Finally, the day of graduation arrived. We sat breathless with anticipation as our instructor announced in portentous tones that the assignment of “territories” would begin. My heart sank as O’Hara’s was the first name called. Green with envy, my heart dark with bitterness, I watched O’Hara advance to receive his accolade. His face wore the dazed, fulfilled look of a successful mountain climber.
“O’Hara” the instructor said in stentorian tones, “I like the spirit you’ve shown here; I like the cut of your jib.” He paused then to let the full portent of his words assume effect before saying, “I’m giving you the Garden District for your territory”. With a brisk, definitive gesture, the instructor planted a large green flag in O’hara’s lapel which bore the legend: “All Signs Ahead Say Go”. Clutching his dreadful looking fibre sample case, O’Hara strode from the room, his step firm with determination. My turn came soon; the ritual was repeated. I left to board the streetcar which would take me to my “territory”.
My “territory” turned out to be a neighborhood with such a massive lack of distinction that it remains in my memory only as an amorphous blob of small, squarish ranch houses—what O’Hara had always called fuck boxes. During the long street car ride, I had rehearsed my recently-mastered techniques: the knock, the foot in the door, the pearly white smile and the announcement that I was bearing “a free gift,” a small cardboard kit of darning wool worth pennies. The same combination of fear and anticipation gripped my bowels that I had felt on the way to bomb Cologne; I would surely triumph.
Three hours later, I sat disconsolately in a bar nursing a glass of beer that I could ill afford. The pages of my order book were virgin and unmarked; I had not made a single transaction. Furthermore, I had been chivvied about and warned off the premises by assorted drabs and unfriendly householders until my spirit had finally snapped. Even my “free gift” had been spurned in most cases; on only two occasions had I been able to dispose of one. I could see no comic side to things; failure, bitter failure, was my lot. The boy who had sat on the old dock on Amherst Island in Canada and dreamed of conquering the world as he watched the sunset, sat now in this dingy bar with his sample case at his feet, and faced the fact that he could not even sell a pair of socks. Worst of all, that concommitant of failure—fear of being passed-by by better men—haunted my mind. By now, I was certain, vast fleets of trucks had taken to the roads laden with socks to fulfill O’Hara’s successful sales contracts in the Garden District. Sadly, I left the bar to board the streetcar for home.
The emptiness of our flat depressed me further. I had half-hoped I might find O’Hara there, wallowing in a like condition. No joy, I was alone gripped by the guilt of a small boy playing hookey in an empty house. Unable to stand the sight of my dreadful sample case, I hid it under the bed and then lay down, one arm across my eyes, to compose self-justification for my failure: a half hour passed which did not ease my mind. Then I heard a heavy step at the bottom of the stairs which led up the outside of the house to our flat. My mind was suddenly flooded with a wild surge of hope. I listened carefully to the sound of these unknown feet. They were slow and leaden; the tread of a doomed and despairing man. I held my breath, my hope growing as a key was inserted in the lock. A moment later, O’Hara appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. His jaunty flag bearing its hopeful message of “All Signs Ahead Say Go” drooped from his lapel in a dispirited angle; his sample case dangled from one lank arm. We stared at each other for a long moment before he said, “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” I replied, feeling better already.
“Not even one pair?” he said, his eyes beginning to gleam.
“Not even one pair. You?”
“Nothing. God, it was awful.”
We began to laugh simultaneously; it was laughter of such intensity that I was rolling around on the bed and O’Hara was clutching the doorjamb for support. Each time it threatened to fade, one of us would recall a particularly noise-some incident from the day’s experience and our laughter would begin again.
My wife was much relieved upon her return home that evening to find that our foray into the world of commerce was ended. Whatever else we were, she had never doubted the fact that we would come to a bad end as door-to-door salesmen.
