Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  'Shit, it is,' said Angie. 'Wednesday night the bottom fell out of the thing and they all dropped out on to the floor. That's dangerous.'

  'Why did you say that?' I asked seriously. She looked a good girl, soft featured, eyes genuinely friendly in the half light, her hands white and nervous, playing with a cigarette packet. Her shoulders were naked, sprouting from a lovely red dress and her hair was very dark and curling modestly around her face.

  'Say what? About the girls falling out of the cage? Because it happened. It occurred.'

  'No,' I said. 'Shit. Why did you say "shit"?'

  She smiled, but down at the table.' I guess that's not very ladylike,' she said. 'You don't like that sort of expression?'

  'I've heard worse,' I admitted. 'I'm a ship's officer, after all.'

  'Gee, are you? That's real nice.'

  'But I didn't like to hear it coming from you. Somehow you don't fit in with that sort of thing in my picture of you.'

  'Right,' she nodded as though I had found her out. Her head went nearer the table and I had a funny feeling she was crying. I felt sure I was right because she excused herself and went to the wailing girls in the go-go cage and borrowed a Kleenex from one of them. She returned brushing her eyes with it. 'Sorry,' she said touching my hand as she sat down. 'The smoke worries my eyes a little.'

  'You were saying . . .' I said.

  'Oh yeah. Sure I was. You're just right, Alvin . . .'

  'Arthur.'

  'Boy, how could I call you Alvin! I must be going crazy.'

  'Easily confused,' I conceded.

  'Sure. Thanks. Well, I was saying, Arthur. Arthur. Now that is right. Arthur?'

  'Spot on,' I said.

  'Well, I think you're absolutely, one hundred per cent, right about me saying "shit". It's a tough expression, I suppose. But, working here, I just try to be professional, that's all. Most men I meet in here would have said it first anyway.'

  It was then, when she said that, there came a thought that this was not destined to be the usual emergency relationship formed and frequently finished over an expensive martini in a place full of noise and hideous lights. I had a sudden feeling that she was real. All the subsequent things could never remove that sensation of discovery that I knew then.

  'How long have you worked here?' I asked.' I know it's a corny question, but I really would like to know.'

  'Sure,' she laughed quietly. 'It's a corny question, but it's a nice corny question, and I guess you are interested.'

  'I'm interested in you,' I said.

  'You damned British,' she mimicked quite cleverly.

  I laughed. 'Well, that's all right, then isn't, it?'

  'Sure it is. I've been here ten days. It's the usual old story, I'm sorry to say. Little girl from Turniptown, big city, needs money. Just that. When I've got enough I'll get out and do the things I want to do.'

  'What do you want to do?'

  'Well I want an apartment. Nothing crazy, just a good little apartment, double locked, and with a security guard down in the lobby. And I want to go to art school because I'm going to be a commercial artist when I'm a big girl.'

  'How big are you now,' I murmured. 'I mean how old are you?'

  'Twenty-two,' she shrugged. 'I guess that's a little hoary to start thinking about commercial art, but I don't think I've gone too far yet.'

  'Oh no,' I encouraged. 'I wouldn't say that's too old. Don't say that word again, will you ?'

  'What? Shit? No, you know we've agreed that. We don't like that expression.'

  'No,' I corrected. ' Hoary. I know how you meant it, but it still sounds terrible coming from you.'

  For a nasty moment I thought she was going to be angry, but then she subsided into good-natured laughter, and rolled her head from side to side.' Oh, Arthur,' she laughed. 'You're a good man! A real, good man. I guess you're just what Angie's been looking for.'

  The affair took a strange turn after that. I did not stay at the bar, or I could see it degenerating into just another of those grubby little things that, God knows, I have known well enough. I told her I was going and she did not try to

  detain me, nor did she ask me to buy her another drink. She just took my fingers and said she hoped we would be able to talk again and I said I intended that we should. I asked her to have lunch with me the following day, for I thought this would put the association on a civilized footing, away from the artificiality of the Split Legs Go-Go Bar, and she smiled and said she would like that, so we fixed it.

