“What do you suppose I’ve said?” she asked. “What he wants to hear. How I’m loving dramatic school.”
“And aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course I am,” she said impatiently.
“Go on.”
“How we all adore Madame. What terrific school spirit we have. All perfectly true. We do. And I told them how we love the concerts, the dressing for dinner every night, and how we take turns serving coffee in the drawing room afterwards. We’d be at home in Buckingham Palace after a year or two under Madame.”
“Or?” Walter asked.
“Yes, or.” She grinned. “You do believe me?”
“No,” Walter said. “Why should I? Ever since Mother’s death your life has been nothing but a web of lies.”
“Do you think that’s when it started?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Walter darling, I’m an actress. I’m not going to dramatic school for fun, no matter what you and Father may think. Part of my life has always been make-believe. Part of it always will. It’s one of the most important pieces of an actress’s luggage. As long as I know which is fact and which is fiction, that’s all that matters.”
“But do you know?”
“Yes, Walter, I do. What I wrote you about is hardly a joke.”
“Nancy,” he said. “Maybe you can keep fact and fiction clear in your own mind, but how do you expect other people to do it, too? How can anybody know when you’re telling the truth?”
“Anybody who really knew me would know,” Nancy said sadly. “But then of course you’ve never bothered to understand me, Walter. We’ve had a lot of fun together, we’ve had our share of sibling quarrels. I suppose we love each other quite deeply, but we don’t really know each other at all.”
“Do any two people?”
“I think Madame knows me,” Nancy said. “I’m sure I know Deirdre far better than I do you. And most of the other girls. I’m not sure about Barbara or Natalia. They are Madame’s specials and they are special.”
“Would you like to be one of Madame’s specials?”
“Of course. And I will be. I just haven’t been there long enough.”
“And how does what you wrote me about fit in with this?”
Nancy smiled dreamily at the waiter as he removed her hors d’oeuvre plate. “I feel differently about it now. Then it was only from things Deirdre had said, and she isn’t one of Madame’s specials, in spite of all that Madame has done for her.”
“Does Deirdre think Madame has done so much for her?”
“Oh, sure, Deirdre’s no fool. She’s just jealous.” Now the waiter put a dish in front of her, removing the lid with a flourish and looking at Nancy for approval. Nancy smiled at him again. “It looks just beautiful,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
A few months ago, Walter thought, waiters were not looking to Nancy for special approval. Had she acquired the ability to excite and surprise that Madame Septmoncel had spoken about, the charm that has both weakness and strength?
“Of course,” she said seriously to Walter, “if you look at it objectively, it can be a tremendous help to my career. I’m going to be a great actress, Walter, and I’ve learned enough in the past couple of months to know that this takes ruthlessness as well as talent. Contacts can be used quite cold-bloodedly, you know. It isn’t necessary to get emotionally involved. A lot of money can be quite useful, too.”
“Is this the role,” Walter asked in distress, “or is this Nancy?”
“Which?” she asked, smiling at him, spoiling it by batting her eyes in a manner too reminiscent of Deirdre’s.
“And what about marriage,” he asked, “and children, and all the things a normal woman wants?”
“Am I a normal woman?” she asked back. “Or do normal women really want these things? Isn’t it something we’ve been made to think we want simply for the preservation of the species?”
“Nancy,” Walter Burton said desperately, “if any of these things is—or should become—true, you’d have to give up all ideas of marriage. You’re young and ambitious now, but you may feel differently later on and then it would be too late.”
“But why?” she asked gaily.
“Don’t you know? Don’t you know that no decent man would have you?”
“I don’t know any such thing. Many of Madame’s girls have made excellent marriages. And most of them have her to thank for them, too. And they do, you know. There’s hardly a week one or two doesn’t come for dinner, and usually with their husbands, so I’ve had a chance to see just how well they’ve done.”
“Nancy,” Walter said sharply, “I hate to see you getting so under the influence of any one woman. It’s a spell, really.”
