The camera dollied in on the drummer, an old man with a Beatle haircut wearing a uniform obviously bought at “I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet.”
“… ‘for the Victoria Cross.’ ”
Laughter was unconfined.
“Before we question Major Griffin about details, who, you may well ask, is this brave soldier?”
Dig glowered at the studio audience: the laughter subsided.
“Born in Caribou, Ontario, Major Griffin became a Queen’s Scout at the age of fourteen.”
This brought forth yet another explosion of laughter, which Mortimer didn’t comprehend because he couldn’t see the monitor on which there was now projected a blowup of another Queen’s Scout, Charles Joseph Whitman, who on August 7, 1966, climbed the University of Texas Tower, rifle in hand, and shot everyone in sight, killing thirteen people and wounding thirty-one.
“In high school, Mortimer Griffin won a Rotary Public Speaking Award and was voted –”
Now Richard Nixon’s face filled the screen.
“– Most Likely to Succeed.”
On and on went the potted, incriminating biography. Finally Dig turned to Mortimer again, his grin infectious.
“Well now, Major, what would you say if I could demonstrate to you, statistically proven, that the average I.Q. of Victoria Cross winners is more than slightly below the national average –”
“But –”
“– and considerably lower than that of deserters. What, if anything, would you say to that?”
“We didn’t get the medal for I.Q.”
“Quite. But it does say something, doesn’t it, about the nature of physical courage and its relationship to imagination, the failure thereof.”
Women applauded until their hands ached. Men stamped their feet.
“Tell me, Griffin, during the war did you kill any Germans?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you feel about that … now?”
“Well, that was the war. We were at war then.”
“Quite. And you were only obeying orders?”
“Yes …”
“Like Adolf Eichmann?” “Hold on there!”
“Just another little cog in the wheel, weren’t you?”
Tssst-tssst-tssst.
“Now, your citation reads that you crawled out on to a knoll, under enemy fire, to rescue one of your men. A corporal. Your very own corporal. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Not bent, are you, Griffin?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Did you have carnal knowledge of the corporal?”
“No!”
“Then why did you crawl out to save him, for Christ’s sake!”
“It just seemed the thing to do.”
“Come on, come on. You’re more articulate than that.”
“I was there. I saw him. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen him. I had to go after him.”
“So you saved his life?”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“Griffin, what if I told you that the man whose life you saved has since slit his wife’s throat and raped his eight-year-old girl?”
“It wouldn’t be true.”
“It wouldn’t be factually true. But, if it were the case, wouldn’t your action – like all our actions, good or bad – be absurd? Don’t you, an intelligent man, recognize our lives as absurd?”
“No. I believe in the possibilities within each of us for goodness.”
“For what?”
“Goodness …”
“Louder, please.”
“Goodness!”
“Griffin, to return to your rescue of the man on the knoll. You said, quote, I saw him. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen him. I had to go after him, unquote. Right?”
“Yes.”
“You a conformist?”
“What?”
“Don’t suffer from a death wish, do you?”
“No.”
“And so, in other words, it would have required more courage, moral courage, to hold back. I mean to say, if you hadn’t been so worried about … looking bad … about riding with the herd … if you had been absolutely honest with yourself, you would have held back. Yes or no?”
Mortimer hesitated.
“He is –” a man in the audience hollered.
“– shittier than the rest of us,” another fan returned.
“Wait,” Dig cautioned. “Give him a chance to answer my question.”
“The answer is I did the necessary thing.”
A man rose, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Bullsh –”
“Fans, wait! Hold it! The fact is Mortimer Griffin is no phony.”
Studio fans, unsettled, began to mutter among themselves.
“He isn’t shittier than we are.”
The camera played on the studio audience just as an irate young couple got up and walked out.
“What’s going on here?”
“Dig’s a sellout.”
“You can’t believe in anything these days.”
Another couple left. And another. Satisfied now, Dig, clutching his microphone, came round his desk to confront his rebellious followers. “Mortimer Griffin,” he began, breaking off as he was seized by a paroxysm of laughter. “The major here –” Dig clutched his stomach, helpless. “The captain –” Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Mortimer Griffin is a – a – a – a hero!”
In the control room, the director and his crew sat bolt upright. “Hero” had not been said on British television for years. Would they be cut off?
“He’s a fucking … hero” Dig said, wiping his face. Pandemonium.
“You can never count old Dig out.”
“Good old Dig.”
“Imagine,” a man said, slapping his cheek. “A hero.”
“Poor dumb bastard.”
As Mortimer, followed by the camera, slunk offstage, nobody laughed. Nobody scoffed. He was not ridiculed. Swingers, after all, were not without pity.
32
“wELL, LOOK WHO’S HERE. MR. CHICKENSHIT HIMSELF. Diana,” he hollered, beginning to flex his hands, “bring out the gloves.”
“No gloves, damn it. I’ve got to talk to you, Hy. It’s about Oriole – the Star Maker – I’m in serious danger.”
