Saturn Over the Water

by J. B. Priestley

  ‘Arnaldos Institute? I know old Arnaldos. And don’t let that surprise you, Tim. These South American collectors are always coming up here, and mostly go back loaded with fake Utrillos and factory-fresh Renoirs. Not old Arnaldos, though. You couldn’t fool him with that junk. He’s a real collector and of course he’s got all the money in the world. I got him an early Monet, a Pissarro and a Sisley. All fresh as daisies, not that I’ve seen a goddam daisy for years. Now wait,’ Sam shouted, as if I’d been silly enough to try to interrupt, ‘if I didn’t sell him a picture of yours, when he came round in the fall, then I nearly did. I know we were talking about it.’

  ‘Is he there now – I mean, at the Institute?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sam said. ‘But it’s summer down there, don’t forget. And I remember him telling me he’s on the coast, with desert behind him – wonderful climate, he told me – and he’s into his eighties now – I’ll bet he doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds – he might well be there. Why? You want to get acquainted with him?’

  ‘I was wondering how to do it,’ I said. ‘And this is just what I need. Sam, do me a favour. Write him an airmail letter, getting it off today, to tell him I’m on my way there. Make it clear I’m not trying to sell any pictures, but tell him I might like to do some sketches of the Institute as well as of the coast round there. Not oils of course – the gear’s too heavy – but I’ve brought a gouache outfit with me, light and easy to carry.’

  ‘What for?’ Sam snorted with disgust. ‘This is New York, son. We’ve everything you have in London – only more so. We sell gouache setups here.’

  ‘Not on Saturday nights and Sundays, I’ll bet you don’t.’

  Sam banged me on the knee. ‘You win, you Limey dauber! And to prove there’s no ill-feeling, I’ll write and mail that letter about you as soon as we’re home. And now – look at that, Timmy boy – just take your first look at it.’ The towers of Manhattan were shining through the snowflakes and the wintry gloom. After I had marvelled at them, he went on: ‘Half the time I think it’s all running down like a clock that nobody knows how to wind up. When it isn’t sour, it’s hysterical, just waiting for the biggest goddam bomb in the world – might be ours and not theirs – to bring it all down for ever. There’s hardly any sense, civility, or service, any more. But what a city for a lot of mongrel bastards and misfits to have put up in under fifty years! Look at the midtown section coming up now! By God – there’s been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. And I wouldn’t live anywhere else, not if you offered me free gratis and for nothing Buckingham Palace and all the châteaux on the Loire.’

  After he’d shown me where I was sleeping and I’d shown him the two canvases I’d brought over with me and we’d arranged to have them stretched and framed, he gave me a bourbon on the rocks, left me to unpack, and went down to his office on the floor below to write that letter to Arnaldos. But he came back to ask me where I was staying in Lima, so that the old man would know where to find me.

  ‘I don’t know, Sam,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to the British Embassy and tell ’em I’m around, and he can send me a message there.’

  ‘You’ll have to call for it at the tradesmen’s entrance. And say – listen – after I’ve mailed this letter, I’m doing the dinner. Steak, the best – big baked potatoes, a green salad, a piece of Roquefort – and a bottle of Chambertin – how’s that, cher maître?’

  ‘It sounds wonderful, Sam.’ And if it wasn’t quite that, it was certainly very good, for Sam, like most people who enjoy good painting, could enjoy good food too. Then when we’d had a touch of Armagnac, and he’d lit a cigar and I’d started my pipe, he said: ‘We can stay here and talk about pictures, Tim, or we can go out. Not on the town, not on Saturday night. But I’ve a niece – she’s called Jill Dayson now – and she’s married into the Madison Avenue agency racket. They’re throwing a party tonight – no dressing up – and we’re both invited. It’s up to you, fella. But if you want to find out what kind of people we have around here, I’d say let’s go. Okay? Fine! I’ll even give you a latchkey so that if you get entangled with one of these gorgeous Madison Avenue women – or it might be Fifth or Park, there’ll be a wide selection – you needn’t leave her too soon.’

  ‘I’ll take it, Sam. Just in case you’re the one and I want to come home.’

