So Lovers Dream

by Alec Waugh

  He had had no intention of working outside his lecturing when he had left England. The writing of his Malayan novel had been a drain upon his strength. He had no fresh ideas. He had meant to lie fallow for a little. Under the impact of Faith’s change of front, however, the modern girl novel which he had abandoned when he had found himself fallen in love with her, completely returned to him from another angle. As he had abandoned the story before because he had found it inexpressive; because he could not say through the medium of it what he felt about her, now that he felt differently about her, that earlier theme offered possibilities for self-expression.

  ‘American women,’ Stanley had said, ‘weren’t like other women.’ He didn’t know about that. He didn’t think that you could dogmatize about nationalities. If the war had taught one anything, it was that you couldn’t say: ‘Germany is this. France is that. Russia is the other thing.’ You couldn’t say American women were this and leave it there. All you could say was this: that there was running through the world at this moment a certain feminine tendency and attitude; a belief that by the mere fact of being women, a woman was entitled to have a thing three ways at once that was found more markedly in America than elsewhere, since America was a woman’s country. So that, writing of English women, he would be able to say all that he wished to say of the type of woman so typified in Faith who not only wanted to have her cake and eat it, but to feel hungry into the bargain.

  He enjoyed the slow, satiric unrolling of the plot; the gradual revealing of the woman who demanded independence only where it suited her; who claimed to be a free woman with a right to a cheque book and an unsupervised acquaintanceship, but expected when she was in difficulties to find a shoulder at hand to cry upon, and a protective masculine voice to say Toor little woman. I’ll straighten that out for you’; who, as a fiancée, broke her dates, kept her young man waiting in restaurants and when he made no gesture on seeing her dining with another man, handed him back his ring with the remark that ‘she could only be happy with a man who would know how to manage her’; who as a wife would be surrounded by young men who called her darling and held her hand and kissed her good night in taxis; yet who when she saw her husband dancing with his secretary welcomed his return with a locked door and a bed made up for him in the drawing-room. In the same way that in his Malayan novel he had found expression for every tender thought that he had cherished towards Faith, in this novel he expressed every bitter feeling that he had for her.

  Chapter Five

  In January Gordon’s lecturing began. Most of his dates were with women’s clubs, in New England or in the Middle West. They were pleasant adventures. And Gordon, who had had some experience of lecturing in England, appreciated the care that was taken to see that he enjoyed his visits. In England a lecturing engagement was a purely professional affair, and for the average lecturer it was more profitable than lecturing in America because of the smaller commission charged by the lecture agent and the smaller amount of time occupied by travelling. In America, however, the atmosphere was much more pleasant. You were always treated as a guest. The lectures took place in the afternoon. A lunch party was usually arranged first. The lecturer was shown what was likely to interest him most in the town where he was staying. The audience was friendly, responsive and appreciative. It was hard work admittedly. And the meeting of new people always requires an effort; particularly in a dry country, when the mauvais quart d’heure is not smoothed over by cocktails or by sherry. It did need an effort, particularly where the making of a good impression was necessary: not only for the sake of his own interests, but because in his own small way, in this one place, and for these few hours, he did represent his country. Not a great many Englishmen would be being met in the course of a year by the members of the audience and the ladies who entertained him first at luncheon. Impressions of a country are based on the representatives, few or many, of that country that one meets. He knew that when the members of his audience were talking at later times of England, and were saying that the English are like this or the English are like that, and were trying to influence others to think the same way as themselves, in some way inevitably their opinion and their attitude would have been influenced by the impression that he himself had made. In the same way that during the war he had been jealous to do or say nothing that should reflect discredit on the uniform he wore, he was now at pains to do and say nothing that might present unfavourably to Americans his country and his countrymen. He invariably enjoyed his lecture trips. But it was with a sense of real exhaustion that at the day’s end he curled up in his half section of a Pullman car.

  It was in the course of one of his lecture trips that he re-met two old friends.

