Her working there had had an odd effect on me. Although I had never seen her at the desk until that night, the little drawings had made her somehow seem like family. Without asking, I made her a lemonade and fixed myself a drink. We sat down together on a couch, casual and intimate like people who live together.
For some reason it didn’t seem to matter that I knew so little about her. She was just Nanny Ordway who lived in the Village with a girl friend, who thought business shouldn’t take place in a pretty place, who had come to be a small part of my life. We had met by accident and drifted into a friendship by the accident of Iris’s absence and mutual loneliness. It was one of those relationships that fall into no fixed category but happen all the time. There were no strings to it at all. Either of us could stop it tomorrow or it could go on indefinitely. That, I suppose, was what made it so pleasant.
We started to talk about the play and, because of the play, about married love. Nanny thought the play was stupid. If a man loved his wife, he wouldn’t run around with other women, and if he did run around with other women, he wouldn’t go back and be in love with his wife all over again. She was very earnest about it. She was Nanny Ordway, the great twenty-year-old psychological author who knew the whole pitch on The Secret of Love.
She looked charming sitting there next to me in Iris’s dress, like a kid sister of Iris’s who had always been overshadowed. I felt fonder of her than I had ever been. Perhaps it was because I no longer had any qualms about my own motives. I had explained our relationship away to myself. I knew there wasn’t the remotest chance of my falling in love with her or her with me.
“If you’re in love, Peter, you’re in love. If you stop being in love, you stop. You don’t start again like a stalled motorboat.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t.”
“You’d be surprised what people can do when they try.”
“Peter, what nonsense!” She turned to me quickly. “You, for example, you could never possibly fall out of love with your wife and then in again. In again out again Finnegan.”
“I couldn’t?”
“Of course you couldn’t. Nor she with you.”
“But she did.”
I didn’t quite know why I’d made that admission. I never normally talked about Iris and myself with anyone. I suppose the atmosphere Nanny created was just right for it—the solemn, impersonal atmosphere of the very young who still think emotions are things to be analyzed.
Once I’d started, I went on. “A couple of years ago—in Mexico—Iris fell in love with another guy. Very much in love. It went wrong. It was all wrong from the beginning, I guess. But she fell in love with him. Then she fell back in love with me. The stalled motorboat. In again out again Finnegan.”
Nanny looked horrified. “And all the time you went on being in love with her?”
“Sure.”
“What was his name?”
“Iris’s man? Martin. Why do you want to know?”
“Did you hate Martin?”
“No, not really.”
“But it must all be there inside you. It was broken once. How could you ever get confidence back?”
“It isn’t as hard as they say in the textbooks.”
“But—but it can’t be the same. Now you could fall out of love with her sometime.”
“No.”
“Not even if someone came along just as attractive and fascinating and amusing?”
I grinned. “Where would she come from? I’ve never met anyone one-tenth as attractive and fascinating and amusing as Iris.”
She put down her lemonade glass. “Well,” she said, “it could never be that way with me. Patched up, compromised. No—never.” And then: “Isn’t it funny?”
“What?”
“You and me—being friends when we’re so different.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“You’ll forget me when your wife comes back.”
“Of course I won’t.”
After I’d said that I realized it wasn’t true. Once Iris was back, I’d probably forget Nanny Ordway in a week. Relationships between men and women were not as simple as I’d been pretending, I reflected. What did I really know about Nanny’s feeling for me? Were these evenings valuable for her? Were they something she would miss? Maybe I had been a selfish, stupid male, using her unfeelingly as a salve for my temporary loneliness.
My insincerity had made me ashamed. Somehow or other, Nanny Ordway always ended up making me ashamed. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, feeling a little like Judas. It was the first time I’d kissed her. Her skin was dry, not very attractive.
“I won’t forget you,” I said. “Iris will want to know you, too.”
She got up quickly as if the kiss had been a wrong note. She glanced at her watch.
“Heavens, it’s late. I’d better change back to my own dress.”
She went into the bedroom and stayed there awhile. Then she came out in her old dirndl and blouse and her scarlet knotted scarf. She went to the desk and picked up her typewriter.
“Why not leave it there for tomorrow, Nanny?”
“Oh, no. I still have something to do tonight.”
“That’s the spirit. George Sand used to work until dawn.”
She didn’t smile. “Good night, Peter.”
“I’ll get you a taxi.”
“No, no. Don’t be silly. And don’t come down. I’d rather really.”
I took her to the elevator. With her typewriter and her old tweed coat, she looked like a shabby little stenographer. The elevator man cast her only a bored, sleepy glance. My feeling of guilt stirred again. I smiled and waved.
“Good night, Miss O’Dream. Do good work.”
“Oh, I will. You can depend on that.”
All next morning I worked at the office. The deal with Thomas Wood, the author of Let Live, had been completed by now and I even had most of the production money lined up. I was reaching the casting stage, and someone had recommended a minor Hollywood character actor for one of the big male roles. I had never seen him on the screen or if I had I had forgotten. I discovered he was playing in an old movie at one of the 42nd Street houses. After lunch, I went to take a look at his performance.
