by Alec Waugh
That he had to divide he had come to realize, even so he was unprepared for the smallness of the lecture bookings that he found waiting for him in Mendleheim’s office. To begin with he was not quite sure how small it was, for Mendleheim had spread the ledger in front of him, and proceeded to give a lecture on the financial situation of the United States as a prelude to whatever bad news he might have to break about Gordon’s own position.
‘The country’s all right. There’s no need for you to worry about that,’ he said. ‘The country’s never been in a sounder position. I voted on the Republican ticket in the last election, and I’ld vote on the Republican ticket if there was an election tomorrow, Hoover or no Hoover. There may be bread-lines; there may be unemployed; there may have been this drought; the farmers may be bankrupt. But there’s more money in the banks than there’s ever been. The trouble is, as far as we’re concerned,’ he said, ‘that they won’t take it out. No, sir. They’ve seen too many of their friends done down in Wall Street. They’re leaving it where it is. They aren’t buying stocks; they aren’t buying books. They are going cautiously with lecture fees.’
‘So I gather,’ said Gordon, who had been trying to read the dates and figures against his name, ‘that this lecture tour isn’t going to do either of us much good.’
‘I wouldn’t say that; no, sir, I would not say that.’ Mendleheim paused. ‘It isn’t as though a lecture tour was a separate thing. It’s what it does indirectly for you; rather than what it does directly. Now, take the case of Martin Travers.’ He took the case of Martin Travers. He explained how Travers had lectured in every State of the Union; how Travers had given the most carefully prepared lectures of any writer that had crossed the Atlantic; of how the main bookshops in each town were filled with Travers’s books. How every member of his audience by talking about him brought him five new readers. Even if Martin Travers hadn’t made a penny out of his lectures, and he had, of course, made several, his lectures would have paid him in publicity. With all the patience that he could summon, while he tried to read the Mendleheim ledger backwards, Gordon listened to Mendleheim explaining, with the example of Martin Travers, how it was to the advantage of an author to come to the States to spend three months there, during which it would be impossible for him to carry on with his own job, and exhaust himself on platforms and in Pullman cars, for a net loss of fifteen hundred dollars. One thing, however, the talk did teach him.
The unpopularity of many writers among their colleagues, he could understand; writers naturally resented successes won by short cuts, by vulgarity, by shoddy sentiment; they resented the aloof superiority of writers who did not depend for their livelihood upon their pens and claimed to be above writing for the magazines; they resented writers who were malicious to their colleagues. But writers were not as a rule envious or resentful of honestly earned success. And he had never understood why the tide should have set so strongly against a writer such as Travers whose success had been honestly come by through hard work; who had been generous towards fellow writers; who had never done anyone an injury; who made himself friendly and agreeable; who was always ready to take the unpopular side where a misunderstood writer was concerned. Now Gordon understood. Aristides had suffered a like fate. Too many less prominent writers had in the offices of agents, publishers and editors been invited to take the case of Martin Travers.
‘Martin Travers’s reputation,’ said Mendleheim, ‘has been built on the lecture platform.’
That seemed a cue to Gordon.
‘On how many platforms,’ he asked, ‘am I going to have a chance of basing mine?’
‘Well,’ said Mendleheim, and at last he swung the ledger round. It was as far as he himself was concerned, about as bad as it could be. There were some dozen dates with a gross receipt of fourteen hundred dollars. ‘We’ll probably get another date or two when we’ve the Press notices of your first lecture to show round.’
‘But you’re unlikely to reach a gross of more than two thousand?’
‘It’s not very likely.’
‘Then I’ld be safe in assuming that I shan’t be getting much more than the thousand dollar guarantee I already have?’
Mendleheim was reluctant to make so final an admission. It was grudgingly that he nodded his head. In which case, Gordon thought, since he was going to be in New York three months, he had better see about getting himself a flat. He couldn’t afford to stay in the Chatham all that time. He did not know, of course, that he would be staying all that time in New York. Within forty-eight hours he might possibly be in a boat with Faith, bound for the Antilles. But he preferred to plan as though there were going to be no such elopement: to continue with his life as though drama were not waiting to sun or shadow it.
Out of a blue sky the sun was shining as he turned eastwards down Forty-second. The silver spire of the Chrysler building was shining brightly; the air was cold, but it had life. Depression seemed further away that morning, in spite of the shabby beggars who sidled up to him, and the unemployed shivering at the corner of every block over thick piles of apples; in spite of the unsatisfactory news he had received from Mendleheim. He was excited at being in New York again. His racquet club was on Thirty-third, between Park and Lexington. As he walked towards it, he noticed on both sides of the avenue advertisements of apartments that were for rent.
‘I wonder what one can get for what,’ he thought.
Walking across the street to an apartment building he made inquiries.
It was a long, lean Irishman who answered him.