“Oh, no,” Nancy said definitely. “I know exactly what I’m doing. Madame isn’t using me. I’m using her. She knows it, too. That’s why I am going to be one of her specials. She doesn’t like blind adoration. Natalia’s going to be a famous violinist and it’s mostly thanks to Madame and she knows it, but she isn’t thanking Madame, she’s simply using her as a stepping stone.”
“And how much help would Madame be if Natalia didn’t have talent?”
“Oh, talent,” Nancy said impatiently. “Thousands of people have talents. Thousands of actresses have talent but they’ll go on having milkshakes in a drugstore when I’m having champagne and caviar.”
“And for this you are willing to—to let yourself be bought and sold?”
“Whenever an actress signs for a part, what else is she doing but selling herself? What else is the management doing but buying her? I’m just making myself more—more interesting. Maybe you might say more available. Walter, I’d like some wine with this dinner.”
“You’re not twenty-one,” Walter said.
“Oh, you’re so stuffy. I could pass for twenty-one without any trouble, couldn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Walter said grimly, “but you’re not going to try. Nancy, when I said goodbye to you in September you were still wet behind the ears—” He flung his fork against his plate with so much force that the waiter came hurrying up, asking, “Anything wrong, sir?”
Nancy smiled up at him again. “Everything is just lovely.” She looked over at Walter tolerantly and raised her lovely brows ever so slightly. She did not look at the waiter, but he smiled at her as though they had a very special secret between them.
“Now what are you so furious about?” Nancy asked as the waiter discreetly withdrew.
“Believing you. I don’t mean to, but you’ve always managed to make me, no matter how outrageous your stories.” Then he pointed a sudden angry finger at her. “But hey, what about me, Nancy? What about your dear friend Walter Burton who just happens to have your surname?”
Nancy laughed merrily. “Oh, Walter darling, that was just sort of self-defense. All of the other girls have someone and you just came in so handy.”
“What about Arnold?”
Nancy laughed again. “Him? I keep his picture hidden in the bottom of my suitcase.”
“But he writes you three letters a week at least, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Do you answer them?”
“Oh, just often enough to keep him hanging on, as sort of insurance.”
“Nancy, that’s—that’s dastardly.”
Nancy grinned. “Sure. I’m a dastard.”
“Nancy, you didn’t have to make me up. There isn’t only Arnold. There are half a dozen other boys at home who pant whenever they see you.”
“Callow infants.”
“But you’ve let Madame Septmoncel think there isn’t anybody, haven’t you?”
“But there isn’t anybody. Nobody that counts. Only Walter Burton. And that’s true, Walter. You’re not in the same class with these other idiots. You’re the only one worth making up a story about.”
He tried not to be pleased; he couldn’t believe her flattery any more than anything else she said.
“But why mu
st you make up a story, Nancy? Why can’t you just take things as they are?”
“Because I don’t like things as they are. Well, at any rate I never have until this year. I don’t think I’ll be making up stories very much longer.”
Walter looked away from her, down at his plate where his dinner still lay, almost untouched.
“Did you tell your Madame Septmoncel how Mother died?”
“No. It’s far too fantastic.” Suddenly she pushed back her chair. “I want to go home.”
“Home?”
“Not home, you idiot. To—to the school.”
“The school?”
“It is a school—in a way. I’m learning something for the first time in my life. I’m going to the ladies’ room, Walter. I’ll wait for you by the elevator.”
He paid the bill to a disapproving waiter, feeling that he had handled neither Nancy nor the situation as they should have been handled, and that he knew no more than when he had first gone down the street and climbed the brownstone steps and seen the polished brass plaque: MADAME SEPTMONCEL’S RESIDENCE FOR YOUNG LADIES.