  ‘Not any more, boy. Not at my age and weight – sixty-three and two hundred and twelve pounds. But I still like to look them over. And as for you, you’ll be drooling, boy. We have the best-looking women the world’s ever seen – and the most expensive – and the most dissatisfied. They’re the better-looking half of what’s the matter with us. Okay then – let’s go.’

  His niece, a sumptuous Old Testament brunette, seemed genuinely glad to see us, though their apartment, a large one, all modern Swedish furniture and phoney abstract art, was already fairly crowded. Her husband, Bill Dayson, was a fair and fattish chap, who’d had plenty of drink but was now sweating it out, bashing around and shouting remarks that nobody seemed to bother about. Sam and I were separated almost at once, and soon I was in a corner with a husband and wife called Pearson, who must have arrived at the party in the middle of a quarrel, and a delicate but damp-looking blonde, Angel Somebody, who was a bit sozzled and droopy, a jonquil in the rain. Some poor devil was probably half out of his mind about her, but not T. Bedford. Even so, though I’m no portrait painter, I couldn’t help looking at her as if she was sitting for me. I began sorting her out into a splendid range of yellows, some warm greys and washed-out blues. All three were in an argument, hotted up by the mutual hostility of the Pearsons, about whether anti-conformists conformed just as much as conformists. It didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere, except to the bottom of tall glasses of Scotch and ice. The dears and darlings of the Pearsons, as they contradicted each other, dripped vitriol.

  Then Angel suddenly changed the subject. ‘Now see here – yes, you, Mr Man from London – why do you keep looking at me like that? If something’s come unstuck, tell me, and I’ll try to do a repair job for you. Tell me, that’s all – don’t just look – like that – ’

  ‘Angel – honey,’ said Mrs Pearson, a streamlined and highly-finished type, rather like a carving knife bursting out at the end into blue-steel curls. ‘Nobody’s looking at you.’

  ‘He is then. And he knows he is. As if I wasn’t really here – or something’s showing.’

  ‘You’re dead right,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I was wondering how to paint you.’

  ‘Don’t you remember, Angel, Jill told us he was an artist?’ said Mrs Pearson.

  ‘No, I don’t. Well, for God’s sake!’ Angel stared at me, her eyes a brighter blue now. ‘I thought you ran an ironworks over there or something. You don’t look aware and sensitive.’

  ‘Then probably I’m not. I just try to paint – for a living and as well as I can.’

  ‘I think you’re cute. Isn’t he – Mildred – George? Well, you can start painting me Monday – I’ll be out of town tomorrow – ’

  ‘And I’m flying to Lima on Monday – ’

  ‘No, we won’t go there. I’ve been and I hated it. We’ll go to Acapulco – and you can paint me there – ’

  Pearson had had enough of this – and I don’t blame him – and his space was more than taken by a character called Nicky, a hard-working funny man, who claimed the women’s attention, though Angel still kept her arm around mine, as if I was a possession she might otherwise forget. Not long afterwards, though I wouldn’t like to say how long because I didn’t feel really there at the party, I heard voices loud and angry in argument. One of them was Sam Harnberg’s. ‘I want to know what my friend Sam has got into, Angel,’ I said to her, trying to disentangle myself. ‘So if you’ll excuse me – ’

  ‘Certainly not,’ she told me, still clinging. ‘’Bye now, Mildred – Nicky! Have fun!’ And I had to take her with me, a flowering creeper after the rain, through the crowd, to where Sam was roaring away. ‘Darling, I think
you’re crazy,’ Angel screamed in my ear. ‘They’re only arguing. The same old thing. Some men can’t help it when they’re high. Let’s go someplace.’

  ‘No, Angel honey. This is my friend. He brought me here.’

  ‘For God’s sake! Don’t tell me you’re – ’

  ‘No, I’m not. Now, let’s listen.’

  ‘Keep tight hold of me, then.’

  A youngish military type, very red in the face, was bawling at Sam. ‘Okay, okay, okay, mister! But I still say if it’s good enough for Mike Giddings, it’s good enough for me – and it ought to be good enough for you, mister.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t, Colonel, not for me it isn’t,’ Sam shouted. ‘And your General Giddings won’t make any more sense to me even if they plaster him all over Time magazine the rest of this year. What the hell’s he want, anyhow? Have we all to stop living because he thinks the Russians are under his bed? We’ve got ’em ringed round with bases right now. What more does he want?’

