.”

  “Even though he was married?” Mr. Small put in quickly.

  “Oh, so you know that too?… No, I didn’t really mean it. I was just joking.”

  “Did you know his wife?”

  “Slightly.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I heard she died.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know…. You said I could visit him at the hospital. When?”

  Before he could answer Dan came from the house to say that Mr. Chandos was on the phone. I was glad of the chance to excuse myself. All Mr. Chandos wanted was to convert the following Wednesday’s appointment into a lunch date; he sounded very cordial and chatted so desultorily that, thinking of Mr. Small waiting for me all the time, I was probably rather abrupt in my replies. When I did return to the terrace, however, there was already a changed atmosphere. I guessed they had been discussing me during my absence, and that some kind of clinching conclusion had been reached. It was not long in disclosing itself, for Mr. Small opened up briskly: “We’ve had an idea, Miss Waring. Perhaps a good idea, if you think it is too. How would you like Bradley to visit you here instead of you going to Arizona to see him?”

  I was a bit amazed by the proposition. “Well yes,” I answered, perhaps seeming doubtful. “Yes, that sounds all right.”

  “Only all right?”

  “All right is all right, isn’t it?”

  “So you agree to it?”

  “Sure … why not?”

  “Would it be convenient for him to stay perhaps a week or ten days?”

  I hadn’t envisaged that even as a possibility, but it came as an increasingly welcome one. “I think so. It’s my father’s house, as you know, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t object. And it’s big enough —nobody need get in anyone else’s way.”

  “Exactly. An excellent place from every standpoint…. Why don’t you write today, asking him here for a visit if he can get leave? Dr. Newby will arrange the rest.”

  “Very well. I’ll do that.”

  “In fact you might write now and we can air-mail it from town—that’ll be quicker.”

  I went back to the library and wrote a brief note, as in answer to the postcard, which I said had been unaccountably delayed through reforwardings. I sealed the envelope and stuck some of those charity stamps over the flap; when I handed it to Mr. Small I saw him notice them; perhaps he thought they would make it harder to open the envelope and reseal it. I was fairly certain he intended to read what I had written.

  They left soon after that, and I took them to the car in the driveway. “Maybe he won’t resist you so much,” said Dr. Newby, pumping my hand up and down.

  “I shan’t mind if he does. He’s not the type for all this confession business—you ought to have seen that for yourself. You’d probably rather confess to him, but he wouldn’t like that either.”

  Mr. Small smiled as he took my hand after Dr. Newby had let go of it. I think he enjoyed the way I tore into the poor little doctor.

  * * * * *

  A week passed, probably the laziest of my life, and doubtless it did me good. I had been leading a rackety sort of existence in recent years, all work and travel, full of interest and sometimes excitement, but a bit hard on the nerves. I began to realize what I had missed when I woke up on those bright summer mornings, stared at the mountains, and remembered I had nothing to do all day. I pottered about the gardens and sun-bathed by the pool, enjoying myself with all the greater abandonment because I knew how this dolce far niente routine would begin to bore me within measurable time. And I took long naps in the afternoon and chatted to my father during and after dinner. He had been perfectly agreeable to having Brad as a house guest, but he wondered how Brad would like it; and then he told me something I had not known before— that in the summer of 1938 Brad had written him a rather bitter letter, blaming him for everything.

  “What do you mean—everything?”

  My father looked uncomfortable. “Oh, the whole business. It was a wild letter—the kind I could forgive because the boy was so obviously not himself when he wrote it. You see his wife died before they could release her.”

  “You mean she died in the Nazi prison?”

  “Or wherever it was they were keeping her…. I could understand how he felt, so when he blamed me I didn’t hold it against him.”

  It was like my father to cling to any edge of circumstance in which he could be an injured party.

  He continued: “I answered his letter but there wasn’t much I could say. He didn’t write again … so you see how it is … if he comes here….”

  “I guess he won’t then. But you didn’t mind my asking him?”

  “Oh, not at all. And if it’s still on his conscience that he blamed me unjustly—”

  “I should hardly think it would be.”

  My father shook his head wearily; I could see he had already chalked up Pauli’s death as his own tragedy more than Brad’s—one further proof of some vast unluckiness clinging to everything he touched. Which was absurd, if one appraised the opulence of Vista Grande. But it was also true that the possession of money had never outweighed his own personal failure to attain some ideal—and what exactly that was I have often wondered—maybe some impossible combination of Maecenas and Napoleon. Something impossible for these days, anyhow.

  “Did he give you any details about Pauli’s death?” I asked.

  He shook his head again, not so much negatively as helplessly. “It wasn’t a sensible letter. Accusations … reproaches … not like him at all.”

  Yes, that was true; it was unlike him. I remembered I had told Mr. Small during our first interview that Brad never had a grudge even when he ought to have had one. My father evidently thought that in 1938 he ought not to have had one.