“That’s not what I hear. I hear you’re the new editor-in-chief. That means I’m looking for a new job, Dr. Himmler.”
“Please hear me out, Hy, you’re just about my last hope.”
Briefly, Hy’s belligerent manner faltered. He considered Mortimer with something like his former regard. “Shoot,” he said.
Mortimer, relieved, was just about to begin his story when a bald, pear-shaped man, sucking an enormous cigar, stepped out of the living room. He walked toward Mortimer, his soft ringed hand outstretched.
“My father,” Hy said in a failing voice. “Paw, Mortimer Griffin. A friend of mine. Once.”
“Put it there, Morty. You’ve known my Hymie for years, haven’t you? Well, maybe you can tell me what’s wrong with him?”
“But Hy’s a splendid chap. Just the sort you can count on in a moment of need.”
“And always walking around with that expression like somebody was going to take a scissors like this,” Mr. Rosen said, demonstrating with two extended fingers, “and snip his bleeding cock off.”
“Hy’s been my best friend for years and years.”
“Listen, I’m not saying my Hymie’s a shmuck. I only wish I had his head for the market.”
“Hy?”
“When he was younger and playing only for fun he picked winners nine out of ten. Hymie knows his onions. He’s got a good Jewish head on his shoulders.”
“The capacity to judge the market has nothing to do with one’s racial origins.”
“You got kiddies of your own, Morty, or are you a nit with a social conscience like Hymie here?”
“I’ve told my father a hundred times that world conditions being what they are, it would be madness to bring a ch
ild into –”
“World conditions, my arse. You want to make Diana happy or you want she should end up like Cousin Sadie with twitches and headaches for no reason and the insides, God forbid, being scraped out twice a –”
“Somebody ought to tell you the facts about strontium 90.”
“Think of the pleasure it would give me to have a grandchild. A Bar Mitzvah boy.”
“Even if we had a child there’d be no Bar Mitzvah. I’ve told you a hundred times, Paw, Diana and I are atheists.”
“Facts of life. Your Diana can be an atheist. Your friend Morty can be an atheist. You can only be a bloody Jewish atheist.”
“We will not burden any child of ours with outmoded tribal customs. That’s final, Paw.”
“Education, that’s what’s giving him such a pain in the kishkes. Here’s a goy, we’ll ask him. Isn’t it true that your kind has more respect for a Jew who is a Jew? Take Rothschild, for instance. He would never buy or sell on the Sabbath. Or take me. On Yom Kippur I fast. I go to shul.”
“You drive there and that’s against the law.”
“I’m not a fanatic, you know.”
“You go to the synagogue to discuss business. Not to worship.”
“There’s something wrong with talking business?” Mr. Rosen asked Mortimer.
“He doesn’t know. He’s condescending to you, Paw.”
“Listen,” Mr. Rosen said, seizing Mortimer by the lapels, “I like you. You’re highly intelligent, I can see. Wednesday I’m taking Hy and Diana to dinner. You’re his friend and he never gives me a chance to meet any. You come too. There’ll be plenty to drink. The best.”
“My father never invites a Gentile out without first assuring him there will be plenty to drink. A ghetto compulsion.”
“You don’t drink?”
“Of course I do.”
“See?”
“And I’d be glad to come.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, you bastard.”
“But, Hy, I –”
“And I won’t have you patronizing my father. He thinks you’re colorful, Paw. A character.”
“No kidding,” Mr. Rosen said, beaming.
“You’re ashamed of him.”
Hy started to say something, stopped, and grabbed his coat. “I’m going out for a breath of air,” he said.
“Hy, wait! I need you.”
He slammed the door.
“Hy!”
“He’s a sensitive boy,” Mr. Rosen said. “Don’t you think?”
33
POLLY COULDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT DOCUMENT HE was working on so secretively. Typing it over and over again. Or why he drank so much and double-locked the doors. Neither could she understand why he pretended to be ill, avoiding Oriole House. Everybody knew he was going to take over from Tomasso. You’d think he’d be proud.
“Men,” she said, ruffling his hair.
“What?”
“Don’t hate me,” she whispered.
“But I adore you,” he said.
“I’m pregnant.”
“That’s bloody impossible! One, I’ve only been staying here for a few nights and two, let’s face it, Polly, we’ve never actually –”
“No, you won’t hate me. If I know you, you beautiful idiot, tomorrow you’ll be handing out cigars everywhere. You’ll be off to Harrod’s to buy him the biggest panda going … and you’ll be putting him down for Eton.” Polly chuckled lovingly. “By the time you get done with it, I will have had nothing to do with it at all.”
“But, God damn it, Polly –”
“Oh, how I love you when you’re angry.”
As soon as she had gone to sleep, Mortimer poured himself a drink and went off to the kitchen in search of ice cubes. Once more, he was struck by the screenplays stacked here, there, and everywhere. No: it couldn’t be. And yet … Mortimer reached for the first screenplay. He sat by the kitchen table all night, consuming one screenplay after another, understanding coming to him at last.