  ‘Listen, Sam, listen,’ another man said to him, an older man, who’d learnt the trick of sounding weary at the top of his voice. ‘Mike Giddings doesn’t trust the Reds – and he’s right, I guess – so he says so. He believes – and he’s right again, I’d say – that when they give us the soft talk we have to be hard – talk from strength – ’

  ‘Sure!’ This was the military type again. ‘I want to tell you I’ve had the privilege of serving under Mike Giddings – and that’s one man they can’t fool and who won’t leave this country undefended – ’

  ‘Undefended!’ Sam looked as if he was about to explode. ‘Look, man – we’ve spent billions and billions of dollars on fancy hardware – and we’ll all be going underground next – and we’re driving ourselves half nutty – for what? What do they want, these Giddingses – what are they aiming at – where do they stop? You talk about crackpots! They’re the crackpots – ’

  ‘If you can listen to them talking this stuff,’ said Angel, giving me a sharp nip, ‘you don’t love me. You don’t love anybody. Just argument, argument, argument. Why, darling – you never told me.’ This last remark, in a new tone of voice, wasn’t addressed to me of course, and I never saw the man who received it, the crush becoming greater just then; but without another word to me, Angel vanished, taking our beautiful friendship with her.

  When we were back in Sam’s apartment, I asked him about this Giddings. I felt pretty sure he must be the Gen. Giddings who headed Joe Farne’s list. ‘Who is he?’ I said. ‘And why did he keep coming into the argument?’

  Sam pushed out his big lower lip and wagged his head. ‘He’s one of these Washington screwballs who are a hundred per cent American patriots. They’re not going to share the same planet with the Reds, and they pretend the five hundred million Chinese aren’t there, only the Russkis. Every time we’re not too far from some sort of agreement with Moscow, somebody like Giddings starts hollering and screaming. They never say what they want or where it all ends. But we mustn’t talk to the Commies as if they were men, we must go on and on, spending more and more dollars, getting tougher and tougher. If you don’t agree, you ought to be investigated – you’re the one whose sister clapped when the speaker mentioned the Red Army in 1944.’

  ‘If you saw Giddings’s name on a list, Sam, what would you think?’ I asked him.

  ‘I wouldn’t think I was looking at the entries for a Peace Prize.’ He gave me a sharp look. ‘I can keep my mouth shut, Tim, if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.’

  ‘It doesn’t make enough sense yet. I’d feel a fool trying to tell you.’

  ‘Okay, let’s forget it. Now tomorrow, Tim, if you can take it, we spend a day with the rich. Believe it or not, Mrs Tengleton has at least seventy-five million bucks, and though she’s a spender she’s richer every week. She has some goddam fine pictures out there – she bought a few from me – and we can mix with the quality, so long as you keep your hands off the silver, you low Limey painter. Okay?’

  A friend of his called Hirsh, even fatter than Sam was, took us out there, in a car nearly as big as a landing craft. No more snow had fallen; the day sparkled; the air was marvellous. A lot of other people, in cars nearly as large as Hirsh’s, were all going somewhere, perhaps to Mrs Tengleton’s. This was somewhere in the Westchester region, and though I gathered that it wasn’t quite as big as Luxemburg, I felt when we drove up to the gates that there ought to have been passport and customs officials. Mrs Tengleton herself was about a mile farther on, inside a building that looked as if it was trying to be the Château de Chambord. She was alone except for about a hundred other people, guests and retainers. Her seventy-five million dollars seemed to be weighing her down – she was a grey and drooping woman, with a voice filled with deep melancholy – but she had among other things a socking great helping of French painting, perhaps keeping up with the Chambords – Claude Lorrain, Chardin, an Ingres, and two huge compositions by Delacroix, to name no more. She was also refusing to preside over – just waving vaguely towards – a Sunday buffet lunch, both hot and cold, of astounding variety and size.

