Laura Z. Hobson

by Gentleman's Agreement

  “But I told Mr. Minify’s niece,” Phil said. He stared with hostile eyes at Jordan. “You think that if a bright kid like Wales has to change her name to get a job, nobody should talk up about it?”

  Jordan looked back, conciliatory, awkward. But he looked away quickly from Phil’s steady examining, and his shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. “Of course you’d talk up,” the gesture spoke in Phil’s mind. Instantly he doubted his reading of it.

  He glanced at John Minify and knew he’d caught the same thing. The lightness of Minify’s eyes above the dark sockets was startling as he looked directly at Jordan. His face looked older. He sat erect and imperative before them. Then he picked up a pencil and began to write on a memo pad as if he’d forgotten they were there. He wrote several words rapidly, read them, changed them, and then turned the pad face down and went on as if there’d been no span of silence.

  “Big talk comes easy, Jordan, and my editorials, too. I’ve been a fool to assume they’d mean what they say in my own office. Now I’ll see they do.”

  “But really, Mr. Minify, I’ve never made it a matter of policy just to hire—why, it’s just, well, personality.” He brightened. “If a girl’s personality is the type that fits in, I’d never ask—”

  “It’s just by chance, you mean, that we haven’t one secretary named Finkelstein or Cohen? In the city of New York?” His voice was soft. “Come off it, Jordan.”

  Phil looked over curiously. Jordan was a man you’d never notice if there were other people about. Medium tall, medium color, neat as to clothes, haircut; even the wrinkles about his eyes seemed neatly rayed out in even, definite lengths. Now his face wore tension and fear. He was expecting to be fired. And he’d hate Jews for it.

  “Mary, take a help-wanted ad, will you?” Minify picked up the small pad, read what he’d written, then ignored it. “Upper case, ‘EXPERT SECRETARY,’ and a couple lines white space. Then, lower case, ‘for editorial department, national magazine, exacting work, good pay.’ Then single line white space. Then, ‘Religion is a matter of indifference in this office. Write full experience to Box—’ Got that, Mary?”

  For the first time since he’d met her, Phil saw expression appear in her prim face. She likes this, he thought, and was surprised to find within himself an odd sense of occasion. “Better state the salary, Mr. Minify,” Mary said matter-of-factly, “instead of just ‘good pay.’ ”

  “O.K. O.K. You fix it. Times, Trib?”

  “Both. And they don’t allow white space in want ads— they’ll put that special line in caps, though.”

  “Right.” With finality he turned to Jordan. “And in case you have to fire Miss Wales on any ground whatever at any time, please remember that I wish to review the case myself first.”

  The neat mouth opened, relief shone in the eyes. Minify’s nod was as curt as the bang of a gavel. Jordan went out.

  “Think I should fire him, Mary?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you were going to.”

  “I argued it out with myself for a long time.” He looked at Phil. “Confusing, isn’t it?” Phil said nothing. He knew Minify wasn’t expecting an answer. “But till I do decide, he’s not to interview applicants any more, that’s sure.” He stroked his tan scalp as if he were smoothing down ruffled hair. “Mary, you too busy to take on some personnel management?”

  “No Mr. Minify.”

  “That’s the tone that means you’re dead from overwork.” They all laughed. “Tell you what. This ad. Get yourself a crack assistant for your regular stuff. Then take over on all new office help. I’ll tell Jordan.”

  She stood up, robust, stolid, but she flushed like a young girl over her first tribute from a man.

  “Yes, Mr. Minify.”

  “In any other ads you run, use that line, please.” Vigorously he turned to Phil. “High time heads of firms took public positions on it.”

  Minify watched her decorous progress across the office and through the door. Then, as if the episode had sped up his metabolism, he embarked at once on a spirited harangue with invisible opponents. Once Phil thought, He isn’t as calm and journalistic about it all as he was a few weeks ago, and instantly added, Lord, neither am I. Minify was half shouting at him now. “—the sloppy, slovenly notion that everybody’s busy with bigger things. There just isn’t anything bigger, as an issue, than beating down the complacence of essentially decent people about prejudice. Not what Stalin’s up to, not the bomb or the peace. Because if hatred and bigotry just go on rotting the basis of this damn country”—he glared at Phil—“all the rest is pious hypocrisy.”