  The meeting came at the end of two very arduous days’ travelling. He had been due to lecture at Grand Rapids and Lansing on following days. His lecture agent’s secretary had looked up the trains wrong, had sent him instead of direct to Grand Rapids from the Grand Central by the Pennsylvania Station via Fort Wayne. He had to change at Fort Wayne at six-thirty on an extremely dismal morning. For two hours he had had to wait in one of the world’s bleakest stations for a stage coach that ambled for five pensive hours through a snow-held countryside. At Grand Rapids the radiator in his hotel bedroom popped all night and stopped him sleeping. At Lansing he realized at the last moment that train time and town time were different and that he had only five minutes in which to lunch. By the time he took the night train to Detroit he was very weary. At Detroit he was informed that there was neither an upper nor a lower berth available on the train he had aimed to catch. There was a drawing-room free. But a drawing-room would have cost a great many dollars. He had nothing to do particularly in New York. He might just as well stay the night quietly in Detroit and get a long and tranquil sleep. ‘Take me to the nearest good hotel,’ he told the taximan. It was with the thought of sleep and nothing but sleep in his mind that he followed the bell-hop down the hotel passage.

  From a room half-way down the passage there emerged a roar of voices. ‘Oh, hell!’ he thought, ‘this is going to be worse than the Grand Rapids’ radiator.’ A door swung open, loosing a volume of sound compounded like a cocktail of the buzz of radio, high-voiced conversation, an attempt at song, and the rattle of Canada Dry on ice. Through the background of sound came a familiar voice.

  ‘Prosperity is round the corner.’

  ‘A trade convention,’ the bell-hop explained. He need not have explained. Nothing but a trade convention could have so festooned the necks that Gordon had last seen blistering under a Riviera sun round the white edge of a zip-fastened Gallerie Lafayette maillot. He had last seen them swinging by in a brand-new Renault, after an exhausting day in Monte Carlo, up the road from Villefranche. In their changed setting neither Gregory nor Francis seemed very different.

  ‘Prosperity,’ announced the larger of the reeling figures, ‘is round the corner. But round which corner? Round this corner,’ he waved an arm towards the left, ‘or round that corner?’ he swung an arm towards the right. ‘Or round neither?’ gesturing to a blank wall. ‘Hoover should be more explicit.’

  He swayed, supported himself on Francis’s constant shoulder, then sighted Gordon.

  ‘Hullo, there! But it is! And how? I’ll tell the world and how? If the sight of that pan of yours doesn’t do me good!’

  He released his hold of the supporting arm and brought both his hands with most of the weight of his two hundred pounds on Gordon’s shoulders.

  ‘Oh, boy, it does me good. Yes, sir, it does me good. And what’s more, you happen to be the very person we were looking for.’

  ‘He certainly is that,’ said Francis.

  ‘Now listen here.’

  With his arm thrust affectionately through Gordon’s, he marched at his side along the passage that might from the unevenness of his stride have been a house of mysteries on Hampstead Heath.

  ‘It’s like this, you see. We’ve a trade convention here. Prosperity is round the corner. Well, do I care
about prosperity? No, sir, I do not; and the President of the Leather and Boot Corporation, Ohio, may be the lousiest bastard living, but as for his wife, oh boy and how? And I’ve a fancy that I would make that Jane if I could get alone with her. What do you say, Francis?’

  ‘You certainly could that.’

  ‘And with Gordon there to help me. Now, what you could do is this.’

  He explained what Gordon was to do. They would take Gordon back into the main room. They would introduce him. There would be a pandemonium afoot. Francis would engage in talk and keep engaged the President of the Ohio corporation. After a time Gordon would invite Gregory and the Jane to sample some of the New York rye he’d brought with him. It was in his room. He had some? Good. The three of them would do a flit. They’ld have drinks ready. Then as soon as the party had got really started, Gordon would fade away.

  ‘I see.’

  Gordon had always believed that a drunk man should be humoured; he had also been ready to help thwarted love, but this seemed really rather a lot to expect at midnight of an exhausted lecturer.

  ‘Where am I to vanish to?’ he asked.

  ‘Now, that’s a point.’

  Clearly, it would not do for him to be seen walking about the hotel. If he went to the drug store, sooner or later he would be accosted by a conventionalist in search of a bromoseltzer. The Turkish Bath was not a bad idea. Only Gregory had the idea that one or two would be doing their best to sleep it off down there. They might wake up. ‘I suppose the best thing, really, for him to do would be to go to your room, Francis, and wait there till the coast’s clear.’

  ‘Why couldn’t we go to Francis’s room in the first place, then I can go back to my room and sleep.’

  Gregory shook his head.

  ‘That wouldn’t do,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t do at all. She knows Francis’s room. The party began there. She’ld feel suspicious.’

  ‘Besides, you have got to go back with us at the end. And you’ve got to be on hand in case anything turns out the way it shouldn’t. No, it must be Francis’s room for safety. Now, you’ll do this for us, won’t you?’