  It was open house on the widest scale, and, like most other people, we were there for hours and hours. I tried a walk, just to get some air, with a handsome girl called Marina Nateby, who did sculpture somewhere down in Greenwich Village, and we ended up at the back of the château where there was an enormous hothouse, about the size of the palm house at Kew. We went in and sat down, and very soon a weight of sleep dropped on me, and the last thing I remembered for half-an-hour or so was Marina Nateby telling me to go ahead and not mind her because she knew I was still feeling the effect of the flight from London the day before. When I woke up we seemed to be surrounded by Central Europeans, and a portable bar had arrived. Marina Nateby, who had a strong maternal streak that I’ve found in other girls who sculpted, brought me a Scotch on the rocks and then introduced me to the Central Europeans. The only one whose name I remembered afterwards, for a reason that will soon be obvious, was a man very different in his carriage and looks from most of the middle-aged American men around the place. His face might have been carved out of old brown wood; he had a cold military eye; and though he wasn’t wearing a monocle he gave the impression that he’d only just started doing without it. He was formally polite but said little himself and seemed to regard with contempt anybody who did say anything. After observing him for some time, I led Marina Nateby out of sight and hearing of the group, into a kind of Tahiti corner, rich with blossom and the scent of frangipani or something.

  ‘Don’t tell me it’s gorgeous, I know it,’ she said. ‘But don’t make a pass at me. It’s too early. Besides, you’re not really thinking about me.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘That’s something we girls do know, dumb as we are about other things. Your mind’s elsewhere, Mr Bedford – your heart too.’

  ‘My heart isn’t anywhere,’ I said, ‘but you’re right about my mind. It’s that chap who looks as if he led an armoured division as far as the Crimea and then burnt two hundred Russian villages on the way back. Did I get his name right – von Emmerick? And if so, who is he?’

  ‘He’s a friend of my friend Inge, who lives near me in the Village. He doesn’t live in New York but he turns up every six months or so – stays at the Plaza – knows a lot of people and goes to parties – sleeps around a bit, Inge says, though I can’t imagine how he leads up to the first suggestion – and then disappears again. He’s one of those aristocratic Continental mystery men who always turn out in the end to be selling oil pumps or printing machines. Why do you care?’

  ‘I don’t. But the name interests me,’ I said, for of course I’d remembered there was a von Emmerick on Joe’s list. ‘Though there might be a dozen of them around, all looking as if they were still on the barrack square.’

  ‘He wasn’t a Nazi, if that’s what is eating you. I know because Inge told me – and you ought to hear her on the Nazis – boy!’

  ‘She didn’t happen to t
ell you where von Emmerick lives these days, did she?’

  ‘Not Western Germany, not Europe at all.’ She frowned at the nearest sprig of blossom. ‘I think – no, I don’t, I know – yes, that’s it.’ Now she looked at me. ‘South America. I don’t know where, but I’m sure it’s South America. Why, what does that prove? Don’t say it doesn’t prove anything because I saw your eyes light up – they really did.’

  ‘That’s drink, you, and this Tahiti atmosphere, ducky. Lighting-up time for Bedford. But nothing’s been proved, not a thing. Perhaps I ought to talk to Inge.’

  ‘Let’s go and find her. And listen to me! Waiting on you hand and foot! It must be this ducky line of yours – and no passes being made. Come on, then.’

  But Inge wasn’t to be found. Neither was von Emmerick; and the next time I met him we were a hell of a long way from Mrs Tengleton’s château.

  I had to talk to somebody about it, and I felt I could trust Sam Harnberg, so later that night, after I’d told him he wasn’t to see me off at Idlewild next morning, when he had his own business to attend to, I explained what had happened so far about Joe Farne’s list.

  ‘Here’s a man – a steady, hard-working scientist – who disappears from one country, Peru, where nobody knows where he’s gone to, and then suddenly writes to his wife apparently from another country, Chile. And after telling her they should never have separated and that he still loves her and so forth, he scribbles as fast as he can remember them, obviously in a devil of a hurry, some names of people and places. Roughly about a third of them couldn’t be made out at all, neither by me nor by a typist who copied the list. So I’ll never know what they were.’