Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  Where was Emily, indeed? Off the rails on the curve of her own garrulity, but he had never heard her ask before where she was. It showed that Emily had lived so long that she, too, was beginning to forget, even though she was correctly miles younger than he. It was true that he had told her his troubles that night at Arthur Higgins’s, but he was damned if he had told them in a little-boy way, or if he had a little-boy quality, either. It was too late to cough or make any sound in the hall by now, because if she were to know that he had overheard her it would only cause an unnecessarily difficult moment for them both. The point still was: where was Emily? Taken from the angle of their relationship, it was honestly quite a question.

  “You were talking very charmingly and cogently,” he heard Walter Price say, “about the immaturity of American men. I can agree with you completely. Having been educated in England and the Continent, after a carefree childhood in Columbia, South Carolina, I have the advantage of a very real perspective …”

  “I know that I was talking about immaturity,” Emily said, and her voice had assumed an unexpectedly compelling quality. She could stop anyone talking—even Walter Price—if she wanted to make a point. “But what was it that I was talking about before that?”

  “About Tom’s second wife, I think,” Walter said, “and you were on the ever-painful subject of alimony. Between you and me, I disapproved of Laura from the first moment, and I did my best to warn Tom. I spoke to him in a very man-to-man way. Indeed, I went right to the mat about it, out of sheer affection. ‘Why get married again?’ I said. ‘Isn’t one experience enough? Why not follow the wiser precept of loving them and leaving them?’ Now I had a great advantage over Tom, of course, of having followed for a lifetime a quite unattainable romance. I don’t know whether I ever told you, Emily.…”

  Obviously the time had arrived to create an interruption by a cough or a careless footstep, but Emily’s voice cut in again.

  “Of course I was just a little starry-eyed Hoosier girl,” Emily was saying. Tom had tried to induce her to drop that phrase, but had never succeeded. In fact, lately she was using it more and more regularly. “But still I told Tom at the time not to put up with that agreement for a moment. Of course there weren’t any grounds, or Tom didn’t want to sue on grounds. He’s so utterly frivolous sometimes and so beguilingly American, but thank goodness women don’t have to conform to chivalry, do they? I know what a traumatic experience it was for Tom, facing marital difficulties a second time, and I think that a sensitive, artistic spirit like Tom’s magnifies everything much more than we pedestrian people can realize. Do you know what I’ve often thought? I’ve often thought, thank heaven Tom isn’t able to bear a child. He would distort the trauma out of all proportions.… But I really don’t think he moved here to run away from Laura Hopedale. I think, on the contrary, he came here to run after someone—not a reality so much as a memory. It’s Tom’s incorrigibly romantic streak.”

  Her voice stopped. When Emily was on the stage, her timing had left much to be desired; but occasionally she knew when to stop, and this was a correct moment, when everything was hanging in dramatic balance, and even Walter Price’s mind was off himself, which indicated a considerable achievement.

  “I don’t quite follow you, my dear,” he said. “I’ve known Tom to pursue a number of projects very assiduously, but never a memory. What sort of memory?”

  There was another pause. If he had been directing the scene himself, he would have insisted on this silent beat of time at just this point.

  “I know it may sound fantastic,” Emily said, “but every human being is fantastic in some department, isn’t he? If you were to ask me, I think Tom’s come here because of old memories of Rhoda.”

  Now and then Emily could still surprise him. Emily’s monologues might continue by the hour. You might be fighting off drowsiness or the ultimate of boredom, when suddenly she would hit on something. It might be only the fabrication of a chain of inaccuracies, but Emily had her own qualities of perception. He was surprised to discover that he was startled simply because his first wife’s name had been mentioned by his third wife, but then, perhaps if you had ever been closely associated with anyone, you might start at her name. You never could tell about memory. Take the memory of a horse, for instance, that caused him invariably to balk or shy at a certain turn on a riding trail simply because something had occurred there once that had shaken him … But Emily was speaking again.

  “You see, I don’t think he’s ever lived-down Rhoda. Hasn’t someone said, some poet or someone, that a first love is never over?”

  Her voice dropped almost to a whisper, another effect which had been achieved by the teaching of Arthur Higgins, who had always had a weakness for the old Belasco school. But one should never discount techniques simply because they are timeworn, and Emily did not pause too long.

  “I don’t mean that he hasn’t lived her down in a practical sense. Tom has always been a great liver-downer—the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ school. An artist has to be, or else his sensitivity would kill him, and Tom is a creative artist, no matter how annoyed he gets when someone tells him so. Of course Tom is one of those people who would have been good at anything. Did you know he was positively brilliant in the war? Well, my only point is that a man who can turn his hand to anything must be a great liver-downer, but he hasn’t ever got over Rhoda. Walter … it frightens me … just a little.”

  Arthur Higgins had worked hard on Emily. Arthur had undoubtedly thought, as others had, that anyone with her figure, combined with brown eyes and ash-blond hair, could develop a stage presence, given instruction—and the instruction had not been wholly wasted. You could believe Emily was frightened a little, and once again she did not pause long enough to risk an interruption.