  He lit a cigarette and clamped it into the corner of his mouth as if it were a cigar. “How’s your stuff coming now, Phil?” While he listened, the cigarette angled upwards, and above it he squinted one eye against the flaring smoke. It gave him the look of a man persistently winking. When the square box on his desk hoarsely announced a caller, Phil was reluctant to quit this lively office for his own.

  In the corridor, his way was blocked by Frank Tingler, the fiction editor, the small neat figure of Bill Jayson, and a tall man with a vaguely familiar face.

  “Morning, Phil,” Jayson said, and Tingler, “Hi, Green, know Rick Dohen? Mr. Green.”

  “ ’Do.” Mr. Dohen said, and offered his hand.

  “How do,” Phil answered, and disliked him. They shook hands heartily while Tingler explained in his flat voice, “We’re running Mr. Dohen’s new serial in the first April issue.”

  “Oh, yes,” Phil said. “That new illustrator McAnny found in the army—”

  “I must stop by and tell McAnny how delighted I am,” Dohen interrupted. “Have you seen the opening spread, Mr. Green? Really a new talent. We were just talking about it. How would you characterize it, Bill?” He looked down at Jayson, and Jayson had to tilt his head back to meet his gaze. Fleetingly Phil hoped Jayson really didn’t mind any more being so short.

  “It’s new and it’s right,” Jayson said dryly. “And you’ll have to wait to tell McAnny. He’s out in the Middle West on a special strike layout at G. M.”

  Tingler looked at Phil, but the thickly ground lenses hid whatever comment his glance was designed to convey.

  “Sort of a combination of Varga girl and Ingrid Bergman, that first illustration of Gracia,” Dohen said, and laughed in his enthusiasm. “That’s it. Bitch and saint. Hard enough to catch in writing, but when I saw that first oil. Tell that boy Herman I’m—fact, I’d really like to tell him personally.” He looked down to Jayson again. “Fix it up, Bill?”

  “I’ll do that.” There was no promise in his voice. “Well, I’ll be getting back. So long.”

  Phil moved off with him. Jayson didn’t like Dohen, and Tingler was bored with him. This distinguished-looking Richard Dohen, Phil knew, was one of the highest-paid serial writers in the magazine world. “What’s the new one about?” he asked Jayson.

  “Well, the gimmick is this gorgeous dame is sitting there exactly ten years from the night her husband walked out to marry the second wife. Sudden impulse. She— Hell, don’t bother me, Phil.”

  Phil grinned. But they were nearing his office, and all at once nothing mattered but Kathy. Embarrassment plucked at him. The adult thing would have been to telephone her as soon as he’d waked yesterday, gone to her, straightened this out. Dave would have waited for him without resentment.

  There was a note propped against his telephone. Miss Lacey called. E. W. Underneath it the line, Again at 11:10. Please call her.

  Without sitting down he dialed the number.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I’LL TRY AGAIN at noon, Kathy was thinking. She moved away from the bedside table so that the phone would not persuade her into a third attempt. He’d ring back the moment he could. This was no crisis to justify asking Miss Wales to put the call through to him in the meeting.

  She went firmly into the bathroom and weighed herself as if that had been her intention for many minutes. In a way it was a crisis. She’d kn
own it when he left her; she’d known it when she’d fallen asleep; she’d known it all day yesterday when instinct cautioned her from telephoning him and telling him what she was going to do.

  She glanced down at the revolving tape of the scale. Two pounds off. Worry it off; toss it off in your chivied sleep; eat it off from the heart. What made her go all skewered on this damn business when they talked about it, when they were not apart on it at all, in theory or in fact?

  There was something mysterious in the process of quarreling. You said one wrong thing and then tried to justify it and said a further thing. That in turn needed explaining or defense. All the time you helplessly knew that if you could only step off the treadmill of dissension and start anew—but something held you where you were with demoniac persistence. Then it was too late. Emotions came in; his face showed disapproval and surprise; anger spat in you that he should misread your motives. Or pride reared up, and you’d be damned if you’d risk seeming abject and always at fault. The sense of crisis deepened, and your helplessness with it.