The end of our meteoric careers with the Realsilk Corporation signalled the beginning of a period of acute demoralization which, understandably, would soon begin to communicate itself to Dorothy. Our efforts to find work became more and more desultory and finally ceased altogether. The days passed dreamily, ruled by increasing sloth. Our moral state was inexcusable. O’Hara and I rose late and passed the balance of the day playing chess, reading novels and strolling about the quarter, involved in long discussions designed to prop up our sagging egos. Partly as a supplement to Dorothy’s pitifully small wages, partly as a rather petulant gesture of defiance, we took up the practice of petty pilferage. O’Hara was the possessor of a long black overcoat. He had introduced passages into it which led directly from the pockets into the lining. We would sally forth for our afternoon stroll around the Quarter and return clanking with contraband. It was only a matter of time before we would get caught.
It happened, in fact, on the same day that we had a terribly curious encounter. At that time—and for that matter, today—I had little acquaintance among the world of the celebrated. This was not true of O’Hara. During his years in Carmel, he had moved among the greater and lesser literary lights of Carmel and the Big Sur; people such as Henry Miller and Frieda Lawrence. He also had some slight acquaintance with the English critic and novelist, Cyril Connolly, a fact which has bearing on what I am about to relate.
Both possessed of vague, inarticulate literary yearnings and friends since boyhood, O’Hara and I shared a mutual and passionate admiration for certain writers. High on the list was the late Evelyn Waugh. It is an admiration—on my part, at least—which has not diminished through the years. I have read and re-read everything by him and about him. The concensus of opinion among the works which throw light on his personality maintains that he was a sour, misogynistic and unapproachable man. One of the few people who knew him well and wrote about him, and does not take this view, is his son, Auberon, who remembers his father as an affectionate and satisfactory parent. I am sure Waugh did not suffer fools gladly but, for that matter, who does? I believe he was the pre-eminent comic genius of the century and a comic genius, living, as he does, in an upside down world, is bound to be a bit eccentric and ingrown. But I am inclined to believe Auberon Waugh is closer to the truth about his father than many others. Our meeting with Waugh in New Orleans was exceedingly odd.
As I recall, it was on Bourbon Street. Walking along, engaged in some pointless discussion, O’Hara and I were distracted by the appearance of a very exotic couple approaching us about a block away.
“My God,” O’Hara said, “it’s Waugh.
And indeed it was. We examined him with great curiosity as he approached. He was a figure as ill-suited to the French Quarter of New Orleans as one can possibly imagine. Waugh was, of course, a sort of dandy; his style was an odd mixture of Winston Churchill and the Duke of Windsor. He wore a square black bowler hat and a wide and very loud raglan greatcoat of horse-blanket tweed. A walking stick swung from one hand and he seemed to radiate an aura of the past he so passionately preferred to the present. He was, in a word, an exceedingly forbidding figure. So forbidding that I could not believe my ears when O’Hara said, “Let’s brace him”. Then, I thought, what the hell, if O’Hara is crazy enough to do it, why not?
By that time, we were past them. I was so busy looking at Waugh that I paid little attention to his wife and I remember her now only vaguely as a rather reserved lady dressed in black with a definite twinkle in her eye. Waugh took no notice of our scrutiny, staring stonily ahead as he walked. Having taken our insane decision, the problem was to put ourselves in a position where we (or rather O’Hara—I was frightened to death of the entire business) could accost Waugh without se
eming more blatant than necessary. Accordingly, we abandoned our shaky dignity, turned right, and scampered back along the next street parallel to Bourbon Street. When we emerged back on Bourbon Street once more, Waugh and his wife were approaching us as before, about a half block away. When the distance between us lessened to five feet, O’Hara spoke. I am still awed by his temerity. In a somewhat quavering voice, O’Hara said, “Mr. Waugh.”
Waugh neither broke stride nor looked at us, simply raising one hand to his square bowler and saying, “Howdja do.” But O’Hara was tenacious; he made one last desperate bid as Waugh had progressed to a point some five or six feet away.
“Mr. Waugh,” O’Hara called, “We have mutual friends.”