  “Walter …” Her voice was higher, but bravely controlled, eloquently pleading. “I wish you’d use your influence to get him to move somewhere else. There’s something wrong about it all, Walter. His preoccupations here are somewhat weird, Walter, and I feel like a shadow. I’m subconsciously rejected, and it’s very dreadful to be rejected by a memory. I never realized that it could be so dreadful.…”

  Emily had the faculty of making many things difficult, and now she had done it again. It was now no longer possible to interrupt her discourse. To have done so would have trespassed on hospitality by embarrassing Walter Price. Also, as he had learned by now, any relationship, more especially one established between man and wife, was based in part on the uncatalogued facts one never faced or discussed, and Emily’s habit of telling her most private troubles was beyond discussion. It was better to pretend that Emily was the soul of discretion as she always said she was. It would now cause Emily needless pain and confusion if she were to find that he had been listening in the hall, and life was hard enough without deliberately causing pain. It was necessary to tiptoe softly to the front door and his admiration for the long-dead builders of the house increased with every furtive step.

  The hall, as was customary in that ancient, brash era when the house was built, had been floored with native white pine. These broad boards had been protected for generations by various forms of carpeting, so that now, having been scraped and oiled, they were in excellent condition. Not a board creaked beneath his tread, but, if one had, it might not have mattered. Emily’s voice had risen to a controlled but louder level.

  “Walter, dear,” she was saying, “you know what a respect Tom has always had for your opinion. He has a great many acquaintances, but not many friends, and you are a friend—a friend of both of us.”

  This was another expression that Emily had taken up recently—A Friend of Both of Us—and one could tell very readily what she meant. A Friend of Both of Us meant someone whom Emily could use conveniently in order to get her husband to do something that he might have been reluctant to do otherwise.

  “All he needs is someone to get him interested in something new, Walter,” she was saying. “You know how restless and questing Tom
always is, and I don’t think his play is doing well, either. He always shuts up like a clam when I ask him about his work. Work is a part of him he always insulates from me like a bamboo curtain, although darling Arthur used to say that I had a highly acute dramatic critical sense. Walter dear, I still have instinct even if he never tells me anything. He’s worried about the play and I’ll tell you something else, Walter. Between you and me, and I’ve never mentioned this to another soul, I think Tom is growing professionally afraid. You know that dreadful fear that comes over everyone in the theatre at some point, Walter—that sort of professional doubt—the discovery that he is just a little behind the tempo of today. Tom’s wonderful. I know it, Walter—but then, there’s Tennessee Williams. I just know there’s something that worries Tom—something new he can’t touch. I wish you could have seen his face at The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof. It was enigmatic, Walter, and sad, and I’ve never breathed this to another soul. What he needs is a change, Walter, and not living in a doll’s house and questing back into the past. It’s Rhoda, Walter, the memory of Rhoda that’s making him uncertain; and if you could just speak to him, Walter …”

  The gentle click of the front-door latch was not audible over Emily’s voice.

  He was on the steps again in that gentle May sun. He knew that his face was flushed, and it should not have been. He had only heard again what he had known already. He knew that Emily disliked the place and that for years she had let him down in subtle ways in order to build herself up, but something new had been added simply because of overhearing. Emily always came upon realities with glancing blows, juggling half-truths and quarter-truths. There was something to be said for her interpretation of Rhoda. There was some truth in the competitive fear but she should have known that one lived always with the fear that one might never write again. It was a common occupational disease, yet when you heard someone else say it, the shock was a little like hearing your own voice on a tape-recorder with tones you barely recognized, or suddenly seeing your face unexpectedly in a mirror. Such experiences always showed that there was a lot you did not know about yourself. At any rate, the old saying was true: nothing you ever overheard about yourself was ever favorable. How right the rule was never to listen at open doors, or closed ones, either.

  III

  It’s Always Old Home Week in Any Old Home Town

  He had not intended to go to the office until after he had called downtown for the mail; but, once he had closed the front door, he found himself walking not toward the street but back past the cutting and vegetable garden to where the old coach house had stood. He had recognized, years ago, the utter futility of maintaining any serious working quarters in any house in which he lived. No matter what rules one might make against interruptions, they were always being broken; and, even if they were not, there was always something in the house to stimulate his curiosity—voices in the hall, the ring of the doorbell, or a crash of glass in the pantry. It was hard enough at best to concentrate, without having the extraneous appear suddenly to blot out some chain of thought; and also, in the house, there was a continuous battle between the sexes. Women, from his experience, preferred having a man beneath their thumbs, if such a thing was possible. It was true, of course, that most women—wives of lawyers, doctors, and businessmen—knew that they could not attain this desire; they watched resignedly when their men went downtown or to goodness knew where, and waited in the afternoon with growing curiosity and impatience if ever their husbands missed the 5:15; but there was no valid reason for writers, artists or composers to get away from home. Usually it was disloyal of them to think of such a thing, and uneconomical, and thoughtless.