  When, now, I think of the parts of this affair that I like to remember, that I can allow myself to remember, the sweetest moment of all was the next day, in the English Bar of the Barclay Hotel when she came in from the Lexington Avenue sun, and I was waiting for her. She was wearing a superb camel coloured suit and a wide-brimmed hat. Her face was more beautiful without the hysterical lights and her smile was full and honest. My inside seemed to fill up suddenly with warm water as she came through the door. Every man in the place stopped and revolved towards her and I knew that every man wanted to see who was the lucky one she had come to see. I stood and waited for her (I was in uniform) and she came deftly across the floor and took both my hands. The faces of all the men about me collapsed with envy and I knew it was one of the best moments of my life. Even taking into account all that followed, if there were only that moment that was worth anything, then I could console myself with the memory of it.

  The head waiter at the English Bar was German, although his father had been a prisoner in Bedfordshire during the war. All the others were Puerto Rican or Negro. Around the walls were some nice prints of Brussels and Environs. We drank Bourbon, the food was chilli con carne, and the piped music drifted originally from the South Seas. I was the only English connection in the place and I was Welsh.

  'People come here when they want to get some feeling of England,' she said. 'It's cute, don't you think?'

  ' Cute, but not English,' I said.

  ' Maybe you ought to tell them you're English and they'll give us a free bottle of champagne, or something very English like that.'

  'Cider more like it,' I said, abruptly remembering the dance hall of that wedding night.' They make it out of little apples and sometimes they call it West Country champagne.'

  'Gee, I like the sound of that. West Country,' she mused over the words. ' England is somewhere I've always wanted to visit, you know, Alvin. I think I would be at peace there. I can just imagine all those castles and toadstools and things.'

  'Oh, we have them all over the place,' I said. 'Castles and toadstools.'

  'And those bars with the grass roofs.'

  'You're thinking of Honolulu.'

  'No, I am not. They have grass roofs and funny old windows.'

  'Oh, I see. Pubs. Thatched roofs. No go-go girls, I'm afraid.'

  'Maybe I could work in one of those if I went to England.'

  A minor but guilty pain started within me at the thought of her turning up in Newport.

  'It's all strictly amateur,' I said hurriedly. 'You wouldn't earn enough to go to art school in an English pub.'

  'You're going soon? Leaving New York?'

  'Day after tomorrow. Thursday.'

  'So soon?'

  'As soon as we finish loading. We'll be out of Hoboken on the mid-morning tide.'

  'Hoboken? But that's not very nice. Why couldn't your ship be over on Manhattan?'

  'It's not that kind of ship,' I said.

  'You'll be back some time?'

  'In three weeks. I'll be coming back regularly now, just doing the trip between here and home.' I said it carefully. She was going the way I wanted her to go without any help from me.

  'Oh, that will be nice. Maybe we can see each other.'

  'I had that in mind,' I said.

  Sixteen

  It was a beautiful American afternoon, with Manhattan shining like a forest in the sun. We went down to the pier on the West side, and went on the tripper boat up the Hudson and down the East River, sitting
hand in hand, among all the people from Milwaukee, Dallas and China. Even knowing what I know now, I still think it was one of the most romantic afternoons of my life, and I prefer to believe that Angie felt so too.

  We made the long oval voyage of both murky rivers, paddling among barges and cargo ships, a liner going out and one coming in to take its place. The man at the wheel sang some songs through the loudspeaker and then told us to look and see where the Mayor of New York lived among the surprising city trees, and to see the windows of Frank Sinatra's apartment. Our heads turned left and right and left again with the rest.

  At Riverdale I bowed quietly towards the place where Mrs Nissenbaum and myself when young had lived and loved. She did not haunt me now, not after these years, but I still remember her and Errol Flynn and the afternoon when my lovely big lover screamed from the bed: ' Oh my God, he's just eaten the French letter!' He was a greedy little dog and he had gobbled it up after I had dropped it from our vicinity. He was dead by the time we got him to the veterinary surgeon's, who told us that it was a rare occurrence, as if we didn't know, and charged twenty dollars, and that was all those years ago. God knows what it would cost today.

  Naturally I did not tell Angie about Errol Flynn, but she noticed that I had become reflective as we rounded the wooded suburbia at the top of Manhattan Island.