It did the trick. Or, to be more precise, it was the thin edge of the wedge, for I am inclined to think Waugh’s reply was intended to brush us off and put us in our place. At O’Hara’s call, he stopped, turned, and fixed him with a very steely eye indeed. His reply was guaranteed to frost a Polar bear: “Indeed,” he said, “How are they?” By this time, poor O’Hara was reeling like a punch-drunk fighter. My own inclination was to cut our losses and run. But O’Hara was game to the end. “Yes,” he said, “Cyril Connolly.”
I will always wonder why Waugh decided to relent. Certainly the mention of Connolly’s name made him pause to look at us. Having looked, the artist’s unconscious process of screening phenomena must have taken over. Two rather odd fish had swum into his net and he was going to have a leisurely look at them. We chatted for a few minutes after having exchanged names and having been introduced to his wife. He was, he told us, lecturing in various American cities, under Roman Catholic auspices. I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard O’Hara ask the Waughs if they would like to come by our flat that evening for a drink. I was even more appalled when they accepted with obvious pleasure. We parted cheerfully, having made a date for six o’clock.
“Are you crazy?” I said to O’Hara after the Waughs had gone, “We have no money, no drink, no glasses to drink out of except jelly glasses, and you’ve just invited Evelyn Waugh and his wife around for cocktails.”
“O’Hara counseled calm and suggested we take inventory. A careful search of all our pockets produced exactly one dollar and seventy five cents.”
“Sherry,” O’Hara said, “It’ll have to be domestic Sherry.”
In view of the endless wine snobbery in “Brideshead Revisited,” it was an appalling prospect. Still, we had no choice; it was the best we could possibly do. We discussed trying to steal some whiskey or gin and vermouth but our nerves were not up to it; from petty theft to the stealing of liquor would be graduation to an ionosphere of crime. Glasses, materials for some sort of canapes, we could pilfer, but we were pretty well stuck with domestic Sherry.
Our one dollar and seventy-five cents barely covered a bottle of mediocre New York State Sherry. We deposited this in the flat and hurried off to downtown New Orleans to complete our “shopping”.
All went smoothly at first. Some of the objects we needed were unwieldy, however. We lifted half a dozen sherry glasses from a dime store and slowly accumulated such things as olives, crackers, caviar and a jar of pate. Flushed with success, we started home to prepare our party. It was then that we made a mistake.
As we passed a neighborhood store where we were in the habit of dealing, O’Hara suggested that we enter and have one last look around for delicacies which might appeal to our illustrious guests. We did so and as we browsed, we stopped by a display of soap. O’Hara asked me if we were not short of it and I replied that we were. He began loading up. Without looking at me, he suddenly said, “The guy saw me”. “Put it back then,” I whispered. He did so, and we discussed the problem sotto voce. We were both loaded with contraband but only I had things from this particular store in my pockets. O’Hara’s loot was all from different sources. The proprietor was showing absolutely no interest in me but he was following O’Hara with an eagle eye. We decided that I should try to leave the store and I did so unmolested. From a doorway across the street, I watched as O’Hara approached the counter to pay for whatever token purchase we had made. After ringing up the single item, the shopkeeper said, “Now what else have you got in your pockets?”
“Nothing,” O’Hara replied.
“Don’t fool around, I saw you take something back there.”
“The fact remains that I have nothing of yours in my pockets.”
“Well, you can just turn them out and we’ll see.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I’ll call a cop.”
O’Hara slowly began to empty his pockets. It was a wondrous collection including the six Sherry glasses but O’Hara was on firm ground. What he displayed was obvious contraband, but equally obviously, it had not been stolen from this store. The shopkeeper was understandably furious. They stared at one another for a moment, and then O’Hara began to replace the various objects in his pockets with great deliberation. At the end, he very nearly went too far. Before leaving the store, he turned and said, “You realize, of course, don’t you, that you could get in very serious trouble, accusing people like this. I shouldn’t let it happen again if I were you.” The shopkeeper’s ears began to glow but he held his silence as O’Hara swept loftily from the store. “Close call,” he said when I joined him around the corner.