  With Jane and Harry last night she’d been in no snarl at all. She’d been unequivocal, incisive. But he hadn’t been there to hear.

  “You’re saying in effect,” she’d said, “that it’d be nice if he just wouldn’t embarrass any Jew haters you might have at the party.”

  It was nice to remember that sentence. Why had she reserved such clarity for Jane and Harry when it was Phil she cared about?

  With a start she saw she was still on the scale, staring down at it malevolently as if it were an insect she was steeling herself to squash. She went back to the bedroom. She was tired; her back was tired; her neck was tired. She wished he would get out of the meeting and call her. She glanced at her watch. Less than ten minutes had passed since her second try.

  With Bill, when things went wrong, she’d never felt this dull ache or fear or whatever it was. There’d been a kind of remoteness instead. But in those days she’d always felt right on the issue they disagreed on. Twice now with Phil she’d known she was somehow in the wrong. She should resent him for making her feel so; that was supposed to be human nature. But it didn’t work that way. She just hurt. This frightened wonder about losing him was what hurt.

  The drive to Darien had soothed her. She felt purposeful and clearheaded. But the string of cars parked in front of the snowy stretch of ground before the house warned her that her neat plan would not work. She’d forgotten the usual comings and goings of the suburban world on New Year’s afternoon. Inside, she knew there’d be no chance for a serious talk until much later. And as each couple arrived with some variation of hair-of-the-dog remarks, each with the satisfied look of one who coins a bright new witticism, she found herself exasperated and bored.

  “Darling, I just heard the news. You’re getting married again. Who is he? What’s he like? When do we meet him?” Endlessly the questions had come. “What’s his name?” “What’s he do?”

  He’s a writer. Phil Green. No, he writes as Schuyler Green. That’s right. Smith’s mostly for the last couple of years. Oh, thank you, I think he’s pretty bright myself.

  Only when she’d got off alone did she even ask herself whether Phil would have expected her to say anything else. Suddenly she’d flimsily announced that she’d “forgotten to check up on things at the “house” and had gone off in desperation to the cottage which needed no checking at all. Unlocking the door, seeing the pleasant rooms as if she were Phil seeing them for the first time, the wide windows that would stream with yellow sunshine on a prettier day, the books and magazines left on end tables as if the place were really lived in—all of it had sent her off into happy planning of spring week ends there with him, and later the whole summer for all of them. And then the question, and with it the doubt, like a checkrein.

  Of course he wouldn’t have expected her to say anything else. It would be imbecilic to say, “He’s a writer, he’s Jewish,” “His name is Phil Green, he’s Jewish,” “He writes as Schuyler Green, he’s Jewish.”

  That would be a sort of inverted proof that it did matter to her—or would if it were true. If Phil weren’t doing this thing, would it ever occur to her to mention his religion, or his agnosticism, which was much more interesting? “He’s a writer, he’s Episcopalian,” “His name is Phil Green, he’s an agnostic.” Surely it would be equally clumsy and absurd to say the other. Was that the only reason she hadn’t once mentioned it?

  And when she’d told Bill Pawling about getting married, Bill’s “What’s he like?” had sent her on and on about Phil. But that one thing she hadn’t mentioned then, either.

  “Oh, God, I get so mixed up.”

  In the pleasant empty cottage, she said it half aloud. How could she, of all people, get so confused on these things? She’d been so clear always, she and all the other people she knew, like Jane and Uncle John and everybody else. They’d not think about things like antisemitism often, but when it did come up, there wasn’t any question that they loathed it and wanted to do something to stop it from growing. And yet now she was in the middle of a different place, where the thing became a personal thing—now everything she did or said was fuzzy.

  Twice in so short a time things had gone awry between them. And both times she’d had that dull pull of fear. The checkrein again, tighter.