Nancy was waiting for him by the elevator, her face composed and freshly powdered, but, he thought, rather pale. They went down in the elevator in silence and stood out in the street, waiting as the doorman blew his whistle for a taxi. No, Walter thought, looking at Nancy with her soft, honey-blond hair shining out under the hat with feathers and falling softly against the little fur collar of her coat. She wouldn’t get away with saying she was twenty-one, that she couldn’t do, except for her eyes, and her eyes had always been ancient, even when she was a tiny child.
“So what are you going to do?” Nancy asked as she leaned back against the leather seat of the taxi.
“About what?”
“About me. About what I wrote you.”
For a long time Walter was silent. The taxi moved like a small bug through the streets, wriggling past cabs, past buses, past trucks. At last he said, “Nothing.”
Almost imperceptibly she relaxed. “Nothing?”
“No.”
“Why not? I thought you’d come to save me.”
“But you don’t want to be saved, do you, Nancy?”
She smiled again, the smile that was meant to be far more than twenty-one. “Not particularly.”
“And I can’t do it to Father,” he said. “I can’t say anything while I’m not sure. You’ve done that at least, Nancy; you can have at least that satisfaction. You planted a doubt in my mind. I’m not sure.”
The passing lights illuminated her face, let it fall into shadow, and then brightened it again. She sat quietly, relaxed, her brow clear and innocent, the tender corners of her lips just faintly turned up. “Darling Walter,” she said gently, “you don’t want to believe it. You’ll be much happier not believing it. That’s best for us both, I see it now. But you’ll come again and take me out to dinner, won’t you?”
“I suppose so. If there’s any reason for me to leave the office.”
“And you’ll just be Walter Burton who happens to have the same name that I do?”
“If it’s that important to you.”
The taxi turned down the quiet street. “Where are you staying?” Nancy asked.
“At the Y.”
“Don’t get out with me. I’ll run on in. You keep the taxi and go on.”
Surprisingly Walter agreed; he felt old and tired and the thought of climbing the brownstone steps with Nancy, of going into the building, seemed a physical effort of which he was not capable. “I’ll wait to see that you get in safely.”
She leaned to him and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Good night, big brother.”
She slipped out, slammed the taxi door, and ran up the steps. The streetlights cast a pale glow on the brass plaque. She stood for a moment searching through her small velvet bag for the key, found it, put it in the door, and opened it. As she closed it behind her she heard the taxi drawing away and she sighed with satisfaction. It had been a most successful evening. She wondered if Deirdre was asleep.
She paused at the mahogany table under the mirror to sign her name and the hour in the book. The door to the lemon satin parlor was closed and voices came from it, masculine laughter and girls’ giggles; a couple of the girls must be having dates there. The door to Madame Septmoncel’s drawing room opened and out came a man in evening clothes, carrying a top hat in his hands. He was followed by Madame herself in pearl-gray chiffon. As he passed Nancy he looked at her appraisingly and whispered something to Madame. Madame merely smiled and nodded, saying as she passed, “Wait just a moment before you go upstairs, Nancy, dear.” She went to the front door with the impeccable gentleman, and stood there a moment talking to him. They were speaking in what Nancy took to be French, and so low that the girl could not understand their words. Then the gentleman kissed Madame’s hand (as Walter would have liked to have kissed it that afternoon) and left, and Madame came back to Nancy.
“Well, and did you have a nice evening with your Walter, my dear Nancy?”
“Yes, thank you, Madame.”
“You’re in a little earlier than I expected.”
“Walter was—Walter was tired, Madame.”
“And you? Are you tired?”
“No, Madame. I’m never tired.”
“That’s my Nancy. Well, come on into the drawing room, then, and sit in front of the fire and have a cup of coffee with me. Since we didn’t expect you back so soon I told Natalia she might use your room for a little while tonight. It’s been a busy evening.”
Nancy stood very still in the dark hall, trying to stare through the gloom at Madame.
“You mean she’s practicing?”