Knees knocking together, we hurried back to the flat to prepare our meager festivities. It was then about five o’clock and Waugh and his wife were due at six. Dorothy rarely reached home later than five-thirty. This day of all days, it turned out that she had been asked to stay on at her job for a couple of hours. Five-thirty came and went, and there was no sign of her.
Finally, the Waughs arrived. I am happy to say that he took the bitter pill of the domestic sherry like a man. Perhaps our carefully arranged platter of stolen hors d’oeuvres helped take the curse off it.
It is rather anti-climatic to report that I recall no memorable remarks falling from the master’s lips. It was, however, a friendly, pleasant hour which we spent together; there was not a single sign of the novelist’s fabled waspishness. I am sure the poor devil was looking forward to tucking into a flock of dry martinis; the social pickings of a lecture tour under Catholic auspices, no matter how rewarding to the soul, cannot have been terribly exciting. However, he did not seem to have a bad time, working on the New York State Sherry with a will. I shuddered to think what he would have thought had he known the tawdry history of the viands upon which he munched. Clearly, he was making some sort of attempt to classify us, and, equally clearly, having little success. Two young men in a very stylish flat with no visible means of support; what were they? He finally gave up and resigned himself with literary small talk. I spent most of the hour chatting with Mrs. Waugh. It turned out that she was acquainted with some English people I had known during the war; this discovery gave us a more or less firm social footing upon which to proceed. Finally, the Sherry bottle near empty, they took their leave.
Ten minutes after their departure, my wife arrived home. She examined the husks and remainders of our little party and demanded to know what had been going on. We told her that Evelyn Waugh and his wife had stopped around for a drink. Her disbelief was immediate and sarcastic. It took us, until nearly midnight to convince her that we were telling the truth. When she finally did swallow it, she was understandably rather grumpy at having missed the fun.
The month for which we had paid our rent on our flat in the Quarter was now coming to an end. There was no possibility that we could scrape up another month’s rent; Dorothy’s wages were barely enough to keep us eating in a substandard way. Some sort of decision would have to be made as to the future. It seemed to fall upon my shoulders to make it. We were all apathetic but my apathy was not quite so pronounced as that of Dorothy and O’Hara. Finally, I persuaded them that we must try to get back to New York where I had some friends and Dorothy had a sister and there was some chance of finding work. We scraped up enough money for thre
e bus tickets to New York. There was a bit left over which we invested in a great bunch of eggs which we hardboiled to keep us going during the long ride. It was a beaten and shameful trio that finally arrived in Manhattan. O’Hara and I were twenty-six years old, Dorothy twenty-four. The time had clearly arrived for me to pull up my socks and for Dorothy and me to cut loose from O’Hara. I remembered how, when O’Hara and I were about fifteen, his father had paid a call upon my father at his office, bearing the message that he felt O’Hara and I were a malignant influence on each other and that they should agree to keep us apart. My father pooh-poohed the idea, saying that he was fond of O’Hara and if O’Hara’s father was not fond of me, that was his business. My father’s reply was the more generous but I have often wondered whether O’Hara senior’s proposal was not the more sentient.
Twenty-six is an age of great resilence; I did manage to get my socks pulled up. But there has never been any doubt in my mind that my wife was the glue which kept them there.
My brother had recently sailed for Italy where he was enjoying a carefree bohemian time in Rome living on the proceeds of a very successful little radio show packing firm he had started after the war. O’Hara was anxious to join him there. I introduced O’Hara to Barbara Hale, whose war with T.B. had not yet begun. Barbara was in possession of a small inheritance and at loose ends after the recent termination of a lengthy and disastrous love affair. Within two weeks of their meeting, Barbara and O’Hara embarked for Italy also. It worked out well for Dorothy and me; we inherited Barbara’s flat on West 12th Street. By that time, I had got a job at a midtown advertising agency. The fecklessness—for us, at any rate—was at an end.
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