I liked him and thought he might do. I went back to the office around four o’clock to send a telegram to his agent in Hollywood. When I got there, Miss Mills brought me a cable from Iris. She was arriving at Idlewild at six o’clock that evening.
I was overjoyed. I made a couple of calls canceling business dates so that I could meet her at the airport. I was scared, if I called Lottie, that she would insist on coming with me and hogging the reunion scene, but I knew I’d never be forgiven if I kept her in the dark about The Great News. I compromised by having Miss Mills call her at the very last minute, explaining that I’d just got the cable and had had to rush right out.
The plane was ten minutes late. Many people suffer torments when someone they love is flying. But I was never that way about Iris. She was so real to me that the idea of anything destroying the reality was inconceivable. The plane appeared and landed. The moment I saw her coming down the gangplank, it was as if she had never been away.
When she came out of Customs, a couple of news photographers were hanging around. Because Iris had appeared in so many movies, she was really more of a celebrity than Lottie (although neither Lottie nor Iris would ever have dreamed of admitting it). Iris is shy with photographers. She’s the most reluctant movie star in history. But we kissed politely for the cameras, and after that they left us alone.
I got her into a taxi. She was looking wonderful, but, then, she always did. She had one of those faces, with large eyes and perfectly constructed bones, which nothing can damage. Sometimes I wished she were less beautiful, less doomed to be in the public domain. But that afternoon I felt only pride and contentment. I didn’t even feel nervous the way you do in the early stages of love when separation may still have made a change and coul
d demand readaptation.
She was in fine spirits, amusing about her mother and the white-mustached British colonel whom Iris had skillfully switched to mother. That was why she had felt she could leave her mother safely alone. She was interested about Let Live, and full of questions about Lottie.
“Is she still our best friend?”
“I’m afraid so. I’ve been having breakfast in bed with her and Brian every morning.”
“Oh, dear, I was hoping you’d mortally offended her by now. Does she know I’m coming back?”
“It was as good as my life was worth. I had Miss Mills call. She’ll be keening around the apartment like a banshee if I know Lottie. It’s been tough for her with only Brian and me to supervise.”
“Dear Lottie!”
“Alec Ryder’s going to be pestering you to do that show in London.”
“Don’t worry. The Swan of Avon could come with a brand-new Hamlet in his beak and there’d be no sale. I’m settling down for a year’s run as a wife.”
I hadn’t really expected that Alec’s offer would interest her, but that made my happiness complete. She started to fumble in her bag. She thought that women who were always asking men for cigarettes were bores. I lit one for her.
“Thank you, Peter. Well, how have you been?”
“Okay.”
“You haven’t been up to anything?”
“For heaven’s sake, what makes you ask that?”
“I don’t know. I always feel that when I’ve been away from you. I suppose it’s smug and feminine. I like to think you need me.”
“I need you.”
She put her hand on my arm. “By the way, what happened to your girl genius? You stopped writing about her.”
“Oh, Nanny Ordway? She’s around.”
“I’m dying to meet her.”
Suddenly it occurred to me that Nanny Ordway might be in the apartment when we arrived home, still sitting at her typewriter with her dark hair floppily hiding her profile. When Iris’s cable came, I’d never even thought of Nanny, let alone remembered to call and put her off. I felt absurdly uncomfortable. It didn’t matter much. Iris wasn’t sentimental about home-comings. But I had never explained to her about giving Nanny the key and, for some reason, it seemed hard to explain now. Oh, by the way, I let her work in the apartment. I meant to write you.
Then I realized that it would be after seven by the time we got home. It had been six-thirty when I had taken Brian and Lottie in that day and Nanny hadn’t been there. It seemed wiser to bank on the fact that she had left and then, later that evening, to explain the whole Nanny thing at length.
If I could explain it! Now Iris was back, I found that the exact nature of the relationship and its justification seemed to be eluding me.
“You’ll see her soon,” I said.
“Is she writing a play or something? Is that why you’re interested in her?”
“Not exactly.” I added with cowardice, “She’s not very exciting.”
Iris looked at me quickly. “Don’t apologize, darling. I didn’t want her to be exciting.”
We’d crawled through the evening mid-town traffic and arrived at Sutton Place. The doorman and Bill, on the evening elevator shift, were pleased to see Iris. We reached our floor and I heard the phonograph playing inside. Bill carried Iris’s suitcases to the door.
I said, “Okay. I’ll take them in.”
He went back to the elevator. Iris said, “Why’s the phonograph playing? You don’t suppose Lottie’s putting on some frightful home-coming production?”
The phonograph was playing Salomé. I knew who was there and I felt very silly. I tried to be nonchalant bringing out my key.
“It’s probably just Nanny.”
“Nanny?” Iris looked blank. “Nanny Ordway?”
“I’ve been letting her write here while I’m at the office. She lives in a terrible dreary room in the Village. Maybe I’m a dope. I’ll explain later.”
I opened the door. For some reason Iris stood back and let me go in first.
Nanny’s typewriter was on the desk by the window, but she wasn’t in the living-room. The phonograph was going full blast. Salomé was screaming her lungs out over Jokanaan’s severed head. Iris picked up a piece of paper that was propped on the desk against the pile of her letters from Jamaica.