  'I knew a woman at Riverdale, once, many years ago,' I said. 'That's all. Just after the war.'

  'The war?' she said with the puzzlement of those young enough not to remember it, or even after it. 'You must have been a kid.'

  'Sixteen,' I said. 'My first trip to sea. I got torpedoed. I think I must have been the last one. I was picked up and I came to New York and this lady looked after me.'

  'How old was she?'

  'Thirties, I suppose,' I said. 'She was amazing.'

  'And you sixteen? I bet she looked after you. And torpedoed. You've seen everything, I guess.'

  'Just about everything,' I agreed modestly although I wish, now, I hadn't said it.

  I showed her my ship, lying over against the afternoon smoke of the wrong side of the river, but when we went under the bridge and chugged alongside Welfare Island I did not tell her that it was there that Mrs Nissenbaum, in her flying voluminous pink, descended heavily to her abrupt death. That I wanted to keep between Mrs Nissenbaum and myself.

  When we got back to the city I told her I had to go out to dinner that night with a shipping agent and his wife. This was true, but she held both my hands and said with concern: 'Oh, really.'

  'I'll see you tomorrow, if you can,' I suggested.

  'Sure,' she smiled. ' t's a shame about tonight, though. I was hoping you could come in and talk.'

  I stopped myself saying I would try. It would be good for her to wait until tomorrow, I thought. It would show that I didn't care for her in the background of the Split Legs Go-Go Bar. It would be good for us to be apart for a few hours; for the next day I would put my plan to her.

  'I'll see you tomorrow,' I repeated. 'Be good, won't you?'

  'If you mean you want me to promise that I won't take any man home, okay I promise,' she smiled. God, when I think of it now, I writhe. As I said later to Mr Trombone, she was some girl, and he said, ' Sure, some girl.'

  All through dinner with Mr and Mrs Svensen that evening I kept thinking of her sitting in the mayhem of the Split Legs Go-Go Bar, while I sat in the subdued restaurant where we dined. Afterwards, with my own perverse leading, we went in that direction to find a taxi for the Svensens, and we actually waited outside the Split Legs Go-Go Bar until an unoccupied cab pulled up. I knew that Angie was within a few feet, but I would not let myself even look in that direction, nor hear the raw sounds coming from its cavern. When my guests had gone I stood uncertain, tempted, for a moment, and then walked resolutely away.

  I had made up my mind to ask her as soon as we met the following day. She was only a minute late and she came to our meeting place in Central Park, by the fountains where I had walked with the late Mrs Nissenbaum. She was wearing a lime green trouser suit and a wide straw hat. Angie that is. Once again she looked wonderful.

  We sat down on one of the seats facing the water and I said immediately: 'Angie, will you live with me when I'm in New York? I mean, have a proper home together.'

  'Are you married?' she asked coolly.

  'I was,' I said staring at the lake. 'My wife died in a car crash two years ago.'

  'Oh, Arthur, I'm sorry.'

  'One of those things,' I said. 'Part of life.'

  'Why do you just want to live with me then? Why can't we be married?'

  I thought I had better kiss her while I thought of an answer. I did so gently, feeling the soft lips and the New York sun on the back of my neck.

  'I'm afraid,' I said simply, drawing back. 'My life takes me everywhere, and it's the only life I know. My marriage was a disaster, Angie, because we were strangers. I often wonder if she crashed that car purposely.'

  'You mustn't say that. You mustn't blame yourself, honey.'

  'I do. I've been in misery since it happened.'

  'It's not the Split Legs Go-Go Bar you're afraid of?' she asked. 'You're not afraid to risk me because I work there?'

  'You won't work there any more, will you, please,' I said. ' I went crazy thinking about you there last night.'

  She kissed my neck. 'I'll quit,' she said. 'You know I don't belong there. I'll quit right now.' She clapped her hands. 'There! Split Legs Go-Go Bar, I quit!'

  'Shush,' I said. 'Someone will hear you.'

  'I don't care,' she laughed. 'When can we start?'

  'What? Living together?'

  'What else, crazy?'

  We threw our arms about each other and held each other, and when we looked up there were two old ladies, with dogs and carrying red balloons, as people in Central Park curiously do, and they applauded us while we shrank with embarrassment.