  “You didn’t keep the letter?”

  “No…. I think your mother took it—and you know what happened to letters when she got hold of them….” The flicker of a smile.

  “You were with her when the letter came?”

  “Yes—we were staying with Princess Franzani at Cannes. A whole batch of forwarded mail arrived there—matter of fact, I think she opened it first.”

  I had heard about that visit to Princess Franzani. It was the last time my father and mother appeared socially together before the breach. They had agreed to patch things up for a last try, but perhaps a house party at Cannes was not the happiest background; and since it was presumably my father’s choice (the Franzanis being his friends) it was like him to have made that final blunder. Anyhow, the patching didn’t work and the divorce was started soon afterwards.

  I could see that these memories were distressing him, but I had to ask one last question. “What did my mother think of the letter?”

  “She didn’t say much. She talked of writing to him herself, but I don’t know whether she ever did. As you know, she often said she was going to do things and then forgot about them….”

  It was curious how my mother’s faults—numerous enough, especially the small ones—wer
e all neatly assembled in his memory, ready to be smiled over sadly, or indulgently excused. But her virtues, of which she had some big ones, gave him no task at all. Not that he denied their existence—merely that they did not fit the mood in which he could keep himself, a weather-worn Hamlet, always in the center of the stage.

  When I looked at him across the dark expanse of oak dining table, with the silver gleaming in candlelight and the paneled walls carrying the eye into sepia shadows, I saw why it was my mother had finally tired of him. She wanted life; he wanted something else. I believe that of all the treasures of Vista Grande the only one she would have keenly appreciated was Dan’s face. She loved beauty—physical beauty—and in people more than in views and things.

  * * * * *

  Wednesday I lunched with Mr. Chandos. I had a special qualm about gas after my father’s assurance that I could use all I wanted, so I refused the Cadillac and chauffeur and compromised on borrowing Dan’s midget car to drive myself; which doubtless sizes up my patriotism well enough, for with only small extra trouble I could have taken the bus from the main road. Mr. Chandos was very affable and decided on lunch at the Brown Derby. We made the short distance from the studio in his rather rakish sports car; he drove with a certain abandon that fitted his conversation but made me feel I should not be happy on a long trip with him. We were already in the midst of an argument by the time we left the parking lot; he was saying that his early training as a maker of B pictures, mostly comedies, had given his mind a kind of contamination he did not think it could ever quite shake off. “For instance,” he said, as we passed a gas station, “if I notice a thing like that—” and he pointed—“I immediately think of how you could get a laugh out of it. Fade-in the drawing room of an apartment high above the street—there’s a woman singing opera at a grand piano—exaggerated tremolo and considerably off key. Camera then moves out of the window down to the sidewalk where a young man can hear the voice—he has a quizzical look, as if he too isn’t sure whether he likes it or not. Then he walks on and sees that, and you get your laugh.” The “that” was a notice in the gas station that said “We Fix Flats.” “Isn’t it terrible? And done with practically no mental effort at all—that’s the danger of it.”

  “I’ve seen worse gags on the screen,” I said, smiling.

  “But to go through life with an eye for them—it’s the worst kind of occupational disease.”

  “Journalists have it too. Anything to catch the reader’s attention — nothing much to catch his mind. And yet if you catch his mind by even a little, it’s worth it, and sometimes only a gag can do it. A few good gags about the world’s future might help to ensure that it has one.”

  “Don’t let them hear you talk like that in any studio.”

  “Why not?”

  “They might offer you a writing job at four figures a week.”

  “It wouldn’t tempt me.”

  “I’m glad of that, but also curious. Aren’t you interested in money?”

  “Of course I am, but I earn enough the way I like without doing something I don’t think I should like.”

  “And you haven’t any uncles and aunts in Scranton whom it would be nice to send help to, and your father isn’t still struggling along at a job he can’t properly afford to retire from?”

  “No. My father’s well enough off to support himself whatever happened to me.”

  “Oh?” he said; and then suddenly the idea dawned on him, later than it does to most people. “Why … he’s not by any chance … or is he? … Are you the daughter of … the Waring … Harvey Waring?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s odd. Somehow I didn’t connect you with him at all.”

  “There’s no reason why you should.”

  “Now what exactly do you mean by that?”

  It was as good a way as any other into the kind of talk we had during lunch. We dawdled over coffee till nearly three, then he drove me back to the studio where my car was, having made another lunch date for the following Wednesday. Again we had discussed almost everything except the book and the picture, and I still thought I liked him—perhaps more than after the first meeting.

  When I reached Vista Grande towards dusk I found two notes awaiting me, one from Brad to say he would be glad to come and would arrive at San Bernardino the following day at 5:20 P.M.; the other was from Dr. Newby to say he happened to be traveling to Los Angeles on business and so could accompany Brad and hand him over to me if I were to meet the train; of course in that case I would be careful not to disclose any previous acquaintance we had had.