The following evening Mortimer led Polly across the river to a decrepit, sleazy street. Unmistakably a back street.
“I feel like a murderer,” she said, sobbing.
“It can’t be helped, darling.”
“Don’t come any farther with me.”
“As you wish.” He handed her a thick envelope. “You go to No. 83 and ask for Dr. O’Hara. You hand him this.”
Mortimer watched her, his eyes tracking, as she continued alone down the endless street, slowly, slowly, running her gloved hand along a wrought-iron fence, just as she had done as a child.…
Concentrating on holding the glove in a tight shot, as it were, Mortimer detected the contaminating grit of experience rubbing off on its pure, bored, overrich whiteness. Finally, he concentrated on Polly starting up the steps to No. 83.
Ordering another in the pub, thinking it over, Mortimer regretted that it wasn’t autumn. Possibly, she had missed the falling leaves. Oh, well, can’t have everything, and he took his time returning to the flat on Beaufort Street, allowing her time to change and adjust mentally for the next scene, the obligatory dissolve to the bedroom.
As he had anticipated, she said, “I feel dirty.”
As was expected of him, he replied, “Yes, I know,” but emptily.
Oh, how he adored Polly, creature of a generation, but living with her was, nevertheless, a mixed pleasure. If, for instance, she looked up a complicated meal in Larousse, he had to reconcile himself to a hasty sandwich secretly consumed in the toilet, for she was bound to cut from pondering the sauce to serving coffee and brandy, just as she dissolved from his cupping a breast to the gratifying pillow talk that followed the most satisfying lovemaking.
One sun-filled but rather wintry afternoon, she insisted that he take her to Richmond Park, where they ate a picnic lunch.
“You look absolutely ravishing,” he said.
“When we are old,” she said, “I want you to always remember me like this, the sun catching fire in my hair …”
“The look in your eyes,” he continued for her, “ten fathoms deep.”
Reaching for her hand, he pulled her to him. Then, for he was in a considerate mood, just as he reached for the top button of her dress, he spun her around, so that she could cut away, so to speak, over his shoulder … to the stags locking horns in the distance.
Living in sin, Polly called it, but the affair, such as it was, had only been consummated on the wide screen of her imagination, which, alas, suited him – suited him too damn well, considering his condition.
Mortimer’s happiness was blunted by an overriding anxiety. As things stood, Polly accepted him as the consummate lover. But week by week the movies were leaving less to the imagination, the love scenes were becoming more explicit, and so surely it was only a question of time before Ziggy’s artistic dream came true and it would be possible to show fucking on the screen. Then, what? Then she would come to realize he wasn’t up to the big scene, and she would look elsewhere for a man, a real man, to track in on her.
“I’m your mistress,” she said, dancing across the room, “and I don’t care if the whole world knows.”
“You can shout it from the rooftops,” he replied, looking up from his typing.
If Polly didn’t do precisely that, she did at least let everybody know that she was living with Mortimer, the most demanding and masterful of lovers, and naturally this especially delighted him. Oh, to be the envy of Oriole, of all publishing in fact, for there wasn’t an editor under sixty who hadn’t had a go at Polly Morgan, but only Griffin had won her favors. Such as they were, he added to himself in dark or drunken moments.
“Typedy-type-type,” Polly said. “What ever are you working at?”
“An indictment, if you must know,” Mortimer said, rising, as he folded papers into two separate long brown envelopes.
Polly watched him get into his coat. “Don’t tell me you’re actually going into Oriole this morning.”
“No.
I’ve got business elsewhere. See you later, darling.”
Across the street, the Rover waited, the two black-suited men inside. I should get these papers to Joyce first. Or Hy, he thought. But, on impulse, Mortimer walked right up to the Rover. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get it over with. Take me to it.”
34
“HELLO THERE. GREETINGS.”
The Star Maker sat up in bed, knitting, a patch over the right eye. The bassinet Mortimer had last seen at the studio stood under the window in the Star Maker’s suite at the Clinic.
“Star Maker,” Mortimer demanded, “why are you still having me followed?”
“Sit down, my boy. Pour yourself a drink.”
Mortimer eagerly sloshed brandy into a glass. “Why are you here?” he asked.
The Star Maker blushed, actually blushed.
“I will be operating out of here for at least nine months to come.”
“Nine?”
The Star Maker chortled, swollen breasts shaking. “But it can’t show yet,” the Star Maker said, flushed with pleasure.
“What can’t show yet?”
“That I’m pregers.”
“Pregnant? You?”
“Well, let’s not put the cart before the horse. However, I can reveal this much. I’m very, very overdue this month.”
“Overdue!”
“Mn. Join me in a cigar?”
Mortimer, his hands shaking, lit a cigar for himself and one for the Star Maker. The Star Maker inhaled deeply and set the knitting aside.
“Star Maker, may I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot, dear.”
“Are you a man or a woman?”
“But don’t you know? Haven’t you guessed? I,” the Star Maker said, “am a modern medical miracle.”
Mortimer hastily poured himself another brandy.
Cocksure Page 18