‘An apartment? Sure, we’ve got a two-roomed furnished apartment. On the seventh floor, and quiet. I’ll show you up there straight.’
‘I only want to have a look at one.’
‘Sure that’s all you want.’
The door was opened to them by a silver-haired negress with a large smile, a shuffle and a West Indian accent.
‘Miss Cowen she asleep.’
‘Best wake her, then.’
‘Miss Cowen she on party last night. Miss Cowen she make whoopee.’
‘I figure that she’ll be wanting to see this gentleman.’
It was a square warm room that Gordon was shown into. It was green and freshly painted. There were a couple of mirrors on the wall; there was a thick pile carpet; against one wall there was a row of bookshelves; against the other a many-cushioned divan. It had been furnished as a result of two hours’ industry in Macy’s. But it had, all the same, a cosy home-like air. Its windows opened on to the windows of another apartment building. Glass doors led into a kitchenette. It was quiet; with the rattle of the trams of Lexington and the roar of the elevated on Third Avenue mingling into a general murmur. It would be a good place to work in.
‘You wait,’ the negress told him.
He sat on the divan. It was adequately sprung. He looked at the four rows of books. There was not one of his own there. He picked out a copy of ‘Young Earnest’ and turned the pages. He had thought it a great novel when he had read it sixteen years earlier as a schoolboy. It had seemed very plain-spoken then. He had not read more than a dozen pages before Miss Cowen appeared.
Quite clearly there had been a party. She was a large, tall, ample person in the middle forties. Her eyes were buried in her cheeks. At least one facial would be needed before she was in a position to face the world. She was, however, in complete control of her business faculties.
‘How long do you want the apartment for? Three months? That’ll be two hundred a month. First month and last month paid before moving in. When would you want to be moving in? Straight away? Then you had better see the bedroom. It isn’t very tidy; but you’ll know what it’s like. The bathroom’s there.’
For America it was a quite ordinary bathroom, tiled, with a wide low bath and pale mauve curtains. But it was a bathroom that Gwen, judging by English standards, would have, in transatlantic phrase, been crazy over. Miss Cowen did not labour its attractions.
‘It’s a nice bedroom,’ she said.
It was, quite. Twin-bedded, with decorous Victorian prints above each bed; with an imitation walnut chest of drawers; a cream-pink wallpaper; lilac coverlets and a blue carpet. One of the beds was littered with Miss Cowen’s clothes. It must have been quite a party.
‘Now you’ld like to move in at once. I can manage it by this afternoon, but I’ld prefer tomorrow.’
‘Aren’t you living here yourself?’
‘I have twelve flats,’ she said. ‘They are all furnished in exactly the same way. I live in whichever one’s unoccupied. I live rent free that way; as each flat looks the same I don’t feel I’m changing house.’
‘Only the books are different?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘they’re the same books. I bought twelve copies of each. Will tomorrow be O.K. with you?’
Gordon, used though he was becoming to transatlantic hustle, had not expected so confident and resolute an assault so early in the morning.
‘What about servants?’
‘I take care of that,’ she said. ‘I leave a servant with each flat. It saves having an inventory. You pay her fifty cents an hour. And her car fare, that’s another ten cents. Sundays she stays away. Now, here’s an agreement form. You sign here. Have you any deposit money? Fifty dollars? That’ll do. You pay the balance tomorrow when you move in. Ten-thirty. That’s O.K. I’ll have Josephine round to help you.’
‘Josephine?’
‘Your maid. I take May with me.’
Within ten minutes of crossing Lexington, Gordon was the possessor for three months of an apartment on the seventh floor of a building on Thirty-sixth, that was replicated to every detail, down, probably, to an indistinguishable coloured maid, in eleven other corners of Manhattan. Back at the Chatham after lunch, he drew a pencil through the embossed heading, wrote below it 138 E 36 and began to send out a number of invitations to a tea at which everything but tea would be provided.
The first letter he sent to Faith. He preferred to meet her in this way, in a crowd, impersonally. It was not going to be too easy, that first meeting. They had been so close. They had been so long apart. They would have to feel their way back to one another. They could leave, till they had found each other, the serious discussions of their plans. It would be easier this way, in a group of people.
But it was not going to be easy, he knew that, as he sat two days later in his drawing-room waiting for his first guest to arrive. It would not be Faith. He had taken care of that by inviting her for any time after half-past five, while he had asked other and as punctual people to arrive at five. The party would have been well started by the time she came. When the bell rang for the first arrival, it was with a last-moment feeling that he turned round and looked at the newly-acquired room. He had no idea what might have happened before he again saw that room empty.