  I wired back to Brad that I would meet the train.

  * * * * *

  I took Dan’s midget car again and was at the station by five. It was very hot, at the low level, and the great wartime trains kept pulsing through in both directions, like part of some tremendous heartbeat in a creature too large for comprehension. The soldiers leaned out of the windows, bronzed and sweating, ready to whistle at a girl because doing so, in this war, appeased some of the loneliness that was also too large to be comprehended.

  Presently the train came in, and I thought at first he wasn’t on it; the windows I ran alongside were full of other faces. Then I caught sight of Dr. Newby, half hidden behind a Pullman porter. He let Brad get down and approach me, and when that happened I forgot all about the doctor till he came up to us a moment later.

  We stared at each other, Brad and I; then we shook hands rather solemnly and I said: “Hello, Brad.”

  “Hello,” he answered.

  We went on staring and the moment stretched itself into impossibility. At length I asked if he had any luggage.

  “Yes, a suitcase. They’ll put it out.”

  “Did you have a nice trip?”

  He said slowly, still staring down at me: “Not very. It was crowded. And the cooling system didn’t work.”

  Then Newby came up, and I was glad in one sense, because it gave Brad the necessary job of introducing us. But Newby seemed to enjoy overdoing the show of never having met me before. “Well, well….” he beamed, pumping my hand up and down. “So this is the young lady?… Lucky fellow…. Take good care of him, Miss Waring.”

  “You bet I will.”

  “And no night clubs. Plenty of sleep … fresh air … and your own charming companionship. I envy him the cure!”

  The porters were shouting “All aboard”; Newby remained waggish to the last.

  Then we walked along the platform to the piled-up luggage. Brad found his suitcase and carried it to the car in the station yard. “The fool,” he muttered. “He’s the doctor who’s supposed to have been looking after me.”

  I said nothing, because already I had forgotten Newby again and it was Brad I was thinking of, trying to decide what he was like, as if a first impression might tell me something clairvoyantly. I couldn’t see anything wrong with him at all. Of course he looked older, much older; but then he was much older, so was I; seven years make a difference, even without a war. I said: “It’s hot here, but cooler up in the mountains where we’re going. You know California? It was hot in Arizona too, I expect. Why do they put hospitals there? Good for lungs, I suppose….”

  As we entered the car he told me I looked very well.

  “Yes, I’m all right. I’m fine. You look all right too.”

  “I enjoyed your book. It was in the hospital library.”

  “Was it?… By the way, I looked up what you said on the card—page 117. The Egmont Overture in the Burggarten…. Yes, I remember that so well.”

  We threaded through the town traffic, then took the road to the mountains. At two thousand feet the air was noticeably fresher; at four thousand a cool breeze held the warmth of the sun in pockets. The nameless mountains clothed in chaparral rose all round us. I wondered aloud if he were nervous of mountain roads, but he said no.

  “Only of flying, then?”

  “How did you know that?” he asked sharply.

  And of course I couldn’t have know
n it without being told; it was a slip. I covered it as best I could. “Elementary, my dear Watson. You’re a flyer out of hospital. Injured flyers often have nerves afterwards—about flying. The ones I’ve met did, anyhow.”

  “I wasn’t a flyer, as you call it; I was a navigator. I could fly, and damn well, but I was too old to be an Air Force pilot … too old at thirty- one, that’s a nice thing.”

  I seemed to have touched a sore spot, but at least it tided over the slip I had made; he had evidently accepted my explanation. He went on: “You don’t fly yourself, do you?”

  I do, all the time; I love it, and I’m taking lessons; I’ve done seven or eight hours solo already. I said: “Sometimes.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t.”

  The strain lifted from his face; he smiled and said that was sweet of me. But I was not too happy over his swift change of mood. There was something odd and rather frightening in the casual way he accepted the idea that I would change a habit just to please him. It was either arrogance of a kind I had never seen in him before, or else he knew I had made the promise without intending to keep it, and he was yet able to find satisfaction in the promise alone.

  He asked me again about my book, how successful it had been, the Hollywood sale which he had read of, and so on. I told him about Mr. Chandos and my studio visit. He said then he was glad I hadn’t visited him at the hospital because we shouldn’t have been able to talk like that.

  “Why not?”

  “Newby would have listened all the time.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have mattered—there’s nothing confidential about it…. Not that I’d choose to have him around, though.”

  He didn’t speak for a while and I asked him why Newby did so much listening.

  “It’s his job. Psychiatrists aren’t supposed to have any manners or decencies—one doesn’t expect them to, but Newby has embarrassments, which makes everything rather worse.” He laughed. “You know, if an ordinary person hears you yelling in your sleep he wakes you, but a psychiatrist comes rushing into the room with a notebook and pencil to take it all down.”