  Now, remembering the cottage, and unconscious of the gesture, Kathy moved her head down and up and around in a swiveling motion. She sighed and reached for something to read. Under her stretching arm the telephone rang. She snatched the arm back as if it had touched hot metal. Then she took up the receiver.

  “Kathy?”

  “Oh, Phil, I wanted to call you last night, but it was midnight when I got back and—”

  “Got back? Where from?”

  “Jane’s. I went up to have it out with her. Oh, darling, has this been hell for you, too?”

  “I haven’t exactly liked it.” His voice was stiff. “You mean you told her you couldn’t persuade me?”

  “Oh, no. I found myself saying all the things you would have. Jane said, ‘Well, goodness, O.K.,’ as if she hadn’t asked it and started this awful business.” She swallowed. “Darling, don’t let’s do this any more—we feel the same underneath. Couldn’t we have lunch and talk?”

  There was a pause. In his office, Phil remembered he was standing. He sat down. He hauled back his runaway feelings as if they were lively dogs on a leash. Suddenly he seemed unable to evaluate, even to remember clearly, the nuances that had seemed so tremendous. A hair-splitting nicety endowed them now, nothing more.

  “But why the disappearing act?” He couldn’t help the tone of resentment. “I phoned you all evening and got pretty beat up about all the silence.”

  “I just couldn’t phone till after I’d fixed everything. I drove out the minute I got up, but the place was full of people and I couldn’t get them alone till awfully late.”

  She was hurrying explanations the way Tom sometimes did, so earnest in admission that it became incumbent on him to make it easier, to end it. Damn the inquisitor’s role he was always falling into. “Solemn” was a kind way to describe this testy stuffiness of his. He was being a purist, a fool—no girl like Kathy would put up with it forever.

  “It was hell, darling,” he said. “I warned you I could be a solemn ass. If you love somebody, though— Hold it a second.” Miss Wales had opened the door.

  “Captain Goldman’s on my line, Mr. Green,” she said. “Could you lunch with him?”

  He raised a forefinger to her and spoke again to Kathy. “Dave’s here; he got in yesterday. He’s calling in about lunch. Should we—no, we’d better talk this out first.”

  “Maybe it’s good not to hash it over any more for a while, Phil.” A brighter inflection warmed her voice. “Let’s do have Dave. I’m dying to meet him.”

  He came back to the office in a bouncing energy. He went straight to the typewriter and began at once to “write forward” as he called it, instead of first rewritin
g parts of the last page or two—his usual priming device. For nearly two hours there was almost no break in the clack and clatter of the old-timer they’d given him. The needed word leaped forth, the sentences turned and shaped and smoothed on the lathe of his mind so quickly that his speeding middle fingers on the keys were like a secretary struggling to keep up with too-rapid dictation.

  He lit a cigarette and stretched back. Then he saw another cigarette, freshly lighted also, tipped against the edge of the loaded ash tray. He smiled. It was another sign. When you wrote in this fierce concentration you didn’t know where you were, didn’t remember the gesture of a moment before, didn’t know what time was elapsing. You felt whole and good and damn lucky to be a writer. You couldn’t believe you’d ever again be caught in the sticky, faltering uncertainty, the fretfulness of doubt over progress, the ambivalence about the choice of a word, the point of attack, the transition to the next point. You were master, for the moment, of your element, and no man anywhere could contrive a life you would prefer to your own.

  The door opened. He winked at Miss Wales and pointed to the sheets spread on the desk. He knew what she would say and wanted to forestall it.

  “Nope, not ready for you yet.” He’d explained at the beginning that he would not be turning over each day’s rough draft for her professional typing, that indeed she’d not get any of it until the series was virtually complete. For a week she had accepted this odd ukase without remonstrance. Then she began to give daily signs that secretarial protocol was being outraged. Each time she saw new pages of manuscript, her itch to take charge of them became more apparent. She wanted to take those untidy pages and turn them into unmarred manuscript. Phil sympathized. But even if he were to turn over his draft without the title, the first sentences of the first paragraph of the first article would effectively end his role with her.

  “I was born, as it happens, of an Episcopal father and an Episcopal mother, whose parents on both sides before them had been Episcopalians. But for the last eight weeks—”