  'You will be coming back, won't you?' said Angie anxiously. 'All the time, I mean. Every three weeks, like you said.'

  'I'll sign a ten year contract with Cohen Overseas Lines,' I promised.

  'What about in England?' she said. 'You won't be unfaithful to me with women in England, will you ?'

  'Nobody's got a hope,' I said exultantly. I held her at arms length in the bright park sun, and thought what a marvellous catch I had made. Oh, God.

  'Where will we live?' she said. 'If we're living together, we've got to have somewhere to live. I'll keep house for you and go to art school while I'm waiting for you to come home, and maybe I'll get a part time job somewhere.'

  'No clubs or bars,' I said.

  'Never,' she promised. 'I told you, mister, I'm the original girl from Turniptown.'

  Immediately, my arm around her comfortable waist, we began to walk from the Park towards the city. 'We can get a service apartment, can't we?' I said. 'Just for now. For the first few weeks. Then you can look for somewhere better. Maybe a bit out of New York in a nice neighbourhood."

  'Can I join the tennis club?' she laughed.

  'If the other wives will let you.'

  'I won't be your wife,' she sulked. 'You've only got me on trial.'

  'And you've got me on trial,' I said. 'Let's not hurry it, darling. It will be all right in the end. I know it will.'

  'You know? You really know?'

  'I do,' I said seriously. I felt as though I were swimming through the city's summer air. I wondered briefly if Pamela was watching Peyton Place, but I did not dwell on it. And that is what we did, God help me, that very afternoon. We went like babbling teenagers into the city, hand in hand across the road in front of the Plaza, patting the buggy horses on their bored noses and joyfully dodging the traffic. I must have looked strange running like that with her, laughing in that young way. We slowed down and jogged along in front of the Fifth Avenue Shops, among all the people, and it occurred to me that this delight is what I should have felt long ago with my wife.

  We went to some agencies and by four o'clock we we
re looking out of our own window at an avalanche of back walls on the West Side. The place was small and the furniture minimal. Someone had fashioned their initials in the grit on the window pane and the carpet had so many holes it looked like a good cheese.

  'It's sure crummy,' she laughed. 'But it doesn't matter. We've got it, and that's all that counts.'

  Because, until then, we had always been together in public places our contact had been inhibited, but now, in that dusty room in the basement of that glamorous city, I pulled Angie to me and felt her for the first time. Jesus, to think I did that.

  We kissed and my hands travelled slowly over her. From the tight bottom up the curve of her back, from her firm waist to the joyful breasts. .

  'There's a bed in there,' I said against her neck.

  'You randy pig,' she laughed. Then she relaxed her clutch and said soberly: 'I don't want it like that. Not right now, Arthur. I want to be domestic with you. I'm your wife and I don't just want to be rushed into the sack in the afternoon. Wives don't do that.'

  'Some wives do.'

  'Not with their husbands,' she laughed. She pulled herself close to me again. ' Listen, honey. I haven't got a thing of my own here. I need to go and get a couple of suitcases from my room.'

  I should have gone back to the ship for an hour, but I had a good first officer, so I telephoned instead and told him I would be back the next morning. The company would not have liked it, if they'd known (for one thing Mr Cohen's Rolls had to be stowed), but I did not want to let her out of my sight now.

  We took a cab to a street beyond Washington Square and seeing it again reminded me of the day when I walked alone through the crowds on the day the war ended, and the man I had talked to on the park bench. The bench was still there. I could see it from the cab. She asked me to wait while she went into an old apartment block. She was very quick, returning in five minutes with another girl, a lovely blonde, helping her with her cases.

  'Sandra,' she said when we were all standing on the pavement. 'This is Arthur. Arthur, Sandra.'

  I thought that she actually sounded so proud. Considering the difference of twenty years between us, and considering also that hardly a person in my life had ever actually been proud of me, I felt flattered and more loving toward her than ever. The brilliant blonde smiled and said: 'I guess you're just what Angie's been looking for.' She turned and kissed Angie on the cheek and said: 'Bye, honey. If he treats you bad, you can always come back here.'