It seemed empty, though, half an hour later when he opened the door and saw in its oblong aperture Faith’s fur-wrapped figure. He had the feeling that he had never been away from her: that he was back again where he belonged, as he walked back with her through the sitting-room into the bedroom where she could leave her coat. Standing before the glass she took off her coat. She was wearing a flimsy rose-petalled frock. The kind of frock that one associates with Lord’s and Ascot. He had a feeling that spring had flowered. He wanted to take her in his arms. He had so wondered what would happen when they met again. If they were alone they would just turn into each other’s arms, he fancied. Or if it was in a crowd their eyes would meet and smile; and there would be no need for speech. Yet here they were alone and motionless and silent: with the feeling that she was as many miles away as she had been ten days ago. He had wondered what would be their first words to one another. When they came he was unprepared for them.
‘So you met Geoffrey Horton?’ she said.
‘Yes, I met him.’
‘He wrote and told me that you had.’
‘We dined together.’
‘He liked you.’
‘It seemed to go all right.’
‘I thought you would like each other. I wanted you to meet him. I knew that if you could only meet him, you would understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘Everything. How I feel about him.’
‘And how do you feel about him?’
‘He’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.’
He stared at her, stupefied.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re having an affair with him?’
‘You’ve no right to say a thing like that to me.’
There was a silence. He had rehearsed in so many imaginary conversations the scene of their re-meeting. He had never imagined anything like this. At the start her voice had been alive. Later it had taken on a dreamy note. When he had turned angrily upon her, it had grown distant and withdrawn. He had heard such a tone in her voice when strangers had grown tiresome at parties.
‘We must join your guests,’ she said.
In the same way that a heavy drinker will behave reasonably and normally when he is so full of drink that on the next morning he will remember nothing of what passed on the previous night, Gordon went through the formalities of introduction. To only two of the dozen or so people there, was Faith known either personally or by name. At a small London party it would be unlikely for most of the people there not to know something about each other. The social life of London having grown slowly as the city itself has grown from a common stock, is still compiled out of inter-related entities. Though families have drifted away from the early centre, they have kept in touch. Manhattan, having been hurriedly colonized from various countries, has not had time yet to link itself. As London’s life has been a drifting away from a centre, so Manhattan’s has been a drifting to a centre. Gordon never worried very much as to whether people would mix well at a party. They usually did. He could see now that they were mixing well. It was going to be a nice party. But he did not care what kind of a party it was going to be. He was dazed by the blow of Faith’s announcement. He could not believe, seeing her sitting there so calm and composed, that she was the same woman who had planned on a Ville-franche balcony to run away with him to Tangiers. He handed round a tray of sandwiches. He mixed gin and grapefruit juice in a jug. He broke some ice into it, then beat it into a high froth with a swizzle stick; replenished glasses, then went across and sat by Faith.
‘You’ve taken this apartment for how long?’ she asked.
‘Three months.’
‘And you’ve got a coloured cook?’
‘I’ve someone who tidies up and cooks occasionally.’
‘I think you should be happy here.’
‘I think I shall be.’
‘When is it that your lectures start?’
She set the questions on the note of the friendliest unconcern.
‘I can’t think,’ he said, ‘why you should have expected me to want to meet him.’
‘I wanted you to understand.’
‘Aren’t there some things that are better left quiet?’
‘If I can’t speak about myself to you, to whom can I?’
‘For three months I’ve thought about nothing except seeing you again. And the first thing you do is to talk to me about some other man.’
‘I thought that you’ld understand.’
‘Can any man be expected to understand a thing like that?’
‘I thought you could. I thought you were different. When I read your book, just at the time I was first meeting Geoffrey, I thought: this man will understand. If nobody else in the world understands, he will. I so wanted to meet you.’
One of Gordon’s guests said it was time for her to go. Gordon went into the bedroom to fetch her cloak. He followed her to the elevator shaft, wondering as he walked back to the room whence he would draw the courage to see the afternoon through.
‘I came over here with one thought,’ he said, ‘and that was you. I was going to hand over everything to you. To say, “I’m not going to ruin your life for you
. I’ve little to offer you. But for whatever it may be worth, here it is and all of it.” And then this happens.’
‘You don’t seem to realize that I’ve had a very unhappy time.’
‘Unhappy? You?’
‘You ought to be sorry for me.’
He stared at her stupefied. That she should have expected that. It was in keeping, he supposed. Deceived she not her husband, loving him? She had brought him into her husband’s house. She had arranged parties for him as her husband’s guest. She had stage-managed a friendship between the two, with at the back of her mind from the beginning the quite ruthless resolve to take advantage of the first opportunity that came. She had expected both her husband and her lover to accept that situation. Then, as she had treated her husband, so she had treated her lover. She had introduced a third party: had expected them to be all friends together and because the keeping of the three threads separate had worried her, she had expected Gordon to be sorry for her. And there she was, lovely and withdrawn, believing herself entitled to love, pity, consideration. If only she had lost her temper with him.