Madame laughed. “If you want to call it that. But Natalia is so finished at everything she does one can hardly call it practicing, can one?” She moved slowly down the hall, moving with a grace that Barbara only imperfectly and Deirdre never would be able to copy. Nancy stood still, for the first time uncertain, her heart beating rapidly, a faint tremor of suspicion tingling her flesh. Why hadn’t Walter come in with her, bringing with him the safe fabric of lies? Why had he left her? What was happening?
Madame turned around. The tiger-striped cat slid out of the drawing room and down the hall, brushing deliberately, smoothly, against Nancy’s ankles.
“Come, Nancy,” Madame said. “I think we’ll find we have a good deal to talk about.”
One Day in Spring
Every life has a turning point. Several turning points, probably, but there’s always one that stands out as the turning point, without which the course of life would be totally different.
For Noel Townshend it came on a day in spring. Without that day, none of the summer, the working in the theatre, the knowing Kurt, the beginning of a completely new life, would have been possible.
Even then she had been aware of it. Sitting there she had thought, How strange to know that the whole course of my life can be changed in a dingy room smelling of cigar smoke and cheap perfume!
But it was true. It was so frighteningly true that her hands felt cold with fear and her heart beat so fast that for a moment she was afraid that she might faint in the hot stuffiness of the little room. Although it was unseasonably hot for an April day, steam hissed in the radiator, and there was no window in the ante-room. There was not even an open door.
Because she had not been able to sit still another moment she went over to the receptionist.
“My appointment with Mr. Price was at two o’clock and it is after three now.”
“Yeah?” The receptionist looked at her with a hot, annoyed face.
“I mean—he’s still going to see me, isn’t he?”
“You’ve got an appointment card, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then, relax. Sit down. Though why you want to see him I don’t know. I’m sure he doesn’t want to see you.”
Noel sat down again. She felt miserable and young, and more than snubbed. She looked
down at her feet because she was afraid that if she looked at the others she would find scorn in their faces.
“Don’t let it get you down,” the girl next to her said. “I’ve been in an office where the receptionist said, ‘Thank you for coming in’ after she told me the cast was all set. They’re not all like sour-puss here—though with a second-rate theatre like Price’s running, I don’t know why we’re all hanging around here like a lot of trained seals waiting for him to throw us a fish.”
The door to the hall opened and a young man entered. The moment he came in, a slight, pleasant smile on his face, Noel saw that there was something different about him, that he was not like anybody else in the room. And then she realized what the difference was: he was the only one who was not nervous.
He walked over to the receptionist’s desk: “Hi, Sadie, how’s my duck today?” He had a slight accent.
The sour face was amazingly pleasant when it smiled. “Oh, dying of heat, Mr. Canitz. Otherwise I guess I’ll survive. You want to see Mr. Price?”
“If he’s not too busy.”
“Oh, he always has time to see you, Mr. Canitz. Go right in.”
The young man smiled his pleasant smile at the roomful of hot, nervous people and opened the door to Mr. Price’s office. Noel looked in quickly and saw a room very like the ante-room, except that it had a large opened window and a brief, welcome gust of cool air blew in at her. Mr. Price was sitting at his desk talking to a young woman with blond hair, and he waved his hand genially at Mr. Canitz. “Oh, come in, Kurt. I want you to meet this young lady.”
Then the door shut and heat settled back over the room. “If I had sense,” the girl next to Noel said, “I’d leave this hell hole and go home. So would you.”
“Home,” said Noel, “is the last place I’d go.”
“Well, then, I guess you have a point in hanging around. Why don’t they open the door or something? Why don’t they at least open the door into the hall? Why don’t they turn off the heat?” She appealed to Sadie. “Couldn’t you turn off the heat or something?”
“No, I can’t,” the receptionist snapped. “The radiator’s broken, and I’m just as hot as you are. Hotter. If you don’t like it here, why don’t you get out? I tell you, he isn’t going to hire anybody else. He’s got the whole season set. You’re wasting your time.”
The Moment of Tenderness Page 8