  It would have been difficult to count the number of times he had heard the wives of writers, artists, and composers say, at some literary cocktail party after a third Martini, that one of the wonderful things about being married to a writer, artist, or composer was that you could share his work, or if not share it, at least watch the creative wheels go round, and this, though often trying, was fascinating in that it gave one a sense of worthwhileness to help, just a little bit, in those lonely, creative struggles. You never knew, you couldn’t know, all that a writer, artist, or composer went through, unless you were actually married to him. Not even his mistress could know, not that any of their husbands had mistresses; but lots of other people’s husbands did. Doubtless you knew some of the husbands to whom they were referring, and some of the gals, too, who appeared with them at first-night parties and things like that—but, let’s face it, a mistress was different from a wife. She might be more attractive. One dared say she was—and why shouldn’t she be, with nothing else to do but be clever and simpática for occasional, limited periods? Yet no matter how delightful she was, she could not have the same true interest in creative work that a wife had. She might be aware of the fun of it, but never of the pain. After all, men who had mistresses could not tell them all their troubles. At any rate, only a wife could understand the true difficulties and the pains of creation—that is, if she were the sort of wife who tried to understand.

  It wasn’t all peaches and cream being married to a writer, artist, or composer. They were naturally temperamental, and at some points surprisingly immature, with crotchets and vanities and little-boy habits that you would have thought they should have outgrown at grammar school. They were not even—let’s face it—very good husbands from a conventional point of view. Sometimes they were so busy with creation that they could not remember that they were husbands. No matter how faithful he might be, a writer, artist, or composer did lead a double life, what with his copy paper, palette, or metronome, or whatever—but still it was the sort of life that an understanding wife could share, and it could be a fine adventure, and the best thing about it was companionship. He was always there and you could see and hear the wheels go round. It was a pleasure to listen to the typewriter in the study and, if there was a pause, to wonder whether one should interrupt and try to be of help or whether, if one did, one’s head would almost literally be taken off. You never could tell which it would be if you were the wife of an artist, author, or composer—but this was part of the fascination. It was—let’s face it—in spite of all the trouble he made, the cigarette burns on the rug, the aspirin and Bromo-Seltzer all over the bathroom and the glass rings on the furniture—it was still wonderful to have your man in the house and know where he was. Moreover, it was the way things ought to be, and anyone who was married to a writer, artist, or composer was silly and shortsighted not to give him a study, studio, or whatever, and keep him in the house instead of listening to suggestions that he move to an office outside with some blond secretary or model or singer or something. What was the use in being married to a creative man if you did not have him right there in the house?

  Tom Harrow had heard it all and also he had tried working at home. He had tried it first in their apartment in the old and ungainly Lexington Avenue house where Rhoda and he had begun their married life. He had used one of the hall bedrooms for writing and, as Rhoda said herself, it was just a cubbyhole; but when he closed the door she made it a special point, on her word of honor, never to disturb him. If he had to leave the door open, in order to get some heat inside the room, it was his fault if Rhoda called to him or occasionally came in to give him a kiss when he was not typing. In retrospect, the hallroom study had not been so bad and surroundings were not important when you were in your twenties and in love. Then there was the study on Park Avenue in the cooperative duplex, and then the other study on Park Avenue in the other duplex which Laura Hopedale had decorated while in one of her beige-and-ivory moods. Nancy Mulford, now his secretary, had come in part-time to do letters and script typing at Park Avenue, on the days she was lent him by the Higgins office. But even before the end of the first Park Avenue duplex, he had had it—and he had rented an office of his own in a dingy building in the vicinity of Carnegie Hall.

  The old coach house here, after it had been made over, was a pleasant office with an open f
ireplace and windows looking over the garden. Its location was one of its greatest assets: at the far end of the gravel drive, and a considerable distance from the garage and the couple’s quarters. Fortunately Emily had not given up wearing high heels. In fact, she seemed to be under the impression that these made her different from the other tweedy women of this community into which she had been catapulted. He was careful every year to have fresh layers of gravel copiously poured upon the drive as well as on the path beyond the turnaround leading to the coach house, and consequently it was almost impossible for Emily to reach the place. In an effort of hers to do so, the previous summer, she had twisted her ankle severely and, as far as he knew, Emily had not attempted the trip again. Thus the coach house was free of interruptions; and there was another room for Miss Mulford, so that, when he wanted, he could be entirely alone.

  His workroom impressed him that morning as at least one place that unself-consciously reflected his personality. The odds and ends of his past were around him, not placed in any studied balance, but with the sort of continuity that came with association. There were the Hogarth prints he bought in his last year at college. There was the desk he had bought in London the first time a play of his had been produced there. The armchair by the bookcase was an ugly Victorian interpolation that had come from his parents’ house on Seventy-second Street. There were a few framed photographs on the wall that would have made no especial sense to anyone else—one of Jack Barrymore, and one of a general, signed, Tom, with admiration—Arthur D. Whelk. There was a photograph of his mother in an evening gown stiffly posed against an Italianate backdrop by a forgotten New York photographer, and a snapshot of his father in white tennis flannels and a yachting blazer with brass buttons. The main point about the room was that all its furnishings, including the clock on the mantel, marked some point in his past without obtruding on his thoughts.