“Whatever is this?”
Those damn drawings! I took it from her. This time it was a kid’s circle-and-line sketch in ink of a girl hanging by the neck from a rope. Under it was typed in block capitals:
THE SECRET OF LOVE IS GREATER THAN THE SECRET OF DEATH?
It was the sort of joke that had seemed cute with Nanny. Now it seemed extremely embarrassing. I dropped it back on the desk.
“It’s just one of the fool drawings Nanny makes,” I said.
“How very strange. Peter, would you mind turning down the phonograph? I feel as if John the Baptist’s hair was in my mouth.”
“Nanny’s probably in the bathroom,” I said.
I turned off the phonograph. Then I picked up Iris’s suitcases and carried them toward the bedroom. The bathroom door was open, and Nanny wasn’t inside. Iris followed me into the bedroom. We both stopped on the threshold.
Nanny Ordway was there.
Her red chiffon scarf was knotted around her neck and she was dangling by it from the metal stem of the chandelier.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE WAS TWIRLING very slightly on the twisted scarf. Her hair had fallen forward screening her face like some ritual hood. A bedroom chair was lying kicked on its side beneath her dangling toes. Her heel had slipped out of one of the worn ballet shoes. There was a run in the stocking on her left leg.
I saw all the details in a moment of preternatural acuity, and I felt a kind of belated clairvoyance as if a voice were whispering inside me: You see? This is what came of your harmless relationship.
I felt sick in the stomach but my mind was very clear. Close behind me, I heard Iris gasp.
I said, “Get Doctor Norris on the phone.”
I put down the suitcases and ran to the kitchen. I found a carving-knife in a drawer and ran back with it to the bedroom. I picked up the chair from under Nanny, climbed on it, and cut the scarf loose from the chandelier. She fell the few feet to the ground with a thud like a sack. I should have supported her while I cut the rope. I hadn’t thought of that.
I kneeled down at her side. I tried to loosen the knot in the scarf at the nape of her neck but I couldn’t free it with my fingers. Finally I frayed the scarf through with the knife.
I could hear Iris on the bedside phone. Dr. Norris was our physician and he lived in the next apartment house.
“Yes, yes… come quickly. Please…”
Her voice sounded steadier than mine would have been. I looked down at Nanny Ordway. Her face was a dreadful purplish gray. There was a deep-red furrow around her neck where the scarf had bitten into the flesh. She wore the old dirndl and blouse, but she bore no resemblance to herself at all. She just looked like a corpse—any corpse.
But I couldn’t be sure she was dead. I didn’t know enough. Did you try artificial respiration when someone was hanged? I squatted there, trying to recapture what shreds of medical knowledge I possessed. But my mind wouldn’t focus on that. All I was thinking was: Nanny Ordway’s committed suicide. Everyone’s going to say she killed herself because of me.
Iris crossed to my side. “He’s coming right away—Doctor Norris.”
I looked up at her. I desperately needed some token to show that she was not going to condemn me. It was absurd to expect one, of course. How could she take a stand yet? She didn’t know anything about it.
“He’s coming,” she said again.
There was something I should say quickly to allay the suspicions that must be forming in her mind. But I couldn’t think of the right words. She must have guessed part of what I was feeling. She put her hand on my shoulder. My hand went up to cover hers. It was as if the floor between u
s had been splitting in an earthquake and she, somehow, with her hand on my shoulder, had miraculously managed to make it firm again.
There was a sharp rat-tat at the front door. We both ran to let in Dr. Norris. Lottie, with Brian behind her, exploded across the threshold. She was wearing an elaborate black cocktail dress dripping with pearls. She didn’t seem quite real to me—like a figure out of some dim past.
“Iris, baby.” Her arms, with a metallic clatter of bracelets, swooped around Iris’s neck. “Welcome home, angel. Quick. Upstairs. Champagne before I go to the theater. And then dinner for you two with Brian. He’s fixed it all. It’s his party. It—”
She broke off, the gimlet gaze spreading from Iris’s face to mine. “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
I glanced instinctively back toward the bedroom.
“Get out, Lottie. Please get out.”
“What is it?” She took a step into the room.
“Lottie!”
She pushed past me and hurried toward the bedroom. Neither Iris nor I moved. Then, in the bedroom, Lottie screamed. Brian dashed forward. Iris and I followed. Lottie was standing over Nanny Ordway. Her face was putty-gray. She was twisting at the pearls around her throat, as if people actually did that outside of a play.
“It’s the little girl! It’s Peter’s little girl!” She swung around to me. Her expression, her quick turn, the position of her hands all seemed inevitable. I might have rehearsed her in the scene time and time again. “How could you, Peter? How could you have done this to Iris?”
Brian put his hand on her arm. “Lay off, Lottie, for God’s sake.”
She pushed him contemptuously aside. She was Avenging Society, Outraged Womanhood, Betrayed Friend—everything merged into one. Of course she was. That’s how I had expected Lottie to react. That was how everyone was going to react.
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