  Gordon supposed he would. What was Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba? If the wife of the President of the Leather and Boot Corporation of Ohio wanted to be unfaithful it was no concern of his.

  ‘Here’s Francis’s key,’ he was told. ‘The room’s one floor below yours. Let’s move.’

  It was after midnight, and it was very clear that the party had been in progress for many hours. The air of the large suite drawing-room was thick with smoke. The cuspidors were littered with cigar ends. Along one side of the wall was a row of emptied bottles of White Rock and Canada Dry. The broken packing of a case of gin filled the space between the window and the door. The purr of the radio was scarcely audible above the noise of talk. Some one was trying to sing. A large man was huddled in a corner intoning lifelessly ‘Prosperity is round the corner.’ It was the conference slogan; and was the only sign, apart from the buttonhole badges and paper necklaces, to indicate that from all parts of the continent shareholders and directors in the leather and boot industry had invested a part of their diminished profits so that their representatives should meet at Detroit and discuss there their mutual problems and ambitions. It was like a New Year’s Eve party that had gone really wild. There were some twenty people in the room. Seven or so were women. They had all a gleam of adventure in their eyes. The party had reached the point when they had ceased to know that they were making Whoopee.

  ‘That’s her,’ Gregory whispered.

  She was plump; in the middle thirties. At twenty she might have been a raging beauty. At forty-five she would be ugly. She was now a friendly, sensual-looking creature. Her husband was tall and thin; in the fifties. He appeared to be argumentative. A dry stick for a woman of that sort. It was probably, thought Gordon, his air of authority that had attracted her to him in the first place; and as so often happens, it was probably now that precise characteristic that infuriated her.

  ‘This is Mr Gordon Carruthers, an English tourist,’ announced Gregory loudly. They all said they were very pleased to meet him. His reception could not have been heartier had he been the favourite bedside author of each one of them. Three glasses were presented to him in thirty seconds. He took one of them. He had had an idea that Detroit’s proximity to Canada would ensure for it a relatively uncontaminated supply of rye. He had been wrong in thinking that.

  ‘How do you like that rye?’ said Gregory.

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘But you think that rye you’ve brought with you from New York is better?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Gregory assumed the stage. ‘Boys, a committee has got to sit on this,’ he announced. ‘Here’s an Englishman that says they make better whisky in New York than we get shipped to us in Detroit. We must examine this. And I think a lady had better sit on the committee. Come along, Fanny. Let’s see what the fair sex has to say about it.’

  A noisier exit could scarcely have been staged. But no one was interested in their movements.

  ‘My room’s down there on the right,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Prosperity,’ chanted Fanny, ‘is round the corner.’

  ‘I’d better ring for some White Rock,’ said Gordon.

  ‘You needn’t bother about White Rock for me,’ said Gregory. ‘I don’t want to have the taste of your mystery liquor disguised for me.’

  ‘I’ll take it straight, too,’ said Fanny.

  There were a couple of tooth-mugs in the bathroom. There was a jug of iced water by his bed. He filled the two tooth-mugs a tenth full with whisky, and filled the water glass to the brim. They would have to share the water.

  ‘What are you going to drink out of?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘The flask’s good enough for me,’ said Gordon. ‘Here’s looking.’

  ‘Here’s looks.’

  Gregory rolled the rye round his tongue, then swallowed a gulp of water.

  ‘That’s smooth. That certainly is smooth.’

  ‘I’ll say it is,’ said Fanny.

  ‘You can fill mine up again,’ said Gregory.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Fanny.

  ‘And that reminds me,’ said Gordon. ‘I’ve got to go downstairs and send a telegram to New York.’

  ‘I don’t see why it should remind you,’ said Fanny. ‘I don’t see at all why it should remind you.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ said Gordon, ‘but it did.’

  ‘Then since you can’t remember, you can stay here and not send it.’

  ‘But no one knows in New York that I’m not going to be there tomorrow night.’

  ‘But why should you be there tomorrow night?’

  ‘I’m not going to be there tomorrow night.’

  ‘Then what are you worrying about?’

  ‘Because I’ve got to tell people that I shan’t be there.’

  ‘If you aren’t there, they’ll know you aren’t there. It’s only when you’re going to be in a place that you need to telegraph. And anyhow, why don’t you telephone it? There’s a telephone there.’

  ‘Because it isn’t going to be the kind of message I want my friends to hear.’